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The Absent Father: Jung and the Missing Masculine · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We get that from dad who says, go on, you
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: can do it. Let's go, get in gear. It can
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: be stern. It can be issued simply as a directive.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: But behind it all is you can. You can. If
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: that has not been modeled for us and the development
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: of our internal masculine, if you will, like plants, these
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: are things that were never watered. And so they just
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: didn't grow.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: In Virginia Beach, Virginia. I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: on Cape Cod. Today, we are going to talk about
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: absent fathers. This is simply a reality in the world.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: And there are so many ways for a father to
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: be absent. He may have had premature death and be
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: absent in that way, or there could be illness, demanding work,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: which takes the father away on long trips, or his
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: attention is simply in other places rather than on a
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: particular child. And there may be just inability, personal inability,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: to provide for a child all that he or she needs.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, Jung had an absent father.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: Father.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: He says in his memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, he says,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: father meant reliability and powerlessness. That's the handicap I started
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: off with. Later, these early impressions were revised. I've trusted
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: men friends and been disappointed by them, and I've mistrusted
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: women and was not disappointed. Here is one of our primary, early,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: early sources of relationship and connection, both mother and father.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: But today, and we'll give equal time to mother later,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: but today let's think about the absent father.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's lots of different ways to come at this,
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: but just to frame it up really broadly, if you
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: think about the relationship the research that sociologists and anthropologists
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: have done on what is the role of fathers. And
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: it is pretty clear, you know, cross-culturally that fathers play
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: a different role in acculturating the young. Mothers tend to
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: get down on the kid's level and look them in
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: the eye and kind of engage in motherese where, you know,
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: they may speak in a kind of sing-song way or
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: kind of kind of a baby talk way. We might
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: kind of modulate our vocabulary so that we're speaking more
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: at their level. Fathers don't tend to do that. Fathers,
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: one of the role of the father kind of, I
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: want to say archetypally, is to challenge the child. So
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: the father won't, in general, fathers do not change their
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: vocabulary when they talk to kids. They don't, baby talk them.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: There's an opportunity for the kid to feel like he
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: or she is being asked to kind of play up
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: to dad's level. I remember when my kids were little,
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: you know, my idea of spending time with my kids is, well,
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: what would you like to do today? We could go
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: to the zoo. We could go to the playground. And,
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: you know, I'd go off and spend the day maybe
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: at Jungian Training and leave them with the kids. And
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: I'd come home, I'd say, well, what'd you do? And
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: he'd say, oh, I took them to Home Depot. And
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: I'd be really angry. I was like, what? You know,
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: you didn't take them somewhere where they could have fun
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: and enrich their minds. But I was wrong because that's
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: the role of the dad, right? You're going to go
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: to Home Depot with me. I'm going to introduce you
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: a little bit to the world of adults, you know?
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: And so that is a kind of a classic role
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: of the dad is to challenge a little bit. And
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: when I think about, you know, a really kind of
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: great dad, one of the images that comes to mind
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: is Laura Ingalls Wilder's father. If you read those wonderful
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: books by Laura Ingalls Wilder about her life growing up,
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: you know, she had a very close relationship with her
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  Speaker 3: dad who doted on her a little bit and taught
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: her all kinds of things. But he was present, but
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: he was kind of introducing her to the world. And,
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: you know, in a way that was loving, but also
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: kind of challenging. You know, this is this great image
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: of the father. But then you get industrialization. And fathers
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: and mothers, by the way, are often out for long
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: hours working away from the home. So we're living in,
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: you know, if we're living in a kind of agricultural existence,
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: we're near our fathers a lot. But then our fathers...
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: In industrial modern society, our father leaves the house often
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: early in the morning and doesn't come back until late
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: at night. I remember when my kids were little, I
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: used to realize that my husband never saw them when
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: they were out of pajamas because he would leave super
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: early in the morning. And, you know, it's like, They
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: didn't see daddy very much, you know, except on weekends.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: So that in and of itself separates us from the father.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: And then I think the world of the father now,
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: because it might be work outside the home, it's very
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: different from the world maybe of mom and kids, depending
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: on what mom does. It's certainly different from the realm
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: of the kids. And so then I think a lot
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: of us have a wound sometimes. where we grew up
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: with a father who was absent merely by virtue of
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: the fact that his world was so different than ours.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: And he may have come home after, this was true
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: for my dad, come home from a long day of
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: work and not had a lot of energy or bandwidth
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: left over to kind of really engage. And Jon Kabat-Zinn
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: talks about this. And he talks about a river of
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: underground grief. that a lot of us feel for the
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: kind of fathering that we missed.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I really agree with these points that you've made
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: and that in our modern world, the father is often
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: out all day, comes home and comes home tired. And
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: if we think about the father's role, you know, throughout history,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: one where he provides food usually men who went out
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: hunting and fishing, and the women were in an enclave, hopefully,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: a community of children and other kinds of domestic activities.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: But the father's job is also to provide in the
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: way of teaching. We would not have survived as a
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: species if fathers had not had an active role in
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: teaching sons primarily, how to hunt and fish, how to
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: make tools, how to do all of those kinds of
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: sustaining things. Fathers had to do that. And they don't.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: They don't come home and teach their sons skills in
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: engineering or.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: Some of them come home and teach them how to
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: throw a baseball or... Yes, exactly. Or football, you know.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: And that's important, right?
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But fathers introduce kids to the world and provide structure,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: provide discipline and instruction, and most of all, take an interest.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: They see little John and little Julie as people and
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: find them of interest and worth spending time with. whether
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: it's throwing a baseball or telling that 10-year-old, this is
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: from my era, of, I know it's raining. Get on
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: your bike. Deliver the papers. Get out there. Go do it.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: They may help that kid to wrap the papers up
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: in plastic, but move it.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: Out you go.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: It's a discipline, but it's also encouragement of you can
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: do this. You can surmount this challenge. Where, you know,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: whereas the father who's tired or what Jung said about
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: his father of a hollowness, when nothing is there, it
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: leaves a void, a vacuum, a comfort. of nothingness, contactlessness,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: that will make the child search for that elsewhere. Jung
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: found it in all his psychological searches of archetypes, fairy tales, myths,
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  Speaker 1: all of those kinds of things. He found the structure,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: the ordering principle, and the guidance.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: And the first place he found it, perhaps, was through projection,
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  Speaker 3: as many of us do, in his colleague and mentor Freud.
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  Speaker 1: And we know that because he referred to Freud as
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: a father. Mm-hmm. And wrote letters saying, you know, I
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: need your guidance. Freud was about 25 years older than Jung.
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  Speaker 1: So he was the perfect father image for Jung to
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: receive what he hadn't received from his own father.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: I do want to say that we're talking a lot
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  Speaker 3: about the... role of fathers, and some of this has
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: some basis in biology, and of course, some of it's
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: cultural as well. It is possible for that kind of
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: father energy to be carried by a woman as much
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: as a man, right? Sometimes it's mom who says, come on,
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: get out the door, even though it's raining. You know,
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: I think I sometimes played that role with my kids
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: a little bit too. So we're not trying to be
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: prescriptive here that this is what men should do and
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: this is what women should do. We're just kind of
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: talking about the general patterns. But to go back to
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: the idea of an absent father, what do you do
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  Speaker 3: if your father literally isn't there or he comes home
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: and is very, very tired and sort of just not available?
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  Speaker 3: And like you said, Deb, he doesn't notice you. He
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: doesn't take an interest in you. or he's aloof or
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: preoccupied or seems like he's not interested in you because
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: you don't measure up. So there's that kind of that
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: yearning that develops on the part of the child. And
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  Speaker 3: I also want to say that in particular, the absent
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  Speaker 3: father tends to leave a child to the mercy of
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: either a devouring mother or sometimes the father abandons the child,
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  Speaker 3: an absent father abandons child to the mercy of the culture.
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  Speaker 3: In other words, there's a protective function that fathers are
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: supposed to play. You know, so it might be that,
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: what do you mean you're talking to strangers on the internet?
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: Give me that iPad right now, you know, that's good
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: father energy. And the father says, oh, well, you know,
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  Speaker 3: what are you going to do these days? That's a
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: kind of absence.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, absence and a powerlessness. But I want to go
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: back to the idea of being seen, having a father
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  Speaker 1: who takes an interest versus that absence, which is, well,
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  Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. I mean, whatever he does
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  Speaker 1: or whatever she does or to not be seen. To
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  Speaker 1: not have a father take an interest is simply devastating.
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  Speaker 1: And Donald Winnicott, who is a British analyst, talked about
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  Speaker 1: the devastation of not being found. If you're not of interest,
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  Speaker 1: talk to me. Tell me about where you were, where
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: you're going. of just you yourself are worth my time,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: worth my attention. I want to hear and see you
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: as a person. It's simply devastating. The person that should
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: be guiding, teaching, protecting, doesn't find you his own offspring
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: worth expending that kind of energy on. really does a
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: job on self-esteem. And as you said, Lisa, then you're
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: turned over to the collective. So then what do you get?
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: A kid who hangs with peers. So if they're all 10-year-olds,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: how much does one 10-year-old know more than another or
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: a 15-year-old or a 25-year-old? They're turned over to a
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: much less mature, valuable, and connecting source. to get the
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: relational needs met.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: So speaking of fathers who didn't really take an interest
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: in their children, that apparently is true for Carl Jung.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: And we're looking in Deirdre Bear's wonderful biography, and I'm
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: just going to read something from it. So Carl Jung
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: had one son named Franz, and then he had, what
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: is it, four other children who were all girls? Is
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: that right? Okay. So this is what Franz says. Can
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: you imagine living... This is about his mother. Can you
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: imagine living with a man who left you with full
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: responsibility for his house and his children while he passed
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: the time playing their games or being in that same
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: house with another woman? Referring, of course, to Tony Wolfe.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: And then Franz also told the poignant story of a
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: rare occasion when Jung took his four older children sailing
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: and bought them sweets when they docked at a village
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: on the lake. When we got home, Marianne ran across
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: the lawn to Mother and cried, just look, Franz's father
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: bought me a little cake. Now, Marianne's father was Carl Jung,
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: but she didn't even recognize that that was her father.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: She thought of him as Franz's father. And then, of course,
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: Mother immediately said, now look, Marianne, you must understand that
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: Franz's father is your father too. But boy, does that
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: tell you something. about Jung's relationship with his children and
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: how he didn't really notice them.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Isn't there such a poignant sadness that you wouldn't recognize
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: your own father as this is my father, our father.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: It's Franz's father. And, you know, and I recall a
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: little girl who was going to be four. And she
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: was so excited. Birthday party's coming up. And she said,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: and even my father's going to be there.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: So I'm circling back to the importance of simply paying attention.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: It's not magic. It's not some elusive personal quality that
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: is hard to define. taking an interest in seeing his
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: daughter Agatha or Marianne or Goethe as an individual and
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: knowing who that person is.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, we can wonder about, you know, why this happens.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: And I want to say that You know, the purpose
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: of the discussion is not to demonize men or demonize fathers,
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: but partly I think what we're saying is the nature
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: of the culture kind of works against fathers having this
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: kind of contact with kids. And perhaps especially in previous generations,
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: I think things are a little better now. You know,
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: now it didn't, it used to be that there was
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: no such thing as paternity leave. Men didn't take off
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: time to take care of babies. You know, I remember
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: when I gave birth, I think my husband had a
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: week off or something, and it was like, oh, okay.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: So we're recognizing now more and more how important fathers are,
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: and there are structural things in the culture that are
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: supporting this kind of contact, even culturally. I think, I mean,
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: just in terms of social norms, it used to be
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: that men that took care of babies were kind of
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: looked askance and considered sissies or what was wrong with you,
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: but there's much more support these days for fathers being
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: really involved. And that's good for everybody. It's good for fathers, too,
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: because it's so rewarding and enjoyable to have a relationship
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: with your kids. But if we grew up with an
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: absent father, what kind of effect does that have on
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: our psyche?
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Well, both of us turned back to Linda Leonard, who
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: has written a number of books about women. And one
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: of her major books is The Wounded Woman. And in
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: that book, of course, she pays a very, very great
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: deal of attention to what can happen to daughters of
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: absent fathers and the kinds of wounding that daughters can suffer.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Trying to get father's attention, earning his love by meeting
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: his expectations. You know, that's what I did. I was
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: good at swimming and he would come to swim meets.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: And the gratification that you get from a kid who's
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: doing something special is getting good grades, not being any trouble,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: all the rest of that kind of thing, it can
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: undermine self-confidence. That if, you know, if my father doesn't
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: think that I can do it or doesn't even really
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: pay attention to me, why would I think I could
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: do really well out there in the world? We can rebel.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: We can become the father's sort of love object. by
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: being very conforming, present, and ego-gratifying for the father. One
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: way or another, wounds are incurred that can be huge
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: governing forces in future relationships for a young woman or
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: an older woman with finding a life partner. If the
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: first man in your life did not really pay attention,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: take an interest, show up and be present, well, we
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: can imagine that that is going to influence future relationships
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: with the opposite sex or same sex where, you know,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: some of this that Linda Leonard writes about for women
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: and the daughters also, of course, applies to men who
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: can be equally wounded.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: By an absent father.
