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CAN DREAMS CONNECT US TO THE ANCESTORS? · 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.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: And I'm a Jungian analyst.
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  Speaker 2: In Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Fanny has written a new book called Race and the Unconscious,
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: an Africanist depth psychology perspective on dreaming. So we talked
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: to Fanny today about this new book. We discussed the
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: importance of community, of the ancestors in dreams and dreaming,
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: especially in African cultures. And it was just a great
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: all-around conversation and lovely to have Fannie back on the podcast.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: For the formal biography, Fannie Brewster is a Jungian analyst
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: and a core faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She
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  Speaker 2: completed her analytical training at the C.G. Jung Institute of
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: New York and is a New York State licensed psychoanalyst
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: and certified school psychologist. She holds an MFA degree in
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  Speaker 2: creative nonfiction from Goucher College.
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: Dr.
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  Speaker 2: Brewster is the author of several books, including The Racial Complex,
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: A Jungian Perspective on Culture and Race, Archetypal Grief, Slavery's
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  Speaker 2: Legacy of Intergenerational Child Loss, African Americans and Jungian Psychology,
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  Speaker 2: Leaving the Shadows, and Race and the Unconscious, an Africanist
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  Speaker 2: Depth Psychology Perspective on Dreaming. all published by Rutledge. We'll
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: have links to all of them in the show notes. Dr.
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  Speaker 2: Brewster is a recipient of the Fay Lectures Honorarium of
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: 2023 from the C.G. Young Society of Houston, and she
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  Speaker 2: is also a member of the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: along with me, Deb, and Joseph. So we were so
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: happy to have her. Here's our conversation. Well, Fanny, it
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: is so nice to have you back with us. I
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: think this is your third time on the show, right? Yeah.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: And always nice to have another Philadelphian here as well.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: Thank you. We're across town.
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  Speaker 2: That's nice.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: So tell us about this really fascinating new book. that
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  Speaker 2: I enjoyed so much dipping into. Tell us what made
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  Speaker 2: you want to write this book, or where did this
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  Speaker 2: book come from? Tell us that story.
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  Speaker 3: Okay, so the origins of this book is actually my dissertation.
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  Speaker 3: Seems like another lifetime almost. I started working on that
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: dissertation after I had completed the classroom work at Pacifica.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: And so I had planned at some point, hopefully, to
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: have gotten that dissertation published. And then other books evolved
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  Speaker 3: before this one, clearly. This one was just published this
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: year in June. So that's how it came to be.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: And COVID became a part of our lives. And so
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: I wound up co-authoring a book with a woman. She's
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: a British Jungian analyst, Helen Morgan. during the time period
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: when this book would have actually been published two years ago.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: And so in spending time working on Racial Legacies, which
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: is that book that I co-authored with Helen, this book
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: once again got delayed. But this book has been kind
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: of in the works since I finished that work of
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  Speaker 3: the oral defense at Pacifica and getting my doctorate there
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: in clinical psychology.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Tell the listeners a little bit about your process because
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: you did some independent research for this book, didn't you?
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  Speaker 3: In attending Pacifica, what I noticed was that there were
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  Speaker 3: no books on dreaming that dealt with African-Americans or with
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  Speaker 3: Africanist people. There were none in the bookstore and there
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  Speaker 3: were none in the library. And at the time, Mark Kelly,
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  Speaker 3: who is still there, he's the head research librarian there
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: and head librarian, worked in the bookstore. And I said,
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  Speaker 3: you know, I don't understand. We don't have any books
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  Speaker 3: on Africanist people. And I'm really interested in that in
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: terms of the dream work. In fact, I had come
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  Speaker 3: to Pacifica specifically to study dream work. So I was
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  Speaker 3: curious and disappointed and wanted to know why and So
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: he and I used to have conversations about it. That
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: was almost in the very beginning of my work at
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  Speaker 3: Pacifica in the three years that I was studying there
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  Speaker 3: on campus when I would come to campus. And so
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  Speaker 3: at the end of that time period, as I started
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: thinking about what I wanted to do my dissertation on,
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  Speaker 3: I decided I'd like to do it on dreaming and
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  Speaker 3: wanted to do a study, a year-long dream study with
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  Speaker 3: African-American women And it wasn't completely finalized. You know, first
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  Speaker 3: I did the concept paper and then the proposal. By
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  Speaker 3: the time I was doing the proposal, I was pretty
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  Speaker 3: much into knowing that this was the work that I
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  Speaker 3: wanted to do for that dissertation project. A couple of
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  Speaker 3: people I wanted to do, you know, to be on
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  Speaker 3: my chair were unavailable. And I thought, well, okay, that's
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  Speaker 3: how it is. I still move forward. You know, there
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  Speaker 3: were all these people different parts to doing a dissertation
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  Speaker 3: and being engaged in that work for literally years, the
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  Speaker 3: culmination of all the learning and the experience and really
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  Speaker 3: the life of who you are goes into that dissertation.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, yes.
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  Speaker 3: So that's how it kind of evolved. And then once
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  Speaker 3: finishing the coursework, I came back to New York. I'd
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: been living in Berkeley during the time of my work.
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  Speaker 3: on my initial going to school at dissertation, that level
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  Speaker 3: of the work, attending classes. And then I decided to
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: go back to New York to do the research. So
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  Speaker 3: I wound up at CUNY, City University of New York,
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  Speaker 3: their Brooklyn campus, which had, and probably still does, maybe
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  Speaker 3: even more so now, an extensive library on anthropological studies.
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  Speaker 3: I was interested in the dreams of African people and
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  Speaker 3: those who had heard and recorded those dreams in the
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  Speaker 3: 19th century, basically, early 20th century.
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  Speaker 2: And this is the thing I think that really excites
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  Speaker 2: me about your project is, you know, Jung said that
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  Speaker 2: there is this universal substrate that we all have access to.
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  Speaker 2: So there's this, I mean, I think kind of this
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  Speaker 2: universalist assumption is obviously extremely important in Jungian thought. But
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  Speaker 2: he also spoke sometimes in a way that was really
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  Speaker 2: kind of awkward and flat footed about the importance of culture.
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  Speaker 2: And there is a cultural unconscious and there is a
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  Speaker 2: way that that culture stamps us and it stamps, perhaps
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  Speaker 2: the quality of our unconscious. So, you know, there are
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: these kinds of layers, there's the personal unconscious, and then
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  Speaker 2: maybe there's this cultural unconscious. And then underneath that is
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  Speaker 2: the universal substrate. So What can we learn about the
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  Speaker 2: unconscious of people from a particular culture, from a particular
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  Speaker 2: part of the world? What did you discover?
