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SURVIVING MASS TRAUMA: How did Jung process catastrophic events? · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, I want to take just a minute to remind
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• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Thanks.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: Welcome to this Jungian life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: In today's geopolitical storms, we're all deeply affected by the media.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: We're flooded with other people's opinions. We're shocked by images.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: and we're pressured to align with the demands of one
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: group or another. Today, we'll discuss Jung's struggles as he
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: tried to understand war and its aftermath. We'll explore how
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: cultural inferiority makes us vulnerable to splitting, how individuation and
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: self-knowledge can help us be objective, and the great value
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: in asking ourselves, what is my role in this global event? Not,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: what news commentators assign us. Afterwards, we'll analyze two amazing
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: dreams about sharks. So, stay with us to the end.
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: Well, this is our experiment in delving into one of
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: Jung's essays. He wrote this essay right after World War II,
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: of course, and What really struck me at the outset,
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: a page and a half or so in, is when
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: he said, I must confess no article has ever given
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: me so much trouble. And it really affected me that
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: the topic that he's dealing with is so psychologically heavy,
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: so big, especially right after World War II and all
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: the devastation to try to just write an article about
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: something so massive affected Jung. And he starts with the concept,
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: and he's careful to call it psychological concept, of collective guilt.
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: He relates it to the polarity of superiority and inferiority.
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: He calls it a psychic phenomenon. It spreads itself over
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: the whole neighborhood, village, country, and Europe. And this is
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: straight Jung. So what do we want to say and
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: how can we understand collective guilt?
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Well, just to say for a second that, you know,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: he says right in the beginning, people are asking me
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: for an explanation. So you can just, you know, he's
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: writing this, like we said, in 1945. reconstruction hasn't even
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: started yet. People are saying, what happened? How did this happen?
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: He says, this calls for reflection. People are showing up
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: on my door saying, you know, Dr. Jung, what can
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: you tell us? And he's really struggling with it. So it's,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: I think for me, it was just, you know, rereading
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: this essay for the fourth or fifth time, just taking
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: in just how close to the events he was at
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: this time in time. So how difficult it would be
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: to fully be able to get a perspective on them
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: in any way. But, but yeah, the part about collective
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: guilt really struck me too, um, on, on this reading
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: that basically we're all implicated and, and especially as Europeans,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: you know, he says, um, Yes.
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: The Christian church should put ashes on her forehead and
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: rend her garments on account of the guilt of her children.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: The shadow of their guilt has fallen on her as
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: much as upon Europe, the mother of monsters. Europe must
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: account for herself before the world.
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: And he says at some point in the essay, you know,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: this just happened a few hundred miles from where Jung lived.
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: Yes. And that trying to isolate it, you know, the
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: Swiss or the French or other European nations could say, hey,
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: it wasn't us, it was the Germans. But that's not
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: how it works. Europe is an entity. It's in our neighborhood.
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: It's part of European culture. And so we can't just
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: lay the blame on somebody else, whether it's an individual
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: or another country. And he also says, are we not
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: all a little ashamed? Because we all want to think
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: well of ourselves. And our shadow can't possibly be that dark,
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: can it? It might be dark for those other people,
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: but not us. It's a lot to take on this
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: concept of collective guilt and that we're all connected. Jung
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: says no man lives within his own psychic sphere like
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: a snail in a shell separated from everybody else, but
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: is connected with his fellow man by his unconscious community.
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: So no crime is ever an isolated psychic happening.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: So Jung is already sitting in a really difficult problem
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: is that something terrible has happened. And people are coming
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: to him as a leader, as somebody who is a
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: wisdom figure, and asking him, how do we hold this?
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: How do we understand this? How do we survive these
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: feelings and images and events? And he's beginning to struggle
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: to use his idea of the collective psyche in a
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: way to frame things that happen in the collective, things
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: that happen on such an enormous scale. And he himself
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: is trying to sit in this place that there is
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: a collective human soul, and the terrible suffering that happens
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: in one place happens in the human soul in all places.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: And when he sits in that attitude, he feels it.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: You know, something terrible inside of himself. This terrible sense
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: of guilt that the human spirit has participated in something
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: that is so terrible and excruciating and painful. And what
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: does one do? Or how does one even think from
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: that perspective? And we can hear him really fighting with
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: that or trying to figure out what that might mean
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: to him.
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: And he's very careful to distinguish collective from individual. You know,
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: he said we have to distinguish between the individually guilty
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: and collectively guilty. So, you know, he is not, you know,
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: making that kind of global assessment of guilt. But I
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: think you're right of what and how is there a collective.
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: And it goes to his concept of the collective unconscious.
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: of where we have so many basic constructs, forms, archetypes,
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: mythological images, et cetera, in common, and that we all
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: affect one another. And he talks about it, and so
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: that's at the collective level, and at the individual level
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: in the consulting room, we have between two people, and
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: I think almost everybody has experienced this, The unconscious to
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: unconscious connection where I just know what somebody is going
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: to say. Or, you know, just this weekend, I had
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: a feeling that one chunk of the family was arriving
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: and I was out getting something in the garage and
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: I just stood in the driveway and then there they were.
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: So we all know there's an unconscious to unconscious connection
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: and it is individual and familial. and global.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: And the tendency when we feel this collective guilt is
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: to want to deny our culpability and project our shadow
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: so that it's these terrible people out there, over there
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: who did this. And of course, you know, There's some
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: truth to that. What we want to split off is
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: the knowledge that that could have been me. And I
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: think that that is very dangerous. It's very dangerous to
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: split off from the knowledge that that could have been me.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Say more about that.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, I think that when something terrible happens
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: in the world and we want to say, well, it's
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: being done by those terrible people over there. We make
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: them into monsters, and then whatever we do is justified.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: So Jung talks at some point about the carpet bombing
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: of Germany. I'm not a military historian, and perhaps that
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: was actually the right thing to do. But there was
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: tremendous suffering visited upon the Germans and German civilians as
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: a result of that. Again, these are difficult stories. These
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: are difficult, in some sense, military and strategic decisions that
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: I don't feel qualified to weigh in on. But on
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: a certain sense, when we turn someone into any group,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: into a monster for any reason, split off our shadow, say,
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  Speaker 1: they're the ones that are evil. They're the ones that
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: are doing this. We monster them, dehumanize them, and then
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: whatever we do to them becomes justified. So, you know,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: it goes back to that Solzhenitsyn quote that I probably
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: go to far too often on the podcast, but here
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: it is. I'll say it again. If it were only
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: so simple, if only there were evil people somewhere insidiously
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: committing evil deeds and it were necessary to separate them
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: from the rest of us and destroy them. But the
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: every human being, which I think is what Jung is
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: getting at in his discussion of collective guilt. The line
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: human being. So where is the evil in me? And
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: can I sit with that?
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: I'm really kind of really feeling the weight of this.
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: And Jung says it's the dark cloud that rises up.
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: and that the murder has been suffered by everyone, and
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: everyone has committed it. It's a huge thing to take
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: in that we are that connected with everyone else, and
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: there are no bad guys out there. Wouldn't it be
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: comforting and convenient if we could blame them, whoever that
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: particular them happens to be, That it is us and
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: that we have to turn inward and really try our best,
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: as monumental as it is, to take that in.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: It's not like Jung gives Hitler or the Germans a
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: pass in this essay, by the way.
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: No, not at all.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: But to be sitting this close to these events and
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: to explore, you know, what you were just talking about, Deb,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: like how we're, How are we all implicated? It's kind
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: of a remarkable psychological position to take.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: One of the things that Jung was doing in his
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: essay is that he's moving the reader from place to place.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: And yes, of course, we're summarizing some things rather quickly
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: about shadow and where we should place evil collectively in
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: the human soul, as well as maintaining a certain moral
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: position about what is acceptable and unacceptable. So just sitting
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: with the essay, he's telling us that even as he's
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: trying to hold what has happened, he says, I noticed
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: how churned up one still is in one's own psyche,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: how difficult it is to reach anything approaching a moderate
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: and relatively calm of view in the midst of one's emotions.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: And so I want to start there for a second,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: which is just how difficult it is just for a
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: human being to sit in the face of catastrophic events.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Some of the things that we're seeing in the world
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: right now, and what I would say is some of
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: the things we're seeing that are reported and many other
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: catastrophic things are happening in the world, even right now
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: in other countries that not necessarily at the front of
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: news in the United States. But to be able to
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: first acknowledge the tumult inside of us, the subjectivity, how
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: difficult it is to even suppose that we can be
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: balanced in all of this. Jung is sitting in that
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: first confession, which is that he's just fighting to be
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: able to tolerate going in to try to understand what
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: has happened. And as you said, Lisa, earlier, that there
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: is this feeling of collective guilt. And part of this
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: is an idea that Jung had called participation mystique, that
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: when we, as human beings, drop down into a diminished
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: state of awareness, We have a tendency to get swept
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: into these collective themes. We get swept into images and
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: ideas in ways that we often don't even realize until
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: we've resurfaced, until we've gotten ourselves out of it for
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: a moment. So right now, this is the state that
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: all of us are in, being saturated and overwhelmed by
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: images and commentaries in news and media. that we're incredibly distressed,
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: which exhausts the ego. Perhaps we've been scrolling through multiple
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: stories and images, we're up late, we're tired, and being
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: in that state of exhaustion and fear actually pushes our
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: psyches down. One of the ways that we are co-participating
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: in the horrors in the world is that the images
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: and narratives that are given to us are populating our
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: personal imaginations. When there's an interview and someone who has
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: suffered terribly in this current awful war situation tells their story,
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: a million people are resting into the same narrative, are
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: co-participating in the listening. And it's as if a million
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: people are having the experience, but of course they haven't.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: They are entranced in a state of listening, which gives
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: them a feeling that they are all having an experience
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: through the narrative that's being given to them. And Jung
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: wants to bring that to our attention right in the middle,
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: right in the beginning of his essay, to say that
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: that imaginal sweep is very hard to overcome in order
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: to then create a kind of somewhat philosophical or psychological
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: stance that is unique to the individual.
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: And he says that, you know, that there's this contagion effect,
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: you know, from narratives, co-participation, all the rest of it.
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: And he says, when crimes mount up, indignation may get
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: pitched too high. And evil then becomes the order of
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: the day. Then he relates it to the play of opposites.
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: And when the opposites get split apart, we get polarities
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: of good, bad, right, wrong. And then we have what
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: he says of something of the abysmal darkness of the
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: world has broken in on us, poisoning the very air
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: we breathe. And I like what you said, Joseph, about
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: that the ego gets exhausted. And the ego then does
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: what the ego tends to do, which is categorize things.
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: What is good? What is right? What is wrong? Who's bad?
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: Because it's comforting to an exhausted and, by definition, limited ego.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Joseph, I'm appreciating what you said, too, about how it
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: kind of populates our imagination. I mean, we live in
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: this world where we can actually know about these terrible
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: things that are happening on the other side of the planet.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Before modern communications, we might not have any idea. You
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: might just know what's going on in your community. And
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: I used to very much think that it was sort
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: of my moral responsibility to know about the terrible things happening.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not so sure anymore that that actually is a
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: positive thing, because I think that this phenomenon that you've
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: put your finger on, where it kind of populates us,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: it can seed in us a desire to split off
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: and project. And maybe that only makes the situation worse.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, hopefully it calls forth compassion, but it also
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: calls forth uglier things as well. And maybe I'll just
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: read a bit from the essay. This is paragraph 408.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: The wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: kindles something evil in our own hearts. The murder has
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: been suffered by everyone and everyone has committed it, lured
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: by the irresistible fascination of evil. We have all made
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: this collective psychic murder possible. And the closer we were
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: to it and the better we could see, the greater
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: our guilt. In this way, we are unavoidably drawn into
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: the uncleanness of evil, no matter what our conscious attitude
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: may be. No one can escape this, for we are
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: all so much a part of the human community that
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: every crime calls forth a secret satisfaction in some corner
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: of the fickle human heart.
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: That's unbelievably powerful and goes back to what we were
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: touching on about how we co-participate in today's age of
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: modern communication, thinking about our podcast just recently about social media,
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: that we have narratives. We have personal experience narratives, news narratives,
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: social media narratives. What and how do we choose and
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: must choose what to participate in? And that's a place...
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: where we really do have choice about how we differentiate
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: individually from the collective, which narratives, what's me and what's
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: out there, what am I really doing here? So it
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: doesn't have to be some sort of esoteric concept about
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: the collective unconscious. We're all dipping into this stream every
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: single day, depending on what we watch, What we read,
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: what we believe, what narrative we accept.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Well, and arguably, if you really listen to Jung, we're
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: drinking from that stream whether or not we're checking the news, right?
