What Goddess encounters really say about your lifestyle

Therapy

Those visions and messages from the deep reflect real-world events, relationships and consequences

Wangechi Mutu, ‘Yo Mama’ showing at Intertwined, the New Museum, NYC till 4 June

How do Jungian interpretations of trip reports actually play out in therapy rooms?

Naturally we’re all smug that canonised psychologist Carl Jung – arguably the most famous one after Sigmund Freud and y’know, Jordan Peterson – dignifies the visionary aspect of psychedelic experiences.

Jung’s relational depth psychology explains the personal relevance of dreamlike imaginary narratives in his masterworks including Man and His Symbols and Archetypes of the Unconscious.

But waxing lyrical on your entity encounters is a far cry from a typical talk therapy session.

“It’s not always good to start diving into the archetype that penetrated their body midway through a ceremony”

I asked Vital lecturer Dr Ido Cohen how he uses Jung’s psychology to help patients make sense – and use – of psychedleic experiences.

“It’s important to meet people where they are,” says the accomplished Jungian analyst and scholar of indigenous shamanistic practices, “So I think first I want to listen. I want to listen to where they are, what the actual capacity, is and what the need is.”

Ido, also a scholar of indigenous shamanistic practices, explains: “I have patients who I worked with for years without talking about anything like I have today. You can also have someone specifically psychedelic related, who comes back from retreat really raw and are very, very open, or very, very scared or something. So it's not a good time for them to start diving into like the archetype they saw that penetrated their body midway through a ceremony. That's not what they need right now.”

Jung related mental health to our inner conflict with subconscious yearnings. Poignant visions from dreams or the waking ‘active imagination’ were messages from our deepest instincts, he believed.

But it’s the emotional content, and the compulsions they stir, that bear most relevance.

“I'm not dismissing the image: act it, treat it as though it's real. But my game is curiosity”

Those encounters with the Goddess evoke more down to earth matters. They present as deeply profound because they are wrenched from the collective unconscious, where that which is undeniably bigger-than-us dwells.

“To give you an example: I worked with this young man, lovely young man, riddled with anxiety and low like low self esteem, had a strong Saturnian father, went to ceremony, came back and he's like, You don't you don't understand what happened to me!’,” says Ido. He continues, “I was like, ‘What happens?’ And he paints this scene, where he was on these mountains… and he was a wolf running with a wolf pack. He's describing this to me in vivid detail. I asked him one question: ‘How was it? How did it feel, to run with wolves?’ He said, I've never felt so strong. I have never felt so capable. I've never felt so much in my body. And I've never felt so free’.”

The subconscious demands we confront said urges. Not by actually going feral in the woods with the pack, tempting as it remains.

“You were a wolf. Consider your wolf self”

But instead by transitioning from the being we are, to someone a little more like the one up on the that mountainside. 

“You were a wolf. I'm totally down with that. I'm not dismissing the image: act it, treat it as though it's real,” says Ido Cohen, “But my game is curiosity… to have you consider your wolf self.”