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Can We Transform Fear into Joy? - learn the secret in the Six Swans fairytale · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day. I'm
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. Hello, everyone. Today,
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: Joseph and I are missing Lisa, who is away, and
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: we're going to do what we often do, which is
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: to unpack some archetypal material, otherwise known as a fairy tale.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: And the tale we are going to look at today
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: is The Six Swans, which has a number of variations
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: on It's told in lots of different ways from 12 Brothers,
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: The Children of Lear, Ravens, The Little Mermaid by Hans
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: Christian Andersen. He also wrote The Wild Swans. So there
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: are some themes in this fairy tale that have been
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: alive for centuries, and we're going to see how they
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: apply to us. And Joseph, is going to read us
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: the story. So sit back and let yourself be read to.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: A king when hunting in a vast forest got lost
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: and couldn't find his way out. Finally, he came upon
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: a witch and asked her to show him the way
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: out of the forest. However, the witch told him she
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: wouldn't do it. He had to remain there and he
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: would lose his life. He could be saved if he
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: married her daughter. The king cherished his life, and he
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: was so frightened. He said yes. So the queen brought
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: the maiden to him. Though she was young and beautiful,
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: he couldn't look at her without getting the creeps and
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: secretly shuddering. However, he intended to keep his promise. Then
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: the old woman led both of them on the right
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: path out of the forest, and once they were at
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: the king's home, the witch's daughter became his wife. Now
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: the king still had seven children from his first wife,
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: six boys and a girl, and since he was afraid
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: the stepmother might harm them, he brought them to a
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: castle in the middle of a forest. It lay so
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: well concealed, nobody knew the way to it, and he
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: himself would not have found it if a wise woman
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: had not given him a ball of yarn. When he
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: threw the ball before him, The yarn unwound itself and
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: showed him the way. Since the king loved his children
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: very much, he frequently went to the castle. However, the
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: queen became curious and wanted to know why he was
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: going into the forest all alone. She interrogated the servants
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: and they revealed the entire secret. The first thing she
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: did was to use her cunning and acquire the ball
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: of yarn. Then she took seven small shirts and went
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: out into the forest. The ball of yarn showed her
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: the way, and when the six little princes saw her
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: coming from the distance, they were delighted, because they thought
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: their father was coming and ran out to her. But
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: all at once she threw a shirt over one of them,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: and as soon as they were touched by the shirts,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: they were turned into swans and flew away over the forest.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Now the queen thought that she had gotten rid of
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: all her stepchildren and returned home. So the maiden who
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: remained in her room was saved. The next day, the
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: king went to the castle in the forest, and she
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: told him what had happened and showed him the swan
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: feathers that had fallen down from her six brothers into
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: the courtyard. The king was horrified, but couldn't believe that
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: the queen had done such an evil deed. At the
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: same time, He was worried that the princess might also
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: be stolen away from him, so he wanted to take
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: her with him. However, she was afraid of her stepmother
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: and begged the king to allow her to spend one
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: more night in the castle. Then during the night, she
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: fled and went deeper into the forest. She walked the
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: entire day and towards the evening she came to a hut.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Once she entered, she found a room with six small beds.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Since she was now tired, she lay herself down beneath
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: one of the beds and wanted to spend the night there.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Yet at sunset, six swans came flying through the window,
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: landed on the floor, and blew one on each other
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: until all their feathers were blown off, as if some
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: cloth had slipped off them. And there stood her six brothers.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: She crawled out from beneath the bed, and the brothers
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: were both glad and distressed to see her.' You can't
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: stay here,' they said.' This is a robber's den, and
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: when they come home from their marauding, they live here.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: We can take off our swanskins for only a quarter
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: of an hour each evening and assume our human form
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: during that time. Then it's all over. If you want
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: to rescue us, you must sow.' six little shirts made
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: out of asters. But during this time you're not allowed
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: to speak or laugh, otherwise all your work will be
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: for naught. As the brothers were speaking, the quarter of
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: an hour expired, and once again they were transformed into swans.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: The next morning, however, the maiden gathered asters, perched herself
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: on a branch of a tall tree and began to sew.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: She didn't speak a single word or laugh. She just
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: sat there and concentrated on her work. After she had
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: been there for some time, the king who owned this
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: land went hunting and came to the tree where the
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: maiden was perched. His hunters called to her and told
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: her to come down, but because she was not permitted
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: to answer them, She wanted to satisfy them by throwing
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: them presents. So she threw them her golden necklace. Yet
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: they continued to call out. So she threw them her girdle.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: And when this didn't work either, she threw down her garters.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: And little by little, everything she had on and could
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: do without until she had nothing left but her little shift. Still,
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: all this was not enough for the hunters. They climbed
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: the tree, carried her down, and led her by force
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: to the king, who was astonished by her beauty. He
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: covered her with his cloak, lifted her onto his horse,
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: and brought her to his home. Even though she was mute,
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: he loved her with all his heart, and she became
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: his wife. Now the king's mother was angry about all
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: of this and spoke ill of the young queen. Nobody
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: knew where the wench came from, and she wasn't worthy
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: of the king. When the queen gave birth to her
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: first child, the old mother-in-law took the child away and
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: smeared the queen's mouth with blood while she slept. Then
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: she accused the young queen of having eaten her own
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: child and of being a sorceress. However, because of his
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: great love for his wife, The king refused to believe this.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: Sometime later, the queen gave birth to a second prince,
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: and the godless mother-in-law played the same trick and accused
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: the queen of cannibalism again. Since the queen wasn't allowed
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: to talk and had to sit there mute and work
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: on the six little shirts, she couldn't save herself and
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: was sentenced to burn the stake. The day came when
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: the sentence was to be carried out. It was exactly
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: the last day of the six years, and she had
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: managed to finish sewing the six shirts. Only the left
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: sleeve of the last shirt was missing. When she was
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: led to the stake, she took the six shirts with her,
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: and when she stood on the pile of wood and
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: the fire was about to be lit, she saw the
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: six swans flying through the air, until they descended right
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: near her. So she threw the shirts over them, and
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: as soon as the shirts touched them, the swanskins fell off,
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: and her sixth brother stood before her in the flesh.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Only the sixth one was missing his left arm. Instead,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: he had a swan's wing on his shoulder. Now she
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: could speak again, and told everyone how her mother-in-law had
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: slandered her in such a wicked way, Consequently, the old
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: woman was tied to the stake, burned to death. However,
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: the young queen lived with the king and her six
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: brothers a long time in great joy.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm thinking back to what an important story this
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: was for me as a child, and that the part
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: of the story that I loved the most and it
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: still gets me, is that at the very end, all
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: the sweaters are complete in this wonderful episode that foreshadows
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: just-in-time delivery. The swans come flying in, but there's one
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: talisman wing that remains the swan's wing that testifies to
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: what she has done, that that one brother will always
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: have that one wing And the fact that it's not
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: perfect is visual, concrete evidence of here is what I
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: was able to do, which really got me as a
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: child rather than, oh, they all turn back into brothers
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: and everybody just goes off to live happily ever after.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: It's like, no, you have to remember what your sister did.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: what her sacrifice yielded is everyone's redemption with the one
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: talisman wing. So that takes me into, you know, kind
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: of the theme of this story. And there are so
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: many stories about swans and this redemption theme of When
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: will they become human again? Or what does it take
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: to change the little mermaid's tail into feet? What does
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: it take for the feminine to be redeemed? And that
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: in many a tale, the hero goes riding out to
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: do all kinds of active deeds in the world and
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: find the treasure or the water of life or bring
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: home a bride or release the magic item from its fortress.
