Archetypal Psychology

Relationship Rupture and the Limbic System: The Physiology of Abandonment and Separation “A relationship is a physiologic process, as real and as potent as any pill or surgical procedure.”

At 40, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married and had no children, was walking through a park one day in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her favourite doll. She and Kafka searched for the doll unsuccessfully.

Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would come back to look for her.

The next day, when they had not yet found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter "written" by the doll saying "please don't cry. I took a trip to see the world. I will write to you about my adventures."

Thus began a story which continued until the end of Kafka's life.

During their meetings, Kafka read the letters of the doll carefully written with adventures and conversations that the girl found adorable.

Finally, Kafka brought back the doll (he bought one) that had returned to Berlin.

"It doesn't look like my doll at all," said the girl.

Kafka handed her another letter in which the doll wrote: "my travels have changed me." The little girl hugged the new doll and brought the doll with her to her happy home.

A year later Kafka died.

Many years later, the now-adult girl found a letter inside the doll. In the tiny letter signed by Kafka it was written:

"Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way."

Embrace change. It's inevitable for growth. Together we can shift pain into wonder and love, but it is up to us to consciously and intentionally create that connection.

Deeply interested in whatever direction Craig takes this.

"It is insane to be in competition with others. Work out a method where you are able to support your friends, your peers, and those with whom you live, while at the same time working very hard to mind your own business and tend to the most important task you have: To improve yourself and use yourself in the best way to earn your place on land. The world will always try to make you think about how you're doing against the others, but ignore this. You need to do--and have to do--the work you were put here to do." Arthur Miller/Interview with James Grissom/1998/Photo by Arnold Newman

Recommended.

Free live stream Friday 2/24 at 9 am Pacific. We’ll talk about imagining as foundational to life and work and glance over recent studies on the benefits of play and creativity. https://www.youtube.com/live/bSE5duyio0U?feature=share

It may well be a prejudice to restrict the psyche to being “inside the body.” In so far as the psyche has a non-spatial aspect, there may be a psyche “outside-the-body,” a region so utterly different from “my” psychic sphere that one has to get out of oneself…to get there.

C.G. Jung, Mysterium Conjunctionis

The Opposite of Toxic Positivity The Atlantic

I’m a psychologist – and I believe we’ve been told devastating lies about mental health | Sanah Ahsan Society’s understanding of mental health issues locates the problem inside the person - and ignores the politics of their distress, says psychologist Sanah Ahsan

HBD, CG.

Iconic Psychiatrist Carl Jung on Human Personality in Rare BBC Interview “Psychological type is nothing static — it changes in the course of life.”

Carl Jung on How to Live and the Origin of “Do the Next Right Thing” “There is no pit you cannot climb out of provided you make the right effort at the right place… do the next thing with diligence and devotion.”

Physicist Alan Lightman on the Illusion of Absolute Rest The beautiful and disorienting science of why we are mostly restlessness and empty space.

Why Our Partners Drive Us Mad: Philosopher Alain de Botton to the Central Foible of the Human Heart and How to Heal It “We believe we are seeking happiness in love, but what we are really after is familiarity.”

"Somatic Psychology" used in a public context
https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/what-is-somatization/

What Is Somatization? What Is Somatization?

Amanda Palmer Reads Polish Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska’s Glorious Poem “Possibilities” “I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.”

Carl Jung’s Delightfully Disgruntled Review of Ulysses and His Letter to James Joyce “You may gather from my article what Ulysses has done to a supposedly balanced psychologist.”

Essential.

The Power of Antagonistic Cooperation: Albert Murray on Heroism and How Storytelling Redeems Our Broken Cultural Mythology “It is literature, in the primordial sense, which establishes the context for social and political action in the first place.”

Romantic (imaginal?) Theology

Join us this Saturday for a webinar featuring Inklings scholars Charlie Starr, Michael Christensen, Terry Glaspey, and Crystal Hurd.

Register at https://cslewis.simpletix.com

draws the attention. Is it still possible to sense what that means?

"Stating plainly that one of America’s two major parties, the party putatively devoted to advancing the ideas and ideals of conservatism, has now fallen into autocratic disrepute is unnerving for a magazine committed to being, in the words of our founding manifesto, 'of no party or clique.' Criticism of the Republican Party does not suggest an axiomatic endorsement of the Democratic Party, its leaders and policies," Jeffrey Goldberg writes. "Substantive, even caustic, critiques can of course be made up and down the Democratic line. But avoiding partisan entanglement does not mean that we must turn away from the obvious. The leaders of the Republican Party—the soul-blighted Donald Trump and the satraps and lackeys who abet his nefarious behavior—are attempting to destroy the foundations of American democracy. This must be stated clearly, and repeatedly."

A Party, and Nation, in Crisis The Atlantic

AI Model Detects Mental Disorders Based on Web Posts | Dartmouth More news Articles AI Model Detects Mental Disorders Based on Web PostsNews subtitleThe model maps changes in users’ emotions rather than the specific content of texts.ImageImage Xiaobo Guo, Guarini ’24, left, and Soroush Vosoughi, assistant professor of computer science, use social media as a l...

Lou Andreas-Salomé, the First Woman Psychoanalyst, on Depression and Creativity in Letters to Rilke “A great deal of poetic work has arisen from various despairs.”

Can People Change? The Psychological Möbius Strip That Keeps Us from Ending Painful Relationships Facing the logical fallacies that fuel painful emotional patterns and what it takes to break them with dignity, mindfulness, and emotional maturity.

The Four Desires Driving All Human Behavior: Bertrand Russell’s Magnificent Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech “Nothing in the world is more exciting than a moment of sudden discovery or invention, and many more people are capable of experiencing such moments than is sometimes thought.”

Amanda Palmer Reads “When I Am Among the Trees” by Mary Oliver “You too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”

Long ago, artist Art Young (born on this day in 1866) captured our elemental human hopes and fears in a series of emotive paintings of trees at night – see them here: https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/08/06/trees-at-night-art-young/

Jung Embodied: Active Imagination in Movement (Authentic Movement) ~ December 5, 10am-12:30 PT; 1pm-3:30 ET; 7-9:30pm CET

Please join us for an international online webinar exploring inner-directed movement to bridge the realms of conscious and unconscious, body and psyche, instinct and spirit, affect and image, memory and emergence.

We’ll delve into Jung’s discovery of Active Imagination; the four steps of this approach; and illuminate Mary Starks Whitehouse’s further development of active imagination in movement, also known as Authentic Movement. Tina’s presentation will include a short film clip of Mary’s pioneering student, Jungian analyst and Dance/Movement therapist, Dr. Joan Chodorow.

Embodied exploration will engage a healing symbol in movement as a form of active imagination, with special attention to the living body in psychotherapy, healing, and transformation – for therapists, healing practitioners, artists, and those interested in the embodied soul. No experience in dance is necessary, only curiosity and openness to engage the unknown.

For information & registration: https://inspirees.glueup.com/event/jung-embodied-active-imagination-in-movement-45284/

“Some of us make our own hell, descending into a mental darkness that binds our minds into the trap of paranoia. In that darkness we see monsters everywhere, convinced they are after us and only we can see them. Between the screaming and cowering in fear we fall deeper and deeper into a world of self delusion unable to see objective reality. It is Dante’s inferno, it is Lucifers trap, it is the soul lost”.
- Deschotte Cline, “On Insanity”

H/T Toby Threadgill

Drinking from the Chalice with Stephanie Zajchowski, PhD A lecture with Stephanie Zajchowski, PhD, hosted by the Jung Society of Austin.

Life as a Soul Journey | Live Online Conference | Jung Platform This five-day conference has been designed to help you understand the perspective of the soul and to apply a Life as Soul Journey perspective to your life and that of others.