**Spoiler Alert!** We will be talking about the film in detail, including twists specific to the film. (Yes, there are twists in this 1000s year old story… or at least Nolan’s telling of it).
This review originally appeared in Czech at dingir.cz.
Vladislav Šolc, George J. Didier, Dark Religion: The Psychology of Denying and Discovering Reality, Prague: Malvern, 2025, 398 pages.
I opened Vladislav Šolc and George Didier’s Dark Religion expecting a scholarly Jungian study of fundamentalism and was pleasantly surprised by how much space it gives to many of the questions I ask myself at my own therapeutic desk—for example, where does healthy faith end and possession by one’s own image of God begin, and where do the concepts of psychotherapeutic work end and a genuine spiritual crisis begin?
Central Concepts: Theocalypsis and Theonemesis
The authors, both Jungian analysts, distinguish between religion, understood as a living relationship to the numinous that can never be fully grasped, and creed, a confession of faith that can so easily preserve this relationship in the form of dogmas, rituals, and institutions. According to the authors, religion becomes “dark” when creed becomes severed from its living source in the unconscious and begins to serve a defensive purpose—concealing what a person does not wish to see about themselves and about reality.
In the dead of COVID, I started interviewing people about Jung in collaboration with the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago. And so, the podcast Jung in the World was born. No one, including me, expected two million downloads would follow. Six years and a couple of epiphanies later, it’s time for the Jung in the World podcast to individuate.
I trained at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago through 2016. But my interest was never clinical; it was cultural.
Right now, I’m watching a civilizational disruption of selfhood unprecedented since the printing press. A conversation that puts depth psychology at the center of that vortex is what the Institute for Psyche and Culture was built for, and mysteriously, it’s what the podcast has been working toward all along.
“Everything psychic is pregnant with the future,” wrote Jung. A rising generation, exhausted by the performance of self, and hungry for depth is waiting. We aim to meet the moment with conversations that advance inner life in the age of the algorithm. Jung’s not going anywhere. He’s been dead since 1961, and his work far exceeds what passes for insight on our phones.
What’s changing is the address. In October, the podcast moves to a new feed. Season 6 starts soon, and it’s an ambitious lineup–video and audio. Come find us there. And come curious.
We continue our coverage of The Odyssey with a focus on proper sacrifice and hospitality rules. As we cannot read the entire epic, there’s no main story reading for this episode. However, towards the very end of the episode, Raisa reads a summary of Odysseus’s reunion with Penelope from Claudio Patrini’s, “Odyssey: Symbols and Meaning.”
*Content Warning: Episode contains discussion of an age-old conspiratorial belief that a secret society is carrying out ritualized child abuse in order to extract a fabled life giving elixir.*
At the 2025 International Association of Analytical Psychology conference in Zurich, Robert Carriger and Claire Kohne got the opportunity to talk to conference presenter Jungian analyst Vlado Šolc about his application of Jungian theory to the understanding of conspiracies and cults. Dr. Šolc draws from Greek mythology and the legend of Odysseus’ seven-year captivity on the island of Ogygia under the spell of the nymph Calypso to explain the phenomena of dark religion and cults. In mythology Calypso is the personification of concealment – or covering – from which the Greek word apokálypsis – apocalypse – is derived which means “uncovering” or “revelation.” Recorded on August 28, 2025.
Carl Jung called it “an acausal connecting principle” — but for Dan Ross, a Jungian analyst working in hospice care, synchronicity isn’t just theoretical. In this episode, Dan reveals what thirty years of end-of-life work taught him about Jung’s most misappropriated theory, its roots in Jung’s relationship with physicist Wolfgang Pauli, and why studying synchronicity seems to produce more of it. This episode is rich with poignant examples blended that will leave you thinking differently about how synchronicity works in your own life.
In preparation for the upcoming Christopher Nolan film, we begin our coverage of The Odyssey with a focus on the isles of Polyphemus and Calypso. As the story is far too long to read aloud, Raisa reads a summary of Odysseus’s encounter with Polyphemus from Claudio Patrini’s, “Odyssey: Symbols and Meaning.”
How does conspiracism appear from a Jungian perspective?
Psychologically speaking, conspiracy theories are, in essence, theories about hidden connections between reality and fantasy. The desire to discover reality and explore the deeper meaning of existence is instinctive. Mythology and ritual behavior testify to humanity’s ancient effort to grasp the mystery of life and use that knowledge to navigate reality more effectively through the expansion of consciousness. Similarly, religion responds to the human longing for salvation and the revelation of eternal truth—a desire, one might say, to crack the ultimate code of existence. Conspiracy theories are driven by the same instinct.
From a Jungian perspective, conspiracy theories may be understood as private—or what I have elsewhere called dark religious—systems through which the ego attempts to come to terms with the overwhelming impact of numinosity. Numinous experience arises from an encounter with the paradox of the holy, what Rudolf Otto termed the mysterium tremendum et fascinans: an experience that simultaneously evokes fascination and awe. The less conscious the ego is of these opposing emotional forces, the more likely it is to become possessed by them. The key is to minimize the phenomenon of splitting so that the ego may proceed further in the quest for the integration of the Self.
Conspiracy theories may thus be regarded as partially protective and partially healing constructs through which a person is able to experience relief from existential anxiety while simultaneously achieving a provisional grasp of reality. They provide the conspiracist with a feeling of personal power and control over reality. By “revealing” evil and its causes, they alleviate so-called negative feelings and temporarily restore a sense of meaning, orientation, and certainty.
Judith Herman is widely known as a defining voice in trauma psychiatry for more than fifty years. Her work bridges the personal and the political, framing trauma as not only an individual experience, but a public health and human rights issue. In this interview with host Patricia Martin, Judith Herman tells the story of how her work evolved, what remains to be done for CPTSD victims, and what all of us can do to create conditions survivors need to heal.
Our Blog shares essays, articles, video, audio, and other resources by members of the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts and other groups that support the education and development of our community.
The views and opinions expressed in the podcasts and blog posts are those of the respected speakers or authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago.
