Latest / This Jungian Life Podcast / SELKIE FOLKLORE: Should we force soul to serve us?

Transcript

SELKIE FOLKLORE: Should we force soul to serve us? · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  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
• 0:09
  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 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. Today,
• 0:38
  Speaker 4: we are going to talk about a mystical, mythical creature
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: who lives deep in the psyche called the Selkie. The
• 0:49
  Speaker 4: Selkie is a mythology that comes from northern realms of Iceland, Ireland, Scotland,
• 0:58
  Speaker 4: where there are seals. And there are many, many stories
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: about seals and that can remove their skin and become human.
• 1:11
  Speaker 4: Half human, half animal lives in the water, our universal
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: symbol for the unconscious. And so today we are going
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: to talk about what is a Selkie and how does
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: that live in our human psyche? And to start, after
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: we hear a little bit More here, Lisa will read
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: a classic tale about a Selkie so that we all
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: have a base from which to join in this discussion.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: And before we jump into the fairy tale about the Selkie,
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: which is this remarkable and magical figure that can transform
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: from a seal into a person and back again, I'd
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: like to talk to you about becoming Selkie. our supporter
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: on Patreon. And you see, it's just like the tail
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: of the selkie. You can magically transform into being a
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: patron and then back into your normal life and then
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: to a patron and then back into your normal life.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: So what we'd like you to do is put on
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: the magical skin of the patron and turn into a
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: remarkably generous magical creature. At that point, you would go
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: to thisunionlife.com and with your flipper, tap the I'd like
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: to be a patron button.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Which is under podcast.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Under podcast. And it'll open our Patreon page and with
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: those little flippers, you can jump right in and with
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: your sea treasure, go right in at the highest level,
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: which is $ 25 a month. And for that, We do
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: a special dream interpretation for people at that level a
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: couple times a month. But more importantly, fellow Selkies, this
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: keeps us free of corporate sponsorship. And just like the
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: Selkies that can't wait to find their skin and jump
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: back into the ocean, we too would like to retain
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: our freedom. So we can do that if you share
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: a little bit of your undersea treasures. So become our
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: patron and let me know whether this style of requesting
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: donations really works or not.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: We'll have to see if we get an influx of
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: patrons after this episode or if people suddenly cancel their support.
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: People want to become magical creatures.
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: Everybody wants to be a shapeshifter.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: I suppose.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, well. Without further ado, I'm going to read an
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: original version of the story because I like to do
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: that when I'm working with stories. I like to go
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: back to the most, I mean, right, all of these
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: were written down. They're part of an oral tradition and
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: someone wrote them down at some point. But I do
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: try to look for the kind of purest version that
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: I can. There's a wonderful series of fairy tales called
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Sur La Lune Fairy Tale Series. And they're edited by
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Heidi Ann Heiner. And I have a bunch of them.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: The Mermaid's one that I'm going to read from, I
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: only have in Kindle, so I'm not going to hold
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: it up. But this is the Rapunzel one. And you
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: can see it just has, I mean, it has, you know,
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: that many Rapunzel stories in it. Wow. So, yeah, some
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: of them are really, really thick. And they're great. Anyway. Okay,
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: so that's what I'm reading from. I'm reading from the
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: volume on mermaids and here it is. It says, a
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: typical story of an encounter with the Selkie folk and
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: what came of it is that of a guideman of
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Wastinus in Shetland. I probably pronounced that wrong, forgive me.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: This young fellow who had successfully withstood the blandishments of
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: the maidens of the countryside and and had escaped the
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: toils of their mamas, one day came upon a group
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: of selkie folk, sporting on a rock by the shore.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Creeping forward, he secured the sealskin nearest him, before its
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: proper owner could reach it, and set off home with
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: it over his shoulder. Before he had gone far, he
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: heard a pitiful wailing behind him, and looking round saw
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: a beautiful girl following him, weeping dolefully. This, as he
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: rightly conjectured, was one of the selkie folk whose sealskin
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: he had seized and who was unable to escape owing
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: to the want of it. Timorously she approached, and tearfully
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: she begged the restoration of her property so necessary to her.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: The young crofter, struck by her beauty and winsomeness, refused
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: to meet her wish unless she consented to become his wife.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: After some persuasion, he succeeded in wringing from the sea
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: maiden a reluctant consent, and she accompanied him home. A thrifty, frugal,
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: and kindly good wife, too, did she turn out, and
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: the birth to them of seven children, four boys and
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: three girls, seemed to leave nothing lacking for her happiness.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: But often the mother would turn away from her children
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: and gaze with a longing, faraway look in her eyes
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: at the sea. The seal skin she had never seen
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: since the day she came as an ocean bride. One
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: day when her husband and eldest sons were away at
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: the fishing and she was left in the house with
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: only the youngest child who had been ill, an overpowering
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: desire came over her. High and low she hunted for
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: the missing skin, but she was unable to find it.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: She was on the point of giving up the search
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: in despair when the child said she knew where her
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: father kept an old skin bundled up. Sure enough, this
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: proved to be the identical article for which she was seeking,
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: and slipping away from her child with it clasped close
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: to her arms, she made quickly for the beach. Arrived
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: at the water's edge, no time was lost in putting
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: on the skin, and with a glad shout, she sprang
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: into the sea. Swimming rapidly towards a group of seals
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: not far distant, she was greeted with warmth on her
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: return to her kith and kin, the demonstrations of a
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: large male seal, which had been often noticed in the neighborhood,
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: being particularly marked. Just then the guideman happened to be
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: returning home from fishing, and as his boat sailed past
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: what was his astonishment to hear himself addressed as followed,
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Guideman of Wasness, fare thee well. I like thee well.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: You are good to me, but I love better the
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: man of the sea. When he arrived home, he found
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: it was no trick that was being played upon him,
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: and what his youngest child had to tell soon enlightened
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: him as to the manner in which he had lost
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: his helpmate. Distracted, he hunted the seashore for several days
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: and nights, but never a trace did he again see
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: of his sulky wife. So maybe I'll just start by
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: saying I included a version of this tale in my book,
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: motherhood facing and finding yourself. And when I give talks
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: about the book or talk to people who've read the book,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: this is the thing I most often hear is, oh
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: my God, that story. So many women relate to that
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: story in some way. And one of the reasons I
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: really love it is because I feel like there are
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: many different ways that we can understand it, lots of
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: different ways to understand it. And they all work. and
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: they don't necessarily agree with each other. So there's a
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: wonderful kind of richness and paradoxicalness to the story. I
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: don't think paradoxicalness is a word.
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: It is now.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: Urban dictionary, here we come.
