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Finding Our Way Back: Healing From Self-Betrayal · 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 on Cape Cod.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: So, did you guys notice my hair today?
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very special.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Are you going to ask me why?
• 0:50
  Speaker 4: Yes, why?
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Well, tomorrow is a very big day, and.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: We're recording this on November 11th, and November 12th is
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: a very exciting day for me for two reasons. The
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: first is that my youngest kid comes home from New Zealand,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: and I haven't seen him in four months, and I'm
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: ridiculously excited to go pick him up at the airport tomorrow.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: And the second reason is that tomorrow, November 12th, is
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: publication of our book. dream-wise. So I was trying to
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: kind of tone match the color of the cover of
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: the book.
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: A good attempt. Excellent. Yeah.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I don't think it really worked. But whether or not
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: my hair works, I really believe that this book works.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: So I hope if you haven't purchased your copy, you
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: will run out and do it right now. So today
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about self-betrayal. How do we
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: abandon ourselves? How do we cheat ourselves? The different ways
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: that this can happen. And how does this show up
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: in dreams and fairy tales? And it's a kind of
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: heartbreaking thing when it happens, when we realize that we've
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: betrayed ourselves. So we're going to be walking around that
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: issue today.
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: I wonder if we could first circle around the difference
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: between self-betrayal and self-sabotage. So we've talked about self-sabotage, and
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: listeners might be thinking, isn't this more or less the
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: same thing? But it isn't.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Well, it depends on if you're a lumper or a splitter.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: And I am personally a little bit more of a splitter.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: I think that self-sabotage They're obviously related, right? Because sometimes
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: when we sabotage ourselves, that is a form of self-betrayal.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: But self-sabotage is really about sort of getting in our
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: own way. And self-betrayal is really... It's something even darker,
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: I think. And by the way, I think we probably
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: betray ourselves every single day, multiple times per day. So
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: it's not unusual. But it is a darker phenomenon where we... Gosh,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: what just jumped into my mind actually was, let's get
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: right to it, the Garden of Gethsemane. When Christ is betrayed,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: is it three times? I didn't look it up. But,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: you know, he says, stay awake with me. And we all.
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: This is to Peter. This isn't Judas, but to Peter.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: Right. So Christ says, right. Well, there are several betrayals
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: going on. But the one I was thinking of is
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: to Peter, stay awake with me. And Peter's like, oh, absolutely.
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: And then falls asleep. And that is the kind of
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: betrayal that we do every single day where we have
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: an aspiration, we have something that feels important to us.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: I think it has, you know, Joseph, when you were
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: prepping this, you mentioned this issue about values. And I
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: think self-betrayal is probably very linked to values. Something matters
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: to us and we don't do right by it. So
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: we want to stay awake in that garden and then
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: we fall asleep. We don't want to spend all day
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: scrolling on our phones. We want to read a book instead.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: But damn it, there it is at the end of
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: the day and we're doom scrolling or whatever it is.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: So it's where we, you know, and Joseph, again, these
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: were your words, but I think they really capture something.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: We abandon something that matters to us.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: And I was thinking as we were preparing, looking at
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: the word betray, because it's a very specific descriptor of
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: this psychological state. And it comes from the Latin tradere,
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: which means to be handed over to, to be given
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: a cross to something else. So it's as if we
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: have a value of using my time very efficiently, but
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: then I am like abducted or handed over to something else.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: And I find myself scrolling for four hours and then
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: being a half hour late for work. So how do
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: we understand that? And The self-betraying moment is also that
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: gasp when we've gotten out of the hand of whatever
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: we've been handed over to, and then we're like, oh
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: my God, what was I just, what did I do?
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: So there's that element of kind of painful surprise.
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: I also think it is an abrogation or a violation
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: of a standard expectation or norm. such as Hansel and Gretel.
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: The expectation and the norm is that families live together
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: and children get taken care of to the best of
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: the parents' ability. They don't get dumped in the woods
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: at night because parents feel it's too much for them
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: at this point. When there's an issue of infidelity in
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: a bonded couple, But wait a minute, that's not supposed
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: to happen. Versus being led down the old garden path
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: that happens to all of us of, uh-oh, I spent
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: too much time again on social media or watching TV,
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: and I didn't read the book I thought I was
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: going to spend time with. But there's that element of
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: having been done to rather than doing it to ourselves.
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: And then also, sort of the surprise and shock of it.
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: I can't believe he did this to me.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: It's the difference between being betrayed by someone else versus
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: the self-betrayal. What were you going to say, Joseph?
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: That when we're betrayed by something else or someone else,
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: then we can point across the room and put blame
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: on someone else. You did this to me, which exonerates us.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: With self-betrayal, there is that same feeling, Deb. You know,
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: like I've turned my own inner children out into the
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: woods to, you know, fend for themselves. And there's nowhere
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: else to point but to myself. And that is an
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: interesting inversion of the finger, of the pointing finger.
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: That's exactly part of the self-betrayal that I'm wanting to
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: lift up. That from a Jungian point of view in
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: a fairy tale, All the characters are representing parts of
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: the psyche. But this is often how we feel with
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: self-betrayal of he or she or they did it to
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: me versus what was my part in it.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Right. How did I contribute to this?
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: And often in fairy tales, I think the theme is
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: an underlying either ignorance or innocence.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: Something that, you know, Hansel and Gretel didn't know any better.
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: Snow White didn't know any better. And so it goes.
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: But what part of that is you that didn't notice,
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: didn't know, and so it feels like being done to?
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: You don't agree, Joseph?
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I'm putting it in the hopper, moving it around.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: That's me shaking it around in my head.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's also the way that when someone does something
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: to us, how we respond, we can either, you know,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: stand up for ourselves or sometimes we sort of capitulate, right?
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: And there are those times where that's a self-betrayal. I mean,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking about, and I wrote about this in The
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Vital Spark, this woman that I worked with, who had
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: just been really trying to, you know, go along to
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: get along or get along to go along. with her
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: husband for years. You know, they had kids and she
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: was just trying to do the right thing and trying
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: not to, you know, she was kind of conflict averse
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: and she didn't want to make waves. And, you know,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: by the time two decades of married life rolled around,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: she'd realized that she'd been very complicit in a massive
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: self-betrayal because she had never stood her ground on some
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: things that really mattered to her. And so that was
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: a self-betrayal first and foremost, but it also was a
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: betrayal of the relationship because you can't expect for a
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: relationship to be healthy and to grow when you're not
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: able to show up for yourself in it.
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: Gosh, I just think that's huge, actually. that we don't
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: show up for ourselves. And there are all kinds of quote,
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: good reasons, unquote, for that. That's okay. I can let
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: this go. That's okay. I can overlook it. Oh, it
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: really matters to the other person. Or, you know, my
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: colleague so-and-so has been with a company much longer than
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: I have. That is the person that deserves the raise
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: or the promotion. We don't show up for ourselves. And
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: that takes me to one possible ingredient in this is
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: our fear of conflict, of don't rock the boat, and
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: the fear that there will be severe repercussions if we
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: do that, that people will say, well, then, okay, you're fired.
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: Why don't you just go get another job then if
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: you don't like it here? Same thing in relationships, neighborhoods, committees.
