Chiron Publications Blog
Watch Kiyomi Hirose on Speaking of Jung
In this book, he tries to convey the Tao beyond the words, with the words based on his experiences.
A Japanese Jungian analyst Kiyomi Hirose was called for translating it into English. This book is filled with warmth, love, and mystery of the Tao.
“….I hope for a well protected publication and a strong entry of Laozi’s code into the world. For me the essence of the book is sacred. Whenever I think of it, I feel trust, numinosity, warmth and deep love….”
-Ellynor Barz, author of Gods and Planets – The Archetypes of Astrology
Author
Kazuki Chiga was born in Shizuoka and lives in Tokyo, Japan. He had numinous experiences through dancing at the time of a student. After working as a teacher for many years, he established dance groups, called “Wa-no-mai,” where everyone is able to resonance beyond words. Training sessions are held every week here and there in Japan and have a good reputation for ability development and self-transformation.
He studies the Jyomon period and is the author of a number of books, in which the Jyomon world without conflicts, the harmonious power in the Jyomon culture and the way how it is actualized are described.
Translator
Kiyomi Hirose is a Jungian analyst, who received her Diploma at the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich in 2005. She is interested in the dynamics of masculinity and femininity. She gave a lecture based on this book at the ISAP (International School of Analytical Psychology), Zurich in 2010. She has been studying Psychological Astrology at the MISPA (Mercury Internet School of Psychological Astrology), London, since 2018 and makes a goal to take MISPA’s Diploma. She works as a clinical psychologist in Japan and gives lectures at the AJAJ (Association of Jungian Analysts, Japan) with the Psychological Astrology taken in.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword by Shen Heyong
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: An encounter with a man, who knew a secret.
- Chapter 2: The village of the old man, Mr. M
- Chapter 3: Secret of Laozi for 2,500 years
- Chapter 4: An existent paradise
- Chapter 5: The truth of the deciphered Tao
- Chapter 6: The sexual universe
- Chapter 7: Sexuality and human society
- Chapter 8: The sexual dimension that decides all courses
- Chapter 9: Sexual energy and sacred sex
- Chapter 10: Dancing toward the Tao
- Chapter 11: Filled with love (the great Tao)
- Chapter 12: The Code of Laozi which was unsealed
- Chapter 13: Time to say goodbye
- Selections from the book of “Laozi”
- 1. The ultimate Tao
- 2. Guide of all
- 3. Union of Heaven and Earth
- 4. Sexuality without any form
- 5. From Ecstasy to the Union
- Photos
- Translator’s Note
Creativity: Patterns of Creative Imagination as Seen Through Art explores the fullness and variety of creativity
Part of the Zurich Lecture Series and previously published by Spring Journal, Creativity: Patterns of Creative Imagination as Seen Through Art looks at where where creativity comes from. Is it inspired from above? Welling up from below? Picked up from the air?
This book does not claim to reveal this secret. It does not attempt to reduce creativity to a “nothing but,” for example to explain it as a special ability of certain creative individuals with special abilities. On the contrary, it is about exploring the fullness and variety of this amazing power, which is the basis of all cultural, artistic, scientific and spiritual activity of man, without attributing it to a simple cause.
The creative imagination is unlimited in its richness of design. At the same time, however, there is a canon of basic forms of creative experience and creative ideas. In other words, creative design is infinitely complex in its respective contents and at the same time follows a limited formal grammar.
To work out the basic forms of this grammar of creativity, this book examines 25 selected works by artists in detail. The guiding idea here is that artists often consciously or unconsciously address the riddle of their creative drive in their works, especially in their self-portraits. Artists are empiricists and experts in the creative process. All their work is shaped by the experience of being stimulated and guided by creative imagination.
Their depiction of this enigmatic creative factor, from which their self-understanding and their creative perspective are derived, thus allows us to sketch, as it were, a general phenomenology of creative expression. In other words, the works of painters show in a both vivid and empirically evidenced way how creativity is basically experienced and in which forms it is expressed and realized.
In order to be able to recognize pictures by artists in this sense as statements about the essence of creativity, they must be understood as symbolic reality, in which the riddle of creativity itself, which is at work in painting, is expressed in the form of a picture. The artist usually does not himself address this reflection on artistic creation in an explicit form. This would be questionable and in the best case lead only to an allegorical paraphrase of the phenomenon of art. Real statements about the essence of the creative are possible, however, if creativity itself is expressed in a pictorially symbolic form, i.e. if the artist does not try intentionally to illustrate his opinion about creativity, but if he allows the creative gestalt itself to appear as such.
