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Projection & Play: What Dolls Do to Psyche · This Jungian Life Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
0:06
Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
0:10
Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
0:14
Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
0:19
Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
0:23
Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
0:28
Speaker 2: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. Today,
0:45
Speaker 2: Joseph and I, because Lisa is away, are going to
0:49
Speaker 2: talk about dolls. Dolls, you're asking? Yes, dolls. Because this
0:58
Speaker 2: topic was born of my astonishment and the impact of
1:05
Speaker 2: a long newspaper article about reborn dolls. And reborns, as
1:14
Speaker 2: they are called, are specially, specially made dolls that can
1:20
Speaker 2: cost up to $ 10, 000 that are made to look and
1:26
Speaker 2: feel as much like a newborn baby as possible. Their
1:32
Speaker 2: heads can be weighted, their bodies are movable and manipulable
1:37
Speaker 2: so that the likeness to a newborn and they can
1:42
Speaker 2: be made to your specific specifications, is incredibly lifelike. So lifelike,
1:50
Speaker 2: in fact, that when one owner or adoptive mother, as
1:56
Speaker 2: they're called, of a newborn, reborn baby doll, see how
2:02
Speaker 2: confusing the terms are already?
2:04
Speaker 3: It is.
2:05
Speaker 2: Left this doll in the car, somebody called, and police
2:09
Speaker 2: came and smashed in the window. thinking that a baby
2:13
Speaker 2: had been left in a hot car. So this leads
2:19
Speaker 2: us into the history of dolls, what is a doll,
2:23
Speaker 2: they are as old as humankind, they are archetypal, including
2:30
Speaker 2: in this new iteration as Reborns, which is the most
2:36
Speaker 2: recent iteration or doll phenomenon. So, Joseph, I'm wondering about
2:45
Speaker 2: you and I talking about this because I have the
2:49
Speaker 2: idea that may be totally wrong that boys don't have dolls.
2:54
Speaker 3: Well, I think that what's happening in the news is
2:57
Speaker 3: that adults, grown women, are purchasing these dolls and they're
3:01
Speaker 3: carrying them around in prams.
3:04
Speaker 2: Yes.
3:05
Speaker 3: There's a bit of an uproar in Brazil right now
3:08
Speaker 3: where they want to pass legislation that to punish women
3:13
Speaker 3: if they bring their dolls into a hospital for care
3:17
Speaker 3: and distract and use up resources with something like that.
3:22
Speaker 3: So it's really an interesting and strange thing. But boys
3:28
Speaker 3: have action figures. I think they were marketed differently for boys.
3:33
Speaker 2: Are these not called dolls? They cannot be called dolls?
3:36
Speaker 3: Yes. Oh, no, no, it would have been highly insulting
3:40
Speaker 3: to call my G.I. Joe a doll. It's not the
3:44
Speaker 3: same thing. So, yes, I remember as a little boy
3:48
Speaker 3: having a G.I. Joe. I've talked to some of my
3:52
Speaker 3: male analysands from Europe, and there was a similar figure,
3:56
Speaker 3: which was part of a cartoon series called Action Man.
3:59
Speaker 3: Action Man! And all of the accoutrements and parachutes and...
4:06
Speaker 3: all kinds of adventurous things. And I had hundreds of
4:12
Speaker 3: little dark green military figures in different positions with different weapons.
4:20
Speaker 3: And I and my buddies would stage these military operations
4:25
Speaker 3: with little two-inch figures and tanks and all these other things.
4:32
Speaker 3: I think little boys now have action figures of Captain
4:35
Speaker 3: America and things like that, and costumes to identify with them.
4:41
Speaker 3: So I think even though we don't use that word,
4:43
Speaker 3: which actually the word doll is a very modern word,
4:47
Speaker 3: in my life we certainly had figures that basically were dolls.
4:53
Speaker 3: And I think for us as boys, that the doll
4:59
Speaker 3: we would, project our progressed self, project our future potential
5:05
Speaker 3: onto these figures that one day we're going to grow
5:09
Speaker 3: up and be action men and athletic and heroic and
5:13
Speaker 3: do amazing daredeviling feats of one kind or another. So
5:19
Speaker 3: I think that if we think about the baby doll,
5:23
Speaker 3: the action figure Barbie dolls, and Barbies are adults, adult females,
5:29
Speaker 3: that it speaks to the way that the human psyche
5:33
Speaker 3: will use figures and project different things onto figures, or
5:39
Speaker 3: they'll mold the figures so that they can carry different
5:44
Speaker 3: aspects of the psyche.
5:47
Speaker 2: It seems to me a huge difference between a child's
5:53
Speaker 2: play with action figures, if you're a boy, And a
6:01
Speaker 2: little girl's baby doll or Barbie doll. And what's going
6:10
Speaker 2: on with these so-called reborns, which kind of blurs the
6:15
Speaker 2: line between symbol and idol or fantasy and reality. And
6:25
Speaker 2: it may be in service to something that that person
6:29
Speaker 2: is going through as an adult, or it could be
6:33
Speaker 2: a regression, and I suppose we would only know on
6:37
Speaker 2: an individual basis. But I'm thinking about you and your G.I.
6:44
Speaker 2: Joe jumping out of planes, parachuting to Earth, and this
6:51
Speaker 2: aspirational aspect to be a hero. Along the cultural norms of,
6:58
Speaker 2: you know, what guys do. And it's interesting that G.I. Joe,
7:04
Speaker 2: he's an Army guy, right?
7:06
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
7:07
Speaker 2: And you had all those other little plastic Army figurines.
7:13
Speaker 2: And my husband had little lead soldiers.
7:17
Speaker 3: Oh, that's right.
7:19
Speaker 2: And those stood on stands and they could all be...
7:24
Speaker 2: lined up and configured. So it's interesting that it's G.I. Joe.
7:34
Speaker 2: It's not personal trainer John or CEO Fred. It's G.I. Joe.
7:48
Speaker 2: And for little girls, the aspirational seems that there's a
7:54
Speaker 2: fork in the road, and that is between the maternal
7:59
Speaker 2: aspiration of having a baby doll, and they typically don't
8:05
Speaker 2: have hair or very sparse hair, and something like a
8:10
Speaker 2: Barbie doll. The stuff that Barbie lives with is enough
8:15
Speaker 2: to make you go cross-eyed. Barbie has... Campers and planes
8:23
Speaker 2: and a wardrobe of thousands and thousands of pieces. Barbie says,
8:30
Speaker 2: you can have it all and you can be anything
8:36
Speaker 2: you want.
8:37
Speaker 3: That's right. Barbie is the first Instagram influencer.
8:41
Speaker 2: Yes. But Barbie does not have children. Barbie is out
8:50
Speaker 2: in the world. looking great, going places and doing things
8:56
Speaker 2: for herself, and having an adventurous sort of single woman,
9:03
Speaker 2: professional woman lifestyle with lots of wardrobe changes.
9:10
Speaker 3: Absolutely. It is interesting that in American male culture, that
9:16
Speaker 3: the infantry and the army particularly captured, like the Boy Scouts,
9:21
Speaker 3: were in a sense kind of a feeder group into
9:25
Speaker 3: the army that we were, we weren't taught to be sailors.
9:29
Speaker 3: We weren't taught to be air pilot, um, pilots that
9:34
Speaker 3: we were being trained in the way that infantry was
9:38
Speaker 3: trained to march. We wore green outfits. They are field
9:44
Speaker 3: skills being in the field of battle. So at least, um,
9:50
Speaker 3: I guess in the earlier part of the 1900s, that
9:55
Speaker 3: the vision of masculinity you know, had something to do
9:59
Speaker 3: with the being the brave soldier specifically. Yeah, it is
10:05
Speaker 3: interesting and how that has really changed, I think, massively.
10:09
Speaker 2: So, you know, I'm thinking really in essence, the universal
10:17
Speaker 2: characteristic of a doll is is that it is some
10:21
Speaker 2: kind of a human facsimile. You know, even if it's
10:31
Speaker 2: carved out of wood, let's say.
10:32
Speaker 3: Yeah.
10:33
Speaker 2: Just one plain little stick figure. That it serves as
10:38
Speaker 2: a vehicle for projection.
10:40
Speaker 3: Exactly.
10:42
Speaker 2: And sometimes, you know, that doll misbehaves, and then she
10:48
Speaker 2: has to stay in her room.
10:50
Speaker 3: Yes, the scapegoat doll.
10:51
Speaker 2: The scapegoat doll who did something wrong, or the doll
10:56
Speaker 2: that brings out the positive mother in the little girl
11:03
Speaker 2: who is that doll's owner or mommy, that this doll
11:08
Speaker 2: is always treated with love and care and empathy. You
11:15
Speaker 2: projected onto your G.I. Joe and his daughter battlefield escapades,
11:22
Speaker 2: you know, all kinds of heroic deeds. Interestingly, I never
11:28
Speaker 2: had a doll. Really?
11:30
Speaker 3: You were never given a doll, even as a little girl?
11:33
Speaker 2: I was given one. I'm going to say I was
11:39
Speaker 2: at my five-year-old birthday party, either four or five. And
11:46
Speaker 2: it was a gift from my grandmother who was there.
11:50
Speaker 2: And I think my grandmother and my mother were so
11:55
Speaker 2: enthusiastic over this doll, cooing over it and cooing over me.
12:00
Speaker 2: And look, Debbie, look, look, look, that it turned me off.
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Speaker 3: A little too intense.
12:08
Speaker 2: Now, all our listeners, because I've been listening to the
12:12
Speaker 2: podcast for quite a while, I assume, are... No doubt
12:17
Speaker 2: starting to wonder what this says about my mother complex.
12:21
Speaker 2: So go right ahead and have all the fantasies you want.
12:27
Speaker 2: But my love and attention got transferred on to stuffed
12:31
Speaker 2: animals as the vehicle for my projections. And what are
12:38
Speaker 2: those projections? They're about the feelings of that maybe in
12:46
Speaker 2: waking life we can't express or the ones that we
12:50
Speaker 2: need to express. And we need to have an external recipient.
12:58
Speaker 2: And eventually, what happened to your G.I. Joe? And what
13:03
Speaker 2: happened to my stuffed animals? My grandmother made them, and
13:07
Speaker 2: they were cats. And my sister and I called them meows.
13:14
Speaker 3: I like that.
13:15
Speaker 2: We had gazillions of them. And what happened to them?
13:20
Speaker 3: What did happen to them? Do you have even one
13:23
Speaker 3: of them hidden away somewhere?
13:25
Speaker 2: I found a pattern, and I had one made as
13:31
Speaker 2: an adult. And, of course, it evoked all kinds of memories.
13:35
Speaker 2: But at some point, we don't need our dolls any longer.
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Speaker 3: So if we think about the doll as... holding the
13:45
Speaker 3: projection of one kind or another, at some point, I
13:49
Speaker 3: would imagine the projection is withdrawn and internalized, and then
13:54
Speaker 3: the doll becomes an inanimate thing once again, and therefore
13:58
Speaker 3: easy to leave some place and forget it, like the
14:02
Speaker 3: end of the Velveteen Rabbit. All of a sudden, the
14:05
Speaker 3: precious rabbit's just found itself lost in the back of
14:09
Speaker 3: the yard as the child grows up and has other interests.
14:15
Speaker 3: So I think, yeah, there is an arc of time
14:20
Speaker 3: where the imagination and the psyche needs things to represent aspects.
14:29
Speaker 3: And then we outgrow it.
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Speaker 2: This is one of the key elements, not just unique
14:33
Speaker 2: to Jungian psychology, although I think it has a special valence,
14:38
Speaker 2: but is the whole role of projections. And that projecting
14:46
Speaker 2: is how we first encounter something. We have to see
14:51
Speaker 2: it out there. And then we go, oh, you know,
14:55
Speaker 2: something in us recognizes it. And we interact with it.
15:00
Speaker 2: And eventually, as with dolls and many other things, we
15:05
Speaker 2: take it into ourselves. So I don't need that physical
15:10
Speaker 2: representation anymore. And so the dolls somehow find their way
15:19
Speaker 2: onto a shelf in the closet.
15:22
Speaker 3: They do.
15:23
Speaker 2: And that is the perfect way to let go of
15:26
Speaker 2: a projection, is it just doesn't hold any more energy.
15:32
Speaker 2: So we project onto our dolls and our stuffed animals. And,
15:39
Speaker 2: of course, we project onto our neighbors, our family members.
15:44
Speaker 2: our colleagues, and the list goes on and on, you know,
15:48
Speaker 2: all kinds of things. And eventually, hopefully, we withdraw that projection.
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Speaker 3: And we withdraw it naturally, that projecting is natural and
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Speaker 3: that the reintegration of the projected material is also natural.
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Speaker 3: I found myself thinking as you were talking, Deb, and
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Speaker 3: you had mentioned earlier the difference between a symbol and
16:12
Speaker 3: an idol. And, you know, having my, you know, action
16:16
Speaker 3: dolls and the little toy soldiers. And then I find
16:21
Speaker 3: myself remembering in my maternal grandmother's apartment that they had
16:29
Speaker 3: this statue of the infant of Prague, which is this
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Speaker 3: infant idol of a baby Jesus, which has a crown
16:41
Speaker 3: and has.
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Speaker 3: All kinds of regalia, regal regalia. In the room that
16:49
Speaker 3: we would sleep in when we visited, the infant of
16:51
Speaker 3: Prague would be up on this dresser, kind of hovering,
16:55
Speaker 3: looking down. And it wasn't terribly scary, but it was
16:59
Speaker 3: very strange, and I had no impulse to want to
17:01
Speaker 3: play with it. And that speaks to the symbol versus
17:06
Speaker 3: the idol. Like if I was going to play with
17:08
Speaker 3: an action figure, my imagination would extend itself into the
17:13
Speaker 3: figure and move it around and manipulate it. But when
17:17
Speaker 3: I looked at the idol of the infant of Prague,
17:21
Speaker 3: it remained inanimate. And I remember exploring it, trying to
17:26
Speaker 3: figure out what was going on, and particularly if there
17:29
Speaker 3: were any zippers in the clothing. For some reason, that
17:31
Speaker 3: seemed very important and very strange that there weren't any,
17:35
Speaker 3: because that meant this whatever this was, was stuck in
17:38
Speaker 3: that one strange bejeweled outfit forever. But I lost interest very,
17:44
Speaker 3: very quickly in the idol. And I think that goes
17:49
Speaker 3: to whether or not the object has really attracted the
17:54
Speaker 3: projection in a living way or whether it remains empty
18:01
Speaker 3: in a sense or just has a formulated meaning.
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Speaker 2: Well, you know, what I'm thinking about is we have symbols, idols,
18:10
Speaker 2: and icons. And that statues, images, paintings that don't call
18:22
Speaker 2: us to relate to them the way we relate to
18:25
Speaker 2: a doll are holding some kind of archetypal and symbolic power.
18:35
Speaker 2: Even as a child, you recognize that this is not
18:37
Speaker 2: to play with. This represents something else that you couldn't
18:44
Speaker 2: find words for as a child. But it was clearly
18:52
Speaker 2: beyond the realm of human representation or only human representation.
19:01
Speaker 2: it existed in a more liminal space, a human representation
19:08
Speaker 2: of what the qualities are that the infant of Prague
19:14
Speaker 2: is said to represent.
19:17
Speaker 3: Absolutely. And when there's an assigned representation, then it becomes petrified.
19:25
Speaker 3: It's consolidated in a way that makes it more difficult
19:30
Speaker 3: for the imagination to have its way with it. Although
19:35
Speaker 3: I think it would have been hilarious to have made
19:37
Speaker 3: the infant of Prague talk and brought it around the
19:40
Speaker 3: house and had it sit there at the dinner table
19:43
Speaker 3: pretending to eat. I think that would have been much
19:46
Speaker 3: more fun than having it just.
19:48
Speaker 2: But that would never have been... allowed.
19:50
Speaker 3: It would have been. It would have been so disrespectful.
19:53
Speaker 3: But I would have had more of a relationship to
19:56
Speaker 3: it if this fantasy that in some way you could
19:59
Speaker 3: pretend it was alive would have made it relevant in
20:03
Speaker 3: a way. But you're right. Not okay.
