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Sibling Rivalry: Archetypal Conflicts and Shadow Dynamics in Families · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod. Today,
• 0:44
  Speaker 4: we are going to talk about sibling rivalry, a phrase
• 0:50
  Speaker 4: that I think is no doubt very familiar to almost everyone.
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: And part of growing up with a brother or a
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: sister or, you know, more than one brother and sister
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: is what goes on there. And, of course, birth order
• 1:11
  Speaker 4: contributes to it. How do we find our own individual
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: different nature from a competitive brother or sister? And, of course,
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: mythology and fairy tales. are famous for depicting sibling rivals,
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: most famously perhaps Cain and Abel, but then we have
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: Cinderella and her hostile siblings. And this kind of sibling rivalry, resentments, competition,
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: what have you, can continue well into adulthood when we
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: might say to ourselves, oh my goodness, am I still
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: not over that? No, there's always unfinished business from the
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: past many a time. So let's dive in and talk
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: about sibling rivalry.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: And of course, this is something that comes into the
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: consulting room. I'm sort of going through my current caseload
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: and siblings and difficult relationships with siblings and sibling rivalry
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: are certainly something that comes up. I'm also thinking about
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: how kind of deeply, deeply archetypal it is. I, I,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: one of my guilty pleasures is watching nest cams, which are,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: you know, naturalists will rig up cameras that show you
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: kind of the goings on and often in raptor nests. And,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: and it's just, you know, you get these, these baby
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: birds and one is often hatched one day and the
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: next day, another one hatches and then maybe the third,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: the third day. And so you've got, you've got these,
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: these these birds and they're all, you know, weak and
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: in need of a great deal of care. And the
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: mama bird comes up or the father bird, you know,
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: with a big bug or part of a rabbit leg
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: or something. And they're all just, you know, they've got
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: their mouths wide open and they're just kind of trying
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: to shove each other out of the way. And You
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: just really get that, you know, where there's a dearth
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: of resources, if you think about it in this really
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: kind of primal way, there is something in us that
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: wants to shove our sibling out of the way and
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: get whatever resources might be available. And of course, that
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: can be heightened in an environment of lack.
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: And that, you know, by extension, travels right over practically
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: undiluted to the human realm, that in most cases, or
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: so one would hope, it's not about physical food, but
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: it is about parental resources for time, care, affection, attention,
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: the psychic food that we all need. If there's only
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: one kid, that child may not realize for years that
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: there was some deprivation in terms of parental resources. But
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: if there's another kid, both of them are wired for,
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: he got this much and I only got that much.
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: I'm going to get more.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: And fairness becomes like a major theme.
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Yes, it does.
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: Fairness becomes a really major theme. And I have to
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: tell the story of this European researcher who trained I
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: think they were bonobos, and both these monkeys could see
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: one another. So Monkey A and Monkey B are facing
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: each other, each in their own cage. They've been taught
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: the same trick, which I'll say is press a lever,
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: get a reward upon a command. So the researcher is there.
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: He's taught them both what to do. He looks at
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: Monkey A, gives the command. Monkey A presses the lever,
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: gets a slice of cucumber. He turns to, and Monkey
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: B's watching. Then he turns to Monkey B, gives the command.
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: Monkey B presses the lever, gets a slice of banana.
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: At which point, Monkey A literally goes, ape shit. Sorry,
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: couldn't help it. I did the same thing he did.
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: I get cucumber, and he gets the much-to-be-preferred banana. And
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: there we have sibling rivalry. How come he got more?
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like there's an innate sense of what is fair
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: and what is unfair. And you see this. I mean,
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, maybe just to sort of set
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: this up, all three of us have siblings. And then
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Deb and I are parents of siblings. So we've kind
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: of had this experience from early on. But it really,
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, my kids were just obsessed. With who got more,
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: who do you love more? That was just a constant question.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: You know, who do you love more, you know?
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  Speaker 3: They would just ask you straight out.
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: Oh, all the time.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: And I had this super annoying answer. I would say, well,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: you know, you're my favorite boy and she's my favorite girl.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: Which was sort of lucky.
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: But it's like, oh, come on, mom.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: I know. They did not like that answer.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: So, yeah. Which goes to the issue of status.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: That siblings are very attuned to status and who is
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: at the top of the herd.
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: And usually, as the oldest of my siblings, I will
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: say I was very aware of having top status. Not
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: only in addition to my incredibly precocious mind and physical
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: capabilities— It's just because I had a 16-month age advantage
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: over my sister. And think about the difference between a
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: 16-month-old and a newborn who can't do anything. So I
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: was always aware of being a little bit ahead and
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: having the competitive edge when it came to performance kinds
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: of things. And my earliest, I've got to tell this story,
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: it just came up, but I have to do this.
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: My earliest experience of feeling empathy was when I realized
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: one day not only that my younger sister was so
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: annoying and so incompetent and difficult, but I had the
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: insight that my mother.
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: Must feel the same way. So I can still see
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: where I was in the kitchen where I offer this
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: comment on my sister Priscilla that she can't do this
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: and she doesn't do that and she's always in the way.
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: And you feel the same way, too. It's like that
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: for you, too, Mom, right? And I think why I
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: remember this is because of the smile that my mother
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: gave of that adult smile.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: Of, oh, my God, that's so funny. That's so cute.
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: And my empathic offering was not received in quite the
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: manner I intended it.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, Mom, you and I have to put up with
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  Speaker 3: that other one. It's terrible.
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: That was exactly it.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: There you were, being a little therapist at that age.
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly. But I honestly couldn't see why this sort
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: of inept kid was taking up so much time and
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: energy and resources.
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: My older sister claims she remembers we were about a
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: year and three quarter apart. But when I was brought
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: home and put in the crib, she remembers looking through
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: the bars and just feeling murderous. Just really wanted to
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: take me out.
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I can totally understand that, that a younger sibling is,
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: what good are, what are they for? Why would you
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: want that when you already had me?
