Latest / This Jungian Life Podcast / The Boundary Paradox: How Limits Create Freedom

Transcript

The Boundary Paradox: How Limits Create Freedom · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Today we're going to be talking about boundaries, and this
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: was a topic that was brought forward by you, one
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: of our listeners. If you have a podcast topic you
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: would like to suggest, please go to our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: And then go over to the podcast page and you'll
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: see there right at the top of the page, a
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: button where you can submit a podcast topic. We really
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: appreciate it. We read through them. So bring it on.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: And we love this one. So boundaries are a very
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: popular topic and kind of pop psychology on Instagram. Boundaries
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: help us navigate the world. They help us differentiate between
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: inner and outer boundaries. And it's not much of a
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: psychoanalytic concept in the way that it's used popularly. But
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I think we have a lot to say on this subject.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: We're going to be able to kind of bridge the
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: boundary between a more popular concept and a more kind
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: of depth psychological aspect of this.
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: I'm aware just to... do a little bit more on
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: setting the context that this is a term that really
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: came online, so to speak, in the 90s in sort
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: of the self-help section of a lot of the bookstores. And,
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: you know, as we thought about it and talked about
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: it amongst ourselves, it has tremendous depth and that the
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: collective psyche came up with a term that embraces so
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: many analytic, social, physical concepts, it's a great container for
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: an important and multifaceted process.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think when we start thinking about it psychoanalytically,
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: actually there's a real developmental use of the term or
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: of the concept. And Joseph, I wonder if I can
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: toss that to you. Sure.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: We could say that the entire idea of ego formation
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: has to do with the differentiation. And differentiation, in a sense,
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: takes something and puts it into parts. The first differentiation
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: for all of us as infants, newborn infants, is I'm
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: over here and mom is over there. Because when we
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: are neonates, when we're in utero, that line between the
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: baby and the mother is not there. They are one entity,
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: one organism. This is something that Jung was interested in,
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: and Eric Neumann, who was his colleague and collaborator and student,
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: wrote a book called The Origins of Consciousness, and he
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: brings in a certain mythic way to understand how the
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: ego has to differentiate from the instincts, has to put
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: a boundary between the original early instinctive world and the
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: emergence of a sense of being a discreet being. So
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: I'm over here, other people are over there. Or for
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: the infant lying in the crib, just moving their hands around,
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: they kind of slap into the side of the crib
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: and maybe they cry or they're startled. Those first sensory
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: experiences are the basis of boundaries. Oh, I'm over here
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: and something else is over there that I just smacked
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: my hand into it. Melanie Klein said the great growth
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: is when the infant discovers that the mother is a
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: separate entity that comes and goes by her own autonomous will.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: So the whole origin of who you are is a
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: progressive discovery of I am over here and everything else
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: is over there and that there is a line between
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: those things.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: And Joseph, if I can lean into that place right there,
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: because I think that idea that we are separate from people,
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: there's the experience of the baby learning that, but we
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: have to learn and relearn that as adults, that psychologically
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: we're separate. So you might find this in a marriage
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: where one of the partners just makes an assumption about
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: what the other partner is thinking or feeling. And really,
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: that's a conflation. That's a loss of boundaries. You've just
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: assumed that you were one in the same or that
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: you could read the other person's mind or that they
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: could read your mind. And so that recognition that the
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: other person is distinct from us and might be having
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: a completely separate experience than the one we're having and
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: from the one we're imagining they're having, you know, and
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Klein called that the achievement of the depressive position, which
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: is a weird kind of term, but it's such an
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: evocative idea that we have to, and I think it works.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: The reason I like that term is because To think
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: that you can understand another person is a kind of inflation.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: And when you realize, oh my God, I have no
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: idea what that person's thinking, it is a little depressing.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: You have to acknowledge your finiteness, your utter humanness, and
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: your fallibility.
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: And there is something in us that longs for what
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: Freud called the oceanic feeling that we presumably had in utero,
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: where all is one, all is connected, a wonderful sort
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: of feeling of unity that we then have to spend
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: our entire lives trying to find within ourselves. the union
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: of the opposites, of a coming together where the difference
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: between opposing forces is maintained, and at the same time, paradoxically,
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: there's a connection. And so we work that boundary between
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: thee and me, you know, basically forever. And I love
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: your reference to discovering it all over again in a marriage.
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: And I just remember all these little things as not
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: only a newlywed, but probably for years, that I cooked
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: the kinds of food and I prepared them in the
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: way that I grew up with. And my mother always
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: put butter on vegetables. And I remember my husband saying,
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: what are you doing? And I remember it because we
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: had a spat about it. This is my domain. I'm
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: cooking the food. I prepare it the way I think
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: it should be prepared. He thinks it should be prepared
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: the way his mother did it. How are we going
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: to negotiate that? So there are huge boundaries that we
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: strive to negotiate. And in our process of differentiation, and
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: then there's the inner boundary. That depth psychology and Jungian
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: theory and analysis are primarily concerned with between the ego
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: and the unconscious. What is it in me? Where are
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: those boundaries? And how do I negotiate and navigate them?
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: And before we move there, I just want to say
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: this idea of, you know, about where do I begin
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: and you end that can happen again and again in our,
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: all of our relationships. And it can certainly happen in
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: the consulting room. So what I can be very aware
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: of sometimes is thinking to myself, how many selves are
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: in the consulting room right now? Is it Is there
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: this sort of Ouroboric thing where the person is experiencing
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: me as an extension of their psyche? Or are we
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: two separate selves in the room? Are there really two
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: well-formed egos in the room? And Deb, to your point,
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: I think that when we don't have a good, flexible,
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: but strong boundary between the ego and the unconscious, for example,
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: that's when we're more likely to project out unconscious material
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: onto someone else. And then we're in that loop where
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: it feels like there's no boundary between us, where I
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: just make assumptions about who you are and what you think.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: And I can't totally relate to you as a fully
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: separate person.
