Robert A. Johnson

Robert A. Johnson was the American Jungian analyst whose short, disciplined books on myth and dream — He, She, We, Inner Work, Owning Your Own Shadow, Ecstasy — became, over the last third of the twentieth century, one of the principal entry points through which American lay readers met the depth tradition. Trained at the Jung Institute of Zurich, where he studied with marie-louise-von-franz and emma-jung, he spent much of his life as a lay monk in the Episcopal tradition, in quiet collaboration with Benedictine and Vedanta communities, before emerging as a teacher at the San Diego Friends of Jung.

Johnson’s method is the archetypal reading of a single classical myth across the length of a short book — Parsifal for the masculine, Psyche and Eros for the feminine, the Fisher King for the wounded modern — paired with teaching on active-imagination and shadow work that remains the clearest practitioner’s introduction the tradition has. His Inner Work is the standard practitioner’s manual for dream work and active imagination in the Jungian register. See johnson-inner-work.

Relationships

• carl-jung
• johnson-inner-work
• active-imagination