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Yascha Mounk: Why Society Crumbles When We Obsess Over Identity · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. We
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: wanted to try to do something a little different today
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: on the podcast. We have with us a very special guest.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: We're excited to have him. But he has no relationship
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: with Jungian psychology. He doesn't know much about it. But
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: his work touches on some really important themes in the culture.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: So we thought that we would lure him on and
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  Speaker 2: see if we could guide him into a conversation about
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  Speaker 2: the psychological aspects ramifications of the work that he's been doing.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: And I am speaking of our guest today, Yasha Monk.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Yasha Monk is an expert on the crisis of liberal
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: democracy and the rise of popularism. He's the author of
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: five books. He is a professor of the practice of
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  Speaker 2: international affairs at Johns Hopkins University. He's a contributing editor
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: at the Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Council
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: on Foreign Relations. He also hosts a podcast called The
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Good Fight. The Good Fight podcast features interviews with leading writers, thinkers,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: and statesmen about their work and its implications for the
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: defense of a free society. His latest book is The
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Identity Trap, A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: And it was this book that made us curious and
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  Speaker 2: wanted to speak with him. So we spoke with him
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  Speaker 2: today about his term, the identity synthesis, so a kind
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  Speaker 2: of new sort of progressivism, and how it differs from
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  Speaker 2: classical liberalism, and in particular, the notion of universalism. and
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  Speaker 2: how universalism is important to the field of psychology. It's
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: important in psychotherapy, and it's particularly important in Jungian thought.
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  Speaker 2: So we're very interested to speak with him about what
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  Speaker 2: it means when we reject universalism. So without further ado,
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  Speaker 2: here's our talk today with Yashana. So as I was saying,
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: I really loved your book. I thought it was so
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  Speaker 2: interesting and important as well. And I appreciated your efforts
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  Speaker 2: to do what we call holding the tension of the opposites,
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: which is really examining all sides and acknowledging the strengths
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  Speaker 2: of all of the different arguments in this arena. But
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  Speaker 2: one area that really struck me and is the reason
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  Speaker 2: that I thought you would make a is this notion
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: of universalism, which you talk a lot about. And I
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  Speaker 2: have been concerned that what you call the identity synthesis
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  Speaker 2: is actually having an impact on the practice of psychotherapy
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  Speaker 2: because of a kind of denial of universalism. So maybe
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  Speaker 2: to start off with, why don't you just tell us
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  Speaker 2: about what is the identity synthesis? What is it and
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  Speaker 2: how did you decide to call it that?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I look forward to finding out, you know,
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  Speaker 4: how it is that these ideas are starting to play
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  Speaker 4: into therapy and perhaps becoming an obstacle. You know, perhaps
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: leaning into some of these themes, you know, I'm a
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: man of the left. I joined the German Social Democratic
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  Speaker 4: Party when I was 13 years old. I had to
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  Speaker 4: lie on the application form, claiming that I was born
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  Speaker 4: a year earlier than I was in order to be
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: allowed to join, because you need to be 14 by
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  Speaker 4: German law to join a political party. And part of
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  Speaker 4: what attracted me to the left, other than my sort
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  Speaker 4: of family history, was a promise of universalism, was a
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  Speaker 4: promise of the idea that What ultimately defines us is
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  Speaker 4: not the group into which we're born. Those things are important,
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  Speaker 4: of course, important to who we are in all kinds
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  Speaker 4: of ways, but they don't ultimately define who we are.
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  Speaker 4: And we are able to understand each other, to stand
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  Speaker 4: in political solidarity with each other, to inspire each other,
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  Speaker 4: to learn from each other's cultures beyond the boundary of race, religion, nationality,
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  Speaker 4: and so on. And along with the quest for economic justice,
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  Speaker 4: I thought that that was a lot of what it
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  Speaker 4: meant to be on the left. Now, as somebody who's
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  Speaker 4: a political theorist by training, somebody who studied intellectual history
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: and political philosophy, I've been struck over the course of
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  Speaker 4: the last decades by the growth and increasing influence of
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  Speaker 4: what I think is a genuinely new political ideology. A
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  Speaker 4: set of ideas about the role that identity categories like
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  Speaker 4: race and gender and sexual orientation play do and should
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  Speaker 4: play in the world that has transformed much of what
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  Speaker 4: it means to be on the left today and come
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  Speaker 4: to have really quite surprising influence in the heart of
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  Speaker 4: our cultural institutions, of our society, of universities and think
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  Speaker 4: tanks and even some corporations. And these claims really reject
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  Speaker 4: the kind of universalist left that I grew up in.
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  Speaker 4: They say that if you stand at a different intersection
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  Speaker 4: of identities than I do, then I'm fundamentally going to
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  Speaker 4: be unable to understand who you are and where you're
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  Speaker 4: coming from. They say that rather than building political solidarity
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  Speaker 4: and mutual understanding, we should delegate, saying, look, if you
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  Speaker 4: come from a more oppressed group and you make a
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  Speaker 4: political demand, I should delegate my political judgment to yours
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  Speaker 4: because I can never fully understand what it is you're
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  Speaker 4: saying to me. And it's very concerned, very worried about
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  Speaker 4: forms of mutual cultural influence, which it problematizes under the
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  Speaker 4: label of cultural appropriation. I could go into much more
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  Speaker 4: detail about the sort of theoretical commitments of these ideas,
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  Speaker 4: the historical origins, the main themes that arise from that.
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  Speaker 4: But that I think in a nutshell explains both what
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  Speaker 4: drove me to write The Identity Trap, to write my
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: new book, and why it is that I'm concerned about
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  Speaker 4: that intellectual transformation.
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  Speaker 3: So I think this idea of broad categorization is something
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  Speaker 3: that Jung was very interested in, because as he was
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  Speaker 3: trying to build up his theory of archetypes, he was
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  Speaker 3: very interested in, I guess, what I would call typicalities. That,
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  Speaker 3: for instance, all of us can know what a flower
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  Speaker 3: looks like, even if we've not seen that flower that
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  Speaker 3: we visited in some odd country. Because the human brain
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  Speaker 3: has a capacity to categorize typicalities of flowers or typicalities
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  Speaker 3: of fish or typicalities of clouds. And then Jung surmised
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  Speaker 3: that there must be some kind of a structure in
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  Speaker 3: the human psyche that allows us to recognize these typicalities.
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  Speaker 3: What Jung was also interested in were the emotional valences
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  Speaker 3: that those typicalities had. Because just because something is different
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  Speaker 3: from something else doesn't mean it necessarily has a particular
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  Speaker 3: emotional valence to it. So the intensity of feeling around
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  Speaker 3: the categories is in part something to do with the
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  Speaker 3: individual experience, the lived experience. And then he goes a
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  Speaker 3: little bit further and says that the archetypes or typicalities
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  Speaker 3: also have a certain predisposition, which he points out through mythology.
