This Jungian Life Podcast

This week, to mark the publication in paperback of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams, Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart interpret a selection of short dreams sent in by listeners.

Many of us dismiss short dreams or fragments of dreams as unworthy of our time. We await the arrival of epic, cinematic dreams, while perhaps overlooking the gold that can be found in more “ordinary” dreams.

Honoring short dreams by writing them down and spending time with them can yield powerful insights. It can also work as an incentive to your unconscious, helping you remember more dreams, and more of your dreams. The time you spend on fragments and snippets strengthens connection with the unconscious.

We hope you enjoy today’s discussion of dreams: an overfed fish raising big relationship questions, a meeting with Greek mythology’s star-crossed lover Thisbe, a harsh landscape of volcanic rocks and blood, a bleached Christ figure, and a biting spider at a crossroads in the dreamer’s life.

Buy the paperback version of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams

Read the dreams we analyze on our website.

Connect With This Jungian Life

Download our free ⁠Dream Recall Meditation Guide⁠.

Check out our Dream School.

Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel.

Follow This Jungian Life on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Every archetype has a dual aspect: light and dark, and ‘mother’ as devouring and destructive is the dark side of this ever-present, over-arching archetype. The mother’s life-giving, bright aspect is counterbalanced by her engulfing, attacking aspect. The devouring mother is present across cultures in myth, fairy tale, religion, and literature, and most of us have at least had glimpses of her in our experiences as children or later, as parents.

In this episode Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart explore Erich Neumann’s The Great Mother and his and Jung’s concept of the unconscious as devouring mother.

Drawing on myths of the Aztec goddess Tlaltecuhtli, the Hindu goddess Kali, the tale of Snow White, and the film Black Swan, we examine the archetypal image of the mother who nourishes and devours, protects and possesses.

We also look at how the devouring mother shows up in ourselves and in our own parents. This dynamic can present as enmeshment, helicopter parenting, fear-based control, or an inability to allow our children to separate and become fully themselves.

Read the dream we analyze in full on our website.

Connect With This Jungian Life

We’re analyzing your short dreams or dream fragments to celebrate the publication of the paperback of our book, Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams: ⁠⁠send your short dream here⁠⁠.

Pre-order the paperback edition of ⁠⁠Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams.⁠⁠

Take a look at ⁠⁠This Jungian Life Dream School⁠⁠, our online course in Jungian dream analysis.

Follow This Jungian Life on ⁠⁠Instagram.

In this final episode of our series on Jungian alchemy, we explore coniunctio, the union of opposites that gives rise to new wholeness.

There are many ways in which we might encounter coniunctio in outer life. We might fall in love, form a partnership, or undertake transformative work with a psychotherapist. In some meaningful, mysterious way, two become one, giving us incremental tastes of transformation.

At the psychological level, work with one’s shadow represents the first stage of coniunctio. When we recognize and reclaim aspects of ourselves that have been split off or rejected, we begin to heal inner division and move toward wholeness.

We also discuss the sacred union, the second layer of coniunctio, in which we strive to achieve an inner marriage, creating new vitality, creativity, and psychic spaciousness.

Ultimately, coniunctio parallels Jung’s concept of individuation, the lifelong process of becoming whole by integrating the hidden, conflicting, and unrealized dimensions of the self and achieving a relationship with the greater Self.

Read the dream we analyze in full on our website.

Connect With This Jungian Life

We’re collecting your short dreams (under 3 sentences): ⁠send your short dream here⁠.

Pre-order the paperback edition of ⁠Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams.⁠

Take a look at ⁠This Jungian Life Dream School⁠, our online course in Jungian dream analysis.

Follow This Jungian Life on ⁠Instagram.

Erotic dreams are extremely common. We may experience them as pleasurable, exciting and moving, or as disturbing and upsetting. It can be hard to talk about erotic dreams, even in therapy, as they insist on attending to secret satisfactions and shames.

There is relatively little written on the subject from a Jungian perspective, so this week we dive in and discuss how to work with your erotic dreams. We also analyze some of the many dreams our listeners sent in.

Erotic dreams may be about connection, union and intimacy, or confront us with shadow figures and situations that show us what we deny or disobey. They may also offer us potent images of unexplored desires.

Join us as we interpret four erotic dreams: a hedonistic experience in a hotel pool, an unsettling meeting with a repellent music teacher, a ritualistic sauna experience, and an unwanted kitchen encounter that invites the dreamer to reclaim her own desires.

Read the dreams we analyze in full on our website.

Connect With This Jungian Life

We’re collecting your short dreams or dream fragments to celebrate the publication of the paperback of Dream Wise: send your short dream here.

Pre-order the paperback edition of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams.

Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis.

Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram.

In his new book, The End of the World, author and psychoanalyst JON MILLS considers the question of why humanity seems bent on self-destruction.

We face famine, climate change, obscene wealth disparities, and threats of global war and nuclear annihilation. Yet the majority of us seem to prefer living either in denial, or in irrational, active opposition to reading the writing on the wall.

This week Jungian analyst and co-host Lisa Marchiano interviews Jon about how we face up to impending catastrophe. Is there a viable alternative to the current situation in which we seem to be indulging a collective death wish, careening unconsciously toward a dangerous precipice?

Lisa and Jon discuss Jung’s emphasis on doing individual shadow work and how myth and fairy tale - a distillation of human nature and wisdom - might offer a spark of hope. If we can recognize and confront evil and hold the tension of opposites we can start a conversation with our shadow.

Follow Up for This Episode

Read Jon Mills’ new book, End of the World: Civilization and Its Fate.
Visit Jon Mills’ website.
Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel.
Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide.