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Coniunctio: The Alchemy of Union · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So Jung gives us three stages of the coniuntio. The
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: first coniuntio, he tells us, is the union of conscious
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: and unconscious content. In other words, shadow work. When we say, oh,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: I can't stand thus and such, that's a negative fascination
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: because we'll often find ourselves talking about it over and
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: over and over again. Finding that way to bring it
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: back inside and to admit in some regard that The
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: intolerable thing is, in fact, an aspect of myself that
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I have rejected or I've been convinced to reject.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: So we've enjoyed, over the last number of episodes, introducing
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: you to the alchemical sequence that was so instructive for
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Jung's understanding of transformation. Transformation is a very unique idea.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: We might change our mind. We might learn a new skill,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: become more proficient at some psychologically difficult moment. But transformation
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: is an idea that's unique to analytical psychology and Jung's
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: idea that one thing can be transformed into something remarkably different, unique.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: And this process of facilitating our own transformative process through
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the acquisition of wisdom and understanding, as well as participating
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: in things like dream work. So in the seven stages
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: that we've talked about, Today we're going to conclude this
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: brief series discussing the coniuntio. And if we look at
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: the word, it's like conjoin, bringing things together with each other.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: There are many ways in which this happens naturally. We
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: fall in love, we form a partnership, and two become
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: one to a certain degree. Any time we discover something
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: about our shadow, and we claim it into ourselves, that's
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: a healing of something that's split off. Every time we
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: have a realization that, although I've been totally positioned in
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: one particular way, for instance, I really can't stand thus
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: and such, and then later on we discover, you know,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: actually there might be an upside. I can actually hold
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: liking and disliking an idea at the same time. Those
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: are all ideas of a split or two things coming
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: back together or coming together to create a unified thing.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: For Jung, he was very interested in the conscious and
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: unconscious mind blending together to create a kind of unified
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: consciousness that doesn't have the sharp demarcation that most of
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: us experience. For instance, the difference between waking and sleeping.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: He felt that when this union occurs between the conscious
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: and unconscious mind, then the self can incarnate in the personality.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: And what that might mean is rather mysterious because even
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  Speaker 1: according to Jung, it is a very rare process. So
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  Speaker 1: today we're going to talk about this coming together of opposites.
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  Speaker 1: When that is complete, and the new whole thing emerges.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Joseph, I appreciate your introduction, and you made me think
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: of something that is sort of top level, but I
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: want to just sort of put it here at the top,
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  Speaker 3: which is you framed alchemy as being about transformation and
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: depth psychology as being about transformation. I just want to
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: point out something that maybe is a little obvious, but
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: I think it's worth saying. You know, a lot of
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: times we talk about psychotherapy like it's akin to going
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: to the doctor to get symptom relief, that you're feeling anxious,
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: so you want to go to a therapist and talk
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: and get your symptoms reduced. And in psychotherapeutic research, that's
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: often how it's done, right? You fill out Likert scales,
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: how anxious are you feeling before and after, and that's great.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: There is a place for it, but that's not the business.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: of a depth psychologist, we're really talking about transformation of
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: the persona, of the personality, transformation of the psyche. And
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  Speaker 3: that is something that changes every facet of your life
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  Speaker 3: when it happens. And, you know, Jonathan Shedler, the psychotherapist,
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: the psychologist and researcher, has made this point in his
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: writings that it's not the right frame to talk about
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  Speaker 3: symptom reduction or symptom relief because most people don't actually
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: go to therapy for that. They want this experience of
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  Speaker 3: deep change that is imaged so fancifully and with such
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  Speaker 3: resonance in these images from alchemy.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, I think most of us are familiar with going
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: to the therapist and maybe getting coping mechanisms.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 1: Do some breathing exercises and reframe our perception of something,
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  Speaker 1: analyze something more thoughtfully, all of which can reduce our
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  Speaker 1: suffering in some measure. But this is more radical. And
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  Speaker 1: I think one of the troubles that Jung had, and
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  Speaker 1: he laments, trying to explain something that is so different
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  Speaker 1: and so rarely described. So when he found the alchemical
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  Speaker 1: writings and the Rosarium sequences, he was gobsmacked. that there
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  Speaker 1: was at least a way to imagine the process, even
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: using these rather, at first, esoteric and inscrutable images, but
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: after a while, they actually kind of make sense and
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: even show up in people's dreams as strange as they
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: may seem at first.
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  Speaker 4: Jung found all these images of alchemy, which we've been discussing,
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  Speaker 4: they're so rich and they're so roomy because these ideas
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  Speaker 4: bubbled up during the heyday of alchemy, before the Enlightenment,
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  Speaker 4: in profusion with drawings and writings and all kinds of things,
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  Speaker 4: so that this is a way, this is a map,
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  Speaker 4: in a way, of the unconscious. And, you know, just
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  Speaker 4: as you were saying at the beginning, Joseph, of, you know,
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  Speaker 4: we might change our mind, or Lisa, you know, we
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: go to a therapist and we get symptom reduction, But
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  Speaker 4: alchemy shows us how and what the essential transformative processes
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  Speaker 4: look like. And that has to do with meeting various
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: elements of our own unconscious, without which we're still working
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: with just the ego, which is very, very important and
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: certainly a good thing. But it's the richness that Jung
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  Speaker 4: discovered in all these old alchemical treatises and manuscripts. He
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: had a bookseller in Munich. He said, whenever you come
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: across an alchemical work, just send it to me. That
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  Speaker 4: provides the richness and the imagery of the unconscious as
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: these various alchemical processes. So there it is, the map.
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: of what transformation can look like and its various essential components.
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  Speaker 4: And the last one is the coniuntio, the coming together
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  Speaker 4: of the opposites, the essential kind of wholeness that I
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: think we all want to feel and experience.
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  Speaker 1: And Jung writes, the coniuntio is the central symbol of
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: the individuation process.
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  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. I was thinking about the philosopher's stone as, you know,
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  Speaker 4: the image that resonates, I think, particularly strongly.
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: But, you know, Deb, you were talking about how these
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: images just kind of bubbled up and how we can
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: sort of intuitively feel them. And I think that's true.
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  Speaker 3: You know, we've talked about soluteo when things kind of dissolve.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: We've talked about coagulatio when things kind of firm up.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: We've talked about calcinatio when they heat up. And And
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  Speaker 3: I think even though we're using these strange Latin terms,
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: most people can feel that intuitively. But boy, is that
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: true here, right? Because with coniuntio, I think we can
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: all relate to that, the sacred marriage, the image of union.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: And marriage is a huge symbol that pops up all
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: the time in people's dreams. And of course, just about
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  Speaker 3: every fairy tale ends with a wedding, and then they
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: lived happily ever after. So this sense of the union,
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  Speaker 3: the coniuntio, being the culmination of something.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: So Jung gives us three stages of the coniuntio. And
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  Speaker 1: so in a sense, there are multiple conjunctions and not one.
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  Speaker 1: The first coniuntio, he tells us, is the union of
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: conscious and unconscious content. In other words, shadow work. And
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: one can't move on to the other possible material until
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: the shadow work has been done. We've spoken about this
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: many times, and it's kind of widely understood that the
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: things that are intolerable despicable that we believe that we
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: are observing in other people or other situations and have
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: the very strong, intense fascinations that are negative, right? When
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: we say, well, I can't stand this and such, that's
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  Speaker 1: a negative fascination because we'll often find ourselves talking about
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: it over and over and over again. Finding that way
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: to bring it back inside and to admit in some
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: regard the intolerable thing is in fact an aspect of
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: myself that I have rejected or I've been convinced to reject.
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  Speaker 1: The second coniuntio is the union of the masculine and
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  Speaker 1: feminine psychic principles inside of oneself. There's been a lot
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  Speaker 1: of debate as to whether that's the best way to
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  Speaker 1: categorize these other qualities that the self wants us to integrate.
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  Speaker 1: But the self has in reserve a bunch of traits
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  Speaker 1: that each of us could bring forward. Discovering that and
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  Speaker 1: bringing it together is the second coniuntio, and that's shown
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  Speaker 1: in the sacred marriage symbolism. And the third coniuntio, which
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  Speaker 1: actually Jung didn't investigate greatly because the Rosarium woodcuts go
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  Speaker 1: on for another oh gosh, 10 or 12 woodcuts. He
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  Speaker 1: kind of stops right with the union of opposites. But
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  Speaker 1: if it were to continue, the final image is the
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  Speaker 1: spiritualization of the individual. So the self emerges as the
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  Speaker 1: organizing center, not theoretically, but in a way that is
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  Speaker 1: profoundly and dynamically incarnated within the personality. three layers of
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  Speaker 1: conjoining that ostensibly sew us all together in such a
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  Speaker 1: way that we are the fullest possible version of ourselves. Yeah.
