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DUMBO'S FEATHER: Are there hidden messages in Disney cartoons? · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: Many of us are familiar with the wonderful Disney story
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: of Dumbo, the flying elephant. I remember coming across the
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: cartoon as a kid. Many of you have as well.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: On one level, it's an inspiring story of this little
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: one who discovers this incredible magical ability. And we're going
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: to talk about the process of coming in touch with
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: a potential that someone else sees before we're able to
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: really hold it ourselves. We'll talk about the importance of
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: having a symbol to represent our potential. We'll talk a
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: little bit about the absolutely important role of a relationship,
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: both in the therapeutic process of analysis, but also in
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: being companioned throughout our life. Because often it's our friends
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: or the people who love us that see what we
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: could be when we're particularly feeling low or misunderstood or alienated.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: And at the end of our discussion, we're going to
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: interpret a dream submitted by a retired teacher where an
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: elephant plays a central role in helping her make a
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: major life transition. So we look forward to talking about
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: all of this with you. Hey, everyone. Our upcoming episode
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: will focus on nightmares, and we're looking for your input.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: If you've had a nightmare that significantly impacted you, we're
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: interested in hearing about it. We'll select a few of
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: these to analyze and discuss in the episode. To share
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: your nightmare with us, just scroll down for the link.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Here is the story of Dumbo the Elephant. It was spring,
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: spring in the circus. After the long winter's rest, it
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: was time to set out again on the open road. Toot-toot,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: whistled Casey Jones, the locomotive of the circus train. All aboard,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: shouted the ringmaster. The acrobats, the jugglers, the tumblers, the
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: snake charmers scrambled to their places on the train. The
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: keepers locked the animal cages. Then with a jiggity-jerk and
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: a brisk puff-puff off sped Casey Jones. The circus was
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: on its way. Everyone was singing. Everyone was happy. Happiest
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: of all was Mrs. Jumbo, for in her stall was
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: a chubby, brand-new baby elephant. Though the other animals called
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: the baby Dumbo, his mother loved him dearly, even though
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: his ears were big. All night, while the baby animals slept,
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Casey Jones whistled and puffed, hauling the long train to
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: the city where the circus was to open its show.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: It was dark when he pulled into the station. Rain
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: poured down hard, but the circus began to unload. The
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: roustabouts jumped down from the freight cars. They lighted torches
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: and stuck them in the ground. Men and animals came
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: bustling out of the train into the windy, wet night. Mrs.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Jumbo worked with the others, and her baby helped a little.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: By morning, the rain had stopped, the tent was all
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: set up, and the circus was busy getting ready for
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: the big parade. The band played. Everyone fell in line.
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  Speaker 2: Then off pranced the gay procession down the main street.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: There were creamy white horses, licorice-colored seals. There were lady
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: acrobats in pink silk tights, lions pacing in their gilded
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: wagon cages, elephants marching with slow, even steps. The crowds
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: on the sidewalk cheered. Then suddenly their eyes opened wide.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: They craned their necks. Look, look, they cried. Look at
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: that silly animal with the draggy ears. He can't be
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: an elephant. He must be a clown. Sadly, Dumbo toddled
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: behind his mother with his trunk clasped to her tail.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: He tried to hurry along faster so he wouldn't hear
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: the laughter, but he stumbled. He tripped over his ears.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Down he splashed into a puddle of mud. Now the
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: crowds laughed even louder. Mrs. Jumbo scowled at them. She
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: picked Dumbo up and carried him in her trunk the
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: rest of the way. When the parade finally came back
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: to the tent, everyone hustled to get ready for the
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: afternoon show. Mrs. Jumbo put Dumbo in her wooden bathtub,
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: and as she scrubbed, she whispered comforting words. A gang
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: of noisy boys came pushing in first for the afternoon show.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: We want to see the elephant, they yelled, the one
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: with the sailboat ears. Look, there he is. The boy
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: grabbed one of Dumbo's ears and pulled it hard. Then
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: he made an ugly face and stuck out his tongue. Mrs.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Jumbo couldn't stand it. She snatched the boy up with
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: her trunk and spanked him hard. Help, he cried. Help, help.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: What's going on here, cried the ringmaster, rushing forward with
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: his whip. Tie her down, he yelled. Soon she was
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: behind the bars in the prison wagon with a big
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: sign that said, Danger! Mad Elephant! Keep out! The next day,
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  Speaker 2: they made Dumbo into a clown. They painted his face
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: with a foolish grin and dressed him in a baby dress.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: On his head, they put a bonnet. They used him
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: in the most ridiculous act in the show, a make-believe fire.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Every night, he had to jump from the top of
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: a blazing cardboard house down into a fireman's net. The
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: audience thought it a great joke, but Dumbo felt disgraced.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: He's a disgrace to us, the big animals agreed, and
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  Speaker 2: they turned their backs on him. Hidden in a pile
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: of hay was Timothy Mouse, the smallest animal with the circus.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: They can't treat the little fellow that way, he muttered,
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: not while Timothy Mouse is around. Hey there, little fellow,
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: he called to Dumbo. Don't be afraid. I'm your friend.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: I want to help you. Timothy ran up toward Dumbo's ear.
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  Speaker 2: We'll get your mother out of jail, you and I together,
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: and we'll make you the star of the show. You'll
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: be flying high. Say, he went on, staring at Dumbo's ears.
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  Speaker 2: Those ears are as good as wings. I'll teach you
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  Speaker 2: to fly. Quietly, Dumbo crept out of the tent with Timothy,
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: and soon they came to the prison car on a siding.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Dumbo told his mother all about the clown act and
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: how unhappy he was without her and about the wonderful
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: idea Timothy had for making him a success. Mother Jumbo
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  Speaker 2: listened sympathetically, stroking him gently with her trunk. Don't you worry, baby,
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: she told him. You're having a hard time now, and
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry I can't be with you to help. But
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: just remember always to do your best, and as Timothy says,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: you'll soon be flying high. Then, sadly, they said good night,
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: and Timothy and Dumbo continued on their way. Out on
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: the bare fields in the starlight, they went to work.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: With Timothy as teacher, and Dumbo practiced running and jumping
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: and hopping. He stretched out his wings and flapped them, one, two, three, four.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: But hard as he tried, Dumbo could not leave the ground.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: At last, almost too tired to stand, The two friends
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: gave up and started gloomily back toward the sleeping circus.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Don't worry, Dumbo, Timothy whispered as he curled up on
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Dumbo's hat brim for a good night's sleep. We'll have
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: you flying yet. So Dumbo fell asleep with a tired
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: smile on his face and a beautiful dream in his heart.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: In the dream, he was flying as easily and gracefully
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: as a bird soaring through the air high above the circus.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: It was a wonderful dream and it seemed very real
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: to Dumbo. When the morning sun arose, Timothy was the
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: first to awaken. He blinked and looked up. Just above him,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: four old black crows sat and stared at him. Why,
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: yawned Timothy, rubbing his eyes, where am I? You're up
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: in our tree, snapped the crows crossly. That's where you are. Tree,
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: gasped Timothy. He looked around. Sure enough, there he was
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: sitting on a branch. He and Dumba were up in
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: a tree. The ground was far, far below. But how
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: did we get here, he stammered. How, cackled the crows.
