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WAS JUNG ANTISEMETIC? · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
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  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
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  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Today we are so excited to have with us Ronnie Landau.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Ronnie is a Jungian psychoanalyst with a private practice here
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  Speaker 2: in Philadelphia. She trained with the Interregional Society of Jungian Analysts,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: where she also served on the executive committee. She's a
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: senior training analyst and supervisor. She's the current president of
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  Speaker 2: the Council of North American Societies of Jungian Analysts. And
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: she's a former president of the Philadelphia Association of Jungian
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Analysts and a training director there. And she is the
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  Speaker 2: author of Dreaming for the World, a Jungian study of
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: dreams during the COVID-19 pandemic that was published in the
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Journal of Analytical Psychology. We know Rani better as our
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: teacher and colleague and friend, And personally, I have to say,
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  Speaker 2: I don't think I would have passed the Propodoidicum exams
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  Speaker 2: without Ronnie. So much, much gratitude, Ronnie. And thank you
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: so much for joining us to talk about a very
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  Speaker 2: important subject that we've, it's been on our list for
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  Speaker 2: a long time to discuss this. And I knew that
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  Speaker 2: you were the one that we needed to discuss it with.
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  Speaker 2: And that is this thorny question. of Jung and anti-Semitism.
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  Speaker 2: So it's kind of whispered through the halls that, oh, Jung,
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  Speaker 2: wasn't he an anti-Semite? And there is some history to
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: be reckoned with, I think. And so we thought we
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  Speaker 2: would pull it out and reckon with it.
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  Speaker 5: Well, thank you, Lisa and Joseph and Deb, for inviting me.
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  Speaker 5: Thorny is the word for sure. I would also add
• 2:27
  Speaker 5: it's a very mercurial topic. There's a lot of history
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  Speaker 5: here that could take us, you know, many days, many
• 2:36
  Speaker 5: months to try to sort through. Before we actually maybe
• 2:40
  Speaker 5: get more into the meat of it, it feels very
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  Speaker 5: important to me to recommend a seminal piece of work
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  Speaker 5: that was written by another wonderful Paja and mentor of mine,
• 2:56
  Speaker 5: Steve Martin. He was actually the editor with Aria Maidenbaum.
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  Speaker 5: And the name of the book, which is sitting on
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  Speaker 5: my lap because it is so vital, I think, to
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  Speaker 5: this conversation, is called Lingering Shadows, Jungians, Freudians, and Anti-Semitism.
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  Speaker 5: And just to give you a little background on this,
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  Speaker 5: this book, which encompasses some really, I think, quite brilliant
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  Speaker 5: and varied articles on this subject matter, by not all
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: Jungian analysts, but primarily Jungian analysts, was the follow-up of
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  Speaker 5: a workshop that took place in France in, I think
• 3:42
  Speaker 5: it was 1989, at the IAAP, their 11th Congress. They
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: had a workshop there on this very subject, Jung and antisemitism.
• 3:54
  Speaker 5: It was out of this particular Congress and workshop that
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  Speaker 5: this book eventually emerged is my understanding. And then they
• 4:04
  Speaker 5: went on and held a wonderful conference in New York
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  Speaker 5: City by the C.G. Jung Foundation. And it was, my
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  Speaker 5: understanding was that it was extremely well attended. And to
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  Speaker 5: your point, Lisa, I just happened to bravely mentioned to
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  Speaker 5: a couple of colleagues that you had invited me to
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  Speaker 5: come in and talk on this subject, two responses that
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  Speaker 5: I immediately got from two of my colleagues. One of
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  Speaker 5: them said to me, you know, I actually attended that
• 4:40
  Speaker 5: conference at the C.G. Jung Foundation. And that was the
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: turning point that allowed me to actually go into training
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  Speaker 5: as a Jungian analyst. After listening to the variety of
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  Speaker 5: the struggling with and reckoning with this particular subject matter.
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  Speaker 5: And my other colleague said a kind of a similar thing,
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  Speaker 5: that it was actually for him, his first foray, because
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: he's a New Yorker, it was his first foray into Jung,
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  Speaker 5: if you can imagine that too, of really trying to
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  Speaker 5: grapple with whether or not he too was going to train.
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  Speaker 5: From a more personal notation, when I got interested in
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  Speaker 5: Jung and was considering training I was hearing some murmurings,
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  Speaker 5: particularly from some of my Freudian, at that time, Freudian colleagues.
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  Speaker 5: I was a therapist here in Philadelphia and some others
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  Speaker 5: who had great concern that what I was moving into
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  Speaker 5: was the psychoanalytic study with a very brilliant man, but
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  Speaker 5: who was himself anti-Semitic. So this has been a tension
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  Speaker 5: sort of very from the very start. I was ignorant
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  Speaker 5: of that. I had not known that. So it was
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  Speaker 5: initially a little startling, but obviously it did not stop
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  Speaker 5: me from my initial deep motivations to really want to
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: study Jung. A kind of supplementary interest that I've had
• 6:13
  Speaker 5: that I think you all kind of know about has
• 6:17
  Speaker 5: had has been a deep interest in the Holocaust. And
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  Speaker 5: I've done a lot of lecturing on that. And I
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  Speaker 5: had a, I was pretty much on fire about that.
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  Speaker 5: I guess you could say psychologically really trying to reckon
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  Speaker 5: with it and making use of our Jungian theory to
• 6:34
  Speaker 5: kind of try to understand what happened. So the subject
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  Speaker 5: of Jungian antisemitism has been sort of alive in the foreground,
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  Speaker 5: mid ground and background since I've been, I've been practicing
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  Speaker 5: for over 20 years. So it still is a subject
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  Speaker 5: that is profoundly important and profoundly difficult, I would say,
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  Speaker 5: and certainly timely.
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  Speaker 4: Exactly. It's still alive in the world. Yeah. Yeah.
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  Speaker 5: In an effort to prepare a little bit, so I
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  Speaker 5: could speak to some of the more historical aspects of this,
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  Speaker 5: of which I hope you can all chime in with me.
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  Speaker 5: I opened up Lingering Shadows and Steve Martin, our colleague,
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  Speaker 5: and also one of the forefathers who started Paja, in
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  Speaker 5: his introduction, I just want to take a minute to
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  Speaker 5: read what he wrote about history and how we might
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  Speaker 5: hold history as we're thinking about this.
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  Speaker 3: Dr.
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  Speaker 5: Is really an active and ongoing process of distillation. Personalities
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  Speaker 5: and social and political conditions that can never be completely
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  Speaker 5: accounted for or fixed. We who are in the helping
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  Speaker 5: professions and who deal with the histories of our patients
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  Speaker 5: know the truth of this observation. Just this idea of
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  Speaker 5: the relativization of history. We can get facts. We can
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  Speaker 5: collect information. We have reports. There's scholarly information about all
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  Speaker 5: of this. But I think we still need to hold
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  Speaker 5: this in a kind of gentle and not overly rational way.
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  Speaker 5: And of course, as analysts, this is a tendency that
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  Speaker 5: we tend to do anyway, because this is part of
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  Speaker 5: the practice of what we do when we hear our
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  Speaker 5: patients' histories. So it is in the spirit of this
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  Speaker 5: that I'm hoping that we can just talk about what's happened,
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  Speaker 5: kind of knowing that we don't really know. We know
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  Speaker 5: some things and many things we do not know.
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  Speaker 2: Well, let's start, Ronnie, just because some people may be thinking, well,
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: what the heck are they even talking about? So it's
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: long been rumored that Jung was an anti-Semite. And let's
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: just talk about what the basis is for those accusations.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, I boned up a little bit before this
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: episode reading Jung's really terrific biography by Deirdre Bair. And
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: by the way, as always, I'll be putting all the
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: books that we're referring to in a book list that
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: will be included in the show notes. I think one
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  Speaker 2: of the main issues, and maybe you guys can chime
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  Speaker 2: in with other things as well, but Jung was involved
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  Speaker 2: in a kind of eclectic analytical society that was based in,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: I believe, Berlin. And this would have been in the 1920s.
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  Speaker 2: And Baer kind of refers to it as the International Society.
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  Speaker 2: I don't think that's its full name, but that's what
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  Speaker 2: I'm going to call it. And as the Nazis took
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: power and they started to Nazify organizations and remove Jews
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: from positions of authority and that kind of thing, Jung
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  Speaker 2: had been the vice president. And instead of stepping back
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: or stepping down, he agreed to serve as president. And
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  Speaker 2: this meant that that he was basically used by the
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  Speaker 2: Nazis as kind of a propaganda tool, that they had
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  Speaker 2: this eminent psychiatrist from neutral Switzerland who was heading up
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  Speaker 2: this society and seeming to sort of validate what they
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: were doing in terms of removing Jews. Jung was very clear.
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  Speaker 2: He spoke about it to many people, and the The
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  Speaker 2: evidence is actually there that his motivation for staying in
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  Speaker 2: power or assuming the presidency was to see if he
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  Speaker 2: could help the Jewish members. And he actually did quite
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: a bit to do that. And I can go into
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  Speaker 2: chapter and verse. But at a minimum, it was sort
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  Speaker 2: of a naive, tone-deaf thing to do because he did
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  Speaker 2: help the Jewish members, certainly. And it is also true
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  Speaker 2: that the Nazis used him for propaganda. Ronnie, you sort
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  Speaker 2: of offered this word mercurial. It's, it's hard to come
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  Speaker 2: down really clearly on one side or the other. It
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  Speaker 2: seems to me that, uh, this was an extraordinarily difficult
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  Speaker 2: moment in history. And, uh, you know, in hindsight, it's
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  Speaker 2: sometimes easier to say, well, he should have done this
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  Speaker 2: or he should have done that. But, um, He, I think,
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  Speaker 2: was probably earnestly trying to thread this needle the best
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  Speaker 2: way he could. Whether or not it was the right
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  Speaker 2: decision in the end is maybe open to discussion.
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  Speaker 4: What we would call today the optics did not work
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  Speaker 4: in his favor.
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  Speaker 5: No. So, you know, on that point, my understanding is
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  Speaker 5: that the Jewish members were it was as if they
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  Speaker 5: had a kind of ad hoc membership. They did not
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  Speaker 5: have a full membership. And those were the Jewish analysts
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  Speaker 5: that actually did not leave Germany. Many of them fled,
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  Speaker 5: many of them left. And so my impression is, I
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  Speaker 5: believe that's what I read, is that they did not
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  Speaker 5: have a full membership, but at least they were included.
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  Speaker 5: Those that were left, those that had not fled, were
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  Speaker 5: included in this. As Jungians, we certainly like to talk
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  Speaker 5: about this thing called shadow because this is something that
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  Speaker 5: Jung really holds our feet to the fire about really
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  Speaker 5: knowing about. Knowing about these parts of ourselves that we'd
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  Speaker 5: rather cast off, send into exile or don't know about,
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  Speaker 5: send into the unconscious. We either never know about it
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  Speaker 5: or it gets repressed as we understand shadow through a
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  Speaker 5: Jungian lens. Andrew Samuel said something very interesting, though. He
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  Speaker 5: wondered about this, his acceptance of this, Jung's acceptance of this,
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  Speaker 5: and to what extent part of his own Jung's shadow
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  Speaker 5: involved in this was his own desire to be the head,
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  Speaker 5: to be the leader, to be the spokesperson for this group.
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  Speaker 5: And so his motivations were like our motivations for many things,
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  Speaker 5: was probably multifaceted. So I thought it was interesting that
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  Speaker 5: Samuels brought that up. And what might we say about that? Well,
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  Speaker 5: it's a power shadow, right? That, you know, this was
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  Speaker 5: a very highly influential position that he was now asked
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  Speaker 5: to fill.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, in Germany, which was, you know, the sort of
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  Speaker 2: the center of scientific prestige at the time. And so,
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  Speaker 2: I mean, as a Philadelphian, you know, I think like
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  Speaker 2: being Swiss then, you know, you sort of feel like, oh,
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  Speaker 2: we're Swiss, but there's Germany and being a Philadelphian, like
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  Speaker 2: that's how we feel about New York, right, Ronnie? We
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: have an inferiority complex.
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  Speaker 5: I do think that point, though, that he had not
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  Speaker 5: only every intention, but did actually try to make sure
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  Speaker 5: that Jewish analysts were not excluded is a very important point.
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  Speaker 5: to what actually happened, rather than seeing him really trying
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  Speaker 5: to kind of cozy up to the Nazis and kind
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  Speaker 5: of be a kind of spokesperson for the Nazi party.
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  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 2: So I want to just dip into that for a
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: second with just a little more chapter and verse, if
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: that's okay. And I'm calling on the work of Deirdre
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: Baer here for a second. First, this has to do
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: with this conference ad Bad Neuheim. I'm probably mispronouncing that,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: but in any case. So there was this question about
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: whether or not Jung was going to go or if
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: he was going to kind of boycott it. It says
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  Speaker 2: Jung did go to Bad Neuheim and his presence did
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  Speaker 2: provide a propaganda coup for Goering, more on that later,
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  Speaker 2: He knew it would, but he went because the Congress
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  Speaker 2: offered a possibility to protect the membership of German Jewish analysts.
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  Speaker 2: And then Baer goes into a very long and entertaining
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: story about Jung's relationship with a lawyer named Rosenbaum, whom
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: he had analyzed. He goes to Rosenbaum and he's very,
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: very insistent. that he needs Rosenbaum to look over these
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  Speaker 2: documents that Jung had gotten hold of that were basically
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: documents that were going to require the expulsion of the
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: Jews from the society. And what he wanted Rosenbaum to
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: do was to kind of tinker with it, to kind
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: of scuttle that intention and to kind of provide a loophole.
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  Speaker 2: Rosenbaum said, you know, you can't do this. You're not
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: going to win. And Jung said, this is what I
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: need to do. And Rosenbaum later said, now, I was
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: very young then, and the age difference between us was
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: rather great. And the relationship of respect was, of course,
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: that of the patient toward his analyst. But all of
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: that left me when I heard what he wanted to do.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: And so I answered him as his lawyer and kind
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: of said, you know, Harry Jung, this isn't going to work.
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  Speaker 2: And Jung got very, very, and by the way, said, Jung,
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: you're being naive. You think you can hoodwink the Nazis?
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: That's not going to work. But Jung was absolutely insistent.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: And so Rosenbaum did it and did create a way
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: for the German Jewish analysts to retain their membership through
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: this kind of loophole. And then Rosenbaum created clauses to
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: fool the authors of these statutes in such a way
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: that they would not notice it. And for years, those
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Rosenbaum statutes that were created kind of helped pave the
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: way for Jewish analysts to retain membership in the various
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: societies as things progressed. So it wasn't a kind of empty,
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: helpful impulse that Jung had. He had a plan. It
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: was a little crazy. It was maybe naive. It did
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: actually work for whatever good it ended up doing. But
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: he was committed to doing it. And there's other clear evidence,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: for example, that he signed a lot of, they were
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: called attests for Jews who were emigrating. He would sign
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: a piece of paper allowing them to come to Switzerland,
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: promising to pay their expenses if they couldn't. if they
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: couldn't support themselves, he pulled a lot of strings to
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: help people get resettled in the States or in the UK.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: So it wasn't, he may have had that power shadow too,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: and he was trying to do something behind the scenes. Again,
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: whether or not that was just a kind of futile thing,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: was it worth giving that public relations coup to the Nazis?
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: That's a question to be entertained.
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: I'm thinking back at this point to the context of
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: Jung and Freud and all of that earlier relation and
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: that Jung was the son of a Protestant pastor. And
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: so the bigger context in Jung's history with Freud, the
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: psychoanalytic movement, And the context, the cultural context of Europe,
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: especially sort of Christian Europe and Jung as a Swiss,
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: a German Swiss, versus what the cultural context was for Jews,
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: that there's a wider framework here within which Jung's actions
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: are set. Yeah.
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: I think that's such an important point, Deb. The complexity
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: of the Freud-Jung relationship that these two men had. Yeah.
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: And the trauma that they both suffered at their severing
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: of their relationship, the extent to which they never spoke again.
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: So. after 1912, I think it is.
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: How close they became very quickly. And then, of course,
• 19:57
  Speaker 5: we're all familiar with the level of projections that went on.
• 20:02
  Speaker 5: Freud towards Jung as being his son and being like
• 20:06
  Speaker 5: his father and the great mentor of And the new prince,
• 20:10
  Speaker 5: the crown prince, the new prince that Jung was going
• 20:12
  Speaker 5: to be for Freud to carry on his work. And
• 20:15
  Speaker 5: certainly for Jung, kind of finding a father figure in
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: Freud that he did not have with his own father.
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: And so all of the complexities of their psychological relationship
• 20:27
  Speaker 5: and the projections that went back and forth was coupled
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: with all of the really brilliant interest and development of
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: psychoanalysis until the great difference and differences began to emerge.
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: Many scholars have certainly written about the combination of both
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: those very intense factors, the levels of projection, as well
• 20:55
  Speaker 5: as Jung's need to individuate his own psychology, his own
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: theories from Freud's. The degree to which those two men
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: severed their relationship and never spoke again, I think says
• 21:09
  Speaker 5: something to us about the intensity of those projections that
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: went on to each other such that they were never
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: able to really commune again. I just want to also
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: bring in the combination of the personal relationship between Freud
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: and Jung and whatever contributions that has had to this
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: notion of Jung being anti-Semitic. From what I recently read,
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: there are reports that shortly after their break, Freud actually
• 21:43
  Speaker 5: made some rather accusatory remarks towards Jung of him being anti-Semitic.
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: And part of what made that, again, very confusing is
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: that some of Jung's writing at that time when he
• 22:04
  Speaker 5: talked about sort of the Jewish psychology and some of
• 22:11
  Speaker 5: words that he used to describe it, certainly to most
• 22:16
  Speaker 5: of us would sound anti-Semitic. So there's a kind of
• 22:23
  Speaker 5: very delicate, confusing, complex dynamic that went on there. that
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: is likely a combination of their own personal psychologies and
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: whatever was getting projected with some of Jung's ideas about
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: Jewish people, the Jewish psychology, of which he went on
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: to write about prior to World War II and then
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: during World War II. And these have become very problematic
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: writings for many of us, read these writings and hear
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: in them what sounds like more of an anti-Semitic kind
• 23:09
  Speaker 5: of attitude. That does not, in my mind, mean that
• 23:14
  Speaker 5: he was anti-Semitic, but that he was writing things at
• 23:20
  Speaker 5: a time, at a really vulnerable time, when these things
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: could easily be interpreted as such. Now, There are Jungian
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: analysts that will highly disagree with what I'm saying. They
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: will say, oh, yes, this was an example of Jung's anti-Semitism.
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: So I think what we want to try to do
• 23:41
  Speaker 5: here is hold the tension. And I think that's often
• 23:44
  Speaker 5: very difficult to kind of suspend the tendency to want
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: to judge. While at the same time, I think Anne
• 23:55
  Speaker 5: Yulinoff writes about this in her essay, you know, we
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: We want to either defend him fiercely and say, no,
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: he was not. Or we want to cast allegations that,
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: in fact, of course, he was. How do we work with,
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: you know, these complicated uncertainties, you know, that we do
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: in our work?
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: What I'm thinking about is Jung's interest in the cultural context.
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: and religious and mythological contexts of nations and cultures. And
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: that he felt that our cultural context influenced us, which
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: of course it does. And that that's a tough mix
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: to say there is a difference culturally between this nation
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: and that nation, this religious tradition and that religious tradition.
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: They're not exactly the same. And yet then it predisposes
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: people to be accused of some kind of prejudice or
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: lack of understanding. And Jung was very interested in cultural
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: differences and how they can influence us.
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: He was intended to use language, I think, however, that
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: became a bit problematic around nationalism and nations and races.
• 25:26
  Speaker 5: I mean, he used this kind of verbiage that I
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: think now as we hear it, and of course, we
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: are also aware he was a man of his time
• 25:35
  Speaker 5: and the language that was used at that time is
• 25:37
  Speaker 5: not the language we would use now. However, he did
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: tend to have a a tendency to look that way
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: in terms of the psychology of nations and races. And
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: that has been a part of how some of his
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: writing and some of his theories have been elucidated. And
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: I think that many of us would have a revision,
• 26:04
  Speaker 5: have some sort of revision of some of this now.
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: And look, whoever the theorist is, it's not as if
• 26:12
  Speaker 5: any of us imagine that what we want to do
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: or need to do is swallow all of it whole
• 26:18
  Speaker 5: or accept all of it. I mean, I think we
• 26:21
  Speaker 5: are all continuing to edit, revise, revision. You know, there's
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: the whole post-Jungian perspective on things. So there's all of
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: the capacity to, I think, learn from this rather than
• 26:37
  Speaker 5: pass judgment on it and to be open to learn
• 26:42
  Speaker 5: from Jung's what he was a bit blinded to. So
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: I think one of the things that as a Jew
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: and what I've read that I think was a, frankly,
• 26:53
  Speaker 5: I'm going to say it in this way, that I
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: think was a blinding of Jung's was his fascination with
• 27:02
  Speaker 5: Wotan or Wotan as the archetypal underpinnings of what was
• 27:08
  Speaker 5: happening in Germany and the rise of that God And
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: he kind of glorified that. He saw it as messianic,
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: I think. The great savior, the great sort of shamanistic
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: Wotan that was going to come in and create a rebirth,
• 27:24
  Speaker 5: a renewal in Germany. And he held on to that
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: for quite a long time and was infatuated with that
• 27:36
  Speaker 5: realm of that archetypal energy. and I think was not conscious. Therefore,
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: he was not as conscious as perhaps he could have
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: been to the very destructive aspects of Hitler and Nazi Germany.
• 27:59
  Speaker 5: I'm sure there's a much more articulate way to express this,
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: but I think we know this. He was very, very
• 28:05
  Speaker 5: captivated by this, possessed, we might say, kind of in
• 28:10
  Speaker 5: our language.
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: It was unfortunate timing, you know, that he was enraptured
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: by these archetypal concepts at the time that Nazism was rising.
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: It created, as you said earlier, kind of a perfect
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: storm and then got conflated with Jung as an anti-Semite.
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: And I think there was also a lot of animosity
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: between the Freudian circle and Jung. They actively attacked him
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: and tried to destroy his reputation. It was very personal
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: warfare from those that were adherents of Freud's. Freud was
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: the conquistador, as he called himself. And there was going
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: to be the psychoanalytic movement, which was Freud and his followers.
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: And that included personal attacks on Jung.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: You know, I just want to say, Ronnie, about his
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: being infatuated with Photon. And maybe I need to go
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: back and sort of check the literature a little bit
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: more closely. But in 1918, in his essay, The Role
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: of the Unconscious, he was writing about Germany being a
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: blonde beast prowling about in its underground prison. ready at
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: any moment to burst out with devastation. consequences. And he
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: referred to the German character as barbaric. It was even
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: very prescient because he noted that someone with a Jewish
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: background awakens in the Germanic psyche, not those wistful and
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: whimsical residues from the time of David, but the barbarian
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: of yesterday. a being for whom matters suddenly become serious
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: in a most unpleasant way. So, you know, I think
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: he wrote some things that just kind of make me
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: cringe about Jews, but he, you know, he did the
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: same thing to, he subjected the Germanic psyche to the
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: same kind of treatment, and it was not particularly flattering.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: And I mean, I think what we're all walking around is,
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: is this kind of, I mean, I want to call
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: it really almost kind of like pseudoscientific claims about national character,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: which I think we all kind of know what he's
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: referring to. Like Deb said a minute ago, like, of
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: course our culture influences us, but man, you're on really
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: thin ice really fast and it starts to sound reductive
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: and bigoted. And, you know, it doesn't even matter who
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: you're talking about, you know? it sort of sounds like,
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: wait a minute, now you're really just trading in stupid stereotypes.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: He was pretty enamored of that way of looking at it,
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: and it's related to his theory of the collective unconscious,
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: because he thought that there was a kind of human
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: universal aspect, but he also thought that there was a
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: kind of national consciousness as well, and he always adhered
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: to that, and it is the kind of thing that
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: I know always makes me uncomfortable.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: Well, it seems to me that one of the ways
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: that we can hold all of this is to understand
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: Jung as a phenomenologist, that when he was at his best,
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: he was able to observe or attempt to observe himself
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: and others and the events around him as phenomena that
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: rises out of a deeper and more mysterious wellspring. He,
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: over the evolution of his work, depersonalized psychic phenomena. He
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: became less and less interested in blaming the individual ego
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: for its actions or inactions or even its fantasies, but
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: tried to trace a route to something more mysterious that
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: is pressing upon the minds of individuals and the minds
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: of groups. And he was attempting to describe that. I
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: think it's impossible for him to have been totally objective
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: that realm, which I think he admitted crosses writings in
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: all ways. But when he was writing about all of
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: the archetypal phenomena and seeking to catalog it, not from
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: the perspective of an expert that knows all of this,
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: but from somebody who is discovering a way of orienting
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: and using what was happening around him as a kind
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: of laboratory to exercise this application of his new method.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: So for him to look at the patients that he
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: had and to ask about the phenomena that he was
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: observing and the field from which that was rising, and
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: then to apply that, awkwardly or not, to cultures, groups, subgroups,
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: even his own analytic institute, and ask the same question.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: I don't believe that was meant to be offensive, although
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: his struggle to find objective language is something I think
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: that he tried throughout the course of his entire professional life.
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: So when I look at his struggle to find language
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: to talk about Wotan, for instance, it's perfectly congruent with
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: how he attempted to describe all manner of other things,
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: assuming that psyche is actually real, both individually and and
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: through the collective unconscious into larger and larger aggregates. And
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: to try to use his intuition, his access to mythology,
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: any other resources to try to find some kind of
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: pattern that could be named. And then as an intuitive,
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: and he describes this in his early work on typology,
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: to get a sense of where something has come from
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: and where it might be going. And to speak in
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: those very broad terms doesn't put him in a particularly
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: prophetic standpoint. It doesn't put him as some kind of
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: political expert who should be using perfect language in order
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: to change the fates of nations. It puts him in
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: this realm of being a psychological researcher who is trying
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: to describe something to himself and to the small group
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: of people at that time who were around him. And
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: from that standpoint, if we were to maintain that more
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: phenomenological standpoint, it's difficult to blame Jung for describing the
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: phenomena that he was able to perceive. And our reactions
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: to his words based on what they mean to us
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: now or what we infer for them is part of
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: our own self-inquiry about what is happening in our own psyches.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: Someone uses a word and my psyche turns red or
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: purple or glows with warmth or becomes exhausted and sleepy
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: is something to do with my soul and the meaning
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: that I make of somebody else's language and their words.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: So I'm highly resistant to wanting to blame Jung or
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: any other deceased philosopher for the words that they used,
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: but I am interested in how my psyche reacts to
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: the things that have been said. I think the concern
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: that we may all be having is not so much
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: about how Jung functioned as a human being or as
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: a theorist or the head of a psychological association decades
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: and decades ago. I think the concern which perhaps isn't
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: being languaged openly enough, is how the language and ideas
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: of any published person can be re-weaponized to manipulate the
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: political sphere and to justify things that are frightening. So
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: the fact that Jung's language could be purposed in a
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: way to seem to support an interest in anti-Semitism is
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: particularly frightening in a current world where there is good
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: evidence that anti-Semitism is on the rise. And so we
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: become concerned about any of the material that could be
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: weaponized to fuel a phenomena that is happening right in
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: front of us. That's what makes this material feel dangerous
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: or perhaps even relevant to a current.
• 37:13
  Speaker 5: I think your idea of weaponizing is really important. The
• 37:18
  Speaker 5: sense of projection that goes on behind the motivation to weaponize.
• 37:26
  Speaker 5: This idea of, you used the word blame. So I
• 37:29
  Speaker 5: think as soon as we're starting to blame, one way
• 37:33
  Speaker 5: we think about that psychologically is we are now projecting
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: some aspect likely of ourselves onto the other. And to
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: what extent are we willing to reflect? I mean, this
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: is what we try to do so much in our work,
• 37:51
  Speaker 5: to try to understand what part of this is me,
• 37:55
  Speaker 5: what part of this is you, where's the hook, you know,
• 37:59
  Speaker 5: all of that. I do think we are living in
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: a climate now where words are easily being weaponized. And
• 38:06
  Speaker 5: I share a deep concern with you, Joseph, on this matter.
• 38:13
  Speaker 5: And I have enormous respect for Jung because he was
• 38:19
  Speaker 5: willing to be vulnerable, make himself vulnerable after the war.
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: And he wrote After the Catastrophe. And he wrote Fight
• 38:30
  Speaker 5: with the Shadow in 1946. And here he really becomes
• 38:36
  Speaker 5: very open with us in letting us know kind of
• 38:40
  Speaker 5: what he missed. that he openly says he didn't see
• 38:46
  Speaker 5: some things. And he then talks about Hitler and the
• 38:50
  Speaker 5: tremendous amount of evil, the psychopathic qualities of it. He
• 38:55
  Speaker 5: also talks about, and I think this is for me
• 38:58
  Speaker 5: is so fascinating and such a really helpful part of
• 39:02
  Speaker 5: our Jungian perspective, which is the way that he talks
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: about the collective inferiority in As a result of their
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: losing World War One, the amount of starvation, the humiliation,
• 39:21
  Speaker 5: just the the economic depletion that went on in this country.
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: And on the positive end, I think he did view
• 39:30
  Speaker 5: Wotan as some kind of initial helpful energies, a kind
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: of compensation, if you will, to restore for a kind
• 39:38
  Speaker 5: of rebirth and whatever. And that, we could say, was
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: a very hopeful kind of positive outlook. But he was...
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: how should we say, not as consciously aware of the
• 39:52
  Speaker 5: darker parts of this. After the war, he absolutely was.
• 39:57
  Speaker 5: And I find his writing, those two essays in particular, really,
• 40:02
  Speaker 5: really powerful essays. And he talks about sort of the
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: tendency to kind of want to see the criminal out there,
• 40:12
  Speaker 5: you know, and to what extent are we really willing
• 40:14
  Speaker 5: to see the criminal in ourselves And how we are
• 40:20
  Speaker 5: quickly able to split this off from ourselves and willingly
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: wanting to project that such that we have this scapegoat, right?
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: And this whole idea of the scapegoat phenomena. And that
• 40:33
  Speaker 5: has certainly been something that Jewish people have carried, that
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: idea of the scapegoat complex and so forth. And so
• 40:40
  Speaker 5: for me, there's a lot of redeeming that Jung does
• 40:44
  Speaker 5: in terms of being open. about his getting some stuff wrong,
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: in terms of how he actually initially thought of what
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: was going on in Nazi Germany in the early uprising
• 40:57
  Speaker 5: of Hitler. And that what we all so much need
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: to do is be able to stay awake to our
• 41:06
  Speaker 5: tendencies to weaponize, which I think is blaming, which I
• 41:09
  Speaker 5: think is projection. It's like a virus. It's a psychic
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: virus or a psychic state of possession And in the
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: absence of a healthy enough psychic immune system, be it
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: individual or in the collective, there's a whole state of
• 41:26
  Speaker 5: possession that can take place. And to what extent we
• 41:33
  Speaker 5: might be seeing some elements of this in our world
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: today as well.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: There's also an element of displacement, that old good Freudian defense,
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: that we're out in the world and we feel helpless.
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: There are frightening things that we can observe phenomenologically, reading
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: the newspaper, watching the news, maybe things we're hearing in
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: our own families or seeing in our own neighborhoods. And
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: so we take that fear and that feeling of helplessness
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: and we decide that we're going to attack something that
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: we think we can get control over, like demonizing somebody
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: that's been dead since 1961. If I can really convince
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: people that Jung was an anti-Semite son of a bitch,
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: and I can really get all his books banned, God
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: knows everywhere I can, well, then I'm going to really
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: have accomplished something because I can't possibly go down the
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: road and talk to or confront the people that are
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: flying a Nazi flag one street over and have a
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: bunch of frightening things going on in that house. But
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: you know what I can do is sit here and
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: really try to take Jung down or fill in the blank.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: So there's an enormous amount of, I think, disingenuous displacement
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: which I see not just around Jung, but any number
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: of writings or public figures, which actually has no effective,
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: evidence has no effective change on the issue. You could
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: wipe all of Jung's writings off the face of the
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: earth and you wouldn't change anti-Semitism one bit in terms
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: of what's happening right around the corner from your own home.
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: But you would swear that you had done something really
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: substantive by making sure that that's where you're going to
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: put all your heat. And that's this false sense of
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: displacement and even magical thinking. So it is good that
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: we're talking about this because we're trying to create a
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: certain amount of frame of understanding around Jung's writings. But
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: I really want to confront the fantasy material that's being
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: pushed into this topic by certain writers and certain lecturers.
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: You know, Joseph, you reminded me of this whole cancel culture.
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: that I think is so active right now. And isn't
• 43:49
  Speaker 5: that very much what you're talking about? That if we
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: hear something that we disagree with, that we think is
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: harmful and in particular threatening, that rather than being able
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: to be in dialogue, which is of course what we
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: hope to do as Jungians, that we want to split
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: it off. We want to dissociate from it. We want
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: to cancel it. And so in a sense, that's what
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: Hitler was doing. He was trying to cancel out the
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: Jews and the homosexuals and on and on and on.
• 44:25
  Speaker 5: Anything that was perceived as threatening to the purity of
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: the Aryan race. So this kind of collective, I don't know, regression,
• 44:38
  Speaker 5: because I think it very much is that, right? and
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: has a kind of collective infectious nature to it is
• 44:49
  Speaker 5: very much kind of what we're living in right now.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: And the thing is that Jung really gives us the
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: tools to understand a lot of this. So I mean,
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: I think that we've talked about this before on the podcast,
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: but I think that the idea of shadow and projection
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: of the shadow and the related ideas of scapegoating and
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: that kind of thing are incredibly incredibly important for understanding
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: prejudice of all kinds, including anti-Semitism through the ages. And then, Ronnie,
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: the other thing that you just mentioned in terms of
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: how contagious ideas can be. And Jung talked a lot
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: about both of those things. And both of those concepts
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: are incredibly important to understanding, for example, how the Holocaust happened.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: or even what's happening in our world today, including as regards,
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: you know, antisemitism. So we better not cancel him or
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: erase all of his books because we'll use these really,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: we will lose these really powerful tools that can help
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: us become more conscious.
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: I'd like us also to just grab, put hands right
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: on some of these ideas. So Jung had this idea
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: that groups have a kind of collective psyche that can
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: be described. And if we take that just at face value,
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: that's exactly what sociologists have been doing since the birth
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: of that science. And all of us that were trained
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: as social workers, at least Deb and I, we are
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: well steeped in this idea of group norms, group values,
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: ethnic traditions, and the whole social work pressure to be...