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: I'm just thinking about how the metaphor and images of
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: drying out really illustrate this of here's a water creature
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: who is up on dry land and doing earthly things.
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: A crofter is a small holding farmer. So I'm imagining,
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: you know, lots of earthy stuff of, you know, helping
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: to grow crops and get your hands in the dirt.
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: And certainly, I mean, she in this version has seven
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: children And the number of... of children varies, but of
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: how motherhood, as wonderful as it can be, also takes
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: us away from ourselves. And that image of a kind
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: of drying out with one consideration, duty, attunement, selflessness that's
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: involved in taking care of children, you know, versus putting
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: back on her own skin and diving into the depths
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: of her own true nature that's not related to duty, work, relationship,
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: child rearing, cooking, housework.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: All of that.
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: And how much work women that you talk to resonate
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: to this tale? I think there is a way that wifehood, motherhood,
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: home duties, and still every survey that's taken says women
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: do more of home-tending, child-rearing, various kinds of house and
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: family-oriented work than men do. What is the cost of that?
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: And yet what's sad about the tale is that it's
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: either or.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very much.
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: You know, then there is a final leaving. She simply
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: leaves instead of a way to combine both. So there's
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: a sadness in a way, I think, to the tale.
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: I think it is a sad tale.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: It seems in the loss of soul, which is somehow
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: connected to the loss of the sealed skin, that if
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: it was possible to visit the seal skin and return
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: to one's natural environment in some cyclic way, then one
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: might come back refreshed, rehydrated, so to speak. It seems
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: that the damage might be done not so much that
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: the seal skin has been taken off for some amount
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: of time, but that it's separated and kept away from
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: the selkie for too long. And I think that the culture,
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: perhaps our own egos that are very driven and determined
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: and focused even forget where they have stored or locked
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: up the seal skin. Maybe start to believe that it
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: was just a dream and they didn't use to really
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: even have a seal skin. until some late midlife process
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: sets them in hunt for it. I think for many
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: of us, that instinctive feeling of being in the right
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: skin might be lost even in childhood as we're acculturated
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: in ways that could be very different from our natural personality.
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: In the fairy tales, they're older, mature men and women
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: Selkies But it seems to me that psychologically it might
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: happen at an even younger age. Mm-hmm.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: It is so poignant, this image of the loss of
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: the skin that is kept away from her. And it's
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: puzzling in the fairy tale that the crafter keeps it.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: He doesn't get rid of it. There are a lot
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: of tales that fall under the heading of kind of
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: animal bride or bridegrooms, right? There are people that marry
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: frogs and birds and all kinds of creatures and often
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: there is this skin element and some of them that
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: end happily i would say that this one doesn't end
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: happily it doesn't have a very sort of satisfying lysis
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: as it were and it and it doesn't we don't
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: feel like oh great it's good ending everyone left happily
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: ever after we're like what about those poor traumatized children
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: whose mother left them Um, this one, uh, you know,
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: it doesn't, doesn't feel very finished. The ones that do
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: feel finished often involve a destruction of the skin, usually
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: by fire. So usually the human partner throws the skin
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: in the fire and sometimes it's a man and sometimes
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: it's a woman. And, and that seems like this great violence,
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: but it's interesting because fire as a, an image is,
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: is when something burns, it's complete, it's actually chemically transformed.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: So it really changes state. And it's an image of transformation.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: There is no transformation in this fairy tale. There is
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: a stasis and a going back. And I think that
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: tells us something about what psychological ground we're in here,
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: or at least one of the ways to understand it.
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: I'm wondering about where the element of choice comes in
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: in these versions. that the women come up and they
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: dance upon the rock or some man, and it's often
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: the females, and that the man looking upon them just
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: falls in love with these beautiful creatures. And he takes
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: a skin. And then, you know, really he holds the
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: woman or the selkie in her female hand a human
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: form hostage to basically come up onto dry land, come
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: to earth and bear children and do all of that.
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: But she has not chosen it. She has not assented.
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: And sometimes he promises, you know, if you'll come and
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: stay with me for seven years or some period of time,
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: and then if you want, you can go back. but
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: just do it for a while. So it's as if
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: there's a contract for kind of being indentured. But then
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: after the time has elapsed, he doesn't want to give
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: it back. So it's an interesting tale on two levels.
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: One is sort of in the so-called real world, what
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: happens to women in marriage and motherhood, But on the
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: other side is how does that happen in the psyche?
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: How do we leave our own skins behind?
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: You know, as I said before, one of the things
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: I really like about this tale is it can be
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: interpreted on different levels. And I think each level has
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: its own richness. I mean, when you think about this
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: story and the lives of women and say, you know,
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: pre-modern Europe, where that was pretty much it. You got
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: married and you had kids and It didn't really matter
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: if you were a free spirit or if you had
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: tremendous talent in music. It's like this was the option.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: And so I think the level that you're talking about it, Deb,
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: about almost being like an indentured servant and there's really
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: no choice and other things really get sort of plowed
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: under by this agenda.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: I think that it pretty accurately reflects the lives of women,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: certainly in the past and to an extent even today.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Certainly this is more true for some of us than others.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, Deb, I think you said a minute ago
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: it's either or. And luckily, you know, many women in
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: the Western world at least, it's not quite so either
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: or anymore, I would say. There is an opportunity to craft.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: you know, some time in the open ocean, and then
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: you go back to your kids. So that's a lovely thing,
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: but I still think that the suffering portrayed or hinted
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: at in this story is very, very real. But you're saying,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: how does that happen in the psyche? I think when
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: we see it as a purely psychological tale and less
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: like a sociological tale, the meaning really changes kind of drastically.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: If we think about it as a dream, as a
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: dream that a single person is having, which could either
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: be a man's dream or a woman's dream, that something
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: or some part of us that used to be one
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: with the primal ocean, an extension of the Great Mother,
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: is beginning to differentiate because the Selkies are able to,
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: by choice, come to the shore by choice, set aside
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: their skin and to play and to walk in human
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: form ostensibly because it pleases them. Because there is something
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: novel about being able to move through that liminal space
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: and know oneself in such a different and profound way.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: But there hasn't been a choice to reside fully in
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: that human world. And so after some amount of time,
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: there is a return to the seal form and then
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: a return to the great mother. So there's something here
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: about growth and autonomy and agency and then regression back
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: into the more ancient place. Many fairy tales also look
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: at this transition between an animal state and a human state.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: For instance, in the ancient story of the Queen of Sheba,
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: which I believe is part of the Ethiopian version of
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: the Bible, the Queen of Sheba is said to have
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: legs that are hairy and goat-like, and in some In
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: some depictions, they literally are goat legs. Solomon comes to
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: the Queen of Sheba. They fall in love ostensibly. And
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: then Solomon introduces her to Kabbalistic wisdom, to this evolving process.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: And through his philosophy and magical and religious influence, her
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: legs transform into human legs. which in that story is
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: seen as a curative process. But so much of the
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: evolution of humanity, both in terms of civilization and in
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: terms of personal development, has been this differentiation from the unconscious,
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: which is often symbolized by animal-like behavior. And the whole
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: system of ethics, for instance, and law, differentiates us from
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: our own animal nature is that we don't take offense
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: if a lion attacks a gazelle and kills it and
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: gobbles it up. We can feel sentimental about it. I
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: certainly do when I see that on these wilderness shows.
