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Inner Life, Outer World: The Psychology of Adaptation · This Jungian Life Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: Jung basically says every outer adaptive context has an inner
0:03
Speaker 1: adaptive context. And it's when I deal with the inner context,
0:07
Speaker 1: which always has to do with how I don't seem
0:09
Speaker 1: to have the psychological resources to deal with the outer problem,
0:13
Speaker 1: then I'm drawing on unconscious energies, unconscious resources in order
0:18
Speaker 1: to expand my adaptive potential. Then I can deal with
0:22
Speaker 1: the outer problem.
0:25
Speaker 2: Welcome to This Jungian Life. conversations with Jungian analysts on
0:29
Speaker 2: the unseen forces shaping our lives and what it means
0:33
Speaker 2: to be truly human in today's complex world. I'm Lisa Marciano,
0:38
Speaker 2: and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
0:40
Speaker 3: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. We
0:56
Speaker 3: are delighted to have with us again today our friend
1:01
Speaker 3: and colleague, John White, who recently joined us to do
1:06
Speaker 3: a really great episode on magic. So check that out
1:11
Speaker 3: as well as what we're doing today. What we're going
1:15
Speaker 3: to talk about today is John's book that was formerly
1:19
Speaker 3: his Ph.D. thesis on Adaptation. And the name of the
1:25
Speaker 3: book is Adaptation and Psychotherapy, Lange's, that's Robert Lange's, a psychologist,
1:32
Speaker 3: and Analytical Psychology. You can find it on Amazon, along
1:37
Speaker 3: with an earlier book written with Laura Tooley, another of
1:41
Speaker 3: our Jungian colleagues. And that book is entitled Jungian Analysis
1:48
Speaker 3: and the World on Fire at the Nexus of Individual
1:52
Speaker 3: and Collective trauma. John is a scholar in residence at
1:57
Speaker 3: Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and he is pursuing his longtime
2:03
Speaker 3: interest in phenomenology as a stream in both philosophy and psychology.
2:12
Speaker 3: So welcome back, John.
2:13
Speaker 1: Thank you. It's my pleasure.
2:15
Speaker 3: And let's talk about adaptation.
2:18
Speaker 1: Very good.
2:19
Speaker 2: I'm so glad we're talking about this because it's something
2:22
Speaker 2: that I think about all the time. And it seems
2:25
Speaker 2: like such, I don't know, like a real sort of
2:28
Speaker 2: bread and butter concept.
2:30
Speaker 3: Yeah.
2:30
Speaker 2: But when you're doing clinical work, like I actually find
2:34
Speaker 2: I think about it a lot. And it's just so
2:38
Speaker 2: great to be aware of how Jung thought about it
2:41
Speaker 2: because he really did. I think it really was a
2:45
Speaker 2: main through line. And how Jung thought, you know, at
2:48
Speaker 2: one point somewhere, Jung says, the real is what works.
2:54
Speaker 2: And I think Jung was very interested in what works.
3:00
Speaker 2: And that's another way, maybe, of talking about what's adaptive. So, John,
3:06
Speaker 2: you wrote the book on it, literally. Do you want
3:08
Speaker 2: to sort of define adaptation for us? Will?
3:13
Speaker 1: I avoided anything like a formal definition in the book.
3:16
Speaker 1: I just simply said that it's basically learning how to
3:19
Speaker 1: manage the environment while at the same time flourishing as
3:22
Speaker 1: a human being. So learning how to relate to one's environment,
3:26
Speaker 1: of course, is an essential part of it. Jung, which
3:29
Speaker 1: we can talk about if you like, at some point,
3:31
Speaker 1: he has kind of two different notions of adaptation. One's
3:34
Speaker 1: the more negative one, which is being too adapted to
3:37
Speaker 1: to a collective. That's the one that Jungians talk about,
3:41
Speaker 1: it seems to me, a lot more than the actual
3:43
Speaker 1: positive and authentic one, which moves along the lines of
3:46
Speaker 1: what I've just said. That is that basically any psychic
3:50
Speaker 1: conflict is in part an adaptive conflict. And to move
3:55
Speaker 1: from one's typical way of adapting to a new way
3:59
Speaker 1: of adapting is basically the mark of a movement toward
4:02
Speaker 1: psychological health.
4:04
Speaker 2: I'm here with a friend of the podcast, Aaron Balick,
4:07
Speaker 2: and Aaron and I have been working together to put
4:10
Speaker 2: on the first summit on depth psychology and AI, and
4:14
Speaker 2: we're calling it Artificial Intelligence and the Psyche.
4:18
Speaker 4: We thought it was about time that we had a
4:20
Speaker 4: conversation out loud with lots of people applying the ideas
4:24
Speaker 4: from depth psychology to what's going on in our individual
4:27
Speaker 4: relational and social.
4:28
Speaker 1: Worlds with AI.
4:30
Speaker 4: We've invited some really incredible people to join us for
4:32
Speaker 4: this conversation, including James Muldoon, Glenn Slater, Todd Essig.
4:39
Speaker 2: And also Alessandra Lemma and Zach Stein and perhaps a
4:42
Speaker 2: few more people that we're hoping will come that haven't
4:45
Speaker 2: confirmed yet. And it's going to be held on October
4:48
Speaker 2: 8th at 2 p.m. Eastern. It will be free and
4:51
Speaker 2: open to the public and online. So you can click
4:55
Speaker 2: on the link below to reserve your spot and we
4:57
Speaker 2: hope you'll join us.
4:58
Speaker 1: Hope to see you there.
5:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we do kind of denigrate it in
5:03
Speaker 2: a little bit, right? I mean, I think it's partly
5:06
Speaker 2: Jungian psychology. We really value, you know, individuation, this notion
5:11
Speaker 2: of sort of separating out from the collective. And so
5:13
Speaker 2: if you're too worried about adapting to the collective, well,
5:16
Speaker 2: you know, that's very, how very pedestrian of you. But
5:22
Speaker 2: also it's something about our cultural ethos that we have
5:25
Speaker 2: such an individualistic bent. My clinical supervisor at this time
5:30
Speaker 2: She's not Jungian, actually. She comes from a different psychoanalytic tradition,
5:34
Speaker 2: which is, you know, really great for me. I'm learning
5:36
Speaker 2: new stuff. But I remember this issue came up because
5:38
Speaker 2: I was talking about someone and I said that this
5:41
Speaker 2: person was making choices that weren't very adaptive or something
5:45
Speaker 2: like that. And she said, well, is that a bad thing?
5:47
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, no, no, that's not how I mean it.
5:49
Speaker 2: I mean, like, this person needs to get out in
5:52
Speaker 2: the world. And it was, and then my supervisor was like,
5:54
Speaker 2: oh yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. But it
5:57
Speaker 2: was interesting because she was a little skeptical of this
6:01
Speaker 2: notion of adapting, right? Like that could actually not be
6:06
Speaker 2: in the interest of greater psychological health if we're talking
6:09
Speaker 2: about conforming in a superficial way, right?
6:14
Speaker 3: I think that's often the way the word adaptive or
6:18
Speaker 3: adaptation is. is understood is, well, you know, you just
6:23
Speaker 3: sort of have to suck it up and deal with
6:25
Speaker 3: it and either comply or sit still or rebel or whatever,
6:33
Speaker 3: rather than dealing with an external world reality. How do
6:40
Speaker 3: you or I, any of us, interact? What is the
6:45
Speaker 3: meaning we make of it? What kind of, hopefully, conscious
6:49
Speaker 3: choices can we make given the givens?
6:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's a nice way to put that.
6:55
Speaker 1: I think one reason, and maybe this partially explains the
6:59
Speaker 1: reaction you recently said, is that, at least the argument
7:03
Speaker 1: I make in the book, is that adaptation was so
7:08
Speaker 1: understood to be part of the process that it wasn't
7:10
Speaker 1: analyzed so much.
7:11
Speaker 2: Interesting.
7:12
Speaker 1: It's not that it wasn't central. It was that it
7:14
Speaker 1: was so central, but it was also assumed. So one
7:18
Speaker 1: of the ways to understand that is that, especially in
7:20
Speaker 1: the Jungian world, we tend to maybe over-spiritualize psyche, aiming
7:25
Speaker 1: at its contents. But psyche, or soul, die Seele in German,
7:29
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily have those overtones per se. It really
7:33
Speaker 1: just means the vital principle in us. That's all it means.
7:36
Speaker 1: So the psyche is the living principle, the vital principle
7:40
Speaker 1: in us, which is experienced both consciously and unconsciously and
7:43
Speaker 1: gives us fantasies and archetypes and all that, but the point,
7:46
Speaker 1: the psyche itself is basically the vital principle. If you
7:50
Speaker 1: understand that, then you'd understand why early 20th century psychoanalysts
7:54
Speaker 1: would think that It's adaptation is obviously what it's about
7:59
Speaker 1: because it's about us insofar as we're living vital organic
8:03
Speaker 1: beings as mammals, basically. And that's what you're talking about
8:06
Speaker 1: with adaptation is you're talking about a process that partially
8:10
Speaker 1: has to do with us being mammals. But then it
8:12
Speaker 1: also has to do with how do we bring our
8:14
Speaker 1: higher functions to involve themselves in our adaptive process. So
8:18
Speaker 1: I think they didn't talk about it so much. And
8:20
Speaker 1: harshly because of what you're saying, there was a strong
8:23
Speaker 1: concern about mass society and things like that in the
8:27
Speaker 1: 1920s and 30s. And so there's a reaction against anything
8:30
Speaker 1: that's too collective, too mass. But I think also it
8:34
Speaker 1: was just so taken for granted that there wasn't much
8:36
Speaker 1: analysis of it. even though it runs through it, you know,
8:40
Speaker 1: you can see this in Freud's theory of, you know,
8:43
Speaker 1: the various phases that you go through, for example, because basically,
8:46
Speaker 1: you know, the anal, the oral, all of those phases
8:48
Speaker 1: have to do with expansion of adaptive potential, you know,
8:52
Speaker 1: or you can see it in egopsychology and Heinz Hartmann,
8:55
Speaker 1: you can see it as well in Jung, as I
8:58
Speaker 1: argue there, that his typological theory has to be understood
9:01
Speaker 1: as a theory of adaptation, and oddly enough, it often isn't.
9:05
Speaker 2: Well, One of the things that comes to my mind
9:07
Speaker 2: is Jung really talks about individuation in some places as
9:10
Speaker 2: having two parts. There's the first half of life and
9:13
Speaker 2: the second half of life. And the first half of
9:15
Speaker 2: life is all about adapting. I mean, this is sort
9:19
Speaker 2: of classic Jung. It may not work out this way
9:22
Speaker 2: for us, but Jung said the first half of life,
9:24
Speaker 2: you need to go out in the world, get a career,
9:27
Speaker 2: find a partner, create a family. You have to do
9:29
Speaker 2: all of the things And then you reach the midpoint,
9:35
Speaker 2: you reach midlife, and then you sort of go in
9:38
Speaker 2: and you start, maybe you could say, kind of adapting
9:40
Speaker 2: more to the demands of the inner world. But the
9:44
Speaker 2: first half of life is about adapting to the demands
9:46
Speaker 2: of the outer world.
9:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. And some of that is developing even
9:50
Speaker 1: a healthy persona, because sometimes also in our tradition, we
9:54
Speaker 1: see the negative parts of persona. The positive parts of
9:56
Speaker 1: persona is understanding how to function within a collective and
10:00
Speaker 1: functioning in a way that's also conducive to your flourishing.
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Speaker 1: So the healthy persona, as opposed to the unhealthy one,
10:06
Speaker 1: is one where you don't identify with simply your social place.
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Speaker 1: But on the other hand, a healthy one still means
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Speaker 1: you know how to adapt socially and work socially, while
10:15
Speaker 1: at the same time not being swept into that. So
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Speaker 1: I think the crucial part about the first half of
10:19
Speaker 1: life has to do both with establishing yourself as a
10:22
Speaker 1: mature adult, but also managing and developing that healthy persona.
10:27
Speaker 2: You know, I'm thinking a little bit about what Freud
10:31
Speaker 2: famously said when someone asked him to define, you know,
10:36
Speaker 2: what mental health looks like. I'm not sure exactly how
10:38
Speaker 2: the question was phrased, but John, I believe that you
10:41
Speaker 2: speak German, so perhaps you would want to say the answer.
10:45
Speaker 2: I could probably pronounce it better than I could.
10:48
Speaker 1: That's okay, go ahead.
10:48
Speaker 2: But he famously said, he said, Liebe und Arbeit, love
10:53
Speaker 2: and work. Exactly. And I love that. I have always
10:57
Speaker 2: loved that because, you know, it's like when you're looking
11:01
Speaker 2: at someone in front of you who's suffering, I will
11:04
Speaker 2: actually ask myself that, you know, so is the person
11:06
Speaker 2: able to love? Is the person able to work?
11:08
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
11:09
Speaker 2: And even thinking back to my training at social work
11:12
Speaker 2: school when we were learning about psychopathology, you know, one
11:17
Speaker 2: of the things that you learn about psychopathology, let's take
11:19
Speaker 2: obsessive compulsive disorder, for example. So any of us might
11:23
Speaker 2: have a little bit of an impulse to say, oh,
11:26
Speaker 2: I don't know, check that the stove is off three
11:29
Speaker 2: times before you leave the house. I used to, that
11:31
Speaker 2: used to be me. And every once in a while
11:36
Speaker 2: I would come back and I would have indeed left
11:37
Speaker 2: it on. was probably good that I checked. But in
11:41
Speaker 2: any case, you know.
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Speaker 3: Adaptive, very adaptive.
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Speaker 1: Exactly.
11:46
Speaker 2: We have a tendency to say, oh, well, that's my OCD, right?
11:50
Speaker 2: But what I learned, and it was very helpful to me,
11:54
Speaker 2: is the behavior or the symptom, let's say, is the
11:57
Speaker 2: symptom getting in the way of the person's ability to
12:02
Speaker 2: love and work. I mean, if you can't go to
12:07
Speaker 2: sleep without checking that all the lights are off twice,
12:10
Speaker 2: and it means that you go to bed five minutes later,
12:13
Speaker 2: that's not psychopathology, according to that definition. Maybe a quirk.
12:18
Speaker 2: It might be annoying. But you can't leave your house
12:23
Speaker 2: for two hours because you have to check, you know,
12:27
Speaker 2: 150 times.
12:27
Speaker 3: Now....
12:30
Speaker 2: It's getting in the way of being able to love
12:32
Speaker 2: and work. So that is just such a portable little thing,
12:36
Speaker 2: but it's really getting at this, you know, are you
12:39
Speaker 2: adapted enough to life, I want to say. I was
12:43
Speaker 2: going to say the outer world, but it's not just
12:45
Speaker 2: the outer world.
12:46
Speaker 3: You know, where I go partly with some of that
12:51
Speaker 3: is the ability to know whether what one is doing
12:58
Speaker 3: is adaptive or not. A huge difference between, you know,
13:03
Speaker 3: your somewhat facetious example of checking 150 times whether the
13:07
Speaker 3: stove is off.
13:08
Speaker 1: You hope it was facetious.
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Speaker 3: You know, one would hope that part of that task
13:15
Speaker 3: would be, oh my gosh, what am I doing? Checking
13:19
Speaker 3: twice is one thing. Checking 20 times is another. And again,
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Speaker 3: Are we adapted enough to our internal world to know
13:32
Speaker 3: when something is out of proportion, doesn't make sense, and
13:37
Speaker 3: isn't adaptive?
13:38
Speaker 2: I mean, I think specifically with OCD, part of it
13:42
Speaker 2: is you know it's not adaptive, you know, but you
13:45
Speaker 2: still can't stop. But there is something there, Deb, about insight, right? Insight.
13:52
Speaker 3: And that is a big part of it. is self-reflection
13:57
Speaker 3: and insight versus getting caught totally in projection. I had
14:03
Speaker 3: somebody that I knew a generation ahead of me who
14:08
Speaker 3: was really terrified of entering elevators. And, you know, in
14:16
Speaker 3: the context of adaptation, this person said that if she
14:22
Speaker 3: had to, she could do it but stairs were healthier
14:29
Speaker 3: it was much better to climb stairs had chapter and
14:34
Speaker 3: verse of elevator accidents elevator stalling out so I'm thinking
14:40
Speaker 3: about that in the sense of the inner adaptation of
14:45
Speaker 3: wait a minute this is a little nutty on my
14:48
Speaker 3: behalf versus it really makes sense.
14:52
Speaker 1: That's interesting it is important when a A person, I think,
14:57
Speaker 1: realizes that they have some kind of a tick or
14:59
Speaker 1: some kind of a peculiarity that there's nothing that they
15:02
Speaker 1: can seem to do about, that they have a plan
15:04
Speaker 1: B that's actually still functional. You know, it's one of
15:07
Speaker 1: the fantasies. I'm sure you two didn't have this, but
15:10
Speaker 1: I had this fantasy when I was first in analytic
15:12
Speaker 1: training of, you know, fully analyzed analysts and this kind
15:16
Speaker 1: of thing, you know.
15:17
Speaker 2: Yeah.
15:18
Speaker 1: One of the things that I learned from Robert Langs
15:20
Speaker 1: was that that didn't happen. And because he was very
15:24
Speaker 1: perceptive about what his weaknesses were. And he was consistently
15:29
Speaker 1: having to actually compensate some plan Bs around them. He
15:34
Speaker 1: would describe himself as narcissistic and aggressive. And, you know,
15:37
Speaker 1: it's not like he didn't work to use union terms
15:40
Speaker 1: to assimilate that, to integrate that. But in certain ways,
15:43
Speaker 1: it would come out in an impulsive way. And he
15:46
Speaker 1: learned that, well, I can't always stop the thing, but
15:48
Speaker 1: I can usually manage the negative consequences of that, particularly
15:52
Speaker 1: for others, as well as for himself. And so it
15:56
Speaker 1: was a nice reminder to me of someone who'd done
15:59
Speaker 1: a lot of inner work. I knew he'd done a
16:00
Speaker 1: lot of inner work, but there are these things that
16:02
Speaker 1: he just couldn't seem to manage. So I think that example, Deb,
16:06
Speaker 1: is actually adaptive in its own way because it's finding
16:09
Speaker 1: plan B when plan A just doesn't seem to work,
16:14
Speaker 1: that I can't get myself to do this, but at
16:17
Speaker 1: least I can do this.
16:18
Speaker 2: Yeah.
16:20
Speaker 3: I can climb stairs except for the time that there
16:23
Speaker 3: was a need to enter a building and get to
16:26
Speaker 3: the 37th floor.
16:27
Speaker 1: There you go.
16:30
Speaker 3: And climbing all those stairs... Wouldn't have been especially adaptive.
16:36
Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. But that's also, it's a very
16:38
Speaker 1: concrete point is that it's within a certain range. You
16:41
Speaker 1: can often find some plan B, but maybe sometimes you can't.
16:47
Speaker 2: You know, I think that's a great, it's a great
16:49
Speaker 2: point and it's a great example because I do find
16:53
Speaker 2: myself sometimes, especially with younger people, having to make the
16:56
Speaker 2: point that You know, it's not like you figure this
16:58
Speaker 2: all out and then you never have to do anything again, right?
17:01
Speaker 2: You know that you're constantly managing things, like your own
17:05
Speaker 2: propensity to procrastinate. Like that will get better as you
17:09
Speaker 2: get older, I might say to someone in their 20s,
17:12
Speaker 2: but it's probably never going to totally go away. And
17:14
Speaker 2: you're probably going to always, always, always be looking for
17:17
Speaker 2: new ways to manage it or having to kind of
17:20
Speaker 2: develop new strategies. Yeah.
17:24
Speaker 3: But I think the capacity here that you're highlighting shows
17:29
Speaker 3: that that would be embedded in the capacity for self-reflection, insight,
17:36
Speaker 3: and some creative ways to deal with a problematic characteristic.
17:43
Speaker 3: You mentioned Robert Lang's, and that is right there in
17:48
Speaker 3: the title of your book. But I'm wondering if this
17:51
Speaker 3: might be a good time to say a few words
17:55
Speaker 3: about Lange's and the importance of his theory.
18:01
Speaker 1: Okay, very good, yeah. Lange was, of course, he was
18:06
Speaker 1: trained in the Freudian tradition. He very much prided himself,
18:08
Speaker 1: would call himself a classically trained analyst. Some people wondered
18:13
Speaker 1: how classical it was, but in any case, he certainly
18:16
Speaker 1: saw himself in that way. And he was an interesting
18:21
Speaker 1: figure because he had He graduated, I think it was 69.
18:26
Speaker 1: And so right in the early 70s, I think the
18:28
Speaker 1: first book he wrote was a two-volume book on clinical techniques.
18:31
Speaker 1: So he obviously had an interest in that. And then
18:35
Speaker 1: he quickly kind of changed his theorization because he began
18:39
Speaker 1: to believe that adaptive problems were the main reasons why
18:43
Speaker 1: people came to us. And that when he looked at
18:47
Speaker 1: clinical material like dream theories, for example, or sets of
18:52
Speaker 1: issues just came up in the material of a patient,
18:54
Speaker 1: He said he found that when he interpreted them purely intrapsychically,
18:58
Speaker 1: as if they're just the psyche talking about itself, which
19:01
Speaker 1: is how he interpreted psychodynamics, he often didn't understand how
19:05
Speaker 1: they were connected. But when he understood them as adaptive problems,
19:08
Speaker 1: that it's a person trying to manage their outer life,
19:11
Speaker 1: he could understand not only what that material was about,
19:15
Speaker 1: but that he could get a picture of what the
19:17
Speaker 1: unconscious was really trying to say about it. And so
19:21
Speaker 1: for him, early on, three, four years probably, maybe certainly
19:25
Speaker 1: no more than six years after his graduation, he started
19:28
Speaker 1: changing the paradigm that he was working with and started
19:30
Speaker 1: calling it the adaptive paradigm, in fact, because he, whether
19:35
Speaker 1: this is accurate or not, in his perception, his training
19:38
Speaker 1: was a very interpsychic training, not really about outer problems.
19:42
Speaker 4: And so he.
19:42
Speaker 1: Really understood the adaptive paradigm to say, no, you you
19:45
Speaker 1: have to really understand the inner workings in terms of
19:49
Speaker 1: the outer problem the outer issue that's the adaptive issue
19:53
Speaker 1: so he um made quite a quite a splash there
19:56
Speaker 1: for about 20 years after his graduation but then later
20:00
Speaker 1: he ran and this is kind of important just to
20:02
Speaker 1: know about him you can always read the wikipedia article
20:04
Speaker 1: because i happen to be the person who wrote it
20:05
Speaker 1: so there's also that but uh.
20:08
Speaker 3: That's exactly what I read.
20:09
Speaker 2: Very good.
20:14
Speaker 1: And so later on, it came to a point where
20:17
Speaker 1: he began to realize, well, yeah, people come with adaptive problems,
20:19
Speaker 1: but most of them are also traumatic problems. So the
20:23
Speaker 1: latter part of his life was really focusing on the
20:25
Speaker 1: idea of how death-related anxieties, death-related traumas, trauma always being
20:32
Speaker 1: in part an experience that one's going to die from something,
20:36
Speaker 1: that he focused much more on death issues. And in
20:39
Speaker 1: that respect, he kind of broke through the older Freudian
20:42
Speaker 1: paradigm that he worked with, where things are about sexuality
20:46
Speaker 1: as well as about trauma. And sex trauma is one
20:48
Speaker 1: of those things, but it's traumas that people come to
20:51
Speaker 1: us about. And that's the major adaptive task is how
20:54
Speaker 1: do I deal with what I witness, with what happened
20:56
Speaker 1: to me, that sort of thing. So he changed the
21:00
Speaker 1: adaptive paradigm, but he filled it out with a different content,
21:03
Speaker 1: you might say, that's primarily about trauma, especially death-related traumas
21:07
Speaker 1: and death-related anxieties.
21:09
Speaker 2: You know what I find so interesting about that is
21:11
Speaker 2: when you go back to his discussion of dreams and
21:13
Speaker 2: how he couldn't understand them without getting the real life context.
21:16
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what we say all.
21:18
Speaker 1: The time, right?
21:20
Speaker 2: You need to know what's going on in the person's life.
21:23
Speaker 2: It has occasionally happened to me that someone will come
21:26
Speaker 2: in and they'll only want to talk about their dreams.
21:29
Speaker 2: And I'll say, I need to know what's going on
21:31
Speaker 2: in your outer life. Rarely, sometimes the person only wants
21:35
Speaker 2: to talk about dreams, but the dreams lead us into
21:37
Speaker 2: what's going on in your life. But most of the time,
21:39
Speaker 2: I want to hear the dreams and I want to
21:41
Speaker 2: hear what happened last week. Because they're, you know, the
21:44
Speaker 2: unconscious is concerned about your adaptation to life. It is
21:49
Speaker 2: supremely concerned about your adaptation to life, actually. And it
21:54
Speaker 2: wants to help you and it's going to tell you
21:56
Speaker 2: where you're doing it wrong. And of course, it wants
21:59
Speaker 2: you to also hear the promptings of the self. So
22:01
Speaker 2: there is this kind of, I don't know, it's a
22:06
Speaker 2: bivalent kind of adaptation. You have to adapt to the
22:10
Speaker 2: inner world and the outer world, but certainly you have
22:13
Speaker 2: to take the person you are and find out how
22:16
Speaker 2: you can adapt to the outer world. And of course,
22:19
Speaker 2: this brings up the notion of the teleological nature of
22:23
Speaker 2: the unconscious, which was one of Jung's huge ideas, right?
22:27
Speaker 2: It's like the dreams report on the mistakes you're making
22:32
Speaker 2: as you try to adapt to because the unconscious has
22:36
Speaker 2: this teleological intent of it, it wants you to adapt.
22:43
Speaker 2: And Lange's really kind of reached the same conclusion, essentially.
22:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he did, yeah. But one of the
22:47
Speaker 1: differences here, and this is where Jung, I think, has
22:50
Speaker 1: a very concentrated, maybe too concentrated, but brilliant articulation of
22:57
Speaker 1: this adaptive problem, really in the same terms that you're using,
23:00
Speaker 1: is that whereas Lange's tended to focus on the outer problem,
23:04
Speaker 1: and how understanding inner material being an adaptation to that
23:08
Speaker 1: and as being healing when you realize, oh, this is
23:10
Speaker 1: an adaptive problem, so I better manage it in another way.
23:13
Speaker 1: Jung had a much more, well, I would consider it
23:15
Speaker 1: actually a much more psychological view of it because in
23:19
Speaker 1: his view, the outer adaptive problem causes an inner adaptive problem.
23:25
Speaker 1: You have an outer adaptive problem partially because you don't
23:27
Speaker 1: have the psychological resources to deal with the outer problem.
23:32
Speaker 1: So whereas Lange's would always talk about the outer thing
23:35
Speaker 1: as the adaptive context, using to try to understand the
23:38
Speaker 1: inner material, Jung basically says every outer adaptive context has
23:42
Speaker 1: an inner adaptive context. And it's when I deal with
23:46
Speaker 1: the inner context, which always has to do with how
23:48
Speaker 1: I don't seem to have the psychological resources to deal
23:51
Speaker 1: with the outer problem, then I'm drawing on unconscious energies,
23:56
Speaker 1: unconscious resources, in order to expand my adaptive potential. then
24:02
Speaker 1: I can deal with the outer problem. So in the book,
24:05
Speaker 1: I pose it as a cyclical view of adaptation. It
24:08
Speaker 1: begins with the outer problem, which usually is first just
24:13
Speaker 1: posed with a lot of frustration because the old way
24:15
Speaker 1: of adapting is not working. Then it becomes an inner
24:18
Speaker 1: adaptive problem. What do I have to change? What of
24:23
Speaker 1: my psychological functions, for example, are not yet suited sufficiently
24:27
Speaker 1: to deal with that problem? And so psychic energy has
24:31
Speaker 1: to go into that psychic function. Once that inner problem
24:35
Speaker 1: is dealt with, that is that you've expanded in the
24:38
Speaker 1: appropriate area, then you can deal with the outer problem.
24:41
Speaker 1: So it turns into a cycle of adaptation, outer to inner,
24:45
Speaker 1: solve the inner, then solve the outer.
24:47
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what Jung meant when he said we
24:50
Speaker 2: don't solve our problems so much as grow larger than them.
24:54
Speaker 2: Because that's what's happening as we're in that process that
24:58
Speaker 2: you just described as we're growing bigger. And then we
25:00
Speaker 2: have a new orientation to that problem and it's not
25:03
Speaker 2: a problem anymore.
25:04
Speaker 3: In other words, we're individuating, hopefully, that life presents us
25:10
Speaker 3: with a challenge and we meet it or we don't.
25:17
Speaker 3: And then what do we do with all that? And
25:19
Speaker 3: that's the inner part. And like, oh, I know, maybe
25:22
Speaker 3: I will interact with this person somewhat differently. And now
25:27
Speaker 3: I have the psychological or inner resources to do that.
25:31
Speaker 3: I don't always have to argue it out. I can
25:34
Speaker 3: just let so-and-so's comments slide. So I'm thinking about expanding
25:41
Speaker 3: this a little bit with What I looked up in
25:45
Speaker 3: Nancy McWilliams, who's a psychoanalyst and has written a wonderful
25:51
Speaker 3: book about diagnosis and more, that the inner work can
25:57
Speaker 3: be overcoming denial. That's not really happening. Or, you know,
26:02
Speaker 3: what my boss said about this coming in on time isn't,
26:06
Speaker 3: that's not that important. I do really great work. We
26:11
Speaker 3: might want to get beyond that one. And she calls
26:16
Speaker 3: it transforming magical ideas into mourning and coping.
26:21
Speaker 1: Oh, that's lovely. That's beautiful.
26:23
Speaker 3: But magical ideas makes it sound like it's such an
26:26
Speaker 3: outlandish way of coping of, oh, nobody, you know, most
26:31
Speaker 3: people don't do that. But we kind of do when
26:34
Speaker 3: we link things together as cause and effect or, The
26:39
Speaker 3: yes buts, the anger, all the rest of it into
26:43
Speaker 3: just disappointment. It didn't turn out the way I thought
26:50
Speaker 3: it would. You know, I should have been the one
26:53
Speaker 3: to get that promotion versus, you know, other ways of
26:59
Speaker 3: circumventing it. And then we have substituting realistic explanations for
27:05
Speaker 3: pathogenic beliefs. To go back to my example of the
27:12
Speaker 3: reluctance of this person to take elevators, there were always
27:16
Speaker 3: pathogenic beliefs instead of something happens and it just scares
27:24
Speaker 3: me to death to get in an elevator and the
27:26
Speaker 3: doors close and then deal with that as an internal reality.
27:32
Speaker 3: And then the final one that I think is a
27:36
Speaker 3: tough one for all of us and hopefully we get there,
27:40
Speaker 3: is coming to terms with what cannot be changed. This
27:47
Speaker 3: is my reality. And how can I flourish in some
27:52
Speaker 3: way or find vitality in myself, even in really adverse circumstances?
28:03
Speaker 3: Often they're, you know, for example, health-related issues. of that
28:07
Speaker 3: this is my new reality. I do have this condition.
28:12
Speaker 3: So adaptation is, as one of my grandkids used to say,
28:16
Speaker 3: a real job of work.
28:17
Speaker 2: That's great. That's great, Deb.
28:24
Speaker 1: I love that.
28:25
Speaker 2: I love how much of it is sort of about,
28:27
Speaker 2: is about acceptance and mourning, that that is a big
28:32
Speaker 2: task involved in adaptation. John, I want to go back
28:35
Speaker 2: to the cycle that you proposed a minute ago. And
28:38
Speaker 2: of course, that Jung really kind of lays that out
28:40
Speaker 2: in this very important essay called On Psychic Energy. And
28:44
Speaker 2: I want to see if I can flesh it out
28:46
Speaker 2: by giving a personal example, because I remember I read
28:49
Speaker 2: that essay early in training and I thought, oh, I
28:52
Speaker 2: know when that happened to me. So and it's helpful sometimes,
28:56
Speaker 2: you know, for us to kind of try to make
28:58
Speaker 2: it not so up here in the air. But so
29:00
Speaker 2: I was in my late 20s and I'd been on
29:02
Speaker 2: this one career path. And I was like, this is it.
29:05
Speaker 2: I found the thing I want to do. And my
29:08
Speaker 2: attitude was, it was too one-sided. I had, I was,
29:13
Speaker 2: I was focusing a lot, you know, sort of out there.
29:16
Speaker 2: I was really, all of my energy was kind of
29:19
Speaker 2: flowing out in this extroverted way. And I had these,
29:23
Speaker 2: all of these goals kind of out there. I was
29:25
Speaker 2: going to kind of climb the ladder and all this stuff. And,
29:30
Speaker 2: and I mostly was doing fine, but occasionally I would
29:33
Speaker 2: just sort of slip under the waves and just feel
29:36
Speaker 2: like something was really wrong, but then it would get
29:38
Speaker 2: better and I'd be fine. But then it all kind
29:41
Speaker 2: of collapsed when I was 28. You know, I had
29:46
Speaker 2: a relationship end and that was kind of the catalyst.
29:50
Speaker 2: But I don't think that's really the thing. I think
29:52
Speaker 2: it was the catalyst for recognizing that the way that
29:56
Speaker 2: I had adapted to my life up to that point
29:59
Speaker 2: was not really in keeping with what, I want to say,
30:04
Speaker 2: what the self wanted from me, for example. So I
30:07
Speaker 2: had the wrong, I actually had the wrong conscious attitude.
30:10
Speaker 2: And what that meant was all that energy that had
30:13
Speaker 2: flowed out, I could almost feel it kind of turn in.
30:17
Speaker 2: It was almost a physical feeling that it was all
30:21
Speaker 2: going in. And I started getting really interested in my
30:24
Speaker 2: dreams and I mean, but I was miserable, by the way.
30:28
Speaker 2: I was absolutely miserable. That thing where there's a damning
30:32
Speaker 2: up of libido, it did feel like that. I couldn't
30:35
Speaker 2: sort of make myself muscle through life the way I
30:39
Speaker 2: had before. But Jung talks about this also in Volume 5,
30:44
Speaker 2: that that flowing in of the libido activates archetypal and
30:49
Speaker 2: symbolic contents. And so that is absolutely what happened to me.
30:54
Speaker 1: For sure.
30:56
Speaker 2: Then there was this, you know, and then I read
31:00
Speaker 2: a book by a Jungian author and all the energy
31:03
Speaker 2: started flowing in a different direction. But, you know, and again,
31:08
Speaker 2: I was being informed about my dreams and by intuitions,
31:11
Speaker 2: I got really interested in that other half of life.
31:16
Speaker 2: And it did allow a new adaptation and the energy
31:22
Speaker 2: started flowing out again and I had access to different
31:25
Speaker 2: parts of myself. that I hadn't had access to before.
31:28
Speaker 2: So I think that's kind of that cycle.
31:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly the case, yeah. So in that brief
31:35
Speaker 1: passage there on psychic energy, it's so concentrated that you
31:38
Speaker 1: could comment on each sentence in a certain way and
31:42
Speaker 1: expand on it. And that's the case that he gives, really,
31:45
Speaker 1: except that you're taking a very concrete thing. He puts
31:48
Speaker 1: it in more typological terms. because he's keeping it a
31:52
Speaker 1: more abstract level. But he'll say, he gives the example
31:57
Speaker 1: of someone who primarily adapts in a feeling way, but
32:00
Speaker 1: there kind of a problem arises where it can only
32:04
Speaker 1: be resolved in a thinking way. And the person is
32:08
Speaker 1: strong on feeling, weak on thinking, so they keep hammering
32:11
Speaker 1: away from their feeling function to try to resolve a
32:14
Speaker 1: problem that really needs more of a thinking dimension. And
32:17
Speaker 1: so there's this damning up of libido that you said,
32:19
Speaker 1: the damning up of psychic energy, doesn't know where to go,
32:22
Speaker 1: deep frustration. And then at a certain point, the recognition
32:27
Speaker 1: comes that, no, I've just got to develop this part
32:29
Speaker 1: of me that makes me feel infantile, that I just
32:32
Speaker 1: don't have developed, that I just don't know how to
32:33
Speaker 1: do it, right? And when that happens, then the energy,
32:38
Speaker 1: the way Jung describes it, then goes into this other function,
32:41
Speaker 1: In fact, it usually describes this first going into the
32:43
Speaker 1: unconscious because it usually represents itself in dreams and so forth.
32:46
Speaker 1: And it becomes sort of the fertilizer that then develops
32:49
Speaker 1: that other function that's necessary in order to solve the problem.
32:53
Speaker 1: So it's exactly what you described. It gives a much
32:55
Speaker 1: more generic way of describing it, but it's basically the
32:58
Speaker 1: same idea. And that once then one has expanded psychic potential,
33:02
Speaker 1: then of course one can resolve the problem. And then
33:04
Speaker 1: one finds the flow happens again, which doesn't mean that
33:07
Speaker 1: it won't dam up another point, right? Because Because it's
33:10
Speaker 1: not a state, really. It's a dynamic that moves on.
33:12
Speaker 1: The psyche will always be asking you to try to
33:16
Speaker 1: expand all the more. So it's not like it's an either-or.
33:19
Speaker 1: It's not like, oh, I solved that problem, so I
33:20
Speaker 1: won't have problems again. You're not in a state of adaptedness.
33:24
Speaker 1: You're in a constant dynamic of relative adaptedness until the
33:27
Speaker 1: next issue comes up. But I think that's a lovely
33:31
Speaker 1: example of what you're talking about, and of the frustration
33:35
Speaker 1: of the deep mind sort of expressing itself in dreams
33:39
Speaker 1: and so forth.
33:41
Speaker 3: You know what I'm appreciating here, and I could just
33:44
Speaker 3: feel it in my reaction to your sharing your personal
33:48
Speaker 3: story of how hard adaptation is. We have to suffer it.
33:56
Speaker 1: Yeah.
33:57
Speaker 3: We really, really have to suffer it. And so it's
34:01
Speaker 3: no wonder that we can have some denial or or
34:08
Speaker 3: a little bit of magical thinking.
34:10
Speaker 1: Sure.
34:11
Speaker 3: These life crises are truly difficult, and adapting is a
34:20
Speaker 3: painful process sometimes.
34:23
Speaker 2: You know, and I want to pick that up, Deb,
34:25
Speaker 2: and just talk about it just clinically for a second,
34:29
Speaker 2: because if I think about the people who've come to
34:31
Speaker 2: see me, I could probably characterize every single person who
34:36
Speaker 2: walks through my door as, as having an issue with adaptation.
34:41
Speaker 2: They're trying to adapt to something. And, you know, I
34:45
Speaker 2: remember at one point someone saying, you know, you can't,
34:49
Speaker 2: I mean, there's different schools of thought about this, right?
34:51
Speaker 2: But some psychoanalysts say, well, you know, someone says analysis
34:58
Speaker 2: is not going to make your life better, but it'll
35:00
Speaker 2: make it more interesting. Someone else says you can't. I
35:03
Speaker 2: think it's beyond who says you can't have any hopes
35:05
Speaker 2: or dreams for your patient. You know, we're taught stuff
35:07
Speaker 2: like this a lot. And I thought about that. I'm
35:09
Speaker 2: not sure that I'm in that camp because I feel
35:14
Speaker 2: like for the most part, people come in with a
35:16
Speaker 2: desire to adapt to their situation. And God damn it.
35:21
Speaker 2: You know, I want to see them get there. Frankly,
35:23
Speaker 2: it may not happen. It certainly is probably not going
35:26
Speaker 2: to happen the way they think it's going to happen.
35:28
Speaker 1: Right.
35:29
Speaker 2: But but. Yeah, for the most part that, you know,
35:33
Speaker 2: that I want to champion their efforts to adapt. And
35:39
Speaker 2: oftentimes when someone's ready to leave treatment, it's because they've
35:43
Speaker 2: had that experience of growing larger than the problem or they,
35:46
Speaker 2: you know, in some sense they have adapted. And it's like, well,
35:51
Speaker 2: that's great. You know, and like you said, it doesn't
35:53
Speaker 2: mean something won't crop up again. But I think this
35:57
Speaker 2: is really, for me, this issue is where the clinical
36:01
Speaker 2: rubber meets the road.
36:03
Speaker 3: And I will put in a quick plug for all
36:06
Speaker 3: the feeling that is involved in that.
36:10
Speaker 1: Yeah.
36:11
Speaker 3: You know, the mourning.
36:13
Speaker 1: The suffering.
36:14
Speaker 3: The loss. The disappointment. Of the tears. need to be shed.
36:21
Speaker 3: We really need to feel our way into the conflict
36:29
Speaker 3: and let that happen. And that in itself is a
36:34
Speaker 3: painful process and also is a critical factor in being
36:40
Speaker 3: able to let go of something and face, go forward,
36:48
Speaker 3: and find a new reality that is more adaptive. I
36:52
Speaker 3: wish we had a different word for this process, John.
36:55
Speaker 2: Why?
36:58
Speaker 3: Because it sounds so sort of Darwinian and, you know,
37:01
Speaker 3: like the goldfinches on the Galapagos whose beaks had to shorten.
37:07
Speaker 2: But I think that's actually an important aspect of it,
37:11
Speaker 2: because that necessity of adapting to reality, whether or not
37:16
Speaker 2: we're a one-celled organism, you know, or a middle manager,
37:20
Speaker 2: or I even read there's a new science of like
37:26
Speaker 2: the evolution of galaxies that says the same principles apply.
37:30
Speaker 2: It seems to be a universal principle that we have
37:34
Speaker 2: to adapt to reality. And so, I like, I was
37:39
Speaker 2: going to hope that we brought that in, the fact
37:41
Speaker 2: that this is exactly the word that Darwin uses to
37:44
Speaker 2: describe the challenge of any organism, the necessary, it's a
37:49
Speaker 2: universal principle.
37:51
Speaker 3: I have no disagreement at all with the process. The
37:57
Speaker 3: word sounds a little more sort of scientific or almost mechanical.
38:05
Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
38:06
Speaker 1: So, like, you lose the individuality of a personality or something.
38:10
Speaker 1: Is that what you're saying?
38:10
Speaker 3: And we lose the feeling function that is required when
38:15
Speaker 3: there's a big life adaptation, you know, versus finding a
38:21
Speaker 3: way to memorize the spelling words for the test on Friday.
38:25
Speaker 1: But that's part of what I think is the value
38:30
Speaker 1: of Jung's, of what I call that cyclical view, because...
38:35
Speaker 1: You know, the same two people can run up against
38:37
Speaker 1: the same adaptive problem. And if a person doesn't make
38:42
Speaker 1: that movement of making it internal to their own individual
38:45
Speaker 1: psychic life, they'll just have a repetition compulsion. They'll go
38:48
Speaker 1: back to the same problem over and over again because
38:51
Speaker 1: the expansiveness didn't happen. So I think you have a
38:54
Speaker 1: good point there, Deb. I would only say that the
38:58
Speaker 1: crucial point to me is that human beings have to
39:00
Speaker 1: participate in the process consciously. Right. So presumably other, you know,
39:08
Speaker 1: one-celled organisms or maybe even middle managers don't have to
39:11
Speaker 1: do that. I don't know. It depends on the situation.
39:14
Speaker 1: But the adaptive quality here is crucial. And that you
39:18
Speaker 1: bring up the middle managers is interesting because many organizations
39:20
Speaker 1: don't learn how to be adaptive.
39:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.
39:23
Speaker 1: They are caught in their inertia, you know, and then
39:26
Speaker 1: if anything falls outside of that, it gets subsumed into
39:29
Speaker 1: the Borg organization. rather than a challenge to something that,
39:32
Speaker 1: you know, may have worked at one time and doesn't
39:34
Speaker 1: work anymore. So I think what you're bringing up there
39:37
Speaker 1: is a really important point, is that we can either
39:40
Speaker 1: adapt simply insofar as organisms, or we can bring consciousness
39:44
Speaker 1: into it, in which case, hopefully, we can change suffering
39:48
Speaker 1: into sacrifice. which is a conscious act, right? Suffering isn't
39:52
Speaker 1: necessarily conscious, but sacrifice is. When a person can, for example,
39:56
Speaker 1: see that, yes, I'm suffering in this, but the point
39:59
Speaker 1: is that I have to change and that I'm going
40:01
Speaker 1: to sacrifice the way I thought it was going to
40:03
Speaker 1: work and the suffering that's come with it with something else,
40:07
Speaker 1: that often changes the sign on the suffering. But that
40:11
Speaker 1: means they include consciousness in making the move. And I
40:14
Speaker 1: would also add that you're talking about feeling, I'm going
40:17
Speaker 1: to going to bring in an aspect that I believe
40:21
Speaker 1: at least is associated with feeling, which is value experience.
40:25
Speaker 1: Because Jung says that feeling relates to values. And oftentimes
40:29
Speaker 1: we're stuck in a value hierarchy that doesn't let us
40:33
Speaker 1: adapt to the situation. And the sacrifice we have to
40:36
Speaker 1: make is putting a different priority, different set of priorities
40:39
Speaker 1: to values.
40:40
Speaker 2: So can you give an example of that? Of sort
40:44
Speaker 2: of being stuck in a value hierarchy and having to
40:46
Speaker 2: make a shift in values.
40:48
Speaker 1: Well, I think I think you gave a good example
40:49
Speaker 1: of it yourself. It's that you when you were in
40:51
Speaker 1: your late 20s, you're in that profession. There was a
40:53
Speaker 1: set of value hierarchies. You may not have articulated them. Yeah.
40:56
Speaker 1: But this is what life was going to be all about.
40:58
Speaker 1: You're going to invest yourself in it. And then for
41:00
Speaker 1: some reason, something comes up. Oftentimes it's partially internal and
41:03
Speaker 1: partially exterior. Like you say, relational things, but also there's changes.
41:07
Speaker 1: And suddenly that you realize that you are living by
41:09
Speaker 1: a set of values that they may even have been okay,
41:12
Speaker 1: but they had to be inverted. Like some of the values,
41:15
Speaker 1: this had to be higher and that lower, or this
41:17
Speaker 1: one I have to set aside because this one's more important,
41:20
Speaker 1: just the sacrifice that I'm talking about. And it's primarily
41:24
Speaker 1: feelings that give us a sense for values. They give
41:27
Speaker 1: us value qualities, that something is important. We have strong
41:30
Speaker 1: feelings about something that's either positively or negatively important, for example.
41:34
Speaker 1: It's the example that Jung gives. So I think this
41:38
Speaker 1: issue of feeling is closely associated with adaptation because I
41:41
Speaker 1: think changing value hierarchies is what's also important about adaptation.
41:45
Speaker 1: That value hierarchy is what I thought was important and
41:48
Speaker 1: their order of importance and that that was going to
41:51
Speaker 1: supply me for the rest of life. Life said, well,
41:54
Speaker 1: that may have worked for a while, but it's not
41:55
Speaker 1: going to work anymore. And so your adaptation is certainly
41:59
Speaker 1: the expanding of psychological life, but it's also an expanding
42:03
Speaker 1: of how you relate values to each other. What counts
42:07
Speaker 1: as important in the here and now compared to 10
42:09
Speaker 1: years ago or something along those lines? And feeling is
42:12
Speaker 1: often the key to that.
42:14
Speaker 2: You know, I think I want to give another example.
42:16
Speaker 2: And this is a mostly made up kind of example.
42:19
Speaker 2: I've sort of, you know, massively changed the story here,
42:24
Speaker 2: but it's sort of inspired by someone I've worked with.
42:27
Speaker 2: So let's say it's a young woman and she's always
42:31
Speaker 2: dreamed of being a sculptor. And she's been pursuing that.
42:36
Speaker 2: but it hasn't really been working out for her. And
42:40
Speaker 2: so she's still living at home. She's, you know, in
42:44
Speaker 2: her late 20s at this point. And, you know, she
42:49
Speaker 2: hasn't been able to make any money being a sculptor.
42:52
Speaker 2: And so one day she comes to session and she says,
42:55
Speaker 2: you know, I think I've decided to go back to
42:58
Speaker 2: school and maybe go to law school. And I'm really
43:02
Speaker 2: just kind of making this up, but again, sort of
43:05
Speaker 2: there's some psychological truth underneath it. And it's sort of like, well,
43:08
Speaker 2: tell me about that decision. Well, if I could wave
43:11
Speaker 2: a magic wand and be a sculptor, I would love
43:14
Speaker 2: to do that. But I'm not sure it's really going
43:17
Speaker 2: to help me get through my life the way I'd
43:20
Speaker 2: like to. You know, and there's mourning involved in that.
43:24
Speaker 2: And Deb, it reminds me of the Nancy McWilliams stuff
43:27
Speaker 2: you shared before. There is a kind of, I don't
43:31
Speaker 2: want to say inversion of values, but there's a shift
43:33
Speaker 2: in values. It's like, well, being a sculptor is one
43:37
Speaker 2: set of values, but the values also of I'd like
43:39
Speaker 2: to have money to have my own apartment. I'd like
43:42
Speaker 2: to not be dependent on my parents. Those are other
43:44
Speaker 2: values that are kind of coming to the fore. And
43:47
Speaker 2: it's in the interest of adapting. And part of, you know,
43:51
Speaker 2: you used this word early on, John, you used the
43:54
Speaker 2: word flourishing earlier. And I think that's actually an important
43:57
Speaker 2: word because I think that when we are well adapted
44:01
Speaker 2: in the really Jungian sense of the term, that there's
44:05
Speaker 2: been this growth demanded of us and we have met
44:08
Speaker 2: that demand and we have grown, that does often result
44:12
Speaker 2: in what we think of as flourishing.
44:16
Speaker 1: Yes. And the experience of happiness and, as the ancients said, yes.
44:22
Speaker 1: And I think that that's an element of what we
44:24
Speaker 1: mean by individuation that maybe isn't said often enough, that
44:29
Speaker 1: it's not just being in connection to all of your psyche.
44:32
Speaker 1: It's also this experience of joy, of excitement, of, you know,
44:37
Speaker 1: about life. Aliveness and vitality.
44:40
Speaker 2: Yeah.
44:40
Speaker 1: That I think is all part of that. That's right. Yeah,
44:44
Speaker 1: I think that's a good example that you're giving. And
44:46
Speaker 1: it's That's exactly what I meant by the inversion. Not
44:49
Speaker 1: so much that it's not a value anymore, but that
44:52
Speaker 1: the hierarchy changes. What's the most important? And when you
44:55
Speaker 1: have someone who has chased after a dream, but at
44:58
Speaker 1: some point they realize, man, I don't know if that's
45:00
Speaker 1: the dream I want anymore. and can be flexible enough
45:04
Speaker 1: so that that's the adaptive move. And it doesn't mean
45:07
Speaker 1: that you don't analyze that because maybe that's a mistake
45:10
Speaker 1: to get up on it. But the point is, even
45:12
Speaker 1: to be able to entertain it is already an adaptive move.
45:16
Speaker 1: Whereas the rigidity that one can have, that this was
45:19
Speaker 1: the dream, this is the dream I'm going to stick
45:20
Speaker 1: with no matter what, even when it doesn't seem like
45:23
Speaker 1: it can work and that you've really tried to adapt
45:26
Speaker 1: in ways that would make it work, it's important to
45:29
Speaker 1: be able to entertain whether a shift is needed.
45:33
Speaker 2: Maybe it's a bit of a tangent, but I do
45:35
Speaker 2: want to bring it in because I think it says
45:37
Speaker 2: something about how pervasive this idea is. Actually, yeah, it's okay.
45:44
Speaker 2: I'm going to have a little soapbox moment here for
45:46
Speaker 2: a second. So mainstream psychology talks about adaptive and maladaptive
45:51
Speaker 2: coping mechanisms. You may have heard those phrases. And again,
45:55
Speaker 2: I think it's really useful. It's like if your coping
45:58
Speaker 2: mechanism is to take a shower when you get stressed,
46:03
Speaker 2: and maybe on a bad week, you take four showers
46:06
Speaker 2: a day, but it makes you feel better.
46:09
Speaker 1: I don't know.
46:10
Speaker 2: I think that's pretty adaptive, right? I mean, if you're
46:13
Speaker 2: taking 20 showers a day and you're developing skin problems
46:16
Speaker 2: from it, that's not adaptive. But if you found something
46:21
Speaker 2: that helps you get through a difficult period, it's a
46:23
Speaker 2: coping mechanism. Is it adaptive or it's maladaptive? Well, it depends.
46:27
Speaker 2: If your coping mechanism is to shoot up heroin when
46:32
Speaker 2: you face a stressful moment that is more likely to
46:36
Speaker 2: be maladaptive, right? And that's a pretty extreme example. But,
46:40
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, you know, one of my coping
46:43
Speaker 2: mechanisms is to have the impulse to like eat a
46:45
Speaker 2: lot of chocolate. And that can be maladaptive because too
46:50
Speaker 2: much chocolate is not good for you. So, and I'm
46:54
Speaker 2: not trying to be flip, but I'm just saying that
46:56
Speaker 2: this is something that's kind of with us always. And
47:00
Speaker 2: one of the things that I think can happen, you know,
47:03
Speaker 2: there's a lot in the media now about, you know,
47:06
Speaker 2: therapy culture and how it just makes us all worse.
47:10
Speaker 2: And you know, there are these romances in the culture
47:16
Speaker 2: around therapeutic concepts that can make us worse and are
47:23
Speaker 2: therefore not adaptive. And so I think, for example, oh,
47:30
Speaker 2: this might be unpopular, but I think I'll just go
47:32
Speaker 2: for it. There are many mental health clinicians out there
47:36
Speaker 2: who will help people, who will readily, readily, easily, Encourage
47:41
Speaker 2: people to cut off from any relative who makes them
47:46
Speaker 2: feel uncomfortable. So, you know, just stop. Your mom is toxic.
47:51
Speaker 2: Stop taking her phone calls, right? And I mean, you know,
47:56
Speaker 2: hopefully that's not too many people, but I think that
48:00
Speaker 2: does happen sometimes. And it's easy to kind of get,
48:04
Speaker 2: especially in social media, to kind of get wrapped up
48:08
Speaker 2: in the energy around that. and forget to ask, is
48:13
Speaker 2: that actually the most adaptive way of responding to that situation?
48:17
Speaker 1: Yeah.
48:19
Speaker 3: And there has been. I just recently read something about that,
48:25
Speaker 3: of the cutoff. But, you know, it seems to me
48:30
Speaker 3: that job one is there's a psychic conflict. You know,
48:36
Speaker 3: my mother, my uncle's Whoever it is, my boss, is
48:42
Speaker 3: driving me crazy. And then what's the next step? Is
48:49
Speaker 3: the next step to resolve it by saying, okay, I'm
48:52
Speaker 3: going to quit the job, I won't talk to this relative,
48:57
Speaker 3: or to allow, as your story about your difficult time
49:03
Speaker 3: as a young adult illustrated, to really embrace that the increase,
49:10
Speaker 3: the surge of emotional energy, of psychic energy is driving
49:15
Speaker 3: me out of my mind. I can't stand it anymore.
49:18
Speaker 1: Ah!
49:19
Speaker 3: Which takes us to our famous Jungian precept here of
49:25
Speaker 3: holding the tension of the opposite. This is my boss.
49:30
Speaker 3: This is my job. This is a relative. This is
49:33
Speaker 3: my mother, for heaven's sake. Oh, just stop there. let's
49:38
Speaker 3: just live in that awful mess for a little bit.
49:43
Speaker 1: Yes.
49:43
Speaker 3: And then pay attention to a dream, a reverie, whatever
49:49
Speaker 3: it is. Psyche will send us some way of representing that,
49:54
Speaker 3: the symbol. You know, Jung famously says, only the symbol heals.
49:59
Speaker 3: But if we're not holding the tension, there ain't going
50:02
Speaker 3: to be a symbol. And That will allow, facilitate the
50:08
Speaker 3: rising up into consciousness of something of which we were
50:13
Speaker 3: previously unconscious. So to take my made-up example of the
50:20
Speaker 3: boss that a person can't stand, he interrupts himself. He
50:25
Speaker 3: never finishes a sentence. He changes his mind all the time.
50:29
Speaker 3: He's never available when I need him. wow, that's interesting,
50:37
Speaker 3: and then do that process of taking it in and
50:41
Speaker 3: reflecting on how and why and that this is so
50:47
Speaker 3: intolerable when there are plenty of other people that aren't
50:52
Speaker 3: perfect either, but they don't get under our skin. And
50:59
Speaker 3: so you said this before, John, and you have too, Lisa,
51:03
Speaker 3: with we get bigger. If we can work with that
51:07
Speaker 3: in ourselves, we don't have to so quickly resort to
51:12
Speaker 3: an outer world, right, wrong, good, bad, either sort of
51:18
Speaker 3: just tolerate it and grit your teeth and suffer it
51:23
Speaker 3: in that way or just cut it off. That's it.
51:27
Speaker 1: I'm leaving.
51:28
Speaker 3: And that's the expansive process, it seems to me, in short,
51:33
Speaker 3: in a very short way.
51:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And you may come out with the same
51:38
Speaker 1: conclusion that you have to actually separate.
51:40
Speaker 3: Yes.
51:40
Speaker 1: But the point is just not circumventing the psychological work
51:45
Speaker 1: because I think that's a really strong tendency in a
51:48
Speaker 1: case like that is that You don't want to go
51:50
Speaker 1: through that. You don't want to actually face the part
51:52
Speaker 1: that you might be contributing. Or nowadays, that's treated as, oh,
51:56
Speaker 1: you're blaming the victim. Well, victim is too strong a
51:58
Speaker 1: word here. It's just because you're suffering doesn't make you
52:02
Speaker 1: a victim. That's actually part of life. And so I'm
52:05
Speaker 1: not saying that there aren't actual victims. I'm just saying
52:07
Speaker 1: that I think the term gets spread a little far.
52:10
Speaker 1: So in cases like this, you know, I've worked with
52:13
Speaker 1: patients where there was a, you know, a And I'm
52:16
Speaker 1: thinking of one that worked very well this way, that
52:19
Speaker 1: we must have spent three years working on this issue about,
52:23
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I should just cut off my family origin. And,
52:28
Speaker 1: you know, this patient was not going to do it,
52:32
Speaker 1: was going to do it, wasn't going to do it,
52:33
Speaker 1: wasn't going to do it, you know. But what was
52:35
Speaker 1: interesting is that even though the conclusion was that the
52:39
Speaker 1: patient drew themselves, was, you know, was that finally that
52:43
Speaker 1: this had to be done. I didn't have any, you know,
52:46
Speaker 1: any qualifications that the work hadn't been done yet. I mean,
52:50
Speaker 1: this was, and that meant working with dreams and it
52:53
Speaker 1: meant actual experiences and, you know, what did that feel
52:56
Speaker 1: like and what were the values at stake? All of
52:58
Speaker 1: those kinds of things were done. Then I didn't have
53:00
Speaker 1: any issue with that being the conclusion, even though inside
53:03
Speaker 1: I was wondering whether that was the right thing to do.
53:05
Speaker 1: I think in the long term it was, but at
53:07
Speaker 1: the time I wasn't sure. But what I was sure
53:10
Speaker 1: of is that the inner work had been done and
53:11
Speaker 1: that was the crucial thing.
53:12
Speaker 2: There'd been a process, yeah. Yeah, and I think, you know,
53:17
Speaker 2: I just want to hammer home this other little distinction
53:21
Speaker 2: I was trying to make too. I think you both
53:23
Speaker 2: really outlined the importance of doing that inner work and
53:27
Speaker 2: to wonder, is this kind of ego trip for me
53:30
Speaker 2: or is it actually adaptive? Does it just feel good
53:34
Speaker 2: or is it adaptive? Because some things feel good, you know,
53:38
Speaker 2: like to get really outraged and indignant, but not necessarily adaptive.
53:43
Speaker 2: So we can even, you know, when we're trying to
53:45
Speaker 2: make a decision for ourselves, we can even say, does
53:48
Speaker 2: this further my adaptation? Is this going to make it
53:52
Speaker 2: easier to love or work?
53:54
Speaker 1: That's right. And am I expanding in the process? What
53:57
Speaker 1: bears witness is the psychic expansion that has come from that.
54:00
Speaker 1: Do I feel a larger person? Am I experiencing myself
54:03
Speaker 1: as a larger person from having done that?
54:05
Speaker 2: Jim Hollis says, if you're making a decision, ask yourself,
54:08
Speaker 2: will it make my life larger or smaller? That's an
54:12
Speaker 2: interesting decision.
54:13
Speaker 3: Yeah.
54:13
Speaker 2: So, Deb, I know you wanted to come back to
54:16
Speaker 2: death anxiety. What were you curious about with that?
54:19
Speaker 3: Well, when I read about Lange's, as you referenced, John,
54:27
Speaker 3: on Wikipedia, I found it interesting to try to relate
54:33
Speaker 3: that to the existential psychologists. We're, you know, in a
54:39
Speaker 3: really broad brush understanding way, feel free to edit this,
54:45
Speaker 3: that behind a lot of our anxiety as humans, and
54:48
Speaker 3: we do have anxiety, is the fact that we know
54:54
Speaker 3: we are going to die. We're mortal. And we don't
54:59
Speaker 3: have control over that. And we don't really know what
55:02
Speaker 3: happens after it. We haven't chosen it. Nobody gave me
55:07
Speaker 3: a say in this. And that that wasn't part and
55:11
Speaker 3: parcel of Lange's concept of adaptation.
55:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, later in his career, yeah.
55:20
Speaker 3: Okay, so say what you will.
55:25
Speaker 2: Okay.
55:26
Speaker 1: Very good.
55:29
Speaker 3: Anything at all.
55:30
Speaker 1: You give death over to me. I see what's going
55:32
Speaker 1: on here. Okay. So So it's an interesting point with
55:40
Speaker 1: Lange's because he had come to this so-called adaptive paradigm
55:44
Speaker 1: fairly early in his life as an analyst. But when
55:47
Speaker 1: it came to the 1990s, later on in his life,
55:52
Speaker 1: he begins to think that it isn't really sexual issues
55:57
Speaker 1: as much as classical Freudian training had said. That's kind
56:00
Speaker 1: of at the root of everything. What he came to
56:02
Speaker 1: believe is that traumas, and particularly death-related traumas, where People
56:07
Speaker 1: have felt like they were going to die or they
56:09
Speaker 1: witnessed death or they felt like they killed, not necessarily
56:12
Speaker 1: literally killing, but that they had killed someone. He would
56:15
Speaker 1: find these coming up frequently in the derivative communications that
56:18
Speaker 1: were coming up. And so as time went on, he
56:22
Speaker 1: more and more came to the conclusion that various forms
56:25
Speaker 1: of death anxiety are actually at the root of most
56:28
Speaker 1: psychic conflict. As you bring up the existentialist, Ernest Becker
56:33
Speaker 1: was one of the people he'd read at that time.
56:35
Speaker 1: And that certainly influenced him in this. But he also found, and,
56:39
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know about his assessment. I only
56:43
Speaker 1: know how he experienced it. When he went into the
56:45
Speaker 1: psychoanalytic literature, he found precious little on death, which actually
56:51
Speaker 1: confirmed his belief that actually death denial is often at
56:54
Speaker 1: the root of psychic conflict. And so he.
56:59
Speaker 1: He started changing his practice and he lost all of
57:02
Speaker 1: his patience at one point in the mid-90s. And in
57:07
Speaker 1: his experience, his colleagues didn't really help him by referring
57:10
Speaker 1: to any. And probably from their standpoint as well, you know,
57:16
Speaker 1: you're the guy who's been so arrogant and aggressive and
57:19
Speaker 1: so forth, so I'm not going to help you, you know.
57:21
Speaker 1: Could be that. Anyway, what he felt was that it
57:25
Speaker 1: was this insight into the importance of death anxiety was
57:27
Speaker 1: at the core of that. I don't know if that's
57:30
Speaker 1: true or not, but what he is trying to say
57:32
Speaker 1: is two things here. One is that what you said, Deb,
57:36
Speaker 1: is that yes, we all know about death, but he
57:38
Speaker 1: thinks we're also deeply in denial about it. And if
57:41
Speaker 1: we weren't, actually, we probably couldn't function at all. But secondly,
57:46
Speaker 1: he thinks that, he actually would say this, he would
57:49
Speaker 1: say that the human species is a failure at evolution.
57:54
Speaker 1: Because the people who succeed by contemporary standards of success
58:00
Speaker 1: are usually people who are suffering from more death denial
58:03
Speaker 1: than others. Because one of the things that comes is
58:07
Speaker 1: that when you're in death denial, you take much bigger risks.
58:10
Speaker 1: And so the type of death denial often associates with
58:14
Speaker 1: people with stronger narcissism and other sorts of conditions and
58:17
Speaker 1: so forth. So his conclusion was that generally people get
58:21
Speaker 1: into high levels of leadership positions because they actually are
58:26
Speaker 1: pathologically in denial of death.
58:28
Speaker 2: But is it pathological if it's adaptive?
58:33
Speaker 1: Right. And so the extent of adaptation is what's crucial
58:36
Speaker 1: with death anxiety. And that was really the point he
58:38
Speaker 1: was driving at. But when he died, he had a manuscript,
58:41
Speaker 1: which he told me about several times, but he died
58:43
Speaker 1: before he finished it, where he did an analysis of
58:46
Speaker 1: the presidents of the United States and trying to show
58:48
Speaker 1: how all of their big decisions, especially their bad decisions,
58:53
Speaker 1: And then trace that biographically to certain experiences of death
58:57
Speaker 1: anxiety in their lives that had probably come to the
59:00
Speaker 1: surface in it. So unfortunately, we'll never have that manuscript
59:04
Speaker 1: because he was the only one who had the code
59:06
Speaker 1: to his computer. So we'll never have that manuscript. And
59:10
Speaker 1: whereas some of the things he was working on, he'd
59:12
Speaker 1: sent me drafts of ahead of time, but he never
59:15
Speaker 1: sent me that one. That was his treasure. And unfortunately,
59:18
Speaker 1: he passed away before that was ever came out in
59:22
Speaker 1: any version of it. But you can see then, so
59:25
Speaker 1: what he's driving at is Many of these problems around
59:27
Speaker 1: death anxiety are really problems of death denial and how
59:31
Speaker 1: denial can become so rigid. And it's not, like you're saying, Lisa,
59:35
Speaker 1: there's something adaptive about being in denial to some extent. Otherwise,
59:39
Speaker 1: we wouldn't get in a car. I mean, there's nothing
59:41
Speaker 1: we would do. But the question is whether there can
59:43
Speaker 1: be such a pathological level of denial that then people
59:48
Speaker 1: just take unnecessary or stupid risks, and especially risks with
59:51
Speaker 1: other people's lives, for example. That often drives people in
59:55
Speaker 1: leadership positions. That would be the question, maybe.
59:58
Speaker 3: You mentioned Ernest Becker, who wrote a book called Denial
1:00:02
Speaker 3: of Death. We'll put it in the show notes. It
1:00:05
Speaker 3: expands on the ways in which the author... assumes that
1:00:12
Speaker 3: a lot of coping mechanisms and things such as you've mentioned,
1:00:17
Speaker 3: a certain kind of denial, at the root of it
1:00:21
Speaker 3: is the fear of death of not being.
1:00:23
Speaker 1: Yes.
1:00:26
Speaker 3: And how does this comport for you as you've thought
1:00:32
Speaker 3: about all of this in terms of adaptation? Is it
1:00:39
Speaker 3: kind of a major taproot here? in the process of
1:00:44
Speaker 3: adaptation and how does it serve us? Just as you said,
1:00:48
Speaker 3: you know, we have to get in the car and
1:00:52
Speaker 3: rather than avoid it, how does it serve us and
1:00:56
Speaker 3: how does it not? And is it a core issue
1:01:01
Speaker 3: in your view?
1:01:02
Speaker 1: Well, I've come to see more of what he's saying.
1:01:05
Speaker 1: I don't think I have a definitive statement on that,
1:01:08
Speaker 1: you know, what you're asking. But I would say that
1:01:10
Speaker 1: that You know, it's one of these things that once
1:01:13
Speaker 1: you see it, you see it, and then it doesn't
1:01:15
Speaker 1: go away. Now, just to be clear with Lange's particular
1:01:20
Speaker 1: articulation of this, he distinguished three different types of death anxiety.
1:01:26
Speaker 1: So he would go along with Becker with this idea
1:01:29
Speaker 1: of existential death anxiety, and that's kind of always lurking
1:01:33
Speaker 1: there and so forth. But he also distinguished two other ones,
1:01:36
Speaker 1: which he chooses poor terminology for. He usually did. He
1:01:39
Speaker 1: usually had either very inexpressive terminology or ones that would
1:01:43
Speaker 1: lead to confusion. So in this case, that leads to confusion.
1:01:46
Speaker 1: So one he called predator death anxiety, death anxiety we
1:01:50
Speaker 1: have when we feel like we have been a predator
1:01:52
Speaker 1: towards someone. And the other he inaptly called predatory death anxiety,
1:01:57
Speaker 1: which is the one of being a victim in some
1:02:00
Speaker 1: way of someone else's predating us and so so those
1:02:06
Speaker 1: terms easily get confused he really should have chosen some
1:02:09
Speaker 1: other language but he's but you can see why he's
1:02:12
Speaker 1: he's doing that because he thinks there are many cases
1:02:14
Speaker 1: where yes existential death anxiety is there but this person
1:02:18
Speaker 1: is suffering because they went ahead and you know uh
1:02:23
Speaker 1: destroyed somebody's career and may have felt like you know
1:02:27
Speaker 1: that was a thing to do at the time but
1:02:29
Speaker 1: now they have extraordinary unconscious guilt And you can see
1:02:34
Speaker 1: it coming through in the way in which they're masochistically
1:02:36
Speaker 1: punishing themselves. Or in the case of someone who has
1:02:39
Speaker 1: predatory death anxiety, usually that arises from a caregiver predating
1:02:44
Speaker 1: them in some way. And so they have this tension between,
1:02:49
Speaker 1: on the one hand, wanting to protect and defend this
1:02:52
Speaker 1: person because that's a caregiver, and on the other hand,
1:02:54
Speaker 1: in that respect, being in denial. And on the other hand,
1:02:57
Speaker 1: having to honestly say, this isn't how a caregiver should
1:03:00
Speaker 1: have treated me. And so Those are two further forms
1:03:04
Speaker 1: of death anxiety that he thinks beyond the existential, which
1:03:07
Speaker 1: are also often at work. And in a case like that,
1:03:10
Speaker 1: you know, a person oftentimes doesn't know how to manage
1:03:12
Speaker 1: a boss, you know, or somebody who's in a paternal
1:03:16
Speaker 1: or caregiver-like situation later on. So when he's talking about
1:03:21
Speaker 1: death anxiety, he's subtle enough to let it be metaphorical.
1:03:25
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily mean it's actual death as in the
1:03:27
Speaker 1: case of existential death anxiety. But the point is that
1:03:30
Speaker 1: the trauma feels like death. And so does that affect adaptation? Well,
1:03:36
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, once you go from the strictly literal
1:03:41
Speaker 1: death to the various death-like experiences that we have, you
1:03:44
Speaker 1: can see, of course, that it is obviously a strong
1:03:47
Speaker 1: source of psychic conflict. And it becomes particularly important in
1:03:52
Speaker 1: Lange's mind also, especially when we come to that thing that,
1:03:54
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, we call termination in psychotherapy. And he, of course,
1:04:02
Speaker 1: thought that anytime that you have a strong frame in psychotherapy,
1:04:07
Speaker 1: that always means the feeling of threat pertaining to those
1:04:11
Speaker 1: death anxieties, particularly to the person who has predatory death anxiety,
1:04:14
Speaker 1: because now they're supposed to just be private and anonymous
1:04:18
Speaker 1: with you, but then they have to trust you, you know,
1:04:20
Speaker 1: and then they're raising certain questions. And anything that's a
1:04:23
Speaker 1: strong frame frame will always be one where one can
1:04:27
Speaker 1: feel limits and strong feelings of limits are always death anxiety,
1:04:31
Speaker 1: thanks to some extent. It doesn't mean that's all that
1:04:33
Speaker 1: they are, strong feelings. But certainly the termination of psychotherapy,
1:04:37
Speaker 1: and I don't know for you, but I know when
1:04:40
Speaker 1: I worked as the coordinator in the Pittsburgh program, we
1:04:42
Speaker 1: would often talk about termination, the difficulties of termination. I
1:04:46
Speaker 1: do think he has a point. Termination is a word
1:04:48
Speaker 1: we use for death. Termination is an ending, a very clear,
1:04:52
Speaker 1: clear ending. So in the end, you could say that
1:04:55
Speaker 1: Lange's use of death anxiety was able to be metaphorical.
1:05:00
Speaker 1: Anything that's a strong limit of some kind, he thinks
1:05:03
Speaker 1: at least resonates with death anxiety. And he does offer
1:05:07
Speaker 1: these kinds of differentiations. And I think once you see
1:05:09
Speaker 1: the different differentiations, I do think it's a crucial aspect
1:05:13
Speaker 1: of therapy in almost all cases. It doesn't mean it's
1:05:15
Speaker 1: the most important thing. And that's, I think Lange's had
1:05:18
Speaker 1: a tendency to think that what he sees in that
1:05:20
Speaker 1: moment is the most important thing. And then 10 years later,
1:05:23
Speaker 1: he's seeing something else and he's giving the same, you know,
1:05:25
Speaker 1: this is the most important thing. And so sometimes the
1:05:29
Speaker 1: kind of the witness of how much insight he's had
1:05:32
Speaker 1: to it makes him think that it's maybe, it's not
1:05:34
Speaker 1: that it's not important what he's seeing, but he sometimes
1:05:37
Speaker 1: loses context. So I don't know if that answers what
1:05:40
Speaker 1: you're getting at there, because I think you can definitely
1:05:42
Speaker 1: overstate death anxiety. And I think sometimes a more existential
1:05:46
Speaker 1: type of analysis will do that, I think. But once
1:05:49
Speaker 1: you understand it, it's not so much death per se
1:05:53
Speaker 1: it's anything that's a decisive limit or ending is where
1:05:57
Speaker 1: one has this you can begin to see he's on to.
1:05:59
Speaker 2: Something archetypally it's saturn isn't it yes it.
1:06:03
Speaker 1: Is exactly exactly and he's uh and he's also father
1:06:07
Speaker 1: time and he's also carrying a scythe so yeah exactly.
1:06:10
Speaker 3: So i have a personal question and that is you
1:06:14
Speaker 3: know it's i'm curious about your relationship with not only
1:06:21
Speaker 3: with Lange himself as a person, but his theories of,
1:06:28
Speaker 3: you know, when there are so many other theorists who
1:06:32
Speaker 3: have been major contributors to psychological and psychoanalytic thinking of
1:06:39
Speaker 3: how and when and why Lange's instead of Bion or
1:06:46
Speaker 3: Kohut or any number of Not to mention Jung.
1:06:52
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, Jung, yeah. It's a good question, and so
1:06:59
Speaker 1: I'd have to say a little something about training, and
1:07:03
Speaker 1: it'll be good for your listeners, because what could be
1:07:04
Speaker 1: more interesting than me talking about me? So we'll talk
1:07:07
Speaker 1: a little bit about trying.
1:07:09
Speaker 3: To raise your rating. It's all about your adaptation, right?
1:07:13
Speaker 1: That's right, exactly. But coming as a philosophy professor into
1:07:19
Speaker 1: into clinical training as a counselor and then into psychoanalysis,
1:07:24
Speaker 1: psychoanalytic training. I didn't have a clinical background. Now, as
1:07:28
Speaker 1: you know, Jung is not keen on things like clinical technique.
1:07:32
Speaker 1: And I think his resistance to that was partially a
1:07:36
Speaker 1: little bit of edible nose thumbing at Freud in the
1:07:39
Speaker 1: Freudian tradition where they emphasize so much on technique. And
1:07:43
Speaker 1: the irony here is that because he didn't emphasize clinical technique,
1:07:46
Speaker 1: we mostly borrow technique from the Freudians. Yeah, that's true.
1:07:52
Speaker 1: But as someone without much of a clinical background, who
1:07:55
Speaker 1: was only gaining a clinical background when I went into training,
1:07:58
Speaker 1: to try to take the complexity of Jung and bring
1:08:02
Speaker 1: it into clinical settings when I'm still learning how to
1:08:04
Speaker 1: be a clinician was a real trial. And I should
1:08:07
Speaker 1: say that given my philosophical background and given that German
1:08:10
Speaker 1: language philosophy was one of my areas of interest, reading
1:08:15
Speaker 1: Jung's theory was easy for me. So the theory was... Okay.
1:08:21
Speaker 1: That was easy to the point that I said, yeah,
1:08:22
Speaker 1: I don't think that's right, but I see why that's right.
1:08:25
Speaker 1: I had my natural critical thinking that I had as
1:08:28
Speaker 1: a philosopher. Whereas most clinicians who go into the Jungian world,
1:08:31
Speaker 1: they have the problem with the theory. That was the
1:08:34
Speaker 1: easy part for me. The hard part was to say,
1:08:36
Speaker 1: how do I take all of that in a very
1:08:37
Speaker 1: concrete way that's not too programmatic, because that was what
1:08:40
Speaker 1: Jung's reaction against clinical technique was and all of that.
1:08:44
Speaker 1: How can I do that? It just so happened that
1:08:47
Speaker 1: my counseling supervisor, forever grateful for, Randy Hudeman. Randy, he
1:08:54
Speaker 1: had a doctorate in psychology of religion, and he also
1:08:57
Speaker 1: was a marriage and family therapist and a counselor. And
1:09:02
Speaker 1: I used his office sometimes when I'd go into the
1:09:06
Speaker 1: agency where I was doing my first clinical work. And
1:09:09
Speaker 1: I saw all these books by Robert Langs. And he
1:09:11
Speaker 1: was also my supervisor. And so, you know, I was saying,
1:09:14
Speaker 1: can I ask you, when I use this, I noticed
1:09:16
Speaker 1: that you've got all these books on this. Who is
1:09:17
Speaker 1: this Robert? He said, what? You've never heard of Robert Langs? Okay,
1:09:20
Speaker 1: start here. When you're using the office, you don't have
1:09:21
Speaker 1: somebody start here and start reading it. And because it's
1:09:25
Speaker 1: very relevant to what we were just talking about, what
1:09:27
Speaker 1: he was just talking about was the idea of the
1:09:29
Speaker 1: communicative fields, which, you know, which Goodhart also brought into
1:09:33
Speaker 1: Jungian approach, right? And so... So what happened then is
1:09:38
Speaker 1: that the books were really important for me because Lange
1:09:42
Speaker 1: is so technique-oriented that I could see that it was
1:09:45
Speaker 1: excessive in my view to that. So, you know, and
1:09:48
Speaker 1: Jung would be turning over in his grave. But it
1:09:51
Speaker 1: immediately put me in a situation where I'm trying to say, well,
1:09:53
Speaker 1: how do I relate what's clearly good technique within a
1:09:56
Speaker 1: Freudian framework, but how would I use that as a Jungian?
1:10:00
Speaker 1: And so right from the beginning, then I'm forced to say,
1:10:02
Speaker 1: this is helping me, but it's also challenging me. new adaptation, right?
1:10:08
Speaker 1: And to see how I can do that. So at
1:10:10
Speaker 1: the final chapter of the book is actually on how
1:10:13
Speaker 1: to bring, how to draw clinical principles of technique from Lange's,
1:10:18
Speaker 1: but put them in a Jungian context by sifting through
1:10:21
Speaker 1: the things that I think are problematic in Lange's. But
1:10:24
Speaker 1: I think that also Jung needs some correction in this
1:10:27
Speaker 1: area because I think a lack of specific clinical technique
1:10:30
Speaker 1: in a Jungian thing was actually a mistake. It's one
1:10:33
Speaker 1: of those things where You know, when I'm dealing with,
1:10:37
Speaker 1: like I'm doing some research and thinking about the feeling function, well,
1:10:40
Speaker 1: there's very specific ways of working with the feeling function,
1:10:42
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't know that from Jung because he just
1:10:45
Speaker 1: wouldn't talk about technique. But if you think about feeling
1:10:49
Speaker 1: and value as being connected, then you can begin to say, well, okay, well,
1:10:53
Speaker 1: the clarification of values is a particular way of helping
1:10:56
Speaker 1: someone with their feeling function, I bet. Or this question
1:11:00
Speaker 1: of value hierarchies I was talking about. That has a
1:11:02
Speaker 1: lot to do. Because when people are in the midst
1:11:04
Speaker 1: of feeling, they're not necessarily thinking about what their feeling
1:11:06
Speaker 1: is about. The values that are at stake. So there's
1:11:10
Speaker 1: an implicit technique there. But that was never worked through.
1:11:15
Speaker 1: So there's a set of synchronicities, accidents, whatever you want
1:11:18
Speaker 1: to call them. That is that I happen to be
1:11:20
Speaker 1: in that office and seeing those books. But it turned
1:11:23
Speaker 1: out to be something I very much needed so that
1:11:24
Speaker 1: right from the start, I was doing this. And then
1:11:27
Speaker 1: in the training, this is, of course, you know, pre-propagandic training.
1:11:30
Speaker 1: But in that training, when we're reading on psychic energy,
1:11:33
Speaker 1: and I see adaptation is the big thing, and then
1:11:35
Speaker 1: I've been reading this dude who always talks about the
1:11:37
Speaker 1: adaptive paradigm. That's how I got into it. And I
1:11:41
Speaker 1: even sent him an email that was part question and part,
1:11:45
Speaker 1: you know, fan mail. As I was assuming I'd never
1:11:49
Speaker 1: hear from him, and 25 minutes later, he was writing
1:11:51
Speaker 1: to me. Because nobody was reading him. And he was,
1:11:54
Speaker 1: I mean, he's straightforward about that. He wrote 47 books
1:11:58
Speaker 1: or wrote or edited 47 books. But the last half
1:12:01
Speaker 1: of his career, they weren't selling because when he went
1:12:05
Speaker 1: into this other view, this death anxiety view, and he
1:12:07
Speaker 1: kind of lost his confidence and was trying to articulate that.
1:12:10
Speaker 1: He never built up what he had as a huge
1:12:12
Speaker 1: career earlier on. So I think he was excited to
1:12:15
Speaker 1: have some, even a Jungian candidate, Talking about it. And
1:12:20
Speaker 1: when I would tell him about the thesis I was
1:12:22
Speaker 1: going to write, because I was already planning this thesis,
1:12:24
Speaker 1: which became the book, he didn't like anything I said
1:12:26
Speaker 1: about Jung. He only wanted me to write on him.
1:12:28
Speaker 1: And I said, well, you know, I got these kinds of,
1:12:30
Speaker 1: and I wanted to hear what he said. I don't
1:12:32
Speaker 1: really think that makes sense. So, and then he passed
1:12:34
Speaker 1: away in 2014.
1:12:34
Speaker 2: Sorry. It would be interesting sometime maybe to do an
1:12:44
Speaker 2: episode on technique and psychoanalysis, because I think that's a
1:12:48
Speaker 2: whole big issue.
1:12:49
Speaker 1: It's true. Yeah, yeah.
1:12:50
Speaker 2: But I love that story. So, yeah, I think it's
1:12:54
Speaker 2: interesting to hear you talk about you, John. Yeah.
1:12:57
Speaker 1: So your ratings will go up now, see?
1:12:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. We're going to get a lot more downloads.
1:13:04
Speaker 2: Before we move on to a dream, I just want
1:13:07
Speaker 2: to sort of bring us back to adaptation and kind
1:13:10
Speaker 2: of differentiate it a little bit from, From the good,
1:13:14
Speaker 2: the dynamic definition of adaptation versus the sort of, you know,
1:13:18
Speaker 2: the more negative one. With this just banger of a
1:13:21
Speaker 2: quote from Jung, it's in volume six, paragraph 760. He says,
1:13:28
Speaker 2: Under no circumstances can individuation be the sole aim of
1:13:32
Speaker 2: psychological education. Before it can be taken as a goal,
1:13:36
Speaker 2: the educational aim of adaptation to the necessary minimum of
1:13:41
Speaker 2: collective norms must first be attained. So we have to
1:13:44
Speaker 2: adapt first and then we can individuate. And then here's
1:13:47
Speaker 2: this great metaphor. If a plant is to unfold its
1:13:51
Speaker 2: specific nature to the full, it must first be able
1:13:55
Speaker 2: to grow in the soil in which it is planted.
1:14:00
Speaker 2: Very nice.
1:14:02
Speaker 1: So I love that.
1:14:02
Speaker 2: I think it's very, very clear.
1:14:04
Speaker 1: And very, very relevant to the idea of the environmental
1:14:06
Speaker 1: factor there. Yes. Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah.
1:14:10
Speaker 2: Today's dreamer is a 36-year-old man who works as a
1:14:14
Speaker 2: filmmaker and And he has entitled his dream, The Father
1:14:32
Speaker 2: and the Hill. And here's the dream. I am on
1:14:37
Speaker 2: a walk with my dad through my childhood neighborhood, the
1:14:40
Speaker 2: kind we usually do in the evenings when I visit
1:14:43
Speaker 2: back home. We turn the corner at the end of
1:14:46
Speaker 2: our block and suddenly we are on a pastoral path.
1:14:50
Speaker 2: I'm amazed. I asked my dad if this park has
1:14:54
Speaker 2: always been close to our house and my father is like,
1:14:57
Speaker 2: of course. We hike the grassy path, which quickly turns
1:15:02
Speaker 2: into an extraordinarily steep, almost 98-degree hill. My dad climbs
1:15:08
Speaker 2: it with ease, despite his age, teasing me almost, saying
1:15:11
Speaker 2: contradictory stuff like, we don't have to climb it. I
1:15:15
Speaker 2: move on all fours, gripping, struggling to make progress, pressing
1:15:18
Speaker 2: up to the dirt so as not to fall. I
1:15:21
Speaker 2: make progress and get close to the top. The final
1:15:24
Speaker 2: stretch is the hardest. I then worry about the problem
1:15:28
Speaker 2: that will inevitably follow when I do reach the top.
1:15:32
Speaker 2: How will we get down? I ask my father, since
1:15:35
Speaker 2: he's at the top now, and he teases that we
1:15:38
Speaker 2: won't be able to. He then dives face first, almost
1:15:42
Speaker 2: like a ski jumper, off the top of the hill,
1:15:45
Speaker 2: glides close by the side of the hill until he
1:15:48
Speaker 2: reaches the bottom, sliding onto the dirt unharmed in his flight.
1:15:54
Speaker 2: I'm amazed. and unsure of my ability to do the same.
1:15:59
Speaker 2: For context, life context, very important, I've just signed a
1:16:04
Speaker 2: new lease in the city I live in after deciding
1:16:07
Speaker 2: not to move coasts. I still feel unsure if that
1:16:11
Speaker 2: was the best decision. I've also recently made a film
1:16:14
Speaker 2: that was met with some early success on the film
1:16:17
Speaker 2: festival circuit, but just this week, after visiting home for
1:16:21
Speaker 2: a brief vacation, I was met by a string of
1:16:24
Speaker 2: rejections from grants, other festivals, and premier partners that have
1:16:28
Speaker 2: hit me hard. Main feelings in the dream were wonderment
1:16:32
Speaker 2: at the appearance of the path and anxiety during the climb.
1:16:37
Speaker 2: And for some associations, he says, I love visiting home.
1:16:42
Speaker 2: I live geographically far from it, but when I can visit,
1:16:45
Speaker 2: I'm always creatively enlivened. However, my love for this is
1:16:51
Speaker 2: complicated and contrasted sharply by my relationship with my parents.
1:16:56
Speaker 2: I've left the religion of my family, Mormonism, and that
1:17:00
Speaker 2: is a point of tension that has been difficult to resolve,
1:17:03
Speaker 2: especially since my father has climbed the ladder of Mormon
1:17:07
Speaker 2: leadership pretty far up. He's retired now, aging, and so
1:17:12
Speaker 2: these evening walks we do are feeling more and more
1:17:14
Speaker 2: precious each visit back. What struck me about my visit
1:17:18
Speaker 2: home recently is how he appears quite lonely, despite material
1:17:22
Speaker 2: wealth and religious status. So, a lot in this dream,
1:17:29
Speaker 2: I think.
1:17:30
Speaker 1: Yeah. It strikes me right from the start that, I
1:17:34
Speaker 1: guess this is a more general point, is that I
1:17:36
Speaker 1: often find with patients, especially patients about this age, that
1:17:40
Speaker 1: when they dream of their parents or the place where
1:17:43
Speaker 1: they came from, It often seems to be a symbol
1:17:46
Speaker 1: of entering into an older psychology or a previous psychology.
1:17:52
Speaker 1: And here I wonder if there is a movement like that,
1:17:56
Speaker 1: and it's entering very much into his father's world because
1:17:59
Speaker 1: he didn't even know this was here. I'm not sure
1:18:02
Speaker 1: what this is, but it is an interesting question. And
1:18:05
Speaker 1: I usually feel like that movement back is not a
1:18:08
Speaker 1: regression in the negative sense, but it's that there's still
1:18:11
Speaker 1: some work that has to be done around it. So
1:18:13
Speaker 1: you said, what happens?
1:18:16
Speaker 2: One of the things I noticed, a couple, yeah, I mean,
1:18:20
Speaker 2: I think it was a very layered dream. So I'm
1:18:22
Speaker 2: just going to throw a few things out. First of all,
1:18:24
Speaker 2: I thought the choice of the word pastoral was interesting.
1:18:28
Speaker 3: Give me two.
1:18:29
Speaker 2: Were you thinking that too, Doc? You know, of course,
1:18:31
Speaker 2: it has a double meaning. Pastor and pastoral.
1:18:34
Speaker 1: Right.
1:18:34
Speaker 2: And then I noticed that he capitalized father. And so,
1:18:40
Speaker 2: you know, our audience wouldn't know this, but where does
1:18:44
Speaker 2: he do it?
1:18:44
Speaker 1: He....
1:18:49
Speaker 2: Says, yeah, I asked my dad if this park has
1:18:52
Speaker 2: always been close to our house. And my father is like,
1:18:55
Speaker 2: of course, and father is capitalized, which of course, one
1:18:59
Speaker 2: would capitalize that word if one were using it in
1:19:01
Speaker 2: the religious context referring to God the Father. So there's
1:19:06
Speaker 2: something here, I think, not surprisingly about religion. And maybe
1:19:12
Speaker 2: a kind of, you know, complex around that.
1:19:15
Speaker 1: There's an adaptive symbol in there. The father can just
1:19:18
Speaker 1: kind of move right up that hill, and he's having
1:19:20
Speaker 1: a hard time with it. And I wonder if it
1:19:23
Speaker 1: is precisely that religious conflict there that's being expressed, is
1:19:26
Speaker 1: that he's trying to conform enough, at least, to do
1:19:30
Speaker 1: what his father does, but he can't do it.
1:19:33
Speaker 2: I noticed that he said his father had climbed the
1:19:35
Speaker 2: religious ladder of Mormonism. Yeah, like he climbed the mountain. Right,
1:19:39
Speaker 2: like he climbed the mountain.
1:19:41
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:19:42
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:19:42
Speaker 2: I mean, I think, you know, John, to your point
1:19:44
Speaker 2: about kind of this age of life and actually, you know,
1:19:47
Speaker 2: sort of related to the conversation we've been having, you know,
1:19:50
Speaker 2: part of adapting to outer life is sort of staking
1:19:54
Speaker 2: out your field and then doing your best to excel
1:19:58
Speaker 2: and flourish in that field. And in a certain sense,
1:20:01
Speaker 2: the father has done that in an outer world way.
1:20:03
Speaker 2: He has kind of climbed to the top of the
1:20:06
Speaker 2: religious hierarchy. And at this particular moment, right at this
1:20:10
Speaker 2: you know, he's 36. He's supposed to be making his
1:20:13
Speaker 2: way in the world and establishing himself. At the particular moment,
1:20:17
Speaker 2: he has this dream. He's had some recent failures, and
1:20:20
Speaker 2: perhaps he's feeling some self-doubt, which he feels in the dream, too.
1:20:24
Speaker 2: Will I be able to do what my father has done?
1:20:26
Speaker 3: I think the dream presents the conflict in a lot
1:20:34
Speaker 3: of ways. Now, of course, I can't know for this person,
1:20:38
Speaker 3: but Here's what I'm making of what's in the dream
1:20:42
Speaker 3: and his association to it. Back in the realm, in
1:20:46
Speaker 3: a sense of earlier time in life, he's in his
1:20:49
Speaker 3: childhood neighborhood. So the dream right at the outset says
1:20:55
Speaker 3: we're back in an earlier time of life. He associates
1:21:02
Speaker 3: to all this conflict about Mormonism, and he's left it.
1:21:07
Speaker 3: But when He's home. He says, I'm always creatively enlivened.
1:21:14
Speaker 2: That's interesting.
1:21:15
Speaker 1: Yes.
1:21:16
Speaker 3: So that kind of points to the future. So we
1:21:19
Speaker 3: have the past and then we have inspiration for what
1:21:23
Speaker 3: can I do next? I have some new ideas. I
1:21:25
Speaker 3: have new energy when I'm back there. And he loves
1:21:31
Speaker 3: his parents.
1:21:32
Speaker 1: Yes.
1:21:33
Speaker 3: But they have a very, very significant conflict around value
1:21:40
Speaker 3: of how do we relate to the transcendent, to the divine,
1:21:45
Speaker 3: to the sacred. And here would be, you know, it's
1:21:50
Speaker 3: a perfect dream for this episode of what is the
1:21:54
Speaker 3: task here of adaptation. And here's where you know, yet
1:22:03
Speaker 3: another example of why dreams are so important. It's a
1:22:08
Speaker 3: dream maker is saying, please deal with this. And then
1:22:14
Speaker 3: we have the pro and con with father who can
1:22:18
Speaker 3: climb this mountain, you know, like the proverbial gazelle and
1:22:24
Speaker 3: fly through the air and make a pinpoint landing. But
1:22:30
Speaker 3: he perceives his father at this point as appearing quite lonely.
1:22:38
Speaker 3: And we have his calling to be the filmmaker. It
1:22:41
Speaker 3: was originally met with success and a positive reception and
1:22:46
Speaker 3: then not. So here are a number of areas to
1:22:53
Speaker 3: be explored and a call. That's the good part about adaptation.
1:23:01
Speaker 3: something is calling us. As tough as it can be
1:23:04
Speaker 3: to deal with, as painful as it can be, something
1:23:08
Speaker 3: is saying, come on, grow into this series of dilemmas.
1:23:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's lovely. Yeah. And that is, that does seem
1:23:17
Speaker 1: to me also what was going on in the dream
1:23:19
Speaker 1: because he, the point is he's got to climb his
1:23:22
Speaker 1: own mountains. He's not going to climb his father's mountain.
1:23:25
Speaker 1: His father's going to be doing that. But, He's having
1:23:28
Speaker 1: a hard time because I think it's because it's not
1:23:31
Speaker 1: his mountain. But he still has to be climbing. He's
1:23:35
Speaker 1: just on the wrong mountain there. It's probably not what
1:23:38
Speaker 1: he's supposed to be getting from this. And You know,
1:23:41
Speaker 1: this point about the religious impulse is probably pretty important because,
1:23:44
Speaker 1: you know, it's one thing to give up your Mormonism,
1:23:47
Speaker 1: but you don't just say, okay, well, I guess I'll
1:23:49
Speaker 1: do this instead. I mean, you know, when you're deeply
1:23:52
Speaker 1: engaged in a religious tradition like that, no matter what
1:23:55
Speaker 1: your mental decisions are, your emotional and instinctual and, you know,
1:23:59
Speaker 1: kind of deeper level reactions, it takes a long time to...
1:24:03
Speaker 1: you know, to reorient those. The intellectual part's the easy part.
1:24:07
Speaker 1: It's the rest of it that's a lot more difficult there.
1:24:09
Speaker 1: So I wonder if there's something in that as well.
1:24:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does seem like somehow visiting the world of
1:24:16
Speaker 2: his parents is enlivening. And yet I really like what
1:24:20
Speaker 2: you said, John, about how it's also the wrong mountain.
1:24:23
Speaker 2: Like there's something there for him, but I don't know
1:24:29
Speaker 2: that he quite knows how to make it his or something.
1:24:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:24:34
Speaker 2: There's a conflict.
1:24:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, and anxiety too, because it's a question of the
1:24:39
Speaker 1: how here. He doesn't understand how his father's doing it. Similarly,
1:24:43
Speaker 1: he doesn't know how he's going to make the next
1:24:45
Speaker 1: step here in his filmmaking. You know, a lot of
1:24:48
Speaker 1: times we resist adaptation because it's going to be a
1:24:51
Speaker 1: hit and miss process. And we'll step back and say, well,
1:24:54
Speaker 1: how am I going to do that? And step back
1:24:56
Speaker 1: until we find the perfect plan or something, where oftentimes
1:24:59
Speaker 1: our adaptation is a hit and miss. And For some reason, oftentimes,
1:25:04
Speaker 1: we don't think of it as, it's okay for me
1:25:07
Speaker 1: to make a mistake as long as I correct it.
1:25:10
Speaker 1: We're more worried about making the mistake. But oftentimes, you
1:25:13
Speaker 1: can't get it right until you make the mistake. So
1:25:16
Speaker 1: this question of how to do it, I think, is
1:25:17
Speaker 1: often one of the great inhibitions to adaptation.
1:25:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:25:23
Speaker 3: The poet David White says, your life is too big
1:25:28
Speaker 3: for what you can plan. So it's not about how
1:25:33
Speaker 3: and it's not about all operationalizing everything. And Lisa, I'm
1:25:39
Speaker 3: appreciating your point about how layered this dream is. And John,
1:25:44
Speaker 3: what you've said about he has his real world father
1:25:49
Speaker 3: and his God the Father, father complex. So it does
1:25:54
Speaker 3: have that layer in addition to others.
1:25:57
Speaker 1: Yes.
1:25:59
Speaker 2: And I want to say too that I don't know
1:26:01
Speaker 2: quite what to do with this, but the father is
1:26:03
Speaker 2: very skilled at getting up, at climbing. He's equally skilled
1:26:09
Speaker 2: at coming back down. And there's something about that. I'm
1:26:14
Speaker 2: not sure exactly what, but that seems like it wanted saying.
1:26:20
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
1:26:24
Speaker 2: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisjungielife.com.
1:26:28
Speaker 1: Thank you.