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  Speaker 2: You and that elephant just came a-flying up. Flying, Timothy yelled. Dumbo, Dumbo,
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: wake up. Dumbo, we're up in a tree. You flew here. Slowly,
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Dumbo opened his eyes. He glanced down. He gulped. Then
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: he struggled to his feet. But suddenly he slipped on
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: the smooth tree bark and fell down, down, and down.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: He bounced from branch to branch with Timothy clinging to
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  Speaker 2: his trunk. They landed in a shallow pond just underneath
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: the tree. The crows chuckled and cawed from above. Timothy
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: scrambled up out of the water and wrung out Dumbo's tail. Dumbo,
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: he panted, you can fly. If you can fly when
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: you're asleep, you can fly when you're awake. Your ears, Dumbo,
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  Speaker 2: they're your fortune. He grabbed one of Dumbo's wet ears
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  Speaker 2: and patted it. You won't be a clown anymore. You'll
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: be famous, the only flying elephant in the whole wide world.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: And Timothy and Dumbo began all over again to practice flying.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: But it wasn't easy. Time after time, Dumbo tried to
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: take off. Time after time, he sprawled out flat on
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: his face. Soon the crows began to feel sorry for
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: the little fellow. When Timothy told them all the sad
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: things that had happened to Dumbo because of his big ears,
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: they flew down and offered to help. One of the
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: crows took Timothy aside. Flying's just like swimming, he whispered.
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  Speaker 2: It's just a matter of believing that you can do it.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: He turned and snatched a long black feather from his tail. Here,
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: take this. Tell the baby elephant it's a magic feather.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Tell him if he holds onto it, he can fly.
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  Speaker 2: The boss crow winked and flew off. Timothy handed Dumbo
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  Speaker 2: the feather and scurried up his trunk to the brim
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: of his cap. The trick worked like a charm. The
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: very instant that Dumbo wrapped the tip of his trunk
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: around the feather, flap, flap, flap one of his ears,
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  Speaker 2: up into the air he soared like a bird. Over
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  Speaker 2: the tallest treetops he sailed. He glided, he dipped, he dived.
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  Speaker 2: Three times he circled over the heads of the cheering crows.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Then he headed back to the circus grounds. Timothy shouted,
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: We must keep your flying a secret, a surprise for
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  Speaker 2: your act in this afternoon's show. No one noticed Dumbo
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: when he and Timothy came quietly back. It was already
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: time for Dumbo to get into his costume. Inside the
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: walls of the cardboard house, he had to wait all
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: through the show until the fire crackled up around him.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: At last, Timothy leaned down and handed him the feather.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: In just a second, Dumbo, he whispered, you'll be the
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  Speaker 2: most famous animal in all the world. Crack, crackle, crack,
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: cackled the fire. The clown act was on. Flames shot
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: up around the cardboard house. Clang, clang, roared the clown
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: fire engine rushing toward the blaze. From the far end
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: of the ring, a red-headed mother clown came running, Save
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: my baby, she screamed. The fireman brought a big net
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: and held it out. Jump, my darling baby, jump, shrieked
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: the mother clown. Dumbo jumped, but as he jumped, the
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: black feather slipped from his trunk and floated away. Now
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: his magic was gone, and Dumbo plunged down like a stone.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: You can fly, Timothy shouted frantically. The feather's a fake.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: You can fly, Dumbo heard the shout and doubtfully spread
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: his ears wide. Not two feet above the net, he
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: stopped his plunge and swooped up into the air. A
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: mighty gasp arose from the audience. They knew it couldn't be,
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: but it was. Dumbo was flying. While the crowd roared
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: its delight, Dumbo did power dives, loops, spins, and barrel rolls.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: He swooped down to pick up peanuts and squirted a
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: trunkful of water on the clowns. The keepers freed Mrs.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Jumbo and brought her to the tent in triumph to
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: see her baby fly. So all of Dumbo's worries had
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: come to an end. By evening, Dumbo was a hero
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: from coast to coast. Timothy became Dumbo's manager, and he
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: saw to it that Dumbo got a wonderful contract with
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: a big salary and a pension for his mother. The
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: circus was renamed Dumbo's Flying Circus, and Dumbo traveled in
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: a special streamlined car. But best of all, he forgave
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: everyone who had been unkind to him, for his heart
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: was as big as his magical ears.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: So I'm wondering, Deb, because this story is so special
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: to you.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: I love this story so much. I'm so glad you
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: agreed that we could and should do it together on
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: the podcast. It always makes me tear up. I just
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: think it is the most heartwarming story as a modern
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: fairy tale. You know, and there's some other modern fairy
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: tales like The Wizard of Oz, but this one really
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: lives in my heart.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: Do you remember it being introduced to you as a child?
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: Did that come to you in a particular way?
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: No, I cannot even remember when I got to it,
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: but it was later in life. It was not a
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: childhood favorite. It just passed me by because, I think,
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: this is a story that was written by, I think,
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: a husband and wife team, but their story was never published,
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: and Disney picked it up. And put it out, I think,
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: in a movie and as a series of their little
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: golden books. I never had any little golden books. I
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: had library books, but nothing from Disney. I didn't even
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: know about Disney until I don't know how old.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: So what part of the story brings such a well
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: of feeling?
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: The part... That really, I think, where the nexus of
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: the story is and where it gets me, which is
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: your question, is that the discovery that Dumbo has that
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: the power resides in him and not in the feather.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: That he had believed the crows and Timothy that it
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: was because of the feather that he could fly. So
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: there's an external source of power there. And the discovery
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: that he has the power in himself, I think, is
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: the big turning point of the story.
