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Furthering Your Self Understanding with Jungian Analysis

March 4th, 2014 · Jungian analysis

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Many people on the web rightly or wrongly call themselves “Jungian” — but what really is Jungian analysis, and how can it further your self understanding?

Jungian analysis

Let’s answer that question by starting with C.G. (Carl) Jung…

1.  Jung

Jungian analysis

Jung’s approach, called Jungian analysis, involves an extensive investigation of the unconscious mind of the client. Unlike many, Jung sought  to “look at a [person] in light of what is healthy and sound, rather than in light of [his or her] defects.”  He focused on a person’s strengths, and on the things that were trying to emerge from the unconscious of the individual.

Jung recognized that the unconscious may have a different attitude to life issues than the conscious mind.  Also, the unconscious may know things about our selves and our lives that the conscious mind doesn’t.  Jung thus anticipated many of the findings of modern neuroscience, which has established that up to 95% of the functioning of the brain/mind is unconscious — and that the unconscious part of the mind is often aware of much of which the conscious mind is not.

2.  It All Centers on Individuation

As Prof. Samuels tells us, individuation is “a person’s becoming himself, whole, indivisible and distinct from others”, and concerns individuality, and with the psychological conditions that may interfere with conscious living.  Jung tells us that it’s very common for the individual to be at odds with him- or herself.  The way the individual has consciously structured life may be fundamentally at odds with his or her own basic nature, in important ways.  Jungian analysis is about becoming aware of unconscious contents, so that the individual may integrate them into consciousness, furthering self-understanding.

3. Images of the Undiscovered Self

jungian analysis

Jungian analysis stresses that we often go through life “believing our own propaganda” — accepting superficial stories about ourselves.  Often we have an understanding of who we are based on how we have experienced our conscious life, and what others have told us, leaving out an enormous part of our inner richness.  As our unconscious self begins to emerge through previously unacknowledged feelings, dreams, or possibly  art or writing, we confront the undiscovered self, and the fullness of the person we are.

Example*:  X, a 40 year old financial services expert, hit an impasse in her career and relationship.  Through Jungian analysis, X realized that her career, though lucrative, was completely at odds with her actual personality, and that the perfectionism and workaholism that drove her had roots in inner pressures to “make good” and to “be perfect”.  Over time, she creatively remade her financial career in ways that aligned with her values.

4.  What is My Unique Way?

Jungian analysis brings us to greater self understanding by unfolding our own uniqueness.  What form might that adventure take for you?

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*NOTE: This is a composite drawn from several cases, with all potentially identifying details changed to protect client privacy.
PHOTO:  Attribution Share Alike  Some rights reserved by  meddygarnet ;
© 2013 Brian Collinson, 2238 Constance Drive, Oakville, Ontario (near Mississauga)

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Jungian Analysis, the Psychotherapist & “Moving Stone”

September 6th, 2012 · Jungian, Jungian analysis, psychotherapist

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A psychotherapist who is fully trained in Jungian analysis adopts a certain attitude to the work, as embodied in the quotation below:

psychotherapist

The Psychotherapist and Stones

The image of stones in the path of a person’s development is powerful. If the obstacles on the path are removed, the individual will travel his or her own path to wholeness.  Jungian analysis discerns an inner wisdom deep in each human being, a kind of self-healing element to the human personality.  If we clear its path correctly, it responds.

What obstacles keep a person from herself?  Frequently, they are forms of psychological complex that result from imbalances in development, and deep psychological wounding.  Becoming conscious of these knots of psychological energy that distort our thinking and feeling, withstanding them, and taking the power out of them, is a key way to “remove the stones”.

Don’t Indoctrinate!

Often, without necessarily being aware of it, the psychotherapist subtly or unsubtly injects his or her version of reality and reasonableness into the client.  Many implied “shoulds” and “oughts” lurk in the ways that psychotherapists respond to clients.

The psychotherapist shouldn’t allow individual therapy to degenerate into putting things into the patient, as if it was de-bugging software.  Psychotherapy is about genuine encounter between two people, in which the client learns more about her or his inner life, and experiences a deep level of acceptance.  That’s the only way the client can find his or her own truth.

Internal Authority, Not External

As stated above, this is a key matter in terms of the individual finding his or her own direction and freedom.  If the therapist’s idea of “the way it ought to be”, or of “normalcy” is injected, the client will stay stuck in an infantile position, depending on the psychotherapist to think and feel for him or her.  But what’s important, as Jung indicates, is what a person learns and acquires for him- or herself, through a process of discovery aided by the psychotherapist.

