The mistake is to think of angels as cherubs. They’re not. That was just the romantic imagination of renaissance art. A more accurate perspective of the angel, at least psychologically, is provided by the Old Testament story of Jacob, who wrestled with the Angel of the Lord. To put it plainly, the angel fucked him up. He escaped with his life intact, no mean feat after seeing the face of God[1], but, not without suffering a dislocated hip,...
This book review is by Lynelle Pieterse and will be explored in the bookclub. Follow this link to join the Jungian Bookclub. James Hollis received his Diploma in Analytical Psychology from the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, and is the Director of the C.G. Jung Educational Center in Houston, Texas. He is a frequent guest speaker who spends winters in analytic practice and writes during the summers. In his books, he elaborates on the theories of C. G. Jung. Contemplated...
When I was a kid, for as long as I can remember, every Friday night, we would go to my grandmother’s house for a family supper. As my mother and one of my aunts were fond of saying, “Every road leads to Mayfair,” the suburb my grandmother’s home was located. We would go there for what I can only describe as a feast. My grandmother, God rest her soul, would prepare a feast for us every single week, without fail. My...
The Spectre of the “Other” in Jungian Psychology 2017 Conference on Jungian Psychology International Conference of the International Association for Jungian Studies www.jungstudies.net August 3rd – 6th, 2017 Cape Town, South Africa Call for Papers “I do not know what Africa is really saying to me, but it speaks.” (Jung in a letter to Emma in Memories, Dreams, Reflections) We invite you to participate in a gathering of academics, analysts, students and others interested in exploring a Jungian conceptualization of Otherness, and how such ideas interface with...
This is a Guest Blog by Dr. Leslee Brown, owner of the MindBodyPassport company that organises educational programmes for people interested in Psychodynamics and travelling. On my last trip to Argentina, the Argentinians told me, “When it comes to choosing a psychoanalyst, we are like women searching for the perfect perfume. We try a bit of this and a bit of that before eventually arriving at the right fit.” There are more psychoanalysts per capita in Argentina than...
Consider for a moment the utterly and overwhelmingly absurd nature of our existence. We send our children to school to learn what? Their capacities or their limitations? What they are capable of or incapable of? I would argue the latter. Here I think one must agree with Freud’s very astute analysis of the human condition that psychic castration is an essential developmental stage. Without the recognition of our limitations we become monsters. One has only to encounter a precocious teenager and...
