Too much, too Jung

I had a therapy session today. First for a while. A tough week prompted a revisit with someone who knows my psychology well. All is fine, just a mental MOT.

Plenty in the news to take in. All testing my resolve as I approach two years in full lockdown. My psychology MSc also made for some interesting things to discuss. Exams passed – a few challenges to the academic process – all ending in smiles.

Principally, the therapy discussion enabled a comparison of teaching vs practice. The psychology I am studying almost completely ignores psycho-analytics, and the works of the likes of Jung and Freud. They will feature at some point, but they have historical interest rather than contemporary lessons to teach. Yet as soon as I need to reset and relate, these are the taught lessons and schema that help me the most. I see commonality between some of the analysis and explanations, for example Jungian archetypes have some level of connection to the typology of brain types currently being argued by the likes of Simon Baron-Cohen. Not that he will thank me for connecting the two.

I am delighted I get to think in such diverse terms. And that my reading invites wider perspective beyond. It is my moments of greatest inner dissonance that I find myself thinking with the most lateral connection. Offering my greatest challenge to whatever system of cognitive schema I am temporarily most reliant upon. It is also when my reading becomes most diverse. All aligning to a questioning of everything. Thankfully, that is no longer a source of self-doubt.

My learning advises me that people who regularly manage depression are amongst those most able to rebuild mental schema. With the most desire to challenge what may otherwise be accepted as true. This is primarily because a depressed state requires heightened awareness of what may not quite be so. Whether that is true or not, I find myself grateful of these moments. It means I get to regularly revisit, reform, and refine.