Cynthia Marks on Bernard Bail, Dreams, and the Mother’s Imprint

Transcript auto-generated from the episode audio; formatting has been cleaned up, but wording is verbatim.

Hello, I'm Cynthia Marks, and I head up the Holistic Psychoanalysis Foundation, established by my late husband, Doctor Bernard Bail. Welcome to And Now Love. Today we have the fabulous doctor Loren Weiner here. And we know all about you and what a treasure you are in terms of this work and what a treasure you are to our world. And today we're going to talk more about Doctor Bernard Bail, what I know about him from the other side of the door. Let's say behind the scenes. Behind the scenes. That's right. We're going to turn the tables a little bit today.

A little bit, but only because it's another way of sharing our message. Yeah, it's very helpful to sort of see who the man was that had these ideas and to see he is also a regular human being, and his life experience completely shaped how he thought about the psyche, how he thought about human beings. You have some interesting stories and you can add some of well, at least for me, I knew him in a professional capacity. I have questions, I there are things that I'm curious about in terms of how he lived his life. How did his work find its way into his life?

How did it inform it? And you might know those answers. I have a little bit of information, right? So anyway, I thought what we could do is maybe give a little background so that people understand how you even came to know him and to be with him. Hopefully what we can share is how you came to want to do this podcast, because at the end of the day, this is sort of a love letter to him. In addition to really believing in his message separate from him, right? That that this will continue on without him. But but for you, there's this beautiful link back to him.

Of course there is, there is. And it is exactly as you describe. It's because of the immense love I feel for him and felt for him, and the transformation that occurred because of my relationship with him. And one of the last things he shared with me was, my darling, if you can carry this work on and move it forward in some fashion, whatever that is unknown to me at the time, unknown to him, he said, please do it. But if it's not in your realm, I love you still a million times over. And that was such a comfortable message. So take it forward. If it if it fits and if not, it, there's nothing.

There's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, yeah. You don't have to do this. Yeah. Only only if it makes sense in your life. Yeah. And it does. And I voraciously want to do this. Okay. So if we could, you know, let's go back since we're always talking about if you want to understand something, go back to the beginning. So let's go back to the beginning. Maybe you would share a bit about how you came to know him and what it was like to think about entering into relationship with him. Yes, I would love to. And some of this I may have shared before, but not in such a concise package here.

Yeah. So I met Bernard because he hired me to be his interior designer, and I was referred to him by a mutual friend. And she called me and she said, I've given your name to this gentleman. And let me tell you a little bit about him. First of all, he's 92. And I thought, wow, wow. Who at 92 wants, needs an interior designer? Doesn't he have everything he ever asked for? Ends up? No. So I had these weird expectations. I was going to find this man in kind of a beat up terrycloth robe and some slippers, shuffling around and needing a new kind of recliner or something.

I got to the front door and here was this very handsome. Well dressed man, and he invited me in. And there was nothing less than proper about this. And just looking at him the very first time, looking in his eyes, I was already taken aback, but I didn't even really think about it so much. It was just sort of a and we walked around his apartment, which was already pretty beautiful, amazing amounts of art, and we went from image to image and he said, what do you think about this one? What do you think about that one? I didn't know if this is some sort of strange interview or if he was really interested.

He was really interested. Part of what I felt or shared was already important to him, unbeknownst to me. So we continued this relationship, this professional relationship, because he did hire me and we would get together on his days off on Fridays, not every Friday, but the occasional Friday. And I knew nothing about this man other than he was somehow important. And he was a psychoanalyst. And for me, that was a very big word. And I was living my life. I was plodding along. My life was my life. I didn't have any idea that it could be any different than what it was decade after decade.

Thinking I was growing, becoming smarter, all those things aging. I began to be super curious about this man. We started to go to lunch together and and I remember thinking, what do I talk about with him? He's so big, I can already tell he's like this Renaissance guy. He knows so much about so much. Of course, he is 92. Yeah. So he's had a lot of time to learn everything that he wants to learn. But he was thirsty constantly for information for knowledge, for for connections. I say that now. I didn't know that then. Yeah. So I thought, well, I know he's got something to do with dreams.

Maybe I could spark a conversation. I had a dream just the night before our lunch, so I thought, you know, what the hell, I'll share it. I'm going to share that dream. Yeah. Please do so in the dream. We're both very well dressed. I was in my dream trying to match his sophistication. I had heels and a nice suit, and we were walking out of a synagogue. We're both Jewish, and we're walking down the steps toward the street, and I take his arm because he is 92 and he's frail, and his eyesight's not so great in reality and in the dream. And as we're walking and we're chatting, somehow he falls and my heart starts to pound in the dream.

And I'm saying, oh my gosh, how could I let this happen? How could I let this happen? I had taken the arm of this man and now he's fallen. And people started to come to us and I'm looking around for help. Do I need to call 911? And people are swarming in and I finally say, back off, everybody back off. I've got this. You're not going to help. I've got it. And then this man Bernard somehow becomes an iguana or a chameleon. It was a chameleon because he could change colors. And then a parrot, a giant parrot flies out of the sky and starts trying to take him from me.

And I'm swatting the parrot away, and it's awful. And I feel so responsible for this whole thing. And then I wake up. I want to hear what you think. Right? Well, when I hear a dream like that, I mean, you know, it's interesting to hear it. Knowing the story of what happened, I have to lay that out. But I would say, and when he heard this, I'm guessing that maybe a little smile came to his face because what you were saying is, oh, here we are leaving the synagogue arm and arm. We've married, you know, you come down the steps. Yeah. And I think you're saying he fell for you.

You already unconsciously knew that he had completely fallen for you and that you were going to take care of him. And that was very unconscious. And yeah, at face value, I was saying to myself, why did you let this person fall? You know, how what kind of. Right. Friend or love are you? Right? Except this is the kind of fall you can't stop. This is an internal emotional fall. He fell in love. He's 92. You were not. Not even close to 92. 36 years. Younger, 36 years younger. And you know, that's going to shock a lot of people. Yeah. And for me it was like, oh really?

This this is not even a possibility. In fact it's impossible. Impossible. And those may be some of the voices, both external and internal, you're trying to keep out of it and for yourself so that you can do what you feel here. And I would say there clearly is sort of a sense of, oh, there's a role here for me as well. You know, he's not just going to be this man that I love, which he was, but also there's a care I'm going to give him. And he needs that. He did. And but it went against every little grain in my body to think that I could actually have a relationship with this man, regardless of what I was feeling.

