Dreams, Trauma, and Your Unconscious Mind: Uncovering Emotional Growth with Tom Paris

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

Hello. My name is Cynthia Marks. I head up the Holistic Psychoanalysis Foundation established by my late husband, Dr. Bernard Bail. Welcome to the and Now Love podcast. Dr. Thomas Paris is with us today. He is a retired psychotherapist. He was in private practice for 30 years in the Los Angeles area. He trained with Dr. Bail for many years, and he has an ongoing interest in his work and theories. Welcome and thank you for wanting to share what you know with us. Thanks, Cynthia. It's good to be here. Happy that you made it in. I'm really excited to be here.

Yes. So the more I get to know you, the more I get to know. Bernard, you've told me so many things about him that I didn't even know, so it's been really fun. I think people have bits and pieces of him, and. Yeah, it must be interesting for you to hear all these different various aspects of his life. Yeah, I continue to have these fun little surprises, so I have a list of questions here which I may follow. I may go off track, but. Okay, I'll start at the beginning and we'll see how it goes. Dr. Weil was, of course, a psychoanalyst. From a doctor's point of view, yours.

What is the difference between analysis and therapy? It depends a lot, actually, on what analysis you're talking about, because there are various versions of analytic work and different analytic theories, and some people practice differently than others. And of course, there's many, many kinds of therapy and psychotherapy. Having said, that, analysis often involves trying to explore a patient's unconscious. Now, some more modern versions of analysis don't necessarily pay much attention to the unconscious these days, but originally it had to do with exploring the unconscious.

Fairer therapy can be anything from short term intervention to longer work. It may be with adult children. It could be cognitive behavioral therapy. I mean, there's that for us laypeople. I'm not an expert in cognitive behavioral therapy, but like its name, it tends to focus on using your conscious mind to change behavior by looking at what messages you tell yourself and getting you to change your thoughts in order to change your feelings and behavior. I see. So I don't like this thing that I do when I do it. I have that feeling that I don't like this thing that I do.

How am I going to adjust myself so I don't get to that place? Yeah, I think that's it. They want to help you figure out why you're doing it in a cognitive way. Sort of intellectually, and then help you have strategies to stop. Cognitive strategy. Yes. So what is the difference between Dr. Bails theory and cognitive behavior theories? Dr. Bails work was very much involved with exploring the unconscious, what's going on in a patient's unconscious that they are unaware of. So and you know that it has a lot to do with exploring your past, and it has to do with, as you've been learning about and talking about on these podcasts.

The what? Dr. Bail called the imprint and the way that he worked with the imprint was through a patient's dream. And then the interpretation and the understanding of that dream. And it took him years to come to this as an approach. My understanding is he came to it later in his life, although he lived to a hundred. That's much later. But I believe that he was in his early sixties, late fifties, early sixties when he began to put this together. And again, my understanding is that it came his discovery really came through his work with his patients.

He already knew from his own training as a psychoanalyst and his own his own analysis. He came to value the dream very, very, very much. So I think the dream was always a part of his work. What the understanding of what that dream meant, I think, changed for him quite radically. He did speak about some of his own therapy early on as being really fabulous but being intellectual. These great conversations back and forth. But he noticed that he wasn't changing or growing or feeling different. And he sort of talked about that as the stimulus to kind of break away from all that and say, I, I've got nothing.

I'm going to start for nothing from nothing and see where it takes me. And that's a huge piece of work to just just to attempt to that, to try to empty oneself, to try after years of medical school, years of psychiatric training, years, then another set of years of psychoanalytic training and building a practice and working in a particular modality, and then to try to let all of that go and open yourself up. It was is quite a task. Yeah. And it was quite trying. According to him, it was a difficult, difficult time. I can imagine that it was it would take well, like everyone's analysis, I think it takes courage, it takes perseverance.

