Jung’s Life

Jung in the World | Image or Art? with Nora Swan-Foster

Transcript


Nora Swan-Foster, Jungian Analyst, author, and art therapist, joins Patricia Martin to discuss Jung, the Red Book, art therapy, and the art-making process.

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Institute Archive | Edith Rockefeller McCormick: Philanthropist, Intellectual, Analyst


To celebrate International Women’s Day, we are sharing the seminar and panel discussion “Edith Rockefeller McCormick: Philanthropist, Intellectual, Analyst” in its entirety. The first hour is a presentation by Andrea Friederici Ross, author of Edith: The Rogue Rockefeller McCormick, followed by reflections by Kennon McKee, PhD, Jungian analyst and Victoria Drake, PhD, that opens up for general discussion.

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Stefano Carpani | “Who was Carl Gustav Jung?” with Dr. John R. Haule

Dr. John Ryan Haule (1942, USA), is a Jungian Analyst, writer, & lecturer. He graduated from the C. G. Jung Institute Zurich in 1980 and is a NCPsyA, Certified Psychoanalyst as well as a Training Analyst at the C. G. Jung Institute-Boston. He works in his private practice in Massachusetts and is the author of books on Romantic Love, Therapy as Relationship, New Age Phenomena, and many articles on these topics, as well as shamanism, history of psychoanalysis, mysticism, and popular culture.

Listen to John Ryan Haule’s lecture, The Love Cure, from the Institute archives

Stefano Carpani M.A., M.Phil. (1978) is an Italian psychoanalyst-in-training (diploma candidate) at the C.G. Jung Institute Zurich and a Ph.D. candidate at the Centre for Psychoanalytical Studies, University of Essex (UK). He works in private practice in Berlin (DE).

Links: Stefano’s YouTube Channel | Stefano’s Website | John Ryan Haule at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago

Institute Archive | Jung & the Environment with Dennis Merritt


We are sharing the webinar “Jung & the Environment” in full. The video version is available on YouTube.

Many believe we are in the Anthropocene Era, an era marked by the planet-wide influence of our species. The field of ecopsychology emerged in the early 1990s as a belated response from the psychological community to address the cascading effects of human-created environmental damage. Jungian ecopsychology offers one of the best frameworks for analyzing our dysfunctional relationship with the environment—and with each other—through an archetypal analysis of the layers of the collective unconscious. Jung was deeply connected with his native Swiss soil that was reflected in the ecological aspects of his conceptual system and his interest in alchemy as his main symbol system. Ecology begins with our relationship with “the little people” in our dreams and dreams can be used to help us connect deeply to the land using Hillman’s concept of Aphrodite as the Soul of the World. In 1940 Jung foretold a paradigm shift that he labeled a “new age” and “Aquarian Age”. The new paradigm will be based on ecological concepts and reflected in the economic system being developed by the sustainable economists. We must think in these terms as a species if there is any hope of averting a planetary nightmare. 

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Jung in the World | C. G. Jung & the Modernist Revolution with Roula-Maria Dib


During our Holiday Giving Drive we are presenting a series of interviews called Jung in the World. In this episode, Patricia Martin interviews Roula-Maria Dib, creative writer and literary scholar, who views Carl Jung as a modernist and has written about the power of the modernist moment in history to give rise to the discipline of psychology. Her book, Jungian Metaphor in Modernist Literature, creates a new context for understanding Carl Jung’s work and his most important theories: the context of the collective in which he lived. In this discussion, they touch on:

  • The development of Modernism
  • Finding wholeness through art
  • Jung’s Collected Works & his literary sense
  • Active imagination
  • The symbol
  • The collective unconscious
  • Deconstruction and integration
  • Reading the Jungian way
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Jung in the World | Jung’s Two Personalities & Their Impact on Jungian Thought & Training with Mark Saban


Mark Saban joins us to talk about the complexity of C. G. Jung’s own personality, and how that has shaped the way Analysts are trained today. They discuss:

  • Jung’s life
  • Training
  • Individuation
  • Inner and outer worlds
  • Engagement with the world
  • The archetypal vs the personal
  • Jungian analysis
  • The individuation of society
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The Archetype of Sacrifice and the Regulation of Archetypal Energy with Robert Moore


This episode is the Saturday morning session of a weekend taught by Robert Moore called The Archetype of Sacrifice and the Regulation of Archetypal Energy. From the seminar description:

This workshop links Jung’s alchemical studies and his examination of the archetype of sacrifice to more recent research into the nature and dynamics of grandiose energies in the human psyche. In this program Robert Moore discusses how the decline of ritual containment of these energies in indigenous and traditional cultures has led to an epidemic of increased anxiety, addiction, and violent acting out.