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: particularly skilled at providing services within a group context. So
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: for Jung to be interested in the psychology of groups
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: or what is typical of cultural groups and what that
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: might infer psychologically, there is nothing new about that. And
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: by the way, all the algorithms on YouTube are doing
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: the same things, grouping everybody based on their interests, based
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: on where you live, based on how much money you make,
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: and experimenting with all kinds of possible assumptions. So for
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: those who somehow think that Jung was being anti-Semitic, I
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: would say that his effort to describe the psychology of
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: any cultural group was a reasonable effort for him to
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: expand his own sense of psychological interest in things. And
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: by the way, that is still happening. The real issue
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: isn't that he should not have been interested in the psychological, ethnic,
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: or cultural qualities of the Jewish communities or Jewish philosophy,
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: but once again, whether or not it was weaponized. Because
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: it is intrinsic to the human consciousness to want to
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: describe things. That was Adam's first job in the Garden
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: of Eden was to give things names and to say
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: that the kangaroo is different from a lion. So saying
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: how things might be unique or different is different from
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: setting up a hierarchy of values based on what is
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: superior and inferior. And even if that information is then
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: used at some time to distort and create a hierarchy,
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: that's the misuse of things that are different from each other.
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: Apples are different from oranges, and if we develop a
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: national campaign to say that oranges are evil and apples
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: are superior, should we then say whether it was wrong
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: to ever say that apples and oranges were different? Because
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: now it's being used to destroy the good names of oranges.
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: But we are mistaking those things when we criticize Jung
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: or his attempt to try to describe things, even if
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: his language was imprecise or crude, or frankly, new. Because
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: if you don't have language that you've been taught to
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: describe something, then you make up language, and you use
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: metaphors to try to reach for something, which is exactly
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: what the alchemist did, by the way. You don't have
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: a language for chemicals, you're going to just try to
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: fabricate something. You don't have a pre-existing language to describe
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: these strange otherworldly insights that you're looking at as you
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: stare at the central fire. You're going to use whatever
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: language you have to try to point to something that
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: you think you're seeing. So those are a couple of
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: other things that I just feel so strongly about.
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm curious in the context of what we've
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: just recently been talking about, of how it happens. It's
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: so difficult to tolerate the ambiguity. or what you called, Ronnie,
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: the mercurial aspect of this. And what is the impetus behind,
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: you know, wanting to, in a way, sort of demonize
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: Jung for, you know, purportedly faulty perceptions about this, that,
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: or the other? What is behind that impetus? as well
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: as anti-Semitism and the Holocaust and all the rest of it,
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: of how complex this is and how incredibly difficult it
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: is to engage it.
• 50:51
  Speaker 5: I wish I could be optimistic and say I think
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: that we're doing better, but I don't think we are, actually.
• 50:57
  Speaker 5: And I would have to say that my initial theoretical
• 51:02
  Speaker 5: interest in Jung had so much to do with him
• 51:05
  Speaker 5: providing a language and a perspective that allowed me to
• 51:10
  Speaker 5: deal with the tensions and opposites, to reflect on these things,
• 51:15
  Speaker 5: to not rush to some kind of rational conscious judgment,
• 51:20
  Speaker 5: and to really work on these deeper layers in our psyche,
• 51:24
  Speaker 5: both our personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. What do
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: I think? I think fear plays a huge role in this.
• 51:35
  Speaker 5: I think the degree to which individuals feel a loss
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: of a sense of belonging, a loss of a sense
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: of connection. I was thinking about this the other day
• 51:48
  Speaker 5: and just anticipating our conversation today. You know, not that
• 51:53
  Speaker 5: we need to go here, but what is happening in
• 51:56
  Speaker 5: the deconstruction of certain religious and spiritual beliefs containers that
• 52:05
  Speaker 5: have created an environment where there's so much more fear
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: and a sense of not belonging. I hear, I hear
• 52:13
  Speaker 5: a sense of not belonging coming from so many people
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: that I see in my consulting room and the way
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: that families used to be operating and sort of the
• 52:23
  Speaker 5: way that families stayed connected through generations. And there's been
• 52:27
  Speaker 5: so much, um, in the way families no longer live
• 52:32
  Speaker 5: in the same cities or the same countries. And I
• 52:35
  Speaker 5: just think there's such a difference in modernity. And of course,
• 52:38
  Speaker 5: Jung was concerned about modernity, wasn't he? You know, that
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: it's creating conditions that is exacerbating, I think, a sense
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: of security and safety and feeling more threatened. And So
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: then what do we do? We try to organize ourselves
• 53:02
  Speaker 5: around an idea that is a kind of artificial or
• 53:08
  Speaker 5: false self or false collective self structure to bind us,
• 53:14
  Speaker 5: to give us that sense of some kind of security.
• 53:19
  Speaker 5: And often at the detriment of having to cast out
• 53:24
  Speaker 5: whatever it is we may decide is threatening us. whether
• 53:28
  Speaker 5: it's the infiltration of individuals coming from different countries migrating
• 53:33
  Speaker 5: into this country. I mean, it's our difficulty in being
• 53:38
  Speaker 5: able to tolerate difference, I guess, on some very fundamental
• 53:42
  Speaker 5: level as well. I mean, it's obviously a very complicated
• 53:47
  Speaker 5: subject that seems to be rearing its head pretty significantly now.
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: One way I would lean into that which I think
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: is very important, is that as a culture, say we're
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: back to Jung trying to describe the psyche, let's say,
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: of the United States, that we seem to have, are
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: observing this loss of interest in virtue and the primacy
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: of interest in safety. And we can trace that to
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: certain shifts in the culture even some might even say
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: to the birth of national marketing and Freud's nephew who
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: began to, who invented this capacity to turn citizens of
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: the United States into consumers. And the fact that people
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: now will vote primarily based on their economic interests and
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: not around principles not around anything that remotely concerns virtue.
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: So this loss of interest in virtue, just as you
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: were saying, this primacy of safety and what safety might require,
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: whether it's having 75 guns in your basement, or whether
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: it's driving strangers out of your city or your town, etc., etc.
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: But safety pushes us into the instinctive mind, and out
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: of the human spirit. And we are seeing more and
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: more people being tricked into thinking they are unsafe and
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: then making highly instinctive and thoughtless choices. So my question is,
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: in many ways, what will it take to restore the
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: idea of virtue? Which, by the way, was Freud's lament
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: at the end of his life. He was putting it
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: in Freudian terms. Freud had lost everything towards the end
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: of his life, barely escaped with his life. He was poor.
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: His books were not being read. They were not being sold.
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: And he had fallen into a terrible depression, thinking that
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: what might have saved humanity could possibly have worked. And
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: in the face of World War II, he couldn't believe
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: that psychoanalysis or the mere primacy of being aware of
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: something could possibly change things. What he hoped is that virtue,
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: which is the superego, an interest in virtue would be
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: strong enough to stand against the id, which wants to
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: kill and destroy, wants to fight and do anything it
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: can to create safety in the survival of one's genetic material.
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: And in the end, he believed that that had failed.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: Jung doesn't use this same language. He doesn't write about
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: the restoration of virtue. He does write about the need
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: for symbols of transformation. Particularly when he discovered alchemy, it
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: opened up this possibility that there could be ancient symbols
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: and the revival of ancient symbols that facilitate transformation and
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: particularly this reconnection with the center of personality, which, by
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: the way, was still an uncertain venture. That doesn't mean
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: everything's going to be peaceful, by the way. So I
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: think that there are, in my own fantasy at least,
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: there are broad cultural reasons that things are more dangerous
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: than they were at one time. We had interviewed Yasha
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: Monk a while back and had a similar conversation with
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: him His concern has to do with this collapse of liberalism,
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: which he defines as a commitment to universal principles, and
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: that it is the commitment to universal principle by disparate
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: people that creates a culture of unity around an exaltation
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: of concept, the exaltation of glorious ideas. and the collapse
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: of that interest, which he attributes to this identity politics
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: and the strange, desperate grasping for any sense of identity,
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: which he feels is being manipulated terribly by social media
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: and other things. But Jung was trying to restore this
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: understanding of the universal, and that that did hold hope
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: And that even as he was standing in the face
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: of what was going to be a horrific disaster, global
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: disaster of World War II, he was still looking for
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: the universal truth.
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: You, Joseph. You know, just towards the end of Jung's life,
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: he had a really profound dream. Joseph, you're nodding, so
• 59:21
  Speaker 5: that means you probably really remember it more than I do.
