Defense mechanisms function as unconscious psychological strategies we deploy to navigate reality and sustain a consistent self-image. They act as a shield, guarding against feelings of anxiety, shame, and vulnerability. They are feeling states that prompt us to avoid contact and trick us into thinking they protect us against emotional harm. Ancient philosophers recognized the human tendency to evade uncomfortable truths. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, he vividly depicts individuals shackled in a cave, seeing only shadows and illusions. Upon being freed and confronted with the light (truth), some retreat to the familiar darkness, unable to bear the illumination of reality. Aristotle wrote about akrasia, which meant a weakness of will that drives one to act against their better judgment, in essence, rejecting reality as unbearable. The stoic philosopher Epictetus noted that people have fantasies of controlling external events and directing them inward to choose how they respond instead. Defenses are affective states that can interfere with our clear, reality-based functioning. They may be complex reactions that muddy our perception of reality, effectively shielding us from feelings or knowledge we find intolerable. They can take the form of denial, regression, rationalization, and even altruism. These are not merely intellectual barriers; they are emotional walls that can keep us from connecting with our own experiences and the people around us. The most common inner conflicts arise from thwarting our instincts. These foundational systems generate intense feelings to guide us. Jung identified multiple instincts: creativity, reflection, activity, sexuality, and hunger. He added the religious instinct to describe how humans naturally generate symbolic systems to link their waking state to the deep unconscious. Freud detailed the multiple symptoms that arise from repressed sexuality, from phobias to hysterical blindness. Jung agreed but understood that thwarting any one of our natural responses would rob us of vitality and distort our adaptation to reality. Cultural expectations, individual trauma, religious demands, and family patterns can convince our waking personality that any one of our instincts is dangerous. When we are overwhelmed by these inner conflicts, we will likely deploy primal defenses like dissociation or acting out. If we can find a more adaptive stance, we will likely intellectualize the conflict or even find it humorous. The goal is not to banish all defenses; we need to manage our exposure to the intensity of life but to discover self-management strategies that allow us to remain effective even under stress. A COPY OF THE DREAM IS HERE MEET LISA IN COLUMBUS OHIO on October 13 & 14, 2023: The Power of Dreamwork – Friday Night Lecture (October 13 from 7 to 8:30 PM) and Saturday Workshop (October 14 from 9:30 AM to Noon): CLICK HERE. UNLOCK THE SECRETS OF YOUR DREAMS: Dream School provides a gently paced program with live interactive webinars, an uplifting online community, thought-provoking audio modules, and guided journaling to deepen your experience. Lisa, Deb, and Joe crafted the program with you in mind and companion you through the process. “Step-by-step, we’ll teach you how to interpret your dreams.” Join the revolution of consciousness! Join Dream School and Transform Your Sleep into the Greatest Adventure of Your Life: CLICK HERE PLEASE GIVE US A HAND:  Hey folks -- We need your help. Please BECOME OUR PATRON and keep This Jungian Life podcast up and running!!

The Selkie swims ashore at night, sheds her seal skin, hides it, and delights in her human form. In Celtic lore, she is the wild feminine soul, a creature of land and sea, innocent and beautiful, who cannot thrive in domesticity. In folklore, the seal-folk are discovered by humans. Their natural, joyous spirit, grace, and affection invite contact. Humans are drawn to them, but if they touch, parting is unbearable. Many a young man, desperate to maintain the life-giving embrace of nature, steals a Selkie’s seal skin, locking her into a human form. Helpless, she is led into domesticity and motherhood. Isolated from the sea, in a role alien to her nature, the Selkie diminishes until her seal-skin is reclaimed. Called home to the sea, she leaves all behind and is restored to her authentic being. Theft of a Selkie’s skin is a kind of archetypal initiation we all may face. Our naive spirits are all too often robbed or captured through lack of foresight. We lose touch with our wild spirit as we accept our assigned social roles, accommodate marital expectations, and forget what we once loved. Drained and disaffected, midlife may cast us into our inner wilderness to renew and restore our original being. We lose our connection to life-giving instincts slowly. Attending the family alma mater, selecting a sensible career, and sacrificing our wildness to corporate culture can leave our souls withered. Deprived of the water of life, we may abandon everything once we find our true skin and smell the brine carried on the east wind.  In the ancient stories, seal-folk were male and female, and either might find themselves trapped through naïve curiosity. For young men and women, innocence is unrewarded in the adult world and often leads us into harsh agreements that force us to abandon our intuition and accept domestication. We turn from our inner world and stare only at the culture. Deep desire is replaced by snacking on what has been advertised. Our uncouth delight is curated into meticulous etiquette.  When we neglect our animal side, the unconscious howls at us. Injured animals surface in our dreams, along with roaring vague creatures that chase us and savage impulses prompting us to bite and claw. If we linger too long in alien domesticity, emptiness, exhaustion, and neglect may drive us to chew our way out of our current situation. But actions of last resort might be avoided by learning to listen to the wild one within. Carving out time in nature, setting unyielding boundaries, and questioning societal expectations are vital to protecting our true nature. If we are sons and daughters of the open water, we need time off, solitude, and uninterrupted periods of self-reflection. Art, music, and poetry can call forward our animal nature, granting us deep relief. Listen to your seal-song and answer it. A COPY OF THE DREAM IS HERE! MEET LISA IN COLUMBUS OHIO on October 13 & 14, 2023: The Power of Dreamwork – Friday Night Lecture (October 13 from 7 to 8:30 PM) and Saturday Workshop (October 14 from 9:30 AM to Noon): CLICK HERE. UNLOCK THE SECRETS OF YOUR DREAMS: Dream School provides a gently paced program with live interactive webinars, an uplifting online community, thought-provoking audio modules, and guided journaling to deepen your experience. Lisa, Deb, and Joe crafted the program with you in mind and companion you through the process. “Step-by-step, we’ll teach you how to interpret your dreams.”  Join Dream School and Transform Your Sleep into the Greatest Adventure of Your Life: CLICK HERE

The archetype of Initiation is primordial, and its force guides our transformative transitions. For Jung, this change reshapes spiritual, emotional, intellectual, behavioral, and social dynamics. Rooted in his anthropological studies, Jung emphasized the vital role of formal ceremonies in fostering separation from parental influences and facilitating integration into adult communities. These ceremonies marked a clear transition from childhood and established an essential connection with the adult community, promoting the collaborative culture by containing unconscious forces. Derived from the Latin "initium," Initiation carries the power of new beginnings, urging us towards greater consciousness and understanding. This journey transcends personal experience, reverberating universally through significant life milestones that act as gateways to realms of human experience, driven by archetypal activations inherent to all. Initiation contains three universal elements: separation, liminal space, and reintegration. This process is approached through a structured and ritualistic path in modern Mystery Schools. It begins with transitioning from our outer lives, then identifying what is alien to our true nature, followed by a dedication to a greater vision. Once ushered into a sacred space, we are helped to recognize the price of being unconscious. When our character flaws are personified and confronted, a Hierophantic figure reveals sacred objects, symbols, and teaching. These, along with various practices, seek to activate the archetype of transformation. Embraced into a community dedicated to mutual growth, Initiates re-enter their daily lives, tasked to integrate a more expansive attitude of themselves and life. The loss of most formal initiations in modern culture leaves these archetypal forces with no aesthetic process to affect the individual. Expressed unconsciously, they emerge as fraternity hazing or surviving a violent gauntlet to gain gang membership. Various mythopoetic movements have attempted to restore initiations for sons and daughters, bar mitzvahs carry ancient themes into contemporary life, and Freemasons strive to maintain ceremonies that make good men better. The archetype of Initiation is still alive and potent, perhaps struggling to find modern idioms and values to carry its transformative power forward. HERE’S THE DREAM WE ANALYZE:  “Someone is telling me my therapist has passed away; I'm shocked. They showed me a very brief obituary that showed she was 44 years old. I am saddened.”  RESOURCES:  Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts, ADVANCED CLINICAL PRACTICE PROGRAM: A case seminar for experienced clinicians to read, explore, and apply Jung’s concepts to clinical practice: CLICK HERE  ARE YOU INTERESTED IN A SERIOUS STUDY OF JUNG? Enroll in the Philadelphia Jungian Seminar 2023 Fall Semester and start your journey: CLICK HERE.  BECOME A DREAM INTERPRETER: We’ve created DREAM SCHOOL to teach others how to work with their dreams. A vibrant community has constellated around this mission, and we think you’ll love it. Check it out.  PLEASE GIVE US A HAND: Hey folks -- We need your help. So please BECOME OUR PATRON and keep This Jungian Life podcast up and running.  SHARE YOUR DREAM WITH US: SUBMIT YOUR DREAM HERE FOR A POSSIBLE PODCAST INTERPRETATION. SUGGEST A FUTURE PODCAST TOPIC:  Share your suggestions: HERE.  FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, LINKEDIN, TWITTER, YOUTUBE  YES, WE HAVE MERCH! Shop HERE

[Spoiler Alert.] In the opening scene of the Barbie movie, listless little girls dressed as drab Dust Bowl mothers play at ironing as they tend plastic babies until a gigantic cosmic Barbie appears on the landscape in a vogue pose. Her presence inspires the girls to smash their dolls and cast off their pretend chores in a whirl of rageful frustration. While this scene spoofs 2001: A Space Odyssey, it unknowingly dramatizes an archetypal event in the collective American psyche. In 1959, the Barbie doll hit the market and created a stir. American mothers objected to her sensuous form, so Mattel marketed it directly to children, a tactic never used before, and it worked. The maternal archetype of Hera, sentinel of the social order, goddess of childbirth, and protectress of the home, was supplanted. Aphrodite, the captivating goddess exuding an aura of beauty, desirability, and persuasive allure, had arrived. Dolls don't command a culture, but when a new primary archetype rises in the collective unconscious, it will potentiate available images that reflect its qualities—Barbie was the perfect representative. The new goddess encouraged a generation to flirt with fashion, aesthetics, autonomy, and self-expression. With her ever-changing wardrobe and perpetual grace, she became the diminutive totem dominating current social media. Her representatives help maintain an era where beauty is a currency, a tool, a language all its own, and men are revisioned as her companion-child, Eros or Cupid.  In this perfect pink world, Barbie-Aphrodite lived with millions of girls, imagining endless possibilities as they donned the costumes of various roles and professions. The creators of the Barbie Movie want to change all that, but their retelling of Pinnacho, the puppet who becomes a real boy, struggles to carry the power and depth of an archetypal event.  Burdened by a giddy blend of social commentary, kitsch, archetypal imagery, a touch of nostalgia, mythical narratives, child-like fantasy, Freudian psychosexual theory, the allure of capitalism, a bow to classical fairytales, a dash of glamor, a sprinkle of kiddy-kamp, drenched in a layer of surreal satire sauce—it’s power to call forth a transformative process is diluted.  The ending of The Barbie leaves the collective psyche unchanged; the pink world is restored to its original state after a few ideological tremors. One doll escapes, perhaps a representative of every-woman, who now resides in the real world, with responsibilities and vulnerabilities. Her final scene, with broad smiles and flat feet, might leave us all humming a new tune: What if Barb was one of us? Just a slob like one of us Just a stranger on the bus Tryin’ to make her way home.  It also leaves us with a lingering question: Does this movie herald a change in the collective psyche, or is it a spoof to laugh at ourselves for taking the current cultural tensions too seriously?  HERE’S THE DREAM WE ANALYZE:  “I'm in the hallway of my new rental place. I see my new flatmate vacuuming the hallway carpet. I see a small amount of white dust he sprinkles on the carpet. As he vacuums, the dust keeps growing and growing. I realize it's actually snow! It keeps billowing out of the vacuum cleaner, and soon, it becomes clouds of snow. The more he vacuums, the more snow he makes. We both grab some snow and make snowballs. Then we both start throwing them and have a snowball fight. Then I wake up.” REFERENCES: What If God Was One of Us by Kate Colston & Robin Morris RESOURCES: BECOME A DREAM INTERPRETER: We’ve created Dream School to teach others how to work with their dreams. Check it out: https://thisjungianlife.com/join-dream-school/  PLEASE GIVE US A HAND: Hey folks, we need your help. Please become our patron and keep This Jungian Life podcast up and running: https://www.patreon.com/ThisJungianLife

As Jung’s anthropological studies expanded and his international travel exposed him to new cultures and ideas, he was taken by the concept of ‘loss of soul.’  A collapse of energy, a strange sudden alteration of personality, or episodes of blinding rage could signify a loss of soul from a shamanic perspective. The soul carries the animating and regulating forces as well as memory. In most traditions, it was expected to fly away upon death, much like the Egyptian Ba, depicted as a bird with a human head. Because the soul had an independent life, it might flee suddenly, leaving a listless body behind. The shaman’s task was to retrieve and escort the wandering soul into the body again. In Michael Harner’s book The Way of the Shaman, he cataloged various ancient practices and distilled a small set of universal techniques. Soul retrieval involves tying a red string on the patient’s wrist and, with the help of one’s spiritual power animal, traveling to the inner worlds, identifying the lost soul by the red string also on its wrist, bringing it back to the waking world and blow it into the patient’s body. Loss of soul in this contemporary system is often associated with trauma, and the imagery is congruent with modern conceptualizations of dissociation. Jung linked shamanic descriptions with the work of psychiatrist Janet and called “abaissement du niveau mental.” Jung described this as “a slackening of the tensity of consciousness, which might be compared to a low barometric reading, presaging bad weather. The tonus has given way, and this is felt subjectively as listlessness, moroseness, and depression. One no longer has any wish or courage to face the tasks of the day. One feels like lead because no part of one’s body seems willing to move, and this is due to the fact that one no longer has any disposable energy.” In modern psychiatry, several clinical descriptions might be assigned to such despair and collapse, but those may not capture the psychospiritual depth of ‘loss of soul.’ For Jung, the soul carries creativity and grants meaning; it links us to the divine and represents all we could be if wholeness were possible. Whatever the cause, to be abandoned by one’s soul is devastating, and to be reunited, the greatest gift. RESOURCES:  Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts, ADVANCED CLINICAL PRACTICE PROGRAM: A case seminar for experienced clinicians to read, explore, and apply Jung’s concepts to clinical practice: CLICK HERE  ARE YOU INTERESTED IN A SERIOUS STUDY OF JUNG? Enroll in the Philadelphia Jungian Seminar 2023 Fall Semester and start your journey: CLICK HERE.  BECOME A DREAM INTERPRETER:  We’ve created DREAM SCHOOL to teach others how to work with their dreams. A vibrant community has constellated around this mission, and we think you’ll love it. Check it out.  PLEASE GIVE US A HAND: Hey folks -- We need your help. So please BECOME OUR PATRON and keep This Jungian Life podcast up and running.  SHARE YOUR DREAM WITH US:  SUBMIT YOUR DREAM HERE FOR A POSSIBLE PODCAST INTERPRETATION.  SUGGEST A FUTURE PODCAST TOPIC:  Share your suggestions HERE.  FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, LINKEDIN, TWITTER, YOUTUBE  YES, WE HAVE MERCH! Shop HERE