Dr. James Hollis: How to Find Your True Purpose & Create Your Best Life

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.240 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.720 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:05.920 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.120 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.320 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.400 | My guest today is Dr. James Hollis.

00:00:18.100 | Dr. James Hollis is a Jungian psychoanalyst

00:00:20.720 | and author of more than 17 books

00:00:23.080 | about the self, relationships,

00:00:25.080 | and how to create the best possible life.

00:00:27.720 | Some of the notable titles and topics of those books

00:00:30.400 | include "Creating a Life, Finding Your Individual Path,"

00:00:34.420 | as well as "The Eden Project,

00:00:36.360 | In Search of the Magical Other,"

00:00:38.180 | which as the name suggests is about relationships.

00:00:41.080 | He has also written about

00:00:42.080 | how to access our most resilient self

00:00:44.720 | in the book entitled "Living Between Worlds,

00:00:47.280 | Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times."

00:00:50.240 | During today's discussion,

00:00:51.240 | Dr. Hollis teaches us what questions we need to ask

00:00:54.280 | of ourselves on a regular basis

00:00:56.360 | in order to best understand who we really are

00:00:59.160 | and what we most desire at the level of vocation,

00:01:02.400 | romantic relationships, friendship, and family,

00:01:05.320 | and indeed in relationship to life's journey.

00:01:07.560 | What you'll quickly realize

00:01:08.700 | during today's discussion with Dr. Hollis

00:01:10.800 | is that while yes,

00:01:12.120 | he is trained as a Jungian psychoanalyst,

00:01:14.400 | he is also very firmly grounded in practical tools.

00:01:17.480 | That is, he teaches us the simple and yet practical tools

00:01:21.040 | that we can each and all apply on a daily basis

00:01:24.200 | in order to make sure that we are staying

00:01:25.920 | on our best path.

00:01:27.360 | We discuss how family dynamics that we grew up in

00:01:30.160 | as well as trauma and attachment styles

00:01:32.760 | combined with our unique gifts

00:01:34.640 | and indeed our shadow side as well

00:01:36.960 | in order to drive us down particular trajectories in life

00:01:39.900 | that sometimes lead us where we want to go,

00:01:42.240 | but other times lead us astray,

00:01:44.000 | and when they do, how to get back on track.

00:01:46.680 | Today's conversation with Dr. Hollis is truly a special one

00:01:50.160 | in that he rarely does podcast appearances.

00:01:52.400 | In fact, we traveled to him to record this podcast.

00:01:55.000 | That's how motivated I was to be able to sit down with him

00:01:57.620 | because I'm familiar with his many books

00:01:59.200 | and his incredible teachings,

00:02:00.880 | but I really wanted to get his knowledge collected

00:02:03.200 | in one format, in one place.

00:02:05.440 | And what I can promise you is that

00:02:07.040 | by the end of today's podcast,

00:02:08.700 | you will be thinking differently about yourself,

00:02:10.940 | about the people in your life, and indeed life itself.

00:02:14.360 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:02:17.120 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:19.840 | It is however, part of my desire and effort

00:02:21.920 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:02:24.440 | and science-related tools to the general public.

00:02:27.280 | In keeping with that theme,

00:02:28.400 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:02:31.200 | Our first sponsor is Matina.

00:02:32.960 | Matina makes loose-leaf and ready-to-drink yerba mate.

00:02:36.120 | Now, I've long been a fan of yerba mate

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00:03:44.080 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve.

00:03:46.760 | Juve makes medical-grade red light therapy devices.

00:03:49.960 | Now, if there's one thing that I've consistently emphasized

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00:04:45.080 | Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp.

00:04:48.200 | BetterHelp offers professional therapy

00:04:50.000 | with a licensed therapist carried out online.

00:04:52.920 | I've been going to therapy for well over 30 years.

00:04:55.620 | Initially, I didn't have a choice.

00:04:57.080 | It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school,

00:04:59.520 | but pretty soon I realized

00:05:01.120 | that therapy is extremely valuable.

00:05:02.940 | In fact, I consider doing regular therapy

00:05:05.240 | just as important as getting regular exercise,

00:05:08.000 | including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training,

00:05:10.320 | which, of course, I also do every week.

00:05:12.400 | The reason I know therapy is so valuable

00:05:14.360 | is that if you can find a therapist

00:05:16.100 | with whom you can develop a really good rapport,

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00:05:33.400 | and to your professional life,

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00:05:36.720 | In fact, I see therapy as one of the key components

00:05:38.960 | for meshing together all aspects of one's life

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00:05:54.640 | And now for my discussion with Dr. James Hollis.

00:05:57.880 | Dr. James Hollis,

00:05:59.120 | such a honor and a pleasure to sit down with you.

00:06:02.160 | I'm a huge fan of your writing

00:06:04.120 | and I'm excited to talk to you today.

00:06:06.160 | - Thank you, Andrew.

00:06:06.980 | It's a privilege to be with you.

00:06:08.280 | - Thank you.

00:06:09.800 | - Let's talk about the self.

00:06:12.520 | This is something that I think people occasionally

00:06:15.040 | wonder about, you know, who am I?

00:06:18.000 | We wake up every day,

00:06:19.000 | we have some stable representation of who we are

00:06:22.040 | in our name most of the time.

00:06:24.420 | And we develop a self,

00:06:27.160 | a story based on what we know about our parents,

00:06:31.300 | our siblings, our life.

00:06:33.520 | From the perspective of Jungian psychology,

00:06:37.960 | maybe psychology generally,

00:06:39.660 | how should we think about ourselves?

00:06:42.480 | - Well, first of all,

00:06:43.320 | the idea of the self with a capital S

00:06:45.800 | to distinguish it from the ego consciousness,

00:06:48.320 | that is to say my conscious presence

00:06:50.680 | as you and I are talking right now,

00:06:52.580 | is a transcendent other, it's a mystery.

00:06:57.180 | It's essentially governed by our instincts.

00:07:00.680 | You know, it's nature seeking its own expression

00:07:02.960 | and its own healing.

00:07:04.680 | What I've seen in terms of the activity of the self

00:07:07.280 | through the years, it has two agendas.

00:07:08.760 | One, healing when injured,

00:07:11.400 | and secondly, expressing itself

00:07:14.500 | in the same way that the acorn becomes the oak tree,

00:07:17.000 | so to speak.

00:07:17.840 | Now the ego, of course,

00:07:20.960 | is that little scintilla of energy

00:07:24.100 | that begins to cluster.

00:07:26.240 | We're born without an ego,

00:07:27.720 | but then there's several shards of experience

00:07:31.340 | between the me and the not me

00:07:33.700 | that slowly accumulate almost in tidal pools

00:07:36.680 | so that I begin to differentiate myself from the other,

00:07:39.800 | my mother, let's say, or my father,

00:07:41.520 | or the object that is there.

00:07:44.180 | And you're right.

00:07:45.800 | We are an animal that seeks to understand

00:07:49.240 | as part of our adaptation to the world,

00:07:51.240 | and so we are narrative animals.

00:07:53.740 | We create stories about it,

00:07:55.640 | and our stories rise out of what we're experiencing

00:07:58.680 | at the moment.

00:07:59.520 | So you can see why a person born into a certain culture

00:08:03.240 | or a certain family of origin

00:08:04.960 | with its style of relating,

00:08:07.260 | or disrelating as the case may be,

00:08:10.200 | becomes the ground for defining

00:08:12.260 | that person's sense of self.

00:08:13.880 | So it's important to distinguish

00:08:15.240 | between the self and one's sense of self.

00:08:18.200 | The sense of self is who I think I am.

00:08:20.680 | In any given moment, that's very fluid, of course.

00:08:24.040 | Now we have all kinds of internal clusters of energy

00:08:27.080 | that are called complexes,

00:08:28.560 | a term that Jung popularized.

00:08:30.880 | And complexes are splinter personalities.

00:08:34.700 | He said, so a person might say,

00:08:36.880 | why did I get so upset yesterday?

00:08:39.320 | What came over me?

00:08:40.660 | Or I don't know what I was thinking

00:08:42.320 | when I made this important decision.

00:08:44.920 | And that's our recognition

00:08:46.560 | that we were in an altered state at that moment,

00:08:49.320 | that something within us had been triggered,

00:08:52.920 | had sufficient energy to come up,

00:08:54.840 | usurp ego consciousness, and take it over.

00:08:58.060 | Actually, the term that Jung used in German

00:09:00.560 | meant possession.

00:09:01.760 | It's a state of psychic possession, temporarily.

00:09:05.240 | You know, we joke that lovers are fools,

00:09:07.720 | or lovers are blind.

00:09:09.020 | So we know that people are in a certain,

00:09:11.000 | they're caught in a certain projection onto the other.

00:09:14.600 | And, you know, that ultimately gets, you know,

00:09:18.960 | resolved into some sort of reality through time

00:09:22.040 | and experience with that individual.

00:09:25.440 | But in that state of being,

00:09:27.840 | one senses that one's making the right decision.

00:09:31.120 | And no one wakes in the morning and says, for example,

00:09:34.840 | well, today I think I'm gonna do the same stupid,

00:09:37.560 | counterproductive things I've done for decades,

00:09:39.800 | but there's a good chance we will.

00:09:42.220 | Why?

00:09:43.060 | Because we have certain clusters of energy in us

00:09:46.080 | that are regularly triggered.

00:09:48.360 | When triggered, they catalyze a response in the ego

00:09:51.560 | that enacts that program.

00:09:53.720 | So it affects our body, it affects our script,

00:09:57.160 | and of course it affects our perception of self and world.

00:10:01.200 | So, you know, from the standpoint of therapy,

00:10:04.900 | one of the things we try to do is suggest to people,

00:10:08.740 | you're not what happened to you.

00:10:10.200 | Because one of our tendencies

00:10:12.580 | is to internalize whatever's happening to us.

00:10:16.200 | And thinking of that defines us.

00:10:18.520 | Of course, the younger, the more, less formed we are,

00:10:22.180 | the more we're likely to be defined by poverty,

00:10:24.520 | or by disease, or by alcoholism, or by sexism,

00:10:28.640 | or whatever the social constructs are

00:10:31.240 | into which we're born,

00:10:32.500 | as well as the psychodynamics of the family of origin.

00:10:36.220 | So in those circumstances,

00:10:38.800 | we all have a provisional sense of self.

00:10:42.000 | And if you have a culture that says, this is who you are,

00:10:44.540 | this is what your orders are, your marching orders,

00:10:48.140 | here's your script,

00:10:49.800 | and the more authoritarian the culture,

00:10:51.720 | or the more traumatic one's environmental situation

00:10:56.120 | in the family of origin,

00:10:57.120 | the more likely I'm gonna be reacting to that.

00:11:00.200 | So when I've had an experience,

00:11:01.680 | I'm either going to repeat it,

00:11:03.400 | or I'm gonna try to run from it,

00:11:05.080 | or maybe I'll be spending my life

00:11:07.400 | trying to treat it in some way that I'm not aware of.

00:11:11.240 | This activates many people

00:11:14.720 | into the healing professions, by the way,

00:11:16.720 | whether it's clergy, nursing, therapy, et cetera, et cetera.

00:11:20.880 | That that's often a sensitive child in the family

00:11:23.400 | who feels, I have to try to stabilize my environment

00:11:26.840 | in order to sort of get things back to a normal state,

00:11:31.840 | whatever that might be,

00:11:34.560 | so that then it can be there for me.

00:11:36.320 | But of course, that never quite happens.

00:11:38.680 | You know, a child can't fix a parent, you see.

00:11:42.200 | And so many people in the helping professions

00:11:44.880 | are driven there by a powerful internalized message,

00:11:49.840 | which becomes their sense of self.

00:11:52.560 | So it's a long-winded way of saying

00:11:54.040 | there's a distinction between the self,

00:11:56.200 | which is the natural organic development of this organism.

00:11:59.640 | You know, as we're speaking, it's growing our toenails,

00:12:02.560 | digesting our breakfast,

00:12:04.400 | mentating, emoting, and so forth.

00:12:07.040 | Most of that's autonomous activity.

00:12:09.840 | It's kind of like the centipede.

00:12:10.960 | You know, you congratulate the centipede

00:12:12.840 | on how well he coordinates all of his legs,

00:12:14.760 | and then he thinks, well,

00:12:16.040 | should I move this leg, or this leg, or this,

00:12:18.000 | and he's immobilized.

00:12:19.720 | These are not functions that we govern consciously,

00:12:22.680 | although we can interrupt them consciously.

00:12:25.400 | But something is there taking care of us.

00:12:27.760 | It's an organic unity,

00:12:29.280 | and that's what Jung meant by the self, capital S.

00:12:33.100 | Our sense of self is a different matter.

00:12:35.840 | And so one of the things that I've tried to emphasize

00:12:39.320 | in therapy is you're not what happened to you,

00:12:42.380 | because we tend to be bound to our story

00:12:45.400 | that says either that's who I am,

00:12:47.880 | that's what I'm defined by,

00:12:49.600 | or I'm spending my life trying to differentiate myself

00:12:52.480 | from that, get away from that, perhaps.

00:12:55.480 | So again, our sense of self is very provisional.

00:13:00.440 | It evolves, and in any given moment,

00:13:03.040 | there may be something in the unconscious that's triggered.

00:13:06.680 | And of course, the problem with the unconscious,

00:13:08.240 | it's unconscious.

00:13:09.820 | So I don't know that it's happened.

00:13:12.320 | I have the unconscious triggered.

00:13:15.680 | It has the power to rise, take over provisionally,

00:13:20.200 | spin out its program, and then after a while,

00:13:23.640 | it recedes back into the unconscious.

00:13:26.120 | And as I said, sometimes people will stop and say,

00:13:28.560 | "Well, I wonder what was behind that decision,"

00:13:31.000 | or, "Why did I choose that path?"

00:13:32.480 | Or, "What in me is blocking me

00:13:34.520 | "from doing what I know is right for me?"

00:13:37.240 | You know, as Paul said in the letter to the Romans,

00:13:39.760 | "Though I know the good, I do not do the good."

00:13:41.880 | Well, why not?

00:13:43.480 | Well, he saw it as insufficiency of will,

00:13:47.560 | but we know it's more than that.

00:13:49.280 | We know that there are unconscious factors at work

00:13:52.240 | that have a certain autonomy,

00:13:54.680 | and the more unconscious they are,

00:13:56.220 | the greater their autonomy will prove to be.

00:13:58.480 | - If they are unconscious and they're driving us

00:14:02.840 | sometimes into states, other times traits,

00:14:07.840 | I mean, and that's perhaps an interesting discussion

00:14:10.400 | in and of itself is, you know,

00:14:12.160 | what's the difference between a state of mind

00:14:14.520 | and body and a trait?

00:14:16.040 | But if it's unconscious,

00:14:18.920 | what chance do we stand to overcome these things?

00:14:22.600 | I mean, where, how does the awareness come about?

00:14:27.000 | Can we do it on our own?

00:14:28.140 | Does it require reflection from a trained professional?

00:14:31.440 | And if so, you know, when we become conscious of something,

00:14:36.440 | does that immediately flip a switch,

00:14:39.520 | or does it require constant returning to, you know,

00:14:43.640 | seeing and, you know, forcing the unconscious

00:14:47.820 | to become conscious over and over again?

00:14:49.480 | - Sure, well, those are great questions.

00:14:52.520 | First of all, again, none of us rises saying

00:14:55.560 | we're going to be counterproductive today,

00:14:57.560 | but we will because of the autonomy

00:14:59.900 | of those clusters of energy within us.

00:15:02.140 | Now, I've said to many people who've asked that question,

00:15:05.600 | well, start with your own life.

00:15:07.600 | Look to the patterns that you have.

00:15:10.120 | A pattern is an indication of some cluster of energy,

00:15:15.120 | whether it's outward or whether it's inward

00:15:18.200 | that you're carrying with you.

00:15:20.160 | And we don't do crazy things.

00:15:22.400 | We always do logical things.

00:15:24.920 | If we understand that what we're in service to

00:15:28.480 | intrapsychically, I'll give you an example.

00:15:30.640 | I was working in a closed ward of a hospital

00:15:32.720 | many decades ago, and it was a fellow

00:15:35.640 | repeatedly trying to break a window.

00:15:37.440 | People were assuming he was trying to escape

00:15:39.480 | or get a shard of glass for some nefarious purpose.

00:15:42.560 | And no one bothered to ask him why he was doing this.

00:15:46.200 | And he said he had the delusion that he was,

00:15:49.520 | first of all, in a locked ward,

00:15:50.760 | so he was caught in a, you know, a non-voluntary situation.

00:15:55.120 | And in his psychosis, he felt that

00:15:59.440 | somebody was pumping air from the room.

00:16:02.160 | Now, if this door was locked and the air

00:16:04.440 | is being pumped out of this room,

00:16:05.680 | the most logical thing we would do

00:16:07.520 | is break through a window or break down the door.

00:16:10.840 | So his behavior was logical based on a premise.

00:16:13.600 | Now, the premise is often inaccurate

00:16:16.360 | or tied to one place but gets extrapolated

00:16:18.800 | to another one somewhere else.

00:16:21.000 | And then we are responding logically to that premise.

00:16:25.720 | So you start with your own life,

00:16:27.600 | particularly the places where you find

00:16:29.640 | these are self-defeating behaviors

00:16:32.480 | or behaviors that are hurtful to you and someone else.

00:16:36.080 | And then you say, since that's not my conscious intention,

00:16:39.320 | and yet there it is as part of my history,

00:16:42.320 | then I have to say, all right, what is it within me

00:16:45.600 | that, you know, has the kind of power

00:16:48.280 | to take over my ego consciousness?

00:16:51.200 | Now, just to back off for a moment here,

00:16:52.880 | I think we're only conscious in the ego

00:16:56.760 | dealing with reality a few times during a course of a day.

00:17:00.400 | My favorite analogy is when you get up in the morning

00:17:03.640 | and you step in the shower, it's too hot or too cold,

00:17:06.560 | so you change the water temperature.

00:17:08.200 | Well, that's the ego in its proper function.

00:17:10.120 | It's being adaptive to its reality.

00:17:12.760 | It's being protective at that moment.

00:17:14.640 | It's achieving the optimum situation for you.

00:17:18.080 | But from the rest of time on,

00:17:19.520 | when that same ego is flooded by other material,

00:17:22.700 | some of which is conscious,

00:17:24.080 | who gets the kids today after school,

00:17:26.600 | how do I get to the work on time, et cetera,

00:17:29.080 | but underneath that are other drivers

00:17:31.080 | that have to do with fear-based responses

00:17:33.400 | or adaptive responses that were perhaps once protective,

00:17:38.400 | but later, you know, we weren't born with them,

00:17:41.200 | but we acquired them along life's highway.

00:17:43.200 | So what was once protective

00:17:45.080 | often becomes constrictive later

00:17:47.000 | and creates those patterns.

00:17:49.560 | So number one, you start with your patterns.

00:17:52.500 | Secondly, and everyone sort of laughs at this,

00:17:57.720 | but there's a certain truth is

00:17:59.080 | you might talk to those around you,

00:18:00.760 | such as your spouse or your closest partner

00:18:04.040 | or your children, and ask them about what they see in us,

00:18:08.720 | if you can bear to hear what they have to say,

00:18:11.720 | and to say, "Where is it you see me being hurtful

00:18:15.120 | "to myself or others?"

00:18:16.360 | Or, "Where is it that I get in your face

00:18:18.220 | "in an inappropriate way?"

00:18:20.280 | And then we usually have something to inform us with.

00:18:23.880 | Thirdly, we pay attention to our dreams

00:18:26.400 | because we don't choose to dream,

00:18:29.240 | but sleep research tells us

00:18:30.500 | that we average about six dreams per night,

00:18:32.680 | and that's a lot of activity.

00:18:33.900 | Nature doesn't waste energy, it's processing something.

00:18:37.280 | And it's not just processing.

00:18:39.200 | If we pay attention over time,

00:18:41.420 | you begin to realize it has a point of view.

00:18:45.460 | Another way of putting this is the psyche,

00:18:49.400 | which is the term I would use here,

00:18:51.400 | and that's the Greek word for soul, by the way.

00:18:54.360 | The psyche has its own intentionality.

00:18:58.920 | It's omnipresent, and it's commenting.

00:19:02.460 | And it comments in terms of our feeling function.

00:19:05.160 | You don't choose your feelings.

00:19:07.240 | Feelings are autonomous responses to what has happened.

00:19:10.500 | You can repress them, suppress them, anesthetize them,

00:19:13.900 | project them onto others, but you are, in the end,

00:19:17.360 | a creature that has an autonomous feeling response.

00:19:22.840 | Secondly, we have energy systems.

00:19:25.240 | If I'm doing what's right for me, the energy's there.

00:19:27.680 | The flow is there.

00:19:29.480 | We can mobilize our energy, and we have to in life

00:19:32.400 | to get up and feed the baby at two in the morning,

00:19:34.700 | or put in our 40-hour week,

00:19:38.720 | or whatever the requirements are.

00:19:41.160 | But over time, forcing the energy system leads, as we know,

00:19:46.080 | to boredom and burnout, and ultimately depression,

00:19:49.920 | often with self-medication attached to that.

00:19:52.420 | Thirdly, we have dreams, which comment.

00:19:56.080 | Fourthly, most importantly, is the question of meaning.

00:20:01.940 | If what we're doing is meaningful,

00:20:04.020 | as understood by the psyche, it will support us,

00:20:07.640 | even in the face of suffering and sacrifice and so forth.

00:20:12.120 | If what we're doing is wrong, as seen by the psyche,

00:20:16.400 | then over time, it begins to pathologize.

00:20:19.480 | So you take that word psychopathology,

00:20:22.940 | literally from the Greek, it means

00:20:24.560 | the expression of the suffering of the soul,

00:20:27.080 | which I think is reflatory,

00:20:30.320 | the expression of the suffering of the soul.

00:20:33.580 | Now, that seems to me obligatory to take seriously.

00:20:38.580 | If my soul, and again, that's a metaphor, you know,

00:20:43.060 | people look for the soul throughout history,

00:20:45.640 | and you can't find it in the pineal gland, for example.

00:20:48.760 | The soul's a metaphor for the organic wisdom

00:20:51.580 | of that natural being that we are.

00:20:55.400 | The soul is a metaphor for this purposeful expression

00:21:00.400 | of the organism.

00:21:02.000 | It is purposeful.