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: And I'm thinking about these three stages, Joseph. I mean,
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  Speaker 4: each one of them has to do with a set
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  Speaker 4: of opposites. And for Jung, his theory of the opposites
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  Speaker 4: was just one of the major planks. in his whole
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  Speaker 4: theoretical work. And so we're always thinking about how do
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  Speaker 4: we unify the opposites? So shadow work, as you said, marriage,
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  Speaker 4: not only as a metaphor, but I think almost everybody
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  Speaker 4: may have experienced some of that in real life or
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  Speaker 4: other kinds of companionships, partnerships. et cetera, of what do
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  Speaker 4: we do with the opposites and how do we unify them,
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  Speaker 4: not by sort of mixing them together so that they
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  Speaker 4: constitute some sort of weird stew, but letting each have
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  Speaker 4: its play in our psyche. And altogether, this is about
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  Speaker 4: integrating the unconscious.
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  Speaker 3: It's all about that.
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  Speaker 4: And that as we can do that work and become conscious,
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  Speaker 4: more conscious of what is really inside us, it will
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  Speaker 4: lead us to the coniunctio, a sense of wholeness, often imaged,
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  Speaker 4: I like the image of the philosopher's stone.
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  Speaker 1: So I think we could start with just subjectively talking
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  Speaker 1: about fascination. Because fascination is one of the ways that
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  Speaker 1: the unconscious guides our attention. In the first stage, which
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  Speaker 1: has to do with shadow, we have a negative fascination.
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  Speaker 1: We're looking at the terrible whatever that we can't take
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  Speaker 1: our eyes off of. Ooh, that scoundrel. Oh, that terrible.
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  Speaker 4: My sixth grade teacher, Mrs.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: Bilger.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: And interestingly enough, you became a teacher.
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  Speaker 3: Right?
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  Speaker 1: I mean, really interesting. Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So there's something about the potential that we're also seeing
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: and perhaps the way that she's exercising authority. I don't know.
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  Speaker 1: And yet there is also a seed inside of you
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  Speaker 1: that's vibrating with the role of being a teacher.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: That's a really, I had never thought of that.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: Sorry.
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: And that is also, that's hallmark of a little coniuntio,
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: is that aha feeling that we're all enjoying me discovering.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So, okay.
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: Go ahead and take it away, Joseph.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: And we can have golden shadow and negative shadow as well.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: So our best friends, von Franz writes, often are carrying
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: a kind of golden shadow. They have traits which we
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  Speaker 1: might have developed in ourselves, but they have done so
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: to great positive effect. So the difference between the first
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  Speaker 1: and the second coniuntio is that the shadow coniuntio represents
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  Speaker 1: material that we once knew and then lost touch with.
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  Speaker 1: So it's a reclaiming of a thing that we have
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: at least brushed against. It may have been set aside
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: in the first six years of life, but it did
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: have some play in our nervous system, whether it's a
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: positive potential or what the culture would say is a
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: naughty potential. But we knew it. So there's a bit
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: of a homecoming to the first coniuntio. And as my
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: friend sometimes says, to his shadow companions, my beloved degenerates
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: occasionally come home and visit me. And that's the attitude
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: that we want. We may not want them to drive
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: our car or make financial decisions for us, but they
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: do represent life force. And even if they were raw
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: and conflictual as children, we can bring them back into
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: the kingdom or the queendom right now and actually help
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: civilize them because they have great vitality inside of them.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: So the second konyungtyo, or the anima animus, is a
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: total mystery. In order for it to be anima animus,
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  Speaker 1: we've never known this about ourselves. It's surprising, maybe shocking.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: And one of the ways we discover that is through
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: our fascinations in our love objects. We adore something about
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: the other person which is quite different from us. Maybe
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: we're all rough and tumble and our beloved is gentle
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: and kind or vice versa. The thing that fascinates us
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: about the beloved is often, but not exactly, is often
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: related to the traits of that are held in reserve
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: for us that we do need to come into union
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: with one way or another, and by being in the
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: proximity of somebody who displays our traits held in reserve,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: we learn about what it's like to live that out,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: first vicariously, and then later kind of trying it on.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: So funnily enough, Virginia Beach is a big tourist destination,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: and I am often reminded surprised and charmed when I
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: see elderly couples show up in Virginia Beach dressed exactly alike,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: matching slacks, matching sweaters, matching haircuts. So the differentiation is
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: really blended, and that's an outer aesthetic, but I think
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: that's inspired by this intuitive feeling that the opposites, in
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: this case often male-female, not limited to that, come together.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: And there is a desire for an outer representation of
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: this inner union and coming together.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: So we really want to make sure that we help
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: the listeners kind of understand the felt experience of this.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: And so I'm going to throw myself on the pyre here.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: I went to high school with Moby, who is the,
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: you know, really well-known pop singer. He was a year
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: above me and he went by Moby. And he was,
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: as you might imagine, a member of like the coolest band.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: And as you can imagine, I had a crush on
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: him because like we all had a crush on Moby, right?
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: He was like incredibly personable and charming and kind of
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: oozed integrity and, you know, was just super cool. And
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: of course, the crush was completely unrequited. But But I
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: think that that was, you know, like you're saying, Joseph,
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: I sort of saw something in him, which he was
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: expressing himself creatively. And that was something that in my
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: personal destiny, I was being called to get a handle on.
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: It would be many, many, many decades before I was
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: able to do that. But interestingly, at one point in
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: analytic training, I can't remember exactly when this was, but
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: I think I had written a paper about that I
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: was really proud of like it had it the writing
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: of it had gone really well and I felt really
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: positive about it and it was kind of a somewhat
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: exalting expansive experience and wouldn't you know it around that
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: time I had a dream with Moby in it which.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Oh I thought you're gonna say he called you or
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: something I was I was so much further along that
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: path imaginably no.
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: No no it's not like um I constellated the archetype
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: and the planets shifted around me. It was just, it
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: showed up in my dreams. But I remember thinking, that's odd.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: And then I thought, oh, no, it's not, because there's
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: that thing, right? I mean, we could say, well, that's
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: kind of an anonymous figure. But the point is, it's
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: reaching in the same direction that we're talking about, this coniuntia,
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: this claiming of a quality that had been unknown to me,
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: but I had an intimation of its significance. And there
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: it was, it exerted exactly what you're talking about, the
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: pull of fascination.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: So sometimes we'll ask our kids in high school, you know, well,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: what do you want to do when you grow up?
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: What kind of career do you want to orient in?
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Which is a very, it's a very good question, I understand,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: but it's a rather dry question. If we were to
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: ask our kids, what fascinates you in this great wide world?
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: They might be able to identify that a little, more distinctly.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: And while it may not seem to be a career
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: choice at the moment, we're all surprised by the kinds
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: of industries and careers that open up and all of
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: a sudden one's fascination with one thing or another could
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: lead into a career if that were even the goal.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: But we cannot choose to be fascinated. We can only
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: acknowledge it. And anything like that, that the ego can't
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: get its little paws on to work the dials, comes
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: from some other more autonomous layer of the psyche. So
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: fascination is very reliable.
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: Another way to take a look at where your own
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: experience of this is, is, you know, who did you
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: have a crush on when you were in high school
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: or college? And it could be Could be a celebrity,
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: a rock star, you know, anyone who's out there in
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: the public. And then think to yourself, what is it
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: about that person, that singer or, you know, world leader
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: or knowledgeable authority? What is it about that? And some things,
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: you know, some people... Don't carry that fascination. You know,
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: nobody would say, yeah, I had a crush on Richard Nixon.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: I don't think so.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Hey, be careful. You don't know. You don't know what
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: secret fascinations people have.
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: There's really someone out there. That's their jam. Okay, apologies.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: They turned it into an opera, you know?
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: I will leave it to anyone out there. who has
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: such a fascination to go ahead and explore that as
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: deeply as needed. But it's very interesting. Or, you know,
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: I remember in high school, people having, you know, dating
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: certain people. This guy is really great. And I would
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: look at him and go, you know, it doesn't turn
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: me on at all. So it's a wonderful image and
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: a clue that you're.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: Offering, Joseph.
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: What fascinated you? And I had classmates who were, I
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: had one guy, a friend, who was fascinated by the
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: idea of being a director of traffic and redesigning roads
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: and systems for people. You know, I would listen kindly
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: and go, okay, right, okay, I get it. But honestly,
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: he was really, really turned on. So look for the fascination.