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: But as I got reacquainted with it, What was very
• 59:29
  Speaker 5: interesting was that he was being fed kosher food and
• 59:36
  Speaker 5: he was being treated by, I guess you could call
• 59:41
  Speaker 5: it a Jewish mother to some extent. And he was
• 59:46
  Speaker 5: having this whole experience of being nurtured by this other faith,
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: by this other spiritual connection at the very end of
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 5: his life when he was very sickly. I was reminded
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 5: of that when I was doing some breathing in preparation
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 5: for this. So if we think about the way that
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 5: we as Jungian analysts refer to our dreams and look
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 5: to our dreams for the healing energy that is very
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 5: much needed for the compensation of a one-sided conscious attitude
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 5: that perhaps has not allowed for a deep enough integration
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 5: of ourselves. And Mary Stein refers to the idea of
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 5: integration as ownership, which I think is a really wonderful
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 5: way to think about integration, that which we can own
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 5: about ourselves. And so in being reminded of this dream,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 5: I thought, what a powerful healing experience. that Jung himself
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 5: had with perhaps everything that he had experienced personally and
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 5: whatever was kind of projected onto him, whatever was sort
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 5: of part of his own shadow, that the unconscious produced
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 5: this beautiful dream at the end of his life that
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 5: was so profoundly healing for him.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: I don't know if I'm remembering the same thing, but
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: Sanford Drobe, I think, references this in his book that
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: Jung was being nursed after another terrible cardiac episode. And
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: he experienced himself as an ancient rabbi being nursed by
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: one of his friends. And he had a vision of
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: being in the Garden of Pomegranates, witnessing the marriage of
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: Tifereth and Malkuth. And why that is so important. First
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: of all, Jung was exposed to Kabbalah. and particularly through
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: the alchemists. And Sanford Drobe puts forward this thesis that
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: if Jung had lived long enough, that was the next
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: big piece of work he was likely to take on.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: That's so interesting, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: Because he was already dreaming himself into this philosophy of Hasidim.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 5: That is the dream, thank you.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: And Kabbalah.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: And he was eating kosher food.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: Yes, which I didn't know.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So he's in this kind of hypnagogic state
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: and he says, for a time, this was the nurse,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: at this hour of the night, the nurse brought me
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: some food she had warmed. For only then was I
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: able to take any and I ate with appetite. For
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: a time it seemed to me that she was an
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: old Jewish woman, much older than she actually was, and
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: that she was preparing ritual kosher dishes for me. And
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: then it goes on, Joseph, to what you were saying,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: that he's in the Garden of Pomegranates witnessing the marriage
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: of Tifereth and Malkuth and He is Rabbi Simon Ben-Yachai,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: whose wedding in the afterlife was being celebrated.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm making a connection, see what you think
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: of this, of Jung as a rabbi. He has been
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: a rabbi in modern life with all his teachings. And
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: I wonder if that sets him up especially as a
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: bit of a target. Just as antisemitism has been a
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: target throughout much of history, that it is the learned
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: tradition and the difference.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: What I'd like to lean into also with that final vision,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: which not a final vision, by the way, but because
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: he did recover for a while after that, is that
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: the marriage of Tiferth and Malkuth, if it's understood correctly,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: is actually a description of the entire opus of Jung's
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: professional life, which is also called Tikkun Olam, or the
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: healing of the world. Because in the religious and mythic
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: story is that the earth has somehow lost its connection
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: to a higher spiritual realm, which we could also call
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: the loss of a consciousness of the archetypal purity of things.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: And that for Tifereth to marry Malkuth would be for
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: the earth to be restored to a certain kind of
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: spiritual clarity. And the redemption of the earth in some ways,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: depending on the tradition, has to do with the recognition
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: that all that happens in the physical earth has its
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: impetus in a higher spiritual plane that descends from above.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: And the only way that we can look at the
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: suffering and beauty of this world, the frightening things of
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: this world, as well as the glorious things of this world,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: and believe that the world is still in right order,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: is to have some sense of the archetypal unfolding of
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: all things, which would suggest that even the horrors in
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: this world somehow are an expression of something greater than ourselves,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: which we may not understand for thousands of years. So
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: that is a rather lofty vision, but it's not a
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: new vision, by the way, at all, in any particular way.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: But in his soul, not only was Jung not an anti-Semite,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: in his soul, I think he felt... tremendous alignment and
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: in fact had his own Jewish identity somewhere inside of
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: himself that emerged at the right time and it also
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: gave him a sense of hope unlike Freud that at
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: the end of his life there was a possibility that
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: the world could be healed by something far greater than
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: anything he personally could due or the absence of anything
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: that he might have done.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really beautiful.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that is beautiful. Just on a level of how
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 5: we hold dream interpretation, just to kind of really highlight
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 5: what you're saying, so fascinating. I never really thought about
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 5: it in the way that you're describing it in terms
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 5: of his own claiming of these parts of himself that
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 5: have this affinity or this aspect of, Jewishness, that every
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 5: aspect of this dream is an aspect of him, right?
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 5: And so all of that was some aspect of him
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 5: that was coming into like a much deeper connection such
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 5: that he could actually have the dream and feel that.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 5: in the way that our dreams really serve as such
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 5: a powerful tool to make those connections to these parts
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 5: of ourselves that have remained so unconscious.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: So it's a.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 5: Really, really important point. I hadn't thought about it that way.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: He did, and Jung recognized this in Neumann's work.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 5: Yes, he did.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: Who was a dear friend, and he loved Neumann and
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: supported him and thought, that Neumann's great works, Jung wished
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: he'd written them.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 5: Yes, that's true.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: One of the things that Neumann introduced to Jung was
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: the idea of the ego self-access. And the ego self-access
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: is a contemporary psychological view of the marriage of Tifereth
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: and Malkuth, where Tifereth is viewed as the self and
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: Malkuth is viewed as the ego. and the mythic union
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: of those things, which has been rent apart and could
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: be redeemed by right practices and right understandings.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 5: Right attitude.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: And that's right out of the Kabbalah, the idea of
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: the ego self-access. And there at the end of his life,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: he believes that he is seeing that, which as you said, Rani,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: may have finally happened inside of him, that the self
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: and his ego had finally married in those last few
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: months of his life.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's so beautiful to talk about the hope
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: that he felt at the end. And one of my
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: favorite passages is the very end of MDR, where he says,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: you know, basically the world is a horrible and a
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: beautiful place, and I cherish the hope that there's meaning,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: and I rather think there is. He says it more
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: beautifully than I just did. But you're absolutely right. He
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: had that marriage of Tifereth and Malkuth within.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 4: There's such an appreciation here for me of, you know,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 4: how hard Jung worked and what a depth of understanding
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: he strove for, and that in many ways he is
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 4: a rabbi for his time and ours, of attempting to
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 4: unify psychology and the spiritual, philosophical, archetypal dimensions that have
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: made him still such a present and important force in
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: today's world. There's wisdom here.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: So I can feel us winding down, but I can't
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: let us leave this topic before I bring in just
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: one more thing, because I think it's just like one
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: of the coolest things. And we're leaving this wonderful lofty
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: place that you've taken us to, Joseph. And I'm going
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: right back to the history, but indulge me. There is
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: a great chapter in Deirdre Bear's biography called Agent 488.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: And I had no idea about this. But Jung was
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: employed by the Office of Strategic Services by Allen W.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: Dulles.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: And I believe the OSS was kind of the precursor
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: to the CIA. You know, his contributions were considerable. He
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: was known as Agent 488 in Dulles' reports to the OSS.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: And those dispatches were taken very seriously. Dulles remarked that
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: Jung understood the characteristics of the sinister leaders of Nazi
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: Germany and fascist Italy. His judgment on these leaders and
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: their likely reactions to passing events was of real help
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: to me engaging the political situation. His deep antipathy to
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: what Nazism and fascism stood for was clearly evidenced in
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: these conversations. And finally, Dulles once noted that nobody will
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: probably ever know How Much Professor Jung Contributed to the
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: Allied Cause During the War. So I recommend reading Bear's biography.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: That chapter reads like a spy novel, as a matter
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: of fact. And it's fascinating. The people in Jung's circle,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: some members of the psychology club who were very involved
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: as well. It's a very lively little part of... Jung's history,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: but I think it does speak to really where he
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: came down in terms of the terrible events in the
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: middle of the last century.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: And the last thing that I would just like to say,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: just in a very common sense way, is none of
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: us know what we would do if an army took
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: over your town and had a gun pointed at your head.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: We all like to think that we would be totally
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: rational and we would make clear thinking decisions based on
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: the futurity of the moment and how history will perceive
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: our decisions. But you don't know. Many years ago, when
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: I was a failing actor, which meant that I was
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: working as a bartender in a beautiful restaurant in DuPont
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: Circle in Washington, D.C., and it was the middle of
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: dinner and the bar was right there in the lobby
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: and And right in the height of dinner, two men
