We can learn a lot from the work of Carl Jung about how to let go of the past. In fact, my journey into Jung’s collected works began with a question that was directly related to letting go of the past: How can I ever move on from, and ultimately transcend, the torment of my past? It was something …
Carl Jung Homosexuality and the Mystery of Love
Recently someone asked me if C.G. Jung thought homosexuality was a mental illness. The short answer is, emphatically, no, no, no! Jung was not that categorical about anything. Even though he was from a time when it was not yet socially accepted, to Jung homosexuality was not necessarily problematic. For Jung homosexuality was even the spiritual destiny of some people. …
Transference Psychology in Jungian Analysis
Someone once asked the question, “Does transference always occur between a client and a therapist? If both hold the adult ego state, does that eliminate transference?” The qualifying statement in this question – if both hold the adult ego state – assumes that transference psychology is only about an infantile, parental attachment to the therapist, but that is not so. Also, …
Active Imagination: Encountering the Other Within
View PostEgo in Jungian Psychology and Why We Need It | Personality Development
The ego gets a pretty bad rap these days. People say things like “It’s just ego,” as though the ego were something we could just dispense of at will. As the center of our conscious mind, the ego is a psychological necessity. Perhaps a lot of what people say today comes from the influx of Eastern philosophy. We should remember …
Anxiety & Depression: Jungian Perspective on Finding Meaning
Conventional approaches treat anxiety and depression as though anxiety and depression are the problems in and of themselves, rather than the symptoms of an underlying imbalance in the whole person. Analytical Psychology, the psychological approach to suffering developed by C.G. Jung, is very different from traditional methods of psychology or psychotherapy. To illustrate the differences, I focus in this article on …
Carl Jung Persona: Connecting the Mask and the Soul
View PostThe Shadow: What You Do Behind Your Own Back
The shadow is one of those concepts that has made its way into everyday language, but I wonder how many people know that it comes from C.G. Jung. What I am about to share about the shadow does not even come close to its profound mystery. You can never really know the shadow or fully integrate the shadow. All of …
Carl Jung Books and How to Read Them
There is no doubt about it. Carl Jung Books are challenging to read, especially in the beginning because he’s talking about things most people have never thought about. And his books are even more difficult to read if you start out with the misconception that you already know what he’s saying. When reading Jung’s books, your first challenge is to …