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VULGARITY: What's Its True Power? · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: Today we're going to have a bit of a romp,
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: and we've decided that we're going to talk about vulgarity,
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: the profane, and the obscene, which is a very complicated
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: social and linguistic topic. And it is a moving dial
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: constantly from ancient times to modern times. And if we're
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: paying attention, we'll see how certain terms or behaviors slide
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: back and forth between something that's acceptable or barely noticeable
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: into the vulgar and back and forth. And Jung also
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: has something to say about this as well as some
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: of his own personal experiences. And of course, this has
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: to do with shadow. And for many of us, vulgar, obscene,
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: and profane things that we often dream about. So with that,
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: let's whip it out and throw it around.
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: Joseph, that was indescribably vulgar.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: It was. And I am really, I am very naughty
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: that way. I mean, I reined it in on the podcast,
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: but I have an extremely bawdy sense of humor and
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: have had since I was really young.
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: So like I'm smiling right now, the, the kind of
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: delight in being profane.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: And I mean, it's, it's just to stay there for
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: just a second. I think, I mean, I know that
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: about you. It's one of the things I really love
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: about you that, you know, when we're just hanging out,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: you know, I mean, we made some of the most
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: absurdly stupid Falker jokes ever. about the names of certain
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: ancient Greek plays, for example.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: And we still laugh about it. And that happened like
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: nine years ago.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: And it's so stupid.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: I know. Oh, God, but it's funny.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: But, you know, you don't often bring that up on
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: the podcast. And I think it's partly because, you know,
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: going to persona for a second, it doesn't really fit
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: with an analytic persona to be vulgar or, you know,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: So it's not something that many of us would whip out,
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: as it were, in a kind of work environment.
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: So it's compensatory. You brought up shadow, Joseph. And so
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: just as shadow is compensatory to persona, it may be
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: that vulgarity is compensatory to civilized, upscale, sophisticated people. dare
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: we say, analytic presentation.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: It is true. Like when we've been in some Jungian
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: conferences and people are reading papers, I'll look around the
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: room and people all look like they're like Victorian old ladies,
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: men and women, by the way. They're like tittering, like,
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: you know, like, ooh, like, oh my gosh, is that real?
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: We all become so delicate. We, like, are going to
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: have fainting spells, you know, if somebody says a four-letter word.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: It's extraordinary.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Well, I just have to warn you all, if you
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: ever become an analyst and join in a regional, do
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: not sit next to Joseph during a meeting or a
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: presentation because he will share, he will scribble in your
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: notebook the most outrageous things that are so... It's vulgar
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  Speaker 2: and obscene.
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: And he will draw little pictures.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: And it'll make you laugh inappropriately. It'll make you laugh
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  Speaker 2: really inappropriately.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: Yes, I'm favorite for my cartoons of the speakers. Yeah, right. Oh, God.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: You just remind me of that.
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  Speaker 2: Can't even repeat any of them.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: Can't repeat any of it. So in that realm, we're
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: talking about the release of social tensions and taboos. that
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: vulgarity often involves topics or language that's considered taboo or
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: socially restricted. And engaging in that and enjoying vulgar content
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: often allows us to feel released from the norms and
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: the pressures of polite society. It is often a safe
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: outlet for expressing emotions and frustrations that are typically suppressed,
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: or deemed inappropriate in public context. So releasing social tension
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  Speaker 3: and taboos.
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  Speaker 4: So we like to transgress.
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  Speaker 3: And we need to.
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  Speaker 2: Yes.
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  Speaker 4: It's transgressive.
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  Speaker 3: And so when we think about even the beginning of
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: psychoanalytic work, it's Vienna, it's Freud, it's people living in
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  Speaker 3: an incredibly ritualized, repressive environment and particularly sexually repressive. This
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: is a time when people are clothed from their neck
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: to their ankles and even revealing an ankle could be
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: considered vulgar and sexually provocative. So talk about being just
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: constantly put into a box and Freud was also saying
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: that this was making people unwell to not have any
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: place to break open from these restraints and norms.
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: And I mean, just to bring another image in, Robert
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: Louis Stevenson wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I think
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Jung was like 11 or something when it was written.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: So that would have been sometime in the waning years
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: of the 19th century. So the same time period that
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: you're talking about, Joseph, which that's an image of someone
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: breaking out of these very rigid persona roles of Dr.
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: Hyde.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Is that right?
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: Dr.
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  Speaker 2: Jekyll and Mr.
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: Hyde.
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  Speaker 2: Right now it's Dr.
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: Jekyll.
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  Speaker 2: And he becomes Mr. Hyde, where he can do anything.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: anything that he wants as a kind of compensation to
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: the very prim and proper and pro-social persona of Dr. Jekyll.
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: In a way, that takes vulgarity into a really dark,
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: its darkest possible aspect, because Mr. Hyde is evil, and
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: eventually the character cannot control the transition from the good,
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: urbane Dr. Jekyll to the evil, murderous Mr. Hyde, versus
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: what we typically think of as vulgarity, which is, in
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: a way, a kind of innocent transgression. We talk about
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: things we really shouldn't talk about, like sex or swearing
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: or poop-related jokes that kids just love. Kids just love
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: humor about poop jokes. and pee and farting. They really
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: love all that kind of stuff. So there's an innocence
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: often to this kind of vulgarity. And then there are
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: sophisticated comedians that can elevate vulgarity to satire and socially
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: pointed humor of all sorts. But it does have its
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  Speaker 4: darkest side of how far can you take the transgression. Right.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: And that has to do with that fine line between
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: tickling someone's nervous system so that there's a little bit
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: of a thrill, a laughter, a kind of unexpected, incongruent
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  Speaker 3: part of a sentence versus going far enough that people
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: become anxious. And then all of a sudden, this kind
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: of superego kicks in. And then this cultural police force
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: inside of our own minds begins to start feeling aggressive
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: and creating anxiety inside of us, which is, again, what
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: Freud said, is that we do have this kind of
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: internalized monitor called the superego. And if we go too far,
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: it kind of tases us with anxiety so that the
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: shadow doesn't have but so much latitude. But going back
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: a little bit to humor, I do want to say
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: that this kind of thing has been around forever. Here's
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: a little scene in Shakespeare in The Taming of the Shrew. Yeah, yeah.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: So Petruchio and Katrina. Yeah. kind of a rakish, um,
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: swag guy. And he's courting Katrina, who's this very sharp
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: tongue woman and they have a famous exchange. So Petruchio says,
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  Speaker 3: who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: in his tail. Katrina, in his tongue? Petruchio, whose tongue? Katrina,
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  Speaker 3: yours if you talk of tails, and so farewell. Petruchio, what?
