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"What Do I Owe My Hurtful Parents?" Is The Wrong Question! Do This Instead! · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: When we're evaluating how we're going to respond to an
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: abusive parent, we need to consider the narrative that we
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: will be left with after they're gone. And that's what
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: you're saying, that you may notice that there's a certain
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: principle or value inside of you that needs something from
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: you which has little to do with the parent. So
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: that 20 years after they passed, and the parent comes
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: to mind, do you have a story about you and
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the parent that you're okay with?
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: We're recording this in early January of 2026, and we've
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: all just come through the holidays, which, as you all
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: may imagine, can be a busy time for therapists. And
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: an issue that perennially comes up this time of year,
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: both in my practice and in my life, is how
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: do we handle relationships with our parents, especially parents with
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: whom we may have had a difficult relationship? So this
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: is a time of year when we're expected to visit
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: or to host. And a lot of people feel really
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: ambivalent about these expectations because their parents may have been
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: wounding or critical or unavailable. And so I find myself
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: sitting with a lot of people in, again, different areas
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: of my life with the question, what do we owe
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: our parents? We're adults, our parents are aging. They're going
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: to have needs and expectations. What do we owe them,
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: especially if they were difficult to us? That might be
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: a question that we need to spend some time exploring.
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm kind of, what comes up for me
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: right away is the idea of some kind of an
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: arc like a needle going from zero to, let's say,
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: a hundred. And that, you know, somewhere on the low
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: end of that arc is obligation and duty and And
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: I should. And at the other end, hopefully, would be
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: I care about, love, want to provide for, give, host,
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: whatever it is for this particular parent or relative. I
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: have it to give. It will be my honor. Even
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: if it isn't a pleasure, I'm thinking about an elderly
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: parent that is really impaired at this point. but that
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: I want to. So I'm thinking about where is that
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: between I have to or I should and I want to.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: And obviously, if we're on the I want to side
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: of that scale, and I really like that as Ramindab,
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: this question isn't so difficult. So this is really for
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: those people that we're on the other side, or at
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: least we're sometimes we're on the other side. And then
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: I think it's a question of discernment.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: I also think there's something very charged in the word Oh,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: that's complicated. Because as soon as we're using the word,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: what do I owe? What we're doing is we're defining
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: the relationship as a kind of debt or a duty,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: a guilt and a payment. And then we've kind of
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: taken the soul and put it into an economy. And
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: that's kind of, that can be a bit of a
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: trap because we may need a very different latitude that
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: isn't kind of a binary, you know, debt and paying debt.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Debt's paid off, then I'm done. It's a little too
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: direct to capture how complicated this all is.
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: And I think it also, just I like what you're,
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: the point you're making, it also implicitly assumes that somehow
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: it's quantifiable.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, there you are.
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: Right? You know, well, I borrowed $ 850 from so-and-so, so
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: I need to repay that, or maybe from a bank,
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: and I need to repay it with interest. But it's
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: a solid, objective, transactional amount in terms of time and
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: energy that I can find, and then I'll just pay
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: it off.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Right, because the relationship is it's mythic, it's ambivalent, it's
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: very complicated, and it's not a moral ledger. So you
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: can't say, well, they harmed me, therefore I owe them nothing,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: or they are my parents, therefore I owe them everything. That's,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, I get the pressure to think about it
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: that way, and also the relief of making it so simple.
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that, Joseph. You're right. It is a
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: mythic relationship, you know, on the level of the individual,
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: it's a cosmological relationship in a way. And so it
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: can never, ever, ever be made that simple. But Joseph,
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: I'm wondering if, and I like your point about owing
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: not being really the right framing. Do you have a
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: suggestion about a different framing as a way to think
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: about that, a different kind of metaphor maybe?
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Well, I think I would start by inviting people to
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: shift away from what is going to be done and
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: how it's going to be done and to who is
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: it going to be done and to kind of pull
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: it inside and to ask, who is speaking about the
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: demand for care? Who inside of me is speaking about
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: the refusal? Who inside of me is speaking about the guilt?
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: And who inside of me is speaking about the rage?
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I often, when people start analysis, I'd say, you may
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: not know this, but you're actually governed by a board
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: of directors that you haven't met, and it's time that
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: you took a seat at the table. There's all these
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: inner figures that are chiming in and have a lot
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: to say. So allowing these various elements to take on
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: an imagistic form and enter into some kind of a
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: dialogue will reveal something how much more is going on
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: and how the inner figures are actually concerned about the
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: parental imago that's also sitting at that table with them.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: That's the thing that people are trying to solve for.
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: Let's say more about the parental imago. It very much
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: relates to the mythological substrate of parental relationships. These are
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: archetypal figures, mother and father. And we experience these archetypal realities,
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: these patterns across every culture and back to the beginning
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: of time as filtered through your personal mother and my
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: personal mother. The archetypal energy is experienced. through mom, my mom.
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: And she was like this, and she wasn't like that,
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: and she demanded this, but she let me do that.
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: And so that's why these relationships with parents take on
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: such power, is that that goes right back up to
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: the stratosphere, the metaphorical stratosphere of the archetypal mythological qualities
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: of mother and father.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: So there's the archetype or the god that shows up
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: as father and the goddess that shows up as mother.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: And then we have the very particular intense memories that
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: accrete around that that are unique to each person. It's
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: still mystifying. You could have a family of four kids.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: And each one of them will say they had a
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: totally different experience of the parent.
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: And they look at each other like, what are you
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: talking about? I got locked in the closet. And they're like,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: what are you talking about? They took me to a
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: ball game.
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: I mean, we can laugh about it because it's so true.
