The Journal of analytical psychology
September 1, 2008
Paul Bishop
6 citations
Jung's 1930 lecture 'Archaic Man' serves as a bridge between the early and later stages of analytical psychology. Unlike Lévy-Bruhl, Jung rejects the label of 'mysticism' for the 'primitive' viewpoint, instead arguing for a dialectical relationship between Self and World where subject and object are more closely interrelated than modern epistemology assumes. This conception foreshadows Jung's later concept of synchronicity, which he insists is a way of apprehending the world through meaning. The article examines the opposition between 'archaic' and 'modern' in Jung's work and surveys the status of the 'primordial' in other texts to foster further debate.
The Journal of analytical psychology
September 1, 2011
John Dourley
5 citations
This paper explores Carl Jung's and the alchemist Gerhard Dorn's concept of the 'unus mundus,' the unified ground of reality. It argues that Jung and Dorn identify this ground with an experience of divinity that is the common origin of both the individual and the whole of existence. The work notes the monistic and pantheistic implications of this experience and amplifies it through the medieval mysticism of Meister Eckhart and Paul Tillich's modern philosophical theology. The authors conclude that the Jungian psychological understanding of ground surpasses monotheistic consciousness and supports a new societal myth that identifies the ground as the source of all divinities. This myth, they argue, is urgently needed to alleviate the threat that monotheistic consciousness poses to human survival.
The Journal of analytical psychology
June 1, 2007
Steven M Joseph
3 citations
Carl Jung incorporated kabbalistic images and motifs into his writings on alchemy, Aion, and Mysterium Coniunctionis, and recorded a dream with kabbalistic symbolism after his heart attack. This paper examines Jung's ideas in relation to Kabbalah by distinguishing his imaginal approach from the Kabbalah's own noetic intention, presenting examples of how Jung understood or misunderstood kabbalistic material, surveying the Kabbalah as an imaginal noetic system focused on inner self-work to 'sweeten the harsh judgments of existence,' and differentiating Jung's psychical living symbol from the kabbalistic mystical symbol. A Hasidic teaching on verbal contemplative prayer illustrates the difference.
The Journal of analytical psychology
September 1, 2024
Robert McDonnell, John Moriarty, Ian Mc Cabe et al.
2 citations
Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, advocated using LSD to help alcoholics grasp the spiritual aspect of the 12-step program, writing a letter to Carl Jung detailing his own LSD use and success in treating alcoholics. Jung died a week after receiving the letter, before he could respond. The article quotes Jung's previous hostile opinions on psychedelics and asks whether he might have changed his mind, as he did on groups, had he seen the documented success of LSD with recalcitrant alcoholics.
The Journal of analytical psychology
September 1, 2023
Helge Michael Osterhold, Gisele Fernandes-Osterhold
2 citations
The paper examines the psycho-cultural shadow dynamics within the current psychedelic renaissance, questioning whether the West's intense fascination with psychedelics—from individual use and entheogenic tourism to capitalist commodification and ethical abuses by clinicians and shamans—reflects a deeper psychological and spiritual malaise in the modern Western psyche, as diagnosed by C. G. Jung. It proposes that these phenomena may stem from a Western cultural complex and uses the archetypal image of the Hungry Ghost from Asian traditions to illuminate these shadow aspects and suggest ways to address them.
The Journal of analytical psychology
September 1, 2024
Ginny Hill
1 citation
Carl Jung was skeptical about psychedelic drugs and wrote very little about them, but Aldous Huxley's 1954 account of taking mescaline, The Doors of Perception, impressed him enough to invite Huxley to Switzerland. Huxley declined, but his collaborator Humphry Osmond met Jung instead. British psychiatrist Ronald Sandison developed an explicitly Jungian approach to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, working with Margot Cutner and connected to the Society of Analytical Psychology through Michael Fordham. Despite Jung's objections, Sandison and Cutner created groundbreaking protocols in the 1950s and were among the first to document spiritual rebirth symbolized in the birth experience known to many LSD therapists.
The Journal of analytical psychology
April 1, 2022
Maria Paula De Magalhães Tavares de Oliveira
Addiction arises from an archetypal search for transcendence that can be channeled through substances or behaviors, but in contemporary society many individuals seek only to soothe discomfort rather than achieve genuine self-regulation. The paper integrates analytical psychology and neurobiology to argue that empathic relationships, which integrate right and left brain hemispheres and connect non-verbal experiences with language, are crucial for self-regulation and individuation. The COVID-19 pandemic has made real encounters a source of anguish, yet investing in the quality of interactions is essential for preventing and treating addictions, including behavioral addictions where discerning use, abuse, and dependence remains difficult.
The Journal of analytical psychology
February 1, 2022
Federico Benchín
The article proposes that the ultimate purpose of Jungian analysis is the manifestation of 'Mystery', a term encompassing experiences of the numinous, synchronicity, and the Self. Drawing on Erich Neumann's 'Homo Mysticus', Rudolf Otto's 'Numinous', and Carl Jung's 'Synchronicity' and 'Self', it distinguishes between violent and subtle mystical experiences. The authors argue that analytical psychology provides a framework for understanding a transcendent, immaterial realm linked to psychic reality. They explore whether such experiences occur in contemporary culture by examining dreams, imaginations, and synchronicities within modern Jungian analysis.
