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How to Work with Denial: A Jungian Guide to Facing Reality · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The etymology of denial comes from the Latin that means
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: to refuse. So it sort of is like a refusal
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: of reality. I think we probably all use denial all
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: of the time, by the way.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: I never use denial.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Except for Joseph.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: Were we just talking?
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Okay. Is it time for lunch?
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: There you go.
• 0:32
  Speaker 4: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:40
  Speaker 4: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:44
  Speaker 4: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Denial was one of Freud's initial defenses that he identified.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: That concept has certainly entered the popular culture. We all
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: know that we can see our friends, our colleagues, perhaps
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: our spouses in a state of denial about something or other.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: It's often very easy to spot in other people.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: There you go.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: It's that sense of thinking, if I don't acknowledge it,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: it didn't happen or it's not happening. And it's kind
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: of built into our language because sometimes when we get
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: bad news, the first thing we say is, oh, no.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: So there it is.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: So denial was not a concept that Jung talked about
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: a lot. And yet, I think the idea is still
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: very much embedded in his thinking, and it is something
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: that we do all engage in. So let's knock it around,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: see if we can find a Jungian take on it,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: and discuss what is the significance of denial.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: So when the Freudians and the post-Freudians were just lining
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: up this idea about how the ego defends against experiences
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: that it finds intolerable, they created a whole list of
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: observable behaviors that seemed to happen spontaneously. Now, we're going
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: to talk about the spontaneous defense and then also more
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: nuanced stuff. But if we take it in its more
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: unconscious level, It is a primary, very young defense that
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: is pushing away some unwanted reality before it is even
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: mentally registered. So there is a saving energy inside of
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: us that is monitoring our reality, even in infancy, and
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: it is titrating what it believes we can survive. When
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: I talk to people who have had terrible childhoods, and
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: they are now suffering the symptoms of their defenses, by
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: the way, we have to have a benevolent attitude toward
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: the defenses. They are like ancient benevolent gods that only
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: have one or two skills to try to throw at
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: the problem. And denial is one of the skills, like,
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: we don't know what to do, but I can make
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: you not know it happened.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: Bam. And then I didn't even know this happened. Nope.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: Isn't happening. Didn't happen. It's an instant, non-reflective process, which
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: means people aren't pondering it. So it has a certain
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: magical quality to it.
• 4:22
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• 4:27
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• 5:29
  Speaker 2: I think, to Jung's idea about the autonomy of the unconscious.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: There is that part of us that when something happens
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: that is intolerable, boom, the protective shield comes right up.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: We don't decide it. It happens. And I think that
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: goes very much to Jung's early history, which is how
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: he then met Freud, was he was doing something called
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: the word association test. And in this test, there's a
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: list of words, 50 or 100 words, and they're common
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: everyday words like, you know, table, pond, mother, boat, etc.,
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  Speaker 2: And the person was supposed to say the very first
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: thing that popped into mind. But then along would come
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: a word where the person either couldn't respond quickly the
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: way he had been with all the other words. It's like,
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Or the person would just do something
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: like a clang rhyme word or something else that was
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: not the usual pattern for that person. I remember taking
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: that test with a fellow student. She had this incredible
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: stopwatch to some sort of microsecond thing. And I was
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: completely stumped by the word boat. I absolutely could not
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: think of a single thing.
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  Speaker 3: Interesting.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: And it took me years to figure out what it
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: was about boats. I've never had any bad experiences on
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: boats or very many experiences anyway. But Eventually, I did
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: figure out what it was, which is the image of
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: the boat as a little ship of consciousness that is
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: very precariously floating on this giant ocean that has, as
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: we all know, sea monsters in it. So at any rate,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking that for Jung, this ability to dissociate, to
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: get stumped that something comes up and you can't think
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: of a word that goes with boat. It is very
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: much aligned with Freud calling it denial. So dissociation and
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: denial live right next door.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Because it's something that you've split off, right? If you're
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: in denial, you've split it off. And we could actually
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: find that language, I think, a lot in Jung of like,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: that which has been disavowed or split off or whatever.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: In fact, you know, in that sense, we're leaning into
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Jung's idea of shadow. So a lot of what is
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: denied lines up in shadow.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Where else is it going to go? It's going to
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: go somewhere back there.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: So, for example, let's say that your best friend gets
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: something really wonderful. You know, she gets a big promotion or...
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: She gets engaged to a great guy or whatever, and
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: you feel like intense envy. But you don't want to
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: know that about yourself. So the envy kind of goes,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: you know, you experience denial about how envious you are
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: of your friend, for example. And that's then sort of
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: in shadow. It's like, me, envious? No.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Me?
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Not me.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: I'm so happy for her. And so what I'm thinking
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: about here is of the purpose that denial and this
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: automatic process that comes up is that it protects us
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: from feelings that we just cannot bear to have. They
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: either are like envy, incompatible with our sense of self.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: I'm just not that kind of person. But there are
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: also much more primitive, primal feelings of things like helplessness
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: or shame. Terror. Terror or overwhelming grief, fear, or something
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: that threatens our basic sense of self-organization that, is so
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: overwhelming and so powerful that our sense of self itself
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: is threatened. And we have this way, a way, of
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: clicking off. That is unacceptable and It gets relegated, as
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: you said, it goes somewhere, goes into the shadow. So
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: it's there, but it's not conscious.