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: Right. Yeah. I mean, I think if you have an
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: absent father as a man, too, you know, there's a
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: way that you haven't been shown how to be a man.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: You haven't been shown how to be a father. I
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: want to say, so you brought up intimate relationships. That's
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: obviously an important one. Another one is the father can,
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: and the father complex, the father archetype can really govern
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: especially a woman's relationship to her creativity. So being able
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: to express yourself creatively, to get out in the world
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: for men and women, the principle of the sort of
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: phallic striving in the world to go out and make
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: a career, make a name for yourself, that is very
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: much related to one's relationship with the father. And if
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: there's a father wound there, if the father was absent
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: or uninterested or dismissive that like you said Doug can
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: undermine your sense of worthiness I want to say there's
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: a kind of bedrock an emotional bedrock of like never
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: good enough I think it has to do there's a
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: sort of anxiety or or insecurity around am I good
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: enough can I do the thing out in the world
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: where has a little different quality with a mother wound
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: if the mother's absent that that that has a slightly
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: different feel to it. But the father, it often has
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: to do with outer world achievement, accomplishment, creativity, self-expression, and
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: particularly in the case of a woman finding a good
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: love relationship with a member of the opposite sex.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: I was thinking I wanted to fold aggression into that.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: You know, as a corollary, it takes aggression to get
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: out into the world. proactive, sometimes real force of, I
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: am going to do this thing. I am going to
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: try out for that part in the class play. I
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: am going to find out about college scholarships or, you know,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: any of those things that take us out into the
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: world and have some real oomph and push and our own,
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: if you will, phallic energy of, We get that from
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: dad who says, go on, you can do it. Let's go,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: get in gear. It can be stern. It can be
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: issued simply as a directive. But behind it all is
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: you can. You can. Now go do it. So if
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: that has not been modeled for us and the development
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: of our internal masculine, if you will, That we all
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: have all these opposites inside us. And they're often very
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: culturally modeled as reflections of an archetypal reality by our parents.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: And these are the things you are and can do
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: and have within you. And these are the things that
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: were never like plants. These are things that were never watered.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: And so they just didn't grow.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: So I have a good father story. When I lived
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: in New York, I used to like to, this was
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: some time ago, I used to like to rollerblade around
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: the Central Park Loop. And if you've ever done that,
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: you'll know that the very top of the park is hilly.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: So there's a cut through where you can miss the hill.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: And of course, it's a little scary being on rollerblades
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: going down a sustained hill because you have to be,
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: you know, you have to be able to stop yourself
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: or slow yourself down. So I used to do this
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: loop with my friend, Suzanne, and I would usually say,
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm going to take the cut off. I
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: don't want to do the top part of the loop.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: And one day we got to that point and she said,
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: you know, Elise, she said, my dad always said to me,
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: face your fears. And I thought, wow, I don't think
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: anyone had ever said that to me before. Face your fears.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: And I was like, okay, let's do it. And I
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: did it, and I didn't, you know, break my leg
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: or suffer a concussion or anything like that. I got
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: down just fine. And after that, I always did the
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: top part of the loop. But I thought my friend
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: was very fortunate to have a dad who said to her,
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: face your fears. And that's exactly the kind of thing
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: that a father does, right, is face your fears.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: And I'm paying attention to the fact that oftentimes those
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: fatherly fears kinds of things are to do it, to
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: try it, to work for it, to prepare for it,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: to commit to it, to go about it in an
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: organized and steady way. That's the father energy often rather than, well,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: You know, no, I think you should stay home. Don't
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: do it. You know, unless it comes in the guise
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: of protectiveness, which also has this positive side of you're
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: not going out tonight. It's a school night. You can
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: get back in here. You're going nowhere.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: But, you know, I do want to go back to
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: what I said before, too, about how, you know, sometimes
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: it's mom who plays that role. And in my family,
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: I think that I... I mean, my husband definitely has
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: some of that, but I have a lot of it too.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: I have a lot of that sort of like sort
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: of phallic energy. And I can remember my daughter wanted
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: to do something very frightening when she was 12. She
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: wanted to leave us and go live in France with
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: another family through this program. And my husband was really,
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: really scared. And he really didn't want to let her go.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: And I remember where I was sitting when we had
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: the conversation. And I just knew my agenda was to
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: get him to say yes. I didn't strong arm him,
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: but I was like, I got to sit down. I
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: got to listen to what he's saying and really understand
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: his concerns and then let him know that I think
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: we should say yes anyway. And we did. And it
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: was like an incredible experience, of course. But I was
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: the one saying, let's let her do it. So sometimes
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: it's mom and sometimes it's dad. But in general, we
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: think of that as kind of like father energy, like
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: from an archetypal standpoint, right?
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: And so you're making the point that each of us
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: has both of those sort of kind of colloquial masculine
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: and feminine qualities in each of us. But, you know,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: I also know kids, including my own, of You know,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: I could say, no, you know, you're not doing that.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Or come in here. My husband would say, all right,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: that's enough. Get upstairs and take a bath.
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: I can just imagine Jamie saying that. You know, and.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Then it would happen in a way. Because mom is
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: always telling you what to do, what not to do.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Taking you places, buying you sneakers. doesn't have quite the
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: same authoritative impact that, you know, when dad says, that's
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: a kid's... Yeah.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: I want to move us into sort of a slightly
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: different version of this topic. And we mentioned absent fathers
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: very particularly because the absent father is a little bit
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: different than the domineering father, although, you know, there's some
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: overlap there. the dad who's really, really cruel or what
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: we might think of more as the negative father. And
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: we do have an episode on the negative father. Maybe
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: the absent father is like a subset of the negative father,
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: but has a particular quality to it. But I want
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: to say that the absent father, both archetypally and in reality,
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: is often paired with an abusive mother. Whenever there's abuse
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: in a two-parent household, it's always the case that, well,
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: usually there's one parent who is more of the abuser,
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: the aggressor. But if that's the case, there's often another
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: parent that's allowing it to happen. And if you've had
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: a parent who is abusive, oftentimes you'll come into therapy
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: and you'll do a lot of work around that. And
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: eventually you'll get to the other parent. And that wound
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: is almost deeper sometimes. Because let's say that you had
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: a mother who was abusive, who was dangerous, who was threatening,
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: you know, whether it was physical or emotional, you know,
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: or she was cold or whatever. Eventually you get to,
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: why didn't dad stop her? why didn't he say something?
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: Why didn't he do something? You know, and sometimes there's
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: a very good reason for it or, you know, it's
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: the dad sort of trying to do his best just
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: the other way around too. Sometimes mom is doing her
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: best to protect the kids, but it's limited. But usually
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: there's a deep, it's an almost deeper sense of betrayal
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: because this was the good parent. This was the parent
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: who didn't beat the shit out of you. But then
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: you realize sometimes Why did they let it happen? Where
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: were they?
