Latest / This Jungian Life Podcast / THREE VOICES, ONE SONG: Lessons in Friendship

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THREE VOICES, ONE SONG: Lessons in Friendship · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, this Jungian Life listeners, I want to let you
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: know about the Philadelphia Jung Seminar. The Philadelphia Jung Seminar
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: meets once a month, September through May. And it's for
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: people who are not necessarily clinicians, maybe just have a
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: serious interest in Jung, maybe you've had some Jungian analysis,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: you can come join us. The Philadelphia Jung Seminar is
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: where Deb, Joseph and I met, it's where we started
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: our Jungian journey. And it's a wonderful program that will
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: be mostly online. There will be some meetings in Philadelphia.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: So check it out if you're at all in the
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: area or you think you don't mind travel. You can
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: go to cgyungphiladelphia.org and you can even see the syllabus.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: And I will be teaching dreams in April. So I
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: hope to see you there. Well, before we get started
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: with today's podcast, we just want to quickly let any
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: clinicians out there know that the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: from which we all graduated, is offering an advanced clinical
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: practice program. So it's a case seminar for experienced clinicians
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: to read and explore and apply Jung's concept to clinical practice.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: It meets once a month in the fall and once
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: a month in the spring, four times in the fall,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: four times in the spring. I believe it's going to
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: be on Saturday in the fall and on Sunday in
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the spring. And there are just a few spots left.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: The seminar will be led by a senior analyst. We
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: know and love both of the people who are going
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: to be leading. So it's our esteemed colleagues, Mark Dean
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: and John White, who are both really brilliant. So If
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: you are a senior clinician and you're interested in delving
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: into Jung a little bit more, we encourage you to
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: take a look. And we will put a link in
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: the show notes to that material. So thank you.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: Today, we're going to talk about friendship. Interestingly, this is
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: an idea that's ancient. It shows up in myths and
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: fairy tales. The Indo-European root of the word for friend
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: simply means to love. So in that regard, friendship could
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: be translated as the state of being one who loves.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: Jung was interested in friendships. The anima animus has a
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: kind of reality in the realm of friendship. Social scientists
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: right now spend tremendous amounts of time and resources both
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: understanding what friendship is in the modern world and also
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: identifying that one can cultivate in order to bring friendships forward.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: And one of the most successful books that has ever
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: been published in the history of American publishing is How
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: to Win Friends and Influence People. That's true. It has
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: been successfully in publication decade after decade after decade. So
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: there's something about this topic that we circle around as
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: a species.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: And it's interesting.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Before we dive in, I know as I usually do,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: I want to remind everyone about Dream School. Dream School
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: is our online 12-month program that teaches you how to
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: work with your dreams the same way that we work
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: with dreams on the podcast. It provides lots of information, rich,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: detailed instruction, suggested readings, but it also provides a really
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: warm community and a chance to be with us live.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: We each do a live event every month. So there's
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: ample opportunity to come to my dream seminar or to
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: visit Deb in her office hours, or you get one-on-one
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: time with her or go to Joseph's really in-depth Q
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: & A. So Go on over to our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: and check out Dream School.
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: What I'm thinking about is the intro to This Jungian
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: Life says, three good friends and Jungian analysts, and then
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: our names. Then I'm thinking that that is how we started,
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: isn't it? We were all in training together. We were
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: all in the Philadelphia seminar for years. And years and
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: years and years. But we became friends. And then I
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: remember you saying after graduation, you know, we have to find,
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: Lisa said, you know, let's find a mutual project. Let's
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: do some things together, have some stuff to do together.
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: And I think that's interesting that it shows the blend
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: of personal affinity and shared activity. Shared interest.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Okay. Can I jump in?
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: You can jump in. Go for it.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: So the first time I met Deb was at the
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: first meeting of the Philadelphia Young Seminar held by the
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia Association of Young E-Analysts. It was in September of 2000.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: And I had just moved to Philadelphia and I was
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: excited to join the seminar. And I noticed Deb right
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: away because she's so friendly and smart and Just personable.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: We were sitting down.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: And I was like, I'm going to be friends with
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: that woman. I've always had a thing where I could
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: sort of tell who I was going to be friends with.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, yeah, she and I are
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: going to be friends. And then we did talk some
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: that day. I remember that. But in subsequent weeks or
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: months when the seminar would convene, you would run off
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: to lunch with other people.
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: And I would think, how could I?
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Doesn't she know that we're supposed to be friends? I
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: was like, totally hurt. So it just took you a
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: while to get on board, but you eventually got with
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: the program. And then Joseph joined a couple of years later.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: I took a year off at one point. And then
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: I think when I came back, there was this new
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: guy in the seminar who And I just knew, like,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: every time he opened his mouth, I was like, oh,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: I was, like, hanging on every word. I was like,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: who is that guy? It's so much charisma. It's so intelligent.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: And cute.
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: And very cute. Absolutely.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Well, that goes without saying. And I was like, I've
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: got to get to know him. So, yeah. And the
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: story continues from there. And I'll let you guys tell
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: your version.
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: It's an interesting story. thing to try to articulate as
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: to that sort of subterranean vibe that reminds me of
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: the song from South Pacific of some enchanted evening across
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: a crowded room.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: You might see a stranger.
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: And that there is some sort of intuitive connection. And
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: if you try to think back on what that is,
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: it's a was it some really cool article of clothing?
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: Was it this person got my joke. I made a
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: funny reference to some Monty Python thing and everybody sat
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: there except for this one person who got it. And
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: it was like, ah, click. I think over time, the
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: three of us, it says, you know, sort of gravitated
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: to one another. We, we got that we had something indefinable,
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: both in common and as differences that attracted us to
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: one another. And I'm thinking, too, about our friend Bob
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: and that there were the four of us that went
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: through this process. So, you know, in a way, too,
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: we helped each other and we were loyal to each
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: other in the sense of supporting one another, being generous
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: to one another. training is arduous. We get bumped and
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: bruised and downright wounded sometimes. So being there in some
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: way over time, let.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Us trust each other.
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: That if I call Lisa or I call Joseph, you'll
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: be there. Help me understand it. Pick me up, dust
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: me off, and get me back on the road.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: One of the things that also, I think, brought us
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: close together very quickly is that extroverts are very rare
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: in the Jungian world.
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: Good point.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: And it is so remarkably obvious, particularly in a group
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: of Jungians, that Most Jungians being introverts are kind of
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: like unicorns that are wandering off on their own grazing
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: in the fields. And the 5% of extroverts, you know,
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: have circled into the center of the field and are
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: sharing all of their experiences about grazing and wanting to
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: compare notes. And do you like it over here? I
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: like it a little bit over there. And this reminds
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: me of that. And what do you think of this?
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: And so Jung has a wonderful way of just talking
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: about introversion and extroversion, that the life force of extroverts
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: flows from them outward into the outer objects, which includes people.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: And in order to be in relationship, we have to
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: re-engage the feeling or thinking level that we've invested in
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: other people. And that's part of feeling related. For introverts,
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: the life force, for the most part, flows internally to
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: the inner representations and even the inner representations of other people.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: So there's less of a pressure to be engaged. So
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: as well as just being well-suited to each other, just...
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: Just to have people that we could sit and just
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: talk for hours about all the stuff that was going
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: on around us, in us, and in the training was
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: rare in that environment. And that similarity, I think, also
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: helped us bond.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, but I'm feeling, I'm finding this kind of like
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: fascinating and also really embarrassing because I just said like,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: oh my God, it was sort of friendship at first
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: glance for me with both of you. And I noticed
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: you distinctly did not share a similar story. So I'm
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: feeling like I must have pursued you guys.
