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Why Do We Push People Away? Understanding our Defenses · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  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
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Hello, listeners. I want to start today by just taking
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: the opportunity to let you know that I'm going to
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: be speaking live and in person in Columbus, Ohio in October,
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: October 13th and 14th. I will be speaking at the
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Young Association of Central Ohio, and I'm going to be
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: giving a lecture and a workshop on dreams and dream interpretation.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: There is a way to attend online at So if
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: you're in the area, it would be great to see you.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: And if you're not in the area, you can still come.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: So we'll put the link in the show notes. And
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: moving on to our topic today, this is something that
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I've been asking Deb and Joseph if we could talk
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: about for a long time, and they finally got sick
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: of me and said yes.
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: But we defended against it. And guess what the topic is.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Right, right. We're going to talk today about defenses, but
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: maybe it's better to think about ways that we protect ourselves.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: And defenses was not a concept that Jung really wrote about.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: This was more of a Freudian concept, and it was
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: further developed later on by post-Freudian thinkers, but it's very,
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: very rich and I think very, very relevant today. And
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: of course, it does have a lot of consonants with
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: many of Jung's ideas. But before we sort of launch
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: into a full explanation, maybe I'll just lay out that
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: there are ways that we may protect ourselves, for example,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: from our own feelings. So we can defend against feelings.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: We can protect ourselves against other people in an interpersonal way.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: And this is an unconscious process. But it has implications
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: for our relationships and our sense of aliveness and vitality
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: in the world. And maybe the last thing I'll say
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: before I hand it over is that as we were
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: prepping this episode this morning, I realized we don't really
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: know what we're going to say today. We don't have
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: this all locked down. We're going to just explore it.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: And we hope you find it interesting.
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: It's an altogether human, deeply, broadly human. universally human reaction
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: tendency bubbling up from the unconscious to preserve our self-esteem
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: and to ward off anxiety. The world is hard. Life
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: is challenging.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: And if I might just jump in, because life is
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: challenging and there are many, We've created Dream School.
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: Oh, Joseph, good segue.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Good segue there, I tell you. So I'm just going
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: to jump in for a second. I want to let
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: everybody know that we have a wonderful online learning platform
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: called Dream School. We've talked about it before, but I
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: thought today I would let you know what that involves.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: So if you sign up for Dream School, there are
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: live webinars that Lisa and Deb and I are live
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: in the school virtually, engaging, providing new material, and getting
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: a chance to meet you. There's an online forum where
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: the members from all over the world have a chance
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: to interact with each other. There are audio learning modules
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: and really thoughtful journaling prompts to help people understand how
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: to analyze their dreams step by step by step from
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: the perspectives that Jung So our hope is that at
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: the end of these 12 modules, you'll be able to
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: write down a dream, unpack it, and harvest from that
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: tremendously significant information for your life and for your personal development.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: That may seem a little long-winded, but I want you
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: to be able to imagine what it would be like
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: to jump into dream school. So if that's interesting to you,
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: please click on the link, take a look at it.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: Maybe we'll see you there.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: So back to our topic. Deb, you were saying that
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: it's very human. And maybe one place to start is
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: that everyone has defenses.
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  Speaker 4: Everyone.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: And we need them.
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: It's normal and healthy to have defenses. And of course,
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: there's a normal and healthy way to have them. And
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: then there's a way where they can take up too
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: much space and keep us from feeling connected and alive.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: And they can become a problem, of course, and make
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: relationships difficult.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: Stepping into defenses, just to open it up just in
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: a very fundamental way, what do you think that we're
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: defending against and what is being protected? How do we
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: understand what the problem is that The ego particularly has
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: to keep away from.
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: That's exactly where I was going to go. We both
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: landed on the same square. We're defending against uncomfortable feelings,
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: feelings that make us feel threatened, feelings that make us
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: feel upset, anxious, sad, guilty, ashamed, angry. And that's the
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: part that comes right up from the unconscious and from
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: our bodies of, you know, that feeling of like, how
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: dare so-and-so say that to me? Or, you know, our
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: feelings come right up immediately and automatically. And then we
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: have a tendency to defend in various styles. It's a
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: good long list of, So.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: What that reminds me of is there's an intersection between
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: Jung's ideas of the complex and perhaps the classic ideas
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: of the defense. And that what's being protected, perhaps, is
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: that the ego needs to function adequately in order for
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: us to get along with the business of life, in
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: order to be able to successfully keep our needs met.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: successfully keep ourselves safe. And anything that interferes with the
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: ego's ability to stay alert and effective has to somehow
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: be mediated, has to somehow be handled. And over time,
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: this has been classified and thought of in any number
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: of different ways. So as you were saying, Deb, sometimes
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: there's an intensity of feeling that will just leap forward
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: Because of some unconscious conflict, that temporarily interferes with the
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: ego's ability to get its business done. And that's an
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: area of interest for us.
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: And I think we all know there are signals for
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: when we are being defended, defensive, fooling ourselves, all of
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: those kinds of things. Our bodies leap into action. we perspire,
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: we start to talk really fast, heart rate goes up.
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: Sometimes we argue, we justify, you know, that the reason
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: that I was late for work was because, you know,
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: then there's an endless list of why I'm entitled to
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: be late today because, and then I recite the list.
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: There's all of my favorite here is the what about,
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: you know, if I use the example of late to work,
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: I know, but what about so-and-so? You know, he's later
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: than I am, and he comes in more late than
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: I do.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: What about ism?
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: What about yes, but? That's another variation on the same thing.
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: We can be sarcastic. We can sometimes use humor. And
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: sometimes we just sort of smile. I think of it
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: as the Teflon shield that, you know, I just, and
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: nothing gets in. And I'm sure that's a really short list.
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: It's a little checklist for each of us of what
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: was I doing, you know, later on? What did I do?
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: Why did I say that? And also to notice in
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: other people that at that time, if there's defensive reaction
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: going on, you're not having a conversation.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: I like that. You know, you said something about like
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: sort of how we deceive ourselves. To me, when I
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: think about really what a defense is and how it operates,
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  Speaker 2: I wonder if we can put most defenses under this heading,
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: ways that we, you know, unknowingly lie to ourselves. And
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: I like to list feelings of indignation, outrage, self-righteousness, that
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: maybe those are all, not that they don't have a
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: legitimate place, but if we spend, if we're lingering there,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: it's like, hmm, what am I trying to keep from myself?
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: And I want to give a personal example. So when
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: I was in graduate school, I lived in Brooklyn. I
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: lived in a part of Brooklyn that real estate agents
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: would call Park Slope, but it was definitely not. And
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: I went to school at NYU. So I used to
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: have to catch the train up to Washington Square to
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: get to class. And I lived near this, just like
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: the best subway stop in the whole system is the
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Pacific Atlantic subway stop because you can get express trains
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: going up either side of Manhattan. But in any case,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: I would go to the subway stop and there were
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: many subways that would take me to Washington Square, but
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: some were fast and some were slower. And I would
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: sit in the morning and I'd drink a cup of
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: coffee and I'd sort of put around the apartment a
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: little bit before it was time to go. And then
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: I would leave, enter the subway, and I would get
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: to the stop. And I would leave myself enough time
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: so that if I arrived on the platform as the
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: B train was leaving, I would get to class on time.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: But sometimes that didn't happen. In fact, most of the
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: time it didn't happen. And then I would walk into
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: class like 10 minutes late. I'm not a late person.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: I never show up late when I'm meeting another person.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: But I was consistently showing up late to class. And
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: one of the days I realized like, This is so
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: inconsiderate of me. Like I'm coming in late. I'm disrupting
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: the class. Like what, what's going on? And what I
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: would tell myself is the subways were running late. That
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: was what I would say to myself when I was late.
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  Speaker 2: I would have been on time, but the subway was
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: running late, but it wasn't true. The truth is that
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  Speaker 2: I didn't leave enough time to catch a train.
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  Speaker 3: Reasonably.