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: But we don't think of the lion as a criminal.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: But in human society, even though we may have leonine
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: qualities in ourselves, we take a very severe stance about
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: whether humans are permitted to be possessed by lion-like qualities
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: and act that way. We won't have it. We expect
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: the animality in ourselves to be contained, but I think
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: what Fair Tales and what Jung was saying, we can't
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: kill off the great beasts that maraud in our organs
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: and our cells, that we have to be able to
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: contain them and perhaps transmute them. And I think that's
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: one of the challenges of the movement from the selkie
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: to the human, but also the challenge of whether or
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: not or how one can set aside the animal part
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: of ourselves. I think the selkie myth is trying, incompletely perhaps,
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: to address this question.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: So one of the things that we can imagine, Joseph,
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: in all of these images of something animal getting humanized,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: is that there's a movement from something that's unconscious and
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: instinctual to something that is conscious. And so, you know,
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: you started off by saying if we looked at this
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: as a dream, and I would say that, you know,
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: we use the same precept in looking at fairy tales
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: that we do in dream work, which is we generally
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: assume that that everything in the fairy tale is an
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: image of a single psyche. So if you look at
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: it like that, then the Selkie is not being captured
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: by some patriarchal man, but there is something in her
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: own psyche. And you're right, we could interpret this as
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: if it were the psyche of the crofter, and that
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: would be a very different story. But if we're going
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: to assume we could actually try to do that, that
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: would be cool. But if we're going to assume right
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: now that we're sort of interpreting it from the standpoint
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: of the selkie psyche, we would say that the crofter
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: is an inner masculine energy. I mean, in classical Jungian formulation,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: we would call that the animus, but we might see
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: it as a kind of function that is inviting her
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: to settle down. The interesting thing about this story is
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: that it started off saying that he had escaped the
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: blandishments of the country lasses. So he was sort of
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: avoiding settling down. But then he finds the selkie and
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: it kind of constellates this desire. It's like, let's root.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: The thing about being in the open ocean is that
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: there's no fixed form. And that is a kind of
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Puella stance. Puella is the Latin word for girl. And
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: it was one of Jung's ideas that some of his
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: colleagues wrote about extensively. There's a time and a place
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: in our lives, usually when we're young, Where we don't
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: know what we want to be. We don't know who
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: we want to marry. We want to keep all of
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: our options open. Totally appropriate. At some point, you have
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: to commit to being a certain version of yourself. And
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: that means picking a career. You might buy a house.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: You might get married. Every time we do that, we
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: close a whole bunch of doors. And if you think
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: about it, you probably know someone who kind of avoided
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: those things. You know, that person, that friend that just
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: never got married, that never really picked a career, who's
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: been kind of hopping around. And maybe when we're in
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: our 30s or 40s and we're bogged down with, you know,
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: three kids in a minivan, we look at that friend
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: and we think, oh, God, you know, that looks so good.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: But usually those people don't wind up being too fulfilled
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: later in life. You can't stay young forever, even if
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: you try. And life has a way of catching up
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: with you. So I think we are required to kind of,
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Marie-Louise von Franz talks about it as sort of coming
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: into a three-dimensional space and time reality. We have to
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: kind of grow down and become one version of ourselves.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: So many possibilities we could have lived. We can't live
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: them all. I think one way to understand being a
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Selkie is, You're staying in that realm of endless possibility.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: You're in the ocean. You could be a seal. You
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: could be a human. You're in the unconscious. So the
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: movement up and out onto land, that's interesting. There's a
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: little bit of growth maybe. There's some consciousness. The crafter
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: is an inner energy that says, come on, let's settle down.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: Let's become something. Let's become sort of real. Let's become
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: something real. That's an opportunity. It's a provisional adaptation that
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: the Selkie makes, right? She's good at it. She's a
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: fine housewife. She has seven kids, but she's never, she's
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: not totally ever in it. She's gazing longingly out to
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: sea and she has not forgotten that somewhere in that house,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: There is the seal skin. It's so interesting that he
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: keeps it and it isn't destroyed because it's like there's
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: always this escape plan. You know, I know people who
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: are married, but they're always thinking about, well, I might leave.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: I might get divorced. They've got like one foot kind
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: of out. It's like they didn't quite make the full adaptation. And,
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: you know, she regresses. She goes back into an unconscious,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: undifferentiated state.
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: I'm not so sure. Here's what I'm thinking about is
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: that in the tales, her skin is stolen. So I'm
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: thinking about theft as a psychological process, that the man
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: steals the skin. And how does that happen inside a woman,
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: inside all of us? that something has to be stolen
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: that forces us into that next stage of life where,
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: you know, as a young woman, you know, it's appropriate,
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: come down to earth or come up onto earth and
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: deal with realities of householding, child rearing, et cetera, and
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: that that's appropriate, but that it's experienced as a theft. of,
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: oh my gosh, I didn't really know what I was
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: going to be getting into.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: So how do you think that is an inner process?
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: What's your thought about that?
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: Well, I think it might work the same way from
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: the masculine element in the story who falls in love
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: and is besotted. He escaped the blandishments of the regular
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: women on land. But something wonderful, mystical, and magical happens
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: when he sees women come up from the sea and
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: shed their skins. And so there's that spark that is
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: lit in him suddenly of desire. And I think there's
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: a spark that is lit in women. And a lot
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: of the tales say, well, you know, the woman exceeds.
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: You know, she doesn't say, hey, you better give me
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: my skin back or else, you know, you're you're really
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: dead meat and I'm going to get you. I'm going
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: to fight you for it. She exceeds because there is
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: something in her too that yearns for her inner opposite
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: of being on the land, the opposite of the sea
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: and doing that hard work. And yet she doesn't know
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: what it is she's really chosen. There's So there's a
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: theme here also of innocence, of that when that spark
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: is lit, of feeling the pull, the yearning for the other,
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: for the inner opposite, for what it is timeframe. you
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: to do in life. There's also that cost later of like, wow,
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: I didn't know that it was going to be like this,
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: that it would last so long and be so hard
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: and dry me out psychologically. And I will add to
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: this that in the external world, we lived in Brooklyn
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: for many years. And one of the things that I
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: saw every single day that was kind of heartbreaking were
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: women and men pushing little kids, preschoolers, in strollers because
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: that's how you can get somewhere rapidly. You put the
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: kid in the stroller and off you go to preschool.
