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Is it Love or Abuse of Power? Shadow and Archetype in TELL THEM YOU LOVE ME · 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, a couple of weeks ago, I, like apparently most
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: other people in the United States, watched the Netflix documentary,
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Tell Them You Love Me, and I was gobsmacked. I
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: was so interested in it for reasons that we'll talk about.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: But then I found out that I was lucky enough
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: to have a connection with the director of this really
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: extraordinary and remarkable documentary, and we have him with us today.
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: So.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Nick August Perna. Nick is an award-winning director, producer,
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: and editor whose work has been nominated for the Emmys,
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: the DuPonts, and the Academy Awards. His directorial work aims
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: to present stories that challenge the shape and power of
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: the documentary form to inspire discourse, which I think we're
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: going to have some today, and to build empathy. His
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: latest feature documentary, Tell Them You Love Me, premiered on
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Netflix in June and in 2024 and was the number
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: one most watched film in America, its first week on
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: the platform. So Nick, thank you so much for being
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: with us today.
• 1:46
  Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me. This is great.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: So let's, because we want to get into this story.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: It's a, your documentary tells this fascinating story of Anna
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Stubblefield and It's kind of a complex story. So let's
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: start with you just setting up the story for us.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Just kind of give us the details about what happened.
• 2:10
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 2:11
  Speaker 6: So Anna Stumblefield was a, at the time, I believe
• 2:16
  Speaker 6: she was the chair of the philosophy department at Rutgers
• 2:18
  Speaker 6: University in Newark, New Jersey. And she had grown up
• 2:24
  Speaker 6: in the disability space, which we can talk about more later.
• 2:27
  Speaker 6: Her mother was quite a big figure, actually, in the
• 2:30
  Speaker 6: 70s and 80s in bringing down some of the abusive
• 2:34
  Speaker 6: institutions around the country.
• 2:36
  Speaker 5: And so she grew.
• 2:38
  Speaker 6: Up in that space and she incorporated into her own
• 2:44
  Speaker 6: work and wrote about it and wrote along with a
• 2:48
  Speaker 6: focus on race and what she would say, I think,
• 2:52
  Speaker 6: white supremacy and the system of white supremacy.
• 2:55
  Speaker 5: She started infusing some of.
• 2:56
  Speaker 6: Her philosophy courses with the ethics of race and of disability.
• 3:02
  Speaker 6: And she was teaching a class one day and showed
• 3:06
  Speaker 6: a film about an autistic woman who was using a
• 3:10
  Speaker 6: method called facilitated communication. And this was a woman in
• 3:16
  Speaker 6: the film who is not entirely nonverbal, but she was
• 3:20
  Speaker 6: she had a very, very difficult time expressing herself verbally.
• 3:24
  Speaker 6: And the method, the claim of the film was that
• 3:28
  Speaker 6: the method unlocked a very vivid and lucid person who
• 3:33
  Speaker 6: was cognitively intact. Somebody who had been given an IQ
• 3:37
  Speaker 6: of about, I think, 21, you know, for her whole life.
• 3:41
  Speaker 6: So you see in the film, which is called Autism
• 3:43
  Speaker 6: as a World, and actually I think was nominated for
• 3:45
  Speaker 6: an Academy Award when it came out in the 90s,
• 3:48
  Speaker 6: you see this woman sort of being unlocked in front
• 3:50
  Speaker 6: of your eyes using this method of typing on a keyboard.
• 3:54
  Speaker 6: And in Anna's class, when she was showing that film,
• 3:58
  Speaker 6: was a man named John Johnson who had a brother
• 4:02
  Speaker 6: who was nonverbal. And his brother was Derek Johnson. Both
• 4:05
  Speaker 6: John and Derek are in the film. Derek is the
• 4:08
  Speaker 6: other main character in the film. So he approached, John
• 4:12
  Speaker 6: approached on and said, you know, I have a brother, Derek,
• 4:14
  Speaker 6: who really reminds me of this woman in the film
• 4:18
  Speaker 6: and he can't speak and he has cerebral palsy. And
• 4:20
  Speaker 6: I wonder if you know anybody that can help you
• 4:25
  Speaker 6: potentially use this method on him because they're, you know,
• 4:29
  Speaker 6: in John's own words, they were always sort of hints
• 4:32
  Speaker 6: and things that, that would happen throughout their life together.
• 4:35
  Speaker 5: He and his brother that.
• 4:37
  Speaker 6: Lend their, this sort of air of maybe there's something
• 4:41
  Speaker 6: more there, right? Are we missing something? There were moments
• 4:44
  Speaker 6: where he felt his brother was paying attention to conversations
• 4:47
  Speaker 6: or reading over his shoulder when he was at the
• 4:49
  Speaker 6: barbershop reading the newspaper. And Ana said, well, you know,
• 4:54
  Speaker 6: I'm not an expert in it, but there's places I
• 4:58
  Speaker 6: can send you. And after sort of trial and error,
• 5:01
  Speaker 6: she decided, they all decided together that she would work
• 5:05
  Speaker 6: with Derek for a bit and see what happened. And
• 5:08
  Speaker 6: so what happened after that is the summary is that
• 5:14
  Speaker 6: they worked together for two years and the working relationship
• 5:19
  Speaker 6: of using facilitated communication, this typing method, which is very controversial,
• 5:25
  Speaker 6: she claims to have unlocked him. She claims that they
• 5:29
  Speaker 6: fell in love with each other. The relationship became sexual.
• 5:35
  Speaker 6: And when the family found out there was an immediate
• 5:40
  Speaker 6: kind of downfall of the story. It took a turn for,
• 5:45
  Speaker 6: you know, she was charged with assault eventually. She was
• 5:50
  Speaker 6: taken to trial, and she was eventually sent to prison
• 5:54
  Speaker 6: and convicted of sexual assault.
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: I came to the story in 2015.
• 6:00
  Speaker 6: There was a bunch of kind of smaller articles written
• 6:03
  Speaker 6: about it. You know, I have some friends in the
• 6:06
  Speaker 6: disability space that I've who were sharing articles about the case.
• 6:09
  Speaker 6: But one amazing article was written called The Strange Case
• 6:12
  Speaker 6: of Honest Doublefield in the New York Times Magazine. And
• 6:15
  Speaker 6: that really captured all the kind of complicated layers of
• 6:18
  Speaker 6: the story. And I was absolutely riveted and transfixed. And
• 6:21
  Speaker 6: I had a moment where, which doesn't happen very often,
• 6:24
  Speaker 6: where you feel just very deeply, I need to tell
• 6:26
  Speaker 6: this story. I don't even know why yet, but I
• 6:28
  Speaker 6: need to tell this story. There are reasons why, which
• 6:31
  Speaker 6: we can talk about, which relate to me and my life.
• 6:34
  Speaker 6: But But I immediately wrote her in prison. I went
• 6:39
  Speaker 6: to visit her in the county jail while she was
• 6:41
  Speaker 6: awaiting sentencing. She was facing up to 40 years in
• 6:44
  Speaker 6: prison at the time. And I met with the Johnsons
• 6:48
  Speaker 6: in Newark. And I slowly, over the course of the
• 6:50
  Speaker 6: next two years, while she was appealing her case, I
• 6:53
  Speaker 6: sort of got everybody on board. Without a camera, I
• 6:57
  Speaker 6: just visited and I talked and I researched and I
• 7:00
  Speaker 6: did all the work I needed to get myself ready
• 7:02
  Speaker 6: to film it, should everybody agree to. And to be
• 7:06
  Speaker 6: on camera. And, and, and so eventually they did. And
• 7:09
  Speaker 6: I spent the next few years making the film after that.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, you obviously have an extraordinary degree of trust
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: with both Anna and Daisy and John and, and, and
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: they're all sort of extraordinary people. Just, I'm not sure
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: if you said this and it's important. So I want
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: to make sure it's there. Anna is white and Derek's
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: family is African-American.
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: Correct.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: So that's, that's a layer in here.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a big, big layer. Yeah.
• 7:39
  Speaker 6: And there are class differences, you know, the fact that
• 7:43
  Speaker 6: she's a woman and he's a man and that he's
• 7:45
  Speaker 6: not a child. He's a man, right? That's an important note.
• 7:50
  Speaker 6: It sounds obvious because I think, you know, now he's
• 7:53
  Speaker 6: in his 40s, his early 40s. At the time, he
• 7:55
  Speaker 6: was in his early 30s. But people, for some reason,
• 7:59
  Speaker 6: when they hear the story, they think of like a
• 8:02
  Speaker 6: teacher-student relationship. And they assume that there is a vast
• 8:07
  Speaker 6: age difference. And then that's part of the ethical, the
• 8:11
  Speaker 6: sort of complicated ethics of it.
• 8:12
  Speaker 5: And in this case, it's two adults, right? So that's
• 8:15
  Speaker 5: just to make sure people know.
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: You mentioned that there were factors in your own life
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: that made you particularly interested in this. Can you share
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: some of those? Sure.
• 8:31
  Speaker 5: I mean, listen, it's funny when I was.
• 8:33
  Speaker 6: Coming on, if I haven't fully mined my own psyche
• 8:39
  Speaker 6: for the reasons why, as an artist, why do you
• 8:42
  Speaker 6: get so taken by one thing over another?
• 8:45
  Speaker 5: And I'm sure that there are all kinds of profound reasons.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: We can give you a referral.
• 8:49
  Speaker 5: I was going to say. So I'm here to figure
• 8:52
  Speaker 5: that out, finally.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:55
  Speaker 5: But I did have, I grew.
• 8:56
  Speaker 6: Up with an uncle who was diagnosed intellectually impaired. And he,
• 9:01
  Speaker 6: at the time, he died actually during COVID. He was 65.
• 9:04
  Speaker 6: And at the time of his childhood, there were really
• 9:06
  Speaker 6: no sophisticated diagnoses for people like him.
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: There was no money.
• 9:11
  Speaker 6: There was no medical or psychological attention to somebody like
• 9:18
  Speaker 6: him in the way that we do now. It's still
• 9:21
  Speaker 6: quite behind, I think, where we should be.
• 9:23
  Speaker 5: But So the diagnosis was always very, very vague.
• 9:26
  Speaker 6: I mean, there were institutions at the time of his,
• 9:30
  Speaker 6: he wasn't an institution, but there was the institution at
• 9:32
  Speaker 6: the time of his childhood that would place severely physically
• 9:36
  Speaker 6: impaired people, people who were visually impaired, people who had
• 9:39
  Speaker 6: severe intellectual impairments, people who were criminally insane is.
