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.

  • The Middle Passage

    The Middle Passage

    Many people never pass from childhood to adulthood developmentally, but are overgrown children, and many never pass from the first adulthood into the second, and thus have unlived lives.

  • 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.”

  • The Personal Unconscious

    The Personal Unconscious

    Jung wrote that real therapy begins when the patient sees that it is not his past holding him back, not the fault of his parents any longer, but that he is standing in his own way.

  • 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.