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  Speaker 2: I had a sort of like fantasy about, well, the
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: B train is always going to be pulling up as
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: I arrive at the station. Once I was honest with
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: myself about that, I was never late to class again.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: So I had been, and I was trying to kind
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: of do some psychological work. Like, why am I, why
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  Speaker 2: am I, why am I doing, why am I lying
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: to myself? And I think I was lying to myself
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: because I wanted to have my slow morning. You know,
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: it's like, well, okay, but there's a cost to having
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: a slow morning. And you just have to, you know, Joseph,
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: as you always say, reality is medicinal. But I wasn't,
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: I was hedging, right? It's like maybe defense is this
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: way we keep reality away. It's like, no, the reality
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: is you're not going to catch the B train every morning, Lisa.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: Deal with it. So that's my little tell on myself.
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: Well, we want to preserve our own good image of ourselves.
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: And I'm not sure... what famous author said this, but
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: Joseph Campbell maybe, that every man and woman wants to
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: be the hero of his own story. We want to
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: preserve our good opinion of ourselves. It's easy to slip
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: into some self-deceit of that. The B train should be there.
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: And that every now and then, of course, it would be, which...
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: kind of feeds the fantasy. You know, it seems to
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: me the inner dynamic is kind of a demotion of, oh,
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: the world isn't run for my sake, for my convenience,
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: to serve me. I'm just one of untold thousands of
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: people who have to submit to the trains and how
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: they run and when they run So it's a little
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: bit of a blow to the ego that, you know,
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: I have to submit to this impersonal system. I'm just
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: a tiny little piece of the great cog wheels that
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: revolve and turn in the world.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: I don't like that.
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: I'd like to be more important.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: From a classic standpoint, it's also a displacement. There's a
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: certain feeling, let's say a failure within oneself or maybe
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: feeling guilty or embarrassed. And then all of a sudden, well,
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: the train should be embarrassed.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: Because it's guilty. Right on.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: The shameful trains, you know, they're just screwing everybody up
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: over there. Let's give them a good talking to, you know,
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: those errant trains. So then that gives us a breathing room,
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: which we need in those moments because we're uncomfortable.
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: We want to feel powerful. We want to feel empowered
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: and good about ourselves. And these defenses come up so
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: quickly and so automatically that they're hard to recognize. And
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: we can all laugh, and our listeners are sure laughing
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: with us about your story about the trains. But it's
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: very hard to... acknowledge our own shadows and our own
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: vulnerability of, whoa, what am I doing here?
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: I think another interesting defense that we see playing out
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: in the public sphere is magical thinking. Because the world
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: is so complicated and sometimes frightening, oftentimes frightening and we're
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: flooded with information from the media that we'll often create
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: magical reasons why something is happening that are less upsetting
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: than what the truth may be. So for instance, there's
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: an entire community that spends a lot of time thinking
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: about how aliens from other dimensions are are actually at
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: war in such a way that it's disrupting the financial system.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Wait, are you saying this is not true?
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: I don't want to deprive you of anything that gets
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: you through your day. So we'll talk about this hypothetically.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: And for some people, they cling to this with a
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: lot of determination. And within that determination, magical thinking, there's
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: a group of aliens that are going to come in
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: and magically redistribute all of the funds so that people
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: that are in financial distress are going to wake up
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: on a certain morning and have this enormous windfall which
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: is going to alleviate their tremendous anxiety. And there are
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: self-enforcing communities, substantial communities, who promote this way of thinking.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: And if if we honor it as a coping mechanism,
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: which is really what defenses are, it allows people to
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: continue to move through their life such as it is
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: and not succumb to a kind of panic and not
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: be full of the paralyzing dread. And yet there's a
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: downside to it. Are people taking effective action in the
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: face of being in a bad circumstance?
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: But I'm thinking about people that have a lot of
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: financial anxiety and how comforting this defense, this illusion, this fantasy,
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: magical thinking, that it does serve as a coping mechanism
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: to take that person off the hook, so to speak,
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: and that some external power will take care of it.
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: And I'm also thinking, you know, what a young place
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: that is, that when we were little, we needed somebody
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: big to take care of things for us, and that
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: somebody would come, or we hoped people would come to
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: pick us up or give us a snack or, you know,
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: soothe our tears, and that there's a wish for some
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: kind of, overseeing superpower to come and care and say, wow,
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: you're in a tough spot here, but don't worry, I'll
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: make it okay.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: You know, the defense of fantasy or magical thinking, you know,
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: like any other, it can have a protective necessary balm,
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: but it can also be inimical to life and growth.
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: So I'm thinking about the film. It was in the 1990s,
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: a film called Life is Beautiful. It was an Italian
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: film with Roberto Benigni about a father and his little
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: boy in a concentration camp. And the father kind of
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: spun this magical yarn for his son, effectively protecting him
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: from the horrors of the concentration camp. So that would
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: be an image of sort of fantasy used in the
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: service of life. But I think, Joseph, what you were
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: talking about, people thinking, well, I don't need to worry
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: about getting my financial house in order because the aliens
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: are going to come and redistribute wealth and I'm not
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: going to have to worry about anything. It may make
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: us feel good, but it does not give us the
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: tools that we need to effectively navigate our life situation.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: But I think you're right. I think a lot of
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: people engage in fantasy thinking as a defect. I've seen
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: this again and again in my practice, honestly. There's a
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: kind of psychoanalytic term for it that is interesting that
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: I like. It's like a psychic retreat. We can retreat
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: from our reality into a comforting fantasy. And again, this
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: might be adaptive in some time for short periods of time,
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: which is why we can do it. It's like why
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: our brain is so wonderful, that it can protect us
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: from uncomfortable thoughts and realities. But in the long run,
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: it's probably not a good way to cope.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: Everybody likes to go and get lost by binge watching
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: a TV series on Netflix that's either funny or charming
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: or deeply moving. And to set aside whatever their real-world
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: difficulties are and take on a different world. And if that,
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: as we've said before, substitutes for learning something we need
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: to learn or figuring out how to handle something, then
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: we are put at risk. So the defense, again, is
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: defending the ego against a depth of fear and anxiety.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: Because when we imagine, let's say, learning what we need
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: to do to get our financial house in order, and
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: as we imagine that, if that evokes a terrible sense
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: of dread, our ability to think clearly or even physically
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: mobilize can be so impaired. And we can be locked
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: up in other areas as well. So in the classic
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: analytic work, it would be a slow exposure. to the
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: actual ideas of what one would have to do to
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: reasonably take a step in the right direction. And this
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: is something that we do with treating any number of phobias,
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: that we allow ourselves to imagine the thing that we
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: feel is unimaginable and hold to it to try to
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: create a relationship that isn't paralyzing to ourselves. which is
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: good stuff your grandmother said, which is kind of, you know,
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: get back on that bicycle, dust off, get behind that
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: wheel of that car after you've had that fender bender.
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: So, you know, in a way, I think we're talking
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: about kind of a range that goes from a real
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: unconsciousness of that, if I really and truly believe that
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: the aliens are somehow going to to my financial situation,
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: I really believe that, then I haven't differentiated between fantasy
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: and reality versus being able to acknowledge that this is
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: overwhelming to me and I really don't know how to
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: go about it and being able to approach it slowly,
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: to start to take it in Whether it's analytic or
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: a favorite uncle or a special friend who can say,
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: hold it, wait a minute. You don't have to jump
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: in the deep end of the pool here. Let's just
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: take it step by step so that you feel empowered
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: and that you can do it. I often say to people,
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: we're not climbing Mount Everest. But sometimes when it's in
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: consciousness and it's scary, it feels like that of, you know,
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: this is too big for me. I can't surmount this.
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: So how do we small it down and how do
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: we get support? My mantra is if you've tried to
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: solve something three times and you haven't been able to
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: figure it out, get help.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: But, you know, interestingly, Deb, you know, I think the
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: crux here is in order to ask for help, you
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: need to admit vulnerability.
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: Vulnerability is one of the key things that we defend against. And,
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: you know, it's interesting because we're walking around this as
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: I thought we would in this kind of meandering way,
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: which is great. But to try to systematize it a
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: little bit, I might say there are ways that we
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: defend against things in the inner world and there are
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: ways that we defend against things in the outer world.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: And of course, we can experience vulnerability both as a
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: kind of inner state, but also as an interpersonal state.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: And defending against vulnerability might look like we don't ask
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: for direction. Well, now you can't even use that joke
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: anymore because we all have phones that tell us where
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: to go. But you don't admit that you don't know
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: what you're doing. It's like, oh, I got this. And
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: then it's like, no, I needed help. But I couldn't
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: admit that I was vulnerable, that I didn't know the answer.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: And so I defended against that with a kind of bluster.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Vulnerability is one of those key things that's very difficult
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: to tolerate. And it affects our ability to be vulnerable,
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: affects whether or not we can really connect with each other.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: So define vulnerability a little more fully. I'm curious about
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: how that's conceptualized.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I'm thinking about it as a kind
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: of multi-dimensional state where we can give up any fantasies
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: of omnipotence, either that we have it all, we can
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: do it all, we've got all the answers, and admit
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: that we're fallible, and both admit that to ourselves and
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: also be able to admit it to others. And then
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: I think also vulnerability is something more in the emotional
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: register because it comes up for me as like, do
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: we need to feel self-righteous maybe instead of admitting that
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: we're deeply sad? Because feeling sad is a small feeling.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: It's a hurt feeling. Feeling self-righteous is a big puffed up,
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: somewhat inflated feeling. So maybe vulnerability covers all of the
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: ways that we can feel small and able to be hurt.
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: That's where we start out in life. We're small and
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: we're able to be hurt and we're pretty powerless. And
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: if needed, others have not been there for us in
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: ways that we really need. connecting with us relationally, attuning
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: to us emotionally, supporting, comforting, helping us, it's not safe
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: to be vulnerable. So it's such a paradox that in
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: a way we have to really be sufficiently whole in
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: order to be vulnerable. I can't do these things. I'm
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: not good at that. I I was hurt. I feel sad.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: So it sounds like the first conceptual shift is that
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: we need to be able to identify and admit to
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: ourselves that we are being affected by something. Which goes
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: to what you were saying about omnipotence. Because the first
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: kind of shell is that nothing affects me. That I'm
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: beyond being... Confused about where I am as I'm driving
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: down the highway That I am NOT being affected by
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: one thing or another So it sounds like the beginning
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: of vulnerability is to be able to admit I am
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: in fact Affected by things that are going on inside
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: of me and I'm affected by the things that are
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: going on around me so the first is to be
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: able for the ego to be able to admit it
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: to itself and And then the second step might be
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: to be able to describe that to oneself and to
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: another person. And that's so much of what happens in therapy.
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: People are in a state of distress, but they are
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: struggling to verbalize what is affecting them and how it
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: is affecting them. They don't have a way of discussing
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: that yet. And if that were to be achieved, out
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: of that, which I think is going to what you
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: had said, Lisa, is identifying what we need as a
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: result of knowing that we're being affected by something. I
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: need directions because I'm feeling lost and I'm being affected
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: by all kinds of things, the desire to arrive on time,
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: the fact that I'm spaced out and didn't know where
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: I turned right or left. So this idea of I am,
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: in fact, affected by inner and outer factors, I am
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: responsible for learning how to verbalize what's affecting me and
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: how it's affecting me, and that I'm responsible for identifying
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: what I need as a result of that and perhaps
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: communicating it or seeking some resolution to that. I think
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: we're in that realm, perhaps.
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's really great. And I think a
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: lot of what we do in our consulting rooms is help.
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: people find a language for what they feel. And that's harder.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: That can be harder than it sounds because those defenses,
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: self-protections come up to take the... example of being lost
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: while you're driving, that I'm really okay, and so on
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: and so forth. And it takes a while to unpack
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: it of, I was really anxious. It affected my self-esteem.
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: I really felt like an idiot. So what are we
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: talking about? Well, in that case, we would probably be
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: talking about shame. That as an adult, I'm ashamed that
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: I got lost. I couldn't find my way. I was
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: running late. And then we feel small and somebody listens
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: and says, wow, and kind of normalizes it. And then
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: it's easier the next time around to know what I need,
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: that it's not that big a deal. It's not going
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: to ruin me. I can stop off at a gas
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: station if perchance this person does not yet have a
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: phone with the directions on it.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Becoming increasingly more fantastical as a scenario.
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly. But it serves a purpose. It's an illustrative
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: example of, I could ask for help without it being
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: even more shaming.
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: One of the things that we're talking about, and you are, Deb,
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: as well, is the idea of the progression of defenses,
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: that there are some defenses that are considered primitive defenses,
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: that there are things... that we used to cope when
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: we were quite young, then there are higher level defenses
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: that we probably found in our teenage years and perhaps
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: a bit beyond that. And then there's mature defenses like humor,
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: which is something that we use all the time in
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: our culture. And comedians will often talk about very provocative
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: things that if we were taking them sincerely would be,
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: very painful, anxiety-provoking, sad. But when they're twisted and moved
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: around in a way that surprises us, we suddenly find
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: ourselves laughing. And that gives us a sense of distance.
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: So it's a perfectly acceptable way of managing something. So
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: if we take the moment about being lost or suddenly
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: don't know where we are in the car, a really
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: young way of dealing that would be to regress and
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: maybe somebody would start weeping, that they're so frightened that
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: they begin to get tearful and they feel abandoned and
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: lost in a profound and paralyzing way. And that would
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: be a very young kind of defense. A middle defense
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: would be something like rationalizing and then to justify. how
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: it is we got lost. Oh, I know why I
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: got lost, you know, because I was actually rifling around
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: in my backpack, you know, and then all of a
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: sudden I just didn't see the turnoff for the highway.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: And then I put on my iPod and I was
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: listening to this really important podcast. And well, of course
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: that's why, you know, I missed the turn and now
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: I don't know where I am. And a more sophisticated
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: defense would be, something like finding it funny. It also
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: could be, this is something I see very much in
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: certain circles, an altruistic defense. And so I got lost.
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: But what I noticed is that there was somebody at
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: the side of the road who had a flat tire.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: And then I stopped and I had a chance to
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: help them fix their flat tire. So the whole thing
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: actually happened And the universe turned on this access because
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: this person needed help. And I then was guided to
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: this accidental turn. And then I could do something altruistic,
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: which is a very sophisticated defense against feeling anxious or
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: sad about getting lost. And as we've been saying all
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: along is all of these coping mechanisms keep us up
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: and running. And the primal directive is keep yourself up
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: and running.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm appreciating that we landed on this example
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: of getting lost in a literal way in a car
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: trying to go somewhere. But of course, in the inner world,
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: that's a thing that happens so often, and it is
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: so hard to tolerate. We hate feeling confused. We hate
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: being in the don't know. We hate feeling lost. We
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: want to feel in control.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: And ambiguity. Yeah.
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: And so it actually is such a great example. And
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: that we do have to keep ourselves up and running.
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: And so we come up with these coping strategies of, yes,
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: but it was because on account of how, even if,
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: but I have to keep moving. And it's hard to
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: just sort of sit down and And say, oh, I
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: don't know what to do. I'm confused. I'm lost. I
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: don't know which way to turn.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: You know, Joseph, when you were talking, the idea that
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: came up for me is that what's actually happening with
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: defenses is that in that moment, the ego's fantasy of
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: supremacy is being protected. That may be a fundamental thing
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: that defenses do is allow us to have an illusion
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: of kind of ego control and omnipotence. And maybe going
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: back to your very good question about what really is vulnerability,
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: maybe it's that, you know, getting into this relationship between
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: the ego and the unconscious. It's like, maybe that's, maybe
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: being vulnerable is the ego saying, you know, I am
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: not the master of my own house. There are forces
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: out there and in here that I can't fully control.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: So there's something about And there's a reason that the
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: post-Freudians called them ego defenses. Not because they're conscious, but
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: because that's what they defend is the ego.
