Holding the Tension

Holding the tension 6

I’m doing a course in Jungian Studies at the moment and a theme that came up several times this week was Jung’s concept of the “transcendent function”.  Essentially this is something (anything) that emerges from a  tension between opposites.  In Jungian theory this is generally a tension that is fundamentally between the ego and the unconscious.   Most of us would experience it as a state of stuckness, like depression.   We would probably identify it consciously as a practical situation like a decision that is proving impossible to make, or we might become aware of it as an emotional situation where different needs or desires [...] Read more »

The Cast of Thousands

bigilittlipicture4

On a training course in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy back in the early nineties I was introduced to this diagram.  I know it as Big “I”, Little “I”,   I’m not sure who the originator of this diagram was (and I apologise to him/her for not being able to attribute this) but it has been a very useful concept to me.  In CBT it is used to help us understand that we are more than the sum of our parts (Big “I”) and that our parts (the Little “I”s ) are many, varied and contradictory. As human beings we each have the [...] Read more »

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