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: The list goes on and on. I think underneath it
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: is the fear of being exiled.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's part of it. But I
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: also think, though, that it can be lots of things,
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: like going back to Peter falling asleep. It's almost like
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: we have trouble sort of staying vigilant, sort of staying
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: connected with ourselves. It's making me think of pretty much
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: one of my favorite Jim Hollis quotes, which is he
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: says in Mythologems, he says, we all have an appointment
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: with ourselves and most of us never show up for it.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: And I just love that. And I think that that's true. Again,
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: it's true in little daily ways and it's true in
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: big lifelong ways too. And hopefully we show up at
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: least some of the time, we're never going to show
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: up all of the time because we're fallible. So again,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: we fall asleep even when we said, no, no, no,
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: this matters so much, I'm going to stay awake, but
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: then we don't.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: And I think that the word betrayal lends a certain
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: kind of intensity to the realization that we've done that.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: So in order to experience self-betrayal, we have to have
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: that moment that we have participated in this outcome. that
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: we have abandoned our own values or abandoned our needs,
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: as you had said about the marriage, or abandoned our truths.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: Which also suggests that you actually know what your values are,
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: you know what your needs are, and you know what
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: your truths are. So it may be that it's quite
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: a long time later that you have that experience of
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: self-betrayal just as we were using the example of this
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: woman from The Vital Spark, it was really long into
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: it that she identified consciously what her values or needs
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: were and then realized that she had been betraying herself
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: over and again.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: So one of the things you're raising is that self-betrayal
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: usually happens unconsciously.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: Quite so.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: We're not even aware we're doing it.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: And there is a rupture at that point and We
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: have this sense of alienation from, at the very least,
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: the image of who we believed ourselves to be. And
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: perhaps if we do know ourselves well, then we're alienated
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: from even a deeper level, which, frankly, I think can
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: lead to a growth period. Because self-betrayal, I think, pulls
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: us into kind of a self-inquiry. It makes us quiet
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: and draws us inward. It makes us sober about the thing.
• 13:42
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• 13:45
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• 14:02
  Speaker 2: and guidance that lets you reach within and You know,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking this might be a good time to ground
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: this in some examples.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: I'm starting with the example you offered of Gethsemane and
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: Peter's betrayal of Jesus and the relationship between self-betrayal and ambivalence.
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: Of that part of me is loyal to something.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: But part of me is not. Part of me is
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: scared of it. Part of me doesn't know if I
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: can do it. Part of me... is very leery of
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: the cost. Like if I really stick up for this
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: part of myself, you know, what if my life as
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: I know it crumbles? So of honoring those parts of ourselves,
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: you know, of those mixed emotions that we have toward
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: all kinds of things. And that's not the problem. The
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: problem isn't that we have mixed feelings. The problem is
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: that we can't surface all those mixed feelings into consciousness
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: and go, oh my gosh, what if I do stay
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: up all night for this guy? What's likely to happen
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: to me? Well, that's pretty scary. Okay, now what? We
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: just sort of take our little airbrush and go, whew,
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: and we go to sleep. In some way, go unconscious,
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: getting rid of the ambivalence and our need to face it.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Deb, I think that's really great. I think it's a
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: wonderful distinction to get into. And also, I love that
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: you raised, what is the cost? Because I think that's
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: probably the thing. What's the cost of showing up to
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: that appointment with ourselves? Well, it might be scary. It
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: might actually ask a lot of us. I mean, what
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: if I ask myself what I want? If I really
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: admit that to myself, I might have to work hard,
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: let's say. what if I admit to myself that there's
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: some things about my marriage I really don't love? Then
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: I might have to know that, which is pretty uncomfortable.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: And then I might have to do something about it.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: So I think that there's all kinds of ways where
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: we just, we don't want to have to pay the
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: cost of remaining true to the feelings, the values, the attitudes.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: And then as you say, ambivalence enters the picture of,
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: So we might wonder if it isn't when we don't
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: manage our ambivalence well, that's when we betray ourselves.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: And often I think that we're not even aware that
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: we're ambivalent until it trips us up in some way,
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: until there is a cost.
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: Because we can be quietly ambivalent and then just shunt
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: aside decisions or actions because we can't find a place
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: to stand that allows us to take action. But I
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: think in the examples, that we had given, the idea
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: of Peter falling asleep, or all of them falling asleep,
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: is this idea of lethargy, and that lethargy can be
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: something that invades us, and then we find that we're,
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: just as you were saying, Lisa, we're not showing up
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: for the appointment. And the other is fear. And when
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: I think about the Gethsemane experience, that Christ is denied,
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's fear-driven, that there's a repercussion for you
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: to declare your alignment with a value or a person
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: or a political movement or a religious belief. And that
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: in the face of certain fear, that we will pretend
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: that we are someone else or we don't actually have
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: that value. I also want to say that one can
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: make an argument for that being adaptive. But for some
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: of us, later on in that dark night when we
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: are alone. For some of us, that feels like a
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: betrayal that we have been treacherous to whatever we believe
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: our values are. I think also you were saying, Lisa,
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: about the woman who was ambivalent about leaving the marriage
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: and just insecurity that I do not feel secure in
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: my own capacity to create. my own capacity to make
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: change and to create something new, to have those internal resources.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: And Deb, you were saying earlier something about the need
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: for external validation, that it takes a lot of energy
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: to individuate from the culture that we're in. And so
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: we will betray, again, our true desires, our true needs
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: in exchange for that bag of silver, so to speak.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: which is whatever the approving smile from the community around us.
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: I'm going back to our idea of how unconscious self-betrayal is,
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: which makes it, as you said before, Lisa, darker than self-sabotage.
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: Because I know I should turn off the TV and
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: read my great book, whatever it might be. That's in
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: my awareness. And self-betrayal is often not, as with the
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: story of Peter, who falls asleep. And that's a theme
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: in fairy tales, of people forget the time, they fall
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: asleep at the very last minute, And goes to what
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: you were talking about, Joseph, of the lethargy, of that
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: there is some way inside ourselves that we make this
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: unimportant or we let it sink below the surface of awareness.
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: And that's the key element for me in self-betrayal is
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: that we erase it from consciousness, where, of course, it
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: will simmer along underground. Anyway, it's not as if we've
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: gotten rid of it. But that's the part that makes
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: it a little darker. It's hard to lift it up.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: Exactly. And so we can be betraying ourselves and not
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: know it, in which case we don't catch it until
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: something has brought it into our face in a given moment.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: But I'm going to try to just differentiate between the
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: three things, ambivalence, self-defeating behaviors and self-betrayal, that ambivalence is
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: an internal conflict between opposing desires or values. And that
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: indicates more about psychological tension, but not necessarily self-rejection. Self-defeating behaviors,
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: I think, are repetitive, maladaptive patterns. And that's often due
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: to unconscious fears, Or perhaps Freud would say trying to
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: master some kind of destructive situation. And that's more symptomatic
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: rather than indicative of betrayal. So I think what's unique
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: to self-betrayal is that there is a suppression of an
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: inner truth in exchange for something else. And it may
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: be that something other than the ego suppresses the inner
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: truth because we are a multiplicity. But I think there's
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: something about the Gethsemane betrayal, that a suppression of inner
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: truth for some kind of a payoff, which often is
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: external acceptance, but not always. And I think the difference
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: there is that with self-betrayal, it leads to a feeling
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: of fragmentation, internal fragmentation, and being alienated from something inside
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: of ourselves, being cast out.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: So I really, I like that. I also think it's
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: kind of cool what we're doing because we're doing like,
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: you know, those medieval scholastic scholars who tried to figure
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: out like how many angels can dance on head of
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: a pin kind of thing. 46.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: I thought it was 43. But anyway, Joseph, I like
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: what you're saying about ambivalence is like tension. And actually-
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: Self-sabotage really speaks to some symptoms, which I think is true.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: And I think about self-sabotage is it's kind of it
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: keeps us from maybe like out adapting perhaps or achieving.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: But self-betrayal to me seems more fundamental because it is
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: the betrayal or the abandonment of something really essential, right?