20:06
Speaker 2: So you're talking about humanizing the archetype. that if you
20:11
Speaker 2: could have projected onto it, if you could have talked
20:15
Speaker 2: to it and imagined it talking back to you, we
20:20
Speaker 2: have now humanized some kind of more symbolic, more archetypal content.
20:32
Speaker 2: And people do that. There are movies about doing that
20:35
Speaker 2: in churches where a young teen, let's say, goes in
20:41
Speaker 2: to talk to the statue of St. Anthony and tell St.
20:46
Speaker 2: Anthony her troubles.
20:49
Speaker 3: And the miraculous, perhaps, tear rolling down the statue's face,
20:54
Speaker 3: which gives us a sense that there's some reality in there.
20:59
Speaker 2: So it's interesting whether it's an icon or a doll
21:06
Speaker 2: and what what role it fulfills, because icons are not
21:10
Speaker 2: usually well able to just be humanized and come to
21:16
Speaker 2: the dinner table. We place them a little bit more
21:20
Speaker 2: outside that kind of relationship. But where it takes me
21:26
Speaker 2: is how ancient dolls are, starting with those Paleolithic dolls
21:34
Speaker 2: carvings of the Venus of something or other.
21:39
Speaker 3: Willendorf.
21:41
Speaker 2: Okay. And were they dolls? Were they icons? Were they
21:46
Speaker 2: fertility symbols? Nobody really knows. And in Egypt, they had
21:53
Speaker 2: paddle dolls, so-called, because they're just carved, not rounded. They're
22:01
Speaker 2: flat on a piece of wood. in more or less
22:04
Speaker 2: the shape of a paddle, and painted, and some of
22:08
Speaker 2: them have beads for hair. By the time we move
22:12
Speaker 2: along to ancient Greece, we've got clay dolls that had
22:16
Speaker 2: joints that were movable. In the Roman times, where record-keeping
22:21
Speaker 2: is by now much more ubiquitous, they have records of
22:27
Speaker 2: girls playing with dolls and pretending to be mothers. There
22:31
Speaker 2: are now ivory dolls. I mean, isn't that lovely that
22:37
Speaker 2: a material as rare as ivory and as valuable would
22:43
Speaker 2: be used to make a doll for a child? We
22:49
Speaker 2: know how precious and how important a doll can be.
22:54
Speaker 2: Of course, there have been rag dolls, I'm sure, from
22:57
Speaker 2: time immemorial, most of which haven't survived yet. In Japan,
23:03
Speaker 2: in the Shinto original Japanese religion, there is a holiday
23:10
Speaker 2: called Dolls Day. In Peru, there were dolls woven that
23:16
Speaker 2: were buried with the dead. And by the 1850s, here's
23:21
Speaker 2: a real irony, there were factories to make dolls. Now
23:26
Speaker 2: we've got economies of scale. And guess what? Those factories
23:34
Speaker 2: employed children to make the dolls that they would likely
23:43
Speaker 2: never own. It's really poignant. And then by, I think,
23:50
Speaker 2: the 1860s, we have paper dolls. And my thought here
23:56
Speaker 2: is that they're the first iteration of Barbie. But you can...
24:02
Speaker 2: in your imagination, these are aspirational. You can dress them
24:06
Speaker 2: up in almost anything. And that by 1965, there were 600,000
24:15
Speaker 2: people in Barbie's official fan club. And Barbie only made
24:20
Speaker 2: her appearance in 1959. So six years later. And so
24:26
Speaker 2: dolls are human.
24:27
Speaker 3: So in the ancient world, as people, many things, dolls
24:33
Speaker 3: were invested with a kind of magic, that they were
24:37
Speaker 3: part of the funerary rites, that they were ritual items.
24:43
Speaker 3: They were sometimes, in ancient cultures, the god was thought
24:48
Speaker 3: to reside in the object, and they were quite sacred.
24:52
Speaker 3: Dolls being given to children to play with is another
24:56
Speaker 3: dimension of that. But anything that was shaped, in the
25:02
Speaker 3: figure of a human, took on a certain kind of power.
25:07
Speaker 3: As I was noodling over the topic in preparation for
25:12
Speaker 3: our talk today, I found myself thinking about the creation
25:19
Speaker 3: myths and that so many, if not all, creation myths
25:24
Speaker 3: start with a creator deity who forms a little figurine.
25:31
Speaker 3: and blows life into it and calls it humanity.
25:33
Speaker 2: Yeah.
25:34
Speaker 3: That God is the first doll maker and humanity is
25:40
Speaker 3: the first doll. So Yahweh takes some dust and molds
25:47
Speaker 3: it into a little figure and turns it into a being.
25:52
Speaker 3: Zeus takes the ashes, yes, takes the ashes of the
25:57
Speaker 3: Titans and molds the first human being So we project
26:03
Speaker 3: it into the creation myths of the divine, and then
26:07
Speaker 3: we also participate in that creation process by extension, and
26:14
Speaker 3: we become, in a very unconscious way, gods of our own,
26:20
Speaker 3: creating living beings. Which I think, I find that thought
26:25
Speaker 3: really fascinating. And on a deep level, it makes sense
26:29
Speaker 3: to me. that secondary to the playing with the doll
26:35
Speaker 3: is the capacity to create the doll as a creative power.
26:42
Speaker 2: That's really interesting. I never thought about us as being
26:48
Speaker 2: dolls of a higher power or powers, but that we
26:56
Speaker 2: were created in God's image and And you're right, lots
27:01
Speaker 2: of creation myths have stories about toads swimming down and
27:07
Speaker 2: bringing up a little bit of mud from which the
27:11
Speaker 2: earth and mankind is created. There are stories about how
27:17
Speaker 2: the first human beings were created out of something and
27:23
Speaker 2: they weren't satisfactory. So God tries again. And eventually, I
27:30
Speaker 2: think this is a Mayan myth where eventually humans are
27:34
Speaker 2: created out of maize, out of corn, which is the
27:38
Speaker 2: vital crop in South America and those parts of the world.
27:45
Speaker 2: And that this time, the gods got it right. And
27:49
Speaker 2: that we do that where we have dolls that to
27:54
Speaker 2: some extent, are created in our own image, at least psychologically,
28:00
Speaker 2: of what is that doll's personality is it the recipient
28:06
Speaker 2: of our love and affection? Or, you know, as we
28:11
Speaker 2: know with dolls used in various kinds of voodoo-type rites,
28:20
Speaker 2: they can take on a connection to a living person.
28:26
Speaker 3: Sympathetic magic.
28:27
Speaker 2: Sympathetic magic, exactly.
28:30
Speaker 3: So it would take a little piece of somebody's hair,
28:33
Speaker 3: stitch it into the top of a fabric doll, and
28:36
Speaker 3: then it becomes linked to the spirit of that person
28:40
Speaker 3: and how we treat the doll affects the fate and
28:44
Speaker 3: the well-being of the person. But again, very godlike.
28:49
Speaker 2: Right. And we have malevolent dolls. We have, like, Chucky.
28:54
Speaker 3: Yes, I was thinking about that.
28:56
Speaker 2: Chucky's the only one I can think of, but he's
28:58
Speaker 2: not the only one. My brother brought his... daughter, this
29:05
Speaker 2: beautifully made little clown who was in, if I'm remembering right,
29:12
Speaker 2: had something to do with a hot air balloon and
29:14
Speaker 2: a whole thing, and he hung it from the ceiling.
29:18
Speaker 2: She was terrified of it.
29:20
Speaker 3: It sounds terrifying. And even in modern movies, if you
29:25
Speaker 3: want to have a creepy scene, you're scanning through the
29:27
Speaker 3: abandoned house, and then there's like a broken doll laying
29:31
Speaker 3: in a corner and the people project all kinds of
29:34
Speaker 3: distressed feelings about that. So the gods create us as dolls.
29:42
Speaker 3: We create dolls. The gods are responsible in some way
29:46
Speaker 3: for providing for us or tasking us. So in the
29:50
Speaker 3: ancient world, Prometheus molds humans from clay. The Egyptian god
29:57
Speaker 3: Khun is a potter. And the potter makes the first being.
