Insights on Leadership, Creativity, and Image

Marilyn according to CG Jung
Jungian Analysis of Images, Photography Yury Li-Toroptsov Jungian Analysis of Images, Photography Yury Li-Toroptsov

Marilyn according to CG Jung

At the Cinémathèque française, a new exhibition opens this spring, dedicated to Marilyn Monroe, under a title that immediately establishes a productive tension between two registers that are too often confused, “Celebrating the star, exhibiting the actress,” as if the aim were not simply to present a well-known figure, but to reopen a question that has never truly been resolved, namely what we are actually looking at when we look at Marilyn.

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Marilyn selon Jung
Jungian Analysis of Images, Photography Yury Li-Toroptsov Jungian Analysis of Images, Photography Yury Li-Toroptsov

Marilyn selon Jung

À la Cinémathèque française, une nouvelle exposition ouvre ses portes ce printemps, consacrée à Marilyn Monroe, sous un titre qui pose d’emblée une tension féconde entre deux registres que l’on confond trop souvent, « Célébrer la star, exposer l’actrice », comme si l’enjeu n’était pas seulement de montrer une figure connue, mais de rouvrir une question qui n’a jamais été réellement résolue, celle de savoir ce que nous regardons lorsque nous regardons Marilyn.

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When images think before we do: art, perception, and transformation in coaching
Life Coaching, Jungian Analysis of Images Yury Li-Toroptsov Life Coaching, Jungian Analysis of Images Yury Li-Toroptsov

When images think before we do: art, perception, and transformation in coaching

There are moments in coaching when language reaches its limit, when the client explains, clarifies, reformulates, and still circles around something that refuses to become clear, as if the problem itself resists being reduced to words, and it is often precisely at that point that an image, whether a photograph taken on the way to the session or a quick drawing made without preparation, opens a path that had remained closed despite careful analysis.

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Finding a Form That Can Hold You. What Kung Fu Panda 3 reveals about complex identity.
Life Coaching, Jungian Analysis of Images Yury Li-Toroptsov Life Coaching, Jungian Analysis of Images Yury Li-Toroptsov

Finding a Form That Can Hold You. What Kung Fu Panda 3 reveals about complex identity.

What Kung Fu Panda 3 shows, in a way that is both simple and exact, is that the resolution of identity does not lie in choosing between parts of oneself, but in finding a form that is large enough to hold them together without distortion, and that once such a form appears, something stabilizes, not because complexity has disappeared, but because it has finally found a place where it can exist without fragmentation.

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How to Resist in Times of Chaos: Lessons from Tolkien on Truth, Kindness, and Everyday Courage
Jungian Analysis of Images, Life Coaching Yury Li-Toroptsov Jungian Analysis of Images, Life Coaching Yury Li-Toroptsov

How to Resist in Times of Chaos: Lessons from Tolkien on Truth, Kindness, and Everyday Courage

Galadriel: “Mithrandir, why the halfling?”
Gandalf: “I don't know. Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I have found that it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.”

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Wicked and the Return of the Repressed Feminine
Jungian Analysis of Images Yury Li-Toroptsov Jungian Analysis of Images Yury Li-Toroptsov

Wicked and the Return of the Repressed Feminine

Few contemporary films stage a psychological drama as vividly as Wicked. Beneath its spectacle of color, music, and theatrical fantasy lies a deeper mythic pattern. The story dramatizes the return of a force long pushed to the margins of culture and psyche. In Jungian language, it stages the awakening of the primordial feminine.

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Totoro, Memory, and the Secret Life of Childhood
Jungian Analysis of Images Yury Li-Toroptsov Jungian Analysis of Images Yury Li-Toroptsov

Totoro, Memory, and the Secret Life of Childhood

When people speak about My Neighbor Totoro, they often describe it as a simple children’s story about two sisters who move to the countryside and meet a friendly forest spirit, yet this description fails to capture the strange richness of the film, because what Miyazaki created is not only a narrative but an atmosphere in which story, image, music, sound, and voice intertwine so delicately that the viewer stops following a plot and instead begins to inhabit a memory.

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Case Study: Midlife Career Redirection Through Image Analysis

Case Study: Midlife Career Redirection Through Image Analysis

A man in his mid fifties contacted me after more than twenty years in consulting. From the outside, his career looked stable and successful. He had moved steadily through the ranks. Increasing responsibility, strong reputation inside the firm, teams who respected him and a comfortable income. Nothing dramatic had happened. No crisis, no burnout. Yet something had shifted.

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Spirited Away and the Journey of the Soul: A Jungian Reading of Miyazaki’s Classic
Jungian Analysis of Images Yury Li-Toroptsov Jungian Analysis of Images Yury Li-Toroptsov

Spirited Away and the Journey of the Soul: A Jungian Reading of Miyazaki’s Classic

I have watched Spirited Away a hundred times and I still cannot fully grasp the nature of its enchanting power. Each viewing leaves me with the same impression: I understand the story, I follow the characters, I recognize the symbols, and yet something escapes explanation. The film works at a depth that resists reduction.

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"The Boyfriend", Season 2 on Netflix: The Quiet Architecture of Desire
Jungian Analysis of Images Yury Li-Toroptsov Jungian Analysis of Images Yury Li-Toroptsov

"The Boyfriend", Season 2 on Netflix: The Quiet Architecture of Desire

At first glance, The Boyfriend looks like a familiar kind of show, a reality program where young men meet, observe each other, hesitate, feel attraction, withdraw, and sometimes move closer again, yet from the very first episodes something feels different, as if the show were less interested in producing drama than in capturing something more fragile and more difficult to name, the subtle way in which people learn to exist in front of others.

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Landscapes of the Soul, CG Jung and the Psyche
Image as Language, Jungian Analysis of Images Yury Li-Toroptsov Image as Language, Jungian Analysis of Images Yury Li-Toroptsov

Landscapes of the Soul, CG Jung and the Psyche

It is a strong exhibition, and walking into the Landesmuseum that morning I felt a quiet respect for the way Switzerland protects its cultural inheritance, not as something decorative or nostalgic, but as a living archive of ideas and practices, among which its contribution to psychology, with figures such as C. G. Jung, Hermann Rorschach, and others, holds a central place.

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The Wholeness and The Beaune Altarpiece (or The Last Judgement)
Jungian Analysis of Images, Image as Language Yury Li-Toroptsov Jungian Analysis of Images, Image as Language Yury Li-Toroptsov

The Wholeness and The Beaune Altarpiece (or The Last Judgement)

Seen intrapsychically, the Last Judgement becomes a portrait of the human psyche. The radiant and the tortured figures coexist within the same being. The Archangel Michael’s scale does not weigh others’ souls, but ours. Heaven and Hell are no longer separate realms but two poles of one psychic field. The light of consciousness and the shadow of the unconscious are both present, both alive.

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