First, Moore introduces the role of the archetype of sacrifice and related techniques of ritual practice in human strategies of coping with the pressures of archetypal energies. Second, he links the failure of these traditional means to our current epidemic of narcissistic acting out. Third, he summarizes the ways in which recent research supports Jung and Edinger on the necessity of the achievement of an ego-Self axis – a conscious and willed sacrificial attitude in the individuation process. Finally, Moore outlines the clinical implications: the ways in which we must be much more specific in our understanding of the structure and dynamics of the ego-Self axis in relation to the analytical task. He discusses the implications of this understanding of sacrifice for our conceptualization of a truly Jungian understanding of a psychoanalytic “cure” – the task of optimizing the analysand’s conscious regulation of archetypal energies. In short, Dr. Moore argues that Jungian Analysis should return to its roots in a manner which draws upon the best in recent interdisciplinary research to build upon Jung’s foundational discoveries.

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Jung’s Theory of Synchronicity & How it Shapes Our Lives: An Interview with Robert Hopcke

Robert H. Hopcke is a licensed Marriage, Family and Child Counselor in private practice in Berkeley, California. Along with his numerous articles and reviews published over the last 30 years, his national best-seller, There Are No Accidents: Synchronicity and the Stories of Our Lives, which he spoke about at the Jung Institute in 1998, has been popular throughout the world and since been translated into a dozen different languages. Known for his landmark work in Jungian psychology on issues of human sexuality and social justice such as Jung, Jungian, and Homosexuality (which he spoke about at the Institute in 1991); Men’s Dreams, Men’s Healing; A Guided Tour of the Collected Works of C.G. Jung; and The Persona: Where Sacred Meets Profane, he is currently on the clinical faculty of Pacific Center for Human Growth where serves as supervisor, and has been enjoying an active career as translator of works on spirituality and religion from the Italian, including a contemporary American English rendition of The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi.

Patricia Martin is a cultural analyst, consultant, and the author of three books on cultural trends. As a consultant, Martin has worked on teams at Discovery Communications, Dannon, Microsoft, Ms. Foundation for Women, Oracle, Unisys, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the New York Philharmonic, to name a few. Her work has been featured in the New York TimesHarvard Business ReviewUSA Today, and Advertising Age. A blogger since 2002, Martin was a regular contributor to Huffington Post during its start-up years. She earned a B.A. in English and sociology from Michigan State University and an M.A. in Irish literature and culture from the University College Dublin. Later, she built a foundation for her cultural analysis by studying Jungian theory and depth psychology at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago, where she is currently a Professional Affiliate and member of the program committee. In 2017, she harnessed artificial intelligence to uncover the effects of the internet on our sense of self. A book on her findings entitled Will the Future Like You? is due out later in 2021. Martin speaks worldwide about cultural changes that are shaping the future and the impact of the digital culture on the collective. A native of Detroit, Martin works in Chicago and lives in an ancient forest near the shores of Lake Michigan with her husband and countless deer.

Thank you to everyone who shared a little bit about themselves since the last episode. If you’d like us to know who you are, click this link, and I’ll read your submission on the podcast! No need to share any identifying information. This information will not be used for any other purpose.

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Links
Robert Hopcke’s lectures at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago
Robert Hopcke’s website
Robert Hopcke’s books at Amazon
Robert Hopcke’s books at Chiron Publications

Books
There Are No Accidents in Love and Relationships: Meaningful Coincidences and the Stories of Our Families
There Are No Accidents: Synchronicity and the Stories of Our Lives
Jung, Jungian, and Homosexuality
Men’s Dreams, Men’s Healing

A Guided Tour of the Collected Works of C.G. Jung
The Persona: Where Sacred Meets Profane


This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may share it, but please do not change it, sell it, or transcribe it.
Executive Producer: Ben Law
Producer: Patricia Martin
Music: Michael Chapman


Thank you to our 2020 donors who gave at the Contributing Member level and above: Barbara Annan, Usha and Ashok Bedi, Jackie Cabe Bryan, Eric Cooper and Judith Cooper, Kevin Davis, George J. Didier, James Fidelibus, John Korolewski, Marty Manning, Dyane Sherwood, Deborah P. Stutsman, Debra Tobin, Alexander Wayne and Lynne Copp, Gerald Weiner, Karen West and James Taylor, and Ellen Young. If you would like to support this podcast, click here to join our community of supporters.