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: And we have archetypal precedence in fairy tales for this.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: I've always wondered, you know, where the heck was Cinderella's father?
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Was he busy in his office? Was he running a kingdom?
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: But he was indifferent. He didn't show up. He was passive.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Couldn't take a stand. Snow White's father, I'm putting him
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: in the same category. I love how the evil queen
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: in Snow White is always portrayed. I mean, you really
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: can't miss it. You just can't miss it. And dad
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: is doing something somewhere, but doesn't appear on the scene.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: In the tale of Beauty and the Beast, you know,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Dad brings home rich gifts from his trip away for
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: two sisters. All Beauty wanted was a white rose. The
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: father steals it and brings it to her. And when
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: it turns out that the price for the theft is
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: going back to the middle of the forest where the
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: beast and his castle live.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Beauty's father, when she says, no, no, I'll go, says, well, okay, honey.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: And there's a passivity, an absence of presence that we
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: would expect a father to display. You know, then there
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: are lots of fairy tales of fathers who do the
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: wrong thing, but If we just stick with those, it's
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: an interesting validation of this as a pattern.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And I want to bring up another fairy tale.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: It's a really dark one called The Juniper Tree. And
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: in it, a man marries a woman and he has
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: this beautiful little boy, but then that mother dies. And
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: so he marries again. So there's a stepmother. And by
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: that woman, he has a daughter. but the stepmother hates
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: the little boy and eventually she kills them. And so
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: I'm just going to read a little bit of this
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: part of the story. Then the mother took the little
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: boy and chopped him in pieces, put him into the
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: pot and cooked him into stew. But Marlene, his sister,
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: stood by crying and crying and all her tears fell
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: into the pot and they did not need any salt.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: Then the father came home and sat down at the
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: table and said, where is my son? and the mother
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: served up a large, large dish of stew, and Marlene
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: cried and could not stop. Then the father said again,
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: Where is my son? Oh, said the mother, he's gone
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: across the country to his mother's great-uncle. He will stay
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: there a while. What is he doing there? He did
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: not even say goodbye. Oh, he wanted to go and
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: ask me if he could stay six weeks. He will
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: be well taken care of there. Oh, said the man,
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: I am unhappy. It isn't right. He should have said
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: goodbye to me. With that, he began to eat, saying, Marlene,
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: why are you crying? Your brother will certainly come back.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's a very disturbing fairy tale and a
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: very poignant fairy tale, but that scene is so psychologically
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: poignant because, you know, the father sort of knows something's wrong.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: Where's my son? But then he begins to eat. He
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: doesn't let himself know what's right in front of him.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: And a lot of times, when we have a configuration
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: like this, where let's say the mother is very abusive,
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: there is a way that the father numbs himself to
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: the reality of what's going on. And even though a
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: part of him may say, where's my son? He's reaching
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: for a spoon at the same time.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: There is a profound sadness. And of course, I'm thinking
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: about fairy tales do not shy away from from depicting
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: these dynamics in incredibly shocking ways. Versus in Cinderella and
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: in Snow White in particular, fathers never even appears in
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: the tale. It's simply not there. So there may be
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: something here that our heritage of all these stories is
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: pointing to about the importance of relatedness, of noticing, which
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: goes back to what I was thinking about before, about
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: paying attention, of just be present and notice. And I'm
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: also aware of how often, probably in our very beginnings,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: It was men who were out fishing and hunting and
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: away more. And women can be just as difficult. Mothers
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: have all of their archetypal proclivities and difficulties. We all
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: know about the dangerous, difficult, cruel stepmother. It is harder
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: to notice what's not there. So one thing seems to
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: be in the background for fathers, whereas mothers are always
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: in the foreground or stepmothers being the ones who are cruel.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: And then what do we do when we grow up
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: and we don't know what we don't know? We don't
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: know that it's missing. We can recognize the presence of
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the things that were difficult or things that felt unfair,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: things that felt cruel. But it's harder to notice something
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: that was never really there at all.
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: Yes, the thing that wasn't there or the way we
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: feel betrayed because like the father in the juniper tree,
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: he could have known and he chose not to. Or
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: he knew and he didn't stand up to her because
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: that's in the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel. It's
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: the mother who wants to leave the kids in the forest.
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: And the father says, oh, oh, really? Do we gotta?
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: And she's like, husband, listen to me. You know, so they,
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: you know, and the kids find their way home and
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: the father's overjoyed to see them. But then he lets
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: her be talked into doing it again. And this time
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: the kids stay in the forest. And I'm going to
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: tell you that I have worked with plenty of people
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: who had a cruel or oppressive in some way, or
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: kind of narcissistic mother, where dad was a basically good guy,
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: but never stood up. I'm thinking I could think of
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: half a dozen clinical cases vignettes right now that I
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: could share.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: I can too.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and sometimes it's little things, but it's just like, oh,
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: you suck. You... Put yourself in service to her at
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: some point. And you are not going to contravene her wishes,
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: even if that means sacrificing me, your child. There's also
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: sort of a similar motif in Rapunzel. The mother really
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: wants the rampion. And the witch catches the man and says, okay,
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: I'll go steal you some. You know, when she's pregnant,
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: she's having this craving for this herb. But he steals
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: it from the witch's garden. And the witch says, you
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: owe me your firstborn child. So again, it's like the
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: child gets sacrificed and the father lets it happen.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm thinking about looking at this from the archetypal
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: perspective of maybe the negative animus in the proverbial wicked stepmother,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: and that the positive side, or at least the uncruel side,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: shows up in the father. And so what has happened,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: might we imagine, to Hansel and Gretel's father, or Rapunzel's father,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: or Cinderella and Snow White's, That they can't stand up
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: to this aspect of the feminine that shows such aggression
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: and such force and such harmfulness that we can associate
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: with the negative masculine. And we talk about negative animus.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: What's missing here? What are we looking at? When we
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: see in these stories, the father who can't say, no,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: we're not leading the kids out into the middle of
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: the woods when it's dark out.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: One part of my work over the past number of
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: years has been consulting with families whose teenage or young
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: adult kids have really kind of gone down a dark road.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: And it's very individual. It's very unique. These stories are
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: all different. And yet there are some patterns. And so
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: one of these patterns is that mom calls me and
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: she's very, very, very, very worried and she wants my advice.
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: And this is not always true, but it's pretty often
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: true that dad is not that concerned. He thinks the
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: kid's going to be fine. He kind of minimizes the danger.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: He may even kind of be a little bit dismissive
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: or disparaging of how spun up mom is about this.