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: We all recognize that those of us that have siblings
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: had different parents.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: And the true tragedy, I think, is that for most
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: of us, our parents remain an enigma. Our parents, by
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: virtue of their role, even if they were good parents,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: there are things they're not going to tell us. There
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: are stories they're not going to tell their kids, things
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: they're not going to admit. Unless you happen to be
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: an analyst, which of course all three of us have
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: done psychological dossiers on our parents. But most people don't
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: do that. And so we create a personal mythology about
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: our parents, which in no way, by the way, excuses
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: tremendous suffering and harm of all kinds that some parents
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: have visited. So I want to just say that clearly
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: is none of that is being invalidated. We're simply walking
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: around the reality of that and trying to tease out
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: how complicated it is. And more importantly, It has nothing
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: to do with the parent. It has to do with
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: how you're going to live with your experiences. And can we,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: as analysts, help you live with them in a way
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: that's okay with you? So the culture intrudes on all
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: of this. So there's this almost like, I don't know,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: superego legislature that has all these things. And the culture
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: is going to tell you, oh, forgiveness and family values
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: and duty and you know, honor and fidelity and wrap
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: all this stuff around you and your aging parent that
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: might have been very dangerous to you. And at first,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: you may feel like it's a bandage, but actually it's
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: a kind of dissociation and it's also kind of a chain.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: It's like a straitjacket. And so I think it's very important,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: and maybe the first thing is, to kind of step
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: away from the cultural pressures or maybe even the family
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: or institutional pressures. You know, you get a call from
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: the social worker at the nursing home and they're trying
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: to pressure you to come and do stuff on and
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: on and on. To be able to kind of sit
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: back and just give yourself permission to think about it deeply.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Just that. Really think about the pressures that from the
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: culture and the institutions and give yourself a breath so
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: that you can actually decide what's true inside of you.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: And that takes a bit of time.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, I think, Joseph, you're talking about the
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: way the culture intrudes and that, you know, we can
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: be told this is your duty or, you know, honor
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: thy father and thy mother or, you know, Aunt Philomena
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: is going to be horrified if I don't visit her
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: in the nursing home or whatever.
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: Oh, absolutely. We'll be judged. You didn't go to see her? Mm-hmm.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: You'll be judged. Yes.
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: On the other side, I think that there is a
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: certain kind of strain of discourse, certainly on social media,
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: but elsewhere as well. It's like, well, if your family
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: doesn't support you, then they're toxic and you should cut
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: them off. And that's an intrusion in a different direction.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: I know I'm going to tell on myself a little
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: bit here. I'm really behind on my television. So I've
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: been watching The Morning Show and I just finished the
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: second season. I know I'm years behind. But in this show,
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: there's a character who's telling the character played by Reese Witherspoon.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: Reese Witherspoon's character has an addict brother. And the Laura
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: Peterson character says, you know, you just have to cut
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: him off. You just have to cut him off. You know,
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: and at first, Reese Witherspoon's character is like, OK, but
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: then at least at the end of season two, I
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: think has decided that's maybe not quite right. But I
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: remember watching it and thinking, yeah, it's it's just it's
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: a little too bad. It's of course, you shouldn't, you know,
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: continue to enable your drug addict brother and let him
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: walk all over you. And it's not good for you.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: It's not good for him. But but is there room
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: for nuance? Like, what would you want to stay away
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: from the term? Oh, How would you want to be
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: in relationship to your addict brother? And it might not
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: be clearly one or the other. There might be some
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: room for something negotiated on a very personal level. And
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: I think that's how I feel about this when people
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: bring in these questions, because sometimes people will bring in
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: the questions, how am I supposed to do this?
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's the plan?
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: What's the plan? And what do I need to do?
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: And they want an answer from me. And I always
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: think it's such a personal process to figure that out.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: And Joseph, I really like your kind of injunction to
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: think deeply. you know, to have your own process, to
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: have a discernment process about, I think, and what I'll
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: sometimes say to people is, well, you have to decide
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: what's going to feel okay for you. Because it shouldn't be,
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: I'm doing it because I should. And it shouldn't be,
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: I'm cutting them off because I should.
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: It has to resonate on a feeling level. It has
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: to feel Right. Not that you're going to be unambivalent
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: about it, because my guess is either way, you're going
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: to feel some ambivalence. But that you could find a
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: resting place in yourself that feels like, okay, this is
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: what I need to do.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Right. So moralism wants a universal prescription, and then you
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: turn to TikTok pundits. Well, if they did this, the
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: rule is, cut them out. They did this, you should
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: do everything you can to help them. And that's just
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: not It takes you out of the formula.
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: It takes having your own real substantial process about it.
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: Those formulaic things take us away from ourselves. And however
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: this gets resolved with a difficult parent, the process is,
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: what is my own truth about this? Because when that happens,
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: there's a wholeness to it versus I should and then
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: I slog through it and I go there and I
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: do the thing and I have resentment or I don't
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: sleep well for three weeks afterwards or whatever. There's going
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: to be a residual or continuing kind of response or
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: I'm just not going there at all. I don't care
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: what they say. going to continue with my own life,
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: where there can be regret or guilt or some feeling
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: that it has not been truly resolved. So I think,
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: you know, what you're really alluding to, Joseph, is how
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: do we have an inner process with ourselves about what
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: do I, I'll go back to that word that we
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: just debated about, what do I owe? this particular parent?
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: And how do I get to my own resolution that
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: has wholeness in it? Now, I may still have some ambivalence.
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: I'm going to have feelings of this or that or
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: the other thing. And I did it, you know, some
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: many years ago with my own very elderly and somewhat
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: incapacitated father. But maybe the last, he lived to be very,
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: very old. And he was difficult. He was somewhat, I
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: would say, I think with great justification, narcissistic. I could
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: make a whole list of things that he had done
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: or not done in his self-enclosed bubble. And I was
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: plenty pissed. And so I went to therapy. I went
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: to therapy with a Jungian-oriented, very Jungian-oriented, and subsequently, honest
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: to God, card-carrying Jungian therapist. And my father had sent me,
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: my father who never sent anything for Christmas, sent me
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: a picture of himself framed.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: I was so mad. I was ready to stomp all
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: over it. And instead, I took it into my therapist.
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: We decided that he should be imprisoned. And so she
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: put the picture in the drawer. And back and forth
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: I went with myself, with her. I wrote him letters
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: that I never sent. But I wrote letters. And, you know,
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: after some period of time, I'm going to say a year,
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: is what it took me. Because it can be quite
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: a process. I wish I could have done it in
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: an hour of introspection, but it certainly took at least
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: a year, along with plenty of other issues. Something had
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: worked itself out, and I decided that all the things
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: I had accused him of were true. And somehow, I
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: was there. And through the process of therapy, my own
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: little metaphorical picture had gotten filled up. And I would
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: visit him once a year. And he lived far away.
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: And that's what I did. I visited him once a year.
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: And I had, you know, all kinds of feelings from
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: the past and in the present. And I enjoyed it.
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: And he ticked me off. And it was a little boring.
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: And we went places and did things. And He was
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: just another human being who was my father who had
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: had his own child. his own past, his own idiosyncrasies,
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: his own complexes. And there we were, two human beings.
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: And that's the place that I'm hoping, you know, for
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: people to be able to reach is this feels right.
