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Dissociation as Design: Why the Mind Sometimes Lets Go · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: There's something about this topic that what it really gets
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: at is the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious, which
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: of course, you know, is one of the ideas that
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: undergirds all of Jung in essence. And I think as
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: you were saying, Joseph, you know, basically, yeah, we've got
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: ego consciousness, but it is a fragile little thing. You know,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Jung at one point had this dream where he was
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: holding a little lit candle in a storm and he
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: had to protect it. And his interpretation of that was,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: that's consciousness, and I've got to protect it, otherwise it's
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: going to get snuffed out by the winds. So we
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: wake up every day, and that is, you know, the
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: age-old symbolism of the sun arising from the depths in
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: the east, you know, with consciousness renewed.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: a psychological perspective to important issues.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: Of the day.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 1:11
  Speaker 4: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: There is an experience, a moment, that most all of
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: us can identify. You're exhausted, you're overwhelmed, you've gotten a
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: big emotional hit, and suddenly your thinking kind of tilts
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: a bit, your focus drops, these feelings can surge, memories
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: can jump in, images, worries, strange ideas kind of push
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: their way into your consideration. And over a century ago,
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: a French psychologist, Pierre Jeunet, was studying this kind of shift,
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: and he gave it a name, a basement de nouveau mental,
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: which is a lowering of the mind's organizing level. Now,
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: Jung studied with Jeunet, and this idea was very helpful
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: for him to explain many of the things that he
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: was observing in and became an essential idea in the
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: way that he conceptualized who we are and how our
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: psyche functions. So he thought today is part of examining
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: these core ideas around Jungian thought that will unpack a
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: basement de nouveau mental. And so.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Jung studied with Jeanne in 1902, and this was around
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the same time that he was working on the word
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: association experiment. And of course, we've discussed that before. What
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: he would do is he would give subjects a word
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: and say, just name the first thing that comes into
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  Speaker 1: your mind. So if he gave the stimulus word of table,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: someone might say chair. And what he noticed is that
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: some words would trip people up. They take a really
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: long time to answer. They might laugh inappropriately. They would
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: have some kind of, as he saw it eventually, an
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: intrusion from the unconscious that would change the fluidity with
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: which they responded to the stimulus word. And for him,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: this was an example of this thing that he learned
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: about from Jeanne that that Ego consciousness seems to be
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: in control most of the time, but throughout the day,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: any number of given moments, we might have that lowering
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: of the threshold of consciousness that would allow a kind
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  Speaker 1: of incursion to come up from the unconscious.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: So a basemore is an involuntary experience. We've all had
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: it happen to us from something like what the truckers
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: call white line fever. I think most of us have
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: experienced that, that we're driving along and our mind just
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: starts wandering until all of a sudden something yanks us
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: right back to hit the brakes or shift lanes or
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: whatever it might be. And Jung would eventually come to
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: understand that this is one aspect of the essential dissociability
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: of the psyche. that we have these various capacities, levels,
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: that are not explicitly all connected, although we like to
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: think of ourselves as all one thing. And he would
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: also come to use it, of how could we make
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: this a little more intentional, and came to develop what
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: we call now, and he called, active imagination. How can
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: we intend, while awake, to dip into the unconscious and
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: dialogue with it?
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: So Jung, as he often did, was interested in the
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: telos of something, that rather than thinking even of symptoms
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: as pathologic, he thought of symptoms as the psyche's best
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: attempt to move forward with what it had available. So
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: it's an interesting and very reasonable shift from Jeunet trying
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: to diagnose severe psychiatric disorders, which, by the way, that
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: whole field was in its infancy. This was all kind
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: of wildcat research, so to speak. And Jung adding in
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: an ethos for himself, an ethic that he has, which
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: is central to Jungian work, that everything has a purpose.
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: It might not be the most skillful way that is
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: possible in terms of the human experience, but within the
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: individual system, it's what someone can do. So for Genet,
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: just starting with this initial idea is that he was
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: interested in what happens as people are shifting states of
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: consciousness and why do they seem to lose information as
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: that happens. So he came up with what he thought
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: was an observation is that to be conscious requires a
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: certain kind of muscle tone. It takes energy to stay conscious. Now,
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: if we just take that idea, that makes sense. If
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: we're exhausted and we're just sitting there watching Netflix and
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: kind of zoning out, maybe we're enjoying it. Like, Your
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: spouse could walk into the room and wave at you,
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: and maybe you don't even notice them until they finally
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: make a noise, and then you're surprised because you didn't
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: see them walk in. That's a normal process. But what
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: if that happened all the time, on and off, all
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: day long? That could really interfere with how you function.
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: So he was interested in these really severe problems. So
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: he noticed, and I think we would all agree that,
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: We need a certain amount of energy to stay conscious.
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: And Jeanne said we need that in order to integrate
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: experiences so that we actually know what's happened. We can
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: take it into ourselves and regard what we've experienced. We
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: also need it in order to sustain goal-directed action. We
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: also need it to maintain a coherent personal synthesis. Now,
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: If we put that in context, Genet and many of
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: the psychiatrists in the Institute were very interested in things
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: like hypnosis, multiple personality disorder. They were very influenced by
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: Mesmer and his experiments as well. And they were trying
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: to explain it in what they felt were scientific terms.