So I think he had to have those qualities in spades to do that. Right. I think some of us just like to say maybe I'm not perfect, maybe I'm not always happy, but I'm good. I don't need this. Just get on. Yeah, I'm just going to live my life, which is great. I mean, people can do that, too. So you came to Dr. Bail after working with Dr. Cher and. And she practiced using his theories and his dream work. Right. And you came to her because you had you read her book or you. I saw her book at a psychoanalytic conference or a psychotherapy conference.

And I just read the flap. And I was really fascinated with the approach she was describing, which was Dr. Bails approach and the analytic understanding, using dreams as a way to understand someone's unconscious. I had very much earlier in my life as a young man had been in and young in analysis for a number of years. And could you give us just a little tip of the iceberg about what Jung in analysis? Carl Jung was one of the original disciples of Freud, and very early on broke off with Freud as a number of people did, who didn't necessarily want to follow Freud's point of view of looking at the edifice complex as some of those disciples were quite famous and great intellects themselves as young was Jung became he still did analytic work and he used the dream.

But Jung felt that the dream was primarily made up of symbols that were universal. And so if you can understand the symbology in the dream, that's how you will unlock its meaning. So that's where that was. But I had always appreciated the dream as as a an area that was mysterious. And yet it felt had always felt to me to be quite important. So when I saw Doctor shares a book that described Dr. Bail's work, that really rang a bell for me. So I got in touch with Dr. Sharon and started seeing her congruent with my work. With her was my growing interest in psychoanalysis.

So I began to get some training with that. I learned more about Dr. Bail. I went to seminars, I went to some psychoanalytic conferences where he would present. And so that was the dream was really my entrance to his work. And during that course of time, were you studying or were you already a doctor? No, I was already in private practice. I had probably been practicing for ten or 12 years. I was doing a different kind of work. I had come out of a kind of work called somatic psychology or somatic psychotherapy. And describe that. Sheer somatic.

There's again, there's you know, hundreds of kinds of somatic psychotherapies that are going around not only the US, but around the world, many, many people have taken bits and pieces of that and developed their own kind of work. Is it also frequently gaining in popularity? I've heard of it a lot more than I had in the past, but maybe my ears are open. I don't know what its current status is, to be honest, but during the eighties and the nineties, in the early 2000s, for sure there was a lot of both professional interest and interest I think. And in the general public in that approach at sort of its essence.

Somatic psychology wants to include the body so that you're not just dealing with a patient in their intellect, but you're looking at the you're including the body in your observation of the person, their eye movements, their facial movements, their facial expressions, their posture, how they're holding their hands. If you begin to talk about somebody's mother and and the patient goes like this, you go, that's it. Let's see. So it's information on a physiological level that you include understanding of the patient and what's going on. And there's lots of other kinds.

And there's people who do physical exercises that have sort of combined yoga with other modalities. So it's a quite varied field as. A way to get to the issues, then. As a way to try to get to the issues. Yes, Correct. So then is this therapy a little awkward now? Because so many doctors are having their meetings with patients across a Zoom platform? I, I, I think it would have to be, you know, people many times now are only doing work on Zoom or or on the telephone. I personally would find that. I mean, I've been on Zoom meetings and there's an odd quality to them.

Yes, there is. It's you're looking at the person. So you have that visual stimulus that you don't have on the phone, but there's the quality of the contact. It's not like sitting with someone. You know, there's definitely a separation. Whereas on the phone you're listening. Part of the therapist is really, really heightened. So you may pay much more attention to the patient's voice and what that's expressing and how it changes moment to moment or in in a sentence or how it changes as the as the subject of what you're talking about, changes. You know, again, if you begin to talk about someone's mother and then they start almost you can see or feel them becoming sad again, it's information.

So the therapy just once all the information that we can that we can gather. Even those who don't really consider themselves somatic therapists, you almost can't help but use it as a tool. I think if you're paying attention, you'll see things, you know, you'll you'll see things happening. The union way of looking at dreams then means that what I'm dreaming about, I'm dreaming about a house, a house is always a house, whether I'm Cynthia or Janine. I mean, I was a patient in that work. And so I have read some of young but again, I'm not a union analyst, but often a house might be interpreted as the self, which is not a leap to me.

