The Absent Father: Jung and the Missing Masculine

A father who is unavailable - whether due to untimely death, a demanding job, family breakup, or simply an inability to step up and meet his children’s needs - may deprive his children of the emotional bedrock they require. They can struggle to access their capacity for aggression and creativity, or to build the self-esteem necessary for successful adult relationships.

As many fairy tales show us, an absent father is sometimes experienced alongside an abusive mother, leaving a complicated legacy of emotional wounding to be worked through. First of all, the abuse must be confronted, and then the failure of the absent parent to witness or protect.

Jung’s life offers us fascinating material with which to explore the impact of the absent father. His father’s powerlessness as an uninspired, struggling pastor planted the seed of Jung’s lifelong quest for the numinous. As a father himself, Jung paid little attention to his children as he developed his life’s work and maintained a relationship with his collaborator Toni Wolff alongside his marriage to Emma Jung.

Join Jungian analysts Lisa Marchiano and Deborah Stewart this week as they explore what it means to be an absent father, and how we might both survive and transcend the legacy of such a parent.

Visit our website to read today’s dream, get more detail on the absent father, and follow up on the resources we mention.

Connect With This Jungian Life

Download our free ⁠⁠⁠Dream Recall Meditation Guide⁠⁠⁠.

Check out our ⁠⁠Dream School⁠⁠.

Watch bonus mini-episodes on our ⁠⁠Patreon channel.⁠⁠

Follow This Jungian Life on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(445)

In Search of the Wild Man: Befriending Bigfoot

The wild man is an enduring archetypal figure worldwide, from Enkidu in Gilgamesh, to the Greek god Pan (worshipped in glens and woods), the Green Man in England, and Bigfoot and the Sasquatch in the ...

13 Aug 1h 28min

Jung vs. Borg: Staying Human in the Age of AI

Are we living through a tech-driven collapse of the ecology of mind? In his new book, Jung vs. Borg, author, psychologist and Jungian scholar GLEN SLATER Ph.D suggests that industrial disruption of th...

6 Aug 1h 41min

Ritual: Finding the Center in a Turning World

As we confront the turbulence of rapid change, technological dehumanization, and cultural polarization, how do we reconnect to being and meaning? Best-selling author BRUCE FEILER returns us to ritual:...

30 Jul 1h 10min

Carl Jung in Basel: A Walking Tour

Happy Birthday to Carl Gustav Jung! To celebrate, we're sharing Lisa's walking tour of Basel with Jungian Analyst and author Kathrin Shaeppi. Last year, she visited Jung's hometown in Basel, Switzerla...

26 Jul 1h 43min

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Power Without Wisdom

The tale of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a gripping story about loss of control and the timeless warning to be careful what you wish for. It sets out the archetypal theme of a magical shortcut that p...

23 Jul 1h 4min

The Odyssey: A Jungian Journey Home

The Odyssey (the subject of a new Christopher Nolan film released on the same day as this episode), is the ancient Greek epic attributed to Homer and one of the foundational works of Western literatur...

16 Jul 1h 17min

Prayer and the Psyche: A Jungian Exploration

Throughout human history, prayer has been a constant. Jung referred to it as “not only one of the most original but also the most frequent means to change the condition of mind”.This week Jungian anal...

9 Jul 1h 2min

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Individuation: A Jungian Reading of the Declaration of Independence

America’s Declaration of Independence has profoundly influenced the development of democracy and democratic movements all over the world, with its bold assertion:“We hold these truths to be self-evide...

2 Jul 56min