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: So while Jung understood that this could be a transient
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: psychological state, some people seem to have a very strong
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: vulnerability to this. And then it starts to interfere with
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: somebody's ability to function, and that takes us full circle
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: to what you were saying, Lisa, at the word association test,
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: is that when Jung would bring up a very conventional
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: word like tree, and if somebody found that they couldn't
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: respond or they suddenly didn't understand or they're saying things
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: that don't have a logical connection to trees, In a sense,
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: their ability to relate to the tree is being interfered
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: with without their permission. The interference could be very minimal,
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: but sometimes the interference is substantive enough that the individual
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: can't function very well in the outer environment. And Genet
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: was trying to understand it. Jung was trying to understand it.
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: And they came up with different theories to explain it.
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: But they were all pointing to something that was easily
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: observable within people.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: You know, I think there's something about this topic that
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: what it really gets at is the relationship between consciousness
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: and the unconscious. Which, of course, you know, is one
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: of the ideas that undergirds all of Jung in essence.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: And I think as you were saying, Joseph, you know, basically, yeah,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: we've got ego consciousness, but it is a fragile little thing.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: You know, Jung at one point had this dream where
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: he was holding a little lit candle in a storm
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: and he had to protect it. And his interpretation of
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: that was, that's consciousness and I've got to protect it. Otherwise,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: it's going to get snuffed out by the winds. So
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: we wake up every day and that is, you know,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: the age-old symbolism of the sun arising from the depths
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: in the east, you know, with consciousness renewed. But it
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: is an effort to stay consciousness. And we know this
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: from fairy tales because People are always falling asleep or
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: being put under a spell. You know, we can lose
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: consciousness so easily, like our mind drifts. We forget what
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: we were doing. This just happened to me in an
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: annoying way the other day where I got in the
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: shower and I was like, I'm not going to wash
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: my hair today. I don't need to do that. And
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: before I knew it, I was like washing my hair,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: which of course means I have to dry it, which
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: is a huge pain in the butt. you know, it's like, well,
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  Speaker 1: I didn't mean to do that. How, why did I
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: do that? I had entered the shower thinking I'm not
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: going to do that. And then before I knew it,
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  Speaker 1: I was just on kind of automatic pilot because consciousness
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  Speaker 1: had relaxed a little bit.
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  Speaker 4: I was off.
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  Speaker 1: My mind was wandering, but I had more access perhaps
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: to the unconscious at that moment. So That can be
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  Speaker 1: a good thing. It can also be a bad thing.
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  Speaker 1: And Joseph, as you were saying, Shanae was very interested
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  Speaker 1: in this sort of pathological aspects of that, you know,
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  Speaker 1: that we wind up doing things we didn't mean to do,
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  Speaker 1: or we sometimes actually are challenged to be in touch
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  Speaker 1: with consensual reality. I mean, it can really run the gamut.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: But as I think we'll get to in this episode,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: it can also be a positive.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just thinking about Jeanne and some of the
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  Speaker 3: other early, now we call them psychoanalysts, paving the way.
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  Speaker 3: And they were working with people that had very severe symptoms.
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  Speaker 3: So it's always important to remember that this is the
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  Speaker 3: context in which they were operating, you know, not things
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: that are sort of like, oh, I'm really troubled by
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: whether I should be in this career or not. That
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  Speaker 3: was not the patient population they were working with primarily.
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  Speaker 3: The other is what you touched on, Lisa, is that really,
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  Speaker 3: you know, I've come to think of all of Jungian
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: concepts and work in the consulting room, work with ourselves,
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: as all of the different ways in which consciousness and
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: the unconscious and interact. So with abysmal, all of a
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  Speaker 3: sudden your mind wanders or some shock occurs and you're
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: bolted out of your usual ego consciousness into some other
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  Speaker 3: kind of mindset. We talk about dreams a lot. So
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  Speaker 3: there's another way that consciousness and the unconscious can relate.
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  Speaker 3: In trauma, consciousness can be absolutely disrupted. And so it goes.
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  Speaker 3: And the question, as ever, is what do we do
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  Speaker 3: with the contents of the unconscious if they emerge in
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  Speaker 3: an involuntary way, as they do every single night with dreams?
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  Speaker 3: We didn't think it up. It just happens. Or something
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  Speaker 3: like an abasement. Can we use it? Can we bring
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  Speaker 3: it to consciousness? Can we write it down? Can we
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: reflect on it? Can we make meaning out of it?
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  Speaker 3: Can we integrate it? Or does it just take over
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  Speaker 3: as it can in people that have very severe psychoses,
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  Speaker 3: that then you fall into a kind of possession where
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  Speaker 3: the unconscious.
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  Speaker 4: Is ruling things?
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  Speaker 3: I'm going to give an example here from a charming
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: book children's story by Maurice Sendak called, I think it's
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: Max and the Wild Things, or maybe it's just the
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: Wild Things.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: No, it's Where the Wild Things Are.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 3: Little boy Max, five years old or so, is, you know,
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  Speaker 3: storming around the house and stomping around, upsetting the dog,
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  Speaker 3: and his mother calls him Wild Thing and sends him
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: to his room. where he has an abaissement, a lowering
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: of the threshold of consciousness. He's upset. He's being punished.
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  Speaker 3: And off he goes to this imaginary realm where all
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: these funny monsters with sharp teeth and weird grins live.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: And when he's on the island of the wild things,
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: eventually he takes charge of the wild things. And then
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: from very, very far away, he hears his mother's voice.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: He hears a voice calling him. and he smells something
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: really good to eat. So he comes back to consensual reality.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: His mom has brought his dinner up to his room,
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: and it's still hot. So there's a great example of
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: integrating all those feelings, his wildness, stomping around, mad at mom,
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: and being able to master the wild things and come
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: back and enjoy his dinner. And that's a great example
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: of that. But we do that all the time. You know,
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: after you got out of the shower, you were back.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: And I just want to say, I'm just thinking about that.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: First of all, when we're kids, it's very easy.
