Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, Lisa Marchiano
Eavesdrop on three Jungian analysts as they engage in lively, sometimes irreverent conversations about a wide range of topics as they share what it’s like to see the world through the depth psychological lens provided by Carl Jung. Half of each episode is spent discussing a dream submitted by a listener.
1d ago
✨ The Gift of Dreamwork: Join This Jungian Life Dream School with 10% off from now until December 31st. Just use code HOLIDAY2025 when you purchase Dream School for yourself or as a gift. Learn more and enroll. ----------------------------------------------------- Mortificatio is an alchemical term for the moment a life-organizing identity collapses. We might call it burnout, divorce, depression, retirement shock, institutional betrayal, or a terrifying medical diagnosis. The alchemists called it “death,” and Jungians understand it as part of the psychology of transformation. Read along with the dream HERE . LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! We’d like to take a crack interpreting your dream. If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
Dec 11
✨ The Gift of Dreamwork: Join This Jungian Life Dream School with 10% off from now until December 31st. Just use code HOLIDAY2025 when you purchase Dream School for yourself or as a gift. Learn more and enroll. ----------------------------------------------------- People often mistake denial for stubbornness, self-deception, or moral failure. Denial is actually a primal psychological defense that attempts to regulate which aspects of reality are permitted to reach awareness. Today, we explore how denial operates within Psyche, why it activates powerfully in response to traumatic experiences and addiction, and how it relates to shadow, repression, and dissociation. Denial is a pre-verbal way of titrating overwhelming experiences by making them unthinkable and unsymbolized. The problem is that they are then stored in the subtle body and give rise to a host of symptoms. Programs like AA explicitly confront the denial of consequences by repeatedly sharing painful consequences within the meeting structure. Some psychoanalysts believe denial is the organizing defense in mania and borderline personality disorder. Art, films, analytic metaphors, and dreams can offer representations of the lost experiences, so the unformulated experiences acquire image and language. Denial can be viewed as a benevolent survival strategy, and yet, like most defenses, must be set aside for us to make full contact with ourselves and the world. Read along with the dream HERE. LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! We’d like to take a crack interpreting your dream. If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
Dec 4
✨ The Gift of Dreamwork: Join This Jungian Life Dream School with 10% off from now until December 31st. Just use code HOLIDAY2025 when you purchase Dream School for yourself or as a gift. Learn more and enroll. ----------------------------------------------------- Jung’s translator and editor for the English edition of his Collected Works took it upon himself to alter more than 60% of Jung’s ideas to make the books more marketable. Finally, this will be corrected. Sonu Shamdasani and his team at the Philemon Foundation are meticulously researching Jung’s original documents, and the results will surprise and perhaps even shock us. There was far more to Jung and his insights than we were permitted to know, and all that’s about to change. So, fellow Jungians, hold onto your hats and get ready to meet the real Carl Gustav Jung. Read along with the dream HERE. LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! We’d like to take a crack interpreting your dream. If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
Dec 2
In this free edition of Jung Love, our subscriber bonus content, a Patron asks: "I'm wondering if you can talk about the issue of place: the ability to settle down somewhere, and how this could relate to a mother complex." Support This Jungian Life on Patreon and ask Lisa, Deb, and Joseph your questions for a chance to have them answered on Jung Love.
Nov 27
✨ The Gift of Dreamwork: Join This Jungian Life Dream School with ten percent off from now until the 31st of December. Just use code HOLIDAY2025 when you purchase Dream School for yourself or as a gift. Learn more and enroll. ----------------------------------------------------- A Jungian Look at Gratitude (and Why It Usually Arrives Late) Have you ever suddenly realized, “I never really thanked them for that,” a parent, teacher, mentor, or community that quietly carried you through a hard stretch? Gratitude is a psychological turning point: the moment you grasp that your life rests on the real, sometimes costly efforts of others, and how that realization can shift you out of self-obsession into a larger world of connection and meaning. Today we’ll explore: - How genuine gratitude usually arrives late because we don’t understand what motivates other people, and our empathy is shallow. - The contrast between gratitude and resentment: how resentment can be necessary at times, but becomes toxic when we’re trapped in it. - Gratitude can shift us from a defensive, shut-down stance to an open-hearted, process-oriented way of living. - Why some gifts like life, care, education, protection, and initiation can never be paid back, and how a mature form of gratitude is often paying it forward. - Religious and ritual practices of saying grace, giving thanks, and honoring the dead are ways of recognizing that our lives depend on ongoing acts of generosity and sacrifice. - How gratitude can be a sign of individuation: moving through the world with a heart that stays open to both joy and suffering, and letting experiences change us. If you’re curious about how a simple “thank you” can become a doorway into a soulful life, this episode is for you. Read along with the dream. LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! We’d like to take a crack interpreting your dream. If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
Nov 20
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! Contempt feels like a gut punch. It’s a cold, distancing act that devalues a person even as it avoids solving a real problem. The contemptuous are full of shame, fear, or hurt, so they recreate those feelings in others to evade their own issues. Unlike anger (which tries to correct an injustice), disgust (which avoids what feels contaminating), or hatred (which seeks destruction), contempt asserts superiority and cuts off relatedness. It shows up in eye‑rolling, sarcasm, mockery, and a habit of judging others as beneath one’s standards. Whether you’re struggling to survive it thrown at you, or you’ve been told you unconsciously do it, there is a way to transcend it. Read along with the dream . LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! We’d like to take a crack interpreting your dream. If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
Nov 13
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! Alchemical separatio is the skill of sorting out your mind. You separate what belongs to you—your complexes, habitual triggers, and painful memories--from what is happening in the world around you. In the laboratory of your life, you separate present triggers from older wounds, and literal facts from symbolic meanings. This is part of your essential self-ordering instinct. As you bring more and more of yourself into conscious awareness, a delightful calm will tell you you’re on the right path. Join us and learn how to gain the profound clarity necessary on the path of Individuation. Read along with the dream HERE . LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! We’d like to take a crack interpreting your dream. If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
Nov 6
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them! Lucid dreaming is an interesting ego state when we are dreaming and regain full self-awareness. Being awake in the dream world can be useful, but imposing a rigid agenda can undermine the Dream Maker’s attempts to educate and help us. Each dream is crafted to incrementally expand our awareness and acceptance of unconscious factors we need in order to grow. When we wake inside a dream, we can lose track of that important attitude and may use the dream as our playground—most people try to fly and miss significant opportunities. If we can achieve a non-grasping clarity, lucidity can deepen our inner work by enabling us to engage dream figures with the full measure of our curiosity. Researchers have various suggestions for increasing the frequency of Lucid Dreams, and ancient traditions like Dream Yoga help the aspirant learn about their mental structures. Attaining access to the inner worlds is similar to Jung’s Active Imagination and can yield comparable or even better results. This is possible if we adopt a proper dream ethic: respect the dream as an autonomous process and use lucidity to inquire and relate, not to dominate. Read along with the dream HERE. Find the books we reference HERE. LOOK & GROW Join THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL Do you have a topic you want us to cover? WE NEED YOUR HELP! Become a patron to keep TJL running. We've got totally NEW MERCH! We’d like to take a crack interpreting your dream. If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.