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: I'm drawn to just think about that as a psychological
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: and developmental process for us as children and perhaps occasionally
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: for us as adults, that somehow we become aware of
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: a potential and perhaps even something or someone outside of
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: us says, hey, I see you can do this. I
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: believe you can do this. I see you've got all
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: this stuff to be able to do one thing or another.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: Maybe that's a teacher in our lives. Maybe it's a parent.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: Maybe it's actually an employer later in life. We're recognized.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: But somehow we don't have an inner relationship to that potential.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: Or the ego image, the image of ourselves, just does
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: not include that, I guess it would be golden shadow,
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: doesn't include that potential. So the feather represents some way,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: some transitional event or transitional object that we can invest
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: the potential into before we can actually integrate it into ourselves.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: We need a way to project the potential in order
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: to see it, which is just bedrock Jungian formulation. Just
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: like a film camera, we can't see the film when
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: it's wrapped up tight. It has to be projected literally
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: onto a screen so we can see it. And so
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: when kids dress up in costumes, my sister just loved
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: having her Superman cape. And she would leap off sofas
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: and chairs, kind of like Dumbo trying to fly. I'd
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: look at her and go, whoa.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: Hope springs eternal.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: That's not going to work. But at any rate, it's
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: the cape. We need the projection. We need the material substance.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Dumbo needed the feather. Kids need their costumes. We need
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: our talismans. I'm thinking about the talisman that Jung made
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: for himself of this little mannequin and a pencil box.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: with a special stone that was half, he painted half
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: of it black, and he hid it way up in
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: the attic where he wasn't supposed to go because it
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: wasn't safe. And so he had something magical that existed
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: apart from him that had some kind of special power
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: that was never really defined. And Dumbo had his feather.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: My sister had her Superman cape.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: So I'm thinking about... several different kinds of psychological perspectives.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: One is that the feather is a symbol so that
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: there's a potential in the unconscious and the ego has
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: no way to imagine it. And so sometimes we will
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: have a dream and the dream maker will present some
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: kind of an image. And if the image puts the
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: ego in touch with something in the unconscious, And the
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: symbol becomes the kind of mediating image that allows incrementally
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: certain feelings, certain imaginings, certain drives to interact with the
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: ego and to kind of nudge it forward. And I
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: think that's so central to our work, the idea of
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: symbols of transformation. So even though Timothy Mouse- Oh, that's lovely.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: And, of course, that's the title of one of the
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: books in Jung's collected works, but it is its symbols
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: of transformation. And that's exactly what the feather is and
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: what many a symbol is, the potential.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: The potential, and we really do need a symbol, or
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: the ego needs a symbol of it in order to
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: even have the feeling that something's possible before we may
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: have developed the actual concrete skills to implement something. And
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: I would imagine, and I would encourage the listeners if
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: they want to leave a comment in our YouTube channel,
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: that you have a story of imagining something, finding something,
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: dreaming of something, and as you were drawn to it,
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: somehow the symbol helped you find something in yourselves. some capacity,
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: and sometimes it may seem very direct, like I had
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: a dream about kind of a luminous and magical book,
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: and then many years later, I discovered that I loved
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: writing or had a capacity for writing. But sometimes it's
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: much more nuanced than that, that there are suggestions decades
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: earlier of some potential that's going to actualize later in life.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: and we get these imagistic hints, which is really what
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: dreams are. Dreams often give us symbols of emergent potential
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: and are nudging us, nudging us towards believing in something
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: and taking a risk, particularly here.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: I really like that, that we have to have some
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: way to envision, and symbols do that, and these talismans
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: do that, of if the potential does not take shape
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: and form, then how can we even begin to imagine it?
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: And dreams send us those crazy ideas about writing a
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: book or doing any number of other things that then
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: can take root in consciousness and begin to be actualized
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: in the waking world.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: So we need a relationship. to the potential somehow in
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: order to even experiment. One thing that I thought was
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: interesting is Timothy Mouse is a hermetic figure. He's a
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: Hermes figure. He's just like Hermes. He's a mouse. He
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: can get into all of these little places. He can
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: run in. He can run out. The mother has been
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: separated from the child. in this somewhat tragic way, but
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: it also represents a psychological and developmental process that at
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: some point, all of us as children have to be
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: separated from the kind of infantile dependencies. And so this
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: is a process where tragically fate in the story has
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: thrown him upon himself. And so there's an evocation of
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: this hermetic, Much like Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: There's this wise, instinctive potential, kind of a small spirit
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: that is smart and sassy and also not sentimental. And
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: that's an interesting tension in the story because When Dumbo
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: is separated from his mom, his mom is misunderstood, mistreated.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: It's this terrible misfortune. It's very easy to take a
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: very sentimental attitude about poor baby Dumbo. But Timothy Mouse,
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: he's not sentimental. He's kind of tough. He's pragmatic. He's like,
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: come on, come on. Pick yourself up. Let's try some stuff.
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: He's not scared.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Timothy Mouse is all about the future. What do we
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: do now? Okay, well, that's all too bad. And I'm
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: just going to pick up on the thread that you
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: offered that I think is so good is how easy
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: it is to become sentimental, to protest. That's awful. How
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: could they do that? You can't separate a baby from
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: its mother. That's terrible. And then we go to social
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: justice stuff. That was unfair. It was unjust. There was
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: no due process. Wait a minute. Those boys were bullies
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: and so on and so forth, and that kid deserved
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: the spanking that he got. And then along comes Timothy
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Mouse that says, okay, pick yourself up, dust yourself off.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: What are we going to do with those years? Where's
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: the potential? Let's move on. I really like that a lot.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: And I also love that it's a mouse. Because there
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: are all these sort of old housewife tales and little
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: mythologems about elephants being scared of mice.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Right? And then there's Ganesha, the god in Hindu mythology,
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: who has the body of a human and the head
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: of an elephant. And he's a transformer. And at his feet,
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: there is a rat. The other thing that I think
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: is hilarious in the story is that Timothy Mouse is
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: with the circus. No, he's not. He's just hiding out somewhere,
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: riding along, getting free food, having the run of the place.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: He's not really an official part of the circus.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: I think that's great. He's a survivor. He's a grifter.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Yes, he's a hitchhiker. In the grain that's falling here
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: and there. Exactly. He's a grifter.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: I like that a lot. And like Hermes, you know,
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: Hermes can fly.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's right. He has wings on his heels and
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: wings on his wrists.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: So while Timothy Mouse clearly doesn't fly, but I think
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: archetypally there's a little hint of something that I think
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: is present in his mercurial ability to not get caught,
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: to not get caught in emotions. to not get caught
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: and injured by forces that would want to attack him.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, as a mouse, he's also seen as a pest,
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: as something that people would go after and want to hurt.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: So there's also something about Timothy Mouse's attitude is an
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: ego advancement. He's the mouse that people try to trap
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: and hurt. and get rid of because it is some
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: kind of pestilence. But he's a survivor. He's figured it
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: all out, and he's figured out how to thrive. So
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: when Dumbo is mistreated and undervalued and chased, a mouse
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: knows what that's like. So he is a wise, later
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: version of the survivor. Yes, exactly.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And mice are also used, Disney used mice in
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: their film of Cinderella to make Cinderella's dress. So there's
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: something nimble about mice that they can slither in the
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: little cracks and they can dart around and they have
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: a cleverness, a quickness to them, which is also, as
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: you were saying, very hermetic.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: As you were saying that, I'm also thinking about how
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: pivotal mouse's ears are. That's such an important part of
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: their navigation, their ability to be safe in the world.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: And so there's an interesting sense that the mouse understands
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: the value of ears. And even though, again, his ears
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: are even a pestilence in as much as it's the
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: thing that he's teased. It's the part that he's maligned for.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: But a mouse understands what ears can do.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: That's very interesting. Somehow as you were talking, what I
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: was also thinking about Timothy Mouse's sort of the old
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: saying about when life hands you lemons, how can you
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: turn misfortune into an advantage? So if Dumbo has these
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: giant ears and mice use their ears to great advantage,
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: maybe there's something really great about having such huge ears.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. You just don't understand it.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: Glass half empty, glass half full, and Timothy's going, I
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: think we can do something with this. There's creative potential here.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: I'm going to take a little uncanny step into amplification.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: It's just a strange little connection. There's an ancient text
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: called Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. It seems like it's coming out
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: of nowhere, but it really is going to circle back
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: in here. There's a number of axioms and ideas about
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: consciousness and meditation and yoga. But there's a large section
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: about the supernatural powers that the yogi could develop. which
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: are called cities. And in some traditions, even now, that
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: this is something that's pursued, that if we can achieve
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: a certain state of consciousness, a certain state of body,
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: that we can facilitate extraordinary events around us. So in
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: this method, one allegedly is able to slip into such
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: a deep state of meditation that one is right on
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: the membrane between the invisible and the manifest world. And
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: in this theory, when you are sitting in that level,
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: a thought can suddenly become a reality. And so Patanjali
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: gives these sequence of ideas. And if these ideas are
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: held into that creative space, miraculous things can happen. And
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: so the miraculous thought to make the yogi levitate is
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: light as a feather.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, for heaven's sake. Well, you did say it was
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: going to come full circle and it just has. Is
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: that right?