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: I probably did. And isn't that so illustrative of the
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: dynamic of friendship, of the reciprocity? And I think my...
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: My memories of you, Lisa, you know, really sparked when
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: we were both in training and we went to that
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: first big interregional conference together. And you were my total
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: major support person. I was so nervous and so anxious
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: and we had rooms in the hotel right next to
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: one another. And then also there was that crazy dance
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: party where a wedding next door came trooping in, doing
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: a conga line. And so we had this sort of
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: really Dionysian experience together. And I was in awe of
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: the fact that you were doing the training while pregnant,
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: while having a baby, then having two babies. So... You know,
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: I think I might have been slower off the mark,
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: but it certainly happened for me.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Obviously, because here we are 23 years later.
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: Oh, my God.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: But I also think, I'm so glad you brought that up, Lise,
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: is that because of the podcast, which has really changed
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: my psychological function when the three of us talk. Mm-hmm.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: That it's as if we are three voices from a
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: singular psyche. So for instance, truly, when you bring up
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: a topic, it's like, oh, we just fell in friendship
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: love at first sight. It actually feels as if all
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: three of us have just said that.
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: No. Oh, you speak.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: I know, that sounds so strange. Oh, it's been spoken.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: So I'm going to talk about the extrovert thing. It's
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: as if we've all spoken that. I'm just going to
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: talk about the par dance party. Three of us have
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: suddenly just said that. It's called a participacion mystique. It's
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: called Spock's.
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: Mind Melt is what it's called.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: Spock's Mind Melt. Which I think is part of the
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: friendship as well.
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: So I think what we're saying is that we have
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: lived into.
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: An unusual dynamic of friendship over so many years and
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: given the commonality, but so have many people lived into
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: a dynamic of friendship of living next door in the
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: same town or the same workplace, but that there is
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: a shared field that might be geographic, it might be
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: a workplace, it might even be some kind of extended
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: family that offers a context, a container within which the
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: personal relationship grows and thrives.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, the interesting thing is that this was
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: suggested as a topic. We now have, by the way,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: a topic suggestion button on our website if you go
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: to the podcast page. So people have always been good
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: about writing in emails or putting in social media. And
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: We didn't have a way to keep it all in
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: one place. So I'm really excited about our new topic
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: suggestion function. It makes it much easier to go back
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: and find. And we were scrolling through and this was
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: one on the top, you know, but I think it's
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: been suggested many, many times. You know, one of the
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: things that's interesting is the psychoanalytic literature is full of
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: stuff about your relationship with your parents or, you know,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: with the parental complexes, for example, that's kind of stock
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: and trade. that people talk about when they come into
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: therapy to the point where it's basically like a meme.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: It's like, tell me about your mother, which is important.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: But I'm here to tell you that plenty of people
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: come into an analytic space bringing friendship difficulties, perhaps more
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: so women, but I'm not even sure I'm prepared to
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: really put that forward. But people have deep friendships that
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: bring them incredible comfort that are meaningful over the lifespan.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: And they also suffer when these friendships falter, when there
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: are difficulties or misunderstanding. So it's sometimes treated as a
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: little bit of kind of a side issue in terms of,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: let's say, mental health. But it's not. It's really kind
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: of an essential part of being human. And I would
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: dare to say that friendship is archetypal.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: I think there's, total evidence that friendship is absolutely archetypal.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: And I think that perhaps in modern American culture, there
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: isn't enough thought about friendship. And so people are often
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: sideswiped when they realize how lonely they are. They've moved
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: to a new city. They've changed jobs where they had
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: built a friendship network. And sometimes it's the sudden absence
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: of friendship that had been taken for granted that puts
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: people into a crisis and brings them to an awareness
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: that friendships are much more important than they had previously thought.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: And then as you were saying, disruptions to friendships that
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: we just expect to be there, that they're kind of
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: atmospheric until... all the guys show up at the first
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: wedding within the men's group. And it's a bit of
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: a combination of a wedding and a wake because the
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: guys are lamenting the truth that they're going to see
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: much less of their friend now that they're partnered and
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: married and on the road to have kids.
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: So it seems to me that one of the components
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: that we're circling around is It is the container, the context.
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: And you're adding to this by saying it's our life
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: circumstance that when you're one of the single guys or
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: single women, you have a cohort and you go out
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: and you go to a nightclub or you go hiking
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: or any one of a number of things. And when
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: the life context changes for marriage, for example, it's very different.
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: Because the person's identity, some kind of social identity or
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: self-identity has shifted from instead of being a single person,
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: I'm now a married person. So my first allegiance is
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: to my partner, my spouse. And it changes even more
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: if you have children, when you have children. Then, whoa,
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm a parent That little baby, that little
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: tiny bundle who hardly takes up any room in the crib.
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: The baby's the boss. Right. And is first in my
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: psyche as a way of me defining who I am.
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: I'm a mother. So, no, I can't go out on
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: Friday night.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, some of it I think is self-definition
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: and identity, but some of it also is just the
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: sort of like the reality. I mean, I think, you know,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: when the three of us were in training together, we
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: had regular structured contact. And it was actually, I mean,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: I think it was kind of wrenching when each one
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: of us graduated because it was, we didn't know, you know,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: the context had changed. And so I remember, you know,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of people have said at interregional conferences, that
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: being in training is better than being an analyst in
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: a way. And I think it's because you have these
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: rich friendships. And so, you know, as we've said before,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: the podcast in part was just a project. It provides
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: a structured way for us to be in touch every week,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of the podcast is like a byproduct. But,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: you know, and sometimes, you know, friendships don't survive like
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: becoming a parent, but sometimes, You develop really rich friendships
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: when you become a parent because then you're hanging out
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: with the other moms or whatever.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: One of the smartest things one of my friends did
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: who got married and had a kid is that he
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: invited me to hold a place in his new daughter's life.
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: And it was very, very explicit. He was setting up
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: an estate for her. And he was going to his
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: various friends and he said, if anything happens to me,
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: I'm going to ask you to help my daughter in
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: this realm. And so there's a group of uncles, basically,
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: that have circled around this little girl now for seven years,
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: which has given me a place to interact with. with
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: him and with his family in this new life. And
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: it was just a delight to be invited and not
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: just evaporated.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: So we're talking about the helpfulness of having a sort
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: of structure around a friendship. And I do find this
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: when people come in and they're complaining of loneliness, which
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: is a real issue in our lives. oftentimes they'll be like, well,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: do you have friends? Yes, but people are busy, so
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: I might see this friend for coffee, and then it
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: might be another six months before I see them again,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: versus I have a group that I play poker with
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: every Thursday. So there's a way that structure can be
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: supportive of friendship contact.