Why a Conscious Life Has a Positive End: An Interview with Dan Ross

This episode I want to try something new. We see statistics that show how many people listen to this podcast, but that doesn’t show us who our listeners are. I’m curious about who listens to this podcast and I think some of you might be interested in what kind of community of listeners you’re a part of. I want to know where you are on your journey, how you found this podcast, and what you are looking for in life. If you’d like to share a little bit of that with us, click this link, and I’ll read your submission on the podcast! No need to share any identifying information. This information will not be used for any other purpose.

In this episode, Patricia Martins interviews Jungian Analyst Dan Ross, RN, PMHNP, about conscious individuation throughout life stages and why it makes for a better death.

Daniel Ross, RN, PMHNP, MSN, MBA has been a nurse for 40 years. He has worked extensively as Director of Clinical Services in the field of home health care and hospice. As a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, he brings both a medical and psychiatric experience to his work. He currently works part time in the field of Palliative Care and Hospice as a Nurse Practitioner, visiting patients in their home or nursing facility helping them in their transition to hospice. He is also a Jungian Analyst in private practice in downtown Chicago.

Patricia Martin is a noted cultural analyst, author, and consultant. She has published three books on cultural trends. As a consultant, Patricia has helped some of the world’s most respected organizations interpret social signals that have the power to shape the collective. She’s worked with teams at Discovery Communications, Dannon, Microsoft, Unisys, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the New York Philharmonic. Her work has been featured in the New York TimesHarvard Business ReviewUSA Today, and Advertising Age. She holds an M. A. in literature and cultural studies at the University College, Dublin (honors) and a B.A. in English from Michigan State University. In 2018, she completed the Jungian Studies Program at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago, where she is a Professional Affiliate. A scholar in residence at the Chicago Public Library, Patricia has devoted nearly a decade to studying the digital culture and its impact on individuation. She lectures around the world on topics related to the psyche and the digital age, the future of the collective, and the changing nature of individuation, all concepts discussed in her forthcoming book: Will the Future Like You?

Links
Dan Ross’s page on the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago Website
Dan Ross on Jungianthology
Dan Ross’s website
Support this podcast
Join our mailing list


This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may share it, but please do not change it, sell it, or transcribe it.
Executive Producer: Ben Law
Producer: Patricia Martin
Music: Michael Chapman


Thank you to our 2020 donors who gave at the Contributing Member level and above: Barbara Annan, Usha and Ashok Bedi, Jackie Cabe Bryan, Eric Cooper and Judith Cooper, Kevin Davis, George J. Didier, James Fidelibus, John Korolewski, Marty Manning, Dyane Sherwood, Deborah P. Stutsman, Debra Tobin, Alexander Wayne and Lynne Copp, Gerald Weiner, Karen West and James Taylor, and Ellen Young. If you would like to support this podcast, click here to join our community of supporters.

Murray Stein | Symbols and the Transformation of the Psyche

My personal physician in Thun recently complained about the many patients he sees who are perfectly healthy but come to him doubled up in pain and complaining about their symptoms. “They are crazy,” he said throwing up his hands in frustration. “Perfectly healthy people, but not able to live with their health! On the other side I have patients who feel as healthy as can be, and I have to tell them they have six months to live because of a recently discovered lymphoma. I’d like to send the healthy ones to the moon! They’re nuts!”

