Vibrant Jung Thing: Jungian Images and Reflections

Here in the Middle Years of Life: Is That All There Is?

The great jazz artist Peggy Lee performed the following beautiful, highly disturbing yet haunting song in 1969, at midlife, in her 50th year: 

 

I doubt that questions get much more real than those in this song.  And the question that Peggy Lee sings about here is of the type, that, for many people, can become achingly urgent at the middle of life. 

For many people, especially in our tumultuous times, the middle years of life can come to feel like an endless process of coping with chaos.  It can feel like life has become a time of just responding to one crisis after another: issues with maturing children, issues with the health of parents; job issues; issues of financial security.  At times, life can come to seem endlessly wearying, and very much as if there is nothing to it, but "just going through the motions".  From such a place, for very many people, there can come a deep heartfelt cry: "Is this really all that there is to my life?  Is this all that I get?"

This moment, the moment of this question, is highly important in the life of the individual.  This is true, even especially true, if the time when this question arises is filled with depression, anxiety -- even despair.

From experience with clients, I can almost guarantee that there will be no canned, pre-packaged answer to this question that will slake the desperate thirst of those who ask such a question. Only an answer rooted in the individual's life will bring any peace, any hope, any meaning -- any sense of value.

By an individual answer, I mean one that emerges from the very depths of the individual.  Not something that the individual's intellect or conscious mind has cobbled together, but something that emerges from the very depths of the person, from what they most fundamentally are.  Something to which they can say "Yes!" with their whole being.

It is the task of good therapy (and of Jungian analysis) to assist the individual in finding the symbolic dimension that conveys meaning, to find the deep story or myth of an individual's life.  There are many in suburban places like Oakville, Burlington and Mississauga for whom the question "Is that all there is?" has become urgently real.  I invite you to enter into the therapeutic journey inward, to find your own inner treasure.

I'd gratefully welcome comments and reflections from readers.  Have you had the experience of wondering in this way "is that all there is"?  How has that question affected your life?  If you were willing to share this important and personal part of your life, I'd be deeply interested to dialogue with you.

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson, Psychotherapist & Jungian Analyst

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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© 2010 Brian Collinson

 

Beyond Cookie-Cutter Psychotherapy

In recent years, there have been certain strong and notable trends emerging in the field of psychotherapy.  Some have been very valuable, but some, unfortunately, have not been for the better.

In many cases what's on offer doesn't seem to be anything that really helps people deal with their own personal uniqueness, or the individuality of their lives.  Nothing that really helps people to truly feel at home and alive within their own skin. 

For instance, cognitive behavioural therapy [CBT] undoubtedly has some aspects that render it useful.  By attempting to change peoples' thought patterns, it does offer a very valid tool for people caught in obsessive thought patterns, or patterns of behaviour, for instance.  The relief that it provides in this way can be of great benefit to many people.  Yet, in my clinical experience, many people who go through a course of such therapy are left with the feeling that, at the end of it, there is something important missing.

I believe that this is because of the emphasis in CBT on purely rational thinking.  There is an underlying belief in CBT that all that is really significant is the conscious mind, and that, if only the individual can be trained to think about their life situations in a reasonable, rational way, then everything will be OK.

But not everything in human life is purely rational.  In fact, if rationality were all that we had in human life, our lives would seem dramatically impoverished.  For instance, consider the following.  

If you have ever been in love with someone, is the manner in which you look at them and think about them purely rational?  If you did look at them that way, thinking about that person as just a purely biological entity, for instance, a primate of the species homo sapiens composed of various amounts of certain organic compounds, which interact in various complex ways, would you still be able to love them?  I think that it is likely that you would not.

Similarly, are you really capable of looking at yourself that way?  As a bundle of chemicals, and metabolic and neural impulses?  Or as something that is like a variant of your laptop computer?  I think that it is much more likely that you look at yourself as a person, as a whole.  

Attempts to reduce human persons to bundles of physical processes are nothing new in philosophy and psychology, or for that matter in medicine.  They have been going on for hundreds of years.  A famous example, which many people find quite chilling is found in the 1971 book Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B.F. Skinner. 

Skinner advocates that decision-makers move beyond "outmoded" ideas of human personhood to govern the world with a sophisticated combination of classical and operant conditioning that would supersede such "obsolete" notions as viewing humans as free and autonomous agents and as having human dignity.  Thinkers like Skinner are very often trying to reduce human persons to something more understandable and manageable, but they never quite seem to be able to capture the essence of what it is to be human.

In addition, please consider the whole added dimension of the human unconscious.  Here is an entire realm of human existence that is never going to be reduced to simplistic notions of goal-directed rationality.  And it is in the symbolic material that emerges from the unconscious, found in the realms of art, literature, mythology, and religious expression that the deepest and profoundest expressions of what it is to be human are found.  Can these dimensions of life be reduced to causal and rational explanations?  Not really.  You can try, of course, but only at a terrible cost: the price to be paid is that our very humanity goes missing.

In the words of the famous poet of the self, Walt Whitman, "Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul."  When it comes to therapy, it's essential to find a mode of therapy that honours the richness and intricacy of your own deepest being...

I'd gratefully welcome comments and reflections from readers.  Have you had experiences of therapy that really honoured your uniqueness, your freedom and your dignity?  On the other hand, have you experienced forms of therapy that have not done so?  I'd be very interested to dialogue with you about this important subject.

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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© 2010 Brian Collinson

Between Childrens' and Parents' Needs: the Generational Anxiety Sandwich

In this post, I would like to write about something that may have a sense of "taboo" about it.

 For many of us in the present day world, a powerful struggle goes on in our middle years.  There are greater and greater demands on our personal reserves of compassion, empathy, time, energy and money.  These resources are streaming out in two directions, both towards our children, and also towards our parents, and possibly other aging relatives, who are living to a greater age than ever they have in the past.

As many people in their middle years try to meet the needs of the younger and older generations, they find themselves nearly impossibly stretched.

In such a climate, it can feel almost impossible to meet the needs of others.  In addition, many people end up feeling like callous ingrates if they give any consideration to their own needs as people.  "How can I consider myself?" one often hears people in this position say, "My parents gave me so much.  I owe them so much--everything!" 

The really difficult thing is when the inner complex gives such guilting messages to an adult child, when the parents have actually not been kind or supportive to their children.  I experience this as a very frequent occurrence in my practice.  Many times, people who have been seriously emotionally or physically neglected by their parents -- or worse -- are the very people who respond in the most dutiful and self sacrificing manner.

And then again, it is often those same people, dutiful to their parents, who turn around and are completely self-sacrificing to their children.  And sometimes those children can be every bit as demanding unreasonable and narcissistic toward their parents as their grandparents are toward them.  And often that same mass of guilt and obligation that whips these people into unreasonably self-denying behaviour toward their parents will do the same when it comes to their children.

The particular psychological forces that bring this about are as individual as the people involved in the situation.  Very often, in dealing with these situations, healthy ordinary people need therapy to get to the root of the problem, and to free themselves from the crushing guilt.  Guilt can be an extremely powerful emotion and motivator, and it is often necessary to confront it in the safe environment of therapy to be able to remove its power.

The other hugely difficult component of these intergenerational binds is that they often lead to enormous amounts of anxiety.  This can prove as difficult, if not more so, than the guilt.  However, what I am going to say next about that guilt may prove surprising, even shocking!

Which is, that it may actually be quite a good thing that the individual is experiencing the guilt!  "Wow, Brian" you might be thinking, "what a horrible thing to say!  ...Speaking of callous!...  How can you possibly wish anxiety on already-burdened people?"

Now, I don't wish anyone unnecessary pain, and, all other things being equal, I would wish that no one would have to deal with excessive anxiety.  But in a situation like this, I believe that it is often the case that the anxiety has a psychological purpose.  Simply put, the intense anxiety makes us aware that there is a conflict, and that the status quo is simply untenable for the individual. 

It may be that the guilt is intense for such a person, but the anxiety shows us that there is tension, that the needs of the self are not willing to just continue being put on the shelf and denied.  The complex of guilt and obligation within us may spur us on to utterly altruistic self-destruction...but that complex is not all that there is to us.  There is the part of us that recognizes that the purpose of human life is to become the person who is latent within us, that that is why we are here in this life.  That part will allow us to make some compromises, but it will not allow us to completely sell ourselves out -- not without our paying a very dire, wrenching psychological price.  

It's easy for many people to feel a strong impetus to self-sacrifice, but, psychologically speaking, it's important to realize that there may be very real limits to the degree to which we can put our own needs on one side to care for and meet the needs of others.

This awareness might lead us to face an even more fundamental questions like, "How do I begin to live my own real life?" and "What is meaningful to me?"  These questions takes us to the very heart of Jungian analysis, and true depth psychotherapy.

I'd gratefully welcome comments from readers on these issues, which affect very many of us.  How have you experienced the "generational sandwich"?.

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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© 2010 Brian Collinson

Does February Bring Any GIfts?

 "April is the cruelest month" wrote the poet T.S. Eliot.  When I first read that line as a teenager, my thought was, "Obviously, this poet wasn't a Canadian!"

Anyone who has consistently lived through winters in places like Oakville, Mississauga or Burlington will probably tell you that "the cruelest month" is either January or February.  I suspect that many would vote for February.

For many people, February can seem very bleak.  The year-end holidays are far behind us.  There is no major holiday to lighten our hearts, although we do now have "Family Day".  Snow or brutal cold --this year we have little of the former and plenty of the latter--can turn trips out into an ordeal.  The days are lengthening, it's true, but, at least in our part of the world, long strings of overcast days lead many people to feel starved for sunlight.

Does February bring us any gifts?  How could it?...

One of the most difficult aspects of this time of the year can be that we tend to feel shut in, and shut up with ourselves.  This can mean that we are left with what I often term the fundamental question of ourselves.  That is, with how to be who we are and feel good about it.  How to actively accept and cherish our lives, rather than just seeing ourselves as "one in a million".

Many of the things into which we pour our energy at other times of the year are just not available now.  Our response to that can be to curse the luck and hang on grimly until spring.  Or, we could use the time to really encounter ourselves.

Here are some things that might be helpful to think about at this time.  They've proved valuable to me, so I leave them with you for your consideration:

Have you ever told yourself the story of your own life?  To sit down and actually write your own life story can be a truly revelatory thing to do.

Have you ever thought about what the happiest time in your life was?  Have you ever thought about what was the saddest?

Who are the three most significant people that you have encountered in your life, other than parents or siblings.  Why are they important to you?  What does that tell you about yourself?

In what do you put your faith?  This might be a formal religious belief, or a personal spirituality or philosophy, or it might be something quite different.  What you fundamentally value can tell you a tremendous amount about who you fundamentally are.

It may be that, as you live with these questions, they take on a fundamental importance that leads you to want to explore new dimensions of yourself, with someone "on your side" to witness your journey.  Certainly that was my experience, and that is what initially led me into psychotherapy and Jungian analysis.

I'd welcome comments below from readers on how any of these thoughts relates to your lives at this time of year.

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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© 2010 Brian Collinson

Identity and Anxiety in the Film, "Up In the Air"

Make no mistake, moving is living.  -Ryan Bingham

"Up in the Air", directed by Jason Reitman, stars George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick.  Clooney's character Ryan Bingham is a full-time corporate down-sizer whose life consists of an endless stream of business travel ("322 days last year").  He moves from place to place, letting people go from corporate roles when their employers cannot stomach doing it.  He has no permanent attachments to people, a desolate and hollow single bedroom apartment he never sleeps in, and he has accumulated 10,000,000 airmiles...

Up In the Air Official Website

Ryan Bingham's life is in airports and hotel rooms and is filled with constant movement.  The stability and security in his life, his secure base, is found precisely in those things that others find impermanent and impersonal.  His finely orchestrated and choreographed travel routine, his mechanized method of moving constantly from place to place gives him re-assurance, and in an odd way a sense of belonging.  Which is good, because Ryan has no permanent connections to anyone in his life. 

Ryan also has a budding career as an motivational speaker.  His message: "Make no mistake: your relationships are the heaviest components in your life....  The slower we move, the faster we die."

Ryan is completely identified with his corporate role.   His aircraft-bound life is an appropriate symbol of his existence on a deeper level.  In the terms of Jungian psychology, Ryan, like Christopher McCandless, the subject of Into the Wild is a true puer aeternus ("eternal boy").  He floats above life in his social self, and never puts down roots into the deep soil of his genuine self.  And he is danger of discovering that his life is tragic because there he has no remaining way to turn back.

In its own way, this is a very disturbing and provocative film, but it's a very good one.  It raises the question for each of us about how connected we're willing to be to the real substance of our lives.

I'd welcome comments below from readers on anxiety, identity and work.

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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PHOTO CREDITS: © DW Studios LL.C. and Cold Spring Pictures

© 2010 Brian Collinson

 

Seeking for Depth

In recent years, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on what are called "brief psychotherapies" by the therapeutic profession.

The emphasis has been on providing very short courses of psychotherapy to individuals, with an eye to providing concrete definable "results" with respect to narrowly defined issues.  In large part, the movement to this type of therapy has been driven by pressure from insurance providers, who have sought to keep costs down by focusing on achieving measurable progress on specific, very focused issues.  By keeping therapy short, the inscos hoped to return people who are off work back to the workplace in the shortest feasible time that is compatible with the safety of the client. 

It may well be that the brief therapies and "solution-focused" therapies are quite successful in acheiving their defined goals.  However, that is not the point that I want to pick up in this particular post.  Rather, I want to ask a bigger and more fundamental question, which is implicit in the following quotation from Jungian analyst Mario Jacoby:

...any psychotherapy founded on depth psychology should focus above all on the question of who we really are above and beyond the distortions provoked by the way we were brought up or by the society we live in.  Becoming conscious ultimately involves an unbiased experience of the 'true self'. The self in the Jungian sense is rooted in the unfathomable domain that has rightly been termed the unconscious.

Mario Jacobi, Individuation and Narcissism,

(London; Routledge, 1990), p. 96

The type of psychotherapy Jacobi is describing is rooted in fundamental questions of depth.  The question that forms its basis is, quite simply, "Who are you?"  It does not accept any glib or shallow answer.  It also recognizes that who we fundamentally are is something that we will never be able to just size up intellectually.  It's much deeper than that -- a matter that we can only experience, and never exhaust.

While brief therapies may provide concrete value, there is a whole other level upon which we need to encounter ourselves, and there be healed.  For many people, it is that deeper level where the need is urgent.

I'd welcome comments from any readers on experiences of their own depth, in therapy or outside of it. Are there moments when you feel that you have really experienced yourself?

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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© 2010 Brian Collinson

Exploring Liber Novis: Jung's Red Book

It has been some months now since the publication of Carl Jung's famed Red Book, the book of images and text that he wrote during his formative crisis and encounter with the unconscious during the years 1913-1919.  I've had a copy of the Red Book for some time now, and have been exploring its richness in some depth.  This voyage of exploration will go on for a very long time, I expect.  To really plumb the depths of the Red Book is a feat not lightly or easily achieved.

In my opinion, the Red Book shows the true genius of Carl Jung.  There cannot have been many human beings who have had the courage to enter in so deeply into their inner lives as he, and to really confront the unconscious in all its dimensions.  Through years of inner crisis he sought to understand the depths of the Self.

Jung emerges from this inner journey with a clear message: there are forces in the unconscious that are seeking to bring us to wholeness; there is a wisdom in our depths that the ego can only just barely start to comprehend.  If we can have the courage to let go, and to open ourselves to our depths, there is a unique life in each of us, that is striving to become, and always has been.  This is not an easy journey, and it is not one about which glib and facile things should be said.  But for some, it is only by embarking on this inner journey that reality, life and meaning can be found.

Only what is really oneself has the power to heal.

-C.G. Jung

Chief Curator of the Rubin Museum of Art Martin Brauen, left, and Felix Walder, right, the great-grandson of Carl Jung, inspect Carl Jung’s famous “Red Book” after it’s arrival at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2009. “The Red Book,” was displayed to the public at the Ruben for the first time on October 7, coinciding with the first-ever publication of the book by W.W. Norton & Company. (AP Photo/Rubin Museum of Art, Stuart Ramson)

Jung's Red Book has now been published by W.W. Norton & Company. It is a major source for Jungian psychology, and a book that contains many of the treasures of the soul of Carl Jung.  Here is the URL for the Red Book's page on Amazon.ca:

http://bit.ly/5Lr5hu

I'd be interested in comments from any readers about your encounter with the Red Book, or with any of Jung's other works. How have Jung's writings impacted you?

