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Shadow and Self in Adolescence: Navigating Rage, Love, and Individuation · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Well, in considering topics for this week, we were surprised
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: to realize that we've never talked about adolescence. So we
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: thought we'd take a crack at it. Adolescence is a
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: word that comes through French. from Latin and is related
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: to the Latin word for to grow to maturity and
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: to ripen. And it is both perhaps, I think it
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: has both a biological and also a social significance. So
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: adolescence refers to this kind of prolonged period of brain
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: development that probably evolved about 2 million years ago. as
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: we developed a greater need for the transmission of complex
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: information like tool making and more complex social structures required
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: by our lives at that point in our evolution. And
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: of course, it also encompasses the idea of puberty or
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: sexual maturity. But there's also social significance to it. And
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: adolescence has been treated very differently by different cultures. Maybe
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: it's been a very short period in early modern Europe. Maybe,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: you know, now it's extended. I think our lesson probably
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: starts around 11 and maybe ends around 30.
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: Or 40.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: So we have different cultural and social ways of understanding it.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: And we thought we'd take a look at all of
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: this today and try to see it through a Jungian
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: lens and also take a look maybe at what Jung
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: had to say about adolescence and also what his adolescence
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: was like.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: Before we jump into the topic, one of the things
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: I recall about being adolescent is the overwhelming intensity of
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: my own dreams, that it was just so intense. fraught
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: with feeling and heroic themes and problems that I was
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: sorting out in my life. Of course, I wasn't aware
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: at the time. And that leads me to the idea
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: of dream school. Some of you.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: I like how you did that.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: I don't know. It just popped up into my mind.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: And some of you may not be aware, but the
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: three of us have created an online learning community that
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: we call the Xiongyin Life Dream School. And we would
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: love to invite you to take a look at that offering.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: It's a wonderful opportunity to progressively learn about dreams, how
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: to interpret your own dreams, and participate in a community
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: of other people who are coming together with a kind
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: of serious intent to learn about the mystery of their
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: own dreams. as well as spending time with us through
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: live events. So pardon me for the interruption, but we
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: hope that you'll take a look at our dream school
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: as well. And in a sense, our dream school is
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: a little bit in its own adolescence, because it's a
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: growing and ever-changing program and process for us as we
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: continue to develop what we hope will be a wonderful
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: growing experience for all of you. Transitioning back to our topic.
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: Yes. I'm appreciating, in a way, the conjunction and contradiction
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: of our growing brains as Homo sapiens required, in a way,
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: a longer period for adults to instruct the next generation
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: on all kinds of things, especially complexities, social and emotional
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: complexities of life. And in another sense, adolescence is a
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: very modern concept. Just as recently in terms of history
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: as Shakespeare's time, there was no adolescence. You were an
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: adult at age 13. You were good to go. There
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: were kings and queens that got married in, you know,
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: 13 and 14 and were ruling countries and doing all
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: kinds of things that today we would say, oh my God,
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: that He's a sophomore in high school.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: Don't give him the car keys yet.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And there's a question in my mind. I've thought
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: about that before. And I'm not sure it's great that
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: we don't let our teens and adolescents have more real
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: world responsibility because there is something about having to kind
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: of grow yourself up to deal with the demands of life.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: That's very maturing. Whereas, you know, we, I mean, part
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: of the reason I think why adolescence has become extended
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: in our culture is that we do protect young people
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: from a lot of adult responsibilities. And so they do
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: remain in a somewhat infantilized state for longer maybe than
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: they need to. So, you know, sometimes I look at
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: a kid who's struggling a little bit and I think,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: you know, a 20-year-old, let's say, And I think, yeah,
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: maybe 200 years ago, you know, she'd already have two kids.
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: And how would that go? And like, maybe it wouldn't
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: have been great. But my guess is that, you know,
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: she wouldn't be spending all day in a room playing
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: video games or whatever it is. You know, I'm making
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: it up. But life would kick you in the proverbial
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: rear end, you know, if you weren't so protected from
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: these adult things.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Right. If we've come to think of adolescence as
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: kind of luxuriating in adolescence, decade after decade, you know,
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: that's that seduction of the puer puela, that it's so
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: wonderful to be a divine child, who would possibly want
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: that to change? And I think in these more ancient worlds,
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: where there wasn't a lot of luxury about much of anything,
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: that based on just The survival drive. You've got to
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: become competent, self-sufficient as fast as possible because the world
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: is not going to be there to take care of
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: you or pamper you in the way that the modern
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: world does.
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: Right. And it was also a very physical world. of,
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: you know, get out there and do the farming or
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: the physical tasks of turning a lathe or a hundred
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: other things, more than a hundred other things. Whereas now
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: I think things are more abstract for a lot of people,
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: that it's not necessarily so physical of what am I
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: supposed to do? You know, and if we're studying and
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: decide or are able to go to college. Adolescence, in
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: a way, sort of lasts until age 22, and we
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: know brain development doesn't stop until age 25 or later.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: So I.
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: Think it's a very vague and fuzzy kind of place
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: of what does it mean to become an adult?
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Answering that question, Deb, and Joseph, picking up on something
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: that you said about being sort of protected in some
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: way in our modern world, there's a psychologist who's written
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: some books actually on parenting who says that adolescence is
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: meant to break the spell of childhood. And I've always
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: found that sentence so provocative. But it also relates to
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: what Jung has to say about And I'm going to
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: just pop right into, this is his essay, The Stages
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: of Life in Volume 8. Just read a couple paragraphs.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: You know, Jung did not say a lot about adolescence.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Went through the collected works in preparation for this, and
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: there's not a lot. But what he says is pretty interesting.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: He says, we are all familiar with the sources of
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: the problems that arise in the period of youth. For
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: most people, it is the demands of life. which harshly
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: put an end to the dream of childhood. So very
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: similar to what Carl Pickhart says. If the individual is
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: sufficiently well-prepared, the transition to a profession or career can
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: take place smoothly. But if he clings to illusions that
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: are contrary to reality, then problems will surely arise. No
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: one can take the step into life without making certain assumptions,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: and occasionally these assumptions are false. That is, they do
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: not fit the conditions into which one is thrown. Often
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: it is a question of exaggerated expectations, underestimation of difficulties,
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: unjustified optimism. And then a little while later, he says,
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: If we try to extract the common and essential factors
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: from the almost inexhaustible variety of individual problems found in
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: the period of youth, we meet in all cases with
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: one particular feature, a more or less patent clinging to
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: the childhood level of consciousness, a resistance to the fateful
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: forces in and around us, which would involve us in
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: the world. I am thinking of so many, uh, clinical cases,
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: either young people I've worked with or maybe parents I've
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: worked with with kids. Something in us wishes to remain
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: a child, to be unconscious or at most conscious only
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: of the ego, to reject everything strange or else subjected
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: to our will, to do nothing or else indulge in
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: our own craving for pleasure or power. In all this,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: there is something of the inertia of matter. It is
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: a persistence in the previous state whose range of consciousness
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: is smaller, narrower, and more egotistic than that of the
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: dualistic phase. For here, the individual is faced with the
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: necessity of recognizing and accepting what is different and strange
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: as a part of his own life, a kind of
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: also I. So, so much, as with just about everything
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: in Jung, takes us in different directions. But this big.
• 11:37
  Speaker 5: Idea that, you know, we want to kind of cling
• 11:40
  Speaker 5: to childhood and adolescence is this time, hopefully, of negotiating
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: a relinquishing of childish things and a step toward adulthood.
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: I think that passage that you just read, Lisa, I
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: would invite everybody to sort of pause and then listen
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: to that again because really it's all right there. And
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: the breaking the spell of childhood of, I thought of
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: Adam and Eve, you know, of there they are in
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: the garden, you know, of everything is wonderful. Um, just
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: decide what, what kind of fruit we're going to have today. Um,
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: And then having to go out into the world and
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: experience all of its realities. And I think that's really
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: the crux of it, of how do we encounter the
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: realities of the world? You know, if you were a
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: 13-year-old in Shakespeare's time, you better get cracking or you're
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: not going to make it. You've got to hustle. You've
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: got to figure it out and figure it out fast.
