Latest / This Jungian Life Podcast / If Looks Could Kill: The Death Mother Archetype

Transcript

If Looks Could Kill: The Death Mother Archetype · This Jungian Life Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
0:06
Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
0:10
Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
0:14
Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
0:19
Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
0:23
Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
0:28
Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. Today,
0:44
Speaker 4: we are going to talk about an aspect of the
0:48
Speaker 4: archetype of the mother that has been termed the death mother.
0:55
Speaker 4: And that is, as I said, the negative side that
0:59
Speaker 4: we're all very well acquainted with through fairy tales such
1:03
Speaker 4: as Hansel and Gretel and the archetype of the witch.
1:09
Speaker 4: And there are others as well, like Medusa. of that
1:14
Speaker 4: part of the feminine, of the maternal, that we perceive
1:19
Speaker 4: and experience as killing psychic energy, shutting us down, turning
1:27
Speaker 4: us off. The part of the mother archetype, whether it
1:33
Speaker 4: comes from a teacher or some other figures in one's life,
1:41
Speaker 4: that elicits in us feelings of anxiety, emotional hunger, shame, dread,
1:51
Speaker 4: all kinds of things. It's part of the mother archetype.
1:57
Speaker 4: It certainly is part of many an individual's history of
2:02
Speaker 4: relational emotional trauma. And there is quite a bit of
2:08
Speaker 4: material and people have spoken about it. So with all
2:13
Speaker 4: that said, let's begin to understand this incredibly influential force
2:21
Speaker 4: in our lives.
2:23
Speaker 2: You know, it might make sense to take a minute
2:25
Speaker 2: and differentiate the death mother from the negative mother, because
2:31
Speaker 2: we have talked about that before. In a sense, they're
2:35
Speaker 2: very close together, and perhaps the death mother is like
2:38
Speaker 2: a category of negative mother, but it's a very specific
2:42
Speaker 2: phenomenon because it has to do with a situation or
2:47
Speaker 2: an energy from which we expect nurture behaves in such
2:52
Speaker 2: a way as to threaten our lives. And this could
2:56
Speaker 2: be an actual biological mother. but it could also be
3:00
Speaker 2: with something else that's supposed to be mothering in the environment,
3:03
Speaker 2: whether it's an institution or an organization, another kind of relationship,
3:09
Speaker 2: or even just the nature of nature itself. Because nature
3:16
Speaker 2: is that great mother that both gives birth to life
3:22
Speaker 2: and also destroys and kills. So at its bedrock, The
3:28
Speaker 2: death mother is part of life itself.
3:33
Speaker 3: Marie-Louise von Franz is the first, I believe, to coin
3:38
Speaker 3: that term. And that shows up in her book, The
3:40
Speaker 3: Interpretation of Fairy Tales. And I'll just read this particular
3:46
Speaker 3: paragraph from the book so we can kind of place
3:49
Speaker 3: it in that initial imaginative world. And from that, other
3:54
Speaker 3: authors have gleaned much more beyond that. So, this will
4:01
Speaker 3: take a minute or two to read her whole quote. Oh,
4:06
Speaker 3: the sun myth and the tree myth are connected, for
4:09
Speaker 3: in the morning the sun is born in the east
4:11
Speaker 3: out of the tree. Therefore, for instance, the Christmas tree
4:15
Speaker 3: and every Christmas the tree gives birth to the new
4:17
Speaker 3: light at the moment of the winter solstice. So all
4:21
Speaker 3: the sun myths are in a way also tree myths.
4:24
Speaker 3: But then the tree is also a mother. You know
4:28
Speaker 3: that in Saxony, even now it is said that beautiful
4:31
Speaker 3: girls grow under the leaves of trees, and I could
4:33
Speaker 3: show you pictures showing that children come from trees. The
4:38
Speaker 3: souls of unborn children rustle under the leaves, and that
4:41
Speaker 3: is why there are trees in the center of all German, Austrian,
4:45
Speaker 3: and Swiss villages. The tree is therefore the great mother.
4:50
Speaker 3: But the tree is not only the mother of life,
4:53
Speaker 3: but also the death mother. because from trees coffins are
4:59
Speaker 3: made and there are tree burials. The shamans of circumpolar
5:04
Speaker 3: tribes and people in certain North Canadian tribes are buried
5:10
Speaker 3: in a tree. Probably also the Babylonian zikarots and these
5:15
Speaker 3: columns on which the Persians put their dead are a
5:19
Speaker 3: travesty of the tree. So the idea of the tree
5:23
Speaker 3: burial that the body of the tree is then transformed
5:28
Speaker 3: into the coffin is a link that von Franz makes
5:32
Speaker 3: and also has older resonances to it, including a Kabbalistic idea,
5:39
Speaker 3: so I think I'll bring up in a bit. So
5:41
Speaker 3: von Franz coins this term just through the observation of
5:45
Speaker 3: burial rites and myths and the similitude of various images
5:51
Speaker 3: and mythologies.
5:53
Speaker 2: So this idea of von Franz, that there's sort of
5:56
Speaker 2: the tree that gives birth and then the tree becomes
5:59
Speaker 2: the coffin, speaks to the fact that this death mother energy,
6:05
Speaker 2: this death mother archetype that we're talking about, is a
6:08
Speaker 2: sort of essential part of the great round, as Eric
6:15
Speaker 2: Neumann calls it. And I have a quote here by
6:20
Speaker 2: Anthony Stevens that I think is really beautiful. So this,
6:23
Speaker 2: Anthony Stevens is a Jungian analyst, and he's talking about Gaia,
6:28
Speaker 2: the Earth Mother. He says, Her commitment to the continuation
6:32
Speaker 2: of life is central, but the commitment to any specific
6:37
Speaker 2: life is non-existent. There is an unconflicted acceptance of the
6:43
Speaker 2: value and necessity of death as an integral part of life.
6:48
Speaker 2: So if you think about it, again, if you think
6:49
Speaker 2: about it in terms of Mother Nature, she puts forth
6:53
Speaker 2: in abundance, but then she also takes away in abundance.
6:58
Speaker 2: And Mother Nature is kind of totally impartial to the
7:02
Speaker 2: life of the individual. So I was, you know, it
7:04
Speaker 2: was a beautiful fall weekend here in Philadelphia this past weekend,
7:08
Speaker 2: and I went to the Morris Arboretum with some of
7:11
Speaker 2: my family. And there was a monarch butterfly in a
7:15
Speaker 2: death and life and death struggle with some big, ugly wasp.
7:21
Speaker 2: And I have to say, we did intervene and rescue
7:24
Speaker 2: the monarch. But those kinds of things are when you see,
7:27
Speaker 2: you know, a bumblebee caught in a spider's web and
7:29
Speaker 2: you think, you know, the human compassion, you want to
7:33
Speaker 2: rescue the poor little bumblebee, but the spider needs to
7:37
Speaker 2: eat too. And nature herself is impartial to that struggle.
7:41
Speaker 2: It's like, well, is the bee going to tear itself
7:45
Speaker 2: free from the web or not? Because this is just
7:47
Speaker 2: how the cookie crumbles. So the death mother energy is
7:51
Speaker 2: all around us all the time. And it actually is
7:55
Speaker 2: an integral and unavoidable aspect of life.
7:59
Speaker 4: What you're saying here really brings up the difference between
8:05
Speaker 4: our ego perspective and And this great round that Mother
8:13
Speaker 4: Nature is in service to life, but she does not
8:19
Speaker 4: provide a whole lot of attention to an individual bumblebee.
8:24
Speaker 4: Or I think what sparks a reaction in us is
8:27
Speaker 4: to any single one of us.
8:31
Speaker 2: Right.
8:31
Speaker 4: There is such an abundance and my image of life.
8:37
Speaker 4: And my image for this is always the salmon swimming
8:41
Speaker 4: upstream and thousands and thousands of them return to the
8:46
Speaker 4: streams where they were spawned. And only some relatively small
8:53
Speaker 4: percentage makes it all the way upstream. And in the meantime,
8:57
Speaker 4: the fishermen are out there catching salmon. The bears are
9:01
Speaker 4: out there gorging on salmon to get them through the
9:05
Speaker 4: winter months. And it is a kind of a startling
9:10
Speaker 4: thing to think about. Are we kind of like the salmon,
9:14
Speaker 4: that there are untold numbers of us? And the message
9:20
Speaker 4: is sort of like, you know, you're on your own.
9:22
Speaker 4: Or as my daughter calls it, yo-yo, you're on your own.
9:27
Speaker 4: And good luck with that. Swimming all the way upstream,
9:32
Speaker 4: do the best you can. You pays your money and
9:35
Speaker 4: you takes your chances. which seems a little sort of like, oh, really?
9:43
Speaker 4: What is supporting me and my life and my becoming?
9:52
Speaker 4: Because it feels like Mother Nature is not there for us.
9:56
Speaker 4: What is there for us? So you know, what I'm
9:59
Speaker 4: thinking about is we've kind of at least given a
10:04
Speaker 4: quick overview of Mother Nature and that aspect of the
10:12
Speaker 4: archetype of the mother. And then we can look at
10:16
Speaker 4: mythology to see what the collective is. has done with
10:21
Speaker 4: this image over time. I referenced Hansel and Gretel, the
10:27
Speaker 4: lovely old lady who tells the kids that they can
10:31
Speaker 4: help themselves to the gingerbread and the candy only as
10:36
Speaker 4: a way, like your image of the spider, Lisa, like
10:39
Speaker 4: lure you in and only to devour you. There's the
10:46
Speaker 4: well-known story of Medusa. who turned people to stone, and Medea,
10:54
Speaker 4: who killed her children to get back at her errant husband, Jason,
11:01
Speaker 4: who'd gone a-wandering. There are many more examples, I think,
11:05
Speaker 4: in mythology and fairy tale.
11:08
Speaker 3: And I'd like to offer another kind of archetypal layer,
11:12
Speaker 3: that in many ancient religions, there's a great tension between
11:18
Speaker 3: force and form or spirit and matter and this is
11:22
Speaker 3: intrinsic to much of the far eastern religions and that
11:27
Speaker 3: was also brought into Christianity through Syria that spirit is
11:35
Speaker 3: somehow unfettered free without limits and free from decay and
11:42
Speaker 3: that all that is brought into matter is subject to
11:45
Speaker 3: all of the of the material world and illness and
11:50
Speaker 3: aging and all manner of other vicissitudes. The story of
11:56
Speaker 3: Gautama Buddha, you know, leaving the palace and looking at
12:02
Speaker 3: death and pain and suffering that life brings. And wouldn't
12:07
Speaker 3: it be wonderful if there was a method where we
12:10
Speaker 3: could transcend suffering and also not need to incarnate again?
12:15
Speaker 3: and to escape the wheel of birth and death would
12:19
Speaker 3: be to escape the womb, because the womb is the
12:24
Speaker 3: thing that takes the spirit and enfleshes it and subsequently
12:31
Speaker 3: subjects it to all of the struggles of being a
12:35
Speaker 3: physical being. So there's a tension theologically between spirit and
12:43
Speaker 3: matter and the whole process of incarnation the kabbalists take
12:48
Speaker 3: another step which i think is helpful in our discussion
12:52
Speaker 3: is that the the light all of the cosmic potential
12:58
Speaker 3: emanates from one aspect of the tree of life is
13:02
Speaker 3: emanated and passed to the divine mother called bina bina
13:09
Speaker 3: so fully understands the potential of the spirit that she
13:14
Speaker 3: immediately predicts the succession of forms that the spirit must
13:24
Speaker 3: embody to force all of its potential to be actualized.
13:31
Speaker 3: And in that model, the form exists to facilitate the
13:38
Speaker 3: actualization of potential, and when the form has exhausted its utility, i.e.
13:46
Speaker 3: the spirit has learned all it can, the same mother
13:50
Speaker 3: principle dissolves the form, liberates the indwelling spirit, and offers
13:57
Speaker 3: the next successive form for its development. And out of
14:02
Speaker 3: that we get this idea which is not uncommon that
14:05
Speaker 3: life and reincarnation is a succession of educative experiences for
14:12
Speaker 3: the soul or the spirit of the individual so the
14:16
Speaker 3: cosmic mother provides all forms and then also dissolves those
14:21
Speaker 3: forms or is the death mother when there is no
14:24
Speaker 3: more utility to the experience And that's one philosophic orientation
14:32
Speaker 3: towards the same principle of embodiment and the succession of forms.
14:38
Speaker 2: You know, one of the things that I think comes
14:41
Speaker 2: up in everything we've been talking about is a total
14:44
Speaker 2: lack of sentimentality.
14:46
Speaker 3: Yeah.
14:47
Speaker 2: So that's maybe one of the defining features of the
14:51
Speaker 2: death mother is there's nothing sentimental, which is interesting because
14:53
Speaker 2: you think about sort of our cultural conception of motherhood
14:57
Speaker 2: is just steeped In sentimentality, isn't it? And I mean,
15:02
Speaker 2: and I can tell you, I was, you know, when
15:04
Speaker 2: I wasn't being a deaf mother, I was a very
15:06
Speaker 2: sentimental mother. So, you know, that's a true part of
15:11
Speaker 2: the experience, too. It's like, oh, look at this little onesie.
15:14
Speaker 2: They don't fit in it anymore. I have to give
15:16
Speaker 2: it away.
15:17
Speaker 3: So sentimentalization and also idealization of the mother then causes
15:23
Speaker 3: this split off. Yes. phenomena that all the other aspects
15:28
Speaker 3: of the archetype are then pushed away, but then they're
15:33
Speaker 3: vibrating under the surface. They're thrumming where nobody can see them,
15:37
Speaker 3: but they are still affecting things.
15:40
Speaker 4: So I think, you know, what this points to is
15:46
Speaker 4: that in our culture in the Western world, at least
15:51
Speaker 4: in this country today, we have kind of split the archetype.
15:59
Speaker 4: Motherhood is wonderful. It's always wonderful, all day, every day.
16:04
Speaker 4: You know, you're going to have a first baby, you're
16:09
Speaker 4: going to have a shower and make a list of
16:12
Speaker 4: all the things you want to get at one of
16:14
Speaker 4: these great baby supply outlets. It's become very, very sentimentalized.
16:23
Speaker 4: And your book, Lisa, on motherhood, and any conversation anybody
16:29
Speaker 4: has ever had with the mother of an infant or
16:33
Speaker 4: toddler will include how frustrating and difficult, exhausting and anger-making
16:44
Speaker 4: the constant demand is. of this infant and toddler is
16:50
Speaker 4: in addition to being many, many shades of wonderful and adorable.
16:57
Speaker 4: But today in our culture, motherhood has been hugely sentimentalized.
17:06
Speaker 4: The negative is not really dealt with or permitted as
17:13
Speaker 4: if these human feelings, are somehow the equivalent of something
17:21
Speaker 4: related to annihilation or death.
17:25
Speaker 2: And you know, Deb, that's really helpful. I mean, I
17:28
Speaker 2: think you're identifying that there's this split, right? And I
17:32
Speaker 2: think that's so true because we either just totally idealize
17:36
Speaker 2: it or the other side really goes into the shadow,
17:41
Speaker 2: doesn't it? And we don't think about it, we don't
17:43
Speaker 2: talk about it, but as you said, Joseph, it's kind
17:45
Speaker 2: of knocking around.
17:47
Speaker 3: But I think that.
17:47
Speaker 2: That idealization of motherhood, it has this other effect, too,
17:52
Speaker 2: that I see where, you know, I had someone, I think,
17:57
Speaker 2: where did this happen? I can't remember, but someone said,
17:59
Speaker 2: you know, I love my mother and I hate my mother.
18:01
Speaker 2: And I thought, yes, you know, it's like somehow, though,
18:07
Speaker 2: an effect, I think, of idealizing motherhood is that we
18:11
Speaker 2: grow up expecting our mothers to have been perfect. Just
18:16
Speaker 2: like somehow we've been sold an image of motherhood as
18:20
Speaker 2: this kind of totally beatific experience all the time. As adults,
18:26
Speaker 2: we look back and we're astounded that parts of our
18:30
Speaker 2: childhood or our current relationship with our mother might be
18:32
Speaker 2: disappointing or wounding. And I'm certainly not talking about mothers
18:37
Speaker 2: who are truly terrible or suicidal or dangerous mothers. But
18:43
Speaker 2: your sort of average mother who has, you know, faults
18:46
Speaker 2: and flaws and makes mistakes and, you know, is infuriating
18:50
Speaker 2: at times. And that gets.
18:54
Speaker 3: Split off too.
18:55
Speaker 2: And then we're not afforded the possibility of having a
18:58
Speaker 2: sort of, you know, reasonable expectation of this entirely human person,
19:04
Speaker 2: you know.
19:06
Speaker 4: So I think we're, you know, what I'm thinking about
19:10
Speaker 4: is that We've been honing and refining what you said earlier, Lisa,
19:16
Speaker 4: about the negative mother is not the death mother. The
19:21
Speaker 4: negative mother is that human mother who gets exhausted, who
19:26
Speaker 4: gets angry, who doesn't pay attention. You know, you can
19:31
Speaker 4: make a great long list of all the faults that
19:34
Speaker 4: mom very definitely had. And it's our job. given what
19:40
Speaker 4: Donald Winnicott, a British psychoanalyst and pediatrician, called, we need
19:46
Speaker 4: the good enough mother who has.
19:50
Speaker 4: From a child's point of view, negative as well as
19:54
Speaker 4: positive attributes, but overall is present, is loving, does care,
20:02
Speaker 4: and can establish with her child a secure base, a
20:07
Speaker 4: secure relational base that is at the center of that
20:12
Speaker 4: child's being, from which then we're free to kind of
20:16
Speaker 4: go and come. But the death mother takes it into
20:20
Speaker 4: a different dimension.
20:23
Speaker 3: So I think, as Jung has said, that whenever there
20:27
Speaker 3: is a kind of archetypal disavowal, that the gods then
20:32
Speaker 3: go into the body, they go into the unconscious, they're
20:35
Speaker 3: secretly influencing, as you were both saying. that when there
20:40
Speaker 3: is shame over natural ambivalence and occasions of hostility in
20:47
Speaker 3: a mother, and that's combined with this intense cultural idealization,
20:54
Speaker 3: that an essential part of the archetype is cut off.
20:58
Speaker 3: When an archetype is cut off and it is still active,
21:03
Speaker 3: it begins to grow in its potency and accrete. all
21:08
Speaker 3: kinds of additional material, then when it hits a critical mass,
21:13
Speaker 3: it will erupt and become a possessing dynamic. And a
21:19
Speaker 3: mother can experience herself being altered, being changed by the archetype.
21:27
Speaker 3: And if it becomes the death mother, then there are
21:31
Speaker 3: some very particular effects that it has on her as
21:36
Speaker 3: well as on her children. I would also say that
21:40
Speaker 3: our vulnerability to archetypal possession comes from many different components.
21:46
Speaker 3: Part of it could be just a natural temperament, but
21:49
Speaker 3: also structural stressors. You know, mom has limited resources or
21:53
Speaker 3: no social support if she doesn't have a partner. She
21:57
Speaker 3: has lots of dependents. All of those things that chip
22:02
Speaker 3: away at our ego strength, And AA does a good job,
22:06
Speaker 3: you know, don't get too lonely, don't get too scared,
22:09
Speaker 3: don't get too hungry. All of the things that chew
22:13
Speaker 3: the ego down make it much more vulnerable to an
22:16
Speaker 3: archetypal possession of all kinds. And if the death mother
22:20
Speaker 3: is hovering close, that exhaustion and chipping away makes the
22:28
Speaker 3: mom much more vulnerable to acting out the archetypal dynamic.
22:34
Speaker 3: which may not, by the way, show up as literal
22:38
Speaker 3: lethal actions against the children, but can create a kind
22:43
Speaker 3: of death-like energy in the relationship that causes the child
22:49
Speaker 3: to shut down and freeze up and be denied the
22:53
Speaker 3: life-giving aspects of the mother.
22:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like your idea, Joseph, about it's sort of,
23:01
Speaker 2: you know, the fact that that we can be susceptible
23:04
Speaker 2: to possession. And it makes me think of, you know,
23:07
Speaker 2: to speak to actual infanticide, the case, a famous case
23:11
Speaker 2: of Andrea Yates, who, what year was that? It was
23:15
Speaker 2: in 2001. And Anna Quinlan, so she drowned her five children,
23:21
Speaker 2: I think, in the bathtub. And Anna Quinlan wrote a
23:25
Speaker 2: piece in Newsweek that was called Playing God on No Sleep.
23:30
Speaker 2: And here's a quote from that. which I just think
23:34
Speaker 2: speaks to the point you were making, that it's like
23:36
Speaker 2: a universal possibility. So here's Anna Quinlan. She says, Every
23:41
Speaker 2: mother I've asked about the Yates case has the same reaction.
23:47
Speaker 2: She's appalled. She's aghast. And then she gets this look.
23:54
Speaker 2: And the look says that at some forbidden level, she understands.
23:59
Speaker 2: The look says that there are two very different kinds
24:02
Speaker 2: of horror here. There is the unimaginable idea of the killings.
24:09
Speaker 2: And then there is the entirely imaginable idea of going
24:13
Speaker 2: quietly bonkers in the house with five kids under the
24:17
Speaker 2: age of seven. And I think she's really, really onto
24:21
Speaker 2: something that in some sense, this is sort of a
24:24
Speaker 2: universal potential. I want to just change tracks just a
24:29
Speaker 2: little bit. And Deb, I think I'm going back to
24:31
Speaker 2: something you were saying a minute ago. You know, Marian
24:34
Speaker 2: Woodman talked about the death mother. And she said the
24:36
Speaker 2: death mother either wants her child dead or wants a
24:39
Speaker 2: part of her child dead. And I think that this
24:43
Speaker 2: is sort of like, what is that like in the
24:45
Speaker 2: relational field to feel like your mother wants you dead
24:49
Speaker 2: or wants part of you dead? And I go back
24:53
Speaker 2: to this thing that I just think about again and again.
24:56
Speaker 2: which is what a difference it makes to feel enjoyed.
25:01
Speaker 2: And I'll have people come in and talk about their
25:07
Speaker 2: experience in childhood. And it's not so much my mother
25:11
Speaker 2: didn't love me. I'll say, I don't think your mother
25:14
Speaker 2: enjoyed you. Sometimes when I work with young mothers and
25:18
Speaker 2: they're all upset and then, am I doing a good
25:20
Speaker 2: enough job? I'll say, do you enjoy it at least
25:22
Speaker 2: some of the time? And they'll say, yes. I said,
25:24
Speaker 2: then you're doing a great job. Because when you think
25:27
Speaker 2: about the experience of knowing that you are enjoyed, think
25:33
Speaker 2: about it now in your life. When you walk into
25:36
Speaker 2: a room and your partner, your friend, your coworkers turn
25:42
Speaker 2: to you and you can just tell, you can't fake it.
25:46
Speaker 2: They're genuinely happy to see you. It's why it feels
25:50
Speaker 2: so good to make someone laugh. It's why it feels
25:55
Speaker 2: so good to play together because you're being enjoyed and
26:00
Speaker 2: you're enjoying the other person. There's mutual enjoyment. I mean,
26:05
Speaker 2: that's really what sex is about too. So it's sort of,
26:09
Speaker 2: it's such an essential glue to feel that you're cherished.
26:14
Speaker 2: And I think especially for kids to know that your
26:17
Speaker 2: mother not just loved you, but enjoyed mothering you. You know,
26:20
Speaker 2: there's this wonderful quote I'm going to just paraphrase it
26:24
Speaker 2: because I don't know the exact words, but Marc Chagall
26:26
Speaker 2: said of his mother, my mother had a very difficult
26:29
Speaker 2: time with me. I think she quite enjoyed it.
26:32
Speaker 3: That's a great quote.
26:38
Speaker 4: Yeah.
26:38
Speaker 2: And that is the opposite of the death mother.
26:42
Speaker 3: Right.
26:44
Speaker 2: The death mother is, there's no enjoyment here and I
26:47
Speaker 2: want you dead.
26:48
Speaker 3: So, In the child, the child feels that they are
26:52
Speaker 3: not wanted, that they are a problem. And then when
26:57
Speaker 3: the child realizes that they are not wanted, it shuts
27:03
Speaker 3: down their affect and their natural interest in exploration. And
27:09
Speaker 3: that can have a devastating effect on the child if
27:12
Speaker 3: it is repeated and chronic. As you were saying, Lisa
27:16
Speaker 3: and Deb, you've alluded to it also that The world's
27:19
Speaker 3: not perfect. Kids aren't perfect. Moms aren't perfect. Life is tough.
27:23
Speaker 3: So occasionally not wanting your kids around like, please let
27:26
Speaker 3: me go to the bathroom alone, like for five minutes.
27:31
Speaker 2: Right.
27:31
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, absolutely.
27:33
Speaker 2: 18 times a day.
27:34
Speaker 3: Yeah. Right. A pervasive attitude towards a child of, I
27:39
Speaker 3: wish you weren't here ever. That changes the child's psyche. Yeah.
27:46
Speaker 4: You're both going right toward the death mother and that
27:51
Speaker 4: dynamic is pervasive, as you just said, Joseph. It's not
27:59
Speaker 4: that flaring of exasperation that says, all I wanted to
28:06
Speaker 4: do was go to the bathroom. Is that too much
28:10
Speaker 4: to ask?
28:12
Speaker 3: Which is a reasonable frustration.
28:14
Speaker 4: Exactly. But you can tell the difference that I'm kind
28:19
Speaker 4: of enacting a little bit of like versus that mother
28:24
Speaker 4: that doesn't want to be bothered with you. And it's
28:28
Speaker 4: often very sort of subtle. And that is one of
28:33
Speaker 4: its characteristics is that it's not always so overt. It's
28:39
Speaker 4: the mother that gets her toddler or child up and
28:46
Speaker 4: always provides a nice breakfast. Do you want cereal? Do
28:51
Speaker 4: you want eggs? What do you want? Okay, here's your breakfast.
28:56
Speaker 2: Well, there's no enjoyment.
28:59
Speaker 4: Right, there's no enjoyment, there's no connection, and there is
29:03
Speaker 4: a deadness of affect and connection between mother and child
29:10
Speaker 4: that gives the child the message that I have a
29:14
Speaker 4: duty toward you. I feed you and I clothe you
29:17
Speaker 4: and I get you to your after-school lessons and your
29:21
Speaker 4: play dates, okay?
29:23
Speaker 3: And when the deadness is also explained as the child's fault,
29:29
Speaker 3: that it is inferred or sometimes explicit that the reason
29:34
Speaker 3: you're being treated that way is that there is something
29:37
Speaker 3: wrong and unlovable about the child. And we see this
29:43
Speaker 3: frequently enough in our practice that people come in with
29:47
Speaker 3: an underlying certainty that they are unlovable. Right.
29:52
Speaker 4: And so this aspect that comes out as not lovable,
29:57
Speaker 4: it's my fault, there's something wrong with me. I don't
30:00
Speaker 4: know what it is exactly, but I know it's me somehow.
30:06
Speaker 4: It is definitely an aspect of a death mother that
30:11
Speaker 4: killed something off in the field or simply didn't have
30:16
Speaker 4: it to offer. And then where I'm headed after having
30:23
Speaker 4: touched on this is then what we do is we
30:28
Speaker 4: create what an author named Robert Firestone calls the fantasy bond.
30:35
Speaker 4: So that's a book. It'll be in the show notes.
30:38
Speaker 4: We have to create the illusion of connection. We have to.
30:44
Speaker 4: Or we will not survive. We are highly social, relational,
30:50
Speaker 4: bonded creatures. And except in the presence of an annihilating
30:57
Speaker 4: mother that is physical, as well as psychological and emotional,
31:02
Speaker 4: what we do is we create our own fantasy about
31:07
Speaker 4: how things work and where the relationship is. And then
31:12
Speaker 4: we can carry that into our adult life and fantasies
31:17
Speaker 4: about how closeness, intimacy, and relationship work that is largely
31:24
Speaker 4: created in our own self projected onto other people as
31:31
Speaker 4: if it is an authentic, multidimensional, interpersonal bond, but it
31:40
Speaker 4: got created long ago as a result of relational trauma,
31:45
Speaker 4: that if I'm a really good kid and I'm a
31:49
Speaker 4: really good woman or man and I do all these
31:52
Speaker 4: following things, then that's intimacy, that's connection, that's love. This
32:00
Speaker 4: is how I earn it. This is how I get it.
32:04
Speaker 4: And the list goes on and on.
32:06
Speaker 3: So that conditional experience where the child might occasionally get
32:11
Speaker 3: a benign response and then the child is unconsciously registering
32:17
Speaker 3: that with great intensity and trying to create the very
32:21
Speaker 3: tight little keyhole through which they have to fit to
32:26
Speaker 3: get a pat on the head, to get a benign
32:29
Speaker 3: look sometimes, which means so much of the child has
32:34
Speaker 3: to be pushed away in order to try to figure
32:37
Speaker 3: out the little tiny thing that might give them the bit.
32:42
Speaker 3: And then as an adult, all relationships can be seen
32:46
Speaker 3: that way. How do I need to constrict myself in
32:50
Speaker 3: order to get the hope of a little bit of
32:54
Speaker 3: something good. Now when the death mother has totally possessed the,
32:59
Speaker 3: and I'm going to say possessed the maternal field, because
33:03
Speaker 3: the archetype transcends the individual. So the archetype may be
33:09
Speaker 3: active in the mother's psyche, but it is in the
33:12
Speaker 3: energy of the household. And there can be multiple strange effects.
33:19
Speaker 3: But one of the devastating effects the child, is that
33:25
Speaker 3: it kills hope, that there is a sense of despair
33:29
Speaker 3: and hopelessness, and that death of hope then shows up
33:37
Speaker 3: in many, many different environments. The hope that one will
33:40
Speaker 3: do well at school, the hope that one will have
33:44
Speaker 3: a future, and the pernicious, quiet way that that shows
33:49
Speaker 3: up in a child is this mantra. It doesn't matter.
33:56
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. What? I didn't get
34:00
Speaker 3: invited to the party in first grade. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.
34:06
Speaker 3: Nothing matters because if it matters, then you have hope.
34:11
Speaker 3: And if hope is going to be attacked by the
34:14
Speaker 3: death mother, it's best not to hope. That that's a
34:19
Speaker 3: way of keeping yourself alive. slick enough that there's no
34:26
Speaker 3: place for the death mother to go after you.
34:31
Speaker 4: I liked your word a lot, Joseph, of constricting, and
34:35
Speaker 4: that that is a great maybe overall descriptor of what
34:41
Speaker 4: happens in a child is, you know, the exuberance and
34:45
Speaker 4: the going out there, and I have a question, and
34:47
Speaker 4: can I have a sandwich, versus all that energy. having
34:53
Speaker 4: to be pulled back in and tamped down, and that
34:59
Speaker 4: only certain kinds of energy are allowed, like fitting yourself
35:04
Speaker 4: into that little keyhole, that performance is valued. Getting the
35:11
Speaker 4: lead in the school play is great. Making varsity some
35:16
Speaker 4: sports team is great. All the things that are valued
35:19
Speaker 4: that become performative versus authentic expressions of self.
35:26
Speaker 3: It's like the child becomes a collapsing star. The vitality
35:31
Speaker 3: begins to crush into itself, and there are often strange
35:38
Speaker 3: somatic symptoms that the child will develop, which I think
35:43
Speaker 3: is captured in the story of Medusa, where it's not
35:45
Speaker 3: like she looks at people and they become neurotic. where
35:49
Speaker 3: she looks at people and then they develop some psychological symptom,
35:53
Speaker 3: that she looks at them and their bodies freeze, their
35:57
Speaker 3: bodies change, which is something that Marian Woodman really was
36:03
Speaker 3: interested in. And one of her areas of life work
36:07
Speaker 3: was the relationship between psyche and soma, and particularly how
36:11
Speaker 3: the mother affects the child's relationship to their own body,
36:16
Speaker 3: since she is the caregiver often. of the body from
36:21
Speaker 3: in utero on until that independence happens. So if the
36:26
Speaker 3: death mother has this hope-killing hatred of her situation, the
36:35
Speaker 3: child's body registers that in very specific ways. So then
36:41
Speaker 3: you have children who refuse to eat, and they're terribly underweight.
36:47
Speaker 3: Children that refuse to sleep. because they're constantly vigilant in
36:52
Speaker 3: the bed and they can't let go. Yeah.
36:56
Speaker 4: I'm going back to you referencing Medusa, Joseph, and that
37:01
Speaker 4: the mother that can't enjoy her children and delight in
37:08
Speaker 4: their funny, quirky exuberance and their pain-in-the-neck behaviors, Medusa has
37:16
Speaker 4: her own story. You know, what happened to that mother?
37:22
Speaker 4: You know, the mother that we, some mother we may
37:24
Speaker 4: have brushed up against in personal life or even experienced.
37:31
Speaker 4: What happened there? Well, Medusa had been a very, very
37:36
Speaker 4: beautiful young woman. And she was raped by Poseidon in
37:42
Speaker 4: a temple of Athena. And who got blamed for that?
37:47
Speaker 2: Medusa.
37:48
Speaker 4: Medusa. So Medusa's punishment was that she would be hideous
37:55
Speaker 4: and ugly and have her famous venomous snakes for hair.
38:02
Speaker 4: So this goes to who was your mother's mother and
38:08
Speaker 4: who was your mother's mother's mother. And so it goes
38:13
Speaker 4: in a great chain of emotional patterns that are multigenerational.
38:20
Speaker 2: And Deb, I want to pick up on that and
38:22
Speaker 2: also bring back in your point about how we've split this.
38:27
Speaker 2: Because I think that if you look at women who
38:30
Speaker 2: have actually committed infanticide, you know, there is a way
38:34
Speaker 2: that I think they carry shadow for the whole society.
38:38
Speaker 2: Most of the time, the point that you made, Joseph,
38:41
Speaker 2: a woman who does something like that, you know, is
38:44
Speaker 2: usually terribly under-resourced and under-supported and you know, maybe suffering
38:50
Speaker 2: from some real mental health difficulties and isn't getting the
38:53
Speaker 2: help she needs. And so there's a way that there's
38:57
Speaker 2: a sort of sociological, psychological, and also an archetypal process
39:03
Speaker 2: going on. And I want to just bring in this
39:06
Speaker 2: really great book, and we'll put this in the book
39:10
Speaker 2: list as well. But it's a book about infanticide written
39:13
Speaker 2: by a psychologist who works as a forensic examiner for
39:17
Speaker 2: women who've killed their children. And the title of it
39:21
Speaker 2: is Uncovering the Act of Maternal Infanticide from a Psychological, Political,
39:26
Speaker 2: and Jungian Perspective. And it's by Brooke Laufer. And the
39:32
Speaker 2: book really kind of makes this point, right, that in
39:35
Speaker 2: some sense, we've split off this reality of this deaf
39:41
Speaker 2: mother energy. It's being held by often the poorest, most
39:46
Speaker 2: disenfranchised mothers. and it may get acted out in this way,
39:52
Speaker 2: and then essentially someone like that winds up carrying collective
39:57
Speaker 2: shadow to a certain extent.
39:59
Speaker 3: I also think that, less physically threatening, that the death
40:03
Speaker 3: mother as a pattern was more visible, let's say, in
40:07
Speaker 3: American culture in the 1940s and 50s in as much
40:12
Speaker 3: as women who didn't want to have babies were culturally
40:17
Speaker 3: pressured into having children, and in their hearts, knowing that
40:22
Speaker 3: this wasn't the trajectory that their own autonomous spirit wanted.
40:28
Speaker 3: And so then the pregnancy, all of the incredible challenges
40:33
Speaker 3: of raising children, are foisted upon them, and there can
40:40
Speaker 3: be a pervasive feeling of, I didn't want this, I
40:43
Speaker 3: don't want it now, I didn't want it years ago,
40:46
Speaker 3: and that some power greater than me forced me into
40:51
Speaker 3: this situation. And that reaction can then cause this feeling
41:00
Speaker 3: towards the children. I didn't want you conceptually, and I
41:05
Speaker 3: don't want you now, and I'm putting up with this
41:07
Speaker 3: until I can get you out of the house. And
41:10
Speaker 3: I think that was more frequent when women did not
41:14
Speaker 3: have the autonomy and choice and support that they do now,
41:19
Speaker 3: at least again in Western cultures.
41:23
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, I'm thinking about fairy tales. We've already
41:27
Speaker 2: talked about Hansel and Gretel a little bit, but if
41:29
Speaker 2: you think about it, filicide is such a common theme
41:35
Speaker 2: in fairy tales. You know, even some of the most
41:37
Speaker 2: common ones, there's Snow White, of course, whose mother is
41:41
Speaker 2: totally homicidal, going after her. You know, children are almost
41:46
Speaker 2: always in danger, and somehow they're being given away to witches,
41:49
Speaker 2: like in Rapunzel. And Little Red Riding Hood is swallowed
41:55
Speaker 2: by the wolf, who's sort of a stand-in for a
41:57
Speaker 2: kind of parental figure. So it is a very common
42:02
Speaker 2: archetypal pattern that the child is endangered often by the mother,
42:10
Speaker 2: One of the fairy tales that comes to my mind
42:12
Speaker 2: is the juniper tree, which is an entirely spooky, grim,
42:19
Speaker 2: Grimm's fairy tale where there's a little boy and the
42:24
Speaker 2: mother has died, which is a very common setup, right?
42:27
Speaker 2: The good mother dies and then there's a stepmother. And
42:31
Speaker 2: then we're in the realm, as soon as there's a stepmother,
42:34
Speaker 2: we're in the realm of the deaf mother. And she
42:38
Speaker 2: has a daughter of her own, and the two children
42:41
Speaker 2: become fast friends, the boy who's the stepson and then
42:45
Speaker 2: the little girl. But the mother doesn't like the little boy,
42:49
Speaker 2: and she winds up killing him and serving him to
42:52
Speaker 2: his father to eat. And then the little girl knows
42:57
Speaker 2: that this is the case, and she's bereft. And eventually
43:02
Speaker 2: the little boy is kind of reborn as a bird.
43:05
Speaker 2: The The little girl gathers his bones and buries them
43:09
Speaker 2: underneath the juniper tree. And then there's this bird who
43:13
Speaker 2: kind of seeks revenge. But the fact that it's such
43:18
Speaker 2: a common theme in fairy tales tells us something about
43:23
Speaker 2: the archetypal power of this image, of this mythologem.
43:29
Speaker 3: If you've ever seen an animal reject its child, it
43:33
Speaker 3: is very stunning and frightening. This is easy enough on YouTube,
43:38
Speaker 3: but just typing in, you know, kind of a cow
43:40
Speaker 3: rejecting its calf or a doe rejecting its fawn, where
43:44
Speaker 3: the mothers will strike at the child on driving it
43:49
Speaker 3: away or trying to kill it. So as we said,
43:52
Speaker 3: there is something in the ancient archetypal field that humans
44:01
Speaker 3: have to the benefit of civilization and ethics and values
44:06
Speaker 3: can sublimate or can contain, but is still absolutely there
44:16
Speaker 3: and affecting the mother subtly and sometimes overwhelming her to
44:21
Speaker 3: take dangerous actions.
44:25
Speaker 2: Joseph, building on that, I'm going to read this little anecdote,
44:28
Speaker 2: which is quoted in this really great paper by Daniela Seif,
44:32
Speaker 2: and we'll link to the paper. And it's about an
44:36
Speaker 2: anthropologist who kind of recorded the life story of a
44:41
Speaker 2: Kung woman. I hope I'm saying that right. One of her,
44:45
Speaker 2: this woman's name was Nisa, and one of her earliest
44:48
Speaker 2: memories is of being on a gathering trip when her
44:51
Speaker 2: mother gave birth to an infant boy. And here's what
44:55
Speaker 2: Nisa said about the experience. After he was born, he
44:59
Speaker 2: lay there crying. I greeted him. Ho, ho, my baby brother. Ho, ho,
45:04
Speaker 2: I have a little brother. Someday we'll play together. But
45:08
Speaker 2: my mother said, what do you think this thing is?
45:13
Speaker 2: Why are you talking to it like that? Now get
45:16
Speaker 2: up and go back to the village and bring me
45:18
Speaker 2: my digging stick. I said, what are you going to dig?
45:23
Speaker 3: She said, a hole. I'm going, oh, the story. Oh.
45:27
Speaker 2: I'm going to dig a hole so I can bury
45:29
Speaker 2: the baby. Then you, Nisa, will be able to nurse again.
45:33
Speaker 2: You're much too thin. Nisa recalls begging her mother not
45:38
Speaker 2: to kill the infant, and the baby was allowed to live.
45:42
Speaker 2: But she makes this point that that was normal. Like,
45:45
Speaker 2: if you were a mother in probably many pre-modern times,
45:51
Speaker 2: cultures probably throughout history and you had one child and
45:55
Speaker 2: you couldn't feed that child and then you had another
45:58
Speaker 2: baby maybe you felt like you had to kill that
46:02
Speaker 2: baby maybe you did have to kill that baby so
46:04
Speaker 2: the first child could live so it's heartbreaking but like
46:08
Speaker 2: you were saying Joseph it is part of the natural
46:12
Speaker 2: world and it's part of our history.
46:14
Speaker 4: Yeah and it goes to what was being mentioned before
46:20
Speaker 4: about under-resourced women. And if you are a woman living
46:28
Speaker 4: in a tribal hunter-gatherer type of community, you have invested
46:35
Speaker 4: in that little girl that you just read about, Lisa.
46:39
Speaker 2: Right.
46:40
Speaker 4: There's a bond, care, food, all of it. And if
46:47
Speaker 4: there isn't enough To go around, it will be the
46:52
Speaker 4: infant with whom a bond has not yet really been
46:56
Speaker 4: established in time that will have to be sacrificed. Well,
47:03
Speaker 4: the corollary is women like, is it Andrea Yates? Did
47:08
Speaker 4: I get that right? Who killed her five children was
47:12
Speaker 4: also under-resourced. She has five kids under seven. And if
47:18
Speaker 4: I'm remembering right, they were living in a trailer or
47:21
Speaker 4: something that was, you know, not really optimum in the
47:24
Speaker 4: way of space and all the rest of it. And
47:27
Speaker 4: she was the sole caretaker for all five children all day,
47:33
Speaker 4: every day. Now that's under-resourced in a different way. It's
47:37
Speaker 4: not literal food, but it's not enough in the way
47:43
Speaker 4: of support. And You know, you can hypothesize, you know,
47:47
Speaker 4: all of her psychological difficulties that were, you know, just
47:52
Speaker 4: her own in addition to all this.
47:55
Speaker 2: The story I just read really, really goes back to
47:59
Speaker 2: that idea about it being there's no room for sentimentality.
48:04
Speaker 3: Like when life and death have claimed the space, then
48:08
Speaker 3: the archetypes often activate. in any number of different ways,
48:12
Speaker 3: not just the death mother, but any number of archetypes
48:15
Speaker 3: will come to the surface and then structure belief and
48:20
Speaker 3: behavior in a certain fashion. But I do want to
48:25
Speaker 3: try to take this primordial energy and give a sense
48:31
Speaker 3: of what this looks like in a less dramatic circumstance
48:35
Speaker 3: so it can be monitored. And because it's much more
48:38
Speaker 3: And this is where Danielle de Sif and Marian Woodman
48:42
Speaker 3: help us by trying to take this big, frightening archetype,
48:46
Speaker 3: this ancient goddess, and put her into a modern kitchen. Like,
48:52
Speaker 3: what does this look like when you're trying to make
48:54
Speaker 3: dinner and this energy surfaces? And what does it sound like?
49:00
Speaker 3: Because I think that's the place where, if we've encountered this,
49:04
Speaker 3: we're more likely to have brushed against it or been marred.
49:08
Speaker 3: by it. So, a couple of ways that they help
49:12
Speaker 3: us understand this, that the mother who is possessed by
49:17
Speaker 3: the death mother experiences her children as a terrible burden,
49:23
Speaker 3: that they are a threat to her fragility, and they
49:29
Speaker 3: are a great burden. But because the knowledge of that
49:34
Speaker 3: experience is disallowed, it creates a defensive reaction, and the
49:40
Speaker 3: mother finds herself constantly saying, I only want the best
49:43
Speaker 3: for you. I only want the best for you. And
49:47
Speaker 3: that's a defense against the more deep reality, which is,
49:51
Speaker 3: I don't want you here. I can't tolerate this. I
49:55
Speaker 3: never wanted this. So the subtext for a mother in
49:59
Speaker 3: that condition can be, I'm too scared, insecure, and compromised
50:05
Speaker 3: to to allow you to live your life. So just
50:10
Speaker 3: feeling into that, it's tricky. I'm not enough. I don't
50:14
Speaker 3: have enough to allow you, my child, to live your life.
50:20
Speaker 3: So the child becomes a corrosive object to this kind
50:28
Speaker 3: of mother. And there is an energy to obliterate the
50:32
Speaker 3: actual child. Now obliterating the child could be denying the
50:38
Speaker 3: needs of the child, being unable to even perceive what
50:42
Speaker 3: the child needs, to be affected by the child's needs.
50:48
Speaker 3: Another way that this can show up is that the
50:53
Speaker 3: mother preferences only the robust child, which is something that
50:58
Speaker 3: you would see, frankly, in the natural world if you've
51:01
Speaker 3: ever had a dog that gave birth to puppies, if
51:05
Speaker 3: there's a weak puppy and it can't fight its way
51:08
Speaker 3: to a nipple, mommy dog doesn't really do anything about that.
51:12
Speaker 2: Right.
51:13
Speaker 3: So when this energy is strong, the mother may have
51:18
Speaker 3: three kids, but she's really only attentive to the one
51:21
Speaker 3: that looks like it's the strongest, most successful, most appealing
51:26
Speaker 3: of the children, and the others are somewhere else in
51:29
Speaker 3: the house. Again, not a conscious choice, but has a
51:34
Speaker 3: powerful effect on all the children, including the one who
51:38
Speaker 3: is overpreferenced, because that can also be very confusing. So
51:43
Speaker 3: there is a field of domination, ever-tightening rules, sometimes intrusive monitoring,
51:52
Speaker 3: and conditional affection. And that's all around this control masked
51:58
Speaker 3: as care.
52:00
Speaker 4: You've just said a lot. That is very powerful to
52:07
Speaker 4: hear because it's so devastating.
52:14
Speaker 3: It is. And it doesn't have to be big and
52:17
Speaker 3: loud and goddess-like. It can just be a pervasive field
52:24
Speaker 3: that everyone is living in. And again, to be compassionate,
52:28
Speaker 3: No mother wakes up and says, oh, I can't wait
52:31
Speaker 3: to be the death mother. That's not in anyone's agenda consciously.
52:36
Speaker 3: But these archetypal forces, bidden or unbidden, the goddess comes.
52:43
Speaker 4: Yes. And that is so powerful that Jung had it
52:48
Speaker 4: inscribed over the front door to his house, that the
52:53
Speaker 4: God will be there. The archetypal realities will be there.
52:59
Speaker 4: and that the death mother is the mother who says,
53:04
Speaker 4: I don't have a lot. I have this much to
53:08
Speaker 4: give you. It's conditional upon your behavior and temperament and capabilities.
53:18
Speaker 4: As a toddler, a baby, a 10-year-old, And we have
53:24
Speaker 4: to have a bond with our parents and other caretaking figures.
53:31
Speaker 4: So we try to sort of suss that out and
53:35
Speaker 4: figure out what are the ways that we can be
53:41
Speaker 4: and feel appreciated, enjoyed, rewarded, attended to, and try to
53:48
Speaker 4: get some of that. You know, some kids rebel and
53:54
Speaker 4: won't do anything. But that we're talking about whether it
53:59
Speaker 4: is a person living in a hunter-gatherer type of community
54:04
Speaker 4: or a modern mother like Andrea Yates, of what are
54:09
Speaker 4: the resources, internal and external, available to that mother versus
54:18
Speaker 4: our children It's sentimentalizing that mothers just love being moms
54:26
Speaker 4: all day, all the time, except for these ever so
54:31
Speaker 4: brief little lapses where I was testy or snapped out
54:35
Speaker 4: at my kid every night. But that's not really me.
54:38
Speaker 4: That's not true. We expect mothers today to do everything
54:45
Speaker 4: in a nuclear family. including hold down a job that
54:50
Speaker 4: pays you a salary.
54:52
Speaker 3: Which can work well if one has enough inner and
54:56
Speaker 3: outer support. There are archetypes that can also awaken in
55:00
Speaker 3: a mother that allow her to be superhuman. And there
55:03
Speaker 3: are plenty of examples of superhuman moms that have full hearts,
55:09
Speaker 3: full careers, and are raising kids. So it's not that
55:14
Speaker 3: the deaf mother must appear It's that there are certain
55:18
Speaker 3: conditions that compel her appearance. And there are other possibilities, which,
55:25
Speaker 3: of course, we also see. So every mother is not
55:29
Speaker 3: condemned to being the death mother.
55:31
Speaker 4: I'm a little curious, a little sort of suspicious of
55:38
Speaker 4: these moms that are on YouTube and other things where,
55:41
Speaker 4: you know, they make their own bread and they have
55:45
Speaker 4: some number of kids and their farm animals and the
55:49
Speaker 4: list goes on and on of like.
55:51
Speaker 3: Demeter.
55:53
Speaker 4: But I can't even imagine, even if I were a saint,
55:59
Speaker 4: getting up every morning at what time? 5 o'clock, 5.30?
56:05
Speaker 4: And going through the day and simply doing all those things.
56:10
Speaker 4: I can't imagine how there could be enough hours in
56:15
Speaker 4: the day. So I'm a little, that sort of feels
56:20
Speaker 4: one-sided to me, of the everything's coming up roses. Most
56:27
Speaker 4: of us really can't do everything all at once.
56:31
Speaker 3: I understand. But there are other archetypes that are at play,
56:35
Speaker 3: is what I'm trying to say. And Demeter is an
56:38
Speaker 3: option to the Death Mother. And Demeter... can support a
56:42
Speaker 3: different kind of experience as the mother. And it's only
56:47
Speaker 3: one of many archetypes, and not everybody is going to
56:51
Speaker 3: be a child of Demeter. And I understand that for sure.
56:56
Speaker 4: And the other flip side of Demeter is her daughter Persephone,
57:02
Speaker 4: who is innocent and is abducted by Hades and raped.
57:07
Speaker 4: So very seldom all one thing.
57:10
Speaker 3: Undoubtedly, undoubtedly.
57:12
Speaker 2: And I think, Joseph, in terms of your desire to
57:15
Speaker 2: sort of, how does this look in a kitchen? And
57:18
Speaker 2: a little bit to the discussion that the two of
57:23
Speaker 2: you have just been having, you know, there's a way
57:24
Speaker 2: that the death mother is always a potential in all
57:28
Speaker 2: of us. You know, and I would say men as well, right?
57:31
Speaker 2: It is an archetypal energy, so it is universal. And
57:34
Speaker 2: even if we have a good enough mother, We still
57:38
Speaker 2: have to contend with the death mother, right? All of us,
57:41
Speaker 2: every single one of us has to contend with the
57:43
Speaker 2: death mother because it is a universal archetypal energy. And
57:47
Speaker 2: one of the examples, literary examples, where I think this
57:52
Speaker 2: comes across in a really interesting way is the Neil
57:55
Speaker 2: Gaiman book, Coraline. And it was also made into a
57:59
Speaker 2: really fantastic movie. So Coraline is this little girl who's
58:05
Speaker 2: kind of at odds with her family and she's a
58:07
Speaker 2: little bit, I think they just moved and she's sort
58:09
Speaker 2: of bored. And she has a mother who is sort
58:12
Speaker 2: of irritating, but like a good enough mother who gets
58:14
Speaker 2: a little irritated with her. But Coraline kind of goes
58:17
Speaker 2: through this doorway, if I recall, and goes into what
58:22
Speaker 2: winds up being sort of a mirror world. It looks
58:26
Speaker 2: a lot like her house, but it's a little bit different.
58:28
Speaker 2: And over there is the other mother. And the other
58:33
Speaker 2: mother is very sweet and solicitous and kind, although she
58:37
Speaker 2: has buttons for eyes. And at first, Coraline is like, well,
58:42
Speaker 2: this woman really appreciates me, but then quickly realizes that
58:46
Speaker 2: the other mother is there to ensnare her. And it's
58:54
Speaker 2: a very frightening, deliciously frightening story. But I kind of
59:00
Speaker 2: love the idea that there is always that other mother.
59:03
Speaker 2: Even when we have a good enough mother, there's an
59:06
Speaker 2: other mother lurking somewhere.
59:08
Speaker 4: The movie is a wonderful... teaching tool, I think, for kids,
59:16
Speaker 4: young people, especially adults as well. But in accomplishing that
59:22
Speaker 4: task of earlier years of toddlerhood and young childhood of
59:30
Speaker 4: being able to integrate the positive and negative mother into
59:34
Speaker 4: one symbol. The, quote, real mother is distracted and pressured
59:39
Speaker 4: and all the rest of it. But Coraline realizes that's
59:45
Speaker 4: the real mother with her positive and negative attributes versus
59:52
Speaker 4: the saccharine, solicitous mother over there in the alternative world.
1:00:00
Speaker 4: who is really deadly. So it's a great, a wonderful
1:00:05
Speaker 4: story about accepting your real world mother and others, that
1:00:12
Speaker 4: they're not perfect. They can be irritating as all get out.
1:00:16
Speaker 4: And they also love you and have your best interest
1:00:19
Speaker 4: at heart, even though they're also all those other things.
1:00:23
Speaker 4: And where I'm going with this is one way or another,
1:00:29
Speaker 4: We have to survive our childhoods, not just physically, although
1:00:37
Speaker 4: that certainly counts, but it is incumbent upon us to
1:00:44
Speaker 4: truly find our authentic selves, our life, engage in whatever
1:00:52
Speaker 4: unfinished business, et cetera, may be left from our childhoods.
1:00:58
Speaker 4: The psychological and emotional and maturational and fullness that is
1:01:06
Speaker 4: imposed on many of us in today's world that is
1:01:09
Speaker 4: not just physiological is really huge, which, of course, goes
1:01:16
Speaker 4: to Jung's core concept of individuation. And it may be
1:01:20
Speaker 4: that there is a lot in our childhood to survive
1:01:26
Speaker 4: But our mission is to be alive while we're alive.
1:01:33
Speaker 4: And that is a quest.
1:01:35
Speaker 3: Yes, I think that Jung says in a number of
1:01:38
Speaker 3: places that by the time we are adults, blaming our
1:01:43
Speaker 3: parents or anybody else that raised us isn't fruitful. That
1:01:47
Speaker 3: whatever we're left with by the time we reach adulthood,
1:01:50
Speaker 3: now it is our own burden to sort out, to outgrow.
1:01:55
Speaker 3: to monitor. There's a last part I know that we're
1:01:58
Speaker 3: kind of winding up, but I think it's important to
1:02:00
Speaker 3: mention because some who have been raised by individuals possessed
1:02:06
Speaker 3: by the death mother, that the death mother doesn't leave
1:02:10
Speaker 3: the children. And one of the very pernicious manifestations that
1:02:17
Speaker 3: needs to be acknowledged is that the children, some of
1:02:21
Speaker 3: them will be on a slow march to an early
1:02:25
Speaker 3: death because the internalized agenda of the death mother still
1:02:32
Speaker 3: preys upon them. And I find that the death mother
1:02:35
Speaker 3: is often at the bottom of life-threatening addictions and that
1:02:42
Speaker 3: the addiction and the obsession that's connected to the addiction
1:02:48
Speaker 3: is going to finally get the job done. That the
1:02:51
Speaker 3: death mother didn't complete since the person's reached adulthood.
1:02:57
Speaker 4: The person has learned to substitute a substance for what
1:03:03
Speaker 4: is really truly needed and was missing.
1:03:07
Speaker 3: I'm saying something else, that the death mother is telling
1:03:13
Speaker 3: the child to die and the child's unconsciously enacting behaviors
1:03:21
Speaker 3: that will hasten their demise yes there's a way to
1:03:27
Speaker 3: think about alcoholism as a comfort i'm drunk i'm warm
1:03:31
Speaker 3: i'm fuzzy and so that must be what it was
1:03:33
Speaker 3: like to be a well-loved child but if we stay
1:03:36
Speaker 3: within the realm of the death mother that the death
1:03:39
Speaker 3: mother is instructing the person from their own unconscious to
1:03:46
Speaker 3: finally succeed in the agenda which is to stop being
1:03:51
Speaker 3: alive so the womb and the tomb collapse into each
1:03:56
Speaker 3: other and there is a march to that and by
1:04:00
Speaker 3: recognizing the connection between our own life annihilating addictions and
1:04:07
Speaker 3: this archetype bring it into consciousness that as Jungians that
1:04:13
Speaker 3: is the path of liberation if we can hear the
1:04:17
Speaker 3: way the death mother is talking inside of us, we
1:04:20
Speaker 3: may be able to then be at a place of choice,
1:04:24
Speaker 3: which goes to what you were saying, Deb, which is,
1:04:27
Speaker 3: I think I'll choose life. I'll choose eros instead of thanatos.
1:04:32
Speaker 3: But in order to choose at the right level, we
1:04:35
Speaker 3: have to discover what is at play in that deeper
1:04:39
Speaker 3: strata and putting us at risk.
1:04:42
Speaker 4: Absolutely. And I'll add another element to that, which is
1:04:48
Speaker 4: people who get into relationships that are unhealthy, abusive, destructive,
1:04:56
Speaker 4: you know, all the things, which calls up the archetype
1:05:00
Speaker 4: of the demon lover. That if this is what you
1:05:03
Speaker 4: have learned that a relationship is, and there are many
1:05:08
Speaker 4: facets and complications to it, that that may be another
1:05:13
Speaker 4: way in which the life force heads into a kind
1:05:19
Speaker 4: of psychological destruction and death, this kind of relationship that
1:05:25
Speaker 4: is patently unhealthy, patently difficult. So we have talked about
1:05:35
Speaker 4: something important, something powerful, and that requires the an astonishing
1:05:43
Speaker 4: amount of energy and more on the part of people
1:05:48
Speaker 4: that have experienced this.
1:05:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think the point that you've just both
1:05:53
Speaker 2: made about if you grew up with someone who was
1:05:57
Speaker 2: possessed by the Death Mother, how it can profoundly affect
1:06:02
Speaker 2: your health and your life, and getting to the root
1:06:06
Speaker 2: of it may require coming face-to-face with this fearsome archetype.
1:06:23
Speaker 3: So this is a good time for us to soberly
1:06:26
Speaker 3: pivot into a dream. And for those who may be curious,
1:06:29
Speaker 3: Deb needed to step away, and so Lisa and I
1:06:31
Speaker 3: are going to field the dream today. Our dream is
1:06:36
Speaker 3: a 31-year-old male who is a writer, and it titles
1:06:40
Speaker 3: his dream, Child Nuclear Meltdown. And here is his dream.
1:06:45
Speaker 3: I was touring a nuclear power plant with a group
1:06:48
Speaker 3: of people in the present day. During the tour, it
1:06:52
Speaker 3: comes out that I had actually designed the plant when
1:06:55
Speaker 3: I was 12, based off of the designs of the
1:06:58
Speaker 3: man who had designed the first ever nuclear power plant,
1:07:03
Speaker 3: but mine was a more modern take on this. Suddenly,
1:07:09
Speaker 3: the plant starts to have a meltdown. Water from the
1:07:12
Speaker 3: cooling tanks is rising quickly around us, and rivets are
1:07:18
Speaker 3: coming loose and firing off like bullets. We know we
1:07:22
Speaker 3: must evacuate the plant immediately. I begin feeling immense guilt
1:07:27
Speaker 3: that the failure of this structure that I was responsible
1:07:30
Speaker 3: for building was endangering others and the environment. But the
1:07:34
Speaker 3: others didn't seem to be thinking about that, and instead
1:07:37
Speaker 3: found it quite natural that a nuclear power plant designed
1:07:41
Speaker 3: by a 12-year-old would eventually melt down. I'm conflicted as
1:07:46
Speaker 3: to how I should feel about this, but at any rate,
1:07:50
Speaker 3: I enter an elevator that takes me to ground level,
1:07:53
Speaker 3: and once I am outside the plant, I wake up.
1:07:57
Speaker 3: For context, he writes, I will soon be moving out
1:08:01
Speaker 3: of Paris after living here for four years. I don't
1:08:05
Speaker 3: know where I will end up in the long term,
1:08:07
Speaker 3: or if maybe I will come back here eventually, but
1:08:09
Speaker 3: I know for the moment I need a change of
1:08:12
Speaker 3: environment and pace. Living in Paris and learning French were
1:08:16
Speaker 3: major aspirations of mine since I was very young, almost inexplicably.
1:08:22
Speaker 3: Now I've accomplished those aspirations and am wondering what's next.
1:08:27
Speaker 3: The main feelings in the dream are guilt, confusion, anger, loneliness,
1:08:31
Speaker 3: but also, strangely, calmness and support. And a sentence or
1:08:38
Speaker 3: two on associations. Nuclear power plant. He associates with rationality, structure, intelligence.
1:08:49
Speaker 3: tour groups he associates with collective, family, and friends. Meltdown
1:08:57
Speaker 3: he associates with overwhelm, danger, and uncontrolled energy.
1:09:04
Speaker 2: So, I have a couple of sort of immediate thoughts,
1:09:12
Speaker 2: which is, I'm struck by what he said that From
1:09:17
Speaker 2: a very young age, he knew he wanted to move
1:09:19
Speaker 2: to Paris and learn French, which is interesting. From a
1:09:24
Speaker 2: young age, he knew he wanted to do this, didn't
1:09:27
Speaker 2: know why, just something he had to do, and now
1:09:29
Speaker 2: he's kind of done it and it's coming apart. And
1:09:32
Speaker 2: so without being too pat or obvious, it's a little
1:09:34
Speaker 2: bit like this was a plan that was conceived presumably
1:09:38
Speaker 2: in childhood, that now he's lived it out and it's,
1:09:44
Speaker 2: you know, his time is done. The rivets are old.
1:09:48
Speaker 2: It's all melting down. And, you know, so it could
1:09:52
Speaker 2: be sort of he had a life plan, and now
1:09:55
Speaker 2: that life plan is over. You know, he's accomplished it,
1:09:59
Speaker 2: and now what comes next? And it feels like this
1:10:03
Speaker 2: sort of meltdown. And a little, going a little bit deeper,
1:10:08
Speaker 2: one of my intuitions sang as you were reading it, Joseph,
1:10:12
Speaker 2: and I wondered, I wondered if this is a person,
1:10:16
Speaker 2: and of course, I'm just, this is purely conjecture, but
1:10:19
Speaker 2: I wondered if this is a person who was parentified
1:10:22
Speaker 2: as a child. There's something about the idea of a
1:10:26
Speaker 2: 12-year-old designing a nuclear power plant. I found myself thinking,
1:10:31
Speaker 2: what enormous responsibilities did this person possibly find on his
1:10:37
Speaker 2: shoulders as a very young person? That wasn't fair. Like,
1:10:42
Speaker 2: you wouldn't expect a 12-year-old to be able to design
1:10:45
Speaker 2: a nuclear power plant that wouldn't melt down, you know?
1:10:51
Speaker 2: So just a little kind of question mark around that,
1:10:54
Speaker 2: which is maybe related. But in any case, I think
1:10:57
Speaker 2: what we can say is, and this is in the
1:10:59
Speaker 2: associations and it's in the dream, is whatever structure design
1:11:03
Speaker 2: plan he's had for his life, it's used up. And
1:11:09
Speaker 2: it's time for something new. And it feels like this
1:11:13
Speaker 2: transition is going to be potentially dangerous and destructive.
1:11:18
Speaker 3: Frankly, I think you just nailed it. I think that's, yeah,
1:11:23
Speaker 3: I'm not sure I have much else to add. But
1:11:26
Speaker 3: I think you're right that there is the end of
1:11:28
Speaker 3: a cycle. Yeah. Has happened. He's experiencing that in terms
1:11:32
Speaker 3: of finishing up the fantasy of living in Paris. My
1:11:36
Speaker 3: first association when I was reading it is, are we
1:11:38
Speaker 3: talking about Paris, Tennessee? Or Paris, France? Very different experiences, undoubtedly.
1:11:46
Speaker 3: But Paris, France. And that he's really absorbed, feasted on
1:11:51
Speaker 3: the experience in a particular way. And now, what will
1:11:56
Speaker 3: be the guiding principle? Where is he going to get
1:11:58
Speaker 3: his life force for to run the next stage of
1:12:01
Speaker 3: the show? And we don't know yet. And that usually...
1:12:06
Speaker 3: is demonstrated in a kind of regression that often happens
1:12:12
Speaker 3: so that he may have a kind of regressive depression
1:12:16
Speaker 3: where the life force withdraws back into the unconscious, surrounds
1:12:23
Speaker 3: the next interesting seed idea and lends aid and support
1:12:27
Speaker 3: to the next stage. But that deconstruction happens And reconstruction
1:12:34
Speaker 3: is something that happens, and the rising cooling tanks also
1:12:37
Speaker 3: remind me of the soluteo. Something is dissolving. And that
1:12:43
Speaker 3: is in service to change, I would imagine.
1:12:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's see. I was struck by his sense of
1:12:50
Speaker 2: guilt that he's, you know, going to might be damaging
1:12:54
Speaker 2: other people and might be damaging the environment. He says
1:12:57
Speaker 2: immense guilt.
1:12:58
Speaker 3: That leads to the parentified child piece, yeah. Right, yes.
1:13:02
Speaker 2: And I'm struck by the fact that he's 12, right?
1:13:05
Speaker 2: That is a threshold age, really, between childhood and adolescence.
1:13:12
Speaker 2: I'm also struck by the image of meltdown, which, of course,
1:13:16
Speaker 2: is a word that has, you know, we use colloquially
1:13:19
Speaker 2: to mean.
1:13:22
Speaker 2: You know, as he said, overwhelmed, but also when we
1:13:26
Speaker 2: have an emotional meltdown, it's like, you know, it's a big,
1:13:30
Speaker 2: big feeling. And finally, I want to say, and you
1:13:34
Speaker 2: touched on this, Joseph, that the good news here is
1:13:37
Speaker 2: he has had a nuclear power plant. That is a
1:13:41
Speaker 2: heck of a lot of energy that has driven his
1:13:45
Speaker 2: life forward. Now, as you said, it's kind of regressing.
1:13:48
Speaker 2: He's losing it all. It's all coming undone. But it's
1:13:52
Speaker 2: not going to go away. The energy doesn't get lost.
1:13:57
Speaker 2: It's going to go somewhere. It's going to go into
1:13:59
Speaker 2: the unconscious or somewhere. But it seems that this person
1:14:02
Speaker 2: has a tremendous amount of just innate life energy, just
1:14:07
Speaker 2: innate libido, just because of this image of a nuclear
1:14:11
Speaker 2: power plant. And there is a sense of calm, like
1:14:14
Speaker 2: the other people in the dream are like, this happens.
1:14:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, 12-year-old fantasies. They run their course. Nothing unusual around here.
1:14:26
Speaker 3: But I want to focus on the word touring because
1:14:29
Speaker 3: he's been a tourist in Paris for several years. You know,
1:14:33
Speaker 3: you think you're just a tourist in your life in Paris,
1:14:40
Speaker 3: and then you find out, wait a minute, I'm not
1:14:42
Speaker 3: just a tourist in my life. I've actually structured all
1:14:46
Speaker 3: of this myself. That's great. That's another interesting attitude. And
1:14:53
Speaker 3: we can feel very provisional. One way of describing the
1:14:56
Speaker 3: provisional life is like, I'm a tourist. I'm an eternal tourist.
1:15:01
Speaker 3: And it sounds like coming back from several years living abroad,
1:15:07
Speaker 3: there's an opportunity to get your feet on the ground,
1:15:09
Speaker 3: to transition from being a tourist to being a homeowner, perhaps,
1:15:15
Speaker 3: or putting down roots in a place that is stable,
1:15:20
Speaker 3: not transitional. And that one's life at a certain point
1:15:25
Speaker 3: has to be taken in hand as the main project,
1:15:29
Speaker 3: not something that we're just visiting, so to speak. I
1:15:33
Speaker 3: think it's a great dream, actually. I think it's intense, undoubtedly.
1:15:37
Speaker 3: And I can also understand that if we'd used a
1:15:41
Speaker 3: naturalistic lens, a nuclear power plant falling apart is a
1:15:48
Speaker 3: life-threateningly dangerous event that can blight a city, so to speak,
1:15:54
Speaker 3: like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island. So I understand the level
1:15:59
Speaker 3: of alarm that one might feel. So it's interesting that
1:16:03
Speaker 3: the other tourists are more relaxed about it because the
1:16:08
Speaker 3: repercussions could be massive. Yeah.
1:16:12
Speaker 2: But the dream ego... If we go with the maxim
1:16:17
Speaker 2: that the least trustworthy attitude in the dream is that
1:16:19
Speaker 2: of the dream ego, the dream ego is very activated
1:16:22
Speaker 2: by it. Everyone else is like, eh, it happens. I
1:16:26
Speaker 2: like what you said, Joseph, about him realizing that he's
1:16:29
Speaker 2: designed this whole thing. I really like that because it is,
1:16:33
Speaker 2: you know, when we're adults, we sort of realize, oh,
1:16:35
Speaker 2: if we're lucky, we realize that we are the architect
1:16:38
Speaker 2: of our own fate. which gives us agency because we
1:16:44
Speaker 2: can make different choices going forward.
1:16:47
Speaker 3: I think this conflict about how I should feel about
1:16:50
Speaker 3: this and then this idea of guilt. Should I feel
1:16:53
Speaker 3: guilty that my plans that I made at 12 years
1:16:57
Speaker 3: old have come to a conclusion? And what I would
1:17:01
Speaker 3: say is, thank goodness, because I'm not sure that anybody
1:17:04
Speaker 3: at 12 years old has enough foresight to chart an
1:17:08
Speaker 3: entire life going forward. But if your inner 12-year-old has
1:17:12
Speaker 3: been given a really fun couple of years in Paris, France,
1:17:18
Speaker 3: good on you. I mean, that sounds like a blast.
1:17:21
Speaker 3: And at 31, which is also kind of a transitional
1:17:27
Speaker 3: stage as we're moving towards, but probably not at, midlife, yes,
1:17:33
Speaker 3: the agendas of the child do get put away in
1:17:38
Speaker 3: something more sober, something more grave, so to speak, often
1:17:44
Speaker 3: takes up residence for the second half of life.
1:17:49
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
1:17:53
Speaker 2: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisunionlife.com. If
1:17:58
Speaker 2: you enjoyed this episode, give us five stars and a
1:18:01
Speaker 2: good review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
1:18:05
Speaker 2: your podcasts. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and make sure
1:18:09
Speaker 2: to click the notification bell to be alerted whenever we
1:18:12
Speaker 2: upload videos. And keep up with all things TJL by
1:18:15
Speaker 2: following us on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok.