In one of his most influential works, Psychology and Alchemy, Carl Jung argues that alchemy was far more than a failed science. Instead, it was an undifferentiated mix of object and subject. Alchemy was chemistry insofar as it was a science, and it was a psychological practice…

For an agricultural society, life is a cycle of deaths and rebirths. In the spring, the farmer places the seeds of his crops into the soil. Time moves forward. Storms roll over the fields and define the space between heaven and earth…

We must understand that all things complex, like our thinking, is now, are reliant on simplicity. It is from a singular concept that many interacting concepts come into being. One begets many…

Nothing exists in a vacuum. The actions and traditions of the modern era required years of elaboration. If Darwin says anything, it is this: complexity requires simplicity. And our culture is complex. Here, I will describe the evolution of Lupercalia into Valentine’s Day…

A meditation on how individuals are able to, or come to be able to, do horrible things. Relying on his own experience and the work of Stanford researcher and professor Philip Zimbardo, Joe Jackowski dives into the nature of evil.

In the present study, we sought to examine how military personnel make meaning out of their military vs. civilian life experiences and the degree to which meaning violation impacts their efforts. Veterans anonymously wrote reflective essays, one about a military-related negative life experience and one relating to a civilian-related negative life experience, and completed the Global Meaning Violation Scale (Park, 2016) for each experience. We also coded for generic you (i.e. ‘you’ used generally, instead of regarding a specific individual) as this indicates meaning-making. Although our results revealed no significant difference in generic you usage depending on the condition, and no significant correlations were found between meaning violation and generic you, active-duty military personnel were much less likely to use generic-you than inactive, a category comprised of reservists/national guard, those who served in both active duty and the reserves/national guard, and other, suggesting an impact on meaning making from military status.

Throughout my time studying psychology, I’ve noticed a consistent pattern: the use of the body as a reference point. At first I considered it to be Jean Piaget’s Egocentrism, but overtime I realized it was something unique. Perhaps an analog or subset of Egocentrism, but not a perfect match. This piece in an exploration into Somatic Primacy.