Right. But your dream, so interesting, and I think it's so nice that you remember that dream that that sort of is at the beginning. And he heard and I'm sure it sort of laughed because I'm guessing he would have known, we will marry. We're going to walk down the steps together. He did tell me that later. Yeah, that I knew that you were in love with me. Yes. And when he said that to me, I said, oh, you couldn't do that absolutely. Well. And what you didn't know. But you could have said him. Yeah. And I knew you were in love with me. You had fallen for me.

And I was going to also just get everybody else out of the way and be with you. Yeah, well, and during this time where I was. Yes. Knowing myself. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yeah. My profession is one that takes me all over. I'm in my car going from this client to that client to this client. And so if that's my alone time is in the car. And I used to find myself thinking about him, not intending to think about him, but he was constantly popping up in my head and in my heart. And I would even say out loud, what is going on? This is not okay. I can't be thinking about this man.

Why won't he get out of my head? That went on and on and on, and I finally had to figure out how to come to terms with it. He knew that too, because he knew I was in love with him. Well, I'd already heard the dream. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm sure he could feel it, but it's so interesting, right, that this dream just lays it out. If you heard that, I hear you fretting about it. And I would say, well, okay, but you already know. Yeah, go ahead and fret. Right. Right. Because you could see it, but still I could not see it. I and he never even shared with me the interpretation.

He just listened to that and he smiled. And there was quite the glimmer in his eye. And from then on, you know, he made this a point to be together, to spend time together. And he started to ask me about other dreams. And I thought, well, okay, I'll tell you more. I don't know why this is so much fun for you because I really, really didn't get the whole gist of the thing, and it took me spending a lot of time talking about dreams with him to sort of finally start to see that there was something meaningful. And maybe this isn't the path we wanted to go down yet, but it is only because of that, because of me finally saying, okay, take a deep breath.

Let go of your preconceived notions about what dreams are or aren't. Let go of your preconceived notions about what a proper relationship is. Just go there for a little bit and see what happens. Just go there. And I mean, I have goose bumps, but the dreams I shared with him then became the tools by which I was able to figure out how to live my own life, rather than the life that was full of the imprints I'd been delivered. I had been living a life under so many falsehoods, and I had no idea they were false. I bought into them, you know, they were as sturdy as marble.

They were the truth. And it took some chipping away for me to finally say, wow, what I believed, what I thought was love, what I thought was whatever. I thought I was going down the wrong path from the very beginning, which created scenarios where I kept looking for things to keep me on that wrong path. So the relationships I found myself in were very reminiscent of the first relationships that were already on the wrong path. I don't know, I had this one and a 2 million opportunity to come across this man, Bernard, to have this right. I can't even put it into words.

But it was remarkable. And to really feel like a different human being with a different path that hits right here in my heart, right here in my heart. I know. Yet you felt that. Yeah. Here you are. You don't know anything about dreams. I mean, most people don't think about them all that much. And I didn't give them credence, like most of us. Yes. And and he I mean, I I'm going to say he cheated a little bit because he you happened to tell him this dream and it happened to reveal everything. So he sort of knows the story and how it ends. But why did that happen?

Why did you choose to share? You have to tell us. I think that there's it's because there's an interconnectedness that runs amongst all of us. And, you know, call that love, call that the divine Spirit. I couldn't help but tell him that dream. And because he is who he is, he couldn't help but understand the message. Yeah. And that dream was about the two of us. It was about the two of us. It wasn't about me learning something else about my life. It was about the two of us. And so did he. See that? Like, I see this is what we're going to come to.

But Cynthia is so far away from understanding that, you know, as a psychoanalyst when he's treating his patients, his methodology says, I, I've got to let my patients come to their own understanding of their lives and their feelings. Right? Yes. And that's why he wouldn't tell you what the dream meant. So it could take forever. And here we were at the end of his life. We didn't have a lot of time left. He's up against hoping that that you decide to shoe all these voices that might interfere come between you right away. And all he could do was give me the gift of patience.

Yeah. Which was must've been so hard for him. And because it was so scary for me, it was jumping off a cliff, and I didn't know what was going to happen. At the bottom of that cliff. I stood back for a very long time, and I let those voices keep talking to me and saying, you know what? Really? You're going to do this? I don't think so. I mean, you're not gonna have any more clients. Your kids aren't going to like you. Society's going to shun you. What? What are you doing? And did any of that happen? Some of it probably, I don't care. My kids didn't dismiss me.

I didn't lose. Yeah, your business is and gone because. But the people in the world who think it's yucky or disagree or think it's wrong. Okay. Yeah, but I think, you know, as you're saying, it's that was the bigger feeling inside. It was. Right. Those are the voices. So you go, oh, all these people, all these things come and they might intrude. And I have to keep them. Yeah. And there was my father who passed away, but he's still walking around in my head in a big way. It's hard to dismiss. This is how it starts. Yeah. He may have known how you felt, but the dream also reveals him.

Right? He falls. So in case he wasn't sure, though, I'm sure at that point he probably was. There it is. Right. He had fallen for you. He had said that maybe eight years or so before we met. He had met with someone who was sharing information, probably in. Like a psychic, sort of. Okay. And he was kind of ready to be done, you know, with trying to find love. I'm too old. It's not going to happen. Who's going to want me? And that person said, stop, there's one more. There's one more chance for you. And he said, when he opened the door and I was there, is that that's that's her.

Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not. But it made me feel really good. I think if he said it, he felt so. Yeah. He wasn't one to share anything but his own truth. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think I don't think he would do that. No. So and even let's say sometimes he would share his own truths much to his own. Yeah. That's the other piece of this, right. That you got to see a side of him. I mean, there's a side that understands all of this is so deep, is so wise. And and at 92 has also amassed, you know, just a lot of knowledge and experience about the in the world.

And also you got to see that he's still a human being. And you know, I, I think he would make mention sometimes of, you know, still having nightmares related to the war. Okay. So tell me a little because obviously his great interest is dream, you know, listening to dreams, he's talking about his own dreams. He's thinking about himself in that way. You enter into this relationship, you start talking about dreams and sharing. And so what is this like, you know, at the breakfast table or where is this happening? I know, so as I said, when I first met him, I gave dreams no credence really.

