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Taming Your Inner Critic: Turn Self-Attack into Self-Awareness · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: We wanted to talk about the inner critic, our tendency
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: to self-attack, to condemn ourselves, to blame ourselves all the
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: time for things. What is that about? What purpose does
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: it serve? And how might it be affecting us? And
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  Speaker 2: how can we understand this from a depth psychological lens?
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: But before we jump into that very meaty, juicy topic...
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  Speaker 2: I just wanted to mention that the three of us
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: trained to become Jungian analysts at the C.G. Jung Institute
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: of Philadelphia. And the Jung Institute of Philadelphia has a
• 1:22
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• 1:27
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• 1:33
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• 1:35
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• 1:39
  Speaker 2: have to be, you know, really interested in this stuff.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: And then it's great. Yeah.
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: So if you are curious, interested, this has just peaked
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: something in you, go online, take a look at cgyungphiladelphia.org.
• 1:58
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• 3:08
  Speaker 5: Come on in.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: Come on in.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so back to being self-attacking or inner critic. Where
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  Speaker 2: do you want to start with this topic?
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  Speaker 4: Well, you know, I usually start at the beginning.
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  Speaker 3: Okay.
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  Speaker 4: If it's a dream, I usually start right at the
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  Speaker 4: very beginning. And here I start at the beginning where
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: we all start developmentally. That where do we start? We
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: start in relationship to other people. We grew up in
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  Speaker 4: someone's body. We have to be spoken to, talked to,
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: attended to, sung to, rocked and held in order to
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  Speaker 4: really come into being. And if those early attachment ties
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  Speaker 4: are not secure, are not basically substantially affirming, it can
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  Speaker 4: lead to a real problem for a developing child who
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  Speaker 4: is utterly dependent on caretakers for all kinds of things.
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  Speaker 4: from basic biological needs to basic psychological needs. And the
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  Speaker 4: tendency in little kids is to blame themselves. Ego is
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  Speaker 4: not developed. There's no way to really think about this.
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  Speaker 4: But a toddler and a child will do almost anything
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  Speaker 4: to maintain ties with caregivers. So if mom, dad, nursery
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  Speaker 4: school teachers, other people in authority are not sufficiently assuming,
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  Speaker 4: most of the time the child will assume, uh-oh, it
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  Speaker 4: must be because I'm not good enough. I'm not doing
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  Speaker 4: it right. I must have screwed up. Somehow I'm wrong.
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  Speaker 4: And there the inner critic is born.
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  Speaker 2: So it is certainly true, I think, that if we
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  Speaker 2: have a parent who talks to us in a negative way,
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  Speaker 2: who's very critical, that that gets interjected. There's a $ 10
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  Speaker 2: word from psychoanalysis for you. And we kind of carry
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  Speaker 2: that inner negative voice with us. And a lot of times, sometimes,
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  Speaker 2: you know, if you're working with someone who has a
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  Speaker 2: real inner critic and you can kind of say, you know,
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  Speaker 2: you hear them talk to the way they talk to
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  Speaker 2: themselves and you say, well, who talked to you that way? And,
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  Speaker 2: you know, and sometimes it's like, well, yeah, my mom
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  Speaker 2: used to say just that thing to me. But I
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  Speaker 2: do want to say, though, that sometimes the inner critic
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  Speaker 2: really has its genesis in these kind of early life dynamics.
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  Speaker 2: But I don't think that's always true. You know, Clarissa
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  Speaker 2: Pinkola Estes in Women Who Run With the Wolves talks
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  Speaker 2: about the inner predator or the inner saboteur. And she says,
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  Speaker 2: it just is. There really isn't always an origin story
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  Speaker 2: for it. And that's my experience, too. I've worked with
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  Speaker 2: some people with really eviscerating inner critic stories. And not
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  Speaker 2: all of them had critical parents. So I think that
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  Speaker 2: can be sort of an additive factor. Sometimes it can
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  Speaker 2: be the catalyzing thing or even maybe the main thing,
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  Speaker 2: but I don't think it's the only thing. We may
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  Speaker 2: just have a tendency to have this bloom in our psyche.
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  Speaker 2: And Josephine, I'd love to hear you come in on this,
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  Speaker 2: but in my experience, women are more susceptible to this
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  Speaker 2: than men.
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  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 5: I don't know if you'd agree with that.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: But tell me why you would think, before I come
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  Speaker 3: into it, why would you think that women.
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  Speaker 2: Just from experience, my experience, my experience of men and
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  Speaker 2: women is that women are more likely to come in
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  Speaker 2: and have this sort of, you know, self-eviscerating. Not that
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  Speaker 2: I haven't worked with men who have it too. I have.
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  Speaker 2: But I would say, proportionately, I see this more in
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  Speaker 2: women than men. I don't know that I have a
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  Speaker 2: theory about it.
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  Speaker 3: I don't know that I can... put a line down
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  Speaker 3: by gender, but I do think that there definitely is
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  Speaker 3: kind of an atmosphere, internal atmospheres that predispose someone towards
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  Speaker 3: a more negative orientation, which can be both a negative
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: orientation towards the ego, towards oneself, as well as a
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  Speaker 3: negative orientation towards others and other things in the world.
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  Speaker 3: I find that if one is vulnerable to kind of
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  Speaker 3: a spirit of negativity, it shows up in all kinds
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  Speaker 3: of places.
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  Speaker 5: I really like that. Because you're absolutely right.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: There is a kind of overall pall on the psyche often. Well, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: in some cases. But sometimes there's someone who's just really
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: deferential and kind of outwardly, at least consciously, very kind
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: of positive toward other people, but very, very down on herself, say.
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  Speaker 2: But I suspect underneath that, like you're saying, there's There's
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  Speaker 2: just a lot of unprocessed aggression or something.
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  Speaker 4: You know, I'm thinking about how much this might be
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  Speaker 4: skewed toward gender, which takes me to the work of
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  Speaker 4: Alice Miller, who wrote a book quite a while back
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  Speaker 4: called The Drama of the Gifted Child. And maybe it's
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  Speaker 4: not so much gendered as it is The child who
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  Speaker 4: is especially attuned, especially relationally oriented, especially sensitive and intuitive,
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  Speaker 4: who wants and needs and craves a relationship with caregivers maybe,
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  Speaker 4: you know, more than the other kids do. and then
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  Speaker 4: tends to take on him or herself any ruptures or
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: deficiencies in that relationship. And the plus side of it,
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: which I want to bring in now, is that it
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: gives that child some hope of control, of maybe I
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  Speaker 4: can't change mom or dad or the teacher or people
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  Speaker 4: at church, but I can change myself. I'll take it on.
