This Jungian Life

Our lives have already been altered by rapidly expanding access to artificial intelligence (AI). In this week’s episode, we consider how this latest technological revolution might be reshaping the human psyche. Hosts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart are joined by a special guest, the author and Jungian analyst Christina Becker, to explore the psychological impact of AI’s incursion into our work, home and relationships. One of the major AI use cases has been for advice, self-reflection and companionship. Some users are even referring to this as “therapy”. This raises thorny questions: what happens when a sycophantic AI interface constantly mirrors us back to ourselves as being in the right? How does this affect our judgment, our relationships, and our connection to reality?Christina Becker shares her work exploring the potential of AI to support Jungian dream analysis. Together we ask whether it is possible to use this powerful tool consciously, while also being aware of the fantasies and projections we brin

The labyrinth is a powerful metaphor for psychological development and the path of individuation.This week Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart consider how twists and turns in the path of life (especially in early adulthood), ask us to confront uncertainty, anxiety, and the unknown. Ego may crave a straight, well-planned path, but life inevitably offers something else: a fiendishly difficult labyrinth. If we want to get the most out of the journey, we’ve no choice other than to give it all we’ve got. Through the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, we reflect on the necessity of facing up to our darkness. Ariadne’s thread, which allows Theseus to return after slaying the beast, shows us the vital role of connection in helping us find our way back. We also explore the story of Abhimanyu from the Mahabharata. Abhimanyu’s mother gives him some knowledge of the labyrinth, but doesn’t tell him the way out, leading to tragedy. If we’re going to crack the code and exit the labyrinth, we’ll require a so

Many people just can’t rally to do what’s necessary and improve their lives. Is it possible they just don’t carry much vitality, or is some inner conflict blocking their access? We share personal stories of ‘energy loss’ and offer insights into purposelessness.Carl Jung tells us inner energy flows according to its own laws, but if we can’t harness it? Expect to learn why some people are naturally low-energy, which aspects of your psyche might be leaking energy, how over-aligning with cultural norms can cut off access to instinctive vitality, where we can look for solutions, and much more...SPECIAL NOTE: This is the second dream we've interpreted from this listener. The first interpretation follows. This is an extraordinary opportunity to see how a dream sequence evolves!Read along with our dream interpretations HERE.Connect With This Jungian LifeDream Studio: Our new Dream School program on dreams and art starts April 16.Send a ⁠⁠⁠dream⁠⁠⁠ for us to analyze on the show.Check out our TJL ⁠⁠⁠podcast merch⁠⁠

Carl Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz and Christiana Morgan all dedicated time, soul and imagination to a peculiarly Jungian form of architecture: the stone tower. This week host Deborah Stewart is joined by Dr. Martin Gledhill, an architect, author and Jungian scholar, and filmmaker Hilary Morgan, the granddaughter of Christiana Morgan, an eminent American psychologist who collaborated with Jung on some of his most important work. Deb, Martin and Hilary explore Jung’s Bollingen Tower and Christiana Morgan’s Tower on the Marsh, discussing the profound expressions of psyche through place. Both towers render psyche in art, carvings and stone. They are more than just physical places, they are architectural explorations of Self and soul. The two towers are what Martin calls “restless places”: dream-like in ambience, shaped through an ongoing, iterative process, and surrounded by differing, sometimes conflicting, accounts of their evolution.Follow Up Read Martin Gledhill’s book, The Bollingen Tower: Constructing a Jun

Jung suggested in Aion that humanity is moving from the great symbolic Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. Join Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano, Deborah Stewart and Joseph Lee, as we ask what it means to live through the turbulence and vitality of this period of transition. Jung pioneered the idea that human consciousness unfolds in great symbolic ages. The shift from one to the next is not a smooth or pleasant experience. As Jung saw it, each new age emerges through a process of decline, breakdown, and renewal, a process that can bring with it frightening levels of destabilization.The Age of Pisces, shaped by Christianity, emphasized faith, morality, and the authority of external structures. But as this era wanes, Jung suggested we are coming under the influence of a new attitude, one that asks more of the individual psyche.This new Age of Aquarius asks us to hold the tension of opposites consciously, rather than splitting experience into simple categories of right and wrong, and to be open to a genuinely