There's just sort of cute little things that happen during the night. And because dreams were his passion, you know, that's what he wanted to talk about. I get that, and I quickly became interested, you know, he would share some of his dreams with me. And in fact, when we would travel, we would find ourselves talking to each other about our dreams and about our lives. And was there any sort of connection between our lives and our dreams? I mean, clearly he knew from his life's work, but we would find ourselves out for breakfast and hours later people are coming in for lunch and we're still there sharing our conversations about our dreams.

I mean, he never really analyzed me. We were just a couple in love and we both ended up having a passion for dreams and a fascination, and they were puzzles for both of us. I love to talk about his dreams with him, even in our waking life. Always a little tenuous somehow, even though he really knew I loved him, he also felt like I might cut that tie. He was very cute. I don't think he thought it was cute, but we would. We would argue totally. Okay. Yeah, that was fine. I mean, I had the best arguments with him and we would be kind of on an equal footing.

And sometimes he would say, I think we should just get a divorce, because I think he was afraid that I. Would get a divorce. And I would look at him and I would say, that is just not happening. It's not happening. You've got to stop talking like that. And he would smile. He always put himself in a position of having to protect himself, even like during the war, he never knew what he was up against. He never knew whether the enemy was going to treat him fairly or kill him. I mean, he had so many moments during the war, he had nothing that he could do except rely on the support of the enemy.

What a wild thing to have to think about. I'm just going to add, because people listening may not know, he was a lead radar navigator in World War two, would often just fly over enemy lines into Germany, and was shot down and taken prisoner of war. Yes. Thank you so much. That helps so wrote a book about it, Armed Guards Flute, which talks about an incredibly important transformational period in his life where he came up against his own understandings of, I think, love and all of the ideas the young man had wherever the arrogance or narcissism was.

But this began to show him a different side of things. Obviously, you know, you're you're shot down and you are completely reliant on the enemy to either kill you or not. Yes. And he, you know, sort of had the fear almost day in and day out is what they're doing for me going to kill me or save me? They're injecting me with something. Is that poison or is it a vaccine that's going to help me? Is are they helping me get rid of my fever or increase the fever? He was at a train station being transported, I think, to this hospital where he ended up and stood guard and everyone was screaming at him.

The people could see that he was an American and talking about killing him kill, kill, kill him. And a German officer came over and stopped the crowd and said, everybody stop. This is not okay. Let this man get on the train. And he was very forceful. I think he had a gun or something. And and that was a big moment for Bernard, you know, sort of they're on opposite sides of this war. They're supposed to hate each other. And this man couldn't help but come from a place of compassion. That man saved his life at that moment. And there were several other incidents during the war that were very, very similar.

And that was definitely food for thought. Definitely created a shift for Bernard in how he perceived the world and in fact, what he intended to do when he was done with his service was to become a high school teacher in Philadelphia. But by the time the war was over, and he'd had all of these experiences that he had relative to kinship, to fear, to love, to war, love of all kinds, he said, I've got to do something to make this stop. And I don't think he was thinking that consciously, just unconsciously, war cannot exist. It serves no purpose. That's what he came to.

I'm going to do something to stop this. And he became a doctor and he became a psychoanalyst, and he came up with his theory. And if we can figure out how to address the war or the chaos that we hold inside, we can bring that forward into the world. As you and I were speaking earlier, you can't treat what we see on the outside without fixing the bits on the inside. If we don't know how to operate from true love and empathy, if we don't know that we can't do that. We're just all, you know, bouncing off the ceiling. Yeah, I think that that was a very important piece for him is for millennia, you know, empires come and go.

They all fall and trying to come up with the right political system, the right way to set up a society. I think my sense was from him. You won't ever do it because there's too much chaos, there's too much war inside. And until human beings go through a transformation and you have to do that by looking inside of yourself, seeing what's in there, right then you become ready to even imagine create a system that might actually work for the people, all of them. Somehow you end up where you you end up with a separation. In a way. You end up with the parents, with all the power and the kids who have none.

Right? It's a replica. Yeah. And when he would later say, and what goes on in utero the way the unconscious of the mother bombards the fetus. And as she. It's not just her unconscious, she sweeps in the father and other people in the family. And so all the fetuses hit with all of these unconscious, unknown, unprocessed parts that are detrimental. But then that baby comes out, many things happen. And one of the things is all of that gets repeated. So there's the war, right? The war is really internal anyway. It's just going to be acted out externally.

So that tells you from my point of view, don't try to fix it externally. Don't waste. I mean, it's not that you're wasting time. You don't want people to kill each other, but if you really want to stop it, all of the negotiating in the world won't do it because you have to have everybody go inside. Now, that doesn't mean there aren't very smart and compassionate, loving people in the world. They may come up with really good ideas, but if you have too many people like we do, that are too involved in the internal war, that will destroy all the good ideas.

So you have to get the whole group to a new place. That internal war is all that those individuals who are dealing with that internal war know. That is all they can bring to the table, right? Love? It is stronger than whatever love may or may not be there. I mean, if it's not there, it's not there. But if it is there, it's still being overtaken by the war side. So that's a problem. But everybody's paddling upstream too hard. Change the way we do it. Stop fixing it out there. Everybody look inside. Get some understanding of your internal world.

See if you can learn to love em. And if it's kind of a hard thing to buy into. What do you mean? I'm looking at the world, and there's chaos and war, and that's inside of me. No, just try it. Just try it. Just think about it. Just let go. Just see. Have a look at what's going on. And you. What is that? I mean, I think it's it's worth considering. Definitely. And by the way, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be attending to the things in our outside world. We still. You know, still live in it, right? This is our waking life. This is our world. But here, here's where you have to go if you want to change it.

And we have to speak to the things that we know are healthy, are loving the truth. I mean, I think we have to have those voices inside and outside. Yeah, I think absolutely. So you who know nothing about dreams are not particularly focused on the internal world. It is there. It is part of you. But it's getting no special place right at this point. And you meet the man who is all focused on the internal world every day, all day, sort of swimming in the unconscious of his patients. And what does this feel like? I was so excited to talk about dreams with Bernard, and at a moment in our relationship, we had little time to spend with each other.

