As a male with pretty much zero [conscious] paternal instinct (while I desire marriage, I have no urge or desire for children); this episode really drew out many of the feelings and experiences my Anima has been drawing out, which I can only describe as an introduction to the mysteries of nature which can’t really be described in rational, non-paradoxical terms.

I dare say that my paternal instincts are channelled into other areas, especially creative endeavours in writing and music. As for maternal instincts, they’re always something that confused me as someone looking in from the outside, so this is fascinating from a bloke’s perspective!

Timing is really good with this episode, as a single mother (a fellow ECU psych student) and I are in the middle of an email conversation about maternity and male-and-female roles, so I will share this episode for sure.

Oh, and I’ve always wanted to hear you interviewed, Dr. Dave, so I’ll check out that podcast!

Cheers,
John

Perhaps a comparison of Logo Therapy and Analytical Psychology would be another interesting podcast?

Cheers,
John

Thank you very much! I am really glad you enjoyed the podcast and I know you will become even more interested as you read up on Frankl. In addition to the ever-popular Man’s Search for Meaning, I would also recommend to you Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning and The Will to Meaning to get a more complete picture. The Doctor and the Soul, of course, is good, but a bit more heavy and technical.

As for more podcasts, well….I think if you click on my name, you will find a few more!

I think Frankl and Jung is a fascinating topic! Frankl was younger, so I don’t know if Jung had any opinion of him, or not. I don’t even know if he was aware of Frankl. It seems to me that after his days with Freud, he went his own way and didn’t look back to Vienna.

Frankl, on the other hand, credits Jung for discovering the religious elements in the unconscious, but thinks he was mistaken for considering them to be archetypal rather than existential, and collective rather than person. If I read Jung correctly, it seems he thought that archetypes were empty shells until invested with meaning by the Self, so, unlike many modern Jungians, Jung himself may have been closer to Frankl that in assumed.

Again, I am not sure of my Jung, but wasn’t his notion of the Self more of the totality of all the elements of the psyche? It may be helpful to know that Frankl considered the spiritual or noetic core to be who we are, not something we have, whereas the body and the psyche are things we have, not who we are.

I have a paragraph or two on Jung and Frankl in an eBook that you can find here:
http://homepage.mac.com/mhlewis/overview/materials.html

Otherwise, Frankl deals with Jung at length in Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning.

All the Best,
Marshall

Thank you so much for your kind words. As I moved into the second half of life, it seems to me as if life called me to Frankl’s work. I certainly didn’t sit down and pick it out of the available options, but it has been a blessing to me. I’m not sure if I am following my bliss, or if my bliss is following me!

I’m glad you talked about the overlap between Jung and Frankl – I wonder what opinion they had of each other? Do you think the internal driving core, incapable of sickening, would be the same part of the psyche Jung referred to as the Self?

Thanks for the question you posted. I’m in the process of putting together the 4th and 5th Jungian CEU packages. The Motherline will be going into one or the other within the next few months.

Best,

David

That notwithstanding, I was blown away by your knowledge of one of my heroes Frankl and learned a great deal from your insight. I have read the Doctor and the Soul and often quote it but I need to re-read it when I don’t have thousands of pages of required reading in front of me. By extension you are held in high regard by myself for honoring Frankl’s work and adding some great insights of your own. There are very few literary works that have to power to change the course and direction of a life like Meaning did. If you start doing seminars, as well you should, I would love the chance to take a more in depth look at his life and work. God bless you for having the courage to follow your bliss and good luck to you in completing the work you are undertaking.

I’ve never been much of a DSM fan, though I recognize it as a necessary evil. If you haven’t already, you might want to check out some of the changes in conceptualization of the personality disorders being proposed for DSM-5, where interpersonal functioning is assessed through measurements of empathy and intimacy.

http://www.dsm5.org/proposedrevision/Pages/PersonalityDisorders.aspx

Frankl wrote a bit about love, too. Much of it can be found in his book “The Doctor and the Soul.” He can explain it better than I can, of course, but he thought of love as one of those irreducible human phenomena, like the will to meaning or the conscience or art appreciation. For him, it was the ability to perceive what another human being was capable of becoming.

Frankl did not believe those who say they are incapable of loving. While humans might numb themselves to love, Frankl would argue that the capability is present in us all, though perhaps left ignored and unused.

I hope you found the interview helpful!

To understand Frankl and his position on animals, I think it is helpful to know that he considered reductionism to have been in part responsible for the Holocaust. When one can think of human beings as nothing but animals, then one can justify treating them as nothing but animals. Therefore, it was quite important for Frankl and remains quite important for logotherapy to emphasize that which is “uniquely human.” Our understanding of what is uniquely human, of course, will be subject to change over time, but I think the bottom line for Frankl was in the human capacity to discover meaning under any circumstances. This Will to Meaning, as he called it, may be responsible for the richness of our symbolic life.

I’m glad you enjoyed the interview!

There was something Mr. Lewis said that I am not sure I agree with, that is the question of whether love can be measured? I have some ideas about how that may be done if it is approached as the capacity to love. There are people that I have encountered, who by their own admission, are incapable of love. Therefore, I feel there may be a common thread with respect to love when viewed as an affective state caused by an underlying responsiveness that is seeded in fundamental thought constructs that are common to those who are capable of love. If this were the case it would just be a matter of coming up with a dependent measure that would predict either the capacity to love or the lack thereof. I think this may be doable and since I am still thinking of ideas for my dissertation in areas that are similar it may be something I can fold into my research.

This may be too ambitious but I am intrigued by the possibility of being able to measure ones ability to love because it would likely be a very good predictor of a particular cluster of Axis II pathology. This in turn could shape interventions that address the underlying causes rather than solely focusing on emotional regulation as a function of positive adaptation and mood affect, Something to think about…

I think it is unfairly neglected (like Rogers in my opinion).

I would like to hear more about the irreducability of the human. (My favourite theory is gestalt, one of whose slogans is ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’.)

The thing that distinguishes the human I think is the richness of our symbolic life. I disagree with Frankl that the higher animals don’t have an (albeit very undeveloped) conscience.

Your comment on the ally, ”one has to nurture and love the ally as well,” reminded me of something I began to grasp last summer but then forgot about: Jung’s autobiographical remark that the entities (all of them) of the unconscious are uninformed about our world. It is like nothing happens down there until we visit them! They are bored to death if they don’t get any news! This may sound like a nifty intellectual idea, but I had a vivid revelation during a shamanistic ceremony that confirmed this intuition on the experiential level. Although extremely powerful, it appears as if many of these beings are in a way starving unless we nurture them with ’soul food.’ (They also seem to have a childish or animal-like way of relating. You know, if a parent has been away from his or her child for too long, the kid may greet the parent with a mix of aggression and clinging, as if to punish the adult for the delay. After a while, the ’quarantine’ is over and they can start to relate normally again. The same seems to be the case with the creatures of the unconscious. The less attention I have payed them recently, the rougher the welcoming. But if I endure, they often become more friendly and cooperative. This goes for dreamwork, active imagination, hypnosis, as well as shamanistic work.)

And if the two worlds are symmetrical, why should one rule the other? It does not make sense. It feels humbling to think that the unconscious also needs our support and cooperation to evolve. It evokes a sense of responsibility and vigilance. Thank you for reminding me.

I loved what you were both saying in regards to big dreams. I had one a few weeks ago involving an autistic child on a swing-set composing and singing a song for me in his own unique language in a beauty that I couldn’t describe that made me start crying (in the dream). When I woke up, I was awe-struck, and later on a friend of mine tried analysing it a little, and for the first time I didn’t really want to analyse it, but instead, just let it be – profound and mysterious.

To then hear you two saying the same thing gave me a warm feeling! Loved Jon’s dreams by the way.

Cheers!
John

I am working on a collaborative exhibition of underwater, night images of mangroves for an immersive video installation work (yes, all symbols of the unconscious) so the discussion of Jung\’s water works … his and your fascination with water play … was particularly poignant. My linked childhood memory was of night spearfishing by underwater light with my father … and this has fueled my creative ideas of late. There was so much in this that was food for my soul. Thankyou from the deepest places in me.

I found Dr Wikman\’s conclusion re the Redbook very interesting – \’the arrival as the Womb\’ makes me wonder … did June Singer explore the parallel female journey to wholeness. Women may come to wholeness from the opposite direction … knowing the connection to the world/earth/being, we are receptive, and have to learn how to be IN the world, how to express and to speak authentically in the outside – to the Other. I would love to hear this explored in deep conversation.

Thankyou again – subtle, perceptive, giving You … and brilliant, open, articulate Dr Wikman.
I love that you keep ego out of SRR
alana

Active Imagination is probably my primary form of psychonautics, but sometimes I get very frustrated with my fellow Jungians, where I feel we should examine the language we’re using, particularly when interfacing with the outside world.

Where Jung would speak of alchemical and mythological material, it would be in the framework of showing patterns – archetypal – and relating it back to psychology, histories of patients, working theories, and so on; taking great care to explain this to the reader. However, I find modern Jungians are often speaking in what sound more like literal terms, which to the uninitiated listener would sound something like, “…the patient needs to channel the spirit of Hercules” (to use some silly hyperbole on my part).

There’s also good reason why Memories, Dreams, Reflections and the Red Book were published after Jung’s death, with them being autobiographical in nature, and not presented as psychological text. However, sometimes it seems modern day Jungians treat these two books and his psychological literature as one and the same (I’m not saying Patricia Damery does), and I can’t help but feel that Jung would likely be worried by the way some of us treat his material in the modern day.

For the sake of balance, I should say I’m in no way ashamed of Jung’s parapsychological experiences as many are (it takes great honesty to record them), but I still feel we of the Jungian persuasion should examine our language and theory a little more closely, in relation to how we present it to the outside world. Many people would see Jungian study on the surface as something not really psychological at all, but simply shamanic and probably nothing more (and many religious people such as myself would be barred from actual shamanic experiences). With Jung’s psychology work, I have no qualms, but with many “Jungians”, particularly in the modern day, I’m really not so sure…

My eventual goal is to undertake Jungian training in Zurich, but would it be expected of me to actually engage in something genuinely shamanic (rather than just Active Imagination and so on) to go through the course? I’d have assumed not, but nowadays, I’m not sure.

Aye, it’s a lovely spot, the neighbours call me Tree Man.

I was about to give several links, but there’s a bunch of reports all in the one spot here, at the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory:

http://lhhl.illinois.edu/

Here’s a paper that explores the physical and psychological benefits of tree climbing, using tower block climbing as a control group:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1618866705000555

Cheers!
John

I wonder if Jean would be interested in some of the studies available on the positive somatic effects of trees on humans, such as lower crime rates, shorter hospital stays, and more.

While I’m in no way an activist type, I have a particular tree which is very important to me and has a cradle section in which I can space out above the village and watch the sunset. Trees have played a part in my dreams and nightmares, and I only realised later that I had used unconsciously in a religious act. So the depth psychology view on trees really speaks to me.

I wrote an article on tree climbing for adults a while ago, and pieced together some of the stuff mentioned above. If anyone is interested in either that, or (more likely, hehe) a link to the research about the positive somatic effects of trees on humans, I’d be glad to hand on a link.

I had that experience of “oh yeah, that’s what this is like, how could I forget?”. But later on, with the ego back in place and its constraints on personality, I have no idea what my observations were last night!

It was cool to hear about Huxley and Leary – those are some serious bragging rights!!!

so some of both is the best answer.

Erin

I absolutely enjoy and always have to learn about the founders of a method of psychotherapy or something like laughter yoga, starting with Freud, Jung, Rogers and so on. So, this was another great occasion to hear from a founder of a method with big impact.

I enjoyed to learn that Dr. Kataria is so altruistic and cares a lot about people all the way down to peace on earth. That\’s the future.

I would like to mention that I had one of these “million dollar” ideas as well, many years ago. My idea was that there should be a “Positive Psychology”. I am sure I wrote it down somewhere. I was actually a little bit disappointed when I first heard of Positive Psychology for exactly that reason! Funny, isn\’t it?