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: And that brings us to Jung's idea of the relativization
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: of the ego to the self or the relativization of
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: the ego to other internal factors. What Jung was trying
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: to do through dream work, for instance, is to highlight
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: these experiences between the ego and the other. And in
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: the dream, the other is these multiple factors inside of ourselves.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: The ultimate other could be the self. But relationally, the
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: ego relativized to the outer world and the people around it.
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: And even in the dream world, we see how difficult
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: it is often for the ego to relate in a
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: constructive way to the factors in the dream.
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: And negotiating.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: And Jung, just as we were talking earlier about the
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: uses of imagination, felt that going in imaginally and with
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: more consciousness and developing an imaginal relationship with these inner
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: figures with the intent to accept and know has this
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: incredible healing effect on the psyche.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad you brought up dreams because one of
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: the things that I'm really interested in, you're smiling is,
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: you know, the way that dreams out picture our defenses.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: So if you're in a dream and you're being pursued
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: by an attacker or actually one of the most common dreams,
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: which I think is just a great defense dream is
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: I'm in a house. Someone's trying to get in. Did
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: I lock the door? What do they want? You know,
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: sometimes these happen in all kinds of variations, but such
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: a common dream. Someone's trying to break in. Well, what's
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: trying to break in is some content from the unconscious.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: And your ego is working very hard to keep it out.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: And a lot of times what will happen is when
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: you work with these dreams imaginatively and you say, well,
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: who is it that wants in? And what does that
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: person want? If you can really tolerate examining that, it's
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: often some part of you. that's been exiled that wants
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: to be let back in. And it probably has a
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: lot of benefits that it's bringing with it. If you can, again,
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: if you can tolerate that. So it's literally showing a
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: defensive action. The dream ego was trying to lock the door,
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: you know, to defend against this. So dreams are certainly
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: one of the places where we can experience this.
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: I think, we're at a place where it's such a
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: central idea that we're circling around here, which is the
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: ego and the unconscious. And I'm just looping back for
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: a second that, you know, the first stage of life
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: requires us to develop an ego. We help our kids,
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: you know, sort of use their words instead of, you know,
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: hitting their brother or sister. We need an ego. And
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: then the ego starts to think that that's it. I'm
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: the end-all, be-all. I run the whole show. We identify
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: with our ego. And then whether it's in a relational context,
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: a work context, all the areas of our lives, The
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: ego thinks it's in charge and it's right and we defend.
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: Then we go to sleep and we have a dream.
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: And here comes the defensive structure to confront us in
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: our dreams of someone's trying to break into my house.
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: I was falling.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: I was late.
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: That's another really common one. I had this exam and
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: I couldn't find the building and then I remembered. I
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: hadn't even taken the course. So that that's the next
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: inevitable step is the unconscious saying, please let me in.
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: Please recognize that you, ego, are not alone. Trying to
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: push me away, defend, justify, fantasize. And it's a challenge.
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: It's a challenge that our dreams bring to us. And
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: it's a challenge in the waking world as well.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: You know, we've been talking about defenses mostly as kind
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: of discrete strategies that we might employ. But there's another
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: level here too that I think is a little more problematic.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: And that is that we can become defensive to the
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: point where that's a major feature of our character structure.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: And I think we probably all know people like this.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: It often feels when we're talking to them that we're
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: never really having a conversation with them. Deb, you said
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: something about that before. But that they're kind of having
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: an argument with someone in their own head and they're
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: justifying and they're explaining. And it is very difficult to
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: have a real contactful, intimate conversation encounter with someone who
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: has this kind of character structure. I just wonder if
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: we can talk for a little bit about the sort
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: of interpersonal effects of defensiveness, whether it's kind of situational
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: and discreet, which can still be very damaging, or when
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: we find ourselves in relationship with someone, and this is
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: kind of the main way they relate to the world,
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: is through this kind of defensive carapace.
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: So I think what we're talking about when I look
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: at it from a developmental place is early, early injury.
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: Before that child was really able to speak, before there
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: really was any real ego structure to speak of, but
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: an ongoing pattern of some kind of relational insufficiency, neglect,
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: or even trauma. that then becomes characterological. It's just part
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: of the nature of this person.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think that could be the way it
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: shows up, kind of like early injury. But I know
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: plenty of people that I know didn't have significant early injury,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: but they have a really hard time being honest with themselves.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: And they kind of always live in a little, I mean,
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: we all live in our own life, all of us.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: but some people more than others. And where it's very,
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: very hard for them to allow themselves to feel sad
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: or allow themselves to feel small or allow themselves to
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: feel their own sense of inadequacy. And instead, they're always
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: kind of puffing themselves up or attaching themselves to some
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: cause that makes them feel strong and powerful. I think
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: it might just be kind of human.
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: Well, fair enough. We probably see this a little differently
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: because I usually feel that there is a taproot that
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: goes way, way back down to the beginning of what
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: a child's temperament, inborn temperament is and what their sensitivities
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: are without there having necessarily been something overtly dramatic, but
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: some kind of relational failure that that affected them. Plus
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: all the stuff we get to accomplish and endure growing up.
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: So fair enough, there it is. There's a carapace and
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: we can't get through it.
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: It makes me think categorically about the various ways that
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: any one of us conceptualize how we relate to and
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: use other people and relationships. And I don't mean that
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: in a particularly draconian way. You know, the baby, in
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: a sense, uses the mother for comfort or to acquire
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: food or to get its needs met. I mean, it's
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: not a dark process.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: It doesn't imply manipulation.
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: No, not at all. So when we're in a state of,
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: we're angry and upset about something that happened at work,
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: And then we come to our friends wanting something from them,
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: wanting the friendship to serve some form of coping process
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: inside of ourselves. And coping is generally a defense. And
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: so I think that there are times when we're asking
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: our friends to collude and to strengthen our defenses. And
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: in that way, the other person is put into a
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: very tight role that the speaker has wants them to play.
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: So if I'm going to really make my boss a
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: total stinker and a terrible person, and I need that
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: because then I would have to maybe feel embarrassed because
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: I did a couple of things that really were provocative.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: I don't want to face that. Then I really want
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: you to make sure that the defense of splitting to
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: a certain degree, I want you to really join with
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: me and double down on the fact that I'm going
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: to grieve character and my boss is a total stinker
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: and then and then that's going to help me keep
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: me away from something conversely it's very difficult if we
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: have a good friend who listens to the story is
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: a pathing it says well you know there is this
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: thing that you do And all of a sudden the
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: speaker is shocked and furious and maybe never wants to
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: talk to you again because you were supposed to be
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: the one that helped defend against that vulnerability. I don't
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: want to know that I'm late to work every day
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: for the last six months. So, of course, my boss
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: just gave me hell for it.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: But, you know. Yeah, I like that, Joseph. I think
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: that's a great example. If I can just like sort
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: of spool it out a little bit further. Let's say
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: that a young woman and a young man are dating,
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: and he breaks up with her. And she goes to
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: her friends. She's like, Oh, my God, he's such a,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: you know, expletive, expletive. And the friends go, Yeah, he's
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: a jerk. And, you know, and I mean, of course,
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: that feels good. We've all been there. And it sort
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: of is a unnecessary place to shore up our hurt
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: and our terrible disappointment. But if we stay there in
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: that defensive place where he's the baddie and I can
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: split and I don't get to the point where I think, okay,
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: what about this relationship do I need to think about?
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: What role did I play? Whatever that was. That's when
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: we let our defenses down and we allow ourselves to think, huh,
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: was I in here somehow?
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: That's a wonderful co-creating stance that Jung has on that
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: unconscious to unconscious communication. We're passing a script back and
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: forth between ourselves and the people that are close to
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: us and we're both agreeing to play out one thing
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: or another. What's exciting about Jung's perspective is there is
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: a telos to that. The reason this conflictual script was
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: put in place is out of an attempt to resolve something,
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: free energy up, and move the psyche closer to individuation,
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: which is, I think, a particularly constructive possibility when we're
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: looking at defenses.
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: I'm looping back to the scenario of you know, friends
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: really colluding in the case of a breakup. And of course,
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: that yes, you know, that person was just a stink pot.
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: You know, he or she was X, Y, Z, expletive, expletive.
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: So we haven't talked yet about projection.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: And that it's the other person who's, you know, bad, wrong, selfish.
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: You know, there's an unending list of terrible attributes that
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: we can put on the other person so that we
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: don't have to do that self-reflective process of, oh, well,
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: gee whiz, maybe I should think about.
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: And projection is a defense.
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: It is a defense. But what I'm thinking about is
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: when we collude with someone about how, you know, stinking
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: rotten dirty that so-and-so is. You know, really what we
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: might do is just attune to and name the feeling
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: of that was really hurtful. You really feel bad. It's
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: really devastating to feel rejected. Versus, yes, so-and-so is a
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: real stinker. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Somewhere colluding in the projection as if
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: the problem is out there when the real problem is
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: in here.
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: And so... What I hear, Deb, is in that way
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: of thinking, you're helping somebody move into their suffering.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: What's really happening here is that you have been affected
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: by the other person, their choices, your choices. And can
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: you name the way in which you've been affected rather
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: than create some other kind of narrative?
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: And don't we do that all the time with little kids?
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: You know that the young child comes running in with
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: a skinned knee, let's say, and yowling at the top
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: of his lungs. And the first thing we do is go,
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: oh my goodness, oh wow, what happened? Oh, this and
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: this and this and this and this. It's like, wow,
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: it really hurts. Okay, let's take a look. And then later,
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: the next step might be, you know, to help the
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: child reflect on, you were running really fast down that
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: slope that has all the gravel on it, weren't you?
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: I think there's a way that if we go to
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: the feelings, that's one of my sort of mantras, but
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: go to the feelings, we can acknowledge the hurt and
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: then think about what part did I play in this?
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: I want to go back, stay with this idea about
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: the kind of interpersonal effects of defensiveness. I mean, I
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: think we all know working with people who come in
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: with issues in their relationships. Yes. That when there is
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: defensiveness in an interpersonal relationship and it's unabated and you
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: can't get past it, you know, is that not a
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: kind of death knell for the relationship? Yeah. So if
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: you are upset with your partner and every relationship is
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: going to have these moments and you bring it to
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: your partner and your partner says, well, you know, I didn't,
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: I didn't, I don't know what you're talking about or
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: will you always, or will I was just totally understandable
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: that any of us would respond initially that way. And
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: I don't, I don't necessarily see that as a bad sign.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: It's just sort of like, you know, The soldiers at
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: the gate, you know, jump up and get their guns
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: when there's someone approaching. But it's sort of like, well,
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: what happens next? What happens two days from now? You know,
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: is there a little softening? Is there a willingness to
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: hear it? If there's an ongoing problem, is there a
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: willingness to go see a couples therapist? But if that
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: initial stance of defensiveness never, if the soldiers never stand down.
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: Then it's almost impossible to have a conversation about something
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: that's bothering you. Because part of the defensive stance in
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: an interpersonal relationship like that is, it's not my fault.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: I didn't do anything wrong. It's an evasion of responsibility
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: or even of admitting a kind of softness around the
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: fact that even if I didn't do anything wrong, I
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: care that you're upset. So it really cuts off connection, defensiveness.
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: There's a man, John Gottman, who's done so much research
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: on couple relationships. And we can put him in the
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: show notes. He's written bunches of books. And he calls
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: the way we defend in relationship, he calls them the
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: four horsemen of the apocalypse, which is really just really
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: a great way to frame it. And it's criticism of,
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: you know, how come you did this again? Stonewalling. I
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: don't know what you're talking about. I don't want to
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: discuss it. It's not my problem. Contempt, which in my
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: view is a real relationship shredder. And then just defensiveness,
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: which is, you know, sort of an overall category that
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: we've been trying to unpack here. And relationships are where
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: defenses show up all the time. We're vulnerable by definition
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: in relationships, in our families, with our partners. We need them.
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: We need them to love us, to care about us,
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: to just be there. Are you really there for me?
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: Will you show up? Will you care? And so when
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: someone we're attached to criticizes or there's a conflict, that's
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: where defenses and difficulty really arise because it matters so much.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: You know, maybe I'll tell another story on myself. There
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: was a time when my kids were small that my
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: daughter was participating in some extracurricular activity and there was
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: a little girl down the street who was participating at
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: the same time. And so The mom and I occasionally carpooled,
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: and one day I was supposed to pick up this
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: little girl, and I forgot.
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: Oh, no.
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: And the mom called me, and I think she left
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: a voicemail, and she was upset. And my first impulse was, well, well, well,
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't remember what it threw up, but,
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: you know, well, I, you know, what it, she didn't remind,
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: you know, who knows what I was saying to myself.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: She didn't remind me or that, you know, this or that. But,
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: you know, thank goodness I've come a little ways since
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: my days riding the B train. You know, I pretty
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: quickly was like, no, I made a horrible mistake. Horrible mistake.
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: And as soon as I let that in, I just
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: started weeping. I was so ashamed and I was so
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: full of genuine remorse. What a terrible thing to do
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: to a kid. to another mom who was trusting me
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: with her child. Oh, God, it's still just, you know.
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: And I called her up to apologize, and I just
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: was weeping on the phone. What was there underneath the
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: defensiveness was this very small feeling and a very vulnerable
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: and painful feeling of, you know, all those emotions that
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: I just pointed out.
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: And when you could feel that, you know, and drop
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: that urge to defend is really the healing moment. I mean,
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: we all know what it's like to really screw something up,
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: really let somebody down, you know, forget to pick up
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: this person's child. We've all been there. And that's when
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: we can soften into our own imperfection And just be sorry.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: You know, when I think about that incident, though, and
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: I think I'm maybe retreading ground we've covered before, but
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: part of what was hard about it was like, I'm
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: not the kind of person who forgets stuff like that.
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: I'm conscientious. I care about kids.
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: Of course.
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: But you know what? Like, maybe sometimes I am the
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: person who forgets about stuff like that. And maybe I
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: wasn't very caring that day. And it's hard to admit that.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: It's hard to admit that. that I do things that
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: don't match my self-concept.
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: I'm also struck by the time that you gave yourself
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: and the time that you needed that this new reality
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: was introduced. Hey, you forgot to pick up my kid.
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: And that you needed time to reflect in order to
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: identify how this information was affecting you. And so the
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: first impulse is, this isn't quite true or it doesn't
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: have to do with me or et cetera.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: Somehow it's not my fault.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: But part of it is there is this distance between
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: myself and this new information from the world. And it
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: takes time to create a bridge. We don't absorb reality
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: or a new aspect of reality immediately. We just can't
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: do that when we're not that facile. So through that
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: instinct of reflection, to be able to then name what's
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: happening inside and then communicate it, how it makes sense
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: at lag time.
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: You've really lifted up something that I think is so important, Joseph,
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: which is one of our five main instincts, according to Jung,
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: and there are only five instincts, and reflection is one
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: of them.
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: Quite so.
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: It's our gift as humans.
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: And that, you know, maybe we don't handle something really
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: well in the moment because our defenses tend to just come, boom,
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: right up, like turning the gas up on one of
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: those stoves where the flames just really roar. But then
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: we can reflect and say, wow.
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: No, this was on me.
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: It was on me. Or let me think about what
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: really happened there that, you know, maybe I did feel
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: really resistant to having to do this extra errand and
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: this extra thing. And some part of me just sort
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: of spaced it because, yes, I'm a good person. And
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: sometimes I act in ways that aren't so good?