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: That's what I was thinking.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Consciousness is an achievement. There's a wonderful book written by
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: the Jungian analyst Eric Neumann, who was contemporary with Jung,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: called The Origin and History of Consciousness. And it's an
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: incredible book. And he makes it clear that consciousness is
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: born from the unconscious. That's part of why the unconscious
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: is associated with the mother, with the creatrix, because it
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: gives birth to consciousness. So we sort of take it
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: for granted, but we lose it every night when we
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: fall asleep. We probably lose it, you know, multiple times
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: every day. And in some sense, we have to struggle
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: to hang on to it. It is more tenuous than
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: maybe we like to think. And yes, when we're children,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: we can easily slip into an abysmal. Go ahead, Joseph.
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: And I think that all of the tremendous work that's
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: being done now on trauma and dissociation and recovery, recovering
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: from trauma, is also a budding against these early discoveries
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: about what does it do to us when we don't
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: process a trauma? Where is it stored, even neurologically? What
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: is the ongoing, what tends to be a kind of
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: distortive effect on the personality to have such intense emotional
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: images still alive in the psyche but not tethered to
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: an access to the ego? So the dissociability of the
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: psyche is natural, as you were saying with children, daydreaming,
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: feeling that there really are monsters under the bed and
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: there really are monsters in the closet, that's a natural abatement.
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: They're living between the worlds, which is just part of
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: being a child. And as you said, Lisa, the gentle,
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: natural emergence of an independent ego from the great imaginal
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: ocean that we swim in as children. And when that
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: continues into adulthood, It's very hard to function. I mean,
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: if we were to imagine that you show up at
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: work one day and you're just convinced that you saw
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: some enormous monster hiding under your friend's desk and you
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: rang the alarm and you pulled the fire alarm and
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: you're pulling everybody over to the side of the office
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: and you're pointing and maybe weeping or shouting, that would
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: be a problem. That would be a big problem. It's
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: all a symptom or a phenomenon that all human beings
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: are subject to, when it gets out of hand, then
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: our ability to navigate the environment becomes really compromised. So
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: Genet was concerned about people who are plagued by this.
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: Jung studied with Genet. He took this on board, was
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: thinking about his clients in this fashion. And over time,
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: Jung began to think of the abaissement as a border
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: between or a threshold condition, which was more interesting to
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: his work of self-development and self-exploration. So in a sense,
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: he was experiencing how consciousness can become influenced or even
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: aware of unconscious content that is imminent, that's about to emerge,
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: and that dreams could even signal this, and very boldly,
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: because we don't hear about this, let's say, with Freud
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: or Genet, Jung was interested in learning how to manipulate
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: the hold that his ego had on unconscious content. He
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: was curious of how to suspend the ego's involvement and
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: to sink down or allow content to rise up and
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: to be just an observer, but not an actor in
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: any way. This kind of opened a floodgate of all
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: kinds of unconscious content, which was scary to him. And
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: yet it was also an initiation that he granted himself
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: by a decision to learn how to suspend ego interference.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: I think that's, you know, exactly it of how can
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: we relate to to the unconscious? How can we intentionally
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: suspend ego consciousness and let some of these images and
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: visions float up from the unconscious? And other times we're
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: kind of abducted by it. As Jung was, this was
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: very difficult and troubling for him. And he writes about
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: it in his memoir, memories, dreams, and reflections, of having
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: these things, the involuntary force and power of the unconscious,
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: involuntary from ego's point of view. It happens whether you
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: will or no, especially from somebody where the permeability was
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: so great for Jung between consciousness and the unconscious. And
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: he talks about this. He says, toward the autumn of 1913,
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: which is also the precursor to World War I coming
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: on board, but also his break with Freud, which was
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: incredibly disturbing for him. So he says, the pressure, which
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: I had felt was in me, seemed to be moving
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: outward as though there were something in the air. The
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: atmosphere actually seemed to me darker than it had been.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: It was as though the sense of oppression no longer
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: sprang exclusively from a psychic situation, but from concrete reality.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: And the feeling grew more and more intense. And then
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: while he was on a journey, he had an overpowering vision.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: I saw a monstrous flood covering all the northern and
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. When
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: I came to Switzerland, I saw the mountains grew higher
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: and higher to protect our country. I realized a frightful
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: catastrophe was in progress. I saw yellow waves, the rubble
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: of civilization, drowned bodies of uncounted thousands, the whole sea
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: turned to blood. Two weeks later, the vision returned, and
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: an inner voice spoke, look at it well, it is
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: wholly real, and it will be so, you cannot doubt it.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: And then he realized that It was presaging the commencement
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: of World War I. It's a great example of abysmal,
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: of the involuntary aspect of it. And what do we
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: do with things like this?
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: So if I can kind of noodle on that, and
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: this is partly my imagination, but the first time he
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: had that vision, he was on a train, right? So
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: what do you do when you're sitting on a train
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: if you don't have a smartphone? You stare out the
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: window and it's somewhat mesmerizing. It's a little hypnotizing. And
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: things just come up. You might have a creative idea. Jung,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: there's this incursion from the unconscious that came up. But
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: it reminds me of another famous incursion from the unconscious
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: among famous people.
