Latest / This Jungian Life Podcast / SATANIC PANIC: The Archetypal Slanderer and False Memory Syndrome

Transcript

SATANIC PANIC: The Archetypal Slanderer and False Memory Syndrome · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:23
  Speaker 4: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: Halloween is a fun time for kids to wear costumes,
• 0:48
  Speaker 4: attend parties, gather up candy, and store it for weeks.
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: Or not.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: Or not.
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: Or eat it all in 24 hours. But it's also
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: an ancient Celtic holiday called Samhain, which is a time
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: when the veil between the living and the dead thinned.
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: This is when the uncanny side of psyche, or the
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: irrational manifestations of the unconscious, were highlighted. And with the
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: suppression of pagan rituals and ideas by the ever-powerful Roman
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: Catholic Church, non-Christian images were seen as evil. Instinctive impulses
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: that challenged the asceticism of the new faith were banished.
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: And these were called Satan, which in Hebrew, means adversary
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: or accuser, or devil, which in Latin, diabolos, means the slanderer.
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: And very interestingly, the Greek word diabolos is composed of
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: the prefix dia, which means across, and balin, which means
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: to throw. So diabolos means one who throws accusations across,
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: or one who divides. In the Latin, Lucifer was actually
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: the name of the planet Venus, the morning star. And Venus,
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: the goddess of love and sensuous beauty and sexuality, became
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: an enormous problem for the powerful ascetic church. These ancient
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: images and archetypes don't go anywhere. They just go underground.
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: And as Jung said, The ancient gods and goddesses become
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: symptoms because they are no longer understood consciously. They were
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: reactivated in the United States in the 1980s and 90s
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: in an event called the Satanic Panic. There was a
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: widespread moral hysteria. centered on unsubstantiated claims of satanic ritual
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: abuse involving child sacrifice and abuse and strange occult practices,
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: which actually were modeled off of movies that people had
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: seen and simply believed were somehow newsreel correct. And psychologically,
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: it was fueled by mass anxiety, false memory syndrome, and societal...
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: fears of moral decay as the culture was changing post-1960s.
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: So rooted in the ancient collective projections of archetypal evil,
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: panic exploited the unconscious archetypal fears of the other, blending
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: scapegoating dynamics with modern conspiracy theories. And so today we're
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: going to talk about the satanic panic because panic It's
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: still alive and well.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: Well, and it's an iteration of something that is always
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: with us. And, you know, disturbingly, even though it eventually
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: sort of ended and many of the false accusations were
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: overturned even somewhat recently. You know, there are others afoot.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: There will be more. And it's something about needing to
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: understand how these archetypal forces, which you've expressed so well, Joseph,
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: get constellated for us and can lead us astray.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: And this is a theme, a particular kind of panic
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: that is... Basically, I think probably as old as man,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: that in the early Christian eras and not so early,
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: you know, anyone non-Christian was attacked and accused of all
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: sorts of horrific things involving babies and children called the
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: blood libel. We had all over Europe, and in this country,
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: we had the Salem Witch Trials, where people were accused,
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: found guilty, and executed. And then we moved on, so
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: to speak, with the McCarthy Trials in the 1950s. And
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: there were a whole series of films in the late
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: 60s and early 70s, Rosemary's Baby, which, uh, I remember
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: watching with total horror, uh, which was then further exacerbated
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: by the film, the exorcist, which scared the living daylights
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: out of me. And then I never did see the
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: omen because I had learned my lesson. Just don't go there. Um,
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: but then there was, there was the Charles Manson group
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: that was tainted with, uh, echoes of Satanism because it
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: was so grisly and appalling and horrific. And then we
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: had all the stuff around daycare centers, the McMartin Preschool
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: and others, where everybody was up in arms about it.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: There was an NBC special. 2020 did stuff on all
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: of this. And almost 200 people were charged with crimes,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: and dozens of them were convicted. So this is something that,
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: as you were saying, Joseph, it goes underground, sort of.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: But like flowers in the spring, they easily pop to
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: the surface when the conditions are right.
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: And there are, we surmise, certain things that happen in
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: the cultural psyche that there are cultural complexes, and when
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: large groups of people are put under certain stressors, they're
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: more vulnerable to the activation of certain things. So right
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: around the 1980s, which is the Reagan era, there was
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: an enormous political change that the evangelical right decided that
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: they had a mission to move into American politics. Prior
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: to that, the fundamentalist Christian church functioned quietly within their
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: own communities. In fact, their message was to withdraw from
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: the world because it was wicked and to create enclaves
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: of goodness and fidelity and virtue. But something changed in
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: the 80s with just a handful of evangelical leaders who
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: decided that they were going to lead an evangelical war
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: by taking over the Republican Party was what they had decided.
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: And successfully did that. And so with a kind of
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: national campaign that began to move religious ideas like the
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: great fight between good and evil and the presence of
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: demonic influences in all quarters of the government which needed
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: to be routed out and changed, which by the way
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: is exactly what the Spanish Inquisition talked about and did
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: for about 350 years. came this enormous fear that evil
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: and terrible destructive intent was housed everywhere. And this coincides
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: also with an enormous cultural shift of women going into
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: the workforce and the rise of putting children into daycare,
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: which was a very kind of reasonable solution to this problem. phenomenon.
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: And so there's also what I would imagine a tremendous
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: amount of unconscious guilt, both in fathers and mothers, putting
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: their children into this institutional care. The guilt that, oh
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: my goodness, I'm doing something bad to my child. Freud
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: was the first one to say that goes underground because
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: we can't tolerate thinking that. And then it gets projected.
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: And so My fear that I might be doing something
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: bad to my kid becomes you must be doing something
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: bad to my kid, even though I don't know you.
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: I have no evidence for that.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: You know, I want to, and Joseph, you sort of
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: referenced this, but I want to bring it in really explicitly.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: Just sort of set this discussion up with a quote
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: of Jung's. I just want to share this quote. Shared
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: it many times on the podcast before. It is, Certainly
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: one of my favorite Jung quotes, but let's have it
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: here in the background in our discussion. We think we
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: can congratulate ourselves on having already reached such a pinnacle
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: of clarity, imagining that we have left all these phantasmal
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: guides far behind. But what we have left behind are
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: only the verbal specters, not the psychic facts, that were
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: responsible for the birth of the gods. We are still
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: as much possessed today by autonomous psychic contents as if
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: they were Olympians. Today, they are called phobias, depressions, and
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: so forth. In a word, neurotic symptoms. The gods have
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: become diseases. Zeus no longer rules Olympus, but rather the
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: solar plexus, and produces curious specimens for the doctor's consulting room,
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: or disorders the brains of politicians and journalists who unwittingly
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: let loose psychic epidemics on the world. So as you
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: both were saying, in 1980, you know, there were these
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: cultural forces going on, There were many kind of contributors
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: that sort of seeded the imagination. And then there was
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: this book published, Michelle Remembers. And it was written by
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: a Canadian psychiatrist by the name of Lawrence Pazder and
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: his patient who became his wife, Michelle Smith. And I think,
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: did I say they were Canadian? They were. And they,
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: you know, he had used this discredited recovered memory therapy
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: to make claims that she had been ritually satanically abused.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: And there were reports of sexual abuse and physical abuse
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: and all kinds of occult satanic rituals. It was really
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: out there and it was completely unsubstantiated. In fact, it
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: wasn't corroborated by members of her family or other kind
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: of facts that you could determine but the book became
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: a huge success and then people started using it as
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: reference material for training therapists and training law enforcement people
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: so it sort of got instantiated into institutions that this
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: was something real and it was really that book in
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: a way that kind of um unloosed everything But it
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: was taken up by the government. It was taken up
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: by law enforcement. It was taken up by therapists. So
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: we somehow, you know, this got seeded into our imagination
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: at this particular moment. And it did let loose a
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: psychic epidemic on the world. That was very costly. I mean,
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: there were the people who were accused and lost decades
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: of their lives in jail, some of them. But also,
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: you know, there were children who were taken away from parents.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: And these children were told that their parents were, you know,
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: ritually abusing them. So these children experienced these, you know,
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: kind of life-changing disruptions in their attachment relationships, you know,
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: that could never be reclaimed. So there was a tremendous
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: cost to this.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: There was, just to hear you talk about that, it's
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: just heartbreaking. And I want to go back to what
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: makes our collective ground fertile for this kind of seeding.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: We hear all kinds of things in various times, histories, cultures,
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: And we brush it off and we say, oh, no, well, maybe,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: but I don't think so. Whereas this took hold in
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: a particularly pernicious way. And I want to go back
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: to what we just touched on. This was a time
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: when women were going back to work and not being
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: so much stay-at-home moms. And there's also the revolution that, quote,
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: the pill made possible. So there was a huge revolution
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: in women's ability for self-determination. I remember way back when
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: going back to work and reading The Managerial Woman and
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Dress for Success. I remember that. Yeah, of how to
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: do this thing. And I wonder if that in some
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: way of a monumental change in the role that women
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: could have and could choose for themselves really also gave
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: rise to this kind of shadow about what happens if
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: women aren't home caring for their children.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: So one of the things that is also at the
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: base of this terrible phenomena, which is still an enormous
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: problem in our culture, is the impulse to literalize things
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: that are fantasies and symbolic. Jung has said, and I
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: wish I could find this quote because I know I'm
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: paraphrasing it, but he was talking about containment or writing
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: about it, and he said that it's the devil that
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: makes you want to think it's literal.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's Marie-Louise von Franz.