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: So self-sabotage might be, I don't know, we never get
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: the tidy house we want or something like that because
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: we keep on engaging in maladaptive behaviors. But self-betrayal feels
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: it touches more our essential nature and means we have
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: been untrue to it somehow. There's something about the inevitability
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: of it that we're all going to betray ourselves at
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: some point. I think we can feel that our body
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: betrays us as we start to age. That's often a
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: very profound feeling. We can feel betrayed by our psyche
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: because the ego has a particular agenda that it wants,
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: and then the self doesn't line up behind it, and
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: it's like, We want to shake our fist at the universe.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: But it really does take courage to show up for
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: that appointment, doesn't it?
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: I think so, because there is a cost. There is
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: something fundamental, as you said, inside of us that is
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: just true. And it could be I truly need something
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: or I truly believe in something. And that just in
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: the way that one betrays a spouse, that we are
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: betraying something that is supposed to be precious to us.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: And then we act in ways that are destructive towards
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: the thing that we believed was so important, so precious,
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: such an object of veneration inside of us.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: That word is really helpful to me as I think
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: about this, precious, because self-betrayal implies that we have damaged,
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: we've abandoned, we've betrayed something precious. I think that's, you know,
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: which kind of goes back to what you were saying, Deb,
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: about like Hansel and Gretel. It's like the most precious thing,
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: a child. And then I remember one of our teachers
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: years ago, like when we were first in training, it
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: may have been, it may have been Hollis, who said,
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: we all kill our children every day. And I thought, wow,
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: you know, I think we were, maybe we were talking
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: about Medea or something who, you know, kills her children.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: But whoever it was, the analyst said, we all kill
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: our children every day. And I thought, oh my God,
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: we do. So there are these little ways that we
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: don't show. I mean, sometimes you have to kill your children.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: There are children that you have to kill. You know,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: like I'm thinking you have an idea, but you just
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: don't have the energy or the time to do it.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: You just have to let that die. But I'm talking
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: about something else. I'm talking about like you wake up
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: in the morning and you want to, you're making a
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: point to sort of cultivate spirituality. And so you have
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: this intention is moved through the day and you're going
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: to engage in prayer or meditation or something. And then
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: you don't do it again. That's a little self-betrayal. You
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: just killed a child. So yeah, that idea of something precious.
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: I'm going back to what you said. just a little
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: while ago about our ego desires and our ego values
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: and the unconscious psyche, the collective unconscious, the mythological layer
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: that we all have, that that is very hard often
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: to really allow to bubble up. That if the status
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: quo is okay and there is some part of a
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: person that wants to go on a big trip or
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: go back to school or change careers. I say, ah,
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: I can't change careers. You know, we have a mortgage
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: to pay and kids take piano lessons and all the
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: rest of it. I can't do that. That that's the
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: part that tends to just get erased because that is
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: a desire that is not in alignment with ego. we
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: can rationalize it and say, well, that's very self-centered versus
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: paying attention to the call from within to do something
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: else that is more true to one's own nature. And
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: it doesn't mean that then you say, well, you know,
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: throw everything to the wind. We're selling the house and
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: I'm changing career and But it does mean we acknowledge
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: that something is bubbling within us that will shake up
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: the status quo. It's threatening. It will really shake up
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: the status quo much more than my, once again, failing
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: to meditate in the morning. And I think that's where
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: we betray ourselves in terms of getting our unconscious wishes
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: in alignment with ego rather than just trying to suppress them.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: Yes, and that's an important distinction because the ego can
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: feel very potent and godlike and make all kinds of
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: New Year's resolutions that might be very thoughtful and quite positive,
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: but they also can be destructively driven by some kind
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: of cultural value. So the ego can entertain all kinds
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: of things and then find that it doesn't have enough
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: inner support to do things. But I think the betrayal
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: has to do with a contract, as we said, the
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: precious contract inside of us. It's something that is much
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: more central and core to the personality. So I liked
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: what you'd said, Deb, about the way rationalization can make
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: it easier to betray ourselves. Because when we're betraying ourselves
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: or when we're approaching a self-betraying opportunity, that we will
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: often feel anxious and we won't kind of know what
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: to do and to defend against the anxiety, then we'll
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: rationalize the betrayal. We'll create some kind of story in
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: the back of our mind that justifies, oh, I'll just
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: go along with, I'll stay in that job for another
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: year or, you know, I'll do this or that. Because
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: the dissonance between what you're married to in the deepest
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: part of you, and just as you were saying, the
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: cost of staying true to that versus the other pressures
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: around us creates so much anxiety. So we rationalize all
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: kinds of things. I also think that we project as
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: a way of the truth of self-betrayal, that instead of
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: really feeling how the truth inside of us is hurt,
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: is hurting and is hurt by the fact that we
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: didn't protect it, that we then project it out into
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: some other external thing. And so somebody else is a liar,
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: somebody else is a fraud or a faker. any number
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: of different things, that the other person is the one
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: who's got the problem, but I don't really have the
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: problem because the pain is so intense.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: You know, the pain and the hurt, what it made
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: me think of is, I think, a common way that
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: self-betrayal might show up in dreams is people often have
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: a dream Of an animal or a child that they've
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: been responsible for.
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: That they needed to feed and they come upon the
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: animal or the child and they realize that they left
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: the child in the car or they forgot to feed
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: the bird or the kitten is emaciated. They were supposed
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: to be taking care of it. And then we realize,
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think probably most of us have had
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: this dream at least once. I know I have. And
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: then it's like, oh my God, I was supposed to
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: take care of this and I didn't. That's a real
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: image of a self-betrayal, that there's some part of us
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: that really needed our attention and we didn't give it
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: to it. And of course, the dream kind of provides
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: a corrective at that point. I want to take us
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: in a slightly different direction and talk about maybe a
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: more fundamental form of self-betrayal that's almost kind of baked into...
