DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! We all procrastinate. Tasks from making a doctor’s appointment to preparing taxes to doing the laundry invite us to put off until tomorrow what we can postpone today. We may distract ourselves by going online, doing errands, or minimizing the time a job will take. Although procrastination signals that a given task is hard and emotionally charged, it buys only temporary escape from anxiety. Furthermore, procrastination can lead to di...
Aug 22, 2019•1 hr 7 min
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! If the passage into fullsome adulthood is avoided, a person can be trapped in the world of childhood. This protected realm is a nexus of potential, defined by avoiding the rigors of the real for the pleasures of possibility. Peter Pan, who chose to remain in never-never-land, is a well-known image for the flighty ingenuousness of the puer or puella. What stops libido from becoming more grounded in order to engage in more purposeful,...
Aug 15, 2019•1 hr 8 min
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! Although only some of us talk aloud to ourselves, all of us have inner voices, even if we are not aware of them. These autonomous parts of ourselves provide running commentary on how and what we are doing. Are our inner commentators friendly and supportive, or critical and attacking? We turn to fairy tales, stories that arise from the collective unconscious, for wisdom about our relationship with those parts of ourselves that ten...
Aug 08, 2019•1 hr 7 min
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! We define dating as the quest for serious partnership or ongoing companionship. Today’s dating world is radically different from that of even a generation ago, and is light years away from previous generations. Dating apps and social media expedite and expand the range the search for a suitable other - and often turns dating into an exercise in personal marketing. Dating also now spans an age range from teens to older - even elderly...
Aug 01, 2019•1 hr 13 min
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! The life transition we call retirement mandates a major readjustment in how time, energy and money are spent, whether retirement means becoming a “snowbird” or having a stepped-down lifestyle. Work has structured the rhythm of life and time; most have found aspects of identity, status, and socialization at work, regardless of how fulfilling, arduous or well paid it may have been. Shakespeare’s King Lear and the Greek myth of Bauc...
Jul 25, 2019•1 hr 1 min
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! Chronic illnesses affect many, creating diminishment of physical ability and energy for life activities. There can be loss of agency, loss of one’s expected future, and a sharpened awareness of loss of life. There is a new need for conscious intention and reality-based decisions in order to avoid denial while adjusting to limitations and managing self-care. Deb, Lisa and Joseph discuss emotional factors in the loss of the healthy, a...
Jul 18, 2019•1 hr 6 min
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! Experiences of physical abandonment are depicted in stories old and new as ways of out-picturing traumas of early relational abandonment. Jung articulated the archetypal foundation of what later psychologists came to call attachment theory. In an infant’s primal state of identification with a mothering other, lack of caregiver availability and attunement constitutes psychic abandonment. This is depicted in fairy tales like Hansel an...
Jul 11, 2019•1 hr 8 min
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! Although cults occasionally make the headlines through tragedy or scandal, the defining features of cults are inherently human and manifest on spectrums of both severity and size. The word cult is derived from culture. While culture refers to the overarching characteristics of a society, cult refers negatively to a marginalized subgroup. Cults tap into universal human feelings and desires, such as the need to belong and resonance to...
Jul 04, 2019•54 min
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! Burnout is a relatively new term for job-related distress or an ongoing life situation that is unsatisfying, defeating, and creates a sense of despair. Burnout robs us of our sense of control and agency—we feel unable to change the troubling situation. Burnout can also be related to our internalized parents, moral convictions, and sense of duty. We can count on fairy tales, our psychic skeletons, to provide wisdom on resolving ag...
Jun 27, 2019•1 hr 10 min
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! Although the word voyage connotes a sea journey, this episode considers a voyage to be an intentional trip of any kind. A voyage can range from a vacation in Vegas to a pilgrimage to a sacred site. Such journeys may be solitary, or, like the famed pilgrimage in The Canterbury Tales , in the company of fellow travelers. We tell our stories to others and to ourselves, companioned by our own inner images and/or others. Voyages take ...
Jun 20, 2019•1 hr 2 min
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! We all shed tears. We cry when we are sad, but also when we are glad, surprised by beauty, love, or touched by other deeply felt and uniquely human experiences. Tears, and our access to them, are part of what makes us human, and when we cannot find our tears we have lost a vital link to feeling, whether for another or a part of ourselves. In their negative aspect, tears can signify the falseness of crocodile tears or affective harde...
