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BULLYING: When Aggression Runs Wild · 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 in Cape Cod.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: Today we're going to be talking about bullying from a
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: depth perspective. Bullying is something that ebbs and flows in
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: the collective concerns. There's certain time periods in my own
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: life where I remember bullying as a topic for school
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: children was very, very present and being born in 62.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: I remember being in school and bullying was never addressed.
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  Speaker 3: so it moves in and out of collective concern. There's
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  Speaker 3: any number of modern takes on it, but the psychoanalytic
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  Speaker 3: tradition has a number of important ways of understanding bullying
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  Speaker 3: and perhaps even some solutions. So today we're going to
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  Speaker 3: take a look at that.
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  Speaker 4: Well, you know, where I started.
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  Speaker 4: Or at least tried to start, was sort of like,
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  Speaker 4: what is the human, instinctual, and, if you will, archetypal
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  Speaker 4: root of bullying? And where I went with that was
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  Speaker 4: just aggression. Bullying is a form of aggression where the
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  Speaker 4: intention is to hurt, to cause distress, to do harm. But,
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  Speaker 4: or and... We need aggression. We come hardwired for it.
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  Speaker 4: We need it to assert ourselves. So there's this root which,
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  Speaker 4: like so many things, can be used proactively for growth
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: and development or reactively and negatively to hurt others or ourselves.
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  Speaker 4: as in self-sabotage. But today we're talking about it's misdirected
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: against others with the intent to hurt.
• 2:51
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• 4:16
  Speaker 3: So if we stay in a kind of Jungian frame,
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  Speaker 3: then every symptom, and if we think of bullying as
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  Speaker 3: a symptom, has a telos. That it's trying to accomplish something,
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  Speaker 3: perhaps in a way that's dangerous or dangerous, unnecessarily painful,
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  Speaker 3: but it is trying to address something.
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  Speaker 2: Yes.
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  Speaker 3: So Winnicott gives us, I think, a frame, and Winnicott
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  Speaker 3: was one of the earlier psychoanalysts.
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  Speaker 4: He was a Brit, Donald Winnicott, and he had been
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  Speaker 4: a pediatrician, and he worked with children psychoanalytically, so he
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  Speaker 4: has something to say about bullying.
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  Speaker 3: And aggression. that he said that healthy aggression tests the
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  Speaker 3: environment and builds trust when the environment survives it. So
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  Speaker 3: everyone that's had kids knows that those kids are constantly
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  Speaker 3: testing you and sometimes are testing the parents by being
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: fierce or enraged or really pushing against the parents substantially.
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  Speaker 3: And Winnicott observed that if the parent can be resilient
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  Speaker 3: and contain what's happening in the right way, that the
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  Speaker 3: child's aggression would be seen as a developmental necessity.
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  Speaker 4: He has a wonderful anecdote about that, that the child,
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  Speaker 4: I'm going to say a three-year-old, you know, is angry
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  Speaker 4: and upset. And, you know, runs up to mommy and
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  Speaker 4: starts hitting her or protesting, stamping his feet and having
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  Speaker 4: what is universally termed a meltdown. And mother's task is
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  Speaker 4: to survive this. Now, is her life in danger from
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  Speaker 4: her three-year-old kid? No, of course not. But how does
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  Speaker 4: she handle the emotionality there? How does she handle this
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  Speaker 4: child's rage, aggression? outburst, acting out. I mean, he's only three.
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  Speaker 4: If she gets upset or ignores it or retaliates, the
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  Speaker 4: child has learned something about the consequences of power. But
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  Speaker 4: if that adult, I'm saying the mother, but it could
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  Speaker 4: be a teacher, a neighbor, a babysitter, the father, a
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  Speaker 4: hundred people, can withstand the emotionality of it and contain
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  Speaker 4: that child of, you're upset, you're very angry, you may
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  Speaker 4: not hit me. No, that's not allowed. Maybe help that
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  Speaker 4: child if he or she is old enough to use
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  Speaker 4: some words. Tell me what you're mad about. Oh, I see.
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  Speaker 4: You were building a tower and it all fell down.
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  Speaker 4: But if it can be worded, if it can be contained,
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  Speaker 4: if it can be accepted as the child's and held
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  Speaker 4: in a way where it's relatively neutral, the child learns
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  Speaker 4: that those emotions are okay. And then after that encounter,
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  Speaker 4: what Winnicott says, the child says, I destroyed you. I
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  Speaker 4: love you. In other words, that three-year-old has learned that
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  Speaker 4: his rage and aggression is not that dangerous. It can
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  Speaker 4: be contained, it can be tamed, and he loves the
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  Speaker 4: adult that was able to keep it in a way
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  Speaker 4: that he didn't lose total control. We need the adults
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  Speaker 4: to help us manage our emotions. And if mom feels
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  Speaker 4: injured and how could you do this to me or
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  Speaker 4: gets upset of, you know, please stop that. No, no,
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  Speaker 4: you can't do that. Or, you know, ignores it as
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  Speaker 4: if it's not happening. The child doesn't learn that lesson
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  Speaker 4: that I will help to keep you safe from your hottest,
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  Speaker 4: most out of control parts of yourself. I will help
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  Speaker 4: you manage your aggression. It's a huge, huge thing that
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  Speaker 4: Winnicott says in such a simple way. And the consequences
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  Speaker 4: of not having adults able to do that can be
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  Speaker 4: the makings of a bully.
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  Speaker 3: Quite so. So what we're saying is that it's natural
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  Speaker 3: to be aggressive. It's natural to experiment with aggression as
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  Speaker 3: a toddler or even somewhat later.
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  Speaker 4: Of course it is. Yeah. Goes with the territory.
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  Speaker 3: Goes with the territory. And that Winnicott wants to normalize that,
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  Speaker 3: that that's not necessarily a problem. And it may feel
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  Speaker 3: at times that as a parent, you have to be
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  Speaker 3: like supernaturally tolerant in order, you know, to survive the
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  Speaker 3: testing that a toddler will give you. And even though
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  Speaker 3: that doesn't have to be perfect, in general... there needs
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: to be a field of adequate safety so that the
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  Speaker 3: child can then also learn how to regulate their own
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  Speaker 3: aggression because they've internalized the patient regulation that the parent
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: is demonstrating. And then the aggression can move from an
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: enactment into play. And that's one of the places where
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  Speaker 3: little kids learn how to imagine aggression in a way
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  Speaker 3: that is safer. So there's a bunch of action figures,
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  Speaker 3: and they're having wars with each other, or let's get
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  Speaker 3: those sticks and pretend they're swords, and we're going to
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  Speaker 3: go over here and battle something or other in the woods.
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  Speaker 3: I remember doing that as a kid.
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  Speaker 4: And that's exactly what we want, is to turn it
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  Speaker 4: into a symbolic representation of aggression. Our son had a friend,
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  Speaker 4: one of my best friends, and they played together a lot.
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: And they were playing something, mostly, remember, railroad tracks and
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  Speaker 4: so on. And one of them said, you know, if
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  Speaker 4: you don't do this, you know, I'm going to punch you.
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  Speaker 4: And the other one said, well, I'm not going to
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  Speaker 4: do it. So I'm going to shoot you. And the
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  Speaker 4: next one said, well, if you shoot me, I'm going
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  Speaker 4: to throw a grenade. And the person said, well, then
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  Speaker 4: I'm going to drop a bomb. And the whole thing
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  Speaker 4: was hilarious. I went out to dinner on that story
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  Speaker 4: for years. And I think after the bomb was verbally dropped,
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  Speaker 4: whichever kid it was, couldn't come up with a way
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  Speaker 4: to top that one. But it was a wonderful way
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  Speaker 4: to enact harmlessly and in play aggression and destruction. And
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  Speaker 4: the atmosphere, as I remember, was not especially intense. They
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  Speaker 4: were just playing with the idea of, of all these
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  Speaker 4: weapons and what the possibilities were. So it's a great
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  Speaker 4: way to illustrate this turning it into play.
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  Speaker 3: You know, when I was a kid, this was again
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  Speaker 3: in the mid-60s, we all had plastic weapons. We had
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  Speaker 3: fake machine guns. I mean, right now that sounds very scandalous,
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  Speaker 3: but it was a thing. And all the boys, We
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  Speaker 3: would stage these kind of infantry battles with these plastic,
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  Speaker 3: you know, guns. I don't own a gun as an adult,
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  Speaker 3: so it didn't necessarily get internalized in an absolute explicit way.
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  Speaker 3: But we were playing at battle and no one got hurt.
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  Speaker 3: Those guns didn't fire anything. We're making pow-pow sounds, and
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  Speaker 3: maybe you're pretending to hit the ground, or paintball is
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  Speaker 3: a modern version of that.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. We played cops and robbers.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's playing at destruction. So that's a normal developmental process,
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  Speaker 3: and even this way of imaginably containing aggression as a game.
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  Speaker 3: It's an explicit game. And then maybe you're playing football
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  Speaker 3: or soccer or basketball, and then the aggression has to
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  Speaker 3: function within the rules, within the boundaries, which is what
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  Speaker 3: the parents were teaching. It's okay for you to feel upset,
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  Speaker 3: but here are the rules.
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  Speaker 4: At root, a lot of it, I think what we're
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  Speaker 4: talking about is how to manage intense emotions. of aggression, anger,
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  Speaker 4: having a conflict. And when there are rules like, you know,
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  Speaker 4: with cops and robbers or you guys playing out in
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  Speaker 4: the woods, it can't really go too far with plastic
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  Speaker 4: toys or with structured games. But what about the child
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  Speaker 4: who doesn't learn this, who doesn't learn a healthy way
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  Speaker 4: to manage emotions and engage in conflict and becomes either
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  Speaker 4: intensely conflict avoidant, that any conflict is really dangerous, which
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  Speaker 4: is a possible pathway to being a victim, that no
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  Speaker 4: aggression is allowed, you never do that, you don't argue,
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  Speaker 4: you don't protest. Or if you've been the so-called victor
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  Speaker 4: in your early years, you may be on the path
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  Speaker 4: to being the bully.
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  Speaker 3: Well, if we again lean into Winnicott just for a
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  Speaker 3: moment more, that he framed aggression as a demand in
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  Speaker 3: the child to be met and survived. And then, as
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  Speaker 3: you were saying, if the environment collapses under the early
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  Speaker 3: aggression and the parents retaliate or shame and they don't
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  Speaker 3: endure and work thoughtfully with it, then what happens is
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  Speaker 3: the child develops this impulse to demand control, to force
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  Speaker 3: control on the environment because the early testing failed. And
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  Speaker 3: for Winnicott, underneath that intense demand to control, which is cruel,
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  Speaker 3: is a false self that was constructed to protect the
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  Speaker 3: vulnerable core of the toddler. So the toddler slaps mommy's knee.
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  Speaker 3: Mommy's overwhelmed and she does something that's kind of psychologically annihilating.
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  Speaker 3: And then the child, at that, you know, particularly if
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  Speaker 3: it's a repeated experience, is deprived of a maturing self. process,
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: and then they have to create, just as you were saying,
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  Speaker 3: a false self, which can look like a lot of things. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: But the cruelty coats the false self as a kind
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  Speaker 3: of aggressive protector. And then we have the bully.
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  Speaker 4: A carapace.
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  Speaker 3: A carapace.
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  Speaker 4: But I'm going back to what you just said a
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  Speaker 4: couple minutes ago, because I think it is really right on,
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  Speaker 4: which is.
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  Speaker 4: The need to be met for that toddler, young child,
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  Speaker 4: to be met when faced with that child's fury, what
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  Speaker 4: feels like hatred, aggression, anger, of, I will meet you there.
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  Speaker 4: I will meet you there. I am the adult. You
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  Speaker 4: are the kid. And we're going to meet. Versus... Leaving
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  Speaker 4: that child on his or her own to try to
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  Speaker 4: manage these intense feelings, which lead one way or another
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  Speaker 4: in a direction or can lead in a direction that
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: nobody wants. But first I have to meet you there
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  Speaker 4: without retaliating or being terribly wounded or simply pretending it's
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  Speaker 4: not happening. Hey. Come over here. Let's deal.
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  Speaker 3: Come on. So the parents also need to have done
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: their work on their own aggression. Because as always happens,
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: is that as the child, as the infant moves through
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  Speaker 3: these developmental stages, they conjure those same primal feelings in
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: the parent, which is part of the initiatory process of
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: raising a child. Right.
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  Speaker 4: So we're talking really about learning emotional regulation, how to
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: regulate intense affect of the child is really angry, in distress, upset,
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: all these intense feelings. And if the adult has not
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: learned how to manage those feelings in him or herself,
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  Speaker 4: it's going to have consequences. Don't you get angry at me.
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  Speaker 4: I'll teach you a thing or two. Versus what Winnicott says,
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  Speaker 4: that when the child is met and contained, he can say,
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  Speaker 4: I destroyed you, or he tried. And because he was contained,
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  Speaker 4: he can then say, I love you. I'm safe. You
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  Speaker 4: kept me safe. Nobody dies from meltdowns, anger, fury, rage.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And then he, in time, learns how to do that
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  Speaker 4: for himself.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly. Exactly. And that rapprochement moment where the child's a
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  Speaker 3: real stinker, the parents deal with it appropriately, and then
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  Speaker 3: the child's looking around the corner and sneaking up to
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: put their head on the lap to make sure everything
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: is okay. And that's the natural cycle. But again, if
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  Speaker 3: a child's... unconscious if their instincts are not being engaged
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  Speaker 3: by the parent then that wildness just gets kind of
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: pushed away into a corner and then it comes back
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: out when they're a little bit older. And it's much
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: harder to teach that containment, let's say, to a 16-year-old
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  Speaker 3: kid than it is to a 4-year-old kid.
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  Speaker 4: So I wonder if what we're saying is, in a way, well,
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  Speaker 4: we're saying one thing for sure, that the roots... go way,
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  Speaker 4: way back to very early stages of development. That's not
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: a big surprise. But I wonder if what we're also
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  Speaker 4: saying is that, in a way, if this is a
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  Speaker 4: repeated kind of experience, that some kids will become more
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: and more aggressive and act out more and more in
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: the hope of being contained and met and engaged and
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: helped by But the more they're not helped, the more
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  Speaker 4: aggressive they become and they turn into bullies, let's say.
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  Speaker 4: But that the other pathway here at this hypothetical fork
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  Speaker 4: is to become the victim. I can't afford to be angry.
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  Speaker 4: I can't afford to be upset. Can't afford to disagree
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  Speaker 4: with mom or dad or my nursery school teacher. And
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: they can be set up to become victims. So it's
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: either we become over-aggressive or unable to access our healthy
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: protest and self-defense.
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  Speaker 3: Because having no access to aggression, because it's been so
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: dangerous to show any hint of that in the home,
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: leaves the child and then even the young adult collapsed.
