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JUNGIAN ALCHEMY: the secret of inner transformation · 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
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Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
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Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
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Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
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Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
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Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
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Speaker 5: Today's topic on the mysteries of psychological alchemy was chosen
0:42
Speaker 5: by our community of listeners on Patreon, where supporters like
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Speaker 5: you help us produce episodes. So if you'd like to
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Speaker 5: choose some future topics and help us keep the lights on,
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Speaker 5: click the Patreon link below and give us a hand.
1:01
Speaker 5: So today we're going to be talking about alchemy, which
1:05
Speaker 5: was Jung's last great area of interest. It was controversial
1:12
Speaker 5: for him to study alchemy. In fact, Tony Wolfe, his
1:15
Speaker 5: great collaborator, ended their relationship because she just thought it
1:20
Speaker 5: was so wrong-minded for him to get into this kind
1:24
Speaker 5: of esoteric mystery. But Jung had come across alchemical writings
1:31
Speaker 5: as part of his general interest in ancient and medieval texts.
1:37
Speaker 5: And what he noticed in the descriptions, and particularly in
1:42
Speaker 5: some of the illustrations from the alchemists, were images and
1:47
Speaker 5: processes that reminded him of dreams and experiences that his
1:54
Speaker 5: analysands were having. And, being enormously curious, when he had
2:02
Speaker 5: a sense of an ancient theme or image showing up
2:07
Speaker 5: in dreams, he ran right towards it. It, in one sense,
2:11
Speaker 5: initially was a way to investigate another archetypal and universal
2:17
Speaker 5: layer of the psyche. He was surprised to find out
2:22
Speaker 5: that the alchemists had identified a sequence that started with
2:30
Speaker 5: one object, here we might say lead, and through a
2:34
Speaker 5: series of transformations could become gold. So this was an
2:41
Speaker 5: essential and still remains cornerstone of Jungian analysis, the idea
2:50
Speaker 5: of transformation. Jung was incredibly excited to find proof that
2:56
Speaker 5: the archetype of transformation was something at the foundation, at
3:03
Speaker 5: the bedrock of human psyche, and that it activated independently.
3:10
Speaker 5: So when you looked at the ancient alchemists, because they
3:14
Speaker 5: were the early versions of chemists and natural scientists who
3:22
Speaker 5: didn't have any kind of scientific language to describe what
3:27
Speaker 5: they were observing in their experiments, they would project their
3:33
Speaker 5: own unconscious material onto the transformations, often using poetry, religious language,
3:43
Speaker 5: intuitive use and combinations of words to try to capture
3:50
Speaker 5: what they were feeling and observing. And this process of
3:55
Speaker 5: projecting innocently and naively projecting their own transformative process onto
4:03
Speaker 5: the chemical operations, gives us what we now have are
4:07
Speaker 5: alchemical texts. Jung psychologized this, so to speak, meaning that
4:13
Speaker 5: he linked it to internal processes that all of us,
4:18
Speaker 5: by the way, all of us are undergoing. And he
4:23
Speaker 5: was able to use that both to describe these very
4:28
Speaker 5: profound changes that happen inside of us. He was able
4:33
Speaker 5: to give that language, to explain it to himself, to
4:37
Speaker 5: give himself a sense of where something might have come from,
4:42
Speaker 5: and most importantly, as Jungians, to give us a sense
4:45
Speaker 5: of where things are going. So we're going to delve
4:51
Speaker 5: into this and at least introduce you to this work,
4:55
Speaker 5: and if this really just sets you on fire, consider
5:01
Speaker 5: reading Edinger's book, Anatomy of the Psyche, which does an
5:05
Speaker 5: exquisite job at summarizing these ideas.
5:09
Speaker 3: Yeah.
5:10
Speaker 4: So, lest we think, as many do, that the long-ago
5:16
Speaker 4: alchemists were somehow, you know, way off in projecting their
5:22
Speaker 4: own processes onto us, you know, rocks and stones and
5:27
Speaker 4: other material substances, our ability to project onto people and
5:35
Speaker 4: items and processes in our worlds today is still very
5:39
Speaker 4: much alive. Through that, if we can step back and
5:44
Speaker 4: take a more objective look, we can track what is
5:48
Speaker 4: going on in the unconscious. What does this mean? Where
5:52
Speaker 4: are we going? And think of alchemy as the archetype
5:58
Speaker 4: of change. Back then, it was the precursor, in a way,
6:02
Speaker 4: to psychology and psychoanalysis. Because those stages of change map
6:09
Speaker 4: onto our own processes of change today. So all those
6:15
Speaker 4: strange terminologies have psychological correlates. But basically what alchemy gives
6:22
Speaker 4: us is a symbolism for our process of change. It's
6:28
Speaker 4: sort of the anatomy, if you will, of individuation or
6:32
Speaker 4: the search for the philosopher's stone, the opus, the aqua permanence,
6:38
Speaker 4: all terms for reaching individuation's goal of wholeness and becoming
6:45
Speaker 4: all that you were innately meant to be.
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Speaker 2: So you guys have given a really good preliminary introduction.
6:52
Speaker 2: It feels right to say that this is such an
6:54
Speaker 2: enormous topic, which I think is why we've never done
6:56
Speaker 2: it before. I think we did one episode on the
6:59
Speaker 2: Negrito at some point years ago, around 2020, I think,
7:04
Speaker 2: which was fitting. But this is only going to be,
7:08
Speaker 2: we're only going to kind of brush the surface and
7:10
Speaker 2: maybe we can come back and revisit perhaps some of
7:13
Speaker 2: the operations in alchemy. But But as you've both been saying,
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Speaker 2: this really tracks the transformation, Joseph, you mentioned from lead
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Speaker 2: into gold. So there's the idea of the philosopher's stone,
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Speaker 2: that which can kind of confer immortality or it can
7:32
Speaker 2: be the thing that affects the change. It's the process
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Speaker 2: of taking something that seems worthless or common and finding
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Speaker 2: in it something of lasting value. lasting value. And let's see,
7:49
Speaker 2: maybe one of the first words to kind of lift
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Speaker 2: up is this term opus, which is Latin for work.
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Speaker 2: So it's the opus, you're undertaking the work. And it's
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Speaker 2: the work of, in a symbolic sense, it's the work
8:04
Speaker 2: of psychological change. The alchemists understood the opus to be
8:10
Speaker 2: kind of a sacred work, that required a religious attitude.
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Speaker 2: And of course, that same thing exists in our work
8:20
Speaker 2: too as analysts, that the work that we undertake as
8:26
Speaker 2: we sit with someone in a process of psychological change
8:30
Speaker 2: requires a certain kind of reverence.
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Speaker 5: So coming in with this correct attitude was really important
8:38
Speaker 5: that sometimes the alchemists would be given these very elaborate,
8:43
Speaker 5: it may take months to prepare for the operation where
8:47
Speaker 5: you would fast and pray and you wouldn't eat certain
8:51
Speaker 5: things and do other things. So finding the right attitude.
8:57
Speaker 5: The other thing which I've always thought of with these
9:00
Speaker 5: long preparatory processes is that the analyst, I was going
9:06
Speaker 5: to say, the alchemist analyst is unambivalent in their desire
9:13
Speaker 5: for transformation and that they are willing to sacrifice, to
9:19
Speaker 5: cut away other interests, to hone, to create a temenos,
9:26
Speaker 5: so to speak, which means a kind of sacred attitude
9:29
Speaker 5: and sacred space. And they have a one-pointed intention that
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Speaker 5: they are going to enter into this work of transformation
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Speaker 5: without any holding back. I also want to just briefly
9:45
Speaker 5: mention something that is unique to Jungian analysis is that
9:52
Speaker 5: if the work were to activate in its fullness, perhaps
9:57
Speaker 5: even reach a true conclusion, something would fundamentally transform. Now,
10:06
Speaker 5: in most modern psychologies, the idea of transformation has been rejected.
10:12
Speaker 5: In modern psychology, there's just an improvement of function. Mm-hmm.
10:17
Speaker 2: Reduction in symptoms.
10:18
Speaker 5: Yeah, reduction in symptoms. You're going to always be exactly
10:22
Speaker 5: as you are now, but we're just going to try to,
10:25
Speaker 5: you know, just sand it down a little of that
10:28
Speaker 5: rough spot. Give you some training wheels so you don't
10:31
Speaker 5: fall off the bike so often. And maybe by the
10:34
Speaker 5: time the end of your life, you won't be as
10:37
Speaker 5: bruised as you might have been without that help. By
10:40
Speaker 5: the way, that's perfectly fine. It's a kind of educational
10:44
Speaker 5: model and a skill model. Jung was saying something really radical,
10:49
Speaker 5: which is that the structure of the psyche itself is
10:54
Speaker 5: capable of dissolving and re-coagulating or restructuring on a higher arc.
11:02
Speaker 5: And frankly, no other psychologies are talking about that these days,
11:08
Speaker 5: nor can they demonstrate that efficacy. It's a radical thing.
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Speaker 4: So the alchemists... devoted themselves to a process. They served
11:23
Speaker 4: something greater. They served it with patience and persistence and
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Speaker 4: courage of preparing, getting everything just right. And they talked
11:35
Speaker 4: about it being a sacred process. And the corollary that
11:39
Speaker 4: you're lifting up, I think, Joseph, is That's what a
11:44
Speaker 4: Jungian analysis hopes to do also is to effect a
11:50
Speaker 4: change in us, in a person, a fundamental transformation versus
11:57
Speaker 4: just a change in degree from, oh, I used to
12:00
Speaker 4: get so upset so often and through the skills that
12:04
Speaker 4: I have learned I don't get quite as upset and
12:07
Speaker 4: I don't get upset quite so often. We're looking for
12:13
Speaker 4: what the alchemist called, you know, the opus, and Jung
12:17
Speaker 4: called it individuation. And how do we work with our
12:24
Speaker 4: own transformation, the underlying, undergirding energies of the self, of
12:31
Speaker 4: the unconscious? How do we do that? much as the
12:36
Speaker 4: alchemists work with material substances.
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Speaker 5: So one way to use some of their metaphors is
12:44
Speaker 5: that one, you have to define the thing that you're
12:47
Speaker 5: going to work on, which they called the prima materia,
12:51
Speaker 5: like what's the thing? So for Jungians, it's the psychic
12:56
Speaker 5: structure or the personality.
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Speaker 3: Yes.
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Speaker 5: And then the personality undergoes certain experiences. some of which
13:06
Speaker 5: the analyst facilitates. I'm going to talk generally. I know
13:12
Speaker 5: we'll become more specific. But in this model of the psyche,
13:17
Speaker 5: your personality exists such as it does right now. And
13:22
Speaker 5: then there's all kinds of other potential, which we call
13:25
Speaker 5: the anima animus, that are hovering somewhere else in the psyche,
13:30
Speaker 5: which you have no idea what it is. And the
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Speaker 5: task is, How can your waking personality and all of
13:38
Speaker 5: these totally alien potentials meet and merge and produce a
13:46
Speaker 5: new personality where those traits and capacities are present and active?
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Speaker 5: And the alchemists give us a sense that your personality
14:00
Speaker 5: needs to kind of soften up or in some sense dissolve.
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Speaker 5: so that something can be added into it, which is
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Speaker 5: your potential, and then it needs to firm up again
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Speaker 5: so it doesn't all just bleed away or evaporate. I
14:17
Speaker 5: know that sounds simplistic, but that's in one very basic
14:21
Speaker 5: way what they're talking about.
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Speaker 4: I want to just go back to that term, the
14:27
Speaker 4: prima materia, of the primary or primal material. And You know,
14:33
Speaker 4: what's that like in today's language and world? Basically, the
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Speaker 4: prima materia is the child. You know, it's the child
14:44
Speaker 4: that later becomes an adult. The child is innocent and
14:49
Speaker 4: the child is undifferentiated. You know, if we don't have
14:54
Speaker 4: all these separate compartments and aspects of ourselves and capabilities
14:59
Speaker 4: and so on and so forth, of a newborn baby
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Speaker 4: is a newborn baby, all one thing. So we are
15:07
Speaker 4: working on the parts of ourselves that are undifferentiated. They
15:13
Speaker 4: have not been brought into consciousness. And the processes, alchemical
15:20
Speaker 4: processes of what needs to dissolve, of what needs to regress,
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Speaker 4: and then coagulate or coagulatio of reform in some very
15:32
Speaker 4: different way? What needs to be burned away? What needs
15:38
Speaker 4: to undergo a process of mortificatio, or dying? So all
15:44
Speaker 4: of these are the ways that the psyche can begin
15:49
Speaker 4: to work with those undifferentiated parts of ourselves, the prima materia,
15:55
Speaker 4: including separatio, separating, sublimatio, rising up above as if you
16:01
Speaker 4: could see things the way you do when you're on
16:04
Speaker 4: an airplane, for instance. And finally arriving at conjunctio, which
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Speaker 4: is the union of the opposites, the wholeness. Things are differentiated.
16:16
Speaker 4: They don't all just merge into one thing, but all
16:21
Speaker 4: of those various aspects are also connected, maybe to use
16:26
Speaker 4: a metaphor of dance, they interact and dance with one another.
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Speaker 2: Deb, that's a really great overview. And I'm going to
16:34
Speaker 2: stick for just a minute more with this idea of
16:38
Speaker 2: the prima materia, which you said is the child, which
16:41
Speaker 2: is a great way to think about it psychologically. The
16:44
Speaker 2: idea of the prima materia actually predated alchemy. It went
16:48
Speaker 2: all the way back to the ancients. And it was
16:51
Speaker 2: this belief that this is sort of the nature of
16:54
Speaker 2: the universe, that there's sort of a single thing, there's
16:58
Speaker 2: a single material and everything else gets differentiated out of it,
17:02
Speaker 2: which by the way, my understanding of physics is pretty limited.
17:07
Speaker 2: But I believe that This is also what we believe
17:09
Speaker 2: about the Big Bang, that all matter, all energy existed
17:14
Speaker 2: in this kind of what's referred to as a singularity,
17:16
Speaker 2: and then there was the Big Bang. And from that,
17:18
Speaker 2: the elements, and I think we know this for sure,
17:20
Speaker 2: the elements kind of accreted out of it. So it's
17:23
Speaker 2: interesting how these metaphors that we intuit have these correlates
17:29
Speaker 2: in the scientific world. But in a way, this is
17:32
Speaker 2: also true, as you said, Deb, We have to kind
17:35
Speaker 2: of coagulate our personality out of the original prima materia
17:40
Speaker 2: of infancy. But interestingly, and this is the point I
17:44
Speaker 2: wanted to come back to, the alchemists believe that metals
17:47
Speaker 2: had to be changed back into the prima materia before
17:51
Speaker 2: they could be transmuted. And Joseph, this goes to what
17:54
Speaker 2: you were saying a minute ago. One of the basic
17:57
Speaker 2: sayings is, I think we've already said it, is salve
18:00
Speaker 2: et coagulio. So dissolve and coagulate. And it implies psychologically
18:07
Speaker 2: that for change to happen, we have to go back
18:11
Speaker 2: to a former state before something new can come forward.
18:17
Speaker 2: And although I don't play golf, I have heard golfers
18:20
Speaker 2: complain that, you know, if you develop a certain golf stroke, right?
18:25
Speaker 2: And then if you're going to try to improve that,
18:28
Speaker 2: the pro comes and tells you, you're doing this wrong,
18:30
Speaker 2: you're doing this wrong, you got to put your weight here,
18:31
Speaker 2: whatever they say.
18:32
Speaker 4: And.
18:34
Speaker 2: People's game falls apart at that point, like they can't
18:38
Speaker 2: play at all. That's the salve before they learn the
18:43
Speaker 2: new skill. So this is also in the psychoanalytic world,
18:47
Speaker 2: it's sort of commonly known that you have to regress
18:53
Speaker 2: before you move forward. And Jung, of course, used a
18:57
Speaker 2: French phrase for that, reculier pour mieux sauter. which is
19:02
Speaker 2: to kind of go back so that you can better
19:04
Speaker 2: jump forward. No, I think that our French listeners will
19:09
Speaker 2: be horrified at my pronunciation, but in any case, again,
19:14
Speaker 2: it's an archetypal pattern that in a change process, we
19:19
Speaker 2: have to go back to the way we were before
19:22
Speaker 2: or sometimes just fall apart and dissolve before we can
19:26
Speaker 2: move forward into a new form.
19:28
Speaker 5: So, If we want to just brush up against the
19:33
Speaker 5: processes a little more psychologically, there's a long list of
19:38
Speaker 5: the various nuanced stages that we can find. The alchemist
19:45
Speaker 5: talked about it in a lovely sequenced way, which makes
19:48
Speaker 5: it seem so wonderfully knowable. But for most of us,
19:53
Speaker 5: it's not quite so predictable. We do a little bit
19:55
Speaker 5: of one stage and then another stage, we come back,
19:58
Speaker 5: pick up a thread. But the first stage that the
20:02
Speaker 5: alchemists called the negredo, which we could think psychologically is
20:09
Speaker 5: that initial stage which is characterized by this experience of
20:14
Speaker 5: chaos and confusion and suffering. Now, in most all of
20:20
Speaker 5: the ancient initiatic traditions, when the initiate was first brought
20:27
Speaker 5: into their very first initiation, they would often be hoodwinked.
20:33
Speaker 5: They would put a cover over their eyes so that
20:36
Speaker 5: they were blind And they were often told in the
20:40
Speaker 5: beginning to admit that they are in a state of
20:44
Speaker 5: ignorance and therefore suffering, a state where my sight is
20:50
Speaker 5: not clear. And this admission that there are things going
20:55
Speaker 5: on that are causing me pain, that I am driven
20:59
Speaker 5: to resolve, but I can't see them, that to me
21:05
Speaker 5: is part of that beginning of the negredo. Some people
21:09
Speaker 5: call it the dark night of the soul, but I
21:12
Speaker 5: think that's actually probably a little bit different. But it's
21:16
Speaker 5: a necessary confrontation with our own suffering, and in a
21:21
Speaker 5: more pure Jungian standpoint, it has to do with the
21:25
Speaker 5: confrontation with the shadow and the repressed and the unconscious
21:31
Speaker 5: parts of the shadow, which, as Deb was saying, puts
21:35
Speaker 5: us in touch with the inner infant which are those
21:39
Speaker 5: primal parts of ourselves that we at one time knew,
21:44
Speaker 5: often when we were quite young, but the culture or
21:47
Speaker 5: other circumstances has caused them to be split off. And
21:52
Speaker 5: we need all of that original material to come back
21:57
Speaker 5: to us in order to have the vitality for the
22:02
Speaker 5: later stages. In the negrito, we're in that place where
22:08
Speaker 5: Jung has told us one does not become enlightened by
22:12
Speaker 5: imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
22:19
Speaker 5: And as we continue to pull the shadow into ourselves,
22:24
Speaker 5: as Deb had said around regression, we can feel ourselves
22:27
Speaker 5: reduced to a kind of chaos where the old things
22:33
Speaker 5: we thought about ourselves, oh, I must always be virtuous,
22:37
Speaker 5: isn't that true? And then Flies start landing on our
22:40
Speaker 5: soul and laying their eggs and maggots start moving around
22:47
Speaker 5: inside of us. And then we discover that I am
22:52
Speaker 5: really full of problems. So in that stage, people can
22:58
Speaker 5: feel depressed and confused and in turmoil. They can lose
23:03
Speaker 5: their direction or their meaning of life. They're confronting their repressions.
23:08
Speaker 5: Am I much angrier than I thought I was or
23:11
Speaker 5: am I more passive? There's often a lot of heightened anxiety.
23:16
Speaker 5: People will have dreams about darkness, dreams about dismemberment where
23:22
Speaker 5: there's decaying bodies sometimes or threatening shadowy monsters that are
23:27
Speaker 5: chasing them around the house or being lost in a
23:30
Speaker 5: forest or sinking in mud or quicksand. And the resolution
23:36
Speaker 5: of the negrado comes through the acceptance of the shadow
23:39
Speaker 5: and confronting the difficult emotions that we've been avoiding.
23:46
Speaker 4: Exactly.
23:47
Speaker 5: The individual stays in the darkness and allows the dissolution
23:54
Speaker 5: of the persona to really take place. The next stage
24:01
Speaker 5: is generally the albedo or the whitening. which they would
24:06
Speaker 5: say is a period of purification or illumination. And that
24:10
Speaker 5: corresponds to coming into a greater state of consciousness. And
24:17
Speaker 5: they think of it as a purification. Purification means that
24:22
Speaker 5: we have washed away the things that are alien. So
24:26
Speaker 5: like if you purify water, water is H2O. But if
24:31
Speaker 5: there's a bunch of other chemicals in it, Those alien
24:34
Speaker 5: chemicals have to get sifted out so it's pure water.
24:39
Speaker 5: So the albedo becomes part of that wonderful stage of
24:45
Speaker 5: analysis where you've accepted your shadow, which gives you a
24:49
Speaker 5: sense of what your original personality is, and you begin
24:53
Speaker 5: to get a sense of how you've been colonized by
24:57
Speaker 5: other people's ideas, cultural ideas, beliefs that don't really belong
25:02
Speaker 5: to you. And by sensing the alien-ness of that, we're
25:08
Speaker 5: able to wash that out. And little by little, we
25:13
Speaker 5: become whitened, meaning we become all of one thing, which
25:18
Speaker 5: is really what our true and natural personality is. So
25:25
Speaker 5: people often feel a great sense of relief. They have
25:28
Speaker 5: more clarity. They feel calmer. They feel renewed. They sometimes
25:35
Speaker 5: can feel more philosophical or have more of an interest
25:39
Speaker 5: in spirituality. The albedo can have dreams or bring upon
25:45
Speaker 5: itself dreams of water or flowing. Literally, sometimes people have
25:52
Speaker 5: white figures, a white dog, a white dove, a white stag,
25:57
Speaker 5: dreams of breaking through darkness or lighting a candle, or
26:02
Speaker 5: literally dreams having dreams of bathing. So there is a
26:08
Speaker 5: sense of who one is. The third stage they called
26:14
Speaker 5: the citrinitas or the yellowing stage, which is the dawning
26:20
Speaker 5: of wisdom. And the yellowing is thought to be a
26:26
Speaker 5: kind of depositing of gold, so to speak, that if
26:30
Speaker 5: you imagine having just a white bowl of substance and
26:37
Speaker 5: you dropped little flecks of gold into it, that it
26:41
Speaker 5: would take on a bit of a golden sheen. So
26:45
Speaker 5: the white, which is also associated with the unconscious, gets
26:50
Speaker 5: little bits of solar wisdom dropped into it. And that
26:57
Speaker 5: begins to give us a sense of maturity, a sense
27:01
Speaker 5: of balance. We become more and more conscious of our
27:07
Speaker 5: true potential, which is that anima animus recognition. We begin
27:13
Speaker 5: to accept that we have a mission that is unique
27:17
Speaker 5: to us, a deeper connection to intuition and creativity. We
27:22
Speaker 5: notice synchronicity more. There's more harmony, more light. People sometimes
27:28
Speaker 5: will have dreams of tremendous freedom. We might encounter wise
27:35
Speaker 5: old men or wise old women or mentors in our dreams.
27:40
Speaker 5: I've had people dream of golden orbs or digging in
27:46
Speaker 5: the ground and finding a lump of gold. And so
27:52
Speaker 5: this stage is marked by a continuing pursuit of self-understanding.
27:59
Speaker 5: Perhaps you're reading Jung's work, or listening to this Jungian life,
28:03
Speaker 5: for instance. Little bits of gold filter down in. And
28:10
Speaker 5: the final stage in this truncated version is the rubedo.
28:15
Speaker 5: And one of the fun things about the rubedo, which
28:20
Speaker 5: is just kind of a fun fact, but in the
28:23
Speaker 5: ancient world, and people were making glass, so you would
28:27
Speaker 5: melt down sand, silica, And the ancient chemists discovered if
28:33
Speaker 5: you put little bits of various minerals in the glass
28:37
Speaker 5: and melt it in, it will change color. So what
28:41
Speaker 5: they discovered is if you add flecks of gold to
28:47
Speaker 5: molten glass, it turns red. So there's a relationship where
28:53
Speaker 5: the gold of the yellowing stage reaches a certain point
29:00
Speaker 5: And the personality, which has become more transparent, so to speak,
29:05
Speaker 5: less contaminated, begins to redden because enough wisdom has become
29:14
Speaker 5: integrated into the process. So in the truncated version, this
29:19
Speaker 5: is the quote-unquote final stage of alchemy. The union of
29:24
Speaker 5: opposites is completed, the primary opposite being between the ego
29:28
Speaker 5: and and the anima animus, which means the self is
29:32
Speaker 5: now perceptible. There's a greater sense of wholeness. This inner
29:38
Speaker 5: marriage has happened. The conscious and the unconscious, the moon
29:42
Speaker 5: and the sun have come together, and the demarcation between
29:46
Speaker 5: the conscious and unconscious mind is now no longer a wall.
29:52
Speaker 3: But the shore of an ocean.
29:53
Speaker 5: And the ego finds that it can move fluidly between
29:58
Speaker 5: those worlds. This is the philosopher's stone, the philosopher's stone
30:05
Speaker 5: finally being the human personality when it is connected to
30:09
Speaker 5: the self. And therefore, it gains the properties of the
30:14
Speaker 5: opus and the philosopher's stone, one of which is the
30:18
Speaker 5: power to heal. And so Jung said with great confidence
30:23
Speaker 5: that the greatest healing agent in the analysis is the
30:27
Speaker 5: analyst's personality if they have done their own work, becomes
30:33
Speaker 5: something of a philosopher's stone.
30:35
Speaker 3: I know I threw a lot out there.
30:37
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it's great. One of the things I
30:39
Speaker 2: wanted to follow up on is that, I don't know
30:42
Speaker 2: about you guys, but it is not uncommon for the people,
30:45
Speaker 2: I mean, over the course of years that I've been
30:47
Speaker 2: doing this, I've heard so many dreams where people had
30:50
Speaker 2: some combination of those colors conspicuously like, oh, there was
30:54
Speaker 2: something black and then there was something white and then
30:56
Speaker 2: there was something gold. And, you know, it may be
30:59
Speaker 2: in different kind of orders or something, but I'm always
31:03
Speaker 2: really struck by that because they're often when there are
31:05
Speaker 2: these very particular sequence of colors and dreams, they're often
31:10
Speaker 2: These four colors and maybe not quite in that order.
31:13
Speaker 2: And I always feel like it points to some kind
31:18
Speaker 2: of process when colors turn up in a dream, but
31:21
Speaker 2: it's very interesting. Yeah.
31:25
Speaker 4: The other, what I would like to say is it's
31:27
Speaker 4: not quite such a linear process. Yes. It's more, I think,
31:31
Speaker 4: maybe more like a spiral or, you know, back and
31:35
Speaker 4: forth and overall going forward. Forward meaning becoming more conscious.
31:41
Speaker 4: But it's not as if one thing sequentially, nicely, and
31:44
Speaker 4: neatly follows the other. Unfortunately. Right. Wouldn't that be nice?
31:52
Speaker 5: Wouldn't it be?
31:54
Speaker 4: And it's also all about relationships. the relationship between you
32:00
Speaker 4: and you that is more than deeper than ego, all
32:06
Speaker 4: about the relationship between ego and the unconscious in all
32:11
Speaker 4: of its permutations that also connects us to relationships with
32:16
Speaker 4: other people, our relationship with the sacred, with the infinite,
32:23
Speaker 4: our relationship to daily work, So it's all about making connections.
32:30
Speaker 2: Although, Deb, I do want to jump in and say
32:32
Speaker 2: that one of the interesting things about alchemy as it
32:35
Speaker 2: was practiced is it was generally very solitary. You maybe
32:40
Speaker 2: had a kind of assistant, and that might be the
32:46
Speaker 2: soror mystica, for example, who might be helping you. But
32:50
Speaker 2: in general, they worked alone. And that's one of the
32:54
Speaker 2: ways that it kind of maps onto the analytic process.
32:58
Speaker 4: Exactly. Exactly. That we work alone with an analyst on
33:05
Speaker 4: our shadow.
33:07
Speaker 2: So you go into the consulting room and it's like
33:11
Speaker 2: you're in that vessel.
33:13
Speaker 4: Your laboratory.
33:14
Speaker 2: The door is closed and it's a closed vessel.
33:16
Speaker 4: Yeah.
33:17
Speaker 2: And there's some kind of change process going on.
33:20
Speaker 4: And the literal secretiveness of alchemy in the, I think,
33:24
Speaker 4: 16th and 17th centuries was because as a cultural phenomenon,
33:31
Speaker 4: it was compensatory to and the shadow of a very rigid,
33:38
Speaker 4: well-defined collective Christianity.
33:42
Speaker 2: Yeah.
33:43
Speaker 4: So it was secretive literally in the world, the alchemists
33:46
Speaker 4: practicing out in the woods. And now it maps onto
33:51
Speaker 4: the analytic process just beautifully.
33:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean, I don't know this for sure,
33:57
Speaker 2: but I think I remember reading this, that there were
34:00
Speaker 2: times and places in which the practice of alchemy was
34:04
Speaker 2: kind of frowned upon and might be able to get
34:06
Speaker 2: you into a little bit of trouble.
34:07
Speaker 4: A lot of trouble.
34:08
Speaker 2: Okay, so there's something transgressive about it. And of course,
34:12
Speaker 2: the analytic process is for certain transgressive. because it's going
34:17
Speaker 2: to tear down norms and it's going to reorient you.
34:22
Speaker 2: But I want to say a little bit more about
34:24
Speaker 2: the point that you just raised about how it was
34:26
Speaker 2: compensatory to Christianity. In this way, it's related to Gnosticism,
34:31
Speaker 2: which is another thing Jung was very interested in. We
34:34
Speaker 2: should perhaps do an episode on that.
34:35
Speaker 5: That'd be great.
34:37
Speaker 2: But the idea is that Christianity had really desold the world.
34:43
Speaker 2: Spirit was separate from matter. But the alchemists were engaging
34:48
Speaker 2: in this process where they were very much interested in
34:52
Speaker 2: the soul that was in matter. They were finding the
34:55
Speaker 2: soul in matter again. So they anthropomorphized or theriomorphized these elements.
35:05
Speaker 2: They described the metals as people or animals. And perhaps
35:10
Speaker 2: we have an example of that.
35:13
Speaker 4: I was just thinking the same thing. Let's give you
35:16
Speaker 4: a taste of what alchemists' language sounded like. So here
35:23
Speaker 4: it is. The recipe for calcinatio or burning, the element
35:28
Speaker 4: of fire or libido, as we would say today. Here
35:32
Speaker 4: it is. Take a fierce gray wolf, which is found
35:36
Speaker 4: in the valleys and mountains of the world, where he
35:40
Speaker 4: roams almost savage with hunger. Cast him to the body
35:44
Speaker 4: of the king, and when he has devoured it, burn
35:47
Speaker 4: him entirely to ashes in a great fire. By this process,
35:52
Speaker 4: the king will become liberated. And when it has been
35:56
Speaker 4: performed thrice, the lion has overcome the wolf and will
36:00
Speaker 4: find nothing more to devour in him. Thus our body
36:03
Speaker 4: has been rendered fit for the first stage of our work.
36:08
Speaker 4: You know, we read that and we go, what?
36:09
Speaker 2: Right. Only young would go, wow, this is so cool.
36:15
Speaker 5: It explains everything. It's a recipe.
36:20
Speaker 4: There was a woman who wrote a cookbook famously containing
36:25
Speaker 4: a recipe for how to cook a wolf. So it's
36:29
Speaker 4: all metaphorical and symbolic because the alchemists were sort of
36:33
Speaker 4: disguising their real purpose and their work with using terms
36:41
Speaker 4: like the king and wolf and so on, they didn't
36:44
Speaker 4: really mean go capture a wolf and feed it to
36:47
Speaker 4: the king.
36:47
Speaker 2: I mean, I think partly they were using that language,
36:50
Speaker 2: like you said, to disguise and keep it secret. But also,
36:53
Speaker 2: there is a way in which some of them sort
36:56
Speaker 2: of had an intimation that they were not doing what
37:00
Speaker 2: they thought they were doing. I think Jung said that
37:02
Speaker 2: about Paracelsus, for example.
37:05
Speaker 5: The later alchemists may have developed code system perhaps to
37:10
Speaker 5: protect their secrets. But more interesting to Jung was this
37:14
Speaker 5: innocent fantasy material that was used to try to describe
37:18
Speaker 5: what was happening. But it would be fun to unpack
37:21
Speaker 5: that little paragraph as Jungians.
37:24
Speaker 3: Oh, okay.
37:26
Speaker 5: So the king often represents the central attitude of the ego,
37:33
Speaker 5: who we think we are at this moment. And the
37:38
Speaker 5: body of the king has lost all of its life force.
37:42
Speaker 5: It's lying on the ground here. Often this is a
37:45
Speaker 5: midlife depression or worse. However, I've been propping myself up
37:49
Speaker 5: as just lifeless. And then this primordial instinct comes out
37:55
Speaker 5: of the unconscious and gobbles up the ego and fills
38:01
Speaker 5: it full of overwhelming, and as you said, infantile needs, hunger,
38:08
Speaker 5: hungry for all kinds of things. I want all these things,
38:11
Speaker 5: or I've never gotten all these things. And then if
38:15
Speaker 5: we're in analysis, hopefully, all of that need is contained
38:21
Speaker 5: and not permitted to act out. Because if you start
38:26
Speaker 5: screaming at everybody, stealing things, or tearing your world apart
38:30
Speaker 5: because you deserve everything, because now you're a hungry infant,
38:34
Speaker 5: that's not going to work. You contain it, And the
38:39
Speaker 5: frustration of those primordial infantile needs burns something down to ash.
38:50
Speaker 5: And then at that point, something underneath the unmet needs
38:57
Speaker 5: begins to surface, which is suggested in the lion. And
39:01
Speaker 5: the lion finally comes forward, which is, true the king
39:06
Speaker 5: of beasts it's the true archetype of the ego in
39:11
Speaker 5: its new state and so then another stage of work
39:17
Speaker 5: can begin because the lion goes from being the green
39:21
Speaker 5: lion to the yellow lion to the red lion but
39:25
Speaker 5: by the frustration of the primordial instincts the wolf we
39:31
Speaker 5: then are changed. So the wolf eats the king or
39:34
Speaker 5: the green lion eats the sun, but some primordial monster
39:39
Speaker 5: gobbles up the symbol of the ego. And as Deb said,
39:43
Speaker 5: that's a regression that has to be contained, which means
39:50
Speaker 5: I'm in analysis and I just want to rip everybody's
39:54
Speaker 5: heads off. And the analyst says, you can talk about
39:59
Speaker 5: it here. You can fantasize it, but you must not
40:04
Speaker 5: act on it. It's the fuel. It's the fire. It's
40:10
Speaker 5: going to burn the old stuff down. And a new
40:15
Speaker 5: temple will be made in three days. which is a
40:19
Speaker 5: metaphor for many years of analysis. Much said. Greater amounts
40:26
Speaker 5: of things that are not said. Maybe one day we'll
40:30
Speaker 5: do a whole live workshop with all of you coming
40:34
Speaker 5: to us and we can really work through alchemy because
40:36
Speaker 5: it's such an enormous thing. But I thought that we
40:41
Speaker 5: could finish up by having a fantasy about what might
40:46
Speaker 5: a human being look like who had completed all the
40:51
Speaker 5: stages of the alchemical transformation, how can we fantasize what
40:57
Speaker 5: they would call the adept? And so here's some of
41:00
Speaker 5: my fantasies, is that when the opus is well completed,
41:06
Speaker 5: that you would experience yourself as complete, as centered, having
41:12
Speaker 5: a sense of inner peace and inner authority, no longer
41:17
Speaker 5: feeling fragmented, having a profound sense of wholeness and self-acceptance,
41:25
Speaker 5: that you would know what your strengths and weaknesses are
41:28
Speaker 5: without shame or denial, having accepted both the light and
41:33
Speaker 5: dark sides of your personality, that you would have a
41:37
Speaker 5: strong sense of purpose and meaning in your life, understanding
41:41
Speaker 5: the unique path that you are aligned with, and inhabiting
41:47
Speaker 5: that authentically, that you might experience a deep, unwavering self-confidence
41:55
Speaker 5: that does not rely on external validation, but is grounded
42:00
Speaker 5: in knowing and accepting who you are with your limitations
42:05
Speaker 5: and potentials, and that you are connected to something larger
42:10
Speaker 5: than yourself, whether that's the collective unconscious or a spiritual reality,
42:16
Speaker 5: but something universal is intimately companioning your sense of self.
42:25
Speaker 5: Such a person, when they look upon other people, would
42:29
Speaker 5: likely feel compassion, empathy, understanding. The adept would recognize the
42:37
Speaker 5: inner struggles and the unconscious feelings forces at play within
42:42
Speaker 5: other people because they have discovered them in themselves. The
42:48
Speaker 5: empathy is drawn from the journey through psychological darkness that
42:56
Speaker 5: you would honor the individuating processes of others that you
43:00
Speaker 5: might see beyond the persona mask. That your interactions might
43:08
Speaker 5: be marked by authenticity and transparency, and that you would
43:15
Speaker 5: constellate around you a feeling of calm, centered, non-reactive engagement.
43:28
Speaker 2: Sounds really nice.
43:30
Speaker 5: We'll let you know when we all get there.
43:34
Speaker 2: And we have so much more to say about alchemy,
43:37
Speaker 2: as you said, but I think it's time for us
43:39
Speaker 2: to switch to a dream.
43:42
Speaker 4: Have you ever.
43:42
Speaker 2: Wondered what your dreams mean? Join us in Dream School
43:46
Speaker 2: at thisjungienlife.com and find out. Jung wrote, dreams are a
43:50
Speaker 2: little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses
43:54
Speaker 2: of the soul.
43:55
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43:59
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44:04
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44:09
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44:13
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44:18
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44:23
Speaker 3: And it's fun. Join us on an adventure to wholeness
44:27
Speaker 3: and healing through understanding your dreams. Go to thisyonginlife.com and
44:32
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44:37
Speaker 3: Once you join, you'll get immediate access to our first
44:40
Speaker 3: three modules. You can get started right away. We look
44:44
Speaker 3: forward to seeing you there.
44:48
Speaker 4: Our dreamer is a woman. She's 25. works as a
44:52
Speaker 4: healthcare assistant, and has entitled her dream, Pregnant Without a Bump.
44:59
Speaker 4: And here's the dream. Pregnancy dream. I was pregnant and
45:04
Speaker 4: in the third trimester. I wasn't showing much of a
45:08
Speaker 4: bump and was worried that I wasn't actually pregnant and
45:12
Speaker 4: thinking about whether I'd actually had scans or not. I
45:16
Speaker 4: recalled that I definitely had scans, so I just wasn't
45:20
Speaker 4: showing that I was pregnant for some reason. I remember
45:24
Speaker 4: saying to someone in the dream that when my mom
45:26
Speaker 4: was pregnant with me, she barely had any bump, and
45:29
Speaker 4: that she could still wear a size 8 dress when
45:32
Speaker 4: she was just a few weeks away from giving birth
45:35
Speaker 4: to me. I kept touching my stomach and trying to
45:39
Speaker 4: feel the bump, wondering why I hadn't felt the baby
45:42
Speaker 4: kick or anything. And for context, she says, I'm about
45:48
Speaker 4: to start a counseling degree at university, and after ending
45:51
Speaker 4: a relationship recently, I'm single for the first time in
45:55
Speaker 4: 10 years. The main feelings in the dream, she says,
46:00
Speaker 4: were being excited about having a baby, scared of giving birth,
46:06
Speaker 4: confused about why there was nothing to show that I
46:09
Speaker 4: was pregnant, and worried that there wasn't actually any baby there.
46:16
Speaker 4: For associations, she offers that she's very close to her mother.
46:22
Speaker 2: Well, of course, pregnancy is a wonderful metaphor that shows
46:26
Speaker 2: up in dreams for all kinds of people, whether they're men, women,
46:30
Speaker 2: have had children or haven't had children, that it's a
46:34
Speaker 2: metaphor for gestating something new.
46:37
Speaker 4: Yep.
46:38
Speaker 2: And oftentimes what's being gestated is the new attitude. And
46:43
Speaker 2: here there is a significant life transition happening. She's beginning
46:48
Speaker 2: a counseling degree, which, you know, I think, I mean,
46:52
Speaker 2: obviously that's academic work, but I certainly remember in my
46:56
Speaker 2: MSW program, even though it was, you know, you completed assignments,
47:00
Speaker 2: you went to class, you did the reading, the topic
47:03
Speaker 2: meant that it was constantly working. rubbing up against your
47:08
Speaker 2: own stuff, you know, kind of rattles your cage. So
47:13
Speaker 2: anytime we're doing this sort of academic work, it certainly
47:17
Speaker 2: is also to some extent or another a change process.
47:22
Speaker 2: And sometimes by design in the case of analytic training,
47:25
Speaker 2: but I think even when it's not. And of course,
47:28
Speaker 2: being single for the first time in 10 years. So
47:31
Speaker 2: something new is growing increasingly. has been growing for some time.
47:38
Speaker 4: And it just doesn't show. She can't feel it. Maybe
47:42
Speaker 4: she doesn't feel it yet in consciousness. You know, it
47:47
Speaker 4: would be just as in pregnancy, the bump is there,
47:51
Speaker 4: the baby kicks. Conscious and what is growing within are
47:58
Speaker 4: connected in very literal ways. So it shows a little
48:03
Speaker 4: bit of a distance between ego and this process that
48:08
Speaker 4: Psyche is imaging as pregnancy. But I don't feel it yet.
48:15
Speaker 4: But there it is. I've had the scans. And I
48:18
Speaker 4: think that is such a great metaphor for a lot
48:21
Speaker 4: of things. Often in dreams, people will say, I was
48:25
Speaker 4: observing something. And the other figures in the dreams were
48:29
Speaker 4: doing this, that, or the other thing. So it's at
48:33
Speaker 4: the first stage of approaching, which is still part of
48:38
Speaker 4: us is removed from it. Part of us hasn't really
48:40
Speaker 4: connected with it in a fully felt way.
48:43
Speaker 5: I think that all makes sense that we're often in
48:48
Speaker 5: that stage where somebody or somehow our potential has been assessed. Like,
48:55
Speaker 5: you know, I took the aptitude test. It says that
48:59
Speaker 5: I did this. I took my Jerry or a the
49:02
Speaker 5: SATs and says that I belong in Princeton, but here
49:06
Speaker 5: I am. And there's no evidence that I actually am
49:10
Speaker 5: as smart as people tell me I am or that
49:12
Speaker 5: I can write the way I thought I could write
49:14
Speaker 5: or can I really be a counselor?
49:16
Speaker 2: When I got into analytic training, I kept on expecting
49:19
Speaker 2: them to write and say that they'd actually made a mistake.
49:22
Speaker 5: This is a dream about maybe imposter syndrome. Yeah, that's interesting.
49:26
Speaker 5: And so she's worried.
49:29
Speaker 2: I like that.
49:30
Speaker 4: I like it too. And we've all been there. They
49:35
Speaker 4: said I could do it, and here I am, but...
49:38
Speaker 4: I'm not feeling it.
49:41
Speaker 1: Exactly.
49:42
Speaker 2: The other thing I find interesting about not having a
49:44
Speaker 2: bump is having been pregnant more recently than either of you,
49:49
Speaker 2: which it was still a heck of a long time ago.
49:51
Speaker 5: My pregnancy was just terrible.
49:56
Speaker 2: It's the secret that you carry until you start showing.
50:00
Speaker 2: And then once you start showing, everyone's like, oh, oh, oh.
50:05
Speaker 2: And sometimes strangers come up and feel your belly. It's
50:09
Speaker 2: really very weird. It becomes public. But before you have
50:13
Speaker 2: the bump, no one can see it. No one knows.
50:17
Speaker 2: So there's a, you know, we're talking about the alchemy process,
50:21
Speaker 2: you know, that it's very individual. But there is something about,
50:24
Speaker 2: which I think relates very much to what you're saying, Joseph,
50:27
Speaker 2: about the kind of– imposter syndrome. It's like, well, I
50:30
Speaker 2: think this is true, but there's no kind of outward
50:33
Speaker 2: evidence of it.
50:34
Speaker 4: Yeah.
50:35
Speaker 5: So if I take that, the main feelings of the dream,
50:37
Speaker 5: she writes, I was excited about having a baby, scared
50:40
Speaker 5: of giving birth, confused about why there was nothing to
50:42
Speaker 5: show when I was pregnant and worried there wasn't anything
50:45
Speaker 5: actually a baby in there. And so if I change
50:48
Speaker 5: the language, I was excited about being a counselor, but
50:51
Speaker 5: scared about launching a new career and confused about that
50:55
Speaker 5: there was no way I could prove that I was
50:57
Speaker 5: a counselor, and I was worried that maybe I actually
51:00
Speaker 5: don't have it in me to be a counselor.
51:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. That's great. Yeah, that's really great.
51:05
Speaker 4: I want to shift over to a part of the
51:08
Speaker 4: dream that I think is also interesting, that she says
51:12
Speaker 4: to someone in the dream, which may also have happened in, quote,
51:15
Speaker 4: real life, unquote, when my mom was pregnant with me,
51:19
Speaker 4: she barely had any bump, and could still wear a
51:22
Speaker 4: size 8 dress just a few weeks away from giving birth.
51:27
Speaker 4: So I'm just wondering about whether there's something in her
51:31
Speaker 4: history and in her mother complex about being able to
51:38
Speaker 4: hold on to and preserve your former self and the
51:43
Speaker 4: appearance of being svelte, And fashionable and whatever else, rather
51:50
Speaker 4: than waddling around in the world with this great big
51:54
Speaker 4: bump showing everybody.
51:56
Speaker 2: So the evidence, the mention of the dress, you know,
52:00
Speaker 2: one of the things that we wonder about in dreams
52:03
Speaker 2: when there's an item of clothing mentioned is whether or
52:06
Speaker 2: not it might relate to persona.
52:07
Speaker 4: Yeah.
52:08
Speaker 2: So I'd be curious about the mother's maybe persona and
52:12
Speaker 2: what her relationship is with that. I mean, it's just
52:15
Speaker 2: a possibility. I also was struck by the fact that
52:18
Speaker 2: it's a size eight dress and she's in her third trimester,
52:23
Speaker 2: which would be around the eighth month. So I'm wondering
52:28
Speaker 2: about that and wondering if there's any special significance to eight.
52:33
Speaker 2: And I also would be really curious if the streamer
52:35
Speaker 2: here were to say, what happened to eight months ago
52:39
Speaker 2: in your life, eight-ish months ago.
52:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's great.
52:42
Speaker 2: And was that when you were applying to graduate school?
52:45
Speaker 2: Was that when it was first occurring to you that
52:48
Speaker 2: maybe this relationship wasn't going to go the different distance
52:51
Speaker 2: and you might need to end it? Was there something?
52:54
Speaker 2: When did the gestation happen for this pregnancy?
52:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's great. And I'm thinking about the great periods
53:03
Speaker 4: of a woman's life from time immemorial of maiden, mother, crown,
53:09
Speaker 4: and whether there's something in the family history of some
53:14
Speaker 4: ambivalence about transitioning from maiden to mother by having a
53:21
Speaker 4: great big bump versus being able to still appear as
53:26
Speaker 4: a maiden in a size A dress.
53:29
Speaker 5: I'd like to throw... just a little curveball into this
53:31
Speaker 5: as well, that sometimes when people go into psychotherapeutic training,
53:38
Speaker 5: that they often have a fantasy that they're going to
53:41
Speaker 5: behave in a mothering fashion towards their clients. Isn't it
53:46
Speaker 5: like I'm going to be loving and I'm going to
53:48
Speaker 5: tend people just the way my mom is, who I'm
53:51
Speaker 5: really close to? And so she's going into the program.
53:57
Speaker 5: She thinks she's pregnant, meaning I think this is going
54:01
Speaker 5: to transform me into being a mom but the baby
54:04
Speaker 5: hasn't kicked or anything and so what it may be
54:08
Speaker 5: is that you're not pregnant you're not going to be
54:12
Speaker 5: a mom and that what is going to waken in
54:15
Speaker 5: you as a counselor is actually different from mothering your
54:19
Speaker 5: clients and that could be surprising or maybe even sad
54:24
Speaker 5: if that was an unconscious fantasy because being a The
54:28
Speaker 5: therapist might involve you being very confrontive or even sometimes
54:33
Speaker 5: rather cool about things or a whole other way of
54:38
Speaker 5: approaching the relationship with the client. And what might be
54:42
Speaker 5: at the risk of upsetting but still born inside of
54:47
Speaker 5: you is a fantasy about the profession which isn't really
54:51
Speaker 5: going to survive the educational process.
54:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting.
54:54
Speaker 5: But hopefully something... Much more interesting could come forward and
55:01
Speaker 5: much broader and more fulsome than kind of mothering your clients.
55:06
Speaker 1: Yeah.
55:08
Speaker 4: And it will be interesting always.
55:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that. I like that, Joseph. That's really good.
55:14
Speaker 4: Yeah.
55:18
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