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: And most of all, to be able for your own
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: sake to rid yourself of the resentment or the hurt,
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: the anger, the, you know, whatever your own list of
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: justifiable wrongs have been, you know, kind of done to you.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: But that's really the point, is to be rid of
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: those parental to the extent that we ever can be,
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: but at least get some resolution of the parental complex
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: that is kicking itself up now that you're in a
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: quandary of, I really don't want to do this, or
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: what do I have to do? It's like, hmm, take
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: the time and work on you.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: So one of the things I want to lift up,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: there's so many wonderful things about the story, Deb, was
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: when you talked about the transition or the transformation from
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: perceiving him as the parent to seeing him as a person.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: And it leans into an idea that James Hillman actually
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: wrote about called the parental fantasy. So as soon as
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: we ask the question of what do I owe my
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: abusive parent now that they're old, There's already a regression
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: that the question is part of the symptom because it
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: keeps your psyche bound to the parent and you bound
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: to being the child and holding the child's story when
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: you're 50 and 60 and 70 and 80. Right. And
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: while the task is not to erase history at all
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: or disrespect it, there is something to be said for
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: stopping letting history to define your soul's horizon, so to speak.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: So by abandoning all of the stuff that the word
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: parent means and liberating, which is really for you, not
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: for them, liberating your mind and even the span of
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: considerations that one might have, you might just find breathing
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: room just inside of you around this complexity. Again, it's
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: still up to you how you choose to enact that,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: but it can afford a kind of relief whether or
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: not you ever see them again.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: I think that's important because we're not necessarily recommending a
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: certain form of action. We're recommending a process with yourself
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: about what course of action really feels right because There
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: is a kind of moral equation, right? And you can
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: solve for X however you need to, but you're probably
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: going to be better off in the long run if
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: you've done that work, whatever you decide.
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: I can say that for me, it was very freeing.
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: I don't mean that everything, you know, was coming up,
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: sunshine and rainbows and puppy dogs, but it felt resolved.
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: It did not hold that kind of charge anymore. And
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: it was quite a relief. And so it wasn't about
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: I should do this or you should do that or
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: you should stop. It was just sort of like, huh,
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: that's a relief. This just isn't in my way anymore.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: So a way to understand that neurologically is that, and
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: this is part of what all reasonable therapy should do,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: is that we've stored certain traumatic memories or distressing memories.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: And when we brush against that, our nervous system reignites
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: and then we go through levels of distress. The goal
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: is not to forget that things have happened. But can
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: we wring the energy out of it through one method
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: or another so we can know what's true and also
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: put it into the archives, not to forget it, but
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: so that it's not constantly slamming up against us every
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: time we're reminded of a thing, which is kind of
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: what Deb is saying. So we can know the newsreel
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: facts about what we survived and we should know them.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: but it doesn't serve us to have them emanate a
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: kind of radiation that makes us ill for the rest
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: of our lives long after the parent passes away. That's
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: a disservice to us. And we're not doing that as
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: a favor for anybody else. You're doing it to save yourself.
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: Yes. And I love that you use the word ring, Joseph,
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: of ring the energy out. So if you could literalize it,
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: It's like wringing out the water from a sponge. And
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: the water is your psychic energy and how activated you
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: get by all of it of just, good, I wrung
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: it out. And now the sponge is still there, but
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: you can put it on a shelf and it doesn't
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: have the kind of supercharge that it did before.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: It's not going to get all moldy like my kitchen sponges.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: They always stink with mold because someone doesn't wring them out.
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: I hadn't quite gone that far, but yes. And I
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: agree with what you just said, Joseph. We're doing it
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: for ourselves, for your own life energy and freedom and
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: relief and joy and moving ahead rather than being held
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: hostage forever. to this awful, moldy, damp sponge.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: And what that means also is that the relationship to
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: the parent narrative never, is actually never done. That there's
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: never a moment where you decide, you're resolved that you've
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: ended it and it's like this.
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Because what happens in those moments is we're banishing all
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: kinds of forces into the unconscious that then come back
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: and do weird things to us and make us feel unwell,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: that the internal process is a conversation. And just as
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: you were saying, Deb, it may be facilitated by a therapist,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: it may be facilitated by journaling or a spiritual experience,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: dream work, but to be talking about to yourself. So
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: you might make a decision like, I just can't, I
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: can't see them. Now, when we go to, I can't
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: see them ever. That's foreclosing the conversation inside yourself. What
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: I would suggest is, I can't see them. And that's
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: the truth today. Might be the truth for 10 years.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: But to check in with yourself when it occurs, when
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: the parent occurs to you, to connoiter around it. What's
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: happening in my body now? What's happening in my imagination now,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: five years hence, ten years hence? What's true for me now?
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: So I think for our sake, we need to revisit
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: when it presents. We don't want to hunt it down,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: but when it comes back to us, as it often does,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: to ask the question again. And the question me to
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: ponder the harmful parent. And that will give you a
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: lot of information about what's happened in the interim. You know,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Deb had said she got to a place where she
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: could ponder the man who was her father and feel
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: reasonably okay. You didn't give words for this yet, Deb,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: so I don't know exactly how you speak to yourself
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: about it.
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: But you're a really good mind reader, so go for it.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm fundamentally okay. Yeah, exactly. And then you
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: can decide if an any action occurs to you, and
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: as you imagine it, again, as I imagine being there,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: how does my body respond? How do my feelings respond?
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: What do I make of that? It's a dialogue between
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: you and you, as Deb says, and you and the
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: psychic content. There are no rules, and you don't have
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: to do anything. But in all of these domains that
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: we've talked about on the podcast over and over again,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: the dialogue inside you is the key, which Jung called
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: the transcendent function.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: I love that, Joseph. And it's really true. There isn't
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: some imperative that you have to follow. I mean, we're really,
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: I think, inviting our clients and now you, our listeners,
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: to just have that conversation yourself. But one of the
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: things I do want to lift up is what you
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: decide will have consequences. And if you just to be
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: the good dutiful daughter or son and give up every
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: Sunday to go spend time with your difficult, miserable parents,
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: that will have consequences. There will be things that you
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: won't be able to do. It may feel like a
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: deep self-betrayal. It may be that you wind up exposing
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: your children to influences that you don't want them exposed to.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: It might mean that you're miserable every Monday. I worked
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: with one person who had a very difficult mother. And
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: this person, kind of like you, Deb, said, well, you know,
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: I don't know, that was once a year, maybe it
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: was a couple times a year. But they would go
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: visit this parent and come back and be wrecked for
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: like a week, you know, and we just knew it,
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: you know, we just like scheduled extra sessions, you know. So,
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: you know, that's going to have consequences. If you decide,
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm never going to see this parent again,
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: that may have other consequences. I mean, I think that
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: one of the things that happens, and we know there
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: is research about this, is it tends to kind of,
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: that sort of estrangement tends to replicate through generations. So,
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: you know, there's some families that have sort of estrangement
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: and cut off in every generation kind of going down
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: the line. And You know, if you have kids and
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: you're cutting off your parent, you know, there's some likelihood
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: that your kid is watching what you're doing. And it
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: may mean that you, in some years later, feel some
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: sense of regret that, you know, maybe not even, oh,
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: you know, poor dad, I didn't come visit him in
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: the nursing home or whatever, but also just forgot, like,
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: you know, maybe there were things I would have wanted
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: to say that I didn't get a chance to say.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: So again, it's not that one thing's right and one
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: thing's wrong, but when you're having that conversation with yourself,
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: be honest about the potential consequences.
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: And the consequence of unfinished business. which really can weigh
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: heavy in the psyche, and it takes energy, and it
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: can be just constantly taking energy that belongs to you
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: and running it in the background, you know, somewhere in
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: your psychic basement. And what's important is to finish the
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: unfinished business. You know, how can I say this and
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: get a response from this person, my father? that I
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: want to work it out with this person. And I
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: couldn't for all kinds of, you know, just reality reasons.
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: And what was really revelatory, and it was right at
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: the beginning of my experience entering therapy in my 40s, is,
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: oh my God, I can work it out between me
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: and me, you know, with a therapist and so on
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: and so forth. But, oh my God, There's another route
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: that I can take.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Deb, it may be helpful for people because you're our
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: resident Gestalt-y expert. Fritz Perls had a lot to say
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: about incomplete business and some methods about getting some traction
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: around that.
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: Thank you. And sure, I'm happy to riff on that
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: because the Gestalt ideas are important and valuable. And they
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: perfectly image the Jungian idea in a way of active imagination.
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: So one of the classic Gestalt exercises called empty chair.
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: So I, as Deb in the real world in my 40s,
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: in this case sitting in a therapist's office, but you
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: can do it on your own, I sit in one
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: chair and I launch my list of grievances to my father.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Towards an empty chair that you've set across the room.
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: Oh, thank you. Exactly. So over there in that other
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: chair is my father. And now I say anything and
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: everything that I've ever wanted to say to my father
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: who's not there sitting in an empty chair. Then I
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: go over and sit in the empty chair. and speak
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: as my father, whatever I think he would say to
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: me in that moment, whether it might be, I never
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: did those things, I deny everything, or gee, I'm sorry,
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: or I didn't know, or any one of 500 things.
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: And this parallels what we're talking about all the time
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: as active imagination. You can journal it. You can talk
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: out loud. You can take a moment to sit and
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: deeply reflect, as you were talking about earlier, Joseph, of
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: how do you start to have a conversation between you
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: and you. And having another person there, if this goes deep,
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: having a therapist there is very valuable because someone is
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: witnessing it.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: Not going to adjudicate it and say, yes, you know, you, Deb,
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: were right and the father figure is wrong. But just,
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: I hear what you're saying. I hear your truths about this.
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: You know, over some months, whatever shape it takes. The
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: process of getting, of finishing unfinished business, I think it's
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: in my hands. It's in your hands. You have the power.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: Pearls had discovered who trained as a psychodynamic a psychoanalyst
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: he came to realize that so much suffering has to
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: do with unfinished business and through his experimentations discern that
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: the unconscious is just as happy yes if the circle
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: is closed imaginably as if it happens in the outer
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: world you get the similar results for many people so
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: imagining the apparent sitting in the chair, and you really
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: need to imagine it and noticing what bubbles up. And
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: as you said, sitting in the other chair and embodying
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: the parent, that the unconscious already knows the medicine that
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: you need. It just needs the ritual to deliver it.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: That's great.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: So when I've done this in therapy sessions, the things
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: that occur to people to say when they are embodying
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: the parent is often inspired by the deepest levels of
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: the psyche. It comes from the self, and it does
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: give medicine in ways that are uncanny. So it's efficacious
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: in ways that are very remarkable. So that can release
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: us from a certain kind of cycle, iterative cycle of
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: reviewing the terrible memories. What happens next? is up to
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: you to discover, but it can release you from a
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: certain repetition compulsion.
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: It comes to a place, whatever it is, for any
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: given individual of, that's it. This is it. This is
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: where I stand. It is finished. Does it mean you'll
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: never have any feelings about it ever again? Of course not.
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: But something at a deeper level, somehow is resolved and
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: is known. And I love what you said, Joseph, about
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: you can close the circle. You can finish the business
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: that needs to be finished imaginably, whether it's something like
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: the two-chair exercise, journaling. There are many ways. All roads
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: lead to Rome. That you don't need the other person there.
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: And we know this from things now like coaches, athletic coaches,
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: help people visualize, you know, the new tennis swing or,
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: you know, how you're going to ski the slalom trail.
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: It's wonderfully optimistic and reassuring that the unconscious really has
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: these powers. Our brains have these powers.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: And that what happens in the unconscious is real.
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly. That you have the power.
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: You know, I don't need this other person. It would
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: be nice if that could happen.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Maybe not. Maybe not. Because what you might say to
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: yourself when you're sitting in the chair might not be
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: as medicinal as you would hope from the real person.
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: But there is a way. There is a way.
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: You know, Deb, when you were talking about the two-chair exercise,
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: one of the things I was thinking about is something
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: that you also referenced when you were talking about your
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: father is the difference between the actual person and our
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: inner father, let's say, which would be our father complex.
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: And as we know, Jung said that complexes are shaped
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: by individual experience but they kind of accrete around an
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: archetypal core. So anyone's father complex, I don't care how
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: old you are, your inner father has an archetypal. So
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: this is the way your father operates in your psyche.
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: And he's there if your own father is passed on.