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: I love that as a clue.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Now, just to have fun, we could claim it's an
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: alchemical stage, the fascinatio.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Of course. Because it's a Latin word. It means enchantment, sorcery,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: spellbinding influence.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: And, you know, the thing about the fascination is that,
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: for me, when I find it, then I always think
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: about it in terms of this other concept that we've
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: talked about, the ego-self axis. Mm-hmm. Fascination is how the self,
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: if you want to say, directs the attention of the
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: ego towards something that's important. Or it's how the ego
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: perhaps first recognizes its own destiny. It's because the self
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: kind of casts this enchantment on traffic directing and it's like, oh,
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: that's the thing. But I think it relates to our
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: concept of conjunctio. Because when we can feel that, when
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: we have access to our ego-self axis, then we are
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: on the road to this process of psychological wholeness that
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: is imaged by coniuntio.
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And the fascination can be negative as well, because
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: these things appear, you know, as somebody we're really attracted
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: to and have crush on, like Moby, or somebody that
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: You know, like all the vampire images, for example, vampires
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: exert a fascination upon their victims. I mean, somebody could
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: just sort of attack somebody and get a meal in
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: a back alley, but the stories are of the person
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: who lets the vampire in, who's fascinated by this. So
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: there's the thread to follow, is the fascination.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Pliny the Elder, one of the Greek folks, says there
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: are persons who have the faculty of fascination whose very
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: glance is destructive. And so there was a whole industry
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: of creating talismans to protect oneself from these overwhelming glances.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: They were called the fascinum. And they were often, interestingly,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: and they find these in Roman hordes, tiny little Erections
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: with wings on them, which were designed to swat away
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: the power of the eye. Yeah.
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: And altogether, this is such great illustrative material for our
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: overarching hypothesis here of how necessary it is to integrate
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: contents of the unconscious. We have to do that. And
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: there it is, all the stuff that we experience, whether
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: it's somebody that just got under our skin or someone
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: we have a crush on or whatever it might be.
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: There is your unconscious talking to you and asking to
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: be admitted into consciousness.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: So one of the dangerous fascinations in that first conjunctio
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: can show up as an addiction. People become fascinated by...
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: by pornography or some other drug of one kind or another.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: And as Jungians, we are often looking for the archetypal
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: dimension of that. While, and sometimes I've said this before,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: right impulse, wrong ritual. So for instance, when I'm working
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: with men that are fascinated, spellbound by pornography, I treat
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: it seriously. It's like you are searching for something. And
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: most of the time, watching pornography isn't just looking at
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: one image. They're moving all the time, searching, searching, searching
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: for something that never arrives. But discovering or beginning to
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: get a sense of the thing that I am searching
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: for can sometimes break the spell of the ritualistic use
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: of pornography.
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: So you're bringing in this concept of telos, that even
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: in such a kind of, if you will, debased ritual
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: as kind of obsessive use of pornography, there is a
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: yearning for something. You know, as Deb, you like to say,
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: the psyche is going somewhere, even when we think it's not.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: And where it wants to go is toward wholeness and
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: towards a sacred marriage. And sometimes we get a little
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: off course. but in essence, that drive toward that. And
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: I think it's, you know, to expand the term a
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: little bit, I think that coniunctio is the alchemical equivalent
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: of what Jung elsewhere termed individuation.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, he did say it was the primary term. symbol
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: in that direction in terms of the coming together of
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: split-off parts, which also started with Freud's observation that that
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: splitting was the ego from the instincts. So even Freud
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: was participating in this restorative coniuntio by bringing the ego
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: of the repressed Viennese patients back into relationship with their
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: healthy instinctive levels and that that was profoundly curative.
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: I want to veer off in a slightly different direction
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: into how important image is. And we've been talking about
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: it as the fascination of whether, you know, it's a
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: crush on some, let's say, film star or a fascination
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: with a substance or something like pornography. But the way
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: that the unconscious manifests, these are images, something that doesn't
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: have a rational sort of reasoning power, and it corresponds
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: to dreams. That's where we get images, night after night
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: after night after night. What else is there other than
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: what we may perceive in our waking life, which certainly
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: is important. But what is our unconscious actually saying to us?
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: And there's a man called Edward Edinger who wrote a
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: wonderful book called Ego and Archetype. And what he says is,
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: this corresponds to the old statement that dreams come from God.
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: In other words, the image-making power of the psyche derives
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: from its transpersonal center and isn't a function of the ego.
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: So this is another source of tapping into that part
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: of us that is not ego and that has its
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: root in a transpersonal center.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: So to clarify that, and sometimes this isn't always so
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: clear in Jung's writing, partially because of the way his
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: work was edited and grouped. But the goal is not
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: to come into union with the self. The goal is
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: for the personality to come into union with its own blueprint,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: which then allows it to be a more unimpeded conduit
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: of expression for the self. So one of the sometimes
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: written as the monstrosities of coniuntio, is when the ego
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: comes into union with the self. And that is sometimes
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: described as a narcissistic character structure. And we see this
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: in this unfortunate suffering. Somebody believes that they are more
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: powerful than they possibly could be. They attribute qualities to
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: themselves that they really cannot evidence, or they expect to
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: be treated in a kind of godlike fashion. So the
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: self is something that we need to have a worshipful,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: inspiring relationship with. and in a sense, needs to be
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: at its natural distance. So we talk about the ego-self
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: access first as a symbol and a metaphor, by the way,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: of the relationship between the ego and the self. As
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: a side comment, Neumann is the one who introduced this
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: to Jung, and it was lifted right from Kabbalah, Kabbalistic
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: mysticism around the ego-self access. We need that channel of
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: communication between the ego and the self, to keep us
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: safe and in the world in a way that it
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: continues to evolve and participate materially. So while the ego's
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: influence is welcomed, it's not that we are to mate
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: with the self. And interestingly enough, in the Old Testament,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: there's a story where angels mate with with physical women
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: and produce a race of monstrous giants called the Nephilim.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: And that's, of course, a metaphor. But what it's talking
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: about is a kind of improper relationship between the self
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: and the ego can produce these strange mixtures of behavior
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: and feeling and thought and maybe even changes in how
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: our bodies function that doesn't serve us well.
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: What you're talking about is inflation. And that can be
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: dangerous for us and it can be dangerous for the
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: people around us.
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Von Franz talks about wholeness and so on. I'm
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: going to read a little bit from her. But the
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: paradox of enlightenment, it's not just what you guys were saying.
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: It's not about something sort of grand and subsuming and grandiosity.
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: It is about humility. and ordinariness, and being in harmony
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: with life. And I love what von Franz wrote about it.
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: It's just so clear and human as her idea of
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: what a kind of wholeness, not that it's ever achieved
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: once and for all, but a description of what this
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: might be like. She says, if through fighting and meeting
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: the unconscious, one has suffered long enough, a kind of
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: objective personality is established. A nucleus forms in the person
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: which is at peace, quiet, even in the midst of
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: the greatest life storms, intensely alive but without action and
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: without participation in the conflict. One day something breaks and
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: the face acquires a quiet expression for something has been
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: born which remains in the center, outside or beyond the conflict,
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: which does not go on anymore as it did. The
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: conflict has not been solved, but the experience that one
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: thing is just quietly beyond the conflict remains, and from
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: then on the process becomes different. People no longer search,
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: they know the thing exists, they've experienced it for a moment. Therefore, thereafter,
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: the opus has a goal, that of finding this moment
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: again and slowly being able to keep it so that
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: it becomes something constant. I think that's just lovely and
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: goes to what started me on my Jungian journey, which
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: was reading about the inner companion and the treasure hard
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: to attain. And that's what it is, the still, quiet voice,
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: the sense that one is not totally at the mercy
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: of life events, feelings, relational or career difficulties, that there
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: is another place.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: It's a really beautiful quote, Deb. And can you just
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: tell us again who wrote that and what book is
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: it in? And we'll put it, there'll be a link
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: in the show notes.
