The Taproot Podcast

🦲The 3 Personalities of Karen Horney Feminist Psychoanalyst

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Karen Horney was a German psychoanalyst. Her career came into prominence in the nineteentwenties when she formed theories on human attachment and neurosis that split from Freud’skey ideas. Horney’s theory of personality development and individuation are still highly relevantto modern theories of personality, attachment psychology and psychological trauma. Eventhough she is not well remembered, her work is as relevant as it was at the turn of the century.Applying her theories to my work with patients and to my own life has been an integral piece ofmy own personal and professional development. This article is part one of four in a seriesexplaining Horney’s theories.
At the time of this writing my daughter is two. Sometimes when my wife and I relax slightly inpublic, she will get a glimmer in her eye and, starting to giggle, run away from us. While we willyell for her to stop, she will cackle drunk with her new found power, as she runs away into acrowd of strangers or into oncoming traffic. When we take her to school or to meet new peopleshe wraps herself around my wife’s leg, pressing her cheek into my wife’s calf, and refuses toSpeak.
Two year old children cannot understand moderation or limitation. They demand to have “morefood” even when their plate is overflowing. Minutes later they will refuse to eat another bitebecause they are “full”. They cannot understand shades of gray. They refuse to believe thatthey need a nap until their eyes are closing. People are either all “bad guys” or all “good guys”.Individual children live in a world of extremes with tunnel vision on their immediate presentdesires and realities.
Infants do not understand that they are separate creatures from their mother. The firsttraumatic event in an infant’s life is the separation from the mother as the infantbecomes a toddler. Infants are connected to the mother for so much of their post birthexperience. In order to soothe infants we try to make them feel as though they are still in thewomb. We swaddle infants, keep them warm, and play white noise. The mother is both theirsource of physical comfort and nourishment. So much of the infant’s conscious experience iscentered on its connection to its mother, that it makes sense that infants would lack the ability tounderstand what they are outside of the central reality of their experience.
For the nine months in the womb an infant is physically and psychologically dependent on itsmother. It takes at least one and a half years after being born for infants to begin to piecetogether that they will have to eventually become something separate from their mother.Because infants cannot understand their existence without their mother, this means that whenthey are inevitably forced to separate from their mother, infants feel like their existence is underthreat. The necessary task of the mother is to separate the child from herself into itself. Yet, thisfeels to the child like it is being obliterated. This is often the first major trauma of a child’s life.
Karen Horney’s theory of personality and neurosis is built on examining its effect on an infant’sdevelopment. When toddlers begin to be separated from their mothers they experiencemoments where they, like my daughter, think they are God and can run through traffic. They arecompletely independant, completely free, can do things “by themself”, and will never needsupervision or approval from parents again. They quickly alternate into periods of abject terrorwhere they are horrified with their agency as an independent being and, often wrappingthemselves around her leg, attempt to remerge with their mother.
The distinction between infant and toddler is between a creature that can not live independentlyand a creature that sometimes thinks it can. Toddlers alternate between rejecting all authority tobecome a god and trying to crawl back into the womb in order to forget they exist. Our ego iswhat allows us to navigate the overwhelming forces of the unconscious. The ego allows us toaccept both our autonomy and reconcile our own ultimate insignificance. Toddlers are justbeginning to develop an ego that will synthesize these competing, and contradictory realities.As a trauma therapist I use Horney’s theories constantly. The connection between the way thatour parents give us attention and the way we learn to get attention from others in later life isendlessly relevant in many types of therapy, especially work with trauma. In Horney’s theory ofneurosis, the way that a child individuates from their mother determines their coping style andpredicts many of the psychological issues they may develop in later life.
Moving Towards People
Karen Horney was a German psychoanalyst. Her career came into prominence in the nineteentwenties when she formed theories on human attachment and neurosis that split from Freud’skey ideas. Horney’s theory of personality development and individuation are still highly relevantto modern theories of personality, attachment psychology and psychological trauma.Horney observed that children deploy three different coping styles during the time they areindividuating from the mother. Ideally children learn mastery in the three different styles. Inimperfect situations infants become over dependent in one style and form a neurotic and rigidpersonality style. This second part of a four part article will explore the moving towards peoplepersonality style.
The first coping strategy that children will attempt in order to retain the connection with themother during individuation is to ask for help Horney called this stage moving towards people.As infants we cry in order to make our mothers come running to our aid. If our mother’s continueto come running to our aid for the rest of childhood however, this can impair our development aswe fail to learn to solve our own problems internally or assert ourselves. In extreme caseswhere mothers will not separate from a child to allow room for experimentation with assertive
aggression or self soothing behavior the child becomes neurotic and co-dependant in themoving towards people style.People and characters with this level of impairment see the entire world in terms of their motherand never learn to make their own judgements or form their own values. What would motherthink of this? That is against mother’s rules. Another force like a charismatic leader, romanticpartner or social identity may replace the actual mother at some point, but the inability to be aseparate person will remain. Persons over dependent on another person or group’s ego haveno ability to self soothe without the warm glow of the surrogate mother’s approval and ability todefine rules and worth.
Horney calls this neurosis the need for affection and approval. The sense of self in people withthis personality type is incredibly diffuse as they are not able to watch others withdraw theirapproval even for good reason. The psychologist Albert Ellis used to tell his patients that “It ispathological to want to be liked by everybody all the time”. I often tell mine that “There are timeswhen the loving or the honest thing to do is to piss someone off”. When we cannot stand to seeour standards judged by other people it means that we cannot have a stable sense of self withauthentic standards for self worth.
This need often manifests as a form of codependency in relationships or friendships as peopletry to replace the stabilizing presence of a controlling caregiver with a different set of rules andboundaries. We learn to tolerate the anxiety of not knowing what to do and being forced tochoose early in life. When we have not been allowed to adapt to making small choices over thelife course we decompensate in the face of larger overwhelming choices about our life andIdentity.
In therapy I encounter patients who have had a controlling caregiver, and a correspondinginability to develop their own sense of identity. I start by asking them simple questions aboutwho they are. Patients with an underdeveloped sense of personal identity will often have noidea what their basic preferences and beliefs are. Often they will have found an abusive partneror a rigid social, political, or religious group to fill up the “blank” spaces in their identity with. Inhealthy partnerships we are allowed to maintain our own sense of identity while still participatingin a group affiliation or romantic partnership.
I always frame the therapy with these patients as an exciting adventure that we are going ontogether. We are going to discover who the patient is and who they want to become. Patients ofthis coping style often will try and figure out what the therapist wants them to do and what the“new rules” that the therapist has for their life are. Their primary fear is that they will dosomething “wrong” and don't know what the “right” answers are to their life questions. I tellpatients that “You are the only best expert in how to be you”.
While the freedom and gray area of this kind of personality development therapy is initiallyterrifying to patients, eventually this style of therapy becomes exhilarating as patients reconnectto a long absent sense of self. Even though patients present to therapy blank and indifferent about their, often abusive and traumatic history, they will start to recognize moments in the pastwhen they had a strong emotion or a preference that was dismissed by a caregiver or a partner.“I was so angry that my clothes were picked out for me every day”. “I was told that goodchristians don’t go to prom”.
Not all people in the moving towards people neurotic type will use a partner to try andcomplete their functioning. Oftentimes I have patients with social and intellectual gifts that useadmiration, fame or envy in order to move towards people. Many people seek fame or attention,but those with a moving towards people neurosis will not be able to function withoutadmiration of others. These patients are not able to determine the value or morality of theirbehavior without group approval.
Moving Against People
Karen Horney was a German psychoanalyst. Her career came into prominence in the nineteentwenties when she formed theories on human attachment and neurosis that split from Freud’skey ideas. Horney’s theory of personality development and individuation are still highly relevantto modern theories of personality, attachment psychology and psychological trauma. This thirdpart of a four part article will explore the moving against people personality style.
In Horney’s theory of individuation, the individuating child will settle into one of three differentpersonality styles based on what allows it to successfully reclaim its parent’s attention. The first style that children try is the moving towards people style. This is most familiar to the child since this is the style they are accustomed to using in infancy. If this asking for attention and attempting to be close to the mother through affection fail, the child will next try aggression in order to force it’s caregiver to give it what it wants. If only aggression is effective the child willsettle firmly into a moving against people personality style.
People in the moving against people personality style had sporadic or unpredictable affectionoffered to them as children. They came from environments that were hostile or uncaring andhandled the fundamental insecurity that these environments engendered by becomingaggressive. They never had the option of asking for the basic attention children need andinstead learned to demand attention. Caregivers were neglectful and unresponsive until thesefought for the little affection or attention available in their home.
This reality in their family of origin colors these patient’s interpersonal style and assumptionsabout the world. These assumptions about others and the world are immediately recognizable inthe first few minutes of the first therapy session when a patient in the moving against peoplepersonality style presents to therapy. Patients in the moving against people personality style are not likely to come to therapy and do not usually present to therapy until they are in crisis orare facing significant personal or professional losses due to their rigidity.
Just as patients in the moving towards people personality type often have anger turned off,patients in the moving against people personality type are often out of touch with their abilityto feel hurt or vulnerable. To ward this feeling off patients in theis personality style develop a“don’t mess with me” defensive posture. They may use wit as a weapon becoming acerbicallyfunny. They maybe overly macho or simply act like they don’t care what anyone thinks.
Most often patients who are neurotic in the moving against people personality style are highlycompetitive and motivated to dominate athletics, group functions and professional environments. Patients in this style are often high achievers when they are skilled. They areseen as invulnerable at work but often feel hollow in personal spheres. They are unable tounderstand the point of life without comparison and competition. Patients often present totherapy in middle age when there is “nothing else left to win”.
Moving Away From People
Karen Horney was a German psychoanalyst. Her career came into prominence in the nineteentwenties when she formed theories on human attachment and neurosis that split from Freud’skey ideas. Horney’s theory of personality development and individuation are still highly relevantto modern theories of personality, attachment psychology and psychological trauma.
Horney observed that children deploy three different coping styles during the time they areindividuating from the mother. Ideally children learn mastery in the three different styles. Inimperfect situations infants become over dependent in one style and form a neurotic and rigidpersonality style. This second part of a four part article will explore the moving away frompeople personality style. 
Horney’s three neurotic personality styles can most simply be understood as dependency (moving towards people), Aggression (moving against people) and resignation (moving away from people). The resigned type is the result of the developing child discovering that they are unable to get the attention of the parent either through asking for attention or demanding it. The child then retreats into an innerworld where it creates its own systems of psychological reward through creativity and self expansion.
If you are a writer or a psychotherapist it is highly likely that you are strongly developed in thisarea even if you are not quite a neurotic! The ability to move into your head and create your ownrules and concepts for life is a useful skill, but not one we learn from asking or demandingattention from our parents. These personality types are more able to see through the arbitrarynature of the rules or traditions in a society, and have less attachment to the cultural rules.
Unless these children develop ways of communicating these inner worlds they can seem“spacey” or “lost in their thoughts”. All of the neuroses that Horeney observes can be understood as the limiting conditions that a person with insecure attachment has for being safe. The dependent type needs others to feel safe, while the aggressive type needs control. A person in the “moving away from people” neurotic type only feels safe when some inner condition of solitude or independance has been fulfilled. This ultimate value of independence can present in several ways. Some want to be invisible, living an unassuming and private life. Sometimes the fixation on independence manifests and living off the land, being wealthy, and sometimes as being emotionally independent. Patients in this style may emulate, Jay Gatsby, Jeremiah Johnson or John Wayne.
The moving away from people’s personality type is not comfortable unless they are absolutelyindependent in some special area. While the moving towards people type needs people in orderto function, and the moving against people personality type needs people in order to becomedominant, the moving away from people type feels unsafe if it needs people for anythingsubstantial. This does not mean that they are unsuccessful socially, only that they areuncomfortable with relying on social or emotional ties to others in order to feel stable. This typefailed to maintain a connection with their mother through either dependence seeking oraggressive behaviors. 
They learned to soothe themselves and learned their own coping skills.This process of learning to regulate ones own emotions as a child without assistance leadschildren into their own head where they develop a large and elaborate inner world. Childrenbecome less interested or even aware of external realities like norms, socially, or practicaltasks. Instead of learning to manage their feelings they become fascinated with them. 
Moving away from people personality type patients have a unique knack for encoding their beliefs, personality and opinions into artistic creations because they crave the recognition andunderstanding that was denied them by their caregivers as children. Art, humor, fashion,business even, is a way of communicating something about the hidden self to others.
 
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xmlTaproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.comThe resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.
 

👶🖍The Child Archetype 6/6

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The Child is a tricky archetype to find within ourselves. The Child is the first archetype that the self identifies with. The Child has no problem asking for help or expressing it’s emotions and desires loudly and honestly. The Child is a kind of creative anarchy that we lose as adults and rediscover during liminal and transitional spaces in our development. The Child is a freedom we reconnect with when we release the parts of ourselves that have held us back. The Child is the “alive” feeling that addicts begin to connect with after completing recovery. The Child is strongly associated with the unconscious and a sense of connectedness to all things. Children are still discovering the things that make them unique individuals. The Child is growth and Children know how to grow instinctively.
The Child does not remember all of the rules that we had to learn as adults and is more interested in its own creative impulses and whims than rules or deadlines. The Child is necessary for art and for self discovery, but it can become solipsistic when it is over indulged. The Child puts us in touch with vulnerability but it cares about its own emotions, desires and whims. It is not aware of others or their wants or needs. The Child is important to creatives because it is the source of new ideas and perspectives but it needs to be tempered lest we become selfish, oblivious and inwardly focused.
In adulthood is the process of losing touch with the vulnerability and capacity for growth that we felt as children. Adults come to believe that the limiting voice of their inner critic is “responsible” and that asking for help or admitting vulnerability is “weak”. Many times the process of therapy forces us to uncover our own vulnerable child and reconnect with the parts of ourselves that are hurting or scared. When we cannot honestly admit our own needs, fears and sadness we often over complicate our life.
Patients who are over identified with the Child may present to therapy lost in creative visions and emotional whims. While over identified with the Child, these patients will be oblivious or in denial about the practical and detail oriented responsibilities of adult life. They may be prone to bouts of drug use or personal vision quests and passion projects. Patients will often overly identify with the Child as a response to their families of origin having pathological Queen archetypes that stifled development. In college or as adults they cast aside all responsibilities and overcompensate for the constraints of their childhood with an overly juvenile outlook on responsibility.
Patients under identified with their Child will present to therapy asking the therapist to produce pragmatic and concrete changes in their lives and relationships. They often come from families led by an over identified King or Warrior that had no interest in the uncertainty or self discovery of the Child archetype. They are rote and uninterested in the abstractions of therapy, art, or life. These patients have little interest in getting in touch with the vulnerabilities or flights of fancy of the Child.
We are all born into the world as a vulnerable Child, as naïve beings that see the world as an unending canvas on which to paint our vision for ourselves. These tendencies are idealistic, but also natural. Material realities impose restrictions on our lives, and we are remiss to ignore them, but also waste the potential meaning in our lives if we become their slaves. Rediscovering the child is necessary for personal growth and healing required to make progress in therapy. The Child is not only creativity and growth, but also our innate resilience. Patients who rediscover the Child during a chronic illness may make recoveries whereas patients who do not may not.
 
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xmlTaproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.comThe resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