We were living in separate households. We were both working hard and he would say, tell me about your dream in the morning when I was driving to work. And I would say to him the same thing and he'd say, okay, let's think about it and let's catch up with each other at the end of the day. And we would both talk further about those dreams. He wasn't analyzing me. We were sharing a conversation about this thing that we were both so curious about. And did you feel like hearing his dreams gave you this window in, you know, just the way he might phrase things in a dream or the images that might emerge?

Yes. I loved listening to what he had to say about his dreams, what is what he was dreaming about. And, you know, I came to know enough about him, Bernard. The man, the stories of his past, what he felt, what his fears were, that I could kind of go along with him in what he was seeing in his own dreams and think, wow, that's so cool. Look at this. There's all this information that's still coming up for him. Yes. Right. And I can see connections to all of the stories about his life, about his feelings. So it was intriguing. You know, a lot of people get to have conversation about their dreams when they wake up in the morning.

When you walk in and see your friend or you get to school and, you know, sometimes you'll hear kids say, oh, you were in my dream last night. People get excited about this. So I think there can be a lot of talk about dreams. There is a difference between sort of just thinking about a dream and doing a work of analyzing a dream where you're really going through each piece, thinking about it and putting a story together that hopefully gives you some emotional truth. That's just a more formal process, really. At the end of the day, there isn't all that much difference between talking about them except this formal process, but just talking about your dreams can also be so informative and it might connect people.

Now you may also be telling people things you don't know you are. I go back to your first dream with him, where you didn't realize you were telling both of you that you were going to get married and you were going to take care of him and everybody else. Go away. Yes, I have no idea. Right. And most of the time we have no idea what we are sharing. A lot of my friends always laugh because we go out. You don't go, wait before you tell me your dream because you know, people just talking about you just have no idea what you're telling me. I'm just letting you know.

But I will happily listen, you know? But you just. People don't know that it reveals so much. And just by sharing our dreams. Right. And so. And I think really, maybe for everybody, if we could all get used to this idea that we could understand somebody close to us or even not close to us by getting the deepest communications from them, might be a very interesting world. Definitely something to open our eyes to. I wouldn't have had a podcast that I felt passionate about, say, 15 or 20 years ago, but if you had said to me, I want you to have this podcast about, I don't know, popcorn and cheese or whatever, I would have said, no way, no way, don't put one of these things in front of me.

I won't even be able to speak. Even in my everyday routine. I was very, very quiet, very, very reserved. I felt like I didn't have as much of a place to speak from as most people. I felt very much like I needed to stand in the background. I totally know why that's my imprint all over the place, but I had no other way to be. I had no knowledge that I could be anything else. I had some what I thought were really good ideas about things or things that I wanted to contribute to a conversation, but I was more like, I don't want to hear what you have to say.

And so I just kept it to myself. I've had people who have been my friends for a long time, but what a weird relationship, because here I was just a little bit opening up and they are over here trying to get me, but they somehow still had a connection. And since this has all happened to me, those friends have said to me blatantly, I knew you were in there. I it's so great to hear your voice. I've always liked you, but man, this is this is great. Now we can have a partnership as friends. This is so part of his theory in a way, is is wanting people to find their voice, listening and taking what someone says as important.

I think he listens to all of his patients and what they say is important. There is a person there who thinks that you are an important person, and I think especially here, that you're a woman. And what you say, as you said, when he wants to hear, well what do you think about the art. And he really wanted to know. He did. Right. He wasn't just making small talk, he wanted to hear. Who are you. What do you see in this. And my instinct was what kind of weird interview is this? He certainly doesn't want to know what I think. As a professional. I laugh a little because it is a little reminiscent of a Rorschach or something.

Where we go. Where do you see this painting? You know? Yeah. So there is probably some of that, but I think he can't help but do that because there's a curiosity for all of us in this field. You know, part of what your what keeps you going is you're interested, you're curious. You know, I want to know who is this person sitting across from me, but and and especially his interest in hearing what women have to say. We see this in the theory. Very important to give women a seat at the table, that there should be an equality. And there was and and that was such a gift because to be on that equal footing, to be loved on the same plane that I think only there's only one way for true love to exist.

You need to be on the same plane. This there's no overpowering. And that gave me all the space, all the space to be who I really am. Once I figured out who I really was. Yeah, yeah, right. But for your voice to emerge. Yeah. And we could talk about 1,000,007 things all day long, and nobody was ever stepping on anybody. I mean, like I said, we had our arguments. They were fine. It didn't mean that we were chipping away at that love at all. It built the love in a way, and a so many times even going through it and certainly looking back, how did I get to this?

How how did I get this fabulous gift? And to now know what real love is and to take it outside of that relationship that I had with Bernard and and be able to have it elsewhere, with friends, with family, romantically, is just, again, the biggest gift. Yeah. And very interesting what you say that even he was afraid of love, right? I mean, you know, for all of his big dream for the world, that's why the podcast is called, what it's called is love. You know that. He says, we tried everything else in the world. How about love? And now real love. Not not lip service to love, right?

Really behaving in loving ways and and loving yourself. So you have to love yourself so that you can love. So interesting that you know, even he human being that he is right, you know, would have moments where it's, I'm so afraid I'm going to lose you. Maybe I'll just leave first. Yes, yes, you could see. I could see that that even I could see that. Yes. As a matter of, you know, self-protection. And looking back and thinking about him in our conversations and what he felt about his mother. And yeah, the way his upbringing informed him. He talked about it, that he had two parents who weren't in love, arranged marriage, and.

And his mom was pretty pissed off about. That. His mom was not happy. She had to leave a boyfriend that she really liked and come to a new country and marry. Someone didn't feel it was a great match. Very unsatisfying to her and I think so. Informs his thinking about human beings. One that love is very important and that if you want a happy world, you have to make sure that the people who carry all the children are happy. Because I think he knew he experienced it, that his mother wasn't happy, had headaches often. Well, her head hurt. This was not what she had imagined for her life.

And yet here she was. And she had expectations for her children that they could not really live up to, and which I'm curious about. She was always, you know, looking to them to some sort of to satisfy something inside of her. And they could not do that. Even if they did do it, she still wouldn't find the satisfaction. It wasn't Bauer. That's right. Yeah. And so Bernard always felt like he was never enough, that whatever he did, she wasn't going to be able to completely love him because he'd always sort of missed the mark for her. Who can't relate to that?