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  Speaker 4: I'll do better. I'll change this. I'll do that. I
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  Speaker 4: won't do this. So there is a good effort toward
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: ego development underneath the inner critic that may be born
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: fairly young in life.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: So if you're interested in articulating Patreon and possibly becoming
• 10:01
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• 10:05
  Speaker 2: our bonus material this week over on our YouTube channel.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: We answer a question from one of our supporters about
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: how personality is understood and how in the Jungian model
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: of the psyche. And it was really interesting. We got
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: into some good stuff. So check that out.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: So I think the spirit of critique, if we just
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: look at the word in and of itself, has something
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: to do with differentiation. And it comes from the Greek kritikos,
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  Speaker 3: which basically means to discern, to be able to separate,
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  Speaker 3: to make a decision, to evaluate. So this capacity, which
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  Speaker 3: I think in and of itself can be positive to self-assess.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm regarding a choice I made or something
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: I said or a characteristic in my personality and to
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: be able to have some discernment around it and at
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: many times to find ourselves lacking. A couple of things
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  Speaker 3: that I'm interested in when somebody comes forward with what
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  Speaker 3: I think is maybe excessive criticism is, is it true?
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  Speaker 3: and trying to tease out what is this thing that
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  Speaker 3: you're saying to yourself or an inner figure is saying
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  Speaker 3: to you? Is it blatantly absurd, fictionalized, and ridiculous, which
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  Speaker 3: can be reassuring to us to be able to look
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  Speaker 3: at that? Is it true, and if it's true, in
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  Speaker 3: what context and to what degree? And if it is true,
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  Speaker 3: what is one suggesting to do about that? Because just
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  Speaker 3: lambasting oneself, so that we don't want to leave the house,
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  Speaker 3: may not be particularly useful, even if we do find
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  Speaker 3: that we have made a mistake or that we have
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  Speaker 3: some kind of negative flaw. So I think there's a
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  Speaker 3: lot of angles to it, but the ability to look
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: at the personality as if it's the engine in a car,
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  Speaker 3: and you want to see how it's running and whether
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  Speaker 3: or not there's something can be done to optimize it
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  Speaker 3: or if something is broken, And if you can stay
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  Speaker 3: relaxed and calm about that and kind of get yourself
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  Speaker 3: out into life, even though you may be driving a
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  Speaker 3: jalopy of a personality, you know, and I have driven
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  Speaker 3: many jalopies in my life in many different domains. For years,
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  Speaker 3: you know, when I was young, I was struggling terribly financially.
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  Speaker 3: I had this enormous yellow eight-cylinder Dodge. It was like
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: driving a sofa down the road, but like the headliner
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  Speaker 3: had separated from the ceiling. And so it was this
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  Speaker 3: big poof of fabric that kind of rested at the
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  Speaker 3: top of my head as I was driving, which kind
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  Speaker 3: of made it seem like the inside of the car
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  Speaker 3: was like a strange, enormous hat that I was wearing.
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  Speaker 3: driving down the road. I just kind of lived with it.
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  Speaker 3: I was a starving actor. This is the cost of
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: being an artist. See, now I'm laughing so much, I'm
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: not sure why I'm telling you the story.
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  Speaker 5: It's a great antidote, but I.
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  Speaker 2: Know why you're telling the story and you're saying something
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  Speaker 2: so important, which is I was hoping this would come up.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: What a delightful way for it to come up. Is that,
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  Speaker 2: you know, to use it correctly, and Deb, you're talking
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  Speaker 2: about sort of the opportunity for ego development, to use
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: self-criticism correctly, there really has to be an element of,
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: I want to say, well, objectivity maybe, but I could
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: also talk about it like genuine curiosity and even self-compassion.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: And Joseph, I love your, it's like your car's not working.
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  Speaker 2: You don't, like, get a whip and beat your car.
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  Speaker 3: You open up the hood. You just drive it down
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  Speaker 3: the road.
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  Speaker 4: It is.
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  Speaker 3: Right, right. Got to get to the store.
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 2: You're not, you know, it's like you're not going to
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: be perfect, and you don't have to be perfect. And
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  Speaker 2: I think sometimes that tendency, that kind of, like, tendency
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  Speaker 2: in the psyche to get into a groove where it's
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  Speaker 2: just constant, constant, constant self-attack, it can actually be a defense.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: It can be a defense against, maybe you're trying to
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  Speaker 2: attack yourself before anyone else attacks you, or it can
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  Speaker 2: be a defense against really having to take responsibility for
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: something that you did wrong. There's a way that you can,
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: there's a way that it can become very self-indulgent to
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: be like, oh my God, I'm a terrible person.
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: Instead of just being like, you know what? I did
• 14:44
  Speaker 5: this thing.
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  Speaker 2: I'm remembering a few years ago, I did, I was
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: actually in absence. I didn't do something I should have
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: done for a friend. And She brought it to my
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: attention and I was so glad she did. And I
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: just let myself take it in and I felt terrible,
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: you know. But self-flagellating, like, oh, I'm a terrible person,
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: that kind of ruminative thing that could happen would not
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: have moved me. Instead, I had to kind of cry
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: my tears for what I had done, make amends to
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: her as best I could, and then move forward. So
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: I really like your Jalopy metaphor, Joseph. Yeah.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: Well, just driving around with what we got.
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: That's right. That's right.
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: And in your hilarious story, the car actually worked.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: It did.
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  Speaker 5: It worked well enough.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: I drove it for a long time.
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: It got you from point A to point B. And
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: which takes me to, I think, saying what you guys
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: are saying yet again. There's such a difference between discernment,
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: as you brought up, Joseph, of like, how do I
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: discern what's going on? Well, this is a jalopy and
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: the light hangs down and I look ridiculous, but a
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: car works. That's discernment versus, I must be a terrible
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  Speaker 4: person driving this god-awful car. What kind of a jerk
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: am I? That is not helpful discernment. And to go
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: back to something you mentioned earlier, Joseph, it's not true.
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: Ask yourself, is this actually true?
• 16:24
  Speaker 5: Like what's, what's, what's, yeah, what's true. That's great job.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: I like, I like that because it's true when you're
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: just sort of in a self-condemnatory state where you're just like,
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: I'm terrible, I'm terrible, I'm terrible. There's no new information there.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: You haven't learned anything new. You haven't taken, you know,
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: it looks like you're taking responsibility, right? but you're actually
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: kind of not. So this can be an interpersonal dynamic too,
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: where someone raises like, hey, there's something, you know, your partner. Hey,
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: there's somebody I want to talk to you about. I know,
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: I'm a terrible person.
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  Speaker 5: And like suddenly you can't.
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  Speaker 4: Have a conversation.
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  Speaker 2: You've actually avoided hearing what's wrong and taking responsibility for it.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: You've intercepted it by just like grabbing the flail and,
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: you know, flagellating yourself and it's actually um it's actually
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: again i come back to that term self-indulgent but i
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: but deb what you're saying is it's actually it's actually
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: work to say what did i do in this situation
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: that i really wish i hadn't done you know that
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: it's work it's not fun work but it is work.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: But that's a really thoughtful critique yes yes it's a
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: thoughtful critique that is giving you information that you could
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: do anything with it's like going to the doctor and
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: You get a checkup, and then they start talking about
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: whether or not the clothing you're wearing is attractive. Is
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: that the right information in this context? No, that's not
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: what we're looking for here. It may be true that
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: I'm dressed like a 1981 Dodge with a fallen headliner,
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: but that is not why I'm coming to the doctors today.
