The word consider derives from Latin considerare, “to look at closely, observe.” Con means “with, together,” and sidus refers to “heavenly body, star constellation.” Observing the marvel of the stars with another is very different from engaging in conflict, “to contend, fight, or struggle.” Conflict summons rigid polarities: for or against,right or wrong, and winning or losing. Significant issues like abortion test our ability to tolerate ambiguity and anxiety without activating the polarizing defenses of judging, moralizing, or demonizing the other. Pregnancy, the archetype of potential life, carries profound emotions--and the shadow of what could be is limitation. Lack of internal or external resources limits our ability to birth many of life’s potentials. Bowing to life’s limitations also holds potential for conceiving new life.

Here’s the dream we analyze:

“I am in a dressing room/anteroom getting ready for my wedding. My mother steps in and makes some critical remark to me…something along the lines of “you’re never ready on time” or “you always leave things for the last minute.” Then she exits, leaving me alone with my father. We are getting ready together for the wedding. I ask him what all the guests are going to do while they’re waiting for us, and he reassures me that the rabbi of my synagogue will keep everyone entertained while we get ready. I then hear the rabbi leading all the guests in Jewish songs from outside. Back in the dressing room, my father and I are putting on tuxedos. I take out a box of studs for the tuxedo shirt and lay them out across some kind of table with a soft surface (like a little bed or mattress). The golden studs are spread out across this surface, and I begin to sift through them, but I’m unable to distinguish which studs belong to me and which ones belong to my father -- they look identical. I examine them in the palm of my hand and grow frustrated, being unable to pick out which one is which. Then I realize that I am not clean-shaven -- I have the same stubble that I currently have in my waking life -- and grow even more frustrated, feeling a sense that my parents never leave me enough time to get the things done that I need to get done. Then I wake up, asking myself: Why am I blaming my parents for my own time management problems?”

REFERENCES:

Katie Watson. Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law and Politics of Ordinary Abortion. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0190051728/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_3Q7EQVAVDHD0P85C2ZZ4

Jonathan Haidt. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion.      https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307455777/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_G79D9A2H4D384SDT8QVA

Daniel K. Williams. Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement Before Roe v. Wade. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0190053321/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_R1DFMY0C5YZW30F4W4T9

Sarah Hrdy. Maternal Instincts & How They shape the Human Species. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0345408934/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_J5M6DPS90SQ71WHWAGXC

Diana Greene Foster. The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, A Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—An Abortion. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1982141573/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_B8F181E6ZEZTVDRDCG7H

Edward Edinger. Ego & Archetype. https://www.amazon.com/dp/087773576X/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_BY4RK04790ZKXVHPMVV7

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Schools have existed across cultures and throughout time; the knowledge they transmit leads us out of childhood, shapes our values and world view, and grooms us for citizenship. Schools help us build ego strength and adapt to cultural norms, the goal of the first half of life and the first stage of individuation. School experiences also wound us, as Jung recalled in his memoir. Collective schooling instills the uniformity needed for a cohesive culture, but individual uniqueness may be lost. Individualized education—including home life--can enhance personal uniqueness or compensate for special needs, but lacks universal principles and methods. Education by example allows the influence of the unconscious to be most openly included—whereas in other methods its power may be unacknowledged or denied. Jung says, “I would say, in the light of my own experience, that an understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough.”

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Guest Machiel Klerk has worked with dreams and healing traditions worldwide; his new book is Dream Guidance: Connection to the Soul through Dream Incubation. Religions, shamanic practices, and depth psychology have recognized the significance of dreams and sought their aid. Dreams open into a deeply intelligent source Jung called the two-million-year-old man. This inner companion is interested in our development and life purpose, and he transports us nightly to worlds of vivid images, fulsome feeling, and embodied experience. Dream incubation invites these encounters into consciousness through a well-defined process: identify a problem, develop a question, and create a ritual of receptivity. Questions related to life direction are especially likely to elicit response. Record the dream immediately upon waking, reflect, and relate its wisdom to waking life. Everyone dreams, everyone is connected to this mysterious source, and everyone has something meaningful to live and give. Our dreams are willing to help us. 

Lisa’s Dream Incubation Question: What is the most important thing I should bring forward for this podcast?

 Lisa’s Dream

“There is a guy who is maybe on a skateboard; I am maybe on a bike and with Deb. We are following him. He is enjoying the speed bumps and the twists and turns in the road. I have a somewhat superior attitude. I am going very straight. I think that we are exactly the wrong people to be following him because we have such different approaches. He seems to really be enjoying himself. When we stop, he comes over and is speaking to me. It is clear he is attracted to me, flirting and telling me I’m beautiful. It is hard for me to hear, but I make myself stay with it. I make myself continue to meet his eye. I make myself say “thank you” and accept the compliment. I know he is totally sincere. He says he knows that one day I will be tucking him into bed. I respond that I don’t think that is going to happen, and he says he knows it will happen. I know that our lives are very different and he can’t really understand mine. I mention something about almost having gone to college in the South, but there were no gothic universities. This man asks me what that means, and I am noticing how “out of his league” I am. Still, I can feel his real sincerity and my own surprising attraction to him.” 

