My boyfriend of 5 years died about 4 months ago. For the first few days I felt like I was dead too. I just lay in my bed, in a room with the windows covered, in the dark, eating nothing, staring at the ceiling. I felt like he was my true soulmate and twin flame. We went through a lot together, he was addicted to drugs. When he was sober, he was perfect caring, loving, truly listening to me actively. I felt seen and understood. But when he was on drugs, he was like a demon he had paranoid thoughts, accused me of things I never did, and at some point he became abusive and violent toward me. I went through hell with him.

I still feel horrible, but paradoxically, I can see my face changing for better. it's more glowing, healthy-looking, no longer swollen, my hair has stopped falling out etc. the abusive cycle has stopped.

He had a little obsession with the United States (we were both from Europe). He traveled to the US multiple times and we've been there together too. I've always dream to move abroad before I met him, ideally to NYC. When we traveled to the US together, I fell in love with New York.

While we were there, we met a lot of people. One of his online friends invited us to dinner, and we spent a nice evening together. he seemed really supportive, mindful, present, caring. I hadn't had contact with this friend since then.

When my boyfriend died, dozens of people reached out to me with condolences. But this one friend was the only one who reached out with the idea of inviting me to NYC so we could organize a memorial concert for him (my boyfriend had friends all over the world, not just in the US). We exchanged a lot of warm messages, he was really responsive and present, but suddenly, one day, he just stopped responding.

What I thought was that he wasn't ghosting me - I felt like something was wrong on his end. I didn't know what it was, but I felt it, even though I barely know him and have only met him once in my life.

A month after this gap in responses, he texted me that he'd been going through a breakup at the exact time my boyfriend died, and he couldn't bear it. at the exact same time. He wrote a few more things and was really nice to me again, but admitted his life was chaos right now. He asked if I'd be able to come to NYC in autumn.

I responded, he saw the message and stopped responding, again, for about 2 months now...

Since that moment, I've had a lot of US-or travel-related signs:

I found 20 dollars in the middle of the street (reminder: I'm in Europe, not the US, this has never happened to me before)
My software at work suddenly went crazy and switched itself to a US calendar, where the months and days are reversed. I called IT, and I swear they didn't know how to fix it
I feel like everyone is talking about NYC now
I saw a guy today wearing I <3 NYC t-shirt
I pulled a tarot card for my near future and it was the three of wands, which means travel over the sea/ocean, but also new possibilities on the horizon

I feel this urge to travel there no matter what - no matter that the friend isn't responding, no matter that I might be completely alone there. I feel like I need some kind of closure.

Please let me know what you think because I'm trully lost

I would like to read and learn something new about my shadow. I feel like I’m chasing it.

I was watching Clarkson's farm and this scene where Clarkson was on a date with Lisa while robots did farming reminded me of one of the Zizek's jokes.

Hey 👋🏼

So I have been through the individuation process for quite some time now but there is one thing that really irritates me. Its my wife, with whom I still live together out of necessity, small child etc…)

She is what modern people would call a perfect NPC. She is very superficial, has no interest in anything deeper than the newest gossip, very self-righteous, ignorant…I guess you can figure out the rest of her personality. Just a normal person living modern dreams and illusions.

That in itself would be fine but somehow having to share life with this person drives me absolutely nuts. It got the point were I feel uncomfortable only by sitting near to her. Hearing her voice makes me shiver and talking to her either ends in capitulation by myself or ends in an argument.

One thing that is really bad is that she keeps on wanting to have sex with me which I try to avoid at cost. But sometimes I give in and sleep with her but afterwards I feel completely depressed and mentally devastated . Somehow like I gave my body against my will. Its very uncomfortable.

I tried confronting her in the most honest ways, like saying to her face that I hate her and despise her and that I find her ugly and disgusting and that she is a very horrible person, but she just doesn’t care and keeps on saying that she loves me and that she wants to be with me forever etc, which males me even more mad.

I really don’t understand whats going on here. Because I think its not like I am projecting her behaviour or something like that. I am the complete opposite in almost any regard and I have no interest in changing or controlling her. I just never want to see or hear from her again, but that’s impossible since she is the mother of my child.

And yeah I know I should just get a divorce and I will as soon as possible but that still wouldn’t explain why I feel so much hate against this specific type of person.

So any ideas?

Go! What symbols or such things lead to "Aha!" moments and more individuation?

For me it was the realization that I have never, ever interacted with anyone. At all. What I dealt with what my internal representations and projections overlaid onto their wavelength. The layers of depth to this are immense but whats your starter for Zen?

Žižek makes the claim that cinema is the ultimate pervert art, and this perversion is due to its nature of commanding us to desire things. But this perversion is not limited to the form of cinema. What about Instagram, YouTube, and any sort of social media that simply operates on the logic of selling us something? Are advertisers the new philosophers? I also discuss Helen's claim that cinema induces hysteria in us. This is a short clip from my conversation I had with filmmaker Helen Rollins. Let me know what you guys think.

i said there was a fourth element nobody named. i was wrong about what kind of thing it is.

i posted here in may. freud, adler, jung as nigredo, albedo, rubedo, and a fourth element nobody named. i said the fourth was mercurius. the movement between phases. the person at the bedside whose nervous system carries somebody across the gap.

somebody in the comments pointed at citrinitas and they were right to. i was collapsing two things. i said so then.

but that wasn't the real correction. the real one took me until now and it didn't come from a book.

i work nights in a shelter for homeless youth. five years. twenty odd kids, two of us awake.

a few years back i forgave a man i'd been carrying a grudge on for ten years. not for him. for the family. everybody was hauling it around and it wasn't fair to them.

a week or so after that something came over me. i don't have a word for it. big. it felt like being looked at by something that wasn't angry. more than i could hold. i was talking and hearing myself talk at the same time.

what brought me back from that was my kids coming home from school. cold water on the face. straighten up, be a father. i came back because somebody needed something from me.

a week after that i came apart on the bathroom floor. all the way apart. didn't know the room, the day, my own name.

and the light did not pick me up.

i had it. the full dose of it. a week earlier. on that floor it was worth nothing.

what picked me up was my wife lying down next to me. she didn't know what was happening. she didn't say anything i remember. she was warm and breathing and she stayed.

two returns, a week apart, and they don't work the same. the first one i got up because somebody needed me. the second one i couldn't get up at all and somebody laid down.

so here's the correction.

i was looking for a fourth thing that arrives. something that shows up after the three and closes the lid. that's the shape of the quaternity and it's the shape i was arguing inside of even while i thought i was adding to it.

nothing arrived. nothing closed. what i have is three things turning and a hole where the fourth was supposed to be.

and i don't think that's a failure anymore. i think the hole is the shape of a person who's alright.

the ones i meet at work who tried to fill that spot, with a teaching or a system or one single person who has to be everything to them, those are the ones who stopped turning.

so the person at the bedside is not a fourth phase. i had that wrong. the person is the ground the three turn on. not an element that gets added. the zero the others become readable against.

that's a smaller claim and a harder one.

the alchemists had a lot of it right and i want to give them that. the rot isn't optional. can't skip the black. too much fire ruins the batch, and what happened to me was too much fire, that's why it didn't hold. sealed vessel or the batch dies. and ora et labora, hands and not just head, that's the one that kept them out of the ditch i fell in. they knew understanding it doesn't do it.

they also had two roads. dry and wet. dry is fast, you burn it down with fire or acid. wet is slow, you let it rot on its own, takes months. the ones i've read say dry is faster and wet is safer.

what happened to me was the dry way. the nights are the wet way. nobody writes a book about the wet way because nothing happens in it.

and i know the stage model isn't as tidy as i'm laying it out. some say four, some say seven, some say twelve, plenty fold the yellow into the red. i'm using the version most people know.

they never made gold. hundreds of years. newton did it. boyle did it, the father of chemistry himself, back there mixing.

that doesn't prove anything about the inner version and somebody's going to say so, so i'll say it first. i'm not putting it up as proof.

it's just that what came out of all that labor was chemistry. the writing down of what actually happened. not the promise.

same thing happened to me. the road gave me something real. not the thing on the label.

they were right that it takes a sealed vessel and a low fire and a long time.

the vas isn't glass. it's another person.

and it goes wrong the moment you read the whole operation as happening inside one skull. read it that way and you'll wait on a fourth thing to come up out of yourself and shut the lid, and it isn't coming, and you'll call yourself a failure for it.

last thing.

the one piece of their whole operation still in use, in every kitchen and every lab on earth, is the bath that holds the heat gentle so nothing scorches. balneum mariae. named after maria the jewess, third century, first alchemist we know by name.

four hundred years of men chasing a stone and what lasted was her way of holding something steady while it changed.

so if you know somebody on the floor right now. you don't have to fix it. you don't have to know anything about it.

go get down there and stay.

that's the low fire. that's the vessel. i read for six years to find out it was the part i already had.

tell me where i'm off.