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: And in a way, we kind of open that up
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: in the consulting room of the we want to help
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: our client experience him or herself and investigate that in
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: the presence of another person who is the therapist or analyst.
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: And so that boundary gets worked and navigated simply as
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: an essential part of analysis from the assumption, if I
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: were the client, the assumption that you think about this
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: the same way I do. I mean, of course, your
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: political views are like mine, right? Or in very literal
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: ways of like, are you married?
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: Do you have children?
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: Do you know what this is like? And how do
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: we then negotiate that of where is the difference between
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: thee and me? And how is it that in those differences,
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: we can still be connected?
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: When you were talking about the process of therapy, I
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: had this image of having a surveyor. Like, for instance,
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: if you're going to buy a plot of land, you
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: actually don't know what the boundaries are. You don't know
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: what your neighbor's zone, which you own. Where's the right,
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: the left, east and west? And so we have somebody
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: come out and do this meticulous measuring and sightlining, putting
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: markers around, say, ah, okay, this side is mine, that
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: side is yours. And I think about that as a
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: process of putting edges to the personality. And so much
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: of what we do in an early part of an analysis,
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: or often as a therapist, is helping the client describe
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: the edges of their personality. This is also why typology
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: work can be so helpful, is it gives somebody language
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: to describe their central traits. Oh, I'm an introvert, and
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: it means this way. I'm a feeling type, a thinking type, etc., etc.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: And that's a way of beginning to have a sense
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: of who I am, and if I have language to
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: accurately describe who I am, that again creates some necessary
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: boundaries or edges around personality.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: You know, I looked up the etymology of boundary as
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: we often do, and it's not from the Latin, but
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: there are associated words like border and limit. So it
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: is a sense of boundaries around what can be known,
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: boundaries around what we can do, boundaries around what's acceptable.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: There are limits. It's a limitation.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: Which I think goes into the idea of the reality principle,
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: that I may have a fantasy and then I find
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: that natural law, circumstances, finances, my own body, time and money, designs,
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: what can really be affected or created and what just can't.
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: And so that brings up for me the bivalence of
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: this idea of boundary, of what is a hard limit?
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: This is the property line. So no, you cannot start
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: digging your swimming pool over this line. Versus psychologically, where
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: is it also a threshold?
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great word.
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: Of where might we sort of transgress? or penetrate, or
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: explore and discover that what seemed like a limit can
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: also be a doorway.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I made some notes to myself that boundaries are
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: for crossing, right? And there is a way that there
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: is a need. Psychological growth often requires transgression. And you
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: see this again in in archetypal material, in myths and
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: fairy tales, that there's some limit that can't be crossed.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: But transformation doesn't happen until the hero crosses that threshold.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: So there's a going beyond. And also, and Deb, I
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: love your use of the word threshold, because when we
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: cross a boundary, we step into a threshold experience, a
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: liminal state. And so this might be a kind of
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: place where the normal rules don't apply anymore. And that
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: often happens, say, in experiences that characterize initiations. Something's different.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: We've stepped across. And so I think about that sense
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: of boundaries, and I want to kind of provocatively raise
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: up the kind of pop culture sense of boundaries. So
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: we've been told by someone, I don't know what, please
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: don't call me anymore. When is that boundary in service
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: to the person? And when is it defensive? And it's
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: not for us to say, but I'm remembering, I'm just
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: going to share a story from early in my college years,
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: just to talk about this. Boundaries are always talked about
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: as if it's really black and white and cut and dry.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: And I think, yes, and. So I had a friend,
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: in college, who before our eyes began to develop a
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: very severe eating disorder. And we would see her and
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: we'd say, oh, have you lost more weight? And she
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: finally sat us down and she said very seriously, I
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: do not want you asking me any more about my weight.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: So it's like, okay, I heard that and I didn't
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: say anything. And then it was like reading period and
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: I hadn't seen her for a couple of weeks because
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: we'd all been like holed up in the library. And
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: then I ran into her and she looked like she'd
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: lost more weight. And I couldn't, I couldn't help it.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: I didn't think about it. I just said, oh my God,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: you look like you've lost more weight. And she, you know,
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: when she was affronted and taken aback, she can come
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: back next semester because she was in residential treatment for
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: her eating disorder. But when she came back, she made
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: a point of saying, you know, It was because you
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: all kept asking me. That kept me in touch with something.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: So I'm not giving license to say, well, if someone
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: tells you not to contact them or someone sets a
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: boundary around A, B, and C, you should disregard it.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: But I'm just trying to complexify it just a little bit.
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: And it is complex, very complex. And I think it
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: calls us into that question, which we deal with all
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: the time in clinical situations of what does that boundary
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: mean to you? Well, where are you, as I say,
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: coming from when you transgress the boundary? Are you being
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: reckless or just kind of really just curious and I
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: really want to know? Or is it, as it was
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: with your friend in college, it's concern of I see something.
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: your weight loss is right before my very eyes. And
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: when you saw her that time, you were concerned. Something's wrong.
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: I care about you. This doesn't look right. So it's
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: a huge process often of discernment about should I move overseas?
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: Should I engage in an intimate relationship with this person
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: to whom I'm powerfully attracted, should I really pay attention
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: to my dreams of what is going on here and
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: what is it about before I encounter and do something
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: with a boundary, inner or relational?
