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Lindsay Clancy & Maternal Infanticide: An Archetypal Perspective · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: There is a maternal instinct that kicks in some vigilance, right?
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Like now I have to protect this dependent being and
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I have to look out for danger. And danger in
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: our modern lives can be a steep staircase. Hypervigilance is
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: when it tips into more obsessive, intrusive thoughts that feel disturbing.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: They're interrupting functioning. Like now they're causing more anxiety, And
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: that can set off a spiral of psychological hell, really,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: for women, where it's like this constant fight with their
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: minds that they're worried something's going to happen or they're
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: worried they're going to do something or someone else is
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: going to do something.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Welcome to This Jungian Life, conversations with Jungian analysts on
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: the unseen forces shaping our lives and what it means
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: to be truly human in today's complex world. I'm Lisa Marciano,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: The issue of maternal infanticide is really up in the
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: collective right now, with everyone paying attention to the trial
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: of Lindsay Clancy. The United States has has the highest
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: rate of maternal infanticide in the developed world. Today, we're
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: going to be talking about this issue from a variety
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: of perspectives, including an archetypal perspective. And we have with
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: us Brooke Laufer, PhD, who has written a really beautiful
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: book on this subject, Uncovering the Act of Maternal Infanticide
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: from a Psychological, Political, and Jungian Perspective. I would highly,
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: highly recommend this book. It's very readable and very, very
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: clear and deep and full of compassion. And Brooke is
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: an independent scholar, writer, and clinician with a doctorate in
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: clinical psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: has analytic training and a deep interest in motherhood, perinatal
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  Speaker 2: mood disorders, and infanticide.
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  Speaker 1: Dr.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Laufer treats women with postpartum illnesses and facilitates groups for
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: women who have experienced postpartum psychosis. She lectures on the
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  Speaker 2: dynamics of maternal filicide. She also serves as a forensic
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: evaluator and expert witness specializing in cases of infanticide and
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  Speaker 2: maternal filicide. So Brooke, welcome and thank you for exploring
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: this difficult but important topic with us.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. I'm a longtime listener, huge fan.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: And it's so nice to arrive here with you guys,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: even if the circumstances have been sort of horrific to
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: get me here.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: Well, thank you for coming. And maybe, you know, a
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  Speaker 3: place that I'm curious about, I'm sure listeners are and
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: can get us started, is how did you become interested
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: in what is clearly very difficult area to work in.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I'm here with a friend of the podcast, Aaron Balick,
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: and Aaron and I have been working together to put
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: on the first summit on depth psychology and AI, and
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: we're calling it Artificial Intelligence and the Psyche.
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: We thought it was about time that we had a
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: conversation out loud with lots of people applying the ideas
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: from depth psychology to what's going on in our individual, relational,
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: and social worlds with AI. We've invited some really incredible
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: people to join us for this conversation, including James Muldoon,
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: Glenn Slater, Todd Essig.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: And also Alessandra Lemma and Zach Stein and perhaps a
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: few more people that we're hoping will come that haven't
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: confirmed yet. And it's going to be held on October
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: 8th at 2 p.m. Eastern. It will be free and
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: open to the public and online. So you can click
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: on the link below to reserve your spot and we
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: hope you'll join us. Hope to see you there. Yeah.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So I'm a clinical psychologist. And then I became a
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: mother 16 years ago. And after I had my daughter,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I had a pretty harrowing postpartum experience. I had intrusive
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: voices telling me to harm her.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Wow.
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  Speaker 1: And it was so shocking and scary, disconcerting. It puts
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: you into this Even now, you know, the sort of
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: like nonverbal, like holy horror state. Luckily, I was seeing
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: a Jungian analyst at the time. I mean, lucky, unlucky.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, because she was like, let's talk about the voice.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: And I was like, I don't want to talk about
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: this voice. And she said, well, you can also call
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: this psychiatrist. And I called the psychiatrist who amazingly answered
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: his phone and is this wonderful person. And he, you know,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: both of those providers immediately helped me normalize that this
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: happens to women. And I was treated and luckily the
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: voice didn't last that long. You know, maybe within the
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: week it resolved for me.
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  Speaker 2: Wow. Oh my gosh. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: But then I was really blown away. Like this can
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  Speaker 1: happen to mothers. And I'm a psychologist and I didn't
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  Speaker 1: know that. And so I dove into the research. I
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: got more training. I actually went back to a grad
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: school here in Chicago, took a class on perinatal mental health,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: joined different organizations, got their certifications, and became a perinatal
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: mood and anxiety specialist. And I started seeing new moms.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, I had a lot of referrals from local OBGYNs.
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  Speaker 1: And I saw a lot of moms with depression, anxiety, OCD,
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  Speaker 1: intrusive voices, suicidality, etc. And then there was a woman
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  Speaker 1: from my hometown who ended the life of her son.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: And she went to prison. And I knew her. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: I grew up with her. She was in my brother's class.
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  Speaker 1: And so I started writing letters to her in prison.
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  Speaker 1: And I asked her what happened. And she was pretty
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: open with me. And so then I got even more
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  Speaker 1: training in postpartum psychosis, infanticide, filicide, the whole forensic piece.
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  Speaker 1: And I've been part of an organization called Postpartum Support International.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: And they have a legal justice branch to them that
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  Speaker 1: I became a part of. And I was mentored by
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: a woman, Susan Benjamin Feingold. And I started taking on
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: infanticide cases. First, it was pro bono and then low bono.
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  Speaker 1: And now, you know, I just get a ton of referrals.
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  Speaker 3: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: There's so many places I want to take this. But
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: one of the things that I learned reading your book
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: that I did not realize somehow is that there is
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: no DSM diagnosis code for postpartum psychosis. That's right. And,
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: you know, it's something, you know, I've been aware of it.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: I thought it was very much kind of part of
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: the psychiatric nomenclature, but it's not an official diagnosis. And
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: you really make the point that it makes it much
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: more difficult for these women to receive treatment or appropriate
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: treatment in the legal system because that's not an official diagnosis.
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  Speaker 2: I just find that so shocking. Because like you said,
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: this happens to women.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: This happens to women. I mean, it's about one to
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  Speaker 1: two in a thousand women who have postpartum psychosis. Although
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: I believe that's underreported because we don't have a way
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: really of identifying and classifying postpartum psychosis because it's not
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: a diagnosis. So there's no funding behind it. It's not
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: in curriculum, right? It's not insurance doesn't recognize it. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: without the greater medical care system recognizing it as a
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: formal diagnosis, it falls between the cracks in every institution,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: including the legal institution. So when I testify for women,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: I can't say postpartum psychosis. I will say bipolar with
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: psychotic features, major depressive disorder with psychotic features with peripartum onset.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: You know, you can code it. You can find a
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: way to do it. But there's no formal diagnosis. And
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're certainly working on it. I'm on a
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: task force to get it into the DSM. And actually,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: we're closer than ever. So it looks like right now
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: it will be entered within the mood disorder section of
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: the DSM. And the definition is limited with criterion that
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: is restrictive, but at least we can hopefully get it
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: in with the next rendition of the DSM.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: It's so amazing to me to hear this, that it
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  Speaker 3: happens to one or two women per thousand, which... multiplied
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: is quite a significant number of women, and follows a
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: long history of women's issues not being recognized. They're not
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: really legitimate. There's no name for this. It's interesting in
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  Speaker 3: and of itself, especially as a metaphor for what happens
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: after that, that it does fall between the cracks, as
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  Speaker 3: it seems to have done for Lindsay Clancy, who is
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: one of many.
