This Jungian Life Podcast &#8211; Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, Lisa Marchiano

⁠We’d like to take a crack interpreting your dream.⁠⁠

If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.

When Everything Changes: Is There Opportunity in Crisis? Apr 09, 2020

Show notes

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠In the Chinese language, the two characters representing crisis are danger and opportunity. Can that possibly be true of these days of pandemic crisis, with physical, economic, and psychological destabilization? Voices of experience and wisdom speak to us about finding potential in desperate situations. Victor Frankl, imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, discovered he had the power to choose his attitude toward brutal circumstances. Erich Fromm felt that isolation and fear could lead either to experiencing or forfeiting personal freedom. Carl Jung valued the human capacity for consciousness: “As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” We can be heartened in hard times by those who have gone before, turned inward, and found treasure.

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Ancestors: Our Psychological Inheritance Apr 02, 2020

Show notes

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The archetype of origins is in resurgence since the advent of ancestry-mapping programs. What are the psychological and symbolic meanings of ancestry? Identity is often strongly linked to ancestry in its ethnic and cultural aspects, and as the carrier of personal traits.

Genealogy gives rise to meaning-making narratives such as: I get my talent for storytelling from my Irish forebears. Jung knew that family complexes are handed down when he said, “Psychologically, the central point of a human personality is the place where the ancestors are reincarnated.” Genograms, another mapping technique, allow us to trace those intellectual and emotional family patterns. Every individual rests on a historical foundation of family, tribe, clan, and nation—and, at levels below consciousness, we are also affected by our common roots in the primeval past and the mysterious central fire of life. In order to differentiate from this multi-layered context, it can help to know it.

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Therapist Disclosures: Withholding or Overloading? Mar 26, 2020

Show notes

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Should an analyst share personal information with clients? Freud believed that the analyst should be devoid of personal presence, so he sat unseen behind his famous couch. Jung realized that regardless of theory, psychotherapy entailed two people in a room interacting. He likened two personalities to chemical substances: as they combined both would be altered. Jung and his patients interacted face to face, for Jung welcomed the complexities of human relationship. Relational dynamics are the bedrock of the therapeutic process; we invite them into the consulting room. Vulnerabilities, friendliness, power dynamics, humor, and shadow’s many manifestations appear in body language, facial expression, and feeling tone as well as language. Humans are wired to read one another, so disclosure is inevitable. The crucial concern for the therapist is that disclosures serve authentic relationship, including the deconstruction of isolation and shame when we as therapists are seen in our humanity.

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Facing the Fear of Coronavirus: Finding a Grounding Attitude Mar 19, 2020

Show notes

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠The word plague derives from the Latin plangere, “to strike the breast as if in lamentation.” The novel coronavirus has visited loss, fear and hardship on many. Nature in her destructive mode can radically disrupt cultural creations and norms and show us how fragile they – and we -- are. We may also find new sources of sustenance within. Dreams, bodywork, and the imaginal realm can help us access a new attitude: a reorientation of purpose, meaning, and consciousness. “The great events of world history are, at bottom, profoundly unimportant. In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of the individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations first take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately spring as a gigantic summation from these hidden sources in individuals. In our most private and most subjective lives, we are not only the passive witnesses of our age, and its sufferers, but also its makers. We make our own epoch.”

C.G. Jung, CW 18, Para. 1400.

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Destiny: Are We Fated to Have One? Mar 12, 2020

Show notes

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Questions about fate and destiny have existed for millennia. Fate often refers to unalterable realities, from genes to future events, whereas destiny points to future potential. An acorn’s likely fate is to die on the forest floor, but its destiny is to become an oak tree. Jung understood that “…when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as Fate.” Differentiating from family and collective values, and from the inner world of the unconscious, is what can enable us to change what appears to be external and autonomous: “fate.” The process of making inner situations conscious, the task of individuation, is the central aim of Jung’s psychology. This is also imaged as the hero’s journey of finding and fulfilling one’s destiny -- discovering one’s true purpose. Jung said, “At bottom, therefore, there is only striving, namely, the striving after your own being.”

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Pessimism: Was Eeyore Right? Mar 05, 2020

Show notes

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠“Could be worse. Not sure how, but it could be.” For Eeyore, only perverse possibilities lie ahead, even if they are unknowable. Do gloomy expectations create self-fulfilling prophecies? Or are pessimists more realistic than naive optimists like Winnie the Pooh? Pessimism can be associated with depression, anxiety, sleep disorders and more. It may also motivate preparation and striving, especially if the pessimist believes he or she can overcome significant obstacles and succeed. There is a difference between ability to anticipate pitfalls and a depressed or hopeless emotional state. Pessimism may have roots in early relational disappointments, leading the person to believe it is better not to expect anything good than to hope for reward and be disappointed. The Greek myth of Icarus is often seen as a cautionary tale against recklessly flying too high and falling – but Icarus was also warned against fearfully flying too low and immobilization. Holding the tension of the opposites—pessimism and optimism--is what makes movement of libido possible.

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Outrageous! What Drives Shocking Behaviors? Feb 27, 2020

Show notes

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠We can all cite examples of behaviors that defy reason and meaning. How can we understand X shouting those things at a party, or the bizarre thing Y filmed himself doing on YouTube? There is a great array of psychological labels for such behaviors, as if pronouncing them “histrionic,” “manic” or even “drunk” explains radical actions and cascades of feelings. The roots of such exaggerated expressions may lie in early relational traumas and attempts to compensate for authentic lacks by appearing uncaring and daring, or dramatic and demanding. Overall, an inability to hold the tension between feeling and action has occurred, hinting at an adaptive failure. Extreme behaviors are often the externally expressed compensation for their internal opposites, so outrageous behavior may be a plea for empathic attention and authentic connection.

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Projection: When the Dart Lands Feb 20, 2020

Show notes

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The power of projections to hit psychic targets serves both defensive and integrative functions. Projections are a natural aspect of psychic functioning, as we know from watching children at play: we first see inner images “out there” in order to experience them internally. Projections give shape to affects and archetypal images, from the hero to the healer, the derelict to the destroyer. We also tend to project our shadows outward, attributing disliked or undeveloped aspects of ourselves to others. In The Wizard of Oz Dorothy and her companions project the power to change their lives onto the wizard. When they discover he is only “the man behind the curtain” they recognize their projections as illusions and are able to see the wizard more objectively. Withdrawing projections allows us to become more empowered and whole.

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Climate Change: How Can We Welcome Upsetting Truths? Feb 13, 2020

Show notes

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Recent severe environmental events have made facing climate change urgent. We talk with Jeffrey Kiehl, PhD, climate scientist, Jungian analyst, and author, about bringing a psychological perspective to our present situation and the process of change. (Kiehl’s book is listed below.) The modern myth of infinite growth and limitless natural resources has led to equating consumerism with personal fulfillment. This belief underlies environmental imbalance; a new attitude is needed to restore right relationship with the earth. Kiehl draws on a tale Jung loved: a Chinese village struck by drought sent for the rainmaker, but right after he arrived he retreated to a secluded hut outside the village. Three days later, it rained. The rainmaker explained that the villagers had been so out of balance that he became infected. He then had to withdraw in order to return to Tao—and then, quite naturally, it rained. The rainmaker—and Jung—knew that one’s inner life and wholeness is the foundation for external change. Kiehl underscores the importance of a lived relationship with Nature and the unconscious, sources of wholeness and harmony. If we engage in the rainmaker’s work we can infect—and affect—the external world.

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