Now accepting new clients – in person and virtually
I am pleased to share that I am welcoming new clients at my office in Glendale and online. My practice offers thoughtful, depth-oriented therapy grounded in Jungian analysis and decades of clinical experience.
Location:
Vlado Solc, Diplomate Jungian Analyst
Causa Praesens LLC
6110 N Port Washington Rd
Glendale, WI
Phone: (414) 509-0506
In the game, earthly reality becomes fleeting, a moment thrown behind the shoulder and folded into the past. The mind loosens its habitual boundaries and prepares to accept the unimaginable, stepping into a realm governed by different laws. Here it is relieved of the weights that bind it to ordinary life and becomes, if only for a while, free, unbridled, and touched by the divine (Hugo Rahner).
Unrestrained passions, crowd-madness, and the ecstatic swings between euphoria and wrath appear most vividly in the collective dramas of politics, war, and competitive sport. They also surface in religious gatherings and musical concerts, where the psychic temperature rises and the emotional field becomes charged. The danger always lies in the splitting of affect—whether the crowd collapses into the dualistic moral categories of us and them, heroes and enemies. Once this bifurcation takes hold, the group is seized by archetypal forces that can overwhelm individual consciousness.
Ball games have long been one of the principal cultural vessels for these strong energies. For millennia they have offered humanity a symbolic container in which the primordial struggle between life and death, order and chaos, light and shadow, may be enacted. One might therefore ask whether the ball game and religion share a deeper kinship. Do they both serve, in their own ways, the development and enlargement of consciousness? And is this still true today?
The oldest archaeological evidence of ball games comes from Central America and reaches back more than 3,000 years. Yet the Maya likely played the game known as pitz as early as four and a half millennia ago (Ekholm, 1991). Similar traditions appear in Egypt and Mesopotamia only later. But these ancient ball games were not sports in the contemporary sense. Although crowds filled specially constructed arenas, the games were primarily sacred rituals. Their purpose was to initiate participants into the mysteries of the cosmos, to appease the deities, and to stimulate the fertility of the earth.
The etymology of the word game itself hints at this older sacred function. In many Indo-European languages, the root behind play is connected to ritual movement, dance, or the turning of a wheel—gestures that symbolize cyclical time and the eternal recurrence of creation and destruction. The ball, spherical and complete, is one of the oldest images of the totality of the psyche, thus the existence, the unus mundus (united world). Its movement across the court evokes the dynamic interplay of opposites that forms the essence of life.
In Mesoamerican traditions the ball itself was often identified with the sun, and the game dramatized the eternal combat between light and darkness. To keep the ball in motion was to keep the cosmos alive. The court represented the axis mundi, the meeting place of the underworld, the earthly realm, and the heavens. Whoever entered the game stepped symbolically out of profane time and into mythic time—a movement akin to entering the temenos of the psyche, where one may encounter The Self (Das Selbst) in its numinous, terrifying, or transformative aspects.
The ball game was also an expression of the fertility rite, a reenactment of the original creative act. By participating in it, humans engaged directly in the maintenance of cosmic order. These rituals mattered. The wellbeing of the community, the ripeness of the fields, and the favor of the gods were believed to depend on their proper performance.
In Mesoamerican thought, creation was not a single event in the distant past but an ongoing process requiring continual renewal. The cosmos had to be “kept alive,” nourished through symbolic repetition of the acts by which the gods first shaped the world. The movement of the ball—its rhythmic rise and fall, its passage through the narrow court, its symbolic descent into and ascent from the Underworld—mirrored the cycles of death and regeneration upon which all fertility depended. The game thus served as a dramatic imitation of cosmic processes: the journey of the sun, the seasonal return of rain, the renewal of vegetation.
In this sense, the players stood in for divine beings, embodying forces greater than themselves. Their exertion was not merely athletic but sacramental. If the game went well—if the cosmic drama was reenacted successfully—life would flourish. If it failed, the balance between humans, gods, and the natural world risked disruption.
Such beliefs were not arbitrary. In an environment where agriculture depended on unstable climate cycles, linking ritual performance to cosmic harmony provided a psychological and social framework for managing anxieties, fears and uncertainty. By engaging in the ball game, the community reaffirmed its place within a living universe, participating in the eternal dialogue between creation and decay.
Even the first Olympic Games in 776 BCE were held in the precinct of the Temple of Zeus, linking athletic competition with the presence of the divine. And in Rome, the ball game celebrated during the festum fatuorum around 200 BCE likewise served as an expression of divine glory, echoing the ancient understanding that the play of humans mirrors the play of the gods.
Sport?
The word sport comes from the Latin de(s) porto, meaning to be carried away, deported. Carried where? Into realms beyond the world of the body, into the sphere of gods and of the underworld. And why? The Greek root of to play points toward paideia (childlike spontaneity, improvisation, freedom) and agon (struggle, contest, the agony of effort). The Latin ludus evokes not only skill but also danger, risk, and chance. In play, conditions arise in which the outcome is never predetermined. The player is, for a moment, lent qualities that allow him to bend the ordinary laws of the profane world. It is as if the destiny allotted to humanity by the gods were itself placed in play. The game shows, at least symbolically, that a human being does not always have to lose against the gods. In the arena, the player becomes a hero who dares to challenge divine fate.
The question of human freedom—how far human destiny is fixed by forces greater than oneself—is among the most elemental themes contemplated by mythology and religion. One need not recall only the biblical Adam and Eve, but also the tragic myth of Oedipus or the fairytale of Sleeping Beauty. If we set aside philosophical or theological interpretation and focus instead on its experiential dimension, a practical question arises: how does a person, or more precisely the human will, loosen itself from the grip of blind instinct? The psychic development of a human being is, by its nature, a sequence of such liberations—a gradual emergence of consciousness from its original unconscious state.
This important idea, appearing in Mesoamerican mythology, is also the subject of the ritual ball games of the Maya and Aztecs. Long before the Aztecs and the Maya, however, the Olmecs—flourishing as early as 1500–400 BCE—shaped the earliest known form of the Mesoamerican ballgame, endowing it with sacrificial and cosmological meaning. The Zapotecs at Monte Albán, beginning around 500 BCE, and the Mixtecs, whose richly painted codices span the first millennium CE, portrayed the game as a rite of kingship, ancestral renewal, and communion with the dead. The Toltecs (ca. 900–1150 CE) linked the game with Quetzalcoatl and the regeneration of cosmic order, while the great city of Teotihuacan (100 BCE–550 CE) integrated the ballcourt into its solar and underworld theology. Thus, by the time the Maya elaborated their own version of pitz, the game already carried a long heritage of cosmological, sacrificial, and initiatory meaning across Mesoamerica.
Beyond Mesoamerica, the Tarascans played their fiery pelota purépecha—a burning ball symbolizing the sun’s eternal struggle with darkness. In Egypt, ball games were associated with fertility festivals dedicated to Hathor and the cyclical renewal of life. The Greeks participated in athletic games and contests not merely for recreation but as offerings to the gods, integrating the spirit of agon with divine presence. Even among the Romans, the ludus pilae at times belonged to the ritual life of festivals and public ceremonies.
All these traditions reflect a universal psychic motif: the game as a symbolic arena in which the human being encounters the forces that shape fate. Through play, humanity reenacts the cosmic struggle between creation and destruction, light and shadow, freedom and necessity. In this sense, the ball game becomes a ritualized dialogue between human consciousness and the powers that surround and transcend it—a rehearsal of the timeless conflict between the ego and fate, between the finite mortal and the gods.
Ball Game
For the Maya, the ball game was not merely a game but an essential part of religious ceremony. In their world, cultural life and religious life were identical expressions of one indivisible Cosmos. The great cities of the Maya contained imposing architectural complexes—stadiums or ritual courts—constructed with extraordinary seriousness and aligned with solar cycles and the rising of Venus. These were not recreational arenas but cosmic instruments, calibrated to the heavens and to the Underworld, places where tribal customs, family traditions, myth, ritual, and the collective psyche converged in order to hold the affect and humanize raw instinctual forces. Their long narrow shape, often flanked by slanted walls, echoed the passageway between worlds, evoking a stone corridor through which celestial bodies travel and through which the soul descends and ascends in its own transformations.
Jaguar
Each court included two chapels: one reserved for the ruler, who served as the axis connecting human and divine realms, and one for the spectators. The players wore leather garments modeled after the jaguar—an animal revered for its nocturnal sight and its ability to move between day and night, surface and depth, consciousness and dream. Among the Maya, the jaguar was not merely a powerful creature but the very embodiment of shamanic authority, associated with rulers, priests, and those capable of navigating altered states of consciousness. It was believed to traverse the porous boundary between the living and the dead, stalking both the forest floor and the Underworld. In this sense, the jaguar served as a psychopomp, a guide through liminal zones, and its presence in the game underscores that pitz was also a journey into the symbolic Underworld—a passage in which players temporarily assumed the attributes of those who could move safely through darkness and return transformed.
The spectators participated actively. During the match, they placed precious jewels and offerings along the pyramid steps to honor not only the athletes but the divine forces acting through them. This immediate bestowal of gifts points to an ancient understanding that the ritual was not symbolic alone: the gods were present and watching, and the actions on the court were part of an ongoing negotiation with fate.