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: And I think that's one of the tasks of psychotherapy
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: and analysis is, where are the illusions? And where is
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: the mismatch between maybe your idealism or anything else? And
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: this world that is here as a reality for you
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: to function in. It's a real passage. Jung didn't say,
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: he said what you read, which I think is really
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: right on, but Eric Erickson really talks about stages of development.
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: He has, I think, eight of them. And what he
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: says about adolescents, which he says are the ages of
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: 12 to 18, more or less, you know, those tasks
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: of who am I? What are my goals? How do
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: I get out there in the real world and get
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: my hands on something? What are my values? What are
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: my beliefs? And at each developmental stage, there is an
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: internal conflict that has to be resolved. And those are
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: the ones, identity, goals, values, beliefs, that fall to the
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: adolescent stage of development.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: So there's so many theories about the transition from childhood
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: into adulthood and finding language that we can resonate with. Generally,
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: it's mostly adults trying to ponder the experiences of their
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: adolescent children because it all just seems so wacky as
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: if we didn't go through it ourselves. There was an
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: old diagnosis from the late 1800s called hebephrenia, which was
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: a clinical term for the madness of adolescence. Just the
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: crazy stuff. that we all feel and think and go
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: through in that transitional time. To me, like diagnosing it
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: that way is kind of like that throwing your hands
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: in the air. It's like, ah, the kids, they're crazy.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: Trying to find a way to structure something that is
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: so unconscious, I think is an effort to try to
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: control and contain it in some way. You know, as parents,
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: if we can look at the hebephrenic changes of our
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: adolescence and say, oh, yes, of course, there are three stages,
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: there are five stages, and we can all calm ourselves
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: and understand how the brain is changing. But for the
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: most part, it is, frankly, a kind of violent intrusion
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: upon the process of being a child. It's as if
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: this herd of beasts has just kind of stampeded into
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: your child's life and is radically changing everything from day
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: to day. Which, by the way, is one of the
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: reasons that clinicians are very, very shy about diagnosing adolescents
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: with personality disorders because... Generally speaking, about every month, it
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: looks like they have a personality disorder. But there is
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: a stampeding wildness that moves through all of us as
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: part of this transformation, which is marvelous and dangerous at times.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: It can definitely be dangerous. I want to pick up
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: on one thing that you said in there. There was
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: so much. This idea about, well, I want to say
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: sort of, you know, the interruption of childhood, going back
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: to this idea of breaking the spell of childhood, the
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: loss of childhood. And I think that loss is experienced
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: often by parents. Like we can feel really sad because
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: it's like our, you know, that kind of late latency
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: period with kids, you know, where they're seven, eight, nine
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: can be those can be some of the sweetest years,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: you know, our kids are connected to us. They like us,
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: you know, often there isn't a lot of conflict or
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: there isn't a lot of pressure and it can just,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: you know, it's the sweet, sweet place in childhood. And then,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: you know, along comes the beginning of adolescence that often
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: interrupts that. And, and parents need to mourn that. I mean,
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: I've worked with parents who were just bereft But there
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: often isn't kind of language for it or it doesn't
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: feel okay to acknowledge it. But I think that we can,
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: as we're going through it, we can feel it too.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: We may not have the language for it, but I
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: remember having some intimation that something was ending and feeling so,
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: so sad. And I'm going to tell a personal story.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: When we used to go away for the training weekends
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: in a regional, it was always my... One of the
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: things I always did was I found the toy store
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: in town and I bought something for the kids. That
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: was always just a point I made. And so I
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: was no longer in training, but I'd been to an
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: interregional meeting and I'd come back, you know, very indulgently
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: with like this enormous Lego thing, right, for my son
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: who was just about to turn 12. And I, you know,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: it's sort of like the last Lego things there for
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: like ages 10 to 12 or something like that.
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: It says it on the box. And, you know, and
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: he was thrilled and he was so excited and he
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: was in the next room putting it together. And then
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden he comes to me. I'm in
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: the next room. He comes in. He's got tears in
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: his eyes. He said, Mom, come here. So I went
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: into the room and he points to the box and
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: it says, you know, ages 10 to 12. And he
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: knew that he was about to turn 12 and that
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: there are Legos for 13 to 18 years old. I mean,
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: people still, you know, adults play with Legos. But he
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: got it. He got it from the Lego box that
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: that was the end of childhood. And I just cried
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: with him. And then I made him listen to Pop
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: the Magic Dragon with me because that's a song about
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: the end of childhood.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: It is. You know, there are many things that strike
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: me about that story, but one is how there's an
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: innate a priori understanding of the transition out of childhood.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: And that was just waiting for just the littlest prompt
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: for him to jump into consciousness and for him to
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: see it, just a little label on the side of
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: a box.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: What we hope is that there's also something good in,
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: you know, certainly there was in your son, Lisa, that
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: all kids who face that mourning of end of childhood
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: also have something leading them on that looks good, that's enticing,
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: that's like there's a road ahead. It's not just an ending.
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: It's also a new beginning.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: Picking up a thread about the ambivalence that parents hold
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: has to do with the fantasy about the loss of innocence.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: And particularly in our culture, that there's something about the
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: idealization of innocence that is protected by the absence of sexuality,
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: that the lack of sexual initiation is considered a positive thing.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: As much as we can do to keep our children
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: from knowing about sexuality is a reproduction of the fall
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: in the Garden of Eden. If we can keep all
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: the kids innocent and not knowing, so we'll cancel all
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: the sex ed classes in school, and then we'll make
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: sure movies never have mentioned sexuality, and then we can
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: really keep our kids like they're little lambs. We'll just
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: keep them as lambs, you know, as long as we
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: possibly can, so that, you know, demonic... reality of sexuality
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: is kept at bay as much as possible. But it's
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: a powerful force, and it's archetypal, which is why it
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: shows up in ancient literature. And it speaks particularly to
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: some of the very specific distaste around sexuality that goes
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: to the founding of the United States. The Pilgrims were
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: considered a crazy extremist religious sect. It was true.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: They were.
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: And they were persecuted in Europe because they were so ascetic.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: They were so concerned about purity and the danger of
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: sexuality and the danger of nature that they were thrilled
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: to be able to get out of Dodge and found
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: their own civilization where they weren't going to be marginalized
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: by those lewd and lascivious Europeans. And that's the beginning
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: of the United States, is this incredible, intense, ascetic fear
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: of sexuality. And that echo continues. For instance, I'll tell
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: you the story. So in high school, I was a
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: drama club kid, and I was in the choir. And
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: so I was, I must have been 17. And we
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: had the opportunity to participate in an international competition in Belgium.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: And it was incredibly fun. And they housed us in
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: a university. So we're there. And we're kind of roaming
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: around the streets a little bit, although the adults are
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: very nervous. And we're walking into bars. People are offering
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: all of us coffee. whether or not we want a beer.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: At some point, we were housed with a family. I
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: turned on the television. There's pornography. It comes immediately on
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: the television. And then there's this one moment. I'm 17.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: I'm walking with this fellow who's another high school kid
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: from Belgium. They were housing us with families and his uncle.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: And we're walking down the street, and I look over
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: to the left, and there's a woman sitting on a chair.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: in a small storefront and you know, with a shawl
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: wrapped around her and she's just kind of looking at
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: people as they walk by. And I had never seen
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: anything like that before. I look at the guys, what,
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: what is happening there? And so, um, but the guy who's,
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: I guess he's about 45, he's just kind of looking
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: at me and he's nodding and he's trying to sort
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: something out in his mind. And, uh, He says, I'm
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: trying to decide whether or not I should pay for
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: you to go in. No. And it took me a
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: minute to figure out what was going on. And I
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: think he saw me figure it out in blush, and
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: then he just kind of dismissed it, and we walked
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: down the road. But it was such a powerful... juxtaposition
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: between how shielded I was from that aspect of sexuality
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: that is so, or at least at that time was
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: so integrated into Belgian culture, where it would have been
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: considered in some ways a non-event for me to be
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: initiated by a sex worker at that point. And this
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: guy was considering whether or not to facilitate that experience
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: for me. But it's a great example of the way
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: American culture holds sexuality versus an older and different culture
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: in Europe. So, yes, I was well integrated into protecting
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: adolescents and my own innocence as well without realizing how
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: I had been colonized by that system, by that value system.