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: J.K.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Rowling. I think she was 24 or something. She's sitting
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: on a train. All of a sudden, this idea pops up.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: boy wizard. And she gets home and she starts writing it.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: But that occurred to her. And I think I mispronounced
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: her name. I think her name is Rowling. But it
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: occurred to her when she was sitting on a train.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: So it's that sense of, I remember as a kid,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: like staring out the car window and just the thoughts
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: would sort of flow by. But I want to go
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: back and pick up on something both of you said. Deb,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: you were talking about this orientation. You know, what is
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: the relationship between the ego and the unconscious? And And Joseph,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: you mentioned Freud. And this is a place where Jung
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: and Freud, this is a key difference between them. Because
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Freud basically said, it is bad and you need ego
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: to conquer it. And Jung says, well, it's a little
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: more complicated than that. It isn't necessarily about ego gaining
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: dominion over the unconscious, but that they have to have
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: a relationship. It's not that you want to hand the
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: keys to the kingdom over to the unconscious. But that
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the unconscious can both be a place where things that
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: are repressed live, but it can also be the source
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: of generative new ideas. Like, for example, you know, nonfiction
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: books about boy wizards. I mean, excuse me, fiction books
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: about boy wizards.
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: Oh, no, no. It's nonfiction.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: Oh, sorry.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: You're right. You're right.
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: You're right. Because there are boy wizards.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: Yes. And you would know because you were one.
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: I thought I was.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: But... But but that, you know, that this just kind
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: of comes up, you know, Jung experienced this sort of
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: precognitive vision of World War One, which, by the way,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: he didn't know how to make sense of until he
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: heard that war broke out. And then all of a
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: sudden he's like, oh, that's what that was.
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: And J.K.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Rowling experienced this incursion from the unconscious and just kind
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: of arose up just this incredible story that, you know,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: and the rest is history and all that.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: So.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Being able to have a kind of channel of communication
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: is really important. It's not about making everything that's in
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: the unconscious conscious. It's not about gaining control over that
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: flow of information. It's about having a workable relationship. But
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: that's easier said than done because as we've been talking about,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: it's possible that this can be completely overwhelming. And, you know,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: how do you control it? How do you make sure
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: that you can unhook and go back to, I don't know,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: getting your laundry done or whatever it is you need
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: to do?
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: The question is, how do we go back and forth?
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: Instead of being stuck at either one, and there are
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: people that are very stuck often in consciousness, at least
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: during their waking hours, And then, of course, there are
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: people that kind of get abducted by the unconscious in
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: situations that are really seriously impairing and serious mental illnesses
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: and are terrifying to the person who is affected. And
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: here's where I think fairy tales, again, can be so,
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: so useful, the fairy tale that I liked so much
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: as a child of the 12 dancing princesses, where every
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: night something happened, but the next morning someone would discover
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: that their slippers, their shoes had been completely worn out.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: And what on earth could be happening every night that
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: this could possibly occur? And It's a mystery, and the
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: king wants to know what's going on with his daughters.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: And finally, after the usual series of failed observers, our
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: hero comes along and manages to trail after them and
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: remains silent. But they go into the other realm, where
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: they dance all night with wonderful young men to fantastic music.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: They wear out their shoes, and then they come back
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: in the morning. And That's the connecting, the linking function
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: of the observer who can be part of both realms.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: And that's our mission.
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: Isn't it that the girls also can't remember it? Like
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: when they're questioned, they don't know why their shoes are
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: that way.
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: Right. They've dissociated. They go, exactly, exactly. Thank you for
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: adding that. So we need the linking function. that is
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: the observer, suitor, who can go into both realms, who
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: can go back and forth. And I think that's our
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: essential task. How do we go back and forth in
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: some way that brings consciousness to these contents, which is
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: why we're always talking about dreams and dream interpretation and
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: dream school, our special opportunity. You can go to thisjungianlife.com
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: and click on Dream School and find out about it.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: So we go back and forth so that we can
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: make use of the riches of the unconscious and some
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: of its darker materials as well. They're there anyway, but
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: the key is traversing the realms.
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: So I think that's a beautiful... bid for lifting the
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: abasement out of a kind of pathologizing frame and really
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: understanding that it's a gift that the human nervous system
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: can do this, can move from the unconscious to the conscious.
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: And if we can maintain a sense of memory between
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: those things, that then we are able to integrate the
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: things that we survey in the mysterious world. Often in
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: fairy tales, people return from the fairy realms, they don't remember,
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: they don't have a sense of passage of time, or
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: that there's generally some kind of a difficulty with it.
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: And in fairy tales, it's often thought of as very dangerous.
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: What I wanted to swing back to, because we were
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: right near it, is Jung's concern about the latent psychosis,
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: which is a difficult term for us to understand what
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: he might have meant fully, but I think when he
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: was analyzing individuals and he was interested in the relationship
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: between the ego and the unconscious, in general, he thought
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: that the conversation between the two gave rise to all
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: kinds of rich material and particularly the symbolic content inside
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: of us. But for some people, he sensed that the
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: line between the conscious and unconscious was kind of fraught.
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: And it was very unclear that if that door was opened,
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: how that was going to get closed again or whether
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: the ego really could regulate a lot of material So
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: sometimes he would analyze a first dream, and in one
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: of his writings he says, I just told the guy
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: that everything was going great, he didn't have anything to
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: worry about, and he should go on home.
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: No, that's a famous case that he wrote about. Yeah.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: The man, I believe, was a well-educated physician and had
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: a dream in which some very alarming things and very
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: regressed content came up. And that is when Jung said,
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: let's not go there. You're fine.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Go home. Like he had an adequate adaptation to life.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Don't mess around. Don't poke around in the unconscious. And
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Jung got that from the dream image.
