What happens when you watch a great goal, or witness a team fall apart under pressure, or find yourself unable to explain why you care so deeply about eleven people you have never met kicking a ball around a field? Something is at work that has nothing to do with the game and at the same time, everything to do with it. That is the premise of The Golden Ball, a new podcast from Jung Platform that brings depth psychology into conversation with football, and in doing so, uses the beautiful game as a lens for the deeper game of life.
The podcast is hosted by three depth psychologists, each with a love for the game. Machiel Klerk is a psychotherapist, author, and founder of Jung Platform. Akke-Jeanne Klerk is a personal development coach, depth psychology teacher, and co-founder of Jung Platform. And John O’Brien is a former Olympic and World Cup soccer player who has since trained as a Doctor of Clinical Psychology and now supports athletes in both performance and life. Together, the three bring an unusual combination of lived experience, clinical depth, and psychological curiosity to a subject that is rarely given this kind of serious attention.
Each episode takes a single theme from the game: winning, losing, pressure, identity, belonging, failure- and follows it somewhere deeper. What does football reveal about how we perform when it matters? How do we lose well? What does it mean to be part of a team, and what happens to the individual within it? How does the crowd become something more than the sum of its parts?
New episodes are released every week during the World Cup, making this a well-timed launch. The Golden Ball is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major podcast platforms. The latest episode is available here, and explores the concept of “striving for gold”, using the extreme pressures of the soccer World Cup as a metaphor for life. The hosts contrast external gold such as trophies, medals, and societal status, with internal gold, which represents the realisation of one’s deep potential and authentic self.
About Jung Platform
Jung Platform is the largest global platform for depth psychology education, with a catalogue of online courses and certificate programmes spanning the full breadth of Jungian and post-Jungian thought. Several new and upcoming courses are currently available, many at special reduced prices.
Starting June 17, Jungian analyst Arash Golnam offers Individuation and Plant Medicine. From July 18, Ken James teaches Jungian Typology for those wanting to go beyond the popularised versions of the theory. And from September and October, a Jungian Life Coaching Certificate Program launches two new cohorts, led by Suzanne van Oosten, Elise V. Allan, Lisa Rambaldo, and Akke-Jeanne Klerk. A full list of courses and current pricing is available here.