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: And of course, the sort of onset of sexuality in
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: adolescence is a great, great driver. You know, Jung in
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: that passage I read talks about kind of getting out
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: into life. And the sexual urge is a big part
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: of what moves us out into life. Let me see
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: if I can figure this dating thing out. Let me
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: see if I can, you know, have my first sexual encounter.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, interestingly, these days, kids are adolescents are not
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: having sex very much. You know, there's, there's been a
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: real drop off. And I think it's interesting, both in kids,
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: like getting their driver's license and wanting to learn how
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: to drive. There's this kind of new phenomenon where a
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: lot of young people don't want to get their license
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: and they're not dating and they're not having sex, which
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: in some sense, it's good, right? Teen pregnancy is way down.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: As far as I know, last time I checked, But
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: it's interesting that it's those two things, right? It is
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: a drive to get out into life, kind of thrust
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: yourself forward and begin to have your own experiences. And
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: for whatever reason in our culture right now, adolescents are
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: not tapping into that. And I think that's where Jung's
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: passage that I read is relevant. It's like we're clinging
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: to childhood.
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean, it's not for some reason that
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: there's a concerted effort to keep American youth naive and
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: quote-unquote innocent. And this has to do with the attack
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: on education, sexual education even.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: I don't think kids are not having sex because they're
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: not getting sex ed. And it's in communities like mine
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: where that's not an issue. 20 years ago, it remained
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: fairly stable, but there's been a drop off. It's dropped
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: off the cliff. I think it has more to do
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: with kids kind of living virtual lives online. And they're
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: not actually getting out and being with one another. And
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: people are noticing that there are social deficits because kids
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: spend so much time socializing online, they don't know how
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: to do it in person. But I'm sure there's lots
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: of reasons. I'm sure there's lots of reasons, but it's
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: a recent phenomenon.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: Well, I think in social media, there is such a
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: contempt towards sexuality that somehow it's repugnant. And there's so
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: much on social media, particularly of young women expressing contempt
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: towards the sexual interest of boys.
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: So that's, Oh, that's, I guess, a way to be
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: a young woman or a late teen girl. And it's
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: a message to boys like, don't even turn your eyes
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: in my direction lest I find you disgusting. Yes. And
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: that is everywhere. And it is communicated many, many, many,
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: many times. And then you have a community of kids
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: that are very impressionable and they're spending a lot of
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: time on those platforms.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: That's a new, powerful message. And now we're seeing the
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: results of that.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: Yep. No, I think that's 100% correct.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: It's a very complex issue. And I'm thinking about a
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: million years ago, I was a high school teacher. And
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: there's a real mismatch anyway. At least there was. when
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: I was teaching high school, between the drives of boys
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: and the drives of girls. And, you know, it's all
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: part of the surging energy of adolescence. And then there's biology.
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: of how to belong, how to socialize, how do we interact,
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: who wants what. And the boys were into things that
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: were much more physical and much more dangerous. Girls could
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: get pregnant or something else, but they were different interests
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: in society. service, we hope, of exerting their own will,
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: exerting their own ability to choose and to command and
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: to decide what was wanted and what was not wanted.
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: And today with social media, you know, what is the
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: price of belonging? That's what is a huge thing is
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: that the heightened emotional sensitivities of all teens, how to
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: form an identity and how to belong and how to
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: have socialization. And even further back in the midst of
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: time when I was growing up, there was no nothing.
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: So we had to figure out how to be with
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: each other. and negotiate that, navigate it. And there were
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: all kinds of youth groups. My very liberal congregational church
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: had a fellowship for junior high and senior high. And
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: that's what a good chunk of us did, guided by
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: these very generous, wonderful adults who took us places and
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: we played all kinds of just streets and alleys and
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: games that would be probably considered totally corny today. But
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: there was an outlet for energy, and certainly there was
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: some snuggling up and cuddling and more that went on
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: between boys and girls and others. But we don't have
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: those containers for it today. And I think if kids
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: are just turned on and turned into themselves to do
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: what they want based on their own desires, it can
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: turn in difficult directions versus adults who can supervise and
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: instruct and provide the belonging that is so wanted, I
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: think not just by teens, but by most of us.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: All our lives. My women's retreat is going to be
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: in Tuscany this August 10th through 16th. On our itinerary
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: is the Tomb of the Unknown Chariot, one of Italy's
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: most fascinating Etruscan sites. Imagine standing in the hush of
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: an ancient tomb, cold, wet stone surrounding you, as a
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: chariot races toward the underworld, driven by a demon with
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: flaming red hair. Further in, you'll find a three-headed serpent
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: and a scene depicting a mysterious reunion taking place in
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: the afterlife. Visiting the tomb, which dates back to the
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: 4th century BC, really makes you feel like you're stepping
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: inside an ancient myth. Excavated in 2003, it is one
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: of the most important recent archaeological discoveries made in Italy.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: The fragile tomb is rarely open to the public. and
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: must be booked a long way in advance. But we
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: have managed to secure private access for the Wellspring Women's Retreat.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: These local excursions will enhance the work we do together
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: at the retreat, including fairy tales, yoga, and dream work.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: If you'd like to join us, please book your place soon,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: as there is now limited availability. The link is in
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: the show notes.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: So I think, Deb, you're leaning into this area of
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: adolescent education, initiation, that there is a poverty of contexts
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: to facilitate that transition. I also just want to say
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: that there was at one time, particularly in the 80s
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: and 90s, a real fascination around providing initiation rites, which
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: to a great degree failed for a very good reason,
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: that the actual initiation ceremony was actually the beginning of
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: a very long process of responsibilities that the young person
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: would then take on. It wasn't just that you went
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: out into the woods, some mysteries were revealed, and then
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: you came back and continued the exact same life that
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: you had before. It wasn't purely psychological. When you came back,
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: you no longer were playing with the kids. You were
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: out hunting, or you were doing other adult things after
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: the initiation. The other stuff, the accommodations you had prior
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: to the initiation, they are all gone. And that isn't
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: how moderns are fantasizing about the initiation. As if a
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: small ceremony could transform everything. So I think We need initiation,
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: but I think it still is not actually understood. That said,
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: I think what we're seeing with the negative impact of
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: living an online life is that the adolescent is not
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: afforded the opportunity to live out the experiences of being
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: a rebel or a trickster or an explorer. that they're
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: simply fantasizing about it, which means that they are saturated
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: in the archetypal fantasies of the experience, not embodying it.
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: And that actually leaves the child feeling shame and guilt
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: because they aren't the thing that they keep fantasizing it
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: should look like.
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: Right. That is really big. Joseph, what you've just said.
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: And I'm just going to build on that, that there
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: is no substitute for lived, embodied, adult-guided, intergenerational experiences. Either
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: adults are there and social containers are there so that
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: we can live within social norms. And teenagers can still
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: be teenagers, but where are the real containers of adult
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: presence and attention, communication, activities, learning, et cetera? It can't
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: be marked by one big night of some kind of
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: rite of passage without the lived context that exists before
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: and after. in a lived, embodied way. And that takes
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: me to a movie that is now on Netflix entitled Adolescence,
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: where four parts, I thought it was really very well
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: done and profound in many ways and illustrates incredibly well
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: that the adults have no idea what is going on
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: with these teenagers. None of teenagers and parents, teenagers and
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: school personnel live in entirely separate worlds.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with you, Deb. It's a remarkable, remarkable series.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: And by the way, the performances are just incredible.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: And that was, especially the second episode, I leaned over
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: to my husband. I was like, the whole subtext of
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: this episode is we have no effing idea what's going
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: on in the minds of teenagers. And in the show,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: it has a lot to do with their online lives
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: and what's going on online. And the adults don't know
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: how to read what's going on online. But I think
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: it does kind of go to this deeper archetypal level of,
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Our kids are... What's the great line from the poem?
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: Your children are not your children. They come through you,
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: but not from you.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: Kahlil Gibran.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: They live in the house of the future, and you
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: can never go there. That's the line I was thinking of.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: We can't fathom, really, who our kids are. And it
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: comes across so powerfully in this wonderful Netflix series. And
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: it goes to, Deb, also what you were saying before
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: about the Ericksonian stuff. The fundamental question, as you said,
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: of adolescence, according to Erickson, is who am I? And
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: the answer to that is something beyond what my parents
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: have fathomed. So there's a beautiful quote from Michael Mead,
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: who as part of the mythopoetic men's movement, he says,
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: it's difficult for parents to see through the veil of
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: their own expectations to the inner nature of the child
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: born to them. And each child carries something that waits
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: to be born in the world beyond the parent's door. And, uh,
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: you know, and I think, um, That that is true.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: And as parents, we just kind of have to release
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: them in some sense to their fate. You know, I
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: do want to come back, Joseph, to what you said
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: a minute ago, because I think you said something so profound,
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: and it's really landing with me, that kids have the
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: need to become more, to live out a heroic drive,
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: let's say. And oftentimes, there is no way to do that.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: And as we see in the Netflix show, the kid
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: finds a way to do it in a very dark way.
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: And sometimes that does happen. But a lot of times,
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: you know, it's go be a good student, do your extracurriculars,
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: and it doesn't scratch that itch. And then I think
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: you're right. I think the kid feels shame and guilt
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: because there's a sense of not being what he or
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: she feels he should be. And it's a... It's a
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: very compelling way of looking at it. I really appreciate
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: that framing.
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, being plagued by these colonizing fantasies.
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: I come back to it in the context of, I guess,
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: my own, the violin I want to play and the
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: context of what we're saying, but where are the grown-ups?
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: What the role of adults has traditionally been is to instruct.
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: You know, somebody teaches these young men how to hunt,
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: how to do all kinds of things. And there's a
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: joined activity together. They're corrected. They're encouraged. There's intergenerational need
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: for contact and for the transmission of skills and knowledge.
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: This film, and I think many other factors in modern
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: life today for a lot of people, there is no intergenerational, meaningful,
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: active kind of contact. And it has an effect.
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: Well, I think there is a larger social change, and
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: now we're seeing some of the symptomology, that the image
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: of a parent, dedicated to the tending of the child
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: is collapsing in the culture. And we can see that.
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: A couple has a child. Who wants to stay home
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: and raise that child? If dad becomes a stay-at-home dad,
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: he's often denigrated. Even in terms of statistical research, women
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: who want to go out and have a career and
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: have a husband who says, well, I'll stay home and
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: raise the kid. Generally speaking, that husband is seen as
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: less valuable and less masculine. Many women either don't want
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: to stay home and do the domestic task, or they
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: have been told that it somehow diminishes them to be
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: the one who stays home and takes care of the kids.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: And so we hire people, often at very young ages.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: infants are put into the hands of nursery schools and
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: other people to raise the kids. And so there's been
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: a change in how we as a culture value the
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: relationship between the adult and the infant and the adult
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: and the child as it's maturing. So Deb, I think
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: you are speaking to a problem that we have, which
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: is a struggle around values and how people characterize their
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: own adult individuation process and whether or not tending to
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: children in an intimate and abiding way is any longer
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: perceived as a path for an average adult. I think, Lisa,
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: that your book on motherhood was an attempt to correct
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: for that, seeing the tending and the archetype of the
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: mother as a path of initiation. which I think is
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: fallen out of consciousness. For the mother, I think there
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: are men, because some of them are my analysis, that
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: are home taking care of the kids, but the scorn
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: that they are subject to is real.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it is.
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: And shocking.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it.
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: Is, yep. But that speaks to the denigration of the
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: role itself, that the one who cares for the child
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: It is terribly undervalued, no matter which sex performs the task.
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: And that, to me, is a great stumbling block, Deb,
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: towards this realization, which I totally agree with you, is
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: that children need contact with their parents, a lot of
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: contact with their parents through all the stages of that process.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: Although, you know what's interesting is there's a practice, I
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: believe it's called extrusion. And it's existed in many, many cultures.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: And it even exists in non-human primates. And it's where
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: a young person usually, I mean, like say maybe eight
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: or 11, 12, kind of in the adolescent timeframe, is
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: sent to live with other adults. Yes. And this is
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: such a widespread thing. I mean, one way to think
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: about it is if you grew up in a village
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: in medieval Spain and When you were eight, you might
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: become an apprentice to your uncle, the blacksmith. And then
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: you left your family and you went and you lived
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: with this other family. And so there's something about this
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: and how widespread it is and the fact that it
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: exists in non-human primates tells us that it's archetypal. So
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: when you're saying, where are the adults? Yes, where are
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: the adults? But as we said a minute ago, the
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: point of adolescence is to grow beyond your parents. So
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: what you need is to continue to be mentored by
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: other adults that are not parents. Yes. But that's a very,
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: very important role. And we don't have anything like that
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: in our culture. We can send our kids to boarding school,
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: but that's a peer environment. You're not being mentored and
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: raised by other adults. You're really in a peer environment.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: And when my kids were in early adolescence, they actually
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: did a program where they lived overseas with other families
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: for three months in France and Spain. It was incredible. Actually,
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: the program is called Adolesco. And it was remarkable. You know,
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: they both came home fluent in those languages. But it
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: was such a growth experience to live with another family,
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: kind of to have other parents for three months. And
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: I think there's something that arises in the adolescent that
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: needs to be cultivated and nurtured by adult presence. But actually,
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: I would argue that it needs to not be the parents.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: And just going back a bit, you know, there's a
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: psychologist named Dan McAdams who's come up with the idea
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: of narrative identity. And he talks about adolescence as the
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: period of time in which we become the myth maker.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: We are, whether or not we know it, we're constructing
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: our own personal narrative, our own personal myth. And it
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: has to do with who we are, like Erickson said,
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: what we believe, what our deeply held values are. I
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: remember deciding that I was a Democrat when I was
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: approaching the age of 18, getting ready to register to vote.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: And my parents were not Democrats and, and I didn't,
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: I didn't at that time, the community that I lived
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: in was very, very Republican, but, but I was a
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: Democrat and, and I still am. And I registered a
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: Democrat and I've always been a Democrat and I've always
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: voted Democrat. Um, uh, but, but it, but it's interesting, right?
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: Because this was a kind of, uh, um, a deeply
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: held value that I had that these, the policies of
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: this party were more in line with with what mattered
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: to me, you know, as this very sincere, earnest young person.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: But it has become part of my identity and my
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: ongoing personal narrative, you know. So I'm thinking actually about, oh,
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: and it probably mattered that my parents weren't Democrats, right?
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: Cause that part of it, part of creating that story
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: is how am I different from my parents?
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: And I'm, I'm actually thinking about the, uh, the, the
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: fairytale Jack and the Beanstalk as a kind of great
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: adolescent myth because, you know, his mother doesn't think much
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: of him. She thinks he's a ne'er-do-well. He goes out
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: to prove himself, comes back with a handful of beans.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: His mother scoffs at him. He hasn't met those parental expectations.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: But he, you know, talking about Joseph, like that need
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: to be a kind of instantiate your own heroic tendencies,
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: which I don't think is just colonized, by the way.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: I think that's innate. He does that. He climbs the
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: beanstalk and he comes back with all these treasures. And
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: he had to do that, as Michael Mead said, kind
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: of beyond the parents' door. Like, he couldn't become the
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: person his mother wanted him to be. He had to
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: really become his own version of the hero. And it
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: was much better than what his mother wanted. She wanted
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: him to come back with a bag of gold for
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: the cow. But they would have gone through that, and
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: then there would have been nothing again. But instead, he
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: winds up getting the goose that lays the golden egg. So,
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: so in, in adolescence, it is important that we, that
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: we go beyond our parents and what their expectations are
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: for us.
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: And I think you're lifting up something that's really importantly
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: so that a lot of fairy tales are tales around adolescence.