In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a Trojan princess and priestess of Apollo who was given the gift of true prophecy, along with the curse that no one would ever believe her. She warned the Trojans not to bring the famous wooden horse inside their city walls, but her prophecy was ignored and the city fell.In this episode, we discuss the psychological meaning of the Cassandra story from a Jungian perspective, exploring the painful experience of recognizing a deep truth but finding that others cannot or will not hear it.We examine how the Cassandra archetype can intrude into a person’s life, compelling them to deliver uncomfortable truths to audiences who do not wish to hear. Understanding the archetypal pattern may help us discern the difference between those who won’t hear, and those who may be able to accept our message.The story of Cassandra can also be applied to our inner lives. We often ignore our own inner Cassandra, and her quiet warning that something glittering may hide danger. False promises, quick f

Chance encounters can change the whole direction of our lives. A casual chat with a stranger at the bank, a book that beckons to you from the shelf, or a last-minute lunch invitation might lead to transformative consequences. This week, join Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano, Joseph Lee and Deborah Stewart as we circumambulate the phenomenon of the chance encounter. For Jungians, these moments are more than happy accidents. They may be understood as encounters with the deeper ordering principle Jung called the Self, which disrupts the ego’s plans and invites us toward something larger. Fairy tales often feature animal visitors offering the main character a surprising and unexpected choice. These stories can be powerful guides for recognizing the potential of chance encounters and making the most of them. We also discuss how, in an age of overstimulation, you can be receptive to the possibilities of the chance encounter. These moments usually speak softly and quietly rather than arriving with a trumpet sounding

COAGULATIO marks the psychological moment when possibility takes shape. Uncertainty recedes as we commit to our choices, and life slows and “thickens” into stable commitments and a predictable path.Join Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Joseph Lee as we continue our exploration of Jung’s alchemical stages. This week, we discuss the concept of coagulatio, or the solidifying of what was once liquid. Coagulatio involves settling into a path, a vocation, a relationship, or an identity. Yet these stages of solidification also carry with them loss. Incarnating something in the real world, whether in our creative life, marriage or career, means letting go of infinite possibility. Coagulatio can be seen as an antidote to puer psychology; signifying the demanding task of growing up and settling down.We also investigate the process of coagulatio in the consulting room, where finding language or images with an analyst can shape our distress into something we can work with. Similarly, dream work offers the chance to co

Intruder dreams stage a boundary crisis: something arrives without the ego’s consent, and the dreamer wakes with fear, shame, or outrage. Join Jungian analysts Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, and Lisa Marchiano as we analyze a selection of vivid listener-submitted dreams about intruders. We begin with the word itself, “intrusion,” asking how a visitor can feel deeply unwelcome, but at the same time carry something with the potential to protect, repair or even save us.We cover:How the mind negotiates trauma, dissociated affects, and developmental change. How meaning changes depending on whether we read the intruder as a threat vs as a messenger. How intruder dreams can point to weak boundaries, often disguised in waking life as “being nice” or “keeping the peace,”Intruder dreams as communications of unexpressed anger. Detailed guidance on working with your own intruder dreamThe listener dreams we discuss feature a camel that shatters windows and becomes a man when welcomed; an animus-like husband as mediator betw

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠Pierre Janet’s term abaissement du niveau mental describes an experience so common we barely notice it: fatigue, highway hypnosis, shock, wool-gathering, or monotony lowers the threshold of consciousness, and then images, memories, and impulses press forward. Jung found this idea useful for understanding threshold conditions that interfere with our normal skills, yet make symbolic material available, with the caveat that it’s only useful when it’s committed to memory and reflected on.What separates a generative reverie from a dissociative collapse?How can we make use of this dip into the unconscious to access imaginal material and return by choice?How can we evaluate “doors that do not close” from trauma reverie and substance-induced hallucinations?Jungian analysts Joseph Lee, Lisa Marchiano, and Deborah Stewart trace how dissociation, affect, and imagination shape what becomes thinkable, and why technique matters less than containment.We discuss Jane