The ball, made from the resin of the guamul (Calonyction aculeatum), weighed about three kilograms (almost seven pounds!). With no use of hands or feet allowed, players relied solely on hips, thighs, and elbows. The game demanded extreme physical mastery and endurance, turning the match into a sacred ordeal. Archaeological studies show that players often wore heavy protective belts, and many suffered broken ribs, bruised limbs, concussions or even traumatic head injuries. This physical intensity aligns with other world’s initiation rites in which bodily trial accompanies spiritual passage.
Hunahpú and Xbalanqúe
The consequences of defeat were profound. The captains of the losing team were often sacrificed by decapitation, and their heads displayed on the tzompantli—the skull rack common throughout Mesoamerica. The iconography frequently depicts the ball as a human head. These two images—ball and head—merge into a single symbolic equation. Psychologically, the head signifies thought, awareness, spirit, and the fragile flame of consciousness. Thus pitz became not only a ritual of physical skill but a drama concerning the birth, risk, and renewal of consciousness itself.
This re-enactment was rooted in the central cosmogenic myth of the Maya, preserved in the Popol Vuh, their Book of Wisdom. The myth tells of the Hero Twins, Hunahpú and Xbalanqúe, whose father and uncle—renowned pitz players—were defeated by the Lords of Xibalba, the gods of death, disease, and destruction. After sacrificing the father, Hun Hunahpú, the Underworld gods hung his skull in a barren tree as a sign of divine supremacy. Yet when Xquic, daughter of an Underworld deity, approached the tree, the skull spat into her hand, impregnating her miraculously. In mythological terms, life sprang directly from death, new consciousness from the bowels of the unconscious.
Twin hero motifs appear across cultures—Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Romulus and Remus, Castor and Pollux—figures who mediate between worlds and embody psychological doubles: ego and the Self, persona and shadow, mortal and divine, daylight consciousness and nocturnal instinct. The Maya Hero Twins belong to this lineage. Their descent into Xibalba mirrors the nekyia, the night-sea journey described in Jungian psychology: an encounter with the powerful forces of the unconscious.
Skilled and cunning, the twins challenge the Underworld gods to the ball game and win. For the first time, a god—not a human—is sacrificed. Cosmic hierarchy shifts. Fate is no longer absolute. In Jungian terms, this is the moment when the ego, developed through ordeal, stands against overwhelming unconscious powers and gains autonomy. Individuation begins with such moments of inner contest.
After their own sacrificial deaths, the twins ascend in transformed form: Xbalanqúe becomes the Moon, embodying its reflective, cyclical, and feminine character, while Hunahpú becomes the Sun, radiant, decisive, and sovereign. Their eternal positions in the sky guarantee perpetual victory in pitz and establishes a new cosmic order in which light triumphs, again and again, over the depths.
Scholars, such as Miller, point out that many Mesoamericans saw the ball game as a living metaphor for the movement of celestial bodies—the Sun, the Moon, Venus. The ball represented the Sun on its daily journey between the Underworld and the world of humans. The playing field became a cosmic slit, a liminal gateway through which the divine light passed. In that corridor of stone, humans stood face to face with the rhythms of creation.
Recent research suggests that the game also served as a means of political negotiation—symbolic conflict resolution between city-states, a controlled ritual alternative to warfare. This added yet another layer: the game became a space where fate, diplomacy, and communal tension found regulated expression in this symbolized form (transactional space).
In this way, the pitz court was an axis mundi—a world center akin to Greek temples, Egyptian ceremonial fields, Roman circuses, and even modern stadiums where collective emotion surges and individual identity dissolves into a temporary collective Self. Everywhere humans gather to “play with fate,” the same archetypal pattern emerges: through ritualized contest, humanity reenacts the cosmic struggle between life and death, consciousness and instinct, freedom and fate.
Xibalba
If we view the ritual through the lens of depth psychology, we can understand the descent into Xibalba as a journey into the psyche itself, into that inner borderland where unconscious and consciousness, instinct and will, body and soul intersect. In the Popol Vuh, Xibalba is not merely the realm of death. It is a vast, multilayered psychic landscape: rivers of blood and filth, houses filled with obsidian blades, scorpions, jaguars, and absolute darkness. Each chamber mirrors an archetypal trial—an encounter with the inner dangers that arise when consciousness descends toward the depths of the unconscious. The father of the Hero Twins is overwhelmed by these forces; he is swallowed entirely by Xibalba.
The brothers, however, represent the first truly human figures in the mythic cycle—those in whom consciousness has achieved a degree of autonomy sufficient to face the Underworld without disintegration. They do not win by brute strength alone but by intelligence, improvisation, and trickster-like creativity. Trickster energy, which Jung regarded as an early, undifferentiated form of the emerging Self, serves here as an indispensable ally. It is often the trickster impulse—cunning, playfulness, unpredictability—that enables the ego to survive encounters with the overwhelming powers of the unconscious.
Where the gods reign absolutely, human freedom is absent. Jung notes that the domain of the gods begins where consciousness ends; beyond that threshold, the human being is at the mercy of natural and psychic forces that decide survival or destruction. In Jung’s theory, the gods are projections of archetypes—transpersonal psychic energies belonging to the collective unconscious. A “victory” over the gods therefore does not mean their eradication but the establishment of a conscious relationship with these energies. Full domination of the archetypal realm is neither possible nor desirable. Whenever the ego attempts such domination, the unconscious tends to return with destructive force, as if to restore balance.
In the Mayan conception, the ball is associated with the head, with the Sun, and with the human world. The head symbolizes consciousness, thinking, and the emergence of spirit; the Sun corresponds to clarity and illumination; and the human realm represents the fragile sphere where consciousness must be continually renewed. Mayan cosmology held that consciousness itself was precarious—it had to be maintained through ritual, courage, and cyclical renewal, much like the Sun must rise again each morning from the depths of Xibalba.
This constellation corresponds in Jung’s psychology to the archetype of the Self (Das Selbst), the inner center of consciousness and the unconscious psyche. The Self represents wholeness, the living balance of opposites. Without such a center, neither stable consciousness nor a coherent experience of reality can emerge. Without some degree of self-realization, the individual remains captive to fragmentation, illusion, and instinct.
In this sense, pitz becomes a symbolic enactment of the drama of life. The Self is not literally but symbolically in play. The ballgame enacts the struggle for the emergence of the Self as the inner center capable of holding together the opposing forces within the psyche. Although players could indeed die in the ritual, the deeper meaning of “victory” and “defeat” concerns the life of consciousness itself—its formation, growth, regression, or dissolution. Victory corresponds to development and integration; defeat suggests stagnation or reabsorption into the archetypal unconscious. The decapitated head—often depicted as the ball—evokes the alchemical caput mortuum, loss of reason: the old state of consciousness that must be symbolically sacrificed for renewal.
The pitz court thus resembles a stone mandala, a ritual enclosure where the movement of the ball traces the circular rhythm of integration. Many spiritual traditions create similar liminal spaces—the Egyptian Duat, the Greek Hades, the Mesopotamian Kur, the Tibetan mandala, and even modern stadiums where powerful collective emotions surge. Each serves as an axis mundi, a world-center in which individuals and communities confront the forces shaping their destiny. Archaeological research notes that many pitz courts were constructed with unusual acoustics: a single clap could echo seven times, creating the impression that supernatural forces were answering human action. Psychologically, this mirrors the phenomenon of synchronicity, moments when inner and outer worlds appear to respond to one another.
The opposing teams in pitz often represented cosmic dualities: day and night, life and death, wet season and dry season, order and chaos. The game dramatized the necessity of balancing these polarities. It was Jung’s profound insight that psychic wholeness emerges only through the union of opposites.
The Mayan pitz player was above all a warrior—yet not only in physical endurance. Warriorhood here means courage in the face of the unknown, readiness to descend into darkness, and willingness to confront the unpredictable. The Hero Twins belong to a global family of mythic twins—Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Romulus and Remus, Castor and Pollux—who mediate between death and rebirth, conscious and unconscious, human and divine. Their descent into Xibalba is a classic nekyia, the night-sea journey that Jung regarded as fundamental to individuation.
By identifying with the hero on the court, the spectators also participated in this inner drama. Their collective emotion condensed into a temporary unity, forming a kind of communal Self. Personal anxieties and private stories merged into a larger mythic pattern. In this sense, the pitz game facilitated a form of collective individuation, a moment when the entire community symbolically confronted its own shadow, struggled with its tensions, and glimpsed the possibility of transformation.
Thus, while only a few players moved the heavy ball across the stone alley, the entire city engaged in a parallel contest within the arena of the soul. The pitz game became not only a cosmological reenactment but a communal psychological event—a moment in which an entire people sought, however symbolically, the balance and integration represented by the Self.
Ego vs The Self
The game served as a symbolic image of what takes place within ego-consciousness when it is exposed to the influence of archetypal energies. When these energies surge upward, they do not enter the ego gently. Jung writes that consciousness is “a blossom which grows only through the tearing open of the unconscious” (CW 11). Such tearing-open is never mild; the ego’s first reaction is usually defensive. The psyche splits. What cannot be endured internally is projected outward, while the positive pole of the archetype is claimed as one’s own. Subjectively, it appears as though the archetype itself has two poles—bright and dark. Whitman therefore speaks of the bipolarity of the archetype (and of the complex), in which part of the energy is projected while another part is identified with (J. W. Perry, 1970; W. Whitman, 2007). Marie-Louise von Franz reminds us that when archetypal contents break into consciousness without sufficient symbolic containment, they tend to lead either to inflation or panic.