In our supposedly free and democratic world, much pressure is still placed on many individuals to comply, and to please others.  That’s why the next point is so important.

Taking Hold of Real Life

The goal of all good psychotherapy, including Jungian analysis, is for clients to firmly take hold of their own real lives, through:

  • acknowledging my own real thoughts & feelings, and distinguishing them from how others might want me to think & feel;
  • recognizing my own freedom to choose, and acting upon it; and,
  • acknowledging the parts of myself that I have hitherto been unable to acknowledge.

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PHOTO:  AttributionSome rights reserved by BinaryApe

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Jungian Analysis , A Psychotherapist & The Worried Well

May 25th, 2012 · Jungian, Jungian analysis, psychotherapist

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psychotherapist

Should a psychotherapist be working with the “worried well”, even if he or she practices Jungian analysis?  Who exactly are the “worried well”?  If you click on the link immediately below, you will see a splendid picture of a “Worried Well” as drawn by the subtly wise cartoonist WG on his site Reaction Formation:

“The Worried Well”

 

Who Are the “Worried Well”?

Semi-official medical lore has it that the worried well are people who have nothing medically wrong with them, but who visit doctors to gain re-assurance.  In a psychiatric context, it refers to those who do not have a psychiatric diagnosis, but who nonetheless seek to gain some reassurance from a psychotherapist.  On a narrowly medical model, only those with a psychiatric diagnosis should seek out a psychotherapist.  But from the perspective of depth psychotherapy and Jungian therapy, does this seems like an adequate understanding of the needs of those seeking counselling / therapy?

Is Psychological “Wellness” Really the Issue?

Do people go to a depth psychotherapist to “get cured”?  In my experience, the vast majority of people who come to see a psychotherapist in a practice like mine would not seem to be suffering from a psychiatric disorder, and they are not exactly looking for “the cure”.  They are, however, looking for something else.  What is it?

The Psychotherapist and the “Other Well”

I know it’s a bit of a play on words, but let’s look at the other meaning of the word “well.”  For the psychotherapist, wells have great significance in dreams, myth and fairytale.  A well is something made by humans, but it penetrates into the dark reality of the earth, and miraculously fills with water, the liquid so essential for life.  And that’s a powerful image for what we as individuals are seeking in the dark earth of the unconscious psyche.

jungian analysis

Water from the Depths

A symbol of the water of life from the depths.  In my opinion, this symbolizes very well the inner journey that many take through a depth psychotherapy, such as Jungian analysis.  From an arid landscape where there is no moisture, devoid perhaps of life and possibility, where the individual roams endlessly and finds nothing but dryness and dust, to a relationship with their own inner depths that brings fluidity, restoration, life.  In this sense, the well with its life-giving water from the depths can be a very apt symbol for the work of a depth psychotherapist or for Jungian analysis.

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PHOTO:  Attribution Some rights reserved by ruffin_ready

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Jungan Analysis & Overcoming Internet Addiction: 4 Keys

March 19th, 2012 · addiction, internet addiction, Jungian, Jungian analysis, overcoming internet addiction

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depth psychotherapy
Overcoming Internet addiction is now a very real concern for many people, and Jungian analysis brings a perspective to this problem that offers hope and the possibility of finding an underlying meaning.  “Hold on a minute”, I hear you saying, “I can understand overcoming Internet addiction, but how could Jungian analysis find meaning in this kind of compulsive activity?”

First: Yes, Internet Addiction Actually Exists

There are many seeking help overcoming Internet addiction who know this.   Especially in Canada, online gaming, online gambling, social media and email, or Internet pornography are taking up more and more room in these peoples’ lives, and they can’t find a way to slow down or stop.  For them, overcoming Internet addiction is a priority, because something not under conscious control is in the driver’s seat.

2.  Signs of Internet Addiction

A person may be wrestling with internet addiction if:

  • Net use dominates his or her life and/or thoughts;
  • Net use modifies his or her  mood, or creates a “buzz”;
  • increasing Net use is needed to stay feeling good;
  • refraining from Net use causes unpleasant feeling or physical effects; or,
  • Net use creates conflict with those they are close to, or with their everyday life.

overcoming internet addiction

3.  Overcoming Internet Addiction: Insights from Jungian Analysis

The key issue in overcoming Internet addiction is determining what the Net is really providing to the individual, that brings him or her benefit.  It is at this point that a perspective drawn from Jungian analysis brings real insight.