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  Speaker 3: And that it's a very different image that we have
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: from the heroic feminine, which is, you know, as in
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: this tale, it is tied to Eros. It is tied
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: to love. It is tied to sacrifice.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Well, we have these wonderful themes here. But maybe we
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: can take the story section by section and just work
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: through it a bit.
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  Speaker 3: Like a dream.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly. My go-to is often to think of it like
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: a dream.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: So we start with the king, and he went hunting
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: in this vast forest, and he got lost and couldn't
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: find his way out. which is also the beginning of
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Dante's Divine Comedy. You know, walking through a dark woods
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: and I took this path instead of that one and
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: that made all the difference.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I could not find my way. So what's a forest? Well,
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: it's the wilderness or the wilderness. It's often a symbol
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: for the unconscious. Yes. And that's where we often meet witches,
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: isn't it? Witches and enchanted princes, talking animals. All of
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: these are the things you find in the forest. You
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: know whenever somebody goes hunting in the forest and gets lost,
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: the tale is about to begin.
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  Speaker 2: The king is often interpreted as the ruling principle in
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: the psyche that many of us, when we do deep
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: deep work may find that there is a central value
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: or a value system that really guides the first half
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: of our lives. And often that doesn't work so well
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: as we continue to mature because the first king is
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: often created in infancy or early childhood, and we need
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: something much more sophisticated as we continue to grow. So
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: the king is going hunting, which often is for sport,
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: in a vast forest, and he gets lost. It's interesting
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: that he's also hunting alone, which of course would probably
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: never happen. So another way to think of that in
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: terms of this idea of midlife is that we will
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: begin to venture beyond our normal scope of curiosity And
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: we may find ourselves in a depression, a midlife depression,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: and we can't find our way out. We're listless. We're lost.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: We don't know where to go, what to do, what
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: the next direction is. And then he finds a kind
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: of anthropomorphic version of the forest itself. The witch is
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: as ruthless as nature is. Because if he remains lost
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: in the forest and remains here, he probably would die,
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: would lose his life. And the witch is speaking to
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: him very much like nature, red in tooth and claw.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: So we tend to be frightened by these anthropomorphic images
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: of nature. But over and again, they may seem monstrous
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: to our sentimental human attitude. but they often are just
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: as black and white and stark as nature, in fact,
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: can be.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: And that here is this image of the feminine archetypally
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: as a witch in the negative aspect, that the feminine
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: can be beneficent, just like Mother Nature. It's a beautiful
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: summer day. The flowers are blooming. The sun is warm.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: And Mother Nature can also be, as you said, red
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: in tooth and claw of storms and floods and all
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: kinds of other things. So as an archetype, feminine and
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: masculine are opposites. We could say yin and yang. Or
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: in alchemy, it's the king and queen, sun and moon.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: And as archetypes, they have a positive and negative aspect.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: And here, when the king is lost, psychologically lost, confused,
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: doesn't know where he is or what to do, what
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: does he meet? He meets a witch who says, you
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: have to marry my daughter. So as the price for
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: his survival, he has to join with the negative feminine
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: who gives him the creeps and makes him secretly shudder.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: So we have this meeting of opposites right at the outset.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: I think that if the witch is the personification of nature,
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: and if we think of the king, perhaps a widower,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: has fallen into depression, he's lost, And the voice of
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: nature says, listen, if you don't choose life, you're going
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: to die. And nature itself says, I will provide this
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: young feminine, I will provide a new wife who is beautiful.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: And you must participate in life. You can't stay lost
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: in the dark woods as the mourning kings. But the
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: ego is not on with this. He's not immediately thrilled
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: about all of this. But he does suddenly think that
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: he wants to live. When we're lost in tremendous grief,
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: tremendous melancholy, we may reach the nadir. And Jung said,
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: often in a deep, dark place, we will begin to
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: have suicidal ideas. And for Jung, he often thought that's
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: the place where things begin to change. That when we're
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: up against the choice, will I choose life? And the
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: spirit of the forest says, either you're going to choose
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: life or you're going to die. And if you choose life,
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: I'll give you a hand. I mean, I have a
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: beautiful daughter. It's not sentimental. It's not about love. No
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: one's talking about love here. But nature herself gives an option.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: And when he finally really faces the fact that he'd
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: prefer to live, he says, okay. I mean, she's young
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: and beautiful. But you can see that the king's attitude
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: is still ambivalent. He couldn't look at her with feeling
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: creeped out and shuddering and feeling very ambivalent about choosing life.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: But he does have a certain kind of faithfulness in
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: terms of keeping his promises. And so nature writes his
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: instincts and nature suddenly wakes him up. He has a
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: sense of where he is and nature leads him out
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: of the depression, out of the forest with this new
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: lease on life. But as you said, Deb, there's a
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: lot of ambivalence and this isn't a meek feminine. She
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: also has magic powers that can be Dangerous and potent.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: So this is a meeting of opposites that is laid
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: out right at the beginning of the tale. And then
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: what happens next? Well, our good king, he gets it
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: that his wife is dangerous and would intend to hurt
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: his children. So back to the forest. So here's the
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: forest in a different iteration this time. There's a castle
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: in the middle of the forest, very well concealed. A
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: wise woman, and we see this theme in other tales,
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: especially the tale of Theseus and Ariadne, a wise woman
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: gives him a ball of yarn that magically unwinds itself
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: so that he can find his way into this well-concealed place.
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: castle in the forest. So, you know, here's a strategy.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: And don't we all do this of like, okay, then
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: let me sequester what is most precious to me in
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: a place where only I have access. And, you know,
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: it's a good ego-oriented effort at protection. This is the
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: place in the unconscious, in the forest, that is a castle.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: So there is something has been built and created out
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: of consciousness in the middle of the forest. And there's
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: a way to get there. So this seems like a
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: good idea. Except, of course, we know it's not going
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: to work.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: And I find myself having fun not demonizing the witch
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: and the witch's daughter. Because if this were a dream...
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: There's a purposiveness to all of this happening. And so
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: we don't know that the daughter, the witch's daughter, or
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: now the king's wife, really would hate his children. She
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: hates that he's split. She hates that he's disappearing from
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: the marriage. Where are you going? What is this other
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: obsession that you have taking you away? from your new wife,
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: from your new relationship, and that the king had carried
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: a kind of paranoia. The king was afraid that this
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: new mother would harm his children, so he secrets this life,
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: his creativity, his previous dynamic, fertile self, hides it away
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: in the unconscious. But we don't know that she would
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: be so terrible to the kids, but he's decided.
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: She's pretty terrible. She turns them all into swans.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: Well, she doesn't kill them.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: But she does. Okay. I mean, you know, there's a
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: lot of choices one could make.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: No, I would say, I would posit that she is,
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: you know, she does mean them harm. And the king...
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: who is trying to protect the life of children, six
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: sons and a daughter, comes up with an ego-oriented strategy,
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: a compromise with the unconscious. There'll be a castle in
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: the middle of the forest, something that consciousness and planning
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: has created. It doesn't work. It's also a theme in
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: fairy tales. and in the Odyssey, of the unfaithful servants.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: It's a very mythical theme of what are the servants
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: really serving, and although it seems like in the tale
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: it's sort of like, that's terrible. These servants ratted out
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: to the evil witch wife the children, and that's terrible,
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: and she's going to harm them. but they are in
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: service to the greater tale of how is this antagonism,
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: how is this enmity, how are these opposites going to
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: be reconciled, or are they going to be reconciled? But
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: the story must move forward. Off goes the wicked queen
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: into the ball of forest, and there's a glitch in
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: the Grimm's tale, which I like, It says she took
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: seven small shirts and went to the forest. So she
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: knows there are seven children, and she throws a shirt
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: over each of the six boys who are turned into swans.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: And then it says she thought she got rid of
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: all her stepchildren and returned home. But there's a part
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: of her that she still has one shirt left over.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: So somewhere she now.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: Something in the psyche forgets that one has escaped. And
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: so even the most wicked, which we see in the
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: Bluebird Tales, of that something in the psyche wants redemption.
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: Something in the worst part of the psyche, a wicked
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: stepmother or a wicked mother-in-law, some sort of the wicked Bluebeard,
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: something there also wants redemption. And so she knows somewhere
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: that there's another child.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: I want to say again, it's interesting, Deb and I
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: are running two parallel movies in our minds. For me,
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: I'm curious about how the king was changed when he
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: went into the unconscious and he brought back something inside
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: himself something instinctive, maybe dangerous. And he doesn't want to
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: expose his children to this instinctive thing that he has
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: retrieved in his depressive sojourns. So he sequesters whatever they represent,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: perhaps quite literally his children, but also some other vestige
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: of his previous life. He doesn't want to undergo the
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: regression that is required for him to come forward in
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: a new way. And so he hides these things away,
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: but what he has brought back in his soul from
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: the forest won't be cut off, won't allow him to
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: escape whatever it is that he has to go through.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: And she ferrets out that something has happened, and it's
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: unacceptable for him to say split in this way. What
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: do you make of the fact that it's a ball
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: of yarn? I find that really interesting. It's kind of
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: tossed and it rolls through the forest and provides the way.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Yarn is something often that was made by women, that
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: spinning wool into yarn and dyeing it was a woman's mystery,
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: a woman's craft. It's the taking of the raw fur
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: and making it into, again, a primary substance. The yarn
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: hasn't been yet made into clothing, but it's a resource.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: So I'm wondering if it has something to do clearly
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: with the feminine, but I wonder what else we make
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: of it being yarn.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm going back to the story of the Minotaur
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: and how Theseus was going to slay the Minotaur. And Ariadne,
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: a princess on Crete, gives him a ball of red
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: thread that he can unwind as he goes down through
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: the dark labyrinth and find his way back. So I
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: think it's just the connecting principle. And the... It's given
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: by the positive feminine. It's given to the king by
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: a wise woman. And it will magically unroll and lead
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: him to the castle in the forest where where the
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: children are. But I think it is really the connecting
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: principle that is also just archetypal and thread and sewing
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: and yarn and spinning are also emanations of of the feminine,
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: of the weaving and the creating that come from that.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: But in this story, I think, as in the story
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: of the Minotaur, it's the connecting principle between conscious and unconscious.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: The ball of yarn unrolls to go into the unconscious safely,
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: and then presumably you follow it back out again of
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: how do conscious and unconscious interact with one another. So
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: the stepmother finds her way into the forest. She turns
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: the boys into swans. The king is horrified, and he
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: can't believe that the queen had done such an evil deed.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: Sort of like, wait a minute, you kind of knew
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: she was a no-goodnik right from the get-go, and that's
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: why you hid your children from So a little part
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: of me wants to say, you know, snap out of it.
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: Get real. He wants to take the remaining child, the
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: one girl, he wants to take her with him. But
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: our girl is smarter than that. She knows she has
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: to run away. She knows she has to leave. She
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: knows she can't go with her father. And she walked
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: the entire day and came to a little hut. And
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: then all her brothers come flying in there. This is
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: an odd part of the story, I think, that she
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: comes to a hut where coincidentally there are six cots
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: for her six brothers and they are glad and distressed
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: to see her again. And they tell her, this is
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: a robber's den. When they come home from their marauding,
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: they live here. And yet that's also where the brothers
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: live with their six cots. And they have 15 minutes
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: a day where they can take their feathers off and
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: be human. So I think this is an interesting place
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: in the story. What do you make of it?
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: Well, it's about shadow. It's that, again, As we were
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: thinking about the yarn, I think the wise woman is
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: the mother complex. And the yarn is an umbilical cord.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: You toss the umbilicus into the forest and it finds
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: your children. And it also finds a place where you
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: can sequester them in this kind of uterine environment. It's
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: a place of regression. And so the king, again, being so...
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: unwilling to embrace this next stage of his life, to
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: take a wife, that it's all about retreating into this
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: maternal regression where his children are going to stay children
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: and sequestered away. Again, the spirit of the forest, the
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: spirit of nature says it not. No way. I think
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: it's interesting that when the spirit of the forest finds
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: these regressed parts of the king's psyche, she doesn't kill them.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: She puts them in touch with this instinctive level of being.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: She turns them into swans who are going to now
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: be part of the natural world, which is, from a
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: restorative standpoint, often in a regression, we have to reconnect
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: with an instinctive level That however we've been going about
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: things is not acceptable. The king also doesn't feel like
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: he has enough potency to stand in front of the
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: new wife and say, keep your hands off my kids.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: His response, she's so dangerous. I've got to spirit you
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: away someplace because I couldn't possibly have enough personal power
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: to set some rules in the house. The old king
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: is so weak. and still so trapped in this depressive forest.
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: I want to cut the king a little slack here.
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: He does choose life as the price of getting out
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: of the forest when he first goes in. He does
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: feel that he must keep the promise. I mean, after all,
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: he's marrying a witch, so there's going to be hell
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: to pay if he reneges on that. And he does
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: come up with a strategy to protect his children.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Well, but if we stick to a symbolic attitude, they're
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: not really children. They're parts of him.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: They're parts of him represented as children, and he is
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: doing his best to protect those parts that are imaged
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: as his offspring. So.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Yes, to separate them out.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: I'm not willing to really denigrate his efforts all that much.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: It's what we do, I think, a lot in life.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: We come up with an idea that we think is
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: going to work, but it is not what psyche really
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: demands of us. And so the first effort where we
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: plan something out and we decide we're going to do
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: it and it really makes sense often doesn't work. And
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: it might be a striving for a goal. For example,
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: that family values decree that you will become an engineer,
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: let's say, you know, and it doesn't quite fit. So
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: you sequester those other parts of yourself somewhere else. You
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: explain it to yourself. It doesn't really matter. Maybe on
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: Saturday night you can, uh, join the jam session somewhere
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: at some other end of campus or in town. But
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: it's a good idea, but it's conceived by consciousness and
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: it just doesn't work. And eventually, perhaps it's your musical
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: nature or your love of poetry or I want to
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: hike the Himalayas will win out. But I think it's
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: just very human to at first say, here's what I'm
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: going to do. Ego will take care of this. I'm
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: going to make a plan.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. And again, whatever change that the new wife is
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: going to bring into his psyche, he's frightened of that.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: And he wants to keep these things from being affected.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: So this nature goddess... This kind of Circe, really, it's
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: like Circe. Her ability to transform these human dynamics into
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: these instinctive places comes in, tosses these shirts onto the
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: little boys, turning them into these instinctive creatures that fly
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: into the air. The maiden, who is a vestige of
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: his first wife, is an image of the amalgam of
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: him and his wife, is kept safe. But the king
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: isn't sure how to stay in relationship with her. He's worried, again,
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: that the princess might also be stolen away from him.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: So the king's anxiety is at the root of so
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: many things. He can't imagine being able to protect her.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: in the face of this instinctive energy that he's brought
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: back from the forest, from the encounter in the beginning
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: of the dream, so to speak, the fairy tale.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: The king is going to do something, again, that isn't
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: going to work. We don't quite know what it is.
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: He's already worried that he won't be able to protect
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: the princess, and he wanted to take her with him.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: That's a bad idea. This is another kind of idea
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: like the castle in the middle of the forest. That's
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: not going to work. But this part of the psyche
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: that is this little girl knows better. She knows it's
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: not going to work. So she begs the king to say, oh,
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: just let me spend one more night here. And then
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: she takes off and finds the hut. in the middle
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: of the forest and has the meeting with her brothers
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: in the robber's den. So I think that's interesting that
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: the brothers with six little cots that must belong to
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: them are hanging out in a robber's den and when
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: they come home from their marauding, they live here. So
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: the robbers and the swans live together.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: Because the robbers are the swans. The boys are sometimes robbers.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: There's sometimes boys and there's sometimes swans. And they're doing
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: just what the father did, which is to split. He
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: brought home this fierce energy from the forest that's dangerous.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: And the boys do the same thing to this little girl.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: There's another thing that comes back from the forest. And
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: you can't be here. You couldn't possibly... tolerate this dangerous thing,
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: and so you must hide. I also want to say
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: that the princess has been changed in some way. She hides,
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: or at least she doesn't come out to meet the father.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: She stays back for whatever reason. When the king says
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: he's going to take her back, she flies off. in
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: the middle of the night, that some part of the
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: swan energy has affected her. And she also has enough
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: of an instinctive capacity to take to the air and
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: follow her instinct, which leads her back to her fellow swans.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: So something good and useful has woken up there.
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: And another place where she's sequestered, this is no longer
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: a castle. It's a hut. where robber energy, swan energy,
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: and human form brother energy is all present. And she
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: is given the task. If you want to rescue us,
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: you must sew six little shirts made out of asters.
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: But you may not speak or laugh.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: So we're now trapped in this world of instinct and shadow.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: We're either swans or we're robbers. And if we think
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: of what is a robber, well, that is a human
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: being who is functioning like a creature of the forest.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: Animals steal things. I mean, if they can find food,
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: they're not going to pay for it. They're out and
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: taking what they need in order to survive. So the hunter,
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: the instinct, the swan, These boys are captured by this
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: instinctive world and there is a possibility with the mother-sister
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: to have the ego restored so that their human ego
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: can actually contain these overwhelming instinctive affects if she can
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: give them a new garb So then it comes into also,
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: what are these shirts? What do shirts mean? A shirt
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: made out of, I guess, swan feathers, a shirt made
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: out of asters. And that depending on the shirt that
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: you wear, yeah.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: It's different in different stories. Sometimes she has to sew
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: it out of stinging nettles, which was the version I
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: remember as a child, like, wow, you know, that would be,
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: really just do a killer job on your fingers doing
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: this day in and day out. But let's think about
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: for a minute, what's a swan? Now, there are variations
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: on this tale. Sometimes there's one that has to do
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: with ravens. There are various kind of shape-shifting things. But
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: swans are big in mythology. I mean, they're huge white birds.
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: They're just perfect for symbolizing things. you know, the whiteness
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: is a symbol of purity, sincerity, innocence. Also, swans are solar.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: They're not deities of the moon. They're deities of the sun.
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: And Zeus turned himself into a swan in order to
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: mate with Leta and give birth to two sons. So
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: There's something about benevolence, purity, swans mate for life. So
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: they're symbols of fidelity. The Hindu tradition, Brahma rides a swan,
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: the divine bird, which laid on the waters, the cosmic egg,
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: the golden egg from which Brahma's swan sprang. And the
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: supreme swan, the Paramahansa, is the universal ground itself. So
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: swans are Very, very big image of all these wonderful potentials.
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: The brothers are in this hut. And when two things
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: exist side by side, we might posit there's a relationship
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: between them. And the negative side here is the marauding robbers.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: And then we have the swan brothers with a little
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: interlude of human form. So something needs to be redeemed.
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: And our girl is hard at it. She does what
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: anyone would do, gather the asters, and then you perch
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: yourself on the branch of a tall tree.
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: Well, but what we see is this bird behavior. That's right.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: That she is subtly swan-ish.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: Flying into the forest, following her instincts, taking to the tree.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: I'm assuming that an aster in that medieval world meant
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: the same thing that we think of as an aster,
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: but I don't know that to be true. I'm assuming
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: it's a flower of some kind. And when I think
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: of asters that I see in my garden, you know,
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: petal of an aster could be seen as a different
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: kind of feather. They're both shaped in a similar way.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: The flower, which I think is interesting, if we're right
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: in that, is also the sexual part of what a
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: flower plant is. So flowers, they put out their leaves
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: and stems. The flower is the genitalia of of the plant,
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: which then is pollinated and produces seeds, etc. So one
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: of the things that occurs to me about this particular
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: fairy tale is that the boys are trapped in a
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: prepubescent place. Swans as symbols of spiritual purity, by casting
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: the shirts onto them, that they remain ever white. ever regressed,
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: ever childlike, caught in a kind of pu-erh flying around
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: and playing robbers. But the flower is a very subtle
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: symbol of sexual maturity. So if you give us a
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: garb that is both beautiful and has something to do
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: with fertility, that then we can return to being human,
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: and also continue to mature, continue to become sexual. And
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: the great problem in the beginning of the fairy tale
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: is that when he looks at his mate, he's not
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: full of ardor and lust. He's creeped out by this
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: beautiful maiden. He's not having an instinctive sexual response. And
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: so the boys are also caught in this ever-pure place
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: of being magical swans, because the king is also not
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: in a mature place. And so she is set to work,
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: just as you said, she takes to the tree, like
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: a bird, and even the word perched, they could have
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: said sat in the tree, but she's perched, which birds
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: perch in trees, She doesn't speak or laugh like a bird.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: Birds don't speak or laugh. So she has to assume
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: some aspect of the brothers. She has to co-participate in
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: a symbolic way in this place.
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: Here comes our second king. So just like a dream,
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: this is very much like a dream of where something
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: happens again. You know, people dream all the time that
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: I was walking along here and I met a friend.
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: Then I was in a store or at a restaurant
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: or in my childhood home and a different someone is there.
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: So we try track the theme here of who are
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: these someones that appear in your dream several times. What's
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: the theme? Is there a commonality? Well, here's the commonality.
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: There's another king. So the king is going hunting. his
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: henchmen tell her to come on down from the tree,
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: and she's trying to appease them by throwing down little treasures,
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: her necklace, her belt, her garters, until she's basically reduced
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: to just a little shift. So all of her persona
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: attributes she has tossed down thinking that the men will
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: be satisfied with them. But, of course, it does. I mean,
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: if somebody was throwing down a golden necklace and some
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: garters from a tree, would you stick around or would
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: you leave? They stick around and bring her to the king.
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: And now she is pretty well stripped of all of
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: her persona vestiges. She is just a maiden in a
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: little shift. Of course, our king falls in love with
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: her and brings her home to marry.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: So one of the things that I see is she
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: is casting off her infantile persona, that she's in the tree,
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: she's being dutiful, she wants to redeem the masculine, and
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: she says she's going to satisfy them by throwing them
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: little presents. It's so innocent, it's so young. Here's this,
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: here's a little bow. here's a necklace, here's a ring,
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: that all of the things that a child might have.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: And when, just as you said, the persona of the
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: child is surrendered, the king looks at her and says,
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: my God, you are astonishingly beautiful. He doesn't look at
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: her and say, oh my God, you're a lost infant.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: And then he restores her modesty, but with his cloak.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: which is the cloak of the king, which has status.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: It's an adult garb.
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: She is now under the aegis. And I imagine that
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: when she is in her little shift, that it's a
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: white shift, and that here's another reference to sort of
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: a swan, a state of purity without any accoutrement, and
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: it is just her. And the king falls in love
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: with her when she is stripped of these other ways
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: that we use to identify ourselves. And now we have
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: the king's mother who is angry about all of this
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: and spoke ill of the young queen. Nobody knew where
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: the wench came from. She wasn't worthy of the king,
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: so now she's a wench. So here's the second iteration
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: of of the evil witch who was originally in the
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: forest told the first king, you have to marry my daughter.
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: So now we have the evil mother-in-law who is out
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: to get our young queen. So our queen is meanwhile
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: maintaining her silence. and her serious demeanor because she can't
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: laugh either. And, of course, she gets pregnant, and the
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: mother-in-law concocts this horrible thing and steals the baby, smears
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: the young woman, her face with blood, to try to
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: make everybody believe that she cannibalized her own child.
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: This is a strange medieval story. artifact but there was
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: something called the blood libel and it was a terrible
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: terrible thing and it was particularly delivered to Jews that
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: were living in Europe so when neighbors became envious of
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: a prosperous Jewish family and they were particularly psychopathic they
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: would come up with this story that the Jews were
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: using the blood of new infants for their Shabbat meals.
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: And they would level this accusation and the Jewish families
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: would be, at the very least, all their property would
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: be taken and they would be driven out of town
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: and sometimes killed. Sometimes there may have been a premature
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: death or a miscarriage somewhere in the village, and even
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: an infant corpse would be somehow pushed into the basement
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: of the house or hidden somewhere in the area to
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: prove that they had done this terrible blood libel. So
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: this terrible thing that's happening here is something that would
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: have been recognized in this fair tale, many of which
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: are can be traced back hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: of years ago. So she's being accused. She's being slandered.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: The blood libel is now being delivered. And she is
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: also being accused of being another creature of the forest.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: She's being accused of being some kind of a beast,
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: an animal. eats young things, that isn't human and is
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: therefore dangerous. You can't marry something that is so savage,
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: that is so inhuman, much like what the king brings
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: back from the forest in the beginning of the tale.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: It can't possibly be permitted. There's also a problem here
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: in the psyche, again, that there is a mother complex
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: that in the young king that will not allow him
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: to move on. And so the first king comes into
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: the forest, and I would say, is bereft, will not
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: move on. Then here we have an outpicturing of the
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: mother complex that will not allow him to move on,
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: will not allow him to mature into sexuality. The young
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: boy is being trapped in the whiteness of the swans,
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: keeps them in this prepubescent place. So there is a
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: recurring theme of this interference with a maturational process. And
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: even the king seeking to bring the maiden into a
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: maturational process, into this adult feminine dynamism.
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: The second king, our young woman's husband, And this version,
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: she has at the second baby, he defends her. And
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: then she has a second child, and the same thing happens.
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: The mother-in-law sets it up so that it looks like
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: she's cannibalized the second baby. And this time, the king
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: has to give up and allow her to be burned
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: at the stake. But again, there is an effort on
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: the part of the masculine, the king, the ruling principle,
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: as you said, to protect his wife. But it doesn't work.
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: And the saving grace is going to come from the feminine,
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: from the young queen who is standing there. I can't
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: tell you as a child how thrilling I found this.
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: that she stood on the pile of wood. The fire
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: is about to be lit. This is worthy of Hollywood.
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: And she sees the six swans flying through the air.
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: They descend right near her. And she throws the six
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: shirts over them. And there are her six brothers turned
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: into humans, except for one wing on one brother. So,
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: The redemption has to come from the feminine. It cannot
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: come from these kings. And what is it that our
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: young woman has done? She's been silent for all these
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: some period of years and has sacrificed her own, even
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: her own children who were stolen from her. And in
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: other versions of the tale, By the way, the babies
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: are restored to her. They were sequestered somewhere, so they
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: didn't die, actually. But she doesn't, I wouldn't, you know,
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: most mothers would protest. Where's my baby? I didn't do this.
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: You know, something horrible has happened here. But she has
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: sacrificed a lot of that and maintained her silence. And
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: that that There is the redemption of she stuck to
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: her project. She was faithful to her vow of silence,
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: faithful to her role as the Redeemer. And hiding all
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: the children out in a castle in the forest didn't work.
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: her throwing down all of her adornments so that the
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: king's hunters would leave, that didn't work. And getting married
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: and having a baby, or in her case, two babies,
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: that doesn't work either. The only thing that works is
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: her sticking to her knitting, as it were, And making
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: the shirts that will redeem her brothers.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: And I have to say that in those six years
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: that she is silent, she herself has learned to become
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: a witch. Because she somehow now has acquired the same
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: magic that the witch's daughter has, which is to throw
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: magical shirts onto beings and transform their shapes. So again,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: the thing we fear in the beginning and seek to escape,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: once it is integrated, also becomes the thing that saves us.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: And this shows up over and over again in philosophy,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: in psychology, is at first it's new, it's raw, could
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: be a dangerous instinct. But at some point, when it
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: has enough connection to the ego, It becomes an ally
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: and can become the thing that we absolutely need. The
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: mother-in-law also, to me, she is the death mother. To me,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: she is just like the witch in as much as
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: she is red in tooth and claw. We might even
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: say that the mother-in-law is death itself. The young queen
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: may have had two miscarriages. that death has visited this
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: new young maiden, and that because she cannot be fertile,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, Henry VIII was at the crux of all
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: of this. If these women could not give him a son,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: he was burning them at the stake. So the fact
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: that the young queen must be fertile in order to
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: carry her role And the death mother, the witch of
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: the forest, the spirit of nature, keeps interfering with that.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: She doesn't have miscarriages. She gives birth to a prince.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: She is fertile, but because of the envy... and the
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: negativity of the stepmother and then the mother-in-law that they're
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: trying to quash life. And I'm curious and interested in
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: the fact that what it requires is tremendous sacrifice on
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: the part of the young woman, that she forfeit everything,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: including to.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: Protest her innocence and demand her two children back in
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: order to pursue her task of redeeming her brothers. That
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: the redemption of the masculine is due to the positive feminine.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: That that is what succeeds in defeating the negative feminine.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: The witch in the forest, the witch's daughter, and then
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: the mother-in-law.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: I think we're saying the same thing. I'm just broadening
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: the story into more symbolic mythic levels. But that whatever
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: the mother-in-law represents, that she will not allow life to
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: happen in the psyche. Whether she steals it away, and
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: it literally means a child is stillborn, or maybe the
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: king himself is deprived of being able to be fertile.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: But now there's going to be this, you know, sacrifice,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: this ancient, horrific, you know, sacrifice of burning people alive.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: But again, it's this terrible vestigial savagery that human beings
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: have done and still do. I mean, it's shocking to us.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: But Right there, at that moment of life and death,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: which is where we start the fairy tale, the king
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: is thrust into a moment of life and death, and
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: he chooses life, and then the whole saga continues. And here,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: once again, life and death is right there. That enormous
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: tension is brought forward, and that constellates the six brothers.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: We could almost say that being put there in the nadir,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: in the greatest amount of tension one could imagine, constellates
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: certain things in the psyche. So it calls forth or
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: conjures the six swans that descend near her. Somehow We're
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: suspending all kinds of disbelief. Even though she's about to
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: be burned, I guess she's allowed to carry luggage with
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: her and her arms are not tied to anything. And
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: so she just happens to have these garments that she
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: can just toss out, which is, you know, as it is.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: And all they have to do is touch them. She
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: has now become a witch. And the six brothers stand there,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: one who is still partially in this mythic, world, it's
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: also a story about it's good enough. Like one of
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: the sleeves are missing, but you know, when push comes
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: to shove, you got to just go with what you've got.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: She doesn't have time to finish that last sleeve. It's like,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: this is as good as it's going to be, buddy.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: I don't know that I think she has become a witch.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's a fairy tale. So these are the
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: metaphors for transformation and change. I think it's a story very,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: very much about the redemptive power of the feminine and
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: its positive aspect. And that it takes a willingness to sacrifice.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: Our young woman, the sister of the six brothers, gives
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: up a lot in order to save her six brothers.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: She runs away. She gets to the hut. She marries
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: the second king. She keeps silent when her two children
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: are disappeared. And she has done nothing wrong. She is
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: the innocent victim of the terrible deeds and is willing
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: basically to suffer that her brothers might be redeemed. I'm remembering,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: you know, in the Lord of the Rings, because we
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: were talking, to a woman who wrote her thesis about
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: this in Jung's Red Book, there's a place where Sam
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: Ganji says to Frodo, where they're on the last lap
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: of their journey up the awful mountain, Sam asks Frodo,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: what's it all about? And Frodo says, sometimes we have
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: to give things up. Sometimes we have to suffer so
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: that others may have them. And because they're just in
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: a terrible space at this last lap of the journey,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: they're suffering so much. And here in this story, it
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: is the young woman who is willing to suffer that
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: her brothers might be restored, that her brothers might have
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: the life that they were intended to have as human beings.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: And that this steadfastness and dedication and selflessness is ultimately
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: what saves the day. And that is a great story
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: about the heroic feminine. And talk about actions speaking louder
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: than words. She is silent. She does. She lives it
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: I often think about and have and talk to people
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: who say words don't work you know I've brought this
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: up to my boss several times I've brought this up
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: to my spouse I don't know how many times. Oh,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: what can I say? Well, sometimes words don't work, and
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: you have to act. And in this story, our girl,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: the first thing she does is to leave. She doesn't
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: go with her father. She leaves and finds the hut.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: And the second thing she does is to sew the
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: shirt's out of asters. I think there is something here
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: about language and how empowering being in yourself can be
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: when you are silent, you are inside, you have an
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: internal interior life, you claim your own life, there's a
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: self-sufficiency that is not dependent on interacting with the next
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: door neighbor, or the kid down the hall. There's a
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: wholeness in what she does.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: So for our listeners, one of the things that's been
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: so wonderfully demonstrated between the position Deb is taking with
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: this particular fairy tale and the position I'm taking is
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: that Deb is, in my estimation, holding a more extroverted
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: view of the story and thinking, at times talking about
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: the characters. Well, if this was a young woman that
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: she's carrying such virtue, her capacity to sacrifice, her capacity
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: to suffer consciously and be disciplined, and in the outer world,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: what circumstances might we find a person in who then
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: has to access this kind of virtue and strength? For me,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: I have held and argued for a much more exclusively
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: subjective process that given that it starts with the king,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: I'm imagining it being in a male psyche. And that
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: for me, this is a story of a male psyche
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: that goes into, I think, a profound state of grief
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: and loss and that these events are happening psychologically. In
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: the end, what occurs is that the mother complex is
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: finally triumphed over, which has been interfering with the psyche's
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: ability to be generative. But it required a tremendous heroic
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: process to go on in the psyche that these young
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: sequestered parts of the king, so to speak, had to
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: regress into animal nature and become robbers, had to suffer
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: in these various ways. And that in one way of thinking,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: the mother complex and the mother archetype is associated with
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: regression and depression. That the great heroic effort is for
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: the ego of all of us to fight itself out
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: of this instinctive collapse into passivity and regression. And so
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: the final version of the king is one who is
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: able to sacrifice the mother complex, who is able to
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: tolerate the truth. This is what's going on. The anima
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: has a voice. And to choose, finally choose the young queen,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: because the king in the beginning of the story cannot,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: just won't, choose the young queen. She's creepy. She makes
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: me shudder. This king chooses the young queen and that
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: there is a restoration, as you say, Deb, that all
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: of this life force that had gone through this cycle
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: of regression into the instinctive has now come back. I
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: would venture to say that the animad, in fact, has
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: become a witch. There's many stories, and we see this
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: with Vasilisa in the Miyazaki cartoon, which is so wonderful,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: Spirited Away. You know, the innocent... feminine is under the
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: tutelage of the ferocious, instinctive goddess and takes on part
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: of those qualities which serves her to great end. So
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: the girl becomes magical. She knows how to do magic,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: a magic of restoration. And finally, something is resolved. The
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: king-principal the young queen or the wife, all these generative,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: dynamic forces in the six brothers who now can actually
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: mature and not be caught in this prepubescent state, can
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: live in great joy. So I think there is a
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: progression from the first scene to the last. For me,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: I like to look at it as a purely internal progression.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: process and to think of these various challenges as psychological
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: processes and struggles between archetypes and complexes. And then it's
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: also giving us a map. These are ways to imagine
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: getting yourself out of being lost into a life that
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: you would want to leave. And there's another view of
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: fairy tales that Dev has so wonderfully brought forward where
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: there's practical advice that's being given in fairy tales that
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: applies to lived experiences sometimes.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: Well, we learn from fairy tales. You know, they give
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: us life principles of what do you do in this situation?
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: What works? What doesn't work? What do you learn from it?
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: But it is an internal story. I'm not positing that
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 3: this is an external event. Fairy tales like dreams are,
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: you know, one psyche. But what I am positing is
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: that one way or another, access to the positive feminine,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: access to Eros, access to a place that is patient, steadfast,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: and willing to sacrifice in a loving spirit is the
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 3: redemptive principle. that is lifted up so beautifully in this story.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: And there is a happy ending, as there often is
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: in fairy tales.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: There's always a happy ending. Encouragement to learn, encouragement to live,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: encouragement to go through the difficult situation. You can prevail.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: Absolutely on this. Fairy tales have been around for hundreds.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: Many people would say that perhaps even many hundreds, maybe
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: even a thousand years old, some of these, because these
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: stories were probably passed as an oral tradition and then
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: at some point were written down. But many scholars think
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: these are really, really old tales and they survive because
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: there's something in them. There's a wisdom that's encoded in
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: these interesting, strange, symbolic stories and that that wisdom is
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: communicated from mouth to ear, whether or not it's explained explicitly.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: They are stories of how the unconscious develops, how psyche
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: does develop, how we can grow and mature, of regressions, transgressions,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: all kinds of things that happen below consciousness in all
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: of us. And that's why fairy tales have stayed with
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: us for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. They
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: were not children's stories. They were stories that adults told
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: around the campfire.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: And just as we all felt, Deb read fairy tales
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: as a kid, so did I. I read the entire
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: Lang series of fairy tales when I was in grade school.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: That when we read them innocently, we put ourselves in
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: the tales.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: We are. the hero with a heroine, or maybe long
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: to be a swan and fly off for all that.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: And it is through identifying initially as children that we
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: also receive an impact. Absolutely. Suspending that disbelief. We're in
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: the ritual drama. I'm there, and there's a witch, and
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: there's magic aster shirts. And sometimes parents are shy about
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: reading children fairy tales because they're often kind of raw.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: Life and death circumstances occur. But many, many advocates of
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: reading fairy tales say, your children already live in that world.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: They're not shocked by this. How many kids walk up
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: to dad and say, dad, I'm going to shoot you
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: and you'll die, okay? Bang. And the dad goes, oh,
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: and he collapses on the ground. And then the kids
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: are running over and he's thrilled. But in the mythic world,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: you shoot things and they die and they come back
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: to life and there are monsters. And kids manufacture and
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: enact these kind of gruesome dramas all the time. So
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: I hardly think that there's very much in a fairy
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: tale that your kid is going to be surprised about
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: when you watch how they naturally play. But what the
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: fairy tale offers is a way through some of these
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: really complicated conundrums that a child hasn't, thank goodness, hasn't
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: had to come up against, but will likely whether that's
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: a purely internal experience or some mix of in or out.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: So I really hope that all of you, if you
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: have children, get copies of Grimm's fairy tale and don't
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: be shy about reading your kids' fairy tales. And again,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: don't have to explain them. And for ourselves to be
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: really thoughtful, what is this saying? What can I make
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: of this to ask oneself if this was a dream?
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: What would I do with this? We can then get
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: a glimpse at that eternal aspect of the unconscious that
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: shows up in all of these ancient stories. In fact,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: has probably written them. So maybe it's time now to
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: transition into a dream. Our dreamer is a 29 year
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: old male. who is an architect. And he tells us
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 2: this dream. I'm on a beach. I think my mother
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: is not too far. A woman in a red bikini
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: is standing in the sea, in the shallow waters. She
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: is blonde, tan, with hyper-sexualized features such as breast implants.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: I try to interact with her in a sexual way.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: I'm at her knees. I'm consumed by lust and desire.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: She tells me that she has to go, but that
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: she will be back. As she leaves, the day turns
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: into night, and she comes back walking on the beach
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: this time. She is now a brunette, slightly skinnier in sweatpants.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: She also looks more natural. She invites me to follow her.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: We are now in the living room of the house
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: I grew up in. I still feel that strong sexual
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: desire for her. She sits in our Ottoman chair and
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: offers me a bowl of cereal. As I take the
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: bowl to go eat it in the kitchen, every spoonful
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: I grab contains long hair. Somehow, I know that it's hers,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: and I'm slightly disgusted and simply not able to eat.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: For context, he writes, Six months ago, I moved to
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: the United States for a job. I met a woman
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: shortly after, and we are now engaged. Last week, we
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: moved in together in a small house. Next week, she
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: will meet my siblings and mother for the first time.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: He says the main feelings in the dream were lust, desire,
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: and disgust. And he offers a bit of explanation for
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: some of the dream elements. He says, my fiance's dad
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: died of multiple sclerosis last year, and she hasn't done
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: the blood test to know if she is carries the
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: genetic markers for that as well.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: Well, I have a quick take on the dream, which
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: is how important it is and how fraught it is
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: when you introduce your fiancé or a boyfriend or any
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: significant other to your family for the first time. So
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: since his mother and siblings are going to meet the
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 3: fiancé for the first time, I'm assuming, okay, they're going
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: back home where all of the family members are. And
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of anxiety around this. He's made a commitment.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 3: They've moved in together. Gosh, I hope you like her.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: The dream itself says, I'm on a beach. I think
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 3: my mother is not too far.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: That sets a very specific stage going into the erotic
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: mix section. Freud would have a field day. Yeah.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: And, you know, I do a personal riff here. The
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: first time that I went to meet my now husband's
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: family was on a spring break. We'd been dating in college.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: We were driving down to Florida with a bunch of
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: other people. And I'm about to meet my boyfriend's, at
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 3: that point, family for the first time. His brother, his sister,
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 3: his father, his mother. And we get to about maybe
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: South Carolina, heading into Florida, which is where his family lived.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: And all of a sudden, I had one of these
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 3: moments of like, what am I doing? I am wandering
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: into You know, who knows what. What if they don't
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: like me? It's very fraught. So I'm projecting that, but
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: it doesn't seem too far to reach that it's a
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: big deal. Here's the person I've chosen in life. We've
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: moved in together. How's this going to go?
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: So the anxiety, perhaps the trepidation. Mm-hmm. I think the
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: dream is on one level commenting on that because there
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: is an evolution in his relationship to the feminine. He's
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: on the beach. The mother is in the proximity. The
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: beach is often interpreted as this kind of liminal thin
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: place where we could walk into the ocean, which represents
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: that the deep unconscious we're on the sand. So we're
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: in a little bit of safe ego space. But we're
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: right on that line. Could have one foot in either
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: world easily. And the mother is close. So the mother
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: is close in consciousness and the relationship that he has
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: with his mother, I would imagine, is in some ways
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: influencing the rest of the dream, or at least we
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: might find evidence of that. So there's an evolution in
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: his attitude. The woman, the first woman, offers such an
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: exaggerated sexual dynamism. So the feminine is overwhelmingly erotic. I mean,
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: an Aphrodite coming out of the sea on the clamshell,
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: as she's sometimes depicted, and it's so overwhelming that he
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: is just on his knees before the archetypal power of
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: the feminine, I love that the next iteration, she's relatable.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: She looks kind of natural. She's not so exaggerated. He's
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: on his own feet. At least he's not knocked to
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: his knees. And then the third encounter, he's really ambivalent. Ah, wow,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: hair in my cereal. So there's a much more complicated,
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: fulsome experience with the feminine that's attained.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 3: I am also really aware that as the dream progresses,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: he says, we're now in the living room of the
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: house I grew up in. As he, in waking life,
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 3: prepares to go back to his place of origin, the
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 3: child and childhood complexes kick up.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 3: Mother is at first not too far, and then we're
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: in the living room where everybody goes to interact of
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 3: the house he grew up in. It's curious that for
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 3: the first woman who is sort of emblematic of everything,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 3: like Marilyn Monroe of the hot babe in the red bikini,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 3: that there's all this sexual desire And it's still there
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 3: the second time around where the woman is the brunette,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: she's skinnier, she's in sweatpants, she looks more natural. But
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 3: there's still a lot of sexual energy here. And I
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: think that too creates a tension. And I would put
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 3: big money down on many a young couple going back
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: to the family of origin with a fiance, and trying
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: to balance the sexual desire in the home you grew
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 3: up in, when your parents are somewhere in the house
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: or nearby, it really sets up a lot of activity
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: in the psyche. You know, and every teenager has experienced it.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 3: You know, you're making out on the couch and then
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: you hear footsteps and it's like, well, I'm pulling back.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: We were just talking.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 3: Now, come on, I know you did this too. But
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: I'm still a little puzzled about the hair in the
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: bowl of cereal of what other part of the psyche
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 3: comes up to say, you know, don't do that here.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: Don't have sexual inclinations in the house.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: So I think that we're in that. realm, as is
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: true for all, that the anima and the animus have
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: to separate out from the parental complexes. For him, the
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: mother is the first image of the feminine and the
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: breasts are important. I mean, so the breasts in his
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: adult mind seem exaggerated, but when you're a baby, the
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: breast is bigger than your head. I mean, the breasts
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: are as wide as your shoulders. You know, it is
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: of mythic proportion. And we have memories of that relationship.
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, we have visual images and sensory memories that
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: are foundational of the magnitude of the breast and its
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: ability to sate, you know, our howling hungers and comfort
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: us and all the good stuff that happens in that moment.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: So his mother is nearby and the first emergence of
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: the anima, one is very archetypal. The breasts are, like
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: you said, substantive. And he is at her knees, which
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: is when you think about a little child coming up
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: to her knees. You know, you have innumerable memories of
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: standing there, being only about as high as your mom's knees.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: So he's really in that place where the anima is
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: trying to separate out from the mother complex. And one
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: of the ways that we can imagine that is he's
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: able to feel that enormous sexual dynamism absent the incest taboo.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: So he's able to experience that without feeling ashamed, which
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: is great because that needs to happen. If the mother
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: archetype is too involved with the anima, then the young
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: man is going to feel very ambivalent. It's going to
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: feel strangely and disturbingly transgressive to feel so sexually interested.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I think you're making a really good point
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 3: about there's no ambivalence about the anima figure being his
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 3: fiance in the dream, these two dream women. So the
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: mother complex is not interfering with his ability to access
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: his sexual desire through these sexualized images of women. But
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: something comes up.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: That's right. It does.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 3: It says, not here. There's going to be hair and cereal,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 3: and it's going to be gross. Gross. And it's yucky.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 3: So there is a place of real internal conflict.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And what I would like to say, which is
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: a wonderful mythologic amplification, is the goddess of the grains
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: is called Ceres, which is where we get the word
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: cereal from.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 3: Ah, that's right.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: So there's the mother who's kind of around but not visible.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: We have the first emergence of the sexualized object. Then
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: she becomes a little more humanized, which she's still lovely,
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: but she isn't so hypersexual. And then we find out
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 2: that she really is still has too much of the
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: mother in it. So then she gives him the bowl
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: of cereal and Sirius is the goddess of agriculture, grain, fertility,
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 2: and motherly relationships. And so when the mother kind of
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: breaks back into the erotic dimension, he can't stomach that.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: It's incestuous. It's disgusting. Yeah.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: I think you just landed on an archetypal amplification through
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 3: connecting serial to series, which is really great stuff. And
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 3: Ceres or Demeter is absolutely a real motherly image. She
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 3: makes the crops grow. She rescued her daughter Persephone from Hades.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 3: So here is the mother archetype. So I'm changing what
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 3: I said before. The mother archetype is present in this
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 3: very subtle but substantial image symbolism of the bowl of
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 3: cereal because he could have been offered anything to eat.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: He could have been offered a sandwich, an apple, a
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 3: piece of fruit, anything, but he's offered cereal.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: And there's too much of the mother in there, so
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: it's yucky.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right. And having a fiancé in the home where
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 3: your mom is present is a big deal. And how
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 3: do we relate to the feminine? and the internal feminine
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 3: of his own anima, given these countervailing currents of what
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 3: it's like to relate to mom and maybe a sister
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 3: and what it is like to have access to sexuality
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 3: with a partner. And I also wonder about whether there
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 3: is some ambivalence that is implicit, perhaps, in his statement
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 3: that his fiancée' s father died of multiple sclerosis. And she
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 3: hasn't done the blood test to know she carries genetic markers.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 3: So I didn't know that there was a blood test,
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 3: but evidently there is. And that this is a piece
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 3: of unfinished business at the very least for him. That
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 3: sets up an ambivalence of a fiancé, if we're going
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: to have a lifetime partnership, this matters to know this.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So that can be part of what's hard to
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: stomach at the end of the... of the dream that,
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: you know, can I really take in that there could
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: be something dangerous that is present. I also want to
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: say that the dream is also giving him an opportunity
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: to understand why he may sometimes hypersexualize women as a
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: way of trying to separate the mother archetype out from
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: the anima. Because the first image of the goddess, and
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: I think about these wonderful Indian statues of goddesses, and
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: their breasts are these like perfect circular half melons. I mean,
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: it's so, everything is so symmetrical, so perfect. And that
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: is a way of him trying to make sure that
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: the motherly stuff is somewhere else, that she's purely... an
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: erotic object. And that's reasonable. I mean, the psyche is
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: trying to figure out how to separate mother and anima,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: mother and lover. It comes back in because that process
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 2: of separating out the mother and the anima is going
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: to happen iteratively. This will happen over and over and
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: over again. And I think there is a recommendation in
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: the dream, one, to look at the fiancé and say,
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: are there some dynamics here where I am unconsciously pressing
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: her to mother me? And is that really what I want?
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: Does that make sense to me? Is that what she wants?
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 2: Am I sometimes being hypersexual in the relationship as a
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: way of trying to vanquish the motherly ambivalence, but also
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 2: perhaps exaggerating my perception of my fiancée because it's so
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: disturbing to see her in a motherly fashion. So he's
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: working something out in the dream, and the dream is
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: helping him work something out.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:38:25
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• 1:38:28
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• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: and submit your dreams for possible interpretation on another episode.
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: We'd like to thank our listener who shared a dream
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: topics you'd enjoy hearing more about. Until next time, keep
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 3: Thank you.