💖The Lover Archetype 5/6

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The Lover is one of the most difficult archetypes to notice that you are experiencing. By its very nature it is seductive and spontaneous. The Lover is most commonly associated with sex, but sex is the smallest part of the archetype. You cannot experience the Lover by yourself, but you do not necessarily have to experience it with another person. Anytime you are pulled into an alluring daydream, swept up in the rhetoric of a rousing speech, or moved to a sense of greater understanding by a work of art or fiction, you are beginning to fall into the embrace of the Lover. The Lover is a drum circle, it is staring deeply into a bonfire, it is a poem about time, a drug trip. The Lover can be an infinite amount of things.
The Lover is most easily understood as our ability to give up a small part of ourselves to become part of something greater. The Lover is our ability to merge with another person or a group of people. The Lover lets us dissolve part of our own ego to be a part of a greater purpose or force of society. If we do not have access to the Lover we are completely alone, completely with purpose and life becomes an abstraction. We are connection making creatures and it is the Lover archetype that allows us to make those connections.
Because The Lover requires us to give up a piece of ourselves in order to identify with it, over identification with The Lover can be disastrous. Patients over identified with The Lover might try to dissolve themselves passionately into each many new relationships or over identify with each new friend. Extreme over identification with The Lover leaves patients with no sense of self. These patients will operate in society as chameleons. Over identification with the Lover is over identification with something outside of oneself. They will continue to find religious, romantic, or social relationships that let them take on someone else’s identity and concept of self.
When working with patients with substance abuse problems therapists should be very aware of the functioning of the lover archetype. Addiction is often understood by therapists as an attempt to numb out painful emotions or memories, and while this interpretation is correct it is also an incomplete understanding of what addiction is. Substance abuse is always fueled by a desperate attempt to have connection with something. The loneliness and isolation that patients with substance abuse issues feel is an extreme under identification with the lover archetype and the hunger for the wholeness of the lover is often the emotional state sought by the addicted person.
I always tell my patients that an addiction is often a hunger for growth with a simultaneous refusal to change. Substance abuse provides the feeling of growth and connection without the actual work or risk. Drugs like alcohol and stimulants often activate the Lover by making us feel productive, creative, loved or accepted. Drugs like depressants or psychedelics often activate the Lover by allowing us to turn off our conscious mind and remerge with the world. Psychedelics and transcendental religious practices often allow a person to experience ego death or a “oneness” with all things. This form of ultimate connectedness is the most activated state of the archetype as we have completely given up our own identity.
The Lover requires us to have the ability to trust something outside of ourselves and may be difficult for patients with trauma to experience without anxiety. We first learn how safe it is to open up to others within our family of origin. Patients that have a strong under identification with The Lover often never felt safe in their families of origin. Patients over identified with the Lover might have had a parent over identified with their Queen and are used to finding a controlling partner. If someone has made us a puppet then we involuntarily find a puppeteer when we leave our families of origin. These patients often become codependent in relationships, looking for someone to give their life rules and meaning. They believe they are unable to do this for themselves.
The Lover is an often ignored archetype, but is needed to give the other archetypes any ability to operate. What is the cause that the Warrior fights for, where is the growth or the creativity of the Child without The Lover? For that matter, what is the grand vision of a King or control of the Queen without the ability to make a connection? For a patient to participate in a relationship with a therapist there must be some part of the Lover archetype active. Therapy requires trust and a dissolution of boundaries enough for the therapist and patient to collaborate on treatment. We cannot begin to benefit in therapy unless we give up some part of our old self and are willing to be open to creating a new self image. Resistance to the therapy process can also be understood as a resistance to experience this archetype
 
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xmlTaproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.comThe resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

The Magician Archetype 4/6

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The Magician is intuition, education, and reflexes. In myth and legend the Magician appears in stories not to be the hero, but to aid the hero on their quest. In these stories the Magician can also take the form of a witch, enchanter, or shaman. The Magician is the most esoteric part of our schooling that filled us with the most passion. The Magician is a sense of personal power and accomplishment, but not power gained through conflict like the Warrior. Power for the Magician comes through cleverness, tricks and being resourceful and inventive.
To the Warrior knowledge, secrets and intrigue make one strong, not brute strength. The Magician is a wiseman and a diviner, both prescient and empathic. The magician can act as a negotiator or statesman, but is more commonly a salesman, seducer, or an entertainer. The Magician stands with one foot in two worlds. He is a gatekeeper between the abstract clairvoyant realm of the unconscious and the practical and results oriented world of the everyday. He brings back visions from the world of the unconscious and bestows them as gifts on others. This power to surprise and interest others is closely tied to our own need for attention. Patients that did not get the attention they desired as children will often have a well developed Magician. These patients believed as children that something about them was bad or shameful, and developed their magician archetype as a way of being seen or having control.
It is the Magician that impresses others with insights, funny stories and hidden talents. It is the Magician that is able to stand out in a bar room or business meeting when others are vying for attention. The Magician is our ingenuity, and adaptability in the face of situations that we cannot plan for or control. The Magician is our ability to read between the lines in academic domains, to see the broader point or meaning beyond a text. Every insight or inspiration that you have ever pulled from the ether and used to your advantage feels like magic. If you are comfortable pulling clever observations and realizations from the unconscious and putting them to use then you are strongly identified with the Magician.
Patients may be under identified with their Magician if they were brought up to be rule oriented or understand the world only as a series of lists to be memorized. These patients are not intuitive but learn by memorizing a series of steps that became a crutch for their thinking. Patients under identified with their own Magician will distrust the Magician in others. They are not adaptable and are inflexible in their thinking. Patients who view people that are funny or creative with suspicion are likely to be under identified with their own Magician.
Patients who are over identified with the Magician may have a grandiose idea of what their intellect or insight will get them out. They may think genius will solve every problem without elbow grease. They may try to use a charming personality or a quick wit to escape hard work or interpersonal conflict. Patients who are deeply dismayed over poor academic performance despite no effort at study will be over identified with the Magician. These patients are often under identified with their Warrior because they have never learned to overcome situations their intuition cannot control or to work hard for a reward.
The fundamental anxiety that the magician assuages is the inability to control one’s surroundings. The Magician is at its root a personality device developed to maintain control during a period in a person’s life when assertiveness was not allowed.
This was often a way to hold on to some control of our environment when direct confrontation was not an option. The Magician can also develop in early childhood when a child feels like there is a need in the family of origin that neither caregiver can meet. This is often a wounded or unreliable caregiver the child has to manage. This leads to the development of an often “magical” seeming ability to read others, read between the lines, and communicate in indirect ways like art and humor.
A patient who is over identified with both the Warrior and the Magician may try to dominate others with their intellect, delighting in the humiliation they cause. After all the cynic is the shadow of the caregiver. A caregiver sees the needs of others in order to meet them. The cynic sees the same needs in others, but uses them to exploit or write off other people. This cynic is the shadow side of the magician’s ability to use intuition to understand others. An example in pop culture would be the stand up comic that summarizes and denigrates groups of people with acerbic insight.
Find more at: Taproot Therapy Collective
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml
Taproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.com
The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

⚔️The Warrior Archetype 3/6

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The Warrior archetype allows us to harness our own sense of personal power to face fear and assert our own energy against the plans of others and the plans of the universe. The Warrior allows us to enforce boundaries securely between ourselves and others. It lets us carve out our own sense of personal space and make clear to others what is allowed and what is not. Mankind has had a warrior class as long as there has been civilization. We must all at some point in life learn to face our fears and accomplish something scary. The psychologist Albert Ellis was fond of saying that it was “pathological to want to be liked by everyone all the time”. He knew wisely that we must all learn to face conflict and navigate disagreements with others to remain true to ourselves and our journey.
The Warrior is our actualized capacity for self-expansion, personality development and discovery. We cannot discover who we are meant to be unless we are brave enough to face the unknown and know we deserve to grow. The Warrior is our capability to develop and use our talents for personal and professional achievement, but the Warrior does not exercise leadership or hold authority. The Warrior is not power within systems, only our sense of personal power and competency. The Warrior is our own success within a system of many other Warriors. The Warrior is our own unique abilities harnessed to make ourselves succeed.
Each of the archetypes deals with some form of fundamental anxiety, and the anxiety that the warrior assuages is meaninglessness in the face of chaos. The enemy of the warrior is chaos. When chaos surrounds us we feel like we are not special, like there is no plan, like we do not matter. The Warrior allows us to impose our will into the void and create meaning from scratch. When we feel like life has no purpose, it is our Warrior energy that lets us create purpose. While this function of the Warrior is not a bad thing when it becomes overindulged it becomes the shadow function of tribalism.
While the Warrior lets us strike back at chaos when it threatens our meaning and significance it can also lead us to turn on other people who are not like us.
The over-identified Warrior sees other people as chaos when they act contra its own plans and meaning. Shadow political and religious leaders often call us to over-identify with the Warrior when they tell us to defend our own tribe against attacks from those who are different and would take away what is ours. The Warrior is what allows us to reclaim our purpose and significance when the world threatens to take these things away from us but when overindulged it robs others of these things.
Patients who are under-identified with the Warrior will feel listless, purposeless, and incapable. These patients will often have had their Warrior taken away in an abusive relationship or in their families of origin where they were not allowed to assert themselves. Often they will present to therapy with a general sense of anxiety, believing they lack the power to be assertive, enforce boundaries or change their current reality when it distresses them. Losing touch with the Warrior leads a person to be fearful and conflict avoidant yet be prone to bouts of rage. Without the Warrior we can not act on our anger and do not notice it until it takes us over.
Over identification with the Warrior means that we see every interaction as a challenge, every challenge a fight with a winner and a loser. When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail; the old saying goes. If you are over-identified as a Warrior, you will not be able to back down from any confrontation. A diplomacy is never an option to the Warrior. The Warrior is not an archetype that is comfortable accepting humility or the mystery. The warrior is only comfortable with certainty, but as adults, we must learn to be comfortable with the mystery of life. An over-identified warrior archetype might benefit the occasional type-a personality in the business world but most often at the expense of personality development, healthy relationships, and a well-rounded existence.
The Warrior is the mask that we wear when we want to see ourselves as the hero. Patients under-identified with the Warrior may have lost the ability to see themselves as the hero, where patients over-identified with the Warrior may not be able to take off the mask of the hero they aspire to be. The Warrior archetype requires that life and development has taught us to have faith in ourselves and a self-image that allows us to achieve our dreams. Many patients with damage in childhood do not know that they have a right to their own hero’s journey or deserve self-discovery. Oftentimes therapy with traumatized patients will require a therapist to teach patients how to put on the warrior mask.
Under Identification with the Warrior is a disowning of one’s powerful self and ability to act heroically or make meaning. The warrior is at its base an ability to make meaning out of life. If we have disowned the warrior we either see life as meaningless or rely on others to make it for us as followers. Oftentimes patients who have learned that anger is not allowed will try and disown the warrior and “play zen” to avoid the anxiety that conflict causes for them. These patients will often act as though conflict is beneath them when in truth judging or disagreeing with others terrifies them.
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Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml
Taproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.com
The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.
 