If we look at the compulsive Net user, we see a hunger and a yearning at the heart of his or her usage.  Jung, in his letter to Bill W., described this as “the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness.”  In our restless searching and exchanges on the Net, we yearn for something to bring us to a sense of being whole and complete.  We are only going to get past unending searching on the Net, if we find something real, that makes us feel alive — that moves us toward fulfillment, and away from anxiety.

4.  Jungian Analysis & Wholeness

For Jungian analysis, wholeness is not the same as perfection.  We can have experiences that make us feel fully aware and alive — whole.  How this happens for each of us is a very individual matter; often only the depth explorations of individual therapy will reveal what these unique, life-giving realities are for each of us.

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PHOTOS:  Attribution Some rights reserved by olga.palma and entirelysubjective
© 2012 Brian Collinson

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Individuality, Therapy for Anxiety, & Jungian Analysis

October 7th, 2011 · Jungian, Jungian analysis

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therapy for anxietyTherapy for anxiety and Jungian analysis might seem to be two very different things.  But if a person really wants to get to the roots of anxiety, there are some very real and powerful connections to be made between anxiety and depth psychotherapy.

  • Therapy Isn’t Modular; Everything Interconnects

My recent post on psychotherapy for depression stressed the key differences between a computer and the human psyche, and the need to avoid the trap of thinking that humans are healed the same way we fix machines.  We cannot pull out a broken “module” that creates anxiety in a person and replace it.  Anxious states often have deep roots in personality, upbringing and overall stance towards life.

  • Anxiety Has a Human Meaning

Our anxiousness connects meaningfully to our inner life and to the deep story each of tells ourselves about our lives.  Anxious states are often tied to the real life happenings that a person has experienced.  However, these anxious states are also tied to simply being alive as individual, mortal, vulnerable beings.

  • Anxiety Has an Individual Meaning

A person struggling with anxiety encounters it in a very personal and individual way.  It is his or her anxiety, and it has emerged in a particular unique way within them.  Only when that individual meaning is fully and carefully understood, will the individual be able to move beyond that anxiety.

  • The Grounding Power of Myth

This could be a whole post, or whole series of posts.  An anxious psychology can be deeply connected to whether or not people have a working framework of meaning within which they can see their lives.  As James Hollis says, “entire generations may be anxious if the mythological carpet is pulled out from under their feet.”  Humans inevitably confront the question of whether the world is a secure place, and whether life is a meaningful journey, or merely a chaotic “tale told by an idiot”, in Shakespeare’s words.  For many in our time, , the standard, institutional answers provided by religious institutions, and secular authorities no longer adequately serve this foundation function.   There is need to find a truly grounding world view, or philosophy of life.

Jungian psychotherapy often provides an appropriate means to find a vibrant, vital and individual connection to a uniquely personal myth, in C.G. Jung’s phrase.  For many, this holistic journey can provides a key form of healing for the particular anxiety that they experience.

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© 2011 Brian Collinson
2238 Constance Drive, Oakville, ON (near Mississauga)

 

 

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Jungian Analysis, Analytical Psychology & Staying Real

September 8th, 2011 · analytical psychology, Jungian, Jungian analysis

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analytical psychologyCG  Jung invented the method of Jungian analysis and founded the school of psychology known as analytical psychology.  He was brilliant; many would say a genius.  That doesn’t mean that he didn’t make some mistakes, or leave a lot for others to discover, as time would tell.

However, there’s vitality in Jungian analysis as an approach to psychotherapy.  It profoundly affected people in his time, as it still does.  The unique strength of Jung’s approach is best lived out when we can stay grounded in the real wisdom that he brought to psychotherapy work, while keeping open to the best of other influences.

Some Jungians want to assert that Jung had it all sewn up, that you don’t need to go beyond what he said.  But Jung himself was surprisingly open, always sat loose to his theories, and welcomed new insights, sometimes from surprising sources.

This single-minded approach was Jung’s greatest contribution, and is the most important emphasis in Jungian analysis to this day.  His ability to sit with people, and to make them feel that they were heard, and that their lives were unique and important, was legendary.

  • Jung Emphasized the Vitality of the Unconscious

Similarly, Jung saw the unconscious as a living reality, not full of only repressed materials, but also of elements that are seeking to help us to come to a more complete and fulfilling understanding of our lives.  This remains a formidible and lasting contribution to psychotherapy.

