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The Outsider at the Gate: Are We Lovable When Persona Washes Away? · This Jungian Life Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: Guess how many weeks a woman is pregnant? 40. And,
0:05
Speaker 1: you know, 40 is an amplification of the number four,
0:10
Speaker 1: which in Jung's theory and thinking had to do with
0:15
Speaker 1: structural wholeness. So it's the right amount of time for
0:22
Speaker 1: something to grow and ripen in the psyche. And she
0:26
Speaker 1: is under 40, mattresses and eiderdown feather beds.
0:32
Speaker 2: Aha.
0:35
Speaker 3: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
0:40
Speaker 3: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
0:44
Speaker 3: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
0:47
Speaker 3: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
0:53
Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
0:57
Speaker 2: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
1:02
Speaker 1: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. This week,
1:18
Speaker 1: as Lisa can't be here, Joseph and I are going
1:22
Speaker 1: to do, as we've done before, a fairy tale and
1:27
Speaker 1: unpack it, see what all its layers, nuances, and possible
1:34
Speaker 1: meanings are. And I especially wanted to do this one.
1:39
Speaker 1: It's a tale by Hans Christian Andersen from about 1835.
1:43
Speaker 1: So it's pretty recent in the genre that we call
1:51
Speaker 1: fairy tales, but it's imaginative and symbolic material, and perhaps
1:58
Speaker 1: after another thousand years have gone by, it will have
2:01
Speaker 1: been granted official fairy tale status. This was a story
2:07
Speaker 1: I read as a child, and I believed every single word.
2:13
Speaker 1: I've gone back to it several times, and I'm really
2:17
Speaker 1: looking forward to seeing all of its nuances and possible
2:26
Speaker 1: meanings and also the fun embedded in this fairy tale,
2:31
Speaker 1: The Princess and the Pea. And here is the story.
2:36
Speaker 1: It's very short. Once upon a time, there was a
2:40
Speaker 1: prince who wanted to marry a princess. but she would
2:44
Speaker 1: have to be a real one. He traveled around the
2:47
Speaker 1: whole world looking for her, but every time he met
2:51
Speaker 1: a princess, there was always something amiss. There were plenty
2:56
Speaker 1: of princesses, but not one of them was quite to
3:00
Speaker 1: his taste. Something was always the matter. They just weren't
3:05
Speaker 1: real princesses. So he returned home very sad and sorry,
3:10
Speaker 1: for he had set his heart on marrying a real princess.
3:16
Speaker 1: One evening a storm broke over the kingdom. The lightning flashed,
3:20
Speaker 1: the thunder roared, and the rain came down in bucketfuls.
3:25
Speaker 1: In the midst of this horrible storm, someone knocked on
3:30
Speaker 1: the city gate, and the king himself went down to
3:33
Speaker 1: open it. On the other side of the gate stood
3:37
Speaker 1: a princess, but goodness how wet she was. Water ran
3:42
Speaker 1: down her hair and her clothes in streams. It flowed
3:47
Speaker 1: in through the heels of her shoes and out through
3:49
Speaker 1: the toes. But she said that she was a real princess.
3:56
Speaker 1: We'll find that out quickly enough, thought the old queen,
3:59
Speaker 1: but she didn't say a word out loud. She hurried
4:02
Speaker 1: to the guest room and took all the bedclothes off
4:05
Speaker 1: the bed. Then on the bare bedstead, she put a pea.
4:11
Speaker 1: On top of the pea, she put twenty mattresses, and
4:15
Speaker 1: on top of the mattresses, twenty eiderdown quilts. That was
4:20
Speaker 1: the bed on which the princess had to sleep. In
4:25
Speaker 1: the morning, when someone asked her how she had slept,
4:27
Speaker 1: she replied, Oh, just wretchedly. I didn't close my eyes
4:31
Speaker 1: once the whole night through. God knows what was in
4:36
Speaker 1: that bed, but it was something hard, and I'm black
4:39
Speaker 1: and blue all over. Now they knew that she was
4:44
Speaker 1: a real princess, since she had felt the pee that
4:48
Speaker 1: was lying on the bed's bed through 20 mattresses and
4:51
Speaker 1: 20 eiderdown quilts. Only a real princess could be so sensitive.
4:57
Speaker 1: The prince married her. The pee was exhibited in the
5:01
Speaker 1: Royal Museum, and you can go there and see it
5:04
Speaker 1: if it hasn't been stolen. Now that's a real story.
5:10
Speaker 2: And as a little girl, that last phrase really stuck.
5:13
Speaker 2: Hans Christian Hansen said, it's real, it's got to be real.
5:16
Speaker 1: It's a real story like the real princess.
5:20
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. When we're looking at a tale, we can
5:26
Speaker 2: take several different lenses. Often we might decide this is
5:30
Speaker 2: a male psyche or a female psyche because the various
5:34
Speaker 2: figures might be interpreted somewhat differently. So if we imagine
5:39
Speaker 2: that this is in a male psyche, then there would
5:42
Speaker 2: be an identification with the prince. If it was a
5:46
Speaker 2: female psyche, there might be an identification with the queen
5:49
Speaker 2: or the princess. And then we might interpret it like
5:52
Speaker 2: a dream. And so the dream, so to speak, opens.
5:58
Speaker 2: And lo and behold, there's a prince, and he's single,
6:03
Speaker 2: he's unpartnered, he's incomplete. And he has this great energy
6:10
Speaker 2: to find his mate. Yeah.
6:13
Speaker 1: He travels the whole world looking for her.
6:17
Speaker 2: And in his evaluations, it just doesn't line up. So
6:22
Speaker 2: the first thing is the real. What does that mean,
6:25
Speaker 2: the real princess?
6:29
Speaker 1: My thought is two things. One is she has to
6:33
Speaker 1: be perfect for him. according to his standard and his evaluation,
6:42
Speaker 1: there cannot be anything amiss. And that's what the book says.
6:46
Speaker 1: There was always something amiss every time he thought he'd
6:50
Speaker 1: found a princess. So, yeah, maybe her hair color was
6:54
Speaker 1: a little off or she was too tall or not
6:58
Speaker 1: tall enough or maybe she had a little facial tick
7:02
Speaker 1: or something. So we don't know whether He has a
7:08
Speaker 1: standard in his mind that is an idealization, a concept,
7:15
Speaker 1: an image of something unattainable, or whether he's actually pretty
7:20
Speaker 1: discriminating and a certain kind of authenticity just doesn't come through.
7:26
Speaker 2: There's a wisdom, at least in the language, because I
7:31
Speaker 2: can imagine even in the courtly world, all the artifice
7:36
Speaker 2: of the court, all the layers of clothing and pomp
7:40
Speaker 2: and circumstance and crowns, that it could be very difficult
7:46
Speaker 2: to peer through all of the trappings to wonder who's
7:49
Speaker 2: the real princess, who's the real person behind all of
7:54
Speaker 2: the stuff of royalty. And lo and behold, he has
7:58
Speaker 2: delivered a young woman who is very real and not.