00:21:03.960 | In other words, a question that occupies all of us

00:21:08.520 | in childhood, and throughout the first half of life,

00:21:11.260 | at least, if not an entire lifetime,

00:21:14.560 | is what does the world want of me?

00:21:16.000 | What do my parents want from me?

00:21:17.360 | What do my school teacher want me?

00:21:19.080 | What do the playmates expect of me?

00:21:21.480 | What does the partner want from me?

00:21:22.920 | What does the employer want?

00:21:24.060 | All of these are reality-based encounters

00:21:26.980 | with the demands of the environment,

00:21:29.600 | and part of what we have to do

00:21:31.200 | is develop enough ego strength

00:21:32.720 | to create a provisional sense of self,

00:21:35.080 | and a provisional functional self,

00:21:37.440 | to deal with those expectations.

00:21:39.820 | But then when you've done that,

00:21:41.440 | you know, why are you still here?

00:21:43.400 | What's the purpose?

00:21:44.220 | Are you simply here to be a creature of adaptations?

00:21:47.440 | Now, without those adaptations,

00:21:48.860 | we would be overwhelmed, typically,

00:21:50.880 | by the circumstances of our lives,

00:21:52.680 | so we accommodate them in some way.

00:21:54.800 | But in the second half of life,

00:21:57.660 | and I'm using that term very loosely,

00:22:00.060 | the real question is, what does the soul want of me?

00:22:04.640 | You know, what does the psyche want of me?

00:22:06.560 | And that's a different question.

00:22:08.560 | Then the issue comes up,

00:22:10.400 | what is it that is wishing expression

00:22:12.320 | in the world through me?

00:22:13.640 | That's a different question

00:22:14.860 | than what does the world ask of me?

00:22:17.320 | The people that we would most admire in history

00:22:20.160 | are people who, in some way, found and lived out

00:22:25.160 | what the soul was asking of them.

00:22:27.880 | It didn't spare them from suffering,

00:22:29.600 | sometimes even martyrdom.

00:22:31.640 | It doesn't spare you from conflict and pain,

00:22:35.200 | maybe isolation, maybe exile,

00:22:38.560 | but you're fed by the purposefulness of it.

00:22:42.520 | Take that away, and life is pretty empty.

00:22:44.920 | And of course, we live in a culture

00:22:47.400 | where there's this enormous barrage of external stimuli.

00:22:52.280 | Well, buy this, purchase that, do this or that,

00:22:55.960 | the latest thing, and this or that,

00:22:57.600 | the newest shiny thing.

00:23:00.040 | And the more I'm seeking to define myself

00:23:03.480 | through that environmental summons,

00:23:06.360 | the more likely I'm gonna be estranged

00:23:08.000 | from something inside.

00:23:09.940 | All of us know it, but we don't know what to do about that

00:23:12.820 | at some level.

00:23:14.340 | And typically, it has to hurt enough inside

00:23:17.020 | to bring a person into therapy.

00:23:19.420 | People don't just walk in and say,

00:23:20.860 | well, I was in the neighborhood,

00:23:22.140 | and I thought I'd pop in and talk to a total stranger,

00:23:25.820 | pay him some money, and then walk out as a different person.

00:23:30.180 | It doesn't work that way.

00:23:31.460 | I've often said to people, this is not about curing you

00:23:35.220 | 'cause you're not a disease.

00:23:36.580 | This is about making your life more interesting,

00:23:41.020 | where you realize every morning you get up,

00:23:44.020 | you have something profound to address today.

00:23:47.520 | "Why am I here and in service to what?"

00:23:51.020 | 'Cause if you don't ask that question,

00:23:52.500 | you're gonna be in service to your adaptive postures

00:23:55.580 | from childhood, as many people prove to be,

00:23:58.580 | until the conflict within reaches that point

00:24:02.420 | where the suffering of the soul,

00:24:03.780 | psychopathology, is sufficient.

00:24:05.960 | I, myself, was cruising along in my 30s.

00:24:10.940 | I'd achieved everything that I wanted to achieve,

00:24:14.020 | and was enjoying my life, and then suddenly, inexplicably,

00:24:17.380 | had a very serious depression.

00:24:18.960 | And it took me a while to realize

00:24:22.900 | that I was asking the wrong question.

00:24:25.280 | The first question that occurs to a person

00:24:27.020 | under those circumstances is,

00:24:29.580 | how quickly do I get rid of this?

00:24:31.540 | Give me five easy steps, or a pill for that, or whatever.

00:24:36.160 | I didn't understand the real question is,

00:24:37.900 | why has your psyche autonomously

00:24:40.260 | withdrawn its approval and support

00:24:42.980 | from the agenda that you've been addressing?

00:24:45.860 | It was a good agenda, nothing wrong with it,

00:24:48.860 | but there was something else

00:24:50.320 | that was missing in this process.

00:24:52.780 | And it took a depression.

00:24:53.820 | It's like something from below

00:24:55.540 | reached up and pulled me down.

00:24:56.980 | Something was being pressed down.

00:24:58.800 | That's depression.

00:25:00.780 | And at the bottom of that well,

00:25:02.740 | there's always a task.

00:25:04.780 | There's always an issue.

00:25:06.860 | The identification of which can lead one

00:25:09.880 | into a new place in one's life, a different journey.

00:25:13.480 | In my case, it led me to

00:25:16.660 | leave a very fine tenure position in academia,

00:25:23.100 | travel to Switzerland, and spend several years there

00:25:26.860 | in retraining as a psychoanalyst.

00:25:29.540 | And I now look upon that depression as beneficent,

00:25:33.620 | but at the time, I certainly didn't, as you can imagine.

00:25:37.340 | - I'd like to take a brief break

00:25:38.500 | and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.

00:25:41.020 | By now, most of you have heard me tell my story

00:25:42.980 | about how I've been taking AG1 once or twice a day,

00:25:45.660 | every day since 2012.

00:25:47.340 | And indeed, that's true.

00:25:48.780 | I started taking AG1 and I still take AG1

00:25:51.060 | once or twice a day,

00:25:52.420 | because it gives me vitamins and minerals

00:25:54.220 | that I might not be getting enough of

00:25:55.620 | from whole foods that I eat,

00:25:57.280 | as well as adaptogens and micronutrients.

00:26:00.180 | And those adaptogens and micronutrients are really critical,

00:26:02.560 | because even though I strive to eat most of my foods

00:26:05.180 | from unprocessed or minimally processed whole foods,

00:26:08.100 | it's often hard to do so,

00:26:09.140 | especially when I'm traveling and especially when I'm busy.

00:26:12.020 | So by drinking a packet of AG1 in the morning,

00:26:14.260 | and oftentimes also again in the afternoon or evening,

00:26:17.580 | I'm ensuring that I'm getting everything I need.

00:26:19.560 | I'm covering all of my foundational nutritional needs.

00:26:22.380 | And I, like so many other people that take AG1 regularly,

00:26:25.380 | just report feeling better.

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00:26:31.120 | immune system health and brain health.

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00:26:34.740 | cellular and organ processes

00:26:36.820 | that all interact with one another.

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00:26:40.500 | towards one specific outcome,

00:26:42.060 | like sleeping better or being more alert,

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00:27:08.440 | - So if our task is to get in touch with

00:27:13.120 | this kind of yearning of the soul,

00:27:16.360 | to perhaps do some reparative work from our childhood,

00:27:20.660 | or at least understand our parent-child relationships.

00:27:24.260 | And then in an ideal circumstance,

00:27:26.540 | to express ourselves through some higher calling,

00:27:31.420 | if you will.

00:27:32.260 | But higher meaning for us or for the world,

00:27:34.900 | hopefully both, that would be ideal.

00:27:37.320 | In terms of the day, you know,

00:27:40.380 | you said you can wake up in the morning,

00:27:42.420 | presumably some of the residual thought processes

00:27:45.380 | and emotions from a dream or dreams

00:27:48.380 | still live within us early in the day.

00:27:50.940 | And then we start going about our day

00:27:52.400 | doing the practical things,

00:27:53.680 | making the cup of coffee, drinking the water,

00:27:55.860 | getting some sunshine, these sorts of things.

00:27:58.540 | How is it that the typical person,

00:28:04.100 | any of us can think about segmenting our thinking

00:28:07.500 | and our actions in a way that we're touching

00:28:10.380 | into the deeper meaning of life

00:28:12.860 | while also carrying out a life?

00:28:14.460 | Because as you know, and I know,

00:28:15.740 | and everybody listening and watching knows

00:28:17.620 | that there's stuff to do.

00:28:19.460 | We need to often get an education, make a living,

00:28:22.900 | tend to people around us, tend to ourselves.

00:28:24.900 | And it becomes a kind of a neuroscience problem in my mind,

00:28:29.900 | right, you know, different brain circuitries

00:28:33.080 | for different types of thinking.

00:28:34.820 | And if I may, I think it also becomes

00:28:37.660 | a time perception problem.

00:28:39.300 | You know, the brain, the human brain to me is so magnificent

00:28:42.240 | at setting milestones that are like get in the shower,

00:28:44.940 | finish the shower, check the text messages,

00:28:48.380 | talk to somebody and get about the day.

00:28:49.860 | The milestones become very close in.

00:28:51.700 | And then if we're lucky enough to be able to take a walk

00:28:54.700 | and reflect, put the phone away, et cetera,

00:28:57.220 | then our mind can expand into, you know,

00:29:00.100 | gosh, why am I here?

00:29:01.580 | You know, what about that thing my grandfather said to me

00:29:05.420 | or my grandmother said to me?

00:29:07.220 | And you know, that the ability to place our perception

00:29:10.820 | in larger or smaller time bins

00:29:12.780 | seems very closely linked to all of this

00:29:14.940 | and to the sense of mortality,

00:29:17.980 | which we'll certainly talk about in a little bit.

00:29:20.140 | But in a kind of a practical way,

00:29:23.180 | in the absence of a daily therapy session,

00:29:25.480 | how do you suggest people start to segment

00:29:32.420 | or compartmentalize in a way that's functional?

00:29:36.380 | For instance, should people set aside 15 minutes

00:29:40.740 | each morning to just think about why they're on this earth

00:29:45.620 | and why they're doing and what they're doing

00:29:49.300 | as opposed to just doing?

00:29:51.740 | - Sure, well, this is a central problem of our time

00:29:54.300 | is everybody's gonna say, I don't have time for that.

00:29:58.740 | I had a colleague, now deceased, Marian Woodman in Toronto,

00:30:02.500 | who used to say to her clients,

00:30:04.620 | you have to guarantee me one hour per day

00:30:07.620 | that you reflect on your dreams

00:30:10.060 | or you journal in terms of what's going on in your life.

00:30:13.340 | And she said, always people say, I don't have time for that.

00:30:16.700 | Then she said, then you don't have time for therapy.

00:30:20.060 | You're not making any priority here for this.

00:30:24.660 | And you're right, the claims of,

00:30:26.980 | Wordsworth wrote in 1802, the world is too much with us,

00:30:31.300 | getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.

00:30:34.300 | This is 1802, before the internet, right?

00:30:37.340 | With all of its claims upon us.

00:30:39.380 | There's such a noisy din around us,

00:30:41.820 | we're all distracted by that, you see?

00:30:44.980 | That's why it usually takes a crisis in a marriage

00:30:47.780 | or depression or whatever the case may be

00:30:50.220 | to get people to pull out of that and reflect upon that.

00:30:54.900 | So I spend 15 minutes every morning before starting,

00:30:58.620 | just meditating, particularly working on a dream

00:31:01.260 | if I've had a dream.

00:31:02.900 | And secondly, I reflect on things in the evening too,

00:31:06.100 | because one of the things we wanna try to do is to say,

00:31:09.380 | what are the stories I'm living here?

00:31:13.900 | One of them, I've gotta earn a living.

00:31:15.420 | One of them, I've gotta do this.

00:31:16.620 | Another one's, I have to do that, you see?

00:31:18.740 | But what's all of that frenzy about, you see?

00:31:22.300 | That's why I think the first half of life,

00:31:25.020 | and I say this semi-humorously,

00:31:28.060 | is a huge and unavoidable mistake,

00:31:30.580 | 'cause we're living just reactively.

00:31:32.380 | You see, it's not generative,

00:31:33.580 | it's reacting to whatever's going on around us.

00:31:37.460 | Is one's entire life to be spent reacting to things?

00:31:42.400 | Now, when you're young,

00:31:43.920 | there's only so much ego strength to reflect upon this.

00:31:47.960 | A number of years ago, I was asked to give a talk

00:31:51.080 | to an advanced group of college students at a university

00:31:55.600 | on the psychodynamics of love.

00:31:58.480 | Well, they were all interested about love,

00:32:00.000 | I can tell you, right?

00:32:01.680 | So it was a three-hour seminar.

00:32:03.680 | So over the first 90 minutes,

00:32:04.960 | we talked about projection, transference, all these,

00:32:08.080 | they got it, they were smart kids.

00:32:10.400 | And then we took a short break.

00:32:11.740 | And then we came back, and I said,

00:32:12.680 | now let's apply these ideas

00:32:14.680 | to your current or recent relationships.

00:32:17.480 | It was like the curtain came down.

00:32:19.880 | You know, they were 19, 20, 21, 22, in that area.

00:32:23.960 | They couldn't bear, they could get the idea,

00:32:26.880 | but they couldn't bear to look at themselves

00:32:29.080 | with that kind of scrutiny.

00:32:31.440 | Flash forward 20 years, when they're 40,

00:32:33.840 | and their marriage just dissolved,

00:32:35.400 | or the relationship has hardships of one kind or another,

00:32:40.680 | they're much more likely to be able to,

00:32:43.440 | A, have enough ego strength to bear looking at oneself.

00:32:47.960 | Secondly, there's enough life experience to reflect upon.

00:32:52.540 | Because this kind of work takes courage in the first place.

00:32:57.280 | I have to be able to bear to look at myself

00:33:00.160 | and see what's there, which won't always be pretty.

00:33:04.160 | And secondly, it's humbling.

00:33:06.200 | Because this is not about feeling great,

00:33:09.640 | it's about being called to accountability,

00:33:12.080 | which is a whole different matter.

00:33:14.320 | To be an adult is not just to have a big body,

00:33:16.680 | it's to know that I'm accountable

00:33:19.560 | for what's spilling into the world through me.

00:33:22.520 | Jung said once in one of those telling statements

00:33:25.200 | that haunts me in a constructive way,

00:33:27.680 | he said the greatest burden a child must bear

00:33:30.040 | is the unlived life of the parent.

00:33:32.740 | So where I'm stuck as a person, my children will be stuck,

00:33:38.440 | or they'll be spending their life trying to get unstuck.

00:33:41.320 | So the best thing I can do for them is to model for them

00:33:46.600 | a life lived with as much courage as I can mobilize,

00:33:50.240 | and as much integrity as I can manage.

00:33:53.400 | And in doing that, it not only models,

00:33:55.840 | it gives permission to them.

00:33:57.640 | One of the things I've found for many people

00:34:00.880 | is they don't really feel permission

00:34:03.280 | to feel what they feel, desire what they desire,

00:34:07.240 | go out and fight for what matters to them.

00:34:09.880 | Because life, we learn early, is conditional.

00:34:13.320 | You will be acceptable in this family,

00:34:15.440 | you will perhaps be loved, you'll be rewarded,

00:34:18.220 | or you'll be punished if you meet these conditions.

00:34:22.120 | And if you don't meet the conditions,

00:34:23.600 | a lot of people put conditions on their children.

00:34:28.200 | A lot of people are still living through their children.

00:34:34.760 | If you'll forgive the joke here,

00:34:36.720 | there's an old joke about Jewish mothers.

00:34:39.400 | The fetus is not considered full term

00:34:41.320 | until it's graduated from medical school, you see.

00:34:44.460 | And that's, it's a joke about a cultural expectation,

00:34:48.680 | and carrying someone else's unfinished business

00:34:52.360 | in a way in which, you know, is to make them feel good,

00:34:56.360 | rather than serve what is wanting expression through you,

00:34:59.000 | which is quite a different matter.

00:35:01.120 | So one of the things one has to do is seize permission

00:35:04.560 | to realize life is short, we're here a very brief time,

00:35:09.560 | and the summons is to live your journey

00:35:12.520 | as honestly as you can.

00:35:15.160 | And when you do, it ultimately serves other people.

00:35:18.440 | It's not selfish, it's actually serving the self,

00:35:21.400 | if you will.

00:35:22.920 | It's not narcissistic, it's not self-absorption,

00:35:26.160 | it's actually humbling.

00:35:27.840 | I would never have imagined as a child

00:35:31.040 | that I would spend my adult life

00:35:33.060 | listening to people's suffering.

00:35:34.760 | And yet that's my day job.

00:35:37.960 | And I'm humbled to be invited into the lives

00:35:41.080 | of other people, it's profoundly meaningful.

00:35:44.300 | I can't imagine living without that.

00:35:47.040 | At the same time, it's not fun, it's not pleasant,

00:35:52.040 | but it's profoundly meaningful, that's the distinction.

00:35:56.320 | That's why of those various sources of insight

00:35:59.560 | that we can have into our lives,

00:36:01.020 | you have to ask about what is most meaningful to me,

00:36:04.220 | as defined by the psyche, not by the culture around you.

00:36:07.140 | 'Cause what the culture says,

00:36:08.100 | it's all about being successful,

00:36:09.600 | it's all about making money,

00:36:10.800 | it's about living in this neighborhood,

00:36:12.860 | it's about buying that object.

00:36:15.100 | And if that worked, we would know it.

00:36:18.380 | It obviously doesn't.

00:36:19.740 | So that's what brings us back to that humbling moment

00:36:23.540 | that maybe I'm not living my life.

00:36:26.940 | Siren Kierkegaard, the Danish theologian

00:36:29.620 | in Copenhagen in the 19th century,

00:36:31.900 | talked about a man who was shocked to find his name

00:36:35.600 | in the obituary column, and he hadn't realized he'd died.

00:36:39.120 | 'Cause he hadn't realized that he was here

00:36:40.740 | in the first place.

00:36:42.540 | Now this is Kierkegaard talking

00:36:43.860 | in the middle of the 19th century.

00:36:45.840 | Think about the ramping up of the stimuli around us,

00:36:49.300 | the steady drum.

00:36:51.840 | Among young people, you take away their cell phone,

00:36:54.220 | they experience enormous anxiety,

00:36:56.520 | because this is their link to the world,

00:36:58.820 | and yet it's constantly making demands upon them.

00:37:02.020 | So again, underneath all of this,

00:37:04.520 | is we have an appointment with our own souls.

00:37:07.360 | And the question is,

00:37:09.400 | are you gonna show up for the appointment?

00:37:11.920 | And I thought I had, but my psyche thought otherwise,

00:37:16.460 | so it was in the midst of a serious depression

00:37:18.860 | that I began showing up.

00:37:21.080 | And it was a difficult process,

00:37:23.380 | but ultimately proved to be, I think, transformative.

00:37:27.480 | - I certainly agree that hardship, for better or worse,

00:37:31.540 | is often the way that these things stimulate

00:37:33.600 | the self-reflection that's required for change.

00:37:36.240 | There seems to be a tricky situation,

00:37:41.320 | whereby on the one hand, I'm hearing, and I agree,

00:37:44.900 | that it all starts with being very honest with oneself

00:37:47.820 | about what one really wants.

00:37:50.400 | And I love and thank you for mentioning this 15 minutes

00:37:54.600 | in the early part of the day,

00:37:56.240 | perhaps, ideally, 15 minutes at the end of the day,

00:37:58.560 | where one takes time away from input from others

00:38:02.160 | of any form, electronic or otherwise,

00:38:04.520 | to just reflect on what's inside,

00:38:07.560 | and the messages coming up through dreams

00:38:09.480 | and reflection, et cetera.

00:38:11.800 | So important.

00:38:12.860 | - And may I just add another piece?

00:38:16.080 | Forgive the interruption, but I've often said to individuals,

00:38:20.040 | it's not so much what you believe, feel, or do,

00:38:23.160 | it's what it's in service to inside of you.

00:38:26.200 | That's an important distinction.

00:38:27.620 | So I may think I've done a good thing,

00:38:30.280 | when it's really an old codependence,

00:38:33.120 | or it's a way of avoiding conflict,

00:38:36.160 | or it's a fear-driven response.

00:38:39.340 | We have to always be asking,

00:38:40.960 | but what was that in service to inside of me?

00:38:44.560 | And you may not know at first,

00:38:46.060 | but you keep asking the question,

00:38:47.520 | and it'll start rising to the surface,

00:38:50.900 | you begin to recognize that.

00:38:53.000 | That's how we begin to identify

00:38:54.880 | some of those internal drivers that we call the complexes.

00:38:58.940 | Because again, they're clusters of energy

00:39:02.920 | with the power to create a provisional personality.

00:39:06.040 | And many times people are identified with their complex.

00:39:10.240 | That's who I am.

00:39:11.520 | I am what I do, or I am my performance,

00:39:14.800 | rather than beneath all of this is a human being

00:39:18.560 | who is wandering through life, afraid of dying,

00:39:22.760 | trying to avoid pain as much as possible,

00:39:24.920 | and hoping that someone's gonna step in

00:39:27.880 | and make it all right.

00:39:29.000 | - I'm certainly familiar with the feeling of

00:39:33.160 | recognizing what I want,

00:39:37.320 | but being afraid that if I were to express that,

00:39:42.320 | that it would not be accepted.

00:39:46.720 | - Certainly.

00:39:47.560 | - And that certainly can create problems.

00:39:50.140 | I'm also familiar with recognizing what I want

00:39:53.320 | and stating it very clearly,

00:39:54.640 | and some people fortunately responding well.

00:39:58.560 | But I think it's fair to say,

00:40:00.880 | at least based on my experience,

00:40:02.280 | that when we are really honest with ourselves

00:40:04.680 | and with others, it doesn't always land well, right?

00:40:08.200 | I mean, I pay a lot of attention,

00:40:10.240 | probably too much to messaging on social media

00:40:13.160 | in the landscape of science and health.

00:40:15.400 | It's just kind of the world I live in

00:40:17.640 | much of the time these days.

00:40:19.720 | And what I noticed is that there's a real gravitational pull

00:40:24.160 | of people to, let's call them whatever they are,

00:40:27.840 | influencers, public figures,

00:40:29.200 | or that are just very clear about who they are,

00:40:34.200 | at least in their own self-perception.

00:40:36.160 | But then herein lies the twist, it seems,

00:40:39.360 | is that what I'm hearing is that

00:40:41.080 | often our self-perception is not accurate.