  • Keeping the Unconscious Connected to Real Life

Whatever your psychological theory is, it’s not enough if it doesn’t meet people where they live, and if it doesn’t make a concrete difference to the story of their lives.  Modern neuroscience has only served to confirm the reality of the unconscious, and modern Jungian psychotherapists like Michael Fordham, Mario Jacoby, Donald Kalsched, and Andrew Samuels have helped to further develop a Jungian understanding of personal and social life that keeps things real.

  • Connected, Growing and Knowing

A Jungian or “analytical psychology” approach has a lot to offer 21st century people.  But those of us who practice this type of psychotherapy need to have the knowledge to be open to the perspectives of others, and to keep analytical psychology a growing, vital discipline.  It’s also essential that we stay connected to the lived reality of people in 21st century North America.

Here’s hoping that your journey toward wholeness will bring you something living, unique and real.

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PHOTO: © Boris Zatserkovnyy | Dreamstime.com
© 2011 Brian Collinson
2238 Constance Drive, Oakville, ON (near Mississauga)

 

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Psychotherapy and Renewal: Persephone’s Big Comeback

April 5th, 2011 · depth psychology, Jungian analysis, life passages, mythology, personal myth, personal story, psychological crisis, Psychology and Suburban Life, psychotherapist, Psychotherapy, renewal, Self, soul, therapist, therapy, unconscious

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There’s a lot of truth for psychotherapy in the Greek myth of Persephone and it’s all tied up with the yearly renewal of the seasons.  Persephone, a vegetation goddess, and the daughter of the harvest goddess Demeter, was kidnapped and ravished by Hades, the king of the Underworld, and taken to live in his realm.

Demeter, so distraught at her disappearance, refused to let crops or vegetation grow anymore until her daughter was returned.  The gods finally prevailed on Hades, who agreed to let her go.  However the all-wise Fates had decreed that anyone who consumed the food of the underworld was destined to stay there for eternity.  Alas, wiley Hades had persuaded Persephone to eat 3 puny pomegranite seeds.  And so Persephone must spend part of the year in the Underworld, a time of barreness, and vegetation would flourish again only when she was re-united every year with Demeter above ground.

This is quite a myth to explain the origin of the seasons.  Here in Canada, after the long barren winter, we all feel a little like I imagine Persephone would, as she was released from the earth. Released back into life!

The profound truth of the Persephone myth also conveys a deep meaning for our own psychological journey.

The Persephone myth conveys a natural movement in psychological life  For Persephone, it is only as she is detached from her familiar world, and descends to the Underworld that she can bring the blessing and the gift of the seasons, of new green life, and fertility.

My experience is that it is like that in the lives of my clients and in my own life, also.  Sometimes the encounter with life’s circumstances and with the unconscious can seem like a sudden plunge into darkness and descent into the underworld.  But the underworld has its own gifts that it brings.  Only those who can accept those gifts, and “eat the food of the underworld”, can bring the gift of life and fertility back to the “surface world” of their everyday lives.  In the encounter with the depths in ourselves, including our unconscious, we travel Persephone’s way, and return to our everyday life with the green lushness of  renewed outlook and vitality.

In the video below, the great Brazilian jazz stylist Antonio Carlos Jobim sings his wonderful song “The Waters of March” at the 1986 Montreal Jazz Festival.  Lush and full of feeling, this wonderful music captures the enormity of the renewal of Spring that we all sense at this time of year.  May we find that same sense of renewal through the encounter with our own deepest selves.

A stick, a stone, it’s the end of the road

It’s the rest of a stump, it’s a little alone

It’s a sliver of glass, it is life, it’s the sun…

…It’s a beam it’s a void, it’s a hunch, it’s a hope

And the river bank talks of the waters of March

It’s the end of the strain

The joy in your heart

Finding Renewal

Both Persephone’s descent into the underworld and the renewal of spring symbolize aspects of the psychotherapeutic process.  Often for renewal, it is important to enter into the depths, and to encounter the more hidden parts of our own existence, and our own experience of life.   The journey may well be demanding, and it is the role of the depth psychotherapist to guide the individual toward renewal, and the deep rewards of the journey.  There’s no better time to start than now.

As always, I welcome your inquiries and comments.

Wishing you the gifts of renewal on your journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson, Psychotherapist & Jungian Analyst

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PHOTO CREDIT:  Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton (1830–1896).  This work is in the public domain.