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  Speaker 3: With my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again. Good Kate,
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  Speaker 3: I'm a gentleman. So it's here again and again and again.
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  Speaker 3: It doesn't seem that funny right now, but I think
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: quite some time ago that would have been considered funny.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: very bawdy humor. And that's something that was showing up
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: in plays that the nobility were seeing. This is also
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: part of French restoration theater. And Moliere had numerous plays
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: where the characters would say very bawdy, scandalous kinds of
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: things and behaviors that were very, very hypersexual. that people
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  Speaker 3: loved to see, and of course we're still there now.
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  Speaker 2: Well, right, and Chaucer.
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  Speaker 4: Chaucer.
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  Speaker 2: Chaucer is full of vulgar humor, and there's some wonderful
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: instances of lively vulgarity in the ancient Greek plays and myths,
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: and maybe we'll talk more about some of those too.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: So you're right, I think that this has kind of
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: been with us always. It's kind of a part of
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: being human. Let's go to this very particular instance that
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Jung had, and a kind of important experience of a
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  Speaker 2: very vulgar fantasy that became extremely meaningful to him.
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  Speaker 4: The frame that I'm putting this in around vulgarity is
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  Speaker 4: shattering norms. And the range of our ability through humor plays,
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  Speaker 4: scatological things, from the innocent sort of a tiny revolution
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  Speaker 4: that an audience can laugh at to something that is truly,
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  Speaker 4: truly disturbing that goes into something darker. And this was
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  Speaker 4: Jung when he was 10 or 11 years old, I think.
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  Speaker 4: And he says, I came out of school and went
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  Speaker 4: to the Cathedral Square. The sky was gloriously blue the
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  Speaker 4: day one of radiant sunshine. The roof of the cathedral glittered,
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  Speaker 4: the sun sparkling from the new brightly glazed tiles. I
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  Speaker 4: was overwhelmed by the beauty of the site and thought,
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  Speaker 4: the world is beautiful and the church is beautiful and
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  Speaker 4: God made all this and sits above it, far away
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  Speaker 4: in the blue sky on a golden throne and here
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  Speaker 4: came a great hole in my thoughts and a choking sensation.
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  Speaker 4: I felt numbed and knew only, don't go on thinking now.
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  Speaker 4: Something terrible is coming. Something I do not want to think.
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  Speaker 4: Something I dare not even approach. I would be committing
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  Speaker 4: the most frightful of sins. What is the most terrible sin? Murder? No,
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  Speaker 4: not that. The most terrible sin is the sin against
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  Speaker 4: the Holy Ghost, which cannot be forgiven. Anyone who commits
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  Speaker 4: that sin is damned to hell for all eternity. So
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: Poor Jung walks home from school having had right at
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: the cusp of consciousness this terrible, terrible thought that he
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  Speaker 4: can't think. And he tries to stop the thought. His
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  Speaker 4: mother sees that he's disturbed. He can't possibly tell his
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: mother what's going on inside. The third night, the torment
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  Speaker 4: became so unbearable, I no longer knew what to do.
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  Speaker 4: Why should I have to think of something so inconceivably wicked?
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  Speaker 4: God himself was arranging a decisive test for me. And
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: then finally, he thinks the terrible thought. He gathered all
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  Speaker 4: my courage as though I were about to leap forth
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  Speaker 4: with into hellfire and let the thought come. Is everybody
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  Speaker 4: bracing themselves? I saw before me the cathedral, the blue sky.
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  Speaker 4: God sits on his golden throne high above the world,
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  Speaker 4: And from under the throne, an enormous turd falls upon
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  Speaker 4: the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks the walls
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  Speaker 4: of the cathedral asunder. That is the horrible, unbearable, vulgar thought.
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  Speaker 4: And Jung says, I felt an enormous, indescribable relief. Instead
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: of expected damnation, grace had come upon me. And with it,
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: an unutterable bliss such as I had never known, I
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: wept for happiness and gratitude. And then he realizes, he
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: thinks that thinking the terrible forbidden thought was itself ordained
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: by God, because if God had not sanctioned the thought,
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  Speaker 4: he would not have been able to think it. There's
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: much more here, and he says, why did God befoul
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: his cathedral and but then came upon the dim understanding
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: that God could be something terrible. And he had experienced
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: a dark and terrible secret. And so I'm thinking that
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: when we are experiencing vulgarity in its humorous aspects, we're
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: just dipping a toe into those dark waters that can
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: also be... You know, as Jung experienced something truly dark
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: and something truly transgressive and something that could be punished.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Well, and it's such a great story because it is
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: a sort of little myth, you know, of God destroying
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: his temple. And it's an image of the shattering of
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: the conventional container of the transformation of a kind of,
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: you know, profound transformation in the God image that prefigured
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: a lot of Jung's later work, you know, in this,
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: you know, and it's funny because I often think about
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: that little story. There's a slight kind of OCD quality
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: to it. Like, I can't think that thought. I can't
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: think that thought. I can't think that thought. But then
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: he's delivered from that by allowing in the vulgar. By
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: allowing those norms to be shattered.
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: And holding the tension of the opposites. That God is
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: not only good and beautiful and all of those attributes,
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: but also can land a great turd on the roof
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: of the cathedral.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: It's kind of like a Zen koan. that just presents
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: this absurdity. And I think that maybe a lot of
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: vulgarity is like that, that it presents us with something
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: that's really quite incongruous or absurd, and so it makes
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: us shift our perspective and have to see things in
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: a new way.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: So in that way, we might interpret this particular dream
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: as an impulse of rebellion. Jung's father was a pastor
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: from a long line of religious leaders. Jung had a
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: very ambivalent feeling towards his father and felt that his
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: father was perhaps not sincere, maybe simply forced to be
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: in that profession, but perhaps not even quite believing the
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: things that he was promoting. Jung began to sense that
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: at quite a young age. The idea that this vulgar
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: imagery was a way of pushing against that authority figure
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: of this religious incursion into his own psyche and changing,
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: breaking the pristine cathedral in his mind, which then, just
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: as he was saying, gave him this enormous sense of
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: freedom And joy. I also think that the image of
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: God sitting on a throne, which is kind of a potty,
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: is an image of God.
