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UNLOCK THE POWER OF SYMBOLS · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Well, today we are so lucky and excited to have
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: with us Murray Stein. Murray Stein is a training and
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: supervising analyst at the International School of Analytical Psychology in Zurich,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: which is also known as ISAP. He has been president
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: of the International Association for Analytical Psychology from 2001 to
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: 2004 and of ISAP Zurich in 2008 to 2012. He's
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: a member of the Journal of Analytical Psychology Editorial Advisory Board,
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: and he is the author of Jung's Map of the
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Soul and many other books and articles. Eight volumes of
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: his collected writings have been published to date, and he
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: lives in Switzerland and has a private practice in Zurich.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: And Murray has been important to all of us in
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: our training. You can't get through the.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Propodoidicum, the exams without being told many times, just read
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Map of the Soul. So advice we have also passed
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: on to our younger colleagues. So Murray, it is really
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: a delight and an honor, and we're thrilled to have
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: you on the podcast.
• 1:50
  Speaker 5: Thank you. I'm very glad to be here with you today.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: So today we were going to ask Murray to opine
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: on Jung's concept of the symbol, which in one way
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: is so ubiquitous that I think we often take it
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: for granted that we know what Jung is talking about
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: or what we are talking about when we bandy about
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: the word symbol. But actually there's a tremendous amount of
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: nuance and significance, particularly in how Jung understood symbols and
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: their efficacy in the individuation process. So where do you
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: think the best place to start might be, Murray?
• 2:34
  Speaker 5: Jung makes a fundamental distinction between what he calls signs
• 2:38
  Speaker 5: and symbols. And he says a sign tells you something
• 2:44
  Speaker 5: that is familiar. It gives you direction. You see a
• 2:47
  Speaker 5: stop sign, you stop. Or you see a sign on
• 2:52
  Speaker 5: a store, you know what's there, Sears, Sears Robot, whatever
• 2:57
  Speaker 5: it is. But a symbol, he says, is the best
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: possible representation of something that is still unconscious. So that's
• 3:08
  Speaker 5: the way we take symbols. We don't try to reduce
• 3:11
  Speaker 5: a symbol to something we already know. A symbol is
• 3:15
  Speaker 5: something to experience. It's something to live with and let
• 3:21
  Speaker 5: it speak to us over time. We treat symbols with
• 3:27
  Speaker 5: great respect in Jungian psychology because they bring us messages,
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: we could say, from the depths of the psyche. And
• 3:37
  Speaker 5: of course, in religious life, symbols have been used since
• 3:40
  Speaker 5: time immemorial to speak about God or the gods or
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: demons or invisible forces. All those invisible forces, Jung concluded,
• 3:53
  Speaker 5: as modern people, we don't believe they're out there anymore,
• 3:56
  Speaker 5: but they exist. but they exist in the psyche. So
• 3:59
  Speaker 5: how do we get a hold of them? How do
• 4:02
  Speaker 5: we live with them? Well, symbols are very helpful. They
• 4:06
  Speaker 5: give us something quite concrete that encloses a mysterious force
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: or power. And then we try to discern what is
• 4:19
  Speaker 5: that power trying to tell us or how can we
• 4:23
  Speaker 5: use it or where will it lead us? But we
• 4:26
  Speaker 5: have to be careful with symbols because they can lead
• 4:29
  Speaker 5: us astray also. They can lead us down the garden
• 4:32
  Speaker 5: path to all kinds of foolishness. So we project symbols
• 4:39
  Speaker 5: all the time into the world around us. And if
• 4:43
  Speaker 5: we aren't aware that we're projecting symbols, we believe it's reality.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: Murray, could you give a few examples of that? Because
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: I think that's so poignant and so It's so real life.
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 5:01
  Speaker 5: It's very hard to stay sane in an insane world.
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: Staying sane means you keep your head above water and
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  Speaker 5: you can think and you can make distinctions and you
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: can see clearly. That's sanity. But when we get caught
• 5:20
  Speaker 5: up in an insane world with symbols flying around all
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: over the place. And we follow one and reject the other.
• 5:28
  Speaker 5: We split, you know, good and evil and so on.
• 5:31
  Speaker 5: We're no longer capable of making very good decisions. But
• 5:35
  Speaker 5: let me give you an example. You know what Starbucks is?
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: It's a coffee shop. It was introduced to the world
• 5:44
  Speaker 5: in Seattle quite some years ago. It's a very successful
• 5:48
  Speaker 5: coffee company. They had a new concept. So when you're
• 5:51
  Speaker 5: walking down the street and you see a sign with
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: an image in it, it's a mermaid. And that tells you,
• 6:01
  Speaker 5: we call her Melusina in mythology. Okay, Melusina. There's Melusina
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  Speaker 5: on a sign. And you say, I think I'll go
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  Speaker 5: in and have a cup of coffee. It's a nice place.
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: And you can have a seat and drink a good
• 6:17
  Speaker 5: coffee there. And I had a friend who went very
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: often to Starbucks in Zurich. And I asked him, why
• 6:25
  Speaker 5: do you prefer Starbucks to the other coffee houses? Zurich
• 6:30
  Speaker 5: is famous for its good coffee. And he said, oh,
• 6:34
  Speaker 5: the girls are much prettier at Starbucks. I said, really?
• 6:38
  Speaker 5: I'll have to go take a look. That's Melissina. You know,
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  Speaker 5: she called him. The siren. The siren called him to Starbucks.
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  Speaker 5: So why did Starbucks use that image? Well, then you
• 6:53
  Speaker 5: go to Seattle and now you're with Joseph Campbell and
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: you go into Starbucks and Joseph Campbell starts telling you
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  Speaker 5: about the meaning of Melissina and mythology. She's quite dangerous.
• 7:06
  Speaker 5: She's beautiful. She's alluring. She calls to you, but be careful.
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  Speaker 5: You could get into trouble with Melissina. She can whole
• 7:18
  Speaker 5: sailors to the rocks. So you think, well, that's very interesting.
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  Speaker 5: Let's have a cup of coffee and have a conversation
• 7:25
  Speaker 5: with Joseph Campbell about the mythology. You're still not experiencing
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: the symbol, but you're getting some information about traditional symbols
• 7:34
  Speaker 5: that have been thought about. And then you go into
• 7:38
  Speaker 5: a Starbucks in Moscow and you're sitting there and you
• 7:44
  Speaker 5: see Grushenka. come into the room. She is Melusina. Do
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  Speaker 5: you know who Grushenko is?
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  Speaker 3: I don't.
• 7:54
  Speaker 5: In The Brothers Karamazov, she drives all the men crazy.
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  Speaker 5: They're all running after her, and she plays with them.
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  Speaker 5: She's very mischievous. She's very destructive. They die for her.
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  Speaker 5: Everybody is destroyed by Melusina. And you see Grushenko in Moscow.
• 8:15
  Speaker 5: And you know you cannot live without her. Now you've
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: experienced a symbol. You're experiencing the anima now, okay? That's
• 8:25
  Speaker 5: what we call the anima. And it's so powerful that
• 8:29
  Speaker 5: it will take your breath away. It will destroy your
• 8:34
  Speaker 5: bank account. So you become irrational following the symbol. And
• 8:41
  Speaker 5: she plays with you. So the experience of a symbol
• 8:45
  Speaker 5: is a numinous experience, as we say. If you get
• 8:49
  Speaker 5: the full impact of a symbol, it changes your life
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  Speaker 5: for the better or worse. It doesn't mean that experiencing
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: the anima is necessarily a bad thing, but you have
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: to be careful, and eventually you may be able to
• 9:03
  Speaker 5: take that projection back and become very creative and very
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: playful yourself. If you think of Saul on the road
• 9:11
  Speaker 5: to Damascus, He has a moment of transformation. He sees something,
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: he hears a voice and his whole life has changed.
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: We call that metanoia. Your whole way of thinking and
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: feeling is changed by a big symbolic experience. So symbols
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: are in Jungian circles taken with light. With great respect,
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: we see them as very powerful images that can call
• 9:48
  Speaker 5: the depths out of us, the depths of our feeling,
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: our imagination, our longing, our desire become taken over by them.
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  Speaker 5: And if you're in a group of people that's taken
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: over by a symbolic force, you lose your identity. You
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: become one with the mass. And we know politicians are
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: good at this. Hitler was a genius. He played Wagner
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  Speaker 5: at his mass rallies in Nuremberg and listened to Wagner.