Right. That I think he started from a place of going, oh my gosh, I'm watching. My my mother is not happy. My father's probably not happy either because, you know, and they're arguing all the time. So this is a house where I think he had to go find other things that would nurture him. And he did. He did without really, I think, even understanding at face value what they were at the time. Even as a kid in elementary school, he used to run around the corner and down the block, and he found himself at the synagogue for Sunday school and and they would be talking about stories from the Bible.

And he wasn't really a member of the class, but somehow he sat in. Back in. And he was enchanted, intrigued, and he went back and back for more, you know, Joseph and the Dreamcoat. And why did that stick with him? And and he didn't tell anybody that he was doing this. And it wasn't about being Jewish. It was just about this fabulous source. And he took that with him. Yeah. I think when you look, you know, you read the books, you see the story of the war, you can see where spirit was sort of tapping him on the shoulder. Yes. Then that it emerges as such an important part of his theory that I think it was also, you know, saving him.

He had that experience. It was saving him from this really unhappy home life. But he didn't realize all of that until he realized all of that. Yeah. I don't know that he even realized that until he had written the book. Said what. You know, 80 right. When he started to look back on what his life meant, how did all the parts and pieces fit together? I mean, he had that experience of being so enchanted by these sort of spiritual stories, and he had his experiences in the war where here he is the lead navigator leading this plane full of comrades to what he can't see.

In one example, there's there's no heading. They have no way of figuring out where they're going. No way. And remaining calm so that none of the other men on the flight understood the despair. And somehow finding his way, somehow finding his way, all of a sudden. He knew he had spirit, talked to him and gave him the heading. Yep. But he didn't know that at the time. Right. But obviously that made a mark on him. And he he managed. So he had all of those moments and, and I think it was when he felt this great desperation because he wasn't feeling personally that he was making any headway in his own life.

He had a full roster of patients. They were discussing dreams. They were they he was helping people become healthier. But yet he didn't feel like he had all the tools he needed. And he found in his own therapy that the tools weren't there. He had these wonderful conversations with these fabulous, renowned and lists, and he adored his time with them. And he learned so much. But it was, in his opinion, mostly intellectual. They didn't ask him how he felt about experiences in the war. They didn't ask him about the trouble he was feeling in his love life.

They it was intellectual, he said. And and that worried him. He said, how am I going to give what I need to give to my patients until I figure out what I need? And and that was scary and depressing and difficult. He had to sort of unwind everything, undo everything. Start with a blank page. I don't know, I think that maybe a connection to spirit too. Well, and I think it is, you know, sort of another echo, right? Okay. I can't find what I need at home. I have to go look someplace else. This is despairing. But then I find something that gives me a glimmer of hope.

That right. You really feel is exciting or has meaning later. You're in the war and you think, oh my gosh, how am I? I am terrified, I don't know ahead. I don't know where to send the plane and all these people I'm responsible for. And a message comes and pulls you out of the the darkness. And I think when he was despairing later, yet professionally, do I kill myself, you know. Really what? What do I do? Where where is this going? I don't, you know. And you are. You have no direction. You're unmoored, you know, yet again. And that was a big consideration for him.

Do I just do myself. And do I just do myself in? And people go, oh my gosh, how is he. He's saying that. But yes, he, he I think really went there. Doesn't look like it on the surface. And if you met him years later, you would go, oh, well this man would never he must not know anything about that. But I think he did. And the feeling, too, of considering that strongly considering that. Yeah. Stuck to him even in our time together. I could see that for him to say, I got to that kind of depth of where that kind of vacancy in me, in my soul, where I thought that was my best option.

That's that's big. And you, you can for him. He could totally feel how others could get there, too. Yes, I think that's that's the important piece that all of these things inform how you start to think about what is really going on inside of a human being, what forms you, what shapes how you think and feel, and how he then brings in early life. I mean, not that other theorists haven't done this, but for him personally to make this particular way of thinking his theory, and that spirit pulls him out of the darkness each time. And I think he wanted that for people right?

That they shouldn't they should know that and and have that comfort. Right. You know, that's another piece of love. It is that I think he really wanted people to have. And once he came to that knowledge to really believe that spirit was there, he 100% believe that spirit is there for everyone, including me, the little Miss Denyer that became part of his work. It truly did. I imagine you saw that. Yes. So I met him late. I mean, he was probably in his 70s. These pieces were already there. Yeah, when I met him. Yes. So I didn't know the before, you know.

I didn't know when he was wrestling with traditional psychoanalysis when he was wrestling with a Freudian paradigm or a clinician paradigm. And wrestling with his peers. Wrestling with his peers and fighting for free speech and and free thought. One of the things that shaped that middle period of his life was, I think we should be able to study things besides Freud, and having a whole institute, a whole group of people and, and the Psychoanalytic Association say, well, we don't agree. Okay. He held on. Interestingly. Right. He knew what it was to to go to war.

And in a way he did have a war with them. And I think it was probably a very painful, disappointing, I mean, soul crushing war to have to to say all I'm asking for is that we can bring other theorists in. Are we so dogmatic that we don't allow a new thought to enter? And I'm not even sure that they fully heard him on that. I think they were so fearful of what it was. He was teaching, professing that it was somehow either, you know, we have to let Doctor Bail introduce his work or not. And he kept saying, but it's not just about me, it's not my work.

It's about as you're saying. Let's think about the possibility of some other theories. Let's let's open the door. Let's let people talk about these things. And they didn't even really I don't think they heard that so. Well, it was more we just have to shut this one man down. Right. And there's a lawsuit. You know, he filed suit there. This is at great risk to his livelihood. Would. Because if you are persona non grata, that means your peers stop referring to you. You're not getting training cases. Right. And so you could potentially lose your entire livelihood.

And he stood his. Ground but he stood his ground. So people understand years later, what he was asking for is exactly what happened. Everything opened up and now people would go, what do you mean? We were never able to study these people because there's so many people being studied now. All right, everybody, every theory is sort of can be looked at, you know. So I think what he was asking for was just ahead of his time. But it, it also put him in a really interesting position because it was sort of him against the world in what do you believe both that piece and that everything should be questioned anew, that we don't just have to take what's handed to us, either knowledge or our emotional experience, and have to live that out, question everything, question, see what you feel about it.

