Category: Soul & Symbol: Perspectives in Depth Psychology

topographia

Depth psychology is the study of the soul in its wildest, most honest form. Here, we look through the lens of Soul and Symbol to move beyond clinical labels, beholding the dreams, archetypes, and hidden complexes that pulse beneath the surface of conscious awareness. Drawing from the wells of Jung, Freud, and other mythic traditions, these perspectives bridge the gap between our daily routines and the profound mysteries of the inner world.

  • How Uncommonly Difficult

    How Uncommonly Difficult

    Any large company composed of wholly admirable persons has the morality and intelligence of an unwieldy, stupid, and violent animal. The bigger the organization, the more unavoidable is its immorality and blind stupidity. C. G. Jung (1977)

  • Carnival

    Carnival

    The carnival is, among other things, a human manifestation and celebration of the orgiastic urge. It is what Cirlot calls a “call to chaos.”

  • MapQuest

    MapQuest

    People like to know where they’re going before they go somewhere. We use our maps for even the simplest excursions. There’s something comforting about knowing where you’re going, isn’t there?

  • The Slime of the Small World

    The Slime of the Small World

    These depressions, anxieties, compulsions, headaches, knots in the stomach, irritations, petty and not-so-petty arguments—that’s where the gold is. This is because the only way the psyche has of speaking its distress is through our symptoms.

  • Come As You Are

    Come As You Are

    One of the reasons why people abandon their true selves is because their parents and other authorities—teachers, other adults, older siblings, etc.—tell them they should.

  • On Being Whole

    On Being Whole

    Those who have worked on themselves enough to be comfortable with who they are […] do not need or ask to be understood by others. The appropriate attitude for a long-term working relationship is not understanding, but acceptance

  • From the Darkness

    From the Darkness

    Every break, every dissolution, everything that comes to an end after a time is part of the inner process of transformation. What changes outside changes the inside.

  • Tending the Flame

    Tending the Flame

    When alchemists failed at their projects, it was because they let their fire go out. The light, heat, and warmth went out of their work because they grew too weary to tend the flame.

  • The Affliction of the Soul

    The Affliction of the Soul

    The beginning of anything new portends eventual difficulty for the pilgrim. We begin with hope but often lose it along the way, for what begins with romance inevitably ends with reality.

  • Let Your Light So Shine

    Let Your Light So Shine

    Some sort of clarity wanted to break forth in me, a spirit of truth where cloudy, unclean elements formerly prevailed.