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Can Art Heal Us? The role of imagery in Jungian Analysis. · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Something special is happening. You are invited to join us
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: on Saturday, July 13th for a live podcast recording, Jung's
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: American Muse, Christiana Morgan's Visions and Art. Our guest will
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: be Christiana Morgan's granddaughter, the filmmaker Hilary Morgan. Hilary will
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: share intimate memories of her grandmother, who, as a gifted
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: and beautiful young artist, was one of the most important
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: women to shape Jung's ideas of the feminine principle in psychology.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Her visions and art illuminated the unconscious in ways he
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: had never imagined. Together, we'll watch Hillary's extraordinary documentary, Tower
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: of Dreams, and after our discussion, the audience can ask questions.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Click the link below to purchase your ticket at the
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: small cost of $ 5.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: We hope to see.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Every one of you there.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
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  Speaker 5: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
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  Speaker 4: Today on the podcast, we have a special treat. We
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  Speaker 4: are so happy to welcome the artist, art therapist, Jungian analyst,
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  Speaker 4: our kid brother in training who was right behind us,
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  Speaker 4: and our dear friend and colleague, Mark Dean, who is
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  Speaker 4: also current president of the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts.
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  Speaker 4: So welcome, Mark. We're going to be talking today about
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  Speaker 4: art and psyche. And I'm wondering if you could sort
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: of just give us your resume a little bit. Can
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: you tell us a little bit about yourself?
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  Speaker 2: Sure, sure. I'd be happy to. And thank you for
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  Speaker 2: having me, by the way, to all of you. Probably
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: the best way for me to explain myself would be
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: to tell you a little bit about my life path
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: and my trajectory. You know, Looking back from a very
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: early age, I had an intimation of the importance of
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  Speaker 2: imagery or the intertwinement of imagery and matters psychological. In
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: the home that I grew up with in Indianapolis, my
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: father had books on the bottom shelf. He had Freud,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: he had Jung, and he also had all the art
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: books there. He was a wonderful man in many ways
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  Speaker 2: and certainly encouraging of my art. So I became sort
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  Speaker 2: of the high school artist. There were the jocks and
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  Speaker 2: the intellectuals and there were the artists and I was
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  Speaker 2: one of the high school artists. And I decided that
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  Speaker 2: really what I wanted to do when I went off
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  Speaker 2: to college was to study art and also study psychology.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: So I applied to the Rhode Island School of Design
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: and I was intending to go to Brown University to
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: study psychology and got to RISD and got swept up
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: in the arts. And in hindsight, I'm really glad that
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: I did. I think that that was the centerpiece. I think,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: you know, imagery certainly is the centerpiece of psychology, as
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: you'll find out as we go along and talk more.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: And once I graduated, I went to the Queens College
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: and got an MFA in painting and went on to
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  Speaker 2: have an art career in the New York East Village
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: scene in the 80s.
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  Speaker 5: And.
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  Speaker 2: In many ways, even though I was pursuing what I
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: thought would be the dream that any art student would want,
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: success in the art field, exhibiting career, I was in
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: many ways unhappy. And I remember one night waking up.
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  Speaker 2: I had been doing volunteer work at a home for children.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: These were children that had been dropped off by their parents.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: They weren't capable of caring for them.
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  Speaker 4: Oh, my God.
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  Speaker 2: And I remember being downstairs in the basement of that
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: place doing art with the kids and teaching them guitar.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: And there were some other art materials around there. And
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  Speaker 2: I asked one of the kids, hey, what's this stuff?
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: And he said, oh, that's the art therapist lady. And
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  Speaker 2: I went, bing, art therapy. So that really rang a
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  Speaker 2: bell for me because that was a return to that
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: old connection. And much to the bewilderment of all of
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: my friends in the art world because I was doing well.
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  Speaker 2: I left it and enrolled in an art therapy program.
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  Speaker 2: I didn't think they'd accept me, but they did. And
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  Speaker 2: so I began a career, second career, got a second
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  Speaker 2: master's in art therapy and began to practice as an
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  Speaker 2: art therapist.
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  Speaker 4: Mark, I mean, when did we first meet? I mean,
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  Speaker 4: it must be 15 years ago, something like that. I mean,
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  Speaker 4: I've known you for a while.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And someone, I can't remember who, you know, said, Did
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  Speaker 4: you know Joaquin was really successful as an artist? And
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  Speaker 4: I've heard these rumors. And I've always wanted to ask
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  Speaker 4: you about it, but I just never have. Can you
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  Speaker 4: say a little bit more about your career as an
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  Speaker 4: artist and the success that you found there? I'd like
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  Speaker 4: to give you an opportunity to wow us on that.
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  Speaker 2: Well, it's a really interesting story. Yeah, it's a really
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  Speaker 2: interesting story. Thanks for the question. Not because it's about myself,
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: just because psychologically it makes sense. I did get swept
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: up in doing the art. And I was trying to
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  Speaker 2: do all this heroic art that I thought would win
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: me praise and success in the art world. And it didn't.
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  Speaker 4: What's heroic art?
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  Speaker 2: Well, it was pretty much what the art heroes of
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: the period were doing. There were large paintings. There were
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: these abstractions and so forth. And at some point, I
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: finally kind of gave up on that and I settled
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  Speaker 2: down into these small little narrative paintings that I would
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: chuckle as I did them. I was like laughing as
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  Speaker 2: I was doing these things and thinking to myself, no
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  Speaker 2: one will ever take this stuff seriously. Well, lo and behold,
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  Speaker 2: we have a studio visit by a guy by the
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: name of Ned Rifkin, who was a curator with a
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: big museum. And he came and he looked at my
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: artwork and he loved it. And so he had all
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: these collectors come to my art studio to visit and
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: they love my artwork. And the next thing you know,
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  Speaker 2: I'm getting this, this call from this gallerist in New
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  Speaker 2: York city, which I don't understand because I'm thinking this
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  Speaker 2: is just fun stuff to do. How can anybody quite
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  Speaker 2: take this seriously? But I think in hindsight, you know,
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  Speaker 2: I think we can understand that, that, that you get
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: a vision of what you're supposed to be. And then
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  Speaker 2: finally you discover what's really your voice, right? And that's
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  Speaker 2: what happened. And that was bewildering, too, because I was
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  Speaker 2: being chauffeured around in limousines by millionaires. And people were
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  Speaker 2: talking about showing it to Whitney and stuff like this.
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  Speaker 2: And one of the things at the end of my career,
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: I get a call from my to-die-for gallerist, gallery owner,
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: who was uptown. And I go in to see her
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  Speaker 2: and she said, can you have a show this fall
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  Speaker 2: in London and New York? And I heard myself say yes,
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  Speaker 2: but inwardly I could hear the no, I can't do this.
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  Speaker 4: Oh my God.
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  Speaker 2: So I can give you the image. Actually, as long
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: as we're talking about imagery, the imagery was that my
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  Speaker 2: art was like a fine little sailboat that I needed
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  Speaker 2: to sense the wind with very carefully and guide myself.
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  Speaker 2: And what I was in was a gale. I remember
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  Speaker 2: that image very, very profoundly. And that's when I left,
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  Speaker 2: applied to a school in Philadelphia to study art therapy.
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  Speaker 2: With the art therapy, I learned, I was trained sort
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: of psychoanalytically in art therapy. It was Hahnemann University at
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: the time. They were very psychoanalytic. And I found it very,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: very valuable. But then when I began to practice art,
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  Speaker 2: I really began to find that the lens that I
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  Speaker 2: had been taught was far narrower than the material I
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: was witnessing and the things that were happening. And that
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: and a few other life events that sort of struck
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: me as coming from a direction that I didn't quite
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: understand somehow or another. And I don't really know how
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  Speaker 2: I made this shift, but I got online and I
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  Speaker 2: started looking up Jung because I'd... I'd known something about Jung.
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  Speaker 2: I knew that I resonated with it. And that just
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  Speaker 2: opened this door. And as you guys all know, having
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: been in the seminar, that was like coming back to
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: life for me. How old were you at that point? Oh, gosh.
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  Speaker 2: You're asking me to give you numbers, not my strong suit.
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  Speaker 2: I think in my 30s, yeah, 30, 35, something like that.
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  Speaker 2: And the first person I talked to when I called
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  Speaker 2: the Philadelphia Association of Yogi and Analysts was a gentleman
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  Speaker 2: by the name of Alden Josie, who would later become
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: my analyst. And I went to the first seminar, and
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  Speaker 2: he was giving the seminar. And the seminar was called
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: The Psychology of the Miraculous. And the assignment was to
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: read the four gospels. Well, I was brought up Catholic,
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  Speaker 2: went to Catholic school. The idea of reading the four
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  Speaker 2: gospels made my head spin and wanted me to just vomit.