• 9:45
  Speaker 5: What they called it.
• 9:46
  Speaker 6: Everybody was kind of like in the same room at
• 9:48
  Speaker 6: some of these institutions because It was just this monolithic
• 9:53
  Speaker 6: category of otherness, of disability, you know, and we have
• 9:58
  Speaker 6: since evolved, thank God, from that point. where we're now,
• 10:01
  Speaker 6: you know, we're gaining much more of an understanding for
• 10:03
  Speaker 6: the very unique thing that every disability is, and not
• 10:09
  Speaker 6: just that, but how the way that it affects each person,
• 10:12
  Speaker 6: each unique person, right? So it's just the sort of neurodiversity,
• 10:17
  Speaker 6: which is now a term that didn't even exist, I
• 10:20
  Speaker 6: don't think, during his childhood, is now opening up all
• 10:24
  Speaker 6: kinds of doors for how to understand people. But at
• 10:27
  Speaker 6: the time, he was just labeled intellectually impaired, and he
• 10:30
  Speaker 6: grew up in a group home. And as a kid,
• 10:33
  Speaker 6: I found him mysterious. He had a big laugh, you know,
• 10:37
  Speaker 6: that I thought was kind of funny and strange and
• 10:41
  Speaker 6: maybe even scared me at times.
• 10:42
  Speaker 5: And He had an incredible memory that was vivid.
• 10:46
  Speaker 6: We'd be sitting around the table at Thanksgiving trying to
• 10:50
  Speaker 6: recall a fishing trip in Wisconsin from 1985, and he
• 10:55
  Speaker 6: would chime in from the other room, the fish.
• 10:58
  Speaker 5: That we caught that particular day.
• 11:01
  Speaker 6: So I was also aware that there were things in
• 11:04
  Speaker 6: his mind that were incredibly active, incredibly vivid. And he
• 11:10
  Speaker 6: was a mystery, right? And this story... what is going
• 11:13
  Speaker 6: on with him? And what did I, did I miss something?
• 11:16
  Speaker 6: And oh my God, what if we missed something? And
• 11:19
  Speaker 6: you start to sort of take on the burden of
• 11:22
  Speaker 6: unpacking maybe your own accountability for this other person that
• 11:26
  Speaker 6: you've grown up with that, you know, might have had
• 11:31
  Speaker 6: more going on, you know, whatever, whatever that might mean. And,
• 11:35
  Speaker 6: and I remember when I told my mother about the story,
• 11:38
  Speaker 6: She got very defensive right away. She was very, very
• 11:42
  Speaker 6: nervous that I was accusing her of something right away.
• 11:47
  Speaker 6: And that was not my tone or my intention at all.
• 11:51
  Speaker 6: I don't think that would have come across in any way.
• 11:54
  Speaker 6: It was pure curiosity at the time. But she immediately
• 11:58
  Speaker 6: dropped into this space in herself that was, oh, my God,
• 12:02
  Speaker 6: please don't tell me I did something wrong.
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: As his, as his sister growing up, please don't do
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: that to me right now. That was really what I
• 12:10
  Speaker 5: felt from her.
• 12:11
  Speaker 6: And I think that emotional kind of vulnerability in the
• 12:17
  Speaker 6: family members of people like my uncle Donald or Derek
• 12:21
  Speaker 6: in the story is, is very, very intense part of
• 12:27
  Speaker 6: what energizes the, the kind of hope, you know, that,
• 12:31
  Speaker 6: that then, can potentially get preyed upon.
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: If we're not careful.
• 12:38
  Speaker 6: And it's a driver of how reality gets shaped, you know,
• 12:43
  Speaker 6: around other people, especially when they can't communicate in the
• 12:47
  Speaker 6: way that we're used to communicating with each other, right?
• 12:52
  Speaker 6: It opens up so much space for projecting those hopes. And,
• 12:57
  Speaker 6: you know, even if there is reason for it, are
• 12:59
  Speaker 6: they the, you know, Are we asking for the right
• 13:03
  Speaker 6: things of that person?
• 13:05
  Speaker 5: Or are we just hoping.
• 13:06
  Speaker 6: That there's a silver bullet that will reveal them to
• 13:10
  Speaker 6: us in a way that we haven't seen and so
• 13:13
  Speaker 6: that we can have that hope confirmed? So all of
• 13:20
  Speaker 6: these forces get unleashed, particularly with this method, which is
• 13:25
  Speaker 6: very powerful in all kinds of different ways.
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: That's almost its own conversation.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Well, let's go there for a minute because I think
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: it sets up a lot to, let's just talk a
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: little bit more about facilitated communication, which was not something
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: I'd even heard of before I watched your film. But
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: apparently it was developed in Australia. It involves, I mean,
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: there are images of it in the film, which it's
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: good to be able to see it, but it's almost like,
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: you know, different versions. But there's some, the facilitator is
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: sort of maybe holding the other, supporting the other person's
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: arm or maybe holding up a keyboard.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: There's sort of different versions of it, but there's usually
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: the facilitator is in physical contact with a person who
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: is typing. In Ana's case, she and Derek kind of
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: started having these very rudimentary conversations where she would, you know,
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: ask him a question and he would give a kind
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: of one word answer. And the spellings were very, as
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: she put it, kind of creative. But eventually they're having
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: these longer conversations. So she would speak to him when
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: we say conversations. She might speak to him, I'm assuming,
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: and then help him type back the answer. Right.
• 14:38
  Speaker 6: She would say, right, she was supporting him so that
• 14:42
  Speaker 6: he could type right back the answer. So the origin,
• 14:46
  Speaker 6: you're right, was in Australia, there was a woman named
• 14:50
  Speaker 6: Rosemary Crossley who was in the film who's considered the
• 14:52
  Speaker 6: pioneer of the method. And there's a sort of extraordinary
• 14:56
  Speaker 6: story that she has with a young woman named Anne MacDonald,
• 14:59
  Speaker 6: who was in an institution in, I think, Melbourne. And
• 15:05
  Speaker 6: it was the description, Rosemary wrote a book called Annie's
• 15:09
  Speaker 6: Coming Out, and the description of the institution is quite horrible,
• 15:12
  Speaker 6: but not uncommon around the world. You know, she found
• 15:17
  Speaker 6: Annie sort of... I think on a dirty mattress kind
• 15:21
  Speaker 6: of shoved under a staircase when she first met her.
• 15:24
  Speaker 6: She had a lot of involuntary neurological movements and she
• 15:30
  Speaker 6: could not feed herself. So Rosemary describes what the nurses
• 15:35
  Speaker 6: would do, which was called bird feeding, where they would
• 15:37
  Speaker 6: kind of, you know, hold her over there. their thigh
• 15:42
  Speaker 6: and just kind of drop things into her mouth and
• 15:45
  Speaker 6: it would not always make it into her mouth. So,
• 15:47
  Speaker 6: you know, she would get it all over her face
• 15:49
  Speaker 6: and they would barely clean her up. And from that
• 15:52
  Speaker 6: to various kinds of just actual physical abuse and things
• 15:56
  Speaker 6: that were going on at the time. So she worked
• 15:59
  Speaker 6: with this woman, Anne McDonald, using this method, facilitated communication
• 16:04
  Speaker 6: and claims that, you know, Anne was a completely vivid person.
• 16:09
  Speaker 6: and lucid person that was trapped in this body, and
• 16:13
  Speaker 6: that she should not be in the institution. And they
• 16:15
  Speaker 6: actually won, I believe, whatever the Supreme Court is in Australia,
• 16:21
  Speaker 6: they won the case and got Anne out of the institution.
• 16:23
  Speaker 6: And Anne spent the next 30 years living with Rosemary Crossley,
• 16:27
  Speaker 6: and they used it. Now, some people question whether or
• 16:31
  Speaker 6: not the validity of this case Of her intelligence, of
• 16:38
  Speaker 6: what occurred between them.
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: That's its own story because she passed what's called.
• 16:43
  Speaker 6: A double blind test in the courtroom. And so there's,
• 16:46
  Speaker 6: you know, this very real pot. We can talk about
• 16:49
  Speaker 6: the double blind test later. But that was such an
• 16:52
  Speaker 6: inspiring story is my point. It was like a sea
• 16:55
  Speaker 6: change in the disability movement. And suddenly she was doing
• 16:58
  Speaker 6: conferences all around the world and people were showing up
• 17:01
  Speaker 6: from all different countries. And there was a conference in
• 17:04
  Speaker 6: Sweden where all of the, you know, the top people
• 17:06
  Speaker 6: in the field, you know, met and watched Rosemary, you know,
• 17:12
  Speaker 6: unlock people, right? And describe the training method. And a
• 17:19
  Speaker 6: man named Doug Bicklin was so taken by it, he
• 17:21
  Speaker 6: brought Rosemary back to Syracuse University in 1990, I believe,
• 17:27
  Speaker 6: and did a huge conference about it. And it created
• 17:31
  Speaker 6: a movement, you know, in the disability field where people
• 17:34
  Speaker 6: then went to all corners of the country and began
• 17:37
  Speaker 6: practicing this method. And there were stories of people being unlocked, uh,
• 17:43
  Speaker 6: all over the country. You know, there were stories of, of, uh,
• 17:46
  Speaker 6: you know, the fathers with their, with their daughters who
• 17:50
  Speaker 6: were now, you know, the daughter was writing poetry and had,
• 17:53
  Speaker 6: you know, was publishing volumes of, of poetry and short
• 17:57
  Speaker 6: stories about, about her life and, you know, these were
• 18:00
  Speaker 6: just such extraordinary things to be hearing about. And especially
• 18:05
  Speaker 6: if you were somebody that had a person with disability
• 18:09
  Speaker 6: in your family, a nonverbal person.
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: To get back to the sort of specifics.
• 18:15
  Speaker 6: Of your point, the idea is that, you know, many
• 18:19
  Speaker 6: people with involuntary neurological, and I want to say very clear,
• 18:23
  Speaker 6: I'm not an expert in this field.
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: This is what I've learned.