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: It's Marie-Louise von Franz, a very close collaborator of Jung's,
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: in her book just simply entitled Alchemy. And I think
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: that For me, that's the goal. That's the opus of
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: those opposites of the still, quiet place, a center that
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: is beyond a conflict and relative peace. And, you know,
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: whatever all the life turmoil is that we're always going
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: to experience.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: And again, I mean, to go back to this idea
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: of communio and the imagery around it, I think we
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: all yearn for that somehow. And it's no... It's not
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: a coincidence that the marriage plot forms the basic structure
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: of many, many, many a book or movie. It's not
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: a coincidence that most fairy tales, as I said before,
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: end with a happy ever after and a wedding feast.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: It's no coincidence that so many of our popular songs
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: are love songs that express longing. And yes, of course,
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: at some level, these things are all about yearning for
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: partnership in the outer world. But I think they also
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: are a yearning for exactly what you just described. They're
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: a yearning for the inner marriage. And to go back
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: to this idea of the lesser coniuntio and the greater coniuntio,
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: we're striving and we may have the lesser versions of them,
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: And then we just keep striving. So it's also cyclical.
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: The stages that we've described in this series, it's not
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: like start here. and get here and then you're done.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: It's like we go through them and then we go
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: through them again.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: So I think there is a difference between the lesser coniuntios,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: the alchemical monstrosities, and the greater coniuntio. And not everybody
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: finds themselves in an alchemical monstrosity. Inflation is normal occasionally
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: as teenagers. We've got to be a little bit too
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: big for our britches in order to try out new
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: things that normally would just scare the pants off us.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: But a true alchemical monstrosity creates a bizarre and dangerous
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: kind of personality. And that's something that we would see
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: more often in the most pathologic examples. If we look
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: at career criminals, John Wayne Gacy, things like that, who
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: really do become monstrous and inhuman and yet certain in
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: their actions, I would say that most terrible crimes are
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: committed by individuals who are likely in a kind of
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: alchemical monstrosity.
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, which is, you know, from the alchemy operational point
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: of view, is when two substances that are impure are
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: combined and they create, you know, some kind of weird amalgam. Alchemy,
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: which Jung appreciated very much, had such an expression of
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: collective unconscious archetypal material that it's famous for all kinds
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: of great images of monstrosities like this one.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: And that the previous stages, as you were saying, Deb,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: are required. One doesn't go from taking an interest in
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: self-development to a coniuntio, The reason that there are stages
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: is the stages are actually necessary. As you had said,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: the connection or the conjunctio of impure substances creates unpredictable outcomes,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: which of course was true in a chemical laboratory. Somebody
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: thinks they're putting these two things together and there's six
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: other pieces of junk mixed into it, and all of
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: a sudden the laboratory is on fire.
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: Every kid with a chemistry set or.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: The nightmare of that at least so so there is
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: there is preliminary processes that are really really important which
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: can be we've summed up sometimes in just the four
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: stages like the negrito the albedo the citronatio and the
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: ribato that that kind of sum up the things that
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: have to happen beforehand. So again, if I'm split and
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know anything about my shadow and the self
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: were to draw too close, what often happens is that
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: the shadow takes on godlike components that can possess the
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: ego and then compel us to do shocking, horrifying things.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: And or we can develop a kind of psychotic paranoia,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: where the shadow elements in the psyche have taken on
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: godlike powers, but we are its victims, at least in
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: our imagination, and that can make us do terrible things
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: when we're in a paranoid psychosis.
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: As you said in An Addiction, that we get subsumed,
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: and it is the job of the ego to integrate
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: the contents of the unconscious, to integrate metabolized shadow, rather
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: than shadow taking over. And that's what happens in addiction.
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: That's what happens in vampire stories. You know, all kinds
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: of things is then the negative aspect of unconscious elements
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: holds us in captivity. Whereas ego, our ego is supposed
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: to incorporate these things.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: So one of the most wonderful fairy tale unfoldings of
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: this is something that I saw many, many years ago
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: in a movie called The Dark Crystal, which I think
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: may have come out of the Jim Henson category.
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: I think it did, yes.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: And so it's a marvelous use of puppetry, which my
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: older psyche has a hard time sometimes with. It can
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: seem kitschy to me. But if I can suspend that
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: part of my psyche and really just fall into it,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: in a nutshell, this is an alternative universe which is
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: ruled by these very dangerous libidinous creatures called the Skeksis,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: which are kind of like vultures wearing Renaissance clothing. And
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: they're amoral and ruthless and... have no empathy and are
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: just constantly voracious for whatever they can get their hands on.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: In another part of this world are the gentle mystics
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: that are turtles, actually, cosmic turtles with these wonderful runes
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: and spirals inscribed onto them, and they have their own
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: kind of magical powers. And then a hero who has
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: found his way to this task that there's an enormous
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: crystal that is dark and malevolent, but there is a
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: shard that must be returned, inserted back into the crystal
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: in order for the universe to come back together. And
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: in the final scene, spoiler alert for those of you
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: that are going to watch this, put your fingers in
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: your ears, that the mystics in their slow and steady
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: way leave their compound and travel to meet the Skeksis.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: and surround them, and the turtles come up on all fours,
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: and the Skeksis are like screaming, and their eyes are
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: bugged out, and the turtles draw the Skeksis into their bodies,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: and then they transform into these luminous, white, kind of
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: angelic creatures who then explain how it is that they
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: conducted an experiment to split apart their goodness and their
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: badness which had then caused all of this turbulence and
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: conflict and had then to come back together. So a
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: little heavy-handed in one sense, but it is inspiring when
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: it all comes together.
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: And it touches on something, you know, it captures something.
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: This story is another in a multitude of stories about coniuntio,
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: about working through difficulties, shadow content of all kinds, the Skeksis.
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: I've never even heard of this movie, by the way.
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: But the story is one of where the happy ending
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: and the resolution is an image of resolution of opposites,
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: of that wholeness. It comes out right. We have the
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: proverbial happy ending, which fairy tales give us as well.
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: And many, many, many a story. is about resolving conflicts,
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: parts of ourselves imaged by people or Skeksis or turtles
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: coming together.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: And the Skeksis and the mystics don't hammer out a
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: peace treaty or like some kind of commercial capitalistic terms
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: where they're going to kind of exchange goods and services.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, that might have calmed things down, I suppose,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: but the actual transformation is the surrender of the two
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: parts to then blend into something that is greater than
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: the parts without diminishing either. And that's one of the
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: ideas around the appearance of the third, which we've talked
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: about many times as we become conscious of two intractable attitudes.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: And we hold it, we hold it, it's very tense.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: And perhaps in a dream or otherwise, a third image appears,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: which actually resolves the tension without diminishing either. And that's
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: a tall order. And often it's something beyond our ego's
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: ability to conceive of what that would even look like.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: But when it appears, it feels obvious. Yeah.
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: You know, Joseph, I so appreciate that you've lifted up
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: here some of the kind of negative aspects, or the
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: dangers involved in coniunctio, because it is pretty easy to
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: be like, you know, the clouds parted, the light shone down, and,
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: you know, we got married and lived happily ever after.
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: But you've sort of mentioned the possibility of a kind
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: of inappropriate union with the self, which would look like
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: this really dangerous inflation. You've talked about the kind of
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: monstrosities that can occur from the lesser coniuntio. You brought
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: up something when we were talking about this before we
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: started recording that I thought was also really good that
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: I'd love to invite you to get us started on,
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: which is, you know, it's so momentous when you realize
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: what the coniuntio might mean and what it's going to
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: ask of you. that when we start to get an
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: intimation of that, we can just want to run away.
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: So would you kind of pick that up and talk
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: a little bit about that?
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: Sure. Jung mentions this when he talks about the regressive
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: restoration of the persona, that there are times when we
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: feel that we are on the precipice of an enormous
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: change that would require us a lot of transformation within ourselves. Outwardly,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: it may look like a change of relationship or career
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: or even a new location or a new vocation. But inwardly,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: it often looks like something that we have denied within
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: ourselves is standing before us and demanding a deep integration
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: and acceptance. And sometimes we turn away. James Hillman, in
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: his biography, I think it's called Blue Fire, he talks
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: about being a child in grade school and hating to write.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: He said he would do anything to run away from writing.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: And yet later in his career, being a writer and
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: being an extraordinary writer was absolutely his destiny. And in
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: the book, he later writes processes that and says that
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: the daemonic demand to be a writer was so powerful,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: so enormous, that as a child, when I even approached it,
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: the only thing I could do was hide myself from
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: the enormity of the demand. So there's an instinctive wisdom
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: that had the coniuntio happened then, it might have been problematic,
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: because there's so much more a child has to accomplish
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: before we take on a vocation. And later in life,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: when he surrendered to the demands of this potential, it
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: became the raison d'etre of his life. I mean, he
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: was a writer in all forms of that work. So
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: I think that there are times when we will feel
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: the magnitude of transformation, and we may discover that we
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: run away instead and want to simply restore the familiar.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: And the familiar could look like any number of things,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: going back to your old job, begging your ex to
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: take you back, wanting to move back to your hometown
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: for no other reason than the comfort of the familiar
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: environments that we have seen. So the regressive behavior restoration
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: of the persona is putting the old clothes on because
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: we're afraid. Or fear may be too simplistic a term.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: It's probably more complicated than that. But there's a cost
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: to that.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that we recognize the sort of enormity of what's
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: being asked. Our ego is going to have to surrender.