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  Speaker 4: That's a great way to put it.
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  Speaker 3: The collapse could look like dissociation. It could look like
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  Speaker 3: even an addiction of some kind. But the collapse creates
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: this magnetic field around the victim that creates a sense
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  Speaker 3: that anyone could do anything to me. And I am
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: harmless or incapable of response. And that's a tragic trauma.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: response you know fight flight freeze fawn posture so that
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  Speaker 3: collapsing is a form of it's a kind of freezing
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  Speaker 3: but it's this demonstration of profound repression of the natural
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  Speaker 3: aggression that one needs to be in a culture whether
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: it's a culture of children or culture of colleagues that
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: we've disowned or our aggression has been banished. And all
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: kinds of problems happen.
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: And then we've got the dynamics of the dance. That
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: this is, one child has learned to be submissive and
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: another child has learned to be aggressive, dominating. And as
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: with polarities, they find each other, that each is the
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: shadow of the other.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: Right. So then we're in this realm of splitting. And
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: Eleni Klein, another early genius of the psychoanalytic world.
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  Speaker 4: You're doing a great job of wending us through all
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: these various leaders in the field. Okay, go for it.
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  Speaker 3: So Melanie Klein was one of the early folks, and
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: Fairbairn as well, who were looking at this process of splitting.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: So the bully evacuates something that is intolerable, that is bad,
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: and projects it into the victim. So the victim is
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: stupid or weak or dirty or carrying some other negative valence.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: and then they harass or attack in some fashion. They
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: attack the person, and then the victim is forced into
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: playing the role of the bad thing. Now, the victim
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: is also split off from their own aggression.
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: So the bully is carrying their aggression, and then the
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: victim is, is carrying whatever is unacceptable in the bully's psyche,
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: and the two are kind of staring at each other
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  Speaker 3: in this magnetic dance, which is tragic. Now, where Klein
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: comes in around the idea of projective identification is when
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: these projections are particularly potent, that they can, in a sense,
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: pass a script underneath the table of consciousness, and there
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: is what some Jungians call the left-hand shake under the table.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: So the unconscious of the bully is passing a script
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: to the victim that they will bring forward some of
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: these unacceptable qualities, The victim is passing a script under
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: the table to the bully that they will bring forward
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: the disowned aggression. And the two will enter into this
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: drama of theatricalizing, so to speak, the thing that the
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: other does not have conscious access to.
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: There it is. And where I take this is into
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: the social realm. of where bullying takes place is called school.
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: That's where it happens, from grade school through middle school,
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: particularly intensely, and then somewhat in high school. But it
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: tends to sort of start tapering off. And I was
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: talking to people all week, and some of the folks
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: that I could touch base with said, yeah, but it
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: never happened in college. By the time we got to college,
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: it was over. So something about establishing peer relations, and
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: I mean, this is a whole huge subject in itself,
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: of how we deal with our peers and socialize and
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: the various groups and subgroups and all those complicated things.
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: You hit grade school, and we have this dynamic that
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: you just elucidated, and the Bully needs to learn to
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: contain emotions and rein in the aggression and develop more empathy.
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: And the victim needs to find some more access to
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: aggression and express and, as the kids all say, stick
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: up for yourself. And what does that take? Grownups. It
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: takes teachers, school officials, guidance counselors, you know, whoever all
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: those adults in the school are, to see it and
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: provide the kind of containment that we were just talking
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: about a la Winnicott. It needs to simply be engaged
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: because that didn't happen for those kids, whoever the ones
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: are caught in this dynamic. It didn't happen sufficiently, probably,
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: early on in the home in earlier stages of development.
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: So now it has to happen in third grade or
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: seventh grade or whatever the grade is. And I'm not
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: sure how to what extent this really does happen in
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: schools in the public forum. And I've heard many a story,
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: not from old folks like us who were in school
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: in the 1920s, but kids who were in school 10
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: years ago or 20 years ago, where it wasn't handled.
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: And something about bullying... makes everybody really nervous. It's not
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: just a thing that we do. It's like, oh gosh,
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: you know, nobody wants to touch it. I don't know
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: that that's true, but I've heard enough stories where, especially
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: if it's, you know, boys are physical. The data supports
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: this all the time. You know, boys will just, you know,
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: get in there and scrap and wrestle and punch and fight.
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: But girls do it much more socially, much more relationally.
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: The whole mean girl thing, especially in middle school, it's
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: very subtle. And there's some way that it's hard for
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: the adults to engage with this. Instead of saying, as
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: we would, I'm I hope, to a three-year-old, hey, hey, hey, whoa, whoa,
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: not settle down, here we are, let's deal with you
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: and what's happening here. Something by the time kids are
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: in the eighth grade seems to prevent school administrators from saying, okay,
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: Get over here. Sit your little butts down in my office.
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: What's happening? Talk to me. I'm going to talk to you.
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: But this is going to stop.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: And that intervention is bringing consciousness to it.
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, just having the assistant principal, you, you, my office,
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: right now. I tell you what, your eyes are big
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: as saucers. Your hair is on end and you are
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: wide awake. Okay.
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: And I'm also wanting to model that idea that I
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: think a mom of a toddler having a meltdown and,
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: you know, maybe a school official or some other adult
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: in a scout troop or whatever would also have that
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: matter-of-fact attitude of, No, I'm not filled with the juice
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: of human kindness when I see you kids doing this.
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: So get your butts in my office and just sit
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: them down and we're going to deal. But that it's
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: not so alarming. It's not so horrible. It's kids being kids.
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: We need to help you guys deal with this. And
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: we do that for a three-year-old. We don't let the three-year-old,
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: you know, rage and punch the walls and punch a
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: parent and so on. We have that. Whoa, hold it,
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: wait a minute. Enough.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: So one thing I want to bring forward is that
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: when we're talking about bullying, we're talking about a caliber
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: of distress and acting out that is shy of criminality.
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: So far.
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: So far, but then bullying moves into... you know, oppositional
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: defiance and conduct disorder and criminality and psychopathy. But those
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: things are generally associated with adults who have failed for
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: whatever reason to self-regulate.
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: But that's such a good point you're making. If you, you,
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: a you out there, doesn't master the task of self-regulation
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: and does all kinds of bullying, acting out, etc., the
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: trajectory is not good. There are higher rates of alcoholism
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: and court behavior and driving offenses and so on. It's
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: really not good. It's not just that it harms the victim,
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: which it does, but it's not good for personal development.
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: It has real consequences.
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: So some of the ways that we're talking about bullying
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: right now, and I I think the listeners need to
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: note that we're talking about this right now as a
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: developmental process in humans that are young enough to have
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: some neuroplasticity. Once these behaviors become cemented into somebody who's
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: 30 years old, let's say, it's a different game that
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: requires different kinds of interventions because then we have a
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: more serious problem. But when we're talking about this kind
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: of victim-bully, unconscious dance that's happening, it can sound benign
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: in a way. And that may be true when we're
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: talking about something happening in elementary school and the stakes
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: are containable. When things start happening in the adult world,
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: then we can wind up having legal problems, and then
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: it escalates really beyond bullying. So I just wanted to
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: put that out there. So let's take an additional frame
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: that I think is helpful. Another theorist, a guy named Kohat,
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: talks about bullying as an expression of narcissistic injury. And
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: for him, we have a child who has not been
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: given empathic mirroring. And for whatever reason, the parents are
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: not available or they themselves lack that skill to mirror
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: or any number of interruptions. But when a child is
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: not offered an empathic mirroring, that there are fragmentations. that
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: occur inside of the psyche. And for Kohut, the rage
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: of the bully couldn't be dismissed simply as sadism, but
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: as a demand to be seen and confirmed.
