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DREAM WISE: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams ~ a live event · 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 in Cape Cod. Hello, everybody,
• 0:45
  Speaker 4: and welcome, welcome to our book celebration, which in private
• 0:51
  Speaker 4: moments I've been calling a book bash. We are overjoyed
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: that our baby is out in the world, available online
• 1:00
  Speaker 4: at booksellers everywhere.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: And in some stores.
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: And in some stores, absolutely. So It's wonderful to have
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: you all with us to celebrate the culmination of a
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: pretty intense, challenging, joyful, every kind of word you can
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: imagine project. And we hope you enjoy it.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: We're so excited to share it with you. This feels
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: really celebratory and we have a lot of fun things
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: happening today. So over the course of the next couple
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: of hours, I want to go ahead and tell you
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: about one of them right now. We will be giving
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: away three grand prizes today, what we're calling the Dream
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Alchemist Toolkit. And if our technology works, hopefully we'll have
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: some images up on the screen to show you what
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: that is. First of all, of course, you get a
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: copy of the book. It also comes in a beautiful box.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: We have a beautiful branded high quality journal, dream journal.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: We have a special pen that has a red light
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: at the tip so that you can write your dreams
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: down in the dark, which is how I do it.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: We have a beautiful talisman that's got kind of physical
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: representation of our beautiful logo. Let me just see if
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: we can get some of these up. Oh, here we go.
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: There we go.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Excellent.
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: There we go.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: There we go. So it comes in that beautiful wooden box,
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: which I have behind me on my, you can see
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: it back there behind me, but there's a picture of
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: the wooden box. We have some dream tea. We have
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: a t-shirt designed by our super talented designer, It's in
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: this beautiful journal. And let's see. Yeah, there's one of
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: the t-shirts. And look at that. Isn't that gorgeous? It's
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: a brass representation of her beautiful logo, which subtly invokes Asclepius, who,
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: of course, was known as... Our patron. Yes, our patron.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Joseph.
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: So anyway, we're going to be giving away three of
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: those just to keep things simple, to help us keep
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: track of your shipping information and also to get your
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: T-shirt size. We are asking that you fill out the
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: form that should be going in the chat right now
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: if you would like to be included in the drawing.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: So take a minute, fill out that form, just ask
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: for your name, your T-shirt size, your email so we
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: can get in touch with you and then shipping. And
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: over the course of the afternoon, we'll be announcing the
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: three winners of the grand prize. So that's one thing.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: We're also going to be interpreting your dreams on the spot.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: I think it was Joseph who called. Maybe it was
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Joseph who suggested that we call this a dream-a-thon. So
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: there's another link to submit your dreams. today. So we're
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: taking dreams from people that are here that are submitting them.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: It's a private link just for this event. That's also
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: going to go in the chat. I would just ask
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: that you keep them short. Usually on the podcast, we
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: print them out. We're not going to be able to
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: do that today. So the shorter dreams are the ones
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: we're going to likely pick because we're doing it on
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: the fly. But given that, let's start telling you a
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: little bit about this book.
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: Well, We begin with a chapter entitled The Call to Adventure.
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: And I just, I love that because this is an
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: inner adventure. In fact, it's a lifetime's worth of inner adventures.
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: And just to give you a sense of how the
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: book sounds, what its voice is, and what a dream
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: can do, I'm just going to read a little bit
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: from our introduction. Marie-Louise von Franz, who was a close
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: colleague and associate of Jung's, says, If we pay attention
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: to our dreams, instead of living in a cold, impersonal
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: world of meaningless chance, we may begin to emerge into
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: a world of our own, full of important and secretly
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: ordered events. And here's the dream. I'm riding a great
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: shaggy beast like a woolly mammoth. It is slow and plodding.
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: carrying me toward what I know to be a great canyon.
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: Before me looms a rock doorway through which I will
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: need to pass to get to the canyon, and standing
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: above the door is a woman dressed in robes. I
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: somehow know I need to ask her permission before entering
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: the canyon. Just then, a man on horseback rides toward
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: the doorway at great speed. He slows only momentarily to
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: acknowledge the guardian of the door. She lifts her hand,
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: signaling him to stop, but he charges forward and rides
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: through the doorway. The woman turns and with a gesture
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: of her hand incinerates the man and his horse. I
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: am overcome with shock. Brynn was in her late 40s
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: when she had this dream. Her children were in college.
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: and she'd moved to a city where she knew no one.
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: Her husband worked long hours, and her job was overwhelming.
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: Lonely and lost, she decided to try psychotherapy, though she
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: was doubtful it could help with problems that were clearly situational.
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: Bryn's Jungian-oriented therapist suggested she pay attention to her dreams.
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: Although it seemed implausible that discussing dreams would help her
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: feel less adrift or deal with her difficult boss, At
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: least her therapist had a game plan. Week after week,
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: Brynn recorded her dreams and discussed them in therapy. She
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: found them interesting, though essentially irrelevant to solving her real-life problems.
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: Then Brynn experienced her independent and powerful inner world through
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: this dream. Her dream was like a memory. She had
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: lived the lumbering ride toward the Canyon on the Beast,
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: seen the priestess, and witnessed the horseman's execution. Instead of
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: solutions to outer world problems, Bryn had been introduced to
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: an interior realm full of mysterious import and aliveness. A
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: new world had opened, and she was ready to ride
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: her beast into it. And that was the call to
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: adventure for Bryn. An introduction to an inner world that would,
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: in fact, and over time, provide a lot of real-world,
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: real-life changes, but ones that really came from her soul
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: or her depths, her psyche, instead of things that were
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: simply cognitive or problem-solving.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: You know, and I think many of us kind of
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: come to dream work because we have a dream like
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: that that just really grabs hold of us and shakes us.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: And maybe, you know, we think dreams are interesting, but
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: when we have a dream like that, we're like, what
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: is going on? Where did that come from?
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly. That there is a life inside that we
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: did not create. And we could never even have thought
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: it up. No.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: There's something shocking and exciting about discovering that there is
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: another intelligence inside of us that we perceive. in one sense,
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: have been noticing our whole lives by virtue of the
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: fact that we've probably been noticing dreams since we were children.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: But there's this seminal moment where we realize that the
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: dream is coming from some other part of us that
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: is in us, but so magnificently different from us. And
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: the dynamic excitement between what's being said to us and
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: who we are when we wake up generates this vitality.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: And that vitality is the thing that helps us launch
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: into the adventure.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, one of the things that I've always
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: loved about dreams is that they're an everyday mystery. You
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: don't have to travel to a foreign country. You don't
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: even have to set aside a couple of hours and
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: watch a movie. They're there. They're with you all the time.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: You wake up, you have it, It's an intriguing image.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Maybe not many dreams are as staggering as the one
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: we opened the book with. But it's like, huh, that's interesting.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: What's that?
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: And it stays with you all day and you think
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: about it. And it is evidence of this other life,
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: another level. There's something else going on in the psyche.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: And that is Really, if that's not sort of an
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: intimation of sort of the religious function of the psyche,
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure what is. So they're profoundly important, I think, obviously.
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: And when we have experiences, we don't doubt them. You
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: don't doubt your everyday experiences. And dreams are our experiences.
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: They're just not experiences of ego and the waking mind.
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: And as you said, Lisa, it's not that we have big,
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: big dreams like that, but almost all the time, but
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: almost everybody has had some kind of a dream that
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: they remember, sometimes from years ago. And people who are
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: in dream school or send dreams into the podcast say,
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: here's a dream I had 20 years ago. that I
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: still think of that still matters to me.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: So let me just say something about kind of how
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: this book happened. So we started the podcast in 2018.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: And as you know, we always discuss a dream on
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: the podcast. And then in 2020, we started Dream School,
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: which is our 12-month online program that teaches you how
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: to work with your dreams. And the three of us
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: sat down around a table, and we worked out the material,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: and we came up with the modules. And We recorded
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: them and re-recorded them and reworked them. And we came
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: up with a whole bunch of supplementary material as well.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: And we've now been running Dream School for four years
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: and learning all the time as we do it, learning
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: from you, learning from our Dream School students. And at
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: some point, it became clear that Dream School was working
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: so well that maybe it made sense to put it
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: into a book format.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, which would be pretty straightforward and unproblematic.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: But as we, and this is so great, as we
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: started working on the book, we realized that there were
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: areas that needed more development. So the book actually takes
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: things deeper than the original Dream School did. And in
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: this kind of iterative process, we're now going back and
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: re-recording parts of Dream School. to match up with the book.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: But basically, every time we work on this, it just
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: deepens and deepens our own understanding. So in some sense,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: it is a companion to Dream School, but it also
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: really stands on its own. So let's maybe take a
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: look at another chapter. We just sort of picked a
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: couple chapters to talk about in some depth, just for
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: you to kind of see how the book works. So
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: we're going to look at chapter three, which is called
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: Dream Images, Association, Explanation, and Amplification. And I'm just going
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: to read a little bit of it. Working with dreams
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: presents a significant challenge. We must distance ourselves from our
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: waking conscious attitude to inhabit the radically different perspective presented
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: by the dream maker. This is not easy to do.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: So difficult is it to understand a dream, Jung wrote.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: that for a long time I have made it a
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: rule when someone tells me a dream and asks for
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: my opinion to say first of all to myself, I
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: have no idea what this dream means. After that, I
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: can begin to examine the dream. Starting off an interpretation
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: with beginner's mind in this way helps to cultivate necessary
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: openness and freedom from the constraints of familiar frameworks. Making
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: friends with the dream maker as explored in the previous
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: chapter helps. Once we've done this, what do we do next?