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: And so I think we're in this realm of evaluating
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: our effect on another person and their effect on us
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: and how much energy we will put into blocking that
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: effect considering the effect welcoming the effect and at the
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: end of the podcast i hope that people will walk
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: away at least feeling that it needs to be a
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: thoughtful process that doing this instinctively or just doing it
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: the way you saw your parents do it or the
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: way you were instructed by someone or other by the
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: time we reach adulthood that's not adequate and the world
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: is changing all the time so it requires at least
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: a due consideration because boundaries have to do with power
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: in the adult world so right now all over the
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: world people are looking at international boundaries. Russia says, oh, Ukraine,
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: you don't have any boundaries because you belong to us.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: And you might say that you have boundaries and that
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: you're sovereign, but we don't believe that and we're not
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: going to behave that way. The United States right now
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: is spending a lot of energy with this idea of
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: blocking off the borders, which are boundaries. What does that mean?
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: Why do we do that? And so there's a national
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: debate about the cost of benefits and reasons why we
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: would or would not need certain kinds of boundaries, and
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: how do we want to reinforce them? So this is
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: a big topic. It's a political topic. It's a space topic.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: It's internal. It's external. It's zooming through the air everywhere
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: we turn around, but it has much to do with power,
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: the power to say no or yes, the power to
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: be influenced or not influenced by any number of things.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: So I know a lot of people think about setting
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: boundaries with difficult people, and that's often the way that
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: it's kind of talked about. And I found myself thinking
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: about that and kind of wondering what Jung would say
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: about that or what my Jungian ideas are about that.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Setting a boundary like that, like, don't call me anymore,
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: I'm blocking your number, is a very explicit, conscious statement.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: And I think that we might need those kinds of
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: very explicit, I'm going to say kind of rigid boundaries,
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: especially in certain moments and in certain times of our
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: life when we may not have full access to our
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: aggressive capacity and our no. You know, it takes a
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: certain quantum of aggression to really say no. And if
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: we have easy access to that, we might not need
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: such tall fences. You know, if you, I don't know,
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: carry a big stick, you might not need such a
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: strong wall because if anyone penetrates your defenses and you
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: need to push them back, you can easily do it.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: But if we don't have good access to that, then
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: we might need to put up that wall. And I'm
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: going to tell maybe a sort of silly story, but
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: it's one that came up for me when I was
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: thinking about this. Earlier in my young adulthood, I was
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: at this period of my life when I was very depleted.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: I was working a full-time job, and I was seeing
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: friends a lot, and I just didn't have enough time
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: to kind of relax. And I noticed that what would
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: happen is I would tell myself, I'm going to just
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: take it easy this week. But then I would get
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: invitations from friends. You want to do this? You want
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: to do this? And there was no... conscious discernment process
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: that went on for me. I simply usually just said yes,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: both out of a sense of, well, that sounds like
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: fun and maybe a sense of I don't want to
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: hurt this person's feelings. And it was remarkable to become
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: conscious of my inability to ever say no. So I
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: started a little experiment. I said, all right, Thursday night,
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: I'm coming home from work and I'm just going to
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: be by myself. And I wrote it into my calendar.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: This was back when I actually wrote things in my calendar.
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: I still do. I know.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: I don't understand that. That's strange. And then someone would say, hey,
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: do you want to go see this movie on Thursday?
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: And I would say, I already have plans. But I
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: sort of needed that really rigid rule around it because
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: I couldn't yet just say no. That doesn't work.
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I like bringing in the idea and the concept
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: of rules as related to boundaries. And that rules help us, hopefully,
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: they help us learn how to set a boundary. So
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: now I have a rule that on Thursday night, I
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: don't go out. And of course, we've all encountered a
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: million rules in workplaces and when we were kids, parental
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: rules about what you could or couldn't do, school rules
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: are helping us learn where the boundaries are between ourselves
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: and others, between ourselves and cultural mandates and necessities. The
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: rule is you have to raise your hand and be
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: called on by the teacher. so that you don't talk
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: over people or just say things impulsively. And they can
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: help us, and of course, as we said before, if
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: they're too rigid, they can constrict our development and even
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: be repressive.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: That brings us back to Freud's early recognitions that one
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: can become so aggressive towards the instinctive self, can lock
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: it away, can... push other people away that seem to
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: stimulate our own instincts. So then the boundary between the
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: conscious personality and the body becomes such a fortress that
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: the instincts then go to war to try to break
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: through these repressions, which are also boundaries, which are making
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: us unwell. So some boundaries can cut us apart internally.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: that creates a kind of intention, an intensity rather, that
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: then leads to symptomology.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: So that's really interesting to kind of start with a
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: kind of Freudian look at things, which I think is
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: really a great frame, right? That we do have kind
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: of internal boundaries. There's this sort of repression barrier. So
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: what do we not want to know? What do we
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: split off? is how we usually think about it in
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: a Jungian term, but the Freudians talk about repression. So
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: that internal boundary about, I am not going to know that,
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to know that about myself, I'm not
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: going to know that about the world, what do we repress?
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: And that boundary, and there has to be a sort
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: of sentinel at the boundary, by the way. It's like, no, no, no,
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: we're not going to go there, so that when you
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: start getting close to it, something comes up and you...
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: get symptomatic or you kind of behave irrationally. I was
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: at the gym this morning and just in the locker room,
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: a young woman was talking about apparently the very painful
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: death of her father. I mean, this was just this
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: thing that was happening right next to me that I overheard.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: And then she was fully dressed to go up and
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: start working out, but she had a shower cap and
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: she started putting the shower cap on her head. And
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: then she left. She said, what am I doing? And
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: of course, me, the psychoanalyst in the women's locker room
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: at seven o'clock in the morning, I was thinking, oh, well,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: that was a reaction to you talking about this painful
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: material about your father, you know, because you went somewhere
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: where maybe the sentinel didn't want you going, at least
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: not right at that moment, not when you're talking with
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: your friends in the gym. And then you did this
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: silly thing of putting a shower cap on your head
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: and It was one of Freud's parapraxis. It's like, there's
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: the unconscious. That's what I thought to myself. Oh, and
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: by the way, then I locked myself out of my
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: locker and I thought, oh, there's the unconscious. So, you know,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: it's always all around us. But anyway, that's one way
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: of thinking about these internal boundaries. Jung really talked a
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: lot about the dissociability of the psyche. And of course,
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: that leads into his complex theory. We have these complexes
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: that react fairly autonomously. And yes, I think they do
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: kind of have boundaries around them. And ego consciousness has
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: a boundary around it. And hopefully there's a good boundary,
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: not an inflexible boundary, but a good solid boundary between
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: the ego and the unconscious. If we don't have that,
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: then we're in psychosis.
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: And so we come again and again to what crosses
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: the boundary of how does ego cross it or not
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: cross it and decide and maybe interact with the sentinel
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: or the proverbial guardian at the threshold. And then what
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: floods over from the unconscious as in a complex that
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: just takes us over? Like, whoa. why am I putting
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: my shower cap on when I'm about to go leave
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: the gym? It goes both ways. And so we're always
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: dealing with ourselves as we deal with other people, rules,
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: et cetera, in the external world. And Jung says it
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: pretty concisely. He says, the patient is unconscious of the
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: fact that the obstacle to be overcome lies in himself.
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: So we're always called upon to reflect. Why did I
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: do that? Oh my God, I can't believe I said that.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: In the first half of life, we need to, again,
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: create some pretty strong boundaries, which gives us a sense
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: of ego. We need to learn how to toilet train
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: so that we say yes or no as to where
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: we're going to evacuate our Bowels, for instance, that's a boundary.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: Not going to happen just anywhere in my diaper. It's
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: just going to happen there. That's a boundary. So this
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: idea of being able to exert control over ourselves, making decisions,
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: and then exerting control over our environment, ideally in a
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: way that's wise, that helps the organism flourish. And then
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: somewhere around midlife, when the ego is nice and muscular,
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: by learning how to say yes or no, set a
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: course for itself, push the unconscious away so that the
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: ego can develop a strong relationship to reality, then the
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: internal boundaries begin to thin. And that's what Jung called
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: the midlife crisis, which is where the neighboring country inside
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: of us called the unconscious begins to send diplomats to
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: you in the dream world. And hopefully you have an ambassador,
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: which is called your anima animus, You have this internal
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: figure that can go to the foreign land inside of
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: you and then come back to the bright, shiny nation
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: of you and broker this relationship with the vast continent
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: that's right next to you so that you guys don't
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: have to go to a war. Because when the ego
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: and the unconscious go to war with each other, then
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: we all become quite unwell.
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: That is really great. I like the analogy. It's delightful
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: and also very accurate. And hopefully we have diplomatic relations.
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: But sometimes, as we all know, war breaks out or
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: some kind of a skirmish, conflict, what have you. And hopefully,
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: if we've navigated the first half of life pretty well,
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: and we've established a strong but flexible and well-adapted to
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: reality ego, then we are ready to have diplomatic relations
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: with the neighboring country called the unconscious.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: The vast, uncharted neighboring country, and ultimately unknowable.
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: The advice that Jung gives us is, when he was
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: really breaking into active imagination, he's having this dialogue with
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: the inner figures. He says, we need to be strong
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: enough to listen to anything, but we still have to
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: decide whether or not we will cooperate or collude with it.
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: But we have to know. So the ideal situation is
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: we receive all the ambassadors, we have all the conversations,
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: we come to understand what the unconscious wants, needs, or
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: is pressuring, but the ego is still sovereign and decides
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: what it's going to say yes and no to, and
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: hopefully in a reflective process decides why it's going to
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: say yes or no. It's not important that we have
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: to concede to everything the unconscious suggests, which by the
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: way could be dangerous, but just being in the dialogue
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: with with the unconscious, things happen. And Jung called that
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: dialogue the transcendent function. Mm-hmm.
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: And that is, that's really great. I like that a lot.
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: That that is the result, one hopes, the new attitude,
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: new understanding of a progressive dialogue between ego and unconsciousness.
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: And hopefully we've been working on that in the first
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: half of life. Do I say yes or do I
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: say no? Do I go out every night? I mean,
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: I'm free and I'm a working woman and I love
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: all the movies and other cultural events and my friends. Okay,
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: step back, reflect, discern, decide. Jung has a really vivid
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: image for that. He says it's the old story of
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: the hammer and the anvil. you know, fashioning and shaping
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: the patient or just plain us between these opposing forces
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: and that we wrestle with ourselves.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: You know, just to go back to my rather silly example,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: I want to extend it just a bit because it's
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: an example, of course, of, in a sense, a defense system.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: You know, I had to develop a kind of inner, well,
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: I had to develop an explicit, a conscious defense that
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: would kind of allow me to protect myself for myself, really.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: So my tendency to just sort of maybe be a
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: people pleaser or something, it was probably a bunch of
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: different things. But I needed to develop this firm boundary
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: to kind of control that. But over time, I did
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: what you both were just talking about, this kind of discernment,
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: this conversation of understanding. And then I thought, I don't
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: need that now. So someone asked me if I want
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: to do something. And part of the process is not just,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: is there a space on my calendar? Which was the
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: only thing I was looking at, you know, 30 years ago. Now, it's...
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: Do I want to? Do I have the energy? What
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: part of me wants to? And of course, a lot
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: of times there's some ambivalence, like that sounds like so
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: much fun and I'm really just going to be too tired.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: But I can be with all of that and then
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: I can respond flexibly to demands in the environment. So
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: sometimes very strict rules about boundaries are important in the beginning,
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: but But I think we have to be careful that
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: they don't become like rigid defensive structures that we hide
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: behind because ultimately that cuts us off from life, right?
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: So to have that internal ability to have those conversations
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: with those ambassadors allows me to move through the world
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: much more fluidly and to say yes sometimes and to
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: say no sometimes, right?
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: And I think if we don't have that capacity to reflect,
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: then we either externalize things, like I can never do this,
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: or I always must do this. I am required to
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: adhere to these rules and regs. And we don't develop
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: an internal dialogue with ourselves and self-knowledge and establishing ourselves
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: in our capacity to reflect and discern. as the way
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: in which we decide. Or the other thing is that
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: we don't have enough of a boundary and we just
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: get swept along by instincts and impulses and whatever else
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: without a capacity to say, where am I in this?
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: How do I choose? Hopefully we have ambassadors and we're
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: always Having meetings and dialogue and hammering out some treaties
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: and some trade agreements and all the rest of it,
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: that's the optimum solution. And sometimes it doesn't quite work
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: like that. And we get invaded, you know, or we
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: make barriers between ourselves and other internal countries. that are
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: unfortunate and that impede our growth and development and discovery.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: And so much of the solution is to be able
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: to be in dialogue, to negotiate, whether it's internal or external.
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: I think the more anxious we are, the more black
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: and white we become. We see this all the time.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: We see it with Parents who are exhausted by their kids,
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: it's like, I don't even want to hear it. I
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: don't want you to open your mouth one more time
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: and ask me for that new bicycle or whatever it is.
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: Stop trying to influence me. Stop trying to advocate. Stop
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: pushing on the decisions that I've made about what I
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: am or am not going to be or do for
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: you or otherwise. Stop testing. the decision that I've made,
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: and yet the really dynamic, interesting place is to keep
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: talking about it.
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: Rather than just being kind of rigid, like you have
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: to do this or I have to do that. But
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: to keep that middle, which is a liminal space of, okay,
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: all right, Billy, we're going to sit down for a
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: half hour and I'm going to hear about why you
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: think you need a bike and I'm going to tell
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: you what I think I can afford or why I
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: don't think it's a good idea. But it's in the
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: discussion that sometimes a third possibility emerges. And that's very
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: much what Jung noticed, is that spontaneously, or rather magically,
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: a symbol can come forward which actually honors both sides
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: of the tension, but brings it together in a way
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: that's very novel. That actually makes it work better.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: I really like that, Joseph, because you're taking us right
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: to the boundary between these two things. And I think
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: that those thresholds, to use your word, Deb, those liminal spaces,
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: that's where something very dynamic and transformational, that's exactly where
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: it can occur is when we're rubbing up against something.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: And that brings up for me this idea of play.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: researchers who have looked at play and this play behavior
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: that occurs in all mammals and is especially beloved by
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: little boys, although girls like it too, the rough and
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: tumble play. Part of that is, the people that have
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: studied it note that it usually ends in tears. And
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: it's because, can I push you a little further? Can
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: I push you a little further? Can I push you
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: a little further? Oh, that's the place I can't push
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: you anymore. So, you know, the scientists have looked at
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: animals playing together and kind of what the rules are
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: around it. But it seems like when we're in play,
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: when we're playing, it is, you know, it is a
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: transitional space, to use Winnicott's terms. And one of the
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: things we're exactly doing in play is we are negotiating boundaries.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: This is the point beyond which you can't go with me.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: But it is this fertile space because we don't start
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: off with the boundaries being clear. So just like you're saying,
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: you're holding the tension in that space and letting that
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: hammer and anvil thing happen to see what emerges or
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: what you're going to learn from that, which you don't
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: know when you start off.
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: So what I'm thinking about here is how we start
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: out with no physical boundary in pregnancy and the infant
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: contentedly at one physically with the parent. And then that
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: first boundary, the physical separation, the physical sense of a
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: sense of self. And your example, Joseph, of the infant
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: hitting the side of the crib and, you know, something
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: goes on that says, oh, there's a difference here. There's
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: a boundary. And we, feel it literally and physically. And
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: then we move on to negotiating the boundary between the
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: and me of the kids having rough and tumble. I
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: can go so far. Tickling is a great example. Kids
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: love to get tickled until they just don't. And one
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: kid goes, stop, stop, stop. And the tickler keeps going.
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: And then, as you said, Lisa, it ends in tears.
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: of how far and how do I negotiate where the
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: boundary is with all the multiple yous in our lives,
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: siblings and parents and teachers and so it goes. And
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: where I'm going here is, and then how do we
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: navigate the boundary between me and me? How do I
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: relate and come to relate to the unconscious? Which takes me,
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: no surprise to our listeners, to dreams. Because they cross
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: the boundary into consciousness many times. Some don't cross the boundary.
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: Maybe we say, well, oh, gee, I never dream. Yes,
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: you do. But it didn't really make it across the
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: threshold into consciousness. How do we establish a relationship with that? Well,
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: of course, we have a book about that.
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: Well, but what I'm sitting with, Deb, is that at
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: a certain point, we come to a place where we
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: realize that we are impoverished, psychospiritually impoverished, because our boundaries
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: have kept us limited. Maybe for the first couple of
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: decades of life, the small plot of psychological land has
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: been enough. There's a lot to discover about my own
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: traits and capacities, and you can garden that for the
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: first 30 years or so. But then after a while,
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: we realize that either we're bored or that it's not
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: enough for us, that we need to know more, to
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: be more, to feel more. And then we have to
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: risk the discomfort of going beyond the known boundaries, the familiar,
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: and into the uncanny. The uncanny within ourselves, the uncanny
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: within other people, the uncanny in the world. People suddenly decide,
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: I need to travel. I'm going to go to these
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: faraway countries where I don't know the language or the culture.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: And people often come back feeling refreshed. Because there are
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: experiences they couldn't have imagined, but still have this powerful
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: effect on them. And it's enlivening.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: And I want to say also that things happen to us.
