What this is
The Girl in the Black Funnel MAC system is an original deck of metaphorical cards and an assistant bot that guides you through it. Note that this is not just a set of pictures with fixed meanings but a professional method: each portrait (a projective stimulus) is a shaped image of one particular state, and the bot asks it the questions a psychologist would normally ask in a consultation. You pick a card, the system recognises it and leads you on through the script with questions — what you see in the image, where it echoes in the body, what the psyche is defending, and what this part might turn out to be good for.
The deck was created out of Anna Shyman’s many years of practice and rests on four structural supports: emotional-image work, psychosynthesis, fairy-tale work and symbol drama. Hence the order of things — first the image, then the body, then the defence, and only at the end words and meaning.
What the deck contains
Twenty-one portraits made to the author’s concept. They are split into three blocks, and the split also works as a first assessment: people usually find themselves in one of them.
- Cards 1–5. The basic wounds and masks (after Lise Bourbeau): rejection (the Runaway), abandonment (the Dependent), humiliation (the Masochist), betrayal (the Controller), injustice (the Rigid).
- Cards 6–15. Shadow feelings: suppressed rage (the Rebel), envy (the Comparer), arrogance (the Snow Queen), chronic anxiety (the Panicker), guilt (the Eternal Sinner), toxic shame (the Invisible One), helplessness (the Little Girl), self-sacrifice (the Pleaser), greed (the Black Funnel), apathy (the Dead Princess).
- Cards 16–21. States of deficit and roles: impostor feelings (the Deceiver), immaturity (Puer), sinfulness (the Harlot and the Nun), loneliness (the Hermit), rivalry and aggression (the Huntress), lost identity (the Chameleon).
Three levels of immersion in the MAC system
A level is bought once and stays yours for good: this is not a subscription, nothing renews and nothing is charged again.
- Level 1 “Basic” — $17. 21 portrait cards, the gallery of subpersonalities, a card at random or chosen by hand, and four universal questions to the image.
- Level 2 “Deep Work” — $29 on top. Everything in level one plus 21 unique, full immersion stories for the chosen subpersonality and written questions for the Shadow Journal: the symptom, the mask, the defence mechanism, the echo in the body. More than 440 combinations.
- Level 3 “Transformation” — $67 for full access. Everything above plus a builder of 21 unique fairy tales: living the ending symbolically, finding the hidden talent of the subpersonality you are exploring (the resource) and bringing its strength back out of the black funnel.
If you would like to practise with real people, subscribe to the closed Kontekst club, $120 a month: individual work with the author and the club’s other activities.
Who should not go into it alone
The system is built for independent work by psychologically healthy people: it asks for psychological steadiness and the ability to hold tension. There are direct contraindications — clinical depression, acute grief, a fresh trauma; in those states the deck should only be used alongside a specialist. It is a tool for self-knowledge and does not replace medical or psychiatric care.
Techniques for coming out of the trance-like state and returning to reality are built in, and they sit exactly where they sit in a live session — on the way out of difficult material.
The deck on paper
The same 21 cards are being prepared for print as a physical deck, for work at a table, with a client and in a group. There is no print run yet: we are collecting the list of people to bring it to, and watching which countries they are in. The deck page and pre-orders →
Before you start
The bot leads step by step, but whether to go into this material today is your call. Everything worth reading first is free on the site: the method, the contraindications, the opening and closing practices, the exercises.