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: Nietzsche said it took him three days to get over
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: listening to the prelude to Parsifal because he was so
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  Speaker 5: sensitive to music. Music, the power of myth. Joseph Campbell
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: writes a lot about the power of myth. It's a force.
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: What we try to do in Jungian work is live
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  Speaker 5: with these powers without being taken over by them. And
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: we try to let them work on us, and we
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: work on them, and we try to form a bridge,
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  Speaker 5: a collaborative engagement with them, and they will change us.
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: And to some extent, they change as well. Jung did
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  Speaker 5: this work for himself, very courageous. We read about it
• 11:17
  Speaker 5: in the Red Book. He had a period of time
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  Speaker 5: where he was deeply engaged with symbols that came to
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  Speaker 5: him in his active imaginations. He changed from a Freudian
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  Speaker 5: analyst to Jung. He became Jung. The Jung we know
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: is a result of that process. What he says is
• 11:37
  Speaker 5: very interesting. He wrote a book called Symbols of Transformation.
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: That's the title of Volume 5 in the Collected Works.
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  Speaker 5: And he links symbols with transformation. And before he had
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: the experience himself, he studied it. The record of a
• 11:59
  Speaker 5: patient that had been published in a psychiatric journal in Geneva.
• 12:07
  Speaker 5: Her name was Miss Miller. She was an American. And
• 12:09
  Speaker 5: she had these daydreams, imaginary experiences while she was traveling
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  Speaker 5: in Europe. And Jung became fascinated by them and he
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: amplified them. So he took her what seemed like everyday
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  Speaker 5: daydreams and he started seeing, oh, parallels. This looks like
• 12:32
  Speaker 5: something from Indian mythology or American mythology. He gets fascinated
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  Speaker 5: by Hiawatha at one point. And so he starts exploring
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  Speaker 5: the world of mythology that he finds embedded in her
• 12:50
  Speaker 5: seemingly kind of trivial, insignificant daydreams. Now, he's not working
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: with her as a patient. He's not doing therapy with her.
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  Speaker 5: He's just, he's being Joseph Campbell. He's looking at it theoretically, philosophically, psychologically.
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  Speaker 5: And that so fascinated him that... he decided to do
• 13:12
  Speaker 5: an experiment himself to see if he could stimulate his
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  Speaker 5: imagination to engage with figures like she apparently could do
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  Speaker 5: automatically very easily. It wasn't easy for him because he
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  Speaker 5: was a trained scientist, a medical doctor, a psychiatrist, a psychoanalyst.
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  Speaker 5: You know, that blocks your imagination. You've got too much
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  Speaker 5: theory in your head So he had to let all
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  Speaker 5: that go and go swimming out into the sea of
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  Speaker 5: the unconscious. And it took him a while to get
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  Speaker 5: any response. But once he did, it really took off.
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  Speaker 5: And he heard a response. He called out of his
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  Speaker 5: window and Kusnacht, my soul, where are you? I've lost you.
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  Speaker 5: My soul, where are you? What's he talking about? I
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: wonder if Emma overheard him calling out to his soul. No,
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  Speaker 5: I'm over here. I'm in the other room. Don't worry.
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  Speaker 4: Here I am.
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  Speaker 5: Oh, he was calling for somebody else. And then she appears.
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  Speaker 5: He's sitting in the desert. And she says, wait, wait.
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: And he says, oh, I'm so impatient. I've been waiting
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: and waiting. I want to talk to you. I want
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: to lie on your lap. And she says, I'm not
• 14:38
  Speaker 5: your mother. You can't lie on my lap. So he
• 14:42
  Speaker 5: gets a fight from her. You know, they have a confrontation.
• 14:45
  Speaker 5: And she doesn't do what he wants him to. And
• 14:48
  Speaker 5: that is where he discovers the autonomy of the unconscious.
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  Speaker 5: That these symbols have a life of their own. They're
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: not under the control of the conscious ego. So his ego...
• 15:04
  Speaker 5: remains intact throughout all of his experiences in the Red Book,
• 15:09
  Speaker 5: but the other figures that he is speaking with and
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: encountering teach him things, give him information. He interacts with them.
• 15:20
  Speaker 5: At one point, he becomes identified with the crucified Christ,
• 15:26
  Speaker 5: even undergoes a kind of crucifixion experience. He has a
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: lot of experiences that are very powerful, very emotional. Some
• 15:37
  Speaker 5: colleagues of mine here in Zurich and I created a
• 15:42
  Speaker 5: script of seven scenes from the Red Book. And we
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: enacted those scenes, and this crucifixion was one of them,
• 15:50
  Speaker 5: and eating the liver of the killed child was another one.
• 15:55
  Speaker 5: And we took it around the world. We performed it
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: in Moscow. In St. Petersburg, we performed it in Qingdao, China,
• 16:06
  Speaker 5: in Taipei, in Zurich a couple of times, Paris. And
• 16:12
  Speaker 5: in China, we had an audience of 700 or 800
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: people watching it. And they had a translation that was
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: put up on a screen on the side so they
• 16:22
  Speaker 5: could follow in Chinese as the English was being performed.
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: And in the discussion afterwards, a man stood up and
• 16:31
  Speaker 5: he said, I had no idea Jung suffered so much.
• 16:36
  Speaker 5: It impressed that audience in China, the impact that these
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: experiences had on Jung. These are experiences of the symbolic world.
• 16:49
  Speaker 5: They were his experience on the road to Damascus. They
• 16:54
  Speaker 5: changed him. into a completely different kind of psychologist and thinker.
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: He became Jung as a result. He could write the
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: books that he wrote afterwards.
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: These experiences that Jung had, Saul on the road to Damascus,
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: who then became Paul, are so numinous, so intense. But
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: I'm thinking that for many people, there are other avenues,
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: other dimensions, other ways to live a symbolic life, uh,
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: without necessarily being blasted off your horse and, and being
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: blind for three days. Uh, so, um, what does it
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: look like for, um, us mere mortals?
• 17:44
  Speaker 5: Well, they were mere mortals too. Paul was a mere mortal.
• 17:47
  Speaker 5: Jung was a mere mortal. We're all made of clay, but, um,
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: I think some people have very powerful, numinous experiences. There's
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: a lot of people nowadays discussing psychedelics. It's coming back
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: very strongly as a mode of treatment for certain types
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: of mental illness. And some people are also attempting to
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: use it as a part of an individuation journey, let's
• 18:16
  Speaker 5: say under the supervision or with the assistance of an
• 18:20
  Speaker 5: analyst And there are some analysts who are now trained,
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: have trained themselves and have had the experience and they
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: will assist people if they want to do that. Personally,
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: I've not been involved in it, but I've heard a
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: lot about it. So it's a way of trying to
• 18:37
  Speaker 5: have a very powerful experience of the symbolic unconscious. It
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: isn't always to be advised. It can have very detrimental
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: side effects as well. But that's a big experience. Types
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: of numinous experiences that I work with in my everyday
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: work as an analyst or I've experienced myself are, you
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: could say, much more tame than that. They come in
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: the form of, I would say, basically three varieties, okay? Dreams,
• 19:14
  Speaker 5: active imagination, and what we call visions. And there's a
• 19:19
  Speaker 5: difference between those three. Everybody knows what a dream is,
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: whether they pay attention to their dreams or not. If
• 19:26
  Speaker 5: you tell them, you can inform them. If they don't
• 19:30
  Speaker 5: think they have dreams, they do. That's been proven scientifically
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: in sleep labs and so on. Everybody dreams. And sometimes
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: you have a very powerful dream and you wake up
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: with it. It may be a nightmare. It may be
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: a recurring dream. a dream repeating a trauma, whatever. These
• 19:54
  Speaker 5: are very strong dreams. And Jung made a distinction between
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: what he called small dreams and big dreams. So a
• 20:01
  Speaker 5: big dream is a symbolic dream, and it's one that
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: analysts are very interested in, pay a lot of attention to.
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: but it's a bit deceptive because sometimes a small dream
• 20:13
  Speaker 5: hides a symbol. If you look at it carefully, you'll
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: find something in it, if you have an eye for symbols,
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: that could lead you into further investigation. And then what
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: is sometimes recommended is to pick up that image in
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: the dream and use it in an act of imagination. Now,
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: act of imagination is what Jung was doing in the
• 20:44
  Speaker 5: Red Book experience. It's a deliberate effort while you're awake
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: to engage your imagination. There are certain rules for how
• 20:54
  Speaker 5: to do it. I can give you some tips, but
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: it's an intentional type of effort. It's a form of meditation.
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: You sit down Try to exclude external distractions. Turn off
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: your cell phone. Don't pay attention to noises around you
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: or take a walk in a quiet place. Sit on
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: a park bench, wherever, and spend 20 or 30 minutes
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: just meditating and concentrating and letting something appear. And when
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: something appears, you look at it, you engage with it.
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: You don't force it. You aren't making it up, so
• 21:34
  Speaker 5: on and so forth. That's active imagination. It's very intentional.
• 21:39
  Speaker 5: Dream is not intentional. You dream whether you want to
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: or not. You go to sleep and you have a dream.
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: A vision is also unintentional. That's what Paul saw on
• 21:49
  Speaker 5: the road to Damascus. And it's basically a hallucination. You
• 21:55
  Speaker 5: see something that isn't there. It doesn't mean you're going
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: crazy necessarily or having a schizophrenic break or something. Perfectly
• 22:04
  Speaker 5: normal people will have vision sometimes. It's an altered state
• 22:08
  Speaker 5: of consciousness for whatever reason. And many people have something
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: close to that experience in what are called hypnagogic states.
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: And that's between being awake and going to sleep. There's
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: an in-between period there where you're not quite awake and
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: you're not quite asleep, and very vivid images will come
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: to you. And then you'll suddenly sit up and you think, wow,
• 22:37
  Speaker 5: that was just as though it was real. Well, it
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: was real in its own way, psychically real. That's a
• 22:44
  Speaker 5: type of vision. But other times, you know, people will
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: be standing in their kitchen. A man told me not
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: too long ago, it was Easter Sunday morning. He has
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: a strong religious background, but he's never had a vision before.
• 22:57
  Speaker 5: And he's kind of skeptical in his later years about
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: the whole thing. But he was standing on Easter Sunday
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: morning in his kitchen and suddenly he saw Christ standing
• 23:08
  Speaker 5: in front of him, the risen Christ. And he looked
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: at him and they sort of embraced each other and
• 23:17
  Speaker 5: a very strong feeling involved and lasted for 30 seconds
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: or so and then it faded. So he brought this
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: into analysis with me and we've been working on it
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: ever since. It's the first time he's had a kind
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: of religious breakthrough in his life, even though he's been
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: officially religious all his life. But it was always very
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: much in his head and texts and sermons and thoughts,
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: but never a living experience like that. And he has
• 23:51
  Speaker 5: a very hard time doing active imagination, turning off his head.
• 23:55
  Speaker 5: This just came to him and hit him like that.
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: And so the unconscious will sometimes manifest itself that way.
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: I remember my colleague, he was a very senior analyst
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: when I was young and in training. And sorry, his
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: name was Harry Wilmer. And you probably know the name.
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: I think he invented therapeutic communities in hospitals and so on.
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: He worked a lot with, in the VA with, soldiers
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: who were coming back, vets from Vietnam at that time.
• 24:33
  Speaker 5: And they would have a lot of recurring episodic memories
• 24:39
  Speaker 5: and visions of their traumas and so on. And he
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: made a distinction between hallucinations and visions that I'll never
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: forget in a lecture. Just in passing, he said, the
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: difference is that a vision is meaningful And it has
• 24:59
  Speaker 5: a coherence to it. Hallucinations are usually very frightening. They're
• 25:04
  Speaker 5: repetitive and they're based on some pathological reason or background,
• 25:10
  Speaker 5: something traumatic. But visions are not a sign of mental illness.
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: I think he had some visions himself. If you read Memories, Dreams, Reflections,
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: he reports a number of vision experiences. One night he
• 25:27
  Speaker 5: woke up And he looked to the foot of his
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: bed and he saw a figure of Christ standing at
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: the foot of his bed. Green, it's called the green Christ.
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: Didn't last very long and then faded away. And he
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: writes about that and he thought a lot about it
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: and related that figure to alchemy, his alchemical studies and
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: so on. So what Jung would do with these experiences
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: is what we're all taught to do as analysts, And
• 25:58
  Speaker 5: that is to take the experience and work with it.
• 26:04
  Speaker 5: To just have the experience by itself isn't enough.
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: What are the ways that people, our listeners, could work
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: with the symbol, both on their own and perhaps with
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: a trusted other?
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: Well, there are a number of ways. You can keep
• 26:20
  Speaker 5: it going in active imagination if you have a symbol.
• 26:24
  Speaker 5: You can try to recall it. and continue living with
• 26:28
  Speaker 5: it in active imagination. That's what I've done. And then
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: it continues to develop. You might have a vision of
• 26:36
  Speaker 5: somebody standing beside you and then you get into a
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: conversation and that leads somewhere else and you develop a relationship.
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: So you keep it going and you keep a journal,
• 26:48
  Speaker 5: write down your experiences. Jung also suggests quite strongly doing
• 26:55
  Speaker 5: something like painting a visionary experience. He was very keen
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: on that. He's a very good painter. Actually, he's an artist.
• 27:07
  Speaker 5: He didn't want to think of himself as an artist,
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: but he is an artist. So he would paint, that's
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: how he made the Red Book, but he made a
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: lot of other paintings that aren't in the Red Book.
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: He also did wood carvings and stone carvings. Bollingen, his
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: tower at Bollingen as a kind of, representation, he said,
• 27:26
  Speaker 5: of the self. He built it over a period of
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: many years. It's a symbolic building. And he said that's
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: where he feels most at home. So you can do
• 27:38
  Speaker 5: lots of things with that. Now, when you do that,
• 27:44
  Speaker 5: Jung drops this as just a kind of sly suggestion.
• 27:51
  Speaker 5: I forget exactly where it is. I'll have to look
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: it up. But he says these objects that you create
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: from your symbolic experiences have a couple of values. One
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: is they help you to remember and recall the experience.
• 28:15
  Speaker 5: You keep it with you. You put the picture on
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: your wall or on your desk and you live with
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: it like that. It reminds you of the symbol. It
• 28:26
  Speaker 5: doesn't disappear as easily. And the second thing he says, strangely,
• 28:32
  Speaker 5: these symbolic objects have a way of constellating synchronicities. There's
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: a kind of magic around them. Now, he doesn't say
• 28:43
  Speaker 5: very much about that because he doesn't want to sound woo-woo,
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: and people think he's a little off his rocker. That's
• 28:51
  Speaker 5: what the alchemists had. They had a little stone, like
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: this little lapis philosophorum. It's a little stone that you
• 29:01
  Speaker 5: hold it up to the light. It's very brilliant red,
• 29:05
  Speaker 5: but it looks like nothing much. I just keep it
• 29:08
  Speaker 5: here on my desk. What they had was an object
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: that they had created in the laboratory that had magical powers.
• 29:21
  Speaker 5: If they would touch something with that lapis philosophorum, that
• 29:25
  Speaker 5: stone of the philosophers, it could transform lead into silver
• 29:31
  Speaker 5: or gold so they could do transformations. Or if you
• 29:35
  Speaker 5: touch a wound with it, it had a healing power.
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: So that's... synchronicities. Jung wouldn't say that's causal, you know,
• 29:44
  Speaker 5: but I had a teacher at the Jung Institute when
• 29:48
  Speaker 5: I was a student. He was a psychiatrist and he
• 29:51
  Speaker 5: believed very much in placebo, the placebo effect, okay? in
• 29:58
  Speaker 5: the afternoon, he would distribute the medications to the patients
• 30:03
  Speaker 5: in his clinic. And he said he did it in
• 30:06
  Speaker 5: a very ceremonial way. He did it like a priest
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: would be giving mass, okay? And he said that increases
• 30:14
  Speaker 5: the power of the medicine tremendously. You know, you aren't
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: just throwing a pill down, but you've got the doctor
• 30:24
  Speaker 5: handing you the pill in a very solemn way giving
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: you a blessing, and then you take the pill, and
• 30:32
  Speaker 5: it has a much more powerful effect. So the placebo
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: effect is being studied by somebody at Harvard, Harvard Medical School,
• 30:40
  Speaker 5: I read recently. It's well known. It's very powerful.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Marie, I want to ask for clarification on something. So
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: this is sort of a very... basic question, and it's
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: a question that's come up for me before, and I
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: don't usually have Murray Stein around to answer it for me.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: Here's the question.
