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From SHAMANISM to JUNG: Understanding 'Loss of Soul' · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, this union life listeners. This is Lisa Martiano. And
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: I want to let you know that I've had a
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: couple of spots open up in my women's fairy tale
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: and yoga retreat that will be held in central Pennsylvania.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: The last weekend of September, the weather should be gorgeous.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: We might get a little early fall color. We do
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: yoga outside when it's warm enough at this beautiful platform
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: down by the river. And we spend a couple of
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: hours every day working through these fairy tales that is
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: just so rich. And it's always an incredible group of women.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: We have fires at night where we do all kinds
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: of crazy stuff. So I hope you'll consider coming. If
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: you want to check it out, you can learn more
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: by going to lisamarchiano.com and click on Wellspring Women's Retreat.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: So hopefully I'll see a few of you there. Bye.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Welcome to this Jungian life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
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  Speaker 3: Today we're going to talk about a rather mysterious topic
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: that Jung wrote about, inspired particularly by his studies of
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: ancient cultures. He called it loss of soul. As we
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: are circumambulating the idea, we're trying to understand what this
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: might have meant thousands of years ago to ancient peoples,
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: but also Jung felt it was something that still heard,
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  Speaker 3: that he observed in his patients in the Burkholzli, and
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  Speaker 3: then as his understanding deepened, he began to be concerned
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  Speaker 3: that this is something that's happening more frequently than we realize.
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  Speaker 3: Loss of soul is in a sense an alienation of
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: the individual from their own psychic experience. This could be
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: caused by trauma. Jung felt Sometimes it was caused by
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: an invasion of the collective into the individual's psyche. And
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: perhaps it occurs more subtly in other circumstances, which we'll
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: talk about today.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: And before we dive into this topic, I just want
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: to do what I often do on the podcast, which
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: is to remind you all about Dream School. Dream School
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: is our 12-month self-paced online program that teaches you how
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: to work with your dreams, the same way that we
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: work with listeners' dreams on the podcast. So dream work
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: is truly transformational. We've seen it change our lives. We've
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: seen it change the lives of the people we work with.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: And we wanted to give you all that gift of
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: being able to work with your dreams. So thisunionlife.com, and
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: you'll see a button right there, learn more about Dream School.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: So hopefully you'll take a look.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: So this interruption of our relationship to the individual self
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: and the invasion of collective ideas, images, agendas is something
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  Speaker 3: that we actually have been talking about with great intensity
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  Speaker 3: for the last several years with the growth of social media,
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: with the incredible intensity of people living in an echo
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: chamber and being pulled into these collective values that can
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: so powerfully invade their ability to make their own unique
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: choice about something.
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: You know, what I want to do a little bit
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  Speaker 4: is to kind of frame what we mean by loss
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  Speaker 4: of soul from a kind of Jungian psychic structure perspective.
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  Speaker 4: For Jung, the structure of the psyche was that we
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: have an ego, which is our sense of self, our
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: sense of I, me, And right underneath that is a
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: layer that he called the personal unconscious, which is very
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: much our own memories and experiences, emotional experience, highly flavored
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: and highly conditioned by how you grew up or how
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: I grew up and what happened. And at a deeper
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: layer of the psyche, there was what he called the
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: collective unconscious, which is universal. that just as we have
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: evolved physically over time, but retain our basic physiological structures
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  Speaker 4: from ancient times, so our psychic experience has been recorded
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: and we kind of know that. And we come with
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  Speaker 4: all of those kinds of associations and the mythological strata
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: that we all have in common. And for Jung, loss
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: of soul was related to injuries to the personal unconscious.
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: And so in a way, it's a kind of optimistic
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: way of framing a sense of dis-ease, usually marked especially
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: by a sense of nobody's home, a sense of emptiness, incompleteness.
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: You know, I get it, but I just don't connect
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  Speaker 4: with it. That's what we do every day in psychotherapy
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  Speaker 4: is to try to help people retrieve what we're talking
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  Speaker 4: about today is parts of your soul that are obtainable, retrievable,
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: and you can reconnect with them.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: You know, Deb, what I was thinking about when you
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: were speaking was the fact that our notions, our models
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: of psychological distress, the way that we as any particular
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: culture understand things like, let's say, depression, they really are
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: kind of little cosmologies or mythologies. And we have a
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: kind of mythology about mental distress, that it's caused by
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: kind of biochemical issues in the brain. We have other
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: mythologies too. I don't think we have a kind of
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  Speaker 1: unitary one. But this idea about a loss of soul
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  Speaker 1: is a metaphor that has been extremely widespread. I was
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: just doing a little bit of research and the cultures
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: that have believed in soul loss and soul retrieval are
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: spread really widely across the globe. And so it is,
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  Speaker 1: I mean, you use the word optimistic and the idea
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: of soul loss and soul retrieval, which was usually the
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: job of a shaman, It is optimistic because it says
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: this can be reclaimed. And I do think we see
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: that in our consulting rooms.
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  Speaker 3: Some of the vestiges of this idea of soul retrieval
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  Speaker 3: came forward, particularly in the United States in the 1980s
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  Speaker 3: when Michael Harner published his book, The Way of the Shaman,
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  Speaker 3: which rose out of his graduate studies that he was
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: particularly interested in shamanic practices and shamanic healing practices. And
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: one of the things that he noticed is that across
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: many different cultures, there seem to be similarities of belief
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: and even similarities of technique. And so as he began
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: to experiment with this, he felt that some of the
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: cultural nuances that were specific to the various tribes could
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: actually be filtered out and the techniques could stand alone.
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  Speaker 3: So for him, shamanism involved things like rhythmic drumming as
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  Speaker 3: a way to fall into a somnambulant state or a
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: light hypnosis. There were various visualizations that were helpful in
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: order to access various internal states. But a central belief,
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: as you were saying, Lisa, is that things can happen
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  Speaker 3: to the individual that cause the soul itself or a
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  Speaker 3: part of the soul to retreat into into one of
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: these inner worlds and to reside there. One of the
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  Speaker 3: duties of the shaman, or in this case, even modern
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: folks who were studying that technique, is to be able
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  Speaker 3: to go into this altered state and then with the
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: help of the power animal, try to find the missing
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: part of the other person and return it to them.
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  Speaker 3: This really lovely symbolic process would happen So for instance,
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: in this training, which I took myself, we would each
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: be practicing these techniques for each other. So the person
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: who was requiring this experience, you would tie a red
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: string or ribbon around their wrist. And the belief was,
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: if you tie the red ribbon around their wrist, that
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: that was simultaneously happening to all parts of their soul
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: in the other worlds. And you would be able to
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: then recognize what belonged to them because it too would
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: have a red string or ribbon around its wrist. And
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: then going into this altered state through drumming in that work.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: asking one's power animal to guide you through the various realms.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: And as you come upon human figures, scanning for the
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: one that actually had the red string around their wrist,
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: to take them back often in the shaman's body, and
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: then return to consciousness. and leaning over the patient's body
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: and then blow the soul physically back into them. And
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: for some people, it was a remarkably deeply moving ritual,
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: a ritual process. What I don't know is how objective
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  Speaker 3: or subject the experience was. Does this part of the
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: soul really disappear? But I could say that even the
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: symbolism of the process being ritualized seem to have this
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  Speaker 3: powerful effect on people.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Well, and I have a couple examples actually that I
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: want to share that kind of confirm what you're saying, Joseph.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: But before that, I'm wondering, should we try to define soul?
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  Speaker 1: I mean, it seems to me that that's a whole
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  Speaker 1: podcast episode. But maybe just for a minute, that a
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  Speaker 1: lot of these ancient cultures saw the soul as, I
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: don't know, maybe something like the animating principle. And isn't
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: that interesting there? That word is anima, you know, which
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: means soul in Latin, you know, that which animates so
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: that you've got the life of the body, but then
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: there's some non-material essence that is really, you know, the
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: aliveness part of you, And the belief is that that
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  Speaker 1: part maybe wanders or can separate or go somewhere else
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  Speaker 1: while you dream or can be ejected when you sneeze,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: which is why we say God bless you. So anything
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  Speaker 1: else we should say about soul?
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  Speaker 4: Oh, I think you're right that it could be a
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: whole podcast. And the other is, of course, this is
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: inherently uncapturable, if that's a word, in language and cognition.
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  Speaker 4: But it's the personal part of our enlivening spirit. It's
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: our life force. It has to do with our personality
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: and memories. It's the little spark of the divine that
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: is unique to each one of us that resides within.
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: That's how I think of it. And, of course, how
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: it's been written about from time immemorial.
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  Speaker 3: I've always liked the relationship between the word soul or
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: anima and animate. The soul is some kind of invisible
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  Speaker 3: animating force. And that when it is alienated from the ego,
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: that we lose that feeling of being animated. And some
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: people would call it a depression, but Jung thought it
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  Speaker 3: was more profound than that. That the voice becomes less animated.
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  Speaker 3: The body is less animated. The energy begins to recede dramatically.
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  Speaker 3: The desires or interests or purposes of a person lose
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  Speaker 3: their animation and become kind of lost and low and
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: difficult to find. The energy begins to fall someplace.
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  Speaker 1: So I want to lean into that, Joseph, because you
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  Speaker 1: said it's kind of more profound than a depression. But
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: I've been depressed. And the way you just described it,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: that's really, I mean, I remember, you know, this particular
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: depression that I had when I was in my late 20s.
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  Speaker 1: And it really was like the whole world was black
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: and white. And it really was like hard to find
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: energy for things. And I remember, I mean, this was
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: before I had gone to social work school, but I
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: remember learning in social work school about anhedonia. And I thought, oh,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: I know what that is because I remember, you know,
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  Speaker 1: and I have this memory of where I was when
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: I realized, God, like I don't even enjoy the things
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I used to enjoy. Like nothing brings me pleasure anymore.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: I was at 72nd Broadway when I was thinking about that.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: I could still see it etched in my mind. Just
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: that total, it was like a loss of life force.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: It was I mean, I was going through the motions, right?
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: And so maybe there's something, maybe loss of soul is
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: you just can't even get up and do the things
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: you're supposed to do. And I was most definitely getting
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: up and doing the things that I was meant to do.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: But it really was like some part of myself was
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: exiled away. It was really, it was a different self state.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: And I can remember it really clearly.
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: That word anhedonia is so descriptive because it's just, I
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: don't take pleasure in anything.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Right. It means it comes from the Greek without pleasure.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: So it's a big kind of psychiatric psychobabble word.
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: But it relates very much to loss of soul and
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: loss of life force, loss of the animating spirit that says, oh, great,
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: I'm going to see a movie tonight or I'm going
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: out to dinner. And instead of it sparking a sense
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: of anticipation and pleasure, it's just, I'm just going through
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: the motions. And that flatness, emptiness is so characteristic of
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: what today we're talking about as loss of soul.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: I think that just looking at Jung's writing, although subjectively
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: there clearly is a very similar connection, Jung writes about
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: it as the ego... descending downward, which he called an abasement.
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: So there's a kind of loss of strength, a loss
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: of clarity, a dropping down into a hazy place. And
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: then what seems to occur is that the sense of
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: being an individual begins to recede, and the collective unconscious
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: begins to push in, and that it is particularly a
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: loss of of feeling of the individual process, the individual mission,
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: the individual teleology. So while it can also look like
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: this just sense of purposeless exhaustion, it also can lead
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: to a kind of possession that the individual seems driven
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: without any ability to really explain. in a direction that
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: feels deeply alien to what their normal or recognizable values are.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: But having been, I was very seriously depressed after I
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: graduated from college as well, my undergraduate. There's so many
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: ways to describe depression, but in a clinical depression, I
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: felt like nothing had necessarily invaded me. It's not that
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: I wanted to do or be anything different than I
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: had been. but that all of the gas, all of
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: the capacity had been taken away. And I came to
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: feel afterwards that it was being pulled to another level
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: and being invested in a whole other sense of identity
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: that I just had no clue. I was living so
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: far away from anything that was useful to me. I'm
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: wondering when you began to move out of your depression, Lisa,
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: what What did you sense the purpose of it might
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: have been?
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: You know, that's really an interesting question because I think
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: that I had a similar situation that you had is
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: that I eventually came to understand that it was like
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: all that life force was being pulled into the unconscious.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: You know, the feeling that you have when you're standing
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: just where the waves break and you can feel the
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: ocean pulling out from under you. It was sort of
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: like that. It was like all the life force just
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: was draining. down, but it wasn't absolutely disappearing. Like you said,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, Jung talks about this in volume five, that
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the libido regresses into the inner world, and it activates
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: stuff there. And so when I came out, it really
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: was with this incredible flowering of a new interest and
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: new life force. And I mean, you know, it's, it's
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: basically when I went from, you know, thinking I was
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: going to do international humanitarian work to my switching over
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: to become a union analyst, it's like, that's where the
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: energy needed to go. So It did eventually feel purposive,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: but that day on that street corner and on the
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Everwood side, that was not how it felt.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: It seems like a different experience might be that we have,
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: maybe it's even easier to see in our kids, that
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: we have a kid that, I don't know, maybe they're
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: an athlete. They enjoy playing in sports. They're doing really well.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: They're an A student. You really like their friends. And
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: then literally all of a sudden, maybe over the course
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: of a month, your kid suddenly has become really angry.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: They're isolative. They're not interested in doing their homework. They're
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: dressing oddly and differently. And parents generally have this feeling
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: of alarm. It's like, what has my kid gotten involved in?
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: Or this feeling like, what's influencing my kid? As if
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: something that was wholesome has been pushed away and something
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: else has now taken its place. And often we instinctively
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: feel like they've fallen in with a bad crowd. But
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: often what we think of as the bad crowd is
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: a group of kids that have all fallen into this
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: collective value system, like we're all just angry all the time,
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: or we're all just going to smoke weed, and we're
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: going to just get away from the adults who are
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: all horrible. But any time a group of people decide
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: that they're all going to do something, or they have
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: an attitude like all the adults are idiots, and the
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: only way is this, et cetera, all homework is stupid,
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: In that very small way, we've lost our kid to
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: this collective belief that this bunch of kids have bought into.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: And it's been powerful enough to kind of knock our
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: kids off of what was a more productive center. And
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: now they're getting swept into a kind of echo chamber where, yeah, yeah,
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: it's all like that. It's all like that.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: And you would see that, according to Jung, as an
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: example of loss of soul?
