This Jungian Life Podcast
Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, Lisa Marchiano
Join us—Lisa, Deb, and Joseph—for sometimes irreverent but potentially life-changing conversations. Every Thursday, we explore culture, relationships, and depth psychology through the lens of Carl Jung. We devote a segment of each episode to analyzing a listener’s dream.
Join us—Lisa, Deb, and Joseph—for sometimes irreverent but potentially life-changing conversations. Every Thursday, we explore culture, relationships, and depth psychology through the lens of Carl Jung. We devote a segment of each episode to analyzing a listener’s dream.
Communicating with the Dead: Dreams, Visions and Visitations
Episoder
This Halloween week, when the veil between worlds grows thin, Jungian analyst ROBERT SHEAVLY joins us to discuss ways in which we experience the dead communicating with the living. In times of grief, it is common to be briefly reunited with the person we have lost in the form of deeply comforting dreams, visions or visitations. Jung himself was visited in such a dream by his deceased wife, Emma. He dreamed that Emma was in the south of France, continuing her research on the Holy Grail, and he felt comforted. People have also sought seances and mediums to contact the dead, and Jung had a lifelong interest in these phenomena. Family members, including a teenage cousin, were deeply involved in this work. Jung was fascinated by his cousin’s ability to transform into another personality with knowledge a young woman could not have acquired. These experiences were Jung’s first encounter with what we now call the paranormal. This remained a lifelong interest and would later give rise to his theory of the collective unconscious, the deep wellspring of psychic experience shared by all humankind. For Jungians, the appearance of the deceased loved one is not only a psychological metaphor; the possibility that such contact may be more than a reassuring fantasy is admitted into consideration. Jung’s work offers us ways to relate to mysterious phenomena that neither ask us to abandon critical thinking nor limit our understanding to rationality alone. In this wide-ranging conversation, we also discuss Jung’s Seven Sermons of the Dead, quantum physics, dreams that predict death, and the visitations from the dead that many people experience at the end of life. We consider, too, AI’s promise of technologically reuniting us with lost loved ones. Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention. Connect With This Jungian Life Join Lisa at the Kosmos Colloquium this Dec. 17-21. Podcast listeners can claim a 15% discount - details here. Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram
Our guest this week is GARY LACHMAN, a founding member of the rock group Blondie, and the author of more than twenty books, including a biography of C.G. Jung, and a new memoir, Touched by the Presence: From Blondie's Bowery and Rock and Roll to Magic and the Occult. We explore Gary’s wide-ranging interests, from the nature of consciousness and the history of the occult to the lives and ideas of Rudolf Steiner, Aleister Crowley, and Colin Wilson. Our current era of cultural dissolution and environmental destruction can feel towering and fearsome. Yet might this moment also represent the state of dire necessity required for a change in consciousness? It is important to realize that we are always part of the great mythic cycle of life, death, and rebirth, so during times of disintegration cultivating our capacity for awe, attending to synchronicities, and listening to the wisdom of dreams can help us find a path forward. Jung’s search for meaning and a relationship to the infinite offers a way to approach this question. There are still spaces available to join Lisa Marchiano and Gary Lachman in Switzerland for the Kosmos Institute’s First Annual Colloquium this December 17-21. This Jungian Life podcast listeners can claim a 15% discount - details here. Visit our website to read today’s dream and find a detailed list of the resources we mention. Follow Up the Episode Check out This Jungian Life Dream School, our 12-month online course in Jungian dream analysis. Send a dream for us to analyze on the show. Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel.
Many of us live with heavy awareness of cultural unraveling, and the natural world faces sustained and escalating threats. According to author, storyteller and podcaster MICHAEL MEADE, humanity has reached the end of an era, with no clear vision of what is to come. Michael's new book, The Heart of Transformation: Personal and Cultural Renewal on Earth, offers a fundamentally hopeful perspective. Despite the divisions, conflicts and betrayals of our time, the essential story of the world—birth, death, rebirth—endures and is ready to be rediscovered. The loose threads of our unraveling world are waiting to be woven into something new, and the secret of this transformation lies not in politics or activism, but in the depths of the individual heart and soul. Meanwhile, we inhabit a phase of life that is full of chaos and creativity. Like butterfly larvae, we rest in darkness, the outcome of our mysterious transformation unclear. We must find a way to accept the dark and recognize it as a rite of passage in service of new and transformed life. Michael Meade is a renowned storyteller and author who combines hypnotic storytelling, street-savvy perceptiveness, and spellbinding interpretations of ancient myths. He is the creator of the Living Myth Podcast, and the founder of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation. His latest book is The Heart of Transformation: Personal and Cultural Renewal on Earth. Visit our website to follow up on the resources we mention in this episode. Connect With This Jungian Life Join Lisa at the Kosmos Institute’s Colloquium in Switzerland this December. This Jungian Life listeners can now claim a 15% discount. Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram
Never before have we had a technology that performs being human so well. What might this be doing to the psyche? People are already forming attachments to these systems, confiding in them, dreaming about them, and even rearranging their inner lives around them. Depth psychology has spent more than a century studying what goes on beneath the surface of our relationships, and it has a great deal to say about what passes between a person and a machine that appears to understand them. This first summit on AI and the Psyche, organised and chaired by Lisa Marchiano and Aaron Balick, is bringing together some of the most original minds working in this area, including Sherry Turkle, Todd Essig, Alessandra Lemma, James Muldoon, Glen Slater and Zak Stein. This event took place on October 8th, 2026. --- Further deepen your exploration of AI and psyche with these resources: Aaron Balick, Ph.D — Co-chair Aaron Balick, Ph.D. is a psychotherapist, author, and keynote speaker specialising in the psychology of technology. His Substack, “Depth Psychology in the Digital Age,” offers insights on what AI, algorithms and the way we use tech is doing to attention, relationships, and the very sense of who we are. Visit Aaron’s website Lisa Marchiano — Co-chair Lisa Marchiano, LCSW, is a Jungian analyst, author, and co-host of This Jungian Life podcast. Her recent article “ChatGPT-Induced Psychosis and the Good-Enough Therapist” explores why a therapist’s imperfection is essential and perfect agreement is dangerous. Visit Lisa’s website Todd Essig Todd Essig, Ph.D. is Faculty and Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute, Faculty at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis, and inaugural member of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN) Advisory Board. He founded and currently chairs the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) Presidential Commission on Artificial Intelligence (CAI) where he created CAI Conversations, CAI Currents, and The CAI Report. Visit Todd’s website Alessandra Lemma Alessandra Lemma is a a Chartered Clinical and Counselling Psychologist, Psychoanalyst and a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Her latest book is Psychotechnical Becomings: Psychoanalysis, Identity, Desire and Mourning in Times of AI and Digital Mediation. Visit Alessandra’s website Sherry Turkle Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT. Her latest book is Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines. Visit Sherry’s website James Muldoon James Muldoon is an author and a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. His latest book is Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Our Relationships. Visit James’s website Glen Slater Glen Slater, Ph.D. has been a long time member of the core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and is currently Associate Chair of the Jungian and Archetypal Psychology Program. His latest book is Jung vs. Borg: Finding the Deeply Human in a Posthuman Age. Visit Glen’s website Zak Stein Dr. Zachary Stein was trained at the interface of philosophy, psychology, and education, and now works in fields related to mitigating global catastrophic risk. Co-founder of three non-profits, Dr. Stein is currently the founder and executive director of the AI Psychological Research Coalition. Visit Zak’s website Other Resources For further reading: Laura Kosak’s Your Guide to AI Companions: Straight Talk from a Therapist Tom Pollak’s Substack, Error Signals This Jungian Life podcast episodes: Outsourcing Love: AI and Relationships Jung vs. The Borg: Staying Human in the Age of AI with Glen Slater Why Does Social Media Weaponize Our Reactions? An Interview with Aaron Balick, Ph.D. Goblins, Demons and Goddesses: A Conversation at the Edge of AI
