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Changing the Foundation of Personality: the Secret Power of Attitudes · 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 on Cape Cod.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: Today we're going to explore something that is so central
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: to Jungian analysis and Jungian thought, which is the transformation
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: of attitudes. There are many things that go into an analysis.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: Most people are familiar with analyzing dreams, for instance. But often,
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: the point of all of this work can sometimes get muddied.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: And so, Jung reminds us, scattered throughout his writings, that
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: it's the one-sided attitude, which is the orientation towards repetitive action.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: The readiness of the psyche to act or react in
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: a certain way is the attitude, and when that central
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: attitude is not balanced, that we begin to become symptomatic. Analysis,
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: and all of the various things that Jung suggested, is
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: an attempt to change the way in which we get
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: ready to be in life. And when that kind of
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: mainframe program shifts, the whole personality shifts. And so we're
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: going to talk about what Jung meant by attitude and
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: how that's relevant to the transformation process. So I'll start
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: just by perhaps saying in a less muddy way that
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: Jung described an attitude as a readiness of the psyche
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: to act or react in a certain way. So that
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: reflects an overarching mental or emotional orientation that shapes how
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: we engage with the world, with ourselves and with our experiences.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: It can be consciously adopted and sometimes unconsciously just reveals itself.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: And it affects our lives enormously.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm thinking of, while you were talking, Joseph,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: one of the things I was thinking about was the
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: way that dreams can actually provide an attitude correction. And
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: it's not always that you wake up from a dream
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: and the dream is like, fuck, you know, and you're like, oh,
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: but it does sometimes happen. I mean, it happens for me.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: I like to do dream incubation quite a bit. And
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: it will often happen that I'll do a dream incubation
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: about something and then I'll get this dream. And the
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: dream will make me just like see it from a
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: different angle. I hadn't seen it before. So for example,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: maybe if I'm in a conflict with someone and I'm just,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: you know, I've got my whole narrative about what's going
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: on and what's important and what I need to pay
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: attention to. And I tend to be sort of conflict avoidant.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: So maybe I'm thinking, well, I'm not going to say anything,
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: but maybe I should say something. And what does my
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: dream maker have to say about this? And then I
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: get this dream and the dream is like, shows the
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: situation from a completely different stance. And it's not even
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: about the conflict anymore. And I'm like, oh. And then
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: it's like, then my whole thing in my head about, oh,
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: this person did this thing and I'm really upset about it.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: It's like it just goes away because it's like, oh,
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: that's not even what it's about, you know? So that's
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: a really miraculous thing when a dream can do that.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: But usually it does it in like smaller ways. I mean,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: I think that's, in a sense, that's what the dream
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: maker wants is to help us foster this new attitude.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Jung talks about the new attitude, but I think we
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: could also thinking about it as gaining a new perspective.
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: I think, you know, here it is. It turns out
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: that the new attitude, you know, which we cavalierly talk
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: about as, oh, you know, so-and-so needs an attitude adjustment.
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: You know, come on, get with it. But it's really
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: very complex, and yet it's so fundamental, and in some
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: ways it's so simple because we have that kind of
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: aha reaction of like, oh, now I get it. And
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: I'm thinking about... experience in the dreams that it parallels
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: one of Jung's examples of dreams. He had a client
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: that he found really, you know, kind of ordinary and
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: mundane and hadn't really, you know, truly connected. And he
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: dreamt that he was down below a big castle or
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: mansion or something. And that he saw her up on
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: a balcony or through a window. And he realized that
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: the dream was telling him that he had missed her
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: in an essential way because in the dream he was
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: looking up to her. And I had a relative by
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: marriage that I met late in life who was dear
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: and kind and generous and And I never really had
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: a big conversation with her. We stayed on very mundane
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: kinds of things. She cooked very traditional kinds of foods
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: and so on. And after she died, she was older
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: than I, of course, I had a dream of her
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: dressed in a fantastic suit, carrying a briefcase in pumps
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: and looking great, looking very corporate, like she was the
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: head of some big company. And I realized, too, much
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: as Jung did, that she was so much more than
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: I had realized, and of course is my interior image
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: of something ordinary that took on a whole new attitude
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: of authority and a wonderful professional sort of persona. And
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: I've never forgotten that dream. It was some time ago.
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: And it wasn't the big thing that knocked me off
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: my horse like Paul on the road to Damascus. But
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: it was a new attitude.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: So another way of saying it is that before you
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: had the dream, you had a particular way of looking
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: at that person or that situation which you recognized. And
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: then in the dream... an unconscious material, unconscious attitude, an
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: additional way is added. And if we can remember the
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: dream and really take it in, then the old way
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: of seeing the person and the new way of seeing
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: the person come together. And then there is this more
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: fulsome way of perceiving the situation or the outer object
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: that frees up something in you something in the dreamer,
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: because when we're one-sided or when we're missing something, our
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: energy is kind of locked up. And Jung called that
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: locked-up feeling a neurosis.
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: And what shifted for Jung, I dare say, and certainly
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: shifted in me, was a kind of arrogance. And that
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: was replaced by... uh respect and and more humility.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: And and of course the dream may have been about
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: your feelings about her but there may also have been
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: an inner correlate exactly yeah um you know i i'm
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: just thinking one of the reasons i i i love
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: this topic even though in a way it's kind of
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: vague and i think when we talked about doing this
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: topic we all had a kind of similar reaction is
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: that many times when I'm working with someone, when I'm
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: sitting with someone in the midst of their struggle and
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: their suffering, you know, it is that sense that something
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: needs to, something new needs to be constellated. And I've
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: seen it and, you know, seen the need for it
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: and then seen it happen, that it does amount to
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: a new attitude. So, Someone comes in and they're just feeling, say,
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: you know, kind of chronically unfulfilled, you know, in their
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: work life. And it isn't, you know, sometimes it's like,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: I've got to go get another job or change careers
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: or something. But sometimes it's like, no, it was really
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: just that there needed to be a new attitude about it.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: And not in the kind of facile way that you
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: might be thinking, oh, just buck up and get over
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: it and try to see the bright side. But something
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: really kind of more fundamental, Joseph, I think going back
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: to your definition about how am I sort of prepared
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: to see, interpret, respond, react to the world? And what
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: if I just shifted things just a little bit? Then
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: I might have different reactions. I mean, it wouldn't, you know,
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: if you've got a terrible workplace, it's not like the
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: new attitude is going to totally change that. But it
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: may make it clear that the task maybe is not
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: what you thought it was. Or like in my case
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: with my dream, it's like, oh, no, it's not about
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: whether or not I confront her. This is like, that's
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: not even what this is about. This is about, you know,
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: this is about me and my vulnerabilities and her and
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: her vulnerabilities and me and where I am. This year,
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: my Wellspring Women's Retreat is happening in Italy from the
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: 10th to the 16th of August. We thought hard about
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: where to host our first European gathering and in the
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: end chose Montepulciano near Siena. I first went to Italy
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: when I was 18 and fell head over heels in love,
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: especially with the spectacular medieval city of Siena. I was
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: lucky enough to be part of the Natruscan excavation project
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: on that trip and became totally fascinated by this mysterious
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: ancient culture and by Italy in general. When I've had
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: the chance, I've tried to keep up my Italian and
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: I've loved reading Italian myths and fairy tales throughout my life. So,
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: for my annual women's gathering, this region felt like the
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: right place. I can't wait to share the local stories
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: and take some trips together to see some of Tuscany's
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: most magical archaeological sites. There will, of course, be all
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: the usual Wellspring offerings too. Fairy tales, daily yoga, dream work, massage,
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: and plenty of time to relax together. I'd love for
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: you to join me. There will be a link in
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: the show notes for you to read all the details
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: and make a booking.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: And so we can have a kind of fixed... Attitude
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: towards any number of things, whether it's a friend, our workplace,
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: the house we live in. And when Jung was often
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: writing about life-changing alterations of attitude, he's saying that the
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: new attitude is synonymous with a way of life.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: Which is kind of like the way that we are
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: on the journey. And when there's any kind of a
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: change at that, level, everything gets a big shake up,
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: which is often not something that we can do on
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: our own. No. We don't really have our fingers that
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: deep into the programming.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: And we couldn't.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: Probably shouldn't, actually, you know.
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: The difference between the program and the hard drive. That's
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: really great. I have a little quote that I liked
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: a lot, Jung, that says, he says, unless there is
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: a personal experience, Realizing from the inside what it means,
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: nothing happens. Such an experience can take many forms. For instance,
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: falling in love, anything which is really lived. So that,
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: you know, not just thought and figured out and problem
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: solved and there's all that stuff is really good. But
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: when there's an inner conflict, you can't really just think
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: your way through it. You would have done that already
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: if it was that kind of issue.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: And we're missing information. That's the thing is, if we
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: could figure it out so fastly on a conscious level,
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: we would already have done it. And it wouldn't be
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: a mysterious attitude. It's that there's something truly novel and
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: probably a little disturbing to us that keeps knocking on
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: the door and we just keep pretending we don't hear it. Mm-hmm.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: And so that's where dreams are so helpful because we're
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: kind of forced to open the door in the dream
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: drama that we wouldn't probably take a look at otherwise.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: So maybe I'll give an example from my personal life
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: about sort of the cultivation of the new attitude. It
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: was a biggie. And I think as we're talking about this,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: I think there can be little ways that you cultivate
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: a new attitude, like my example with the dream. But
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: then there are those really big ones. And, uh, you know,
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: this is a story that I've, I've told before on
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: the podcast, but I was, I was in my twenties.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: I was in my late twenties. I was in graduate school.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: I was, you know, all, all ready to go to
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: law school and I was dating this guy and it
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: was going great. And I was, you know, you know, yeah,
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: we were going to get married in my mind. So
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: I had my life all figured out as, you know,
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: had this career path and I had this relationship and then, um,
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: he ended the relationship and, and it, it, kind of
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: plunged me into something, which made me sort of rethink everything. And,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: you know, it sort of felt like everything kind of
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: fell apart. Well, something like that.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: Something fell apart.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Something fell apart. And I found myself just feeling so
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: sorry for myself, really. I mean, I had this little
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: temper tantrum in my head, like, kind of to the
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: universe or God or whatever you want to call it. Like,
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: why can't I just get my way? Why can't I
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: just have this thing? I want this thing, you know?
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: And it's, and it's like, you know, maybe if I
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: do this or I do that, or I, you know,
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: walk in a circle counterclockwise eight times underneath the full moon,
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: I'll get what I want. You know, I just wanted
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: what I wanted. And it was like, eventually it's like, no,
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: that's not, that's not going to work. You know, and
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: I had to, so there was a sort of sense
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: of kind of surrendering, my insistence on trying to just
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: kind of get my way. You know, on an internal level,
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: I had to be like, well, okay, I guess I
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: just got to buckle up and go along for the ride.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to read something in a minute from
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Jung that I think explains this really well, but I
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: had to just sort of give up and let things happen.
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: And kind of do the next right thing. You know,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: that's what they say in AA, which is so great.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: And then Jung says almost the exact same thing in
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: a letter. When you don't know what to do, just
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: do the next right thing, you know. And I sort
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: of started doing that and I didn't know what was
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: going to happen or where it was going to go. And,
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: you know, in that time, that's when I sort of
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: discovered Jung. I mean, I'd known about him before, but
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: this was my discovery for myself. And, you know, and
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: I just kind of kept on putting one foot in
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: front of the other until I emerged out the other
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: side of it, you know, on the road to becoming
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: a Jungian analyst. But it was, it took years and it, it,
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: it took, it was, it was a lot of being
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: worked on by life. and having to let go of
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: things and just wait for the new thing to come.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Like I remember in the middle of all this kind
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: of realizing that this career that I thought I had
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: just was so in love with and I thought this
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: was what I was going to do forever and ever
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: and just realizing that I just didn't have any more
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: energy for me. This is my prior career. And just
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: being like, oh my God, just like sitting in that
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: nothingness and like wanting to know what is going to
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: happen next. You know, but part of the new attitude
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: is you can't force it. You can't muscle it. You
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: have to just let it happen until it grows. So
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: that's maybe just one. I mean, it's not super helpful
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: because there's no formula. And Jung says that later in
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: this thing I'm going to read. But, you know, it's
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: like you have to trust. You have to trust that
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: the new thing will constellate.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: And specifically, he advises that as we're brooding, and I
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: like the idea of brooding, the way a hen will
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: sit on a nest and wait and wait and wait,
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: is to pay attention to one's fantasies in the waiting process.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: Because the fantasies are the strange way that ideas and
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: symbols are nudging us towards our realizations.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Maybe I will just go ahead and read this. This
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: is from his introduction to The Secret of the Golden Flower.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: As I have said, the essential reason which prompted me
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: to look for a new way, which is another term
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: I think for the new attitude, was the fact that
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: the fundamental problem of the patient seemed to me insoluble
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: unless violence was done to one or the other side
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: of his nature. I had always worked with a temperamental
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: conviction that at bottom there are no insoluble problems, an
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: experience justified me insofar as I have often seen patients
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: simply outgrow a problem that had destroyed others. This outgrowing,
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: as I formally called it, proved on further investigation to
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: be a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: interest appeared on the patient's horizon, and through this broadening
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: of his outlook, the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: out when confronted with a new and stronger life urge.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: It was not repressed and made unconscious, but merely appeared
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: in a different light, and so really did become different.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: What on a lower level had led to the wildest
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: conflicts and to panicky outbursts of emotion from the higher
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: level of personality now looked like a storm in the
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: valley seen from the mountaintop. This does not mean that
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: the storm is robbed of its reality, but instead of
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: being in it, one is above it. But since, in
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: a psychic sense, we are both valley and mountain, it
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: might seem a vain illusion to deem oneself beyond what
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: is human. One certainly does feel the affect and is
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: shaken and tormented by it, yet at the same time
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: one is aware of a higher consciousness looking on which
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: prevents one from becoming identical with the affect, a consciousness
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: which regards the affect as an object and can say,
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: I know that I suffer. What our text says of indolence,
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: indolence of which a man is conscious, and indolence of
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: which he is unconscious, are a thousand miles apart, holds
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: true in the highest degree of affect. Now and then
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: it happened in my practice that a patient grew beyond
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: himself because of unknown potentialities, and this became an experience
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: of prime importance to me. In the meantime, I had
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: learned that all the greatest and most important problems of
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: life are fundamentally insoluble. They must be so, for they
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: express the necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating system. They
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: can never be solved, but only outgrown. I therefore asked
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: myself whether this outgrowing, this possibility of further psychic development,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: was not the normal thing, and whether getting stuck in
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: a conflict was pathological. Everyone must possess that higher level,
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: at least in embryonic form, and must, under favorable circumstances,
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: be able to develop this potentiality. When I examined the
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: course of development in patients who quietly as if unconsciously
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: outgrew themselves, I saw that their fates had something in common.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: The new thing came to them from obscure possibilities either
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: outside or inside themselves. They accepted it and grew with
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: its help. It seemed to me typical that some took
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: the new thing from outside themselves, others from inside, or
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: rather that it grew into some persons from without and
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: into others from within. But the new thing never came
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: exclusively either from within or from without. If it came
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: from outside, it became a profound inner experience. If it
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: came from inside, it became an outer happening. In no
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: case was it conjured into existence intentionally or by conscious
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: willing or but rather seem to be borne along on
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: the stream of time. We are so greatly tempted to
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: turn everything into a purpose and a method that I
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: deliberately express myself in very abstract terms in order to
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: avoid prejudicing the reader in one way or the other.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: The new thing must not be pigeonholed under any heading
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: for then it becomes a recipe to be used mechanically.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: and it would again be a case of the right
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: means in the hands of the wrong man. I have
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: been deeply impressed by the fact that the new thing
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: prepared by fate seldom or never comes up to conscious expectations.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: And still more remarkable, though the new thing goes against
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: deeply rooted instincts as we have known them, it is
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: a strangely appropriate expression of the total personality, an expression
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: of which one could not imagine in a more complete form.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: What did these people do in order to bring about
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: the development that set them free? As far as I
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: could see, they did nothing but let things happen. Consciousness
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: is forever interfering, helping, correcting, and negating, never leaving the
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: psychic processes to grow in peace. It would be simple
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: enough if only simplicity were not the most difficult of
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: all things. To begin with, the task consists solely in
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: observing objectively how a fragment of fantasy develops. Nothing could
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: be simpler, and yet right here the difficulties begin. Apparently
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: one has no fantasy fragments. Or yes, there's one, but
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: it is too stupid. Dozens of good reasons are brought
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: against it. One cannot concentrate on it. It is too boring.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: What would come of it anyway? It is nothing but
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: this or that, and so on. The conscious mind raises
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: innumerable objections. In fact, it often seems bent on blotting
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: out the spontaneous fantasy activity in spite of real insight
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: and in spite of the firm determination to allow the
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: psychic process to go forward without interference. Occasionally, there is
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: a veritable cramp of consciousness. If one is successful in
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: overcoming the initial difficulties, criticism is still likely to start
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: in afterwards in the attempt to interpret the fantasy, to
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: classify it, to aestheticize it, or to devalue it. The
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: temptation to do this is almost irresistible. After it has
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: been faithfully observed, free reign can be given to the
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: impatience of the conscious mind. In fact, it must be given,
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: or obstructive resistances will develop. But each time the fantasy
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: material is to be produced, the activity of consciousness must
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: be switched off again. In most cases, the results of
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: these efforts are not very encouraging at first. Usually they
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: consist of tenuous webs of fantasy that give no clear
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: indication of their origin or their goal. Also, the way
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: of getting at the fantasies varies within individuals. For many people,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: it is easiest to write them down. Others visualize them,
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: and others again draw or paint them with or without visualization.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: If there is a high degree of conscious cramp, often
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: only the hands are capable of fantasy. They model or
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: draw figures that are sometimes quite foreign to the conscious mind.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: These exercises must be continued until the cramp in the
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: conscious mind is relaxed. In other words, until one can
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: let things happen, which is the next goal of the exercise.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: In this way, a new attitude is created, an attitude
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: that accepts the irrational and the incomprehensible simply because it
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: is happening. This attitude would be poison for a person
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: who is already overwhelmed by the things that happen to him.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: But it is of the greatest value for the one
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: who selects from among the things that happen, only those
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: that are acceptable to his conscious judgment and is gradually
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: drawn out of the stream of life into a stagnant backwater.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: I just think that's one of the most comprehensive descriptions
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: of the process of psychological growth. maybe that exists in
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: the collected works.
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: I think that is really central and complicated to take
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: in all at once, but very, very clear of, I
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: would say, you know, Listen to that again and again.
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: Take notes because so much is right there of the
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: process of change and how images that come forth from
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: the collective unconscious that spring from archetypes as our fantasies
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: or dream image or something that comes in from the outside.
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: Somebody says something to us and it just goes like, oh,
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: of how that can meet consciousness, cognition, and work together.
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: And I think we're also, at least I am going
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: into another of our tropes here from Jung, of how
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: to hold the tension of the opposites and allow images
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: and fantasies to develop to engage them And let things happen.