Jun 13, 2019•1 hr 10 min
We can experience powerful feelings of empathy for those who are victims of trauma in all its heartbreaking dimensions. It is difficult even to consider a shadow side to this already dark aspect of human experience. Nevertheless, it is important also to consider the difference between lived experiences of victimization and meaning-making narratives that not only can become calcified, but self-reinforcing. If entrenched, narratives of victimization can become part of one’s identity and suppress l...
Jun 06, 2019•57 min
Individuation, the central concept of Jung’s psychology, is the foundational image and aspiration of Jungian psychoanalysis – and life. It is the theme of many a fairy tale, the sought-for treasure of a quest, and the “juice” that makes symbols compelling. Individuation has an innate developmental arc and a psychological trajectory that allows us to bring conscious intention to our own individuation process. However, vital transformational events are not simply occurrences ego alone can command;...
May 30, 2019•1 hr 9 min
Images of physical dismemberment are often used in fairy tales, dreams and art to depict psychological fragmentation, numbing and other forms of disconnection. Such cut-offs, dissociations, and splits may be related to earlier relational trauma, and constitute defenses against experiences perceived as too overwhelming for consciousness to absorb or even acknowledge. Experience can be dissociated, or dismembered, behaviorally, emotionally, bodily, and by denying memory or knowledge of events. Jun...
May 23, 2019•1 hr
Anything that disappears from your psychological inventory is apt to turn up in the guise of a hostile neighbor, who will inevitably arouse your anger and make you aggressive. It is surely better to know that your worst enemy is right there in your own heart. ~CG Jung, Vol 10, para 456 Very often the ego experiences a vague feeling of moral defeat and then behaves all the more defensively, defiantly, and self-righteously, thus setting up a vicious circle which only increases its feeling of infer...
May 16, 2019•1 hr 7 min
In this episode, the archetype of the bitch is explored using fairy tales, mythology, and popular culture to shed light on this colloquial, pejorative term. The term is applied most frequently to assertive women - and to men acting in a way deemed "feminine" - who are either not sufficiently in touch with their own authentic power or seem overly invested in power dynamics. What is the secret of authentic feminine power? We reference the myths of Cassandra, Persephone, Inanna, The Frog Prince (Gr...
May 09, 2019•1 hr 9 min
Having mixed feelings, or strongly opposing feelings is a normal occurrence in human life. We can find ourselves in a quandary about big decisions, upcoming life events, or experience being stuck without quite knowing why. Deb, Joseph, and Lisa consider various facets of ambivalence: anxiety around foreclosing options and missing out fear of regret over a possible wrong choice, or inability to raise complexes and shadow elements into consciousness. All aspects of the personality need to be allow...
May 02, 2019•1 hr 1 min
This episode, inspired by the new album by the Korean band BTS , explains and amplifies the Jungian concept of the persona. Like the cornea of the eye, persona both shields us and makes opening up to the world possible. In ancient Greek theater, the actors wore masks that identified their roles, or personae. Similarly, we adjust our outward presentation to others according to the appropriate roles we play in the workplace, with neighbors, or close friends and family. A persona that is too rigid ...
Apr 25, 2019•1 hr 1 min
The personal shadow is created as a normal part of development, as we learn what behaviors, values and feelings are not acceptable in our family, school, or religious tradition. In order to be accepted by needed significant others, parts of ourselves have to be split off from consciousness and are therefore relegated to the unconscious as shadow. A major part of becoming more whole is discovering these exiled parts of ourselves and integrating the feelings they carry. Deb, Lisa and Joseph discus...
Apr 18, 2019•1 hr 13 min
People who are chronically late create relational problems with others and generate negative consequences for themselves, from embarrassment and guilt to loss of friendships or jobs. Chronic lateness evidences a split between consciousness and the unconscious: while the ego may feel distressed about lateness, the unconscious may be expressing an unmet need and deriving a benefit from lateness. That is why self-help strategies such as setting multiple alarm clocks and allowing extra time for trav...
Apr 11, 2019•1 hr 4 min
One of the issues clients bring into the therapeutic consulting room is dissatisfaction with the state of their marriage or partnership. Although this dilemma often takes shape as bipolar, it represents a challenge to engagement with deep, defended parts of self and relationship. Joseph, Lisa and Deb make it clear they are not focusing on issues like abuse or addiction, but the more subtle yet substantial ways in which people can feel dissatisfied. Partners often hold deep aspects of the other’s...