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's part of the idea of
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: the community is that in whatever version it takes, you're
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: not going to be totally in control of it. And
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: then just to link it up, you know, the regressive
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: frustration of the persona is very similar to Joseph Campbell's
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: idea of the refusal of the call as a stage
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: of the hero's journey. That you feel something's moving, you
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: can move toward it, you sense what's being asked, you
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: sense the sacrifice that you're going to be asked to make,
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: and you say, take this cup away from me.
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: You know, we've used some concrete examples to give people
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: an idea, but it's not about whether, you know, moving
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: back to your old hometown, like your example, Joseph, is
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: the right or the wrong thing to do, that it's
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: automatically one or the other, or whether moving to a
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: new location is. Of any of these major life decisions
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: asks us to engage in some self-reflection of where is
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: this coming from? Am I refusing something? Am I kind
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: of scared of something or I don't want to do it?
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: Or is it really my path toward more wholeness? What
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: is really going on inside that is represented by this decision,
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: which may look like something we need to decide rationally,
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: but really goes deep? You know, should I move here
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: or should I go back to my hometown? oh, I
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: should do this.
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: No, no, no.
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: What really is the path? And most, I think, with
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: time and reflection, and it's certainly something that we do
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: in psychotherapy, is it takes a while to plumb the
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: depths and really understand what a major life decision is
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: about because it includes something of the unconscious. And where
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: is really our individuation path?
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: And so just as you said, Deb, it's not that
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: moving back home to your hometown is intrinsically a bad thing,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: but when it is done in service to escape growth,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: it's really the motivation that gives us a hint of, ah,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: is this really, am I running away or am I
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: running towards?
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: Jim Hollis used to say, when you're facing a decision, ask,
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: will doing this make my life bigger or smaller?
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: And that is perfect because it brings us back to
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: the results of the coniuntio, which is said to be
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: an enlargement of psychic space, an expansion of interiority. So
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: rather than identifying with just one dominant position, that the
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: individual feels that they themselves are large enough to contain
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: a multiplicity of options. and to not feel compulsed to
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: grab one necessarily over the other, but to have this
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: field of consideration that can be uncannily objective. So sometimes
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: there are people who have gone to, for one reason
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: or another, to visit a master, and perhaps the master
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: is a Zen master, or it's a yogic master, or
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: a Tibetan lama, who is highly venerated. And many of
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: you may have had the experience I have also, to
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: stand before somebody and to try to ask a question.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: And what is coming from them, from their eyes, is
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: this tremendous, uncanny indifference and unpredictability. So if a person
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: is primarily responding to impulses from the self rather than
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: the environment, it's very hard to predict what they are
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: responding to because it doesn't follow the normal social sequence
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: of things. So we come to this elevated Lama and
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: we ask a question and perhaps they don't smile or
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: don't nod or don't have an emotional response and then
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: suddenly say something which is profound and startling in its
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: depth and breadth. But what it comes from feels very,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: I keep using the word uncanny because I don't have
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: a better one.
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: Mysterious.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: Mysterious.
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: But it's a separation from the collective.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: It's a person who is so uniquely and almost wholly
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: W-H-O-L-Y and maybe H-O-L-Y, him or herself, that what will
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: come forth from that person is a surprise. And that,
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: you know, that often, you know, some of the paradoxes
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: appear of, you know, oh, you know, wisdom figure, should
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: I do A or B? And the person says 42.
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: That's a.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: Scene in a movie.
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: So is it... So that is an indication of a
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: unique and very substantive individuation process. The person isn't acting
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: according to normal collective expectations.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: Which can put them in a kind of chafing relationship sometimes.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: Jung was often criticized for his choices even later in
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: his life. And when his own individuation process advanced far enough,
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: he began to speak differently. One of the things he
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: said that I have thought over many times, it is
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: not I who create myself, rather I happen to myself.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: Which so beautifully captures that shift from the ego believing
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: that it is the builder of its own attitudes, of
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: its choices, of its feelings, and stepping back and watching
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: the personality as an artifact of the incarnate life. And
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: in that way, There's a number of different things that
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: one could make of that. But one is then relativized
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: to the self, understanding that there's forces that are far
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: beyond anything that we could control, that have a hand
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: in our personal fate at the very least. So, Deb,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: you were saying early on the signs of individuation or
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: the signs of the coniuntio. And Jung himself, Sprinkles us
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: around humility, psychological spaciousness, and decreased defensive reactivity. And as
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: a whole, a more permeable access to symbolic experience. And
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: symbolic experience is being able to track the internal correlates
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: of what is happening around oneself in the outer world
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: so we might be sitting there in traffic we're agitated
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: we've been stuck for two hours and you know everyone's
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: honking their horn and maybe our body is red-faced but
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: the ability to monitor the inner landscape where quite often
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: different things are occurring that are correlates to what's happening
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: in the outer environment but the primary fascination are these
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: internal correlates to the outer happenings of the time. And
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: that is a great reversal of what our bodies tell
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: us to do, which is often a hypervigilance to the
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: physical world.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: I want to go back and just touch on some basics.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: I'm going to present a fairly, perhaps, pedestrian understanding of coniuntio,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: but could be a place to start if this is
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: all feeling kind of confusing. Part of the idea of
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: individuation is that you make as much of yourself conscious
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: as possible and that you have a relationship with as
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: much of yourself as possible. And as Joseph said earlier,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: some of that is shadow work and some of it
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: is a little bit deeper than that. But in any case,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: it does mean in some sense that you are choosing
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: to develop parts of your personality that you may not
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: be most identified with. And in the language of typology,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: if you're a real sensei type, it might mean that
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: you really lean into your intuition. If you're a real thinker,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: it might mean that you really lean into feeling and
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: vice versa. And, and And so I think this is
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: all part of this idea of coniuntio, and it's all
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: part of the idea of individuation, and those things roughly
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: mean the same thing. So you're kind of developing those
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: qualities in you that are opposites, and that's where this
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: idea comes of the coniuntio. And it could be something
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: like you've never been very good at physical tasks, you know,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: you're just, you're kind of a klutz. And I would,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't want you to think I was referencing myself
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: in any way. Okay. Of course not. But you might
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: say to yourself, you know, I'm gonna really, as the
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: kids say these days, lock in and see if I
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: can become a competent pickleball player. Or it could be
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: that you've never been very good at detail-oriented stuff. And
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: you tell yourself, I'm going to really work on that.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: So it might happen in these small ways. I mean,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: if you think about the whole trajectory of your life
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: and the horizon ahead of you, it's very easy to
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: keep on doing the same thing you've always done and
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: to work on becoming better at the same things that
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: you're already good at. But there is a way that
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: our whole personality expands when we touch into areas that
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: seem a little bit more foreign or perhaps even opposite
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: to our conscious attitude. And again, I gave some somewhat
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: superficial examples, but I do think that those things can
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: have a deep impact on the personality as a whole.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: And of course, there's deeper ways that you might engage
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: that too. If you've always been a very rationalistic person,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: you may consciously choose to really develop your spirituality, for example,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: or vice versa. But it's for this reason that another
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: image that is associated with the coniuntio is the hermaphrodite.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: So the hermaphrodite is an image of the opposites having
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: come together. It's a little bit like your reference from
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: the Jim Henson movie a minute ago, you know, that
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: these two things have been apart, male and female, and
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: then in the image of the hermaphrodite, they have come together.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: And that's why that is kind of a sacred symbol.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: So the invitation, therefore, is to say, what parts of
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: myself have I not claimed? What could I work on
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: that might expand me and help me integrate some more
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: of my inner opposite?
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: Well, I think bringing in typology is just absolutely right.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: And I would recommend a book that deals with it
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: very specifically. It's written by C.A. Meyer, M-E-I-E-R, and it's
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: called Personality, the Individuation Process in Light of C.G. Jung's Typology.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: And C.A. Meyer, if I remember correctly, was the first
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: president of the Jung Foundation. After that was formed, he
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: wrote a series of books, all of which are rather wonderful,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: but have fallen out of common knowledge. But he takes
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: that on very specifically. So as an ENFJ, my fourth
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: function is introverted thinking. And I've often joked that my
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: introverted thinker is a troll that lives under a bridge
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: with a broken typewriter, you know, and types like this
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: and then pulls the paper out and gives it to
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: me and says, done. And there is some good stuff
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: in there, but it's kind of a mess. And I
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: love my troll writing companion, total ally. But it's a
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: great labor for me to continue to work with introverted thinking,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: particularly through writing, is a great way of, or painful
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: way of me accessing introverted thinking. That's not true for
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: some of you. Thinking is right up in the front
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: of your personality. It's well-developed in feelings. might be your
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: fourth function. So under your bridge is, you know, some
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: kind of wild dervish spinning around laughing and crying and,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: you know, throwing tomatoes at people that are crossing the
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: bridge because it makes them laugh.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: Under my bridge is an interior decorator.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: And before they are brought into their full aesthetic, how
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: are they decorating under the bridge?
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: It's pretty rough.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: Bottle caps, stickers from bottles. Got to work with what
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: they have access to.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: Right, right.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 4: That's a great image of what is living under one's
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 4: own bridge of what kinds of trolls are there who
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: kind of like your trolls, Joseph. They're doing the best
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: they can.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: I think I have pickleball players under my bridge.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: Anything that has to do with physical coordination, especially if
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: it involves a ball, oh my gosh, absolutely a tough one.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 4: But overall, I think what we're saying is what a
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 4: good guide typology can.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: Be to.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: Where are my underdeveloped capacities. And how do I make
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 4: friends with them?
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: And it's interesting that the language of this, the imagistic language,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: whether it's the sacred marriage or whether it's, you know,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: the hermaphrodite, there is an invitation. I mean, I think, again,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: this is a little pedestrian, but it's worth saying, if
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: you're a woman and you kind of identify with sort
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: of typically feminine ways of being in the world, one
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: of your life tasks might have to be to develop
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: your more masculine side, whatever that means, and vice versa.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: You know, these days, thank goodness, these terms aren't as
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: prescriptive and restrictive as they once were. And nevertheless, you
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: may find that maybe you're a woman and it's kind
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: of easy for you to not be the one who
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: ever makes decisions. You know, that's an out, man. Step
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: up to the plate and you be the one to
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: decide where to go for dinner or where you want
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: to go on vacation or whatever you know like develop
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: that undeveloped side and grow bigger.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: And it isn't simply taking you know the steering wheel
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: in your hand like for instance If I'm not accustomed
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: to planning a vacation for six people, there's a lot
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: of learning to that. I mean, one has to figure
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: out the stuff and the logistics and the budget and
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: what are the opportunities for the family. So it's not
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: as simple as just it's my turn. Right, that's right.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: But becoming good at it being your turn is where
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: the growth comes forward. So Lisa says, I'm going to
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: decorate the house. Beware. But for Lisa to decide she's
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: going to take a class in interior design and really
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: do whatever is necessary and really do a great job
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: and go, wow, I've got this skill in my hands
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: and I love doing it, is actually an arc of development.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: And it starts with deciding I'm going to take on
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: the labor of my inferior function.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: I'm really going to claim it.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: Going to claim it.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: Not just take on the labor, but take on the
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 4: anxiety and the aversiveness of the feeling of like, okay,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 4: I'll do it. Because all kinds of feelings are going
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: to come up. Just as they come up in me
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: at the mere mention of pickleball.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: We know it's in your future, man. We expect pictures
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: of you and the pickleball coach with tears running down
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: your cheeks.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 4: I think it might be the pickleball coach that had
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: the tears running down his cheeks.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: Could be.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: But doing the thing that we do not want to do,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: but is required of us.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: That doesn't come easily.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: Doesn't come easily. That's God talking and offering us an
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: opportunity to grow or grow. turn around and go backwards.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: And it is up to us. The truth is life
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: is going to grind us under its wheel. So we're
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: going to go towards evolution kicking and screaming, or we
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: could go kind of sweating and driving. It is to
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: some degree up to us, but we can't really avoid
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: our own potential. We are haunted by our potential. And
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: if we're running away, it comes to us in dreams
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: as kind of monstrous figures or monstrous demands. But when
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: we turn towards it, it becomes our guide, the educator
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: inside of us that's going to give us not necessarily
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: all of the skills we need, but would give us
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: the energy to go and do it. So recently I
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I talked about this on the podcast,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: but I decided to go and take a tiling workshop.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: I was thinking of that.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: It was expensive. I had to, like, go up to, like,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: Egg Harbor City, New Jersey.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: And learn how to, like, tear a bathroom apart, put
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: up all the drywall and do all the tiling and
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: pouring the mortar and all these different things. And my
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: friends were looking at me like, but why?
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 4: Why?
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: Why would you do that? It would be for the
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: amount of money you spent on the workshop. You could
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: have paid someone to tear your bathroom out. Who does
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: it all the time? And I cannot tell you how
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: fascinated and happy I showed up giggling at this damn workshop,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: totally full of enthusiasm. Everybody else there was actually an
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: experienced professional and I became their elderly mascot. You know,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: kind of helping me turn the trowel in the right direction.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: But I loved it. And I don't know how far
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go with this. And by the way,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: if I show up with a trowel at anybody's house
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: or bring your doorbell, don't let me in. Because what
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: was really clear is I don't have any real skill
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: about it. So I have my troweling troll kind of
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: playing like finger painting. But it was because I followed
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: my fascination. It's in the experience of it, whether or
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: not I master it. So, Dev, I should have taken
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: you along with me on this sensate sojourn to do
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: things that we can't imagine that we would like, but
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: actually can be kind of fascinating.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know that's a really good example. And it
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: was so different from what you usually do during your day,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: wasn't it? And just like every way. And that's, I think,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: exactly the kind of thing that that that this calls
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: up this experience of connectio.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 4: And to engage our, you know, sort of inferior functions
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: can also be kind of fun. Yeah, you were fascinated
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 4: by it, Joseph, and it's not your usual MO, but
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 4: it's not as if these things are always some sort
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: of dreadful, oh my gosh, I have to buckle down
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: and do it kind of thing. It can also be
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 4: something that's just out of the norm.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: And it's novel. Well, it can be a place where
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: we play.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: That's exactly what I was thinking. So I showed up
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: and I was like, you know, not knowing anything. And
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: I was not being as exacting as the other professionals.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: And so the guy who's instructing comes near me. I
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: can see how he's struggling to give me feedback without
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: crushing my tender spirit about this. And so it gives
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: me a couple of ideas which are important. And at
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: one point, he's kind of mystified. And I say, the
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: reason I'm here is there are no consequences.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: It's not my career. I just get to play. I
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: get to try it out and smush the mortar around
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: and cut the tiles and do my best. And I
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: can see something light up in his own eyes. He
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, well, that's why you're here. That's why
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: you're here.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: He doesn't have to certify that you're a competent tiler.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: No, nor am I going to blame him if I
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: leave not uncompetent, which, by the way, kind of happened.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 4: So we all want a guarantee from you that when
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 4: that bathroom floor is tiled, you will bring pictures of
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: it and show the world.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: I will.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: But knowing myself, I've actually done this. I set up
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: a mock bathroom in my garage was two by fours
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: because that's what you do at the training station because
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: you don't want to tear your own house apart and
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: then have it torn apart and you don't know what
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: you're doing so there you set up these two by
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: four frames and you put cement board on it and
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: you just do it and you do it over and
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: over again until you can do it so it's a
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: manual skill Right.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 3: I have had some bathrooms redone and my God, the tilers,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: like I will sort of peer over their shoulders while
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: they're cutting and measuring the tile. And it fascinates me
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: because I'm like, oh my God, like the degree of precision.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: Do you know that episode of I Love Lucy where
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: Lucy's putting up wallpaper and she goes like this on
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: the wall to like measure it and then she lays
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: out the wallpaper and she goes like that to measure
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: it and she cuts it she just kind of eyeballs it. Like,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: that is me. I just eyeball it. And, you know,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: in things like wall papering or tiling, I would have,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: or sewing or knitting, I would have, you know, predictably
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: disastrous results because I just find it so hard to
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: be really precise like that. It just is contra notorum
