Individuation

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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Jung in the World: Jung & the New Generation of Creatives with Jessica Carson


Carl Jung was known to be endlessly creative and said art is an innate drive within all of us. People who identify as creatives are prone to certain mental health issues that are somewhat specific to their work. In particular, their shadow material is often overlooked in our culture in favor of a more romantic, poetic view of their identities. Author Jessica Carson uses Jungian theory in her book Wired This Way, a guide to the wellbeing of the creative spirit. It helps us understand creatives as more fully complex human beings. In this discussion, they touch on:

  • Jung’s Writing
  • Creativity & Creative People
  • Entrepreneurialism and Business Culture
  • Integrating Masculine & Feminine Archetypes
  • Fairy Tales
  • Shadow
  • Projection
  • Tension of Opposites
  • Cycles of Renewal
  • Joseph Campbell & the Hero’s Journey
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Jung in the World | Eros and the Archetypal Pursuit of Healing Love with Maci Daye, Certified Sex Therapist


Love was a great mystery to C. G. Jung. It is thought that his pursuit of love and the feminine aspect of his psyche was an animating force in his famous red book. Maci Daye, trained psychologist, certified sex therapist, and author of Passion and Presence: A Couples Guide to Awakened Intimacy & Mindful Sex. Maci’s work delves into the deep roots of love and why eros is a profound path to individuation.

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Healing Cinema: The Lives of Others


Jungian Analysts Judith Cooper and Daniel Ross discuss Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s 2006 film The Lives of Others (Wikipedia). They touch on:

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Jung in the World | The Discipline to Stay with the Symbol: Interview with Director of Training Warren Sibilla


In this episode, Patricia Martin interviews Warren W. Sibilla, Jr, Jungian Psychoanalyst and the new Director of Training for the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago’s Analyst Training Program. How does someone know they are ready for training? What is the process of development in training like? What does Jungian analysis and study bring to someone’s life and practice?

Dr. Sibilla is an athlete who competes in endurance sports like the Ironman and Spartan Obstacle Race. How has this discipline manifested in Dr. Sibilla’s own analytic practice? Does that lead to a particular framing about the practice of psychology and analysis? In this discussion they touch on:

The Symbol
The Unconscious
The Self
Individuation
The Shadow
Discipline
Analytic Training

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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 in the World | Animating Female Archetypes & Telling Women’s Stories: Interview with Elizabeth Lesser


Best-selling author Elizabeth Lesser sat down with us to discuss her latest book, Cassandra Speaks: When Women are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes. Elizabeth is the co-founder of the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. In the interview, Lesser talks about new models of power with host Patricia Martin and explains why feminine archetypes and female myths are so resonant today. Offering bright insights and deep wisdom, Lesser touches on several of Jung’s theories, including anima and animus, and shares a gem-like memory of Jungian analyst Marion Woodman, who led workshops at the Omega Center during its early years. Having Elizabeth Lesser on Jungianthology was profoundly inspiring; and we invite you to listen for yourself. In this interview they touch on:

The Omega Institute
The Omega Women’s Leadership Center
Archetypes
Power and abuse of power
Masculine theories of leadership
Greek mythology as written by men
The myth of Cassandra
Marion Woodman
Anima/Animus
Simone Biles
How gender roles are changing
Feminist theories and practices of power
How “feminine-ist” power is necessary to face contemporary problems

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Murray Stein | Midway on our life’s journey…: On Psychological Transformation at Midlife (Essay)

The midlife period in most advanced countries worldwide today the average life expectancy for males extends to their mid- to late seventies and for women to their early to mid-eighties. Of course, this varies from place to place and depends very much on socio-economic factors that fluctuate broadly with world historical events such as revolutions, wars, economic depressions, and so forth. But on the whole and in average circumstances, the midway point of life for both sexes falls in the period between thirty-five and forty-five years of age. Why is this noteworthy, especially for psychotherapists?

Often midlife is a profoundly transformational period in personal identity for both women and men. Sometimes this takes the form of the famous “crisis,” but often it is not something quite so dramatic. I have come to think of it instead as a potential second birth of adult identity, the first having taken place between late adolescence and the thirtieth year. And birth is sometimes traumatic, and so one speaks of it as a “crisis” with justification. But even if not a fullblown crisis, it may signal a subtle transition in a person’s sense of self and identity.

About the timing of this transformation process, one cannot be quite so precisely mathematical. Some people seem to experience this on the early end of the midlife period, and many others on the other end and in their late forties. The timing is quite variable and depends on a number of factors coalescing that bring it to a point. What happened earlier in the person’s line of development out of childhood through adolescence and into adulthood is of importance in this. Generally speaking, the storms of life catch people by surprise, and the midlife tumult is no exception even if people are somewhat prepared to expect something big nowadays due to the extensive press coverage the midlife crisis has received in the decades of the late twentieth century.