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  Speaker 2: And we've, I mean, it's been documented going back thousands
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  Speaker 2: of years.
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  Speaker 3: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 3: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: You know, and I think the other thing about postpartum
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: psychosis is that, as I understand it, and I'd love
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: to hear your take on this, but, you know, it
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: has a kind of like different strands that can contribute
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: to it. So there's certainly a biological one. There's this
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: huge crash of hormones that have sustained the pregnancy right
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: after birth. It's very, you know, it's very to say,
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  Speaker 2: I remember personally just, you know, like the first six weeks,
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: just like anything would make me cry, you know, and,
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  Speaker 2: and You just, yeah, it's quite, you really dropped into
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: the soup after you've given birth. And a lot of
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  Speaker 2: that is hormonal. There is a biological reason for it.
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  Speaker 2: And there must be something also about the mother's psyche
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  Speaker 2: becoming much more vigilant in the postpartum period. I remember,
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: and I've told this story before, so apologies to listeners
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: if you've heard it before, but My mood postpartum, I
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: was actually one of the lucky ones. I kind of
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: had postpartum euphoria. I was like, oh my God, this
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: is great. But what I remember is that whenever I
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  Speaker 2: would frequently have, God, I can still feel it in
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: my body when I say this, I would have these intrusive,
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: grim images of her being hurt. So we had these
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: brick steps down from the front of our house at
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: the time. And every single time I walked down those
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  Speaker 2: steps holding her, I would have a very vivid, bloody,
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  Speaker 2: visceral image of me falling and her head getting cracked
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  Speaker 2: open on those steps. And it was frightening and absolutely
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: outside of my control. And again, it was very assertive.
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  Speaker 2: It asserted itself. And I remember that happening to me
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  Speaker 2: and going, oh, because I could understand how, first of all,
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  Speaker 2: if I were in a different place, Those images might
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  Speaker 2: have been very destabilizing for me if I didn't have good,
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: you know, psychosocial support or, you know, there were other
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: challenges in my life. And then I could see how
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: they could take on a life of their own and
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: even sort of transmogrify into an image of me hurting
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: her on purpose. Because that is one of the forms
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: that postpartum depression can take, right, is the mother has
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: intrusive images of harming the baby. So I had an
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: intrusive image of her being harmed accidentally. But, you know,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: you tip the scale just a little bit and it
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: becomes something darker. And then as you talk about, it's
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: not ego dystonic. It's not like, oh, no, I don't
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: want that to happen. It becomes something that you identify with.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: And that has, you know, a much kind of darker
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: potential trajectory. But what I thought was interesting was that
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: it I could see how it's adaptive, right? Like I'm
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: telling you, every time I went down those stairs, I
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: was like holding onto the rail, being really careful. So
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: maybe it's something, I mean, I wonder if there isn't
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: going back to the point I was making that there's
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: sort of a biopsychosocial etiology to postpartum psychosis. Maybe, you know,
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: it's like the mechanism that's there is maybe a kind
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: of biological mechanism to make us more vigilant, to be protective,
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: but maybe something goes slightly haywire in some number of
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: cases and it doubles back on itself in this way.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: But of course, you know, there's also always these complex
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: psychosocial things going on in these cases where there's often
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: domestic violence or a lack of adequate support or prior
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: histories of trauma that feed into this.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Right. I think what you're talking about a little bit
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: is the difference between vigilance and hypervigilance, right? That there
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: is a maternal instinct that kicks in some vigilance, right?
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Like now I have to protect this dependent being and
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: I have to look out for danger and danger in
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: our modern lives can be a steep staircase. The hypervigilance
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: is when it tips into more obsessive, intrusive, thoughts that
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: feel you know disturbing they're interrupting functioning like now they're
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: causing more anxiety and that can set off a spiral
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: of you know psychological hell really for women where it's
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: like this constant fight with their minds that they're worried
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: something's going to happen or they're worried they're going to
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: do something or someone else is going to do something
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: So the vulnerability is there because of the progesterone, the
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: estrogen is dropping, especially for women who don't breastfeed. I mean,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: nursing can help mitigate some of the hormone drop. But
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: then you also get the hormone drop with lactation cessation
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: when you stop breastfeeding, when women go back to work,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: which is what happened to Lindsay Clancy. I mean, I
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: often see that it's at that transition time of stopping breastfeeding,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: trying to get this baby to take a bottle. That's
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: notoriously difficult to do. Going back to work, separating from
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: the baby, and that can really set off a mood
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: disorder from the hormones, but also from the anxiety and
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: the separation. And because maybe this vigilance or hypervigilance had
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: set in, so you don't want to be separated from baby.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: It still makes me upset. I've had clients that experienced
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: exactly that. That at the three-month mark of having to
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: go back to work sets off, oh my goodness, so
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: many things.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: And so many ambivalences of, I have to work. It's
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: my responsibility. But to stop breastfeeding and introduce a bottle
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: and be separated, this goes against our actual history as hominids.
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: This is an unnatural thing to do from Mother Nature's perspective.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: And it is heartbreaking to have had just a couple
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: of people, but a terrible heartbreak, and then have that
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: new mother have to add in an hour of therapy
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: to her already taxing life. Right. Because it can plummet
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: people into a terrible... anguished and depressed state. The importance
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: of support for mothers with the birth rate falling pretty
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: dramatically in this country and in other, quote, developed, unquote, nations.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: The lack of support is now kind of universal. It's
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: the world we live in. Have to go back to work.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: I do see infanticide as... a reproach on the way
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: the Western world tends to their mothers, that it is
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: a symptom and a sign and a recurring nightmare, right,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: that will just keep happening until we really make it
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: conscious and integrate what a mother is and what she
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: needs in our world. And it's not being forced back
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: to work at three months, right?
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: I mean.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: That's not right. I think there is something, yeah, that
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: goes against a primal relationship. Right.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, we know scientifically that the mother's gaze into
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: her infant's eyes actually spurs brain development. We have physiological
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: evidence for what the bond with the mother can do.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: And how important bonding and a secure attachment is all
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: the way through toddlerhood for two, two and a half,
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: three years. And we don't always provide it for many, many,
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: many a mother. So it's not a direct form of infanticide,
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: but it is a cultural numbness or lack of receptivity
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: to what a baby really does need and a quality
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: of abandonment that is a cultural norm.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: You know, Brooke, when I've looked at the Lindsay Clancy stuff,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: it's so upsetting that I just, I haven't really immersed
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: myself in it. And then here you go and you
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: sit with these women, you visit them in prisons, you
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: testify for them, you work with them clinically. You know,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: I find myself really wanting to know what that experience
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: is like. I mean, in some sense, you are dropping
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: into some of the darkest layers of shadow that are
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: out there. And What is that like and how do
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: you deal with it and how has it changed you?
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: And what do these women say? Yeah. Yeah.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, my experience generally has been that the women
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: I visit in prison who've ended the lives of their
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: children are very powerful women who have gone through a transformation.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: It depends on where I catch them in their process.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Some women who've been in prison for a long time,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: and maybe I'm working on an appeal with their lawyer
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: or a post-conviction, have gone through a lot of healing
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: and recovery and religious practice and acceptance and understanding of
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: what has happened. Some of the women who it's more
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: recent are like fragile, wounded birds who are still very
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: much wanting to die and who are sort of a
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: shell of their former selves and not even necessarily participating
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: well in their defense process, right? I've talked to women,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: like one of the things I do is I talk
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: to women, when you are out of here, when you're
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: discharged from prison, what do you want? What is your plan?
