Transformation

Jung in the World | Exploring the Mystery of Transformation with Murray Stein


Transformation of the self is mysterious, whether it comes about gradually or suddenly. The essence of the process is buried in the unconscious. In this interview, Murray Stein sheds light on key dimensions of transformation based on his recent book, The Mystery of Transformation. In conversation with host Patricia Martin, they cover topics such as the individuation process, the union of anima and animus, and how the deep work of psychological transformation makes us whole.

The video of this interview is available on YouTube.

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Institute Archive | Chrysalis: The Psychology of Transformation with Marion Woodman (Rebroadcast)


For the second episode of Marion Woodman Month, we’re rebroadcasting the very first episode of Jungianthology, Chrysalis: The Psychology of Transformation. In this lecture, Toronto analyst Marion Woodman explores the body/spirit relationship, the withdrawing of projection, gender issues, and the surrender of the ego to the Self as these themes relate to personal transformation.

Marion Woodman was a Canadian mythopoetic author and women’s movement figure. She was a Jungian analyst trained at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich, Switzerland. She was one of the most widely read authors on feminine psychology, focusing on psyche and soma. She was also an international lecturer and poet. Woodman is author of Addiction to Perfection and The Ravaged Bridegroom

Marion Woodman Book List

If you’re interested in Marion Woodman, you may like Soul in Exile, available in our store.

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Jung in the World | Marion Woodman & the Transformative Power of Uncertainty with David Clark


For the next month, Jung in the World is presenting a weekly series on Marion Woodman, Canadian mythopoetic author, poet, Jungian Analyst, and women’s movement figure. In this episode, Patricia Martin interviews Dr. David Clark, Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies and Associate Member of the Department of Health, Aging and Society at McMaster University, and long-time friend of Marion Woodman. In this interview he shares rare insights into Woodman’s approach to life and work.

For this series, we will be sharing the videos of the interviews on YouTube: David Clark Interview Video

Marion Woodman Book List

If you’re interested in Marion Woodman, you may like Soul in Exile, available in our store.

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Healing Cinema: The Lost Daughter


We’ve just launched our Spring Fundraising Drive! You can support this podcast and the Institute by making a donation of any amount. Due to a generous grant from the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts, the first $5,000 donated will be matched!

Jungian Analysts Judith Cooper and Daniel Ross discuss Maggie Gyllenhaal’s 2021 film The Lost Daughter (based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante). They also reflect on the analysis provided in the article “Motherhood and Taboo: Recovering the Lost Daughter” from The Point. In this discussion, they touch on:

  • Transformation
  • Book vs Film
  • Maternal Ambivalence
  • Liminality
  • Lostness
  • Idealization vs Deidealization
  • Eroticism
  • Patriarchy
  • Achievement
  • Narcissism
  • Redemption
  • Pregnancy (Biological vs Psychological Impact)
  • Generational Trauma
  • Sadism
  • Aggression
  • Grief
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Jung in the World: Jung, The Mythology of Pan, and Panic Culture: Interview with Ryan Maher


In this episode, Patricia Martin interviews Ryan Maher, MA, LMHC, LCPC, and graduate of the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago’s Jungian Psychotherapy Program. In this discussion, they touch on:

  • Symbolism of the Forest in ancient and modern contexts
  • “Panic” and irrational states of mind
  • Paul Robichaud’s Pan: The Great God’s Modern Return
  • Self-regulation
  • Jung’s concept of reflection as an instinct
  • Dissociation from nature and instincts
  • Integration of the irrational
  • Transformation
  • James Hillman

Listener’s may be interested in Ryan’s presentation The Forest, The Witch & Pan – Psyche’s Need for Wilderness and Enchantment for the Myth Salon on YouTube, which is mentioned in this interview.

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Healing Cinema: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Jungian Analysts Judith Cooper and Daniel Ross discuss Alejandro G. Iñárritu‘s 2014 film Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). They touch on:

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Myth Salon | The Splendor Solis with Dr. Dyane Sherwood (Video)

Thank you to The Mythology Channel for sharing this video. From the description:

On Thursday, October 21 at 5PM Pacific, we are particularly excited to be featuring Dr. Dyane Sherwood giving a presentation on the alchemical illuminated manuscript, the Splendor Solis. The illuminated manuscript of the Splendor Solis is one of the Treasures of the British Library, and in recent years has become widely known for the beauty of its 22 illuminated paintings. In her presentation, Dyane Sherwood will place the Splendor Solis in context, give the audience an overview, and then focus on some of the images in depth. We will discover the sophisticated consciousness behind three series of images that portray a process of depth transformation that moves from (1) a personal process, (2) to an appreciation of a relationship between archetypal, environmental, and inner states, and (3) finally to a profound acceptance of the nature of being. Dr. Sherwood will address two interrelated themes of the Splendor Solis that are more relevant today than ever before: the fact that humans can use Nature to work against Nature and the need for, in Jungian terms, redemption of the Feminine Principle.

Dyane Sherwood collaborated with the late Joseph L. Henderson, MD on a book relating the images of the Splendor Solis to the process of transformation in analysis. Dr. Henderson had his personal analysis with C.G. Jung and was the only American contributor to Jung’s remarkable book, Man and His Symbols. Dr. Sherwood is a Jungian psychoanalyst, sand-play therapist, and author. She founded the Analytical Psychology Press.

Links
The Mythology Channel on YouTube
Dyane Sherwood on Jungianthology
Dyane Sherwood at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago
Analytical Psychology Press

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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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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The Adventure of Being Human: Beyond the Myth of Biological Salvation with Polly Young-Eisendrath


This episode is the opening lecture of a weekend given by Polly Young-Eisendrath. It contains a 1-hour lecture followed by an hour of Q&A. From the seminar description:

We all sense a connection with the source that underlies our existence, whether or not we recognize it as such and we all wish to identify with something larger than ourselves. Some feel this as a spiritual yearning, while others wish for fame or celebrity or the knowledge of a larger truth. The spiritual isolation and materialism (both economic and philosophical) of our times make it difficult to find trustworthy methods from institutional religions, non-traditional approaches, psychology, or philosophy for seeking knowledge of this source. However, our desire to help others (and ourselves) and our willingness to love deeply and authentically can offer the common ground through which we can find this knowledge, but it requires a dedicated understanding of our own suffering and its transformation.

Instead of seeking such insight into our subjective lives, we Americans embrace popular myths of biological salvation and pharmaceutical soothing. It?s not just that we seek instant solutions to complex problems, rather we have lost our taste for the adventure of human life, replacing it with ideals of economic and biological ?security? and hopes for absolute control of our diet and health.

This program offers a critique of this contemporary myth of biological salvation and presents accounts from psychoanalysis (Jungian and otherwise) and Buddhism of how embracing our limitations can open the path to transformation and lasting contentment.

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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!

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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.

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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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