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  Speaker 2: I was I had been beaten up by the nuns
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  Speaker 2: who saw me as a sinner and shoved a lot
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  Speaker 2: of things down my throat. And we got into the room,
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  Speaker 2: and I think some of you might have been there, actually.
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  Speaker 5: I was there. I remember that assignment and thinking, oh,
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  Speaker 5: my God, you can't just read all four Gospels.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I did.
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  Speaker 5: I did, too, but it made my head spin because it's,
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  Speaker 5: It's so dense that my eyes could go over the words,
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  Speaker 5: but absorbing it, that's a whole other process.
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  Speaker 2: Yes. And you may remember this, because I certainly do.
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  Speaker 2: I walked out of that room floating. Alden opened up
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  Speaker 2: those Gospels, and what he focused on was the miracles.
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  Speaker 2: And no one had ever told me. that that was
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  Speaker 2: in those texts. No one have ever showed me the
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  Speaker 2: richness that's in the Bible. And this was a specialty
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: of Alden's. Alden is now deceased, unfortunately. And Alden showed
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  Speaker 2: me something that has been very profound in my life.
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  Speaker 2: He showed me that you don't want to look at
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  Speaker 2: things in a preconceived way, but to open yourself up
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  Speaker 2: to what's actually there.
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  Speaker 4: I remember I had been interested in Jung. I'd been
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: reading Jung and Jungians for a number of years. Then
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: we moved to Philadelphia. I started the Philadelphia seminar September
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: of 2000. And I remember the first seminar. It's so
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  Speaker 4: funny that you said that you floated out of there
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  Speaker 4: because I felt like I floated home. I had a
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  Speaker 4: walk home and I felt like I floated the whole way.
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  Speaker 4: It was so remarkable. It was such a powerful experience.
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  Speaker 4: So I don't even remember who presented, but it may
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: have been Georgette. But it was just so powerful anyway.
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  Speaker 2: So, yeah. Yeah, it was very much an ugly duckling experience.
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  Speaker 2: All these years I thought, what I'm seeing can't possibly
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  Speaker 2: be real. This can't possibly be the way it is.
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  Speaker 2: And when he opened this material up and showed what
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: was inside of it, I kind of went, oh, yeah,
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: it's always been there.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's beautiful.
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  Speaker 5: It makes me tear up a bit to remember Alden
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  Speaker 5: And he was such a gifted teacher.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 5: And he did. He just opened it up. And then
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: time after time, I think we were all just blown away.
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  Speaker 5: It was there all the time, ready to be seen.
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  Speaker 5: It took someone to open it for us. And that's
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  Speaker 5: what I think you're going to do for us and
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  Speaker 5: with us and with our listeners today is to open
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  Speaker 5: up Things that we see all the time. But we
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: don't know that we see what we see.
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  Speaker 2: Well, that's exactly right. I remember, I think it was
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  Speaker 2: Jim Hollis that came in one time and said, there's
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: another world and it's right here. And he's right. And
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  Speaker 2: this really has set me. I remember being in the
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: seminar and asking the question, what happened to us as
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: a people that we've forgotten our connection with all this stuff?
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: What happened with religion that it became what it was?
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: What happened when people no longer could trust their inner
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: worlds and their inner images? How did that get severed?
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: And I've spent a long time actually trying to answer
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: those questions and looking at those issues. I don't know
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: that I've gotten to the bottom of it, but in
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: the journey I just keep bumping into massively intelligent people
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: That have said over and over again, yeah, that's absolutely true.
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  Speaker 2: There are these multiple levels to us that our civilization
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: has cut us off from.
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  Speaker 5: So that is such a great question of how did
• 14:26
  Speaker 5: we get cut off from this and what are we
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: even talking about? Are we talking about psychic imaging? What
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: are we talking about? What have we been cut off
• 14:40
  Speaker 5: from and how do we reconnect with that?
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  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I have a lot of stories about that.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: I could probably talk your ear off for a lifetime.
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  Speaker 5: Oh, go for it.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Let me just give you a little bit of an anecdote.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: And I do have some ideas about that and ways
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: to articulate that. So I'll try to get to those
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: as we go along. I was teaching art therapy. I
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: taught art therapy for about 35 years. And my experience
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: was this. I could walk into a room of students,
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: undergraduate students who had never done any art therapy, had
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: never really looked at an image from any kind of
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: critical perspective, I could put the image of a client
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: up on the wall and I could just let them
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: go to town with it to notice what they were noticing.
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  Speaker 2: And I can guarantee you, because I did it over
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: and over again, that within 15 minutes they had told
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: us volumes about who this individual was that they had
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: never even met. The problem was that they couldn't trust it.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: They couldn't trust that they were seeing what they were seeing. Now,
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: if you, and I know you guys have, if you
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: open up Jung's Volume 5, this is what Jung's doing.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: He's looking at Miss Miller's fantasies and he's taking them
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: into him and he's finding out what they're telling him
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: from within. And this is an innate human capability. It
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: is not necessarily an acquired skill. People can do it readily.
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  Speaker 2: The problem is, is they've been educated not to trust
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: it and not to believe what's in them.
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  Speaker 4: I just want to share that, you know, we have
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: people write to us after we interpret their dreams on
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: the podcast, not all the time, but sometimes. And they
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: really say, you know, how did you know I had
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: a trauma history? How did you get all of the,
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: how did you know this, this, and this from my dream?
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: It was, you know, some people are, are very moved
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: by what their dreams reveal. So I love that, Mark,
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: that we all know it, and yet we've been educated
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: not to trust it. I thank you for that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, there are reasons for that, specific reasons. And I
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: don't want to get elaborate and esoteric and intellectual. But
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: of recent years, I've really been very interested, not just
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: in Jung, but the work of Gene Gebser. And Gene
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Gebser was a poet... and kind of a philosopher. And
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: he studied language very carefully and he began to realize
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: that there were different structures in our psyches. He doesn't
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: say it, he says structures of consciousness. Jung talks about
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: different structures of the psyche. Many people who are familiar
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: with Jung will remember his dream where he descends through
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: this building and down into a cavern where he finds
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: two skulls and I think this was on the trip
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: back over from the Clark lectures or whatever with Sigmund Freud.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: And Freud says, well, you have a death wish against me.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: And Jung says, no, I'm actually discovering that we have many,
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: many levels within us that go right back. Well, Gebster
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: says the same thing. He says, his book is the
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: ever-present origin, which will tell you something about what the
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: content is, that all of that which we have inherited
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: as human beings has not gone away. But what has
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: happened is it has become sort of covered over. And
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: it gets covered over by the immediately reigning perspective of consciousness.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: And in our era, rationalism, materialism is really the dominant mode.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: And its expression is science. And science says that what
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: is scientifically true is the only truth. Now, it is
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: the nature of human consciousness for that to happen. Actually,
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: that happens in complexes as well. When a person is
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: in a complex, one aspect of consciousness is taken over
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: and the others just have no say. So this is
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: a tendency in human awareness that we can get possessed
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: by a particular viewpoint to the point that we find
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: any other viewpoint relatively inaccessible. And certainly as a society,
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: and Jung says this over and over and over again
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: in the collected works, the collectivization of who we are
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: becomes an impediment to really accessing the depth of who
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: we actually are.
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: Say a little more about collectivization of who we are,
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: of how do we get collectivized, taken over, By what exactly?
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: Well, I think in some ways, you know, the anecdote
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: that I gave you earlier about my art career, the
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: idea that based on my exposure to the art world
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: and the values of my peers and what was showing
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: in the galleries, I was adapting myself to what was
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: expected of me as an artist. And that happens with
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: all of us. The great historian Hartmut who writes the
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: book Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, massively intelligent man,
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: says most people don't want to admit it, but we
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: all exist in myths, pre-existing myths, you know, and that
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: most of our lives are are actions in service to
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: that myth. Now, many of your listeners, I suppose, I'm
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: pretty sure, will be understanding of the concept that a
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: materialist society that believes that nature is something to be
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: exploited is having the negative effect of creating climatological disaster
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: because there's actually no actual connection to nature. There's a
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: domination of it. And so this is the problem. You see,
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: people have been living in this materialist myth that begins
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: really with the Enlightenment. Primarily it gets going. And Gebser
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: would say that it is the domination of what he
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: calls the mental structure of consciousness. The mental structure of
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: consciousness is a structure of consciousness that orients towards exteriority
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: or towards the external and physical world. the prior structures
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: of consciousness oriented towards being embedded in nature. The actual
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: value of a myth is not whether it's scientifically or
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: factually true, but actually whether it provides a livable context.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: So its authenticity has to do with its utility. I'm
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: paraphrasing Milton Scarborough now from a text called A Myth
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: in Modernity. So what I'm trying to articulate here is
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: that We have different ways of knowing how to be
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: in the world. But the current dominant, the reigning king,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: is this notion of scientific awareness, factuality, materiality, which has
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: really come at the cost of our connection to our
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: interior worlds. I'd like to make one other comment about
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: that if I might, because I think it's an important comment.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Gebser also brings up this notion of integrality. And what
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: he says is that the apogee of human consciousness development
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: isn't scientism, isn't materiality, but actually the integration of all
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: the former structures of consciousness and ways of understanding nature,
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: our inner worlds, and the external world as embodied in
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: an individual. I think this is very close to what
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: we mean by individuation.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: So Mark, in your work, in a consulting room, how
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: do you facilitate that process of individuation with the primacy
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: of image?
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Because one of the things that I notice even with
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: my own analysis is that many people come in, they're
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: very facile with their words. Perhaps they don't even remember
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: their dreams that frequently. But when we try to nudge
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: into the visual imagination, or even asking them a little
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: bit about their fantasies, it's as if there's a sentinel
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: at the gate that makes it really difficult. Or at least,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: even if it's not difficult for them to experience it,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: perhaps it's difficult for them to say it. So how
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: do you negotiate this sentinel at the gate?
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: That's a great question, Joseph. I think first and foremost
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: for me, and I've been through enough analysis and I
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: have had the experience, and I think that's one of
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: the things why we go through so much analysis and
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: training is because if it's real for us, we have
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: a foundation in it. I like what Jung has to
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: say in The Transcendent Function, that the analyst mediates the
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: transcendent function, meaning that the analyst has to have within
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: him or her the capacity to span between worlds or
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: else the analysand is never going to achieve that. So
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: there may be lots of impediments for people to find
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: ways to access that in themselves. But the first and foremost,
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: my answer to your question would be, the analyst has
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: to be aware that the psyche is always purposive. And
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: so whatever is manifesting then, is part of Psyche's plan
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: and part of Psyche bringing image forward in a guiding way.
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: This is so rich, Mark. And please don't lose where
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: you were. But just to expand on what you were
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: just saying, I'm thinking about, first of all, can we
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: talk about what the transcendent function is? We've certainly thrown
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: that term around on the podcast, but it might be
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: good to try to make that more explicit for people.
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: And also I'm just, I'm just thinking about how I
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: love that kind of vision of what the analyst job
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: is because it's, it's not directive, right? It's sitting with
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: the possibilities that come up from the unconscious and being
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: open to that. So can you just, or maybe we
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: can all work on sort of defining the transcendent function
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: and maybe how that even happens in the consulting room.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Sure. I'll give some of my perspective, which is incomplete. Uh,
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Like yourselves, I've read that essay a lot of times.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: And every time I read it, I look at my
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: highlights and then I realize I pretty much have the
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: whole thing highlighted because almost every word is profound. And
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: this really dovetails with so many things. You're going to
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: get me started here and I won't stop, but I'll
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: try to.
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: It's great stuff, so don't stop.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: We become divided. In the process of adaptation, we become
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: divided against our natures. We accentuate certain aspects of ourselves,
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: and we push away other aspects of ourselves. But all
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: of those things are part of ourselves. They are part
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: of our faculties. And in the neurotic formulation, an individual
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: will have a conscious identification with certain contents and disidentify
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: with other contents, and this sets up a conflict in
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: the psyche. It is for the analyst, however. Jung uses
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: the term unconscious. I sometimes chafe at that. It is unconscious,
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: but I actually find with most of my analysands that
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: they know what this other aspect of themselves is. They
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: just don't know what it's about or how to relate
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: to it. So I have to be the interpreter in
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: a way. I have to take it seriously. I have
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: to draw their attention to it because in that conflict,
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: between those things, the analyst is going to hold to
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: the veracity, the authenticity, the absolute necessity from the point
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: of life that what is challenging the ego's assumption about
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: itself also has a say, that the unconscious or this
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: other aspect also has a say. Now, this all gets
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: very interesting. because as I mentioned before with Gene Gebser,
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: and I think in Jung it's very, very clear, and
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: I think if you take the two and put them together,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: you really realize that they have a very common map,
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: that the two parts of the psyche don't speak the
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: same language. And so it's important for the analyst to
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: be able to do everything you can to try to
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: take what this other unconscious part is saying and take
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: it seriously, and not dismiss it, and try to divine
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: what it is it's trying to express. And so that effort,
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: this is what Jung says, he says, the analyst's role
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: is to mediate the transcendent function, meaning that your growth
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: as an analyst, your growth in perception, your capacity to
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: be open, to something new that you've never seen before
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: is a vital aspect of the analytic process. My client
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: or my analysand doesn't see it, but I need to
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: as best I can, as best I can. So in
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: the transcendent function, there is a coming together of these
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: two things. Now, what becomes difficult about that is that
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: typically I find analysands say, well, I'll take this side
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: of me and I'll take that side of me and
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: I'll do a little bit of both and put them
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: together and I'll figure this out. I've never seen it
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: work that way. What I see is that something that
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: you could not have foreseen shows up as if out
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: of nowhere.
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: And Jung says this. I mean, he says, you know,
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: you don't know what the creative outcome of this is
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: going to be. However, speaking as we're talking about art
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: and imagery and psyche, The creative function in human beings
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: is that function. It's the capacity. That doesn't mean you
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: have to be an artist. It doesn't mean you have
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: to play a violin or do drawings or anything like that.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: So just to give you an example, Joseph, of kind
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: of a way that I might work with that. I
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: will in my work. Hold on. There's another thing that
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: I think maybe I should say that might help to
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: kind of organize this. Image isn't something that we have
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: before us. We're in it. We're in it at the
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: same time we look at it. So when we think
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: of image, we think of a picture. But we are
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: living these dramas. This is what Harari is talking about, right?
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: Our lives are dramatic inactions of our life's drama, of
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: our development and of the archetypal powers. This is something
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: that Nathan Schwartz Salon nailed, I think, more beautifully than
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: anybody I know. He says, each of our lives are
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: individually lived, but they're actually a drama of greater powers
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: lived through us, you know? And so what's going on
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: in a case, even if somebody doesn't have a dream,
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: the drama of their life can be read like a book.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: It can be read like a painting. And you can
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: look at the components of it and realize the drama
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: and the image world that they are caught in. And
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: these things will show up. And sometimes what I will
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: do is I will move from the rational world. Okay,
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: let's just say somebody has... something going on in them
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: that's a feeling that they don't want and they have
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: no relationship with. Well, what I will do sometimes, and
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: speaking of art therapy, I will have them visualize it
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: as a being. Now, what am I doing there? Well,
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: I'm moving it from the rational world to the mythic world.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: The mythic world populates our lives, populates our worlds, with
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: qualities that are personifications that then enable us to be
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: able to relate to the contents. So just as a
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: very clear example, I might say, well, you know, can
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: you go online and find an image that you think
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: captures how angry you feel of a person or a creature?
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: You know, and then they'll bring it in and we'll
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: begin working on it. And just that process of suddenly
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: establishing a relationship through those means to something that seems
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: so foreign changes everything. That just happens over and over again,
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: you know, once you make that move. And consciousness is
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: then able to kind of say, oh, yeah, when I
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: look at that image of my anger, I see hurt, right?
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Or I see grief, or I see loss, you know? And,
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: you know, it just brings it up. Because the psyche
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: and imagery, imagistic processes are constellative or constellational in nature,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: meaning that they're always drawing together a lot of contents
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: from a lot of different directions to create their singularity.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: So that's one of the ways that I may work
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: with those things. Yeah.
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: And one of the things that strikes me about that, Mark,
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: is that you can do this work online.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: You know, there's, there's been this discussion that we've been
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: somewhat involved in since the pandemic is, you know, can
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: an online virtual encounter constantly all of this? And do
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: you work, is your practice partially online?
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: My, my practice is primarily online now. Um, you know,
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: I've been, I've been involved in a move, so I'm
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: resituating myself, but, um, yeah, I work primarily online. Um,
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: I have a gentleman that I work with. You can
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: do it with drawing too. I mean, or any kind
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: of expression. Sometimes people, as you guys know, will say,
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: oh God, you know, there was this film, you know,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: and there was this section where, you know, Carrie reaches
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: up and grabs the girl at the end of the movie,
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: you know, and there it is, you know, and I'll say, well,
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: let's watch it. You know, let's look at that together.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: I have a gentleman that I'm working with now who,
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: you know, just had a horrific childhood and he had
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: a dream. And from the dream, there was an abstract
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: something hanging behind his back, you know, as he was
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: watching something in the dream. And I said, bring it forward,
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: you know. Let's see what that looks like, right? And
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: he did that. And then we went to another. It
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: was like a Rubik's Cube or something, you know. It
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: was something abstract. He couldn't get his mind around it.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: So it was very much lodged in the feeling world,
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: which doesn't necessarily have a form. And then I asked
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: him to make a personification of it. And Jung says,
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: speaking of the transcendent function, you don't have to have
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: any ability. I can guarantee you after many years of
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: doing art therapy, artistic ability and psychological expression are not
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: one and the same. You know, the simplest things by
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: kids will blow your mind what's in that artwork. So
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: it doesn't require any skill. you know, to do that.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: And what came out of this image for this man,
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: I think, was really important and profound in his work.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: No skill needed.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Well, Mark, you were leaning into this thing that we
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: see in analysis, that sometimes body sensation and feeling and
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: image are not woven together in the psyche, and that
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: produces a kind of suffering and symptomology.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: So I'm wondering how you understand that separation of those things.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: And have you seen some cases that you could talk
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: about where those things come together and how that facilitated
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: a process?
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: I certainly can. And I hope I don't get tearful
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: talking about it because this young man and I agonized
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: together for years. There was a young man that came
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: to me who insisted that he was severely mentally ill.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: And he was of the opinion, he just graduated high school,
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: he was of the opinion that his parents had sent
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: him to me so I could convince him to go
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: to college. I had no such agenda. I said, okay.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: I actually didn't buy that he was seriously mentally ill.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: I had a pretty strong intuitive sense that this was
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: a pretty strong individual in many ways, but I didn't
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: know what was going on. He began to tell me
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: that he had a lot of somatic disturbances. He would
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: become nauseous, and he would not go outside because he
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: was nauseous. He wasn't agoraphobic. He was socially very capable,
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: a force to be reckoned with, actually. He was quite
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: a strong guy. As the work progressed, I kept going
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: back and forth in a verbal manner, trying to put
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: together a kind of a psychological, theoretical formulation for the
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: onset of these symptoms. And would formulate, as we always do,
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: psychological formulations are also myths that we tell ourselves about
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: what we're looking at, and that is the goal of
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: psychological theory is that it allows us a mythic lens
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: into what's going on. And it seemed like there were
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: some things that could account for these symptoms. But as
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: we went along, there would suddenly be as if we
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: had put things together again and our bowling ball would
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: come hurling down and knock the whole thing down. And
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: I was always baffled. And so there was constantly this
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: back and forth between Is this physiological? Is this psychological?
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: What is this? He had been to many, many, many doctors,
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: and the doctors shook their heads. Nothing wrong with you.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: This is all in your head.
• 37:03
  Speaker 5: That is so unhelpful to people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: Well, it was. It was. And it turns out they
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: were wrong. But actually, you know, in this case, what's
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: interesting is he pushed me. He goes, well, you do
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: art therapy too, don't you? And I said, yeah, I do.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: And I had never thought. to actually ask him to draw.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: A very verbal, very bright, very intelligent young man. And
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: good with concepts. But we did. And I had him
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: draw what we call a scribble projective. And a scribble projective,
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: it's a way to get the unconscious contents. You scribble
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: on the page for a period of time. And then
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: you make associations to what you scribbled. And then you
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: ask the person to choose one of their associations and
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: complete a drawing. That's one version of the scribble projective.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: And he did. And it was immediate. Immediately, he looked
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: at it and he said, you know, essentially, that's me.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: That is the part of me that's ill. I asked
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: him what he felt about it and he said he
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: felt sad for it. He felt compassion. Before He had
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: felt hatred of it. So, you know, going back to
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: the transcendent function, you've got something in the unconscious or
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: something of which he's not aware that's part of him,
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: and his attitude towards it is hostility and antipathy, you see.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: And so that's the ego attitude towards the unconscious contents.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: Now Jung tells us quite clearly, the unconscious cares about
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: the attitude consciousness takes towards it, you know, says that explicitly.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: And here what happened when he was able to look
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: at this image of the scribble, he was able to say,
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: this is a suffering part of me and I have
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: compassion for its plight. And that just opened a huge door.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: And we began to continue with the scribbles and what
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: began to happen was in his world, there was a
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: whole cast of characters in there and a whole dynamic
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: and the artwork was just laying out what was going
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: on in his psyche to the amazement of both of us,
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: by the way. I later had a dream about him
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: that I was in my mudroom and he came in
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: and he handed me a little bit of food and
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: I took it and ate it and it was the
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: most delicious food I ever had in my life. Oh, God.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: You know, it was, you know, Jung says, no doctor
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: who is incapable of being changed by his patient is
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: likely to be of much help to that patient. And
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: this guy has changed me really irrevocably. But to continue
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: the story, one of the things that would happen is
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: with the onset of his symptoms, he would become what
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: he called the kid. And it was a little inner
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: child that was trapped. And the kid began writing me letters,
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: telling me about myself and telling me the things that
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: were helpful. And there was also a monster.
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: So it was like supervision from the self or something.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah. And this goes to what we're talking about, right?
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: There was a piece of him personifying and communicating what
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: was going on. We see this in active imagination all
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: the time, don't we? The person enters the dream. Somebody
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: shows up and says, well, let me guide you here. Or,
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: you know, no, this is not what you think it
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: is at all. This is something quite different. And so
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: this kid was talking. So I thought I was hot
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: on the trail. I thought, at least now I've got it.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: It was only one problem. There was this monstrous element
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: in him. And the monstrous element that I tried to
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: make contact with and have some sort of dialogue with
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: would not talk. It did not care. It was impervious.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: It was going to do what it needed to do.
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: And it was anti-life.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: It was a piece of life at another level. And
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: this is it. It was a somatic expression, ultimately, of
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: an actual illness. And what happened was, one of the
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: things that would happen is when he got these onsets,
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: he would break out in a sweat. He would pace around.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: He couldn't focus on anything else. It totally captivated him.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: And one night he came into my office and he
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: would always say, you know, something's terribly wrong and nobody
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: can do anything about it, you know. And I would
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: always do the work of saying, you know, maybe there
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: really isn't anything wrong. You know, this is me not
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: doing the transcendent function, not listening, you know, to what
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: it was being brought, you know. But one night I'm
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: sitting in my chair looking at him over on the
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: sofa and what do I see? I see the kid,
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: you know, with tears in his eyes saying to me,
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: something's terribly wrong and nobody will do anything about it.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: And suddenly my heart kind of broke and I said, yeah,
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: you're right. There's something terribly wrong and we really need
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: to do something about it, you know? And, um, what
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: subsequently happened was that he finally found a physician I
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: sort of said, we got to find a doctor because
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: what began to dawn on me was that some of
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: his psyche was actually held captive by a somatic experience
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: in a way that was not going to be translatable
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: into psychological language. It was physiological. And that we had
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: been working with his physiological structure, which I think had
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: grown up around this physiological issue. Turned out, Long story short,
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: there was a physiological problem. It was finally discovered. And
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: then he went through hell, absolute hell, trying to ferret
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: out and find out what this was. There's a lot
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: more to the story. But ultimately, you know, he's doing well.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: He's doing well.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: You've created a total cliffhanger here. You've got to name
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: what this problem was.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: Well, it was an autoimmune disorder that caused an inflammatory
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: process in him that this sleuth of a doctor hung
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: in there with him and went after it doggedly and
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: even went up against a lot of other physicians and said, no,
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: this isn't this diagnosis. No, you've got it wrong. But
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: the doctor got it right and began to treat it.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: And so the symptoms began to abate. Now, the psychological
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: structure that he had created in himself to try to
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: compensate for this remained. And so there was some work
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: ongoing with beginning to dismantle this because, to put it bluntly,
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: this young man had been repeatedly traumatized over and over
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: and over and over again by this. Another aspect of
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: it was he not only graduated college, He went to
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: graduate school to become a counselor and he was thought
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: by his school to be brilliant. And I said to him,
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: I remember saying to him, because this is the story
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: of the wounded healer, right? I said, all of your
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: attention that has been inwardly focused towards, he was so
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: hypervigilant to any fluctuation in him physiologically because he knew.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: That what was going to happen was he was going
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: to be clobbered by this thing. And I remember saying
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: to him, if you can, at some point, bring all
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: that energy to bear towards the process of looking at
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: other people and viewing outwardly, you'll be a force to
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: be reckoned with. He is.
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: That's just so great.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: It required two doctors. Required two doctors, actually.
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: And you being one of them?
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I was the doctor of the soul and
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: the other was the doctor of the body who tended
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: to his domain and I tended to my domain. You know,
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: Mercurius comes down and there's the two battling figures with
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: their swords going at it. And here's the transcendent function
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: in a way. And I think the mistake that I
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: made was trying to psychologize everything physiological because that was
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: my framework. But I can just tell you, I mean,
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: to this day, I will never forget it. You know,
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: looking over there and actually seeing the kid, you know,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: just like, oh my God, you poor little kid, you know.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: And I believed him then. I believed him because I
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: could see him.
• 46:14
  Speaker 5: That is so critically important to be believed, to have
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: a person's experience simply be believed rather than interpreted or
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: airbrushed away or minimized or psychologized. But I wanted to
• 46:32
  Speaker 5: look back and articulate what is the wounded healer. It's
• 46:39
  Speaker 5: something that I imagine every analyst in training has to
• 46:45
  Speaker 5: deal with. And I remember Alden Josie assigning us an
• 46:50
  Speaker 5: essay on the wounded healer. So let's just say what
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: that is.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll give you my understanding of it coming from
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: my own life as well. The psyche wounds us. Always,
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: all human beings get wounded in the process of our becoming.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: And those things that have wounded us give rise to symptoms,
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: give rise to pain. But they also provide an opening.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: They also permit us to see something in a unique way.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: I imagine this young man, and this was the direction
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: he was heading in when I last had contact with him,
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: was to work with people with chronic somatic or chronic
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: physiological issues. It makes sense. He knows the territory. He's
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: done the research inside of himself. And so he can
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: bring compassion and insight into that. So the thing that
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: wounds us also endows us as well. And it can
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: be the very devil trying to move from one to
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: the other. It's an agonizing journey oftentimes and leads down to,
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: I think oftentimes, what we call the dark night of
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: the soul, to face that scary thing that's wounded us,
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: to face the pain and to come to terms with it.
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: But that's the way I understand the wounded healer.
• 48:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that the wound is also an opening.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 48:18
  Speaker 5: And when we can find that opening... you know, like
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: your young man did, then it becomes a portal to
• 48:29
  Speaker 5: connect with other people and to connect in a felt, intuitive, experiential,
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: kind of transcendent function way with what's going on in
• 48:42
  Speaker 5: other people.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: Yes. I mean, the alchemists say you will find it
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: in the filth. And, you know, my understanding of that
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: is you will find it in the very thing you
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: detest and the thing that you hate and the thing
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: you least want to touch, that the gift is there,
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: you know. And, again, it's, you know, people, you just
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: can't say that and everybody go, oh, great, I've been wounded.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: What a gift, you know. Nobody wants that. But the
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: reality is it's there. And I think it's really important,
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: you know, from an analytic perspective to for us to
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: understand that potential and hold out hope for that potential.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: Well just to take a little side note for some
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: of our listeners that might not be familiar but also
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: the transcendent function for Jung was his discovery that the
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: ego and the unconscious can talk to each other and
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: that That things come out of that dialogue.
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: And as you were saying, sometimes our wounds, our physical
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: and psychological suffering, call our attention so powerfully to a
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: place or beckon us to a place. And as the
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: ego takes an interest in that, that interest is a
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: kind of conversation. And if we have a space, as
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: you did with your client today, to try to get
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: words around that conversation. That begins, hopefully, to slowly move
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: things along. The scribble drawing is a way of having
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: that conversation. And I'd love for you to describe that
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: process a little bit because I could imagine some of
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: our listeners wanting to try it. It seems like a
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: wonderful way to take a little step into facilitating a
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: conversation with the unconscious. And then of course dreams are
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: part of the conversation and what we might do with it.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: So you had spoken so eloquently about that. But there
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: is a little bit of a definition around that that
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: I think could be helpful, yeah.
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well thank you for that. I actually loved what
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: you said about the transcendent function. I thought it was
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: beautifully stated. Yeah, the conversation and the relationship are very important.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: You know, one of the things that art therapists always
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: talk about is the idea of objectification. That things that are,
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: what this means is, most of your listeners will know
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: something about funerary art or tombstones. And when somebody is
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: lost to us, they've simply disappeared, we need some physical
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: thing to have a relationship with them still. And this
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: is why you have things like tombstones. And we also
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: need a ritual, by the way, to handle that transition
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: from one state to another. But that's a whole other
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: piece to this. To describe the scribble projective is you
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: close your eyes for a brief period and scribble on
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: the page and stop when you're ready. And then what
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: I would do is I would hold up the image
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: and I would have them look at it and say,
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: you know, what comes to mind as you look at
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: this like a projection, like an inkblot test? And they
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: would give me associations, and I'd write them all down. Now,
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: I can guarantee you that even in that process, a
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: lot of stuff comes to the surface, right? But they'll
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: pick one. I say, okay, here are these associations. Please
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: pick one. And then they go, I'm going to do
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: a little creature, is what this guy said. I go, well,
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: you know, complete a picture using the scribble, That if
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: somebody came in, they'd say, I see the little creature.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: And you can use whatever you want to fill it in.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: And he did. And the little creature in this drawing,
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: he put a ground line. And underneath the ground line,
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: he put three demons that looked like fiery demons underneath.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: And the little creature was scurrying away through the night
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: and flames were coming up under its feet. How evocative
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: is that? These things down below in the unconscious, in
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: the soma, You know, where was this down below? There's
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: many down belows, but in this case, I think it
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: was largely unconscious and somatic. And then we put it
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: up together and we look at it and I just say,
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: what comes to you? What do you notice? And you're
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: just asking some really simple questions like, you know, what
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: do you see? You know, what's the narrative here? What
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: do you feel about what you're looking at? Those kinds
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: of questions are helpful. Again, as with dream interpretation, and
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: I'm sure everybody in this room has had this experience
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: of working on your own dreams when you were early
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: in training and banging up against the wall. Because our
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: own complexes tend to inform what we're looking at. That's
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: what a complex does. It hijacks perception. It sort of says, well,
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: this is what's allowable to see, and this is what
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: it should mean. And so part of the process of
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: the analysis, or in the case of art therapy, the
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: art therapist, is to stand as the intermediary and to
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: actually hold that there are more possibilities that the individual
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: themselves has the capacity, really, or the orientation to engage with. Now,
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: that's not always the case. That's definitely not always the case.
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: creative process in and of itself can reconnect people to
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: things in quite a natural way. You don't always need
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: the interpretive process. Um, I, I had a case with
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: a young man, came in with some really bad behaviors.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: You know, his parents said, I think he's bipolar and,
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: you know, I kind of didn't want the case, you know,
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: to be honest with you. And I kind of let
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: it lag for a while and let me think about this.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: And they came back to me and petitioned to me
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: to see this young man. And I began, um, where
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: I thought where the therapy should be directed. This was
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: before I was in analysis. And he got really frustrated
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: with me. He goes, this isn't helping me. And I said, okay,
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: let's just do this. And so I initiated a drawing
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: with him. And what happened was things came up in
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: the drawing and I just said, okay, next one. What's
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: the next drawing? And he took me on this journey
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: for about, four months. And all I did was say, oh, well,
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: what's going on in there? This kid was about 15, 14, 15.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: So what's going on in there? Well, what's the next
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: thing that happens? Well, who is that? I just interviewed
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: him about it. And the whole thing just flowed. And
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: at some point, his symptoms disappeared and his mom comes
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: in and says, well, we're ending therapy now. The Effexor
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: that he's on is finally starting to work. But I
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: said to the kid, I said, I don't think this
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: has anything. You've been on Effexor for a long time.
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: Nothing's been changed. I've had so many cases like that,
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: you know, where everybody's medicating some, you know, medical model diagnosis.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: This kid had some issues in terms of he was
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: a little bit atypical neurologically. But he also had some
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: issues with, you know, his mother wasn't really tuned in
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: to him. I don't think she knew quite how to
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: relate to him. And I think what, as I look back,
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: Jung says this wonderful thing, we don't know the diagnosis
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: until the case is over. And I find that to
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: be true. You've got to go, I really don't know
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: what's going on here. I think I have an idea
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: and I'm trying to get there. But there's really something.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: About the analyst's deep investment in that process and caring
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: about it, you know, that I think is huge. You know,
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: I think that that's actually, if you look at psychotherapy research,
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: the psychotherapy research says that. It says the greatest differential
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: between therapies is not the type of therapy, it's the therapist.
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: And whether or not the therapist is using a model
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: that they authentically feel comfortable in and believe in, right?
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: And wish to be helpful. Wish to be helpful. You know,
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: there's a fairy tale called The Frog King. In olden
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: times when wishing still helped. Well, it still does.
• 57:08
  Speaker 5: It still does.
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: You know, your intentionality, what you care about. And you
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: can be wrong. I mean, I think I've just told
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: you on a couple of occasions. Yeah, I got it
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: wrong for a while, you know. Until finally I got
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: educated by what was there.
• 57:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah. Our clients educate us over and over. Yes. And
• 57:31
  Speaker 5: the reality of psyche, the reality of the caring and
• 57:37
  Speaker 5: working from a model that feels truly authentic and real.
• 57:42
  Speaker 5: Jung says over and over again that the psyche is real.
• 57:48
  Speaker 5: It feels like, yeah, okay, right, I know that. Psyche's real. Okay, next.
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: But that it has a direction and a purpose of
• 57:59
  Speaker 5: its own, and it is autonomous. And if we can't
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: connect with that, how do we help our client connect
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: with it in himself or herself?
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, there's always a struggle. I think, at least I'm
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: speaking personally, maybe not for you guys, but there's always
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: a struggle within me to get out of my preconceptions,
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: no matter how well-meaning they are. Sure. And to finally
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: open up to kind of what's there and to be
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: able to relate to it and to invert the process
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: of being the person that knows to being the person
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: who's taught. you know. And, you know, what you said, Deb,
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: is true. You know, he says that the psyche is
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: a principle of a concept of the highest heuristic value.
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: It is so true. It is so true. And to
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: move a little bit, this is kind of what Gebser's
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: talking about. He's saying, you know, that capacity for us
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: to listen to nature, right, and be affected by nature
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: rather than dominate nature, that's still in us. And it's
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: really important.
• 59:11
  Speaker 5: This is a little bit of a dogleg turn, but
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: I know that that story about the frog king has
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: been really important to you. And I am wildly curious
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: about how that is and what that is.
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: So....
• 59:29
  Speaker 5: Can you say something about that and maybe give us
• 59:32
  Speaker 5: a quick overview of the story to the Reader's Digest version?
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: Well, the story, you know, everything. Let me begin in
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: a strange place. That sounds great. I sometimes say that
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: to my clients. I know this is going to sound crazy,
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: but bear with me for a minute. You know, in
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: Jung's introduction. his foreword to the I Ching, he says, well,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: you know, the Western mind sectorizes, encapsulates, quantifies everything. He
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: says that was not true of the mind that created
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: the I Ching, which in the image of the very
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: moment that you're in, all the little details are interrelated
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: and important. So what I would say, just as a
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: broad concept, The image of the moment can only be
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: understood imagistically, by which I mean as a complete whole
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: in which all the little details line up according to
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: some principle. Now, I wrote my dissertation for my analytic
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: degree on the, I called it Instances and Aspects of Image,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: a Fairytale Example. And my point wasn't an interpretation of
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: the fairy tale. My point was to look at the
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: moves happening in the fairy tale as moves of psyche.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: Marie-Louise von Franz, famous Jungian analyst, massively brilliant, has written
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: volumes on fairy tales. I can't match that. But I
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: did my own journey through it. As much to educate
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: myself and wake up myself to what was there. It
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: was more of a voyage of discovery into the fairy tale.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: The fairy tale really operates for most of the fairy
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: tale in what I would call a vertical axis. If
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: you look at the fairy tale, it begins with the son,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: with the king, and his daughters. And there's three daughters, right?
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: And it's the youngest daughter. So you have this hierarchy, right?
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: The celestial golden orb that provides it overall. And then
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: you have the king, who is the son on earth personified.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: And the ruler sets the rule. But he doesn't have
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: a wife. And there's no suitor. So how's the kingdom
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: going to continue? We don't know the answer to that.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: There's the incest taboo. This isn't going to be happening.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: There's not going to be King Jr. coming along. Now,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: the fairy tale says something really remarkable. It says, when
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: the days were hot, the princess would go down by
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: the linden tree And sit by a well, you know,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: to cool off. Well, psychologically, what we understand that is
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: there's too much heat. And she's trying to escape the
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: heat that's up there with the king and the sun.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: And she's heading down towards darkness. Now, what do we
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: extract as a principle from that? We can extract a
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: principle from that. Jung calls it entropy. Entropy. That when
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: there's an imbalance in the psyche, the psyche will try
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: to rebalance itself. And so here is the princess trying
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: to find a balance. And she goes down to the darkness.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: A linden tree is a shade tree. The well isn't up.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: It's down. It's not light. It's dark. And it's cold.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: It's not fire. It's water. It's in the earth, not
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: the sky. So we see the eternal play of opposites
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: happening in this fairy tale. And what happens? Well, she
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: loves her golden ball. But somehow, mysteriously, the thing she
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: most values falls into the well. There is psychological teleology.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: There is the psyche saying, you know that thing you
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: care most about? Guess what? Say goodbye. It's psyche's move.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: It's the thing that's incidental. And people don't stop and
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: think about it in their lives, right? It's like, well,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: this thing just happened. Well, we know. in looking at
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: this grand imagistic drama that's unfolding, that even these incidental
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: things that happened in the lives of us and our
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: analisants are part of Psyche's process. So she drops the
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: wall down the well, and what happens? Well, she immediately
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: has feeling. She screams and cries and wails. And what happens?
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: Life from down below comes a-calling. And the frog comes
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: up and says, what's the matter, little princess? You know?
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, we go from there and she
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: makes a deal with the devil, the frog, the thing
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: she least likes and least, but it's living nature is
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: what the frog is at that point, right? It's an
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: expression of living nature. And we just look at the
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: frog symbolism and frogs are amphibious, right? They're highly procreative,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: you know, and, you know, they're the antithesis of what
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: she would want. So they're metamorphs too. They start off
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: as little eggs. They become tadpoles and they come up
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: on the side and they come up on the land.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: And the frogs know how to move from one realm
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: to another. And sure enough, after she makes a deal
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: with the frog, she says, forget about it. I'm out
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: of here. And she goes back up to the king.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: And of course, now we've gone down the axis and
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: now we're going back up the axis, right? There's a
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: structure here in the psyche. And she goes up and,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: you know, there's this knocking on the door and she
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: goes to the door and the frog's there and says,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: little princess, I thought we had a deal, right? You know,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: and she slams the door in fright and runs back
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: to the king who's sitting at the table. And the
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: king says, what's wrong? It seems like you've seen a giant.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: Because actually that's the way her psyche sees the frog,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: as if it's massive and dangerous, right? But she knows,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: and we know, that they have a destiny with one another.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: And that, speaking of the transcendent function, is the conflict says,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: you have a destiny with something in the unconscious. It's
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: coming calling for you, and you're going to have to
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: meet it. The analyst knows this, at least in principle,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: doesn't know the outcome. You're quite right. What's going to happen?
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: We have no idea how this is going to come out.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: So she's always just a nasty frog, and she tells
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: the king that she made a deal and that King says,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: you know, you made a deal. You need to kind
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: of stick with it here. The ruler is sticking to
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: the rule. So she sticks with the deal, brings him in,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: and he actually eats from her golden plate, you know,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: with her. It means they, you know, finally the frog
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: and she are eating from the same plate. You know,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: how symbolic, you know, we're both, we're on an equal level.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: So it comes time to go up to bed and
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: she carries the frog up. King says, you need to
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: go up there. And what does she do? The little
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: princess becomes an actual animal, a murderous animal. She suddenly
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: becomes instinctual. She slams the frog against the wall. And
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: as soon as the frog hits the wall, he becomes human.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: There's a mutual enantiodromia, right? There's a mutual coming together
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: of what was always hidden in each one of them,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: meaning that inside the frog, there was a latent humanity.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: He felt for her. He cared about her. He was relatable.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: That's what he wanted, relationship. She, on the other hand,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: was human, but cold, not accepting, too pristine, not instinctual.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: And so there's a mutual coming together because they both
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: are transformed in that moment. And then suddenly, if you
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: look at the fairy tale, you realize it's now on
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: a horizontal axis, not on a vertical axis. Suddenly, they're
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: now being drawn by eight white horses. They're chained. There's
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: the gold chaining them to the carriage, and they're going off.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: And then the dream ends with the feeling function, you know,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: who is sitting and tending to the whole process that
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: feeling was important. There are so many things in that
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: fairy tale. And one of the concepts I would like
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: to put forward is as remarkable as that fairy tale is,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: they're all remarkable. And so are all of our dreams.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: each fairy tale, I would say, is an organ of perception,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: meaning that each one is a doorway into understanding the
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: moves of the psyche, each and every one of them.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: And so, actually, so is scripture. You know, so are
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: the great religions, if we could look at them properly.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: They are portraits of the soul in action. And so
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: are the dreams. So I just learned so much. I mean,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: I think I just barely squeaked by graduating with that.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: I got passing with distinction on my cases, which I
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: didn't expect. But then I got clobbered over my thesis. But,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: you know, I have to say, the real gift of
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: the thesis wasn't the product of the work. It was
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: the process of writing it.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: That's beautiful. I love what you said about fairy tales.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 4: I couldn't agree more. I love that fairy tale in particular,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: and that's included. in my new... And I'm almost thinking, gosh,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: we should have you back and just spend the whole
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: time talking about that fairy tale.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, I would love that.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 4: That would be.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: I would love that.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 4: We should do that again soon.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 5: I think the happily ever after ending here is how
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 5: many portals there are into the wisdom of psyche, into
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 5: the wisdom of the unconscious. There are what we call
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 5: religious texts. There are fairy tales. There are dreams. There
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 5: is image. There is art therapy. There are It's there.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 5: It's accessible. It's waiting for us. If we can just
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 5: shift our vision enough to see what is right in
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 5: front of us as age-old wisdom, as image, the list
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 5: is really quite extensive. And you've made it really much
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 5: more readily available this morning.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this has been an extraordinary conversation. I feel like
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 4: we could just go on talking, but I think we
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: need to switch to a dream. But before we do, Mark,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: some people might be curious about how to get in
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: touch with you. I think that you're, are you accepting
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: new analysands? Is that right?
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Be happy to see people.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: And what's the best way for people to get in
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 4: touch with you?
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: The best way to get a hold of me would
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: probably just be my email address. which I think you
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: guys can post online, but do you want me to
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: give it verbally? Yeah, it's going to be my name, M-A-R-K-D-E-A-N,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: the number two at mac.com, MarkDean2 at mac.com.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: And before we transition into a dream, I would love
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: to tell people about Dream School, that we have a
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: program online, which we've designed with you in mind to
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: help people keep a dream journal and really carefully and
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: meticulously unpack the secret messages that the dream maker is
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: providing for you. That there is something deep and profound
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: inside of you that is trying to reach out, trying
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: to help, trying to illuminate important things. So if you
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: go to our website, thisunionlife.com, click on Dream School, We
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: have a wonderful, informative page where you can take a
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: look at that offering, and hopefully we'll see you there.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 5: Today's dreamer is a woman. She's 53, and she's a psychotherapist, writer,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 5: and storyteller who has titled her dream, The Belly of
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 5: the Whale. And here's the dream. I am in the
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 5: upper level of a shopping center with a man who
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 5: seems to be recently released from some kind of jail
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 5: or lockup. He's tall, lanky, bedraggled, and unworldly. I am
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 5: tasked to take him somewhere in the center, but we
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 5: keep getting trapped in a department store amongst high-end fashion
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 5: labels that seem outrageously colorful and ridiculous to almost Alice
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 5: in Wonderland-y. I try to take him down a level,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 5: but the man can't navigate the escalator, and we find
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 5: ourselves outside on the deck of a lavish swimming pool.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 5: Both of us are in the pool, and a freak
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 5: wave takes me under. I am stuck underwater. There is
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 5: a ledge above me, stopping me to find the surface. Panicking.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 5: Then I realize not only can I breathe, but I'm
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 5: in a cavernous room and a woman sits opposite me.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 5: I say, how long have you been here? And she says,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 5: six months. Welcome to the belly of the whale. I
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 5: realize the walls are pink and indeed I'm inside a whale.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 5: I ask her why she hasn't tried to escape through
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 5: the blowhole and she leans forward, head in her hands, passive, resigned,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 5: given up, then I wake. And for context, she says
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 5: that she's currently moving house and recently realized that her
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 5: calling to be a storyteller is stronger than that of
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 5: a therapist. And she adds that in the dream, there
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 5: was a feeling of letting that man down, terror that
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 5: the surface of the water is blocked by the rock shelf,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 5: awe inside the whale, and a sense that there is
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 5: a way out of there. She also adds that she
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 5: has no interest in fashion and that where she lives,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 5: whales are currently migrating.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 4: Before we start working on this dream, I just want
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 4: to say, I want to share my repeated awe whenever
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: I encounter a dream. I mean, what you just read,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 4: it's so... It's so beautiful. It's so full of mystery.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 4: It's so full of life. I have no idea what
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: it means. But I marvel at the psyche's ability to
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: produce these products, that the ego could never create something
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: like this. And I think it's just sort of an
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 4: example of the territory you took us into, Mark, like
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 4: the incredible creativity of the unconscious. Even before we know
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 4: what this dream means, I just stand in awe of it.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: I think the awe is, you know, people, I talk
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: to therapists all the time, they're burnt out. I'm like, well,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: I'm not, you know. I mean, it is always just
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: that experience. It's like, my God, how do such things
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: get created? And you will find, as I found, not
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: only in the dream world, but the art therapy world, general,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: when the psyche speaks, it's precise.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's precise.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 4: Dreams are very precise.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's not random. It's not a mistake. It's not
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: an aberration. It is spot on. We can't always nail
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: it down because the language is really sometimes well beyond us.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: But boy, the things we get to are stunning. Yeah.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: And that's why with a dream, it's so important to
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 4: pay attention to the precise image that the psyche has supplied.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 4: So for the setting, we're in a shopping center.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 5: I think about the upper level. She's on the upper level,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 5: sort of like I'm thinking back to the Frog Prince,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 5: the upper level versus down in the well. But upper
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 5: level of a shopping center and maybe a little bit
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 5: of a, psychic play on words of something at the
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 5: center with an opposite sex person who seems to be
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 5: newly released from some kind of jail. So something has
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 5: been liberated. Although this image of the man is, you know,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 5: it's not all good to go. He's tall, lanky, bedraggled,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 5: and unworldly, but newly released into a center at the
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 5: upper level.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: And you also have this image, even though the dreamer
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily identify with high style and fashion, between the
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: bedraggled man, his demeanor, and this would-be shopping for a
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: nicer image.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 4: Well, and I think about a shopping center has the
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 4: word center in it, as you pointed out, Deb.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 4: And it can be a kind of cornucopia.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: But it can also be a place of collective values.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 4: I'm thinking back to what you were saying in the
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 4: initial part of our conversation today, Mark. It's a place
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 4: where we go to kind of find a suitable persona
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 4: that might be very influenced by the spirit of the
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 4: times rather than the spirit of the depths. So we
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 4: don't know more. The dreamer didn't say more about her
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: feelings about shopping centers. So we're just kind of reaching
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 4: for the dominance here. But I think both of those
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 4: things are included.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: Well, she did give us a lovely clue and I'd
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: like to digress just a little bit to circle back
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: around because what I said was that a complex or
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: a piece of psyche will organize itself around a central
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: dominant principle. In other words, something in the psyche will say,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: this is the most important value and I'm going to
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: organize myself around it. What's interesting is what the dreamer
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: told us is that's not what she's about. She's not
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: about that center. And she has a task.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: She's kind of tasked to get him out of this
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 4: persona-driven world.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I'm picking up too. This next line
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: here about we keep getting trapped in a department store.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: I just can't help but go back to a quote
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: from Rumi. You keep heading out on the ways, but
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: you keep stopping off at mean-spirited roadhouses, you know. And
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: there's a way sometimes it's so easy that we're on
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: our journey to get sucked into being stuck again, you know.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 5: What I was paying attention to is that she's tasked
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 5: to take him down a level and that, you know,
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 5: there's such an image of descent here that they start
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 5: out at the upper level But he can't navigate the escalator.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 5: So then the down is when they are in the pool.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 5: And she is under the water. So this is really
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 5: going down.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 4: Right. And of course, this brings to mind the imagery
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 4: from the alchemical text of the Rosarium that Jung wrote
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 4: about in The Psychology of the Transference, to be in
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 4: the bath. to be in the pool together, to be
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 4: in the same psychological place of sort of soaking in
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 4: the unconscious, as it were. We both descended, and there's
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 4: a kind of abysmal.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I'd like to add in just one little detail
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: here that catches me, and it goes back to what
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: I said about Gene Gebser. And he talks about the
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: mental structure of consciousness, the mythical structure of consciousness, and
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: the magical structure of consciousness. I see a hint of
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: a movement into the magical structure of consciousness with which
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: he says, almost Alice in Wonderland. It's a movement from
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: the idea of the temporal world into one that is
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: more magical. And one of the things, it's difficult to
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: explain all this here, but in fact, it's one of
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: the reasons why we do move into these kinds of
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: magical places and these mythical places, because transformation inwardly is
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: not going to happen on the level of merely moving
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: around different fashions outwardly. It's going to be more of
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: a mythical, magical world that we're going to enter into.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: Well, one of the lenses that I'm just going to
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: toss on all of this is the Rosarium. So we
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: start with a male and a female. The male has
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: just been released from some kind of a jail. The
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: woman who is in the belly of the whale is
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: trapped in some kind of a jail.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: The man and the woman are taken into a pool,
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: which is central in the Rosarium. But when she and
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: the man finally get in the pool, the ego's main
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: attitude is, can't we get out of here? So what
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: I see as the central difficulty is that she's been
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: tasked to have some kind of a relationship with this,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: what might be anonymous figure, that somehow is rather unappealing.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: He's bedraggled. He looks like he's an ex-convict. He's strange
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: and otherworldly. But something that she doesn't quite know has said,
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: you have to be on some kind of a journey.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: There's something to be done between the two of you.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: And at the end, what we see is that the
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: dream ego and the feminine that is in.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: The pool, the.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: Feminine reality is trapped in waiting. The ego really wants
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: to get out of all of this. So if I
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: was to do a really quick piece on this, I
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: would go into this question of what is the relationship
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: with the monomous? What is unappealing about that such that
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: the salutio doesn't seem like something creative, but more something
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: that's a trap? And how might that in some way
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: be evident in what she's struggling with, although we don't
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: know that. We know she's in a transition from being
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: a therapist to being a storyteller. So there's something about
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: this resistance, I think, in the dream that I would
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: be interested in highlighting.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a lovely observation. I would also add, however,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: But it's interesting that she's able to get into the
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: submerged place and survive. She learns that even though she
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: goes into submergence, she can survive it, no matter what
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: the concern is about the whale.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 5: You know, I'm going back to the myth, the story,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 5: because it's so blatantly obvious, of Jonah and the whale.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 5: And Jonah... was swallowed by the whale because he refused
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 5: to do God's bidding. God sent him off to preach
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 5: in Nineveh, which was the capital of the Assyrian kingdom.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 5: And the Assyrians were, from the Hebrew point of view,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 5: ungodly people, and they were pretty ferocious. So Jonah, sensibly enough,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 5: didn't want to go, gets on a boat going away
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 5: from Nineveh, get me out of here, not doing that.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 5: Then when he's on ship, the storm comes, and the
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 5: sailors say, well, this is somebody's fault. And Jonah says, yeah, sorry, guys,
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 5: it's on me, and asks to be tossed overboard. So
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 5: the first thing is that he does take responsibility for
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 5: for being the cause of the storm, which is evidence
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 5: of God's wrath. And then he's swallowed by the whale.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 5: So if I take that into this dream, I think about,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 5: is there a Nineveh in this woman's life that she
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 5: was or is kind of supposed to, in quotes, go
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 5: to and has refused? And that in the dream, the
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 5: dream ego is the one that says, hey, look, you know,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 5: why don't you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 5: try to get out through the blowhole? But that's not
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 5: how you get out of the belly of the whale.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 5: Something else, you know, in the story, God takes the whale,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 5: of course, right to Nineveh and vomits Jonah up on
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 5: the shore where he.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 5: Where he goes and preaches very successfully in Nineveh. They're
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 5: all very receptive. So I wonder if something else has
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 5: to happen to liberate our dream ego from the belly
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 5: of the whale, which is sort of a depressive place
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 5: with the woman inside being passive, resigned, giving up.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 4: And you do have to kind of resign yourself to
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 4: the Lord's will, right? Or the will of the self
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 4: in psychological language.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: I also loved that when Jonah pops out of the whale,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: he's a storyteller. You know, he's a preacher.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's great.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: He's out there preaching the stories. You know, he's not
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: writing books or doing therapy. He's spreading the news.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 5: That's right. He has a story to tell of here
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 5: is the one true faith, so to speak. And everyone
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 5: is really receptive because his voice is, is now authentic,
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 5: having been infused with the power that this awful experience
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 5: has given him. But now he really knows. He's not
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 5: operating from ego about this is the right religion and
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 5: here's what I need to tell you. This is really,
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 5: he knows it in his guts now.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: So when we come to the animus image that had
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: just been released from a lockup, tall, lanky, bedraggled, unworldly,
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: kind of looks like Jonah probably did when he popped
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: out of the whale after that terrible digestive experience. Not
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: looking so great.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 5: Not looking good, no.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: Probably does, in fact, need some new clothes. So, in
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: a way, with your amplification, is that a foreshadowing of
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: how she's going to come out of whatever this storytelling
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: adventure is, perhaps looking needing some support.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 4: And I have an intuition, Joseph, that you just helped
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 4: me make, which is that the task is to descend,
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 4: but she may not fully understand what that means because
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 4: she thinks it means going down to the ground floor.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 4: So it might mean, okay, I think I have to
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 4: get more practical here. I think I have to get
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 4: more grounded in reality. I think I have to come
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 4: down to earth. But in fact, the descent that's required
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 4: is more of a spiritual descent into the water and
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 4: into the belly of the whale. So it seems like
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 4: she didn't do the right task by taking him to
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 4: the pool. But in fact, that's where she needed to go.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 4: And I'm thinking, Mark, about your experience with being a
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 4: painter and having great success, but just sort of having
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 4: this knowledge that that's not That's not the thing you were,
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 4: that was not the task. You had misunderstood the task.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes I have an analogy that I call the
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: bowl analogy, the marble and the bowl analogy that I
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: share with some of my analizands. And I said, you know,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: as egos, we keep trying to put the marble of
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: ourself on the lip of the bowl, but it keeps
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: rolling to the center, you know. And I think that's
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: part of what maybe we're talking about here, the common
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: denominator in my life and maybe in this woman's life, perhaps, that,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: you know, That, you know, we do keep stopping off
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: at mean-spirited roadhouses and sort of missing the turns and
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: missing Psyche's messages to us. And we are then compelled.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: You know, the Psyche has its own specific gravity and
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: it's going to draw you where you need to go.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 4: Can I bring in another quote from Rumi?
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 4: There is one thing in this world you must never
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 4: forget to do. If you forget everything else and not this,
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 4: there's nothing to worry about. But if you remember everything
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 4: else and forget this, then you will have done nothing
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 4: in your life. It's as if a king has sent
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 4: you to some country to do a task and you
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 4: perform a hundred other services but not the one he
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 4: sent you to do. So human beings come to this
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 4: world to do particular work. That work is the purpose
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 4: and each is specific to the person.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 5: Oh, that's just beautiful.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: You know, Joseph's amplification that he brought made me think
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: of the Syriac tale of the hymn of the pearl, right?
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: And what you're talking about, Lisa, and the royal robe
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: of Gnosis. In the tale, the young man is tasked
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: with going down to Egypt, the land of the unclean,
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: and he has to get the pearl of great price
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: from the snorting serpent that lies there, you know. And
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: he goes down and he totally forgets about his task.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: He assimilates to the Egyptians. And then finally he gets
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: a message, oh, no, you need to complete this task.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: And he does it and he comes back. And he
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: actually does get the fancy clothes. He gets the royal
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: robe of Gnosis that is glittering and beautiful. So it's interesting,
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: this idea of the guy who sounds like a disheveled
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: beggar and this contrast with the potential for wearing these
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: kinds of really amazing clothing. So it's a really curious
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: element in the dream. This is fun. I enjoy this.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: You guys are great.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: It's good to talk to you, Mark, and I'm glad
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: we had an opportunity to have you on the podcast
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: and introduce your fine work to our group of listeners.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much to all of you. This
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: is a lot of fun to mix with you guys
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: again and do this stuff.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 4: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:31:22
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• 1:31:27
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• 1:31:30
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