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: And I wonder about depth of structure. I'm thinking about Us,
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: for example, in the Jungian training, which demanded so much
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: of our psyches and vulnerability and our complexes and, you know,
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: all of that versus, and this may be, you know, unfair,
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: but versus a poker group, for example, of, you know,
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: is it really context driven? And if one person, you know,
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: moves to a whole different area that, You just join
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: a different poker group versus a depth of connection.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: But I think we're probably moving into the differences between
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: male and female friendship. And it's probably going to be
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: mostly men who have that weekly poker group. But I
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: would say that male friendships might look different than female friendships.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: But I don't take it for granted that that means
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: they're less deep. Because I think that those kind of
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: bonds of affinity, even if there isn't a lot of
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: deep sharing, that they can be very, very meaningful, very meaningful.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: It might look different from what I'm thinking. For example,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: my son is 19 and he has this very close
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: group of friends and they've been friends since middle school.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: And I really doubt that they sit around and share
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: their feelings. In fact, I can guarantee you that's not
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: what happens. But I have to tell you, they hold
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: each other up. And I've seen them do this for
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: each other when one or the other of them struggles
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: with something big or small. No, I don't think they
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: cry on each other's shoulders. But one of them had
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: a girlfriend reject him or something, and the group of
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: them went and somehow finagled to get him removed from class.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: They said like, oh, you know, His mom called and
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: he has to come to the principal's office or something
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: and then like took him somewhere and took him out
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: to lunch or something. You know what I mean? It's
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: not that there's deep intimate sharing, but there is a
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: sense of kind of camaraderie and I gotcha. And I
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: have no doubt that they'll be friends for decades. I
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: can just sort of feel that in their connection. So
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: I think, Deb, we might judge male friendships because we
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: know that in some way they don't look as depthful
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: as the friendships that women generally have. forge with one another,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: but I think they can be deep in their own way.
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: Yes, fair enough. And I should add as a little
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: sidebar that my sister has a poker group that she
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: runs and organizes. So just to make this not too
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: overly male-female, and yet there are overall and in general,
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: differences between male friendships and female friendships. And you were
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: just highlighting some of them with your son of men
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: do things, men discuss topics, men get together to play
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: poker or go fishing or watch a football game. It's
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: more sort of one of the descriptions is side by side.
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: And you're right, it doesn't mean that there's less depth,
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: but it is different overall from women's friendships. I just
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: spent a week with two friends.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: I think the man would like to chime in on
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: this for a moment. Okay. It's lovely to hear people
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: looking from the outside, having great wisdom about it.
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: Okay, ma'am, go ahead.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: Just a little bit.
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: Joseph, we're mansplaining friendship.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: You're femsplaining the manship. Okay. And I'm sure everything sounds familiar.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: First of all, these researchers come in and, you know,
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: they're looking at statistics. generalities. And we know that men
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: and women vary greatly on that bell curve amongst themselves
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: and between the sexes. So, we of course understand that
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: there are some men that have very one-to-one relationships that
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: are highly verbal and highly disclosing. But in generalities, it
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: seems that men have a tendency to have friend groups
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: and even quite large friend groups. And what I would
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: say is that even though in these larger groups, men
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: may not sit close and across from each other and
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: specifically disclose a lot of information explicitly.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's good. I like that.
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: Men are constantly inferring an enormous amount of information that
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: is not explicitly verbalized. And men will often speak about
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: another person in the friend group with substantial insight, more inferentially,
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: and I think in a sense to protect each other
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: from being shamed.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, that feels just right. Yeah.
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: Our friend Bob shows up and all of a sudden
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: it looks like he hasn't shaved in three weeks and
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: he just looks unbathed. None of the men are going
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: to say anything. But when he steps out for a
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: little while, all the men are going to start talking
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: and wondering, what's going on? Does anybody hurt anything? They're
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: noticing it. But whether or not they're going to go
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: right to the concern is held very carefully in the group.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: Because particularly in men's groups, if somebody feels shamed, it
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: changes their status in the group and may alienate them
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: and make them feel inhibited about returning.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: You know, that's perfect because what you're saying is that
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: men will behave this way in friendships to kind of
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: protect each other's status, whereas in times of kind of
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: distress or stress, the style of women's relational response to
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: that is called tend and befriend, which it's not that
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: men can't tend and befriend. But that is generally, it's
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: generally women who tend to do that, who will go
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: to the other and are you okay and tell me
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: what happened. And, you know, and I can say that
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: women often, I'm speaking from personal experience here, can get
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: frustrated when we see a man we care about, whether
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: it's our spouse or our son or just a friend
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: who's suffering or struggling. And you go and you say,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: what's going on? I'm thinking of this with my son. Like,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: you seem a little down today. What's going on?
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: Nothing.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: You know, we don't get the kind of disclosure that
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: we're looking for. Like I want to tend and befriend,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: tell me what's going on. I want to listen. It's not,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to get it. You know, not, not
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: that every man responds that way, but I'm always looking
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: for that exchange. And sometimes men want to engage in that.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: And a lot of times they don't because it, it, it,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: it might mean this loss of status that you were
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: referring to Joseph.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: A good example of this is, um, My nephew, through marriage,
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: came to stay with us for a couple of weeks.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: He'd been having a rough time at home, and so
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: we flew him out to Virginia Beach to hang out
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: for a few weeks. And when he showed up, he
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: was so, so quiet. It was very difficult to discern
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: what was going on, and sitting across from him and
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: asking questions was totally ineffective. 100% ineffective. But it was
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: clear that he was upset and unhappy. And it wasn't
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: until I had to take him on a long drive.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: It was about an hour and a half drive. And
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: it was nighttime. And he was just sitting over in
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: the passenger seat of the car. And I knew that
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: he liked listening to rap. So I'm putting on some Eminem.
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: So at least we have something to talk about. And
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: it only took about 10 minutes. And then he just
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: quietly asked this question and goes, how long do you
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: think that song is? I thought, I don't, I have
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: no idea. And then I suddenly dawned on me that
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: he's asking how long it is because he wants it
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: to be over. It was so subtle. So I just,
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: I just turned off the music and then we just
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: drove in silence. And about five minutes later, this hour
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: long silence, monologue about everything under the sun what's going
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: on at school and his great grandmother had passed away
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: in his house because that's where the hospice was and
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: he cried about it and just this tremendous amount of
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: life and I also noticed that if I mirrored him
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: a little too much it was sidetracking so that And
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: this is some really helpful advice if you've got a boy.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: There's an old skill that all you have to do
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: is repeat the last three words that a boy has
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: just said. And that's enough to let him know you've
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: heard him without sidetracking the conversation down a rabbit hole
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: that he's not prepared to go to. So somehow that
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: came back to me in my mind. So I would
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: just speak one to three of the last words and
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: he would go, yeah. And it would be another 10
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: minute monologue. It was so, it was so great. It
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: was so, so great. I learned so much about him.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: He had this really cathartic response. And then at the
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: end he said, it felt really good to cry. Right.
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: It was like, oh buddy. And it, sitting there quietly driving,
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: that can't be commented on. It can only be heard.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: In terms of this idea of protecting a young man
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: from feeling overly self-conscious or ashamed that he relieved so much,
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: just holding it in quietly.
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: It's a wonderful illustration, literally, of how side by side,
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: can be really intimate because you were literally side by
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: side in the car. And then you gave him the
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: space to just express what he wanted to express without
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: too much mirroring, which is the difference often with women.
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: Mirroring is face to face. I'm looking at you, mirroring you,
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: showing you that I see you and hear you. And
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: it's very direct. And the emotions and vulnerability and all
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: that are pretty explicit and allowed. It is often characteristic
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: of men and women, but it certainly isn't limited to
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: men and women. And it's a good thing to keep
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: an awareness of if you want to attune to someone,
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: you know, what's their style?
