Notes from the attic

1. Hermann Hesse: Artists & Psychoanalysis

   [Psychoanalysis] demands a truthfulness toward oneself to which we are not accustomed. It teaches us to see, to recognise, to examine, and to take seriously exactly those things that we had been most successful in repressing in ourselves. For some of us there’s nothing of higher value in the pursuit…

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2. Bedtime Story: The story of the mouse who could leap across the sky

   Many of us tend to pay no attention to folk stories and fairytales as they are seen as the realm of childhood entertainment or considered simple mindedness for a grown-up. Analytical psychology regards them as stories from below that have a deep connection to the human unconscious. I would like…

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3. Seneca: On how to live & die

   “Learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die.”                A beautiful little book by Seneca (4BC-AD 65) fell into my hands called On the shortness of life, title which - I must say - caught…

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4. Hermann Hesse: On talent and vocation

   “All these virtues […] are the hallmarks of the true human being per se, of the un-enslaved, unmechanised man, of the reverent and responsible human being, no matter what his profession.“   Hermann Hesse’s brilliant and sensible presentation - in the form of a letter- of the relation between…

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5. Epictetus: The stoic way of acceptance

   “When you are delighted with anything, be delighted as with a thing which is not one of those which cannot be taken away, but as something of such a kind, as an earthen pot is, or a glass cup, that, when it has been broken, you may remember what it…

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