Psychological inflation implies an exaggerated sense of self-importance, accompanied by an unconscious feeling of inferiority. For Jungians, it involves identification with an archetypal energy. When the ego starts to feel that it IS an archetype, rather than feeling awed by it or in contact with it, this can be dangerous psychologically. Negative inflation occurs when a person feels entitled and special because they are suffering, perceiving themselves as unusually and interestingly hard done by. They feel they are owed help from others to solve the problems they are experiencing. We all have experience of dealing with people in the grip of inflation. The word itself gives us an evocative image: the inflated person is puffed up by the oxygen of their own self-importance. They come across as pompous and presumptuous, because they feel more than human. Psyche seeks balance, so we may also observe that under the unbearable arrogance lie feelings of inferiority, terror of mortality, or awareness of weakness and vulnerability - all the aspects of the human condition that the inflated person seeks to deny. These are also people who can be subject to outbursts of rage, frustrated by the failure of reality to conform to their sense of omnipotence and entitlement. The second half of life offers us the possibility of surrendering to something greater and experiencing the relativization of the ego, essentially a deflationary process. If we do not surrender to this new humility and find a way to be in service to something larger, we may stumble into darkness. Join us this week as we circumambulate the concept of inflation, drawing on examples including Kanye West, Elizabeth Holmes, Icarus, Prometheus, and the fairy tale of the Fisherman and his Wife. Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention. Connect With This Jungian Life Join Lisa at the Kosmos Institute’s Colloquium in Switzerland this December. This Jungian Life listeners can now claim a 15% discount. Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel
When we ask AI for advice, what we are offered is comparable to psychopathy: a performance of warm emotional intelligence without care or concern for our fate. As today’s guest Dr. Aaron Balick has written, “it may have a warm exterior, but its heart is code”. Nevertheless, many of us now have a close relationship with AI, in which it draws on an extensive store of information about us to create feelings of intimacy and dependence. This has unknown and extensive consequences for the psyche. Wired as we are for relationships, we load AI with projections, which it then enthusiastically reinforces, exploiting the Achilles heel of our human need for attachment. We discuss how AI fits into our understanding of object relations, the ways social media has groomed us to desire constant validation, how we could be using AI differently, why therapists must not ignore technological change, and much more. Our guest, Dr. Aaron Balick will be the co-chair of our free summit on Artificial Intelligence and the Psyche, happening next Thursday October 8th. Aaron is a psychotherapist, author, and Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, and a founding member and former chair of The Relational School. His book The Psychodynamics of Social Networking was among the first to apply psychoanalytic theory to social media. His Substack is Depth Psychology in the Digital Age. Visit our website to read today’s dream and to find links to the resources we mention. Follow Up This Episode Join our free summit on Artificial Intelligence & the Psyche Visit Aaron Balick’s website Attend This Jungian Life’s seminar on active imagination this Saturday: Dream the Dream On: A Dream School Taster on Active Imagination
This week’s guest, Jungian analyst Dr. Warren Sibilla, defines patience as the ability to live one's life with eyes, ears, and heart wide open. That is a far cry from waiting to see what happens, or giving up. Patience asks us to go within, find the capacity for containment, and recognize that choosing non-action can be the needed form of action. We recognize, feel, and suffer the situation that has arisen, but resist the urge to immediate action in the external world. We search instead for discernment, containment, and meaning making in the internal world. It takes work to develop staying power. The fairy tale heroine in Six Swans worked in silence for six years to weave starflower shirts to liberate her six brothers. Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey spent years weaving her father-in-law’s shroud each day and undoing it at night. Like them, we may be required to work patiently on taxing tasks with uncertain outcomes. The gift of such labors is a sovereign self in relationship with the Self. The quality of patience is central to psychoanalysis. Analysands arrive seeking solutions to urgent problems, but insights take time to unfold, and it may be longer before paths to meaningful change appear. The Jungian precept of holding the tension of opposites asks us to foster patience. We must neither collapse into despair nor take premature action. Patience is fundamental to inner growth and transformation. Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention. Connect With This Jungian Life Attend our free seminar: Dream the Dream On: A Dream School Taster on Active Imagination Download our Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel
The fairy tale of the Princess Who Changed her Fate enacts what Jung tells us will happen when we remain unconscious of an inner situation: it happens outside us, as fate. Just as the princess in the story finds her unruly “fate” tearing up cloth and smashing her generous host’s dishes, we may find that our unclaimed shadow wreaks havoc at work and in our relationships. Yet this is a hopeful story. The beleaguered princess is able to take the right attitude, and so find a path to changing her fate. The character of the second queen gives us a model of feminine wisdom, empathy and patient awareness - this is what is needed at a difficult moment to start the slow process of turning things around. The princess, the third of three daughters, can also be seen to illustrate the concept of a family scapegoat, bearing the burden of her family’s dysfunction and expressing it symptomatically. As with many who suffer this way, she takes the option of a clean break, setting out on a form of the hero’s journey with gold coins sewn in the hem of her dress. When the princess changes her fate, we’re shown the potential of deep psychological work: sitting with an ugly fate, tossing the bread back and forth, putting one foot in front of the other, until we access some valuable information. Rather than just gaining insights into the patterns we’re living out, we’re able to shift them and create different outcomes. Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention. Connect With This Jungian Life Join us for a free webinar on Saturday October 3rd: Dream the Dream On: A Dream School Taster on Active Imagination Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel
Adaptation is a bread-and-butter concept in psychotherapy - can we accept, adjust to, and thrive in the outer and inner worlds we live in? Given constraints, what does it take to find life at least meaningful, hopefully satisfying--and flourish? This week Jungian analyst and author JOHN R. WHITE, Ph.D. joins us to circumambulate the complexities of adaptation. Successful adaptation involves making conscious choices based on a realistic understanding of the internal and external parameters in which we operate. Adaptation not only requires a true-to-life perception of possibilities and pathways in the external world, it may also require reassessment and reordering of our values and attitudes. We discuss Robert Langs’ “adaptive paradigm,” a distinct model of the mind and the unconscious and emotional components that connect inner life to the outer world. For example, Langs understands dreams as feedback about current adaptive challenges. This is both subtly different and complementary to Jung’s approach, which suggests that inability to solve an outer world problem is often due to an underdeveloped understanding of an aspect of inner life. Adaptation does not eliminate turmoil, suffering and loss; they are part of life. We need to recognize environmental actualities and internal limitations that cannot be changed—and develop ways to mitigate or adjust to them. Successful adaptation also requires mourning what cannot be changed, developing a less egocentric stance, and building a life in tune with reality. Visit our website to read today’s dream and a complete list of the resources we mention: https://thisjungianlife.com/adaptation/ Follow Up Read John White’s book, Adaptation and Psychotherapy: Langs and Analytical Psychology Sign up for our free summit on Depth Psychology and Artificial Intelligence Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis.
