When Words Don't Work: Finding a Way Forward

Whether it’s an intractable dispute at the United Nations or a teenager’s dirty clothes on the floor, some conflicts are impossible to solve with words.When we raise difficult issues in our relationships, such as whether to have a child, address a partner’s alcohol consumption, or negotiate spending, we may discover that the other person stonewalls. A refusal to engage can take us from one difficult question to another: what does obstruction say about the relationship? Are we strong enough to handle difficult conversations?When repeated attempts at communication fail, a different approach may be needed. Deb shares her mentor’s rule: if you have clearly raised an issue three times without a meaningful response, it is time to step back and find support, perhaps from a friend, a therapist or a lawyer. This can lead to self-examination, a new perspective, or facing a painful reality and developing the strength to act. The famous conflict between Jung and Freud proved unresolvable, leading to a permanent schism between the two giants of psychoanalysis. This plunged Jung into his confrontation with the unconscious that generated all his subsequent work and established analytical psychology as a discipline. Creative possibilities can arise if we have the strength to move on when there is no prospect of repair with the other.Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention.  Connect With This Jungian LifeTake a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis.Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram

Two people stand at the rim of the Grand Canyon. One is overcome with awe at nature’s grandeur, while the other sees an enormous rift in the landscape. What accounts for the difference? This week, Jungian analyst and scholar JOHN R. WHITE joins Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart to explore Jung’s feeling function, our capacity to discern what matters.One of Jung’s best-known legacies is his categorization of ego functions: typology. Whether we are extraverted or introverted (terms Jung introduced), our four basic ego functions sort themselves into intuition, sensation, thinking, and feeling. We have all four functions but prefer some over others. Jung’s system led directly to the creation of the widely used Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator.The feeling and thinking functions are both ways of making judgments, but the feeling function is based on personal values: if you were a military commander, would you be like Napoleon, directing his troops from the hilltop -- or like Braveheart, leading his men on the field? When the feeling function is cultivated and differentiated, it illuminates much of how and why we do what we do. Do we tend to prefer a subjective stance based on personal values, or a more objective and strategic stance?Developing our feeling function may be challenging in the context of a culture that prioritizes thinking and sensate functions over feeling and intuition. It is a task worth taking on, however. Evaluating our experiences up close as well as from the greater distance the thinking function affords can be a profound step toward growth and individuation. Discerning whether the basis of a decision should be subjective or objective builds consciousness and expands choice. Since subjectivity is closely aligned with feelings, we can reflect on what a bruising encounter has made us feel—and choose our response rather than reacting.We discuss some of the strategies you might use to differentiate your feeling function, including embarking on analysis, writing in your journal, and Eugene Gendlin’s focusing technique, which asks us to tune into the body and carefully name what is felt.Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention.Connect With This Jungian LifeTake a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram

This Halloween week, when the veil between worlds grows thin, Jungian analyst ROBERT SHEAVLY joins us to discuss ways in which we experience the dead communicating with the living.In times of grief, it is common to be briefly reunited with the person we have lost in the form of deeply comforting dreams, visions or visitations. Jung himself was visited in such a dream by his deceased wife, Emma. He dreamed that Emma was in the south of France, continuing her  research on the Holy Grail, and he felt comforted.People have also sought seances and mediums to contact the dead, and Jung had a lifelong interest in these phenomena. Family members, including a teenage cousin, were deeply involved in this work. Jung was fascinated by his cousin’s ability to transform into another personality with knowledge a young woman could not have acquired. These experiences were Jung’s first encounter with what we now call the paranormal. This remained a lifelong interest and would later give rise to his theory of the collective unconscious, the deep wellspring of psychic experience shared by all humankind.For Jungians, the appearance of the deceased loved one is not only a psychological metaphor; the possibility that such contact may be more than a reassuring fantasy is admitted into consideration. Jung’s work offers us ways to relate to mysterious phenomena that neither ask us to abandon critical thinking nor limit our understanding to rationality alone.In this wide-ranging conversation, we also discuss Jung’s Seven Sermons of the Dead, quantum physics, dreams that predict death, and the visitations from the dead that many people experience at the end of life. We consider, too, AI’s promise of technologically reuniting us with lost loved ones.Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention.Connect With This Jungian LifeJoin Lisa at the Kosmos Colloquium this Dec. 17-21. Podcast listeners can claim a 15% discount - details here.Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis. Send a dream for us to analyze on the showWatch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channelFollow This Jungian Life on Instagram