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: Yes, but disrupting, I mean, I think the first porn
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: gets this lavish amount of attention. Yeah. By comparison. And
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: then the the next puppy is born and she's been
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: deposed at least for a while and that is hard
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: i mean it's really difficult for a kid yeah.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: And I think, you know, it just, yeah, I mean, again,
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: I think it has such kind of an archetypal root, right?
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: There is that sense of having a companion. There's like
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: another one. There's another puppy in the litter. You're not alone.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: But on the other hand, you've been replaced. And I
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: think at a very deep level, we can experience it
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: as a kind of rejection and that it can be
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: a very deep wound to have a sibling born, which
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: is a, A terrible thing to kind of know as
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: a parent because you don't want to inflict that on
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: your child. And yet it is a gift to give
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: your child a sibling, I think. I think that having
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: a sibling in adulthood is a wonderful thing in many ways.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: You know, if you do happen to get along, I mean,
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: you have that incredible touch point of having gone through
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: the same childhood.
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  Speaker 4: Exactly.
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  Speaker 2: And also that you're, you know, you're not alone in
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  Speaker 2: the world. There's someone else who was there at your
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: beginning or very close to your beginning, if you're the
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: elder sibling, who may be with you for most of
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: your life. And there's no one else like that.
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  Speaker 3: And I think that that realization comes on much later
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  Speaker 3: in life. Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't realize that when you're 18 months old
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  Speaker 2: staring at your baby brother.
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  Speaker 3: That's right. Well, you're still, you know, competing for really
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: fundamental access to resources.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: There is only, you know, one or two, whoever your
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: siblings are, witnesses to the same childhood. And each person
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: experiences it differently. But who else knows about how mom
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: always did that and dad never did this? And the
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: time when, and the list goes on, there are no
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  Speaker 4: other witnesses that were in the same basic position as you.
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: Except your sibs.
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  Speaker 3: So that goes to the fact that later in life,
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: and often in early adulthood, we kind of rediscover our
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: siblings in a different way, which I think is normal
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: because it takes so much libido to just get your
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: brain on track, to learn what you need to learn,
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: to deal with socializing and all the different environments. I
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: think that we don't always give our siblings a lot
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  Speaker 3: of attention early on because all the resources are going
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: to just growing up.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: And we want to launch and get out there on
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: our own, and we leave our sibling behind.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: This week, we interpret a dream from one of our subscribers.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: We chew over the content of the dream, and we
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: find a little thing stuck in our craw, kind of
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: work it out a little bit. And this is one
• 12:56
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• 13:00
  Speaker 3: to Share your dreams and answer your questions. The stuff
• 13:05
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• 13:07
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• 13:11
  Speaker 3: So in this week's dream, somebody dreams about a problem
• 13:16
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• 13:20
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• 13:24
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• 13:30
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• 13:35
  Speaker 3: chew over some of your dreams as well.
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: So we've talked about the competition and kind of being
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: rivals for parental resources, but other difficulties between siblings can
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: be estrangement and just indifference in adulthood of, yeah, you know,
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: I did have a sibling. I don't know, we just
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: aren't in touch much, maybe a couple times a year.
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  Speaker 4: We don't have anything in common. Or the resentment of, nope,
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: you know, I don't talk to so-and-so.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: You know, I think that those early experiences of rivalry
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: can take on a life of their own and continue
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: to reverberate even through adult relationships. So, you know, you see,
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: you know, otherwise perfectly normal, healthy, professional relationships adults who
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: really regress to a kind of infantile state when sibling
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: rivalry issues come up. So when you find out that
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: mom and dad told your sister first about this new
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: development in the family and you just feel devastated and
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: you want to call someone up and ream them out,
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: or another big flashpoint that many siblings lose touch over
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: is when both parents die, when are both parents die
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: and there are issues that come up around the settlement
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: of the estate, which usually are not about money. On
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: the surface, it looks like they're about money, but really
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: it's about, I've never felt like I got what I
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: deserved and here it is again. And I've known more
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: than one family where siblings stopped speaking to each other
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: at that point. And that's an estrangement can go on
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: at that point.
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: The issue of fairness comes up as well. that one
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: person in the family lives nearby an elderly parent or
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: an ailing parent, and the other siblings live further afield. And,
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: you know, yes, sure, we get it. I'm in the
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: same town, and two other siblings are far afield. But
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: the sibling who's there day in and day out can
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: resent it. And then resent the settling of the estate,
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: that there were three of us, one supplied 80 to
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: 85% of the care, and then everything is divided equally.
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: That the money could or should symbolize a different kind
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: of distribution of resources. The one who gave the most
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: should get the most. represented by dollars. So it can
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: be a sticky business well into maturity.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: And if we're going to kind of put a Jungian
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: take on this, one of the ways to do that
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: is to remember that siblings, especially in our dreams, especially
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: same-sex siblings, will often carry shadow. So, and I think
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: it's a very natural thing that siblings tend to take
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: up different positions in the family. So, you know, this
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: one's the smart one, this one's the funny one or something.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And that can naturally kind of lead to this shadow development.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: So whatever doesn't get claimed and developed by me becomes
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: part of my shadow, which not entirely coincidentally is often.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: what is.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Most claimed and developed in my sibling. So I have
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: a sister, I'm a younger sister, and my sister is very,
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: very good at all things kind of sensate and visual.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: She's actually an extraordinarily talented garden designer. And she, you know,
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: her house is just beautiful and she just has excellent taste.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: And when she does anything like involving a kind of
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: manipulating the physical world, it's always just exquisite. And that's
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: so different for me, right? I mean, I couldn't design
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: a garden if my life depended on it. When I'm
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: manipulating the physical world, I'm often kind of awkward. My
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: house does not look like her house at all, you know,
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: and I just am not that sensate. And I mean,
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: some of it is probably the way we were born,
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: but certainly it got reinforced because we kind of were
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: assigned slash claimed these different things. You know, I was
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: going to be the people person and the person who
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: was really interested in feelings and motivations. Mm-hmm. And she's
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: this person who is very, very focused on physical things.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: So what that means is, you know, if I have
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: a dream about my sister, for example, I'm going to
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: want to be curious about how might this be about
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: something that's in the shadow for me. And it might
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: be something having to do with my sensate ability in
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: my case.
