Implicit States of Connectivity in the Clinical Practice of Jungian Psychoanalysis and Andean Shamanism

This paper will describe the spiritual states of “oneness” experienced by Andean shamans in relation to oceanic states in early infancy and working with trauma in Jungian analysis. The author’s work exploring implicit energetic experience with Andean shamans will be referenced with comparisons made to depth psychology, in both theory and in practice. Definitions of Q’echua terms describing different psychic meditative states that Andean shamans enter into will be provided as Andean medicine people have a much more developed language for conceptualizing these experiences. A clinical vignette will be presented that demonstrates how the spaces of implicit connection that occur between an analyst and analysand in the analytic setting can be a catalyst for healing.     

Working Online During the Contemporary COVID-19 Pandemic1

Within the psychoanalytic school there has been substantial and ongoing debate about the efficacy of teleanalysis. However, as a result of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the online work with which the Jungian analytic community has now had to engage, this paper initially focuses on analysts’ actual experiences of working by teleanalysis. These experiences highlight a range of issues like “Zoom fatigue”, “online disinhibition”, dissonance, confidentiality, the frame and working with new patients. Alongside these issues, there were ample experiences by analysts of both productive psychotherapy apace with analytic work involving transference and countertransference phenomena, all indicating that a genuine and good enough analytic process can occur with teleanalysis. An overview of the research and literature both prior to the pandemic and as a result of it, confirms the validity of these experiences so long as analysts are cognizant of the specifics of such an online modality. Conclusions to do with the question, “what have we learned?”, alongside training, ethics and supervision issues are subsequently discussed.     

Collective Trauma,Implicit Memories,the Body,and Active Imagination in Jungian Analysis1

This presentation attempts to show the healing potential underlying the inclusion of the patient's body in the analytic process, while honouring and revisiting the understanding of the psyche-body connection described by Jung in his early work. In addition, the author offers reflections on the impact of collective trauma whose aftermath, among others, has been the disappearance of thousands of people, consequently breaking the family genealogy, leaving hundreds of children stripped of their roots and true identity. Referencing clinical material, the author describes how the process of translation and integration—from the sensory-perceptual to the conceptual-symbolic—can be halted on account of collective trauma occurring at an early stage in development. Moreover, it is shown how the potential of the archetype or image schema, linked to the somatic-affective early experiences encoded as implicit memories, can be recovered, when Embodied Active Imagination is included in the analytic work. The patient's bodily gestures and somatic experience may bridge the gap between the preverbal-implicit knowledge and the emergence of emotions and images that allow for the creation of a new symbolic narrative.     

Devouring and Asphyxia: Paradigm Crisis,the Depletion of the Hero and Complex Thought1

This article deals with the profound paradigm crisis that affects modernity and threatens the destiny of humanity. This crisis results from the lack of perspective offered by the paradigm of modernity with its emphasis on unilateral rationality, scientific objectivity, and exploitation of natural resources by a hyper development of an inflated Hero archetype. The emergence of a new paradigm of complexity, C. G. Jung’s complex psychology, and Ameridian perspectivism, may offer new paths to approach these serious problems lived by modern man. A clinical vignette illustrates how complex psychology may also help with individual patients suffering from psychosomatic complaints.     

Working with patients with disruptions in symbolic capacity1

This article focuses on understanding and working with patients who have poorly developed symbolic capacity, or for whom symbolic capacity has been disrupted due to trauma, particularly as it pertains to the use of reverie and interpretation in the analytic process. Many patients who present for Jungian analysis will initially present with deficits in symbolic functioning. This situation results in necessary limitations or modifications in utilizing traditional Jungian techniques such as dream analysis, active imagination, sand tray and other expressive art techniques. The initial phase of analytic work with these patients requires a focus on developing their symbolic capacity before traditional Jungian techniques can be utilized effectively. During the paper Jung's concept of ‘the symbolic attitude’ will be examined as well as the conceptual models of Wilfred Bion and other post-Bionians who outline theories and method for cultivating symbolic capacity and reflective functioning in patients for whom these capacities are impaired or poorly developed.     

When left hands touch: shadow vows and Jung’s quaternity

Is there a connection between the exchange of vows and the fighting and suffering of couples that are unique to the institution of marriage? This essay introduces the concept of Shadow Vows, the unacknowledged assumptions, agreements, and obligations each partner brings to the relationship, which the authors believe are often responsible for longstanding marital discord and strife. The authors ground the existence of shadow vows in Jung’s quaternity, alchemy, typology, archetypal theory, and depth approaches to couple therapy. The essay concludes with a list of themes indicative of shadow vow enactments in clinical work with couples.     

Phenotypic plasticity and archetype: a response to common objections to the biological theory of archetype and instinct

Since Jung’s death in 1961, scholars have attempted to integrate growing biological science data into Jungian concepts such as the collective unconscious, instincts and the archetypes. This enterprise has been challenging due to persistent false dichotomies of gene and environment occasionally arising. Recent works by Roesler (2022a, 2022b) for example, have raised objections to the biological theory of archetypes, but the objections are plagued by such dichotomies. The concept of phenotypic plasticity, however, helps to both avoid this problem as well as bridge the gap between competing theories into a more integrated model with solid biological foundations.     

Jung’s Psychoid Monism

Jung’s final psychoid theory of archetypes was an additional attempt to find a solution to the philosophical problem of how to relate mind and matter. In the following essay Jung’s solution is summarized by a set of 17 theses, and Jung’s philosophy will be called psychoid monism. According to psychoid monism, what ultimately and primarily is, is the psycho-physically neutral domain of instinctual experience. The origin of this view can be traced back to Post-Kantian German Idealism (Schopenhauer, Schelling, Hölderlin), and a systematization of the view requires a dialectic approach and, in particular, contradiction-tolerant dialectic logic.     

An Epistolary Conversation

This written exchange is between a senior and a younger Jungian analyst on issues relevant to the development of analytical psychology throughout the world today. The younger analyst, Stefano Carpani, considers himself a neo-Jungian. He explains to John Beebe, known for post-Jungian contributions to the study of typology, integrity, and gender, how important it is to include sociological perspectives alongside those that stem from the Jungian practice of relational psychoanalysis. The degree to which analysis has become an extended meditation on the relation of individual self-exploration to supra-personal Self-realization is emphasized by both authors, who envision this introspection leading to an expanded inner openness that Carpani has called “absolute freedom.” The authors conclude that absolute freedom is a space of engaged reflection that can permit an informed but individualized approach to the complexities of the world soul today.