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: You know, Rapunzel is sitting up there in her tower
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: with the contact is only with her sort of surrogate
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: mother who keeps her up there. Yeah. Um, And then
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: what happens? Well, one day this prince comes climbing up
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: the tower, and the rest, of course, is history. And
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: it was a fraught path for her, but the urge
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: to go beyond her isolated, peaceful, innocent life in the
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: tower was overwhelming. She saw this prince, and it was like,
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: that's for me. We're definitely doing that. And then there's
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: Snow White and there's Cinderella.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: And Sleeping Beauty.
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: And Sleeping Beauty. And that these are demonstrating or illustrating,
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm going to go my own way. I
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: have to follow my own life urge of being curious,
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: whether it's going to the ball or like Sleeping Beauty
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: exploring the castle and finally discovering the spindle. And you
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: can imagine how many people have written psychological riffs on that.
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: So there's something here about what is supposed to happen
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: and it can happen in adolescence of writing your own story,
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: being the hero of your own story and your own
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: myth of who am I.
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: So I wonder if we should talk a little bit
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: about Jung's experience of adolescence.
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: Well, he, you know, and in some senses we were
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: saying that it kind of sets the stage for, for
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: later life. You know, I think that Jung's experience of
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: his father's kind of failed religious experience, really, his father
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: was a cleric who didn't believe in And Jung kind
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: of discovered this in adolescence, and it was sort of shocking.
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: And in some sense, Jung's whole oeuvre is about trying
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: to answer to that, I think.
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: Jung's father's myth failed. And we want to see adults
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: who have a purpose, something that calls them, something that's
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: meaningful for them, a deep calling to do what it
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: is they do. a sense of being present in finding
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: meaning in their life. It doesn't have to be, you know,
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: theatrical or, you know, special or lit up in big lights,
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: but an adult that is grounded in himself and in
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: a greater purpose. And Jung's father, you know, as he's
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: been written about, seems to have kind of flatlined inside.
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: The interesting thing that I feel about Jung's characterization of
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: his father is that I'm not really clear who his
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: father was based on the things that we've read. But
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: there is a narrative about Jung being disappointed in his
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: father and that need, as we were saying, to make
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: himself different from his father. I think teenagers... regularly devalue
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: their parents as a way of not making themselves consciously
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: into an exact replica of them. So I think that
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: Jung's stories about his dad are more about his own
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: psychological process of pushing dad away so that he could
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: become his own person. Maybe there's a bunch of fact
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: in it, but I don't know about that.
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to read a little bit from Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: On the white cloth covering the altar, so this is
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: his first Holy Communion. On the white cloth covering the
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: altar lay large trays filled with small pieces of bread.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: I could see that the bread came from our baker,
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: whose baked goods were generally poor and flat in taste.
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: From a pewter jug, wine was poured into a pewter cup.
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: My father ate a piece of the bread, took a
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: swallow of the wine, I knew the tavern from which
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: it had come, and passed the cup to one of
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: the old men. All were stiff, solemn, and it seemed
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: to me uninterested. I looked on in suspense, but could
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: not see or guess whether anything unusual was going on
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: inside the old men. The atmosphere was the same as
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: that of all other performances in church, baptisms, funerals, and
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: so on. I had the impression that something was being
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: performed here in the traditionally correct manner. And then later
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: he writes, Only gradually in the course of the following
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: days did it dawn on me that nothing had happened.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: I had reached the pinnacle of religious initiation, had expected
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: something I knew not what to happen, and nothing at
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: all had happened. So here's Jung's encounter as an adolescent
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: with a structure of meaning that leaves him empty, and
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: he needs to go off in search of something else.
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: And I think that had Jung, the ritual been much
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: more emotional much more dramatic much more magical it would
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: have been harder for jung to break away because so
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: much of his process later in life was forging a
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: direct relationship with the self not falling prey to an
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: inherited code of ideas so i think that that um
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: impulse inside of him to not simply follow along with
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: what the culture was prescribing is to the great benefit
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: of all of us because he became an intrepid adventurer
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: regarding all of this. I think the impulse to forge
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: a living relationship to the self versus following our fantasies
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: of an ancient person who was able to forge that experience,
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: which is what religion is, as a collection of beliefs
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: and processes is what Jung very much was in favor
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: of and is part of his later fantasy of what
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: religion would one day become, which is the individual forging
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: of the relationship between the ego and the self and
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: not prescribed processes necessarily.
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: I think what we hope for, I mean, Jung found it,
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: being the remarkable man he was in and through in
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: many ways, his own individual process. But we want our
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: kids and we want one another as adults to have
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: a living relationship with themselves, with each other, with something greater.
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: And the concern today, just looping back to adolescence, based
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: on a lot of what I read, is that that's
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: what's missing. Living connections with neighbors, with communities, religious organizations, schools,
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: the list goes on and on. A living relationship with
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: other people that is meaningful and has vitality. that can
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: seed a living relationship with oneself. So that, unlike Jung,
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: we don't have to turn our teenagers over to one
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: another and to social media and hope to hell they
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: figure it out.
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: The thing that it seems like, and this is just, again,
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: in the published material, is that Jung was deprived of
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: witnessing his father intimately enough to believe that you're either
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: going to choose conformity or collapse. And what he couldn't
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: see is that his father could be wounded and wise,
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: that he could be both of those things. Now, as
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: an adolescent, that isn't something that he was naturally going
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: to come to on his own. Although I would say
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: that late in his life, Jung changed his relationship to, quote-unquote,
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: the church. And he actually had a kind of internal
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: revival of the archetype of the church as something that
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: was a very real refuge for him. But he had
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: to find that living relationship later in life. It couldn't
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: just be given to him. But this idea of being
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: wounded and wise, being imperfect and still valuable, is something
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: that of course is central to Jungian thought. But he
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: had to earn his way back to that deeper place, having,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: in a rather righteous way, rejected his father for being insufficient.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: Where I go with that is Jung's perception was that
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: his father did not have inner vitality. And it may
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: be very human, as you're kind of pointing out, that
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: his father was wounded and he was human and he
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: had a life, all of those things. But Jung says
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: that what we cannot do and should not do is
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: to foist our own unlived lives onto our children. And
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: the most important thing we can do for our kids
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: is to find our own vitality and meaning. Yes, we
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: have to spend time with them and have it be meaningful,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: substantive time, but mainly our kids need to see that
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: we are alive in our own selves and in our
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: own lives out there in the world.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: I think that's exactly right. That letting the child see
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: your process so that they could believe in their own
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: process is incredibly helpful. I want to swing to something
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: that we were implying a number of times in the conversation,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: which has something to do with the amount of protection
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: and regulation that parents should have or ought that they
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: themselves overdo. The idea of the helicopter parent, but also
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: the parent that thinks their role is to attack anyone
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: who makes their child uncomfortable. And one of the things
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: that I wish parents en masse could really understand is that, yes,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: we need to protect our children from harm, but the
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: world is very difficult. And if you overprotect your child,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: you are stealing the rite of passage from them. You
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: are robbing them of something. And that adolescence is meant