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: Light as a feather.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: And the mythology is that the yogi will suddenly be
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: able to literally levitate in the room. So what that
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: suggests to us as Jungians is there is an archetype.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: There's an idea for thousands of years that the feather itself,
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: and if the feather is imagined even in the human
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: psyche in just the right way, in just the right moment,
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: that something supernatural can happen. And of course, Dumbo's skills
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: are supernatural. I mean, a baby elephant wouldn't be able
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: to soar around like that, but Dumbo has a supernatural ability.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: It's interesting. I never, until this moment, actually somehow thought
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: of it as supernatural, which shows you that some part
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: of me is back there being 10 years old, but
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: I think I thought more about it as that what
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: you believe you can do, you can do. I think
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: there's a saying by Goethe that whatever you can do,
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: begin it. Beginnings have boldness and various other qualities to them.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: So I think I always thought of it as much
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: more whatever you believe you can do, you can do.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: And it's a belief that is connected to capacity. Mm-hmm.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: It's not so much that anyone in the circus could
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: believe that they could fly and then they would, but
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: actually Dumbo has a capacity. Exactly.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: He has the capacity. The other part of the story
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: that always meant a lot to me is its relationship
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: and how analogous it is to the therapeutic process. And
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: that's why, as an adult, I've always liked it. And
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: I've even imagined myself at times of giving somebody a
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: magic feather. You can do it. You have the power,
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: but you need something to hold, an image to hold
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: that anchors it, anchors your potential to real-world actualization. as
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: a way of bridging potential into actuality, of imagining it
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: into actuality. Here's the talisman. And I will ask people,
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: you know, is there a talisman? Is there something? We
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: do it a lot with dreams. You know, if people
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: dream of a particular animal or something of, Is there
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: something in the house or could you make something? Or
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: just to keep that image in mind. And of course
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: it's symbolic and everyone is an adult and knows that,
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: but it helps to see that little seal on the
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: windowsill or on the bathroom counter and let it sit
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: and grow inside as a potential.
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: What I'd like to add to that, which I think
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: leans into your work with Gestalt, is that there does
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: need to be some kind of a bridge between the
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: purely symbolic or conceptual and a kind of experiential learning model.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: So Timothy Mauss helps bring forward the symbol, the light
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: as a feather symbol. There's something so exciting about Inside
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: of Dumbo, it puts him in touch with energy. But
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: then the next thing Timothy Mouse says is, now we
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: have to conduct some experiments. We've got to do some stuff.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: Which in Gestalt work is very congruent. Like, here's a concept,
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: but now we have to create some kind of even
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: a symbolic action. But something's got to happen for the
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: body to somehow experience even just an aspect of it.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: And that goes to a real fundamental part of Jungian theory,
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: and I'm sure it's not unique just to Jungian theory
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: because it's embedded in Gestalt, is if you have a dream,
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: whether it's a nighttime dream or a dream for some
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: possibility in your life, you have to do something with it.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: You can draw it, you can dance it out, you
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: can have a little figurine and speak to it. You
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: can journal. You can do all kinds of things, but
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: you have to kind of let yourself live into it
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: imaginably in the waking world. And that's what Timothy Mouse
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: does for Dumbo, and the crows do it. The light
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: is a feather, and here's a feather as a material
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: bridge and a symbol so that Dumbo Dumbo can begin
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: to live into that.
