EXPATRIATED JUNGIAN HOPES TO RECLAIM PSYCHE FROM PSYCHOLOGY
www.fireflySun.comDrawing from his 2,000-typed page, 15-year dream diary, social and spiritual psychologist Wyatt Ehrenfels (Ph.D., 1997) composed an expose/epic dream thriller based on actual dreams and events to depict his struggle against an anti-dream prejudice within departments of psychology.
"I set out to write the biggest dream novel there is and using real dreams and waking contexts to flesh out not only symbolism but synchronistic connections and metaphysical meanings, all as an instrument for a message of relevance for field of Psychology."
Having his first General Psychology and Personality Theory textbooks by the age of 13, a young Wyatt Ehrenfels, inspired by a vivid childhood dream life, took to CG Jung, reading nearly his collected works by his sophomore year in college.
Across three graduate schools, Ehrenfels suffered the indignity of an anti-Jung/anti-dream prejudice and received his Ph.D. under a cloud of political embattlement at the age of 27, going out triumphantly with his wildly popular doctoral dissertation exploring the relationships among dream characteristics, blood chemistry, and coping styles in terminally ill cancer patients.
Unable to build a competitive vita as a graduate student under fire, Ehrenfels opted not to pursue a tenure-track teaching/research position in universities, withdrawing from academic life to spearhead an initiative aimed at exposing the complexes and repressions that comprise the "Unconscious" of modern academic communities and that seek to compensate, in classic Jungian style, for elements of the professional culture that undermine an accurate, adequate, and
authentic science of the human condition.
Toward that end, Ehrenfels amassed a coalition of authors, developing his own web portal and writing his own book (culled from a diary that encompasses years of political imbroglios and concurrent dreams).
BOOK PAGE:
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www.fireflySun.com/news.htmlOverview
It came bearing standards for mental health and scientific research. It would spread, vying to rally a nation of academics and therapists around an ever-widening nucleus of vaunted norms. But before it could assume control of a profession, it must meet the approval of the profession's sole accrediting body. With a National Psychology Association inspection waiting in the wings, the faculty of the National School of Professional Psychology (NSPP) turns inward to realize its vision of mental hygiene within its own walls. It was the perfect plan...
...Until it casts a covetous eye on the careers of four graduate students who came bearing something other than the school banner. They brought their humanity. For THAT, they would be imperilled: (1) Anton Mason, for aligning himself with Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung; (2) Aniela Mason, for sharing his name; (3) Matthew Sykes, for original and independent thinking; and (4) Angela Jewell, for requesting accommodations for her visual disability. These "imperfect fits," or "misfits," were perceived as threats to the school's vision of a Brave New Psychology, resisting at every opportunity intense pressure to betray their own natures, the subject they loved dearly and, by extension, the human psyche.
In a world of professionals geared toward the pursuit of excellence in Psychology, four young scholars struggle to pursue the truth about the human psyche.
But when the groundswell opened the earth beneath their feet, it threatened to consume more than their careers. More than their way of life. The struggle to defend their livelihood would place them in the path of a wider and more insidious swath of destruction. As the students brave a perfect storm of politics, prejudice, and professional training, they brace for a flood of equal and opposite imperatives from within. It is along this trail of dreams and meaningful coincidences that these young visionaries learn their plight itself is symptomatic of a disturbance to structures beneath the crust of human consciousness. Now these students find themselves caught between the need to defend their careers and a higher call to preserve the human condition. Pathological and paranormal collide as a universe of possibilities is pared down to one fateful outcome: will the nature of the psyche survive the culture of professional Psychology?