This book presents art as something that invites symbolic understanding. In this way, art appears not only as an aesthetic experience, but also as a deep symbolic discovery, in which rich psychological knowledge can be found.
“In his trenchant and all encompassing analysis of the emergence of autonomous imagination in the works of artists, Paul Brutsche lays out a theory of creativity that is deeply grounded in Western philosophy and contemporary Jungian thought. Brutsche’s insights reach boldly for the stars in claiming transcendence for creativity in human existence. This is a summary of decades of research and observation and a devout tribute to creativity and especially to its manifestations in the domain of art. It is a feast for the eye and the mind.”
-Murray Stein, PhD, author of Jung’s Map of the Soul
“With a wide breadth of comprehension Paul Brutsche outlines the many forms of creativity, then to distinguish the special gifts of the creative artist. The author’s fine sensitivity and incredible flare for detail offer new perspectives on many famous paintings. He elaborates on the painter’s imagination, self-observation, sensitivity, life-experiences, and cultural anchoring as the essential ingredients that give birth to the great masterpieces of Western Art. Paul Brutsche has written an inspiring book on creativity.”
-John Hill, MA, author of At Home in the World: Sounds and Symmetries of Belonging
“Paul Brutsche gifts us with a jewel of a book on the autonomous creative force that trespasses on intellectual and artistic skills, exerting its archetypal demands on the whole personality of the creator. In erudite and highly differentiated ways, drawing from manifold sources and decades of experience as a Jungian analyst, Brutsche carefully leads us from painting to painting, inviting our participation in myriad and mysterious expressions of creative energy. A truly unique book that opens areas hitherto neglected in the literature on creative imagination.”
-Kathrin Asper, PhD, author of The Abandoned Child Within: On Losing and Regaining Self-Worth
Table of Contents
Introduction
II Manifestations of Creativity
2.1. Discovering Possibilities in Existing Things
2.2. Confronting Inner and Outer Images
2.3. Binding to Concreteness
2.4. Individual Experience, Self-Observation, Insight
2.5. Anti-Creativity, Deconstruction, Destructivity
III Dimensions of Creative Consciousness in Examples of Painting
3.1. Marc Chagall: The Rabbi, or the Pinch of Snuff
3.2. Marc Chagall: Jew in Red
3.3. Marc Chagall: Rabbi with Torah
3.4. Marc Chagall: Jew in Green
3.5. Marc Chagall: Jew in Black and White
IV Creativity as Interaction Between Masculine and Feminine Factors
4.1. Otto Dix: Self-Portrait with Muse
4.2. René Magritte: Attempting the Impossible
4.3. Edouard Manet: Luncheon on the Grass
4.4. Albrecht Dürer: Adam and Eve
4.5. Julian Wasser: Duchamp Playing Chess with a Nude
V The Creative Individual
5.1. Daimonic Individuality in Albrecht Dürer’s The Desperate Man
5.2. Muse-Inspired Individuality in Pablo Picasso’s Family of Saltimbanques
5.3. Ingenious Individuality in Vincent van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters
5.4. Alchemical Individuality in Paul Klee’s Carnival in the Mountains
5.5. Missionary Individuality
5.5.1. In Albrecht Dürer’s The Four Apostles
5.5.2. In Albrecht Dürer’s Madonna and Child with the Pear
VI Creative Existence
6.1. The Choleric Mode in Vincent van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with the Bandaged Ear
6.1.1. Existential Truth
6.1.2. Binding of Nature and the Person
6.1.3. The Soul in Nature
6.1.4. The Destined Life
6.2. The Sanguine Mode in Nicolas Poussin’s Self-Portrait
6.2.1. Exacting Factuality
6.2.2. Layers of Lightness and Darkness, Foreground and Background
6.2.3. The Meaning of Myth and the Muse
6.2.4. The Sketch and the Final Work
6.3. The Phlegmatic Mode in Paul Gauguin’s The Artist with the Yellow Christ
6.3.1. Natural Authenticity, Visceral Presence
6.3.2. The Art Work and the Depths
6.3.3. Proximity to the Archaic Source
6.3.4. Experienceable Transcendence
6.4. The Melancholic Mode in Edvard Munch’s Self-Portrait: Between the Clock and the Bed
6.4.1. The Gaunt Introspective Gestalt
6.4.2 Depressive Character, Bright Background
6.4.3. Origin of Creativity in the Antagonistic Unconscious
6.4.4. Chronological and Creative Time
VII Creativity and the Experience of Transcendence
7.1. Juan Miró: Self-Portrait
7.2. Marc Chagall: Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers
7.3. Paula Modersohn-Becker: Self-Portrait with Amber Necklace
7.4. Albrecht Dürer: Self-Portrait with Landscape
7.4.1. The Balance of Opposites
7.4.2. Spatial Symbolism
7.4.3. Symbolism of the Body and Its Attire
