Wales 1966 – 1967
- Encountering Death: Near-death Experience, Trauma
- The Unconscious Family: Family Unconscious, Family Emotions, Ancestors
- Dancing with the Shadow: Personal Shadow, Family Shadow, Projecting
- Mother Church: Mother Archetype, Good-enough Mother, Religion and Spirituality
- Shame about Sex: Sexuality, Sex in the Family, Sexual Abuse
- An Aborted Trial: Illusion and Disillusionment, Abortion
- The Hero’s Journey: Hero’s Journey
Ireland 1967 – 1970
- The Complex Mother: Complexes, Mother Complex
- Learning to Lounge: Identity and Persona
- Going Public: Denial, Trickster Archetype, Evil
- Misery: Understanding Our Parents
- Seeking a Fortune: Angels and Fairytales, Awareness and Compassion
- A Hypnotic Trance: Hypnosis and the Unconscious, Gaslighting
- Stuck in the Mud: Suffering, Talents
- Sickness and Magic: Magic, Symbolic Understanding
- Dublin: Illness and Healing, Intention and Synchronicity
- The Doors of Perception: Drugs and Reality, Forgiving our Parents
- Boxed and Unbound: Work and Purpose, Spiritual Path
- Opening the Door: Inner Journey
Introduction
Therefore the spirit of the depths forced me to speak to my soul, to call upon her as a living and self-existing being. C. G. Jung, The Red Book
This is a story of my life between the ages of 14 and 18, an intense period that happened during the 1960’s in Wales and Ireland. It is an odd tale, filled with twists and turns—but it is real, or at least as real as my psyche allows.
I wrote much of the narrative years ago but something was incomplete. Gradually, it dawned on me: as a psychotherapist, I inhabit two worlds, the ordinary world of taken-for-granted happenings and a deeper more elaborate world of symbols and inner meaning. On the surface, everything is the way it looks. Beneath the surface everything is intricately distinctive. As a therapist, I help clients delve the depths of the psyche, illuminate mysteries, explore tangled metaphorical connections, and ultimately contact the hidden realm of the soul. How can I only write about the exterior of life when the depths are ever-present and insistent?
Life is more than personal, more than a sequence of events. As Winifred Rushforth, my first therapist, said with a twinkle in her eye, “Something is happening!”[1] Beneath the skin, profound things are happening, a whole tapestry of subterranean meanings. Subtle threads weave intricate patterns through the fabric of our lives, patterns we hardly recognize. To understand ourselves, we have to tease out these strands, and search for elusive signs and hints. Only then can we know life for what it is—a purposeful journey of the soul.
Each chapter in the book is a fusion of narrative and psychological reflections. The overt story is an adolescent hero’s journey. The reflections are the outflowing of many years engaged in Jungian-inspired psychotherapy.[2] This dual process—outer story and inner meaning—is similar to the process of psychotherapy. In a session, clients recount the stories of their lives, both past and current. This narrative is the surface story. Like the frothed milk on a cup of coffee, the surface story tends to conceal the dark labyrinthine dynamics of the psyche.
Therapy seeks to uncover the powerful motivations, lost feelings, childlike fantasies and psychic patterns buried beneath the surface story. Understanding and integrating these meanings unlocks a client’s ability to move beyond emotional and personal stuckness. Often the client’s adolescent experiences signal an important turning point.
The ten-year life period between 14 and 24 is intense. Tide-like forces of instinct and spirit stir within our psyches; we love and hate passionately because our bodies and souls are awash with the Life Force. It shakes us, filling our hearts with dread and wonder, spinning our heads with daydreams and visions, and provoking us to question everything.
If the soul has its way, out of this tumult stumbles a moral and spiritual awakening: numinous openings, intrusions of “otherness” into ordinary consciousness. Odd dreams, disturbing intuitions and elusive hunches rise up out of the darkness producing thoughts and feelings impossible to articulate. Do you remember?
In this book, I invite you to contemplate your own teenage years. Recall the adventures and struggles, the despair and elation, the doubts and triumphs. Examine the extraordinary decisions you felt compelled to make. Understand the forces that shaped your choices and experiences. Now is a good time to revisit those vital questions: What happened to me? How did it affect me? What does it mean for my life?
[1] Rushforth, W. (1981). Something is Happening. Turnstone Press
[2] I am not a Jungian analyst, but I consider C.G. Jung as my psycho-spiritual mentor. In my 20’s I read his memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Jung, C. G. (1961). Random House), which set me on the path to becoming a psychologist.