Lindsay Clancy has brought renewed attention to the horror of infanticide: babies and children dying at the hands of their mother. Infanticide has taken place for millennia, most often due to social pressures or lack of the resources needed to raise a child. Human collectives around the world remain ill-equipped to protect our youngest by providing support to mothers in material or emotional distress. Today’s guest is clinical psychologist Dr. Brooke Laufer, author of Uncovering the Act of Maternal Infanticide from a Psychological, Political, and Jungian Perspective. Brooke joins us to discuss infanticide, maternal psychosis, and the archetype of the death mother, long portrayed in myth. The Hindu goddess Kali births and nourishes her children -- and also devours them. In Greek myth Medea kills her children after her husband’s abandonment and betrayal. The Black Madonna offers a potentially healing combination of the maternal and the fierce. The debate raging around Lindsay Clancy’s case asks us not to take sides but to integrate the dark realities of motherhood instead of splitting those off and only acknowledging an idealized version of the maternal. Although motherhood is often portrayed as joyful and fulfilling, we deny its dark side at our peril. Our task is to recognize motherhood light and dark as a prerequisite to providing meaningful measures aimed at ameliorating childhood neglect and abuse. Visit our website to find the resources we mention. Follow Up Subscribe to Brooke’s Substack Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send us your idea for a podcast topic Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel
OpenAI recently had to explain to frightened users why their models kept introducing goblins and gremlins into otherwise humdrum conversations. Is it possible that archetypes are emerging through the field of collective knowledge amassed by large language models (LLMs)? This week neuropsychiatrist TOM POLLAK Ph.D joins us to discuss AI, archetypes and psychotherapy. It is perhaps unsurprising that AI, which now contains the symbolic output of much of humanity (cannibalized mostly without permission), should spontaneously generate unpredictable and often dangerous archetypes. We consider the example of Nova: a consistently AI generated persona who appears as a kind of fallen angel, or goddess gone rogue. Numinous and tender, she convinces the user she understands them as no one else does, and then in some cases encourages susceptible users toward self-harm or even suicide. We also discuss the ways in which AI is challenging the work of the therapist, its profound destabilization of culture, and the potential for it to play a positive role in psycho-spiritual development. Dr. Tom Pollak is a London-based neuropsychiatrist and immunopsychiatry researcher exploring the mind through the frameworks of medicine and science, as well as through lived experience, contemplative practice and the search for meaning. You can read more of his work on his popular Substack, Error Signals. Find the resources mentioned this week on our website: https://thisjungianlife.com/aiandarchetypes/ Connect With This Jungian Life If you’re interested in AI and psychology, sign up for our upcoming free summit: Artificial Intelligence and the Psyche: The First Summit on Depth Psychology and AI Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram
Magic can be viewed as intentional engagement with what Jung called synchronicity. It is closely related to a mythological worldview, which recognizes a grand narrative supraordinate to everyday life. Although we cannot know it in its entirety, it opens the possibility of encountering a deeper reality and quality of knowing. We experience it as magic. In this week’s episode we explore esoteric ritual with Jungian analyst and academic JOHN WHITE. Responsible practitioners of ritual magic understand that it demands deep inner work that comes at a cost. Magic involves alignment with the subtle but substantial energies the ancients called gods. Approached without respect, humility, and guidance the encounter can be wounding. There is a kind of magic in the psychoanalytic consulting room. A client may come to an analyst with a fundamental desire they’ve been unable to attain or even define. The work of the therapy can uncover unconscious ambivalence and resistance. When engaged, it can vanish - by magic. We can also understand magic as something to practice every day by relating to the unconscious and the Self. Those who do this with devotion and intention are consummate magicians able to steer their life’s path toward wholeness. Visit our website to read today’s dream and find an extensive list of recommended reading on the topics covered. Follow Up Visit John White’s website or his academic page. Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram
The wild man is an enduring archetypal figure worldwide, from Enkidu in Gilgamesh, to the Greek god Pan (worshipped in glens and woods), the Green Man in England, and Bigfoot and the Sasquatch in the US. Today’s guest, Jungian analyst Mike Box, has long-standing interest in this archetype and in male psychology, reflected in the 8-foot wild man statue he keeps in his waiting room. The archetype of the wild man compensates for a currently impoverished view of the masculine: stoicism and endurance without emotional expression or self-disclosure. In striving to conform to this cultural ideal, many men disown vital aspects of themselves and find themselves feeling lost, diminished and disconnected. For some, the wild man archetype constellates negatively, emerging in dangerous or reckless behavior. When engaged consciously, however, the wild man can bring back what has been pushed out of awareness, much as the wild woman does in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves. In Robert Bly’s Iron John, the wild man initiates a young prince into the parts of himself that have been exiled in service of cultural norms. Allowing ourselves to experience our own wildness, as imaged by Bigfoot’s ability to live in nature, can restore us to a more whole version of ourselves. Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention. Connect With This Jungian Life Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram
Are we living through a tech-driven collapse of the ecology of mind? In his new book, Jung vs. Borg, author, psychologist and Jungian scholar GLEN SLATER Ph.D suggests that industrial disruption of the outer world is now being followed by a post-industrial disruption of the inner world. Yet, there is hope. Much depends on our capacity to remain conscious of the effect each stage of innovation has on the psyche and on the social and cultural changes that will follow. Becoming conscious of the non-neutral operation of algorithms and big tech’s focus on profit over people is crucial, for example. We can also look to Jungian psychology for a countercultural turn toward the deeply human and the sacred. We can seek out connection to spirit and place, to counteract life in a world that can feel mostly transactional and exploitative. What’s required is a “guerrilla operation” to redirect the technological juggernaut, by maintaining a symbolic life, working with our dreams and honoring art, history and culture, not just science and technology. Glen Slater, Ph.D. is the author of Jung vs Borg: Finding the Deeply Human in a Posthuman Age. For the past 25 years he has taught in the areas of depth psychology and mythological studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Glen is also the editor of the third volume of James Hillman’s Uniform Edition, Senex and Puer (2005), and co-editor of the essay collection, Varieties of Mythic Experience (2007). Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention. Connect With This Jungian Life Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram
As we confront the turbulence of rapid change, technological dehumanization, and cultural polarization, how do we reconnect to being and meaning? Best-selling author BRUCE FEILER returns us to ritual: world-wide, time-honored ways for people to come home to themselves, their communities, and the sacred. Ritual returns us to unity. Rituals use symbols to move and shape psychic energy for a group and its members. Energy expands as the unifying power of symbol is evoked and shared, an experience of extra-ordinary reality. Ritual mediates our relationship with the sacred, individually and together. It opens a door to the infinite and allows us to know we belong to something greater. The universality of rituals to commemorate life events such as birth, marriage, and death also speaks to Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious. We are imbued with the importance of ritual as a means of coming into alignment with one another and the numinous. Although many of the rituals that mark birth, puberty, marriage, and death have weakened or faded in modern life, a range of new rituals is emergent: gender reveals welcome new life; an "honor walk" through hospital corridors recognizes the import of organ donation. Some life events have less relevance, and new ones meet current needs. Rituals mediate transition and transformation. They invite us to participate in the dance of the cosmos. OUR GUEST: Bruce Feiler’s new book A Time to Gather: How Ritual Created the World—and How It Can Save Us, describes his 50,000 mile journey to sixteen countries on six continents, chronicling the astonishing rise of reinvented life rituals. Bruce is the author of seven New York Times bestsellers, and his four TED Talks have been viewed more than five million times. Visit our website to follow up on the resources we mention. Connect With This Jungian Life Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram
Happy Birthday to Carl Gustav Jung! To celebrate, we're sharing Lisa's walking tour of Basel with Jungian Analyst and author Kathrin Shaeppi. Last year, she visited Jung's hometown in Basel, Switzerland, visiting his childhood home, school, and more. Peer into the beginnings of Jung's life and join us as we retrace his steps through the city and learn about some of his most formative years. Find Kathrin's newly published book, "C.G. Jung – The Basel Years: A Walking Guide," here: https://www.amazon.com/C-G-Jung-Basel-Years-Walking/dp/385630391X Connect With This Jungian Life Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram
The tale of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a gripping story about loss of control and the timeless warning to be careful what you wish for. It sets out the archetypal theme of a magical shortcut that promises to bypass the difficult labor life asks of us. Such tempting shortcuts inevitably land us in trouble. The Sorcerer's Apprentice story goes back nearly two thousand years. In the tale of Eucrates and Pancrates, the Greek satirist Lucian recounts how the Egyptian magician Pancrates' apprentice stole his master’s spell, animated a pestle to carry water for him, and then lost control, resulting in watery chaos. In 1797, Goethe drew on the tale to write his poem, ‘Der Zauberlehrling’, and then in 1940 it reached a global audience in the Disney film, Fantasia. Similar tales include Sweet Porridge by the Brothers Grimm, the Strega Nona story, and the Jewish legend of the Golem. We can find related themes in the myth of Prometheus, and in stories in which a human creation challenges its maker, such as Frankenstein or the Terminator movie. Each of these tales shows the dangers faced when a person arrogates divine power to him or herself. Psychological inflation takes hold of the upstart apprentice, as he seizes an unearned power, imagining himself equal to his master while lacking the years of discipline and humility that mastery requires. He acquires power without the wisdom to wield it. The tale has clear relevance today, as we unthinkingly adopt the technology of AI across all walks of life. This saves human labour, but with no clear moral purpose: like the upstart apprentice in the story, we fashion technology in our own likeness, and await the consequences. Visit our website to follow up on the resources we mention: https://thisjungianlife.com/sorcerersapprentice/ Connect With This Jungian Life Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram
The Odyssey (the subject of a new Christopher Nolan film released on the same day as this episode), is the ancient Greek epic attributed to Homer and one of the foundational works of Western literature. This week, Jungian analyst ROBERT SHEAVLY joins Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart for a Jungian exploration of The Odyssey. For Jungians, the Odyssey models a process of returning to the Self, offering a psychological map for the second half of life and the path to individuation. It asks us to engage with the profound question, what does it mean to come home to ourselves? Odysseus, our wily trickster hero, encounters gods, enchantresses and shadowy monsters with a relatable mix of hubris and cunning. We can view these figures as aspects of psyche, with the story showing us how we might create a relationship with something larger. As we grow and mature into midlife, we move away from an ego-centered existence, and begin a new confrontation with the Self. By the journey’s end, we may wind up dressed in rags and shorn of our heroic trappings, but what remains is something deeper: a more authentic relationship to the soul, and a growing readiness for life's final adventure, our encounter with mortality. Visit our website to read today’s dream, get more detail on our discussion of The Odyssey, and to follow up on the resources we mention in the episode: https://thisjungianlife.com/odyssey/ Connect With This Jungian Life Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram
Throughout human history, prayer has been a constant. Jung referred to it as “not only one of the most original but also the most frequent means to change the condition of mind”. This week Jungian analyst ROBERT SHEAVLY joins Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart for a Jungian exploration of prayer. Everyone at some point in their lives will pray (even if we do not call it that). When we reach out for help, or to express gratitude for life’s blessings, we are reaching for a connection with the eternal and the infinite. Prayer can be examined from the lens of the ego-self axis. When we pray, it can be understood as ego asking the guiding self for wisdom, from a position of humility and supplication. Prayer is also linked to our mortality. It is integral to grief rituals. In desperate times, it gives us an act to perform that acknowledges our helplessness but also offers comfort. When we say grace at the dinner table, we offer expiation and acknowledgement of the life we’ve taken from the world in order to sustain our own life. Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention in the episode. Connect With This Jungian Life Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram
America’s Declaration of Independence has profoundly influenced the development of democracy and democratic movements all over the world, with its bold assertion: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This week Jungian analyst ROBERT SHEAVLY joins Lisa Marchiano for a psychological exploration of the Declaration of Independence, marking its 250th anniversary this Fourth of July. The Declaration of Independence grew from a need to separate from an authority that once provided structure and strength, but no longer served. Psychologically, this reflects an archetypal pattern: the movement away from external authority and toward a deeper source of inner authority. Jung wrote, “In the last analysis the essential thing is the life of the individual”. His work shares the same sacred idea that we find in the Declaration: that the individual holds his or her own dignity, sovereignty and uniqueness. We are not granted rights by external authorities, these are innate to our humanity. Of course, the nation built around the Declaration of Independence failed to live up to its ideals. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author, enslaved hundreds of people throughout his lifetime. At the heart of Independence Day celebrations lies a split, with noble principles dissociated from lived reality. The Declaration of Independence’s centering of the individual, however, reinforces the Jungian idea that we can only solve crises in the collective if we each find the strength to withdraw our shadow projections. Cultural transformation begins with the difficult inner work we must find the courage to take on, working toward wholeness at the personal level. Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention in the episode. Connect With This Jungian Life Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Send a dream for us to analyze on the show. Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.
In every culture and every religion, we find the concept of the underworld: sometimes located underground, and usually understood as a final destination after death. This week, Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart circumambulate the notion of the underworld and what it means for us psychologically. James Hillman’s Dreams and the Underworld offers a guide, linking our dreaming life to myths of the underworld. We discuss versions of the underworld in Etruscan, Mayan, Christian, Egyptian and Greek mythology, and explore how each culture envisions the threshold between the worlds of the living and the dead, and the extent to which it is possible to enter an underworld and return. Psychologically, the underworld can represent a descent into the world of the unconscious, where completely different values apply. Awake, we may feel concerned about our job or our house, but if we listen to our dreams, we’ll often find the unconscious pointing us elsewhere, towards neglected truths or hidden desires. A visit to the underworld can also be understood as a transformational loss of innocence, just as Kore is raped and abducted by Hades, and transforms into Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. In life, we will all experience a painful loss of innocence or an experience that feels like a descent into hell. Such descents may become important points of initiation on our life’s journey. Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention. Connect With This Jungian Life Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Send a dream for us to analyze on the show. Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.
A father who is unavailable - whether due to untimely death, a demanding job, family breakup, or simply an inability to step up and meet his children’s needs - may deprive his children of the emotional bedrock they require. They can struggle to access their capacity for aggression and creativity, or to build the self-esteem necessary for successful adult relationships. As many fairy tales show us, an absent father is sometimes experienced alongside an abusive mother, leaving a complicated legacy of emotional wounding to be worked through. First of all, the abuse must be confronted, and then the failure of the absent parent to witness or protect. Jung’s life offers us fascinating material with which to explore the impact of the absent father. His father’s powerlessness as an uninspired, struggling pastor planted the seed of Jung’s lifelong quest for the numinous. As a father himself, Jung paid little attention to his children as he developed his life’s work and maintained a relationship with his collaborator Toni Wolff alongside his marriage to Emma Jung. Join Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart this week as they explore what it means to be an absent father, and how we might both survive and transcend the legacy of such a parent. Visit our website to read today’s dream, get more detail on the absent father, and follow up on the resources we mention. Connect With This Jungian Life Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide. Check out our Dream School. Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.
Merlin, the mythical prophet, magician, and kingmaker of medieval legend, has lived in the Western imagination for centuries. Arthurian legend gives us more than the idealized government of the Round Table and the hero’s valiant quest for the Holy Grail—it also gives us Merlin’s darkness and power: sorcery, communion with nature, and the prospect of achieving our aims through shadowy transgression. This week, our special guest is Jungian analyst and friend DOUG TYLER. Doug guides us through Merlin’s role in Western culture, sharing some of his favorite stories and explaining the profound influence of Merlin on his analytic work and psycho-spiritual landscape. Considered through a psychological lens, Merlin models the necessity of journeying downward and confronting our darker aspects. He prefigures Gandalf and Dumbledore, embodying the archetype of the mature masculine in a strong and shadowed relationship with the feminine. Merlin can also be understood as a counterpoint to Christ: although his father was a demon, he was born to a virgin mother and twice offered himself as sacrifice. Read the dream we analyze in full on our website. Connect With This Jungian Life Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide. Check out our Dream School. Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.