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: So respecting the reality of the basements and that if
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: there isn't confidence in regulating it, probably best not to
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: poke the dragon. A very contemporary example that I saw
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: when I worked in the psych hospital was that sometimes
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: young men who were doing very well did their first
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: experiment with a psychedelic, and they couldn't shut the door,
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: and they were devastatingly psychotic, Most of them could kind
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: of be recontained with medication. I can remember one situation
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: where nothing that they could give to this young man
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: could close the door again. So we don't really have,
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: in our modern work, a really clear sense of how
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: to evaluate that vulnerability. But it still exists, even though
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: we don't quite know how to predict it. And I
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: think that the individual... cannot predict it, or we don't
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: know how to advise people to self-evaluate. So for the
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: most part, yes, engaging the unconscious and doing that more
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: skillfully through technique generally produces remarkable results. And there is
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: a little cautionary disclaimer that no one ever reads at
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: the door to hell, by the way. You know, you
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: just scroll, scroll, scroll, you click the I give consent,
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: and then you open the door, and then we realize, gosh,
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: that 20-page document that Apple gave me before I opened
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: the door to the infernal regions, I just signed it
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: off and walked right in. Right. So there's a little cautionary,
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: and it really is small, but it applies to a
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: certain number of people who couldn't know that they're more
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: vulnerable than they would have imagined. Yeah.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: I think that's a really great point. And it is
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: a reason to be careful or cautious or a little
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: circumspect when using substances that sort of create that abysmal.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Because I think many do.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: Without any of the natural safety factors that our bodies
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: might have provided, including fear. Sometimes people brush up against
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: the unconscious and they immediately have a sense of terror.
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: that might be something in place because it's not such
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: a good idea to jump into the unconscious at this
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: time or in these conditions without containment. So that said,
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: Genet helped people find language to describe something that was observable,
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: and he was looking for a kind of functional psychological
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: description of how ego integration fails or weakens in the individual.
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: That's what his thing was. Now, many years later, an
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: anthropologist named Levi Bruhl, who was studying tribes in Africa
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: and trying to understand and write about what he was observing,
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: was interested in how reality is experienced when differentiation is
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: not primary. So it wasn't about pathologizing anything. he was
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: trying to just understand what he was observing. And he
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: was privileged to be there when various tribal rituals were
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: being enacted. And he was fascinated by this kind of
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: cohesive experience that happened in these very exalted rituals and
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: trying to understand how could an entire group of people
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: seem to be sharing an experience. And he called it
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: a kind of mystical participation. Now, Jung's studying with Jeunet,
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: he comes across Lévi-Bruhl's descriptions, which speak more to the
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: personal experience, and he brings those two things together along
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: with his own fund of knowledge, and he begins to
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: understand the non-pathologic side of this abysmal. how it actually
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: is a natural adaptation and sometimes, as Levi-Bruhl observed, creates
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: a kind of unification of a community, allows them to
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: be cohesive, to experience themselves with a commonality through that
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: kind of shared mystical experience.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: So we can think of the abaissement du niveau mental
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: as a kind of precursor to a participation mystique because
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: a participation refers to a group experience, right? Whereas an abaissement,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: one person could just have that like me in the shower.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: But if I'm going through that and you're going through that,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: then we might be in a shared field. And And
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: Jung talks about when somewhere he says that he imagines
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: we dream all the time, even while awake. But it's
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: as if, you know, the sun comes out and eclipses
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: the moon and you can't see the moon during the daytime.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: So when consciousness is turned on, as it were, we're
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: not aware of that kind of organic flow of images
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: and impressions that may be going on all the time
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: in the unconscious. But I want to speak to the
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: non-pathologic aspect of it. I want to talk about a
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: kind of clinical use of it. We, as analysts, think
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: about our own reverie in session as a potential source
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: of information about the case. So there's a very famous
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: paper by Thomas Ogden, psychoanalyst, that Jungians love to quote.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: And in it, it's this great case where he's sitting
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: with someone and he's kind of frustrated. It's not a
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: very alive case for him. And he just notices he's
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: kind of staring at this envelope next to his chair.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: And he's been kind of using the envelope all week
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: to just scratch down phone numbers and other things. But
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: while his patient is talking to him across the room,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: he's staring at the envelope and he notices things he
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: hadn't noticed before. And it brings up all these feelings
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: in him. And then he notices something else. And he
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: brings himself back to the case. And he's like, what's
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: going on, you know? And then he starts realizing that
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: he has to go pick up his car, but he's
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: afraid the garage is going to close. And he has
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: a kind of intense experience around that. But he gets
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: curious about it. Why now? Why are these thoughts, impressions,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: feelings coming up now? and he's able to relate them
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: to the case, he has a kind of totally different
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: understanding of what's going on with his patient. And there's
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: the idea that they've both been participating in a shared field,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: but it didn't get communicated kind of consciously. It got
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: communicated at the level of the unconscious through this shared experience.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: And that can only happen if we have a little
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: bit of an abysmal So I think it's related to
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: this clinical idea of reverie.
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: So we might say that that's connected also to intuition.
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: And I'm not sure which historic analyst said, listen with
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: the third ear, which is like listening with intuition. with
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: the non-rational, with these impressions. And as you said, these
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: subtle enactments that the analyst might find themselves entrained in,
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: which is relevant to what's happening with the individual.
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: So it's a great example of kind of a dual reality.
