Archetype in Action™ Organization: Putting Archetype to Work for the Good of Society

Is there Meaning to Life?

Writer-Director Margaret Betts’ outstanding new film Novitiate shows us all we need to know about religion.

The Police Chief pleads for patience. “I’d rather not tell anyone, but I’m dying of pancreatic cancer.” Mildred, played tougher than nails by Frances McDormand, won’t take dying for an excuse. She slams back his response telling Woody Harrelson’s otherwise ingratiating Chief that the billboards will encourage him to do his job. Besides, Mildred grimly observes, “the whole town knows you’re dying.”

Over the last few weeks, I have been thinking about a sentence that is said to be mentioned in Turkish primary school books. “If a boy is educated, he becomes a kadi. If a girl is educated, she becomes a witch.” Does this sentence really exist in any school books? I am not sure about that.

When Huizinga said “beauty in love, occupies more place than pride and power do’’, surely he emphasized, love also occupied more place in beauty than pride or power. So, in both sides where should be looked to find “beauty’’? Undoubtedly, first in nature, after in arts. For instance, in photography/paintings… Known fact: Nature in itself, is a photograph, a picture. So as everything in nature. If you draw a picture of a human, this is because human resembles painting; if you draw a tree, this is because tree resembles painting; if you draw a bird, this is because it resembles painting vice versa… Well, what does artist do? It is the kneading in artist’s inner world, and his/her formalising the second time. This is what makes art, itself. The beauty and love in formalising.

For National Psychotherapy Day, Edward Santana, author of Jung and Sex, reflects on the founders of the field and their critical focus on the mysteries of sexuality more than 100 years ago, as well as its vital role in mental health, both then and now…

American Soul author Ronald Schenk will speak Friday, September 22nd on “The Trump Phenomenon,” with a follow on Workshop on Saturday, September 23rd on “The Soul of Terror and America’s Involvement in the Middle East.” Both events will take place in The Butler Board Room at American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20016.

Since the beginning of Jungian psychology it has been said and discussed a lot about theory and clinical practice. However, it has not been done enough when it comes to political and social practice. The title of the conference in Cape Town is symptomatic – the spectre of the other, or othering, cannot be understood and experienced merely on the ground of the theory or even clinical experience. Othering is not purely psychological or philosophical phenomenon – it is a political and social reality that is also present in psychology as it is, what cannot be forgotten, a part of political and social practice.

Dayveon, the central character in Amman Abbasi’s new film, is a study in contrasts. He lives amidst great beauty and great danger. The at-risk African American adolescent is coming of age in rural Arkansas. Lush landscape envelopes the meager shanty where he lives with his sister Kim (Chastity Moore) and her boyfriend Brian (Dontrell Bright). Kim and Brian try their best to instill value, discipline and love.

Archetype in Action™ Organization: Putting Archetype to Work for the Good of Society

Archetype in Action™ Organization: Putting Archetype to Work for the Good of Society

Archetype in Action™ Organization: Putting Archetype to Work for the Good of Society

"A specter haunts our world today; its name is Angst." In this way Dr. Thomas Arzt begins his profound essay and this amazing book. He then proceeds to fully diagnose the malaise of our age, and address what we all need to do to recover.

Greta Gerwig’s new film Lady Bird is a brilliant primer on how young people experience class and alienation in America. Sweet and sour, this razor-sharp, figuratively autobiographical gem is Gerwig’s bridge from acting to writing and directing. It is a gift not to be taken lightly.

“When evil breaks at any point into the order of things, our whole circle of psychic protection is disrupted. Action inevitably calls up reaction, and, in the matter of destructiveness, this turns out to be just as bad as the crime, and possibly even worse, because the evil must be exterminated root and branch. In order to escape the contaminating touch of evil we need a proper rite de sortie, a solemn admission of guilt by judge, hangman, and public, followed by an act of expiation.”

Dr. Carl G. Jung, Civilization in Transition: After the Catastrophe, 1946, ¶411

But I know that without my experiences in other cultures, and without some knowledge of history, my understanding of the world today would be severely limited. And even more, my understanding of what is possible would be limited. History is not simply a timeline of events and people. It is a panorama of possibilities and lessons about what it means to be human.

“The U.S. is in a moral crisis. We need to challenge private morality. There is a deep moral under-pinning of progressive ideas. We must deal with systemic racism, war economy, health care and redistribution of wealth. We are now engaged in the greatest transference of wealth since the days of slavery. We take money and give to the greedy while letting other people die of need. . . like in the Post Civil War era, when the Freedman’s Bureau Hospitals health care was given, then taken away. Today there are familiar arguments to justify the new take-aways, arguments that people do not deserve health care.”

Lana Shaheen has emerged from her university experience as a capable writer in both English and Arabic, as an effective translator of complex documents from English to Arabic, and as a capable artist. I have personally used her services to translate my work from English to Arabic, and have been most satisfied with both her diligence and her performance.

Unveiling Masks & Mirrors of the SELF in Tarot

How does the Fool's Archetypal Path in Tarot and the Hermetic Tree of Life offer us keys to navigating our lives with meaning and purpose in our polarized, changing world?

Archetype in Action™ Organization: Putting Archetype to Work for the Good of Society

Neasa Ni Chianain’s “School Life” is a lyrical look at a year at the Headfort School in Kells, Ireland. The film is an irresistibly charming journey of free flowing images and situations that might comprise a scrapbook of school memories.