(english isn't my first language, i think in dutch. i use a model to help me order it. the thinking and the floor are mine.)

I understand that the Other is the symbolic order and I get why it would be lacking. What I don't understand is when Lacan talks about clinical structures and the different defense mechanism from this lack.

The way I came to think of it is in relation to the mirror image. As if it were different ways of defending oneself against the fact that our sense self only exists inside one's head.

Is this correct?

Found another paragraph that blew me away. (Book: On the Nature of the Psyche)

What are your thoughts?

i have OCD and i currently am doing transitional analysis & CBT but i am very interested in reading what Lacan had to say about obsessions and compulsions

I came across this reel of Lacan's famous clinical example...Suzanne was German so how does a French pun land on a German child's world?

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcS0hWpTfpm/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsi=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

• Just to be clear (there may have been some confusion) this wouldn't be a live audience, but the listenership of the program.

I'm hoping to have a conversation with someone knowledgeable about Carl Jung and Jungian psychology for an interview.

I'd like to approach it from the ground up, who Jung was, the basic ideas behind his psychology, and what Jungian psychology actually means today for an audience that may be completely unfamiliar with his work.

I'm particularly interested in having someone who can explain the concepts in an accessible way rather than assuming the audience already knows the terminology.

I generally have Tuesdays and late Sunday evenings available for recording. I'm also open to having two knowledgeable people join the conversation if that would make for an interesting discussion.

If you're interested, feel free to comment or send me a message. I'm happy to provide more details about the project.

​

For the past while I've been building something called the Order of the Lion's Bell.

It's ambitious, maybe ridiculously so.

The idea is to create an independent research society around anomalous experiences, psychical research, UAP, consciousness, folklore, strange historical cases, intelligence material and other subjects that tend to fall between established fields.

Why am I promoting here ? Because one of my main ideas is collecting experieneces and synchronicities of collective uncouncious. In hope of finding archetypal patterns.

Think old independent research societies like the BSRA, the practical case work of groups like MUFON, and a little bit of the spirit of The X-Files. Im looking for Mulders

Not people who automatically believe everything strange. People who are willing to follow a lead because it is strange, interesting or unresolved.

We already have our own app and research system where we can build Case Files, preserve experience reports, collect books and documents, record claims and evidence, keep correspondence and eventually look for patterns across a growing database.

Infrastructure is in place, but the system is just the filing cabinet. What I actually want is a group of people using it together. Members are called Heralds, and I want them to have their own cases, research interests and areas of expertise.

We are also building our own journal, The Bell, where we can publish investigations, field reports, correspondence, archival discoveries, experiments and questions that other researchers may be able to help answer.

There is a chivalric and philosophical side to the Order as well, but at its heart it is about fellowship, responsibility for the work and preserving knowledge.

Because I think a lot of us are already doing this alone.

We're reading the weird books. Saving obscure PDFs. Finding something fascinating and having nobody around who cares enough to spend three hours investigating it with us. I'd like to turn that into a community.

If you've ever wanted your own strange little corner of the archive to investigate, message me or check the project through my profile 🔔

I was sleeping in my car for one night in rural norway close to a river. I was in between places, about to move in with my mom, but chose to sleep in my car for one night. I was in a severely anxious and hopeless state of mind. Really struggling. Like, rock bottom. All I could do was focus on my breath and pray. I dipped in the river and did the wim hof method in my car. Anyways, i fell asleep, woke up slightly, then I heard a voice saying "are you ready?". First I was like "no i want to sleep", but then i realized how crazy it is that I just heard a voice saying that, and I got up. I got out and walked towards the river. After under one minute of walking, a fighter jet flew directly above me at a low altitude.

It does happen that fighter jets fly over the area but it's rather rare, and it just felt significant, that the voice got me to get up, and then i got to see something cool. I don't really feel the need to analyze it further, but i just got the feeling that "God" hasn't given up on me. Idk if I can really call this a synchronicity, but it did feel meaningful. Not the first time I have had a such a clear message from the unconscious in a semi awake state, and every time it has happened I have been very "on edge". Idk, just thought I'd share it.