His complaint reminded me of the opening pages in Jung’s 1936 Terry Lectures at Yale University entitled “Psychology and Religion.” There he is telling the audience about the power that a neurosis can have over patients’ lives. For instance, he says, a man imagines he has cancer, but there is no physical evidence of cancer in his body. He then feels at a complete loss and becomes convinced that he is crazy. So he consults Jung, a psychiatrist. “Help me, doctor. I think I’m dying from cancer but this is nonsense, yet I can’t stop it!” What does the psychiatrist Jung do with this imaginary cancer? “I told him that it would be better to take his obsession seriously instead of reviling it as pathological nonsense. But to take it seriously would mean acknowledging it as a sort of diagnostic statement of the fact that, in a psyche which really existed, trouble had arisen in the form of a cancerous growth. ‘But,’ he will surely ask, ‘what could that growth be?’ And I shall answer: ‘I do not know,’ as indeed I do not. Although… it is surely a compensatory or complementary unconscious formation, nothing is yet known about its specific nature or about its content. It is a spontaneous manifestation of the unconscious, based on contents which are not to be found in consciousness… I then inform him… that his dreams will provide us with all the necessary information. We will take them as if they issued from an intelligent, purposive, and, as it were, personal source…. The symptom is like the shoot above ground, yet the main plant is an extended rhizome underground. The rhizome represents the content of a neurosis; it is the matrix of complexes, of symptoms, and of dreams. We have every reason to believe that dreams mirror exactly the underground processes of the psyche. And if we get there, we literally get at the ‘roots’ of the disease.”

The delusional idea of a cancerous growth in a healthy body, then, is a symbol, which can provide a point of entry into the unconscious realm of complexes, processes, and hidden conflicts. And just as a physical cancer will suck the life out of a living organism if it is allowed to grow and remains unchecked, a psychic cancer too will drain a person’s life of psychic energy and produce a state of hopeless stagnation and eventually even psychic death. Symbols have the power to do just that. They collect, hold, and channel psychic energy, for good or ill.

In one sense, this psychic symptom is a metaphor, in that it is borrowing the language of physicality (cancer, illness) and applying it to the psychic domain. This transfer of language from one domain to another is what poets do when they employ metaphors. The psyche is involuntarily acting in a poetic fashion by stating, “I am sick with cancer,” when the person, were he more conscious of his psychic suffering, would say, “I am in profound despair,” or “I have no energy,” or “I am in hopeless conflict and it’s eating me alive!” But this patient cannot say that. He can only say: “I am convinced I have cancer, and I can’t get this irrational idea out of my head!” He is an unwilling poet. He has not chosen this symbol consciously or voluntarily; it has chosen him. He is unfree to dismiss it and unable to interpret it. So he goes to the analyst, and he confesses that he is possessed by a symbol and doesn’t know what it means. Understandably, he is humiliated by the stupid symptom and its unyielding grip on him. Jung says that such morbidity is usually shameful, and the patient is embarrassed to admit this weakness. He is in the grip of a complex, and this psychic factor – powerful, autonomous, and unconscious – is symbolized as a cancer. It must be analyzed and made conscious so that the very real suffering caused by the symptom-symbol can be transformed into psychic suffering. Perhaps other psychic resources can thus also be constellated, which will assist in bringing about the free flow of energy (libido) into more life enhancing tasks and goals.

What is a symbol?

As Jung understands and employs the term symbol, it is different from a metaphor in that what it is communicating or presenting to consciousness is utterly untranslatable into any other terms, at least for the time being. Symbols are opaque and often bring thinking to a standstill. Metaphors are transparent and must be so if they are to do their job. They help us think in creative ways “outside the box.” If a poet writes, for instance, that a bridge leaps (“vaulting the sea”) and addresses it as a “harp” and an “altar,” as the American poet Hart Crane does in his famous poem, “To Brooklyn Bridge,” the reader can with diligence puzzle out a sense of what the poet means to communicate. We know what a bridge is, and we know what “vaulting” signifies and what “altars” and “harps” are, and we can think along with the poet and appreciate what he is getting at with these metaphors. The image all refer to sense data in the material world, and reflection will yield interesting ideas about how they belong together and what this unique concatenation signifies. But if a patient says, “I am convinced that that I have a cancerous tumor in my body but there is no evidence, what does this mean?” the psychotherapist must confess, with Jung, “I have no idea what it means, but we can explore the image. By looking at your life, your history, your dreams and fantasies, we may be able to discover something that at this moment is locked out of consciousness and is analogous to a cancer.” It is an important difference. The link between signifier and signified is totally opaque in the case of symbols; with metaphors, on the contrary, this link is evident even if often very complicated and at first glance puzzling.

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Murray Stein | On the Importance of Numinous Experience in the Alchemy of Individuation

In a letter to P.W. Martin (20 August 1945), the founder of the International Study Center of Applied Psychology in Oxted, England, C.G. Jung confirmed the centrality of numinous experience in his life and work: “It always seemed to me as if the real milestones were certain symbolic events characterized by a strong emotional tone. You are quite right, the main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neuroses but rather with the approach to the numinous. But the fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy and inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experiences you are released from the curse of pathology. Even the very disease takes on a numinous character” (Jung 1973, 1: 377). If one holds the classical Jungian view that the only genuine cure for neurosis is to grow out of it through pursuing individuation, then treatment based on this model would seem necessarily to include “the approach to the numinous,” as Jung states so firmly in this letter. The individuation process, as proposed by Jung and his followers, typically includes experiences of a numinous nature.

The question is: How are such momentous experiences related to and used within the context of analysis and the individuation journey, and how do they contribute to the overall process of individuation? On the answer to this complex question rests the difference between psychological individuation and the development of spirituality. While the psychological hero(ine) of the individuation journey is by no means identical to the spiritual hero(ine) of the journey to God (however this term may be defined), it is not always easy to tell where their paths diverge, precisely because Jung placed such central importance on numinous experience for individuation. And yet they do diverge, and decisively.

On Healing and Numinous Experience

We can begin by investigating how attaining to numinous experiences releases a person from the curse of pathology, as Jung claims in his letter to P.W. Martin. Generally speaking, an “approach to the numinous” is considered a religious undertaking, a pilgrimage. The “attainment to the numinous experiences” that Jung speaks of refers to religious experiences of a quasi-mystical nature. By itself, this attainment might well persuade a person that life is meaningful. Numinous experience creates a convincing link to the transcendent, and this may well lead to the feeling that character flaws like addictions or behavioral disorders are trivial by comparison with the grand visions imparted in the mystical state. The pathological symptom can be interpreted as an incitement to go on the spiritual quest, or even as a paradoxical doorway into transcendence, and this can donate meaning to the malady itself. Perhaps some degree of pathology is needed, in fact, in order for a person to feel strongly enough motivated to set out on a spiritual quest to begin with. In this case, attainment to numinous experiences would bring about a change in the feeling that pathology is a curse, even if it did not result in curing the pathology itself, although it might lead to this as well.

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They Had a Dream (We Have a Dream): C G Jung, MLK, and the Evocative Power of Symbols

with Jennifer Leigh Selig, PhD

In continuation of our COVID-19 response, we are sharing another full seminar. You can support our ongoing efforts to provide free and low-cost educational resources during this pandemic by making a donation on our website or a purchase in our audio and video store. We have extended our Stay Connected Sale through May 31st, so you can still get 40% everything in our store (use the coupon code CONNECT on the cart page before checkout).

Jung initially rejected the invitation to write Man and His Symbols, whose intention was to make Jungian psychology understandable to a general audience, but a dream convinced him otherwise. In his dream, he speaks to a multitude of enthralled people who understand everything he says. In this presentation on Chapter 1 of Man and His Symbols, “Approaching the Unconscious,” we’ll explore how two years after Jung completed both his chapter and his life, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to a multitude of enthralled people and translated many Jungian concepts into everyday language in his “I Have a Dream” speech. Jung’s chapter is concerned with four major areas—the unconscious, dreams, archetypes, and symbols—all four of which we find illustrated and translated to a general audience in King’s dream speech. We’ll dream the dream forward into the 2020 election and see how leading presidential candidates are working with archetypes and symbols as well, on behalf of the psychological health of the body politic.

A PDF of the PowerPoint shown during the seminar, which includes links to the videos on YouTube, is available HERE . It was recorded on October 4, 2019.

Jennifer Leigh Selig, PhD is the founder and former chair of the Jungian and Archetypal Studies doctoral degree at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She has spent almost two decades researching, writing about, and presenting on Martin Luther King, Jr., including her 2005 title, Integration: The Psychology and Mythology of Martin Luther King, Jr. and His (Unfinished) Therapy With the Soul of America. Her latest books include Everyday Reverence: A Hundred Ways to Kneel , Kiss the Ground, and a co-authored volume titled Deep Creativity: Seven Ways to Spark Your Creative Spiritjenniferleighselig.com

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© 2019 Jennifer Leigh Selig. This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may share it, but please do not change it, sell it, or transcribe it.
Music by Michael Chapman
Edited and produced by Benjamin Law

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    The Jungianthology Podcast offers free lectures from our archives and interviews with Jungian analysts and presenters at Institute programs.

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