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Dark Forces in the Psyche: Our Self-Destructive Impulses · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ideally, our life energy is flowing out. It's carrying us
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: with it out into the world. It gets us out
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: the door in the morning. However, there are times when
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: libido gets damned up for a variety of reasons. Well,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Jung spent a lot of time in Volume 5 talking
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: about this very thing. He said that one thing that
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: can happen is that when the libido is blocked, it
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: can start flowing in and down. That can look like depression.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod. My
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: husband always asks me every Monday, what are you going
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: to talk about? And I said, This week, we're going
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: to talk about antilubidinal forces in the psyche. And he said,
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: I've never heard of that. And I said, yes, you have.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: We've all experienced times when we work against ourselves. We
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: undo things. We stop ourselves from trying things. We sabotage ourselves.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: I don't think there's anybody who hasn't experienced that. So
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: under this very wordy heading that I started out with,
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: let's talk about the ways that we get in our
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: own way to no good purpose, what that means, and
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: what to do about it.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Well, we're really talking about our self-destructive tendencies, aren't we?
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: And by the way, I would say that your husband is...
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: remarkably non-neurotic. And so he may really not have had
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: much experience with this. But most of us, most of
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: us have some self-destructive streak in us and it can
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: look different ways. And we'll talk about that. But of course,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: you know, the tendency to, the human tendency to being,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: toward being self-destructive, whether that's on an individual level or
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: we could even talk about it on a collective level,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: which gets pretty dark. But it's nearly universal. And so,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: of course, it's been very much of interest to psychoanalysis.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: So throughout the past 150 years or so of psychoanalysis,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: this topic of how we.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Express our self-destructive urges, where those come from and why
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: they exist, there has been a lot of ink spilt
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: in psychoanalytic literature on this subject.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: Not only a lot of ink spilled, but a lot
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: of vocabulary created and reiterated. And so I particularly liked
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: this phrase because a listener wrote in and suggested the
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: topic as anti-libidinal forces in the psyche, which I have
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: to say has a certain ring to it. And I
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: was immediately intrigued, but we know it by so many,
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: so many different names of the different luminaries in the
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: field have given it all kinds of different names of,
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: you know, Freud called it thanatos, the death wish. that
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: I think we'll talk a little bit more about. Clarissa
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Pinkola Estes, who wrote Women Who Run With the Wolves,
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: calls it the predator in the psyche. Melanie Klein, who
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: worked with infants in early development, called it the bad
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: breast or the bad object. From a trauma perspective, Donald Kalshed,
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: whom we've had on the show and is written about
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: the early relational trauma, calls it the protector-persecutor. I think
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: it's Freud who also called it repetition compulsion. It's a
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: well-known mythological motif. Sometimes they're just called monsters, those personifications
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: of sort of psychic darkness. And mythology is wonderful for
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: giving us monsters. as symbols of this whole dynamic of
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: we have the whale that Jonah sat in the belly
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: of for three days. We've got Bluebeard and Dracula and
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: the Minotaur and, you know, uncounted more monsters. So we
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: all do know this and we know it by many names.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: It has been with us, I think, since the dawn
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: of time. Let's walk around it.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: So when we think about our self-destructive urges, and you
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: can ask yourself right now, you know, where is that
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: in my life? How have I been self-destructive? How have
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: I maybe self-sabotaged or kept myself from moving forward or
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: undermined myself? I mean, if you think about it, my
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: guess is you're going to get in touch with something
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: that at a minimum feels painful and may even feel dark.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: you know, we really do this to ourselves and it
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: can be incredibly frustrating to understand why these tendencies can
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: be incredibly impervious to change. I'm thinking, for example, about
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: people who have major difficulties with completing projects who maybe,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of procrastinate to the point where there
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: are real considerable consequences, not just, you know, not just
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I'm the type who always waits the last minute to
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: write the paper. But people who are facing real consequences
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: in life and can't move forward because they just can't
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: get themselves to do anything. I'm thinking about certain compulsions,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean, bad OCD can really keep you
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: from moving forward, you know, literally. It can make it
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: hard to leave the house.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking about something like hoarding, where we kind of
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: bury ourselves under a bunch of stuff. And then, of course,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: there are more subtle ways. Maybe we know that there's
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: something that we want to do or a way that
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: we want to put ourselves forward, but we just never
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: find the courage to do it.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: All of these things feel very stuck. It can feel
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: very difficult to overcome them. And it is almost like
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: there is a dark force in the psyche that's holding
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: us back. I think about sort of those kind of
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: scary stories. sometimes that are kind of part of folklore
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: where there's a hand that reaches up out of the
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: ground and grabs your ankle and keeps you from moving forward.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: But there are forces in the psyche that treat us
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: that way. And it can be very difficult to confront them.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, our ego might be saying, I know I
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: want to run ahead, but something's grabbing us and keeping
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: us pinned down.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: You know, however it may manifest itself, the critical part
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: of it is that this part cannot be reasoned with
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: or related to, you know, and people will say things like,
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: you know, I know, you know, I know I could
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: or I should or, you know, I know this doesn't
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: really make sense that I can't get rid of all
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: this stuff or I can't leave my house or go
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: beyond the borders of my backyard. I know it doesn't
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: make sense, but I can't do it. So there's an
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: elusive quality that is not amenable to what your head
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: may think about it, that it's perfectly okay to take
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: a trip on an airplane or some other thing. And
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: it can't be even understood. I don't know what it's about.