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Awareness of death can help us create an intentional life—one that serves the movement of soul toward wholeness. Jung realized that although we experience death as “a fearful piece of brutality,” the unconscious images death as celebration. On a night train, after his mother died, Jung reported that “during the entire journey I continually heard dance music, laughter, and jollity, as though a wedding were being celebrated.” Our limited capacities and the conditions of earthly life preclude certainty about life after death, but Jung’s recognition of universal mythic patterns led to his theory of archetypes and a psychic reality beyond our grasp. We glimpse it in dreams, visions, precognitions, and synchronicities, and it can inspire connection with the infinite, which Jung considered life’s decisive question. For Jung, death was “an archetype rich in secret life, which seeks to add itself to our own individual life in order to make it whole.”

REFERENCES:

C.G. Jung. Memories, Dreams, Reflections.  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004X19L3E/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_BZYJF184D3ZSXT9WR3ZF

C.G. Jung. Collected Works, Vol. 8: The Soul & Death. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691097747/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_38HYESF2JQ13FB49H0E9

Von Franz, Marie Louise. On Dreams and Death. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812693671/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_ND8DQF0VKRXW8GQ9P9R7

Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth.  https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385418868/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_SB4EJWY02WJ8XGWCRF42

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While many of Hans Christian Andersen’s 19th-century stories have moralizing motifs, their universality and depth places them among ageless fairy tales. Although The Princess and the Pea and The Emperor’s New Clothes are social satire, they also depict psychic dynamics. A young prince searches but cannot find a mate—until a princess arrives one stormy night, soaking wet and mind-blowingly over-sensitive. Do opposites attract, or are they only contrasting representations of superficiality and entitlement? Andersen’s pen next delivers the famous emperor an even more pointed jab: a child, innocent of the contrivances of social status, blurts truth: he has no clothes! Perhaps each of us has an inner emperor whose shadow is on unwitting public display—and a wise child. If Andersen has little regard for self-aggrandizing conceits, The Ugly Duckling depicts compassion for suffering and the downtrodden. Despite abuse and exile, the ugly duckling responds to springtime’s jubilant beauty. He takes wing, answering the call to transcendence—which reveals his transformation. Swans are the divine bird—a royalty we may rightly aspire to. 

Here’s The Dream We Analyze:

“I am walking and see a headlight lying on the road (on a bridge) and a baby crawling beside it--the baby narrowly escapes from being hit by cars. I see a black and red Bugatti parked (owner of the headlight) and denounce the driver to my football coach, who is also a policeman. I remember the car’s number plate. I get a lot of attention due to this, and I greatly enjoy this. I start murdering people to get more attention. The first murder is with a pistol, the second with a revolver. I try to steal a gun from the football cafeteria for the third one, but I fear being found out by my trainer/policeman, so I end up throwing the gun into the changing room. I confess to him that I am the murderer. My trainer accompanies me to a field nearby where some of my classmates from school are celebrating my birthday. There is a pool. On our way there, I explain to my trainer that I committed those murders because I had become addicted to the attention and adrenaline. It is dark, and suddenly my trainer starts walking faster. There is a donkey chasing us. We manage to evade it and climb the fence. The donkey jumps over the fence and attacks me. I crawl underneath the fence and arrive at the spot where my classmates are.”

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Pharmakon, the ancient Greek word for drug, can mean both “remedy” and “poison.” There is a close connection between poison and cure. Poison is stealthy, and takes us by surprise, whether through an unseen snake’s venomous bite or a ripe apple’s alluring disguise. Psychological poison glides past our defenses, pervades our being, and wounds us where we are most vulnerable. We participate in our poisoning through our own unknowing, from toxic cognitions and rigid fixations to self-doubt and self-sabotage. Poison can transform us by stinging us into building the immunity of increased consciousness and insight. Reason and objectivity can act as antidotes, allowing old attitudes to dissolve and new awareness to arise. Whether a poison is injected or ingested, we can use it for cure.