And I think throughout the work and and that hopefully lives on in all of the people who are engaged in doing that kind of work is if I make an interpretation about something, I'm not laying the law down. If it doesn't feel right, let's talk about it. That doesn't hit you in the right spot. You don't have a feeling about that or it feels wrong. Let's explore it. Which is so interesting because I remember having these conversations with Bernard, and how am I going to know when it feels right? I'm not sure I get that, and I but I'd keep going with him, keep going and I remember that first moment that I felt that feeling.

That feeling is almost like concrete. It was real. I felt it, I felt it, and once I had that one moment and I was taken aback, I'm just like, I'm all in. Yeah, I get it, I get it. And and that moment of feeling and how just that little bit took 17 notches out of my imprint. Oh, I felt lighter. I felt different already. Yeah. So I think that's what hopefully happens. Somebody feels understood. And sometimes feelings aren't there or they're not there in a way that serves your highest best self. Feelings may be there to push something away or, but that getting to a place where you're then able to oh yeah that feels right.

I can now distinguish that. Right. I have an experience where I know something feels correct and it's going to feel correct to my mind and probably to my body. You know people relax or they you'll hear, you can hear it, you can see it. And then that's your baseline. And then you know, right now I have now I have a measuring stick. Okay. Sometimes you do have to work at dreams. I think even when it's your theory for Doctor bail, you know, there there were moments where I go over something. Is it right? No, it's not right. Okay, well, that's then then we.

Let's get it right or as close as we can. That has to be part of it. Because what you are creating, hopefully, is not just a copy of yourself is the therapist. You want to help somebody become a separate individual person with their own feelings for what is right or not right for that particular person's life, not what's right for my life right now. Obviously, we all should have things in common that are good for us and not good for us. But personally, on the personal level, that person has to begin to be able to feel his or her own self and life.

And believe it or not, that doesn't happen all that often. People, you know, they say, oh well, I trust my trust, my gut. Fine. And some people have guts that are trustable and some people have guts that will send you, you know, North stars over there, and they send you to the South because the imprint and your history and the way your feelings were most likely not respected or given space creates havoc in the system, and often it is then sending you in all the wrong directions. Well, even up until recently and I've shared this before, my father's voices have been in my head for every decision I had to make, and there was a moment where I heard my father's voice when I was deciding something, and I said, all right, let's wait here.

Wait a minute. Why are you doing this? You know, I don't need you in my head telling me what to do. Obviously, I put him there, right? And I said, why don't you just. Back pipe down? Yeah. Never again. There it is. Right. And and chances are dad was not going to make a decision for you. Meaning you're just going along. You know, we're talking about the dad's voice in your head that's going to what about this? And don't do that. And why would you, you know, do this. And that may make a good decision for him. It may make a decision that keeps you attached to him and living for him, but it chances are that's not going to be the right decision for you.

Yes. And freedom in your life. In my life, for me, I am stronger than my dad. I am stronger than my dad. That's right. You. You are the expert for your life. Yep. He's not. And go back to that dream. You told us about the meeting. I mean, that is even evident in that dream, is I'm going to have to shut a lot of voices down. In order to find my way. In order to find. My way. Yeah. And in order to love this man. Yes. That's right. And that was your path. Path was together. I am curious where if he talked to you. I know he talked professionally about this and it was all in his work, but what are the dinner table conversations like about where the world is going.

So even before we, we're where we are Bernard passed away almost five years ago, four and a half years ago. He always said we talked about sort of the political climate in the United States and around the world. And we talked about how, how do we get here, what's going to make it different. And he said, it clearly has to get a lot worse before it gets better. It clearly has to get worse. People haven't been put to the ultimate test. They still don't understand what's at stake. They still don't understand what's at stake. And the only way to repair what's going on is to make people look inside.

And people have become so desperate for an answer that they're open to looking everywhere for solutions. And I'm beginning to see a glimpse of that. People are desperate. People are thinking, how? How do I make a dent? How do we change this? This is super scary. It's not just scary in the United States. It's scary everywhere. And maybe I need to look at myself. I if I think about the things I can do outside of myself, I can. And these are all valuable. I can write a letter to my congressman, I can protest, I can send a check to support something, things that I believe in.

But maybe I can also look inside myself. Maybe there's something I need to learn about the way the world operates, but I can't learn that until I know how I operate. So that he, as we said earlier, that was a big topic for us in that what's going on outside is happening inside and we've got a long way to go before we figure out how to straighten it out. And one of the things we want to do here is like, put the pedal to the metal, because we need to get busy with this. Looking at ourselves. That's interesting to me because in a way, no matter what one's political orientation is, there seems to be a sense that it isn't going right.

Political parties come and go, and my guys and your guys in, that's. Almost the thread that connects us now. Yes. It's not going. Right that, that that's right, that's right. So it's everywhere. And it seems to point to the idea that maybe this is an external if everybody's feeling it and it isn't right, you know, and it's global. Yeah. In a lot of ways maybe it's really calling on human beings to get a new way of thinking about these problems and, and a new way of seeing ourselves, a new way of thinking about who we are and what we might be capable of, not in the negative direction.

We see a lot of that. What about in an expansive, elevating way? And how do we get in touch with the love and and spirit and all of the things that would nurture us and lift us up? Where do we go? Well, we have to go inside. And when you get to that place where you're really lifting yourself up, you can't help but lift up those around you. Yes, I think that that's the beautiful piece is you. It emanates, right. This impacts everything. This is the ripple from the stone in the pond, if you will. So when he said worse, did he, did he say. Like how much time or.

Well, how how bad? I say that a little bit, knowing that I had asked him that lot. Where do you see it going? What do you think is going to happen? His point was, you know, you really have to feel it. The, the average person, I think we're seeing it right. It's not just that it has to be hard or uncomfortable. It has to kind of push you in a way that you haven't been pushed before, where you feel you might lose something. And and maybe that makes everybody go, wait, what are we doing? What are we really doing? All right. So what, we're going to argue with each other.

And I'm on this team and you're on that team. And and and what? Blow the planet up. Right. Because we can't now figure out a way to talk to each other. Doesn't seem to make sense. His feeling was that we each had to really, almost tangibly feel like we were losing something. Yes. And to the point where you feel like you have no control or you see that fear is just if you're not afraid. Now is just around the corner and when you start to feel this kind of panic, like maybe there's no turning back, we've reached the perfect storm. I think he sees us stepping in before we're completely out of control.