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: Life events that are difficult, even tragic, happen to us.
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: And we are then called. to deal with ourselves in
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: the wake of an unwanted, awful illness or a catastrophe
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: of the homes that get destroyed due to fires or
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: hurricanes or floods. The list is huge. That life itself
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: acts on us. And so that demand can come either
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: from within ourselves, as do I answer this call, do
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: I travel abroad, or something that I did not choose
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: inflicted itself upon me.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: So there's one thing to choose a boundary, there's another
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: to enforce it, which one needs power and resources. And
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: there's another stage, which is I set a boundary between
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: me and the self, between me and fate, between me
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: and forces that I fantasized I was more powerful than
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: or could control. And then the ego realizes, you know,
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: I'm a leaf in the wind. I just gave myself
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: a sense that I had all this power to control
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: whatever the factors are. And the truth is, I am vulnerable.
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: And that's also part of the story.
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: And that is a process, um, that Jung and Jungians
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: have called the relativization of the ego, that one way
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: or another, we are called or simply are the recipients
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: of something beyond ego that confronts us, that happens to us,
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: and we are called to start to realize that what
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: I want and like and choose is undergirded by something larger,
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: and it can come in myriad ways. Some that we
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: can choose and accede to, and some that come from
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: without and call us to a new realization that something
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: larger than ourselves is here. asking us to recognize it.
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: And our only choice is how do we respond? You know,
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: I think in sort of archetypal terms, often expressed in
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: religious imagery, that the self can come upon us. Like
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: the famous example of Saul on the road to Damascus,
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: knocked off his horse, blind for three days. and realizing
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: that something bigger was calling him. Or we could be
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: like Muhammad, who famously went on a retreat to seek
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: the something larger, to seek the self, where he acceded
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: to it willingly and surrendered to the something larger. There
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: are lots of examples in myth, religious teachings of how
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: we come to recognize and develop or refuse a relationship
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: with the something larger.
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: And one of the things that we believe that dreamer
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: can do is that by attending to the dreams and
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: taking them seriously, it actually circumvents a war between the
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: ego and the unconscious.
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: Because the unconscious is being dealt with in a friendly way,
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: is being received, its considerations, symbols, suggestions are being at
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: least pondered. It calms something inside of us. It releases
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: a kind of tension. So, not always, but often enough.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: the unconscious doesn't need to invade the ego or the
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: body and really trounce.
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: Us right dream work is a way of establishing diplomatic
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: relations in your great analogy with the unconscious, and why
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: not do that? Which leads me to think about maybe
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: this is our cue to take a look at a dream.
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: Our dreamer today is a 21-year-old female who is a
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: student at university and titles this dream Campus Crocodiles. And
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: here's the dream. I was walking on my uni campus
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: with a friend discussing how we would react if we
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: were mugged. We started walking down a dodgy looking underground stairwell.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: I was ahead of her and descending the stairs very fast.
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: I called out for her and she didn't answer so
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: I turned back to find her. There was a slender,
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: older man who really wanted to know why I was
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: turning around. He started to follow me and I felt
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: super uncomfortable, so I told him that there were crocodiles
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: in the water below and we didn't want to go
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: there anymore. Well, that was a lie to try to
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: get him to leave us alone. We then walked back
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: onto campus and he followed us. I was waiting for
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: him to rob us when we passed the door of
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: a music class. I could hear the saxophone, an instrument
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: I played competitively throughout my younger years. When entering this
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: class to signal to the teacher that we were being followed,
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: a young girl was playing the flute. I watched as
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: she read the music and I felt transported back to
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: younger years. The man didn't feel like a threat as
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: long as we stayed in that nostalgic music room. For context,
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: she writes, I am in my third year of university.
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: I've just moved into my own apartment with one roommate
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: after having been in an all-girls boarding school since the
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: age of 10. I then moved to an all-girls sorority.
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: I've battled to claim this space as my own. I've
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: also just received my yoga teaching training certificate. The main
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: feelings were I felt scared, threatened, responsible for my friend, isolated, nostalgic,
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: safe when I was in the music room. and a
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: few associations she offers. The dream was set in my
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: university campus. The friend with me is not a friend
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: in my waking life, but actually a sister of a
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: girl I was at school with. I associate music lessons
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: with a stressful time in my life as my childhood
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: teacher was extremely strict and mean. So the first thing
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: that I find interesting about and I've done this work
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: with many of my analysis, is separating out the objective
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: versus subjective dynamics in the dream. And I use that
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: word a little bit differently from maybe Jung had, that
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: the objective part of the dream is what the camera
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: would see. So if I think of the dream maker
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: as like a camera person, they're taking a snapshot of
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: this and a snapshot of that, and it's kind of
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: the forensic facts of the dream. and separating out the
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: dream ego's interpretation of what's happening, which the dream maker
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: isn't providing. And often the ego is making all kinds
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: of assumptions. And oftentimes that says more about the complex
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: and less about what the dreamer, or rather the dream maker,
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: is providing. So there's a girl and a friend friend
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: often is interpreted as a shadow figure, though we don't
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: seem to know a lot about that. And then there's
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: a slender older man. And that's really objectively how it starts.
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: And then the dream ego has all kinds of anxious
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: responses to the perception of the slender man, although he
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: doesn't do anything that is overtly dangerous.