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea” is a parable about seeing beneath the surface. It shows us that our authentic nature can be detected, whether we’re swathed in status or rags, if we’re offered the opportunity. A prince’s search for happiness fails when it’s driven by lordly criteria. A wild storm heralds change and delivers a drenched possibility. A king and queen choose subtlety to coax what is hidden into sight, raising stakes about vulnerability, discernment, and the body as witness.What counts as evidence of realness, and why does the tale treat pain as the strongest credential?When ego choice collapses, what higher ordering functions intervene, and how do they design tests?What does sensitivity reveal that competence, status, and prettiness conceal?We ask how a seed-sized irritant becomes a criterion of truth. We discuss the prince’s idealized bride, the storm as solutio and unconscious intervention, the gate as psychic defens

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠In the aftermath of the holidays, many people find themselves facing an old question in a new stage of life: what does an adult child owe aging parents, especially when the relationship was full of criticism, absence, harm, or disappointment? The pressure to visit, to host, to reconcile, or to perform affection can feel like a moral demand, and a trap.In this episode, three Jungian analysts question the idea of filial duty that feels like debt and lift up new aspects of discernment. They explore the mythic elements of the parent-child bond, the power of the internalized parent, and the inner figures that govern Psyche through guilt, rage, duty, love, and refusal. They consider the power of cultural scripts, the tension between fleeing painful demands on the one hand and familial duty on the other, and the pressure to abandon one's inner life. They offer practical and safe ways to release parental wounds without collapsing back into obedience, defi

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠In this episode, Joseph, Lisa, and Deb explain why Corruption is not only a political problem, but a human one, why Power breaks trust long before it breaks laws, and why the most dangerous people are often the most certain. They reveal the core mechanism behind Corruption and Inflation: when unconscious drives flood the ego, making someone feel exceptional, entitled, and above ordinary rules. They unpack how Corruption escalates quietly, from small rationalisations and moral distortions to full-blown abuse of entrusted Power that destroys relationships, organisations, and communities. Joseph brings decades of clinical experience, including high-stakes psychiatric hospital work, where he has seen how quickly people can become less reflective while feeling more “right.” Lisa and Deborah add decades of analytic practice and teaching, connecting leadership research, brain science, mythology, and Jung’s warnings about the will to Power, certainty, and the

Jung wrote “The Undiscovered Self” in 1957, opening with “What will the future bring?”, as the Cold War, the Iron Curtain, and nuclear weapons gained enough momentum to threaten survival. He argued that mass-mindedness, amplified by state power, corporate bureaucracy, and scientific rationalism, reduces people to statistics, numbs conscience, and makes evil all the easier to project.When institutions promise safety and efficiency, what happens to individual responsibility?If religion is an instinct, what strange substitutes will it flow into when it’s suppressed?What can we do to strengthen our Ego-Self axis to resist groupthink?Late in his life, Jung sought to restore the value of religion by freeing it from specific dogma and defining it as a conscientious regard for the irrational facts of experience. As he watched various nations lose their footing and careen into extremes that swept the populace into unthinking obedience, he quietly stated over and again, a vital connection to the transpersonal was the o

You're invited to our free Dreams for Change seminar on Sunday January 18th. ⁠Sign up here⁠.*****If you have been through betrayal or loss, you may still be living by a terrible rule you made when in pain.It can look like hiding, overworking, numbing out, or letting people cross lines because being unseen feels safer. This episode uses the fairy tale “All-Kinds-of-Fur” to help you identify your survival pattern and take the next step out of it. When you update the rule you made when in trauma, you get your choices back. What you’ll learnIdentify the “impossible promise” that keeps you stuck, and where it began.Notice your “fur cloak,” the mask of busyness, perfectionism, people pleasing, or disappearing.Stop confusing coping with identity, and start practicing safer honesty.Practice the “30-minute return,” small windows to feel, speak, and be seen.Build endurance through gentle reveal-retreat-return, until you can stay safely present. Joseph Lee and Deborah Stewart, Jungian analysts, turn this tale into a gui