8:06
Speaker 1: Not fancy.
8:07
Speaker 2: Not fancy. Right. Not fancy at all.
8:10
Speaker 1: I want to pick up on what you said about
8:12
Speaker 1: the princesses in their various castles, you know, adorned and
8:17
Speaker 1: begowned and all the rest of it, that there would
8:21
Speaker 1: be a tremendous amount of persona in all the attire.
8:28
Speaker 1: and courtly etiquette and propriety and all of that stuff
8:35
Speaker 1: that would make it hard to feel into who's really real,
8:40
Speaker 1: all the status and mannerisms of what people think of
8:47
Speaker 1: as royalty.
8:48
Speaker 2: And I would imagine that there's all of this political negotiation,
8:53
Speaker 2: how much access they would even have to each other
8:56
Speaker 2: with these politically arranged matings, contracts and money and dowries
9:02
Speaker 2: and all this stuff.
9:03
Speaker 1: Right, it's a business.
9:05
Speaker 2: It's a business, and it has very little to do
9:08
Speaker 2: with soul and love. But there's something I think that's unique,
9:13
Speaker 2: is the prince is in a unique position that he
9:18
Speaker 2: gets to vet his spouse, which actually in those ancient
9:22
Speaker 2: monarchies That wasn't really the case. The parents were doing
9:26
Speaker 2: this for political alliances. But he's got him, he owns
9:31
Speaker 2: himself to some degree. He may not be, we don't
9:34
Speaker 2: know how sophisticated or how insightful he is, but he
9:38
Speaker 2: is at least, he's curious and he is searching.
9:43
Speaker 1: And the other possibility here, though, is that he's impossibly
9:48
Speaker 1: entitled to You know that if he searched the whole
9:52
Speaker 1: world over, there must have been quite some number of
9:56
Speaker 1: princesses that got assessed and audited. and auditioned and interviewed.
10:03
Speaker 1: And part of me wants to go like, really? You know,
10:07
Speaker 1: out of all those, what, 173 princesses, 482 princesses? There
10:16
Speaker 1: wasn't one that you thought you could be compatible with
10:22
Speaker 1: who was just human, who would be a fine and
10:26
Speaker 1: suitable mate for life in the real world?
10:29
Speaker 2: Apparently not.
10:31
Speaker 1: Right. Exactly so. Apparently not.
10:35
Speaker 2: And I would say that in a world that we
10:38
Speaker 2: live in with a 50% divorce rate, people might need
10:42
Speaker 2: to search a little bit harder. to find the right
10:47
Speaker 2: mate before you kind of grab the marital reins.
10:53
Speaker 1: That was great. Apparently not. So if this were a dream,
11:00
Speaker 1: we would do the when-then thing. So when our prince
11:05
Speaker 1: cannot find a princess despite all of his efforts, then
11:12
Speaker 1: what happens?
11:14
Speaker 2: Fate steps in.
11:15
Speaker 1: A storm breaks over the kingdom with lightning and thunder
11:20
Speaker 1: and pouring down rain. So psychically, what does that mean?
11:28
Speaker 2: The unconscious brings what the persona ego could not procure.
11:32
Speaker 2: That something greater than the ego is activated. And the
11:40
Speaker 2: other thing which the tale doesn't tell is, I was joking,
11:43
Speaker 2: but the ego has failed. And there is something important
11:49
Speaker 2: about the ego failing, that he's not omnipotent. He can't
11:54
Speaker 2: find the thing he wants, that he doesn't either have
11:58
Speaker 2: the competency or the insight or the energy, but that
12:03
Speaker 2: he's going home a failure. But that also sets a
12:08
Speaker 2: stage for perhaps also a level of openness. Because when
12:13
Speaker 2: you start out, He's full of himself and full of
12:16
Speaker 2: fantasies and pomp and circumstance. But the hundred thousandth failure,
12:21
Speaker 2: and then he's slouching home, can't do it.
12:25
Speaker 1: Oftentimes, too, I think, you know, it's a storm in
12:29
Speaker 1: the psyche.
12:30
Speaker 2: A storm in the psyche, yes.
12:33
Speaker 1: Everything breaks loose, the thunder and the lightning. And rain
12:39
Speaker 1: often is a symbol for feeling. Yeah. You know, our
12:44
Speaker 1: tears and the torrents of tears and feeling and wetness
12:52
Speaker 1: pouring down from above, which is when our princess appears.
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Speaker 2: Drenched. And I love those images. It's so wet. Water
13:02
Speaker 2: runs in through her heel and out the toes of
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Speaker 2: the shoes. That's a very interesting choice. that the shoes
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Speaker 2: are somehow exemplary of how much water there really is here.
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Speaker 1: And I love the contrast between the prince, you know,
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Speaker 1: going around to castle after courtly poppin' circumstance and this
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Speaker 1: is the exact opposite. She's soaking wet. It's nighttime. Thunder
13:38
Speaker 1: and lightning and she is Must have been the most drenched,
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Speaker 1: bedraggled human being on Earth at that moment. No persona
13:48
Speaker 1: is going on here.
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Speaker 2: And that alchemically, that the opus begins in darkness and
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Speaker 2: confusion and chaos. So that his personality is incomplete, he's
14:03
Speaker 2: in a very structured world, and the unconscious needs to
14:08
Speaker 2: send a storm. is to shake things up for him
14:13
Speaker 2: to perhaps even be able to be sensitive enough to
14:17
Speaker 2: perceive her truly.
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Speaker 1: And also, the opus often begins in salutio. Everything breaks
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Speaker 1: down and is brought back to its original state in solution. So,
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Speaker 1: tears are salutio, and certainly this rainstorm is evocative of
14:40
Speaker 1: taking everything right back to basics. Whatever fine gown she
14:45
Speaker 1: might have started out the day in is a sorry,
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Speaker 1: soggy mess by this time.
14:53
Speaker 3: Yes.
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Speaker 2: And then we have a gate.
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Speaker 1: Yes. Oh, that's right, the gate.
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Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. So the Citadel is locked. They're all isolated in there,
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Speaker 2: and the prince is no one can get in.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
15:08
Speaker 2: And somehow, I can't imagine that the king is out
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Speaker 2: there in the rain standing at the gate, but the
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Speaker 2: cries of the true anima, the true princess, somehow penetrate
15:20
Speaker 2: the defenses because gates and the walls around a palace
15:26
Speaker 2: are defenses. They block the way. But somehow, her voice
15:33
Speaker 2: is heard, her claim of legitimacy.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
15:36
Speaker 2: And the ruling principle in the psyche goes out, gets wet,
15:42
Speaker 2: goes to the gate and does the first evaluation and decides, yes,
15:50
Speaker 2: we will set aside at least one level of the
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Speaker 2: defensive structure of the psyche to examine this uncanny appearance.
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Speaker 1: You're right, but how would the king... even hear somebody
16:05
Speaker 1: knocking at the gate with all that thunder and lightning
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Speaker 1: and the rain hitting all the rooftops. Hmm.
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Speaker 2: So we're already in an uncanny thing, and nobody would
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Speaker 2: expect a king to go out through the muddy courtyard
16:22
Speaker 2: where people are throwing their piss pots to open up
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Speaker 2: a gate. I mean, it's a very lonely thing to do.
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Speaker 1: I do like to imagine that he had an umbrella.
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Speaker 2: There you go.
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Speaker 1: But Be that as it may, he nevertheless, as you say,
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Speaker 1: he goes out there in the storm to open the gate,
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Speaker 1: to open the defense, and let this bedraggled creature in
16:48
Speaker 1: simply because she says she's a real princess. You don't
16:54
Speaker 1: have any proof. You don't have any fine jewels. You
16:57
Speaker 1: don't have a letter of recommendation from, you know, the
17:02
Speaker 1: court attorney.
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Speaker 2: Or diplomats having been sent months before.
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Speaker 1: Right. You know, it sort of gives me the idea
17:12
Speaker 1: that all kinds of things I could just claim and
17:16
Speaker 1: people would say, yeah, sure, right, out you go.
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Speaker 2: But the thing that's being demonstrated is that he's the
17:24
Speaker 2: one carrying all the desire in the beginning. He's going out,
17:28
Speaker 2: he's beckoning, he's reaching. And this is ostensibly the first
17:34
Speaker 2: princess who has desire and reaches for him. Yeah.
17:39
Speaker 1: Although it's the king and not the prince.
17:42
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, but she has traveled to the kingdom. She's
17:48
Speaker 2: got the agency.
17:49
Speaker 1: And I like that. Your point's well taken, that what
17:53
Speaker 1: is being sought... somehow receives a message. We don't know how.
18:02
Speaker 1: And it comes through in a way, the worst possible way.
18:08
Speaker 1: But I'm also thinking about how it is the king
18:14
Speaker 1: that answers the pounding on the gate and lets her in.
18:20
Speaker 1: So now the parents of our prince have entered the tale.
18:26
Speaker 3: Right.
18:27
Speaker 1: All the princess has to do is say she said
18:30
Speaker 1: she was a real princess.
18:32
Speaker 2: Well, that's the beginning of a conversation. The king is curious.
18:37
Speaker 2: He's willing to have the encounter. And he feels safe enough.
18:43
Speaker 2: She doesn't seem threatening. But the mother principle, it's the
18:48
Speaker 2: great mother who also lets her in. But she's the
18:52
Speaker 2: one who is going to provide the discernment that the
18:56
Speaker 2: prince ostensibly would not be able to conjure.
19:00
Speaker 1: Exactly. Oftentimes in fairy tales, some bedraggled creature, in Six Swans, there's,
19:08
Speaker 1: at this point, a naked girl in a tree, and
19:12
Speaker 1: the king takes her home with him. In The Handless Maiden,
19:18
Speaker 1: here's our orphaned heroine missing her hands. The king takes
19:23
Speaker 1: her in. Aller Lio, the Many Furs Tale, she is
19:32
Speaker 1: allowed to be in the scullery, given a little room
19:37
Speaker 1: under the stairs somewhere like Harry Potter. But our princess
19:43
Speaker 1: is taken right on into the castle where, I love this,
19:48
Speaker 1: the old.
19:48
Speaker 2: Queen is.
19:50
Speaker 1: We'll find out quickly enough, says the old queen, like, yeah, well,
19:57
Speaker 1: from Missouri, you gotta show me.
20:00
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And interestingly, because of the condition within which the
20:05
Speaker 2: princess comes, the great mother now has access to create
20:11
Speaker 2: the test that I'm not sure she would have been
20:13
Speaker 2: able to deliver when the prince is running around in
20:16
Speaker 2: everyone else's kingdom. She has enough control over the psychic
20:21
Speaker 2: environment to then introduce her own evaluative process.
20:27
Speaker 1: Of all the things that you or I might think
20:31
Speaker 1: of to evaluate the authenticity of a princess, This one
20:39
Speaker 1: takes the cake. 20 mattresses and 20 eider-down feather beds.
20:47
Speaker 1: It's such a hilarious and vivid image, and many, many
20:51
Speaker 1: an artist has had a wonderful time. And then there
20:55
Speaker 1: was a musical play.
20:57
Speaker 2: Carol Burnett did a show with it, right? Spoofing it.
21:03
Speaker 1: She did a show, and there's a comedy called Once
21:07
Speaker 1: Upon a Mattress. Everybody has had a lot of fun
21:12
Speaker 1: with this particular characterological assessment.
21:18
Speaker 2: And it happens in the bedroom, which is the conjugal space.
21:23
Speaker 2: So the great mother prepares this very exaggerated thing. I
21:29
Speaker 2: don't know. It may have seemed very luxurious for the queen.
21:32
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how they tossed her up on this
21:33
Speaker 2: pile of mattresses.
21:34
Speaker 1: Yeah. I've often thought about that, too. How the heck
21:38
Speaker 1: do you get up there? It's hard enough getting to
21:41
Speaker 1: the top bunk.
21:44
Speaker 2: And the Great Mother is going to provide the ordeal,
21:47
Speaker 2: the initiatic ordeal.
21:49
Speaker 1: Ah, yes, indeed.
21:50
Speaker 2: The princess must somehow exhibit the right thing.
21:55
Speaker 1: And she does.
21:58
Speaker 2: And she does. She passes the test of vulnerability.
22:02
Speaker 1: Poor darlings. She's black and blue all over the next day. Now,
22:09
Speaker 1: the story doesn't say that somebody, you know, her supposed
22:14
Speaker 1: teacher mother-in-law took a look at her and went, oh,
22:17
Speaker 1: my gosh, you know, look at this. You know, poor
22:20
Speaker 1: child is really hurting. Again, it's just the princess herself
22:27
Speaker 1: who says, I'm black and blue all over.
22:30
Speaker 2: She has her own voice.
22:32
Speaker 1: But that's the right answer, isn't it?
22:34
Speaker 2: It is. It absolutely is. And that she expects to
22:38
Speaker 2: be heard and she expects her suffering to be validated.
22:43
Speaker 2: And let's talk about the pea. What is a pea?
22:48
Speaker 2: It's a seed. First of all, it's a seed. If
22:51
Speaker 2: you plant a dried pea, it would grow into a plant.
22:55
Speaker 2: So it has something to do with seed development. It
22:59
Speaker 2: has to do with growth that is held in reserve.
23:03
Speaker 2: It's the smallest kernel with the largest effect. The stone
23:08
Speaker 2: rejected by the builders. Semen, the thing that is not
23:14
Speaker 2: fertile in the environment. So the fact that it's a
23:18
Speaker 2: pea versus a jewel or a dagger, there's something about
23:23
Speaker 2: the fact that it's a seed that she is so
23:26
Speaker 2: vulnerable to. And it turns out to be precious because
23:31
Speaker 2: it then gives the information that is needed. So it's
23:35
Speaker 2: both vile in as much as it hurts, but it's
23:38
Speaker 2: also precious because it is the determinant that allows the truth,
23:44
Speaker 2: the real thing, to be revealed.
23:49
Speaker 1: Now, there are some variations on this tale. There's one
23:54
Speaker 1: from India where it's about three princesses. And each one
24:00
Speaker 1: of them is really injured. They're knocked unconscious by a
24:08
Speaker 1: falling flower petal because they are so sensitive. And yet
24:16
Speaker 1: another one where there's some sensitive prince who there's a
24:20
Speaker 1: single hair under his mattress and he feels that. So
24:26
Speaker 1: at this point, I can't help but start to entertain
24:30
Speaker 1: the hypothesis that no doubt many listeners already there of,
24:36
Speaker 1: is this a satire? Is this a spoof? And I
24:41
Speaker 1: remember as a kid being so puzzled about, was it
24:46
Speaker 1: a pea or was it a dried pea? I mean,
24:49
Speaker 1: at least in other words, was it hard? Did it
24:52
Speaker 1: have a kernel like popcorn?
24:54
Speaker 2: Or was it a mushy canned pea?
24:58
Speaker 1: Right. Of like, Wouldn't it get squished under all those mattresses?
25:02
Speaker 1: I was a very literal child.
25:04
Speaker 2: Yes, of course. It makes perfect sense.
25:07
Speaker 1: But here we have something that is obviously pretty silly.
25:14
Speaker 2: Well, and we could imagine that Hans Christian Andersen is
25:17
Speaker 2: poking fun at royals who were just so precious, so pampered,
25:21
Speaker 2: they just couldn't possibly tolerate a real life. So he's poking,
25:27
Speaker 2: perhaps deliberately, Consciously, he thinks he's being satirical, but we
25:32
Speaker 2: can still imagine it seriously. And I want to take
25:36
Speaker 2: a moment to think about the 20 mattresses and 20 blankets,
25:41
Speaker 2: which equal 40. And 40 is a very archetypal number.
25:46
Speaker 1: Oh, good for you, Joseph.
25:48
Speaker 2: Because, you know, you're out in the desert for 40
25:51
Speaker 2: years or 40 days and you're being tested. So 40
25:54
Speaker 2: is this magical number that has to do with testing
26:02
Speaker 2: and trial.
26:03
Speaker 1: And guess how many weeks a woman is pregnant if
26:08
Speaker 1: it's full term? Forty. Forty. And, you know, 40 is
26:13
Speaker 1: an amplification of the number four, which in Jung's theory
26:19
Speaker 1: and thinking had to do with structural wholeness. So it's
26:25
Speaker 1: the right amount of time. for something to grow and
26:30
Speaker 1: ripen in the psyche. And she is under 40 mattresses
26:36
Speaker 1: and eiderdown feather beds.
26:39
Speaker 2: Aha. So we can imagine that there are layers of defense,
26:44
Speaker 2: layers of obfuscation, layers of persona, things that mask, masking
26:51
Speaker 2: through the appearance of comfort and specialness. But then there's
26:55
Speaker 2: a little living thing. the seed which is placed way
27:00
Speaker 2: at the bottom and can she discern the potential the
27:07
Speaker 2: potential of the prince the potential of the marriage her
27:11
Speaker 2: own possible fertility can she sense the secret thing through
27:17
Speaker 2: all the layers of obfuscation and what i would suggest
27:22
Speaker 2: is that p is a metaphor for the prince Can
27:26
Speaker 2: you see beneath the royalty, the crown, all the money
27:32
Speaker 2: and status? Can she discern something real, even as he
27:37
Speaker 2: is trying to discern something real?
27:39
Speaker 1: Ah, fair enough. And I think there is an element
27:45
Speaker 1: of satire here.
27:46
Speaker 2: Yes, of course.
27:47
Speaker 1: Of course, we can't miss that. And when they say
27:52
Speaker 1: only a real princess could be so sensitive, Sometimes that's
27:59
Speaker 1: a way of being a little disdainful about somebody. Like, oh, well,
28:04
Speaker 1: she's just a real princess. Oh, she couldn't do that. Yeah.
28:10
Speaker 1: So there can be a sarcasm in that. And there
28:18
Speaker 1: are all of these symbolic, mythological, and archetypal images that
28:27
Speaker 1: hearken to something deeper. In this little story that has,
28:33
Speaker 1: I don't know, something like eight little paragraphs in it,
28:36
Speaker 1: it's not even a page and a half in the book,
28:40
Speaker 1: there is that other element. And so if we're tempted
28:44
Speaker 1: to just sort of write it off as a spoof,
28:48
Speaker 1: and I do agree with you that there's a cultural element,
28:51
Speaker 1: there's often a cultural element in fairy tales of commenting
28:57
Speaker 1: on social and cultural norms. And the commoners and the
29:02
Speaker 1: so-called royals were forever inserting those elements into all kinds
29:10
Speaker 1: of things. So that's there too.
29:13
Speaker 2: So we're doing something that analysts do. You might have
29:16
Speaker 2: a client come in and tell a story they think
29:18
Speaker 2: is funny. And the analyst might think it's funny, but
29:21
Speaker 2: also they're trying to look beneath the story that the
29:25
Speaker 2: ego thinks it's telling. Yeah. So hence Christian Anderson may
29:29
Speaker 2: be writing this and his conscious attitude is, oh, these royals,
29:32
Speaker 2: I'm sick and tired of them. And yet his unconscious
29:37
Speaker 2: also has its own separate voice that very well may
29:41
Speaker 2: have put these little tells, little parapraxies, Freudian slips, that
29:48
Speaker 2: tell a second interesting story which helps the tale remain
29:53
Speaker 2: relevant through the passage of time. Right.
29:58
Speaker 1: I like that a lot. that lest we take things
30:03
Speaker 1: for its sort of surface value, this tiny little nugget
30:07
Speaker 1: of a tail, think about what's underneath. There are other
30:12
Speaker 1: layers and other truths, and there's a bivalence here of,
30:18
Speaker 1: is our princess, you know, just all taken with herself
30:24
Speaker 1: and her incredible sensitivity, or... Is there a reality and
30:29
Speaker 1: an authenticity here that perhaps even hence Christian Anderson didn't
30:35
Speaker 1: really know he was putting down on paper? But there
30:40
Speaker 1: it is.
30:41
Speaker 2: Yeah. Can we look underneath the 40 layers of fluff
30:45
Speaker 2: and fun and sarcasm? There is a kernel of truth,
30:51
Speaker 2: a seed of truth underneath all of what might have
30:55
Speaker 2: been silliness.
30:58
Speaker 1: Yeah. What do you make of the fact that the
31:01
Speaker 1: prince's parents are the ones that really get things moving?
