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SOLUTIO: The Alchemy of Letting Go · This Jungian Life Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
0:06
Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
0:10
Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
0:14
Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
0:19
Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
0:23
Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
0:28
Speaker 2: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod.
0:43
Speaker 3: In today's episode, as part of our sequence on alchemical stages,
0:49
Speaker 3: we're going to talk about the soluteo, which is one
0:53
Speaker 3: of the primary operations in alchemical symbolism. It's associated rather
0:58
Speaker 3: explicitly with the element of water. And from a purely
1:03
Speaker 3: chemical standpoint, it has to do with the operations that
1:06
Speaker 3: turn a solid into a liquid. When we think about
1:10
Speaker 3: that as a psychological metaphor, we're talking about dissolving something
1:16
Speaker 3: that is fixed, taking a very differentiated attitude, experience, feeling,
1:24
Speaker 3: and taking it back to a kind of primal, undifferentiated
1:29
Speaker 3: state back to what the alchemists called its prima materia.
1:35
Speaker 3: And this return to one's origins is a kind of
1:40
Speaker 3: psychological return to the womb and a possibility for rebirth,
1:47
Speaker 3: ideally on a higher arc. So we're going to delve
1:53
Speaker 3: into this But before we jump into the specific, we
1:58
Speaker 3: should probably just talk a little bit about alchemy in general,
2:02
Speaker 3: particularly for those of you that may be new to
2:05
Speaker 3: the topic.
2:06
Speaker 2: So alchemy was the medieval study of materials with the
2:14
Speaker 2: hope of learning the secret to transmuting lead into gold.
2:20
Speaker 2: It was about the search for the philosopher's stone, which
2:24
Speaker 2: was also seen to have magical properties such as granting
2:29
Speaker 2: everlasting life. It was the precursor to modern-day chemistry because
2:35
Speaker 2: the alchemists actually did experiments in their laboratory trying to
2:40
Speaker 2: understand the chemical changes, again, in search for the magical
2:46
Speaker 2: substance or process that would transmute lead into gold. which,
2:50
Speaker 2: by the way, you can now do. You do need
2:53
Speaker 2: a large Hadron Collider to do it, but it can
2:57
Speaker 2: be done. But Jung became very interested in the alchemists.
3:04
Speaker 2: You know, at that point when Jung was writing, this
3:08
Speaker 2: was now sort of centuries past, but he found these
3:11
Speaker 2: ancient alchemical texts and he started collecting them, actually. And
3:15
Speaker 2: he was fascinated because the alchemists, for various reasons, use
3:20
Speaker 2: very imagistic language to describe what they were doing. Part
3:26
Speaker 2: of it was because the work of the alchemists was
3:31
Speaker 2: considered to be somewhat of a challenge to the church,
3:35
Speaker 2: so they were disguising what they were doing. But they
3:39
Speaker 2: also were involved unconsciously in a metaphorical process of self-transformation.
3:48
Speaker 2: And so I think that the imagistic language that they
3:51
Speaker 2: used arose out of their own unconscious. And this was
3:55
Speaker 2: what Jung felt too, that he was seeing the kind
3:59
Speaker 2: of production of a symbolic language that described, they thought
4:05
Speaker 2: they were describing what was happening to the metals. What
4:09
Speaker 2: they were actually describing was their own psycho-spiritual transformation. So
4:16
Speaker 2: he resurrected alchemy and the study of alchemy as an
4:21
Speaker 2: extended metaphor for individuation.
4:26
Speaker 3: So Jung was deeply familiar with the process of projection.
4:33
Speaker 3: And unlike some other schools of psychoanalysis, which saw projection
4:39
Speaker 3: as a kind of defense against a growth process, Jung
4:45
Speaker 3: felt that projection was a way that the psyche makes
4:50
Speaker 3: itself known to us, that if it can't talk to
4:54
Speaker 3: us directly or that we're not making sense of the
4:57
Speaker 3: dream life, for instance, the psyche will then find a situation,
5:03
Speaker 3: project its content onto the outer, and then in that
5:09
Speaker 3: regard introduce the ego to some of this deep material.
5:14
Speaker 3: So what Jung surmised, of course he wasn't there, but
5:18
Speaker 3: what he surmised is that the alchemists were projecting this
5:23
Speaker 3: deep strata of their own psychology onto these mysterious things
5:29
Speaker 3: that they were observing. And while it's hard for us
5:32
Speaker 3: to understand this in context, we're talking about a time
5:38
Speaker 3: when there was no scientific language for chemistry. that as
5:43
Speaker 3: they were taking substances that had been identified, mixing them together,
5:49
Speaker 3: they were using the language of religion and poetry and
5:55
Speaker 3: dream symbols even as a way to try to capture
6:00
Speaker 3: what they were observing. And in the innocent process of
6:05
Speaker 3: projecting onto it, Jung analyzed it, saw this as a
6:11
Speaker 3: psycho-spiritual process, which, just as you were saying, Lisa, and
6:15
Speaker 3: then also noticed his analysands seemed to both be dreaming
6:21
Speaker 3: and living out these various stages, and he thought it
6:25
Speaker 3: was incredibly helpful and useful to see the way this
6:31
Speaker 3: had been laid out in stages, particularly. This stage, the salutio,
6:39
Speaker 3: is one of the early stages of alchemy and is
6:44
Speaker 3: a stage that we often find ourselves in psychological reality.
6:50
Speaker 3: So solutio means basically dissolving, the experience of dissolving.
6:57
Speaker 2: And if you think about dissolving psychologically, I mean, that
7:01
Speaker 2: could be both a kind of positive feeling. I mean,
7:05
Speaker 2: we can dissolve ourselves into union with another person If
7:09
Speaker 2: we take drugs, we might have a euphoric experience of
7:12
Speaker 2: kind of having our ego dissolved for a little while.
7:15
Speaker 2: It can be a very positive thing to have, say,
7:19
Speaker 2: a rigid defense dissolved, but oftentimes it's a very painful
7:24
Speaker 2: process as well. I mean, we don't necessarily like losing ourselves,
7:30
Speaker 2: losing our coherence.
7:33
Speaker 3: I think that when we're young, often that solutio experience
7:37
Speaker 3: can seem fun. getting wildly drunk and then allowing any
7:44
Speaker 3: young impulse to come out of us and we find
7:47
Speaker 3: ourselves doing silly things or laughing wildly all night long.
7:53
Speaker 3: We can fall in love so easily when we're young
7:56
Speaker 3: and lose the boundaries of our own personality as we
7:59
Speaker 3: kind of rest into the new romantic relationship. As we
8:04
Speaker 3: become older and the personality becomes more defined, also, We
8:10
Speaker 3: depend on having access to our own internal resources in
8:14
Speaker 3: order to get through the work week, in order to
8:16
Speaker 3: get our stuff done. The possibility of interrupting those relied
8:23
Speaker 3: upon structures becomes more costly as we age. So let's
8:29
Speaker 3: say the first stage, or rather the first aspect of
8:34
Speaker 3: the soluteo stage that we might put on the table
8:38
Speaker 3: is the idea of returning to the womb. If we
8:41
Speaker 3: think about the uterine environment, the fetus develops in this great, watery,
8:49
Speaker 3: mysterious place, and is in this intimate relationship to the mother,
8:56
Speaker 3: the great mother on an archetypal level. Sometimes, when we
9:02
Speaker 3: are in a psychological impasse, it becomes necessary for the
9:09
Speaker 3: self to grab hold of us and pull us backwards psychologically.
9:16
Speaker 3: A metaphor that I've heard you use, Lisa, that I've liked,
9:21
Speaker 3: is that when you're knitting, if you make a mistake
9:24
Speaker 3: and then you go forward some great amount of time,
9:28
Speaker 3: You'd have to unravel a good bit to get back
9:31
Speaker 3: to the missed stitch and then tie it into the
9:36
Speaker 3: pattern correctly so that the entire garment of the personality
9:42
Speaker 3: can reach a level of integrity. So sometimes we have
9:46
Speaker 3: to go back to an earlier state of functioning in
9:50
Speaker 3: a purposive way.
9:51
Speaker 2: Right. And this is an idea that occurs in Jung
9:55
Speaker 2: that he, of course, used the French to describe it.