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: I don't know why. But something has... a grip on
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: us that is powerful and possessive. I love your image, Lisa,
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: of the image of the hand that just reaches up
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: out of the ground and grabs you by the ankle.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: There's no way to understand it. There's no way to
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: connect with it in a felt way, except that it's
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: very scary. Something dangerous and scary and foreign and instinctual
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: has us.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: And I think it can kind of manifest in maybe
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: one of two ways. One is something grabs hold of
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: us and holds us back. And then the other one
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: is something is really predatory and kind of stalking us.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: So one thing is a little more passive and the
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: other thing is a little more active. And so maybe
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: we can think about that a bit. But the phrase
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: anti-libidinal forces kind of introduces us to this idea, you know,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: for Jung, libido was life energy. It wasn't necessarily, it
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: wasn't just connected with the sex drive. It was any
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: life energy. And he was interested in the progression of
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: libido so that, you know, I guess, in some sense, ideally,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: our life energy is flowing out. It's carrying us with
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: it out into the world. It gets us out the
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: door in the morning. It is that desire, that wanting,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: that seeking impulse that is part of all of mammalian life.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: You know, we have a seeking system that's out there
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: looking to get fed and find sexual partners and find water.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: And And other things, right? There are things that we want.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: And those desires are expression of our life energy. And
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: it's positive. It's positive to want something that gets you
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: out and engaged with the world. However, there are times
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: when libido gets damned up for a variety of reasons,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: some of which I think we'll wind up talking about today.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: What happens when the libido gets damned up? Well, Jung
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in Volume 5 talking about
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: this very thing. He said that one thing that can
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: happen is that when the libido is blocked, it can
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: start flowing in and down. That can look like depression.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you're not a depressive person, but you've
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: had a depressive episode, it actually feels like oh my God,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: the tide's going out and I'm just like, I'm getting leeched.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: I'm getting leeched of all my energy, all my desire.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: One of the common symptoms of depression, the kind of
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: symptoms of clinical depression is something called anhedonia, which means
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: you don't take pleasure in things anymore. If you've ever
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: had a depressive episode and you think, is there anything
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: I like? You know, this is what someone comes in
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: and I think they might be depressed. I say, what
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: gives you enjoyment? A depressed person will say, nothing. You know,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: I used to love taking a walk in the park
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: and now it just does nothing for me. I used
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: to love going out for dinner and now I just
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: couldn't be bothered. It is, I mean, it is a
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: frightening thing, but it's like the libido has left you.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: It has flown. There is no more life energy. Really,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: it's just gone in and down. The other thing that
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: can happen there is is that the libido can regress
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: to the deeper layers of the unconscious where it kind
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: of wakes up the archetypal layer, the archetypal strata. And
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: if it can then be recanalized, you return with kind
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: of a renewal, actually, and with greater access to the
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: depths and the archetypes if things go well. But there
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: is this danger that it'll get stuck down there.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm wanting to really expand a little bit on
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: this idea of regression and the going down and going
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: back to earlier, earlier levels. And that a big part
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: of this dynamic can be what happens when instinctual energies
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: have been disowned. And maybe they had to be disowned
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: for lots of good reasons, often very early in life,
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: where certain things were repressed. And in order to find
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: them again, we do have to kind of go through
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: this regression back to that kind of emotional little nexus
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: that's been hidden away to find those energies that and
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: release them. But it's scary because it's been outlawed and
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: exiled for so long that it's like some kind of
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: a caged animal that over the years has become fiercer
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: and more decompensated and And psychotic and all sorts of
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: other things that's sort of like, oh, my God, I'm
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: not going to let that thing out. And somebody could say, well,
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: you know, but it's just a house cat. And what
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: do we do with that? So I think I'm wanting
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: to say that it can get to the place where
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: something that is unmetabolized, like that cat that was not
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: allowed to grow and become more itself. And maybe it
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: did scratch the furniture. You know, maybe it did have
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: a habit of nipping people. And so then it had
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: to be caged up. And how then do we come
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: to terms with it? Because it's still there and its
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: energy is holding us back, overlaid now with an awful
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: lot of fear that this is now the forbidden realm.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: This has now gotten really big. It's no longer a
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: house cat in a cage that's raging. It's a lion
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: or a tiger, and we cannot possibly go near it.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: There was a book that I read my kids when
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: they were little. It's such a stunningly accurate psychological picture book,
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: and I believe it's called There's No Such Thing as
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: a Dragon. And it starts off, this little boy wakes
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: up in the morning, and there's a dragon about the
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: size of a kitten in his room. And He says
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: to his mom, he's like, you know, there's a dragon
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: in my room. And his mom says, there's no such
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: thing as a dragon. And the dragon gets a little bigger.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: So now it's the size of a cat and it
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: comes down and eats his pancakes. And look, mom, the
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: dragon's eating my pancakes. There's no such thing as a dragon.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: And basically, every time anyone says that, the dragon gets
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: bigger and bigger and bigger. And finally, it's enormous.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: And it's only when the adults can say, oh, yeah,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: there's a dragon. that it kind of shrinks down to
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: a manageable size. So I think it's exactly what you're
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: talking about. When we can't find a way to relate
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: to these contents, they actually just get bigger and potentially
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: more dangerous. I mean, in the children's book, it's kind
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: of charming, but they get bigger and more dangerous and
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: more kind of archetypally wild.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: Exactly. That's exactly it. And we're talking, of course, in
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: the broadest possible terms about shadow, of what was disallowed,
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: what didn't happen, what didn't you have a chance to
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: metabolize and turn into, you know, sort of ego functions
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: like the proverbial, you know, the monster in the closet
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: or the monster under the bed, that when it's denied,
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: When your shadow, your anger usually, I think it's often
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: tied to anger, rage, and aggression.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: Those emotions were disallowed. That's not okay. You go to
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: your room until you can behave yourself or punished. Then
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: you have this energy in the psyche that can emerge
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: in all kinds of ways. that most of us go
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: on and we learn to read and write and do
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: all kinds of things in life until it comes to
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: something that the psyche has put up a wall against.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: And you can't do it. I want to do it,
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: but I really want to. You know, I really want
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: to get on that plane and go on that great vacation.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: I would love to go to anywhere, Tahiti. But I
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: can't get on a plane.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: People who are really ridden by these self-destructive tendencies, you know,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, we all have them, right? But people whose
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: lives are really controlled by a self-destructive force. So, for example,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: who might have kind of agoraphobia or just like a
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: real fear of traveling or leaving the house or, you know,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: another compulsion or something. They can be incredibly difficult people
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: to be around. There often is a lot of anger there.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: And it is kind of not, it's not really attached
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: to anything in particular. So they wind up kind of
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: pushing people away a lot of times. They can find
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: themselves being very isolated.