 
 
 

👸The Queen Archetype 2/6👑

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The Queen is the power behind power and the maternal influence on development. The Queen is the indirect power that we hold over authority and systems just as the magician is the indirect power we hold over peers and our immediate vicinity. She is every calculated comment that ever made you reconsider your own behavior. She is every raised eyebrow that made you behave. The Queen is long talks by the fire with a loved one about your own worst impulses. She is tempering to power, but when over identified with she becomes a manipulative puppet master behind the throne, a Bloody Mary.
The Queen uses her influence over the powerful to exercise her own power. If this concept is lost on you, then you are likely under identified with your own Queen. If this is the case, be careful, because it is the patients under identified with their own Queen who are most susceptible to be influenced by the Queen of others. If we do not understand the art of manipulation, we have no defenses against it. The Queen is, by her very nature, the least recognized archetype. The Queen is the thing behind the thing. She is the unnoticed influence on the world. The Queen is the reason that the people in charge behave better than they otherwise would.
The Queen is a mothering impulse in all of us. She sits close to our Anima or archetype of the feminine. The Queen is the part of us that wants to see the people around us grow and flourish under our watchful gaze. The Queen smiles as her children and her husband mistake her subtle suggestions for their own ideas. She is the master of the understated and implied. The Queen is consigliere, advisor, right hand man, and second in command.
The fundamental insecurity behind the Queen is the fear that power is incompetent or malevolent. Patients with an over developed Queen usually had a competitive parent or a parent that viewed them as a peer in childhood. Like patients with an overdeveloped Magician, the child with an overdeveloped Queen may have worn this anxiety like a badge of honor in childhood. However, also like the child with an over developed Magician this damaged the child, leaving them hyper vigilant and trapped with an exhausting control instinct. Unlike patients with an over developed Magician, patients with an overdeveloped Queen felt responsible for running a household by proxy and controlling an irascible or inconsistent parent. They did not seek to be understood or get attention from a caregiver like children with an overidentified Magician.
Patients that present to therapy reporting that they are the “therapist for all their friends” or that “everyone asks them for advice” have a healthy identification with their Queen. The over identified Queen is not content to advise power, but wants to control it from the shadows as a puppeteer. Overidentification with the Queen leads patients to become obsessed with subtly influencing other people as extensions of themselves and power. Manipulative patients, who begin to hold their altruism over the heads of those they are helping are on the road to over identification with the Queen. Therapists should be aware of the functioning of this archetype, as it is the role of the therapist to play The Queen in the patient’s life during the process of therapy.
The over identified Queen as a mother does not want children to develop as individuals outside of the family or have a personal identity. Children are to remain a part of her and only exist as her accessory and a reflection of her purposes and her values. The over identified Queen wants to know all her children’s secrets, and to get to tell them exactly who they should become. Because patients who had a mother over identified with her own Queen never had the chance to listen to their own inner voice during development they will present to therapy with a bothersome inner critic that reflects the internalized critical voice of the parent. This overwhelming voice of inner criticism is the implanted voice of the parent that did not want their Child to exist outside their own sphere.
Find more at: Taproot Therapy Collective
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml
Taproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.com
The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

🤴The King Archetype 1/6👑

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The King is our sense of systemic power or our sense of power within society . The King is both the father of the family and of society. He has a larger plan for others and sees how all pieces of the system work and what different types of people need. This larger plan comes from creativity and imagination, but it is the practical imagination of planning and developing communities and systems. The King not only wants to improve himself, but to improve others linked to him as an extension of himself. The appropriately identified King is a proud father.
We need the King in order to manage our households, supervise employees, or volunteer in leadership roles. The fundamental anxiety the King manages is the fear that there is no larger plan structuring others lives. The King fears anarchy. The King lets us take the reins and provide leadership when we see that no one else can. The King is able to organize the many individual Warriors behind a single banner. The King is order, organization and unity.
It is healthy and positive to have a vision for a better world that we would like to see our life and works contribute toward. Without the King we cannot have hope for our families or for the world. Patients who were raised being systematically excluded or oppressed are likely to be under identified with their King. If society has rejected or oppressed them their entire lives they have been taught that it doesn’t want them, and will have difficulty believing others will let them lead. If we do not believe we have any power over the world, it is difficult to function within it. These patients will be plagued with interpersonal difficulty until the under identification is resolved.
Patients under identified with their King will avoid any position where they have responsibility for or power over others. They were often punished for being angry or assertive in their families of origin and felt they were not allowed to hold power. Often these patients will have anger “turned off” and have extreme anxiety when circumstances force them to judge others, even accurately, or when they are angry. These patients will have difficulty reconciling anxiety when they have a moral standard that others violate. They do not want to let go of their own moral compass but also are uncomfortable when others fail at being moral or good by their own standard.
Patients who are under identified with their King may be highly competent and successful, but still remain highly individual and atomized, clinging to solely personal power or adhere to strict moral standards they refuse to apply to others. . They may express hopelessness or even contempt for ideas relating to improving family or government systems, even though they could otherwise be highly successful in either.
Patients over identified with their King will mistrust and criticize all authority because it is not their own. They will play contrarian during any discussion of politics or religion and often family issues. They will often get into conflicts with superiors at work but secretly feel unheard or misunderstood. During these times they are reliving their experiences in their own families of origin. Extreme identification with the King will leave patients listless and unsatisfied no matter how much power they attain. Extreme over identification with the King means that there is no amount of power that will ever make one feel fulfilled. Life becomes a competition. It does not become a competition with individuals like the warrior, but a competition with all “great” men from history. Total overidentification makes one want to hold power and influence over others in every domain of life.
Patients over identified with their King will rarely present for therapy of their own volition. These patients can become tyrants to their friends, families and colleagues. Even though these patients may do things that society would consider immoral they will never see themselves as evil. These patients see themselves as saviors that want to save an unappreciative society or family by making them great. Patients who are under identified with their Magician and Warrior often over identify with their King in order to compensate for their failure to develop their own domain of internal (intuition) or external (accomplishment )personal power. These patients often are prone to fantasies about what would happen if they were in charge. They will never see themselves as immoral, but only as misunderstood heroes.
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Taproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.com
The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

☄️Astrophobia: Why are so many trauma patients afraid of space?🌌

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Our phobias are often metaphors for our most unconscious parts of self. In the 2013 movie Gravity, Sandra Bullock plays an astronaut marooned in space. At every moment she is seconds from spinning into the hopeless oblivion of deep space. Bullock’s character must use her ingenuity to navigate the shuttles and space stations to find her way back to earth. During her time in space Bullock is haunted by trauma from her past. Numerous shots suggest that her time in space causes her to regress to infancy and face not only trauma but primal childhood fear.
It’s fairly common for patients with insecure or reactive attachment to have had an intense fear of darkness as children. Some of them still have a fear of the dark as adults. Darkness takes away the control and awareness that our eyesight provides us. Children who learn that mystery and uncertainty are not safe spaces come to fear the dark. It takes secure attachment to learn that we can go into the great unknown and survive its surprises.
I work primarily as a trauma therapist and a surprising large number of trauma patients have a fear of outer space. So many that I have started to ask if patients have a fear of outer space when certain things come up in therapy. Patients are shocked that I am able to detect such a specific and seemingly bizarre phobia.
Why outer space? We might encounter spiders, or snakes in our everyday routine but outer space is something few people have a direct encounter with. Why do our primal fears manifest as a fear of space?
At a surface level it might not seem to make sense. However space is an extended metaphor for many of our most basic fears. For one space is dark. It is cold. It is inhospitable to us. People that feel unwelcome or incapable can project this inadequacy on the impossibility of surviving in space.
On another level space represents a complete lack of control and orientation. There is no up or down. Every direction leads to the same hopeless void. There is no gravity. There is no ability to center ourselves. These extreme conditions manifest the lack of our most basic needs for orientation control and power.
Most mythological systems begin with a primal void. Water is added to the void and then land. This archetype appears in almost every creation myth. Space represents a reality stripped of the basic elements we need to survive.
Space threatens the importance of all the things our ego needs to maintain integrity. Space represents the ultimate existential threat to all of the projects we create and all the things we identify ourselves with to make meaning. The most ambitious human projects mean nothing from the window of a rocket. Even the great wall of china is a thin line. The Vatican is a tiny dot. Our families, our careers, our religions, our sports teams… all of these things fail to matter in the midst of the cosmos. Space represents the ultimate existential annihilation. It reminds us of our ultimate limitations against the enormous scale of the universe.
When starting trauma therapy we must find our worst fear in order to confront and overcome it. Many times imagining space is the best place to start because it encompasses so many of our fears. What does space make you think of? What parts of it frighten you?
 