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: And nobody ever looked happy. Nobody ever looked like, well,
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: you know, here we are. It's another day, and I'm
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: up for my day. It was like, okay, I got up.
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: We got everybody ready. I packed the lunch. I dressed
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: my kid. I put my kid in the stroller. I'm
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: on the clock. I've got to get this kid here,
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: and then I'm going to get on the subway and
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: go to work. It does dry us out, and it
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: is hard.
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: Well, if we think, again, as we were saying, in
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: a more archetypal, psychological perspective, the sailor, the male figure
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: on the shore, represents also the ego inside of the consciousness.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: The sulki represents the soul. And at a certain point, developmentally,
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: the ego becomes strong enough to lay hold of the
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: powers of the soul. And again, this is that process
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: of adaptation. It's natural for the ego to look into
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: the unconscious and see something beautiful, amazing, magical inside of
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: the unconscious, to want to be in union with this
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: remarkable possibility, and then finds a way to do this.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: The stealing, from the standpoint of the ego, seems reasonable.
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: It may have a cost to it. All writers, for instance,
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: stand at the shores with their keyboards. They stare into
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: the water.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Is that how it's done?
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: They're catching glimpses of ideas and themes. And if they're lucky,
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: some figure literally puts a beautiful... Big-eyed seal-like face forward
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: and their fingers are off and running. If they're lucky,
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: it'll come to the shore and unzip the seal skin
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: and a really amazing story will happen. And that creative
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: process is both a description of the creative process, but
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: also the ego wants access to what is miraculous in
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: the unconscious. And just very likely to take the sealskin
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: and say, wait a minute, they're not going anywhere. Muse,
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: writing muse, you know, artwork muse, architecture muse.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: Can I just make something explicit, Joseph? Because you're doing
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: something that I think is really interesting, but I want
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: to flag it. Because you've moved into an interpretation of
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: the tale as if it's from the psyche of the crafter.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: You're saying he's the ego and she's the soul, which
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: I think works. Before, we were talking about the tail
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: as if it were from the psyche of the Selkie.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: And I'd love for us to spend more time talking
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: about what this would mean if we were interpreting it
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: as the crofter is the ego, the Selkie is the soul,
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: because we would say, I think you're absolutely right. And
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: so what do we do from there? He's seized it,
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: but you can never really control the soul. Is it
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: something like that? You might have seven beautiful children, but eventually...
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: the soul is going to go its own way. What
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: further would you do with that, Joseph?
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: Well, I was thinking actually an older Jungian tradition, which
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: is more like Eric Neumann's work in the origins of consciousness,
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: where from that archetypal level, the ego can be seen
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: in general as having masculine qualities in as much as
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: most of our egos are purposive, They're separating out from
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: the unconscious. They have agendas. They make decisions. And that
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: the ocean is the unconscious, the great feminine, and with
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: all kinds of marvelous and treacherous effects upon the ego. So, yes,
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: if we were to think of it as solely a
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: dream interpretation, we would pay a lot of attention to gender.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: If we think about it from a much more collective standpoint,
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: as perhaps von Franz and Neumann did, that the male
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: on the shore is all of our egos, that all
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: of us can't live in the ocean.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: It's sort of mythological. It shows this, right?
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: Let me just clarify. I'm not saying, oh, this is
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: a man and this is a woman. I'm more saying,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: whose experience are we centering in the tale, the crofter
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: or the selkie, just to see everything? to imagine how
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: the parts relate to one another. But I completely agree.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: We could each be the crofter trying to have that relationship,
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: the sulky, absolutely.
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: That's what I was leaning into at that moment, although
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: you've brought forward, I think, a good complexity is we
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: could hold this as a dream in a woman's psyche,
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: a man's psyche, or a collective dream that talks about
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: the psychological organs. Mm-hmm. and how they function in human
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: beings in general. I think that I'd slipped into that
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: without providing enough of a frame. So I appreciate the clarification.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: But I think all of our listeners, we are standing
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: on the shore and we are looking into the unconscious.
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: And there are contents in the unconscious that we long for.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: That's why we go to dream school. That's why we
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: write our dreams down. That's why we contemplate our inner fantasies,
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: because all of those inner fantasies, like Selkies, are swimming
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: around in us, beckoning, looking like all kinds of interesting things.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: And if we're lucky enough, something that is very other
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: in the psyche will anthropomorphize, and then the waking personality
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: can have perhaps a miraculous relationship. Now the process of
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: stealing the skin or taking the skin so that the
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: ego at least fantasizes that it will now have a
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: permanent union with this quality in the unconscious, this miraculous wildness,
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: this being that is half in the water and half
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: on the land. And in the naivete, of the uninitiated ego,
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: we all believe that we can then just put our
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: creative forces to the task that we can take the libido,
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: for instance, the deep oceanic parts of ourselves and say, okay,
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: come on, let's, let's do this.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: Let's do that.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: Let's put it into the great engine of the first
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: half of life. And what's remarkable, even in the fairy
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: tale is, you know, It seems that in a rather
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: human way, that can work for a while. Right. It
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: works until it doesn't work.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: And then something wants to go back to the sea.
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: But in a way, isn't that kind of a developmental process?
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: You made the analogy to dream school, but what we
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: often are talking about in dream school is how to
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: approach that. the unconscious, with an attitude of respect and
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: friendliness and openness, relatedness. So that would be as if
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: in this story, the man saw the women take, seals
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: take their skins off and dance in the moonlight, and
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: then went up to them and said, excuse me, but,
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: you know, this was so magical and so lovely. Would
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: one of you please deign to come and spend some
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: time with me in my But at that early first
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: stage of life, that ego part that's represented as the man,
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: the crofter, has to take it. And that sets up
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: a whole dynamic. But that is often that first inner
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: stage of development of the imperfect union. That something magical
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: happens and then all of a sudden you're in it.
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: And hopefully... could grow into, over time, a more mature
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: kind of union where each partner has autonomy, fullness, has
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: developed fully, and relates very differently. But I think it's
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: very much a first stage of life story of that
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: you have to knuckle down, you have to make a commitment,
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: you have to get real, you have to get a job,
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: have a family and just deal. And it's not perfect.