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: for me. But that tells me it would be something
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 3: growthful for me to work on.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: Well, if you could knit without consequences, it might be fun.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 3: Knit like no one's watching.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: Knit like no one's watching.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: But really, truly.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: And it was really, it was a really great and
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: fun thing. So again, another bit of advice, don't make
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: a career out of your fourth function.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: Good sound advice, which I have actually run into people
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: who have discovered their fourth function, which is close to
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: the unconscious, so it's very numinous, and they want to
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: go out and tell the world and make a career
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: out of it, only to find that other people who
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: have had that in the front of their personality are
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: far more successful at selling their pottery than me after
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: a weekend workshop. But people sometimes have to learn that
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: themselves again. hopefully minimal consequences.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 4: So I'm aware here that in our discussion of coniunctio,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: you know, how we've gone from, you know, something more
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 4: theoretical with various examples and a more serious tone to
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 4: something that is really very playful, you know, using your
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 4: example of pickleball and Joseph, your saga. of tiling, it's
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 4: not something that's unfamiliar to you. Just notice what you're doing,
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: how you're doing it, where does it fit with typology, shadow,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: all of these things.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: Just notice. You know, there's one more area of this
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: that I think we would be remiss not to discuss,
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: and that is sexual unification. as a metaphor for coniuntio. Literally,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: it's a conjoining. And one of my favorite psychoanalytic jokes
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: that I know I've told before on the podcast is
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 3: that for Freud, religion was really about sex. But for Jung,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: sex is really about religion. And there's something really kind
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: of true about that. So, you know, you have a
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: sexual dream with a Jungian. They're like, oh, it's an
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: image of conyuntio. You know, we try to spiritualize it. However,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: there is a way that that is true. And I
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: think that most dreams, for example, of sexual union and
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: perhaps many experiences of yearning for sexual union, have underlying
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 3: them this dynamic that we've been discussing.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: Certainly the yearning, I think often the disappointment that it
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: is not a mystical yearning is a kind of an
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: awakening process.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a lesser coniunpio in that case, yeah.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: But a perfect symbol if, let's say, a man and
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: a woman come together and then produce a third, produce
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: a child. But the reason that symbolism shows up in
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: alchemy and even in our unconscious is that we have
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: awareness of that in the natural environment. For the alchemists,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: it was literally chemical. Like you crush up this thing
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: and you crush up that one, you sluice it together
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: with mercury and things happen. But yes, the symbolism of
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: the two coming together and producing the third Of course,
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: that's going to partake also of that sexual idea and
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: the hope in the sexual union through the ecstasy. One
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: is momentarily brought into a union. Yeah.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 4: We have a taste, an experience of what it can
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 4: feel like in an embodied way.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: Yes. And when we're born, when we're newborns, we enter
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: the world existing in this kind of oceanic, unconscious wholeness.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: And then there is the kind of fall from grace
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 3: where we lose that sense. And in some sense, we
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 3: spend the rest of our lives trying to get back
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: to it, often thinking that sexual union or dissolving into
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 3: substance use will do that for us. But really, as
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 3: you said before, Joseph, it's the right impulse. We're looking
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: for union. We're looking for a coniuntio. And when we
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: do arrive there through lots of pickleball lessons or tiling workshops,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: it doesn't feel quite, you know, maybe ecstatic all the time,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: but it has that feeling that you so beautifully described
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: with that quote from Bon Fons earlier, Deb, as I
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: think of like an inner sturdiness, you know.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: So are we ready to take on a dream?
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: I think we are. And this is one of those
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: cases where the dream that popped up fit perfectly with
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 3: today's topic. And I think you'll see why in a second.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: Today's dreamer is a 54-year-old male.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: And his occupation is a writer and a yoga teacher,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: and his title for the dream is Wet Dream. My
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: ex-wife and I are at a restaurant on the top
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: floor of a tall building in the city. It is evening,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: and I can see the skyline of the city lit
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: up in distance. Many people are in the restaurant eating
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: dinner at their tables. My ex-wife and I are now
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: in the water pond in the center of the restaurant
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: fully clothed, It is large enough for us to lie
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: down in with her on top of me. The pond
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: has lily pads and other water plants floating on the
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: surface of the water, which is comfortably warm. I feel
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: my erection growing harder. Now our clothes are off and
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: my ex-wife's naked body is pressed against mine as we
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: float in the water. All around us, people are still
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: eating their dinners. They don't seem to notice my ex-wife
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: and me naked in the water pond. My ex-wife takes
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: hold of my penis and guides it inside her. She
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: lets out a soft moan of pleasure as she does so.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: A few moments later, she is gone, and I am
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: floating naked, alone in the water pond, still with an
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: erection as the people in the restaurant continue eating their meals.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: For context, he says, at the end of the dream,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: it has been 17 months after my wife ended our
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: marriage of 13 years. a few minutes after I told
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: her I'd made an appointment with a therapist for help
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: with depression and panic attacks. We've had no contact for
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: over a year, even though I still live near her.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: I've not been dating at all since we separated, focusing
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: instead on treatment for trauma related to my childhood and marriage.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: I recently decided to move away from this area, living
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: as a digital nomad with no definite plans. For feelings
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: in the dreams, he writes, warmth, happiness, sexual excitement, shock, emptiness.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: And he gives us a few associations. The only familiar
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: part of the dream is my ex-wife. I don't even
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: know if she is my ex-wife in the dream, or
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: if the dream is supposed to take place before we separated.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 3: So I just want to read back the context just
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 3: to make sure that I'm understanding it right.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: So.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: His wife ended the marriage of 13 years right after
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 3: he said to her, I've made an appointment with a therapist.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: That was my understanding.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And then 17 months elapse, and they haven't had
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 3: contact for over a year, and then he has this dream.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 3: Is that what you understood, too?
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: That's what I took away, yeah. Wow.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 3: I mean, this dream, I mean, it's just unbelievably alchemical,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: for one thing. That's right. And here we have the Rosarium.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 3: It's also so moving. I just feel really.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: Touched by it. What does it conjure in you?
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: Oh, I mean, I think there's just a lot of sadness, right?
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 3: The longing and the emptiness at the end.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: It's, yeah.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 4: You know, it feels a coming down, you know, almost literally.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 4: but also figuratively, because the dream starts at a restaurant
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 4: on the top floor of a tall building. So there
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 4: are all these images of elevation being waited on at
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 4: a restaurant. You have, you know, you're up above it all.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 4: You can see the whole city lit up in a distance,
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 4: eating dinner. So all this looks, that's all good. That's nice.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 4: That's great. And then the descent into the water pond. And,
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 4: of course, water is a huge symbol. It comes, really
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 4: alludes to the alchemical function of soluteo, of things dissolving,
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 4: things being put back into their original sort of liquid form.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 4: And no one notices. They're fully clothed. Then they're naked.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 4: And it's a sort of a private moment. And it
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 4: feels like, you know, this might turn out to be,
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 4: you know, some sort of an endeavor, an action that
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 4: works out well, but it doesn't. Everything, you know, seems
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 4: to be culminating. in the sexual act of union, of coniunctio.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 4: But then she is gone. And I am floating naked
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 4: alone in the water pond, still with an erection, which
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 4: is frustrating as all get out, I imagine. And again,
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 4: no one notices. People in the restaurant continue eating their meals.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 4: So it's an awful kind of letdown instead of a
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 4: kind of satisfying.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: Union. So there's a couple of things that strike me
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: is one could see the final scene as he's left
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: with frustration. But I would say that when somebody is
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: depressed and somebody is kind of collapsed inward, that their
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: arousal is often inadequate. So I see this dream as
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: an invitation to be aroused, to wake up to, one,
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: to remember that one is a sexual being, that erections
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: are dynamic and responsive, and that he can hold his
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: capacity to be awake and dynamic without his partner. And
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: it takes some arousal in order to get the new job,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: start dating again, make the new choice.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And it does say at the end, he says
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 4: the feeling at the end was shock and emptiness, but
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 4: you're right. He cannot ignore how he feels. There he is,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 4: naked in water, and still with this erection and no
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 4: way to fulfill it, also no way to ignore it.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And on display for everybody else to see that
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: he is a sexually aroused or potent male and that
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: nobody is over exaggerating a response. It's no big deal,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: so to speak. So starting at the beginning, we're in
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: a restaurant and people are eating. So the first thing
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: that struck me is this is a place where instincts
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: are satisfied.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: Jung's, whatever, five instincts. And so, yeah, this is a
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: place where people's needs are aesthetically met in this very
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: kind of ritual environment. And so another instinct then becomes
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: available or comes to the forefront, which is the sexual instinct.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: So there's a reservoir of instinctive life that remains alive
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: and a reservoir of feeling that remains alive even within
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: this adapted adult life of civilized dining. The pond is
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: also in the center, and that the center of things matters.
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: So to be at the center might suggest that we
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: are getting closer to something. It's also man-made, which is important.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 4: But there's also other life in it. There are lily pads.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 4: So something is blooming.