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: walked in with guns and they pointed them at me.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: And they said, empty the register. While that was happening,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: very tragically, one of the kitchen staff had just been
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: out on the sidewalk and had walked in the front door.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: And one of the men just turned and shot him
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: in the chest right in front of me. And I
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: have to tell you what, when you've got a gun
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: pointed at you, I opened the register. And strangely, I
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: have very little memory of it. I just started laying
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: the money out across the bar. About six feet, I
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: just kept making little piles of it. I can't even
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: tell you why. What was interesting is that that seemed
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: to distract these guys as they were kind of scrambling
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: to pick up the money. It threw them off a
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: little bit. And then when people were walking from the
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: restaurant back into the lobby, they fled out the front door.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: I have to tell you, in that moment, There is
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: no thinking process. And I can't imagine living in that
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: state that I was in for months or years, feeling
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: that there is someone who is killing people right in
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: front of you or right next to you, and they
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: have a gun at you and your family. So to
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: criticize Jung for not making an erudite, politically correct decision
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: suggests such a profound naivete. around what trauma is and
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: what happens to the human psyche in the midst of unbelievable,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: horrible circumstances. So I also don't fault Jung for even
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: making a mistake just to survive until he could get
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: his footing and figure out something else to do.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, Joseph, I've known you a long time
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: and I've never heard that story. But, you know, unlike you,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: his life was, you know, perhaps not immediately threatened in
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: most of the things that we've been thinking about. But
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: I found myself having a similar thought during our discussion is,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: you know, these were evolving events and it was an
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: incredibly tumultuous period of world history. And we all maybe
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: think we know what we would do in the moment
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: or the best thing to do in hindsight, but Yeah,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: he was, you know, responding and reacting. And what are
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: any of us doing currently to respond or to react
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: to some of the evil that's around us currently? I mean,
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: I think we're all trying to do our best probably,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: but it's not always so clear. So it's a point
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: well taken. So perhaps with that, we'll move to a dream. Hello, listeners.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: I want to take just one minute to remind you
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: about my upcoming women's fairy tale and yoga retreat. We
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: have just a few tickets left. It is April 25th
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: through April 28th in central Pennsylvania. It's a beautiful time
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: of year to be there. It's a great group of women.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: We have a ton of fun. We hang out. We
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: do yoga. We talk about fairy tales. We eat good food.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: We tell stories and share poems around the campfire. We
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: do some dream incubation. It's a really great time. So
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: if you're interested, pop on over to my website, lisamarchiano.com,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: where you can read more about Women's Wellspring Retreat.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: Thanks.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: A dreamer is a 40-year-old male and an aspiring actor,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: and he titles the dream The Little Burning Fire. I
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: listened to the recent episode on The Vital Spark, and
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: I knew I just had to submit this dream. I
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: had this dream about three or four years ago now.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: I'm an aspiring actor, but to make ends meet, one
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: of the things I do is background acting or being
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: an extra on TV shows and movies. So here's the dream.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: I'm working on a set on a production that's filming
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: at a large mansion, only this time I'm not working
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: in front of the camera. I'm working behind the camera
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 3: on the crew as a production assistant. The scene is
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: being shot inside, right at the entrance of the mansion.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: I'm in a very happy, enthusiastic mood. I stand there
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: watching the filming. Directly behind me are two French doors.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: Suddenly I need to use the restroom, but the restrooms
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: are for the crew, our port-a-chans outside. and I can't
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: get out the door because they're filming right in front
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: of the entrance. Then I remember something. I know the
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: owner of this mansion, and he's entrusted me with the
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: skeleton key. And I think to myself, well, I've been
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: given a key to go into any room in the house.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: Surely it's fine for me to use one of the restrooms.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: I turn around and use the skeleton key for the
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: first time. The key is gold and looks just like
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: a big old-fashioned key. I open the French doors and
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: close them behind me. Now I'm in a large study.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: It's beautiful and luxurious. It looks like old money. Nothing
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: too modern. There's a fireplace and comfy chairs, a large
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: elegant sofa with lots of pillows, and of course a
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: desk and many books. The room is lit only by sunlight.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: I slowly walk across the study towards the bathroom at
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: the end of the room. I take my time taking
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: it all in. I feel special. being in here alone.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: When I get to the restroom, the door is locked.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: I use the skeleton key for a second time. Now
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: I'm in a small restroom that looks remarkably like the
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: restroom in my parents' bedroom. I stand to look at
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: myself in the mirror, then I notice to the left
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: of me there's a wooden medicine cabinet on the wall.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: I'm curious as to what's inside. I'm drawn to it.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: I try opening it, but it's locked. I wonder if
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: the skeleton key even opens this small cabinet. I use
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: the skeleton key for the third time, and sure enough,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: it worked. I'm shocked to discover that inside the cabinet,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: there is only a small burning fire. It looks just
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: like a small miniature campfire, and I'm stunned. Why is
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 3: there fire in here? What's the meaning of it? How
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: does this fire continue to burn even when the cabinet
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: is locked up? Why does the fire not consume the
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 3: entire wooden cabinet? I'm just awestruck. Then I realize, oh
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: my gosh, I've left the key in the lock, and
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: that lock must be burning hot from being so close
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: to a fire for so long. I pull the key
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: out of the lock, and sure enough, the key is warped.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: It began to melt. Now I'm slightly panicked. I run
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: the key under cold water, but it's no use. The
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: key is obviously warped from the fire. Now the owner
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: of the mansion is going to know that I've been
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 3: snooping and that I found this little burning fire. I
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: try to figure out what to do and finally decide.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: I better just come clean. He's going to know exactly
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: what I did when he sees the key. For significant context,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: he offers, I've been on a journey of self-discovery for
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: the past 10 years. It's been a wild ride. Your
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: podcast has helped me a lot. I just love you guys.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: Let me see why I had to pick this dream.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: There we go.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: He says the main feelings in the dream are happiness
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: and enthusiasm, awe, wonder, and curiosity, and finally a bit
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: of panic and dread. He provides a bit more and says,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: I remember thinking the study looked like a room you
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: would see in the show Dynasty in the 1980s when
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: I was a child.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: Well, it also kind of has the fairy tale theme
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: continues because, first of all, it's the key that betrays
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: the maiden in the Bluebeard story because she drops the
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: key into the bloody basin and then can't wipe it off.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: And when Bluebeard comes home, he says, give me the key.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: And as soon as he sees the key, he knows
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: exactly what has happened, just like in this dream. And also,
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: there's a series of three in this dream. So he
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: uses the key three times. And the third time is
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: the discovery of the little fire. So it truly is
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: just like a fairy tale, this dream.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 5: Well, it's interesting to me that he is trying to
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 5: get into the rest of So when we think about
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 5: a restroom, we typically think about a bathroom, right? Think
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 5: about a place where we can relieve ourselves. But the
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 5: dreamer uses the word restroom. So a room to rest,
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 5: also some place to go. He needs to go there.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 5: There's this beautiful extravagant space, but he really needs to
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 5: go to this restroom, which is a place that's typically
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 5: more private, more personal, where he makes this extraordinary discovery
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 5: once he finally gets in. And there's a lot of
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 5: effort that goes on, almost magic. It almost feels a
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 5: little magical, you know, as you were referring to sort
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 5: of the fairy tale, you know. element of it he
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 5: has to do it three times right three times and
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 5: then once he's in there it is he makes this
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 5: fascinating discovery of this this small burning fire yeah yeah.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 4: But you know first what happens is um it looks
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: remarkably like the restroom in my parents bedroom yes So
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 4: he goes into the family or child complex. I'm also
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: so interested in our culture that somehow it's become wrong
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: to say the word bathroom. He wants to relieve himself.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 4: He wants to expel probably urine, but we insist on
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 4: calling it a restroom. He uses that word quite intentionally
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 4: a lot, and it's like the one in his parents' bedroom.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: So I'm noticing that there's this relationship with the owner.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: The owner is not present, but is implied. He's been
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: given a key by this owner, and it's this kind
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: of gold key, and it has an old-world feel, and it's...
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: somewhat grand. We sort of deduce that the owner may
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: be in a little bit of a kind of parental
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: position because it's like the childhood, it's like the childhood
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: memory of his parents' bathroom. The owner has this mysterious
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: fire that doesn't go out, that just continues to burn
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: in this way, in this secret medicine cabinet. So somehow,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: That's where the medicine is. And is the fire then
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: understood to be the medicine? And of course, I think
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: the streamer thought of submitting the stream because in the
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: podcast we did on my new book, The Vital Spark,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: I think we were talking about both a blue beard variant,
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: but also Jung's notion of the central fire that he
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: used as a metaphor. He used that term as a
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: metaphor to talk about our kind of life urge to
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: or even, if you will, the self. And so I
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: found myself wondering about this mysterious owner of the house
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: who'd given him a key. And is that not an
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: image of the self, the owner of the house who
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: keeps the fire?