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: So there, your unconscious and your body are full of
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: unthought thoughts. The unthinkable has to go somewhere. So denial
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: arises in the pre-verbal mind when the capacity to symbolize
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: and reflect is not online, or if we're babies, it
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: just hasn't matured yet. And so when we have overwhelming experiences,
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: there is, and now I'm going to use psychodynamic language,
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: there is a pre-logical conviction. If I don't acknowledge it,
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: it's not happening. Right. Now, I also want to say
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: that kids think this is delightful, which is why they
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: like peekaboo.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: Your face is gone. Your face is back. Your face
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: is gone. Your face is back. I'm going to put
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: my head under a blanket and I have disappeared. So
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: playing with this, I'm here, I'm not here, you're here,
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: you're not here, is sometimes even delightful. But when the
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: experience is terrifying or overwhelming and I can't even bear
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: to think about it, it also means that I'm interfering
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: with something called the transcendent function or the symbol-making function.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: So what we find with trauma work is is that
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: often the early trauma isn't being stored in a symbol,
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: so it marauds in the flesh and people become strangely
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: physically symptomatic in ways that are really difficult.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Well, to sort of follow up on that, and Deb,
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  Speaker 1: I think I'm picking up on what you're saying, is
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  Speaker 1: that defenses such as denial usually do protect us against feelings, actually.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: And although that has utility, as you were saying, Joseph,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: it has utility. It's like we need these defenses. It's
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: not a bad thing. But there is a cost to
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: not feeling your feelings or not formulating them or learning
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: from them. You know, there's a lot of wisdom in emotions.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: And so what happens is we become symptomatic. So one
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: way to understand symptoms such as, I don't know, anxiety or,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: you know, overwhelm or a tendency to self-sabotage or procrastinate
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: or whatever symptom or depression that you want to think about,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: one way to conceptualize that is that we haven't allowed ourselves,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: our defenses like denial have kicked in and cut us
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: off from an experience, an internal experience that we actually
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: need to have to be well.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: So denial is a disavowal of reality. standing at kind
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: of the gate of your experience, it's fast, it's early,
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  Speaker 3: it's more magical, and sometimes it is confused with repression.
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  Speaker 3: But in order for something to be repressed, it has
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  Speaker 3: to have been known in some way and then consigned
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: to the unconscious. Denial in its pure form is an instant,
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: non-reflected process that makes something disappear that is unpleasant.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: And it's grouped because it is so early as one
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  Speaker 2: of the primary defenses.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: As with peekaboo and so on, if I don't see
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: it or experience it, then it doesn't happen. So it's
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: a lot of very early, early pre-ego development kind of thing,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: especially in its automatic, the automatic nature of it. And hopefully...
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: As we grow, just developmentally, and we acquire an ego
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: and a sense of outward reality as really being there,
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: we don't need to use that kind of primary defense
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: very often. And then it can go into something more
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: like the example you gave, Lisa, of, you know, my
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: friend got this amazing movie contract.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: And I don't want to have to face the fact
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: that I do have some envy, but that's denial along
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: a much more developed, older ego state than the automatic
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: shutting off of younger children or people who really do
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: lean on this to defend against trauma.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: I think we probably all use denial all of the time,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: by the way.
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: I don't.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: I never use denial.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Except for Joseph.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: Were we just talking?
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: Is it time for lunch?
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: There you go. The etymology of denial comes from the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Latin that means to refuse. So it sort of is
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: like a refusal of reality.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: But I want to talk about repression for just a
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: second because I have two examples. So again, as Deb said,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: I think it was Deb, one of you said, repression,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: when something's been repressed, like we knew it briefly first
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: and then we put it away, whereas denial is like, nope,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: don't even know about that. So when I was in
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: like second grade, I remember we would get these like
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: assignments that we had to do that we had to like,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: I guess, complete during class or maybe take home. And
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: I remember kind of experimenting. It was like a second,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: third grade. I didn't go second. With just sort of
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: shoving it to the back of my desk. And I
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: kind of knew that they were there, but I didn't
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: let myself think about it, right? So I had definitely
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: known that I had been asked to complete these things.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: But I thought, what would happen if I just shoved
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: it to the back of the desk and didn't think
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: about it again? And interestingly, so that was my repression.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: You know, there's sort of like a concrete form. At
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: the end of the year, we had to clean out
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: our desks, and there they all were. I had a
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: messy desk, as no one who knows me now would
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: be in the slightest bit surprised at that. And there
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: they were, and I had not gotten in trouble for
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: not doing them. So my repression was rewarded.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Ah, it worked, right.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: I want to offer a darker example of.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: I don't know. That one was pretty, pretty drastic.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: But I'm going to need your help a little bit.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: It's the story of the mother who let her child
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: suck on a sponge that had been dipped in water,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: infected with, was it typhoid fever? Yeah. And the child
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: had died. And the mother knew kind of on the
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: outskirts of consciousness that she had allowed that child to
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: be exposed to typhoid because she was in love with
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: someone else. She was in love with someone who wasn't
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: the child's father. And Jung apparently diagnosed this repression through
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: the word association test, I believe. Correct me if I'm
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: getting this story wrong. But it brought her great relief
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: to have it revealed to But it was something that
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: she knew, but she didn't want to know. And so
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: that was an example of repression.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly. She'd been bathing her children, and she knew that
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: she let her daughter suck on a sponge that had
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: been in the bathwater, which was not, you know, sort
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: of pure water. And she was then hospitalized because of
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: this trauma at the Berkholz, where Jung was then working
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: at the psychiatric hospital. And Jung confronted her with the
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: reality that she had allowed this to happen and colluded
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: in her daughter's death. And guess what? It enabled her
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: to leave the hospital and go out and lead a regular,
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: normal life. So reality is... to coin a phrase Joseph
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: often used, is medicinal. The repression was not serving her.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: It cost her her sanity to hide this knowledge from herself.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: So being able to bear her guilt and remorse was
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: actually the cure, so to speak.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: I'll give another personal example. When my father died, and
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: he died very suddenly, And unexpectedly, he was in the hospital,
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: but he had a very sudden heart failure based on
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: a kind of ketoacidosis because his kidneys were messed up.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: And so I got this phone call. He had asked
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: for all heroic measures.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, my.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: And so I told them. that's what he wants. So
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: when I went in to see his body, he looked traumatized.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: His eyes were wide open. His mouth was open. His
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: teeth had broken, and I could see them on his tongue.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: So I walk in, and I look at him, and
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: there's this keening wells up inside of me, and then
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: it all disappears. And I walk out, you know, and
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: I'm just talking to the doctor, and it's very strange, but, oh, doctor,
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: you seem rather upset. Was this very difficult for you?
