Swiss psychiatrist and C. G. Jung (1975-1961) viewed mid-life, the time midway between entering adulthood and the end of life, as a critical time of transition. Dr. Brad Chabin, a depth psychotherapist with a practice in West Hollywood, California, had his own experience of a spontaneous and powerful mid-life transition. It involved a devastating diagnosis and challenging times, during which, Chabin now recognizes, much of his social identity slipped away. After going back to school and getting licensed in Counseling, as well as a Ph.D. in depth psychology—even while battling a deadly disease—somehow Chabin pulled through. Chabin now believes he […]
Continue reading »Category: Depth Psychology
Inside and Outside: How the Unconscious Reveals Itself Through Art—An Interview
As an artist, Margeaux Klein has always approached her art from an imaginative direction and produced works in her studio that felt like they originated deep within her heart and soul. Now she has begun to understand how to “read into” her work using a depth psychological lens. Reflecting back on some of her favorite works, Margeaux marvels how the unconscious psyche can take so many subtle avenues that we’re not necessarily aware of. After being inexplicably drawn to making raku bowls, she realizes the imperfection or brokenness of the bowl reflects our own brokenness back to us. After she embroidered […]
Continue reading »Interview—From Information to Inspiration: An Interdisciplinary Career Based on Myth, Music, Depth Psychology, and the Arts
[media-credit id=1 align=”alignright” width=”202″][/media-credit] As a cultural historian, Kayleen Asbo has crafted a fascinating career by weaving together mythology, depth psychology, music, literature, and women’s studies. The work of bringing together so many different fields stems from her burning passion and desire to create something that is truly unique. Her love of music, along with what she calls her “medieval imagination” (through which she views things in terms of their “hidden wholeness”) have been a key piece of her journey. The age of enlightenment, powered by reductionism and rationalism, is becoming ever more narrower, she notes. By following not only […]
Continue reading »Reclaiming a Sense Wholeness Amidst the Environmental Crisis —An Interview with Dr. Jeff Kiehl
Dr. Jeffrey T. Kiehl has been a climate scientist for almost 40 years—but he has a unique take on the challenges we face on the climate front, because he is also a Jungian Analyst, focused on the study of the unconscious. In this short interview for Depth Insights™, Dr. Kiehl speaks with Bonnie Bright about his upcoming daylong workshop, “Reclaiming a Sense Wholeness Amidst the Environmental Crisis,” which he’ll deliver at the C.G. Jung Psychology and Spirituality Conference taking place in Santa Fe, NM, June 9-11, 2017 In the conversation, Dr. Kiehl offers an exclusive preview of his workshop by […]
Continue reading »Depth Psychological Insights on Narcissism (in the Era of Donald Trump): An Interview with Steve Buser, MD
To say that Donald Trump has “stirred a lot of emotions” is perhaps an understatement, so it makes sense that many of us would welcome a better understanding of why that is the case. The American Psychiatric Association declares that it’s unethical for a psychiatrist or psychologist to diagnose a public figure without evaluating them, so contributors to the new book, A Clear and Present Danger: Narcissism in the Era of Donald Trump, focus instead on narcissism itself and the underlying and unconscious factors at work in both individuals and the culture, notes Steve Buser, MD, who is a psychiatrist, co-founder of […]
Continue reading »How Memory Tending Can Transform You: An Interview with Dr. Daphne Dodson
You may have donated that Times of Your Life Paul Anka 8-track to charity when it didn’t sell at the last neighborhood rummage sale, but the words to “Good Morning Yesterday” live on. Sometimes it is hard to find the “memories you left behind” as Anka sang in 1976. Sometimes, as Freud argued, those memories sink below the level of our consciousness, but continue to work on us in various ways even decades later. Sigmund Freud even formulated a term “return of the repressed” to explain where neurotic symptoms originate, writing that illness is …characterized by the return of the repressed memories […]
Continue reading »The Image Making Capacity of Soul: A Conversation on Imaginal Figures in Everyday Life with Dr. Mary Harrell