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: And some women will say, I want to die immediately.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Which is why the psychiatric commitment as an option for
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: women who've committed infanticide, which is what is the automatic
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: writing in countries like the UK, is really more humane.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Because there can be treatment that is there for women
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: instead of in prison, which is really literally like a
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: holding cell. Until a woman with enough time has done
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: her own transformation or is just holding her until she
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: can finally end her life. So sitting with women, that's
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: all to say, sitting with women can be, it's a
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: wide variety of experience. But it's so, I mean, I
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: love my job. It's so life-giving to me.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, I really.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: love these women. They've gone through something. And my job
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: is to come in there and find out what happened
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: along their path that got them to that moment.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Because no one just wakes up and that's what they're
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: going to do that day is kill their child.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: Can you say more about women having been high achieving
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: and what their stories are? What have they gone through?
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: And and what might have been done or understood along
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: the way that could have prevented them having to end
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: the life of a baby. Yeah.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: So, I mean, I'm thinking a couple of things. First
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: of all, when you say high achieving, so women who've
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: been educated or women who are middle or upper class, right?
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: So women who have the means to maybe have had
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: some intervention or there was maybe even providers in her life.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of it goes back to what
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier with postpartum psychosis not being
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: in the DSM. So a lot of providers aren't specifically
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: educated in knowing how to catch it. And it can't
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: just be, are you having thoughts of killing yourself or
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: killing your child? Because most women will say no. For
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: various reasons, for psychotic reasons or for protective reasons, right?
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: They don't want their kids taken from them. The psychotic
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: voice doesn't want them sharing it. Or they also have
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of shame for even having those thoughts and feelings.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: So a good provider really needs to see the signs
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: that there's internal stimuli going on, that there's mania often,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: that there's adrenaline and cortisol going through a woman, right?
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Like her eyes are different. Her family is telling her
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: that she's been acting different. She's been paranoid. She's been
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: obsessive about bizarre behaviors or behaviors like double checking the
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: locks or, you know, washing her hands or having certain
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: rituals with the baby. Like those things need to be
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: flagged in such a larger way.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: You know, you make this point that like postpartum psychosis
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: looks different than the psychosis that we might see associated with, say, schizophrenia,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: because it's, as I understand it, it's kind of, it
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: kind of comes and goes. So the woman may be
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: very coherent and maybe have insight about even what's happening
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: to her, but then the voice asserts itself two hours
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: later and she's in some kind of different state. So
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: family members or providers who aren't familiar with this may think, Well, she's,
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: you know, she's perfectly lucid, you know, a lot of
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: the time. So therefore, you know, so that was, that
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: seemed like an important point.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: I think that's the waxing and waning of the psychosis
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: in postpartum psychosis is essential for people to understand because
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: you can have a mom who's packing lunches, doing baths,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: setting up doctor's appointments while harboring this delusion that their
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: lives have to end because we have to get to
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: heaven or whatever it is. The decompensation can happen really fast.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: The other signature of postpartum psychosis is the sense of
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: losing control of one's body, that there's an external influence
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: on a person and they feel compelled to follow through
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: on acts. I worked with a mom who became psychotic
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: very quickly after she stopped breastfeeding. And she even lived
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: with her father and her sister. So adults, other adults
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: in the house who just didn't know anything about psychosis
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: or postpartum psychosis. And suddenly she was talking about drones
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: who were following her or the TV was listening in
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: on her. She was talking a lot about religion. She
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: was worried about Satan. She was worried about hell. And
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: they thought mostly she's okay. She would just make these
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: comments once in a while. Or like the father said,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: she would like look off into the distance. And, you know,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: there's a baby around, like everything's a little chaotic. They're
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: just not clocking it. And within, you know, I mean,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: she really decompensated quickly. It was just overnight where she
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: believed she and her daughter had to go to heaven.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: And often there's a lot of sacrificing. There's a lot
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: of stories of baptism. Almost every story of infanticide that
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: I've encountered is altruistic, right? So the theme is that
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: the mother is saving the child from some greater harm.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: that the world is a dangerous place or the devil
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: is coming in this case to eat the child. And
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: there's a moral consistency that the mother is experiencing within
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: her delusion. This is the right thing to do. This
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: is the best thing to do. This is aligned with
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: my values as a good person and a good mother.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: And they're not in line, of course, with legal consequences
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: and the legal order of things. That we live by.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: And then often, unfortunately, in these cases, the suicides fail.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: So we have an infanticide. She's saved the child. Now
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: she's going to save herself. And that turns out it's
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: much harder to do.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Because these aren't sophisticated plans. They're really impulsive plans and
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: they don't work.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: That's a lot to take in. Yeah, it is.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: The sadness of it. And, you know, of course, terribly delusional. Nonetheless,
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: the belief that this is the right thing to do,
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: that it's done out of love, is just heartbreaking. And
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: that it is hard for people to really notice because
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: the person may go in and out. And people can
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: discount some of the things that the mother says because
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: other times she seems fine.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: You know, this feels like a good place to take
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: a turn toward the archetypal with this notion that there's
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: a kind of moral consistency, that the mother is acting
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: out of altruism or even out of love. Because, you know,
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: and we've talked about this before on the podcast, that
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: one of the truths of the mother archetype, the great mother. archetype,
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: is that she is both the giver of life and
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: she who takes life away. And of course, in the
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: mythologies of many other cultures, that's made explicit. One of
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: the best examples is the Indian goddess Kali. who is
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: worshipped as the great mother who brings life and succor
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: and nourishment. But she's very, very fearsome and deadly. And,
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: you know, she gives birth to her children and then
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: sometimes she eats them. And this is the nature, of course,
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: of nature. There's a great quote that you give in
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: the book that her commitment to the continuation of life
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: is central. but the commitment to any specific life is non-existent.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: That's the nature of nature. There's a commitment to life,
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: but not a specific life. And of course, this maps
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: on to anthropological notions of the deaf mother, because in
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: other mammalian species and also in kind of indigenous cultures,
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: you know, sometimes a mother has to make a choice.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: She can either let all of her children die where
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: she can put all of her, if resources are scarce,
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: you might have to make a really difficult decision. I'm
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: going to, this is the strongest child. I'm going to
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: nurse this child and I'm going to let the other
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: one die because I don't have enough milk to nurse
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: both or whatever it is. And that this is, again,
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: you know, I believe, and you can correct me if
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: I'm wrong, but something that we see in the animal
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: kingdom as well. So it's, It is part, in a
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: deep way, it's kind of part of the DNA of
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: the mother archetype.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, even some, I
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: think it's the coyotes who, if they're in a dangerous
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: area or resources are low, they may eat, they may
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: consume the newborn as soon as it's born, right? Because
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: the commitment, again, is to the whole species or the
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: whole family, maybe the litter. And this last newborn, this
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: one that maybe is going to have the fewest resources
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: or maybe it was born sickly or maybe, you know,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: this was the runt, that one has to go because
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: otherwise it'll be a burden to the rest of the
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: family and their survival. And certainly there are, I mean,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: I will talk about evolutionary biology in the courtroom sometimes
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: because there are women who very poor women who've had
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: extreme trauma in their lives, who become teenage moms and
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: didn't maybe realize they were pregnant and delivered a baby,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: you know, in the bathroom at their home and had
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: no idea what was happening and instinctually ended the life
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: of that newborn as soon as it arrived. and then
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: disposed of it. It's a very primal act, and we
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: call it neonaticide, and it can have a sentence of life.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: But it's actually something that she, you know, that a
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: 14-year-old girl, like, knows how to do somehow.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah. That actually has a lot of roots in indigenous
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: cultures and in our pasts, that a baby... that was
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: born at the wrong time, or one story is about
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: a woman whose husband died while she was pregnant, and
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: she remarried very quickly, as was the custom, and killed
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: the baby when it was born because her second husband
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: was not the father of the child, and she knew
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: that he would not want this baby. So I think we...
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: today often really sort of romanticize motherhood and parenthood, smiling faces,
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: beautiful babies. You have to buy all the right stuff
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: for the baby. And we don't like to think about that.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: But I'm also lifting up the difference between kind of
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: an instinctual thing to do of the neonatic side. Is
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: that the right word?
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: And the kind of psychotic state that a mother can
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: have where you don't know the difference. It's not a decision.
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: It's born of raw emotion or delusion versus the historical
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: killing of babies, which is monumental, but was made deliberately,
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: you know, from a, quote, rational, unquote, place. not enough
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: resources to go around, boys are preferred to girls, a
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: baby that doesn't look really healthy or has a deformity, illegitimacy,
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: all of those things have been part of human culture
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: for millennia.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: But, you know, Deb, you say that those decisions were
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: rational and maybe some of them were, but I think
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: the truth is they were also instinctive. Some of them,
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: in any case, you know, the impulse comes from an instinct,
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: which of course is an aspect of the archetype. So
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: sometimes paradoxically, and this is going to be a really
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: controversial thing to say, but But on the level of
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: kind of universal human experience in the archetype, sometimes to
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: be a good mother is to kill your child. And
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: that's what comes through with postpartum psychosis, I think, as
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: we're talking about it. Because that's how it's experienced. It's
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: almost like the archetype possesses these women. And then they're
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: living in this kind of archetypal reality where to be
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: a good mother, I have to kill my child. Mm-hmm.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: That's an interesting question. How does that fit for what
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: you experienced, Brooke, that the so-called rational decisions of the
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: mother that simply doesn't have the resources to nurse two
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: children would decide to usually let go of the younger one?
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: And by the way, it's usually mothers, no matter what
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: the circumstances or cultural context is, Who kill their infants. Right.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: We know fathers kill more out of revenge and shame
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: and mothers kill out of preservation. I think that it's both.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: It's instinctual and it can be interpreted rational, but it's
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: not rational as in a logical line of thinking is happening.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: It's rational in that, yeah, we understand logically that There
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: weren't resources and so that, but the action, I do
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: see it as archetypal possession. I do see a vulnerability
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: that leaves a window for the death mother archetype to
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: come in. And the death mother is a part of
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: the great mother, right? It's part of the cycle of life.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: And many times it's horrific. And it does seem unnecessary, right?
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Like there could have been interventions. Something could have happened
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: that stopped Lindsay Clancy from ending three little lives. But
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: we can also now interpret it archetypally, right? That this
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: had to come in, that the death mother, nothing was
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: going to stop her. And it's trying to bring something
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: to consciousness for the greater collective. Which it does seem
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: because women are gathering outside the courthouse, right? Like the
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: feminine is responding in a way that I haven't seen
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: in other cases. I mean, part of this is because
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: of the media. But there's something about women being able
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: to understand this tension and this paradox that a good
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: mother can be a killer.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm interested in what Lisa said about preservation. that
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: the death mother arrives in the guise, and I'm asking
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: if this is true, arrives in the guise of a
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: greater good, that this baby will go to heaven, will
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: be in a better place. It's an act of, you know,
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: so-called mercy or a life beyond the physical. How often
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: does that play in, that the death mother comes alive clothed,
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: as it were, in the guise of a guardian of
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: a greater, better life.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. It's the death mother,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: but it's also the great mother.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: So the message is, this is how we survive. And
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: often there's this idea that the mother and children will
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: still be together, right, if we all die together. So
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: this is the way we survive together. But really, in
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: our objective material reality, they've died.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm wondering... if we could ask you to
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: just take a few minutes and give us your take
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: on the Lindsay Clancy case. Like we were talking about,
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: you were saying about how, you know, that there's some
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: vulnerability and then this archetypal possession comes in And then
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: what is getting asked to be integrated in the collective?
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Maybe just, you know, like I said, I haven't been
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: paying that much attention to it because it's just kind
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: of too awful. But maybe we can ask you to
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: do that.
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Well, the Lindsay Clancy case brings up something really interesting
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: the way I am looking at it, because she was such,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: by all accounts, a very good mother.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: She was a mother who took notes, who cared a
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: lot about the food and the behaviors and her children's
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: weight and their activities. And she apparently made up songs
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: to sing them. I mean, her whole identity became infused
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: with being a good mother. And I do think something
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: that happens in our contemporary society is what I see
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: as the too good mother, right? Like we have these
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: standards for a good mother that are actually too good.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: They're a mother on steroids. It's the hyper-optimization of the
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: child's life. The helicopter parenting and positive parenting has sort
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: of helped usher this in. But it's really still about
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: the Virgin Mary as our real icon of motherhood, right?
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: The sacrifice and Right. That's the archetypal underpinning of that phenomenon.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: I believe it is. Even in a really diversely religious
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: country like ours, she still is the mother archetype.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: But she's only one-sided, right? She's just good. She doesn't
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: have self, a sexuality, a flaw. She is the gaze.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: She is the martyr. And so when we are trying
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: to become the good mother in today's society, we really
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: fall in, we get hijacked by this too-good-mother complex. So
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: I do see that at play. That doesn't always happen
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: with postpartum psychosis and infanticide, but I do see that
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: at play in Lindsay's case. And when we try to
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: be so good and when we're identified as good, right,
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: then we're putting the bad, the unwanted, into the shadow, right?
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Like feelings of, I hate being a mother. Kids disgust me.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: Like I need a break. Like I've changed my mind.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Like all these taboo feelings that mothers really should be
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: allowed to have, right? Like when I'm treating moms in
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: my office, I will try to model that for them. Like,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: you know, kids are horrible. Like, God, whoever decided someone should.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: Have a kid, right?
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Because We need to have the full range of our
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: emotions in motherhood. I wish someone had done that for
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: Lindsay Clancy. So she's busy being the too good mother
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: and she's nervously fretting over food and weight and bottle
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: and she's going through hormone changes and she's thinking about
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: going back to work and she's increasingly losing sleep. Insomnia
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: was a huge trigger in this case. And she starts
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: to become manic. You know, it's possible she has an
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: underlining bipolar disorder. Obviously, I'm not treating her. I've never
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: assessed her. I have no idea. But that's certainly someone
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: has diagnosed her with bipolar disorder. And then she's on
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: a spiral. Like meds are just making it worse. Different meds,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: different providers. There's this fix, fix, fix mentality. And then interestingly,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: she hears a male voice, right? This like authoritarian, insistent
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: voice that this is what she has to do. So
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: my sense is she went from mania into psychosis pretty quickly.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: She was harboring the taboo voice to end her children's lives.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: And when she had the chance, she did. And it was...
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: There's some... Reporting that she had said, she was saying
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: to them, go to God, go to God, which tells
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: me it was, again, this altruistic, you know, that she
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: was saving them, that she was saving them from whatever
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: she believed was catastrophic if she hadn't done it. Apparently
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: the one person she really confided in was the chaplain
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: at the hospital about the voice and about saving the children.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: Which I find interesting, right? Like on some level, she
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: was probably really reaching for religion. This was a spiritual experience.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: And that was a language that she could find to
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: discuss it. I think she's still suicidal. You know, she's
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: very frail.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: And so when you're talking about, obviously, there's been intense
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: interest in this case and women are gathering at the
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: courthouse and a lot of discourse on social media, what
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: do you think we're being asked to integrate? What do
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: you think, you know, if this is happening, you know,
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: in a sort of the collective is bringing something forward
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: to be acknowledged and integrated, what is that?
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: I think it is about how hard it is to
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: be The Virgin Mary, right? The too good mother. And
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: there's women who are seeing that that are saying this.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: I feel for her. That was this is too hard.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: And mothers are not being taken care of well enough
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: if this is what you expect of us.
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: So women's mental health, the idea that a mother is
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: not all good all the time, that mothers need more care.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: that mothers should be allowed a greater spectrum of experience
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: and emotions, I believe that's what's being called to be integrated.
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: And I will build on that a little bit because
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: of some personal experience and the historical that mothers need support.
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: You know, I would love to shout it from the rooftops.
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: that they need emotional as well as material supports to
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: raise a child. And it's sort of easier to understand
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: if a woman is very, very poor and simply doesn't
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: have the resources to feed a child. We go, oh, okay,
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: at least I can kind of wrap my mind around that.
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: But when it becomes emotional, psychological, somehow it veers into
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: a realm that we don't get. I know my mother
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: was hospitalized after the birth of my younger brother for
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: postpartum depression. Wow. And then that took care of it,
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: but it did not because there was underlying bipolar disorder. Right.
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: That sort of was and wasn't understood, you know, kind of.
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: et cetera. But, you know, my recollection, I was eight,
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: eight and a half, almost nine. But, you know, that
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: was also a time when we had a very unhappy home.
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: And I know my mother didn't feel understood or supported emotionally.
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: And so there is that aspect, even in a, quote,
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: good home, unquote, where everything looked fine. You know, we
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: certainly had enough material resources. We were very fortunate that way.
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: But the mental health aspect of it was not really recognized.
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: It was kind of, well, that's, you know, that's oh
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: too bad, but she's home now, everything is okay. And
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: certainly there was no infanticide, but another woman took birth
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: a huge amount of responsibility for caring on a daily
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: basis for my brother. And it was an ongoing issue.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: I think with this focus on the good mother, the
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: expectation of the good mother, and that motherhood is, you know,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: sort of the pinnacle of our femininity. It's what every
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: woman is meant to do. We all have these capabilities naturally,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: what gets missed is the possibility that it wouldn't be
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: all shining and rosy and perfect, right? If you lay
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: that veneer over women that were meant to be good
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: mother's that it will come to us naturally then we
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: miss the fact that it might not and that can
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: be really yeah detrimental for your family for your brother
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: for your mom.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: And also You know, from a historical point of view,
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: from way back thousands of years ago, we always raised
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: our children in community. Right. There were always other women,
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: other people around, and certainly the mortality rate was high.
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: But I'm thinking about the together and communal aspect versus
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: the nuclear family. in a perfectly nice home, often away
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: from any kind of immediate family. People work, people do
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: all kinds of things. But I know my mother was
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: expected to figure it out herself. She was the mother,
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: and there were no neighbors or family members right close
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: by living there and taking turns sharing the cooking. gossiping,
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: chatting about things. That is a human need for company,
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: for support, versus this specially, wonderfully good mother can do
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: it all every day, superlatively, by herself. It just doesn't
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: comport with human experience. You know, we don't ask zebras
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: to behave like horses. But we're asking mothers to do
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: something that is just not realistic.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: So I just want to maybe just build that out further.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: And Deb, you're making the very good point that mothers
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: need emotional support. But I wonder, too, if our culture
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: needs or would benefit from a more archetypal, symbolic perspective
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: and that that would bring in the possibility of that
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: we could relate to these huge emotions that are bigger
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: than us and these huge experiences. I mean, the experience
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: of mothering is an archetypal experience. And that symbolic perspective
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: would give us the permission to have both aspects of
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: the experience, both the loving, beatific gaze at our infant
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: that we see in so many paintings of the Virgin
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: and Child, But also some of the darker feelings, too.
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: In other words, there's a way that the symbol can
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: canalize psychic energy, can give us a way, can give
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: us a kind of universal handle on these experiences, can
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: give us a way to think about them and talk
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: about them and imagine them. That makes them more bearable.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: And I wanted to ask you specifically, Brooke, I mean,
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: you shared very generously that you had, you know, briefly
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: your own experience with this. And I'm wondering, I mean,
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: you did have some supports, you had some providers. What
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: did having a union perspective at that time do for
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: you in that case?
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: That's such a good question. I, at the time.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: Didn't want to analyze, right, the meaning or the symbol
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: of my, that voice that I heard. I wanted it eradicated.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: But I do believe, and actually I've written a study
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: on this, that there is value in analyzing the symbolic
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: content of psychosis, in postpartum psychosis, but also in intrusive voices,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: in OCD, in intrusive thoughts.
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: Because, I.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Mean, Jung talked about this, but other, you know, analysts
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: have talked about the value of psychosis, that it's not
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: just a neurochemical, right, that there is meaning in even
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: in the religiosity or the persecution. I mean, it's showing
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: us our inner conflicts. Jung had this idea that it
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: was compensatory. It was ushering in some sort of transformation.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: It was a psyche's attempt to heal itself. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: So I.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: I have since certainly gone back and analyzed that voice
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: that I had and why I would have needed that
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: at that time and what it was trying to bring in.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: I do think there's something about the animus for new
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: moms that comes as a male directive that is trying
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: to take control of something where she feels so out
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: of control. I think that the symbol I eventually was
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: led to that has been so healing and I use
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: in my work is the Black Madonna, because she has
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: both the maternal and the ferocity, right? If we need
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: a new mother archetype that's not the virgin mother, I
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: want one as compassionate, but who can like hold a
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: sword as well, right? Who has some scars, who can
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: fight a little bit. So I eventually, this is a
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: long answer to that question, but it was led to
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: the symbol of the Black Madonna, which I really find
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: healing for me and try to share with all women.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it seems to me too that, you know,
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: that that ferocity is so important in motherhood. You know,
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: that was something in my experience working with women in
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: my own experience that There is a ferocity that comes
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: online when you become a mother and it can be frightening,
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: especially if it's kind of turned the wrong direction. It
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: can be surprising. But, you know, if you've always been
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: a sort of, you know, sweet, accommodating thing as a maiden,
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: once you become a mother, you can't, that no longer
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: fits and you have to grow into your ferociousness because
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: you really may need that at some point to protect
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: your child. So, you know, it strikes me as that's
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: another potential kind of archetypal content that gets constellated in
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: the experience of becoming a mother. I wonder if we
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: could talk, just continuing on the sort of archetypal exploration,
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: if we could talk a little bit about Medea.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Medea often gets misinterpreted as being vengeful.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: Would you just tell a story for listeners that may not?
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: Sure. Yes. So Medea was a sorceress and was put
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: under a spell, I believe by Hera, who cast most
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: of these spells, to fall in love with Jason. And
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: she was. They were deeply in love. Jason wanted to
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: achieve greatness, and he had the Argonaut, and so she
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: used all of her powers to help him in his battles.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: And that included... leaving and killing off some of her
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: own family members.