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: I think another direction it can go in is a
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: kind of passivity thing. or a commitment to an awful
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: lot of unlived life.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: You know that the person seems perfectly amenable and nice
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: in many ways, but we sense there's a certain spark missing.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: Because in the case of agoraphobia, and I knew somebody
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: in the town we grew up in who couldn't go
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: any further than her backyard. And her backyard abutted a
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: relative's backyard, and she couldn't go over into the relative's
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: backyard where they were all one property. basically. So what
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: happens if you can't go to the grocery store or
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: to your daughter's wedding? That the energy has been dammed
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: up and backed up, and you don't have access to it. Mm-hmm.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: and or the leftover resentment can spill over into, you know,
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: ordinary give and take between people.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: And I think it was, you know, when Freud and
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: his circle were looking at this phenomenon, trying to understand it, like,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: why would we do that? You know, it's so clearly
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: not in the interest of life or adaptation. And that's
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: that's where he came up with this idea of the
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: death drive, which is an inherent drive towards self-destruction. And
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: it's a subconscious drive, Freud said, to return to an
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: inorganic state. So there is, and of course it's contrasted
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: with the force of Eros, but that idea of sort
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: of returning to an inorganic state That's an interesting image too, because,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: and it's not so dissimilar to some things that Jung
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: talks about. There is a sense of like, you know,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: to go back to what I was talking about, about
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: the regression of the libido, there is a kind of
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: drive to return to the mother. That's maybe how Jung
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: would talk about it. So to return to that early
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: uroboric state and And Jung, this, you know, what we're
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: talking about right now is super interesting in the history
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: of Freud and Jung, because it's right at the point
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: where Jung puts his foot down and says, I disagree
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: with Freud, because Freud's talking about this death drive. And,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: you know, just it's kind of purely destructive. And he
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: needed this idea of thanatos to explain this thing. Jung says, yeah,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: you know, the libido wants to go back to that
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: early uroboric state and it can't. And that's why there
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: is a prohibition against incest. And Jung was looking at
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: incest with the mother symbolically. And what he said is,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: we can't allow our libido to regress to that infantile point. Otherwise,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: we'll just stay there. And that could look like lying
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: in bed all day with the covers over your head
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: and literally not getting out of bed, which some people do.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's a real thing. And then you're just
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: kind of looking for other people to care for you
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: and there's no forward progression. And that's the meaning for Jung.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: That's the meaning of the incest prohibition is no, libido
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: is meant to move out and you're meant to get
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: out of the, what he called the morally poisonous state
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: of infancy.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: So this takes me to seems like the challenge is
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: to find the inner hero and embark on a hero's
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: journey which might be as ordinary seeming as leaving the
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: house and taking two steps beyond the backyard if that's
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: the original limitation, that we have no choice, no good choice,
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: but to go toward this instead of attempting to repress
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: it or regress back to an inorganic state, which is anti-life.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Jung talks about the hero. He says, if a man
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: is a hero... He's a hero because in the final reckoning,
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: he did not let the monster devour him, but subdued it.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: Victory over the collective psyche alone yields the true value.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: The capture of the horde, the invincible weapon, the magic talisman,
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: or whatever it is that the myth deems most desirable.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: And what do we have to do when we're slaying dragons?
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: we have to conquer our fear. We have to leave
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: the early place where we got stuck in the first
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: place of being in the realm of childhood where there
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: are structures and rules and we know what's expected, what
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: the teacher expects, what mom and dad allow and disallow.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: And it is dangerous to leave that. It is dangerous
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: to challenge it. And Nobody wants to come across a
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: dragon like your story. A dragon the size of a kitten,
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: that's okay. Or even a cat is fine. But when
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: it gets to be bigger than the house, I'm really scared.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: I don't know whether I really can do it. And
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: how do I find the courage to take the risk?