00:40:44.520 | - That's correct.

00:40:45.360 | - And it's almost futile to try and convince people

00:40:48.280 | that we are who we believe we are, right?

00:40:51.280 | And I have a theory that's emerging.

00:40:53.000 | It's not a formal theory that the internet

00:40:56.280 | and in particular social media is borderline.

00:41:00.120 | It weaves back and forth between sane and psychotic,

00:41:03.480 | as if a borderline person would,

00:41:05.160 | projecting either adoration or total disgust.

00:41:09.520 | And I warn anybody now, including myself,

00:41:12.160 | if you're going on social media,

00:41:13.660 | you're interacting with a borderline organism.

00:41:18.040 | So you need to be prepared to be told in various ways,

00:41:21.140 | sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, that you're terrible.

00:41:24.420 | And you also need to be prepared for immense reward

00:41:29.480 | and being told that you're spectacular,

00:41:32.280 | simply by being there.

00:41:33.740 | That's what it is to interact with a borderline person.

00:41:36.360 | And there's no controlling or predicting their flips.

00:41:40.600 | So in any event, that's a little theory that's emerging.

00:41:45.440 | Why wouldn't it be that way, right?

00:41:47.180 | You're the psychologist, but why wouldn't it be that way?

00:41:49.080 | Because ultimately social media is the emergent property

00:41:52.240 | of all these individuals.

00:41:53.880 | Okay, so you've made it clear how one way

00:41:59.300 | to anchor to the self and get in touch

00:42:01.960 | with what's really going on inside.

00:42:04.360 | Reflecting on dreams, reflecting on what geysers

00:42:06.960 | to the surface, journaling, perhaps meditation,

00:42:09.940 | ideally twice a day, perhaps therapy as well would be ideal.

00:42:15.120 | But then we move about our day

00:42:16.920 | and we do our best to be the best version of ourselves.

00:42:19.680 | And when we get positive feedback, we tend to,

00:42:24.580 | I think as neurobiological, psychological organisms,

00:42:28.480 | do more of that.

00:42:29.480 | - Do more of that.

00:42:30.320 | - And it's sort of a bank account of sorts.

00:42:34.860 | We're going for a net positive balance.

00:42:37.200 | And we tend to do less of the things

00:42:39.640 | that give us negative feedback,

00:42:42.080 | except perhaps go to social media

00:42:43.940 | where people seem to go on there

00:42:45.520 | specifically for friction-based interactions as well,

00:42:48.440 | which is its own thing.

00:42:49.920 | So as we move through life, first half of life,

00:42:54.120 | second half of life,

00:42:56.000 | how is it that we can orient in time,

00:43:00.400 | as I kind of put it before,

00:43:01.560 | how can we carry out these daily or weekly

00:43:06.160 | or maybe yearly reflections

00:43:08.920 | in a way that really serves us well?

00:43:11.240 | I mean, do you recommend one day a week

00:43:13.600 | stepping away from everything?

00:43:14.920 | Do you recommend doing retreats of sort?

00:43:18.440 | Do you recommend that people keep a life journal?

00:43:22.180 | Is the story and seeing how one story evolves,

00:43:26.280 | is this useful?

00:43:27.520 | What I'm trying to do here is kind of orient people

00:43:30.280 | to some practical tools,

00:43:31.740 | because I think at some level

00:43:34.880 | we can get pulled down currents of any kind.

00:43:40.320 | And ideally we stay out of deep pathology,

00:43:44.240 | but even if we hit the rumble strips

00:43:47.840 | and go back over and over again,

00:43:49.740 | this is important work, right?

00:43:52.880 | This is about being the best version of ourselves

00:43:55.640 | and society benefits from that.

00:43:57.280 | So are there more macroscopic things that we can do,

00:44:01.680 | or is it just a daily chip away to meditations,

00:44:05.200 | ideally therapy, journal, and just anchor down

00:44:10.480 | do we ever get to relax?

00:44:13.000 | - Well, of course, of course.

00:44:15.580 | First of all, there's no formula that's applicable

00:44:19.080 | to everybody and their life circumstances.

00:44:21.440 | You know, the word psychotherapy literally means

00:44:23.400 | from the Greek to listen to or pay attention to the soul.

00:44:27.880 | However you go about doing that is right for you.

00:44:31.160 | It's up to you to figure that out.

00:44:33.080 | And for some people be working in nature,

00:44:35.520 | for others to be working with their hands,

00:44:37.600 | for others it'll be through some creative enterprise

00:44:40.160 | or working with their dreams or meditating or whatever.

00:44:43.940 | I would say whatever helps you step out

00:44:49.120 | of the stimulus response, stimulus response melee

00:44:52.360 | that we call our daily life is likely to be helpful to you

00:44:57.360 | either because you rest and you restore the psyche

00:45:00.600 | and or you have some reflection upon it.

00:45:03.400 | You recollect yourself as it is, right?

00:45:06.720 | You remember the self because we get unraveled.

00:45:10.640 | I often have the feeling of getting unraveled in life

00:45:14.480 | where, you know, this calls you and this calls you

00:45:16.800 | and this calls you and that calls you.

00:45:18.240 | And it's just pulling you away from some center here.

00:45:22.200 | And again, this is not about self-absorption,

00:45:24.760 | but if I'm not in connection with something abiding here,

00:45:29.080 | my behaviors or choices there are not gonna be very helpful

00:45:32.120 | in the long run, you see.

00:45:34.120 | They're gonna be merely responsive to the demands

00:45:36.640 | of the environmental circumstances.

00:45:38.520 | - One thing I enjoy doing from time to time is drawing.

00:45:43.560 | I like doing anatomical drawings and things of that sort.

00:45:45.560 | And I find that if I engage in an activity

00:45:48.480 | that absorbs all of my attention,

00:45:51.320 | even though I have zero minus one aspirations

00:45:55.360 | of becoming a commercial artist or something of that sort,

00:45:58.680 | that two things happen.

00:46:00.880 | One, I exit the stimulus response world

00:46:05.120 | and at the same time,

00:46:07.740 | it's inevitable that some insight comes later.

00:46:10.880 | - That's right.

00:46:11.760 | - What is that?

00:46:12.880 | - Well, see, I think that's a good example though,

00:46:15.040 | as you said, of exiting the stimulus response cycle

00:46:18.040 | because in that moment, something in your psyche rises

00:46:22.200 | to express itself through you.

00:46:24.680 | And, you know, it's your drawing.

00:46:27.800 | We could perhaps read that drawing

00:46:30.360 | and perhaps interpret something of it.

00:46:33.440 | You know, like the famous Rorschach, for example.

00:46:36.400 | Rorschach's an inkblot.

00:46:38.400 | When's an inkblot not an inkblot?

00:46:40.160 | Well, when I confabulate a response to it, you see,

00:46:43.880 | and that response is indicative

00:46:45.480 | of what is going on inside of me.

00:46:47.920 | So that's a good example.

00:46:49.120 | I mean, for some people, you know,

00:46:50.720 | they have those moments when they're out jogging,

00:46:53.160 | for example, or riding a bicycle

00:46:54.800 | or whatever it does, listening to music.

00:46:59.000 | There's no right path for everyone.

00:47:01.540 | It's like, find the place

00:47:03.560 | where you're able to be alone with yourself.

00:47:07.480 | And if you can tolerate being with yourself

00:47:10.200 | and you pay attention,

00:47:13.360 | something will start coming up, you see.

00:47:16.680 | And ultimately, ironically, that's the cure

00:47:19.480 | to the great disease of our time, which is loneliness.

00:47:23.080 | It's interesting that the UK and Japan

00:47:27.080 | now have cabinet level posts for ministers of loneliness.

00:47:31.280 | So great is the loneliness.

00:47:32.240 | We've never been more connected in human history

00:47:35.060 | through our electronic media.

00:47:36.680 | And yet people are now isolated in their rooms,

00:47:39.860 | talking to each other.

00:47:41.680 | And I saw a cartoon, probably New York or somewhere,

00:47:44.640 | where a couple was getting married

00:47:46.100 | and the minister says to the couple,

00:47:49.240 | "Text each other, I do."

00:47:51.200 | It was ultimately a joke about

00:47:53.560 | how we are so media dependent now

00:47:57.160 | that we're disconnected from each other.

00:47:59.640 | And so whatever it is

00:48:01.880 | that helps you link to something in here.

00:48:05.360 | Jung asked this question,

00:48:06.600 | which I'm also haunted by in a constructive way.

00:48:09.400 | He said, "We all need to find what supports us

00:48:11.840 | "when nothing supports us."

00:48:13.420 | And that's ultimately the cure for loneliness,

00:48:16.680 | that there's something inside of me

00:48:18.160 | that knows me better than me,

00:48:19.840 | is working hard to bring about a healthy response

00:48:28.400 | to whatever life brings.

00:48:30.480 | And it has a purposefulness to it,

00:48:32.440 | an intentionality, an expression.

00:48:35.440 | And when I'm in touch with that,

00:48:37.960 | I feel that sense of wholeness and purposefulness.

00:48:41.160 | When I'm out of it,

00:48:42.280 | it's when I start unraveling, so to speak.

00:48:44.880 | And that's how we get exhausted and burned out and so forth.

00:48:49.520 | So again, I use that word recollecting, remembering.

00:48:54.480 | It's like pulling the pieces back together again

00:48:56.960 | in some way.

00:48:58.440 | So what Shakespeare said,

00:48:59.820 | knitting the raveled sleeve of care, you see.

00:49:05.360 | He was using the same metaphor

00:49:07.080 | of being unraveled in some way.

00:49:09.260 | - I love this notion of spending time alone

00:49:13.620 | and accessing one's deepest resource for self-care

00:49:18.040 | as a way to deal with loneliness.

00:49:20.320 | Because ultimately, I also completely agree

00:49:23.240 | that stimulus response is the hallmark of text messaging.

00:49:28.240 | There can be useful aspects of text messaging, of course,

00:49:32.880 | coordinating plans, et cetera, and communicating.

00:49:35.280 | But certainly social media,

00:49:37.040 | we have a stimulus response device.

00:49:39.520 | Some people think of it more like a slot machine,

00:49:41.320 | but it never actually returns the jackpot, is the issue.

00:49:44.640 | And I also think that social media can be terrific

00:49:48.160 | for educating and learning as well.

00:49:50.880 | Certainly much of what I do or strive to do.

00:49:53.560 | I think time alone is incredibly beneficial.

00:49:57.880 | So thank you for highlighting that.

00:49:59.800 | And also that it doesn't take much,

00:50:02.760 | maybe even a half hour walk or something of that sort.

00:50:06.680 | If I may, what do you think happens

00:50:08.600 | when we exit that stimulus response mode?

00:50:11.240 | Do you think the unconscious mind

00:50:12.960 | is revealed a bit more to us?

00:50:15.880 | And I think of the unconscious mind,

00:50:18.480 | a former guest on this podcast,

00:50:21.200 | a psychiatrist, described the unconscious

00:50:23.200 | as kind of like the iceberg that's beneath the surface,

00:50:27.400 | all the stuff going on that we're entirely unaware of.

00:50:30.280 | Do you think that the water recedes a little bit?

00:50:32.320 | - Oh, absolutely.

00:50:33.400 | Because there's no room for the expression

00:50:37.040 | of whatever's wanting to be acknowledged within us

00:50:41.000 | when we're constantly responding

00:50:42.560 | to our environmental demands.

00:50:44.260 | One of the things I try to do is walk a mile every day.

00:50:47.920 | I've gone through some health issues in recent years.

00:50:50.400 | And so I'm sort of in a physical recovery stage of life.

00:50:55.120 | And I walk a mile a day,

00:50:57.240 | even though it's physically difficult.

00:50:59.680 | And I find that revelatory because that's,

00:51:03.500 | I'm focused on being present here

00:51:06.760 | rather than all of the distractions there.

00:51:08.920 | And that's one of the things that I have found

00:51:12.440 | a form of meditation, if you will.

00:51:15.240 | And what comes up for me is often surprising.

00:51:17.940 | - I've talked before on the podcast

00:51:21.160 | about meditation, clinical hypnosis,

00:51:23.280 | something called the yoga nidra,

00:51:24.580 | which is a self-directed relaxation.

00:51:26.800 | Some of us call it non-sleep deep rest, et cetera.

00:51:28.760 | And without taking us on a tangent,

00:51:30.860 | I raise this because we keep talking about meditation.

00:51:34.960 | And I think to a lot of people,

00:51:36.880 | meditation sounds like something esoteric.

00:51:39.260 | To me, as a neuroscientist,

00:51:41.240 | meditation is a perceptual exercise.

00:51:43.760 | It can be done to enhance focus

00:51:45.300 | by focusing on a specific location behind the forehead

00:51:48.240 | or looking at a light.

00:51:50.040 | It can be an open monitoring meditation

00:51:54.180 | where you're intentionally not trying to focus

00:51:55.720 | on any one thing.

00:51:56.560 | But at the end of the day, it's a perceptual,

00:51:58.760 | it's a deliberate perceptual shift,

00:52:01.200 | much in the same way that if I decide to, you know,

00:52:05.300 | listen to an opera with my eyes closed,

00:52:07.840 | that's a, in some sense, it's a meditation.

00:52:09.980 | It's a deliberate perceptual shift.

00:52:13.620 | So a deliberate perceptual shift

00:52:16.520 | that we're calling a meditation,

00:52:17.760 | which I think is a great label for it,

00:52:20.020 | that is directly aimed at better understanding

00:52:22.660 | one's own unconscious processing

00:52:24.820 | so that one can then lean into

00:52:27.780 | the stimulus response parts of life

00:52:31.100 | with more intentionality,

00:52:32.900 | with less opportunity to hit the rumble strips

00:52:35.740 | or go into the gutter.

00:52:36.940 | - With a more authentic response to it, you see,

00:52:41.500 | because it's more likely to be coming out of me

00:52:43.840 | rather than simply being reactive.

00:52:45.500 | I think that's the important thing.

00:52:47.620 | - What's so important about what you're saying

00:52:49.060 | is that for years now, we've heard about, you know,

00:52:52.220 | meditation being important as a way to intervene

00:52:56.180 | in the stimulus response process.

00:52:59.900 | And people say, be responsive, not reactive.

00:53:02.740 | And it all sounds so wonderful,

00:53:04.080 | just as sounding, being gritty and resilient

00:53:06.380 | sounds wonderful.

00:53:07.220 | But one of the things that's really important here

00:53:09.480 | that you're raising is that there are methods to do this.

00:53:13.140 | They almost always involve going inward

00:53:15.620 | or someone who can see what we can't see

00:53:19.100 | pointing out blind spots in us.

00:53:21.140 | - That's right.

00:53:22.020 | Well, I think, again, the issue is to still the traffic

00:53:25.660 | inside and be present to the moment in whatever way that is.

00:53:28.980 | That's why I said a person can meditate

00:53:31.340 | by a work of the hands or by walking

00:53:35.140 | or something that pulls one out of the cycles

00:53:39.180 | that are running their little script over and over and over.

00:53:43.140 | So there are many forms of meditating.

00:53:45.460 | And, you know, ancient traditions have revealed that too.

00:53:47.860 | There was walking meditation and so forth.

00:53:50.020 | And you mentioned music.

00:53:52.120 | I think that's another example.

00:53:53.540 | To listen to music, I think, takes one out of,

00:53:55.940 | you know, Nietzsche said once,

00:53:57.140 | "Without music, life's a mistake."

00:54:00.060 | And I think what he was getting at was

00:54:02.180 | there is a sense in which music has no purpose

00:54:06.740 | except being itself.

00:54:09.540 | So when we're really present to the music,

00:54:12.600 | we were in the midst of being.

00:54:15.400 | If I'm, we're at spring right now,

00:54:18.540 | as you and I are talking,

00:54:19.680 | and it's beautiful in the neighborhood.

00:54:21.240 | And so I've been watching the flowers emerge and so forth.

00:54:24.860 | And simply being present to that

00:54:27.340 | means some of that other traffic is stilled.

00:54:30.460 | And then I returned and the traffic resumes.

00:54:32.840 | But maybe I have a little more of a sense of who I am

00:54:36.800 | and from whence I'm responding, you see,

00:54:39.360 | as a result of that recentering process.

00:54:42.840 | You know, the Zen folks talk about being no-minded.

00:54:45.640 | I think that was their way of talking about

00:54:47.760 | being present to this moment,

00:54:50.200 | but not consumed by the demands of this moment.

00:54:54.400 | And that's a difficult thing to manage, but it's essential.

00:54:57.860 | I'd like to take a brief break

00:55:00.000 | and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Waking Up.

00:55:02.860 | Waking Up is a meditation app

00:55:04.360 | that offers hundreds of guided meditations,

00:55:06.440 | mindfulness trainings, yoga needer sessions, and more.

00:55:09.480 | I started meditating over three decades ago.

00:55:11.800 | And what I found in the ensuing years

00:55:13.640 | is that sometimes it was very easy for me

00:55:15.740 | to do my daily meditation practice.

00:55:17.440 | I was just really diligent.

00:55:19.060 | But then as things would get more stressful,

00:55:20.840 | which of course is exactly

00:55:21.860 | when I should have been meditating more,

00:55:23.860 | my meditation practice would fall off.

00:55:26.040 | With Waking Up, they make it very easy to find

00:55:28.580 | and consistently use a given meditation practice.

00:55:31.040 | It has very convenient reminders

00:55:32.840 | and they come in different durations.

00:55:34.640 | So even if you just have one minute

00:55:36.080 | or five minutes to meditate,

00:55:37.440 | you can still get your meditation in,

00:55:38.840 | which research shows is still highly beneficial.

00:55:41.680 | In addition to the many different meditations

00:55:43.480 | on the Waking Up app, they also have yoga nidra sessions,

00:55:46.660 | which are a form of non-sleep deep rest

00:55:48.920 | that I personally find is extremely valuable

00:55:51.580 | for restoring mental and physical vigor.

00:55:53.560 | I tend to do a yoga nidra

00:55:54.980 | lasting anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes, at least once a day.

00:55:58.080 | And if I ever wake up in the middle of the night

00:56:00.160 | and I need to fall back asleep,

00:56:01.600 | I also find yoga nidra to be extremely useful.

00:56:04.360 | If you'd like to try the Waking Up app,

00:56:06.320 | you can go to wakingup.com/huberman

00:56:09.320 | to try a free 30-day trial.

00:56:11.160 | Again, that's wakingup.com/huberman.

00:56:14.180 | Perhaps we can talk about the shadow,

00:56:17.520 | this notion of the shadow.

00:56:18.880 | Sounds very ominous.

00:56:21.220 | What is the shadow?

00:56:24.240 | And are people aware of their shadows?

00:56:28.800 | And if they're not, how can they become aware of them?

00:56:32.560 | And how can they work with them?

00:56:34.400 | - Well, a shadow was Jung's metaphor

00:56:38.240 | for those parts of our own psyche

00:56:40.880 | and/or our affiliation with groups, for example,

00:56:45.440 | whether it's a religious group, educational group,

00:56:47.840 | a national identity, that when brought to consciousness,

00:56:51.680 | we find troubling, perhaps contradictory to our values

00:56:56.200 | or inimical to our sense of self-worth

00:57:00.640 | or something like that.

00:57:01.640 | For example, typical shadow issues include

00:57:05.280 | our capacity for jealousy and for envy,

00:57:08.240 | for aggression, for greed, et cetera, et cetera.

00:57:11.960 | We don't want to acknowledge those things,

00:57:15.160 | but since when are we exempt from the human condition?

00:57:19.040 | The wisest thing ever said about the shadow

00:57:21.120 | came from the Latin playwright Terence two millennia ago

00:57:24.320 | who said, "Nothing human is alien to me."

00:57:29.000 | Now, I think that's important to recognize.

00:57:31.280 | In me, I carry the entire capacity of human nature

00:57:34.740 | to express itself.

00:57:36.600 | Some of those forms of expressions will be acceptable

00:57:40.340 | to the society or to my psychological culture,

00:57:43.800 | and some will not be.

00:57:44.980 | And that's the shadow material.

00:57:48.120 | And there's the personal shadow

00:57:50.160 | and there are group shadows

00:57:51.480 | because nations can be possessed by bloodlust, for example,

00:57:55.040 | or a fashion is a shadow issue

00:57:58.080 | where everybody has to look the same way

00:58:00.000 | and dress the same way and so forth.

00:58:02.640 | The more insecure I am as a person,

00:58:05.000 | the more likely I'm going to try to look around me

00:58:07.200 | for what are the clues so I can fit in,

00:58:09.200 | be like others, and therefore I'll be acceptable.

00:58:12.800 | That's not a federal crime.

00:58:14.240 | That's a very deep complex that is left over from childhood.

00:58:18.760 | I'm not here to fit in, I'm here to be who I am,

00:58:22.520 | which at times will fit in and other times it won't,

00:58:25.520 | but that's okay because I'm at least in good relationships

00:58:29.120 | to myself at that point.

00:58:31.360 | So typically, the shadow manifests as being unconscious,

00:58:35.480 | therefore it just spills into the world through us.

00:58:38.400 | A perfect example of shadow issues, as I mentioned before,

00:58:41.440 | is parents expecting their children to grow up

00:58:43.640 | and have the same kind of values that I have, for example,

00:58:47.840 | same religious views, marry somebody that I find acceptable,

00:58:51.040 | et cetera, et cetera.

00:58:51.880 | Well, that's not really loving the otherness

00:58:54.520 | of the other, is it?

00:58:55.480 | It's not really loving a child for their own journey.

00:58:57.840 | That's them carrying some piece

00:58:59.840 | of their own unfinished business.

00:59:02.760 | Secondly, we disown the shadow by projecting on some,

00:59:06.880 | you know those people across the border there.

00:59:09.000 | You know, they're the carrier.

00:59:10.560 | They're what's wrong with this world, you see.

00:59:13.440 | I disown the shadow in myself

00:59:16.280 | by seeing it in everybody else around me.

00:59:19.000 | Jung actually said what often we find troubling

00:59:21.320 | in another person is because they're expressing something

00:59:24.240 | within our own unconscious.

00:59:25.720 | You know, as a certain itinerant rabbi said

00:59:29.880 | two millennia ago, I can see the speck in your eye,

00:59:33.560 | but miss the log in my own.

00:59:35.080 | That's a perfect illustration of what the shadow is.

00:59:37.760 | Thirdly, one can get caught up in it.