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: maybe our humanness, which is that the way that we,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: merely because of the fact that we're moderns, we routinely
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: betray the instincts. And Jung talked a lot about being
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: cut off from the instincts, being cut off from what
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: he called the two million year old man. And there's
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: a way that this is just our nature. And I
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: think that Ian McGilchrist's in his phenomenal book that, as
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: you know, if you listen to the podcast, I love deeply,
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: The Master and His Emissary. I think he's getting at
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: something of the same thing that Jung is talking about.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is a super kind of broad brush,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: but I think we're in that same neighborhood. So I
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: want to just read a little bit from this book
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: because it relates to our topic. So this is at
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: the end of McGilchrist's introduction. There is a story in
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: Nietzsche that goes something like this. There was once a
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: wise spiritual master who was the ruler of a small
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: but prosperous domain, and who was known for his selfless
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: devotion to his people. As his people flourished and grew
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: in number, the bounds of this small domain spread, and
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: with it the need to trust implicitly the emissaries he
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: sent to ensure the safety of its ever more distant parts.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: It was not just that it was impossible for him
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: personally to order all that needed to be dealt with,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: as he wisely saw he needed to keep his distance
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: from and remain ignorant of such concerns, and so he
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: nurtured and trained carefully his emissaries in order that they
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: could be trusted. Eventually, however, his cleverest and most ambitious vizier,
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: the one he trusted most to do his work, began
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: to see himself as the master and used his position
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: to advance his own wealth and influence. He saw his
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: master's temperance and forbearance as weakness, not wisdom, and on
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: his missions on the master's behalf adopted his mantle as
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: his own. The emissary became contemptuous of his master, and
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: so it came about that the master was usurped, the
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: people were duped, the domain became a tyranny, and eventually
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: it collapsed into ruins. So how that relates to his thesis,
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: he says, The master is our right brain, which is
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: responsible for holistic thinking, implicit meaning, metaphor, embodiment, all kinds
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: of other things. The emissary is our left brain, which
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: is very good at chopping things up into parts, being
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: kind of instrumental in the way it sees the world.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: His point is that the left brain way of looking
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: at the world develops and becomes more elaborated over the
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: course of human evolution in order to do the bidding
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: of the more holistically oriented, I always get confused, right brain.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: But then eventually what has happened is that that part
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: of us has grown so strong and is so good
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: at what it does. That it has really usurped that function.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: So the emissary betrays the master in McGilchrist's thinking.
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: And this is a great parallel really to the relationship
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: between the ego and the unconscious.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: That the ego thinks it runs the show.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: And we are ever more distant from instincts just as
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: we are, many of us, ever more distant from reality.
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: all kinds of natural processes, connection with nature, etc. And
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: this is a good, smart, advanced, technologically proficient way to
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: live is what we think. I'm thinking how important it
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: is to have that dialogue between those two parts of ourselves.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: Right. So when we get divorced from this The stuff
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: of primary process thinking, dreams, imagination, visionary events, ritual, myth,
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: fairy tales, metaphor. that these things are so primary to
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: what it means to be human. And when we go
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: through the world in a very left-brained way, as many
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: of us do, well, I have to do this today,
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: and I have my ordered list of priorities, and I
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: need to get things done. I'm just going to focus
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: on this level of things. It is a kind of
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: profound betrayal, And it is the nature of the human condition,
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: as it were, also.
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: And it's a developmental reality as well, that in the
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: course of growing up, as we've talked about before, we
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: do have to learn to sort of suppress a lot
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: of our instinctual desires, urges, feelings for the sake of
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: developing a social and socially acceptable environment. way of interacting
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: with people in the world. You have to get up
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: and you have to make your bed. You have to
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: go to school. You have to raise your hand if
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: you want to talk. These are all things that help
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: us develop ego strength. But then, like the emissary, the
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: ego tends to think it's in charge of everything. It's
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: my whole self versus a part that has been developed
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: in service to the master of that more right-brained, holistic,
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: metaphorically-oriented part of ourselves.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: I think that fear of instincts that sometimes rolls around
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: in the culture and in us as therapists is a
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: kind of Freudian throwback. But I think that if we
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: stay closer to Jung's idea of the instincts— sex, activity, creativity, self-reflection,
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: religious or mythological imaginings, then all of a sudden we
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: can understand that suppressing the instinctive level is cutting us
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: off from much, much more than, let's say, sex and aggression.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: So the betrayal can be really substantive, like going into
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: a career that you have absolutely no intrinsic relationship to,
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: only because someone told you that You know, you'd be
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: able to do a good cost-benefit analysis between what you
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: paid for your degree and how much money you can
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: make in the external environment. Yes, that's adaptive, but there
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: may be so many other important instincts to create and
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: self-reflect that have been shunted aside or betrayed because you
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: were supposed to love them, not yourself. You know, something
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: you read off the internet that told you you couldn't
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: do a good cost-benefit analysis by becoming an English major.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: You know, Deb, you brought up some fairy tales, and
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: I'm just so aware of how many fairy tales feature
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: images of betrayal. You know, there are the appointments that
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: people are late for, that they don't show up for,
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: that there's fairy tales where the lovers don't remember one another,
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: they don't recognize each other. There are fairy tales where
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: the brothers, the older brothers take the youngest brother and,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: you know, stuff him in a closet so he can't
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: go claim the bride or whatever it is. There's just
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: all kinds of things that happen. But when I was
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: thinking about the topic today, I was thinking about a
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: fairy tale motif that's very common. It's the type of
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: fairy tale. There's a fairy tale typology and these are
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: These tales are known as the true bride and the
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: false bride. And there are many, many, many, many versions
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: of them, which is interesting. But the one that I
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: knew first when I was a child and that I
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: think is probably most known to us is the tale
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: of the goose girl. And I think it's a fascinating
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: example of self-betrayal. And I'd love it if we could
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: talk about this fairy tale for a bit. as an
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: example of this psychological phenomenon. So I'm going to read it.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: I'm reading from my favorite version of Grimm's, which is
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: the complete first edition of The Brothers Grimm, and I'll
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: put a link to that in the show notes. The
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: Goose Girl There was once an old queen whose husband
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: had been dead for many years, and she had a
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: beautiful daughter. When the daughter grew up, she was betrothed
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: to a prince who lived far away. When the time
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: came for her to be married and the princess had
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: to get ready to depart for the distant kingdom, the
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: old queen packed up a great many precious items and ornaments,
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: gold and silver, goblets and jewels, in short, everything that
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: suited a royal dowry, for she loved her child with
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: all her heart. She also gave her a chambermaid who
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: was to accompany her and deliver her safely into the
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: hands of her bridegroom. Each received a horse for the journey,
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: but the princess's horse was named Valada and could speak.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: When the hour of departure arrived, the old mother went
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: into her bedroom, took a small knife, and cut her
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: finger to make it bleed. Then she placed a white
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: handkerchief underneath her finger, let three drops of blood fall
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: on it, and gave it to her daughter. My dear child,
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: she said, take good care of these three drops. for
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: they will help you on your journey when you're in need.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: After they had bid each other a sad farewell, the
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: princess stuck the handkerchief into her bosom, mounted her horse,
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: and began her journey to her bridegroom. After riding an hour,
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: she felt very thirsty and called to her chambermaid, Get
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: down and fetch some water for me from the brook
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: with my goblet that you brought along for me. I'd
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: like to have something to drink.
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: Hey!