The Mayan warrior, identifying with the hero who battles the forces of darkness, enacts this psychic process. Because pitz is a ritual, both players and spectators experience this encounter with archetypal force in a symbolic setting. Through living out the drama, they learn not only to handle the fierce energy but also to accept its opposite pole. In doing so, the archetypal power becomes less an external god and more an embodied psychological quality. Aggression can be refined rather than acted out blindly. In this respect, the ritual cultivated the beginnings of consciousness by teaching the community how to endure and integrate archetypal intensity. Mircea Eliade’s insight that “every ritual is a return to the beginning, to the moment when the world was created” applies here: pitz brings participants back to the primordial struggle out of which consciousness itself arises.
These psychic processes are closely mirrored in the body’s hormonal response. Testosterone is released in situations such as anticipation of a stressful event, competition and success in competition, an increase in social status, anticipation of sexual activity and success in it, and anger. Conversely, testosterone levels fall during defeat, humiliation, loss of status, failure, the prevention of sexual activity (the Lysistrata phenomenon), isolation, and punishment. These fluctuations parallel the psychic experience of inflation and collapse: the heroic pole swelling with energy, the defeated pole collapsing into impotence. In ritual form, this somatic and psychic surge is contained, shaped, and given symbolic meaning.
Across cultures and millennia, this function has changed very little. James Hillman notes that for many societies, the initiation of youth—especially young men—into a conscious relationship with the violent inner god we call Mars was essential. Without such rites, litima, the unbound and volatile energy of youth, remained primitive and dangerous. The Maori spoke of growing into a person—kia tupu koe hei tangata—meaning precisely entering into a conscious relationship with one’s inner powers. The Spartan agoge served a similar purpose: to temper thymos, raw spiritedness, into andreia, disciplined courage. The Mayan pitz player stands firmly within this lineage of warrior-initiation archetypes.
Even today, it is mostly the young—particularly young men—who participate in ball games and identify with the players. The players become heroic figures, often treated like gods; the opposing team becomes a dark and reprehensible force; the stadium becomes a secular initiation ground. Though the religious dimension of modern sports has faded, the numinous energy surrounding them remains unchanged. Neuropsychological research shows that participation in group sporting events activates the same circuits involved in ritual bonding and warfare: oxytocin for cohesion, adrenaline for risk, dopamine for victory. The psychological function also remains: to integrate unconscious autonomous energies through identification with heroic figures who symbolically confront the archetypal field.
Here René Girard’s theory of mimetic violence clarifies the mechanism: groups under emotional charge naturally polarize, seeking an “enemy” in which to lodge the disowned half of themselves. The opposing team becomes the vessel for the archetype’s projected negative pole. The stadium thus becomes what Hillman calls a “projection field,” an arena for psychic discharge in which the community attempts—sometimes successfully, sometimes disastrously—to metabolize instinctual energy.
However, when the symbolic container of the ritual collapses, the process becomes too concrete. Instead of uniting opposites, the psyche fractures. The energy does not refine itself; it erupts into violence. We see this particularly among youth whose inner Mars remains unconscious and undifferentiated. Football rowdies and hooligan gangs flourish in this psychological gap. Their destruction, often spilling beyond stadium walls, demonstrates what Jung meant when he wrote that archetypes possess an “overwhelming actuality” and behave as if they have “intentionality and will” (CW 9i). When the ego fails to hold its ground, the archetypal field takes over.
In such cases, a person can lose the symbolic battle with the gods and, like Hun Hunahpú in the Mayan myth, sacrifice his head—losing consciousness, judgment, and moral orientation. What was meant to be an initiation becomes possession. What was meant to integrate becomes fragmenting. The ritual slips from a symbolic encounter with the Self into a literal enactment of the ego’s defeat.
Yet it is precisely this danger that reveals why such rituals arose in the first place. In Jungian terms, the symbolic arena protects the ego from being overwhelmed by archetypal forces by giving instinct a form, a rhythm, and a container. When the game remains within its symbolic frame, it channels aggression, rivalry, and primordial emotion into a structure that consciousness can hold. The raw heat of Mars is transformed into courage rather than violence; anger is moved into the realm of image and ritual rather than acted out in the streets.
At their best, ball games contribute to the growth of consciousness: they offer a communal temenos in which shadow, instinct, and competitive drive can be encountered without destroying social bonds. They allow a society to dramatize conflict without collapsing into it. They give form to tension, enabling communities to maintain peace precisely because the darker energies of the psyche are acknowledged rather than repressed.
Thus, the ancient wisdom embedded in pitz still speaks: only when instinct is granted a symbolic field can it be integrated; only when the gods are honored can they be humanized; and only when the Self is allowed to emerge through play can the ego withstand the forces that would otherwise tear it apart.
Що відбувається, коли святе перетворюється на ідеологію, а віра — на знаряддя влади? У книзі «Темна релігія: психологія заперечення і відкриття реальності» юнґіанські психотерапевти Владислав Шольц і Джордж Дідьє (США) досліджують, як архетип Самості, відірваний від свого джерела, може перетворитися на інфляцію й одержимість — на те, що вони називають «темною релігією».
Українське видання спеціально адаптоване до реалій нації, яка переживає жорстоку агресію і масову травму. Автори пропонують глибше зрозуміти, як колективна і особиста душа реагує на зло, руйнування, втрату, і як у процесі випробувань народжується нове усвідомлення сенсу й духовної сили.
Спираючись на клінічний досвід, аналітичні поняття та уважне слухання символів, книга дає мову для осмислення релігійної травми, провини, сорому й утрати себе — без знецінення духовного вимірювання і без підміни психіки догмою. Вона пропонує орієнтири для розпізнавання: де справжня, жива віра, а де психологічна підміна; як розпізнати маніакальну «посвяту», що приховує страх; як відновити зв’язок із внутрішнім джерелом сенсу та надії.
Для українського читача, який шукає шлях через біль і випробування, ця книга є глибоким психологічним і духовним супроводом — не збіркою готових відповідей, а дороговказом до внутрішньої цілісності й відродження.
In an age of misinformation, polarization, and collective fear, how can we stay connected to truth—and to ourselves?
This course offers a Jungian exploration of the psychological roots of conspiracy theories, radical belief systems, and cultic movements that shape today’s social and political landscape. Together, we will look at how these movements arise when authentic spirituality loses connection with the unconscious, giving rise to what Jung called Dark Religion—a distortion of the numinous that seeks power rather than meaning.
Through dynamic discussion and depth-psychological reflection, participants will learn how unconscious forces shape collective attitudes, manipulate perception, and fuel ideological extremism. We will also explore ways to remain psychologically grounded and hopeful amid the turbulence of our divided world.
The course includes experiential practices such as active imagination and guided group dialogue to encourage greater awareness, integration, and inner resilience.
Learning Objectives REGISTER HERE
This course is intended to help you:
Suggested Reading & Reference Material
“‘Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood.”
(Shakespeare, Hamlet, ca. 1600)
On the thirty-first of October, countries as distant as Mexico, Brazil, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Canada, and, above all, the United States, celebrate one of the strangest and most popular pagan holidays: Halloween. Over the past two decades, this festival has also taken root in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and other Eastern European countries, where it overlaps with the Christian commemoration of All Souls’ Day.
Its origins, however, reach back more than two millennia to the ancient Celtic custom known as Samhain, once celebrated in northern France, England, and Ireland. In various forms, this archetypal motif appears in religions and myths across the world. The theme that Halloween brings to consciousness holds deep psychological significance, as it addresses a core insight for curating the well-being of humankind.
The Celts called the festival Samhain. The old Irish and Gaelic word samfuin means “the end of summer” or “the setting of the sun.” The festival marked the conclusion of the harvest and the beginning of the Celtic New Year. The Gallic calendar divided the year into two halves—the dark and the light—each beginning with the months Samonios and Giamonios, respectively. Samhain thus opened the dark half of the year, a time when the sun withdrew and the fires of transformation were kindled. The New Year’s celebration lasted three days—Trinoux Samoni—a triple feast that symbolically contained the movement from life toward death and back again.
The Celtic calendar aligned itself less with the course of celestial bodies than with the organic rhythm of the earth; in this way, its basis was more psychological than astronomical. Ritual bonfires blazed on high hills; families gathered in their light and offered sacrifices to the gods so that divine wrath would not fall upon them during the long winter. The rites were both agricultural and spiritual: offerings, sacrifices, and symbolic deaths ensured the survival of the community. In Ireland and Scotland, this day was called Feile na Marbh, the festival of the dead, for winter inevitably claimed human lives as well. Even today, in certain regions of Ireland and Scotland, people dedicate this night to their ancestors and recount the stories of those who have gone before.
According to Celtic tradition, when one half of the year overlapped with the other, the world of the living came perilously close to the world of the dead. This contact produced strange and frightening phenomena—what we would today call perhaps paranormal events. During this threshold time, the dead were believed to enter daily reality and for one day to walk among the living. However, those spirits brought both blessings and terror: they could destroy crops or whisper prophecies to the Druids, the Celtic priests who in turn can share them with their people. They advised on matters of love and marriage, on the number of children to come, and on the food stores needed to endure the winter.
The Druids built great fires around which families gathered in symbolic unity, seeking communion with the divine. People dressed in animal skins and wore masks that evoked creatures of the wild, acknowledging that the human being and the animal share a single psychic ground. From a Jungian perspective, such a ritual can be seen as an act of integration—an acknowledgment of instinct as the foundation of psychic vitality but also its use as a tool during difficult times of survival. Though the festival contained a sense of dread, it also carried fascination, beauty, and awe. Most importantly - it built resilience through embodiment and development of a new attitude. The participant experienced the ritual in its totality—with pathos, fear, reverence, and wonder—precisely the conditions under which transformation of consciousness can occur.