Our guest this week is GARY LACHMAN, a founding member of the rock group Blondie, and the author of more than twenty books, including a biography of C.G. Jung, and a new memoir, Touched by the Presence: From Blondie's Bowery and Rock and Roll to Magic and the Occult.We explore Gary’s wide-ranging interests, from the nature of consciousness and the history of the occult to the lives and ideas of Rudolf Steiner, Aleister Crowley, and Colin Wilson.Our current era of cultural dissolution and environmental destruction can feel towering and fearsome. Yet might this moment also represent the state of dire necessity required for a change in consciousness? It is important to realize that we are always part of the great mythic cycle of life, death, and rebirth, so during times of disintegration cultivating our capacity for awe, attending to synchronicities, and listening to the wisdom of dreams can help us find a path forward. Jung’s search for meaning and a relationship to the infinite offers a way to approach this question. There are still spaces available to join Lisa Marchiano and Gary Lachman in Switzerland for the Kosmos Institute’s First Annual Colloquium this December 17-21. This Jungian Life podcast listeners can claim a 15% discount - details here. Visit our website to read today’s dream and find a detailed list of the resources we mention.Follow Up the EpisodeCheck out This Jungian Life Dream School, our 12-month online course in Jungian dream analysis.Send a dream for us to analyze on the show.Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel.

Many of us live with heavy awareness of cultural unraveling, and the natural world faces sustained and escalating threats. According to author, storyteller and podcaster MICHAEL MEADE, humanity has reached the end of an era, with no clear vision of what is to come. Michael's new book, The Heart of Transformation: Personal and Cultural Renewal on Earth, offers a fundamentally hopeful perspective. Despite the divisions, conflicts and betrayals of our time, the essential story of the world—birth, death, rebirth—endures and is ready to be rediscovered. The loose threads of our unraveling world are waiting to be woven into something new, and the secret of this transformation lies not in politics or activism, but in the depths of the individual heart and soul. Meanwhile, we inhabit a phase of life that is full of chaos and creativity. Like butterfly larvae, we rest in darkness, the outcome of our mysterious transformation unclear. We must find a way to accept the dark  and recognize it as a rite of passage in service of new and transformed life.  Michael Meade is a renowned storyteller and author who combines hypnotic storytelling, street-savvy perceptiveness, and spellbinding interpretations of ancient myths. He is the creator of the Living Myth Podcast, and the founder of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation. His latest book is The Heart of Transformation: Personal and Cultural Renewal on Earth. Visit our website to follow up on the resources we mention in this episode.Connect With This Jungian Life Join Lisa at the Kosmos Institute’s Colloquium in Switzerland this December. This Jungian Life listeners can now claim a 15% discount. Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram 

