some Articles
A Good Intertwining to Take Care of the Soul:
Depth Psychology, Philosophical Practices, and Spirituality
Philosophy Study, May-June 2025, Vol. 15, No. 3, 131-134.
David Publishing Company 2025
A shift has taken place in the common types of pathology and the relationships between them, all broadly linked to the crisis in identity frameworks, which in turn is characterized by a difficulty in recognizing appropriate boundaries (boundaries between self and others, boundaries between self and the world, and the boundaries inbuilt in one’s own personality). This has led to the spread of narcissistic, addiction, and eating disorders, panic attacks, or alternatively, in the case of an illusory attempt to remain in control, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and phobias. Even mood disorders appear to be related to excessive expectations regarding performance, within a confused overall framework of overlapping and ill-defined roles. I have placed analysis, formative practices based on philosophy as a way of life and spirituality side by side in what I have designated “Biographical analysis philosophically oriented”. However, the theoretical validity of the project still hinges on whether it adequately addresses the unresolved issues posed by psychoanalysis, formative practice, and spiritual accompaniment, once scientific justifications, confutative models of comparison, and forms of religious exclusivism have exhausted their historical function.
KEYWORDS:
psychoanalysis, Hadot, philosophy as life style, biographical analysis
C.G. Jung: Forerunner of a Philosophy for The Soul
JEP – European Journal of Psychoanalysis - Humanities, Philosophy, Psychotherapies
The ambivalence of the word and concept of Philosophy in C. G. Jung’s works is the main theme of the first part of this essay. On the one hand Jung distances his work from all kind of philosophy, asserting his aims and methods are only scientific and clinical ones; on the other hand in many works he uses the word “philosophy” in the sense of the ancient philosophers, like a synonym of a kind of wisdom to be practiced in everyday life. This is very similar to Hadot’s reconstruction of the spiritual exercises in ancient philosophy. Jung may be taken as a forerunner of what the author has proposed to call “philosophically oriented biographic analysis”. The analytical position should be regarded as the professional articulation of an existential vocation for a loving pursuit of wisdom, and this formulation implies important changes in analysis itself.
KEYWORDS:
Analytical Psychology – Philosophical Practices – Jung and Philosophy – History of Psychoanalysis