#space #astrophobia #astrology #trauma #ptsd #therapy #psychology #growth #psychotherapy 
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xmlTaproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.comThe resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

🌠Existentialism vs Mysticism: What is the Ego Self Axis?

To subscribe to the thought-provoking podcast episode, click here: 🎧🌟 #Astrophobia: Why Are So Many Trauma Patients Afraid of Space? Podcast Link: https://GetTherapyBirmingham.podbean.com/e/astrophobia-why-are-so-many-trauma-patients-afraid-of-space/ For additional free resources, explore the website: 📚🔍 #FreeResources Website: https://www.gettherapybirmingham.com/ Dive into the enlightening article on the intersection of therapy, spirituality, and mysticism: 🌌🧠 #TherapySpiritualityMysticism Read the full article that explores the commonalities between major religions, their relation to psychotherapy and mental health, and the potential reconciliation of neuroscience and spirituality: 📖🙏 #ReligionAndMentalHealth Article Link: https://www.gettherapybirmingham.com/post/therapy-spirituality-and-mysticism Delve into the alignment of trauma therapy, Jungian psychology, and depth psychology practices like Brainspotting, EMDR, somatic therapy, and internal family systems therapy: 🔍🌊 #TraumaTherapyAndJungianPsychology Discover how these therapeutic modalities can help us explore the depths of our personality and psychology: 🕳️🔮 #DepthPsychology Taproot Therapy Collective: Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/ Address: 2025 Shady Crest Dr Suite 203 Hoover, AL 35216 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.com Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/cnverPNUPuxiPkbc8 Podcast: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ Phone: (205) 598-6471 Fax: 205-634-3647 Note: The resources, videos, and podcasts provided on the site and social media platforms are not a substitute for mental health treatment. If you require assistance, please seek a qualified mental health provider or contact emergency services in your area during emergencies. The provided contact information is solely for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective and is not monitored consistently or intended for emergency purposes. #spirituality #therapy #mysticism #psychadelic #asmr #mentalhealth #psychotherapy #IFS #growth #jung #Brainspotting #depthpsychology #mystic #EMDR #yoga
 
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Taproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.com
The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

🧩Tamar Stone Interview: Voice Dialogue and Body Dialogue

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Find more free resources on the website: GetTherapyBirmingham.com🆓🔍 #FreeResources
Discover the expertise of J. Tamar Stone, M.A., C.H.T., a renowned psychotherapist, consultant, and consciousness teacher: 🌟🧠 #TamarStone
Explore the transformative Body Dialogue Process and Selves in a Box: 📦💫 #BodyDialogue #SelvesInABox
Tap into Tamar's teachings at respected institutions worldwide: 🎓🌍 #ConsciousnessTeacher #VoiceDialogue
Connect with Tamar for a deeper sense of self and fulfillment: 🌟🤝 #DeeperSelf #Fulfillment
Visit the Taproot Therapy Collective website for additional information: 🌐📚 #TaprootTherapyCollective
Remember, the provided resources are not a substitute for professional mental health treatment: ⚠️❗️ #ProfessionalHelp
Contact qualified mental health providers or emergency services if needed: 📞🆘 #EmergencySupport
For appointments and scheduling, use the provided contact information: 📅📞 #Appointments #ContactUs
#Psychology #Therapy #Psychotherapy #Jung #DepthPsychology #Trauma #Therapist #Introspection #MBTI #Existentialism
 
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xmlTaproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.comThe resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

🪕🎻The Psychology of Music with Tim Rutili of Califone

Tim Rutili is the lead singer and songwriter of the dream like mythological soundscapes of the band Califone. He sits down to talk about the depth psychology behind his life and work. His other projects include contributions to the bands Red Red Meat, Loftus, Ugly Casanova and the fil All My Friends Are Funeral Singers. I have been a life long fan of his projects and we are grateful for his time.
 
Buy Tim's Music at https://www.califonemusic.com/ & https://califonemusic.bandcamp.com/
 
Check out the podcast version of this interview at: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/
#califone #music #psychology #depthpsychology #songwriting #mythology #sound #singer #singersongwriter #folk #folkmusic #folklore #redredmeat #modestmouse
Find more free resources on the website: https://www.gettherapybirmingham.com/
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml
Taproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.com
The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

🌆Interview with Urban Planner and Architect, Andres Duany

Subscribe to the podcast: https://GetTherapyBirmingham.podbean.com/e/astrophobia-why-are-so-many-trauma-patients-afraid-of-space/ Join Andres Duany, acclaimed author and urban planner, as he delves into the psychology of architecture and urban planning in the second part of our series: 📚🌇 #PsychologyOfArchitecture Discover the transformative power of well-planned towns and the archetypal elements of design on the human psyche: 🌳🧠 #UrbanPlanning #DesignPsychology Learn from the expertise of Mr. Duany, renowned for his work in Seaside, Florida; Kentlands, Maryland; and Alys Beach, Florida: 🏙️🏡 #AndresDuany #NewUrbanism Don't miss this insightful discussion on the psychological forces shaping our built environment: 🗣️🏗️ #PsychologyOfUrbanPlanning For more information, visit Taproot Therapy Collective: 🌿🤝 #TaprootTherapyCollective Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/ Address: 2025 Shady Crest Dr Suite 203 Hoover, AL 35216 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.com Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/cnverPNUPuxiPkbc8 Podcast: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ Phone: (205) 598-6471 Fax: 205-634-3647 Uncover the intersection of psychology, architecture, and urbanism with Andres Duany: 🌇📚 #PsychologyOfArchitecture #UrbanDesign #Architecture #Architect #Urbanism #UrbanPlanning #NewUrbanism #CongressForTheNewUrbanism #DesignPsychology #SeasideFL #AlysBeach
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xmlTaproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.comThe resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

🪔Don’t Block the Hearth Fire🔥; Reclaiming the Soul of Therapy by Embracing the Awareness of Death