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Just to deepen this exploration a little bit, the other
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: way to look at this is that the dragon is
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: the mother. The dragon is the mother unconscious, and the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: dragon is that all-encompassing world of childhood. And so the
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: hero that you're talking about, Deb, has to slay the
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: mother dragon.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: Oh, this is classic Jung history. In one of your
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: favorite volumes, the one that solidified the split from Freud
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: because Jung went very deep about mother, dragon, unconscious archetypal energy.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: So, and yeah, so Jung really develops these ideas in
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: volume five. And then Eric Neumann picks up very much
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: on this line too, which basically they're, the ego is
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: the hero. The ego is the hero and has to
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: have a heroic attitude to leave the realm of childhood, right?
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: So one way of understanding this is staying stuck in childhood,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: staying kind of bonded to the mother. psychologically, that is
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: anti-libidinal as well. So I want to read a little bit.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Jung talks about the story of Tiamat and Marduk, which
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: is a very ancient myth. Tiamat is the goddess of chaos,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: and then Marduk kills her. And so I'm going to
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: read just a little bit of the myth and then
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: what Jung says about it. Then Tiamat and Marduk, the
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: wise one among the gods, joined issue, girding their loins
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: for the fight, drawing near for battle. Then the Lord
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: spread out his net and caught her. Imhulu, which followed behind,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: he let loose in her face. When Tiamat opened her
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: mouth as wide as she could to consume him, he
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: let Imhulu rush in and her lips could not close.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: So this is the wind. With the raging winds, he
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: filled her belly. Her inward parts were seized and she
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: opened wide her mouth. He smote her with the spear.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: He hewed her in pieces. He cut up her bowels
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: and made mincemeat of her heart, vanquished her and put
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: an end to her life, threw down her carcass and
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: trampled upon it. And then after he did this, he
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: sat down and he decided that he was going to make,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: you know, create the world. Then the Lord paused to
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: contemplate her dead body. that he might divide up the
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: monster and do artful works. He split her like a
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: flat fish into two parts. One half he set up,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: and with it he covered the sky. So this is
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: the creation story, which involved the hero, we could think
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: about the ego, kind of conquering this kind of chaotic, early,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: uroboric state. And here's what Jung says. In this manner,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Marduk created the world from the mother. Evidently, the killing
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: of the mother dragon here takes the form of a
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: negative wind fertilization. The world is created from the mother, i.e.,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: with a libido that is withdrawn from her through the
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: sacrifice and through prevention of the regression that threatened to
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: overcome the hero. So, in some sense, to avoid getting
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: trapped in these anti-libidinal forces that want to kind of
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: drag us down, want to make us go back to bed, really.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: We have to find our heroic energy and like, I mean,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: you know, every day I do this, it's like, I
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: want to just lie in bed. No, get up and
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: put your running shoes on. So I enact this Tiamat
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: and Marduk scenario several times a week when I kick
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: myself out of bed to go exercise. Yeah.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: And actually, I think that's a great example, is that
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: we all have that, that taste of exactly what self-sabotage
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: or anti-libidinal energy or any of these other names by
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: which it goes. It crops up all the time, doesn't it?
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: All the time.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: I don't want to do it. I'll do it tomorrow.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: Or I can put it off until next week. These
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: calls to confront that part of ourselves and at least
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: to notice it and then have that discussion with ourself.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: So what about when it's really more predatory? So now
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking of Bluebeard. Do you want to talk a
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: little bit about Bluebeard?
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: I'm looking at the... I've read over the old... oldest version,
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: I think, which is original in Grimm's. And I agree,
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: the heroes are real predators, as scary as all get out.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: And it seems benign enough that there's a man who
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: has three sons and a beautiful daughter. Sometimes it's a
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: mother with just daughter. Like a lot of tales, there
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: are lots of versions of it. And it says, one
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: day a golden coach, six horses with servants, drove up
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: to his house. And after the coach stopped, the man,
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: the king who lived there, asked if he could have
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: the daughter for his wife. The man was happy that
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: his daughter would benefit from such a stroke of good
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: fortune and immediately said yes. There was nothing objectionable about
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: the suitor except for his beard, which was totally blue.
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: and made one shudder somewhat whenever one looked at it.
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: So there's the clue. Everything looks great, right? Guy comes up,
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: great carriage, servants, six horses, except for that inkling inside
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: that says, this is repugnant, deeply repugnant. But off she
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: goes and gets married. And she reaches the castle. Everything
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: is splendid. They would have been very happy if only
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: the bride had been able to have accustomed herself to
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: the king's blue beard. However, whenever she saw it, she
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: felt frightened. So I think the first clue is in
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: the feeling. And then, of course, the rest of the
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: story is that everything is fine until later. the king
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: or the husband has to go away on a trip
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: and he gives his wife all the keys to the mansion,
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: to the castle and says, here you go, do anything
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: you want, open all the doors, have a good time,
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: except see this one little key right here, the golden one,
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: don't open the door that this fits into, which of
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: course we know is that now we know for sure.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: Any kid who's ever heard a fairy tale will know
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: that that's what's going to happen next. And she sees
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: all the slaughtered bodies of his previous wives. And as
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: Lisa related in the tale of Marduk and Tiamat, fairy
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: tale writers do not hesitate to present things in all
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: their gory detail. And of course, she escapes. She calls
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: her brothers. There are various ways in which she foils
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: the plot to be killed. by Bluebeard and instead kills him.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: And this is the real predator in the psyche, which
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: somebody like Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who has deconstructed so many
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: fairy tales and provided interpretive parts to them, says is
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: inherent in the psyche.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she says, you know, this is a just is.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: This is a just so.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: It's not there because....