9:58
Speaker 2: that sometimes we have to go back to be better
10:00
Speaker 2: able to go forward but but it's also uh an
10:05
Speaker 2: observation made by the object relationists that that there's a
10:09
Speaker 2: kind of um positive regression and then we often see
10:13
Speaker 2: this at various stages in childhood you know sometimes sometimes
10:17
Speaker 2: um a young child will seem to regress a little
10:20
Speaker 2: bit before they make the next developmental leap. But that's
10:24
Speaker 2: true of us too. We might kind of regress and
10:26
Speaker 2: fall apart a little bit before really being able to
10:30
Speaker 2: kind of step forward in some new way. So this
10:33
Speaker 2: is an important and kind of universal experience that maybe
10:38
Speaker 2: we don't think about all the time, but if we
10:40
Speaker 2: give it some consideration, we might be able to see
10:42
Speaker 2: it in our own lives.
10:44
Speaker 3: Listeners, are you interested in young in a very deep
10:49
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10:54
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10:58
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11:05
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11:09
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11:16
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11:19
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11:23
Speaker 3: in training, as well as people from all walks of
11:26
Speaker 3: life who find Jungian work important and enlivening. The organization
11:34
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11:40
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11:44
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11:46
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11:51
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12:01
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12:11
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12:17
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12:21
Speaker 3: And in dreams, it's not uncommon for us to have
12:23
Speaker 3: dreams of being immersed. Somebody has a dream that they've
12:27
Speaker 3: jumped into a lake or they're walking into the ocean.
12:32
Speaker 3: Or even something like, you know, I was taking a
12:34
Speaker 3: bath and then thus and such occurred. So the ideas
12:39
Speaker 3: of being in water or being submerged in the substance
12:44
Speaker 3: can suggest a kind of returning backwards. Also, dreams where
12:52
Speaker 3: boundaries are being broken down. For instance, if you had
12:56
Speaker 3: a dream of walking into your house and the rear
12:59
Speaker 3: wall dissolves or crumbles down, that's another kind of dissolving
13:08
Speaker 3: breaking down, breaking open imagery that's probably connected to this
13:14
Speaker 3: aspect of the salutio. We can also find ourselves at
13:18
Speaker 3: various stages in life where we want to shed our
13:25
Speaker 3: burdens and responsibilities. So I would say that most vacations
13:32
Speaker 3: are a kind of salutio experience. I just want to
13:36
Speaker 3: eat a lot and relax.
13:38
Speaker 2: But also you see that when someone goes on a
13:41
Speaker 2: vacation and it takes four days for that person to
13:45
Speaker 2: kind of relax enough to start having fun. It's like the,
13:50
Speaker 2: let's call it the sort of maybe work persona, you know,
13:53
Speaker 2: that you've kind of clung to pretty tightly if you
13:57
Speaker 2: have a demanding job. It takes a little while for
14:01
Speaker 2: that to loosen its grip. And then maybe you start
14:03
Speaker 2: getting silly and you find yourself sleeping in or whatever.
14:07
Speaker 2: But it's why a week's vacation is actually hard sometimes, right?
14:12
Speaker 2: Because it takes a few days. And then when you
14:15
Speaker 2: go back.
14:17
Speaker 3: Yes.
14:18
Speaker 2: You have to put on that rigid garment again.
14:21
Speaker 3: And people often experience a mild depression when they come
14:26
Speaker 3: back from a vacation. Hell yes. There you go. I
14:31
Speaker 3: know that. Absolutely. So sometimes... We need that. We need
14:37
Speaker 3: to go back to a childlike relaxation where everything's going
14:43
Speaker 3: to be taken care of you, right? You go to
14:45
Speaker 3: the resort. Someone else will make your bed. Maybe you
14:48
Speaker 3: can drop your laundry in a bag. Someone else will
14:51
Speaker 3: cook your food, get a couple of massages. And there's
14:55
Speaker 3: a part of us that thinks, oh, that's the best. Like,
14:58
Speaker 3: that's the really good stuff.
15:00
Speaker 2: That is a return to the womb.
15:02
Speaker 3: It's a return to the womb and being taken care of.
15:05
Speaker 3: And in short doses, it's actually renewing, isn't it?
15:11
Speaker 2: Yes, right. And that, I think, is the hope of
15:15
Speaker 2: the soluteo, is that it becomes renewing or that it
15:19
Speaker 2: can be.
15:21
Speaker 3: Sometimes we can also have a tragedy that will make
15:25
Speaker 3: us long to return to the womb. So if we
15:29
Speaker 3: think about some of the practices that we have in
15:33
Speaker 3: cultures around death. So sitting Shiva is a Jewish tradition.
15:43
Speaker 3: Somebody has passed away and the family will shroud the
15:48
Speaker 3: mirrors and sit in the living room and unlock the door.
15:54
Speaker 3: And friends in the community would traditionally come by. They
15:58
Speaker 3: would bring food. They would take care of the family.
16:02
Speaker 3: The family was expected to do as little as possible
16:07
Speaker 3: to rest into the dissolving process of grief, to go
16:14
Speaker 3: into a state of dependency upon those who love us
16:18
Speaker 3: as we rest into the dissolution of the relationship, so
16:24
Speaker 3: to speak, with the one who has passed away. And
16:28
Speaker 3: being taken care of is a kind of return, to
16:34
Speaker 3: a psychological dependency. And in that process, it's something that
16:39
Speaker 3: we need and something that helps us eventually return back
16:44
Speaker 3: to an active life after the grief has passed.
16:48
Speaker 2: Well, and grief itself, the kind of active mourning can
16:54
Speaker 2: be seen as an aspect of salutio. Because we must,
16:59
Speaker 2: when we need to let go of something and say goodbye,
17:02
Speaker 2: we must dissolve that tie that binds us to that
17:06
Speaker 2: person or thing. And again, it's very painful, but it
17:12
Speaker 2: is the medicine that needs to happen is to dissolve
17:16
Speaker 2: that bond.
17:17
Speaker 3: Now, this idea of infantile dependence, this is something that
17:22
Speaker 3: sometimes parents become concerned about if we have an adult
17:26
Speaker 3: child that's still living with us, that we're still kind
17:31
Speaker 3: of buying their food or maybe doing their laundry or
17:34
Speaker 3: making their bed, that we can become concerned that the
17:39
Speaker 3: infantile dependence upon the parent is keeping our children in
17:45
Speaker 3: a kind of womb-like place and then we'll notice that
17:51
Speaker 3: we kind of want to push them out of the
17:54
Speaker 3: nest because the soluteo in that regard can be seductive. Absolutely.
18:02
Speaker 3: Sometimes in clinical practice, if I'm working with somebody that
18:07
Speaker 3: has suicidal fantasies, I will often ask many, many questions
18:14
Speaker 3: about what their fantasy is on the other side of
18:20
Speaker 3: passing away, of death. And often it is a kind
18:25
Speaker 3: of womb-like fantasy that all my burdens will be will
18:31
Speaker 3: be laid down. Nothing will be expected of me. I
18:35
Speaker 3: can just go into this sleepy darkness, which I've often
18:40
Speaker 3: interpreted as a kind of cellular memory of being in
18:45
Speaker 3: the womb, where we didn't even have to breathe for ourselves.
18:48
Speaker 3: We didn't even have to chew food. And sometimes the
18:52
Speaker 3: fantasy of what it will be like after we have
18:55
Speaker 3: passed away is like a return to the womb. And
18:58
Speaker 3: in that way, It can be a rather dangerous seduction
19:05
Speaker 3: to go back into the womb.
19:08
Speaker 2: And also what we're talking about, what gets dissolved in
19:13
Speaker 2: these instances, I think, is the ego. And ego dissolution
19:19
Speaker 2: may have an appropriate place in certain controlled environments, but
19:26
Speaker 2: you don't actually want to lose your ego long term.
19:28
Speaker 2: That's not a good thing. So the dissolution of the ego,
19:33
Speaker 2: what that can look like if it happens and you
19:36
Speaker 2: don't come back from it, that's psychosis. So there can
19:40
Speaker 2: be this regression, and Jung talks about this very clearly,
19:43
Speaker 2: that there is a danger associated with regression.
19:47
Speaker 3: It....
19:50
Speaker 2: The danger associated with regression is you don't progress back out.
19:53
Speaker 2: So you regress into the unconscious. The thing that we
19:58
Speaker 2: hope happens there is that something gets activated, the ego
20:02
Speaker 2: gets renewed and supported by it and reconstitutes in a stronger,
20:07
Speaker 2: more expansive way. The danger is you go in, you
20:11
Speaker 2: get lost there. And again, that's when you see images
20:13
Speaker 2: and dreams, for example, of drowning. You can drown in
20:17
Speaker 2: the unconscious, especially if you don't have an adequate ego.