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  Speaker 3: That's an amazing question. I love that question. You know,
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  Speaker 3: I think about Jungian psychology as a psychology of discovery, right?
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: That's lovely. Yeah, as Jungian analysts, you both know that, right?
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  Speaker 3: That's the work. We don't come in knowing everything. And
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  Speaker 3: Jung talked about that a lot, right? It really is
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  Speaker 3: the work of the unknown. And sometimes people call us cultists, right?
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: Or they have in the past, right? Jungian says cultists.
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  Speaker 3: And I don't mind that, not at all, actually. And
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  Speaker 3: so for myself, I felt that there was so much
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: to discover and to explore here. in looking at African-esque
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  Speaker 3: culture within the context of dream work and within the
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: context of depth psychology. Jung talked about culture. Joseph Henderson
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: out of San Francisco, right, talked about culture, right, in
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: Jungian psychology. Michael Venoy Adams wrote the book Multicultural Imaginations,
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  Speaker 3: beautiful book, which I recommend to absolutely everyone who hasn't
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  Speaker 3: Reddit has a chance to look at it. But looking
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  Speaker 3: at African people and Africanist culture has always been a
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  Speaker 3: problem for us in America, even with the field of psychology,
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: especially within the field of psychology in a way. So
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  Speaker 3: when Jung looked at culture, he could take some of
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  Speaker 3: the goodness, I think, of African culture and look at it.
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  Speaker 3: But then when it came time to say, look at
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: the brilliance of this thing, or look at how this
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  Speaker 3: magnifies culture for everyone. he was not able to do that.
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  Speaker 3: Don't believe. And I think that came out of his
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  Speaker 3: own culture, his own cultural experiences, because culture defines us.
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  Speaker 3: It's not just about the food we eat.
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  Speaker 4: I'm just going to reiterate what Lisa said because I
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  Speaker 4: think it's so important for listeners to get it. And
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  Speaker 4: there's a diagram in Jung of these sort of cones,
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  Speaker 4: one after another, starting with ego at the top and
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  Speaker 4: then family, your nuclear family and extended family and clan
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  Speaker 4: and culture and going all the way down to what
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  Speaker 4: Jung called the central fire. So somewhere four or five
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  Speaker 4: layers down is the cultural substrate that we are all
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  Speaker 4: born into. And as you're talking, Fanny, you're referencing the
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  Speaker 4: cultural substrate that Jung was born into, and he felt
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  Speaker 4: we're all influenced. And we are, of course we are,
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  Speaker 4: by the culture that we're born into, just as we
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  Speaker 4: are by our families and whatever religious tradition we may
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  Speaker 4: have been imbued with. But what I'm thinking about for
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  Speaker 4: your book is how very complicated this is, because with
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: the diaspora, people emigrated to South America and the Caribbean
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  Speaker 4: and the United States, you know, hundreds of years ago.
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  Speaker 4: So what a complicated mix is. of history, trauma, cultural origins.
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  Speaker 3: And more.
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  Speaker 4: You've taken on an incredible, complicated, huge task.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think that it becomes simplified by, and
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  Speaker 3: when we look at the African Holocaust, I think that
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  Speaker 3: that has defined in a very large way Africanist people
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  Speaker 3: who came from Africa and settled in the Caribbean, the
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  Speaker 3: ones who wound up even in the UK, the ones
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  Speaker 3: who came to North America, those ancestors had unique experiences
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  Speaker 3: that were related in kinship. Like you could say someone
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  Speaker 3: from Ireland and someone from England or someone from Wales, right?
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  Speaker 3: Like you have roots that are, that are kind of intertwined, right? Interconnected. And,
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  Speaker 3: you know, someone from Ghana, for example, or Mali or Nigeria,
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  Speaker 3: related in those ways, right? In kinship around African philosophy
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  Speaker 3: or beliefs about the earth, beliefs about what is important
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  Speaker 3: in the family. Those things are culturally there, but interconnected. So,
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  Speaker 3: I think that, you know, when Jung talked about, you know,
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  Speaker 3: in his autobiography, right, Memory Streams, Reflections, he references African people.
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  Speaker 3: And on that trip to Africa, you know, he said
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  Speaker 3: and did some things. Some of them were refined and
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  Speaker 3: some of them were racially negative in a way or
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  Speaker 3: brought up images that were negative. I'll give you an example.
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  Speaker 3: I use the thinking about the whip as a symbol.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: I wrote about that in one of my books, right?
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  Speaker 3: And the whip as a symbol of slavery and how
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  Speaker 3: it was so powerful in hurting and harming and killing
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  Speaker 3: black people on plantations often, right? And Jung, on his trip,
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  Speaker 3: used the whip in one of the dances that he
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: was doing. He got afraid. as he talked about his
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: hair dream, you know, with his Tennessee barber, he said,
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: you know, he had a dream about his Tennessee barber
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  Speaker 3: that getting his hair, getting his haircut and black barber
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: and how it was going to make him go black, right?
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  Speaker 3: So Jung's own fears became evident in his trip to
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  Speaker 3: Africa around raciality. And even though And he used the
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: whip to break people up, he said, at the end
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: of the dance because he felt like everyone was dancing
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  Speaker 3: and getting so excited and it was unnerving for him.
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  Speaker 3: So he took out his whip. And when I first
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: read that, I thought how relevant it was as a symbol,
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  Speaker 3: especially to a black person. Maybe for someone reading that
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  Speaker 3: in his autobiography as a white person, you wouldn't even
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: think that much about it. but looking at my ancestral heritage,
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: I would certainly look at that. So looking at things
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: culturally as a black person is so important and we
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  Speaker 3: haven't had it enough, right? In Jungian psychology or just
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: psychology broadly for others in psychoanalysis who do dream work also. Yes.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: Jungian psychology can feel like the purview of, you know,
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: upper middle class white people. And, uh, to bring in
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: this perspective is so powerful and enriching too. I just
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: loved reading about the importance of dream work in African
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: cultures and what they thought about dreaming and the body
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: and the ancestors and how dreaming, like in many other
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: cultures that we know of, was connected with healing. And
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: it's just so very rich.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it is, you know, and I think
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  Speaker 3: that's one of the main points that we have missed
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: when we look at African and say, for example, Nigerian
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: or Mali culture, South African culture, you know, we're only
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: just catching up now. And a part of that is
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: since the end of the colonization period in Africa, and
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: also since more of our own movement in America, civil
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: rights movement, Black Lives Matter even more recently, that we
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: begin to say, oh yeah, black is beautiful. We know that.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: And so let's expand on that. And what is the
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: richness of our culture? And we can see more of
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: it now in the films that could be produced, the
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: Black Panther, you know, more films that look at Africa
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: and different African societies and not just for one particular
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: thing in one particular way, the old films, the Tarzan movies, right,
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: for example, where black people, black bodies are used to
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: carry packages on the head on safari or something, you know,
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: it really needed to develop out of that image. So
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: image is important. We know that as Jungians. And so
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: it was really important, I think, for us to move
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: away from that 19th century, those 19th century mythologies that
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: were not the narratives of black people, but were the
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: narratives of white people. So there's a lot of richness
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: there that we still have so much to explore. I
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: wish maybe I will come back in 300 years, 400 years,
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: and I could say, wow, and to come back and
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: remember in a reincarnated way. oh, this is where we
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: were at the beginning of the 21st century and look
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: how much deeper we have gone. I do believe, you know,
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: part of my own care about Jungian psychology is that
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: it does allow for the development of richness, even with
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: Jung saying certain things. It's like actually what Jung said
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: is the work that I feel is my work and
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: our work in the 21st century.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Don't say more about that. Say more about that.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that people say Jung was a man
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: of his times. And at first, I had my own
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: pushback against that and an immediate reaction. But then in
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: these last several years, I've come to think more about
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: it within different contexts. And I realized, yes, he was.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: And a part of his understanding for the person that
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: he was coming out of Switzerland, this homo genetics in
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: society was fine for him. And that I have this
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: ability to expand and deepen Jung's work because it's what
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: he said was necessary. And of course, he had contradictions
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: in that, right? Like he would say, okay, we need
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: the associations. But then for the dream study that he
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: did in St. Elizabeth's Hospital with those men, years later
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: in the vision, one of his vision seminars in Europe,
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: someone asked him about what were the dream associations for
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: these men? And he said, oh, it didn't matter, you see.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: And so this way in which things could be discounted
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: has opened up for me as a Black woman, a
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: Black American, Jungian analyst, right, has opened up for me
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: a way to say, well, this is what Jung said.
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  Speaker 3: And so if I believe what Jung said about individuation
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: or how we have to deepen, we move the myth forward,
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: we move the dream forward, then that is my work.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: And I'm called to do that work. And if Jung
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: was here today, would he not want me to do
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: that work?
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: At the end of the 21st century and say, I
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: like what you're doing. Do more of that work. You know,
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: I would like to think that he would feel like
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: that rather than, you know, I'm in opposition. Like it's
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: not an oppositional thing, right? It's definitely not oppositional.
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: The work of really looking at and expanding that cultural substrate,
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: you know, that we all have grown up in. And
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: as you point out, you know, Jung was, Jung grew
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: up in a cultural substrate and at a time when
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: nobody was calling him or other people to really step
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: out of it. And to his credit, he traveled to Africa, India,
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: visited Native Americans here in the U.S. But I think
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: he didn't quite step out of his own cultural framework,
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: but He was curious. And you're, I think, doing the
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: work along with others of really expanding, you know, our
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: mythological substrate of, wait a minute, there is mythology from
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: all over Africa. There's also mythology from.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: All over Asia.
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: We don't have to stick to Grimm's fairy tales anymore.
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: or Greek mythology only, and how can we expand this
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: layer that we share at a yet deeper level as
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: human beings? And I'm aware that your work has been
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: very much also with women. Another unsung, tends to be
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: unheard segment of humanity.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's true. You're saying that, you know, reminds
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: me of just a recent conversation that I had over
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: this weekend when I was working. And this is about
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: our collective, right? Because we talk about how the archetype
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: becomes present in the societies, right? In the collective and
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: how it gets dressed in the clothing, the cultural clothing, right?
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: of what's going on in the moment. And Jung talked
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: a lot about how we as individuals, like it's the
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: individual and it's the collective. That's the relationship, isn't it?
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: It's not I have and I got what I needed
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: and now I'm in this little corner by myself. The
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: work is to be able to go back into the
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: collective and to have conversations and to bring something if
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: you find something of value, like you have done with
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: your this Jungian life, right? Broadening and deepening consciousness in
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: our lives, in the collective. So over the weekend, of course,
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: with what's going on in the Middle East, we are
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: all in a way of being constellated, all of us.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: It's in the conversations with our patients, I'm sure. It
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: is with me. It's in the talks that we have
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: with groups and with people other individuals. It's stories you read.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: It's everywhere. And so a part of, in the last week,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: what has become, has had more energy and charge is
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: the story around the rape and the sexualized horror that
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: happened for women that were Israeli women. And how now
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: we have voices. Some of these women spoke out last
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: week and said, why have we not heard about this
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: more in the news? Why have we not heard about
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: the sexual assault that happened with these women? And so
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: I think that it's important that, yes, we do the
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: work of the individual and think about it with the
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: collective because individuals that come to us to do this
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: work in the temenos, in that space, are experiencing the
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: trauma also of what's going on out there, even though
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: it's not They're not in Gaza in this moment, but
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: we are all feeling the trauma on some level in
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: the way because of how we're connected in consciousness, right?
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: We're all feeling that. So, and women, women's voices saying,
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: what about us? What about our story and us being
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: hurt and traumatized in this moment? And so, yes, Going
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: back to your question, Deb, about myself and women, I
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: have moved more and more towards working with women's groups,
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: calling them sacred circles in my work. In the beginning,
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: I was thinking they would just be sacred circles for
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: men and women, and it didn't develop in that way.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: And finally, I understood more and more that the circles
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: were for women, and it echoed my own work with
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: women circles that I had done in the 80s in California.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: And I'm having two women facilitators in the way that
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: you two are today, facilitating our talk together, right? And
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: realizing that, well, for myself, I had an analyst who
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: was very much engaged in feminine, the emergence of the
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: feminine within psychology. and had written about that. And so
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: I came through my own training with women. Claire Douglas
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: was one of my teachers at Pacifica, you know, yes.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: Looking at women who were on the edge of discovery, right.
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: And being able to not certainly we're past inner discovery,
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: but outer discovery and being able to say, what is
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: that edge of the feminine needing to emerge more and
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: differently and, What does that look like? And so they
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: were women that preceded me. So I feel in a
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: way that I carry somewhat of a torch in that
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: tradition for those women.
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: And it seems from your book also very much related
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: to what you talk about in your book as the
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: matrilineal African or Africanist tradition. So the two are very connected.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel that. And, you know, this dream book,
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: I dedicated it to my grandmother.