Every once in a while, a term emerges on the horizon of my awareness which I find strikingly beautiful. In this case, it is the “image-making capacity of soul.” The language of soul is symbol, and symbol shows itself in image—including dream images, fairy tales and myth, or even art, Mary Harrell, Ph.D., explains in her recent book, Imaginal Figures in Everyday Life: Stories from the World Between Matter and Mind. Ultimately, this language of images is soul manifesting in a way people can understand, and without that image-making capacity, people can’t come to terms with the unconscious, Harrell insists. What […]
Continue reading »Encountering Sabina Spielrein: Forging Paths To and Through Powerful Women in Depth Psychology
In 2011, Sabina Spielrein became something of a household name due to the debut of a mainstream film called A Dangerous Method, starring well-known actors including Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, and Viggo Mortensen. The film purported to tell the story of Sabina Spielrein, a young woman psychiatric patient and acquaintance of the infamous doctors Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, pioneers of the modern psychoanalytical and depth psychology movements. When Angela Sells, who earned her degree in mythological studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute, first heard of Spielrein in a class at Pacifica, something about Sabina captured her imagination. She began to research Spielrein’s life […]
Continue reading »When You Hit a Brick Wall, Turn to Stone Like Carl Jung | The Creativity Post
Carl Jung played with stones during a time of deep confusion. His example illustrates some things we know about the science of creative insight and the making hands-at-work. Source: When You Hit a Brick Wall, Turn to Stone Like Carl Jung | The Creativity Post
Continue reading »Remembering the Role of the Body in Culture, Trauma, and Everyday Dynamics: An Interview with Dr. Rae Johnson
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” ― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, The Power of Myth If you’ve ever had the experience of being fully in your body, you can likely relate exactly to what Campbell meant when he referred to the […]
Continue reading »Archetypal Reflections: Dr. Keiron Le Grice on Jungian and Depth Psychologies
C.G. Jung contended that our personalities are made up of a multitude of archetypes, Dr. Keiron Le Grice, Chair of the Jungian and Archetypal Studies program at Pacifica Graduate Institute, reminded me when he recently sat down with me to share his insights into the field of depth psychology. Each archetype asserts its own aims, moods, and ideas on our personalities, influencing our lives on a day-to-day basis. Jungian and depth psychologies, by aiming to make what is unconscious conscious, offer an entrance point into recognizing and understanding the various deep forces that move through us from one day to […]
Continue reading »Yoga Meets Depth Psychology: Union, Consciousness, Healing
“The body is merely the visibility of the soul, the psyche; and the soul is the psychological experience of the body” —C.G. Jung “Yoga is most often understood as the union of the individual with the transcendental self, with what Jung terms the Self.” —Judith Mills In recent years, the practice of yoga has made headlines in the mainstream media as parents in U.S. school districts challenged its inclusion in the curriculum at public schools, insisting it amounts to religious indoctrination and that it violates religious freedom.[1] In the U.S. today, while mainstream yoga is largely focused on physical poses and […]
Continue reading »The Genius Myth: An Interview with Storyteller and Author, Michael Meade
When Michael Meade was thirteen, his aunt, seemingly by accident, bought him a book of mythology for his birthday. Though he felt profoundly aligned with the book and stayed up all night reading it, it would take another 20 years before it became evident it was his path in life, guiding him to his current calling as a renowned storyteller, author, and scholar in mythology and depth psychology. “The soul’s way of being is unique to each person,” Meade wrote in his acclaimed book, Why The World Doesn’t End. “It was seeded and sown within each of us from the beginning […]
Continue reading »The Value of Multi-Cultural Perspectives in Depth Psychotherapy: Interview with Dr. Matthew Bennett
Counseling is an applied healing art that helps us address suffering, enrich personal lives, activate our potential, to live more fully, and to develop more adaptive capacities to life in the view of Dr. Matthew Bennett, a psychotherapist and lecturer who teaches Counseling program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. More, psychotherapists and counselors that have a depth psychological orientation are prepared for a “broad spectrum slice of the human experience,” which for Bennett, includes the ability to be emotionally present in difficult emotional circumstances or even to simply better hold and tolerate emotionally powerful situations. Depth psychology is grounded in the […]
Continue reading »The C.G. Jung—Erich Neumann Connection: An Interview with Dr. Lance Owens
Dr. Lance Owens has dedicated the past thirty or more years of his life to studying C.G. Jung, whose willingness to engage with and understand his visionary experiences has transformed so many lives. Owens has also recently become profoundly interested in the life and work of Erich Neumann, who was arguably one of Jung’s most gifted students, and who eventually became a close friend of Jung’s. Through the influence of Jung, Neumann made his own creative and compelling contributions to the field of depth psychology through works such as The Great Mother (1955), The Origins and History of Consciousness (1954), and Depth Psychology and a […]
Continue reading »Limitless Growth, the Destructive Myth of our Times: PART TWO of a Report on a Talk Given by Dr. Vandana Shiva
Read Part One of this Report here Dr. Vandana Shiva, author and activist, has courageously spent the last decade working on soil solutions to climate change, steadfast in her belief that if governments can’t make the shift, people can. In her recent talk at Pacifica’s “Climates of Change and a Therapy of Ideas” conference, she focused on the dangers of genetically modified crops and the big business that seeks to capitalize on it. Monopoly rights on seeds and plants are increasingly being imposed through global patents, she notes, by which certain corporations develop proprietary processes for breeding plants and animals, thereby allowing […]
Continue reading »Ecotherapy: Nature Reconnection as a Powerful, Transformational Healing Practice: A Short Interview with Linda Buzzell
If the name, Linda Buzzell, sounds familiar to you, it’s no surprise—particularly if you are moved as I am by the growing ecological crisis that is unfolding around us. Linda Buzzell, MA, LMFT, PDC (Permaculture Design Certificate) has been a psychotherapist for more than 30 years and has specialized in ecopsychology and ecotherapy since 2000. She co-edited the 2009 Sierra Club Books anthology, Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind. From my perspective, Linda is a true pioneer in the field, with a wonderful gift for sharing her passion for the planet in a multitude of ways that appeal to a broad audience. In […]
Continue reading »Dreaming the Earth: Earthing the Dream—Depth Psychology and Appreciative Nature Practices with Dr. Pat Katsky
Dr. Pat Katsky is a Jungian Analyst and core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute, and she has been a therapist for thirty years. When Pat sat down with me in a recent interview, our conversation focused on the idea that some of the most psychologically healing experiences come from the natural world, a theme derived from an upcoming certificate program, “Dreaming the Earth: Earthing the Dream” starting April 15, 2016. Pat mused on how in the last million or so years of history, humans have always needed nature and did not feel separate from it. But with the industrial revolution […]
Continue reading »Spirit, Soul, and the Secular: An Interview with Thomas Moore
Depth Psychology is often associated with “soul.” Many great thinkers in the field have shared some important thoughts on the topic, and perhaps none more so than psychologist and author, Thomas Moore, whose best-selling book, Care of the Soul, is one of the most recognized and appreciated works on the topic. When I sat down recently with Thomas to discuss the topic of soul and spirituality, my first request was that he elaborate on the difference between spirit and soul. Moore’s understanding of the topic is rooted firmly in the past, going back to some of the earliest teachers of soul. […]
Continue reading »The Therapy Room and the Interactive Field: Dr. Joseph Cambray on Becoming a Supervisor in Depth
Psychotherapy is pervasive in contemporary culture. Even if you’re not a therapist yourself, if you’re taking the time to read this post, chances are good that either you or someone close to you has been involved in therapy at some point in their lives. And, while you may feel you have a good understanding of what happens in the therapy room, there may be more than meets the eye. Do you ever wonder, for example, what has to occur in the therapeutic process so that the basic experience is what it needs to be for both the client and the […]
Continue reading »