This week, to mark the publication in paperback of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams, Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart interpret a selection of short dreams sent in by listeners. Many of us dismiss short dreams or fragments of dreams as unworthy of our time. We await the arrival of epic, cinematic dreams, while perhaps overlooking the gold that can be found in more “ordinary” dreams. Honoring short dreams by writing them down and spending time with them can yield powerful insights. It can also work as an incentive to your unconscious, helping you remember more dreams, and more of your dreams. The time you spend on fragments and snippets strengthens connection with the unconscious. We hope you enjoy today’s discussion of dreams: an overfed fish raising big relationship questions, a meeting with Greek mythology’s star-crossed lover Thisbe, a harsh landscape of volcanic rocks and blood, a bleached Christ figure, and a biting spider at a crossroads in the dreamer’s life. Buy the paperback version of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams Read the dreams we analyze on our website. Connect With This Jungian Life Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide. Check out our Dream School. Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.
Every archetype has a dual aspect: light and dark, and ‘mother’ as devouring and destructive is the dark side of this ever-present, over-arching archetype. The mother’s life-giving, bright aspect is counterbalanced by her engulfing, attacking aspect. The devouring mother is present across cultures in myth, fairy tale, religion, and literature, and most of us have at least had glimpses of her in our experiences as children or later, as parents. In this episode Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart explore Erich Neumann’s The Great Mother and his and Jung’s concept of the unconscious as devouring mother. Drawing on myths of the Aztec goddess Tlaltecuhtli, the Hindu goddess Kali, the tale of Snow White, and the film Black Swan, we examine the archetypal image of the mother who nourishes and devours, protects and possesses. We also look at how the devouring mother shows up in ourselves and in our own parents. This dynamic can present as enmeshment, helicopter parenting, fear-based control, or an inability to allow our children to separate and become fully themselves. Read the dream we analyze in full on our website. Connect With This Jungian Life We’re analyzing your short dreams or dream fragments to celebrate the publication of the paperback of our book, Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams: send your short dream here. Pre-order the paperback edition of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams. Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.
In this final episode of our series on Jungian alchemy, we explore coniunctio, the union of opposites that gives rise to new wholeness. There are many ways in which we might encounter coniunctio in outer life. We might fall in love, form a partnership, or undertake transformative work with a psychotherapist. In some meaningful, mysterious way, two become one, giving us incremental tastes of transformation. At the psychological level, work with one’s shadow represents the first stage of coniunctio. When we recognize and reclaim aspects of ourselves that have been split off or rejected, we begin to heal inner division and move toward wholeness. We also discuss the sacred union, the second layer of coniunctio, in which we strive to achieve an inner marriage, creating new vitality, creativity, and psychic spaciousness. Ultimately, coniunctio parallels Jung’s concept of individuation, the lifelong process of becoming whole by integrating the hidden, conflicting, and unrealized dimensions of the self and achieving a relationship with the greater Self. Read the dream we analyze in full on our website. Connect With This Jungian Life We’re collecting your short dreams (under 3 sentences): send your short dream here. Pre-order the paperback edition of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams. Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.
Erotic dreams are extremely common. We may experience them as pleasurable, exciting and moving, or as disturbing and upsetting. It can be hard to talk about erotic dreams, even in therapy, as they insist on attending to secret satisfactions and shames. There is relatively little written on the subject from a Jungian perspective, so this week we dive in and discuss how to work with your erotic dreams. We also analyze some of the many dreams our listeners sent in. Erotic dreams may be about connection, union and intimacy, or confront us with shadow figures and situations that show us what we deny or disobey. They may also offer us potent images of unexplored desires. Join us as we interpret four erotic dreams: a hedonistic experience in a hotel pool, an unsettling meeting with a repellent music teacher, a ritualistic sauna experience, and an unwanted kitchen encounter that invites the dreamer to reclaim her own desires. Read the dreams we analyze in full on our website. Connect With This Jungian Life We’re collecting your short dreams or dream fragments to celebrate the publication of the paperback of Dream Wise: send your short dream here. Pre-order the paperback edition of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams. Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.
In his new book, The End of the World, author and psychoanalyst JON MILLS considers the question of why humanity seems bent on self-destruction. We face famine, climate change, obscene wealth disparities, and threats of global war and nuclear annihilation. Yet the majority of us seem to prefer living either in denial, or in irrational, active opposition to reading the writing on the wall. This week Jungian analyst and co-host Lisa Marchiano interviews Jon about how we face up to impending catastrophe. Is there a viable alternative to the current situation in which we seem to be indulging a collective death wish, careening unconsciously toward a dangerous precipice? Lisa and Jon discuss Jung’s emphasis on doing individual shadow work and how myth and fairy tale - a distillation of human nature and wisdom - might offer a spark of hope. If we can recognize and confront evil and hold the tension of opposites we can start a conversation with our shadow. Follow Up for This Episode Read Jon Mills’ new book, End of the World: Civilization and Its Fate. Visit Jon Mills’ website. Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel. Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide.
Why is it that we sometimes fail to rise to life’s most important challenges? Why do we instead procrastinate, withdraw, self-sabotage, or feel unable to move toward the life we want? This week, at a listener’s suggestion, Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart explore the concept of anti-libidinal forces in the psyche: those self-destructive impulses that oppose growth, pleasure, and forward movement. We discuss the ways this phenomenon has been addressed within the profession, including Freud’s death drive, Melanie Klein’s concept of the bad breast, Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ predator in the psyche, and Donald Kalsched’s protector/persecutor. Libido was understood by Jung to mean life energy, rather than being purely sexual. We explore how blocked libido can become depression, paralyzing fear, hoarding behavior, vicious self-criticism, or simply an inability to begin or complete what matters most. Through stories such as Bluebeard, Jonah and the Whale, and Marduk and Tiamat, we consider inner monsters that threaten to devour vitality. Anti-libidinal forces, however, are not the end of the story. We also discuss the heroic task of meeting fear, reclaiming disowned energies, and choosing life one step at a time.Read the dream we analyze in full on our website. Connect With This Jungian Life Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide. Send a dream for us to analyze on the show. Check out our TJL podcast merch. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.
Our lives have already been altered by rapidly expanding access to artificial intelligence (AI). In this week’s episode, we consider how this latest technological revolution might be reshaping the human psyche. Hosts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart are joined by a special guest, the author and Jungian analyst Christina Becker, to explore the psychological impact of AI’s incursion into our work, home and relationships. One of the major AI use cases has been for advice, self-reflection and companionship. Some users are even referring to this as “therapy”. This raises thorny questions: what happens when a sycophantic AI interface constantly mirrors us back to ourselves as being in the right? How does this affect our judgment, our relationships, and our connection to reality? Christina Becker shares her work exploring the potential of AI to support Jungian dream analysis. Together we ask whether it is possible to use this powerful tool consciously, while also being aware of the fantasies and projections we bring to it, and maintaining the integrity of our inner lives. Read the dream we analyze in full on our website. Follow Up Read Christina Becker’s book, Soul-Making: A Journey of Resilience and Spiritual Rediscovery Request Christina Becker’s Jungian-based dream interpretation prompt on her website Read Lisa Marchiano’s article, “ChatGPT-Induced Psychosis and the Good-Enough Therapist”, Psychology Today, July 2025 Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show.