20:23
Speaker 3: This is something that I had seen when I was
20:25
Speaker 3: working in the psych hospital, that it is rather rare,
20:30
Speaker 3: but sometimes I would see particularly a young man, 16,
20:34
Speaker 3: 17 years old, who had done their first experiment with
20:39
Speaker 3: psychedelic mushrooms or LSD, and then an incipient or latent
20:47
Speaker 3: capacity for psychosis blossoms, and the kid winds up in
20:52
Speaker 3: a kind of often wild, florid, psychotic episode that the
20:57
Speaker 3: ego really wasn't strong enough to withstand the gates being
21:03
Speaker 3: thrown open in so much unconscious content mostly in the
21:07
Speaker 3: form of fantasies and beliefs that are not based in reality,
21:13
Speaker 3: come rushing up. And then the ego has a very
21:17
Speaker 3: hard time, sometimes an impossibility, to discern what the outer
21:22
Speaker 3: reality is and the inner impulses and images can't seem
21:28
Speaker 3: to tell them one from the other. So this goes
21:32
Speaker 3: into the idea of dissolution, dismemberment, which is a kind
21:38
Speaker 3: of fragmentation process. And as we were saying, there's a
21:43
Speaker 3: loss of ego coherence and boundaries. On the positive side,
21:50
Speaker 3: we can have really rigid ideas, very entrenched attitudes where
21:57
Speaker 3: we're really stuck up to our knees in a kind
22:00
Speaker 3: of psychological mud. And we don't seem to be able
22:05
Speaker 3: to grow or move forward. So sometimes the dismembering process
22:12
Speaker 3: allows some part of the psychology to become malleable.
22:16
Speaker 2: Right. And I would say that for most people moving
22:22
Speaker 2: through the world, you know, who are high functioning, you're
22:28
Speaker 2: more likely to have this problem than that your ego's
22:32
Speaker 2: so weak that it's going to dissolve and you're not
22:34
Speaker 2: going to come back. I mean, Jung was worried about
22:37
Speaker 2: that because he had an exceptional permeability to the unconscious.
22:41
Speaker 2: And there are some that think that his confrontation with
22:44
Speaker 2: the unconscious was actually a psychotic episode. But he did
22:48
Speaker 2: manage to come back from it, although he himself, you know,
22:52
Speaker 2: wrote and said it was kind of touch and go there.
22:53
Speaker 2: He wasn't really sure he was going to be able to.
22:56
Speaker 2: But for most of us who are not Jung, we
22:59
Speaker 2: are more likely to have overly rigidified persona, perhaps, as
23:06
Speaker 2: we talked about before, or defensive structures that protect us,
23:11
Speaker 2: protect us from, you know, insults from the outer world
23:15
Speaker 2: and attacks from the inner world as well. Challenges to
23:18
Speaker 2: the ego stance, basically. The ego's like, no, I get
23:21
Speaker 2: to buttress myself here. But if those become too rigid,
23:27
Speaker 2: they're quite stultifying. They can get in the way of
23:30
Speaker 2: a kind of open-hearted appreciation for life. They can get
23:34
Speaker 2: in the way of growth and the realization of new
23:37
Speaker 2: potentials within us. And they can really get in the
23:40
Speaker 2: way of intimacy with another person. We're just not as available.
23:45
Speaker 3: A natural dismemberment process that most of us go through
23:49
Speaker 3: is just retirement. That if we've spent maybe 20, 30,
23:54
Speaker 3: 40 years in a particular profession and then we retire...
24:00
Speaker 3: that something gets pulled apart, our identity as a doctor,
24:04
Speaker 3: a lawyer, an analyst, a nurse, any number of things.
24:08
Speaker 3: There's a dismembering of who I was. And it's not
24:14
Speaker 3: uncommon for people to fall into a depression post-retirement, at
24:19
Speaker 3: least for several months, if not longer. And that kind
24:23
Speaker 3: of a depression is a soluteo, that we're kind of
24:27
Speaker 3: being pulled down into the unconscious as we are casting
24:34
Speaker 3: off the carapace of a professional identity. One of our
24:41
Speaker 3: guests had used this term, going from role to soul,
24:46
Speaker 3: that we have to dismember the roles that we have
24:49
Speaker 3: held in our lives, often in the latter years of
24:53
Speaker 3: our lives. And even though it may be something in
24:56
Speaker 3: service to the self, it can be deeply uncomfortable, deeply painful.
25:03
Speaker 2: In a way, we're going to be talking about other
25:06
Speaker 2: alchemical operations in future episodes. And I'm just thinking about
25:10
Speaker 2: the similarity between what we're talking about with soluteo as
25:14
Speaker 2: opposed to putrefactio, for example, or rotting. I mean, they're
25:19
Speaker 2: similar in that they both make things come apart, but
25:21
Speaker 2: they do have a little bit of a different feel
25:23
Speaker 2: to them. I want to bring up another example, which
25:27
Speaker 2: is analysis. You go into analysis because there's some part
25:32
Speaker 2: of your life that feels like it's not working. And
25:34
Speaker 2: if you're lucky, you're going to be pulled apart a
25:38
Speaker 2: little bit. Some things are going to be dissolved. You're
25:40
Speaker 2: going to be challenged. You're going to look at things
25:42
Speaker 2: in new ways. And some structures that you've been clinging
25:46
Speaker 2: to might be dissolved. The interesting thing is that the
25:49
Speaker 2: word analysis comes from a Greek word that means a
25:54
Speaker 2: breaking up or a loosening. So really, the whole point
25:59
Speaker 2: of it is to kind of come apart.
26:01
Speaker 3: And in that, to create space for something else that
26:07
Speaker 3: hasn't had an opportunity to show itself in the character
26:12
Speaker 3: structure of the individual. So the soluteo process can be
26:19
Speaker 3: sobering because the new thing hasn't emerged yet, but the
26:24
Speaker 3: old thing is being dissembled. And so hopefully, whether we're
26:30
Speaker 3: in analysis or we're in a loving relationship or we
26:33
Speaker 3: have kind and close friends, we often need a kind
26:38
Speaker 3: of containing support as we sink down and cast off
26:45
Speaker 3: the things that are no longer useful or even actively
26:50
Speaker 3: interfering with our actualization. Another aspect of solutio is the
26:57
Speaker 3: idea of being contained within something larger. This experience of
27:03
Speaker 3: being swallowed up. So we may literally have dreams, as
27:09
Speaker 3: people do, of being swallowed by a whirlpool, swallowed by
27:13
Speaker 3: the whale like Jonah. It's not uncommon for us to
27:19
Speaker 3: feel swallowed up by a job or a relationship. Sometimes
27:23
Speaker 3: if we have an overwhelming mother complex, We can have
27:27
Speaker 3: this fear of being overwhelmed by the parents' needs, and
27:33
Speaker 3: then therefore feel somewhat swallowed up by your new baby's needs,
27:38
Speaker 3: swallowed up by your new spouse's needs and fantasies, and
27:44
Speaker 3: we can find ourselves losing something that we previously had
27:52
Speaker 3: a firm sense of identity and grip on. Mob consciousness
27:58
Speaker 3: is another experience of being swallowed up by something larger
28:02
Speaker 3: than the individual ego.
28:04
Speaker 2: And the idea of salutio being a kind of watery
28:08
Speaker 2: experience is particularly pertinent, I think, to that last example.
28:12
Speaker 2: Because when we think of water, what it often means
28:15
Speaker 2: symbolically is a reference to the unconscious, but also specifically emotions.
28:21
Speaker 2: And of course, mob consciousness, the psychology of crowds, let's say,
28:26
Speaker 2: is often an experience of emotional contagion. You know, if
28:31
Speaker 2: you've been part of a big crowd at a football
28:33
Speaker 2: game or a parade or something, and you can just
28:36
Speaker 2: feel it, there's a wave of something that's quite thrilling
28:40
Speaker 2: that kind of catches fire. And we do lose a
28:45
Speaker 2: sense of ourselves as individual egos when we're part of,
28:49
Speaker 2: I'm going to say crowd rather than mob, because mob
28:52
Speaker 2: makes it sound negative.
28:53
Speaker 3: Sure.
28:54
Speaker 2: It's not always negative. You know, there can be a
28:58
Speaker 2: really fun, delightful aspect of it. But Jung felt like
29:02
Speaker 2: it was very dangerous, by the way. Jung was very
29:06
Speaker 2: fearful of crowd psychology because he felt, well, and it's
29:10
Speaker 2: very understandable. I mean, he had a sort of, not
29:14
Speaker 2: exactly a front row seat, but, you know, somewhere in
29:18
Speaker 2: the orchestra section of World War II. which was a
29:21
Speaker 2: kind of experience of that par excellence. All you have
29:24
Speaker 2: to do is go back and look at some of
29:26
Speaker 2: those videos of the Hitler rallies where he's up there
29:30
Speaker 2: speaking and just see the fervor in the crowds. You know,
29:34
Speaker 2: that is crowd psychology in one of its darker manifestations.