30:02
Speaker 3: In the Greco-Roman world, human beings have to take care
30:06
Speaker 3: of the gods. They have to sacrifice to them. The
30:09
Speaker 3: gods consume the smoke and the scent of it. Many
30:16
Speaker 3: animals sacrificed to Yahweh, and we as the created dolls,
30:22
Speaker 3: so to speak, of Yahweh, And so there also is
30:26
Speaker 3: this responsibility that the doll brought to life has a
30:30
Speaker 3: responsibility to the god that has created them, that there
30:34
Speaker 3: is a relationship between those things. When I think of
30:41
Speaker 3: watching a little girl play with her doll, or my
30:44
Speaker 3: own experience playing with a G.I. Joe, I didn't think
30:47
Speaker 3: of myself as being responsible for the fate of G.I. Joe,
30:52
Speaker 3: but I certainly treated... him and the things you could
30:57
Speaker 3: buy that go along with him very seriously. The dolls
31:01
Speaker 3: are supposed to provide something for us as their creators
31:05
Speaker 3: as well.
31:06
Speaker 2: I think an ability to integrate a whole range of
31:15
Speaker 2: feelings and certainly a vehicle for imagination, that space between
31:23
Speaker 2: the worlds.
31:25
Speaker 3: And I would venture to say, which hadn't occurred to me,
31:28
Speaker 3: is that AI could be seen as the next iteration
31:33
Speaker 3: of a doll. Because it is created, and then we
31:39
Speaker 3: play with it, and just like Pinocchio that comes to life,
31:44
Speaker 3: it acts as if it's a real thing, and something
31:48
Speaker 3: inside of us takes it very seriously. I'm thinking about the...
31:54
Speaker 3: In the midst of Inanna, Ereshkigal's in the other world,
32:00
Speaker 3: Inanna's in the upper world, and she goes to console
32:03
Speaker 3: her sister whose husband has died and gets trapped in
32:05
Speaker 3: the underworld. And Inanna's maid is looking for help because
32:10
Speaker 3: she's realized that Inanna's trapped and goes to Enki, who
32:15
Speaker 3: takes dirt out of his fingernail and forms little tiny figures,
32:20
Speaker 3: little dolls. and then breathes a little bit of life
32:24
Speaker 3: into them, and then they trundle down into the cave
32:28
Speaker 3: and find Ereshkigal and console her by mirroring her feelings.
32:37
Speaker 3: And that's one of the complaints that people have about AI,
32:41
Speaker 3: that AI is currently kind of psychophantic and is constantly
32:46
Speaker 3: affirming people and telling them that they're right, however they're feeling.
32:52
Speaker 2: But the difference there is, going to the underworld to
32:57
Speaker 2: console Inanna, there is an element of imagination for Inanna,
33:06
Speaker 2: even if she interacts with them as if they're real,
33:09
Speaker 2: and an element of imagination in your G.I. Joe and
33:16
Speaker 2: the dolls that primarily little girls have. And something like AI,
33:23
Speaker 2: it's not embodied. You can't touch it. You can't hold it.
33:28
Speaker 2: You can't dress it up. That makes it much harder
33:32
Speaker 2: to translate into the imaginal realm. And that's the gift
33:41
Speaker 2: of a doll, a physical doll that you can hold
33:46
Speaker 2: and you supply energy you know, the verbal content of,
33:51
Speaker 2: you know, it's time to have dinner. I don't want
33:54
Speaker 2: to have dinner, but, you know, it's time, and aren't
33:58
Speaker 2: you hungry? No, I'm not hungry. You know, we can
34:02
Speaker 2: enact all kinds of parts of ourselves, but we can't
34:06
Speaker 2: do that with AI.
34:07
Speaker 3: And I totally agree, but I do think that this
34:11
Speaker 3: ancient Sumerian myth says is speaking to an impulse in
34:18
Speaker 3: the collective unconscious through this fantasy that one could make
34:23
Speaker 3: a little teeny humanoid thing, and then it would sit
34:28
Speaker 3: in front of somebody and mirror them and make them
34:33
Speaker 3: feel better, but it's not human, and in a sense
34:37
Speaker 3: it's not real, but Ereshkigal still softens and relaxes. But
34:44
Speaker 3: I think that fantasy, that one could create an artificial
34:49
Speaker 3: thing that then goes to the distressed and in a
34:53
Speaker 3: rather mechanical way says the words that are necessary. So
34:58
Speaker 3: in the story, Rishkigal says, oh, my heart. And the
35:03
Speaker 3: little creatures go, oh, your heart. And it's the first
35:07
Speaker 3: echo chamber. You know, it's like the algorithms. that whatever
35:14
Speaker 3: you need, that the little figures just echo you, which
35:18
Speaker 3: calms Ereshkigal. And Ereshkigal doesn't realize that they're basically tricking
35:26
Speaker 3: her into letting Inanna go. But I do think there
35:32
Speaker 3: is some connection between that very ancient fantasy and some
35:37
Speaker 3: part of the fantasy around AI. But I take your
35:43
Speaker 3: meaning that it's not the same thing as having a
35:45
Speaker 3: doll that you can play with, an inert doll which
35:49
Speaker 3: then doesn't interfere in any way with what you want
35:53
Speaker 3: to project on it.
35:55
Speaker 2: And the doll in that story of Inanna's descent to
36:01
Speaker 2: the underworld, those little figures bring in qualities that Ereshkigal
36:12
Speaker 2: needs to their shadow qualities. So Ereshkigal is this harsh
36:20
Speaker 2: mistress of the underworld who hangs Inanna on a hook.
36:25
Speaker 2: It's like, ooh, that's kind of awful. And so what
36:29
Speaker 2: is needed is a compensatory psychological function which these figures hold,
36:35
Speaker 2: which is one of empathy.
36:38
Speaker 3: Yes.
36:40
Speaker 2: Whereas with AI, it's all mechanical. There's nothing that a
36:45
Speaker 2: person can project imagination onto. There's no image of a figure.
36:53
Speaker 2: There's no little carved image of a figure. There is
37:00
Speaker 2: nothing literally at hand. And it is disembodied. And is creating, unlike,
37:11
Speaker 2: I would imagine, unlike a doll, a phenomenon that allows
37:16
Speaker 2: people to project only positive feelings. That it's being, AI
37:26
Speaker 2: responses are being accused of being too mirroring, too empathic,
37:32
Speaker 2: too willing to take a human being's fantasies as real
37:40
Speaker 2: and affirm them.
37:42
Speaker 3: I think we're saying the same thing, because I think
37:44
Speaker 3: that's what happens in the myth. And I'm only talking
37:48
Speaker 3: about that archetypal layer, not the literalization of it necessarily.
37:54
Speaker 3: I'm talking about the underlying fantasy around AI, drawing from
38:00
Speaker 3: this ancient religious fantasy, which we see in Sumer, But
38:05
Speaker 3: I take your meaning that the actual lived experience of
38:09
Speaker 3: a baby doll, for instance, or a G.I. Joe, is
38:12
Speaker 3: different both from the myths of Inanna and from A.I.,
38:17
Speaker 3: that they are different domains. And I do understand that, yeah.
38:22
Speaker 2: I think that A.I., and about which I've had, or
38:26
Speaker 2: with which I've had very, very little experience, but I
38:30
Speaker 2: think what it doesn't do... is to serve as a
38:35
Speaker 2: vehicle for imagination. What your GI Joes did and my
38:43
Speaker 2: Meows and my daughter's Barbies do is they facilitate imagination.
38:56
Speaker 2: And I don't think AI does that. You need an intermediary.
39:03
Speaker 2: that will allow you to play. Like, you know, our
39:08
Speaker 2: kids used to play. They would, you know, Rachel would
39:11
Speaker 2: be with her dollhouse. Jay might be, you know, assembling.
