C.G. Jung believed that deep within each psyche, there is an inner other, an opposite sex spirit that stands between the ego and the archetypal unconscious. He called this entity the anima for men or animus for women (Stein, 1998). To illustrate opposing and dynamic features of the psyche I now invoke the Roman god Janus, as the ancients did,...
Social media has increased global connectivity and created a super social online world. However, while technology has increased the speed and volume of communication, it has also compressed personal and interpersonal expression. Images are flattened by screens and writing is abbreviated by character limits. Forced brevity diminishes nuance and creates a condition for increased polarization. Being hyper social is not...
Attachment theory, notably established by John Bowlby and further developed through object relations psychology, by Donald Winnicott and others, revealed that an infant’s sense of security and developmentally increasing ability to self-regulate originates in a secure bond with their primary caregiver. These theories posit that if secure attachment is established and sustained from the beginning of a child’s life, it...
Below ordinary awareness, held within personal and collective layers of the unconscious, there is a psychic reservoir of dormant, forgotten, repressed, and yet revealed images and beliefs. One might imagine the unconscious as a deep, dark caldron containing a mysterious brew with swirling bits of stories, scripts, and symbols that originate from past and present lived experiences, cultural norms and...
La France calls me back. My first visit to the country was for a family reunion when I was 21. The following year, after I graduated from college, I lived with my uncle and his family in Paris for six months while I undertook an apprenticeship in alchemy. I have returned more than half a dozen times since. When I...
Six summers ago, on the eve of my mother’s birthday, she faded with the dimming evening sky and rode a receding sunbeam over the western horizon as the sun set. I was left behind holding my baby, a motherless mother crying out for my mama. Like my own infant daughter each time I was momentarily out of sight, I desperately searched...
“Mythology is a psychology of antiquity. Psychology is a mythology of modernity.” (Hillman, The Dream and The Underworld, 1979, p. 23) In the classical Greek myth of Eros and Psyche (Apuleius, 2nd century), Psyche- ‘Soul,’ a beautiful young maiden, attracts popular adoration and worship and thereby also attracts the ire of the goddess of beauty, Aphrodite-Venus, who is bitter that devotion...
“Home.” When I vocalize the word, it resonates in my throat and chest. I elongate the central vowel sound and the tone grounds me in the place where I am writing, the place where my imagination is wandering to an unknown destination, home. Four letters, a single syllable - H O M E - brings to mind a wooden, hand-painted,...
Baba Marta – Grandmother March – dwells deep in the forest with her two brothers Little and Big Seshko (January and February). Like three bears, they spend winter dozing in their cozy den. While the snow falls silently in the woods and all is quiet and still, Marta and her brothers snore through the short, dark days. When Father Sun returns...
HEKATE’S DESCENT - PART 1 Hermes walked solemnly behind me and the parade of shades followed at our heels. When we reached the gates of Hades, I turned to admire Hermes’ eternally youthful beauty before we parted. Lust, longing, duty; in an instant much passed between us unspoken. Then he led the dead back into the earth and I walked on...