Okay, so like, where do these come to the edge? Yeah. Now, I don't know if we can start right now as individuals. With the edge. Helping ourselves figure out who we are as sort of helping that process along more quickly. But I sure want to give it a try. At the very least, it puts an idea out there. Yeah, I sure want to come at this world from truth, love, empathy. I mean, for me, that's the only way to make a difference. And really seeing where even if you think you are using those, right. Because I think a lot of people say, but I'm very loving, you know, I love all kinds of things.

What we have to be looking at is, are your actions loving and what are your dreams? Show us. Right. Because the unconscious, the dream will show us. Well, wait a minute. Do you think it's loving? And maybe it isn't. And I think that goes for a lot of our politicians for years. This isn't right now, only this is historically. And and look back at all sorts of societies, you know, different countries, different empires. And were people really being taken care of in a loving way by the people who were in charge? Those people with good intentions.

With good intentions, and many who may say, well, I'm doing this for the country. I'm doing this, sure. But all of those people have an imprint. All of those people are carrying unprocessed, virulent parts that. May. Intrude upon, even if you can have it, the idea of loving, the idea of taking good care of people. So part of this is untangling, giving people just the idea that, okay, wait a minute. Sometimes, even if intellectually you think you're on the right path, we really have to check that. We all have to check it within ourselves and go, well, wait a minute, let's check this within ourselves and see, is this really loving?

Am I really doing the best for myself and those around me and the society at large? And have you figured out what love really feels like? That's it. And what is love really? I mean, love is one of those things that is just given so much lip service. I'm loving, I love you, I do this well, okay, but the what behaviors go with that? You say that and then what right. You know, do you just say, I love you and don't bother me? Let me keep doing what I'm doing. Don't intrude on it. I'm I don't have to change at all. And in fact, saying those words might get me off the hook for a while.

I do a lot of things right. You won't blame me. I don't have to be responsible for anything. Just know I love you, I love you. That's right. And I think that is ubiquitous, you know? But then it's all right. Wait a minute. But are you behaving in a loving way? Do you even know what that is? Were you ever treated with love? Really? And I think a lot of most people might be much like I was. Of course I was loved. Of course my parents loved me. Of course I had a great upbringing of course not so much. And I think that's what, in a way, everybody has to come to that.

We have been sold this idea that everybody's loved. Oh, you got hurt, your loved. And he would say, no, the evidence shows it because the minute you start looking at people's dreams and this may scare people, then they won't want to look at their dreams. But trust me, it's worth it. You see where love wasn't. And wherever you don't have love, you have pathology. So wherever love is missing, what's going to fill it? Not love. So wherever in the personality and it's makeup and the design and how it's all put together. There isn't love. And that comes from daily life.

Upset what our families went through, what our parents went through in their lives, our relationships to them, all of these things that we're just sort of used to saying, well, okay, yeah, it was hard, but they did their best and they may have done their best. I don't take that, I don't that's that may be very true. That may also mean it wasn't loving. And there are some really lovely people in the world who may also not know how to love. That's not saying that these are monsters walking around. What it's saying is most people have never really been loved.

They don't even know what it is. I truly believe when you treat people with love. When I say that, I specifically mean looking at dreams in a nut that you are just this oh, anything you say goes that's not love. Love is really understanding who that person is, what that person has been through on the deepest level, and helping that person get to the true self under all of the trash. What's buried there? Who's there in your practice when you're when you're getting to know a patient really well and you've gone over dreams, do you usually see or have a better glimpse of who they truly are before they do?

In some ways, I don't know that I always get a full picture ahead of time of what that person's going to look like to everyone else, but I certainly get these internal snapshots of parts of a person. So I might say to you just what I said to Bernard is, oh yeah, everything was great and I was loved. And he's listening to my dreams and he's saying, I don't see that so much, but he's not going to say that to me. He's going to let me come to it. But I guess our dreams just open us up. And generally, unbeknownst to the person who's opening up until they realize down the road when they're starting to feel the feelings that their dreams are telling them about, they know how much they're exposing.

I mean, I say emotional reality. Okay, so it's not that the dream is exactly this historical document, but it's an emotional, historical document. And what it cuts through is a lot of the denial. So the dreams will, you know, every place where we've had to go. Like, I know my mom would yell at me all the time, but I know she loves me. Okay, right. She needs you to say that. And you need to say that. Don't you want that to be true? That's what everybody wants to be. True. Right? But the dream may come along and say, well, actually, look, your mom was a really troubled woman, and you're going to have to let go of wanting to hold on to that fantasy.

If you want to heal, if you want to really change, you have to let go of that fantasy because if you see what she did to you as love, you will never be available for real love. And how are you not going to have that as your mode of showing love to those around. That's right. It will become the standard and it will be the standard of what you look for, for somebody to give to you. Right. So you've got this behavior titled love and it is completely not love. We have a problem. I mean, anything else in the world where I said, okay, you're going to walk around in every orange, you're going to say is an apple.

People in the world, you know, depending on what that is, or maybe they don't care about your fruit, but something else that you keep getting wrong, you mislabel it every time you bump into it, you're going to have a problem. So part of the goal of a treatment and of doing this work, of looking at your dreams is going, where do I have this completely mislabeled? Because that's how I'm living my whole life. It's amazing how true that is what you're saying. So if it's love, you know, it's one thing. If it's an apple, fine. Don't ever. Who cares?

You never need an apple. Again, right? If it's love and you're a human being, we're in trouble. That's for sure. There's nothing else. We need more than that. That's right. This is one of the critical pieces you're doing. And until you get to the truth of the story where you can go, oh, you know, we can call what my mom did a lot of things. Sometimes it was abusive, sometimes it was friendly, sometimes it was thoughtful. But what it wasn't was consistently loving. If we can get that truth and you can feel it in the heart and know that, then. Right.

And that we can. Oh, that wasn't love. Oh my gosh. All right. Maybe I don't have to chase that down in the world as an amazing thing. I have to have. Right. Then you get some change. But it requires knowing the truth of what you had. And given our propensity as human beings to deny the ugly parts of the people we depend on most our caretakers. And so, oh no, it was just. But but they did it for love. Well, then we're all backwards. We are. And so here we. Are, and here we are. I tried to prove to Bernard again and again that this particular relationship that I thought was 112% love, that I was involved in early in life as a, as a teenager.