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: So just bringing this back into a kind of a
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: developmental process. So the crows, they know they can fly.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, they do.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: They're demonstrating this capacity. And so looking at a young
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: one who has a fantasy and to pass something to
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: the young one, it reminds me of being six years
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: old and putting on my dad's suit or wearing his
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: shoes or wanting to dress up in mom's jewelry in
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: some way that these symbols of something that's, again, advanced
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: before us is now going to be something that we're
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: going to try on. I'm going to get the football
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: jersey just like my hero in the NFL and I'm seven,
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: but somehow Having something of the mature version makes me
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: feel like I'm closer and perhaps am psychologically closer in
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: some way to the actualized version.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: And we have to have that experience, a bodily experience,
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: to connect our imagination with living it out in the
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: waking world. So you need the football jersey. You know,
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: my sister needed the Superman cape. But I also want
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: to think about the relationship and how it is a
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: parallel for some part of the analytic process between Dumbo
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: and Timothy Mouse. And that one of the possible sort
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: of shadow sides of psychological theory is, you know, we're
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: going to help you, whoever the you is, Find whatever
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: it is in yourself so that you can do it yourself.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: And that bypasses the crucial, necessary human relationship part of
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: the process that is absolutely essential. Because if therapy is
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: going to work, it has to inspire the possibility that
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: you can find your center here. in a human relationship.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: We are wired for human relationship. We're born into the
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: world and we wouldn't learn to smile, we wouldn't learn
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: to talk, we wouldn't become human without a relationship. People
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: who come into therapy, I think people just worldwide have,
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: we all have relational wounds, traumas, things that we didn't receive,
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: things that were missing. And we have to be able
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: to find that in a relationship before we can find
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: it in ourselves. Otherwise, it's sort of like telling people, well,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. And so there's
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: the relationship with Timothy Mouse. It's not just the feather.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: Timothy reaches out and says, hey, this isn't right. And
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: I'm He's the hermetic figure. I see some possibilities here.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: Let's get on it. So he helps Dumbo find his potential,
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: but the relationship precedes everything else. It's Timothy being there,
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: reaching out, and offering connection.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: I think that's absolutely correct, that Timothy had to take
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: an interest in him, was moved by Dumbo's suffering, or
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: the injustice of what had happened between him and his mom,
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: and decided that he was going to help this kid,
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: take an interest in this traumatized kid, and instill a
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: kind of audacity, a kind of experimental courage. And even
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: though Dumbo failed several times, Timothy Mouse is the one
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: who holds the vision of Dumbo's potential before Dumbo has
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: enough evidence to actually be the person that Timothy claims
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: that Dumbo is.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: And he does actualize it in that he, what then
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: happens is that Dumbo does find it in himself, unconsciously.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: That's what I was just going to say, that he
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: has to dream it.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: Exactly, that they wake up in a tree and it's like,
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: what the heck? How did we get here? And as
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: soon as Dumbo wakes up, of course he falls out
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: of the tree, plonk, plonk, bouncing from branch to branch
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: and lands in a mud puddle. That the unconscious has
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: been activated and consciousness has to catch up.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: Beautifully said. So we may find ourselves fatefully bringing something
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: creative forward and only to be surprised. Maybe we claim
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: that we're going to do something at work and we
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: don't know why we even agreed to do something or
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: something remarkably insightful pops out of our mouths and we
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: kind of don't really know where that came from. There
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: were so many inventors saying that they had a dream
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: and that was the missing key to the invention.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The story that One of my favorite stories is
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: that Elias Howe, who invented the sewing machine, tried and
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: tried and tried and was stumped and invented this thing,
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: but the threads didn't connect. And he had a dream
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: of people marching with spears that had a hole in
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: the center. And then he got it, that the sewing
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: needle had to have a hole in the center and
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: the thread had to be threaded through that hole in
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: the needle tip. And then from there it was launched.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: But it's a parallel to what happened to Dumbo. He
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: tried and tried consciously. He invented. He had machines. He
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: worked at it all day. Then his unconscious supplied an
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: idea and an image. And then he went back into
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: conscious effort to do all of the finagling and fiddling
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: and tinkering to actually operationalize it as a sewing machine.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: And that's just what Dumbo does, is he tries and
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: tries and he flops and fails and falls flat on
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: his face. He flies up in a dream when he's asleep.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: The unconscious says, got this. And then consciousness has to
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: go back to work. You know, two different levels. One
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: is like, okay, I think I can do it because
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: I have the feather. And then the next is, I
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: can do it without the feather.
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: I'd also like to talk about the idea of the
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: child that has an outsized or an oversized aspect of
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: their character. Okay. So he's a little guy. If he
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: had whatever ordinary years are, then he would fit into
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: this familiar place. The other elephants or the rest of
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: the culture would say, oh, you know, his ears are
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: about the right size, his feet are the right size,
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: he says the right things. You know, he's what would
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: be expected. So sometimes, and I've certainly had this experience
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: with adults that I've analyzed, that one of their character
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: traits or one of their functions is so remarkably advanced,
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: that it dwarfs the other parts of their character and
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: it puts them out of sync with the social environment.
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: So what I'll talk about is kids that are unusually talented.
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: So children that have spectacularly high IQs. I've had some
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: adolescents that had 140, 150, 160 IQs. And, you know,
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: as I talk to them, they talk about the incredible
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: distress that they felt as children. You know, there you
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: are at seven, but you're thinking like a 30-year-old. Now,
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: other parts of the psychology are not developed, but there's
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: a sense that I am so different, so misunderstood, and
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: often mistreated because something is so highly developed so much
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: larger in the personality. On the other side, when there's
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: a trait that's so developed, let's say like an extraordinary IQ,
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: it can dwarf the feeling function. It can dwarf the
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: sensation function because it takes up so much dynamic room
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: in the psyche. So on the shadow side of it
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: is that Dumbo's ears become the most important thing, as
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: if other qualities that will develop in him don't quite matter.
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: The other shadow of the story is Dumbo's ears are
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: oversized relative to the fact that he's an infant, but
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: he's going to outgrow that. He's going to become as
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: big as his mom or larger, and the adult ears
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: that are on him are going to be average. years,
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: by the time he is a fully formed adult. So
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: there's a celebration of something that's disproportionately developed to the
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: rest of the personality and therefore is remarkable and extraordinary.
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: And at the end of the story, he has his
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: own train and the circus is named after him. And
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: the story goes on.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: That's an interesting supposition, that Dumbo's ears are basically fully
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: grown when he's a baby, but that as the rest
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: of him grows, everything will wind up being much more
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: in proportion, which kind of maps onto the idea of
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: a child prodigy really very well, that as other parts
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: of this gifted child develop and catch up, that person
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: can still have a special gift and talent, but it's
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: better balanced by other psychic functions that have had a
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: chance to grow and develop. There are developmental aspects of
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: every human being that simply take time to come online.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: We can't be adults before we're actually adults. But the
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: other idea is what if everything grows and Dumbo's ears are...
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: get bigger and bigger, along with his body getting bigger.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: And there's something that isn't quite as appealing, is there?
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: It's a little troubling.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: And so what is that? We don't like the idea
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: of a full-grown adult elephant being able to fly. It
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: doesn't have the same kind of charm, does it? It's like,
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: what the hell is that?
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: And in Indian mythology, there are enormous godlike elephants that
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: actually can fly or that some of the gods ride on,
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: second seven-trunked elephants that vault into the air. But then
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: it moves out of it being adorable to something that
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: has a different valence to it.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, it does.
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: So then he's kind of an aging child star with
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: a drinking problem or something like that. living out his
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: days of glory, cracking peanuts in his one-room apartment when
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: he's 50. Oh, my God.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: I think you've just completely deflated this whole story for me.
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: That postmodern chapter two of Dumbo. But be that as
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: it may. It ends in this kind of glorious celebration
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: of this precocious development. I've also been thinking about what
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: does it mean to have all this energy in the ears?
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: Just purely symbolically, right? And whatever the ears can do,
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: which is primarily hearing, there's something about... Receiving. Right, perceiving
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: and hearing. And if that is mastered in the right way,
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: one can fly. So that's a little bit of the
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: story as well, that Dumbo starts and he's able to
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: hear everything. And so much of what he hears is cruelty, criticism,
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: and ridicule. And that when one has such large ears
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: and one can hear every little comment in the crowd,
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: What is it that we take in? What do we internalize?