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm also thinking about, you know, that tendency
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: to veer into self-condemnation. If it's interpersonal, it reminds me
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: of the old joke about you can't fire me, I quit. Yes.
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: But it also just cuts right across any possibility for
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: an actual interpersonal process.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: Totally.
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: And the other is that really what is being expressed
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: is I'm upset, I'm angry. I'm frustrated. I'm hurt. I
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: will take it out on myself, which is called turning
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: against the self. And then you get this ridiculous narrative of,
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm just no good. I fail at everything
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: I do. I'm one of the jerk I am, which
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: is also not helpful at all. It precludes, wait a minute,
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: what's going on here? What actually happened? And it cuts
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: across any possibility for repair like you had with your friend, Lisa,
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: of like, I'm really sorry.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: The difference between critique and condemnation, which are very different.
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, good point.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: They can sound, I guess, in our minds that way,
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: but the critique has something to do with discernment, and
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: it should have specificity. That may lead, like a legal proceeding,
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: to a condemnation, which is a sentence, doom, blame, disregard, damage.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: We convict you of cooking crappy food, you know, um, how,
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: you know, sentencing you now to that terrible meal. Um,
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: But if we're separating out, if we have a good
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: inner critiquer, they are giving us accurate information. Whether or
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: not we are then convicted, condemned because of what we
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: have observed has nothing to do with a whole other
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: part of the psyche Sometimes, which can be valid, because
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: we may have acted against our values in some fashion,
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: and we really have created harm that we need to
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: participate in healing. But the critiquing part, if the critique
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: is intelligent, could give us information.
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm aware as we're talking that in my experience,
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: there are different flavors of self-critique. So there are some
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: extremely likable, very well-related people who do this to themselves. And,
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: you know, and your heart just kind of goes out
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: to them. And then there's something a little bit more
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: along the lines of, you know, You know, we're at
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: such a kind of extreme rigid defense. And as you said, Deb,
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: it kind of cuts across the possibility of any kind
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: of real, you know, every time you turn toward them
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: and want to connect a little more, they're, you know,
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: over in the corner, you know, flagellating themselves to avoid you,
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: you know, ever saying anything critical of them or anything
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: like that. And that is a little bit less appealing,
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: I think, in those terms. I'm also imagining someone with
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: a self-critiquing propensity listening to this episode and thinking, oh, no.
• 21:29
  Speaker 5: I'm self-critiquing.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: Oh, no.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: You know, it's like when you have that propensity, you
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: can turn anything against yourself very, very easily. So you
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: could be critiquing yourself because you're self-critiquing in a way
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: that would be, you know, just it's a groove, right?
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: And in some sense, you have to lift yourself out
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: of the groove a little bit so that you can
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: think about it. You have to get out of the groove.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: And the way to get out of the groove, I think,
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: is something like curiosity and self-compassion. And to go back
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: to your car, Joseph, you know, it's like, hey, it's
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: getting me around.
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: It may not be perfect. Let me see what I
• 22:12
  Speaker 5: need to do to keep it running. Thumbtacks.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: It's okay. Thumbtacks pressed into the ceiling of the inside
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: of the car. They worked for a while.
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I was thinking of masking tape, but....
• 22:26
  Speaker 5: Crazy clue.
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: Right. Of an imperfect solution, but that's okay. I'm thinking
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: about what you just said, Lisa, about the different flavors
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: of self.
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: Let's call it self-condemnation or self-attack versus the discernment around critique.
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: So I'm thinking people who apologize all the time. That
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: could be a call to say, what am I doing? Like, oh,
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm sorry. Oh, gosh. Blaming oneself. Something went wrong.
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: It must be my fault. It must be me. Taking
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: responsibility for somebody else's feelings. Yeah. Like, oh, I'm really sorry.
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: Do you feel bad about that? I should have thought
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: of you when I was getting coffee and I didn't
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: think of you. It's like, wait a minute. What's going on?
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: And feeling guilty or unentitled if you say no.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: No, I can't do that. Hey, would you mind running
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: out or out of paper towels during the lunch hour?
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: Would you just run off and grab some for the office?
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: I'm like, no, not necessarily. I really wanted to have
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: some recovery personal time in my office this lunch hour.
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: So some of those are little indicators of, am I
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: doing something where I capitulate to an other for fear
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: of being criticized? If I say, no, I don't want to.
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: Or if another person feels bad because I walk in
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: with coffee and a donut and I didn't think about
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: my office mate, is it really my fault?
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: That may be in that realm of fawning behavior where
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: I've done something and then I'm anxious about how I'm
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: going to be treated in some way and then offering
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: kind of self-abnegation as a form of fawning.
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:33
  Speaker 5: I have a friend.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: who she is just delightful and she's very, very funny,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: but her habitual style of humor is very much based
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: on sort of self-attack.
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: And I had a big come-to-Jesus conversation with her last weekend.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: I was like, you've got to stop doing that, you know,
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: because a little bit of it is hilarious. But she really,
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: really kind of serves herself up she really lays herself
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: out on the altar. And, you know, it's interesting how
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: if you do that verbally, if you attack yourself verbally,
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: sometimes it's just inner, it's just inner. But a lot
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: of times it takes this form in the outer world where,
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: you know, you arrive late for something, you're like, I'm
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: such a fucking idiot, you know, or whatever. And like
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: other people notice that in your environment and people who
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: are not particularly, I mean, unconsciously it influences other people, right?
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Like they may not think, oh, great. she's attacking herself,
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: so I'm going to attack her. But it constellates something. Joseph,
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: you said something a number of years ago on the
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: podcast that I've never forgotten. You said, you know, masochism
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: invites sadism. And so if you are laying yourself out
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: on the altar, you can expect to get attacked. And
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: it also just kind of depreciates your value in the
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: eyes of the other. You know, it's like, So we
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: have to be careful about that. But I also think
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: that that more kind of characterological thing where we evade
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: taking responsibility for ourselves by seeming to take responsibility by self-flagellating,
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: which is very different than what my friend does.
• 26:18
  Speaker 5: It's a little bit more characterological.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: I consider that a negative inflation, or it can lead
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: into that, which is this idea that Jung had that,
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: you know, you can be all puffed up with, like,
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: I'm the greatest person in the world. The negative inflation
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: is like, woe is me.
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: I'm so terrible. I'm so awful.
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: You must hate me.
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: And it's me, me, me, right? It's very.
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: Exactly. It's still me, me, me. And I think part
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: of it, too, there's an inflation in holding oneself up
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: to an impossible standard of perfection. as if I think
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: of everyone and everything all the time. I'm always on time.
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: I'm always prepared. I always wonder who else in the
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: office I can bring coffee for. Then what? Then I
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: will absolve myself from my own inner inability to affirm
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: myself in some basic way, which takes me back to
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: your yellow Dodge jalopy, Joseph, of is such a great
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: image of, you know, this is my car. It's yellow,
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: for Pete's sake.
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: Was it like bright yellow?
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: It was like banana yellow.
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: Banana yellow.
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: At one time, that was considered really big. And then
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: the back part of the cab was like in this
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: faux white leather, which, of course, was peeling off the
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: car on top of it. It's like it had a
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: horrible sunburn on top of everything else.
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: So, you know, if we take that as an image
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: somehow of oneself, you know, we could say, oh, my God,
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: this is I must be a terrible person. I should
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: be driving a state of the art car. This is
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: a versus it's a car. It gets me from here
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: to there. And I'm taking it back to the person
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: who's always so self-critical of it's perfectly okay. The inner
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: light is dangling from the ceiling. It's not a great
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: color in terms of style, but I'm okay.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: I kind of like the yellow part of it, just that,
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: you know, that wasn't my biggest complaint about the car. Okay.
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: We do have a tendency to have that negative inflation
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: if we're holding ourselves to some impossible standard around performance,
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: around how other people perceive us.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: Versus how we ourselves are doing.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: So two things that we could summarize from this last
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: bit is if you find yourself using hyperbolic language, be suspicious. Ah.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: And if you find yourself using very general language, whenever
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: we're generalizing like, oh, I'm such a piece of shit.
• 29:21
  Speaker 5: That's great.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: It's not specific enough. What the hell does that mean?
• 29:25
  Speaker 5: Damn, Joseph, I love that.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 29:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, keep going.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: So when we hear ourselves, which could just be our
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: own actually ego habit, or it's being prompted by an
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: inner figure, we can turn around and ask for specific evidence.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: What exactly am I evaluating? And am I evaluating it
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: in right proportion? And any time I hear myself or
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: any of my analysis use hyperbolic language like, they are
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: all like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. you know, and
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: it's just getting higher and bigger and bigger and bigger.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: We know we're in the realm of the complex.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: Because complexes depend on generalities in order to slip in
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: under the wire and start messing with us.
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: That's brilliant.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: And it's, you know, that also ties into the cognitive
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: behavioral thing about cognitive distortions. I can't remember which one
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: that is, but like one of them is like when
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: you speak in these kind of absolute terms, because Rarely
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: are absolutes true.
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: Like, I'm not always a piece of shit. You know,
• 30:28
  Speaker 5: I mean, what does that even mean?
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: But the old gestalt mantra is you need data. So
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: what is the horrible, heinous crime that you have committed?
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: Do you know what it was? You spilled the coffee
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: and it went all over the place. That's the data.
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: That's what happened. Or the data is, I said I
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: would call so-and-so back, and I completely forgot. It just
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: went right out of my mind.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: And even, Deb, with that, someone says, I spilled the coffee,
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: it went all over my place, and then they're turning
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: bright red. Wait a minute. Where did it actually go? Well,
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: it went across the table. Well, how far did it go? Well,
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: it went about nine inches across the table. And about
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: how wide was that? It was maybe about four inches wide.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: And so was it a one? napkin mess or four
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: napkin mess. It sounds silly, but when you break it
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: down to that granular level, then it's all of a
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: sudden six ounces of coffee were on the table, it
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: took four napkins, and then it was gone. That's a
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: very different story. That's data. Right, right.
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: That's the data. And sometimes the data can be terrible.
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: Let's take a fender bender. I was pulling out of
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: the parking space. My mind was on other stuff. And
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: I bashed into the car behind me. Ugh. Well, well
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: then what? Does that mean, you know, that you're the worst,
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: most god-awful, heinous arch-criminal of all time?
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: No.
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: It means you can do a little self-analysis. I was distracted.
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: I was in a hurry. I wasn't paying attention. And
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: now I have to call the insurance company. I'll wait
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: for the owner of this car. Maybe the police come.
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: It's going to take some time this morning. It's going
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: to affect my insurance record. And I will have to
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: feel some regret about it and hopefully learn a little something.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Well, and that's the thing is that I think when
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: you retreat into the shell of I'm terrible, I'm terrible,
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: I'm terrible, you actually rarely learn anything.
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: You've not allowed yourself to be changed by it.
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Whereas if you approach it with some real curiosity, like, okay,
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: what did I do? What's the data, as the two
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: of you were saying? And then, you know, how did
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: that happen? You know, not in a sort of defensive way.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: How could I let that happen? But no, actually, what happened?
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: What was I doing? What was I thinking about? What
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: would I do differently next time?
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: And then you've been changed and you've taken responsibility for
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: something too.
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: And then the self-condemnation hopefully can just turn into grief. Right.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: Because there are things that we, situations we find ourselves
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: in that just are sad because they are. And that
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: we are in grief. We wish this hadn't happened, whether
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: we participated in it or not. We wish it was different.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: Something that my analyst... who's deceased now, she was an ancient,
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: wise old woman, I was lamenting something that I had
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: done that was deeply painful to me to reflect upon.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: And we were talking at great length about it. And
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: I said, I don't feel there's anything that I can
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: do to correct this. I mean, it's something from a long,
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: long time ago. And then we sat in the agony
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: of that for a while, and she said, grief is
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: the correction. And I just felt the truth of that. Yeah.
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: That your grief is the repair at the level of soul.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: Because people who do harmful things and don't feel grief
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: are caught in it. And sometimes that is the only
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: reparation that's available to us. And if it's authentic grief,
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: there is something curative and maturing in the soul. Yes.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 35:00
  Speaker 5: That's beautiful.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: You know, I want to bring up something that I
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: see in the culture around this, which is there's a
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: great interest in shadow work. And there's a lot on
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: social media and there's books out about shadow work. And
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: they're sort of informed by Jung, but if they don't
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: have a deep understanding of Jung, some of this idea
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: of shadow work turns into this kind of generalized self-flagellation.
• 35:31
  Speaker 5: And I've had.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: People, you know, we've had people write into podcasts with
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: questions or people kind of contact me individually and they're
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: describing what they think is shadow work, which is basically
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: just like this terrible self-abnegation and just like wallowing around
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: in what a terrible person they are. And I think, no, no, no,
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: that's not it at all. So, you know, there's something
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: that's kind of appealing and even seductive about falling into
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: the groove where we're just self-condemning. In a way, it
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: allows us to escape, as we've been saying, the actual
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: taking responsibility for something that we need to look at.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: We can just condemn ourselves and be done with it.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: We don't have to do the hard work of thinking
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: about it. So if you're interested in shadow work, just
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: please know that it's not that.
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: Also, it can be an attempt to arrogate to ego
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: what does not belong to ego. Like, okay, if this
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: means that I'm simply a terrible person and I screwed
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: up and I've faced my own inner demon or inner
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: thief or whatever, then good. I've done it all with
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: my ego and it's in my ego and I'm going
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: to self-flagellate about it. And you haven't descended into.
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: You know, some of the other things we've been talking
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: about of what actually happened and the feelings of regret
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: or sparking some kind of self-reflection, needing to repair a
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: fence or a relationship with someone else, there has to
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: be feeling in it rather than just self-judgment. That's just
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: plain egotistical.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: So I do want to maybe lead us more for
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: a minute into this realm where people have this tendency
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: to really beat up on themselves, not so much as
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: a defense, but out of just a kind of What
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: is it?
• 37:57
  Speaker 5: An ego habit?
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, Clarissa Ben-Kol Estes literally says there's just no origin.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: You know, it's just a just so in the psyche.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: And how terribly painful that is. You know, we did
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: an episode a number of years ago about self-talk, and
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: we talked about it a little bit then. I think
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: that negative self-talk is incredibly, incredibly damaging. And oftentimes we
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: don't even know that we're doing it. There's a great book.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: called chatter that's about the science of what we know
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: about self-talk and how we talk to ourself influences us
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: for the better and and and for the worse so
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: you know it i invite you if you're listening to
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: this to pay attention how do you talk to yourself
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: when you um i don't know leave the oven on
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: you know do you come back in the room and
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: go god i'm such an idiot you know You know,
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: watch it. Watch what you say to yourself and don't,
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: you know, don't talk to yourself the way you wouldn't
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: talk to someone that you care about.
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: But I do want to say that one way that
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: I think about this, especially I'm going to talk about
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: it in women, although I think we could make a
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: similar argument for men, is it's a manifestation of the
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: negative animus. Which, of course, is kind of one of
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: the ways that we can see this is in fairy tales.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: So there's the fairy tale Bluebeard. I'm thinking of the
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: Grimm's version of that story, which I like tremendously. called
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: Fitcher's Bird. And just to lay out the beginning of
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: the story, three young women are at home one day.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: A man comes by. He's actually a magician, but he's
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: dressed as a beggar. He knocks on the door and
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: he asks for a or the oldest daughter, gives him
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: a piece of bread. And when she does that, the
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: wizard has power over her and makes her jump in
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: his basket. He carries her back to his castle and
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: shows her all around and says she can go in
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: any room she wants, except that one right there.
• 40:05
  Speaker 5: Don't go in that room.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: And he leaves her alone and he gives her an
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: egg and a key. And he says, keep the egg
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: with you always. And so she does. So she's exploring.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: She goes into the forbidden chamber, which you know, you're
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: never supposed to do that, but always you wind up
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: doing it. She goes into the forbidden chamber and what
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: she sees in there is a vat full of chopped
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: up body parts of his previous wives. And she's so startled,
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: she drops the egg in the vat and it's bloody.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: She can't wipe the blood off. He comes back. He says, ha,
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: you went in the bloody chamber. Now you shall go
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: there too. And he chops her up, throws her in.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: Same thing happens to the The second sister, it's the
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: third sister who is able to break the cycle and
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: bring and rescue her other sisters and bring them back
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: to life and vanquishes the magician, the sorcerer. But it's
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: such a great image, I think, of like how the
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: negative animus or this, if we want to call it
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: just the inner critic for now, we can do that,
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: operates in our psyches, right? It can actually dismember us.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: It can completely slaughter us sometimes. And really, that has
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: a big effect on the personality in the world. If
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: you're trying to accomplish something and you've just got that
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: kind of voice going. But I think that the image
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: of that figure is a very complex one. And the
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: call is to transform it, not to just banish it.
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: I'm appreciating, I want to do two things. But first,
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: to appreciate lifting this up to the archetypal level. That, yes,
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: you know, there could have been all kinds of things
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: in our culture and in your upbringing, whoever the you is,
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: that affect and create this dynamic. But I'm Part two
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: is I'm going to read what Clarissa Pinkola Estes says
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: about this. There is also within the psyche naturally an
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: innate contra naturum, against nature, aspect. The contra naturum aspect
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: opposes the positive. It is against development, against harmony, and
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: against the wild, which means against ego. It's a derisive
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: and murderous antagonist born into us, and even with the
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: best parental nurture, the intruder's sole assignment is to attempt
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: to turn all crossroads into closed roads. And I'm also thinking,
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: going back to what we talked about before, that the
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: sisters who hand over the piece of bread... to our
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: wizard magician posing as a beggar, that she says, if
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: a man could be that charming, then perhaps he was
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: not so bad. So if a man could be that
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: much of a supplicant, if a person is that needy,
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: perhaps he could be not that bad. And that we
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: get through, a kind of verging into pity, innocence. We
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: forego our own ability to confront and to see that
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: inner predator, the inner critic for who and what it is.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: And I think it's like, so what stance do we
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: take toward the negative animus, the inner critic, whatever we
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: want to, you know, the inner saboteur? I mean, sometimes
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: you just have to say, get the heck out of here,
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: you know. But I don't know that that's always the
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: case because it's a powerful thing, right?
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: I don't know that it works doing that, just saying
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: get away from me. Right.
• 44:10
  Speaker 5: I don't know that it works.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: And you can also see just on a practical level,
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: there is a potential utility to having a voice like that, right?
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: It's like, you know, maybe you're such a fucking idiot,
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: it's not the right way to talk to yourself when
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: you leave the oven on. But the voice that says, well,
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: you know, you might want to be more careful about
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: leaving the other oven on. I mean, that ability to
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: self-critique is ultimately what helps us grow. So the ability
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: per se is not a negative thing. But there is,
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: and I want to say, especially when we're talking about
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: it as an archetypal force, it is something really powerful.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: And as I said a minute ago, I think what
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: it demands is transformation. There's a great book called The Wizard,
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: the Agate Fitcher's Bird, which is this wonderful exploration of
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: Fitcher's Bird. And I want to just read just a
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: little bit about what she says about the sorcerer character.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: She said, Like Fitcher's Bird, many fairy tales harbor a
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: transformational spirit, often a devilish character whose evil activity paradoxically
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: leads to renewal. The wizard represents a psychic figure that
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: we reject in our conventional religious and rational lives, one
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: that we have relegated to the unconscious and so forced
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: into a negative role. He is a spirit of nature
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: or a spirit of the unconscious and its transformational capacities,
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: an archetypal force of uncontrollable energy. So there is a
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: call to know that negative aspect of the psyche more deeply. But,
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: you know, it's a lot. So you have to be
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: sort of well-equipped when you go to meet it. And
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: I'll put the name of that book and the author
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: in the show notes.
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: In alignment with that, and a little bit, stepping a
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: little bit into a new direction, there are times where
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: we also have to conjure the inner critic. Because for some,
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: it's not adequately present. So for instance, in my analysis,
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: who I admire greatly that have been in AA for many,
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: many years, a part of most Alcoholics Anonymous meetings is
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: that somebody will act as the speaker. And part of
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: the speaker's role is to, in a confessional way, talk
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: about their own story, the suffering that their alcoholism caused
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: them and the path that they found towards recovery. And
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: so there is a value to reviewing the suffering that
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: we have caused ourselves and others as a kind of
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: vaccination against repeating the activity. So part of that is
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: based on an accurate description. Part of it is based
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: on a very thorough self-reflection, both in terms of the
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: impact we've had and the conditions inside of ourselves without
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: any evasion of responsibility, and the process of confession, which
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: creates community, it's a bid for some form of support.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: And it's also a demonstration that we can survive the
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: truth and move beyond it. So sometimes the inner critic
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: is the truth teller, who is reinforcing us against repeating
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: a mistake or worse, keeping us safe and keeping the
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: people around us safe from our own capacity to be destructive.
