Explore every episode of the podcast Psychology & The Cross

“I'm not a machine,” Jung insists in one of his last recorded interviews. What might his resistance tell us about our relationship to technology today?

An audio essay by Jakob Lusensky, featuring Jung’s original voice, on artificial intelligence, faith and the work of becoming psychologically mature.

 From the upcoming essay Living from the Centre, exploring Jung’s religious attitude in an age of AI.

Music licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - From deep down

References

Amodei, D. (2026, January). The adolescence of technology: Confronting and overcoming the risks of powerful AI. https://darioamodei.com/essay/the-adolescence-of-technology

Jung, C. G. (1970). The undiscovered self (present and future). In Civilization in transition (R. F. C. Hull, Trans., 2nd ed., Collected Works, Vol. 10, paras. 488–588). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1957)

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. McGraw-Hill.

Nordenstreng, K. (1961, February). Interview with Carl Gustav Jung [Audio recording]. Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle). https://sites.tuni.fi/kaarle/interview-with-carl-gustav-jung/

In this short reflection, I return to the final page of Jung’s Red Book, where he left a single handwritten word: Möglichkeit. Possibility.

What does it mean to continue dreaming Jung’s work onward, responding to the questions of our own present and future?

I also introduce the newly launched Center of the Cross, an emerging space for dialogue and new encounters between Jungian psychology and Christianity.

Read the original essay on Substack: Möglichkeit

Explore the Center: cross.center

Music licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - From deep down

Leonard Cohen on songwriting, self-respect and getting up at 4:30. In this excerpt from his 1992 conversation with Paul Zollo, Cohen shares the patient work of finding a song, and the appetite to redeem the day so that it does not go down in debt.

First part of interview as audio.
Full text of interview.

Can psychology take religious experience seriously without reducing it to psychological explanations? Did Jung succeed in remaining a psychologist of religion, or did his psychology gradually become a theology of its own?

In this episode, I speak with Jungian scholar Matei Iagher, author of The Making and Unmaking of the Psychology of Religion, about the largely forgotten field of psychology of religion from which Jung's work emerged.

We explore what Jung inherited from this tradition and what he made distinctly his own: his attempt to hold together scientific psychology and religious experience, the relationship between his psychology and Christianity, and whether he discovered something universal in the world's religions or universalized his own experience.

Toward the end, our conversation returns to The Red Book and a provocative possibility: that we might need to move beyond the familiar language of archetypes and individuation and return to the more immediate language of Jung's original experience.

References and people mentioned

William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience
Théodore Flournoy
Rudolf Otto - The Idea of the Holy
Friedrich Schleiermacher
Max Müller
Mircea Eliade
James W. Heisig - Imago Dei: A Study in C. G. Jung's Psychology of Religion
C. G. Jung - The Red Book

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - From deep down

If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for education in ethical discernment and the capacity to acknowledge the moral good.
- Pope Leo XIV, 25th of September 2026 

In this episode, Jungian scholar Paul Bishop joins Jungian analyst-in-training Emma Iovoli to explore Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and C.G. Jung’s complex relationship with Nietzsche.

Drawing on Bishop’s recent book, Jung and the Epic of Transformation, Volume 3, they explore some of Zarathustra’s most powerful images, from the eagle and serpent to the camel, lion and child, and what they reveal about psychological transformation.

The conversation moves from Jung and Nietzsche’s encounters with the depths of the psyche to Christianity, the death of God, and the question of what transformation might mean today. In an age of AI and post-humanism, what does it mean to overcome ourselves without losing sight of what it means to be human?

Purchase Paul Bishops latest book.

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - From deep down

What is the goal of psychoanalysis? Is it greater self-knowledge, or the recovery of our capacity simply to be?

In this third Freudian/Jungian conversation with psychoanalyst Donald Carveth we explore Winnicott's notion of the true self alongside Jung's understanding of the Self, individuation, and the religious attitude. We discuss conscience and the superego, the image of God (imago Dei), love, community, and why Jung increasingly turned toward Christianity in his later work.

The two earlier Freudian/Jungian conversations are found here and here.

For more psychoanalytic thinking visit Don's youtube page.

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - From deep down

Pope Leo XIV's Magnifica Humanitas may be one of the most important reflections yet on artificial intelligence and the future of humanity.

In this conversation, Jakob Lusensky and Sean McGrath explore the encyclical's central question: What does it mean to be human in an age of AI? Along the way they discuss Jung, technology, transhumanism, work, community, suffering, and why a human face that asks to be gazed upon may remain at the center of our history.