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: And the same, I think, is a very true, you know,
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  Speaker 4: out there in the so-called real world and in fairy tales,
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: that we see our shadows in the sister who's always
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: doing this or excelling at that or something like Cinderella
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: and her main stepsisters. What if we see this as
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: part of one's psyche and the stepsisters are part of
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: Cinderella's shadow? And I do think some of it comes along,
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: just as you're saying, you and your sister are so different, Lisa.
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: And my sister, who's really close in age to me,
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: and I are hugely different. So that's reflected and documented
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: really well in an article in this week's New York
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: Times Magazine. Sunday magazine on siblings. And they mention a family,
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: the Goffs, and each of the four children became really
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: a stellar achiever, but each of them found a different
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: way to do it. So the eldest was really did really,
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: really well in school. The next one who grew up
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: to be a writer turned in a more introverted direction
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: and wrote books. And then the third one, like, gosh,
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: what's left for me? Well, what about athletics? And the
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: fourth one also, one was into swimming and the next
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: one's into soccer. So we have to find a space
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: that's just me and carve it out for ourselves. Sometimes,
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: you know, there's the shadow of, I wish my house
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: looked like, you know, a designer had done it. I
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: wish everything was gorgeous and beautiful. And, you know, then
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: the sister looks at us and goes, gosh, I wish
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: I were more like that. But, you know, it's a
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: question of how do we use it?
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: I think that when we talk about shadow, it's important
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: that shadow can be dark shadow or golden shadow. Because
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: I've certainly, in my analysis, seen younger brothers idealizing the
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: older brother who was the captain of the football team
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: or wildly successful in one way or another. And if
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: there was a kind of generosity between, from the older
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: towards the younger, that the older brother can become a
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: hero in their eyes, as well as carrying the disowned
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: antisocial components as well. So that's still a way of
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: alienating from oneself. So if all the heroic energy goes
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: into the older brother, then I'm not going to live
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: that out and I'll be whatever is left.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: We can become impoverished by casting too much golden shadow
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: on our siblings as well.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and oftentimes, you know, what's in the shadow is
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: not something that you consciously value, right? So it would
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: be easy for me, I don't do this, but it
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: would be easy for me to look at my sister
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: and say, oh, that's so shallow, you know? I mean,
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: I think that that's a place.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: Where any of us might go easily is to devalue
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: what we haven't developed and claimed. And then of course,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: you know, we have the dream with the shadow figure,
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: perhaps a sibling, kind of showing us that we haven't
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: valued something that could really be vivifying, that really is ours. So,
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: you know, in fact, I looked at my sister and
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: I'm like in awe, you know. But there are ways
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: in which I'm sure I let some of those qualities
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: lapse into the shadow and didn't develop them, didn't claim them,
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: because as you're saying, Joseph and Deb, she kind of
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: already had that domain.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: And devaluing is a way of managing envy. So if
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: there's something my sibling has and it makes me feel bad,
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: but I still want to be in relationship to the sibling,
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: stripping the value out of the thing I envy allows...
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: there's still to be room for the other person because
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: I'm not blocked by the envy as much.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: In terms of the shadow dynamic, I want to bring
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: up a fairy tale that I think encompasses this really well.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: It's a Scandinavian fairy tale called Tatterhood. And just really briefly,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: there's a queen who really wants to have a child
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: and she hasn't managed to have one. And she's told
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: by a beggar woman how to do it. So the
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: beggar woman says you have to, um, Wash your feet
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: and then throw the dirty water from washing your feet
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: under the bed. And then in the morning, you'll wake
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: up and there will be two flowers growing under the bed.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: One will be white and one will be black. Eat
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: the white one. Don't eat the black one. So the
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: queen does as she's told. And indeed, there are flowers
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: growing under the bed. And she eats the white flower
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: and it's delicious. So she's like, I'm going to eat
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: the black flower too. So she does. And nine months later,
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: she delivers this perfect blonde, blue-eyed, beautiful baby girl. And
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: right after, she delivers a little girl who is wearing
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: a tattered cloak and rides around on a goat and
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: holds a spoon, a wooden spoon in her hand. And
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: she's so horrified by the second child who shouts, Mama,
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: she says, if I'm your mama, you know, God help me.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: So the second child's named Tatterhood. She tries to hide
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Tatterhood away and only wants to kind of give attention
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: to the beautiful child. But Tatterhood and her sister are very,
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: very close. And I'll just tell you that, you know,
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: the fairy tale goes on. It's a really beautiful fairy tale.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: But what happens is when tragedy strikes, it's Tatterhood who
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: knows what to do. And so we can have these
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: kind of shadow children, sometimes in families, where one child
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: is very, very valued and the other child carries shadow.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: And often the child carries our shadow if we're a parent.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: And you can also read this tale as that Tatterhut
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: and her sister are two parts of a single psyche,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: one part which is valued and another part that wants
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: to get hidden away. So there's a lot in that tale.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: When you support us on Patreon, you get access to
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: bonus content and you can also submit your dreams and
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: questions to us for discussion for our bonus content. This week,
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: we look at a dream about a problem with the
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: dreamer's tooth, which of course is a very common dream theme.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: If you want to hear what we have to say
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: about it, sign up for our bonus content. And I'll
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: tell you, you also get to hear Joseph Lee's confession
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: about flossing.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: I'm so busted.
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: So many other siblings in religious and other mythology, fairy tales, etc.