The Journal of analytical psychology
April 1, 2021
Alexander H. Smith
Experiences of an 'empty ego' stemming from early relational trauma involve a dualistic consciousness that splits non-dual subjectivity from its objects. In contrast, 'healing void states' of non-dualistic consciousness allow individuals to dis-identify from traumatizing self- and other-representations. These states arise in the ego-Self relationship, bridging chronic subject/object splits with unified consciousness. The healing void is always incipiently present and can aid stalled treatment. The article explores integrations with non-dual models from Vedantic and Kashmir Shaivism, proposing a combined Vedantic-Jungian framework as a transcendent bridge for treating emptiness.
The Journal of analytical psychology
April 1, 2018
Robin S Brown
Jung's psychology challenges modern assumptions about subjectivity, but his thinking shows an underlying bias toward introversion. While his work on synchronicity addressed this bias, its clinical implications remain unclear. The author introduces imaginal action as a corrective, describing relational synchronicity where the intrapsychic emerges non-projectively within the interpersonal field. This contrasts with the more introverted practice of active imagination. Imaginal action is proposed as a distinctly Jungian approach to the psychoanalytic notion of enactment, with further support from transpersonal psychology.
The Journal of analytical psychology
February 1, 2018
Nathalie Pilard
Intuition is central to C. G. Jung's work, practice, and philosophical legacy. Initially attracted to intuition as an extraordinary gift linked to the paranormal, Jung explored it in his early Zofingia Lectures and his 1902 study of occult phenomena. A major shift occurred in 1913 when he turned esotericist intuitions toward psychological use in his Red Book, incorporating intuition at the core of his psychology—both in practice through empathy and in theory. In his 1921 book Psychological Types, intuition became the first of four fundamental psychological functions alongside thinking, feeling, and sensation, establishing it as the most significant function of the psyche through rational argument.
The Journal of analytical psychology
April 1, 2017
Robin S Brown
The participatory paradigm, associated with transpersonalists Richard Tarnas and Jorge Ferrer, offers a non-reductive approach to Jung's archetypal thinking for clinical practice. Examining debates about 'truth' in the clinical setting, the author argues that any therapy oriented toward 'the unconscious' must make pluralism a central concern. The relational commitment to constructivist epistemologies in psychoanalysis tends toward biological reductionism, while analytical psychology faces similar tensions. The process-oriented, speculative nature of Jung's psychology provides a more adequate basis for contemporary practice than is often assumed.
The Journal of analytical psychology
November 1, 2016
David Sagar, Marcus West
A personal account of psychological and spiritual development through active imagination, Transcendental Meditation, Jungian analysis, and Vedanta describes how these disciplines together foster a process of transformation. The individual progressively frees themselves from the ego's identifications, potentially gaining a vision of the 'self as consciousness' as understood in Vedanta. The paper presents records of active imaginations tracing key stages in this process, with commentary linking them to Jung's concepts of ego and Self. It discusses Jung's rejection of the Vedantic view of the Self as consciousness and suggests a reconciliation through the understanding of disidentification, where the difference between the two views is attributed to the extent of disidentification from the contents of consciousness.
The Journal of analytical psychology
June 1, 2015
Warren Colman
The paper argues that developments in phenomenological biology, particularly the enactive approach of Maturana and Varela, offer a way to reconsider synchronicity and the self. This approach breaks down the Cartesian division between mind and world, viewing meaning as a function of how an organism engages with its environment. The self is inherently embodied and engaged with material, cultural, and social worlds, yet infinitely extended through imagination, enabling adaptation to diverse environments. Understanding other animals requires immersion in their environmental milieux, while understanding other humans requires recognizing that different socio-cultural milieux create significantly different worlds of meaning and experience.
The Journal of analytical psychology
February 1, 2012
Harry T. Hunt
A rapprochement between Jung and contemporary human sciences may depend less on a biologistic collective unconscious than on re-inscribing archetypal imagination as the phenomenological and empirical core of Jungian psychology. The most promising approaches combine cognitive psychology of metaphor and synaesthesia, individual differences in imaginative absorption, and openness to numinous experience as symbolic intelligence. This perspective aligns with Lévi-Strauss on metaphoric roots of mythology and Durkheim on collective consciousness, validating cross-cultural commonality of physical metaphor. Jung's Red Book is closer to a socio-cultural collective consciousness based on metaphoric imagination than to a phylogenetic unconscious. Mutual re-inscribing can validate Jung's observations and is consistent with his early synthesis efforts.
The Journal of analytical psychology
April 1, 2009
Christopher MacKenna
Carl Jung adopted Rudolf Otto's concept of the 'numinous' from his book 'The Idea of the Holy' and made it central to his understanding of religion. However, Lucy Huskinson argues this involves a misreading of Otto: one must look beyond the numinous (the non-rational factor) toward the 'holy,' which, like a symbol, holds rational and non-rational aspects of religious experience together in a personally transformative way. Case material from intensive analytical psychotherapy supports this: a numinous experience was only the first step in a process that, through mourning, led to the patient's capacity to symbolize. The author suggests the sacred resides in a quality of symbolic relatedness to self and other, which may or may not involve numinous experience.
The Journal of analytical psychology
October 1, 2000
L Petchkovsky
In a culturally adapted version of Flavell's 'stream of consciousness' experiment, 15 Central Australian Aboriginal adults (8 patients, 7 colleagues) were shown pictures of persons with empty or 'busy' thought-bubbles and asked to assign a picture to the mental state of a second experimenter seen reading or sitting quietly. Only 4 people assigned the empty thought bubble to the quiet experimenter, a result at least as good as a sample of Stanford College students tested by Flavell. Participants' comments revealed great subtlety of phenomenological awareness, attributing subjectivity to non-human entities including inanimate elements.