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: It takes a lot of psychological energy to add something
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: in that doesn't match or that I didn't even know
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: about myself. That's the other thing is sometimes we're in
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: circumstances where we behave in a way that truly has
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: not happened before and we don't know how to stitch
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: that in to who we are and it takes time
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: and it's a certain kind of suffering What I wanted
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: to do before we finish up is to circle back
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: to this idea of instincts. Because the Freudian work, and
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: I've come to appreciate Freud, really. I think he was
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: a genius. No theorist can know everything, God knows. But
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: he really, coming without any psychiatric background and just this
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: incredible observative process, I mean, I think he certainly deserves
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: all the respect he's afforded. For him, the defense is,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: rise up because there is a conflict between the instinct
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: and what the ego finds permissible, based on whatever the
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: criteria is. So Freud, there was a lot of talk
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: about the fact that the sexual instinct would rouse and
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: then the ego would moralize it away or the integration
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: of some societal prohibition and then Freud's clients would become
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: and sometimes wildly symptomatic. But when we add in the
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: idea of Jung's five instincts, and then I imagine what
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: happens when any one of those instinctual demands naturally rises
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: up in someone and the ego structure will not permit it.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: For whatever reason, it's not allowed to And then it
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: becomes really much more interesting. So I found myself thinking
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: and finding it even myself that sometimes my own creative
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: instinct has been activated and for some reason my ego
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: won't accept it or fights against it or makes excuses. Oh,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: I don't have time for that. I won't do this
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: or that. And the kind of war and knotting up
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: process the impulse to self-reflect, the impulse to take action,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: to be sexual, and the other instinct around hunger, which
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: I think is very, very interesting in terms of the
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: epidemic around obesity, that when any of these instincts are
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: thwarted in a particularly primitive way, I think we do
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: become symptomatic. And depending on how sophisticated we are, we
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: can fight against the instinct really in a way that
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: creates an enormous amount of problems for ourselves, or we
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: might dismiss it in a sophisticated way, but central to
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: psychoanalytic thought in all of its permutations is that our
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: instincts are pretty reliable. And when we can find a
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: way to say yes to them, something irons itself out.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: I was thinking about the story about, um, A friend
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: coming to us or even a family member looking for
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: support because there's all of this anger at a third
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: party and they want that to be confirmed. Are they
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: defending against the instinct of reflection? That something inside of
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: them does want to reflect on this and somehow there's
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: a prohibition? Or is there an activity, an action that
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: they need to take And the ego is defending against
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: taking action and instead diverting it over to the side
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: in the form of complaining, which I actually think we
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: all do an awful lot.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: I really like that, that one of the things that
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: we can defend against are instincts or instinctual urges. That's
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: really nice. I hope you guys will forgive me if
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: I just toss in a fairy tale for a second.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: I'm going to read the synopsis from Wikipedia. Actually, it's
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: the fairy tale, The Sea Hare.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: And I think it's a really lovely, I mean, there
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: are a bunch of fairy tales. Many fur, too, would
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: be another good example. But just quickly, The Sea Hare,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: I think, in my way of understanding the tale, is
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: a wonderful illustration of this super kind of defended stance of,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: So this is a Grimm's Tale, and this is the synopsis.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: A princess had a magical tower with 12 windows, and
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: whenever she looked from a window, she saw more clearly
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: from it than the one before. But being haughty, she
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: had no wish to marry and decreed that any suitor
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: must hide from her to win her. But if she
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: found him, he was to lose his head. After 97
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: lost their lives... Three brothers presented themselves and the first
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: two lost. The youngest son asked for three tries. He
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: went hunting and spared a raven, a fish, and a fox.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: The raven tried to hide him in an egg where
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: he could be seen only from the 11th window. The
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: fish swallowed him where he could only be seen from
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: the 12th. And the fox turned him into a pretty
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: sea hare. and sold him to the princess. And when
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: she went to the windows, he hid in her hair.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: She could not see him and angrily threw the sea
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: hare out of her hair. He sneaked off, the fox
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: restored him, and he went to claim her and they
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: were married. So among other things about that tale, and
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: there's a lot we could say about it, but this
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: idea about living in a castle with 12 windows and
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: where you are going to spy on everyone that might
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: be coming close. And as soon as they get close,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: that's it, off with their heads. Talk about a kind
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: of characterological defensive stance that you're kind of not going
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: to let anyone get close. And, you know, the other
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: example that I mentioned was many fur, which is explicitly
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: a trauma fairy tale. And I think that when we
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: have this kind of stance in the world pictured by
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: either one of these fairy tales, Deb, I think we
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: are in that world, perhaps, of early injury where we're
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: not going to let anyone get close.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 4: And we haven't had, we don't know how. You know,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 4: if you don't have that experience very young of being
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: cared about, attuned to, We have to be taught how
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: to relate. We're wired for it. We're receptive to it.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: But we have to receive it from other people. It
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 4: has to be implanted in us, as it were. And if,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 4: like this princess, we haven't received enough of it, we
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: may have all these windows that we can look out
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 4: of intellectually, consciously, strategically, all these are our defenses, but
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: we can't let anybody in. I know it's a fairy tale,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: but imagine 97 people sort of lost their lives and
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 4: then three more show up and two of them are goners.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 4: It really is a great illustration of there's a lot
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 4: of slaughter that goes on if you really have strong defenses.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: And this goes into attachment styles that, based on, again,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: early childhood experiences, if the intimacy evokes tremendous experiences of
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: injury or abandonment, and that even the memory of those
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: things causes the ego to fragment or become profoundly distressed,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: then the approaching invitation for relationship is attacked and rebuffed
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: or worse. because of the complex, because of the early
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: childhood experiences. It's something that's very, very difficult to unwind.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: I remember reading the Sihara and studying that with you
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: guys for the first time in our training. And it
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: was interesting that the animus figure or the prince was
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: clever and had this instinctive help from the unconsciousness. hiding
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: as the sea hare seemed to prevent him from being
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: seen by the princess so he could slip behind her
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: defenses but it's unclear how that then leads to a
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: successful coupling tricking somebody into marrying you is uncertain proposition.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: So there's always been like a part of that story
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: that I was left kind of curious about.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's in some ways the
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: more satisfying version is Puccini's opera Turandot, which is very similar, right?
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: It's like winning the princess with the riddle. That's the
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: Arne Thompson fairy tale type. But, you know, and in Turandot,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: it's like this sort of, like you see the princess
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: kind of her heart melts, you know, and then she
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: and Cala formally embrace and all that stuff. So, you know,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: I agree. It's given sort of short shrift in this
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: fairy tale. And we're not really sure how that exactly
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: comes about.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: How the ego needs to transform, which is the far
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: side of all of our talk about defenses today.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: Is that the way out of the defenses, or at
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: least moving from primitive defenses to stuff that's more sophisticated,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: has to do with ego transformation. How does that happen?
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: How do we understand that? Which I think is a
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: difficult thing to describe, but in some sense is the
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: goal of all forms of psychotherapy, including Jungian analysis, is
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 3: introducing the ego to inner experiences, that allow it to
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: change the way it functions. And that can be experienced
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: as a death and rebirth. So in the popular culture,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 3: when we hear things like, oh, ego death, the ego
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: needs to be killed off so that all the good
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: stuff can happen because the ego's the problem in everything.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: I think it's a misunderstanding of the demand for the
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: ego to go through a massive maturational process so that
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: it's collaborating with the instincts and with the center of
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 3: the personality instead of fighting against the instincts and the
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: original blueprint of who we're supposed to be.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: You know, I like what you just said, this massive
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: collaborative process between me and me or you and you,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 4: that we have to, or hopefully we will, take ourselves
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: in hand and have the dialogue between ego and unconscious,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 4: ego and instincts, ego and defenses, that we'll talk to
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 4: ourselves about, hey, what's going on between me and me?
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 4: And grow in our awareness, which makes us more open,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 4: more able to be vulnerable, feel our feelings, and not
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 4: have to engage in automatic or impulsive warding off strategies.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: Exactly. And that the relational struggles, as you were talking about, Lisa,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: are outpicturings of exactly how the ego is in a
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: struggle inside of itself. That there is this echo. So
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: if we have a friend that just wants to complain
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: to us and is looking for affirmation that the boss
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: is a stinker, But that's a dramatization also of how
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: the ego is navigating the internal environment.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Since you were talking, something totally different occurred to me.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: And so it's a little bit of a non sequitur,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: but I'm going to throw it out there anyway. You know,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: in training, one of the things that happens is you
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: get your defenses poked a lot. And God forbid you
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: respond defensively. So if you're having a meeting with your
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: review committee and they give you a poke and you
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: become defensive, that is like bad, bad. Don't get defensive.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: You're supposed to sort of lean into it and tell
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: me more about that and that sort of thing. And
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: I get it because it is so important not to
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: be defensive in the analytic container, meaning that... when an
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: analysand confronts you, you know, with something that you did
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: wrong or that they feel you did wrong, when they
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: want to kind of throw stuff at you, whether it's
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: deserved or not, it's not that you have to roll
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: over and take it all. But if you respond defensively,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: the analysis is off the rails.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 4: So it's a good distinction that you're making of between
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 4: having to as I say, suck it up or comply
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: and just get interested and curious about, talk to me
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: about it. You know, I may see it differently, but
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: I care about how you feel, whether it's an analysis and,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 4: or a relative or a friend or a colleague or, or, or, uh,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 4: That if we take it to the feeling of that you,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: whoever that you is, felt X or Y or Z,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 4: I get that. And I can hear it, and I
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 4: may see it very differently. But I can connect with
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 4: you instead of going to the content of, no, I
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: didn't do that. That's not what I said. Then you're
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: off to the races.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 4: You know, and you're pointing to a hierarchical reality that
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 4: when we're in training and we are candidates and they
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 4: are analysts, there's a strategic component here. Yeah.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: We got a lot of practice in not becoming defensive,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: didn't we?
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 4: There is a relational axis and they're just people too.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: And many a person out there in the work world
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 4: has to You know, sort of put up, you know,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 4: just a little bit of a Teflon shield because the
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 4: boss is like this and I want to keep the job.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: So there's that too.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: What I would hope to leave people with who are
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 3: listening that there is good stuff on the other side
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: of all our defenses.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 4: Ooh, that's great.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: That's great.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: That's great.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: What is it?
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 3: It's not just like knuckling as we're dealing with our
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: projections and all idealizations and all of that, but that
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: as we work through them, either by fate or with
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: help or just the fact that we're in a partnership
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: of one kind or another, on the far side, it's relief.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's beautiful, Joseph. That's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: guys for letting me talk about this. This was really satisfying.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: It was great.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 4: So with this and before we move on to a dream,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 4: I'm going to put in a word that's familiar to
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 4: all of our listeners about becoming a patron and going
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: to our website, thisjungianlife.com and click on become our patron.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 4: Doesn't take long. You can support us for a very
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: small amount. It makes a huge difference to us.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: And we produce weekly content just for you.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 4: Yes, we do. And it makes for somehow a reciprocal relationship.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 4: So just take a look. Really, two minutes. Help us out.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: Thank you, all of those who are supporting us, especially you.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 4: some who are incredibly generous. So anyway, thank you.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: So today's dream comes from a woman who is 40
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: years old and works as a waitress. And she titled
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: her dream, Letting Children Play Too Close to the Dead.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: And here's the dream. It's nighttime. I'm playing with my
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: children outside, somewhere like the bottom porch of a two-story building,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: when I suddenly notice men, possibly soldiers, carrying dead bodies
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: just next to us up the stairs. I don't know
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: what to do, but my children haven't seemed to notice,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: so I let them continue playing. The next thing I know,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: one of the soldiers is carrying my son over his
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: shoulder up the stairs. and my husband is carrying a
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: dead body into our house on the adjacent side of
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: the street. The man tosses my son onto a pile
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: of dead bodies on the second floor porch. I thankfully
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: make it just in time to catch him as he
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: slips off the pile of corpses. Looking up at the
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: room of men on the second floor, the soldier who
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: took my son in the middle looking at me and
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: three or four other soldiers around him, I yell at them,
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: and try to insult them with something like, what, have
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: you blown your brains out? How stupid can you be?
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: And here's the context for the dream. The dreamer says,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: the evening before I had the dream, my partner and
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: I were having a conversation about my reactions and triggers
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: and and how I'm not really thinking in certain situations.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: No matter how much I rationally want something different and
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: better for myself and my family, in the moment it
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: feels like I don't have control. He suggested that it
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: might be related to post-traumatic stress disorder or something related.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: Either way, the conclusion was that continuing on without change
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: was not okay. and that I should ask for professional
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: help as it seems I don't have the tools to
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: fix this on my own. And the main feelings in
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: the dream were fear, a feeling of protectiveness, and sadness.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: She notes, the place to me was unfamiliar. I didn't
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: feel threatened by the soldiers at first and just thought
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: of them as doing their job. But I did feel
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: scared and sad about the lives lost. When I was 27,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: I met the man who was one day going to
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: be the love of my life and the father of
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: my children. But I didn't know that yet. I did
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: know I wanted to be ready to meet someone like
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: that one day. Someone who, when I was with them,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: I felt like the best version of myself. So I
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: started therapy. Wonderfully, we got to start our lives together
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: a few years later. And let's just say... I wasn't
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: emotionally prepared for motherhood. My son is four, my daughter
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: is two and a half, and they are everything. They're magic.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: But I also feel like the worst version of myself.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 2: I definitely feel like they all deserve better than me. Also,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: I just want to say a huge thank you to
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: the three of you. Your podcast is a refuge for
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: me right now. I mean, I wonder if it isn't
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: a case that there are a lot of corpses in
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: her psyche.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: And there are some men there that are helping her
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: clean them up, and sometimes the kids wind up close
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: to the corpses.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 4: I'm aware that at the very beginning it's nighttime, and
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 4: she's playing with her children outside. So, you know, if
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 4: we were to compare this with... what we like to
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 4: think of as real life, that's a little unusual to
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 4: be playing outside in the dark. And the night is
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 4: often a way that Psyche symbolizes the unconscious. And so
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 4: here we are in the unconscious with the young, the children,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 4: the ungrown parts of ourselves. And there's been some kind
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 4: of a war. There are soldiers here. And the soldiers
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 4: are carrying dead bodies up the stairs. So I think,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm building on what you said, Lisa, that
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 4: there are a lot of corpses. Something has happened, and
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 4: there are people who are dead, including her son. And
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 4: her husband carrying a dead body into the house. The
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 4: dream ego ends all this sort of awful situation. It
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 4: feels like war trauma. Mm-hmm. Doesn't it? If this were
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 4: to happen, this would be like, oh, my God, that
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: is so traumatic. But I'm wondering if the dreamer and
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 4: the dream ego... of the message of this dream is
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 4: a new awareness. She yells at them and says, what
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 4: have you, have you blown your brains out? How stupid
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 4: can you be that all of a sudden she gets it.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 4: Something awful has happened. And that that is picked up
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: with the conversation with her partner saying, you know, that
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 4: maybe she needs therapy.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: You know, I think that, The dream's a little, it's
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: a little ambiguous. And we also don't have the dreamer here, right?
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: I have a very important question, I think, which is
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: how does her son react to being put on the
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: pile of corpses? Because here's what I'm thinking is that
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: she says at first that the soldiers are just doing
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: their job. Like this is a kind of dirty job.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: But the point is there are people that are able
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: and willing to do it, including her husband, by the way.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: And this little boy gets mistakenly put on the pile
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: of corpses, which we might imagine that sometimes, yes, our
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: children do get sacrificed momentarily in our trauma reactions, let's say.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: But I don't hear that he's harmed. And I would
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: be so curious, what is his reaction? Is he Does
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: he just sort of roll right over and start playing again?
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: I'm so struck by the dreamer saying, you know, I
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: want it to be the best version of myself. Well,
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: being a mother, I'm the worst version of myself. And
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: I would just suggest to the dreamer that she buy
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: and read my book if she hasn't done so already,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: because I do feel like I address this in the
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: book somehow. I mean, children need their mother. Their mother
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: is what they need. It's not like there's someone else
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: who can be their mother. And I get that this
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: is not an ideal situation for the little boy to
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: be thrown on the pile of corpses. But I also
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: want to say, well, you know, in the end, nothing
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: so bad happens, does it? So that's sort of what
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: I'm wondering about. The dreamer feels like she may be,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: you know, a good thing is happening. The corpses are
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: getting cleaned up. I mean, there's been some awful thing
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: that has happened. But now it's over and there's a
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: cleanup process happening.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 4: And a realization on the part of the dream ego
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 4: is a new realization.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 4: This is awful. What the hell is going on? Yeah.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 4: And we often say the dream ego is the least
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 4: trustworthy aspect of a dream. So something new has happened
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 4: where there's a new realization.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 4: Something that might have been defended against before has now
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 4: penetrated into the ego structure in the dream.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 3: A couple of things I find myself just curious about
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 3: is that the corpses are being carted inside, which is
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 3: a very unusual thing. And the husband is actually carrying
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 3: a dead body into the house. So the movement in
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 3: the psyche is the animus figures that dynamism in the
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 3: psyche is collecting these scattered corpses and concentrating them, bringing
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 3: something that is scattered around to a central point, which
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 3: is either near her or in her own house. So
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: I find that condensing process interesting and somewhat confusing. and
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 3: asking myself what the telos, what the purpose of that
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: might be. Of course, we'd have to look at it
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 3: with a broad metaphorical lens. And then something inside of
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 3: her seems okay with that. That's not particularly distressing. And
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: then I find myself questioning, well, is it not distressing
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 3: because perhaps that's something that happens regularly? I don't claim
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 3: to know what that means in terms of the psychic structure,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: but the collecting of corpses and concentrating them, all that's
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 3: something that the ego is comfortable with, related to, understands,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 3: it's all right. It's when the sun gets swept up
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 3: into that process in the psyche that something is now
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 3: jarred inside of her. It's okay if it happens away
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 3: from her son, but now it involves her son. And
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 3: she wants to go and rescue him, get him out
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: from that and to separate it. And that whatever has
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 3: occurred in the psyche, her response is to hurl insults.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: That's the reaction. I think the partner speaking to her
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 3: about perhaps a her hyperarousal or the fact that she
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 3: gets particularly intense about one thing or another, leans into
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: this issue of hyperarousal and whether or not the way
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: that the psyche is trying to respond to the stressors
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: makes sense or if it's really resolving anything. For instance,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 3: if our child really did get accidentally swept up into
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: something that was potentially dangerous, it might require a lot
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: more than hurling insults. She doesn't, in the dream, doesn't
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: run over and make sure he's okay or isn't concerned
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: about whether he's traumatized having lain on a pile of corpses,
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: but it's going after the people who did this they
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 3: did this now the thing that is probably intense to
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 3: look at for the dreamer is that she did this
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 3: some part of her is piling the sun up into
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: a category inside of her psyche and when she realizes
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 3: that it's incredibly distressing and then disowns what's happened So
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: what often occurs is if we have a lot of
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 3: unresolved trauma in our lives or a lot of complexes,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 3: sooner or later, our children or our spouses will get
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: co-opted into the complex. And then we'll start responding, let's say,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 3: to the son the way we used to respond to
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 3: our dad or used to respond to our first husband
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: who aggrieved us greatly. So the son is now getting
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 3: swept up into whatever that process is of gathering corpses
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 3: and she's realized it. And she's suggesting that even in
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 3: her self-reflection that she wants to behave differently, better towards
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: her children because they are getting swept up in a
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 3: predisposition of some kind. But the mystery is deeper. which
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: is what is this system of gathering corpses and putting
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 3: them into her home or nearby? How can we understand
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 3: what that is, how it started, what its function is,
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: so that then she can track when that's co-opting other
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 3: relationships around her? But the primary mystery is in the
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 3: soldiers and the corpses, that's where I go. So I'm
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 3: wondering if you guys have any intuitions about what that
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 3: might represent in terms of psychic functioning.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess my initial take on it was
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: that in some sense, it's maybe a kind of ordering
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 2: process in the psyche that's trying to deal with the
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: sequela of the assumed trauma. You know, that the body count...
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: represents you know some kind of harm that's been done
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: it is being collected and you're right joseph it's very
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: interesting that they're being brought inside and of course in
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: dreams as in fairy tales you know corpses can come
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: back to life right i mean you know these are
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: these are contents that have suffered some kind of grievous
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: injury but you know might might revivify at some point So,
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: you know, it is very interesting. Why are they being
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: brought back in? That would be, you know, an interesting
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 2: question for the dreamer. Does your imagination tell you anything
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: about what's going to happen to them? Why are we
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: collecting them here? There's all of these male figures in
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: the dream, right? There's her husband, there are multiple soldiers,
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: and there are multiple corpses, which I assume are all male,
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: although maybe I'm making an assumption there that isn't safe.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: But in any case, it's sort of like somehow the
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: sort of vital masculine aspect of this dreamer is made
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: up of many different parts, some of which have been
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: wounded and are dead, at least for now.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 3: I really was moved by the body count that all
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 3: of a sudden her son has been added to the
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 3: body count.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 3: And is now being added. to the storage room, much
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 3: like Bluebeard having a storage room. So I'm wondering if
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: she's also, as I think is happening in the outer world,
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 3: being asked to look at where her rage has landed.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 3: The body count could be relationships that have suffered or
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: been lost or opportunities or even parts of our own
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 3: psyche that have been the subject of war making internally
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 3: or externally. And just as you said, if they are
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 3: inner factors, inner capacities that have been killed off, that
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 3: something is gathering them together for a purpose, if nothing else,
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 3: to look at and to confront. Although, as you said,
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 3: there could be a potential of revivification, or some cycle
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 3: of putrefaction, and then the libido is released and can
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 3: come back in some other way that we don't know yet.
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 4: I'm repeating myself somewhat here, but I'm thinking about the
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 4: image of war and the soldiers. That is such a
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 4: diffuse image. It's not personal. It's horrible, it's cataclysmic, et cetera,
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 4: but it's collective and there are multiplicities of people when
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 4: there's a war. And then it gets a little more
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 4: personalized with the sun. And there is an element of
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 4: the masculine represented with all the soldiers that still tend
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 4: to be male and the sun and all the corpses.
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 4: But I wonder if with the personalization of the sun
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 4: sliding off the pile of corpses and that the dream ego, quote,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 4: thankfully catches him just in time, that that then leads
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 4: to her being able to yell at them and she
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 4: tries to insult them. Like, you know, what's the matter
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 4: with you? Why are you crazy in effect? I'm paying
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 4: attention or imagining perhaps the telos of this dream, which
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 4: is the new awareness that something has gone from a
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 4: diffuse battle that we haven't even seen that resulted in
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 4: corpses to the realization that her son was being placed
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 4: on this pile. She catches him. And then she can protest.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 4: And it's a legitimate protest against this warring, corpse-collecting element.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 4: It's a wake-up call. I'm going to add a little personal,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 4: two personal notes. One of them is I agree with you, Lisa.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 4: Lisa's book, Motherhood, is well, well, well worth reading. The
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 4: other is, I think there is a terrible mother in
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 4: all of us. Whenever I think back to who I
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 4: was and how I was as the mother of young children,
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 4: I am filled with a lot of feelings of that
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 4: I could not be there and bring to that process
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 4: what I wish I could have on an everyday basis.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 4: There are a lot of us, I think really every woman,
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 4: who cannot be the wonderful, giving, empathic, responsible, attuned mother
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 4: all day, every day that we wish we could be.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 4: And that there may be a need also to accept
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 4: and forgive yourself for being the terrible mother and also
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 4: the good mother. It's very, very hard to be the
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 4: mother of young, demanding, incessant, energetic. It never stops.
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, four and two and a half is pretty rough.
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: It's really hard.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 4: And we don't live in communities anymore where aunts, uncles,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 4: and neighbors help to share the raising of our children.
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 4: We don't have villages anymore. So I just wanted to
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 4: acknowledge that in my own remembered experience. And I think
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 4: it's true for so many people. Motherhood is hard.
• 1:38:00
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• 1:38:06
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• 1:38:18
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• 1:38:20
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• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.