29:39
Speaker 2: But it is a sense of being swallowed by a
29:44
Speaker 2: big emotion, a big kind of tidal wave of feeling
29:49
Speaker 2: that takes our ego apart, at least momentarily.
29:53
Speaker 3: Now, sometimes the self will activate, which is that very
29:59
Speaker 3: powerful center of the personality and we may have a
30:03
Speaker 3: moment where we can choose to surrender choose to submit
30:08
Speaker 3: to a kind of internal authority to a process that
30:12
Speaker 3: is larger than just our normal ego state and even
30:18
Speaker 3: though it is a thoughtful submission to the center of
30:24
Speaker 3: the personality it can still be disturbing to us, we
30:30
Speaker 3: can still find it at the very least uncanny to
30:35
Speaker 3: feel that parts of us are being changed by some
30:40
Speaker 3: other force. The example analysts will often use is the
30:44
Speaker 3: story of Jonah and the whale, that God in that
30:50
Speaker 3: mythopoetic story has told Jonah that he needs to go
30:54
Speaker 3: to Nineveh to evangelize, to spread the the word of God.
31:00
Speaker 3: And Jonah's like, I am not going to Nineveh. In fact,
31:03
Speaker 3: I'm taking the first ship somewhere else. And the ship
31:07
Speaker 3: gets stranded, and there's all these difficulties. And then Jonah
31:11
Speaker 3: confesses that he thinks he's caused all of this by
31:15
Speaker 3: displeasing God. He winds up getting thrown overboard. A whale
31:20
Speaker 3: swallows him and takes him to Nineveh anyway. But Something
31:25
Speaker 3: we can imagine is happening when Jonah is inside the
31:28
Speaker 3: belly of the whale, which is a kind of dissolution
31:33
Speaker 3: of his defense against his vocation, his calling. So being
31:40
Speaker 3: swallowed by the larger can feel like a personal crisis.
31:44
Speaker 3: We can feel powerless against intense emotional and archetypal forces
31:51
Speaker 3: that That can be a kind of swallowed-up experience, again,
31:57
Speaker 3: in service to the process of change. Another aspect of
32:02
Speaker 3: salutio is the idea of rebirth and rejuvenation. Now, we're
32:08
Speaker 3: in this cycle that Jung writes extensively about, this birth, death,
32:13
Speaker 3: and resurrection cycle, which is a way of thinking of
32:18
Speaker 3: the alchemical process of lead being reborn as gold, so
32:24
Speaker 3: to speak, and the idea of the personality undergoing a
32:29
Speaker 3: process and becoming a golden reflection of the self. Now,
32:36
Speaker 3: this would require a substantive change process, but the new
32:42
Speaker 3: personality is often seen in mythology as having properties that
32:48
Speaker 3: are rather remarkable. And the Osiris myth, Osiris comes back
32:53
Speaker 3: to life and rules the living and the dead, he
32:58
Speaker 3: himself having been transformed into a brilliant green of new
33:04
Speaker 3: growth and exists in another order of being. So after
33:10
Speaker 3: we dissolve, there's this possibility of renewal, a creative rebirth
33:16
Speaker 3: out of a primal unconscious process.
33:22
Speaker 2: You know if you if you think about the chemical
33:26
Speaker 2: solution so when you put salt crystals in water they
33:32
Speaker 2: dissolve and you can't find the salt crystals anymore but
33:37
Speaker 2: if you allow the water to evaporate you will find
33:40
Speaker 2: salt crystals much like those that you originally added and
33:44
Speaker 2: Salt crystals always look the same, and other kinds of
33:48
Speaker 2: crystals have a very distinctive shape and structure. So that
33:53
Speaker 2: must have been something noted by the ancients, that something
34:00
Speaker 2: could go into solution and then come back out again.
34:03
Speaker 2: So again, as a psychological process. Now, you're talking about
34:07
Speaker 2: a state where we go into solution and we emerge
34:10
Speaker 2: as something greater than Let me offer a natural metaphor
34:14
Speaker 2: for that. It would be what happens to the caterpillar
34:18
Speaker 2: that goes into a chrysalis form. I know we've talked
34:24
Speaker 2: about this before on the podcast, but as an amateur
34:29
Speaker 2: butterfly enthusiast, I've seen what happens when a caterpillar goes
34:36
Speaker 2: into that chrysalid state. You know, it hangs upside down.
34:40
Speaker 2: and it just sort of hangs there, and then it
34:42
Speaker 2: wriggles out of its skin one last time, and there's
34:45
Speaker 2: this beautiful chrysalis. Well, what's in the chrysalis at that
34:49
Speaker 2: moment is only liquid. If you hold it up to
34:53
Speaker 2: the light, it's opaque. There's no structures in there. It's
34:59
Speaker 2: gone into solution. And I once accidentally punctured a chrysalis
35:07
Speaker 2: with a needle, and Just clear ooze came out. By
35:10
Speaker 2: the way, the butterfly turned out fine. I felt very
35:13
Speaker 2: badly about that, but it wasn't a disaster. But it
35:16
Speaker 2: was sort of proof that there it is. It's just,
35:19
Speaker 2: it's just ooze, you know. But what happens, of course,
35:23
Speaker 2: is over the next 10 days or so, something coalesces,
35:29
Speaker 2: something coagulates, which is another alchemical operation, uh, something coagulates
35:38
Speaker 2: out of that ooze, and what coagulates is a butterfly.
35:43
Speaker 2: So I think it's a beautiful metaphor for what Jung
35:46
Speaker 2: was trying to describe with the process of salutio, that
35:51
Speaker 2: something is just broken down into some kind of elemental mush,
35:58
Speaker 2: and what arises from it is something related to what
36:01
Speaker 2: came before, but not in a way you would ever recognize.
36:06
Speaker 3: And that mushy ooziness is the substance which is then
36:11
Speaker 3: harnessed to the new pattern. If I'm remembering a bit
36:17
Speaker 3: about that chrysalis process of the butterfly that the body
36:21
Speaker 3: of the caterpillar, as you were saying, turns into a
36:25
Speaker 3: primordial ooze. But there are several pieces of kind of
36:30
Speaker 3: genetic structure that float into certain positions in the ooze,
36:37
Speaker 3: and then begin to purpose the ooze into the new structure.
36:42
Speaker 3: It's an extraordinary, perfect metaphor for the idea of individuation,
36:48
Speaker 3: that there is a matrix for who we're supposed to be.
36:52
Speaker 2: Yes, that's a great way of putting it. Yeah, the
36:55
Speaker 2: bits in there that make the butterfly are referred to
36:58
Speaker 2: as imaginal cells.
37:01
Speaker 3: Oh, that's truly what they're called. Yes, that's what they're called. Oh,
37:05
Speaker 3: that's so interesting. I love that.
37:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's completely fascinating, and it's an amazing metaphor for
37:13
Speaker 2: our transformation. I like what you said, that there's a matrix.
37:16
Speaker 2: You know, there's a blueprint, right? It looks like it's
37:19
Speaker 2: just ooze, but there's a blueprint for what happens next. And,
37:23
Speaker 2: you know, one of the studies that scientists have done
37:26
Speaker 2: is— taken caterpillars and kind of taught them to have
37:32
Speaker 2: a response, say they, I don't know exactly what it is,
37:35
Speaker 2: but they kind of give the caterpillar a mild shock
37:38
Speaker 2: if it is, I don't know, crawling on a red
37:40
Speaker 2: piece of paper or something. And then they'll take those
37:45
Speaker 2: butterflies that result and the butterfly will have a retained
37:49
Speaker 2: memory of, oh, I don't want to go near red.
37:53
Speaker 2: So there's something consistent there. There's some Mm-hmm. There's some,
37:59
Speaker 2: it's the same organism, but as children's books remind us,
38:05
Speaker 2: I mean, there's some really charming children's book about like, wait,
38:08
Speaker 2: who are you? I don't know you. Oh, yeah, no,
38:10
Speaker 2: you just knew me as a caterpillar, you know? It's like, whoa,
38:13
Speaker 2: you look really different now, you know? It doesn't look
38:17
Speaker 2: like at all like what came before.
38:20
Speaker 3: So in this framing of the salutio that the primal ooze,
38:25
Speaker 3: you know, the substance of ourselves when it's broken down
38:29
Speaker 3: into its primal state is nourishing, it's fertile, and necessary
38:36
Speaker 3: that it is a sacred substance of ourselves that's put
38:43
Speaker 3: into this infinitely malleable moment so that it can coalesce
38:50
Speaker 3: around something else, at the very least something new, but
38:55
Speaker 3: perhaps something even profound.