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: There was a trauma or a rupture. It just exists
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: in the psyche. And it's a little bit like Freud's
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: death drive, right? He's like, well, wait a minute. It
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: seems like most of us do something self-destructive. So there
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: must be some innate self-destructive impulse in the psyche. And
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: I guess I think that's true. I've spent a long
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: time thinking about this particular manifestation of these anti-lubidinal forces
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: because in one of my books, I wrote about Fitcher's Bird,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: which is, I think it's probably a more ancient version
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: of Bluebeard. And in some sense, I like it better,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: but it's a very similar story. There are these three
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: sisters and they get taken to his house one at
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: a time and given a key and said, don't use
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: the key. And then You know, of course, they open
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: the door and there's the bloody chamber. And I think
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: it's a very, very profound story. And of course, there's
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: a couple other variants, too. There's another, I think it's
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: another Grimm's Tale called Mr. Fox, which is very similar.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: And the robber bridegroom, too, I think is similar. But
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: what about that? I mean, you know, it's interesting that
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: in the stories I just named, they're all.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: I want to say they're all kind of women's tales,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: which is the protagonist is a woman. I have a
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: sense that the predator in the psyche plays perhaps a
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: distinct role in women's psyches versus a man's psyche. I'm
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: not saying that men are completely free from this phenomenon,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: but I do think it manifests differently in women. Most
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: women I know do have a really cruel, eviscerating inner voice.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Not every woman. And, you know, maybe some of us
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: have done a better job at coming to terms with it.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: But women, let's say, in general, are more susceptible to
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: really eviscerating self-talk. And I see that, you know, as
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: basically as... The personification is the predator in the psyche.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: It's like that part that goes, you fucking idiot. What
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: did you do that for? You know? And how many
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: of us talk to ourselves like that without even realizing it?
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: I have also seen that in men. You know, like the,
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: you know, sort of a great example is the guy
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: out on the golf course who throws his club. Yeah. Or,
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: you know, the baseball player. Who slams his bat down.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Or the pitcher who gets the yips. Mm-hmm.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. That it can happen to anybody that is
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: that self-eviscerating, you know, you idiot. Yeah. You didn't make
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: that shot. That was an easy shot. You know, slam
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: the golf club down or throw the bat, and so
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: it goes. But I'm going back to the idea here
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: of the real predator in the psyche that can be
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: really terrifying and manifest in ways that are so deeply
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: painful and troubling to people as real mental health, life-stopping
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: agonies of energy. I think that taps into more than
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: personal layer of the psyche that we call the collective psyche.
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: And then it gets invested, infused with mythopoetic fantasy images
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: of terrible, terrible things that may be a consequence of
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: earlier trauma, particularly relational trauma. and particularly related to unmet
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: dependency needs where a child was expected to function above
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: his or her level of development. And one part did
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: that and figured it out and got himself dressed and
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: off to school and made his own breakfast or went
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: without lunch and really functioned. But another part is plagued
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: by these archaic forces in the psyche and defenses against feeling. Now,
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: it seems sort of contrarian to say that a person
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: is feeling, you know, utterly miserable and handicapped by these
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: forces and that they are at the same time defenses
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: against feeling. But they're defenses against feeling vulnerable. helpless, scared.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: And so something comes up that actually images that fear
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: so that you don't have to go back to how
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: raw and scared and weak you were.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Well, you just said a lot, so I want to
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: unpack it a little bit. But I think the idea
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: of defense is really important, right? And that is very
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: much what Kalshet's talking about. He's talking about an archetypal
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: defense that that the inner predator basically is functioning as
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: a defense to keep us cut off from life in
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: the interest of protecting us against future, further victimization. So
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: what Kelsch had noted was that his analysands would come
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: in with these really disturbing dreams of like an axe-wielding
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: murderer who would come in and that those dreams tended
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: to happen after he had a tender and connecting session.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: with the client. And it was almost like, I'm not
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: going to let you get hurt again. I'm going to
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: cut off this connection.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, that's really fascinating, right? Because there's
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: like a telos in it. And that would go along, Deb,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: with this idea that some of these anti-libidinal forces or
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: these self-destructive impulses might have a taproot in early trauma
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: or at least relational trauma. But I do want to
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: also keep open the possibility that like Clarice Piccolo Estes said,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: there can be a just so quality to these and
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: not to skirt over too quickly this idea that it
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: can take root in our psyche and in a kind
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: of quasi personified form as our inner voice. And just
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: let me give you an example. the, let's say, 17-year-old
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: girl who looks at herself in the mirror and the
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: voice that comes back is, you're so fat, you're so fat,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: you're so fat. And that can take on a life
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: of its own, right? And then, you know, she can
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: wind up developing an eating disorder, you know? And that,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: I think, is a great example of an anti-lubidinal force
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: or a self-destructive force, right? Like anorexia. I'm going to
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: starve myself? How does that If we don't have some
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: conceptualization of some force, I'll just say, in the psyche
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: that is against life, how else do we understand anorexia?
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: You know, which is, I believe it is the mental
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: health issue with the highest mortality. I mean, it's no joke. And,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: you know, people die. People die from it. It's very debilitating.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: And it comes from a super, super harsh and actually
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: inaccurate understanding of ourselves. But it's sort of like that.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: It's sort of like aggression turned inward is maybe one
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: way of thinking about it.
