Many people try to change their lives yet fail to do so for one single reason: they base their actions on a misguided intention. Intention lies at the very core of human action and permeates everything we do. The paradox is that, although intention is the true instrument through which we create our reality, most […]
The essential principle of synchronicity is that events occur simultaneously inside and outside of us, and that these events are meaningfully related. Synchronicity is an expression of a coincidence in time of contents with the same meaning, manifested in different forms—psychic and material. As Jungian analysts say, there is no clear boundary between matter and […]
“Every psychological truth is only a half-truth, and this too is only a half-truth.”C. G. Jung In a previous article, I shared how, as a child, I used to daydream that I would become a doctor who healed people by pulling white worms out of their heads. I remembered this fantasy many years later, after […]
I think that if I had known this back then, I would have spared myself a great deal of anguish. I am referring to the third kind of suffering spoken of in Buddhism—the so-called “all-pervasive suffering.” Because I was definitely suffering, and with a depth greater than anything I had experienced up to that point, […]
“The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves.” — Carl G. Jung, Aion: […]
Some time ago, when I began looking for a job as a psychologist, people told me that I would need to know the right people. That without knowing the right people, nothing could happen. And yet, I did find a job as a psychologist. Without knowing the right people. Fifteen years later, I left that […]
Burnout is a form of occupational stress expressed through extreme exhaustion and alienation from work and from people. If at the beginning a person was inspired and burned brightly in their work, now we observe the exact opposite — the flame has gone out, and in place of inspiration there is fatigue, apathy, pessimism, and […]
Once, a man was walking near a cliff and fell. As he was falling, he managed to grab onto the branch of a small tree growing out of a crack in the rock. Hanging from the branch, shaken by the cold wind, the man realized the full hopelessness of his situation: below him were river […]
Recently, I heard myself telling a client that I am “like this” because I have been touched by death. And I realized that this expression describes, better than anything else, what matters most to me. When I was seventeen, my mother died. But even before that happened, I lived constantly with the fear of death, […]
Yesterday I was visiting some friends, and the hostess was talking about how every week acquaintances called her to ask whether she could help them find a job. She is very compassionate, and I could sense how she worried about them and suffered because she could not help them. At the same time, I saw […]