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Because we are connected at this unconscious level.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Well, and I think he's also saying, which is very confrontive,
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: that when we are observing something which is in that
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: category of evil or violent or wantonly destructive, it excites
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: something in the human soul, just categorically. And it's a
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: very difficult thing for us to face because we have
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: these defenses. But millions and millions of people will go
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: and see movies where people are blowing the heads off
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: other people or disemboweling them. Or, you know, do you
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: like slasher movies or horror movies or military movies where
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: somebody is For whatever reason, whether it's set in the
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: magical science fiction realm or whether it's a terrible, nightmarish movie,
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: human beings show up to these Roman Colosseum-like gory things.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: And while we can say that one thing is theater,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: which it is, and thank goodness, and something else is newsreel,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: What we have to really understand is that your unconscious
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: mind is often not clear in the way that the
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: ego is. This was an enormous discovery in terms of
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: the power of psychotherapy, that if you imagine something with
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: enough emotional intensity and clarity, your body and your personal
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: unconscious will take it as true. Now, this can be
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: used to great effect in healing, for instance, in attachment disorders.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: One effective treatment is for people to begin to visualize
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: an ideal parent somewhere in their imagination that is providing
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: them the warmth and guidance that they may not have
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: had in their lived life. And actually, their body and
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: their personal unconscious will take that in as true, and
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: it will be incredibly healing. Conversely, the millions of hours
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: that are spent in games where people kill each other,
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: in movies and other theater where war is depicted and glorified,
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: your unconscious cannot differentiate that from newsreel. And what that
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: means is in one environment, you'll call it entertainment and
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: call it exciting and even say you love watching it.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: And when the collective says, oh, no, no, no, but
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: this has actually really happened, then the ego takes a
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: distancing position. But what Jung is saying, deep down, human
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: beings are still equally as excited by violence and destruction.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: And Joseph, I'll back up what you've just been saying
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: with a brief quote from the essay. He says, has
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: it never occurred to anybody, for instance, that the vogue
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: for the thriller has a rather questionable side?
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: So, you know, it's a question of how do we,
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: each one of us, deal with this. When I was
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: raising kids, it was very much sort of the in-liberal
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: viewpoint that you didn't give your kids toy guns to
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: play with. That as if that kind of was just eliminated,
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: it would somehow be a good thing. So it's not
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: about something as simplistic as that. It's really the issue is,
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: what am I doing and how do I deal with
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: that side of me that wants to play this video
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: game or see that movie or tune into the latest
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: awful crime because plenty of them are going on in
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: our world today? What am I doing with this? What
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: am I, how am I processing it? So we're back
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: to the beginning of the essay where Jung says, We
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: are called upon to reflect. We are called upon to
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: become conscious. What am I doing? Why am I doing this?
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: How am I dealing with myself? Whatever we do, we
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: do with ourselves, and we should be reflecting on it,
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: not just deciding certain things are right or wrong. Otherwise,
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: we're splitting ourselves.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to move us along in the essay
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: a little bit. I'm now up to paragraph 412. But
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: to go back and make a point we've already touched upon,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: but it's just such a good quote. He says, do
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: we seriously believe that we would have been immune?
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: To make the point that I'm sure our listeners have
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: already arrived at, it's not as if those things happened
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: only in Germany. I think we have plenty of issues
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: worldwide today, and that's why we're talking about this essay.
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: Do we seriously believe that we are immune? You know,
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: Jung goes on to talk about man being too far
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: separated from his instincts, which is a theme throughout his works.
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: But what does he mean by, you know, our instincts?
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: He means from nature, from hands-on stuff, from living in
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: a literally grounded way, which is why he built his
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: other second home, Bullingham. He built a lot of it
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: himself with his own hands. He was a stone carver.
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: Lisa and I were fortunate enough to have seen it,
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: and it's pretty primitive. You know, the part that visitors
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: are allowed to see is the round stone tower and
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: the kitchen, and it's pretty basic. So that is where
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: he said he was most himself. Most of us are
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: not going to live like that, and we don't live
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: like that. But what Jung is talking about is a
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: separation from our essential nature and the distancing from ourselves
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: that technology allows us to have. We live in cities.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: We take elevators, public transportation. We drive cars. The list
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: is almost endless. But we don't have the direct experience. of,
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: let's say, hunting for our own food, growing our own food.
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: We're not close to nature. And that turns us into
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: more dependent creatures. We're more dependent on the state because
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: we're not subsistence farmers. And I think that's really interesting.
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: He says, once a man is cut off from the
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: nourishing roots of instinct, he becomes the shuttlecock of every
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: wind that blows.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: And that's got to be like one of these great
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: kind of, you know, young mic drop quotes, you know.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: And he does say this repeatedly in different ways. This
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: is a particularly eloquent way of saying it, I think.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: But I think you're right that it relates to how
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: cut off we are from sort of the basics of life.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: But I think even on a psychological level too, it's like,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: are you in touch with what your gut says? Are
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: you in touch with what your body says? When you
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: have a decision to make, Do you reach inside and
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: ask a question of yourself? What really feels right here?
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: And do you hold that question and let an answer
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: come up? Or are you so cut off that you're
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: going to just follow whatever comes across your TikTok feed?
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: Because we don't get our information in our bodies, you know,
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: the way that we once did. Oh, it's raining out. Oh,
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: it's cold. oh, one of my animals is sick. I
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: have to move this herd of cattle from point A
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: to point B. You know in an immediate sense way
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: what needs to happen and what's going on. And it
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: is radically different from getting something across your TikTok feed.
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: That is so far from direct experience. And I like
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: what you're saying, Lisa, that it calls us to say,
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: to reflect. And to ask ourselves, what does my body say?
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: What does my heart say? How do I take a
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: more objective stance and weigh this out with some cognition,
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: some reason, some additional information? It really calls on us
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: to have a much fuller, more complicated, in-depth process with
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: ourselves than it once did eons or not so many
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: eons ago. when the information was direct, sensate, and inarguable.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: What I'd like to also introduce is something that Jung
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: is putting at that point in the essay, that there
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: is something about a chronic experience of inferiority that then
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: makes one vulnerable to this collective manipulation and being swamped
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: or overwhelmed by the voices that come to us from
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: the collective. And in our time, that would be media,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: the various media suites. And that sense of inferiority or
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: collapse or inadequacy then makes us or seduces us into
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: wanting to yield authority, and particularly the internal authority, where
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: I as an individual must research, discern, investigate in order
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: to have as much of a personally informed position as
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: is possible. And when we have a sense of being
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: inadequate and inferior, then we will cede psychological authority to
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: whoever is most prominent in the culture.
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: That's a very specific vulnerability that can get all of
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: us in trouble.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: It's like we hand over responsibility for thinking and judging
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: and deciding to whoever kind of holds sway at the moment.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: And this, Jung says in the essay, this kind of
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: helps explain the rise of demagoguery.
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. That we cede the authority. Here's a paragraph, you know,
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: that I think applies, applied then and it applies now.
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: All these pathological features, says Jung, complete lack of insight
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: into one's own character, autoerotic self-admiration and self-extenuation as compensation
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: for the inferiority complex you were mentioning, Joseph, leads to
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: denigration and terrorization of one's fellow men, projection of shadow, lying,
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: falsification of reality, determination to impress by fair means or foul,
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: bluffing and double-crossing. All these were united in the man
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: who was diagnosed clinically and hysteric. He's referencing Hitler here.
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: And whom a strange fate chose to be the political, moral,
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: and religious spokesman of Germany for 12 years. And then
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: he says, is this pure chance? So it calls on
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: each of us to go, what are we doing? Who
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: are our leaders? What constitutes leadership? Is this pure chance?
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: I think all of us might have a list of
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: people today who that might fit.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: But you know, it's interesting because in the same part
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: of the essay, he talks about, obviously, you know, the
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: importance of taking responsibility and not becoming dependent, not handing
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: over your judgment faculties to someone else. And part of
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: that is accepting our own guilt. So he says, if
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: only people could realize what an enrichment it is to
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: find one's own guilt, what a sense of honor and
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: spiritual dignity, but nowhere does there seem to be a
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: glimmering of this insight. Instead, we hear only of attempts
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: to shift the blame onto others. So I think, you know,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: in a way really interrogating ourself, saying, well, where am
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: I in this dynamic? Instead of constantly seeing the blame
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: as belonging out there, that the tendency to just split
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: off our own awareness of blame actually sets up this
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: path to demagoguery.
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: And he says, to add to what you're saying, Lisa,
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: the German people, but it could be anyone, would never
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: have been taken in and carried away so completely if
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: this figure had not been a reflective image of the
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: collective German hysteria. Again, it calls on us to reflect
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: and to be able to take in our own guilt
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: rather than splitting it off and projecting it onto a
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: leadership figure that allows us to escape our own internal
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: condition of guilt.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: You know, that term, Deb, that collective hysteria, that is
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: a really interesting term. And he talks about it and
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: kind of describes it some in this essay. But even
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: if we just sort of think about it evocatively, I mean,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: we're not really using it as a diagnostic category. But
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: what do we think of when we think of that term?
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm thinking of, you know, just two things
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: that came across my newsfeed this morning, that there were
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: three young Palestinian Americans walking home from Thanksgiving. And they were,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: I think this was maybe in Maine. Someone just pulled
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: up alongside them and shot them dead. There were three brothers.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: They were just executed. Another thing that came across my
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: newsfeed is a school, I believe it was in Brooklyn,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: where there was a Jewish teacher who had to be
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: locked into a room while the students rioted, ripping things
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: out of the walls, kind of going after her because
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: she had been to a rally in support of Israel.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: And so is this not collective hysteria and is it
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: not incredibly dangerous? So here's a quote. This condition can
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: easily lead to an hysterical dissociation of the personality, which
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: consists essentially in one hand not knowing what the other
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: is doing, in wanting to jump over one's own shadow,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: and in looking for everything dark, inferior, and culpable in others.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: And he has italicized those last two words. that we
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: want to look out there. This is the drum I'm
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: beating today, is that we're always wanting to look out there.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Where's the evil? Look inside. Where are you in this?
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: How important it is to look inside. I think maybe
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: the drum I'm beating is related to yours, Lisa, but
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: that our own consciousness makes a difference. I think we
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: concretize things and we say, well, but what could I do?
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm just one person. What can I do?
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: I'm living out here at the end of a dirt
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: road on Cape Cod. What can I do? You can
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: do a lot. Your powers of self-reflection, consciousness, doing some research,
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: really thinking things over, examining yourself makes a huge difference.
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: That's what you can do. That's what we can all do.
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: is look inside. It's not a nice sort of psychological cliche.
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: Each of us matters. And raising our own level of
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: self-awareness matters. And Jung said over and over again that
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: the way to change the world was basically, I'm paraphrasing,
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: one person at a time. We are called upon to
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: do our own internal work. today as never before because
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: we have so many destructive technological powers at our hands,
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: you know, from guns to instruments of war.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: I'd like to loop back in, in light of all
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: that's been put, and come back to what we were
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: saying about the capacity to withstand one's own guilt. Because
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: When we talk about moving into hysteria, whether that's an
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: individual or a culture, it happens because there is a
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: lack of strength that facing our own experience of guilt or,
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: more broadly, moving towards our suffering instead of away from
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: it creates a kind of muscularity in the sense of
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: the individual. In order to say, I feel guilty about something,
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: we have to reflect on how we may or may
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: not have co-participated directly or indirectly in the suffering that
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: we are struggling to face. Whatever we discover in that inquiry,
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: the ability to withstand suffering is the secret about strength.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: And when we feel reduced in a substantive way, we
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: often tell ourselves that we're not strong enough. It might
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: be said subtly or explicitly, and when we lack that strength,
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: then we are prone to split, to want to put
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: all the blame somewhere outside of ourselves, and then we
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: are incredibly vulnerable to political leaders who will back that up.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: We have political leaders that then say, well, you're absolutely right.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: You are blameless. And it's them. And we're going to
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: take action to reinforce this feeling or this partial evidence
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: that you are either totally victimized or totally blameless. And
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: that all has to do with that collapse of personal strength.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: So as you and Lisa have been saying, what are
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: the ways? that we develop strength. And as you were saying, Lisa,
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: to be able to self-reflect, to be able to face
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: our own shadow, which means to be able to face
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: the things that we don't want to know about ourselves. Now,
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: this is a process that is secondary to whatever terrible
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: geopolitical tragedy is out there. We're talking about the things
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: that we fail at just within the 20 feet around
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: us at any given moment, or in the last six
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: months of our engagements with our families and friends, we
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: don't have to look to archetypal situations or enormous overwhelming contexts.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: There are wars that we are in the middle of
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: in our families. We're at war about something in our workplace,
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: and we're often at war in our own minds about
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: one thing or another. And as we face that, we
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: suddenly become, not suddenly, I would rather say over time,
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: we become more capable of holding internal tension. And then
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: we can feel suspicious about leaders or anyone else who says,
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: I can take that tension away from you.
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: I think I'm just looking at what you've said, Joseph,
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: and looking at it. through a slightly different lens but
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: reiterating it, Jung says psychological corrections can only be made
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: in consciousness and that without guilt, unfortunately, there can be
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: no psychic maturation and no widening of the spiritual horizon.
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: So that goes to us inside. And then he says,
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: Every demagogue exploits this human weakness when he points with
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: the greatest possible outcry to all the things that are
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: wrong in the outside world. But the principle and indeed
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: the only thing that is wrong with this world is man.
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: I don't know that it could be said any better. And,
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: you know, I wonder if we're all sort of circling
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: around What is it that makes it so very, very
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: difficult for all of us to do the work that
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: so clearly somehow needs to be done? Because all of
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: us are distressed and grieving and sorrowing over so much
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: in the world that is creating so much suffering, as
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: you said, Joseph. Something is really trying to get our
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: attention as individuals. This is the time, if not now, when?