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In my house, like in most houses in America there is a fireplace. My wife and I do not often use our fireplace. In fact, I am not even sure if it works. Now that there are more efficient forms of heating installed in most homes there is really no need for fireplaces, but they continue to be built all the same. Any interior decorator or homemaker worth their salt will tell you that whether or not a fireplace works it cannot be blocked, and furniture must be placed so that people can gather around it. The style of houses that we build today are still based on the same basic floor plan of the ancient Roman style of architecture. In Rome, houses were built around a lares, or hearth fires, where penates, ancestral gods of the family, were revered and guarded the home.
Even though most Americans could not tell you why the hearth is afforded such significance, it is still agreed upon in western design language that the hearth is significant. The origin of the hearth idea in western architecture is one example of the many ways that the religious impulse indirectly recognizes a connection to our ancestors. As humans we long for transpersonal and trans-generational connectedness. Jungian oriented therapists help clients cultivate the transcendental and reflective skills that a well-developed spiritual dimension brings into our lives.
Inhale, exhaleForward, backLiving, dying:Arrows, let flown each to eachMeet midway and sliceThe void in aimless flightThus I return to the source.
–Japanese Death PoemGesshu Soko, died January 10, 1696, at age 79:
Stephen Jenkins is a palliative care counselor and writer that I admire. In his writing, he makes the argument that western culture has an unhealthy avoidance of the reality of death. Jenkins writes that that the fear of death in our society has robbed us of a spiritual dimension and tools for everyday life that ancient civilizations have always had. Acceptance of one’s own mortality and acknowledging one’s ancestors are directly related concepts. Jenkins’ argument is that acceptance of death is what gives a culture the ability to make meaning and understand its own story. If we deny or disregard death as an important part of our human experience, then we can never make meaning of our own lives. We must embrace this important part of our humanity if we are to be able to make ourselves whole (Wilson, T 2009).
As a society we hide children from the dying, and often even from the elderly; not allowing young people to understand this important stage in the life journey. We do not value the wisdom of the aged; we simply treat their cultural experience as out of date. It is our general cultural practice to pretend that we are immortal. We hide from death and all the trappings of death until it is too late. We wait until we are at the end of our life journey and we have not developed any tools to help us understand how to die. This practice is to our own deficit and the deficit of our culture. Jenkins argues in his interviews that our culture needs to embrace death and the process of dying in order to reclaim the spirituality our culture has lost (Wilson, T 2009).
It’s your life. You don’t know how long it’s going to be but you know it’s got a bad ending.
–Don DraperMad Men; Season 2, Episode 9
Spirituality in most religions contains a meditative or contemplative component used to orient one’s priorities, clarify goals and values, and discover one’s own personal identity and agency within the world. Although spirituality is a vague concept that can mean many things to many people, most therapists agree on the importance of spirituality in the therapeutic process. One of the major benefits of spirituality in therapy is that spirituality assists clients in understanding their place in the world, and helps clients accept their own finitude and mortality. This is true whether a person’s spiritual tradition advocates belief in an afterlife, a multi-layered reality, or simply a scientific materialist understanding of the world. Regardless of an individual’s spiritual tradition, an active spiritual life will help a therapist engage an individual in important reflective personal questions.
Personal spirituality is different from organized religion. Developing one’s own personal spirituality distinct from the organized religion you participate in is important because it allows individuals to answer questions and face struggles unique to their own life. There is much diversity between different individuals’ life course trajectories. What works for one person may not work for another person. Developing one’s own personal spiritual dimension inside or outside of an organized religion increases an individual’s self-efficacy and individual human capacity for choice-making.
A robust spiritual dimension allows individuals to solve problems that arise in the life course in the best way for them, according to their own strengths and weaknesses. This self-efficacy is an important protective factor for individuals as they develop throughout the life course. This protective factor can help individuals avoid many problems as they traverse the various stages of life.
In the book The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker puts forth a hypothesis that won him the Pulitzer Prize, and changed the way many cognitive theorists thought about therapy. Becker argued that human cognition is a defense mechanism against the knowledge that we must die. Many drives within humanity are attempts to make ourselves immortal and find ways of obtaining spiritual immortality. Becker put forward the idea that anxiety, depression, and even psychosis can be attributed to the breakdown in our immortality seeking processes. Becker argued that human beings long for secular and religious accomplishments because we believe that these will make us immortal. Becker argued that cognitive problems arise when our culture lacks the spiritual and numinous dimension that allows us to understand death and accept our finitude (Becker, E. 1973).
The part of Becker’s theory that is most applicable to therapy and social work practice is his idea of immortality. Becker’s idea of immortality is much more involved than simply an idea of an afterlife in popular culture and religion. In The Denial of Death immortality is the way that a person finds their significance, self-worth, and meaning in relation to the universe (Becker, E. 1973).
We attain spiritual immortality when we have a well-developed spiritual dimension that allows us to feel connected to the past, others in the present and to future generations. It is this connectedness that allows us to feel spiritually immortal and come to terms with our mortality. In the ancient world heroic deeds and religious traditions were an attempt to feel connectedness to a numinous reality larger than the time ancients lived within. Becker argues that nothing but spirituality of some kind can give humans the connectedness to the fabric of our world and provide us the spiritual immortality we long for.
One of the reasons that Becker’s theories were so successful is that they build on the basic assumption that all human beings know at a fundamental level that we will one day die. Because of this we are all in a sense already dead. This knowledge is an intrinsic part of our humanity that we must learn how to handle, or it will lead us to destroy ourselves. The reason that this is important to include in a discussion of spirituality in psychotherapy practice is that this theory of therapy makes spirituality an essential component in the therapeutic process. The problem of death in our own and in our clients’ lives must be solved in order to live a fulfilling life. This cannot be done without the transcendent quality of spiritual practice.
In my own life I find Becker’s spiritual immortality in what will be preserved of me in how I change the world for the better. I personally have no interest in the concept of the afterlife in my own religious tradition, but I do not need that to feel motivated and important. Sharing love that changes the lives of those around me and the lives of those they will touch is where I find immortality. What will be preserved of me is the impression that I leave on this world through how I live my life and affect the lives of others.
The presence of me will be preserved by people who likely do not recognize or understand what they are preserving. We are all released into the earth, and into the stuff of the heart, and the mind, the character of others, and the lives of everyone who antecedes us. A piece of the things that are part of me will become part of everyone whom I become a part of. The things that made me who I am did not come only from me; but also from those before me and how they shaped the world. The juice of ourselves was never ours, but something we borrowed from countless others. This is not something that would make sense to everyone, but it is what makes sense to me.
Life is chaotic and overwhelming to the best of us. To understand it we need a lens to view our world in a way that makes sense to us. When we develop our own spiritual dimension it can act as the lens that lets us understand our world. Our personal spirituality tells us why we are unique and special. It gives us the immortality that Becker describes in a way that we decide is important to us. A robust spiritual dimension can help us live life intentionally, mindfully and effectively.
Bibliography
Wilson, T., Clarke, A., Lorber HT Digital, Alive Mind Media, & National Film Board of Canada (2009). Griefwalker. United States: Alive Mind.
Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press.
Weil, A. (2005). Healthy aging: A lifelong guide to your physical and spiritual well-being. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
 
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xmlTaproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.comThe resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

🌗Jungian Shadow Work Meditation for Integration

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Check out our youtube for more meditations and content: https://youtu.be/_FP6w_TapXE 
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For additional free resources, you can visit the Get Therapy Birmingham website: 💻 GetTherapyBirmingham.com
One of the available resources on the website is a meditation designed to help you connect with the shadow part of yourself, which may have been repressed due to trauma or negative experiences. This meditation aims to bring awareness to the aspects of yourself that you may avoid.
Please note that the resources, videos, and podcasts provided on the site and social media platforms are not a substitute for mental health treatment. If you require professional assistance, it is important to seek help from a qualified mental health provider. In case of an emergency, please contact emergency services or a local mental health provider. The provided phone number and email address are for scheduling purposes at Taproot Therapy Collective and may not be regularly monitored for emergencies.
For more information and to explore additional content, you can visit the Taproot Therapy Collective website:
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xmlTaproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.comThe resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.
#depthpsychology #meditation #meditate #integration #jung #carljung #psychology #asmr #trauma #healing #growth #shadow #alchemy #creativity

🏯Interview with Urban Planner, Architect, and Founder of New Urbanism, Leon Krier

Read the article on Mr. Krier's work here: https://gettherapybirmingham.medium.c...
Leon Krier is uncompromising in his philosophy of design and philosophy of architecture. His vision of the past and future make him a controversial figure. He is one of the key figures in the founding of the new urbanism movement. Krier's architectural theory is fixated on designing permanent construction that will endure both physically and stylistically. His theoretical orientation is highly informed by the peak oil movement of the 1970's, but the implications are important for an urban and architectural future that is sustainable.
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xmlTaproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.comThe resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

🧿Brainspotting Changed My Life. Can it Change Yours? - www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com

Subscribe to the transformative podcast: 🎧✨ www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com
#GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast
Discover more invaluable resources on the website: 🆓📚 #FreeResources
Experience the life-changing yet unintrusive therapy method: 🧠💫 #Brainspotting
Supported by the latest neuroscience, Brainspotting helps reshape your interactions with the world: 🧠🔬 #NeuroscienceTherapy
In a Brainspotting session, therapists use a pointer to identify eye positions associated with traumatic events or emotional and physical reactions: 👀🎯 #TraumaHealing
Reprocessing with Brainspotting enables recognition and release of underlying emotions, muscle tensions, and stress responses: 💪💔 #EmotionalHealing
Remember, the resources provided are not a substitute for mental health treatment. Seek qualified providers and emergency services in your area when needed: 🆘🌍 #MentalHealthSupport
For more information, visit Taproot Therapy Collective: 🌿🤝 #TaprootTherapyCollective
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xmlTaproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.comThe resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.
Unlock the power of Brainspotting for healing and recovery: 🧠💪 #TransformationTherapy #HealingJourney
#Brainspotting #EMDR #TraumaTherapy #Psychology #PTSD #DID #IFS #Anxiety #Alabama #Birmingham #MentalHealth #Recovery

