Analytical Psychology in a Changing World: The search for self, identity and community


Book Description

How can we make sense of ourselves within a world of change? In Analytical Psychology in a Changing World, an international range of contributors examine some of the common pitfalls, challenges and rewards that we encounter in our efforts to carve out identities of a personal or collective nature, and question the extent to which analytical psychology as a school of thought and therapeutic approach must also adapt to meet our changing needs. The contributors assess contemporary concerns about our sense of who we are and where we are going, some in light of recent social and natural disasters and changes to our social climates, others by revisiting existential concerns and philosophical responses to our human situation in order to assess their validity for today. How we use our urban environments and its structures to make sense of our pathologies and shortcomings; the relevance of images and the dynamic forms that underpin our experience of the world; how analytical psychology can effectively manage issues and problems of cultural, religious and existential identity – these broad themes, and others besides, are vividly illustrated by striking case-studies and unique personal insights that give real lucidity to the ideas and arguments presented. Analytical Psychology in a Changing World will be essential reading for Jungian and post-Jungian scholars and clinicians of depth psychology, as well as sociologists, philosophers and any reader with a critical interest in the important cultural ideas of our time.




Identity


Book Description

Identity has become one of the most widely used terms today, appearing in many different contexts. Anything and everything has an identity, and identity crises have become almost equally pervasive. Yet 'identity' is extremely versatile, meaning different things to different people and in different scientific disciplines. To many its meaning seems self-evident, since its various uses share common features, so often the term is used without a definition of what, exactly, is meant by it. This provokes the core question: What exactly is identity? In this Very Short Introduction Florian Coulmas provides a survey of the many faces of the concept of identity, and discusses its significance and varied meanings in the fields of philosophy, sociology, and psychology, as well as politics and law. Tracing our concern with identity to its deep roots in Europe's intellectual history, individualism, and the felt need to draw borderlines, Coulmas identifies the most important features used to mark off individual and collective identities, and demonstrates why they are deemed important. He concludes with a glimpse at the many ways in which literature has engaged with problems of identity throughout history. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.




Active Imagination in Theory, Practice and Training


Book Description

- Features contributions by many renowned, international Jungian analysts, as well as interviews with other well-known cultural personalities. - Based on research supported by the IAAP, and covers a unique topic that isn't widely written about.




Analysis and Activism


Book Description

Jungian psychology has taken a noticeable political turn in the recent years, and analysts and academics whose work draws on Jung’s ideas have made internationally recognised contributions in many humanitarian, communal and political contexts. This book brings together a multidisciplinary and international selection of contributors, all of whom have track records as activists, to discuss some of the most compelling issues in contemporary politics. Analysis and Activism is presented in six parts: Section One, Interventions, includes discussion of what working outside the consulting room means, and descriptions of work with displaced children in Colombia, projects for migrants in Italy and of an analyst’s engagement in the struggles of indigenous Australians. Section Two, Equalities and Inequalities, tackles topics ranging from the collapse of care systems in the UK to working with victims of torture. Section Three, Politics and Modernity, looks at the struggles of native people in Guatemala and Canada and oral history interviews with members of the Chinese/Vietnamese diaspora. Section Four, Culture and Identity, studies issues of race and class in Brazil, feminism and the gendered imagination, and the introduction of Obamacare in the USA. Section Five, Cultural Phantoms, examines the continuing trauma of the Cultural Revolution in China, Jung’s relationship with Jews and Judaism, and German-Jewish dynamics. Finally, Section Six, Nature: Truth and Reconciliation, looks at our broken connection to nature, town and country planning, and relief work after the 2011 earthquake in Japan. There remains throughout the book an acknowledgement that the project of thinking forward the political in Jungian psychology can be problematic, given Jung’s own questionable political history. What emerges is a radical and progressive Jungian approach to politics informed by the spirit of the times as well as by the spirit of the depths. This cutting-edge collection will be essential reading for Jungian and post-Jungian academics and analysts, psychotherapists, counsellors and psychologists, and academics and students of politics, sociology, psychosocial studies and cultural studies.




Jungian Psychology in the East and West


Book Description

It is well known that Jung’s investigation of Eastern religions and cultures supplied him with an abundance of cross-cultural comparative material, useful to support his hypotheses of the existence of archetypes, the collective unconscious and other manifestations of psychic reality. However, the specific literature dealing with this aspect has previously been quite scarce. This unique edited collection brings together contributors writing on a range of topics that represent an introduction to the differences between Eastern and Western approaches to Jungian psychology. Readers will discover that one interesting feature of this book is the realization of how much Western Jungians are implicitly or explicitly inspired by Eastern traditions – including Japanese – and, at the same time, how Jungian psychology – the product of a Western author – has been widely accepted and developed by Japanese scholars and clinicians. Scholars and students of Jungian studies will find many new ideas, theories and practices gravitating around Jungian psychology, generated by the encounter between East and West. Another feature that will be appealing to many readers is that this book may represent an introduction to Japanese philosophy and clinical techniques related to Jungian psychology.