38:58
Speaker 2: That brings up another alchemical metaphor, and that is of
39:02
Speaker 2: the aqua permanence, which is a kind of a watery
39:11
Speaker 2: substance that's associated with the alchemical process and associated with transformation.
39:17
Speaker 2: It's a little bit like amniotic fluid, right? That that
39:22
Speaker 2: watery substance in which something new is gestated.
39:27
Speaker 3: So the rebirth process in its best form, requires the
39:34
Speaker 3: solution again. Now, we can dissolve and also come back
39:46
Speaker 3: the same way we did in the beginning. And Jung
39:49
Speaker 3: called that the regressive restoration of the persona. So sometimes
39:54
Speaker 3: we're on the verge of being quite different, often in
40:00
Speaker 3: a positive way. But as we begin to step into
40:05
Speaker 3: this new attitude, this new way of being, fear, something
40:11
Speaker 3: neurotic kicks in, and then we kind of jump back
40:16
Speaker 3: into the primordial womb. And the ego works very hard
40:20
Speaker 3: to return itself to the old version because it is
40:26
Speaker 3: in some ways too frightened, unprepared, so it thinks, to
40:32
Speaker 3: step into a very new way of being. Another aspect
40:36
Speaker 3: of the salutio is the idea of purification or the
40:43
Speaker 3: ordeal by water. And I think the most common ritualistic
40:51
Speaker 3: process is the idea of baptism, that it partakes of
40:57
Speaker 3: that alchemical salutio imagery and symbolism, that one is submerged
41:04
Speaker 3: into the divine waters and then one comes out as
41:10
Speaker 3: a spiritually pure or brand new reissued being or soul
41:19
Speaker 3: so in that symbolism we go into the baptismal water
41:25
Speaker 3: we return to infancy so to speak and come out
41:30
Speaker 3: of the water without sin or error into this new
41:35
Speaker 3: spiritual life that's contained in the religious ideas.
41:43
Speaker 2: And i think another everyday experience that might be related
41:47
Speaker 2: to that aspect of salutio, Joseph, is tears. Tears are transformative,
41:53
Speaker 2: but tears are primarily purifying. I mean, tears, tears, I
41:59
Speaker 2: want to say purifying and clarifying. If you are sad
42:03
Speaker 2: and you let yourself kind of cry all the way through,
42:06
Speaker 2: there is often a sense of relief and clarity and
42:13
Speaker 2: and almost contentment, even in the midst of your sorrow.
42:17
Speaker 2: Because tears kind of catalyze a neurochemical experience that is regulating.
42:26
Speaker 2: And of course, in myths and fairy tales, tears are
42:30
Speaker 2: also purifying. The Grimm's fairy tale, The Girl Without Hands,
42:35
Speaker 2: she says, is trying to ward off the devil, and
42:39
Speaker 2: so she washes herself with holy water until it gets
42:42
Speaker 2: taken away from her. And then she cries on her hands,
42:47
Speaker 2: and that leaves them purified so that the devil can't
42:50
Speaker 2: touch her.
42:51
Speaker 3: So conscious suffering sometimes can also have that purifying process.
42:59
Speaker 3: This idea, I think, is underneath worship. all of the
43:05
Speaker 3: concepts of punishment that we often carry in the culture,
43:11
Speaker 3: if we arrest someone and we put them in a prison,
43:14
Speaker 3: the symbolic fantasy is that the suffering, the remorse, the grief,
43:20
Speaker 3: the penitence, because prisons used to be called penitentiaries, the
43:27
Speaker 3: penance that the soul goes through allows one to then
43:33
Speaker 3: emerge purified of the wrongful impulse through suffering its consequences.
43:40
Speaker 3: It's not uncommon for parents who are watching a child
43:45
Speaker 3: experiment with the environment sometimes to step back and let
43:50
Speaker 3: the child stumble a bit, let the child take a
43:53
Speaker 3: risk and perhaps learn that something is uncomfortable so that
43:57
Speaker 3: they then can create a different orientation and change how
44:02
Speaker 3: they are relating to something is a kind of ordeal
44:07
Speaker 3: in a similar way through suffering, educative suffering. Another aspect
44:13
Speaker 3: of the solutio is the solution or dissolution of problems.
44:22
Speaker 3: And this is something that happens so commonly we often
44:27
Speaker 3: don't think about it. But if we've ever had even
44:31
Speaker 3: a very pragmatic problem. How am I going to, I
44:36
Speaker 3: don't know, paint the house? Part of what we need
44:39
Speaker 3: to do is to analyze the problem of the house
44:44
Speaker 3: that needs to be painted and to dissolve it down
44:48
Speaker 3: into its component tasks. What exactly is the problem? What
44:53
Speaker 3: am I solving for? What are the various steps that
44:58
Speaker 3: one has to go through to scour the dirt and
45:03
Speaker 3: the old paint off the house, and what are the
45:06
Speaker 3: various steps that one has to do to then make
45:09
Speaker 3: it better, to paint it again, so that mentalizing or
45:16
Speaker 3: analyzing a problem breaks it down or dissolves it into
45:21
Speaker 3: its component parts, which then can offer a possible solution.
45:27
Speaker 2: Which is why the word solution... as we colloquially use it,
45:34
Speaker 2: often may require a solutio.
45:36
Speaker 3: I love that.
45:37
Speaker 2: I mean, it's an interesting etymological exploration, right? Because solution
45:41
Speaker 2: comes from, you know, we've been saying this Latin word
45:44
Speaker 2: for dissolve, and we have the word dissolve. And we
45:48
Speaker 2: talk about a solution in chemistry, which is where something
45:51
Speaker 2: gets dissolved in a liquid. And yet the word solution,
45:55
Speaker 2: like the solution to a problem, but I think it's
45:58
Speaker 2: exactly what you're saying. You know, it's sort of evolved
46:00
Speaker 2: over time. It's It's one of those etymologies that you think, huh,
46:03
Speaker 2: why does that mean that? But I think it's exactly
46:06
Speaker 2: what you're saying, is that sometimes, you know, problems seem
46:10
Speaker 2: big and overwhelming. If you feel overwhelmed by a task,
46:14
Speaker 2: the best thing to do is to break it down
46:17
Speaker 2: into its component parts, and then you can begin to
46:20
Speaker 2: work on it. So when someone comes into analysis and
46:24
Speaker 2: is very overwhelmed and they're, you know, they're personal life
46:28
Speaker 2: is not where they want it to be and their
46:30
Speaker 2: professional life is not where they want it to be,
46:32
Speaker 2: the first thing we're going to do is sort of say, okay,
46:36
Speaker 2: what's the essence here? Let's break it down. What's the
46:40
Speaker 2: core thing that's going on? Or what is the highest priority?
46:45
Speaker 2: We're not going to try to address everything all at once.
46:47
Speaker 3: Those are exactly perfect examples. And so the alchemical stages
46:53
Speaker 3: are not something that Jung invented. or that the alchemists
46:57
Speaker 3: necessarily invented, they identified these processes through projection and just
47:06
Speaker 3: observing some organic change processes. We naturally solve for problems,
47:13
Speaker 3: and we do that by chewing into something. So sometimes
47:18
Speaker 3: people will also have dreams of biting and chewing, or
47:22
Speaker 3: if it's not going well, of their teeth breaking off.
47:27
Speaker 3: that they're having trouble turning the solid food into the slush,
47:33
Speaker 3: which would then allow something to be understood in its
47:38
Speaker 3: component parts.
47:40
Speaker 2: And of course, our saliva begins the process of breaking
47:44
Speaker 2: down food. So that's another image of solution.
47:49
Speaker 3: So sometimes dreams of flooding, which I think are always interesting...
47:56
Speaker 3: Because often after the flood recedes, the fertility of the
48:01
Speaker 3: silt is left on the land. And then something new
48:06
Speaker 3: can then happen as a result of that.
48:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think solutio is always watery. So
48:15
Speaker 2: dreams that feature watery image, we might wonder about it.
48:20
Speaker 2: It also means, as we said earlier, that solutio is
48:23
Speaker 2: often really related to strong feelings. You know, because feelings
48:28
Speaker 2: are watery, you know, so you can kind of drown
48:32
Speaker 2: in a big feeling.
48:34
Speaker 3: Absolutely. And sometimes that can be euphoric. Again, falling in
48:38
Speaker 3: love is one of the salutios. This huge feeling of
48:43
Speaker 3: adoration and love and longing and wanting there to be
48:48
Speaker 3: no demarcation between oneself and the beloved in this kind
48:54
Speaker 3: of euphoric state. warm bath so to.
48:58
Speaker 4: Speak together yes so another aspect of the saluteo that
49:03
Speaker 4: we can toy with is the idea of melting or
49:09
Speaker 4: softening which is a process towards saluteo you have a
49:14
Speaker 4: stick of butter you take it out of the freezer
49:16
Speaker 4: it's very hard to do much with put it in
49:19
Speaker 4: the microwave just a bit, not too much.
49:22
Speaker 3: It begins to soften, and then something becomes more possible.
49:28
Speaker 3: It's more malleable. It's not quite so rigid and overly structured.
49:35
Speaker 3: And you can spread it, you can mix it into
49:37
Speaker 3: a recipe. It will join in with the other chemical
49:42
Speaker 3: compounds of the cake mix, let's say, and produce something
49:48
Speaker 3: ultimately different. So just the softening and the beginning of
49:53
Speaker 3: the melting process is something we certainly see in analysis.
49:59
Speaker 3: And this is part of the work with our defenses.
50:04
Speaker 3: So we develop rigid defenses often from painful emotions or
50:10
Speaker 3: painful experiences and truths, and they become overly fixed in
50:16
Speaker 3: the personality. They become overly rigid. Now, the total dissolution
50:24
Speaker 3: of the defense may not need to happen, it may
50:27
Speaker 3: never happen, but softening the defensive structure often is the
50:34
Speaker 3: beginning of allowing certain corrective ideas or even memories of
50:41
Speaker 3: having been freer in an earlier time in our lives
50:48
Speaker 3: can emerge when the defense is somewhat softened, becomes somewhat
50:54
Speaker 3: more flexible.
50:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think flexible is such a key word when
50:58
Speaker 2: we're talking about psychological health. You know, perhaps it's really
51:03
Speaker 2: a hallmark of psychological health that we can be flexible
51:08
Speaker 2: in many ways. And I think just generally, you know,
51:12
Speaker 2: that idea about rigidity in the psyche, you know, that's
51:16
Speaker 2: when Jung would talk about something becoming too one-sided. That's
51:20
Speaker 2: almost the definition of a neurosis. So there has to
51:24
Speaker 2: be some flexibility and to a certain amount of permeability.
51:31
Speaker 2: That the ego has to be able to be penetrated
51:34
Speaker 2: to an extent by the unconscious too much. And again,
51:38
Speaker 2: you're in the realm of psychosis and that's not good.
51:41
Speaker 2: But not enough and you're cut off from the source.
51:46
Speaker 3: So a common manifestation of just what you were saying
51:50
Speaker 3: is when a new analyst hand often comes in and
51:55
Speaker 3: I'll say, do you have any dreams this week? And
51:57
Speaker 3: they'll say, no, no, no. They'll say, really? They're like, well, yes,
52:00
Speaker 3: but they weren't very good dreams and they were all stupid. Like, really? Well,
52:05
Speaker 3: they weren't complete dreams. I only captured 10 sentences and
52:09
Speaker 3: I know that it was far more. But there's a
52:13
Speaker 3: way in which the material of the dream is kept
52:17
Speaker 3: away because if it was held close, it would require
52:22
Speaker 3: a softening, as you were saying, of a particular attitude.
52:26
Speaker 3: because the dream is always trying to add a little
52:30
Speaker 3: something extra to the ego attitude, which means the ego
52:34
Speaker 3: has to be permeable enough at least to consider it,
52:38
Speaker 3: and ideally soft enough to integrate the fact that there
52:42
Speaker 3: are other perspectives brewing inside of us that would be
52:45
Speaker 3: helpful for us to take on.
52:47
Speaker 2: Yeah. And here's an incredible metaphor from Jung that really
52:52
Speaker 2: speaks to that. And And includes an image of water.
52:56
Speaker 2: So I think this idea of the ego being surrounded
52:59
Speaker 2: by water, needing what comes from the water to be
53:03
Speaker 2: healed or restored, but also having to kind of defend
53:06
Speaker 2: against it.
53:07
Speaker 3: I love this.
53:10
Speaker 2: I love what he says. He talks about even a
53:13
Speaker 2: normal person exhibits a resistance and there's a fear of
53:18
Speaker 2: going crazy. This resistance borders on the grotesque when it
53:22
Speaker 2: comes to scouting all psychological explanations of art, philosophy, and religion,
53:28
Speaker 2: as though the human psyche had or should have absolutely
53:31
Speaker 2: nothing to do with these. The doctor knows these well-defended
53:35
Speaker 2: zones from his consulting hours. They are reminiscent of island
53:42
Speaker 2: fortresses from which the neurotic tries to ward off the octopus.
53:49
Speaker 2: And he says that one of his analysands refers to
53:53
Speaker 2: his conscious state as happy neurosis island. The doctor is
53:59
Speaker 2: well aware that the patient needs an island and would
54:02
Speaker 2: be lost without it. It serves as a refuge for
54:06
Speaker 2: his consciousness and as the last stronghold against the threatening
54:10
Speaker 2: embrace of the unconscious. The same is true of the
54:13
Speaker 2: normal person's taboo regions, which psychology must not touch. But
54:18
Speaker 2: since no war was ever won on the defensive, one must,
54:21
Speaker 2: in order to terminate hostilities, open negotiations with the enemy
54:26
Speaker 2: and see what his terms really are. Such is the
54:29
Speaker 2: intention of the doctor who volunteers to act as a mediator.
54:33
Speaker 2: That's an interesting description of the analyst's role. He is
54:38
Speaker 2: far from wishing to disturb the somewhat precarious island idol
54:42
Speaker 2: or pull down the fortifications. On the contrary, he is
54:46
Speaker 2: thankful that somewhere a firm foothold exists that does not
54:50
Speaker 2: first have to be fished up out of the chaos,
54:54
Speaker 2: always a desperately difficult task. He knows that the island
54:58
Speaker 2: is a bit cramped and plagued with all sorts of
55:01
Speaker 2: imaginary wants because too much life has been left outside
55:05
Speaker 2: and that as a result a terrifying monster is created,
55:09
Speaker 2: or rather is roused out of its slumbers. He also
55:13
Speaker 2: knows that this seemingly alarming animal stands in a secret,
55:19
Speaker 2: compensatory relationship to the island and could supply everything that
55:24
Speaker 2: the island needs.
55:26
Speaker 3: That is fantastic. I love that.
55:30
Speaker 2: I know. I love that. I love that. It's so great. It's, it's, um,
55:35
Speaker 2: there's so much in there, right? But, but this idea of, uh,
55:39
Speaker 2: We're all our egos. We're all island fortresses. And if
55:44
Speaker 2: we dissolve those battlements, we could be inundated by the
55:49
Speaker 2: waters and by the octopus. Look at that. That's great.
55:56
Speaker 3: That's excellent.
55:57
Speaker 2: I didn't even think about that. Yeah, I've been admiring
55:59
Speaker 2: your octopus mug. That's great. But that's what we need, too.
56:04
Speaker 3: I love that. quote that's just so brilliantly sums that
56:09
Speaker 3: up that both both the feeling of threat inside of
56:15
Speaker 3: us but also offering us a way of conceptualizing the
56:20
Speaker 3: life in the water the water of life yeah that
56:23
Speaker 3: has something to offer us but will demand a change
56:28
Speaker 3: in order for us to receive the gifts of it
56:33
Speaker 3: and that's ever the Ambivalent position, which we were talking
56:37
Speaker 3: about at the beginning. Should I just stay exactly as
56:41
Speaker 3: I am because it's at least the known little island
56:44
Speaker 3: that I can circle around for 25 more years?
56:50
Speaker 1: Or.
56:51
Speaker 2: Happy neurosis island, yeah.
56:53
Speaker 3: Right. Do I throw open the gates and see what's
56:57
Speaker 3: going to crawl out from the primordial sea into my
57:02
Speaker 3: living room? Then ask for a relationship. Yeah, I love that.
57:08
Speaker 3: So the solutio is something that is, it's so common
57:14
Speaker 3: that it can escape our notice. Everything from our child
57:19
Speaker 3: regressing because they had a hard day at school and
57:22
Speaker 3: suddenly they want to crawl into our arms in a
57:25
Speaker 3: way that they hadn't for the last year or so,
57:28
Speaker 3: to falling in love, to retiring. to preparing for the
57:33
Speaker 3: end of life in the face of a threatening illness,
57:37
Speaker 3: as well as courting it as part of our self-growth.
57:43
Speaker 2: Well, there's another solutio that happens to all of us
57:46
Speaker 2: every day, and that is going to sleep.