🧠Brain Mapping and Neurostimulation Interview with Peak Neuroscience

Peak Neuroscience has clinics in Dallas Texas and Birmingham Alabama. Their Neuro stimulation and brain mapping treatment pairs neurofeedback EEG with a neurostimulation device that targets specific parts of the brain. Neurostimulation has been proven to reduce the symptoms of PTSD, Autism, Dissociation and many other disorders. 
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml
Taproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.com
The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.
#Jung #Therapy #psychology #EMD #DepthPsychology #anthropology #sociology #philosophy #mythology #psychology #psychotherapy
 

🏺Living on the Inside of History - www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com

🌟 At every age, we anticipate feeling different, but do we truly change? Join us on a journey through adulthood, realizing that grown-ups are simply larger children. 🧒👨👩🧓 #AgeIsJustANumber #Adulting
💑 My partner and I grew up together, only to find ourselves puzzled by the seeming irresponsibility of adults our age. We pondered the existence of "adult police." 🚔😮 #AdultingDilemmas #GrowingUpTogether
🌍 As time passes, we struggle to accept that the world around us evolves, bringing unforeseen changes. What if our society, culture, and norms can never be the same again? 🔄❓ #ChangeIsInevitable #EverChangingWorld
📚 History teaches us valuable lessons, but we often detach ourselves, believing that these events are reserved for others. We long to learn from the past while remaining exempt from its consequences. 📖🧠🔍 #LearnFromHistory #Detachment
Join the conversation about #existentialism, #history, #time, #therapy, #depthpsychology, #existentialtherapy, #irvinyalom, #growth, #selfhelp, #ancienthistory, #jung, #philosophy, and #psychology. 🌌📚💭💡 #PodcastDiscussion
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml
Taproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.com
The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.
#Jung #Therapy #psychology #EMD #DepthPsychology #anthropology #sociology #philosophy #mythology #psychology #psychotherapy
 
 

💉Interview with Dr. Harrison Irons from Southern Ketamine and Wellness

Discover a wealth of free resources: 🆓💡 #FreeResources Learn about medical IV Ketamine treatment from Southern Ketamine and Wellness: 💉✨ #KetamineTreatment Dr. Harrison Irons sheds light on the process and benefits of ketamine infusions: 🌟🌿 #ExpertInsights Uncover the potential of ketamine in treating PTSD, panic disorders, dissociation, mood disorders, and chronic pain: 💪🌈 #HolisticHealing Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/ Please note that the resources, videos, and podcasts provided on the website and social media platforms are not a substitute for mental health treatment. It is important to seek assistance from a qualified mental health provider in your area. In case of an emergency, please contact the appropriate emergency services. Join the supportive community at Taproot Therapy Collective: 🌱
 
Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml
Taproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.com
The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.
#Jung #Therapy #psychology #EMD #DepthPsychology #anthropology #sociology #philosophy #mythology #psychology #psychotherapy

🧐How do you Brainspot Patients With Severe Dissociation? - www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com

Brainspotting: Exploring Processing and Aftercare ✨
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#Brainspotting #TraumaTherapy #MentalHealth #Healing #Processing #EmotionalWellbeing #TherapyJourney #SelfCare #TaprootTherapyCollective #GetTherapyBirmingham #Support #Guidance

🤯How to Use the Subcortical Brain in Therapy - www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com

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and psychological insights: 🌊💡 #DepthPsychology Tap into the transformative resources available at Taproot Therapy Collective: 🌱✨ #TransformativeHealing Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/ Address: 2025 Shady Crest Dr Suite 203 Hoover, AL 35216 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.com Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/cnverPNUPuxiPkbc8 Podcast: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ Phone: (205) 598-6471 Fax: 205-634-3647 Uncover the path to healing and growth: 🌟💚 #HealingJourney #therapy #psychotherapy #jung #depthpsychology #trauma #PTSD #CPTSD #Brainspotting #Birmingham #Alabama #therapist #Psilocybin #psychadelic #ayahuasca

🧠How to Eliminate the Roots of Trauma in the Deep Brain - www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com

Trauma is stored in a part of the brain that lies beneath language, cognition, and the ego. To effectively heal the effects of trauma, it is necessary to explore the roots of trauma in the subcortical brain. Therapists must begin with the visible symptoms in the cognitive process and delve beneath the surface into the subcortical brain. The roots of trauma impact our emotional system, and the deepest aspects of trauma lie in the way our physical body reacts to stimuli and emotions. By letting go of the ego and tapping into the creative and intuitive aspects of the deep brain, we can heal trauma.
It's important to note that the resources, videos, and podcasts provided on the website and social media are not a substitute for mental health treatment. If you require assistance, please seek a qualified mental health provider, and in case of emergencies, contact the appropriate emergency services in your area. The contact information provided is for scheduling purposes at Taproot Therapy Collective and is not monitored consistently for emergency services.
For further information, please refer to:
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#Brainspotting #EMDR #Trauma #PTSD #DID #CPTSD #Psychology #Neuroscience #Brain #Therapy #Psychotherapy #sensorimotorpsychotherapy #somaticexperiencing #carljung #emotion

📖What Happened to Transactional Analysis Book Review of The Games We Play by Eric Berne - www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com

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🦋Demystifying Carl Jung - www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com

Subscribe to the podcast and delve into intriguing topics like astrophobia and its connection to trauma patients' fear of space: 🎧 https://GetTherapyBirmingham.podbean.com/e/astrophobia-why-are-so-many-trauma-patients-afraid-of-space/ Explore a wealth of free resources on our website to support your journey: 🌐 https://www.gettherapybirmingham.com/ Jung, a multifaceted figure, ventured into parapsychology and ESP, pushing the boundaries of psychology. While he didn't define the limits of his psychology, his legacy birthed "depth psychology," studying archetypal images within the collective unconscious in fields such as sociology, anthropology, creative writing, and comparative religion. Jungian psychology stands apart, focusing on growth and self-discovery throughout life. Instead of symptom reduction, it aims to help individuals explore their desires and express their true selves through creativity. Join us on this transformative path. For more information, visit 
 
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📡Bodyscan Meditation for Relaxation and Mindfulness - www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com

This is a free mindfulness meditation for relaxation and processing anxiety.Mindfulness works because in the present moment there is usually not that much to worry about. Maybe we are a little tired, or hungry, maybe it is cold, but there is not much to deeply upset us.
Find more free resources on the website: https://www.gettherapybirmingham.com/
 
To subscribe to the podcast, you can click on the following link: 🎧🌟 Podcast
For additional free resources, you can visit the Get Therapy Birmingham website: 💻 GetTherapyBirmingham.com
One of the available resources on the website is a meditation designed to help you connect with the shadow part of yourself, which may have been repressed due to trauma or negative experiences. This meditation aims to bring awareness to the aspects of yourself that you may avoid.
Please note that the resources, videos, and podcasts provided on the site and social media platforms are not a substitute for mental health treatment. If you require professional assistance, it is important to seek help from a qualified mental health provider. In case of an emergency, please contact emergency services or a local mental health provider. The provided phone number and email address are for scheduling purposes at Taproot Therapy Collective and may not be regularly monitored for emergencies.
For more information and to explore additional content, you can visit the Taproot Therapy Collective website:
Address:
2025 Shady Crest Dr
Suite 203
Hoover, AL 35216
Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.com
Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/cnverPNUPuxiPkbc8
Podcast: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/
Phone: (205) 598-6471
Fax: 205-634-3647
#depthpsychology #meditation #meditate #integration #jung #carljung #psychology #asmr #trauma #healing #growth #shadow #alchemy #creativity

💔Evidence Based Practice is Broken, How to Fix Research - GetTherapyBirmingham.com

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Embrace the power of self-discovery and healing: 💫💚 #SelfGrowth
#phd #insurance #therapy #academia #healthcare #trauma #Brainspotting #EMDR #psychotherapy #self #growth #change #research #academicjournal #impactfactor

⛩️Carl Jung, Leon Krier and the Architecture of the Archetype - www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com

