Showing results by author "Ann Ulanov" in All Categories

Seated in her nest of ashes, Cinderella embodies human misery. The essence of inner and outer nobility, she is the envy of her cruel stepmother and her ugly sisters. Using this familiar story, Ann and Barry Ulanov explore the psychological and theological aspects of envy and goodness. In their interpretation of the tale, they move back and forth between internal and external issues – from how feminine and masculine parts of persons fit or do not fit together to how individuals conduct their lives with those of the same and opposite sexes, how they conflict, compete, or join harmoniously. ...

Analyst and author Ann Belford Ulanov draws on her years of clinical work and reflection to make the point that madness and creativity share a kinship, an insight that shakes both analysis and analyst to the core, reminding us as it does that the suffering places of the human psyche are inextricably -- and, often inexplicably -- related to the fountains of creativity, service, and even genius. She poses disturbing questions: How do we depend on order, when chaos is a necessary part of existence?

This eloquent work speaks of the centrality of imagination in the life of the spirit. Ann and Barry Ulanov describe the imagination as a bridge between the psyche and the spirit. Using rich imagery drawn from literature, film, and their own experience as therapists, they unlock for us the healing power of our imagination. "Imagination heals by building a bridge sturdy enough to link us up, each of us, to the river of being already present in us, to the currents flowing through us and among us in our unconscious life." After describing this healing power of imagination, the authors go on to ...

This book offers a collection of many new ideas: connection with the psychoid processes of the unconscious is a source of healing, especially in relation to trauma; fresh interpretation of the bedevilling flashbacks of trauma; addition of an alternative interpenetrating matrix to the container model of healing; sum of the insights of Nicholas of Cusa and their implications for Jung’s complex around freedom and relation to the Divine.

Using the image of knots that are hard, and sometimes impossible, to untie, Ann Ulanov circles around the psychic dilemmas that entangle us, sometimes for decades. These can be heartrending to us and destructive to others, even to those we love. Yet these knots, so peculiarly our own, also open onto human problems we share with others, even across the ages. Hence working on our knots takes us far down to taproots of energy and far up and out to bring that vital aliveness into shared existence with others. Knots thus comprise a ladder, offering footholds and handholds, for descending and ...

Carl Jung is the foremost interpreter of the many interactions of religion, the world of the spiritual and psychological insight into human behaviors. In this book, one of the outstanding Jungian scholars of our time surveys Jung’s contributions to a whole series of issues, ranging from the political to the pedagogical to the inner life of a saint, Therese of Lisieux. Ann Belford Ulanov is Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. A Jungian analyst in private practice, she is also the author of numerous books, including ...

We live in a time of unparalleled opportunity for women and a time, just because of that opportunity, of great stress. It is a time when every woman can find her own particular style, to develop her skills, to acknowledge her needs and failures, and to claim both her satisfactions and dissatisfactions. The old stereotypes are all but dead. But another danger threatens; of new stereotyped roles for women in the very range of choices and opportunities presented to the. "RECEIVING WOMAN grew out of a decade of reflections on women’s experiences - my own, my patients’, and my students’," ...

This book, adapted from the distinguished Hale Lectures presents material from a woman’s wrestling with death, showing how inextricably mixed are matters theological and psychological. At a point when her life was blossoming in every way, Nancy was struck down by a terminal brain tumor which soon robbed her of her speech. She used paintings, many of which are here reproduced, to wrestle with this blow and to communicate what she was slowly discerning in the face of death, something from the ’other side.’ The author addresses a variety of related issues, including the place of language...

This book promotes a strong argument for a ‘feminine’ approach to religious discovery: to struggle in the ambiguous gap between the wisdom of the psyche and the wisdom of Scripture, between our interior experience of God and the exterior reality of God. The Wisdom of the Psyche urges clergy to help parishioners bring forth their unconscious feelings and images to join their conscious thoughts. In this way, the church allows its members the space to present themselves fully to God and to be fully present to the human need around them.

Seldom has an event in the world had such a pervasive and all-encompassing effect as the brutal terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in September, 2001. Has our world become a different place as a result? If so, in what ways? Along with the tragic aspects, what might this “global nightmare” have to give us, the human inhabitants of this world? What is there for us to acknowledge and what old and new wounds have been opened? Beyond the obvious scars, what sort of a legacy has it left behind? These big questions and many more face us now in the aftermath. In this book, the highly ...

How does the spirit come into clinical work? Through the analyst? In the analysand’s work in the analysis? What happens to human destructiveness if we embrace a vision of non-violence? Do dreams open us to spiritual life? What is the difference between repetition compulsion and ritual? How does religion feed terrorism? What happens if analysts must wrestle with hate in themselves? Do psychotherapy and spirituality compete, or contradict, or converse with each other? What does religion uniquely offer, beyond what psychoanalysis can do, to our surviving and thriving? This book raises and ...

Created during the threat of worldwide pandemic, this book reaches to new language to express the basics of Analytical Psychology in new forms. What results is not a finished conclusion but a never ending process that includes dismay and celebration. Bad and good interweave as long as we are growing; celebration happens in perceiving the infinite is lived through our ordinary finite life. Projection is a first step toward consciousness; the missing piece that lures us to destructiveness can be found. A defense of dissociation presses for its undoing to support a consciousness that ...

The spiritual power of the Feminine shines forth in this psychological study of four Old Testament heroines from Jesus’ family tree. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba are the only women mentioned by name in the Gospels’ genealogies and, for Ann Belford Ulanov, this indicates that they impart something essential to the lineage of Christ. By exploring their brave and unconventional lives, she demonstrates how salvation enters the world in the feminine mode of being human, through these women’s embodiment of such powerful and deeply feminine qualities as ingenuity, audacity, ...

Ann Belford Ulanov submits that we have all painted our own pictures of God. Most of them were formed in early childhood and now lie buried in our unconscious selves. Even though we may be unaware of our images of God, they play an active, sometimes harmful role in our spiritual development. Picturing God demonstrates the importance of confronting our unconscious selves and allowing our images of God – both positive and negative – to surface. Such inner exploration reveals not only relevant insights about ourselves, but also pulls us beyond our private pictures of God toward a truer ...