• 18:25
  Speaker 6: And I, you know, I'll only say what I sort
• 18:27
  Speaker 6: of feel pretty confident saying, but there's an experience where
• 18:31
  Speaker 6: people kind of feel that they're floating in space because
• 18:36
  Speaker 6: of the neurology and that they need to feel grounded
• 18:40
  Speaker 6: in some way in order to focus on the keyboard
• 18:45
  Speaker 6: and get the writing out and the words. And so
• 18:48
  Speaker 6: the theory is that with just a little bit of touch,
• 18:51
  Speaker 6: which is both physical and emotional support, the nonverbal person
• 18:59
  Speaker 6: can then type their thoughts and express themselves because they
• 19:03
  Speaker 6: feel grounded. They feel supported. They feel confident. They don't
• 19:08
  Speaker 6: feel rushed, right?
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: They don't rush. That's a big thing as well.
• 19:12
  Speaker 6: So, so that's what Ana was doing with Derek. And, and,
• 19:16
  Speaker 6: and originally it's called facilitated communication training because the idea
• 19:19
  Speaker 6: was always, okay, let's, even if you have to start
• 19:22
  Speaker 6: with support with your hand on their finger, the idea
• 19:26
  Speaker 6: is to eventually move up the arm to the wrist
• 19:29
  Speaker 6: and then further up to the elbow and then up
• 19:31
  Speaker 6: to the shoulder. And ideally you are then not touching
• 19:36
  Speaker 6: them and they are on their own typing without support.
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: And that is what they, you know, everybody that I.
• 19:44
  Speaker 6: Talked to in the field say that is the goal
• 19:46
  Speaker 6: of facilitated communication is to get to that point. And
• 19:49
  Speaker 6: they'll admittedly, they will all say it does not happen
• 19:52
  Speaker 6: very often, but that it does happen.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: I can imagine that it does happen. But I think
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: it's also good background to have that once facilitated communication
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: kind of took the country by storm, there followed some
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: cases where the facilitated person was accusing, say, a family
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: member or a caregiver of sexual assault.
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: Correct.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: And it was actually sort of a disproportionate number of
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: times that that started happening. And so there were these
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: legal cases and there were expert witnesses called in who
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: developed the double-blind test. So, for example... You might show
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: the facilitator a picture of a cup and then you
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: would show the facilitated person a picture of a sneaker
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: and then ask, you know, the facilitated person to type
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: out what they saw. And it would always be what
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: the facilitator saw. So it was pretty clear that at
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: least in many of these cases, what was being accessed,
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: and here we go, was the unconscious thoughts of the facilitator.
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And I just wanted to add that the professional organizations,
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: American Psychological Association and Association for Speech and Hearing, this
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: has been widely discredited as a scientifically valid method for
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: communication because of what Lisa's heading into, because of the
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: potential for projections.
• 21:26
  Speaker 6: Which was happening right from the beginning. I mean, it
• 21:28
  Speaker 6: didn't take any time at all for those cases to
• 21:31
  Speaker 6: start emerging.
• 21:31
  Speaker 5: It was immediate.
• 21:32
  Speaker 6: And, uh, you know, I, I, I put segments of
• 21:35
  Speaker 6: the frontline film in, in my film, which was made
• 21:39
  Speaker 6: in 1993. So it was just, you know, and it
• 21:41
  Speaker 6: takes about a year to make a film, right? So they,
• 21:43
  Speaker 6: they immediately started working on, uh, this film, which was
• 21:47
  Speaker 6: considered a kind of debunking of the method from very,
• 21:50
  Speaker 6: very early on.
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: But it, it, uh, it persists to this day. Um,
• 21:56
  Speaker 5: And the.
• 21:57
  Speaker 6: Accusations through the method of, you know, a disproportionate amount
• 22:03
  Speaker 6: of sexual abuse claims, you know, of all the things,
• 22:09
  Speaker 6: those continue to this day as well. There are still
• 22:12
  Speaker 6: cases all over the country happening as we speak.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Wow. So with that real set up, let me just
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: kind of venture in to some of the territory that
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: I'm hoping we can launch into. which is I watched this,
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: and Nick, as I've said to you, one of the
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: things that so impressed me was that, though I think
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: you know right away at the opening of the film
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: that Anna goes to jail for this. And it's very
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: shocking when Derek is first on the camera. Oh, this
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: is the person she did this with. And yet you
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: do such a good job in the film, I think,
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: of giving her a voice of, And she's so clearly
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: convinced that she and Derek really had a love affair.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: And you just do a wonderful job of holding open
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: that space. I didn't feel sure about what I thought
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: until toward the end. And I think that once you
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: do get to the end, there is a lot of outrage.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: There is like, how the heck could she do that?
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: What was she thinking? my God, how naive. I mean, there's,
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: there's a, there's a, I can just kind of feel
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: that in myself and I'm sure in the kind of
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: discourse around the film, there's just like a lot of shock,
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: you know, that, that she would, she would do this because, um,
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: you know, she did, she did, you know, bring him
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: to her office and, and have sex with him. What
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: I was left with, what was reverberating for me was
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: as someone in the helping profession, um, how aware I
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: am of how susceptible we all are to what we
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: would call counter-transference, our own kind of thoughts and fantasies
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: about the person that we're working with. And all of us,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: but especially those of us in the helping professions, can
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: be susceptible to developing a savior complex, which can distort
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: reality for us. So I, I found myself, you know,
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: horrified and shocked, but at the same time thinking, wait
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: a minute, I know that place too.
• 24:29
  Speaker 6: I think it's essential for me as a filmmaker that
• 24:34
  Speaker 6: people ask themselves those questions. You know, I was starting
• 24:37
  Speaker 6: to say before we hit record that, you know, um,
• 24:41
  Speaker 6: I didn't set out to make a film that was shocking.
• 24:43
  Speaker 6: You know, that's not what interested me about the film.
• 24:45
  Speaker 6: What interested me about the film was that it was
• 24:47
  Speaker 6: an extreme human experience that had a lot to reveal
• 24:53
  Speaker 6: about our own potential and just the very idea of
• 24:59
  Speaker 6: relationships and love, right? That was one big element I
• 25:01
  Speaker 6: was interested in the beginning as to what degree do
• 25:04
  Speaker 6: we all project onto the person we're with, right?
• 25:07
  Speaker 5: I mean, to what degree are we.
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: With the person, the real person who is the other person?
• 25:15
  Speaker 6: And to what degree are we with or hoping to
• 25:17
  Speaker 6: be with the person that we want them to be?
• 25:20
  Speaker 6: And how that confusion leads to so much turmoil and
• 25:24
  Speaker 6: conflict in some relationships.
• 25:26
  Speaker 5: Not speaking personally, of course, I don't have any of
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: those problems.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: No.
• 25:32
  Speaker 6: But, you know, I was interested in it for those reasons.
• 25:35
  Speaker 6: There's reasons why we have all the mythology around that, too.
• 25:37
  Speaker 6: You know, I thought about Pygmalion, you know, very early on.
• 25:40
  Speaker 6: I was like, well, if this is, you know, if
• 25:42
  Speaker 6: this is a love story in quotes, right, what kind
• 25:45
  Speaker 6: of a love story is it? I went in with
• 25:48
  Speaker 6: a real open mind and a lot of curiosity about
• 25:50
  Speaker 6: it because I thought it had, the story had.
• 25:52
  Speaker 5: So many things to teach us all.
• 25:54
  Speaker 6: And sometimes when you take extreme stories, you know, it's
• 25:57
  Speaker 6: a little bit easier to kind of see kind of
• 26:00
  Speaker 6: tentacles of those stories dangling in our lives and how
• 26:04
  Speaker 6: easy it might be to latch on to one of
• 26:06
  Speaker 6: them and get to a place that we never imagined
• 26:09
  Speaker 6: we might get to, you know, if we're not careful
• 26:12
  Speaker 6: or thoughtful or checking in with ourselves and others. And
• 26:17
  Speaker 6: I think what happened in this case also was that
• 26:19
  Speaker 6: they kept, you know, the relationship was.
• 26:21
  Speaker 5: Very private, right, for so long.
• 26:24
  Speaker 6: And in that privacy, which lasted almost two years, privacy
• 26:29
  Speaker 6: and the sort of secretive nature of it can be
• 26:32
  Speaker 6: a context for all kinds of things to start happening
• 26:36
  Speaker 6: that may or may not have been there, right?
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: It's such a good point of just that one-on-one relationship
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: in any kind of a helping profession. The analogy that
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: Jung uses is that you put the two people, their personalities,
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: in an alchemical vase. And if the elements combine, both
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: people are changed. People bring their own projections, their own complexes,
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: the helper, especially in this case, because Derek was so impaired,
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: he could not speak. So in a way, he's very
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: much a blank screen, which creates the conditions for projection. Right.
• 27:25
  Speaker 6: I mean, it gets very complicated, you know, especially when
• 27:28
  Speaker 6: you get into the disability side of it, because he was,
• 27:32
  Speaker 6: you know, he could not communicate verbally.
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 27:35
  Speaker 6: And I think it's just really important to remind people that,
• 27:40
  Speaker 6: you know, Deva Kastnitz, who's one of the people in
• 27:42
  Speaker 6: the film who is a she has something called torsion dystonia.
• 27:45
  Speaker 6: And she's one of the main characters in the film.
• 27:47
  Speaker 5: She was at trial.
• 27:49
  Speaker 6: She has a Ph.D. She taught in Berkeley for many,
• 27:53
  Speaker 6: many years. you know, she would say the majority of
• 27:55
  Speaker 6: our communication is nonverbal anyway, right? And she wasn't saying
• 27:59
  Speaker 6: that as a way to sort of let everybody off
• 28:02
  Speaker 6: the hook, but it was just to make the point that,
• 28:04
  Speaker 6: you know, let's just make sure we understand how fundamental
• 28:10
  Speaker 6: and verbal communication is to our perception of reality, right?
• 28:14
  Speaker 6: But that's one layer of it. And I'm only saying that,
• 28:18
  Speaker 6: which is to say that, you know, Derek.
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: as.
• 28:21
  Speaker 6: Much as he is a blank slate, he is also
• 28:24
  Speaker 6: a full and sort of total person of his own, right?
• 28:27
  Speaker 6: That is bringing a very different kind of life experience
• 28:32
  Speaker 6: to the table. And that produces its own alchemy, as
• 28:38
  Speaker 6: what you're saying, that is quite different than the one
• 28:41
  Speaker 6: that we're used to, right? And so I only say
• 28:44
  Speaker 6: that not as a sort of like a correction, but
• 28:46
  Speaker 6: just to sort of.
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: Say that You know, he was bringing things to the table.
