I learned about Dr. Carl Gustav Jung and his “analytical psychology” in a college seminar, in which we read Man and His Symbols, a book Dr. Jung created with several colleagues near the end of his life, to make his ideas accessible to the wider public. Many years later, I still feel the book is a great introduction to Jungian psychology.

In our seminar, we also kept dream journals, under the watchful eye of our very loving and personally integrated professor. The “proof in the pudding” was that during the course I experienced a real Awakening, a return to a sense of fresh new life and wholeness, after a very troubled couple of years.

Lots of Jungian educational opportunities

The publicly available forums for studying Dr. Jung’s work seem to, of late, have expanded exponentially. Besides local Jungian groups in various cities, I know of five international “schools” which take place online, or mostly online, and advertise constantly—and, so far as I can tell, spread Dr. Jung’s ideas in depth and with quality.

Around a year ago, I began taking courses at one of these schools, the Center for Applied Jungian Studies. It’s physically centred in South Africa, but has students taking part online from all over the world. I’m quite satisfied with CAJS, and intend to continue taking their courses, at least until I finish the four-course sequence that they call the “Magnum Opus.”

Around the time I discovered CAJS, I also learned about a weekly American podcast called “This Jungian Life.” The podcast is billed as, “Three good friends and Jungian analysts invite you to join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.”

As weeks, months, and now four years have gone by since the beginning of the enterprise, the index of topics available on YouTube, where I listen, and on several other venues, has grown to a whopper size! There are now 227 episodes available for listening. They span vast areas of subject matter. I usually listen to the current one, and as I’m often in my car, “This Jungian Life” has replaced my former proclivity for novels or non-fiction audiobooks much of the time.

The 3 friends and analysts

The three friends and analysts include Deborah Stewart, who lives on Cape Cod; Lisa Marchiano, who’s living in Philadelphia; and Joseph Lee, of Virginia Beach, Virginia. They have a fluid conversational style, and balance one another in many wonderful ways. The three are extremely skilled in communication, and although their discussions of deep and often controversial issues can be quite intense, I’ve never heard a word of hostility on the program.

Some of the most memorable episodes that come to my mind are the one on death, which they released in the past year, and a discussion of abortion, aired not long after the Roe v. Wade reversal in the U.S.

In the abortion episode, the three were careful to be non-partisan and non-divisive. They ferreted out deep philosophical questions at the base of the issue, questions that one rarely hears about in the usual public conversations on the topic—issues for which each side clearly has valid points.

Last week, they had a discussion about “Compartmentalization” in our lives, and how we each find ourselves doing things that “other parts of us” might find shocking, because we’re complex, multi-levelled beings. The current podcast offers a powerful conversation with a guest analyst, Dr. Donald Kalsched. Dr. Kalsched specializes in treating people who have undergone severe childhood trauma. He’s the author of several books, including Trauma and the Informed Heart, which is also the podcast in which he is featured.

There are also many episodes on bottom-line Jungian concepts, such as:

• Archetypes
• Dreamwork
• The technique Dr. Jung called “Active Imagination,” used for contacting the Unconscious while one is awake
• Complexes
• Introversion and Extraversion

And on and on.

One of the panelists, Lisa Marchiano, has recently published a book titled Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself, which looks at the psychology of motherhood by utilizing fairy tales as its “teaching stories.”

Passing the candle on

I’m thrilled that such a high-quality presentation exists in such an easily accessed public venue. So thrilled that I wanted to tell those readers of The Mindful Word who might not yet know about “This Jungian Life.”

Dr. Jung was asked, towards the end of his life, whether he thought that our world would survive. His answer was, “It may, if there are enough people in the world working on themselves.”

Jungian work is essentially about facing oneself, instead of blaming various scapegoats—often via the mechanism called psychological projection, about which there’s also a podcast—for one’s dissatisfactions. A friend of mine who’s professionally involved in Jungian work calls it “generative” of the kind of world we need to have in order to face our challenging future.

This article is one tiny way of trying to pass this candle on. Dr. Jung had a dream, in the deeply troubled days before the First World War, that he was carrying a candle on a dark night. There were many possible ways it could be put out, but he continued to protect his “little light.” When awake, he realized that his work, based on his commitment to discover, embody and pass on some of the deepest truths that human beings need to know about themselves and how to live, was such a “little light.” So he bravely soldiered on with it, until the end of his life.

And now, it’s our turn.

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image 1: with permission of “This Jungian Life”; image 2: with permission of “This Jungian Life”; image 3: Wikimedia Commons; image 4: Wikimedia Commons

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