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: And that's shadow work.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there that is.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: That's great talk. Underneath this process of the self-critic or self-condemnation,
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: as well as this possibility of an archetypally destructive energy,
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: which is kind of the energy of set that stands
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: eternally against Osiris. The force of entropy and chaos and
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: dissolution of all things. But there is also a, I think,
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: an impulse towards self-purification. That in most ancient traditions, purification
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: rites were have something to do with confession and limits
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: that have to do with a self-imposed suffering. That I'm
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: going to submit to some form of process, and that
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: may be I'm going to fast, for instance, which is
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: a kind of uncomfortable process. But the idea is that
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: by controlling or confronting or limiting myself in some fashion,
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: that I will be the better for it. So self-flagellation,
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: self-critique or self-criticism can be, in excess, a misguided effort
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: towards self-purification or a seeking for absolution. Where it becomes
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: really difficult is If the reason for the absolution has
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: disappeared from consciousness and all we're left with is an
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: endless cycle of self-punishment in the hope that we will
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: somehow be better for it in some future date, that
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: becomes really difficult. And that can happen when there is
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: a kind of multi-generational pattern.
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: Of self-reproach or self-harm.
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: Where the actual reason, which could be one or two
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: generations back, has disappeared from consciousness, but the behavior of
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: self-punishment or self-attack remains as a norm within the family system.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: But from the standpoint of purification, one knows what has
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: happened and one hopes or believes But the limits that
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: are then imposed will lead to some form of a correction.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: You know, that links into what both of you were
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: saying earlier. There's something about consciousness. Are we conscious of
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: what we're critiquing? Why we're critiquing it?
• 50:47
  Speaker 5: Are we conscious?
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: Or are we just falling into generalities? Or a kind
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: of a patterned response?
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: And What you're saying, Joseph, is in the process of purification,
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: and we've touched on it before, but there's a beginning
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: and a middle and an end. That if I have
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: failed to call somebody back, I said, oh, I'll get
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: back to you, and I didn't do it, rather than
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: just telling myself what a horrible person I am, that
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: I go to the data of this is what I did,
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: It actually really did hurt that person. They were expecting
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: me to get back. I feel regret. I have a
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: process with myself about that. I can make a repair
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: with the person, as you did, Lisa. I'm really sorry
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: about that. And then it is over. Now I have
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: done what I can do to make this repair. It
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: might be just something in myself to take the... a
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: little incident of spilling the coffee. Let's say I spilled
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: it all over the place. In fact, I spilled it
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: on somebody.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: A pot of coffee. Oh, my God. Spattered across everywhere.
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: Beautiful new white shirt.
• 52:10
  Speaker 5: A white carpet.
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: Right, exactly.
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: White carpets, white shirts, it's all over the place. There
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: has to be an end to that.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: I am sorry.
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: I'll pay for the dry cleaning. I'll pay for the
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: carpet cleaner. I do all of those things, and I
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: feel the regret. I feel the grief of like, oh,
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: I feel terrible about it. And I feel, not only
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: do I feel that, I feel the shame. There are
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: all kinds of primal emotions that come up that are
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: hard for us to bear, and shame is certainly one
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: of them. Maybe other people were startled and kind of
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: angry about it. So we feel those feelings. We do
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: what we can do in the external world with others
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: or with a task. We do what we can do
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: in the internal world. And then it is over.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: And actually, that kind of like repetitive self-flagellation can be
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: a defense against feeling the shame. I mean, I think
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: I'm sort of just saying something I said earlier, but
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: it's like, yeah, I don't want to feel that. So
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to go over here and beat myself. Right.
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: There's like a machine that's constantly yelling at us. And
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: if we keep putting in coins to shut it up,
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: the coin is, I'm a shit. I'm shit. I'm a
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: piece of shit. I'm a piece of shit.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: It can feel easier to do that.
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: It drowns out everything else.
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: One of the last things that I would just suggest
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: to people is that when we find ourselves in an
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: Ouroboric closed circle, right, where the one who is critiquing
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: or criticizing you is eating its own tail, and so
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: it's a closed system over and over and over again,
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: is that if I'm working with an analyst who can
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: trust the process and, in a sense, trust me, that
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: we will slowly work through the forward-moving fantasy. So I
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: ran a red light. I'm a piece of shit. I'm
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: a piece of shit at it. And so we start with, okay,
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: so you're at a red light and you truly believe
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: you're a piece of shit. So let's just hold that.
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: And then what happens? But what's the next step in
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: the fantasy? Because what happens is it's almost like we're
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: constantly in the introduction to the novel over and over
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: and over and over again. But there is an internal
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: process that actually has a much more complete narrative, which
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: again can be highly mythic and maybe even ridiculous, but
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: if we don't defend against it, so you ran the
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: red light and you're a piece of shit, and then
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: the next part of the fantasy is the cops show
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: up in my door. All right, and then what happens?
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: And then they drag me into the back of the car. Like, okay,
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: and then what happens? And then what happens? So to
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: stop guarding against the fantasy or the unconscious narrative, and
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: allowing it to move to whatever its conclusion is, which
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: often is a resolution. And to give yourself permission to
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: allow it to unfold, even if it's ridiculous in a sense,
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: but it's not ridiculous because your unconscious mind is trying
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: to dream something forward regarding the intractable moment. And most
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: people are too afraid to watch something the dream that
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: keeps trying to play itself out in the back of
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: your mind.
• 55:46
  Speaker 5: That's great.
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: If you can let yourself do it, every time we've
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: been able to do this in a session, there is
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: a surprise at the end that often is more beautiful
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: than anybody could have imagined.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: So another theme maybe as we wrap up is that
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: in one way, shape, or form, This sort of constant
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: inner critic is really a way.
• 56:13
  Speaker 5: Of being stuck.
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: Or evidence of that, yeah.
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: Yes, or evidence of it, yes.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: And so working it through opens up the possibility for growth.
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, put your hands on it. Jump right into that
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: muddy water and don't be afraid of it. It's just
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: most of us who are chronically self-critical already know that
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: about ourselves. There's nothing novel about it. In fact, one
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: of the symptoms of getting better is that you kind
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: of get bored with yourself. It's like, oh, God, I'm
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: going to criticize my waistline one more time. Jesus.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: You know, I do want to say, though, I have
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: worked with people who don't have a good handle on
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: their inner critic, and they don't know it's happening. And
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: the first step is, how do you talk to yourself
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: during the day? What do you say to yourself? You know,
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: really pay attention and get it. But But there's another
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: kind of technique, if I may, which basically involves a
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: kind of version of active imagination. If you've got an
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: inner critic in there who's beating you up all the time,
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: one of the things you might do is personify that
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: inner critic. You know, what does he look like? Or
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: what does she look like?