• 28:51
  Speaker 6: And I, as a filmmaker, am also interested in that mystery, right?
• 28:56
  Speaker 6: And I had a disability consultant who was a black
• 29:00
  Speaker 6: artist and advocate from San Francisco, also with cerebral palsy.
• 29:04
  Speaker 6: And he helped remind me that part of what we
• 29:06
  Speaker 6: were trying to understand was what did Derek experience? What
• 29:09
  Speaker 6: did he bring to the table, whether he was intellectually
• 29:12
  Speaker 6: impaired or not? That's an important question that I think
• 29:15
  Speaker 6: audiences are left in the film is what did he experience?
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: What was your sense of that after your exploration and
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: consultation with an expert of Derek's experience?
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: You know, I think even I would only quote the film.
• 29:31
  Speaker 6: There's a gentleman, Howard Shane, who assesses Derek for trial
• 29:35
  Speaker 6: and determines that he you know could probably did not
• 29:39
  Speaker 6: have the ability to type and didn't have the sorry
• 29:42
  Speaker 6: I should say did not have the intellect to type
• 29:46
  Speaker 6: but had the physical ability to type that's sort of
• 29:48
  Speaker 6: an interesting thing in and of itself but he would
• 29:51
  Speaker 6: say you know I don't he wouldn't claim to know
• 29:53
  Speaker 6: what Derek was experiencing I don't think he would ever
• 29:57
  Speaker 6: assess that I think everyone you know What he, I think,
• 30:00
  Speaker 6: did correctly was stay in his lane, which was as
• 30:03
  Speaker 6: a clinician, he was very much testing for very particular things.
• 30:09
  Speaker 6: Does this person have the ability to use a device?
• 30:13
  Speaker 5: And that's all.
• 30:14
  Speaker 6: He stopped there and he stopped short of making any
• 30:18
  Speaker 6: assumptions about what might have occurred and what level of consent,
• 30:24
  Speaker 6: if any, there was that was not expressed. And I
• 30:27
  Speaker 6: would sort of, you know, it's not to sort of
• 30:29
  Speaker 6: cop out, but I would sort of, I would plead
• 30:32
  Speaker 6: the fifth as well on making a statement about what
• 30:35
  Speaker 6: he was experiencing.
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: I don't think that's fair of me.
• 30:37
  Speaker 6: You know, I think that's a question I want people to,
• 30:39
  Speaker 6: I want it to bother people, you know, at the
• 30:42
  Speaker 6: end of the film.
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: I want it to agitate people, you know.
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: That was remarkably and poignantly successful. It is a very
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: agitating film and necessarily so. The polarities are not resolved.
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: And the film challenges us to hold all these tensions
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: about race and consent and disability and power and communication
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: and all of it leaves us, I think, really wrestling
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: with all these questions instead of the, you know, the
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: false comfort of here are the answers, the answers. And
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: Lisa made a point earlier on that I think is
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: really salient, which is let's think about where all these
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: issues reside in us around power and consent, communication, projection. Because,
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: you know, what Jung says is that we first get
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: to know someone and many life dynamics through projection. That's
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: our first. That's what draws us to someone or to
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: an experience. And then hopefully we can reflect and differentiate
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: between that person or that experience and self rather than
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: merging with it as Anna may have done. And that's
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: very much part of analytic training of, What's me and
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: what is the you who sits in our consulting room?
• 32:30
  Speaker 6: That's where the ethics of it get tricky because, you know,
• 32:33
  Speaker 6: one could say that, you know, it is our responsibility
• 32:37
  Speaker 6: to take on the challenge of that differentiation and that process, right?
• 32:43
  Speaker 5: And if we don't, we're not being responsible, right?
• 32:46
  Speaker 6: And I think that in this case, that's obviously it's
• 32:49
  Speaker 6: a very, has a lot of the stakes are very high.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: It's a very complicated issue also because in the United States,
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: there is a history of forced sterilization of people who
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: had mental disabilities. There are legal battles that are still
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: happening as to whether, for instance, two people with Down
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: syndrome should be together. Should they have children? Can there
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: be a legal marriage if there is a sense of
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: not full understanding of And of course, in some places
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: that is happening and supported by family. So there is
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: a larger issue of how we perceive the vulnerable other
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: and how in the context of the parental dynamic, whether
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: literally as Daisy was Derek's parent or whether the state,
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: the government thinks of themselves as the parents of the
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: eternal children of the culture, those who do not appear
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: to age psychologically or mentally. And how much power should
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: the parental energy, the parental images, the parental context exert
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: over their children? And that's a dynamic that's very present
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: in the documentary that Daisy, of course, wants to protect
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: him and loves him, but she's also appalled that he's
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: ever been exposed to sexuality. That she thinks of that as,
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: she says in the documentary, basically, once you let that
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: cat out of the bag, now my child knows about this,
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: and what are we gonna do about that? So what
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: we can also see in Daisy's projection is that he
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: is the eternal child He has to be kept in
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: a state of innocence. And that Anna has come like
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: the serpent into the Garden of Eden and robbed my
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: son of his innocence. And she and Derek's brother both
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: have that sense that Anna is evil for having corrupted
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: the innocence of Derek. And that is a very ancient
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: archetypal feeling that is in the collective and understandable, but
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: it complexifies the legal standing of what's also happening. And
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: there is a way in which, and this is less,
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: of course, about Derek, that we can fall into a
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: malignant worship of innocence and a almost perverse obsession with
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: maintaining innocence, and whether that's even in the United States now,
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: parents deciding their children should have no sex education in
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: public schools, that we do have a very bizarre relationship
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: with the archetype of innocence, and that is rumbling around
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: under the surface in the whole documentary and in the discourse.
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: I wonder if you have any thoughts about that.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: None.
• 36:22
  Speaker 5: I'll pass.
• 36:27
  Speaker 6: The question of infantilization, right, is something that is an
• 36:33
  Speaker 6: extremely heated point in.
• 36:38
  Speaker 5: The disability space. Deva Kasnitz, who has a Ph.D.
• 36:41
  Speaker 6: In anthropology and disability studies, will walk into an elevator
• 36:47
  Speaker 6: of a Barnes & Noble's and people will baby talk
• 36:49
  Speaker 6: to her still.
• 36:51
  Speaker 7: Oh, God.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: Um it is she was extraordinary oh she's just extraordinary.
• 36:58
  Speaker 6: She's i always said she's kind of like the greek
• 37:00
  Speaker 6: chorus right um she kind of pulls us out to
• 37:04
  Speaker 6: a different level and says here's how you might want
• 37:07
  Speaker 6: to think about this chapter and then you know sort
• 37:09
  Speaker 6: of gently let's back into the story and because she
• 37:13
  Speaker 6: has an experience in a point perspective that none most
• 37:16
  Speaker 6: audiences will not have and not understand um But this idea,
• 37:22
  Speaker 6: this is also the thing that I think is very
• 37:23
  Speaker 6: triggering for people as they watch, is that Anna, at
• 37:27
  Speaker 6: certain points of the film, who some people will have
• 37:31
  Speaker 6: decided she is a villain early or later in the story,
• 37:35
  Speaker 6: at various different points of the story, you can't deny
• 37:39
  Speaker 6: that she guides us through some of this very uncomfortable
• 37:42
  Speaker 6: terrain of trying to differentiate when infantilization is happening, when
• 37:47
  Speaker 6: it's not appropriate. And it's very, very important to understand
• 37:54
  Speaker 6: why not just his mother rejects the sex of it.
• 38:00
  Speaker 5: And we could talk, there's so many reasons why one would.
• 38:04
  Speaker 6: But also the jury, which is kind of a proxy
• 38:09
  Speaker 6: for the audience, who their only view of Derek as
• 38:15
  Speaker 6: a person is was that he was walked to the
• 38:19
  Speaker 6: courtroom one day and then walked out the door. And
• 38:22
  Speaker 6: Devis says, you know, I think the verdict happened in
• 38:27
  Speaker 6: that moment. And that was like the first or second
• 38:30
  Speaker 6: day of the trial, which lasted two weeks. When people
• 38:33
  Speaker 6: saw him, it was unimaginable that somebody like him could
• 38:37
  Speaker 6: be sexual. And it was unimaginable to them that Ana
• 38:40
  Speaker 6: could have sexual desire for him.
• 38:43
  Speaker 5: And that.
• 38:45
  Speaker 6: His mother who had walked him through the courtroom and
• 38:49
  Speaker 6: showed him, so to speak, to the judge and the jury.
• 38:53
  Speaker 6: And that's just, no matter how you feel about the story,
• 38:57
  Speaker 6: those forces were very, very present in the courtroom. And
• 39:00
  Speaker 6: I think they're present in the documentary as people watch it.
• 39:03
  Speaker 6: There are people that identify with Daisy and there are
• 39:06
  Speaker 6: people who have a real issue with that.
• 39:11
  Speaker 5: And I think both are valid things to explore.
• 39:14
  Speaker 6: To what degree does the allowance for self-determination then present
• 39:20
  Speaker 6: more vulnerability in his life, right? And when do you
• 39:24
  Speaker 6: intervene in that process? You know, these are incredibly difficult
• 39:28
  Speaker 6: things for people to negotiate. And I think that that,
• 39:32
  Speaker 6: for me, is what makes the story a tragedy more
• 39:37
  Speaker 6: than anything else, because you can have, you know, four
• 39:40
  Speaker 6: or five people all doing their best to negotiate terrain
• 39:48
  Speaker 6: that is frankly unexplored in so many ways. And you can,
• 39:54
  Speaker 6: you can, it can still end in tragedy. And that,
• 39:57
  Speaker 6: that is, that's what I think happened here. And that's
• 39:59
  Speaker 6: why I think it's important. It's just an important story
• 40:02
  Speaker 6: for us to consider generally.
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: What about Anna's innocence? Yeah.
• 40:08
  Speaker 6: I mean, I think it's, it's a question of the
• 40:11
  Speaker 6: ethics of, you know, do good intentions make you innocent?
• 40:14
  Speaker 5: And right. I don't.
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
• 40:16
  Speaker 5: That's extremely in the courtroom. It doesn't matter. Right.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: Although intention does, intent to do harm does matter, but Deva,
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: the consultant there, had used the word naive, which is
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: a form of the way we say that an adult
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: who looks like they should be more mature is acting
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: in a way that is oddly innocent of various factors,
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: if nothing else, even the factor around the family dynamics
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: that she could kind of trundle up there and tell
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: mom and the brother, you know, we're in love, and
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: expect this perhaps to be celebrated as really good news. Again,
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: she was encapsulated in a romantic fantasy that made her vulnerable.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: But I want to go a little deeper into the
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: idea of innocence. And again, not taking any position about the.
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: Documentary itself, that the loss of innocence is the central
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: mythology of Western religion. It is the great primal sin.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: It is the original sin. Adam and Eve are, and
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: we're talking on an archetypal level, Adam and Eve are
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: living like children in the Garden of Eden, as innocent
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: as every creature. And then they become self-aware. And the
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: first thing they become self-aware of is their nakedness, their genitalia,
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: which they hide. And there they are, you know, hiding
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: in the shrubbery in the Garden of Eden. And God's like,
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: where are you? And one could say that the first
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: sin is hiding. And so much of that archetypal tension
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: is constellated in the story with Anna. This idea of
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: Anna awakening Derek, so to speak, to the idea of
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: nakedness and sexuality, and then even the hiding from quote-unquote God,
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: the hiding from the massive authority which then threatens to
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: throw them out of this Edenic, relationship in the Edenic
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: world for Derek, of course, is to be ever cared
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: for by his devoted and rather wonderful mother, for sure.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: And so I think the audience cannot help but be
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: influenced by something that is so central to the mythology
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: of Christianity and Judaism, for that matter. So it is
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: very difficult, as you were saying, to see Derek you know,
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: as a discrete human being having his own very complicated
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: and often inscrutable experiences. So as Jungians, we're very interested
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: in this idea of archetypal activation. And I suspect that's
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: one of the reasons that stories like this, but this
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: story in particular, is so, so capturing to the minds
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: of people the Judeo-Christian world for that matter. And the difficulty,
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: of course, is that when an archetypal pattern is activated
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: in the collective, people's quality of consciousness reduces. And that's
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: exactly what you're talking about, that when Derek was walked
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: through the court and not engaged in any way, that
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: an archetypal field is captured and that the judge herself
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: was captured in that, deciding what information was even permitted
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: to be presented, even deciding that the jury can't even
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: know certain things. So this stupefying power of archetypal constellation
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: is happening, and so many people are getting caught in that.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: And Anna, of course, plays the role of the serpent.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: That's a really rich, interesting take, Joseph. And as usual
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: with a lot of what you say, it's like I
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: had not even considered that. But I want to pick
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: up on it and just take it in a slightly
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: different direction because I'm so glad you brought in this
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: idea about archetypal activation. I think there were multiple archetypes
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: at work and definitely the one you're talking about. And also...
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: For Anna, I think that we were in the archetypal
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: field of the savior. And there's a few things about that.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: First of all, the savior complex often constellates what's known
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: in transactional analysis as Karpman's drama triangle. So if you
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: know about the drama triangle, there's a victim, there's an
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: oppressor or a victimizer or persecutor, and there's the rescuer.
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: And we have that here, right? Like, in Anna's view,
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: Derek was the victim of Daisy's kind of smothering, and
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: maybe society's generally kind of discounting him for multiple factors.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Daisy was at least the stand-in persecutor, and she was
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: the rescuer. She was going to come in and rescue him.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, as the transactional analyst will point out, the
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: drama triangle creates problems. It's a problematic dynamic, relational dynamic.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: But from our view, one of the things about it is,
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: and I think it also goes to Ana's naivete, when
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: we're naive, when we're innocent, we are identifying with an
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: archetype and we're splitting off knowledge of the other part.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: So she's identifying, you know, unconsciously she's in identification with
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: this archetype of the savior and the shadow aspect of
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: that the shadow aspect of the savior is the charlatan.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: And she had really, really split herself off from that.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: And that's entirely relevant because as we've already said, by
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: the time she begins using facilitated communication with Derek, it
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: had been debunked for like almost two decades. You know,
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: was Anna a savior or was she a charlatan? Those
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: are two aspects of the archetype.
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: I'm going to introduce another aspect here, which is transgression
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: that is also embedded in the myth of Adam and Eve.
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: And when is transgression in the service of growth? When
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: is it the right thing to do to break the
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: rules of And many a fairy tale has examples of
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: transgression being necessary and examples of transgression leading people to
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: a bad end. And I think we're circling around the
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: crucial importance of consciousness as much as any of us
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: ever can bring consciousness to a certain situation. that that
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: is our only and best way truly forward out of
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: all of these archetypal realities.
• 48:08
  Speaker 5: There's so much there.
• 48:10
  Speaker 6: I mean, I want to just let you guys roll,
• 48:14
  Speaker 6: to be honest with you.
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, Nick, we could.
• 48:20
  Speaker 6: I think I'm just going to point out a couple
• 48:21
  Speaker 6: things from the different things that I've heard, which I
• 48:24
  Speaker 6: think are important.
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: And one is to.
• 48:27
  Speaker 6: Go back a little bit you know, during the disclosure
• 48:31
  Speaker 6: in the film, it is not totally clear how much
• 48:36
  Speaker 6: doubt the family had about the method itself at that point.
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: What really, really shot to the surface.
• 48:45
  Speaker 6: And became the kind of upheaval of the story was
• 48:48
  Speaker 6: that sex had entered the story. Yes. So which came first, right?
• 48:56
  Speaker 6: The doubt about the individual self-determining person that was Derek
• 49:02
  Speaker 6: or the sexualized Derek and which was more of an
• 49:07
  Speaker 6: offense to the reality of the Johnson family. And it's
• 49:13
  Speaker 6: not completely clear to me. I think that they might
• 49:17
  Speaker 6: say that there were doubts about the method and that
• 49:19
  Speaker 6: there was a kind of colliding of the two things
• 49:22
  Speaker 6: and that this sort of the sexual relationship confirmed those doubts.
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: But there is the reality that on its own.
• 49:30
  Speaker 6: The sexual nature of the relationship is what really did
• 49:33
  Speaker 6: create the downfall, right, of the rest of the story
• 49:36
  Speaker 6: and the sort of the cascade of of, you know,
• 49:42
  Speaker 6: the legal and all the things that happened afterwards. So
• 49:45
  Speaker 6: I think that's an important thing to sort of understand
• 49:48
  Speaker 6: also is when the innocence became corrupt, everybody went into
• 49:55
  Speaker 6: a very high state of activation and action at that point, right?
• 50:02
  Speaker 6: To sort of gain back the innocence, to protect the
• 50:07
  Speaker 6: child and to villainize the predator right in that in
• 50:12
  Speaker 6: that moment before any analysis was done about whether he
• 50:17
  Speaker 6: might have been communicating or not right so i think
• 50:20
  Speaker 6: that's just an important detail to sort of to sort
• 50:22
  Speaker 6: of throw out there is that it's the order of
• 50:24
  Speaker 6: events and i think it relates to some some of
• 50:26
  Speaker 6: the stuff you guys are talking about but Another thing
• 50:29
  Speaker 6: to say is that Ana and most people in the
• 50:31
  Speaker 6: facilitated communication community will say, oh, I know that there's
• 50:34
  Speaker 6: the possibility of influence. I know how my subconscious works.
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: I'm smart enough. I've studied this stuff.
• 50:42
  Speaker 6: I understand that it's possible that I've entered the story
• 50:46
  Speaker 6: at various moments and that But I watched out for that.
• 50:50
  Speaker 6: I made sure that I triangulated responses, that I brought
• 50:54
  Speaker 6: somebody else into the room and said, you know, Derek
• 50:56
  Speaker 6: mentioned that they were, you know, he's saying what I
• 50:58
  Speaker 6: think is that he was at the gym today, if
• 51:00
  Speaker 6: I'm reading the word, the letters GM correctly.
• 51:03
  Speaker 5: Is that right? Oh, yes, Daisy told me.
• 51:07
  Speaker 6: Yes, he had been to the gym that day. That's amazing.
• 51:10
  Speaker 6: You know, and he seemed very excited, according to his
• 51:14
  Speaker 6: aides at the adult daycare center. oh, okay, well, that
• 51:18
  Speaker 6: confirms I'm on the right track, right? So she would say,
• 51:21
  Speaker 6: of course, there's influence. Of course, I have, there's the
• 51:25
  Speaker 6: idea of projection, right? But I made sure that wasn't
• 51:30
  Speaker 6: happening at various points, right? And so, you know, I
• 51:33
  Speaker 6: talked to some people in the community who admittedly, when
• 51:36
  Speaker 6: I say the community, the facilitated communication community, who admittedly,
• 51:40
  Speaker 6: somebody in, I think in Wisconsin, I spoke to runs
• 51:43
  Speaker 6: a center out there, said 70% of.
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: The time, It is faulty.
• 51:50
  Speaker 6: Now, based on those statistics alone, one might say, well,
• 51:52
  Speaker 6: that's why the method was debunked and it shouldn't be
• 51:54
  Speaker 6: used because that's a high percentage. And then she would
• 51:57
  Speaker 6: say in response, well, what about the 30% of the time?
• 52:02
  Speaker 6: And do we just throw the baby out with the
• 52:04
  Speaker 6: bathwater in the absence of another method that can keep
• 52:09
  Speaker 6: pace with the kind of communication we're unlocking in people?
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: What I didn't hear from Anna is exactly what you
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: just pointed out just now, which is that people will say, yes,
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: there is very much the possibility of influence and projection.
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: And it may even happen a lot, but not always.
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: So here we have both sides being presented. I did
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: not hear in the film that Anna reflected on her shadow.
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: Perhaps I did misunderstand. Perhaps I was caught in the
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: excitement of trying to unlock Derek. I did not hear
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: any self-doubt whatsoever, which to me indicates really being caught
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: in a complex, the savior part of the Karpman's Triangle.
• 53:09
  Speaker 5: She, I think, so I would say two things about that.
• 53:12
  Speaker 5: One is you're correct.
• 53:13
  Speaker 6: And towards the end of the film, I asked her
• 53:15
  Speaker 6: straight out if there was ever a moment at any
• 53:18
  Speaker 6: point of the first meeting Derek all the way through
• 53:22
  Speaker 6: the trial that she had doubts about what might have happened.
• 53:24
  Speaker 5: And she says resoundingly, no, there are no doubts.
• 53:29
  Speaker 6: And then when I asked Daisy the same question, do
• 53:31
  Speaker 6: you think that Anna believed that she was communicating?
• 53:36
  Speaker 5: Daisy says something very interesting. She says it.