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, another place that Jung goes in this essay,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: which he has spoken about elsewhere in the Collected Works,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: is how suggestibility, psychic epidemics are especially dangerous, Deb, to
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: your point about the danger being manned. Because we have
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: lost these kind of overarching narratives, which, you know, I mean,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: the interesting thing is, you know, he talks about sort
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: of the gods being dead. But of course, when the
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: gods weren't dead, they were responsible for a lot of death, destruction,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: and war too. Somehow we have to come to terms
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: with what it means to be creatures with a religious function,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: because Jung says that We are, and I believe him.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: I think that's right. He says in this essay, now
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: for the first time we are living in a lifeless nature,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: bereft of gods. No one will deny the important role
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: which the powers of the human psyche personified as gods
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: played in the past. The mere act of enlightenment may
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: have destroyed the spirits of nature, but not the psychic
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: factors that correspond to them, such as suggestibility, lack of criticism, fearfulness,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: propensity to superstition and prejudice, in short, all those qualities
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: which make possession possible. Even though nature is de-psychized, the
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: psychic conditions which breed demons are as actively at work
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: as ever. The demons have not really disappeared, but have
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: merely taken on another form. They have become unconscious psychic forces.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: Just when people were congratulating themselves on having abolished all spooks,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: it turned out that instead of haunting the attic or
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: old ruins, the spooks were flitting about in the heads
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: of apparently normal Europeans. Tyrannical, obsessive, intoxicating ideas and delusions
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: were abroad everywhere, and people began to believe the most
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: absurd things, just as the possessed do. And again, I
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: think we can see that he's accurately describing something that
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: happened in Europe in the 1930s and 40s, but there's
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: plenty of evidence that similar things are going on now.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: And what do we do about this? It's not so
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: easy to know.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: I think Jung struggled with whether or not there was
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: some kind of a public opinion he should have taken
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: or whether or not He had a platform that could
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: have in some way vaccinated the nation. And of course,
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: that left him with an enormous sense of guilt and
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: personal suffering and personal inquiry. But what he comes to
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: over and again is that it is unlikely that consciousness
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: can be raised on a collective level because the collective
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: itself pushes against consciousness, that we exist in a collective
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: experience because consciousness is dimmed. So all of the efforts
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: which appear to be lifting us up if we all
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: just did thus and such, inherently works against itself. Jung
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: had a very broad suspicion about any form of collective experience.
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: He stood very strongly against communism, for instance, inasmuch as
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: it seemed to entice or demand that people surrender their
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: personal decisions over to the government. and whether or not
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: it was good or bad for the culture at large,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: his concern was about the independence of the human spirit.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: So anything that either demands that we surrender our independent thinking, feeling,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: and imagining, or that fate entices us to surrender our individuality,
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: is working against this liberation from being manipulated. And whether
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: that's being manipulated by the unconscious archetypes, which have lost
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: a kind of religious valence, or the mythologies or stories
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: that would allow us to see them in one form
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: or another, or whether it's financial stressors or the enticement
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: of some kind of idealized outcome in the future, all
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: of that surrendering is what he's standing against. And what
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: he's saying, quite frankly, is we have to learn to
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: talk about our inner life. We have to find the
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: language to do that. We have to find the philosophies
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: to do that. And we have to take the time
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: to reflect in such a way that we have anything
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: we can say that is truthful and honest.
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: I think that is really... Insightful and important, what you
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: just said. We have to find ways to talk to
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: one another about our inner life. What is going on
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: inside so that we learn to be able to have
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: a language, a spoken language, for things that are at
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: a level of feeling. that are hard to articulate. We
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: don't do it just ourselves, between me and me, or
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: you and you. We do it with one another. What
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: are you really thinking? What are you feeling? To have
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: those conversations.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: You know, in one of his late essays, he talks, Joseph,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: about what you were just talking about, about the kind
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: of collectivization of of people is so damaging and can
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: lead us so far astray. And he says the antidote
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: to this is really essentially to develop your own individual
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: personal relationship with the transpersonal. So he's very clear he's
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: not talking about dogmatic religion, but that that's the factor
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: that is protective of And he says that at the
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: end of this essay that we've been talking about today, too.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: He says, the question remains, how am I to live
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: with this shadow? What attitude is required if I am
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: to be able to live in spite of evil? In
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: order to find valid answers to these questions, a complete
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: spiritual renewal is needed. And I think he's very much
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: talking about a spiritual renewal on the individual level. He says,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: the eternal truths cannot be transmitted mechanically. So you can't
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: receive these from, you know, religious, dogmatic religious teachings. In
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: every epic, they must be born anew from the human psyche.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: So we have to have a kind of a direct
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: experience of this. And that is the thing that is
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: protective of, I want to say, of one's humanity.
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: You know, I've been thinking about something that the three
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: of us are familiar with and have loved. as an
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: image to offer of how this, how does this work?
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: That if each of us does our work, how does
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: it affect the whole? So what I'm thinking about is
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: Max Zeller's dream. And Max Zeller went to see Jung
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: after World War II. He had been troubled about his
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: life and his vocation. He was a psychoanalyst. The world
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: was in a bad state. The morning that he was
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: to leave, he had this dream and called Jung and said,
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: oh my gosh, here's this dream. And Jung said, come
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: on over, let's talk about it. And I think it's
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: a beautiful image for all of us of how we
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: participate in changing the world. Here's the dream. A temple
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: of fast dimensions was in the process of being built.
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: As far as I could see, ahead, behind, right and left,
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: There were incredible numbers of people building on gigantic pillars. I, too,
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: was building on a pillar. The whole building process was
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: in its very first beginnings, but the foundation was already there.
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: The rest of the building was starting to go up,
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: and I and many others were working on it. And
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: Jung said, yeah, you know, that is the temple we
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: all build on. We don't know the people because, believe me,
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: They build in India and China and in Russia and
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: all over the world. And I find that image reassuring, comforting,
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: and true that going back to the concept of the
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: collective unconscious and our unconscious to unconscious connection, if we
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: all work on our pillar, the temple can be built
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: and the foundation is already there.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: So, Deb, that's a beautiful and inspiring dream. We've had
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: the wonderful good fortune to know that and to talk
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: about it. So let's take a moment to imagine how
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: could we help our listeners understand how to apply that?
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: What would it mean for each of us to imagine
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: that we are participating in in the building of the
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: new idea, which for Max Eller was this new temple.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, in one way, I think that Jung's comments
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: to Max and his dream are reassuring, are soothing and calming,
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: that despite the outer circumstance of the world, its hysteria,
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: the terrible geopolitical things that happen, on and on and on,
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: that there is a human spirit that is constructively imagining
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: a better future. And I believe he said to Max,
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: it would take a few hundred years in his own
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: intuition for this to emerge. So it's comforting. It might
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: help us feel less distraught, less hysterical about things. And
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: beyond that, what do we think is required?