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: It could be in a way that's not overly remarkable,
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: but a sense where the individual mission of the soul
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: has somehow been pushed aside and some other sense of
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: collective values have suddenly set themselves up like usurpers in
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: the kingdom, like Hamlet's uncle taking over the throne. And
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: Hamlet's actually supposed to be sitting there and Hamlet can't
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: kind of find the energy to kind of stand up
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: for what he believes. That would be a very, very
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: small way. I think Jung was talking about much more
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: dramatic examples, but he is talking about this ability to
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: hold onto ourselves in the face of powerful forces that
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: are coming at us in the collective.
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: You know, I think it might be useful here to
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: differentiate between depression and, Lisa, your image of being sort
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: of out in the ocean and being pulled by the undertow.
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: Or your example, Joseph, of kids when they often go
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: through puberty and are teenagers and so on, some awful
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: change comes in and comes over that is a bit
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: like being swept away. swept under in some way or
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: swept out versus a dissociative process, which is more like
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: parts being split off or separated in some way. There's
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: something that continues to run sort of on automatic pilot,
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: but this man named Bennett Braun suggested a really useful
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: acronym that, that is BASK, B-A-S-K, and it stands for Behavior, Affect, Sensation,
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: and Knowledge, where parts of us are online and parts
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: of us aren't. So we can dissociate behavior as in
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: somehow I did that and I don't even remember doing it.
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: And I think we all do that all the time.
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: Truck drivers, for example, talk about white line fever issues
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: and you're driving, and then all of a sudden you're
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: snapped back into a different reality. There's feeling and how
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: feeling can get cut off. This terrible thing happened, and
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: I can report out on it, but it's as if
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: I'm just reporting on some objective event instead of really
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: feeling it acutely. I'm indifferent to it. Sensation can be
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: cut off as well. as in memories where we just
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: don't have that sensation anymore. I can't really relate to it.
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: I can't recall what that felt like. And that there
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: are places where we blank out knowledge of that I
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: just don't remember that. Or I just went into a
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: dissociative state. That can be very protective, by the way,
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: in cases of sudden physical trauma where we're our automatic
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: pilot takes over, but it's too much to process. So
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: those four things, behavior, affect, sensation, and knowledge are places
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: where chunks of us can get split off, chunks of
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: our soul, chunks of our knowing, chunks of our essence
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: get compartmentalized either short-term or long-term. And I think that
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: relates to loss of soul.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: You know what's interesting, Deb, is you've really helped me,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: I think, clarify something. And I said before that we
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: have these sort of mythologies that explain distress. And in
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: our culture, it's possible that we have two main mythologies,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: which are more or less at odds with one another, actually.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: And the first is the kind of serotonin hypothesis that,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: you know, we get depressed or anxious or whatever because
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: of a biochemical imbalance. And the other major one would
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: be the trauma hypothesis, which says that if we're feeling
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: depressed or anxious or whatever, it's because we experienced trauma.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: And we know that there's like some truth in both
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: of these. There really are kind of chemical things going
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: on in the brain when we're depressed and anxious and
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: trauma really can have incredible consequences for our later mental health.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: But it's interesting, isn't it, that loss of soul maybe
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: is an overarching metaphor that somehow covers both a kind
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: of depressive process and a dissociative process.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: So I'll read a little bit from Jung, who really
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: is trying to help us in the same way. This
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: is from Volume 8. Certain complexes arise on account of
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: painful or distressing experiences in a person's life. Experiences of
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: an emotional nature which leave a lasting psychic wounds behind them.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: A bad experience of this sort often crushes valuable qualities
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: in an individual. All of these produce unconscious complexes of
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: a personal nature. In the ancient world, this would rightly
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: speak of a loss of soul, because certain portions of
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: the psyche have indeed disappeared. A great many autonomous complexes
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: arise in this way, but there are others that come
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: from quite a different source. While the first source is
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: easily understood, since it concerns the outer life everyone can see,
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: this other source is obscure and difficult to understand because
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: it has to do with perceptions or impressions of the
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: collective unconscious. Usually the individual tries to rationalize these inner
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: perceptions in terms of external causes, but that does not
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: get to the root of the matter. At bottom, there
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: are rational contents of which the individual had never been
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: conscious of before, and which he therefore vainly seeks to
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: discover somewhere outside himself. And in ancient cultures, this would
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: be expressed very aptly when they might say that some
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: spirit is interfering with them. And Jung goes on to say,
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: so far as I can judge, These experiences occur either
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: when something so devastating happens to the individual that the
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: whole previous attitude to life breaks down, or when, for
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: some reason, the contents of the collective unconscious accumulate so
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: much energy that they start influencing the conscious mind. And
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: he goes on and says, in my view, This happens
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: when the life of a large social group or of
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: a nation undergoes such a profound change of a political, social,
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: or religious nature. Such a change always involves an alteration
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: of the psychological attitude. So we have these two dimensions
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: of interference with the unique and individual soul. One is,
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: you know, an experience just as we were saying, something
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: terrible can happen to us.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: And we know this terrible thing has happened, and we
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: feel different after it's happened. Our personality feels altered. And
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: then one way of thinking about it is, where did
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: I go? Where did the old me go? And we
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: have an ego image of how I used to be happy,
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: or I used to like thus and such, and now
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: I only have a vague memory. And then there's the
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: stranger thing, for instance, this movement. the Flat Earth Movement,
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: which actually exists on YouTube, where some people seem so
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: taken by the idea that they're going to prove that
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: the world is indeed flat and this is a ridiculous,
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: outrageous thing that we've been tricked into thinking the Earth
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: is round. See people very sincerely putting this forward. And
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: we have to ask that is unlikely to have risen
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: out from their recent car crash or losing their job,
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: but something truly strange has come into them and come
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: into a large enough group of people that they actually
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: talk to each other about this. They get together for conventions,
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: flat earth conventions, to really try to prove this strange
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: but ancient belief is somehow relevant and in the same
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: way also interferes with it.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: You know, I.
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: Wonder if that is veering into what has been referred
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: to and what Jung refers to as possession by a spirit.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: That that is where comes from that deeper level of
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: the unconscious, the collective level, where there is a belief
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: that can be just incredibly distorted or weird, and yet
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: it takes over a group or an individual in something
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: like the Flat Earth Society. There is a belief system
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: that is unshakable by science, by objectivity, by... you know,
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: any other means because it has possessed them.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: But possession is not, I mean, it might be related
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: to loss of soul, but I'm thinking that it's sort
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: of a different phenomenon. I agree.
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: It's a different, it is, it's different. And that's the
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: differentiation is between loss of soul, which is what we've
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: been talking about as the where did I go, Or
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: I don't have access to some part of myself. So
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: it can be an overall depressive experience where my energy
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: is just really all down, all over. Or I see
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: things and think things, but I don't feel them. And
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: those are, I think, the two aspects of loss of soul.
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: But then there is a different critter called possession by spirit. Mm-hmm.
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: And that takes over in a more universal way and
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: kind of runs our system. Maybe we could analogize it
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: to the difference between a computer program versus the underlying
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: hard drive.
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: So they both have a similar vulnerability, which starts with
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: this abysmal. And whether it's literally someone's, we'll use the
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: car accident, because I've had some clients who had just,
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: terrible physical events happen to them, where there's been such
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: an overwhelming sensory interruption that there is a dissociation. There's
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: a sense that I suddenly don't feel real. I don't
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: know where my body is in space. I can't access
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: my feelings. So there's a way in which we're kind
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: of fallen into the unconscious. But there's other things that
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: can cause an abasement, people who have been ill for
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: long periods and they're deeply exhausted, it's very hard to
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: stay alert. It's hard to stay aware if we're in
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: physical pain all the time. It's incredibly difficult to just
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: stay focused on our own sense of individuality. Also, long
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: periods of fear. So if we think about what people
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: have been through with COVID, The tremendous amount of anxiety
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: and fear and the disruption to the normal sequence of
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: life and how during that time, at least my armchair observation,
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: his groups of people seemed much more vulnerable to taking
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: on collective fantasies. Dr. Fauci is an evil genius who
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: is controlling incredible, powerful forces and we're all in danger
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: or the vaccine is actually created by some nefarious underworld
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: organization in order to do terrible things to the human race.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: And large groups of people gathering together and reinforcing the idea.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: But part of the vulnerability to that is the sustained
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: anxiety and the exhaustion of.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Fear We noted how loss of soul is a metaphor
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: that has wide applicability all around the world in all
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: kinds of different cultures. One of them is the Quechua Indians,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: and they are in, I have to look and see, Peru.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: For this episode, my homework was I read up on
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: soul loss and soul retrieval in in this book that
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: I'm sure we all remember from our training, The Discovery
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: of the Unconscious by Henri Ellenberger. And we all had
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: to read this book and it's a little bit legendary
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: in training circles. There's some great examples in here about
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: soul loss and soul retrieval. And Ellenberger is using it
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: as a, what did we used to think about mental distress?
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: And he's obviously going to parlay that into kind of
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: its analogies in modern depth psychotherapies and our understanding of
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: the unconscious. But let me read you something that's quoted
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: in here about what the Quechua Indians called susto, which
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: is the Spanish word for fright. And they believe that
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: you can lose your soul if you're scared. If you
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: see a snake or you have another frightening experience, it
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: can kind of separate the soul and I just want
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: to read the treatment for it, if that's okay, because
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting and then perhaps we can
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: talk about the treatment. So it says the healing ceremony
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: begins with an operation called the shokuma, which is also
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: performed by a korandera, which is a woman who recites
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: certain invocations while rubbing the patient from head to toe
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: with a mixture of various flowers and leaves and the
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: flower of several kinds of grains. The mixture is then
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: collected and handed over to a male hero, a curioso,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: who now performs the essential parts of the rites. And
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: curioso sounds like it comes from the same root as curious,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: which we know comes from the Latin for care. The
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: curioso comes to the patient's house at midnight, wraps the
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: mixture in a piece of the patient's clothing, and prepares
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: him to receive the absent spirit. He then leaves the patient,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: who remains alone in the darkened house with the door
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: opened He walks away using the mixture to make a
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: white line along the ground to enable to let the
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: soul find its way back. He goes either to the
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: spot where the patient experienced his initial fright or to
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: some dreaded place such as an old grave or the
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: ruin of an Incan fortress. There, using the mixture, he
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: makes the remains of the mixture as a propitiatory sacrifice
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: to the earth. He then solemnly calls the lost soul,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: repeating his call five times. And then at the end
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: of his invocation, he apparently can kind of hear the
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: soul come. Then he walks back along the white line
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: with the soul following him. He goes upstairs to the
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: sleeper and he lifts the blanket over the patient's feet
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: because that's the place. that the soul is going to re-enter,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: and apparently the curioso can hear the soul re-entering. The
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: patient is supposed to be asleep at this point. The
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: patient is supposed to dream that his soul comes back.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: And then when he wakes up in the morning, he's cured.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: So this person compiled statistics on 176 patients, mostly children
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: or adolescents afflicted with susto, who underwent medical examination as
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: well as this shamanic treatment, it was found that these
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: patients belonged to two distinct groups. The first consisted of
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: 64 emotionally disturbed individuals suffering from anxiety, depression, hysterical symptoms,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: and the like. The second group included 112 patients afflicted
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: with physical diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, post-dysentery colitis, malnutrition, anemia,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: and so on, further complicated by emotional disturbances. So the
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: remarkable fact is that there were frequently successful outcomes of
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: this healing procedure that I've just described. And the person
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: who gathered these says, I have personally observed many cases
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: of typical or even atypical susto abruptly improve or recover
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: completely after one or two sessions of this healing ceremony.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Such a success achieved by a humble, rural, curioso, or
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: by a peasant woman with their primitive and savage psychotherapy
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: contrasts with the failure of graduated physicians, among them the
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: author of this article, In the Cure of Susto. So,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: highly effective cure.
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: You know, it's really very, that's very moving information. as
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: a testament to what we can do. for one another,
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: what we can do with one another. With time and
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: intention and some training, ritual, visualization, of course it's effective.
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: The images, the visualization, the ritual, the connection of what
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: a healing process that is. You know, as Jung says
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: over and over again, psyche is real. There actually really
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: is autonomy of the psyche. We know that. I mean,
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: nobody decides what they're going to dream at night, and
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: we have all kinds of dreams tonight. psyche is a
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: living other within us that can be intentionally called up.
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: And of course, it is a healing. There is healing
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: property and healing potential. And I wonder if in our
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: overly mechanized, seemingly, quote, rational, unquote, world, we've lost touch
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: with how these seemingly simple processes by seemingly untrained people
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: are actually very real, very powerful, and we should be
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: honoring them.
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: And I think that one of the change of values
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: that you're talking about, Deb, is this really serious attitude
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: towards investigating plant medicines, something that had been demonized and
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: dismissed and poo-pooed And all of a sudden going back
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: into this ancient wisdom and really asking the question around,
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: for instance, psilocybin, what is it about these remarkable states
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: that people go into that seems to often enough help them?
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: And to try to find out what those various chemicals
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: are doing in the brain and how can we use
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: this to best effect.