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 3: Growing. I'm going to sort of swing in with some amplifications,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 3: but also maybe just a slightly different kind of feel
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 3: to it. First of all, I do just want to
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 3: say about the pool in the middle of the restaurant,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 3: we're really talking about a mandala, right? I'm seeing this
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 3: kind of big square room with a circle in the middle,
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 3: which is often the exact essence of a mandala. And
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 3: By the way, it reminds me also of Jung's Liverpool dream,
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 3: which is in the center square of a city, is
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 3: a beautiful pool that's lit from a golden tree. So
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: that's interesting to me because Jung had that dream at
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 3: a pretty dark time in his life, and it expressed
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 3: the kind of the center and the intimation of wholeness.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 3: And then I do just want to just lift up
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: that this dream kind of follows the Rosarium woodcuts strikingly.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 3: So in the Rosarium woodcuts, the king and the queen meet,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 3: and they're both clothed in their regal attire. And so
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: this couple starts maybe at the dining table. And then
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: there's a left-hand shake in the next woodcut. And then
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 3: after that, the king and the queen are naked. So
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 3: this happens a little out of order because in the woodcuts,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: they get naked first and then they get in the bath.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 3: This couple gets in the bath and then they get naked.
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: But in the woodcuts, you see the king and the
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: queen in the bath together and it's actually a round pool.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: And then they copulate. I think the king is on
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 3: top of the queen, but I can't quite remember. And
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 3: that's what happens here. And then after that, there's this
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 3: image of the soul kind of ascending. And then there
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 3: is this image of, that Jung interpreted to mean that
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 3: there was a profound depression. And it's actually been discussed
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 3: as something that can happen in therapy, is sometimes in
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 3: the course of analysis, you have a session that's amazingly connected,
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 3: and you feel this intense joining with the analisand, and
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 3: often what happens in the next session is it feels
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 3: totally dead. And that is a true thing, that happens.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 3: So So I think that the dream is picking up
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 3: on this kind of very deep archetypal dynamic that we've
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 3: been discussing this episode, that after the conjunction, there can
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 3: come an experience of real deadness and depression. And I
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 3: think the thing I want to say about the way
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 3: the dream ends, Joseph, I really like your positive spin
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 3: on it. He's He's still aroused. He can be aroused
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 3: without his partner. And I don't want to lose sight
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 3: of the fact that the feeling is one of emptiness.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 3: And what strikes me is that he's in this room
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: full of people and he's floating alone in this body
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 3: of water with an erection and no one notices. So
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 3: there's a way that his arousal is not connected with
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 3: the world around him. It doesn't feel seen. It's like
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 3: his potency feels invisible. So this dream seems to be
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 3: kind of capturing this moment where there certainly is some
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 3: thrust forward in life. I think you guys were right
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 3: about both the meaning of the erection and the fact
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 3: that the lily pads are there. There's something cooking, but
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 3: right now it doesn't feel very good. I think we're
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: more in that kind of like depressed place that's shown
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 3: in the Rosarium.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: I take the emptiness as part of the medicine of
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: the dream because the ex-wife is not available. And so
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: the dream is also staging a reality that if you
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: are expecting the ex-wife to return or you are still
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: clinging to some erotic attachment, that vessel is empty and
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: must be filled by this fellow and his new relationships.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: So while emptiness we could think about it as a problem,
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: but emptiness and the feeling of emptiness finally means that
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: something else can fill the cup. Like if the cup
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: is full of hope that the wife will return, hope
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: for something that is impossible, there's no room to date again.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: There's no room for a relationship. So while the emptying
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: out temporarily, as you said, Lisa, can be a depression,
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: he also does need to empty out his inappropriate fantasies
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: that are where he's clinging to the past, perhaps.
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 3: Perhaps. But the ex-wife in the dream could also, in
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 3: addition to being about the actual ex-wife, who, as you say,
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 3: is no longer there, could also be an image of
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 3: his own soul and the way that at dark times
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 3: we feel like we have been abandoned by our soul.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 3: So it's perhaps both and.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: It's also a visitation. It's a visitation rather than an abiding.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: Which again could be purposive.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I'd like to go back to the image of
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 4: this water pond in the middle of the restaurant. Yes,
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 4: it's an image of a mandala or could be. And
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 4: I'm putting that together with a couple of things. One
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 4: is that no one notices.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 3: And The other is.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 4: The idea of the salutio, of the lilies are growing
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 4: in it. But there is also something that I still
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 4: feel my interest going toward, that I would want to
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 4: understand that a little more completely. Of what is this
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 4: pond as something that our dream ego and his wife
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 4: would go into? in a public place. It's just really
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 4: got my attention.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: What else would you say about it? I mean, I've
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: been in restaurants where there were kind of like lily
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: ponds in the middle of the restaurant, so it is
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: kind of a thing, I suppose.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 4: Oh, no, it's very human to want to have what
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 4: they call a water feature.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: That's right. Thank you.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 4: You know, in the public space, it could be the lobby,
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 4: it could be a restaurant, your backyard. You need a
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 4: water feature. So I am wondering about the salutio of
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 4: what is, despite the sexual activity image, of what might
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 4: be dissolving.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: One dissolving that therapy might be helping is really dissolving
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: his attachment to his ex-wife that is no longer viable
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: on possibility and on less magical level.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting, Deb, because I'm thinking about, I mean,
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 3: this dream is just, this is an amazing dream. But
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 3: the water is comfortably warm. I mean, this is a
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 3: kind of uterine environment. So the idea of solutio, of
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 3: something kind of going back to its original form, of
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 3: a kind of regression in a way, which Joseph, I think,
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 3: goes to your point. And sometimes we need to dissolve, right?
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 3: Solve et coagulo.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 4: That sparked something for me of the fact that the
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 4: water is warm. And so it does call up a
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 4: kind of uterine fat. and being alone in the uterine
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 4: pool because none of the people in the restaurant notice
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 4: the thing. So there is, you know, maybe a kind
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 4: of both and here of the archetypal mandala and the
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 4: a regressive image, Freud called the oceanic image, of that
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 4: I'm just enveloped in this wonderful, warm environment that's encapsulated.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 4: And the pond is sort of an image of encapsulation.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 3: It has boundaries.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 4: It's not part of or joined with the rest of
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 4: the floor, the rest of the restaurant. So it may
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 4: be a both-and image.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 3: Well, and that sparked something for me too, which is
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 3: the dreamer mentions trauma. What comes to my imagination as
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 3: we're talking about the pool and the uterine nature of
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 3: it is there may have been a lack of early
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 3: maternal holding because he is kind of in this uterine environment,
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 3: but he's there alone.
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: And if we think about this as the feminine principle
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: inside of him, trying to reconnect him to embodied relatedness,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: to his feelings, to his instincts, and in the symbol
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: of the pond, to his life-generating depths, which are hidden
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: right next to that social sphere. No one's paying attention,
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: but it's just a few feet away when one discovers
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: where it is and one is willing to submerge oneself
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: in the aqua vitae, the water of life.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 4: And here we are. I wonder if What he's doing
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 4: now is getting out in the world. He says, I
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 4: recently decided to move away from this area, living as
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 4: a digital nomad with no definite plans, but he's out
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 4: in the world. He's no longer in the pond.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 3: Well, maybe, but he might be floating a little bit. Yes, exactly.
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: Of course, we don't know.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 4: But of course, it's not only one thing. But nevertheless,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 4: he's back on dry land and exploring.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: And I want to take that piece of work. We're
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: shy sometimes talking too sexually graphically. But the female figure
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: takes hold of the penis and guides. And that also
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: suggests that the ego is not yet capable of of
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: active relationship to this layer of life. So then the
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: feminine is the psychopomp. He's being led into it and
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: the process is happening to him more than through him.
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: So in that sense, the dream might be less about
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: sex and more about receptivity to reanimation. Because in a sense,
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: that's kind of what happens to his body as well
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: as just his level of excitement. He is which is
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: something that we often don't feel when we're in the
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: depth of a depression. We don't feel animated much at all.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: But at the end, even his fantasy of moving somewhere else,
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: that takes a lot of animation, planning, energy. It's a
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: big deal to relocate. That's why people infrequently do it.
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 3: That's right. I'm just aware that we've had such a
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 3: rich conversation about this dream. It's just... It is a
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 3: remarkable dream, and we're very grateful for the dreamer for
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 3: sharing it with us. And I think we all wish
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 3: him all the best. Indeed. Thanks for listening. To submit
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 3: a dream, suggest an episode topic, or join our mailing list,
• 1:42:24
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• 1:42:29
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