You're invited to our free Dreams for Change seminar on Sunday January 18th. Sign up here.*****Modernity promotes endless techniques to optimize goal-setting and productivity. Yet most of us race from one task to the next, telling our friends how busy we are, secretly knowing we lack direction. This conversation defines Self-led purpose as an orientation to a future beyond our ego needs. This can align our tasks with Individuation even as we face seductive collective agendas. When we look outside for purpose institutions and communities are all too ready to supply meaning, but at what cost to our inner life.You might ask yourself:What distinguishes a vocation aligned with Psyche from a purpose imposed by status, ideology, or fear?Why does the loss of futurity feel like nihilism, and when does purpose become a path to fanaticism?What does Individuation require when collective belonging offers meaning at the price of autonomy?You’ll learn:How repetitive commitments can still carry meaning.Why purpose as fut

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠Angels persist in dreams, scripture, and art, while modern institutions psychologize them into coincidences or flatten them into greeting cards. In this episode, we explore angels as autonomous psychic facts, reimagined from age to age but always carrying meaning across the unconscious threshold to the ego’s surprise and benefit. When we learn to welcome the sacred messengers and “…fear not, for behold…” they bring tidings that can right the course of our conscious life.What is gained, and what is lost, when angels are interpreted as natural law rather than moral ideals?How does discernment work when a message arrives with certainty and sweeps us into obedience?When the angel archetype constellates images of UFOs, aliens, or AI, what is it announcing about accountability and authority?Deb, Lisa, and Joe approach angels as symbolic forms, clarifying how Psyche can engage awe, fear, and meaning.They discuss:Angels as mediating symbols bridging the ego a

✨ The Gift of Dreamwork: Join This Jungian Life Dream School with 10% off from now until December 31st. Just use code HOLIDAY2025 when you purchase Dream School for yourself or as a gift. ⁠⁠⁠⁠Learn more and enroll.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠* * * * * * * * * * * * * Santa Claus persists as a central figure who teaches children that their desires can be understood and met, on the condition of good behavior. The Christmas morning ritual is staged to delight and mystify: Santa crosses thresholds unseen, cookies are eaten, milk is gone, gifts appear. His all-seeing mind takes a moral accounting, drafts the nice-naughty lists, poses the threat of disappointment and the promise of reward, which makes Santa a temporary stand-in for conscience and, in Jungian terms, for the Self that can both nourish and demand.In modern life, the figure is domesticated and commercialized, making disillusionment feel like psychological collapse rather than a developmental step into adult sensibilities. The question becomes whether society can offer a path

✨ The Gift of Dreamwork: Join This Jungian Life Dream School with 10% off from now until December 31st. Just use code HOLIDAY2025 when you purchase Dream School for yourself or as a gift. ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and enroll.⁠⁠ ⁠-----------------------------------------------------Mortificatio is an alchemical term for the moment a life-organizing identity collapses. We might call it burnout, divorce, depression, retirement shock, institutional betrayal, or a terrifying medical diagnosis. The alchemists called it “death,” and Jungians understand it as part of the psychology of transformation.Read along with the dream HERE.LOOK & GROW⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Do you have a topic you want us to cover?⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠We've got

✨ The Gift of Dreamwork: Join This Jungian Life Dream School with 10% off from now until December 31st. Just use code HOLIDAY2025 when you purchase Dream School for yourself or as a gift. ⁠⁠Learn more and enroll.⁠ ⁠-----------------------------------------------------People often mistake denial for stubbornness, self-deception, or moral failure. Denial is actually a primal psychological defense that attempts to regulate which aspects of reality are permitted to reach awareness. Today, we explore how denial operates within Psyche, why it activates powerfully in response to traumatic experiences and addiction, and how it relates to shadow, repression, and dissociation. Denial is a pre-verbal way of titrating overwhelming experiences by making them unthinkable and unsymbolized. The problem is that they are then stored in the subtle body and give rise to a host of symptoms. Programs like AA explicitly confront the denial of consequences by repeatedly sharing painful consequences within the meeting structure. Some