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  Speaker 3: So working this around, first, it's not unusual at all
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  Speaker 3: for people to group things by typicalities, that that's essential
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  Speaker 3: to who we are. That sounds like that's a starting
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: place around this conversation, that that's natural.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, so certainly... It makes perfect sense to think of
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  Speaker 4: the importance of social identity in a number of dimensions.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, one is that obviously a country like the
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  Speaker 4: United States today continues to be marked in many ways
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  Speaker 4: by injustices that were meted out on the basis of
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  Speaker 4: identity categories. So certainly one of the lenses we need
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  Speaker 4: to understand what's happening in the United States today is
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  Speaker 4: to be able to recognize when there's incidents of racism,
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  Speaker 4: of sexism, of discrimination against sexual minorities, and so on
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  Speaker 4: and so forth. Secondly, of course, in a deeply diverse
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  Speaker 4: society like the United States, or even in the comparatively
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: homogeneous societies of Europe of the 19th century, facts about
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: the kind of groups into which we're born are going
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  Speaker 4: to be helpful to understand something about a person. You know,
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: people might be wondering where my accent is from. And
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  Speaker 4: it's helpful to know that, you know, I'm a German
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  Speaker 4: Jew who grew up in Germany in the 80s and
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: 90s and then went off to college in England. So
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: I have a sort of weird, fake British accent that,
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  Speaker 4: you know, All of those kinds of things help us
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  Speaker 4: make sense of people. And of course, they often have
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  Speaker 4: deep first personal importance to some people. It might be
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: important that they have a heritage in Spain or in
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  Speaker 4: Turkey or in the Caribbean, and they want to remain
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: true to that heritage in some kind of way. Of course,
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  Speaker 4: they may have deep religious commitments that guide their life
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  Speaker 4: in in all kinds of ways. And I think all
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  Speaker 4: of that is a positive thing. The diversity of a
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  Speaker 4: place like New York City today is one of the
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  Speaker 4: things that make me love the city, not one of
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  Speaker 4: the things that I think we should be worried about.
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  Speaker 4: That's why I think the notion of cultural appropriation can
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  Speaker 4: be so misguided. That's a sort of side point. But
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  Speaker 4: Where we start having problems is when people are encouraged,
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  Speaker 4: as I can see that many of my college students
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  Speaker 4: have been throughout the high school, middle school and elementary
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  Speaker 4: school careers, to see themselves primarily as a result of
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  Speaker 4: the kind of groups of which they are. And I
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  Speaker 4: think that comes to be worrying in two ways. The
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  Speaker 4: first is that it can entail a denial of our
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  Speaker 4: ability to understand each other. So going from saying, hey,
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  Speaker 4: if you're a black man in America, you may be
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  Speaker 4: more likely to have experienced police violence. Or if you're
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  Speaker 4: a woman, you may be more likely to have experienced
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  Speaker 4: sexual harassment on the subway. And so that'll give you
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  Speaker 4: certain insights about what it's like to live in this world,
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  Speaker 4: which I think is correct. you then take a step
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  Speaker 4: further and say, hey, I just do not understand what
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  Speaker 4: sexual harassment is or what police violence is, and so
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  Speaker 4: I can't make my own judgments about that. That, I think,
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  Speaker 4: is wrong, because in philosophy, we would distinguish between experiential
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  Speaker 4: knowledge and propositional knowledge, which is to say that I
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  Speaker 4: may not know exactly what it's like to be harassed
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  Speaker 4: in the subway because there's a guy that hasn't happened
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  Speaker 4: to me, but I can talk to my female friends
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  Speaker 4: and understand they've gone through those experiences, And recognize this
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  Speaker 4: as an injustice and come to have a commitment to
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  Speaker 4: creating a world in which my female friends can as
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  Speaker 4: safely go home at night at 11 p.m. using the
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  Speaker 4: subway as I can. And the second is that I
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  Speaker 4: think it just encourages people to construct their self-view and
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  Speaker 4: the things they hope to get validation from in society
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  Speaker 4: in the wrong way. Because all of us are not
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  Speaker 4: just sort of instances of a general rule, we're also
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  Speaker 4: idiosyncratic individuals. And if you're encouraged to get your social recognition,
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  Speaker 4: your respect from society, all those things that I think
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  Speaker 4: most of us crave, just by saying, well, I am
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  Speaker 4: an X, Y, Z, I'm studying this exact intersection of identities,
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  Speaker 4: you're never going to get the recognition that you actually
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  Speaker 4: as an individual crave. One way of putting this is
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  Speaker 4: that my brother has a symbol of intersection of identities
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  Speaker 4: as me, but I'm never going to feel like I
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  Speaker 4: have my place in society. I'm recognized in society as
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  Speaker 4: myself if I'm seen in identical terms to my brother.
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  Speaker 2: So I want to pick up on your point about
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  Speaker 2: propositional knowledge for a second because I think that this
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  Speaker 2: is very important in the field and practice of psychotherapy.
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  Speaker 2: And we may use different terms for it, but I
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  Speaker 2: can remember my first patient I ever sat with when
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  Speaker 2: I was a social work intern said, was a Vietnam vet,
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: and I was like 32 years old. I'd had some
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: proximity to a wartime experience because I worked for a
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: refugee organization in Bosnia in the But other than that,
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  Speaker 2: you know, I had never been in a war and
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  Speaker 2: I wasn't a 50 something year old man and on
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  Speaker 2: and on. And I remember my supervisor sort of just
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  Speaker 2: lifting that up and just stating it. You know, there's
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  Speaker 2: a lot of experience you don't share with this person,
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  Speaker 2: but your job is to just be open and try
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  Speaker 2: to understand. And I think we do this all the
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: time in therapy. In fact, it's a really interesting question.
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  Speaker 2: Do you need to share common experiences with your therapist
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  Speaker 2: in order for your therapist to be able to understand you?
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  Speaker 2: And I don't know that there's an absolutely straightforward yes
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  Speaker 2: or no answer to that. But what I will say,
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  Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, I can tell you that
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  Speaker 2: as someone that had children, and when my children were small,
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: I was working with an analyst who had never had children.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: And I do remember thinking, oh, there's just so you know, it's,
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  Speaker 2: It's hard to understand having children unless you've had children.
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  Speaker 2: I'm sure it's hard to understand all kinds of things
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  Speaker 2: unless you've had that experience. Nevertheless, there is so many
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  Speaker 2: universals that connect us all. And I can use my
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: empathic imagination and my ability to listen very carefully to
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: how someone else has described their experience to And that
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  Speaker 2: does not mean that I will be able to understand
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  Speaker 2: it from the inside. And there may be ways that
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: I never get it. But I can try really hard
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: and I can get pretty close. And I would say,
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: as it relates to psychotherapy, you know, sometimes I have
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  Speaker 2: someone come to see me who is a similar age,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: and maybe their kids are the same age, and maybe
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  Speaker 2: they're also a therapist. And, you know, and it's always
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: a little tricky to work with someone like that, because
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  Speaker 2: I can make a lot of assumptions that I know
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  Speaker 2: their experience when really their experience might actually be on
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: a kind of emotional level, quite different from mine, even
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  Speaker 2: though we share some of these common experiences, which goes
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: to your point that we're fundamentally individuals, that we cannot
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: be encompassed exclusively or even fundamentally by our, say, our
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: identity groups or even our major life experiences.
