A strong theoretical foundation for analytical psychology to engage with psychedelic therapy can be built using tools already present in Jungian thought. The paper offers a brief history of psychedelic therapy and Jungian psychology, focusing on three analysts, and outlines Stanislav Grof's work with LSD therapy as a basis for dialogue with Jungian concepts. Alchemical concepts and language from analytical psychology—prima materia, Mercurius, the vessel, and subtle body—are applied to understand psychedelic experience, alongside individuals' accounts of their LSD sessions. The author then discusses implications of this dialogue and potential future directions.
Recent philosophy of mind trends propose that consciousness pervades the entire universe and serves as the organizing foundation of the cosmos, reviving panpsychism, Neoplatonic Oneness, and neo-Jungian cosmopsychism. The author argues these views commit an anthropomorphic fallacy by projecting human-like consciousness onto nature. Instead, the cosmos is unconscious of itself, though it consists of dynamic, evolving information-processing systems that drive its organization and spacetime structure. Respecting the limits of language avoids a category mistake in cosmological discussions. Understanding psychic experience does not require positing a fundamental cosmic consciousness.
This article examines the influence of Husserl's phenomenological method on James Hillman's archetypal psychology. It argues that Hillman's work, from his early thesis Emotion (1959) through his major work Re-visioning Psychology (1975), adopts a phenomenological attitude by bracketing theoretical assumptions to focus on the essence of phenomena. The method is illustrated in how archetypal psychology approaches dream images, attending only to the phenomenology of the image itself without interpretation, in order to grasp its archetypal background. The article contends that this phenomenological turn is central to Hillman's critique of modern psychology's replacement of metaphysical perspective with a phenomenological attitude.
This article critiques Jon Mills and Erik Goodwyn's 'Archetypal Origins' and their cosmopsychist framework for Jungian psychology. It argues that their treatment of matter and consciousness is problematic, particularly regarding agency and ontology. The author proposes an alternative ontological idealism that gives consciousness greater primacy, distinguishing between Universal Spirit as a non-local absolute consciousness and Soul as a localized projection within spacetime. This retains Goodwyn's themes of holism and formal cause while offering a different metaphysical grounding.