The reason I commented on this interview was that I found out that for me, in this place of many languages (Canada), I can best laugh about comedy in my mother tongue. On the internet I found the outtakes of a quiz show from Austrian TV where the candidates are all top comedians, a show I used to watch. I was laughing so hard that my teenage sons asked me to not watch the show when they were home. I am always laughing so much that I end up screaming and squeaking from fun and having tears in my eyes! And I haven’t had a cold in ages!

I wanted to ask Lindsay/ask her opinion on an epiphany that I had.

Everyone says that Jersey Shore is popular because its a “Train Wreck” However, EVERY reality show is a Train Wreck and not every reality show does well.

I think the popularity of the Jersey Shore is that there is an aspect of family. The group fights together but they also laugh together. This further proves her hypothesis that relationships pulls people into shows and movies. Of course Jersey Shore should be reality, however, we all know that this is not entirely true. Do you think producers understand that the audience wants an aspect of family and belonging?

I loved this interview and it was just what I needed to hear this morning as I prepared to go to work. In a parallel process, I had also been listening to a lot of positive psychology type material recently and this provided a counterbalance to that “light” approach, as you say, for myself. I could see how I am (usually unconsciously) at the effect of this denial of grief in our culture, with how I relate to my own grief – but also how the world we live in is a manifestation of this denial, with all its troubles, its lack of connection (lack of communal ritual and lack of connection between our action and their effects on the “soul” of the world.) I breathed a bit easier knowing that my relation to my own grief was as much a cultural pattern, as my own stuff!

Thanks again,
Tony

Firstly, I should say I’m not usually one for pedantry in terminology and especially not one for trends. For instance, we’re not supposed to say ‘subjects’ any more, we’re supposed to say ‘participants’. While I stick to this in my reports, I really couldn’t care less about such fads, and I really can’t stand PC-ness and other similar movements that really just get in the way and up all of our noses!

However…. ‘subconscious’ is a particularly tricky one, and one of the few points where I feel one shouldn’t take the easy way out and just run with it.

The reason being is that it tends evoke a concept in people’s minds that is very nearly the opposite of an ‘unconscious’. If you look at Freud’s objections for instance, the problem isn’t so much to do with inaccuracy (just about every person in any field has to deal with inaccurate terminology on a daily basis, but you can usually get around it), but the *misleading* side of it. The public tend to think of this ‘subconscious’ as a sort of secondary thing tacked on the back of consciousness; whereas you really have a greater unconscious, with consciousness being a smaller part of the psyche that grows from the unconscious.

To use an astronomical example, a psychologist speaking of a subconscious is a bit like an astronomer talking about the Sun rotating around the Earth – it’s all sort of backwards. However, in terms of terminology being misleading and being a stumbling block, perhaps there’s a better analogy in religion.

Say you’re looking at religious beliefs in regards to life after death, and examining resurrection and reincarnation. Now the uninitiated often mistake these two and perhaps regard them as synonymous, but in reality they’re two entirely different concepts with extremely different effects, practicalities, and so on.

Anyone with even a hint of training in psycholinguistics can tell you that language shapes thought, and that words have connotations, and in terms of shaping thought, in Psychology we need patients to understand themselves more than any other field.

If someone were studying to become either a Hindu or a Christian for instance, they could only get so far until their teacher would have to tell them the correct terminology (either reincarnation or resurrection in this case), or the belief systems would be confusing from the start.

In the case of ‘subconscious’, if you have a quick google around or simply listen to ideas about it from the public, the things attributed to it are often so at odds with an unconscious that you have little choice but to break with those connotations. In terms of actual academia, while the unconscious has clear definitions in numerous disciplines, while a ‘subconscious’ has no clear definition (I could probably say a subconscious is governed by a pink elephant and be no more incorrect than someone who actually sounds convincing) – in fact the largest body of literature for a subconscious lies not in psychology but with new age writings.

That’s not to say it came from the new age people, however; it’s an English translation of the word ‘subconscient’ – a rudimentary idea put forward by Pierre Janet in the 19th century (pre-Freud, pre-Psychoanalysis, etc.). However, this idea always tended to carry the idea of a kind of double-consciousness; almost another layer underneath of consciousness, so to speak. It was largely this that Freud, Jung, and so many others saw as incompatible, and as Mr Eagleman quite rightly noted, it’s a completely different language down there and a totally different structure!