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: So it may also be the story of a uniquely
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: sensitive soul that hears so much more than maybe the
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: average person would. The average person might not even notice
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: that somebody's in the corner making a face at them
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: or pointing at them. But Dumbo's sensory organ, his ears,
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: are enormous. So how important it is for him to
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: find a different voice and that Timothy speaks into the
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: ear and gives him different messages.
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: And ears and communication are our social function. All our
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: senses serve all kinds of purposes in our development and
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: physical being, all the rest of it. But we have
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: to learn to speak and to hear to become social beings. And,
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: you know, mothers talk to their newborn babies and sing
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: them songs. And what on earth is the point of that?
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: It's a two-day-old baby. Well, there's a lot of physiological
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: purpose to that. We're all born with the capacity to
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: speak any of the world's languages. And by speaking and
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: singing to the baby in whatever tongue that baby's going
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: to learn to speak, the brain prunes the excess cells
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: or neurons that it's not going to need, which is
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: why it's so hard sometimes to pronounce things in a
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: foreign language because that foreign language has sounds that we
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: don't use in English and vice versa. So hearing and
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: language and that kind of social connection is huge. And
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: how it's our social sensitivity a lot of the time
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: that we can tell when somebody, you know, we walk
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: into the office and someone says, good morning. It's like, whoa,
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: what's up with Bob? Yeah. You know, it's an organ
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: of attunement.
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: And poor little Dumbo has far too much of it.
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: And that often happens with highly sensitive people. It gets
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: turned back on them. Why do you make such a
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: big deal out of everything?
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: Oh, my gosh.
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: Just so sensitive. You've got to watch every little thing
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: you say.
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: And this is a little one who hears everything.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: Which is also part of the mythology of elephants. Because
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: their ears are so large that they are very sensitive
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: and they can hear the tiniest little thing.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: I have a theory that a lot of the people
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: who show up in our consulting rooms... are dumbos. They
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: have great big ears and they took in an awful
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: lot of stuff that other people wish they hadn't paid
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: attention to or don't pay attention to and that no
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: one has validated their ability to pick up all kinds
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: of nuances in other people's psychology, dynamics, interactions, etc.
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: And if we think of dumbo as we do in
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: fairy tales that This is all happening in a single psyche.
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: So this is a dream, one Dumbo dream happening in
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: a single person. So there's this discovery of enormous sensitivity,
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: great hearing. The one tactic for managing the sensitivity is
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: for the mother principle to go and want to punish
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: the ones who are upsetting. to try to change the
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: outer world, to make it different so that I don't
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: have to hear things that people say. And right now,
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: this is a big struggle with our culture. Should an
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: entire audience change its behavior so that a single attendee
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: is not triggered or doesn't hear something that they don't
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: want to hear because it's difficult for them to hear?
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: So one thing that the mother does is she's deciding
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: she's going to act on the environment so that Dumbo
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: isn't exposed to certain things. And I guess in the
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: imagination of the author, that's not a solution that this
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: particular psyche is going to happen, that we're going to
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: put away that particular solution. And instead, what we're going
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: to do is teach Dumbo how to focus on what
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: he's going to value of what he hears. So he
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: could prioritize the envy or cruelty of other children, but
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: there are also other voices saying, there's something really amazing
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: happening here. You can really do something. And there's a
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: shift from having to act on the bullies to actualizing
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: a potential. And then we get that phrase, you know,
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: the best revenge is success. instead of just acting on
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: the ones who gave us pain or constantly focusing on them.
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: Timothy is so wise and he says, let's actually look
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: in a totally different direction that's actually going to get
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: you the things that you want, which isn't about shutting
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: the bullies up. That's low. That's not going to give
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: you very much. We've got to do something else with this.
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: I think that what you've just said is so important.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: Do we locate the problem out there with those boys
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: that are bullies? I mean, that doesn't make it okay
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: for those boys to be bullies. No one's saying that.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: That was awful, and it was hurtful. And Dumbo, as
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: a little baby, felt just the hurt. He was dripping
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: over his ears and so on, and he He just
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: felt hurt. He didn't feel like he needed to take
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: revenge or anything. And then comes that next possibility represented
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: by Timothy Mouse. Let's see what you've got in you
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: that might represent some potential, and I'm going to help you.
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: I think that we've done a wonderful job circling around
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: a tale that most of us know. Many of us
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: as young children have seen the cartoon Dumbo. Whether or
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: not we've read the story, it's really kind of a
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: universal kind of image. And I think it's so useful
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: to take something that we take for granted, a story,
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: a fairy tale, a folk tale that's just humming around
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: in the background we don't give much thought to. And
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: with the Jungian lens, we can find embedded in so
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: many things a level of depth or possible depth that
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: gives a whole other valence to something that's so familiar.
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: I just always love that about our conversations.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: That in these simple and heartwarming stories lies a lot
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: of depth, a lot of psychic truth, which is why
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: they last.
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: And that the unconscious hears it. The unconscious has the
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: biggest ears.
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: I like that a lot. Yeah.
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: So before we transition into a dream, I would just
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: like to remind our listeners that we have an educational
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: platform that Deb and Lisa and I have co-created called
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: Dream School. We've mentioned it many times, of course, on
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: the podcast. We really hope that you will give it
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: a look. We have a wonderful informative page on our website.
