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Stoicism and Jungian Psychology: A Recipe for Resilience · 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 1: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
0:28
Speaker 3: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
0:43
Speaker 2: Well, hello. You may be wondering what happened to Joseph.
0:47
Speaker 2: He looks a little different today. Now, Joseph couldn't join
0:51
Speaker 2: us this morning. He was feeling a little under the weather,
0:54
Speaker 2: but we are so delighted to have our colleague, John White,
0:58
Speaker 2: with us here today. John and I were in training together,
1:02
Speaker 2: and I think the first time I met you, we
1:05
Speaker 2: wound up going to dinner together, and I laughed so hard,
1:08
Speaker 2: my stomach hurt. So I Yeah, it's just always so
1:13
Speaker 2: fun to be with you, John. And I've been wanting
1:16
Speaker 2: to get you on the podcast. And there's so many things, honestly,
1:20
Speaker 2: that we could talk about with John. But today we
1:23
Speaker 2: asked him to come on to talk about stoicism. So
1:26
Speaker 2: we're interested in the connection between stoicism and psychoanalysis, between
1:31
Speaker 2: stoicism and Jung, and also between stoicism and just, you know,
1:35
Speaker 2: living a good life now. So John White is a
1:38
Speaker 2: Jungian psychoanalyst and mental health counselor in private practice in Pittsburgh, PA.
1:44
Speaker 2: He is the coordinator of the C.G. Jung Institute Analyst
1:47
Speaker 2: Training Program in Pittsburgh and president-elect of the board of
1:51
Speaker 2: the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Center. Besides his work as a psychotherapist
1:56
Speaker 2: and training analyst, he has a doctorate in philosophy and
2:00
Speaker 2: and is a scholar in residence at the Simon Silverman
2:04
Speaker 2: Phenomenology Center at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Among his recent
2:09
Speaker 2: publications are the book Adaptation and Psychotherapy, Lengs and Analytical Psychology,
2:15
Speaker 2: which I'm really looking forward to reading. He has a
2:18
Speaker 2: recent co-edited book with our colleague Laura Thule, Jungian Analysis
2:23
Speaker 2: in the World on Fire at the Nexus of Individual
2:26
Speaker 2: and Collective Trauma. and an article entitled Colonizing the American Psyche,
2:33
Speaker 2: Virtue and the Problem of Consumer Capitalism in Critical Theory
2:37
Speaker 2: and Psychoanalysis, among many other publications. And he's a wonderful
2:44
Speaker 2: speaker and teacher and just a really fun guy. So
2:48
Speaker 2: I think you're going to enjoy this.
2:49
Speaker 4: Thank you.
2:51
Speaker 3: Welcome, John. You know, when Lisa mentioned you know, we
2:57
Speaker 3: should do an episode on stoicism. My reaction was, what?
3:03
Speaker 4: On purpose?
3:08
Speaker 3: And then Lisa said, it's really out there. People are
3:12
Speaker 3: talking about it. It's in the collective. And so I said,
3:19
Speaker 3: well then, okay, let's get interested in it and let's go.
3:23
Speaker 2: And so I.
3:25
Speaker 3: Here you are to help us understand not only Stoicism,
3:30
Speaker 3: but what on earth might we make of what's going
3:33
Speaker 3: on in the collective, that there's a resurgent interest in
3:37
Speaker 3: this now.
3:38
Speaker 2: Yes, I think there's the potential that it's compensatory, but
3:43
Speaker 2: we'll get to that in a minute. John, why don't
3:45
Speaker 2: you just start off by telling us, like we told
3:49
Speaker 2: John as we were prepping, we're like, We're going to
3:53
Speaker 2: let you carry this because you're the philosopher, goddammit. You
3:57
Speaker 2: probably taught undergraduate courses on Stoicism. So Deb and I
4:01
Speaker 2: did a little prep. But tell us what Stoicism is.
4:04
Speaker 2: Give us just a taste of the history.
4:07
Speaker 4: I wonder if as a starting point, it might be
4:09
Speaker 4: worthwhile to talk a little bit about what I would
4:12
Speaker 4: call the ancient discovery of reason, because reason is so important, obviously,
4:17
Speaker 4: for Stoicism. And Well, in our time, we use the
4:20
Speaker 4: word reason like it's straightforward and we know what it
4:22
Speaker 4: means and that sort of thing. One of the interesting
4:24
Speaker 4: things about the ancient world that we're entering into here
4:29
Speaker 4: for a few minutes is that the discovery of reason
4:32
Speaker 4: is actually something could be attributed to it. In other words,
4:35
Speaker 4: rationality is a faculty we have and we could understand
4:39
Speaker 4: it that way. But philosophy only begins when rationality becomes
4:43
Speaker 4: conscious of itself. So it's not just that somebody has
4:48
Speaker 4: been rational in this situation or not. It's rather the
4:52
Speaker 4: recognition that rationality is of value and something that could
4:55
Speaker 4: actually guide one's life. Now, that's really important because I
4:58
Speaker 4: think when people talk about philosophy, very often they've had
5:02
Speaker 4: an entry to a philosophy class in college or something
5:05
Speaker 4: like this. And when you have that class, you're going
5:07
Speaker 4: to have this idea that, I don't know, that, you know,
5:09
Speaker 4: some philosopher pulled some question out of his ass and
5:11
Speaker 4: then they answered it and, you know, then he produced
5:13
Speaker 4: this thing and you have just a, kind of a
5:15
Speaker 4: piecemeal sense of it without understanding the basic experience that
5:19
Speaker 4: produced philosophy in the first place. It's really rationality becoming
5:23
Speaker 4: conscious of itself as valuable and important. And why did
5:28
Speaker 4: that come up is also key here for understanding Stoicism,
5:30
Speaker 4: I think. And that is that in the age that
5:33
Speaker 4: we're talking about, particularly the age of Plato and Aristotle
5:37
Speaker 4: and then Stoicism, You have a consistent regression, you might say,
5:42
Speaker 4: going on in Greek Talmudic culture, or at least the
5:45
Speaker 4: feeling that that's going on. The loss of a sense
5:48
Speaker 4: of the polis, of the community that's bound up with
5:51
Speaker 4: the organization of the cities and their particular traditions. And
5:55
Speaker 4: that loss felt like it was a loss that wasn't
5:58
Speaker 4: being replaced by anything else. Now, why is that important?
6:02
Speaker 4: And this plays into our understanding of Stoicism, is that
6:06
Speaker 4: the act of... Rationality becoming conscious of itself was also
6:11
Speaker 4: a resistance to political and social disorder. If there had
6:15
Speaker 4: not been that political and social disorder, it's a real
6:17
Speaker 4: question whether that act of philosophizing would have happened. It
6:22
Speaker 4: was the idea that a civilization, a culture, didn't have
6:25
Speaker 4: its own resources anymore to satisfy and also to survive
6:32
Speaker 4: whatever crises were going on. that seems to have produced
6:35
Speaker 4: an activity whereby one tries to take another perspective on
6:39
Speaker 4: what's happening, and as it were, tries to rise above
6:42
Speaker 4: the crisis of history to find another view on it.
6:46
Speaker 4: So again, it's one of those things that, you know,
6:49
Speaker 4: you wouldn't get that from a philosophy book necessarily. So
6:51
Speaker 4: I think it's kind of crucial to understand it, but
6:54
Speaker 4: you actually see it in the letters of Plato. You
6:57
Speaker 4: see it in even the symbols, particularly that Plato uses.
7:00
Speaker 4: So when he writes his masterpiece, The Republic, The symbols
7:03
Speaker 4: he uses is the difference between a healthy and diseased city,
7:08
Speaker 4: which he says the soul is written in large letters
7:11
Speaker 4: in the city. So the point here is that it's
7:14
Speaker 4: not just saying, oh, this city is not functioning well.
7:16
Speaker 4: The symbol of health and disease, something that, of course,
7:19
Speaker 4: the psychotherapists would take very seriously, that's actually said about
7:22
Speaker 4: the society and about the soul. What Plato already recognized
7:26
Speaker 4: was that the corruption of the city means that there's
7:28
Speaker 4: already a corruption of the soul, and the kind of
7:30
Speaker 4: person who's being produced by the city is is an
7:33
Speaker 4: indication of how corrupt both the system and the souls are.
7:36
Speaker 4: So this movement toward understanding from a rational point of view,
7:41
Speaker 4: you know, a point of view from above, what's going
7:44
Speaker 4: on here, it's pulling one out of one's criteria, what's
7:47
Speaker 4: going on in the collective, and saying, actually, we can
7:50
Speaker 4: begin to judge the collective from another and higher point
7:52
Speaker 4: of view. So You see why that might be important
7:55
Speaker 4: for understanding rationality and why this is so important for
7:58
Speaker 4: the inception of philosophy, which also, even though I've only
8:01
Speaker 4: talked about Plato, it certainly works itself into Stoicism.
8:04
Speaker 3: It also sounds like implicit in this is the differentiation
8:09
Speaker 3: of the individual from the society. That if you can
8:12
Speaker 3: pull back and think about thinking and differentiate also from
8:17
Speaker 3: the society that is you know, difficult and not satisfying,
8:22
Speaker 3: is it also the birthplace of individual kind of locus
8:28
Speaker 3: of control?
8:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, certainly that. And it also has its compensatory side
8:34
Speaker 4: as well, right? So Plato and Aristotle were more trying
8:37
Speaker 4: to fade the polis in some way. The Stoics, who
8:40
Speaker 4: come a little later, the polis is already kind of lost.
8:43
Speaker 4: With Alexander, you know, spread of the empire and the
8:47
Speaker 4: spread of Hellenism, all of which was deemed generally a
8:50
Speaker 4: good thing, but which nonetheless broke down the kinds of
8:53
Speaker 4: more interpersonal, familial relationships and so forth that were characteristic
8:57
Speaker 4: of the polis, one had to find a new way
9:00
Speaker 4: of relating to others. So on the one hand, you're right,
9:03
Speaker 4: stoicism begins kind of with the idea that of a
9:06
Speaker 4: sort of dependency on one's own reason, one's responsibility for
9:10
Speaker 4: one's inner life, to be rational and reasonable in what
9:15
Speaker 4: one does, So in a way, there's a kind of
9:17
Speaker 4: an articulation of individualism in the sense that one is
9:20
Speaker 4: no longer interpreted simply as a member of the polis.
9:24
Speaker 4: On the other hand, though, there's also a universalism. That's
9:27
Speaker 4: one of the interesting things about Stoicism. It moves away
9:29
Speaker 4: from a more aristocratic idea. The old visions of virtue,
9:34
Speaker 4: for example, which are so important in ancient philosophy and
9:38
Speaker 4: in ethics throughout the Western tradition. Virtue always has a
9:41
Speaker 4: somewhat aristocratic dimension to them that, you know, If you
9:45
Speaker 4: had education and culture, you could actually also become a
9:50
Speaker 4: virtuous person, but maybe not everybody could do that. Stoicism
9:53
Speaker 4: changes that. It's just everybody is responsible for that, and
9:57
Speaker 4: everybody can, in principle, become that. So it's both individualistic
10:01
Speaker 4: and universalistic at the same time.
10:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I think it has in common actually with
10:06
Speaker 2: psychoanalysis in general, but certainly with Jung, the sense that
10:10
Speaker 2: the idea of universality being so central, that what we're
10:14
Speaker 2: talking about is something that can at least theoretically be
10:18
Speaker 2: accessed by anyone.
10:20
Speaker 4: That's right. And when one talks about stoicism, it's often
10:23
Speaker 4: in terms of a kind of cosmopolitanism. So one is
10:26
Speaker 4: no longer simply experiencing oneself as part of one's own
10:31
Speaker 4: traditions out of which one comes, but that there's a
10:34
Speaker 4: universality sense maybe of a common human nature even that's
10:37
Speaker 4: maybe more important than most traditions. So that's right. And
10:41
Speaker 4: as you say, yeah. certainly within a psychoanalytic tradition, the
10:44
Speaker 4: idea is that we all need to be responsible for
10:47
Speaker 4: our inner life, and all of us can, in principle,
10:49
Speaker 4: be responsible for it.
10:51
Speaker 2: So reason, then, is this faculty of kind of thinking,
10:56
Speaker 2: becoming aware of itself, and it's, you know, for the
10:59
Speaker 2: purpose of perspective-taking and perhaps meaning-making.
11:03
Speaker 4: Well, that's right. And in fact, this is, I don't
11:06
Speaker 4: know how much we want to go into this, but
11:07
Speaker 4: this is worth sort of understanding, is that When I
11:10
Speaker 4: said that reason becomes sort of conscious of itself, the
11:13
Speaker 4: reason why I can say that is because Plato wrote
11:15
Speaker 4: on that and Aristotle wrote on that. They actually talk
11:19
Speaker 4: about these experiences and they imply, at least, that these
11:22
Speaker 4: are experiences they understand to be new in some level,
11:26
Speaker 4: that there is this other point of view. And this
11:28
Speaker 4: is really interesting. This is where the Stoics, you might
11:31
Speaker 4: say they may have lost something, even though they also
11:34
Speaker 4: gained certain things in this. When Plato talks about reason,
11:38
Speaker 4: this is one of these ways where contemporary understanding of
11:40
Speaker 4: reason is really quite different. Plato understands it. He uses
11:45
Speaker 4: the Greek word nous, that's N-O-U-S, so it's not a
11:49
Speaker 4: rope around your neck. Plato introduces this or articulates the
11:54
Speaker 4: notion of nous. It's not simply reason like the capacity
11:59
Speaker 4: to use logic and apply it, which is really what
12:02
Speaker 4: we mostly mean by reason nowadays. It actually has more
12:06
Speaker 4: of a mystical component to it. In The act of nous,
12:09
Speaker 4: one rises above, one might say, one's normal pragmatic relationship
12:15
Speaker 4: to the world and begins to understand things according to
12:18
Speaker 4: their nature. So you try to understand, you understand what
12:21
Speaker 4: they are, not only what their function for your life is,
12:24
Speaker 4: but what they are themselves. Plato thinks there's a kind of,
12:29
Speaker 4: I sort of want to call it a sense for
12:33
Speaker 4: the cosmos that happens, that one is illuminated. He uses
12:37
Speaker 4: light symbols all the time. not only reason being conscious
12:40
Speaker 4: of itself, it's also sort of reason being luminous to itself.
12:44
Speaker 4: It understands itself as having a place in the cosmos
12:49
Speaker 4: and understanding something about the structures of the cosmos. And
12:53
Speaker 4: he does call it luminosity. And in fact, throughout the
12:57
Speaker 4: philosophical tradition, it was often called illumination. In philosophical texts,
13:02
Speaker 4: they often just call it the illumination theory of knowledge.
13:04
Speaker 4: I don't really like that because it's not really so
13:05
Speaker 4: much a theory. It's an articulation of an experience. But
13:09
Speaker 4: the experience, then, of reason, this is what I mean
13:12
Speaker 4: by I say it kind of takes you above the
13:15
Speaker 4: historical contingencies of your time to try to understand the
13:18
Speaker 4: nature of things and then try to understand how those
13:20
Speaker 4: are brought to bear on reality. So the nous is
13:23
Speaker 4: an experience. Logos, which is the other word for reason,
13:27
Speaker 4: is more like logic, articulation, how to apply it. And
13:31
Speaker 4: that's where the Stoics have a real emphasis. But they
13:34
Speaker 4: sort of gave up the experience of nous. They... didn't
13:38
Speaker 4: so much understand the idea that the human psyche participates
13:42
Speaker 4: in kind of a divine order on the basis of
13:45
Speaker 4: which then one uses logic. On that, they were much
13:49
Speaker 4: more skeptical. Skeptical is maybe too strong a word, but
13:52
Speaker 4: I think that they didn't do what Plato calls in
13:55
Speaker 4: his Phaedo the second voyage. What Plato means by that
13:58
Speaker 4: is that he not only articulates an understanding of the world,
14:01
Speaker 4: but tries to understand that there are super sensible causes
14:05
Speaker 4: for why the world is the way that it is.
14:08
Speaker 4: Stoicism kind of gave up some of that mystical element
14:14
Speaker 4: and instead just focused on something kind of like what
14:17
Speaker 4: Plato was talking about, but they didn't really think that
14:19
Speaker 4: there was this mystical element. It really had to do
14:21
Speaker 4: with understanding how the cosmos has a kind of rationality
14:25
Speaker 4: and you do participate in it, but it's not so
14:27
Speaker 4: much in a mystical participation.
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15:14
Speaker 3: So, in a way, it feels like this kind of
15:18
Speaker 3: concept of reason and objectivity, you know, and all the virtues.
15:25
Speaker 3: I was reading the new translation of Meditations, originally written
15:30
Speaker 3: by Marcus Aurelius. And it feels very sort of moralistic.
15:38
Speaker 3: You know, all these lessons of, you know, don't feel envy, greed, jealousy,
15:46
Speaker 3: get up in the morning.
15:48
Speaker 2: Make your bed.
15:49
Speaker 3: Make your bed, eat right. But something missing of like, yeah,
15:54
Speaker 3: if we could do all those things, we would. But
15:59
Speaker 3: really sort of a veneration of ego. today we would
16:03
Speaker 3: call ego, of your thinking function, and just do the
16:08
Speaker 3: right thing all day, every day. That's it. If only
16:11
Speaker 3: we could.
16:11
Speaker 4: I just wanted to point out that much of what
16:15
Speaker 4: we think of nowadays as psychotherapy was really done in
16:18
Speaker 4: philosophical communities and media worlds. Because the idea was that
16:22
Speaker 4: wisdom-seeking is always simultaneously about the cosmos, but it's also
16:25
Speaker 4: about the soul, right? So There's always this kind of
16:29
Speaker 4: working idea that we're a microcosm as human beings. So
16:33
Speaker 4: the more we understand ourselves, the more we understand the cosmos,
16:35
Speaker 4: the more we understand the cosmos, the more we understand ourselves.
16:38
Speaker 4: So even if there was a philosophy of nature that's
16:41
Speaker 4: also shedding light on our inner life and our inner
16:44
Speaker 4: life on the cosmos at the same time. So much
16:47
Speaker 4: bringing order to the psyche, you could say then, is
16:51
Speaker 4: done in a moralistic way because trying to formulate it
16:55
Speaker 4: as something that one should do, But a lot of
16:58
Speaker 4: it is a kind of psychological wisdom at the same time.
17:01
Speaker 4: It's very practical wisdom, but it's nonetheless the kind of
17:03
Speaker 4: psychological wisdom. So in a way, what we do was
17:07
Speaker 4: internal to the philosophical communities in the ancient world.
17:11
Speaker 2: So if it's okay, let's just, because I want to
17:14
Speaker 2: kind of bring us up to the present day. So
17:16
Speaker 2: you started with Plato. Can you just give us a
17:19
Speaker 2: whistle-stop tour? These ideas started in Greece. How did they migrate?
17:24
Speaker 2: Because they've kind of, I mean, Stoicism has, either existed
17:29
Speaker 2: or has been very influential in many different wisdom traditions
17:34
Speaker 2: up to today.
17:36
Speaker 4: All right. So just sort of quickly then, Stoicism really
17:41
Speaker 4: begins right after Alexander forms the empire. So it's not
17:46
Speaker 4: so much Athenian as much as Hellenic, right? So it's
17:49
Speaker 4: about kind of it's already you have empire that's at work.
17:53
Speaker 4: And so with the empire, there's, of course, the spread
17:55
Speaker 4: of ideas around you know, that's going on much more
17:59
Speaker 4: even than there had been previously, even though that's going on.
18:02
Speaker 4: So it's really in the Hellenic period that Stoicism becomes
18:06
Speaker 4: very widespread. It does this function that we've already talked about.
18:10
Speaker 4: It kind of gives people common guidance for life. Oftentimes,
18:14
Speaker 4: figures who are part of it were very good at
18:16
Speaker 4: doing kind of aphorisms. Marcus Aurelius, of course, is outstanding
18:20
Speaker 4: at giving very brief, pithy statements of things. But that's
18:23
Speaker 4: in a way kind of endemic to Stoicism. And that
18:27
Speaker 4: early Stoicism always had this focus on ethics. That was
18:29
Speaker 4: very much right from the start central to Stoicism. As
18:34
Speaker 4: the Hellenic period kind of moves to what we call
18:36
Speaker 4: the Roman Imperial period, you also have kind of the
18:39
Speaker 4: rebirth of the schools. Once the Roman Empire brings a
18:42
Speaker 4: certain amount of peace, then of course you have the
18:47
Speaker 4: possibility for some of these schools to flourish once again.
18:51
Speaker 4: You have the possibility of kind of a new setting
18:55
Speaker 4: in Rome. and throughout the Roman Empire. And various of
18:59
Speaker 4: these traditions take root. Stoicism is very strong. By the
19:03
Speaker 4: time that the kind of Roman Republic is flourishing, philosophy
19:08
Speaker 4: is an inherent part of education. So people have some
19:12
Speaker 4: kind of knowledge of what's going on philosophically. Stoicism was
19:16
Speaker 4: not so much an independent school in some ways as
19:19
Speaker 4: being part of an eclectic mix. That was often the case. Cicero,
19:24
Speaker 4: for example, the great orator, had a strong Stoic influence,
19:28
Speaker 4: but he'd also read Plato and other figures as well,
19:32
Speaker 4: and gives a very specifically Roman element to that. And
19:36
Speaker 4: of course, the Romans of the time, of course, were,
19:39
Speaker 4: as a rule, very practical people anyway. Their speculative philosophy
19:44
Speaker 4: was not a strong suit. uh you might say uh
19:48
Speaker 4: speculative religion was not a strong suit uh you know
19:51
Speaker 4: we're taught in elementary school that the roman gods are
19:54
Speaker 4: just the greek gods another uh name and that's uh
19:58
Speaker 4: some extent that's true in some ways it's not like
20:00
Speaker 4: for example aries in greek was the madness of war
20:04
Speaker 4: but mars and rome a very disciplined soldier, of course,
20:08
Speaker 4: because he's representing the virtues of the Romans. So the
20:12
Speaker 4: Romans were very much practical people, which is not to
20:14
Speaker 4: say they didn't have strong religious and also had their
20:19
Speaker 4: own kind of version of a kind of mysticism, but
20:22
Speaker 4: it's not a speculative philosophical mysticism. So Stoicism found a
20:27
Speaker 4: natural home there, I would say. So it's not surprising
20:30
Speaker 4: even that one of their emperors was very clearly Stoic. Now,
20:35
Speaker 4: due to the so-called Dark Ages, of course, there isn't
20:38
Speaker 4: much access to those traditions in Western Europe. And they
20:43
Speaker 4: only really begin to reemerge, actually, through Islam.
20:46
Speaker 2: Interesting. I didn't realize that.
20:49
Speaker 4: The preservation of many of the Greek and even, to
20:52
Speaker 4: some extent, the Roman texts go through Byzantium and then
20:54
Speaker 4: that goes to Islam. And then as Islam crosses Northern
20:57
Speaker 4: Africa and goes into the Iberian Peninsula, where Spain and
21:00
Speaker 4: Portugal are now, then you have this mix of kind
21:03
Speaker 4: of Jewish mysticism, Islamic thought, some of it was Neoplatonic,
21:08
Speaker 4: some of it was Aristotelian, and there was some awareness
21:12
Speaker 4: of Stoicism as well. There's also very much Jewish thought,
21:16
Speaker 4: Kabbalah becomes kind of articulated there too. And so it's
21:20
Speaker 4: interesting that it's actually what's now Spain and Portugal, a
21:23
Speaker 4: region that was extremely fruitful in various traditions and accepted
21:28
Speaker 4: that really up until 1492, Ferdinand and Edna Bella. insisted
21:33
Speaker 4: on being a Catholic country and all of that sort
21:35
Speaker 4: of thing. Prior to that, there'd been a lot of interaction.
21:38
Speaker 4: So many ideas of that kind kind of come into
21:42
Speaker 4: Italy and into the educated part throughout Europe. But Stoicism,
21:46
Speaker 4: so far as I know, comes back with more interest
21:49
Speaker 4: in the Renaissance. So the Renaissance, when there's a strong
21:51
Speaker 4: recovery of ancient texts, as the Eastern empires falling under
21:57
Speaker 4: the force of Islam coming west, Many of the texts
22:02
Speaker 4: that were preserved in that part of Europe then also
22:05
Speaker 4: come to Western Europe. And I think it's really at
22:08
Speaker 4: this time that just a general interest, both in the
22:11
Speaker 4: Roman and Greek history and kind of recovering literary texts
22:16
Speaker 4: and so forth, that Stoicism comes back. Now, elements of
22:19
Speaker 4: Stoicism are still there even in the Middle Ages. If
22:22
Speaker 4: we get to a point where we're talking about the
22:24
Speaker 4: theory of the natural law, for example, it's very important
22:27
Speaker 4: for medieval scholasticism. That's largely borrowed from Stoicism. But I
22:32
Speaker 4: think as far as becoming kind of flourishing as an
22:36
Speaker 4: ethical system, it's really post-Renaissance. And this is where, it's
22:41
Speaker 4: one of the places where it actually influences United States,
22:44
Speaker 4: not necessarily in an entirely good way, is that the
22:48
Speaker 4: recovery of Stoicism, one place where Stoicism became pretty popular
22:52
Speaker 4: was actually in Puritanism. Interesting.
22:55
Speaker 2: I hadn't thought about that.
22:57
Speaker 4: Well, our Puritan founding is, I think, very much a
22:59
Speaker 4: shadow that still is very much, very influential at a
23:04
Speaker 4: deep stratum. And I think, you know, looking at the Jungian,
23:08
Speaker 4: of course, also in a non-geodromic way, right? It's because
23:11
Speaker 4: you have puritanical repression or else you have kind of,
23:15
Speaker 4: you know, wild promiscuity and, you know, kind of a
23:20
Speaker 4: pleasure-based thing, right? They're two sides of the same coin.
23:23
Speaker 4: So I want you to understand that That Puritanism kind
23:25
Speaker 4: of represents one side of a complex. You can also
23:28
Speaker 4: understand that the other side, which might be more rampant
23:30
Speaker 4: in some ways, but that these opposites seem to need
23:32
Speaker 4: each other. So Puritanism found Stoicism a great help because
23:37
Speaker 4: one of the characteristics of Puritanism is, I don't know
23:40
Speaker 4: how to put it, but it hates wildness.
23:44
Speaker 3: All those fun-loving pilgrims?
23:47
Speaker 4: Well, that first Thanksgiving, they did party for three days.
23:49
Speaker 4: But after that, I don't know what happened. You know,
23:51
Speaker 4: you can say hate wildness. You can say love of order.
23:54
Speaker 4: It depends on how you want to view it. Certainly,
23:56
Speaker 4: it's viewed as a love of order. And that is
23:59
Speaker 4: one of the things that impels the Puritans so quickly,
24:01
Speaker 4: for example, to, you know, spread throughout New England and,
24:04
Speaker 4: you know, found the Boston Latin School and found Harvard. And,
24:07
Speaker 4: you know, there's just this incredible... They're only there six years, right?
24:10
Speaker 4: And they founded Harvard already, right? So there's this incredible...
24:14
Speaker 4: incredible energy in that and a lot of that comes
24:17
Speaker 4: from a vision of rational control so that's maybe the
24:19
Speaker 4: you know the positive part of that but the shadow
24:21
Speaker 4: part of it of course is you know kind of
24:24
Speaker 4: tends to be antibody tends to be very suspicious of
24:27
Speaker 4: emotions of instincts and of course is equally devastating to
24:31
Speaker 4: the environment because if you if you think that your
24:35
Speaker 4: own relationship to animal nature has to be suppressed chances
24:38
Speaker 4: are you're not too keen on nature generally.
24:41
Speaker 2: So one of the main precepts of stoicism then is
24:44
Speaker 2: really sort of like we can control ourselves and should.
24:50
Speaker 2: We should control our emotions. We should rein in our impulses.
24:54
Speaker 2: We should check our instincts. Am I getting it?
24:58
Speaker 4: Yes, I think that's right. And there are variations of degree,
25:01
Speaker 4: but I think that's very much a part of it.
25:03
Speaker 4: And it's always the idea that somehow Instinctual life, to
25:07
Speaker 4: a lesser extent, but also emotional life will throw off
25:10
Speaker 4: this rational self-control.
25:11
Speaker 3: It's a real polarity, kind of a split, a real
25:16
Speaker 3: valuing of ego and decision-making, as if the rest of
25:21
Speaker 3: us isn't there anyway.
25:24
Speaker 2: Yeah.
25:26
Speaker 4: Or is so problematic that you can't do much with it.
25:29
Speaker 4: You know, that's not just an old Stoic influence. It's
25:31
Speaker 4: still present today, isn't it? I mean, there's still an idea,
25:34
Speaker 4: for example, and I've always noticed this in American culture,
25:37
Speaker 4: that because feelings and strong affects can lead us astray,
25:43
Speaker 4: there's the strange inference that affectivity itself must be a problem.
25:47
Speaker 4: I mean, volitions also lead us astray, but nobody thinks
25:49
Speaker 4: the will is a problem. Reasoning also leads us astray sometimes,
25:52
Speaker 4: but nobody thinks reason itself is the problem. or for
25:55
Speaker 4: some reason emotional life, affective life, because it can somehow
25:58
Speaker 4: lead you astray and somehow it's as if affective life
26:00
Speaker 4: itself is the problem. So if you're objective, you leave
26:04
Speaker 4: emotional life out of it.
26:06
Speaker 3: I'm going back to what you said about the origins
26:10
Speaker 3: in a time of disorder, that Stoicism comes along to
26:16
Speaker 3: say there is order, we can make order, we will
26:20
Speaker 3: be in order as a kind of way of staving
26:25
Speaker 3: off almost an apotropaic compensatory reaction to disorder of we
26:32
Speaker 3: will will order into being.
26:37
Speaker 4: Right it moves in that direction and with that it
26:40
Speaker 4: has you know the kind of again looking at it
26:44
Speaker 4: as a Jungian it has this peculiar problem that feeling
26:48
Speaker 4: function is actually where you get values uh oh so
26:53
Speaker 4: if If you think getting a moral compass is important,
26:59
Speaker 4: in a way, having a cultivated... Notice I'm not saying
27:02
Speaker 4: the feeling function is just fine the way it is.
27:05
Speaker 4: I would agree with the Stoics. It needs to be
27:08
Speaker 4: cultivated in a certain way, and just letting it run
27:10
Speaker 4: amok is not a good thing. But the Stoics seem
27:14
Speaker 4: to give the impression that it must run amok rather
27:16
Speaker 4: than it can be cultivated, which is something... You know,
27:19
Speaker 4: someone would be more Aristotelian and Platonic to say that, no,
27:21
Speaker 4: you can actually do something with this part of your being.
27:24
Speaker 4: It doesn't have to just be, just kind of run amok.
27:27
Speaker 4: And so Stoicism seems to suspect that. So it makes
27:30
Speaker 4: sense that, I think, on a Stoic model, that you'd
27:33
Speaker 4: be worried about feeling life perceptive because it does have
27:35
Speaker 4: to do with values. There's value of confusion when there's chaos.
27:38
Speaker 4: But instead of saying, maybe they're telling me something about
27:40
Speaker 4: value confusion, instead, well, just suppress that and be reasonable,
27:45
Speaker 4: be rational.
27:46
Speaker 2: You know, one of the things that you said a
27:48
Speaker 2: minute ago that I think is important that I like
27:52
Speaker 2: about stoicism and that I wonder if this is why
27:55
Speaker 2: people are so drawn to it is you use the
27:58
Speaker 2: word cultivation. And I feel like this is something that
28:03
Speaker 2: in our current moment, and maybe it's been true for
28:07
Speaker 2: a while, I don't know, but there is no sense
28:10
Speaker 2: that it's on us to cultivate ourselves. to cultivate the intellect,
28:16
Speaker 2: to cultivate our virtue, to cultivate sort of being better.
28:22
Speaker 2: There is a, I mean, it does strike me that
28:25
Speaker 2: that is kind of a stoic value that one works
28:29
Speaker 2: on oneself. One tries to be a better person. And,
28:34
Speaker 2: you know, I know individuals like that who, okay, how
28:39
Speaker 2: can I How can I be a better friend? How
28:42
Speaker 2: can I be a better partner? How can I be
28:44
Speaker 2: a better husband? How can I improve my mind? But
28:48
Speaker 2: in general, I don't think there's a lot of that
28:50
Speaker 2: in the culture. It's more like, this is me. This
28:53
Speaker 2: is who I am. What I'm lobbying the rest of
28:57
Speaker 2: the culture for is acceptance for who I am. I
29:01
Speaker 2: don't need to change. So I find that kind of
29:06
Speaker 2: principle or that that value, that tendency in Stoicism to
29:12
Speaker 2: be something that maybe is very potentially valuable that we
29:17
Speaker 2: might want to take on. So I don't know if
29:19
Speaker 2: you have thoughts about that.
29:20
Speaker 4: I am just what I am. It's sort of a
29:22
Speaker 4: Popeye psychology. I am what I am. I know that
29:25
Speaker 4: goes back before most people's time, I know. But anyway,
29:28
Speaker 4: you know, the ancient Stoics, the ancient philosophers generally had
29:31
Speaker 4: the idea that personality is not the fame as who
29:35
Speaker 4: I am. It's more how I am. than what I am.
29:40
Speaker 4: It's the way I express myself. It's not identical with me.
29:45
Speaker 4: And that consequently, it can be cultivated and should be
29:48
Speaker 4: cultivated because the personality is rather sets of potentials, some
29:53
Speaker 4: of which are strong, some of which are not. And
29:55
Speaker 4: Jung's theory of topology hinges, of course, on that idea
29:59
Speaker 4: in some measure. but the old virtue theory entirely hinges
30:03
Speaker 4: on that as well, that it's not the personality I have,
30:06
Speaker 4: it's what I do with the personality that I have
30:08
Speaker 4: that's actually the important thing and what makes me a
30:11
Speaker 4: substantive person is that I do something with it, not
30:14
Speaker 4: just simply that I am this.
30:16
Speaker 2: You just mentioned you called it the virtue.
30:20
Speaker 2: What did you call it? The virtue principle?
30:22
Speaker 4: The old idea of virtue theory.
30:23
Speaker 2: Virtue theory. Is that part of Stoicism?
30:27
Speaker 4: The old virtue theory that they... could have inherited from
30:30
Speaker 4: Plato and Aristotle didn't focus simply on intellectual virtues, let's say,
30:35
Speaker 4: which is where Stoicism tends to focus. It focuses on
30:38
Speaker 4: the cultivation of intellect, and in its ethical principles, it
30:42
Speaker 4: tends to think that other things are unimportant compared to rationality.
30:48
Speaker 4: I think there's a bit of a more holistic picture
30:50
Speaker 4: that's more characteristic of Plato and Aristotle, where there's also
30:53
Speaker 4: cultivation of intellectual virtues is, of course, crucial, but so
30:57
Speaker 4: is the so-called moral virtues, which really meant cultivation of
31:00
Speaker 4: instinctual and affective life. Because ultimately, the idea is for
31:04
Speaker 4: all of these to serve a kind of a purpose,
31:08
Speaker 4: a life purpose, right? And actually, the people probably who
31:14
Speaker 4: developed this the most were the medieval theologians that a
31:16
Speaker 4: lot of philosophers don't look at very much. But Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Dunsco,
31:21
Speaker 4: some of these great figures, they're very aware of the
31:24
Speaker 4: Stoic idea of law, of the Aristotelian conception of the
31:28
Speaker 4: cultivation of virtue and use virtue language and virtue conceptions
31:34
Speaker 4: even to articulate their christian faith right so faith hope
31:37
Speaker 4: and charity are understood as theological virtues because they're in
31:40
Speaker 4: need of the things you have to cultivate in yourself
31:43
Speaker 4: not just that you have them is that you're consistently
31:46
Speaker 4: trying to expand their influence right and developing ways they're
31:50
Speaker 4: almost like ranges of positive adaptation you might say is
31:54
Speaker 4: what virtue is so if That's interesting. Wait, wait, wait.
31:58
Speaker 2: Say that again. Say that again. Yes.
32:00
Speaker 4: It's developing a range of positive adaptation.
32:03
Speaker 2: Developing a range of positive adaptation. Wow.
32:07
Speaker 4: And positive is not only positive for the environment, but
32:09
Speaker 4: it's positive for you because you become excellent through it.
32:12
Speaker 4: So the old Greek word for virtue was arete, which
32:16
Speaker 4: really means excellence. You're basically saying, I have a human nature.
32:20
Speaker 4: That's what it is in general. But I also have
32:22
Speaker 4: the particularities of what we nowadays call personality. All of
32:25
Speaker 4: it needs to become excellent. That's what the goal is.
32:28
Speaker 2: Well, I'm just thinking about, I'm thinking about, first of all,
32:30
Speaker 2: I like how you tied it to adaptation because of course,
32:32
Speaker 2: in some sense, that is one way to think about
32:36
Speaker 2: the goal of psychotherapy or even psychoanalysis. Some people might
32:40
Speaker 2: disagree with me on that, but I, we could have
32:43
Speaker 2: that conversation. And so I'm thinking about this again, going
32:46
Speaker 2: back to this idea of cultivation and then how that
32:50
Speaker 2: fits into, for example, a psychoanalytic process.
32:54
Speaker 1: Yeah.
32:54
Speaker 2: You know, like, do we just come in, does the
32:56
Speaker 2: person come in and just get soothed? Oh, I'm so
33:00
Speaker 2: sorry your boss did that to you. Or, or is
33:04
Speaker 2: it that plus a sense of where are the places
33:10
Speaker 2: where the new possibilities?
33:12
Speaker 4: Yes. Lovely. Lovely. That's exactly what I would say about that.
33:15
Speaker 4: And that's, that's something that, you know, I, uh, though
33:18
Speaker 4: I certainly conceive of myself as a classical Jungian therapeutically,
33:22
Speaker 4: obviously philosophical sources are always influencing the way in which
33:25
Speaker 4: I'm using that. So what you're talking about, I think,
33:28
Speaker 4: is crucial. I've always felt that the kind of more
33:31
Speaker 4: traditional classical understanding of psychoanalysis, that it's really about insight,
33:35
Speaker 4: is true but partial. And that it is about saying,
33:40
Speaker 4: how do we take that insight and make it into
33:43
Speaker 4: something where a person experiences themselves as expansive? to this
33:47
Speaker 4: virtue at the expanse of this making excellent one's nature,
33:51
Speaker 4: looking at crises as opportunities more than simply crises, that
33:55
Speaker 4: we can empathize with the crisis. But is there some
33:58
Speaker 4: seed in here whereby you are cultivating a part of
34:04
Speaker 4: yourself that this challenge is, so to speak, the work
34:07
Speaker 4: of the self trying to have you have that challenge
34:09
Speaker 4: so that you will cultivate aspects of yourself that you
34:12
Speaker 4: might not do otherwise? It's always been a part of
34:15
Speaker 4: it for me, and I have felt at times that
34:18
Speaker 4: in analytic process, sometimes it's not that I in any
34:21
Speaker 4: way underrate the importance of insight. I just don't think
34:24
Speaker 4: that it's sufficient, especially if what you're trying to do
34:27
Speaker 4: is to help people become adaptive in a deeply maladaptive world.
34:30
Speaker 3: That's kind of where I was heading, too, is how
34:34
Speaker 3: do all these concepts relate to Jung's idea of becoming whole?
34:41
Speaker 3: and individuated, to use the Jungian term, to take all
34:46
Speaker 3: these ideas that sound very sort of highfalutin around excellence,
34:53
Speaker 3: and I self-reflect, and then I can cultivate more virtue
34:57
Speaker 3: in myself, versus folding in deeper levels our affect and
35:04
Speaker 3: really becoming much more whole and expanded versus where I
35:12
Speaker 3: think there might be a dogleg turn somewhere in the culture,
35:16
Speaker 3: especially maybe in American culture, because that's the one I'm
35:21
Speaker 3: more or less familiar with, of the dogleg turn is,
35:25
Speaker 3: I'm an individual, and my individual nature, and my individual wants,
35:31
Speaker 3: and my individual proclivities, I'm entitled to that. And that
35:36
Speaker 3: bypasses the depths that our psychoanalytic profession can help people access.
35:44
Speaker 3: So how do we put all that together?
35:48
Speaker 4: Come on, John.
35:49
Speaker 3: Simple question.
35:51
Speaker 4: And when are you going to get to the tough ones?
35:53
Speaker 4: But in any case, I think I have found that
35:57
Speaker 4: this language, which may sound highfalutin, but it actually takes
36:00
Speaker 4: root very well.
36:02
Speaker 2: Which language?
36:03
Speaker 4: I use the word like a cultivation. I'll use the
36:05
Speaker 4: word virtue at times. And even though it's not, you know,
36:09
Speaker 4: you might think that it sounds like overly academic or something.
36:11
Speaker 4: I don't know, maybe it is. But all it takes
36:14
Speaker 4: is a little bit of illustration of what one is
36:16
Speaker 4: talking about there. That to become excellent as a human being, yeah,
36:21
Speaker 4: that may be a little bit abstract. But if you say, well,
36:23
Speaker 4: what we're talking about is how do you function in
36:26
Speaker 4: a civilization that partially works in your favor and partially doesn't?
36:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. And you have control over some things. And you
36:33
Speaker 2: don't have control over others, right?
36:35
Speaker 4: So that learning enough self-mastery in the sense of understanding
36:38
Speaker 4: how it is that your psyche works, what would work
36:41
Speaker 4: in its favor, what not, how do I adapt in
36:44
Speaker 4: a maladaptive society without losing the sense of my own expansiveness,
36:49
Speaker 4: my own individuation, my own contact with myself? Those are
36:52
Speaker 4: all things where you don't have to use the language
36:54
Speaker 4: of virtue theory, but I think the ideas that are
36:56
Speaker 4: there are crucial. And as you said, Cultivation is a
36:59
Speaker 4: good word. I mean, it's a word that's not used
37:01
Speaker 4: that much in contemporary American English, so it's actually helpful
37:04
Speaker 4: because everybody kind of knows what it means, but they're
37:07
Speaker 4: not assuming, you know, however it's used in popular media
37:11
Speaker 4: or something. It's just really not a common word. And yet,
37:13
Speaker 4: cultivation is the best, right? And of course, the word
37:15
Speaker 4: that cult comes from, right? Or that rather comes from
37:18
Speaker 4: the word cult, right? So the idea that, you know,
37:21
Speaker 4: you honor the divine by cultivating, you know, these aspects
37:25
Speaker 4: of yourself, the divine spark in you or the self.
37:28
Speaker 2: So, You were talking about self-mastery, which again, I think is,
37:33
Speaker 2: if I'm not mistaken, that's a very much a stoic idea, right?
37:38
Speaker 2: And so I'm always interested in how we can describe
37:43
Speaker 2: these very abstruse processes that we talk about in psychoanalysis.
37:49
Speaker 2: So let me take a swing at this, okay? Because
37:52
Speaker 2: I have this idea about what individuation looks like when
37:57
Speaker 2: it's operationalized. And I think it might relate to this
38:01
Speaker 2: idea about kind of mastery and cultivation. So this is
38:07
Speaker 2: my take on it. So we all kind of come
38:09
Speaker 2: to adulthood with a certain repertoire of behavioral responses. Like
38:15
Speaker 2: when we're angry, we do this. When we're tired, we
38:19
Speaker 2: do this. We just have a pretty narrow range of
38:22
Speaker 2: ways that we respond to situations. And as we grow,
38:27
Speaker 2: we can begin to develop other capacities. And that's the
38:31
Speaker 2: idea in part of individuation of kind of becoming whole.
38:36
Speaker 2: So for example, if you always deal with anger by
38:39
Speaker 2: shutting down because you're not very good at expressing it,
38:42
Speaker 2: part of becoming whole might be developing your ability to say,
38:46
Speaker 2: that's not okay with me, right? And then there's this
38:49
Speaker 2: idea that I think was expressed really well by, I
38:52
Speaker 2: can't remember which psychoanalyst talks about like, The purpose is
38:56
Speaker 2: to insert a pause between the stimulus and the response.
39:01
Speaker 2: So if you've developed a full range of capacities, now
39:05
Speaker 2: you have the capacity to be angry. You have the
39:07
Speaker 2: capacity to sit back and chill. You have the capacity
39:12
Speaker 2: to do all these different things, dozens and dozens of things.
39:15
Speaker 2: And then you have that self-mastery to wait a beat.
39:20
Speaker 2: And then there's ethics. Because you think what's the, I mean, well,
39:24
Speaker 2: it's two things. One is adaptation. Like what's most likely,
39:28
Speaker 2: let's say your boss does. something that really pisses you off.
39:32
Speaker 2: You know, part of it's the question of what is
39:35
Speaker 2: most likely to get a good response out of this?
39:38
Speaker 2: Should I come back at him and scream? Probably not
39:41
Speaker 2: the best way.
39:44
Speaker 4: Now you're telling me.
39:45
Speaker 2: Or should I do something else? But, And then there's
39:50
Speaker 2: the ethics. What's kind of the right thing to do?
39:52
Speaker 2: I could be very manipulative in this situation, or I
39:57
Speaker 2: could choose to take the high road or whatever. You've
40:00
Speaker 2: lifted up something so important because we always are talking
40:03
Speaker 2: about the unconscious. But Jung, too, felt that a strong
40:07
Speaker 2: ego was really important. The point is not to get
40:10
Speaker 2: rid of the ego. The point is to strengthen the ego.
40:13
Speaker 2: So that it can both navigate the outside world and
40:17
Speaker 2: relate to the inner world in this way that's effective.
40:20
Speaker 2: And it does produce more adaptive responses, actually. So, I
40:28
Speaker 2: don't know. How'd I do?
40:28
Speaker 4: Good job.
40:31
Speaker 2: Do I get an A? Because I definitely feel like.
40:33
Speaker 4: Well, I give A's only very rarely. I think that
40:38
Speaker 4: that's great. Though I did use the word self-mastery there.
40:41
Speaker 4: I actually prefer the word self-management.
40:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like that. That's really good.
40:45
Speaker 2: That's perfect.
40:46
Speaker 4: I think self-mastery often, or self-control, has more of a
40:50
Speaker 4: defensive dimension to it. But self-management is saying, look, I
40:55
Speaker 4: want my anger to be functional, and I also don't
40:57
Speaker 4: want it to get out of hand. But I'm not
40:58
Speaker 4: going to say, oh, because it'll get out of hand,
41:00
Speaker 4: I'm not going to have it.
41:02
Speaker 3: Right?
41:02
Speaker 4: So as usual, it's the middle path here that's so
41:07
Speaker 4: characteristic of Jung, the equilibrium here between the extremes. And
41:13
Speaker 4: that to me is a managing, and it's a managing
41:15
Speaker 4: of a range, because in some situations it's more appropriate
41:18
Speaker 4: to be angry than others and so forth, for example.
41:21
Speaker 4: But as you expand the capacity, it becomes more adaptive
41:27
Speaker 4: in the sense that it can function in the world
41:29
Speaker 4: and simultaneously serve your expansion. It's the two together that
41:33
Speaker 4: you want to have. And that's also the way that
41:35
Speaker 4: the tradition of virtue was understood. I'm both at the
41:39
Speaker 4: service of others, for example. I'm doing good for others,
41:41
Speaker 4: but I'm becoming good through doing good at the same time.
41:44
Speaker 2: Can I give a personal example of that? My favorite
41:48
Speaker 2: Stoic in my life, I think, although I don't think
41:50
Speaker 2: he would think of himself necessarily as a Stoic, is
41:53
Speaker 2: my father. And my mother... had dementia. And my father's
41:58
Speaker 2: always been that kind of guy who was really into self-management,
42:01
Speaker 2: you know, and he was a pretty straight arrow. And
42:03
Speaker 2: when my mother got sick, he devoted himself unfailingly to
42:10
Speaker 2: her care. And he took such good care of her
42:14
Speaker 2: and was so kind of measured about it. He wasn't,
42:17
Speaker 2: you know, a martyr about it. He would call me
42:19
Speaker 2: and say, what do you think I should do? And
42:21
Speaker 2: we'd talk about it and we'd talk through the different options.
42:24
Speaker 2: And he always tried to make the sensible, you know,
42:27
Speaker 2: is it time to get someone to come in and help?
42:29
Speaker 2: But it was, it was just, it was his mission
42:34
Speaker 2: to care for her. And I think John, as per
42:36
Speaker 2: your point, I mean, he was definitely in service to her,
42:39
Speaker 2: but I think, I think he felt really good about it.
42:43
Speaker 2: You know, when, when she did die, he was devastated,
42:47
Speaker 2: but he, I remember saying, talking to him about it
42:49
Speaker 2: and he, you know, sort of how's the grieving process going?
42:52
Speaker 2: You said, you know, I'm okay. Because I did what
42:56
Speaker 2: I needed to do. And then he waited a few
43:00
Speaker 2: years because he didn't make any big decisions right away.
43:03
Speaker 2: But then he made this decision to move out of
43:04
Speaker 2: the house and into a community. His decision. He got there. Oh,
43:10
Speaker 2: this makes me just choke up. He got there and
43:12
Speaker 2: he called me about a week to 10 days later.
43:15
Speaker 2: He goes, Lisa, I think I'm getting depressed. He said,
43:17
Speaker 2: everyone here just talks about their health problems.
43:20
Speaker 4: And I was like, oh.
43:22
Speaker 2: Dad, you don't have to stay there. Let's think about
43:26
Speaker 2: other options. And then about a week later, I called him.
43:30
Speaker 2: He goes, I just had the best dinner last night.
43:35
Speaker 2: I met these really great people. And within a month
43:37
Speaker 2: or two, I mean, he was producing a TV show.
43:42
Speaker 2: He joined the philosophy club. And I said, you're happy there.
43:48
Speaker 2: He goes, because I decided to be.
43:52
Speaker 4: Oh, lovely.
43:53
Speaker 2: And he is having a blast. I mean, I can't
43:55
Speaker 2: get him on the phone because he's always busy, but, um,
43:59
Speaker 2: and just doing all kinds of wonderful things. He's learned
44:01
Speaker 2: to play bridge and he's anyway, it's just great. But it,
44:05
Speaker 2: so he is doing the right thing. He isn't service
44:08
Speaker 2: to other people. He really wants to not be a
44:11
Speaker 2: burden to, to me and my sister. You know, he's
44:14
Speaker 2: very aware of that, but he's also having a great time.
44:19
Speaker 4: So yeah.
44:20
Speaker 3: That, I think is a really wonderful and very illustrative
44:27
Speaker 3: story about what are we talking about, about self-management and
44:34
Speaker 3: cultivation of our own inner resources in the service of
44:40
Speaker 3: someone else, in the service of our own expansion. How
44:45
Speaker 3: do we operationalize all that?
44:47
Speaker 4: It's a good question. And usually I think It's important
44:53
Speaker 4: to have what I would call a narrative about what
44:56
Speaker 4: your life means. The potential of our psyche is to
44:58
Speaker 4: become virtually anything. But the point is to focus it
45:02
Speaker 4: in such a way that you have a definite enough
45:05
Speaker 4: set of purposes in your life that are also expansive
45:09
Speaker 4: to you. You can't become everything, but all too many
45:13
Speaker 4: people become nothing.
45:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, wow. Now, is that a Stoic idea or is
45:18
Speaker 2: that a John White idea or is that a Jung
45:20
Speaker 2: idea or all three?
45:23
Speaker 4: Well, I think you find it in various places in
45:25
Speaker 4: the tradition. There's a lot of ways where Aristotle's discussion
45:29
Speaker 4: of ethics is very much like that. He thinks the
45:32
Speaker 4: virtue of excellence of human nature, but it's also about
45:35
Speaker 4: if you're a shipbuilder, you need the excellence of the shipbuilder, right?
45:37
Speaker 4: So he's getting a narrative story about what you feel
45:40
Speaker 4: like your purpose is, even if he doesn't go into
45:42
Speaker 4: a lot of detail about that. But I think a
45:45
Speaker 4: lot of literature is about this, and it's about finding
45:49
Speaker 4: a definite purpose where people move from not knowing what
45:53
Speaker 4: they're about to knowing what they're about. And once that
45:55
Speaker 4: is articulated, they can begin to harness the full range
45:59
Speaker 4: of their potential or at least the substantial part of
46:01
Speaker 4: their potential in some way. And I would also say,
46:04
Speaker 4: of course, Jungian psychoanalysis, I mean, certainly about that. You
46:07
Speaker 4: have to be able to tell a narrative about what
46:10
Speaker 4: your life means, and it's all right to be one
46:12
Speaker 4: that you're revising, but it's not all right not to
46:14
Speaker 4: have one And if you begin to articulate what that is,
46:17
Speaker 4: then you are kind of marshalling the various resources that
46:20
Speaker 4: you have towards some purpose. So they are being activated
46:24
Speaker 4: and you are learning adaptation and you're learning how to
46:27
Speaker 4: struggle with difficulties and so forth. My experience, clinically even,
46:31
Speaker 4: is that many people are anxious in part because their
46:35
Speaker 4: talents aren't being used. They can't tell a story. about
46:39
Speaker 4: what that happens. And they get that sort of, you
46:40
Speaker 4: know what I mean, by antsy anxiety, where you can
46:42
Speaker 4: almost see in their body this sort of antsiness. And
46:45
Speaker 4: a lot of it is because there's, I think, an
46:48
Speaker 4: impulsion on the part of certain talents or abilities that
46:51
Speaker 4: want to be activated in some way. But for some reason,
46:54
Speaker 4: they can't imagine a narrative in which those things are
46:56
Speaker 4: being activated.
46:57
Speaker 3: That takes me to thinking about, you know, these words
47:00
Speaker 3: like purpose and narrative and meaning of, you know, well,
47:04
Speaker 3: you know, how do we do that? And it takes
47:08
Speaker 3: me back to the idea of cultivation and your father, Lisa,
47:13
Speaker 3: of cultivation. You get up in the morning and you
47:18
Speaker 3: grab your hoe and you go out to the field
47:22
Speaker 3: and plant by plant by plant by plant, you loosen
47:27
Speaker 3: the soil around, let's say, the corn. Your father, Lisa,
47:34
Speaker 3: got up in the morning and, let's say, you know,
47:38
Speaker 3: made breakfast for your mother and made sure she was
47:41
Speaker 3: set for the day. When things changed, he talked to you,
47:45
Speaker 3: he talked to other people about what's the best way
47:48
Speaker 3: to handle this, of that there's something about the doing
47:52
Speaker 3: of what the day asks you simply to do. that
47:59
Speaker 3: can help us find that narrative so that it's not
48:05
Speaker 3: some sort of magical mystery tour.
48:08
Speaker 2: So maybe this would be the right place to read
48:10
Speaker 2: this very famous passage from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. So
48:16
Speaker 2: he was, these were, and John, please jump in. Meditations,
48:20
Speaker 2: it was basically a kind of a journal, basically, that
48:24
Speaker 2: he kept. when he was campaigning out there near current
48:28
Speaker 2: day Vienna, they were attacking Rome. Okay, so he's, you know,
48:32
Speaker 2: sleeping in a tent, you know, bivouacked somewhere. And he writes,
48:36
Speaker 2: at first day's light, having readiness against disinclination to leave
48:41
Speaker 2: your bed, the thought that I am rising for the
48:44
Speaker 2: work of man. Must I grumble at setting out to
48:48
Speaker 2: do what I was born for, and for the sake
48:51
Speaker 2: of which I have been brought into the world? Is
48:55
Speaker 2: this the purpose of my creation? To lie here under
48:59
Speaker 2: the blankets and keep myself warm? So he's really, you know,
49:04
Speaker 2: chiding himself, get out of bed and do what you
49:07
Speaker 2: came here to do, which I think is exactly what
49:10
Speaker 2: you were just talking about, Deb. You know, the sense
49:14
Speaker 2: of having a greater purpose somehow, even if it's just
49:17
Speaker 2: making breakfast for someone else.
49:20
Speaker 4: Yes.
49:21
Speaker 2: And just realizing that that's what needs to be done,
49:26
Speaker 2: which I think it's so interesting to talk about this
49:29
Speaker 2: in terms of a psychoanalysis or Jung, because in a
49:34
Speaker 2: certain sense, our work is all about really plumbing the unconscious,
49:39
Speaker 2: not so much on the surface of ego management, like
49:43
Speaker 2: get out of bed, but those two things are related,
49:46
Speaker 2: aren't they? And we certainly have people coming into our
49:49
Speaker 2: offices who need to plumb the unconscious, but frankly also
49:53
Speaker 2: need to get out of bed.
49:54
Speaker 4: Yes, oftentimes that's the bigger obstacle at that moment, I think.
50:02
Speaker 4: But see, I think this may seem out of line
50:05
Speaker 4: in some ways, To me, you have to have a narrative,
50:09
Speaker 4: but a narrative has to come from an imagination. I
50:12
Speaker 4: think imagination is highly shut down. And part of the
50:15
Speaker 4: reason why it's shut down is because screens and advertising
50:18
Speaker 4: and so forth are basically colonizing the imagination. And so
50:22
Speaker 4: instead of people actually imagining what would be a narrative
50:25
Speaker 4: that would work for me, realizing that it's not an
50:27
Speaker 4: easy thing and that you're not going to come out
50:29
Speaker 4: with the end-all be-all story in your first stab, but
50:34
Speaker 4: I think there's a real closing in of imagination and
50:37
Speaker 4: a kind of dissociated, general dissociated state of just receiving.
50:42
Speaker 4: Imagination has become passive because we receive things through our
50:46
Speaker 4: imagination all the time, primarily on screens. And the advertising industry,
50:52
Speaker 4: of course, works that way. I mean, that's demonstrable that
50:54
Speaker 4: they work with the subconscious mind speaking in terms of
50:57
Speaker 4: affect and image. So they can colonize what's going on.
51:01
Speaker 4: So we don't have a spontaneous imaginations. that helps us
51:04
Speaker 4: to understand what are possibilities that we could have and
51:07
Speaker 4: how could I tell a story of my life that
51:09
Speaker 4: shows me that this could be a purpose and these
51:11
Speaker 4: be the steps that I would take that and that
51:13
Speaker 4: I would maybe even love doing that. I think a
51:16
Speaker 4: lot of that is shut down. I don't know if
51:17
Speaker 4: your experience is similar, but I find that very frequently.
51:21
Speaker 3: The loss of the self-reflective capacity with which Stoicism seems
51:26
Speaker 3: to have begun, which is we start thinking about thinking,
51:31
Speaker 3: but if it all just comes in at us, through media,
51:36
Speaker 3: it bypasses that function.
51:38
Speaker 4: Yes, I think that's right. A lot of patients I
51:42
Speaker 4: noticed have a certain amount of fantasy life, but not
51:46
Speaker 4: creative imagination.
51:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really interesting. I feel like this could be
51:49
Speaker 2: a whole other episode to talk about the creative imagination.
51:52
Speaker 2: But yeah, sorry, go ahead.
51:53
Speaker 3: I would love, let's expand on that at least a
51:56
Speaker 3: little bit of what are we talking about with creative imagination?
52:01
Speaker 4: What I mean is the capacity to really, and in
52:04
Speaker 4: in a robust way, imagine possibilities as if they're actuality.
52:09
Speaker 4: If I can't do that, the likelihood of me changing
52:12
Speaker 4: anything in the stream of my life is very limited, right?
52:15
Speaker 2: Totally.
52:16
Speaker 4: And I do think that much of media plays off that. So,
52:19
Speaker 4: you know, you're getting lifestyle of the rich and famous,
52:21
Speaker 4: you're getting celebrities, you're getting that kind of thing. But
52:23
Speaker 4: you're not getting much that's food for creative imagination. How
52:28
Speaker 4: would I go from here to there? Why would I
52:30
Speaker 4: want to go there? How can I imagine being there?
52:31
Speaker 4: What would that actually look like for me? What would
52:33
Speaker 4: it feel like? Imagination is key to this, I believe.
52:36
Speaker 4: I really believe that imagination is the workshop of possibility.
52:41
Speaker 2: Oh, I love that. Imagination is the workshop of possibility. See,
52:45
Speaker 2: I totally agree with you. And I feel like, first
52:48
Speaker 2: of all, it's very difficult to do something if you
52:51
Speaker 2: haven't imagined doing it first. And if you have something
52:56
Speaker 2: difficult to do, try imagining it as vividly as you can,
53:00
Speaker 2: and it will be easier. And I, and John, I
53:05
Speaker 2: have people who come in and say, well, I don't
53:06
Speaker 2: know what I'm going to do. And they have that
53:07
Speaker 2: kind of energy. And I feel like, you know, their
53:09
Speaker 2: talents pressing to come forward. And I say, well, you know,
53:12
Speaker 2: sometimes I'll invite people say, well, imagine what kind of
53:15
Speaker 2: life would you like in five or 10 years? And
53:18
Speaker 2: some people can, oh, well I can, you know, and
53:20
Speaker 2: they can really picture, but a lot of people can't
53:23
Speaker 2: and they'll shut themselves down. And I'll say, no, no, no. First,
53:27
Speaker 2: let yourself have the fantasy of And I'll say, what
53:29
Speaker 2: is the fantasy? And they're all embarrassed. I'm like, no, no, no.
53:32
Speaker 2: Tell me. Tell me. You're dancing on a rooftop in Ibiza.
53:35
Speaker 2: Go ahead. Go there. You know, really let yourself have
53:39
Speaker 2: the fantasy. And then, yes, eventually there will be the
53:44
Speaker 2: compromise with reality. And what's the version of that you
53:49
Speaker 2: can have? But you've got to have the fantasy first.
53:52
Speaker 2: So I really agree very much with that.
53:55
Speaker 4: That's also very interesting. bound up with the feeling function,
53:59
Speaker 4: as we were talking about earlier, right? Because the fantasy
54:03
Speaker 4: or the imagination is bearing the values, right? So that's
54:05
Speaker 4: what the feeling function is trying to express also through that.
54:08
Speaker 4: I noticed that when I asked someone to imagine it,
54:10
Speaker 4: oftentimes they could still only do it like it's an intellectual,
54:12
Speaker 4: like they don't get their feeling involved. But without the
54:15
Speaker 4: feeling of it, you're not really fully imagining it. Like
54:18
Speaker 4: you say, it's not the vivid kind of imagining that
54:20
Speaker 4: you're looking at. But if you can do that, I
54:22
Speaker 4: not only think that it gives you a sense of possibility,
54:25
Speaker 4: but if you keep imagining yourself in that situation, often
54:28
Speaker 4: certain abilities that are latent begin to develop so that
54:32
Speaker 4: you can actually do it.
54:33
Speaker 3: You're cultivating them.
54:35
Speaker 4: Cultivating. It's exactly what you're doing. Yeah. As you read
54:39
Speaker 4: that a lot about people who have been very successful
54:42
Speaker 4: in life, they often have a very robust creative imagination
54:45
Speaker 4: and often imagine themselves in that situation. And by imagining it,
54:49
Speaker 4: it's as if psyche responds by saying, oh, that's what
54:51
Speaker 4: you want? Well, look, then let's start developing this. Let's
54:54
Speaker 4: start developing that.
54:55
Speaker 2: I feel like we're treading dangerously close to the, what
54:59
Speaker 2: is that called? Manifesting.
55:02
Speaker 4: Yes, the new thought tradition and things like that. That's right, yeah.
55:04
Speaker 3: But in a way, that is one of the possibilities,
55:08
Speaker 3: is that it's sort of a magical thinking thing, and
55:11
Speaker 3: I can waft off into some sort of fantasy there above,
55:17
Speaker 3: you know, the bluebirds sing, versus the depths of yourself
55:22
Speaker 3: and the rest of yourself, where I'm thinking about this
55:25
Speaker 3: is the parallel with active imagination, of connecting with your
55:31
Speaker 3: own inner ability to have feeling and to let the
55:38
Speaker 3: unconscious speak while you have a dialogue with it. So
55:43
Speaker 3: you sort of immerse yourself in something in your own
55:47
Speaker 3: interior that that is also real. So you're going in
55:53
Speaker 3: and deep, not out and away. And that is very
55:58
Speaker 3: much at the heart of Jungian analysis anyway, is what's
56:02
Speaker 3: our relationship with the unconscious, with psyche?
56:05
Speaker 4: And I think what you're saying also really increases agency,
56:07
Speaker 4: which is also associated with the Stoics. Yes. Because it's
56:11
Speaker 4: when you can have that kind of connectedness to your
56:14
Speaker 4: own potential and then imagine it also becoming realized in
56:18
Speaker 4: the outer world. But then, of course, your agency is
56:20
Speaker 4: also activated.
56:22
Speaker 2: So it's the both and, right?
56:23
Speaker 4: Yes.
56:24
Speaker 2: It's the feeling and the creative imagination coupled with the
56:27
Speaker 2: sense of agency and I want to say like responsibility.
56:31
Speaker 2: So here's a quote from Jung that I think of
56:36
Speaker 2: as kind of, you know, stoic-like. He says, life calls
56:41
Speaker 2: us forth to independence, and anyone who does not heed
56:45
Speaker 2: this call because of childhood laziness or timidity is threatened
56:50
Speaker 2: with neurosis, which is what you're talking about, John, when
56:52
Speaker 2: people come into the office and they have their antsy.
56:56
Speaker 2: And once this has broken out, it becomes an increasingly
56:59
Speaker 2: valid reason for running away from life and remaining forever
57:04
Speaker 2: in the morally poisonous atmosphere of infancy. So that's super
57:09
Speaker 2: interesting because once you feel neurotic, once you're like, oh,
57:11
Speaker 2: I'm anxious, then you're literally like, oh my God, I
57:14
Speaker 2: can't do anything because I'm anxious. And we see so
57:17
Speaker 2: many people like that who are really, who are suffering
57:21
Speaker 2: because they can't get out in life and do what
57:23
Speaker 2: they want to do because they're anxious. And really, it's
57:27
Speaker 2: almost like, well, if you could just make a move,
57:29
Speaker 2: you might be less anxious.
57:31
Speaker 4: Well, that's right. That's right. It's understanding those kinds of
57:33
Speaker 4: things as indications of You know, rather than just trying
57:36
Speaker 4: to avoid the anxiety, figure out what the anxiety is
57:39
Speaker 4: telling you.
57:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
57:39
Speaker 4: You know, that so often happens with those feelings that
57:42
Speaker 4: are uncomfortable, whether it's grief, whether it's anxiety, you know,
57:46
Speaker 4: whether it's feelings of shame, you know, how often someone
57:50
Speaker 4: just sort of punishes themselves because they're feeling shame. Well,
57:53
Speaker 4: that's not really the function of shame. Shame is trying
57:55
Speaker 4: to tell you something. And it's as if, yes, you're
57:58
Speaker 4: taking anxiety seriously insofar as it limits you, but not
58:01
Speaker 4: insofar as it's telling you something, which is really what
58:03
Speaker 4: the anxiety is for. It is part of its own
58:06
Speaker 4: adaptive thing. It's trying to say, you know, you got
58:08
Speaker 4: to do something with this talent. Otherwise, you're just going
58:10
Speaker 4: to remain anxious. Not, well, I can't work it because
58:12
Speaker 4: I'm anxious. The other way around, the anxiety telling you
58:15
Speaker 4: you need to.
58:16
Speaker 2: You know, we started off by saying, gosh, this is
58:18
Speaker 2: really so up in the culture. There are podcasts. There
58:22
Speaker 2: are all kinds of, there's an Instagram page. There's a,
58:26
Speaker 2: you know, there's the Daily Stoic. I forget what that is.
58:29
Speaker 2: And if you look, I will shamefacedly admit that I'm
58:32
Speaker 2: somewhat obsessed with the Amazon bestseller ranks. But I will
58:36
Speaker 2: tell you that Marcus Aurelius is like, I don't know
58:39
Speaker 2: what it is today, but it's usually like number 600
58:41
Speaker 2: out of all the millions of books on Amazon. And
58:45
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty much been a bestseller since it
58:47
Speaker 2: was published. But especially now, it's very, very apropos. And
58:51
Speaker 2: I think I said in the beginning, I think it's compensatory.
58:56
Speaker 2: is I think in this culture now, we get messages that, oh,
59:00
Speaker 2: you're anxious? Well, here's a pill and maybe don't take
59:04
Speaker 2: that class if it makes you anxious. Oh, you're anxious?
59:08
Speaker 4: Oh, then.
59:10
Speaker 2: here's a here's a what do they call those things
59:12
Speaker 2: where you know if you're in high school you get
59:14
Speaker 2: a special education plan if you're anxious don't go to
59:17
Speaker 2: class go to the nurse's office you can lie down
59:19
Speaker 2: you know we there's been a kind of cultivation of
59:23
Speaker 2: fragility actually and in some of the ways that our
59:27
Speaker 2: culture has responded, you know, this whole idea about trigger warnings,
59:31
Speaker 2: which have now been shown to be actually unhelpful.
59:35
Speaker 4: It's like, well.
59:36
Speaker 2: No, maybe you need to, you know, pull yourself up
59:38
Speaker 2: a little bit and do something difficult, which I think,
59:41
Speaker 2: you know, as per that Marcus Aurelius quote, it's like,
59:44
Speaker 2: that is what stoicism urges us to do. And it's
59:47
Speaker 2: what Jung urges us to do as well. It's like,
59:50
Speaker 2: figure out what you need to do and then bloody
59:54
Speaker 2: well figure out how to do it.
59:56
Speaker 3: And the good news is, really, it is so empowering.
1:00:01
Speaker 3: You have the power. You have the power. It's right
1:00:05
Speaker 3: there in you, a little bit like Dorothy in the
1:00:08
Speaker 3: Red Shoes. Go for it. Come on.
1:00:11
Speaker 4: You can.
1:00:12
Speaker 3: Have a life.
1:00:14
Speaker 4: Instead of looking at the obstacles to your agency, look
1:00:16
Speaker 4: at how your agency can overcome the obstacles. How much
1:00:19
Speaker 4: better do you feel about yourself than we can?
1:00:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:00:21
Speaker 3: And when we do better, we feel better.
1:00:23
Speaker 2: So what have we not? hit here, John, in terms
1:00:28
Speaker 2: of Stoicism or its link with Jung. Did we miss anything?
1:00:35
Speaker 4: There's a way where classical psychoanalysis and Stoicism are kind
1:00:40
Speaker 4: of opposites, like insofar as original psychoanalysis was in large measure,
1:00:46
Speaker 4: a reaction against industrial society where instincts and affects were
1:00:50
Speaker 4: to be suppressed because you're supposed to be working in
1:00:52
Speaker 4: the industrial machine, right? And so I'm not even sure
1:00:55
Speaker 4: if there hadn't been industrial society, a psychoanalysis would have
1:00:57
Speaker 4: actually been necessary. But in any case, stoicism is instead saying,
1:01:02
Speaker 4: you know, control them. Sometimes it's maybe overly strong about them.
1:01:07
Speaker 4: Sometimes maybe it treats instincts and feeling life too much
1:01:10
Speaker 4: of the same way. that they're all problems and so
1:01:13
Speaker 4: just be very rational. But as you're saying, there is
1:01:15
Speaker 4: something compensatory about it in an age where people's affect
1:01:18
Speaker 4: just seems to be vomited out all over the place.
1:01:21
Speaker 4: And it's such a chaos of affective life because of
1:01:24
Speaker 4: this uncultivated, this problem of uncultivated affective life when it's
1:01:28
Speaker 4: not cultivated and it has a way of just projecting
1:01:30
Speaker 4: itself into the world and people are just trying to
1:01:33
Speaker 4: react against it. So I also see this increase in
1:01:36
Speaker 4: stoicism in the last 15 years or so as being
1:01:40
Speaker 4: partial reaction against that, which increased, I think, during the pandemic.
1:01:43
Speaker 4: I think when people didn't know what to do with
1:01:44
Speaker 4: themselves to read meditations, for example, was actually kind of
1:01:48
Speaker 4: consoling to figure out and kind of keep doing that.
1:01:51
Speaker 4: But what I think you both have highlighted and what's
1:01:54
Speaker 4: really key there is that the kind of responsibility we
1:01:57
Speaker 4: have for our inner life is very central to Stoicism.
1:02:00
Speaker 4: I wouldn't necessarily limit that to rationality because, as I've said,
1:02:04
Speaker 4: I think that the language of cultivation tells you cultivate
1:02:07
Speaker 4: your abilities and your powers and so forth. includes your
1:02:10
Speaker 4: capacity for feeling and relating to values. That's a hard
1:02:15
Speaker 4: thing to do in a consumer capitalist society where there
1:02:18
Speaker 4: is no such thing as value. It's just whatever you want.
1:02:20
Speaker 4: And I shouldn't have to make myself any different for it.
1:02:24
Speaker 4: So that's kind of a hard lesson. So part of
1:02:27
Speaker 4: this compensatory mood of stoicism is serving a good purpose.
1:02:31
Speaker 4: Some of it maybe not, because it could be saying, yeah,
1:02:34
Speaker 4: your feeling life doesn't matter. Your instincts don't matter. Well,
1:02:36
Speaker 4: that's not, I think, the right point either. So it
1:02:40
Speaker 4: has maybe an ambiguous relationship to psychoanalysis. Certainly in highlighting
1:02:44
Speaker 4: responsibility for inner life, that I think is crucial. But
1:02:48
Speaker 4: inner life is more than rationality. But honestly, in our society,
1:02:52
Speaker 4: if you cultivate that, you're already on a good track.
1:02:54
Speaker 2: Right.
1:02:56
Speaker 4: The capacity to take a little distance from one's emotional
1:02:58
Speaker 4: life so that one can't cultivate it if you can't
1:03:01
Speaker 4: learn how to take that space between your feeling and
1:03:04
Speaker 4: interpreting what it means and so forth. That classical psychoanalytic
1:03:08
Speaker 4: idea that You have kind of three options of your
1:03:11
Speaker 4: affective life. Repress it, act it out, or learn how
1:03:14
Speaker 4: to contain it so that it symbolizes. That's not exactly stoic,
1:03:18
Speaker 4: but there is something that resonates with the stoic thing,
1:03:21
Speaker 4: where I learned to neither repress, which maybe a negative
1:03:25
Speaker 4: stoicism would do, or just kind of vomiting out that
1:03:28
Speaker 4: I'm saying I think is all too frequent. And understanding
1:03:31
Speaker 4: there's something kind of in between that, which is enough
1:03:34
Speaker 4: management of yourself so that you don't spit it out.
1:03:37
Speaker 4: Management and not control. So you're not trying to repress
1:03:40
Speaker 4: it and not let it have a voice. You're trying
1:03:42
Speaker 4: to figure out how to have it let a voice
1:03:44
Speaker 4: that's actually fruitful.
1:03:45
Speaker 3: Right. Feelings are information.
1:03:48
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly. Exactly.
1:03:49
Speaker 3: And so they tell us something. The next step is, hmm,
1:03:54
Speaker 3: what do I do with that information? How do I
1:03:57
Speaker 3: reflect on it, turn it over in my own mind,
1:04:01
Speaker 3: and decide how to use it, how to put it
1:04:04
Speaker 3: to use? one way or another, versus I'm identified with
1:04:10
Speaker 3: my feelings. So to go back to something you said earlier, Lisa,
1:04:14
Speaker 3: if I'm mad at my boss, absolutely, walk right in
1:04:17
Speaker 3: there and start screaming. After all, I have a feeling.
1:04:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't do that.
1:04:23
Speaker 3: Oh, don't do that.
1:04:24
Speaker 4: No, try that at home.
1:04:26
Speaker 3: But how to use all that we have and all
1:04:30
Speaker 3: that we are.
1:04:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a nice way to put it. I wouldn't
1:04:34
Speaker 4: say that Stoicism says this, but you could take it
1:04:36
Speaker 4: as an implication that you have to learn how to
1:04:38
Speaker 4: love your inner life. So even if we don't draw
1:04:40
Speaker 4: that just from Stoicism, which might be ambivalent with relation
1:04:44
Speaker 4: to that, I think it's something we need to draw
1:04:46
Speaker 4: probably from what we've talked about today. If you learn
1:04:48
Speaker 4: to love your inner life, you learn to cultivate it.
1:04:51
Speaker 4: You know, if you're not trying to cultivate it, you're
1:04:53
Speaker 4: probably not loving it. You're probably trying to escape from
1:04:55
Speaker 4: it or something else is coming up.
1:04:57
Speaker 3: I really, really like that as a sort of a
1:05:00
Speaker 3: compass of, What do you love? What goes on in
1:05:06
Speaker 3: you that you enjoy about yourself that you love, that
1:05:10
Speaker 3: you find interesting, good, remarkable, beautiful? Orient to yourself with
1:05:19
Speaker 3: a feeling of love.
1:05:21
Speaker 4: I think like Jung said, the face should turn to
1:05:23
Speaker 4: the unconscious, the faith to the unconscious turns to you.
1:05:26
Speaker 4: So the more you do that, the more I think
1:05:28
Speaker 4: Even when you run into those inner obstacles, which is
1:05:30
Speaker 4: so much a part of that second half of analysis
1:05:32
Speaker 4: Jung talks about, when your adaptation is not so much
1:05:35
Speaker 4: to outer life but to your own psychic structure, if
1:05:38
Speaker 4: you don't gain a love for that inner life, you're
1:05:40
Speaker 4: not going to go very far down that path.
1:05:53
Speaker 3: Today's dreamer is a man. He is 60 years old,
1:06:00
Speaker 3: and he is in academic publishing and sales. And the
1:06:06
Speaker 3: name of his dream is The Diamond Bicycle. And here's
1:06:10
Speaker 3: the dream. I'm on foot, waiting at a traffic light
1:06:15
Speaker 3: on a sunny day with a bunch of pedestrians and
1:06:18
Speaker 3: cyclists to cross a busy London street near Westminster. The
1:06:23
Speaker 3: light changes, and as the crowd in front of me moves,
1:06:26
Speaker 3: I discover a gorgeous bicycle in front of me. I
1:06:31
Speaker 3: look around, and an old woman next to me says, yes,
1:06:34
Speaker 3: that's right, someone forgot it. I take the bike a
1:06:38
Speaker 3: few meters away to a less crowded, grassy area. The
1:06:43
Speaker 3: bicycle is glistening silver, and it sparkles with countless embedded diamonds.
1:06:50
Speaker 3: There's a huge front wheel and a small back wheel,
1:06:53
Speaker 3: and the whole thing folds up neatly for easy carrying.
1:06:57
Speaker 3: I know this bike is the absolutely A1 highest quality
1:07:01
Speaker 3: top-of-the-line bike anyone could own, a real luxury item. Some
1:07:07
Speaker 3: of the diamonds spell the name of the owner, along
1:07:10
Speaker 3: with a warning that the bike is equipped with a
1:07:12
Speaker 3: tracking device. I decide to take it home anyway so
1:07:16
Speaker 3: I can further examine it perhaps find out how to
1:07:19
Speaker 3: contact the owner and then call them. We only have
1:07:22
Speaker 3: landlines in the world of the dream. I unfold the
1:07:26
Speaker 3: bike into a standing foot scooter, a few pushes from
1:07:30
Speaker 3: my feet, and I'm off on an exhilarating journey. With
1:07:34
Speaker 3: no more effort from me, the bicycle scooter speeds along
1:07:39
Speaker 3: sidewalks while I deftly weave in and out of people's
1:07:43
Speaker 3: way with a breeze in my hair. At one point,
1:07:46
Speaker 3: I'm rushing along a passageway resembling an airport concourse beneath Westminster.
1:07:53
Speaker 3: When I arrive home, I explain to my partner what's happened,
1:07:57
Speaker 3: and it's then I discover a backpack strapped to the bike,
1:08:01
Speaker 3: which contains a pair of black jeans with a wallet
1:08:04
Speaker 3: in a front pocket. When I open the wallet, I
1:08:08
Speaker 3: discover an ID, along with a huge wad of cash. Instantly,
1:08:13
Speaker 3: I start counting. I discard the few bills that unwrap
1:08:18
Speaker 3: the bundle as they are Deutschmarks. Instead, I count the
1:08:21
Speaker 3: wad of 20-pound notes, amazed at how much money there is,
1:08:26
Speaker 3: secretly hoping my partner will tell me to keep it,
1:08:29
Speaker 3: the bike, and the cash. And I know I will, too.
1:08:34
Speaker 3: All I need is a nudge, which she might just
1:08:38
Speaker 3: give me. And for associations, he says, my partner and
1:08:43
Speaker 3: I are very busy. and never seem to have much
1:08:46
Speaker 3: time to enjoy life. We both start work very early,
1:08:50
Speaker 3: and our free time is taken up with the stress
1:08:53
Speaker 3: and details of purchasing our first house together. It's an
1:08:57
Speaker 3: exciting change, but we also don't want to leave the
1:09:01
Speaker 3: arty little town where we've been renting for the last
1:09:04
Speaker 3: five years. But rising rents and high house prices are
1:09:09
Speaker 3: driving us out. We're both artists. I'm also a writer
1:09:14
Speaker 3: and have found an edgy and nurturing art scene here.
1:09:17
Speaker 3: The main feelings in the dream, he says, At first
1:09:21
Speaker 3: was confusion, then excitement, exhilaration, and temptation. And he adds,
1:09:27
Speaker 3: I've lived in London for 25 years, but moved away
1:09:31
Speaker 3: to my current location in the UK countryside about six
1:09:34
Speaker 3: years ago. The sparkly silver reminds me of classic 60s
1:09:40
Speaker 3: drum kits. I was born into a drumming family on
1:09:44
Speaker 3: my mom's side, and it was always a safe space
1:09:47
Speaker 3: for me to play drums. I played in rock bands
1:09:50
Speaker 3: and throughout the late 80s to the late 90s in
1:09:53
Speaker 3: both the U.S. and the U.K. So, okay, what can
1:09:58
Speaker 3: we make of this dream?
1:10:00
Speaker 2: It's such a lovely dream, isn't it?
1:10:02
Speaker 4: So many images, so much nuance to them as well.
1:10:05
Speaker 2: We could start with the location. It's funny, though, I
1:10:08
Speaker 2: found myself, you know, Westminster's mentioned a couple of times,
1:10:12
Speaker 2: and I found myself wondering about that particular location. There's Westminster.
1:10:19
Speaker 2: you know, the seat of government, and then there's Westminster Abbey,
1:10:23
Speaker 2: and there's, you know, Westminster being an area of London.
1:10:26
Speaker 2: I was just thinking about all of that and wondering
1:10:29
Speaker 2: if there's a particular resonance, but I don't know if
1:10:34
Speaker 2: there is or not. So it's a little hard for
1:10:36
Speaker 2: me to do that, but it seems very specific that
1:10:39
Speaker 2: it's about Westminster. So I don't know. But we could
1:10:42
Speaker 2: talk about diamonds, because... This is an archetype. The diamond
1:10:48
Speaker 2: is an archetype. And it is something, you know, I
1:10:53
Speaker 2: think it's the hardest, isn't it the hardest substance on earth?
1:10:58
Speaker 4: I think so.
1:10:59
Speaker 2: So there's something eternal about a diamond. It doesn't rust
1:11:05
Speaker 2: or change shape or in some sense it really is
1:11:11
Speaker 2: therefore an image of something like soul. You know, that
1:11:16
Speaker 2: it's everlasting, that it's inviolable.
1:11:19
Speaker 3: I'm in a slightly different place, perhaps.
1:11:23
Speaker 4: Okay.
1:11:26
Speaker 3: Here our dreamer, our dream ego, comes across this wonderful,
1:11:32
Speaker 3: wonderful bicycle. And it's sparkly and it folds up and
1:11:38
Speaker 3: it's got diamonds in it. And it sounds, I mean,
1:11:42
Speaker 3: what a great thing to sort of ride home on
1:11:44
Speaker 3: this kind of magical bike. And then, as if that's
1:11:49
Speaker 3: not enough, aha, you know, there's a backpack with plenty
1:11:53
Speaker 3: of money in it. And so more and more good
1:11:57
Speaker 3: fortune befalls our dreamer. And then the intention of the
1:12:05
Speaker 3: dream ego kind of goes from, you know, I'm going
1:12:07
Speaker 3: to get it home, but then I'll contact the owner to, hey,
1:12:11
Speaker 3: wait a minute, maybe I could just if my partner
1:12:15
Speaker 3: gives me a little nudge, just go ahead and keep it.
1:12:20
Speaker 2: So there are kind of two potential references to the
1:12:24
Speaker 2: anima in this dream. The first is the woman who says,
1:12:28
Speaker 2: that's right. You know, that that's a, what does she
1:12:30
Speaker 2: say that the woman that, that encourages them to take. Yeah.
1:12:35
Speaker 3: Somebody left it here.
1:12:36
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:12:36
Speaker 2: She says somebody left here. So, so the first woman
1:12:41
Speaker 2: in the dream is, kind of encourages him to take
1:12:44
Speaker 2: it in a sense. She doesn't say that, but that's
1:12:47
Speaker 2: the sense like, yeah, someone forgot it. And then he's
1:12:49
Speaker 2: hoping that his partner will say, yeah, keep it. What
1:12:52
Speaker 2: I imagine about this, because I think oftentimes in dreams
1:12:56
Speaker 2: where we dream of stealing something, it's an image of
1:13:01
Speaker 2: a part of us reaching for something that feels like
1:13:05
Speaker 2: it's kind of transgressive. So for example, maybe having fun.
1:13:11
Speaker 2: You know, he says we don't have a lot of
1:13:12
Speaker 2: time for fun in his context. And here he's riding
1:13:16
Speaker 2: this home and the wind is in his hair. You know,
1:13:18
Speaker 2: it's kind of exhilarating. And it's almost like the anima
1:13:22
Speaker 2: is saying, go ahead.
1:13:25
Speaker 4: It's okay.
1:13:25
Speaker 2: You can claim it. You know, my fantasy the whole time,
1:13:28
Speaker 2: and this is often the way it is in dreams,
1:13:30
Speaker 2: is like the owner is, the name is written in
1:13:33
Speaker 2: diamonds on the side of the bike. And he's going
1:13:35
Speaker 2: to contact the owner. It's like, I think what you
1:13:38
Speaker 2: need to get in contact with is a part of yourself.
1:13:42
Speaker 3: You know, I thought of a fairy tale. And the
1:13:46
Speaker 3: fairy tale is Jack and the Beanstalk. And Jack makes
1:13:51
Speaker 3: the dumbest trade in all of human history. Where he
1:13:57
Speaker 3: trades or sells the cow for a handful of beans.
1:14:03
Speaker 3: And his mother is so mad at such a dumb
1:14:06
Speaker 3: deal that she throws him out the window and up
1:14:08
Speaker 3: he goes. And they're The giant's wife up there at
1:14:13
Speaker 3: the top of the beanstalk helps him. She hides him,
1:14:18
Speaker 3: and I forget all the treasures he comes back down with,
1:14:21
Speaker 3: but one of them is a magic harp, and I
1:14:24
Speaker 3: think another is.
1:14:25
Speaker 2: There's a goose that lays a golden egg, and there's
1:14:27
Speaker 2: something else too, yeah.
1:14:29
Speaker 3: And so I'm wondering if this woman at the beginning
1:14:33
Speaker 3: of the dream, like you mentioned, Lisa, who says, yeah,
1:14:36
Speaker 3: that's right, someone forgot it, is kind of tipping her
1:14:40
Speaker 3: hat to... Yeah, it's there for the taking. And that
1:14:44
Speaker 3: the transgressive thing is actually in service of the psyche.
1:14:49
Speaker 2: Exactly.
1:14:50
Speaker 4: Right, right. And that's also, I think, clear from the
1:14:53
Speaker 4: fact that at the beginning he's with a group, pedestrian
1:14:56
Speaker 4: and so forth, and he takes it and takes off
1:14:58
Speaker 4: with it. It's like a movement toward individuation. Ooh, I
1:15:01
Speaker 4: like that. From the collector to the individual. And I
1:15:04
Speaker 4: also felt the transgressive part of it was crucial about,
1:15:07
Speaker 4: you know, We don't know what the name says, actually.
1:15:10
Speaker 4: Maybe it's actually yours. Maybe it is the transgression. It's
1:15:15
Speaker 4: the boldness that will allow you to do that. If
1:15:18
Speaker 4: you have the boldness to do it, then you can
1:15:20
Speaker 4: reap the fruits of it.
1:15:21
Speaker 2: I was curious about the Deutschmarks. Sometimes these little details
1:15:25
Speaker 2: in dreams can be so eloquent. Now, of course, we
1:15:29
Speaker 2: don't know because we don't know what Deutschmark might mean
1:15:33
Speaker 2: to this dreamer. But it's interesting because there's some kind
1:15:36
Speaker 2: of currency that doesn't matter on the outside, but then
1:15:40
Speaker 2: there are all these 20-pound notes, yeah, inside. So, you know,
1:15:45
Speaker 2: if I had the dreamer here, I'd say, Deutschmarks, tell
1:15:47
Speaker 2: me about Deutschmarks, tell me about Germany, you know, it's German,
1:15:51
Speaker 2: I don't know. But we could sort of have a
1:15:54
Speaker 2: fantasy about what that might mean. But it does seem
1:15:58
Speaker 2: like he's getting closer and closer to the thing. And
1:16:01
Speaker 2: I think per your point, John, which I just love,
1:16:04
Speaker 2: you know, this is something that takes you places. This
1:16:08
Speaker 2: is a bike. It's going to take you someplace so
1:16:11
Speaker 2: you can travel on it.
1:16:13
Speaker 4: Yeah. So it's an agency symbol there, right? And it's just, again,
1:16:17
Speaker 4: it's more the courage, the boldness to take it and
1:16:20
Speaker 4: see what happens. Yeah.
1:16:21
Speaker 3: I'm also thinking it relates to what he said about
1:16:25
Speaker 3: the drumming that he was so involved in and that
1:16:30
Speaker 3: he was born into a drumming family. And how drums
1:16:34
Speaker 3: have all that sparkly silver. And what would it feel
1:16:38
Speaker 3: like to be able to just play music and drum
1:16:44
Speaker 3: and express yourself in this way? Let loose. I wonder,
1:16:51
Speaker 3: you know, there's some parallels in the dream. Take it.
1:16:54
Speaker 3: Ride it. Get those drumsticks. Let loose.
1:16:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really, it feels like a really auspicious dream.
1:17:03
Speaker 2: It feels like an invitation or even an exhortation to
1:17:07
Speaker 2: take hold of something that feels like maybe doesn't belong
1:17:11
Speaker 2: to you. And there's a really nice relationship with the
1:17:15
Speaker 2: anima implied because it's like, yeah, the anima is going
1:17:18
Speaker 2: to say, do it, do it, you know? And that
1:17:21
Speaker 2: seems to be reflected in his outer world partnership as well,
1:17:24
Speaker 2: that she wants him to do it too. It seems
1:17:27
Speaker 2: like a lovely dream. Thanks for listening. To submit a dream,
1:17:32
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