39:16
Speaker 2: He was a train engineer and a trucker. But if
39:22
Speaker 2: I called them, and they're supplying the dialogue and all
39:25
Speaker 2: the rest of it, you know, there were all kinds
39:28
Speaker 2: of catastrophes. that happened and bathrooms became kitchens in the
39:34
Speaker 2: dollhouse and it went on and on. But if I said, hey, guys,
39:39
Speaker 2: come on, dinner's ready. You know, they could drop it
39:43
Speaker 2: like like that. Because there is a knowing. They're between
39:48
Speaker 2: the worlds. They're not immersed in the reality of the dollhouse,
39:53
Speaker 2: let's say, or those wooden train tracks. But people do
40:00
Speaker 2: get immersed in artificial intelligence as being somehow a, quote, real, unquote,
40:11
Speaker 2: person or function. that takes me back to these reborn dolls,
40:18
Speaker 2: that there's a literalization of the wish to have this baby.
40:25
Speaker 3: So it goes to something that Von Franz has said
40:29
Speaker 3: about symbols, that we are meant to relate to the symbol,
40:37
Speaker 3: not reside in the symbol.
40:39
Speaker 2: Okay, that's great. Relate to it, don't reside in it.
40:44
Speaker 3: And if we reside in the symbol, then we've kind
40:47
Speaker 3: of lost touch with some things.
40:50
Speaker 2: Then it's not a symbol anymore.
40:54
Speaker 3: Right. And the symbol is the thing that mediates between
40:57
Speaker 3: the conscious and the unconscious mind, which allows this dialogue
41:02
Speaker 3: to happen. And as you were saying, that's a part
41:04
Speaker 3: of all play, when the play is not being interfered with.
41:09
Speaker 3: And by interference, I mean by being overly structured or...
41:13
Speaker 3: being overly defined. Like, for instance, once they started making
41:17
Speaker 3: dolls talk, and I remember when you could pull that
41:21
Speaker 3: little string in the back of a doll and it
41:23
Speaker 3: would wind up some little recording that would make noise.
41:27
Speaker 3: So there was a part that delighted in that, which is,
41:30
Speaker 3: I think, the part of us that wants to create life,
41:33
Speaker 3: the part of us that wants to be in the
41:35
Speaker 3: fantasy of making Pinocchio become real, and that has a
41:41
Speaker 3: certain archetypal delight, but it also could interfere with the
41:48
Speaker 3: way the psyche wants to use the doll to project
41:52
Speaker 3: its own sounds on its own ideas. But we have
41:56
Speaker 3: to honor the fact that part of us does want
41:59
Speaker 3: to create a living doll just as God created us.
42:04
Speaker 3: And I think that's also part of the drive to
42:07
Speaker 3: clone and to do genetic engineering and to control life
42:12
Speaker 3: and create life as was depicted in these archetypal themes.
42:19
Speaker 3: So to take the doll and move the doll from
42:23
Speaker 3: the projective canvas to something that approximates life or perhaps
42:33
Speaker 3: one day is alive in and of itself. And then
42:37
Speaker 3: we have become like unto life. Yahweh and Prometheus and
42:42
Speaker 3: Zeus and the gods.
42:46
Speaker 2: That's actually really very interesting as a construct.
42:57
Speaker 3: And I.
42:59
Speaker 2: Don't think that it works.
43:02
Speaker 3: I don't know what the outcome is going to be
43:04
Speaker 3: at the end of the millennium.
43:07
Speaker 2: Well, there's many a fairy tale, including the Gilgamesh fairy tale,
43:14
Speaker 2: where after a whole series of preceding adventures, Gilgamesh goes
43:20
Speaker 2: basically in quest of immortality because his former enemy, now
43:28
Speaker 2: brother Enkidu, has died, and Gilgamesh traipses off to some
43:38
Speaker 2: island occupied by a couple of people. And they actually
43:43
Speaker 2: give him a plant, I think it is, that will
43:48
Speaker 2: ensure immortality. So, whew, what a relief. Your worries are over.
43:53
Speaker 2: Except that Gilgamesh falls asleep on the way back and
43:58
Speaker 2: a snake eats it. you know, giving rise to an explanation,
44:04
Speaker 2: if you will, of the immortality of snakes and shedding
44:10
Speaker 2: their skin. But I think I have more of a
44:16
Speaker 2: position that wants to at least explain consider a divide
44:27
Speaker 2: between what is a vehicle for imagination, projection, and feeling,
44:34
Speaker 2: and what becomes a substitute for it. Most kids know
44:42
Speaker 2: the difference. I have a nephew that had an imaginary
44:47
Speaker 2: figure who just did a lot of things wrong and
44:52
Speaker 2: He made a mess. He didn't pick up his toys.
44:56
Speaker 2: And we would all very gently, with our tongues firmly
45:00
Speaker 2: in cheek, play along with Nathan as he explained that
45:08
Speaker 2: his alternate self, this other person, had done it. And
45:13
Speaker 2: we said, well, you know, you're going to have to
45:14
Speaker 2: go back and talk to him. You're the only one
45:16
Speaker 2: that can talk to him. you're going to have to
45:19
Speaker 2: tell him that he better pick up those toys before dinner.
45:24
Speaker 2: That often worked. But I think when things are concretized
45:31
Speaker 2: and fixed in place as if real and veering into
45:41
Speaker 2: lookalike dolls or the wish to substitute, reality for fantasy,
45:49
Speaker 2: I think that's where it becomes unhealthy.
45:55
Speaker 3: There are all kinds of layers inside of us that
45:59
Speaker 3: make use of these things in complicated ways, in different ways,
46:04
Speaker 3: and it is an uncertain proposition. I agree with you.
46:08
Speaker 2: I think we have our own, a lot of our
46:12
Speaker 2: own reaction to depend upon when we read about people
46:19
Speaker 2: concretizing AI or the feeling that a lot of people
46:25
Speaker 2: have about dolls that are too realistic, that we recoil,
46:30
Speaker 2: that we automatically recoil. And there's a term for it.
46:34
Speaker 2: It's called uncanny valley. That if something that is not
46:39
Speaker 2: human takes on too much resemblance to human Our empathy
46:50
Speaker 2: and ability to project onto it turns into revulsion, which
46:54
Speaker 2: is why I think in the Mary Shelley story of Frankenstein,
46:58
Speaker 2: which has become heaven only knows how many movies, Frankenstein
47:05
Speaker 2: does not look human.
47:07
Speaker 3: He does look humanoid, but yes.
47:10
Speaker 2: Humanoid, but he sure doesn't look like Brad Pitt.
47:14
Speaker 3: Unfortunately for him. Although the next iteration, when they do
47:17
Speaker 3: the bride of Frankenstein, she's looking much better. Which makes Dr.
47:22
Speaker 3: Frankenstein a little more ambivalent about giving her up as
47:27
Speaker 3: a mate to the malformed first attempt. But that said,
47:34
Speaker 3: Frankenstein comes forward because of, again, that desire to take
47:39
Speaker 3: the inanimate thing, make it look human, and somehow bring
47:43
Speaker 3: it to life. Which puts us in that realm of
47:47
Speaker 3: Pinocchio and also Jung having his little carved mannequin that
47:52
Speaker 3: he secreted into a box and treated like a living
47:59
Speaker 3: person that would tell his secrets. It was his confessor.
48:02
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm so glad you brought that in. And this
48:05
Speaker 2: is a doll that didn't resemble a real doll at
48:09
Speaker 2: all that Jung, when he was about He said in
48:14
Speaker 2: his 10th year, so I guess he was nine or
48:20
Speaker 2: maybe he was 10. But he said he had a
48:24
Speaker 2: ruler like what you have in a pencil box. And
48:27
Speaker 2: at the end of this ruler, I carved a little
48:30
Speaker 2: mannequin about two inches long with a frock coat, top hat,
48:36
Speaker 2: shiny black boots. I colored him black with ink, sawed
48:41
Speaker 2: him off the ruler. and put him in the pencil
48:43
Speaker 2: case where I made him a little bed. I even
48:47
Speaker 2: made a coat for him out of a bit of wool.
48:51
Speaker 2: And then he also put a smooth stone from the
48:55
Speaker 2: river in there, a smooth blackish stone, and he painted
49:00
Speaker 2: it to look as if it had an upper and
49:02
Speaker 2: lower half black, half white and half black. And it
49:05
Speaker 2: was a great secret, and Jung took it up to
49:09
Speaker 2: the attic and hid it on top of a beam.