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: Yes. Which is, you know, sort of a corollary back
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: to Winnicott of see me, help me, contain me. Engage
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: with me.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: If the child has a narcissistic injury, which means that
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: they are not in contact with themselves because the self
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: has not been identified and languaged to the child from
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: the parent, then there is a kind of inverted mirror happens.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: And by humiliating others, the narcissistically wounded child feels temporarily inflated, grand, powerful,
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: and that creates a very brittle solution to that narcissistic wound.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: And in order to stay on top of the wound,
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: the bully becomes dependent on this continuous demand, domination, and
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: humiliation of others. to keep themselves above this painful void
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: of connection to self.
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: That's a really, I want to keep going around on
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: this a little bit more because it's hard, it's a
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: little hard to understand, I think, at first pass. So
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: I'll take a slightly different tack. That when the child's aggression,
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: let's say beating up on a sibling or, you know,
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: having tantrums, etc. If the parent cannot meet the child
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: there and understand that anger, rage, the obvious lack of
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: emotional regulation in any child is part of his or
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: her being human and it's okay. The child has to
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: do something with those feelings of not being met, not
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: being affirmed, that what do I do with this? And
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: there's an injury there that can take the path of
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: escalating the behavior to become more attacking, more of a bully. With,
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: I would imagine, the faint hope underneath that someone will
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: engage with it. But it does create that sense of
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: inflation of, oh, I got away with this. Oh, you know,
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: I can be king of the hill. I can be
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: king of the playground. But underneath, there is a relational
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: connection that has gone missing. And it's a very hollow,
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: as you were saying earlier, it's a false self. It
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: creates a false self versus a place that is understood
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: and where you have been met. But that's a part
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: that's simply unacceptable. If it's a part of you that's unacceptable,
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: people tend to act it out because the business is
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: never finished. It's unfinished business. What will happen if I'm aggressive? Well,
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: if nothing happens, it tends to escalate.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: So there is the general experience of being met, as
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: we were saying. And when we're talking about a narcissistic injury,
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: we're talking about being met in a very particular way
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: with a parent saying, is able to identify what the
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: child is experiencing and to language that back to the
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: child so that they slowly develop a theory of personality. Now,
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: there's some research that suggests that this is something that
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: siblings also teach each other, that sometimes it's more difficult
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: for a child that is alone, a single child, to
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: develop a theory of personality without the constant feedback from siblings.
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: But a narcissistic injury is when the parent's needs are
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: consistently dominating the family relationship. So it doesn't really matter
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: what you want. What matters is that you look or
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: behave a certain way in order to make daddy or
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: mommy feel affirmed or not embarrassed. Or you should like
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: playing football because I like playing football. And of course,
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: everyone must like playing football or whatever it is. So
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: early in life, This idea of empathic recognition is missing.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: And then the child is criticized, humiliated, abandoned, unseen, and
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: develops a feeling that they are defective in some way.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: And this isn't just about being disappointed, which is a
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: normal experience at all time. But this is internalized so
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: that the cohesion of the personality is violated and the
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: child feels worthless, unseen, and in the worst case, even annihilated.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: And for Kohut particularly, this is met eventually with narcissistic rage.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: And it is in proportion to the chronic invalidation. So
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: then this turns into an outer attack And it is
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: in service to not collapsing under the weight of this invalidation.
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: So there's a hypersensitivity to self-criticism. There are these wild
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: ships from grandiosity to despair. There's rage and humiliation, a
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: dependency on needing to be admired at all costs. And
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: so coming back to this idea of the rage that's
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: boiling in the invalidated child and then discovering maybe by
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: accident that by humiliating and narcissistically wounding another child that
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: the bully feels relieved of that feeling of inferiority of
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: being meaningless or worthless And that is a very seductive defense,
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: a very seductive fix that leads to, of course, all
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: kinds of other problems.
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: So that adds another causal sort of hypothesis, but one
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: that has, I think, a lot of reality to it. First,
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: we have an inability, a la Winnicott, to contain and
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: help a child escape regulate emotion. And what Kohut adds
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: to this, he's a self-psychologist and he talked a lot
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: about narcissism, is that just a general overall pattern in
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: a child of certain things being rewarded, of this is
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: how you really should be. You use the example of football.
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: You really should want to play football. You should, here's
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: what a boy is like or what a girl is like.
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: and that the parents have a certain kind of set
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: of expectations. And as the child who needs parental approval,
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: you know, tries to fulfill some of those, what does
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: he or she do with the anger and the rage
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: at not being affirmed for who he or she actually is?
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: So again, to use football as a metaphor, this kid
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: doesn't want to play football. You know, this is a
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: kid that likes to read books or likes to play chess.
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: I'll do battle on the chessboard and not on the field.
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: And that not being affirmed for, yes, that's who you are,
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: so let's sign you up for chess club and you
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: be you, whoever that you is. There's a subtle but
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: substantial tug to be who we want you to be.
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: And that, understandably enough, can unleash a lot of rage
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: and of the urge to dominate as he or she
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: has been dominated. Dominate others. That's how it works.
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: And so as we're moving through these various lenses to
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: contemplate bullying, I think the listeners are likely to maybe
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: find one idea is more resonant than others in terms
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: of their own experience, which is why it's so useful
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: to toss out different lenses. Here's another Freudian lens. Freud,
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: of course, had a theory of instincts. He was particularly
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: interested in instincts compared to any number of other things
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: that go into making a human personality. And in his model,
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: the instincts have to be contained by a kind of
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: internalized moral authority, which he called the superego. Of course,
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: in some measure, that is correct. I mean, when you
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: look at your three-year-old, they're taking a wooden block and
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: they're clobbering, you know, their sibling who's, you know, a
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: year younger. You run over there and you've got to,
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: you know, tell them that is wrong. And hopefully, somewhere
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: inside of them, they register this and they think, yes,
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: hitting the baby with a wood block is bad. That
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: needs to happen in some measure so that we help
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: our children socialize to minimize harm, if nothing else. But
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: some systems that we can be raised in are so moralistic,
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: so perfectionistic, so hyper-regulating, so that the eye of the
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: parent becomes this kind of frightening scourge, and then the
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: child can internalize a very harsh, fierce monitor of And
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: then the superego, rather than helping the child gently socialize
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: and be successful, the superego becomes an oppressive, fierce warden.
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: And if that's been internalized, then when the child, a
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: little bit later, sees the errant behavior in another child,
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: they can rise up with that same ferocious, critical, oppressive attitude.
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: And that can be impressive.
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because that's how it works.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: That's how it works.
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: Whoever is bigger and more powerful gets to have, holds sway.
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: So if, let's say, being proud of an achievement is
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: considered arrogant, in the family system. And, you know, you
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: better shut up. You're too big for your bridges. You know,
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: it's unseemly or worse to even acknowledge a success than
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: as the child's a little older and someone else, another child,
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: feels proud of something. The bully will very likely shame
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: them into silence.