It is also the case that some people do not undergo a midlife transformation at any time, any more than that everyone achieves a solid and meaningful adult identity. This is not a given. Some people show serious developmental arrest in early childhood attitudes or in adolescence, for example, and for such people there is no midlife transformation to speak of, but rather a continuous and prolonged identity as a partially adult person with striking childish or adolescent features remaining in place to the end of their lives. For these people, aging is real only in a physical sense but not psychologically, and even at the physical level it can staved off quite well and for a lengthy period of time given enough money for cosmetic surgery and other forms of anti-aging treatment. For people who make the transitions from childhood into adulthood successfully and more or less fully, however, aging is a psychological as well as a physical process. Psychologically, as one gets older one also becomes more complex and – dare we say it? – more mature and perhaps even attains to a level of wisdom in later years. Most importantly, one achieves a defined identity that extends beyond the early one of late adolescence and early adulthood. This later form of adult identity I call the personality’s “imago.” It takes form as the result of one or more transformations in and around the midlife period.

The Two Halves of Life – Achievement of Conventionality, Development of Individuality

The midlife phase of the lifelong psychological developmental process, which in Jungian circles we refer to as individuation, marks the turning point from the first half of life into the second. The lifespan as a whole can be divided into two more or less equal (in duration) parts, a first and a second half. This is an important image to keep in mind when considering the meaning of the midlife transition. Each half of life has its own proper projects, tasks, and challenges, and they are different. The tasks of the first half have to do with growing up physically and mentally and with attaining the social stature of an adult member of one’s community, willing and able to take responsibility for the tasks of adulthood – working, raising a family, paying taxes, preparing to take care of one’s aging parents and able to care for one’s growing children, and so forth. From the psychological perspective, this calls for personal (i.e., ego) development out of a primal state of attachment to mother and parentlike caretakers and and for growing out of a sense of dependency on them in order to gain a felt degree of independence, autonomous functioning, and the ability to contribute to others rather than only to absorb and consume. This has profound moral as well as psychological features.

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Healing Cinema: Gaslight

This episode is the first in a new series called Healing Cinema. Judith Cooper, PsyD, and Daniel Ross, PMHNP, members of the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts, discuss films from an Jungian point of view. These informal discussions will be released in parallel with our other episodes (lectures from our archives and interviews by Patricia Martin) and will not be on any particular schedule.

In this episode, Judith and Dan discuss the 1944 film Gaslight (Wikipedia). They mention the fairy tale “Fitcher’s Bird”, so if you want to learn more about that, you can read about it on Wikipedia. They also touch on the following:

  • Alchemy
  • Animus/Anima
  • Beebe, John
  • Blackbeard fairytale
  • Hillman, James
  • Imposter Syndrome
  • Initiation
  • Kalsched, Donald
  • Numinous
  • Puella
  • Senex
  • Splendor Solis
  • Telos
  • Transcendent Function
  • Trauma
  • Trickster

Judith Cooper, PsyD is a clinical psychologist and diplomate Jungian Analyst in private practice in Chicago. She is a graduate and member of the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago. She was adjunct faculty at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology (1999-2000), teaching projective testing. She was clinical supervisor (1991-2002) and director of training (1998-2002) of an APA-accredited psychology internship program at a community mental health center in northwest Indiana. She has taught in the Analyst Training Program and lectured on the anima/animus, and the clinical use of film.

Daniel Ross, RN, PMHNP, MSN, MBA has been a nurse for 40 years and in hospice for over 30.  As a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner and Jungian Analyst, he brings a medical, psychiatric, and analytical perspective to the field of end-of-life care.  He first completed the two-year Clinical Training Program (now the JPP/JSP) at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago then went on to complete the Analyst Training Program.  He is in private practice in the northwest suburbs working with adults seeking psychotherapy and continues to see hospice and palliative care patients at the end of life.  He is Co-Director of the Jungian Psychotherapy Program and Jungian Studies Program at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago.

Thank you to everyone who has shared a little about themselves. If you’d like us to know who you are, click this link, and I’ll read your submission on the podcast!

You can support this free podcast by making a donation, becoming a member of the Institute, or making a purchase in our online store. Your support enables us to provide free and low-cost educational resources to all.

Links
Judith Cooper’s page on the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago Website
Daniel Ross’s page on the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago Website


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
Host: Patricia Martin
Contributors: Judith Cooper & Daniel Ross
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, Mary Dougherty, 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.

The King Within: A Study in Masculine Psychology

with Robert Moore, PhD

This episode is the first session of the series The King Within: A Study in Masculine Psychology, a classic seminar in his series on the four major archetypes of masculine psychology as he understood them: King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. From the seminar description:

Of the four male archetypes described by Robert Moore—King, Warrior, Magician and Lover—the King is the central archetype in the mature masculine psyche. Without dis-identification from this archetype—and without a dynamic connection to it—a man will be immobilized by grandiosity, lost in depression, and bereft of a sense of meaning, just order, and connection with the creative springs of the psyche. The course is divided into the following four topics:

• The Sacred King in Myth, Folklore and Religion
• The Role of the King in Masculine Selfhood
• Psychopathology and the King
• Healing the King: Resources from Analysis, Ritual and Human Spirituality

It was recorded in 1989.