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: I'm just sitting with that example and feeling how overwhelming
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: and literally life-threatening, those anti-libidinal energies can be, in an
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: example like anorexia, and that there is the monster that
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: cannot be reasoned with, cannot be understood, and cannot be
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: related to. And I think that's the word I want
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: to land on, And it happens, I think, all the
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: time with people who come into our consulting rooms with
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: a dream, for example, of like, you know, I can't
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: relate to this. You know, that there is some image
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: that seems, or a whole series of them, that are
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: impenetrable by just our rational, conscious mind that wants things to, quote,
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: make sense, unquote. But that's our mission is to relate
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: to these vague, amorphous energies that don't fight fair, so
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: to speak. You know, like, you know, it was great,
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: the story of the little boy with the dragon that
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: kept growing and growing. As you see, he had an image.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: He could go down and say, there's a dragon in
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: my room. But oftentimes people, you know, the mystery is
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: that we are cut off from what is it really,
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: except I know that I can't do this or go
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: there or eat in a healthy manner. And that's the
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: work is to be able to get an image, to
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: be able to find a way to relate, to be
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: able to find a way to feel. the feelings that
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: are being both manifested and blockaded by the compulsion, the anorexia,
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: the agoraphobia, you know, and all kinds of just daily
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: examples such as, I know I really should go for
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: a little run, but no, I think it looks really,
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: really cloudy. I'll do it tomorrow.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: You know, I think it was in one of Robert
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Johnson's books, and I wish I'd looked it up before
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: we got started, but he was talking about some way
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: that he was blocking himself. Maybe he was in graduate
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: school and he wasn't able to finish the assignments or whatever.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: And he just sort of sat down and he started
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: talking to that part of him. And it really, really helped.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: And I think, obviously, you can't necessarily just talk to
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: your anorexia and have it resolve. But there may be
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: smaller self- self-destructive impulses that we can have a conversation with.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: I remember I had a terrible time getting to class
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: on time when I was in graduate school. And so
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: I kind of tried that. I was like, okay, what's
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: going on? You know, I just kind of had this
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: little conversation with myself. And, you know, I don't know
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: that it sort of magically resolved, but it seemed to
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: loosen something, you know? So when we catch ourselves routinely
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: engaging in something, that is anti-lubidinal or that is self-destructive,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: at least in small ways, even just, even inviting our
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: unconscious to have a conversation with us. Because what we
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: talked around today is that sometimes what looks like it's
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: anti-life is actually asking for transformation or asking us to
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: transform in some way. So there can be a telos
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: to it. There can be a perspective function to it.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say that there always is, but
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: there can be.
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the two really off-putting things here are
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: the fear, especially when it's amorphous but monstrous in some way.
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: And certainly for women, one of the things even today
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: that is Forbidden is real access to rage and aggression.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: But the answer is, I think what we're circling around is,
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: the answer is we have to go toward it. And
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: how do we do that? Well, you can talk to it.
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: And I do mean talk to it out loud in
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: your house when you're alone and uninterrupted.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Journaling.
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: Journaling. And when you talk to it, change chairs of like, okay,
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: now I'm me and I'm talking to this problem that
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: I have and I want to know why, blah, blah, blah.
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: And then move to another chair and start talking like
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: that part of you. Journaling is another way. A walking meditation. Get,
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: if it's something that you can image and personify, turn
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: it into an image. Is it Animal, vegetable, or mineral?
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: Is it a frog? Is it a dinosaur? What is
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: this thing in the psyche? So now you've taken it
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: down from something vague and amorphous, like a dark cloud,
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: to an image of some horrible, evil villain from film
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: or theater. So now you've got something you can start
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: working with. It's just a little plastic figurine. It's just
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: writing in a journal. It's just trying to talk to
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: that part of ourselves, not to mention paying attention to
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: your dreams. So we can go toward these things and
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: certainly also seek professional help in ways that are not overwhelming,
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: It's not all or nothing. It's step by step. You
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: brought up fear.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: And I think that in some sense, fear may be
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: at the bottom of all of these.
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: I agree.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: And it's the paradox also that sometimes it's fear of
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: death that keeps us from living. Fear of death being
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: maybe the ultimate fear. And there's a quote from volume
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: five that is just one of the real blockbuster quotes
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: that says so much. And I want to read it
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: and then I want to unpack it a little bit. Okay.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: So this is paragraph 551. The spirit of evil is fear, negation,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: the adversary who opposes life in its struggle for eternal
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: duration and thwarts every great deed. who infuses into the
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: body the poison of weakness and age through the treacherous
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: bite of the serpent. He is the spirit of regression,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: who threatens us with bondage to the mother and with
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: dissolution and extinction in the unconscious. For the hero, fear
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: is a challenge and a task, because only boldness can
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: deliver from fear. And if the risk is not taken,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: the meaning of life is somehow violated, and the whole
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: future is condemned to hopeless staleness, to a drab gray
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: lit only by will-o'-the-wisps. So let's see, Jung would have
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: been about 25, 35, you know, like between 35 and 40,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: I think when he wrote that. And it's just so big.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: And especially that line, if the risk is not taken,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: the meaning of life is somehow violated. if we always
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: listen to fear, if we never get out of our beds,
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: if we never overcome the pull of indolence and just
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: the lack of energy, the impulse to move beyond our compulsions,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: if we never overcome those things, then we do wind
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: up having a lot of unlived life that you mentioned earlier, Deb.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: You know, the person who never went beyond her backyard
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: and she didn't go to her daughter's wedding or whatever
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: it is. Boy, there's a whole lot of unlived life there.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: It's like we constantly have to struggle with the temptation
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: to regress.