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm going to one of the authors that
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: we read and read and read, and we can recommend
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: to listeners, Edward Edinger. And I think any Jungian, and
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: God knows how many other people, have ever gotten through
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: training without reading Ego and Archetype. And he elucidates a
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: really big polarity that can become a split between in
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: the psyche between what you've been saying, inflation, of I'm
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: bigger than this, I can do anything, I'm king of
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: the mountain, and alienation, the collapse, I'm in exile, I'm alone,
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: I'm defeated. And there's some great illustrations, one of them
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: is some poor man adult guy with a beard sitting
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: alone on a rock, and so it goes. But at
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: an archetypal level, these dynamics play out in all of us,
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: and they're especially visible in the bully-victim dynamic, whether it
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: comes from parental domination and harshness or any one of
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: the other kinds of early beginnings that we've spoken of,
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: but we all wrestle with this of you know, I'm great,
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: you know. My team won the game, you know, or,
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm getting an award. And then usually these
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: things are moderated by this little thing out there called reality.
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: Of like, yes, but now I want you to come
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: in and set the table for dinner. You're back home now.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: Before enlightenment, the laundry. After enlightenment, the laundry.
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: There it is. There it absolutely is. And usually we
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: navigate these things along a range that's manageable.
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: So we get all puffed up, you know, I'm just
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: a hot ticket. The teacher picked me to read the
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: whole short story aloud to the whole class. Oh, I
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: didn't get picked at all for the softball team. So
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: we're managing these triumphs and disappointments and these assaults on
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: our little developing ego pretty well, unless things are either
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: not things are too exaggerated, they're too much, and or
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: they're repeated. And it becomes just a relational dynamic that
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: is over-established. And then we get the bully with, as
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: you said, the false self that I always think of
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: as like a knight in armor. That we have our
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: armor and, man, nobody can get to me. But Oh,
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: it's heavy. It hinders movement. It's inhibiting. It isolates us.
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: I mean, nobody wants that.
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: Not deep down. The little one inside of us is
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: really just looking to be loved and embraced and welcomed.
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: And you can't grow in that armor if you put
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: it on when you're, let's say, 11. It's going to
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: really be pretty stifling as you continue to grow. So
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: what was once protective is going to become terribly inhibiting
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: and antithetical to your growth. And then we have the victim,
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: the alienation side of this archetypal polarity, who feels helpless
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: and alone and abandoned and also unseen. There are two
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: different forms of in this bully-victim dynamic, two different forms
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: of being unseen.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: Because how many times have, I don't know how many
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: stories I've heard of kids relating some awful defeat or
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: problem and the adults saying, well, you've got to learn
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: to stick up for yourself or you've got to learn
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: to fight back. Or it may not even be spoken,
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: it's just a pervasive attitude of, This is part of childhood.
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: Boys will be boys. You know, he's got to learn
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: to take care of himself. Man up.
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: Right. Which is fine if it works, but if that's
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: not adequate, you know, the parents need to take a
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: deeper interest in trying to help the child figure out
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: how to access what's needed. Right.
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: Where.
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: are the grown-ups. One of a client's story that was
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: a horrible trauma was a little girl in school, third grade,
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: and there was some kind of a platform for ladders
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: and slippery slides and stuff in the schoolyard, and the
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: kids would go out to the playground for recess, and
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: they would get her up on this platform And surround
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: it so she couldn't go down the ladder or the
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: slipper slide or any of that stuff. And she was,
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: you know, sort of cornered up there. And that one
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: of the teachers told her she had to learn to
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: defend herself. You know, my question is, what are you
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: talking about? There are six, seven, eight kids surrounding this platform.
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: This is Mission Impossible. You can't be expected to take
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: that on. Where were the grown-ups? And for kids, whether
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: it's the toddler still at home or the child in school,
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: the grown-ups have to get involved, especially when, as in
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: this situation, we haven't talked about this yet, when one
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: kid becomes the leader of a little group rampaging, bullying pack.
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: And that power and that behavior can be contagious. Of,
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: come on, you're going to be on my team. We're
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: going to get him or her. We're going to get him.
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: The safety of shared sadism reduces anxiety and guilt.
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: I'm just going to say that again. The safety of
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: sadism reduces anxiety Anxiety and guilt.
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: Right. The safety of shared sadism reduces anxiety in group
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: because then we're talking about the group.
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: We've got mob behavior. And I love how you said that.
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: That's exactly it. And that has been the case throughout
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: human history. It's contagious. The shared sadism. Cruelty, fury, rampaging
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: is contagious. Jung talks a lot about mob behavior, and
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: it's incredibly regressive.
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there is something about getting swept into a kind
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: of primal energy that is exalting and frightening. But for Jung,
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: what was most concerning is that there is a loss
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: of the individual. Jung's whole psychological thrust is learning, which
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: often happens later in life, because in the beginning we're
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: just trying to figure out, get our feet on the ground,
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: figure out who we are. But later on in life,
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: it's like, no, this is me, and that's not me.
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: Those traits, that agenda, those belief systems, that's being shoved
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: inside of me. And I recognize that as... alien to
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: my true nature.
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: It's easily ignited, and you've kind of teed me up
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: to read this. I wasn't sure whether it would fold
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: in or not, but here it is, so I'm going
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: to go for it. It's our friend, mentor, life guide,
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: Carl Jung, talking about this. Ultimately, everything depends on the
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: quality of the individual, but our fatally short-sighted age thinks
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations, though
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: one would think that the world had seen more than
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: enough of what a well-disciplined mob can do in the
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: hands of a single madman. Unfortunately, this realization does not
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: seem to have penetrated very far, and our blindness is
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: extremely dangerous. People go on blithely organizing and believing in
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: the sovereign remedy of mass action without the least consciousness
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: of the fact that the most powerful organizations, can be
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: maintained only by the greatest ruthlessness of their leaders and
• 57:31
  Speaker 4: the cheapest of slogans. Now, I'm calling that basically bullying.
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: So if we take the schoolyard bully and give him
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: or her a pack of followers and turn them into adults,
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: This is why you get mobs and how you get mobs.
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: And it's just what you were saying, the loss of
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: the individual of, wait a minute, this doesn't comport with
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: common sense, doesn't comport with my values. I'm not going
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: to do this. People can get swept up in it.
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. So what Jung was interested in and is mysterious,
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: that when a group comes together and there is this,
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: whipping up of intense feeling and combined with anxiety that
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: the ego loses some of its consciousness. There's a dipping
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: and dipping and it goes down and down. And then
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: once we lose a certain level of consciousness, we are
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: much more easily manipulated by the mob, the crowd, advertising
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: campaigns for that matter, So, like, for instance, part of
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: advertising is it's not just, you know, buy this product,
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: but it provokes anxiety. Like, if you don't buy this product,
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: there are these terrible outcomes. You won't be pretty, you
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: won't be healthy, you won't be rich or famous. So
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: there has to be a stirring of anxiety. which lowers consciousness,
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: and then the false solution is presented, which in a
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: benign way might be buy this perfume or cologne or
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: buy this beautiful car. In a more savage environment, the
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: solution is is to gang up on another person, be sadistic,
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: to demonstrate how superior the group is, how morally righteous,
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: that how powerful we all are, and therefore we don't
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: have to feel guilty or anxious about anything. And that's dangerous.
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: But I like how with sort of extended the perimeter
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: of this into a realm such as advertising. And the
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: question is, you know, is it in a certain sense,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: is manipulation a certain form or at least tangential to bullying?
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: That if you can be manipulated and you can be
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: coerced into buying something, or into not speaking up, of
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: not going against the crowd, or simply maintaining your own
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: individual stance. No, I don't believe in that. So I'm
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: not going to do it. I'm not going to buy it.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: I'm not going to wear that. It's an interesting thought
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: that this is a subtle form of being manipulated by
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: outside forces of be this way. You know, it goes
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: back to the kid whose parents hypothetically, we're using it
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: as a metaphor, say all our kids, all our boys
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: all join the football team. And, you know, in a sense,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: we're all privy to that kind of parental influence too,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: of everybody in our family. is good at sports. And
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: we do kind of go along, but just what Jung
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: was saying here, everything, ultimately, everything depends on the quality
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: of the individual. That's an amazing phrase. And there, I think,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: is the ultimate antidote to bullying, you know, whether it's
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: taking place in an overt way in a school, let's say,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: or perhaps as an adult in a really subtle way,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 4: pressure to live a certain way and acquire certain consumer items,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: establish certain values of everything ultimately depends on.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: Each of us Right, so achieving this feeling of being
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: an individual, which is why Jung coined that term individuation, individualation,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: so that it starts with an assumption that we have
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: been so powerfully colonized, we have been so incessantly pushed
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: to identify with collective values and beliefs and behaviors, that
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: it's actually an effort to reclaim the reality that I
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: am a unique, sovereign, particular soul in this world, unlike
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: any other. And how do I language that to myself,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: particularly if it wasn't seen or engaged over the course
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: of my life prior to that?
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: Well, I like.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: How we have finally come around. We didn't plan this.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: This was not on our outline. There really isn't one.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: But to come around to individuation, but there it is.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: We each eventually, especially as adults, we have the resources
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: within us to grow and develop as we each were
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: meant to be, to find our true nature, our values, ourselves,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: and become that.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: So if we operationalize that, as we do a life
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: review in our own minds, we will find examples where
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: we were bullying another person. That's an opportunity to do
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: shadow work What was the intolerable thing that we fantasized
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: about the other that was so dangerous to us that
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: we had to harass it or attack it or in
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: some way do harm to it? And now as more
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: mature adults, can we take that and pull it back
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: into ourselves and find that small part hard to tolerate
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: reality in ourselves and if we were victims of bullying
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: can we look at the aggression the accusations the cruelty
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: of the other and pull that into ourselves and say
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: where is my aggression where is my accusational energy hiding
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: where is my will to dominate Where is that in me?
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: So there's shadow work on both sides, taking hold of
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: the disowned parts of ourselves and laying claim to it
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: and working with it, which doesn't mean acting it out,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: but it means talking to it, giving it an image.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: We're right back to Winnicott, engaging with it.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: Yes, there you go.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: Right. We have to engage with that part of ourselves,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: even if as a child it was not engaged with
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: by the adults in our lives. It's still there, waiting.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: The thing that we hate in the other person, whether
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: we think they're inferior to us or whether they're plaguing us,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: it's where the gold is. It's where the mystery lay. Yes.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 4: And for the people that have been On the victim
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 4: side of this great divide, same thing holds true. So
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: where's your authentic self, your own, your desires, your feelings,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: and your empowerment over yourself that you can have as
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: an adult that you might not have been able to
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 4: have as a child? But here it is. And each
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 4: activates the other.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: And so, and it's internal, just as we're both saying.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: So here we are. The task ever present is ever
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: thus of individuating.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: And our dreams help with that process. And before we
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: jump into a dream, let's talk a little bit about
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: dream school.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: Lisa and Deb and I have created a school, a
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: learning environment where people can learn how to interpret their
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: own dreams. Now, for those of you that may not
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: be familiar with dream interpretation, it is a very comprehensive art.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: There are many facets to it. It is a kind
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: of discipline. So in dream school, we progressively inform and
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: educate about the various aspects dimensions of dream analysis and
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: because it is a vibrant and large community you have
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: a chance to work in dream groups to attend live
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: programming presented by the three of us and to chew
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: on your dreams and the dreams of other people to
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: practice practice practice practice in an environment of goodwill and
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: curiosity And as you gain in this way of thinking
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: about symbolic language, you can begin to really feel when
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: you've kind of hit the nail on the head. It's like, ah, yes,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: that's what's going on in oneself or perhaps in a
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: loved one that you're talking with about their dream. And
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: that can be transformative. Our dreamer is a 38-year-old male
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: who works as a programmer. And this is the dream.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: I'm being forced to attend a gathering of my extended family.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: It's some sort of lunch or dinner, and it's taking
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: place in my childhood home. It feels as if this
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: is where I now live, and my father had dreamt
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: me from my room into the kitchen downstairs. The kitchen
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: is not where it used to be. It's in a
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: room that used to be the study. It has since
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: been converted into the living room and merged with the
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: kitchen in real life. My mother is there, and one
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: other person, male, Maybe my uncle. My mother says something
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: nasty to me, further igniting my anger at forcing me
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: to be here. I start yelling at her, pouring all
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: my rage and fury into my shouted words. As I
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: am yelling, I see her trying to escape my shouting,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: but she's cornered with her back against the kitchen cabinets.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: I want to hurt her the way she hurt me.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: I love that she is scared, and I want to
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: wound her in her child the way she wounded me
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: when I was a child. She has nowhere to run,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: and I love it, that sweet taste of vengeance. I
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: finish my yelling at her with a sarcastic, but no,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: you've never made even the tiniest mistake in your life,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: and everything you did was fucking perfect. Then scream in
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: her face, letting all my rage be heard, In this
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: last word, liar! I let her run away now, and
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: suddenly I feel a wonderful sense of calm. My uncle
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: asks me then about the time when I was out
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: with someone. I don't really think about this question or
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: my answer, as I'm just taking in this sudden outburst
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: of calmness. Yeah, I remember, I say very calmly, quietly, absentmindedly.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: I mention something about coming home from that trip to
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: which he responds, seemingly taking some umbrage at my understatement,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: that I was completely wasted when I got home. Then
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: he mentions that my friend had had petroleum or something
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: like that, which was the name he'd given to the no-egg,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: gluten-free pasta with something oily as a sauce that my friend,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: my real-life wife's colleague, ate. I tell him then, ready
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: to finally focus on our conversation, that I was thinking
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: of some other outing I went to with my brother.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: I sit down at the kitchen table and grab something
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: to eat. I don't join the rest of my family
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: in the other room. Whatever I got is so tasty,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: I close my eyes to enjoy it fully. My dad
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: arrives at this point. He hadn't heard me yelling at
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: my mother, but I knew that if he had, he'd
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: have assumed I'd hit her and would have restrained me.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: I'm woken up from the dream at this point by
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: my wife who kisses me on the cheek. In my
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: dream state, I think it's my mother, and I want
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: to push her away. I want to shout at her
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: something I can only later phrase as, you don't get
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: to skip the part where you apologize. But I realize
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: in time that I was sleeping. For context, the dreamer writes,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: My wife and I have had a difficult period in
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: our marriage and are now receiving marriage counseling. I had
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: previously gone to individual therapy and have made progress in
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: standing up for myself I've always had trouble with that
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: and representing myself, my needs and desires. The day before
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: the dream, my wife and I had a counseling session
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: and for the first time I was able to repeat
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: the words my wife has spoken to me in anger.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: In my individual therapy sessions, my therapist and I were
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: able to ascertain that I dissociated from some situations due
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: to my childhood trauma related to my mother. Dissociated so completely,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: I could never remember what was said during an argument,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: even moments after it was over. He writes the main
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: feelings in the dream for him were anger, rage, fury,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: then sudden calm and peace, enjoying the food at the table.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: And then he offers a bit more explanation. My father
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: had to once restrain me, held my hands behind my back,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: when I was angry at my mother. I've never been violent,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: and I was absolutely disgusted that he would have such
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: a low opinion of me to think I would have
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: hit somebody so clearly weaker than myself. In the dream,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: I held my arms at my sides. I wanted to
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: torture my mother verbally. As a child and well into
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: my teens and even adult years, I was always forced
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: to attend parties and gatherings, although I would usually never
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: know anybody at those gatherings but my parents. At those gatherings,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: but also in other areas of my life, my mother
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: would expect very high standards of behavior, standards impossible to achieve.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: She once scrutinized a flawless A grade I got until
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: she found I'd written in one of the answers a
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: letter A, which somewhat resembled an E, bragging then, along
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: with my father, that she was even better at spotting
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: mistakes than my teacher. See, you're not perfect, they told
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: me then. Ouch.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: So I think this is just a wonderful dream because
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: it contains so many elements of the dynamics that we
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: had been talking about in the episode. This narcissistic wounding
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: that then gives rise to this ferocious rage. And yet
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: the rage doesn't really solve the problem necessarily. This idea
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: of him projecting in the dream this enormous amount of energy,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: and then once the tension has been exercised and put
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: into the image of the mother, he feels calm. It
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: does what the psychoanalyst said, that all of a sudden,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: all of that feeling has disappeared. It's just no longer here.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: That rings so true to, you know, that we get
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 4: We vent. We get the rage out of us, and
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 4: it feels, oh, good, for a little while. But it
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 4: will come back up again. It's not a real solution
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 4: to the problem. So in this dream, you know, I'm
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 4: being forced to attend a gathering of my extended family.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 4: I'm being forced. to be together with people who are
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 4: my family, that our dream ego doesn't have warm feelings toward.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: So we're into that coercion, domination. The bullying thing is
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 4: right there at the outset. You're going to get some
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 4: nice clothes on, by golly, and you're going to go,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: whether you want to or not. And we also, of course,
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: have a gigantic mother complex here. Our dreamer has a
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 4: lot of feelings toward, in his comments, his real-life mother.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 4: And here is his mother complex in the dream that
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 4: is unresolved. And that part of, you know, we could
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: call this bullying. of the overcritical parent where he says
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 4: in his comments that, you know, that she once scrutinized
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 4: a flawless A grade by, you know, kind of combing
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 4: through his paper until she found a very minor mistake.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: So something was terribly embattled here that, of course, crops
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 4: up as it does for practically everybody in his marriage.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: of the next woman in your life, the next man
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 4: in your life, the next significant other in your life,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 4: is going to evoke all kinds of things from each
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 4: other's early histories.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: Yes, I think that the mother comes across as perhaps
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: part of that perfectionistic superego that's, you know, very intense,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: giving the child these constant narcissistic wounds of it's wrong.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: It's not enough. You're not good. You're not big. You're
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: not smart. And then this ferocity that comes forward, which
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: in a sense is, you know, see me and confirm me.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: He does feel this relief because now the dream mother
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: is anxious and kind of backed up and collapsed. So
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: there's an inflation of power. So there is a way
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: in which we're seeing how the machinery of the psyche
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: gets him through the day.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: I'm thinking about the role of the masculine in this dream,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 4: because it's very clear about, you know, nobody can miss
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 4: the mother conversation. and the feeling that the dream ego
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 4: has toward the representation in himself. Dear dreamer, this is
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: now part of you. But what about the men? So
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: scene one is.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 4: Between dream ego and mom. And scene two, it's helpful
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 4: to break up a long dream like this, is, aha,
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: if all this yelling and screaming at mother and getting
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 4: even with her and yelling at her, if all that happens,
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 4: then what happens next? My uncle asks me about the
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 4: time I was out with someone. I don't really think
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 4: about his question or my answer. as I'm just taking
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 4: in this calmness, the relief at having disgorged his rage. Yeah,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 4: I remember, I say calmly, absentmindedly. And so he remembers
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 4: that he was completely wasted after a trip home. The
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 4: uncle mentions my friend had petroleum or something like that,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 4: which was a name he gave, no egg gluten-free pasta.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 4: that his friend, my real-life wife's colleague, ate. Then he
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 4: thinks of an outing he went on with his brother.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 4: And then he sits down at the table to grab
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 4: something to eat, and my dad arrives at this point,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 4: who hadn't heard him yelling at his mother. So what about,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 4: we have uncle, brother, and father arrive on the scene.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 4: in fairly innocuous ways. And yet they are represented in
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 4: the dream. And have this sort of irrelevant conversation about
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 4: the gluten-free pasta, this trip that he had been, our
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 4: dream ego had been on at some point. And the meal,
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 4: he says, is whatever I got is so tasty, I
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 4: closed my eyes to enjoy it fully. And in his associations,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: he says that his father once restrained him when he
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 4: was angry at his mother. So, you know, in the
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 4: context of what we've been talking about with bullies, you know,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 4: what do the other adults do?
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: Critical, perfectionistic, and demeaning. And then the father is monitoring
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: the dreamer for any aggression, any protest, or any self-protection.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 3: From that, the father then pins him so that he
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 3: has to align or submit to whatever the excreting assessment is.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 3: And I think in the associations he says that he
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: was offended because he had never been physically aggressive towards
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: his mother and the father, exaggerating his rage as if
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: he needed to be pinned or straightjacketed was again a
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 3: misunderstanding of what was happening inside of the dreamer. And again,
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: the father's response is just to wrap him up not
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: to talk to him, not to intervene regarding the narcissistic
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 3: wounds that he's experiencing, but to just make it safer
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 3: for the mother to continue to wound his self-esteem.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: And that can often happen in families. First, you know,
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 4: the parental, you know, sort of like the management team.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 4: You know, we're the head of this little family business
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 4: that we're running here. called Raising You Kids, and that
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 4: parents can support one another. Your mother's always right. Don't
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 4: talk back to your mother. How dare you do that
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 4: to your mother in the interest of preserving a hierarchy,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 4: parental authority, and, of course, avoiding conflict. Let's not go there.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 4: Let's not open... that terrible can of interpersonal difficulties. Your
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 4: mother's always right. Now go to your room and come
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 4: back down when you're ready to behave well, right? But
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 4: in this dream, you know, nothing much happens with the men.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 4: But I'm interested in the end of the dream. First
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 4: of all, he sits down after his outburst and this
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 4: interlude with the uncle. And he says, I sit down
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 4: at the kitchen table and grab something to eat. I
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 4: do it. I dream ego do it. I don't join
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 4: the rest of my family in the other room. Whatever
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 4: I got is so tasty, I close my eyes to
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 4: enjoy it fully. So when he can use his own
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 4: agency to not join the family, grab what he wants
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 4: to eat, he can enjoy it fully. And it's symbolic
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 4: of taking something good in. What is the psychic food
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 4: that he can provide for himself or is just available
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 4: on the kitchen counter that you can have that? You
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 4: can get it yourself now. And then in the dream,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 4: dad arrives. He would have restrained him. And then I'm
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 4: woken up from the dream at this point by my
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 4: wife who kisses me on the cheek. In my dream state,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 4: I think it's my mother and I want to push
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 4: her away. I want to shout at her something I
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 4: can only later phrase as, you don't get to skip