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: Yes, Rebecca.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, to my grandmother. That's my middle name, one of
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: my middle names. I have a confirmation middle name also
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: from confirmation when I was 12 years old. But yes,
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: from my birth middle name, from my two grandmothers, Rebecca
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: is my middle name. Yeah, so there is this consideration
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: and love and respect and always trying to have a
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: remembrance of the women that I have come from and
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: my women ancestors who got me to this space. Because
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: it's true that, you know, like we don't arrive here
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: by ourselves. We do not arrive here by ourselves. No,
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: we do not.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: You know, I found all of the discussion about the
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: ancestors in the book really poignant. And just like you're saying, Fanny,
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: I think especially as Americans, we don't have much of
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: a sense of the generations that preceded us or where
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: they came from. There's this kind of cutoff for most
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: of us where we don't maybe even know where our
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: family originated from. I mean, there's We all love to
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: do 23andMe, but it's a surprise. It's like, oh, really?
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: I'm from that part of the world? I didn't even know.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: So there's a way we're all kind of rootless here,
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: most of us, unless we're indigenous to this continent. And
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: I loved the discussion in the book about the Xhosa
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: believed that the ancestors speak to us through dreams. And
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: if the dreams stop, it means the ancestors have are
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: kind of not available. So, you know, we've always, in
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: various cultures, believed that dreams came as a source of
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: wisdom and guidance. And some cultures have focused on dreams
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: as a way to communicate with God. But what a
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: beautiful thing that dreams are the ways that the ancestors
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: speak to us each night. And I don't know if
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: You know, is that something that you found in your
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: own life or your own clinical practice? I mean, I
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: can certainly say that I have had people kind of
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: come in and say, yeah, I kind of was guided
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: by the ancestors last night. So I'm just wondering, Fanny,
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: what your experience is of that.
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it reminds me of the dream
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: that I had that said that I– that was guiding
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: me to become a Jungian analyst. When I left and
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: did that work, I had no, I had no intention
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: or idea to become a Jungian analyst. Right. I was
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: just trying to go to New York to do that research,
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: to finish the dissertation.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: Like, Oh, okay. I'm going to go do that. And
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: having the, you know, the anxiety around that.
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: So I, I was in New York about a year ago.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: after having left Pacifica before I did analysis to begin
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: with the Jungian. And I had never done work with
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: the Jungian before. And so I started my work. I
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: think I was in analysis maybe a couple of years
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: or a year and a half. And I had a
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: dream and I told the analyst my dream. And I said,
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: you know, I think this dream is about me becoming
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: a Jungian analyst. And she said, well, no, Maybe it is.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: And I said, I just can't believe that. You know,
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: I was kind of like a naysayer. You know how
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: you get the call? Oh yeah.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, you get the call and then you refuse the call.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: I had that too.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: So, so Fannie, are you, are you going to tell
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: us the dream? Well, I don't want to put you
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: on the spot.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: But attempted to tell you the dream. So in the dream,
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: there was a man. And he was, he looked, he
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: was a brown man. And I went to him because
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: I said, there's something going on with me and I
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: don't feel well. I said, I don't know what's happening,
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: but I don't feel good. And he said, of course
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: you don't. You have to open your this door. In
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: the dream, he pointed to my nose and here. He said,
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: you have to open this more here. And he said
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: a few other words. And he said, and then you
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: would feel better. And it's what you need to do.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: And so I, with a few other associations at the
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: time that I discussed with the analyst, my analyst, I
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: understood that it was really the call It was really
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: the call to do the work and to open from
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: this center, right, which is I consider my intuitive center, right,
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: this place where intuition happens. I consider myself to be
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: an intuitive type, and I needed to breathe more deeply
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: and to breathe into that space and to have the
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: healing happen here, and that that was going to happen
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: through becoming a Jungian analyst and doing the work. So
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: my analyst and I talked about and I said, you know,
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: I said, OK, I trust my dreams. I believe in
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: my dreams. And yet I'm not so sure about this
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: thing about becoming a Jungian analyst. I said, anyway, it's
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: too late. I said, they've already closed probably the admissions
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: for the year. And she said, well, you know, well,
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: it's too late. I'm not even going to bother. And
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: she said, well, I think you might want to check
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: it out and see and apply anyway. She said, what
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: do you have to lose? The eternal optimist, my analyst, right?
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: And I said, sure, I'll check it out. And so
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: I applied and I was accepted. So, yeah, so I
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: think that was my dream calling me into this work.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: And like I said, I never left Pacifica, even though
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: I had loved Pacifica. the work that I had done
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: at Pacifica. And it encouraged me when I thought about
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: it later on to become a Jungian analyst because I
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: had loved that work so much at Pacifica, the dream work,
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: the work around phenomenology, the work around mythology. I mean,
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: it was so beautiful to be in that space doing
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: that work there. So that part of me resonated a
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: lot with the idea of becoming a Jungian analyst. Because
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: I thought, oh, I'm going to do much more of that.
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: It's going to be great.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting because one of the things I
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: highlighted in your book was about the Sangomas who always
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: were called to their profession by a dream, right? If
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: I understood. Although apparently, according to your book, the dreams
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: in which a Sangoma is called invariably involve a snake.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: So you didn't have a snake in your dream, but
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: there is that sense of being called in a dream.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: Yes, it's amazing. I have had so many snake dreams
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: and continued snake as my totem. Right. Snake. Yeah, like Jung. Yes.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: And so one of the very first dreams that I
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: had when I started Jungian analysis was I consider myself
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: to have had a series of dreams in the beginning
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: of work of my analysis, I look back now and
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: I can say, you know how we look at dreams
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: and we say, oh, that's the initial dream. I felt
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: like a series of initial dreams that had to do
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: with the feminine, that had to do with the call,
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: and that had to do with defining my creature, my
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: animal spirit in the work. And it wound up being snake,
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: which of course I didn't like I, of course, wanted
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: another animal.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: You didn't want to be a Slytherin?
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: I did not want that because I had a fear
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: of them. Growing up in the South, when I was young,
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: there was always like be cautious about the snakes and
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: what color they were.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: The snakes in the South are not the same thing
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: as the snakes in Philadelphia.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Actually, there was one out in the yard this summer.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: And it was hot. It was warm. And I went
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: out the back door and I went, oh, my gosh,
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: there's a snake. It was brown. It was a pretty
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: cocoa-colored brown. And it stopped when I came out. It
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: was about three feet long. Wow. And it was headed
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: to the creek, I think, because we have a creek
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: near the house. And I think it was headed that way.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: So everything is kind of going downhill towards this creek.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: And I think it was headed that way. But we
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: have deer. We have all kinds of things. That was
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: the only time I saw the snake, but we've had
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: some snake skin in the basement of the house. We
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: have found... Oh, oh, oh. Yeah, but babies, right? Babies,
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: they got caught on what is the crickets, you see,
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: because we also have those. So there's a lot of
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: wildlife near this creek, even though I'm only like 14
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: miles from Philadelphia in this town.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: It's amazing. That's great.