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“Truth of feature is related to truth of being”
- Frank Lloyd Wright
What does the building in the dream look like?
How does the space make you feel?
During dream work and active imagining, I often ask clients these questions. Many times clients lack any formal training in architectural style or the history of design. When I name the specific architectural styles or design traditions present in client’s dreams they often draw a blank on the names. When I ask them if the design elements of those styles are present then I get “Oh yeah! The stone had this blocky spiraly pattern.” or “The columns had this simple shape over and over like in [X] movie”. People remember how the spaces they were in made them feel first and the details about those same spaces second. In dreams buildings have a symbolic and metaphorical component.
Architects and design professionals will tell you, people don’t always consciously notice the space they are in. Yet people unconsciously feel the interiors they inhabit in an intuitive way. “Clean up your house” is one of the early mandates that many cognitive therapists will prescribe to patients under the assumption that their space becoming more orderly in the exterior will reorder their interior cognition.
Jung began developing his theory of archetype when he was working with psychotic and impoverished persons that had no exposure to anthropology or mythological theory. Yet Jung observed these persons’ psychotic episodes and hallucinatory events often were exact descriptions of ancient Babylonian and Persian mythology. Jung’s conclusion was that the images and symbols of unconscious are often “collective” or universal amongst all humans due to their shared evolutionary history.
Are there archetypal elements of architecture, in the same way that their primal elements of consciousness?
As I said before, when I mention to clients during dream work specific architectural styles; Incan revival, Frank Lloyd Wright, Danish modern; they often draw a blank. Yet when I ask them for details about the structures they have experienced many of the specific details of these styles of design through the psyche in their dream world. Are there archetypal visual patterns that come from our unconscious? Carl Jung thought that the unconscious spoke in symbols through myth and dreams. He saw metaphor as a way that our psyche could tell us deeper truths than language and consciousness alone could contain. It would make sense that the unconscious also speaks through the houses and cities we build to contain our lives.
Design itself is a kind of symbol. In the same way that a poem or song can make us feel something that is not present in the literal meaning of its text. Just like a poem is more than a list or a story, architecture is more than creating a structure that won’t fall down. Like poetry, the arrangements of structural elements in architecture gesture towards a greater meaning than merely practical purpose. Architecture is meant to impart an emotional story, and sense of structural purpose. The point of a well designed building is to have an effect on our psyche.
The interpretation of dreams enriches consciousness to such an extent that it relearns the forgotten language of the instincts.
~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 52.
The set designer of the 1982 film Bladerunner (Lawrence G. Paull) did an interview once that I found fascinating. Paull explained that the world in the script of Bladerunner lacked any exposition. Paul said he built three sets over each set. In the first set there was high technology overlaid over a previously mechanical world. In the second set people had overlaid the infrastructure for wireless technological revolution over this first tactile-technical world. On the third layer of the set that he built, Paul over lapped vandalism and security devices. The script doesn’t tell the audience the history of the world, but the audience intuits the history based on the design of the world. The audience feels the conflicting sense of an optimistic and hopeful world overlain with a cynical and hopeless future. Here the subconscious elements of design are used to tell a story.
Our sub-cortical body brains, that Jung described as our unconscious, evolved to feel our deep emotional and intuitive experiences at a level beneath cognition. Being aware of how our environment made us feel at an unconscious level kept us alive through prehistory. Our fight or flight system that helps us to “read the room or “know something in the gut” is the core of this system and the oldest evolutionary piece of our brain, with all other parts developing later. The latest neuroscience indicates that the first thing that our infant brain begins to recognize is the basic structure of the faces around us and then, later, the rooms and spaces those faces inhabit. What is it about these spaces that we are designed to recognize from an evolutionary standpoint? Are there deeply unconscious reactions that design and architecture invoke in us?
We have an instinctual reaction to shape and symbol. A dog will bark at a snake shaped stick because the dogs that didn’t bark at that shape died.
Jung’s idea of archetypal postulated that their were structures that underlay consciousness. These structures manifest as psychological patterns that can be observed repeating across history in mythology, politics, and culture. Could they also be found in design? Seldom are the implications of the visual part of archetypes discussed. But yet, aren’t the “element and principals of design” the first thing that a pupil learns in art school?” There is a tacit agreement among design professionals that certain forms of design are good or bad in a way that defies any cognitive or intellectual rule.
Leon Krier Painting in Post Modern Classicsm ArchitectureLeon Krier is one architect who has written about the archetypal elements of structures. Krier has written extensively about the patterns and forms in city planning and their effect on our psychology. Krier is an architect, design theorist, and urban planner. He became famous for his work on Seaside, Florida; Poundbury, England; and Ciudad Cayalá in Guatemala. He was influential to the new urbanism movement. Krier works in a postmodern classicist style. His work striped ornamentation, removed extraneous detail and assembled the oldest and most timeless architectural features. You will recognize many design elements in his drawings that have been a part of architecture since the bronze age.
“The poet does not excel by inventing new words, but when by particular arrangements of otherwise familiar words, he makes us see ourselves in new ways,”
-Leon Krier
Krier’s architecture is interesting to me as a psychotherapist because his work is in conversation with Jung’s ideas and focuses on the psychological reactions that design evokes. Krier felt that the archetypal ideas in architecture were unchanging because they were inborn from the deep psyche. Krier believed that the usage of structure and space should be intuited from design. Much of Krier’s work was built around his study of the way that people think and function. Krier was molding the architecture to the person instead of attempting to mold people with architecture.
Krier and the new urbanist movement designed space that innately fused with the way that humans historically think, feel and live. This clashed with the modernist ideas present at the beginning of Krier’s career. The modernist architects practicing after the middle of the century sought to uproot the structures present in society and transform the way that humans lived through design. In Krier’s notes and doodles he expresses contempt for the hubris and revolutionary tendencies of the disciples of Mies van der Rohe and le Corbusier. The debate of tradition vs progress has been raging in architecture for nearly two centuries.
‘In traditional cultures invention, innovation and discovery are means to improve handed-down systems of communication, representation, thinking and building … in Modernist cultures, by contrast, invention, innovation, and discovery are ends in themselves’
-Leon Krier
Krier is not clinging to tradition and antiquity simple to be anachronistic. Instead Krier is reaching through all of the traditions to find the most fundamental pieces of architecture in their most pure form. Jung’s work in psychology was an attempt to find these same primal forms and the roots of what makes us human. Krier’s insistence on shaving design elements back to their most time honored and simplest forms make his buildings seem like they sprung from dreams or myth. Krier works in with structural archetypes. His buildings often feel like they exist in both all eras and none.
One of Krier’s early projects, Atlantis at Tenerife, was never built. However, elements of it informed thousands of projects that Krier and other architects did build over the next decades. Don’t these renderings look like the setting of a dream? Perhaps Krier did have an intuitive insight into the forms that lurk in our shared unconscious psyche.
In the Dominion of the Dead, Robert Pogue Harrison writes about architecture “Must we change our way of existing before we can change the way we build? Or would changing the way we build change the way we exist?”.
Jung observed that our brains are capable of processing information in both an introverted and extroverted way. Our brains are designed to search the world around us for information but also to have our inner and subjective experiences guide us. We are designed to learn about the world around us through the spaces we inhabit, but also through our own inward journeys. In other words, our thinking is a product of our environment while also our environment is a product of our thinking. Both projects must be undertaken simultaneously. We need creativity in our personal interior and cultural exterior worlds to be whole.
We need both internal and external creativity to be whole. We need to look for the soul of our collective hummanity dually in the patterns of our ancient history and our ability to transcend that history.
The search for the basic structure of the deepest parts of consciousness is something that the field of architecture, like all other creative disciplines, can help us with but not somethings that it can do for us. We can take inspiration from innovation while still recognizing that what makes a design good is how well it resonates with the deepest patterns inborn in our creative human spirit.
Humans make mythology in the same way they make architecture. Both The Odyssey and Star Wars are built on the same mythological framework and describe the same inborn heroic process within us. Both are one attempt to tell the same story with in our own ongoing human story. Both are using the same elements to tell the same story, yet both stories are different. We are driven to describe over and over again the patterns and voices, shapes and spaces that we sense from within our own soul.
The debate between modernism and traditionalism in design is a flawed one when it assumes only environment or self determines reality. We can neither completely control society through building nor can we find inner peace and natural order while living in a creatively devoid chaotic wasteland. The journey to find and know the self through creativity is both a collective and personal one. It is through discovering how to build that we can find ourselves and through finding ourselves that we discover how to build.
 
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🛐☯️⚕️Mysticism, Spirituality and Therapy - www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com

Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml
Taproot Therapy Collective2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216Phone: (205) 598-6471Fax: (205) 634-3647 Email: Admin@GetTherapyBirmingham.com
The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.
#Jung #Therapy #psychology #EMD #DepthPsychology #anthropology #sociology #philosophy #mythology #psychology #psychotherapy