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: Which goes to Lisa's mention in the Puella, that we
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: have to fish our potential out of the unconscious, or
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: else we're just playing on the beach. And here in
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: Virginia Beach, there are entire cultures of people in their
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: 40s and 50s whose primary life is still surfing all day,
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: even in the winter.
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: Holding provisional jobs to allow that to be so. I have,
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: over the many years, befriended one or two of these people,
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: and I find them much like Selkies. It's kind of
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: remarkable to me. And the joy with which they experience this,
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: and when they talk about the ocean, I've never heard
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: anybody talk about the ocean with such intimacy. It's dangerous,
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: and the incredible alertness... that lifelong surfers have. That's not
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: to say that everybody that loves surfing lives a provisional life,
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: but those who are committed to staying in a selkie
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: form don't venture far. And there are wonderful gifts from
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: that and so much that does not manifest on dry land.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: So I just want to make it clear that we're
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: considering all of these different ways of looking at the
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: tail and they're all valid. So we're just kind of
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: throwing up different ways to understand it. I'm going to
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: do something now that Maria Louise von Franz often does
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: is when she's looking at tails, she'll pull in tails
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: with similar themes to compare and contrast to kind of
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: sharpen the focus on the tail we're looking at. So
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: I really quickly want to bring up a tail called
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: the swan maiden. And I'm just going to tell it
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: really quickly. So there was a hunter and he was,
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: you know, at dusk by a lake and he watched
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: these 12 swans land. And then they came ashore and
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: stepped out of their feathered robes. And there were 12
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: beautiful young maidens. And he noticed that the youngest and
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: the smallest was the prettiest. So he knew which robe
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: was hers. He picked it up. And she became his
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: wife and stayed with him and they had kids and
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: that kind of thing. And then when the daughter reached adolescence,
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: she was in the attic and she came downstairs and
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: she said, mother, what is this feathered robe doing here?
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: And the mother said, I must leave you now, but
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: tell your father to come look for me east of
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: the sun and west of the moon. So it's like
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: once having seen the feathered robe again, she doesn't have
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: a choice, but she has to leave. But she does
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: have a choice to tell her daughter, tell him to
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: come find me. She goes away. The husband comes home.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: The hunter comes home, realizes what has happened. The daughter
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: lets him know. And he goes off and looks for her.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: He has all kinds of trials and tribulations and that
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: kind of thing. But at the end, he comes to
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: the palace of the swan king. And he says, I'm
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: married to your youngest daughter. And the swan king says,
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: you must know her. You have to pick her out.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: So these 12 swans come out. Basically, if you can
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: identify her, then you can have her. So these 12
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: swans come out. And swans all look pretty much alike,
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: you know. But he looks at, and this is a
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: kind of paradox in the tale, because he looks at
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: her fingers, which swans don't have fingers, but just roll
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: with me here for a minute. And the fingers of
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: the youngest swan sister had calluses on them from the
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: sewing needle where the swan maiden or the swan wife
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: had been darning the children's clothing. And that's how he
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: recognized her. And then he brought her back home and
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: they were reunited. So the thing about this tale is
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: there is a transformation. She has changed. She starts off
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: as a swan. And by the end, she's been marked
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: as an individual. She has become unique. The selkie, he
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: doesn't pick out a single selkie. He just grabs whichever skin.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: And she goes back into the water and again is undifferentiated.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: But this is a complete meaningful psychological transformation where she
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: becomes a unique individual because of the toil that's associated
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: with being a mother. So I think one way to
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: look at these stories is the Selkie is a sort
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: of incomplete individuation and the Swan Maiden shows what it
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: looks like when there is a real personal transformation.
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: I'm especially appreciating the relational component in the psyche that
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: the man, the ego, recognizes.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: It's not undifferentiated in that part of the psyche that
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: the ego has been observing and knowing his wife, And
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: knowing that he could pick her out by the calluses
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: on her fingers. Isn't that a great, it's a great
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: image of the relationship between the ego and the psyche.
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: Of does, you know, whether in the Selkie stories where
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: the man just takes a skin and just pick one,
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: just take a skin. Versus I have chosen this one
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: and I've gotten to know her, and I can recognize her,
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: I see her, that could be, in the outer world,
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: a real relationship between two people. And in the inner world,
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: the relationship between the ego and the unconscious, that I
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: have discriminated, I have taken the time and the trouble
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: to see, to recognize, to differentiate, is a wonderful image
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: for how the ego can best relate to psyche.
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: It reminds me of the difference between in fairy tales
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: and myths when a human being is cursed to be
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: in an animal form and the process that has to
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: happen to be released versus a truly magical creature that
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: belongs in both worlds and is true to itself. The
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: selkie is its own order of being. Although there are
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: some Scottish tales that selkies may be the souls of
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: despondent people who had committed suicide in the sea or
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: were lost in the sea. But for the most part,
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: as I was reading about it, they are simply considered
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: an order of being much like the fairy folk. And
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: even within that, there are several differences. The fin folk
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: are any of the humanoid figures that reside in the water,
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: of course, that have fins, but more fish-like. They're considered
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: very dangerous. Mermaids and mer-women sometimes meld with the Selkies,
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: but have something to do with that Greco-Roman influence in
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: Scotland and Ireland. The Selkie is something that seems more
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: ancient and is eternally magical. So, I find myself now
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: wondering about the ego of and its relationship to the
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: collective unconscious and how dynamic or how dangerous that may be.
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: We talk about the dangers of archetypal possession, that the
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: ego can wind up too close to an archetypal force
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: and put it at risk, overwhelm it, leave it in
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: some difficult state. But we rarely talk about the danger
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: or diminishment to the archetype if it is pulled forward, trapped,
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: and claimed in a certain fashion. And I'm wondering if
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: the tale, thinking in a very broad way, has to
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: do with the transition in these Celtic cultures from their
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: natural indigenous pagan beliefs into Christianity and from Christianity into
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: the modern world where the magical creatures are just like
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: the Queen of Sheba, whose bottom half was a goat,
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: have to be stripped of these otherworldly components. The skins
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: have to be hidden or imprisoned and that The images
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: have to be secularized that some cases aren't real. We're
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: just going to take the skins off them and turn
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: them into wives and maidens and neighbors. And we're just
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: going to hide away that mystical, uncanny dimension of the
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: psyche and make everything rational, scientific, ordinary, non-scientific. bizarre, to
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: hide the uncanny away. And what I like about the
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: tale that you told is that the skin wasn't destroyed,
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: but it was only hidden. This goes in part to
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: Jung's idea that the gods, being deprived of their status
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: in a mythic religious sense, then live inside of us
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: and become symptoms. The archetypal forces then start doing strange
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: things in our physical bodies and even in our cultural bodies,
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: making strange tensions move around in the culture in ways
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: that we can't understand. And so something magical, again, has
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: been stripped from its magical, mythical, religious dimension and made ordinary,
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: put in service to the culture. Here are the rules.