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: to be a risk-taking time, or for lack of a
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: better word, a dangerous time, that it's necessary and to
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: feel lost or ashamed and ecstatic and enraged and all
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: the wild stuff that we all experience as adults. Adolescence
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: is part of a self-initiation process. So yeah, we need
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: to shelter our kids' bodies. We need to provide food
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: and safety and space. But if we try to shelter
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: the adolescent's soul from its confrontation with shadow and instinct
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: and sexuality and even meaninglessness, the kind of ennui of adolescence,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: if we interrupt their relationship to those things, that we
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: are preventing them from crossing the terrain that they have
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: to cross in order to approach adulthood. So making our
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: kids' lives more and more pampered, taking more away from
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: them because we want things easier for ourselves. So of
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: course our children must want it to be easier for them.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: We're imposing the decline and exhaustion of our own adulthood
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: And our own fantasy of regressing back to some, you know,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: cared for moment, we're projecting that onto the child, which
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: is an example, Deb, of what you'd said about the
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: unlived life. So you may want to live, you know,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: like somebody who's reclining on a divan having grapes popped
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: into their mouths by your, you know, servants. But that's
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: a terrible thing to convince your 14-year-old that that's the
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: vision of a life well lived.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: Well, and I think I have my own take on
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: this from perhaps personal experience. I think sometimes when we
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: make our kids' lives too easy, it's because it is
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: difficult for us to tolerate their distress. So what I
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: can recognize in myself is I want you to figure
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: this out so that I can... So that you can
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: rescue me from the agony of me having to worry
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: about you. Because it's so uncomfortable for me to watch
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: you flail or watch you be uncomfortable. I don't want
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: to be uncomfortable. So stop being uncomfortable or flailing or
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: being confused or whatever else. Get your shit together so
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: that I can just relax over here, okay? That's what
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: I can claim.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: It's hard to be a parent, 100%.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: It is. But I agree, Joseph. I think, you know,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: it is a dangerous passage. It is a perilous passage
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: to adulthood. And you know what? Some kids won't make it.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: That is true. Some kids will fall prey to addiction
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: or will engage in risky behavior and will, you know,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: have a bad accident and die. I mean, I'm being serious.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: Like some kids won't make it. Most will. But I
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: always think about I'm a Raptor fan. And I like
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: to watch those raptor cams and the most dangerous times
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: for newly, you know, little, little, you know, hawk chicks
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: or owl chicks is fledging. It's when they're leaving the
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: nest because they can't fly well yet. So they fly
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: into buildings or they get hit by a car or whatever.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: That's when, that's when if a, if a, if a
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: chick is going to have a problem, it's going to
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: be at that point on that kind of threshold of independence.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: But It's fascinating to watch the parents start to kind
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: of withhold food a little bit if the chick is
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: not getting out of the nest. They don't starve it,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: but they make it a little uncomfortable because you got
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: to get out there. Otherwise, again, going back to that
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: passage I read earlier from Jung, you stay trapped in
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: childhood and that is poison to the psyche.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: How I'm thinking about it is that the unlived adolescent
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: child will seek danger elsewhere, that we have to let,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: or at least step back and not interfere with the
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: adolescent trying to live, trying to test things, and trying
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: to test the gods, the icons in front of them,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: testing the parents, testing the culture, testing spirituality. And in
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: a sense, because they have to figure out whether those
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: symbols are alive or dead. Yes. And one of the
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: ways that you figure out your parents aren't dead is
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: by testing them.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: So let's talk a little bit about social media because
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: that is the totally new thing abroad in the world
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: that is different from our 2 million years worth of evolution.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: that takes kids into basically sort of a supine receiving
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: position and a virtual reality that is not out there
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: in the world, you know, mowing lawns or doing other things.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, there is a lot to say about
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: social media. We could do, I think we have done
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: one episode on it, but there's more to say about it.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: But what comes up for me, Deb, when you say
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: that is the way that social media is engineered to
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: hijack our dopamine system, like the reward system of the brain.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: And when I was reading that passage from Jung, he
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: was talking about like the drive to get out there.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: We've referenced that several times, at least I have. I
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: think that's a big part of adolescence. Like I got
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: to get myself out there in that big world. And
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: part of what makes us do that is our dopamine system,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: our seeking system, which is kind of Modulated by this neurotransmitter.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: And if we're getting our dopamine hits from likes on
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: social media, where is that drive to, I want to
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: go out and get a summer job? or I want
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: to explore how to make pottery or these other kinds
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: of things that can arise in adolescence and kind of
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: get us out the door. I remember being like approaching,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know, I was 16, 17. And I was like,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: it was very conscious. I was like, I want to
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: have an adventure. And that's how I thought about it myself. Anyway,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: my mom helped me. And we found this opportunity for
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: me to go. I decided I wanted to do something
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: involving archaeology. And I went and I did an archaeological
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: excavation in Italy, which was amazing. It was the first
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: time I traveled alone. It was 18. It was the
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: first time I traveled alone. It was the first time
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: I'd ever been to Italy, which just blew me away.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: And that's where I fell in love for the first time.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: Of course, in Italy. Yeah. Certo. Anyway, but what led
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: to it was that itch. I want an adventure, you know?
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: And I just wonder what happens to that impulse when
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: social media or gaming even can kind of scratch that
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: same itch from our bedroom. Yes, exactly. Exactly.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: That we have to actually conduct the experiments that we
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: are fantasizing and not just fantasize, we've conducted the experiments.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 4: And that's what the difference is, is we can do
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: so many things vicariously as if it's the real thing,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 4: which is very different from actually getting your butt out
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 4: there into the real world and figuring it out. I
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 4: remember I needed a summer job. And that was the deal.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 4: My father says, I will pay your college tuition, but
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: you earn all your own spending money. And I had
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: no clue how to get a summer job. And you
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 4: know what my father said to me? Figure it out.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: And did you?
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: Yes, I went to the state. There was a bureau
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 4: or an office somewhere for state employment. and I got
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: a job working in a dress shop, and they fired
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: me after, I'm going to say two weeks, just so
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 4: I don't look bad, because it might have only been
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: after one week. And it wasn't that I wasn't trying,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: but I just honestly, I didn't get the vibe. And
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 4: I or what they wanted, or it just was the
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 4: wrong fit. And then I got a job working at
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: this little tiny summer camp. There were people that had
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 4: a farm, and they had animals. And then during the summer,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 4: they took in some kids. And that was the, quote, camp, unquote.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 4: And I was it.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 4: I was the arts and crafts counselor, the writing instructor,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 4: the swimming instructor.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: But But it was a job, and that job led
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: to my job the next year. They had a young
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 4: woman who was given a summer, I guess I can't
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 4: quite call it an internship, but a reprieve. And she
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 4: was at a place for homeless orphaned girls. Mm-hmm. in Connecticut.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 4: And we had lots of opportunity to talk. And I thought,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: that's what I want to do next year. I want
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 4: to work at this school. You had to have certain
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 4: points and be able to leave for the summer, having
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: met their standard. And there I was. One thing led
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: to another.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: And Deb, you said something, you used a phrase, you said,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: I want, I want, I want. I want. And I
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: think that's a critical thing at any time of life,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: but in adolescence or in young adulthood, it's like, I want.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: What do you want? What's pulling you forward into life?
