Jungian And Archetypal

The psychosomatic pain of heartbreak and mourning shows neurobiological evidence of stress similar to being submitted to torture. With time, the intensity of the pain may lessen, yet it is false to think that time heals all wounds! Many live the rest of their life with a captive heart, alone in the emotional desert of psychic numbness. The first challenge is to become aware of the instinctual fear that makes us say "if you leave me, I'll-die." This fear poses a logical problem because to overcome it, you must learn to survive without the partner, which is precisely what you fear! You are like a patient who has been shot by an arrow? Cupid's arrow ?but is afraid to let the doctor pull it out. Living with an arrow sticking out from your chest makes life impossible. Recovery is not, as so many popular self-help books suggest today, an ego decision to move on. Recovery is the opposite of a willful decision, the opposite of an emotional shutting down which only mimics detachment. At the beginning of heartbreak, the brain reacts like that of a drug addict suddenly deprived of his or her drug. The behavior of the love-crazy is similar to that of the addict desperately searching for a fix. Hooked on hope, your brain is in a panic mode. Love is at the core of depressive, suicidal and murderous states. For the brain, lack of love, lack of food, lack of sleep, or a pit bull jumping at you are all kinds of threats. How you respond impacts not only your health but your destiny as well. In other words, either emotional suffering turns on the evolutionary switch, or your emotional shutting will destroy your capacity to love. This book summarizes what you need to learn, and to do to turn on that switch. I wrote from three different points of view. First, as a teacher and researcher in psychology, I spent most of my adult life studying the symptoms of lost love, tortuous love, smothering love, condemning love, controlling love, insufficient love, betrayed love, compulsive love, codependent love. This text is my report from the field: which theories are validated and which are not. Second, I am writing as a therapist who, for many years, listened to the stories of courageous individuals free falling from the summit of love, crashing down into the relational desert of mourning, grief, and loss. While witnessing their despair, I admired their courage. Love, its presence and absence, quality and quantity, form and essence, nurturing and toxic effects, its bitterness, and sweetness, is at the core of every therapy because love is fundamentally liberating. Love is also easily corrupted. Love develops the brain, but heartbreak transforms an otherwise functional adult into a cognitive dimwit. Love attaches itself to our neurotic traits, which then develop like barnacles on the hull of a boat. And last, I am writing as an individual who has suffered her fair share of heartbreaks. As a young woman, I plunged into the cavernous mouth of that mythical beast we call Love, like a frog jumping into the path of a lawnmower. This humbling experience taught me the contrast between the sweetness of love and the tragedy of remaining innocent about its power.

This volume ensues from the 8th Jungian Odyssey retreat, inspired by Kartause Ittingen, a former monastery founded in 1150, and lying some thirty miles from C.G. Jung's birthplace, Kesswil. As training analysts and scholarly guests of the International School of Analytical Psychology, the authors address students, clinicians, and all others with interest in Jung. Nestled in the Thurgau lowlands, Kartause Ittingen still echoes its past as the tranquil refuge of a community of Carthusian monks. Invoking the genius loci, Lionel Corbett wryly recalls Lao Tzu's wisdom, "Those who know don't talk; those who talk, don't know." Corbett thus humbly submits, "Silence is not just an absence of sound," but a "non-conceptual mode of knowing," with "amazing qualities and textures." In this volume, the authors listen for the textures of silence emanating from sources as varied as the analytic consulting room, dream, fairy tale, the music of John Cage, and the activities of wandering and rowing. Can we attune our hearts to the silence that traps the oppressed and exploited? When is silence healing? When does it divide and crush us? When is the time to speak out about what truly matters? Indeed one author begs, "make more noise!" Thus readers of this volume are invited to ." . . watch patiently the silent happenings of the soul," realizing that, "the most and best happens when it is not regulated from outside and above." (C.G. Jung)