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: Siblings and sibling rivalry and who's the favorite is a
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: really big theme and who gets chosen. There's Cain and Abel,
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, Romulus and Remus.
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: And in the women, we've already mentioned Cinderella, now there's Tatterhood.
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: There's Seth and Osiris, Mary and Martha, Leah and Rachel,
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: Clytemnestra and Helen. Of how different the experiences and the
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: rivalry can be between brothers and sisters.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: And the social system has a lot to contribute to that.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: For instance, not until fairly recently, the eldest son would
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: automatically inherit the entire estate. And whoever was born after
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: that was thought of as the spare. You have the
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: heir and then the spare. So if something happens to
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: your heir, then you've got one in the chute to
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: take the role. But if you're not the firstborn son,
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: You're on your own. Either you're going to be working
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: for your brother or you're out seeking your fortunes somewhere else.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: And so knowing that you're not the firstborn for ages
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: and ages meant that you were disenfranchised. And that undoubtedly
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: had an enormous impact.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm working my way through the, I guess
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: it's a masterpiece theater program, Marie Antoinette. Oh, really?
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: It's fabulous.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: But that is really highlighted with Louis the, what was it?
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: He was the Louis the 16th. And he has a
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: younger brother who just, you know, in the show anyway,
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: just wants a piece of it. And it's not going
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: to go well. It's not going to go well. It's
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: doomed from the beginning because He's never going to be
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: able to be incorporated in a constructive way into the
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: power structure. He's always going to be a little bit
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: of an outsider, which means he's going to be disgruntled
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: and full of grievance and resentment. And that can absolutely
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: be part of a sibling dynamic. It's interesting because I
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: think another television show that I will just run up
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: the flagpole here is Succession. which is now a few
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: years old, but is all about a sibling rivalry as
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: they each try to jockey to take the lead role
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: in the company.
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: I'm thinking about a couple of things of other ways
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: that this can play out is where one child in
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: the family is exceptionally talented. Not just birth order, not
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: just sort of royalty, but.
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: Is let's say an outstanding asset So everybody always wants
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: to go to his tennis games or basketball games. And
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: the other kids who are not as talented or didn't
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: have the opportunity are a little bit left in the lurch,
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: you know, sort of extending this air and spare. theme.
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: How do we get our moment in the sun? What
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: about me? No, no. Yeah, we'll see you later, honey.
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: We're going off to watch Tommy play Tommy's basketball game.
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: And it does go back, Joseph, as you lift it
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: up to the ancient and not so ancient practice of
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: leaving the estate to the eldest son. Because if you
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: divide it up, if you have three sons, and you
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: divide your estate into thirds, and then they have children,
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: pretty soon there won't be anything left. So it all
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: has to go to one person. And then there were
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: sort of established roles for the other sons, if there
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: were successive sons. And that's where we see Cain and Abel,
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: that Abel's the eldest son. He's going to be the farmer.
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: He works with Dad every day out in the fields, presumably.
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: Next kid comes along. named Abel, and he's relegated to
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: the duty of being the shepherd. So he is the outsider.
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: Off he goes with all the sheep, wandering the hills,
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: keeping the flock together, versus Cain, the eldest son, who
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: works with Dad every day in the field. And then
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: when it comes time to offer God the first fruits,
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: Cain is able to offer lots of produce. And Abel
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: is able to offer a sheep. Uh-oh. That is really
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: where the trouble starts. And the offering that Abel can
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: provide of the sheep and meat was very highly valued
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: in ancient times. There wasn't much of it. We see
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: it in Greek mythology and so on. That offering is preferred.
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: And there have been so many interpretations about this tale.
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: But I would like to offer that that's just the
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: way it often is. These things happen. They happen in
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: every family. A parent is closer to one child than another.
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: They have temperaments that are particularly well aligned. The child
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: demonstrates a kind of proficiency somewhere that gets parental attention.
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: And so it goes. Brothers and sisters in particular have rivalry,
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: and there is simply a fact of human existence that
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: can't just be explained away within the framework of what's fair.
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: It's introduction to, this is just the givens, that you
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: have this brother or sister, brothers, sisters, that's how it is.
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: And it has so much to do with indexing on
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: the parents. Cain doesn't know that bringing wheat and squash
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: and potatoes is a bad thing. I mean, he's proud
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: of it. He's worked, you know, for months to get
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: these things to fruit. He's proud of it. He wants
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: to give it. Abel is also, you know, shepherding in
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: the fields, you know, brings a lamb. They're both equally
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: proud of what they have generated, and they don't know
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: it's a problem. They both put it on the fire
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: and expect, you know, the gods or God to enjoy,
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: you know, the smoke of the sacrifice. And so it's
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: surprising and shocking, I think, to Cain to discover that
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: the thing that he prizes isn't valuable to the great
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: father in the sky. It's shocking. And all of a sudden,
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: the thing that he valued now has no value because
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: the great father doesn't find it preferable. Yeah. And that
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: speaks to the enormous power that the parents have over
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: how the children are going to see each other and
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: how they are going to prioritize or deprioritize what they're
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: going to bring forward. you'll prefer to bring forward the
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: thing that is praised.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: But I just want to sort of press against that
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: a little bit because I think that, you know, in
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: a way it is the great father in the sky.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: And in that sense, it is sort of, I don't know,
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: like nature itself, right? And not maybe just the personal appearance.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, the truth is, and Deb, I think I'm
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: picking up kind of what you said, like Like, the
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: truth is that the world values some things more than others.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: And it may not be fair, but it's kind of
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: the just so of things. Yes. And so, I mean, Joseph,
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: you're absolutely right that it does operate on the level
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: of the parents. And there are certainly families where, you know,
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: both kids might have a real talent, but the parents
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: only really value one over the other. And there's this
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: sort of larger level, I think is just what I'm saying.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: It's sort of a both and where it's like, Yeah,
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm sorry, but if you're, you know, if you're,
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: you know, five foot eight and drop dead gorgeous as
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: a woman, like your life might be a little easier
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: than your sibling who is not so comely, you know,
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: that it's just so. And in a certain sense, our
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: sibling relationships may be the first opportunity to countenance the
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: reality that we all got dealt a different hand.