When the Romans conquered most of the Celtic lands around 43 BCE, the native rituals did not disappear but gradually intertwined with the religious life of the empire. This fusion was not imposed by any imperial order; it unfolded naturally through interpretatio Romana—the Roman practice of assimilating local gods and festivals into its own pantheon to maintain harmony across the provinces. The Romans rarely abolished native deities; they translated them into their own symbolic language, recognizing in them familiar divine forces. Thus, Samhain began to merge with the Roman observances of Feralia and Pomona.
Feralia, a solemn day dedicated to honoring the spirits of the dead, brought families to graves with offerings of food and wine, affirming the continuity between the living and the departed. Pomona, by contrast, introduced a gentler, life-affirming note. As goddess of fruit and orchards, she presided over the fullness of harvest before the world withdrew into dormancy. The apple, sacred to her, became a symbol of regeneration—the life hidden within the seed at the heart of decay. It is likely through this blending that both apple and, later, pumpkin entered the imagery of Halloween.
Pomona belonged to the numinous company of the Numina—divine presences inhabiting woods, streams, and sacred springs. These forces guarded both nature and the human soul, protecting home and spirit from chaos. In them we can sense an early intuition of what Jung would later describe as the psychoid realm, where matter and spirit interpenetrate. Thus, Pomona’s care over orchards and hearth symbolized the safeguarding of the soul’s inner dwelling against destructive powers that arise when the boundary between worlds grows thin.
Through this organic blending of Roman and Celtic imagination—not by decree, but through shared archetypal resonance—two spiritual sensibilities met and transformed each other. The Feralia contributed solemn remembrance; Pomona offered sweetness and renewal. Their union gave rise to a ritual vision in which death was no longer the final end but part of the natural rhythm of life—a quiet prelude to the descent into winter and the soul’s return to its mysterious roots.
By the eighth century CE, Celtic lands had come under Christian rule. Pope Gregory III declared the first of November to be All Saints’ Day, honoring martyrs and the blessed who beheld God in heaven. The following day, November 2, became All Souls’ Day, commemorating those still undergoing purification. The papal intention was to replace the pagan Samhain with a Christian feast, yet the ancient symbolism persisted among the people. Elements of the older rituals were absorbed into the Christian observances, giving rise to All Hallows’ Eve, the night before All Saints’ Day—eventually shortened to Hallowe’en and later Halloween.
Only in modern times did Halloween separate from the church calendar and return to its pre-Christian date of October 31, regaining its “pagan status”—to the dismay of ecclesiastical authorities, who have often viewed it either as “foolish indulgence” or as “the celebration of demonic forces” (Rogers, 2002; Hutton, 1991).
The festival itself, however, has a deep symbolic meaning that transcends both condemnation and commercial trivialization. Its psychological function lies in confronting what civilization habitually represses—the instinctual, the nocturnal, the proximity of death, and the haunting presence of the unconscious.
Halloween, originating in Ireland, reached North America around the mid-nineteenth century and spread across Europe during the twentieth. The celebration includes masks and costumes—especially ghostly and monstrous ones—visiting haunted houses, telling frightening stories, watching horror films, and lighting bonfires. Children go from house to house with the playful threat “trick-or-treat,” receiving sweets as a symbolic exchange. The carved pumpkin, glowing from within, has become its most recognizable emblem. During this season, America swarms with skeletons, devils, and ghosts; according to the National Retail Federation (2024), Americans now spend around four billion dollars on costumes alone, contributing to a total Halloween expenditure of nearly twelve billion dollars each year. Cinemas and streaming platforms earn millions more from horror entertainment. In sheer commercial magnitude, Halloween rivals even Christmas.
Yet rituals honoring the dead or the spirits of the departed are not unique to the Celts or the West. They appear in cultures worldwide—in the Greek Anthesteria, the Egyptian Feast of the Valley, the Australian Alcheringa rites, the Hindu Shrāddha, the Tibetan Ullambana, the Chinese Zhongyuan Jie, and in Mexico’s Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), celebrated on November 1 and 2. Each of these ceremonies dramatizes the human encounter with mortality and the unseen.
If such festivals were mere remnants of archaic superstition, they would long ago have disappeared. Their persistence suggests a deep psychological necessity. Recent surveys in the United States reveal that one-third of adults believe in ghosts and nearly one-fifth in witches and curses (Harris Poll, 2021). Beyond literal belief lies an archetypal need—the psyche’s urge to symbolize what cannot be grasped by reason alone. The psyche speaks through symbols; rational thought is only one mode of understanding. The symbolic dimension is its native language—an archaic, primordial way of relating to reality that allows meaning to emerge where logic reaches its limits. Let’s look at it through Jungian lenses.
Death, after all, is as fundamental to psychic life as birth. It is the boundary that gives shape to existence, the horizon against which life becomes meaningful. Without death, life would lose its direction and its moral gravity. As Jung observed, “Life is teleological only in so far as it is self-limiting; its goal is death” (Jung, 1934/1960, CW 8, para. 812).
The non-existence of consciousness would mean immortality, but also the absence of life. Only that which is reflected by consciousness truly exists. A lifeless world “in itself” is meaningless to the sentient being. To exist psychically, the world must mirror itself in at least one tiny mirror, in one consciousness. The nature of this reflection defines life and that is to say the quality of life. The world perceived by the Dalai Lama is not the same as the one reflected in the mind of a small child—not merely because of knowledge, but because of the depth of freedom experienced in each reflection.
Life and its counterpart, finality, are inseparable. It is almost impossible to imagine existence without death. If death were abolished, moral and social laws would dissolve into a chaos of endless relativism. Life without its counterpart would become a prison—an infinite prolongation stripped of meaning, purpose, and orientation. Its sense is anchored in individuation: the ongoing attempt to find the most conscious and ethical response to the complexities, perplexities, and reversals of existence. Purpose itself can only be measured against our striving within the limits of ultimate choice, defined by the absoluteness of death—finality.
Death remains the greatest unknown of life, the silent justice from which none are exempt. Psychologically, it is the ultimate mystery—a dark realm beyond consciousness, from which only faint voices of faith, imagination, and fantasy reach us. At times these voices whisper terror and cruelty; at others, they promise solace and continuity. Yet though their truth can never be verified, we can still enter into a relationship with them. Death stands as the most enigmatic object of projection—the screen upon which the psyche casts its deepest images, fears, and aspirations. From this interplay, paradoxically, the meaning of life itself begins to emerge.
Since the birth of symbolic agency, death has held a double meaning: fear of absolute annihilation, and the hope of blissful continuity. Both evoke anxiety, for the final answer remains forever uncertain. As Paul Tillich (1952/2000) said, the greatest anxiety is not fear of punishment but “the anxiety of meaninglessness,” the dread that life itself may lack significance.
From the standpoint of the ego, death means dissolution—the collapse of individuality, the annihilation of being. From the standpoint of the unconscious, it signifies return and reunion. Myths across cultures portray death as a joyous homecoming, the restoration of unity with the divine. The moral dimension of this return—heaven or hell, redemption or damnation—merely clothes the archetype in cultural garments.
In this sense, contact with the dead in ritual form fulfills a profound psychological function: it helps integrate - to contain - the existential anxiety. The spirits of the dead truly “live” in the unconscious; translated into psychological language, they are the latent fears and unresolved complexes surrounding death. For archaic humanity, the acknowledgment of these spirits occurred through projection onto the outer world. During Samhain—and later Halloween—the dead could appear as ghosts and monsters. Fear thus took visible, graspable form; it could be acted out rather than merely endured. What was once diffuse anxiety became embodied symbols. The vague unease of the soul found a face.
This process is not an expression of primitive superstition but a psychic necessity coming from the deep archetypal wisdom. To “express” fear in symbolic form is to externalize and ritualize the inner tension between life and death. Such dramatization mirrors the process of active imagination in Jungian analysis, where unconscious contents are personified and engaged in dialogue rather than split-off and sent off as projections.
In the Celtic lands—especially in Ireland, where winters were long and harsh—the collective psyche carried deep fears of darkness, hunger, and death. Such seasons of isolation and loss filled the community with emotions too heavy for consciousness alone. Festivals like Samhain served as sacred vessels for these tensions. Around great fires, through masks, dance, and story, people gave form to their fears and released them into ritual space.
In this way, the Celts transformed fear into meaning. Samhain was a psychic act of courage—a collective “holding” of darkness rather than being consumed by it. From a Jungian perspective, these rites contained the unconscious, allowing archetypal energies of death and renewal to rise into awareness. By facing the shadow together, the Celtic people found balance and prepared the soul—and the land—for facing the Giamonios, the dark side of the year.
The overlapping of the worlds of the living and the dead corresponds psychologically to the overlapping of consciousness and the unconscious. During Halloween, the unconscious gains energy, forcing consciousness to respond with heightened attention. Contents once denied or repressed—fear, aggression, guilt, and desire—arise as ghosts and walking dead. Yet in this symbolic space, they can be acknowledged and even embraced.
Confronting fear within a defined, socially sanctioned ritual—whether through costume, storytelling, or bonfire—parallels the therapeutic encounter with shadow material in a safe analytic setting. Here, safety isn't provided by the analyst, but by the ritual container itself, which allows for emotional enactment and play. Many people intuitively seek this controlled exposure to fear, choosing to watch horror films or read Stephen King precisely at this time, engaging with frightening content under the reassuring psychological condition of "as if."