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: Maybe your relationship has totally changed. Maybe you haven't seen
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: him in 50 years. He's in there. And he has
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: an archetypal dimension. And I think this goes back to
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: where I think you started us, Joseph, is that these
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: are very complex relationships. But it could be that after
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: a long lifetime, in fact, it probably is the case,
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: that that father complex and the actual person out there
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: pretty different. And it may be that the work that
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: we have to do is with the father complex. The
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: actual person out there, maybe old, maybe having some cognitive decline,
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: at that point, it's kind of a different thing. It's
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: not that same inner father that maybe tormented us.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Of 10 years old, maybe very different from the
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: father who's in the retirement community. And the father who's
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: experienced the vicissitudes of life for 30 more years may
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: be able to provide experiences that can be added to
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: the internal father to mitigate the way you imagine the
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: father or mitigate the way you imagine the mother. And
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: that is very powerful if that happens. But as you're saying, Lisa,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: to even be open to it. I do want to
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: bring up, something that I think is in the space
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: as well, about forgiveness. Because it's a real trap. And
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: it's a trap in our culture. We treat forgiveness as
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: if it's a switch, a circuit breaker you can like
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: flick inside yourself. But in fact, that is not how
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: it works. And it's a terrible disservice. So We can
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: be pressured either from within ourselves, maybe by our family,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: maybe by the culture, maybe by your church, to provide
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: forgiveness as if it's owed. And forgiveness is not a
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: commodity that the wounded must supply to keep the world
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: tidy because it's messy. And managing the wounds and the
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: harm and the agonies is not tidy work. So forgiveness
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: is a way of brushing and scrubbing things and sticking
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: it somewhere else. So forgiveness, in fact, I would venture
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: to say, is not granted. And it can only maybe
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: happen when the other has offered atonement, which is a
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: kind of event that requires something from the betrayer, from
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: the one who wounded. So an adult child does not
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: owe forgiveness to an abusive parent. which is not about
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: being hard or ruthless or heartless. It's because forgiveness is
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: not an ego decision. It is a process around an
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: archetype called atonement. And there is no guarantee that the
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: deepest levels of the psyche will even accept it. It's
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: a process. And I think that offering forgiveness under pressure
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: is a further humiliation of the one who was wounded.
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: I agree with you that when we're just told to
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: forgive or rise above it, it's a spiritual bypass. That
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: was then, that was then, but you're fine now. It
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: is a denial of what is in shadow, what still
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: has energy, and a process. Forgiveness is a two-person process.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: So, you know, it would enable person A to go
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: to person B and they work it out. If it's
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: going to be an intrapsychic process, a process between me
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: and me, that's a different process and it can be done.
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: But it doesn't mean that past events that were hurtful
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: or neglectful or worse yet, even abusive, have been brushed
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: under the carpet. It just means that that person has
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: found a way for them not to hold that kind
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: of energy that can wreak havoc in your psyche. But
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: it's important, as you're often saying, Joseph, about the levels
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: of not to confuse the relational process with an intrapsychic process.
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: They're both available, but they're different.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: So I think that we have to take.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: The one-sided forgiving and put it away, because what it
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: does is it short-circuits the internal dialogue, which needs to continue.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: You may discover that you have been released from something,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: and you might call that forgiveness, I'm not sure, but
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: you're going to notice it. You actually can't grant it.
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: Right. No, I want to say, though, that sometimes our
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: parents have really, really wounded or disappointed us, and we
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: haven't forgiven them And we may still decide through a
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: discernment process that we owe them a visit a year.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: Or a phone call a month. Like, you don't have
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: to forgive in order to say, you know what, my
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: moral code indicates that I not abandoned this person and
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: that it would be important to me to do this. Again,
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: not because of a should, but because this aligns with
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: my deeply held beliefs. That is a real, real, you
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: have to run that through the sieve a bunch of
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: times to get clarity. Yeah.
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: But forgiveness requires contrition on the part of one party of,
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm really sorry about this or I regret
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: or I acknowledge that. So, you know, just what you're saying,
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: it can't just be a one-sided process.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: But I also think, Lisa, you were saying something which
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: is important that in the end of the day, when
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: we're evaluating how we're going to respond to an abusive parent,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: we need to consider the narrative that we will be
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: left with after they're gone. And that's what you're saying,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: that you may notice that there's a certain principle or
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: value inside of you that needs something from you, which
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: has little to do with the parent.
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: So that 20 years after they pass and the parent
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: comes to mind, do you have a story about you
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: and the parent that you're okay with? And only you
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: can decide that. No one can assign that to you,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: but it's a worthy consideration. So when Nala Sands asked
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: me this, and they do in session, I don't equivocate
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: about what was done to them. I turn it back
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: to them. After it's all over, you're going to tell
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: yourself a story. What is the story that you need,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: not what the parent needs? And to at least consider that,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: and that goes to what you were saying earlier, Lisa,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: about consequences.
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I love that, Joseph. It's so, it's very
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: to the point. And I do see this sometimes with people.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: I think when we're hurt and we're angry, sometimes the
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: kind of, you know, cutting the person off I think
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: it can feel very satisfying. But I do worry sometimes
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: when people do that about what they might be left holding.
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: I also do think that losing a parent who's been mean, abusive, critical, distant,
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: it's actually more difficult usually than losing a parent to
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: whom we had a less ambivalent bond where it's just like,
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: you know, I mean, it's so sad to lose a
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: beloved parent But at least there's just a sense of clarity.
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: You just feel mostly just sad. And you feel supported
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: in that because that's what people expect you to feel
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: and on and on. It's hard to lose a parent
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: actually who's been abusive or it can be very difficult
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: because you don't have the expected reaction. And you may
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: feel a mix of different things, including grief over the
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: parent you never had. And I think that if you
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: also have intermingled in there, unprocessed stuff around, did I
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: really do what I felt like I should have done?
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: That just makes it harder for you. You know, so again,
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: it's not so much that you need to do A
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: and not B, but do you know why you're making
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: the decision that you're making? Are you doing it with
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: intention and with consciousness? Because I think that will save
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: you some suffering in the long run, whatever you decide.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: So I want to also lift up a little bit,
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: which I think is very real. So somebody has really
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: been hurt, abused, victimized by a parent, and they, for
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: whatever reason, have chosen to be in a caregiving position.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: So we'll just set that as a thought experiment. So,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: one of the tragedies around that is that we can
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: be vulnerable to continuing to feel re-victimized every time we
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: return to the position that the adult who goes to
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: care becomes a child again, subject to the parents' moods
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: and demands and contempt and manipulations. And then the care
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: situation is literally a reinstallation of the old trauma complex.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: And that's an excruciating situation. So what do we do?
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm so glad to bring this up.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: What's something to be done?