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: Here are the roles. This is what people do. And
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: when that occurs, a drying out happens. There's a lack
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: of moisture. There's a lack of magic. It's an attack
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: on enchantment itself. And what was magical starts to wither. Right.
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: I think that's really just a very brilliant way of
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: looking at this, you know, really different. And that's the
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: great thing about fairy tales and this tale in particular
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: is that there's so many ways to look at it. And,
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: you know, that process of sort of the attack on enchantment,
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, that definitely is a process that happens at
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: the cultural level. has been going on for years and years.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking again of Ian McGilchrist, you know, the master
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: and his emissary. And it happens on the personal level too, right?
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: Because there is a time when we leave magic behind,
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: you know, kids when they're eight or so, they start
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: realizing that the tooth fairy is really their parent and
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: Santa Claus doesn't really exist. And even as you grow up,
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: there is this loss of magic. I mean, I see
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: a lot of young people on the threshold of adulthood.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: And it's a daunting precipice to be on because it
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: doesn't look like it's so much fun to be an
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: adult because there's no magic to it, you know. And
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: to a certain extent, to become a mature adult, we
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: do have to lose the magic. But of course, ideally,
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: we come into a different relationship with it. we realize
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: that it's an internal process, that the world is awake
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: and alive and full of magic, but we have to
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: find our own interior way of relating to that. And
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: some of us can't or have great difficulty doing so.
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: And in the fairy tale or the folk tale, the
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: thing that is left behind is the child. And one
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: might say that the purpose of the entire fairy tale,
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: if it were, thought of as collective, is the production
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: of the child that is part mythic and part human,
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: and acts as a bridge between the enchanted world and
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: the world as it is, just as children do. I mean,
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: maybe the child is every child that still sees Selkies
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: and goes to kindergarten, that they live in both places.
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: But I think perhaps as a symbol of the psyche
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: that has undergone this loss of enchantment and then the re-enchantment,
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: as the sulky finds her way back into the water,
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: is left with some new version of the ego. The
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: divine child or the child that remembers that it is
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: half magic.
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm appreciating that, you know, where the new
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: thing is, is often imaged in the psyche as a child.
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: And that in these tales, it's one of the children
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: who comes and says, you know, Mom, I found this
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: swan robe up in the attic. What do you know
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: about that? Or, you know, guess what? I know where
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: this skin is. How come dad keeps this old thing
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: out in the garage? So the child is very important.
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: And there's a lovely, lovely movie called The Tale of
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: Roan Inish. And in this story, a child has been lost.
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: And there is another child, the grandchild, and the grandparents
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: and the people who live on the land are lost.
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: dried out. They're good, kind, loving people. And it is
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: the child who sees, the child who sees, and they
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: image it in the movie as that this baby is
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: still alive and out there on the island that they
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: have had to evacuate and goes back out there and create,
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: you know, they renovate the old cottage and eventually there's
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: a reuniting, and it's all very concretized in the movie,
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: but as a mythical theme that it is the child
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: who bridges both realms and who is the healing force
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: for the adults in the tale, that the liminal space,
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: the magical enchanted space, And what we might say is
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: our interior psychic space, the place in us that is alive,
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: that has moisture, where we can swim, where we can
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: be free, that there's a place where that too can
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: be present and unite the realms.
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: I'm wanting to sort of see if we can ground
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: this in the experience of an individual. And I'm thinking
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: of some friends that I have. So maybe I'll just
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: spin a yarn here for a second. So I'm friends
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: with the woman and she's very accomplished and really educated.
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: And she didn't get married for a while. She really
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: wanted someone. And then she met this guy who was
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: very charming, but, you know, a little lost. And he
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: had been really struggling with something at the time that
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: they met. And she kind of took him under her wing.
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: And he was amenable to that. And she kind of
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: coaxed him into getting married. And for a little while,
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: things seemed good. But then she started getting frustrated because
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: he really never kind of picked himself back up and
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: really got out there in the world and made anything
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: of himself. And she was supporting them. And he started
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: kind of pulling at the reins a little bit because
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: he didn't really appreciate being confined by the expectations of
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: his role as husband. And he strayed a little bit,
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: and eventually it fell apart. And I can think about
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: this tale as the man.
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: Is the selkie.
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: He had an opportunity, and you could look at it
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: as provided by the outer person, but also provided by
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: life's events. I mean, he'd sort of had a real
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: difficult thing happen to him. He was in a bit
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: of a kind of night sea journey. And that could
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: have been a wake-up call for him to grow up,
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: grow himself up, put some roots down, become someone. And instead,
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: he kind of let himself be rescued by her and
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: wasn't really happy with that. So when he left, he
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: just sort of went back to the life he was
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: living before, more or less. So, you know, I think
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: that this kind of sulky psychology can turn up in
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: any of us. I think we've all felt it. We
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: may choose to do something different with it than what
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: happens in the fairy tale, but I think it's really universal.
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: And that's part of the appeal of the story.
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: So it was a good time. It seems to transition
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: to a dream. And before we do that, I'm just
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: going to put in a word and a reminder about
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: Dream School. I wish I could come up with an
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: analogy to here's your selkie opportunity, but it really is
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: to swim in the depths of psyche. That's our own
• 59:23
  Speaker 4: deep interior. That's where there is an inner other. That's
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: the treasure hard to attain, as Jung said, and the
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: inner companion. So all I'm asking you to do is
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: just go online, thisjungianlife.com, and just tap on Dream School.