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: So while we're speaking of male friendship, I want to
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: go to a very ancient example. And that is in
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is the oldest extant myth
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: that we have. It was written on cuneiform tablets. It's
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: from ancient Sumeria. And Gilgamesh was this great warrior hero, king,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: and he was kind of full of himself. So he
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: was just creating kind of a mess of He was
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: taking all of the sons and he was sleeping with
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: all of the women. And so the people kind of
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: complained to the gods and the gods heard their lament.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: And they decided to make someone who would be his equal,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: who could come down and kind of put him in
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: his place. So they created Enkidu. And it says, the
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: myth says there was virtue in him. of the god
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: of war. His body was rough. He had long hair
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: like a woman's. It waved like the hair of Nisaba,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: the goddess of corn. His body was covered with matted
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: hair like Samugan's, the god of cattle. He was innocent
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: of mankind and he knew nothing of the cultivated land.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: So he's kind of this wild man. And he comes
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: down and he challenges Gilgamesh. So I'm just going to
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: read this part of the myth. Then Enkidu stepped out.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: He stood in the street and blocked the way. Mighty
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Gilgamesh came on, and Enkidu met him at the gate.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: He put out his foot and prevented Gilgamesh from entering
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: the house, so they grappled, holding each other like bulls.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: They broke the doorposts, and the walls shook. They snorted
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: like bulls locked together. They shattered the doorposts, and the
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: walls shook. Gilgamesh bent his knee with his foot, planted
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: on the ground, and with a turn, Enkidu was thrown.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Then immediately his fury died. When Enkidu was thrown, he
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: said to Gilgamesh, There is not another like you in
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: the world. Ninsun, who is as strong as a wild
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: ox in the byre, she was the mother who bore you,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: and now you are raised above all men, and Enlil
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: has given you the kingship, for your strength surpasses the
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: strength of men. So Enkidu and Gilgamesh embraced, and their
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: friendship was sealed. And then the myth goes on and
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: they are inseparable. They are always together and they are
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: very dear to one another. But then one day Enkidu
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: dies and Gilgamesh is overcome. In the first light of dawn,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Gilgamesh cried out,' I made you rest on a royal bed.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: You reclined on a couch at my left hand. The
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: princess of the earth kissed your feet. I will cause
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: all the people of Uruk to weep over you and
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: raise the dirge of the dead. The joyful people will
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: stoop with sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: I will let my hair grow long for your sake.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: a lion.' The next day also in the first light,
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Gilgamesh lamented. Seven days and seven nights he wept for
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Enkidu until the worm fastened on him. Only then he
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: gave him up to the earth. For the Anunnaki, the judges,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: has seized him. Then Gilgamesh issued a proclamation through the land.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: He summoned them all, the coppersmiths, the goldsmiths, the stoneworkers,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: and commanded them, make a statue of my friend. The
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: statue was fashioned with a great weight of lapis lazuli
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: for the breast and of gold for the body. A
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: table of hardwood was set out and on it a
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: bowl of carnelian filled with honey and a bowl of
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: lapis lazuli filled with butter. These he exposed and offered
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: to the sun and weeping he went away. So he
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: goes about this great weeping. So here in this very
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: first myth that we have, there's this central element of
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: friendship and it begins interestingly with a competition or with
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: a sort of a grappling with one another. And so
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: I wonder what we think about that. Is that a
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: kind of element of maybe of male friendship, maybe a
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: female friendship, whereas competition have to, what place does competition
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: have in friendships? Any thoughts about that?
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: One interesting little tidbit because I'd been, Reading up on
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: some of the research, men don't tend to stand face
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: to face with each other unless there's an absolute crisis
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: or there's some substantial tension that's building. And often when
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: male animals are facing each other closely, you're expecting some
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: kind of an eruption of aggression. So if you go
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: out into public and you see men standing, they tend
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: to stand at a greater than 90 degree angle across
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: from each other. This has actually been measured. It's usually
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: somewhere between about 100 and 120 degree angle because it
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: is such an instinctive intensity naturally builds to actually be
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: face to face, which happens so beautifully in the epic
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: of Gilgamesh that they're just facing each other. And that
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: alone creates this volcano of competition between them.
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: There is something about grappling. I'm thinking about jujitsu. And
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: I've had male clients who engage in all kinds of sports,
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: but the jujitsu is physical grappling. And that there's a
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: whole dynamic of you kind of have to play by
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: the rules because you can really get hurt. So there's
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: something where, you know, one person will tap the other
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: as a signal of, you know, sort of enough.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: Tap out.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: And I'm even thinking about, you know, animals and animal
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: aggression of play fighting. But it's a kind of contact
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: and that allows a closeness while preserving individual autonomy.
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: If I can amplify that. With one quick myth.
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: Go for it.
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: Again. So Aphrodite and Eros give birth. Aphrodite and Ares
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: mate and they give birth to Eros Cupid. And in
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: one myth, Eros begins to fail. He's not thriving. He's
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: not feeding. He's not growing. And Aphrodite is distraught. So
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: she goes to one of the great earth goddesses and
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: asks for help. And she says, you need to have
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: a second child. You need to have a second child
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: with Ares. And so she does. And she gives birth
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: to Anteros. Eros meaning love. Anteros meaning love returned. And
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: when the two young boys meet, they wrestle and roughhouse.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: And in that dynamic love and love returned that Eros
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: comes back to life and is strengthened and goes on
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: to thrive. So there is the love between opposites and
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: then there is the love between similars. So yes, that
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: wrestling robustness has a place.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: And I'm thinking about the tapping out and the wrestling
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: that you were talking about, the grappling And how, you know,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: the tapping out thing is really lovely because it's like
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: we're learning our limits, right? Like, oh, there's my limit.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: I have to stop. And of course, that's what dads
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: do when they roughhouse with children is they take the
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: children right up to the limit and usually right past it.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: In a roughhousing session. Oh, gosh. It ends with tears.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: Somebody's going to cry.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Somebody cries, but it's really fun until then. I remember
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: my son. I remember my son when he was a kid,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: he had this friend. And they, I mean, I'm thinking
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: they were like six, seven, kind of in that range.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: They would wrestle like a couple of puppies together. for
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: like an hour at a time, usually just laughing, kind
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: of tumbling over the bed, just wrestle, wrestle, wrestle, wrestle, wrestle.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: It was so interesting to see. And I guess maybe
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: that is an important element of male friendship is sort
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: of like, where do you begin and I end and
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Which again, I don't think that's
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: necessarily as big a part of friendship of say girls
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: of the same age.
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: I agree. Boys are not girls.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Have we like hammered that home?
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: That's really deep. I was a nursery school assistant when
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: my kids were in nursery school to help pay their
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: tuition while my husband was in grad school. And there
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: were different corners in the three-year-old room. There was a
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: car and truck corner. There was a dress-up corner. And
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: there was a doll corner. It was revelatory to me
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: to see. You almost never saw a girl in the car, truck, vehicle,
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: things on wheels place. And almost never saw a boy
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: over in the doll corner. And both participated in the
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: dress-up corner. I had had a boy and a girl
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: who happened to be twins there. And I was just determined,
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: you know, that, you know, that they would pick out
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: their clothes when they got to have preferences at the
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: right age. And, you know, we were just not going
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: to do this, you know, sort of what a quote,
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: proper role unquote is for a girl or for a boy. And,
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: oh my God, my girl wanted to wear pink and
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: take ballet lessons. And our son wanted to you know,
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: rough house and dig up worms and all that good stuff. So,
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: you know, overall, there are, there just are differences.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think we're just saying there are differences
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: in friendship partners. And, you know, certainly some of these
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: differences can be ascribed to culture that kids imbibe even
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: from a very young age. But there does seem to
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: be some real robust evidence that some of it is
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: kind of hardwired. But Let's go to a different friendship,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: shall we? Another example of a male friendship. So Carl
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: Jung read Freud with great interest when he was a
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: young man and eventually made his way to Vienna to
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: meet the august Sigmund Freud. So here's a little bit
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: of a description of that first meeting. This is from
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Deirdre Bear's biography of Jung, which is just called Jung,
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: a biography.
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Jung entered Freud's apartment at Bear Gossa 19 for lunch
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: at 1 p.m., stayed through dinner, and left at 2 a.m.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: after a 13-hour marathon of nonstop talking. At 1 a.m.,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Both men looked at the clock and were astonished to
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: discover how much time had passed since they began to talk.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: A world happened then, Jung told the distinguished Freudian Dr.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: Kurt Eisler many years later during an interview. Jung compared
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: his day with Freud to the act of giving birth.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: At birth, everything is already there. In reality, there is
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: no time. Time is nothing. That's what one realizes on
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: such occasions. There are moments that are completely timeless. Yes,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: he replied in agreement with Dr. Eisler, that was a
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: really intense encounter. And so, you know, whether it was
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: a mentorship or a friendship, you know, there might be
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: room for discussion on that. But it was in some sense,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: I think, of great, great friendship, of encouragement.
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: That he later referred to as his encounter with the unconscious.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: So this also kind of brings up, you know, something
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: we hinted at earlier, which is you have these kind
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: of love-hate relationships with friends, you know, and that there's
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: that wonderful term, frenemy.
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: Frenemies.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: Freud and Jung were kind of frenemies there for a
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: little while. So what do we think about that?
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: Well, there's a wonderful... quote by Marie-Louise von Franz, who
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: is one of Jung's close collaborators, about this sort of
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: love-hate aspect. She says, we make friends with people who
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: live out our shadow. Friends can do the things we
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: cannot do. Tell me who your friends are, and I
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: have the whole panorama of your good and bad qualities.
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: Our bad qualities as well as our good ones hold
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: an attraction, a fascination for us. The friend is often
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: the person whom one envies. The friend is more elegant
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: or dances better or can move about better in life
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: or has depth or has a better mind. So if
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: one hasn't worked on one's shadow, there's always a kind
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: of love-hate relationship with the shadow and with one's friends.
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: So I think that adds a really powerful and very
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: interesting element to friendship. And I think it is right
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: there in the friendship between Freud and Jung, of how
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: Jung venerated Freud at the beginning. And at one point,
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: he writes to him and says, you know, in be
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: like a father to me. Freud was 25 years older.
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: And yet there were differences that eventually couldn't be overcome.
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: And both of them had a kind of rigidity there
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: and a kind of adherence to their own thinking and
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: their own theory. that the personal relationship couldn't overcome. And
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: don't we see this sometimes in friendships? And people will say, well,
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: what happened? And the hook that the difference is hung
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: on seems fairly small, but it goes really much, much deeper.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I know we've seen close friendships fall
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: apart even.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: Within our community and how kind of devastating that is.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: I think for everyone, you know, it's, it's really hard
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: to lose a friend or have, have a conflict with
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: a friend. It can, it can really kind of haunt us. I,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: I want to say, um, I love that von Franz
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: quote and it, it is helpful to keep in mind
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: when you dream of a friend, the formula, which is,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: you know, of course it has limited applicability like any formula,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: but if you have a same sex image in a dream,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: it's likely to be a shadow figure. So a lot
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: of times if you dream of your friend, you have
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: to say, okay, so my friend, you know, Suzanne, what
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: part of me is she caring for me that I
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: have a relationship with, but I haven't absolutely kind of
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: claimed consciously. So I do think that our friend's can
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: be a pretty good representation of shadow qualities. And that
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: is something to keep in mind when we're working with
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: our dreams.
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: I'm sitting with the tremendously unique meeting of Freud and
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: Jung in light of some of the other generalities we've
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: talked about friendships. The fact that the two men already
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: came so verbally developed having a language of their inner
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: and outer lives, having a language for their philosophies and concepts,
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: that it afforded them this way of dancing, so to speak,
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: this place for Eros to erupt and sustain. And I
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: think that that is a dimension in all friendships that
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: is so, so important. So as I've said in a
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: number of other podcasts, I like to make a differentiation
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: between sex.
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: Eros, and love.
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: And eros, when it manifests and it can't be chosen,
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: it happens independently. It's evoked by something intangible between the
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: two people. There is this mounting sense of aliveness and
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: often joy just in in the presence, in the speaking,
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: in the back and forth, in the dance. And I
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: suspect that that was part of what happened with Jung
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: and Freud. I suspect looking at the story of Rumi,
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: Rumi met Shams. Shams said something that was so theologically profound, apparently,
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: that Rumi fainted. And when he came to, Shams was
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: kind of helping him out for a bit. And the
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: two of them just went arm in arm back to
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: Rumi's home. And they just kind of locked themselves in
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: a room for 30 days of talking, of sacred talk,
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: which in Sufism is called Sobet, which is this deep,
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: deep dialogue of the soul. And that lifelong friendship between
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: Rumi and Shams, incredible partnership, power of the friendship between
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: Jung and Freud comes out of that joy.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: You know, I.
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: Wonder if what we are touching on here is how
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: do friends resolve conflict? And that that's what Rumi and
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: Shams apparently never had. And Jung and Freud started out
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: that way too, if they just in a way fell
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: in love with one another with these ideas and all
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: that they were each working on, these two incredibly brilliant men,
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: and they couldn't grapple. I'm going back to the myth
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: of Gilgamesh and Enkidu of can you grapple and really
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: have it out with one another, go toe-to-toe, and that
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: that ability to engage in a conflictual relationship without going
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: for the jugular can forge a bond that is even stronger.
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: And that is what Freud and Jung could not do.
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: And I mean, you can tell from reading Jung that
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: he was, at least this is what I see when
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: I read kind of the later Jung and he refers
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: to Freud, like 20, 30 years after this event, you
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: can see there's still a complex around it.
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: Because he's fairly generous. He'll give Freud his due, but
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: then he'll get defensive. And you can hear that that
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: was a wound that took a long time to close,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: if it ever did. I just want to say we've
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: been talking about these sort of great friendships like Jung
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: and Freud and Gilgamesh and Enkidu. I just want to
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: give a little shout out for Barbara Hanna and Marie-Louise
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: von Franz.
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, perfect.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: So, you know, I don't know as much about it
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: as I wish I did. I've not read a biography
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: of either woman. But Barbara Hanna was a little older.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: And apparently Jung told them that they should live together
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: because he wanted Marie-Louise von Franz to understand that you
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: could have a kind of positive mother experience. And so
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: the two of them lived together, I think, for decades
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: and decades. And I believe they're buried together.
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: Oh, wow.
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: And Barbara Hanna was quite a bit older. And when
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: we went to Zurich, we were told that Barbara Hanna
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: would sort of stand outside the door while Marie Louise
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: was having a session and make sure that that session
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: ended on time. It was sort of protecting Marie Louise
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: von Franz of.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: Well, and you got the feeling there might be some
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: jealousy there, which is a really interesting thing to talk
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: about in terms of friendships. And yeah, I mean, I'm
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: curious about the relationship between them. I don't know much
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: about it, but certainly it was a great friendship, if
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: not also something more. But yes, Barbara Hannah seemed to
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: kind of jealously guard the younger woman.