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: And we call it the throne, right? Yes.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: Is an infant of God as a toddler. And experiencing,
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: in some ways, both a sense of mastery in terms
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: of toilet training. Yes, you... sit on the throne and
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: you did release the tension in the appropriate place and
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: also it's a form of a creative act in a
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: sense and this is an old idea that very very
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: young children have this mysterious relationship to their feces that
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: they don't quite understand how it happens why it happens,
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: what is it that's just appeared down there. And it
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: seems like a very surprising mystery. So there's a number
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: of valences on that remarkable dream. And that Jung found
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: whatever that was important enough to put in his memoir.
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: And like a dream, something had arisen from the unconscious.
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: And I think for a lot of vulgarity, transgression, body humor,
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: it does press up from the unconscious. It comes from
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: another realm that wants to push against convention and virtue
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: and propriety and all the rest of it and have
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: what Jung experienced, a catharsis, that we burst out laughing
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: at some comedian who upends a conventional norm. And Jung
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: experienced it as grace and relief and gratitude, but that's
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: what we experience today. with vulgarity is a catharsis, including,
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: here's one of my little facts that I uncovered, that
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: swearing can activate the amygdala. It will result in a
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: little surge of adrenaline, and it's a source of natural
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: pain relief. And I had an aunt who worked in
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: a long-term care home as a nurse, and when people
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: had had strokes, one of the things that she did
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: to help them regain some speech was to encourage them
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: to swear. And that that was often a word that
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: they could access most easily, a way back into speech,
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: because it's connected with some primal part of the brain.
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: It's not just left brain language. It's got punch and
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: feeling in it. And wouldn't you want to be able
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: to say some of those words?
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: That makes perfect sense, that there is something enlivening and
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: arousing with both vulgar humor as well as curse words,
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: as well as doing things that were profane. In Albert
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: Camus' book, The Plague, and he's detailing that in the
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: face of certain death, how might different groups of people respond?
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: And a certain group of people, he imagines, would seek
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: to do every kind of profane thing, going into the
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: cathedrals and having orgies in the middle of the cathedrals
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: or on the altars. Something in some of us needs
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: to break all the rules in order to feel free.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: in order to try all the things that we've been
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: told that we should not and could not do. So
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: talking a little bit about this back into humor, one
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: of the things that we talk about is the shock
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: value of vulgar language, when particularly it's used creatively or unexpectedly.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: And it has to do with this idea of the
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: incongruity theory of humor where surprise or deviation from social
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: expectations can provoke laughter. And this is sort of as
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: a kind of playfulness, a bending of both linguistic norms
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: and expectations. When Milton Berle, who is an old comedian
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: from my parents' generation, he would walk out on stage
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: dressed in this very exaggerated costume as a woman. And
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: it was at that time period that was so unexpected.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: People would just fall out, and they loved it. They
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: thought it was just delightful for this craggy old guy.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: I think a modern version of that is this drag
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: queen named Dame Edna, who is a really hilariously funny
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: a British comedian who is in that same spirit of incongruity.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking of Benny Hill, too.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. And if you remember the old candid camera, so
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: much of what they would set up is just things
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: that people didn't expect. And one of their really bawdy
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: social experiments was a film series called What Do You
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: Say to a Naked Woman or a Naked Lady?
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: And what they would have is they would have a
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: model and a film crew, a secret film crew, put
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: a naked woman in an elevator.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, God.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: And you couldn't get away with this now. In a business,
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: in a bank, in a business environment. And the doors
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: would open and people would walk in and they would
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: just film how people would respond. But they stare forward.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: Guys would offer her their trench coats and she would
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: be like, oh, no, no, no, I'm fine.
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: And.
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: There's something but just make people squeal with delight.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, geez, that's hilarious.
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: What I'm appreciating is we're talking about what you've mentioned before, Joseph,
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: is the body element of vulgarity. This is not clever.
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: It's not linguistically adroit. It's really baseline, five-year-old humor. As adults,
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: I mean, candid camera was very popular, and we delight
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: in it. We kind of roll around in the elemental
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: naughtiness of it, of poop and pee and naked people
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: in elevators and all the rest of it. There's a
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: naughtiness and a regression that is very enjoyable.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: But I was thinking that those things are, though, particularly
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: about surprise and deviation from social expectation. That you're surprised
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: to see this woman on the elevator without any clothes on.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: I would say that it wasn't about it being obscene
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: or particularly vulgar. It's that it was shocking.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: It could be vulgar.
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: And its body.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: Particularly the way that particular joke was being … I
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: think the model was not there to be bawdy, that
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: she was there as if she wasn't even aware that
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: she wasn't wearing clothing. I think what made it funny
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: is that it was as if nothing at all was happening.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: That was strange. And the slightest. Although there are lots
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: of bawdy humor that we all enjoy. Bette Midler is
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: fantastically bawdy and very, very funny.
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: Oh, yes.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: Energy we're all bringing to this conversation and how kind
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: of energizing it is to talk about this. And Joseph,
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: I think you used the term a few minutes ago, life-giving.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: And it's interesting to think about that because I think
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: it is, it does wake us up. You know, I mean,
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: I think we were making those really silly jokes in
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: analytic training when we were talking about the Oresteia because,
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: you know, it was a long day. And so- We
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: need really stupid vulgar jokes about things.
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: Wordplay.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to say what it is. So what
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: is that? Why is it life-giving? Why is it energizing?
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: And I think it is because we are stepping over
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: a taboo and tapping into something that feels transgressive. So
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: there's something about it. It kind of creates a little
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: doorway there. into a part of the psyche that's been
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: fenced off and disallowed. And so then all of this
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: new energy can flow in. And I know if you
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: think about attending a conference or something and one speaker
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: after another gets up, but when, when someone kind of
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: cracks a really good joke, just how, how much the
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: energy in the room changes and, and you know, these
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: kinds of jokes in particular carry a lot of energy
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: because they feel risky too. Because you might offend some people.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: It's a risk. You're stepping out onto a high wire.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: But to think more about this being life-giving, I want
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: to go to a mythological example, and that is Baobo.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: So when Demeter is feeling so forlorn over the loss
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: of her daughter Persephone, Baobo is a ridiculous old woman who,
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: who kind of comes and lifts her skirt up, makes
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: Demeter laugh. And this gesture of lifting up her skirt
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: was actually something that was sometimes part of religious ceremony.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: So it's this very interesting place where the profane and
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: the sacred lie right next door to one another.