• 57:23
  Speaker 5: And then see if you can have a conversation.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: You know, it's like you are always telling me that
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: I'm not good enough and that I'll never be able to,
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: you know, write this book. Well, let's have it out
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: because I think you might be wrong. So tell me
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: what you need me to hear, you know, and make
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: some room to have that conversation and see if you
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: can even, you know, it might feel right to kind
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: of strike a deal. It's like, look, you're going to
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: come in really handy after the draft is written. So
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: would you mind just taking a vacation? until I've got
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: a draft, and then I'd, you know, I'd love to
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: call you back here when it's time to do the proofreading,
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: you know? But I need you now to sort of
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: shut the fuck up, if you don't mind, you know? So,
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: but just see if you can have that conversation in
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: the imagination.
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: There was a book that was written about 20 years
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: ago called Taming Your Gremlin.
• 58:23
  Speaker 6: Oh.
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: Which was like a, it was in like this business of,
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: genre of publications, which speaks to exactly this process in
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: a very kind of good-humored way. But Taming Your Gremlin
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: is exactly, as you said, finding this unhappy, negative inner
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: figure and figuring out how to objectify it.
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: What does it need? What does it want from you?
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: And have a conversation.
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: Just as you said, Lisa, by imagining it, you are
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: immediately claiming a psychological reality, which is it's over there,
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: I'm over here. We're in the realm of Jung, which
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: is that the inner landscape is populated and the populace
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: of the inner landscape have autonomous consciousnesses that they are
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: not you although they abide with you and that alone
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: creates an enormous amount of freedom the last thing I
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: want to say, which is very sobering. This is an
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: example from a friend of mine, a social work friend
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: of mine I've known for 20 years or so. And
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: several years ago, she had brought a friend to my
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: Christmas party. I used to have these huge 100-person Christmas parties.
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: Lovely woman, another kind of late middle-aged therapist, psychotherapist. And
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: So I had met this person and then it was
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: a year later and I had had the Christmas party
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: again and my friend had come alone this time. And
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: I said, well, where is your friend? And she said,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: she's passed away.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 5: And I said, well, what had happened?
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: And this friend who was really quite lovely had gotten
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: into a car accident and she had accidentally caused someone's death.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: And in the ensuing year, The agony of self-reproach had
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: been so horrific that she eventually took her life. I
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: didn't know this person well enough to know how her
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: psyche was structured, but there is this spirit of condemnation,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: the furies, which promised Orestes that they would kill him
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: because he had caused his mother's death. That there are forces,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: primordial forces in the unconscious that are archetypal, that can
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: be powerful enough to make us question whether or not
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: we can live with our own sorrow and remorse. And
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: what I would say is that when these ancient primal
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: gods get you in their crosshairs, it takes a god
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: to save you. from a god and so what i
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: would have hoped for this person which i don't believe
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: was able to happen is that it actually is the
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: religious function it is it is the self that needs
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: to rescue us from the maw of some of these
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: titanic dangerous forces that can become activated and so relentlessly
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: attack the ego that we question or choose not to
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: be alive. There are powers that are stronger than death.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: And Freud recognized that. There's a tension between life and death,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: between eros and thanatos, between love and dynamism, and the
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: dark maw that that can destroy us. And if we
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: find ourselves in that terrible, terrible grip, that we have
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: to reach to something higher sometimes to save us, which
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: again is exactly what our friends in AA do. There's
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: a power that can restore me. I don't know where
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: it is. I don't know how to find it, but
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: I believe, or at least I'm around people who believe
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: that it exists. So I take these condemnatory forces. even
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: though I'm being high-spirited about it from time to time.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, you're right, Joseph. It can be very serious.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: And I'm glad you brought that forward because the condemnatory
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: force that Clarissa Pinkola Estes refers to and that you've
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 4: just really given such a great example of is very real.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 4: And I like your phrase, it takes a God to
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: save us from a God. And it also takes the
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: support of others, which is one of the things that
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 4: AA knows about and practices, that we have each other
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: and the activation of the religious function in the psyche,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: both of those.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: And maybe this is a good time to switch to
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: a dream. And as we get ready to do that,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: I just want to let everyone know that we have
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: Dream School, our 12-month online learning experience where you can
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: learn to work with dreams the way that we work
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: with dreams on the podcast. It's to help you learn
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: to work with your own dreams. There are Myriad opportunities
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: for you to meet with and be with other Dream
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: School students and to be with us live each month.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: And we hope you'll check it out. So head on
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: over to our website, thisunionlife.com and take a look.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: It is a school for the soul. It is. For
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: many of us, it's just the thing that we need.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: Our dreamer today is a 25-year-old male who works as
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: an architectural assistant, and he titles this dream, To Design
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: Beautiful Architectural Monuments and Homes. And this is his dream.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: I had a dream that I was walking along the
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: cliffs of a coastline. Picture the white cliffs of Dover,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: but covered in lush New Zealand ferns. The path along
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: the clifftops twisted and curved as though shaped by massive
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: boulders pressing through the landscape. I was scared, but also
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: deeply moved, as if I were inside a sublime painting,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: overwhelmed simultaneously by awe and fear. Before I could gain
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: a solid footing or fully grasp where I was, the
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: great boulders began to quake and rise. revealing themselves as
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: colossal humanoid golems. They moved in a line, slowly striding forward,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: heading in a similar direction to my own. Despite my fear,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: I began to follow in their footsteps with determination and curiosity.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: As they approached their destination, the scene abruptly shifted. I
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: suddenly realized that I had walked onto a movie set,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: It took me a moment to notice that behind me
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: a camera crew had been filming me, and the golems
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: were the entire time. I couldn't discern whether I'd been
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: deliberately acting or merely swept up in the scene. Once
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: aware of what was occurring, the crew informed me the
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: scene had ended. The act was finished. Yet feeling perplexed,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: I continued following the golems as if unable to step
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: out of the role. The main feelings in the dream
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: were awe, fear, curiosity, and disorientation. And a few associations
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: that he offers are, to the cliffs and landscape, he
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: associates that with travel and nature. The golem, he associates
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: with the divine, his shadow, and the collective unconscious. And
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: as for the movie set and camera crew, he associates
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: that with social expectations. As for context, the dreamer shares,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: I'm in a transitional phase of my life standing between
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: what I've studied and what I'm beginning to more consciously shape.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: After completing an undergraduate degree in architecture and spending nearly
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: a year working in a firm, I made the decision
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: to step away, not out of disinterest, but because I
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: felt the quiet urge to question the What kind of
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: life I actually want to build. I spent two months
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: traveling through New Zealand and Japan, and during that time,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: I began to see more clearly what draws me. This
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: has been looking at the way people live in relation
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: to space, nature, and one another. I'm now back home
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: with my parents. I find myself in a stable but
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: uncertain place. For the first time, I feel like I'm
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: truly choosing my life, not just reacting to it. I'm
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: asking not only what kind of work I want to do,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: but what kind of lifestyle I want to live. I'm
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: just beginning to walk up with clarity, integrity, and intention.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: So I thought I would just jump right in because