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: Surrender consciousness so that you let things happen and simply
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: pay attention to them. It's not that the unconscious is
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: always right, quote unquote, but you have to let it appear,
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: give it space, and entertain it consciously. And then there's
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: that eureka moment. Oh, I get it. Something happened. And
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: a process of discernment of now which way do I go?
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: What do I make of it? But that is a
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: terrifically fertile passage that you just read from Jung.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: It is. I'm going to offer a really boiled down
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: piece just so we can have a place to stand,
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: which is the answer is obviously getting rid of the
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: separation between conscious and unconscious. And there are multiple ways
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: of doing it. As you were saying in that wonderful summary,
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: paying attention to fantasies, which requires not interfering with them
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: or banishing them because they seem disturbing. So we cannot
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: condemn the stuff that comes out of the unconscious fantasies.
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: We have to recognize them as significant. If we adopt
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: the symbolic attitude, that can give us some breathing room
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: around the embarrassment that interferes with allowing our fantasies to
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: move forward to something that releases energy inside of us.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: and I notice this frequently with my analysis, is that
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: when we're talking about a dream, they'll provide something of
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: an association or a thought process. They'll add about a sentence.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: And if it's a fantasy, what I'll do, which drives
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: them a little crazy, is I'll say, well, let's start
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: with that sentence. And then what happens? And then what happens?
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: And then what happens, and we'll do this maybe for
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: 30 minutes, and at certain points they're like shaken. But
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: once they just close their eyes and ask the inner
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: script maker, because the unconscious has actually written a movie
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: script in response to some place that we're stuck. And
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: we know that we're finally getting the medicine because as
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: the Fantasy goes down and down and down the path.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: Almost always there's a final moment where something lets go. Something,
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: the cramp, the cramp in consciousness lets go. And people just,
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: they'll cry or they'll sigh or they'll smile, which they
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: couldn't imagine at the beginning of the fantasy, which seemed
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: so troubling to them. Mixing the conscious and the unconscious mind.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: which Jung just found in the Rosarium woodcuts, which is
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: that the king and the queen in these various stages
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: become one thing, one creature, which represents the melding of
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: those two ways of being. And the more that that happens,
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: the more resources that we have. And I would venture
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: to say that almost every rigorous study system of meditation,
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: spiritual development, in some way is approaching that process. Even meditation,
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: you're quietly watching without interfering what comes up. That's the
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: basis of Vipassana. People just scan their bodies and then
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: they watch what comes up without interfering with it and
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: also without over-identifying with it.
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: And he mentions that, you know, that if you can
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: observe yourself, look at me, I'm angry, that that's so
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: different than just being caught in the anger.
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: So that's the difference between having the complex anger versus
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: the complex having you. This new attitude ties in and
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: overlaps or connects with so many other things that we
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: have talked about on the podcast and that Jung talks
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: about in the collected works. Complexes, transcendent function, holding the
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: tension of the opposites, suffering, amor fati, or the love
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: of one's fate, one's existing life situation. It's all there
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: all the time as the essential operations of individuation.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: And we stand in, as Jungians, a basic presupposition that
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: there are insights that are potentially present in every person.
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: that can be made conscious and that those insights free
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: something up inside of us that was stuck.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm listening to us and I think we
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: all have a lot of conviction about this because we've
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: seen it in our lives and we've seen it in
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: the lives of the people that we work with. And
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: I think what we're talking about is kind of a,
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: we're trying to describe a process of psychological growth and
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: change that we know can resolve symptoms. I mean, I
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: love that part where he says, you know, is it
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: inner or outer? And if it starts as an inner experience,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: it becomes an outer happening because, you know, like when
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: people come in with some inner problem, I know that
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: if our work together works, their outer life will change.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: You know, in some sense, you know, some people say
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: as an analyst, you're not supposed to care about what
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: happens to the patient. But But I don't know that
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: I stand there because, you know, it's sort of like
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: someone comes in and they've got this real inner thing.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: But then, you know, two years later, they now have
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: more relationships in the outer world and they like their
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: job better and they've, you know, taken up a painting
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: class and the inner work will manifest in the outer world.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Symptoms do get better, but we're not looking for symptom resolution.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: that's not what this process, that's like an after effect
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: of the process of psychological change. So the kind of
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: standard medical model mental health approach is you're anxious. And
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: so you come in and you want to feel less anxious.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: But I think the psychodynamic approach or the depth approach
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: or certainly the Jungian approach is, no, there's going to
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: be a change in your personality. And Jung describes it
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: in that passage that I wrote, you know, there's the
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: development of a new level of consciousness. And then it's
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: not like the symptoms, you're no longer anxious because I
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: got in there under the hood with a wrench and
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: like tightened a few loose bolts and then you're not
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: anxious anymore. It's like, you know, something surprising happened, something
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: that you couldn't have predicted, you changed and you grew
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: in a new way. And now you have a different
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: relationship with your problems. Like, You know, like, you know,
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: I would say that for myself. Like, I still, you know,
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: after I, you know, went through this process of growth,
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: I definitely still, you know, was sorry that the relationship
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: had failed and yearned for another relationship. I had a
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: different relationship with that problem, though. And it didn't stop
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: being a problem, but it occupied a different place in
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: my life. I thought about it differently. I had a
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: different feeling about it. And that, you know, I want
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: to say made it more bearable or something, but it
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: allowed something to move. I wasn't stuck. I wasn't in
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: that psychological cramped space that Jung mentions.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: It reminds me of a moment in my own analysis
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: where I had been raised in a very, very violent home,
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: lots of problems. And so in the many years of
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: my analysis, I would come in and tell these long, stories.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: And I would often tell the same story over and
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: over again, trying to do something rather. My analyst was
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: infinitely patient. And literally one day I walked in, sat down,
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: I could feel myself wanting to launch into the story.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden it became absolutely clear
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: to me that I was bored, which was a new attitude.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: I was like, oh my God, I am so bored.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: telling these same whatever eight stories that I kept circling around.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: And I just looked at my analyst and I said,
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: I'm not even going to talk about this anymore. And
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: so just as you were saying, Lisa, it's not that
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: I didn't live those things, but all of a sudden
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: the charge had finished in it. And then it became
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: kind of like just a journalistic report that I could
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: file on the shelf inside of my psyche. and then
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: walk past that book without it talking to me anymore.
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: That was an enormous, miraculous process to just get bored
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: with my complaining. If someone had told me, let's say
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: a year earlier, I'm bored hearing you, or can't you
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: just get bored with telling that story? I probably would
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: have shut up because I would have been embarrassed, but
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: I don't think I would have felt the freedom to
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: put it on the shelf and just then pay attention
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: to other things that are more fruitful or just other things, period,
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: because I'm not staring anymore.
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: It's a huge process and people do that. We all
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: do that in our process. That process of circumambulating, or
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: I make the analogy to making cornstarch pudding, it's all
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: liquid and And has no hope that we can see
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: at the outset of really changing. But we patiently stir
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: the pot and stir the pot, tend the heat. not
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: too hot, not too cold, until eventually the change occurs.
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: And that goes back to what we said before about
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: really paying attention and giving space to the things that
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: arise in us, where we're stuck, where we're hooked. And
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: then somehow, mysteriously, we get unhooked, or we come to
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: a tipping point, or we simply outgrow the problem. I
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: often use the image of a tree, and it starts
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: out as a sapling. Let's say a tree trunk is
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: four inches in diameter. And somebody comes along with an
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: axe and takes a giant wedge out of that little
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: tree's trunk. And it's awful. And it is monumental to
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: our little sapling. But it survives. And by the time
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: it has grown bigger and its trunk is now, let's say,
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: 12 inches in diameter, the gash is still there. It's
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: had an effect. But the tree is bigger. There are
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: more branches. It's sturdier. And so now that has been
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: integrated into And is no longer front and center as
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: it was originally.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: That's a really good metaphor, Deb. I like your visual metaphors.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: And since I've never made cornstarch pudding, I will offer
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: another one. But I think it's great because you start
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: to get just a feel for it. And like Jung says,
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: this isn't a recipe, right?
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: That's my, it's my theory. Like Jung has the collected
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: works and I have the cornstarch pudding theory of change.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: But have you ever churned butter?
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: Once I did.
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: So this is something I did with the kids when
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: they were little. You got some cream, some whole cream,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: and you put it in a jar. And then you
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: shake and you shake and you shake. And you're just like,
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: nothing's going to happen here. Nothing's going to happen. And
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: then you keep shaking and it still keeps feeling hopeless.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: There's no change. There's no change. And then all of
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: a sudden, after you've shaken much longer than you think
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: you should have to shake, there's butter. It just happens
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden. But sometimes psychological change is like that.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: That we can't necessarily just attack the problem, but something
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: else needs to happen. I'll read a very short quote.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: I read a long one. You can read a long
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: one too. No, no, no.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to read another long one. The treatment...
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: must do more than destroy the old morbid attitude. It
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: must build up a new attitude that is sound and healthy.
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: This requires a fundamental change of vision. Not only must
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: the patient be able to see the cause and origin
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: of his neuroses, he must also see the legitimate psychological
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: goal towards which he is striving. We cannot simply extract
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: his morbidity like a foreign body, lest something essential be
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: removed along with it, something meant for life. Our task
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: is not to weed it out, but to cultivate and
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: transform this growing thing until it can play its part
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: in the totality of the psyche. So, this idea of
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: the emergent whether it's the little bits of butter that
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: start to accumulate in the shaking, and then you keep
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: shaking it and it grows until it's a nice, cohesive
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: piece of butter that you can just lift out of
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: the milkway. Deb, as you were saying, it's a growing thing,
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: like a sapling. And that once we discover there's a sapling,
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: you don't have to worry about all the other weeds
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: and briars that have been poking us. but just tending
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: to the sapling because it's going to play its part.
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: And the briars that have been cutting us earlier also
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: may have a part to play. So we don't really
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: need to cut down all the briars, but we need
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: to notice that the tree is growing and that we
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: need to prioritize or take seriously the new thing.
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: Because psyche is going somewhere. And if we focus on
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: the briars and the poison ivy and all that stuff, no,
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: that's the wrong place to place very much attention. Focus
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: on what is trying to grow, which means paying attention
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: to fantasies and happenstances and unwelcome things that seem like
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: distractions or unimportant or a nuisance. or uncomfortable, or just
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: plain silly, but to pay attention to those, because that
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: is often where the new thing starts to arise. Yeah.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: So I think what we're saying again, and Joseph, you
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: summarized this so well before, that the new attitude involves
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: the addition to the conscious attitude of what has dropped
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: into the unconscious and can't be accessed. And it's when
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: that gets lifted up and incorporated somehow. And that is
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: not something that you can do with your ego. You
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: have to, you have to sort of just, you know,
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: shake the jar or, or, or, or just kind of
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: surrender and, and let that, let that happen. And, you know,
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: and I'm thinking about cornstarch pudding and, and, and, and butter. Patience, patience,
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: you know, and the thing about our egos is we
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: want what we want when we want it. And it might,
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: it might not happen in the timeframe that you want it.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: And like Jung says in that passage, it might be
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: a disappointment. When it gets there, it's not what consciousness imagined,
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: and yet it's the right thing.
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: And the goal of the new attitude is always to
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: free up energy, and then that energy is put in
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: service to actualizing your potential. And that potential is often
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: mysterious to us. The shadow work that happens in the
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: beginning of an analysis is more familiar because it's something
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: that at some point we knew, and then our hand
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: was slapped or something, and we're like, oh, that's going
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: to go in the basket. But when the libido is
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: freed up from the neurotic cramp, I love that idea
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: of the conscious cramp, from the neurotic cramp, that energy
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: starts feeding seed ideas, seed traits that we didn't even
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: know about ourselves, and they begin to press upon us
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: in ways that cause a fascination. A new fascination is
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: often the outcome of the freed-up energy.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: I think the conscious cramp could be a good name
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: for a band or a cafe or a drink. A drink, maybe.
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: It'd be great for a process group.
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: And it's so vivid and can be imagined so literally
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: of like, you know, the first thing that happens when
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: I have a cramp is it's like, oh, okay, how
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: do I make it go away? How do I make
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: it go away? Recently it's been, there's one place that
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: tends to cramp and I've been just sitting down and
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: Sort of letting it happen and relaxing into it of just,
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: rather than that activation and the sort of tightening up of,
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: you know, how do I get rid of it, is, oh, okay, okay,
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: and it will relax. So it's, what do we do
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: with our conscious cramps once we get past that instant
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: urge to banish it? that there's usefulness there. Something is
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: speaking to us, and there are tremendous parallels between the
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: body and psychology. I wonder if we should talk a
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: little bit about neurosis and what that is, because that's
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: sort of an old-fashioned term. that people don't use much anymore,
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: perhaps thanks to the DSM and its multiplicity of symptoms
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: and diagnoses. But that place in all of us where
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: consciousness and the unconsciousness are in conflict is And Freud
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: and other people have seen these inner conflicts somewhat differently.
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: But there's a lot of overlap that for Freud, it
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: was the conflict between values from our families and culture
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: that become internalized and we adopt them and our biological
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: urges that were usually associated with aggression. And psychic energy.
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: And just biological, basic biological drives. An ego psychologist, Hans Kohut.
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: thought about neurosis as our need to be validated and
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: our need to be able to depend on others to
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: meet our needs and have a place to belong that
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: our families may not have provided. In some way, I
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: think we kind of all have to find a way
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: to survive our childhoods. The experiential psychologists like Carl Rogers
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: and Fritz Perls kind of framed it as conflicts between
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: what the social system dictates and our need to self-actualize,
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: to achieve our full potential, to individuate, to do what
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: we want to do independently and spontaneously and and with
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: some ability to kind of have reality checks with the
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: real world. Eric Erickson was a psychologist who had eight
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: stages of development. And in each one, there's sort of
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: an ambivalence or a conflict to be resolved, like between
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: trust and mistrust in the first year of life, later
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: on between identity and role confusion, or in older years
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: between the forces of integration and despair for elderly people.
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: And so it goes. The existential people talk about the
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: need to find meaning in a universe that's incomprehensible and
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: defies our rational mind and because of the inevitability of death.
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: So there it goes. We all have these kinds of conflicts.
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: And if the world has not been as welcoming as
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: it might have, then we can get stuck in any
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: of these places. And we often need a new attitude.
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: So an example that is common enough is that people
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: will come in and they'll talk about a conflict, maybe
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: with a loved one, a parent. And they'll describe the altercation.
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: And then at the end, they'll say, and then I
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: became so depressed. I was exhausted. I just could barely
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: get out of bed. So maybe dad visits. And while
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: he's visiting, he's criticizing everything that every repair you made
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: in the house. It's like, oh, you built that shed,
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: but really? It is actually not perfectly square. So, you know,
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: if you need some help, I can do that. Or
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: you painted that room, but you know there is a
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: spot up there in the top right corner where actually
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: you got some of the wall paint on the ceiling there.
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: I can give you some pointers about that. And so
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: it goes and goes. And the longer it goes, the
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: more exhausted and depressed and de-energized, you know, the fellow becomes.
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: And then... If they have an analyst, perhaps the analyst
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: will say, you know, Freud once said that depression is
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: repressed anger turned against the self. And then if the
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: person actually can connect to that, they're like, oh, yeah, actually,
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: I am really. I was incredibly angry when he said
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: that my shed wasn't square and said that my painting
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: was sloppy. I was furious. And that's an example of
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: the missing part of the attitude that the anger needed
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: to join the experience. It was happening, but it took
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: a lot of energy to keep smushing it down because
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: there was some attitude that said you have to respect
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: your parents. You can never disagree with them, particularly if
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: you're from a culture that reinforces that strongly.
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: And especially when dad is trying to help you.
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: He's so helpful. And so we actually don't know or
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: can't know the underlying anger. So when that, not just
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: academically is considered, but actually we suddenly feel it as
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: we're reviewing the memory, often people are angry, but they
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: also feel really energized. They feel a lot of vitality.
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: What they're going to do with that is.
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: Up to them.
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: But it does change the way you might relate to
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: that experience.
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. You don't feel so deadened around it.
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: And there's often such relief, you know, when the true
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: authentic feelings can come to light of like, oh, I
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: was angry. Dad was really being critical. And I was
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: so proud of the shed I'd built and the room
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: I painted. There's a huge, huge amount of relief at
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: acknowledging these forbidden feelings, just like all these people have
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: talked about of what you're supposed to and what you really.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: Right. And emotions always have lots of information in them.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: So when you can feel your feelings, you have a
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: more well-rounded view, perspective, attitude about the situation that you're in.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: And you can use that to, you know, make various decisions. So,
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm also thinking, Joseph, your example made me
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: think a little bit about what in psychotherapy is often
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: called reframing. And although I don't think reframing is always
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: the same thing as developing a new attitude. I mean,
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: you know, I think there can be moments when someone
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: says something to you and helps you see your situation
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: in a different way. And sometimes that's your analyst who
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: just drops the right penny at the right time. And
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: suddenly a new vista opens. But a lot of what
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: a lot of therapists do, not just unions, but therapists
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: in general, the technique is reframing. It's like, my friend
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: has moved on because she doesn't call anymore. And it's like, well,
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: maybe your friend just got busier. You know, that's not
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: a great example of reframing, actually. I'm having trouble coming
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: up with one on the cuff.
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: I have one.
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: Go ahead. Yeah, thanks.
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: I have a couple of... One time, I had been
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: in another field, and I was probably... earlier mid-40s, somewhere
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: in there. And she got together and we were talking.
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: She wanted some real sort of consultation and brainstorming about
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: what she should do in the same field and how
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: to solve this problem and how to do this campaign
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: and all the rest of it. And we were just
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: going along and going along. And all of a sudden
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: I said, geez, you know, you're so into this. And
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: I'm just not. Isn't that funny? And she said, oh,
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: she said, oh, yeah, that's because you're in the wrong field.
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: And I was like, what? And she said, oh, yeah,
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: you should be in counseling. And it hit me like
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: somebody throwing cold water in my face. I was like, whoa.
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: And that was a total reframe. And then reframing is ongoing.
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: I was talking to somebody else because the idea had
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: taken root in me like, oh my gosh, that's got
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: a lot of energy. Talk to somebody else. I said,
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: I know, but here I am really in the middle
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: of my 40s and I'm looking at 50. And this
• 57:31
  Speaker 4: person said, yeah, but You're going to be 50 anyway.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: Right, right. That's a great reframe. That's a great reframe.
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: And then I started looking into it.
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: Well, it's a reframe, but also your counselor had been
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: listening or intuiting deeply enough that they were able to
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: language something that was emergent. And so in that way,
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: your therapist was able to link your conscious mind to
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: something that actually was brewing, baking in there quietly.
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: These were, one was a relative and one was a friend.
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: So it can come from anywhere.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: Yes. But you're right. I mean, in a way, those
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: two interventions are a little different. The second one is
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: definitely a reframe because it's just like, well, you could
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: think about it like that, or you could think about
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: it like this. It's just like a different way of
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: thinking about things. But But the first one, it's really
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: remarkable because, and I think it's worth lifting up because
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: I think this does happen a lot of times. There's
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: something we know, but we don't yet know we know it.
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: And then maybe someone puts it into words and that
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: releases the new attitude or plants a seed so the
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: new attitude can begin to grow.
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: It's a big thing to know that you know what
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: I do find this idea of reframing and the value
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: of it interesting. Yes, it of course can help us
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: come in touch with some unconscious potential, but there is
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: something else about it. And I think this is where
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: philosophy comes in, where there's a system of orientation that
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: we can try on for size to see what it
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: does to us. Does it make us calmer, happier, or not?
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: Does it make it seem like we can orient more
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: comfortably or safely to life? Right now, which we had
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: on the podcast, there's a great rise in Stoicism, and
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: Stoicism is offering ways of reframing the experiences of one's life.
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: AA is a reframing process. where it comes from the
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: outside in, which was something you were talking about in
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: the quote, if it sticks, then often it's resonating with
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: something that was already there, and the words that come
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: in are close enough that it can take root. And then,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: as happens in dreams, it spontaneously sometimes just announces itself,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: often through a dramatized experience in the dream. But either way,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: the proof in the pudding is whether or not it
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: takes root. And if it does, then we feel different.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: Yes. And I'm so glad you brought those two examples
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: up because I think that that is one of the
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: great benefits of philosophy, especially philosophies that kind of offer,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: you know, sort of ideas about how to live. Which
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: also religious systems do as well, and AA does as well.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: And we could kind of think about these as systems
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: for cultivating a different attitude. So especially, I think, Joseph,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: your two examples, Stoicism and AA, I mean, you go
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: to AA, and they are going to walk you through
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: how to cultivate the new attitude. And the first step
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: is you've got to give up the old one. You know,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: just like I said, with my experience, one of the,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: you know, after I finished throwing my tantrum internally, it
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: was like, I guess I just got to surrender, you know,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: which is exactly the first thing you do in AA,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: you know? Right. And stoicism as well. I mean, stoicism
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: literally kind of says, you know, instead of thinking about
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: it like this, think about it like this and see
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: how that feels. See if that makes you feel any better,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: you know?
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: Which is an experiment.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: It is an experiment. And there's a ton of sort of,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: I want to say like psychological technology around thinking about
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: things differently that can be part of developing the new attitude.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think, you know, Jung is so clear
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: to say you can't force it. And I think your point, Joseph,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: is really well taken. You could try to force stoicism,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: but if it doesn't take root, it's not going to work.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: It might. like Jung said, come from the outside. Stoicism,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: that's so interesting. You start reading, studying, listening to podcasts,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: and then it really takes root and becomes a profound
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: inner experience. And then you are doing the work of
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: cultivating a new attitude.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: And that goes, even in Jungian work, it goes to
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: the element of education, which is something that Jung talked
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: about as part of analysis. Another thing... The way that
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: I'll phrase that to my clients is they'll talk about
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: certain people in their lives and maybe they'll say the
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: same two or three sentences. Oh, that person's such an asshole.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: And it doesn't go any deeper than that. And often
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: I will say, you need a much more comprehensive theory
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: of personality.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's great. I love that.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: Because there's so many other additional ways of describing and
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: imagining people. Why is that person saying that brutal thing?
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: What exactly are they saying? What does it mean? And
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: so another way I'll say it to people is, you
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: need to complexify that. That anything that's that simple is
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: a lot of missing information. And so we can turn
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: to Jung as a philosopher around the human psyche and say, well,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: what about these principles? Any evidence that any of that's possible?
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: Sometimes they'll get frustrated with me because they really just
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: wanted to say it and move on because it's gratifying
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: to just announce this person's a jerk. So they can
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: feel frustrated when I ask them to complexify it. Or
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: if I do a functional analysis of the interaction and
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: add a bunch of layers, that's another thing that we
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: do is we'll model this idea of adding possible layers
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: of meanings. through functional analysis of a moment, and then
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: offer that back to the person to see if any
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: of these additional possibilities frees up something in them.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: What I'm liking about all of this, what you've just added,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: but I think it's a thread running through our discussion today,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: is it is doable. This is not the magical mystery
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: to her. There are steps you can take, ways you
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: can think, things you can read, people you can listen to,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 4: conversations you can pay attention to, dream images you can
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: have reveries about and journal about. It's actually very doable.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: With the caveat that it's an insoluble problem and what
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: you have to do is do nothing and let things happen.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: So there's a paradox.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: I agree. Let me rephrase what I just said.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: Well, it's sort of both and, I think.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: It's a both and, but ego can do the going toward.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: Ego can approach, ego can listen, ego can do certain things,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: the willingness and take some initiative. We can't command the unconscious,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: but it often starts, as does dream recall, with I
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: really would like to move toward you. I'm paying attention.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: I'm facing this direction from which I hope something will come,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: and when it does, I am ready to receive it.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: I'm open.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: Coming back to what you had read earlier, Lisa, just
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: the last two sentences or so, and this goes to what...