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: awareness of Ogden goes into this, you know, preoccupation with
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: all the little doodles that he wrote down back of
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: the envelope and comes back and then can be curious
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: about it. Why now, you know, why did my eyes
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: fasten on this particular thing and use it for a
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: greater awareness of Other ways that, I mean, Jung says
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: for his experiences that were so intense, that he used
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: his body. He said he would do certain yoga exercises
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: to hold my emotions in check. And he would do
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: them only until he'd calmed himself enough to resume work.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: But there is something here in both cases, they're, you know,
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: different in degree, but not in kind of, can you notice?
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: Can you notice, like, oh, what was I doing? And
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: how can I connect these two inner realms? Whether it's
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: to be able to make meaning, as Ogden did, or
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: just influence your own state of awareness. If I don't
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: want to be here anymore, I need to slow my
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: heart rate, I need to breathe slowly, I need to
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: come back. And Jung also says he used to tell
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: himself sometimes when it was such a struggle, my name
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: is Carl Jung. I live at 128 C. Strasse. I
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: have a wife and children. So there's a way that
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: consciousness can, and our bodies, and community participation, as you
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: were alluding to, Joseph, with Levi-Bruhl, of doing something with others.
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: an intentional kind of abesement through ritual or substances or
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: all of the above to make sure that we can
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: open and close that door.
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: So I think that puts us on a nice organized
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: ground to pick up something that you had said, Deb, earlier,
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: which I really want to come back to, which is
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: that Jung's experiments with the abesement move into his work
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: with the tension of the opposites. So one of his
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: primary theories, which in some ways was supported by his
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: investigations into Gnosticism, which is that the universe in Gnosticism
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: is organized in pairs of opposites. Jung came to think, huh,
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: that may be a metaphor for the way that the
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: human psyche is universally organized in pairs of opposites. Now,
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: if we take that seriously, What that suggests is every
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: time you formulate a conscious attitude, for instance, I love
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: ice cream. Ice cream's the best. In order to have
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: that idea, at the same moment, somewhere in the unconscious
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: is another anchor of the opposite idea. So I love
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: ice cream. I'm not sure how it might be in
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: each individual psyche, but let's say the idea that I
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: find ice cream disgusting. I love ice cream. Ice cream
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: is disgusting. So the compensation kind of moves out of awareness.
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: So I just keep eating ice cream and telling myself
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: it's the best thing I've ever had in my life.
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: But it still has to be anchored over here. So
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: Jung noticed that when consciousness begins to relax, fantasy material
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: will often erupt which will reveal the opposite attitude. Now,
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: I can't say I've ever had a fantasy that ice
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: cream is disgusting, but I'm sure it's in there somewhere,
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: but I'm going to just trust him. But there are
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: many examples, and some listeners might relate to this. Let's
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: say you've been raised in a very, very morally rigid
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: environment that demonizes sexuality. So you hold your sexuality in
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: a very, very specific way. Maybe you only have sex
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: for procreation. There's a conscious attitude about that. It feels
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: like it's aligned, it's egocentronic. But at the end of
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: most days when you're relaxing and just daydreaming, all of
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: a sudden there are all these very intense fantasies around sexuality.
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: You know, it suddenly looks like a Bruegel painting. You know,
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: everything under the sun is dancing around, you know, in
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: the field. Everything's copulating with everything. And then the individual
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: could become very distraught, think that there's some kind of
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: an evil incursion, and one has to double down on
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: the purification of the sexuality. Jung might say, huh, so
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: what's happening is that the conscious attitude is so spectacularly rigid,
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: that when consciousness is relaxed, its opposite wants to introduce itself.
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: So to the degree that you're sure sexuality should be regulated,
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: the dionysic or pangenic sexuality is very, very active in
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: the unconscious, and that both of them live on a
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: kind of seesaw in a way. So the abaissement, whether
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: it's consciously induced or unconsciously breaks free, is often showing
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: the opposite of the dominant attitude. And if we can
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: see it and decipher it in that way, it is
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: spectacularly helpful.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: And then it's part of that self-regulation of the psyche
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: that Jung talks about, that the psyche is a self-regulating system,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: and if you have a two-one-sided attitude, it's going to
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: get corrected. So again, that's part of this way that
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: this is not pathologic. And the other way, and I
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: think we've mentioned this so far, but I want to
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: make sure we really lift it up, that this abaissement
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: is exactly what Jung encourages us to do with active imagination.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: So what you need to do when you do an
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: active imagination is let consciousness drift down a little bit.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: That's why you close the door, you turn off the phone,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: you make sure you're not going to be disturbed, you
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: get comfortable. maybe you breathe deeply, maybe you light a candle.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: There's a sort of, I am entering into a slightly
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: lessened degree of consciousness. I'm gonna relax my ego hold
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: on things, not let it disappear altogether, but relax it
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: so that I can see what wants to come up
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: from the unconscious. And Jung said of active imagination, and
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: we've done an episode on it previously, You know, that
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: it's one of the most important techniques for psychological growth,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: that it really speeds up the process of individuation, as
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: it were, because it directly invites this kind of relationship
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: between consciousness and the unconscious.
