I wet my feet on Analytical psychology during my training and ongoing development as a therapist, but it made sense to me regarding healthy living and dealing with trauma and life’s challenges.It is not my purpose to present a treatise on Jungian psychology or to denigrate it by using it eclectically, but to allude to aspects of it which I have integrated into my understanding and way of being.
During the pandemic we have been asked to live with lockdown’s and restrictions to our way of living and generally being in the world , these restrictions and lockdowns have at times crippled us with fear and resentment because we are not made to be in lockdown or restricted in daily living.Social distancing and face covering have not been part of what we consider ‘normal’
From a psychological and spiritual perspective many are finding it hard to adapt to the ‘new normal’ and within our everyday living environments the intuitive individual can sense the trauma and frustration the pandemic is causing.It is in my opinion not just the restrictions but not knowing what will happen next, because as human beings we do not deal well with the unknown, even that which we do not know in or about our own selves.
It seems to me that adaption requires a ‘self knowing’ which is not given to or sought by everyone,and such a lack of ‘self knowing’ can mean we are not living in an integrated and meaningful way and are subject to frustrations and disturbances of our mental health.
Carl Jung taught that life was about becoming an individual integrating the parts of ourselves to find wholeness and acceptance of ourselves as individuals. You can find in depth reading on this online should you like to read it, suffice to say that we are both conscious and unconscious beings and we don’t have to live in the world very long to learn this, as children we often got punished for behaviour we did not even know was wrong or had been unconscious of.
Something to hang your cap on, so to speak, is two words which come from Jung’s psychology ‘ego’ and ‘shadow’ ego being considered the conscious part of us and shadow the dark and unknown side. Recently the shadow has broken loose from its mooring and is abroad in society we can see this in the selfish, greedy, and undisciplined behaviour of those who are spreading this virus. In order to adapt and cope in our current environment we need to bring the evil and difficult aspects of the shadow into our awareness and attempt to deal with them otherwise they will seriously affect our mental health as well as our physical well being both of which are, of course connected.
Carl Jung believed that we had both a personal unconscious and were connected to a collective unconscious which has its roots in ancestry and all the cultures and norms in the world it is seen in archetypes the world over. I think this is interesting as we have been bombarded by the caption ‘ were all in this together’ and also if the world stopped today and restarted again we would behave in the same ways we do today.
We were informed that this virus jumped from animal to human species ,and that this began in China last year.It came to light then, but the environment for it’s emergence and continuance has come about by all of us polluting and destroying our environment by our greed and selfishness we have become maladapted to live in a useful and connected society.
THE SHADOW IS LOOSE!
aoibheann thoughtful reflections 