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: So what I'm going to say It sounds simple, but
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: it's not. So the language is simple, but it's an
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: enormous process. There is a psychic cost to remembering in
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: the wrong way. If we think about what has happened
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: to us in a way that re-inflames our nervous system,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: then we are continuing to be victimized In our memory,
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: we remain a victim in our nervous system and in
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: our memory. So there is a process that one might
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: discover that if we can move the memory to another place,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: and by that I mean another perspective. For instance, we
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: might be able to hold it as a kind of
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: excruciating initiation. Then, we may be able to hold it
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: as something other than the victim place. Now, this is
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: not something to be done if somebody is in a
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: situation and they are currently being victimized. This is a
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: long after the fact situation. And I'm not sentimentalizing the
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: idea of, let's say, initiation, because if we really understand that,
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: many initiations, people would die in the ancient world during initiation.
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: This is no joke. I mean, this is an enormous situation.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: So we could discover that the physical beating becomes an
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: initiation into the depths of human violence and also the
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: capacity for the spirit to survive in the midst of that.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: But I was initiated into the brutal reality of the
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: human spirit, and I have risen again from it, and
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: I know something about that darkness that I would not
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: have known before, and I go out into the world
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: knowing the darkness and no longer innocent or naive to it. Now,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: I can imagine some of you listening to this could
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: find this very difficult to even imagine. So I suggest
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: this to people who feel that it's possible. And if
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: it doesn't feel possible to you, that's okay. You're in
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: a process. But for some people, there may be enough distance.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: There may have been enough cooling off that they can
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: wrap the experience in a philosophy that prevents their nervous
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: system from re-injuring them. And that is the whole purpose. Again,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: it's not about the parent. It's about can we hold
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: something that at one time was like molten iron that
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: you were grabbing with your raw hands out of the
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: oven to actually having oven mitts so you can kind
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: of move it around and not scorch yourself. And the
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: oven mitts are the attitude that allows you to know
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: what's true without re-traumatizing yourself or having the interactions with
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: the parent. re-traumatize you again.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: Joseph, that's really profound. You know, to me, part of
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: what you're talking about is you're making it yours. You're
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: changing the narrative around it and you're taking ownership of it.
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: And it reminds me of this quote that I know
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: we've shared before in the podcast, but it's such a
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: good one. Jung says, but no matter how much parents
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: and grandparents have sinned against the child, The man who
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: is really adult will accept these sins as his own condition,
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: which has to be reckoned with. Only a fool is
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: interested in other people's guilt, since he cannot alter it.
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: The wise man learns only from his own guilt. He
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: will ask himself, who am I that all this should
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: happen to me? To find the answer to this fateful question,
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: he will look into his own heart. And I just
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: want to say again what you said. I mean, I'm
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: not saying, oh, an abused child was guilty. No, of
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: course the abused child was not guilty. But I think
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: your recommendation that's kind of echoed in this quote is,
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: if you can, if you're far enough along, maybe you
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: can write your own script about what it meant. And
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: then it's yours. rather than something that happened to you.
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: It's something that you have. It changes your relationship. It
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: doesn't change what happened. It does change your relationship with
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: what happened. And like you said, it may not always
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: be possible, but it's something to maybe think about, consider.
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: So it seems to me that what we're circling around here,
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: and I like the concept of initiation here, Because initiations
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: can be really, really big and painful and hard. Even
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: they used to be life-threatening. But how do we make
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: meaning out of it? What did you learn? Who are
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: you now? You've survived this. Is there something more here
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: that you can do something with now? in your own
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: narrative and how you feel and with your nervous system
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: that takes it from being relatively powerless as indeed you
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: were as a child. But now what do I do
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: with it psychologically, emotionally, physiologically, so that I come out
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: the other side and in initiatory processes, After being dragged
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: by your hair and bitten by fire ants all night,
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: you come back to the village, your own inner village,
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: and are recognized as an adult. You are changed. And that's,
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: I think, the question here is, how can I use
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: this so that I can change? I can change my
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: relationship with myself and enter a new state. You know,
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: in some way. Now, you know, a 14-year-old or a
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: 16-year-old who goes through an initiation isn't magically, permanently, inalterably
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: changed the day after. But something has really shifted that
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: makes a difference.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: And I'd like to just leave with just a couple of,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: from myself, some summary ideas to think about. So, the crisis...
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: isn't going to be solved by deciding whether your parent
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: deserves care. I think it's going to be clarified by
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: asking which powers, archetypal powers in you are demanding tribute
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: of you. Is it the gods of piety, the gods
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: of vengeance, the gods of guilt or love or necessity
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: or money? And can you refuse... to let any one
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: of them declare itself as the whole truth. These are daimons,
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: and they are inhuman in a way, and it is
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: important to feel the power they have and to at
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: least acknowledge these forces are too one-sided, and none of
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: them can hold the complexity that is required around us.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: The other thing that I would say is abuse makes
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: the parent not only a person, but a wound in itself.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: The parent becomes, is transformed into the wound. So to
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: really think about that, the parent and the archetype of
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: the wound have come together. And so the task is
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: not reconciling and being virtuous or even estranging necessarily by principle.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: But it may be replacing the parent in a wider
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: context which might involve even finding myths to make sense
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: of this so that you are not ruled exclusively by
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: the literal biographical story. And that's the great gift of
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: Jungian amplifications that Our suffering is also universal. I would
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: also offer that care does not have to mean intimacy.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: Nurses know this, you know. An image can demand competent
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: caretaking without demanding emotional fusion. And so the imaginal move
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: could be to think about the role, caretaker, carrier, witness,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: whatever it is, as a function of and not as
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: a confession of some kind. And that can also free
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: us up. The last bit that I would offer is
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: around inheritance. Inheritance is a very powerful archetype. I think
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: we should do a whole episode on inheritance. So inheritance
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: sometimes is a way where the dead govern the living
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: through money or guilt or loyalty or even revenge. You're
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: not in the will anymore. And the inheritance can masquerade
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: as love. And also, love can masquerade as, you know,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: the principle, you know, the financial principle. And so when
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: that's at play, when you're deciding how much you want
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: to give to the parent when a substantial inheritance is
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: in hand, I would only suggest thinking deeply about it
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: and monitoring it. just monitoring it, you may find yourself
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: caring for a really awful parent because an enormous amount
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: of money is involved. But to allow yourself to explore
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: what that means so that you have some consciousness around it.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: I love all of those. Really summed it up beautifully.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: I think I want to pluck on one and just
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: extend it a little bit more, Joseph, your very excellent
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: point about care, not being intimacy. You know, there is
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: a way to be in touch with even a damaging
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: parent such that you have agency. And I think that
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: the sense, well, I've just got to collapse myself into
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: this and throw myself on the pyre. No, you don't.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: It's not necessarily an either or situation. For some people,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: it might be. It might be either I'm in touch
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: with this parent or I need to just cut off.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: But just in a very practical way, just like you did, Deb,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: one visit a year. And then you know what you