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: She helps him get the fleece, the golden fleece, and
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: then they're fleeing. And what she does is she kills
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: her brother and I think like chops him up.
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: So that their pursuers have to stop and collect his
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: body in order to give it a proper burial. And
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: that slows them down enough that Jason and Medea can
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: get away. That's, yeah. Yeah.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and she had no qualms with that, right? I mean,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: here she goes supporting Jason and they arrive in Corinth
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: and she has two of his children. And when the
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: youngest one, I think, is about two, he finds his
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: new wife, a Corinthian princess, and is leaving Medea high
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: and dry. And of course, at that time, a woman
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: who's left has no status. She has no title. She
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: has no identity. She has no home.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: She can't go back to where she came from because
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: of what she did.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: She's destroyed her family.
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: She burned that bridge.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: She burned that bridge. And so she's left, you know,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: with nothing. She's left in that sort of psychologically almost
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: like a depersonal and dissociated state, right? It's like very,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: it's liminal.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: And.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: doesn't know what's to happen with the children. Like if
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: she gets to have the children, the children would stay there.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: There's different versions of the story. And her way out,
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: and you can see this in some of the reproductions
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: of Medea, where she truly becomes possessed. It's an archetypal possession.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: And the death mother comes in and there are these
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: moments where in some of the speeches she gives, she's
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: bringing herself to this. Like, you know, no one will
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: know this pain. This is mine and I have to
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: take this with me and I'm transcending all of this
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: with this fury that I have. And she takes the
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: dagger and ends the lives of her children. It's the
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: way to save them from either being exiled with her
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: or being separated from her. It's a way of bringing
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: home the madness of what has happened in her life.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: Can I just read her speech? Yes, I love it.
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: This is Euripides, and you include it in your book.
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: On me, I groan at what a deed I must
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: do next. I shall kill my children. There is no
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: one who can rescue them. When I have utterly confounded
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: the whole house of Jason, I shall leave the land
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: in flight from the murder of my own dear sons,
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: having committed a most unholy deed. The laughter of one's
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: enemies is unendurable, my friends. Let that be as it will.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: What do I gain by living? I have no fatherland,
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: no house, no refuge from calamity. Let no one think
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: of me as weak and submissive. But as a woman
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: of a very different kind, dangerous to my enemies and
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: good to my friends, to such a life, glory belongs.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: So she is driven to an extreme.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: You know, I wonder if that might be the common
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: thread for all kinds of infanticide, whether it is from
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: within us And that speech is so moving, the distress
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: and the shock, the abandonment. And the same with Lindsay
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: Clancy of different circumstances, not so obvious from an external
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: world point of view, but that the inner experience is
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: that intense. I cannot endure this. And then, you know,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: outer world poverty and extremes of people in the past
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: who simply could not support another child. And the example
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: that when I first read about it has stayed with
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: me ever since is the orphanage in Florence, Italy, that
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: was created by a wealthy merchant out of compassion for orphans.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: And It opened its doors in something like 1468, and
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: it was designed to harbor 50 orphans. And five years later,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: there were 400 or something like that orphans to care for.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: And of course, the mortality rate was sky high. But
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: imagine how, you know, all this history... Up until now,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: of all of the pressures that lead a mother to say,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: I can't do this.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for whatever reason.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: For whatever reason, there isn't enough in the way of support,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: whether it's material resources like food or understanding, as with Lindsay. Yeah.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: But Medea has a very interesting ending, a surprising one. Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: And I think that that's kind of important for the discussion, too.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: Could you talk a little bit about that? Yeah.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: At the last minute, the golden chariot is sent by
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: the god Helios, right? The sun god. And she's swept
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: off into the heavens, into the world of the gods
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: and goddesses. So she's saved so that the collective, right,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: the unconscious, so she can remain an archetype, in my understanding.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: She lives eternally as Medea. She's not punished. She's saved,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: which is a real desec machina, right, in a story
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: like this, but also has that eerie resemblance to what
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: I was saying earlier, that women... often fail at their
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: own suicide, and they are saved after infanticide, and they
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: do live on. And they are then, like Medea, the
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: holders of this tension.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You make this point about, you know, Medea kind
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: of becoming this deus ex machina, you know, and you
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: say something in the book that I thought was so interesting.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: It's like an unsolvable problem gets solved. And if you're
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: a if you're a teenager and you've become pregnant and
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: you have no idea what's going on and you can't
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: tell your mother, you know, you don't have adequate social
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: supports to be able to handle this and you give
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: birth in the bathroom at your prom, then simply stuff,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's horrible, but simply stuffing the child in
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: the garbage, that becomes an unthinkable solution to an unthinkable problem.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: But there you go. In a sense, you've solved the problem. So,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: you know, Medea was in this really tight spot. And
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: what do you do in that spot? You do the unthinkable.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: She does the unthinkable. There's a violation to her, to
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: her dignity. And it puts her into the possessed or
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: the psychotic state, right? That something, is wrong. And I
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: do see that, and here she had been, even in
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: the speech, I've been submissive, I've been good, right? She's
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: been the good, supportive wife. And I do see that
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: reflected in Lindsay Clancy's case, that she's been so good,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: but this indictment of her motherhood has come with these symptoms,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: with the insomnia, the worry, the kids aren't doing okay,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: I can't help them. She has writings about this in
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: her diary. I'm failing them. I'm not the mom that
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: I want to be. And it's intolerable.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: Do we know if, so that was her internal state.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: Do we know if there was any external trigger? Was
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: there any external circumstance that helped tip over the balance
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: or was it purely an internal experience? Do we know?
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: Well, I can interpret it. I mean, it hasn't been,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: of course, we don't really know, but she was weaning
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: and trying to get her youngest to take the bottle
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: and she was going back to work. So my sense
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: is that was a trigger for hormonal disruption and then
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: grief separation.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: What resources could you recommend for women who might be
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: struggling with postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis? What would you
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: want women to know, Brooke?
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: I am.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: An advocate for Postpartum Support International. They're an incredible group
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: that have truly endless resources for women. At any point,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: you can get on their maternal, like, warm hotline. You
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: can talk for free to a consultant. If you're a provider,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: you can get advice from consultants at Postpartum Support International.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: There's groups that are free every day of the week
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: for depression, anxiety. I do the surviving psychosis. All sorts
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: of different groups, you know, perinatal loss, miscarriage, etc. And
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: we do a lot of trainings of new providers. So
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: I've been training providers to be able to identify and
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: treat postpartum psychosis. They're just so... accessible and warm and expansive.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: It's just the best organization. So Postpartum Support International is
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: number one. And then on their website, they have a directory.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: So any state or city you're in, you can find
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: local providers who have had this training or who have
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: experience with perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. So I'm always
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: referring people to them or providers on their list.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: And we'll put that link in our show notes.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: You know, I think as we circle around all this
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: and the death mother as an archetype continues to arise
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: in ways that we don't recognize as in postpartum psychosis,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: how else does this death mother as an archetypal expression
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: arise in ways that we may not be all that
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: aware of?
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the death mother archetype is around us
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: and alive all the time. I mean, sometimes in much
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: less horrifying ways. Sometimes she's there and gets mitigated like
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: an unwanted pregnancy, right? Like there's the maternal instinct saying, no,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not doing this. In a way, that's the most
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: preventative way move that the death mother could make, right?
