Editorial

In the Northern Hemisphere, September traditionally marks the transition from the relaxed holiday pace of summer with its warm rays of the sun to more serious concerns, the fall harvest and the beginning of the school year. For many, this change of season is experienced with a sense of loss and of sadness. With its focus on the topic of depression, the first article in this edition seems particularly fitting.

In ‘The weariness of the hero: depression and the self in a civilization in transition’, Henrique Pereira references the report of the World Health Organization of 2013 which lists depression as affecting over 300 million people in the world. Beginning with an exploration of how depression has been viewed from antiquity to the present, the author asks whether we are not currently living in an era of depression. On a collective level the author considers this as symptomatic of the disorientation of a civilization in transition and the result of a preponderance of a one-sided development of the ego that has lost touch with a meaningful connection to the unconscious and to the self. Referencing the ideas of Jung and Hillman, the author stresses the importance of striving to understand the symbolic significance of symptoms as a means of establishing a sense of meaning in one’s life. Given the turbulent and worrisome changes in the zeitgeist we are currently witnessing on the world stage, this article seems particularly timely.

By way of introduction to the third paper in this edition, in ‘A master’s key to the understanding of self experience’, John Beebe shares with us how a previous article by H.J.M. Hermans in the Journal (Vol. 38, 4, 437 - 462) on the concept of dialogism led him to a new way to think about self experience. The notion of opposites moving and transforming as a result of inner dialogue rather than solely as a result of enduring the tension of the opposites opened up a new perspective on Jung’s notion of transformation for the author.

Further develop