VIDEO CREDIT  © 1986 Antonio Carlos Jobim and Koch International

© 2011 Brian Collinson

Brian Collinson, 2238 Constance Drive, Oakville, Ontario (near Oakville / Mississauga border)

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Psychotherapy, Jungian Analysis and Creativity

March 30th, 2011 · depth psychology, Jungian, Jungian analysis

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Some fear that psychotherapy, even Jungian psychotherapy will lack creativity.  They envisage talking endlessly to a minimally responsive therapist who records everything, but shows little of his or her reaction.  They even fear that it will be overly rational, and distant from feeling.  But it doesn’t have to be so.  Proper therapeutic work can bring genuinely creative possibilities into being.

The Water of Life

Psychotherapy can enable encounters with enlivening, vital elements in the psyche.  Often, such contents emerge, and take us partially, or sometimes entirely by surprise.  They may take the form of things that we discover attract us, for reasons that we would find it hard to explain.  Or maybe there are things that we’ve yearned to try for much of our lives that suddenly become urgent.  Or else there are feelings that we discover ourselves feeling, that suddenly make us seem that much more alive.

The Spectrum of Aliveness

On the other hand, I’m not talking about that kind of ungrounded “being positive” prevalent in our time.  Often we find ourselves opening to a whole range of widened feeling possibilities.  Often this may mean both possibilities for feeling that move us towards new passions and joys, and also capacities for genuinely feeling the sorrows, angers and difficult emotions in our lives.  It seems almost to be a psychic law that, as the capacity to experience one of these things increases, so does the other.  An approach that is one-sided, that only offers joy and exhilaration would involve a fundamental denial of what it is to be human.  As we experience the whole spectrum of our feeling in more depth however, we feel more alive.

Opening; Emergence

The particular importance of the best psychotherapy involves opening those parts of the psyche that are poorly connected to, or disconnected from, consciousness.  There is a whole range of thought, feeling, intuition and sensation experience that is actually or potentially part of us.  From the perspective of consciousness, it might almost seem as if it were the experience of ‘somebody else”!  Yet it is that full spectrum of psychic content that carries the fullness of our life.  This is not to say that it is easy or effortless to let it emerge into consciousness, but the full impact is real.

Image and Possibility

To the best of my knowledge, it was American archetypal psychologist James Hillman who was the first to refer to “imaginal” reality.  Images and feelings that emerge from the unconscious levels of people, particularly people in psychotherapy, can have a compelling reality.  And they can reveal a great deal about the unique psyche of the individual.  As individuals creatively explore such psychic content, and take steps to bring its reality into their own lives, people start to flesh out new possibilities for their lives.

What Will Your Deepest Self Create?

The creative powers released in psychotherapy can be vast and compelling, and might not take the form and direction that the conscious mind would expect.  Have you had experiences of unexpected creativity coming to the fore from within yourself?  Or, the experience of having the unconscious mind solve something that the conscious mind could not?  A living, vital experience of psychotherapy can often bring an individual into contact with a creative wisdom that the person did not know that she or he had.

Wishing you creativity and vitality on your journey to wholeness,

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PHOTO CREDIT:  © Jackq | Dreamstime.com

© 2011 Brian Collinson

Brian Collinson, 2238 Constance Drive, Oakville, Ontario (near Oakville / Mississauga border)

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Jungian Psychotherapy, and Our “Typical”, Atypical Self

March 13th, 2011 · analytical psychology, Identity, Individuation, inner life, journey, Jungian analysis, Psychology and Suburban Life

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Jungian psychotherapy tends not to talk much about “the typical person”.  However, someone I respect a lot recently sent me a link to a very clever video on what humans have and do not have in common.  It’s produced by the National Geographic Society, and entitled “7 Billion: Are You Typical?”  It’s a very well put-together, engaging video about “the world’s most typical person”:

Typical

The concept of “the world’s most typical person” invites some really careful thinking.  All of us seem inclined to compare ourselves to the “typical person”.  It seems to me that there are some interesting ways in which we do this.  I think we both look for the ways in which we are like such a typical person, and the ways in which we are unlike him or her.  We often do want to establish what we have in common with such a person.  We want to feel some bond of shared humanity.  But we also want to find ways in which we are individuals.

How Do You Compare?

How do you compare to the “most typical person” in this video?  He is a 28 year old Han Chinese male.  Perhaps you feel, as I do, that “The most typical person in the world is not like me, in many respects.”  But are there some deeper ways in which you and this “typical person” are alike?  Put more basically, what is it that gives you your particular identity?  What makes any of us unique individuals?  I think it’s something beyond whatever categories or traits are compared.  There’s a kind of mystery in that.