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: Let's talk about friendship jealousy, because I think that's not
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: discussed at all. too frequently. I think we all experience it,
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: particularly if we're in a stage where we just, we're
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: so enjoying a friend that we, it becomes a bit greedy. Yes.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: And we just want, you know, all the time and
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: attention and all the good stuff that can come out.
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: And I know I've experienced this and just felt really
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: intensely about somebody interfering with the friendship and really not
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: knowing what to do about it. I think now at
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: this age, I probably would just say, gosh, I feel
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: really jealous about these other people kind of diluting the time.
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: But back in the day, I knew I just felt
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: angry at the interlopers.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: Well, and friendship can have this kind of romantic quality,
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: can't it? When you're first friends with someone, especially you
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: can feel a little sort of And so when the
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: friend makes plans with someone else, you know, it's like, what?
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: And I think that that can be true, whether it's
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: between two women, whether a man and a woman or
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: two men. that it can feel, you can sort of
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: feel usurped and you want to be first in that
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: person's heart and that kind of thing.
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: It really goes to such an early developmental stage, you know,
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: of I want to be number one, you know, of
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: the old, to call up Freud again, to call it
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: the old Oedipal dilemma of, you know, that Mom and
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: dad sometimes prefer to be with each other rather than
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: with me. And horrors, how could that possibly be? And
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: needing the security signs. of a best friend. Adolescent girls
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: are famous for this, of having a best friend. And
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: you go places together and you discuss when we go,
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: what are you going to wear? Oh, I'm going to
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: wear this. I'm going to, oh, okay, then I'll wear that.
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: of that sameness and being chosen and having that bond
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: that has echoes of the original bond with mom. I
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: remember having a friend who lived down the street named Sally.
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: She was my best friend. And so one day I
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: told her she's my best friend. And then she told
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: me that she couldn't make up her mind whether I
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: was her best friend or whether it was Lois. And
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: I remember being absolutely shocked and then launching a real
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: little campaign to make sure that I beat out Lois.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: See, now you know how I feel, Deb, in the
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: fall of 2020 when you used to go out to
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: lunch all the time with that other woman. And I
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: was like, what's going on? Doesn't she know?
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: I was inexplicably oblivious to the real dynamics that I
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: should have been paying attention to. Yes.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: So evolutionary psychologists studied this as well. And it was
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: interesting to read a bit that This idea of protecting
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: your best friend happens in other species. That horses, among
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: female horses, they'll choose a best friend. And if somebody,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: if another female horse starts to get a little bit
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: too friendly, the more dominant friend will come over and
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: nip them or kick them, get them away.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: That's what I tried to do.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: Get Lois out of the way.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: Male macaques will do the same thing. If they've got
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: a best buddy, they're going to snarl away anybody who
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: tries to get in the middle of that. And one
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: of the theories is that, of course, if we have strong,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: intimate support from a friend, we are more likely to
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: survive and particularly survive physical attack. in the wild and
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: perhaps even in more primitive circumstances for humans, but also
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: it protects us from reputational attack. So it's a really
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: interesting dimension that if somebody is our friend, we expect
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: them if they're out in the world and they hear
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: something negative about us to be like, Hey, wait a minute.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: You know, I, I have, you know, yes. And, and
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: because we live in, such complicated social situations, maintaining a
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: certain level of reputation is very, very important in terms
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: of thriving. And if we discover that a friend doesn't
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: protect our reputation or aligns with somebody who is verbally
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: against us, their stock plummets in most people's estimation. So
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: we expect our friends to defend us and protect us
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: and for us to do the same.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: Which is interesting because that then gets repeated at the
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: international level, right? This kind of very ancient, hardwired, maybe
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: mammalian pattern of forming these alliances and expecting to be
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: backed up. We formalize that in international treaties. And we
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: talk about, you know, for example, the United States and
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: Britain have a special friendship. And, you know, we always
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: know that we'll support the UK and we expect them
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: to support us. And that has a long history. And so, again,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: just to say it, this is really, really archetypal. And
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: it gets repeated at these various kind of levels of organizations.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: So let's talk a little bit more about female friendships
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: since we spent so much time at the beginning talking
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: about these archetypal male relationships. And something that, again, comes
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: out of research is that women particularly sit in this
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: place of cooperation and competition. And that that is instinctively monitored.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: groups of women. So the cooperation in terms of evolutionary
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: psychology makes sense. We know that women who have strong
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: friend groups live longer. Women that have strong friend groups
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: have a greater success rate in raising their offspring and
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: the offspring themselves tend to be healthier, have more of
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: access to resources than women who are isolated and set
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: to the side. But women also compete with each other
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: in a group setting. What do you guys think of
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: all that? Does that ring true? Are the other research
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: scientists getting anything right?
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, I do think there's a lot of kind
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: of covert competition. Yes, exactly. Yeah, and it can obviously
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: turn ugly And it's been immortalized in movies like Heathers,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: I suppose. There's this kind of social aggression that women
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: can enact on each other.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 4: It is covert. And it's not anywhere near as direct
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: as guys banging into one another on the football field
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: or the basketball court. And then after the game is over,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: we're all friends again. it's very much masked by at
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: least a veneer of being nice. Because women are not encouraged,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: I think, overall, culturally, to be aggressive physically. And I've
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: seen it just most recently in a granddaughter's pictures of
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: the class in junior high, all the girls are dressed
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 4: exactly the same. And they all have, you know, short
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: skirts and dresses on in different colors. And the competition,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 4: this is my imagining here, the competition is allowed in
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: terms of, you know, how expensive a dress you get
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: and whether it has special decorations and so on. But
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: at the same time, you have to be the same.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: You have to be dressed the same as the other
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: girls and not be too aggressive about getting way out
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: in front or being assertive or taking power or asserting
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: hierarchy or dominance in an overt way. But it's human,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: isn't it, to compete? to want status, to claim authority,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: to want leadership. So it's just a question of style.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: So again, the evolutionary psychologists often bring this down to
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: a kind of survival dynamics. One idea is that if
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: a woman has identified a mate and they have a
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: pair bonding, And there's either an intention or a production
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: of children that a woman is scanning for any person,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: any other woman that might interrupt, draw the mate's attention away,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: put the children, the offspring at risk, which is something I,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: I think when I was young, I was really naive
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: to the first time I had a, uh, I was
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: got my social work license. I was just beginning. And, uh,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: A woman had come in and she was talking about
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: having recently gone through a divorce. And so I thought
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: we would just talk about the change and the loss.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: What she was really suffering is that how her friends
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: reacted to her had totally transformed. Again, at first I thought,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: is it because it's a taboo? Is this a religious community?
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: Because sometimes that's considered a religious sin. And she goes, no,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden, they're treating me like I'm dangerous
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: to their relationships. Like I'm the merry widow or the
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: gay divorcee. And I'm going to dance in and dance
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: their husbands off. And if I show up at a
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: wedding and I don't have an escort to the wedding,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: I'm literally kind of scorned and isolated, pushed aside. And
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: I was so naive to that dynamic, but I think
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: this is real.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that women can feel intimidated by each other. And
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: there's kind of an unconscious pact that can go on.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: There's a way that women signal to each other, and
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: perhaps men too, I'm not going to be a threat
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: to you. And part of the way that women do
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: that for sure, maybe men do it by not standing,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: by standing at an oblique angle to one another. But
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: women do it by sort of, sometimes it's called fawning.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: It's like, you know, I'm going to reveal myself. I'm
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: going to make myself vulnerable. I'm going to share something
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: that's really very vulnerable. Or I'm going to kind of
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: maybe put myself down. You know, I'm going to make
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: a crack about how my hair looks terrible today or
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: something like that. To make myself kind of relatable and
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: not threatening. And then it's like, okay, now I know
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: we can connect. We're not going to be threatening to
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: each other. We're both going to be kind of accommodating
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: to one another.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: Does that feel comfortable? Does it feel reasonable when you
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: observe that?