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - From deep down

This is a reading of the introduction to Magnifica - Humanitas - On Safeguarding the human person in the time of Artificial Intelligence, by Pope Leo XIV. For the full encyclical visit the following link.

Join the live stream conversation with Sean McGrath about this text Wednesday 17th of June at 3:15 pm CEST on this link.

The reading of the introduction is done by Emma Lovoli, Jungian analyst in training at ISAP. You can read her Substack here.

After our excursion along the currents of our collective dreams, we now turn our attention back to Psychology on the Cross. For this conversation, I invited Jungian scholar Ann Conrad Lammers to discuss Emma Jung: Dedicated to the Soul, a book she recently edited together with Thomas Fischer and Medea Hoch.

It's a wonderful book that brings Emma out of Carl Jung's shadow, revealing the full range of her creative work through essays, poems, dreams, and paintings. Throughout this conversation, Ann will also read a poem and two dreams from this important publication. 

Biography

Ann Conrad Lammers is a Jungian scholar who has worked and written at the crossroads of theology and psychology for the past forty years. Her doctoral work at Yale University led to the book In God's Shadow: The Collaboration of Victor White and C.G. Jung, and she is also the editor of their correspondence. An earlier conversation about this book can be found here.

Music played in this episode"From deep down" by ketsa.uk. Licensed under creativecommons.org by NC-ND 4.0.

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 Music Publishing Limited Company. 

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 myths that are forming us, and the ones asking to be born.

Co-create our new podcast by submitting your dream before December 31st.

Credits:
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Artwork: Iraq (Babylonia). Euphrates River, fisherman throwing net, sunset scene
Music: It was just a dream by Rafael Krux
Literature: The Third Reich of Dreams by Charlotte Beradt

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!

The book is available as e-book and paperback on the publisher Collective Inks website.

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 the power of the psyche is of man, how important it is to know something about it. But we know nothing about it. Nobody would give credit to the idea that the psychical processes of the ordinary man have any importance whatever. One thinks, "Oh, he has just what he has in his head. He is all from his surroundings, he is taught such and such a thing, believes such and such a thing, and particularly if he is well housed and well fed, then he has no ideas at all." And that's the great mistake because he is just that as which he is born, and he is not born as "tabula rasa," but as a reality.

Interviewer: Jung had a vision at the end of his life of a catastrophe. It was a world catastrophe.

Marie-Louise von Franz: I don't want to speak much about it. One of his daughters took notes and after his death gave it to me, and there is a drawing with a line going up and down, and underneath is "the last 50 years of humanity." And some remarks about a final catastrophe being ahead. But I have only those notes.

Interviewer: What is your own feeling about it, the world situation?

von Franz: Well, one's whole feeling revolts against this idea but since I have those notes in a drawer, I don't allow myself to be too optimistic. I think, well, we have always had wars and enormous catastrophies, and I have no more personal fear much about that. I mean at my age, if you have anyhow soon to go— so or so egocentrically spoken. But the beauty of all the life— to think that the billions and billions and billions of years of evolution to build up the plants and the animals and the whole beauty of nature— and that man would go out of sheer shadow foolishness and destroy it all. I mean that all life might go from the the planet. And we don't know— on Mars and Venus there is no life; we don't know if there is any life experiment elsewhere in the galaxies. And we go and destroy this. I think it is so abominable. I try to pray that it may not happen— that a miracle happens.

Interviewer: Do you find that young people that you see now are aware of that? That it's in their consciousness?

von Franz: Yes it's partly in their unconscious and partly in their consciousness, and I think in a very dangerous way, namely, in a way of giving up and running away into a fantasy world. You know, when you study science fiction, you see there's always the fantasy of escaping to some other planet and begin anew again, which means give up the battle on this earth, consider it hopeless and give up. I think one shouldn't give up, because if you think of [Jung's book] Answer to Job, if man would wrestle with God, if man would tell God that he shouldn't do it, if we would reflect more. That why reflection comes in. Jung never thought that we might do better than just possibly sneak round the corner with not too big a catastrophe. 

When I saw him last, he had also a vision while I was with him, but there he said, "I see enormous stretches devastated, enormous stretches of the earth. But, thank God it's not the whole planet." I think that if not more people try to reflect and take back their projections and take the opposites within themselves, there will be a total destruction. 

Is psychoanalysis a path to salvation? In this second Freudian/Jungian dialogue I ponder this provocative question together with psychoanalyst Donald Carveth.

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 science and ideas and the author of the internationally renowned book The Innermost Kernel: Depth Psychology and Quantum Physics – Wolfgang Pauli’s Dialogue with C.G. Jung. Suzanne is a scholar for the Philemon Edition, where she edited Jung’s 1937 and 1938 seminars in Bailey Island and New York.

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - One has another.

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.

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - One has another.

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 is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - Bed.

C.G Jung: Face to Face with Christianity is now out on Chiron Publications.

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 - SUBMERSIBLE

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 genuine experience of being Christian? If so, was it successful?

The book contains some of the most vital conversations from the podcast with scholars such as Murray Stein, Paul Bishop, Sean McGrath, Pia Chaudhari, Jason Smith and David Tacey. The introduction and epilogue of the book is an attempt to distill the insights from the conversations of the last years, and work as an introduction to Jung’s relationship to Christianity and its relevance for today.

Special thank you to my editor Christina Galego who helped translate my broken written English into a pleasant reading experience. 🌸 🙏

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 most clearly outlines his rendering of the Imitatio Christi.

I invited Jason Smith, host of the podcast Digital Jung, and author of Religious But Not Religious: Living a Symbolic Life, back to the podcast to discuss this important work of literature, Jung's comments on it, and what we can learn from it today. 

Music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: "Hard Sell" by Ketsa.

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 as the outer world. 

I invited my favorite scholar Paul Bishop again to the podcast to help shed some light on Trüb's thinking, his contributions, and their importance for us today. 

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - No light without darkness, Aimless and Mind 2.

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 this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - Dawn’s Dew.

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, and when, for example, I was once only just rescued from certain death by a maid. « My mind is torn to its very depths. I, who had to be a tower of strength for many weak people, am the weakest of all. Will you forgive me for being as I am? For offending you by being like this, and forgetting my duties as a doctor towards you? Will you understand that I am one of the weakest and most unstable of human beings? 

And will you never take revenge on me for that, either in words, or in thoughts or feelings? I am looking for someone who understands how to love, without punishing the other person, imprisoning him or sucking him dry; I am seeking this as yet unrealized person who will manage to separate love from social advantage and disadvantage, so that love may always be an end in itself, and not just a means to an end. 

It is my misfortune that I can not live without the joy of love, of tempestuous, ever-changing love. This daemon stands as an unholy contradiction to my compassion and my sensitivity. When love for a woman awakens within me, the first thing I feel is regret, pity for the poor woman who dreams of eternal faithfulness and other impossibilities, and is destined for a painful awakening out of all these dreams. Therefore if one is already married it is better to engage in this lie and do penance for it immediately than to repeat the experiment again and again, lying repeatedly, and repeatedly disappointing." What on earth is to be done for the best?

I do not know and dare not say, because I do not know what you will make of my words and feelings. Since the last upset I have completely lost my sense of security with regard to you. That weighs heavily on me. You must clear up this uncertainty once and for all. I should like to talk to you again at greater length. For example, I could speak with you next Tuesday morning between 9.15 and 12.00. Since you are perhaps less inhibited in your apartment, I am willing to come to you. Should Tuesday morning not suit you, write and tell me, otherwise I will come in the hope of getting some clarity. 

I should like definite assurances so that my mind can be at rest over your intentions. Otherwise my work suffers, and that seems to me more important than the passing problems and sufferings of the present. Give me back now something of the love and patience and unselfishness which I was able to give you at the time of your illness. Now am ill...

In this episode, I am joined by Sarah Larkin to discuss the life and work of Christian depth psychologist Fritz Künkel (1889-1956). Sarah has a background in religious studies and a Master's in Theology. She is a poet and has created an online archive of Künkels writing online accessible on fritzkunkel.com

Künkel was a giant in psychology in the 1920s and 1930s corresponded with Jung and studied under Alfred Adler. He lived in Berlin but emigrated to California in 1939 and developed a religiously informed depth psychology that he named “We-Psychology”. 
 
Künkel's psychology differs from C.G Jung’s in its broader emphasis on the concept of individuation and by emphasizing the importance of the collective. He also corrects Jung on matters related to evil. In my opinion, Künkel has a lot to offer depth psychology as it helps to bridge the “me” with the “we”, individuation with a social conscience, and a Christian vision for the world.

If you want to go deeper into Künkel the place to start is John A. Sanford’s book Fritz Kunkel: Selected Writings

The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - Between Each.