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: A real union of opposite. And the catharsis. Demeter laughs.
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: The release. It breaks and shatters. It shatters a norm,
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: a norm just of any kind of rationality. The surprise,
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: the shock, the The shift hits us in that place
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: where we just have a reaction. And the opposites come
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: together in that moment.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I like to think of Balbo as this
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: kind of spicy old woman who just doesn't give an F,
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: you know?
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: But she has a larger mission. She's saving the Earth.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: Demeter's grief has literally blighted the Earth.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: And people, animals, creatures are dying for lack of fecundity,
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: lack of greenness and life. So Balbo, who is an ancient,
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: ancient earth goddess, which is part of her earthiness, comes
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: forward to save life by not just lifting her skirt,
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: but lifting her skirt and doing a silly dance and
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: making funny sounds and and parading around in a way
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: that Demeter's could be distracted from her grief and the
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: blighting of the earth could at least be suspended temporarily,
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: that the need to break the grip of what I
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: would say is pathologic grief, that actually is a category
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: in the DSM. This idea of pathologic grief and, and,
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: the way we sometimes need something that is pre-edible. We
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: need something that is young and unsophisticated to jar us
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: out of something that we are trapped in that is life-killing.
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: And I wonder if the category of gallows humor is
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: sort of in the same neighborhood. because emergency workers, doctors,
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: you know, people who are in really rough circumstances will
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: employ gallows humor. And I, you know, there have been
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: times in my life when, when that was very much
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: when I worked in refugees in the former Yugoslavia, you know,
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: sometimes we would really, really dark and really, really funny.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: You know, it's so offensive, so offensive, but it, it,
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: It allows you to dance with these really difficult dark
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: energies and kind of keep your head up.
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: This goes to something that Peter Berger wrote about, which
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: I've mentioned before in his small book, A Rumor of Angels,
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: where he talks about how remarkable it is that human
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: beings can be in a very sincere relationship to something,
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: like a tragedy in front of us, and then to
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: radically and suddenly shift a perspective to jump above the
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: distress of something and to see it as humorous. That's
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: a remarkable capacity for human beings and a coping mechanism.
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I liked what you said, Lisa, about dancing
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: with darkness. And we could go back to Jung and
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: his terrible vision of, God dropping a turd on the cathedral.
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: But he did dance with his own inner darkness and
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: the fear of that. And for people that are in
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: dire circumstances, like you working in Yugoslavia, emergency workers, etc.,
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: the darkness is there. And gallows, humor, vulgarity, all of
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: these things are ways of Dancing with it and not
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: just keeping it behind a defensive wall.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: It's also part of group bonding and the idea of
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: in-group language.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: That even our little silly wordplay from the Oresteia. That
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: was kind of something we kept tightly. It was like
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: a little secret among the three of us. In fact,
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: I think at times we tried to share it with
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: other people and they were like, that's not that funny.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: But the three of us would just squeal.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: You had to be there. You had to be there.
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: But it was about group bonding.
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: And then frankly jokes that we, and by we I
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: mean I, would make around the training analysts.
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: Which I am not going to repeat.
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: It was only you, Joseph.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: It was only me. But to depotentiate some of that
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: stress and all the projections of power onto them. So again,
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: group bonding and shifting power that vulgarity can both give
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: us a sense of being powerful as well as taking
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: power away from something that is throwing us off our center.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: I'm remembering when Devin, we took the Propodoidicum exams at
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: the same time, and we had flown out early, and
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: we were there with our good friend Katrin, and we
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: were preparing ourselves, we were studying, we were trying to
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: kind of ground ourselves, but we had I remember this
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: particular lunch, and I'm not going to report the conversation,
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: but I will say that we were all very scared.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: We were very tense. We were anxious about the exams.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: It really felt like a trial that we were entering into.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: We just had the most rivaled, absurd conversation ever. That
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: I think did exactly what you were talking about, Joseph.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: It sort of de-centered the power. We were feeling so
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: kind of at the mercy of this process. And the
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: particular form that our vulgar conversation took. was very much
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: in the direction of, you know, us kind of seizing
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: the reins of control of the process, I would say,
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: in a certain uncharacteristic way. And, you know, we still.
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: Laugh about that.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if it was that funny,
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: but it still makes us all laugh, that conversation, which
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: we recall with some regularity.
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: It is a way of seizing power. That there we were,
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: headed into four oral exams, facing, in each case, three examiners.
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: And so in this ribald, vulgar way, we could take power.
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: We can make fun. We can do a little bit
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: of one-upsmanship. We can turn the tables. We can shatter
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: the norms. We can claim our autonomy. And there's a youthful,
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: you know, sort of innocent quality to all of this,
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: but it helped.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: Well, and thinking just a little more Jungian humor, of course,
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: there was the propodactyrum.
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: And this goes to the role of the fool.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: I was just going to explain that for just a second. Yes,
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: go ahead. Deb wrote this really hilarious book. kind of
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: send up of trying to explain to your relative what
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: the propadoidicum was. And, uh, yes, it was, it was
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: a little vulgar too.
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: It had to do with proctology. And, um, I, you know,
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: but I remember reading that to you guys at the
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: Philadelphia seminar and you started falling off your chairs. And
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: I honestly didn't know what was going on. What were,
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: What was wrong with you? And then I finally got
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: the courage to read it at this little open mic night.
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: Did I dare offer my vulgarity send up out there
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: in public? And you know what? There was a bit
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: of a backlash to that.
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: Yes, there was.
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: Oh, yes, there was.
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: I didn't know that.
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah. But it was a quality read. that I think
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: vulgarity has in it of daring.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: Of daring to transgress and daring to be out there.
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: And I think some of the really best comedians have
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: that quality. It's very risky. Is it going to be funny?
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: Are they going to laugh? Will people be on your
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: side or will they look at you as if you're
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: just some sort of ridiculous outlaw? There is a process
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: of You know, how vulgar can we be and to
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: whom and when and in what way?
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: And it goes to that fine line around humor and
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: being offensive. And what is considered offensive is a very
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: broadly moving dial. And certainly being exposed to something over
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: and over again tends, to normalize it and we move
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: it out of the category of unacceptably offense to something
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: that might be humorous. And then from humor, something that's ordinary.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: Because there are certain things that might have been shockingly
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: hilarious that now people really wouldn't make us laugh because
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: we've seen that incongruity so many times that there isn't
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: that swift shift of consciousness. So when we think about
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: the propriety laws that were in place in television in
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: the 1950s, that for instance, in I Love Lucy, they
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: showed an image of the bedroom and Lucy and Ricky
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: slept in separate beds on the other side of the room,
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: little single cots. because it was considered inappropriate, even scandalous,
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: to show a bed where two people would be sleeping
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: in the same bed, or that people had, if adults
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: were sitting on a bed in a film, one foot
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: had to be kept on the ground, or else there
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: would be a suggestion that something else might happen. And
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: now that seems silly, not even funny, but silly because
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: the cultural norms have shifted. But I think what we're
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: seeing also is the dial shifts back and forth. So
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: we can find what would have been considered soft porn
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: showing up easily in most of the movies that we see.
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: But common words have now become, quote unquote, trigger words.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: And now they're obscene. They're unacceptable. They're shocking. They're not
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: funny at all.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: There's this kind of new sort of Puritanism.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: Right. But that's part of this idea of the sacred, profane, vulgar,
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: the dial moving all around.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: There are new forbidden words. And one of my favorite
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: forbidden words, I have a couple of them. Are you
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: really ready? Bathroom. Toilet. We have to call it the restroom.
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: The ladies' room. The necessary room. But for some reason,
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: we never refer to it as a bathroom or going
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: to the toilet. A call of nature. People are very
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: delicate about that.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: A powder room.
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: Oh, a powder room. In an age where four-letter words abound,
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: we pussyfoot around that. bathrooms and toilets.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, the thing is a bathroom is actually
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: also a euphemism, right? Because you're not going there to
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: take a bath. And I remember being in France and
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: asking where the bathroom was and they laughed at me
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: and they're like, you want the toilet, you know, because
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: they don't use that euphemism or at least they didn't
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: in that part of France. But now even bathroom is
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: a little risque or something. But toilet is much more
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: to the point, isn't it?
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: And also, vulgarity can be used as a form of dominance,
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: that when we're angry or when we're seeking to express power.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: And so then the shock is about presenting oneself in
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: a posturing kind of way. And I think about this
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: scene in Mommy Dearest, which is an old movie that's
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: tragic in a lot of ways, but Joan Crawford, somehow
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: inherits this seat on the board of directors of Coca-Cola.
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: And they're all old men. They're, they're being totally dismissive
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: of her and telling her how they're going to buy
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: her out and shush her out of the room. You know,
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: and the actress Faye Dunaway, she stands up playing Joan Crawford.
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: She leans, slaps her hands on the tables and says,
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: don't fuck with me boys. And, um, You can see
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: just the fierceness in her face and the men just
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: reeling back and shutting up. So in that moment, it's
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: about using vulgarity or profanity to take a stand and
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: to try to at least signal that I am powerful
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: and that I can break the rules.
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: What comes up for me around that is I'm more
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: modern now. example from Succession. I don't know if either
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: of you saw it, but it was such a great
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: television show. And Kendall is one of the lead characters
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: who's always trying to act like he's the big guy,
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: but he's, you know, sort of suffers from incompetence and insecurity.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: But especially when he's in some kind of big business deal,
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: he's always, you know, fucking this and fucking that and
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: He's trying to come across as cool, but I think
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: he's also trying to evoke that power, Joseph, that you're
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: referring to. And, you know, it's such a great acting
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: job because he's not able to do it really convincingly,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: the character. And so there's a lot of nuance in it.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: But I think he's trying to do exactly what you're
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: talking about.
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: So there is power in the ability to shock and
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: particularly to shock in a way that feels powerful. Primitive
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: and unrefined.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: Like, you don't know what I'm capable of. You don't
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: know what I'm going to do. I'm not going to
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: follow the rules.
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. That I'm dangerous because I can break even
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: just a linguistic rule.
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: It accesses a layer of primal energy. of carrying it
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: off with that kind of power in the Joan Crawford scene.
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: It's primal, and that's very contagious. We really get it
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: when somebody is experiencing a level of feeling that goes
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: way beyond and way beneath anything that's civilized or rational
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: or anything. and it stops us in our tracks. And
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: it has to be primal, and it has to be
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: a little dangerous, and it has to be carried off
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: with conviction and power.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: You know, there's another Jungian concept that I'd like to
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: link this to. I think we've been talking around it
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: the whole time, but it's the idea of the trickster.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: And the trickster often resorts to vulgarity. There are some
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: wonderful trickster stories that involve, you know, shit and Penises
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: and all this kind of stuff, you know, in all
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: of what we've been talking about with humor and this
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: idea about transgression or breaking the norms is all associated
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: with trickster. And trickster energy can be in service to,
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: you know, things that are less than lofty, but ultimately
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: the trickster plays this very deep function of renewal of
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: the culture and is often in service to growth, both
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: in personal life and in collective life. So I think
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: that vulgarity is sort of maybe one of trickster's tools.
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: So an interesting example of that is, I don't know
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: if you guys remember when a group of Oregon self-organized
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: militia folks took over a federal building. Was that in Oregon?
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: This is something that happened a while ago. And there
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: was a standoff. Sadly, one of them was killed as
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: they started waving a gun, but people started mailing them
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: bags of dicks. But it was a thing, like bags
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: of little penises that they kept mailing to them, and
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: they were getting boxes and boxes of these things as
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: a way of kind of insulting them, as a kind
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: of trickster expression.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: Where were they getting these penises from?
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, whose penises?
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: Well, apparently there is a cottage industry where you can
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: buy little plastic penises by the hundreds. Oh, plastic penises. Oh,
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: my God. What were you thinking?
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: I was like, what?
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: Oh, my God. No, they weren't literal.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: I thought it was really dark. Okay, little plastic penises. No, no, no.
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, calling them all dicks for doing this.
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: But that's an example of that.
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: Little dicks too.
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: Little dicks of this trickster. And that for whatever reason,
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: the post office was still allowed to deliver things, even
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: though there was like a standoff with guns. And so
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: there was this moment where the leader of the group
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: was doing a little bit of a video message to
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: the public. And he brings it up and he goes,
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: and those of you that keep, you know, mailing us
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: boxes of dicks, don't waste your time. But the whole
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: thing was so wildly absurd and strange that that would
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: be something that would be inserted into this life-threatening and
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: politically dangerous situation. That's trickster.
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: And it also brings in an element of how vulgarity
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: can be used as an instrument of contempt.
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: Oh, okay.
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: Yep. To really demean and humiliate, in this case, these
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: people of, you know, you're just a bunch of little dicks.
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: It seems like it didn't really succeed, but vulgarity is
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: often used to put people down.
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: It's a form of satire. Something that you were saying earlier, Deb,
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: is that There is something particularly about vulgar language as
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: an emotional outlet that actually changes neurochemistry. And this is
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: something that we probably have all experienced when we've hurt ourselves.
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: And I've done this. I broke my little toe once.
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: It was really awful. I was walking barefoot. I hit
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: the corner of a couch. I heard a sound that
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: sounded like a carrot being broken.
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: Oh, God.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: And I was like, what? Holy shit. See, we're doing
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: it right now, right? We're all there. I looked out
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: and my little toe was like at a 90 degree angle.
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: And that was the first where I was like, fuck.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: It was so... And the interesting thing is that studies
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: have shown that swearing in a moment like that actually
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: increases pain tolerance and is an effort at emotional regulation.
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: It was gruesome. But I have to say that I
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: did pack ice on it immediately, numbed it out, and
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: then this wonderful resident at the ER put it back
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: in place. So it was a clean break. But it
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: was the carrot sound. You got me.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: You can stop now.
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: I got the picture. So isn't that a great example
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: of a little bit of vulgarity there? And imagine this
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: toe like a carrot breaking. It's like, ooh, dragging us
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: into something kind of awful, but we're sitting here safely,
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: so it's okay. And this is an example of what
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: it's like to sit next to Joseph at a meeting
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: when you really want to be serious.
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: So now the next time we're together, I'll have a
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: bag of carrots and I'll... I'll bite them in a
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: crunchy way and then stare at you when you least
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: expect it. Yeah. So another dimension, I think, of vulgarity, profanity,
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: obscenity has to do with psychological ambivalence. That people have
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: very ambivalent feelings towards vulgarity, for instance. That they are
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: simultaneously attracted. to the emotional expressiveness and humor. And at
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: the same time, they can be repelled by its potential
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: to offend or to violate social norms. And that we
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: have both of those feelings in us. And that's why
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: we can go to, again, I love Dave Chappelle. So
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: you're listening to Dave Chappelle and his timing, the way
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: he's introducing something is so outrageous. Everyone's laughing. But then
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: the three of us could sit here and look at
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: the same topic and suddenly it's not funny at all.
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: And that we have, we're able to hold both of
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: those tensions inside of us, which I think is, is
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: important and challenging, which is why I think humor, as
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: you were saying earlier, can be a kind of dangerous
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: game because the dial is moving. All the time.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: But there is something, and I think that's a great point,
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: that it's about ambivalence. And there's a way that we
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: might find ourselves laughing at something and not even wanting
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: to find it funny. You know, we're sort of being
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: like dragged across the line and being shown for the little,
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: you know, potty-mouthed person that we are or whatever when someone,
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: you know, cracks a fart joke. And we're trying to
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: act sophisticated, but we can't help it. We just crack up.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: I like ambivalence, but I think there's something important here
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: about I just am really distrustful of anyone who can't
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: find something humorous. There's something psychological going on when we
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: always revert to offense and we can't have a good
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: roll in the mud, you know?
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: There's something that the psyche is too rigid. And that again,
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: that goes to the role of the trickster. The role
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: of the trickster is to break apart something that's gotten
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: overly rigid. And I think vulgarity of the topic that
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: we've been talking about today is absolutely a part of that.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: That our ego or persona perhaps has gotten too crusty.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: And vulgarity invites us to kind of get down in
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: the mud a little bit. And that there's something really
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: healthy about that.
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: I think that that has something to do with the
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: inability to transcend shame and anger. Because taking offense, when
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: someone is chronically claiming being offended, there is both a
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: sense of shame that's being moved from the individual onto
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: the other person and shames them for doing it. And
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: it's also an opportunity to express anger and aggression.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: And outrage.
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: So if one is infested with anger, aggression, and shame...
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: then that is not an environment where humor or laughter
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: can easily exist. They don't generally go together because humor
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: would pop you right out of shame and rage because
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: you're kind of giggling all of a sudden. So some
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: people can get, as you were saying, really trapped in
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: that kind of pain and misery.
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: In a way, the ultimate attribute of vulgarity is its
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: ability to help us transcend the usual norms. Whether it's
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: something like shame or anger or propriety or a hundred
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: other things, that it's a very lowness and appeal to
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: bodily functions and other kind of body fundamentals of human existence.
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: That is also transcendence. Yeah.
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: And that seems like a great place to stop for
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: now and perhaps switch to a dream.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: On that note, I'm going to use an old fashioned
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: form of profanity, a term that I've come to love.
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: God's teeth. Let's move to a dream.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: Hello, listeners. I want to take just one minute to
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: remind you about my upcoming podcast. Women's Fairy Tale and
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: Yoga Retreat. We have just a few tickets left. It
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: is April 25th through April 28th in central Pennsylvania. It's
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: a beautiful time of year to be there. It's a
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: great group of women. We have a ton of fun.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: We hang out. We do yoga. We talk about fairy tales.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: We eat good food. We tell stories and share poems
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: around the campfire. We do some dream incubation. It's a
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: really great time. So if you're interested, pop on over
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: to my website, lisamarchiano.com, where you can read more about
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: Women's Wellspring Retreat. Thanks.
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: Today's dreamer is a woman. She's 36 years old. She's
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: a health care administrator, and she has entitled her dream,
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: I Should Call. And here's the dream. I had a
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: dream that I was with my friend at a large
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: park and then I went to the bathroom. While I
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: was in the stall, a lady with white hair laid
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: down on the ground and was peering into the stall
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: where I was. She was being completely creepy and strange.
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: I was yelling at her to stop, but she wouldn't listen.
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: I remembered feeling she was unwell and possessed. I realized
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: I should have videotaped her actions and called the cops,
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: but I didn't. I left the bathroom, and when I did,
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: I realized that my friend had left me. I thought
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: to myself, I'm going to call him, but I didn't.
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: I then walked over to a large field that was
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: going downhill. I kept walking on it, almost tripping down,
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: but realized I was walking on tons of planted seeds.
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: I felt horrified knowing I was stepping on these seeds,
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: but the strangers around me didn't seem to care that
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: we were trampling these seeds. They were all at the
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: bottom near a fence watching a scene unfold. You could
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: hear a little girl crying. She kept saying no and stop.
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: She was helpless against her oppressor, and I wondered who
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: was hurting her this way. As I get closer, I
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: can see that it was her mother beating her up.
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: Another lady was videotaping it. The little girl was dejected
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: and sad and hurt. The mother seemed possessed and out
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: of her mind. I said, we need to call 911.
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: Has anyone called? The crowd said, no, nobody has called.
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: Right as I'm about to call, I see another woman
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: teacher has called over the mother to talk to her
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: and tell her this abuse must stop. The little girl
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: stops crying and the lady is saying she will stop
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: being so harsh with her daughter. I am thinking, this
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: is ridiculous. Call the cops, put this lady in jail,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: she will never stop. I should call, but I never did.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: For context, the dreamer says, I feel like I am
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: pouring into many people without very much appreciation. I'm a
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: single mother without support. I work a demanding job. I
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: feel I am getting older and have lost my maiden energy.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: I'm surprised by life being not what I thought. I
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: thought goodwill toward others meant something, but as I get older,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: I feel like much of it becomes an obligation to
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: love and take care of those around you because it's
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: the right thing to do, not necessarily because you always
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: feel like it. The main feelings in the dream, she says,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: are longing for resolution and for people to do what's right,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: feeling shocked by people's actions, the friend leaving, the woman
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: in the bathroom stall, the people just watching a woman
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: abuse her daughter, the abusive mother, the teacher giving the
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: mother a chance to redeem herself. And she finally adds,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: I have been trying to support a friend who was
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: recently diagnosed with Huntington's disease, the friend who left me
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: in my dream. His actions have been very hurtful toward
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: me as I notice him changing. My mother also recently
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: had a cancer diagnosis, and I have been trying to
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: be supportive of her. She was an alcoholic while I
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: was growing up, though we are close now. Somehow there
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: is a link between these two people and my historical
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: desire to help and save people without care or appreciation
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: back toward me. The abusive mother ended up being my
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: old high school teacher.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: This is a longer, more complex dream. And sometimes what
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: can be helpful with a dream like this is almost
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: to kind of chunk it into scenes. So just first
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: there's the scene of her in the bathroom stall. Then
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: there's the scene of kind of tripping down the hill
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: and trampling on the seeds. And then at the bottom
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: of the hill, there's this scene with this mother abusing
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: the daughter and the response to it. So it's kind
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: of interesting just to notice that. And of course, when
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: we do it that way, we can see that there's
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: a kind of parallel thing that happens in the first
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: scene and the third scene. In the first scene, there's
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: this kind of crazy old woman who transgresses and she's
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: sliding under the bathroom stall and it's, you know, it's this,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: she seems possessed. And then in the, in the third scene,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: there's the mother who's abusing the daughter. And again, the
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: mother seems possessed so that there's an echo of those
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: two things are somehow parallel. And so that, that helps
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: us understand that, when the little girl is being abused,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: of course, that's an image of a way that the
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: ego is being, the dream ego is being abused because
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: in the first scene, it's the dream ego who is
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: impinged upon by the possessed woman. So I wonder about the,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: and I know I'm going right here for the big guns,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: but I wonder about the quality of mother. You know,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: she says she's close with her mother now, but it's
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: very difficult to grow up with an alcoholic mother. And
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: I wonder about her own Yeah. The impulse of the
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: school teacher to say, let me give you another chance
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: to extend toward the abusive mother some kindness or some understanding.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: And yet the dream ego is very impatient with that.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: But I am wondering... if that isn't actually what's needed,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: that there needs to be some generosity extended toward the
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: kind of possessed women in this dreamer's psyche.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: You know what I'm paying attention to in the three
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: scenes that you elucidated, Lisa, is there is no happy
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: resolution at all in this dream, in any of these scenes.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: The first scene of being impinged on by a possessed
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: woman lying down and looking into the bathroom stall. Then
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: the second scene of everybody's trampling on the seeds, the,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 4: you know, the hopeful new beginning that something can grow. Yeah. Uh,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: and the seeds of growth are being stomped on. And
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 4: then in the third scene, the abused little girl and
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: the dream ego is not supportive of, uh, woman who says,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 4: you have to stop doing this. And the lady says, okay,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: I'll stop. But our dream ego says, no. You know,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: if she goes for a punitive stance of, you should
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: just call the cops and put her in jail. So
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: I'm just paying attention to the feeling tone that the
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: dream ego repeatedly experiences of something awful, something possessed, something abusive,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: something trampling. and hurting. This is a, this is a
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: really significant dream of, of pairing it with, with her
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: comments of, of I'm a single mother without support and
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: pouring into people without appreciation. I think this dream is
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: out picturing this situation, these feelings in the dreamers life.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: Well, I think there's, um, so many little pieces that
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: I'm just curious about. Any one of them could capture
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: my attention. This phrase that she says, call, but I didn't.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: She's going to, in the beginning there's, call the cops,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: but I didn't. Call the friend, but I didn't. Someone
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: should call, they didn't. But I should call, but I
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: never did. So, There's something about the repetition of the
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: ego being offered a dramatization of some kind of a
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: crisis that requires her ability, the ego's ability to call out,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: to connect, to ask for help or ask for clarification
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: or ask for information or intervention. But it seems that
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: that's the activity that I should call, but I didn't.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: So she's curious about that, secondary to the various contexts
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: that might have been helpful for her to make a call.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: Why is she so hesitant to make calls? And what
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: is a call? So it's an action that she would
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: have to initiate. It would require her to ask something,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: to reveal something. And what I would imagine, it would
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: set something in motion that she would then have to
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: be responsible for. Call the friend and say, where'd you go?