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 5: So when I think about the fire, I think about heat.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 5: Of course, we would naturally think of that. And this
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 5: is a contained fire. And he's curious about how it
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 5: hasn't sort of spread. So there's something very unique about
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 5: this fire that it's remained so contained, as you said, Lisa,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 5: in the medicine cabinet, where the medicine is. So I'm
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 5: also thinking about sort of the alchemical aspect of this too,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 5: that there's some heat maybe that is needed in his life.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 5: He's also, it sounds like he's an actor who's kind
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 5: of not getting his, some frustration maybe about sort of
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 5: who he is in the world or what he's doing.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 5: And Maybe there's some alchemical heat here that's sort of
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 5: part of the medicine of what he's really needing for
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 5: his own sense of aliveness. And maybe it's going back
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 5: to some aspect in his youth when maybe there was
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 5: more of a sense of that, really needing to reconnect
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 5: with that. We think of sometimes in our childhoods, these
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 5: are the times when we have perhaps a greater connection
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 5: to our own creative life, you know, before we've been
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 5: sort of beset by the sort of complexes and bruises
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 5: of life and traumas of life. But there is something
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 5: very numinous about it too, isn't there? Like it's just
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 5: this very mysterious, extraordinary thing, but also wants to come clean.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 5: There's some sort of confessional aspect to this dream too.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 5: He doesn't want to be seen as falsifying evidence.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 4: That's where I was going, too, is right at the
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 4: very tail end of the dream where the key is warped,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 4: just like in the Bluebeard tale of, uh-oh, now the
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 4: owner's going to know. But he says, now the owner
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 4: of the mansion is going to know that I've been
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 4: snooping and I found his little burning fire. I try
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 4: to figure out what to do and finally decide I'd
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 4: better just come clean. He's going to know exactly what
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 4: I did when he sees the key. So I think
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 4: it's unusual that the dream ego is really willing to
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 4: step up. Oh no, I'm guilty. What should I do?
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 4: I'm going to hide the evidence. But there's a relationship
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 4: between these parts of the dream The invisible, mysterious owner,
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 4: the self, perhaps, and the dream ego of, yes, I looked. Yes,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 4: I snooped. And there's no impetus to try to cover
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 4: it up. I think there's a connection there between sort
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 4: of this shadow element, the owner and The dream ego.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: And in that way, it reminds me of another fairy tale,
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: either the singing, springing lark, which is sort of like
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: a Beauty and the Beast variant, or if you know
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: it better, Psyche and Eros. Because once he's opened the cabinet,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: that's it. There's no going back.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: The key has now been permanently warped, and the key
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: cannot be used to lock things back up. So in
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: Psyche and Eros, she is convinced by her sisters to
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: light a lamp and peer at her husband, whom she's
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: only ever been visited by in the pitch of night.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: And when she does so, she sees that she's actually
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: married to Eros. But then he flies away and leaves
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: and it's this great tragedy, but it's this very common
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: thing that happens in fairy tales of it's a felix culpa.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: It's a happy mistake because something that has been in
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: the unconscious wants to become conscious. So in that, I
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: think that's a little bit like this fire is it's
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: been locked away. It can't be locked away anymore. He
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: doesn't work. Whatever that is, that repression or it's not
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: going to work anymore.
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 4: No, I like that a lot. It's a Felix Culpa.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 4: It's out now. It has been seen, it has been experienced,
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 4: and its mystery has been experienced. And of course, it
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 4: seems pretty symbolic that it's in the medicine cabinet where
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 4: you find the thing that will be And you're right,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 4: now there's no going back. Something is now known, very
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 4: much like the tale of Psyche and Eros. Once she
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 4: sees who it is that she's been making love to,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 4: there's no going back. Once the maiden in the Bluebeard
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 4: Tales uses a little key and it is stained with blood,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 4: there's no going back. It's a new threshold.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: I'm still sitting with something that you had said, Ronnie,
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 3: about fire as medicine. I just keep circling around that,
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 3: wondering what to make sense of with that. If we
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 3: look at the arc of the dream, it starts with
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 3: this urgency that he's feeling and this the right place
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 3: to somehow let go. Like you said, Ronnie, perhaps it's
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 3: a confession, some other form of psychic tension that's really struggling.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 3: He can't find the right place to do this. And
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 3: then that circuitous process leads him to find the fire
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 3: in the medicine cabinet and marvel at it. And then
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 3: the fire has an effect. And the fire has a
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 3: melting effect on the key. And the key is going
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: to force him to confess something, which is a bit
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 3: where you were going even in the beginning of the
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 3: dream with the urgency to find the confessional, i.e. the toilet.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 3: So fate is going to force him to have to
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 3: confess something. But I am wondering about the medicinal fire.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 3: If we think about the calcinatio which we were referencing,
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 3: which is an essential process in alchemy, if we think
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: of attaining the opus as the great medicine, and the
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: idea of the philosopher's stone, which is the end product
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 3: of alchemy, is said to have great medicinal properties. So
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 3: this is a young man that is perhaps in a calcinatio,
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 3: or there is a glimpse of something that is in
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 3: store with him, for him. So a couple of thoughts
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 3: that I have about the calcinedio is the calcinedio starts
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 3: with the frustration process. And he's already in that frustration, right?
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 3: He's frustrated. He has to let go of something. He
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 3: doesn't know where to do it. And by the way,
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 3: he still hasn't gone to the bathroom. He's gone to
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 3: bad rooms, but he hasn't finally sat down and done
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 3: his business. And so there he is still with this,
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 3: the fire of frustration that is small, but it's building
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 3: inside of him. If this happens, I think as one
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 3: of you had said, this may have something to do
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 3: with his career. He wants to be an actor. He's
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 3: being an extra. And here he is now working on
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 3: the production staff. So there may be a very important
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 3: transformative frustration with the career that is going to require
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 3: some transformative clarification about his image of himself in terms
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 3: of his professional life or his identity, perhaps as a
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 3: performing artist. I'm also really fascinated by the melted key
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 3: and wondering what to make of that.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 5: Something's being transformed. Yes. It's no longer going to operate
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 5: the way it had been. Perhaps a new entrance or
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 5: a new engagement, a new approach, a new attitude, perhaps,
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 5: but the key is no longer in service to him
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 5: in the way that it has been. He's going to
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 5: have to find another way in.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: And a less sneaky way in, by the way.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah. It feels like this story, in a way, is over.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 4: He's had, per every good fairy tale, three times to
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 4: use the key. And this will not be the way forward.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 4: That part is over. And he says, I better come clean.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 4: With the owner of the mansion, it feels like that's
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 4: the next step, is a different kind of encounter.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 5: And we don't know who the owner of the mansion is, female, male,
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 5: we have no idea. We have no idea. Yeah.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: No, that's okay. But if my little supposition that the owner,
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: the mysterious owner, might be a kind of self-image... then
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: we could say that the dreamer has an appropriate attitude
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: toward the unconscious, toward the self, and that there will
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: be a kind of reckoning with the self because the
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: owner is only implied. We don't see him. But at
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: the end, it's a sense, I better come clean. It's
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: like he's going to have a discussion. He's going to
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: have a discussion with that owner. So there's going to
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: be some kind of closer relationship. There won't be a
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: mystery to one another anymore.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 5: So perhaps it's like what you mentioned earlier, Joseph, the
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 5: ego self-axis is being activated here. Yes.
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: This is about the marriage of Tiproth and Malkuth.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 3: And this call for directness, direct engagement, and rather than sneaking,
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 3: skulking through life.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah, maybe feeling more entitled in a healthy way. A
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 5: sense of belonging in the space rather than just kind
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 5: of a break-in, so to speak, although he doesn't describe
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 5: it quite that way.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 3: I think of my own, again, my failed career as
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 3: an actor in my late teens, early 20s, and there
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 3: is just such an unbelievable amount of pandering that you'll
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 3: take any job, thank you, thank you so much, to
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 3: get a call, to get an audition, to get a chance,
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 3: the ridiculous kind of shows or commercials. I mean, I
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 3: told you my turning point was In my young career,
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 3: I'd been called to audition for a commercial and I
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 3: arrive and we're all being asked to dance with a
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 3: loaf of bread.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 5: That sounds like a nightmare.
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, maybe it was Wonder Bread.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 3: My face must have been bright red. Luckily, I'm watching
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 3: all these actors trying to improv with a loaf of bread,
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 3: making it into a baby. One woman pretended it came
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 3: out of her hips and dropped onto the floor. You
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 3: know what I mean? It was like people were just
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 3: doing anything they could to get attention. I was just
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 3: at a loss. And I thought this- This is where
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 3: my life has come to.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: Let me go become a Jungian artist.
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 3: It was a liberating fire of humiliation, actually. So there
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 3: is all of that.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 4: That's great.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 3: That's just pandering. And I was an extra, of course,
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 3: in the stand-in and all of that. So I feel
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 3: a lot of sympathy for this guy. finding that little
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 3: fire and asking himself, God, is there something else?
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life from our website, thisjungianlife.com.
• 1:37:58
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• 1:38:01
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• 1:38:10
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• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
• 1:38:15
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• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.