SELECTED ESSAYS
AWAKENING THE SOMATIC IMAGINATION: A DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY OF THE BODY
Somatic imagination is a perspective and a habit of the heart. It honors embodied emotional life as an authentic expression of the soul and our humanity, acknowledging our humanities rootedness in the sensory world. It is a return to the moist earth from the airy heights of intellectualism.
Walking in a wounded world: A case study of somatic healing in a horse-human relationship
It is grandiose to imagine that we, individually, can heal the world. Yet it is imperative to contribute by repairing one small part of it. Where, when, and how the world touches you will be different from how it touches me—but it is always an opportunity to respond.
Lioness Dreaming: A Somatic Approach to the Animal Ally
Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies, 2021
A profound encounter with an aging lioness in the South African bush dramatizes somatic dreaming as a practice of intentionally dwelling with vivid dream figures as embodied others. The autonomous figures of what transpersonal psychology calls an exceptional human experience (EHE) and Jungians describe as a numinous waking vision are both deeply strange and strangely familiar. What are the possibilities and challenges of somatic dreaming while awake? How might such an approach evoke and express soul? The paper contends that hosting living images in and with the body can be powerfully transformative, altering the course of one’s life.
Eating ice cream in heaven: A memoir of Austen, my four-legged soulmate
“Today, on the last day of my kitty’s life, I’m thinking of my dad, and of Austen, who will be together soon. This is how I imagine it: He will be there to greet her, and she, unburdened from the pain and debility of old age, will leap into his lap just like she did 15 years ago. I wonder if he will know that Austen is my soul mate, carrying a piece of me with her? …”
“Hatred is Tremendous Cement:” Complexity Science and Political Consciousness in Chaotic Times, Psychological Perspectives
The relationship between love and hatred is evident in Greek epic and myth, Greek philosophy, and in Jungian theory. This essay examines the cement of hatred in light of the 2016 election of Donald Trump, briefly discussing Jung’s thoughts on emotion, conflict, and consciousness followed by a short meditation on mythic Chaos and its close relationship with Eros as a generative, formative, and connecting principle. Three principles of complexity science, unpredictability, bifurcation, and autopoeisis, help us think differently about the eros of hatred in chaotic political times.
Puer-Pater-Senex: Toxic masculinity and the generative father in an age of narcissism
Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies (2019)
The suppurating father wound in the Western psyche, manifesting in toxic masculinity, is represented mythically by a recurrent theme of fathers who eat their children. The wound is inscribed in contemporary archetypal theory by an omission: James Hillman’s extensive discussion of the puer-senex tandem names youth and elder but without the crucial role that mediates them, pater. Restoring the archetypal erotic father to this tandem, the one who values beneficence not brutishness, creates the more stable and sustainable triad, puer-pater-senex.
Fierce young women in popular fiction and an unpopular war
Feminist Perspectives from Somewhere (2018)
The moment a woman of any age thinks that power is masculine, she relinquishes an essential element of her human endowment. This erroneous thought impoverishes women psychologically by limiting their imagination of how to be vital, effective, thoughtful people in the world. It impoverishes culture by undermining the many important ways in which women can, should, and already do exercise social, economic, and political power.
It's alive: The evolving archetypal image and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
The Routledge International Handbook of Jungian Film Studies (2019)
Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, A Modern Prometheus, is one of the great enduring works of literature that has been retold endlessly and rarely faithfully. Though Victor Frankenstein is a memorable character—the prototype of morally reckless scientific ambition—it is the psychologically complex creature who fascinates. Two hundred years on, Shelley’s creature is alive, as is her tale, and shows little signs of decrepitude. How does the evolution of an archetypal image in film reveal the shifting cultural landscape that work and audience occupy in any given moment?
“Tormented: Affective neuroscience, ethics, and the portrayal of evil,” Monsters and the Monstrous (2010)
Monstrous images in painting, sculpture, text, and film reflect aspects of our humanity, qualities we abhor and reject. In rare cases, artists have depicted the monster’s own torment, the cost of carrying our projections. Do we have the courage to imagine the plight of the Other and respond with empathy rather than disgust?
“Monstrous desire: Love, death, and the vampire marriage,” Monsters and the Monstrous (2009)
Why do we fail to recognize the vampires in our midst – especially when they come disguised as beautiful lovers – and what are the implications of our blindness? This essay explores the answers from literary, psychological, and feminist perspectives, comparing a 2,000-year-old fairy tale with a 21st century blockbuster film.
Abstinence vs. indulgence: How the contemporary ethical vampire reflects our monstrous appetites
The vampire has stalked the human imagination for centuries, appearing in myth and literature from widely diverse cultures. Judging by popular culture, it is alive and well in the 21st century collective psyche, offering essential, relevant lessons about the ethical treatment of the Other.
“Teaching” depth: Reflections on the challenges and rewards of integrating depth psychology into research methodology
Depth research centered on the psyche is especially meaningful and especially arduous. But what of the challenges and rewards of leading doctoral students into the depths? This essay uses three composite case examples to answer that question.
Writing as method: Depth psychological research and archetypal voice
In the realm of psyche, all authors are co-authors because images from the unconscious lay claim to the researcher’s attention. These autonomous figures bring insight and inspiration, weave together ideas, and subtly alter language to make their impact known throughout the process of inquiry.
Jungian research and postmodernism, an antinomial approach
What would happen if a postmodernist struck up a conversation with a Jungian? I like to imagine that the two scholars would engage in a lively, wide-ranging conversation that clarifies their disciplinary commitments as well as stimulates fresh interdisciplinary thinking.
Speaking with the Dead: Remembering James Hillman
Any knowledge worthy of its name comes from persons and places that exist beyond our fragile time-bound egos. To gather it, we must speak with the dead. This essay reimagines Hillman’s work through the metaphor of theatrical combat to explain his precise observation, pointed language, and commitment to the agon of idea-making.
Wagner’s Parsifal as ritual theater: Approaching the numinous unknown
Richard Wagner spent 37 years developing his final work, Parsifal, which resists easy analysis. Yet when audiences encounter its strange and disturbing beauty as they would a dream, the light of understanding emanates from within the drama – and Parsifal becomes an event of the soul.