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: And risk perhaps conflict or call the cops the first
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: time and then perhaps the second time. which then she
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: would somehow be involved with a repercussion, a regulating experience.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: But she's, for some reason, she's ambivalent at the very least.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: So that's the place that I would lean into, secondary
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: to the dramatization of the events.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: So I have a thought about that, which is, You know,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: because then she calls it, you know, she titles the
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: dream I should have called or something. Yes. So you're
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: absolutely right. This is a real, this is the overarching theme.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: And I am making this up.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: But here's an imagination I have. I was really struck
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: by her saying. my mom was an alcoholic when I
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: was growing up, but we're close now. And, you know,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: from what I know about working with people who've had
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: an alcoholic parent is that's not something that just simply
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: kind of melts away into the ether. But depending on
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: the severity of it and the circumstances around it, I
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: find that it shapes people's psychological experience in a pretty
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: profound way, even when the parent hopefully gets clean and
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: repairs the relationship, which is wonderful. And I celebrate both
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: of these people for managing to do that. So I
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: don't want to take anything away from that. But I
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: wonder if there's a kind of sweeping aside of the
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: effects of what it was like to grow up with
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: an alcoholic parent. By the way, one of the things
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: is that you often become a kind of inveterate caregiver
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: who has trouble attending to your own needs because you
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: as a child were so oriented to your parent and
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: always trying to see, oh, which mom am I getting today?
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: Some people with alcoholic parents literally wind up caring for them.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: Let me make sure that she's got her alcohol because
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: I don't want her to go into DTs or I
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: know she hasn't eaten or she's smoking again and I
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: don't want her to fall asleep and set the house
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: on fire. I mean, these are all stories I've heard.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: This woman, one of her issues is she's giving and
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: giving and giving and giving and realizing that it's really
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: burning her out. Well, that could be a sequelae of
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: having grown up with an alcoholic parent, that that's one
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: of the ways it influenced you. So Joseph, I wonder
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: if I could have called the cops on refers to
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: a kind of inner possibility of kind of acknowledging the
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: harm done in that situation. And if perhaps she doesn't
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: feel able to because, you know, maybe the mother has,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: you know, really made amends and she doesn't want to
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: indulge in kind of going back and parent blaming, which
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: I respect, actually. I think we can oftentimes... go into
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: that too much. And that can be a downside actually
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: of a therapeutic process is it kind of cultivates that
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: attitude of let me go dig up all the harms done.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: But I do wonder in this case, or my fantasy
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: goes to, you know, do we need to call the
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: cops here and just say, yeah, here's what happened actually. And,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: and although it's not happening anymore with mom, which again
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: is great, the internalized dynamics are still happening. So she's
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: still feeling impinged upon to care for other people. And
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: by the way, being possessed can also sort of be
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: like being drunk. Or rather, another way to say it
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: is maybe people who are drunk can often seem possessed.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: What I want to lean into in addition to that,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: and I feel so much certain about this, or strongly
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: about it, certainly it's too much. I think it's also
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: a dream about dissociation. That At the center of the dream,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: we're given a really important moment, which is easy to
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: overlook because it seems quite less dramatic. I walk over
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: into a large field. I'm almost tripping. Suddenly, I realize
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: I've been walking on tons of planted seeds, just trampling them.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: No one seems to care that we're trampling them. the seeds. Now,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: all of us that have had traumatic childhood experiences, one
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: of the ways we survive, and it is a kind
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: of grace at the time, is that we dissociate. We
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: can fully dissociate so that we don't experience anything and
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: perhaps barely remember things. We can dissociate from our feelings
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: so that we remain calm, We can dissociate from our
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: physical sensations so that we're protected from overwhelming hurt and pain.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: And at some point, if the analysis goes deep enough,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: we begin to call back to ourselves these things that
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: we have lost. When we aren't dissociated, we can have
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: an idea. Someone should leave the room. Somebody should stop this.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: but it's kind of happening in a kind of a
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: secret phone booth inside of our head. And our body
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: and hands are not moving to do those things because
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: in the traumatic moment, there is a disconnect between our
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: perhaps even clear thinking and our ability to actually mobilize
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: or feel the full depth of emotion, as you were saying, Lisa,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: or to feel the physical energy. discomfort or pain. So
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: there is a kind of secret room inside of us
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: when we've been traumatized. And we don't realize that all
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: this stuff is happening in a little cordoned off box
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: inside of ourselves that isn't reaching other parts of the
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: psyche and even other parts of the body And I
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: wonder if that might be part of what the dream
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: is pointing to.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 4: I'm really pondering this dream and entering into the mood
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: of it and resonating to what you brought up, Joseph,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 4: of all the times in this dream of calling and
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 4: people don't listen, should have videotaped but didn't, the cops
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: calling and calling and the very last sentence is, I
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 4: should call, but I never did. And I'm wondering about
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 4: her capacity here to use her voice, not only to
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: tell other people, this is what I feel and think
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: and want and need, but to call herself back to
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: the strong injunction in the dream against taking action against
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 4: a confrontation that she can't call, she doesn't videotape, nobody
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 4: has called, and what it would mean for her, metaphorically,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 4: to call, to start calling, lifting things up into daily life,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 4: into interactional life, and into the internet action between herself
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 4: and herself.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: And I think that the image of the teacher is
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: the medicine in the dream, because finally there's a feminine
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: figure that comes forward, is able to look at the
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: mother and say, stop. And she actually stops. You see,
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: in the beginning, She's looking at the woman who's peering
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: under the stall, and she's shouting, stop, stop, stop. But nothing,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: no one hears her. Yeah. But the teacher inside of her,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: by the way, this is a part of her psyche,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: is the part of her that can go over into
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 3: a tumultuous situation inside of herself, perhaps outside of herself
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: as well, and actually carry a kind of authority so
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 3: that the disorder or the chaos in the psyche and
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: around her actually responds. And that kind of is one
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: of the superpowers of a really good teacher. I think
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: of the grade school teachers that I experienced and their
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: ability to wield authority to create order in the classroom
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: or monitor and create repercussions for kids that couldn't regulate themselves.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: So that I think of, A teacher is probably a
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: good paradigm for taking control of the chaos and sitting
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: down and talking and communicating with even these errant parts
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: of herself, her own possessed parts. Even the woman who's
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: staring at her under the stall seems to be in
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: a trance. She also seems dissociated. The friend who wanders off,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: that's a form of dissociation. I didn't know where you were.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: I just, I don't know. I just wandered off and
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: then I was somewhere else in the park. I have
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: no idea. The mother's kind of possessed in some dissociated
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: screaming state. But the teacher's holding the reality principle. Stop.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: Come over here. We're going to have a talk. So
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: there's hope in the dream. And the teacher is perhaps
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: a progressed form of herself as well.
• 1:18:37
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• 1:18:43
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• 1:18:49
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• 1:18:54
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• 1:18:56
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• 1:19:03
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