Journeying: Internal and External Landscapes

ABSTRACT

In individuation journeys or in the context of immigration, the landscape may complement, mirror, and anticipate psychic states. Becoming intimate with a landscape is visualizing a transformation to come, redefining a symbolic container, and making space for growth. In analysis, the imaginal space of the landscape becomes a shared space between analysand and analyst. When words are lost and have never been found, exploring a landscape invites the sensory function to reshape psychic experience, which, in turn, is a way to use and direct the libido for future growth.

KEY WORDS:

• container
• immigration
• individuation
• journeying
• landscape
• psychic transformation
• Self
• transcendent function

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I am grateful for the teachings of Richard Stein, MD, on Savitri and Sri Aurobindo.

NOTE

References to The Collected Works of C. G. Jung are cited in the text as CW, volume number, and paragraph number. The Collected Works are published in English by Routledge (UK) and Princeton University Press (USA).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Isabelle M. DeArmond

ISABELLE M. DEARMOND, PhD, is a psychologist and candidate at the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. Her main interests are death and dying, life transitions, immigration, spirituality, and leadership development. She performed research on the transformative experience of hospice workers and has published and lectured on the activation of the transcendent function, the archetype of transformation, and the experience of immigration. She also received a medical degree from the University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, with a medical dissertation on herpetic encephalitis, and she has more than thirty years’ experience in clinical research.