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: had then? I'm going to use a very popular word here.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: You had a boundary. And that boundary bespoke your agency
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: to define the relationship and what you were willing and
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: not willing to do.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: Yes. And it was freely given. This is what I
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: have to offer you. But I also want to, as
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: you said, pluck on something that you raised, Joseph, about inheritance,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: that to go back to our sub-theme of gestalt stuff,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: of that there's an intimate and a strategic aspect to relationships.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: And in an intimate relationship, we go there because we care,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: we want to give something to others, The other person,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: we want to hear what the other person has to say.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: There's no desired outcome. I'm just here because I care
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: about you. In a strategic relationship, and this happens all
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: the time at work, that there are outcomes, there are plans,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: there are strategies, there's hierarchy, there are all these other things.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: But you can balance strategic. This is what is in
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: my interest. for my own future in terms of concrete benefits.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: And this is what I have to give if you
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: do in the way of affection or care or just
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: something that is basically friendly to work, not loaded, not anything,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: but to be aware of what is in my strategic interest.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: And if that's your truth, That's your truth.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: It's okay to have a strategic interest.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: It is okay to have that. And if that is
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 4: something that this difficult relationship can afford you, then maybe
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: that's simply the reality.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: And I just want to circle back to, based on that,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: just a little bit more about this idea about boundaries.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: Because if you're going to be in relationship with a
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: difficult parent, either because that's what you've decided you need, or,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: you know, as Deb was saying, this kind of strategic thing,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: you know, let's, let me, let me do this. You know,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: once you've made your peace with that, one of the
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: ways to do this is to think about setting a boundary.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: I'm going to talk to this person once a month,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: Sundays at 10 a.m. from 10 to 10.30.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: You can do that.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: I know this person needs some in-home care. I'm going
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: to see if my siblings and I can cobble together
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: the money to pay someone to come in. Or, you know,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: whatever it is, you can sort of have this compromise
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: with reality, that was Freud's term, about how this is
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: what I think I need to do. Here's how I
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: can get it done in a way that is boundaried.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: So I'm really in favor. And again, I'm just getting
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: very practical and, you know, set a schedule. No, you
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: can't come whenever you want. You can come, you know,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: every six months. The next date that we're available is this.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: Seize your agency and assert your own boundaries and then
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: maintain them. That is another way to do this dance.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: And the boundary gives you that space to consider so
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: that you don't flood yourself, that you're giving yourself some
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: room because you've sensibly considered what your limits are so
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: that you're not made unwell by the engagement. We haven't
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: talked a lot about mythology, and that could be another hour,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: so I'm not going to throw too much in there.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: But I want to mention it because we're Jungians. Mythology
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: is full of problematic parents.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: Among the gods themselves, in fairy tales. So what I
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: would say is that if we fall into the question,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: what do adult children owe? Then we've kind of collapsed.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: If we insist, or the question has collapsed, if we
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: insist on only one answer. And if we look to mythology,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: there's lots of different orientations to the archetype. In the Aeneid, Aeneas,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: famously in the ancient world, ran into a burning building
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: to rescue his father, lifted him up, carried him on
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: his shoulders through the smoldering building. The archetype might require
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: competent carrying. Kronos is eating his children, and that has
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: to be stopped. Kronos, in a sense, is asking for
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: conscious containment. The Furies, sometimes called the Arrhenies, are murderous
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: with rage. We have parents like that, and they are
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: only placated by remembrance and truth. So you do not
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: owe your abusive parent your soul. You may owe the
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: gods their due, each in its proper place. So you
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: are not forced into two, what I would say, cheap endings.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Martyrdom as a kind of hallmark sentiment or severing them
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: off as a kind of righteousness. But the myths tell
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: us it's complicated and there are many ways of metaphorically
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: imagining the process. And sometimes we have to look to
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: myth to even consider something in a wider lens?
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: Shall we consider something through that deeper and very real
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: nightly lens that we all have that gives us something
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 4: different and new called a dream?
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: Today's dreamer is a 29-year-old male who is a student
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: and also a new father. And here is this person's dream.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: I'm in the passenger seat of a car with my parents, sister,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: mother's sister and husband, and their daughter. We're going out
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: for dinner, and we're all very dressed up. We do
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: not know where to go out, and it feels like
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: it's up to me to find the right restaurant. As
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: we pull into a parking spot downtown, I'm trying to
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: write out a thought that keeps slipping away on a
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: large piece of paper. As we get out of the car,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: I put the paper down, and we go into a
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: restaurant that feels like a university cafe with lots of
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: young people. We find a table big enough for all
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: of us, and it still has food garbage on it.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: We sit down And there's a feeling of being way
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: overdressed and of letting down my family, who seem very irritated.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: I then leave the restaurant by myself and walk into
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: a beautiful old Italian restaurant. I feel delighted to have
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: found this place and also feel regret that I did
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: not make a reservation here for my family. There is
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: one family, whom I do not know, seated at a
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: large table eating together. In a special area of the restaurant,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: there is an old man seated alone at a table.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: As I turn to leave the restaurant, I notice that
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: this is my deceased maternal grandfather, whom I loved as
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: a child. There is an emotional upwelling in my chest,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: and I begin to smile and cry looking at him
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: as he smiles at me. I then walk down a
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: flight of dark stairs and enter out into the street
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: and wake up. For context, he writes, the family member
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: in this dream are all estranged from each other. My
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: family used to gather around my maternal grandparents, but have
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: stopped since they both have died. For many years now,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: I have been forming a new life for myself and
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: devoting lots of energy to spiritual practice and therapy. I
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: feel that I have largely separated myself from my fragmented family.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: The main feelings in the dream for him, I was
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: perplexed and embarrassed in the beginning, then grateful, regretful, and
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: elated in the end. He offers a bit more explanation.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: My grandfather used to take my family out to nice
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: restaurants as a child. He is the one relative. who
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: I wish could see my baby boy.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: One of the things about this dream, obviously, is the
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: context that he's a new father. And there is a
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: way that when we become parents, these sometimes difficult, troubling
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 3: relationships that we had with our own parents take on
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: an additional importance in our psyche, and we often find
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: ourselves revisiting them So here he is in the very
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: beginning of the dream in the passenger seat. He's not
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: driving with all of these parental and family complexes. And
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: I think that that sort of starts us off right
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: there where we're really in this troubled realm. We find
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: out that all the family members in this dream are
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: all estranged from each other. But even when we cut
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: our family off, they still live inside us. And I
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: think this dream is a testament to that.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: Anytime we're in a dream and someone else is driving
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: the car, one question we could ask is, who is
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: the driver and what complex inside of us might they
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: represent that is dominant in the moment, at least when
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: the dream is happening? And the dream maker is trying
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: to give us a snapshot of that. Look. This is
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: driving you. So the ego is not at the wheel,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: and yet the family system inside of him still assigns
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: him responsibility for pleasing them. And that tells us something
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: about the wound, the kind of impossible task of satisfying them.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 4: There's often in a family a kind of peacemaker, right?