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, God.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's all I had. And over the next several weeks,
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: as I'm managing the funeral and all these other things,
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: I would have these periods of, it felt like I
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: was over-caffeinated, and then it would go away. Fast forward
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: two whole years, I'm watching a movie called Big Fish.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: And in the movie, the central characters are this tall
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: tale-telling dad and his rather cynical young son.
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: And.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: The father is ill and needs care and the son's
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: there trying to deal with him. And my dad was
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: a tall teller as well. And in the final scene,
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: his father has died and he's carrying him to the
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: edge of the river. He lowers him into the river
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: and magically he becomes this massive catfish, you know, and
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: kind of swims away. And when he's lowered his dad
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: into the river, I started howling. And crying and just
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: wailing for maybe about an hour. So what happened is that,
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: this is my analysis of it is, I needed, one,
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: a frame to think about it, but I needed a
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: way to symbolize what had happened to my father and
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: letting him go into this greater reality of death. And
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: I needed to witness it. In order to show my
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: nervous system how to hold the reality, I needed art,
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: movies or art.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: And until that, you had to deny it.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: And again, it was just gone. I wasn't struggling. It
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: wasn't like I was telling myself, don't cry. As a
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: matter of fact, because I'm a therapist, I was kind
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: of worried that I wasn't grieving. I just felt just empty.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: And so, beautifully, being able to think and symbolize restored.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: But boy, I tell you, it was in my body.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, it wasn't not there. I simply couldn't find it.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: And again, my psyche was trying to save me because
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: something inside of me thought I couldn't handle it. And
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: it was really shocking when I went into the hospital.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: I know many of you as listeners have had this experience,
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: life deals, shocking, terrible things that we have to survive.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: And I have to tell you, the reason humans survive
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: is because they have defenses. And if we say it politely,
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: it's called a coping mechanism. Because if I had a
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: bunch of babies that were dependent on me, I wouldn't
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: have been very warm and fuzzy, but I could have
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: gone to work, fed the babies, kept the farm running,
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: you know, I would have kept running, and I did
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: keep running. So it is in service to life.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and it is adaptive. It does protect us in
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: early stages of crisis or grief or trauma. We need
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: our defenses.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: To underscore the very excellent point you made about art,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: it was.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: It was the image that allowed you to have a
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: symbolic frame in which to place the horror of what
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: you saw.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: It's like the actors had to show me how to
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: do it.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: You know, I had an image, too. It was a
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: book I can still remember in training by Jeffrey Raff,
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: and it had the image of a boat on this
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: vast sea. And as soon as I saw that, it
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: was like, ah, that's it. That whole thing came back,
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: and the text also explained, you know, the image of
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: the ego floating on the sea of the unconscious. So
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: we're veering into what Jung says, that only the symbol heals.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And it's the symbol making function of the psyche
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: that can allow us to deal with that which is
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: unthinkable that we otherwise might need to deny. Right. So
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: that in some sense, it's the symbolic that can restore
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: the connection between what's been split off from us in
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: this very kind of normal act of denial.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: And that's what often your analysts will do. They'll listen, listen, listen,
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: and they'll offer you a metaphor. It's clearly not the
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: exact thing. They'll say something like, you know, it's like
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: a bathtub that's draining really slowly. That's what your marriage
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: reminds me of. And then if it's the right metaphor,
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden people can tolerate the feeling like
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: you're right. Like all the water is draining out of
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: the marriage. I can feel it leeching out. Or We
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: offer a poem, a fairy tale, a myth, which again
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: provides metaphors to approach the unthinkable unknown in a frame
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: that's a little bit less personal, but when it lands,
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: it gives us access. And a friend of mine did
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: this for me. There was a relationship that was kind
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: of fading in my life, and I was having trouble
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: languaging it, and he said, oh, it's a waning moon.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: I just slapped my hand on the table. I said, yes, yes, yes.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: It's a waning moon. Yes. It was just the perfect metaphor.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: And I could then hold it.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: And the other thing is that dreams will often show
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: us what we're in denial about. So I think that's
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: a very interesting topic, actually, is the function that dreams
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: can play in terms of defenses. So again, Jung didn't
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: talk much in terms of defenses. And I actually want
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: to come back to that and ask you guys about that. However,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: you know, the ideas are sort of implicit in his
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: model of the psyche. And we do find that our
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: dreams exactly show us what we're denying a lot. And
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: that's partly why dreams are hard. Our own dreams are
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: hard because we often don't want to know the information
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: that's being shared in them.
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: Like when we tell Anu and Alisand, well, you know,
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: everything in that dream where people were running around naked
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: smearing pizza on each other, that's all you. You're the pizza.
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: You're the nudists smearing the mozzarella all over themselves. And
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: the first thing is that people feel is, no, it's not,
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: is the big no.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: And it simply is hard for all of us. To
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: connect with an image in a dream, we can say that,
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: as did Jung. He said, you know, in the dream,
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: you're the movie director, the actors, the stage, the props,
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: the prompter, everything. And people, it's not that people don't
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: hear it or that they are, you know, protesting. It's
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: sort of like, I just don't get it. You know,
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: I don't have that click. It's like, mm-hmm. Really? So
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: I'm that weird scaffolding that surrounds my house. I'm a
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: whole scaffolding around my... I don't get it. Or something
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: that's maybe more mundane of like, so I don't see
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: what the image of my seventh grade science teacher has
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: to do. I never think of him. It wasn't important.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: I don't have any associations. And that is a good
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: illustration of, oh man, it's hard to really integrate material
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: that we have suppressed, repressed, dissociated, denied one way or another,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: put back there into the shadow.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: And a lot of times that's what's fueling the dream.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: That's like the the engine that creates the dream actually
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: is that which has been denied. I want to offer
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: another example of denial, which is a little bit less dramatic,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: but I think still important and goes to my point
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: that this is probably something that we do every day.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: And again, it's like you don't see it because that's
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: exactly the nature of denial. But it was someone I
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: worked with whose marriage was, was a little difficult. You know,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: her husband could be kind of not big C cruel,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: but kind of little C cruel. He could be disparaging
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: or kind of critical. just didn't always kind of show
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: up in a great way in the marriage. And partly
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: because she was a pretty high-functioning person. I think if
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: it were the kind of thing where he was coming
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: home and smashing plates on the regular, that she wouldn't
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: have split that off and she would have kind of
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: rang the alarm. But maybe it's that What we colloquial
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: think of is that sort of slowly boiled frog phenomenon where,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: you know, part of that is like something happens. It
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: doesn't seem like that big a deal. So you deny
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: its importance. There's the denial. And before you know it,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: you're in a lot of hot water. But it seemed
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: like it snuck up on you. And I think we
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: can all relate to this. You know, probably many of
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: us have either been in a relationship like this or
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: we know someone. So, you know, over the course of
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: the marriage, you know, there had been lots of little
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: pieces taken out of her. And at some point, the
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: denial kind of faded away and she looked at what
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: she had and she said, wow, this is not good.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: But she had been in denial about the quality of
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: her marriage. If you had asked her and, you know,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: I was working with her and she would sort of say, yeah, it's,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: you know, it's not perfect, but. Everyone has problems. And it's, yeah,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: my marriage is okay. But, you know, something happened that
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: sort of shook her out of that. And she had
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: to look at it more realistically and say, wow, this
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: is not good. This is not good.
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: So I just want to pick up that thread of
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: the tell, the parapraxis. And it's so ubiquitous. So, like,
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: you go to your friend's house and you're like, how
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: are you doing? And they go, well, it's not like
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: I'm lonely. Like when they list the thing that it's not,
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's right in our faces. So the loneliness
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: is there and they're going to not the loneliness over here.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: And so it is the thing that they're in denial about.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: And we use this linguistic tell. If you just open
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: your ears in a restaurant, you're going to hear people
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: saying this all the time. Well, it's not like I'm
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: angry with you. I'm not angry. I don't think I
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: asked you if you were angry, but you did volunteer
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: something about angry. So the listing of the not thing
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: is like, you know, psychodynamic 101.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: It's a great variation on denial of stepping it up
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: from a purely unconscious process to one that is sort
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: of partially conscious. Of like, well, you know, but everything
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: is really fine. He does have these bad habits.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: But, I mean, nothing's perfect is the minimizing part of it.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: You know, yes, it exists, but it's not a big deal.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: It's just the usual flotsam and jetsam that is part
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: of every marriage. And as you say, Joseph, in a way,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: it's a sort of a tell-tale. When somebody has to say,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: it's not really that big a deal, it's sort of like, really?
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: Then why is it even in this conversation? But the
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: other is, I'm going back to, I'm reiterating what I
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: said before, how it protects us against feelings that we
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: just don't want to have to have of being helpless
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: or angry or shamed. threatened, scared, you know, a whole list.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: And if this woman were to say to herself, oh
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: my God, you know, he's doing this all the time.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: I really don't like it. It's indicative of something really
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: powerful that's going on in our whole marriage. I need
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: to really take this up with myself and with him
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: and maybe with a therapist. And then what if it
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: doesn't work? my whole marriage could go down the drain.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: And what about the kids? And how are we going
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: to pay the mortgage? And so it's just not that
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: big a deal.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: It becomes unthinkable. You know, Joseph was talking before about,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: you know, your body is full of unthought thoughts and
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: it's like sometimes thoughts feel unthinkable. And Deb, I liked your,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: you know, your fine-tuned tweak there where you said, well,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: it's kind of minimizing because you're probably right about that.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: It's probably not technically denial in the sense that we've
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: been talking about it. What might be right is to
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: say that what she was in denial about was her
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: own distress about what was going on. So, you know,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: he would come home and say something critical to her
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: and it might just kind of make her cave. But
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: she denied that and then told herself, well, you know,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: he had a hard day, you know, or something like that.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: Right. To give it a false causality in some way
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: to explain it.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: Well, because then you have to take responsibility. Yes.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: What would that mean if I admitted it? What might
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: I have to do?
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: What might I have to do? Do I have to
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: take it up with him? Do we have to see
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: a therapist? How do I really feel? It depends. presents
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: us with a mountain of stuff that I, going back to,
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: I don't want to think about it. I just can't
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: do all that. And of course, you know, we're all
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: aware in situations like that, that, you know, psyche is
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: moving and things can escalate. Resentment can build. Maybe this
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: person starts to have stomach problems or headaches, it's not
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: as if denial actually works.
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: In the long run.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: You know, it just, exactly. It's not a solution. Right.
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: I want to talk about another really ubiquitous denial thing,
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: because I'm sure we've all either done it or seen it.
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: So there is a kind of healthy, benign denial that's
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: embedded in reasonable functioning. And it'll sound like, not now.
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: And it's a tactic, it's a way of, it's a
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: time-limited disavowal that buys time for affect regulation. I just
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: don't want to hear this right now. Yes, yes. I
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: know we just got the IRS gave me a letter.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: Please put it somewhere else. And then they go over
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: and I'm going to make dinner and I'm going to
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: feed the kids and I'm going to play a game
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: with the kids. And then later on tonight with a
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: bottle of scotch, then I'll go open the letter from
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: the IRS.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's sure to do the trick. Yes, exactly.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: It's not like I've done that.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: So that.
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: Not now maneuver yeah i i when i just think
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: about that i i could think of like 50 moments
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: of anybody around me.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: I just had one of those this morning actually it's
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: like i just can't think about that but you know
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: i mean technically we might be talking about compartmentalization there
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: you know yeah um i mean it's it's sort of
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: we're splitting um psychoanalytic hairs here but but These are
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: all very similar mechanisms, denial, repression, suppression. There is a
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: difference between those two. I can't remember right now. Compartmentalization,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: you know, but they all sort of, they're all sort
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: of essentially the same mechanism, just in sort of different ways,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: you know, or minimizations, the other one, right, that Deb
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: just brought up. It's like, I'm going to split that off.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: By the way, related to that, so, you know, Freud
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: came up with these and then it was actually Anna Freud,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: his daughter, who really is known for categorizing them. And
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: defenses are such a major, major part of Freudian psychoanalysis.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: And a lot of what's understood to be happening in
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: analysis and a Freudian analysis is analyzing the defenses and
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: understanding what your defenses are and that sort of thing.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: And personally, I find so much value in that, just
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: both in my work with patients and in myself. It's like, oh,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: what am I defending against? But Jung almost, it's almost
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: like if you look at the collected works, it's almost
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: like he avoids talking about defenses, right? Like he never
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: uses that language ever, ever, ever. He has his own
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: way of thinking about it. I think complexes are sort
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: of in that vein. He talks about like the thing
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: with the woman and the typhoid sponge. I mean, you know,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: he's giving examples. He's talking about himself, about people that
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: he knows. But it's almost like he denies, splits off
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: his awareness. I've always kind of wondered about that. And
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: I wonder if my fantasy is that he did it.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: almost kind of on purpose because he just wanted to
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: really differentiate himself from Freud.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: It's very possible.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: That's my feeling, too, that coming at it from a
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: whole different angle and honoring the role of the unconscious,
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: the autonomy of the unconscious, which was a huge differentiation
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: in and of itself from Freud. his discovery of the
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: collective unconscious. Let me clarify. But the unconscious has autonomy.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: It does all kinds of things.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Well, Freud would agree with that, right? You know, that
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: the id is always kind of lurking around, kind of
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: threatening to get us into trouble and causing us to
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: engage in parapraxies and, yeah. Yeah.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: But also, of course, the unconscious is creative and is
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: moving forward. So, you know, like so many things, there's
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: an upside and a downside, at least from the perspective
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: of our judgmental egos.
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: But I think Jung really wanted to honor the autonomy
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: and the automaticity of the unconscious and in something like
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: denial that these things are rooted more deeply than just,
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: you know, the refusal, which was the etymology of it
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: that you cited, Lisa. It is a refusal, but it's
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: not an entirely conscious one. And I have a quote
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: here from AA that I like. They say, denial is
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: the most cunning, baffling, and powerful part of my disease.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: And that's a quote from the big book, I think.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: So with Jung's ideas about having a complex, it is
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: implicit in a complex that the unconscious is included and
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: that there's an archetypal taproot to it. So I think
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: it adds layers of... of complexity that are important rather
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: than the matter-of-fact way that out there, colloquially, people just say, oh,
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: you know, oh, she's just totally in denial, you know,
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: totally in denial about that, as if it is just
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: being a refuse, Nick.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: But I want to say, I agree, Deb, but I
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: do want to say that for my money, the loss
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: of the language of defenses, from the Jungian canon is
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: we're missing something. We're missing something. And I mean, you know,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: for me, for me, I find it really useful. I
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: find those ideas really useful.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: It's interesting, isn't it, to think about that as I'm
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: so habituated to the idea of, you know, a mother
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: complex and an authority complex and an inferiority complex. And
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: of course, those two have made their way into just
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: societal verbiage. Yeah. And yet I agree there is something
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: about the defenses that seems much clearer and more crisp.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: And by the way, can I just pick up on
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: something that you just raised? Because I think it's such
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: a great, is like the best example of denial is addiction.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Denial plays a huge role in addiction. For example, my addiction,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: which is chocolate. And again, I don't I don't I
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: don't want to be I'm I'm trying to I'm trying
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: to humanize this. I don't want to minimize it. OK, because.
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: Yes, of course. I'll be very sober about it.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: OK, thank you. Thank you. Sober being the appropriate word. No,
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: but if we're talking about drugs or alcohol, you know,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: it's a tragic.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, well, it can be tragic.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: Well, it depends. If you're eating a pound of chocolate
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: today and then you have to purge it in the toilet,
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: that's pretty dramatic.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: That's tragic, too.
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: Lisa, how bad is this? It's pretty bad. Is it
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: really bad?
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Because I'll tell myself, like, I'll be like, OK, you know,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: it's not like I'm not going to feel good. And I'm,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to have a stomachache. It's like,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: I know all of that. Yeah. But like, I know that, right?
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: And then I see the chocolate sitting on the counter.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: My whole family knows you cannot leave it out. Like
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: if I see it, it's like, it's like that, that
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: awareness is just gone. And I'm like, oh, it makes
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: sense to eat that. Like my, I'm like totally in
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: denial about how I'm going to feel in three hours,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: you know? So again, that is a sort of a
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: little bit of a funny or flip, but not really
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: because it actually is painful for me example. But if
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: you're talking about, like, drinking too much or using drugs,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: I mean.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: Denying consequences.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're denying consequences and, like, you're denying what you know.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: That you can't do this or that it's not good
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: or you... You know, I thank you, Deb, for bringing
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: in that quote from the big book because I think
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: it's really relevant.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: I knew we were going to get there at some point.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: because these are things that render us helpless, and we
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: know it's against our better judgment.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: Or we used to know it, and then suddenly there's
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: just chocolate.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: The whole world has become chocolate.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: And there is that sort of dissociative thing where common sense,
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: how I'm going to feel in three hours, all goes
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: out the window. Because, oh, it's there, and it's going
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: to taste great.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: And it does taste great. That's the problem, is it
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: really does taste great.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It does give all the physiological effects of chocolate
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: or ice cream or alcohol or hard drugs. It's very
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: hard to postpone the immediate gratification.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: And this is why AA works so well because people
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: have to reconfess the consequences of their drinking, let's say.
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: You go to a meeting and it always involves somebody
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: at the podium telling the story of how their alcoholism
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: ruined everything for them. And sooner or later, you'll be
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: up there doing it. So you never disassociate from the
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: consequences of the behavior.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: So part of the... Part of AA is to kind
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: of hedge against the tendency for denial. Yeah, that's interesting.
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: By reviewing the suffering and the suffering of other people
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: again and again and again. And the reason you never
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: stop going to the meeting is that denial is waiting
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: in the wings for the rest of your life. You
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: never lose the capacity for denial to jump into the
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: room and say, I'm going to drink like a gentleman.
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm no longer an alcoholic. So I went
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: out to the bar, and I had a drink, and
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: it was fine. But then the next morning, I woke
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: up in Hoboken. And if you've ever been in Hoboken,
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: that's a problem. And then, you know, you're back there
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: trying to earn your one-week chip. So denial is this
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: ancient god that just gives you permission by cutting away
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: the problem, the consequences.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: I'm going back to what we talked about before of,
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: Of having the symbol, you know, for you, you know,
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: when the friend said it's like the waning moon.
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: You know, or when I came across the image of
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: the boat floating on this vast sea.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: Then we could stay in touch with it.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: But I think we're touching on another way of overcoming
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: denial with AA, which is a higher power. We have
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: to relinquish it. or acknowledge or turn it over, whatever
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: the right words are, to the higher power.
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: And recognize that ego alone cannot do this thing. And
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: there is a community of people who have been down
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: this road at every stage of their addiction and recovery journey.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: Well, and part of getting a sponsor is the sponsor
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: will confront you about your denial. And that is what
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: a good analyst will do as well. You know, that
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: is a tricky part to our profession, but I say
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: this all the time. When I'm talking to a new
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: prospective client, one of the questions I always ask is,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: If you've been in therapy before, and most people have,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: I'll say, well, what worked or what didn't work? What
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: would you like, you know, what do you want more of?
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Just to get a sense of if we're going to
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: be a fit. But the answer to that question is
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: almost always the same. People will say, I was in
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: therapy before. It didn't go deep enough because my therapist
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: never challenged me. People come in because they want help
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: seeing what they can't see, which means... that they're looking
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: for us to challenge them and to point out their
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: defenses and to point out where they're in denial. you know?
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: So someone comes in and is having an affair and says,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm really sure that this is, you know,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: I'm going to tell my husband that we're, I think
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: we're done. And I think he's going to really be
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: understanding because, you know, we've been at odds for a while.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: So I think he'll be happy for me. And this
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: won't affect my three kids and, you know, they'll be fine.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: It'll be great for them to see me happier. And
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: it's like, okay, some of that might be true, but
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: you're not being totally honest with yourself.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of missing pieces to that story.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: What I'm thinking of as the corollary to my example
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: of community in AA is is that therapy is also
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: very much a holding environment. So this, I hope, hypothetical person,
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: you know, could go to a friend and the friend
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: would say, you know, that's ridiculous.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Are you nuts?
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: It's going to be awful. You have to quit that.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: And the therapist will say, wait, hold it. Let's really
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: walk around this. Let's really, let's explore what you're thinking.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: Tell me about your kids, what they're like. Have you,
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: you know, and get to that same place of, wait
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: a minute, the therapy here is reality, of facing the
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: reality and really taking as fully conscious responsibility as possible
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: for any big life decision. So I think we have
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: a corollary in a way to the symbol that heals
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: in the combination of understanding and feeling and all of
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: that in a larger, putting it in a larger context
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: that therapy can provide or the AA community provides to
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: its members.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think AA works partly because you have
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: the sponsor who's going to hold your feet to the fire.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: And good sponsors can be really ruthless.
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: And you've confessed all your problems to him, so he
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: knows the list.
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: But a lot of times our friends don't confront us.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: So I'll go to a friend, I'll say, oh, it's
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: going to be great. I'm going to do this, this
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: and this.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: It will be great.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: And right. It's like, oh, that's wonderful. It's it's you know,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: it's a special friend who could say, Lisa. You're missing
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stuff there. We often don't do that.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: Can I confess something to you? I have a confession
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: to make. Okay. A minute ago when you were saying
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: the first thing that I ask my patients when they
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: come in, and in my mind what I heard is,
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: did you bring chocolate? That's not as funny as I
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: thought it was going to be. But anyway, Deb, going
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: to your story about the self, I've told this story before,
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: but it blew my socks off. I have type 2 diabetes.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: I manage it very well for the most part. But
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: I was there, I baked a carrot cake ostensibly to
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: give to somebody else, but I was in denial because
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: half that cake was going to be gone before morning.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: And I'm sitting there approaching the cake with a knife,
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: much like a great white shark approaching a seal.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: You were stalking the cake.
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: Purely instinctive. Absolutely. My brow is furrowed. My teeth are extended.
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: And I'm approaching the carrot cake and I heard a
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: voice as loud as you being behind me and said,
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: you can have the cake or your toes. And that
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: stopped me dead in my tracks. And Deb, that is
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: an intervention of the self.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: That just benevolent, one who knows what I am refusing
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: to know in that moment.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: And, you know, AA and other programs talk about hitting
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: bottom that breaks through the denial that something happens and
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: the person goes, oh my God, what am I doing?
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: I need help. I have to stop. And whether a
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: friend would or wouldn't confront you, I think what I
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: was trying to articulate is, That just bashing somebody over
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: the head and saying, that's the dumbest idea I ever heard,
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: you better quit that right this minute, doesn't work. That
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: there has to be something more in the way of relationship,
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: a transcendent experience of the voice says, stop, think about
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: carrot cake versus basically your life, your health.
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: AA provides what it provides, we're looking for a third
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: thing which is so woven into every aspect of Jungian
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: theory and practice of what else will be there for
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: you if you face this awful thing of an addiction
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: or a bad marriage or something else. Or are we
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: just throwing you back on your own ego, pull yourself
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: up by your bootstraps, get a grip, straighten up and
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: fly right, which doesn't work.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: But denial can feel really good. It can feel really good.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: You know, let's translate this into fairytale language. I mean, Deb,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: you had a great idea for a fairytale for this episode.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: The classic story, which has become a saying, of the
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: emperor has no clothes.
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: And he doesn't know it.
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: Well, and that is a great denial that he's so
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: caught up in his own vanity that I think the
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: outfits progress from fancy to fancier to even more until
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: finally the garment that he's been given is gossamer. And
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: it's so special. And so rare and so incredible. It's unearthly.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: And in this special garment, he rides through his kingdom. And,
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: of course, all his subjects have to line up on
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: the road and bow and take their hats off. And
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: they all do. And then there's this one little kid
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: on the side of the road that says, but he
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: has no clothes.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: Because they've been told that you can only see this
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: very special fabric if you're very intelligent.
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: That's right. It's just very special.
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: So it's a great example of denial in a way
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: because we've been talking about kind of, you know, denial
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: of things that are upsetting or traumatic or just feelings
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: we don't want to have. But this is sort of
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: denial in service to... to vanity, to kind of like
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: this phenomenon of groupthink, that we can deny what we
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: know in order to kind of serve a social function
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: happens all the time.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: It does. It happens all the time where everybody says,
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: you know, we can't tell the boss this or that
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: or the other thing.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: And the boss, the boss doesn't want to know, right?
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is why This is why leaders can
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: get into real trouble because people don't challenge them. We
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: can all be in denial, for example, about our weaknesses,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: you know, and then no one tells us, hey, you know, actually,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: that's a terrible idea. And so we just charge ahead
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: if we're a leader and we're kind of high on
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: our own supply. And then that does not end well.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: And it can enter the therapy consulting room of, you know,
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: I ask people at the outset very explicitly, tell me.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: Please just come and tell me. It's part of the process. Or,
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: you know, something happened last week or happens in this
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: session that didn't sit well with you. It rubbed you
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: the wrong way.
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: But the brilliance there is you gave them a week
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: so that they're not as defended. They're not as panicky
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: about it. So strike when the iron is cold is
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: an old, I think it's a Yalom saying.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: But it is hard to address those things when there's
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: a power differential between some kind of an expert or
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: the boss or a parent or a teacher. It goes
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: on and on. it's very hard to address those things.
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: And you're right. I mean, whole groups collude in telling
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: the department head or whoever it is that all is
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: well or simply not going there. We never talk about that.
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: I also want to touch on another aspect. See if
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: you think this flies, but... I've been thinking in this context,
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: there was vanity and also mania. Mania is a form
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: of denial. In a way, again, there's a whole scale here.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: We all get mega excited about the wedding that's coming
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: up or the holiday, et cetera. And, you know, I
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: don't have to go to bed until two in the
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: morning and I'm all of that stuff as a counterweight
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: or compensation to maybe the anxiety around the event or
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: something that is really bothersome, depressing, and disturbing in my
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: life of just step on the gas.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: In her book, Nancy McWilliams, her book is Psychoanalytic Diagnosis.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: She actually talks about mania as a kind of psychopathology
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: that's defined by the use of denial, which I hadn't
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: thought of before I read that, Deb. So I like that.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting because basically, you know, and
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: that idea of the manic defense, you know, it's like,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to feel this unpleasant feeling. I'm just
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: going to go, go, go, go, go. I'm going to
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: get really excited or really garrulous or, you know, super energetic.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: And then I'm just going to not know this painful thing.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: So it's an interesting example of like sort of how
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: the tendency towards denial can result in different kinds of symptoms,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: you know?
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: Right, because I think Big Williams also says that in
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: borderline disorders, that denial is the central organizer of the personality,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: which is stability at any cost, including extruding reality. So
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: the psyche is going to not know all kinds of
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: things in order to just be able to get through
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: the day without... howling and panicking and fleeing and threatening
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: and all the things that might happen there. So when
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: I have a borderline client and they're under a lot
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: of stress and they do seem very manic, they're talking
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: a mile a minute, they're in what they call an
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: affective storm. The good thing is that many borderline patients
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: have pretty good minds. Like when they're calm, they can
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: think really creatively. But when they're in an affective storm,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: then they have to evacuate aspects of reality to try
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: to get their feet back on the ground.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: And I'm wondering if it would be a good time
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: to switch to a dream.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: The timing of that is suspicious, Lisa.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: I may be in denial about something.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: Well, we're not going to be in denial about time constraints.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: That is the reality that Lisa has. Introduced us, too.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: I will go ahead and read this dream from a
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: woman who is 60. She's retired, and here's her dream.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: The man that I live with takes two of my
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: fish out of their tank. They are larger white fish.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: I have four or five tanks. I'd forgotten about these
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: fish for years, it seems. They have been doing fine
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: with no maintenance. The water is clear and the filters
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: are still functioning. The fish are healthy. There's one that
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: I need to add water to. I am going to
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: add the two larger fish that were taken out to
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: this tank. I hold up a small jar-type object that
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: is self-contained like a terrarium. There are very small fish
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: alive in there, and two larger ones still no longer
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: than an inch or so. They're confined to a very
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: small area with no room for the larger two to swim.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: I will put them in the larger tank. In one
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: of my tanks, there are larger aggressive fish that eat
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: the smaller fish. There are also colorful frog-like creatures who
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: are in mating positions, but they seem to be in
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: mating positions always. There's another tank that has colorful fish
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: all about the same size. For context, she says, I
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: recently experienced a painful breakup of a two-year relationship. I
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: took up some artwork that I have not done for
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: a while. I don't have any fish tanks. A therapist
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: told me some years ago that I was somewhat autoerotic
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: in my life as a whole. I was in a
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: marriage with someone who didn't want to interact with me
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: at all, And over the years, I became very self-reliant
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: and did everything by myself for the most part, not willingly.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: She says the main feelings in the dream were surprise
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: that the tanks were still functioning properly and interest in
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: providing for the continued well-being of the fish. And she adds,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: I had a saltwater tank many years ago with two blowfish.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: They died due to my inexperience, I believe.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: So they're all of these fish tanks.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: She's got this psyche where she can either compartmentalize or
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: put things to forget about them, but it seems modestly
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: successful because whatever she's storing in the tanks seems to
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: remain alive.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: Not only that, I think it is actually quite successful
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: because there's kind of a plethora of life. There are
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: these smaller fish and there are these potentially mating frogs.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of life in these different tanks.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: What I'm paying attention to here is it reminds me
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: of the task that Psyche had of sorting the seeds.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: In the myth, she was given a pile of seeds
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: and they all had to be sorted by morning. And
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: it seemed impossible until the ants came. and helped her.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: But here we have, uh, we don't need, uh, that
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: kind of intervention. She seems to be, uh, these fish
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: go over here, those fish go over there. I can't
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: keep track of them all, but she's obviously moving things
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: around from tank to tank. Uh, and as you've already commented,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: it seems to be working just fine. And, and that finally, um,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: We don't know about these aggressive fish that eat the
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: smaller fish. Are there smaller fish in that tank? And
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: then we move on to amphibians. Then we move on
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: to the frogs who are in mating or, and guess
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: what happens when you mate?
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: Suspended mating.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: But they seem to be in mating positions always. And
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: then colorful fish in the last part of the dream.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: So something seems to be getting reorganized.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I do want to point out that there's
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: that one kind of terrarium thing, and there's not enough
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: room for the fish to swim around in, too. So
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: there's something that feels important. Yeah, what were you going
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: to say, Joseph?
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm right on that same track. So we now
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: have this... It seems like the dream maker is being
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: a perfect therapist right now. Because if you were to discover...
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: or suspect this client has an enormous amount of repressed
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: or denied material, you're not going to confront them and say,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: holy baloney, there's a minefield waiting for you on the
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: other side of these realizations.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: That is the second time this episode that you've uttered
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: the word baloney. I just want to point that out.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: Okay. I love baloney. It's a confession that I want
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: to make. I love baloney sandwiches with ketchup. And crappy
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: American cheese like Velveeta. Now this is really a true
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: confession and I hope I won't lose all of your respect,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: but I could eat a bologna sandwich every day. And
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: I'm sure it wouldn't be good for me. Oh my gosh.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: There's something about them that in Skittles. Okay. It's my chocolate.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: So what I ask clients when they first come for
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: sessions is whether they brought me a bologna sandwich because that's,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: you know, that's my thing. Um, But you would frame
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: the missing thing as not frightening. Now, listen, I think
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of life. There's a lot of memories,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: experiences that are kind of stored carefully, maybe even lovingly
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: in various parts of your memory. And we kind of
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: need to go in there and find out what we've forgotten.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: Just do a little maintenance. Check it out. Add a
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: little water. Take a little look. And then we'll come
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: back out and then we'll chat about it. And then
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: once you figure out where the, you know, where the
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: aquarium is, basically, once you find out where the aquarium is,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: maybe we'll just visit that once a month. So, you know,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: it'll be okay. There's something reassuring about all the lost life.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: And something so interesting, too, about the fact that the
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: filters are still working. You know, you think about That
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: is a kind of psychological metaphor for filtering out what
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: doesn't belong there or what's maybe harmful. That mechanism is
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: still chugging along.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: I agree. thinking about something we haven't discussed yet. What
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: are fish?
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Fish are highly fertile, by the way, and fish
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: are often associated with sexuality in the ancient world because
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: of their capacity to breed thousands of offspring.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: And fish often are symbols of the life of the
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: unconscious with water representing the unconscious and this magical generative life.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: You know, I like to imagine in the ancient world
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: of the fishermen go out and this source of sustenance
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: that they didn't farm. They can't see what happens in
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: the deep.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: But there it is.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: You know, the ever-burgeoning light of the deep. And then
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: I'm going to the very beginning of the dream. The
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: man that I live with takes two of my fish.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: Yes, the animus.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: So we have a man at the outset who then
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: is not present in the rest of the dream as
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: the dream ego does all the moving, sorting... of fish
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: and the tanks. But it would appear to me, she
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: says that the fish are healthy, but it looks like,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: not those two fish, it looks like the man left
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: with two of her fish. And she's saying that, I think,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: in her comments. A painful breakup of a two-year relationship,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: and he takes two fish with him. But she still
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: has plenty of fish left.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: I was thinking more as an animus figure in as
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: much as the animus and anima are linking functions. So
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: he's the one that connects her to the stuff she's forgotten.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: And that's a classic anima-animus assistance.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He leaves with two fish. When he takes two
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: fish out of their tanks, then... She goes back to
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: the fish she had forgotten about for years, it seems.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: It's right from the dreams. So the end of that
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: relationship turns her back to this life in the water
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: that she's forgotten about for the time that she was
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: in this relationship, I think is implied.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: And we get these two great words. aggression and mating.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: And by the way, those are things people often dissociate from.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: They just kind of disappear if you're in a certain place.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: Well, and those are also the two Freudian drives, right?
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: The life drive and the death drive. There they are.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: That's right. So it's time to know something about aggression
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: and mating. And you've got this man that can help
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: you connect to this, hopefully. It may be a day
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: residue that it's about the loss there, but I actually
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: am not sure that the man walks away with them
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: because she says, I'm going to add the two larger
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: fish that were taken out to this tank.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, you're right.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: So he may still have them in his hand or
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: maybe he's not speaking, but she still thinks of the
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: fish as a resource, even if they're not right in
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: front of her. And she's got a plan for how
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: she's going to move them around. So she's also being
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: given this information that, you know, I have agency. I
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: can go into the unknown stuff. I can take care
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: of it. I can move a little here, put a
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: little there. And I can look at the aggression safely
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: because it's behind a little glass wall. So I can
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: ponder it. I can mentalize. I can think about the
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: nature of aggression in the fish. And in a way,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: some of that aggression will probably be transferred to her
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: through the observation. The mating frog's frozen but not moving
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: reminds me of her content about being autoerotic and struggling
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: to actualize or tolerate actually touching and mating with somebody.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: But they're ready to go. They're in mating positions, and
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: they're always in mating positions. So I'm not sure what
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: needs to happen. It may just be a little something
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: or other. But it's close to happening.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: And the end of the dream is another tank that
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: has colorful fish all about the same size. So it
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: seems to me to be an image of things in balance.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: We don't have smaller and bigger and so on and
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: so on. And that has color that has, you know,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: we all know color changes. Movies versus black and white.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: It's got life. It's got feeling. It's got all of
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: those kind of nuances that seem like an image of
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: a kind of wholeness.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: It's a very generous dream. There's a kindness in it.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: There's all this positive potential. I think this person's going
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: to be fine.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 4: Really.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: She's got a dream maker that really is taking care
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: of her.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: episode topic, or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisunionlife.com.
• 1:14:39
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• 1:14:42
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