It would be naïve to think that only children take Halloween seriously. Beneath the laughter and play often lie adult anxieties. Denying them does not free us from their power. Every ritual works unconsciously, and therefore partly against our conscious positions. Children, being closer to instinct, experience the festival more directly and deeply; for them, fear and fascination are still united.
The atavistic identification with animals, monsters, and ghosts—so typical of Halloween—can thus be understood as a psychological attempt to integrate the unconscious. It represents a phylogenetic regression, a descent of ego-consciousness into its instinctual roots. This descent naturally provokes fear of disintegration. The ego feels anxiety as evolution appears to reverse itself, plunging back into the archaic. Yet establishing a relationship with the inner animal is essential for psychic wholeness. Instincts that “modern” people believe they have outgrown have merely sunk into the depths, living silently like coelacanths in the ocean of the unconscious.
Halloween, therefore, serves not as a mere exposure to fear but as a nature-guided process of transformation. The descent into the "underworld" (Tír na nÓg), the world of instinct, corresponds psychologically to a descent into the unconscious. Because every symbol contains something ineffable and numinous, confrontation with it is always mysterious. It brings forth emotions that were previously unknown, split-off, and considered too painful or unbearable for consciousness to hold. Immersion in that horrific and fascinating mystery—whether through ritual, dream, or creative expression—can be turned into a cleansing and healing bath if the mind finds the right propensity and courage. The ego, bathed in the transformative waters of the unconscious, will always emerge more courageous and grown.
Jung said: "The true man is a child who has had his eyes opened. The darkness that hides the good is the same darkness that hides the bad, and we can draw the good out of the darkness only when we can also find the bad there." (CW 16, para. 544)
The ancient Celts understood that the confrontation with darkness carries a transformative purpose. Confronting the spirits of the dead was not simply an act of terror, but an initiation. Through the symbolic death of the ego, a new life could be born. What we now call the “unconscious,” early humanity referred to as the “world of spirits.” Among the ancient Irish and Celts, this world was known as Annwn or Tech Duinn—realms of the ancestors and of the unseen forces shaping life. From that world came both wisdom and power. By honoring the dead during Samhain, people maintained a dialogue with the invisible realm, ensuring that life remained in balance with its hidden source. Through such rituals, they derived strength to endure existence in the body with all its sufferings and limitations, understanding that descent into darkness was not an end but a passage toward renewal.
Through myth and ritual they summoned their spirits, expanding the image of the world beyond the boundaries of individual existence. Faith in those spirits opened access to the living wellspring of the unconscious—a capacity that many modern people have forgotten. Few civilizations cultivated this art of dying as profoundly as the ancient Egyptians, whose mysteries aimed to initiate the living into the life beyond death. Psychologically understood, this “life after death” represents an initiation into a higher state of consciousness—the transcendence of ignorance and unconsciousness. In this light, death is not the negation of life but its incomplete form, existence without awareness, deprived of the experience of the divine—the divine as the ever-present, eternal ground of life itself.
We find similar parallels in the Greek mysteries, in Christian liturgy, and in other ancient religions. The Bardo Thödol, or Tibetan Book of the Dead, can likewise be understood as a guide for awakening the soul to its original divine nature, forgotten at birth (Jung, 1935/1958, paras. 841–842). As Jung wrote, “The dead who seek recognition are the voices of the dead within us; it is they who demand the work of transformation which leads to individuation” (CW 11, para. 856). The spiritual climax is attained precisely at the moment of bodily death, when the soul is initiated into a higher mode of awareness.
From the depth-psychological perspective, such ritual dramas view life and death symbolically, for the projections surrounding death can never be entirely rationalized. Communication through symbols is not a trivial game of conjuring spirits but a moral and transformative act through which ego-consciousness enters into relation with the deeper reality—a world that continually calls for ethical participation and conscious engagement with the mystery of being.
Halloween, in its contemporary form, is indeed a simplified echo of such ancient initiations. The Druids, guided by instinct, enacted the same process that the Bardo Thödol describes in sophisticated theological language: conscious participation in the transition from one mode of being to another. In a similar way, Jungian analysis is an initiation into new life, assisting the integration of the Self into ego-consciousness. As Jung (1955/1966) wrote, “Penetration into the lower strata of the psyche is a kind of Socratic maieutics which brings to birth psychic contents that were hitherto only in a germinal state, subliminal and therefore unborn” (CW 13, para. 163).
Life “before” birth, therefore, can correspond to the original unconscious totality—the Platonic realm of the Good (to agathon). In Plato’s philosophy, this realm was also called the hyperuranion topos—the “place beyond the heavens”—where the eternal Forms dwell, unchanging and pure, and where the soul contemplates truth before descending into the body. In the Celtic imagination there is a similar symbol-image of the “Land of Youth,” or Mag Mell, the “Plain of Delight”—timeless realms of harmony where the soul dwelled in unity with the divine prior to incarnation. Both express the archetype of primordial wholeness that the human soul seeks to recover through experience of reality. Thus, when the soul remembers its divine origin, it will be reborn. Depth psychology understands this process of transformation as spiritual rebirth. By entering into dialectical relation with archetypal forces—the living symbols of the unconscious—one attains the highest form of wisdom: a consciousness that reconciles the opposites of the mortal with the eternal within the Self.
Archaic humans possessed an advantage over the modern: ritual contact with archetypal powers was an organic part of daily life. They lived immersed in symbol, in continuous dialogue with the unconscious, which ensured psychic balance and continuity. Modern humans, by contrast, have overvalued—and even deified—rationality to the point of blindness, leaving themselves defenseless before archetypal energies they no longer recognize or understand. The archetype, as a source of image, emotion, thought, and impulse to act—the very wellspring of psychic energy—cannot be “thought away.” The task of modern humanity is not to banish or subjugate these forces, but to rediscover their roots and, like the ancient Druids, to enter into conscious relationship with them—an attitude that once again aligns life with the deepest and most natural rhythm of being.
The so-called primitive lived in dialogue with his gods and therefore with his own soul. Jung (1961) observed that “while the man without faith walks toward nothingness, the one who entrusts himself to the powers of the archetype walks toward life through death. Both move in uncertainty, yet the one lives against his instincts, the other in accord with them” (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 306). When archetypes—or “spirits,” are ignored, they turn against us.
James Hillman (1977) demonstrated this in Suicide and the Soul. When the symbolic dimension of death is denied, its archetype may possess the personality, producing the literal urge for self-destruction. Death and rebirth are then experienced as bodily necessity. But the soul, which knows no body, expresses this as an archaic longing for transformation. The task is to understand that the body need not die; it is only the old psychic form that must perish so that a new, spiritual body can emerge. When we follow an archetype concretely, we become trapped in its literal meaning. When we apprehend it symbolically, its energy can be sublimated and transcend the body and its compulsions. Physical destruction is no longer required; the work with the archetype of death leads instead to renewed life.
The “ghosts” that haunt us—the unrecognized contents of the psyche—belong to what depth psychology calls the shadow: all that lies beyond the light of awareness. The more we repress these contents, the more destructive they become. Halloween reminds us that by consciously approaching this danger—whether through mockery, laughter, or the deliberate evocation of fear—we learn to live with death rather than turn away from it.
Here we encounter a phenomenon no longer confined to America—the growing fascination with brutality and violence. The modern obsession with horror films and violent games reveals, on one level, a conscious trivialization of death, and on another, an unconscious build-up of unacknowledged aggression. When the natural impulse toward aggression is dissociated, it sinks into the unconscious and returns as compulsive imagery. What consciousness neglects eventually takes possession. This process, known as psychological compensation, reflects the psyche’s instinctive effort to restore balance by bringing the rejected material back into awareness.
Just as excessive sexual restraint gives rise to obsessive erotic fantasies, and rigid dieting provokes compulsive overeating, an exaggerated attachment to life strengthens the pull of its opposite—death. Nature seeks equilibrium and continually brings both poles before consciousness. Only when the denied and the desired unite can true psychic freedom emerge. Instinctual and moral forces must meet in reflective harmony, converging at the center of the psyche—within what Jung called the transsubjective reality of the Self.
In the ancient Samhain, the world of spirits and the world of humans overlapped, allowing people to face the harsh winter not trembling with fear of death but strengthened through communion with their ancestors. Likewise, modern humanity, if it dares to gaze into its own darkness, may discover guidance rather than terror. The spirits that once haunted the night are, in truth, reflections of our own unlived life.
Thanks to Claire Kohne, MS, LPCC and Robert Carriger, MS, LMFT, for interviewing Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts member Vlado Solc on their podcast, The Jungian Drift.
Knihu od George J. Didiera a Vladislava Šolce, která vyšla v nakladatelství Malvern, krátce představuje Jan Lukavec.
Jungiánští analytici Vladislav Šolc a George J. Didier ve své knize s podtitulem „Psychologie popírání a objevování skutečnosti“ zkoumají psychologii náboženského fundamentalismu a fanatismu. Kořeny těchto jevů hledají v situaci, kdy člověka „ovládnou nevědomé energie bytostného Já“. Takový jedinec pak není schopný snášet přirozenou nejednoznačnost a složitost světa – a odmítá i jakýkoli symbolický výklad posvátných textů. Místo toho vyžaduje absolutní jistotu, má paranoidní pohled na realitu, sklony k mesianismu a milenialismu. Podřizuje se autoritám, ale současně touží po moci. Typická je pro něj „mentalita oběti“, kterou autoři nachází u Donalda Trumpa i Vladimira Putina. Obecně přitom Šolc a Didier přiznávají, že chovají velkou úctu k lidské religiozitě, potřeba spirituality je podle nich „neodmyslitelným rozměrem lidského života“. Právem však varují, že některé její formy mohou být nebezpečné až zhoubné, zvláště pokud má dotyčný v rukou moc a k dispozici zbraně hromadného ničení.
The article is an extended and revised version of the one originally published in Vesmír, which was based on an interview that Vlado gave to Psychologie.cz.
In recent decades, we have observed how high politics and society are being increasingly influenced by low motives and emotional drives such as envy, frustration, manipulation, deception, or revenge. The division of society has intensified, accompanied by aggression and the entrenchment of one-sided positions. In the United States in particular, we are witnessing a rise in irrational attitudes, conspiratorial thinking, and accompanying attacks on pluralism, minorities, those who hold differing opinions and “others.”
Alchemical Nigredo
A decade before Donald Trump’s emergence on the political scene, those impulses had begun to be heard in American society. Psychologically, we might view this as an emergence of the “narcissistic archetype.” Possession by this archetype manifests in the ego as self-absorbed, self-centered focus, where “mine” is presented as universal, righteous, correct, and perfect. Thus, a sense of entitlement arises to impose this ideal upon others, even at the cost of one-sidedness, control, or cruelty. Mythical Narcissus rejected Echo’s love and remained enchanted by his own reflection. This indicates an emotional detachment, splitting off the psychic poles of thinking and feeling—that is, a loss of contact with the soul, the heart—typically accompanied by a loss of compassion, intuition, perspective, and understanding of higher motives. Things that were previously subjected to moral scrutiny are now – under the new paradigm – reconsidered as a new value; bold acts are no longer feared—because now it is done in the name of truth. The new truth! But where is the “old” truth? It is now pushed away by the complex that got constellated. And Trump emerged as a major object of the collective projection of this complex within the American psyche. As the chosen Über-Narcissus, he legitimized shadow emotions—rage, entitlement, xenophobia—emotions that had previously been repressed under the weight of collective scrutiny. Thus, he allowed the collective shadow to manifest openly, without burdening shame.
This opened the door to authoritarian dynamics and narcissistic manipulation. When society becomes psychically fragmented—when people lose both internal and external cohesion—they often seek a dominant figure to restore a sense of order: someone emotionally expressive, seemingly confident and strong. As a rule manipulators and narcissists then contain the chaos during turbulent times and offer temporary relief by directing the collective shadow outward—by way of scapegoating towards the state, immigrants, minorities… Anyone perceived as different. The forms of oppression in a family controlled by a narcissist are quite similar to those by which a totalitarian state controls its citizens.
The many afflictions that ache us in a rapidly changing world are like splinters of traumas that we do not have time to process. For many, these create uncertainty, fragility that weakens the power of the ego-consciousness, consequently causing emotional and moral regression in society. We can think of an example of the unmet needs of a child who cannot express them by words and enacts them through anger, projection, or magical thinking. In the core there lie legitimate needs for safety, belonging, justice, and transformation—but without conscious reflection, these needs emerge in distorted, primal forms.
Moreover, trauma evokes archetypal fantasies that exist outside of time and space. They manifest unconsciously and often appear as a longing for the lost paradise—for a golden age. Slogans such as “Make America Great Again” are a reflection of this nostalgia; they really are distractions, and represent a soothing psychological defense against a painful present. Trump inspires people to dream on a grand scale, blurring the line between what is possible and impossible. Even ambitions that are unattainable or rooted in darker impulses now appear not only imaginable but, in many cases, socially permitted.
As a nation, speaking metaphorically, the United States is undergoing an alchemical phase of nigredo—a dark and seemingly disorienting phase of decay. Fixed concepts that the ego once adhered to in order to navigate reality are disintegrating; everything is changing and nothing is stable. The reality as ego perceives it is at the same time Maya—an illusion, sustained by collective hypnosis that spins the truth of the masses. Without genuine, conscious confrontation with darkness—and without sincerely suffering through the obsolete parts of ourselves—transformation is not possible. In this phase, old inner structures must be dismantled, and their fragments reconnected and rebuilt to allow new paths for life-giving energy. The search for new pathways and the creation of new attitudes is always painful; suffering must be integrated, not bypassed through scapegoating, conspiracy fantasies, or new “isms” that would only further generate another collective illusions. Unconscious contents would keep projecting and finding new objects and create sophisticated escape routes from reality, thereby replaying the escape game.
In projection, Trump initially appears as a kind of sage, savior and warrior—a mythological figure upon which ideals could be projected including split-off emotions and secret fantasies. Over time, however, he becomes a mirror that reflects it all back to society, including not-so-ideal aspects. This is the archetypal process through which consciousness evolves: the first stage is idealization, wherein magical expectations are attributed to the redeemer; the second stage is disillusionment, when the unwanted shadow comes on the scene and the projections collapse, allowing reality to be confronted and reflected upon. If projections are consciously withdrawn, there is potential for new awareness. If not, they simply transfer onto the next fantasy image. Ego-consciousness eventually has to confront how to hold contradictions—“bad” and “good” psychic actors—together. It appears that Trump’s willingness to declassify Epstein files might be one of these tipping points that forces the position of his followers to change. The image of innocent young girls simply holds too much innocence, too much emotional potential, and it becomes very difficult to justify their abuse, even by rather sophisticated maneuvers.
Trump’s role embodies the archetype of the Trickster—marked by what we can view as narcissistic traits—a figure who breaches taboos and norms, criticizes, disrupts, laughs at, mocks, and exposes hidden hypocrisies, but without offering any actual solutions. The Trickster stirs the smoldering ember of psychic shadow, but if there is no strong enough container for conscious confrontation, the fire only spreads and chaos grows.
We also see elements of the Wounded King here—when his personal woundedness reflects the sickness of the “land.” To use the language of alchemy, the king’s suffering must eventually be transformed in the Athanor. Trump is unlikely to change on a personal level, but through him, the collective shadow has been exposed and brought under collective scrutiny. If society remains locked in an “us versus them” dynamic—viewing him solely as villain or redeemer—the opposites will stay split and remain in conflict. But if we take the mirror in hand and clearly face what we have pushed away within ourselves, the soul work can begin.
Therefore, I believe that although current societal developments bring significant risks, at the same time it also opens us up to a deep opportunity for transformation. Trump, as a cultural phenomenon, uncovers a psychic map full of swamplands we all, as collective inhabit. Healing requires not only fighting outer battles but undertaking a quest for slow, tedious inner work—the vulnerable task of mourning illusions, surviving disillusionment, and assuming responsibility for the world we inhabit, sharing with all forms of existence.
Ultimately—and most likely—Trump’s presidency will expose an old truth: that the task is not to find another redeemer, but to redeem ourselves.
The nigredo, as described in alchemy, is a phase of dissolution—a darkness of the soul that naturally precedes transformation. The question is whether society can make use of this descent and emerge into a stage of renewal. Will those who now admire authoritarian rulers like Putin one day choose leaders who embody emotional maturity and human values? Psychology offers insight, for society ultimately reflects the inner attitudes of individuals.
Narcissistic splitting is a form of regression into a state where the ego feels omnipotent and superior to all it perceives. But this sense of power is deceptive, as it remains disconnected from reality. It reflects a way of being in disharmony with the world—a stance that cannot be sustained over time. It contradicts the natural evolution of consciousness, whose aim is integration: a credible and grounded connection to the world. The psyche—what Kalshed calls the “self-care system”—continually attempts to restore this harmony, often by constructing provisional fantasy images (ideologies, -isms) that mask what has been lost. Yet beneath these images, an erosion begins to take shape—and eventually, the inner rupture becomes visible externally.
Of course, no one can predict how deep the rupture must be before society begins to reckon with the consequences of its own shadow. It wouldn’t be the first time. In therapy, we often observe the same pattern: a person’s delusional stance grows so misaligned with reality until something gives in—a crisis, confrontation, or even a breakdown. Drunk driving, a heart attack, a divorce… Eventually, the family stops tolerating gaslighting, denial and manipulation. The narcissistic bubble bursts. And only then, maybe for the first time, must real problems be faced with humility and honesty.
In his work Aurora Consurgens (The Rising Dawn), Thomas Aquinas presents the soul as a wounded bride longing to unite with her beloved—the divine Bridegroom. A soul that yearns to merge with matter. The birth of consciousness is preceded by chaos and pain.
In the Fisher King legend, the king suffers a mysterious wound in his groin—rendering him unable to lead or move. His land turns barren, dry, and without life. All he can do is go fishing, to sit by the river and wait for the catch.
Knights from far and wide seek the Holy Grail, which could heal both the king and his kingdom. Only one—Parsifal, the pure-hearted knight—matures over time and finally asks the essential question: “What ails you, my king?” That question breaks the curse, heals the king, and revives the land. Parsifal dares to face what is truly wounded. He approaches the king not as a warrior, but as a therapist.
Many individuals may not be able to ask this question of themselves, but society creates institutions that hold space for such reflection. The longing for freedom—which is ultimately a spiritual longing for wholeness—cannot be fooled or permanently suppressed. It stems from a deep yearning for truth! The truth that far transcends the individual ego, illusion of the state, and the collective.
The Axiom of Psychology
The rise of self-serving, manipulative politics—characterized by control, deception, and the exploitation of fear—is not uniquely American but a global phenomenon. In today’s interconnected world, few major shifts remain confined to one region. This prompts a pressing question: why is this happening now? History may offer some perspective. What typically precedes the fall of empires or the outbreak of global conflicts? The narcissistic paradigm often takes root in the wake of collapsed harmony—driven by economic decline, social inequality, the destabilization of institutions, and the erosion of national and cultural confidence.
A narcissistic leader—typically a spokesman for low motives—offers simplistic solutions that resonate with those who feel powerless. When people experience humiliation—economic, social, or cultural—they instinctively gravitate toward figures who appear bold, self-assured, and immune to doubt. Such a leader presents an idealized, and therefore incomplete, image of who they long to become in times of vulnerability.
We can view this phenomenon from at least three angles. First, as causa efficiens—the immediate source of the problem. Among the contemporary forces with destabilizing effects are global climate change, the relentless pace of social transformation accelerated by social media, and, most recently, the disruptive impact of artificial intelligence.
Second, as causa praesens—that what mediates and enlivens this phenomenon in the present. Simply put: here and now. In clinical practice, I see many clients struggling with anxiety, mood disturbances, or depression, often lacking sufficient inner insight or connection to the present moment. This absence of self-awareness feeds projection, interpersonal conflicts, conspiratorial thinking, and other destructive patterns. When emotions remain disconnected—dissociated—from ego-consciousness, they surface in their raw, “shadow” forms as fear, rage, or shame.
Thirdly, causa finalis—and that is a prospective, teleological aim. The psyche is endowed with a self-regulating drive, an instinctive force that works towards reconciling opposites and restoring harmony. Just as the physical body produces immune defenses, the psychic body creates symbolic compensations in forms of images. Jung postulated the psychological axiom stating that when opposites are torn apart—when people can no longer agree even on the most fundamental matters—the unconscious archetypal contents gets activated and emerge into the world through acts and events, as a rule throughout forms of narcissistic aggression; thus the struggle for dominance ensues.
The alchemical nigredo is, in fact, a noble Buddhist truth: there is suffering—and no psychological maneuver can bypass it. It returns the irrational forces back to the realm of the archetypes, while at the same time giving rise to a new form of rationality.
Ignorance or Stupidity?
Buddhism teaches that avidyā, or ignorance, is the root of all suffering. This ignorance is not mere lack of information, but essentially misunderstanding of reality itself. Stupidity is an inherent part of human nature, the opposite of wisdom, and thus also an archetype. Stupidity is a force that places obstacles to our path, causing harm both to ourselves and to others without any apparent benefit. We all know it well—from our own experience and from observing those around us. Carl Gustav Jung warned, even before the Germans unleashed a catastrophic war in Europe, that stupidity is far more dangerous than intelligence—primarily because everyone understands stupidity, while wisdom is grasped by only a few. Stupidity is immune to wisdom and logic, and at the same time susceptible or indifferent to evil. Dietrich Bonhoeffer considered it worse than evil itself, because it is elusive, and even its bearer does not understand it. Stupidity, in essence, is the incapacity to perceive the consequences of one’s own actions. The Buddha likened it to blindness.
From the perspective of depth psychology, stupidity is essentially unconsciousness. The ego initially has no insightful knowledge of its own origins, but through the process of individuation, it can begin to recognize its own blindness. Consciousness begins as perception, then moves into projection, and then into discrimination—a form of relationship—and from there it can be developed into the integrative capacity of higher consciousness, the unification of opposites (coniunctio oppositorum).
For this, a reflective observer is required—one who can observe the experiencer, the projector and the projected. Foolishness lacks this capacity. For the foolish, things simply “happen.” They fail to recognize the common denominator—their own self in relation to the higher Self. Fate, therefore, is nothing more than the consequence of an unconscious being.
From the Jungian perspective, stupidity is the inability of inner dialogue with oneself. It’s the loss of connection with one’s own unconscious. Animals are intelligent because they are guided by instinct—but not consciously, since consciousness also presupposes a subject, a self-reflection. A human being can lose the ability to listen to instinct—and then become lost in the bundle of the world’s intertwined demands. It is the dialogue with one’s own soul that heals stupidity.
In many fairy tales, it is the fool or the naïve young man or a woman who first sets out on the heroic journey. Hero finds himself in a world that compels him to respond, later to experience, then to reflect, and ultimately to perform the heroic deed that leads to transformation of the entire kingdom. What is open to the new is also capable of being transformed. Individuation is the path toward wisdom, yet foolishness is its inseparable part.
In the Christian myth, the first humans sinned because they listened to the serpent’s lure without much reflection. Foolishness, therefore, is an archetypal process—spiritually programmed into human existence. The ego must first separate itself from its source so that, through its clash with reality, it may come to recognize its own foolishness. Many scientific errors, in the end, have brought forth re-evaluation and subsequent progress.
Today, foolishness is amplified by modern forces—AI, algorithms, emotional manipulation through social media, and the like. Foolishness is no longer merely passive; it is cultivated, monetized, and exploited as a tool. As Yuval Harari notes, foolishness is cheap, while wisdom requires great effort and cost.
Without a culture of self-reflection—one that integrates critical analysis and the employment of feeling-consideration—ignorance proliferates throughout society and takes on a life of its own, spreading through social networks and their algorithms. It is important to recognize that many of the reasons behind the election of dictators arise from the electorate’s legitimate, even fundamental, needs. These are not deliberately intended to harm others; rather, in their narrow rationality, they fail to perceive the larger web of interconnection that underlies both humanity and the cosmos. Conflict, therefore, is but a symptom of an inner misunderstanding. The narcissistic leader is merely a transient manifestation on the journey from the ego to the Self.
Opus Contra Naturam
Narcissistic leaders, who instinctively pursue dictatorial ambitions, hold a peculiar fascination for us. They projectively relieve us of our own doubt, feelings of inferiority, shame, and the quietly harbored whispers of our shadows. In this way, our relationship to ignorance— or rather, to stupidity— is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history, where sameness and tribal cohesion once ensured survival. It was meant to protect us from the “other,” yet at times it leaves us defenseless against the very consequences it unwittingly creates.
For millions of years, human society evolved in small groups where loyalty and identity were paramount, serving as the very principles of cohesion and survival. Unconscious identity (participation mystique), an undifferentiated hierarchy of priorities, and shared goals formed the basis of clan cohesion. A leader who could secure a common focus effectively ensured the survival of the group. Such a group functioned like a single organism, sustained by the leader’s control, which eliminated differences that might threaten its integrity. Fear and the numinous experiences of ecstasy born of identification were the primary emotions driving conformity. Imagination and mythopoetic creativity served precisely this purpose.
Only recently—around 70,000 years ago, during the cognitive revolution—humans began to develop capacities for symbolic thinking, complex language, willful decision-making, and moral reasoning. Rational principles started reshaping mass organization. The seed of the individual self took root. Instinct met its counterpart in the “other.” And just as beautiful roses grow from manure, the psyche found new paths—setting out on the risky experiment of individuality. Along with duality and doubt came the shadow of ignorance. The “other” was no longer merely a threat—it became a mirror, a source of conflict and creativity. And precisely from this tension, a new, third thing emerges.
Jung teaches that individuation is an opus contra naturam—a work against the natural instinctual nature of humans, a process that transcends nature while simultaneously containing it. Individuation can bring forth something unique, something that has never existed before. The conscious individual Self, as it begins to emerge, grants the organism of the masses not only self-awareness but also the capacity for transformation. This transition from unconscious unity to conscious individuation is nothing less than the miracle of a new paradigm.
Yes, stress, trauma, and problems threatening an individual’s survival automatically trigger a return to a mass mode of operation, to unconscious unity and attachment to leaders—but these states endure only until they collapse under the weight of their own unsustainability and transience. It is a phase that may seem cruel and helpless, yet it paves the way for the creation of new, creative solutions. How could we ever know that something must change without a mirror? Sometimes, that mirror is Icarus’s fall. What insight does not transform will, in time, be resolved by natural selection.
Democracy is an expression of yearning for values, a quest for ideals of fairness and equality where every human being deserves a rightful place. It is, at its core, an experiment where nothing is guaranteed. It is not blind faith that conscious effort alone can give rise to greater freedom, but a certainty rooted in the experience of all that humanity has redeemed countless times through sweat and blood. It is hope and a driving force for progress. I believe it springs from the very soul, like living water that gives meaning to our lives.
The Future of Consciousness
Consciousness, inseparably bound with meaning, is an exceedingly rare—if not entirely unique—phenomenon in the universe. Despite human progress, it remains an open question whether this precious light could one day be extinguished. Progress is no more guaranteed than regression.
Canadian biologist Peter Watts wrote an intriguing sci-fi novel, Blindsight (credit Jan Majer, Psychologie.cz). In it, humanity makes contact with an intelligent alien being. It understands our language, responds, and learns—yet it lacks something we take for granted as an essential part of intelligence: consciousness. It has no “I.” It does not think in the first person. It is like a camera that records an image but does not see. And still, it acts—and perhaps precisely because of this, it acts more effectively than humans. Astrobiologists and AI experts take this possibility seriously. The legitimate question arises: what if consciousness is not necessary for the development of intelligent life?
Many ask whether love, empathy, fear, conscience, and compassion will one day be recognized as expressions of a higher stage of human evolution—or dismissed as evolutionary baggage that humanity will eventually shed. This is, of course, a question without a definitive answer—unless we assume the existence of a supra-individual source of consciousness that exists “beyond” the individual self. Jung’s philosophy, reaching into metaphysics, addresses this theme precisely because it touches the domain of religion.