Jung's Red Book for Our Time: Searching for Soul In the 21st Century


Book Description

Do we, like Jung, need to leave the spirit of the time and follow the spirit of the depths, to call out "my soul, where are you?" through the windows of our now post-modern homes? We live in a digital world of incredible virtual inter-connectedness but at the same time fragmented and divided on many levels, including the psychological. The pace of life is rapid and ever accelerating. The spirit of the time is flux: It twitters. There is no sense of coherence in the whole. The guidance of a transcendent North Star is invisible to the naked eye of consciousness. Our existential crisis is not about the individual alone. It infects the entire human world, like the Covid-19 pandemic. Wars between cultural brothers and sisters, increasingly dire effects of climate change, economic disruptions, hunger, migration-these conditions affect everyone on the planet. Is there a spirit of the depths that can take us through this Inferno, perhaps toward the emergence of a meaningful narrative that can stabilize the global community and provide a collective sense of "supreme meaning?" This is the search for soul in the 21st Century.




Jungian Perspectives on Indeterminate States


Book Description

In Jungian Perspectives on Indeterminate States: Betwixt and Between Borders, Elizabeth Brodersen and Pilar Amezaga bring together leading international contributors to analyse and interpret the psychological impact of contemporary border crossing - both literally and figuratively. Each chapter assesses key themes such as migration, culture, gender and identity formation, through a Jungian lens. All the contributors sensitively explore how creative forms can help mitigate the trauma experienced when one is forced to leave safety and enter unknown territory, and examines the specific role of indeterminacy, liminality and symbols as transformers at the border between culture, race and gender. The book asks whether we are able to hold these indeterminate states as creative liminal manifestations pointing to new forms, integrate the shadow ‘other’ as potential, and allow sufficient cross-border migration and fertilization as permissible. It makes clear that societal conflict represents a struggle for recognition and identity and elucidates the negative experiences of authoritarian structures attached to disrespect and misrecognitions. This interdisciplinary collection will offer key insight for Jungian analysts in practice and in training, psychotherapists, anthropologists, political and cultural theorists, and postgraduate researchers in psychosocial studies. It will also be of great interest to readers interested in migration, sexuality, gender, race and ethnicity studies.




Contemplating Climate Change


Book Description

Global climate change policy has failed us all, but what is the reasoning that underlies this failure? Why are some people more disposed to reflect on confounding issues like climate change, recognise the danger, seek a solution, and act accordingly, more than others? This book is concerned with how we think and act in response to climate change. In particular, faced with deep uncertainty and the multifaceted complexities that characterise the climate change conundrum, how the various actors and institutions involved in the policymaking process make decisions that both aid and impede in the design and implementation of climate change policy. This book focuses on how these actors and institutions frame and use the knowledge available – under conditions of competing ideologies and interests – and synthesise it to form often-disparate mental models, or worldviews, that inspire them to become firm advocates of meaningful climate change action or indeed, sceptics that continue to downplay the threat, and hence the need for urgency. By exploring how we think about climate change and the disparate mental models we hold as a result, this book explores why humankind has thus far failed in its endeavours to solve the climate change problem. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, environmental policy and environmental psychology.




Counseling and Coaching in Times of Crisis and Transition


Book Description

Counseling and Coaching in Times of Crisis and Transition explores how threats and challenges caused by rapid social and technological changes require counselors and coaches to rethink their usual ways of working, and, in some cases, even abandon their traditional theoretical anchors. The authors of this forward-thinking book argue that practitioners who aim to help others strengthen their resources can no longer afford to wait for clients in their offices or offer them protected, objective and neutral professional relationships. Contributors from around the world argue that there is a real need for new counseling and coaching actions to be delivered in different contexts: counselors and coaches should be able to use heterogeneous languages and interventions, as well as numerous relationship modalities and activities in order to streamline the support that they offer to people in sectors as diverse as health and well-being, life and career design, prevention and community inclusion, work inclusion, and schools. The book provides an evidence-based framework, with numerous counseling and coaching examples that are capable of promoting people’s strengths, whether this be face-to-face, in groups, or online. This book will appeal to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of counseling and coaching, as well as those with an interest in psychological, social and educational science. It should also be essential reading for practitioners and policymakers in a diverse range of contexts, including those working on intervention and support for vulnerable people, non-traditional and disadvantaged students, and people with disabilities.




Corpus Anima


Book Description

Corpus Anima is a collection of previously published essays written for professional Jungian journals about the unity of psyche and soma, spirit and matter, body and soul. There are also two chapters of more personal reflections, previously unpublished, including a series of articles on the mid-Atlantic Azorean Archipelago. The essays on psyche and soma come from the direct experience of their unity. We live, life moves, at the confluence of these polarities of spirit and matter, body and soul, where through the capacity to hold contradiction and paradox we can become whole. Included in this collection is a published essay (Routledge) on the Portuguese poet and writer, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). His particular paradoxical expression of the soul and its life in the world is radically inspiring. The lines below are written on his tomb in Lisbon, resting in the same national monument with Vasco de Gama (c. 1460s-1524), world oceanic explorer. Pessoa was an explorer of inner worlds. He is, posthumously, a national treasure. I am nothing. I shall always be nothing. I cannot want to be anything. But I have in me all the dreams of the world. Cedrus Monte, PhD, is a Jungian Analyst, graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute in Switzerland (1995) where she now resides. She is originally from Northern California. Her roots lie there, even her heart; but even deeper roots, soul roots, lie in the Azores and Madeira, both autonomous island regions of Portugal. An uprooted wanderer of many lands, she has grounded herself as much as possible in the one constant earth, the body.