The next thūmos paper
The scholarship is turning into theory. The new paper takes the Homeric material past commentary and toward a claim about how the soul endures. No journal attached yet — the writing is not waiting for one.
Depth psychology · Recovery · Words & Stories
Cody Peterson
Scholar of the ancient organ of feeling — author, builder, and canyoneer.
I got sober on a curb in Las Vegas in 2013. Since then: a book with Chiron Publications, papers in Jung Journal, a rain-gutter company that runs without me, and two platforms for the psychology of feeling. These days I split my time between the dead languages, a psychology degree, and the slot canyons of southern Utah.
Fat Man’s Misery · Zion Right now
What’s on the desk, in the shop, and out the door — updated as it moves.
Logoi.Health
A younger sibling to Seba, being built right now: a companion over the vocabulary of the soul, fourteen eras of it, Homer forward. Live in early form.
The stories are next
Seba is the person. Logoi is the words. The third sibling is the stories — a companion over the world’s myths, Beowulf to the Mahābhārata to the Enūma Eliš. Chartered; the corpus is already gathering.
Seba.Health & Sebastian
Nearly two thousand pages: a library of three hundred books, a glossary, a lexicon of the soul’s oldest vocabulary, dream work in the depth tradition — and Sebastian, a librarian of the soul you can actually talk to.
The Iron Thūmos and the Empty Vessel
Peer-reviewed and accepted at Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche. A Homeric response to Jung’s Answer to Job.
Toward the clinic
Finishing a psychology degree at the University of Utah, admitted to the M.A. Clinical Mental Health Counseling program at Adams State. The end of this road is a licensed clinician who reads Greek.
Field note · on machines
Almost nobody knows what AI is for yet. A very small number of people are actually building with it — and what a person builds with a machine like this tells you exactly who they are.
I automated a rain-gutter company so it runs without me. Then I built a research engine over hundreds of volumes of depth psychology, taught it to read the dead languages, and started using what came back to poke holes in Jungian theory. Some people are making video games with it. This is my video game.
— from the workshop, southern Utah desert
Book & papers
One monograph, a growing series of papers on thūmos — the Homeric seat of feeling — and what it means for recovery.
Chiron Publications · 2024
The Shadow of a Figure of Light
The Archetype of the Alcoholic and the Journey to Enlightenment.
“A book whose extension is deep, wide, and high… it elevates the vision of Bill Wilson and AA using the psycho-spiritual wisdom of C.G. Jung.” Murray Stein, Ph.D.
Taming Wild Beasts
Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche · Vol. 19, Iss. 2 · 2025
Iron thumos and the interoceptive roots of emotional sobriety in Homer’s Odyssey.
The Iron Thūmos and the Empty Vessel
Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche · peer-reviewed, accepted
A Homeric response to Jung’s Answer to Job.
The next movements
The thūmos series continues
More than one paper is on the desk right now — the furthest along is pushing past scholarship into theory.
Lectures & seminars
A year of weekly lectures on the book, plus seminars for Friendly Circle Berlin on dreams, alchemy, and emotional sobriety.
Out of the library
Field work
Depth psychology is not a metaphor out here. Canyoneering, big walls, and trail running in the desert around Zion — where the descent is literal and the rope matters.