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: were intimating that the ego can make this easier on itself,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: although it's not going to know everything. So, he had
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: said that, in this way, a new attitude is created,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: an attitude that accepts the irrational and the incomprehensible, simply
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: because it is happening. This attitude would be poison for
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: a person who's already overwhelmed by the things that happen
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: to him. But it is of the greatest value for
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: one who selects from among the many things that happen
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: only those that are acceptable to his conscious judgment and
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: is gradually drawn out of the stream of life and
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: into a stagnant backwater. So even just that little bit,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: am I the kind of person that notices a bunch
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: of things in my fantasies or even in my dreams,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: and I only pay attention to the things that are
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: acceptable to my day-to-day attitude and judgment? Or do I,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: as a discipline of the ego, pay attention to the
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: things that I don't like, which is basically just shadow stuff.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: If I ask most people, what do you not like
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: to think about? Most people will, well, they have a list.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: I don't like to think about death, or I don't
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: like to think about whatever it is. It's like, ah, well,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: there's the gold, or the beginning of a piece of it.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: And that can happen at the level of the ego
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: making a decision to at least turn in the direction
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: of the thing we're avoiding. What the actual missing information is,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: just as you were saying, Lisa, has to reveal itself.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: But we can have enough muscle to at least face
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: towards the stench and start walking towards it, which is
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: why I think Jung said analysis is for the second
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: half of life, because we've got to have enough muscle,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: so to speak, on our ego to do something like that.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: Today's dreamer is a 72-year-old woman who works as an artist.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: And she actually gives us two dreams. And one is
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: headless man and the other is bodiless man. So she says,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: I had two dreams that seem related. And the first one,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: I'm in the entrance to my mother's apartment building in Florence.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: It is made of vast gray stones, high ceilings, cold
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: and bleak. A stairway curves away and upwards on the
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: left side, and on the right is the lift. I'm
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: standing in front of the lift when a man comes in.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: He has no head. His neck is rounded. off and
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: smooth at the top. He is swarthy and strong, bare-chested,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: wearing trousers. I'm afraid of him, though he makes no
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: move towards me, and in fact, he makes a cheery
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: gesture with his hands, sort of a thumbs up. I
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: press the lift button, wanting to get away. Then he
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: comes back down the stairs. The lift won't respond. He
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: passes near me and I am frightened. He makes the
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: thumbs up sign again as if to reassure me and heads,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: no pun intended, for the front door. His presence terrifies
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: me and the lift won't come. I shout at the lift,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: just let me in. A few weeks later, I dream
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: I'm coming out of a big, rather grand hotel with
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: a man friend. Just behind, a man with a head
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: and no body is coming out of the hotel. He
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: seems to take offense at something I have said or done.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: My friend says he will speak to him on my behalf.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: I say, no, I will. He says, she will speak
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: to me. I kneel down to speak to him. He
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: is handsome with curly dark hair. I say to him
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: in Italian, I'm sorry. I did not mean to be discourteous.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: He is pleased and repeats what I have said. So
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: she says, I can't think of any particular life transitions.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: I've been very focused on learning to lucid dream for
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: several months with a little success. And what were the
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: main feelings in the dream? In the first one, panic
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: and fear. In the second one, a wish to assure
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: the bodiless man that I respect him and wouldn't wish
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: to offend him. I couldn't see what I had done
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: to make him take offense. Maybe I stared at him
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: for a moment. And her associations, she said, the headless man, blind, brute, nature, instinct,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: lack of intelligence and reason, but also pure instinct, intuition,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: and simplicity. The bodiless man, intellect, mind, fragile pride, helplessness.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 4: And such opposites, right?
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: And very complementary.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly. A body without a head, a head without
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 4: a body, really can be such an image of the
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: split that we all have between cognition and rationality and
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: get your head on straight, use your head, versus where
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 4: our bodies and physiology, instinct, and the body. seat and
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 4: site where emotions arise. And it seems in the dream
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 4: that the headless man, that inspires panic and fear. And
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 4: she says it. She's got a lot of insight already
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 4: of the headless man, lack of intelligence and reason, but
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 4: also pure instinct, intuition, and simplicity.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: So my thought about this dream initially is, first of all,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: I think it's important that she's at her mother's apartment.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: And I would be, of course, curious about what that
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: relationship was like. So we're something about the mother complex here.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: And it's interesting that there's a stairs and a lift,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: and she's going to take the lift. She could take
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: the stairs, potentially, but she's going to try to take
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: the lift. And of course, you know, it struck me
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: in particular that the man was not wearing a shirt
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: and he's got a very well-developed physique. And it struck
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: me that the dream is a very poignant. I mean,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: I felt some sadness as I read this dream because
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: I was imagining that it's a little bit of an
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: invitation from her embodied self, from her body to sort
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: of make friends. You know, there's the thumbs up sign,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: you know. But she recoils in fear and panic. So
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: I do think there's something here about the body and
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: the body being discounted and somehow that there's some relationship
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: there with the mother complex.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: The thing that I would be curious about if she
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: was here is what was her mother's relationship to men
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: and to the masculine that when we're being raised, Whatever
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: our parents respond to negatively or with fear, as a child,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: we simply take that in because it's the way we
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: know what's dangerous in the environment. This is very obvious
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: when you see a mama cat with kittens. Mama cat
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: looks at something, she hisses and bristles. All the kittens
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: will hiss and bristle, although they're not even looking in
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: the same direction because they're learning from her responses. So
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: if the physicality of men, for instance, or their relative size,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: or perhaps even being shirtless, whatever, that kind of raw sexuality,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: if that's disturbing to mom, if mama cat hisses and
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: backs up, kitten's going to think, ooh, stay away from that.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: So I'm wondering about a kind of inherited anxiety around
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: men or the masculine side That in the dream is
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: wonderfully being depicted as harmless. Like the objective view of
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: the dream is nothing bad is really happening. I mean,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: it's uncanny to see someone without a head, but there
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: really is nothing dangerous. So it forces the dreamer to go,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: you know, it must be my attitude towards this because
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: the dream maker is not showing me anything I should
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: be flipping out about.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and the headless man keeps giving her the thumbs up.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 4: He's friendly.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Just as one little bit is that the word
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: Florence originates from the Latin name Florentia, which means flourishing
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: or prosperous. I know she associated it with her mom,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: and that's factual. But she's in this place where flourishing
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: is possible. And this kind of robust, instinctive masculine is
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: just kind of ambling about being friendly to her. So
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: that gives me a little sense that if she were
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: to somehow figure out how to befriend the headless guy
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: with the great body, that some flourishing potential might happen.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: You know, we could think about it in sort of
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: a classical Jungian sense, right? That these are two different
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: images of us kind of split animus. And that one
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: is very instinctual and rooted in the body. And that
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: one she rejects. But the one that's very petty, petty.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 4: Literally.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: See what I did there? And intellectual is one that she,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: you know, she goes to great lengths to say, I
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: respect you. I, you know. I mean, she's not freaked
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: out to see a bodiless head. She's freaked out to
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: see a headless body. So somehow it's the body that
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: trips her up. And so in terms of the kind
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: of creative force within her, maybe she's too taken with
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: the intellectual aspect of it, and it's really the rooted... embodied,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: instinctual aspect that is asking to be admitted.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: Just as an association, there's a movie from 1988 called
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 3: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. And one of the scenes
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 3: is played by Robin Williams, plays the King of the Moon.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: And the King of the Moon's head actually can detach itself,
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: and it flies around and has its own opinions. And
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: then the body is kind of ambling about doing other things.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: And so over the course of this interaction in the movie,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: kind of capturing the head and sticking it on the
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: body changes the personality of the King of the Moon.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: So there is something archetypal about her image from the dream.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: And of course, in the Splendor Solus, there's this image
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: of decapitation Because again, that's separation of mind and body,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: sometimes which might be necessary in a chemical transformation. Because
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: in that particular depiction, the head is gold and the
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: body is kind of chopped up and not useful. But
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: here it certainly seems that by comparison, that the two,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: like the king of the moon, need to find each other.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: And then what interesting thing might happen then? Mm-hmm.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: That's nice. Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest
• 1:18:14
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• 1:18:20
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• 1:18:23
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• 1:18:27
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• 1:18:37
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