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: And I think that's exactly here in the Cain and
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: Abel story, because it just says, you know, Yahweh, he
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: said for Cain and his offering, he had no regard.
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: So Cain was very angry and his countenance fell. The
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? Why has
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: is lurking at the door. Its desire is for you,
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: but you must master it. In other words, get over it.
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: Don't take it out on your brother and don't collect
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: all kinds of grievances of, you know, you did this
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: and you did that for him and you didn't do
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: that for me. Run your own race. Do well for yourself.
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: Grow your vegetables. You'll be the inheritor of your father's farmlands.
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: Play your hand. Be who you are, regardless of what
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: seems like parental approval of God the Father or whatever.
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: You have to come into yourself and do what you
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: can with yourself. To have a productive, happy, stable, individuated life.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: It also has something to do with displacement. I mean,
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: Cain is angry, but he's not willing to say, I'm
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: angry at.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: You, God.
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: Wouldn't dare.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: Because God's the one that made him feel bad. Right.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: Abel had nothing to do with it. So we're also,
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: how siblings feel that they can't really vent whatever their
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: response is to the parent. So then it goes out sideways.
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: He's not going to feel murderous towards God, but he's
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: going to vent it over to Abel because he's the
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: one in reach and it's the place where it's permissible
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: or even possible, frankly, to be able to express that.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: So I think this idea of displacement is swinging around
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: all the time In fact, it's a real moment, and
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: we see this in analysis, where a kid can go
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: as an adult to their parents and say, I was
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: angry about this or disappointed in that, to have the
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: courage and clarity to speak to their experience of being
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: the child of that parent. It's hard for kids to
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: do that.
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: And one way or another, we all hopefully have to
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: survive our childhoods psychologically and emotionally. The stuff that did happen,
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: the kid who did seem like the favorite, the one
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: who did get more of the resources. I mean, I've
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: known people where, you know, the first kid gets to
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: go to college, especially if it's a male, or, you know,
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: some advantage given to the oldest son And so it goes.
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: We have to come to terms with it without displacing
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: our own anger and resentment onto another sibling or blaming
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: mom and dad.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: I was going to lay down a new thread.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: Which is that our siblings are the first society that
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: we belong to. That's right.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: That's great.
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: Siblings provide constant social feedback.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: So they may teach you to toughen up. They may
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: teach you how to handle conflict. They might show you
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: your weaknesses. And so siblings function as socializing agents. for
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: each other and then there was a research project at
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: Cambridge University that found that siblings even if they squabble
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: a lot accelerate a young child's development of social understanding
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: and in this study they found that children with siblings
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: often have a more advanced theory of mind by the
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: time they're six years old that's great and theory of
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: mind being an ability to understand other people's thoughts and
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: feelings and so um The sibling society is then the
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: entry into society at large.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: And we can turn to our siblings. I mean, often
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: what siblings do is get us down off our high horse.
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: The rest of the world may see you as the
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: supervisor of the XYZ department or, you know, some other thing.
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: But to me, you're just Jim. So come on in and,
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: you know, And that there's an intimacy and a way
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: to cast off persona with siblings because, come on, I've
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: known you ever since you were two years old or
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: the time when you.
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: So there's a comfort there.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: Well, to maybe, though, flip that around and pick up
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: on what Joseph was saying and to go back to
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: our main topic of rivalry... is that idea about kind
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: of having to jostle a little bit as a young
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: kid and therefore gain those skills of theory of mind
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: and have this experience of society. These kinds of issues
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: come up in sibling-like relationships ever going forward. So when
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: we were in analytic training, there were issues of sibling rivalry, like,
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: who got to, you know, who passed all their exams first?
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: And did the rest of us feel left behind and resentful?
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: You know, I remember one of our compadres, you know,
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: passed all of her exams and, you know, we were
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: all sort of confronted with, you know, are you feeling
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: some sibling rivalry? And there is a sense of competition
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: in professional environments and in academic environments. And You know,
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: there can even be sort of like if there's a
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: kind of sibling transference in an analytic relationship, there can
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: there can be a kind of rivalry that comes up.
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: And all the case colloquia where there's a supervising analyst
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: and it does come up of like, oh, my God,
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: you know, he was just so focused on you. And
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: I was trying to get a word in edgewise about us.
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: It is just a given. And we do, I mean,
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: for a lot of healthy reasons, compare ourselves with others.
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: These are my peers. They're getting ahead. I'm not. What
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: does that mean? Maybe it can evoke an inferiority complex.
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: All kinds of things. Or the famous mother's brother's refrain
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: where I think it's Tommy that says, mom always liked
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: you best. We're humans. We have some of the same
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: tribal and hierarchical innate instincts that some of our other
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: mammalian species have.
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: So siblings, if it's a healthy family, the sibling is
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: a natural ally and a sparring partner. And that allows
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: us to kind of develop.
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: A certain toughness, but also an ability to be relational
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: and to be attached to someone other than our parents
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: as well. Because the sibling introduces the horizontal attachment. That's great.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: While the parents, you know, you're dealing with a vertical attachment,
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: both of which have very important components to them. But
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: the horizontal attachment is what you're going to be carrying
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: into your first job and into school and your marriage,
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: for that matter.
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: So, and it reminds me, as you were saying, Lisa,
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: about where this shows up in non-biological relationships, which we've
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: talked about Gilgamesh and Enkidu. You know, they start as
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: sparring partners, that they're fighting, fighting, fighting, and then Gilgamesh triumphs,
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: doesn't kill Enkidu, but makes him submit, much like an
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: older brother, and then they're inseparable.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: And they're going off in these great heroic quests. So
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: allies and sparring partners. And often the ally part really
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: comes forward when something bad has happened. I mean, there
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: might be bickering in the family, but you get a
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: terrible diagnosis or you wind up in some really serious trouble.
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: Often the siblings rally and they show up like Bluebeard.
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: You know, the girl is promised to Bluebeard. She's sent off.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: Not an unusual thing for an arranged marriage in the
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: ancient world, but when things go bad, it's that group
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: of brothers that gallop in and rescue her. They're not
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: sending her fruit baskets prior to that. There's no comment
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: about them attending the wedding or asking how she's doing.
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: It's when things become dire that the siblings show up
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: and their allegiance is clear.
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: You know, I think I'd like to go back and
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: kind of highlight or amplify how important it is that
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: there be enough resources in a family for every child,
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: and that this idea of there's a closeness and sparring
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: partners in your siblings, and this New York Times article
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: that I've referenced before, it gives an example of a
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: family called the Groffs. And they sparred and they competed
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: and they differentiated from one another with grades and writing
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: and athletics. And when one sister said she wanted to
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: swim across this lake, the name of which I don't remember,
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: you know, the family supported her and somebody's rowing along
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: in a boat. while she swims this nine-mile lake, sets
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: a record. Another one of her siblings said, I'd like
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: to try it too, and could have beaten her sister's record.
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: But that sibling had her own niche and therefore allowed
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: her sister to have the best time. Now that, you know,
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: to me, this is my projection, but what a great
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: family that there was enough for everybody and that sibling
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: could say, no, I need to let my sister win
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: this one. If every kid has his or her place
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: and there's enough to go around, it makes a huge difference.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: And if we take that to an extreme of deprivation
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: where the home is traumatogenic, Then what happens is the
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: siblings bond in a way that excludes the parents as
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: a way of surviving. And then we have that wonderful
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: fairy tale, The Children of Lear, where the mother dies,
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: the stepmother comes in, curses the first children, turn them
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: into swans for 600 years. And it's the eldest sister
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: who shelters the little ones under her wings in storm
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: and deprivation. But then the kids become a survival tribe.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: And then we get this term trauma bonding.
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: And so those sibling relationships can be particularly intense throughout
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: the life.
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen traumatic genic households generate exactly what you're
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: talking about, Joseph. And I've seen almost the exact opposite.
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: That it can be really split. And I suspect that
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: it has to do with one family. You know, the
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: parent may be kind of favoring one child and the
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: other child really just carrying all of the shadow and
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: the majority of the trauma. And so, you know, it
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: can either really pull kids together and then you get
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: that kind of Hansel and Gretel kind of dynamic.
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: Or it really, really splits. So, yeah, both of those.
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: Right. And there are two books about this. One is
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: a childhood story. I've been so surprised how many people
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: are familiar with it called the boxcar children. And these
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: are six kids without a parent. And they live in
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: a boxcar that has been derailed. And they make it
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: into their house. And each child has some way of contributing.
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: And the oldest brother is very, very resourceful. And they're
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: all such a close, helpful, cooperative, mutual aid society. And
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: then there are the three children in the story, Prince
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: of Tides, where it's, as we say today, a dysfunctional
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: family with a particularly difficult father. And the three kids
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: bond together Out of necessity, that in the face of hardship,
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: they cling to one another.
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: And speaking about sibling groups, I'd like to take a
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: moment to talk about dream school.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: I like how you just put that in there, Joseph.
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: You've been waiting all this time.
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: I know, just couldn't wait to get it out. One
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: of the ways that we also create sibling-like relations later
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: in life is to find people that have a common
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: value system. So people find sibling-styled relationships in a number
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: of environments, and it's not uncommon for people that love
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: Jungian thought to want to come together, whether it's creating
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: a Jung society, joining a study group.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: Or starting a podcast.
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: Or starting a podcast, as we did. And also, there's
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: an opportunity. We have an online learning program which we
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: call Dream School, this Jungian Life Dream School, and the
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: many hundreds of people that have come through the school,
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: it's not just that they learn how to interpret their dreams,
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: but they interact with each other and help each other
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: and come together in this unified fund of values and interest.
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: And that creates a working sibling community. I don't know
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: that people necessarily talk about that consciously, but it's really
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: obvious when I do the live Q & A. I'll often,
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: as I'm giving a lecture, in the chat stream, I
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: see people helping each other. Someone will ask a question.
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: I'm in the middle of giving a lecture, and four
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: or five people will rush right in and say, hey,
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: here's a resource. Here's an idea. Try this. Try that.
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: All of this support around the particular concept comes forward.
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: And after the Q & A, often, actually every session,
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: I just disappear and leave the Zoom session up and
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: running so people can actually just socialize with each other. Oh,
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: that's really nice. And they do. And the older students
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: help the younger students just the way it is in
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: a family. So Dream School is part of that horizontal
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: relationship But it's a bond around values and philosophies and,
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: probably most important, a group of cohorts that are committed
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: to self-actualization equally in the way that you are. So
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: if that's interesting, and I hope it is, go over
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: to thishungianlife.com, click on Dreams Rule, and take a look
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: at that offering. We would love to add you to
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: our family.
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: Wow. And with that, perhaps it is time to switch
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: to a dream. And Joseph, would you take it away
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: and share this week's dream with us?
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: Sure, sis. Today's dreamer is a 27-year-old male. and his
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: job is in patient services and is a representative at
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: a mental health clinic and is also a graduate student.
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: He titles this dream, The Bones of Jesus. My mom
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: and I were in the parking lot of a church.