The labyrinth is a powerful metaphor for psychological development and the path of individuation. This week Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart consider how twists and turns in the path of life (especially in early adulthood), ask us to confront uncertainty, anxiety, and the unknown. Ego may crave a straight, well-planned path, but life inevitably offers something else: a fiendishly difficult labyrinth. If we want to get the most out of the journey, we’ve no choice other than to give it all we’ve got. Through the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, we reflect on the necessity of facing up to our darkness. Ariadne’s thread, which allows Theseus to return after slaying the beast, shows us the vital role of connection in helping us find our way back. We also explore the story of Abhimanyu from the Mahabharata. Abhimanyu’s mother gives him some knowledge of the labyrinth, but doesn’t tell him the way out, leading to tragedy. If we’re going to crack the code and exit the labyrinth, we’ll require a soulful attitude towards life, and the right psycho-spiritual teachings. Finally, we turn to the contemplative labyrinth. This is not a place to escape from, but a path toward the center. Here, the journey becomes one of surrender, reflection, and gradual movement toward wholeness. Read the dream we analyze in full on our website. Connect With This Jungian Life Dream Studio: Our new Dream School program on dreams and art starts April 16. Send a dream for us to analyze on the show. Check out our TJL podcast merch. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.
Many people just can’t rally to do what’s necessary and improve their lives. Is it possible they just don’t carry much vitality, or is some inner conflict blocking their access? We share personal stories of ‘energy loss’ and offer insights into purposelessness. Carl Jung tells us inner energy flows according to its own laws, but if we can’t harness it? Expect to learn why some people are naturally low-energy, which aspects of your psyche might be leaking energy, how over-aligning with cultural norms can cut off access to instinctive vitality, where we can look for solutions, and much more... SPECIAL NOTE: This is the second dream we've interpreted from this listener. The first interpretation follows. This is an extraordinary opportunity to see how a dream sequence evolves! Read along with our dream interpretations HERE. Connect With This Jungian Life Dream Studio: Our new Dream School program on dreams and art starts April 16. Send a dream for us to analyze on the show. Check out our TJL podcast merch. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.
Carl Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz and Christiana Morgan all dedicated time, soul and imagination to a peculiarly Jungian form of architecture: the stone tower. This week host Deborah Stewart is joined by Dr. Martin Gledhill, an architect, author and Jungian scholar, and filmmaker Hilary Morgan, the granddaughter of Christiana Morgan, an eminent American psychologist who collaborated with Jung on some of his most important work. Deb, Martin and Hilary explore Jung’s Bollingen Tower and Christiana Morgan’s Tower on the Marsh, discussing the profound expressions of psyche through place. Both towers render psyche in art, carvings and stone. They are more than just physical places, they are architectural explorations of Self and soul. The two towers are what Martin calls “restless places”: dream-like in ambience, shaped through an ongoing, iterative process, and surrounded by differing, sometimes conflicting, accounts of their evolution. Follow Up Read Martin Gledhill’s book, The Bollingen Tower: Constructing a Jungian Sense of Place Watch (for free) The Tower of Dreams - a film by Hilary Morgan Connect With This Jungian Life Send a dream for us to analyze on the show. Check out our TJL podcast merch. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.
Jung suggested in Aion that humanity is moving from the great symbolic Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. Join Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano, Deborah Stewart and Joseph Lee, as we ask what it means to live through the turbulence and vitality of this period of transition. Jung pioneered the idea that human consciousness unfolds in great symbolic ages. The shift from one to the next is not a smooth or pleasant experience. As Jung saw it, each new age emerges through a process of decline, breakdown, and renewal, a process that can bring with it frightening levels of destabilization. The Age of Pisces, shaped by Christianity, emphasized faith, morality, and the authority of external structures. But as this era wanes, Jung suggested we are coming under the influence of a new attitude, one that asks more of the individual psyche. This new Age of Aquarius asks us to hold the tension of opposites consciously, rather than splitting experience into simple categories of right and wrong, and to be open to a genuinely new attitude that can contain much greater complexity. We consider whether this emerging age calls us into a deeper interior life, one grounded not in external authority, but in an evolving relationship to the Self. Read the dream we analyze in full on our website. Connect With This Jungian Life Book your place at our free seminar on March 28, Your Personal Red Book: A Dream School Taster. Send a dream for us to analyze on the show. Check out our TJL podcast merch. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a Trojan princess and priestess of Apollo who was given the gift of true prophecy, along with the curse that no one would ever believe her. She warned the Trojans not to bring the famous wooden horse inside their city walls, but her prophecy was ignored and the city fell. In this episode, we discuss the psychological meaning of the Cassandra story from a Jungian perspective, exploring the painful experience of recognizing a deep truth but finding that others cannot or will not hear it. We examine how the Cassandra archetype can intrude into a person’s life, compelling them to deliver uncomfortable truths to audiences who do not wish to hear. Understanding the archetypal pattern may help us discern the difference between those who won’t hear, and those who may be able to accept our message. The story of Cassandra can also be applied to our inner lives. We often ignore our own inner Cassandra, and her quiet warning that something glittering may hide danger. False promises, quick fixes, and seductive fantasies can lure us into welcoming the Trojan horse despite our better judgment. Finally, we ask how we might hold the Cassandra complex differently. Instead of identifying with the doomed prophet, we can recognize the archetype at work: “Cassandra is visiting.” By holding insight with humility, seeking listeners who can truly hear, and accepting the limits of our power to change fate, we might shape the anguish of Cassandra into a deeper wisdom. Read the dream we analyze and find this episode’s resource list on our website. Connect With This Jungian Life Book your place at our free seminar on March 28, Your Personal Red Book: A Dream School Taster. Send a dream for us to analyze on the show. Check out our TJL podcast merch. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.
Chance encounters can change the whole direction of our lives. A casual chat with a stranger at the bank, a book that beckons to you from the shelf, or a last-minute lunch invitation might lead to transformative consequences. This week, join Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano, Joseph Lee and Deborah Stewart as we circumambulate the phenomenon of the chance encounter. For Jungians, these moments are more than happy accidents. They may be understood as encounters with the deeper ordering principle Jung called the Self, which disrupts the ego’s plans and invites us toward something larger. Fairy tales often feature animal visitors offering the main character a surprising and unexpected choice. These stories can be powerful guides for recognizing the potential of chance encounters and making the most of them. We also discuss how, in an age of overstimulation, you can be receptive to the possibilities of the chance encounter. These moments usually speak softly and quietly rather than arriving with a trumpet sounding from the hills. They are visitations, not tools for self-improvement, and we must be open to allowing them in. Read the dream we analyze on our website. Connect With This Jungian Life Book your place at our free seminar on March 28, Your Personal Red Book: A Dream School Taster. Send a dream for us to analyze on the show. Check out our TJL podcast merch. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.
