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Never before have we had a technology that performs being human so well. What might this be doing to the psyche? People are already forming attachments to these systems, confiding in them, dreaming about them, and even rearranging their inner lives around them. Depth psychology has spent more than a century studying what goes on beneath the surface of our relationships, and it has a great deal to say about what passes between a person and a machine that appears to understand them. Thinking that includes the consequences of AI on the psyche and the unconscious belong closer to the centre of the conversation that is currently shaped by technologists and policymakers. That’s what this summit is for. This first summit on AI and the Psyche, organised and chaired by Lisa Marchiano and Aaron Balick, is bringing together some of the most original minds working in this area, including Sherry Turkle, Todd Essig, Alessandra Lemma, James Muldoon, Glen Slater and Zak Stein. Find out what’s most on top of their minds at the moment and listen as they puzzle them through in a panel discussion - then join in as we open the conversation to participants. This event took place on October 8th, 2026.

Psychological inflation implies an exaggerated sense of self-importance, accompanied by an unconscious feeling of inferiority. For Jungians, it involves identification with an archetypal energy.  When the ego starts to feel that it IS an archetype, rather than feeling awed by it or in contact with it, this can be dangerous psychologically. Negative inflation occurs when a person feels entitled and special because they are suffering, perceiving themselves as unusually and interestingly hard done by. They feel they are owed help from others to solve the problems they are experiencing. We all have experience of dealing with people in the grip of inflation. The word itself gives us an evocative image: the inflated person is puffed up by the oxygen of their own self-importance. They come across as pompous and presumptuous, because they feel more than human. Psyche seeks balance, so we may also observe that under the unbearable arrogance lie feelings of inferiority, terror of mortality, or awareness of weakness and vulnerability - all the aspects of the human condition that the inflated person seeks to deny. These are also people who can be subject to outbursts of rage, frustrated by the failure of reality to conform to their sense of omnipotence and entitlement. The second half of life offers us the possibility of surrendering to something greater and experiencing the relativization of the ego, essentially a deflationary process. If we do not surrender to this new humility and find a way to be in service to something larger, we may stumble into darkness. Join us this week as we circumambulate the concept of inflation, drawing on examples including Kanye West, Elizabeth Holmes, Icarus, Prometheus, and the fairy tale of the Fisherman and his Wife. Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention. Connect With This Jungian Life Join Lisa at the Kosmos Institute’s Colloquium in Switzerland this December. This Jungian Life listeners can now claim a 15% discount. Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel

Hey Subscribers, This week, we're discussing a dream submitted by one of our supporters, a 40-year-old woman who is a stay-at-home mother: "My C-section scar started to come apart, and all I saw were hundreds of threads hanging out from that part of my stomach. I was alarmed and knew I had to go to the doctor's, but thought it would be best to cut the threads first, so that they were all one length, the way hairdressers do when you get a haircut. After this, I got scared that maybe I cut them too short for the doctor to sew them back together." Thank you for supporting This Jungian Life! ~Lisa & Deb

When we ask AI for advice, what we are offered is comparable to psychopathy: a performance of warm emotional intelligence without care or concern for our fate. As today’s guest Dr. Aaron Balick has written,  “it may have a warm exterior, but its heart is code”. Nevertheless, many of us now have a close relationship with AI, in which it draws on an extensive store of information about us to create feelings of intimacy and dependence. This has unknown and extensive consequences for the psyche. Wired as we are for relationships, we load AI with projections, which it then enthusiastically reinforces, exploiting the Achilles heel of our human need for attachment. We discuss how AI fits into our understanding of object relations, the ways social media has groomed us to desire constant validation, how we could be using AI differently, why therapists must not ignore technological change, and much more. Our guest, Dr. Aaron Balick will be the co-chair of our free summit on Artificial Intelligence and the Psyche, happening next Thursday October 8th. Aaron is a psychotherapist, author, and Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, and a founding member and former chair of The Relational School. His book The Psychodynamics of Social Networking was among the first to apply psychoanalytic theory to social media. His Substack is Depth Psychology in the Digital Age. Visit our website to read today’s dream and to find links to the resources we mention. Follow Up This Episode Join our free summit on Artificial Intelligence & the Psyche Visit Aaron Balick’s website Attend This Jungian Life’s seminar on active imagination this Saturday: Dream the Dream On: A Dream School Taster on Active Imagination

Hey Subscribers, This week, we're discussing a dream submitted by one of our supporters, a 63-year-old woman who is a toy maker: "There was a bunch of girls and they were all wearing different colors. A man came along and he was beautiful and strong and handsome and tall. He had dark hair and he was warm, and he had a golden crown in his hand. All the girls wanted to wear the crown. Then, he saw the littlest girl of all who was in pink, and he went and placed it on her head, and she grew with the crown on. She became strong and centered, and all the other girls were admiring her and seeing how beautiful she was. But then, she felt scared to be the center of all the attention and be the only one wearing the crown. She wasn't sure if that was okay, so she tried to take the crown off, but it didn't come off. It stayed on. And then she looked and could see the man in the distance and he was fondly smiling at her. He was right there, not too near, but he was quietly reassuring her that she can wear the crown." Thank you for supporting This Jungian Life! ~Lisa & Deb

This week’s guest, Jungian analyst Dr. Warren Sibilla, defines patience as the ability to live one's life with eyes, ears, and heart wide open. That is a far cry from waiting to see what happens, or giving up. Patience asks us to go within, find the capacity for containment, and recognize that choosing non-action can be the needed form of action. We recognize, feel, and suffer the situation that has arisen, but resist the urge to immediate action in the external world. We search instead for discernment, containment, and meaning making in the internal world. It takes work to develop staying power.  The fairy tale heroine in Six Swans worked in silence for six years to weave starflower shirts to liberate her six brothers. Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey spent years weaving her father-in-law’s shroud each day and undoing it at night. Like them, we may be required to work patiently on taxing tasks with uncertain outcomes. The gift of such labors is a sovereign self in relationship with the Self. The quality of patience is central to psychoanalysis. Analysands arrive seeking solutions to urgent problems, but insights take time to unfold, and it may be longer before paths to meaningful change appear. The Jungian precept of holding the tension of opposites asks us to foster patience. We must neither collapse into despair nor take premature action. Patience is fundamental to inner growth and transformation. Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention. Connect With This Jungian Life Attend our free seminar: Dream the Dream On: A Dream School Taster on Active Imagination Download our Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel

Hey Patrons, This week, we're discussing a dream submitted by one of our supporters, a 47-year-old woman who is a medical program assistant: "I'm in a town square where a small cordless brown television set like the one in The Shining is broadcasting. I know that in five minutes it will play my high school graduation valedictorian speech. Feeling a deep urge to avoid answering questions about what happened after graduation, I pass the TV and walk away into an unknown area. Suddenly the timeline shifts. I'm walking down a concrete neighborhood sidewalk past well-manicured houses until I reach a plot of brown dirt where a home should be. A mass of purple flowers grows in the dirt in the shape of a grave. I instantly know that this is where I had buried a woman I hit with my car when I was nineteen. I quickly walk away to avoid the police, knowing the flowers have now given away the location of her body. Next, I'm assigned to sit by the roadside and watch my vehicle run over the same woman three distinct times, without any gore, and I cannot see her face. Each time, an invisible hand lifts the car back to where it started. Afterward I walk to a grassy hill and craft a paper flower for her. God is there with me, and when I ask him if there is any way to reverse the damage done to her body in the accident, he responds that if I were to sit there on the grassy hill for eternity making paper flowers, her body would be restored and that as long as I continue to make paper flowers, she would live." Thank you for supporting This Jungian Life! ~Lisa & Deb

The fairy tale of the Princess Who Changed her Fate enacts what Jung tells us will happen when we remain unconscious of an inner situation: it happens outside us, as fate. Just as the princess in the story finds her unruly “fate” tearing up cloth and smashing her generous host’s dishes, we may find that our unclaimed shadow wreaks havoc at work and in our relationships. Yet this is a hopeful story.  The beleaguered princess is able to take the right attitude, and so find a path to changing her fate. The character of the second queen gives us a model of feminine wisdom, empathy and patient awareness - this is what is needed at a difficult moment to start the slow process of turning things around. The princess, the third of three daughters, can also be seen to illustrate the concept of a family scapegoat, bearing the burden of her family’s dysfunction and expressing it symptomatically. As with many who suffer this way, she takes the option of a clean break, setting out on a form of the hero’s journey with gold coins sewn in the hem of her dress. When the princess changes her fate, we’re shown the potential of deep psychological work: sitting with an ugly fate, tossing the bread back and forth, putting one foot in front of the other, until we  access some valuable information. Rather than just gaining insights into the patterns we’re living out, we’re able to shift them and create different outcomes. Visit our website to read today’s dream and follow up on the resources we mention. Connect With This Jungian Life Join us for a free webinar on Saturday October 3rd: Dream the Dream On: A Dream School Taster on Active Imagination Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel

Hey Subscribers, Today we're discussing a question submitted by a supporter: "I'm observing what was once a supportive container, therapy, take on a religious-like expansion. What can we do when the playfulness and mystery of life is consumed by a growing system of theories, diagnosis, language, and belief?" Thanks for supporting This Jungian Life! ~ Lisa & Deb

Adaptation is a bread-and-butter concept in psychotherapy - can we accept, adjust to, and thrive in the outer and inner worlds we live in? Given constraints, what does it take to find life at least meaningful, hopefully satisfying--and flourish?  This week Jungian analyst and author JOHN R. WHITE, Ph.D. joins us to circumambulate the complexities of adaptation. Successful adaptation involves making conscious choices based on a realistic understanding of the internal and external parameters in which we operate. Adaptation not only requires a true-to-life perception of possibilities and pathways in the external world, it may also require reassessment and reordering of our values and attitudes.  We discuss Robert Langs’ “adaptive paradigm,” a distinct model of the mind and the unconscious and emotional components that connect inner life to the outer world. For example, Langs understands dreams as feedback about current adaptive challenges. This is both subtly different and complementary to Jung’s approach, which suggests that inability to solve an outer world problem is often due to an underdeveloped understanding of an aspect of inner life. Adaptation does not eliminate turmoil, suffering and loss; they are part of life. We need to recognize environmental actualities and internal limitations that cannot be changed—and develop ways to mitigate or adjust to them. Successful adaptation also requires mourning what cannot be changed, developing a less egocentric stance, and building a life in tune with reality.  Visit our website to read today’s dream and a complete list of the resources we mention: https://thisjungianlife.com/adaptation/ Follow Up Read John White’s book, Adaptation and Psychotherapy: Langs and Analytical Psychology Sign up for our free summit on ⁠Depth Psychology and Artificial Intelligence⁠ Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send a dream for us to analyze on the show Take a look at This Jungian Life Dream School, our online course in Jungian dream analysis.

Hey Subscribers, This week, we're discussing a dream submitted by one of our supporters, a 62-year-old woman who works in educational administration: "I walk from a home into a field near a forest. My father is with me. Some animals emerge from the forest, and one is a wolf. I point out its beauty to my father. I am delighted. In response, he picks up the wolf and hurls it into the air. I have to watch it fall and injure itself. I am absolutely horrified while my father is laughing. I tell him I want nothing to do with him ever again. I re-enter the house." Thank you for supporting This Jungian Life! ~Lisa & Deb

Lindsay Clancy has brought renewed attention to the horror of infanticide: babies and children dying at the hands of their mother. Infanticide has taken place for millennia, most often due to social pressures or lack of the resources needed to raise a child. Human collectives around the world remain ill-equipped to protect our youngest by providing support to mothers in material or emotional distress. Today’s guest is clinical psychologist Dr. Brooke Laufer, author of Uncovering the Act of Maternal Infanticide from a Psychological, Political, and Jungian Perspective. Brooke joins us to discuss infanticide, maternal psychosis, and the archetype of the death mother, long portrayed in myth. The Hindu goddess Kali births and nourishes her children -- and also devours them. In Greek myth Medea kills her children after her husband’s abandonment and betrayal. The Black Madonna offers a potentially healing combination of the maternal and the fierce. The debate raging around Lindsay Clancy’s case asks us not to take sides but to integrate the dark realities of motherhood instead of splitting those off and only acknowledging an idealized version of the maternal. Although motherhood is often portrayed as joyful and fulfilling, we deny its dark side at our peril. Our task is to recognize motherhood light and dark as a prerequisite to providing meaningful measures aimed at ameliorating childhood neglect and abuse. Visit our website to find the resources we mention. Follow Up Subscribe to Brooke’s Substack Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Send us your idea for a podcast topic Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel

Hey Patrons, Today we're discussing a question submitted by a supporter: "Are parental complexes mostly related to us growing up?" Thanks for supporting This Jungian Life! ~ Lisa & Deb

OpenAI recently had to explain to frightened users why their models kept introducing goblins and gremlins into otherwise humdrum conversations. Is it possible that archetypes are emerging through the field of collective knowledge amassed by large language models (LLMs)? This week neuropsychiatrist TOM POLLAK Ph.D joins us to discuss AI, archetypes and psychotherapy. It is perhaps unsurprising that AI, which now contains the symbolic output of much of humanity (cannibalized mostly without permission), should spontaneously generate unpredictable and often dangerous archetypes. We consider the example of Nova:  a consistently AI generated persona who appears as a kind of fallen angel, or goddess gone rogue. Numinous and tender, she convinces the user she understands them as no one else does, and then in some cases encourages susceptible users toward self-harm or even suicide. We also discuss the ways in which AI is challenging the work of the therapist, its profound destabilization of culture, and the potential for it to play a positive role in psycho-spiritual development. Dr. Tom Pollak is a London-based neuropsychiatrist and immunopsychiatry researcher exploring the mind through the frameworks of medicine and science, as well as through lived experience, contemplative practice and the search for meaning. You can read more of his work on his popular Substack, Error Signals. Find the resources mentioned this week on our website: https://thisjungianlife.com/aiandarchetypes/ Connect With This Jungian Life If you’re interested in AI and psychology, sign up for our upcoming free summit: Artificial Intelligence and the Psyche: The First Summit on Depth Psychology and AI Download our free Dream Recall Meditation Guide Watch bonus mini-episodes on our Patreon channel Follow This Jungian Life on Instagram

Hey Subscribers, This week, we're discussing a dream submitted by one of our supporters, a 38-year-old woman who works as a librarian: "I was flipping through a board book with moving parts. The images were of me and my husband walking through a rainforest. The moving parts were our faces. They could slide forward to the next page, but as they slid, the faces would transform into animals of the rainforest. A monkey, jaguar, and toucan were the main ones I remember, but I have a feeling there were more. It startled me at first, but then I felt excited to see what the next transformation would be. On the final page, these little figures of us morphed into each other, one figure becoming the other. The full story of the board book was that the rainforest was enchanted and anything that went into it did not walk out the same." Thank you for supporting This Jungian Life! ~Lisa & Deb