Psychology & The Cross

In the final episode of the first wave of Was it just a dream?, the outside world folds inward, everything condensing toward a single point, triggering a shocking realization.
 
Share your own commentary and read the full dream on our Substack page.

Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux. Courtesy of the Krux Music Publishing Limited Company. 

Our last dream received some thoughtful commentary from listeners. We decided to put together some of these as extra material.

Read the full dream here. 

Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux. Courtesy of the Krux Music Publishing Limited Company. 

In the sixth episode of Was it just a dream?, we find ourselves in a church, looking the other way. 

Share your own commentary and read the full dream on our Substack page.

Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux. Courtesy of the Krux Music Publishing Limited Company. 

In the fifth episode of Was it just a dream?, we find ourselves at sea in the Middle Ages. A raven lands on deck and transforms. What is it asking of us?

Share your own commentary and read the full dream on our Substack page.

Reference to Albrecht Dürer's medieval engraving Knight, Death and the Devil.

Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux. Courtesy of the Krux Music Publishing Limited Company. 

In this fourth episode of Was it just a dream?, we're discussing a dream we received as a response to previous dreams. It again involves cutting. 

Share your own commentary and read the full dream on our Substack page.

Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux. Courtesy of the Krux Music Publishing Limited Company. 

In this third episode of Was it just a dream?, we are faced with catastrophe, and learn something about the creative response to it.

The name “Edward” comes from an Anglo-Saxon name which literally means “guardian or protector of wealth”.

Share your own commentary and read the full dream on our Substack page.

Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux. Courtesy of the Krux Music Publishing Limited Company. 

In this second episode of Was it just a dream?, we’re invited to follow the symbol of the fish.

We’re inviting the fish to remain a fish, to swim swiftly, hard to grasp a hold of, turn into a concept, as we ask what kind of consciousness it might ask the dreamer, and us as dreamers to develop.

Share your own commentary and read the full dream on our Substack page.

Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux. Courtesy of the Krux Musi...

The first episode of our new podcast series, Was it just a Dream?, is titled “I Don’t Want to Hurt You.” Listen to the dream, and you will understand why. If you’d like to read the full dream or comment on it, go to our Substack page.

Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux. Courtesy of the Krux Music Publishing Limited Company. 

Have you had a dream that stayed with you — one that felt larger than your own life?

This is an invitation to join Jungian analysts Cécile Buckenmeyer and Jakob Lusensky in the experiment of shaping a holding space for collective dreams. The new podcast Was it just a dream? is devoted to those big dreams that C.G. Jung described as “the common property of mankind” (CW 10 §33), the deep streams of the delta that is the unconscious.

By gathering these dreams, we may glimpse what our culture is dreaming beneath the surface, the myth...

In this episode, I speak with Sean McGrath about his new book The Lost Road - A Search for the Soul of the West, a spiritual autobiography and a philosophical meditation on the soul of the West.

Moving between personal narrative and cultural diagnosis, McGrath traces how the ancient fusion of Greek contemplation and Jewish revelation formed the heart of Western spirituality, how that inheritance fractured into secular modernity, and why consumerism has become our age’s dominant, and destructive, false religion.

I hope you will enjoy this conversation as much as I did!

...

Musical interlude: Submerged † 2026 by The Psychia†ry.

Audio clip from the film, "Matter of Heart," (1986) directed, edited, and produced by Mark Whitney, conceived and written by Suzanne Wagner, executive producer George Wagner.

C.G. Jung: The world hangs on a thin thread, and that is the psyche of man. Nowadays we are not threatened by elementary catastrophes. There is no such thing [in nature] as an H-bomb; that is all man's doing. WE are the great danger.  The psyche is the great danger.  What if something goes wrong with the psyche? You see, and so it is demonstrated to us in our days what th...

Is psychoanalysis a path to salvation? I was invited to ponder this provocative question together with psychoanalyst Donald Carveth. This is our second Freudian/Jungian dialogue.

For more psychoanalytic thinking visit Don's youtube page.

In the fourth and final season of Secular Christ, Sean McGrath introduces his ideas around everyday Christian Mysticism. 