00:59:41.200 | That's at times what rock concerts are, mass events,

00:59:44.960 | people are caught up in a mob mentality

00:59:48.000 | where you lose your sense of individual ego identity

00:59:52.560 | and become subsumed into a collective mood.

00:59:56.480 | And you know, that could be a hanging mob, for example,

01:00:00.520 | as has happened in history too many times.

01:00:03.080 | And it could be a force for good or a force for evil.

01:00:06.480 | But again, the larger the group,

01:00:08.120 | the lower the level of consciousness

01:00:09.840 | of the individuals in that group.

01:00:12.080 | And then fourthly, we recognize it in ourselves.

01:00:15.760 | In a speech at Yale University in 1937,

01:00:19.720 | Jung said a person who could look

01:00:22.520 | at their own shadow and own it,

01:00:25.080 | he said now has a large problem

01:00:26.760 | because they're no longer to blame others

01:00:28.640 | for what goes wrong in their life.

01:00:30.240 | They have to acknowledge that within themselves.

01:00:32.600 | And he said further, it's the single best thing

01:00:35.240 | you can do for your society.

01:00:37.080 | This is not navel gazing.

01:00:38.360 | This is how you lift your unfinished business

01:00:41.680 | off of your partner, your children.

01:00:44.360 | Take it back yourself, which is a loving thing to do

01:00:47.720 | and a civic-minded thing to do

01:00:49.480 | if you look at it collectively here.

01:00:51.700 | - So how does one learn what their shadow or shadows?

01:00:58.000 | - Well, again, if you're married, ask your partner.

01:01:01.560 | - Sure, yeah.

01:01:02.760 | - Who will tell you immediately

01:01:04.800 | what your unfinished business may be.

01:01:07.060 | Or your children or your close friend, perhaps.

01:01:11.720 | It shows up in dreams.

01:01:13.320 | Freud talked about a young man

01:01:16.120 | who's disowned the content of his dream.

01:01:18.520 | He says, well, I don't, you know.

01:01:20.680 | Freud said, well, whose dream do you think that was?

01:01:23.040 | It was your dream.

01:01:23.880 | You have to acknowledge that

01:01:25.720 | that was embodying something within you.

01:01:29.040 | So there are many ways to recognize the shadow.

01:01:32.240 | Often, consequences pile up,

01:01:34.360 | and then one begins to realize,

01:01:36.120 | well, the only consistent person

01:01:38.560 | in all the scenes of this drama I call my life is moi,

01:01:42.720 | so I have to acknowledge that that's my stuff.

01:01:46.240 | And that's a very humbling thing.

01:01:48.400 | That's why I say this work is humbling,

01:01:50.040 | not inflating in some way, it's humbling.

01:01:54.000 | So, again, shadow work is never gonna be popular

01:01:58.660 | because it means I'm taking responsibility.

01:02:02.080 | And yet, what else would being a human being

01:02:04.860 | who's responsible and adult-like do,

01:02:08.720 | except accept responsibility, you see?

01:02:11.600 | It's one of the definitions, I would say,

01:02:13.240 | of an adult person is I know I'm accountable

01:02:16.080 | for what spills into the world through me.

01:02:18.440 | Yes, I'm responding to various things

01:02:20.520 | that happen around me, but sooner or later,

01:02:23.720 | I'm the one bringing my stories, my conditioned responses,

01:02:28.720 | and something of my shadow to the mix

01:02:32.520 | and responding out of that.

01:02:34.680 | Now, that's a witch's brew at times, as you could imagine.

01:02:38.860 | At the same time, you recognize,

01:02:40.800 | all right, but that's my business to address

01:02:43.820 | because if I don't, it just continues.

01:02:46.900 | - What I observe in the world

01:02:49.580 | and what I've experienced before

01:02:51.300 | is that certainly we all have shadow sides, me, everybody.

01:02:56.300 | I mean, I think that's like,

01:02:59.140 | I think anyone that doesn't believe that

01:03:00.660 | is perhaps not of Homo sapiens.

01:03:04.840 | Maybe other animals have shadows too, who knows?

01:03:08.780 | But that when shadows clash, it becomes very confusing

01:03:12.400 | because given what you're saying,

01:03:14.980 | very few people address their shadows.

01:03:17.500 | And these days, especially,

01:03:19.740 | there's no need to make this political.

01:03:21.340 | This is just social.

01:03:22.940 | - Sure.

01:03:24.060 | - We see mobs forming.

01:03:26.660 | As you said, the larger the group,

01:03:29.780 | the lower the level of consciousness.

01:03:32.360 | And then it becomes even more challenging

01:03:37.100 | to address one's shadow

01:03:38.580 | when A, there's the perception of an attack.

01:03:43.580 | B, that attack oftentimes is the reflection

01:03:49.460 | of the other group's shadow.

01:03:51.580 | And C, people find refuge with people

01:03:54.880 | who have similar shadow processes.

01:03:59.000 | So not to be pessimistic here,

01:04:01.400 | but perhaps the answer is what you referred to before

01:04:06.060 | is to go inward to the self.

01:04:07.960 | Work with somebody or somebody close to you

01:04:12.140 | that has your best interest in mind,

01:04:14.660 | truly best interest in mind,

01:04:16.840 | and then try to resolve that.

01:04:19.300 | - Well, yes.

01:04:20.140 | And very few people are willing to do that.

01:04:22.360 | That's what polarizes societies,

01:04:24.260 | polarizes groups, and so forth.

01:04:26.300 | It's comforting to find like-minded people,

01:04:29.620 | but then they're both caught in the same complex

01:04:32.040 | is another way of putting it.

01:04:33.440 | So ultimately, whatever reality is,

01:04:36.960 | it's gonna wear through that

01:04:38.320 | and reveal something that's gonna be

01:04:41.640 | pretty disconcerting to individuals

01:04:43.840 | who are caught in a collective identification that way.

01:04:46.840 | The shadow comes because our human nature

01:04:51.820 | is thrust into various social situations.

01:04:55.000 | We can't help but have a shadow.

01:04:57.980 | We have to socialize a child.

01:04:59.980 | We learn to use a knife and a fork

01:05:01.580 | and not take our siblings' food and that sort of thing.

01:05:04.740 | You learn to look both ways before you cross the street.

01:05:06.960 | There's socialization that's important,

01:05:08.940 | and yet the greater the socialization,

01:05:11.820 | the more likely there's gonna be an interruption.

01:05:13.900 | I mean, think about those cultures

01:05:16.260 | where people are forced to dress alike

01:05:18.260 | for some form of unity or conformity.

01:05:21.840 | Think about where a person might have

01:05:25.780 | a special gift or talent,

01:05:27.340 | but it's not appreciated in family X or Y.

01:05:31.220 | Well, where does that natural form of expression go?

01:05:35.780 | It pathologizes as depression,

01:05:37.740 | or it comes out in compensatory dreams

01:05:40.740 | or in projections onto someone else,

01:05:42.780 | or it makes the person ill.

01:05:45.660 | The unlived life can make a person ill.

01:05:47.840 | There's a sickness unto death,

01:05:49.300 | as Kierkegaard talked about it.

01:05:50.860 | It's that sickness where the human spirit

01:05:55.340 | is being repetitively violated.

01:05:58.260 | And much in our culture violates our spirits.

01:06:02.400 | And spirit is not something you will.

01:06:04.820 | It's something that is the quickening

01:06:07.100 | of life's energy in service to something.

01:06:09.860 | And if your family or your situation

01:06:12.700 | imposes itself upon that.

01:06:16.040 | To give a quick example,

01:06:17.260 | my own family of origin was one in which they were,

01:06:22.140 | by the circumstances of decades ago,

01:06:24.740 | unable to attain an education.

01:06:27.300 | My father worked in a factory.

01:06:28.500 | My mother was a secretary.

01:06:30.700 | And for them, life was a series of shaming events

01:06:35.700 | and overwhelming events.

01:06:39.660 | And the message to me, both overt and covert,

01:06:42.140 | is don't go out there.

01:06:43.420 | It's too big.

01:06:45.540 | It's too much.

01:06:46.940 | Stay here and we'll take care of each other.

01:06:49.540 | So one of the first things I did when I was 18 was left.

01:06:52.900 | I went to college and came back for vacations.

01:06:55.580 | But I left psychologically at that point.

01:06:58.420 | Something in me knew that I had to have

01:07:01.460 | a larger life than that.

01:07:02.740 | And I say that with love and respect

01:07:04.620 | and compassion for my parents.

01:07:07.540 | The last conversation I had with my mother

01:07:10.000 | before she died of cancer,

01:07:11.560 | her ancestor, the father she'd never known,

01:07:15.460 | was from Sweden.

01:07:17.260 | And I'd had a book translated into Swedish.

01:07:20.780 | And I told her I thought that would be something

01:07:22.500 | that would be nice for her.

01:07:24.540 | And she was horrified.

01:07:26.500 | It's like, why have you written it?

01:07:28.720 | What are they saying?

01:07:30.860 | And I thought she meant reviewers at first.

01:07:33.260 | And I realized that's the voice I heard in childhood.

01:07:36.420 | She was saying, you shouldn't be out there.

01:07:38.500 | Now people are going to attack you.

01:07:41.780 | This will draw attention to you, you see.

01:07:45.020 | And her intention was protective.

01:07:48.100 | In her last days, actually, before she died,

01:07:51.700 | she was more afraid of what people thought

01:07:55.740 | than whether her son was living his journey or not.

01:07:59.020 | And I say this with grief for her.

01:08:02.380 | And that was the message of childhood.

01:08:05.420 | It's too much out there.

01:08:07.740 | And yet, something inside quickened and said,

01:08:11.780 | well, you need to go where those airplanes are going.

01:08:14.620 | You need to go see the ocean for yourself.

01:08:16.900 | You need to try to live in a foreign country

01:08:19.460 | and see what that's like.

01:08:21.580 | Was I, was that easy?

01:08:23.580 | No, it was doubly hard because of the messages I had.

01:08:27.820 | But it was just necessary.

01:08:30.020 | Sooner or later, again, the appointment with your life,

01:08:33.300 | do you keep it or do you not keep the appointment?

01:08:36.140 | So that was the first meeting of the appointment

01:08:38.780 | was to leave home and start the journey.

01:08:42.580 | You know, in terms of the archetype of the journey,

01:08:46.740 | first is the departure.

01:08:48.860 | And then you have the initiatory experiences

01:08:50.980 | which can knock you down.

01:08:52.380 | And then the question is,

01:08:53.380 | do you get up and go to the next one?

01:08:56.260 | And sooner or later, something begins to change inside

01:08:59.340 | and you begin to feel that this is the journey

01:09:02.820 | that's right for me.

01:09:03.900 | - It's very moving to hear because I, you know,

01:09:07.060 | we hear that we become our parents.

01:09:09.980 | And yet I've never believed that.

01:09:11.660 | I believe that for whatever reason inside us,

01:09:18.820 | that we either adopt their traits unconsciously

01:09:23.820 | or consciously,

01:09:26.620 | or we resist them 180 degrees in the other direction.

01:09:30.380 | There doesn't seem to be a 90 degree response

01:09:33.140 | as your example beautifully illustrates.

01:09:36.960 | That there's something in the brain

01:09:38.900 | and in the human psyche that either says, yeah, okay.

01:09:43.620 | Like that's just the way life is for better or worse.

01:09:48.580 | Or says no.

01:09:50.040 | And, you know, I feel I'm 48 years old.

01:09:54.180 | So I'm still learning to be a full adult.

01:09:57.340 | I like to think there's some neuroplasticity left.

01:10:00.820 | Science tells us there's neuroplasticity

01:10:02.620 | throughout the lifespan.

01:10:03.860 | So I do believe that.

01:10:05.420 | But I feel like so much of being an adult,

01:10:09.180 | perhaps just being a human being,

01:10:11.340 | is about learning to stand one's ground and say, no,

01:10:17.180 | no, no, no, that's me.

01:10:18.660 | And this is what's right for me.

01:10:20.020 | And you're wrong, crazy, or just different.

01:10:24.580 | And we agree to disagree.

01:10:26.580 | And then there's the other half of being an adult,

01:10:28.320 | which is saying, oh goodness, you might be right.

01:10:33.080 | Maybe you are right.

01:10:35.820 | Okay, you're right.

01:10:36.780 | I screwed up or I need to think,

01:10:41.780 | at least think about this differently.

01:10:44.060 | And the hard work of being a human, I think,

01:10:47.840 | is knowing when you are dealing with incoming messages

01:10:52.840 | that are real, they could be from a healthy source

01:10:58.740 | or an unhealthy source, it's complicated.

01:11:01.620 | And this is why I mentioned this thing about the internet

01:11:03.500 | and social media in particular earlier.

01:11:05.140 | I do believe it's borderline.

01:11:06.820 | I think if you were to remove the names and the faces

01:11:11.900 | and you would just put that into a script,

01:11:15.500 | you'd say, this is a dialogue

01:11:17.100 | coming from a borderline person,

01:11:19.220 | weaving back and forth across the line,

01:11:21.460 | literally of healthy and psychotic.

01:11:25.040 | And so as a human, especially nowadays, it's complicated.

01:11:28.100 | We don't just live in little villages where we go,

01:11:31.700 | okay, well, that person tends to kind of spin off

01:11:34.460 | and that person seems very grounded,

01:11:36.580 | but occasionally makes mistakes too.

01:11:38.340 | And so I feel like so much of the work

01:11:40.940 | of being a, I said an adult,

01:11:42.660 | but I'm going to replace that with just a human

01:11:45.060 | is trying to know thyself, right, as the Oracle said,

01:11:49.140 | and own thyself and report that into the world,

01:11:53.520 | but also to be semi-permeable in a way that's functional

01:11:56.380 | is such hard work because in both cases,

01:12:00.300 | the adoption of what we were told

01:12:05.080 | and what was ingrained in us and is unconscious

01:12:07.620 | so that we just live out the script of our parents

01:12:10.300 | or where we say, no, I'm going to leave this little town

01:12:13.660 | or I'm not going to live life or relationships

01:12:16.660 | that way at all.

01:12:17.540 | I'm going to do it this other completely different way,

01:12:19.620 | maybe unconventional way.

01:12:21.540 | Both have an element of reactivity in them

01:12:24.740 | and certainly both have an element of kind of,

01:12:28.160 | there's like, there's a vigor behind it.

01:12:33.100 | - Sure.

01:12:35.020 | No, your point is very well taken and appropriate

01:12:38.720 | because it is a paradox.

01:12:40.180 | First of all, in the Eden Project,

01:12:44.300 | a book I wrote on relationship

01:12:46.020 | and subtitled The Search for the Magical Leather,

01:12:49.020 | there is inside of us this infantile

01:12:52.260 | and understandable desire to find the right person

01:12:55.460 | who's going to make our life work for us,

01:12:57.940 | who's going to take care of us, meet our needs,

01:12:59.980 | read our minds, et cetera, et cetera, you see,

01:13:03.020 | and the other person has that going on in them

01:13:05.740 | so they project that onto us.

01:13:07.260 | You wonder why relationships get so complexed, you see,

01:13:11.220 | but the great gift of relationship, if you can tolerate it,

01:13:15.260 | is the otherness of the other produces the dialectic,

01:13:19.100 | produces the enlargement

01:13:21.540 | that comes from encountering the other.

01:13:23.820 | I've learned so much from my wife

01:13:25.700 | and I believe she's learned a few things from me.

01:13:28.140 | Our ongoing dialogue, 'cause we're both similar

01:13:32.180 | and very different at the same time,

01:13:34.820 | is one that has at times been conflictual, naturally,

01:13:38.780 | but most of the time is a pattern of growth

01:13:41.700 | because we are allowed to bring in that other perspective

01:13:45.420 | and see the same reality.

01:13:47.140 | My wife has taught me to see some things

01:13:49.660 | that I wouldn't have seen before

01:13:50.940 | 'cause she has an artist's eye.

01:13:52.940 | On the other hand, there are places where you have to come up

01:13:56.740 | as you said, against what is central and critical

01:13:59.340 | to your own well-being or your own integrity

01:14:02.140 | and then you have to stand for that

01:14:04.100 | and the wisdom to know which is which at any given time

01:14:07.540 | is not inbred, it's one of those times

01:14:10.580 | where we have to find that balancing point

01:14:13.620 | between legitimate dialogue and compromise

01:14:16.740 | and sacrifice in a relationship.

01:14:18.740 | There's a place for sacrifice,

01:14:20.940 | but at the same time, there's a place

01:14:22.820 | where you have to say, all right,

01:14:24.500 | but I also have to separate myself here

01:14:27.100 | and stand for this on the other side of that.

01:14:30.420 | And it takes a Solomonic wisdom

01:14:33.100 | to know always what's right, but over time,

01:14:35.740 | I think one can get a sense of what that's about.

01:14:39.380 | So again, that's why we have to individuate

01:14:44.260 | as individuals by definition, but also in relationship

01:14:49.260 | because it's the otherness of the others

01:14:51.020 | that pulls us out of that self-referential system.

01:14:53.700 | Otherwise, we get caught in a circular dialogue

01:14:57.580 | among our complexes, for example.

01:14:59.460 | As Jung said, it's important to go to the mountaintop

01:15:01.700 | to meditate, but if you stay up there too long,

01:15:04.060 | you'll be talking to ghosts.

01:15:05.500 | Your complexes will be caught in this looping cycle

01:15:11.180 | and you need the other to pull you out of that

01:15:13.580 | into the presence of the other,

01:15:15.460 | and it's out of that that the third comes.

01:15:17.780 | Joseph Campbell made an important distinction once.

01:15:21.220 | He said about committed relationship.

01:15:23.740 | He said if you're constantly sacrificing to the other,

01:15:26.740 | you'll grow resentful.

01:15:30.860 | But if you're sacrificing to the project

01:15:32.900 | the two of you have launched together as a friendship

01:15:36.380 | or a marriage or whatever form it takes,

01:15:38.860 | you can do that in a very constructive way.

01:15:41.140 | You're fed by that because you're mutually committed

01:15:44.980 | to the project that this relationship represents.

01:15:49.180 | And that's an important distinction, I think.

01:15:51.420 | - Yeah, given that 50% or more of marriages

01:15:55.700 | seem to end in divorce these days,

01:15:57.420 | I think that statistic still holds.

01:16:00.020 | Do you think that can be largely attributed

01:16:03.060 | to people not arriving to those relationships

01:16:06.780 | with the mindset you just described,

01:16:08.580 | people not arriving to those relationships

01:16:10.380 | having a deep enough understanding of themselves

01:16:13.860 | prior to that or something else?

01:16:18.100 | - I think all of the above.

01:16:19.940 | First of all, young people tend to marry

01:16:21.980 | and make babies, understandably.

01:16:24.460 | And then 20 years later,

01:16:27.260 | in some way they're a different person.

01:16:29.660 | And it's very hard for the premises

01:16:32.020 | that brought them together to still obtain

01:16:34.180 | in a developmental and honest way many years later.

01:16:39.180 | When you reach that point,

01:16:43.020 | then there's a time for renegotiation

01:16:45.420 | or if need be, unfortunately,

01:16:47.340 | the dissolution of that relationship.

01:16:49.380 | Because I had a colleague in New Jersey years ago

01:16:54.020 | who worked exclusively with the couples

01:16:55.500 | and she talked about starter marriages.

01:16:57.740 | And she said, "I would never say that publicly

01:16:59.380 | because that sounded too pessimistic."

01:17:02.460 | But she said, "If you're lucky,

01:17:04.060 | your starter marriage will be a good one

01:17:05.860 | that will evolve and so forth."

01:17:07.420 | But for most people,

01:17:09.620 | that which brought them together

01:17:11.860 | was running from their parents

01:17:14.260 | or replicating their parents' relationships

01:17:17.140 | or their insecurity about themselves.

01:17:20.540 | Therefore, they bonded with someone else

01:17:22.100 | who was gonna take care of that for them.

01:17:23.580 | Whatever it was, it's been outlived.

01:17:27.580 | Their own natural development,

01:17:29.860 | their life circumstances have changed.

01:17:31.980 | And then it brings about the necessity

01:17:35.140 | of some very difficult decisions.

01:17:37.020 | So marriage is an institution

01:17:42.020 | with the best of intentions

01:17:44.700 | that is sorely tested over time.

01:17:47.540 | And sometimes it'll survive the test.

01:17:50.580 | I would not automatically applaud

01:17:52.420 | if somebody's been married 50 or 60 years.

01:17:55.180 | I would ask what has happened to the soul of that person

01:17:58.340 | in that relationship?

01:18:00.660 | Has it grown?

01:18:01.620 | Has it developed?

01:18:02.540 | Did they mutually support each other's growth

01:18:05.420 | and development?

01:18:06.620 | Or did something get stuck at that point?

01:18:09.860 | And are our early family of origin dynamics

01:18:14.860 | still dominating that relationship?

01:18:17.140 | And from the outside,

01:18:18.100 | we usually don't know the answer to that question.

01:18:20.780 | But inside, you'd have to say,

01:18:22.460 | what has happened to this person?

01:18:24.300 | And the same is true with parenting.

01:18:27.820 | Parenting is very, very difficult

01:18:29.660 | because we'd like to think we know what's right

01:18:32.340 | for our own child,

01:18:33.540 | but then they have to spend a good part of their life

01:18:36.180 | trying to get away from us in some way,

01:18:38.500 | as we did ourselves, you see?

01:18:40.860 | And then if you remember that,

01:18:42.780 | then you're a little more likely to say,

01:18:44.940 | I really don't know what's going on here,

01:18:46.820 | but I have to pay more attention

01:18:48.180 | to what I think is wanting expression through my child.

01:18:51.780 | And support that rather than assuming

01:18:55.060 | that they're gonna grow up

01:18:55.900 | and replicate our lives and our values,

01:18:58.300 | as I've said before.

01:18:59.860 | - Given the number of people

01:19:02.940 | who do deep introspective work,

01:19:05.620 | either by themselves or with a trained professional,

01:19:08.940 | perhaps should surprise us

01:19:10.580 | that 50% of marriages do survive.

01:19:13.140 | - Yeah, in a way, yes.

01:19:14.700 | And those that survive are not necessarily good marriages

01:19:18.580 | in the sense in which the person is growing and developing.

01:19:21.660 | They may be stuck,

01:19:22.580 | they may be afraid of the alternatives,

01:19:24.140 | they may be bound by economics, for example,

01:19:26.620 | or cultural forms.

01:19:29.020 | So again, from outside,

01:19:30.180 | you don't know what's happening

01:19:31.500 | inside the soul of that individual.

01:19:33.500 | And it's very important for us

01:19:34.580 | to not judge them for that reason.

01:19:36.300 | - Earlier, you described the painful work,

01:19:40.860 | sometimes painful work,

01:19:42.100 | of really addressing what one wants

01:19:45.060 | and really getting in touch with one's soul, psyche.

01:19:50.140 | And how society, or we think society,

01:19:53.260 | might not approve of that.

01:19:55.740 | And yet, when I think about popular culture,

01:19:58.640 | oftentimes it's the people

01:20:02.140 | that seem to be living in their own truth

01:20:06.020 | that are most celebrated.

01:20:08.180 | - That's true.

01:20:09.020 | - Like there's something about the crowd,

01:20:12.140 | I've shifted from mob to crowd here

01:20:13.920 | to make it sound more benevolent,

01:20:15.220 | but it's still a mob that cheers on the person

01:20:18.860 | who really seems to be in their,

01:20:20.820 | we say full expression or living in their truth,

01:20:23.740 | but who just comes out and says like,

01:20:25.860 | "Yeah, I don't really care what they're saying about me

01:20:30.580 | "or what people think.

01:20:31.420 | "I know me, I know my own goodness,

01:20:34.460 | "my own intention, my own mission.

01:20:37.780 | "And the people close to me do."

01:20:39.260 | Hopefully they have people close to them.

01:20:41.220 | And we say, "Yeah, like go."

01:20:45.260 | It's inspiring.

01:20:46.460 | - Yes, that's why I said earlier,

01:20:48.080 | many of the people in history that we would admire

01:20:50.700 | had difficult lives,

01:20:52.060 | but we admire them because they stuck to some value

01:20:55.980 | that was central to who they were.

01:20:57.740 | And they lived that maybe at great cost,

01:21:00.100 | but they lived that through whatever suffering

01:21:03.060 | they had to experience.

01:21:05.460 | Again, from outside, we don't know, do we?

01:21:08.900 | When we see some cultural figure out there,

01:21:11.900 | maybe they're manipulative,

01:21:14.540 | maybe they're caught in a complex of some kind.

01:21:16.980 | We don't know from outside.

01:21:19.200 | You have to say, I mean, one of the shadow issues

01:21:22.560 | is how often people will live through a celebrity

01:21:24.920 | or live through a pop figure in some way,

01:21:27.640 | maybe imitate that person.

01:21:29.420 | Again, for a child that's natural and normal.

01:21:33.020 | On the other hand, sooner or later, you have to say,

01:21:36.480 | "But my journey is a different journey.

01:21:38.720 | "Maybe they're living theirs, but am I living mine?"

01:21:42.840 | And I don't mean this in any grandiose way.

01:21:45.200 | I don't mean that they have to go out and become something

01:21:47.680 | that's noted in the society,

01:21:49.680 | but to live in accord with something

01:21:51.640 | that is wishing its expression through us.

01:21:54.800 | That's why I said the final question in life

01:21:57.760 | is what is wanting to live in this world through me

01:22:01.920 | rather than what do I want, or what do my complexes want?

01:22:05.320 | Because they're noisy chatterers in there.

01:22:08.400 | I had a dear friend from another state

01:22:10.740 | write to me just yesterday,

01:22:12.040 | and he's in semi-retirement now

01:22:15.400 | and he's been dealing with some health issues,

01:22:17.120 | and he said, "Now that I'm not distracted,

01:22:21.740 | "I have time to work on all the goblins of the past

01:22:24.100 | "that I left behind."

01:22:25.240 | And he's an analyst.

01:22:27.000 | So it's not like we get rid of these things.

01:22:29.320 | They're lifelong.

01:22:30.560 | This is why Jung said, "We can't solve these things,

01:22:33.180 | "but we can outgrow them."

01:22:34.400 | There's a big difference.

01:22:36.080 | You become larger than what happened to you, for example.

01:22:39.140 | You become larger than that voice inside of you

01:22:41.640 | that says you can do this, but you can't do that.

01:22:44.680 | And over time, something inside of you

01:22:48.520 | is wishing that growth and pushing that,

01:22:51.120 | and again, pathologizes when that's blocked.

01:22:53.500 | So people can be doing all the right things

01:22:57.160 | as defined by their values and their environment,

01:23:01.280 | and it violates something inside.

01:23:03.300 | That's why we can be, quote, successful and achieve things,

01:23:06.520 | and it still feels empty.

01:23:08.620 | There's no there there.

01:23:09.960 | You know, you get to the top of the ladder,

01:23:11.760 | and you realize there's no there there.

01:23:14.360 | And that happens so often in our culture.

01:23:16.520 | I remember one of the fiscal figures

01:23:21.280 | in the late 20th century

01:23:23.560 | who had a personal fortune of $400 million,

01:23:27.160 | and he was asked what was his philosophy of life,

01:23:30.160 | and he said, "Well, at the end of life,

01:23:32.420 | "the person with the biggest pile wins."

01:23:34.760 | And I remember thinking, how infantile is that?

01:23:37.480 | This was a smart man.

01:23:39.700 | An elder statesman in his field,

01:23:42.420 | ultimately went to prison because of some things,

01:23:44.920 | but that's the philosophy of the sandbox.

01:23:49.660 | I have the biggest pile of sand.

01:23:51.100 | I've won.

01:23:51.940 | No, you haven't won, you're dead.

01:23:53.500 | And it's a pile of sand.

01:23:55.660 | What are you talking about?

01:23:57.340 | And yet, this is what drove the man's life,

01:23:59.500 | and obviously drove him across enough lines

01:24:02.740 | that it got him into legal troubles sooner or later.

01:24:06.660 | And again, I say that without judgment.

01:24:08.300 | I'm just saying here's an example

01:24:11.380 | of a very achieved person

01:24:14.020 | who's been living an infantile philosophy,

01:24:17.220 | and as such, something else causes him

01:24:19.460 | to pay greatly for that.

01:24:20.900 | - Yeah, well, I certainly can say that

01:24:23.960 | despite having pursued work with a lot of vigor and career,

01:24:29.220 | that without question,

01:24:31.820 | friendships and relationships are the most important thing.

01:24:36.380 | There's just no question, especially when things get hard.

01:24:41.300 | - That's right.

01:24:42.140 | - I actually have a list in this very book,

01:24:46.100 | I won't flip to it now,

01:24:47.380 | of the people that I'm just really blessed

01:24:49.740 | to call close friends, like real friends

01:24:52.380 | that you can count on.

01:24:53.380 | And to me, it seems, and I've always,

01:24:55.460 | my sister, I have an older sister,

01:24:56.780 | and she always said, "You've always been a pack animal."

01:24:58.760 | I've always had big groups of, big-ish groups of friends,

01:25:03.300 | and it's something I've invested in heavily,

01:25:04.860 | sometimes to the expense of other things,

01:25:07.500 | including work and other relationships.

01:25:09.260 | But the notion that the material things

01:25:14.260 | or that the opinions of strangers would somehow fill us,

01:25:19.780 | that to me is like the most foreign concept.

01:25:23.340 | - Sure.

01:25:24.180 | - Like that's the most foreign concept.

01:25:25.500 | But clearly some people operate on those metrics.

01:25:29.140 | That's like- - Of course.

01:25:30.460 | - And my guess is that they have a reward horizon

01:25:35.460 | that is, you know, tacked to whatever it is

01:25:38.340 | the algorithms are that get them that thing.

01:25:40.740 | And so it must feed some reward mechanism

01:25:42.540 | that has them distracted enough,

01:25:43.860 | like locked into this one mode of time perception.

01:25:46.860 | You know, just hit the mile mark, hit the mile mark,

01:25:48.740 | hit the mile mark, so that they're not aware.

01:25:51.180 | But when you take somebody like that,

01:25:52.420 | who's been doing that for a lifetime,

01:25:53.620 | and you say, "Wait, you know, you're on this track

01:25:56.140 | "going around and around and accruing trophies,

01:25:58.860 | "but actually that track doesn't go anywhere,

01:26:01.300 | "it doesn't lead you into the world."

01:26:02.940 | - That's right.

01:26:03.780 | - My guess is that they just, they've been doing it so long

01:26:06.580 | that they're like an animal that's just been, you know,

01:26:09.420 | digging a trench in its zoo-confined cage.

01:26:13.540 | - Which is something I'm finding

01:26:15.140 | with a lot of the men that I see.

01:26:17.220 | I happen to see right now in my practice,

01:26:20.900 | several men between 60 and 80, and one's 82.

01:26:28.740 | And of course they've been conditioned to work.

01:26:31.140 | And then suddenly, you know, on Monday morning,

01:26:33.340 | you don't have to stop and think who you are.

01:26:34.820 | You get up and you go to work

01:26:35.900 | and you do what you've done all these years.

01:26:38.660 | And then suddenly you don't do that.

01:26:40.420 | And what are you gonna do?

01:26:41.260 | Well, you say, "Well, I'm gonna go play golf every day."

01:26:43.300 | Well, okay, go do that.

01:26:44.820 | But typically, within three or four months,

01:26:47.460 | the depression comes, and they'll think about,

01:26:49.500 | "Well, I need to get back into doing this

01:26:51.360 | "or get doing that," you see.

01:26:53.020 | So often, we find people defined by exactly

01:26:58.580 | that kind of mentality.

01:26:59.780 | I've finished the first lap, so what do I do?

01:27:02.340 | Run another lap and run another lap.

01:27:04.140 | And you realize you keep coming back

01:27:05.820 | to the same starting point.

01:27:08.460 | That's why I say it's not what you do,

01:27:10.020 | it's what it's in service to inside that makes a difference.

01:27:12.740 | So is that person being successful by external standards?

01:27:17.060 | Yes, whatever that means.

01:27:19.140 | Does that mean that their psyche's gonna cooperate

01:27:21.980 | and give them that genuine sense

01:27:23.840 | of satisfaction in something?

01:27:25.660 | No, it won't.

01:27:26.700 | It's autonomous.

01:27:27.820 | It's not going to get co-opted into that.

01:27:31.540 | And sooner or later, chickens come home to roost,

01:27:34.740 | and then you have a depression, as I experienced,

01:27:38.020 | and/or you find your relationships

01:27:41.600 | are in tatters all around you.

01:27:44.380 | So sooner or later, I mean, no revelation on my part,

01:27:48.860 | nature will express itself.

01:27:50.980 | And if we live long enough,

01:27:54.300 | then everything that we pushed underground

01:27:57.220 | is gonna be coming up.

01:27:58.500 | - You mentioned men in particular.

01:28:01.720 | So now would probably be a good time

01:28:03.340 | to ask about men in particular.

01:28:05.980 | You wrote "Under Saturn's Shadow,"

01:28:07.580 | which is how I initially learned about your work.

01:28:09.620 | And then I listened to some of your lectures online.

01:28:12.460 | I'm still in the process of reading your other books.

01:28:15.980 | But let's talk about archetypes,

01:28:20.660 | stereotypes of men and women,

01:28:24.180 | with the intention, of course,

01:28:26.020 | of better understanding what's real

01:28:28.620 | as opposed to what's stereotype.

01:28:30.220 | So in the, let's call it the 1930s, '40s, '50s, '60s,

01:28:36.660 | view of men in the United States and elsewhere,

01:28:41.020 | there was this notion of kind of like the stoic

01:28:43.460 | and work and duty,

01:28:50.300 | and to some extent, a fair amount of mystique, right?

01:28:54.820 | Like it wasn't really, because with fewer words,

01:28:59.480 | we have less awareness at least of what people are saying,

01:29:02.420 | who knows what they're thinking,

01:29:03.860 | whether or not they talk a lot or not.

01:29:05.700 | But there was this idea of the male

01:29:10.540 | as somebody who did stuff, maybe thought about it,

01:29:14.660 | but didn't really talk about it much.

01:29:18.940 | Nowadays, things have changed.

01:29:20.540 | This is borne out in the statistics on college campuses

01:29:24.640 | about how many people seek therapy if they have an issue.

01:29:28.860 | It's gone from like 15% to 85 plus percent,

01:29:32.500 | at least roughly in the statistics I've seen.

01:29:34.900 | But in terms of males and their sense of duty

01:29:40.500 | and how they're supposed to be in the world,

01:29:43.060 | I would think just the way I just laid out

01:29:45.540 | the little, by all admittance,

01:29:48.540 | like just very antiquated now view of maleness,

01:29:53.140 | that they would be thinking a lot about what's going on.

01:29:58.560 | It would meet some of the daily practices

01:30:00.680 | that you talked about earlier,

01:30:02.560 | that there would be reflection,

01:30:04.020 | that there would be a consciousness,

01:30:06.980 | there would be an understanding of one shadow,

01:30:11.500 | or if one were to add in the other stereotype

01:30:15.480 | that went with it, that they drink a lot, right?

01:30:17.280 | That was very much, I'll remember my first,

01:30:20.200 | I went to graduate school first at Berkeley

01:30:21.740 | before I shifted to a different place.

01:30:23.860 | And I was told when I got there that it used to be

01:30:28.500 | that the faculty and graduate students,

01:30:31.380 | of which at that time in the 1970s and '60s

01:30:34.500 | was mostly male, mostly, now that's changed,

01:30:37.340 | fortunately, right?

01:30:38.680 | That they would meet every day after work to drink

01:30:42.840 | and then stagger home to their partners, every day.

01:30:45.780 | And I was shocked, I'm like, "Are you kidding me?"

01:30:47.060 | I was like, "No, every single day."

01:30:48.460 | So, you know, the idea here is that that was the old view.

01:30:53.220 | Now things are very different.

01:30:55.060 | But what about the work of men, men and boys,

01:30:59.900 | to try and understand their own psyche better?

01:31:03.160 | What are the things that are specific to them

01:31:07.300 | that you've talked about?

01:31:08.300 | And then we'll turn to women,

01:31:10.260 | and then we'll do our best to bridge the divide

01:31:13.060 | in a conversation.

01:31:15.100 | - Well, just to go back to our earlier conversation

01:31:19.500 | for a moment, you know,

01:31:21.620 | why would those men have to drink every day?

01:31:25.380 | And the answer is because there was some deep pain

01:31:28.260 | that they had to anesthetize,

01:31:31.060 | of which they were by and large unaware,

01:31:33.320 | or presumably they would have the opportunity

01:31:35.260 | to address whatever that was.

01:31:37.080 | You know, and I'll come back to that in a moment.

01:31:40.980 | I've been asked often to speak about men by women's groups.

01:31:44.380 | And by the way, men's groups have never asked me

01:31:46.780 | to talk about women, right?

01:31:48.340 | - Is that right?

01:31:49.180 | - That's right.

01:31:50.000 | You know, individuals such as yourself,

01:31:51.460 | but it's mostly women's groups have asked me

01:31:53.900 | to talk about those strange creatures called men.

01:31:55.900 | And I say, imagine these three things.

01:31:58.540 | First of all, that you cut away all your close friends,

01:32:01.920 | the women that you share your worries

01:32:04.780 | about your marriage with, about your children,

01:32:07.060 | about your body, your love life or lack thereof.

01:32:10.620 | You know, those people are gone forever.

01:32:12.780 | There's no one you can share that with.

01:32:14.980 | Secondly, you have to sever your link

01:32:18.540 | to whatever your guiding source may be.

01:32:20.700 | You call it your instinct or your intuition,

01:32:22.660 | whatever it is, that's cut off.

01:32:24.500 | It's not acceptable.

01:32:25.580 | And thirdly, your value as a human being

01:32:28.460 | will be defined by your meeting abstract standards

01:32:31.260 | of productivity as defined by total strangers

01:32:34.940 | in your culture.

01:32:36.420 | And sooner or later, no matter how much you win today,

01:32:39.860 | you'll wind up a loser.

01:32:41.220 | And the thing is you hold that off as long as you can.

01:32:43.740 | So keep running, right?

01:32:46.020 | And women hear that and they think,

01:32:47.380 | well, that's horrible, that's horrible.

01:32:49.940 | How lonely that would be, how isolating that would be.

01:32:52.840 | And of course it is, it's self-estranging.

01:32:55.780 | You know, my poor father was pulled out of the eighth grade,

01:32:58.500 | sent to work in the factory,

01:33:00.220 | worked all of his life in that factory.

01:33:02.900 | And by the standards of his day, he was a good man.

01:33:06.460 | He supported his family.

01:33:07.820 | He didn't run away.

01:33:08.900 | He accepted the responsibility.

01:33:11.780 | But I also know he didn't live with his own soul.

01:33:14.380 | I know that.

01:33:15.220 | And I had clues here and there.

01:33:16.940 | And I even saw that as a child.

01:33:18.580 | And so when I started to reflect on men,

01:33:24.340 | I realized I had my own inhibitions about that.

01:33:28.820 | And I was fortunately enough as a therapist,

01:33:31.040 | I would say, all right, what would you say

01:33:33.500 | to someone who expressed these inhibitions?

01:33:36.660 | And I would say, all right, there's some fears here

01:33:39.900 | that you're defending yourself against.

01:33:41.480 | What's that about?

01:33:42.320 | So I thought, and then I had a voice in me that said,

01:33:45.020 | but these are secret.

01:33:46.700 | You don't talk about it.

01:33:48.300 | And then I thought, well, that's my duty, isn't it?

01:33:50.340 | I have to bring some of those things up.

01:33:52.580 | And so that's what led to the writing of the book,

01:33:55.140 | "Understand Our Shadow."

01:33:56.380 | And I suggested a number of those secrets.

01:34:01.140 | One is men's lives are as much governed

01:34:04.220 | by role expectations as women's lives are,

01:34:07.260 | less so today, but in the past, they were ironclad, right?

01:34:10.800 | And the net effect of those roles was self-estranging.

01:34:16.060 | You are your function, you are your duties.

01:34:18.920 | Men's lives are governed by fear-based responses.

01:34:24.460 | And there's a certain level of competitiveness

01:34:27.400 | that is central to men's culture.

01:34:29.740 | Women learn through the years, probably out of necessity,

01:34:33.300 | to cooperate and support each other.

01:34:35.980 | And they can get through difficult things by doing that.

01:34:39.860 | For men, you're always having to demonstrate

01:34:43.860 | your competency in one area or another.

01:34:46.460 | And the one thing you don't wanna do is be a loser,

01:34:49.420 | you see, it's a zero-sum game, winners and losers.

01:34:53.140 | And ultimately, there's a deep, deep longing for,

01:34:58.140 | well, there's a fear of the feminine, so-called,

01:35:02.560 | that can include the feminine within,

01:35:04.860 | hence men's estranging themselves from themselves.

01:35:08.260 | I had a client many years ago who was sent into therapy

01:35:11.500 | by his wife saying, you know, either you go to therapy

01:35:13.820 | or I'm outta here.

01:35:15.300 | So he was there very reluctantly, and he walked in

01:35:17.460 | and he saw a box of tissue there, a Kleenex box,

01:35:20.700 | and he just kind of sniffed at that without saying anything.

01:35:25.020 | And I knew exactly what he was saying,

01:35:26.780 | but I acted like I didn't, and he thought I'd missed the clue

01:35:29.460 | and so he pointed the box and sniffed again.

01:35:32.260 | And I said, what's this about?

01:35:34.060 | And he said, well, you had a woman in here before,

01:35:36.220 | don't you, I'm not gonna be needing that.

01:35:38.260 | And I said, you know, every man has a lake of tears

01:35:42.680 | inside of himself and a mountain of anger in there.

01:35:45.620 | And I said, sooner or later.

01:35:47.460 | And he said, no, no, we have other,

01:35:49.260 | better ways of dealing with that.

01:35:50.780 | And I thought, well, our prognosis is not very good here.

01:35:54.260 | He left after about five sessions

01:35:56.660 | because it was just going to ask

01:35:58.660 | more than he was capable of.

01:36:01.180 | So there's a fear of the feminist,

01:36:02.920 | like I have to be so much in my masculine mode

01:36:05.860 | of combativeness or competitiveness

01:36:08.300 | or expression of competency.

01:36:10.660 | I can't afford anything that one would undo.

01:36:14.140 | My shaky hold on that.

01:36:15.860 | Wheresoever you see macho behavior,

01:36:18.900 | you see fear-based overcompensations,

01:36:21.260 | what it amounts to, right?

01:36:23.580 | You know, saber rattling is always a fear-based response.

01:36:29.120 | And underneath there is a very deep longing,

01:36:32.320 | you know, for the wise father,

01:36:34.440 | for the person you could see some modeling from,

01:36:39.000 | who would teach you something,

01:36:40.480 | who would share with you wisdom he's learned along the way.

01:36:44.040 | And so, you know, the condition of modern men

01:36:47.080 | and things have changed a great deal.

01:36:49.120 | And I think partly steered by the revolution

01:36:53.480 | in the history of women, you know,

01:36:57.040 | and their courage in addressing these stereotypes

01:37:01.640 | about what a woman is

01:37:02.760 | and what she's supposed to do with her life,

01:37:04.960 | required men to start looking at themselves as well.

01:37:09.260 | So women have done us a great favor,

01:37:11.380 | not always recognized by men.

01:37:13.960 | But, you know, in both cases,

01:37:16.480 | you have to say, all right,

01:37:17.580 | the message you have from family of origin and culture

01:37:21.040 | may or may not work for you,

01:37:22.800 | but you're here to, in a certain way,

01:37:26.080 | deconstruct, you know, those expectations

01:37:29.760 | and find your own path, you see.

01:37:32.240 | The Spanish analyst, Irene de Castillejo,

01:37:36.240 | long deceased now,

01:37:37.240 | talked about the difference between focused awareness

01:37:40.120 | and diffuse awareness.

01:37:42.120 | And I think rather than talk about gender,

01:37:45.000 | which is a social construct coming out of this culture

01:37:47.760 | or this culture or this culture,

01:37:49.920 | talk about those are two different modes

01:37:52.520 | of orientation to the world.

01:37:54.360 | And we need both.

01:37:55.840 | We need focused awareness that's goal-directed behavior

01:37:59.240 | that is historically associated with the masculine.

01:38:02.560 | And we also need this awareness of context

01:38:05.520 | and of relationship.

01:38:07.720 | So this focused awareness without relatedness

01:38:10.800 | leads to sterility and isolation.

01:38:13.240 | And on the other hand,

01:38:14.560 | too diffuse without a sense of directed

01:38:16.960 | and purposeful behavior, you know,

01:38:18.960 | means that one is just sort of fumbling

01:38:20.780 | one's way through life too.