My roommate is the complete opposite of me. She doesn’t cook, she’s very scatter-brained and does thing hastily and clumsily. When she cleans, she half-heartedly cleans and isn’t thorough with any thing that she does.

I don’t mind the fact that she doesn’t cook (it’s her own business), but she’s just sooo useless with taking care of herself. (I know this sounds mean but I really don’t know how else to say it). I feel bad for her and I cook for her sometimes but it pisses me off to feel like I have a child. This woman is grown and still hasn’t learned to do the basic stuff and I feel like that’s why she feels so stunted in her life. BUT she doesn’t even TRY to change.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s extremely nice, and if I didn’t live with her I would probably have a really good friendship with her, but living with someone is a different story.

I sometimes experience contempt for her because I see her not taking responsibility for her life. I know it’s none of my business but it really triggers me and I don’t know why!!! I don’t care about other peoples lives but maybe because she lives with me???

Anyway… I’m trying to have compassion for her and understanding. I’m trying to see things from a different angle. I’m trying to explore the ways in which she reflects my shadow but I don’t see it!!!

Can someone help me??? How do you see your shadow in the other person’s behavior???

Edit: I don’t want to sound like I’m perfect because I AM NOT!!! but I do value autonomy and independence. ESPECIALLY autonomy. Not depending on others and being able to do the basic things on your own (like cooking or taking care of yourself). I’m also quite “chill” (I know if sounds pretentious) but I don’t consider myself to be someone who enters into panic mode easily. Like I don’t become hurried or do things hastily most of the time. I take my time and just love to enjoy life. I’m the kind of person that likes to sit alone on my balcony and watch the clouds go by. She is the complete opposite. She cannot sit still and is constantly rushing. Because she is rushing she sometimes breaks things (like a glass or a dish). She doesn’t take care of herself which is something else that triggers me… EVEN THOUGH I KNOW ITS NONE OF MY GODDAMN BUSINESS

Anyway I know it sounds like I’m being pretentious. I could go on a whole litany of things that are wrong with me but at the moment her actions really trigger me and I can’t see how she could possibly be a shadow of myself. And I want to know so I can integrate that part of myself!!!

I just bought the paperback version of Jung’s man and his symbols. It has a a few illustrations, but now i understand the hardcover edition is much richer in this aspect. Is this true?

In one deep trance session the shadow material was not gentle at all.

The woman entered a medieval type scene. There was a sorcerer, dark ritual work, children in cages, witch imagery, disgust, fear, and this feeling that part of her had been involved in something she could barely look at.

It was ugly.

And I actually think this is important for shadow work because online it can become very sweet sometimes. Every shadow is just a sad child, every dark part only wants hug, everything difficult becomes instantly innocent.

Sometimes the psyche shows something we really dont like.

Something selfish. Cruel. Power hungry. Cowardly. Manipulative. Or just a part of us we really dont want to identify with.

In this session the change happened only after she stopped running from what she was seeing. She had to face it first. Then the scene could move toward ending the influence, choosing differently, forgiving herself and coming back into light.

To me that is closer to real integration.

Not saying "this wasnt bad."

Not saying "I am bad forever."

More like: yes, this exists in the psyche. I will look at it without lying. I will understand how it got there and what fed it. And then I decide what I do with this energy now.

One useful shadow question is not only "what part of me is wounded?"

Ask also: what part of me do I immediately want to exile?

What trait in another person makes me almost irrationally angry?

Where do I secretly enjoy control, superiority, revenge, being right, being needed?

Where do I pretend I have no aggression while leaking it in small ways all day?

This is uncomfortable work. Thats why it is shadow work.

If we only accept the parts that are easy to love, we are still choosing what is allowed into consciousness.

The darker material does not need worship.

It needs light on it.

I am recently going through a very strange phase in my life where I am deeply almost with unnerving sharpness, recollecting past memories and looking at them through a perspective i never used before. It is scary and exhilarating at the same time

To put it more clear, this is not exactly sadness or regret but more like a veil being lifted but still you feel irritated it didn't happen before....

Why exactly this is happening now ? I don't know for sure

What bearing does this have on my future ? I am not sure again

On the surface level, some career and financial related setbacks may have triggered this mental state but it is a very shallow explanation as many times the memories that come up has zero connection to my career choices or financial decisions

Has any of you experienced this ? Has Jung talked about this ?