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: Oh, it's von Franz. Thank you so much.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: I can get that.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: I'd love to have that quote correctly.
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: And there is something to that, that there is a
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: way in which our senses can just be trapped into
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: a materialistic perspective. So whatever my eyes see, well, that
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: must be the fact. So, I mean, that's what fuels
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: this thing about the flat earth theory, that my eyes
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: tell me that the horizon is flat, and so therefore
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: the earth must be flat. So when we begin to
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: extend that into mystical texts like the Bible or other
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: mystical texts, and we take everything as literal in a
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: materialistic way, it alienates us from reality. It alienates us
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: from consequences as well, terrible consequences that are done in
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: the name of literalized fantasy material. And so, as psychoanalysts,
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: we're very interested in people's fantasies, but we call them fantasies.
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: These are products of the unconscious, and they are full
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: of meaning, and they are more meaningful when they're looked
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: at symbolically.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: That's beautifully said, Joseph. And I think it's like you're saying,
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: this fantasy material is important. We should treat it as
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: if it's important, but not treat it as if it's
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: literal and concrete. And this, this is the great, like
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: literalism is the great sin of modernity, really. And it's,
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: you know, it's like Deb, you said what seeds us
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: and I want to say, well, I think it's normal.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: I think we're always doing this. And, and, and the
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: problem is, I think we've diagnosed it, Joseph, with what
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: you said, that it's, it's a, it's a problem of,
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: of being, of being too concrete. And that quote, or
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: at least one of them is, Marie-Louise von Spahn says,
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: the devil is the one who wants the concrete thing.
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: Great. Thank you so much.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he says something which has no existence in concrete
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: reality is not real. So, but I want to say,
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: you know, it goes back to that quote from Jung,
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: where he says, you know, We think we've gotten rid
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: of our prejudices and our, you know, being superstitious by
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: not believing in the gods anymore. But instead, in fact,
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: they've actually gotten more concrete. And that creates a problem.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: So if we could relate to any of this stuff
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: as fantasy material, as you're saying, Joseph, then we wouldn't
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: be caught in this. So I think that is a
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: big part of it, is the lack of ability to
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: think symbolically or psychologically and to take these things as literal.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: And to also take our feelings as a given. If
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: I feel something this strongly, then it must be real. Yes.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: And I think that gives rise to all kinds of
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: things about, you know, at that point during the, what
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: was then termed the satanic panic, you know, people were
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: saying you have to believe the children.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: Who are, of course, highly suggestible. The interview techniques were
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: nowhere near as well developed as they have been since. So,
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: you know, children were in a sense, kind of coerced
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: to let loose their imaginations and strong feelings. And that was, quote, evidence, unquote,
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: of then everything. must be real. We have a number
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: of societal issues going on now around abuse and women.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: And do we simply believe? How do we take it seriously?
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: How do we take these things into consideration? And how
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: do we do our own conscientious sort of investigation, not
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: to mention fact-checking?
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: You know, there's this idea that I think is kind
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: of relevant here. It's this idea called tooth fairy science.
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: And it's an idea that was posited by the doctor
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: Harriet Hall.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: I love this.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very cool. And it's where you, it's, it's
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: studies that investigate something that is unfalsifiable. So you, you
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: can gather up a lot of, let me, let me
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: just read you some quotes from Hall because I think it'll,
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: I think it's kind of relevant to what you're saying.
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: So she says tooth fairy scientists mistakenly think that if
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: they have collected data that is consistent with their hypothesis,
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: Then they have collected data that confirms their hypothesis. So
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: you could measure how much money the tooth fairy leaves
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: under the pillow, whether she leaves more cash for the
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: first or last tooth, whether the payoff is greater if
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: you leave the tooth in a plastic baggie versus wrapped
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: in Kleenex. You can get all kinds of good data
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: that is reproducible and statistically significant. Yes, you have learned something,
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: but you haven't learned what you think you've learned because
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: you haven't bothered to establish whether the tooth fairy really exists.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: And it seems to me that something like that was
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: at play in this, where you've got this book, Michelle Remembers.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: You take it as fact, and then you start designing
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: public programs. to train people how to ferret out this
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: abuse or how to respond to it, you, you sort of,
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: it begs the question, you just made an assumption. And
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: this happened at the very highest levels. I mean, Janet
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: Reno was involved in prosecuting one of these cases. So,
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: you know, the, the, the, the penetration of this belief
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: was extraordinary and it never passed the common sense test.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: But what, um, You're also talking about here is how
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: powerful confirmation bias is.
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: You know that if I see that leaving a tooth
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: under the pillow results in payment, and payment is higher
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: for molars than it is, the natural conclusion is definitely
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: the tooth fairy must exist. And I check with my friends.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: And the tooth fairy comes for them too, therefore it's real.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: And Janet Reno was a member of the Supreme Court,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: by the way. That's how high up the judiciary ladder,
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: so to speak, this went. But that we cherry pick
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: things that fit our internal theory, our bias, our wish
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: to believe something. And then the facts fit in and
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: support something that really is not objectively real.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: She was the attorney general. She wasn't part of the
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: Supreme Court.
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Okay.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: I had to look that up to be sure, but yes. Yes. Absolutely.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: We start with the assumption and then we proceed from
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: there rather than than really kind of doing our due diligence.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: But we're all susceptible to this.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: But that in itself is so fascinating that we start
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: with assumptions. We start with an assumption that there are
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: these satanic, predatory cults, little groups that do these things.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: We start with that. And that's really a hell of
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: an assumption.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Isn't it that the people that are running your child's
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: daycare center are practicing satanic rituals on preschool children? That
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: is an amazing assumption to even consider, much less expand
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: on and believe.
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: And it's frightening. I think that's also what we need
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: to really hold. I mean, in a smaller way, we're
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: seeing that again with cancel culture, is that false aspersions,
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: the devil who throws accusations, constellates in the collective, and
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: then strange things are done, and your wife posts something
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: on Facebook, and then you lose your job as a
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: corporate CEO, which by the way happened. I mean, it's
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: bizarre to see this incredible, dangerous horror that happens around
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: the constellation of the devil as the accuser. And it
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: destroyed people's lives. I found out only recently that in
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: the small town of Edenton, where I have my weekend place,
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: that there was a major satanic panic trial. I have
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: not had it in me to ask anyone local about
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: this because it must have been horrific. But it was
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: called the Little Rascals Daycare Center, which apparently was really infamous.
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: So in 1989, a bunch of these kind of religious
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: leaders became obsessed with the daycare center And they charged
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: Bob and Betsy Kelly and a bunch of other minimum
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: wage workers with these incredible things of killing babies. Which,
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: of course, they.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: Never found them.
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: They never found a dead baby.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: None of the parents lost a baby.
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: They all picked them up at day school. But somewhere
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: there are the bodies of babies that aren't being revealed
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: and children being taken out. onto the ocean in boats
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: and subjected to things while you're at work and coming back.
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: And then all kinds of strange, grotesque ceremonies. And then,
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: of course, horrific sexual fantasies are projected onto this. And
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: so the accusations start. It catches on fire. The investigations
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: come in. and particularly the children who are coached and
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: coaxed by asking very specific, fantastical questions. I mean, have
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: you ever seen this, holding up a pentagram? And did
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: anybody ever do this to you? I mean, kids are
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: very impressionable. And also, they can feel the incredible fear.
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: Well, and they want to please, right?
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: Of course they do.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: So it's like, oh, you know, the investigator gets excited
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: when the kid says, oh, yes. And so the kid
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: keeps going, you know? Yeah.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: And one of the adults who was a child and
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: was interrogated said he lied because it was the only
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: way he could get away from the questioning, that he
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: wasn't going to be allowed to leave unless he said
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: what his interrogators wanted him to say.
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: So over a hundred counts were leveled against this fellow
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: Bob Kelly, and he wound up being sent to jail
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: for 10, 12 consecutive life sentences in 1992. And many, again,
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: of these local retired moms who were working for a
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: minimum wage to take care of kids and change diapers,
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: now were being accused of being the brides of Satan,
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: many of whom, by the way, were not offered adequate
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: defense attorneys. So many of them just took whatever plea
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: bargains they could to try to keep themselves alive. Finally,
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: years later, by the way, that they were exonerated, and
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: it was seen as an absolute travesty, and all of
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: these Alleged convictions were overturned. Everyone's record who was burdened
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: with this horrific nonsense was exonerated and cleansed. And yet,
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: no one gets their life back from this. And the
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: incredible post-traumatic drama of being put through that as an
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: adult is unimaginable.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: And the year is lost in prison.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: And you cannot prove... How do you prove it?
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: Prove what?
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: That you're innocent.
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: Right, because it's unfalsifiable.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: It's unfalsifiable. But Joseph, I want to go back to
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: something you said of Satan as the accuser. I think
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: that's really important. Can you expand on that?
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: Well, it comes from the etymology of the word. That
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: in Greek, the word is devil means to the one
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: who throws accusations and and so it it had a
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: very specific meaning of of a slanderer and that in
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: first of all in ancient communities people who lied in
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: an ancient tribe were often even put to death or
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: they were they were abandoned to be exposed to the
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: elements because the the tribal leaders understood how unbelievably poisonous
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: it is for somebody to seek to lie and to
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: destroy a culture through lies. So it was taken very
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: seriously as something that was horribly dangerous. The idea of
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: the adversary, which is more of the word Satan, which
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: some people say is linguistically connected to Saturn. And in astrology,
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: Saturn is the great malefic. And the idea is that
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: when Saturn comes across your astrologic chart, it causes things
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: to gum up. It makes things hard for you, and
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: life becomes adversarial to the desires of the ego. So
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: in the book of Job, Satan is where that word
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: shows up in the Hebrew Bible most. frequently, and Satan
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: is the one who creates the problems, the adversarial things.
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: But as theologians look at that, in that way, Satan
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: is explicitly the servant of God. God tells Satan to
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: have his obstructive way with Job. And Jung, in his
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: analysis of the book of Job, talks about the transformation
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: of Job through being relativized to the divine, that there
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: is something inside of the self that at some point
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: will make sure we know that we are very small
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: compared to massively powerful dangers. And that famous quote where
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: Jung says, and I'm going to paraphrase, I see everything
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: that crosses my path and thwarts me as God. which
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: is a total transformation. For him, he means that the
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: self is anything that the ego wasn't prepared for, because
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: if the ego was prepared for it, it's about the ego.
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: So all of the uncanny interventions, good, bad, or indifferent,
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: that move our path in a direction, he does see
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: from that transpersonal standpoint, and that we are required to
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: respond with a kind of adaptive creative intelligence. And so
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: in that regard, Satan, in the Hebrew Bible, is the
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: one who forces human beings to learn and grow because
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: of the suffering and obstacles that are put in front
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: of them by Hashem, under the direction of a god.
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: A lot of theological ideas I've just thrown out there.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: But again, it goes to this idea that this is archetypal,
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: and that human beings create these symbolic mythologies as a
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: way of trying to understand their own unconscious forces, that
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: our own unconscious mind is the one that puts obstacles
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: before us. One, to help us learn, and also make
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: us conscious of the incredible realities internal forces that we
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: think are not there until our marriage blows up, our
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: business closes down, we get sick because we were smoking
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: for 40 years, etc., etc.
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: Our Patreon has had a makeover. There's lots of new
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: content and ways to engage with us. Patrons who support
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: us at the $ 5 level and up will now access
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: Young Love, weekly bonus episodes where the three of us
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: discuss dreams and questions sent in by supporters. At the
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: $ 10 level, you can vote on topics for podcast episodes
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: and vote on which guests we invite. And at the
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: $ 25 level, you'll also be able to watch behind-the-scenes content
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: and even join us for occasional live events. If you'd
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: like to be a part of all this, the link
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: to our Patreon is in the show notes. Thank you
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: so much for your support. We couldn't do it without you.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: And the archetypal polarity of good and evil is probably
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: one of the very most basic ones. And that, as
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: you said, we are small and we are at the
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: mercy of many forces. And I think there is some
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: way that some of this is apotropaic, a way of
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: warding off evil by being especially good, playing by the rules,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: references to moral standards, etc., as a way of making
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: sure that some of those other horrific feelings do not
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: take us over. I will be safe.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: You know, the thing about these moral panics or psychic epidemics,
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: whatever you want to call them, one of the key
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: features of at least many of them is this sense
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: of a kind of battle between good and evil. And
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: we're good and evil is out there. whether it's, you know,
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: the Red Scare and McCarthyism or, you know, or the
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: Satanic Panic or any of these, we know what evil
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: is and it's not us and we need to get
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: rid of it. So there's, I mean, there's that thing
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: that you referenced earlier, Joseph, about the scapegoat, about the
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: sense of trying to protect ourselves. You know, it's a very,
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: in some sense, a sophisticated defensive process that we identify
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: evil we see it as being out there and then
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: we can make ourselves safe we think by excising it
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: but but really they're just phantasms i mean the other
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: thing that comes up for me joseph is you sometimes
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: talk about the mixing of the levels which goes to
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: the danger of concretizing something that should be symbolic you
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: know so there there's you know the level of uh
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: This horrible fear or guilt I might have, for example,
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: about leaving my children in daycare. If I can deal
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: with it psychologically, you know, maybe looking at my fantasies,
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: my dreams, my feelings, then I can be in relationship
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: with it. But once it becomes part of the U.S.
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: justice system, that is the wrong place for it.
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: And that's where I know we're right now in a
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: big political. Yeah. turbulence in the United States, but there's
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: an enormous amount of projecting and fantastical beliefs that are
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: being projected onto one leader or another leader. And the
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: way for people to get out of that is to
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: actually look at policies, because that's the way the government
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: is going to reach into your personal life. Look at
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: the policies that the various parties have put in place
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: and are promising to put in place. Not not the
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: mythic theater that's going on in social media. And that's
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: a way to evaluate whether or not one person or
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: another is actually going to help or hurt your interests.
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: But the stories that we make about the leaders in
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: the collective is so shockingly mythic that it would be
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: funny if it wasn't so frightening because people lose contact
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: with just reality. I did want to go back to
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: the idea of the birth of good and evil. And
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: I was thinking, Lisa, you had been reading Jung's writings
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: on Zoroastrianism, thus spoke of Zarathustra as well as Nietzsche's
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: commentary on it. And as far as we know, this
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: very clear polarization of good and evil seems to have
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: come forward around 600 BCE. And this particular conflict between
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: Ahura Mazda, who is the supreme god of all good
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: things and wisdom and truth and order, and Ahriman, or Angra,
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: mind you, the destructive spirit representing chaos and evil and lies.
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: And this profoundly influenced All of the religions in the
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: Middle East and Christianity is an Abrahamic Middle Eastern religion.
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: So the battle between light and darkness, good and evil,
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: which again culminates in the triumph of Ahura Mazda and
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: the perfect world, is something that is woven into our bones.
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: But there were faith before that that I think might
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: very well have been more embracing of a world where
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: suffering and triumph both exist on a spectrum that is
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: not so split.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: That's a good point. That's a good point, that somehow
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: this is in our cultural DNA or something because of
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: these religious bedrock that our society is based on.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: And I think when tensions get high, the tendency to
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: polarize increases so that we have good and evil, right
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: and wrong.
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: It's a way of managing our anxiety, right?
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: It's a way of managing that. And the other thing
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: that happens is we are story writing creatures. We are
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: meaning making creatures. So I see this on TV. I
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: hear it from someone. I read something. I have certain
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: inputs or information. And then I write a story about it. That,
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: you know, when this happened and then that happened and
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: then it means this. And that's my story. And it
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: relates to, I liked your phrase, Joseph, the mythic theater
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: that is playing out in our collective now around the election.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: It's unbelievable. And if we could say, wow, this is
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: mythic theater. Let's investigate this. It'd be great.
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: And I want to say that one of the candidates
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: for president has actually verbalized the same blood libel and
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: said that there are clinics that are killing live babies,
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: which is the exact same thing that came out during
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: the satanic panic. It's the exact same horrific nonsense that
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: medieval medicine Christians who were jealous of prosperous Jewish families
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: would say that they had stolen a new infant and
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: used their blood for the Passover chalice. So that is
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: a unique test of the reality principle of Americans. And
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: people are repeating it, and they're believing it again. It's
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: being echoed. back and forth and back and forth, just
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: like it was in ancient times, as it was in
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: the 80s. And people are not thinking, thinking.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: So there's a writer named Megan Phelps Roper, and she wrote,
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: I believe it was a memoir. She was raised in
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: the Westboro Baptist Church, and then she sort of deprogrammed herself.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: And she has this great list of questions, six questions
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: to ask yourself if whether or not you're whether or
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: not you're let me think how to say it. You're
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: being you're caught by something. OK, I think it's a
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: really interesting list. I'm going to read them. Are you
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: capable of entertaining real doubt about your beliefs or are
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: you operating from a place of certainty? So if we
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: think about the satanic panic, you know, there were people
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: who said, maybe this isn't really happening. And you know
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: what people said? They said, believe the children, Deb, like
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: you said before. So if you questioned it, you were
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: considered to be, you know, a terrible person because you
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: didn't believe the children. But that phrase, believe the children,
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: is kind of a thought-stopping technique to get you to
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: not think, to get you to not entertain doubts. So
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: can you really entertain doubt or are you operating from
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: a place of certainty? Number two, can you articulate the
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: evidence that you would need to see in order to
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: change your position or is your perspective unfalsifiable? So if
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: you believe that there are satanic ritual, there's satanic ritual
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: abuse happening at your daycare, can you, can you come up,
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: what evidence would you need to see to have that disproved?
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: You know, for example, the lack of any, you know,
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: the lack of any physical evidence that this happened. And
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: in fact, one, one of the things that happened during
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: the satanic panic is they actually said, missing, I'm actually
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: quoting here from Wikipedia, missing memories among the victims and
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: absence of evidence was cited as evidence of the power
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: and effectiveness of this cult in furthering its agenda. Like,
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: look how effective they are at burying the evidence. Isn't
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: that amazing? So if you're using negative evidence as evidence,
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: you're dealing with something that's unfalsifiable. So what evidence would
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: you need? Three, can you articulate your opponent's position in
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: a way that they'd recognize or are you straw manning?
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: You know, for those who were saying, you know, I
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: don't know that this satanic panic is really a thing,
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: you know, would you have been able to say, well,
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: here's what they believe and do it in a way
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: that's fair. Are you attacking ideas or attacking the people
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: who hold them? So there were people who were denounced
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: and sort of had their livelihoods threatened because they dared
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: to question that this was going on. Are you willing
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: to cut off close relationships with people who disagree with you,
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: particularly over relatively small points of contention? Are you willing
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: to just cut someone out of your life because they
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: hold a different view? That might be something to think
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: about because it says that you can't tolerate being in
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: contact with someone who doesn't support your beliefs, which may
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: mean that your beliefs are actually resting on a weak foundation.
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: And six. are you willing to use extraordinary means against
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: people who disagree with you? For example, forcing people out
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: of their jobs or homes, violence or threats of violence,
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: celebrating misfortune and tragedy. So I love that list of questions.
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: I think, you know, and it's something, you know, Megan
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: Phelps Roper talks about, well, I grew up believing this
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: and then it was all wrong. How can I trust
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: my own mind again? And I think the thing that
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: I want to say, I know I say it all
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: the time, I want to say it again, We are
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: all susceptible to this. In fact, the more intelligent you are,
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: the more susceptible you are to all this, because we
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: could all be misleading ourselves.
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: I think that in terms of other research around this phenomenon,
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: people who have had any kind of early trauma history
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: have a tendency to want to project those nefarious agendas
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: onto other people. One of the things I also want
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: to just put out briefly is the reality that memory
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: is plastic. And by plastic, I mean plasticity. Memory can
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: be poured into many different molds and mixed with mythologic material,
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: mixed with events from other experiences. which is exactly what
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: Jung was talking about when he was describing and discovering
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: the complex, which was his first great discovery using the
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: word association test, that you can read somebody a single word, pond, tree, cat,
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: and the incredible number of associations that are grouped around that.
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: And those associations, in a sense, talk to each other.
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: and create an overall feeling and attitude about the thing.
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: So an initial experience gets added to and added to
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: and added to and added to, in this case, by
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: the parents and the investigators who are leading the children
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: into these terrible false situations. But as Lisa was saying,
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: for all of us as the decades go on, that
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: our memories are being reformed over and over again. And
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: as Deb, you were saying, because we are self-narrating beings,
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: who we think we are also changes because the narrative changes,
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: and then we mistake the narrative for reality.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: So Joseph, I just want to kind of build on
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: what you just said and to lift up that really
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: the bedrock of what you're saying is there's a part
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: of us that's unconscious and the unconscious is powerful and
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: it influences us. So if we take a particular view
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: of our past life or our identity or who we
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: are or what happened to us or what we think
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: happened to someone else, We have to take into account
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: that we're being influenced all the time by unconscious forces.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: I'm going back to what you said, Joseph, about the
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: plasticity of memory. I once, a long time ago, took
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: a class on memoir writing, and it was called Memory
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: and Imagination. And how we shape our memories, what even
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: sticks in our mind to remember in the first place.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: I think we all have had experiences, those of us
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: with siblings, of don't you remember the time that mom
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: did this or dad did that? And the other sibling goes,
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: I don't remember that. Oh, no, it was so important. Remember,
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: it was like, nope, it didn't lodge that the power
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: of the unconscious is that real. And to take memoir
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: as a function of weaving a story, as a function
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: of imagination, and there was a woman who wrote The
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: Satan Seller, and it was a memoir that was a bestseller,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: and then it was completely debunked. We have the child trafficking, Pizzagate,
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: more recent memoir, quote, scandal that was entirely fabricated with
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: no reality whatsoever. But these things lodge in our imagination.
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: They take hold and they feel real because they are
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: real symbolically, metaphorically, and psychically, but they are not real
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: as external facts in the world. And that is a
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: tough thing to separate those two things.
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: You know, I want to, I want to bring this
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: home because the truth is that the satanic panic among
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: the various groups that were implicated in it, there is
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: one very big group and it's therapists and, and therapists,
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: you know, it was, it was the guy pastor who
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: wrote the Michelle remembers with his work with his patient
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: who later became his wife that kind of started there.
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: There were therapists who got very interested in hypnosis. Um,
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: One of the important guys I think was also, yeah,
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: he was a psychologist, Corden Hammond, who did a lot
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: of damage. He was a psychologist. Lots of therapists out
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: there thinking that they might have a patient with repressed
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: memories of satanic ritual abuse. And why did we participate
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: the way that we did? Because we did. And by
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: the way, one of the things that brought it to
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: a halt was was therapists being successfully sued. And I
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: think we have to take responsibility for this. And I've
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: thought a lot about this because I think we're all
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: always a danger at this. So first of all, I
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: think that as therapists, we want to help people. And
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: that means that sometimes we can have a savior complex.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: We come swinging in and we think that we're making
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: all the difference in saving the person from this terrible fate.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: We are susceptible to that. But also mental health is
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: it's very different than, than being a medical doctor, because
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: the things that a medical doctor deals with can often
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: show up on objective tests. You know, you can go
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: to the doctor and say you have a sore throat
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: and he can do a test and find out whether
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: or not you have strep throat. But if you go
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: to a therapist, everything that we deal with is, um, well,
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: maybe not everything, but most of what we deal with
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: is subjective in nature. We're dealing with what patients report
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: to us. We're dealing with impressions. These are either behaviors that,
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: you know, frankly could be encouraged through suggestion or subjective feelings,
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: which of course matter. I'm not saying they don't matter,
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: but we have to be aware of that they can
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: be interpreted in different ways. And we have to be
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: responsible about how we interpret them. So our field in
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: particular carries a lot of blame for what happened. And
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: I think we need to be very aware of the
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: potential for future such kind of psychic epidemics stemming from psychotherapy.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: And I think that savior complex, not just in therapists,
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: but in the culture, is hugely activated because the victims
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: were children. Mm-hmm. You know, the innocent and the young
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: is a particularly horrific image that calls up our righteous
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: fury and there must be something going on and we're
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: going to find the supposed bad guys and root them out.
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: That we do root for innocence and we root for
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: anyone who's an underdog. And some of it is compensatory.
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, all of the kinds of accusations, much more recently,
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: where women have spoken out against abusers, compensatory to abuse
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: in some number of cases that did transpire that was
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: culturally sort of swept under the rug. It gets very
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: sticky and very thorny. And I like The steps you articulated, Lisa,
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: about are we coming from a place of certainty versus
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: being able to entertain doubt? Can we look to the evidence?
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: You know, and Joseph, you were talking about facts and policies.
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: So it calls what it should call up, one would hope,
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: would be, wow, I really need to engage in a
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: thorough investigative process. process around this rather than reacting?
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: I think relative to this word responsibility that's floating around,
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: modern therapists are responsible for staying informed, integrating new information,
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: questioning whether or not what they're doing is sound and
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: based at least on the most recent discoveries around what
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: is efficacious. I don't know that any practicing therapist now
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: is responsible for something that happened in 1970. I graduated
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: from high school in 1980.
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: Oh, no, I wasn't trying to apply that at all.
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: But I do think that when any of us are
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: in fields where we hold a lot of trust, continuing
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: to be educated and informed is really on the onus
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: of the therapist, the physician.
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: But I'm going to push back on what you're both saying, though,
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: that we can just look at the facts, because the
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: truth is that the nature of what we're talking about
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: alters our perception of what we think is trustworthy, and
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: that we can try to stay ahead of the current
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: evidence But we all have confirmation bias about which evidence
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: we're going to listen to.
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: So we're talking about therapists. So what is the conclusion
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: you want people to come to with your advocacy right now, Lisa?
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: That we just need to be thoughtful and maybe apply
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: those six questions to any strongly held beliefs that we have.
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: And you're talking to everyone? Are you talking to therapists?
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: I think to everyone, but I do think that our
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: profession has a particular tendency to get swept up just
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: because of the nature of what we deal with, because
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: we deal with the psyche, which doesn't lend itself to
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: kind of objective tests. Everything that we deal with in
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: some sense in psychotherapy... Well, I don't say it's all unfalsifiable,
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: but there's a there's a strong subjective element to everything
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: we deal with. And we just need to be aware
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: of that.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: There there is. And I think one of the key
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: things that we also do is to help our clients
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: differentiate between sort of what's inside and what's outside. You know,
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: is my my boss really does he really have it
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: out for me? You know, we go around and around
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: of what did he say? What was your annual review like?
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: How many other people got a salary raise versus you didn't,
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: if that's even ascertainable. But we're always helping people and
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: ourselves go back and forth about what's going on, what
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: else can I bring to the table here in the
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: way of consideration, evidence, external world reality versus my internal
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: world reality? They're both real, but they're in different categories.
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: That's your idea, Joseph, I think, about the levels. Yep.
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And I think that most therapists are really working
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: hard to do something good in the world. Oh, of course.
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: And I think most therapists are reliable therapists. I know
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: that there are certain trends that therapists can get caught in,
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: whether it's 1980s and everybody's learning hypnosis. and guiding people
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: down strange mystical paths to discover hidden memories in a
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: pool underneath a rock and then taking that as factual
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: and then getting that confirmed. There are agendas, even right now,
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: that are moving through certain psychotherapeutic traditions with certain values
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: that might skew objectivity. But I do think that it
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: is reasonable for most people with a well-vetted therapist to
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: have some sense of trust in the therapist's intent. And
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: in terms of the therapeutic efficacy, what's more important than
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: whether or not every word the therapist says is exactly
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: precise or objectively researched, is that the other person feels
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: on a deep and profound level that their therapist intends
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: to help them and wants the best for them. And
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: then whether or not we are perfect or imperfect in
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: an intervention can be forgiven, can be moved aside. Because
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: The talking cure is, in essence, has something to do
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: with love, as Freud said, to be cured through a
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: kind of depth of attention, of desire to help. What
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: I do think is that when any professional is possessed
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: by the accuser, what happens is they've abandoned being therapists
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: and they have taken on the role of forensic investigators.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: who are excited by the opportunity to participate in the
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: great world of accusations. And they are no longer therapists
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: in those moments.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: You know, of course, what we want to do is
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: to help. And I go back to James Hollis, who's
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: a Jungian analyst with a wide body of books that
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: are available to the general public. And one of his
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: mantras that he passed on to us is, what it's
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: about is not what it's about. And what you see
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: is compensation for what you don't see. And that's the
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: part I was speaking to about inside, outside. What's the
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: meaning I make of it? I'm sure that, I'm just
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: making this up, but I'm sure that my boss just
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: hates me and has it in for me. Well, what
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: it's about is probably not what it's about. Let's walk
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: around it, walk around it, do some discerning, and start
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: to differentiate what is my internal world story from what
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: are the actual events in the external world. And that's
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: what we do that isn't directly related always, as you
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: were saying, Lisa, to facts. But it's a process of circumambulating,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: walking around and around something, And starting to differentiate different
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: aspects and different elements of it rather than taking something
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: and just running with it. Yeah.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: And, you know, Joseph, I really like what you said
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: about when the therapist becomes the accuser, because that I
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: think is exactly you really put your finger on a
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: kind of dynamic. Where maybe it's a therapist. I'm thinking
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: also of the sense of kind of inflation that I mean,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: that anyone could get in any career. I mean, I
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: think I'm looking at our part simply because, you know,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: this is our backyard. But this would be true in
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: law enforcement or, you know, in education or in any
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: of these fields. But, you know, are you getting inflated?
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: Are you getting hopped up on the idea that you're
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: the righteous accuser, you know? And if so, that might
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: give you pause. You know, what's going on, you know?
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: And we leave the realm of healing psyche and we're
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: in the realm of something else. I do want to
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: also circle back because we have just a minute or
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: two more. around the idea of the plasticity of memory,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: because this is a well-researched topic.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: Elizabeth Loftus has done the research on it.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: Elizabeth Loftus. Everywhere from the 1970s through the 1990s, she
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: was a pioneering cognitive psychologist, and she revolutionized the understanding
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: of human memory. And this was very important in understanding
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: false memory syndrome. And she did these... almost humorous experiments
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: where she would take groups of people and use different
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: techniques to slightly suggest that they had had an experience,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 4: like getting lost in a department store, or trying to
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: convince them when they looked at a car crash, suggesting
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: to them how fast the cars were going, and then
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: finding out in the survey that all of them would
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: report exactly what the interviewer told them the speed of
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: the cars were, but they were absolutely convinced that they
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: had seen the cars going at that speed. So it
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: lets us know that, well, she says that about 25%
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 4: of the participants added enormous amounts of content to the
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: memories that were totally fabricated and most of them could
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: not remember things accurately. And if any of you remember
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: that children's game telephone, so somebody would whisper something, you know,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: like the rhinoceros answered the telephone and picked a flower.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: And then it goes around a circle. And then the
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: final person says what was spoken into their ear. And
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: it's like shockingly unrelated in any way to the first statement,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: which speaks again to even short-term memory, being able to
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: repeat just a sentence. is so influenced and changed by
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: our neurology.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 4: That our bodies do these really interesting things that short-term
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: memory is in a certain part of the brain, and
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: then as images, ideas, memories get distributed, they move broadly
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: into other parts of the brain and are linked with
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 4: other things.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: And part of this is you know, the archetypal and
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: mythological nature of our psyches. So if people are told about,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: you know, the time when they got lost in a
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: shopping mall, it never actually probably occurred. The archetypal root
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: of that is being lost and getting lost. And there
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: are gazillions of stories about exile and abandonment and being
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: lost And we've.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: All either been lost or felt lost. Like you're right, Deb,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: that's great that it has an archetypal basis.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember being lost. And a shopping mall is
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: evocative and it's big and it's impersonal and so on
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: and so forth. And that sounds right.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great, Deb. The kind of mythopoetic nature of
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: the way we process experience. I think it goes back
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: to what you were saying about like we're storytellers, you know.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, we're storytellers.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: And for a lot of things, there is an archetypal taproot.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: You know, having a machine, this is something you've talked about, Lisa,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: having a bread making machine on your counter.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: Couldn't be more modern, mechanical, etc. But it has an
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: archetypal root of bread as the staff of life. So
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: being abused, being lost, being afraid, being at the mercy of,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: these are all.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: Gigantic, you know.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: Everybody has those experiences.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's because it's archetypal. Yeah, that's really, that's really great.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: And so, you know, we have all these threads here
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: and I just, I can't help but bring up just
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: one more. instance of when there was another kind of, um,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: psychic epidemic that happened at the hands of, well, he
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: didn't think he was a mental health practitioner, but Charcot
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: at the Sal Patriaire at the end of the, uh,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: the end of the 19th century, you know, he diagnosed
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: all these women as hysterics and he could kind of
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: induce in them these really remarkable symptoms of And then
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: hysteria was everywhere in Europe for a few decades, and
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: then it just went away. So this is, you know,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: this is a modern thing that happens. It's happened many,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: many times. As we said at the beginning, it happened
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: with McCarthyism. And where might it be happening right now?
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, golly.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 4: Well, I have to say that... Because of social media
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 4: and the incredible, unprecedented connectivity that these kinds of misinformations
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 4: and accusations can surge through a million people in five minutes.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: It's turbocharged now, isn't it? Yeah.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 4: So there is something about the the credibility that we
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: give to printed material like that book that came out
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: with that goofy hypnosis experiments this guy did on his
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 4: soon-to-be wife because it was in print we lended a
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: kind of credibility because we trust publishers won't couldn't possibly
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: put out something that was so fallacious and Same thing
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: with newspapers. I remember this was probably in the late 70s,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 4: early 80s. I was visiting my grandfather, who I loved,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: my mother's father. And my grandmother and grandfather were very,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: very gentle, very, really kind. And I sat down next
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: to him, and he very suspiciously folds a newspaper and
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: kind of tucks it down onto the side of the couch.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 4: And I was old enough to ask. I was like,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 4: what's that? And he goes, Oh no, no, no, no.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: It's not something you should be reading.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: Oh gosh.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: So of course you read it.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 4: Well, so I, I tell him, I say, you know,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 4: I think I've been maybe 17. I was like, it's okay, grandpa.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think he can do it. So he
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: opens it up and he's really stricken. And it says
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 4: that aliens have invaded the white house. And here's a
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: picture of an alien that someone in the white house
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 4: has given birth to. And, um, And because it was
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 4: in a newspaper, I think it was in the Post
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: or something, he was frightened. And he wanted to protect
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: me from this kind of H.G. Wells situation where aliens.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: That did really happen, Joseph.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: You know, it did, but we're trying to cover it
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 4: over in the podcast. So be careful because they're listening.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 4: But in a not funny way, it was... I was...
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 4: Just kind of shocked. Sadly, I didn't know what to say,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: and so I didn't say anything. But I felt so concerned.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 4: But it was my first initiation into, I mean, this
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: is like the National Enquirer. I mean, this is a
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: fiction thing, and it might even be fun if you
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: know it is. You know, it's satirizing everything. But for
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: my grandfather, for whom something is in print means it's
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: the truth, that was really alarming. And we're still in
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: that place in some ways.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: And it might help us to think about all the stuff,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: whatever that is that you're reading, seeing, listening to, as
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: mythopoeic tales of, wow, what is that about? What is
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: being spoken about? And what are the feelings? underlying it.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: Is it righteousness? Is it fear, anxiety? What is this?
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: But to appreciate how easily experience, content, et cetera, gets
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: shaped by the psyche into a story that then purports
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: to be, quote, real, unquote, factual, objectively existing in the world.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: And this is an age where all kinds of storytelling
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: is fulminating everywhere.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: So there are a couple of refuges people can go to.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 4: One is the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. One of many,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 4: many organizations, this is out of one of the universities, fmsfonline.org.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 4: And this is an organization that's trying to both study
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: and confront individuals who later in life, through the manipulation
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: of therapists, come to believe that they were horribly abused
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: by parents when there's absolutely no evidence of it. And
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 4: then parents get these terrifying phone calls and letters of
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: being locked in basements and terrible things being done to them.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: and the parents turning to experts trying to figure out,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 4: what do I do when these false memories are happening?
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 4: So there is a foundation that is trying to study
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: this in adults as well, and that is a resource.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 4: And as Deb has been saying, and all of us believe,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 4: is that the symbolic attitude is the thing that Jung
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 4: affords us.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 4: And it is a medicine, it's a vaccine, so to speak,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 4: against getting sucked into this weird literalization that the unconscious
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 4: communicates through symbols, which are bridges between conscious and unconscious content.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 4: And this symbolic language shows up in dreams. Usually we
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 4: know when we're dreaming. but also fantasies, religious imagery, and
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 4: even creative artistic work. And it's not logical. These images
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 4: are not trivial, but they're not to be taken at
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: face value. And this was part of Jung's great tension
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: with Freud. Also, he really wanted to look at dream
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: symbols as having multiple layers of meaning, complexifying these things. So,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 4: Jung really rejected concrete, literal attitudes, which then brings people
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 4: into kind of a rigid, what they think of as
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: factual way of interpreting things. And that leads to a
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 4: kind of stubborn belligerence in any of us who are
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 4: sure that we know all the facts, and it is
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 4: exactly that way. The other thing is that the symbols
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 4: or if we take everything in our life as having
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: a symbolic equivalent, is showing us about tensions inside of ourselves.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 4: And for Jung, it's the tension of the opposites. So
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: every time we're flooded with frightening fantasies, let's say around
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: death and destruction, somewhere in the unconscious, life is trying
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 4: to show itself to you, which might happen in a dream.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 4: And Both of these symbolic tensions of life and death,
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 4: of creation and destruction, are both trying to show themselves
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 4: to you because it grows consciousness. And when we collapse
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 4: into only one side, we wind up just becoming inflated,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 4: which is why people get really loud and really big
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: when they're caught in literalistic positions, because they have to
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: defend themselves. against the symbolic level, which is trying to
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 4: emerge in their dreams and in other ways. So, approaching
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 4: our lives from a psychological stance that highlights the multiplicity
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: of meanings, that encourages all of us to look for
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: unconscious meanings and unconscious dimensions, and if we're parents, to
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 4: understand that our beautiful, wonderful children live in mythic worlds,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 4: and particularly as infants. When your child comes home and says, Daddy, bang, bang,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: you're dead. And Daddy, oh, grabs his chest and he
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 4: falls on the ground. Are you going to rush in
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: the room and think that's literal? That, oh my God,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 4: my child wants to murder my husband. That's going to
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 4: cause a lot of problems in your house. But Most
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 4: people instinctively know that it's a form of play, but
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 4: that play comes from a mythic level. And your child
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 4: is relying on you to hold the reality principle so
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 4: that you can take their play in a calm, interested way.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: And let them play.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: And let them play.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 4: If you go into a panic about something that your
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 4: child is fantastically exploring, that is going to hurt your child.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: as well as put you into all kinds of braxums
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 4: of horror.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: I think it might be time for us to switch
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: to a dream.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 4: I think so.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: This is a 50-year-old woman who is a tribunal member
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: and adjudicator, and the title of the dream is Meeting
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: Jung Himself. I am in Switzerland with M, my close
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: friend and lawyer. First, I'm in a jewelry shop which
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: sells very beautiful and delicate Swiss gold jewelry. I like
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: the jewelry, but I say to myself that once I
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: get my money, I will buy myself a piece. Just
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: like I bought a beautiful ring which was enameled with
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: a painting of a row of houses by an Austrian
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: artist many years ago. That happened last time I traveled
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: to Austria or Switzerland. Emma and I go to Emma
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: Young's home. Emma invites us to stay for the night.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: M says that she is comfortable driving in the dark
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: so we can leave after dinner. I don't offer any views.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 3: Then we begin making dinner. The dinner is served at
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: Jung's house. Jung's house is the 8th largest house in
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 3: the world. The dinner table is set with candles and
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: decorations that resemble a lavish Thanksgiving table. Jung is sitting
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: at the head of this very long table. The house
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: of Jung is behind him and through the glass. It
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 3: looks like an old terracotta colony or a beehive. It
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: looks ancient and has multiple levels. The house is right
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: behind Jung. The table is in a room that is
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: surrounded by glass and there are many people sitting around
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: this long table. Once dinner is ready and the table
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: is set, M and I start serving the meat. The
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 3: meat is beef and set in the center of the
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: table in two columns. The columns of meat are unusually
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 3: tall and have a square circumference. M and I start
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: carving the meat, but we shred a corner of it
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: instead of cutting it. Jung tells us in a stern
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: manner that meat is being ruined if it is shredded.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: It must be sliced instead. We serve the dinner, and
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: after the dinner, we go for a walk around this
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: glass dining room. Jung's library is outside this room, too.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: His library is the third largest library in the world
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: and I have donated a number of books to this library.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: After dinner, Emma tells us to stay and sleep there.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 3: We agree this time and sleep at Emma Young's room
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: for the night. For context, she notes the following. I
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: had this dream the night I came back from a
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: Zen mountain hiking retreat in Scotland. On the plane, I
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: listened to one of the recent This Jungian Life podcasts
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: on parental complexes. In recent months and years, I've been
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: working a lot on intergenerational complexes and trauma. The episode
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: was very topical for me, and at the end, it
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: had some reference to Jung's relationship with Emma's friend. I
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 3: experienced betrayal when I was married years ago. I feel
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 3: a bit stuck with the dynamics of my office and
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: my workplace. I feel work has gone stale and don't
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 3: appreciate the toxicity in the office. At the retreat, I
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 3: had some insights about potentially changing my job or saying
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: no to certain assignments. Em is very unhappy in her
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 3: job but is afraid of change. Recently, I collaborated in
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: publishing a book on fairy tales. She said, for the
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: feelings in the dream, when I woke up, I was
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: super happy that I finally have met Jung and had
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: my first dream about the man himself. This is my
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 3: first dream after 10 years of analysis that Jung himself appeared.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 3: I've never had a dream about Jung, actually.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 4: Neither have I.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: Here's some final associations. I've been listening to your podcasts
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: since they began. You have interpreted some of my pivotal
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: and most important dreams, which referenced life-changing events. I feel
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: this is also an important dream. I've been in analysis
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 3: for 10 years and four years of Zen practice. I've
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: been working on my relationship with money, work, vocation, and
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: parental complexes recently. So we have at the outset of
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: the dream, she is with her friend M. So we might,
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: you know, wonder whether M is a shadow figure. What
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: we know about M from the associations is that M
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: is very unhappy in her job, but is afraid of change.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: And so that seems to be, you know, sometimes I
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: think if you have a shadow figure in a dream,
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: a same-sex figure, it can be interesting to say, in
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: what ways am I different from that person? And how
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: am I like that person? And here we have this
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 3: similarity that there's an unhappiness with work and maybe a
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: hesitance to make a change.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: What I go to next, I'm just going, because this
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: is a complicated dream, of this particular piece of jewelry
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: that has to wait to be purchased when she gets
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: her money. So some resource. We might think about a
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: psychic resource. And then they go to Emma Young's home.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: So we start with Emma. And M says she's comfortable
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: driving in the dark so we can leave after dinner.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: So it has something to do with what's the dark
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: here in this shadow figure. And we know from the
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: commentary that both are, you know, in a place where
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: they're not especially happy in their lives or work. And
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: then we begin making dinner. In Jung's house, which is
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: the eighth largest house in the world, it looks like
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: an old terracotta colony or a beehive.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: And we're sort of like in Jung's house and also
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: right outside of it at the same time. It's a
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: little confusing.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: It looks ancient and has multiple levels. So I'm thinking about, wow,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: that is such a great image of a house. that
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: is ancient and looks like a beehive, which is, of course,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: a really archetypal symbol. Bees and beehives exist all over
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: the place. They've been symbols of bees, have been images
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: for kings, etc. And all the activity, the magic that
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: happens in a beehive, where the bees go in and
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: honey is made and we never really get to see, um,
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: the inner life of this transformative process.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: So it's some kind of like the house is sort
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 3: of some kind of mound almost. It's, and it's this
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 3: very kind of ancient, almost kind of primitive structure, right?
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: So referencing something very old. So what do, what do
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 3: we make of, um, It's interesting that there's Emma's house
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 3: and then there's Carl's house, and they're almost two different things.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 3: And there's this big, long dinner table and these columns
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 3: of meat. It's interesting because Jung is very stern in it.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: You know, a lot of times when I have heard
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: people dream of Jung, he's a very kind of comforting figure.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 3: But here he's like, you're doing it wrong. You're ruining
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: the meat because you're shredding it instead of slicing it.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 3: So that's an interesting distinction between slicing something and shredding it.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: And one of the associations with slicing something is like
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 3: the way the thinking function works. So if the thinking
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 3: function is nice and sharp, like a good knife, it
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 3: can slice right through something. And of course, slicing is differentiating.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 3: You're sort of saying this is this and this is that.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: So there's a kind of clarity to it. If you're
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: shredding something, you're pulling it apart in a way that
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 3: doesn't have that clear distinction, I suppose.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the alchemical process of separatio. And maybe a
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: kind of decisiveness. The sharpness of the blade and the
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: clean cut versus something messier and... and maybe more ambivalent.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: I'm going to kind of cut the meat, but I'm
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: not so sure about this. And of course, they're in columns,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: making the process more challenging.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 3: So it seems like the inner Jung is inviting the
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 3: dreamer to be more decisive, right? Is that a possible
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 3: way to think about it?
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 4: There's something confusing about the dream that I'm just moving through.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 4: I'm looking for some underlying pattern that I think is
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 4: moving through this that I'm not quite seeing yet. So
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 4: it's making me just keep staring at it and going
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 4: over it again and again. Yeah. The close friend who
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 4: is a lawyer, so it just using the keys that
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 4: we do use, like, okay, that's probably a shadow figure.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 4: So what does it imply that a legalistic companion is
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 4: going through this process with her? One thing I'm just
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 4: muddling around with, I'm curious when she says to herself
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 4: that once I get my money, get my money, That's
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 4: a phrase I would explore with her. Where are you
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 4: going to get money from? What is something pending that
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 4: the dream ego knows about but we're not privy to
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 4: because it's the conditional event? When that happens, then this
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 4: will happen. So there's a little pivot point that's being
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 4: put into that moment that I'm just curious about.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: Well, and it's also delicate Swiss gold jewelry. So we
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: think of gold as something really of supreme value. So
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking about sort of Swiss gold. And, you know,
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think when we're looking at dreams and
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 3: especially a dream with Jung in it, I haven't had
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 3: a dream of Jung, but I have had dreams that
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 3: took place in Switzerland. And many times when that happens,
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: sort of like, oh, is this something about Jungian psychology?