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: some of our listeners may not be familiar with the
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: term Gollum. And so the Gollum is part of the
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: legends of Judaism. And It particularly is associated with something
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: called the Golem of Prague. And so the story or
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: the legend is that the Jews in Prague were being
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: persecuted at this time, and that one of the rabbis
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: created an enormous man out of clay, and then using
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: Kabbalistic magic, transformed it into a living creature. The creature
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: was called Joseph Gollum, and the golem was set to
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: guard the Jewish community particularly. By the way, there's a
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: wonderful novel called Snow in August, which is a modern
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: telling of the golem that's rather beautiful. So there's a
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: very specific idea that soil and mud, because in the
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: Old Testament humans are made from the dust of the earth,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: so soil and mud then formed becomes animated, and so consequently,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: the boulders becoming animated beings. I can understand the dreamers'
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: association to this particular legend. My first visual association were
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: those enormous figures on Easter Island. Those enormous boulders that
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: have been, I think it's been through x-rays and ultrasounds
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: and other devices that they've discovered that those figures, which
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: look like they're just part of the head, actually extend
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: very far down into the ground. And they're much more
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: complete carvings that are hidden under the soil. So there
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: is this feeling that were they to be fully revealed,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: there's this ancient archetypal feeling energy, these primal gods that
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: are just waiting under the ground.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: I find this dream that this young man has shared,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: I find it moving. I find his situation moving. You know,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: what a really remarkable thing to have sort of like
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: reached this moment as a very young person, like, whoa,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: this is my life. and I could just kind of
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: keep on blindly moving forward, or I could sort of
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: take a step back and think about it.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 5: Most of us.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: Just plunge blindly ahead at that age, which works fine.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's very much like the image of the
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: fool in the tarot. I don't know where I'm going,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: but let me just get out there. But of course,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: it can be the case that we, you know, wind
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: up many years down the road thinking, I never picked this,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: like the talking head song. And I then, you know,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: I may ask, you may ask yourself, well, how did
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: I get here? And it's like, this young man is
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: not going to let that happen to me. He's going
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: to say, what do I want? What kind of life
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: do I want? Where am I going? So here's, you know,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: here's the thing. Obviously, this dream has these kinds of
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: archetypal images, this archetypal energy, these huge, vast stone men
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: that burst forth from this beautiful hillside, and he's walking
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: in concert with them. It's sort of like some giant
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: archetypal energy is on the move, and he is walking
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: with it, you know, which feels really positive. And then
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: he finds out he's in a movie. And to me,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: this like I'm not sure quite what to make of this.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: It seems like a little ambivalent because then it's just like, oh,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: then it's then it's just make believe it didn't really happen,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: you know. But I'm not so sure that's the way
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: that I want to wind up reading it because because
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: he keeps like the golems don't like take off their
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: golem suits. And then they're like, you know, guys from
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: standard casting, you know, they're they're like these things are real.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: And they just keep, as I understand the dream, and
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they just
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: kind of keep on walking too. It's not like the
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: director yells cut. Here's what I make up about the
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: film is that sometimes when you have an image of
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: like watching a movie or a play in a dream,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: it's like there's some kind of like mythic action going on.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: because it's kind of up there on the big screen.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: He is in the movie of his life. And that's
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: the way I think I'm going to go with that image.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: What I pay attention to is the difference between being
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 4: caught up in something and then what he says in
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 4: the context that he provides. So in the dream, he
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 4: is first caught up in this incredible sort of archetypal, huge,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 4: huge thing where there are these boulders and the boulders
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 4: are golems and they're moving. And, you know, he talks
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 4: about fear and awe and being part of something that
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 4: it is greater than he is. He is swept up
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: in it and moving along with it. and he says,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 4: I'm following along with great determination and curiosity. And then,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: as he's following along, the scene shifts, and he realizes
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 4: he's on a movie set. Same thing happens. He's caught
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 4: up in it. The camera crew has been following and
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 4: filming him the whole time. I couldn't tell whether I
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 4: had been acting in the film or simply caught up
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: in it. So now instead of it being these huge
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: archetypal golems and boulders, it's a movie director and cameraman,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 4: and it's all very much more human in its dimension.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 4: But our dream ego is still caught up in it.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: And then the dream ends with our dream ego says,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 4: I was so perplexed by the situation. that I continued
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 4: to follow the Golems. It was as if I couldn't
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: stop playing the act. So there's a whole, you know,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: of like a performative... Is.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: He just getting swept along?
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: Still swept along of where am I? What do I want?
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: And then he says in his comments that he made
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 4: the decision to step away after his academic training. And
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 4: he spent the two months traveling through New Zealand and
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: Japan to see more clearly what drew me. So what is,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: you know, he's got now an observational or an observing ego.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: And he feels for the first time I'm choosing my life.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 4: Not asking not only what kind of work I want
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 4: to do, but what is the lifestyle that I want.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 4: So I feel like the dream moved him from an
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: archetypal realm of golems into a more human realm, but
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: still caught up in performative stuff as a way of,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 4: as he has lived recently, calling him into a sense
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 4: of self. And what is it that I like, that
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: I choose, that I want?
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 5: I like that. I like that, Deb.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: I have a slightly different take on it because I
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: think there's room for both on these elements although because
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: at the end we don't really have a resolution but
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: no it's true that the first half of the dream
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: is full of such intense swells of feeling at the
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: beginning of the dream is described so poetically there's a
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: lot of big feeling in it And that culminates with
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: the rising of these bolder creatures. In The Lord of
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: the Rings, there's these figures, the storm gods, which are
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: basically these mountains that come to life and war with
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: each other so terrifyingly. And then there's that pivot point
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 3: that we were talking about where all of a sudden
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: the In Kabbalah, they call it the vision of the
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: machinery of the universe. It's a particular spiritual vision, which
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: is underneath all of this awe and swell of feeling
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: is a machine, which is basically like how these things happen,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: which I think is a perfect metaphor for being an architect.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: Because he has to have one foot in this swell
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: of feeling and art and vision and the magnitude of beauty.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: And then you also have to pick out a ruler
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: and you have to decide how many feet, how many inches,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: what's the load-bearing capacity of something, where the pipes go in,
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: where the outlets. That being an architect is creating a
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: space where it feels like the boulders might get up
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: and walk. And there's also an entire crew of people
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: that are making the machinery of that happen. So to me,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: it's both. And at the end of the dream, even
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: though he knows that there's an entire human machine, there's
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: a human process making this happen, he's still compelled by
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: the magnitude and substantiveness of it. of the golems so
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 3: an additional way i agree with both of you but
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: an additional way is yeah this may be a way
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 3: of holding your career going forward it's both magic and
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: machinery it's aesthetic and utility they're both there.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisunionlife.com. If
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: you enjoyed this episode, give us five stars and a
• 1:19:21
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• 1:19:24
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• 1:19:28
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• 1:19:35
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