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. Where, as you said, the dream ego starts making
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: meaning of things. So the facts, the forensic facts, I
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: like that new phrase, are that there's a man following her.
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: The meaning the dream ego makes of this is that
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: it's uncomfortable and threatening. There's a threat. Now, the dream
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: itself doesn't say he's doing anything but following her.
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: He might actually live at the university and they're all
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: just going in the same direction.
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: Or maybe he wants to make contact because he has
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: something useful to share.
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: Exactly. But our dream ego feels that this is a threat.
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: And what does she do when she feels under threat?
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: She lies. There are crocodiles down there. And crocodiles is
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: a favorite dream image for me. It's amazing how many
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: people dream of crocodiles who live in Minnesota or New
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: Zealand or places where there are no crocodiles at all
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: because they are such a great image of primitive, primeval, reptilian,
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: instinctual capacity for aggression.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: So I want to cover that same part of the
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: dream and not really disagree with either of you, but
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: just take a slightly different take on it. So she's
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: with this friend who we might assume is a shadow figure.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: And it's too bad we don't know a little bit
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: more about the person that this reminds her of. But okay,
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: so there it is. And already they're in a kind
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: of defensive stance because they're talking about what would we
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: do if we were mugged, right? But then they start
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: walking down an underground stairwell. So there is an approach
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: here to the unconscious. and uh and it um she's
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: actually descending very fast so this is kind of promising
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: in a way you know this is it's a it's
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: a good thing to go into the depths this dreamer
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: says it's dodgy and it's scary and she was already
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: scared before she went down there right it's like it's
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: kind of like a horror movie where you're like anticipating
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: getting killed and then you're like go into the dark
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: house and the audience going, don't go in the dark house.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: Here she is. She's anticipating getting mugged. And then she
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: goes down this dodgy underground stairwell. But it brings to
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: mind what we often say on the podcast that Jung
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: said that the face we turn toward the unconscious is
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: the face that looks back at us. She's already nervous
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: about her encounter with what she might find underground in
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: the unconscious. And then, so of course, interprets it in
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: a pretty frightening way, as you have both mentioned. And
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: then she meets this slender older man, which I don't
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: know if this is a little kind of like Senex,
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: the wise old man, or if this is actually an
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: anonymous figure, perhaps. But instead of Instead of having an
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: open view toward it, which in real life, if you're
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: in a dodgy underground stairwell and a creepy guy comes up,
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: by all means, take precautions. But in the dream world,
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: it's like, who are you and what do you have
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: to teach me? Why are you here, right? She doesn't
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: have that attitude. She's uncomfortable. She's defensive. She's scared. And
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: then she tells him there were crocodiles in the water below,
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: which actually I see as an accurate statement of fact.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: Because if you keep going down this dodgy underground stairwell,
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: you will come to the waters of the unconscious. And
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: there are crocodiles down there. There are not only crocodiles
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: down there. There are also many wonderful things. But there
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: are kind of primordial creatures in the unconscious. And she
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: doesn't want to know. She's not ready to know about
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: them yet. So she has to turn back.
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: I think that's absolutely right. I think we're just seeing
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: different facets of this. And the place that I'm paying
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: attention to in this is that she's going down the
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: dodgy stairwell and she goes ahead of her friend so
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: she does not have companionship. She knows that it's dodgy
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: and she goes very fast. Yeah. And isn't that something
• 58:18
  Speaker 4: that might relate to a real-life dynamic of, you know,
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: I'm just going to close my eyes and just shoot
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: through this, rather than I'm taking my time, I'm looking around,
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: I have a companion, how far should I go? This
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: is starting to feel funny. It feels like an impulsive
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: first attempt at descending the depths. And she doesn't know
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: yet that there are crocodiles. I agree. There are crocodiles
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: down there. And there are nymphs and all kinds of
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: other wonderful things. But her approach to the unconscious is
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: just rush through it.
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: The other thing that I was thinking is the slender
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: man could be Hermes because when the soul goes to
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: the underworld, you need a guide, and Hermes is the
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: one that shows up as the psychopomp, and he's asking questions.
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: Why are you turning around? And he's curious. He's exercising
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: a kind of curiosity about her. She finds it menacing to,
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: ostensibly because she doesn't recognize him, but the gods often
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: can't be recognized. Shows up over and over again. The
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: gods come down to the earth. They're walking around like
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: average folks. Only the wise can discern, oh, that's one
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: of the gods. I'd better do something different. I think
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: that if it's Hermes, Hermes has a little bit of
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: trickster energy. So she brushes against Hermes and then she
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: tells a whopper. After that, It's kind of a Hermes
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: thing to do a little bit. So maybe there's a
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: little dose of trickster kind of kicks in there. And then,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: strangely enough, she winds up going back in time. And
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: what I could imagine, and this is a very kind
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: of Matrix movie kind of thing, is she never stopped
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: walking down the stairs. And where the stairs led is
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: her childhood home. music room, which she somehow, where she
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: was able to access a certain kind of competitive dynamic.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: I was very competitive as a young person, watching another
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: young person read and play. And she's back in this
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: world where there's a teacher overseeing and facilitating, protecting. And
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: that she doesn't feel threatened as long as she stays
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: in nostalgia. But what I would suspect is that Hermes
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: probably helped her navigate down into this nostalgic memory. So
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: I would be less interested in the slender man and
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: more interested in why did the unconscious bring her back there?