01:38:22.360 | I've always said to women in therapy, you know,

01:38:25.520 | to be a man is in a sense,

01:38:27.360 | your requirement is to know what you want and to do it.

01:38:30.800 | But you have to do that too.

01:38:32.120 | And what Jung called the animus,

01:38:33.560 | that is to say the so-called inner masculine

01:38:35.960 | or the inner focused awareness.

01:38:37.600 | And that goal-directed behavior

01:38:40.440 | is what moves your life forward in a purposeful way.

01:38:44.240 | But for men, it's about becoming aware of,

01:38:47.480 | again, context and relatedness.

01:38:50.480 | What happens if I have the biggest pile of sand

01:38:53.400 | at the end of my life?

01:38:54.800 | Well, you know, obviously you can't take it with you,

01:38:57.880 | but in the end, it's only sand.

01:38:59.680 | Money's only money.

01:39:01.640 | What was your life about?

01:39:03.040 | That's the question.

01:39:04.200 | Women have to ask that, men have to ask that.

01:39:08.360 | And sometimes the culture is supportive in that process.

01:39:11.800 | Sometimes it's opposed to that.

01:39:13.760 | And then that's when you have to engage in a fight.

01:39:17.080 | Men and women have a common summons here,

01:39:20.900 | and they can be very supportive of each other

01:39:23.920 | as well as, you know, celebrate their differences

01:39:27.640 | and recognize, you know,

01:39:29.640 | as men are beginning to recognize,

01:39:32.880 | if you don't address what's going on inside of you,

01:39:35.400 | you're gonna be simply a creature of adaptation

01:39:39.280 | and you're gonna lose your way sooner or later.

01:39:41.640 | When I came back from my training in Zurich in the '70s,

01:39:46.620 | I would say my practice was 90% women and 10% men.

01:39:53.140 | Today, it's the reverse, 90% men.

01:39:55.280 | I don't put out a shingle and say I see men or women,

01:39:58.240 | I see both.

01:39:59.080 | But I think, again, the change is in men now.

01:40:03.120 | They recognize they're lost in some way.

01:40:07.480 | The old masculine definitions are no longer applicable.

01:40:12.480 | You know, a lot of this happened

01:40:14.720 | with the Industrial Revolution,

01:40:16.220 | where fathers and sons worked together in the same trade.

01:40:18.880 | If you were a tanner, you tanned.

01:40:21.080 | You know, if you were a carpenter, you built houses.

01:40:24.420 | If you were a shepherd, you, you know,

01:40:27.240 | worked with the sheep and so forth.

01:40:29.300 | And you sort of learn who you are

01:40:32.260 | from your rubbing shoulders with the father.

01:40:34.300 | Well, today, men go away to the factory

01:40:36.900 | or go away to the office,

01:40:38.260 | and sons are at home with their mothers, you know,

01:40:41.340 | and their female school teachers and so forth.

01:40:44.180 | And so there's, again, this deep hunger

01:40:47.140 | for the initiatory father, the supportive father.

01:40:52.140 | In traditional cultures where there were rites of passage,

01:40:56.440 | they recognize the importance of separating the boy

01:41:01.000 | at puberty, in a simpler culture, yes, but at puberty,

01:41:04.420 | it wasn't initiated by the personal father or relatives.

01:41:08.920 | It was by the elders in the tribe,

01:41:11.720 | often wearing masks or painted faces

01:41:13.880 | because they were archetypal forces.

01:41:15.920 | They were not the neighbor down the street.

01:41:17.620 | It was like, you're in the hands of the gods now,

01:41:20.720 | and they require you to leave home,

01:41:23.320 | and we're gonna teach you things,

01:41:24.840 | but we're also going to bring about some forms

01:41:28.120 | of isolation and suffering for you.

01:41:30.000 | So begin to realize that you have within you

01:41:32.180 | the resources to undertake this journey.

01:41:34.920 | What we have now is a whole culture of uninitiated males

01:41:39.000 | who haven't left home, psychologically speaking.

01:41:42.440 | You know, in the past,

01:41:43.520 | they were simply governed by masculine roles,

01:41:45.840 | and now, as those have dissolved for many men,

01:41:48.720 | there's very little sense of,

01:41:51.560 | well, what does it mean to be a man?

01:41:53.280 | What am I supposed to do as a man?

01:41:56.360 | And the answer, basically, is go live your life.

01:41:59.760 | Find your path, find the courage and resolve

01:42:02.840 | and resources to sustain that over time,

01:42:06.400 | but how to do that is, there's no model for that.

01:42:10.640 | You have to sort of find that yourself, you see,

01:42:14.320 | and that's what brings people into therapy at times,

01:42:17.240 | and it's interesting that I have, right now,

01:42:19.360 | this collection, and it's consonant

01:42:20.780 | with my own stage of life journey, too,

01:42:22.880 | I only have one man under 50,

01:42:26.740 | and all of the others are interested

01:42:29.760 | in how you deal with aging and mortality, for good reason,

01:42:32.880 | and they're also dealing with,

01:42:34.180 | how do I define myself other than my work?

01:42:36.780 | And that's where the unlived life often is coming back

01:42:42.900 | in a very useful way, all right?

01:42:45.900 | Although there are some things that have left

01:42:48.020 | and not coming back, in terms of the changes in the body

01:42:51.140 | and that sort of thing, but basically,

01:42:53.740 | now's the time to address this emotional,

01:42:56.880 | developmental, spiritual life.

01:42:59.960 | That is to say, do you have any concept of a story

01:43:02.700 | that's larger than the stories of your complexes, you see?

01:43:06.940 | Doesn't mean one has to be part of a religious group.

01:43:09.500 | It means that you have to question,

01:43:11.300 | what quickens the spirit in me?

01:43:13.820 | What stirs me inside?

01:43:15.460 | What touches me?

01:43:17.460 | Where do I encounter the numinous?

01:43:19.540 | And the word numinous means there's something there

01:43:22.120 | that causes this reaction within me.

01:43:25.620 | So if you and I walk into an art museum, let's say,

01:43:29.300 | and you're touched by a particular painting,

01:43:31.500 | and frightened by it, or moved to tears by it,

01:43:34.220 | or whatever, and the other person walks by

01:43:36.340 | and is indifferent, which is a right?

01:43:38.140 | Well, it's not right or wrong.

01:43:40.060 | It's this here, it correlates with something in here.

01:43:45.060 | That's what caused that resonance,

01:43:47.100 | and that resonance is your engagement

01:43:49.300 | with something numinous for you.

01:43:51.560 | You don't have to know it, or explain it, or whatever,

01:43:54.620 | but you have to value it, and ask,

01:43:56.900 | what is it that was touched in me?

01:43:58.860 | And if it doesn't speak to me,

01:44:01.000 | duty, or convention, or expectation

01:44:04.700 | is insufficient to make it happen.

01:44:07.300 | We can't will these things to be numinous.

01:44:10.700 | Numinosity is something that's defined by one's soul,

01:44:14.820 | and not by the collective, that's for sure.

01:44:17.620 | And women and men in time, I think,

01:44:19.800 | will find that they have very similar goals in their life,

01:44:24.060 | and that's how to balance my journey

01:44:26.980 | with the legitimate commitments of relationship

01:44:29.780 | on the other side.

01:44:30.940 | And that's why we have that wonderful word sacrifice.

01:44:36.020 | Not surrender, sacrifice is sacrifice to make sacred.

01:44:41.020 | If you're sacrificing on behalf of a value

01:44:45.480 | that is right for you, and for your project together,

01:44:49.580 | then you're both served by that.

01:44:52.260 | On the other hand, you don't sacrifice the journey

01:44:55.300 | of the individual spirit, too.

01:44:58.600 | And again, it's about balancing that as best one can,

01:45:02.420 | and there's very little in our culture that rewards that,

01:45:05.820 | but then the price is, again, the symptomatology

01:45:08.640 | that comes to the surface.

01:45:10.500 | And from a psychodynamic standpoint, we don't say,

01:45:13.140 | well, how quickly you'll get rid of the symptoms.

01:45:15.120 | We say, why if they come?

01:45:16.800 | What are they asking of me?

01:45:20.100 | That's why, as I said, my first question in therapy

01:45:23.400 | was how quickly did I get rid of this depression,

01:45:25.460 | get back on the road, you know, the careerism road, right?

01:45:29.460 | And I came in time to realize it was my psyche saying,

01:45:33.740 | you're on the wrong path, fella.

01:45:36.300 | You don't know, it's not so much that it's wrong,

01:45:38.780 | it's just not right for you.

01:45:40.100 | There's a big difference here,

01:45:42.100 | and you're gonna have to find a different kind

01:45:43.940 | of conversation in your life, and so forth.

01:45:46.580 | And during my training, I was obliged to, you know,

01:45:49.340 | do my clinical experience.

01:45:51.700 | I was working in a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey,

01:45:54.820 | and sometimes I was shuttling back and forth the same day

01:45:59.140 | between the psychiatric hospital, a locked ward

01:46:02.260 | and the university campus, and I came to realize

01:46:06.980 | the conversation in the hospital was more real somehow,

01:46:10.580 | it was more about things that mattered.

01:46:12.960 | And that's what began to, you know, further my resolve

01:46:18.500 | to move from academia to being a therapist,

01:46:22.660 | you know, a working therapist, and so forth.

01:46:25.060 | So, the point is, I need to add this,

01:46:29.580 | my way of responding to the family of origin

01:46:34.580 | and social context stuff was to retreat

01:46:38.700 | into the life of the mind.

01:46:40.620 | I didn't realize that's what I was doing at the time.

01:46:43.220 | That's why the psyche had to reach up and pull me under.

01:46:47.060 | And then I came to realize that the fears that I had

01:46:52.980 | in childhood were the ones I had to face at midlife,

01:46:56.260 | the difference being I was bringing the adult's capacity

01:47:00.580 | to the table that was not present to the child.

01:47:03.540 | So, quick example, in my first week working

01:47:08.540 | in the psychiatric hospital, I was signed

01:47:10.260 | to a kind of grizzled old ex-military guy

01:47:12.740 | who was my mentor, and without asking me,

01:47:16.460 | he took me into an autopsy.

01:47:18.060 | It was his, you know, let's initiate the new kid

01:47:20.740 | kind of thing, you know.

01:47:22.340 | Well, I realized it was a test, so I stayed cool

01:47:25.420 | and so forth, all the while I'm seeing this human body,

01:47:28.180 | you know, cut up and so forth in a radical way.

01:47:31.140 | And I realized all that I had fled in childhood

01:47:36.100 | was right there on the table before me.

01:47:39.420 | And it continued to perseverate in my dreams and so forth.

01:47:43.100 | And I was back in Zurich in my own analysis

01:47:46.820 | and I talked about this and my analyst said quite rightly,

01:47:50.140 | he said, "When you've dealt with your fears,

01:47:51.900 | "the fears of others will not be so threatening to you."

01:47:55.400 | 'Cause the closed ward I was in was at times violent

01:47:58.740 | and so forth, and was not a pleasant situation,

01:48:01.780 | but I could feel my own sense of purpose and gravitas

01:48:06.300 | in that situation after that.

01:48:08.380 | So, it's like, you can run, but you can't hide.

01:48:10.620 | Sooner or later, what you've avoided will show up

01:48:13.860 | in your behaviors or your blockage in your behaviors.

01:48:17.380 | So, it doesn't go away, it goes somewhere.

01:48:19.560 | - I'd like to just hover a bit on this idea

01:48:23.260 | that on the one hand, our work is to understand ourselves

01:48:28.260 | and what really feeds our soul,

01:48:30.980 | and to try and live that forward as much as possible

01:48:35.740 | in a benevolent way, one would hope.

01:48:38.500 | And on the other hand,

01:48:40.520 | anytime we are in the relational aspects of life,

01:48:45.400 | in particular, romantic relationship

01:48:47.560 | as we sort of framed it here,

01:48:50.820 | because I think with friendships and work relationships,

01:48:54.700 | oftentimes it can align with the self in a different way.

01:48:57.540 | And it's our work to try and, as you said, sacrifice,

01:49:04.100 | to sacrifice one for the other, one for the other,

01:49:07.460 | in a way that over time allows both

01:49:09.500 | to not just persist, but grow.

01:49:12.300 | And I'm also thinking about what you said earlier,

01:49:15.020 | which was, we should be cautious

01:49:17.060 | about immediately applauding the 50-year marriage,

01:49:20.240 | because oftentimes there's a soul death

01:49:22.660 | in one or both people,

01:49:24.600 | and that we don't want to celebrate that.

01:49:28.060 | And yet, there's something pretty impressive

01:49:29.940 | about a 50-year marriage as, if for no other reason,

01:49:33.900 | as an endurance event.

01:49:35.700 | But we have to be cautious

01:49:37.100 | about rewarding endurance events like that,

01:49:39.180 | because in as much as they sound to be about love,

01:49:42.180 | I mean, there's also the endurance event

01:49:43.900 | of the person that was a stockbroker for 50 years

01:49:46.580 | and got to the end and then walked out

01:49:48.240 | of the stock exchange or stepped out

01:49:50.820 | from behind the computer monitor and went,

01:49:53.260 | "Oh, wow, I missed a lot."

01:49:56.320 | - That's right.

01:49:57.160 | - So, there's no handbook for this,

01:50:02.160 | of you spent 15 minutes here and 30 minutes there,

01:50:05.140 | ratio of two to one, children absorb energy,

01:50:08.260 | and when their health or other issues in a relationship,

01:50:12.480 | then energy goes as well.

01:50:18.180 | So, how does one guide the rudder?

01:50:23.180 | I mean, does it require third-party support?

01:50:28.640 | I mean, I've often thought this,

01:50:30.780 | because we evolved presumably in small villages

01:50:33.140 | where there was support at closer proximity

01:50:35.820 | than perhaps we have now,

01:50:37.280 | people that know both individuals

01:50:40.180 | and have the best in mind for both and for the collective.

01:50:47.440 | I mean, is there the idea that like every romantic couple

01:50:52.440 | should have a third-party trained counselor to guide them?

01:50:56.780 | Seems like not a bad idea,

01:50:58.240 | although I think people are pretty resistant to that.

01:51:00.140 | And of course it takes resources, which is always an issue.

01:51:03.080 | - Sure, sure.

01:51:04.000 | Well, there's nothing wrong

01:51:05.160 | with having the third-party conversation

01:51:07.160 | from time to time, that's for sure.

01:51:08.720 | We have to remember that what we call therapy

01:51:11.640 | is a relatively modern invention.

01:51:14.040 | How was that addressed before?

01:51:15.480 | You're right, at the village level.

01:51:18.120 | When people were living in vitalized mythological systems,

01:51:23.120 | they had a sense of relatedness to the cosmos,

01:51:27.540 | first of all, who are the gods?

01:51:30.240 | Wither do we go when we die?

01:51:32.600 | What's this life about?

01:51:33.860 | In other words, every tribe had its story.

01:51:36.920 | Secondly, what is our relationship to nature

01:51:40.480 | and to live in harmony with that nature

01:51:42.720 | as opposed to violating it repeatedly for our own purposes?

01:51:47.240 | Thirdly, to whom do I belong?

01:51:50.840 | Who is my tribe?

01:51:52.000 | Who are my people?

01:51:53.720 | And is that a life-serving or life-suppressing experience?

01:51:58.120 | And fourthly, is the mystery of individual journey.

01:52:01.140 | By what lights do I conduct my journey and so forth?

01:52:04.680 | And of course, those mythological systems

01:52:07.160 | were not particularly interested

01:52:08.680 | in the development of the individual,

01:52:10.320 | but they're certainly about the individual

01:52:12.240 | being subsumed into the tribal experience.

01:52:15.280 | At least you have a sense of belonging.

01:52:17.280 | Erode that, and people fall out of that

01:52:21.960 | into the abyss of the self, as it were.

01:52:24.500 | Jung put it this way.

01:52:27.320 | He said people walked off the medieval cathedral

01:52:31.280 | into the abyss of the self in one of his letters, you see.

01:52:35.280 | And it became a cultural contrivance

01:52:39.280 | with the best of intention to help people find their path

01:52:44.200 | and deal with whatever their psyche's reaction to,

01:52:47.720 | you know, again, typically, not always,

01:52:50.220 | but typically what brings people to therapy

01:52:52.600 | is that their belief system or their conventional practices

01:52:57.280 | are no longer working for them.

01:52:59.520 | I had a client from Houston once who said in his AA group,

01:53:04.080 | their slogan was, "This isn't working for me,

01:53:06.400 | "but I do it very well."

01:53:08.120 | That pretty much summarizes the first step

01:53:10.800 | of going into 12-step is that recognition.

01:53:13.600 | - That's right.

01:53:14.440 | - And then, you know, 12-step, of course,

01:53:15.760 | provides so much more.

01:53:16.880 | - But applicable to all of us, you know,

01:53:18.960 | our practices sooner or later will often,

01:53:21.960 | 'cause they're driven by these stories

01:53:24.320 | that we carry intrapsychically, they don't work for us,

01:53:28.040 | but we've learned to do them

01:53:29.120 | with a certain facility and so forth.

01:53:31.000 | And that's when the discrepancy becomes so difficult,

01:53:33.920 | then one has to face the, you know, the fire, so to speak.

01:53:38.840 | Then what matters is how am I to conduct my life

01:53:41.840 | in the face of these circumstances,

01:53:43.960 | which I'm not able to solve in the old way,

01:53:46.720 | and that's the adventure, and that's the challenge,

01:53:50.840 | and at the same time, it's intimidating

01:53:53.160 | to many people, understandably.

01:53:56.360 | So sooner or later, again, one has to say,

01:53:59.920 | is this your life, or is it someone else's?

01:54:04.080 | Most people are not living their life, sadly.

01:54:06.440 | They're living reactively.

01:54:07.880 | They're living whatever the stories were,

01:54:10.320 | and I put stories not in the sense

01:54:12.720 | that they're so conscious as such,

01:54:15.320 | as they are representing whatever message we internalized

01:54:20.320 | and produced a splinter narrative.

01:54:24.440 | Again, when triggered, it has the power

01:54:26.640 | to govern our behaviors.

01:54:28.800 | That's why, again, you start with your own patterns

01:54:31.480 | and say, where did this come from?

01:54:32.960 | I wasn't born with it.

01:54:34.920 | A pattern is something that is replicating itself

01:54:37.840 | as a result of this story spilling into the world.

01:54:41.760 | So, you know, what I learned in my own life

01:54:44.800 | was I had put so much of my emotional distress

01:54:49.720 | up in the world of the life of the mind,

01:54:51.880 | which was rich and valuable.

01:54:53.160 | I don't repudiate that, but it was too one-sided,

01:54:56.360 | and what I had to do was come back

01:54:58.360 | and face what was on the operating table

01:55:00.400 | in that psychiatric hospital.

01:55:02.680 | The world of repressed emotion, fears, et cetera, et cetera.

01:55:06.200 | It's like both are true.

01:55:08.400 | Now, see if you can honor both of them,

01:55:11.320 | and when you do, something grows and develops within you

01:55:14.320 | to respond to that in a new way.

01:55:16.300 | - So we've been covering a lot of human universals

01:55:20.160 | and things that everybody should think about and address.

01:55:24.540 | We talked a bit about things more or less specific to men.

01:55:28.460 | What about women?

01:55:31.160 | What are some of the unique psychic challenges

01:55:36.160 | that they face and need to address in specific ways?

01:55:42.000 | - Sure.

01:55:42.960 | Well, first of all, each woman has to examine

01:55:47.300 | what was the message given her by her family,

01:55:50.440 | by her mother, her extended family expectations

01:55:54.740 | and role models, and cultural setting and so forth,

01:55:58.260 | and say, "Is this something that supports

01:56:01.060 | "my personal growth and development or not?"

01:56:03.460 | I mean, that's a kind of inventory.

01:56:05.220 | Men have to ask that same question as well.

01:56:07.420 | We have to acknowledge that biological differences suggest

01:56:13.300 | if you're a woman, you're the one

01:56:15.020 | who's gonna be carrying that baby,

01:56:17.380 | and still in our culture, the major responsibility for it,

01:56:20.680 | while shared by father and mother, hopefully,

01:56:25.160 | still is something you have to attend.

01:56:28.280 | And many women are trying to have it both ways, as we know,

01:56:32.640 | the career development and being a parent at the same time.

01:56:37.640 | I saw a survey some years ago

01:56:40.080 | that a large number of women executives,

01:56:44.280 | all had MBAs and had all achieved, you know,

01:56:47.820 | like vice president status or something in their corporation.

01:56:51.740 | When asked around age 50, "Would you do this all again?"

01:56:55.720 | Almost 100% said no.

01:56:59.220 | It cost too much for me.

01:57:01.500 | It cost me too much.

01:57:03.840 | They felt something else was missing.

01:57:05.620 | They felt friendship was missing.

01:57:07.580 | They felt intimacy was missing.

01:57:10.140 | In many cases, they felt parenting was missing,

01:57:12.580 | or it had gotten short shrift, you see.

01:57:15.060 | As men often face when they look at retirement,

01:57:19.540 | you know, as the old saying, on your deathbed,

01:57:22.060 | you don't say, "Gee, I wish I spent more time

01:57:23.660 | "at the office," you know?

01:57:24.820 | It's like, "I wish I'd done this or that."

01:57:26.900 | - I know a few scientists who, to this day,

01:57:29.460 | say that they plan to die in their office.

01:57:31.540 | It's always a sad thing for me to hear this.

01:57:33.860 | I also know their children, in many cases,

01:57:35.860 | and that's about 4/5 of the time is not a good picture.

01:57:40.860 | - That's right.

01:57:41.940 | - Yeah, and again, not all, right, this 4/5,

01:57:45.820 | but because other colleagues are spectacular parents,

01:57:48.900 | but I grew up with the children of a lot of academics,

01:57:51.380 | and a lot of times, it ain't a pretty picture.

01:57:54.820 | - That's right.

01:57:55.820 | So I think that another thing that men, in our time,

01:58:00.820 | really need to learn is, if you're in a relationship,

01:58:06.180 | part of your role is supporting the growth

01:58:08.260 | and development of your partner,

01:58:10.220 | and the more insecure the man,

01:58:11.620 | the more threatened he will be by that,

01:58:13.540 | because she might go off in some other direction, you see.

01:58:16.660 | And that means sharing household duties

01:58:20.380 | and sharing childcare and so forth,

01:58:22.560 | which you do to the best of your ability.

01:58:25.100 | Having a child and having two careers

01:58:27.060 | requires an enormous amount of juggling, as we all know,

01:58:31.380 | but you can do it in good faith with the best of intentions.

01:58:36.100 | If not, resentment builds, and one-sidedness builds.

01:58:39.740 | So I think for women, they still need a partner

01:58:44.740 | that will buy into the notion of genuine reciprocity

01:58:49.620 | in our responsibility to each other and to our work together,

01:58:54.220 | which includes child-rearing,

01:58:55.740 | without which women are unduly burdened, you see,

01:59:00.740 | unfairly burdened,

01:59:02.460 | and I don't think we've solved that one yet.

01:59:04.940 | I think that's still open-ended

01:59:06.620 | in the culture at this point.

01:59:09.400 | On the other hand, it's stunning to see women grab hold

01:59:13.860 | of the opportunities available now.

01:59:15.720 | I'm living in a retirement community as of a year ago,

01:59:19.860 | and so many of the women that I've had dinner with,

01:59:22.700 | my wife and I have dinner with various people,

01:59:25.460 | have said, "Well, when I was at this stage,

01:59:27.020 | "women were not allowed to do this."

01:59:29.420 | One woman was a scientist, and she said,

01:59:31.140 | "I just wasn't recognized in the physics world

01:59:34.260 | "until, like, late in my life."

01:59:37.140 | And you forget how recently that was the case.

01:59:40.000 | I mean, that was a deep violation of the human spirit,

01:59:44.080 | but it was routine.

01:59:45.480 | And so many of the women that I see there

01:59:47.280 | who are gonna be over 70, most of them are over 80,

01:59:50.400 | lived in a world that was not unlike a segregated world,

01:59:54.880 | just as I grew up where segregation

01:59:58.920 | was practiced by half of this country.

02:00:01.760 | It's not so long ago.

02:00:03.680 | - Somewhat hard to fathom

02:00:06.560 | how much things have changed,

02:00:08.240 | and yet also how much things persist.

02:00:10.840 | - That's right, that's right.

02:00:12.760 | Well, and, you know, the '60s happened,

02:00:15.120 | and what happened to the '60s

02:00:17.040 | is a kind of resurgence from below

02:00:22.040 | in both men and women, some men and some women,

02:00:25.900 | to overthrow the sort of oppressive nature

02:00:29.080 | of role definitions and so forth.

02:00:31.160 | You know, I mean, you couldn't think of marrying a person

02:00:35.400 | in another religion, for example.

02:00:37.360 | You couldn't think of marrying someone of a different race.

02:00:40.100 | I mean, the price of that meant you had to go live

02:00:43.200 | anonymously in the city somewhere,

02:00:45.160 | or you couldn't be gay, for example.

02:00:47.480 | The love that dare not speak its name, as it was called.

02:00:51.420 | All of that's been radically challenged, and rightly so.

02:00:56.360 | And yet what that does is bring about a world

02:01:00.160 | of great freedom, greater freedom, but also ambiguity.

02:01:04.680 | You know, if this isn't right, well, but what's this,

02:01:07.320 | and what's that?

02:01:08.600 | And people are troubled by ambiguity.

02:01:11.120 | And so, therefore, there's always a reactive nature

02:01:15.080 | in some individuals who are fighting that, you see.

02:01:19.240 | So, again, it shows up in various issues of racism,

02:01:24.240 | whether we have abortion or not,

02:01:26.000 | or whatever the social issue may be.

02:01:29.440 | A lot of what's playing out there

02:01:31.660 | is the traditional role definitions

02:01:34.460 | versus a sense of the autonomy of the individual

02:01:37.940 | to live his or her journey, you see.

02:01:40.680 | - I'd like to shift a bit to discussions of pathology,

02:01:45.620 | or asserted pathology.

02:01:48.940 | Nowadays, I think thanks, again, to social media,

02:01:52.700 | or no thanks to social media,

02:01:55.740 | there's a lot of use of psychological terms.

02:02:00.220 | Narcissism, projection, gaslighting, clinical diagnoses.

02:02:05.220 | I mean, I admittedly took the liberty of saying

02:02:11.860 | that I, as a non-clinician, view the landscape

02:02:15.460 | of a lot of social media as borderline,

02:02:18.380 | and I have no credential to be able to diagnose

02:02:22.060 | an individual, let alone the internet.

02:02:23.980 | So, I'll be clear about my limitations whenever possible.

02:02:28.620 | But there are real pathologies of the psyche, of the mind.

02:02:33.620 | I'd be curious about your view of the ones

02:02:37.920 | that tend to capture people's attention the most.

02:02:41.540 | I mean, I think we now understand

02:02:44.660 | some of the neurochemical basis

02:02:46.860 | of certain psychiatric challenges,

02:02:50.820 | schizophrenia bipolar in particular, OCD in particular,

02:02:54.100 | sometimes by way of which medications

02:02:56.460 | they respond to or don't.

02:02:58.820 | But that alone doesn't allow us

02:03:00.900 | to understand their underlying mechanisms.

02:03:03.220 | I think a lot of that is still mysterious.

02:03:05.140 | But I'd love to get a different perspective

02:03:08.460 | on these things, which is the psychological perspective,

02:03:12.220 | which of course embraces biology,

02:03:15.620 | but looks at it a little bit differently.

02:03:17.440 | So, yeah, what are your thoughts about the way

02:03:21.240 | that these days these words are slung?

02:03:25.580 | And what's your view about our actual treatment

02:03:30.580 | for these conditions, both for the people suffering

02:03:34.540 | from them and the people that suffer

02:03:36.980 | because others suffer from them?

02:03:38.340 | - Yeah, well, you're asking me to speak both

02:03:40.780 | as a therapist and as a citizen, I think,

02:03:43.300 | and I'll address the first one first.

02:03:45.720 | Part of the therapist's role is to differential diagnosis.

02:03:51.740 | In other words, if a person comes in with a depression,

02:03:55.860 | we have to try to define what kind of depression

02:03:58.180 | we're talking about.

02:03:59.020 | There are different kinds of depression.

02:04:00.940 | Is this a reactive depression?

02:04:02.660 | It's only pathological if it lasts too long

02:04:05.420 | or interferes with their normal functioning too much,

02:04:09.540 | and that's a judgment call.

02:04:11.360 | If a person's grieving the loss of something important

02:04:13.980 | in their life, the loss of a marriage, let's say,

02:04:16.560 | it's appropriate to feel depressed

02:04:19.100 | for a certain length of time until life's challenges

02:04:22.220 | move on forward and so forth.

02:04:24.820 | There is biologically driven depression,

02:04:29.740 | which can be approached with medication,

02:04:31.820 | although many of the antidepressants are very limited

02:04:34.540 | in their success.

02:04:36.100 | Long-term therapy tends to be more effective

02:04:39.340 | as various studies have recognized,

02:04:41.460 | albeit there's an economic cost to that.

02:04:44.780 | And then thirdly, there's what you can call

02:04:46.900 | an intrapsychic depression, which is what I experienced,

02:04:50.660 | was that there were certain parts of my life

02:04:54.180 | that had been walled off, and that was crying out.

02:04:59.180 | Pathology comes from the Greek word pathos,

02:05:02.300 | which means suffering, and logos,

02:05:04.860 | which means expression of.

02:05:06.140 | So pathology means the expression of the suffering.

02:05:09.820 | Psychopathology is expression of the suffering of the soul.

02:05:12.300 | So what is it in terms of this person's natural desire

02:05:16.380 | to live in a meaningful way

02:05:18.060 | that's interfering with their life?

02:05:19.500 | Is it biologically driven?

02:05:21.340 | Is it a function of the social context in which they live,

02:05:24.500 | or is it some personal task that they have to address?

02:05:28.820 | And that kind of differential diagnosis is essential.

02:05:33.140 | And as you said, there are certain conditions

02:05:34.980 | that are predominantly biologically driven,

02:05:37.460 | such as schizophrenia, bipolar, et cetera.

02:05:40.820 | So secondly then, speaking as a citizen,

02:05:46.020 | you know, the internet,

02:05:48.620 | and I don't wanna get lost in the internet again,

02:05:50.540 | but it's like it's a vast open stage

02:05:53.180 | in which whatever is unaddressed in people

02:05:55.780 | can be put out there without censorship,

02:06:00.420 | without reflection, without the other being represented.

02:06:04.420 | And it allows people to reveal

02:06:09.220 | whatever is going on within them without genuine dialogue.

02:06:15.300 | And of course you can have opposition,

02:06:17.020 | but what has to happen typically is,

02:06:19.060 | again, associating with like-minded people.

02:06:21.620 | I must be right because these other people agree with me,

02:06:25.220 | you see.

02:06:26.420 | So, you know, any of these terms can be misappropriated

02:06:30.340 | and will be sooner or later.

02:06:33.460 | So what one has to say is we can only make diagnoses

02:06:37.500 | with, you know, observation over time.

02:06:40.260 | It's very hard initially to know what's really going on.

02:06:44.860 | As I mentioned, what we do or what someone does is logical.

02:06:48.700 | What we don't know is what it's in service to

02:06:50.820 | inside of them.

02:06:52.420 | And you will not get much sense of that by the internet

02:06:56.140 | because it's too superficial.

02:06:57.980 | That's why it takes repeated observation

02:07:00.540 | and conversation for that to emerge.

02:07:03.280 | - The reason I keep coming back to the internet

02:07:06.500 | is I think it's where most people get their information now.

02:07:08.860 | It's, unless they're listening to this as a podcast,

02:07:11.940 | that's where they're going to get this information.

02:07:14.440 | I think what you said about the lack of dialogue

02:07:19.440 | being really key.

02:07:22.200 | I mean, I think we see this now also at the level of media.

02:07:24.680 | We have a very polarized media.

02:07:26.780 | - Yes.

02:07:28.040 | - This is an independent media channel.

02:07:29.800 | We don't have a political stance

02:07:31.960 | despite what some people might assert.

02:07:33.920 | We don't, right?

02:07:34.760 | It's about science and health information

02:07:37.320 | for everyone who is interested.

02:07:39.520 | Zero cost, that's the mission.

02:07:42.440 | - Understood.

02:07:43.280 | - So when we read and see things now about politics,

02:07:48.280 | but also about business, about sport, about celebrity,

02:07:52.500 | about kids, about culture,

02:07:54.840 | all too often the labels of psychology are placed on those.

02:07:59.300 | Kids are depressed.

02:08:00.800 | They're not just lonely, they're depressed.

02:08:03.020 | And they may very well be experiencing high levels

02:08:06.000 | of clinical diagnosis of depression.

02:08:08.240 | That could be true.

02:08:09.680 | So my concern, it's a real concern,

02:08:13.440 | which is why I keep bringing this up,

02:08:15.040 | is that in doing that,

02:08:17.760 | that we both diminish the suffering of those

02:08:21.520 | who are really suffering from those pathologies.

02:08:24.160 | And we also perhaps create a little bit of catastrophizing

02:08:29.160 | about feeling low for an afternoon

02:08:32.480 | might be a great source of stimulus

02:08:35.960 | to go write or think or nap or insight.

02:08:40.960 | And I loathe to think that in people learning terms,

02:08:47.680 | that somehow they're getting further away

02:08:50.820 | from what they need.

02:08:51.960 | - No, I agree.

02:08:53.000 | Louis Pasteur, from whom we got pasteurization, of course,

02:08:58.740 | reportedly put over the entrance to his office.

02:09:03.440 | Tell me not your politics or your religion,

02:09:05.560 | tell me only your suffering.

02:09:07.520 | And I always think about that in the context of therapy

02:09:10.780 | because everybody's a suffering soul

02:09:14.360 | because life is difficult and then you die.

02:09:17.000 | So have a nice day, right?

02:09:18.480 | Life is suffering.

02:09:20.920 | And that's not pessimistic, that's just descriptive.

02:09:25.920 | The question is, what does that suffering make you do?

02:09:29.160 | What does it keep you from doing?

02:09:30.560 | That's the central question.

02:09:32.520 | There's where the person is called into some accountability.

02:09:37.520 | You know, if you're depressed, all right,

02:09:39.600 | what's the task that that depression's asking of you?

02:09:42.300 | If you're anxious, where's that anxiety coming from?

02:09:47.280 | How much of that is archaic?

02:09:48.880 | How much of that is inherited from family?

02:09:51.600 | How much of that is unique to your life?

02:09:55.480 | And what is the task that is to be addressed there?

02:09:58.440 | I also wrote a book called "Swamplands of the Soul"

02:10:00.880 | that deals with anxiety, depression, loss,

02:10:03.120 | betrayal, et cetera, et cetera.

02:10:05.200 | And sooner or later, life is going to take us to swamplands

02:10:09.080 | where you find yourself really mired into something

02:10:13.120 | and one will feel very much victimized in that way.

02:10:16.400 | But that's the passive experience.

02:10:19.240 | The summons is always what is the task

02:10:21.960 | that this visitation to the swampland is asking of you?

02:10:25.620 | What do you need to address?

02:10:28.240 | If you feel that your partner betrayed you

02:10:30.560 | and left the marriage, for example, all right,

02:10:32.520 | and took your self-esteem with that, all right,

02:10:34.600 | well, your task is the recovery of self-worth

02:10:37.740 | because without that, no other choice you make

02:10:40.040 | is gonna be very good.

02:10:41.400 | And maybe that's a hard project,

02:10:44.680 | but that's nonetheless the work you have to do.

02:10:47.800 | So always the question, what does this make you do?

02:10:51.600 | What does it keep you from doing?

02:10:53.240 | And to bring responsibility back to the individual.

02:10:58.160 | And of course, some people are willing

02:10:59.560 | to accept that responsibility, some are not.

02:11:01.960 | And that makes the difference.

02:11:03.000 | I had a colleague many moons ago who said

02:11:06.400 | she could tell in the first hour

02:11:07.960 | whether the person she was seeing was a big kid

02:11:10.280 | or a little kid because everybody's a recovering child.

02:11:14.480 | And the big kids could do the work.

02:11:16.920 | The little kids wanted someone to tell them what to do

02:11:20.080 | or tell them that there's an easy fix to this.

02:11:23.080 | And in the long run, those person's gonna stay stuck

02:11:27.640 | pretty much until something else happens

02:11:30.840 | in their life, perhaps.

02:11:32.840 | - Well, to me, it seems that the litmus test

02:11:35.120 | is the extent to which somebody is pointing fingers

02:11:38.040 | at others or directing the work towards themselves,

02:11:42.440 | regardless of who was wrong.

02:11:44.040 | - Sure, sure.

02:11:44.880 | - One individual, both individual, like regardless.

02:11:48.320 | Ultimately, I think what you're saying,

02:11:49.920 | and forgive me for interrupting,

02:11:50.920 | is that if one is asking what is the task

02:11:53.720 | to develop what, you know, to control one's anxiety,

02:11:56.320 | to develop stronger sense of self,

02:11:58.480 | to better understand what one really wants and assert that,

02:12:03.480 | to set better boundaries so that people's projections

02:12:09.000 | are not as permeable to us, whatever it is,

02:12:12.040 | ultimately, there's no business of looking at

02:12:17.040 | what others are doing wrong in that.

02:12:20.560 | It's all introspective and self-directed things.

02:12:23.360 | - That's right.

02:12:24.560 | Well, and you gave good examples of the kind of tasks

02:12:27.320 | that rise out of a person's experience.

02:12:30.240 | Now, for example, if a person has been subject

02:12:32.880 | to serious abuse in childhood, physical or emotional

02:12:36.000 | or sexual or whatever, it's affected their entire life.

02:12:40.920 | Well, what is the task?

02:12:42.800 | You know, it's to wrest from that experience

02:12:47.040 | a sense of self and that one is still here

02:12:50.960 | to live one's journey.

02:12:52.360 | That's why I said at the beginning of our conversation,

02:12:55.100 | I'm not what happened to me.

02:12:56.820 | I'm what is wanting to be expressed in my life through me.

02:12:59.980 | To get a person to that place takes some time

02:13:04.420 | and repetition, frankly.

02:13:06.400 | You know, the two hardest things I ever learned

02:13:08.380 | as a therapist, and I still don't like either one of them,

02:13:10.960 | is patience.

02:13:11.940 | You have to sit with it over time.

02:13:14.980 | You have to sort and sift and sort and sift

02:13:17.740 | and hold this over time till something else emerges.

02:13:20.940 | And secondly, powerlessness.

02:13:23.180 | I can't fix anybody, right?

02:13:27.460 | But we can try to promote the attitudes and behaviors

02:13:30.640 | that will allow that person to find what is right

02:13:33.020 | from within them.

02:13:34.460 | Because something in each of us always knows

02:13:37.260 | what is right for us.

02:13:39.380 | If we pay attention and if we are willing to honor

02:13:42.960 | what emerges and have enough courage to address that,

02:13:47.220 | then we can live in a different way.

02:13:49.040 | And it's very tough in the face of substantial abuse,

02:13:54.040 | for example, because it was so intrusive and so devastating.

02:13:58.260 | It's cleared out a space in which the self

02:14:00.520 | seems to find no room.

02:14:02.760 | But that's the task then, is the recovery of a sense of self

02:14:06.540 | and purpose that's independent of what happened to oneself.

02:14:09.820 | - It's almost as if one needs to really understand

02:14:13.920 | their own story, but then be able to depart from that story.

02:14:18.760 | - Yeah, that's why I said one has to have a larger story

02:14:22.020 | than what happened to you, right?

02:14:24.580 | One has to have a larger story than the story

02:14:27.580 | that one's culture gives you,

02:14:29.380 | or your family of origin gives you.

02:14:31.480 | What is that story?

02:14:33.200 | That's why I said my instructions and my models

02:14:36.820 | were to stay home and stay safe.

02:14:39.980 | Something in me hungered, and I honor my teachers

02:14:44.460 | to this day.

02:14:45.760 | I honor a local librarian who showed me any book.

02:14:49.300 | She recognized this kid's a reader.

02:14:51.740 | So she said to me, "You don't have to stay

02:14:54.340 | "in the children's section.

02:14:55.180 | "You can go anywhere you want in the library,"

02:14:56.840 | which I thought was like having a lot of candy.

02:14:59.240 | I enjoyed that.

02:15:00.520 | And as a child, I devoured the biographies of famous people

02:15:04.800 | because I think I was looking for clues

02:15:07.340 | about how do you live a larger life?

02:15:10.140 | I couldn't have languaged that.

02:15:12.120 | It was just some deep urge within.

02:15:14.960 | How do you live this life in a way that's more satisfying?

02:15:19.920 | And I was privileged to have some people there,

02:15:23.760 | notably teachers and a librarian,

02:15:26.060 | who gave permission to that and supported that,

02:15:29.520 | and I'm grateful to them.

02:15:31.160 | So I think it probably would have happened anyway,

02:15:36.160 | but much later in life.

02:15:39.240 | But I look back and I realize there was something there

02:15:42.560 | that wanted to go, as I said,

02:15:44.320 | to see where the airplanes went,

02:15:46.600 | what the ocean looked like,

02:15:48.000 | what it meant to live in a foreign country,

02:15:49.800 | what it meant to learn a foreign language.

02:15:52.600 | All of those things were unimaginable to my family,

02:15:57.600 | and rest their souls,

02:16:00.020 | because I grieve the life they were not allowed to live.

02:16:06.040 | I never forget that.

02:16:07.320 | And it causes me to resolve, again, to stop and say,

02:16:13.440 | all right, now, where are you being blocked today

02:16:15.440 | by convention or your old fears

02:16:18.480 | or your inhibitions or whatever?

02:16:21.840 | Because there's always a summons to show up.

02:16:25.440 | In fact, in one of the books, I said my motto,

02:16:27.840 | which I think about every morning, it's very simple.

02:16:30.640 | Shut up, suit up, show up.

02:16:33.620 | Now, I'm speaking to myself when I say this.

02:16:35.640 | Shut up means stop whining.

02:16:37.960 | You know, there are people who don't have food today.

02:16:41.200 | There are people whose children are being killed today.

02:16:44.160 | There are people who don't have a roof.

02:16:46.480 | You have tons of things.

02:16:48.720 | Shut up, don't whine.

02:16:50.320 | Speaking to myself.

02:16:52.040 | Suit up means prepare, do your homework.

02:16:54.960 | Don't expect life just to present it to you.

02:16:57.240 | You have to go out and work hard at something.

02:17:00.000 | Show up, meaning not show off,

02:17:01.880 | but just do the best you can.

02:17:04.160 | Step into life, you know.

02:17:07.780 | Sooner or later, life knocks us down.

02:17:10.480 | Death is the great democracy,

02:17:12.560 | but you're here to live it as best you can

02:17:16.160 | by lights that matter within

02:17:18.280 | instead of what people around you are saying, you know?

02:17:21.360 | And as simplistic as that slogan is,

02:17:24.320 | I know a lot of people have copied it

02:17:26.000 | and put it on their refrigerator

02:17:27.360 | because it's a reminder of this is your life.

02:17:31.760 | You're accountable.

02:17:33.360 | What are you gonna do about that?

02:17:35.000 | - I'm gonna let that sink in for everybody.

02:17:39.800 | I think shut up, suit up, show up is essential.

02:17:43.960 | I love that.

02:17:48.440 | I love Eric's stages of developmental maturation.

02:17:53.920 | For those not familiar,

02:17:56.440 | Eric's in, I think, another Dane, right?

02:18:00.720 | Is it Dane?

02:18:01.560 | Yeah.

02:18:02.400 | Psychologist, you know,

02:18:03.720 | set about to kind of explain neurobiology

02:18:06.880 | without knowing any neurobiology

02:18:08.400 | and asserted that there were specific core conflicts

02:18:11.120 | that infants and children,

02:18:12.880 | young adults and adults go through.

02:18:14.740 | And the age ranges are more variable now

02:18:21.360 | based on life expectancy and other factors

02:18:24.480 | than they were originally.

02:18:25.880 | But one reason I like Eric's stages of development so much

02:18:29.400 | is that as a developmental neurobiologist first,

02:18:33.080 | that's where I started out more or less,

02:18:35.080 | it makes perfect sense to me

02:18:37.640 | that the brain circuitry would be resolving certain things

02:18:40.720 | about interactions with physical objects

02:18:43.040 | and relational objects.

02:18:44.800 | And it just makes perfect sense.