I so bought into that, and that relationship was my directive for all of my subsequent relationships where which pretty much would fail. I kept telling him this and and he never denied that. He never he didn't argue you out of your position. I mean, it was just us having conversations. And my dreams became this thing. And maybe he helped steer me here, now that I think about it, because he he gave me a place to talk about this thing that I was so enamored by without judgment. But my dreams had me basically often, like in a yard where they might keep junk cars, chain link fence around, locks rattling, and then like wild animals running around in there with me.

And I was always near death. I always had to be as quiet as I could. There was no way out, no way out. And he eventually connected that. And I can't even go into all the interpretations with my experience and, you know, said, well, you know what? If it's this or what if it's that and like that. No, no. But my dreams didn't stop going down. That kind of fearful, fearful path with these giant animals and locks rattling in cages and I finally opened my mind to what he was suggesting. After not too long a period of time, I got it, I got it. This thing that had shaped all of my romantic relationships was just nothing but a farce.

It was a cage, right? You were locked in and terrified. Yeah. And that was devastating to hear. Devastating to hear that I had continued to live this lie for decades. And on the other hand, so refreshing. That's a putting it mildly on it. So enlightening and so freeing. That's it. It was so freeing. I was no longer locked up by that thing that I thought was reality. I totally thought that was reality. I look back now and think, isn't that amazing? It's as simple as the apple in the orange. You know, I'm calling an orange an apple. It is that to me.

And to everybody else, it's like, okay. So that's what we're looking for is help to get emotional clarity so that you have a chance, a shot at going in the right direction for yourself. So you're not locked in a cage with ferocious beasts going, oh, this is love. This is totally love. Doesn't feel very good. I'm frightened. Doesn't matter. We'll call it love. And that's okay with me. Yeah. And even looking back at the reality of that relationship, it felt like that I was frightened all the time. But yet I called it love. So I just want all of us to be careful about what we think the truth is.

Yeah, well, and this may be where humans are going that the more we can look inside. Let me be very clear, because I think a lot of times we get what we think are emotional truths. It felt like an orange to you, right? Nobody was going to argue you off of that. And so we've got this big problem, which is but we're saying your feelings are not always right. And if we don't get the trash cleaned up inside of you, you don't know where you're wrong. And that's, you know, really important. So that we have all these people walking around calling apples, oranges.

How are they going to put together a government that does the right thing? They don't know what the difference between an apple and an orange. Somewhere in there, we don't have enough of those people, in my opinion. Enough people who can say an apples, an. Apple, right? It's overwhelmingly the other. Yes, that that we can then make a system of government that serves the people, that is loving. If you don't know what the apple is, how do you make a system of government that is to hand out apples? It can't happen. And that's why he said it. And, it resonated with me.

That's right, that's right. If the psyche has things to confused, you cannot make a good system to live under. And as an aside, but an important one, let the women in the door stop shutting them down. Yeah. That was his other big point, was that historically, the silencing of women, the putting women in a one down position, always not inviting them to the table. You can't have a world that is loving by definition if you are doing that to half your population. Right. And this is a message to men and women. It isn't just about women. Men are not going to do a better job in the world moving forward, unless they figure out how to let women in the door and stop putting us back in time.

We just took 27 steps backwards. What? What does going backwards do for us? Even in a theory where you are always referencing back to the beginning to the start, you weren't going backwards though. We have moments where things are regressive in a treatment. We may feel feelings we felt from an earlier time, but you are not regress, meaning the idea is not to actually take you back to being a baby. You are still an adult. You are still here in the present time. We don't really want to go backwards. We are referencing. We are touching it for the purpose of going forward.

You're not applying that information to your existing situation, to your current situation. Well, the idea is to see where you are and pull it off. Yeah, but he I think one of the things that is so important about the theory is that is go to the beginning to understand the importance of women. That is where for every human being, no matter what the configuration of a family, you start inside guide. Until we start somewhere else, you start inside of a human woman. There's no ifs, ands or buts. This is how at the moment, this is how the biology works.

So that means why would you not want to treat the person that is responsible for bringing in the next generation with at least as much care as the people who don't bring in the next generation should be afforded the same respect. And that is going to affect little girls and little boys. Yeah. And I think this really came out of his observation that his mother wasn't happy and she wasn't allowed to make her own choice. This is an arranged marriage. Now, neither of them could make their choice, but she was more unhappy about it in the relationship.

And I think he saw that. Why should a woman have to do that? Why doesn't she get a say? And she buried these children who come from that. That's right. And he, like everybody else in the world, had an imprint and that was part of it. Right? That's that has to be in the mix. You don't have that situation and not do. So. He had firsthand experience that when you don't let women have as much choice as men, there's a problem. And he felt it in his heart. That had to be part of how he thought healing for the individual and for the group would happen.

I feel that early on, before he even came to his theory, he somehow already had a respect for women that most men don't have. And maybe it is, I don't know. I'm curious about how that relates back to his mother, and that maybe with kids when when he was little, when he was a young teenager, she used to confide in him how horrible his father was. The arguments they had, how awful it was. He hated it. He didn't like hearing it. But I wonder if he somehow then innately saw that she was just squashed and he innately didn't squash women. I'm not sure.

It's sort of like the opposite of what you think. Well, and maybe he was giving every woman what he wanted his mother to have had. You are important. Let me listen to you, not argue with you and and tell you you're wrong about everything. Let me actually listen to you. I think that's what his mother was trying to get from him. Right? Won't you please just listen to me? Understand what I'm feeling? Maybe many other things as well. But that was a piece of it. And I think he thought, okay, well, who doesn't want to be valued and listened to? Why?

Why would we assume that isn't important anyway? And he also said that he saw his mother many, many times sort of being the neighborhood confidant. So people would come to her with, with their troubles. And he said he always just wanted to sit on the sidelines and kind of listen to that good stuff going on there. And he could see in her face, in her eyes that she was really listening to these people. And the same with her mother. Oh, interesting. So he's in the line. He's in the family business. Okay. Well, it at least gives people more of a sense of how you ended up wanting to do a podcast that carries his work on.

Oh thank you. Yes. I am so thrilled to be here. And I'm a bruised apple. We should all strive to be bruised apples. That would be. Good. I'm not exactly an orange anymore, but I'm working toward being a pure apple. Right? But, you know, it's a lifetime and and bruises are A-okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for letting me share. Thank you for sharing. So much of the story behind the scene. It was fine. It's fine. Thank you very much for listening. Come back again soon. We have more to talk about. Bye for now. And.