Culture and Psyche

It's a Wonderful Life

In juxtaposing Frank Capra’s sensitive vision of human nature in It’s a Wonderful Life with the realities of the year 2000, Don Williams demonstrates that the rise of mass-mindedness and the emergence of scientific rationalism submerge the individual and reduce his agency and humanity to a set of abstract numbers and predetermined, formulaic norms.

The Sonoma Valley Historical Society

John Fraim celebrates the collecting and writing of personal histories in this brief essay.

Hope and Fear

Paul Valery captured our problem in one line: "We hope vaguely, but dread precisely."

The Pattern of the Lion

In 1985, the late Frank N. McMillan, Jr. donated funds to his alma mater, Texas A&M University, to endow the world’s first professorship in Analytical Psychology. Born in 1927, McMillan experienced a childhood immersed in the now almost vanished natural world of rural America. Inspired by an early archetypal experience, as an adult McMillan set out on the quest for meaning that transcended the limits of his traditional Christian background and propelled him into a firsthand encounter with the autonomous reality of the psyche. This search ultimately led to Jung.

Navigating a Breakpoint in History

...as we look towards the coming decades, we cannot escape the fact that some great phase of the human experience is dying, while some new stage seeks to take shape....