02:18:45.960 | And what genius it was to superimpose on that

02:18:50.960 | some ideas about what infants are doing from zero to one,

02:18:55.360 | then from three to five, et cetera.

02:18:57.220 | Rarely, if ever, do we hear about

02:18:59.960 | the maturational stages of adulthood

02:19:02.520 | and the core conflicts that we all have to go through

02:19:07.600 | perhaps not exactly from age 45 to 50

02:19:11.720 | or 50 to 55 or 75 to 80 and so forth,

02:19:15.680 | but that life as it were might be a series

02:19:20.680 | of trying to make it through specific milestones.

02:19:24.240 | And when we don't make it through a milestone,

02:19:26.960 | problems arise.

02:19:29.320 | - Sure, sure.

02:19:30.640 | - You described the first half of life

02:19:33.200 | as one in which we're kind of foraging more or less

02:19:36.520 | for most people unconscious of how our parental influences

02:19:40.580 | or family influences set about certain patterns

02:19:44.800 | that may or may not be healthy for us.

02:19:46.240 | And then at some point, some event comes,

02:19:48.400 | oftentimes a painful event,

02:19:51.520 | but it could be a joyous event

02:19:53.960 | like the birth of a child or something like that.

02:19:56.160 | And all of a sudden we get hit square in the face

02:19:58.640 | with the work that we need to do.

02:20:00.280 | Would you say that the second half of life

02:20:04.080 | is one in which we, because of our life experience

02:20:09.080 | and because of some awareness,

02:20:10.520 | and yet, because also our brain is yes, still plastic,

02:20:14.780 | but it takes more work than when we're kids

02:20:17.240 | to modify our brain circuitry,

02:20:19.520 | that we have to set about this juggling act

02:20:22.520 | of still trying to understand the self

02:20:24.920 | while still bringing the self that we have into the world.

02:20:28.640 | We don't really get to pause,

02:20:30.040 | go to the shop and come out a year later in most cases.

02:20:35.040 | So regardless of whether or not somebody is 10, 15, 20,

02:20:41.200 | 50 or 80 years old, how do we know what our work is then?

02:20:47.160 | Like, how do we best know like what to focus on?

02:20:51.460 | Because it can be a bit overwhelming

02:20:53.920 | to think about like tackling all of this.

02:20:56.400 | - Sure, sure.

02:20:57.640 | Well, let me say, first of all, many years ago,

02:21:00.720 | when I was still teaching at a university,

02:21:03.280 | I taught a course on life stages.

02:21:05.840 | And for one of the papers,

02:21:08.100 | I asked the students to imagine two stages ahead of them.

02:21:12.680 | So if they were typically 18 to 22, let's say,

02:21:16.660 | to imagine themselves in their 40s

02:21:19.240 | and try to write about their life in their 40s.

02:21:21.720 | And the assignment completely failed,

02:21:24.720 | although it was made useful for the classroom discussion,

02:21:29.120 | because all of them imagined in their 40s,

02:21:32.300 | they would have this perfect marriage,

02:21:35.000 | their adolescent children would adore them,

02:21:38.360 | and they would be in these satisfying careers

02:21:40.320 | despite everything we'd read, everything we talked about

02:21:43.480 | as a time of turbulence and disappointment and so forth.

02:21:47.600 | And it was a complete failure.

02:21:49.520 | So it's hard for us to imagine

02:21:51.640 | that we too will go through these similar kinds of things,

02:21:55.480 | but usually we do.

02:21:57.220 | And some of this is triggered by roles in one's life.

02:22:01.920 | A lot of it's determined by our own aging of the body

02:22:05.160 | and so forth.

02:22:06.600 | So for example, the last stage in Erickson's discussion

02:22:11.360 | in so-called old age is the conflict

02:22:14.940 | between despair and integrity.

02:22:17.560 | And I remember reading that when I was young,

02:22:20.260 | and wondering what did he really mean by that?

02:22:22.480 | Now I know that in a very personal way.

02:22:26.400 | Despair is one sees friends die,

02:22:29.420 | one sees avenues in your life closed

02:22:32.000 | that you can't possibly do that.

02:22:33.700 | You're confronted with the unlived life

02:22:36.920 | or the mistakes you made.

02:22:38.960 | You're dealing with loss of functions of the body,

02:22:42.120 | you're facing your mortality and so forth and so on.

02:22:45.960 | And how could you not despair in the face of that?

02:22:49.000 | Well, at the same time, there's again,

02:22:50.880 | the summons to accountability.

02:22:53.480 | What now is life asking of you?

02:22:55.700 | How are you to show up today

02:22:58.040 | in this changed environment, you see?

02:23:01.520 | So, the stages of life,

02:23:05.320 | and Shakespeare wrote about the seven stages of life.

02:23:07.800 | I think Erickson had eight stages.

02:23:10.400 | And again, underneath this, these things happen, right?

02:23:15.400 | And often one doesn't realize it.

02:23:18.980 | One reads about it somehow.

02:23:20.760 | It's sort of like when you're young,

02:23:22.000 | yes, I understand I'm mortal,

02:23:23.880 | but that happens to people out there.

02:23:27.360 | It's not part of my DNA, you see?

02:23:30.220 | Well, it is.

02:23:31.280 | And sooner or later, life is going to unfold,

02:23:34.360 | unless it's cut off in some way.

02:23:36.360 | And I remember reading when I was in graduate school,

02:23:42.280 | a saying in ancient Greece

02:23:44.080 | that I saw in several different environments.

02:23:46.840 | And it said, "Best of all is not to have been born.

02:23:49.440 | "Second best is to have died young."

02:23:51.420 | And I thought, gee, how awful that is, right?

02:23:54.700 | Well, I think I've understood why they were saying that.

02:23:57.220 | If you're born into the veil of tears, so to speak.

02:24:01.880 | You're born into suffering.

02:24:03.540 | You're born into mortality.

02:24:05.420 | You're born into loss, and so forth.

02:24:08.180 | If you're going to live,

02:24:09.560 | you're going to go through some of those.

02:24:11.380 | If you live long enough,

02:24:12.540 | you'll go through the loss of people you love and care about.

02:24:16.520 | You may outlive your children, as I've had an experience.

02:24:19.280 | And sooner or later,

02:24:22.260 | life will take you to these difficult places.

02:24:25.220 | And what are you going to do then?

02:24:26.700 | Who are you then, and how are you going to address that?

02:24:29.100 | And that's where the issue of integrity came in.

02:24:30.980 | And I think Erickson was right on that.

02:24:32.940 | To be a person of integrity means to integrate something,

02:24:36.820 | to pull back one's stuff,

02:24:39.660 | and sense this is who I am,

02:24:42.080 | and this is where I stand vis-a-vis this dilemma.

02:24:45.620 | That's why I said the practical question

02:24:47.180 | is how now am I to live my life

02:24:49.100 | in the face of this situation?

02:24:52.100 | That's a task that comes to each of us

02:24:54.940 | at some place in our life, and that never goes away.

02:24:58.260 | - Let's talk about death.

02:25:02.180 | - Okay.

02:25:03.620 | - I've often wondered whether or not

02:25:05.420 | the human brain's ability to

02:25:09.420 | adjust the aperture of our time perception

02:25:15.500 | is an adaptive thing,

02:25:18.660 | because were we to not be able to do that,

02:25:22.780 | we would probably always focus on the fact

02:25:25.580 | that at some point we are going to die.

02:25:27.940 | This to me is analogous to a situation in space,

02:25:32.940 | not outer space, but let's just frame it this way.

02:25:37.920 | We can orient in time,

02:25:40.260 | and in particular under conditions of stress,

02:25:42.740 | our time horizon tends to shrink.

02:25:45.340 | We have to solve for now.

02:25:46.420 | We get the troubling text message.

02:25:47.780 | Somebody that we care about is in trouble.

02:25:49.380 | We need to solve for now.

02:25:50.580 | So the time horizon has shrunk.

02:25:53.140 | We're on vacation, we're relaxed.

02:25:54.580 | Everything's taken care of.

02:25:55.600 | We're fed, we're rested.

02:25:56.740 | Our loved ones are safe, we're safe.

02:25:59.340 | And all of a sudden we can daydream.

02:26:01.820 | And so in the space domain,

02:26:05.100 | the brain can learn to navigate

02:26:08.100 | a small environment like this room,

02:26:10.380 | and in conversation we're present to this room,

02:26:13.080 | but we can also imagine that we're just two people

02:26:17.260 | among billions of other people floating on a planet

02:26:19.940 | in the galaxies, and we can expand our notion of space.

02:26:22.420 | The space-time dimensionality of perception

02:26:25.460 | of the human brain is vast,

02:26:28.340 | and it can be consciously controlled

02:26:29.740 | or unconsciously controlled.

02:26:31.180 | So that's great.

02:26:33.940 | It allows us to be functional

02:26:35.260 | in a number of different space-time dimensions.

02:26:37.680 | It also can allow us to avoid the reality,

02:26:41.620 | which is that at some point, our time here is finite.

02:26:44.380 | - Yes.

02:26:45.360 | - And the example you gave earlier

02:26:47.980 | of somebody who was just trying to pile up as much money

02:26:49.860 | to get to the end was an example, I think,

02:26:51.460 | of a shortened time horizon.

02:26:53.180 | Other compulsive behaviors,

02:26:55.500 | maybe even addictive behaviors, I would argue,

02:26:59.260 | have some component often of being a way

02:27:03.180 | to avoid the reality of death.

02:27:05.860 | It's a way of packing away the fear of death,

02:27:08.280 | because if you can create these reward-based,

02:27:12.040 | which eventually become punishment-based

02:27:14.200 | in the case of addiction,

02:27:15.440 | milestones and algorithms that the brain is running,

02:27:20.120 | solve for this now, solve for this now, solve for this,

02:27:22.200 | you stave off the reality, which is death is coming.

02:27:26.100 | Are we as humans, meaning, is it our work

02:27:32.560 | if we wish to be the most conscious,

02:27:34.800 | healthy version of ourselves,

02:27:37.540 | to understand and acknowledge our sense of mortality?

02:27:41.860 | I think of what I consider the great commencement speech

02:27:45.460 | of Steve Jobs at Stanford in 2015,

02:27:47.500 | where he talks about the knowledge of one's mortality

02:27:50.140 | is actually, in his words, more or less,

02:27:53.060 | one of the most important features

02:27:54.460 | of our self-recognition as humans.

02:27:57.040 | So that's the question.

02:27:59.700 | And then the challenge becomes how often to think about it.

02:28:05.340 | You don't want to think about it too much,

02:28:07.980 | because it can be paralyzing, it can lead,

02:28:10.540 | I mean, if we just think that we're,

02:28:11.800 | if we acknowledge that we are indeed, it's a fact,

02:28:14.480 | just two people among billions

02:28:15.900 | floating around on a planet in the middle,

02:28:17.300 | then nothing really matters, right?

02:28:20.260 | One can get the sense that our impact is zero.

02:28:23.360 | But if we overemphasize our impact,

02:28:26.820 | thinking that everything we do,

02:28:28.100 | like the movement of this book

02:28:29.300 | is going to impact molecules that then will impact,

02:28:31.820 | you'd go crazy, you'd become dysfunctional in a real way.

02:28:35.860 | So those are the two extremes.

02:28:37.080 | And I'll just kind of set that about and let for reflection,

02:28:42.060 | but in terms of our sense of our own mortality

02:28:46.420 | and what that means about our sense of life,

02:28:49.060 | seems like a pretty big topic.

02:28:50.700 | And I know you're writing a book about this,

02:28:52.100 | and I'm very excited to read it when it comes out.

02:28:54.280 | - Well, I've actually written about it before.

02:28:57.060 | The paradox here is it's mortality

02:29:00.780 | that makes this life meaningful.

02:29:02.420 | If we were immortal, we would simply do this for a century,

02:29:08.820 | then we'd get bored,

02:29:09.660 | and then we'd do something else for a century,

02:29:11.180 | and then get bored, and then something else for a century.

02:29:13.880 | Life is short, as Jung said,

02:29:15.900 | that short pause between two great mysteries.

02:29:18.380 | From whence we come, we know not.

02:29:20.040 | Whither we go, we don't know.

02:29:22.740 | The problem is the identification of the ego.

02:29:26.120 | One of the things that's occurred

02:29:28.420 | is in many traditional cultures,

02:29:30.460 | that ego was subsumed, as I said, into a larger story.

02:29:34.440 | Take away that story, and what's gonna fill that space?

02:29:37.220 | The ego, my own importance, my self-perpetuation.

02:29:42.220 | The fact that people have frozen their brains

02:29:44.500 | and wanting to be revived in some future era

02:29:49.240 | is a good example of denial, it seems to me.

02:29:52.160 | Life means something because your choices are finite.

02:29:58.540 | You don't live here forever.

02:30:01.040 | Now, when the more you identify with the ego,

02:30:04.140 | the more threatened you're gonna be by that.

02:30:06.340 | And then you begin to realize,

02:30:09.060 | all right, the center of my personality is not the ego.

02:30:11.860 | There are several things to say about this,

02:30:15.260 | none of which is proof of anything, simply observations.

02:30:18.720 | And Jung pointed this out in an essay once

02:30:22.340 | called The Soul and Death.

02:30:24.500 | The psyche doesn't seem to recognize its own termination.

02:30:29.420 | People who are overtly dying, and they know they're dying,

02:30:31.940 | and one of my patients right now

02:30:33.460 | is a glioblastoma client

02:30:35.380 | who's not going to be here in a few months,

02:30:38.340 | who's purely aware of mortality,

02:30:43.980 | but the dreams have to do with the journeys

02:30:46.900 | and crossings and things of that sort.

02:30:48.980 | In other words, as if the human psyche

02:30:51.520 | is not bound by time and space, per se,

02:30:53.700 | but the ego is.

02:30:55.580 | So if there's another life, it's another life.

02:31:00.020 | If there's a life after this, it's another life.

02:31:01.820 | This is the only one we know about for sure.

02:31:04.060 | And I would say, in terms of the fear of death,

02:31:08.280 | which most people don't wanna talk about,

02:31:10.940 | but sooner or later it comes up in therapy,

02:31:13.380 | no matter what stage of life one is involved in,

02:31:15.880 | is either there is another life of some kind

02:31:23.620 | which is larger than my imagination can conjure up,

02:31:28.220 | or there's an annihilation of this ego identity.

02:31:31.380 | Either case, my theories about it

02:31:34.140 | and my anxieties about it are rendered moot.

02:31:36.640 | So again, the more I identify with the ego consciousness,

02:31:40.980 | the more I'm tied into its perpetuation.

02:31:43.380 | The less I'm identified with that, the less it matters.

02:31:46.340 | I would say to you at this moment,

02:31:48.860 | and I'm trying to be as honest as I can about it,

02:31:51.740 | the chief thing I worry about as I approach my mortality

02:31:55.260 | is I don't want my wife to be alone.

02:31:59.220 | I care for her and I know there are areas

02:32:01.320 | where she needs my help.

02:32:02.940 | And I want to be here for her as long as I can.

02:32:07.140 | And my existence a little over a year ago

02:32:09.580 | was sort of problematic coming out of all those surgeries.

02:32:12.360 | So that's one reason we moved to a retirement community,

02:32:14.860 | so there'd be some structure there for her.

02:32:17.700 | Secondly, I don't want to suffer, obviously,

02:32:22.100 | but that's outside of my control.

02:32:24.260 | And thirdly, I'm still curious as a human being.

02:32:27.140 | There's so much to learn.

02:32:28.300 | And when we're talking about the internet and its perils,

02:32:30.620 | it's also an enormous learning tool.

02:32:32.820 | I love to Google up things and find out about things

02:32:35.420 | that used to be so difficult to learn about.

02:32:38.420 | So I'm still heavily invested in the adventure of life,

02:32:43.420 | but I'm less and less attached to it in some peculiar way.

02:32:48.420 | It's the ego attachment, you know?

02:32:52.500 | The German word gelassenheit is the word for serenity.

02:32:57.220 | It's the condition of having let go.

02:33:00.040 | And the only solution, so to speak,

02:33:03.620 | for our fear of mortality is accepting it paradoxically,

02:33:07.540 | of letting go of the fantasy of the sovereignty of the ego,

02:33:12.460 | that it's immune somehow to the natural order of things,

02:33:16.140 | the natural progression of things.

02:33:18.780 | Now, I'm not saying that makes me wholly unafraid of death.

02:33:22.780 | That would be delusional, and it's in another way,

02:33:25.960 | but I can say that I'm not defined by it in any way.

02:33:28.820 | And I think you're right.

02:33:29.860 | A lot of people, what it usually produces

02:33:32.220 | is either depression and torpor of some kind

02:33:35.460 | or frenetic activity.

02:33:38.340 | So the inability of a person to relativize the ego

02:33:42.780 | in the context of the idea of the soul,

02:33:45.980 | and does that soul perpetuate?

02:33:48.720 | I don't know.

02:33:49.920 | If I knew, I would tell you.

02:33:51.380 | I wouldn't wanna keep that a secret.

02:33:54.380 | I don't know, it's a mystery.

02:33:56.740 | Maybe I'll be conscious enough to experience it.

02:33:59.500 | Maybe I'll just be annihilated.

02:34:01.100 | Either way, as I said, my present speculations

02:34:04.700 | are just that, speculations, and ultimately irrelevant.

02:34:08.140 | And again, the thing we have to recognize,

02:34:10.500 | it's mortality that makes this life mean something,

02:34:14.260 | 'cause your choices matter.

02:34:16.300 | You're here a short time.

02:34:17.640 | What are you gonna do with that precious gift

02:34:20.660 | you call your life?

02:34:22.340 | What are you gonna do with it?

02:34:23.780 | - Well, I can't think of a more appropriate place to end,

02:34:30.300 | and yet I have still so many more questions.

02:34:34.900 | But I think because of today's conversation,

02:34:38.940 | I realized that those questions are questions

02:34:41.860 | to ask of self, as I think everyone listening

02:34:46.320 | and watching this surely is stimulated

02:34:49.140 | to ask many important questions of self.

02:34:52.060 | I must say, I'm both a bit awestruck, frankly,

02:34:58.620 | because I, again, I'm familiar with your teachings

02:35:02.940 | and work in the form of books.

02:35:05.460 | And it was a great wish of mine in my life journey

02:35:09.560 | to sit down with you face-to-face and have a conversation.

02:35:13.320 | So that's why I'm speaking more slowly today

02:35:17.300 | than I normally do.

02:35:18.620 | My audience perhaps will notice that.

02:35:20.780 | And if they send some emotion,

02:35:21.940 | it's that I feel like there's just so much richness here

02:35:25.000 | to take in for myself and for everyone listening to take in.

02:35:29.340 | I'm certainly going to listen to this again

02:35:32.160 | and take careful notes.

02:35:33.380 | And we likely will put some notes and some highlights.

02:35:35.780 | We always timestamp everything

02:35:37.140 | so that people can navigate back.

02:35:38.540 | But I think there's just so many essential prompts

02:35:42.220 | of the self, of the soul

02:35:44.020 | that people are going to be motivated to take

02:35:46.500 | as a consequence of hearing your words today.

02:35:48.940 | So I just really want to say thank you so much

02:35:53.300 | for the work that you've done

02:35:55.300 | and that you're doing and continuing to do,

02:35:58.780 | and for taking the time to share this information with us,

02:36:03.540 | because it really is the guts,

02:36:08.540 | like the core stuff of being a human being.

02:36:11.840 | So thank you so much.

02:36:13.280 | - Thank you, Andrew.

02:36:14.120 | May I just add as a footnote here,

02:36:16.560 | there's a wonderful letter of the poet Rilke

02:36:21.560 | to a young man in which he said,

02:36:23.920 | "You want the answers.

02:36:26.640 | "The key is to find the right questions

02:36:29.080 | "and live the questions.

02:36:30.120 | "You're not yet ready to live the answers,

02:36:32.020 | "but you ask the right questions in time

02:36:34.920 | "if you live them honestly,

02:36:36.580 | "with as much integrity as you can manage.

02:36:39.720 | "Someday you'll live your way into their answers for you."

02:36:43.140 | And that's what I would say.

02:36:45.020 | Ask large questions.

02:36:47.380 | As children, we did.

02:36:49.120 | What was this about?

02:36:50.300 | Why am I here?

02:36:51.140 | What's the story?

02:36:52.320 | What's going on here?

02:36:53.980 | We get so inured to those questions

02:36:56.640 | by our adaptive necessities.

02:36:59.700 | And we have to come back to those questions.

02:37:01.840 | I'm still asking those questions.

02:37:03.520 | I do it consciously now.

02:37:05.320 | Ask large questions.

02:37:06.820 | You'll live a large and interesting journey.

02:37:08.680 | Ask small questions and it gets diminished somehow.

02:37:12.220 | Another thing I say to a lot of patients,

02:37:15.680 | when you reach a decisive point in your life,

02:37:18.440 | we have to make a decision one way or the other.

02:37:21.080 | Ask, does this path enlarge me?

02:37:23.800 | Psycho-spiritually?

02:37:24.980 | Or does it diminish me?

02:37:26.180 | And you usually know the answer to that.

02:37:29.040 | If you choose the larger path,

02:37:30.940 | you're gonna grow and develop.

02:37:32.020 | It's gonna take something out of you,

02:37:34.060 | but it'll give something to you.

02:37:35.980 | If you don't, your life gets narrower

02:37:38.340 | and narrower and narrower.

02:37:39.580 | And something inside of you knows the difference.

02:37:41.740 | And sooner or later, the psyche's gonna show up

02:37:44.700 | with its point of view.

02:37:46.080 | And the more we fled from that kind of question,

02:37:49.820 | that kind of conversation,

02:37:51.500 | the more pathology is gonna erupt

02:37:54.660 | when we've avoided the big question.

02:37:56.660 | So thank you for asking big questions

02:38:00.280 | and thank you for inviting me

02:38:01.700 | to be part of this conversation today.

02:38:03.180 | It's been a privilege and a pleasure.

02:38:05.020 | - Thank you so much.

02:38:07.180 | Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

02:38:09.280 | with Dr. James Hollis.

02:38:10.860 | I hope you found it to be as insightful

02:38:12.740 | and practical as I did.

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02:38:35.300 | If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast

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02:39:35.260 | Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion

02:39:37.560 | with Dr. James Hollis.

02:39:38.980 | And last, but certainly not least,

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02:39:43.180 | (upbeat music)

02:39:45.760 | (upbeat music)

Dr. James Hollis: How to Find Your True Purpose & Create Your Best Life

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