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: Some wonderful images and some little descriptions, and just see
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: what happens inside you. And if your inner selkie, I
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: think I'm pushing this, but if your inner selkie says, yes, yes, yes,
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: please come back to the water, then come on board
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: and join us in Dream School. Our dreamer this week
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: is a woman. She's 63 years old, and she's in
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: Environmental Health Administration. And she's titled her dream, Fake Prospero's Advice.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: And here's the dream. I dreamt I requested to present
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: to local government an opportunity to help people out with
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: repair and replacement of septic tanks if they couldn't afford it,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: including replacement caps to prevent toddlers from falling in and drowning.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: The chief executive, an inexperienced and clueless fellow, introduced me
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: to their new consultant who looked just like the guy
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: who played Prospero in my senior year production of The
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: Tempest in college when I played Caliban. The guy was
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: really good looking but was a terrible actor who had
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: never studied and couldn't seem to memorize his lines. As
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: the consultant to our local government, he informed me that
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: in order to make any assistance possible for people in need,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: I'd have to first make a public presentation pledging I
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: would worship Thanatos and Eros, and that I would only
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: award assistance to those who swore their religious allegiance to
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: Thanatos and Eros. I was outraged and stomped out. My friend,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: who is in the same field and with whom I
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: often collaborate, was sitting in the audience calmly taking notes.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: I asked her if she would do it, and she
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: said she didn't see any problem with it, which I
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: thought was completely out of character and As she is
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: a very principled woman who stands up to anything unethical,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: I woke up angry and a little confused. For context,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: our dreamer says, I recently left a job I loved
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: in local government after almost three decades because of a
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: change in leadership to one I considered vapid, incompetent, and
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: deeply unethical. I am in a new position where I
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: might be able to help my community that I love,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: but would then have to cooperate with people I consider corrupt.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: The main feelings in the dream were anger, indignation, outrage,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: and some confusion and deflation. Usually, I wake up laughing
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: from dreams because mine are funny and filled with silly paradoxes.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: So this one stood out. And for additional context, she adds,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: Prospero is a father figure. In this case, the consultant
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: reminded me of someone I knew in college who was
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: incredibly handsome but couldn't act or be bothered to memorize
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: his lines. He was really shallow. Eros and Thanatos would
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: be gods of eroticism and death, quite an odd combo
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: to worship as I am Jewish and next week as
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: Rosh Hashanah.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: The woman taking notes is someone I often conspire with
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: to do good things, despite the slow-moving bureaucracies in which
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: we exist. Everything was gray and brownish colors I associate
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: with depression, anxiety, death, and septic tanks. So now our
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: listeners know that I send out the dream to Deb
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: and Joseph every morning, and they print it, and yeah,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: that's our workflow.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: And her final words are, I often conspire to do
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: good things, despite the slow-moving bureaucracies in which we exist,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: and that in the dream everything was gray and brownish,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: colors that she associates with depression, anxiety, death, and septic tanks.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to just jump right on in.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: I figured you would have a lot to say about
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: this one, Joseph. This is such a great dream.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: This is a total Joseph dream.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: Well, although she doesn't put this in the context, this
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: is a remarkable Freudian dream in every regard.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 4: Really?
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. Because the great Freudian tension was between Eros and Thanatos,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: between life and death. Those were the two great drives
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: that human beings were struggling with, that Freud was was
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: of course aligned with life, with eros, with relatedness, and
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: to stand against the death urge. And in the beginning,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: what we see is very much Freud's concern that the
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: human ego, when it is innocent and young, can fall
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: into the id, can fall into the great cesspool of
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: dangerous life-killing impulses, which Freud was very frightened of, and
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: he saw World War II as the worst example of
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: the destructive dimension of human psyche. And his great quest,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: and very much his daughter's quest, is how do you
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: cap off the worst parts of human behavior so that
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: civilization can survive, so that the ego can create and
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: move forward. So we also have a wonderful Jung-Freud parallel
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: that this woman, much like Jung, has been put in
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: this place where you must swear allegiance to death and eros,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: to the libido sexual theory. You must do that in
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: order to move forward. And like Jung, she says, hell no,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: I think it's more than that. And it's unethical. When
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: we think about Prospero and Caliban, by the way, the
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: story of the Tempest, we could put that in very
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: easy Freudian terms. Prospero is this well-cultured, civilized ego, and
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: Caliban is the id. Marielle is the superego. And so
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: the containment of Caliban's impulses to rape Prospero's daughter, which
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: happens very subtly in The Tempest, but it is insinuated,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: is also part of this entire dimension. So I know
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: it sounds very abstracting, but it fits so well that
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: it just, I found it kind of stunning.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: So one of the things I love about doing this
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: podcast with you guys is like, I knew you'd have
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: something to say about the stream. I would not in
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: a million years have known that you were going to
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: say that. Like, I don't have known you for like,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: over 20 years and I still cannot see things totally
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: through your eyes. That's great. That is totally not where
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: I went with this dream. But I had this, I
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: was also sort of salivating. I was like, oh man,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: this is great. You know, I really liked the idea
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: of the septic caps as kind of repression, which is great.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: I think that's a great image. I was really struck
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: by the attitude of the dream ego in this dream.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: So the dream ego is sure she's right. We've got
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: these feelings of anger and outrage, which, you know, I
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: think usually when the dream ego feels anger and outrage,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: it's a little bit of a flag that we might be,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: I'm going to say defending against some content or add
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: new attitude that's in the unconscious. It's like the ego is,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: The ego thinks that she's got this all figured out
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: and that she knows what's what. And in fact, this
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: kind of this sort of prospero guy, he is bringing
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: something new. He is bringing the new attitude. He's the
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: kind of telos in the dream, as it were. The
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: ego is kind of doing what the ego always does.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: She's in work mode. But he's saying you have to
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: worship these larger forces. You have to kind of pay
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: attention to the archetypal world. You have to note that
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: we are motivated by love and by death and invokes
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: these huge archetypes. And she rejects it out of hand.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: She feels like it's unethical. And again, I think whenever
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: the Whenever the ego is kind of angry, especially when
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: we wake up sort of angry, you know, it's like, what,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: what are you doing to me? It's like, hmm, I
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: wonder if there's something in there that we need to
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: pay attention to. And I would say that that is
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: further strengthened by the appearance of her friend, who would
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: be a shadow figure, who says, yeah, this is good.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: It's like some part of the psyche is knows that
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: she might be overvaluing the impulse to do good things,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: to be out in the outer world doing good things
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: and making presentations. And it's kind of saying, what about
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: the inner world? What about the invisible world of the archetypes?