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: That that's the telos of the dream is you're an
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: adult on a campus, now you're a kid learning how
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: to play the flute or watching your inner girl learn
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: how to play a flute. And that's somehow useful to you,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: by the way.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: And in a way, it's a kind of corrective experience,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: because she says in her comments that she played the
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 4: saxophone in childhood, and it was a, quote, stressful time
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: in my life as my childhood was music teacher, was
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: extremely strict and mean. So music, which, you know, is
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: supposed to be all kinds of wonderful things. The people
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: played music probably for as long as there have been people,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: was a stressful experience for her in childhood. But now
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: the instrument being played is the flute. And she felt
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: transported back to younger years. So I wonder if Psyche
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: is inviting her to really experience a different instrument, which
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: has an altogether different tone and feeling tone, rather than
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: the difficult experience she actually had with a sax. And
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 4: both of these are instruments that you blow on, That
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: your own breath, the breath of life, is what creates
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: the music. And there are very different kinds of music.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: So sort of picking up on what you both just said, Joseph,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: I love that you talked about the Tealist of the Dream.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: You know, when I read this dream this morning as
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: the dream picker, I didn't have any idea what it was,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: but I was like, oh! that girl playing the flute,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: like that image, that's the image, right? That's the image
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: that brings the new thing that brings the new attitude.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: And I really didn't have any more thoughts about it
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: other than that. But I do think that is, I
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: had the same formulation. I was like, that's the telos
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: of the dream is the girl playing the flute. And
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: there's this sense the dreamer is watching as she reads
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: the music and learns to play. And my fantasy, as
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: we've been sitting with this, is that, and Deb, this
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: goes to your point about how she's going down the
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: stairs very fast. She was in this boarding school. I
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: was so surprised a little bit when she said, I
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: played the saxophone competitively. I mean, I don't like you
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: play chess competitively or you play like, I don't know.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: pickleball competitively, but do you play that? I mean, I
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: know there are musical competitions, but it's not the first
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: thing that comes to mind. So she's been in boarding
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: school and she's been competitive at saxophone and she just
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: got her yoga teacher certification and there's a kind of
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: drivenness about it. She may just propel herself forward. Well,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: now she's been propelled down and into the unconscious and
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: this psychopomp or animus figure has led her to this
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: place where there can be a kind of delightful lack
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: of expertise, that the girl, she's just learning to read
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: the music. She's just learning. She's young. And it's a
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: very different sensibility than this very kind of ego-oriented, driven
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: quality that I hear in some of her associations.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: As you were saying that, I was also thinking that
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: she's claiming that she herself has now taken on the
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: mantle of being a teacher. So I would also imagine
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: her teaching complex is alive and well. And some of
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: the parts of her teaching complex might be very strict,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: maybe even sadistic, causing a lot of anxiety and tension
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: in herself. What kind of teacher is she going to be?
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: Well, she's a yoga teacher. And I find it very
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: hard to imagine a yoga teacher being competitive or strict
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: or mean.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: You have not been to an Iyengar yoga class. Not
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: that people are mean, but there are schools of yoga
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: that are fiercely exacting and incredibly muscular and athletic. Some
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: schools of yoga are very permissive, like yin yoga is
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: very slow and delicate, Iyengar yoga is very militant and intense.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: So I think it could be a lot of different things,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: but I'm imagining that the dream maker is wanting her
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: to be in touch with the whole underpinnings of education,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: the boarding school world, the music lessons, and who is
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: she as a teacher. And even if she's decided that
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: she's going to be the antithesis of that and be
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: the most loving and warm a positive motherly teacher, I'm
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: making all that up, but let's say she is, in
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: the background, there's still that fierce, strict, critical teacher inside
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: of her that if she doesn't have, you know, she
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: can't dial into that, it's going to wind up expressing
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: itself unconsciously. And that can show up, honestly, because I've
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: had this experience of being in a yoga class And
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: then the teacher gets frustrated and pushes someone a little
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: too far, a little too demanding. And then they're not
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: terribly injured but can be injured because there's some over-intense
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: feeling about it.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 4: So there's a call here to establish a range of
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: the beauty of music and childhood and nostalgia. with a
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: certain kind of the muscularity that you were talking about, Joseph,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: in the context of yoga, of how do we do
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: this whole range?
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: I see it a little differently. I think that she's
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: been so driven and been on such a kind of
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: conveyor belt, educational conveyor belt and achievement conveyor belt her
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: whole life. And of course, I'm totally making this up.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: And that the appearance of the young girl that the
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: animus led her to is a call to find a
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: less ego-driven, accomplishment-oriented attitude.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: Right. And it goes to the teacher, too, of the nurturing, beautiful,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 4: gentle high notes of the flute. So in a way,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 4: I think, again, we're just seeing things. We're all looking
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: at the central fire from different vantage points around the fire.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: But I think the final sentence, though, is the real
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: kicker and where I think she's being criticized, actually. The
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: man didn't feel like a threat as long as we
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: stayed in the nostalgic music room. So going back into
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: these nostalgic fantasies, is a way of mediating her own
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: experience of being under threat, which is a kind of
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: escape from the reality principle, which would allow her to
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: actually evaluate, am I under threat? Am I just being neurotic?
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: It's not like we're never under threat. I mean, we
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: do live in a world where there are risks, but
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: we have to turn around and look at it and
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: think about what's really going on. If we're fleeing into
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: a fantasy, into a nostalgic fantasy of the past, then
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: we're also, we've kind of left the room. Even though
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: I agree with you, Lisa, it's a lovely image of
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: being young and open and learning.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: Well, it might be the beginning of something. It's not
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: a place to stay, but it might be the beginning
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: of something. And I think we're just going to have
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: to leave it there.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all present. It's all there.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisunionlife.com. If
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: you enjoyed this episode, give us five stars and a
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: good review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: your podcasts. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and make sure
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: to click the notification bell to be alerted whenever we
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: upload videos. And keep up with all things TJL by
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: following us on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok.