Adaptation is a bread-and-butter concept in psychotherapy – can we accept, adjust to, and thrive in the outer and inner worlds we live in? Given constraints, what does it take to find life at least meaningful, hopefully satisfying–and flourish?
This week Jungian analyst and author John R. White joins us to circumambulate the complexities of adaptation. Successful adaptation involves making conscious choices based on a realistic understanding of the internal and external parameters in which we operate. Adaptation not only requires a true-to-life perception of possibilities and pathways in the external world, it may also require reassessment and reordering of our values and attitudes.
We discuss Robert Langs’ “adaptive paradigm,” a distinct model of the mind and the unconscious and emotional components that connect inner life to the outer world. For example, Langs understands dreams as feedback about current adaptive challenges. This is both subtly different and complementary to Jung’s approach, which suggests that inability to solve an outer world problem is often due to an underdeveloped understanding of an aspect of inner life.
Adaptation does not eliminate turmoil, suffering and loss; they are part of life. We need to recognize environmental actualities and internal limitations that cannot be changed—and develop ways to mitigate or adjust to them. Successful adaptation also requires mourning what cannot be changed, developing a less egocentric stance, and building a life in tune with reality.
Our Guest – John R. White, Ph.D
John R. White is a Jungian psychoanalyst and mental health counselor in private practice in Pittsburgh PA. He was Coordinator of the C. G. Jung Institute Analyst Training Program of Pittsburgh (2019-2026) and is President-elect of the Board of the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Center. Before becoming a psychotherapist and training analyst, he was a philosophy professor (primarily at Franciscan University of Steubenville OH) and is currently a Scholar-in-residence at the Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center, Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh. He is also an esoteric practitioner and a Hermetic initiate.
John’s recent publications include:
- (Book) Adaptation and Psychotherapy. Langs and Analytical Psychology. Rowman & Littlefield (2023).
- (Co-edited book) Jungian Analysis in the World on Fire. At the Nexus of Individual and Collective Trauma. Routledge (2024).
- (Book chapter) “Ressentiment: Its Phenomenology and Clinical Significance,” in Roger Brooke, ed., Jungian Psychology and the Human Sciences, Routledge 2024.
- (Book Chapter) “Colonizing the American psyche. Virtue and the problem of consumer capitalism,” In Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis. From the Frankfurt School to Contemporary Critique, edited by Daniel Burston and Jon Mills, New York, Routledge 2023, 211-230.
Here’s the Dream We Analyze
I am on a walk with my Dad through my childhood neighborhood, the kind of walk we usually do in the evenings when I visit back home. We turn the corner at the end of our block and suddenly we are on a pastoral path. I’m amazed. I ask my dad if this park has always been close to our house, and my Father is like, ‘of course’. We hike the grassy path which quickly turns into an extraordinarily steep, almost 98 degree hill. My dad climbs it with ease, despite his age, teasing me almost, saying contradictory stuff like “we don’t have to climb it.” I move on all fours gripping, struggling to make progress, pressing up to the dirt so as to not fall. I make progress, and get close to the top. The final stretch is the hardest. I then worry about the problem that will inevitably follow when I do reach the top: how will we get down? I ask my father, since he’s at the top now, and he teases that we won’t be able to. He then dives face first, almost like a ski jumper, off the top of the hill and glides close by the side of the hill until he reaches the bottom, sliding onto the dirt unharmed in his flight. I’m amazed and unsure of my ability to do the same.
Resources from the Episode
- Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death.
- John R. White, Adaptation and Psychotherapy. Langs and Analytical Psychology. Rowman & Littlefield (2023).
- John R. White & Laura Camille Tuley, Jungian Analysis in the World on Fire. At the Nexus of Individual and Collective Trauma. Routledge (2024).
- Wikipedia page on Robert Langs
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