It’s All There, In Us

What makes us “atypical”, or unique?  There are many, many things, when we reflect.

It would be a big mistake to see the 9 million “most typical” humans referred to in the film as all “the same”.  Every one of them will have a myriad of unique personal factors.  For instance: different family of origin; different socio-economic background; different genetic make-up; and, different life history.  These are just four of a huge array of factors that make a person the complex, unrepeatable event that they are.

Questions for You, as a “Typical Atypical” Individual

What makes you the unique human that you are?

What do you feel are the key things about you that shape your particular identity?

What are the groups of people with whom you feel a common human link?

Are there things that you feel you have in common with all human beings?

What are the mysteries that you experience in yourself?  The things that form part of your identity that you maybe can’t fully understand or explain?

Beyond Categories, There is the Mystery That We Are

This last thing, the exploration of the mystery of the self, is the special realm of psychotherapy and depth psychology.  For many, opening up the unexplored territory in the self, and living it out, is essential to having a meaningful life.  For many, as life progresses, this journey takes on more and more importance.  For such individuals, entering something like Jungian analysis may be essential.

May your journey to wholeness connect you meaningfully to others, but above all, to your unique self,
Brian Collinson, Psychotherapist & Jungian Analyst

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PHOTO CREDIT: © Constantin Opris | Dreamstime.com

VIDEO CREDIT: © 2011 National Geographic Society

© 2011 Brian Collinson

Brian Collinson, 2238 Constance Drive, Oakville, Ontario (near Oakville / Mississauga border)

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Shadow Identity: Inside You Someone Waits to Emerge

February 4th, 2011 · analytical psychology, Jungian analysis, Self, self-knowledge, Shadow

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The shadow is the unacknowledged part of ourselves.  Inside you, that shadow someone has been waiting to emerge for a very long time, like a butterfly from a cocoon.  You may well encounter that someone, or aspects of her or him, in your dreams.  That person may be an elusive stranger, or someone who urgently cries out to you to open your doors to her…or him.  The shadow can be many things.

The shadow someone who waits to emerge may contain elements of you which have been forgotten or even repressed since childhood.  Or, that “someone” may appear with elements that have never before been in your conscious mind.  He or she may represent something new in you, a reality about you held in the depths of your unconscious, waiting until now to emerge and encounter you in your conscious identity.  You may well find that you are not always entirely comfortable with this one who wishes to emerge!

Depth Psychology and Emergence of the Shadow

The calling of the depth psychotherapist is to assist in the encounter of the one who wishes to emerge with the already established identity of the person who starts to hear the call of their inner self, in whatever form that call takes.  The depth psychotherapist recognizes that these are elements of one and the same person. and that,  for a person to love, accept and acknowledge him or herself, the known self and the undiscovered or emerging self must embrace each other. Then the person will live in the awareness of his or her true self, and her or his own real life.

Yearning for Transformation

Something inside of us yearns for this. Something in us may also be aware that such a transformation takes effort, and is only acheived if we devote ourselves to the goal, and move past that part of ourselves that would tell us that everything is OK the way it is, and there is no need for us to change or grow.  The part of us that is caught up with inertia, that would tell us that even though things don’t seem the best, and that life is less than satisfying— or even less real — than we had hoped, it is better to let sleeping dogs lie…or sleeping aspects of the self.

Awakening

Depth psychotherapy, especially Jungian analysis, is all about the process of awakening sleeping shadow aspects of the self.  It is opening gates within you, and allowing exiled aspects of your being to walk through those gates.

What will that someone who emerges be like?  The answer to that question will be as unique as you are.  But the encounter with the undiscovered self will ultimately be a homecoming.

Who is Waiting to Appear?

As you read this, there are aspects of who you are of which you’re aware, and aspects that are in the unconscious.  Who is it who is waiting to appear in you?  What is there that is part of your nature that is yearning to reveal itself in you?  What kind of healing would those parts of you bring?

Have you ever had the experience of encountering an aspect of yourself of which you had previously been unaware?  Such experiences can sometimes be profoundly transformative.  If you were willing to share about such an experience either in a comment or vie email, I would love to hear from you.

Wishing you and your emerging self every good thing as you travel on your personal journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson, Psychotherapist & Jungian Analyst

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PHOTO CREDIT:     Creative Commons  Some rights reserved by Teosaurio

© 2011 Brian Collinson

Brian Collinson, 2238 Constance Drive, Oakville, Ontario (near Oakville / Mississauga border)

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