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: And it's an interesting parallel to some of these stories
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: where in this case, the kid may not being preyed
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: upon by the mom, but may be preyed upon by
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: something in the culture, kind of darker forces in the culture.
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: And mom is like, what are we going to do? And,
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: you know, sometimes in a way that is itself, I'm
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: going to say, as a shorthand, her worry may be,
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: let's just say her worry may not be adaptive. But
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: a lot of times, you know, she's tracking something. And
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: it's dad who, you know, who's kind of absent, who's
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: a little bit weak or passive. Or just says, well,
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: what are we going to do? We can't do anything
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: about it. And it's not that big a deal. Not
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: that big a deal. You're annoying me because you're always
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: talking about this thing. So it's interesting to see that
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: these fairy tale patterns do exist out in the world,
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: not 100% of the time. And I've certainly seen the
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: case where it's the dad who sails in who's really worried,
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: that kind of protectiveness thing. So it is very unique.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: I don't want to say that it's always the same thing.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: But we do see these patterns. And of course, what
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: we will get to next is the devouring or the
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: terrible mother. But the pattern does seem to be for
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: fathering energy to be passive, withdrawn, and inactive, and mothering
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: energy in its negative aspect. is overt, cruel, punitive, or
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: sometimes making more of something than it needs to be made. Of, no,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: you know, this is a terrible problem. And most people
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: looking in would say, well, you know, it's not that,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: it's not really that big a problem. Right.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, a mother's, and we'll talk about this more
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: in the upcoming episode on Devouring Mothers, but I think
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: there's a way that a mother's anxiety can be devouring.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that puts a point right on it, that the
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: anxiety and the presence of mom hovering, noticing, reacting, and
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: being the imperfect human that most of us are, you know,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: is not helpful. And the proactive efforts are also, you know,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: not really to good effect, not well considered. So each
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: side of this negative parental kind of archetypal constellation has
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: its effect. But the pattern is there of The overall
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: tendency for negative father to withdraw.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Or to be domineering and cruel. So we haven't included that.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: But this withdrawing.
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: Right. It's one version.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: One version versus the tendency to be overly present in motherhood.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: I do just want to sort of throw up the
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: mirror example, which happens, right? Where let's say dad is
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: sexually abusing the daughter and mom just looks the other
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: way and mom doesn't see it. Now that's kind of
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: the mirror version, I think, of maybe what's depicted in
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: a fairy tale like the juniper tree. It's like mom's like, hmm,
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to see it. And again, if you're
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: that kid, you know, and you grow up to be
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: an adult, you know, the first thing you process is
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: your incredible rage at your father for doing that. And
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: eventually you get to like, and where, where the heck
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: was mom? But it does, it does go to this
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: quality of absence, this quality of absence that we see
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: in so many of these fairy tales, either because the
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: dad is just not in the picture or or mom
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: is doing terrible, terrible things, and what's dad doing? Or, again,
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: in these fairy tales like Rumpelstiltskin, or The Singing Springing Lark,
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: or Beauty and the Beast, or the story of Iphigenia,
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: where dad is like, you're expendable, let me, you know,
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: let me, the myth of Iphigenia, of course, where he
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: sacrifices his daughter in order to get favorable winds at
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: the beginning of the Trojan War. So there are lots
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: of different sort of iterations of this.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think I want to put in a plug
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: for fathers in our collective. That of people that I
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: have worked with, either individually or as couples, when there
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: is a divorce.
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: Whew.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: Whew. It is very, our culture makes it difficult for
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: men to stay in touch with kids.
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: Oh my God, yes.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: You know, it's so typical in, you know, my limited
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: exposure to this, but for the father to have every
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: other weekend and then maybe one night a week, depending
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: on geographic distance and all of that kind of thing of,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Without the support of home and maybe a dinner on
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: the table, a container, a structure, you know, dad has
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: to come up with stuff to do with the kids
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: all weekend when it's his weekend. Child support payments can
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: be onerous for fathers. When children are born, there's paternity leave.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: is more commonplace now, but it's not the same amount
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: as what women get.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: Well, I think it's changing. I think now it's more
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: common that men get the same amount. Yes, it's now
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: called family leave. And I believe that men can take
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: the same amount, which is great, but this is totally new, right? Like,
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: you know, it doesn't feel like that long ago that
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: I had kids. And it was like, like I said,
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: I think my husband got a week, you know, which
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: is nothing. But you're so right, Deb.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: I remember.
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: I remember I worked with a lot of men. I
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: worked with Vietnam vets early in my career. And of course,
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: they were all men, essentially. And there was such heartbreak
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: over the way that many of them had been separated
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: from their children through divorce. And I'm not saying that
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: these men were saints and hadn't done anything wrong. But
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: it had been, I mean, I think there were realities
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: about the legal system and assumptions made about fathers. that
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: meant that it had been pretty easy for the mothers
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: to get either full custody or in some cases kind
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: of the father had sort of minimal custody, like you're saying.
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, now, again, fortunately, I think it's changed a
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: little bit. It's more common for parents to have 50-50 custody,
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: but that's relatively recently. And I think fathers have been
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: considered less important than mothers in many ways. And there
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: has been a great deal, I think, of heartbreak around that,
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: both for the children and for the fathers. And I
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: think mothers who are responsible who get divorced understand that
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: it's really important to cultivate that relationship with dad and
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: not to undermine that. And it's difficult because you may
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: be very angry at your former spouse. And I've worked
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: with tons of people in that situation, and a lot
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: of people really, really try to do their best to
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: make sure that that relationship stays strong. And it can
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: be hard.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: And I think also today, you know, you just mentioned
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Vietnam vets. You know, the preponderance of people who go
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: to war are still men.
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: The 80-hour-a-week jobs that some men have or working two jobs,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: there still are so many trends that structurally distance men
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: from their children. I know my father, when he came
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: home from work, was exhausted. He was a doctor. He'd
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: been working all day long. first at the hospital, and
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: then he had clinic hours. And he came home, and
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: he put on headphones, and he had a recliner chair,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: and he listened to music.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: Oh, my gosh.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: You know, partly looking back on it, I mean, you know,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: is it realistic to expect any number of very, very
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: hardworking guys, mothers too, absolutely mothers too, to come bounding
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: in the door at 6, 6.30 and want to play
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: Uno with their kids. It's like the last thing you
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: want to do. So I'm not wanting at all to
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: minimize the role of providing that in many ways often
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: falls largely to men still. Of course, mom, mom works
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: all day too. She comes home and gets dinner. So
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: it can be difficult all around. But there is something
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: still that distances men inherently and structurally in many, many cases.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: She'll work structures through distance, geographic distance of being in
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: the military or having a job that involves heavy travel,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: as well as psychologically.
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: You know, I just want to go back to the effect,
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: the effect of the absent father for a minute, because
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: we talked a little bit about how Paul Young was
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: kind of an absent father. He was, I get the feeling,
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: I'm sort of making this up.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: Young's father, right.
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Young's father, a little A little depressive, maybe. He
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: didn't feel that connected with his sense of vocation. His
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: mother was kind of a character. But his father was
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: a little bit of a failed man. And he died young, too.
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: So there's Jung, who's had this father wound of this,
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: you know, in some sense, an absent father. And what
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: does he do with it? Well, first he projects it.
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: I make up that he probably projected on Bleuler first,
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: but then certainly Freud. But really what he does with
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: that wound is he essentially makes it the beating heart
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: of his life's work. Not in a super explicit way.
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: It's not like everything he did or whatever was about
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: the father. But he was trying, I mean, his father
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: had this wound around his spirituality. His father was a
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: pastor who couldn't experience the numinous side of religion and
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: wasn't sure what the heck he was doing. But Jung
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: kind of makes it his life work to figure out
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: what is this numinous experience and how can we reclaim
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: it the way my father's way of doing it doesn't
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: work anymore. How can we do it? And that's what
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: Jung does his whole life. is to kind of solve
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: his father's problem. And thank God he did because he
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: bequeathed all of this wisdom to us. So on the
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: one hand, it was this like essential thing that happened
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: to him, this wound that he received that enriched him.
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: And at the same time, look what kind of father
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: he was. His daughters didn't even realize that he was
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: their father. And we know that he had his relational
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: difficulties with women. let's call his relationship with Emma incredibly
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: productive on many levels. But, you know, then there was
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: Tony Wolfe and that caused people pain. So it's not
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: a simple formula. A wound from an absent father might
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: make certain aspects of your life more difficult and it
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: also might inject you with the question that will form
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: your life's work. Yeah.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: But I think you're really... presenting something really important, which
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: is the redemption and the opportunity, hopefully, that we have
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: to use that wound for our own growth and development
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: and contribution. Not perfection, but can we use it? Can
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: we notice it, embrace it, work on it, and do
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: something with it? Nobody would ever recommend childhood trauma as
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: somehow a worthy thing. But we all have some, even
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: a lot. And the question is, can we put it
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: to use? As Jung did, he wanted to solve that
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: problem and many, many others by you know, kind of
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: going into a spiritual world with his seances as a
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: university student. But he was determined to find the something
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: that his father didn't have. And in a way, we
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: redeem our parents this way and contribute to the wholeness
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: of the world and of ourselves. by really facing and
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: working on that wound.
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: And I like that we're kind of bringing it to
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: a close there, Deb, because one of the feelings I
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: did have as I prepped for this week's episode is
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: just a little bit of caution around that narrative that,
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: you know, oh, I'm this way because my father wasn't around,
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: you know, which sort of is, okay, that's the end
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: of the story. You know, that's looking back at the
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: wake of the boat, you know, but this is Jung's
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: sense of, the kind of prospective approach, right? I mean,
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: if you're a Freudian, you look back and what happened
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: in the past that caused how you are now? And
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: certainly that's an important question, but we're also interested in
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: where is it going? And that's the perspective function. How
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: can you work with it? What seed got planted in
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: you when you were experiencing the pain and the anguish
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: of the absent father? And what wants to come into
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: the world through that wound in you? We want to
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: invite reflection about this, but not the adoption of a
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: sort of self-limiting narrative.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, I like that very much. No self-limiting narratives that
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: we can move ahead and there's nothing better to do.
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: Right, right. So today's dreamer is a 22-year-old man who's
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: a university student studying psychology and philosophy, and he called
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: his dream the death of God, and I want to
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: say I was very moved by this dreamer and his circumstance,
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: and it felt important to me that we talk about
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: his dream. I walked up to an old Catholic cathedral
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: with two other people, a couple, and one was named Trinity.
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: Mass was going to begin soon, but we were just
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: looking at the big front doors. There were two curved
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: staircases leading up to the doors and above which were
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: some stained glass windows. Between the staircases was an old fountain.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: By the door, there was a broken bell on the ground.
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: I said we should ring that bell on the next
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: big holiday. I believe I said Easter, but I'm not sure.
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: There were two large volumes and some papers also near
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: the door. The books were green. Trinity wanted to sharpen
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: her pencil. There happened to be both a dispenser with
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: old pencils and a pencil sharpener. When I tried to
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: sharpen her pencil, it was sucked up by the sharpener.
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: Then I tried to get her another from the dispenser.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: The first was too old and short, so I put
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: it through the sharpener and it was eaten up. I
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: then got a second one and I tried sharpening it
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: without having it sucked up. I was only able to
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: sharpen it a little bit. I looked down the steps
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: and saw Trinity somehow stuck in a terrarium or aquarium
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: filled with water. It floated into the air and she
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: was trying to get out. Time kept ticking by and
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: she became more frantic. For some reason, I grabbed the
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: two green volumes and a large piece of parchment, but
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: that didn't do anything. She eventually got out safely. Somehow
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: the books ended up being in the fountain. Suddenly, there
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: were a lot of people there, including a cardinal. The
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: cardinal was walking up to the doors and I hurried down.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: Parishioners noticed the books and tried to get them by
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: using the hem of their shirts to paddle the water
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: toward themselves. A priest with long, shaggy gray beard and
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: hair yelled, Why are you not wading into the water
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: to save the precious words? Are your clothes more important
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: than the Word of God? And here's the context. A
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: few months ago, my older brother took his own life.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: He was my childhood hero, and much of what I
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: did was an attempt to make him proud. My life
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: reeled following his death. Meanwhile, my religious community, which is
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: not Catholic, did not help. A few people texted after
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: the incident. even though they all knew about it. Messages
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: by church leaders and lessons talked by members felt hollow
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: and trite. I've been struggling with my allegiance to the
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: church ever since, despite my calling as a Sunday school teacher.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: Main feelings, there was a sense of panic as Trinity
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: was drowning. There was also a profound annoyance with both
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: the parishioners and the leaders. And he says, the Catholic
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: cathedral was located in the middle of the residential region
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: in which I live, which is filled with Latter-day Saints,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: not Catholics. Other than that location, there were no other associations.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: Well, I see why he chose this dream, coming as
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: it does, just a few months after this dreamer's brother died.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: took his life, and he hasn't had much support.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: Right. And I feel like I want to say a
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: little bit more. First of all, this is the kind
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: of dream our psyche offers us when we're in despair
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: or when we're in a state of confusion. Like, I
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: think it's important to see that. And I also want
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: to say that when I pick the dreams, I am
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: very aware that For some dreamers, the issue that's being
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: presented in the dream is very current. It's very immediate.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: And it feels important to me, not always, but sometimes
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: to be able to offer that dreamer something that I
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: know that this dreamer will probably hear this dream in
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: a few weeks and maybe it will offer him something.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: Let's see what we can do with it. It's a
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: confusing dream.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah, I'm curious when you said a psyche will
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: offer us a dream like this. So what category or
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: general heading might you put on this kind of dream?
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean, I think in a way it's
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: it's a pretty deeply archetypal dream. It's a dream that
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: really in a way that I don't know that I
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: can or will be able to clearly articulate. But I
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: think I think the dream does something. I think the
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: dream really puts it out there with the central conflict
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: is now we might land on it and we might
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: not because it is a it's a confusing. I don't
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: want to say confusing. It's a complex dream. But boy,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: this psyche is really delivering up some important images here.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: So let's just kind of walk through them one at
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: a time and do what you'd like to do, Deb,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: which is just to kind of start right at the beginning.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: So I think, first of all, it's interesting that it's
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: a Catholic cathedral and we could think about, you know,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: Catholicism and even the meaning of the word Catholic when
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: it doesn't refer to the church, you know. How do
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: we define that word? It means... Universal? Yeah. There's two
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: other people. So there is a trinity of people.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: There's a threesome, which, you know, we might say in
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: a Jungian sense, where's the fourth? Three is a number
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: of something moving toward wholeness, but it is also, of course,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: associated with the trinity, which gets explicitly evoked because I guess...
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: I get the feeling that this is a couple, once
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: a man, once a woman. Don't know that for sure.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: And that the woman's name is Trinity.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly where I was. So mass is going
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: to begin, but they're outside just looking at big front doors.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: And then I thought this image of two staircases going
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: up and around with an old fountain in the middle.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: Right. It's a very visual image, right? And there's this
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: kind of parallel structure.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I thought about the
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: very beginning of the Rosarium woodcuts.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: There are a series of woodcuts Jung was very interested in.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: And the very first image is that of a fountain.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: And it is bordered on either side, not by staircases,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: but with a border. Mm-hmm. And that here is something
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: that is supposed to be generative. A fountain is supposed
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: to be active. It's there to circulate water. And it
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: appears that that's not. Stained glass windows and a broken
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: bell on the ground, which kind of emphasizes or reiterates
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: the idea of something not working.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: Wait, but is the fountain not working?
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: It says an old fountain.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: But I think the fountain is... I don't know that
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: the fountain's not working, but the bell is definitely broken.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, but what I'm thinking is, so we should ring
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: the bell on the next holiday, but if it's a
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: broken bell, it won't ring. And where I went, which
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: I don't claim is accurate, is... Because of the broken bell,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: I think it's a doubling of a fountain that is
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: not in good shape. I have a hunch that if
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: it were working, I think we would know it. Again, hypothesis.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: Okay. I didn't necessarily go there, but, and again, that
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: would be something interesting to ask the dreamer.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: I'm just thinking about just the situation of standing in
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: front of two staircases, A fountain and a broken bell.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: Right, right. So we, I mean, just even the bell, right?
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: You could amplify that. A bell has a feminine shape.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: A bell is to alert people. We ring a bell
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: at times of trouble and celebration. There's a kind of
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: universality of ringing the bell because everyone hears it from
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: all around. So we're all having the same experience when
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: the bell rings. I think it's interesting that he thought
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: it might have been Easter. I want to say, too,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: that Mass is a sacrament, right? Mass is also a
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: sacrifice because in a Catholic Mass, you eat the body
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: of Christ and you drink the blood of Christ. So
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: there's a recapitulation of this sacrifice.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: You know, here's a broken bell.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: Next, the big holiday might be Easter coming forward. But
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: for me, the opening scene is a scene of things
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: not working. He's not inside the church. And, of course,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: this is reiterated by the fact that our dreamer has
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: not felt supported by his religious community. So there's an outside...
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: image altogether. It's an outside image of not centered, not
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: within the church. The bell doesn't ring.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: And then, you know, I think, I think, Deb, where
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: you're going is perhaps underscored by the next scene, which
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: has to do with the pencils. The pencil is not sharp.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: And every time he tries to get another pencil, it
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: gets ground up. So there's so much here with this
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: pencil thing. First of all, we can't not apply a
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: little bit of a Freudian lens to it. You know,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: pencils are nice, you know, phallic shaped. Yeah. And the
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: idea of a pencil that keeps on getting ground up is,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: you know, perhaps an image of a feeling of impotence
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: or being emasculated. I mean, he said his brother was
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: his hero. And so something is not working, but he's
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: also a student. And the pencil is a form of communication.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: It's something that we use to write our ideas down.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: It's a little bit associated, I think, with the air element,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: the thinking function. And so somehow this, his ability to
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: express himself, to discern, to separate, is getting ground down.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: It's getting eaten by the sharpener.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's all exactly right on. that to
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: put a point on it, to sharpen a pencil, is
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: to enhance its usefulness in order to literally make a
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: point so that this is an ideal instrument. And instead,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: the pencil keeps getting ground down. But I want to
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: go back to what happens prior to that, which is
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: there are two large volumes and some papers near the
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: door and the books are green.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: So that's almost like a little sidebar of like, hmm,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: one would think this is two large volumes and the
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: books are green, often the color of growth. But Trinity
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: wants to sharpen her pencil. She doesn't want to open
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: the books. You know, if this were a short story,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: we'd all be going, hey, wait, wait a minute. What
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: about the books?
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: So we'll come back to them later in the dream.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: But something, and what's a book? Well, a book contains information.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: Might be a poem, might be some kind of scripture,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: might be a short story, might be directions for how
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: to do something. But books contain information, and instead of
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: taking in information, Trinity wants to put out by using
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: a pencil. And once again, that doesn't work. So I
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: think so far we have being outside the church, books
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: not being opened, and a pencil that basically is destroyed.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: It was all eaten up, which is an interesting phrase.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: So I want to do a little when then. So
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: he does get the last pencil a little bit sharp.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: So I was only able to sharpen it a little bit.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: I looked down at the steps and saw Trinity somehow
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: stuck in a terrarium or aquarium filled with water. So
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: if we do a when then, we say, when I
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: get the pencil a little bit sharp, then Trinity is
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: essentially drowning. And that's a really interesting image that she's
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: in a container filled with water and she can't get
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: out and she's drowning. And what I'm wondering about is
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: sort of thinking and feeling. So I was wondering a
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: minute ago about the pencil as an image of the
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: thinking function. And the dreamer is kind of focused on
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: sharpening that. And so you could sort of say, when
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: I focus on sharpening my thinking, my feminine, the anima, drowns.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: So what I might wonder about is where is the
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: feeling about his brother? And is it contained and yet
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: so overwhelming that a part of him is drowning while
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: he's off trying to sharpen his pencil, kind of focusing
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: on his thinking function? So it might be an image,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: if you'll indulge me, it might be an image of
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: a defense. I'm going to think about this a lot
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: and I'm not going to feel And then so a
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: part of him, you know, and a female in a
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: man's dream might be an image of the anima, which
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: is also associated with his feeling function. And the anima
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: is trapped, trapped in a way that she's drowning in feeling.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: So I wonder what's going on with the feeling.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and water is so often an image of that. Mm-hmm.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: So here she is in a container and can't be
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: connected with because she's floating up above in the air
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: and she's frantic. And so our dream ego grabs the
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: two green volumes and a large piece of parchment, but
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: that didn't do anything. And she eventually gets out.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: I just want to say, I mean, there's two possible
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: ways of looking at this. First of all, Someone's drowning.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: You were sharpening your pencil and now she's drowning. So
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: you grab the books. It sounds like more evidence for
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: my possible hypothesis. There's too much thinking going on. Like
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: you think that thinking about it more, i.e. reading a book,
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: is going to help, but it doesn't help. However, I'm
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: going to contradict myself and say that the dream ego
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: says it doesn't help, but somehow she does get out.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: So it might be, and you know, it can be
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: a both and. Dreams are very paradoxical. That somehow, that might,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: in some ways, thinking about it more might in some
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: ways be the wrong impulse, but in another way, it
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: might be what leads you through. Yeah.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: And I'm seeing the two green volumes and parchment as,
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: you know, another image of the thinking function. I'll open
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: a book, I'll read the directions, I'll learn something.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: And then the books wind up in the fountain, and
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: they're wet. So there is water in the fountain.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: I stand corrected. There is water in the fountain. And
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: when that happens, another when then, when the books are
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: in the fountain, a lot of people are there, including
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: a cardinal. He's walking up to the doors. I hurry down.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: Parishioners notice the books. tried to grab them by using
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: the hem of their shirts to paddle the water toward themselves. Okay,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: so I get that, that we kind of churn the
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: water to create kind of a little tide. And the
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: priest with long, shaggy gray beard and hair scolds them.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: Why are you not wading into the water to save
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: the precious word? Are your clothes more important than the
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: word of God?
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 3: Okay, I'm having a thought. So first the water, there's
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: water in the fountain. And of course, you know, the
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 3: fountain can be an image for regeneration and renewal because
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 3: if the fountain's working, the water is kind of eternally
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: cycling through, right? But then we get this water in
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: this like weird aquarium terrarium thing that's potentially going to
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: drown somebody and also is floating up in the air,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: which is not what a big container of water would do.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: So that's interesting too, right? Because it's almost like the
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: feeling is not grounded. But then our attention is turned
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: to the fountain. And that is a more natural place
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: for water to be. And by the way, fountains existed
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: in towns in the Middle Ages and later as sources
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: of drinking water or where you would bring your livestock
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: to drink. So, you know, I mean, if you go
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: to Rome, you see all these beautiful fountains, which were
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: obviously works of art, but they had this practical application
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: that this is where you would go to get water.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: So very, very important. And now the books are going
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 3: in the fountain. And if we think about the books again, Deb,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 3: as you and I were saying, like kind of the
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: thinking function, this feels a little bit better to me
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: that the thinking function's now gotten wet, which maybe is
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: kind of what needs to happen. What do you think
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: of that?
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: I hear that, that there is a contact, a submersion,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: that thinking is now subordinate.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The dry books of knowledge and all kinds of words,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: like we know from every textbook, has been submerged in
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: the water, which that is not the appropriate treatment of books,
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: but at least the trajectory of the dream has swung
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: to the other side. Rather than having this aquarium high
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: up in the air where nobody can reach it, it's
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: now gone the other way, and the books have been
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: dunked in the water in the fountain. where they're unreadable, unusable.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: But it's a polarity here that has occurred. And then
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: we have the dream image of this cardinal.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: Who is, first of all, he's old.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: Well, wait, there's a cardinal and then this is a priest.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: So I think we have, do we, are they two,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: are they separate?
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, the cardinal is walking to the doors. Oh, no,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: they're different. A priest with long, shaggy gray beard and hair.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: So here we have a sort of a Cenex image.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: The old man who stands for law and order and
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: tradition and doing things, quote, right, unquote.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: Which might be an image of kind of the church.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: and the priest is kind of perhaps incorrectly valuing the
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: books over the parishioners. You know, the parishioners are sort
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: of taking an intermediary step. They're not just letting the
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: books float there. They're trying to get them. But I
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: also want to explore whether or not we can imagine
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: that the priest might be right. And I want to
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: go back to your very excellent exposition about this kind
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: of polarity. Like it's not right that the books are
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 3: in the fountain, but it may be better than that
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: they're sort of dry and the water's floating up above you.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: But maybe now what's needed is a new synthesis where
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 3: the dreamer or the parishioners go into the water And
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: get the books.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: This is the puzzling part of the dream for me,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: where we really need the dreamer. Yeah. Because there can
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: be another polarity. Our dreamer was not well treated by
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: his religious community. The word can be dry and doctrinaire
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: and rules and regs and This is the way you
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: do it. And there's also a possibility that this priest
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: could be a wise man, an old wise man.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: Who is saying, look to the spiritual meaning of the word.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: Get in the water. Yes.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: Get wet in the feeling function and retrieve something of
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: supreme importance that is simply symbolized by the books. You
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: have access to an archetypal transcendence, but first you have
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: to get in the water of feeling to be able
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: to find it.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: Yep, I like that a lot.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: Both of those things can be true. And it could
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: be that in his religious experience following his brother's death,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: his local religious community's lack of support and empathy and
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: caring and love has resulted in distancing him from a
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: superordinate reality, the self. something greater than people and an
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: individual church here on earth. So both of those things
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: and probably more can be true.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I really like that. I really like that. And
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: I think it's then it's maybe significant that it might
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: be Easter because that is the moment of rebirth. So
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: I really, I don't think, I don't think I could
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: say it better. I really like your thought that he
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: has to kind of go into the water, which of
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 3: course is, that is actually an image of baptism as well,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: to go into the water and then find the living water,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: the living, the living word, not the dry dogma, dogmatic doctrine,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: but the word that is infused. With the living water.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm very touched by the dream and the dreamer's situation.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: And I'm hoping that this young man has some sources
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: of human support. His psyche is looking ahead and pointing
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: toward how to resolve this conflict.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 3: And there is inner support, right? The psyche is showing up.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 3: And I hope that our discussion today has also provided
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 3: some support. Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 3: an episode topic, or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisunionlife.com.
• 1:23:17
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• 1:23:20
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