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: We stood in front of what seemed to be a
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: circular fountain structure, but instead of it being filled with water,
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: it was filled with dirt. We were supposed to help
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: dig the dirt As soon as I started to dig,
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: I noticed human bones. Bones with an electric blue color
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: to them. A full skeleton and skull, but wearing a
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: crown of thorns. I became ecstatic because I realized these
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: were the bones of Jesus. I was so moved by
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: this experience, but also slightly terrified since I technically just
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: dug up a dead body. I felt like I made
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: a world-changing discovery which also came with a dual sense
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: of exhilaration and heaviness. However, my excitement came to a
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: halt when it became revealed to me that it was
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: all a fake. Someone passing by told me that these
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: were not real bones, but a kit of fake bones
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: to fool people into believing they've dug up Jesus. I
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: immediately felt stupid and shameful that I let myself get
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: so excited that by something that was not real. For context,
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: he writes, this dream came to me at a time
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: where I was just starting graduate school to pursue filmmaking
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: as a career. I believe, or wanted to believe, there's
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: immense spiritual value in the arts. However, I sometimes question
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: whether this path I am pursuing is an actual calling
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: or inauthentic posturing that I'm taking. for egotistical purposes. The
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: main feelings in the dream were shock, excitement, immense gravity,
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: followed by extreme disappointment and shame. And for a bit
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: of context, he adds, my mother is the most religious
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: in our family. She completed all 12 years of grade
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: school in Catholic school. I was raised Catholic, but went
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: to public school. The parking lot in the dream feels
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: like the parking lot of the church I went to
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: as a kid.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: It's such a kind of compelling image. You know, and
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: I think it's sort of bivalent. When we meet the numinous,
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: can we trust it? Or what does it mean, in fact,
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: to come across something numinous? And I think I'm responding
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: maybe just sort of philosophically for a minute to the dream.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: But I'm curious about the person who comes along and says, no, no,
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: this is all a fake, because... I'm not sure if
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: we should believe that part of the psyche or not.
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: I have the same feeling.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: But there is a way that we think we've discovered
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: the answer. So again, that kind of like late 20s transition,
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: what we sometimes talk about on the podcast is Saturn return.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: You are at this point in your life where you're
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: establishing your values. And and you may become disillusioned with
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: something that you believed that was true up until that point.
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, that certainly happened to me. I thought I
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: had found my calling. And then it was like, oh, no,
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: that's not the thing. That's not the thing. And it
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: was pretty devastating, actually, that that loss of a sense
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: of a kind of a clear compass that this was
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: going to be the thing that was going to kind
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: of give my life meaning. and having to let that
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: go and just remain kind of empty-handed in the void
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: while I waited for something else to come forward. So
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: it seems to me like this is a very important
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: dream that kind of lays out this critical moment that
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people face. And what can
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: you believe in, and what does it mean to be disillusioned,
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: in a sense?
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: It reminds me of a process that, I think all
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: of us need to go through regarding our religion, is
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: that the religion of our childhood, the symbols and ideas
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: that were taught when we're very young, are kind of
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: titrated and languaged with the idea that this is how
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: you would explain it to a child. And that often
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: sets up the foundational ideas and images for the religion.
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: And by the time we reach adulthood, those religious ideas
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: are not adequate for an adult psyche. Like I remember
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: being a little kid and I went to Bible camp
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: and I was the most religious of the entire family
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: and remained that way. And the first time I saw
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: like an icon of a lamb holding a flag and
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: somebody told me that was Jesus, it was incredibly disturbing.
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: I had no way to understand that. So These really
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: early experiences shape things, but often, and the Saturn return
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: is a great time, we have to unearth the religious
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: stories and teachings that were given us at our mother's
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: knee to re-examine them and find, is this an adequate
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: religious attitude? Is this an adequate understanding of my own faith?
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: to carry me forward in an adult world and with
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: the kind of sophistication that you certainly have at 27,
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: but would not have had at seven. So we do
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: have to unearth and rethink, because God probably isn't an
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: old man with a beard, and I don't think Jesus
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: is a lamb carrying a flag. Right. But those are
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: all pointing to much greater truths that as adults we
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: can mine for great relevance. But we might have to
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: give up some of our youthful superstitions almost.
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: I'm going back just as I often do to the
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: very beginning of the dream and the mother complex. My
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: mom and I were in the parking lot of a church.
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: There's a lot right there. Mom and me.
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: And the mother church.
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: In a parking lot where things are stationary, nothing moves.
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: And the mother, of course, the mother church. So another
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: huge symbol here is we stood in front of what
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: seemed to be a circular fountain structure, but it was
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: filled with dirt. We, mom and I, were supposed to
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: help dig the dirt. So what would it mean if
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: you saw in waking life, if you came across a
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: fountain that's circular, that where things are supposed to circulate
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: go up and down as fountains do, and it's filled
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: with dirt?
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: It's actually a ubiquitous thing because a lot of old fountains,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: the mechanisms break down, and rather than do a very
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: difficult repair and ripping up paving to put in new piping,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: people will often fill them with dirt and turn them
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: into planters. Because there's a structure there, but it does
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: imply that it's a kind of a compensation, a re-utilizing
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: of something that stopped working at some point, that the
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: waters of life stopped flowing. We're not going to do
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: what's required to fix it, but we are going to
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: make use of the structure. We're not going to raise it.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: Well, and also, you know, you think about especially like
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: a circular fountain. I mean, that is a pretty religious image.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: You know, it's the fountain of spirit in a sense.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: And like you're saying, the waters of life are circulating there, right?
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: And somehow the element of water has been replaced by
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: the element of earth, which is also an important element,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: but it does say we're in a sort of different
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: key now.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: And dirt doesn't belong in fountains. That's not why a
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: fountain was created. So it might be, as you were saying, Joseph,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: might be plan B. If the fountain isn't working, let's
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: turn it into a planter. But fountains are for water,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: not for dirt. Yes. I was thinking, too, about this
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: discovery of the human bones. And again, this is sort
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: of an example of how one's mind can wander into
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: some funny memory that doesn't seem related. But let's see
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: if it is, which is when our grandson was, oh,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: maybe six, seven. He and we all lived in New
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: York City.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: He loved it.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: To go to the Natural History Museum, where they had
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: these big sand pits for kids. And you could dig
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: up dinosaur bones and dinosaur eggs. And of course, everything
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: was planted there for the kids to find, and they
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: just had a ball being miniature archaeologists or something like that.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: But it somehow feels like that, that Would it be
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: that easy? Would it be that simple of like, oh,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: let's just dig around in the dirt and find the
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: thing of sublime value somehow buried in the dirt of
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: a fountain? Like, really?
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: And it's painted electric blue.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: So there's something questionable and innocent about thinking that the
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: electric blue bones, by virtue of the crown of thorns, Yeah.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: You know, I've rediscovered Christ. Yeah. And I think that
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: that's part of it is he feels like he's rediscovered
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: Christ and then has to question that. Is this really
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: a spiritual revelation or is this something else? It still
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: could be valuable.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: Well, and I think that that's a really key point,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: what you just said, Joseph. It's like it may not
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: be what we thought it was, but there may still
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: be value in it. And that is this, I mean,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: whether it's actual religion or maybe in his case, his
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: sense about the arts, You know, that we do tend
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: to invest things with extraordinary meaning, especially in young adulthood.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: It's an idealistic time. And then we may lose our ideals,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: but it's not so much that we have to just
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: become a kind of, just a cynic at that point. Right.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: But there's a kind of both-and-ness of it that we
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: can hold that it may not be the... world-changing discovery
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: that we thought it was, and yet it may still
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: have value, even if it's just the feeling experience that
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: we had as we made the discovery.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: If you found the bones of Jesus, you have then
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: disproved the entire theological fantasy. Because Jesus rose from the
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: dead and took his bones and everything else up to heaven.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: So if you actually found the bones of Jesus, he's
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: no longer as holy, he didn't resurrect, and he's been
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: turned into a kind of artifact, an archeologic artifact. And
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: if it really was the bones of Jesus, you would
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: be disproving the central tenant of the Catholic Church. So
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: when he says, I'm so moved and I'm terrified, it's
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: a world-changing discovery. And at first, We could be tricked
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: into thinking it's a world-changing discovery because he's proved that
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: Jesus is real. But it's also a world-changing discovery because
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: he's disproved the entire mythopoetic story.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 4: But I think what's of value here, and this reminds
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: me of, I can never remember which night it is,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: but the night that sees the grail.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: He sees the grail. It's numinous and luminous. He sees
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: the thing of supreme value.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: Of the goal of the opus, the goal of our
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: life's work, the goal of individuation. But then he has
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 4: to spend the rest of his life looking for it.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: Because you never really get the thing, right? You'll never
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: really get the bones of Jesus.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: So I don't want to discount this incredible feeling that
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: it's miraculous and I've had a vision of something Of inordinate,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: unspeakable value.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: But it's not this thing because it's not out there.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: It's in here.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: So I'll tell a story related to that, which is
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: Deb and I a few years ago got to go
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: to Jung's house in Zurich and we were in his
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: office and, you know, there's this chair and across the
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: room there's this like picture frame that's covered. And I
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: certainly didn't break any rules, but I was able to
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: kind of peer behind, I was really, what is covered
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: behind that? And somehow I was able, I don't remember
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: now how I saw it, if I pulled it aside
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: a little bit, what it was, was an image of
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: the Shroud of Turin, which is a fake. But that image,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: and Jung didn't know it was a fake, right? He,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: you know, he died in 1961. So I, you know,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: I imagine that there was still, I mean, a lot
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: of people believed that it might actually be sort of
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: a an image of Christ. Now it's been conclusively disproven.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: But there it is. It's like the face of Christ
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: was looking at him. And in a way, it doesn't
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: matter that it was a fake because it had a
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: significance to Jung, that image. But I did want to say, Joseph,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: I find your point so interesting about the bones of
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: Christ and what that means about the myth. But in
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: a way, is it possible to think about it like,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: the myth has kind of come down into earth in
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: a way, that the myth is kind of being changed
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: as it interacts with this person's psyche. And now maybe
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: Christ needs to be a little bit more embodied and
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: kind of weave his bones behind in the dirt.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: That's a super interesting idea.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: I often think the medicine in the dream goes from
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: The attitude at the beginning of the dream and then
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: what's the attitude at the end.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: And everything in between is plucking you along to get
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: to the final attitude. And the final attitude is, I
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: was excited by something that wasn't real. Yeah. So even
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: if we take the religious domain around it, there's something
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: about how the psyche holds what is real and what
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: is not real And what is his relationship to the
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: unseen world? One of the things that can be so
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: difficult is that we demand or prefer a concretized empirical
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: fact in order to get excited. But so much of
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: what Jung's discovery was is that the inner world of
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: the psyche, it's an inner landscape, and the images, the power,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: the libido, the feelings are are real even though they
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: aren't concrete objects in the outer world that other people
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: can handle. And this is where I think a lot
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: of people get really trapped relative to their religious function
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: is that the empirical mind, which some people call the
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: luciferic aspect, will let you have faith in something unless
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: it's an object that you can put your hands on.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: That's interesting. And I get it. You know, and I
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: certainly would want that, you know, relative to my car. Like,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: I don't want to drive a mythic car. I really
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: need a car that I can, you know, put a
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: key in and get it running. But when it comes
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: to things like connecting to the self, that's probably not
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 3: going to be an object. Although people in the Middle
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: Ages spent fortunes buying relics of the bones of saints.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: Because it was so miraculous to think it would be
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: an object and it would protect you from the plague,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: you know, by granting you these spiritual protections. But the
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: discovery of Christ, if that is what he is seeking,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: it won't be found in bones. And it won't be
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: found in the bones of the religious rituals of the
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: church of your childhood. You have to find the living bones. Christ,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: which is an image and a symbol and a set
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: of feelings and philosophies that really live in your soul.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's beautiful. Thanks for listening. To submit a dream,
• 1:10:55
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• 1:10:58
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