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm... thinking about the themes you discovered with
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: the people whose dreams you recorded and tracked. And that
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: one of the major themes, there was family and groups.
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: And then travel motifs.
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: And I wonder if you could talk some about those
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: as guiding themes for people who are here, women, women
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: of color, that those three things stood out so much.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there is a man, Dr. Bynum, Bruce Edward Bynum.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: He is at University of Massachusetts, African-American, who has written
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: several books. And one of them is about black family
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: dreaming and looking at family dreams and how we dream together. uh,
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: as family. So I, I love his work and have
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: a lot of respect for it. He's a colleague of
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: mine and, um, we're together on the, um, International Association,
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: the IASG, um, for the study.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: International Association for the Study of Dreams.
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. We are there together, um, in being a
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: part of that group. And so there's quite a bit,
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: I think, that can happen with us in dreaming with family,
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: family dreaming, right? And dreaming about kin. And I think
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: a part of it goes to ancestral dreaming, right? Dreaming
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: about our ancestors. But I think it also showed up
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: in the dreams of these women where they all had
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: dreams about their families. And so in the book, I
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: talk about that, right? And they, in the interviews with me,
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: because we were together doing interviews and talking about related associations,
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: and one of them most importantly was about family and
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: how they said that dreaming about their families was really
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: significant and meant something to them about developing relationships with
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: these family members. and how they could become more bonded
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: and engaged with their dream life through the dream images
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: of the family that showed to them as well as
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: in their wake state. So there was just this connection,
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: this interweaving between the wake state and the dream state
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: that could be partly connected by the fabric of family
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: because it connects. deepen intimacy and bring them closer together
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: and to help them have a better understanding of who
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: their family really was and what was going on with
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: them in the relationship with family.
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: I found that so touching because what I'm am aware
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: of in Jungian studies and from Jung is how much
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: he emphasizes individuating and having to take a stand apart
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: from family and apart from culture to step outside those
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: areas that we're so immersed in. And that this presented
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: the other side of yes and.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: What about deepening connection? What about deepening closeness? What about
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: deepening understanding of relationship to family?
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love how you said that, Deb. That's great. Yeah,
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: because I think that that is so important. And, you know,
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: a part of, you know, what Jung said, you know,
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: is that African people could not individuate. You know, he
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: did say that. And You know, it could be surprising
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: to some people that he would say that, but we
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: have to shine the light on some of the things
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: that he said so that we can come to what
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: you just said about how we need to be in
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: relationship and how we need to be with one another
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: and how our culture allows us to be that. Find
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: those places where we could have estrangement So then we
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: could say, oh, this is where I feel disconnected. How
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: do I find the love? How do I find the
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: connection of being with another, right? Whether it's a blood
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: other or an other in the world. How do I
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: find that, right? And so I think we need both.
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: We need Jung to say, well, there's no individuation possible here.
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: And then we need to come up against that and say,
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: how do I shine the light on this idea that
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: is not correct for people? We bring relationship, love, care, affection, intimacy,
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: because that's the work that we are aiming at in
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: the temenos when we do that work. That is the
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: alchemical experience that we are wanting in that work, what
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: you just said, Deb, right?
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's beautiful.
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: And if we expand it, you know, from the Temenos,
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: the consulting room, work with an analyst, re-approaching family, friends, community,
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: and the world at large of how do we also emphasize, grow,
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: and honor connection. And doesn't the world... Need that now.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: We definitely need that. And I also want to say that,
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: you know, it can be hard for us, right, us
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: in the world, even within our own communities. You and
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: me in communities sometimes can be very difficult to be
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: in a way of connection. And we can have ideas
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: about people. As I could find, I came out of
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: the New York community. That's why I did my training
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: and have bonds with some people there that are very
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: loving and caring and wonderful. And there are some bonds
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: that have been, you know, damaged and because people are
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: still referencing, you know, from over a decade ago and
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: looking at, you know, what happened over a decade ago.
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: And we know that the New York Institute moved in
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: and we formed the JPA. another New York-based Jungian group.
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: And there's room for all of us, all of us,
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: every single one of us. There's room for every culture.
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: There's room for everything. Because that was what Jung said.
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: I'm not just saying that. That's part of Jungian philosophy,
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: isn't it?
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: It absolutely is. It's a bedrock. It's a central plank.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: You know, everything belongs.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: Everything belongs. That's exactly one belongs. We have to figure
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: out how to embrace those connections rather than, you know,
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: oftentimes holding projections or, you know, thinking, oh, this is bad. Well,
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: if it is bad, let's shine some light on it.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: If it is shadow, like, oh, let's look at it
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: more deeply. How do we approach it better than cutting
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: it out or refusing to admit it? Yeah. Right. We
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: have to admit everything. Everything belongs. Everyone belongs.
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: You know, Fannie, a few minutes ago, you joked about
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: it being a cult. And I mean, I can appreciate that.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: I remember one of our colleagues when we were in training,
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: she used to joke about how her family was going
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: to have to do an intervention.
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: They were so horrified by the things they heard about
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: training that they were like going to hire a cult
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: intervention specialist and get her out. But what I actually
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: appreciate about the Jungian world that I know, and I
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: know not every corner is like this, but that, you know,
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: there really is no dogma. And at least in the
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: training that we received, we were really encouraged to figure
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: out what didn't work for us. synthesize other thinkers, you know,
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: know Freud deeply, know beyond deeply, bring that in however
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: we wanted. We were explicitly encouraged to kind of make
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: Jung our own, which I think is actually a sign
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: it's not a cult. And I love what you said
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: earlier about how this work is work of discovery and
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: its essence is in kind of constantly being open to
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: new things and Jung has this place in the Zarathustra
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: lectures where he talks about when you find something that's true,
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: you know, taste it, eat it, see how it, you know,
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: is it really right? You know, so it's his kind
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: of phenomenological approach, which just says, you know, kind of
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: does this work? Does it really work? So there is
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: this kind of built-in mechanism for I want to say
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: kind of reform and incorporating new things, you know, and
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: like you're saying, it's an essential part of it. And
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: so we're called to question what feels true, what doesn't
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: feel true. And I think, again, given permission to say,
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: this doesn't actually hold water, or at least it doesn't
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: hold water for me. It doesn't hold water anymore. Fannie,
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: remind me, were you in Vienna in 2019? I don't
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: think you were, were you?
