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Wounds into Wisdom: Carl Jung’s Private Life · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Well, this is a special episode because on July 26th,
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: it will be Jung's 150th birthday. And I believe that
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: is referred to as the sesquicentennial. Aha. So we wanted
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: to do a special episode because of this momentous occasion.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: So we're going to talk today about Jung the man.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Who was he? What do we know about him? And
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: why does that matter? And to mark this special occasion,
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: we invited our Patreon supporters to submit questions. So we're
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: going to be using their questions as jumping off points
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: to discuss this topic. And so you'll be hearing some
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: of their voices throughout the episode. And why don't we
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: just go ahead and get started? So here's our first question.
• 1:40
  Speaker 5: Hi, my name is Kay Larry. I'm curious about Jung.
• 1:47
  Speaker 5: Was he married? Did he have children? Did he talk
• 1:51
  Speaker 5: about his family life in his writings?
• 1:54
  Speaker 6: Thanks.
• 1:55
  Speaker 5: I really appreciate your podcast.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: So Jung, yes. Jung married an extraordinary woman, Emma Rauschenbach,
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: and they married in 1903. Emma was a catch. I mean,
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: she was an extraordinary person. She came from a wealthy
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: industrialist family and she was able to provide Jung with
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: a kind of financial stability and I think intellectual companionship
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: that really gave him the time and the latitude to
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: be able to go inside himself and to develop these
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: concepts and clarify these inner experiences in a way that
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: might have not happened otherwise. had he not had the
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: support of Emma and her family. She was very significant.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: And he had five children, four daughters and one son,
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: and each of them had their own very interesting lives.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: Agatha became very interested in astrology and continued to steep
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: in Jung's symbolic studies. She authored a book called The
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: Moon's Nodes. Greta kept her personal life very private and
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: did not pursue a similar kind of career. Franz became
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: an architect and again had a really rather private life.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: Marianne again chose to stay rather private. I think we
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: can imagine that Jung's international renown affected his children and
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: his spouse, each in rather unique ways. And Helene became
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: a kind of curator of Jung's work and was very
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: involved in preserving his legacy. And she co-founded the Zurich Institute.
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: So by all accounts, even though having a father who was,
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: I guess, would be considered very eccentric in a lot
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: of ways, particularly in terms of Swiss culture, Emma and
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: the kids provided a fair amount of support. So that
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: gives you a little picture.
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: It was very grounding for Jung. They had a big,
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: wonderful house that... I have visited and Lisa has visited
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: right on the shores of Lake Zurich. It's a wonderful place,
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: big garden, and it really gave Jung the base, as
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: you were saying, Joseph, from which he could travel, write, study,
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: and do all the things that we remember him for.
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: This family life that Emma Young, orchestrated, managed, ran, provided.
• 5:05
  Speaker 5: Hello.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Podcast listeners are invited to join me for a Vital
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Spark book club event on Monday, August 4th at 6 p.m.
• 5:14
  Speaker 6: ET.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: All you have to do is read some or all
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: of my book, The Vital Spark, reclaim your outlaw energies
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: and find your feminine fire, and then join me with
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: a glass of something cold to discuss it on Zoom.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: This will be a relaxed, informal event with plenty of
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: time to ask me all of your questions. Find the
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: link in the show notes to buy the Vital Spark
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: and to register for the book club event. I hope
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: to see some of you there. So just to back
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: up a little bit, Jung was the son of, you know,
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: I think a sort of, what would we call it,
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: kind of middle class pastor family.
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: They were poor.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Okay. And he was born in 1875. And his father
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: was a pastor. He had one younger sister. And his
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: father died, I believe it was when he was in university.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: He attended the University of Basel. And he had to
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: make a living to support his family. But there's this
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: great story about the first time that he saw Emma.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: And I'm not even sure what circumstance that was under,
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: but he saw her. Deb, do you want to tell
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: that story?
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: What Jung writes about is he sees Emma at some
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: event or someone's house, some kind of a party, and
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: she is coming down the stairs. Jung sees her and knows.
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: Remember how intuitive he was. He knows, this is the
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: woman I am going to marry. And he proposed to her,
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: I think, twice before she accepted him. Swiss society was
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: very structured, very conscious of who's who and where do
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: you come from, what's your parentage, and what class in
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: the Swiss society do you belong to. Jung was the
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: son of a very poor parson. So he was not
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: the kind of outwardly good, quote, catch that one might
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: have wanted. On the other hand, he was full of energy, spirit, educated, good-looking,
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: and going places. So he and Emma eventually married. And
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: then my favorite part is they lived at the Berkholzi.
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: which was a very, very large psychiatric hospital outside of Zurich.
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: And can you imagine starting off your life as a
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: young couple in residence at a mental institution? And that
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: was the norm in those days. I mean, a lot
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: of the staff lived on the grounds in the hospitals
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: in the quarters assigned to them. But a great place
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: to start out a marriage. We wish everyone could do that.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: She was the second wealthiest woman in Switzerland. So that
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: gives you some idea. And as you mentioned before, Joseph,
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, you think about what that enabled
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Jung to do. I mean, not that he, not that he,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: you know, he worked, he worked, he developed his own career,
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: he developed his reputation. But But that kind of financial
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: security must have let him do things that maybe he
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: wouldn't otherwise have been able to do. They built that big,
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: beautiful house that Deb referenced earlier. So when they left
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: the Burgholzli, they moved into that house, which you can
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: visit on the shores of Lake Zurich and Kuznacht. And,
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: you know, and that's where he lived. And that's the family.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Some of the family still lives in the upper floors
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: of the house, although it is also a museum. So
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: he loved Emma very much. He was bereft when she died.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: She pre-deceased him. Theirs was not a marriage without some complications,
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: as many listeners are aware of. He had a very
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: important relationship with Toni Wolfe and Toni kind of became
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: part of the family. So there was this period of
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: time when he was openly engaged in relationships with both
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: women and the senses that this caused the family, Emma
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: and the kids, some degree of pain and suffering, but
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: it was something he felt he needed to do. But
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: he was you know, steadfastly devoted to Emma, on the
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: other hand, too. So, you know, life is complicated. People
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: are complicated. And Jung was complicated.
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: Jung was very complicated.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: So let's take another question from one of our patrons.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: And remember, if you'd like to submit questions for occasional
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: podcast episodes, you can become a patron. Just go to
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: our website and you'll see our Patreon page there. And
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: you can also join right from Spotify. So here's our question.
• 10:32
  Speaker 7: Hi there.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: My name is Elizabeth.
• 10:36
  Speaker 7: I'm curious about how Jung dealt with his own problems, issues.
• 10:43
  Speaker 7: I recall you talking about different periods of his life
• 10:48
  Speaker 7: where he may have had like a dark night of
• 10:52
  Speaker 7: the soul experience. So I'm curious about what he did
• 10:58
  Speaker 7: on his own healing journey and what techniques he used
• 11:05
  Speaker 7: to help himself. Since we know he helped lots of clients,
• 11:11
  Speaker 7: I'm just curious about young the man, helping himself. Thank
• 11:19
  Speaker 7: you so much for asking for questions and for all
• 11:23
  Speaker 7: the work that you do.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Bye. Well, this is an important question, isn't it?
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: Yes, it's a very important question. And I would refer
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: this listener and others, we've mentioned it so many times,
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: to Jung's memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. It's such a wonderful
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: memoir of his inner life and development, and it's a
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: real page-turner. And in that book, there is a chapter
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: called Confrontation with the Unconscious, in which Jung talks about
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: his dark night of the soul subsequent to the break
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: with Freud. And that break took place 1912, 1913, and
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: Jung spent several years really soul-searching, lost in many ways.
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: He continued to see clients, patients. He built little villages
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: out of stones and sticks on the shores of Lake Zurich.
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: He said, since I know nothing at all, let me
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: just sit here and do what I did as a child.
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: He was often accompanied by a very silent Tony Wolfe,
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: who simply sat nearby, She said she did not speak
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: unless Jung spoke to her. And Jung really also found
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: within himself, within his own psyche, the depths of that,
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: relationships with inner figures who had names and characters, Philemon, Salome,
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: and others, who he said told him things that he
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: could not have.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Known on his own.
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: And in that period, which was dark and difficult for him,
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: he also wrote later that it gave him the material
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: for a lifetime and was really the foundation of his
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: own creative work, starting in 1921 with a publication of
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: his book on typology. And I think these dark nights
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: of the soul have, With Jung's example, amongst others, you know,
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: such promise for also sowing the seeds of development.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: So Jung did have this incredible dark night of the
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: soul that you referenced, Deb. And it was kind of
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: sparked by the break with Freud, I think partly because
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: it plunged him into a deep personal crisis. that probably
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: had to do with his father complex, but also who
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: he was in the world. It also happened when he
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: was around 35, so it was kind of like an
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: early midlife crisis. But the suffering that he endured and
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: the techniques, I will say, that he developed to deal
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: with it make him an example of the archetype of
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: the wounded healer. So that archetype is most famously known
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: in the Greek figure of Chiron, who was associated with healing,
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: and he was a centaur, and he had a wound
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: that never healed. And of course, if you're a therapist,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: you yourself probably went through some wounding, and that may
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: be why you went into this field. Many of us
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: are wounded healers, and Jung was as well. So he
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: went through this great suffering and carried that wound with him,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: and it was from that experience that he was able
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: to help others. And You know, so some of what
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: he developed during that time was this technique of active imagination,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: which you referenced, Deb. And he got interested in his
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: inner life, and he knew what helped him get through
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: that dark time. And that's where he directed his future
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: analysis to go to, because he understood the healing that
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: was available in the unconscious.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: I would say that something else that was so important
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: for Jung in terms of his self-care was his indomitable curiosity.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: That even as a young man, he had this independent, curious, investigative,
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: explorative traits in his personality, which served him throughout his life.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: He was a reader.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: He was a researcher. He was looking for answers wherever
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: he could find them. Later in life, when he had
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: his creative illness, we sometimes call he had accumulated a
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: pretty extensive library of knowledge, particularly about yogic techniques. There
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: is a suggestion in some of the biographies that he
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: drew upon that to try to calm himself when he
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: was overwhelmed by these emotional states that rose up after
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: he had split with Freud. So he was doing breath work,
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: maybe some other yogic techniques. self-reflecting, journaling, and as Lisa
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: and Deb had said, really moving into his imagination and
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: trusting that there was something in that imaginative world that
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: could and eventually did help him.
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: He found something that supported him. I often make the
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: comparison to somehow water. that we go to the kitchen
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: sink and turn on the water and there it is.
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: Maybe if you have a well, you can go outside,
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: lift off the cover and get water from the well.
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: But underneath there is a great water table of streams
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: and the flow of water deep, deep, deep underground that
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: is somewhat wonderfully mysterious despite its ubiquitous presence. And Jung
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: discovered life, autonomous creatures and people way underneath in his
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: own and through his own unconscious, that it resided in him.
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: And that, I believe, is what supported him most during
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: his confrontation with the unconscious, was that he discovered that
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: his ego, his sense of life direction, decision-making, the perennial
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: to-do list, was not all that he was. And that
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: knowledge through experience of being undergirded by others a life
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: force that wasn't just his own conscious sense of self.
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: It was supportive, curative, creative, and that's part of his
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: legacy that he gives to us. There is more to
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: each of us, much, much more, if we can discover it.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Deb, I have to say that I just noticed the
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Wonder Woman figurine behind you, and it's shaping how I
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: hear everything that you say. Oh, isn't that great?
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah, there it is.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: There it is.
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: I'm at our daughter's home, and she is obviously living
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: a symbolic life, and Wonder Woman is part of it.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's sort of an Athena archetype back there.
• 19:06
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's go to another supporter question.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: Here's a question from Helen. I must admit that the
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: majority of what I know about Jung is from your podcast.
• 19:20
  Speaker 6: Thank you.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: I've mentioned how helpful this podcast has been for me
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: to my therapist. The latter mentioned that Freud and Jung
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: used to be friends and that they parted ways because
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: of their beliefs, particularly on the psyche. were very different.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: Could you elaborate on what happened between Freud and Jung?
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: And what I would say is, you know, our speculations
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: on what happened, I mean, Jung made some comments about this,
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: but there's probably a level of mystery about it as
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: well as it is with all interpersonal conflicts and tensions.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Well, you could probably write a book on this topic,
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: and there have been some books that have been written
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: about it. And by the way, we do have a
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: book list that goes with this week's episode. So you
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: can find that in the show notes. It lists all
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: of the biographies and biographical books that we could think of.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: So you might want to check that out. But there
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: were letters between the two men. There's a lot of
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: kind of exhaustive information about the wind down of this relationship.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Emma was trying to repair it. It was shaky. And
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: basically what happened is Freud was, I mean, this is
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: a simple explanation of it, but Freud was very committed
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: to his libido theory. So he felt that his theory
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: of sexuality was the primary one He was grooming Jung
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: to become his successor. He called Jung at one point
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: the crown prince. And they were very close. They had
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: a very close connection and collaborated for a while. When
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: did they meet, by the way? Does either of you
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: have that date? Was it 1903 that Jung goes to
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Vienna and they had been corresponding for a while?
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: I think a little later than that. And their famous
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: first encounter lasted for something like 13 hours of nonstop conversation.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: You know, like those famous first dates where it's like
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: you couldn't stop talking? It was one of those, right?
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly. And they corresponded, and the Jung-Freud letters are available.
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: That correspondence is available. And that was time in the evening.
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: Each of them would write something. to the other about
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: their work, their ideas. So the correspondence is voluminous. Yes.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, Freud was, and you can kind
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: of hear this in the letters, really trying to bring
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Jung along and say, you know, kind of, this is
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: the way it is, and this is what you have
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: to stick to. And Jung, you know, and he talks
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: about sort of just feeling a little uncomfortable, feeling like
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: he was being told what to think, basically. And not
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: liking that, there's a really fascinating thing that happens. They
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: come to the United States together to give lectures at
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: Clark University, and they do it by a boat. So
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: I think that was 1910, maybe?
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: 1909, they crossed from German on the steamship George Washington.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: And they're analyzing each other's dreams. And by the way,
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: you get a sense of this in the film. A
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Most Dangerous Method, which is based on a really great book,
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: by the way, which is in our book list. Such
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: a page turner, that book. But you see it in
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: the film, them on the boat together. And there was
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: some tension there because, again, Freud wanted Jung to submit
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: to his authority. And Jung had his own ideas, and
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: he was very... trepidatious about crossing Freud, but he had
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: to follow his own ideas. So he was developing his
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: own ideas, which said that it wasn't all about sexuality,
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: that libido or psychic energy was a general kind of
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: energy that could flow from and into different parts of
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: the psyche. And he elaborated this in what is now
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: known as Volume 5 or Symbols of Transformation. And he
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: wrote that he knew that publishing that book was going
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: to be the end of his relationship with Freud. And
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: it was. And there was a last kind of missed
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: visit between the two of them where there was some misunderstanding.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Freud was coming back. close to Zurich and didn't stop
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: to visit or something like that. I don't have all
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: of those details in front of me, but that was it.
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: And I also think to set the bigger context, I mean,
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: this whole idea of psyche and psychoanalysis and the unconscious
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: was radical and new. And Freud and Jung both had
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: incredibly dominant personalities. And Freud wanted to establish it as
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: a science, as legitimate, and not some kind of wild discipline.
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: And therefore, politically, in Freud's view, it was also necessary
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: that everybody be on the proverbial same page, that we
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: all agree and this is it. In many ways, there
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: are ideas... were not so divergent. Freud certainly understood mythology
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: and all kinds of symbolic material. And he was 25
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: years older than Jung, more or less. So they had
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: a lot of sort of father-son, senior partner, junior partner
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: tensions and conflicts. And eventually they broke up, as you said, Lisa,
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: with the publication of what we know as Volume 5,
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: Symbols of Transformation. And that was followed by Jung's confrontation
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: with the unconscious. And then his resurgence into his most
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: creative work that he is best remembered for.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: Some of the biographers also mention that on the trip
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: to the United States the week over and the week back,
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: Freud and Jung had decided that they would analyze each
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: other's dreams and what Jung upon reflection noticed is that
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: Freud was very interested in Jung's dreams and analyzed them.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: And then when Jung wanted Freud to share his own
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: unconscious material, Freud was very cautious about it and did
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: not want to risk the shift of authority. And he
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: was able to say that really directly to Jung. And
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: that struck a nerve in the back of Jung's mind
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: that continued to kind of reverberate through these other tensions.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: But that seems to have been a real moment for Jung.
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: That was the first iteration of what was to come
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: because Freud writes in Memories, Dreams, Reflections that.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: Jung writes.
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry, Jung writes, I cannot risk my authority.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: That's what Freud says, yeah.
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: And that is when, for Jung, Freud lost his authority.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Yes. And, you know, throughout the collected works, if you
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: look for it, you can really see the influence of Freud. And,
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: you know, in the early writings, when he's very much
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: an acolyte of Freud, he's sort of right aligned with
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Freud and his theories. And then after the break, you
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: can see him wrestling with that throughout his life, even
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: in his later works. He'll reference Freud, and he will
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: do it with always kind of giving Freud some credit.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: He'll say Freud did this and Freud did this. But and,
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: you know, here's the thing that I want to add
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: or here's where I maybe take issue with Freud. So
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: it continued throughout his life to sort of reverberate for Jung,
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: the influence of Freud and also his need to, I
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: want to say, differentiate himself from Freud. You know, in
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: preparation for this episode, I rewatched the John Freeman episode.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: interview with Jung that was done in, I think it
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: was 1957. So right a few years before Jung died,
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: he was a very old man. And John Freeman travels
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: to the house in Kuznacht and has this conversation with Jung.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: And at one point, John Freeman says, you analyze some
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: of Freud's dreams. What were his dreams? What were they about?
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: And Jung said, you know, I prefer not to say
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: this is, you know, this is a This is very
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: private stuff. And John Freeman says, oh, but Freud's been
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: dead these many years. And Jung said, some things go
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: beyond death. And he wouldn't talk about Freud's dreams. There's
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: something so sweet about that, that he had this kind
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: of loyalty.
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: Confidentiality was honored.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: And as much as Jung wanted to differentiate himself from Freud,
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: I don't think he wanted to betray Freud.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: So one of the fruits of the tension between Freud
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: and Jung was the refinement and evolution of his idea
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: of typology. Jung was trying to understand something in himself. Now,
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: there are some early roots to this. When he was
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: working in the Burgholzli, he was already trying to understand
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: something about his schizophrenic patients and there was something about
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: the profound way that the patients turned inside themselves and
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: he was already pondering this question about the flow of
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: energy into the internal versus the flow of energy to
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: the external. So he's beginning to formulate some of those ideas.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: But after the break with Freud, when he's really trying
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: to understand what's the difference between his personality, Freud's personality,
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: and also Adler, who was another person that stepped away
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: from Freud in order to develop his own concepts, he
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: really solidified this idea of introversion, extroversion, thinking, feeling, intuition,
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: and sensation, that those were incredibly important And they became
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: increasingly important as he tied that into individuation. So I
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: believe that he saw Freud as being much more extroverted
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: than himself, Jung being a very strong introvert. And as
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: he tried to find language for it, it gave him,
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: I think, some sense of peace that our typology isn't
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: our fault. I mean, it's not a flaw. even though
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: we can find ourselves not understanding each other for reasons, again,
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: that aren't based on personal problems.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can just kind of imagine him saying, like,
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: wait a minute, how did this happen? And trying to
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: come to grips with this very important relationship and how
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: it fell apart.
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: Jung really developed a whole theory of typology, as you
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: were saying, Joseph, and it's become part of everybody's vocabulary
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: of whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, but there
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: were the four basic functions of consciousness. Two of them,
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: intuition and sensation, are non-rational functions and what we basically
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: pay attention to. Of all the information that surrounds us
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: every single day, from people and circumstances and our own
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: internal workings. What is it that we pay attention to?
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: What do we take in? And the intuitives tend to
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: take in the, where is it going? What can I
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: do with this? Sensei people that are oriented more that way,
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: pay attention to what the practical matters at hand are,
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: what they see, hear, touch, taste. And then we have
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: two rational functions, thinking and feeling. And thinking is the
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: more objective stance. I always think of Napoleon standing on
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: a bluff, directing the troops from on high. And the
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: feeling type is also rational, very rational, but makes decisions differently.
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: according to a subjective sense of what is valuable here.
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: And my quick way of envisioning that is Braveheart down
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: on the field with his men. And each is legitimate.
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: We all have all four functions, but some of them predominate.
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: And that is the shortest, most simplistic version of Jung's
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: typology that I can imagine.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: Where it became increasingly important is that once we identify
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: the dominant traits that we use to navigate the world,
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: we can begin to become suspicious of the other qualities
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: that we hold in reserve. And part of the process
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: of becoming whole is lending aid and support to those
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: less developed traits in the second half of life. And often,
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: as energy moves in midlife, those traits from the rear
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: begin to gain a lot of steam. And so we
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: find engineers after retirement suddenly wanting to learn how to
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: meditate and make art. And Jung had a way of explaining, well,
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: why the big shift? And it's because something in us
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: wants us to know ourselves in all the four aspects
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: before it's over.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: That's great. That's great. Okay, let's go to another question
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: from one of our Patreon supporters. And here's the question.
• 34:21
  Speaker 8: Hi, I've become a student of Jung's over the past year,
• 34:24
  Speaker 8: thanks to this Jungian life and my own readings and
• 34:28
  Speaker 8: dream work. My question, how was Jung perceived or understood
• 34:33
  Speaker 8: by his contemporaries throughout his brilliant and syncretic life? And
• 34:39
  Speaker 8: why isn't his life more widely known? For he is
• 34:43
  Speaker 8: surely the teacher we all need.
• 34:45
  Speaker 6: That's open to a lot of speculation, by the way,
• 34:49
  Speaker 6: because what we're wondering is, what is the evolution of
• 34:54
  Speaker 6: the relationship between Jung's contribution and the various shifts in
• 34:59
  Speaker 6: the collective?
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: He was very important. In fact, many people thought of
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: him as the founding father of the New Age movement
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: in the United States. Strangely enough, it was part of
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: the hippie movement when there was a redesign of psychology
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: and spirituality. Jung had died in 61, but there in
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: the late 50s, people were really thrilled about his work
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: because he was validating in a very thoughtful way the
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: relationship between personal development and spirituality or the transcendent. And
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: there was a huge renewal of that. So that's an
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: example of him being rediscovered suddenly and becoming very important.
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: And then with the rise of cognitive behavioral therapies, where
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: there was a shift more to focus on ego development,
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: Jung became, well, Jung and Freud, by the way, became
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: less interesting. Because they were talking about the unconscious, which
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: is mysterious and cannot be controlled, while thinking can actually
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: be controlled. We can put our hands on those dials.
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: So there was a shift in the collective about what
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: was interesting and where could people work to try to
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: relieve their suffering in a different way.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Just to answer the first part of that question, though,
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: how was he received during his life? He was a
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: major figure. There's no question. He, you know, he met
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: Albert Einstein. He worked with Wolfgang Polly, James Joyce, and
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: he had some connections. I think he analyzed Joyce's schizophrenic daughter.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: You know, so he, you know, in fact, the sort of.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: In some sense, the authoritative biography that came out about
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: 20 years ago by Deirdre Bear, it gives you a
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: real sense of how important he was during his lifetime.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: You know, he had a substantial reputation of his own
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: before he even met Freud. So even as a young man.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: But Joseph, I like how you're talking about him being rediscovered.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: The way I think about Jung is that he's like
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: one of those perennials in your garden that comes back
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: every year. So it's like we sort of forget about
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: him and then he comes back. There was a resurgence
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: in like the kind of late 80s and 90s when
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: there were a whole bunch of bestselling books by Jungian authors,
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: including Clarissa Pinkola Estes and Women Who Run With the Wolves. And,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: you know, and perhaps there is a resurgence now, maybe
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: in part due to our podcast. So I think he
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: stays with us because he continues to be relevant. But
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: there were efforts. I mean, like you said, Joseph, there
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: are many things that have contributed to the fact that
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: he is less well-known, say, than Freud. And I will
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: say that, you know, and I never, ever came across
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: Jung in my undergraduate years. I didn't study psychology. And
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: in my social work degree, he was mentioned once. he
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: didn't make his way into the academy the way that
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: Freud did.
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: I want to backtrack to sort of a historical piece
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: that I think bears on this, which is that Freud
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: was very conscious of the need to establish psychoanalysis in
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: the world. And he had a cadre of followers who
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: They even all got special rings with Greek gods in
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: taglio on the ring. Freud, of course, was Zeus. And
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: there were many books, a big biography by Ernest Jones.
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: Freud was very conscious of promoting his work and establishing
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: it as the dominant sort of force in this field
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: in the world.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Jung.
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: considered himself very much a scientist, very much an empiricist.
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: In that light, he was also interested in sort of
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: spiritual or paranormal phenomena because they exist. People have reported
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: this for, you know, millennia. But I think over time,
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: Jung became a little bit more associated with sort of
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: the spiritual, mystical, aspects versus there was that split between
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: mystical and spiritual and scientific. And so, as you were saying, Joseph,
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: you know, more associated with human growth of potential, hippie movements,
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: that kind of thing. And his very solid grounding in
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: empirical science didn't have as much weight. Now, today, I
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: think your point, Lisa, is well taken. Jung is resurging
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: in the collective because he has messages and medicine that
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: we need and are especially deep and relevant for the
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: time we're in.
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: And sometimes people fantasize that Jung would somehow be polarized
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: or towards some of the modern discoveries. But I have
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: to say, based on what we know about him, he
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: would be fascinated by the discoveries in neurobiology.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: He would.
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: He would be. He would have been thrilled. And he
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: had some intuitions. Nobody knew what was causing schizophrenia. And
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: Jung just intuitively was saying, I think it's organic because
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: it doesn't respond to this interactive therapy. But that's as
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: far as he could take it. There were no MRIs,
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: all of these sophisticated things. So a lot of people
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: will shy away from Jung because he didn't have access
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: to much of this modern technology. But he still had
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: a mastery of the subjective. And in a sense, that's
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: still that cry in the wilderness. that despite all of
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: these amazing discoveries that we've made about the brain and
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: genetics even, the subjective is still the place that the
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: individual works on their own behalf.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: Right, right, right. That's great, Joseph. You know, speaking of
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: him being a scientist for a second, this is just
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: a little bit of an aside, but I think it's
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: an interesting and important one. You know, early in his career,
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: right at the beginning, at the Burke-Holsley Institute, he developed
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: the word association test. And again, if you saw the
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: movie A Most Dangerous Method, you saw a little snippet
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: of that being administered. And that was very scientific. It
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: was actual kind of statistical research. How long was the
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: response time? Did the person have an unusual reaction or
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: say an unusual word? And from that, he could deduce
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: a person's complexes. And He started using, what are they called,
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: like galvanic conductors to test a kind of activation. And
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: that became the basis for a lie detector test. So
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: to the extent that there was technology, he was using
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: it and making deductions from it. But of course, you're right, Joseph.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: And the truth is that a lot of modern neuroscience
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: is actually just backing up his intuitions. But in terms
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: of like why he isn't better well-known, Deb, you mentioned
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: the committee. And I want to just offer just a
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: few more details about the committee because I think it's
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: kind of fascinating. So there was a committee, it was explicit,
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: a secret committee around Freud. And it included Ernest Jones,
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: Sander Ferenczi, Otto Ranke, and Carl Abraham. And I'm reading
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: here from John Kerr's book, A Most Dangerous Method. The
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: sole purpose of this group was to guard against future
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: deviations from Freud's views within the psychoanalytic movement, although forensic
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: did eventually defect also. Explicitly, Freud was to tell them
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: where to stand and they would stand there. So... They
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: were working to protect, as you said, Deb, Freud's legacy,
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: but also to really suppress Jung's. And Ernst Jones in
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: particular worked very hard to discredit Jung. And it worked.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: You know, Freud reigned supreme in academic psychiatry until the
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: kind of fall of psychoanalysis when the shift really went
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: into kind of biomedical treatments. for psychological issues, for medication.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: But you're right. I wanted to say to this listener,
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: and Deb and Joseph, you've both made this point, that
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: he is the medicine that we need now, and I
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: think we all sense that when we come across his work.
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: One of the key differences between Freud and Jung that
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: I think is right here and now is that Freud
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: was very much interested in the past, what we call
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: reductive analysis of, you know, what happened when you were
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: in kindergarten and your parents and the teacher that didn't
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: understand you, et cetera. And that is important. And Jung
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: was even more interested in where is your individual psyche
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: going now? What is your essential nature, the pattern, the blueprint,
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: in a sense, that you were born with for who
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: you can and should become to be your best, most whole, unique,
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: wonderful self? And the telos, the trajectory, the where are
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: you going part is a huge part of the medicine
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: for our time. And it's a great question that takes
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: a lot of consideration of where am I going? What
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: about my family, my community, the world at large? Where
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: are we headed? And that takes introspection and some sacrifice
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: of just our own ego needs for something that is
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: greater and deeper in us as individuals and.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: In our collectives.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: Something else that I would put forward in terms of
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: why Jung seems more vaguely represented in the collective is
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: that Freud and the post-Freudians, because many brilliant post-Freudians contributed
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: to the entire field of psychodynamic work, is that Freud
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: and his successors were invested in creating and standardizing a method.
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: that there were techniques, techniques that were very, very valuable. Jung,
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: for his part, really stood against standardized techniques. He wanted
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: to introduce people to the collective, to the psyche, to
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: the unconscious. He wanted to talk about his own intuitions
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: and experiences. And as he said, to point us to
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: the central fire, understanding, that any one of us is
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: only going to get a glimpse of whatever that mystery is.
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: He wanted future Jungians to rediscover the things he was
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: pointing at and to go beyond it. He didn't want
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: people to be boxed in, or clinicians particularly, to be
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: boxed into specific methods. That sounds really appealing. but it
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: also makes it much more difficult to reproduce over time
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: and much more difficult to learn and even communicate about.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: And that had real implications in terms of how it
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: might continue forward.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: We want to thank all of you listening today, and
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: we especially want to thank our supporters who gave us
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: such great questions. And we want to say, happy birthday, Carl.
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: Happy birthday.
• 48:18
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: Our dreamer today is a 73-year-old woman who's retired, and
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: she calls her dream Buddha Brat Discovered. I was in
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: a wooded area, perhaps a campground with my husband, and
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: the sun shone down through the trees. I could see
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: out of the corner of my eyes, webs flowing down
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: from the trees, iridescent, beautiful, shimmering. They were everywhere. I
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: couldn't see them if I looked directly at them, but glancing,
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: I couldn't see. And it filled me with joy and
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: a little dread as they were like enormous spider webs
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: flowing from the trees. Then my daughter beckons me into
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: a house and as I enter, she points to another web,
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: smiling as she does. This web completely covers the hallway
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: entrance and has the typical circular shape radiating out from
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: the center. There is something in the center, maybe a spider?
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: As I move closer to see, I realize it is
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: a Buddha, and it is alive. So, here's the context.
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: I have been in a centering prayer practice for almost
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: two years, and began having dreams challenging enough to lead
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: me to examine them with a therapist to good result.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: We moved near to our daughter and her family, so
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: have the joy of grandchildren. I have strongly identified as
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: a Christian, but always read and explored Eastern traditions and
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: the mystics. My work was in the sciences, which always
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: supported and nourished me spiritually. The main feelings in the
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: dream were wonder, joy, and apprehension. I am somewhat afraid
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: of spiders, but try not to kill them in the house.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: And for further context, she notes, Having heard your podcast
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: on the Buddha Brat, I was intrigued because the living
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: Buddha in the web has been something of a mystery
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: to me. My husband is strong and protective of me
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: and supports my spiritual exploration without participating. My daughter has
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: always graced us with beauty and wisdom and humor. She
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: has been a strong symbolic presence in my dreams of
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: my spiritual self. I have a strong connection to nature
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: and its beauty. You know, we're all sitting here taking
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: in this very significant and special dream, a special experience
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: for the dreamer. And I think somewhat atypically for me,
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: what I go to is the Jungian concept of the
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: coniuntio appositorum, a la Jung himself, of which is the connection,
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: the unification of the opposites. So our conscious minds make
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: us go, you know, is it this or is it that?
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: Is it up or is it down? Is it north
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: or is it south?
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: And the idea of the coniuntio is a bit of
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: a mystery. It can't just be reduced to logic, but
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: that In some way, the opposites, the polarities, the way
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: we typically think, are one whole.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: They're a unity.
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: With each maintaining its own separateness, that they don't just
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: get all indistinguishable and mixed together in a homogenous way.
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: So with that, what stands out to me is the
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: spider web in the hallway entrance has a circular shape.
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: It's a mandala. Spider webs essentially are mandalas radiating out
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: from a center, the self, as in Jung's Liverpool dream,
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: with the magnolia tree blooming in the center. And what
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: is in the center? Well, let's see. It's maybe a spider,
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: and it's a Buddha. So something that is often associated, spiders,
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: with a kind of shadowy and malevolent kind of presence.
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: And the Buddha, a Buddha. So this dream, I'm finding
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: it very moving because that's what has come up in
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: me at the outset.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: I think you're capturing the paradox, and this is just perfect.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: And I could imagine that being... caught in the web
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: of Buddhism, maybe something about the ambivalence. She says her
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: primary religion of childhood has been Christianity. And for many Christians,
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: being caught up in other alternative religions would be considered
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: a problem, perhaps a negative. And so I'm wondering if
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: the child pointing to the web, suggests that the child
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: inside of her is ambivalent about the interests in Buddhism
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: and wondering if there is some kind of an ethical
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: or moral conundrum about having one foot in each kind
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: of religious practice. Our sophisticated minds can hold this easily.
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: We can know about many things. But the religions of
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: our childhood which is generally where we're introduced to it,
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: often have very black and white components. And so it
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: may be that something about the early religious experience needs
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: to be deconstructed so that we're not burdened by the
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: religion of the childhood, but actually can embrace something that
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: was more sophisticated.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: Just to clarify, her daughter's an adult, and I don't
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: have a sense that the daughter's a child in a dream. Um, so, uh,
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: so yeah, but, but yeah, I, I take your point.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, I thought one of the things that was
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: interesting about, about the dream and in some ways it's
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: a just so dream. It's one of those, I think
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: of this as kind of a self dream. There's just
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: a lot of numinosity and in some sense, With these dreams,
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: it's almost like the most important thing is just to
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: experience it and they don't require a lot of interpretation.
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: But I do think it was interesting that she couldn't
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: see the webs if she looked directly at them. She
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: sort of had to look at them, you know, off
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: to the side, which is interesting, especially because she mentions
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: that she was a scientist. Because there is a way
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: that spiritual life or the life of the soul or
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: the life of, of the symbolic life, you can't look
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: at it too directly. You can't put it under a microscope.
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: You have to have a, it only reveals itself in
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: some sense when you're able to see it with a
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: kind of softness. So then it's interesting that the daughter
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: points the way to something right in the center. And
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: then she does move close to see it and then
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: she can see it. So there's a bit of a
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: contrast there because in the end she does sort of
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: focus in on the Buddha and that's when she sees
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: that it is alive. But, you know, it's a beautiful place.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: She has positive associations to her husband, positive associations to nature,
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: positive associations to her daughter. And there's only just a
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: little bit of apprehension about the fact that these are
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: spider webs. Now, the one thing I might wonder about
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: is since the spider is symbolically associated with the great
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: mother and in some sense, the negative devouring mother, I
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: would wonder if that's in the mix for the streamer.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: We obviously don't know. She doesn't say anything about her
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: mother or her mother complex. But if there were a
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: bit of a negative mother complex, The dream might be
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: saying something like, and it is through our wounds that
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: we will eventually discover the most transcendent truth. Because what's
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: in the center of the web is not a spider,
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: but this transcendent figure of the Buddha.
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: I also want to just introduce a little fun fact.
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: That when you are looking at a night sky, there
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: are certain stars that you can only see through your
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: peripheral vision.
• 56:49
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: You actually cannot see them when you stare straight at them.
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: So your retina has two different kinds of cells in them.
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: There are cones and rods, and the cones are focused
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: in the center of your eye, and they work very
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: well for seeing bright light, but they're not good at
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: seeing dim light. The rods, which are in the periphery
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: of the retina, help you see dim light. So If
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: you focus your eyes here and you look over to
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: the side, you'll suddenly see tiny stars that when you
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: turn and face will disappear from your vision.
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: Interesting. So this idea about the importance of what you
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: can't look at directly but might be very important.
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: Some things are just so subtle that looking at it
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: with a blazing self-awareness occludes it. We have to We
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: have to look at it softly in order to see
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: something that's soft, subtle.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 58:00
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• 58:05
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