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: If you're thirsty, said the chambermaid, get down yourself and
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: lie down by the water and drink. I don't like
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: being your servant. Since the princess was very thirsty, she dismounted,
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: bent over the brook, and drank some water, but she
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: was not allowed to drink out of the golden goblet. Oh, God,
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: she said. Then the three drops of blood replied, Ah,
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: if your mother only knew, her heart would break in two.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: but the princess was quite humble. She said nothing and
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: got back on her horse. They continued riding a few
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: miles further. The day was warm and the sun so
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: sticky and hot that she soon got thirsty again. When
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: they came to a stream, she called to her chambermaid
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: once more. Get down and bring me something to drink
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: from my golden cup, for she had long since forgotten
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: the servant's nasty words. If you want to drink, the
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: chambermaid said even more haughtily than before, Drink by yourself.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: I don't like being your servant. Since she was very thirsty,
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: the princess dismounted, lay down next to the running water,
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: and wept. Oh, God, she said. Once again, the drops
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: of blood responded, Ah, if your mother only knew, her
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: heart would break in two. As she was leaning over
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: the bank and drinking the water, her handkerchief with the
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: three drops of blood fell out of her bosom and
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: floated downstream without her ever noticing it. So great was
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: her fear. But the chambermaid had seen it and was
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: delighted because she knew that now she could have power
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: over the princess. Without the three drops of blood, the
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: princess had become weak. So, as she was about to
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: get back on the horse named Velada, the chambermaid said,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: Velada belongs to me. Yours is the nag. The princess
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: had to put up with all that. Moreover, the chambermaid
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: ordered her to take off her royal garments and to
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: put on the maid's shabby clothes. Finally, she had to
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: swear under open skies that she would never tell a
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: soul at the royal court what the chambermaid had done.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: If the princess hadn't given her word, she would have
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: been killed on the spot. But Valada saw all of
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: this and took good note of it. Now, the chambermaid
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: mounted Vallada and the true bride had to get on
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: the wretched nag. Thus, they continued their journey until they
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: finally arrived at the royal castle. There was great rejoicing
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: when they entered the courtyard and the prince ran to
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: meet them. He lifted the chambermaid from her horse, thinking
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: she was his bride. Then he led her upstairs while
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: the true princess was left standing below. Meanwhile, the old
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: king peered out a window, and when he saw her
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: standing in the courtyard, he was struck by her fine,
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: delicate features. He went straight to the royal suite and
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: asked the bride about the girl she had brought with her,
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: the one standing below in the courtyard, and who she was. Oh,
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: I picked her up along the way to keep me company.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: Just give her something to keep her busy. But the
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: old king had no work for her and could only respond,
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: I have a little boy who tends the geese. Perhaps
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: she could help him. The boy's name was Little Conrad,
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: and the true bride had to help him tend the geese.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: Shortly after, the false bride said to the young king,
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: Dearest husband, I'd like you to do me a favor.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: I'd be glad to, he answered. Well then, let me
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: summon the knacker. I want him to cut off the
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: head of the horse that carried me here because it
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: gave me nothing but trouble along the way. However, she
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: was actually afraid the horse would reveal what she had
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: done to the princess. When all the preparations had been
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: made and faithful Falada was about to die, word reached
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: the ears of the true princess and she secretly promised
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: the knacker a gold coin if he would render her
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: small service. There was a big, dark gateway through which
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: she had to pass every morning and evening with the geese,
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: and she wanted him to nail Volada's head on the
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: wall under the dark gateway, where she could always see it.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: The knacker promised to do it, and when he cut
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: off the horse's head, he nailed it firmly onto the
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: wall under the dark gateway. Early the next morning, when
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: she and Conrad drove the geese out through the gateway,
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: she said in passing, Oh, poor Falada, I see you
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: hanging there. Then the head answered, Dear princess, is that
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: really you there? Oh, if only your mother knew. Her
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: heart would break in two. She walked out of the
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: city in silence and they drove the geese into the fields.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: When she reached the meadow, she sat down and undid
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: her hair, which was as pure as gold. Little Conrad
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: liked the way her hair glistened so much that he
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: tried to pull out a few strands. Then she said, Blow, wind, oh,
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: blow with all your might, blow little Conrad's cap out
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: of sight, make him chase it everywhere till I've braided
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: all my hair and fixed it so that it's all right.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: Then a gust of wind came and blew off little
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: Conrad's cap into the fields and he had to run
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: after it. By the time he returned with it, she
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: had finished combing and putting her hair up and couldn't
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: get a single strand of it. Little Conrad became so
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: angry that he wouldn't speak to her after that. Thus
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: they tended the geese until evening, when they set out
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: on their way home. The next morning, when they drove
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: the geese through the dark gateway, the maiden said, Oh,
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: poor Falada, I see you hanging there. Then Falada responded,
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: Dear princess, is that really you? Oh, if your mother knew,
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: her heart would break in two. Once she was in
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: the field again, she sat down in the meadow and
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: began to comb out her hair. Little Conrad ran up
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: and tried to grab it, but she quickly said, Blow, wind, oh,
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: blow with all your might. Blow little Conrad's cap out
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: of sight and make him chase it everywhere till I
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: braided all my hair and fixed it so it's all right.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: The wind blew and whisked the cap off his head
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: and drove it far off so that Conrad had to
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: run after it. When he came back, she had long
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: since put up her hair and he couldn't get a
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: single strand. Thus they tended the geese until evening. However,
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: upon returning that evening, little Conrad went to the old
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: king and said, don't want to tend the geese with
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: that girl anymore. Why not?
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: Asked the king.
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: Well, she torments me the whole day long. Immediately, the
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: old king ordered him to tell him what she did,
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: and Conrad said, In the morning, when we pass through
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: the dark gateway, there's a horse's head on the wall,
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: and she always says, Oh, poor Falada, I see you
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: hanging there, and the head answers, Dear princess, is that
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: really you there? Oh, if your mother knew, her heart
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: would break in two. And thus little Conrad went on
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: to tell the king what happened out on the meadow
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: and how he had to run after his cap. The
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: old king ordered him to drive the geese out again
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: the next day, and when morning came, the old king
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: hid himself behind the dark gateway and heard her speak
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: to Falada's head. Then he followed her into the fields
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: and hid behind some bushes in the meadow. Soon he
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: saw with his own eyes how the goose girl and
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: the goose boy led the geese to the meadow and
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: and how she sat after a while and undid her
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: hair that glistened radiantly. Before long, she said, Blow, window,
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: blow with all your might, blow little Conrad's cap out
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: of sight, and make him chase it everywhere until I've
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: braided all my hair and fixed it so it's all right.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: Then a gust of wind came and carried little Conrad's
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: cap away so that he had to run far, and
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: the maiden calmly combed and braided her hair. All this
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: was observed by the old king, He then went home unnoticed,
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: and when the goose girl came back that evening, he
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: called her aside and asked her why she did all
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: these things. I'm not allowed to tell you, nor am
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: I allowed to bemoan my plight to anyone. Such is
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: the oath I swore under open skies, otherwise I would
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: have been killed. Although he kept on insisting and would
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: give her no peace, she wouldn't talk. Then he said,
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: If you don't want to tell me anything, then you
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: certainly may let the iron stove over there listen to
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: your sorrows. All right, said the maiden, I'll do that.
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: Upon saying that, she crawled into the iron stove and
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: poured her heart out and told it what had happened
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: to her and how she had been betrayed by the
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: wicked chambermaid. Now the oven had a hole on top
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: and the old king overheard what she said and listened
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: to every word she uttered about her fate. He immediately
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: intended to make everything good and had her dressed in
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: royal garments, and it was like a miracle to see
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: how beautiful she really was. The old king called his
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: son and revealed to him that he had the wrong bride,
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: who was nothing but a chambermaid. The true bride, however,
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: was standing there before him, the former goose girl. The
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: young king was delighted and ecstatic when he saw how
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: beautiful and virtuous she was. Now a great feast was
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: prepared and all their friends and the entire court were
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: invited to attend. At the head of the table sat
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: the bridegroom, with the princess at one side and the
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: chambermaid at the other. But the chambermaid was so distracted
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: that she could no longer recognize the princess, who was
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: dressed in a dazzling manner. After they finished eating and
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: drinking and were all in high spirits, the old king
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: gave the chambermaid a riddle to solve. What punishment did
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: a woman deserve who had deceived her lord in such
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: and such a way? whereupon he told her the whole
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: story and concluded by asking, How would you sentence her?