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: And what we hope is that we can provide information
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: and experiences so that you'll be able to look at
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: a story like this, interpret it like a dream, to
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: find a dream perhaps that's been mysterious in your life
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: and unpack it, decipher it. to think about it from
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: multiple different angles and have a surprising insight that opens
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: something up, a capacity up inside of you. So we
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: hope that you'll jump over to the website, thisjungianlife.com, but
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: really try that this time and click on Dream School
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: and just look at the offering. Look at what's possible there.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: This is a dream from an older woman, and here's
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: her dream. I was walking in a forest, maybe with
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: my husband. We came to a part of the path
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: that was too steep downhill and too muddy to walk
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: down safely. A park ranger appeared at the bottom of
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: the steep part and asked if we would like to
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: ride an elephant down. and soon I found myself astride
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: an elephant. We were going down the track, but I
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: was facing backwards. I assumed the elephant was walking backwards,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: the way people get down a ladder, but then I
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: realized I was facing the tail end, and the elephant
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: was in fact walking forward. I was worried about slipping off.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: Then we were walking in a trench beside a flat road,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: The ranger said the trench was for elephants to keep
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: them safe from traffic, but that our elephant had had
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: to go off for a procedure, maybe a fertility treatment.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: We came to a town, and I saw a poster
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: on a pole, but I forget what it said. And
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: our dreamer adds for context that she has grown children
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: but no grandchildren. She has family and money. She doesn't
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: have any family money or health problems. And she wonders
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: what can give meaning to her declining years. The main
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: feelings in the dream, she says, were enjoyment of nature, trepidation,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: and mild excitement. So we have an elephant dream.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. As often, we'll just start with the initial setting.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: So the dream ego is walking in a forest, Maybe
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: it's with her husband, but it's unclear. What seems more
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: important is that she's in a forest. And so many
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: stories begin in a forest. Dante's Inferno starts, somebody's walking
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: in a forest, in a dark wood. Little Red Riding
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: Hood is going into the forest.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: Beauty and the Beast.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: Hamsel and Gretel. A lot of stuff happens in the forest.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: A lot of stuff happens in the forest.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: And it's that transition from, for instance, the town, the city,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: which is a construct of conscious human civilization and represents
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: whatever the values are in the culture and the individual.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: But once we step out, we're in the forest and
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: we're in the unpredictable, we're in nature, we're in the
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: unconscious in one way or another. And interestingly, The dream
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: ego is the center of consciousness in this churning instinctive system.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: So the trees are not thinking about what they do,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: they're just being trees, and foxes are just being foxes,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: and birds are just being birds. But the dream ego
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: enters in, in some ways, as both the witness, the
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: one who is thinking about the unconscious, but also is
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: subject to it. So much of civilization is about protecting
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: us from nature. We'll have walls and roofs so we
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: don't have to be cold or feel the wind or
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: we don't have to deal with predators or pests. So we,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: left to our own devices, we would limit how nature
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: can interact with us. But here the dream maker says,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: we're gonna put you In a world where you're going
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: to have an encounter with things that you likely cannot control.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: So the next part of the dream is a descent.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: And that is very mythological, of having to descend, having
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: to go down. The path is too steep and it's
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: too muddy for humans to navigate. And then we have
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: this guide like the woodsman in a lot of fairy tales,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: the park ranger is there. I have an idea. You
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: could ride down on an elephant, something larger. And that
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: will help you make the descent safely. You need something
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: bigger that can hold its footing on the steep, muddy trail.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: And then our dreamer finds herself facing backwards. No, the
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: elephant does not have to walk backwards like going down
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: a ladder. The elephant is fine. He's going straight ahead.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: But she's facing the tail end, which I think is
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: really pretty significant. And she's worried about slipping off. So
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: here's a metaphor for a psychic descent. And oftentimes when
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: we face a real crossroads in life, like I'm in
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: my 70s, I'm retired, and what do I do now?
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: It's like, what else can I do? Where else can
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: I go? What are the possibilities for growth or adventure
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: or something new? And Psyche says, let's go down a steep,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: muddy path on an elephant. Were you facing the tail end?
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: She says that the path is too steep. downhill what's
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: interesting is the dream ego doesn't consider trying another path
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: somehow feels that going forward means going downhill that there's
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: some energy and when we think about going downhill then
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: there's a sense we've been on a hill or on
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: a mountain up.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: High you've been up there time to go.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: Down here right so these mountaintop forests which in Mythology
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: are often associated with the spiritual, particularly these very high
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: mountain ranges we look up and they're ringed with clouds.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: So it's mysterious. There's something where the heavens and the
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: earth meet at the top of hills or the top
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: of mountains. So it may very well be that she's
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: had some rarefied experiences or perhaps she's a retired teacher.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: Maybe she's had a very rich life. intellectual life, perhaps.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: But it's time. It's time to come down from the
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: mountain back into the valley. And there's something for that.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: But there's a risk, as you said, that the descent
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: could be handled badly or the transition from whatever the
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: state of consciousness is on the mountaintop to whatever it
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: means in the valley. It's slick. There's been rain. There's
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: no steps. She feels vulnerable. Doesn't feel like she can
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: just grab from tree to tree, that gravity could just
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: slam her down into the valley.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: I'm really sort of reaching in with imagination, and of
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: course we don't have the dreamer here, but all that said,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: I'm associating the height prior to the descent with her
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: being a retired teacher. She didn't say she's just retired.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: But we all, I think, have so many years of
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: claiming a professional identity. I was a retired lawyer. I'm
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: a retired, you know, anything that you can name. I
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: spent many years practicing this profession. And in a classroom,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: the teacher is an incredible authority. And so I'm wondering
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: about whether there's a descent there of letting go, even
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: though she's already retired, but letting go of some kind
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: of an identity as an authority, of somebody knowledgeable and
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: a guide. And now the guide in the dream is
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: the park ranger. He knows the terrain, the physical muddy
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: path terrain. And I think it's absolutely fascinating that she's
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: given an elephant to ride. What a gift. What a
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: magnificent animal an elephant is. And in the Western world,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: it really carries a lot of symbolic significance because it's
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: not we don't we don't live in an environment where
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: elephants are just part of the of the usual scene
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: where they're a real beast of burden and we've all
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: seen movies of them moving logs and helping people build
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: houses and They were the tractors of the ancient Asian world,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: weren't they, essentially?
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. The way the ox was an engine of civilization
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: in Europe.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that. They are engines. And also, they
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: can be images of the self because they're so big.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: And in the water, whales often carry that kind of
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: symbolic meaning. So she's given something really wonderful to help
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: her with this transition.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: I think that's wonderful. And statistically, we know that many people,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: they'll look forward to retirement. It's, oh my goodness, it's
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: going to be great. They have all these plans. They retire,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: and very shortly after, they can slip into a serious depression.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: And they're surprised. They thought it was just going to
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: be a wonderful relief. but the descent can be so
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: fast or perhaps there's not enough time. So what's nice
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: about the elephant also is it's slower. It's a step.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: Elephants are not gonna slide down the muddy mountain. There's
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: time to transition and she's facing backwards. So as the
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: elephant slowly descends, not slipping quickly, she can look backwards
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: and regard what is being left behind, and have time
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: to do that.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, I like that a lot. I was thinking of
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: it more as an image of the relationship between the
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: ego and the unconscious. But I like it. It still
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: works that the ego is looking back and having a
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: reflection on what was, where I've been, and is afraid
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: of slipping off. while the unconscious forward-moving part of the
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: psyche is doing just fine navigating the muddy trail. And
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: I imagine that an elephant's weight would make it unlikely
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: to slip.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: We imagine it would be sure-footed, or at least this
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: elephant surely is.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: This elephant is definitely. So it's a little discomforting, but
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: I like that, that one part of the psyche looks forward,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: and navigates the trail ahead. And one part of the psyche,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: the ego part, reflects on where I've been, what I've done,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: what am I leaving.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: And she feels a little shaky, just as you said,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: that the elephant is, we don't even know if the
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: elephant's aware of her very much, but the ego has
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: to hang on. The ego can't be totally passive, carried
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: like a baby, She's got to stay balanced. She's got
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: to make sure her legs or her hands are gripping something.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: She can't go to sleep.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: Nope, and she's got to be uncomfortable and be a
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: little anxious, like, oh, God, what if I fall off?
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: That's part of it, too.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: I'd also like to just talk about the park ranger.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: He appears at the bottom of the steep part and
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: somehow seems to be speaking upwards, is able to communicate.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: that if she'd like to use the eye, if you
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: want to use the elephant, I'll offer this to you
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: so you can come on down. And there's a wonderful
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: image in Sufi mysticism that there is a guide that
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: emerges from the green foliage called Khidir. And he is
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: also part of that. that helping part of the unconscious
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: and often a positive animus image in a woman's psyche
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: just steps out of the greenness and companions, offers the
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: bit that's missing that's essential. So there's something ancient about
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: the one that steps out of the woods and can
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: help and does help. He also offers, he says, would
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: you like to ride an elephant down? So it's really
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: up to the ego. Can you recognize that you need
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: this help? Will you accept help from the unconscious? Or
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: if you're feeling really full of swag or maybe a
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: little inflated, you might just try to do this yourself
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: and have whatever happens.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: And good luck with that.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: So there's some humility in the ego. She's aware of
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: her vulnerability and then she can accept the help. And that,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: to me, is so important in life transitions, is that
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: often when we get scared, for whatever reason, we can
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: find ourselves being inflated. And we're angry and justified or
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: overly optimistic or living with a bunch of fantasies. But
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: because she stays in touch with her own vulnerability, then
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: she can access more resources internally and perhaps even externally.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: And she gets to the flat road at the bottom.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: So mischief managed, mission accomplished. She's done it. And then
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: there's a little denouement there. Then we're walking in a
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: trench beside a flat road. And the guide, says, oh,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: this is for the elephants to keep them safe from
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: the traffic. And ostensibly that, you know, if they wander.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: It's like a bike lane.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: A bike lane. If they wander over into the traffic,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: they could get hurt, hit, or there would be a disaster.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: So these, as enormous and powerful as they are, they
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: have to be kept safe. And just on that line
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: of the unconscious, you know, if you think about The
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: shoulder of the road is the liminal space, you know,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: between the high traffic ego world and the forest or
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: the bank of trees that's over to the side. And
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 3: the elephants are just to the side of that transitional space.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: And there is some truth that if the ego gets
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 3: overly involved in certain things, it can actually interfere. It
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: can muck things up. Sometimes we have to trust that
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: there is a spirit of life that is there to
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: help us. So that if the ego decides it's going
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: to stick its hands in and force everything to be
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: its own way, our inner elephants might get hit by trucks.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: That things can be too controlled by the left side
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: of the brain.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: It's a lovely image that there is this special road
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: just for the elephants, just for that part of the psyche.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: But then there's this part at the end that I
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: often sort of refer to in my own mind as
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: the kicker. Everything is going along just fine, and then
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden it's right at the very tail end.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: It's like, what? Our elephant has to go off for
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: a procedure, maybe a fertility treatment? What? Wait a minute.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: Where did that come from? What are we talking about?
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: That wonderful, irrational bit that's tossed in. Right.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: But, of course, I could venture the supposition that our dreamer,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: what part of our dreamer might need to be fertilized,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: to have something new, to have something growing, to have
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: something springing up in her. You know, where is the
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: generative spirit?
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: So the elephant has become our elephant. The elephants are
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: going down the track, but our elephants, and now she's
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: got a relationship with her special elephant.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: That's right, it's our elephant.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: So that this great powerful engine in the unconscious, this
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 3: life force, is... going to go and get some assistance
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: to be fertile for this next stage of her life.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: Yes. You know, as we have wended our way through
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: this dream, the feeling in me and the feeling that
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: we all have about one of our own dreams or
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: if someone tells us a dream really matters. I am
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: just filled with the feeling of what a very beautiful,
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: wonderful gift of a dream this is. And what a
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: wonderful look ahead for this dreamer's future, for what the
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: descent has been made. There's been an elephant. Our elephant
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: is going to have a fertility treatment that something new
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: is here.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: And it's going to take a bit of energy that
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: one would say if it's a procedure that there's been
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 3: a little difficulty in fertilization and Generally speaking, it might
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: be a female elephant who's going to have some hormone
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: injected or some process is going to move it into
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: some actively fertile stage so that it can then receive
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: seed and gestate and give birth. So for something to
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: become more fertile, it means that the environment has been
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: to receive and gestate something from outside itself. The new thing,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: the new seed idea, the new impulse, vision, the plan
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: for the next stage. And while that's going on somewhere
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 3: in the unconscious, the ego has come to a town,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: there's a pole, there's a poster, and she's transitioning into civilization.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: the world of the town, other people, relationships, cultural opportunities.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's such a good point. And I'm back to
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: the transition into a non-professional identity. This is our, in
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: a way, it's a comedown. I'm no longer the retired
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: authority engineer, teacher, whatever it might have been. I'm just Deb.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: And the good news is, hmm, I wonder more about that.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: What else is there to just one's self? And what
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: she says in the context is she's got grown children
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: but no grandchildren, and she's fine in terms of money, health,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: outer world resources, but what can give meaning to my
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: declining years? And I think this dream is saying they're
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: not declining years. You've come down the hill and it
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: was muddy, but you had an elephant. Now the elephant
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: will have some fertility treatment, which means new growth is
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: what's lying ahead. And as you've said, she's going into town.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: The world of ego constructs, all the buildings and cultural
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: things that humans build that something lies ahead that doesn't
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: feel at all declining.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: And there's a poster on a pole, and a poster
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: is generally an announcement about some event. There's a concert
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: or something or other is happening, and it's being promoted.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 3: So the poster represents, I would say, an opportunity, news
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: about an opportunity, and it's not quite clear what that
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: is yet. It's not clear what she's going to think
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: about it, But posters are invitations.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: Something good is out there. We want you to know
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: about it. Come on down.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: So we're very grateful that the dreamer submitted her dream.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: And also, as you scroll down, whether this is on
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: YouTube or in one of your podcast listening programs, scrolling down,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: you can submit a dream through one of the links
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: down at the bottom there after the show notes. And
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: so it'd be wonderful to hear from more of you
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: and for you to share your dreams if you'd like
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: us to consider it for interpretation on one of the podcasts.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook,
• 1:22:56
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• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: and submit your dreams for possible interpretation on another episode.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: We'd like to thank our listener who shared a dream
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: topics you'd enjoy hearing more about. Until next time, keep
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.