Consciousness, in its fundamental essence, arose in relation to the body and the physical environment. Our senses perceive the shape, taste, color, and sound of the world in which we evolved. The voice of a protective father, the taste of mother’s milk, or the scent of a predator—all of these are signals that determine our relationship to reality and our ability to survive within it. Our body perceives, feels safety, or reacts to pain and life-threatening factors. From the body and the center of the self arise fear, joy, and other emotions rooted in the experience of material existence. Human consciousness is a unique experience of reality through matter, and at the same time, it offers a glimpse into the universe of the psyche—connected to the body in ways still incomprehensible.
Religion, at its core, is an attempt to gain insight into a “mind” that transcends individuality. Jung called it the collective unconscious. The soul of the world—anima mundi—may be an intelligence that existed long before individual consciousness emerged. It is this consciousness that has found a mirror in the human being, allowing it both to reflect itself and to evolve higher forms such as compassion, love, and awe, as Jung describes in Answer to Job. Does humanity hold a unique role in the discovery and expansion of the universe’s consciousness? Is the universe conscious a priori?
Given the limits of our subjectivity, we are left with no choice but to postulate a distinction between consciousness and intelligence. In our interactions with others, we unconsciously rely on a theory of mind—we assume consciousness in others and project our own experience onto them. But this approach grows increasingly problematic in the age of artificial intelligence. When engaging with animals, extraterrestrials, or intelligent machines, we must rely solely on intelligence as an “output”—the result of intelligent activity that we interpret through the lens of our own consciousness. A computer may read millions of pages per second and communicate seamlessly with another machine, but it becomes conscious only when there is someone who “knows” about this process.
Similarly, trees—connected through underground mycorrhizal networks (the so-called “wood wide web”) that transmit water, nutrients, and warning signals—appear to act intelligently. Yet this intelligence is visible to us only because we perceive it through our own observing intelligence. Slime molds of the genus Physarum polycephalum provide another example: they require no nervous system to find optimal paths to nutrients in a maze. Termites, too, are capable of constructing vast and intricate mounds with highly sophisticated systems of ventilation, temperature regulation, and humidity control—all without central organization or a brain. Each individual follows simple rules, but together they give rise to emergent structures whose functionality rivals that of intelligent human architecture. This kind of intelligence, like other forms of communication among plants or non-cerebral organisms, does not arise from conscious or I-will-deliberate processes. It appears intelligent only because we witness it through the mirror of our own I-consciousness. The problem of consciousness will remain unresolved until we find a way to grasp it objectively. For now this is the very paradox we encounter.
Consciousness, bound to the emotional state of the “I-body” and its environment, may serve as an intelligent catalyst, but it is not in itself identical with intelligence. Consciousness entails the union of affect with the experiencing subject of responsibility.
The transformation of an intelligent agent into a conscious agent requires the union of the self with the very feeling of self—an emotional insight. Emotions are, in essence, autonomous organs of the soul. Jung (1937) writes:
“It would be a great mistake to think that feeling consists of emotions. Emotions are states that possess you; but if you have feeling, you possess it—it does not possess you. If it possesses you, it is an emotion.”
In other words, consciousness involves the development of feeling—and it is precisely this that distinguishes intelligence from consciousness. However, the evidence of intelligence surrounds us. Intelligence is the capacity to achieve goals and solve problems. It includes the ability to communicate and to make use of information through feedback from interaction. Bees, termites, ant colonies, coral reefs, and complex forest systems all serve as examples. In these systems, we see the exchange of information, feedback, self-correction, and self-organization—the same processes that govern neural systems, including the human brain.
The unconscious undoubtedly possesses intelligence. It can process information, analyze, solve problems, anticipate outcomes, and influence consciousness by creating images or responses. And yet, the question of “who” truly mediates conscious insight remains a mystery.
Intelligence that abandoned consciousness—and with it, duality and all its expressions—would in fact regress to a lower evolutionary level. In theory, this is possible. But I am an optimist: I believe that even in such an organism, the collective unconscious would ultimately find its way into the world through a new self.
References:
V posledních desetiletích pozorujeme, jak vysokou politiku i společnost stále silněji ovlivňují nízké motivy a emocionální pohnutky jako závist, frustrace, manipulace, lži a msta. Rozdělenost společnosti se vyhrocuje, což provází agrese a utvrzování jednostranných postojů. Zejména v USA sledujeme vzedmutí iracionálních postojů, konspiračních teorií a s tím souvisejících útoků na pluralitu, menšiny a ty, kteří zastávají jiný názor.
V americké společnosti se zmíněné nízké pohnutky začaly probouzet ještě před příchodem Donalda Trumpa na politickou scénu. Psychologicky bychom to mohli nahlédnout jako posedlost „narcistním archetypem." VICE
Vlado Šolc: I grew up in what we would refer to as “communism.” I was young and naïve and believed that truth was something so obvious that it was virtually impossible to avoid. There was a consensus among — I believe — most of us that it was a game of the powerful, who pretended the King had beautiful clothes on. But when I moved to the U.S., I realized that this phenomenon — the phenomenon of dark religion — permeates the whole society and does not spare even the highest levels of politics. During my studies at the institute, I connected Jung’s opus with what I saw around me and within me. I also had a profound dream — the "door in the cave" dream.
Vlado Šolc: Ready or not, here we come. Of course, many writers have already taken up the topic of fundamentalism. Marty and Appleby explored it deeply in their comprehensive Fundamentalism Project (1991), Karen Armstrong (2001), Chris Hedges (American Fascists, 2008). Jung himself wrote about it — offering one of the most profound psychological perspectives on the topic. Jungians such as Lionel Corbett and Roderick Main have continued the discussion. I believe our contribution lies in bringing it home — pointing out that we can all be fundamentalists to a greater or lesser degree. What we call “dark religion” is a stage of individuation. It’s about reconciling symbolic reality with what we might call consensual reality. There is a thin thread between them — and maybe, as Jung said, that thread is what the world is hanging on.
Vlado Šolc: We aim to move away from the purely historical and sociological definitions of fundamentalism. Instead, we coined the term “dark religion” to describe inadequate or unhealthy expressions of religion. You could also call it “shadow religion.” It’s when ego-consciousness creates defensive positions. The numinous energies of the Self are broken into many parts, operating unconsciously and serving ego-driven goals. Phenomenologically, three factors are involved: inflation, the imago Dei, and the ego. Dark religion is when the ego hides behind God — but in truth, it’s all just a selfish, self-serving game.
Vlado Šolc: Dark religion is a defense against the full religious experience. Believing in a great God does not make people great. It is ultimately one’s actions that speak for the religion they claim. The shadow always harms and always creates consequences. George and I write about patients who come to therapy to heal from the shadow that was projected onto them by their God-loving parents. The shadow of dark religion is particularly painful because it stands in opposition to the God who is supposed to be the greatest.
Vlado Šolc: Jung believed that religions are the psychotherapeutic systems of humankind. Religion, as a process of consciousness, can contain affect and turn into a beautiful experience — but as an unconscious energy, it can be abused in the most horrific ways. We can understand religion as a response to archetypal powers that are universal. It is opus contra naturam — a natural, instinctive response — but as it becomes more conscious, we begin to speak of spirituality.
Vlado Šolc: Goodness is a philosophical concept — like a perfect circle, it does not actually exist in reality. It’s an ideal to strive for, but it’s always a process. There’s always a shadow hidden even in the best intentions, because the shadow is the twin brother of ideals. We see children of “perfect” parents in our offices. Individuation is about recovering the self from the illusion of a false self. The imago Dei of a perfect God puts immense pressure on those who genuinely seek.
Vlado Šolc: To be clear, religion is only “dark” when the ego hides behind it. Symbols can be wells of life and can offer numinous, transformative energies. If those energies are used by the ego for its own purposes, they become dark. If they serve the process of enlarging consciousness, they become light. The Catholic Church grew out of the same fertile ground as every other religion. We don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Vlado Šolc: The need for control goes hand in hand with the need for growth. There is a will to power, but also a religious function of the psyche. Dark and light, rational and irrational — they’re different sides of the same coin. The paradoxical nature of both nature and the psyche is present in religion; religion is an expression of the psyche. Corruption has always existed, but religion is a particularly convenient object to hide behind — because it’s attractive and promises something magnificent. Just like money, power, or sex, religion touches a deep unconscious yearning — and can also become a trap.
Vlado Šolc: Take, for example, conspiracy theories. It is so easy to spread them. They are growing in countless variations. Anonymity, combined with lies, helps them spread on the internet like fungus.
Bibliography:
Appleby, R. S., & Marty, M. E. (Eds.). (1991). The Fundamentalism Project (Vol. 1–5). University of Chicago Press.
Armstrong, K. (2001). The battle for God: A history of fundamentalism. Ballantine Books.
Corbett, L. (1996). The religious function of the psyche. Routledge.
Hedges, C. (2008). American fascists: The Christian right and the war on America. Free Press.
Jung, C. G. (1961). Memories, dreams, reflections (A. Jaffé, Ed.; R. & C. Winston, Trans.). Vintage Books.
Main, R. (2004). Revelation and transformation: Jungian depth psychology and religious experience. Routledge.
Šolc, V., & Didier, G. J. (2018). Dark religion: Fundamentalism from the perspective of Jungian psychology. Chiron Publications.