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: She deserves nothing better, said the false bride, than to
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: be stripped completely naked and put inside a barrel studded
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: with sharp nails, then two white horses should be harnessed
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: to the barrel and made to drag her through the
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: streets until she's dead. You're the woman, said the old king,
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: and you've pronounced your own sentence, and this shall happen
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: to you. After the sentence had been carried out, the
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: young king married his true bride, and they both reigned
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: over their kingdom in peace and bliss.
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: I have to say, right at the end, I'm always
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: astonished at the particularly gruesome punishments that fairy tales can
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: come up with.
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, indeed. It's a rough tale, right? I mean, I
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: remember hearing it as a kid, and in fact, it
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: was my sister's favorite. It was. It was her favorite.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: But a wonderful thing, fairy tales. They're gruesome and wonderful.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: So let's weave that into self-betrayal.
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: What were you thinking when you were planning on reading it?
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: So, you know, obviously the true bride and the false
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: bride are two aspects of a single psyche, as Deb
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: pointed out to us earlier. So the true bride is
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: something like our true self, what really matters most to us.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: And the false bride is maybe a little bit like
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: McGilchrist's emissary that can get carried away, that can get
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: attracted to other values. You know, it's interesting that the
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: chambermaid seems to not have any power over her at
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: all until she leaves home. And so it might be,
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: for example, just to make up a story that we
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: could map this onto, that the princess... who has this
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: very good mother who is a source of kind of
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: life blood to her, uh, you know, is, is let's
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: say raised with a certain set of values, a certain
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: knowing who she is perhaps, or, or being, um, you know, having,
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: having perhaps certain religious beliefs or, or, or a certain
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: sense of, of what really matters most in the world.
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: But when she goes off to college, let's say, um,
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: She becomes really entranced by, I'm going to make it up,
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: maybe the world of the social life. And so instead
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: of staying true to what she really cared about and
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: really interested her her whole life, let's say she loved,
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: I'm totally making this up, let's say she loved English literature,
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: let's say she loved to read. And reading was her
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: thing and it was her happy place. And it really,
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: really mattered to her to read and understand books. But
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: she goes off to college and she starts drinking too
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: much and maybe smoking too much weed and just sort
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: of not really tending to those things that mattered to her.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: And then it's like the true bride has been lost.
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: And the part that goes off into the world every
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: day is this other part of ourselves maybe that, you know,
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: is going to maybe dress the role of super fashionista
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: or something. And really, that's not who we are. And
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: so we can lose ourselves. We can lose touch with ourselves,
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: and it can be a terrible betrayal.
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: I'm thinking about picking up a strand that you mentioned earlier,
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: relevant to the master and his emissary, about how when
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: the master had to hire emissaries, circuit riders, as it were,
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: the master had forbearance and realized that he needed to
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: remain distant. In other words, he really had to delegate
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: to the emissaries, or he wouldn't have been able to
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: hold the center, the true center of the kingdom. And
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: that there is something here in this story, too, where
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: our princess, is forbearing of the, you know, her chambermaid says,
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: you know, get off the horse yourself and go drink
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: out of the stream if you want to drink. And
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: our princess says, well, okay. And so it goes. And
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: what she's really hiding from Conrad, her fellow goose tender,
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: is her golden hair. And that's a motif in fairy
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: tales that we've seen in Iron John and others of
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: the golden solar special crown, her crowning glory, as it were,
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: that is gold. And that we hide our true gold
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: or our true gold gets forgotten as the emissaries take
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: over or the chambermaid becomes a dictatorial.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: That's beautiful, Deb, that one of the ways that we
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: betray ourself is to hide our light.
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: And I think there's a lot of that. If I
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: claim that, if I claim my bigness in the world,
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: if I go for my real ambition here, and I
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: try out for the lead of the play, let's say,
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: there will be a repercussion. You know, that there will
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: be something that is shaming or punitive or whatever, because
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: we dared to stand up and be big. How we
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: dare to be seen.
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: I think the dream is also, in another lens, is
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: about the way complexes can act against our own true
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: and essential nature. And so often in fairy tales, the
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: wicked stepmother is an aspect of the shadow of the mother.
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: So the mother provides all of these lovely gifts and
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: three drops of her blood, but she's also the one
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: that says, who? Hey, take this chambermaid. You know, she'll
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: be great.
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: Good point.
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: And so, you know, the chambermaid, I think, represents the
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: shadow of the mother, the aspect of the mother that says, Hey,
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: I haven't been married for years. My husband's dead. I
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: think I'd like yours instead. That would like to take
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: over the life of the daughter. It's an aspect of envy.
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: That is suppressed, but it is absorbed. And so we
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: have this young, lovely girl who's going to a lovely fate,
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: we imagine. And then the shadow of the mother shows
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: up and starts bossing her around. And just as you said, Deb,
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: forcing her to hide in rags, so to speak, and
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: to be silent and not say anything and not stand
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: up for herself or even to tell the truth for
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: that matter. Yeah. The horse represents just the capacity to
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: tell the truth, just to have your own voice. But
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: the mother complex here... just silences everything inside of the girl.
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: It's wonderful. The king often represents or can represent the
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: self or something that can bring order to the situation.
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: I found the relationship between the king and the goose
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: boy So strange.
• 59:28
  Speaker 5: I mean, what king's like going to have the goose
• 59:31
  Speaker 5: boy come in and ask him for advice? So the
• 59:34
  Speaker 5: goose boy represents some aspect of the king's shadow, the
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: lowliest part of himself, but also gives him essential information
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: that can relate to the girl, which then allows him
• 59:48
  Speaker 5: to become suspicious of what's going on and to restore
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: things to right order. So we can know who we
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: are We set out in life, and then all of
• 59:59
  Speaker 5: a sudden, a father complex, a mother complex, some other
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 5: kind of difficulty that we had in childhood rears itself up,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 5: and it forces us to serve something other than our
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 5: authentic self. We've said that in many ways across our conversation,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 5: but here it's an active interference.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: By the shadow of the mother. which is as much
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: an example as any other complex that can alienate ourselves
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: from who we really are.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: What I'm thinking about here is the role of the
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: masculine in this tale. And many a tale starts off
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: with one or the other parents is missing. And this time,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: there's an old queen whose husband had been dead for
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: many years. So the masculine has been out of the picture.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: Our princess does not have a father. An inner masculine
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: that we can often refer to as animus, our inner other,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: the opposite. And the first thing that happens is our
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: little Conrad, who's just a kid, all he knows is
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: how to tend geese, says, hey, wait a minute. She's
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: got golden hair. That's really cool. I think I want some.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: And then he complains to the king about it. I'm
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: not going to do this with her anymore. I don't
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: like her, she's really difficult, etc. The other part of
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: the masculine is the king, the ruler. So these two
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: parts connect. The king listens to the goose boy and
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: is curious, he is interested, and he goes forth and
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: observes under the gate and then hides behind a bush.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: So that there is a part of the personality that
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: that has that role as well. First, I just, like
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: the young boy, I just noticed there's gold here. And
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: a more capable, more advanced, mature part of the psyche says, right,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: I'm going to look into this.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in some sense, I think about the false bride
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: as the one who is more adapted to external values.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: And therefore, you know, which again is a good thing, right?