This volume, the premier issue of the Archai journal, lays foundations for the academic discipline of archetypal cosmology, which has emerged from the confluence of a number of different fields: depth psychology, archetypal astrology, history, philosophy, cosmology, religious studies, comparative mythology, cultural studies, the arts, and the new-paradigm sciences. With contributions from Richard Tarnas, Stanislav Grof, Keiron Le Grice, and Rod O'Neal, this book provides an introduction to the theoretical basis of archetypal cosmology and its applications to cultural history, biography, and the arts. The articles address topics such as the historical context of archetypal cosmology, the nature and meaning of the planetary archetypes, their connections to the psychodynamics of the unconscious, and the new method of historical analysis called archetypal historiography. Also included, as examples of this kind of analysis, are a case study of the Puritan movement, an analysis of Bruce Springsteen's song lyrics, and an exploration of the Saturn-Neptune complex through the study of the lives and works of major cultural figures, including Blake, Coleridge, Freud, Wilde, Bergman, and Woolf.

How does the spirit come into clinical work? Through the analyst? In the analysand's work in the analysis? What happens to human destructiveness if we embrace a vision of non-violence? Do dreams open us to spiritual life? What is the difference between repetition compulsion and ritual? How does religion feed terrorism? What happens if analysts must wrestle with hate in themselves? Do psychotherapy and spirituality compete, or contradict, or converse with each other? What does religion uniquely offer, beyond what psychoanalysis can do, to our surviving and thriving? This book abounds with such important questions and discussions of their answers.

In the boldest expose on the nature of power since Machiavelli, celebrated Jungian therapist James Hillman shows how the artful leader uses each of two dozen kinds of power with finesse and subtlety. Power, we often forget, has many faces, many different expressions. "Empowerment, " writes best-selling Jungian analyst James Hillman, "comes from understanding the widest spectrum of possibilities for embracing power." If food means only meat and potatoes, your body suffers from your ignorance. When your idea of food expands, so does your strength. So it is with power. "James Hillman, " says Robert Bly, "is the most lively and original psychologist we have had in America since William James." In "Kinds Of Power," Hillman addresses himself for the first time to a subject of great interest to business people. He gives much needed substance to the subject by showing us a broad experience of power, rooted in the body, the rnind, and the emotions, rather than the customary narrow interpretation that simply equates power with strength. Hillman's "anatomy" of power explores two dozen expressions of power every artful leader must understand and use, including: the language of power, control, influence, resistance, leadership, prestige, authority, exhibitionism, charisma, ambition, reputation, fearsomeness, tyranny, purism, subtle power, growth, and efficiency.

The most complex and unexplored relationship in a woman's life is with her father. If their bond is close, she is referred to as "Daddy's little girl." As cute as that may sound in childhood, a "father's daughter" later pays a high price for her favored status. In order to sustain his approval, protection, and love, she often distances herself from her mother and rejects her own feminine nature. By identifying solely with her father, her development as a woman is arrested in daughterhood.
In this unique and fascinating look at a pervasive personal and cultural issue, family therapist Maureen Murdock at last reveals the unspoken truth about daughters and the immense power the fathers they idealize have over them. Fathers' Daughters explores how these exclusive relationships affect every aspect of a woman's life. While fathers' daughters are often high achievers in the outside world, their denial of their innate feminine nature wreaks havoc on other aspects of their lives--from fearing commitment to recklessly choosing a mate, among a host of other personal and professional problems.
With revealing case studies and an exploration of the hidden truth in myths, dreams, and fairy tales, Fathers' Daughters makes clear that the rewards for healing the father-daughter relationship are great--as a woman will learn to take herself seriously, reclaim the authority she projects onto men, and establish a healthy, balanced sense of herself as a woman.
"Murdock offers a rich and thoughtful analysis forged in the fires of her own suffering and growth. The urgent need to discover deeper feminine values and to challenge the rigid and possessive qualities of patriarchy belongs to the psychologyof all of us."
--Suzanne Wagner, Ph.D.
Jungian Analyst
Producer of "A Matter of Heart"
"A moving exploration of the feminine journey from father's daughter to peer. Murdock guides us through uncharted territory to find, within the shadow of our fathers' influence, a female vision that is powerful and nurturing. Groundbreaking and dynamic, Fathers' Daughters invites us not only to heal the father-daughter wounds, but also to build our own distinctly feminine futures."
--Brenda Peterson
Author of Nature and Other Mothers