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Three levels. Since dreams usually feature a combination of people, places,
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: and things, we'll begin here. Each of these elements was
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: chosen by the dream maker and exploring personal thoughts, memories,
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: and feelings about specific dream components can help us understand
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: their symbolic significance. In addition, some dream images, let's say flashlight, office, shoe,
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: benefit from stepping into explanation and factual functions. Lastly, some
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: dreams contain universally meaningful images such as tree, wheel, or fire.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Such images require us to look for parallels in religion, art, myth,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: and fairy tale. This adds up to three levels of
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: meaning to Plum when considering a dream component. Personal associations,
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: factual explanations, and archetypal amplifications. A personal association is just
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: what it sounds like, individual experience, memory, and feeling connected
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: to a dream image, such as a dog. Such associations
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: can range from fond memories of a childhood pet to
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: dog-related trauma. A factual explanation provides description and function. A
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: dog is a four-legged domesticated animal commonly kept as a pet, guard,
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: or hunting partner. Archetypal amplification is Jung's method of applying mythic, cultural,
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: and symbolic similarities to universal human images. Cerberus, a three-headed dog,
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: guarded the gates of hell. And in ancient Egypt, the
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: dog-headed god Anubis ruled over mummification and the afterlife. If
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: you've been thinking about joining Dream School, now is the time.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: We're offering 10% off until December 31st. Dream School is
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: a unique online course that offers you access to the
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: inner world of knowing, possibility, and imagination. Presented by the
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: three of us, this year-long program provides the space, knowledge,
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: and guidance that lets you reach within and access the
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: secrets of the inner self that appears each night in
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: your dreams. It's an affirming community of fellow travelers, each
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: on an individual inner adventure. Join us in an adventure
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: to wholeness through understanding your dreams, the little hidden door
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: in the innermost and most secret recesses of soul.
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: So what I like about this chapter, I like them all,
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: but this one is in keeping with the mission of
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: our book, which is to show you and teach you
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: how to work with your dreams, not just read about
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: the theory, but how to actually do it. This is
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: something that everybody can do. When you have a dream,
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: you can write down your associations, your personal experiences with
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: that person or a pet or a setting or any
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: kind of an item, the car you were riding in.
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: Everybody can do that. We can all explain something. We
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: can all explain what a car is or what a
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: shoe is or what an office is. And then we
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: can all wonder and muse on whether and if and
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: where there's a kind of taproot down into an archetypal level.
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: And even something which is cited in this chapter, even
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: something as mundane and ordinary as a bread maker that
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: you keep on your countertop and never use, or maybe
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: you got it for a wedding present. and it's somewhere
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: in the pantry. Even that has an archetypal root because
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: bread is the staff of life. And we may have
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: it in a machine on a countertop today, but it
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: has always been something that was done by hand with
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: grain that was grown nearby. And it still has that
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: kind of ancient, universal, symbolic significance.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: These three levels of working with an image are ubiquitous.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: It's very common to us if we've participated in a
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: dream group or perhaps we've even watched some YouTube videos.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: But there's something that Jung is doing which is really
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: profound by asking all of us to move from the
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: personal to the universal. It actually changes something inside of us.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: It expands our understanding of the image that was given
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: to us with great specificity by the dream maker. So
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: the personal association allows the image to be rooted in
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: to the life that we are currently leading. The factual
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: explanation allows the image to gain a little bit more
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: depth in a way that we couldn't really argue with,
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: because it has to do often with something that just
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: is so. For instance, if we use the idea of
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: the bread maker, we learn a few things about bread
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: makers that we just didn't know, but is interesting and
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: could be interesting as a psychological metaphor. When we tap
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: that into, as Deb was saying, you see, I just
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: called her young, so you know the level with which
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: I regard Deb there. That's fine. Deb Young, as the
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: staff of life, then we are taking that very personal
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: level of the psyche and we are linking it into
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: the universal. And what that does is it allows us
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: to reconceptualize that part of the psyche by showing us
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: that it and we can be so much more than
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: what we thought a moment ago. And when we tap
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: into the great oceanic level of the image, we can
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: then come back to the individual life and reimagine a
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: psychological moment. That sounds all very lofty. And yet, all
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: of that is held, all of that alchemy is held
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: in the three little common steps that we put in
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: our cookbook.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: So to speak. Yeah, thanks, Joseph. I love how you
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: kind of set that up because you're right, like the
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: purpose of the book really is to give you access
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: to this incredible mystery and depth that you just described
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: so well. But we tried to break out the steps
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: so that they're really, really doable. We had lots and
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: lots of dreams, by the way. I just grabbed one.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: So for example, just to say, Jung didn't specifically talk
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: about explanation, but a lot of people since Jung have
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: I think it's a pretty common thing. It's certainly not
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: our innovation to wonder about function and explanation. But I
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: think what we did do was really kind of make
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: it explicit and codify it and help you understand how
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: to apply that. So what we've done throughout the book
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: is we have these things called keys. And the keys
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: are essentially little prompts. that help you apply these insights
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: to your dreams. So I'm going to give you an
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: example for explanation, actually, so that you can see what
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: we mean. So the key for explanation reads like this.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Explain a dream element using a common definition. Describing what
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: a dream element is and what it does can reveal
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: the dream maker's metaphorical intent. Consider the following questions. Who
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: is this person or what is this object? Describe it
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: as if you were telling an alien from another planet
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: about the person or thing. What is the function of
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: this object or person? What role does this person play?
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: What is this object used for? Does etymology throw additional
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: light on a word's meaning? Do you notice any wordplay
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: or double entendres? How might any of these additional shades
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: of meaning contribute to a symbolic understanding of the person
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: or object? Why did the dream maker pick this particular
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: person or object? How does this relate to something going
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: on in your life right now? So when you're using
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: the keys, you can simply pick one and kind of
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: work through those steps with your dream to see what
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: comes up. Right.
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: And this kind of thing, the prompts, the keys to understanding, unlocking,
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: get it? The meaning of your dreams. Slow us down.
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: Especially something like explanation is a really great example because
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: we tend to think we know exactly what it is.
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: I know what a bread maker is.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: I was on a bus. Why? Everybody knows what a
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: bus is. So if you go to the key it
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: will slow you down. Exactly what is it? What's the function? Well,
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: it's a bus. It's not a train. It's not a bike.
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: It's not a car. And this will help you deepen
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: into something that you might be tempted to just gloss
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: over because it's so familiar.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: James Hillman wrote wonderfully about this dimension that because our
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: unconscious is connected to all points in space, the unconscious
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: has an intimate knowledge of the physical reality of objects,
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: even when the ego is not as aware of it.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: So bringing our waking mind up to speed with finding
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: out the facts about any image in the dream actually
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: connects us into that very objective level of the psyche.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Let's turn to the dream. So this is a 40-year-old
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: woman who is a stay-at-home mom, and here's the dream.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: I was in North Carolina and there were reports of
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: killer birds coming. I was very scared. Suddenly, I was
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: the pilot of a plane and I was concerned about
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: birds hitting the engine. There was also a big storm
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: coming and I was flying through dense dark clouds, many
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: of which were brown. The storm became the main concern,
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: not the birds, and for some reason I knew I
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: had to do a nosedive in order to get through
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: a cloud. I woke up extremely panicked. And she says
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: about context, I was visiting family in my home state
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: and the trip was difficult emotionally. My parents are older
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: and set in their ways. All of their emotional baggage
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: gets heavier and more pronounced as the years pass. While
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: I love being there, being with them is painful and
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: at times unbearable. On our way back to where we
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: currently lived, we passed through North Carolina. And there were
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: a ton of birds circling in the air above an
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: abandoned smokestack. When I saw the scene, it reminded me
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: of my dream. And she notes that the main feelings
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: were fear and panic. For associations, she says, I have
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: no connection to North Carolina, apart from having to drive
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: through it when getting to and from my home state. Birds,
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: she says, no connection. Planes, she says, I do often
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: dream I'm in a plane or a space shuttle or
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: a ride at some sort. And she notes that she
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: loves thunderstorms. So this, I'll just sort of start off.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: I think that, you know, she says she has no
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: connection with birds. And one of the things that she
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: might do if you don't have a personal connection with
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: something is to use the key, for example, for explanation.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: What is this? Or for amplification. The key for amplification
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: helps you figure out how to link this to archetypal material.
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: And so, for example, what about birds archetypally? Well, birds
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: are often associated with spirit in many different cultures. Birds
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: are kind of intermediaries between the above and the below.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: They can kind of travel between the realms.
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: I think those are really good examples of how to
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: use the keys. And what can also help is the
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: use of a dream symbol dictionary, which is not the
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: same as some of those books that just sort of say,
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: you know, if you dream of this, it means that.
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: But the one that we like a great deal is
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: the book of symbols. It has a big hand on
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: the front of it. And it opens things up from
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: all kinds of mythological, literary, artistic levels. And that can
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: help you start to think a little bit about, huh,
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: maybe I do have more of a relationship with birds
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: than I thought at first. Because after all, the dream
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: maker has sent you this image, this very specific image,
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: and they are killer birds. And they are scary.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: So one of the keys that we also can use
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: to ask ourselves, is this a dream about the inner
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: or the outer world? And because this woman, from the
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: sense we have of her, she doesn't work as a
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: commercial pilot. Some people do. I mean, I don't make
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: any assumptions. Nor is this a situation that she's quite
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: literally been in. So the first thing that we can
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: discern is that This is about the inner world, which
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: then gives us the freedom to think symbolically about the dream.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: And that gives us a lot of latitude. Just as
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: Lisa was saying earlier, we can think of birds as
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: symbols and how they are connected archetypally to spirit and
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: sometimes even messages from spirit. So following that key and discerning,
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: this is about the inside of me. gives us the
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: latitude to expand to those other domains. If we would
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: toy with what Lisa had said, are there messages that
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: are coming to her in the unconscious which are frightening
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: to her, which give her information that she thinks might
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: kind of tank or crash the plane if they were
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: kind of to get into the mechanism of her psyche?
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: And these are just examples of how to apply a lens,
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: a key. There's much more in this dream than that.
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: And there always is much, much more in almost every dream.
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: But we're just going to illustrate with a few examples
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: of here's a dream, here's a key, here's a place
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: to start.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: So we have a 34-year-old lawyer, and here's the dream.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: I'm walking through a small and charming village leading to
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: a meadow. The grass and wildflowers smell sweet and become
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: taller than me as I continue to walk deeper into
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: the meadow. Then I reach a beachfront and see two
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: long black nets sticking out of the water like two
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: Loch Ness monsters, their heads with sharp teeth or menacing.
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: I know I cannot even remotely win a fight against them,
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: and that they will inevitably tear me into pieces if
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: I come close. Yet I have a strong feeling that
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: I must confront them, that they are truth and clarity,
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: and that if I go back into the village, I'll
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: live in denial. Yet, I go back into the comforting village,
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: hugely disappointed in myself. For context, they write, I had
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: the dream when I was 22 and just moved to
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: the United States.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: I don't think we have any other associations for the stream,
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: but it's a really striking image. And obviously one of
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: those dreams that, you know, the streamer had it, she
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: had it, you know, 12 years ago or something, and
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: it's really stayed, stayed with her. So one of the
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: things that I think of with the stream is our,
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: our key for setting. So I'm going to read that
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: key and then we can maybe apply it. Pay attention
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: to the setting and initial situation. You hear us do
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: this all the time on the podcast. Note the setting
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: and initial situation in your dream, usually given in the
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: first sentence or two of a dream text. And so
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: here it says, I'm walking through a small and charming
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: village leading to a meadow. So that's our setting. These
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: will likely provide important clues as to the dream's agenda.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Dream settings provide an immediate sketch of the psychological landscape.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: You might consider the following questions. Does the setting point
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: to a domain that tells you what aspect of your
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: life the dream is speaking to? Do you have a
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: personal association to the dream setting? Can you use explanation
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: or archetypal amplification to further understand the significance of setting?
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: And it goes on. I think there's a couple more.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: But yeah, what were you going to say, Deb?
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: I'm landing on another key.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: And, you know, I just thought, oh, this one would
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: be useful. No big, long research process here. And that
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: is the key that says, notice any transfer of emotion.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: That's great.
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: Is there a sudden shift in emotions during the dream?
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: And we go from the meadow to the monsters. If so,
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: ask yourself where it came from. Did it come from
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: another dream element? Is there a non-ego element? that expresses
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: a strong emotion in the dream, such as Loch Ness monsters.
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: Consider that it may be transferring feelings, deepening your range
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: of conscious emotion. Does the strong feeling present in the
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: dream correspond to feelings you've been aware of or have
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: been repressing? And does the dream make these feelings more
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: available to consciousness? And where are such feelings in your
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: life currently? Presumably, you do not live near a beachfront
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: with Loch Ness monsters. Although, but you get the idea.
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: And I just have to add as a footnote, I
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: am a true believer in the Loch Ness monster.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: Me too. Me too. Absolutely.
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: I want it to be there. Nessie. The mysteries of
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: the deep.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: I just found out that one of the recent graduates
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: at Interregional wrote his thesis on Bigfoot. I was like,
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: oh my God, that's so great.
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: I want to read that.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: Podcast episode, right? Okay.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, yes.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: But yeah, Deb, I love that you picked that key
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: up because it's perfect, right? Like there's a kind of
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: bucolic sensation in the beginning. There's a charming village. There's
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: this grassy meadow. And then everything changes. And it's like
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: the two monsters are do really transfer something, an awareness,
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: a feeling, an emotion to the dream ego who feels
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: very differently after that point. Right. So that's a great
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: example of like a little piece that these can pick.
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: So maybe this is a good segue to our chapter
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: on emotions. And I'll just read a little bit from that. Often,
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: when we wake from a dream, we are aware of
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: the emotions it stirs. Whether the dream wraps us in
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: a subtle, ineffable mood or engulfs us in a torrent
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: of feeling, dreams capture our interest and attention in part
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: because they provoke emotional reactions. And often, feeling is an
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: important key to unlocking meaning. Emotions in dreams are one
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: of the main tools the dream maker uses to uncover
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: hidden conflicts, bring to light repressed or unacknowledged contents, and
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: highlight self-deceptions. Feeling in dreams gives us a clue as
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: to the state of relationship between consciousness and unconscious. For example,
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: a dream in which you are full of righteous anger
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: at a store clerk who is charging you too much
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: and you are in righteous anger, I may show you
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: that you are devaluing an aspect of your unconscious life.
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: Dreams put us in touch with feelings we split off,
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: such as sadness. We may be able to feel sorrow
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: for the wounded animal in our dreams that we couldn't
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: express before, and allowing it into consciousness helps us stay
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: balanced and avoid one-sidedness. The dream maker uses emotion to
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: call the dreamer's attention to what's not known, has been
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: forgotten or exiled, and helps the dreamer recognize it consciously.
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: If the sentiment in the dream is mild, it's a
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: clue that something is a bit out of sync. Intense,
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: disturbing dreams jolt consciousness into paying attention. Something is seriously misaligned.
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: Feelings are a primary aspect of dreams, and greater awareness
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: of them, can help generate consciousness that serves individuation.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: That's great. I'm wondering if it makes sense to take
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: a look at some questions. We just got a first
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: batch of questions. One of the questions is, how are
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: the keys set up in the book? They're shared throughout
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: the text, and they're set off in what's a really
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: lovely way. The publisher did a really great job with this.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: So it says keys. Yeah, there's a little key. But
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: here it is. We've just been discussing the dream ego's
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: attitude is likely to be wrong. There are examples of
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: that that precede it. And then this kind of wraps
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: it up and also kind of turns it into a
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: little set off prompt. And there's also a journaling prompt
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: that there is on some of them. And then we
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: also include a list of all of them at the
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: back of the book. So in the second appendix, they're
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: all there just listed. That knocks out one question. Do
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: you guys want to pick a different question to answer?
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: Let's take one here. Are all dreams, quote, interpretable? I
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: write mine and find patterns, but some feel too scattered.
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: Maybe they're also meant to metabolize emotions, like sleep restores
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: the body.
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: But one of the things that I would also suggest
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: is if we have a dream that feels very scattered,
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: but at least we have a handful of sentences, I
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: will often ask people to separate out exactly what they
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: observed in the dream as separate from what the dream
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: ego is assuming is in the dream. Because often the
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: dream ego's intuitions or assumptions are adding information that is difficult.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: So in a very simple dream, if we take out
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: the ego assumptions, it could be as simple as, I
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: opened the door, I got in my car and saw
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: that the sky was purple. And sometimes if we just
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: pare it down to just the bare bones, which Jung
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: also did in the collected works. He would take a
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: dream fragment, a very tiny bit of a client's dream,
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: maybe just a sentence, and then he would use that
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: to explain his method. And that might help us make
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: sense of something. Okay, leaving the house, car, purple sky,
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: maybe I can anchor a few things on just the
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: little bits that are very concrete.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: You know, I I think some dreams are so chaotic
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: that it's difficult to make much sense of them. And
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: we do talk about this at one point in the dream. Yes,
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: we do. But like you said, if you can pull
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: out something concrete, Joseph, you can maybe start to work
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: with it. And sometimes that's even hard to do. And
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: then maybe it's just really important to pay attention to
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: the feeling tone, as you mentioned.
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: I wonder, too, for this... person writing in, which there
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: often is an assumption somehow that there's a decoding process
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: that you can engage in, that any of us can engage. in,
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: that has sort of a beginning and a middle and
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: an end. And then, ba-dum, we come up with a nice, good, clean, neat,
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: crisp answer and interpretation. And I think I'd like to
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: just invite all of us to steep in the dream,
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: take a look through the book, take a look at
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: the keys, live with the images, take note of your associations,
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: and see what kinds of meanings rise to the surface.
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: And it may not always be a dream that comes
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: out in rational, worded sentences. is something that makes immediate
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: sense to the ego.
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: And that's where the key about dealing with each image
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: discreetly can be helpful.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: If we even remember one bit, we have associations, explanations,
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: and amplifications. That can be very rich. And at the
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: very least, we get to absorb a little more of
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: the libido from the image, even if it isn't purely
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: rational at the moment.
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: Exactly. So all dreams give us something that will increase
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: our understanding and our relationship to the dream. Can I
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: take a little hop back on this chapter about emotions
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: and give us a pat on the back? All the
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: books that we bought, collected, read, etc., I did not
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: find a single book that had a chapter on emotions
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: and dreams. It's woven through because feelings and dreams, of course,
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: are so important. That's not unique to us. But what
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: is unique, I believe, is that we have devoted a
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: whole chapter to feelings and dreams. And they are important.
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: Dreams are affect images in many ways, images of our feelings.
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: feelings that we're not familiar with or don't understand. And
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: so I just wanted to highlight this feature of the book.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: So I'll just say something about that. When we were
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: drafting it, I kept on thinking, okay, like this is
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: a cookbook, right? We're like trying to actually teach people
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: how to do this. Or the other metaphor is when
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: you're trying to teach someone how to tie their shoes, like, right,
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: for you, tying your shoes is a totally unconscious process
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: at this point. You don't have to think about it.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: And In fact, it would be somewhat difficult to try
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: to describe to someone how to do it, especially in writing.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: And I know that when I hear a dream, I
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: always have to pay attention. And this is why if
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: you've ever sent a dream in on the podcast, you know,
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: one of the questions is, what were the emotions in
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: the dream? Whenever I'm working with someone at the dream,
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: it's like, well, what were the feelings in the dream?
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: It's very difficult for me to start to orient to
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: a dream until I know that. But I don't know
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: what I'm doing when I do that. It's just like
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: I'm just tying my shoe. I sort of told myself,
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: it's like, okay, guys, we've got to try to reverse
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: engineer this. Like, we all know this is important, but why?
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: What is the information we get from hearing an emotion
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: in a dream? So that's what we tried to do
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: with this chapter is like, okay, all right, the dream
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: ego is angry. What do we know about that? So
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: we really tried to break it down, make it so explicit,
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: make something that, make a process that's been implicit explicit
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: so that you can do it too for your own dreams.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: So that's what I think is really kind of special
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: about the book is the way that it turns something implicit,
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: what is kind of an intuitive process into hopefully something
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: like a cookbook. You can make it too in your kitchen.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: I'm going to take one more question if that's okay.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: So many great ones. Someone's asking, what were your career paths?
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: that led you to Jungian therapy?
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: I guess we all need to chirp in a little bit.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: I think we all came to be Jungians in a
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: serpentine way.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: As one does.
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: I was part of the drama club in high school.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: I had no idea what I wanted to do in college.
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: I said, what the heck? And I auditioned for a
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: bunch of fine arts programs, got into Carnegie Mellon University,
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: and soon found out that the industry of being a
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: performing artist was incredibly horrifying to me. I am a
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: remarkably stubborn person. And so I still went through, got
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: a BFA, and then started trying to become an actor.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: And I really was not particularly talented as an actor.
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: And there was one moment, when I was auditioning for
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: a commercial, And as you're in a line, you know,
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: and each person has to stand in front of the
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: camera and do whatever the director wants. And when I
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: got close enough to the camera, I realized what was
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: happening is everyone was being asked to dance with a
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: loaf of bread.
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: Wonder bread?
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: No, it was a local bakery in Baltimore or something.
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: And people were cradling it like a baby. Somebody else
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: was making out with it like it was their lover.
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: And I.
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: And then it was my turn to talk to a
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: loaf of bread. And I started pretending it was a football.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: And I treated it like it was a dog. And
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: like the level of just humiliation. It was like this
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: thing up inside of me. I drove home and I thought,
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: this is my life. So on the drive home, I thought,
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: This just isn't me. And other people I was watching
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: were really having a good time, by the way, with
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: the loaf of bread.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: Someone might enjoy that.
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: It's very playful. Anyway, so I did a real soul searching,
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: or perhaps that was happening underneath anyway. I'd been exposed
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: to the Alexander Technique, which is a kind of body-mind
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: movement therapy. Moved, trained for three years, and then spent
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: about 25 years doing movement therapy for using the Alexander Technique.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: And I wound up just by fate doing rehabilitative work
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: with injured classical musicians, which opened a whole sensitivity and
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: sensibility in my psyche and in my own body, just
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: connecting to my own physicality. And then when I was
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: in my 40s, I heard the call to go into
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: mental health work. I remembered being exposed to Jung when
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: I was in undergrad and thinking, one day I think
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: I'll be a Jungian because this guy is into everything
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: I'm into, which was a very myopic way of thinking
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: about it. And then I launched into kind of a
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: total midlife redesign, got a master's in social work so
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: that I could go into analytic training. And then here
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: we are today with the podcast and this wonderful book
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: and all of you. So what about the rest of you?
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: I know you all First of all, Joseph, just want
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: to put this out there. Okay. I think it would
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: be great fun if you feel comfortable, if we could
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: share your professional headshot for your acting days on our Instagram.
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: Oh, I will do that. I can dig it out. Okay, good. Yeah,
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: you got it. I'll do it.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: Deb, you're up.
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: Well, of course, as Joseph said so well, it's a
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: serpentine road. And You know, really starting an adult life
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: with marriage and children and wending my way into being
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: a special ed teacher and then a number of other
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: jobs in what is now colloquially called development or advancement,
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: which actually means fundraising for a couple of universities.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: And then I.
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: Hit the midlife phase. tritely named midlife crisis, I had
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: always kind of wanted to be a therapist. And we
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: had moved, and I was in the doldrums. And I
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: thought of everything that I could possibly do to make
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: my life a little better. And I went into therapy.
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: And that helped me say, well, if not now, when?
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: And if not me, who? and go back to school,
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: to graduate school, to get another master's degree, this time
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: in social work. And that led to Gestalt training, and
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: that led to a psychoanalytic training program in Westchester, New York.
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: And eventually, I found my way. I had been in
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: a Jungian seminar, and I said, well, okay. The darn
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: thing has just got me, has bitten me, and I
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: can't shake it loose. So, okay, here I go.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: And I know I've told this story before on the podcast,
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: but I'll try to tell it kind of briefly. I
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: was working in my 20s in international humanitarian assistance, and
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: I was in graduate school. And then I had my
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: Saturn return, which is I was 28 years old. And
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: I was sort of, you know, fell into a depression.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: And I used to go to this bookstore across Columbus
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: Avenue from my apartment in Manhattan. And I would go
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: down to the the basement of the bookstore and go
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: over to the psychology section. I was studying, I was
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: studying like international affairs at Columbia, right? But I was
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: going to the psychology self-help section. And there was this
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: book that was, it was called On the Way to
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: the Wedding by Linda Leonard. I didn't know anything about it,
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: but it just intrigued me. I'd pick the book off
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: the shelf. I'd open it to any page. I'd start
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: reading and then I'd cry. And then I'd be like,
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: I have 400 pages of reading. And you know, whatever,
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: whatever class I can't, I can't buy this book. I
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: put it back on the shelf, but I kept on
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: doing that until one day I did it happened again.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: I started crying, put it back on the shelf across
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: the street. There was like this little new age gift shop,
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: literally across the street that had about 12 books in
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: the back. The name of the gift shop, by the way,
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: was the hero's journey. I kid you not. This was 1990.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: What was this? 1993, maybe. So, and in the back
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: of the gift shop, they had this book. So I
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: was like, all right, that is, I didn't know the
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: word for it at that time, but I recognized it
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: as a meaningful coincidence, which I now know is a synchronicity.
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: And I thought, okay, okay, okay, I'll buy the book.
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: So I bought the book, took it back up to
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: my apartment. It was a signed copy. I didn't even really,
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: really understand what it meant to be, what it meant
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: to be a Jungian at that point. I had had
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: like minimal exposure, but I started reading the book. And
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: by the time the book was done, I was like, Oh,
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: I wonder what it'd be like to do this. And
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: it took me a few years to get to it,
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: but it didn't go away. And I, I have the
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: copy of that book right over there. And of course,
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: Linda Leonard was kind enough to write one of the,
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: the blurbs for the book. So it's full circle.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: It's been, it's really nice. So So yes, so I
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: too had to then go back and get a graduate degree,
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: another graduate degree in social work and then to do
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: Jungian training.
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: Okay, here's a question. When someone appears in dreams, how
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: do you know if the person is an aspect of
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: yourself or as themselves? For example, I often dream about
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: my sister-in-law with whom I have issues in waking life.
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: I think Jung often asked us to consider how often
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: and how deep the relationship was and how current it was.
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: So if the sister-in-law is somebody who you're engaging with
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: very regularly, day after day or very frequently, then the
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: dream could be suggesting that the unconscious mind or the
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: dream-maker had something to say about your relationship with the
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: outer person. What do you think, Deb?
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: I'm going to find myself a key.
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: And I can tell you right now, the key is
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: on page 39.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: Right on.
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: Or in the appendix, which is where I looked, it's.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: On page 297. And it says, dreams are usually about
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: the inner world.
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: Determining whether the dream is about the inner or the
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: outer world helps us orient to the dream's meaning, in
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: a way in which to choose the following questions are helpful.
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: Does the dream feature unknown people or people peripheral to
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: your life? Does the dream feature someone well-known to you,
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: like a sister-in-law, who appears dramatically different, which she didn't say?
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: Perhaps the dream figure is older, younger, behaves bizarrely, or
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: has unfamiliar features. If the answers to these questions are yes,
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: the dream is most likely commenting on the inner world.
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: In this case, you should assume all dream elements are
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: images of aspects of your own psyche. And to add
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: to that, one of the rules of thumb is most
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: dreams are about your inner world. But the dream maker,
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: in another chapter about the dramatic structure, the dream maker
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: is staging a little play. And he has to choose
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: for the cast of characters, settings and people and other
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: elements of the play that are familiar with you, for you.
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: So the sister-in-law is part of the cast of characters
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: that can show you something almost always about your inner world,
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: symbolizing something about you.
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: Okay. I sent you guys a dream and I will.
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: Read it. The dreamer is a 28-year-old woman who works
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: as a restaurant server, pet sitter, and yoga teacher. And
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: here's the dream. My dad remarries. I'm present for the wedding,
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: which I believe is in a high-rise building. I have
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: responsibilities in the ceremony, something involving directing the audience. My
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: dad carries a different energy in the dream than he
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: does in waking life. He is mature, perhaps more fit.
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: I'm pondering how it is that my dad is remarrying,
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: but happily go along with it. Though I don't remember
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: meeting her, his bride carries an esteemable, queenly energy. There
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: is an apprehension of waiting for her to appear. This
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: is such a lovely dream. Okay, she says, for context,
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: the dreamer says, I've just turned 28. Continuing to focus,
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: on stabilizing my mental and emotional well-being through exercise, recommitting
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: to sobriety and meditation practices. I'm also slowly but deeply
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: cleaning my apartment. Oh, feel free to come help me
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: if you like. My hope is that if I feel
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: well and grounded enough within myself, Then I can begin
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: to consider the overwhelming task of choosing a career path. Ah, yes.
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: Main feelings in the dream. Apprehension. Mild surprise at the
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: elegance of the event. Confusion. Excitement of welcoming in something new.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: And then she says, having had this dream on Friday
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: the 15th. So that was just a few days ago.
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: The dream actually reminds me of the rehearsal dinner scene
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: in Freaky Friday. In it, Jamie Lee Curtis undergoes a
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: psychic change that allows her and her daughter to return
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: back to their respective bodies after having been cursed for
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: their lack of gratitude, presence, and understanding for one another. So, gosh,
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many. I'm thinking of all the
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: different keys that could apply here. One is the one
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: that you just read, Deb, about sort of, you know,
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: inner world and outer world? And is this about the
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: inner world or the outer world? And with a father,
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: sometimes it can go either way or potentially be both.
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: Well, what I have landed on is the image of
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: the wedding, which is not only archetypal, but we have
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: In each chapter, there is a special little section that's
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: just boxed off in a few paragraphs. And on the
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: section on anima and animus, we have a box featuring
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: wedding dreams. And so that would be a place you
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: might start to say, huh, what does it mean? that
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: in this dream there is a wedding. My father is
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: marrying a woman that carries a queenly energy, and you
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: are waiting for her to appear. So what does this
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: mean is going on? What kind of wedding is being
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: imaged in the dreamer's psyche? This is not necessarily a
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: linear process, although we recommend starting with associations, explanation, and amplification.
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: But dreams are famously not linear processes.
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: The other key to me that seems important is in
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: that dream to look at complexes, that there's a way
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: in which we can ask if any of the images
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: in the dream are related to any of the psychological complexes.
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: Explain the complex.
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: So dreaming about our father or our mother is often
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: a good example because we have hundreds of thousands of
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: memories of our parents. So let's say the father. The
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: father is a person in your space, but also is
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: a universal archetype because every human being requires a father
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: and a mother to be born. And so as we
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: accumulate hundreds of thousands of memories, in this case of dad,
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: they all group together inside of our psychology, and they
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: coalesce into a character. That character, in many ways, could
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: behave like our biological father, particularly at certain periods of time.
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: Also can be, you know, very different. Often we call
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: something a complex because it's interfering with our day-to-day functioning.
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: It upsets us, confuses us in some way. So it
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: seems really important that in this dream, the dreamer remarks that, huh,
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: this version of the father seems more mature.
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: It's kind of.
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: Got his stuff together a little bit better. So using
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: the key about is this a complex could suggest something
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: good is kind of happening about the father complex, which
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: could portend maybe my issues around authority have gotten a
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: little more grounded, a little less provoked.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: And not surprisingly, there's a key about complexes.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: There's also, and Deb, you were talking about shadow. Shadow's
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: in this dream too, right? Because we have a same-sex figure.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: So the key is aspects of yourself that you might
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: not feel comfortable acknowledging can show up as a same-sex figure.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: And of course, this would be an example of a
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: very positive shadow figure, this new bride who has queenly
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: energy and she's really excited to see her.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: So there's so much in this dream.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: And I feel like we could go on talking about it.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: Dreams are rich, but it also helps us in trying
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: to understand a dream that there are so many lenses
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: that we can use to get going. I often think
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: of the chapters and the keys and so on, like
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: those lenses at the optometrist's when they click a lens
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: down and say, is this better? And what about this?
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: And what about this? And you wind up with five
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: or six lenses. There are many, many ways to start
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: to get into a dream. And this dream has everything
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: in it. It has complexes and archetypal wedding and anima
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: figure in the bride and shadow. And so it goes.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: Joseph, do you want to read a little bit from
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: the shadow chapter, maybe from the beginning.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: So chapter eight, shadow, the inner exile. The shadow is
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: a living part of the personality and therefore wants to
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: live with it in some form. It cannot be argued
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: out of existence or rationalized into harmlessness.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: C.J.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: Young.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: In 1886, when Carl Jung was 11 years old, Robert
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: Louis Stevenson awoke from a dream with an idea for
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: a story that explored the relationship between good and evil.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: And the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: was born. Now part of the cultural lexicon, the tale
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: colorfully depicts the dynamic that Jung would later call shadow.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: The universal inclination to distance oneself from personality traits deemed unacceptable.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: The cultured and aristocratic Dr. Jekyll exemplifies persona, the face
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: aligned with conventional expectations and social mores that we present
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: to the world. Everything that must be denied to present
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: this proper face gets disowned and can only be expressed
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: by Mr. Hyde, the shadow part of the personality. Mr.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: Hyde can do and be things that would never be
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: acceptable for Dr.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: Jekyll.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: The two act together, allowing the single person to live
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: out his role in polite society and get his baser
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: appetites met. And this Jekyll-Hyde dynamic is something that we
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: see in the news particularly often. I was recently watching
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: the Martha Stewart documentary on Netflix right now, and we
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: mentioned that in the book, that She, of course, presented
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: herself as this paragon of domesticity and beauty and order.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: And then she got caught up in a bunch of
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: stock exchange problems. And what was interesting in the documentary
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: is she was far more complex in many additional ways.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: But it really helps us understand that We can have
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: a very cultivated, particularly if one works in the public media,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: a cultivated public face, and there is a churning life
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: underneath that, which in one sense gives us life force,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: but could be subject to a lot of criticism. So
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: in dreams, this can show up as characters that we
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: feel very judgmental about, We have very negative feelings about
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: the characters. God, I can't stand this person in my dream.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: Maybe I know them in real life or I've seen
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: them in the news, something like that. And they can
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: also show up as kind of monsters that are chasing us,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: something really ugly and horrible that's running after us. And
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: it represents a part of our personality that we are
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: working hard to not know about. And the dream maker says,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: you're going to encounter this sooner or later, no matter
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: how far you run away. And then we have dreams
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: like we're running in peanut butter and the monster behind us,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: which could be the monster of excessive credit card debt,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: by the way, is running behind us, getting just ready
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: to grab us and introduce itself to us. And so
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: one of the keys deals with How do we identify
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: a shadow element in a dream? And so we might ask,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: does the same sex figure appear in your dream? If
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: it does, consider that that image might represent shadow qualities
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: that you repress or deny. What does the dream say
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: about those qualities? Does the person with those qualities achieve
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: something successfully? Is there a person in your dream from
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: your waking life whom you don't like or find irritating?
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: How have you disowned or disallowed the qualities that most
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: irritate you in that person, and what qualities might you
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: need to claim and integrate for yourself?
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: I also like... your image of the shadow, Joseph, as
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: feral animals. And sort of toss that ball to you
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 4: to build that out for our listeners here.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: Sometimes what we put in our shadow is just plain
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: old instinct. And there is a kind of wild part
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: of us that we, of course, see in children. Even
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: if we're adults now, you might notice that You know,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: your three-year-old will turn around and bite their sibling like
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: an angry chihuahua and even draw blood or there might
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: be some punching or, you know, you never leave your
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: three-year-old alone with a hammer in the house because you
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: do not know what they're going to go swinging at
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: with great gusto, by the way. So even when we're
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: very young, we have to be socialized. So many of
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: these very primal energies have to get pushed down or
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: pushed away so that we can live in polite society.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: And one of the ways I imagine it is the culture,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: for the most part, banishes parts of ourselves into the forest.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: And sometime, often in midlife, we'll begin to have dreams
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: of these figures coming back to us and knocking on
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: the door. But when your lost capacity to be aggressive
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: comes back to you and you open the door, it
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: shows up with like twigs in its hair and like
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: mud dried, swiped over the cheek and a wild look
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: in its eyes. And maybe it's wearing a garment made
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: of moleskin or something like that. And it seems very
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: primal in part because Our instincts or other disowned parts
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: have been trying to make their way in the forest
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: of the unconscious and they haven't had the benefit of
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: polite society, which the other parts of your personality have
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: had the benefit of. So they show up in their
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: uncivilized versions, which doesn't mean they can't be very, very
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: helpful once we kind of clean them up and teach
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: them a couple of table manners.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm thinking back to the person who submitted a
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 4: dream a bit ago about a sister-in-law. And this is so,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 4: so common that there is a figure in the dream
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 4: that's the same sex as the dream ego, who is
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 4: an irritating colleague or relative. And it's exactly what you said,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 4: the shadow is the inner exile like an animal that's
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 4: been turned loose and becomes feral in the forest. And
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: of course, there are keys to this.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: There's a key for that.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 4: There's a key for all kinds of things. So that dream,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 4: we didn't touch on shadow, but of course, it's there.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: So there are so many redundancies and different lenses that
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: will overlap and get you to the essential meaning of
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 4: what you need to know.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: Right. It's definitely not linear. It's something to, as we
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: always say, cause I kind of circumambulate and you know,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: the thing about using the keys is like, you don't
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: have to use all 69, just start somewhere. And usually
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: in like, I find like five or six, I'm like, Oh,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: I see something I hadn't seen.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: So, yeah.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: So speaking of dreams, I just sent you guys another dream.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: So many, so many, so many good dreams are coming through.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: So this is a dream from a 30-year-old woman who
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: is a social worker. Yay, social workers. And here's the dream.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: I saw a spider. Then it seemed to turn into
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: a turtle and I wanted to save it. And I
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: put it in a bucket with water and went in
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: the car with my mom and brother. My mom was
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: concerned the way my brother was driving and I was
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: as well. I looked down and the turtle had grown
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: and I gave it to my mom to keep in
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: her pool. So one of the things that comes up
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: for me about this dream is I'm really curious about
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: the associations to the brother. So what about the fact
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: that the brother's driving is, you know, is concerning, you know, again,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: I'd be curious about whether this might be commenting on
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: the outer relationship, you know, something in the dynamic with
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: the relationship with the brother possibly, or that, you know,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: that the brother is sort of symbolic of something in
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: the inner world. There's some lovely stuff with spiders and turtles.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: There's a little box in the book about animal dreams
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: because animal dreams are so prevalent and so important to us.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: And I love the fact that the spider turns into
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: a turtle. So If you think about sort of biogenetically,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: whatever is more distant, like an insect is more evolutionarily
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: distant from us than a reptile. So as the dreamer
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: has some relationship with this content, it gets a little
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: closer to consciousness. And there's a willingness to move toward
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: it and take care of it.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 4: I'm also looking at this through the chapter on dramatic
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: structure of the dream. We want to know what dream
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 4: elements may be symbolically with all the personal associations and
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: explanations and amplifications. But we also want to know what
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 4: is happening in the dream. What is the story? And
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 4: here is the story that says a spider turns into
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 4: a turtle. And I wanted to save it, put it
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 4: in a bucket in the car. Mom's concerned with how
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 4: the brother's driving, but the turtle has grown. And I
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 4: gave it to my mom to keep in her pool.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: And in this chapter, one of the things we look at,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 4: one of the many things, is does the dream ego,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 4: how does the dream ego orient to other action in
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 4: the film and other figures in the in the dream
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 4: film theater play. And here, our dream ego is moving toward.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: She wants to save it, and then it winds up
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 4: under the care of the mother, and it can live
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: in a pool. Sometimes the dream ego moves against and
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 4: may fight something. And sometimes the dream ego may move
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: away and go and hide, for example. So here's a
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: story arc where our dream ego is moving toward a
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 4: shadow content, a number of shadow contents. A spider, turtle, brother, mom.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: From the standpoint, again, of the dramatic story is in
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: the idea of the Aristotelian story. theater, which is where
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: we get this idea of a story arc, there is
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: often something called a peripeteia, which is an unexpected reversal
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: that can be really interesting. And that starts right in
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: the beginning of the dream. A spider, which she thinks
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: of as rather scary, has miraculously turned into a turtle,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: which she thinks of as very productive. So right at
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: the beginning, something really interesting has changed inside of the
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: psychological environment. There might be a lot of interesting questions
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: about what the spider represents, but even in a general way,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: has something scary inside of you or in your life
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: suddenly taken on a different level of meaning? become interesting
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: in a way or perhaps may have had a positive
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: value for you that you couldn't see early on.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go to the questions. We got a
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: bunch more questions. There's a couple here that I think
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: are related, which one person says, how do you recommend
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: using the book? Do you take one dream and use
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: it through the book? And another person says, I've carefully
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: written down just about every dream I've had since 2008. Oh,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: my goodness. But I haven't intentionally worked with them. Any
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: tips for starting to break into what has become a
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: daunting tome? So I'm going to sort of combine those
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: two questions, I think. And then I'd love to hear
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: what you guys think, too. So first of all, I
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: would say, you know, the way to work with the
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: book is probably just to read it first, just sort
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: of read it over. But then you've got the keys
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: and they're all in the back. And what I would
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: recommend doing is just taking a dream, a recent dream.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: I think it's much better to work with a dream
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: that you've had in the past week that still has
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: some energy, that still feels alive. Because you know what?
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: Dreams comment on our outer lives. So sometimes people come
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: into analysis and all they want to do is tell
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: me their dreams. And eventually I have to say, you know,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: I love dreams too, but I need to know what's
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: going on in your life. Otherwise, how do we know
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: what the dreams are commenting on? The dreams are commenting
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: on how you are moving through your life. And yes,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: they're often commenting on what's going on in the inner world,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: but it's going on in the inner world as you
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: attempt to adapt to the outer world. So it matters
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: to kind of know what the context is. And that's
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: going to be fresh for you if you pick a
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: recent dream. So pick a recent dream, maybe one that
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: has a little bit of energy. And then I would literally,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: I think it's always good to start with personal associations.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: So there's that key. And then just flip through and,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: you know, put your finger, like putting your finger on
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: a globe, just find another key and apply it and see.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: And if that one doesn't work, okay, go on to
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: another one. And just kind of maybe go through, I
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: don't know, 10 keys and see what kind of comes through.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: And you can do it as a journaling exercise. You
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: cannot work that way. If you're a prolific dreamer, if
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: you're dreaming every night, you probably can't work that way.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, I can't. I'm too busy. I don't have
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: an hour every day to work on my dreams. What
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: I'll often do is maybe on the weekend, I'll kind
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: of look back and see which dream really stood out.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: And then I might do some journaling with that dream
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: or some active imagination. So It is a sifting process.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: You can't work with every dream. But pick something recent.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: Pick something that has a little bit of juice. Do
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: you guys have anything else to add about that?
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: I agree with you, Lisa. I also find that a
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: lot of times when people bring a dream in, I
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: ask a lot of clarifying questions. And the keys will
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: ask you clarifying questions. And if it's a dream I
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: had when I was 20, I can't pull it back.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to remember how old I felt in
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 3: the dream or what I was wearing or what time
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: of day the dream was set in, which all might
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: be interesting to know. So working with a dream that
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: you've had in the last, maybe even up to three days,
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: it's going to allow you to continue to pull back
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: interesting nuances about the dream, which the keys will kind
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: of tickle your thinking about, tickle your imagination. It might
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: make something visible.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: I'm just looking at some of these other questions.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: I'll jump in quickly. Someone asks, what about a dream
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: figure with attributes who wish you had? Is that also shadow?
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: And I don't know who coined this term of golden shadow.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: I don't think it was Jung. It was one of
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: the post-Jungians. Talked about how depending on the family we're
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: raised in, or perhaps the culture we're in, there are talents.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: attributes that we have, which really could help us, help
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: us achieve our life mission or help our, I don't know,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: incarnate the self in some fashion, but somehow it's been disowned.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: It's had to be hidden away. So sometimes later in life,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 3: we'll discover a shadow figure, which at first is kind
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: of threatening. I had this experience myself. I had a
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: shadow figure that kept breaking into my home and it
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 3: turned out to be an actuary. It was like this
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: thing that was going to really hurt me. And basically,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: it was like, you know, do you have any financial
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: intelligence anywhere hidden away in your noggin? Which I didn't.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: But for whatever reason, I found that really threatening. based,
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: I suppose, on a number of speculations I have. And
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: it was really helpful for that fellow to go and
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: take a walk and give me a good talking to.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: But I think we started out that chapter on shadow
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 4: because dreams with shadow are often really unpleasant and, you know,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 4: like the Jekyll and Hyde thing, like, oh my gosh,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 4: am I like that? But shadow is really anything that
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 4: you have not been able to integrate into consciousness. So
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 4: it might be a dream figure that is pretty forthright
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 4: and assertive and pushes to the head of the line
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: and says, I'm going first. And that at first seems
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 4: really negative, like, oh, what an awful pushy person. And
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 4: that's my colleague at work, and she's just like that. Versus,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 4: wait a minute, what about, is it depicting in a
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 4: way an attribute that you could use for your own
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 4: assertiveness and putting yourself forward, taking more initiative, confronting somebody
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 4: who's a little difficult? And Jung says 99% of shadow
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 4: is pure gold.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: And the other thing that's interesting about shadow is that
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: shadow is something that at least for one moment in
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: your lived life, you know, put its toe out there,
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: poked its head out. So it's something that when it
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: comes back to us, it's not totally alien, which is
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: why we get disturbed about it. It was once known...
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: even just on a feeling level. And then we got
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: a really strong message that no way, Jose, that's going
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: out of here. Unlike the anima animus, which also represents
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 3: hidden potential, but anima animus represents potential you have never
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 3: even suspected, has never shown itself to you before. And
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 3: so it is brand new. And in that way, fascinating
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: and rather miraculous and also seems much further away from us.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: That's a great distinction.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: Here's a question which we get asked very frequently and
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: I think is really dealt with in the book beautifully.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: Couldn't the same-sex figure be her anima instead of her shadow,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: considering that women and men have both anima and animus?
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: And this is a a topic people can get really
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: hung up on when they read Jung's writings about anima animus,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: which are really revelations of his own experience and his clients.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: We can transcend whether or not the anima or the
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 3: animus should look a certain way when we really understand
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: what it is. And when we understand that the self
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: has an image of you in your fullness, with all
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: the possibilities that you have in full bloom. And when
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: the self is looking at you, it knows the parts
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: of your capacities that are still latent, that are hidden away.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: And that pocket of possibilities is then captured in a
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: symbolic form, and it's offered to you. We don't know
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: why the dream maker puts it into a certain gender
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 3: or sex or makes it look a certain way. That
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 3: has something to do with how the ego identifies itself.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 3: But what's most important is however it presents, it's going
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: to feel very fascinating. It's going to hold an enormous
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 3: amount of promise. It's something that we are likely to
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 3: really want to get as intimate with as possible. And
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 3: as we engage it over time, we should have some
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: evidence that new unexpected potentials begin to emerge in the personality.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 3: And however that looks in your dream, that's secondary to
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 3: its impact on your development.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: I just want to pick up on that, Joseph. I
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: think that's a great description. And, you know, just one
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: clarification on the question, though. It's not that everyone... Every
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: woman has an anima and an animus. I hear this
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: conflation a lot or that every man and men have
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: an anima, women have an animus. And it does, Joseph,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: I think what you said a minute ago was so
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: great and so clarifying that shadow is unknown potential, but
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: it's unknown potential that you've had some contact with before
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: and learned that it wasn't any good.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: The undeveloped potential that's represented often by an animus, in
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: the case of me, for example, would be something I've
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: never seen before. So I really love, you know, Joseph,
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: how we parsed this in the book. And that was really,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: you know, came from you, is it's an image of
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: your undeveloped potential. And that the psyche, you know, often
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: picks the contrasexual because it's an image of something that's
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: totally other. that you haven't become familiar with before. So
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: that's just a beautiful kind of clarifying way. It was
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: really helpful to me.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 3: And it's not like you choose what your anima or
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 3: animus is going to look like. The dream maker chooses it.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: And so the other thing is just because I know
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 3: people can have strong feelings about it, it may be
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 3: that humanity will evolve in some way that we couldn't predict.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 3: And the anima animus will begin to be imaged in
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 3: some new and fascinating way. And when that happens, we
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: hope that we'll understand it by virtue of its effect
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 3: on the ego. So it's not so much that it
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 3: has to look one way or the other. It's more
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: that we look at images such as they present themselves,
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: and then we try to categorize them for our own
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 3: use so that we can try to get into what's
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: being asked of us. And again, We don't choose how
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 3: things look in our dreams. That's something that the self decides.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, so I sent you guys another dream.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 4: So here's the dream. And she's a woman who is
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 4: 46 and a psychotherapist. I am in an area I
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 4: don't know, but feels vaguely familiar. A stranger I walk
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 4: past in a group pulls out a knife and demands
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 4: my phone. I give it to him and he says,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 4: I can have it back if I know the right words.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 4: He is laughing at me. And she says she's working
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 4: hard to let go of unhealthy habits and that she
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 4: was scared. And what comes up immediately for me here
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 4: is a fairy tale. So if something jumps out at
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 4: you from a dream, it could be the feeling that
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 4: you had in the dream. It could be a shadow figure.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 4: It could be something you associate to in your personal life.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 4: But any point of entry will do. And the fairy
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 4: tale that this reminds me of is Rumpelstiltskin, where she
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 4: makes the bargain. She has to spin straw into gold,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 4: and a little man comes forward to help her do this.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 4: And she gives him a necklace, and then she gives
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 4: him something else. And finally, she has nothing left to
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 4: give him in exchange for the magic that he can achieve.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 4: And so she has to promise him her firstborn baby.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 4: And then the story goes that she can get out
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 4: of having to keep this awful promise if she can
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 4: figure out what his name is. So she gets three
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 4: nights or three tries, and finally she sends out some spies.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 4: I guess things weren't so different then than they are now.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 4: And she learns his name, and it's Rumpelstiltskin. So what
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 4: is the magic word?
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: That's a great amplification. Beautiful, beautiful. And it's great, too,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: because that to me, I love I love Rumpelstiltskin.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 4: I know you do.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 4: You would have told it better, too.
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: No, no, no. But Rumpelstiltskin is a great example of
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: the negative animus fairy tale. And in fact, we have
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: a key about the negative animus fairy tale. Dark, dangerous,
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: or daunting opposite sex figures may be images of animus.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: Notice how they appear and what your relationship is to them.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: And one of the things about it is, is he
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: a paradoxical figure? Is he asking you to grow even
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: while he's attacking you?
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: Bingo.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: So I think in this dream, Joseph, what did you
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: want to offer about that?
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: That he takes the phone, but then just as you
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: were saying with Rumpelstiltskin, there's a challenge. There's a challenge
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 3: to grow. I also love, in a sense... that the
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: animus takes the phone because the phone is the thing
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 3: that's putting words into us rather than pulling words out
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: of us. And it can put us in a kind
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 3: of hypnotic, overly dreamy, receptive state. And so the shadow says, no,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 3: you need to be the speaker. You need to have words.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 3: I would also suggest that for Jung, the highest expression
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: of the inner masculine is connected to the logos. which
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: is the archetype of the divine word. So for the
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 3: masculine figure to say, you must find words, and words
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 3: that will allow you to reclaim what has been taken
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 3: from you. On that level, the dream is, even though
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 3: it's scary, it's a beautiful, profound demand on a person's life.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: That's beautiful. That's great. We're winding down. We have a
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: few more minutes. I want to mention something else. You
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: can help us by buying the book and giving everyone
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: on your holiday gift list copies. And it would be
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: so helpful if you could write us a review on
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: Amazon or Goodreads.
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 3: As you know, unfortunately, we are so influenced by these algorithms,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 3: these damn algorithms and everything that's on the Internet. So
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 3: when any of you are kind enough to review something
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: on Goodreads or Amazon, it tells the great algorithmic gods
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 3: of the computer world that they should introduce this book
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 3: to other people who are searching for ideas similar to
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 3: the ones that we have. So I wish it wasn't
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: so important, but honestly, just in terms of reality, it
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 3: really is... tremendously important. And so your help that way
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 3: has an enormous impact on getting these ideas in front
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 3: of people.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: I always like to think it's sort of like, this
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: is our baby and we want to help it have
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: a good life in the world. So your reviews will
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: help that. And I do think that I really humbly
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: contest that the book is going to be great use
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: to many people who are interested in working with their dreams.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: So should we take maybe a last question or two?
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: We have about eight minutes or so.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 3: I thought that there was a good question. Someone had
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 3: asked the same question several times. Could you share a
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 3: little bit about cross-cultural ways of working with Jungian concepts?
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 3: And is dream interpretation more relevant through a culture-specific understanding
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 3: of symbols? And one, I would say that that's intrinsic
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 3: in the keys because whatever culture or language someone is in,
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 3: if you're asking somebody for their personal associations, that's going
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 3: to bring forward what's true for them in their culture,
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 3: whether it's the culture of the family, the city, the state,
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 3: the nation they're in. That's immediately going to be present
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 3: as well as the explanations that There are common objects,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 3: for instance, in some cultures that have certain purposes that
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 3: are just not particularly available in other cultures. And so
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 3: you absolutely are going to, just by virtue of following
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 3: the steps, honor the cultural context. And then the last
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 3: bit about archetypes, the wonderful thing about archetypes is because
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 3: we reach into antiquity, It tells us whatever the idea
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 3: of that is, it has survived across time and multiple cultures.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 3: So there is something eternal about it that is not
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 3: specific to a culture. And then we're in the realm
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 3: of the archetypal image.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 4: There's a difference between the particulars and the universal. And
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 4: there may be particulars in your life experience. Personal, ethnic, religious, cultural, nationalistic.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 4: But they also connect to universals, which is part of
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 4: why dreams are so important. They have meaning that is beneath, below,
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 4: and bigger than each of us as individuals. But our
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 4: way in is often related to our individual experience.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 3: And I would say... Many of us now, because of
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 3: the podcast, have international clients, and I spend a lot
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 3: of time asking people, so in your culture, how does
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 3: that play out? Because we don't know everything about each other.
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: This is maybe a great question to end with, if
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 2: that's okay, is could you share a dream of yours
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 2: that significantly impacted your life? And, you know, it's interesting.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 2: I was thinking about this dream, and I think in
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: some ways the answer to it is a little bit
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: not straightforward, at least for me. I mean, one of
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 2: the ways I understand dreams is that, well, I once
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: heard this great, this is not an original metaphor, I
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: can't remember who came up with it, but it's great,
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: that there's two kinds of dreams. There's the big ships
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: that arrive And then there are the little boats that
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: have to take the cargo off the big ship that
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 2: ferry back and forth. So sometimes the ship comes in
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: and it's huge. But most of the time, dreams are
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 2: little bite sizes. So has there been one dream that's
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 2: changed the course of my life? Probably not. But I
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: would say one of the things I notice is just
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: the way that you know, the dreams nightly come to
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 2: me and, you know, shift here and shift there. And
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: did you think about this? Because this is something you
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: need to take on board. And so dreams are kind
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: of constantly giving me feedback and course corrections. I do
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: remember having one incredibly numinous dream around the time I
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: decided that I was going to pursue becoming an analyst.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: I think I had already made the decision. I'd have
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 2: to go back and look at that dream journal. I
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 2: think I'd already made the decision. I'd already given notice
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: at my job. And actually, yeah, so I would have
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: given notice of the job yet without having absolutely made
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: the decision of which way I was going to go.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 2: But I'd sort of decided that I was going to decide.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 2: And I had this just really remarkable dream it was
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: more about the feeling content than anything else but it
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: was just it was very it was an ancient setting
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: there was a sense of like a kind of ancient
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: archaeology around me and just this image of this um
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: this enormous man and woman kind of out dancing on
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: the water so it was sort of an image of
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: the heroes gamos maybe but it was i can still
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 2: kind of feel it it was it was really deeply magical,
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 2: but I don't know if either of you want to
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: share anything.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 4: I've certainly had a couple that have stayed with me
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 4: and been really very powerful to work through and to
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 4: come to particular kind of realization. But more than that,
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 4: I think it has been my several experiences of how
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 4: powerful the inner other really is. And that it is
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 4: there in a way that one's own experience leaves us
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 4: no doubt about it at all.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 3: I similarly had a really important dream. I was looking
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 3: for guidance about, was this the right time to apply
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 3: for analytic training? Often, when you're interviewed, the analyst will
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 3: ask if you've had a dream that you think has
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 3: guided you to to give them a sense of whether
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 3: or not your psyche is ready. And in this dream,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 3: I had circumambulated the four corners of a yard with
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 3: one of my Alexander Technique training teachers, interestingly. The fourth
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 3: wall of the square was a stream. And as I
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 3: looked into the stream, it was crystal clear. And I
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 3: could see the bed of the stream and all of
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 3: the interesting, beautiful variations in the bed of the stream.
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 3: And I took that to suggest that my personal material
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 3: was clean enough that I might be able to see
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 3: objectively into the bottom of my own psyche, the bottom
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 3: of the psyches of my analysis and do something useful
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 3: for them. And I brought that to my interview and
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 3: it seemed like that was a really important decision about readiness.
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 4: So in a way, we are going to end where
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 4: we began with the call to adventure.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: We hope that you will have your own adventure and
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: perhaps that we can help.
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 3: Join us in Dream School, by the way, as well
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 3: as buying the book. We are all actively involved in
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 3: an online learning. platform. So if you find the book remarkable,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 3: you don't have to do this alone.
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 3: Come join us over in Dream School.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: And the new Dream School, which will be going up
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: very soon, is going to be aligned with the book
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: and it'll sort of be the course companion to the book.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: And as Joseph said, We're all over there. So thank
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: you for joining us today. Thank you for sharing your dreams.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 2: There were so many. Thank you for the wonderful questions.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: I'm so sorry we didn't get to every dream or
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 2: every question. These are always so much fun, and I
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: think we'll continue to do them periodically because it's just really,
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 2: really great to have a podcast experience that's a little
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: more directly interactive.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 2: And thank you for celebrating the book with us. Please
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: buy it.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 3: Bye-bye.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: We'll look forward to seeing you soon. Thanks for listening.
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 2: To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic, or join
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: our mailing list, visit our website, thisunionlife.com. If you enjoyed
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: this episode, give us five stars and a good review
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 2: on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 1:39:46
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• 1:39:49
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• 1:39:52
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• 1:39:55
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