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: I don't know that I have sort of these actionable specifics,
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: but what for me is heartening about it is that
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: one's own process of individuation, of working on your own pillar,
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: affects the whole and is part of the whole, which
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: is what we've been saying, the capacity to reflect, the
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: capacity to feel our own guilt. Who are we at
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: war with? or what parts of ourselves might be at
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: war with, that that's building our own pillar. And that
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: makes a contribution to growing the world.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: I also think that there's another aspect too, which is,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: you know, when I'm sitting with someone in a very,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: very dark place in the consulting room, and I am
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: aware of feeling helpless, like I don't know what to do,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: and the situation seems hopeless. I remind myself, as I
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: think many Jungians do, that there is a self, that
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: the person has a transpersonal center that Jung called the self.
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: And it's not up to me to come up with
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: the answer, that I can trust that that something in
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: that person will activate in the right way. And so
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: we often lean on that as analysts. And I think
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: a similar thing applies here, that there is a process
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: going on that we can't fathom, that we're not in
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: control of, that we can maybe only darkly discern, as
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: Jung did, through dreams, for example, but a sense of trust, perhaps,
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: that we are being, we meaning humanity, is being carried
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: along in some way towards some development.
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: So I take that as inspiring and comforting, which is
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: important because when we fall into mind-numbing distress, even at
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: the thought of something which is very far away from
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: us in a personal sense, it might allow us to de-escalate,
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: to kind of re-regulate ourselves or feel co-regulated by the psyche.
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: And in that moment, when our nervous system is calmer
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: and our body is calmer, then we can think. And
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: we can even think creatively. What can be done? What
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: must be done? What could be done? Is this my
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: work to do? And I think that that is such
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: an important question. There is great work at all times
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: to be done in this vast world. All three of
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: us have training as social workers. So we have a
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: sensibility and a sensitivity to these collective systems where we're
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: well acquainted with the role of advocacy and a policy
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: and the capacity for thoughtful systemic change. And some people
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: are called to that. Some people do that well. Some
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: people don't. that less well, but we understand that there
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: is a way to slowly shape systems with the hope
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: that it will give rise to something better. So that
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: is a piece of work one might do. But what
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: I often will say to my analysis and to the
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: students that I also work with is when you behold
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: whatever is there before you, to then go back inside.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: And inside may be even just asking your physical body,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: what is my heart in this event? What is my
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: true and authentic response? And I know this may sound
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: provocative to some of the listeners, but sometimes when we
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: are saturated with horrifying pictures that we have seen in.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: Media.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: And we say, but what is my task at this moment?
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: It may be to protect my children so that they
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: are not overwhelmed by the things that they're seeing on TikTok,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: to actually keep my family safe and calm and thoughtful.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: because that is the scope of my reach today or
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: this month. Someone else may go inside and say or discover,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: I'm going to shift my charitable donations because I believe
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: that there are agencies that can intervene, and the Red
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: Cross and other organizations, and on and on. What we
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: must do is pull ourselves away from kind of clockwork orange,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: eyes pinned open, being programmed by some kind of media
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: agency to pull back, turn away, breathe, pause and pause
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: and pause again, and to ask your own spirit, what
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: is my role at this time? in this place. And
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: it may be to get very involved in something you've
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: learned about, or it may point you in a different direction,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: and that is at the center of individuality. You have
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: a unique destiny on this planet, and it is not
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: determined by the news channel that you are staring at
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: all day long.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really great advice, Joseph, and very well put.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: And I think perhaps this is a good point at
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: which we can switch to a dream.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: Today, we are going to consider two dreams because they
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: both have to do with sharks. And we were intrigued.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: And so I'll read one, Lisa will read the next. Also,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: of course, we have so many sharks on Cape Cod,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: now the world's largest shark population. So here we go
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: with something that has hooked us. Okay. Our dreamer for
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: this dream is a woman, 24. She's a student and
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: she has entitled her dream, Shark Attack. And here's a dream.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: I discover a river inlet in the city I used
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: to live in. I take the guy I am seeing there.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 4: He wants to go for a swim. But as I
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: am telling him he shouldn't, as there are probably a
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 4: lot of tiger sharks in there, he jumps in and
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: swims out away from the jetty. He immediately gets attacked
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: by a shark. I know I should jump in to
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: save him, but I am too scared of the shark.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: I put my arm in the water and managed to
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: grab the shark's tail and pull it back toward me.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: I poked the shark in the eyes as I know
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: this is their weak spot and I managed to pull
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: the guy I am seeing out of the water. He
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: has lost both his legs and an arm and I
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: am sobbing, asking him to please hold on. I call
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: my mom to ask her what I should do and
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: she tells me to call an ambulance. I do. and
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: he survives, but he has lost both his legs and
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: an arm. And for context, she says, I am currently
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: living abroad and have become quite anxious and a little depressed.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: I'm struggling to do daily activities, and I feel quite lonely,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: but incapable of doing anything to change this. Moving here
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: and not having a stable base has brought up feelings
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: of being lost in my life, of not knowing who
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: I am or what I want to do, not knowing
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: what my value is. She says the feelings in the
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: dream were, I was so happy to discover the river inlet.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: I was excited to show it to my friend. When
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: he jumped in and swam out, I was impressed by
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: his bravery. During the shark attack, I was really fearful
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 4: and ashamed afterwards that I didn't have the courage to
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: jump in and shame him. And for additional context, she says,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 4: The city where I used to live was a really
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: happy place for me. I loved my time there. The
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: river inlet I discovered was a lot like the one
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: I used to holiday at with my family when I
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: was little, only happy memories. But I do remember being
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 4: fearful of sharks there too. My associations with the guy
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: are mixed. I think I really like him, but sometimes
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: I'm unsure how I really feel.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: You know, uh, One of the first things that comes
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: up for me is this guy. And I have to say,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure if this is a real person in
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: her life or just a guy. Do you guys have
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: a block on that? Or we don't really know.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: It's a little unclear. whether she's not sure how she
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: feels about the dream figure or who the dream figure represents.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: But in any case, here's this image of a kind
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: of courageous, robust, masculine, going out into the world kind
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: of image, this energy who then gets just horribly mutilated
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: by these sharks. And it is possibly an image, a
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: kind of image of depression. So what happens when our
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: kind of get up and go energy becomes mauled by sharks.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: And of course, one of the things that will be
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: interesting in this discussion is what is a shark? But
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: in some sense, being 24, being a little bit lost,
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think a lot of people feel kind
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: of lost at 24.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 4: It's a really important and often hard stage of development
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 4: to be an adult when you're still really very young.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: Well, and you haven't really found your way yet. And
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: so that energy that we have to put ourselves out
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: there to jump into the water, you know, can get
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: pretty badly mauled.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: So I'm starting back right at the very beginning. I'm
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 4: just taking a jump back here that I discovered a
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: river inlet in the city I used to live in.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: And then she says in her comments, the city she
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 4: used to live in was a happy place and it
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: was a place where her family holidayed. So there is
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 4: an inlet. There's a where the water flows in. from
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: the bigger, wider sea, let's say. So something has made
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 4: an incursion into the city she used to live in,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: which was the happy place of holidays and childhood. The colder,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 4: shark-infested aspect of the world is intruding. in the form
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 4: of her dream image guy she is seeing. And what
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 4: happens when he jumps into the water? It's pretty bad.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 4: The dream ego says, no, don't do it. But, you know,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: his bravery is not rewarded with success. The other place
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: in the dream that I.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: She's sobbing. He's lost both legs and one arm. It's
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: really grisly and could hardly be much worse. And then
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: the dream ego says, I call my mom to ask
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: her what I should do. I think of a 24-year-old
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 4: who's living abroad and having what seems to be a
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: bit of a hard time there. And the longing for
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 4: the maternal other to say, to take care of the situation,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 4: to come up with a solution.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and she does come up with a, you know,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: the right next thing to do, right?