In the fourth and final season of Secular Christ, Sean McGrath introduces his ideas around everyday Christian Mysticism. 

In the fourth and final season of Secular Christ, Sean McGrath introduces his ideas around everyday Christian Mysticism. 

In the fourth and final season of Secular Christ, Sean McGrath introduces his ideas around everyday Christian Mysticism. 

In this episode, I speak with Swedish psychotherapist and historian of ideas, Suzanne Gieser, who shares some of her recent research on the fascinating topic of Jung and psychedelics. She offers insights into Jung’s views on the therapeutic potential (and dangers) of these substances and sheds light on early Jungian pioneers in the field of psychedelic psychotherapy. Suzanne also shares some of her own clinical experiences as a psychotherapist, actively working with psychedelic substances to treat complex trauma.

Suzanne is a licensed relational psychotherapist with a private practice in Stockholm, Sweden. She is also a historian of...

Jung on death. An audio clip from John Freeman's 'Face to Face' (BBC) interview at Jung's house at Küsnacht, in March 1959, two years before Jung's passing. Watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0p1ITcGtKI

In this episode I speak to a dear friend and colleague, Luis Moris about his most recent book "Confronting Death". The conversation ambulate around Jung's writings on death and dying and the role of "the dead" in the process of individuation. 

Luis Moris is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Zurich. He is the founder of Blue Salamandra Films. He has produced and directed several films including interviews with prominent Jungian analysts. His website is: www.luismoris.com

Confronting Death edited by Luis Moris and Murray Stein is now out on Chiron Publications.

In this episode, I speak to religious studies scholar Aaron French. We discuss Rudolf Steiner’s concept of the Doppelgänger and Jung’s concept of The Shadow, and explore what to learn when putting these two visionaries in the same room. 

Aaron J. French is a post-doctoral researcher in Religious Studies at the University of Erfurt in Germany.  His main research focuses on the History of Esotericism, the History and Philosophy of Science, Sacred Space and Architecture, modern German Philosophy, and Science and Technology Studies.

The music played in this episode...

I invited a few of scholars partaking in C.G Jung: Face to Face with Christianity to share a personal reflection after reading the book. Third out is Jungian analyst and scholar Murray Stein. 

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Siddharta Corsus - Constellations

I invited a few of scholars partaking in C.G Jung: Face to Face with Christianity to share a personal reflection after reading the book. Second out is Jungian scholar and Orthodox Christian Pia Chaudhari.

Here is a link to an earlier conversation we had which is also to be found in edited form in the book.

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Siddharta Corsus - Constellations

I invited a few of scholars partaking in C.G Jung: Face to Face with Christianity to share a personal reflection after reading the book. First out is Paul Bishop.

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Siddharta Corsus - Constellations

Today the book C.G Jung: Face to Face with Christianity - Conversations on dreaming the Myth onward is finally released. For this episode I decided to swap seats and have Sean McGrath interview myself. Thank you for listening and feel free to support this podcast by purchasing a copy of the book. 

I had a conversation with Freudian psychoanalyst Don Carveth on his excellent youtube channel "Psychoanalytic thinking". The conversation takes as a starting point the upcoming book C.G Jung: Face to Face with Christianity, but also discussed Ernest Beckers book Denial of Death and the importance of further Freudian/Jungian dialogues. 

In the final episode of this season of searching for the seeds of Secular Christianity, we travel to the 20th century to learn from the German Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

We explore his concept of religionless Christianity which developed as he sat imprisoned in Berlin by the Nazi regime for his resistance, and before his execution. McGrath continues to link back to Augustines idea of the invisible church and coins the term invisible Christianity.
 

What Meister Eckhart learnt, and we can learn, from The Beguines.

We left off in Alexandria in the second century and in this episode time travel a thousand years forward in tie, to the 14th century Northern Europe. At this point in time, particularly in Belgium and in Western Germany in the Rhineland, a non dual philosophy of Christianity emerges. The center player is Meister Eckhart and we explore his relationship to the woman's movement of The Beguines.