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 3: You know, so there's some gold there that she's not
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: really ready to fully claim for herself yet, but she
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: spied it out. She knows what she wants. She doesn't
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 3: have the inner resources yet to take it.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 4: And there's some positive association having taken something from Austria
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 4: or Switzerland before. Like you said, there's some gold in
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 4: this dream, some gold in perhaps the story of Jung
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 4: or the story of Emma, for that matter, who is
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 4: being written more about coming forward in the story of
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 4: Jung's contributions.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: One of the things I thought was interesting was Emma
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 3: features prominently. And she says later, just kind of in
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 3: an offhand way in the context, I was betrayed in
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 3: my marriage. And I, you know, cause that that's part
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 3: of what comes up for me around Emma is she
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 3: was this kind of long suffering wife who stood by
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: her husband, supported him even while he was engaged in
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 3: an affair. So there was a bit, there was a
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 3: significant betrayal there.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking about the difference between, uh, the dream egos
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: relationship with Emma and her friend M, uh, that Emma
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: invites us to stay for the night. Um, and at
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: first I say, no, no, no, we'll, we'll take off
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: after dinner, uh, in effect. And then again, um, Emma
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: invites them to stay and sleep there, and they agree.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: And the contrast between this inclusiveness and the image of
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: the beehive and Jung at the head of a very
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: long table with these columns of meat... So we have
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: some images of long and length and rectangularity as contrasted
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: with being invited in by Emma and being invited to
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: sleep there. And the separateness, I'm not altogether clear on
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 2: how this works, but the separateness of the spaces.
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's confusing.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: And this table's in a room surrounded by glass. So
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: what's glass? Well, obviously it's transparent and you can see
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: through it, but it is also a real barrier. And
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: glass lets us, if I think about seeing and thinking,
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: that's what it calls up for me. But we can't
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: touch what is behind the glass. We can't smell it.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: We can't reach out to it. There's an invisible barrier.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 2: So I'm kind of wondering about that and where might
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: that be in the dreamer's life. I also, and I'm
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: going right back to the end of the dream, the
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: library where our dream ego has made some deposits, some donations.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: some contributions. And then Emma tells them to stay. And
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: they agree. I think there's a really interesting and overall
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: positive resolution.
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 3: To this dream. Yeah, it's a real license, right? It's
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 3: a real resolution. Emma invites us to stay. And I
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 3: think you're right, Deb. There's something important about that library
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 3: and the fact that the dreamer has made deposits in it,
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 3: that the the dreamer, there's this kind of repository of
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 3: knowledge and some of it has been contributed to by
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 3: the dreamer. So it makes me think back a little
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 3: bit to the Swiss gold, you know, is the library
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 3: also kind of, you know, a different kind of gold
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 3: and that she's contributed a part. So she's been laying
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: aside some resources into this library and now she can
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: be kind of uh welcomed in by emma it's interesting
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 3: to be you know emma precedes and and succeeds the
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 3: the image of carl you know so it's first they
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 3: have contact with emma and then they find cg and
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: then it's emma again so somehow it's almost like there's
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 3: some kind of maybe feminine principle that's mediating the relationship
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: with this anima anima excuse me this animus figure par
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 3: excellence of you know, Jung, this real image of Animus
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 3: as kind of the wise old man, perhaps, you know,
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 3: but who's chastising her a little bit. You need to
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 3: do something different. But meanwhile, there continues to be this
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 3: mediating factor, I think, of Emma, although it's a little unclear.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 3: It's a little unclear from the, you know, because she's
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 3: very excited to have met Jung and And yet Jung
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 3: was chastising her. So I find that a little confusing too.
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: Or he is directing her in that sort of patriarchal
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: way that a patriarch can say, no, you know, don't
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: sit there, sit here. Or don't do it like that,
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: do it like this. He's just directive. You're going to
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: ruin it if you are not decisive and sharp and
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: don't just slice through something instead of, you know, sort
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 2: of shredding it, which for me just calls up this
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: image of a little timidity about, oh my God, do
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: I dare to really just, you know, bring the knife down?
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 2: And that process of recommending, it's an alchemical process, the
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: process of separatio and swords and all kinds of things
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: come into that of just Sometimes you cut through something,
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: you know, like the famous apocryphal story of Alexander the Great,
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: who comes to a city of Gord or whatever the
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: name of it was. And it's roped off by this
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: very intricate knot. And he's told, well, until you can
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: take this knot apart, you cannot enter the city. And
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: it's unbelievably intricate and impossible. So Alexander the Great takes
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: out his sword and cuts the knot, cut the Gordian knot.
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 3: That's a good association, I think.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: So I don't interpret, I mean, the dream ego says,
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: Jung tells them in a stern manner. But we might say, okay,
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: that's a perception, a felt stern, no question. But maybe
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: it was just directive.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: You know, I wonder if I had to kind of
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 3: gently offer a possible interpretation of this dream. It might
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 3: be saying something about her timidity and her lack of decisiveness,
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 3: perhaps around her job and whether or not it's time
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 3: to perhaps consider a different kind of work or a
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 3: different job. And, you know, again, I think there's the
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 3: promise of the gold jewelry and there's the promise maybe
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 3: of the wisdom that's available in this library. But she
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 3: both is being invited, I think, to be a little
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 3: bit more decisive. But there's also this.
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 3: This kind of feminine relatedness around it that's offering kind
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 3: of acceptance, you know, in this figure of Emma. Maybe
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 3: it's like, well, stay here after dinner. Stay here. Don't
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 3: drive tonight. Stay here and digest. You know, maybe it's
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 3: okay to take a little time or something like that.
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 3: And sleep on it.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: And sleep on it.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: So partly for me, this dream calls up how difficult
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 2: and lacking and nice, pardon the phrase, clear cut, decisive
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: meaning there can be in a dream. And that this
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: is part of the process. As we approach a dream,
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: we look into it as best we can and bring
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 2: into it what we can. And set it aside and
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: then go back to it. See what else you dream.
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: What did you dream before this? What else is going on?
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: So that there's an ongoing process in working with any
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: single dream. sometimes there's a real, ah, that's it, I
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: got it. That's the core of it for me, that
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: aha moment. And sometimes dreams call us back. Come back
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: to me. Look at me again.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 4: For me, and again, I feel like there's maybe something's
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 4: missing from the dream. Maybe there's more content that just
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 4: didn't get recalled. It seems like based on what she
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 4: has said and has been inferred before, is that she's
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 4: highly identified with Emma, and that when she is in
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 4: the proximity of her idea of Emma, then she behaves
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 4: like Emma. She offers no views, she makes dinner, she
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 4: serves and carves meat, she goes for a walk, and
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 4: she goes to sleep. That there is something about that
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 4: and the fact that the dream ends with her losing consciousness.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 4: So I think sometimes, and we see this all the time,
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 4: that if we've been reading Jung for a long time,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 4: we have a lot of fantasy material about him, his life,
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 4: his family, and we can become overly identified with the
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 4: historic narrative, which is really quite secondary to the concepts
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 4: and the utilities of analytical psychology. So there's Jung and
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 4: his family, and then there's the books that she has
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 4: donated to his library. And so the books, I think,
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 4: represents one way that she had been relating to analytical
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 4: psychology is through ideas and perhaps the utility of ideas.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 4: But now, she seems to be very heavily identifying with
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 4: Emma Jung. And I'm not clear what the utility in
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 4: that is, but I could say that the utility of
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 4: the dream is that you're heavily identified with Emma Young.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 4: I wonder why. I wonder perhaps how that is interesting
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 4: to you. In one way, it could be a somewhat
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 4: fantasy way of feeling closer to Young, because she then is,
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 4: by extension, kind of the spouse of Young. I'll bet
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 4: beleaguered and long-suffering. So that may be some way of
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 4: coming into relationship. But I challenge her heavy identification with
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 4: Emma if for no other reason than it leads to sleep.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 4: And it would just be a conversation that I would
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 4: have very speculatively.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting, Joseph. Thanks for listening. To submit a dream,
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 3: suggest an episode topic, or join our mailing list, visit
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 3: our website, thisunionlife.com. If you enjoyed this episode, give us
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 3: five stars and a good review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 3: or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to our YouTube
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 3: channel and make sure to click the notification bell to
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 3: be alerted whenever we upload videos. And keep up with
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 3: all things TJL by following us on Instagram, Facebook, X,
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 3: and TikTok.