Complexes | Brian Collinson

Entries Tagged as 'complexes'

Escaping the Grip of Regret, Part 3: Through Phoenix Gate

August 11th, 2010 · 4 Comments · Individuation, Jungian analysis, Jungian psychology, Psychology and Suburban Life, Shadow, complexes, depression, depth psychology, guilt, inner life, regret, soul, therapy, unconscious, unlived life, wholeness

Hopefully I have succeeded in making one very central thing clear: regret is not some peripheral thing in our lives that is going to be cleared away by simply improving our thinking. It strikes deeper. It is much more fundamental. How then are we to deal with the presence of regret in our lives? To answer this question in our own personal way, we have to meet this question for ourselves head on.

Escaping the Grip of Regret, Part 2: The Power of Regret

July 29th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Hope, Individuation, Jungian analysis, Jungian psychology, Psychology, Psychology and Suburban Life, Psychotherapy, The Self, complexes, compulsion, decision, depression, depth psychology, guilt, inner life, life passages, midlife, regret, soul, therapy, unconscious, wholeness

In my last posting, I tried to open up the whole subject of regret, and the powerful and sometimes crippling place that it can occupy in our lives, and how we can be held in slavery to regret of all the choices we could have made differently, or courses of events that could have turned out differently. In this posting, I’d [...]

Escaping the Grip of Regret, Part 1

July 26th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Psychology, Psychology and Suburban Life, Psychotherapy, complexes, compulsion, depth psychology, guilt, life passages, midlife, regret, soul, therapy, unlived life, wholeness

Regret can be a potent emotion, and a great many of us have experienced its power. In my next few postings, I will be examining the phenomenon of regret, and the way it impacts us. It can have a huge grip on us. It can even imprison us, and embitter us beyond words. But, let me ask a question that might seem strange: Is there health in regret?

G20 Toronto: What the Heck Just Happened?

July 6th, 2010 · No Comments · Carl Jung, Current Affairs, G20, Ontario, Psychology and Suburban Life, Toronto, Trauma, collective consciousness, collective unconscious, complexes, depth psychology, panic, popular culture, trust

On June 26 and 27, the leaders of the G20 nations and numerous other nations met in downtown Toronto. For many living in this area, what happened in the course of those two days has something of the character of a nightmare in the collective psyche of the City of Toronto, and indeed, the whole of the [...]

Depth Psychotherapy Heals

June 14th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Jungian analysis, Jungian psychology, Psychology, Psychology and Suburban Life, Psychotherapy, Science, Wellness, complexes, depth psychology, unconscious, wholeness

The research paper that I have linked to below is both striking and very important. It provides strong empirical evidence of the effectiveness of “psychodynamic psychotherapy”. That’s a technical term for those forms of psychotherapy, like the Jungian approach, which:

take the unconscious dimension of individuals seriously;

seek to relate to the unconscious in the therapy process;

focus on affect and expression [...]

Crisis

May 8th, 2010 · No Comments · Anxiety, Carl Jung, Identity, Individuation, Jungian analysis, Psychology, Psychology and Suburban Life, collective unconscious, complexes, depression, depth psychology, inner life, psychological crisis, soul, stress

Sometimes we can be overtaken by things that happen in the psyche. Such events can leave a person in a very vulnerable place struggling with intense anxiety, depression or stress. Often these psychic events are triggered by events in our outer lives. Nonetheless, it is their psychological impact, the things that they cause to happen [...]

Stuck

April 4th, 2010 · No Comments · Hope, Identity, Individuation, Jungian analysis, Psychology and Suburban Life, complexes, compulsion, depth psychology, inner life, soul, wholeness

One of the common experiences that brings people into therapy is the feeling of being “stuck”. This is an expression that people commonly use to describe the experience of being brought up again and again against some psychological issue that seems incredibly difficult or even impossible to resolve.
Sometimes this sense of “stuckness” can concern some aspect or [...]

Between Childrens' and Parents' Needs: the Generational Anxiety Sandwich

February 15th, 2010 · No Comments · Current Affairs, Jungian analysis, Psychotherapy, The Self, complexes, compulsion, depth psychology, parent-child interactions, parental complex, therapy, unlived life, wholeness

In this post, I would like to write about something that may have a sense of "taboo" about it.
For many of us in the present day world, a powerful struggle goes on in our middle years. There are greater and greater demands on our personal reserves of compassion, empathy, time, energy and money. These resources are [...]

Job, Identity, Anxiety

January 13th, 2010 · No Comments · Anxiety, Identity, Individuation, Psychology, Psychotherapy, The Self, complexes, life passages, wholeness

I don't know what might motivate an employer to choose to lay people off 3 weeks before Christmas. However, judging from the calls I received from clients and potential clients prior to the New Year, there were quite a few employers who took such action this year.
Having been on the receiving end of such news myself in prior times, my thoughts [...]

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Mother, Father, Family

September 13th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Identity, archetypal experience, complexes, father archetype, feminine, inner life, masculinity, mother archetype

Here’s a quote from Jung on the key importance of the mother, father and family archetypes:

How is it then, you may ask, with the most ordinary everyday events, with immediate realities like husband, wife , father, mother, child? These ordinary everyday facts, which are eternally repeated, create the mightiest archetypes of all, whose ceaseless activity [...]