Abstract Analytical psychology and modern physics have opened windows to describe aspects (or even one single substance) of reality. The notions of archetypes and the collective unconscious suggest that dreams carry symbolic messages from the area of psychic potential, while quantum neuroscience posits that consciousness and brain activity may be influenced by quantum‐level phenomena beyond...
The publication of Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1900/2000) marked the birth of psychoanalysis in the public consciousness. Since then, therapeutic work with dreams has formed a central element for the practice and teaching of all schools in the tradition of psychoanalysis and depth psychology. Nevertheless, it is precisely this core element of work with unconscious contents...
The increasing, convincing scientific studies of the usefulness of psychedelics for promoting changes for the ego calls for analysts to take a position in relation to these substances. In appropriate cases, they may be considered as an aid to Jungian psychoanalysis, yet they remain controversial and outside the traditional realm of our therapeutic modality. The purpose of the plenary and this...
Abstract This study explores spiritual experiences in online video games and dreams from the perspective of analytical psychology, focusing on how such experiences activate the archetype of initiation in adolescents. Method: The present study adopted a Jungian psychological perspective to analyse symbols and psychological processes emerging in dreams that occurred after interaction with video...
AbstractA 35‐year‐old woman patient had an unusual dream with a catastrophic plot. The protagonist of the dream is a girl who lives on an island; she makes a wish that there will always be a sun in the sky. After that, 30 additional smaller suns appear in the sky, so that it never gets completely dark. Due to her wish, a strange phenomenon occurs: a huge black octopus emerges from the ocean and...
The mystery of the role of the brain in the formation of consciousness is the subject of endless philosophical and neuroscientific speculation. The ongoing, intertwined processes of the unconscious and the ego, what Jung defines as that which creates consciousness, opens the inquiry as to the role of the structures and functions of the brain in individuation. The purpose of this paper is to...
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is an established resource for people suffering from alcohol use disorder (AUD). However, Bill Wilson, the co-founder of AA, in his second letter to Jung referred to its low success rate. One evidence-based alternative, dating back to the 1950s, is the clinical use of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) for treating AUD. Bill Wilson was a strong advocate of using LSD as a...
C. G. Jung wrote very little about psychedelic drugs and he took a sceptical view of them. However, he was sufficiently impressed by Aldous Huxley's 1954 account of taking mescaline, The Doors of Perception, to invite Huxley to visit him in Switzerland. Huxley declined Jung's invitation but Huxley's collaborator Humphry Osmond met Jung instead. This paper documents Jung's contact with the...
For a significant part of its history, archetype theory has been undermined by criticisms containing unexamined Cartesian assumptions. Such assumptions treat all cognition as disembodied, consisting of mere manipulation of abstract, inherently meaningless signs mimicked from verbal instruction or cultural learning. Since the 1980s, due to the results of many independent disciplines, however,...
In recent years a renewed scientific, public and commercial interest in psychedelic medicines can be observed across the globe. As research findings have been generally promising, there is hope for new treatment possibilities for a number of difficult-to-treat mental health concerns. While honouring positive developments and therapeutic promise in relation to the medical use of psychedelics,...
This written exchange is between a senior and a younger Jungian analyst on issues relevant to the development of analytical psychology throughout the world today. The younger analyst, Stefano Carpani, considers himself a neo-Jungian. He explains to John Beebe, known for post-Jungian contributions to the study of typology, integrity, and gender, how important it is to include sociological...
This paper will describe the spiritual states of "oneness" experienced by Andean shamans in relation to oceanic states in early infancy and working with trauma in Jungian analysis. The author's work exploring implicit energetic experience with Andean shamans will be referenced with comparisons made to depth psychology, in both theory and in practice. Definitions of Q'echua terms describing...
In this paper I explore what it means to encounter the symbol as a meaningful object, or process, within the environment of the other-than-human. Using Jung's account in 'The spirit mercurius' of an enlisted Indigenous soldier who attempts to desert his barracks on hearing a native Oji tree calling him, I compare the evolving stages of consciousness theorised by Jung to explain this phenomenon...
This paper seeks to integrate the perspectives of analytical psychology and neurobiology in order to understand the phenomenon of addiction in contemporary society, taking into account the COVID-19 pandemic. Jung emphasizes the role of the psyche's self-regulation and the development of consciousness in the individuation process. The search for experiences of transcendence is archetypal and can...
The present work aims to present ideas about the notion of 'Mystery', based on the contributions of various thinkers from different areas of knowledge. It will focus especially on the experience itself, that is, on the human possibility of generating the mystical experience and conceptualizing the dimension from contact with it. Concepts such as 'Homo Mysticus' (Erich Neumann), 'Numinous'...
Amerindians, living in a perspective of synchronicity, attribute to symmetry a negative value that produces an understanding of unstable dualism cosmologies, in a continuous and dynamic imbalance, in a notion of complementarity between conscious and unconscious. These notions are in line with the view of synchronicity proposed by Jung (1952/1972) and Cambray (2013), a view that expands...
Starting with the current pandemic, a potent symbol of death for all, the author explores the need to transform our vision of, and position in, the world. The author describes the world in which we live in terms of accelerated transformation and extreme imbalance: environmental suicide, consumerism, environmental pollution, global warming and intense polarization brought about by...
Global living standards have increased considerably as a result of the progress brought about by human civilization. However, ecological crises, global nuclear armament and an increasing sense of psychological discontent are among a list of things that bring into question the nature of modernity. Often these large-scale collective issues seem too overwhelming for the individual to ponder in any...
This article explores clinical encounters with experiences of the 'empty ego' which arise from early relational trauma. The ego's emptiness is held in repetitious complexes and arises out of affectively charged experiences between self and other which remain split-off from awareness. This kind of consciousness is viewed as dualistic, separating non-dual subjectivity from its dualistic objects...
In this paper, the author attempts to show some structural changes in the adolescent mind in modern Japan through examination of our quantitative research of the dreams of university students. Two questionnaires, Scale of Anthropophobia Mentality and Scale of Sense of Self, were administered while asking students about the contents of their 'impressive dreams' in childhood as well as their...
The various ways schools of psychotherapy relate to dreams have been marked by isolationism and mutual conflict rather than self-examination and then integrating the discoveries and methods of other schools. Jung's method was in opposition to Freud's psychoanalysis. Existential psychology was dismissive of Freud's and Jung's discoveries, while cognitive dream interpretation and cognitive...
This article explores how the body and imagination operate as pathways of knowledge through the use of Movement as Active Imagination in clinical practice. This method activates the transcendent function, thus encouraging new therapeutic responses. A philosophical perspective (Spinoza, Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty) and some concepts from neuroscience (embodied cognition, somatic markers, image...
This theoretical paper considers the fashion in which Jung's psychology radically challenges modern assumptions concerning the nature of subjectivity. With an eye for the clinical implications of Jung's late work, the author introduces the idea of imaginal action. In order to explain what is meant by this, the paper begins by exploring how Jung's thinking demonstrates an underlying bias towards...
Intuition is central in the work, practice, and philosophical legacy of C. G. Jung. In this paper, I will first discuss the importance of intuition for Jung in the paradigm usually designated the 'paranormal'. Jung was attracted to intuition as an extra-ordinary gift or function in the traditional sense, and this is considered here in relation to his 1896-1899 Zofingia Lectures and 1902 On the...
Introducing the 'participatory' paradigm associated with the work of transpersonalists Richard Tarnas and Jorge Ferrer, the author outlines an approach to Jung's archetypal thinking that might offer a more adequate basis in which to ground a non-reductive approach to practice. In order to demonstrate the relevance of this outlook at the present time, the author begins by examining recent...