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think this provokes two thoughts in me, and
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: you've actually sort of evoked each of them, I think.
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  Speaker 4: You know, the first is that one of the very
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: common human experiences is to be faced with somebody who
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: superficially is very similar to us, often a member of
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: our family, and say, you don't get me at all, right? Like,
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: here we are, not just with the same sort of
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: skin color perhaps, or the same religious background, or the same,
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: you know, we grew up together, right? And yet you
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: don't get me and I don't get you because we're
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: so fundamentally different from each other. And I'm sure that
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: this is the case in many patient-therapist relationships where you
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: find a therapist who seems to be a great fit
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: and all kinds of external characteristics, but somehow they don't
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: get you and you don't get them and it's not
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: a good fit, right? Now, conversely, I think it's perfectly...
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: understandable and legitimate that it can be helpful to have
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: certain experiences in common. That if you have children, you
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: might want to have a therapist who also has children.
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: If you've gone to war and you're traumatized by that,
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: perhaps you do want somebody who has had some experience
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: that helps them understand what it is like, for example,
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: to be shot at and what it does to your
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: psyche in a first personal way. That's perfectly legitimate. And
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: certainly some identity categories we're born into might be that
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: kind of thing, right? I certainly agree that the experience
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: of racism in the United States is a particular kind
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: of trauma. And if particular patients have a strong preference
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: for having a therapist who has undergone similar experiences, I
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: think that's perfectly understandable and certainly worthy of respect. I
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  Speaker 4: think it becomes troubling when we think that these pre-cut
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: identity categories either consume the whole space of our individuality
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: that you know the intersection of identities taken together will
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: define who you are with little of a gap left
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: which i think is clearly untrue when you look at
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: how different siblings are from each other right and conversely
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: that one kind of collective fact about you is more
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: important than the other that for example you know I
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: really bristle at the way in which Americans often split
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: the world into sort of whites and people of color.
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: The idea that somebody whose parent, you know, father may
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: be a white British man and mother may be, you know,
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: an Indian Brahmin from sort of the, you know, the
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: height of a caste system and who's very affluent and,
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: you know, they are born in the United States and
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: go to an elite private school and and undoubtedly would
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: undergo certain forms of discrimination over the course of a life.
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: But the idea that they somehow metaphysically are in the
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: same category as somebody who grows up, you know, in
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: a family of descendants of slaves, you know, in a
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: deeply disadvantaged neighborhood in the south side of Chicago, for example,
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: who perhaps has dealt with real trauma in their childhood.
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: The idea that because they're both people of color, they
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: somehow naturally understand each other Whereas, for example, a middle-class
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: white person would be unable to understand this British Indian
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: origin person. It's just, you start to get into these
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: caricatures of how the social world works and of how
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: individuals work. The truth of it is that there's hundreds
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: of characteristics that each of us on this call and
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: every one of the listeners and all of us share
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: and don't share. And in particular contexts, Some of those
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: may be particularly important and salient, and that's worthy of respect.
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: But the idea that you can pick up one or
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: two of those and that'll tell you everything about whether
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: there's an essential similarity in the world and whether we're
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: able to engage in meaningful human communication across that divide
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: seems to me to be simplistic and more importantly, a
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: betrayal of the aspiration of those things not defining. I mean,
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: to me, it's a deeply reactionary idea that your skin color,
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: your religion, all your experiences define you to such an
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: extent that if we don't share them, there's no ability
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: of mutual understanding and empathy between us.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so let's just boil down to a really small piece.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: We're using the word understand. often. You can't understand me.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: I can't understand you. And there's also in that a
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: tacit agreement that we both mean the same thing when
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: we throw the word understand around. I'd love to just hear,
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: what does the word understand mean? What happens inside of
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: someone when they do or don't feel that they understand
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: or are understood for that matter?
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, as part of the sort
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: of ideology I'm talking about, you know, there is this
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: claim that, you know, there's sort of four subclaims when
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: you think about the sort of popularized versions of standpoint theory,
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: standpoint epistemology that have become so influential. And so the
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: first of these is that the certain experiences that all
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: members of a certain social group or class will share.
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: All women will have certain kinds of joint experiences. The
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: second is that this gives them unique insights into form
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: of social oppression. So that if what all women are
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: share is the experience or is the expectation of certain
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: kind of caregiving responsibilities, then they share an insight into
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: the injustice of being expected to do those kinds of things.
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: And then the third is that they're unable to communicate
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: that to outsiders or bystanders, that even the pieces of
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: these that are socially or politically relevant are not communicable
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: to somebody who in this context would not be a woman.
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: And then the fourth is the kind of political upshot
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: of this, that as a result, what we should do
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: is to delegate our political judgments. And, you know, this
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: might sound a little bit abstract, but if you go
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: to activist spaces and literature, you often hear this kind
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: of things, right? Like, why don't talk to white people
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: about race anymore is the name of a best-selling book.
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: You have this idea that, you know, if you want
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: to be a good ally in a progressive political space,
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: what you have to do is shut up and listen
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: and delegate. And I think that there's both deep philosophical
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: and deep political reasons to be wary of these claims. Philosophically,
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: It's unclear that all members of a particular class share experiences.
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: Not all women share experiences of caregiving, for example. And
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: there may be single dads, for example, who have rather
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: similar experiences. It's doubtful that people who are marginalized always
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: have greater insight into oppression. In some contexts, people who
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: are dominant will by virtue of a dominance have access
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: to certain kinds of social effects that are important to
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: understand for the process of marginalization as well. If we
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: want an accurate view of a social world, we need
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: to be open to having insights from both. Thirdly, it
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: is simply wrong that you can't get the politically salient
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: upshot of something from the experiences of another. As I
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: was arguing earlier, even if I haven't experienced being sexually
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: harassed in the subway, I can recognize that this is
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: an injustice that I should fight against. And fourthly, I
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: think the kind of politics you create when you have
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: to delegate to others is really damaging. Most people are
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: not going to do that. They're simply not committed enough
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: to social justice to engage in that kind of form
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: of delegation. And when they claim to delegate, since there's
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: no official spokesperson for each group, and if there was
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: such a spokesperson, they would not in fact speak for
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: the entire group. What people end up doing is an
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: argument by authority, where they pick the person who they
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: already agree with as the supposed spokesperson for that group.
