Eternal Child

Robinson thumb image

18 Oct: Healing the Ancestral Hauntings of the Archetypal Mother

My mother is a ghost now. She died the last day of 2016. She was the person nearest and dearest to me for much of my life, yet it seemed we never quite understood and accepted each other unconditionally. She haunts me as an unfulfilled spirit when I have anxious thoughts, or fearful premonitions, or self-admonition, but also in old sayings, endearing quirks, and the names of flowers and trees. And she inhabits my dreams, mostly as an unhappy child.

macke_sailboat_on_tegernsee

11 Jul: Typological Refugees

Individuation calls us to fight the dragon head-on. The struggles of relationship—whether with another person or within a culture—are opportunities. We can flee and seek a quick-fix, taking what my husband calls “tequila shot” flights to numb the discomfort until the next situation arises. Or we can remain within the oyster shell and endure the uncomfortable rubbing.

casorati_silvana_cenni

04 Apr: Anorexia Nervosa and the INTJ Type

Anorexia nervosa can be understood as an archetypal death-rebirth process. A typological analysis shows a psychological syndrome based in archetypal possession resulting from the dynamic configuration of INTJ preferences. The individual with anorexia undertakes her own heroic psychospiritual journey through the underworld to transform personal and collective consciousness.

Hartley, 1939, Sustained comedy (detail)

04 Apr: Death by Thesis

To have to spend a year in one’s inferior function is like a yearlong time-out for a toddler. I got so bored and desperate with my inferior introverted sensing (Si) function, required to gather and document the data, that I spent many hours asleep in the library. I could have asked Dr. Goldsmith for help, or maybe a mercy killing, but I was too proud to admit difficulty.

theseus_and_aethra

06 Jul: The Greek Hero in Crisis

Like the water that surrounds their country, the Greeks are very fluid and go with the flow. They are passionate and capable. However, their heroic use of extraverted sensing has contributed to the current economic crisis. The Greek hero must ease his extraverted sensing grip and use puer extraverted thinking energy to build analytical and efficient systems.

il_trovatore

05 Nov: A Broken Personality Repairs Itself

“Everything has a purpose, clocks tell you the time, trains take you to places. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn’t be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too. ”

kandinsky_sketch_III

05 Jun: Egosyntonic and Egodystonic

Our often-used shorthand illustration with a line drawn between the four allegedly conscious function-attitudes and the four “unconscious” ones is misleading because consciousness is not a sufficiently reliable characteristic for distinguishing these two sides of the psyche’s typology. It’s related to what distinguishes them, but only as a secondary and fairly unpredictable characteristic.