31:08
Speaker 1: The king goes to open the gate, and the queen
31:13
Speaker 1: is the one that says, okay, let's do an assessment
31:18
Speaker 1: with the mattresses and the feather beds.
31:22
Speaker 2: I think it has to do with the fact that
31:24
Speaker 2: the ego has failed. that whatever criteria he was trampsing
31:28
Speaker 2: around with, he couldn't get the job done. He couldn't
31:32
Speaker 2: even recognize, like you said, how was he evaluating any
31:37
Speaker 2: of these girls? And so something deeper, something superordinate to
31:43
Speaker 2: the ego gets involved, much like the storm. Right. And
31:49
Speaker 2: helps something happen. And it's a great blessing. And sometimes
31:54
Speaker 2: that happens for us. We've We've exhausted our ability to
31:58
Speaker 2: figure something out. And then you get a dream. You
32:02
Speaker 2: didn't figure that out, but the inner ones that are
32:05
Speaker 2: watching out for you are offering something because you did
32:11
Speaker 2: everything you could and you still need something. So I
32:16
Speaker 2: think that sometimes we're blessed that way. that something else
32:21
Speaker 2: in the psyche intervenes when we abjectly cannot do the
32:26
Speaker 2: necessary thing to be made whole.
32:29
Speaker 1: And if we take this tale as an image of
32:34
Speaker 1: one psyche, which is the typical Jungian perspective on any
32:39
Speaker 1: fairy tale, that like a dream, all of the characters
32:43
Speaker 1: and the situation is part of one psyche, I'm just
32:48
Speaker 1: building on what you said, that the prince is young
32:50
Speaker 1: and he's callow, and he just couldn't get the job done.
32:56
Speaker 1: But the wisdom figures, his parents, the king lets in
33:02
Speaker 1: this bedraggled young woman. He somehow hears the knocking at
33:09
Speaker 1: the gate, and he lets her in. So that starts
33:14
Speaker 1: things moving. I mean, previously they'd been at a standstill.
33:19
Speaker 1: And the queen brings, as you said, the discerning power,
33:24
Speaker 1: the logos of, okay, well, we'll see about that. But again,
33:30
Speaker 1: is participating. Both those images in the psyche, the king
33:36
Speaker 1: and queen, the parents, go toward this soaking wet young
33:44
Speaker 1: woman with what an unappealing sight she must have been.
33:48
Speaker 2: Yes, but something in them saw beneath the outer seeming
33:53
Speaker 2: of things.
33:54
Speaker 3: Yeah.
33:55
Speaker 2: But let me do another amplification and talk about the
33:58
Speaker 2: myth of Sophia. So in the Gnostic myth, Sophia is
34:03
Speaker 2: part of this divine order. Some disaster happens. She separates out.
34:10
Speaker 2: She falls out of the heavens and in her confusion
34:15
Speaker 2: creates this tumultuous world out of pieces of herself so
34:20
Speaker 2: that the divine feminine is lost in the world. And
34:24
Speaker 2: part of the Gnostic tradition is to find the sparks
34:29
Speaker 2: of Sophia that are lost in the world and to
34:33
Speaker 2: relate to them. So there is The secret feminine divinity
34:40
Speaker 2: in nature, in the plainness that is hidden in the darkness.
34:45
Speaker 2: And here in the darkness of the storm, it's the
34:47
Speaker 2: middle of the night. Yeah. She's wet. She's like Sophia,
34:53
Speaker 2: lost in matter itself. And that takes the wisdom of
34:59
Speaker 2: the king and the queen to hear the validity of
35:04
Speaker 2: the cry. and to receive the secret, the feminine that
35:11
Speaker 2: is lost in the storm and could easily have been
35:16
Speaker 2: overlooked by someone who doesn't understand how to see.
35:21
Speaker 1: It's such a tale of redemption, isn't it?
35:25
Speaker 2: In that way, absolutely. It's a two-second moment, but it's
35:29
Speaker 2: a profound moment.
35:31
Speaker 1: Yes, that they let her in. Right.
35:35
Speaker 2: They give her a chance. At the very least, they're
35:38
Speaker 2: going to take care of her, even if she doesn't
35:40
Speaker 2: turn out to be the one for the prince. They're
35:43
Speaker 2: not going to just ignore this suffering human outside the gate.
35:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's exactly so. At least they take her in.
35:53
Speaker 1: And that actually has a lot of mythological references of
36:00
Speaker 1: Balchus and Philemon take in Hermes and Zeus in disguise
36:06
Speaker 1: where others have barred their doors. And this poor old
36:11
Speaker 1: couple on the outskirts of town welcomes them and prepares
36:17
Speaker 1: a meal for them. And then they notice that the
36:21
Speaker 1: pitcher that should have been emptied of the wine still
36:26
Speaker 1: has wine in it.
36:28
Speaker 2: Miracles start happening because you open the door.
36:31
Speaker 1: And, you know, around The Mediterranean, it's in the Odyssey
36:38
Speaker 1: and in other tales that when Odysseus is sort of
36:42
Speaker 1: washed ashore, that there is a hospitality code and you
36:48
Speaker 1: seek out somebody who's the same social status as you.
36:54
Speaker 1: And they basically have to take you in. And there's
36:58
Speaker 1: a very strong guest tradition. There is something about they
37:06
Speaker 1: let her in.
37:08
Speaker 2: And the prince doesn't join them. So we might imagine
37:11
Speaker 2: that the ego, as in his journey, he's not mature
37:16
Speaker 2: enough to discern the thing that's hidden from him. But
37:20
Speaker 2: something deeper, wiser, more experienced can.
37:25
Speaker 1: It's really a very nice tale with quite a moral
37:30
Speaker 1: tone to it of be open, Try it out. Don't
37:38
Speaker 1: judge things just by appearance. But then also use your
37:43
Speaker 1: head and come up with an evaluative process. How many
37:48
Speaker 1: mattresses does the castle have that we can stack up
37:53
Speaker 1: like this? So there's a fun, spoofy element, but also
37:59
Speaker 1: a lot of psychological wisdom.
38:01
Speaker 2: I think so. And I find it interesting that She's bruised. Mm-hmm.
38:08
Speaker 2: So her body reveals the truth. That if she had
38:13
Speaker 2: just said, oh, I didn't sleep, it was terrible. Well,
38:17
Speaker 2: maybe she's just saying stuff. But the fact that something
38:22
Speaker 2: that she couldn't fabricate, her body is telling a truth.
38:27
Speaker 2: That she is registering the objective reality of the pee,
38:31
Speaker 2: and it is impressing something upon her. And that is
38:37
Speaker 2: compelling evidence for the king and the queen and for
38:40
Speaker 2: the prince as well. That's a way that she's not lying.
38:45
Speaker 2: Because who would willingly hurt themselves for that matter? So
38:50
Speaker 2: there are marks upon her regarding the discernment, the seed,
38:57
Speaker 2: the potential for the marriage.
