Jae Botávn, M.A.(c) is a writer, iconoclast, aspiring depth psychologist, and motorcyclist whose work explores the alchemy of the human psyche—where longing meets transformation, and the self is forged through the crucible of somatic-psycho-social-spiritual dynamics that can not be reduced into a tidy box.
Rooted in Jungian depth, archetypal, integral, transpersonal and developmental psychology, his work bridges ancient wisdom with emerging frontiers, challenging conventional narratives around reductivism and mental health while diving deep into questioning spirit, sentience, intimacy, individuation, self-actualization and ultimately the human quest.
Human Science Approach
A human science approach to psychology is distinct from the natural science’s mental health medical model of conventional psychology. While natural science focuses on empirical measurement and generalization, human science emphasizes the exploration of meaning more than reductive empirical reasoning as the essence of a individuals psychological life.
This perspective delves into how experiences matter to individuals, considering their cultural and historical contexts. Rooted in the humanities, it embraces imagination, meditative awareness, and reflective inquiry as essential tools, contrasting with the strictly analytical methods of natural science. By integrating mythology, history, philosophy, religion, and the arts, this approach fosters a richer, more holistic understanding of the human experience and expression toward a persons sovereign purpose.
Into the Deep
Depth psychology is the study of the unconscious mind and its influence on thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and has given me the clearest path to wholeness from purpose, to presence to power and human connection than any other system I have explored.
Depth psychology, rooted in over a century of scholarly Jungian insights that embraces the full kaleidoscope of the human expression, focuses on uncovering unconscious patterns, offering deeper self-awareness and long-lasting transformation beyond symptom reduction and surface-level fixes.
Pen, Paper & Ink
My forthcoming book, Love Letters to a Love Addict, is a deeply personal and semi-academic exploration of relationship suffering as a formula for growth vs. archaic addiction ideologies, recovery culture dogmas and medical model psychotherapy.
This work serves as the launch point to inspire a greater awareness that integrates elements from Developmental, Archetypal, Mythopoetic, Depth, Transpersonal and Intregral Psychology with the spiritual undercurrents of inner-alchemy as a more efficacious formula to navigating human relationships.
Manuscripts in Process:
• Narcissus Reborn: Debunking a Modern Myth and Transforming Borderline Relationships
What if everything you thought you knew about narcissism was wrong? This powerful book dismantles the overhyped over sensationalized myth trending misinformation about “narcissism,” exposing the true psychological underpinnings of misunderstood relational struggles.
With evidenced based research offering a new theory that disproves the modern myths that have become common troupes across social media destroying relationships, aiding scapegoating and ensnaring the minds of millions.
Combined with eye opening disclosure and practical tools, this book will guide readers toward profound understanding, new approaches to mutual growth, and the rediscovery of intimacy in relationships often written off as hopeless.
• Digital Gurus: Unmasking the Hidden Dangers of Online Coaching CULTure
What happens when the trusted guide is the master manipulator? This explosive exposé reveals how “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” by the insidious tactics of self-proclaimed, self styled coaches, who unconsciously prey on vulnerability under the guise of mentorship, relationship advice, mental health and spirituality.
Offering piercing clarity and actionable strategies, it equips readers to break free from unseen psychological manipulation, reclaim their mental autonomy, psychological sovereignty and discern true experts from wolves in sheep’s clothing in a world of digital deception.
“I am human, and nothing human is alien to me.” —Terrence (Publius Terentius Afer)
Nosce te Ipsum
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) —Walt Witman, Song of Myself, 51
Words both constrict and liberate. They condense the ephemeral realms of thought into active forms, while simultaneously expanding the mundane dimensions of time and space.
When distilled by the mind into utterance, they bridge the unseen and the seen, spirit and matter. They are neither fully concrete nor temporal abstractions yet, their potency may intone life or death.
Words traverse human landscapes as foolish emissaries, gods of men, unsavory house guests, tiresome dilettantes, transcendent angels, humble illuminations, and spellbound revelations.
They shape causality, bending reality as they are woven and spoken. In this way, words are inherently magical.
But for me, this magic has been a battle. I have suffered and caused suffering. Like many, existential curiosities, and emotional turmoils juxtaposed by small victories and fleeting joys lights a way through the labyrinth of my mortality.
Forever endeavoring to hold the tension between the opposites is a great work and an even greater mystery. This friction embodies the myriad paradox’s that defines me: I am what I am not, and I am not what I am.
By refusing to identify with word-labels I am free to shape myself on the human spectrum beyond the confines of duality—success or failure, good or bad, disordered or ordered, defective or effective, active or still, wrong or right.
I accept myself as I am now and as I am becoming. By reconciling the split duality within I find myself arriving at a singular point: contentment.
A harmony between the finite dance of paradox. Thus transcending the tertium non datur giving birth to a third option, the path less traveled and my personal myth.
This is the inner alchemy of my life, and my living contemplation of these words:
Know Thyself