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: I didn't go, yes.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: Because I remember, and I wish I had a little
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: tighter grasp on this, but Deb, maybe you'll have a
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: memory too, but there were some South Africans there. I
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: don't think they were analysts, but they may have been
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: psychologists or dream workers with a kind of interest in
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: Jungian psychology, and they had come as a group and
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: were presenting. And at some point, they were talking about
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: you know, this really horrendously, uh, racist thing that Jung had.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: I think it was one of his dreams that had this,
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: this had this image of a, of a, um, an
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: African person in it. And Jung, the way he spoke
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: about it was, was really pretty, um, limited and, and
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: distasteful and uncomfortable. And they said, they said, um, yes,
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: this is racist and don't throw the baby out with
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: the bath water. That that's, that's, and it was, um,
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: And I think it's very much in the spirit of
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: what you're saying. It's, yeah, let's reevaluate this. Let's revisit it.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: There's something here. The core of it is solid and
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: it gives us tools to make it better all the time.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: Something like that.
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely. And, you know, we have also one of
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: the tenants, I think, of Jungian psychology is that the
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: remedy is in the poison. So remedy is in the poison.
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: then yes, of course. Then we have to look to
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: Jungian psychology. So for example, when I wrote Archetypal Grief,
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: Slavery's Intergenerational Loss of Children, it's writing that book, looking
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: through the lens of grief and looking through archetypal grief. Yes,
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: it's archetypal, the grief that happened for black women going
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: through slavery for generations and child loss that's happened So
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: it's like, to me, it's using the work that Jung
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: promoted himself, that he created from his thinking. What do
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: we need here? The racial complex, that book that I wrote,
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: development of his work from over 100 years ago called
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: The Color Complex. He didn't say very much about it,
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: but he said something about it. And he recognized that
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: there were racial differences and differences. I don't agree with
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: everything he said about what he said about the racial
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: complex at the time, but it gave me an opening
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: to look at that concept and to develop something you see.
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: And so that to me is the work of deconstruction.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: There's an idea there. There's a principle. How do I
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: look at it? I don't turn away from it. I
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: look right at it and say, what do I see here?
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: What can I see here? What can shift here? It's
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: no longer the 19th century. We're in the 21st century.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: We've got to be looking at things we don't want
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: to see. We don't want to see them. They're painful.
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: They're hard. Some of them are glorious and beautiful. And
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: We have to embrace all of it, right? Because it's everything.
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: That's one of our principles as Yumians doing depth psychological work.
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: What I'm so appreciating in your stance, Fanny, and in
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: the stance you referenced, Lisa, of people from South Africa
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: at the conference in Vienna, is To be able to
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: look at things that are hard, as you have in
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: the racial complex and archetypal grief in this book.
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: It's hard.
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: And we can take a look at what Jung thought
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: and wrote and said, deconstruct it, and move things on
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: so that things are better connected. And I really like
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: how you're bringing his concept. I think overall, the concept
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: of individuation is not just individualist.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, yes.
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: It should and does connect us more with each other
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: and with other groups that we don't know about, other
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: traditions that we don't know about, other mythologies that we
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: don't know about. So if we can go deeper.
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: We can go broader. And that's the work.
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: And that's the work.
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: It is really looking at the shadow, right? That's a
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: large part of our work that we do, and we
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: acknowledge that. And then we can fall deeper. And sometimes
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: it is this falling experience, right? It's falling, falling, and
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: trusting that there is having faith, that there is somewhere.
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: to land that, of course, it's uncomfortable. Of course, it's hard.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: That's life. There is suffering. It's going to happen, right?
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: It's definitely going to happen.
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: You know, it is hard and it is uncomfortable, but
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: there is also a rightness and a certain kind of
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: joy in it. And I think joy has a ferocity
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: in it. But when something is right and it moves
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: us and it's challenging and it's hard, but it's also nutritious.
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: It's like, whoa, it draws us. So it's not just
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: arduous and, oh, gosh, I have to do this. It's
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: very enlivening as well.
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: That's right. And getting that spontaneity to it is amazing.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: And I think of it as delicious food.
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's great. Delicious and nutritious. Can I drop in
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: some quotes? We're talking about individuation. Okay. Jung said, individuation
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: does not shut one out from the world, but gathers
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: the world to oneself. And the other one is, life
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: makes no sense if completely detached. We are only complete
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: in a community or in a relationship. There is no
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: possibility of individuation on the top of Mount Everest. where
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: you are sure that nobody will ever bother you. Individuation
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: always means relationship.
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: That's wonderful. Yeah, it does. I think it does because
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: otherwise what's the point of it?
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: What's the point of like, and, and individuation continues through
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: the lifetime. It doesn't end. Right. It doesn't, Like, oh,
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: I'm healed, really? Right.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: Wait, I thought I got individuated when I finished training.
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: Is that not true? That would have been so fabulous.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: Check, check, check.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: With that.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: I'm done. I'm cooked. Yeah, no, not.
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: That's right. Fannie, you grew up in a community. Mm-hmm.
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: This is really, I don't know, something that is bred
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: in your bone that you've worked with and worked on
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: and written about that you know from, you know, day one.
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: And I would love for you to talk a little
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: bit about feeling and the spirit and what, you know,
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: more about community.
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I love that question. Yeah, I feel like
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: I have come of age in different communities. You know,
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: I really do. I feel that there is my birth community.
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: I was born in my grandmother's house. She was my midwife.
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: So she brought me into the world. My grandmother, Rebecca,
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: the individual I devoted my book to, my dream book,
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: my father's mother. So I had that. community right at
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: the very beginning, coming into that house. You know, my
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: parents lived there in that house with my grandparents at
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: the time. So I feel like I came into this,
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: this family that was just there and ready to hold,
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: you know, my grandfather, grandmother, like we all live there
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: in the same house. Nowadays people are coming back to bring,
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: and they have in-law units that they could build for
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: their families and, And we all lived in that same house,
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: which didn't have that much space at the time, looking back.
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: But we all lived there. So that was my first community.
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: And I had a community that circled that was the
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: AME Church, which my ancestors, my grandparents, my great-grandparents had
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: belonged to for generations in that town, right? That was
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: actually the land of previous barony from that South Carolina community.
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: community from slavery and the plantation land. And so I
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: had that community of the church. And I started going
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: to school, very young kindergarten in Catholic school. So I
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: had that experience of being in the church, in both churches, right?
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: So I felt like I had a community of religions
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: And from both places, plus I had the spirituality that
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: was a part of my own family culture that I
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: mostly was getting from my grandmother, as well as from
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: my father and my mother as well. And my mother's sibling,
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: her sister was there, my Aunt Lena. And so I
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: grew up being in her house and being in her home.
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: And so religion, the Baptist church was across the road
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: from my aunt's house. She was there on Sundays. And
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: so religion was very much a part of the family.