7.4.4. Landscape Symbolism
7.4.5. The Analogous Creative Force in Nature
7.4.6. Correspondences Between Self-Knowledge and Knowledge of Nature
7.4.7. The Role of Synchronicity
7.4.8. Further Parallels in the Creativity of Nature and Mind
7.5. Henri Rousseau: Self-Portrait from L’Île Saint Louis
7.5.1. The Artist’s Figure
7.5.2. The Boat and Setting Sail for New Shores
7.5.3. The Bridge
7.5.4. The Sky
VIII Concluding Reflections on the Nature of Creativity
8.1. Creativity: Construction and Negation
8.2. Creativity as the Cooperation of Opposites
8.2.1. The Past and the Future in the Realm of Consciousness
8.2.2. “Masculine,” “Feminine,” and Symbolic Thinking
8.2.3. The Creative Personality and the Collective Unconscious
8.2.4. Individuation, the Willful Ego, and Oppositional Life
8.2.5. The Individual and Transcendence
8.3. The Objective Creative Force and the Four Temperaments
8.3.1. The Choleric in The Rabbi, or the Pinch of Snuff
8.3.2. The Sanguine in Jew in Red 64
8.3.3. The Phlegmatic in Rabbi with Torah
8.3.4. The Melancholic in Jew in Green
Overview of Illustrations
Notes
Index
Paul Brutsche, Ph.D., has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Zürich. He graduated from the C.G. Jung Institute Zürich in 1975 and is a training analyst and supervisor at the International School of Analytical Psychology (ISAPZURICH). Since his doctoral thesis on the psychological meaning of pictures in analysis and his work as director of the Picture Archives of the C.G. Jung Institute he has been interested in questions of picture interpretation, symbolism in art and creativity and has regularly lectured and published on this topic.
In his memoir, Memories Dreams Reflections, Carl Jung tells us that, as a child, he had the experience of possessing two personalities. ‘Two Souls Alas,’ by Mark Saban, is the first book to suggest that Jung’s experience of the difficult dynamic between these two personalities not only informs basic principles behind the development of Jung’s psychological model but underscores the theory and practice of Analytical Psychology as a whole.
May Book Spotlight!
Barbara Child put her heart and soul into a letter to her partner, Alan Morris, while he was at the cottage they shared in Florida and she was away at school in California. He was a Vietnam War veteran, and she was taking a seminary course on war—in particular, the Vietnam War. She turned in her letter as a term paper for the course, calling it “An Open Letter to a Vietnam Veteran.” A little more than two years later, the war finally took its toll on Alan. He put a Colt .45 to his head and pulled the trigger. Barbara read part of her letter as the eulogy at his memorial service.
That letter led to one thing, then another. Eventually, Barbara began analysis with a Jungian psychologist and shared the letter with him. She began talking more and more about Alan. She began writing more and more about Alan. From those writings came this book.
The book gives a partner’s-eye view of post-traumatic stress and moral injury relentlessly taking their toll on the body, mind, and soul of a veteran who served as a medic in the Vietnam War. The book also shows how Jungian dream work with an expert, caring analyst can bring forth memories and the meaning of memories both sought and unsought. Ultimately, this book is both a labor of love and an impassioned outcry on behalf of all victims of war, whatever their part in the suffering.
Love and Soul-Making brings awareness to both the patriarchal origins of romance and the unarguably magical, archetypal experience of love. Relationships can serve as an alchemical vessel for the development of the soul as part of the individuation process. The struggles of relationships, whether one is partnered or not, can allow us to engage more deeply with the psyche and can guide us further into her territory.
For those experiencing romantic difficulties, the myth of Psyche and Eros can serve as a guide to the stages involved in soul-making and how that is enacted in human relationships. This book encourages contemplating relationships both literally and metaphorically. With metaphorical vision, we create possibility for the alchemical transmutation process and the development of the soul. This book provides context to the soul-making process, and it can help to re-animate your creativity and vitality. Soul (Psyche) follows what she loves (Eros).
The Collected Works of Marie-Louise von Franz is a 28 volume Magnum Opus from one of the leading minds in Jungian Psychology. Volume 6 heralds translations of material never before available in English. It explores the profound visions of two ground-breaking saints in the Catholic church, Saint Niklaus von Flüe and Saint Perpetua.
Note: Volumes 4 and 5 are currently in production and we look forward to the releases when translations are complete.
The first chapter describes how the theory of individuation serves as an assessment tool for the analyst and guides the process toward the client’s further psychological development. The second chapter, on the analytic relationship, discusses the depth psychological understanding of the healing effect of the therapeutic encounter.
Working with dreams and active imagination comprise the other two chapters. In both of these chapters, there is detailed discussions of how these methods are used in Jungian psychoanalysis and to what purpose. It is the combination of “the four pillars” that makes Jungian psychoanalysis unique.
Author Susan Rowland’s first mystery novel!
A simple job turns deadly when Mary Wandwalker, novice detective, is hired to chaperone a young American, Rhiannon, to the Oxford University Summer School on the ancient Celts. Worried by a rhetoric of blood sacrifice, Mary and her operatives, Caroline, and Anna, attend a sacrifice at a sacred well. They discover that those who fail to individuate their gods become possessed by them.
The God of Love who Drives Our Wanderings: An Origin Story
Releasing Today! Love and Soul-Making: Searching the Depths of Romantic Love

Also Available from Stacey Shelby
Tracking the Wild Woman Archetype
Dr. Demaris Wehr at the Maine Jung Center this month!
Making it Through:
Bosnian Survivors Share Stories of Trauma, Transcendence, and Truth
A Lecture by Dr. Demaris Wehr
Friday, April 29 | 7 to 9 pm
Members $20, Non-Members $25
Held Online via Zoom | Register Here
Based on Wehr’s book, Making it Through: Bosnian Survivors Share Stories of Trauma, Transcendence and Truth, this presentation will explore Vahidin Omanovic’s story, which revolves around his slow, agonizing journey toward forgiving the Serbs—the group who were the most responsible for the Bosnian war/genocide. We will learn the profound mind/body connection between hating and physical ailments, and forgiving and the healing of those ailments. Wehr will tell the story of how the book came to be as well as how she came upon the main theme, the “centerpost,” a sustaining, natural, instinctive value that arose within each one of them as they “made it through” the horrific conditions of the war. Participants will consider the primary importance of our having a centerpost, or several of them, ourselves as we make it through similarly chaotic and confusing times of global unrest. We want to resist falling prey to archetypal madness. As Jung said, “there is no lunacy people under the domination of an archetype will not fall a prey to.” (Jung: CW, Vol. 9 I, 47-48).
Demaris Wehr, Ph.D., is the author of Jung and Feminism: Liberating Archetypes (Routledge) and Making It Through: Bosnian Survivors Share Stories of Trauma, Transcendence, and Truth. Demaris has had a lifelong interest in peacebuilding, starting with her Quaker upbringing. She taught Religion and Psychology for many years, including at Swarthmore College, Harvard Divinity School, and the Episcopal Divinity School. Demaris began her practice as a Jungian psychotherapist in 1993. She and her late husband, Jungian analyst David Hart, had a joint practice in Dialogue Therapy (a form of couples therapy), which they did together as the therapist couple. Demaris is on the core faculty of the Sophia Center for Transformative Learning: Integrative Studies in Psyche and Soul. She lives in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Forgiveness in the Face of Genocide
A Workshop with Dr. Demaris Wehr
Saturday, April 30 | 9:30 am to 12:30 pm
Members $30, Non-Members $35
Held Online via Zoom | Register Here
This workshop will begin with a short (4 min.) film titled “Forgiveness: Even in the Face of Genocide?” Discussion will follow. We will then consider our own definitions of forgiveness and possible resistance we may have to it. We will do this in breakout groups, later to be shared with the whole group. Next, we will reflect on Vahidin’s definition of forgiveness. If we accept this new definition, we will then look at ways that we can possibly really do it. Using examples from our own lives, we will again break out in small groups to consider the need and practicality of forgiveness, learning from each other how it may actually, heartfully, be achieved. (The person we need to forgive may be ourselves.) We will complete the workshop with a bringing-together of our learnings.
Demaris Wehr, Ph.D., is the author of Jung and Feminism: Liberating Archetypes (Routledge) and Making It Through: Bosnian Survivors Share Stories of Trauma, Transcendence, and Truth. Demaris has had a lifelong interest in peacebuilding, starting with her Quaker upbringing. She taught Religion and Psychology for many years, including at Swarthmore College, Harvard Divinity School, and the Episcopal Divinity School. Demaris began her practice as a Jungian psychotherapist in 1993. She and her late husband, Jungian analyst David Hart, had a joint practice in Dialogue Therapy (a form of couples therapy), which they did together as the therapist couple. Demaris is on the core faculty of the Sophia Center for Transformative Learning: Integrative Studies in Psyche and Soul. She lives in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Love and Soul-Making : Available May 1st!
Releasing May 1, 2022!
Love and Soul-Making brings awareness to both the patriarchal origins of romance and the unarguably magical, archetypal experience of love. Relationships can serve as an alchemical vessel for the development of the soul as part of the individuation process. The struggles of relationships, whether one is partnered or not, can allow us to engage more deeply with the psyche and can guide us further into her territory.
For those experiencing romantic difficulties, the myth of Psyche and Eros can serve as a guide to the stages involved in soul-making and how that is enacted in human relationships. This book encourages contemplating relationships both literally and metaphorically. With metaphorical vision, we create possibility for the alchemical transmutation process and the development of the soul. This book provides context to the soul-making process, and it can help to re-animate your creativity and vitality. Soul (Psyche) follows what she loves (Eros).
Excerpts from the author:
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Love and Soul: Invocation
Chapter 2: Relationship as the Vessel of Transformation
Chapter 3: The Romantic Tragedy
Chapter 4: The Magical Other
Chapter 5: Aphrodite
Chapter 6: Beyond the Romantic Tragedy
Chapter 7: Love of Soul
Afterword
References
“Few things are as important to a human being as the combination of love and soul-making. This beautifully written book shows you how to serve your soul while allowing love to have its way with you—a path to meaning and pleasure.”
–Thomas Moore, Author of New York Times #1 Best Sellers Care of the Soul and Soul Mates.
“Soulful ecstasy awaits those who surrender to the hidden agenda of romantic love.”
–Deborah Lukovich, Ph.D, author of Your Soul is Talking. Are You Listening?
“Shelby brilliantly and convincingly argues, romance is first and foremost about the individual’s calling to love soul, their own soul, and the soul of the world, and reciprocally to find soul in, to make soul from, and to serve soul through love’s many expressions.”
–Dylan Hoffman, Ph.D., Adjunct Faculty—Pacifica Graduate Institute, M.A./Ph.D. Depth Psychology—Jungian & Archetypal Studies
Love and Soul Making – Excerpts read by the author
Releasing May 1, 2022!
Love and Soul-Making brings awareness to both the patriarchal origins of romance and the unarguably magical, archetypal experience of love. Relationships can serve as an alchemical vessel for the development of the soul as part of the individuation process. The struggles of relationships, whether one is partnered or not, can allow us to engage more deeply with the psyche and can guide us further into her territory.
For those experiencing romantic difficulties, the myth of Psyche and Eros can serve as a guide to the stages involved in soul-making and how that is enacted in human relationships. This book encourages contemplating relationships both literally and metaphorically. With metaphorical vision, we create possibility for the alchemical transmutation process and the development of the soul. This book provides context to the soul-making process, and it can help to re-animate your creativity and vitality. Soul (Psyche) follows what she loves (Eros).
Excerpts from the author:
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Love and Soul: Invocation
Chapter 2: Relationship as the Vessel of Transformation
Chapter 3: The Romantic Tragedy
Chapter 4: The Magical Other
Chapter 5: Aphrodite
Chapter 6: Beyond the Romantic Tragedy
Chapter 7: Love of Soul
Afterword
References
“Few things are as important to a human being as the combination of love and soul-making. This beautifully written book shows you how to serve your soul while allowing love to have its way with you—a path to meaning and pleasure.”
–Thomas Moore, Author of New York Times #1 Best Sellers Care of the Soul and Soul Mates.
“Soulful ecstasy awaits those who surrender to the hidden agenda of romantic love.”
–Deborah Lukovich, Ph.D, author of Your Soul is Talking. Are You Listening?
“Shelby brilliantly and convincingly argues, romance is first and foremost about the individual’s calling to love soul, their own soul, and the soul of the world, and reciprocally to find soul in, to make soul from, and to serve soul through love’s many expressions.”
–Dylan Hoffman, Ph.D., Adjunct Faculty—Pacifica Graduate Institute, M.A./Ph.D. Depth Psychology—Jungian & Archetypal Studies
Don’t miss “Depth Poetry and Alchemical Poetics” (reading + workshop) tomorrow!
Tuesday, April 12 (4:00 pm UK, 11:00 am EST):
Register on: https://us02web.zoom.us/