Here’s The Dream We Analyze:

“I am "cooking up" a batch of Xenomorphs (from the movie Alien) for a "client" in an underground lab. I'm mixing chemicals in a vat, and realize I missed a step...I call the client and am reassured it will still work, it will just take some extra time. The chemicals coagulate into a pink goo. The next day, I return to the lab and see swimming in a pool of water four adolescent xenomorphs. A male lab assistant tells me "This shouldn't have worked. They mutated and can only breath flesh." I see the adolescent aliens all have a caul of pink ectoplasm over their faces. The next day, I return to the lab and there is only one xenomorph, an adult, chained as if crucified to the back wall of a cell, wreathed in shadow. I peer at it from across the cell, and a white dove appears and flies across it. The alien's claw shoots out and snatches the dove from the air and crams it into its mouth. There is a great sucking sound, and I realize the alien is breathing the dove's flesh. My vision zooms in to the alien’s face. It regurgitates the dove's carcass, which inverts into a black cage of bone, and the alien screams. I am shocked awake.”

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From Homer’s Odyssey to the Wizard of Oz our native soil draws us home, whether home is a small Greek island or a simple Kansas farm. The soul has a natural longing to return to the place of its beginning and belonging. Home is a state of safety and changelessness; it is our foundational experience of original completeness, containment and care. As we mourn the loss of the familiar and face the unknown, homesickness generates neural activity similar to physical pain. Its underlying intent is to spur us into detaching from the familiar and investing in the foreign. Homesickness asks that we bear leave-taking and loneliness in service to belonging to a wider world, building new relationships, and the eventual realization that the soul’s true home is a transcendent source of personal being.

Here’s The Dream We Analyzed:

“I am walking up the street toward my apartment at night. Near my building I see a man with a small dog on a leash. The dog is a tiny Yorkshire terrier and the man is very large. He is wearing a long, dark trench coat and has wild black hair. He looks a bit threatening. The dog is on one side of the sidewalk, the man is on the other, and the leash is between them, blocking my path. I try to step out into the street to go around, but as I do, the man swings around and the dog runs around my legs. I get all bound up in the leash and am pressed up against the man. He puts his face right up to mine, like he might try to kiss me, and I see that he is the Devil from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. He begins to blow some kind of smoke into my mouth. I think he is trying to get inside of me--to possess me or steal my soul. I blow the smoke back into his mouth and it forms a kind of ring that circles between his mouth and mine. I know that I won't have the strength to keep him out for very long.”

REFERENCES:

John Hill. At Home in the World: Signs and Symmetries of Belonging. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1685030211/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_VBGPAMVEX5X2DA2XB3HQ

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Vocation, once associated with serving God through service to others, is now most strongly associated with a career having personal worth. Vocation spans a range of needs and values:  commitment to making ends meet, striving for material rewards and social status, or the more internal satisfaction of research, helping others, and artistic expression. Freud considered love and work the cornerstones of our humanness, and Jung said, “In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.” A discernment process is essential to determining the difference between a true calling and ego ambitions, what we want versus what we can have, and distinguishing dream from dedication. Ultimately, however, vocation is a state of being—so perhaps we can invest the work we have with a sense of call.

HERE’S THE DREAM WE ANALYZED:

“I was at the beach with my mother and grandmother. My mother was driving a red car. My grandmother in the passenger seat, me in the back. It was stormy; the waves were wild and aggressive. My mother was determined to drive as far as possible to find old family members who we no longer speak to, to enact revenge. I was silent. The waves were angry, the wind swirled and howled and rocked the car. She was on a mission.”

REFERENCES:

James Hillman. A Blue Fire.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060921013/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_M7PXWF54T0MRBEBPETQM

James Hillman. The Soul’s Code. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0399180141/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_DKSW982XDDP53F2WM610

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Jung interpreted religious traditions from the viewpoint of their psychological significance. The allegorical tale of the Prodigal Son illustrates Jung’s basic understanding of the structure and development of the psyche. The young prodigal epitomizes shadow qualities of ignorance, arrogance, and impetuousness. His dissolute indulgences show a lack of ego strength and land him in a pigsty. Repentant, he returns to his father’s estate, hoping for servant work. Instead, his father celebrates his homecoming. At this joyful reception, the older brother is aghast; he has been dutiful yet never so acclaimed. He is the embodiment of a respectable persona and adaptation—yet his ego-oriented sense of self seems to have a less enlivened connection with the father. Symbolizing the transcendent Self, the father provides redemptive eros and safe haven. Each of us has a shadow, an ego that tends to believe it’s our totality, and a transpersonal center that can welcome us home.

