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STAY AT HOME DADS: emerging potentials in the father archetype
As our bonds to historic roles loosen, fathers are finding new ways to express themselves within the family dynamic. Being caregiver and homecreator does not diminish their experience of masculinity but rallies inner resources that had been set aside.
SEWING: Stitching a Life Together
What we sew has a limited lifespan, as do we. Stitching our inner and outer lives together day by day, we can create raiment for the soul.
Matthew Quick on Jung, heartbreak, and healing in his new novel We Are the Light.
Matthew Quick, author of The Silver Linings Playbook, shares himself and his new book, We Are the Light. Writer’s block led Quick to This Jungian Life podcast, analysis, and letter writing as a literary device.
Zombies: a call to consciousness
Zombies have recently risen from mythological depths to menace modern-day culture. Zombies image the horror of vulnerability to dehumanized existence. They exist in a meaningless void marked only by insatiable appetite; they are our collective’s pathological shadow. The undead alarm us–and can also awaken us. We are summoned to contend with dark and deadening powers through vigilance, consciousness, and action. Jung says, “If you will contemplate your lack of…inspiration and inner aliveness, which you feel as sheer stagnation and a barren wilderness, and impregnate it with the interest born of alarm at your inner death, then something can take shape in you, for your inner emptiness conceals just as great a fullness if only you will allow it to penetrate into you. If you prove receptive to this ‘call of the wild,’ the longing for fulfillment will quicken the sterile wilderness of your soul as rain quickens the dry earth.”
The Problem with Problems: solve or avoid?
Problems can pester, persist and plague. They range from short-lived to chronic, bothersome to heart-wrenching, resolvable to unalterable. Problems cause what Jungian analyst and author James Hollis refers to as the three As: ambiguity, ambivalence, and anxiety. Ambiguity arises when a problem is complex and confusing, demanding action without certainty. Ambivalence is a state of conflicted feelings, often related to immediate versus long-term gratification. Anxiety is worry and doubt about whether we can meet a challenge or achieve a desired outcome.
OCD: The Distress of Repression
Obsessions are unwanted, intrusive thoughts; compulsions are unwarranted, involuntary behaviors. Though different, they often go together, for compulsions pose as protection from the imagined bad consequences of obsessions.
VOLCANO: archetype of creation and destruction
Volcanoes appear in our myths, movies, and dreams. Their awesome destructive power fascinates us and serves as a reminder that we are not in control of nature’s primordial forces. Offering access to the earth’s molten core, volcanoes have been believed to be the entryway to the underworld or Hell. The Greeks believed that the fiery bursts from volcanoes were the sparks flying from Hephaestus’ forge, thus underscoring the creative aspect of volcanoes – Hephaestus created items of incredible beauty and power in his underground workshop. Volcanoes create new rocks and new land mass. Their mineral-rich output fertilizes the surrounding soil, producing abundant and delicious crops. The volcano serves as a potent image of the unconscious – unpredictable, sometimes explosive, powered from the depths – but also capable of bestowing its fructifying blessing upon us.
THE INFERIOR FUNCTION: Opening to the Interior
Our inferior function lies closest to the unconscious. It tends to manifest through tasks, people, and situations that throw us off balance.
