Soul Spelunker

Golgotha, by Vilmos Aba-Novák (1894–1941) “In order to approach the psychology of pathology afresh, I am introducing the term, pathologizing to mean the psyche’s autonomous ability to create illness, morbidity, disorder, abnormality, and suffering in any aspect of its behavior and to experience and imagine life through this deformed and afflicted perspective” (Hillman 57). I would like to delve into the matter of how we can “experience and imagine life through this deformed and afflicted perspective.” When one is afflicted…

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  Photo by Uray1130  Carl Gustav Jung did very original work in his field. One thing that seems to be largely ignored is that he was also an ingenious philosopher. Some of his theories deal with important philosophical questions rather than strictly psychological issues. One such theory has to do with what he called the collective unconscious. When Jung entered the field of psychology around the turn of the twentieth century, there were notions of an unconscious region prevalent among…

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Each religion has got their own way of making you feel like a victim. The Christians say ‘you are a sinner’, and you better just zip up your trousers and give the money to the pope and we’ll give you a room up in the hotel in the sky. —Timothy Leary, Timothy Leary’s Last Trip Guilt is one of the primary tools used in our culture to manipulate us, whether it be by so-called religious leaders, politicians, managers, or family…

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Whoever . . . scrutinizes his mind . . . will find his own natural work, and will find likewise his own star and daemon, and following their beginnings he will thrive and live happily. Otherwise, he will find fortune to be adverse, and he will feel that heaven hates him (Ficino 169). The daimon is a sort of inner mentor, dissuading us from taking certain paths in life. Heraclitus adds that our ethos is our daimon. In this work,…

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The Japanese Footbridge, by Claude Monet Ficino writes, “Man is the soul itself. . .” (Ficino 74). In his Commentary On Plato’s Symposium, Marsilio Ficino makes a statement that is totally antithetical to the teachings of modern psychology. For the most part, psychology today refuses to accept any idea of Soul. The predominant view of our day is Behaviorism, which is totally materialistic and scientistic. Man is a material entity. There is no metaphysical element, such as Soul, mind, or…

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One of the most ignored and underestimated thinkers in Western history is Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). Here is a brief biography from the Wisdom Supreme: Giambattista Vico (or Giovanni Battista Vico) was a Neapolitan philosopher, historian, and jurist. Vico is famous for his concept of truth as an act, verum factum. His major work is the New Science (Scienza Nuova), published in 1725 and, as a completely rewritten work, in 1730. His major idea — that truth is an act, is…

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