Robert Moore, PhD was Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Spirituality in the Graduate Center of the Chicago Theological Seminary where he was the Founding Director of the new Institute for Advanced Studies in Spirituality and Wellness. An internationally recognized psychoanalyst and consultant in private practice in Chicago, he served as a Training Analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago and was Director of Research for the Institute for Integrative Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and the Chicago Center for Integrative Psychotherapy. Author and editor of numerous books in psychology and spirituality, he lectured internationally on his formulation of a neo-Jungian  psychoanalysis and integrative psychotherapy.  His publications include THE ARCHETYPE OF INITIATION: Sacred Space, Ritual Process and Personal TransformationTHE MAGICIAN AND THE ANALYST: The Archetype of the Magus in Occult Spirituality and Jungian Psychology; and FACING THE DRAGON: Confronting Personal and Spiritual Grandiosity.

Thank you to everyone who has shared a little about themselves. 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.

You can support this free podcast by making a donation, becoming a member of the Institute, or making a purchase in our online store. Your support enables us to provide free and low-cost educational resources to all.

We’re currently running our annual Summer Sale! Get 20% off everything in our online store through July 14. Use the coupon code SUMMER on the CART PAGE before proceeding to checkout.

Links
The King Within: A Study in Masculine Psychology
The King, Warrior, Magician, Lover Compilation
All of Robert Moore’s Seminars


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
Host: 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, Mary Dougherty, 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.

Jung in the World | Learning as a Path to Individuation: Interview with JPP/JSP Directors Adina Davidson & Andrea Gaspar Gonzalez

This is the second weekly episode we are releasing as part of out spring fundraising drive, Grow With Us. You can support this podcast and help us reach our $10,000 goal by making a donation. You can also support us by becoming a member of the Institute or making a purchase in our online store.

In this episode, Patricia Martin interviews Adina Davidson, PhD & Andrea Gaspar Gonzalez, PsyD, directors of the upcoming Jungian Psychotherapy Program (JPP) and Jungian Studies Program (JSP), about the process of individuation in this cultural moment. It’s a lively discussion about self-development during moments of crisis: What is necessary to integrate painful realizations, and what happens if we don’t? What do we need, as individuals and as groups, to follow the individuation process, rather than retreating into persona? For those interested in the programs, both Adina and Andrea discuss their philosophies of teaching and explain what to expect.

Adina Davidson, PhD is a Jungian analyst practicing in Cleveland, Ohio. She trained at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago and graduated in September 2019. She is particularly interested in the ways we personally and collectively make meaning of our lives through telling our stories.

Andrea Gaspar Gonzalez, PsyD is a clinical psychologist practicing in the Chicagoland area, with a focus on the treatment of trauma and sexual abuse. She is a recent Fellow of the Jungian Psychotherapy Program (2018–2020) and graduate of the Jungian Studies Program (2014–2016) at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago. Her current research is focused on collective psyche, application of Jung’s theories to the present cultural climate, and re-examining archetype and archetypal material, especially as it relates to the concept of the feminine, from a fourth-wave feminist standpoint.

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.

You can support this free podcast by making a donation, becoming a member of the Institute, or making a purchase in our online store. Your support enables us to provide free and low-cost educational resources to all.

Links
The Jungian Psychotherapy Program (JPP) & Jungian Studies Program (JSP)
Adina Davidson’s page at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago
Andrea Gaspar Gonzalez’s page at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago


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.

Image for Hire Podcast | Synchronicity and the I-Ching with Dennis Merritt (Audio)

Dennis Merritt, member of the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts, is interviewed on the Image for Hire podcast. It was released on October 30, 2018. From the description:

The Skrauss discusses synchronicity and the I-Ching with Dennis A. Merrit.
Listen up, Cavedweller. Take a plunge into the divinatory system that cracks into the Tao, the binary code of the Universe.

Names dropped and subjects mentioned:
Synchronicity is a Dimension
How Much Is the I-Ching (Unanswered)
Compendium of Chinese Wisdom
It Came From 1050 BCE
Leibnitz
How to Question the I-Ching
Carol Anthony’s 3RD Edition Guide to the I-Ching
Time is Not Just Quantity; It Is Quality
Gausian Curve
The Rainmaker Story
“Black Elk Speaks”
Wolfgang Pauli
Hexagram 42 “Increase”
The Confucian School
Hexagram 23 “Splitting Apart”
Hexagram 24 “The Turning Point”
Yellow is the Color of the Medium
Donald Trump is a Trickster
Cover Story of the January 1976 edition of Scientific America

Dennis L. Merritt, PhD, is a Jungian psychoanalyst and ecopsychologist in private practice in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Dr. Merritt is a diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich and also holds the following degrees: M.A. Humanistic Psychology-Clinical, Sonoma State University, California, Ph.D. Insect Pathology, University of California-Berkeley, M.S. and B.S. Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Over twenty-five years of participation in Lakota Sioux ceremonies have strongly influenced his worldview.

Dr. Merritt is the author of Jung, Hermes, and Ecopsychology: The Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the Universe Volumes 1 – 4.

Links: Dennis Merritt’s Blog | Dennis Merritt’s Practice Website | Dennis Merritt’s Page on the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago Website | Image for Hire podcast on SoundCloud

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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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