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: Something we might add a little bit is that while
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: we are aiming to allow unconscious material to appear, there
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: needs to be enough ego participation involved To support later
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: reflection and integration.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: And that's the difference between what Jeanne was worried about
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: versus Jung's constructive application through active imagination. Right.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: Or even what Ogden did, right? He's like, wait, he
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: didn't say, I've got to get my thoughts back on track.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: What am I doing? He said, that's interesting. Why am
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: I so interested in that envelope right now? You know, so.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: That's that process of engaging consciousness to make meaning out
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: of what's come up.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: But I want to add that for Jung, with active imagination,
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: it wasn't some kind of decoding process of, oh, you know,
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: now I'm going to make this up about Ogden, that, oh,
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: I looked at that phone number on the back of
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: the envelope and I couldn't remember whose phone number I
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: had jotted down, it doesn't have to necessarily go that far,
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: that there's a subjectivity with these images that are affect
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: images that we can be curious about, we can enter
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: into without having to sort of get into a, you know,
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: what does all this mean? Like, oh, it was this
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: and it was because of that. And then it was
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: last week and of, Tilting way too far into something
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: that wants to nail it all down as if it
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: was some kind of a cipher. But just holding it
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: a little bit lightly, noticing, getting interested, having an observing eye,
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: and also being able to notice and manage the feelings
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: that come up. Because it's like dreams. Dreams are images
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: of affect. So here we have these reveries, these abbe small, of,
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: oh yes, I enter it, I feel it, I'm curious
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: about it, and let it keep flowing. And then, you know,
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: come back to your consulting room and your client and go, ha,
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: that's interesting that it happened right now with this person.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: And speaking of dreams, I wonder if now might be
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: a good time to turn our consciousness in a directed
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: way to a dream and see what it might have
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: to say. So today's dream comes from a woman who's
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: 32 years old and is self-employed and training to be
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: an expressive arts therapist.
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: Here's the dream.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: I dreamt that I was at my grandma's house and
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: I was throwing myself a birthday party for about six
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: of my friends. My aunt was there and really wanted
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: to help and she was preparing this amazing dinner while
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: I was getting ready. I was feeling really underconfident and
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: went to look at myself in the mirror and didn't
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: feel I looked good enough. I walked out and saw
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: my auntie waiting to get in and she gave me
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: a lovely smile and told me to enjoy myself. I
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: then bumped into my good friend who told me what
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: an amazing dinner my auntie made and how wonderful she is.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: I sat at the table and started eating. Some of
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: the friends at the table I could not recall, but
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: I remember feeling a bit embarrassed about some of my
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: guests and not about others. We then walked into an
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: outdoor forest setting and into an old school setting and
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: There were buses waiting to pick us up. They were
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: like yellow American school buses. The bus was jam-packed and
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: began traveling at some speed down the road. It sped
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: up towards what looked like the gate to a city,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: and it suddenly felt very dangerous. It felt like a
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: war zone in the Middle East or something, and all
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: looked very sandy, like the desert. Men in desert clothes
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: were standing with guns and asked us to get out.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: They seemed aggressive. Out of the bus stepped six Spanish
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: translators who were negotiating with them. I looked out into
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: the gates and I could see a huge city like
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: an inner mechanism in a spiral pyramid moving in circles. Animals,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: giant horses, and small humans were walking around in circles
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: like they were hypnotized. I suddenly realized the scope and
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: danger of this place. I found myself off the bus
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: and with a guy I knew from art college. We
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: were copying some papers in a printing shop. He said
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: he had the document to send for help and asked
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: me for my auntie's email. I didn't know I had it.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: Then I found it. We sent it and we ran
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: back onto the bus and it was quickly pulling away.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: We drove away again at high speed and I woke
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: up around here. I then went back to sleep and
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: dreamt I was wearing a white wedding dress, looking back
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: in the mirror and thinking I looked really beautiful. So
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: for context, she says, I'm in transition where I'm moving
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: from my current business into my training as an arts therapist.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: I have been undergoing a lot of deep psychotherapy work
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: and unearthing a lot of old emotions. A few weeks
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: after this dream, I got married. The main feelings in
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: the dream were admiration, insecurity, courage, deep fear, and self-love.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: And she notes, my aunt is a big inspiration in
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: my life and someone who pushes. Not sure what that means.
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: Probably means she's pushy.
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: I would say who strives. Someone who is proactive and
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: has access to her own direction and wants and dreams, perhaps.
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: So we can all imagine what that might mean.
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: So one of the things that I like about this
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: dream is it ends with a kind of participation mystique,
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: where there's an entire... world around the pyramid that's spiraling
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: in a trance-like process that she's given a glimpse of,
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: which makes it seem like there's something happening in the
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: descent of the dream where she's finally given an archetypal
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: glimpse into something mysterious around the pyramids. The question is,
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: how to relate to something so mysterious and so uncanny.
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: I'm starting someplace else. This is one of those dreams
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: where I imagine it in scenes. That scene one is
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: at the grandmother's house, throwing myself a birthday party with
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: the aunt who has all these good things. And the
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: aunt has made a wonderful dinner, and she's wonderful. There's
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: some friends at the table. She felt a little embarrassed
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: about them and not about others. So here we are
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: at that turning point in life. Birthdays often mark, you know,
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: sort of a turning point, to have a transition from
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: one stage to another, imaged by turning from age this
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: to age that. And there are some shadow elements at
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: the table, some guests that were sort of like, oh
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: my God, did I really invite them? and others that
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: are really wonderful, but The Odd is wonderful.
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: So it's a mix.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: There's a kind of wholeness to it. And then scene two,
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: you get on the buses and go into this weird,
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: mystical city like you were talking about, Joseph. It's a
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: war zone, sandy, men with guns, the spiral pyramids, all
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: the horses. We've left the dreamer's known world and have
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: moved into this mysterious world, which I haven't begun to
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: really think about yet because I'm tracking the dramatic trajectory
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: of the dream. And then she meets the guy in
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: the printing shop. They get back in touch with the aunt.
