Transformation is not linear. Imagine it like a mandala forming, but if you were looking at it from above, it might appear as a boiling caldron, each bubble blooming into existence to form a place in the mandala. The moment of the blooming is an awareness flooding, a new feeling opening, or perhaps alchemy happening. The mandala as transformation, becomes the love. Like…

As I write this essay (April, 2014), I read that even though the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that it is unconstitutional to bar consensual sex between adults, twelve of the fourteen states that had anti-sodomy laws at the time have refused to repeal them(…

Here at the Community Psychology, Liberation Psychology, and Ecopsychology  Specialization of 

Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Depth Psychology Program, we  would like to share with you the current work 

of our students and faculty in our annual  newsletter:… 

Waves of Awareness

II recently had the good fortune of standing at the shore of the Pacific Ocean.  The water was…

Have I got your attention? Are there any other one-syllable words in American English that can provoke such strong – yet mixed – emotions? Some hear the word and anticipate private pleasure, immediate gratification or opportunities for male bonding, but may be unaware of shameful feelings that lie just below the surface, while others who express disgust, anger or condemnation may well be covering up a sense of titillation. It’s all so complicated…

Indeed, opinions about pornography do…

One way to enter into the deep symbolic language of our soul is through a fairy tale. When we write a fairy tale, the words “Once upon a time” opens up a portal to another world. We have stepped into shamanic terrain.

  

Every fairy tale is psychologically significant. The narrative and images that show up are metaphorical, not literal. These metaphorical images are powerful, because they’re working on all levels at once. They will show you perspectives and doors that you wouldn’t…

After the Tucson lecture and workshop, April 4-5, 2014, Friends of Jung, Tucson, Arizona ,

The Environmental Crisis: Birth of a New Consciousness?…

In my story of how after nine months of some pretty intense psychotherapy my patient and I decided to end our therapeutic relationship for a more emotionally and spiritually honest coupling that leveled the playing field, even in its telling, I…

I'm interested in alliance members' thoughts on the phenomena of ghosts - especially from Jungian and Groffian perspectives that are influenced by Quantum physics (I.e. post classical science). I recall somewhere that some Jungians theorise both an internal collective unconscious AND a kind of objective external imaginal dimension in which matter and mind coalesce ... the psychoid realm perhaps? Apparently Pauli the physicist and Jung discussed such issues and Jung saw the third coniunctio…

In September of 2020, with the pandemic, the economy, the racial violence, the election (see my essay, “A Mythologist Looks at the 2020 Election”)  and (for Californians) the forest fires on our minds, it’s easy for us to shunt thoughts of America’s post-World War Two foreign policy to the back of our minds. But when we bring them to the forefront, we remember…

Psychologist David Feldman writes:

…the tendency to blame the victim may be programmed into the human mind at a very basic level…(it) may originate, paradoxically, in a deep need to believe that the world is a good and just place…On some level, most of us believe that that the world is basically good, that good things happen to good people, and that we, fortunately,…

To hit on lethal aspects of mind scares the beejeezus out of people! We've all got them lurking there inside us. They're the destructive emotions that hurt people, hurt ourselves, maim or destroy one potentially healthy relationship after another. They're primitive psychic energies that we need to come to terms with or else they'll inflict themselves onto and into our lives whether we like it or…