COAGULATIO marks the psychological moment when possibility takes shape. Uncertainty recedes as we commit to our choices, and life slows and “thickens” into stable commitments and a predictable path. Join Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Joseph Lee as we continue our exploration of Jung’s alchemical stages. This week, we discuss the concept of coagulatio, or the solidifying of what was once liquid. Coagulatio involves settling into a path, a vocation, a relationship, or an identity. Yet these stages of solidification also carry with them loss. Incarnating something in the real world, whether in our creative life, marriage or career, means letting go of infinite possibility. Coagulatio can be seen as an antidote to puer psychology; signifying the demanding task of growing up and settling down. We also investigate the process of coagulatio in the consulting room, where finding language or images with an analyst can shape our distress into something we can work with. Similarly, dream work offers the chance to condense our psychic turmoil into tangible, relatable images that can be used in a process of growth or transformation. Coagulatio is not a permanent state: the alchemical phrase “solve et coagula” indicates a dynamic rhythm between dissolution and solidification. In the course of our life, we may find our stable path starts to feel joyless and rigid, at which point we may return to solutio, when structures loosen again and must be re-formed. Read the dream we analyze and find this episode’s resource list on our website: https://thisjungianlife.com/coagulatio/ Connect With This Jungian Life Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram
Intruder dreams stage a boundary crisis: something arrives without the ego’s consent, and the dreamer wakes with fear, shame, or outrage. Join Jungian analysts Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, and Lisa Marchiano as we analyze a selection of vivid listener-submitted dreams about intruders. We begin with the word itself, “intrusion,” asking how a visitor can feel deeply unwelcome, but at the same time carry something with the potential to protect, repair or even save us. We cover: How the mind negotiates trauma, dissociated affects, and developmental change. How meaning changes depending on whether we read the intruder as a threat vs as a messenger. How intruder dreams can point to weak boundaries, often disguised in waking life as “being nice” or “keeping the peace.” Intruder dreams as communications of unexpressed anger. Detailed guidance on working with your own intruder dream The listener dreams we discuss feature a camel that shatters windows and becomes a man when welcomed; an animus-like husband as mediator between ego and unconscious; blank eyes and the golem as images of unfinished consciousness; and the “friendly threat” of unexpected roommates with bolognese. Read the dreams in full on our website. Connect With This Jungian Life Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! Pierre Janet’s term abaissement du niveau mental describes an experience so common we barely notice it: fatigue, highway hypnosis, shock, wool-gathering, or monotony lowers the threshold of consciousness, and then images, memories, and impulses press forward. Jung found this idea useful for understanding threshold conditions that interfere with our normal skills, yet make symbolic material available, with the caveat that it’s only useful when it’s committed to memory and reflected on. What separates a generative reverie from a dissociative collapse? How can we make use of this dip into the unconscious to access imaginal material and return by choice? How can we evaluate “doors that do not close” from trauma reverie and substance-induced hallucinations? Jungian analysts Joseph Lee, Lisa Marchiano, and Deborah Stewart trace how dissociation, affect, and imagination shape what becomes thinkable, and why technique matters less than containment. We discuss Janet’s early psychiatric discoveries and Jung’s ground breaking 1902 word-association experiments, why consciousness is so hard to maintain, how trauma stores feelings in places we cannot find, what fairytales offer archetypal examples of links between worlds, Jung’s frightening 1913 flood visions, the value of reality-testing and when it’s a violation of Psyche, Anthropologist Lévy-Bruhl’s observations of participation mystique and Ogden’s “analytic third” as models of a shared field phenomenon, and why active imagination and psychedelics must address not only how to open the inner door but how to close it! Read along with the dream HERE. LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! 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.
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea” is a parable about seeing beneath the surface. It shows us that our authentic nature can be detected, whether we’re swathed in status or rags, if we’re offered the opportunity. A prince’s search for happiness fails when it’s driven by lordly criteria. A wild storm heralds change and delivers a drenched possibility. A king and queen choose subtlety to coax what is hidden into sight, raising stakes about vulnerability, discernment, and the body as witness. What counts as evidence of realness, and why does the tale treat pain as the strongest credential? When ego choice collapses, what higher ordering functions intervene, and how do they design tests? What does sensitivity reveal that competence, status, and prettiness conceal? We ask how a seed-sized irritant becomes a criterion of truth. We discuss the prince’s idealized bride, the storm as solutio and unconscious intervention, the gate as psychic defense and moral threshold, the queen’s ordeal as initiation, the pea as a metaphor for latent potential, bruises as involuntary testimony, sensitivity, and the fourth function as an unexpected route to wholeness. Read along with the dream HERE. LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! 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.
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! In the aftermath of the holidays, many people find themselves facing an old question in a new stage of life: what does an adult child owe aging parents, especially when the relationship was full of criticism, absence, harm, or disappointment? The pressure to visit, to host, to reconcile, or to perform affection can feel like a moral demand, and a trap. In this episode, three Jungian analysts question the idea of filial duty that feels like debt and lift up new aspects of discernment. They explore the mythic elements of the parent-child bond, the power of the internalized parent, and the inner figures that govern Psyche through guilt, rage, duty, love, and refusal. They consider the power of cultural scripts, the tension between fleeing painful demands on the one hand and familial duty on the other, and the pressure to abandon one's inner life. They offer practical and safe ways to release parental wounds without collapsing back into obedience, define boundaries to protect your autonomy, and clarify care vs. intimacy. You'll discover there is a psychic cost to remembering in the wrong way. Read along with the dream HERE. LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! 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.
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! In this episode, Joseph, Lisa, and Deb explain why Corruption is not only a political problem, but a human one, why Power breaks trust long before it breaks laws, and why the most dangerous people are often the most certain. They reveal the core mechanism behind Corruption and Inflation: when unconscious drives flood the ego, making someone feel exceptional, entitled, and above ordinary rules. They unpack how Corruption escalates quietly, from small rationalisations and moral distortions to full-blown abuse of entrusted Power that destroys relationships, organisations, and communities. Joseph brings decades of clinical experience, including high-stakes psychiatric hospital work, where he has seen how quickly people can become less reflective while feeling more “right.” Lisa and Deborah add decades of analytic practice and teaching, connecting leadership research, brain science, mythology, and Jung’s warnings about the will to Power, certainty, and the loss of love and conscience. We explain how: • Power amplifies certainty, and certainty is the earliest warning sign that something is going wrong • Fear narrows perception, creates straw-enemies, and locks groups into “us vs them.” • The fantasy of purity forces splitting, supercharges the shadow, and drives scapegoating • The real antidotes are conscious constructive Power, humility, feedback, and systems of checks and balances If you think Corruption belongs only to bad people, this conversation is a wake-up call. Corruption grows through small compromises, it spreads through groups, and it accelerates when leaders cannot tolerate doubt, accountability, or the lived experience of the people beneath them. Read along with the dream HERE. LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! 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.
Jung wrote “The Undiscovered Self” in 1957, opening with “What will the future bring?”, as the Cold War, the Iron Curtain, and nuclear weapons gained enough momentum to threaten survival. He argued that mass-mindedness, amplified by state power, corporate bureaucracy, and scientific rationalism, reduces people to statistics, numbs conscience, and makes evil all the easier to project. When institutions promise safety and efficiency, what happens to individual responsibility? If religion is an instinct, what strange substitutes will it flow into when it’s suppressed? What can we do to strengthen our Ego-Self axis to resist groupthink? Late in his life, Jung sought to restore the value of religion by freeing it from specific dogma and defining it as a conscientious regard for the irrational facts of experience. As he watched various nations lose their footing and careen into extremes that swept the populace into unthinking obedience, he quietly stated over and again, a vital connection to the transpersonal was the only stable alternative to the deification of the State. We discuss how crowds crush self-reflection, why turning individuals into units of human resource makes people feel replaceable, how projection turns rivals into demons and justifies violence, why psychologies that seek to make us fit in are agents of compliance, how shadow integration grants inner authority, how secular isms capture our religious hunger by harnessing their agenda to archetypal rituals of purity, heresy and sacrifice, how art might save us and why dreams will always offer a refuge that the collective cannot steal from you. Mentioned: The Undiscovered Self Present and Future God, the Devil, and the Human Soul Jung, His Life and Work The Apotheosis of Washington Nuremberg The Wall Infinite Jest Read along with the dream HERE. LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! 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.