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: So the pregnancy ends before life really even begins. And that,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: in a way, protects that, I mean, if you believe,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: you know, in that soul from having to come into
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: a world that might have been even more deadly. So
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: I think abortion, women are able to access the death
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: mother archetype, that instinct, they're pretty well if sort of
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: location and religion allows for that access, right? Otherwise, adoption,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: having a child and giving it up for adoption, it's
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: another way of, it is destructive towards the maternal-child relationship.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: but in a way it saves the child from maybe
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: another form of destruction that could be worse, right? Like again,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: low resources or abuse or being unwanted, being uncared for
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: or wrong time, wrong place, right? A mother who's not
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: meant to mother at that time. So there's adoption. There's
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: also the safe haven laws that are so underused apparently.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: So there's these Moses baskets or places where you can
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: drop off a newborn, such as a fire station or
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: certain schools or hospitals with no questions asked, right? But
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: they're really under, there may not be advertisers. Mostly they're
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: run by religious organizations and they don't get as much
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: use as you might think they get. So there are
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: babies that may occasionally be dropped off and then they
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: are put up for adoption, like I said, with no
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: legal consequences. That's another way that the deaf mother comes
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: in and, you know, the mother is relinquishing her own child,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: but the child ideally remains safe.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, so it's almost like this way that
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: the culture has responded to the existence of the deaf
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: mother to try to kind of mitigate the outcome.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. And I think that was the case
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: with the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence, is that it was,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: you know, sort of, you could just drop your baby off.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: And many, many, many people did through the years.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And churches have traditionally been places where babies were left,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: you know, and these times, hundreds of years ago, churches
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: had alcoves in the walls with a basket hanging down.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: And there was an opening in the side of the
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 3: basket where you could leave the baby, turn the basket around.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: And in the morning, there was an opening inside the
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: church and they would check to see if any babies
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: had been anonymously left. So it's been with us forever.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: This death mother has been with us forever and ever
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: with babies and young children for so many reasons. And
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: it's important that we face the ubiquity and reality of
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: the death mother. If we don't manage to integrate this,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: we have no real hope of changing external world circumstances. Right.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: And we'll keep seeing these horrific headlines and watching families
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: desecrated by these acts, right? I mean, even the churches
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: and the alcoves and the ways we understood infanticide historically
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: were more, it was more integrated in a way at
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: that time than it is now.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: Because it was acknowledged because the church as an institution
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: was there to receive these children. It was like on
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: a cultural level. We were saying this thing can happen
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: and this isn't all on the individual mother. You can
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: surrender your child to the archetypal mother. the church.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: Exactly. The mother church will receive your baby.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: Versus the, you know, the teenager with the unperceived pregnancy
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: who just gives birth and it's a shock and she
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: doesn't know what to do and she just kind of
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: stuffs it and, you know, tries to flush down the
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: toilet or whatever because she literally doesn't even know what's
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: happening to her, you know, where it's just all, it's
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: just all that her psyche has to contain that experience
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: rather than there being a an institution that can hold
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: it archetypally and practically with her.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: And I really think that there's something about like that
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: teenage girl who doesn't sense that there's a greater mother
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: available for her.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: She doesn't know the church. I'm doing my own little,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: you know, noting of, in my cases, like anecdotal studies
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: that I do. Like a lot of these girls don't
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: have healthy relationships with their own mothers. In fact, there's
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: a lot of shame they feel in the face of
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: their own mothers. So that contributes to the set and setting, right,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: of why they would commit neonaticide. Generally, they're not sensing
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: that there's an accepting mother available to them, either personally
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: or archetypally.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes. And of course, it's the personal mother that
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: kind of mediates the archetypal mother. So when you haven't
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: had adequate mothering, it's almost like there's this, you know,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: there's the archetype is the charge and it hasn't been
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: stepped down so that it can be related to on
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: a human level. And it just has more power over
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: the psyche. And if you get an archetypal possession... You know,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: you're more likely to become archetypally possessed if you haven't
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: had the archetype mediated for you. And it's more likely
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: to show up in a really chaotic, destructive fashion. So
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: if I can just read a quote from your book
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: where you talk about this, and I thought you put
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: it really well. You say, the energy of the death
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: mother archetype is more than the drive to kill a child.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: It is a dynamic of energies. vexing to the intellect
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: almost impossible to contain in a description. The death mother
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: archetype is a fury of the betrayed, a fear of
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: the entrapped, a movement of liberation and a blind white
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: rage of action. It is the catalyzing of a movement
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: from the mundane to the mysterium tremendum in the activation
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: of the sacred deadly force of the great mother that
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: transcends human life. Specifically, these archetypal energies arise in a
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: mother whose children are still close to her womb and
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: who has experienced a deep constitutional wrong that has injured
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: her integrity as a mother to such a degree that
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: a wire is tripped and electricity released. We know from
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: neuroscience that the tripwire of a trauma reaction bypasses the
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: executive decision-making functions of the brain. Moreover, in the frame
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: of archetypal and Jungian psychology, the quality of this electrical
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: surge that floods the maternal psyche in reaction to trauma
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: is that of the deaf mother archetype. That's really well,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: really well put.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: Oh, my gosh. Thank you very, very much for coming on, Brooke.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: This is a very hard topic to engage in. And
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: I've felt it just at a distance from really, you know,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: trying to embrace it in preparation for today's conversation. But
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: it is crucially important.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And you've helped us explore it and also humanize it.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: And we're really grateful to you for that.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: I'm so grateful to be here. It's really wonderful to
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: talk to you ladies about this. Thank you.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: And we'll put information in the show notes about where
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: you can find Brooke's book and learn more about her
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: work and more about her.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: So, thanks.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: Today's dreamer is a 65-year-old woman who is a writer.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: And she has entitled the dream, The Tyrant on My Back.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: Here's the dream. I'm at a place with a lot
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: of people and a tyrant. An older man keeps clinging
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: to me and I don't necessarily mind, except I think
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: it will get us into trouble. The tyrant sees us
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: and decides we have to die. He grabs us and
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: throws us into a room and I realize he will
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: kill us. I'm sad, but don't feel there's any way out.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: A man comes over carrying a phone and gives it
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: to me. It's my mom with a whole bunch of
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: friends in the background. She yells, they're going to kill you,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: aren't they? And I say yes and start to cry.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: It's the first time I feel emotion around it. Then
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: the man takes back the phone and I think they
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: should get on with it. I think it will be
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: poison and I'll just go to sleep, but it seems
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: they're taking forever to get to me. The Guess Who song,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: No Time, is playing. And she doesn't say if it's
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: playing in her head or playing in the dream external environment.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: For context, she says, I've submitted a piece of writing
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: to a series of competitions and haven't been accepted by
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: any of them. I'm dealing with some health issues. The
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: main feelings in the dream, she says, were resigned, briefly sad,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 3: and then impatient. And she adds, the tyrant felt like
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: an overriding judgmental feeling more than a person. The old
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 3: man felt like an old way of being rather than
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: a person. The small enclosed room also felt more like
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: a state of being than a place I recognized.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: Boy, I just don't even know where to start. So
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to start somewhere. What I'm struck by is,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: and this is something to pay attention to in dreams.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: It's like, what's the balance of male figures versus female figures?