• 31:04
  Speaker 5: I'll take a stab.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: What's the difference or relationship maybe between a symbol and
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: an archetype?
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: There's the archetype and there are archetypal images. Okay, so
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: Jung makes a very important distinction You can read about
• 31:21
  Speaker 5: this in a paper he wrote called The Nature of
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: the Psyche in Volume 8. And I use that a
• 31:27
  Speaker 5: lot in my book, Jung's Map of the Soul. He
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: lays out a spectrum. He says the psyche is like
• 31:33
  Speaker 5: a spectrum from ultraviolet to infrared. On the infrared side,
• 31:37
  Speaker 5: it disappears through a psychoid membrane into the body, into
• 31:43
  Speaker 5: physiological organs. processes. And there's an interplay between body and psyche,
• 31:49
  Speaker 5: the psychosomatic interplay. The psyche can affect the body, the
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: body can affect the psyche through that psychoid membrane. He
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: says on the other end of the spectrum, on the
• 32:02
  Speaker 5: ultraviolet end of the spectrum, that's blue, the psyche disappears through, again,
• 32:09
  Speaker 5: a psychoid barrier or membrane into, he says, what I
• 32:12
  Speaker 5: can only call spirit. And that's where the archetype exists.
• 32:21
  Speaker 5: And the archetype emits, like the body influences the psyche,
• 32:27
  Speaker 5: the archetype influences the psyche by giving it images. So
• 32:34
  Speaker 5: when you have powerful images coming into your dreams, for instance,
• 32:37
  Speaker 5: we call them archetypal images, big dreams that are related
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: to mythology and fairy tales and all that. The archetype
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: beyond the psyche in that spiritual world is emitting some
• 32:55
  Speaker 5: energy and it's coming into the psyche and then it
• 32:58
  Speaker 5: takes the form of a couple of things. It can
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: be an image or it can be a big idea.
• 33:03
  Speaker 5: It can be an inspiration. You know, suddenly, aha, light
• 33:08
  Speaker 5: goes on. You understand something. Now, what is that spirit world?
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: On the one hand, the psyche disappears into the material world.
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: On the other hand, it disappears into the spirit world. Okay? Now,
• 33:27
  Speaker 5: Jung tried to tie that together, the material world and
• 33:30
  Speaker 5: the spirit world, in his theory of synchronicity. Something happens
• 33:35
  Speaker 5: in the material world and in the psychic world at
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: the same time, and it has meaning. It delivers meaning. Now,
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: there's a new book, not so new now, I guess,
• 33:47
  Speaker 5: by a man named Harold Atmanspacher called Dual Aspect Monism.
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: And they're filling out Jung's suggested theory. Jung and Wolfgang
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: Pauli worked on this quite a lot. And Jung wrote
• 34:05
  Speaker 5: his paper on synchronicity. And what dual aspect monism does
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: is take it further in a philosophical direction. But basically,
• 34:16
  Speaker 5: the hypothesis is that there is a source. They call
• 34:21
  Speaker 5: it the monad. It's an energy source or it's being
• 34:27
  Speaker 5: as such beyond what we can know or experience. And
• 34:32
  Speaker 5: it sends out radiations or energies in a couple of directions.
• 34:41
  Speaker 5: One is a psychological direction and the other is a
• 34:44
  Speaker 5: material direction. They have a common source. And when those
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: two meet, Jung gives the famous example of a dream
• 34:53
  Speaker 5: of a scarab beetle. And then there's a tap on
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: the window in his office and he opens the window
• 35:00
  Speaker 5: and grabs the beetle from the garden and says to
• 35:03
  Speaker 5: the patient, there is your scarab beetle. And that was
• 35:07
  Speaker 5: so shocking to her that she was instantly transformed. She
• 35:11
  Speaker 5: had a sultory experience. But that's, you know, dual aspect monism.
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: It's an interesting idea. It has roots in Spinoza, who
• 35:21
  Speaker 5: says there's only one substance, or not two substances, only
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: one substance. Everything comes out of one substance, mind, body, spirit, everything.
• 35:32
  Speaker 5: So it's a kind of monotheism, and Jung calls synchronicity
• 35:38
  Speaker 5: acts of creation in time. I'm not answering your question,
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: but what is the difference between image and archetype, right?
• 35:51
  Speaker 5: As I said, there are archetypal images. Right.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: But is the symbol an image of the archetype? Is
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: that what a symbol is communicating, is an archetype?
• 36:06
  Speaker 5: Partially, yeah. It's drawing on the archetype that's invisible. Jung
• 36:12
  Speaker 5: says the symbol is a magnet. It has a magnetic
• 36:16
  Speaker 5: quality to it. So if you hold the symbol and
• 36:22
  Speaker 5: live with the symbol, it draws on deeper energies in
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: the psyche. beyond your experience. It brings something to you.
• 36:33
  Speaker 5: You know, when I was in Russia years ago, I
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: did quite a lot of work in Russia. We were
• 36:39
  Speaker 5: working on bringing Jungian psychology after the Cold War to Russia.
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: I was in a church. They reopened the churches shortly
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: after it was possible. It was amazing to see how
• 36:52
  Speaker 5: religion came back so quickly. People had been religious, but
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: it was... very dangerous, but now they could do it
• 37:01
  Speaker 5: in the open. So I went into this church one afternoon,
• 37:05
  Speaker 5: and I watched the people coming in. There were mostly
• 37:10
  Speaker 5: elderly women coming in, and they would kneel in front
• 37:15
  Speaker 5: of the icons, you know, the picture of the virgin
• 37:19
  Speaker 5: and the child. And if you look at that picture
• 37:24
  Speaker 5: as a sign, it's not very good art, you know.
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: You find these pictures in used art shops and so on.
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: But in the church and in that setting, it had
• 37:39
  Speaker 5: a very special power. And so they would gaze at
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: the icon, at that image, and then they would move
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: forward and they would kiss it. And then they would
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: slowly back away and move on to the next icon.
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: And it gave them something. These icons were considered windows
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: into eternity. If you look into them deeply, you will
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: see the reality that they are drawing from. These are
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: just pictures on a board, but they're connected to, that's
• 38:18
  Speaker 5: what an archetypal image is. It's connected to deeper sources
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: of meaning and energy. And if you dwell on it,
• 38:27
  Speaker 5: It gives you something. It gives you meaning. It gives
• 38:31
  Speaker 5: you a sense of wholeness. It gives you a sense
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: of fate and destiny.
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: Or belonging.
• 38:40
  Speaker 5: You belong. You're a child of God. You are in
• 38:43
  Speaker 5: the lap of the Virgin. She is consoling you for
• 38:46
  Speaker 5: your suffering and so on. So it's very vivid and
• 38:50
  Speaker 5: very powerful. And, you know, Jung spoke about the religions
• 38:54
  Speaker 5: as therapeutic institutions, they preserved the link between the conscious
• 39:03
  Speaker 5: ego and the collective unconscious, and the symbols of the
• 39:06
  Speaker 5: collective unconscious, the archetypal images. They gave people access. And
• 39:12
  Speaker 5: what we suffer from, Modern Man in Search of His Soul,
• 39:16
  Speaker 5: Jung's book in the 1950s, is A desacralization of the
• 39:21
  Speaker 5: world as a result of the Enlightenment. We got a
• 39:24
  Speaker 5: lot of benefits from the Enlightenment, a lot of technology
• 39:27
  Speaker 5: and understanding of the material world. but we lost this
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: connection to the symbolic world. And that's why Jung thought
• 39:38
  Speaker 5: depth psychology was so important. It is picking up where
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: the religions drop the ball or where people can no
• 39:46
  Speaker 5: longer find their meaning and a source of connection to
• 39:54
  Speaker 5: the spiritual world. In a way, religion is making a comeback.
• 39:59
  Speaker 5: Religions will never die out. They're dangerous in one way.
• 40:03
  Speaker 5: You know, they lead people and become ideological and political
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: and they lose their spiritual values. But for many people,
• 40:14
  Speaker 5: they remain a resource. And I fully respect that. Jung
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: said when a lapsed Catholic came to him for analysis,
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: he said he made her into a better Catholic than
• 40:27
  Speaker 5: she ever was before. And he said, the Pope sent
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: me a thank you note because she was a Roman
• 40:34
  Speaker 5: noblewoman and went back and told the Pope what Jung
• 40:37
  Speaker 5: had done for her. So he didn't try to remove
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: people from their religious roots at all, strengthen them, anything,
• 40:45
  Speaker 5: because they are a resource, symbolically speaking.
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: I like that we can reach out to them in
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: manners akin to you having a stone on your desk
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: as a reminder that we can have objects. We can
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: paint a picture, not in order to become a great artist,
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: but in order to connect our hands and our minds,
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: our bodies with an image and sink into it.
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: And.
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: That then perhaps like the man who was not religious
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: and saw the image of Christ on Easter morning, we're
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: opening a portal for something to come through to us.
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: That we don't create it, but we can reach out
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: toward it in all manner of relatively everyday ways.
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: Absolutely. I think linking the material world to the symbolic
• 41:46
  Speaker 5: world is important. Very important. The problem can arise that
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: it just turns into a sign. When symbols turn into signs,
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: they lose their power. They still mean something. You know,
• 42:00
  Speaker 5: you see a cross on a church, it means there's
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: a church there. In Switzerland, it's a Catholic church if
• 42:06
  Speaker 5: there's a cross on it. If there's a rooster on it,
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: it's a Protestant church.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Marie, can you talk a little bit about the difference
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: between a symbol and a sign?
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: A sign tells you something... that is familiar. Starbucks on
• 42:22
  Speaker 5: the window means there's coffee inside. Know that. If you
• 42:26
  Speaker 5: see a church building, you know that it's a church.
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: I went into a church some years ago in, where
• 42:37
  Speaker 5: was that? Portugal, I think it was, yeah, somewhere in Portugal.
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: And it was full of worshipers, you know, In Switzerland,
• 42:46
  Speaker 5: the churches are empty mostly, but in Portugal, I think
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: they still have quite a strong presence. And they were
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: truly worshiping. The priest was in. So to me, it was,
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: there's a church. I think I'll step in. It's a sign.
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: I couldn't participate in the worship because I'm not a Catholic.
• 43:13
  Speaker 5: It doesn't speak to me. I don't have that. It
• 43:16
  Speaker 5: doesn't resonate. But I could watch them. And I could
• 43:20
  Speaker 5: see they were into it. They were experiencing something. So
• 43:25
  Speaker 5: while the church for me is a sign, for them
• 43:27
  Speaker 5: it's a symbol. They're going into a sacred space. That's
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: a symbolic space. There's a mystery there. And those sensors
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: that are swinging around, smoke coming out of them, are
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: curiosities for me. I'll look at that later. man is
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: blowing smoke, what's that all about? But if you're into
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: the ritual and you participate in it, it has a
• 43:53
  Speaker 5: very powerful effect. It's scaring away the bad spirits, it's cleansing,
• 44:00
  Speaker 5: it's creating sacred space. So it's a very important difference
• 44:06
  Speaker 5: between sign and symbol. You just look at signs, it's
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: in your head, you understand it, but symbols are deep experiences.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: And I think this is relevant in lots of contexts,
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: but maybe particularly when we work with dreams, because I
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: think if we're not familiar with dream work, we tend
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: to think of some of the images in our dreams
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: as signs. You know, it's like, well, this means this.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: You know, I dreamt about a tiger, so that means
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: that something's going to attack me this week or something
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: Or my inner tiger. James Hall, you might have heard
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: of him too. He was a founder of the Interregional
• 44:48
  Speaker 5: Society and was a man I knew well. He talked
• 44:51
  Speaker 5: about archetypal reductionism. That's when you just give a name
• 44:56
  Speaker 5: to something in a dream. You say, oh, that's your instincts. Oh,
• 44:59
  Speaker 5: that's an animal. That's your instincts. Or that's a bird.
• 45:03
  Speaker 5: That's something to do with the spirit or animus or something.
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: Just naming things or treating them as signs. It can
• 45:12
  Speaker 5: be helpful. A theory can be helpful. It gives you
• 45:15
  Speaker 5: a kind of orientation. A good dream, we don't really
• 45:22
  Speaker 5: interpret dreams the way Freud did. Freud gives you the
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: reduced meaning of the dream. It means you want to
• 45:28
  Speaker 5: sleep with your mother. Period. End of the story. That's it.
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: Jung would take the mother as the great mother in
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: the lap of the mother. It's not regressive necessarily. Have
• 45:42
  Speaker 5: the experience. And when I work with dreams in analysis
• 45:49
  Speaker 5: with my clients, I try to re-experience the dream with them.
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: They tell me the dream that they've had. Sometimes they
• 45:59
  Speaker 5: have written it down. And then I ask them about
• 46:02
  Speaker 5: details and we sort of go into a reverie state
• 46:06
  Speaker 5: of living in the dream together. And then exploring it
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: and seeing where it might lead. You know, amplifications that
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: Jung suggests. If you have some references in your mind.
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: Somebody told me about a dream about an owl the
• 46:25
  Speaker 5: other day. And immediately I thought of Athena. And wisdom
• 46:31
  Speaker 5: and all that. But that isn't enough. But it can
• 46:34
  Speaker 5: give you some direction where to go and experience the
• 46:38
  Speaker 5: wisdom of seeing in the dark. that the owl seems
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: to have. And, you know, it's a kind of a
• 46:44
  Speaker 5: spiritual guide.
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: Murray, when people are working with dreams, let's say they have,
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: you know, a whole scenario unfolds, would they treat every
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: image as a symbol? Or is there a kind of
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: hierarchy with which they would look at a dream?
• 47:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we speak about objective and subjective interpretation of dreams.
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: If you dream about your, your, your partner, your children,
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: your neighbor, somebody that you have a relationship with in
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: the present time, and maybe you talked to the day before,
• 47:22
  Speaker 5: and you dream about that person. That person appears in
• 47:25
  Speaker 5: your dream. Unless they look really different and act very
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: different from the way they do in real life, in
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: which case you would start thinking, well, maybe there's something
• 47:36
  Speaker 5: symbolic here. You would treat it on an objective level. Okay,
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: this is saying something about the way my unconscious sees
• 47:45
  Speaker 5: this relationship or this person. They're very present in my life.
• 47:50
  Speaker 5: We are connected. We're interacting with each other. And I
• 47:56
  Speaker 5: see them in a certain way consciously, and maybe my
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: unconscious sees it in another way. So you try to
• 48:02
  Speaker 5: match the unconscious to the conscious situation. That doesn't tell
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: you anything objective about the person, but it can tell
• 48:10
  Speaker 5: you something about the relationship and the levels of relationship.
• 48:15
  Speaker 5: The subjective interpretation says the image is a part of
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: your psyche. It belongs to the inner world. The man
• 48:25
  Speaker 5: who told me that he was dreaming about an owl,
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: I asked him if he'd seen any owls lately, and
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: he said, no, they don't live in this part of
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: the country. So it was clearly a symbolic experience. The
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: owl entered into his dream for no obvious reason. You know,
• 48:44
  Speaker 5: we ask about the day before, what happened the day before,
• 48:46
  Speaker 5: the day's residue and so on. And sometimes we can
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: clearly link a dream to something that happened recently. Sure.
• 48:55
  Speaker 5: The dream still gives us some further, we could say,
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: information or perspective on what happened the day before. It
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: isn't just a reflection unless it's an exact repetition, in
• 49:10
  Speaker 5: which case there's probably a trauma involved. Traumatic experiences have
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: a way of repeating themselves for a while.
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: So, Murray, I'm thinking about how we might sort out
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: some hierarchy of perhaps intensities. For instance, we all have dreams,
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: and I'll make one up. I'm walking down the street.
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: I turn left. I see a horse gallop across my path,
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: and then I walk into an ice cream store, and
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: I order some chocolate ice cream, and then I eat
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: the ice cream. So there's a sequence of images that
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: we remember, but I get the sense that there is
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: something different about one of those images being identified as
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: a symbol, because the symbol seems to have so much
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: more impact than perhaps maybe other images that a dream
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: would have. Although often, when we're learning dream interpretation, we
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: tend to unpack each image as if it is a symbol.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: But I don't know if that's quite the right attitude.
• 50:22
  Speaker 5: Practically speaking, we often don't have enough time to work
• 50:27
  Speaker 5: on all the images in a dream. But you're right,
• 50:31
  Speaker 5: they're a kind of garden variety moments in dreams, images
• 50:37
  Speaker 5: or experiences, stories that don't really strike us as anything special.
• 50:45
  Speaker 5: They're kind of everyday experiences as we have them during
• 50:48
  Speaker 5: waking life. Going into a shop and having a chocolate
• 50:54
  Speaker 5: ice cream seems quite ordinary, unless it's not. If it's
• 50:58
  Speaker 5: not ordinary, then one would want to pay some special
• 51:02
  Speaker 5: attention to it. That horse running across the path seems
• 51:06
  Speaker 5: more extraordinary and something to look at more on a
• 51:11
  Speaker 5: symbolic level. And also turning left, we think turning right
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: is going more toward consciousness and away from the unconscious.
• 51:20
  Speaker 5: Turning left, you're going more into the unconscious. So what
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: does that mean? What Jung says about the unconscious is
• 51:27
  Speaker 5: it's the unknown. You don't know what's there. Now, if
• 51:31
  Speaker 5: a store with ice cream is there, what's it doing there?
• 51:37
  Speaker 5: And it may be something very special. It may remind
• 51:40
  Speaker 5: you of a certain moment in your childhood that, you know,
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: your father took your little hand and took you into
• 51:47
  Speaker 5: the store and bought you an ice cream cone. It's
• 51:50
  Speaker 5: the only nice thing he ever did with you. Or,
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: you know, a special moment, a special memory. One thing
• 51:57
  Speaker 5: I find about dreams is that they often bring back
• 52:01
  Speaker 5: memories that we have tucked away, forgotten, or stored in
• 52:06
  Speaker 5: a attic somewhere. And out they come, and you dream
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: of somebody you haven't seen in 20 or 30 years,
• 52:13
  Speaker 5: a high school friend or something. And then you start
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: talking about them, and memories come back, and very strong
• 52:23
  Speaker 5: feelings often. And that's one thing we do quite a
• 52:27
  Speaker 5: bit in analysis. We reconstruct a narrative. And things that
• 52:32
  Speaker 5: didn't seem very important when they happened might be quite
• 52:37
  Speaker 5: important in the long term. That moment of the ice
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: cream cone. My wife has told me many times about
• 52:46
  Speaker 5: an incident where her father took her and her little
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: friends into a store and bought them all a bunch
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: of candy. And one little girl said, well, I'll take
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: a piece of that. And he said, is that all
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: you want? You need more than that. And this generosity
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: of the father is so important in her life. So
• 53:08
  Speaker 5: that's a very precious memory. And dreams will sometimes bring
• 53:12
  Speaker 5: back things like that in moments.
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: There can be kind of emotional medicine that we find
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: has been tickled by these associations. But I think what
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: I'm hearing is, well, there's many healing valences in a dream.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: But it might be that it's the unusual thing or
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: perhaps the uncanny piece that might attract our attention and
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: curiosity as to whether or not it is a symbolic piece.
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: Like the horse just galloping across the New York Avenue
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: on my way to get the ice cream.
• 53:52
  Speaker 6: Countess is really like waving something in front.
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: Of us just in case we didn't catch it more subtly.
• 54:00
  Speaker 5: Uncanny is a good word for the unconscious. Freud used
• 54:04
  Speaker 5: that word, unheimlich in German. And it's related to numinous.
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: Numinous experiences are uncanny. There's something mysterious there, something that
• 54:19
  Speaker 5: we can't explain, but that catches our attention. And Rudolf
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: Otto said, when you have a numinous experience, it makes
• 54:26
  Speaker 5: the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: You know, you get goosebumps.
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: So we might then, if the horse gives us that
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: subjective gasp or there's something so magical about retelling it,
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: that that might give us a sense that the unconscious
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: is putting a magnitude of energy into that image and
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: that the subjective response might give us a clue that
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: this is a symbol, as you were saying, a symbol
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: of transformation that it offers a potential to affect the
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: ego perhaps more dynamically or more significantly than perhaps the
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: asphalt that we saw in the dream under our feet.
• 55:13
  Speaker 5: I always look at animals carefully in dreams and I'd
• 55:18
  Speaker 5: like to know, is it a healthy animal or is
• 55:23
  Speaker 5: it a failing animal? It has to do with our
• 55:27
  Speaker 5: physical being too and our instincts.
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: Or a talking animal.
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: A talking animal, yeah. You see those in the movies sometimes.
• 55:39
  Speaker 5: I heard about a talking tree lately. A tree that
• 55:42
  Speaker 5: actually spoke to a person.
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: A dryad.
• 55:45
  Speaker 5: I found that quite interesting.
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: I had a dream of three talking parrots in the backyard.
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: It And it was so obvious that it was clearly
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: about the podcast.
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: But I was like, of course.
• 55:56
  Speaker 6: You know, and I'm like, what could those three talking
• 55:59
  Speaker 6: parrots mean in the backyard?
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: That's great. That's great. Well, I wonder if this would
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: actually be a good time to switch to talking about
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: a dream. Have you ever wondered what your dreams mean?
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: Join us in Dream School at thisunionlife.com and find out.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: Jung wrote, dreams are a little hidden door in the
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: innermost and most secret recesses of the soul.
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: Dream School is a unique, self-paced online program you can
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: start at any time that unlocks access to your inner world.
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: Our 12-month program provides the support, knowledge, and guidance you
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: need to reach within, decipher your personal dream code, and
• 56:46
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• 56:50
  Speaker 4: an affirming community of fellow travelers, each pursuing a unique quest.
• 56:56
  Speaker 5: And it's fun.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: Join us on an adventure to wholeness and healing through
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: understanding your dreams. Go to thisjungielife.com and click on Dream School.
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: You'll be taken to our secure checkout. Once you join,
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: you'll get immediate access to our first three modules. You
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: can get started right away. We look forward to seeing
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: you there. So our dreamer today is a 33-year-old male.
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: He works as a barista and coffee roaster. And he
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: has a wonderful title for the dream, The Coffee War.
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: The dream starts with me going on a journey to
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: South America. As I was walking over a meadow in
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: South America, I started to feel a deep connection to
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: nature and to a greater spirit. Some people of the
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: travel group I was with started jumping in a river
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: to have some fun, but I couldn't because I was
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: afraid of piranhas, so I stayed out. After a while, though,
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: I realized that the river is artificial, so there wasn't
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: even anything alive in it, and the real river was
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: cut off from that artificial river. After that, the travel
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: group transformed into a school class, and I was back
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: at school. I was annoyed because we didn't really learn something,
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: and I complained that I wanted to move to the
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: next task because I was already wasting half of my life.
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: Then suddenly, the group transformed again, and we were knights,
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: and it was announced that we needed to go to
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: war and attack castle of Constantinople. But before that, the
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: old king of our group resigned his throne and a
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: new king was crowned. The new king was tall and
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: strong and we would all gather around him. All the
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: other men were also tall and strong, only I was
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: much smaller, only half the size of the other men.
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: Everyone gathered in a circle around the new king and yelled,
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: To die for a king will bring us honor. Then
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: we went to attack the castle. I was the first
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: in the line charging the castle. Enemies were shooting arrows
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: at me, so I jumped behind a small wall and
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: realized that I was there all alone. I must have
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: gone to the wrong place. So I went back to
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: search for the other knights and found them sitting in
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: a cafeteria. So I sat down with them and started
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: drinking really bad coffee from a broken vending machine. As
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: I was looking around me, seeing all these knights in
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: armor drinking coffee out of paper cups, I was thinking
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: to myself, what in the world am I even doing here?
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: For context, he writes, I'm thinking about changing career at
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: the moment, but I feel really stuck and blocked because
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: I have no formal education and I feel it's too late.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: He says the main feelings in the dream were, Standing
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: in the circle with the other knights, I felt strong
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: and empowered, even though I was smaller than them. But
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: I am a small man in real life, so I'm
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: used to being smaller than everyone else. And for associations,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: he shares, Coffee. I started working in the coffee industry
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: because I quit school when I was 18 years old.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: Ever since then, I'm beating myself up about quitting school.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: I've never been to South America or even seen a
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: piranha in real life.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: So I, I, I find this dream really poignant just
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: off the bat. I, it feels really poignant. It feels
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: like it's a, I mean, there's this, it's, this is
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: a question of kind of male initiation and there are
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: many images, I think that relate to that in the dream.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: It also has a lively sense of humor. I think
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: the dream does, which is, uh, Yeah, you've got a
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: real interlocutor here when your dream is offering you these
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: really intriguing, compelling images, like knights in armor drinking coffee
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: out of paper cups in the cafeteria.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: It's such a flaccid interruption from his heroic journey that
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: he might have started in life.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 6: He started ready to go. go to war, and there
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 6: he is in the barista.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 5: Drinking coffee out of a paper cup. Well, I was
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 5: struck by the opening. He goes to South America where
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 5: he's never been. So when you dream of a place
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 5: you've never been, you're deep in the unconscious. And North
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: Americans typically dream of South America. Europeans dream of Africa.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 5: or India, something like that. And he comes upon this
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 5: amazing situation of an artificial river and a true river.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 5: And the true river is blocked off. So the false
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 5: and the true. We often speak about true self, false self. Okay,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 5: what is the true self? I think he's beginning to
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: experience something of the true self in his life. That's
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: why he wants to make a change. And being ashamed
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 5: and regretting and feeling small is a signal. It's not
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 5: the end of the story. It means you need to
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 5: do something. You need to grow yourself, and you can.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: What is this, age 30-something? That's not too old to
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 5: go to school, for God's sake. No, he's young.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: Christ was 33 when he started his mission.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right. Never too late. No, 33 is approaching midlife.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 5: If I were working with him, I'd want to know
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 5: more about him. Why did he drop out of school?
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 5: What was his family life? Does he have a relationship?
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 5: Does he have friends, support? But he says he's stuck.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 5: He wants to make a change. So that's a moment of,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 5: it's a turning.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: Point in his life. Yeah, I love that you lifted
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: that up, Murray.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: It's true.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: I think that feeling of feeling small or desperate or stuck,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: it is the thing that prods us out into more growth.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: One of the things that I notice about, sometimes with
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: dreams like this, I'll break it out into scenes. So
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: we've got the first scene is South America with the rivers.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: The second scene is back at school and feeling frustrated
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: because he's not learning anything. The third scene is attacking
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: the castle and then kind of winding up getting lost.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: And then the fourth scene is drinking coffee in the cafeteria.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: And each of those four scenes kind of has something
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: in common that you already picked up and elucidated, Murray,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: which is the sense that it looks like one thing
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: and then it's another. And the other thing is kind
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: of a disappointment. So it looks like there's this wonderful
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: opportunity to jump into this river, which is a little
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: fraught with danger because there might be piranhas in it,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: but other people don't seem concerned about it. But then
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: it's not the real river and there's nothing living in it.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: The second scene, it's like you're back at school, but
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: we're not learning anything. The third scene is we're going
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: to attack the castle. Yay. And we have a new
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: king and everything. But then he kind of winds up
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: behind this wall by himself. And then the fourth scene,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: it's like, oh, and now we're drinking coffee. So there's
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: a sense of discovering that the mission is not what
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: you thought it was.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: And disappointment.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: Disappointment, yep.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: Over and over again. I can't get in the river
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: because it's artificial. Go to school, but I don't learn anything,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 4: et cetera. I would be curious about that of, at
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: this turning point in life, is there a feeling that,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: you know, that won't yield good results, that it won't
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: be satisfying?
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: All of that I see, but I'm very interested in
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: the way that the dream ego interferes with what's being
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: offered in the dream. And something, Murray, that I've become
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: increasingly interested in is the difference between what the dream
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: maker is providing, image by image, and what does the
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: dream ego do with that. And I think there's such
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: an important differentiation. So in the beginning, they're starting to
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: go on a journey to South America, and he's walking
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: over a meadow. The deep connection to the Great Spirit
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: is interesting and, of course, is subjective. We don't know
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: that there's a Great Spirit, but people from the travel
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: group are jumping in a river to have some fun.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: What we see is that he wouldn't jump into life
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: because he's afraid of something that doesn't exist. There aren't
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: piranhas in the water. So I think that we're beginning
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: to see the problem right from the beginning. is seeing
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: danger where it does not exist. And he's already separated
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: himself out from the response to the adventure because of
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: the piranhas in his mind. So my first inquiry would
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: be all about piranhas and who are these piranhas that
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: you assume are so dangerous terrifying and the assumption that
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: they're there has kept you from doing, I suspect, all
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: kinds of things like going to school. So I'm looking
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: for the piranhas that continue to come forward because there's
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: the real river where there are no piranhas. Then there's
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: the fake rivers of his mind. So he's back at
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: school and then I'm annoyed because we didn't learn anything
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: and I want to be moved to the new task
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: because I wasted my life. That's a piranha. It's another
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: like aggressive gobbling up complex that's interfering with him swimming
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: in the water with his cohorts and having a good time. Again,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: they're now in a heroic war. And all of this
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: thing about the new king and the old king, of course,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: the new attitude and the old attitude. And it all
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: seems okay. And then once the enemies are shooting arrows
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: at him, once there's engagement, which are the piranhas, once again,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: he jumps to the wrong place. So we have this
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: sense that fear of the thing is where he, jumps
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: away from the encounter over and over again. And what
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: he's left with after he's wrung the joy, the libido,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: the dynamism, his own phallic curiosity, he's wrung it all
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: out and he's left with bad coffee in a paper cup.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: But I'm so interested in these fears, these piranhas that
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: he projects into life and into the dream.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 5: Well, it comes to my mind that he probably was
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 5: bullied in school. So he's small and there are piranhas
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 5: out there. Maybe not in that river, but there are
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 5: piranhas in the world. And he's very cautious. I don't
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 5: hold that against him, that caution. But I think you're right.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 5: It gets the best of him. But the dream also
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 5: says there's a true river somewhere. And I find that very.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's very moving.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 5: A very strong, positive message. What is a river? You know,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 5: the river of life getting into the flow. As you say,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 5: Joseph participating... With the army, he does participate, and he's
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 5: the first to attack. So he's got courage. He's got
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 5: the armor on.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: But then he jumps to the wrong place.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 5: Well, he's protecting himself. He jumps. I'm going to defend
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 5: his dream ego a bit.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: That's great.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: Go for it.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 5: He jumps out of the way of the arrows. I would, too.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 5: But he does end up alone.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: And then he says, I must have gone to the
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: wrong place.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but maybe he didn't.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: The slings and arrows.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 5: He survived.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 5: You know, a lot of people experience loneliness these days.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 5: They talk about an epidemic of loneliness. And he is
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 5: quite alone. But he's not at the end. He is
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 5: with his cohort, and they're drinking bad coffee, but he's
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 5: with them. They... attacking Constantinople. It's interesting. He has this geography.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: In his dream. Yeah, that's great.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 5: South America and Constantinople is the gateway to the East.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 5: You know, it's the home of the Holy Roman Empire
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 5: after Rome collapsed. And it's the home of the Orthodox
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 5: Christian religion. And it was occupied, is occupied by the Turks,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 5: you know, and the Christians tried to retake it several
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 5: times in the, Middle Ages in the Crusades that were
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 5: mostly a failure. But there is something of maybe a
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 5: religious impulse. He talks about the great spirit and being
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 5: on a crusade with a new king. There's something, there's
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 5: energy there and there's a real river. And being in
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 5: a school and being bored and you're, That isn't necessarily bad.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 5: Go to a different school. Jump classes. A lot of
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 5: kids are bored in school. But don't drop out. You know,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 5: he wants to go back to school. He says it's
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 5: too late, but it's not too late. At 33, he
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 5: can go to a junior college for a couple of
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 5: years and transfer to a college and get a graduate
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 5: degree and he can become a doctor.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, people do that. We have a colleague,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: I'll just say, who's a Jungian analyst, very accomplished, wonderful analyst.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: And I think when she decided to become an analyst,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: she had to get her undergraduate degree. And she probably
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: did that in her 50s.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 5: Yes, yes, absolutely. I know lots of people who have
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 5: done that. Girls used to get married when they were 18, 20,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 5: drop out of college, and then have a couple of children,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 5: and then go back and become professionally educated. accomplished in
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 5: the second half of life. And, you know, he can
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 5: do that. But it's going to take courage. It's going
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 5: to take stamina, resilience. You'll have setbacks. And he won't
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 5: like everything that comes along. But I think he can
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 5: do it. I would cheer him on.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: He's got all these knights, you know, gathering around him.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: That's a lot of masculine dynamism. I do want to
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: say that... There is something that happens. Again, I like
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: to analyze the ego defenses because I think that can
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: help someone. Because he says, I couldn't jump into the
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: river because I'm afraid of piranhas. And after a while,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: I realized that there wasn't anything alive in it anyway.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: But that's one of the ways that we justify our
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: fears is that we devalue the thing that we don't
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: engage because it's too painful to to actually keep looking
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: at the river with all my friends frolicking in it.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: So then I have to create this story in my
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: mind of why I didn't jump in. So there's piranhas,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: they're in there, but you know, there's nothing in that
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: river that's worth anything anyway, and it's not even a
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: real river. And, you know, so I don't need to
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: trouble myself about it because there's something really good somewhere
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: else in the world.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 5: That's why he dropped out of high school.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: Exactly. So again, I love your association with the bullies
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: as piranhas. And how do we cope with the things
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: that are blocked off to us as we make it
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 3: not matter?
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 4: I'm going to the very end of the dream and
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 4: thinking about how the end of the dream is really
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 4: very ordinary. That he's with the other knights, but they're
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 4: doing something so mundane, drinking bad coffee out of paper cups.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 4: And I wonder if part of the dream is, you know, no,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 4: you don't have to go to South America and swim
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 4: in a river, and you don't have to wage war
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 4: and attack the castle in Constantinople. It's perfectly okay to
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: be with the knights drinking coffee, to become ordinary. But
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: just the contrast between these heroic missions and hang out
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 4: with these guys, have some coffee. what will you talk about?
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 4: And it's okay.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking I'm reaching for something. I don't know if
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: I have my hands around it yet. But Joseph, I
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: really like, you know, what you did with it and
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: talking about his fears and his defenses. And Maria, I'm
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: taking to heart what you said about standing up for
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: his dream ego. And my fantasy is something like, at
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: some point, the fears may have been very adaptive. Like,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: maybe going to college at when he was 18 was
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: really the wrong thing. But, but it's sort of that
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: discernment about when, you know, jumping away from the battle
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: is the right thing. And, and maybe very adaptive and
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: when it maybe lands us in the wrong place and
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: makes us miss the true river or whatever. So I'm
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: just kind of holding, holding all of that, that, Because
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: I think you're right, Murray. I mean, he does have courage.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: He is the first one into the fray. There is
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: strength there. There is, as we've all said, a lot
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: of dynamism. And sometimes it is right to be really
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: cautious and to duck out of the way or be
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: wary of the piranhas. But maybe there is a question
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: of trying to really learn when that's the savvy response
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: and when it's actually avoidant.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 5: Yeah, avoidant. Avoidant would be the issue.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: And he has a conflict with, because of the announcement,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: to die for a king will bring us honor. But
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: then when the arrows are coming towards.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: Him, he doesn't want to die.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 5: He rethinks that cheer.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: Doesn't seem so great.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 6: Maybe honor is not the best thing that I can
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 6: look for at this point.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 5: In my life.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: So there is this complicated that when the new, tall,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: strong king in him like begins to come forward that
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: there's this martyring that gets activated in the psyche, which
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: of course, I don't know that that's a great response either.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: I want to.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: Talk just a bit about coffee and maybe I'm picking
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: up on what you said, but maybe I'm kind of
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: having a slightly different experience of it. There's something about,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: and I'm going to go back and check the language.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: So what he says is really bad coffee from a
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: broken vending machine. So, in armor drinking coffee, but out
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: of paper cups, you know, which you don't usually don't,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: you even, even at Starbucks, which has come up, there's
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: been a lot of coffee in this episode, you know,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: the cups are a little more substantial. So he, and
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: he works in the coffee industry. It's almost like it's saying, like,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: I'm going to venture into being maybe a little bit literal,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: but it, I think, I think the dream is being said,
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: maybe saying like coffee is not where it's at.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: It's not going to give you what you need. It
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: also reminds me of being an extra on a movie set.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: We're like, it's the king, run, run, take.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 6: Everyone's sitting there around drinking coffee out of bad paper
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 6: cups waiting for.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 5: The next take.
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: That's funny. That's funny.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 6: Which goes to what you were saying, Deb, is there's
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 6: a theatrical production and then there's the reality of just
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 6: shooting back some caffeine for the next take.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 4: And he is with the cohort. So he's together with people,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: which he was not at the river. He didn't like
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 4: being in school. He was all by himself when he's
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 4: off to conquer the castle of Constantinople. But now he
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 4: is with a cohort, and it is very, very ordinary.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 4: But he's connected. And I think there is something here about,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 4: you know, these dramatic scenes of the river in South
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 4: America and the knights and the battle. And then, hey,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 4: how about we just hang out and have really bad
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 4: coffee out of paper cups?
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: It also makes me wonder about how much gaming this
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: young man did and how much he's still doing. Because
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: that compensation, which we see heartbreakingly, is kids, young men
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: coming out of high school and then being very caught
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: in these fantastical worlds of nights and battles and everything
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 3: under the sun. And then, you know, at the end
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: of it, you know, we're all sitting around drinking bad
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: coffee and nothing's really been accomplished. So the incredible medicine
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: at the end of the dream, because there is a
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: change of attitude and the change of attitude is though,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: What in the world am I even doing here? Which
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 3: is maybe questioning gaming, for instance, or heroic fantasies or
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: a kind of quixotic compensation about life.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 5: It's hard to interpret this dream since we don't know
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 5: the dreamer, but that's a very good point.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a great point.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 5: He's never been to South America or certainly not Constantinople.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 5: Where did those associations come from? And it may be
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 5: a kind of virtual world that he has lived in.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 5: But I come back to the true river. That's something
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 5: to search for. And there's a kind of communion at
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 5: the end. I like what you said, Deb. He's with them.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 5: They're in their armor, but they're not in some glorious war.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 5: They're drinking very ordinary coffee. Mm-hmm.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: And it reminds me a little bit of Jung's Siegfried dream.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: And I'm not sure how old he was when he
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: had that. But part of the purpose of that dream
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: was a recognition that he had to kill off a
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: kind of heroic attitude. And it could be that, you know,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: something similar is going on for this dreamer that, that,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: you know, hey, maybe I have to be ordinary and
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: just go back and kind of slog through getting a degree.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: and I'm not going to be propelled into, you know,
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: magical adventures. It's time to sort of just sink back
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: into ordinariness and, you know, put one foot in front
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: of the other and, you know, even if it's boring,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: kind of get through this.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: But he's with knights. The knights are being, you know,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 4: hanging out and drinking coffee, but they are still knights.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 3: Yes, there is potential.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 4: You know, I would be interested in exploring... you know,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: the heads and tails of this particular coin of the
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: dream ego going, oh my gosh, what am I doing here?
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 4: And also, but maybe this is what knights do. Instead
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 4: of roaring off to battle and doing heroic stuff, maybe
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 4: they lead regular lives.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: And maybe the question is, do I need this armor?
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 3: Because a lot of us being bullied or having really
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: difficult childhoods, you know, We figure out how to survive
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 3: very effectively and we're armored. And I'm in a cafeteria,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 3: you know, snacking, drinking coffee. Do I need armor? Now,
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: I would say is for those of us that were
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: bullied in school, you.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 6: Do need armor in the cafeteria, by the way. Because
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 6: it is a dangerous war zone.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 6: But in the current life, wait a minute. Am I
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 6: still living as if I'm in the junior high school
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 6: cafeteria needing armor?
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: Well, this dream was very lively. And, you know, we've
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: obviously all, it's been sort of a projective test because
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: we have had our own imaginations about it. But I
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: think we all are in this place where we're really
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: kind of cheering the streamer on.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: 100%.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 5: Certainly want to encourage him to make. The changes he
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 5: needs to get in the stream of life.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a real you-can-do-it spirit here.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:24:01
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• 1:24:06
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• 1:24:09
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