38:59
Speaker 1: Hmm. It's a lovely tale. And also, it's such a
39:05
Speaker 1: lovely tale about appearances and sensitivity. I kept thinking, here's
39:13
Speaker 1: our sensitive, sensitive princess. So what is she doing out
39:17
Speaker 1: at night in the middle of a horrible storm?
39:19
Speaker 2: That's the whole mystery there. I need the prequel to
39:23
Speaker 2: this whole story. Yeah.
39:24
Speaker 1: I mean, she wasn't too sensitive to go out in
39:26
Speaker 1: the storm.
39:27
Speaker 2: Yes. Some things happened. She fallen out of a carriage,
39:32
Speaker 2: some strange thing, and she's got some strength. I mean,
39:36
Speaker 2: she's walking around in a gown and open-toed shoes in
39:40
Speaker 2: the middle of a storm, knocking on gates. She has
39:44
Speaker 2: no one around her and none of her retinue is
39:46
Speaker 2: around her.
39:47
Speaker 1: It doesn't say what she was wearing, but I like
39:52
Speaker 1: that somehow, in some mysterious way, if you are truly
39:59
Speaker 1: seeking something, it's the seeking you shall find with a twist.
40:06
Speaker 1: Seeking it will come toward you, possibly at the worst
40:10
Speaker 1: possible time and looking in the worst possible way. But
40:16
Speaker 1: Wishes can come true. You wanted a princess? Here's a princess.
40:20
Speaker 2: Now, the other thing about reality is she is so sensitive.
40:25
Speaker 2: And that says something because the people that are working
40:29
Speaker 2: the fields, the peasants, they're rough, the rough ones. They
40:33
Speaker 2: have calluses on their hands. Their muscles are hardened. Right.
40:37
Speaker 2: And those are all signs of not being privileged enough
40:42
Speaker 2: to have everybody do everything for you. So the royalty
40:46
Speaker 2: are all delicate and soft and not even muscular, which
40:50
Speaker 2: was seen as a sign of privilege that way. But
40:54
Speaker 2: she's also real because she's bruised. She's imperfect. So as
41:01
Speaker 2: the prince is visiting these various princesses, they're not showing
41:05
Speaker 2: up with bruises. They're not going to subject themselves to
41:10
Speaker 2: pretty much even picking up a fork or a plate.
41:13
Speaker 2: Everything's pampered. But she's also real because she has been
41:19
Speaker 2: slightly hurt.
41:20
Speaker 1: Yeah. Maybe she had a sensory processing disorder.
41:24
Speaker 2: Maybe so.
41:26
Speaker 1: Of some sort.
41:27
Speaker 2: Her body is telling a truth, and that truth is
41:30
Speaker 2: substantive enough for it to make the difference.
41:35
Speaker 1: I also am thinking about highly sensitive people.
41:40
Speaker 2: And a lot.
41:43
Speaker 1: Has been written about this. There's a book about it.
41:47
Speaker 1: And how people that are highly sensitive often get treated
41:53
Speaker 1: with what I think might be the typical response to
41:57
Speaker 1: this tale, which is, oh, for Pete's sake, you know,
42:01
Speaker 1: give me a break. She feels a pee under all
42:05
Speaker 1: those mattresses and eiderdowns. You know, that tendency to sort
42:11
Speaker 1: of gaffe it off and be disdainful. And the highly
42:18
Speaker 1: sensitive people often experience some of this, of, oh, for
42:24
Speaker 1: peace sakes, you really have to be so sensitive about everything? Oh,
42:28
Speaker 1: just get over it. And the story just, in the
42:34
Speaker 1: words on the page, say she felt it and she
42:41
Speaker 1: was black and blue all over. So there is a
42:45
Speaker 1: validation here of A, you were right. There was a P.
42:52
Speaker 1: You did not make it up. And B, you get
42:56
Speaker 1: to marry the prince. It proves your worth. You have
43:02
Speaker 1: met the standard. The sensitivity can stand you in good stead,
43:08
Speaker 1: which I think is often true for highly sensitive people,
43:10
Speaker 1: that what they see, feel, make meaning of is actually there.
43:18
Speaker 1: And other people often want to just disparage that, like,
43:22
Speaker 1: but that's not important. You should just keep going. And like, yeah,
43:28
Speaker 1: there was a P.
43:29
Speaker 2: So if we take the dream, as we said before,
43:33
Speaker 2: as the kingdom and all the characters, all four of
43:37
Speaker 2: them are a psyche, and that the tale could be
43:41
Speaker 2: interpreted as a psychological event. So we have a young
43:45
Speaker 2: Puerh prince. He's not terribly experienced. He's doing what he does,
43:51
Speaker 2: but he's missing parts of himself. And so the missing
43:56
Speaker 2: part of the personality, which we often call the fourth function,
43:59
Speaker 2: that the part of us that is most in the unconscious,
44:04
Speaker 2: least developed, is often touchy and tyrannical even. Because it
44:11
Speaker 2: hasn't been integrated, but is the necessary thing to be
44:14
Speaker 2: whole because there are only three in the castle and
44:18
Speaker 2: the fourth, the second coupling comes forward. And she, like
44:27
Speaker 2: all of our functions that have not emerged or have
44:30
Speaker 2: only just emerged, there is a hypersensitivity in that. that
44:35
Speaker 2: it hasn't had the benefit of being worked into the
44:39
Speaker 2: personality yet, but it still is absolutely the thing that's
44:44
Speaker 2: needed for wholeness to happen. And the marital conjoining is
44:50
Speaker 2: often the symbol of wholeness, the coming together of the
44:54
Speaker 2: two disparate things to make a whole single thing. Then
44:59
Speaker 2: we have a little jest at the end, you know,
45:01
Speaker 2: and the pea's in a museum, so install it. You know,
45:07
Speaker 2: so that little wink at the end goes on and on.
45:11
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I think all in all, we've had a
45:16
Speaker 1: lot of fun with it. And it is a wonderful spoof.
45:21
Speaker 1: It's a satire. I'm sure, you know, Hans Christian Andersen
45:26
Speaker 1: was not royalty, but he was known at that time.
45:31
Speaker 1: So he had plenty of opportunity to mingle with them.
45:35
Speaker 1: So I think we have some class resentment going on here.
45:40
Speaker 1: It's impossible to read the story without laughing. And there
45:48
Speaker 1: are some real psychological truths if we stay a little longer,
45:53
Speaker 1: use our imaginations, really kind of take a look and
45:59
Speaker 1: are willing to find those P's. under the surface mattresses,
46:06
Speaker 1: so to speak, of this story, not just laugh it
46:11
Speaker 1: off and gaffe it off.
46:13
Speaker 2: And just here at the end, I want to just
46:15
Speaker 2: humanize Hans Christian Andersen because having read a little bit
46:19
Speaker 2: about the person and his struggles and his suffering, the
46:25
Speaker 2: story is, I think, also a personal fantasy for him.
