Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies
March 23, 2020
Greg Mahr, Jamie Sweigart
3 citations
A review of historical and recent research indicates that psychedelic drugs, when used in psychotherapy, may facilitate access to unconscious material and produce deep, lasting psychological change. The authors examine these effects through the lens of Jungian theory, highlighting archetypal aspects of hallucinogenic experiences with clinical vignettes. The evidence suggests therapeutic potential, though the text does not report specific effect sizes or definitive conclusions.
Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies
March 23, 2020
D. J. Moores
2 citations
Carl Jung was wary of ecstatic rites involving dance and drumming, as well as the use of psychedelics like LSD and mescaline, warning they could expose people to overwhelming unconscious energies. This paper challenges Jung's caution by drawing on recent shamanic studies and psychedelic research. D. J. Moores argues that ecstatic rites have value in depth psychological work, countering Jung's apprehensions and highlighting the therapeutic and transformative potential of such practices.
Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies
April 22, 2023
Juliet Rohde-Brown
1 citation
The archetype of the Child serves as a psychological presence that fosters creativity and relationality for individuals and groups. Integrating the shadow aspect of human nature reduces harmful biases and projections that negatively affect the archetypal Child and actual children. Attentive listening to the divine child within supports personal growth and spiritual transformation, mending wounds from colonization and family or cultural trauma. Forgetting the divine child through abuse or neglect severs access to the Self, which cannot be discovered without its animating presence. Jungian practitioners use arts-based practices to integrate shadow aspects, decolonize marginalized frameworks, and promote multiple ways of knowing.
Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies
May 16, 2026
Dragana Favre
The Slavic Rozhanitsy are presented as archetypal figures that mediate feminine temporality, embodied cycles, and individuation within a Jungian and post-Jungian framework. Menstruation, fertility, and menopause are reframed not merely as biological events but as thresholds for psychic transformation and symbolic integration. Clinical vignettes show how Rozhanitsy motifs—weaving, spinning, measuring—appear in dreams and therapy, providing a mythopoetic container for bodily suffering that biomedical models often pathologize. The paper proposes the Rozhanitsy as psychoid figures linking bodily processes and archetypal patterning, repositioning menopause as a fateful re-weaving of feminine identity rather than a deficit.
Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies
May 16, 2026
Ruth A. Lanius
Trauma, dissociation, and bodily disconnection are central clinical concerns, and insight alone is insufficient for healing—there is a difference between knowing one is safe and actually feeling safe in the body. The book integrates Jungian depth psychology with somatic practices like Authentic Movement, demonstrating that somatic experience can be a precise, symbol-bearing dimension of analytic process rather than a deviation from it. A case example of "Lydia," a sexual abuse survivor, illustrates a phased approach that first emphasizes boundaries, grounding, and orienting through structured movement and sensory awareness to build bodily safety and agency before moving into more imaginal and expressive work. This approach aligns with contemporary trauma neuroscience showing that early overwhelming experiences are encoded in subcortical networks.
Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies
May 16, 2026
Daniel Boscaljon
This article builds on Peter Levine's work to argue that some trauma, termed 'estranged sorrows,' has no single causal event or ongoing cause of harm. It proposes that these sorrows arise from blocks to learning occurring throughout life, either from a lack of meaningful relation in early development or from being raised in an environment anchored in a cultural complex. The phenomenological approach highlights how such trauma emerges and how learning—understood as a somatic process—can help resolve it. The article concludes by extending theories of learning to argue that embodied engagement and the somatic imagination offer a form of rehabilitation important for trauma that is otherwise difficult to name or place.
Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies
May 16, 2026
D. J. Moores
The drum, like the body, has been colonized in Western culture due to colonial and missionary efforts to suppress African slaves' religious practices involving possession through drum and dance. A decolonized view sees drummers as shamans or sonic soul guides whose rhythms guide dancers to numinous experiences. This view is found in Yoruba and Yoruba-diasporic traditions, where possession rituals are facilitated by trained drummers. Yoruba possession resembles the ego-transcendence of Jungian theory, and with acceptance of nonwestern forms, these drumming rituals can be accommodated as a form of active imagination, particularly in somatic dance therapy.
Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies
June 6, 2024
Jessica Fink
Spirits—including deities, spirit animals, nature spirits, and deceased persons—are inherently numinous, filling people with awe and a sense of connection to something greater. Carl Jung viewed spirits psychologically as unconscious autonomous complexes that appear as projections because they lack direct association with the ego. This projection-based understanding often troubles spiritual practitioners, who take spirits to be real entities coexisting in the world, not mere imaginings. The text presents Jung's psychological perspective alongside the counterview of spiritual practitioners for whom spirits are genuinely real.