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: It's good to have a part of us that's adapted
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: to external values, but it's the way that that can
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: take over the other sort of more essential, tender, deeper
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: part of ourselves. So there's lots of different ways to
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: think about these fairy tales. One of the things that's
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: hard is when you think about it like the shadow,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: because that's where you would initially go with this, but
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: it doesn't, It's unsatisfying to me to say, well, the
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: chambermaid is the shadow. But in some sense, she is
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: the shadow. She is the part of the psyche that represents...
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: It's not the typical kind of positive shadow that we
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: often find in fairy tales. This shadow really is negative
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: because it's not the true thing. It's the false thing.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: And she's the usurper.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: Like the emissary.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: And she's a good shadow figure in as much as
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: the trip starts out and it looks one way. And
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: then there's a secret, something that's not seen ostensibly, that
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: suddenly reveals itself. And she is usurping and full of
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: power drive and cunning and bullying and dangerous.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: You know, that's, you just put your finger on it, right?
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: Is it's a power drive. It may, it may, that
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: may be what it is. It's an image of the
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: kind of power drive in the psyche and how that
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: can cause us to betray ourselves. You know, this particular
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: configuration doesn't really exist in a masculine form. Like there isn't,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: there are, there are, there are fairy tales about the
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: false bridegroom, but they don't look like this. And I
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: think that's really interesting, Joseph. So something about the power
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: drive that when it sits in a particular way in
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: a woman's psyche, it can really cause her to betray herself.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that kind of maps on to what you
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: were saying earlier in the example of somebody who goes
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: off to college and that first stage of day-to-day lived autonomy,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: whatever it is, and how... No, I think I will
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 4: go out to the bar tonight. I think I can
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: do this. I finally have this autonomy, and nobody can
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 4: tell me what time I need to be home or
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: what I'm supposed to do. And that power drive often,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 4: I think, comes up as part of young adulthood, I think,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: of giving in to some of that immediate gratification. more
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 4: ephemeral pleasures that are not aligned with our true self.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: And we often have to do what the goose girl did,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: which is, you know, go in some sort of a
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: metaphorical iron stove and have a conversation with ourselves of like,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 4: oh my gosh, look at this. I'm spending my time
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: in these ways. I'm not being true to myself. Yeah.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: And it's always so devastating whenever I read this story.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: that falada is killed i know that feels like such
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: an essential betrayal to to kill to kill the the
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: innocent animal and.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: Something so magical and extraordinary yeah to kill the magical thing.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: Yes to kill the magical thing yeah.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: We've we've covered a lot of territory with self-betrayal and
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: so many different ways of thinking about betrayal and treachery
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: and who are we really Can we lay hold of
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: that clearly enough that we know who we are in
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: most circumstances? I think the fairy tale also talks about youth.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: When we're young, our values are there, but they're often
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: unconscious because there is a matrix with which our personality
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: is grown. So there is an authentic stance, but it
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: can take us decades before we can find language for
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: what is true in us and what is true about us.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: And devoid of language, it's much more difficult to stay
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: conscious of what our values are and what's real and
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: true inside of ourselves. We have to fight for that.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: And so one might even think in the fairy tale
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: that she has to undergo some of this difficulty to
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: in fact know what's important to her.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a story of a kind of, clarification
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: of our stance, of our values, and knowledge of who
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: we are.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: And she is a bit of a goose.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: But she is.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, the chambermaid decides to start herding her around
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: with a stick, telling her what to do, go here,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: go there. She's kind of a goose, and she's going
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: to go out in the field with the other geese,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: and the king's like, oh yeah, we'll crawl in a
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: stove and just tell your secrets, and she's like a goose.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: She's like, oh, okay.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: So, It lifts up the necessity of discerning what is
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: true forbearance and what is simply compliance. Am I truly
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 4: forbearing or am I just going along to get along?
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: Suffering makes us often realize, ouch, this feels really terrible.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: I am not that person.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: Suffering brings consciousness.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: It does.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 4: This week's dream is from a woman who is 43
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: years old, and she is a writer and a somatic practitioner.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 4: And here's the dream. I am congested, though I don't
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: feel sick, other than the sensation of needing to blow
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 4: my nose. I anticipate that what will come out is mucus,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 4: though not runny mucus, something ball-like and formed. I feel
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 4: a tickle in my nasal cavity, but every time I
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 4: try to blow, nothing comes out. Finally, I manage to
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 4: get something out, but I'm immediately horrified to see it's
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 4: a living creature. A prehistoric bug that is rust-colored with
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 4: six legs on either side and a flat, oval-shaped body.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: I immediately recognize it as a troglodyte and feel disgusted.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 4: This experience continues over and over again, the feeling that
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: there is something in my nose, difficulty getting it out,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: and then blowing out a troglodyte. When the troglodyte comes out,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: it quickly scurries away like a cockroach being exposed to
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: the light. Each time this happens before the bug comes out,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 4: I'm sure that this time it will just be mucus.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 4: In the dream, there's a sense that if I blow enough,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 4: I can get to the bottom of the bugs, but
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: this never happens. One of the bugs, I get wet
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: with water from my faucet, though I don't know why
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 4: I do this. It expands in size like a foamy
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 4: mushroom bug, which horrifies me. I tell my mother about
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 4: what I'm experiencing and she says she had the same thing.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: I just need to get an antiviral from my doctor
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: and it will clear up. I'm immediately angry because she
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 4: obviously gave me this ailment. She brushes off this accusation
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 4: and it appears that she can't hear me or doesn't care.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 4: Then I wake up. So for associations, she says, the
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: night before the dream, I learned that a colleague had
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 4: negotiated a salary of $ 130, 000 for a job that I
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: initially turned down. I have struggled with my finances for
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: years and can't imagine this kind of stability, though I
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 4: do long for it. Part of the reason I turned
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: down the job initially was was that the organization did
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 4: not feel psychologically safe to me at the time. I'm
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 4: a person of color, and all other people of color
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: staff members had left the organization. The organization was making
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 4: a commitment to racial justice work, but had not yet
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: begun this process. I was the first person of color
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: they had reached out to since the other BIPOC teachers
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 4: had departed. And that means biracial indigenous people of color.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: She says the main feelings in the dream were, before
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 4: the bug came out, it felt like I might finally
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 4: be successful and clear what was in my nasal cavity
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: for good. But then I was met with another bug.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 4: I felt disgusted and like there was something seriously wrong
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 4: with me. There was also a feeling of shame. I
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: didn't want others to know that I was filled with
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: these cockroach-like bugs. And for additional content, she says, Okay.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: Do any of us know what a troglodyte actually is?
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a hermit or someone who lives in a cave.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: I think etymology is it comes from a word for cave, maybe?
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: It's from the Greek, and it means one who creeps
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: into holes. Cave dweller. So in ancient texts, it's part
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: of the mythology of prehistoric humans. Where did the original
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: humans come from? Somehow they were hole dwellers or cave dwellers.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: And I think it can also kind of have this,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: it can be used to have the sense of like
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: someone who is kind of like almost willfully stupid or unsophisticated.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: Is that right?