HERE'S THE DREAM WE ANALYZE:

“I am on the second platform of a four-tiered structure leading from a dock on the river to the top of a cliff.There are ladders and obstacles connecting each of the platforms. I am looking down at the water, which israging and ebbing with monstrous waves. The water is a beautiful color of indigo blue, vastly wide andimmensely deep. Boats are being tossed in the waves with the owners tethered to them by rope,desperately attempting to climb aboard but ultimately becoming swallowed by the crashing waves. I noticea small park ranger dinghy boat come out from a crack in the cliff face and set into the raging water in an apparent attempt to save the other boaters. The driver of the boat appears timid and frightened. I shout to aman next to me, "I used to have that job!" The boat is immediately capsized. I begin climbing up to the third platform and become paralyzed with fear as I climb the wooden pegs juttingout of the side of the cliff. I am aware that a slip would result in certain death. I realize that I have done thismany times before and struggle before ultimately pulling myself up and over. A young Afghan boy comesafter me, effortlessly scaling this obstacle and the next, reaching the top of the cliff. I realize that I washolding up a line of people!I think of the capsized park ranger and determine that I must go save him. I look into the water from on highand see his body, curled in the fetal position, bobbing in the water. I am transported down and reach myhand in to gather him and perform CPR. I am confused to find that all I pull out of the water is a long-expiredcartridge from a firework or rifle. I begin the climb up to the second tier and at the threshold, there is a tangled web of rope that ensnares me.I am panicking when I hear little voices from below: "Wear it like a dress!" I ponder this for a second andthen slip through the rope web as if putting a dress on and am securely on the second platform.I look below and see a dozen young girls; aged about five years old, all wearing matching black and whitedresses. I realize that I must help them up and demonstrate the climbing technique: “Pretend you are a pirate!" I shout to them and demonstrate in an animated way the technique. They begin to climb, and I reach down, gathering them two at a time and pulling them to the secondplatform.”

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Beth underwent gender transition from natal female to trans male and has since de-transitioned. In her early teens, Beth felt she was not like other women and began to question her gender. She saw people who were nonconforming, but although she adopted a non-binary identity in college, people still saw her as a woman. Beth became drawn to a masculine identity and associated transitioning gender with empowerment: she would be free from the perceived social constraints and physical vulnerabilities of womanhood. Beth’s parents, the therapist she saw a few times, and the surgeon all affirmed her desire to transition. Beth underwent testosterone therapy and top surgery to remove her breasts, sacrifices in service of liberation. In time, however, Beth discovered that physical changes did not transform her inner world, and her post-surgical chest remains numb. Beth says, “de-transitioning brought me down to earth” and into adulthood. She feels some of her urges to transition were healthy, and some were self-annihilating—and wishes she had had more help in differentiating her inner world from her gender expression. Beth hopes to be a voice for the complexity of gender transitioning.

Music and lyrics by Wells Hanley ©2021

Singers: Laura Ann Singh at www.lauraannsingh.com and Rei Alvarez at www.reialvarez.com

https://www.iwrotethissongforyou.com/

https://www.patreon.com/iwrotethissongforyou

NOTES: 

Currently, there is limited research on the factors that correlate with detransition and the percentage of individuals who chose to detransition. Of the available studies, methods and definitions vary, suggesting a need to establish standardized criteria in the future. Five studies are mentioned below. One concludes, of 17,151 who identify as transgender and gender diverse people, 13.1% reported a history of detransition or going back to living as their sex assigned at birth. Another concludes that only 0.2-0.3% of patients expressed post-operative regret and requested reversal surgery. In another study, 6.9% of patients detransitioned. Additional research is necessary to understand these phenomena more fully. 

Boyd, I.; Hackett, T.; Bewley, S. Care of Transgender Patients: A General Practice Quality  Improvement Approach. Healthcare 2022, 10, 121. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare100 10121

Hall, R., Mitchell, L., & Sachdeva, J. (2021). Access to care and frequency of detransition among a cohort discharged by a UK national adult gender identity clinic: Retrospective case-note review. BJPsych Open, 7(6), E184. doi:10.1192/bjo.2021.1022

Littman L. Individuals Treated for Gender Dysphoria with Medical and/or Surgical Transition Who Subsequently Detransitioned: A Survey of 100 Detransitioners. Arch Sex Behav. 2021 Nov;50(8):3353-3369. doi: 10.1007/s10508-021-02163-w. Epub 2021 Oct 19. PMID: 34665380; PMCID: PMC8604821.

Narayan SK, Hontscharuk R, Danker S, Guerriero J, Carter A, Blasdel G, Bluebond-Langner R, Ettner R,  Radix A, Schechter L, Berli JU. Guiding the conversation - types of regret after gender-affirming surgery and their associated etiologies. Ann Transl Med 2021;9(7):605. doi: 10.21037/atm-20-6204.

Turban JL, Loo SS, Almazan AN, Keuroghlian AS. Factors Leading to “Detransition” Among Transgender and Gender Diverse People in the United States: A Mixed-Methods Analysis. LGBT Health. 2021 May-Jun;8(4):273-280. doi: 10.1089/lgbt.2020.0437. Epub 2021 Mar 31. PMID: 33794108; PMCID: PMC8213007.

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