• 53:38
  Speaker 6: Yeah, in her wicked mind, which is a very quick
• 53:42
  Speaker 6: response and the edit sort of moves on fairly quickly
• 53:45
  Speaker 6: from it, but it's quite profound because there's an acknowledgement.
• 53:49
  Speaker 5: That I did believe, but also that it was wicked.
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: It was evil, right?
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: So we have that archetypal world that's just spinning around
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: in people's minds, understandably, and in a way influencing the
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: fate of this event.
• 54:09
  Speaker 6: The other thing that I would point out just quickly
• 54:12
  Speaker 6: is something that's hard to get across in a film
• 54:16
  Speaker 6: that is moving at the same pace from minute one
• 54:21
  Speaker 6: to 102 is there's a time period of two years
• 54:26
  Speaker 6: happening here. And within that time period, when you look
• 54:29
  Speaker 6: at the printouts of the Neo, because the Neo, which
• 54:32
  Speaker 6: is the machine that they typed on, it preserves in
• 54:35
  Speaker 6: its memory everything that was typed into it unless you
• 54:39
  Speaker 6: actively delete it and throw it in the trash on
• 54:41
  Speaker 6: your computer. When you look at those printouts, it's pages
• 54:45
  Speaker 6: and pages and pages of single words that are meaningless. Sorry,
• 54:51
  Speaker 6: single letters that are meaningless. They become two words, sorry,
• 54:57
  Speaker 6: two letters, which becomes a misspelled word that is somewhat
• 55:02
  Speaker 6: recognizable that then becomes a word that is misspelled but
• 55:07
  Speaker 6: clear what the word is, to two-word sentences, to four-word sentences,
• 55:15
  Speaker 6: to essays. It's a process that is so deeply embedding
• 55:23
  Speaker 6: that once you get to the point where you're reading
• 55:26
  Speaker 6: the essay and to unravel it and just unlock it, right,
• 55:31
  Speaker 6: and to sort of say, oh, okay, I was in
• 55:33
  Speaker 6: the wrong reality during that moment, right? I mean, not
• 55:36
  Speaker 6: only is that difficult, but it's a terrifying, terrifying thing
• 55:41
  Speaker 6: to then to admit and walk back from. So, you know,
• 55:45
  Speaker 6: that's all. It's just to say when you get down
• 55:48
  Speaker 6: to something that's actually coherent, that this was a process
• 55:50
  Speaker 6: that happened over time. And that that's really something I
• 55:55
  Speaker 6: think people need to consider and is hard to capture
• 55:57
  Speaker 6: in a moving picture.
• 55:59
  Speaker 5: Right. That is only 90 minutes long.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: So so what you're talking about, I'm going to use
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: the word kind of a seduction. And it leads me
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: into one of the things that I find really fascinating
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: about the film that I want to lift up is
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: about the nature of our relationship with the unconscious. So
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: at one point in the frontline film, you know, they
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: use the term what was actually being tapped into was
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: the I think it was in the frontline piece segment.
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: What's actually being tapped into is the unconscious thoughts of
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: the facilitator. And then Shane, is that his name? Shane
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: says she fell in love with herself. And I think that,
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: you know, at some points Ana says something like, well,
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: I knew I wasn't influencing him because he was disagreeing
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: with me. And I was like, oh, she thinks that
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: just because there's a contrary voice that that. No, it's like, well,
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: the unconscious, the unconscious is actually other. That's the thing.
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: And our process of projection is unconscious. So for so for.
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: for anyone doing facilitated communication to say, well, I understand
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: there can be a projection. And because I, because I'm
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: aware of that, it won't happen. That's not how it works.
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: And I, I'm saying that as someone who sits with
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: people and tries to be aware of my own projections
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: and the unconscious is unconscious, you know? So, and, and I,
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: and I also think it's really fascinating and, and there's something,
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, if it didn't have such a, potentially really
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: damaging outcome for all involved. It would be, well, let's
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: put it this way. You brought up Pygmalion, which I
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: loved that you brought up that reference. And for those
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: of you that don't know that story, it's a Greek
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: myth about a man who spurned women. He didn't have
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: the patience for women, but then he started trying to craft,
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: he was a sculptor and he started trying to craft
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: like the ideal woman and he spent so much time
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: working on it and he made he made this this
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: sculpture of this beautiful woman and he felt absolutely in
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: love with her and then Aphrodite takes pity on him
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: and brings her to life but it's it is the
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: way that we can pour our soul in an in
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: an unconscious process into into something and either, you know,
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: perhaps an artistic, you know, I remember Leo Tolstoy, I
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: think at one point says that he fell in love with,
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: he fell in love with Anna Karenina, you know, even
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: though he started off thinking she was, you know, a
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: kind of a villain, or at least a fallen woman,
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: but then there he was, he fell in love with her.
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: And we can all we can all do this, we
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: can fall in love with ourselves. And as long as
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: we sort of know that that's what's happening, it can
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: be a really beautiful revivifying process. And I think, you know, Nick,
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: you were talking about this is what happens in love relationships.
• 58:56
  Speaker 5: Well, yes, it is.
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: And Jung said this, you know, that limerence phase, that
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: falling in love phase is about projecting our own inner
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: unrealized potential onto the partner. And in our world, we
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: call that anima when it's a man and animus when
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: it's a woman. And you could say, that Anna Stubblefield
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: projected her animus onto Derek. And she says, you know,
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: I'm a nerdy intellectual girl and I want a nerdy
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: intellectual guy. And that's what Derek is. You know, she
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: projected her own inner beloved onto him. But again, it's
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: hard to understand how autonomous the unconscious is. So there's
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: this term, I think I have the term right, idiomotor.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: So when you're holding someone's hand, it's a lot like
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: the Ouija board, right? You've got a couple of hands
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: on the planchette and it's driving around the board, spelling
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: out these uncanny things. And everyone's like, I'm not moving it.
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: Or automatic writing is the same kind of phenomenon where
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: we don't consciously, we're not intentionally moving it, but we
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: are kind of giving an avenue to our unconscious. So
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: I guess I'm probably rambling about this, but it's really
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: poignant to me that Ana did this and it's kind
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: of really irresponsible too.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 6: If you could sort of accuse her of willfully ignoring
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 6: some of the evidence, it is somehow this idea that
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 6: a argument with yourself is not, or is proof that
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 6: you somehow had, it couldn't have, you know, that it
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 6: had to be true because people don't argue with themselves. But,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 6: and I think if you were to have any other
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 6: conversation with her in any other context, she would say,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 6: of course, we're at conflict with ourself all the time.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 6: But context of this, it just didn't make any sense.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 6: There's another story where they go to see a movie
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 6: and they're at dinner. And this, I think, was written
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 6: about in the article in 2015.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 5: But she orders a glass of wine.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 6: And then according to her, Derek says, I'm not comfortable
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 6: with you having a glass of wine because aren't you
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 6: driving home tonight and she says well it's just one
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 6: glass I can handle a glass of wine and they
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 6: have another argument about whether one glass of wine is
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 6: too much and so she she eventually says listen I'll
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 6: do it for you I'll cancel the order because I
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 6: don't want you to feel uncomfortable and she would say
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 6: why would I why would I argue with my why
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 6: would I deny myself a glass of wine and if
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 6: I wanted a glass of wine and knew that I could,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 6: you know, knew that I could drive, why, why would
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 6: I do that to myself?