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: I think that's a Luddite, but perhaps so.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: But I think that is the connotation, that a troglodyte
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 4: is a primitive, unlearned, unsophisticated kind of person.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: So we're in that realm of shadow, something to do
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: with something primal, something coming out of the ground, so
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: we know it's something in the unconscious. If it has
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: something to do with some kind of fantasy of ancient
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: peoples about the original humans, it's something very instinctive and
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: feels very far away. And I think when we dream
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: of insects... We're almost always dreaming about complexes, but we're
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: dreaming about something that is so radically alien to anything
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: that we experience in ourselves, just like watching a praying
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: mantis and trying to figure out what's going on inside
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: of the praying mantis. It's so different from us.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: Very other.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: I think the fact that it's coming out of her
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: nose is important. The nose and smell being connected to intuition.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: So I found myself saying, what would it mean that
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: there's something clogging up her intuition? She does have an instinct.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: She can blow it out. So she has a way
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: of kind of clearing out the canal. She does get
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: a glimpse of what's going on in there. And it's
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: somehow related to the mother. So we're back in this
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: realm of potentially the mother complex. and how it acts
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: in her own psyche, and that she's becoming aware of it.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: That there's a revelation, a revelatory component of the dream.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's obviously, Joseph, I really like that
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: stuff about sort of intuition and thinking about the bugs
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: as a complex. And of course, bugs are like so
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: autonomous also. You know, they just are going to do
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: what they do, and they don't, you know, have any
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: relationship with us, you know. And I also think it's really,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: you know, there's such disgust and shame, you know, that
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: she mentions. And I wonder if that's related to her
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: experience of herself as a person of color, if that's
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: part of the layering there. But also, one of the
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: things that really struck me about this dream is the
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: mom says, you just need an antiviral. The mom says,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: I had this too. And The dreamer kind of bats
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: that away. But there's, as I think you were saying,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: you know, this is something that actually comes from the
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: mother complex. But it feels important to me that there
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: is a remedy for it. And one of the things
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: that I think is really significant, potentially, I'd love to
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: know what you guys think about this, is that... I
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: just need to get an antiviral from my doctor and
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: it will clear up. It's like pretty simple. I'm immediately
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: angry because she obviously gave me this ailment. So it
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: makes me wonder about the dreamers, let's say, I'm going
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: to say self-sabotaging attitude about this job, although I don't
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: know that that's totally fair. I'm just kind of, it's
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: a placeholder, you know, it's like, was that a self,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: was it self-sabotaging to turn down the job? But it's somehow,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: it's kind of, Is it related to the fact that
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: her mother's offering her something that would fix it? And
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: her response is to get angry because you gave it
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: to me. So there's something about the mom says it'll
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: go away if you get an antiviral and then I
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: get angry. And it's like, are you staying stuck in
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: some kind of resentment when actually you just need to
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: get the antiviral? I don't know.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 4: I am mapping some of this onto the fairy tale
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 4: of the goose girl. Instead of getting the antiviral, there
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 4: is some way that there is this awful ailment, like
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 4: being relegated to the pasture to tend to the geese.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 4: And I'm also thinking about the possible history here with
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 4: this job that pays such a very, very great deal
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 4: And that there, you know, there were two instances here,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 4: at least possibly, of turning down the good thing, the
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 4: job and the antiviral. And because it seems like it's
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 4: much bigger than that, you know, the problem that I have,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 4: if I have these bugs inside my nasal cavity, is
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 4: obviously much bigger than any antiviral could possibly be. handle
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 4: versus what if there is a simple solution? What if
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 4: it is worth trying? That her, you know, the possible,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 4: you know, having the financial stability that she says she
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 4: would really like to have was also brushed aside because
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 4: of the sense of feeling isolated in the workplace as
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 4: a person of color. So there's some way I feel
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 4: like the There's a way of wanting a kind of support,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: a kind of empathy, a kind of resonance with how
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 4: big all this is that our dreamer and dream ego
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 4: may not have had versus that casual, here's a simple
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 4: solution attitude.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: I think that when we have a lot of unconscious
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: material around a circumstance, It's difficult to relate simply to
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: the solution because so many different voices are looking for
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: resolution simultaneously.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: So sometimes we just need to sequence it. Let's do
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 3: the antibiotics now and then let's After that, we'll wonder,
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: how did I get this infection?
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: That's great.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 3: Then thirdly, maybe I'll examine what these bugs are and
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: catch one. Something like that.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: But solving the problem, because it could be hurtful to
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: her to have these parasites.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's really great, Joseph. I really like that. But everything,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: like what you said about there are these different things and,
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: you know, and then you can sequence it. So, like,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: if we are going to kind of map this onto
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: the job, like, Just get financially stable first. And then
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: you might be able to do the work and say,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: how did this happen? How did I get here?
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 4: But what I'm thinking about relevant to what you just said, Joseph,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 4: is that maybe, you know, the feelings get minimized.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: Or brushed past.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 4: And how infuriating that is. You know, I've got this
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 4: terrible problem with this and that and the other. And
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 4: Somebody says, oh, well, you know, just get some WD-40
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 4: and spray it on. And it's like, no, you're not
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 4: hearing how frustrating and defeated and helpless I feel. And
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 4: that that level of our psyches, ourselves, also needs to
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 4: be understood, appreciated, and addressed.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: That feels also really right on to me, Deb.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: That she can't focus on the solution being offered because
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: she feels dismissed.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: And that it might be really important to just say,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: but can you just, you know, can you just be
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: with me and how awful this is? And then I'll
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: go get the prescription filled.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: The feelings that she notes in the dream are horror
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 3: and disgust. So it would also be helpful to just
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: really rest into those feelings and What are the various
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: things that are horrifying, that are difficult to get out,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: get into the room, get into discussion? What are the
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: things that evoke disgust? Do we feel that we are
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: held as an object of disgust in one environment or another,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 3: or were perhaps somewhere in our childhood? There's so much
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: gentle kind of opening of things, I think, that we're
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: all talking about because there's so many dimensions. to her suffering.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 3: I think the troglodyte that scurries away when it's exposed
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: to light is a really important thing that, taking it
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: a little bit out of the context, but our complexes
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: don't like to be seen. And often we'll get a
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: glimpse of something inside of ourselves that makes us uncomfortable,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: and then we can barely even remember what we just
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 3: were thinking about a moment ago. But what strikes me
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: is that In the beginning of the dream, she is
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: determined to get this stuff out of her nose. And
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: she keeps trying and then nothing's coming out. But she
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 3: feels something tickling her inside of her nose. And we've
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 3: all had that sensation. It's like you almost can't think
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: of anything else because it's so disconcerting. So something's tickling
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: her awareness.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 4: Something's bugging her.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: Bugging her. And gosh darn it, she is going to
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: keep blowing her nose or trying to get the hidden
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: thing out in front of her. And even once it's there,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: it's very complicated and shocking and she doesn't quite know
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: what to do with it. But I like her determination.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do too. There's a lot in her attitude
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: that I feel like, yeah. Thanks for listening. To submit
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: a dream, suggest an episode topic, or join our mailing list,
• 1:22:54
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• 1:22:59
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• 1:23:03
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• 1:23:07
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