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: Can you get interested in your interiority as well? So
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: that's my kind of quick hit on it. I've got
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: more to say, but I'll stop for now.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: Well, this is a great illustration in how many different
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 4: ways there are, how many different lenses through which to
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: see a dream. I was moved by the very, very
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 4: first part of the dream, that she requested to present
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 4: to local government an opportunity to help people out with
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 4: repair and replacement of septic tanks if they couldn't afford it,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 4: including replacement of caps to prevent toddlers from falling in
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: and drowning. And I have wondered if this is a
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: dream about the collective. You mentioned, Joseph, about Freud and
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: how he saw World War II, and certainly Jung did.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 4: both World War I and World War II, that what
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 4: is happening to our processing as a collective of waste
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: and is it safe and does it need to be
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: kept much as our impulsive and destructive and immature instincts
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: need to be kept. There's a place for them. in
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: the septic tank to process waste material appropriately, and we
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 4: don't want it open to the external world where our
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 4: young energy, our young, innocent, and future energy children are
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 4: often symbols of the future, and we don't want that
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 4: part to be in danger. And that then as the
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: dream goes on, she's given this, our poor dream ego here,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 4: is given the choice to have to worship Thanatos and Eros.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 4: And even though, you know, in a way that sort
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 4: of promises kind of a unification of the opposites of worship,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 4: both love and death, it's also an either-or construct. You
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 4: either do this and comply, or you don't. I agree
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 4: with everything that you guys have said. And I wonder
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: if this is also a dream about our collective dilemmas.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: And she's dreaming for all of us. And sometimes that
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 4: happens that we dream for everybody.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: I want to just sort of add, I think that's
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: really interesting, Deb. You know, the Prospero figure in the
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: dream is a little bit of a trickster.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: Hmm.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: Because of the relationship with this guy from college who
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: was good-looking but could sort of, I guess, try to
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: skate by on his good looks. So that's another interesting
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: thing that somehow the new thing is kind of slipping
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: in through these values that are definite. You can tell
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: that this is a very conscientious person, I have no doubt.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: And she had no patience for this guy who wasn't
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: willing to learn his lines. So the ego has this
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: certain orientation to the world, but there are other values too.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: There are other possible ways to do things. Sometimes it
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: does work to be a little bit slippery or a
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: little bit tricky. And what important values might come through
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: into consciousness through that part of the denied personality? The
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: other thing is that I think we're all interested in
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: the sewer and the sewer caps. And I think both
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: of you have said really good things about it. But
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: you could look at sewer as kind of being the
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: prima materia in alchemy. You know, it is literally the filth.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: And we know that that's where you find the philosopher's stone.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: So you would want to cap it to keep young,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: immature aspects of the psyche from drowning in it. But
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: it might be important to also be able to get
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: access to it at times. So I wonder if, and Joseph,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: I think I'm picking up on your question. speculation about
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: the sewer caps as kind of an image of repression.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: If you're very keen on keeping the powers of the
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: interior at bay, you would want to cap that sewer
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: and not know about Thanatos and Eros. And you'd want
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: to just be focused in the world about sort of
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: doing good things. I think the context of the dream
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: is interesting because, you know, she left this job after
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: She found that she couldn't, you know, kind of work
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: with these people who she felt were not handling things
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: the right way. And that's really admirable. And is it
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: possible that there's a certain kind of rigidity there because
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: there isn't enough kind of dream prospero or there isn't
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: enough access to the sewer? I mean, you need to
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: keep it capped. I'm not denying that. But somehow, sometimes
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: we need a little bit of access to that because
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: that's where the new growth is.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: And so the dream ego is defending against any change. Maybe. Yeah,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: it appears that way. That the change of internal organization,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: internal leadership is shifting and the dream ego is not
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: going to have it. That she doesn't respect This version
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: of heronymous thinks of him as too mercurial. Prospero is
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: a magician, so in the world of Mercury. And he's
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: not going to get his lines right. I mean, that's
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: one of the associations there, that he isn't going to
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: play his role. Right. Because he isn't going to spend
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: enough time to know what his role is.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: Or he might have to improvise.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 3: Improvise and play. something about the dream ego and perhaps
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 3: the profession of being in an environmental health administration may
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: very well be that she's a scientist, which has worked
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: very well for her. And she has a very precise
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 3: scientific way of understanding things. And so if intuition begins
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: to come in through the animus, it can be very
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: hard to find that valid, to make sense of it.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: And just as you had said, these archetypal dynamics are,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: that are being invited in. Now, the listener is obviously
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: listening to this Jungian Life podcast. We're talking about archetypes
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: all the time. And yet on the unconscious mind, she's very.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: She's not listening to this Freudian life, okay?
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: No, she's not. Feels rather suspicious, although from a Freudian perspective,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: she could kind of take refuge. She could separate out
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: from the more kind of mystical sounding things that Jung
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: wrote The thing that is also significant for me is
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: that there is a shadow figure inside of her, the friend,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: who's just taking it all in stride. Oh, yeah, Thanatos, Eros. Oh, well,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: you know, I'll just jump in there and get to
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: know them. And Prosperous, you know, seems to be fine. And,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: you know, big changes are occurring. And there is a
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: part of her that is able to be relaxed, curious,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: unflapped about a big change of internal administration, while the
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: dream ego is highly agitated and angry. But there is
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: another potential that's just quietly sitting right next to her,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 3: just hanging out, looking at what's going on. Absolutely.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 4: I've wondered if, I'm going back to the construct of
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: either or, and I'm wondering, I'm thinking about how that
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 4: plays out again and again in the dream. And in
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 4: the context that she supplied to us, that she was
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 4: working for a place and for her it was unethical
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 4: or unprincipled and she left. Then there is this command
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 4: to worship and give a public presentation on Thanatos and Eros,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 4: which might be a theme of unification, integration, But it's as,
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 4: you know, you do this or else, either you do
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 4: it or you don't. And she's still in this another
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 4: sort of slow, slow moving bureaucracy. And again, it's sort
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 4: of like, do I put up with this and go
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 4: along with it or do I not? And the shadow
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: figure in the audience is an image of just take
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: it in and calmly take notes. But I'm also wondering
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 4: about whether there's a call here for the trickster, for
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 4: the prospero energy of, is it all evil? you comply
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: or you have to rebel or protest or leave, or
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 4: is there some other sort of fun trickstery way to
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: play with this a little bit, to be a little irreverent? Oops.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: Along those lines, it's important that her association is that
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 3: in senior year, she played Caliban.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: Yes, that's right.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: So it is a return to the instinctive, to the unconscious,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 3: to the magical and mystical. Because Caliban is, like Ariel,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: is a creature between the worlds. It's not quite clear
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: if he's human in the Tempest. He may be some
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: earth creature. just as Ariel flies and is some kind
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: of an angel, the spirit of the air. But they
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 3: are these elemental beings that Prospero has tethered to his
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: will and has made them his servants in this magical island.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: So there is something inside of her that is primal,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: causing perhaps a problem. Perhaps that primality requires this extremely ethical,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: principled organized, role-centric compensation, which may have served her very,
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: very well for quite some time. But much as we
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: were saying in the episode on the Selkie, it seems
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: that enchantment is knocking at the door.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: Magic has arrived.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: That's a good way to sum up this dream, I think.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: I'll just say, just to get the last word in,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: I'm curious. I would be curious about her relationship with
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: her father because she lifts up that Prospero is a
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: father figure. And so that makes me curious.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook,
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: help us produce future episodes by funding us through Patreon,
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: and submit your dreams for possible interpretation on another episode.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: We'd like to thank our listener who shared a dream
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: topics you'd enjoy hearing more about. Until next time, keep
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life. Thank you.