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 4: Call an ambulance.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: Get some help.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: So I'd like to take the dream in one of
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: two directions. One is just looking at it as a
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: psychic situation where she's troubled by inner sharks. But I
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: think the dream is also a comment on how she
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: deals with intimacy. So she has discovered an inlet, and
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: she decides to take Othello to meet her inlet. And
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: when he sees this opportunity, this opening inside of her psyche,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: he jumps in to swim. He jumps into the relationship.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: He jumps into being a little more intimate and connecting, perhaps,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: to her on a deeper level, on a psychic level,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: on an unconscious level. And here, now, there's a fellow
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: that's getting into the water with her, or into her waters.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: And lo and behold, what happens is that there is
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: a tremendously aggressive instinct that rises up inside of her
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: that really goes after the guy. that would dare jump
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: into her waters. She has an enormous amount of power
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: over the sharks. She can just reach the hand in,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: pull one out, poke its eyes out, pull it away.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: If for whatever reason, and I'm not speculating on why
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: there are sharks, there are many reasons we have sharks
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: inside of us. But for this girl, there seems to
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: be a confrontation that you're very lonely. But when somebody
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: gets in the water with you, there is a kind
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: of instinctive aggression and even predatory aggression that sees the
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: other person as food or as prey. The ego is
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: horrified by that. The ego doesn't want someone to get hurt,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: doesn't want somebody to be disabled around her. But yet
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: something in the psyche really goes after people. and goes
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: after them in such a way that they lose their agency.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: The guy survives, which, of course, somebody would not survive
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: having their limbs taken off. They would bleed out in
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: two seconds. But this guy now has only one arm
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: left with which to interact with her. How many times
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: have we met in Alisands who are deeply lonely and
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: confused about why they're not in relationships anymore? only to
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: discover that there is a part of them that will
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: not tolerate another person expressing their full agency, that somehow
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: that can be deeply threatening or upsetting, and that if
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: somebody gets too close, we start cutting them into pieces.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: So there's only one little way that they can make contact,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: one arm, one hand left with which to reach us.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: And the deeper question is, why? Why do I feel
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: so vulnerable? Why do I feel so ambivalent about having
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: someone swim in my waters? Now, the fact that they're
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: sharks means that they seem very, very alien and very
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: far away from the ego. But she does have control
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: over them, and I think that's the real medicine in
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: the dream. You can grab those darn sharks, you can
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: pull them away, You don't have to let them go
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: after people who are trying to get close to you.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: There is a way forward.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting what you said, and I
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: could see it applying not to other people, but how
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: she treats parts of herself too, that there's an inner energy.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: Let's move on to the next dream. I just want
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: to make sure we have time. And I just want
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: to say that I opened up our dream folder this morning,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: and there were these two dreams right next to each
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: other submitted within hours, one called Shark Attack, the other
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: called Shark Skin. It just seemed like a natural thing
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: to take both of them. So the second shark dream
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: is by a different dreamer. a 39-year-old woman who is
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: a psychologist, and the title of the dream is Shark Skin. First,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: there was a part about overthrowing an oppressive regime by
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: undermining a female associate of the dictator. In the next
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: part of my dream, I was walking with the skin
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: of a shark in my arms. It was a great
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: white shark or something similar. I could carry it, although
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: with much effort, as if it was a sturdy blanket
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: folded over my underarms. The shark was comatose. If it
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: were put in water, it would come alive and be
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: whole again. I walked for days, sometimes putting it on
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: a rod to hang it while I rested. It was
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: a heavy task. I felt at the same time love
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: and fear for the shark. Towards the end of my journey,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: children and their teacher walked with me. It seemed that
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: they came to see the shark in the water. The
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: children were fooling around with the shark. They were not afraid.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: I tried to tell them it would be appropriate to
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: fear the animal. We reached the destination by walking over
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: a broad, straight, sandy road. It was a small building
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: near the sea where the water was shallow at first.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: I hung the shark over a line before it would
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: be put back in the water. I was glad this
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: painful journey was coming to an end for both of us.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: I sat down on the wooden floor of the shack
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: and looked at the animal. Then I woke up. And
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: she says, I will start working in a new job
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: soon after recovering from the remnants of a medical condition
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: and a burnout that I developed after that. I had
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: a terrible boss who pressured me to recover faster. and
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: humiliated me when I asked for help. I triggered some
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: old trauma from my stepfather, who passed away a year ago.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: I'm grieving the relationship of three years that ended in
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: March of this year. I loved my girlfriend very much,
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: but she had a disorganized attachment style, and I became
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: quite anxious while we were together. I left because she
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: was not a stable and loving partner for me. I'm
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: excited to start a new chapter in my life, but
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: I'm also afraid of what I could discover about myself.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: Maybe my role in my hardship has been larger than
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: I feel it is, and I'm afraid of being or
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: feeling rejected and treated badly again. I try to find
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: out what I can do differently, but other than setting
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: better boundaries, I do not know what else I can do. Also,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: a few days ago, there were elections in my country,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: and the vast majority voted for a conservative right-wing party.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: which pains me, but also does not surprise me. And
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: she says, I felt strong and hopeful in the first part,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: as well as tense while taking risks. It felt necessary
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: and possible to overthrow the regime. While walking with a shark,
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: I could feel how heavy it was. I felt love
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: and fear for the animal. I felt compassion and wanted
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: for it to have a less painful fate. And I
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: was anxious that it might still be able to hurt
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: or kill me, even though it was comatose. Later, I
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: felt concerned that the children were not careful and worried
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: enough to stay unharmed by it. It felt nice to
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: have the teacher around, to have a second adult to
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: relate to.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: To.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: When I woke up, I felt sad for both the
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: shark and myself. Finally, she notes the first part look
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: and felt like an action movie with fast movements in
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: dark spaces. My associations about sharks are Dangerous, beautiful creatures. Strong, vicious, deadly.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: Mysterious in a way because they live in the sea
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: and are so other. I remember as a child I
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: saw a documentary where divers go into the water inside
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: a cage and these enormous sharks come circling around the cage.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: The association with the children is going on a field
