Latest Articles
Finding the Way Home to the Body
Karishma Sharma
September 1, 2024
Intuitives must engage with and deepen into the body’s knowing, enter into conversation with the body and be open to its revelations. Coming into relationship with the body has opened channels to the depths of my being, making me conscious of the guidance within, informing me of my innermost needs, and allowing me to accept the paradoxes of the inner world.
Trading the American Dream for Real Life
Sofia Taboada
June 11, 2024
The competent, professional, independent persona that I had painstakingly crafted over my entire adolescence and adulthood was taken from me. The woman who had climbed the ranks to become a successful executive at the pinnacle of the corporate world, with her glamorous jet-setting lifestyle, was gone. I had experienced an enormous personal defeat and, having no recourse left, I realized I had reached rock bottom.
The Rhetoric of Paranoia in an ESTJ Culture
Erika Raney
March 6, 2024
In this patriarchal and heavily capitalistic culture that privileges the thinking functions, feeling seems to dominate the unconscious collective psyche. In the rise of cults of personality in their contemporary manifestation, the inflated extraverted thinking function establishes a goal; then anything that does not adhere to that universal aim is excised. In this crusade-like paradigm, connection to the genuine feelings and needs of a diverse community is lost as unhealthy extraverted thinking tightens its grip on power.
From the Archives
Nietzsche on “Self-Overcoming”
James Kennard
July 1, 2015
Rather than truly being able to move down to embrace the inferior function, to achieve “integrity in depth,” Nietzsche tries to “overcome” the problem of the personality. His fantastic intuitions are not wholly thought through, and so he is not able to deal with the real task of individuation, which asks us to ground consciousness in the reality of body and mind.
Conversations with Satan
Walter Smith
January 4, 2017
What is evil? We know it when we see it. Evil is subjective; it often depends on our point of view. For example, when the two women asked if they could tell me what I did wrong, I had a choice; I could either see their offer as helpful or “evil” in the sense that they were out to destroy my work. Can we utilize the power of psychological type to better understand what evil is?
Red Book Ruminations I
Mark Hunziker
November 15, 2010
“The black serpent seems to be stronger; the white serpent draws back. Great billows of dust rise from the place of struggle. But then I see: the black serpent pulls itself back again. The front part of its body has become white. Both serpents curl about themselves, one in light, the other in darkness.”
Anxiety and the Energy Attitude
Sophia Dunn
September 5, 2012
I went back to the thing that seemed to make no sense. I asked Matt why he thought he became anxious coming home from work but did not experience this fear on his way into work? I had spent the hour prior to my session with Matt going through notes of other therapies with other ENTJs, but nothing in this other work had seemed particularly germane.
When the Music Plays the Band
Mark Ransom
January 22, 2019
The dynamics of creative process and psychological wellbeing are such that creative artists are often overcome by the demonic. From Nietzsche’s Zarathustra to Curt Cobain’s Nirvana, there is an artistic star swallowed by the unconscious every week. But the arts can also be a type of savior—a place for us to process our darkness and not become it.
Unraveling Tragedy
Shirl Hughes Terrell
January 22, 2019
My sister’s life illustrates the impact of a lack of positive parental guidance on the development of personality and what happens if the inner parent fails to develop. Family tragedy deprived Christin of a compass with which to navigate psychic turbulence during midlife. While few people succumb to such crises, many lack the tenacity to face them.
Golf: A Game of Individuation
Jeffrey Lauterbach
July 9, 2014
To win in the crucible of national championship golf requires skill, luck, and self-knowledge. A player with the requisite physical skill may be distracted by the emergence of the inferior function or led out of focus on the present by auxiliary or tertiary functions. One must rely on the extraverted sensation function, whether it is dominant or not.
So Texas Walks Into a Bar …
Elizabeth Martin
April 5, 2017
With his unique thundering velvet hand approach, a Texan rarely says, “Shut up!” or “Don’t do that!” Instead, we hear, “Hush,” or “That would be ill-advised,” with a long drawl and a grin. The result is effective and charming, binding the man to his community. He easily compensates in robust, creative, and powerful ways to ensure full balance in his personality expression.