57:51
Speaker 3: That's right.
57:52
Speaker 2: Falling asleep is a dissolution of ego consciousness in preparation
57:58
Speaker 2: for entering a resting state and dreaming. And that's when
58:03
Speaker 2: the octopus gets to talk to us. And I wonder
58:08
Speaker 2: if with that, this is a good time to switch
58:11
Speaker 2: to a dream.
58:12
Speaker 3: I think it's a perfect time to switch to a
58:15
Speaker 3: salutio experience of our dreamer. So I.
58:32
Speaker 2: Picked this dream this morning, and it's a remarkable dream.
58:36
Speaker 2: But I was also drawn to it because it refers
58:41
Speaker 2: to alchemy, and I thought it was just a really
58:44
Speaker 2: good fit. This dream comes from a woman who's 42
58:49
Speaker 2: years old, who's a digital marketer and a therapist-to-be, and
58:54
Speaker 2: she called her dream Calcinatio. I see a head which
58:59
Speaker 2: I know is my own, even though I can't see
59:01
Speaker 2: my face clearly. What I can see is a close-up
59:05
Speaker 2: on one side of my face, specifically the jaw. My
59:08
Speaker 2: skin seemed to have burned off, exposing my mouth. There's
59:12
Speaker 2: both black tissue and ash on the edges of where
59:16
Speaker 2: the burn happened. Something is making me inspect the wound
59:20
Speaker 2: and see if there's anything left. Like a dentist, I
59:24
Speaker 2: dig in to find what's left, and in the blackness,
59:27
Speaker 2: that has almost the texture of coal, I find a
59:29
Speaker 2: single tooth which is intact. I'm surprised to find it
59:33
Speaker 2: hidden so deep under all the layers. The Dreamer notes,
59:38
Speaker 2: I had this dream a year ago while on a
59:39
Speaker 2: work trip to Basel. At the time, I found it
59:43
Speaker 2: quite frightening. Only later, after learning more about Jung's fascination
59:47
Speaker 2: with alchemy from your podcast, I understood how important this
59:51
Speaker 2: dream had been. Soon after I had it, I had
59:53
Speaker 2: a depressive episode which had kept me out of work
59:56
Speaker 2: for nearly two months. At that point, I had been
59:59
Speaker 2: in therapy for about nine months and had been feeling
1:00:01
Speaker 2: up and down as a result of it. The therapy
1:00:04
Speaker 2: made me realize that I had buried a lot of
1:00:06
Speaker 2: grief as several difficult things had happened to me in
1:00:08
Speaker 2: the span of three years, including a breakup, losing my
1:00:12
Speaker 2: best friend of 30 years to cancer, and seeing my
1:00:15
Speaker 2: father's steep physical decline. Since that dream, I've had other
1:00:19
Speaker 2: dreams which brought up alchemical imagery. but this one was
1:00:23
Speaker 2: the only scary one. And she notes the main feelings
1:00:27
Speaker 2: in the dream were fear of seeing my face badly burned,
1:00:31
Speaker 2: curiosity to see what was left, and then surprise at
1:00:35
Speaker 2: seeing the tooth hidden under the black tissue. She says,
1:00:39
Speaker 2: I usually have dreams with elaborate stories, people I know
1:00:42
Speaker 2: from real life, and I find them quite easy to interpret,
1:00:45
Speaker 2: but I had no associations with the elements in this dream.
1:00:49
Speaker 2: I only made some sense of it after listening to
1:00:51
Speaker 2: your podcast and then reading the book, Anatomy of the Psyche,
1:00:55
Speaker 2: which Joseph recommended on the podcast. So here we have
1:01:01
Speaker 2: a quite remarkable Calcinadio dream. And for those of you
1:01:06
Speaker 2: who may not realize it, we have a previous episode
1:01:11
Speaker 2: on Calcinadio as part of our alchemy series. So you
1:01:16
Speaker 2: can go back and find that also. very different from salutio.
1:01:21
Speaker 3: Well, the first thing that I really admire in the
1:01:26
Speaker 3: dreamer's psyche is that they come across something that is disturbing, distressing.
1:01:36
Speaker 3: And the ego has the right attitude, which is to
1:01:40
Speaker 3: be curious and to dig into the mystery. And That
1:01:46
Speaker 3: is the attitude that we would wish any of us
1:01:49
Speaker 3: might have when we come across something, particularly something that
1:01:53
Speaker 3: looks tragic or gruesome in our own psyche.
1:01:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's really highlighted if you think about the dream.
1:02:02
Speaker 2: There's like this little kind of wonderful dream absurdity in
1:02:04
Speaker 2: that and that she finds a head and she's, you know,
1:02:08
Speaker 2: she's manipulating it, right? She's sticking her hand and she's
1:02:11
Speaker 2: examining it very carefully.
1:02:14
Speaker 3: But it's her head.
1:02:16
Speaker 2: She's using her eyes, obviously, to examine this thing that
1:02:19
Speaker 2: is hers. But it's a great image of a kind
1:02:23
Speaker 2: of like developing a certain kind of objectivity toward our
1:02:29
Speaker 2: own suffering. So Deb likes to use that phrase, which
1:02:33
Speaker 2: I think is so great about, you know, you're on
1:02:36
Speaker 2: the playing field and you're up in the skybox. So
1:02:39
Speaker 2: she's up in the skybox, as it were, like she's
1:02:41
Speaker 2: looking at her suffering head. She's both having that experience
1:02:47
Speaker 2: of having been burned, and she's exploring it with, like
1:02:53
Speaker 2: you said, Joseph, with kind of a great deal of intention. Like,
1:02:56
Speaker 2: what have we here, and what can I learn about it?
1:03:00
Speaker 3: And then that wonderful sentence, which could be a standalone,
1:03:05
Speaker 3: I'm surprised to find it hidden so deep under all
1:03:09
Speaker 3: the layers. And what she finds is a single tooth.
1:03:16
Speaker 3: She's finding something that has survived the burning process, has
1:03:23
Speaker 3: left something essential after there is only ash. So the
1:03:30
Speaker 3: calcinatio can often represent a frustration of a certain kind
1:03:36
Speaker 3: of neurotic drive inside of us. We really, really want
1:03:43
Speaker 3: to do or have, want to pursue, something historically we've
1:03:48
Speaker 3: come to understand this doesn't generally work well for us.
1:03:52
Speaker 3: And with support, we decide that we're going to hold
1:03:54
Speaker 3: back and yet watch the frustration and the tension build
1:04:00
Speaker 3: up inside of us, which is a kind of suffering.
1:04:03
Speaker 3: We talk at length in the Calcinatio through a rather
1:04:07
Speaker 3: involved psycho-spiritual process. A number of things fall away and
1:04:14
Speaker 3: then we can get to the seed of what this
1:04:18
Speaker 3: energy is about. And the seed that she finds is
1:04:23
Speaker 3: a single tooth. If she was here, we might have
1:04:27
Speaker 3: more associations with what the tooth looks like. I have
1:04:33
Speaker 3: a curiosity as to whether or not it's a baby's tooth,
1:04:36
Speaker 3: kind of milk teeth that have been found in the ashes,
1:04:40
Speaker 3: which would suggest that going back a very early transitional process.
1:04:46
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it is an interesting image because everything
1:04:49
Speaker 2: else is ash, right? And ash is something that's been
1:04:53
Speaker 2: completely chemically transformed that doesn't have anything to do anymore
1:04:57
Speaker 2: with the original substance. It's very different. But there's one thing,
1:05:01
Speaker 2: as you said, Joseph, that has kind of survived. So
1:05:05
Speaker 2: it's the idea that when, as we're being broken down
1:05:08
Speaker 2: by any of these alchemical operations, just like with the
1:05:12
Speaker 2: butterfly metaphor, a lot may be changed, a lot may
1:05:16
Speaker 2: be destroyed, but some kernel of something abides.
1:05:24
Speaker 3: I want to say.
1:05:25
Speaker 2: So, you know, there's this idea about like one of
1:05:26
Speaker 2: the significance of bones, and of course teeth and bones
1:05:29
Speaker 2: are very related, is, you know, that which remains, that
1:05:33
Speaker 2: which survives in any kind of process of transformation in
1:05:38
Speaker 2: which things are always destroyed, There still is a part
1:05:42
Speaker 2: of us that's kind of essential that cannot be destroyed,
1:05:46
Speaker 2: that prevails, the imperishable part of us. So it can
1:05:51
Speaker 2: even be kind of an image of soul, the tooth,
1:05:55
Speaker 2: in that sense.