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: And so we have a female dreamer, female dream ego,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: and everyone else in the dream that we know of
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: is male. So there's the old man on her back.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: There's the tyrant. There's the man who hands her the phone.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: The only connection with the feminine is on the phone.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: And that's when the feeling comes in. Because that's when
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: she's kind of able to cry and have an emotion
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: about the state that she's in. So, you know, I mean,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: a very classical Jungian take might have been that this
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: person is really kind of very steeped in sort of
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: animus attitudes. Kind of old-time analysts might say something like that.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: But I do think there's something here about the negative animus.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm going to add in here a Freudian concept,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: which is a harsh super ego.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: We all have to develop a super ego that, you know,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: along about age seven, when the storekeeper isn't looking and
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: you could grab hold of that Snickers bar.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: Deb, it sounds like you're speaking from personal experience.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: I never, actually, I never dared. It was a very
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: small corner store.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: Not out of any advanced moral development, but I was
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: just afraid I'd get caught. But at any rate, that
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: superego is our internalized parents as well, that it's wrong
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: and it's bad and we know we shouldn't do things
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: like that. And sometimes when there's been, you know, a
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: history often of hardship or trauma, especially relational trauma, People
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: can develop a very, very harsh superego that says, you
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 3: be good, you abide by all the rules, you take
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 3: care of everything, you're never late, you dress nicely, you're
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: a good girl. And so I'm kind of wondering about
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 3: that in the context of our dreamer saying that she
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: is in a somewhat different place. And the fact that
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: this man is a tyrant. Yeah.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because a harsh superego can definitely be tyrannical. You know,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: I like that. And I think the harsh superego, you know,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: kind of in popular psychology, we can think of that
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: as kind of sometimes the inner critic. But I do think,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: tying it back to Jungian thought, I mean, these are
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: all interconnected ideas. I think the negative animus, the kind
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: of masculine element of a woman's psyche, can often manifest
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: as an inner critic. Yeah.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: But these men in the dream all have different roles.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: They do.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: There's our tyrant.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 3: And then there is the older man who's clinging. So
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 3: a man who is needy, who is maybe scared or
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: who is fragile or frail since it's an older man.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: But at any rate, someone who is clinging and needy,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: which presents a different feeling tone from the tyrant. And
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: then we have the positive male figure who comes along
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: and hands her the phone.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: Connects her to the feminine.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: Connects her to her mother. So we have three different
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: manifestations of the masculine in this dream.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: And I like how she says, you know, this feels
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: like a state of being. And she's basically relating to
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: it symbolically. And I think her impulse about, you know,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: the man, the old man on my back feels like
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: an old way of being, you know.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the clinging.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: You know, and it's kind of, right, something from the
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: past is kind of clinging to her. And it could
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: be making her more susceptible to this kind of inner
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: critic dynamic in some way. So it'd be interesting to
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: find out more about who she imagines that person is
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: and why. if he reminds her of anyone or anything.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 3: This is a great dream to sit down with a
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 3: journal and start listing your associations to all of these
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 3: dream figures. I find it interesting when she's reconnected with
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 3: her mother, the feminine principle, that mom has a whole
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: bunch of friends in the background. So mom is having
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: a good time or socializing. She's accompanied by friends. And
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: then mom knows, the internal mother figure knows, they're going
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: to kill you, aren't they? And the dream ego says, yes,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: starts to cry and has emotion for the first time. Yes.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: Of this is awful. And she can feel her feelings.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: So I'm really confused. puzzling out these two images of
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 3: people in power, the tyrant who is so unfeeling and cruel,
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: and the mother.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: You know, I want to offer a thought about the tyrant,
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: because as we know, the negative animus actually seeks to
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: be transformed and may work in a very perverse way
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: that seems very cruel. But ultimately, the telos of the
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: animus is to spur our development. And so if I
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: think about this dream from that perspective, one of the
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: things that comes up for me is that it's almost
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: like the tyrant wants to kill her because the old
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: man is clinging to her. And if we look at
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: this for a second, the tyrant sees us and decides
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: we have to die. And I'm assuming the us is
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: me and the old man. So I'm making an assumption there.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: But we can use our trustee when then. When the
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: tyrant sees us, then he decides that we have to die.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: So what I wonder about is, is the tyrant upset
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: that this old way of being is clinging to her
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: and holding her back? And that's the reason why this
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: whole configuration has to die. So the secret purpose of
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: the tyrant actually is to free her from this old pattern. Yeah.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: And she says in her associations that the old man
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 3: felt like an old way of being rather than a person.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: So it may be that old way of being that
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 3: takes a tyrant to kill it off.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: So it's just this mysterious way that these figures can
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: present kind of paradoxically in dreams and in fairy tales, too.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: They often do.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 3: Do you have any association to the Guess Who song,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: No Time?
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: No, I haven't had a chance to look up the lyrics,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: but we could do that. I want to bring in
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: just one thing, too. We were talking about the inner
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: critic and the harsh superego and the negative animus. And
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: this is particularly interesting because it is related to writing.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: Marie-Louise von Franz, of course, one of Jung's closest collaborators,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: had a dream that she talks about in her book,
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: The Way of the Dream, which I just love that book.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: So I'm just going to read her dream and what
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: she says about it. She says here, here's the dream.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: A murderous burglar came into my bedroom and I woke
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: up with a cry of fear. I went through. OK,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: so that was the dream. So she wakes up. She's
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: wondering about the dream. She says, I went through what
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: I had thought the evening before. I had had a
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: very peaceful, quiet day, which could not account for such
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: a terrible dream. Then I remembered that before going to bed,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: I had thought, the book I'm writing is all nonsense
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: and I must throw it away. I thought that I
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: really thought that. Then when I reflected on the dream,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: I thought, no, I don't think that. It thinks that
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: in me. and I needn't believe it. I don't think
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: that at all. Then I could disentangle myself from the
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: negative thought, and I didn't accept it. So that's very
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: clarifying to me because there is this kind of autonomy
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: that the animus has, and we can identify with it,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: or we can do what she did, which is kind
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: of step back and take this moment of reflection and
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: differentiation and And say, well, yeah, I can see how
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: there's a part of me that thinks that, but I'm
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: not really sure that I believe that. And, you know,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: when we're writing and exposing our writing to other people's
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: critiques and sending it out and sending it out and
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: sending it out, and I am very, very familiar with
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: this as a writer, you know, you get a lot
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: of rejections. You get a lot of people that don't
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: answer you back. Sometimes you get nice rejections. Sometimes you
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: get not so nice rejections. Sometimes you just get ignored.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: And it does, it is a real place where the negative,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to say the negative animus can get constellated.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: And we do need a good sturdy connection with the feminine.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: It sounds like perhaps the streamer has a positive mother complex.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: And to be able to call on that positive mother
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: complex and help us recalibrate so that we don't have
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: to just surrender to those negative thoughts. So the lyrics, Deb,
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: to your point, the lyrics of the song are interesting.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know that I knew this song, but it's good.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: I think it's helpful. The lyrics are, No time left
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: for you On my way to better things No time
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: left for you I'll find myself some wings No time
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: left for you Distant roads are calling me No time
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: left for you So, you know, it's a song of defiance.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: And it's, I'm getting rid of you. So I wonder, again,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: if that is, I mean, it's maybe there's this sort
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: of layered thing, right? She needs to get rid of
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: this old clinging man. And the tyrant in her wants
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: to just get rid of everything. You know, sometimes, though,
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: when we get rid of an old pattern or an
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: old way of being, it is like a part of
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: us dies, right? And so I do wonder if, you know,
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: something needs to get killed off here, and it might
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: feel like it's a part of her, but she might
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: need to find a new stance to relate to her
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: inner reality and her outer reality as she puts herself
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: out there as a writer. Thanks for listening. To submit
• 1:30:06
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• 1:30:15
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