46:29
Speaker 2: Hans Christian Andersen was a gay, artistic fellow, living in
46:34
Speaker 2: a world where there was no place for him. So
46:37
Speaker 2: isn't he the one at the gate, banging, abandoned, and
46:43
Speaker 2: hoping to be found and hoping to be validated? Does
46:48
Speaker 2: he have a prince somewhere in the world that can
46:51
Speaker 2: actually see him behind all of whatever else is there?
46:57
Speaker 2: Could he be recognized? And I often think of many
47:00
Speaker 2: of his tales, and I put him Like, he's the
47:04
Speaker 2: ugly duckling. He's the gay boy that nobody can recognize.
47:09
Speaker 2: So his aching and his loneliness, and when he did
47:14
Speaker 2: finally find somebody, after a while he was rejected and
47:17
Speaker 2: spent the rest of his life pining and alone. So
47:22
Speaker 2: he himself is a tragic figure, and many of his tales... Mm-hmm.
47:27
Speaker 2: are fantasies of blooming and finding your tribe and being accepted,
47:33
Speaker 2: although at first the characters are decried and rejected and invisible.
47:40
Speaker 2: So I feel for him in this story, and yes,
47:44
Speaker 2: he's poking fun maybe at himself, and the suffering is real.
47:49
Speaker 1: Yeah. He was an orphan, bedraggled and wet, and nobody
47:55
Speaker 1: really let him in.
47:57
Speaker 2: Right. He's the little match girl also. You can fit
48:00
Speaker 2: him in these stories and there's a poignancy in it,
48:05
Speaker 2: even in the tales that are silly. Are they silly?
48:10
Speaker 2: There's an ache hidden in so much of this.
48:25
Speaker 1: Our dream is... A woman who's 22, she's a student,
48:30
Speaker 1: and here is the dream. I was laying in a
48:35
Speaker 1: moored boat at night and trying to sleep, but was
48:38
Speaker 1: unable to because the moon was full and very big,
48:44
Speaker 1: and it was so intense and almost terrifying. It was
48:48
Speaker 1: shining down on me. Then the boat started flooding with
48:52
Speaker 1: water from some mechanism that was inside the boat. the
48:56
Speaker 1: boat was not sinking. There was just water pouring all
49:00
Speaker 1: over my and the bottom of me and the bottom
49:03
Speaker 1: of the boat from a pump for drinking water, not
49:07
Speaker 1: water from the outside of the boat. And for context,
49:11
Speaker 1: she says, I've recently been seeing someone new after a
49:15
Speaker 1: long and difficult on and off relationship and have been
49:19
Speaker 1: struggling with the transition into something healthier and less extreme.
49:24
Speaker 1: I graduate soon and am not sure what I'm doing
49:28
Speaker 1: after this. I feel quite frightened about what potentially is
49:32
Speaker 1: opening up for me since it's all so unfamiliar. And
49:36
Speaker 1: she says the feelings in the dream was just a
49:39
Speaker 1: lot of anxiety.
49:41
Speaker 2: So she is laying in a moored boat at night
49:48
Speaker 2: trying to sleep.
49:50
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the moon was full.
49:52
Speaker 2: So many symbols of the unconscious. So she's lying down.
49:59
Speaker 2: We have a sense that she's not expecting to be active.
50:02
Speaker 2: She's waiting. The boat is not going to go anywhere.
50:06
Speaker 2: A moored boat means it's tied either to a dock
50:09
Speaker 2: or to a buoy. But it is a stable thing.
50:14
Speaker 2: And she is trying to slip deeper into the unconscious.
50:17
Speaker 2: But that is not permitted. She's not permitted to go unconscious.
50:23
Speaker 1: Exactly. I also love this image of the moon. That
50:29
Speaker 1: is such an archetypal image. We all know it from...
50:34
Speaker 1: all kinds of songs and tales and illustrations, and it
50:40
Speaker 1: goes on and on. And it is very much an
50:43
Speaker 1: image of the feminine. Sun is often associated with the
50:47
Speaker 1: masculine and the moon with the feminine, of the thing
50:53
Speaker 1: that provides light in the night, the lunar kind of
50:59
Speaker 1: light that is softer, it waxes, it wanes. But this
51:04
Speaker 1: is a full moon. The tides are higher.
51:08
Speaker 2: Yes. And often if people see a big full moon,
51:14
Speaker 2: it suggests the unconscious is very active and very present.
51:19
Speaker 2: If it was a big shiny sun, we might say, oh,
51:21
Speaker 2: the ego is really awake, really bright. So the unconscious
51:26
Speaker 2: is super active in this dream. And I think most importantly...
51:31
Speaker 2: The moon is big and full, and it's so intense,
51:34
Speaker 2: almost terrifying. So let's talk about that terror of the
51:42
Speaker 2: unconscious itself, and she's only 22. So much of the struggle,
51:49
Speaker 2: if we take Neumann's work, in the first half of
51:54
Speaker 2: life is separating from the unconscious. As children, we are
51:58
Speaker 2: predominantly unconscious and instinctive little creatures and the maturational process
52:05
Speaker 2: is the ego you know corralling the instincts and also
52:08
Speaker 2: becoming increasingly more awake and more agentic and making decisions
52:14
Speaker 2: so the unconscious is in a sense a kind of
52:17
Speaker 2: threat in as much as it can draw her back
52:21
Speaker 2: backwards into something while she is still like all people
52:27
Speaker 2: in their 20s fighting to be awake and to make
52:31
Speaker 2: good choices, which she is doing in her outer life.
52:35
Speaker 2: She's trying to make a better choice and to not
52:38
Speaker 2: fall into the unconscious pattern, which is to date impossible men.
52:44
Speaker 2: And getting free of the unconscious and feeling the power
52:49
Speaker 2: of the unconscious to kind of grab her and push
52:53
Speaker 2: her around, which is true. The unconscious is very powerful.
52:58
Speaker 2: And that's a bit of an initiation. Like, the unconscious
53:01
Speaker 2: is a bit terrifying. And Jung might say, yes, yes
53:05
Speaker 2: it is. And he lamented, especially in the 40s and 50s,
53:12
Speaker 2: as the New Age movement, which he's thought to be
53:16
Speaker 2: the grandfather of, by the way, people were taking his
53:20
Speaker 2: books and they were saying things like, oh, the unconscious,
53:22
Speaker 2: it's all wisdom. Your unconscious will solve everything. And all
53:26
Speaker 2: this idealization of the unconscious came forward from his writings.
53:32
Speaker 2: And Jung kept trying to remind people, like, wait a minute. Yes,
53:37
Speaker 2: and the unconscious is full of dragons and monsters, and
53:40
Speaker 2: it can trick you into doing incredibly dangerous things. It's
53:45
Speaker 2: not all roses.
53:47
Speaker 1: But one might think, from this particular dream, that in fact,
53:54
Speaker 1: all these images of the unconscious are really pretty beneficent.