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: And they say, well, we should do this because, you know,
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: Latinos demand that because that's what some particular person on
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: TV has said. That may be slightly different in the
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: political context than it is in the kind of context
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: that you're more concerned with. But I could imagine some
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: of those flaws coming up as well, either from patients
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: who perhaps are encouraged to assume that somebody who doesn't
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: share all of their identity categories can't understand them and
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: thereby giving up a relationship with a therapist that might
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: be very helpful. But I could also imagine that from
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: the point of view of a therapist, who assumes that
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: a patient who shares a certain identity category has the
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: same worldview as them, or who, when they're dealing with
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: a patient who doesn't have the same identity category, ends
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: up sort of essentializing what their view must be like,
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: what their experience of the world must be like, what
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: kind of trauma they must have undergone by imposing these
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: simplistic political categories on on the patient, and rather than
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: listening to them carefully, making assumptions and shortcuts about who
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: they are in the world. I could imagine a good
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: amount of patronizing and quite damaging behavior coming from that
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: kind of set of assumptions.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: I'd also like to say that patients with certain kinds
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: of personality disorders generally and frequently come in and say, well,
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: you couldn't possibly understand me, and that they require such
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: a rarefied and specialized person who could ascend to even
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: hoping to understand their uniqueness or understand their experience, and
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: that's associated with substantial narcissistic characteristics. So underneath the entire
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: statement of you couldn't possibly understand me is something Jungians
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: called inflation, that there's an over-identification with some kind of
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: an archetypal which is exactly what you're saying, Yasha, that
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: there are categories that seem to take on a life
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: of their own. Let's say the victim. I have been
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: victimized in a particular way. And while that's a horrible
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: personal experience, some people can feel inflated. Some people can
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: feel that they have a remarkable status or destiny because
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: of the way that they've been victimized And so you
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: could not possibly ascend or reach into my experience. And
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: it's foolish for you to even attempt to. And inherent
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: in the belief is your attempt to understand me is outrageous.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: How dare you understand me? And that's part of that
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: narcissistic piece.
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: That is really interesting. So I have two thoughts on this.
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: I mean, one is that I really worry about how
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: this ideology ends up being a trap for a lot
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: of individuals in general. I see it with my students
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: who are very thoughtful people who really want to think
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: about the world, but who've just been encouraged to see
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: themselves and see the world in a particular way. But
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: I wonder whether people with certain risks in their personality
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: profile may be particularly ill-served by that. So let me
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: give you an example. On the reverse side of the
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: NYU student card, you now have three telephone numbers. The
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: first is a telephone number to call in case of
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: medical emergency. The second is a number to call in
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: case of some kind of public order threat, if there's
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: an active shooter, God forbid, on campus, for example. And
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: the third is a number to call anonymously, if you wish,
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: for a biased response team if you feel that you've
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: undergone a microaggression. What this does is to suggest to
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: students that there are people in this community who are
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: out to get you. you are going to experience these
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: forms of discriminatory or racist or sexist behavior. And when
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: you do, you should catastrophize about it. Call somebody in
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: to go and investigate and so on. Now, you know,
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: there are some people, I don't know the right language,
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: but with a victim complex or with a persecution fear
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: or who feel that they're always being targeted. And here
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: you're giving them a socially sanctioned structure that to not just.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: Cultivating it.
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, not just to encourage them to see themselves in
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: those terms, but to be socially celebrated for speaking out
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: and doing something about that. And if you think that
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: giving into those instincts that some people may have in
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: terms of a personality profile is bad for them, then
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: the first victim of this social practice is not just
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: the academic freedom that gets restrained or the possible person
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: who ends up with this investigation about an anonymous complaint.
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: They might not even know what they said and so
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: on on their hands. But it's the person who makes
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: that call, who's being encouraged to see themselves as continually vulnerable.
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: I think that's a broader problem with some of the
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: sloppy language and literature on sort of implicit bias and
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: so on. This idea that even people who seem, you know,
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: have overriding political commitments and so on are secretly racist,
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: are secretly bigoted, have secret biases. I think that might
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: make some people paranoid about themselves, but it also sends
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: a terrible message to people who do come from vulnerable
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: groups to say that colleague who's nice to you, who
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: treats you warmly, et cetera, you know, deep in the mind,
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: they hate you just as much as, you know, the
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: worst kind of racist. You know, that is not a
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: set of assumptions that a society that wants to have
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: people feel inclusion and belonging should encourage when it's not
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: scientifically well-founded.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: And that kind of paranoia is generally thought of as
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: a projection that people that have an enormous amount of
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: unconscious aggression have a tendency to fantasize that other people
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: are aggressors. People that actually are intensely hostile will have
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: a tendency to accuse other people of secret hostilities. So
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: as Freud often said, is the thing that you deny,
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: is the thing that you are constantly thinking about And
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: if you're thinking about that all the time, it probably
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: has more to do with you than the other person.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: But there isn't a lot of realm for that self-reflective capacity.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: That ability to look at oneself is tremendously interfered with,
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: which goes back to your concern, Lisa, that if we
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: are seduced into thinking that all of our problems can
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: be solved by hammering on the external environment, and that
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: Everything that's happening inside of us is innocent, mushy, childlike,
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: and undefined until the right environment then tells me who
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: I am, we're lost. We've lost the whole human endeavor.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: I think that's right. Joseph, I want to go back
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: and pick up your excellent question about what do we
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: mean by understanding? And I'm thinking about how we conceptualize
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: understanding in a clinical environment in the kind of therapeutic dyad.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: And I would say that the thing about understanding is
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: that all of us have things of which we are
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: unconscious about ourselves. And the thing about the identity synthesis,
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: I like to use your term, Yasha, is that It
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: sort of indicates that we can know ourselves through our identities,
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: and that is a fully just egoic process. There's no
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: room for the unconscious. That there might be things, I mean, really,
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: why does anyone go into analysis to discover things about
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: themselves that are unconscious? And that is a very slow, individual,
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: organic process that we engage in with someone when we
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: do this work. There's a lot about ourselves that is unknowable,
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: that cannot be known by just identifying which identity groups
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: we're in. And of course, if we only focus on identity,
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: it is reductionistic. It removes everything that's unconscious. And I
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: want to just take that a step further and say
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: that Jung said that it was the symbolic that heals.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: And Joseph, I know you and I have both had
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: this experience that someone who's really suffering is presented with
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: an image or their psyche comes up with an image
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: that is symbolic and it is deeply moving. You can often,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: or at least I have frequently, and I'm sure you
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: have too, seen these moments where something really shifts in
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: the person sitting across from you because they've had this
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: encounter with the symbolic that often cannot be adequately put
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: into words and what you know what is the nature
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: of the symbolic the nature of the symbolic is that
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: which is universal symbols speak to us and move us
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: because they are universal. And that is why the symbolic
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: is healing, because it connects us with the universality of
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: the human experience. And if we get rid of that
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: notion that there is this thing that's fundamentally human that
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: connects us all, we really cut ourselves off from a
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: source of meaning and healing. And I'll give an example.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: there is this Buddhist story of the mustard seed. And
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: just briefly, the story goes that a mother had lost
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: her child and she is bereft and she cannot function.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: She's so distraught. She goes to Buddha and she says,
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: you've got to restore my child. I can't go on
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: like this. And he says, okay, okay, I'll do that
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: for you. Just bring me you know, a handful of
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: mustard seed from the home that has not been touched
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: by loss. And so she starts knocking on every door
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: and every single house has been touched by loss. So
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: she goes back to the Buddha and she says, I
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: understand now. Like this is a universal experience. When we
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: can understand that our suffering is universal, then it has
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: meaning and then we can bear it and we can
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: move forward. So when we get rid of this idea
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: that there's something fundamental that connects us all as humans,
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: we really cut ourselves off from this tremendous source of
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: support and meaning.