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that is the basis upon
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: which many female friendships are formed. The interesting thing is
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: that some women are by nature not that accommodating.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: And they're not going to be that interested in showing
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: their juggler, as it were, to kind of establish. And
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: I think that I admire women like that. And you
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: can't be friends with a woman like that and be accommodating.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: You have to present yourself with as much force as
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: the other woman. And then there's going to be a
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: little bit more maybe conflict in the relationship than You know,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: like those two, is it those two cartoon skunks who say, oh,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: after you? No, after you. No, after you. Do you
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: know that old cartoon? I can't remember if they're skunks
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: or whatever, but it's like, oh, no, no, you go first. No, no, no,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: I insist you go first. That kind of relationship can
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: work okay when both people are sort of equally accommodating.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: And it can also work okay when you're Enkidu and
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: Gilgamesh and you're going to stand toe to toe together.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: I think when people orient in different ways, then you
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: can get into trouble because the accommodating person feels resentful,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: the accommodating person feels steamrolled. And sometimes the person who's
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: not accommodating is like, you know, come on, stand up,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: you know, get pushed back. You know, there's this kind
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: of testing period. Who are you and are you going
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: to be accommodating? And do we have the same level
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: of kind of thoughtfulness of one another?
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: So.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 4: You know, I wonder if collectively the scales are really
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 4: tipping and we see it in women's sports that are
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 4: becoming more and more prominent. Women's soccer World Cup is
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 4: people are watching it. We have a relative who coaches
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: girls basketball and he coaches them to be aggressive and
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 4: And somebody said, oh, you're making these girls. And he says, no,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 4: I am treating them like basketball players. And that the
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 4: terms of engagement, so to speak, are really shifting, which is, no,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 4: we're not going to be as sweet and dear and
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: accommodating as girls and then women. We're going to say
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 4: what we want and go after it and grapple. I
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 4: think there is a real shift there. collectively, and I'm
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: glad to see it.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: So I think one of the things that's come forward
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: in our fun conversation today is that there is so
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: much to say about friendships, friendships between men, between women,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: and friendships between men and women, which actually we didn't
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: have a chance to talk so much. So I'm wondering
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: whether there might be a series of of talks on
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: friendship where we've kind of cordoned off a little smaller
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: area of consideration. In the ancient world, there was an
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: enormous amount of interest in what a friendship is and
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: the Nicomachean ethics, deciding how friendships work, friendships of utility
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: or pleasure or friendships based on morality. Cicero wrote about
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: friendships Modern psychologists write an enormous amount on friendship and
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: they've identified that proximity, common interests, similarity of personal values, self-disclosure, reciprocity, consistency, empathy, time,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: all of these things are elements that are naturally part
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: of cultivating and being a friend. We started by discussing
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: how we three discovered our friendship and have continued to
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: find opportunities and reasons to creatively interact with each other.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: And I suppose if I were to leave our listeners
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: with one idea, finding mutual creative purpose can be a
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: the sustaining soul of friendships, whether it's a small group
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: of people or two people, and that that purposiveness can
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: bring forward so many other dimensions of how we grow,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: what we learn, what we have to learn, how we
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 3: shore each other up. And gosh knows there's so many
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: important things that need help in this world. So if
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: we can come together in smaller, larger groups, trying to
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: do something that's good in this world, what a wonderful
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: way of fostering a friendship.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 4: So with that, and before we transition to a dream,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 4: I would like to say thank you as ever to
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: our patrons and for your friendship. You are special people. appreciated,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: very dear friends. Most of you are unmet friends, but
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: still friends. And you help us keep going. We appreciate
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: your support. It ensures our freedom to just do what
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 4: comes up that feels real and authentic every week. And
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 4: we thank you for your supportive friendships.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: A friend out there in the ethers has submitted their
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 3: dream for us to share with all of you and
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: talk about. This is a fellow who's 31 years old
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: and works as a musician, and he has titled his dream,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: The Tower and the Tunnel. There is a vast plain
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: with a deep, wide, and steep hole. From the center
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: of this deep pit a high tower stands, throws me
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: across the expanse to the tower where I'm suspended against
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: the building. The perspective stays on the figure who's wearing
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: a black cloak that covers their form. Their arms and
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: legs and face and old skin is under this black cloak.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 3: There are two white marks on the fabric denoting eyes,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: but they aren't actual eye holes like a mask. They
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 3: slowly turn and walk off, after I've been thrown. The
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: dream then repeats. I'm thrown again, but the perspective follows
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: me across the expanse. The thread I am suspended from
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: is a single piece of spider's silk. Where I'm hanging,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: I am face to face with a guardian of the tower.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: It is an anthropomorphic lizard, light green, wearing golden armor.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: It raises its sword and instead of attacking me, it
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: cuts the silk thread and I fall in a quick
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: but safe manner. I notice open windows one could sneak
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: into on my way down. Safely reaching the base of
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: the tower, facing underneath where the cloaked figure and I were,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: I see a large tunnel and I know I need
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: to enter. I begin to walk towards it when I awake.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: For context, he writes, His main feelings, he writes, I
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 3: knew I was in a very special place. The cloaked
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: figure felt immensely powerful, and I felt respect rather than
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: fear for them. The lizard guardian was also noble, but
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: in a workman's way. I felt safe and collected in
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: my fall. There was cool evenness in my temperament throughout.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: What a spectacle. mythopoetic encounter for this person.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: I read this dream this morning and I thought, Joseph's
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: going to love this dream. I always guess I get
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a head start since I read
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: it first.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: Since I'm the dream picker.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: Go for it. Well, here's what I.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: Thought when I sat with it a little bit. And,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I'll just say that we get
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: so many more dreams than women from women than men
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: that when possible, I'll go searching for a man's dream
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: just to kind of even it out a little bit.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: So I was definitely on the hunt this morning for
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: a man's dream. And I think this is a really,
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: really interesting dream. I think the age of the person
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: is interesting, 31. So as we've talked about on the
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: podcast before, it seems like for many people, there's a
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: real shift in the psyche around age 30, where, you know,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: it's sort of the beginning of oftentimes for people, it's like, oh, wow,
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: you know, the party is not going to last forever,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: is it? So maybe I need to sort of figure
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: things out and get serious. So I think that sometimes,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: this is just the way I think about it. This
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: doesn't carry any particular authority, but You know, a lot
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: of times in our 20s, we may act like a
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: pu-erh or a pu-ella. We may flit from thing to thing.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: We don't really commit. We fly off here. We fly
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: off there. And actually, that's kind of age appropriate at
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: that stage. If you're 25 to be a dabbler, that's
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: actually fine. If you're a dabbler at 45, that looks different.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: For a lot of people, and maybe this is kind
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: of close to my heart because this is when it
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: happened for me, I was around 30 when I was like, oh.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: You just keep getting older. You know, the time doesn't
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: go back the other way. So maybe if I want
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: to do certain things, I need to kind of knuckle down. And,
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: you know, that's when my life kind of began to
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: take the form it is now. And I think that
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: that's not that unusual. So I'm focusing on this dreamer's
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: age and the fact that he says he has a
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: new approach to his craft and his lifestyle. And I hear...