54:00
Speaker 1: First of all, she's in a boat, but it's moored.
54:04
Speaker 1: So obviously it's near a dock or the shore or
54:07
Speaker 1: maybe it's in a marina, who knows. But it's moored.
54:11
Speaker 1: It's not out in the middle of the ocean. And
54:15
Speaker 1: she's trying to sleep. And here is this moon that
54:20
Speaker 1: most people love the full moon. It's something wonderful and magical.
54:28
Speaker 1: Here on the Cape in the summer, one of the
54:31
Speaker 1: favorite rituals is to go to the beach the night
54:35
Speaker 1: of the full moon. Because you're looking out over the
54:39
Speaker 1: Atlantic and moonrise is spectacular. And it's summer, the weather's warm,
54:46
Speaker 1: and let's go see the moon rise. Let's go out
54:50
Speaker 1: to the beach. But for her... even though it is
54:55
Speaker 1: shining down on her, it's intense and almost terrifying.
55:02
Speaker 2: But we have to be careful not to confuse the
55:04
Speaker 2: levels because the outer world moon, you're right, it's beautiful.
55:08
Speaker 2: It's not going to cause you to get flooded. It's
55:10
Speaker 2: not going to do weird things to you. But the
55:13
Speaker 2: inner moon is not the same as the outer moon.
55:18
Speaker 2: The inner moon is a living thing. that has autonomous
55:22
Speaker 2: active energy in it. And if we do the when-then formula,
55:27
Speaker 2: when the terrifying full moon shines on me, flooding happens.
55:33
Speaker 1: Yeah. But let's look at the flooding. It's flooding with
55:37
Speaker 1: water from a mechanism, not the ocean or the lake,
55:42
Speaker 1: whatever she was. And the boat is not sinking. Nothing
55:46
Speaker 1: really terrible is happening. There's just water pouring all over
55:51
Speaker 1: me and the bottom of the boat from a pump
55:55
Speaker 1: for drinking water. So it's from within. And not only that,
56:02
Speaker 1: the water, Kim, is for drinking. It's not salt water.
56:06
Speaker 1: It's not just lake water. It is water intended for
56:11
Speaker 1: human use.
56:12
Speaker 2: Yes, but it is malfunctioning. It has lost its container function.
56:18
Speaker 2: And there is a problem. I mean, if you had
56:20
Speaker 2: a boat and all of a sudden a pump started
56:23
Speaker 2: pumping water all over the boat, it's going to damage
56:26
Speaker 2: things and it's scary. And she doesn't know why all
56:31
Speaker 2: of a sudden this saturation is everywhere.
56:35
Speaker 1: What I'm thinking that may be somewhat different from what
56:38
Speaker 1: you're thinking is, I'm putting it in the context of
56:44
Speaker 1: the difficult on and off past relationships something newer that's healthier,
56:51
Speaker 1: less extreme, and, oh, this huge life event of graduating
56:58
Speaker 1: and having to get out into the big, wide world.
57:04
Speaker 1: So all these things are uncomfortable and upsetting to our
57:08
Speaker 1: dream ego, but nothing really bad is going on. She's
57:13
Speaker 1: in a boat. It's moored. It's the moon. There's a
57:19
Speaker 1: mechanism inside the boat. The flooding is, you know, it
57:25
Speaker 1: needs attention and it's not a good thing, but it's
57:28
Speaker 1: not terrible. And it's drinking water. It's for human consumption.
57:35
Speaker 1: So nothing terrible is going on, but our dream ego
57:41
Speaker 1: is upset.
57:42
Speaker 2: And something is required of her. She can't just lay
57:45
Speaker 2: there and go to sleep while the boat's being damaged. Like,
57:49
Speaker 2: She's got to figure out something with this problem.
57:54
Speaker 1: Or get out of the boat.
57:55
Speaker 2: Well, you wouldn't want to get out of the boat
57:57
Speaker 2: because then the damage will just advance more and more
58:00
Speaker 2: and more. If the boat matters to her, she's got
58:05
Speaker 2: to figure out the problem. If she abandons it, the
58:08
Speaker 2: damage will get worse and worse.
58:09
Speaker 1: Right. Go get some containers to catch the water. Try
58:13
Speaker 1: to fix the mechanisms.
58:15
Speaker 2: How do you turn it off? Yeah.
58:17
Speaker 1: But also, worst case, Just get out of the boat.
58:22
Speaker 2: Could be. Now, the boat is often a symbol for
58:25
Speaker 2: the ego.
58:26
Speaker 1: Yes. Floating on the sea of the unconscious.
58:31
Speaker 2: There's the unconscious above and the unconscious below.
58:35
Speaker 1: But I find that actually very reassuring, given the life
58:40
Speaker 1: circumstances of transition and change that she's in. And I
58:46
Speaker 1: find myself wanting to say, nothing really terrible is happening.
58:50
Speaker 1: But it does feel alarming. And there are things that
58:55
Speaker 1: you can do. You still do have agency. Right.
58:58
Speaker 2: There's a problem that the ego needs to solve as
59:02
Speaker 2: it is learning how to float upon the unconscious, how
59:06
Speaker 2: to be in the moonlight. And the ego being flooded...
59:10
Speaker 2: is often a metaphor for these intense feelings. And she's
59:13
Speaker 2: saying that she feels quite frightened about what potentially is
59:18
Speaker 2: opening up for me because it's unfamiliar. So there are
59:23
Speaker 2: these feelings that get into the boat that are a
59:29
Speaker 2: bit much. It would be nice if she had a
59:31
Speaker 2: dry boat so she wasn't so impacted by unconscious material.
59:35
Speaker 2: And I think the dream is, as you said, Deb,
59:39
Speaker 2: it's letting her know that the terror may be nothing
59:42
Speaker 2: more than a pump that needs to be unplugged until
59:45
Speaker 2: you can get it replaced. That you're not under severe threat,
59:51
Speaker 2: but the real issue is, can we kind of get
59:55
Speaker 2: a cleaner separation between the conscious and the unconscious? So
1:00:00
Speaker 2: some of these terrors may not really belong in the
1:00:05
Speaker 2: job search after graduation.
1:00:09
Speaker 1: It's such a tough rite of passage, isn't it?
1:00:12
Speaker 2: It is.
1:00:13
Speaker 1: That we're really tossed out there into a really big
1:00:17
Speaker 1: and overwhelming world from the confines of our family homes.
1:00:24
Speaker 1: And then sort of this intermediary place where you get
1:00:29
Speaker 1: fed with all the learning and coursework. And it's called
1:00:33
Speaker 1: the Alma Mater, the All-Mother. And then, ah!
1:00:38
Speaker 2: You're out in your own boat, out in the ocean.
1:00:40
Speaker 1: It is a big rite of passage. There's no question
1:00:45
Speaker 1: about that. It is.
1:00:47
Speaker 3: It is.
1:00:49
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
1:00:51
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