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: a hero, rescuer, you know, all kinds of words that
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 4: may or may not fit for this dreamer. It's up
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 4: to him to find the place that will unify the
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: family to eat together. And eating at a table together,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: eating a meal has, you know, huge mythological reverberations as
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 4: an image of togetherness, of what we take in together.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 4: But I'm just wondering if this is a man who's wanting,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 4: he's wanting to be responsible. It's up to me. It's
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: up to me to figure it out for everybody. All
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: these people that have been estranged from one another, and
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 4: somehow I have to bring it all together and get
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 4: it right. And then, you know, it doesn't work out.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 4: They're overdressed. It's all wrong. The table hasn't been cleared
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 4: from the previous diners, and people are irritated with him.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 4: And oftentimes that person in the family doesn't ever do
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 4: it right. Keeps trying, but never gets it right, despite
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 4: good faith efforts. But the part that I'm especially curious
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 4: about is the area of the Italian restaurant, a beautiful
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 4: old Italian restaurant. And There is a family there that's
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 4: eating peacefully together. So here's another option. There are restaurants
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: where families have a nice meal together. And then this
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 4: old man that is his grandfather that he loved. And
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 4: our dream ego begins to smile and cry. He smiles back.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: There's the image of care, love, connection in a beautiful setting.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 4: where a family is eating together, there's the option. There's
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 4: the possibility, the telos, what you're headed for. And then
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 4: the dream ends with, I walk down a flight of
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 4: dark stairs and enter out into the street and wake up.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: You go through that dark passage out into a street,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: daily life. I love the image of these two restaurants.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 4: the family that he's with and the family that he
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 4: sees in the Italian restaurant, along with his grandfather. It's
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 4: a real contrast.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: And then he's out on the street, like you were saying, Deb,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: where ostensibly he has some choices to make. And I
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: think when you first become a parent, you are faced with, well,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: what do I want my family to look like? How
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: do I want it to be? What kind of relationships
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: do I want to cultivate? I also want to pick
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: up this thing about he's trying to write out a
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: thought that keeps slipping away.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: So I've been reading a lot of Wilfred Bion recently.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 3: Bion was another psychoanalyst who actually is very, his writings
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: are very kind of consonant with Jung and Jungians take
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: a lot of inspiration from Bion a lot of the time.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: And one of the things that Bion really concentrated on
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 3: was thinking. And are we able to think? And he
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: was very interested in the way that trauma of various
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: kinds can result in an inability to think, that we
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: need to be able to have access to our reverie,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: to our kind of hovering imagination in order to metabolize experiences,
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: and that when we can't for whatever reason, we can't think.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: And part of what enables that is this relational container.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: So another person can kind of provide containment for our
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: confusion and chaos, for example.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: And so I'm.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: Really struck by the fact that this thought keeps slipping
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: away and he is trying to write it down. There's
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: something that he knows that he can't quite grab a
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: hold of. He can't quite know what he knows. but
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: he's trying because he's trying to write it down.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: Well, if I think of the dream as corrective, it
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: may be that he over-relies on his cognitive or conceptual
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: formulations to get him through this family trauma stuff. And
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: so we could also imagine that the current developmental questions
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: about family obligations, separation, fatherhood, lineage, who he is as
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: a person, cannot be solved just through cognition or his
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: spiritual ideals or his therapeutic concepts. That the dream demands
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: feeling and grief and a kind of reordering as to
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: what he's loyal to. And it provides this option in
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: the form of the archetypal layer of the psyche in
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: this ancestor and going back to something else. So if
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: we look at the first bit, it's the whole Puerh milieu.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: It's a university Ratzkeller and it's full of trash and,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: you know, it's full of young people. And the other
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: one is old and Italian and beautiful. And so we
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: have this juxtaposition between this kind of Puerh milieu and
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: the kind of healthy Cenex tradition, which has kind of
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: got a root in something that maybe is meaningful to him.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: So there's also the necessity of kind of leaving the childhood.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: Even though he's a student, he's got a baby. He's
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: a father. And part of the medicine is moving over
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: to the realm of the positive fathers.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 4: I was thinking about that too, Joseph, that he's a student.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 4: And when we're a student, in a way, we're still...
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 4: sort of in a child realm. We're being cared for
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 4: by the grownups, quote unquote, the university professors or whoever
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: they are. But we're kind of in that archetype, which
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 4: is why we call universities the alma mater. But you're
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 4: positioned in a certain way, and yet when you're a
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 4: father or a mother, heaven knows, a parent, you have
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: to separate from the identities you held as a member
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 4: of your larger family. I'm so-and-so's niece or nephew. I'm
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 4: this person's grandchild. I'm somebody else's child. I'm somebody else's cousin.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 4: And he's got a huge family phalanx in this car
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 4: with him. Or a huge bunch of family complexes in
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 4: his metaphorical car. So now you are the head of
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 4: your own family. I mean, of course, together with your wife,
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 4: but that's been the traditional phrase of the head of family.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 4: And I think it's a tough transition to make for anybody.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 4: And I think the clue, and it certainly was for me,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 4: but the clue in the dream is, I walk down
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 4: a flight of dark stairs. So it's a descent. It's
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 4: not an elevation or an epiphany. It is a dark
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 4: passage and a descent to enter out into the street,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 4: which is the public forum. Everybody's out in the street.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 4: It belongs to everybody. In a way, it's a sort
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 4: of neutral space in which we all participate, but It
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 4: feels like the fresh canvas for a new painting.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's really well said. Thanks for listening.
• 1:20:50
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• 1:20:53
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• 1:20:58
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