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: And explain some of the harshness in the cultural discourse
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: in the United States at the moment that I find
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: sort of inhumane in that sense, which is You know,
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: the claim that, you know, if you're a cis, straight,
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: middle-aged white guy, I can sort of assume that you've
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: always been a creature of privilege and I can assume
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: that everything is fine in your life. And I think
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: we can completely recognize that, you know, members of certain
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: demographic groups have historically had advantages in this country and
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: others have historically been terribly discriminated against. And on average,
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: that may mean that the life of a middle-aged white
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: guy in the United States has been a little bit
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: easier than the life of members of other groups. But
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: to project that assumption on individuals that, you know, you
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: have no standing to talk, to complain if you're a
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: middle-aged white guy, because we already kind of know who
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: you are, is, I think, both individually damaging because it
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: cuts people off from that consideration in a humanistic way.
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: And then, of course, politically, it's exactly one of the ways,
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: and this is sort of a little bit sort of
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: a different strain from what we're talking about mostly today,
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: but it's an important part of my book, in which
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: this ideology ends up being politically counterproductive, in which it's
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: exactly what helps fuel the distrust and the rage that
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: then gets people like Donald Trump elected. And that's that
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: a lot of people are going to be watching TV.
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: And when do they hear the claim that they, you know,
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: have white privileges, but when they're sitting at home, on
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: the sofa watching TV, and they may have all kinds
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: of struggles. They may be worrying about paying the next
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: month's rent. They may have a relative who has a
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: serious illness or who's just passed away. They may have
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: lost a child, right? And then they see somebody on
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: TV saying, you know, the thing that characterizes this country
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: is white privilege. And they look at that person on TV,
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: and perhaps because they lack in that moment a little
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: bit of empathy for that person, they say, you're on TV,
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: you're more privileged than I am, which is always going
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: to be the case, right? Like by definition, if you're
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: on TV, your life is probably going better than my
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: life is. Who are you to tell me, right? And
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: so it's a lack of empathy that then invites another
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: sort of bout of lack of empathy in return. And again,
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: in certain sociological contexts, talking about the structural advantages enjoyed
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: by parts of a population, perfectly appropriate, but as this
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: kind of cultural trope, you know, oh, you don't really
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: have standing to speak because you enjoy this and that
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: kind of privilege. I think it really does encourage a
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: lack of empathy in all of us. And of course,
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: that is in the first instance, an injustice towards a
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: person you're not empathetic towards. But in the second instance,
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: always ends up being an injustice towards towards yourself. You know,
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: I'm a huge fan of John Stuart Mill's argument on
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: the subjection of women, that the laws that existed in
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: the 19th century in England were an injustice towards women
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: because men acquired by marriage, for example, all kinds of
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: rights over them. But that it was also an injustice
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: towards men because men, by virtue of those laws, would
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: never be able to come into the enjoyment of a
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: relationship of equals. Because even if he didn't want to,
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: he himself renounced all of the rights that his marriage
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: to Harriet Taylor would give him. But of course, legally,
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: he still retained those rights, no matter what he said
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: on paper in this wonderful public declaration. And so it
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: deprives you of a relationship of true equals. In the
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: same way, I think you might say, if I fail
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: to be empathetic towards somebody, that's an injustice towards them.
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: but in just as real a sense, you yourself are
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: the victim. Because if you're saying these people in our society,
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: you know, they are privileged and they have no problems
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: and so on. And it's just me who has to
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: face these struggles. That I think is something that doesn't
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: encourage a healthy attitude towards life and towards your own
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: place in the world for yourself, because you're failing to
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: recognize this insight about the history of loss.
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: Well, it seems to me that One of the things
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: we're talking about is when observations are harvested about anything,
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: just distinctions. You're a white guy. You're an African-American woman.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: You're an Irish person. Your hair is red. Your hair
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: is black. You're chubby. You're skinny. We're capable of making
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: all these distinctions about everything. In fact, that's why human
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: beings have developed a kind of mastery system. We can
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: make distinctions between things, but more importantly, we have capacity
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: to decide which distinctions are meaningful and which are meaningless.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: Because there's a bazillion differences between the three of us
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: right now. We can find 150 differences just by looking
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: at each other. But what of those are actually significant
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: in any way is where things become incredibly distorted. That said,
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: when we find a distinction and we verbalize it, When
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: the distinction becomes an accusation, a different part of the
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: psyche is activated. And so somebody could say the same
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: thing and make you think that, oh, Lisa, you're silver locks. Oh,
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: you've got silver hair. That's a distinction. But you could
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: be accused of having silver hair. You could be venerated
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: for having silver hair. Someone could be curious about your
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: silver hair, but it is particularly the power of accusation.
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: And that's been demonstrated since the beginning of civilization and
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: is particularly part of the way that this is being
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: harnessed in the political realm and also in social media.
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: It's not just that I can see or identify it,
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: but that I'm accusing you of it. And that, as
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: subtle as it is, that moves masses of people both
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: being frightened of being accused of whatever the heck that is,
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: but also wanting to join in the destruction or punishment
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: of the one who is accused, regardless of what they're
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: being accused of. It is the accusation itself, the spirit
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: of accusation itself. Archetypally, there are these ancient ideas that
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: when you die, you go to heaven and two angels
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: will sit to the right and left of you. And
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: one will be the accusing angel who will accuse you
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: of everything that you've ever done before God's throne. And
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: the other is a defending angel who will actually support
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: and verbalize all the good things that you've done. And
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: then God will sit in judgment. So the power of
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: the accusing one is very much what we're talking about.
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: And I think we're seeing that politically used to great
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: advantage So I'm not sure what to do about that
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: other than to know that that's true and it's part
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: of the scapegoating archetype. And the idea that what I
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: accuse people of sends it away from me.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: I think this builds on what you were just saying
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: and what you said before, too, about projection. And, you know, Yash,
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking about what you said a minute ago about
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: how when we do this, we We cut off a relation.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: It hurts both people, right? It doesn't allow us to
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: have a relationship with other people kind of as equals
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: because we're in this kind of hierarchy and we've sort
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: of separated us out. And it also doesn't allow us
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: to have a full relationship with ourself because we've taken
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: these unknown, rejected parts of ourselves and put them, projected
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: them out there and said, I am I am only this.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: I am only what I know of. I'm only conscious.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: And we can't get curious about those very unique things
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: that make us an individual and look for that understanding
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: of the rejected parts of ourself. Rather, they're all projected
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: out there. So I think I'm just going back to
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: this notion of projection, Joseph, that you brought up before
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: and how important it is to withdraw those so that
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: we can have that full experience and relationship with ourselves.
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I have a thought that's perhaps a
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: little bit further afield, but when we talk about psychological pitfalls,
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: the ways in which it encourages some of the worst
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: sides of ourselves, there's a kind of more straightforward level
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: at which this is also true, which is that, you know,
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: one of the basic instincts that people have and that
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: all societies have to manage and particularly deeply ethnically and
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: religiously diverse societies have to manage is, you know, in
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: group bias is the tendency that we all have as
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: humans to say, you know, here's some line between who
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: we are and who they are and anybody who's a
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: member of us might be treated with consideration and altruism
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: and courage but anybody who's a member of them doesn't
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: deserve the same thing and you know any decent political
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: ideology any decent set of political norms has to mitigate
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: that tendency to some extent has to make sure that
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: we expand the circle of who we think of as
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: us in certain ways and that we continue to treat
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: with decency those who don't fall in that category And
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: I think what's strange about the identity trap is that
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: it gives, in the same way in which it gives
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: a set of permissions to scapegoat or to project or
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: to say you are a bad person who means ill
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: for me, I think it gives a set of permissions
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: for the simplest form of this in-group bias. For saying that,
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: you know, if you're just acting on behalf of a
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: particular kind of tribal identity group, even beyond asking for
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: justice or asking for redress of historical injustices, but simply as,
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: you know, this is who we are and we are gonna,
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: you know, it's dressed up in these progressive clothes, but
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: it is the oldest human instinct and it is one
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: of which nothing productive has ever been wrought. It is
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: one that virtually always has been used by the far
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: right and by nationalists and by religious fanatics and by
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: people who want to disclaim the interests of anybody who's
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: not a member of a group in order to justify
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: plunder and war and exploitation.
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: And Jonathan Haidt's work really goes into that wonderfully in
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: the righteous mind and tribalism.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: Well, and you talk about that in your book too,
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: about that humans are groupish, which of course is really
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: supported by a lot of social science research. And again,
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: I think that the beauty of art, the beauty of
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: psychoanalysis is that it can help us to transcend that
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: groupishness and to appeal to the higher place where we're
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: all connected. And so to find this ideology really gaining
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: a foothold that denies that is concerning to me.
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: And I think that what we're talking about is we
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: all have a predisposition for literalism. So when people group
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: themselves together and say, well, we're a subgroup because we
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: all worked in the sewing factory that burned down, or
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: we all had to walk 20 miles to get to school,
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: or we all had to live in this part of
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: the country. And so there's a very literal events of
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: our life. You can't know anything because the six literal
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: events happened to me. And that's true. I literally did
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: not physically do that. But what's discounted is that we
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: only have so many variations of emotions. And so I,
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: I didn't have that literal experience of being denied for
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: that promotion, but I do know what it's like to
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: be disregarded. I know what it's like to be dismissed.
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: I know what it's like to be devalued. I know
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: what it's like to be financially anxious. I know what
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: it's like for my feet to hurt. I know what
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: it's like to be frightened that, Emotions are universals and
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: the whole narrative that you can't understand me only exists
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: if emotion is totally irrelevant and extracted from the narrative.
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: So to me, there is a really desolating, reverse manipulation
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: of the experience because your experience is only the physical
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: events that happen to your body having nothing to do
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: with how you experienced that. And something else that we
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: really focus on as Jungians is holding what we call
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: a symbolic attitude, which is that any particular experience that
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: any of us have had has a universal component, as
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: Lisa was saying. There's something universal about all losses. There's
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: something universal about death in all cultures. no matter how
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: it comes to us. And yet, thinking symbolically or metaphorically
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: is a higher order of thinking. And so that transition
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: from literalism even to metaphor involves a certain kind of asset,
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: a certain quality of self-awareness that is discouraged greatly by
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: the same systems that you're talking about. So convincing people
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: that they are only the literal experiences they've had makes
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: them vulnerable to being categorized in these ways. Denigrating or
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: making their own emotions. irrelevant allows them to be more
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: vulnerable in that way.
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: I've really enjoyed this conversation for many reasons. I learned
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: more about how I myself think about these topics. I
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: learned a lot more about Jungian analysis. But one of
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: the things I say in my book is that I
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: don't that this ideology will ultimately win, despite the very
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: real power it now has over public policy, over pedagogical
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: practices in our schools, over the way in which diversity
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: trainings are held in corporations, lots of things we sort
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: of didn't talk about in detail today, is that there
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: is a very broad set of moral and religious traditions
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: that that I think reject the basic assumption of this ideology.
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: And I talk a little bit in the book about
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: some of those traditions, from Buddhism, actually, to Christianity, from
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: conservatism to Marxism. I myself am a philosophical liberal. I
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: think the reasons why these ideas go against my grain
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: is that I think we have historically made progress when
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: we've recognized areas in which we have failed to live
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: up to the universalist promises of the United States Constitution,
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: but in which we haven't dismissed them and ripped them
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: up and said that how people should be treated should
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: depend on that, but rather insisted on living up to them.
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: That is how we've made progress on gay rights, and
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: it's how we've made progress on everything from the abolition
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: of slavery to civil rights in one of the proudest
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: American political traditions, which goes, in my mind, from Frederick
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: Douglass to Martin Luther King Jr. to, in certain respects,
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: Barack Obama. But I didn't realize that the Jungian tradition
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: is one of those. And so I feel like I've
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: learned about yet another important tradition, but for reasons that
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: are internal to itself and its own view of the
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: world and its own contribution it can make, says, hang
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: on a second, these ideas that say, reject the universal,
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: what really matters is this group you're born into, just
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: as violence to that rich tradition. And that's something I
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: I didn't understand before this conversation, and so I'm particularly
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: grateful to this conversation for having learned that.
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: Well, it's been wonderful to have you.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: We're grateful to you.
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: And, uh, and of course I'll, I'll just make a
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: last explicit plug. I think I referred to it earlier,
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: but one of Jung's, perhaps the key idea that sets
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: him apart is the collective unconscious, which is the universal
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: human substrate. So yeah, it is, uh, you're, you're right, Yasha,
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: we're another strain. So thank you so much for coming. And, uh,
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: We wish you best of luck with this terrific book.
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: We want to take a minute to remind you, as ever,
• 52:13
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• 52:17
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• 52:20
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• 52:25
  Speaker 2: Head on over to our website, thisunionlife.com, click on podcast,
• 52:28
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• 52:32
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• 52:34
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• 52:40
  Speaker 2: we recorded a really interesting mini episode where we talked
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: about integrating trauma according to a Jungian framework. So if
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: you'd like those extra episodes, do check that out. And finally,
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: I want to remind you about DreamSchool.com. For the month
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: of December, we have a special offer. You can join
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: Dream School at a discount of 10%. So go to thisunionlife.com,
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: scroll down a little bit, you'll see Dream School. And
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: just use the code HOLIDAY2023 at checkout. And that's holiday
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: with an H. We also have something else exciting. This month,
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: we are introducing a gift subscription. So you can give
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: the gift of dreams away. And just be sure to
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• 53:28
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• 53:31
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• 53:35
  Speaker 2: So thank you very much. Today's dream comes from a
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: 59-year-old woman who is a designer and visual artist. And
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: she titled her dream, Netted Crow. And here's the dream.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: There were three black crows standing side by side. The
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: crow in the center was caught and entangled in a net,
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: and the crows on either side were tugging and struggling
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: to free the crow in the center, and it was
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: the one in the middle that was caught in the net.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: So she notes that she has concerns about her future
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: as related to age, retirement, and She says, I've always
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: wanted a working studio for design and for my art practice,
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: but I do not know where to do so. And
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: I have concerns about the financial aspects. Designated space in
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: which I could create and play. I've been single for
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: some time and I feel like I have forgotten love
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: or how to love. And the feelings in the dream
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: were struggle, dismay, and fear. And finally, her associations, she says,
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: I think crows are interesting, but their tendency to prey
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: on newly born birds makes them wicked. A net can
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: be used to catch something and to provide safety if
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: one were to fall. It can also signify immobility. I
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: associate the number three with the trinity. So I'll tell
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: you that I was picking the dreams this morning. This
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: one was very near the top of the pile. And
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: I looked at it and I thought, yeah, I like
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: that dream, but I don't know, maybe I should pick
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: something else. And I was making my coffee and I
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: looked out the window and there were three crows right outside.
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: And I thought, okay, we'll do that one. Psyche must
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: want us to do that one this morning.
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah. there were three black crows standing side by side.
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: And the crow in the center is entangled in a net.
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: So the image that that evokes for me, and sadly
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: I have seen this because I live on the water,
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: where birds will wind up getting caught in some piece
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: of netting or fishing line And they might even be
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: able to fly or escape the water, but something has
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: wrapped around them and is dangerous, of course. So the
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: fact that all three of them are standing side by
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: side suggests that whatever the netting is, that it's a
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: rather small piece of netting that is clinging to the
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: middle crow. And that somehow the crow has been able
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: to also arrive at that place. So it is partially compromised.
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: And there is what I would imagine is a long-term
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: problem that if this netting is not removed, that the
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: issue of being caught with netting around the wings or
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: the feet or the beak is going to become a crisis.
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: One of the things that I have an association to
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: is I was jet skiing out on the Albemarle Sound
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: during the summer and there's a lot of fishing nets
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: that are put out during the summer and I saw
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: something flopping in the water and I went over and
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: there was a gannet that was caught in one of
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: the nets and was fighting its way to stay alive
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: at the surface, which is interesting Incredibly tragic. So I've
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: never had to cut an animal free of a fishing net. Frankly,
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: I'm not even sure that it's legal, but I did anyway.
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: A couple of things that were really interesting is the
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: incredible violence that this bird visited upon me as I
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: was trying to save it. Of course, it's in a panic.
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: So it doesn't know what's helping it or hindering it.
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: And that even once I freed it out of the
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: water so that it wasn't suffocating, I still had to
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: really wrestle with this bird to cut away all this
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: webbing that was around its face and its feet in
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: order for it to actually survive. My hands were bleeding
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: from trying to rescue this poor creature. So there is
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: a kind of panic when an animal is caught in something.
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: There's a panic in all of us when we are
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: caught in something. And I have to say that there
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: were other gannets around that were observing what I was doing.
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: But when he was flopping in the water, there were
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: no other gannets that were helping. That behavior doesn't.
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: I love that you brought that story in because I
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: think it does take us into a kind of kinesthetic
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: or sort of somatic experience of the dream. which is
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: always a good thing to do. And first of all,
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: it does make me want to ask the question, we
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: don't hear that there's a kind of panic in the
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: crow who's in the net, right? You know, the other
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: crows seem like they're fairly calmly helping that crow, that
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: middle crow, out of the pickle. But I'd be curious
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: if we had the dreamer to know that. You know,
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: what was the sort of the attitude of the three crows?
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: And then something that might be interesting for this dreamer
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: to do is to kind of go into the dream
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: and be that crow in the net and just see
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: how that feels. What does it bring up? Does it
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: bring up panic? Does it bring up surrender and kind
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: of despair? Or is it calmer? It's like, yeah, I
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: just have to wait until this gets cleared away. And
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: there could be really interesting, almost like embodied information in that.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: And so I would want to do that if this
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: were my dream. But If we even just sort of stay,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think it seems interesting because there's so
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: many different ways you can go with it. But if
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: we want to take a real kind of archetypal approach
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: to it, which is not inappropriate because it's just this
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: kind of fairly discrete image without a ton of personal associations,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: we could say, okay, crows. Well, alchemically, crows are associated
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: with negrito. And, you know, some of their associations, they are,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: you know, the streamer says that they're wicked. But, you know,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: they are associated with darkness and with shadow and with
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: evil sometimes. Naturalistically, crows are incredibly intelligent. They are very social.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: You know, I saw something... because I follow crows a
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: lot on Instagram. My Instagram feed is full of crows
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: because I happen to love crows. And I don't know
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: if this is true or not because, you know, these
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: memes go around and you have no idea how true
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: they are. But it was a little story about a
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: crow pair, and crows do pair bond and remain with
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: their single spouse throughout their whole life. They're monogamous. where
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: one of the crows in the pair had had an
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: injury to her beak and her mate fed her. If
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: without that, she wouldn't have survived. Now, I don't know
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: if that's true, but it is true that they're very
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: socially connected, that sometimes older crow siblings will hang around
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: and take care of younger broods, that kind of thing.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: So they do kind of live in these families. And
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: what else about crows? Oh, A mythological crow, well, these
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: were ravens, but I think that's close enough, is that
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: the Norse god Odin had two ravens that sat on
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: his shoulder. Huginn and Muninn, I think, were their names.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: And if I'm not mistaken, those words mean thought and memory.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: So they're associated with the Norse god Odin. Joseph, am
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: I missing any crow mythologems? Oh, the crow is the
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: trickster in Native American mythology as well.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: Yes, there it is.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: We know that there's something very archetypal that's happening and
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: that whenever the psyche produces multiples of a thing, it
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: really wants to make sure that we kind of put
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: our attention there. So three crows, and the crows could
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: be activating any number of things in her psychic environment.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: On one level, we would say that any animal instinct
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: and undoubtedly crows have certain instincts which you could research
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: and as Lisa has said they're highly social they bring
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: people gifts if they feed them regularly it's wonderful interesting