Visit our pop-up shop for the existential swag you did now know you needed!

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: XYLO - ZIK...

In this episode we travel back in time to the city of Alexandria, the cultural Mecca of the Roman Empire to learn from the Christian theologian and philosopher Clement of Alexandria (150-215 AD), about how to build resilience in our present age.

 
The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: XYLO - ZIK - SUBMERSIBLE

We need to reclaim the future for Christian consciousness, and to recognize that the first Christians were looking towards the future, looking towards the fruition of something. They were not commemorating something that was past. They were actually witnessing something that is coming to be.
 
- Sean J McGrath and Jakob Lusensky go seeking for the seeds of Secular Christianity.

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: XYLO - ZIK - SUBMERSIBLE

The Christian teaching is that we are not yet human. We are on the way towards humanity. Humanity is still to come. 

- Sean J McGrath and Jakob Lusensky go seeking for the seeds of Secular Christianity.

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: XYLO - ZIK - RAINBOW

Sean J McGrath together with Jungian Analyst Jakob Lusensky go seeking for the seeds of Secular Christianity.

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: XYLO - ZIK - RAINBOW

I am delighted to announce that the upcoming publication C.G Jung: Face to Face with Christianity - Conversations on Dreaming the Myth Onward published by Chiron Publications is now available for pre-order.

The book can now be pre-ordered on Amazon or for a 20% discount for followers of the podcast using the discount code facetoface2024! on Chiron’s website. 

With the conversations from the podcast as a starting point this book explores C.G. Jung's lifelong wrestling with Christianity and its importance for us today. Can Jungian psychology be understood as Jung's attempt to recover a g...

The Secret of the Golden Flower is a Taoist text on inner alchemy that landed in Jung's hands in the late 1920s. It was the sinologist and Christian missionary in China, Richard Wilhelm who sent the text to Jung for a commentary.

It's hard to overestimate the importance this text had on Jung and his work. Reading this text made him abandon his work on the Red Book and shift his focus outside to the comparative studies of the individuation process. Especially interesting for this podcast is that it's in Jung's commentary of the text that he...

Hans Trüb is one of the unsung heroes of the early movement of Analytical Psychology. He was a pioneer of relational psychoanalysis or intersubjective psychotherapy years before any such terms were coined. Trüb (which means 'cloudy' or ‘gloomy’ in German) had a personal friendship and later conflict with Jung and an ongoing correspondence with philosopher Martin Buber.

Trüb's psychological theory is an attempt of synthesising Analytical Psychology with Buber's dialogue-based philosophy. His vision was an analysis at eye level, a powershift between analyst and analysand, as well as an analysis as focused on the inner a...

In this episode, I speak to Jonah C. Evans about the ideas of Austrian social reformer, architect, and Christian esotericist Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) and how they relate to Jung's psychology.

Jonah is a priest and director of the seminary of the Christian Community in North America based in Toronto. The Christian Community is an international Christian movement inspired by Rudolf Steiner and still very active today. 

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - Mind 2

In our third season of Secular Christ with Sean J. McGrath we go searching for the seeds of Secular Christianity. The series will go live in early 2024.

In this episode, I speak to Pia Chaudhari about her book Dynamis of Healing: Patristic Theology and the Psyche published by Fordham University Press. 

Pia holds a doctorate in theology from the Department of Psychiatry & Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Her research interests include theological anthropology, depth psychology, processes of healing, and the engagement with aestetics and beauty. She is a founding co-chair of the Analytical Psychology and Orthodox Christianity Consultation (APOCC). 

Thank you for listening in on our conversation. 

The music played in...

A letter from Carl Gustav Jung to Sabina Spielrein (1885-1942), 4th of December 1908.

My Dear,

I regret so much; I regret my weakness and curse the fate that is threatening me. I fear for my work, for my life's task, for all the lofty perspectives that are being revealed to me by this new Weltanschauung as It evolves. How shall I with my sensitive soul, free myself from all these questions? 

You will laugh when I tell you that recently earlier surfacing, from a time (3-4 year) when I often hurt myself badly, a...