49:12
Speaker 2: And the attic was forbidden. It was a no-fly zone
49:18
Speaker 2: because the wood was... rotted and unstable. And Jung would
49:24
Speaker 2: go sneaking back up there to check his pencil box
49:30
Speaker 2: and to check that the mannequin was still there. And
49:36
Speaker 2: so for Jung, it was a secret, that it held
49:43
Speaker 2: some secret part of himself. He can't remember what he
49:49
Speaker 2: wanted to communicate to it. And he says, I was
49:54
Speaker 2: satisfied to possess something that no one knew and no
49:59
Speaker 2: one could get at. And I think about that in
50:03
Speaker 2: terms of ego development. And it's really important to have
50:11
Speaker 2: a secret. It really establishes the ego as having its
50:18
Speaker 2: own container, its own strength, its own power of imagination
50:24
Speaker 2: that is really and inviolably separate from reality. a you
50:31
Speaker 2: out there in the world. If I can have a secret,
50:35
Speaker 2: it means I really do have a separate self bounded
50:42
Speaker 2: off from other people.
50:45
Speaker 3: Von Franz surmises that a child will also project the
50:51
Speaker 3: self onto the doll, and I think in some ways
50:55
Speaker 3: that may have been what Jung was doing, the young Jung,
50:59
Speaker 3: that The secret inside of him was another intelligence that
51:07
Speaker 3: he was in unique rapport with, that nobody should interfere
51:11
Speaker 3: with or could interfere with, and that he had to
51:14
Speaker 3: ascend into this kind of secret place to commune with
51:20
Speaker 3: this other intelligence. And as you said, it was Very
51:24
Speaker 3: important that nobody interfere with it in one way to
51:27
Speaker 3: make sure that is for it to become very secretive.
51:31
Speaker 3: Nobody could say something ill about it or dismiss it
51:34
Speaker 3: as foolish or any number of things that might have happened.
51:40
Speaker 3: But he could commune. And that's the thing is that
51:44
Speaker 3: whether the doll becomes animated as dolls have strangely become
51:50
Speaker 3: in more modern times or whether they are physically animated inanimate,
51:54
Speaker 3: and we animate them totally with our imaginations, that there
51:59
Speaker 3: is something inside of us that wants to bring these
52:02
Speaker 3: things to life. There's a fascination about that and a power,
52:07
Speaker 3: an abiding power in that human capacity. The other thing
52:13
Speaker 3: I just wanted to toss out, which just only now
52:16
Speaker 3: occurs to me, is there are also stories about the
52:22
Speaker 3: reverse happening where people become dolls as well as dolls
52:29
Speaker 3: becoming people.
52:30
Speaker 2: Really?
52:31
Speaker 3: So if you remember that 1950s horror movie with Vincent Price,
52:37
Speaker 3: The House of Wax, and he would lure somebody in
52:41
Speaker 3: and he would murder them and taxidermy them and then
52:45
Speaker 3: coat them in wax and then they would be installed
52:47
Speaker 3: in his wax museum.
52:49
Speaker 2: Oh.
52:50
Speaker 3: So... And then thinking about mummies. I mean, I know
52:53
Speaker 3: mummies weren't thought of as dolls, but in a way,
52:58
Speaker 3: they become these inanimate effigies and are imbued with an
53:03
Speaker 3: enormous amount of hope for the afterlife. And the reborn
53:08
Speaker 3: Osiris is a mummy. So there's something about the animate
53:14
Speaker 3: becoming the inanimate and yet being kept in effigy. And
53:20
Speaker 3: there was... a television uh series and this was done
53:26
Speaker 3: in the 50s as well as well and it was
53:28
Speaker 3: called um evening primrose or evening at primrose it was
53:33
Speaker 3: a stephen sondheim musical it was the only musical he
53:36
Speaker 3: did for television and the story is set in a
53:41
Speaker 3: department store called primrose and um All of the mannequins
53:48
Speaker 3: are actually disenfranchised humans who are secretly residing in the
53:54
Speaker 3: department store. But they hide during the day by being mannequins.
54:00
Speaker 3: And at night, they cast that off and they talk
54:03
Speaker 3: among themselves and have an entire culture and even a government.
54:08
Speaker 3: And one young girl that they had stolen... in infancy
54:12
Speaker 3: in the department store and had absorbed into the community
54:15
Speaker 3: is now a young woman and wants to leave the
54:19
Speaker 3: department store. And they all menace her, and the next
54:22
Speaker 3: thing you know, she's a permanent mannequin. And the Stepford Wives, right,
54:30
Speaker 3: is another turn them into dolls, that the energy in
54:37
Speaker 3: the psyche can flow both ways. Let's make them, turn
54:41
Speaker 3: the doll into a living thing, take the living thing,
54:44
Speaker 3: turn it into a doll. And I think that the
54:48
Speaker 3: plasticity of that attitude, again, speaks to, as you say,
54:54
Speaker 3: the uncanny relationship that we have with dolls.
54:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm thinking about crossing the border between you know,
55:04
Speaker 2: what's alive and what isn't alive. That you have a mummy.
55:10
Speaker 2: You have a stand-in for real life. The Stepford Wives, well,
55:17
Speaker 2: they're still human. They're alive. But they don't have consciousness, really.
55:27
Speaker 2: They're automatons. And then all these things about what is life.
55:33
Speaker 2: And I think what dolls can do is give life
55:40
Speaker 2: to imagination and give life to psyche versus, as Gilgamesh found,
55:52
Speaker 2: the actual ability to create immortality or the ability now
56:00
Speaker 2: with AI that some people think there is really an
56:04
Speaker 2: other out there. And that we long for that. We
56:10
Speaker 2: long for immortality. We long for wisdom, advice, support, compassion.
56:20
Speaker 2: But where it can be found is in our own
56:25
Speaker 2: inner world. The life of imagination that can be facilitated
56:30
Speaker 2: by a little mannequin and a pencil box, something as
56:35
Speaker 2: simple as that. Or it can be facilitated by a very,
56:44
Speaker 2: very simple doll. But the role is to bring us
56:48
Speaker 2: into more life. Is it going toward life or is
56:53
Speaker 2: it not?
56:55
Speaker 3: Right.
56:55
Speaker 2: Would be the question for anybody's use of any of
56:59
Speaker 2: these things.
57:00
Speaker 3: So somebody might purchase or be given a wildly expensive
57:05
Speaker 3: doll i've had an alice ans who inherited some very
57:11
Speaker 3: expensive porcelain creation which really just has never been played
57:15
Speaker 3: with you admire it it's a curio exactly and then
57:21
Speaker 3: the the whole american it was an american.
57:24
Speaker 2: Girl american girl dolls yes.
57:27
Speaker 3: Which are very expensive, and their entire store is dedicated
57:31
Speaker 3: to the adventures and the accessories of these rather substantive
57:37
Speaker 3: American Girl dolls with birth certificates and names and personalities
57:44
Speaker 3: and the whole nine yards.
57:46
Speaker 2: And stories, they're historical. A lot of them, our granddaughter
57:52
Speaker 2: loved them. And there's a whole American Girl store. or
57:57
Speaker 2: was on Fifth Avenue, and you could bring your American
58:03
Speaker 2: Girl doll and take her to tea, and she would
58:08
Speaker 2: have a little jump seat at the table brought, just
58:12
Speaker 2: like a toddler or a baby has. Nevertheless, it was
58:17
Speaker 2: always very, very clear that this is pretend. And if
58:23
Speaker 2: it's pretend, you're using it. If it's not pretend, you're
58:30
Speaker 2: not using it.
58:32
Speaker 3: What I'm finding myself thinking about is the early dolls,
58:36
Speaker 3: like the paddle dolls, which were planks of wood with
58:39
Speaker 3: a bit of hair on them, and that something in
58:43
Speaker 3: us longs to and has successively made the dolls more
58:50
Speaker 3: and more and more human-looking. more perfect, the porcelain dolls.
58:55
Speaker 3: The heads have to be totally realistic, and then they
58:59
Speaker 3: need to have realistic hair on them, and then they
59:02
Speaker 3: need this, and then they need wardrobes, and and then
59:06
Speaker 3: we're going to put little voice boxes in them that
59:10
Speaker 3: you can pull and then they'll move autonomously and so
59:13
Speaker 3: there is this this fantasy inside of us to create
59:17
Speaker 3: the doll and make it increasingly more human and then
59:22
Speaker 3: i think the underlying fantasy is and then somehow life
59:28
Speaker 3: we'll get breathed into our doll, and then we will
59:31
Speaker 3: become like unto gods. I still think that that is
59:34
Speaker 3: still part of it and part of the arc of
59:36
Speaker 3: movement from, I'm happy with a sock and two buttons
59:40
Speaker 3: sewn on his eyes. We're good. We're good to go.
59:42
Speaker 3: Here's a husk I just turned into. It's got legs
59:47
Speaker 3: and arms. Here you go. You make up the rest.
59:50
Speaker 3: To really something that's been going on for a couple
59:53
Speaker 3: of hundred years of making the the doll as perfectly
59:58
Speaker 3: human as possible. And there is something inside of us
1:00:03
Speaker 3: that does that for whatever reason, to good or ill gains,
1:00:07
Speaker 3: for that matter, whether it's confusing or otherwise. But I
1:00:12
Speaker 3: do take what you're saying, Deb, that providing a child
1:00:16
Speaker 3: with something that is decisively incomplete so that their imagination
1:00:24
Speaker 3: then has space to complete it is very important that
1:00:30
Speaker 3: the more complete the toy is, the less space there
1:00:35
Speaker 3: is perhaps for the child to project a wider spectrum
1:00:40
Speaker 3: of their own psyche upon the object and then relate
1:00:44
Speaker 3: to it in play. And there can be a cost
1:00:47
Speaker 3: to that. And sometimes we've all seen this, um, Like
1:00:52
Speaker 3: you'll show up at your goddaughter's birthday. I've done this.
1:00:58
Speaker 3: And then there's all the fancy schmancy gifts of this
1:01:01
Speaker 3: and that. And then there's a big blob of slime,
1:01:04
Speaker 3: a big bucket of slime. And they ignore all the
1:01:08
Speaker 3: fancy stuff because it's too defined. It's too specific. And
1:01:13
Speaker 3: they spend three or four hours making things out of
1:01:17
Speaker 3: the slime, which is like a clay-like substance that they
1:01:21
Speaker 3: can then throw around. So it goes to what you're saying,
1:01:24
Speaker 3: is that even children can sense which objects are likely
1:01:29
Speaker 3: to give them more space to express themselves or to
1:01:35
Speaker 3: manifest the psyche rather than be assigned a certain way
1:01:41
Speaker 3: to play. And that does seem particularly important. And speaking
1:01:48
Speaker 3: about play... I'd like to just take two seconds to
1:01:53
Speaker 3: talk about Dream School, which is a kind of a playground.
1:01:58
Speaker 2: Nice segue.
1:01:59
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. That we have our online learning program,
1:02:05
Speaker 3: Dream School, which you can sign up for. It's become
1:02:08
Speaker 3: a very vibrant and warm community of students, some of
1:02:12
Speaker 3: whom have just started, some of whom have been here
1:02:15
Speaker 3: for a few years. Lisa and Deb and I all
1:02:18
Speaker 3: provide live programming for it as well as other resources
1:02:23
Speaker 3: to teach you how to analyze your own dreams. And
1:02:28
Speaker 3: if one were to really enter into the spirit of it,
1:02:31
Speaker 3: dream analysis is absolutely a form of play, 100%. And
1:02:38
Speaker 3: dreams themselves, I guess, could be thought of as a
1:02:42
Speaker 3: kind of play between the conscious and the unconscious mind.
1:02:45
Speaker 2: We have inner figures in our dreams all the time.
1:02:51
Speaker 2: You know, from the next door neighbor to your third
1:02:55
Speaker 2: grade teacher to, you know, your spouse or a relative.
1:03:03
Speaker 2: And those are inner figures that are inviting us to
1:03:08
Speaker 2: play with them, to enter into the dream imaginably. with
1:03:15
Speaker 2: our waking mind and see what those inner figures want
1:03:20
Speaker 2: to say to us. Why was he in my dream
1:03:25
Speaker 2: or she? I haven't thought of him in years. And
1:03:29
Speaker 2: that takes, I really like this, that takes the dolls
1:03:36
Speaker 2: that children have and these days some adults from literal
1:03:42
Speaker 2: objects in the external world to inner objects who have
1:03:49
Speaker 2: their own independent life, and they do what they do
1:03:54
Speaker 2: in our dreams in order to tell us something about ourselves.
1:04:01
Speaker 3: And we'd love to see you all in dream school,
1:04:04
Speaker 3: and we're going to interpret a dream.
1:04:19
Speaker 2: Okay, let's take a look at this week's dream. Our
1:04:26
Speaker 2: dreamer today is a woman. She's 46 years old. She's
1:04:32
Speaker 2: a teacher. And she says, here's the dream. I am
1:04:37
Speaker 2: in a small house. It is made out of white
1:04:40
Speaker 2: limestone and has many cubby holes as doors. I have
1:04:46
Speaker 2: been here before in some other dreams. It looks like
1:04:49
Speaker 2: a Moroccan kind of house. The father of my son
1:04:53
Speaker 2: Jeremy is there as I came through one of the doors.
1:04:58
Speaker 2: I grab him, rub my bottom against his groin in
1:05:02
Speaker 2: a sexual way and walk away. Now I'm in a
1:05:05
Speaker 2: room and there is a little house like a doll's
1:05:08
Speaker 2: house with things inside. These old ladies walk into the
1:05:12
Speaker 2: room and start emptying. I see a lot of clothes
1:05:16
Speaker 2: when my son walks from when my son was a child,
1:05:20
Speaker 2: around six years old. As I look at them, I
1:05:23
Speaker 2: start sobbing profusely. And for context, she says, I'm living
1:05:28
Speaker 2: in the UK after seven years of living here. I've
1:05:33
Speaker 2: just finished a PhD. I hate my current job. I've
1:05:37
Speaker 2: not seen my son for two years. He left for
1:05:42
Speaker 2: New Zealand when the pandemic started. And the main feelings
1:05:48
Speaker 2: in the dream, she says, I am sad.
1:05:51
Speaker 3: So starting at the beginning, I'm in a small house
1:05:56
Speaker 3: made of white limestone that has many cubbyholes as doors,
1:06:02
Speaker 3: which actually conjures an image of a birdhouse to me,
1:06:06
Speaker 3: as in some of those really large birdhouses.
1:06:09
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
1:06:10
Speaker 3: Have all these little cubbyholes in them, and white limestone.
1:06:15
Speaker 3: Looks like a Moroccan kind of house. So there's some
1:06:22
Speaker 3: quality of antiquity, I think, around it. Something from a
1:06:27
Speaker 3: more ancient world, in some ways, conjured in my imagination.
1:06:32
Speaker 2: What I'm aware of in myself which is worth paying
1:06:38
Speaker 2: attention to in a dream, is what gets evoked in you.
1:06:43
Speaker 2: Sometimes it can be a way into a dream in
1:06:48
Speaker 2: that dreams are essentially, in my view, images of affect.
1:06:55
Speaker 2: So what gets evoked in me is worth paying attention to.
1:06:59
Speaker 2: It doesn't mean that it's, quote, right, unquote, or anything else,
1:07:04
Speaker 2: but it's information.
1:07:05
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
1:07:07
Speaker 2: And this dream evokes a feeling of, what? I'm puzzled.
1:07:14
Speaker 2: I'm confused. I'm kind of all over the place. With
1:07:19
Speaker 2: this small house with cubbyholes as doors, she in real
1:07:27
Speaker 2: life misses her son. The son's father is there. There
1:07:35
Speaker 2: is a sexual... a kind of behavior of rubbing up
1:07:39
Speaker 2: against him. And then within the house, there is a
1:07:44
Speaker 2: little house, and old ladies walk into the room and
1:07:49
Speaker 2: start emptying, and she sees clothes from her son's childhood. So, okay,
1:07:56
Speaker 2: this is like doing a rubbing, and the story is
1:08:00
Speaker 2: getting a little clearer for me, that in this house,
1:08:06
Speaker 2: there is another house with old ladies emptying memories of
1:08:15
Speaker 2: her son from when he was a child.
1:08:21
Speaker 3: So if I think of the dream as medicine, and
1:08:24
Speaker 3: we know that she's sad and feeling isolated, so if
1:08:30
Speaker 3: I think of the father of the son as an
1:08:33
Speaker 3: anonymous figure, for the dream ego to come into kind
1:08:38
Speaker 3: of a friction, you know, with the animus that has
1:08:42
Speaker 3: a kind of erotic dynamism or is seeking that, that's
1:08:48
Speaker 3: kind of like striking flint and steel. It's like looking
1:08:51
Speaker 3: for some energy, looking to create some dynamism in the psyche,
1:08:58
Speaker 3: which sounds like it could be very helpful to her
1:09:01
Speaker 3: because her life right now feels unsatisfactory and she feels
1:09:05
Speaker 3: very isolated. So trying to rouse that inner figure inside
1:09:11
Speaker 3: of her seems like a reasonable effort. It's also an
1:09:17
Speaker 3: attempt to conjure the archetype of the lover. And I
1:09:22
Speaker 3: think for a lot of parents, once they've been parents,
1:09:28
Speaker 3: and mom and dad have constellated so powerfully, and then
1:09:33
Speaker 3: the children go off and they start their own lives,
1:09:37
Speaker 3: it's up to the parents to try to find the
1:09:42
Speaker 3: lover archetype again, which has been sequestered in a very
1:09:47
Speaker 3: substantive way during all the effort to raise a child.
1:09:53
Speaker 3: So the reason I put that out front is it
1:09:57
Speaker 3: looks like there's an attempt to stoke that shift to
1:10:02
Speaker 3: the lover archetype. There's a diminution of playing house. Now
1:10:09
Speaker 3: it's a doll's house with little doll things. And then
1:10:13
Speaker 3: the old ladies who may be servants of the self
1:10:18
Speaker 3: or aspects of the self, start putting away these energies
1:10:25
Speaker 3: of the child, trying to perhaps move her out of
1:10:30
Speaker 3: her over-attachment to the role of mommy, clearing up some
1:10:36
Speaker 3: space for the return of the erotic and the return
1:10:40
Speaker 3: of her relationship to the animus as something that can
1:10:45
Speaker 3: give her meaning and vitality rather than relying on the
1:10:49
Speaker 3: role of the mother to be the thing that gives
1:10:52
Speaker 3: her meaning and vitality.
1:10:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, for me, what you've just said rings true.
1:11:01
Speaker 2: It feels like, yep, that feels like, to me, the
1:11:04
Speaker 2: essential story of the dream. Then we have the question
1:11:10
Speaker 2: of where is this dream going? What does it point
1:11:17
Speaker 2: ahead to? And it seems to really depict an ending
1:11:25
Speaker 2: with the old ladies emptying the six-year-old's clothes and the
1:11:34
Speaker 2: dream ego's ability to grieve this. She says, oh, you know,
1:11:39
Speaker 2: she starts sobbing because they're her son's clothes. So there's grieving.
1:11:47
Speaker 2: Something else has ended. She's living in the UK after
1:11:52
Speaker 2: seven years here. I'm thinking maybe that's the US. I
1:11:58
Speaker 2: just finished a PhD and I hate my current job.
1:12:03
Speaker 2: So those are endings, the completion of the PhD. Whatever
1:12:09
Speaker 2: this job is, maybe... It was necessary while you were
1:12:14
Speaker 2: getting your PhD, but you can now move on. And
1:12:21
Speaker 2: that she hasn't seen her son for two years. So there's,
1:12:27
Speaker 2: in a way, another absence, but also the possibility of
1:12:34
Speaker 2: a new beginning.
1:12:36
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, because the space is not being injured. The
1:12:42
Speaker 3: space is being cleaned out, so then it becomes a
1:12:45
Speaker 3: canvas for any number of new things that want space
1:12:52
Speaker 3: inside of her. I think that if we come back
1:12:57
Speaker 3: to the initial image of the white limestone building, and
1:13:03
Speaker 3: if I just step out a bit and I think
1:13:06
Speaker 3: of the white and the albedo stage, which is associated
1:13:12
Speaker 3: with washing and cleaning things up, and the old ladies
1:13:16
Speaker 3: kind of come in to clean things out, clean things up.
1:13:22
Speaker 3: That's often a stage where projections are being withdrawn, which
1:13:26
Speaker 3: kind of washes the environment clean of the stuff that
1:13:31
Speaker 3: we splatter onto it, which could allow us to see
1:13:34
Speaker 3: things more objectively, perhaps. I think that that whitening process
1:13:42
Speaker 3: is part of this transformation certainly the summoning of eros
1:13:50
Speaker 3: through that little bit of erotic um energy it's just
1:13:56
Speaker 3: a bit of venus and mars not too much just
1:14:00
Speaker 3: a little homage and she is being very agentic i
1:14:05
Speaker 3: mean she goes to the inner masculine she decides she's
1:14:09
Speaker 3: going to seek to rouse some energy and seems very
1:14:15
Speaker 3: comfortable with it, which I think is a very positive, very,
1:14:18
Speaker 3: very positive thing to happen in a dream.
1:14:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'd have to know a lot more about the
1:14:25
Speaker 2: relationship because she doesn't say her partner or her husband. So,
1:14:34
Speaker 2: you know, not quite sure what her associations to this
1:14:39
Speaker 2: would be. But what I am aware of is things
1:14:44
Speaker 2: have ended. And if she's just finished a PhD, something
1:14:54
Speaker 2: new is on the horizon. And I liked what you
1:14:58
Speaker 2: said about the erotic element with the father of her
1:15:05
Speaker 2: son versus the parenting energy. And the grieving and the
1:15:12
Speaker 2: dream for the loss of this six-year-old as the object of,
1:15:21
Speaker 2: we hope, most parents, the object of our erotic energies
1:15:27
Speaker 2: is our kids. Of, you know, all the little things
1:15:32
Speaker 2: and the big things and the special bath toys and
1:15:35
Speaker 2: all the stuff that we do. Our kids are our focus.
1:15:39
Speaker 2: And I think this dream is pointing to things that
1:15:43
Speaker 2: are over, and where are you going? Inside yourself, in
1:15:50
Speaker 2: the world, as possibilities. Time for a new beginning.
1:15:54
Speaker 3: And the old women, Von Franz talks about the tough
1:15:59
Speaker 3: old women that show up in fairy tales, and they
1:16:03
Speaker 3: represent the part of the psyche that just does what
1:16:06
Speaker 3: needs to be done regardless of whether or not the
1:16:09
Speaker 3: ego likes it. I mean, there's an aspect of the
1:16:13
Speaker 3: psyche that just has to disregard the ego in order
1:16:18
Speaker 3: to just get some stuff going there. And von Franz
1:16:23
Speaker 3: admonishes us to not fight the old women. They're doing
1:16:27
Speaker 3: the right thing and They've got to remove this stuff.
1:16:31
Speaker 3: They've got to sort it. Perhaps they're preparing it to
1:16:34
Speaker 3: be scrubbed and washed in the spirit of the White House.
1:16:37
Speaker 3: But to understand that they are not vandalizing your life,
1:16:42
Speaker 3: that they're actually serving an important purpose. And if we
1:16:46
Speaker 3: take the last bit of the dream, where this sobbing
1:16:51
Speaker 3: is released inside of her, we might even say that
1:16:54
Speaker 3: the old women and the taking and sorting of the
1:16:58
Speaker 3: clothing is in service to releasing the grief.
1:17:02
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely.
1:17:04
Speaker 3: Which may have been somehow encapsulated in some way and
1:17:08
Speaker 3: needs to flow, needs to move. And she's given that
1:17:13
Speaker 3: gift in the dream. So I feel very hopeful for
1:17:19
Speaker 3: this dreamer. I think she's on track. I think something
1:17:22
Speaker 3: is happening that's really helpful and important for her. Even
1:17:28
Speaker 3: though it's a short dream, there's a lot packed into
1:17:32
Speaker 3: those few sentences.
1:17:35
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
1:17:39
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