I discovered This Jungian Life in 2023, when I was brooding over my existential struggle with indecision. I came across an episode they had done about the psychology behind the tendency to be indecisive and I was cracked open to a whole new depth of my own shadow material. It was wonderful (not!). Anyway, since then I’ve been listening to these guys regularly and gleaning all sorts of insights from their many years of experience as Jungian analysts. Lisa, Deb, and Joseph are just delightful people and when I listen to this podcast I feel like I have a circle of friends who understand my inner world. Wouldn’t that be nice!
Some quotes from the podcast:
”… all psychotherapy has as its goal to put us in right order towards the things that are life-affirming. As Jungians, we want these to be aligned with the deepest and most authentic aspects of oneself. The ego often has to change, and the things that are most deeply authentic to us can feel alien to the ego.” - Joseph
“When you can personify unconscious contents, you no longer identify with them and you can begin to have a dialogue and a relationship with them.” - Lisa 1
“Our irrational anxieties, fears, and panics are related to the excessive repression of the instinctive life. With the rise of Christianity, there was an enormous shift in attitude toward the instinctive life. Fantasies of Purity caused a split between earth and spirit, the demonization of sexuality and instinctive impulses. All in favor of a kind of transcendent perfection. As the culture shifted, parts of ourselves became massively repressed.
When we think of repressed sexuality, it’s interesting in this context because Pan is the most fundamental of the fertility gods.
Freud observed that when instinctive satisfaction is blocked, there is an enormous buildup of unsatisfied instinct which takes on the toxic character. And that toxic quality can be vented, out to the side so to speak, like volcanic material that is boiling and pressing, creating all of these vents off to the side, trying to move some of the heat and pressure out in indirect ways. The human psyche is like that. If we say No to Pan, and we do that, that pressure is going to show up sometimes in strange places.
The restorative process is understanding the archetype of Pan. Allowing ourselves to really imagine what Pan is as a psychological function. And to be able to give Pan his due. Give him his homage. His support. So that those energies have some place to live in the psyche and they’re not rumbling like a volcano, ready to explode underneath.” - Joseph, Pan - The Archetypal Source of Panic Disorder