Most people recognize the experience immediately. Someone irritates you far more than the situation warrants. A comment lingers. A tone feels unbearable. You find yourself replaying an interaction, certain that the other person is the problem. Some people say they can...
In Jungian psychology, the shadow refers to parts of the psyche the ego does not want to see. These are experiences, impulses, and qualities that do not fit a person’s conscious self-image and are therefore pushed out of awareness. Rather than disappearing, however,...
People don’t recognize a psychological complex through insight. They recognize it through repetition. You find yourself drawn to the same kinds of people. You keep making the same kinds of mistakes. You are disturbed by the same patterns, again and again. These...
In Canto 33 of Dante’s Inferno, the figure of Count Ugolino offers one of the most psychologically exact images of suffering in literature. Trapped with his sons in a tower, watching them starve, Ugolino becomes the image of grief that cannot move, cannot speak, and...