I’ve taken up waaaaaaay too much space here and I do apologise. I can’t cite a ‘rulebook’ (although there may be something in APA guidelines), but I can cite the source material. Check out Freud’s papers, ‘The Unconscious’ (1915), and ‘The Question of Lay Analysis’ (1927), and Carl Jung has quite a lot on the subject in Collected Works 8: ‘The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche’.

Regards,
John

Your thoughts are good, and I wish I could view the response!

Best to all,

K.

I too was immediately put off by his work with the military. I think this is the natural gulf between killing and helping. However, killers (hunters) are a large gene pool and it ought to be studied. Too much psychological research is done on psychology majors which may not be a representative cross section of the population. I have to give Seligman credit for getting funding wherever he can find it.

Part of the resentment is due to temperament differences between Seligman and the general membership in the APA. He is definitely a person who is committed to his personal goals. Sometimes at the expense of the group.

The thing that stands out is that he seems to have a clear appreciation of his strengths and his weaknesses. He apologizes readily and admits to being off track on occasion. For example he points out flaws in the interpretation of his research on trying to change gays.

Maybe mental health is too big a problem to be solved by endless analysis of individual problems. Getting people to be more open, socially aware, “positive”, is probably the best way to stop soldiers from having to kill on behalf of paranoid politicians.

I am not an employed psychology academic and I know about Frankl. It makes me wonder about what else is being glossed over.

As to the contention that psychology had been all about the negative. This ignores utterly the third force psychologies by obscure figures like Maslow and Rogers.

I really find this glossing out of the past worrying.

He admits to the heritability of many of the traits associated with resilience. He also addresses the problems of those who have a predisposition to various mental problems. He suggests that everyone, including the naturally positive types need to learn methods for disputing negative self-talk.

He isn’t really ignoring mental illness. He is trying to affect public policy so that those who have natural resilience work on that strength and create a better environment for everyone. Maybe 55 minutes of weekly therapy is not enough for those with problems. Maybe they need to be in nourishing environments where they can imitate the model of resilience. If healthy people learn how to be even healthier it is bound to pull along those who are at the fringes.

In the words of “Emily Litella” (played by Gilda Radner on SNL) – “NEVER MIND”.

I couldn’t find details — and the devil is in the details in this case. I would seriously question his ethics. I know all good Americans are patriots but consulting to the CIA?!

The positive psychology movement attracts funds as Dr. Seligman confesses because it feels
good. It is not a cure for mental illness. In fact it is another way of ignoring the serious mental
diseases that continue to plague humans. We don’t chain schizophrenics any more but we
choose to assign them to a dark corner of pill popping so we can enjoy our marvelous resilience.

Although a lot of Jung was self-indulgent shamanism he got one thing right. Individuation -
brutal self awareness – is the key to a successful life with or without “happiness”.

The problem with Dr. Seligman’s premise is that it gives only lip service to the fact that
resilience correlates with personality factors that have a strong genetic component. Like most
bell curves 60-70 percent of people are resilient. Good for those who are genetically predisposed
to be resilient. But there are people at the left side of the curve that need to be aware of their
tendency to magnify their discomfort by turning their inconvenience into a horrific tragedy.

Maslows description of the self-actualizing person was an earlier attempt to force a model of
“healthy” behavior on everyone. People have a tendency of taking an idea like resilience and
torturing themselves with all sorts of techniques and practices to produce the ideal state.
Resilience is natural to the right side of the curve. The left side is apt to feel guilty because they
never seem to be able to achieve it. The naturally resilient majority can take care of themselves.
There remains the need to care for those who live their lives in darkness even though the sun is
shining. That’s where the millions of dollars need to spent.

Cool interview, I particularly liked hearing the rabies explanation, as it’s something I’ve often thought, but hearing it come from someone with more authority was very gratifying. I think it gives credence to the Jungian topographic model of the psyche, updated from Freud’s, that has the typical triangle/iceberg motif, but also surrounded by a circle, representing the body. I think it also gives credence the Jungian concept that consciousness is really more of an extension of the unconscious, and not the other way around.

However, I was somewhat concerned at the start of the show with his use of the term ‘subconscious’. As you’re probably aware, it was Freud who was the first major objector to this term and it has traditionally been avoided in academic settings, with the general public keeping the term going. Freud dubbed the term ‘inaccurate and misleading’, going on to say that when someone uses the term, he wasn’t sure whether they were speaking topographically or qualitatively, and in all likely hood, those who employ the term probably aren’t sure about the subject on which they are speaking.

However, I keep seeing the term used *occasionally* in modern text books, and was wondering whether the Psychodynamic field’s objection to the term has since become irrelevant, and if these days, the two terms are now treated as synonymous despite the semantic inaccuracy of ‘subconscious’?

Or for a much simpler scenario, would it be much more likely that it’s just a slip of the tongue on David’s part, particularly after dealing with the public?

You mentioned at the end of the show that you would have been interested in exploring some of the weirder phenomena (like automatic writing and so on), particularly in the case of multiple personalities in the unconscious (I can’t think of a better term right now). I was wondering if you’ve read Jung’s earlier works in dealing with “so called occult phenomena” in Collected Works 1, if I remember correctly. This was also the time of some of the freakier stuff in Memories, Dreams, Reflections!

As it happens, I’ve met Dr. Davidson (Richie as everyone calls him) several times through a yoga center I work for. I had to laugh when you commented of being nervous around him – I still just cannot relax around him, because I am so in awe of him and what’s he’s doing for the scientific recognition of meditation. This despite the fact that I’m somewhat in the “inner circle” of his yoga friends, having recently paddled down the Wisconsin river in a Sunday gathering with a couple dozen others and he and his wife.

The most interesting thing I’d like to add here is that he and the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds are partnering with us to begin researching the effects of a new yoga program for people with Autism, called Spectrum Yoga Therapy, which is extremely exciting. This area may soon be another thing that he becomes known for if the data shows what we think it will.

Eg the Intro or Preface to Authentic Happiness where he claims that therapists encourage their clients to indulge their emotions. Have you ever met one therapist who does this? I haven’t.

So I guess his objection to Happiness Psychology isn’t that it is untrue to our experience? I guess he should just train his thoughts to think positively about Happiness Psychology – which is sort of what Happiness Psychology advocates.

If Russ didn’t think that pain was inevitable would he be happier? Perhaps he could sing this belief to get free of it.

Is experiential avoidance true or ‘just’ a thought?

Still this kind of contradiction is hardly confined to Russ’s way of doing things.

Therefore, I’d love to be able to take part in some of the therapies that have mentioned!
Cheers,
John

Many thanks for your response. I’m sorry to say I didn’t hear about your book. I’m very glad you are interested in this side of things and have written about it. I think it needs to be well and truly on the agenda.

I’ll get a copy from Amazon – though I may need to save up for it.

I know cultural generalisations are liable to be offensive and wrong but it does seem there is something of an individualist bias to American psychology. (Although, as Dave pointed out above about polarities, the US is also the culture shot through with societies for mutual co-operation – even if some of them call themselves by religious names, and then there are the civic and business ones as well.)

Many thanks for your reply.

I think you raise good cautions here. As an interviewer, I do tend toward the sympathetic listener side of things. As my own version of Jungian, I tend to believe there is a shadow side to everything. For example, Martin Seligman, founder of positive psychology, is working with the U.S. military to make troops more psychologically resilient, i.e. more resistant to PTSD. The rationale and advantage is clear enough but seems to me there is also a big dark side, as well. Do we want to create an army of impervious killers? That’s a scary idea.

They have the insight that we are social and yet their therapy is individualistic. (They are not alone in this.)

To speak of pro-social needs to be examined too. Do we mean Hitler’s Germany. A culture where we women are forced into clitorectomies? If so the easy marriage of happiness and ethics seems to be somewhat strained.

If you regard as your job to give your interviewee a sympathetic hearing I understand this.

And I want to stress that I don’t disagree with most of Positive Psychology either – but I think there are few key ideas that need to be examined.