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: What the research seems to show is that these substances
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: like psilocybin, ayahuasca, and others, that their effectiveness depends on
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: how and when and with whom they are used. And
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: that having ritual and a spiritual intention, having care, having
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: a guide, being accompanied and companioned, by somebody who's knowledgeable,
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: makes a huge difference rather than a sort of casual
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: kind of use. So again, the connection with psyche, the
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: connection with soul, the connection with our inner being makes
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: a difference in the kind of altered state that we
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: can access. But I think one way or another, we
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: learn that there's much more to.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Us And one of the things, just going back to
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: the passage that I read that I thought was fascinating
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: is there was the first group that only had emotional disturbance.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: And then the second group had physical things, like real
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: physical things, but also emotional disturbance. And the thing about
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: loss of soul or soul retrieval is it's a wider,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: broader metaphor, right? Like even what you guys were just
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: saying about plant medicine. I mean, yes, it's the substance,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: but it's not just the substance step. As you were saying,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: it's the whole context in which it occurs, right? And
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: the thing is, when you go to the doctor's office
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: and maybe you do have malnutrition, but you also have
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: real soul wounds because your parent died or something like that.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: There's been real hardship somehow. Just to be told, well, here,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: take this multivitamin or whatever the treatment is, it doesn't
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: address the whole thing. So there's something about the richness
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: of the metaphor of soul loss and soul retrieval that
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: seems to address all of us. the same way that
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: a plant medicine experience when it's done with a guide
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: kind of does the same thing. Yes, there's a physiological
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: component and we can make our brains do this different
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: thing by ingesting these substances. But when it's also held
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: in this larger container, you know, that's what we really
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: hunger for. And that is, if I dare say, that
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: is what depth psychology does. You know, someone comes to
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: me for depression because they've Or, you know, they're struggling
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: with like a difficult life circumstance. And I know that, yes,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: that really difficult life circumstance is there and it's important.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: But I also know that there's this larger context. And
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: when I can, you know, someone recently kind of brought
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: me a dream and, you know, was thinking about the
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: dream fairly literally. And I just kind of moved it
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: up to a higher key. Not saying that the literal
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: interpretation was wrong, but that there's also this other way
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: of looking at it which encompasses more. My impression was
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: that that was a very healing moment for this person,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: just to be reminded that we are more. Yes.
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: I like the distinction very much of the whole context,
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: the whole person, and attending to that. through some of
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: these shamanistic kinds of rituals, let's say, versus the compartmentalization,
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: which goes back to that Basque model that a lot
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: of modern medicine has. You go to the doctor and
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: I have these particular symptoms that have to do with
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: my body as a mechanized system and that there will
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: be this medicine or this procedure for symptoms relating to
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: the stomach and some other medicine or some other procedure
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: for symptoms relating, let's say, to headaches or sinuses, and
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: that there is a compartmentalization. I'm not at all suggesting
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: that we do without that. I'm very happy when I
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: have a symptom and there's a medication to relieve it.
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: But it is a different method of healing, a different
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: philosophy of healing from some of these shamanistic practices that
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: have been going on for millennia.
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: Well, I think that we're all in the same realm,
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: and this is, of course, essential to Jung's work, which is, well,
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: what does it mean for us to lose something, and
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: where does it go when it's lost? And this puts
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: us right in this essential place that there is conscious
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: and unconscious terrain inside of us. And if what we
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: have lost is in the unconscious, then seeking it in
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: the unconscious makes perfect sense. So the root of the
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: word loss means, in the Proto-Indo-European root, means to loosen,
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: to divide, and to cut apart. And of course, we
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: have that same sense that something that was in our possession,
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: we have failed to hold or to keep or to preserve.
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: So when we're talking about the soul, something that the
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: ego used to have a relationship with that was knowable, recognizable,
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: has somehow fallen into the unconscious and fallen so deeply
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: that we're not sure where it is. And all of
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: the various methods, including, for instance, psilocybin, open the doors
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: to the unconscious. And as we know, the unconscious is
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: also full of a lot of things. So the art,
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: which I think, Deb, you're leaning into, is once the
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: door is open, how do we orient to the unconscious
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: in such a way that what we have personally lost,
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: we might be able to retrieve or become conscious of?
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: Perhaps it's part of our own potential. Perhaps it's a
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: quality of vitality which the body needs in order to
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: restore balance and physical homeostasis. So the unconscious is both
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: the repository and the wellspring of all kinds of things
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: that are needed. And leading to what you had said, Lisa,
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: or were inferring, that one of the places that we
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: retrieve things is in dream work. because the ego finally
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: has a way to get a glimpse into the unconscious,
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: which day to day can be mysterious. We might not
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: all want to meditate or know how to open these doors,
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: but every night we go in and this content from
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: the unconscious is presented to us or presents itself. And
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: there's an opportunity to retrieve, engage, to bring into the
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: conscious world something that was lost to us. I think
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: in the loss of soul concept, that something has interfered
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: with a state of being that we once had and
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: that we have now been diminished in one way or another.
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: I'd like to share a story that's a bit dramatic.
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: but I think it can. exemplify this subjective experience of
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: something that is lost and something that is returned. So
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: one of the ways that I conceptualize trauma work these
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: days is that there are seminal moments in our lives
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: where we lose access to a capacity, to a quality
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: of functioning, and those qualities and the memory of what
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: it was like to have them fall out of consciousness.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: Part of the healing process is to try to find
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: the memory of how we functioned before the interfering event.
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: That it's not enough to just know fully that something
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: happened or even to connect to the feeling states that
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: we may have dissociated. But on the other side of
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: the loss is a capacity. And that when the capacity
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: is truly re-experienced, we are then able to engage life
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: in a way that we had not been able to
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: for a long time. So I'll tell a personal story.
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: And then if we have time, I'll share something that
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: happened in a psychological group that I have worked with
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: for a very long time. So this past December, one
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: of my dogs had died really terribly and tragically. It
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: was very, very painful. It was unexpected. It happened in
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: the home. It was a bad death. And it was
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: just really, really a terrible, devastating experience. And I and
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: my family experienced intense states of distress, pain, and I
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: would really say trauma, at least in my experience. And
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: this feeling of agony companioned me on and on and
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: on for weeks and weeks and weeks. And I'm writing
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: about it. I produced that little solstice poem and put
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: it up on our YouTube channel as an event, as
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: a desperate attempt to try to find some kind of
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: archetypal imagery around it, but nothing, nothing really opened up.
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: And then sitting in the agony, I had what Freud
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: would call a source memory returned to me. And I
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: remember it being three years old, playing in the front yard,
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: and we lived in a low-income housing area outside of
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: New York City. And it was certainly pleasant enough and
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: But I'm outside, and there was really not much to do,
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: and we're often just digging with spoons in the dirt
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: and making up stuff to play with as little kids.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: And I look up, and this English sheepdog is kind
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: of bounding down the sidewalk. And I'd never seen a sheepdog.
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: It was... It was otherworldly to me at three years old.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: So I stand up, it's coming at me with its
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: big tail wagging and its tongue out of its mouth.
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: I just threw my arms open and this licking pile
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: of joy and fur just kind of embraced me and
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: I embraced it. And I had never, I have just
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: never experienced that kind of, wondrous joy, this kind of
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: apparition of love. I don't even have words for it,
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: but that, that feeling. It was a true visitation. And
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: of course, you know, I'm trying to bring the dog
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: into the garden apartment. My mother is there and it's
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: a missing dog to her. So I'm like hanging onto
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: the dog with all my life. I want it. I
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: want us to keep it. My mother is a little
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: confused as to what to do. She's willing. Actually, at first,
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: like most New Yorkers, she's like, just keep it outside.
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: It'll go away. It's somebody else's problem. But I wasn't
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: going to let that happen as a three-year-old boy. So
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: there's a little pie plate of water. I'm really engaged
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: with it. Of course, she finds the owner. The tag
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: calls them up. It's their dog. They're going to pick
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: it up. So we're there for several hours, and the
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: woman drives up, and she's very relieved, and she wants
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: to retrieve her dog. I thought I was going to die.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: That unbelievable agony that I experienced having that dog taken away. Again,
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: of course, rationally, it's her dog. Of course, it should
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: go with her. But I could see the woman's confusion.
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: I was sobbing as the dog was being taken off.
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: And in that moment, in that agony, a capacity inside
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: of me was stored away. A receptor site was just
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: plugged up with something because the agony was just too much.
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: And that experience I had this December of, a similar
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: agony returned me to that moment of overwhelming pain as
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: a three-year-old. But more importantly, it returned me to who
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: I was before that agony, which is that little boy
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: who could throw his arms out and see something miraculous
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: running towards him, and that feeling of whatever that's called.
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: Whatever that arm out inhalation, that awe, wonder, joy, and
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: that meeting of this ecstatic union that the capacity for
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: that had been gone for 50 somewhat odd years, and
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: it had been gone so long that I didn't know
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: I used to be like that. It's not like everything
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: was cut off, but that piece of my soul had
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: just wandered, had just gone somewhere else. I've had dogs
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: since then. I've loved them, but not like that. Or
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: I've met life in whatever ways that I have that,
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: It was very positive for me, but that totally unobstructed, wondrous, synchronous,
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: joyous throwing open my arms, I remembered viscerally what that
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: is and have, in a more subtle way, been able
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: to retain that since that moment just a few months ago.
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: And that happened organically. It wasn't in therapy. But that
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: is a return of soul. So the loss of soul
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: can also be thought of as a moment or a
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: period of time where some natural capacity in ourselves just
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: stops being accessible. And often because it is associated with
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: pain that is intolerable. And I think Donald Kalchad's work,
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: Trauma in the Soul, is speaking to this exact process
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: of loss of soul, retrieval of soul, and on the
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: other side of that, a remembering of who I was
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: before that capacity was lost.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a beautiful way to describe it.
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that we have an original wholeness that is accessible,
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: that is a potential within us. And that's an incredible story, Joseph.
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: It was a strange, agonizing gift through such loss.
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: And it was offered to you by the unconscious.
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, the unconscious remembered.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: Dug that up, the unconscious remembered, yeah. And, you know,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: Finn was just like that English bulldog, wasn't he? Oh, Finn. Big, silly, fluffy, loving, joyful.
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: Leaping across, you know, right on top of you. That
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: echo was enough for that similitude to help me.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: To retrieve the joy.
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: Finn was and that your three-year-old self was open to.
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: And even as an adult, I mean, I welcomed Finn
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: into the house, but not fully. Not fully.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: Not in the way that I did at three.
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: Now that we have another dog in the house, I
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: have a fuller relationship with our surviving dog. I can
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: grant myself a kind of joyous, you know, face right
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: in his muzzle kind of unrestrained joy. A really messy
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: kind of joy that little boys can have with dogs.
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: I That just would not have been possible. I wouldn't
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: have remembered.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: How to do that. So this soul retrieval came about
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: through trauma and pain and suffering.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: And through being able to hold the current agony.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: And being able to sit with that, yeah.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: Until something came to me and to believe. This again
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: brings us to Jung's brilliance. To believe that the extraordinary
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: suffering that was coming up, was more than just the
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: physical loss, but that my psyche was doing something. The
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: inner shaman, the dream maker, the guide, is trying to
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: retrieve something that I need to come back to me
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: in order to be as I should be.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: As open-hearted as you could be. Yeah.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: And how diminished I had been since then without knowing it.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: And I wasn't, you know, a collapsed person the way
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: one can be, as I was with a serious depression.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: But there are ways in which I think we have
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: all perhaps lost parts of our soul along the way,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: capacities that we should have had that have been closed off.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: And the metaphor that I find myself using It's like
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: my soul has all of these USB ports on it
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: for certain kinds of experiences to be plugged into it.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: What an image.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: Or taste buds, maybe. And when we have an intolerable experience,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: it's like somebody just took some beeswax and just plugged
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: it into that port.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: It's still there.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: And if it turns black, you could believe it doesn't
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: even exist anymore. No, I only have Nine ports, I
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: don't have 10. What are you talking about? And we
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: don't even know. Part of us is gone.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: So could you tell the story about what happened at
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: your psychological group? Because I think that's another really beautiful
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: example of this.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: I'm happy to because this represents something of a more
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: curated experience. So as I have over the years cultivated
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: doing intensive work with small groups and have over the years,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: Many years ago, I began to do a project inspired
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: by Donald Kalschad's trauma work, where we were beginning to
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: do some artwork, trying to find ways to imagine what
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: might have been lost, what was in the way of that,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: and even just being able to fantasize who might I
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: have been had nothing been interrupted. And it's not a photograph,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: of course. It's based on who we fantasize. But even
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: the fantasizing process is a beckoning to the unconscious. We're
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: still asking for help. So as we were working on
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: these evolving art projects, I would have people take turns
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: presenting it to the group or as much that they
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: would want to. And then, if they were open to it,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: I would work with them in front of the group,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: which would sometimes involve staging things for people. With this
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: one fellow, a guy in his early 40s, really smart,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: good guy, but suffering from a subtle chronic experience of
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: melancholy and a subtle sense of alienation. Not enough to
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: really blight the life, really successful, smart, good relationships, but
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: just something uncomfortable, something not fitting well. And so as
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: we began to talk and going a bit back in time,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: he began to remember an early childhood experience when he
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: was a toddler and he had become really seriously ill.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: And it was the right decision to bring him to
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: the hospital. And as was the case many years ago,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: parents were much more trusting. So they kind of dropped
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: their toddler off at the hospital. Both parents worked. Of course,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: mom would come back at night and spend some time.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: But really, the child was kind of handed over to
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: the nursing staff. On a conscious level, as this man
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: had reflected on it, he began to have some memories
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: of the nurses actually delighting in him. And he actually
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: could remember running down the hospital corridors and the nurses
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: playing catch with him and telling him how beautiful his
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: eyes were and really being these lovely mothers, you know,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: substitute mothers. And yet, somewhere lurking around that was this
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: chronic sense of terror that was unlanguaged, unworded. I imagine
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: at that time, the nurses aren't going to ask him
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: if he's terrified. The parents don't want to think of
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: him that way. And the world was different. I think
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: psychological sensitivity was not as heightened as it is now.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: So I think the assumption was kids are adaptive. He's smiling.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: Everything's fine. But at night, he would sometimes have to
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: share a room. Private rooms weren't so easy to have,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: particularly in rural areas. And during a particular period, there
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: was an ill old man that he was sharing a
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: room with as a little boy. And he would hear
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: the labored, breathing and smell the scent of this unwell
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: person and began to feel like something was coming after him,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: that death itself was in a sense coming after him.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: That's an afterthought. As a child, it wasn't quite that sophisticated.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: So in psychodrama, what we tried to do is to
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: get a sense of how to stage things and to
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: invite various members to participate or the person who's having
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: the experience chooses people. So this fellow had chosen another
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: male friend to represent his child self. And as we're
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: playing through this drama, the man who had been in
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: the hospital begins to narrate what it was like to
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: be there at night and hear this elderly ill person.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: The other man who is holding the position of the
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: boy begins to have an overwhelming sense of grief and
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: begins crying hysterically. As often happens, the field, the energetic
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: field of the event takes it over. And the man
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: who had the experience is looking at the weeping boy
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: in the room. And he begins to become so upset
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: and says, I know you're crying and I can't feel anything.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: It's an extraordinary moment. So the actor is holding all
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: the feeling. The man is across the room and begins
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: to feel the distance between himself and this feeling natured
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: inner child. He then chooses a woman to play one
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: of the comforting mother figures who tends the actor who's
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: playing the boy, but somehow it doesn't, it still doesn't
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: quite get into him. He begins to relax a little
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: bit and I'd asked him, where in the room do
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: you need to go in order to place that boy
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: back in yourself? And just in that intuitive wisdom, He
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: then migrates over to a corner of the room, puts
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: his face down in the corner the way an infant might,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: with his pelvis up in the air, kind of rocking.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: And he begins to narrate for us how he is
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: experiencing his body transforming back into being a toddler that
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: he can actually feel the body of the toddler he
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: begins to rock and then the agony that the actor
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: was holding begins to here in this man, he begins
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: to keen in a way that was so painful for
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: all of us in the group to have to hold
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: as a desire to want to rush over and comfort him.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: And if we had, we would have acted like his
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: defense system. We would have acted like the protector persecutors
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: pulling him away from the intolerable experience. So we're all
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: kind of white knuckling it as we We're carrying the
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: defensive structure. He begins to feel and visualize that something
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: is hunting him, that what he interprets as death is
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: hunting him. This enormous amorphous man spirit is hunting him.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: He's crawling into the corner. The tension is almost unbearable
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: and it occurs to me to suggest Can you let
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: him in? Can you let him into you? Which seems
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: like the most non-intuitive thing one would say. Would seem
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: like the wrong thing to let what terrifies us back in.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: So to this man's great credit and because he's done
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: a lot of work and trusts the group, he says yes.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: He experiences this ghost at the moment come into his body.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: All of a sudden, he shudders. All the affect smooths out.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 3: His body relaxes. He stands up and looks at us.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: He begins to take these enormous breaths. His ribs are.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: Moving in this extraordinary full way. And he says several things.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: It's as if my breath has been returned to me.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: I actually feel as though I have forgotten how to breathe.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: It's as if he was remembering what it was like
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: not to hold his breath, which he had forgotten for
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: some 40 years. The muscle fibers were acting differently. Again,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: he looked at all of us, and there was this
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: remarkable aliveness in his eyes, this kind of brilliant clarity.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: And he said, I've been wearing glasses for many years,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: and I have this feeling that I can actually see
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: you in a way that I... couldn't or don't remember
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: being able to and that he felt alive in a
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: way that he could finally remember before he was the
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: toddler who was brought to the hospital that he had
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: a relationship to the grass and the yard and the
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: cats and the sunlight that he had lost some capacity
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: for So I don't know that I have done justice
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: to evoke the full story of it, but for those
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: of us that were in the room, we were just
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: awestruck that something this miraculous was happening in front of us.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: And then staying in touch with this fellow for quite
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: a while afterwards to then trace how his own ability
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: to feel alive and enlivened and confident and in his
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: body and to breathe in his life had quite literally
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: been returned to him.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: You're relating the story of this man and your experience
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: with your dog, Finn, takes me to one of the
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 4: thoughts that a lot of soul has to do with
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 4: our feeling life. And that actually, you know, for Jung,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 4: the essential basis of our personality is affectivity. That our
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 4: feelings are the central organizing principle. They are closely allied
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 4: with soul, with anima, with animation, with enlivenment, all the
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: things we've been talking about. And that retrieving soul is...
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: the healing of a disturbance in our ability to feel
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: and how important that is as an aspect, a dimension,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 4: and maybe even the heart of what we think of
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 4: as soul. Before we turn to the dream, a word
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 4: of thanks to all of you who support us so
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: generously and so faithfully. as our patrons through Patreon. If
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 4: you are a listener and you're enjoying the podcast and
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 4: we've been able to give you something that matters to
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 4: you in your life, please go to this youngianlife.com and
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 4: sign up and support us. You can do it for
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 4: as little as a dollar a month. It makes a
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: difference to us. This week's dreamer is a woman. She's 30.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: She's an attorney. And the title of her dream is
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: My Dragon. I was trying to save a younger girl
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 4: or woman at the start. She was like a little sister.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: I was working, trying so hard to protect her. I
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 4: am teaching and nurturing her, defending her. She grew stronger
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 4: along the way. We were looking for plants for a bouquet.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: and an evil man viciously and ruthlessly attacked us. I
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 4: fought back, and I was just as ruthless. I physically
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 4: throw him out. He lost and was brutally injured. I
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 4: realized the girl with me was powerful in her own way.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 4: She had special abilities to sense things that others did not.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 4: We continued and came upon a theater performance in front
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: of a school. We volunteered for roles, but mostly because
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: the roles seemed meant for us. I realized the girl
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 4: I was caring for could give a voice to those
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 4: who could not speak for themselves. We realized some people
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 4: in the school were oppressed and their oppressors had control.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 4: We broke something and an entire wall came down and
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 4: wild horses ran everywhere. We climbed the structure of the
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: school that was left to try to get to safety,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 4: or maybe to try to jump onto a horse from
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 4: higher ground. I lost the girl in the struggle to
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 4: climb higher, and a bull with horns started attacking me.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 4: He could climb, too, and the higher I got, the
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 4: closer he got. I started falling, but I wasn't scared
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 4: because I knew something was coming to catch me. A
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 4: creature caught me and started to fly. I intuitively knew
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 4: this creature was meant for me, and he felt like
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 4: an old friend. He was scarier, darker than a horse.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 4: My dragon. He was black and had spikes everywhere. All
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 4: of a sudden, I felt less alone. I realized I
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 4: had been carrying so much, and finally someone was carrying me.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: I rode this animal as he flew. We bonded and
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 4: I got accustomed to him. We took a break for
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 4: me to get snacks. I noticed people staring at me
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 4: and they seemed scared or in awe or in respect.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 4: Someone told me my dragon liked chocolate, so I got
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 4: some for me and some for him. I got on
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: his back and fed him the chocolate. He liked it.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 4: And as he ate, I noticed that his body was
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 4: huge and strong and his head was smaller. I wake up.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 4: For context, the dreamer says, I am an attorney who
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: is reconnecting to my creative side, a side of me
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 4: that has always been strong, but I am just recently
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 4: allowing to develop as I learned pottery. I grew up
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: as the oldest of seven kids, and my parents were
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: too emotionally immature to care for them. So I was
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: a parent at a young age and consistently worry about them.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 4: I've been facing a lot of fears lately and opening
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 4: myself up to rejection in starting to share my creative work.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: The main feelings in the dream, she says, are I
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 4: felt stressed at first, worried about protecting the girl, focused
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: and hard at work, never a moment's rest, keeping an
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 4: eye out for danger and not being able to trust
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 4: the adults who were in leadership roles. Then I feel
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: strength and clarity when I fight back, when I climb. Finally,
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 4: I feel some level of peace of connection, even curiosity,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 4: as I bond with the creature who flies with me
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 4: on his back. And she adds for additional context. My
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 4: relationship with the younger girl is one where I am
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 4: the stronger and wiser protector who feels responsible for her well-being.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 4: with those who would hurt her or us or stand
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 4: in our way. I'm fearless in fighting them down because
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 4: I know she's worth saving. With the dragon, I feel
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 4: a connection that is like one I've always known but
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 4: had not felt before, like meeting an old friend.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: So this is a more complex dream in a way.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: And I think what I'll maybe start off with is
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: that there's some connection between the evil man who attacks
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: the bull and the dragon. And all of these figures
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: are masculine. And when we see the dream ego kind
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: of defeating this, we could call it an anonymous figure,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: this man that attacks, you know, it's not just like, oh, yay,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: the ego prevails over the evil unconscious figure. It's more
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: like there's been a kind of transaction So sometimes in
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: fairy tales, when someone dies, it's not really like, it's
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: not really that that element has died. It's more like
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: that whatever that element represented has been absorbed into consciousness.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: So for example, in Hansel and Gretel, when the witch
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: dies at the end, the kids have integrated that capacity
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: for aggression and darkness and can move about the world
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: in a different way. So we might say that the
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: evil man with his capacity maybe for aggression. And I
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: want to say for kind of constructive selfishness would be
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: what I suspect that image is, has been integrated. Because
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: she's always been a good protector and carer. That's what
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: she did as a child. But this man represents a
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: different kind of aggression. Like the aggression needed to say, no,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to go out to dinner with you
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: tonight because I promised myself I was going to go
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: to the pottery studio and work on my pottery. So
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: that kind of constructive selfishness. And it proves very powerful.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: She kind of triumphs over it in that scene, but
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: it shows up again later where there's this bull, which
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: again is this very strongly masculine figure. But we can
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: almost imagine that the image of the dragon catching her
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: is this psychological image of her being able to relate
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: to this energy in a new way, where yes, it's strong, yes,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: it's powerful, yes, it's dangerous, but she is now riding it.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: So she has a kind of constructive relationship between the
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: ego and that part of the unconscious.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 4: That's a lot.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 4: And I think you've just done an amazing job of
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 4: unpacking the storyline in this dream and that the story
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 4: is a story of, First, she has to fight the
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 4: evil man. Then there's the bull. And then finally, this
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: dragon who's black and has spikes. And yet it's such
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 4: a great image of riding a dragon is a great
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 4: image of how the ego relates to a dark force
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 4: of the unconscious that the ego is in charge. The
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 4: ego is the rider. And that unconscious force, just as
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 4: you said, is supporting her and befriending her. And then,
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 4: of course, it's just charming that she has to share
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: her chocolate with him. Now he's almost like a pet.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: It's a very tender relationship, especially in the context of
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 4: her life history as what we would call call a
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 4: parentified child, a child that had to take on precociously
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 4: and prematurely the role of caretaking, parent, protector, which is
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 4: very hard in the psyche. I like your reference, too, Lisa,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 4: to the phrase of constructive selfishness. Mm-hmm. and I think
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 4: the dream images it with that first fight against the
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 4: evil man, that she's ruthless. And she says ruthless twice.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 4: And that's a word that I really resonate to because
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 4: it's not fury.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: It's not panic-driven anger.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 4: There's a coldness and a sensibility and a kind of
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 4: cognitive quality to ruthless, that this is something that has
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 4: to be done, and I am just confronting something in
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 4: a way that requires equal and opposite force.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: I'm tracking some additional things, and all that you guys
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 3: have said makes perfect sense. So I'm stepping back a
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: bit and noticing that when she starts falling, it seems
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 3: to be the place where things change. So in the
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 3: first part of the dream, the idea of the oppressed
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 3: and the oppressors, the victim and the perpetrator, is a
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: paradigm that's very powerful and very present in her psyche.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 3: It allows the ego to be very heroic and dynamic.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 3: But it also, if that's projected into the outer world,
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: it puts the ego in a place of just constant
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: hypervigilant anxiety also. I think it's wonderful that over the
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 3: arc of the dream, it seems that the victim-perpetrator paradigm
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 3: seems to have relaxed. That's enormous.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: It's an enormous shift.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: That's great. I really like that.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 3: It seems that also when the girl disappears, the girl
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: shows up in the ego. So at first the ego
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 3: is caring for the girl who needs to be protected
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: in all these ways. When the girl disappears, then she
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: gets to be the girl who's finally having somebody carry her. Nice.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: So the girl moves in and seems to incarnate. in
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 3: her as she falls. And she has this wonderful experience,
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 3: which sounds like she did not have growing up, that
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 3: if I fall, something will catch me.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's beautiful.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: And that's the gift that I think the collective gives her,
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 3: as it often does if fate has not given us
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: a certain kind of parent or parenting experience. The potential
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: still exists in the archetypal world, So it also makes
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 3: sense that it would come to her in a magical
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 3: form rather than a memory. Archetype catches her.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 3: There is something in the world that will catch you
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 3: when you fall.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: The transpersonal, you're caught by the transpersonal. If that's not
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: mediated by a personal mother, for example, who you experienced
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: as always being there for you, you can be caught
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: by the transpersonal at the archetypal level. And that seems
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: to happen here. That's really lovely, Joseph.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 3: Sounds like something really good is happening for her.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: I also, I have to just say, you know, we
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: haven't talked about the wild horses, you know, but now
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: I'm going to have a certain Rolling Stones song stuck
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: in my head for the rest of the day. But
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: these wild horses, you know, this image of sort of
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: unbridled life urge, this unbridled life force, libido, is just
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: going to come and kind of sweep everything down. There's
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: There's been, you know, something's been knocked down or something
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: and it calls up the image of the tarot card,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: the tower, that some old way of being is really
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: just being swept away. And what's coming online is really,
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: it's pretty good. It's pretty good. Chocolate eating dragon.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook,
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: help us produce future episodes by funding us through Patreon,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: and submit your dreams for possible interpretation on another episode.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: We'd like to thank our listener who shared a dream
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 2: topics you'd enjoy hearing more about. Until next time, keep
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: living this Jungian life.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: Thank you.