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: stories yes they are tricksters and yes they are predators
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: as many successful forest dwellers are so there are three
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: instinctive forces and one of these instinctive forces is ensnared.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: So that begs just an initial question. What instinct is
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: ensnared in this dreamer's psyche? So that would be one
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: place that we would go. And if we think about
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: a crow being caught in netting, that there's something, some
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: human invention that the crow does not have an instinct
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: or an instinctive response to, which is, of course, the
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: terrible thing that happens. People throw these plastic six-pack can
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: holders into the ocean and they wind up around turtles'
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: necks or they find them in the bellies of large
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: fish because the instinct's don't recognize these very strange modern things.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: They're not sure what they are, how to defend against them,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: whether they should fly into them or eat them or not.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: So this instinct has come up against some modern human
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: invention and has failed to know instinctively how to negotiate
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: it And has therefore been trapped in it. And animals
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: that are caught in webbing like that, it is a
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: life-threatening problem.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to say, I think it is
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: kind of an immediate crisis, actually. So I would take
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: the three. Well, here's another way you could go with
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: the fact that there's three of them. Which three is
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: also in fairy tales and kind of archetypally, it's an
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: image of something that's in process. So Jung would say
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: that the three is the thing that comes before the
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: fourth and the fourth is symbolic of wholeness. But a
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: lot of times in fairy tales, we find that there
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: are three brothers and the first brother screws it up
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: and the second brother screws it up and then the
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: third brother gets it right. And a lot of times
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: I think that that shows a sort of temporal developmental process.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: It shows, first we try to do something in life
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: and we can't quite get it done. Then we try again,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: we still screw up. But the third time, symbolically, it's
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: not always the third time. Sometimes it's the 30th time,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: sometimes it's the 100th time, but eventually we figure it
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: out and we handle the relationship better the next time,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: or we don't get into the same fight with our partner,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: or We recognize that we can deal with our boss
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: in a more skillful way or whatever the issue is.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: So in a way, I feel like this dream may
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: indicate that there is a process unfolding. The other piece
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: of the dream that makes me think that this might
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: be part of it is the fact that these two
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: crows on either side of the middle crow seem to
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: know what to do. And again, there isn't this sense
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: of it's a sort of panicked, pulling, but they're, they're
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: working on it. You know, if this, if in real life,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: if a crow were caught in a web, just like
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: you're saying, Joseph, with your story of caught in a net,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: it takes time. It takes time to untangle it. It's
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: an untangling process and patience is required. And, and it
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: seems like that middle crow, it seems like all of
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: the crows have patience. So it may be the dream
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: is saying something has been bound. something has been caught
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: and stifled and has been unable to move, really. I mean,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: it's kind of paralyzing. But there's a process that's occurring.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: That may take some time where this will get fixed.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: Well, I think in that mythic way, in that fairytale world,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: crows might very well be able to snip and free
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: up you know, a sister crow from its ensnarement. Of course,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: that would be hopeful. What we can say is that
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: the very least, the two side crows picking at the
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: netting is focusing an attention on a task. So the
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: instinctive force is to focus on the netting, focus on
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: what the crow is caught in, I don't know whether
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: crows would be able to snip fishing line or actually
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: tear plastic free, but the dream is demonstrating an activity
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: and I think offering it to the dreamer, which is
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: you've got to find where you're caught in the netting
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: and you need to start picking at it and trying
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: to free yourself. That's the focus to be done. Now,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: as you were saying about what crows symbolize, so again,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: if we were to think about this in North mythology,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: so the ravens would fly across the world, and as
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: you said, they would symbolize memory and knowledge, but they
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: also would bring that knowledge to Odin. They would collect,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: they were like journalists, you know, They would write information
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: and they would give it back to Odin. So if
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: the birds were caught in netting, there would be some
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: interruption with access to knowledge and memory. So is there
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: some resistance to knowing something? Freud discovered all kinds of
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: ways that our egos can not know something. can be
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: in denial, we can distract ourselves, there's a million other ways,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: but there's something that I'm not regarding because that capacity
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: to regard is caught up, it's been caught in a net. Now,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: interestingly enough, this is what we were just talking about
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: in the podcast with Dr. Monk, that there is a
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: way in which the natural individual curiosity that needs to
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: fly freely, needs to be able to look at things
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: from on high, needs to come down, be suspicious. You know,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: the way crows are, they'll look at you with like
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: a stink eye and then they'll kind of fly off.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: They're very cautious about what they're going to get involved in.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: Extremely cautious.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: They are tremendously alert and very awake. And just as
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: we were talking about with this identity synthesis, that free
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 3: mercurial soaring capacity to look and know and think can
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 3: get caught in a net that is not of our
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: own making. And what a powerful metaphor for getting caught
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: in an echo chamber where I'm only hearing back from
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: social media the story that I originally inquired about, or
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: have got caught in the net of some politician's rhetoric,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: and I've suddenly absorbed it as my own, although it's
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: never occurred to me to think that way before. So
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: we can get caught, our minds which need to fly freely,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: can get caught in all kinds of nets. And then
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: we are not being, we are not accessing objective information.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: And she says, I've been single for so long. I
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: think I've forgotten love or forgotten how to love. And
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: I wonder if that's, you know, that's a net is
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: maybe even a belief, a belief that, um, you know, that,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: that something is no longer possible when of course her.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: Crow of love is, uh, caught in something that's limiting it.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: Something else in Greek mythology, Apollo is said to have
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: turned the crow's feathers black as punishment for delivering bad news.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: So this also links to the Odin piece. Are we
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: locking up a capacity to know what is true, because
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: it's too painful. How many of us say that? I
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: just can't look at the news anymore. I just can't.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: I can't tolerate knowing something, and particularly in that myth,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: knowing something that is really and deeply, deeply upsetting. So
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: we kind of throw a shroud of refusal to know.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: or avoidance. We get caught in the story that I
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: can't take it, which is a really problematic story. As
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: something you had said, Lisa, that they're often seen as omens,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: dark omens. Crows and ravens were always present at battlefields,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: and so they are associated with war because they are
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: carrion birds. So as the dead animals and humans began
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: to litter the battlefields, the crows would circle looking for
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: opportunities to feed. Now, right now, you know, we are
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: in a time where wars and stories of wars and
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: rumors of wars are filling the collective narrative. And the
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: part of us that may want to cast a net
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: around the crows of war, to inhibit, to somehow stop
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: what's happening, or at least limit the news of war
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: coming to us, although the instinctive forces would say, you
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: can't stop. You can't stop knowing reality. can't throw a
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 3: net over the crows of war and still expect to
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: be healthy. So there's many different perspectives and many different
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: mythologic resources to look at. And often when a dream
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: is so short and we don't have the dreamer with us,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: then we really need to lean into the archetypal associations
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: in order to at least speculatively pray, to work with
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: it in one way or another.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: Really interesting image, and it was nice to spend some
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: time with the crows.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:15:26
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• 1:15:33
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• 1:15:37
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• 1:15:40
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• 1:15:43
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• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.