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 4: the part where you apologize. But I realized in time
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 4: I was sleeping. There's an echo in the dream of
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 4: being given something good. The kiss on the cheek. And
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 4: he says they're having a hard time in their marriage. And,
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 4: you know, so, okay, they've gone to marriage counseling, and
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 4: his wife is doing something spontaneous and affectionate. Hey, honey,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 4: good morning. Little peck on the cheek.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 3: And can he take that in, in the spirit with
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: which it's given? Or does the complex so interfere and
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: distort that what's being given that he can't recognize it
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: as food.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly. He gets real-life emotional food in the form
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 4: of his wife's kiss on the cheek. And he realizes
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 4: in time. He makes the distinction of like, whoa, I'm
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 4: not dreaming anymore.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 3: I'm awake.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 4: It's my wife. So there are some indications here of
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 4: real separation from the complex that... He's not under the
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 4: sway of these parental complexes anymore.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: So the mother complex seems to have been internalized as
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: an internal persecutor. And so in the dream world, rather
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 3: than acting out in the outer world, he's able to
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 3: face off with the mother complex and really... have a
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 3: rock'em sock'em with the inner persecutor and challenge rather than
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: align with the criticisms of the internal persecutor saying, you
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 3: are lying to me. This isn't true. I haven't failed
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 3: in all these ways. I'm not making endless mistakes as
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 3: an inner figure. And then she does back up and
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: fall silent. I mean, that's In that regard, if we
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 3: keep the symbolic attitude and we don't literalize it, as
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: a symbolic attitude, sometimes the ego needs to stand up
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 3: against some of the inner figures and say, cut it out.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 3: Stop it. Stop messing with me.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 4: I often think about how, you know, and fairy tales
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 4: give us the model for this, of when you encounter
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 4: difficulty a hurdle, a problem, an antagonist in a fairy tale.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 4: You can run away, you can hide, you can do battles,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 4: you can try to befriend, you can trick, you know,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 4: you have all this whole range of options.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 4: And a psychologist named Karen Horney has minimized this and
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 4: sort of distilled it down to you can go toward,
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 4: you can push against, Or you can hide. You can
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 4: just go away. And I always like the engagement that
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 4: you can push against. But, you know, imagine locking hands
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 4: with somebody and their fingers are interlocked with yours and
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 4: you're pushing. It's engagement. And moving towards something, even if
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 4: it's to do battle, is also engagement. So our dream
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 4: ego is engaged with the mother complex. He's just moving
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 4: right in there. He's ready to do battle. And I
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 4: wonder if where, you know, Psyche might be intimating the
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 4: movement is at two places. He helps himself to food,
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 4: and it's tasty. All right, go team. And then the
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 4: differentiation between the mother complex in his dream and his
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 4: real-world wife of, oh, they're really a felt realization. Of
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 4: waking up and thinking it's one and then, uh-uh, it's
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 4: the other. That there is loving, tenderness, affection. It's a
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 4: sweet moment to be woken up by a kiss on
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 4: your cheek.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 4: Even in the midst of having marital difficulties, it's an
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 4: essentially friendly gesture. So his wife comes toward him. spontaneously,
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 4: right at the end of this dream. Now, that's amazing.
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 3: It is amazing. And it really creates this wonderful opportunity
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 3: for him to really think about the difference between the
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 3: mother complex and his partner, his wife in the room,
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 3: and that they are different. And that's so much about
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 3: pulling the complex out of a relationship where it doesn't belong.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: your mom did she didn't raise you i mean you
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: weren't an infant totally vulnerable to her yeah so so
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 3: when we can really compare like this is this is
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 3: my lived reality this is my past they don't line
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: up and we want to find those moments where it
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 3: doesn't stick so then we can as you were saying
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 3: deb relax and say no no no this is this
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 3: is a lovely kiss this is a nice thing I've
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: got to wake from the nightmare. I have to wake
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 3: from the dream to see reality. And that's true for
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 3: all of us.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 3: I want to come back just for a second at
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 3: this idea of him feeding himself, that the mother complex
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 3: has been banished from the kitchen, and then he needs
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 3: to take on the role of mothering himself, that he
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 3: needs to be... The mother he's been waiting for. And
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: that's so important because if he's projecting that onto the wife,
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 3: if he's pressuring her to be the perfect mother he
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 3: never had, that can create all kinds of tension in
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: the marriage. And that needs to be extracted as well.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 3: That he can give to himself the things that he
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 3: didn't get and discover that it's kind of wonderful.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 4: And that it's a mixed bag. Your wife, your husband,
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 4: whoever it is that you're partnered with, or other people
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 4: you're close to, are wonderful and good, and we have conflict,
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 4: and we get mad, and the person we love is
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 4: all those things. Not just, you know, some sort of
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 4: angelic presence in the room, but human. Human. And if
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 4: we've had an experience of a parent that's been overwhelmingly negative,
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 4: it can be hard to come to that, what Melanie
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 4: Klein calls the depressive position, that the person I'm married
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 4: to is.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 3: Both.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 4: Not the polar opposite, not what I want her to be,
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 4: but a very real person, like the mother he should
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 4: have had, who.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 4: Was sometimes frustrating, sometimes in a bad mood, but basically
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 4: really loved him. And that's where we learn to accept
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 4: and love people in their essential imperfections because we're all human.
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 4: But a very one-sided negative experience of a parent has
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 4: a terrible reverberation well into adulthood.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. And in his significant context, he says that recently
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 3: in the couple's counseling, he was able to recall something
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 3: upsetting that his wife had said to him, where normally
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 3: he wouldn't be able to recall it because he's dissociating.
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 3: I think he's just saying he could remember it, like
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 3: he could even just report the sentence. Yeah. Because the
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 3: inner defense system was so potent that previously it wouldn't
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 3: even permit him to remember what had been said in
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: the argument. And therefore, you can't reflect on it. You
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 3: can't process it.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 4: He says, for the first time in counseling, I was
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 4: able to repeat the words my wife had spoken to
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 4: me in anger. He was simply able to repeat them.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 4: So that's a good supposition that he was able to maintain. presence,
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 4: and which the dream may be celebrating in his tirade
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 4: against his mother complex, his mother in the dream. The
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 4: dream maker may be saying, yeah, let her rip.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 3: And that he's then able to taste the deliciousness of
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 3: the food, because I have to tell you that when
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 3: you're dissociated, often all your senses are blunted. Things don't
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 3: smell quite real. They don't feel real. They don't taste real.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 3: So this ability to be able to let his instinctive,
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 3: self-protective rage come forward, then all of a sudden his
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 3: senses wake up. And that's the opposite of being dissociated.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 4: This resonates for both of us. We hope, dear Dreamer,
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 4: that some of it will resonate for you. But I
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 4: like this hypothesis. that his ability to repeat words that
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 4: his wife said in anger rather than blocking it out
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 4: or dissociating has let loose this tirade of affect in
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 4: the dream of sudden new access and being able to
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 4: yell at his mother or in the dream his mother complex.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 4: And then enjoy the food that you yourself got for yourself.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So even though it's an intense dream, there is
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 3: this arc. And as is true in every dream, if
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 3: we maintain the symbolic attitude and we don't literalize it,
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 3: we can make it any dream. Very interesting. And the
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 3: dream is moving him to a place where something a
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 3: little bit better, just incrementally better, is at offer. And
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 3: that's the wonderful thing about dream work and dreams in themselves,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 3: that they exist even.
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 4: They are of significant help to us in meeting the
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 4: parts of us that help us get over childhood traumas
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 4: and so on. They're useful. It's not just a theoretical
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 4: thing to do. They grow us.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: They do. And with that, we hope to see you
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 3: all in dream school.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisunionlife.com. If
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: you enjoyed this episode, give us five stars and a
• 1:37:05
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