July, 2009 | Brian Collinson

Out here in suburbia, great pressure is often placed on people to “look good”. People feel all kinds of pressure to keep their image in the finest order.

We get the message that it’s important to keep your grass well-cut and your garden well-manicured. It’s important to drive a car that makes you look (and feel) like you’re successful and upwardly mobile. It’s important that your kids wear the right clothes, and belong to the right after-school activities. When you go to your yoga class, you should be sure to have the right mat and outfit…

And people do look good! My, do they ever! A walk down Lakeshore Road in downtown Oakville, my town, will surely convince you of that. To the extent that having good stuff and doing all the “right” things can give you a good life, boy howdy, we suburbanites have got it down!

If that was all it took, we suburbanites would surely have the best lives imaginable…

So, if that’s true, why do so many people seem to feel that they’re “just going through the motions”? How is it that I hear from so many people that, at times, life can just “feel hollow”?

To a certain extent, we all have to bow to the necessity of looking good, if we want to make our way in the world. There are social conventions that we have to live within, if we want to have a job, get an education and do all the many things that we have to do to make our way. To choose an extreme example, showing up naked to a job interview would be career-limiting, to say the least!

However, just fitting the idea of others about “how we should be” isn’t enough for a fulfilling life — even if those “others” are lifestyle advertisers who spend untold billions to influence us to remake our lives around their products.

Sooner or later in life, we are going to be strongly confronted with the question of what is really ourselves. If we really take that question seriously, it can be the beginning of the greatest adventure in life.

When I feel empty in my life, it is not a curse. It can actually be a gateway. That which is empty wants to be filled. At least if I’m aware of my own feeling of emptiness, I can start to seek out what makes me feel full, what makes me feel real.

For a significant number of people, that’s where the journey of therapy begins…

I’d be interested in your comments about your journey, and about what is meaningful or important in your life.

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian’s Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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Is Attending to Your Dreams “Worth It”?

July 16th, 2009 · Carl Jung, depth psychology, dreams, Jungian analysis, Jungian psychology, Psychotherapy, wholeness

There are some people who might look a bit oddly at you if you tell them you pay close attention to your dreams. To some people, in fact, it seems like an incredibly “flaky” thing to do.

Often, these people subscribe to the “daily regurgitation” theory of dreaming. Their understanding of where dreams come from is that the mind sort of soaks up all the impressions and images from the day, and then at the end of the day has to wring itself out, or clear itself from all the accumulated daily grunge. This “grunge disposal”, on their view, is what dreaming is. “After all” they say, “I had a dream that involved Harry Potter last night, and I just went to see the Harry Potter movie two days ago. So surely seeing the Harry Potter movie made me dream about it!”

However, dreaming is really not that psychologically simple a process. It’s unquestionably true that the dream will use imagery or ideas from a person’s recent life. So if you went to the Harry Potter movie yesterday, it might very well appear in your dreams. But does that mean that the Harry Potter movie caused your dream? There are lots of things that you experienced in, say, the last 48 hours. So why would the dream focus specifically on this? As opposed to, say, the time you spent stuck in traffic on the QEW or the scrumptious BBQed ribs you had for dinner?

To determine the answer to that question may take some real inner exploration. But it can reveal a great deal to you about your unconscious and your inner life. The answer will depend very much on what Harry Potter or the Harry Potter movie symbolizes for you. That will depend on both your personal associations (e.g., if your brother is the biggest Harry Potter fan ever, the dream may have something to do with him, one way or another) and also on the more objective or archetypal meaning of the symbol (e.g., Harry Potter is very much an archetypal hero, and the dream may have something to do with the heroic aspect of yourself).

Conscious, careful recording and examination of your dreams will be “worth it”. There is a great deal of your self contained within them, and they offer the chance to know your psyche and the hitherto unknown aspects of who you are.

What do you think about your dreams? I’d be interested to talk with you about them, and to hear how they’ve been meaningful or important in your life.

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian’s Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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When You Hit a Brick Wall

July 13th, 2009 · Carl Jung, depression, depth psychology, unlived life, wholeness

Often people get to the point in life where they reach an impasse, and they don't know how to solve a particular situation in their lives.

There doesn't seem to be a way forward and there doesn't seem to be a solution. Although this can happen at any point in life, it seems particularly prevalent at mid-life.

Often, the way one becomes aware of this is that you just realize that the way that you have been trying to solve a particular problem or deal with a particular life situation just isn't opening anything up. What this tells you, at least in part, is that your attitude is no longer adapted to the realities of your life.

Now, please don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying something along the lines of "If you want it enough, and you're unfailingly positive about it, what you want in your life will come" — the kind of message that you find in books like The Secret. I think that approach to life is quite naive, and I have seen a fair number of people come to real harm as a result of trying to live like that. Such an attitude can be really unadapted, and can lead you into a major collision in reality. I know of one person who left home and found herself absolutely destitute and friendless in Dubai as a result of that kind of thinking. From all that I hear, Dubai is not a great place to be penniless, and to try and get by on just a sunny smile.

Having an adapted attitude may well mean that there are certain realities that I have to let in and acknowledge. That may even mean that there are things that I have to grieve. What it may mean, above all, is that I have to change.

Let's say that I'm a true died-in-the-wool "thinking type" person. So I try to approach all the problems and situations in my life in very rational, thought-out, dispassionate ways. Then perhaps one day I find myself deep in the grip of a depression that I simply can't shake. It might well be that the only way that I'm going be able to come through the depression and feel alive again is by acknowledging my feeling side — all those years of unacknowledged and suppressed feelings. This is going to require a big change in the way that I see myself, and a lot of open-ness to dimensions of my life that I've previously done my very best to cut off. It isn't going to be easy. Parts of me are really going to resist. But it may well be that it's the only way that I'm going to get my real, meaningful life back.

Similarly, a person who is all about willpower and control may well have to acknowledge the parts of him- or herself in the unconscious that they can't control. They may have to admit that the ego is going to have to acknowledge that it is "second banana" to the Self, and let things emerge from their dreams and from other parts of the unconscious, and take those things into account in the way that they live their lives. This might be quite difficult, but it might just give them a meaningful life again.

Many times "hitting the wall" has to do with coming up against the things that I really refuse to admit to myself. The key to the lock that I need to open, I hide from myself, because there is some truth about myself or my situation that I really don't want to look at.

The only way past the wall is to be open to something new: the undiscovered self.

Please keep sending me your comments and your thoughts! I would welcome any of your reflections on the "walls" in your life, past or present.

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

Get "Vibrant Jung Thing" posts delivered to your email using the "FeedBurner" box in the left column!

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When You Hit a Brick Wall

July 9th, 2009 · Carl Jung, depression, depth psychology, Jungian analysis, Jungian psychology, life passages, midlife, psychological crisis, Psychology and Suburban Life, Psychotherapy, soul, stress, The Self, unconscious, wholeness

Often people get to the point in life where they reach an impasse, and they don’t know how to solve a particular situation in their lives.

There doesn’t seem to be a way forward and there doesn’t seem to be a solution. Although this can happen at any point in life, it seems particularly prevalent at mid-life.

Often, the way one becomes aware of this is that you just realize that the way that you have been trying to solve a particular problem or deal with a particular life situation just isn’t opening anything up. What this tells you, at least in part, is that your attitude is no longer adapted to the realities of your life.

Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying something along the lines of “If you want it enough, and you’re unfailingly positive about it, what you want in your life will come” — the kind of message that you find in books like The Secret. I think that approach to life is quite naive, and I have seen a fair number of people come to real harm as a result of trying to live like that. Such an attitude can be really unadapted, and can lead you into a major collision in reality. I know of one person who left home and found herself absolutely destitute and friendless in Dubai as a result of that kind of thinking. From all that I hear, Dubai is not a great place to be penniless, and to try and get by on just a sunny smile.

Let’s say that I’m a true died-in-the-wool “thinking type” person. So I try to approach all the problems and situations in my life in very rational, thought-out, dispassionate ways. Then perhaps one day I find myself deep in the grip of a depression that I simply can’t shake. It might well be that the only way that I’m going be able to come through the depression and feel alive again is by acknowledging my feeling side — all those years of unacknowledged and suppressed feelings. This is going to require a big change in the way that I see myself, and a lot of open-ness to dimensions of my life that I’ve previously done my very best to cut off. It isn’t going to be easy. Parts of me are really going to resist. But it may well be that it’s the only way that I’m going to get my real, meaningful life back.

Similarly, a person who is all about willpower and control may well have to acknowledge the parts of him- or herself in the unconscious that they can’t control. They may have to admit that the ego is going to have to acknowledge that it is “second banana” to the Self, and let things emerge from their dreams and from other parts of the unconscious, and take those things into account in the way that they live their lives. This might be quite difficult, but it might just give them a meaningful life again.

Many times “hitting the wall” has to do with coming up against the things that I really refuse to admit to myself. The key to the lock that I need to open, I hide from myself, because there is some truth about myself or my situation that I really don’t want to look at.

The only way past the wall is to be open to something new: the undiscovered self.

Please keep sending me your comments and your thoughts! I would welcome any of your reflections on the “walls” in your life, past or present.

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian’s Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

Get “Vibrant Jung Thing” posts delivered to your email using the “FeedBurner” box in the left column!

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Other People?

July 7th, 2009 · Carl Jung, Identity, Individuation, Jungian psychology, Relationships, Shadow, unlived life

Here's a reflection-provoking quote from Jung on how we tend to see other people.

"Everybody thinks that psychology is what he himself knows best – psychology is always his psychology, which he alone knows, and at the same time his psychology is everybody else's psychology. Instinctively he supposes that his own psychic constitution is the general one, and that everyone is essentially like everyone else, that is to say, like himself. Husbands suppose this of their wives, wives suppose it of their husbands, parents of their children, and children of their parents. It is as though everyone had the most direct access to what is going on inside [him or her], was intimately acquainted with it and competent to pass an opinion on it; as though his own psyche were a kind of master-psyche which suited all and sundry, and entitled him to suppose that his own situation was the general rule. People are profoundly astonished, or even horrified, when this rule quite obviously does not fit — when they discover that another person really is different from themselves. Generally speaking, they do not find these psychic differences as in any way curious, let alone attractive, but as disagreeable failings that are hard to bear, or as unendurable faults that have to be condemned. The painfully obvious difference seems like a contravention of the natural order, like a shocking mistake that must be remedied as speedily as possible…."