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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PHOTO CREDITS: © AP Photo / Rubin Museum of Art, Stuart Ransom

© 2010 Brian Collinson

Remembering and Renewal

New Year's Eve and the New Year, with all its joy, and its bittersweet recollection of another year gone by, will soon be here.  Another year of memories, and another year of living behind us, with everything that entails.

For many, 2009 couldn't end too soon.  A year of stress and economic uncertainty like practically no other in recent memory. For many, changes in their lives with which they would rather not have to grapple. And yet, for many, 2010 approaches with signs of hope.

Is there any possibility of renewal for each of us, in our individual lives?  Here is a song that I think beautifully describes new life that can arise from our own depths, sometimes from hidden places of which the conscious ego is unaware.

Blackbird

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Black bird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
all your life
you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise,
You were only waiting for this moment to arise,
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

Easy or hard, you have now made your journey through 2009.  What is stirring in you at the beginning of this New Year, that might be "only waiting for this moment to arise"?  Is there any indication in your dreams at this time?  What might they show you?

My very best wishes to each of you on your individual journey to wholeness, especially at the turning of the year,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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PHOTO CREDITS: © Romko| Dreamstime.com.com

© 2009 Brian Collinson

Can I Get a Witness?

Some of you will recognize this phrase from R and B music; some of you may recognize it as a phrase used in the black church.  But it's a phrase that has an awful lot to do with psychotherapy!

A lot of people come into therapy because they need someone else to simply see and acknowledge the reality of their lives.  This is a very basic human need.  We all need someone, at some point, to see us, really see us, the way that we actually are, rather than the way that we might seem in all our social roles, and amidst all the pressures that we find in our lives to be what it is that others want us to be.

To have someone to whom we can actually tell our story.  Just as importantly, maybe more importantly, to tell our story with someone to witness it...  To finally have the chance to do that can be one of the most important and precious things in human life.  I certainly know that is the gift that my therapists gave to me.  I know that it is a precious thing for many who come into therapy.

I invite you to tell your story, to someone who really knows how to listen and who is not burdened with a lot of preconceptions about who you are.  You way well surprise yourself with who it is that you really are!

I'd be interested in your comments about the times in your life when you have felt really seen, heard ... witnessed.  

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca 

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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PHOTO CREDITS:  © Nyul | Dreamstime.com 

© 2009 Brian Collinson    

Looking Good... Feeling Empty

Out here in suburbia, great pressure is often placed on people to "look good".  People feel all kinds of pressure to keep their image in the finest order.

We get the message that it's important to keep your grass well-cut and your garden well-manicured.  It's important to drive a car that makes you look (and feel) like you're successful and upwardly mobile.  It's important that your kids wear the right clothes, and belong to the right after-school activities.  When you go to your yoga class, you should be sure to have the right mat and outfit...

And people do look good!  My, do they ever!  A walk down Lakeshore Road in downtown Oakville, my town, will surely convince you of that.  To the extent that having good stuff and doing all the "right" things can give you a good life, boy howdy, we suburbanites have got it down!

If that was all it took, we suburbanites would surely have the best lives imaginable...

So, if that's true, why do so many people seem to feel that they're "just going through the motions"?  How is it that I hear from so many people that, at times, life can just "feel hollow"?

To a certain extent, we all have to bow to the necessity of looking good, if we want to make our way in the world.  There are social conventions that we have to live within, if we want to have a job, get an education and do all the many things that we have to do to make our way.  To choose an extreme example, showing up naked to a job interview would be career-limiting, to say the least!

However, just fitting the idea of others about "how we should be" isn't enough for a fulfilling life -- even if those "others" are lifestyle advertisers who spend untold billions to influence us to remake our lives around their products.

Sooner or later in life, we are going to be strongly confronted with the question of what is really ourselves.  If we really take that question seriously, it can be the beginning of the greatest adventure in life.

When I feel empty in my life, it is not a curse.  It can actually be a gateway.  That which is empty wants to be filled.  At least if I'm aware of my own feeling of emptiness, I can start to seek out what makes me feel full, what makes me feel real.

For a significant number of people, that's where the journey of therapy begins...

I'd be interested in your comments about your journey, and about what is meaningful or important in your life.  

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca 

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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© 2009 Brian Collinson