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 6: And it's the same as the argument that they had
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 6: in the classroom. So there's a number of examples of
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 6: which for her were confirming examples of their communication. And
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 6: which I think that what you're getting at is that, um, it's, it's,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 6: it's not at all evidence of confirmation. In fact, it's,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 6: it's just evidence of how complicated the, this, this concept is.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, usually the unconscious is at odds to some
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: degree with the conscious mind. You know, we're all always
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: kind of in this state of inner conflict.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 6: And also, you know, the big lesson for me, I think,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 6: which is almost one of the most profound ones in
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 6: the age of social media, is that, you know, the
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 6: responsibility to not only look at things that are confirming
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 6: of your reality, but to also look at things that
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 6: question it and you question your perception.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: And there's an enormous responsibility there.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 6: And I think, you know, this, this film show shows
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 6: how important that is and the stakes for just a
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 6: couple of people and a family, but, you know.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 5: You extrapolate that out and you sort of.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 6: Zoom out and you see that how much sort of
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 6: simultaneous confirmation bias is happening all the time.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 5: And it feels kind of terrifying to me.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 6: I mean, I don't want to bring us down the
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 6: rabbit hole of social media because any conversation can go there, strangely.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 6: But it is really important to me that one of
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 6: the lessons is that you can't just look for confirmation.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 6: I mean, that's not the point, right? Like, even in
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 6: the scientific community, I was making a film about a
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 6: woman at Princeton who was trying to question whether the
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 6: fifth extinction was actually an asteroid. She believed it was volcanoes.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 6: And she had a graduate student who was helping her
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 6: do the work. And he said, you know, the problem
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 6: is many scientists try to prove their theories, but I
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 6: try to prove my theory is wrong. My theory can
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 6: withstand the scrutiny of that. Then I know it's a
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 6: good theory. You know, then I know it has legs
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 6: and I can continue on with it. So how many
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 6: people are, you know, if scientists in many fields are
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 6: not doing that, how many, you know, can we count
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 6: on the average person to hold themselves to that standard.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 5: It's an incredibly high standard.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 6: And I think it's too easy to just point the
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 6: finger at Anna and say, oh, you didn't do that.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 5: We all do that. You didn't do that. We're virtuous
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 5: out here. And boy, did you cross the line in there.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 5: And I would never do that.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 6: And I think that the interesting conversation is more about
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 6: how easy it is to do that.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: But not only do we project the secret beloved onto
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: other people, but that the secret beloved is configured very
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: specifically in each person. So there is something inside of
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: Anna that is seeing her own beloved locked in, trapped, encapsulated,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: and this remarkable, overwhelming barrier between her and her own spirit, really,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: which is how Jung would interpret it. and the great
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: lengths that she is willing to go to release. Now,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: this shows up in fairy tales all the time when
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: the beloved is under a curse. Beauty and the Beast,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: any number of other curses in there. In some of
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: the other non-European fairy tales, the beloved is cursed into muteness.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: In the myth of Echo, Echo is a nymph, who's
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: punished by Hera, so that the only thing she can
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: do is repeat the other person's last words. So the
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: beloved could also be configured as echo. This echoing is
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: going back and forth, but it's a sign of love.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: But I would love to take a moment, if you'll
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: allow me to be just a Jungian and not a
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: social commentarist, and I would love to read a very
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: ancient love story to constellate a certain archetype in our conversation.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: And I want to say to our listeners, this is
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: not in any way suggesting that what happened was moral
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: or right. But as Jungians, we're always trying to diagnose
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: the deeper and deeper levels of the psyche that we
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: are all vulnerable to. And by bringing consciousness to it,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: we then can experience a sense of freedom. So, There's
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: a story of Pyramus and Thisbe, which is thought to
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: be an old Babylonian love story that is recounted only
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: in Ovid's Metamorphoses. And there are some uncanny images that
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: unfold in this story that remind me just too much
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: of what's happening. And I think it might be worth pondering.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: Pyramus and Thisbe, he the loveliest youth and she the
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: most sought-after girl, lived in neighboring houses in the towering
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: city of Babylon that the Cimmerius is said to have
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: enclosed with walls of brick. Enclosed. Their nearness and their
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: first childhood steps made them acquainted and in time Love appeared.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: The nearness. May love appear. They would have agreed to
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: swear the marriage oath as well, but their parents prevented it.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: They were both on fire, with hearts equally captivated, something
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: no parent can prevent. They had no one to confide
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: all this to. Nods and Signs. were their speech. And
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: the more they kept the fire hidden, the more it burned.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: So we have this remarkable archetypal setup where, just as
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: it was with Anna and Derek, nods, signs, are interpreted
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: as declarations of a burning love. There was a fissure,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: a thin split in the shared wall between their houses,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: which traced back to when it was built, and no
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: one had discovered the flaw in all those years. But
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: what can love not detect? You lovers saw it first
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: and made it a path for your voices. Your endearments
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: passed that way in safety, in the gentleness, of murmurs.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: Often when they were in place, Thisbe here and Pyramus there,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: and they had each caught the sound of the other's breath,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: they'd said, unfriendly wall, why do you hinder lovers? How
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: hard would it be for you to let our whole
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: bodies meet? And if that is too much, perhaps to
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: open to the kisses we could give each other. Not
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: that we are ungrateful. We confess that we owe it
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: to you that words are even allowed to pass to
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: loving ears. There they are, with the keyboard, like a
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: crack between the two walls and murmurs and whispers. So
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: they talked, hopelessly, sitting opposite, saying as night fell, farewell,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: each touching the wall with kisses that could not reach
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: the other side. One morning, when Aurora had quenched the
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: fires of night and the sun's rays had thawed the
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: frosty grass, they came to their usual places. Then they decided,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: first with a little murmur of their great sorrows, to
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: try in the silence of night to deceive the guards
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: and vanish outside. Once out of the house, they would
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: leave the city as well, and they agreed, in case
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: they went astray, crossing the open country, to meet by
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: the grave of Ninus and hide in the shelter of
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: a tree. And there was a tall mulberry tree there,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: dense with white berries bordering a cool fountain. They were
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: satisfied with their plans, and the light, slow to lose
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: its strength, was drowned in the waters, and out of
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: the same waters the night emerged, carefully opening the door.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: Thisbe slipped out, deceiving her people, and came to the tomb.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: Her face veiled, and seated herself under the tree they
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: had greed on. Love made her brave. But a lioness,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: fresh from the kill, Her jaws foaming, smeared with the
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: blood of cattle, came to slake her thirst at the
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: nearby spring. In the moonlight, Babylonian Thisbe sees her. Someway
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: often flees in fear to a dark cave, and as
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: she flees she leaves behind the fallen veil when the
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: fierce lioness has drunk deeply. Returning towards the trees, she
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: chances to find the flimsy, fabric without its owner, and
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: rips into it with her blood-stained jaws.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 4: Daisy.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: Leaving the city. A little later, Pyramus sees the creature's
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: tracks in the thick dust and his face is drained
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: of color, and when he discovers the veil stained with
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: bloody cries, two lovers will be lost in one night.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: She was the more deserving of a long life. I
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: am the guilty spirit. I've killed you, poor girl. who
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: told you to come by night to this place filled
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: with danger and did not reach it first. Oh, all
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: you lions that live amongst these rocks, tear my body
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: to pieces and devour my sinful flesh in your fierce jaws,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: though it is cowardly to ask for death. He picks
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: up Thisbe's veil and carries it with him to the
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: shadow of the tree they had chosen, kissing the token
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: and wetting it with tears, and he cries, now be
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: soaked with my blood too, Having spoken, he drove the
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: sword he had been given into his side, and dying,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: pulled it warm from the wound. As he laid back
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: again on the ground, the blood spurted out like a pipe,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: fracturing at the weak spot in the lead, and sending
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: long bursts of water hissing through the spit, cutting through
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: the air, beat by beat, sprinkled with blood, the tree's
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: fruit turned a deep blackish red, and the roots soaked through,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: also imbued the same overhanging mulberries with the dark, purplish color.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: Now Thisbe returns, not yet free of fear, lest she
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: disappoint her lover and calls for him with her eyes
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: and in her mind. Eager to tell him about the
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: great danger she has escaped, though she recognizes the place
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 3: and the shape of the familiar tree, the colors of
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: the berries puzzles her. She waits there. Perhaps this is it. Hesitating,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: she sees the quivering limbs writhing in the blood-stained earthen stairs,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: back terrified, like the sea that trembles when the slightest
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: breeze touches its surface, her face showing whiter than boxwood,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: but when staying a moment longer she recognizes her lover.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: She cries out loud with grief, striking at her innocent
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: arms and tearing at her hair, cradling the beloved body.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: She bathes his wounds with tears, mingling their drops with blood,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: planting kisses on his cold face, and she cries out, Pyramus,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 3: what misfortune has robbed me of you? Pyramus, answer me.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: You'd Dearest, your dearest, Thisbe calls to you. Obey me.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: Lift your fallen head. Tell them you love me. At
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: Thisbe's name, Pyramus raised his eyes. Darkened with death and
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: having looked at her, buried them again in darkness. When
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: she recognized her veil and saw the ivory scabbard and
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: without its sword, she said, Unhappy boy! Your own hand
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 3: and your love have destroyed you. I too have a
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: firm enough hand for once, and I too love. It
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: will give me strength in my misfortune. I will follow
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: you to destruction. And they will say I was a
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: most pitiful friend and companion to you. He could only
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: be removed from me by death. Death cannot remove. Nevertheless,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: I ask for both of us in uttering these words. Oh,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: our poor parents. mine and his. Do not deny us
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: the right to be laid in one tomb, we whom
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: certain love and the strangest hour have joined, and you
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: the tree that now covers the one poor body with
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: your branches and soon will cover too. Retain the emblems
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: of our death and always carry your darkening fruit in mourning,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: a remembrance of the blood of us. And thus, the
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: mulberry is the documentarist. And saying this and placing the
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: point under her heart, she fell forward on the blade. And,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: of course, agrees to be interviewed and tells her whole story.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: Still warm with his blood, then her prayer moved the
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: gods and stirred her parents' feeling for the color of
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: the berry is blackish red. When fully ripened and what
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: was left from the funeral pyres, rests in a single urn.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: And this is, if Abbott is correct, this predates the
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: ancient Greeks. It's a very, very ancient story.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: And it's the story that Anna thought she was living out.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: Exactly. Without knowing it, of course, because these themes, we're
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: all born with these themes in us. And when certain
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: factors change, activate, when certain energies start moving inside, an
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: archetypal theme can activate. And when an archetype activates, it
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: defines your sense of reality. And it is reality. So
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: whether the mother's archetypal theme is, you know, the serpent
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 3: has entered the garden and now we need a flaming
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: cherub there at the gate because Eden needs to be,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: you know, defended. and innocence, and now she and her
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: son are on a journey of redemption, because innocence must
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: be restored, or the woman being captured by the story
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: of Pyramus and Thisbe, the story of love created by
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: murmurs and whispers. So, this goes to say that, yes,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 3: we are, in the material world, responsible, of course, for
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: our actions, and There are overwhelming powerful forces that guide
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: human souls and shape how we interpret and the meanings
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: that we make. And yes, if Anna had been able
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 3: to have a symbolic way of thinking, she might have
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: been saved from this, but so few people are even
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: aware of what symbolic thinking means.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: And I want to, Joseph, like, thank you for that.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: And I want to just like take that a step
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: further because I think like who, I mean, you know,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: I'm human. I've had people come in my office falling
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: in love, say, with someone inappropriate. Okay. I'm thinking I've
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: had that walk into my office so many times. And,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: you know, you, what we want to do is we
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: want to sit and we want to listen and say,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: tell me, tell me what's so wonderful about this. You know,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: a married guy who actually doesn't seem to be noticing
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: you at all or whatever it is, you know, I mean,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: that's not what I say, what I say, well, wow,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: this sounds really important. Tell me about it. You know,
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: it's so important to kind of let that. be there
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: honor it and at the same time encourage a symbolic
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: understanding of it eventually because then and I feel like
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: this goes back to what I was trying to say
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: before like it is a beautiful thing to fall in
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: love with yourself and And often the way that happens
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: first is through projection. We see ourselves in maybe say
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: an inappropriate or unattainable person. And if we can hold
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: it the right way, if we can be helped to
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: hold it symbolically, then it can be healing and transformative.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: But when it remains something that we're putting on something
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: out there, then it can be really destructive and it
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: doesn't have the same opportunity to change us and we
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: can kind of do violence to the person that we're
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: projecting onto. I mean, I'm thinking of in the film,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: you know, She's saying, oh, Derek doesn't like beer. He
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: likes wine. Oh, Derek doesn't like gospel. He likes classical music.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: You know, then you're really sort of coercively forcing someone
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: to be what you need them to be. You know,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: you're forcing them to kind of be a puppet or
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: play a role. I mean, another alternative, and this I
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: think happens, maybe this is the ideal thing, is we
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: fall in love with someone. We're projecting something onto that person.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: our love and attention to that person, you know, we
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: don't just project, you know, randomly, there's always a hook.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: And Nick, you were talking before about, you know, kind
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: of what did Derek experience? And you very poignantly said, like,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, like, the other person is
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: always kind of a mystery, right? But my imagination about
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: Derek is that he's essentially a very loving person. I mean,
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: it comes across in how much his family loves him
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: And maybe that's something that captivated Anna. That was a
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: hook on which she hung her projection, that there was
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: a kind of just goodness of spirit there, just a lovingness.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: So when we project our very best self on the
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: other person, sometimes it can evoke a real response in them.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: And then what grows out of that is a real
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: relationship where we're truly seeing the other person but I
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: don't know that that actually happened in this case.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 4: I'm just highlighting all that has just been said, I hope,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 4: which is how powerful and autonomous archetypal realities are. And
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 4: I think sometimes, you know, these Jungians talk about archetypes
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 4: and so on, and it sounds really you know, pretty
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 4: pie in the sky. But the myth is a vivid
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 4: example of it and its relevance and application to what
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: happened between Anna and Derek is also very apropos. And
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 4: then Lisa, you're talking about how hard it is to
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 4: render an archetypal reality into one's own human ability to
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 4: hold it, tell it, reflect on it without acting it out.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 4: And that is hard work in a consulting room when
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 4: somebody is truly seized with a passion, not just for
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: another person, but for some incredible new venture. all of
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 4: a sudden wafting off into some unknown part of the world.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 4: It can be any one of a number of things.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 4: And it's so powerful, it's hard to develop an ego
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 4: position that can really dialogue with it.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: Well, Nick, I feel like we've done what we usually
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: do when we have exciting guests on, is we just
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: talk more than the guest.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 5: I know. I mean, it's absolutely riveting.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 6: And, you know, as a filmmaker, there is a part,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 6: I do believe, almost like music, where, like, there are
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 6: things that are playing through you, right, that you don't
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 6: always even realize, but you tap into and you have
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 6: the experience enough to shape even the things you don't
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 6: understand sometimes immediately. So it takes the critic or the
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 6: therapist or the, you know, to really kind of extend
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 6: the conversation. So I'm riveted and it's wonderful. I think
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 6: the one thing I was going to say is that
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 6: in the therapist's room, in the privacy and the safety
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 6: of the therapist's room, when you can, as you say,
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 6: engage with the archetype and act it out and unravel
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 6: it and then sort of come to maybe a reality
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 6: that is greater than, you know, the sum in a
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 6: way that is hopefully healing and transcendent or whatever it is.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 6: You know, the world is not so forgiving, right? The
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 6: world is very punitive and it is almost impossible to
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 6: reevaluate ourselves once our story is public, right? How do
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 6: we unravel and reevaluate something once it's been tried and convicted, right?
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 6: I think that that's something that happens also when a
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 6: film like this goes out into the world and receives
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 6: the attention of so many people that I never imagined.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 6: I mean, 4 million people watched this week that it
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 6: was out there. And it is in the safety of
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 6: a screening room where I'm presenting it at a festival
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 6: and I'm answering questions, there is a conversation that happens
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 6: and an evaluation that is enlightening for people and it
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 6: is engaging. When a film goes onto a streaming platform
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 6: like this and it is completely out of my hands
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 6: and a social media conversation starts around it that chooses
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 6: its villains and chooses its victims and whatever the predominant
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 6: thread is influences, you know, if comment number 267 is
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 6: poignant enough, then comment 268 onward, they just reinforce the,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 6: you know, who is the villain and who is the victim.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 6: And the separation into the poles of good and evil
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 6: become fixed in stone in the walls of the myth, right?
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 6: You go right back to the walls of the myth.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 5: And the fissure is closed. to bring it back to
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 5: the story. You know, that's something that.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 6: Is out of my control and I've had to accept.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 6: And it's a strange, I've never been through that before
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 6: with a film. I've never had it so out of
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 6: my hands in that way.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: I want to ask you a question. Why do you
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: think Anna agreed to do the documentary?
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 4: I wondered about that too. And her willingness to talk
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 4: to Daisy over the phone.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 3: Falling on her sword.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 6: She would say, I mean, listen, I want to only
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 6: quote from her because I don't want to be presumptuous,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 6: but things that she has said to me early on was.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 5: That she was worried about Derek.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 6: She felt that he was now sentenced to his own
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 6: jail cell, that she might be the only advocate left
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 6: for him on his behalf, right? These were things that
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 6: I think she believes to this day. She might have changed,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 6: you know, she may not feel that it's her fight anymore, right?
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 5: Rightly so. But that I think she still believes that.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 6: And I think that, I mean, it's complicated to say,
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 6: but I think the reasons why she did it came
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 6: from partially a place of no matter what you think
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 6: of the story, there are things that Everyone can learn
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 6: from it. Whereas she may have committed sin over here,
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 6: she is right to shine the light on those projections
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 6: that are incorrect, that so much of the world shares.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 6: That he cannot possibly be in love. He cannot possibly
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 6: experience pleasure.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 5: In this way.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 7: Because he looks like this, because he wears diapers, because
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 7: he needs his mother, because he is under the guardianship of,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 7: you know, all of these things are, it's right to
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 7: unpack them and find our way through it.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 5: You know?
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 3: To complexify something rather than collapse into this good and
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 3: bad binary, which is really just a defense against the
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: anxious fear of of these incredible forces that rumble under
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: the ground in humanity. So these knuckleheads that are like,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: it's right and it's wrong and this is the way
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: it is and it's left and it's right and it's
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 3: black and it's white. I mean, I understand we need defenses.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 3: People get full of overwhelming anxiety. But where it becomes,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 3: I think, just so awful is that the anxiety is
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 3: so high that if you don't reinforce my defenses, I
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: will destroy you. So it's one thing to need to
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: do this for yourself. It's the other is that your
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 3: anxiety is so hard, it's so high that you become
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 3: dangerous to other people. And that's when we start getting
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 3: this incredible violence, violent use of social media, which is
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: just so perverse. And one of the criticisms that will
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 3: be thrown at even our episode today is, how dare
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: you understand? How dare you try to understand all parties
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 3: in this story? You Absolutely not. It's my way. It's
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 3: this way. It's the way that makes me comfortable and
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 3: splits everything into these weird little places. But so much
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 3: of what we do as Jungians and what we do
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 3: with our podcast and what you have done with your
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 3: documentary is you have dared to try to understand, dared
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 3: to understand.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 5: I very much appreciate you saying that.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 6: I mean, it's... There is an accusation in the world
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 6: now of who and who not to platform, right? And
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 6: that's always changing. And it is a sensitive thing. And
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 6: there is a great responsibility. And I took that responsibility
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 6: incredibly seriously. But I made a decision that the total
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 6: story that was made up by all of its parts
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 6: was of value and that it would be of less
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 6: value without one character or another. And that's just a
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 6: decision I stood by at the very beginning. And, you know,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 6: people are fooling themselves intentionally if they are saying, we
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 6: are not allowed to look at somebody like her. You know,
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 6: if people were just, would allow themselves the curiosity, untainted
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 6: by the self-judgment and the judgment of, of what, what the,
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 6: you know, the sort of the signaling of, of virtue,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 6: you know, before somebody else gets to it first, if
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 6: they just allow themselves the curiosity, I think that they'll,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 6: they'll see that, you know, the intention of the film
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 6: is to just boil the, the, the ingredients and let
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 6: them percolate to the surface so that people can see
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 6: them and sort of scrutinize them and, and, and wait
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 6: around together and, uh, and talk to each other. You know,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 6: the biggest, the most, uh, the most, um, kind of
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 6: a satisfying thing is that as I hear about the,
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 6: when I hear conversations that are happening, people see the film,
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 6: they talk to their husband, they talk to their wife,
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 6: they talk to their partner for days afterwards. Those are,
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 6: that's exactly what I want people to do. You know,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 6: I think it would be a disservice to everybody in
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 6: the story to come down hard with an agenda about
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 6: how you feel. You know, one of the most interesting
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 6: things that I think Howard Shane says towards the end
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 6: of the film is, which I think is weirdly maybe
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 6: the question that has been the itch that I think
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 6: is the most important itch to scratch, which is he says,
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 6: I don't know what was going on between them. And
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 6: he said, but even if you say that that was
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 6: a good thing, he says, Howard Shane says, it would
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 6: have been a false life with Anna. And for me,
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 6: that always stuck right into the heart of of the story,
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 6: what is the false life and what is the true
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 6: life that we choose for ourselves, right? I do believe
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 6: that ethically, morally, that's what integrity is, right? What is
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 6: the true life and what is the false life?
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 3: Yes, you have two women that are seemingly taking Derek
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 3: and making him a character in their personal theater roles.
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 3: so to speak, and I don't say that negatively, but
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 3: the archetypal drama of the mother-son, and he is cast
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 3: in a role, and this is the archetypal, for Anna,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 3: the archetype of the lover who is trapped and cursed
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 3: and needs to be freed and liberated. But just as
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 3: I think you're inferring, that both of those are narratives
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 3: that these powerful, clear, potent women are holding, And are
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 3: either of those narratives capable of granting Derek all the
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 3: opportunities and resources that might allow him to lead a
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: fuller life?
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 5: And are we supporting that, right?
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 6: This is not something one can do alone with somebody
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 6: like Derek. There needs support, needs support from the state,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 6: from the technology, from from the values that we choose
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 6: to prioritize, you know, we need, you know.
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 5: How do we prioritize Derek?
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 6: Is he an important member of society? That's something that
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 6: people have to answer before they can allot money towards helping,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 6: helping his mom or.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 5: Helping, you know, whatever situation. So we're all, we're all involved.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 5: I think, you know, You have dared to understand.
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 4: And I think the film, you know, exploding in this way,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 4: is you have dared us to understand the complexity that
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 4: is never just going to be answered. That's it. It's complex.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 6: And can we be comfortable with that anymore? My greatest
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 6: fear is the aversion to that that we see. And
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 6: for me, that's the most courageous thing I feel like
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 6: I've done is I've planted my flag with the film
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 6: to say, you know, it's maybe the most important thing, right.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 6: You know, rather than being reductive, it's okay to say
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 6: it's complex, right.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: Um, thank you so much for joining us on this
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: wild ride and thank you so much for this wonderful
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 2: film that you made. It really affected all of us
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: and lots of other people too.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 6: I can't thank you enough for having me. It's, uh, it's, uh,
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 6: it's a rare, a rare treat, uh, that, um, filmmakers
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 6: don't always get.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life from our website, thisjungianlife.com.
• 1:35:11
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• 1:35:14
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• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: and submit your dreams for possible interpretation on another episode.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: We'd like to thank our listener who shared a dream
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: topics you'd enjoy hearing more about. Until next time, keep
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.