"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" in Jung, C.G., Hull. R.F.C., trans.,

Civilization in Transition, Collected Works, Vol 10, second edition,

(Princeton: University Press, 1989), para. 277

Jung highlights for us one of the very greatest dangers in our relations with other people: that we will see them as just like ourselves when in fact they are hugely different. This is a trap that each of us falls into numerous times a day, very often without being aware of it.

I invite you to think about the people in your life. Do you see them as more similar to yourself than they really are? Can you be open to their psychology, their way of perceiving their lives? Can you acknowledge who they really are, without a sense of threat? This can be quite a challenge — and an ongoing one with which we're never quite finished. Yet the process of taking back our projections on others is a key part of individuation, of becoming ourselves. Unless we can do this, we find ourselves fated to go round and round on the same old merry-go-round of relationship, never really knowing others or that part of ourselves that we have never lived, and have not yet acknowledged.

As always, I welcome your comments and your thoughts on relationship and "the other", and I look forward to dialoguing with each of you.

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

Get "Vibrant Jung Thing" posts delivered to your email using the "FeedBurner" box in the left column!

PHOTO CREDITS: © Fred Goldstein| Dreamstime.com; ©Luisfico| Dreamstime.com; © Rui Matos| Dreamstime.com

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Vibrant Jung Thing Blog

Looking Good… Feeling Empty

July 27th, 2009 · depth psychology, Identity, Individuation, inner life, Jungian psychology, Meaning, persona, popular culture, Psychotherapy

Out here in suburbia, great pressure is often placed on people to “look good”. People feel all kinds of pressure to keep their image in the finest order.

And people do look good! My, do they ever! A walk down Lakeshore Road in downtown Oakville, my town, will surely convince you of that. To the extent that having good stuff and doing all the “right” things can give you a good life, boy howdy, we suburbanites have got it down!

Is Attending to Your Dreams “Worth It”?

July 16th, 2009 · Carl Jung, depth psychology, dreams, Jungian analysis, Jungian psychology, Psychotherapy, wholeness

There are some people who might look a bit oddly at you if you tell them you pay close attention to your dreams. To some people, in fact, it seems like an incredibly “flaky” thing to do.

When You Hit a Brick Wall

July 13th, 2009 · Carl Jung, depression, depth psychology, unlived life, wholeness

Often people get to the point in life where they reach an impasse, and they don't know how to solve a particular situation in their lives.

When You Hit a Brick Wall

July 9th, 2009 · Carl Jung, depression, depth psychology, Jungian analysis, Jungian psychology, life passages, midlife, psychological crisis, Psychology and Suburban Life, Psychotherapy, soul, stress, The Self, unconscious, wholeness

Often people get to the point in life where they reach an impasse, and they don’t know how to solve a particular situation in their lives.

There doesn’t seem to be a way forward and there doesn’t seem to be a solution. Although this can happen at any point in life, it seems particularly prevalent at mid-life.

Other People?

July 7th, 2009 · Carl Jung, Identity, Individuation, Jungian psychology, Relationships, Shadow, unlived life

Here's a reflection-provoking quote from Jung on how we tend to see other people.

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Vibrant Jung Thing Blog

Looking Good… Feeling Empty

July 27th, 2009 · depth psychology, Identity, Individuation, inner life, Jungian psychology, Meaning, persona, popular culture, Psychotherapy

And people do look good! My, do they ever! A walk down Lakeshore Road in downtown Oakville, my town, will surely convince you of that. To the extent that having good stuff and doing all the “right” things can give you a good life, boy howdy, we suburbanites have got it down!

Is Attending to Your Dreams “Worth It”?

July 16th, 2009 · Carl Jung, depth psychology, dreams, Jungian analysis, Jungian psychology, Psychotherapy, wholeness

When You Hit a Brick Wall

July 13th, 2009 · Carl Jung, depression, depth psychology, unlived life, wholeness

When You Hit a Brick Wall

July 9th, 2009 · Carl Jung, depression, depth psychology, Jungian analysis, Jungian psychology, life passages, midlife, psychological crisis, Psychology and Suburban Life, Psychotherapy, soul, stress, The Self, unconscious, wholeness

Often people get to the point in life where they reach an impasse, and they don’t know how to solve a particular situation in their lives.

<img decoding="async" src="/images/old/6a00e54f0dc9ee88340115710811e4970c-320wi.jpg" alt="Hitting the Wall 1 for Vibrant Jung Thing Blog" width="368" height="251" />

There doesn’t seem to be a way forward and there doesn’t seem to be a solution. Although this can happen at any point in life, it seems particularly prevalent at mid-life.

Other People?

July 7th, 2009 · Carl Jung, Identity, Individuation, Jungian psychology, Relationships, Shadow, unlived life

Here's a reflection-provoking quote from Jung on how we tend to see other people.

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