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: I'm getting more serious. I'm getting more settled. And that
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: I think is what we see in the dream because
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: there's this image of being suspended. So being suspended is
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: a real image, I think, or can be an image
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: associated with sort of Puerh psychology. You're just hanging. You
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: haven't landed. You're sort of literally up in the air.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: But he comes down to earth. he has this kind
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: of somewhat frightening initiation, although he doesn't say he's frightening,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: but the, um, the guardian of the tower, this, um,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: kind of lizard guy comes and raises a sword and
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: it's the sword that maybe disconnects him from this, um,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: who were attitude that he has appropriately held. And now
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: he's going to have a soft landing because he's, he's not, um,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: at odds with the self. He's open to this and
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: he's going to willingly go into the tunnel, which would
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: be a kind of potentially it's an image even of
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: depression or in a great hope, but it certainly is
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: an image of kind of going in and down and
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: perhaps kind of getting a little more grounded.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: CB Well, I think, Lisa, my ideas about The 16th
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: Tarot Key, the lightning struck tower is very congruent with
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: his dream and your interpretation that for the great amount
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 3: of our lives, we live in something of a tower
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: of isolation. And that can be interpreted in many different ways,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 3: whether it's our complexes isolating us and for some, Just
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 3: the experience of the ego being isolated in some ways
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 3: has to be overcome in order for us to have
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 3: a sense that we are part of a larger life,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: which we could not discern earlier. In that Tarot key,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: there's a lightning strike to the top, and the figures
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 3: are cast out into the air, and they're crying out
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: in horror. And the esoteric teaching is that they will
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: fall into a fertile valley. Hmm. is the valley of experience,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 3: and they'll begin a journey. So I have that same
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: very positive association with this. I did want to also
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 3: bring in another mythic dimension to it, that the Greek fates,
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: there were three of them, and often imagined as old
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: women spinning the threads of human destiny. Clotho was the spinner.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: I think I'm going to mispronounce the next name. Loxis
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: was the one who distributed the thread and Anthropos cut
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: the thread. So this idea of kind of dangling from
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: this thread that the thread of his predestined fate because
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 3: in that mythic world everything has already been set out
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: for you that something has happened in the psyche and
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 3: Anthropos has snipped the predestination and set him free to
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: have a different kind of experience now in the external world,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 3: it looks like there's been a change moving from bringing
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: forward 1920s music written by other people and moving towards
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 3: his original works. I mean, wow, what an enormous snipping
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 3: of the previous tendency. And then making a decision about
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 3: how often and how far that he's going to travel
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 3: is And I have to say, for musicians, living on
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 3: the road, which I'm sure is exciting when you're 20,
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 3: really interferes with creating a home or finding a spouse,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 3: a loved one, who really can tend home with us.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: Or sustaining friendships.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: Or sustaining friendships. So just deciding that he's just going
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: to move between a couple of areas and which will
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 3: allow him a way of building a different kind of stability,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 3: I think is also part, as you were saying, of
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 3: this maturational arc.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 4: Let me come in with my first sort of reaction
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 4: to this dream that is like a snippet of a
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 4: myth or a fantasy tale, a sort of sci-fi fantasy of,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 4: you know, this incredible setting, the pit with a tower
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 4: in the middle of it, and then this mysterious black
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 4: cloaked figure that can just throw him up against the
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 4: tower and then being suspended. And the guardian of the
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 4: tower is an anthropomorphic lizard, light green wearing golden armor,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 4: and turns out to be a friend in snipping the
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 4: silk But our dream ego doesn't quite know in the
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 4: moment what's going to happen. So, you know, this is
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 4: a dream that does not really have any personal context.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 4: This is all in the realm of the mythopoetic with
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 4: pits and towers and tunnels and spider threads and gold armored.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: Anthropomorphic lizards.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 4: And part of me goes, hmm. You know, let's talk
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 4: a little bit about what's going on more specifically in
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 4: your life. So my tendency is to want to ground
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 4: this magical, mythopoetic fable in more human lived reality, which
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 4: the two of you have pointed to in terms of
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 4: the transition around age 30, working on his own music,
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 4: et cetera. And I am struck in this light by
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 4: the fact that at the very end of the dream,
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 4: the dream ego sees a large tunnel and knows he
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 4: needs to enter and begins to walk toward it, that
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 4: there's going to be a descent. Welcome to the real world.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 4: I would be hoping that if this were someone I
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 4: was working with, I'd be hoping that other dreams would
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 4: have shadow figures in them. Uncle so-and-so, grandmother so-and-so, my colleague,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 4: my bandmate, of things that are not quite so somehow
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 4: shimmering with archetypal imagery. And I think that is the
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 4: telos of the dream is going in that direction. Speaking
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 4: of the large tunnel of That's going to be dark.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 4: And the darkness is where fertility is. Babies grow in
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 4: dark wombs. Plants grow in the dark earth. And I
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 4: would be interested in seeing what this person's dreams look
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 4: like several months from now of where is psyche going
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 4: down from the heights to the depths.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: No, I just want to say one more thing about
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: the lizard is, you know, lizards can be associated with
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: death and rebirth because when they lose a tail, for example,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: it regenerates. So there's a little intimation there in the
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: fact that the armor is golden, that this might be, well,
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: I wonder a little bit about the black cloaked person
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: and the lizard if they're not kind of manifestations of
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: the self in some sense. kind of forcing the ego
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: onto the next leg of the journey. So I agree, Deb,
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: it's a very archetypal dream. And it would be interesting
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: to know more about this dreamer and see how these
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: things are seeded in his everyday life as they always are.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: And sometimes at points of major life transition, we might
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: have very archetypal dreams.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 3: One thing we can say about archetypal dreams is that
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: A change is going to happen. A change has already
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 3: happened in the imaginal world. The thread has been cut.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 3: You're on the ground and there's a tunnel before you.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 3: So if we take dreams as the artifacts of something
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: that has occurred, you are in a different place. And
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 3: at the beginning of a new mysterious process, There's also
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 3: a wonderful dichotomy between the tower which is phallic and
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: the tunnel which is feminine. So you're cast towards this
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 3: tall tower and perhaps as you're hung by the thread,
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 3: you've learned something about the tower and what it might mean.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 3: And now you've been set free to explore something about
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 3: the nature of the feminine within yourself. And midlife is
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: a perfect time for that, to begin to explore something new,
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: a different approach. And even the fact that he's long
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 3: been transient, and now there's a sense that I'm more
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 3: interested in home. Home, which is often the realm of Hestia. Home,
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: the hearth, the heart, and homemaking, and the value of
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 3: that in a man who who has lived without that transiently,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: is an enormous shift of archetypal priorities. And I would
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: imagine this person is at the beginning of learning how
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 3: to do that. The skills associated with it and the
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 3: archetype can provide this enormous motivation to figure out and
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 3: find out whatever is required to have that for yourself.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook,
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  Speaker 2: help us produce future episodes by funding us through Patreon,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: and submit your dreams for possible interpretation on another episode.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: We'd like to thank our listener who shared a dream
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 2: topics you'd enjoy hearing more about. Until next time, keep
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: living this Jungian life.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 3: Thank you.