1:05:56
Speaker 3: In the 13th tarot card called Death, there is, in
1:06:01
Speaker 3: most decks, an animated skeleton often holding a scythe, kind
1:06:07
Speaker 3: of reaping. And the skeleton is often... very white so
1:06:13
Speaker 3: as as you were saying lisa the skeleton becomes a
1:06:18
Speaker 3: symbol of the secret structure underneath the visible which in
1:06:25
Speaker 3: some traditions is the spiritual matrix it could be the
1:06:29
Speaker 3: self as you're saying it's the imperishable structural thing that
1:06:38
Speaker 3: we hang on so to speak that all manifest things
1:06:42
Speaker 3: hang on, but is only visible after the other outer
1:06:47
Speaker 3: seeming of it has been burned away or washed away,
1:06:50
Speaker 3: for that matter.
1:06:51
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. You referred to the tooth as a seed a
1:06:55
Speaker 2: minute ago, which I think is really interesting because it
1:06:58
Speaker 2: does have that quality. It also has kind of a
1:07:01
Speaker 2: pearl-like quality, and I believe that pearl, nacre, and teeth,
1:07:06
Speaker 2: tooth enamel, are probably... Related somehow. I wouldn't want to
1:07:11
Speaker 2: put forward any hypotheses because I've not looked into it.
1:07:14
Speaker 2: But there is that sense, again, of something hard and precious.
1:07:19
Speaker 3: The single tooth, if we think about babies, when they
1:07:25
Speaker 3: cut their first tooth, that's a really significant process developmentally
1:07:32
Speaker 3: that they're developing a capacity to eat solid food. at
1:07:37
Speaker 3: that point, which is that transition out of being reliant
1:07:42
Speaker 3: on the breast to provide all of the nutrition. So
1:07:46
Speaker 3: the beginning of a kind of self-efficacy, possibility of self-feeding
1:07:52
Speaker 3: comes on when the first tooth begins to cut. But
1:07:57
Speaker 3: also the first tooth is painful. Babies are in great distress,
1:08:03
Speaker 3: kind of wailing and crying as they begin to cut
1:08:07
Speaker 3: their first teeth as they descend out of the gum line.
1:08:10
Speaker 3: And they literally have to kind of cut through the
1:08:13
Speaker 3: edge of the gum. There's a bit of blood there.
1:08:16
Speaker 3: And then the gum kind of structures and heals around
1:08:19
Speaker 3: the emergent tooth. So the first tooth, the single tooth,
1:08:26
Speaker 3: could be interpreted as the beginning of a new process
1:08:31
Speaker 3: in the same way that an infant's first tooth is
1:08:33
Speaker 3: the sign of the beginning of a new process of maturation.
1:08:37
Speaker 2: You know, I have a kind of curiosity about the
1:08:40
Speaker 2: fact that this is, you know, she says it's, you know,
1:08:43
Speaker 2: I have a close-up of one side of it. And
1:08:47
Speaker 2: I was trying to, I kind of, when I first
1:08:49
Speaker 2: read The Dream, I had this like image that the
1:08:51
Speaker 2: burn only took place on one side, but I think
1:08:54
Speaker 2: that's not actually there. I think that was just something
1:08:57
Speaker 2: I kind of interpolated. But still, I'm curious, about the
1:09:00
Speaker 2: fact that it was a close-up of one side. And
1:09:04
Speaker 2: I wonder if there's another side of the issue, for example,
1:09:07
Speaker 2: that she doesn't have access to yet. This seems sort
1:09:12
Speaker 2: of a specific part of the dream narrative that called
1:09:17
Speaker 2: for a little attention.
1:09:19
Speaker 3: I do find that really interesting. If we take away
1:09:24
Speaker 3: her assumption that it's her head, and then we just
1:09:29
Speaker 3: allow it to be a symbolic head, there is an
1:09:35
Speaker 3: old Kabbalistic idea that we can only see one side
1:09:41
Speaker 3: of the face of God. And in some of the
1:09:45
Speaker 3: Kabbalistic depictions, particularly from the Middle Ages of the Ancient
1:09:50
Speaker 3: of Days, it's only shown in profile, which is meant
1:09:56
Speaker 3: to suggest that no matter how much we learn about
1:09:59
Speaker 3: the divine, there is always a mystery that we will
1:10:04
Speaker 3: never be able to penetrate. This goes into the idea
1:10:07
Speaker 3: of the ineffable. So if the head suggests something that
1:10:13
Speaker 3: is even beyond the personal ego, that there is a
1:10:18
Speaker 3: mystery on the other side of most anything that pertains
1:10:23
Speaker 3: to ourselves or the deeper structure of the psyche, that
1:10:26
Speaker 3: we can only work with some small single tooth, so
1:10:31
Speaker 3: to speak. And there is a greater reality out of
1:10:35
Speaker 3: which we rise and can only infer A certain amount.
1:10:41
Speaker 2: I want to go, before we finish up with this
1:10:44
Speaker 2: really remarkable dream, I want to go to the feelings.
1:10:48
Speaker 2: She says, fear of seeing her face badly burned, curiosity
1:10:55
Speaker 2: to see what was left, and then surprise. And I
1:11:00
Speaker 2: think this is a common... feeling arc in dreams and
1:11:07
Speaker 2: perhaps in psychic life in general that's very significant. So
1:11:12
Speaker 2: at first there's fear. You're being confronted by something you
1:11:15
Speaker 2: don't understand that feels threatening. Then, and Joseph, you pick
1:11:20
Speaker 2: this up right at the top, there's curiosity. What is it?
1:11:24
Speaker 2: I can orient to it with curiosity. Then there's surprise
1:11:28
Speaker 2: because you learned something new. And that is often true
1:11:32
Speaker 2: with dreams, that if we're curious about them, we get
1:11:35
Speaker 2: a surprise when you're working with them and you interpret them.
1:11:39
Speaker 2: There can be a feeling of surprise consciously. But surprise
1:11:42
Speaker 2: in dreams is common because, again, the unconscious is confronting
1:11:48
Speaker 2: us with something we didn't consciously know. That experience of surprise,
1:11:53
Speaker 2: whether it's in the dream or once you're awake, is significant.
1:11:59
Speaker 2: Because the dream was sent to you by the unconscious
1:12:03
Speaker 2: to try to get you to realize something you didn't
1:12:06
Speaker 2: know before. Surprise means you got something you didn't have before.
1:12:13
Speaker 2: So when you feel surprised, you've learned something. And that's
1:12:17
Speaker 2: true whether it happens in the dream or later when
1:12:20
Speaker 2: you're interpreting it. It sounds like it was both for
1:12:22
Speaker 2: this dreamer. And so if we feel fear... and then
1:12:28
Speaker 2: we can orient to something with curiosity, we're likely to
1:12:32
Speaker 2: have the benefit of surprise.
1:12:35
Speaker 3: In the context she gives us a bit, soon after
1:12:38
Speaker 3: I had this dream, I had a depressive episode which
1:12:41
Speaker 3: kept me out of work for nearly two months, which
1:12:45
Speaker 3: is really a substance to depression, which does bring us
1:12:51
Speaker 3: in some ways to that soluteo process or an alchemical process.
1:12:56
Speaker 3: I want to take it out of rigidly the solutio.
1:13:00
Speaker 3: But the depressive state kind of pins us down. It
1:13:05
Speaker 3: pulls the energy away from the ego, which would likely
1:13:10
Speaker 3: use it to escape, to get away from some content.
1:13:15
Speaker 3: So the self kind of pins us down so that
1:13:21
Speaker 3: we must encounter something. And the dream seems to be
1:13:27
Speaker 3: foreshadowing her depression in as much as she's going to
1:13:32
Speaker 3: have to sift through the ashes of the depression to
1:13:36
Speaker 3: find the the piece of meaning as you said lisa
1:13:41
Speaker 3: the thing that survives which is that psycho-spiritual part of
1:13:47
Speaker 3: herself that is structural It's a tooth, so it has
1:13:51
Speaker 3: something to do with digestion, the ability to grab the
1:13:56
Speaker 3: thing and chew on it, and that it allows the
1:14:01
Speaker 3: dross of the life. Here we have a sermon in
1:14:05
Speaker 3: midlife at 42. It allows the dross to fall away.
1:14:10
Speaker 3: But often by midlife, we've come to think that many
1:14:14
Speaker 3: things are important, often which have been assigned to us
1:14:17
Speaker 3: by the family or the culture. A serious depression in
1:14:22
Speaker 3: midlife can boil us down to what is essential.
1:14:27
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yep. Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest
1:14:32
Speaker 2: an episode topic, or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisunionlife.com.
1:14:38
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