Never before have we had a technology that performs being human so well. What might this be doing to the psyche?People are already forming attachments to these systems, confiding in them, dreaming about them, and even rearranging their inner lives around them. Depth psychology has spent more than a century studying what goes on beneath the surface of our relationships, and it has a great deal to say about what passes between a person and a machine that appears to understand them.This first summit on AI and the Psyche, organised and chaired by Lisa Marchiano and Aaron Balick, is bringing together some of the most original minds working in this area, including Sherry Turkle, Todd Essig, Alessandra Lemma, James Muldoon, Glen Slater and Zak Stein.This event took place on October 8th, 2026.---Further deepen your exploration of AI and psyche with these resources:Aaron Balick, Ph.D — Co-chairAaron Balick, Ph.D. is a psychotherapist, author, and keynote speaker specialising in the psychology of technology. His Substack, “Depth Psychology in the Digital Age,” offers insights on what AI, algorithms and the way we use tech is doing to attention, relationships, and the very sense of who we are. Visit Aaron’s websiteLisa Marchiano — Co-chairLisa Marchiano, LCSW, is a Jungian analyst, author, and co-host of This Jungian Life podcast. Her recent article “ChatGPT-Induced Psychosis and the Good-Enough Therapist” explores why a therapist’s imperfection is essential and perfect agreement is dangerous.Visit Lisa’s website Todd EssigTodd Essig, Ph.D. is Faculty and Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute, Faculty at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis, and inaugural member of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN) Advisory Board. He founded and currently chairs the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) Presidential Commission on Artificial Intelligence (CAI) where he created CAI Conversations, CAI Currents, and The CAI Report.Visit Todd’s websiteAlessandra LemmaAlessandra Lemma is a a Chartered Clinical and Counselling Psychologist,  Psychoanalyst and a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Her latest book is Psychotechnical Becomings: Psychoanalysis, Identity, Desire and Mourning in Times of AI and Digital Mediation.Visit Alessandra’s websiteSherry TurkleSherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT. Her latest book is Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines.Visit Sherry’s websiteJames MuldoonJames Muldoon is an author and a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. His latest book is Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Our Relationships.Visit James’s websiteGlen SlaterGlen Slater, Ph.D. has been a long time member of the core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and is currently Associate Chair of the Jungian and Archetypal Psychology Program.  His latest book is Jung vs. Borg: Finding the Deeply Human in a Posthuman Age. Visit Glen’s websiteZak SteinDr. Zachary Stein was trained at the interface of philosophy, psychology, and education, and now works in fields related to mitigating global catastrophic risk. Co-founder of three non-profits, Dr. Stein is currently the founder and executive director of the AI Psychological Research Coalition.Visit Zak’s websiteOther ResourcesFor further reading:Laura Kosak’s Your Guide to AI Companions: Straight Talk from a TherapistTom Pollak’s Substack, Error SignalsThis Jungian Life podcast episodes:Outsourcing Love: AI and RelationshipsJung vs. The Borg: Staying Human in the Age of AI with Glen SlaterWhy Does Social Media Weaponize Our Reactions? An Interview with Aaron Balick, Ph.D.Goblins, Demons and Goddesses: A Conversation at the Edge of AI

Psychological inflation implies an exaggerated sense of self-importance, accompanied by an unconscious feeling of inferiority. For Jungians, it involves identification with an archetypal energy.  When the ego starts to feel that it IS an archetype, rather than feeling awed by it or in contact with it, this can be dangerous psychologically.Negative inflation occurs when a person feels entitled and special because they are suffering, perceiving themselves as unusually and interestingly hard done by. They feel they are owed help from others to solve the problems they are experiencing.We all have experience of dealing with people in the grip of inflation. The word itself gives us an evocative image: the inflated person is puffed up by the oxygen of their own self-importance. They come across as pompous and presumptuous, because they feel more than human. Psyche seeks balance, so we may also observe that under the unbearable arrogance lie feelings of inferiority, terror of mortality, or awareness of weakness and vulnerability - all the aspects of the human condition that the inflated person seeks to deny. These are also people who can be subject to outbursts of rage, frustrated by the failure of reality to conform to their sense of omnipotence and entitlement.The second half of life offers us the possibility of surrendering to something greater and experiencing the relativization of the ego, essentially a deflationary process. If we do not surrender to this new humility and find a way to be in service to something larger, we may stumble into darkness.Join us this week as we circumambulate the concept of inflation, drawing on examples including Kanye West, Elizabeth Holmes, Icarus, Prometheus, and the fairy tale of the Fisherman and his Wife.Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention.Connect With This Jungian LifeJoin Lisa at the Kosmos Institute’s Colloquium in Switzerland this December. This Jungian Life listeners can now claim a 15% discount.Download our free Dream Recall Meditation GuideSend a dream for us to analyze on the showWatch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel

When we ask AI for advice, what we are offered is comparable to psychopathy: a performance of warm emotional intelligence without care or concern for our fate. As today’s guest Dr. Aaron Balick has written,  “it may have a warm exterior, but its heart is code”.Nevertheless, many of us now have a close relationship with AI, in which it draws on an extensive store of information about us to create feelings of intimacy and dependence. This has unknown and extensive consequences for the psyche. Wired as we are for relationships, we load AI with projections, which it then enthusiastically reinforces, exploiting the Achilles heel of our human need for attachment.We discuss how AI fits into our understanding of object relations, the ways social media has groomed us to desire constant validation, how we could be using AI differently, why therapists must not ignore technological change, and much more.Our guest, Dr. Aaron Balick will be the co-chair of our free summit on Artificial Intelligence and the Psyche, happening next Thursday October 8th. Aaron is a psychotherapist, author, and Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, and a founding member and former chair of The Relational School. His book The Psychodynamics of Social Networking was among the first to apply psychoanalytic theory to social media. His Substack is Depth Psychology in the Digital Age.Visit our website to read today’s dream and to find links to the resources we mention.Follow Up This EpisodeJoin our free summit on Artificial Intelligence & the Psyche Visit Aaron Balick’s websiteAttend This Jungian Life’s seminar on active imagination this Saturday: Dream the Dream On: A Dream School Taster on Active Imagination

This week’s guest, Jungian analyst Dr. Warren Sibilla, defines patience as the ability to live one's life with eyes, ears, and heart wide open. That is a far cry from waiting to see what happens, or giving up.Patience asks us to go within, find the capacity for containment, and recognize that choosing non-action can be the needed form of action. We recognize, feel, and suffer the situation that has arisen, but resist the urge to immediate action in the external world. We search instead for discernment, containment, and meaning making in the internal world. It takes work to develop staying power. The fairy tale heroine in Six Swans worked in silence for six years to weave starflower shirts to liberate her six brothers. Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey spent years weaving her father-in-law’s shroud each day and undoing it at night. Like them, we may be required to work patiently on taxing tasks with uncertain outcomes. The gift of such labors is a sovereign self in relationship with the Self.The quality of patience is central to psychoanalysis. Analysands arrive seeking solutions to urgent problems, but insights take time to unfold, and it may be longer before paths to meaningful change appear. The Jungian precept of holding the tension of opposites asks us to foster patience. We must neither collapse into despair nor take premature action. Patience is fundamental to inner growth and transformation.Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention.Connect With This Jungian LifeAttend our free seminar: Dream the Dream On: A Dream School Taster on Active ImaginationDownload our Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel

The fairy tale of the Princess Who Changed her Fate enacts what Jung tells us will happen when we remain unconscious of an inner situation: it happens outside us, as fate.Just as the princess in the story finds her unruly “fate” tearing up cloth and smashing her generous host’s dishes, we may find that our unclaimed shadow wreaks havoc at work and in our relationships.Yet this is a hopeful story.  The beleaguered princess is able to take the right attitude, and so find a path to changing her fate. The character of the second queen gives us a model of feminine wisdom, empathy and patient awareness - this is what is needed at a difficult moment to start the slow process of turning things around.The princess, the third of three daughters, can also be seen to illustrate the concept of a family scapegoat, bearing the burden of her family’s dysfunction and expressing it symptomatically. As with many who suffer this way, she takes the option of a clean break, setting out on a form of the hero’s journey with gold coins sewn in the hem of her dress.When the princess changes her fate, we’re shown the potential of deep psychological work: sitting with an ugly fate, tossing the bread back and forth, putting one foot in front of the other, until we  access some valuable information. Rather than just gaining insights into the patterns we’re living out, we’re able to shift them and create different outcomes.Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention.Connect With This Jungian LifeJoin us for a free webinar on Saturday October 3rd: Dream the Dream On: A Dream School Taster on Active Imagination Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel