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Cassandra: A Jungian Interpretation · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Some people are uncanny in their ability to see emerging patterns.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: And in typology, this might be a person for whom
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: intuition as one of the four functions might be in
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the forefront of the personality. They just have this extraordinary
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: ability to sense patterns. Jung called it sometimes a unconscious
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: form of mentation. The unconscious is thinking And then it
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: sends up a pattern into the highly intuitive person. And
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: they have this feeling of, oh, that pulls it all together.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: And then we want to tell somebody.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Welcome to this Jungian life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. Today,
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: Joseph and I are going to talk about the Cassandra complex, which,
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: of course, is rooted in a Greek story, a Greek myth.
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: Cassandra was one of the Trojan princesses. In the kingdom
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: of Troy, she was the daughter of Priam the king
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: and Hecuba the queen. And she was also a priestess
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: in the Temple of Apollo. And of course, like many,
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: many a myth, there are many variations on this. One
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: is that she had a twin brother, and they were
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: both granted the gift of prophecy at birth, that she
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: would tell true prophecies and not be believed, whereas her
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: brother's prophecies would be believed. The more familiar mythological version
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: of Cassandra is that the god Apollo saw her serving
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: in his temple and was attracted to her and entranced
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: with her. And in order to win her love, he
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: promised her the gift of prophecy. And she, of course,
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: accepted such a wonderful gift. seeming gift. But then when
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: Apollo returned to consummate their union, she rejected him. What
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: has been given by a god cannot be revoked, so
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: he could not take away the gift of prophecy that
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: he had bestowed. But what he could do, and did do,
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: was to say that although her prophecies would be true,
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: no one would ever believe her. And one of her
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: famous prophecies in the famous war between the Greeks and
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: the Trojans was that she warned the Trojans about the
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: big Trojan horse that was outside the walls of the
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: city as a supposed gift from the Greeks who were
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: going to surrender. And she warned them that it was
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: a ruse, that this was dangerous. They did not believe her.
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: They brought the horse inside the city walls. The Greeks
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: spilled out and finally won the war. She was then
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: abducted by Agamemnon as one of the spoils of war.
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: He was entitled to claim women as well as treasure.
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: She predicted his death and hers upon returning to Greece
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: and was not believed. and, of course, suffered the consequences,
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: her own death and Agamemnon's. So today, what the Cassandra
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: Complex is generally taken to mean, and which we are
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: going to circumambulate, is the conundrum of knowing that something
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: is true and not being believed. Something prophetic, something in
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: the future, this is going to happen, no one believes you.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: So there's a way in which this is so ubiquitous,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: we may not think about as an archetype. As we
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: were preparing for this, I was thinking that as analysts
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: and before that as social workers, so much of what
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: we're doing, particularly early in our careers, is trying to
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: align somebody with a certain factual truth. For instance, we're
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: working with somebody that has a very dangerous drug addiction,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: for instance. And we're forecasting the damage to their bodies.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: You know, if this continues, your heart might be damaged.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: These terrible outcomes will occur if this continues unobstructed. Or
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: we tell our grandma, grandma, you've got to stop smoking.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: You know, this is not going to end well. People
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: get lung cancer and then grandma gets lung cancer. Yeah.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: So there are truths that we've heard, truths that we speak.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: And there's something missing, just like Cassandra, between a truth
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: and the persuasion that's required to have someone else take
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: it in and operationalize it in a way that matters
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: to them. So there's something archetypal about this problem of
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: knowing where things are going and being helpless, at least
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: to change the fate of others. But honestly, often we
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: also know it's true and we fail to change our
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: own fate. There's a Cassandra inside of us that's saying,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: don't go to Vegas. Don't take your down payment for
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: the house to Vegas. It's not going to end well.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: And sometimes we do it and it doesn't end well.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: And we're like, why didn't I listen to myself, to
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: the Cassandra inside me? The myth is trying to externalize
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: this problem that humans have.
• 6:52
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• 6:55
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• 6:59
  Speaker 3: Dream School Taster. Many listeners will know that Carl Jung
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: created a remarkable illustrated manuscript called The Red Book, in
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: which he recorded dreams, visions, and fantasies that emerged during
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: a period of intense confrontation with the unconscious. In our
• 7:19
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• 7:23
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• 7:28
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• 7:32
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• 7:37
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• 7:41
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• 7:44
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• 7:49
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• 7:53
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• 7:56
  Speaker 3: to do so in the show notes for this episode.
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: So, what you're saying is that as in a fairy tale,
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: where all the characters are parts of one psyche, You're
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: making the analogy that there are Greeks and Trojans inside
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: each one of us with the Cassandras issuing the warnings
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: and her fellow citizens saying, no, but that horse outside,
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: they gave us that as a gift. It's amazing. I've
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: never seen anything like it. Let's bring it in. It
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: looks great. And that there are Greeks, Trojans, populations and
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: prophetesses in each of us. And we find it hard
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: to listen to our Cassandra voices sometimes.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Right. Why isn't truth more powerful?
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: Oh.
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  Speaker 1: Which is, boy, that's a big question. I don't know
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: that I have an answer for it, but I know
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: it to be true. If we think of truth as
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: a kind of seed, and I think the parables talk
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: about this, truth is a kind of seed and And
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: we are not always tilled in the right way to
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: take in the seed and let it root and let
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: it bloom in our psyches so that then it can
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: change us or fruit in a new decision. That just
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: because we're given a package of seed truths, so to speak,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean that we have anywhere to sow them or
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: anything to do with them yet.
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: It's a real conundrum. But I'm backing up a little
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: bit to think about what I think we're talking about
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: has several kinds of capsules or compartments.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: One of them is the truth that Cassandra, let's say,
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: speaks for something that there's no context for. I mean,
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: nobody's ever seen a Trojan horse before. It's the first
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: time ever. It's completely unfamiliar. The second is what you
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: were alluding to when, you know, we try to tell
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: somebody who has really bad, self-destructive, obviously health-impairing habit to
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: please stop. This isn't going to go well. But that's
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: predictable that, you know, that some form of addiction is
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: going to lead to a serious health consequence. And what
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: the new one that I'm introducing is sort of the
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: scapegoat one of the person who says something that is
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: true like a whistleblower. and then is really castigated or
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: punished for issuing that kind of a truth. But it
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: all goes under what you just said. Truth is hard
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: to accept.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: It's what do we do with the truths that kind
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: of we generate, people generate for us, we read in
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: a book. And then there's also, we live in a
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: world right now where, you know, pretending something is true
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: is now a marketing thing. thing that marketers, pundits, the
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: phone call you get trying to sell you the miracle,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: all of it's coded as this is the truth. And
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: so now we're in a world where it's even harder
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: to discern truth from scam, which can then make us
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  Speaker 1: so jaded to anything that even claims to be true.
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: I think where I go with that is, This is
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: the truth. If you mix this herb in your morning
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: coffee or tea, it'll take 20 years off your life.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: I can feel it.
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: You've already done it, okay? That's right. And now there
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: are videos and so on showing that in a mere
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: 28 days, some huge number of pounds has been lost
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: or some fantastic amount of musculature and fitness has been achieved.
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: That takes me right back to the Trojan horse. It is,
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  Speaker 4: I want to believe it. And that the voices of
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: the Cassandras inside our heads that are saying, no, don't
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: go there. That can't be true.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: No, no, no.
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: I saw the video of the transformation in a mere
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  Speaker 4: 28 days. of doing this, eating this, drinking this, exercising
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  Speaker 4: like this, the list goes on and on, investing my
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  Speaker 4: money like this, results in transformation.
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  Speaker 1: Miracles, yes.
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  Speaker 4: In just a month. It's all it takes is a month.
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  Speaker 4: That we get lured by the prospect of a reward,
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: of something sparkles, something glitters inside our psyches.
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  Speaker 3: I want that.
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  Speaker 1: So, We know the car's a lemon. We've read all
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: the reviews. You know, Consumer Reports says it's the most
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: repair-laden car, but then you drive in it and something
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: inside of you feels so excited. It's so flashy and
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: beautiful and it has all the bells and whistles and
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: we don't want to hear the inconvenient truth that's going
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: to interrupt the trajectory of our appetites or what our
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: defense is. are deploying to keep us calm. Because sometimes
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: truths are reassuring and that's a blessing, but sometimes truths
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  Speaker 1: are upsetting because they will require so much of us
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: in order to accommodate them that we can't imagine what
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: it would take to want to restructure our lives in
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: order to make room for the truth. Right.
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  Speaker 4: Cassandra can be such a wet blanket, you know?
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Well, Exactly. I have to tell you, there was this
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: hilarious scene, by the way, in American Horror Story was
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: a TV series. And one of their wonderful seasons was
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: called The Coven, which was about witches. And one of
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: the witches there, which was a very hilarious thing, she
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: would kind of throw her head back and she'd get
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: really intense. And then she could accurately predict exactly how
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: many calories were in the food you were about to eat.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Which was true. Yeah. know it's absolutely true so there
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: are levels of truth also there's all kinds of facts
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: that are truth but the prophecy has something to do
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: with foresight which is the consequence of a trajectory and
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: some people are uncanny in their ability to see emerging
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: patterns and in typology the This might be a person
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: for whom intuition as one of the four functions might
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: be in the forefront of the personality. Yeah. They just
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: have this extraordinary ability to sense patterns. Jung called it
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: sometimes a unconscious form of mentation. The unconscious is thinking, connoitering,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: and then it sends up a pattern into the highly
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: intuitive person. And they have this feeling of, oh, that
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: pulls it all together. And then we want to tell somebody,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: I rely heavily on intuition and people are like, what
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: are you talking about, Joe? What the hell you're saying?
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: That never happened to you in training, did it?
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Absolutely not.
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: We always, but before we go into the other three functions,
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: I'll just touch on them, but I want to, you're, you're,
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: example of intuition is exactly parallel to one of the
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: things that happened to Jung, of the intuitive person who
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: can sense pattern growing where other people don't. And here's
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: what happened to Jung. In 1913, right before World War was,
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: as we now know, before World War I, He talks
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: about a pressure I had felt was in me, seemed
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: to be moving outward as though there were something in
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: the air. The atmosphere actually seemed to me darker than
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: it had been. It was as though the sense of
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: oppression no longer sprang exclusively from a psychic situation, his
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: personal situation, but from concrete reality. This feeling grew more
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: and more intense, so something's bubbling up in him. And
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: then in October, alone on a journey, I was suddenly
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: seized by an overpowering vision. I saw a monstrous flood
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: covering all the northern and low-lying lands between the North
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: Sea and the Alps. When it came up to Switzerland,
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: I saw the mountains grew higher and higher to protect
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: our country. I realized that a frightful catastrophe was in progress.
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: I saw mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble of civilization.
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: and the drowned bodies of countless thousands. Then the whole
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: sea turned to blood. This vision lasted about one hour.
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  Speaker 4: I was perplexed and nauseated and ashamed of my weakness.
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: That's what it's like to be a Cassandra. And then
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: he says, two weeks passed, then the vision recurred under
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: the same conditions even more vividly than before, and the
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: blood was more emphasized. An inner voice spoke, look at
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: it well. This is wholly real, and it will be so.
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: You cannot doubt it. And then in the winter, someone
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: asked Jung about the political prospects in the world, and
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: he was able to say that he had seen rivers
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: of blood. And then he had more dreams and so on,
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: and eventually World War I ensued, and he had had
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: The psychic sensitivity to realizing that the tensions in Europe
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: were headed toward a cataclysmic war. And what I'm appreciating
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: is how painful that Cassandra-like capacity or complex can be.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: In the ancient world, there's another god that's at play
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: in the story, which doesn't make an appearance. which are
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: the gods of fate. So one of the tensions is
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: that Cassandra has been given a godlike power. The priestesses
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: of Apollo would, this is quite literally, they were these
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: volcanic fishers, and they built these enormous tripods, and the
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: priestesses would literally climb up on a tripod. They would
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: swoon from inhaling the vapors. Then Apollo would possess them temporarily,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: and they would say things, the Oracle at Delphi, and
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: then they would be escorted down and revived, and they
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: would have no memory because it was Apollo that was prophesying.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: But Cassandra has been given Apollo's gift. She is like
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: unto a god now, without any of the other powers
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: to actualize what is known. But part of what the
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: lesson is that the faithfulness have already determined that the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Trojan horse is going to happen, that they're going to
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: get in, that they're going to sack Troy, that all
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: of these things are going to happen. And then Cassandra
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: has been given foresight of what the fates have decreed
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: And human will or the fear of suffering cannot change
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: the thread of fate. And so what kind of a
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: curse is it to know the future and to know
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: that one cannot stand against the fates? So this goes
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: to something that Jung also is looking at, which is
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: the shift from causality to teleology. That, yes, they're going
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: to come in, they're going to devastate the city, and
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: I can't understand where that is all going to lead
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: because all I can see is the incredible human suffering
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: that this is going to set in motion. But Jung
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: might believe that as horrific as suffering that an individual
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: might be subject to, a culture might be subject to,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: something is trying to fight its way to emerge in
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: the collective psyche that even the truth can't necessarily foretell.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: So Cassandra knows that And the fates have still decided
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: it's going to play out the way that it is.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: And that from the standpoint of fate, even she has
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: been scripted. You shall hear the truth and you shall
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: ignore it and you shall let the Trojan horse in.
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: So I wonder if what this leads to is, as
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: Jung did, of knowing that you know what you know
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: and putting it in a larger context of that this
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: is simply a truth that you're aware of, that you hold,
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: that you know, without being too over-attached to the ego
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: realm of, oh my gosh, you know, there's a horrible
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: horse out there, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, we got
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: to do something, I've got to tell people, we have
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: to assemble, we have to get a committee, we have
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: to organize, we have to, what is it like, what
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: would it have been like if Cassandra had been able
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: to put her own knowing in a larger context of,
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: you know, calling it the fates? that it's much bigger
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: than she is, much, much bigger. This is this huge
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: war that took 10 years between the Greeks and the Trojans.
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: She is one small part of this mythic conflict. And
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: the resolution of the Cassandra complex is not other people
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: have to listen to me, we have to do something
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: about it, coming to terms with, this is what I know.
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: This is something that I have to bear. I may
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: not be able to affect the course of fate any
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: more than Jung could possibly have affected the forces leading
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: to World War I, but that when everything depends on
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: you have to believe me, you have to do something
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: about it, it's anguishing.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Like a lot of myths, there's like a few sentences
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: we're given. It's a bare-bones story. But in the telling,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: and even as Cassandra shows up in some of the
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Greek dramas, and she occasionally makes an appearance in one
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: of the Greek plays, she'll just kind of gently wander
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: on stage, tell everybody what's really going on, and then
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: she'll just kind of fade off the stage. Is that
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Cassandra seems resigned. Like, she knows when her death is
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: going to happen, and she seems to accept it. She
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: doesn't fight to get out of the city. She doesn't
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: flee Troy. That there's something about the fatedness and the
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: knowing that, is that a gift? It's the gift and
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: the curse.
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm going back to what you said about
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: intuition as one of the four functions of ego, according
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: to Jung. And we all have intuition. Some of us
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: have more of it than others, lean on it more
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: than others. It's a really open pathway for some. But
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: what about the other four functions of sensation and thinking
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: and feeling? as I go back to you saying earlier,
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: you know, we know the truth. We know the truth
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: about consuming addictive substances. It's not going to end well.
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: It's going to impair your health.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Or eating too much sugar when I know I'm diabetic
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: and it's hurting me and my doctor's showing me evidence
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: of it. And yet, I know it's true. Yes. But
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: my behavior doesn't, whatever's telling me to do the thing,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: doesn't yield.
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: So what I'm, Really wanting to build on is what
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: you said about Cassandra acceding to her fate, that she
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: would come on stage in some of the plays and
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: say what's what. And, you know, that's her job. I'm
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: just letting you know, much as a doctor might say,
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: I'm just letting you know that smoking is really bad
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: for you or something like that. And there's evidence now
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: in your lungs on your latest x-ray, blah.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Blah, blah.
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: And where we go with that kind of knowing, whether
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: it's intuitive or whether it's bodily, the sense state function
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: that we have for tactile perception and practicalities, how we feel,
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: what our subjective valuing system is, do I really value
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: my health, for example? And our capacity to be objective
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: of like, yeah, that makes sense. I see the x-ray.
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: I see what the doctor has said. Here's scientific evidence.
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: What do we do with those truths that our inner Cassandras.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Are delivering without ambivalence? I'm thinking you were talking about
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: the various... ways that our Cassandra tries to speak to us.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: And so just to talk about, we'll probably do a
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: series on the typology a bit, but in the idea
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: of typology, like I'm an ENFJ, I think Deb is
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: also an ENFJ, and that sets up a kind of sequence.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Feeling function is often foremost, intuition is next, sensation is third,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: and thinking is the fourth function.
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: It kind of sounds bad when you say it like that.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Well, I try to be good-humored about it. And von
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Franz writes with a lot of color about this, that
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: the fourth function shows up in fairy tales as the dumbling,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the one that doesn't look like they know what's going on,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: but is connected to the unconscious, which provides irrational wisdom,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: like a prophecy. Don't know why I'm going to let
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: that The wolf eat my horse, but seems like a
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: good idea at the moment. And then the wolf comes
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: and saves him. You know, in chapter three of the story.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: So our fourth functions change depending on what's up front.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Mine and Deb's is thinking, could be sensation. If sensation
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: is your fourth function, it means that like an iceberg,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: maybe three quarters of it is still moving in that
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: strange and miraculous unconsciousness, just a little bit. sticking out
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: of the top. So maybe your body tells you something.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: You're walking down a street and suddenly your body's like,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: get out of here. Like, jump in the store right now.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: And hopefully we listen to that. Sometimes it's your feelings. Like,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: you know, everything looked good about the deal, but my
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: emotions were so distraught and churning up. And so I
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: finally decided to listen and that was helpful or I
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: overrode it. The difficulty with the fourth function is that
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: the fourth function is the cleanest vessel from the unconscious,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: but it's also the place where our complexes can get
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: really involved. So sometimes the prophecy is coded in some
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: other kind of stuff we haven't worked out yet. And
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: so it comes to us in ways that make us
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: doubt the coating, even though the truth itself underneath that
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: could still be very helpful to us.
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: Now, it's hard for us to really take in and
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: listen to some of the prophetic communications that come from
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: deep within. I don't like it. I don't want to
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: listen to that. It doesn't add up. I don't resonate
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: to it. And I think, you know, we have a
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: kind of institutional You know, I'm going into, you know,
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: sort of, I have an inner Cassandra that often feels
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: to me like one of those pesky, spoil-sport whistleblowers. We've
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: got a really good thing going here in the corporation
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: of Deb. And then some other little voice arises and says,
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: you can't keep doing that. your diet is really just
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: not good enough and it's got too many carbs, too
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: much sugar. And I'm like, you know, everything's going great.
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm busy, I'm having fun, this and that
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: and the other. And we don't like to listen to
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: Cassandra because it goes against the grain and it really
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: does sound like a spoil sport. And whistleblowers and The
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: external world either are often exiled and attacked and disbelieved
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: and decried, or they have a horrible, long, awful fight
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: before they're finally validated. So my inner Cassandra whistleblower is
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: not somebody I especially like to welcome.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: Totally understandable. So there's a form of psychotherapy that we're
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: familiar with that some of the listeners may call motivational interviewing.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: And it's an experiment, so to speak. It's still growing
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: and research is coming around it, but it often shows
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: up in substance abuse treatment because there's this chasm between
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: the person who's trapped in a self-destructive behavior Then there's
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: the clinician who has facts or we could say truth
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: or prophetic wisdom. But something's missing in the gap between those.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: And I would say that archetypally, Hermes is missing because
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Hermes is the messenger. That Hermes is that relational archetype
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: who takes whatever the information is and delivers it the
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: right place does it go to heaven does it go
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: to earth does it go to the underworld of the
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: ocean what part of the psychic world should this message
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: get to so that it could even matter so in
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: motivational interviewing there's a very careful listening process and trying
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: to also find what is important to the individual and
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: then to link what they know that they want to
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: limiting and overcoming the addiction. When they can understand that
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: the addiction is an impediment to something they deeply desire,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: it's possible that some of the motivation can then move
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: over and grab onto the addiction and motivate for recovery.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: But that's really Cassandra's issue is she's got this truth,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: but she can't deliver it in a way that creates motivation.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: And again, from the standpoint of the fates, even motivation
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: wouldn't matter. But in our less archetypal world, down here
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: in the world of name and form, motivation is the thing.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: And it's mysterious.
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: So I'm thinking that this goes to enlisting the other
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: functions of the ego as messengers.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: We have to engage not only intuition, but bodily realities
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: and sensation and what we can hear, see, feel. We
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: have to engage our objective thinking function and our values,
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: the feeling function. These are my deeply held values. So
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: that it's not just one inner voice standing alone. That
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: can easily or relatively easily just be dismissed or vilified
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: of like, there goes that spoil sport part of me again.
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: Going to ignore it. But to be able to enlist
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: all of our ego capacity to say, wait a minute,
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: does that make sense? Wait a sec. Does that phone
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: call from someone... way overseas, promising me the stars and
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: the moon, if only I send, you know, some huge
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: amount of money. Does that really make sense?
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Or is it a Trojan horse?
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: Exactly. And do I want to know? Do I want
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: to know or do I need the fantasy? In which case,
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: if I want to listen up, you know, I will engage...
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: you know, all kinds of other things. Doing some fact-checking,
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: asking people I trust, is this a good idea? You know,
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: in which case we know all our friends and family
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: will say, stop now, don't go there, that's crazy. Or
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: do I not want to know that so I don't
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: tell anybody? Can we afford to listen to our inner Cassandra?
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: You know, inner Cassandra does not usually deliver good tidings.
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: She's forever telling you stuff you don't want to know.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: That's really unfortunate. Cassandra probably would be much more welcome
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: if tidings of good news and great joy could come
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: through that as well. Exactly.
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: You know, I would listen up if there were, you know,
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: don't worry. You know, something wonderful is coming your way.
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: You know, just tomorrow morning at sunrise, just go down
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: to the end of the block and there it will be.
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: You know, or it'll happen without you having to work
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: too hard for it. But it's never that. It's always like,
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: you know, the wonderful Trojan horse and she's saying, don't
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: go there. Don't let it in. It's like, oh, what
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: a sourpuss.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: And it has something to do with, you know, for
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: those who have ears to hear, for those who have
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: eyes to see. So if we think about the kind
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: of archetypal formula, you know, Apollo might be the knowing.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: And Cassandra has become like unto Apollo. She doesn't have
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: to go into a trance. She doesn't have to climb
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: up on the tripod anymore. She doesn't have to go unconscious.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: Like Apollo, she knows. Then we need Hermes, which is,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: what do I do? How do I message this? And
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: then we need the hearing, that feminine hearing. aspect of
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: psyche and the organ of hearing which allows things to
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: come in to be received and then the fourth part
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: is the polis the collective consent and all four of
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: those things kind of need to line up for the
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: prophecy to effect change if it's even possible and sometimes
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: there are other gods at play The gods of war
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: have their own energy, and they want things to go
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: a certain way. Will Apollo win? Will the gods of
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: war win? Does Apollo even really care what the outcome is?
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: It's just telling you what he's seeing, but he's a god.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Maybe he doesn't even really care.
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: I like that a lot. Apollo as our knowing. Hermes
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: as the messenger that connects our inner functions and the
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: four ego functions with one another. So they can start
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: to talk to each other. And then the collective, the
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: whole community that we are internally as well as externally.
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: And so I have a horrible hunch that what you
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: are talking about is being conscious. That's so hard.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, that Cassandra doesn't know is she just speaks the truth,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: the message, but also the If we're caught in the
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Cassandra complex, which means all the archetypal elements have kind
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: of grabbed us, it also means that something in us
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: will seek out the Trojans, expecting them to be the
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: receptive ear, only to find that they never listen to us.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: And this is the strange curse of archetypes, is that
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: it's one thing to know it, but to fulfill the archetype,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: it's going to lead to a tragic end. If we
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: understand the archetype and we have the prophecy, one of
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: the things that we might do is to be able
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: to discern the deaf ear from the listening ear, which
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: is something that Cassandra, in the myth, wasn't granted. So
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: she's always speaking to the deaf ear. But not every
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: listener is a deaf ear. But we can literally seek
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: out deaf ears because when we are in the Cassandra complex,
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: that's what the archetype tells us to do. Yeah, yeah.
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: That's a subtle but very important point. So I'm just
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: going to try to reiterate and see if I got
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: it right, that there is something about our inner Cassandra
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: that doesn't really want to be heard and kind of
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: engages in a sort of self-sabotage. For example, I imagine
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: with our symbol today of the Trojan horse, You know,
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: that she could go out into the city and tell
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: all the important people in the city and the important
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: people in the court, this is a terrible idea, it's
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: a ruse, don't do it. But she doesn't pick the
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: right way to deliver the message. She just goes out
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: and somehow blats it out in a way that can't
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: be heard. Instead of maybe there was a more strategic
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: way that she could have done this. I know I'm
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: literalizing the myth here, but just for purposes of illustration
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: of what might she have done to get the collective,
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: the polis that you mentioned before, to get that behind her.
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: And what do we do with ourselves to get our
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: collective functions, parts of ourselves in alignment. And perhaps sometimes
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: we talk to ourselves in negative ways. We engage in
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: some sort of self-sabotage. I'll just do it this once,
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: or that doesn't really matter, or, oh, that's just being negative.
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: You can do it anyway. Go ahead, have the hot
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: foot Sundays. It's a celebration. We do that thing, don't we?
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: of having our knowing over here that Cassandra's standing alone
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: and everybody else finding ways to undermine it, sabotage it,
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: not listen to it.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: Or they just dismiss it. They don't even sabotage it.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: It's as if they didn't even hear it. It's not
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: even violent. It's just like, what? What did you say?
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It's like, I mean, if you've ever
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: had a teenager, by the way, sales right past.
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: Exactly. That other parts of ourselves, our desires, our instincts,
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: all of those things are right there ready to say, yes,
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: but that's not important.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Now, I also want to say is that not every
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: person who's experiencing intuition changes. is caught in a Cassandra complex.
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: Good point.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: Just to open that up, that is not everyone's fate.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: This is a very specific archetypal constellation. Some people know
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: what is true, have Hermes as an ally, and really
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: are very skilled at delivering important messages, and the messages
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: are heard, and they're taken in. The Cassandra complex is
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: a very particular kind of archetypal intrusion into someone's life.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: Why an archetype activates in one person and not another.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: When I was working on that thesis, The Heart Within
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: the Heart, I was really rooting around for whether Jung
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: ever spoke about why an archetype activates and why that
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: one and why not another one. And all the early on,
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: the analyst said, Who knows? The gods are capricious. Like,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: who knows why you're the one that the gods are
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: going to play out the Cassandra, but somebody else is
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: going to get some other story about their intuition. What
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: we can do is to catch it. And once we
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: can see it, just what you were saying, Deb, once
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: we can see it and really understand all aspects of it,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: you can't just identify with Cassandra being a victim. Because
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: that's actually the story.
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Like, is Cassandra's a victim? But if we see the
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: whole formulation, then we realize we are passing a script
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: to the people around us and asking them, would you
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: mind playing Agamemnon? Would you play the city of Troy
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: and you be the Trojan horse? And so that we
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: can all release the tension of the archetype that keeps
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: telling me to live this out. So, We have to
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: wrestle with the gods.
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: Yes, and I'm thinking about Jung's vision of World War II.
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: And I'm also going to, you know, other examples of
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: sort of precognitive, you know, kinds of flashes, intuitions, precognitive dreams.
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: People ask us all the time about it. And the
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: reality is, that you can't know certain things for sure
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: or how they're going to play out before they've happened.
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: So precognition is a tricky business, and prophecy, I imagine,
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: is even trickier. So what do we do with that,
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: that Jung had a knowing that some sort of awful
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: conflagration in the external European world was coming?
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Well, what he did do is he shared it with
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: people who could take it in, like von Franz. He
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: had an intimate circle that took his lived experiences seriously
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: and were thought partners with him and helped him hold
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: these catastrophic images, although nobody necessarily knew exactly how that
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: was going to play out.
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: Exactly. But what they knew was something powerful had happened,
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: could listen, with real understanding and help him hold it,
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: which goes back to what you were saying about the fates,
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: about which is a way of saying something much bigger
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: than any individual, that there's so many parts, so many people,
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: so many powerful forces building and building and building into
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: what would be World War I. that the task for
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: Jung and maybe for all of us who can sense consequences,
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: which is usually how it plays out, the consequences of
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: addiction will be, you know, something not good. But how
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: do we hold it? How do we hold it within
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: ourselves rather than taking it to the relational realm of
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: I have to tell everybody, And then people have to
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: gather up and we all have to work together and
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: we have to do something about it. And you have
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: to believe me versus this is my knowing. I hope
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: there will be some people who can hear me and
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: stand with me in an accepting way. But what kind
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: of action, where and with whom and how often I
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: should or could take is a different matter.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: And this goes, ironically, to the serenity prayer. God grant
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: to know the difference. So our friends that are in
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Al-Anon or Nar-Anon, I mean, they're looking at their deeply troubled,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: hurting family member. They've tried to intervene with fate. in
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: every every which way and much of what the al-anon
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: naranon programs are is for the ego to step back
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: accept its limits and to come into relationship with the
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: self which the ancients may have called fate that there's
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: another power at play here and the message you're getting
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: is despite all of your prophecies for your troubled child,
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: for instance, you have not been given the power to
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: change the fate of this person. So something else, and
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: as David Chain says, it takes a god to save
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: you from a god. And if you have been marked
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: by the gods of addiction, much of what AA is,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: is an attempt to find a life-giving archetype that is
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: stronger than the self-destructive piece. Very, very difficult.
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: But what you've just done to bring it home in
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: the very real world is very poignant and very real,
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: of that that is the task.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Everybody in that room feels like Cassandra. Yep. And weeping
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: and pounding their chests. with knowing and not having any impact.
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: You know, and to some extent we experience it in
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: a lesser degree with probably every teenager that anybody has
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: ever had. This is a really bad idea.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: And then they come back with a broken elbow and
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: you're like... And so... The dark side of Cassandra is,
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: I told you so. Yeah. That's the Cassandra inside of us,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: just so frustrated.
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: But I want to unpack that a little bit, too,
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: because I think it's important that that is, you know,
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: maybe the corollary to the Cassandra myth, is that after
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: they took the Trojan horse in and the Trojans were defeated,
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: Did she run around saying, I would have been tempted
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: to say, I told you so.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: See?
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: You wouldn't listen to me. Now look.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: Maybe. Or maybe she just knew it was going to
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: happen exactly the way it was, which then brings up
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: the question of, why did she even speak the prophecy
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: if she knows that the future is predetermined? Yeah. Or
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: that even if it was heard, The fates would spin
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: it all around and get it to the place they
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: were determined to get it anyway.
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: It's a huge discernment about what is an internal reality
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: of where your knowing is that this is not going
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: to work out well and what you do about it.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Where do we find peace?
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: Do I tell everybody? And then when it comes true,
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: do I retaliate by saying, told you so?
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: It seems that Cassandra doesn't. Because it seems that because
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: she's been marked by the gods and she is part
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: of the archetype, the archetypal play of the gods, there
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: is a fatedness to all of this. But what I'd
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: like to do is be playful for a minute. Uh-oh.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: And this is something I know that the Gestaltis do
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: so well when they work on dreams. is that you
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: get to play all the parts of the dream. Yes.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: So that you really get a chance to be like, well, what? Yes.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: So there's, when the ego is identified with Cassandra, right,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: there's this pressure and this urgency to give the warning,
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: this experience of repeatedly being dismissed. I feel isolated, morally inflamed,
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: maybe bitter, maybe despairing. That's often what we talk about.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: But what happens if you are Troy? We're not always
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: playing the same character. So now we're Troy, and we're
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: hearing all this stuff, and then Troy says what? Oh,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: I'm overreacting. Oh, I'm crazy. Don't ruin the mood. We're
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: all celebrating the end of the war.
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: Right, we're celebrating. The Greeks have accepted their defeat and
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: have offered us this magnificent huge horse as a sign
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: of their surrender. Go away. Be quiet. Everything's great. Somebody
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: grab her. Go take her somewhere where she can just
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: vent in private.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's a party pooper.
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: So sometimes we're the Troy, celebrating full of relief, welcoming
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: the gift from the defeated. It's all going to turn
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: out just great. Sometimes you are Apollo. Ah. Distant from feeling. Oh, yeah.
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: Just knowing.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: Intellectualizing. So perfectly knowing a moral superiority. And maybe punishing
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: those who seem rather hysterical. You know, even inflicting truth
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: on people as a way of punishing them. That is
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: a very tempting thing. When you see something before someone
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: in your family does or your beloved does, Sometimes we
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: like to weaponize what we are seeing and then we
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: inflict enlightenment onto other people who don't appreciate it, even
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: though it's the truth. But we may feel serene and
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: peaceful and playing a harp when we're delivering the bad news.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we're ego. Sometimes the ego is Apollo. Sometimes the
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: ego is the horse, the beautiful lie. How many of
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: us have lied on our resume? You know, making ourselves
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: look better than we are only to get the job,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: and then we don't know what we're doing, and we're
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: creating chaos in the office. That happens. Presenting a pleasing
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: surface just to be received. And inside, we're not really aligned.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: We don't know what we're doing, or maybe even we
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: feel quite negatively about it. Maybe we swallow our own
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: inner warning so that we can be liked.
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we dress it up. Looks great. Doesn't look great.
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: Looks great. So we revert to that sort of persona,
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: the shiny, magical, big aspect that looks great but has
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: destruction inside. Now we have all those Greek warriors inside
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: the horse.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: That's right. Looks good on the outside, but I'm full
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: of violence on the inside.
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: Oh, they brought us inside the city walls. Now they're
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: going to get it.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: Passive aggressive behavior. I'm doing it for your own good.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: Then the horse opens up and there's a lot of
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: aggression in there.
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: So in a way, you could cast the horse as
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: the persona, the beautiful, attractive, spectacular image. And then all
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: those Greek soldiers inside are the shadow, let loose to
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: wreak havoc on the city of Troy, which is you
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: and me and everybody.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: Or our family. And then everyone's running around screaming. And
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: we just thought we were telling a truth which couldn't
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: have imagined. So we can be any part of the myth.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: And this is where it really opens us up because
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: If we're over-identified with Cassandra, we can miss the other
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: parts of the archetype that are also active in our psyche.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: Either we're prompting other people to carry it, or we're
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: hopping around between the different characters, and we don't know it.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: That's why we That's why we unpack myths. So we
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: can see a pattern and go, oh my gosh, I
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: have done that so many times and it's always been
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: like a misery and I never knew what to call
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: it to describe it. So somebody's, let's say they're over-identified
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: with Cassandra, that they're all about Cassandra. What does it
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: look like to be compulsively foreseeing Some people who've had
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: a trauma background are anticipating danger. They're scanning for danger
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: all the time to such a degree that the goodness
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: of life isn't visible, that the prophecy of danger, which
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: might even be true, is yet only one part of
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: a life. And all kinds of goodness is also present,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: even if the end, let's say someone is going to have,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: a fatal disease, God forbid, but that happens. Should we
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: live those last few years always staring at the prophecy?
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: Or do we grab life by the leaves and drink
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: it for the time that we have?
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: So I think, you know, what I'm taking from what
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: you just said is rather than identifying with Cassandra as
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: a victim, taken advantage of, and powerless, which I think
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: the Cassandra Complex in all of us does that exact
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: same thing. But I'm telling you, I'm really telling you, no, no, no, stop.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Wait, wait.
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: How do we reclaim our own power? And, you know,
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: your example of, you know, and people do know that
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: they have some sort of, let's say, health problem that
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: will limit life or where their death is imminent, such
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: as Caroline Kennedy's daughter, whose first name, I'm sorry to say,
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: escapes me in the moment, but her last name is Schlossberg,
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: written a beautiful, beautiful piece in The New Yorker about
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: knowing and is not Cassandra. She is not disempowered. She
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: wrote this stunning, moving piece that is just full of
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: wisdom and grace.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: So she is the pieta. She is the feminine capacity
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: to hold the unimaginable suffering.
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: And we do not have to lose. our own power,
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: our power of knowing, even knowing our fate. We have that.
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: But if we're just sort of constantly running around looking
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: for other people, to validate, to listen, to fix it,
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: whatever it might be, that I depend on a you
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: out there versus knowing that I know what I know
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: and that I can accept it. And it goes right
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: back to the serenity prayer of where is my power
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: in this moment given these circumstances? Where is my power?
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: Of then, the Cassandra complex has been depotentiated.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: Which is exactly right. And it hides everywhere. Your friend
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: that says, I just tell it like it is. And
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: people don't really like being around them in that way.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: Returning to invalidating environments. So what I think we're both
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: saying is, if we can really understand this as an archetype,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: instead of saying, I am Cassandra, to be able to say, oh,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Cassandra's visiting.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: Here she is again.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Here she is again.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: But that's really great because that gives, it gives everybody,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: you know, I like visualizing that of here she is. Now,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: if I can imagine her sitting over there on one
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: of my kitchen chairs, then we can talk.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: That's right. I don't have to be her.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: So what's bugging you today, Cassandra? Talk to me, tell me.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: But we have to have a dialogue together about this.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: And if we can catch those inner dynamics, our inner
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: Cassandras and inner almost everybody else's, and start talking to ourselves,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: it could yield a lot.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: We are at least one reliable place for our prophecies
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: to land. And in fact, maybe the great majority of
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: our prophecies actually were only ever for us.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And, you know, one source of inner prophecy is
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: what we call dreams. They talk to us every night
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: and they tell us, how differently they see things from
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: the way that our waking egos and awareness sees things.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: So this may be a good time to turn to
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: an inner prophet.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: So our dreamer today is a 27-year-old male, who is
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: currently working as a server. And the title for the
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: dream is I Let Myself Get Kidnapped. And here's his dream.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: As I was walking down an unknown street, a white
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: minivan pulled up next to me with a man offering
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: a ride. I could immediately sense his bad intentions. So
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: I turned him down and continued to walk. He followed
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: me on foot, carrying a conversation, I don't remember, only
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: for him to convince me to take him up on
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: his ride. At that moment, he violently grabbed me and
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: threw me into the back of his van. And then
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: the dream ends. And for context, he writes, I experienced
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: homelessness not so long ago for over two years and
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: had met a lot of people, to stay clear from.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: Main feelings in the dream were unease and self-shame. And
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: he adds one more sentence. I don't know the person
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: or the car or the street that this dream takes
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: place in. We could easily put the Cassandra myth into this,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: that the Cassandra voice tells him what This is bad.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: This is bad news. But then the person, like a
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: Trojan horse, is like, oh, no, it'll be fine. I
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: want to take you. Come on in. It'll be great.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: And then there's this eruption of control. So we could
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: talk with this person about who and what he's listening
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: to and how he operationalizes it in that way. That
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: could be a lens.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, our dream ego has the Cassandra-like knowing. Mm-hmm.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: He says, I could immediately sense the driver of the
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: white van's bad intentions. So he says, no. I know
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 4: that this is not a good idea. Really, I do.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: But it doesn't work. The driver of the van pursues
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: him on foot. carrying on a conversation, trying to convince
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: him to get in the van, while he says that
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: the driver violently grabbed me and threw me in the
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: back of the van. So he was kidnapped. And so
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: we might say, here's the trap, right? We were just
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: talking about that with Cassandra, is don't identify with the victim.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: Don't identify with Cassandra. She's right. Everybody else is being
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: mean and bad. And so here we might say our
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: dream ego feels wronged. And from the point of view
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: of ego, if this happened in the waking world, we
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: would all say, yes, it's wrong. That's terrible. And then
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 4: he grabbed you and he threw you in the van.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: But from the point of view of psyche.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: We're interested in the driver of this van.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: It's as if the dream ego is the Trojans. He's
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: walking around like he's in the city of Troy, and
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: the Trojan horse shows up. Cassandra tells him something bad's
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: going to happen, but he doesn't treat the person as
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: if they're dangerous, and we chat. And I just remember
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: him trying to convince me to take him up on
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: a ride, and it's so civil. And then all of
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: a sudden, this explosion of grabbing and throwing. So this
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: could be an example of the ego is like the Trojans,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: just wanting a relief, wanting maybe somebody to offer them something,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: offer to help them out. Now, in context, we know
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: the fellow had experienced homelessness, which is a devastatingly vulnerable
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: position to be in, and we are in such need
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: of help when we are in that condition.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so if I go right back to the dream,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: how it's interesting, I was walking down an unknown street.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: So all we know is it's just unfamiliar. Mm-hmm. He
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 4: doesn't say it's a dangerous street or it's a cobblestone street.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 4: It's just unknown. I don't know what street it was.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 4: A white minivan. I don't know quite what to make
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: of that, and I don't want to make too much
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: of it because I see white vans. We're in Florida now.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 4: I see white vans all the time and white cars
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: all the time, so... Because of the sun, they reflect
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: the light, and white vehicles are often preferred. Now, all
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: we know is a man offering a ride. So far,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: that's it. Now, your mother and mine, and I hope
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 4: everybody else's mother, always told us not to take rides
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: from strangers. So... It's been instilled in us that a
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 4: stranger offering a ride is a bad thing, and you
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 4: say no. And that is what our dream ego does.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 4: The dream ego says, I could immediately sense his bad intentions,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 4: so I turned him down. But what we don't have
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 4: is evidence of his bad intentions, that the man lunged
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 4: toward me or the man had a weapon of some kind.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 4: or the man was grimacing, looking hostile and ferocious, all
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 4: we know is that the dream ego thinks this is
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 4: a bad thing and says, no.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: So if we psychologize it a bit, in the beginning
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: of the dream, the ego is walking based on its
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: own ability to propulse, like he's got some agency. he's
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: got a direction, he knows his legs can move, which
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: is a really helpful thing, particularly if we've had a
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: difficult time getting on our feet, so to speak. So
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: there he is, and he's in new psychic terrain, a
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: new attitude, it's a novel experience. And sometimes we'll talk
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: about a complex, an autonomous complex just kind of grabbing
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: us and then zooming off with us, and it's in
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: the driver's seat, and we're kind of being dragged behind.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: We just don't know what this complex is, but when
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: it takes over, it makes the ego passive, and then
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: the ego then is moving in a direction that it
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: has not chosen and feels very mystified by or worse,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: frightened by. So without the dreamer here, we don't know
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: what that might look like in the lived environment. But
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: there's something sobering. The psyche is saying, you know, watch out.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: There are these autonomous complexes inside of you and they
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: can kind of grab you. And they approach before they
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: grab you. And often when we're working with clients that,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: let's say, have a certain complex, you kind of map
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: the triggers. They said, like, every time I do this,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: then I get caught in the complex. Yeah, so you
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: have a map. So once you kind of see the
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: lead in, maybe you can find some way to step
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: around it.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: I'm just going back to this dream. It's amazing. This
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: dream is three and a half lines long. And it
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: is such a great example of how powerful, how complex,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 4: how meaningful, how important a, quote, short dream, unquote, is.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: But what happens next is this man followed me on foot,
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 4: carrying a conversation the dream ego doesn't remember, only for
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: him to convince me to take him up on his ride. So,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm thinking, I get it about taking rides
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: from strangers, and something in all of us would go
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: up and say, well, that can't be right. That can't
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 4: be a good thing, right? And then, finally, the stranger
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 4: violently grabbed me and threw me in the back of
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 4: the van. Now, we would all agree, oh, my gosh. Oh,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 4: that's awful. But what I'm wondering about is, then what? Well,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: the dream ends, so we don't know.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: So here's a couple of teleologic lenses. One is, in
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: many tribal traditions, the boys, when initiation, it's time for initiation,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: the men break into mom's house, And they take the
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: boys and they abduct them out into the woods and
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: they initiate them. And the mothers, you know, are coached
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: to grieve and holler out and the boys are anxious.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: And then when they are taken out of the old life,
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: they are then offered something new, something different that they
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: couldn't have imagined, and something that allows them to return
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: to the tribe with authority that they didn't have prior
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: to that. Now, we don't know that to be true
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: in this dream, but if I imagine someone who has
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: fallen on such hard times as homelessness, there are certain
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: aspects of aggression that may be missing, There's certain information
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: about how to make life work for oneself that could
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: be missing. And if we're optimistic, it might be something
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: that has to be inflicted on the ego. It's like,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: we're going to help you out whether you like it
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: or not.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 4: So what we're considering here is the possibility of an
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: initiatic experience. a modern equivalent of those initiation rites that
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 4: were part of, I think, most tribal societies of the
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 4: transition from boyhood to manhood and the feeling of fear,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 4: that it entails the feeling of fear, of being abducted
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 4: from your tent, dragged out in the middle of the
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: night into the woods, the jungle, the desert, and the
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: ability to bear not only the pain, but the fear.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 4: And then returning and being recognized now as adult, as man,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: no longer boy. We're offering that as a possibility, and
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: I think it's right there in the dream. And of course,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 4: I have a predilection for optimism. Our dreamer says that
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 4: in the past he was homeless and encountered these dangers.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: So, yes, it could be a trauma dream, and that
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: would be interpreted differently, of course. The other thing is
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: that there's something that just struck me in the title.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: I let myself get kidnapped.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 4: Oh, that's, yes.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: So there's the shame. It's like, how could I be so,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: make this mistake or be weak or be so naive?
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: He's lamenting something and he feels ashamed, apparently, when he
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: reflects on the dream. If we take the man in
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: the van as a shadow figure, this is a guy
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: who's able to drive life. He's able to grab life.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: He's able to make things happen.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he has agency.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's going to grab that ego and initiate him
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: into this ferocity that the ego may lack access to.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: And one of the stumbling blocks to the ego is
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: claiming healthy aggression, I suspect, is shame. That it seems
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: shameful to grab the wheel, to make things happen, to
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: drive your life, and to pursue what you want with
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: a kind of dynamism.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm going back to your comment that it
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: could also be a trauma dream, and it is. It's both.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: It's a both and. You know that, of course, if this,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: you know, in a dream you would wake up from
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 4: a dream like that. He does say unease and self-shame
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 4: were what he was feeling because he let himself be kidnapped.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: And the other flip side of that is what was
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: gained from that?
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: Of that's the initiation possibility here. And initiation rites were
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: always pretty painful and traumatic. So what's there that might
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 4: be new here? And that's what we're kind of moving into,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 4: or at least considering that as a possibility. And my
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 4: thought is for the dreamer, Think about then what? Of
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 4: dream the dream on. Now you're in the van. You're
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 4: all shook up. It's closed. You can't see anything. And
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 4: then what? And then what happened? That is not the
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 4: end of the story.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: Like the Persephone myth.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: You know, the earth opens. Pluto, Hades takes you. And now...
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: You're the king of the underworld.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great analogy of out of nowhere, our
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 4: lovely maiden who's picking flowers with her friends. Chasm opens
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 4: up and Hades comes barreling forth when his big black
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 4: horses grabs her and takes her down below. And after
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 4: a horrible time in the underworld, it doesn't take much
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 4: in the way of my imagining. to think that this
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 4: dreamer has been in the underworld of two years of homelessness.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 4: But after Persephone is in the underworld, she emerges back
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 4: into the upper earth, and she has now been transformed
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 4: into queen of the underworld. People seek her out for
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 4: her knowledge and magic. So I like that a lot. Joseph,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 4: that this is a Persephone story. And I'd like to
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 4: say to the dreamer, I wonder if your time in
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 4: the underworld is over.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: I hope that as well.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisunionlife.com.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: Thank you.