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: Yes. There has to be a want. And social media is,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: everybody's read about all kinds of things, the dangers of that,
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: because it doesn't take bodily and systemic activation. To get
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 4: out there in the world. As you said, Lisa, you
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 4: can do it in your bedroom. But I also want
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: to go to the other side of that. And in
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 4: thinking about today and preparing for it, of a remarkable
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 4: young man who was a mentor through an online game
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 4: to hundreds, of teenagers. And he had an illness from
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 4: which he died. He was a young man in, I think, Norway.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: And when he died, his parents got emails or notifications
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 4: from all around the world that the avatar he created
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 4: in this game was instructive and compassionate. and empathic, all
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: those things for all kinds of kids all around the world.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 4: And they gather together virtually every year to remember his
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 4: virtual character. So, of course, like so many other things,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 4: social media is a whole wide range of experiences and
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 4: a conduit to Lots of things.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: Of course it is. Gaming and social media does have
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: some incredibly positive aspects. I mean, there's certainly benefits that
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: I've appreciated just in my own life. And it can
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: be a wonderful way for kids to connect. It just
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: hopefully leads to that next thing. It hopefully gets you
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: out the door.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 4: It's getting trapped in the magic mountain, getting trapped in
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: the land of fairy. And the rule of fairy tales
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: is that if you're trapped in the land the fairies
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 4: have you, don't eat anything or drink anything. You must
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 4: withhold yourself from indulging in order to be able to
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: get out of the magic mountain.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: What I hear you saying is that peer groups serve
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: as the first mirror outside the family. And that sometimes,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 3: in right proportion, any number of peer groups serve important purposes.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: And sometimes that can be an online gaming community, and
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: it can be any number of other kinds of peer groups.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: So I think we are absolutely... um, influenced and sometimes positively,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: sometimes not, but we do need something other than the
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: family to know ourselves and to know ourselves in ways
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: that are unique. And also to be given that really
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: important feedback process of which we all experience adolescence. We
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: bring a way of being to a group of peers
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: and then they give us feedback. And that feedback can
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: be very positive and affirming, and that feedback can be
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: very damning and challenging. And that's the first encounter with society.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: And from that is the process of developing a persona.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: And without a persona, you can't get a job. I mean,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: you need some kind of social accommodation. And that's what
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: happens certainly in adolescence. sometimes in a way that can
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: be a little bit too overwhelming. We can certainly be
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: thrown off something that is authentic in us for a while,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: but we do need help to know how to fit
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: in in some measure, particularly when we are that age.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: I want to talk a little bit about hatred, because
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: I think that's very much part of adolescence. I remember
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: when I was in high school, I was hanging out
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: with a friend of mine, Joan. And I mean, after
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: this experience, I thought her mother must be the Buddha.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: I mean, it was unbelievable. But we were mucking around
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: with something and the mother came in and I can't
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: even remember what she said. It was one thing or another. Oh,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: I actually think she asked whether or not I was
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: going to stay for dinner. And my friend Joan kind
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: of rose up and she screamed obscenities at her mother
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: to get her out of the room, to get away
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: from us. And I was shocked. I mean, I couldn't
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: even speak. But I can remember it like newsreel in
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: my mind about the way that her mom just contained
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 3: totally observant, not inflaming it, not shaming her, not showing... anger,
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: not showing anxiety, but the mother just observing her. My
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: friend just kind of exhausted herself. The mom just kind
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: of hovered for a moment and then just in a
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: very measured, dignified way, just stepped out of the room.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: I thought that that was an immense display of containment
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: and I remember it now decades afterwards but where I
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: wanted to go with hate is that I think that
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 3: adolescent rage is necessary and often masks a kind of
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: unbearable love because as an adolescent the intensity of love
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: threatens to dissolve the growing personality, that love is a
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 3: kind of salutio experience, and particularly the intense feeling between
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: parents and children that part of the excessively sustained adolescence
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: is that what is now a young adult is still
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: dissolving in the parental love yeah and they they've got
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: to fight their way out of that and that often
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: has to do or at least looks like hatred or
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: what jung said is individuation can sometimes be individuation.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: Against yes yes so the.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: Hatred for the parents is in often exact proportion to
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: the fear of just dissolving into that bond between the
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: parent and the child.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: You know, Joseph, talking about that mom who kind of
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: does this great job of containment, I mean, one of
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: the big parental tasks in toddlerhood and in adolescence is
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: to teach affect regulation, right? So, you know, you have
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: big feelings when you're a toddler and the parents supposed
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: to help you contain it. And then again, in adolescence,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: and you're right, that mom did a great job, much
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: better than a job than I ever, ever did. But
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: it reminds me of a Scottish fairy tale that I sometimes,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: because in part of my practices, I've worked with a
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: lot of parents with really difficult teens and young adults.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: So this is a fairy tale that I will often
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: tell them is the fairy tale of Tam Lin. So
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: in Tamlin, the heroine's fiance is snatched by the fairies.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: And she tries to get him back. And they say, oh,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: you know, there's no way. You'll never get him back.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: But finally, someone tells her, you know, you have to
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: be waiting at this place on Midsummer's Eve. And they
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: will pass. The fairy folk will pass. And then at
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: that point, you need to pull him off the horse.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: And here's the part that I think is related to
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: your story. Then you must hold him fast. And he
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: will turn into all manner of things, a writhing mass
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: of snakes, a fire, you know, a burning fire, a
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: raging bull. You must hold him fast through all of that.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: And then if you can do that, he will be
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: returned to you. And I offer that as an image
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: to parents, like your kid is going to look like
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: a writhing mass of snakes, a burning fire and a
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: raging bull. And it's your job just to contain it.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: Easier said than done. But that's the idea.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 3: Well, I was also in the room. I have no
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: idea what that mom would have done if I wasn't
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: in the house.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's interesting.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: In hindsight. But yes, love that. And I've thought about
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: that fairy tale from time to time as well, that
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 3: the ferocity of love between parents and their adolescent children
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 3: is the thing to behold. The other thing that I
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: think is important is, and we're leaning into that, is
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 3: parental anxiety. And this is a really difficult position for
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 3: all parents to be in. I mean, your boy goes
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 3: out on his first date and he's supposed to be
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: home by midnight and it's two o'clock and you want
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 3: to start getting in the car and running around looking
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: for him, which of course would also humiliate him at
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 3: the same time. And the axiom that I often suggest
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 3: to parents is, and it's hard to take in is
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 3: your anxiety is not your child's guide.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 3: And that is a hard lesson, but I mean, every
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 3: parent should have like tattooed on their wrist, like before
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 3: they leave the hospital with the baby.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: Your own fears, you know, you, you can't make your
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: kid pay for what you could not endure.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: Although a lot of us try.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: Oh, my gosh. No kidding. I mean, it's not like
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: it's easy to do these things.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: But I think we need a perspective on some of
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: these things so that we can kind of, we can
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: breathe and then we can give our kids breathing room.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: So as well as containing our kids, helping co-regulate them,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: we also need to hold Hold on for dear life
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 3: and not spray our stuff all over the house, our
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: own unfinished business.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: We have to manage our own anxiety.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 3: Yes, it really interferes with kids.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 4: Then we can see more clearly what this particular child
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 4: can manage versus something that he or she really can't manage.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 4: That allows us to be discerning.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, related to that, one of my kids,
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: I'm going to be vague because I don't want to
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: embarrass my kids. But one of my kids recently, as
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: a young adult, was late adolescent, let's say, was facing
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: a challenge. And this person was away at college. And
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: I got wind of the challenge. And I was, like, oscillating.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: I was so, like, upset. And I, like, wanted to
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: get on a plane. you know, go there. I mean,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: not really, but, but I was, I was very anxious.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: And, and I decided to do, you know, what, what
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: one does when one is facing something like this, I
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: did a dream incubation. And, you know, sometimes when you
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: do a dream incubation, you, I get a dream, but
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: sometimes I just wake up knowing something I didn't know
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: when I went to sleep. And this was the latter case.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: I woke up in the morning and I thought, Lisa,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: you have no idea what they are doing to solve
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: the problem.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 3: Hmm.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: And it was, it was, it was such, it was like,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: just broke the, it just broke my, my mania. I
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: was like, right. Because, you know, this person is, you know,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: has been alive for almost two decades and knows a
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: thing or two and probably isn't happy with what's going
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: on either and probably has a plan. And of course
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: they did and they did figure it out, but it was,
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: it was so shocking to me to, to, to, to
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: realize that I hadn't, I hadn't gained that perspective at
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: all before that. Like, yeah, I was upset by what
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: was going on, but so were they, and they were
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: like capable of maybe wrestling with it. And I, I didn't,
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: it wasn't helpful for me to be anxious about it.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: Didn't do any good, anyone, any good. So thank goodness
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: for the dream maker, which Which brings to mind the
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: fact that it might be a good time to switch
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: to a dream.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 4: Oh, that was such an artful segue, Lisa.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: Hey, before we jump into the dream, I just want
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: to remind people also, since I've been like the guy
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 3: with the megaphone, is that, you know, we rely on
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 3: our listeners to create a fundamental support for us to
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 3: keep the podcast up and running. We do have a
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: Patreon channel. That link is right underneath the show notes,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 3: as well as a link to the Sunyi Life Dream School.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 3: And we really do rely on your support. We've managed
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 3: to not have a bunch of corporate sponsors jump onto
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 3: our bandwagon and give us scripts to read this and that.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: But in order to remain that fluid and free, we
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: need you guys to show up And to make a
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 3: monthly donation, we do generate extra content for people who
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 3: are our patrons. But secondary to that is that if
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: you believe in this venture, which is our ability and
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 3: hopefully the usefulness of disseminating Jung's ideas, we need you
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: to show up and help us out. And that could
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 3: just be five bucks a month, maybe a little more
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 3: if that's easy enough for you. But we rely on
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 3: you to make sure that the machine, so to speak,
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 3: underneath this human life stays up and running. So with
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: that in mind, let's jump into the dream.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 4: Our dreamer this week is a woman. She's 28, and
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 4: she's a conservator of arts. And the title of this
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 4: dream is Initiation by Leeches. Here's the dream. I dreamt
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 4: that I was at some kind of initiation. We were
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 4: ordered to go to the river and swim in it. Suddenly,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 4: I felt sharp stings on my thigh, mostly the inner
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 4: thigh and crotch. I looked down and saw about 12
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 4: leeches attaching themselves to me. I panicked and swam out
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 4: of the water. The pain was unbearable, even worse when
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 4: I tried to pull them off. They were slippery, and
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 4: it was too painful to go on like this. Someone
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 4: approached me, the master of ceremonies, I think, and I
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 4: begged them to help me get the leeches off, saying
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 4: I thought there was even one on my labia majora.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 4: They tsk-tsk-tsk and told me I was correct and that
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 4: there was also one attached to my labia minora. They
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 4: didn't help me. I was so repulsed I felt sick.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 4: It felt violating. I started to beg anyone around for help.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 4: Everyone was kind and sympathetic, but acted like they couldn't
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 4: help me, just dismissing me with these sheepish smiles. The
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 4: pain was unbearable, as was the repulsion and maybe the
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 4: humiliation too. I cried from powerlessness. At one point, the
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 4: leeches just dropped off by themselves. Someone, probably the master
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 4: of ceremonies, told me, your blood is going to nourish
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 4: a new generation of leeches. For context, she says, for
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 4: the past few months, I've been going through a spiritual
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 4: awakening preceded by a sexual assault. And the main feelings
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 4: in the dream were panic, disgust, repulsion, helplessness, probably humiliation,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 4: and at the end, anger, I think.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: Well, this is such a profound dream, I think. And
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: I think it's an important example of how the psyche
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: takes a trauma and through the process of symbolic integration,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: turns it into a depth initiation.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: And it's an example also of how dreams can help
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: us to heal. Because I think this dream very clearly
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: references the sexual assault in a symbolic way. I mean,
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: we don't know what happened to the streamer, but there
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: isn't a sexual act pictured in the dream. But it
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: does show that there is a kind of violation that
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: involves her genital area. But it's a very different kind
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: of violation, I suspect, than the one that she actually suffered.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: And it's one that carries with it the possibility of healing. Leeches,
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: of course, were used in medical treatments throughout the Middle
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: Ages and into the Renaissance in Europe and even into
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: modern times and are still used now because they clean
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: out wounds. And in fact, it used to be that
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: a leech was a word for a doctor because it
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: was such a common part of medical treatment.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 4: What stands out to me most of all, and I
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 4: usually like to sort of take a dream from the
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 4: beginning through its various stages of the story, but in
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 4: this one, what happens at the point is her pain
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 4: and revulsion and humiliation lead to tears. I cried from powerlessness.
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 4: And when she can find her tears, the leeches drop
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 4: off by themselves. And there is a wonderful theme in mythology. When,
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 4: I think it's Mary Magdalene can cry when she goes
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 4: to the tomb where Jesus was put and no one
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 4: is there, she cries. And the angel appears. In the
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 4: fairy tale, the handless maiden can cry. When we can
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 4: find our grief, something is softened and alchemically goes into soluteo.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: It dissolves.
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 4: And it's very clear in the dream. First, she can
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 4: cry and suffer. her helplessness, really feel it. And then
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 4: the horrible leeches fall away. It's a very powerful and
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 4: very moving dream about just what you were saying about
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 4: a process that the dream maker has so been on
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 4: board with of healing from a trauma, as something is
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 4: there to help us.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: Something surprising that we didn't expect. Deb, I'm going to
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: take a page from your book and start at the beginning.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: And she says, I'm at some kind of initiation, right?
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: Like the psyche is just putting it right out there.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: This is an initiation. And then she has to swim.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: So she has to get in the water, which of
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: course is, you know, associated with maybe baptism. But you've
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: got to get in the water. You've got to kind
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: of surrender to the process in some sense. And And
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: that's where this disturbing but somehow necessary thing happens of
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: the leeches attaching to her.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: It's, of course, a very complicated dream, and the association
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 3: with the terrible trauma can also trap us and the
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 3: dreamer into thinking that it is a commentary always on
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 3: the trauma. But I'm also asking myself, How is the
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 3: dream medicinal, not just reflective of something that had happened?
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 3: And what I found myself thinking, finally by the end
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 3: of the dream, when the master of ceremony says, your
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 3: blood is going to nourish, there is an old legend.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 3: And you see it often in artwork and iconography And
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 3: it's an image of a pelican plucking at its chest
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 3: and its young clustered underneath. And it's interpreted as an
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: allegory for the blood of Christ nurturing the congregations. And
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 3: it goes back to St. Thomas Aquinas. So the idea
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 3: that one surrenders one's blood for the benefit of the many.
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 3: And so what I am wondering is if the unconscious
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 3: is very gently trying to suggest that the Christian mythopoetic
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 3: metaphor can be useful in addressing this trauma that she's
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 3: been through. That if we think of Christ and the
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: story of Christ as an archetype that can suffer infinitely,
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 3: bear all things, can transcend that suffering and return in
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 3: a kind of glorified or spiritual exaltation, it may very
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 3: well be that that really archaic level of the psyche
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 3: is very gently offering that archetype as a way of
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 3: surviving this tragic event, this crucifixion, so to speak, that
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 3: this person has come through.
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: That's beautiful, Joseph. And I guess I'm sort of following
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: up on that. I think the final statement that your
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: blood will nourish, whatever exactly it was. If we think
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: of leeches as a healing factor, that statement is almost
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: like your suffering will give rise to healing, perhaps for others.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: And it's true that when we've gone through a great
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: trauma like that, one of the things that can happen
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: is we can become the wounded healer.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 3: There's also an arc at the end. I cried from
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 3: powerlessness and the leeches dropped off by themselves. So I'm
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 3: wondering that there's something... About that admission of powerlessness, that
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 3: humbling that all of us experience in the face of
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 3: terrible trauma of all kinds. and the ability to be
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 3: conscious of that and to survive the realities of powerlessness
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 3: in the face of some adversity seems to be the
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 3: initiation at the end and she's the one who calls
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 3: this an initiation that I am powerless this is also
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 3: part of the mythopoetic story of Christ. Not my will
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 3: but thine be done, the submission, the refusal to exercise
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 3: supernatural power to circumvent Christ's task. Because the great temptation is,
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 3: you know, Christ is dragged out to the desert and
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 3: Satan says, I'll give you power over everything, whatever you want,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 3: whatever you want to do, if you'll Just bow down
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 3: to me. And in the story, Christ chooses the path
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 3: of powerlessness and submission to the self. And so I
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 3: think it is in that weeping, as you were saying before,
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 3: and the admission of powerlessness that the thing that horrifies
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 3: her then casts off, much like a snake shedding its skin,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 3: perhaps then the possibility of being renewed, the blood is
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 3: going to nourish the new thing, the new skin underneath.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 4: There is something about humiliation. And that is an undefended position.
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 4: That's simple. That's the feeling. And the submission, as you
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 4: just said, Joseph, without the overlay of pride or this
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 4: shouldn't have happened and all of these other kinds of things,
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 4: but simply to be able to suffer it. And when
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 4: we can do that, we can't be humiliated any longer.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 4: Here I am. I am still here. I still have.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 4: A self and a self that hurts. And I think
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 4: that's part of why tears archetypally are so healing, is
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 4: we're not protesting, we're not justifying, we're not explaining, we're
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 4: not taking legal action, not that I'm against that, but
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 4: as a felt state, it is a state of simplicity
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 4: and presence. This is an amazing dream.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: It is a really amazing dream.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 4: This is a really moving dream for me to be
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 4: able to have some part in considering, and I can
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 4: appreciate its significance for the dreamer.
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:41:45
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• 1:41:50
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• 1:41:53
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