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: trip in elementary school. The kids were about six or
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: seven years old. So here's our... or synchronicity of a
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: second shark dream. Very different from the first one, but
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: I think there's some common elements.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: I felt very interested in her observation that her previous
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: partner had a disorganized attachment style. And one fast pass
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: over the dream, I'm wondering if a dehydrated shark is
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: somehow symbolic of the way that she has carried the
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: relationship with a partner who was both dangerous and loved,
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: and that she is still, as she mentions, processing something
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: about carrying that, that if she's correct, that she has
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: a secure attachment, and she's had, again, this is a
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: remnant of the relationship. It's dehydrated, so to speak, into
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: a skin. But disorganized attachment-styled folks are caught between being
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: deeply frightened of the caregiver and deeply anxious that they'll
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: be abandoned. It's a very unworkable situation. So when the
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: fear kicks up in the partner, they can become very
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: aggressive because they perceive the caregiver or the other person
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: as dangerous to them. And then when the other person
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: naturally moves away because they're being aggressed, then there's a
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: kind of panic. that moves into the partner. Correctly so
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: that if you approach the partner as if you are
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: a child, as if you are harmless and innocent, and
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: this is often true, that disorganized attached folks can often
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: feel safe with children and with pets because they don't
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: feel endangered by them. There is a kind of connection,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: a kind of gentleness And then finally feeling that the
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: partner can be released into the right environment. And if
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: we love someone with that attachment style, you hope that
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: they will be happy, that they will be freed into
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: something that is better for them and the relationship could carry.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: So that's one fantasy that I just have about the dream.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 4: Building on what you said, Joseph, that there was the
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 4: partner relationship and also this terrible relationship with her boss,
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 4: which is another relational conflict, difficulty, and just so very painful.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: She said she had a terrible boss who pressured her
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 4: to recover faster and humiliated her when she asked for help.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 4: So I'm There's certainly the relational component that you've been
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 4: lifting up. What I noticed is very hopeful in the dream. First,
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 4: there was a part about overthrowing an oppressive regime by
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 4: undermining a female associate of the dictator. So the dream
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 4: starts with something that's not elaborated on, but something oppressive
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: has been overthrown. So that's the first scene or what
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 4: we see off stage as the dream setting. And then
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 4: in the next part, she does the hard, hard work.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 4: The hard work of this journey with shark skin. She
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 4: says it folded over. The shark is comatose. She walked
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 4: for days. sometimes having to put it on a rod
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 4: to hang it on. It was a heavy task. And
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 4: our dream ego is feeling both love and fear. She
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 4: feels a whole mixture of feelings. Then she has the
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 4: children and the teacher. But it feels like, and the
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 4: dream says, this is a really arduous experience. And she
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 4: makes the journey. And it's coming to an end. And
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 4: she's going to release the shark back into the wilds
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 4: of the archetypal sea where it belongs, not in her
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 4: personal life.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: So, you know, this is a little bit of a
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: quest dream. She has a quest to fulfill and it's
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: arduous and it's difficult. And I mean, I think we
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: could relate it to other, you know, archetypal quest stories
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: that we might know about. And what I'm aware of
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: is that this shark is some kind of image of
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: an aspect of her, an aspect of her instinctual life. Sharks,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: and this maybe can inform the previous stream that we
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: talked about as well. Sharks are ancient. They're, you know,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: kind of consummate predators. They live in the open ocean.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: So they are also kind of denizens of the unconscious.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: So they are mysterious. They are powerful. And they are aggressive.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: And so what aspect of the dreamer's psyche might have
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: become comatose or desiccated through these various things that she's
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: talked about, the relationship with the boss, the partner, the stepfather,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: and somehow needs to be restored and vivified and put
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: back in right relationship?
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 4: Of course, that's always hugely a part of any dream
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 4: of Jung is pretty clear that everything in the dream
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 4: almost always is a part of the dreamer. What I'm
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 4: going back to is that that part of her and
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 4: that part of a relational dynamic is being set free
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 4: to go back into the archetypal realm. So, you know,
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 4: I kind of wonder about our dreamer's own history. where
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 4: archetypal forces that we haven't been able to process, perhaps
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 4: as children, then become intruders in our lived daily world
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 4: and can't really be humanized. You can't humanize a shark.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 4: You can't turn it into a pet. And so we
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 4: have to let what belongs to the Great Mother, the
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 4: Great Sea, the wild, mysterious oceans, we have to turn
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 4: it back to that. It belongs in its own realm.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: In the first dream, we have people in the shark-infested waters.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: People don't belong in shark-infested waters. And in the second dream,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: we have a shark that is sort of existing on
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: dry land. And both somehow are not, the instinctual unconscious
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: and conscious personality are somehow not in right relationship with
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: each other.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 4: That land and sea have their separate realms and need
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 4: to stay separate. There's a boundary. We clearly recognize that
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 4: when it's land and sea. But when creatures from the
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 4: land jump into the sea, it's not a fit. And
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 4: when creatures from the sea are somehow being carried around
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 4: on the land, things are not in right order.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: I also want to lean in a little bit to
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: what you'd said, Deb, about this being archetypal. Because often, well,
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: not often, but we can be under the sway of
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: a very potentiated archetypal matrix. And then We can feel
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: both inflated and compelled. Parts of our humanity are pushed away.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: Other very narrow elements of the personality are brought forward.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: What we would hope, which I think has happened very
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: constructively in the dream from that perspective, is that the
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: archetype has become deflated. If we think about the inflated shark,
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: the great white shark is several tons, but now it's
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: deflated that she can actually carry the archetype. It's burdensome,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: but it's doable. This can happen in an analysis when
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: we become aware that an archetype has been unduly influencing us.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: And as we study it and come into more knowledge
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: about it, it does begin to deflate. It begins to
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: go back to the unconscious, to its mythic world. And
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: I think quite so, she may have come aware of something,
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 2: and she is in this process of Detaching or separating
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: away from her identification with whatever the shark symbolized. And
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: that it has been a great labor as it is
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: with self-reflective work.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:29:19
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• 1:29:22
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• 1:29:26
  Speaker 3: and submit your dreams for possible interpretation on another episode.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 3: We'd like to thank our listener who shared a dream
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 3: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 3: topics you'd enjoy hearing more about. Until next time, keep
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 3: living this Jungian life.