Leslie Stein is a Jungian analyst, author, attorney, law professor and judge in Sydney, Australia.
Born and raised on the mean streets of the Bronx (New York City), his path was rather different from other analysts.
He attended the State University of New York where he earned a degree in sociology and psychology (and played basketball), and then went on to law school in Toronto, later becoming a law professor and, for 10 years, served as a judge.
In the 1980s, he trained as a Jungian analyst in Australia and the C.G. Jung Institute of New York and started a private practice but left it behind to pursue his particular specialty of using legal mechanisms to improve mental health in urban areas. He completed a master’s degree at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto and thereafter has been a professor at law schools and urban planning schools in Canada, the US, England, Australia, and India.
Prof. Stein has written five books on how to make our decaying cities livable. This has resulted in him being sought out as a consultant to the United Nations and governments around the world on managing urban blight, homelessness, the effects of climate change, and the inclusion of mental health in strategic planning. His work on strategic planning for neighborhoods was given an award by the United States Congress of New Urbanism and he was, among other appointments, invited to be the Visiting Scholar at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. He then became Senior Fellow for four years at the Global Center for Environmental Legal Studies in New York. He even now maintains that interest as an Adjunct Professor of Urban Planning Law at the University of Sydney.
It was on a trip to India for the UN on the urban planning of Varanasi that his interest in mysticism was awakened and he then returned full time to practice as an analyst, spending long months in India and enrolling at the C.G. Jung Institute in New York to refresh his work. Since then, he has written or edited four books on Jungian thought reflecting that interest, including, Working with Mystical Experiences in Psychoanalysis, The Self in Jungian Psychology, Becoming Whole, and the novel The Journey of Adam Kadmon. He is most recently editor and contributor of Eastern Practices & Individuation: Essays by Jungian Analysts, released today by Chiron Publications. (See show notes below for links.)
This spring, Prof. Stein attended the Eranos Conference in Switzerland where he presented a paper on collective individuation in our troubled times, and was just appointed to the board of directors of the Philemon Foundation.
This video interview was recorded on Wednesday, August 31, 2022. It’s 01:01:33 long and 43.9 MB. You can listen to it right here in your browser (click the play button in the bar below) or download it directly to your computer. You can also watch the video edition of this interview on our YouTube channel.
NEW
Newly Published Jung A new blog and discussion about Philemon Series Books by Professor Leslie Stein. The first post is about Vol. 7 of Jung's lectures at the ETH-Zürich, Jung on Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises.
CORRECTION
When Prof. Stein mentioned the letter Jung wrote to his wife, Emma, “in 2017,” he was referring to a letter dated June 27, 1917 that Sonu Shamdasani quoted on pages 68-69 of Vol. 1 of The Black Books: “[H]e wrote to Emma Jung that three days prior, he was on Pointe de Cray (a mountain just northwest of Château d’Oex), ‘It was a glorious day. On the summit I had a wonderful ecstatic feeling. Last evening I had a most remarkable mystical experience, a feeling of connection of many millennia. It was like a transfiguration. Today I’m probably going down to hell again for this. I want to cling to you, since you are my center, a symbol of the human, a protection against all daimons.’”
BOOKS BY LESLIE STEIN
Becoming Whole: Jung’s Equation for Realizing God Helios Press, 2012
Eastern Practices & Individuation: Essays by Jungian Analysts (Editor) Chiron Publications, 2022
The Journey of Adam Kadmon: A Novel Arcade, 2012
The Self in Jungian Psychology: Theory & Clinical Practice Chiron Publications, 2021
Working with Mystical Experiences in Psychoanalysis: Opening to the Numinous Routledge, 2019
SHOW NOTES
C.G. Jung Society of Sydney New South Wales, Australia
Rix Weaver Amazon Author Page
The Death & Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
Varanasi the City Eternal Uttar Pradesh, India
Jung’s Red Book for Our Time: Searching for Soul in the 21st Century 2022 Eranos Conference Special Event
The Red Book by C.G. Jung (currently 55% off)
The Origins & History of Consciousness by Erich Neumann; Foreword by C.G. Jung
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by D.T. Suzuki; Foreword by Carl Jung
Kumbh Mela Uttar Pradesh, India
Jung’s Self & the Ātman of the Upaniṣads by Lionel Corbett, M.D. (Chapter 5 of the book Eastern Practices & Individuation: Essays by Jungian Analysts)
The Black Books by C.G. Jung (currently 33% off)
From Akron to Bodhgaya: Suffering & Individuation by Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D. (Chapter 1 of the book Eastern Practices & Individuation: Essays by Jungian Analysts)
Yoga in Mayfair or Fifth Avenue, or in any other place which is on the Matrix, is a spiritual fake: What are the effects of Eastern spiritual practices on the individuation process and the revelation of the Self? by Royce Froehlich, Ph.D. (Chapter 10 of the book Eastern Practices & Individuation: Essays by Jungian Analysts)
Speaking of Jung, Ep. 107 Jungian analyst Royce Froehlich, Ph.D.