Posts related to the psyche.
“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…
Have you ever had a dream in which you were trying, unsuccessfully, to find your way out of a large house or other building? You feel lost, frustrated, or panicky. You encounter hallways or stairways that lead nowhere, or perhaps circle back upon themselves. Odd passageways or doors all around, yet none seem to get…
Analytical thinking is the backbone of science and a key attribute setting us apart from other animals. The gifts it has provided us impact every aspect of our lives, from the food we eat to how we communicate and travel. But there is a dark side to our love affair with the analytical mind. When…
At the Japanese Garden of the Chicago Botanical Gardens there is an odd shaped bridge. It consists of two large, rectangular granite slabs laid end-to-end over a small stream. What makes the bridge intriguing is that the slabs are offset from each other forming a zigzag walkway. According to Japanese folklore, the devil always travels…
As the gatekeeper of consciousness, the ego has a profound effect upon the expression and health of the larger personality. Like the iris, which regulates the amount of light entering the eye, the ego regulates the sensory data that reaches the “retina” of your inner mind. For example, if you believe that a certain drug…
A young woman who was addicted to drugs developed a paranoia about bugs. Although she had some reason to be wary of bugs—she once contracted Lyme disease from a tick and later experienced a scabies infestation in one of her apartments—her current fears were extreme and unfounded. For example, she was certain that bugs were…
“W.C. Fields once said, ‘Never give a sucker an even break.’ Most people hear that and think it’s just some conman credo, a self-serving ethic of opportunism. They believe you ought to go easy on the innocents and the naïve. Hold their finger to the fire, but don’t burn it. But after 70 years of…