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: Drove away, high speed, woke up. So there's a way
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: to get back in touch with the positive shadow figure
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: of the aunt, get on the bus and get out
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: of the difficult situation menacing realm. And then she finds
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: out she's wearing a white wedding dress. And weddings, again,
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: are another thing of what parts of the psyche are
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: getting married. And then it turns out that our dreamer has,
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: in fact, recently, recently married. So it goes from the
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: birthday and the transitional stage to this odd city that
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: to a friend from art school and sending a message
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: and getting on the bus and going back to find
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: a new kind of wholeness symbolized by the wedding dress
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: and thinking that she looked beautiful, which she did not
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: at the beginning of the dream, which is especially touching.
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: At the beginning, she says, I didn't feel I looked
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: good enough. At the end, she says, I felt I
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: look beautiful. Anyway, that is my quick take on this dream.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: I find this dream a little difficult to orient to.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: It's a little, there's, it reminds me of, you know,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: what is sometimes called a chain reaction dream, where this
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: is happening and this is happening and this is happening,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: and it's a little bit hard to find a through line. There's,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: you know, first it's a desert and then it's a, no,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: it's a forest and then a school and then a desert.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: And I'm not quite sure what to make of all
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: of that. But I agree, Deb. I think it's important
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: that the aunt comes back. But there really is no
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: lysis at the point at which she awakens because they're
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: speeding away. It's a dangerous situation. And it's like, Ken,
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: are we going to be able to get a message
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: asking for help? And it seems like they do, but
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: then they just speed away. I mean, it really covers
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: a range, even the emotions that she cites, you know, admiration, courage,
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: deep fear and self-love. It's a huge, vast range of
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: images and feelings as well.
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: I see it as a going out and then a
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: kind of coming back because they do get to send
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: the message to the auntie. And then she manages to
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: get away. So she's gone. into the weird realm of
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: the city and then back out again. And then the dreamer,
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: and this happens in dreams, you're in a dream and
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: you dream you went to sleep and she's wearing the
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: white wedding dress and feeling beautiful. So I see it
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: as a going forth and a coming back, a kind
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: of descent, as it were. And a lot of the
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: mixture and it's not a, you know, totally... cohesive dream,
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: but I think the essential structure is very much there. Also,
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: I'm paying attention, however, you know, just purely subjective this
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: is and how much it might relate to the dreamer,
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: to my feeling about not feeling at the beginning that
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: she looked good enough. And it's her birthday, and she's
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: throwing herself a birthday party and doesn't feel she looks
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: good enough. And at the end, after all these things,
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: I looked in the mirror again, like she did at
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: the beginning, and thinking I looked really beautiful. So something
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: has happened in the psyche as told by this dream.
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: So something that we might consider as I'm pouring through
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: this is the number six happens twice, six friends and
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: six translators. And there's something very young about the beginning
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: of the dream that auntie is making the meal for
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: the party. She just has to get dressed and wants
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: to look pretty. And I'm wondering, if this were my analysis,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: what happened when she was six? What was life like
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: at six years old? Because there really may have been
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: a process where she was pulling together a sense of identity.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: How should she think about herself? Does she measure up
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: to her friends? All of that really vulnerable experience that
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: all of us have when we're so young. But more importantly...
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: If this is speaking to some business that's wanting to
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: be tended from six years old, she is granted a vision.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: And in the vision, there is a mechanism that spirals
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: regarding a pyramid that really all of life is moving
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: and compelled in a great spiral of life, having glimpsed it,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: There's a sense of danger at the scope of it.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: And then she finds herself back on really a child
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: school bus, bright yellow school bus. And then she's going
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: to copy some papers and print things to document something.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: So what I think is that the dream is returning
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: to her a numinous, even overwhelming experience she may have
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: had as a child but could not metabolize. which is
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: recorded somewhere in the psyche, documented, and it's time. It's
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: time to read the documents and to figure out what
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: this extraordinary archetypal encounter could mean to her. What I
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: might imagine is if some of us have had an
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: experience like that as a child, we might be left
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: feeling rather anxious about the unconscious or what we might encounter,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: that as we were talking earlier, that the abaissement, the
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: dropping down, could feel scary because of this early experience,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: and sorting that out might open something up and make
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: the sojourn back and forth, as you were saying, Deb, safer,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: a little bit more comfortable than it might have been
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: as a child to come across something like that. They
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: run back to the bus. They quickly... pull away. They're
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: driving it at top speed to get away from this
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: really beautiful, numinous, but overwhelming experience of evolution itself. Evolution
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: is sometimes described as a great cosmic wheel that all
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 4: of life is moving on, whether or not it knows
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: that that's what's happening. So there is a vision of
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: enormous power in this dream that is compelling telling an
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: entire world to work in concert for a mysterious reason
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: that one couldn't understand. I wouldn't understand at six years old.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: But she has enough of a sense in her to
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: think if she keeps moving into that, the too muchness
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: of it, this is dangerous. Like, it shouldn't play with
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: the live wire. I need to step back. And as
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: you said, Deb, at least in this dream, she comes back,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 4: into a knowledge of this, and rather than feeling uncertain
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 4: about herself, she comes back now as an adult with
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 4: a sense of beauty in herself that she might have
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: at six just felt scared and kind of broken apart
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: a little bit, leaving her not sure what to do
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 4: with it. And the first part of the dream, there's
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: a lot of not sureness, right? Am I pretty enough?
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: Did I invite the right friends? I'm not really sure
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: how this is all going to work out. But something
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: is restored to her through the encounter of the archetypal image,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: which goes to your observation, Deb, that something seems to
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 4: be sorted one way or another. And that may require
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: some maternal holding, which is seen in the image of
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: the aunt, so that she doesn't fragment as she might
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: have when she was quite younger.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:04:26
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• 1:04:31
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• 1:04:34
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