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: We have to always find that heroic attitude that will
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: allow us to move beyond our fear.
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: It sort of sounds like, oh my gosh, Lisa, you
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: mean I have to keep doing this over and over
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: and over again? It doesn't sound all that appealing. But
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: the more we do it, the bigger we get. It's
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: very much like that story about the dragon. Really, the
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: only choice we have is to recognize it. And then
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: it gets, if we don't, it gets bigger and bigger
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: until it does take on these gargantuan proportions of, I
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: can't possibly do that. And I think myths and fairy
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: tales with, you know, minotaurs and dragons and, you know,
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: all kinds of other superpowers. make it seem like it's
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: mission impossible. But really, we can do it step by step.
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: And it's not an external dragon, as the little boy thought.
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: It's really a part of us, and it is there anyway,
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: taking energy for life and sequestering it and making it unavailable.
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: So it's not as if you can safely ignore it.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. Right.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: You know, and I even go back to the Bluebeard
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: story of, well, you know, should our young woman whose
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: husband's Bluebeard gave her the creeps, maybe she should have
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: been a good girl and not used that little key
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: to see all the slaughter inside. And what would be
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: the price she paid for that? Of living a half-life,
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: a life with a horrible secret, a psychic secret inside?
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: Of what has been killed off? What is the price
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: for staying with her husband and killing off her own
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: feelings of distaste and revulsion? Better to open the door.
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: defeat the predator, and go on to live fully.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: Today's dream comes from a woman who is 43 years old,
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: and she is an entrepreneur, and she titled her dream,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: Owl Orb. And I just want to remind listeners that
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: if we discuss your dream and you want to share
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: some feedback with us, we now have a form on
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: the website, thisunionlife.com, where you can go and give us
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: some feedback. Let us know how we did. Okay, here
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: we go. I was walking in an urban area. It
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: felt a bit like the edge of a town. There
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: were some industrial buildings below, so I must have been
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: on a bit of a hill. I was walking with
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: a friend when I looked up and saw a feathery orb.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: It took a while, some blinking in disbelief, to realize
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: that it was in fact an owl. I kept wanting
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: to take a photo, but didn't want to miss a
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: second of seeing it by taking the time to pull
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: my phone from my pocket. I was trying to determine
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: if it was a special kind of owl or if
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: it was just flying in a curled-up manner. Then we
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: noticed a faded red string or piece of material dangling
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: from it. My friend grabbed it and pulled. Down came
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: the owl and with it a human baby. The owl
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: was surprisingly friendly and willing to be petted and touched.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: The owl and the baby were on a curb and
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: the baby was kind of half falling off of it,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: very grubby, partially wrapped in a dirty white cloth. My
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: friend wanted to keep it, but I was adamant that
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: we must call the police because someone must be missing
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: their baby. I think I did call in the report,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: but we took the baby home with us in the meantime.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: I was walking all around with her, smelling her sweet,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: warm head and feeling her soft baby cheeks on my cheeks.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: I had walked off on my own with her and
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: was on my way out of town when I looked
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: back and saw there was an Indian woman in a
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: sari beckoning me back. I turned and started walking back.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: So here is the context. She says, I'm in a
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: major transition period in my life. One year out of
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: a five-year codependent relationship, learning how to enjoy my own
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: company and practicing self-care for the first time in my life.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: I have two children aged 13 and 11 on the
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: threshold of starting a new business and building a house.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: My mom is in late stage Alzheimer's and I am
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: currently examining the correlation between my intense histamine skin gut
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: issues and anger, but also feeling more freedom, peace, and
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: happiness than I have ever felt. Feelings in the dream
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: were awe, responsibility, and tenderness. And she says the people
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: and the place in the dream were unfamiliar, so no associations.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: So Really such a remarkable dream with just incredible imagery.
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking about how the dream begins at the edge
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: of town. You know, that liminal space between collective, you know,
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: buildings and so on, including these industrial buildings below. But
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: she's up on a hill somewhere in between the realms.
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: at the edge of the town. And then, you know,
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: I'm experiencing dream envy. You know, wow, you know, this
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: feathery orb, and then it turns out to be an owl. Well,
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: I would like to have that experience. And The friend helps,
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: in effect, reel it in. And I'm paying attention to
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: the fact that it's a faded red string of, you know,
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: and we talk about the red thread of following the
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: red thread in a story of there's the connecting, there's
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: the link, the connecting thing. And just reach up and
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: get this wonderful, I mean, I think how amazing that
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: would be. To discover that it's this lovely, friendly owl
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: and a baby. Mm-hmm. Oh, my goodness. Well, this baby is,
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: you know, I think about all these myths about how
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: does the baby arrive? How does the baby Jesus arrive? Well,
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: you know, he's out behind the inn because there's no
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: room there, you know, with all the cows and the
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: sheep looking on, born in a manger. Something kind of
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: a parallel here of here's this baby coming from an
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: unexpected place and baby's kind of grubby.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: It's the divine child, isn't it?
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: You know, which always has a very unlikely beginning. And
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: this is sort of a combination of the stork and
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: like Harry Potter, the baby arrives by owl.
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think... There it is, flying through the air
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: in Harry Potter, carrying a baby. Okay, so what has
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: happened here? There's been a visitation. You have been visited
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: by owl, you know, and these things really are visitations.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: An owl.
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: Is not a different kind of bird, and it is
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: not a cow. And it is. not an alligator. And
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: we all have various associations to owls. They fly silently.
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: They can see in the dark. Their heads revolve 360 degrees.
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: They can see everything. to the side and behind them.
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: And this owl is friendly and bringing a baby.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, just to, you know, owls, of course,
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: have all of this tremendous kind of archetypal resonance, as
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: most animals do. But the owl, of course, was sacred
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: to Athena. Owls are associated with I'm actually looking at
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: a symbol dictionary right now because I want to just see.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: Let's just roll that out a little bit. It's a
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: bird of wisdom and darkness and death. Wisdom, divination, chthonic,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: the corpse bird, evil, crime, death, horror, ungrateful children, Satan,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: the powers of darkness. And again, I think I said
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: this already, sacred to Athena, very much associated with Athena
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: and also with Athens. Anyway, it goes on like that.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: We could roll that out even more and pull out
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: more symbol dictionaries with something like an owl in the dream.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: It can be interesting to do that. But certainly, it's
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: a pretty big symbol. And as the symbol dictionary says,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: it's somewhat ambivalent, but but here it is the bringer
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: of new life. Yes. And that seems to be a
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: delightful surprise. Now, you know, with the other friend in
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: the dream, I'm thinking, okay, so we have two women here,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: so we might consider that to be a shadow figure. Obviously,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: if it's shadow material, it's something that's quite close to
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: ego because it's identified as a friend. And also, importantly,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: they're pretty close together in terms of how they're experiencing things.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: The one deviation is... The friend is like, let's take
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: the baby. And the dream ego is like, no, we
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: have to notify the police. And I wonder about that.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's an interesting distinction. And I
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: wonder if the shadow doesn't know better than the ego
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: here that this baby is actually for you. I'm curious
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: about kind of how the dream ends because she does
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: call it in, which I suppose is a good thing.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: Can't really go wrong there. but she's just drinking in
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: this baby's deliciousness, you know, the cheeks and the smell
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: of the head. And she's just really enjoying that. And
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: then the mysterious way this dream ends with an Indian
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: woman in a sari who is beckoning her back. So
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: I wonder about the Indian woman in the sari. I
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: wonder what the kind of feeling of her is. I
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: would love to hear if there was anything more that
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: the dreamer had to say about her. Whether it's that
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: there's a little hint of threat, like, don't you leave
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: here with that baby, or, hey, there's something else I
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: want you to know.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. The dream does not say, it is mysterious,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: because a dream does not say that this is the
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: baby's mother or a family member. It just says an
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: Indian woman, and we don't know where our dreamer is from.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: But oftentimes, I'll posit that it's a Westerner and that
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: it's an opposite from the other side of the world,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: a culture that is really different. And that's exactly what
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: we don't know is she goes back there and what
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: else might be about to happen. We don't know she
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: keeps the baby alive. She does call it in, but
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: in a way, this is a dream, a great dream
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: to dream on in your imagination. And then what happens?
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's interesting. You're making the point about,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: you know, if someone is, say, from the United States
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: or Europe, that India represents a kind of opposite, just
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: like something that's very different. Because in some ways, this
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: dream is full of surprises. Surprising things happen. All of
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: a sudden, there is an owl orb. And then there's
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: a friendly owl with a baby. And then there's an
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: Indian woman in a sari. You know, it's like surprising
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: things keep happening, which, you know, I think surprise is
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: actually a major component of dreams oftentimes. Like I'm talking
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: about the experience of the dream ego.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: Is often really surprised, which I think is a good
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: thing because it means an expansion of consciousness. Something new
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: has been shown to consciousness. The dream ego has been
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: exposed to a new attitude or a new perspective or
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: a new kind of psychic fact. And the nice thing
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: about the dream ego in this dream is that she
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: seems very up for encountering the new. She's like, there's
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: an owl or a I don't want to miss it
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: for a second. I'm not going to take my phone out. Okay,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: let's pull on that red thread. Let's hug that baby.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: And that woman's beckoning to me. I'm going to go
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: find out what she wants.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that is a really, really good point.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: Everything in this dream is positive. The walking, the orb,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: the owl, the baby, the friend, the grabbing hold of
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: the red thread. One wonderful thing after another seems to happen.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: So one might expect, you know, something new from the
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: Indian woman in the sari beckoning you back of wanting
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: our dream ego to know something. This is really a very,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: you know, nothing untoward or difficult or anxiety-producing happens in
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: this dream. is life just unfolding. Can you imagine looking
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: up and seeing an orb and then it's like the
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: owl is the stork bringing you the baby, but with
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: all the symbolism associated with owls. And our dreamer says
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: she's in a major transition in life and that she's
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: just one year out of a difficult relationship. learning how
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: to enjoy my own company, practicing self-care. It feels like
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: the dream is affirming her new life with the image
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: of the baby, of here's the potential. Yeah. Yeah, we're
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: validating what you've done in this year.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: And I laughed when you said you have dream envy
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: because I can really relate. But the truth is that
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: we tend to have dreams like this with really kind
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: of big imagery when we're in a transition. So when
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: you're sort of chugging right along, your dreams often look
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: a little bit more ordinary.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: So.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: I think that that's just the truth, Deb. So you
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: and I need to cook up some major life transition
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: to start having more archetypal dreams, I think.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: Okay, stay tuned. We'll let you know.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisjungianlife.com. If
• 1:07:08
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• 1:07:11
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• 1:07:14
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• 1:07:18
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