Arriving at Bollingen Tower. I am not an intrepid traveler. I am rather attached to my comforts and routines and usually overwhelmed by the airports and stations and luggage and people and shops. So it was with great trepidation that I set off to Zurich to attend the C.G. Jung Institute Winter Intensive, 2016. I traveled with a group organised by Dr. Leslee Brown that included accommodation and outings. This really worked for me, since I usually hide...
This article locates, defines, and evaluates Jung’s contribution to psychoanalysis of the Collective Unconscious or “Objective Psyche” and its use a tool in psychotherapy. This is a copy of a lecture given by Stephen Anthony Farah at the University of Pretoria on the 9th of September 2015. Introduction Carl Gustav Jung, (1875 – 1961), the Swiss psychiatrist and academic, was an early and key collaborator of Freud’s; and at one time the heir apparent to the psychoanalytic legacy. He made a big...
With apologies to C. G. Jung Some general context What follows is an attempt to synthesise and make meaning from my very own Jungian journey of the last fifteen years. Besides borrowing the title from Jung’s biography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, I follow in the footsteps of two of my students, Tasha Tollman and Linda Hawkins, who have previously written pieces along these lines for publication on this site. I am not into the white washing or spin doctor style of...
James Hollis has the extraordinary ability to make the work of Carl Jung meaningfully applicable to our everyday lives and this genius is apparent in Creating a Life: Finding your Individual Path. The book takes you on a journey into living an examined life, a journey towards consciousness. But Hollis warns this journey will not solve all your problems or heal your pain, it will simply make your life more interesting to you. And who doesn’t want to feel...
This is the second part of two posts on the Classic version of Jung’s Anima and Animus theory in which I condense the information from Marie-Louise von Franz’s book Anima and Animus in Fairy Tales [1]. This post focuses on the malevolent, destructive, dysfunctional Anima and how that affects a man and also attempts to address the approach to take in order to integrate the Anima and thus render her benevolent and constructive. In the classic version of Jungian psychology, the...
In preparation for our Anima and Animus Module on the Conscious Living Programme, I re-read Marie Louise von Franz book “Animus and Anima in Fairy Tales”[1]. Whilst it is a fascinating read, I can’t say that I enjoy reading her, since her writing style is very difficult to follow. I decided to extract the invaluable information from “Animus and Anima in Fairy Tales” into two concise posts that explains the process of integrating the Animus and Anima. This...
In the spring of 1957, at the age of eighty-four, the Swiss psychologist and founder of analytical psychology (also known as Jungian psychology), Carl Gustav Jung, set out to tell his life’s story, embarking upon a series of conversations with his colleague and friend Aniela Jaffe, which he used as the basis for his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (MDR). Jung described his life as being ordinary for his time and place; he was schooled, forged a career, married, had children...
Sia, an Australian singer, brought out a video (2015) that disturbed some people and drew a fair amount of criticism. The video is of an adult male and a young girl fighting in a cage. Sia responded to this criticism by saying that the two actors portray a single person, namely herself, and represent her two warring-self states. It is a wonderful depiction of the war between shadow and ego. Coming to terms with your shadow is hard, unpleasant and...
This is a guest post by Tasha Tollman. In the space of a few years I lost my father, I lost my business, I lost my financial freedom, I lost my passion for life. And in this my darkest hour I lost even my faith in God. The life that I had worked so hard to create disappeared and I slipped deeper and deeper into the dark night of the soul. Every day presented a new crisis, everything I touched turned...
Book review by Tasha Tollman Joan Chodorow, dance therapist, analyst and analyst member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco combed through volumes of Jung’s writings and lectures to bring us this collection of Jung’s writings on Active Imagination. Fascinating for me was the insight into the many different names Jung used for this process – transcendent function, picture method, active fantasy, active phantasying, trancing, visioning, exercises, dialectical method, technique of differentiation, technique of introversion, introspection and technique of...