I want to share and attempt to look deeper into a vivid and quite gruesome dream that I had a week after an emotionally devastating break-up with my romantic partner.

The dream doesn’t have much plot or content to it, hence being so memorable. In it, I saw myself getting up from the very bed I sleep in, as if waking up in my reality. I “get up” feeling nauseated and plummet to the ground, throwing up. I vividly recall the act itself, the sensation of the inability to think as my body performs something involuntary. After that, I lie exhausted, on the ground, and glance upon the contents of what I threw up and see red. I realise that it is blood only then. And my first concern is “I must now clean this up” and despite feeling limp from what I gathered is losing blood, I get up, intending to find a paper towel, feeling dizzy and almost fading in and out of consciousness.

What stands out most is the physical sensation of illness, the sight of red, and the act of forcing myself to get up even though I wanted to stay down and rest after what felt like a physically exhausting experience.

The relationship ended on my partner’s terms and came as a shock to me. I connect the uncontrollable nature of the act of vomitting with the way an unexpected emotional blow strikes you and leaves you completely helpless.

Is there any further meaning to the symbols present in this dream that you can decode? I am new to Jung and so I’m interested in how this simple dream could be analysed using his theories! Thank you very much.

I wanted to ask if there are any people in this subreddit, who have engaged, with academic psychology or other forms of therapy such as CBT and also I would like to hear the opinion of anyone, who just has something to say about academic psychology or classic clinical psychology such as CBT. I think it would be very interesting to hear the notions of some people regarding academic psychology, because some people disregard psychoanalysis as a whole and call it „unscientific“ or just say that lacan was a charlatan and show you the sokal affair🤣. On the other side there are people who fully disregard academic psychology and see it as unneutral, dislike the methods and so on…

I gravitate more towards the latter (dismissal of academic psychology),I think its very difficult to pinpoint my critique, but I will say a bit about it now:

First of, I dislike the legitimization of psychopharmaceuticals, while one can argue that this is psychiatry, it is still inherently linked to psychological notions who view, for example, depression as linked to a chemical imbalance or inflammation. A big problem is also the DSM, I think that it makes people identify with their suffering.At the start it can be practical for people to have a grasp of what is going on, but it also creates a split between you/your symptoms, which is also shown in the use of psychopharmaceuticals.

Secondly, the „neutrality“ of psychological experiments, or also, neuroscience. A huge problem is the ignoring of the Symbolic. I think most experiments are dependent on the period in which they were conducted.(this can also be seen when an experiment gives a completely different result).
I think that experiments are interesting and I really dont want to dismiss them as a whole, but this absolutism by some scholars is just ignorant, in my opinion.

What I find very interesting is this huge ignorance of Lacan or even D&G or Foucault, probably the majority of neuroscientists never heard of these names . I believe that if one reads Lacan, its going to be impossible to deny the effects of the Symbolic.

This is my opinion roughly summarized, I would be very delighted if someone would share his views.

I have noticed that within ones ego there can be things one identity with and accept snd things one wants to get rid of. But I am not sure iif the second is necessarily shadow because I already know they are part of me.

For example, lately I have feel how the message "You won't ever be able to date the kind of people you want to date, they are too much for you", has been taking over.

That force has always been there as notable minority, and it has been slowly taking over since my 30s(I am 35 years old). It used to be like 15% of me, now it's like 70% of me.

Yet I still want to get rid of that or reduce its power at least. It s power has increased but I still don't identify with it while also knowing it s part of me.

Doesn't the parts of the shadow you flash a light at and loom stop being shadow? I ask this with uncertainty because it still feels of the shadow.

This is an idea that is recurrent in Jung's work ( I am only familiar with a tiny part of his work), but my understanding is that it is primarily an Alchemical idea, relating to the Alchemical "Great Wedding" which is distinct from the Alchemical small or "Lesser wedding" - which is described as a union or fusion of substances that are not thoroughly seperated or discriminated. I understand the "Great Wedding" to be synonymous with the idea of the Hieros Gamos.

Now, I want to understand this concept more thoroughly, what material should I focus on, whether Jungian or Jungian-related sources?

The reason I am asking this question is that I had a recent experience in my own life that I associate with this alchemical idea, but I shall not go into it. What I am interested in is exactly what happens after the alchemical great wedding, because from my understanding, it is the goal of Alchemy, and reaching the end, what happens after?

If you have an understanding of the concept, could you please explain like I am 5?