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

Get "Vibrant Jung Thing" posts delivered to your email using the "FeedBurner" box in the left column! 

© 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

Get "Vibrant Jung Thing" posts delivered to your email using the "FeedBurner" box in the left column!

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

Get "Vibrant Jung Thing" posts delivered to your email using the "FeedBurner" box in the left column!

PHOTO CREDITS: © Gorbovskoy| Dreamstime.com

© 2010 Brian Collinson

The Holly and the Ivy

Once again the Holidays have rushed to be upon us.  It often seems that, once we hit the first day of December, the calendar somehow catapults us forward through the month of December and into Hanukkah, Christmas and then the New Year. 

It's a busy time, full of a combination of demands upon us, social times, and a tidal wave of various and sometimes conflicting emotions.

It's a season that emphasizes joy.  Consequently, people who are going through a range of very common difficult human experiences can find this season particularly hard.    

For the recently divorced, separated or bereaved, the holidays, with their emphasis on family togetherness, can be a brutally difficult time.  Living with the reality that a relationship that once promised love and acceptance is no longer there, and often, dealing with limited access to children at a time of the year that may have had particularly intense connections with children in the past can be a particularly difficult emotional experience.

For many people, even encounters with relatives at this time of year can also be ambivalent or difficult.  It can be painful to realize that relationships with family members, that should be filled with closeness and trust are in fact much more tentative and superficial.  Where in earlier times, connections with relatives may have been much closer and warmer, now geographical distance and time constraints keep us much more nearly at arm's length.

Yet there is another character to this time of year, when the days grow short, and we long for the return of light and warmth.  This is a season which possesses an archetypal character and which has held significance for people probably just about as long as there have been people and they have been noticing their environment.  I think here of the words of an old carol of the season:

The holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown,

Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown.

Refrain:

Oh, the rising of the sun and the running of the deer,

The playing of the merry organ, sweet singing in the choir.

These are lines well known to many who come from the Christian tradition, as they come from a famous carol, "The Holly and the Ivy".  This carol actually has pre-Christian origins and may well date back over 1000 years. I believe that this carol points to some of the transpersonal meaning and significance of this season. 

For many centuries, people have always taken the evergreen holly and ivy indoors during the winter in the hope that the occupants of the house would survive difficult conditions just like the hardy holly and the ivy. The colours of the Holly and Ivy, green and red are traditionally associated with the winter solstice.

From very ancient days, people have always met the solstice with courage and hope, and faith in the return of the sun.  For us, too, these holidays call us to recognize that within ourselves which is evergreen, perpetually living and growing, even in those seasons and times when the warmth and light of life can seem very far away indeed.  In Jungian terms, to find this evergreen part of ourselves is to find the permanent and indestructible core of our unique personhood, the Self.  It is at that place within us that we touch the divine. 

I'd be very interested in your comments about how you approach the Holiday season. Are there symbols in this season that bring you life joy and hope?

My very best wishes to each of you on your individual journey to wholeness, especially in this Holiday season,

Brian Collinson

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

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

Get "Vibrant Jung Thing" posts delivered to your email using the "FeedBurner" box in the left column!

PHOTO CREDITS: © Dink101| Dreamstime.com ; © Tinabelle| 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

Get "Vibrant Jung Thing" posts delivered to your email using the "FeedBurner" box in the left column!

PHOTO CREDITS:  © Imagery Majestic | Dreamstime.com 

© 2009 Brian Collinson    

Purpose in Your Life

The Toronto Globe and Mail in an article this morning cited research by Dr. Patricia A. Boyle and her colleagues at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, and published in Psychosomatic Medicine, tending to empirically confirm something that psychotherapists and counsellors have known from their practices for a very long time:   Greater purpose in life is associated with a reduced risk of mortality among older persons.

Almost needless to say, the insight that meaning and purpose in life are tied to greater vitality in life is not something that is confined to the old.  In some important ways, depression can often be related to a particular crisis of meaning in a person's life.  Jung has written on the theme of meaning with great frequency in his writings.  He particularly emphasizes its importance at mid-life and all points thereafter in life, but it is a theme that he would readily acknowledge throughout the life journey, as does psychiatrist Dr. Viktor Frankl in his classic work Man's Search for Meaning.

That's all good, but where does one get this meaning?  Most fundamentally, something is meaningful to a person when the meaning emerges from deep in the self, and is connected with the very core values and life experience of the individual.  The depth of the Self is not nearly the same thing as the reality of the ego and its particular projects: it has to do with the whole dimension of us that is seeking to find unity and wholeness.  The work of psychotherapy at its deepest and most valid is to assist the individual in getting to know these undiscovered aspects of the whole psyche.

How does the issue of what is meaningful touch your life?  WHere have you found meaning that is vital and important to you?  What parts of you continue to look for meaning?

Thank you to those of you who suggest possible topics for my posts either on-line or face-to-face.  This post came about as the result of a personal conversation with someone.  As always I welcome your comments, and I look forward to dialoguing with each of 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

Get "Vibrant Jung Thing" posts delivered to your email using the "FeedBurner" box in the left column!

PHOTO CREDITS:  © Kirill Kurashov | Dreamstime.com

© 2009 Brian Collinson    

The Mirror of Relationship

He woke up one day, and realized that he didn't recognize his marriage, his partner or himself.  He realized that things had gone on in a certain way for years and years, but that for a long time now, he had just been going through the motions.  

Certainly, he loved his kids, now in their early teens, and was a very giving parent.  He knew he wanted good things for them, was prepared to make all kinds of sacrifices for them, and could not bear the thought of hurting them.  Outside of the relationship with the kids, though, what was there that remained positive, or that had any life in it?

He thought of his wife and felt that he had nothing in common with her anymore.  It was almost painful these days to spend time together.  She seemed so different from the woman that he had been in love with, all those years ago.  He could remember how thrilled he had been to be with her, to share things with her, and just to talk early in their relationship.  It had been so intoxicating!  But now there was little that they enjoyed doing together.

With pangs of sharp feeling, he realized that he himself had changed.  The young adult "keener" who had worked so hard to supply all the material things, and who had sought to advance himself any way he could had disappeared now.  In that person`s place was someone who among other things, realized that he was not immortal, and who wanted the things that he did with his life and his time to count -- to be meaningful to him.  And right now what he was experiencing in his relationship was not meaningful, and was not making him feel good that he was alive.

The experience of this man is not uncommon.  He could just as easily be a woman, or a partner in a gay or lesbian relationship.  In our current world of shifting relationships, people are now often much readier to acknowledge when relationships and marriages are no longer working.  This is not to say that such awareness comes easily: it may often be a very difficult matter for a partner when they finally have to admit to themselves that their relationship, once so full of hope, is now a shell of its former self.

When such awareness dawns, there is usually no going back from it.  It may be that the couple concerned will end their relationship, or it may be that the relationship will change dramatically  One thing that you can be very sure of: the relationship that used to exist has outlived itself, and is dead and gone. Something new, either within or without the relationship, must now emerge.

QUESTIONS FOR WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF IN THE RELATIONSHIP CRUCIBLE:

1.  Who has changed in the relationship?  Me?  My partner?  Both of us?

2.   How did I see my partner when we first got together?  What attracted me to my partner?  How do I see my partner now?

3.  Do I see my partner realistically?  What are the aspects of him/her that I don't acknowledge, or that I don't understand?

4.  Are there aspects of myself that I see in my partner.  Are there aspects of anyone else that I recognize in him or her.

5.  What am I really yearning for in relationship.

The journey of therapy very often starts in the crucible of relationship, or leads through it.  In many different ways, relationship can catalyze a deeper connection with the depths of the self.

Thank you to clients and readers alike who have shared with me aspects of their lives in relationship over the years.  As always I welcome readers comments ànd I thank you for taking the time to read.

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

Get "Vibrant Jung Thing" posts delivered to your email using the "FeedBurner" box in the left column!

PHOTO CREDITS:  © Playboots | Dreamstime.com ; © Kristian Peetz |  Dreamstime.com

© 2009 Brian Collinson    

Fantasies

So often the word "fantasy" is treated as a negative term.  After all, aren't we supposed to be realistic, and practical, and down-to-earth?  How can our fantasies possibly help us to live our real lives?

 Well, Jung has some interesting things to say on this topic, including the following, which is about the role of fantasy at mid-life and later:

"Then, with the beginning of your life's second part, inexorably a change imposes itself, subtly at first but with ever-increasing weight.  Whatever you have acquired hitherto is no longer the same as you regarded it when it still lay before you -- it has lost something of its charm, its splendor and its attractiveness.  What was once an adventurous effort has become routine.  Even flowers wilt, and it is hard to discover something perennial that will endure.  Looking back slowly becomes a habit, no matter how much you detest and try to suppress it...

"The backwards look will not fail to show you sides and aspects of yourself long forgotten and other ways of life you have missed or avoided before.  The more your actual life becomes routine and habit, the less it will be satisfactory. [Italics mine]

"Soon unconscious fantasies begin to play with other possibilities and these can become quite troublesome unless they are made conscious in time.  They may be mere regressions into childhood, which prove to be most unhelpful when one is confronted with the difficult task of creating a new goal for an aging life.  If one has nothing to look forward to except the habitual things, life cannot renew itself any more.  It gets stale, it congeals and petrifies, like Lot's wife who could not detach her eyes from the things hitherto valued. Yet these insipid fantasies may also contain germs of real new possibilities or of new goals worthy of attainment.  There are always things ahead, and despite all the overwhelming power of the historical pattern they are never quite the same.  [Italics mine]"

So, for Jung, our "insipid fantasies" are not at all devoid of value -- if we really work with them to make them conscious.  They may in fact contain the vital clues for us to the way to move forward in our lives.  Sometimes these fantasies can seem childish, or useless -- so much so that we dismiss them.  Perhaps we have been told, or have told ourselves, that our longing or our fantasy has no value, that we are silly even to entertain it.  We may have gotten this message so strongly that we even find it difficult to find our fantasies or to experience them -- so rigourously does the internal schoolmaster/critic discipline us to "keep out nose to the grindstone."

Anxiety, Depression and My Own Truth

According to a recent New York Times article, people in North America are finding their lives more and more embroiled in anxiety.  This is a social trend that started prior to the start of the economic downturn, and which has been increasing since that time, if the mass media are to be believed.

The Times article  cites the example of one woman who found herself more and more in the grip of panic attacks, which impelled her "to read every single economic report" -- not an uncommon response.  It seems quite possible that this obsession with economic information could create a vicious cycle: in response to her anxiety, the woman might read more economic reporting, which in turn could be expected to further elevate her anxiety.  And so on, potentially without end.

This brings us to a very fundamental question.  As individuals, are we prepared to accept the assessments of social scientists, journalists and economic and business experts, when it comes to the most basic attitudes that we will have to our lives?

Jung has something interesting to say about this.  It is couched in the gender usage conventions of the past (1957), for which I ask your understanding.  Nonetheless, his point is clear, and as relevant today as it was then:

"...[A] man is not complete when he lives in a world of statistical truth.  He must live in the world of his mythological truth [italics mine], and that is not merely statistics.  it is the expression of what he really is, and what he feels himself to be.  A man without mythology is merely a product of statistics, as it were, an average phenomenon.  Our natural science makes everything into an average ... while the truth is that the carriers of life are individuals, not average numbers.  And, of course, all the individual qualities are wiped out, and that is most unbecoming....  It deprives people of their specific values, of the most important experiences of their life, where they experience their own value, the creative background of their own personality."

"The Houston Films" in McGuire, William, and Hull, R.F.C., eds., C.G. Jung Speaking (Princeton: University Press, 1977)

What is the dominant story that I choose to live under?  If I accept my life story as told by the mass media, I am a very small speck indeed, swept up in the great currents of economics, social trends and technological change.  My living and dying will be a matter of negligible significance.  I will be only a statistic.

But what if I make a determination to look for my story elsewhere, and to give that story my energy, my love and my trust?  What if my dreams impart to me some additional sense of the meaning of my life, of who I am, and what I really value?  To attempt to see my own myth, as not something so much consciously created, as a story made up, but as something that I am only partially capable of understanding, that emerges over time from the reality of my own life and my own psyche.

Real therapy, therapy that makes a fundamental difference, connects me to the deep story of my life.

I would welcome your input, comments or any sharing of your personal experience as you seek to encounter your own myth.

My very best wishes to each of you on your individual journeys to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

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

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

Get "Vibrant Jung Thing" posts delivered to your email using the "FeedBurner" box in the left column!

PHOTO CREDITS:  © Kentoh| Dreamstime.com ; © Arhaic| Dreamstime.com

© 2009 Brian Collinson 

Stress, Anxiety and Basic Trust PART TWO: Coming to Terms with the Fates and Furies

In Part One on this subject, I looked at the connection between stress and our relationship to our own deepest being, the Self.  In this post, I examine the way that stress plays out in our daily lives, and some possible ways in which we can reduce the impact of stress.

In these economically stress-laden times, it's possible to feel ourselves getting more and more drawn into fear.  The economic news plays right into one area of sensitivity that nearly everyone has: the money complex.  Money, wealth, prosperity, "having enough" -- these are all very emotionally laden concepts and symbols.  The continual diet of dark economic news that we are subjected to recently plays right into our deepest fears about our security, and for many people conjures up feelings and traumas that have their deep roots in the family of origin.

Touchstones In the Midst of Stress

1.  Are you keeping up your connections with friends, and people you love and cherish?  Do you need to renew your contacts with people who care about you?

Staying involved with friends and people who are close to you is a great way to feel connected and grounded, and to keep your focus.  Isolation can lead to increased obsession with worry and fear.  Are you staying in touch with the people who matter to you?  Are you enjoying their company?  Are you making the distinction between superficial contact with others and being deeply in touch with those who love you.

2. Are you staying connected to ultimate things?

What about your ultimate values?  For most of us there is something that is of fundamental importance in life, whether you call it God, Goddess, the Self, the Ground of Being or Truth.  Whatever symbols are meaningful to you, connecting with them can give a sense of value and stability to life.  For many people, the sense that there is a destiny for me, something which is seeking to emerge in my life -- which will emerge in my life -- is a source of hope and strength in the face of anxiety.

3. What about connecting to your physical self? 

Whether it is through exercise, yoga, or some form of body work, connecting with and experiencing your body can bring reduced overall tension and fatigue in your body.  This is certainly true, but even more importantly, experience of the body can help me feel real and substantial.  It can even help me feel like I have a home in the universe, that I belonghere.  In the face of the sense of financial threat, which some on the religious right are even prepared to characterize as the judgment of an angry and wrathful father God, connection with the body can bring awareness of our connection and rootedness in the Great Mother.  We can share a sense that our life is a participation in what Matthew Fox has called the "original blessing" of the universe, rather than a sense of condemnation and festering guilt and fear.

4. How are you relating to your creative and imaginal self?

In the midst of our current lives, the greater Self is seeking to come into realization.  The ways it does this usually have to do with different kinds of awareness, and differentapproaches to our inner life and to the outer world than we habitually use.  If we can work with those different ways of experiencing, it can help greatly with feeling grounded and feeling real.  Many people find that working with clay, painting, making music dancing or other creative and imaginative "ways" or methods can bring a sense of rootedness and reality to their lives.  Also, it can be of great value to engage in active imagination, but I do not recommend that you use this technique without the assistance of someone who has been thoroughly trained in Jungian analysis.

My very best wishes to each of you on your individual journeys to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Websitefor Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca ; Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

Get "Vibrant Jung Thing" posts delivered to your email using the "FeedBurner" box in the left column!

PHOTO CREDITS:  © Arekmalang | Dreamstime.com ; © Cleo | Dreamstime.com 

© 2009 Brian Collinson