A collection of articles that explain important Jungian concepts.
“A terrifying symptom is usually your greatest dream trying to come through.” Arnold Mindell, PhD When people draw a connection between their wounds/illnesses and God, it is often by viewing their physical ailments as a form of punishment for real or imagined sins and failings. Much more rarely are wounds and illnesses seen as constructive…
“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.” Carl Jung The developmental goal of youth and early adulthood is the maturation of the ego and its adaptation to the demands of outer life. During the “first half” of life family, peers, and society play a significant role in the molding of…
“Paranoia strikes deep Into your life it will creep It starts when you’re always afraid Step out of line, the man come and take you away” (from the song, For What It’s Worth, by Buffalo Springfield) There are different kinds of paranoia with different unconscious factors driving them. This article gives a Jungian look at…
“Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that lives above ground lasts only a single summer. What we see is the bloom, which passes. The rhizome remains.” (Carl Jung, from the prologue of Memories, Dreams, Reflections) In…
“Why do these philosophers pretend that God is an idea, a kind of arbitrary assumption which they engender, when its perfectly plain that he exists, as plain as a brick that falls on your head? Suddenly I understood that God was, for me at least, one of the most certain and immediate experiences.” Carl Jung…
“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happiness would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.” Carl Jung In my post, Growing Through Depression, I explained how depression often represents an opportunity ripe for the transformation and growth of the personality. Depression can be fruitfully treated when…
“When we must deal with problems, we instinctively resist trying the way that leads through obscurity and darkness. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness.” Carl Jung, C.W. v.8. The Structure and…
Just as the projection of one’s shadow (the disowned part of our personality) is a fundamental process in the psychology of people, it is an aspect of the psychology of groups of people. Like the individual, groups are organized around a certain identity and purpose. This identity is the foundation of the group’s persona. It…
Some people who experience a stroke–the loss of blood flow to part of the brain–lose the vision and physical sensations on one side of their body. Depending upon the location of the stroke, it may also affect their awareness of these sensory losses. For example, if I place an eyepatch over one of your eyes,…
In the story of King Midas, everything the king touches turns to gold. At first this seems like a boon, for this power would make him the richest man in the country. But turning everything he touched to gold would eventually make the king the most spiritually and emotionally poor man there can be. How…