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: So I was held in a spiritual community, a religious
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: community there. And then as I got older and continuing
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: in Catholic school, I feel that the nuns that taught
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: me also were part of my community. I had black
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: nuns that came from New York that were my first teachers,
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: beginning in kindergarten. The school, of course, was segregated. And
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: so those black nuns in my segregated black school were
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: my first teachers and mothers in a way. So I
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: had this community of teacher mothers from the very beginning.
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: So they were also my community. And so I feel
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: like my life has been layered with community through the years.
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: Nested in these different communities.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: That's beautiful.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: Oh, thank you. Yeah, thank you. So as I work
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: in doing more groups now, which, you know, is not
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: typically Jungian, but as I work to do these groups,
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking, of course, this is what I would be
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: drawn to and wanting to do, wanting to have community
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: and to help create community with women and help create
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: community with anyone that wanted it, because I think it's
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: really important. Community is so important.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: And related to it, Fanny, I know you just spoke
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: about spirituality and you talked about the importance of the
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: church as one of the communities. And I know that
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: spirituality was one of the things that you explored in
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: your research in the book. And of course, you know,
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: the book kind of traces the importance of dreaming in
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: traditional African culture's that dreams had a spiritual significance. Can
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: you just talk about that aspect a little bit more,
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: about dreams and spirituality and if there's a particular way
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: that manifests either in African cultures or in Africanist people?
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: I think that oftentimes we think about it coming through
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: the ancestors, right?
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: And them bringing us ways of knowing. Like the man
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: who showed up in my dream and said, this is
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: what you need to develop. You need to develop this
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: chakra here, this sense of breathing from the nostrils. Make
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: them wider. Make them bigger. There's nothing wrong with them
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: that you have broad nostrils. This is a part of
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: your physical being. your characters, right? So I think that
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: we have a learning, a teaching that happens. I certainly
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: had that with my grandmother around spirits and individuals who
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: had passed on and how the spiritual life is continuous.
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: It's on a continuum. The spiritual life is not, okay,
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: I went to church and so I'm done. I went
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: to church today or I got confirmed and I'm finished.
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: Now I'm truly a soldier in the army of Jesus.
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: I'm ready to become a martyr, right? Part of Catholicism, right? Okay,
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: one can hold that. It's an idea. It's part of
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: the teaching that others had to pray me out of purgatory.
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: that I could not pray myself out of purgatory, that
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: others had to save me. One of the tenets of Catholicism, right,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: that I was taught, right, that you needed others to
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: pray for you in order to get out of there, right?
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: So then in Africanist thinking or religion could be the idea, well,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: you know, this life is on a continuum and the
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: ancestors that came before can still be with me. It
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: takes generations now. generation after generation after generation for someone
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: to be lost back in the stars, let me say,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: back in the spiritual space of beingness, capital B, right?
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: And then they could be rebirthed. An idea I wrote
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: about this in one of my books comes that they
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: are waiting in the room to come back. It's reincarnation,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: principle of reincarnation, right? Waiting to be born. And we
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: hear how Oh, this person looks just like uncle so-and-so
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: or like, look at how they are. They're bringing back
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: this person that was from two generations ago, right? They're
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: bringing back, revisiting them and bringing back their spirit. So
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: the idea is not that it ends. The life is
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: not ending. The life is not ending. Like the dream
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: is not ending.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: Then that that's just what we said a minute ago
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: about individuation, right? Is it never really stops or even
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: the development of union psychology, it keeps on developing, it
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: keeps on changing, there's more. And I'm so glad, Fannie,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: that we came back to your dream, because I was aware.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: I had asked you about the ancestors and you talked
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: about that dream and then we got, I think I
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: pulled us off topic. But yeah, so the man in
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: your dream was perhaps an ancestor and he was also
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: really inviting you to claim your ancestry.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: I think that that's true and to claim it through
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: the work. And the work, I think working, I guess
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: that word capital W or in quotes has always been
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: important for me. you know, an important aspect of my
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: personality and who I am. And, and I, and I
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: enjoy working. I enjoy the space of wanting to know
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: more and not only wanting to know more, but how
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: is it of benefit for someone else? It's not just
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: that I gain knowledge. How is it of support and
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: caring for another? Because that's truly being human and relational,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: Well, Fanny, your new book is called Race and the Unconscious,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: Dreaming in Color. And we will have that linked in
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: the show notes. How else can people find you? Where
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: should people look for you online?
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm going to give you the updated title
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: of my book. Actually, yes. And I'm going to show
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: you the cover, which I love. It was designed by
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: a woman, Danielle Hunter. Lovely. And this couple with a child,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: they're going through what could look like a dream, a
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: field of cotton. And there's an open there where clearly
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: change is happening, walking a different path, right? So Race
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: and the Unconscious, an Africanist perspective, an Africanist depth psychology
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: perspective on dreaming. Yeah, we changed that title. Okay. Yeah,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: the editor and I had changed that. Someone could Google me,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: or they could go to the sign and look for
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: the book.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: We will put links in so it's easy to find. And, Fannie,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: we're so grateful for you coming on. We loved being
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: with you, as always. Yeah, thank you. And hopefully you
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: and I will be able to get together again sometime
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: in person. We did that over the summer.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be lovely. And we'll see each other
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: for our next Pasha meeting, hopefully in January. So we'll
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: see each other next month.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts, of which
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: we are all members.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: Yes. It won't be far. I want to say thank
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: you both very much. And thank you again for this
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: Jungian life. I think it has helped and enriched a
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: lot of people that have contacted me and said, I
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: heard about this Jungian life and I was curious more
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: about Jungian psychology. And I think that you have brought
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: so much. speak of richness to individuals. And I deeply
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: appreciate both of you for the work that you do.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: And I'm looking forward to seeing you both. Hello, listeners.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 4: Here we are headed into holiday season, all kinds of
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: things for lots of people, and the end of the year.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: And this is a time when we often reflect on
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: with gratitude for what we have been given. And so
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 4: I would like to say thank you for listening to
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: the podcast and especially for supporting us as patrons. We
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: really appreciate it. And thank you very much for all
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 4: the ways in which you support us on this Jungian life.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: Happy holidays to all of you.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: And I will bring a holiday reminder about Dream School.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: Now is the time to join Dream School. You can
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: get 10% off if you use the code HOLIDAY2023, and
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: that's HOLIDAY with a capital H. And we have a
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: new ability where you can gift Dream School. So just
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: go to the website and thisunionlife.com. And you can click
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: on Join Dream School. And then if you choose the
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: option for a single payment, there's a little checkbox that says,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: Is this a gift? And I must say that I
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: think a year of Dream School makes a terrific holiday present.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: So see you there.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: This dream is from a woman who's 73 years old.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: She's a retired scientist and a volunteer teacher. She's entitled
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 4: her dream encounter in the library. And she says as
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: a preliminary orientation, my dream was set up after reading
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: Jung's autobiography, memories, dreams, and reflections. I wanted to know
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: if I was fit for the life of a Jungian analyst.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: I set up the dream by asking that question. And
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: here's the dream. I found myself in a beautiful old
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 4: library with a dark, rich oriental carpet, comfortable leather chair,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: and surrounded floor to ceiling by many books. The lighting
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: was low. To my surprise, I found about a nine-month-old
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: baby girl sitting in the middle of the floor. I
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: immediately had an overwhelming love for that baby. However, there
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: was something wrong with her head. It was not visible,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: yet I knew there was something wrong. Despite this, I
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 4: felt so much love for her. It did not matter
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: that there was an invisible problem.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: The dream ended. I felt at peace.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: And she adds for context that she's studying Jungian psychology.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: At a university.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: The main feelings in the dream were love. And then
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 4: she adds, The baby represented me and clearly I had
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 4: positive feelings toward her library, love libraries. So with all that,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 4: let's dive in.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: Well, I immediately know what this dream means.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: Oh, well then.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: It means that if you want to become a Jungian analyst,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: there's something wrong with your head.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 4: You know, that's hilarious and yet There it is. It's hilariously,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 4: it's the opposite. That's exactly right, that there's the shadow.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: Well, I was being a little bit funny.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 4: I know, but it's also there.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: You need to have your head examined if that's what
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: you want to do. But yeah, there's the shadow. I mean, well,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: I don't know, Deb, what did you take from this dream?
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: What thoughts do you have?
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 4: Well, I had a couple thoughts. I thought, in a way,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: what our dreamer has done is she set up a
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: dream incubation.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: And so I'm just going to, we've talked about it before,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: but I'm going to reiterate that. Reading Jung's memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 4: It is a page-turning must-read about his own internal life.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 4: It's so moving and important. Really, all his main ideas
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: are there. I've read it and reread it I don't
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: know how many times. So she incubated this dream. And
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 4: then where is she? She's in a library. Well, we
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 4: go to explanation of what is a library. A library
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: is a source of knowledge, a source of information. There's
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 4: information about all kinds of things. It's not overly restricted
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: at all. And it has a kind of old world feel,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: you know, of classic, wonderful, old school library with its
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 4: oriental carpet and the dim lighting. I associate it to
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: the New York Public Library, which is, is so evocative
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 4: of the spirit that a library can really contain. And
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: then there's this baby in the middle of the room,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 4: something young, something new, nine months old, which is sort of,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: the baby is nine months old, but nine months is
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: also the period of gestation for something to be, to
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: something to be born and I'm thinking here's our dreamer
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 4: who's 73 can she can she really be a Jungian
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: analyst is this going to be uh the right fit
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 4: for her and I think your comment is apropos.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: I offered it in jest I know.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: You did but but I it is apropos if you
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: want to do this what's wrong here It's a long,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: arduous path. And I know, you know, when we were
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: talking with Fannie on the podcast, you know, you joked
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: of somebody where they were going to have somebody come
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 4: and reprogram her. And many times my family wanted me
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 4: to drop out. So there is that question of what
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: are you doing? What are you thinking?
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: Well, and maybe to frame it a little bit differently,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: you know, the thing about and dream incubation, of course,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: we have a whole episode on dream incubation, but it's
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: essentially where you kind of ask the unconscious to weigh
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: in on something. But I think that in some ways,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: the unconscious is usually not as interested in the exact
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: form that something takes in our outer life. So I
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: think I'm mostly where you are, Deb, but maybe just
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: a little different emphasis. This library is beautiful. And it
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: does evoke a kind of typical, you know, analyst's office.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: I've got my, I don't know that you can see it,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: but I've got my oriental, maybe I'll just show you
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: my oriental rug.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: Oriental rug.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: And my books and, you know. So, yeah, it's kind of,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: it sort of looks like the typical analyst's office in
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: a way with all the books.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: And it feels good, and then there's this baby. So
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: it's a space. Let's put it this way. Her interest
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: in Jungian thought is a space in which something new
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: and tender can emerge that she can connect with in love.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: So a new aspect of herself can emerge. So the
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: unconscious is clearly sort of giving a thumbs up on
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: her interest in this topic. or the space that it's
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: creating in her life. But I don't know that the
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: unconscious is particularly weighing in on kind of undertaking a
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: specific course relative to it. There is an indication that
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: this baby needs some attention. Um, that, that, so it's
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: almost like, well, actually what you need to do here
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: is turn toward yourself. and attend to that. And that
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: may or may not involve Jungian training in a way.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: But I take your point, Deb, that it is difficult,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: it's expensive. We certainly had colleagues who began the training
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: process very, very late in life. And I think some
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: people do feel called to undergo it. And And, you know,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: there's a real question about the kind of cost benefit analysis.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: Not that that is a very Jungian way of thinking
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: about it, but there it is. But there are other
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: ways to develop soul and individuate other than pursuing analytic training.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 4: Yes, I think your point is right on. And the
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: dream is not going to be the definitive answer about
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: for anyone really. about here's your specific career path, but
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 4: really about what is going on in you. What is
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 4: the state of psyche around this? And the dream maker
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: puts her in this wonderful, evocative, glorious image of a
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: library where you can learn all kinds of things and
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 4: a baby for which she feels great love and a
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 4: baby that is going to need attention. So she's in
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 4: the right place. She has the right attitude, a loving,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 4: accepting attitude, a curious attitude, but she's moving toward the baby.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: And that something can grow. And whether it is as specific.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: As Jungian training or not is unknown, but something about
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: her own personal process, Jungian ideas, and something young in
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 4: her that she embraces and wants to grow.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: That's a lot.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: So what I would tell this dreamer, I think, if
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: the dreamer wanted my opinion is, well, you don't know
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: yet exactly.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: But the dream is certainly, as I said before, I
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: think saying like, yeah, this is the right place to
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: encounter this part of yourself. And I believe she called
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: it the encounter in the library. And that is the
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: work right now is to encounter yourself. And then perhaps
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: to see, you know, what comes from that.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: And the very young part of yourself. Something that is young,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: that is growing, that is there.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: In the library.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: As well. Without being too attached, and it's always hard
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: for us, I think, without being too attached to outcome,
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: that has to culminate in this. There are, you know,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 4: all roads lead to Rome, one way or another.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: help us produce future episodes by funding us through Patreon,
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: and submit your dreams for possible interpretation on another episode.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: We'd like to thank our listener who shared a dream
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: topics you'd enjoy hearing more about. Until next time, keep
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.