Blog Draft - Konrad van Staden

Konrad's Blog

Aug

2024

Fatness As Protection

August 12, 2024

UNPACKING THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LAYERS OF OBESITY: It seems that much of what we experience these days is a polarisation between the concrete and the symbolic. In politics the world stage is seeing polarising forces of conservatism and liberalism. In social economics there seems to be an ever-growing disparity between the super rich echelon and the...

Jul

2024

The Journey Within

July 23, 2024

EMBRACING THE DEPTHS OF SELF: “At first, the encounter with the Self is indeed a defeat for the ego; but with perseverance, Deo Violente, light is born from the darkness. One meets the “Immortal One” who wounds and heals, who casts down and raises up, who makes small and makes large – in a word,...

Jul

2024

Unleashing The Power Within

July 10, 2024

EMBRACING THE UNCONSCIOUS: As the gnostic Gospel of Thomas observes, if we bring forth what is within us, what we bring forth will serve us, and if we do not bring forth what is within us, what we do not bring forth will destroy us. Hollis, James, Ph.D.. Living Between Worlds: Finding Personal Resilience in...

Jun

2024

Mental Health

June 28, 2024

“A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.” – Carl Jung(1) Mental health is becoming a universal concept, infusing the realms of business, psychology, everyday life and the media. The rise of this ubiquitous concept is in response to global awareness of psychological functioning brought into...

Jun

2024

Trauma & Dreams

June 5, 2024

“Trauma is about pain so utter that it swallows up normal developmental processes, leaving an abyss or “basic fault” (Balint, 1979) between self and world outwardly and ego and self inwardly (Edinger, 1972 ). Fortunately the story does not end with this cleavage because the human psyche has enormous self-curative powers. It covers the abyss...

May

2024

Trauma & Transformative Experience

May 14, 2024

In a world where trauma has become a common experience it is easy to become despondent. A melancholic tinge permeates consciousness, playing a sad fiddlers lament in the background. Traumatic experience, sometimes acute, sometimes chronic, sometimes vicarious, shows its presence in every person’s life. Trauma shapes the person you are, leaving with some… a feeling...

May

2024

The Archetype

May 14, 2024

The Archetype of the Human Shadow: The concept of the shadow was derived at by Jung after much influence from both Freud and the neuro-psychiatrists like Janet, who spoke of the phenomenon of double consciousness (Casement, 2003). There is a long history of humans grappling with the concept of the shadow, not in the form...

Apr

2020

The Baobab Tree

April 20, 2020

A look at symbolism: The baobab tree has a strong symbolic link to our psyches and spiritual symbolism. The baobab in African myth has been described as the upside down tree, as well as the tree of life. According to one legend, these beautiful trees were uprooted by God and planted upside down with their...

Apr

2020

So… How Are We Coping…

April 18, 2020

in the pandemic?: I thought about all the sage advice that is being put out there…mindfulness, setting goals, using this time to re-evaluate your life, and spending quality time with our family, among many other good suggestions out there. This is a time of incredible uncertainty, a time of grappling with parts of ourselves that...

Apr

2020

Some Days Are Difficult

April 7, 2020

Some days our souls stand up & fight: I see people struggle every day through not just one problem, but a myriad of conflicted confluence of emotions, thoughts and beliefs. They walk into my practice desperate to understand their psyches, desperate to find ‘the answer’; thereby ending all suffering in one fell swoop. And here...

Mar

2020

How Am I Going To Do This?

March 31, 2020

Relationships & Lockdown: A day, a week, a month, even a year. How long will I have to cope with this lockdown or the social changes due to the coronavirus pandemic. As I am writing this we are in week three of lockdown in South Africa. I live with my wife and two children just...

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