Dreaming for the World: A Jungian Study of Dreams During the COVID-19 Pandemic1

This project explores what dreams might reveal about the collective psyche’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in its first year, before the development of vaccines. A brief survey, distributed to Jungian colleagues and organizations, and to various social media sites, invited people to submit online a dream related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Four hundred and thirty-six dreams were submitted. Forty additional Russian dreams were collected and submitted by Russian colleagues. Using qualitative research methods based on phenomenological hermeneutics, the researchers categorized and counted the range of COVID imagery. In addition, the researchers describe a range of psychic responses to the pandemic, including horror, grief, sickness, social discord, and violence, but also images of healing and transformation, increased sense of community, and spiritual renewal. Several healing nightmares are presented. Healing alchemical and anima/animus imagery is described. Twelve dreams are introduced and presented. It is concluded that the collective psyche, rooted in the Self, is a healing resource for social and cultural trauma. This project supports Beradt’s (1968) inspirational study of dreaming in Nazi Germany, as well as recent studies of COVID-related dreams and recent publications on the social nature of dreaming.     

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.     

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.     

Cooperation or Tension? Dyadic Coping in Cystic Fibrosis

Following a rise in the life expectancy of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients, many adults with CF form couple relationships. Yet, dyadic coping has not been previously examined in people with CF. This study examined how adults with CF and their partners cope as a couple with the illness, and what meanings each partner and the couple as a unit attribute to the experience. Seventeen adult CF patients and their partners participated in separate semi‐structured in‐depth interviews. Two main patterns of dyadic coping with CF were identified as follows: cooperation and tension. For couples in cooperation, the marital relationship served as a resource for adaptive coping. These couples were characterized by similarities in their perception of the place of CF in their lives and of their roles in the marital relationship. Couples in tension described the couple relationship as strained by difficulty of accepting the disease, proliferation of negative emotions, and a sense of burden and loneliness in the process of coping. Findings point to the importance of mutual empathy, clear and accepted division of roles between the partners, and open communication for facilitating coping as a couple.     

Maintenance of Relationship and Individual Functioning Gains Following Online Relationship Programs for Low‐Income Couples

Initial evidence suggests that gains in relationship functioning from brief, web‐based programs are maintained through one year following the intervention; however, whether these results generalize to a low‐income sample is unclear. Furthermore, previous research from in‐person couple therapy suggests there may be different shapes of maintenance slopes for behavioral versus acceptance‐based techniques. This study contacted 668 individuals who enrolled in online behavioral (ePREP) or acceptance‐based (OurRelationship) programs one year following completion of the program. Multilevel modeling was used to examine linear and quadratic rates of change in the year following the online intervention as well as total amount of change from pretreatment to 12‐month follow‐up for both relationship and individual functioning. The majority of couples who responded continued to be in a relationship with the same partner (68.3%). Examinations of relationship functioning indicated couples in both programs maintained their gains over follow‐up (i.e., no significant linear or quadratic changes), with medium‐to‐large within‐group effect sizes from pre‐ to one‐year follow‐up. There were no significant differences in relationship outcomes between OurRelationship and ePREP. Similarly, examinations of individual functioning outcomes indicated couples maintained their gains over follow‐up or continued to improve. In total, couples experienced small‐to‐medium within‐group effect sizes from pretreatment to one‐year follow‐up, with larger effects for individuals who were initially distressed. These results suggest that online programs create lasting change for low‐income couples in relationship and individual functioning, with minimal differences between behavioral and acceptance‐based orientations.     

A preliminary sketch of a Jungian socioanalysis – an emerging theory combining analytical psychology,complexity theories,sociological theories,socio- and psycho-analysis,group analysis and affect theories1

This paper presents a preliminary sketch of what we have termed a Jungian socioanalysis – an emerging theory combining analytical psychology, complexity theories, sociological theories, socio- and psycho-analysis, group analysis and affect theories. Our assumption is that Jungian theory and practice need to attend to and focus more on social contexts, sociality and the influence of societal developments. But also, on the other hand, that analytical psychology, primarily Jung’s theory of individuation and the transcendent function as well as the broad complexity perspective of his theory of psyche, can be extended to a ‘socio’ and not just a ‘psycho’ perspective. The paper presents five foundational assumptions for a Jungian socioanalysis, with the following headings: 1) A Jungian socioanalysis calls for a complex psychology; 2) (Un)consciousness is social and sociality has a dimension of (un)consciousness; 3) A Jungian socioanalysis explores social fields ‘from within’ by smaller groups; 4) A Jungian socioanalysis enables and is enabled by emerging metaphors and affect-imagery; 5) Socio-cultural fields have an impulse toward individuation. This is the first of two papers in the present edition of the journal – the second paper gives socio-clinical illustrations of our thesis in this paper.     

Psychosis,symbol, affectivity 1: etiopathogenesis and treatment through analytical psychology

This is the first of two papers concerning our study into an integrated approach to psychotic disorders, conducted at the University of Palermo’s Psychiatry Unit Polyclinic over approximately 15 years. Here we will explore and reflect upon the acute psychotic condition mainly from a theoretical and conceptual perspective, while in the second paper we will explore the clinical perspective. From the point of view of psychopathology, and in the light of C.G. Jung’s conceptualization of analytical psychology, as well as calling on contributions from other authors from the systemic-relational and post-psychoanalytic field, we will clarify the ideas developed over these last few years by our team. From a more speculative perspective we will advance new interpretive hypotheses in an attempt to thoroughly understand the nature of the psychotic condition, both on a psychodynamic relational and a neuroscientific level. The paper describes how we revised our understanding of psychosis from a brain disease to a process aimed at the rearrangement of psychic functioning, as anticipated by John Weir Perry nearly 40 years ago.     

Adverse caregiving in early life: The trauma and deprivation distinction in young children

Knowledge and understanding about the impact of cumulative adverse experiences on the health and wellbeing of children, adolescents, and adults has rapidly expanded over the past 30 years. Despite the invaluable attention and support this proliferation has drawn to the importance of early childhood experiences, we believe that it is time to move beyond broad indices of risk and toward more specific and individualized understanding of how risk exposures are linked to clinical outcomes in young children. Within infant and early childhood mental health, there is a need for greater specificity in linking adverse caregiving experiences in early life to psychopathology in children. We highlight a framework distinguishing experiences of trauma from experiences of deprivation and use the examples of posttraumatic stress disorder and reactive attachment disorder to demonstrate how greater specificity in our understanding of early adverse caregiving can lead to more accurate and targeted diagnosis and treatment for young children. Both researchers and clinicians benefit from an approach to gain a greater appreciation of the links between specific types of experiences and outcomes in the children that we serve.     

Processing trauma in psychoanalysis in ‘real’ time and in dreams: the convergence of past,present and future during COVID-19

In the current collective unrest, we and our analysands are living in real time and need vantage points from which to make meaning, as subjective experience of time is collapsing. For many analysands, the past is being relived in the present, with no imaginable future. During the time of COVID-19, dreams are providing a valuable mechanism in working with atemporal emotional trauma, previously uncontextualized. Dream metaphor can provide a transitional space to move around in within the analytic framework. This paper explores a variety of dreams from individual analysands demonstrating different ways of conceptualizing personal and collective experience, bridging between the past, present, and future. Parallels between feeling states related to the current condition and unprocessed implicit memories from the past will be examined, as a vehicle for processing past trauma. Dreams expressing current states of dread for an unimaginable future, as well compensatory dreams showing a hopeful vision of the future will be considered.