The communications of “spirits” are statements about the unconscious psyche, provided that they are really spontaneous and are not cooked up by the conscious mind.35

while the origins of many disturbances can be found in patterns of relationship with one’s parents (who are, after all, ancestors too), one often needs to go beyond the biographical factors to perinatal and prenatal conditions, to multigenerational family patterns, and to ethnic, cultural, racial or national influences.

Koan, the archetypal pattern an enigma of each soul; it is the puzzling question that one’s life secretly desires to answer.”

I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors.

“primeval ancestors.”

From that time on, the dead have become ever more distinct for me as the voices of the Unanswered, Unresolved, and Unredeemed; for since the questions and demands which my destiny required me to answer did not come to me from the outside, they must have come from the inner world. These conversations with the dead formed a kind of prelude to what I

Bernstein uses the term “‘transrational’ to refer to . . . observable phenomena and connections that do not ‘make sense’ by generally accepted scientific and rational criteria.”

For Freud, it was the recovery of lost and repressed memories for the sake of healing and the adaptation of the instincts to the requirements of civilization. For C. G. Jung, it was facing and integrating the personal and collective pieces of the shadow in service to a sense of wholeness.

Jung concludes that “inner peace and contentment” depends on whether or not one creates harmony between the “historical family”