Apr 04, 2019•1 hr 5 min
Listeners contributed examples of precognitive dreams for this episode. Lisa, Joseph, and Deb discuss theoretical concepts and listener dreams from various vantage points: the intuitive capacity of the unconscious, the synchronous intersection of matter and psyche, and activation of an archetype. These and other ways of knowing are beyond the scope of ego and call us to the realization that the ego, as Jung said, is a part of and connected to something larger that is ultimately mysterious. Jung ...
Mar 28, 2019•1 hr 3 min
Lisa, Joseph, and Deb explore and explain what the analytic process is like for them as they work with clients. Deb describes her interactions with clients using a rectangular diagram that, like the Scottish flag, traces lines going from the two upper corners to the two lower corners. This represents the multi-directional flow of energy in the session between the conscious and unconscious contents of both people. The analytic process is also likened to a chemical reaction in which both people ar...
Mar 21, 2019•1 hr 5 min
Everyone shops—we have access to an astonishing choice of products. Internet shopping has multiplied our range of options beyond what nearby retail stores may have to offer. Desired items range from mountain climbing trucks to gold jewelry to highly specialized cookware items. What are we seeking for our inner selves as we shop for outer objects? For some, utilitarian objects carry libido, whereas for others shopping is an aesthetic, adventurous, relational, or aspirational experience. Joseph, D...
Mar 14, 2019•1 hr 3 min
Preoccupation and obsession with food–a condition called orthorexia--can take the form of the quest for health and purity, with rigid rules about food categories, such as the need for all-organic ingredients or omitting food groups such as dairy, sugar, and gluten in the absence of identified physiological intolerances. This overall effort to banish anxiety can take the form of an implicit bargain (eating “right” guarantees health), a strong need for ego control, elitism, specific community valu...
Mar 07, 2019•59 min
Estrangement from members of one’s family and others takes place far more often than seems commonly acknowledged. Estrangement involves psychologically cutting-off, repressing, and defending against connection with another who has come to be experienced as “all bad.” People may move away geographically, refuse to talk to a certain person, or simply give someone the “cold shoulder.” Joseph, Lisa and Deb discuss the importance of setting appropriate boundaries with others and understanding that es...
Feb 28, 2019•1 hr 5 min
As Jung well knew, eros – love – is an essential part of the analytic process. In Vol. 16 of his Collected Works Jung used alchemical images of a king and queen to illustrate the various ways in which erotic feeling can enter the consulting room. The safety of a time-limited, fee-based relationship is important to allow a full range of feelings and fantasies to be admitted into consciousness without being enacted. Idealizing and erotic feelings for another can pave the way to finding one’s cente...
Feb 21, 2019•1 hr 6 min
Many a fairy tale features hiding as a strategic defense. Jack, of beanstalk fame, hides from the giant in order to survive and discover his treasure. We often hide when we feel small and life events and people feel big. Hiding can be a conscious decision, whether for fun, as in the game of hide and seek, or out of necessity, as Anne Frank’s family’s had to do. Hiding can also be an unconscious phenomenon, particularly if there has been trauma, in order to protect the inviolable life of the soul...
Feb 14, 2019•1 hr 5 min
With “The Wall” very much in the forefront of national discussion, Deb, Lisa and Joseph reflect on the archetype of walls. Some may be stonewalls simply marking boundaries between neighbors. Others may be massive defenses like the Great Wall of China. What do walls keep out – or keep in? What do we need to create necessary separation, and what walls off connection with our own shadow that may be projected onto immigrants. When we focus on building a wall, do we neglect our internal infrastructur...
Feb 07, 2019•50 min
Football is a uniquely American sport with millions of fans, heroic teams, and stadiums reminiscent of colosseums. As the Super Bowl approaches – television’s most watched show – Lisa, Joseph and Deb consider the archetypal underpinnings that contribute to making football America’s most watched sport. They consider the light and dark sides of fandom, the hero’s journey, the battleground, and more. The Dream: For some reason, I brought kitty litter to the bathroom -- it was not for a cat (since I...
Jan 31, 2019•1 hr 10 min