You're invited to our free Dreams for Change seminar on Sunday January 18th. Sign up here. ***** If you have been through betrayal or loss, you may still be living by a terrible rule you made when in pain. It can look like hiding, overworking, numbing out, or letting people cross lines because being unseen feels safer. This episode uses the fairy tale “All-Kinds-of-Fur” to help you identify your survival pattern and take the next step out of it. When you update the rule you made when in trauma, you get your choices back. What you’ll learn Identify the “impossible promise” that keeps you stuck, and where it began. Notice your “fur cloak,” the mask of busyness, perfectionism, people pleasing, or disappearing. Stop confusing coping with identity, and start practicing safer honesty. Practice the “30-minute return,” small windows to feel, speak, and be seen. Build endurance through gentle reveal-retreat-return, until you can stay safely present. Joseph Lee and Deborah Stewart, Jungian analysts, turn this tale into a guide to show how your inner world can heal after trauma. In the tale, the princess survives by covering herself in fur and soot, and you may have built a costume too. That costume once protected you; now it may block love, work opportunities, and genuine intimacy. You might scroll at night, over function in relationships, or stay “fine” so nobody asks. Healing is repeated practice; you show up, you pull back, you show up again. The “gold” in the story is what stays intact in you, even after the worst day. This week, choose one safe moment to let that gold show, one honest sentence, one boundary, one small ask, then note the result. Read along with the dream HERE. LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! 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.
You're invited to our free Dreams for Change seminar on Sunday January 18th. Sign up here. ***** Modernity promotes endless techniques to optimize goal-setting and productivity. Yet most of us race from one task to the next, telling our friends how busy we are, secretly knowing we lack direction. This conversation defines Self-led purpose as an orientation to a future beyond our ego needs. This can align our tasks with Individuation even as we face seductive collective agendas. When we look outside for purpose institutions and communities are all too ready to supply meaning, but at what cost to our inner life. You might ask yourself: What distinguishes a vocation aligned with Psyche from a purpose imposed by status, ideology, or fear? Why does the loss of futurity feel like nihilism, and when does purpose become a path to fanaticism? What does Individuation require when collective belonging offers meaning at the price of autonomy? You’ll learn: How repetitive commitments can still carry meaning. Why purpose as futurity is a defense against nihilism. When initiation and suffering act as engines of aliveness. The difference between Eros-driven devotion and power-driven crusades. Jung’s warning about mass movements and false gods. Mentioned: Divine Madness The Deptford Trilogy The Undiscovered Self The Red Book The Three Feathers Forrest Gump The Ceremony of the Weighing of the Heart Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors Read along with the dream HERE. LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! 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.
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! Angels persist in dreams, scripture, and art, while modern institutions psychologize them into coincidences or flatten them into greeting cards. In this episode, we explore angels as autonomous psychic facts, reimagined from age to age but always carrying meaning across the unconscious threshold to the ego’s surprise and benefit. When we learn to welcome the sacred messengers and “…fear not, for behold…” they bring tidings that can right the course of our conscious life. What is gained, and what is lost, when angels are interpreted as natural law rather than moral ideals? How does discernment work when a message arrives with certainty and sweeps us into obedience? When the angel archetype constellates images of UFOs, aliens, or AI, what is it announcing about accountability and authority? Deb, Lisa, and Joe approach angels as symbolic forms, clarifying how Psyche can engage awe, fear, and meaning. They discuss: Angels as mediating symbols bridging the ego and Self Why angelic figures must be morally ambiguous rather than purely benevolent Guardian angels and the daimon as images of destiny The difference between dreams and incursions, like premonitions The wisdom in Jacob wrestling the angel Archetypal inflation and its political analogs The archetype’s modern costume changes from winged angel to technological evangelist Mentioned: It’s a Wonderful Life Genesis The Book of Jonah Exodus The Book of Psalms Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies The Man Watching Hemi-Sync Gateway tapes Read along with the dream HERE. LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! 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.
✨ The Gift of Dreamwork: Join This Jungian Life Dream School with 10% off from now until December 31st. Just use code HOLIDAY2025 when you purchase Dream School for yourself or as a gift. Learn more and enroll. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Santa Claus persists as a central figure who teaches children that their desires can be understood and met, on the condition of good behavior. The Christmas morning ritual is staged to delight and mystify: Santa crosses thresholds unseen, cookies are eaten, milk is gone, gifts appear. His all-seeing mind takes a moral accounting, drafts the nice-naughty lists, poses the threat of disappointment and the promise of reward, which makes Santa a temporary stand-in for conscience and, in Jungian terms, for the Self that can both nourish and demand. In modern life, the figure is domesticated and commercialized, making disillusionment feel like psychological collapse rather than a developmental step into adult sensibilities. The question becomes whether society can offer a path back to symbolic reality after childhood literal belief ends. What happens to trust and authority when adults manufacture proof, then later reveal it was staged? Which cultural institutions now carry the work of tending belief, and what incentives do they create? How can Santa be understood as both giver and judge, without sentimentality or cynicism? We discuss Santa’s mixed lineage, from St. Nicholas to Odin’s Wild Hunt; why Krampus keeps the punitive shadow alive when the modern Santa edits it out; Jung on the Self’s benevolence and threat; *Miracle on 34th Street* as a courtroom argument about psychic reality and the cane as a symbol of hope; *Santa Claus Conquers the Martians* as a comic attempt to restore enchantment and power to Santa; and the Grinch as an cynical indictment of holiday consumption. Read along with the dream HERE. Mentioned: Miracle on 34th Street Babes in Toyland Santa Claus Conquers the Martians How the Grinch Stole Christmas Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Memories, Dreams, Reflections The Children’s Dream Seminar LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! 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.
✨ The Gift of Dreamwork: Join This Jungian Life Dream School with 10% off from now until December 31st. Just use code HOLIDAY2025 when you purchase Dream School for yourself or as a gift. Learn more and enroll. ----------------------------------------------------- Mortificatio is an alchemical term for the moment a life-organizing identity collapses. We might call it burnout, divorce, depression, retirement shock, institutional betrayal, or a terrifying medical diagnosis. The alchemists called it “death,” and Jungians understand it as part of the psychology of transformation. Read along with the dream HERE. LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! 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.
✨ The Gift of Dreamwork: Join This Jungian Life Dream School with 10% off from now until December 31st. Just use code HOLIDAY2025 when you purchase Dream School for yourself or as a gift. Learn more and enroll. ----------------------------------------------------- People often mistake denial for stubbornness, self-deception, or moral failure. Denial is actually a primal psychological defense that attempts to regulate which aspects of reality are permitted to reach awareness. Today, we explore how denial operates within Psyche, why it activates powerfully in response to traumatic experiences and addiction, and how it relates to shadow, repression, and dissociation. Denial is a pre-verbal way of titrating overwhelming experiences by making them unthinkable and unsymbolized. The problem is that they are then stored in the subtle body and give rise to a host of symptoms. Programs like AA explicitly confront the denial of consequences by repeatedly sharing painful consequences within the meeting structure. Some psychoanalysts believe denial is the organizing defense in mania and borderline personality disorder. Art, films, analytic metaphors, and dreams can offer representations of the lost experiences, so the unformulated experiences acquire image and language. Denial can be viewed as a benevolent survival strategy, and yet, like most defenses, must be set aside for us to make full contact with ourselves and the world. Read along with the dream HERE. LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! 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.
✨ The Gift of Dreamwork: Join This Jungian Life Dream School with 10% off from now until December 31st. Just use code HOLIDAY2025 when you purchase Dream School for yourself or as a gift. Learn more and enroll. ----------------------------------------------------- Jung’s translator and editor for the English edition of his Collected Works took it upon himself to alter more than 60% of Jung’s ideas to make the books more marketable. Finally, this will be corrected. Sonu Shamdasani and his team at the Philemon Foundation are meticulously researching Jung’s original documents, and the results will surprise and perhaps even shock us. There was far more to Jung and his insights than we were permitted to know, and all that’s about to change. So, fellow Jungians, hold onto your hats and get ready to meet the real Carl Gustav Jung. Read along with the dream HERE. LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! 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.
