Causal or Creative: Is History Destiny?

This Jungian Life Podcast

Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, Lisa Marchiano

Jungian, Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Psychology, Dreams, Jung, Relationships, Selfhelp, Society & Culture, Psychoanalysis

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2022

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Roman god Janus had two faces. They looked in opposite directions, representing dualities, especially beginnings and endings, past and future. Psychotherapy often begins by facing the past and understanding its influence on the present. Belief in the past as unalterably determinative, however, can imply that personal history is a single, all-powerful god—as if Janus fixed on yesterday. Jung took special interest in psyche’s purposive and creative energy—the face Janus turned toward the future. Incarnating our innate potential, which Jung termed the individuation process, is the process of engaging our capacity for growth and wholeness. Life’s road ahead has new possibilities, which is why we launch the new year in honor of Janus, for it is he who presides over all new beginnings.

HERE’S THE DREAM WE ANALYZE:

The Magic Gown

“I’m in a dress boutique, watching as teenage girls try on bright prom gowns. They giggle, twirl, and take selfies. I need a dress too because I’ll be attending the prom as a chaperone. I go into a private changing room that doubles as a small bedroom. The dresses hanging for me to try on make me think of Little Bo Peep. Reluctantly, I select the least offensive option, a ribbony mauve number. I’m sure it’s going to look ridiculous, but when I step into it, it becomes bespoke black lace, elegant and perfect. I want to send a selfie to my husband. I try to frame my image in the full-length mirror, but a bed is in the way, and I can’t move it or figure out the angles. Meanwhile, my husband texts sweet portraits of our dog who recently passed away.”

LOOK & GROW

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to this Jungian life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts, Lisa Marchiano,
0:07.1	Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee invite you to join them for an intimate and honest conversation
0:12.3	that brings a psychological perspective to important issues of the day. I'm Lisa Marchiano,
0:20.1	and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia. I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
0:22.5	I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
0:27.5	I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst, on Cape Cod.
0:37.4	Today, we're going to talk about Jung's concept of reductive and prospective methods, which relates to energy.
0:47.5	And in case this sounds just sort of a little too abstract and kind of out there.
1:02.2	What this has to do with is how and when and whether and to what extent things are causal,
1:09.5	maybe prompted by the external world, the past, your experiences back when,
1:14.8	versus perspective, where it's going, where is its final, energetic destination, as it were. So forward and back, reductive prospective, mechanistic,
1:22.7	energetic or finalistic. This reminds me of the Roman god Janus, who was two-faced. He one
1:33.4	face looked toward the past and the other looked ahead. That's a great introduction, Deb. And I think
1:42.4	you're right. It might sound kind of arcane somehow, but this really
1:46.2	matters in psychotherapy. It's kind of a bedrock question, because how do we understand people's
1:52.6	suffering? Do we see it as all related to the person's past, or is there another way to look at it that
1:58.8	frees us up and gives us more options?
2:02.1	You know, Jung did spend a lot of time thinking about this,
2:05.9	and he came up with some really interesting observations.
2:09.0	And to a certain extent, his work on this question was in answer to Freud,
2:16.3	who did tend to favor the reductive method of looking back to the past
2:22.9	to understand someone's struggles in the present. And of course, to this day, that's a very
	...

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