You know, I can stand in for the you're essential. So. So Jung didn't come with a book of symbols saying this is well. More or less. Yeah. If you study that work, you know, if there's a fish that can have a particular meaning. So numbers would have meanings. There were symbols that Jung found that seemed to be universal across cultures and across time. And so that's important to think about. And it is and it does make some some sense that a house would represent, you. The place where you reside. Yes. Yeah. Whether that's physically, literally or psychically.

Yeah. Yeah. In Dr. Bail's work, though, that symbology was more individual based, he would look to his patient to share what they thought their dream was about and what those things meant. Like I was in this house, but it wasn't my house. That's an unfamiliar house. Well, now there's a house. But what does that mean? And maybe it is completely individualized. Yes. Dr. Bail's view, I believe, of the of these kinds of symbols in a dream or the unconscious has a great amount of plasticity. It can use anything at any time in any way it chooses to.

So you always want to have an open mind as the analyst. You want to look at What does this House mean for this patient today or last night or in their in the context of their life, what's going on? Because the House might be maybe it's a haunted house, You know, maybe their childhood home was not a good place. Maybe it was a place of violence and terror and not a good place. So it might not represent the self. So you have to it's a piece of work for the analysts to keep an open mind, especially as you go along with the patient. Some themes may reemerge over time.

That's why the analyst and when you work in the way that Dr. Bail developed, you want your information to come from the patient. You try not to put what you think is going on onto the patient. You gather when you listen to the dream and you ask questions that may elicit feelings and thoughts from the patient. Then you begin to gather information about what this dream, what the patient is thinking, what's occurring to the patient about this dream, not just what I think I may have a hit, but I have to I have to be mature enough in my own mind to put this.

I have to hold it over here and keep gathering this information. And at some point in the hour, you try to put them together in and solve the mystery and the patient will tell you if you're right or not. I think so, yeah. So that, though, for is that the case for any therapist across types of therapy that you as the therapist, have to hold over here what it is you think is going on? Well, hopefully. It would seem like that would be one of the tenants. Yes, it it is one of the tenants. And I said hopefully half jokingly. But but also, you know, seriously, because it's a it again, is a piece of work for the analyst to put aside in a significant way their own feelings and impulses and their thoughts and keep listening to the patient.

So every therapist and analyst is trained in a particular way. And so you the therapist, is going to bring something of their training and their background, of course, to to the to the consulting room and how they manage that is very important. And I guess that would lead patients to go to one therapist or another, depending on where they were thinking that they were best suited. I mean, if you feel that at home in the good sense. Right. Of home, you will probably stay there. If you you know, if a patient has the experience that the therapist is continually putting something on them or has an agenda in some way that isn't clearly stated.

Yeah. And that can tend to drive a patient away because they won't feel listened to. They won't really feel seen. Sure. So Dr. Bail's work of late, we're doing our best to put it back in the forefront. I know for a period of time his work was really well known and there were lots of people trying to learn about his theory as doctors, other therapists. Is. Is that right? That's my understanding, yes. And I know that a lot of what he did was considered very controversial. And he always made his point known. He didn't step back from what he believed to be the absolute truth in terms of people being able to take care of themselves and become their best self.

I'm disheartened that he wasn't able to make a whole lot of progress with that in his community, amongst his peers. Do you think there's more of an opening to this work now? I hope so. I think that there is, because the field itself is more I believe, is more open. When Dr. Bail first was trained and first was in his practice, it pretty much was true that there was Freudian analysis and the couple small offshoots that grew in the late forties and early fifties, but they were really very, really, very new. I believe that, you know, one of the things that Dr. Bails said is that truth is love.

When you are able to say the truth, that should be in a loving way and to further love. He was a man who who stood for the truth in many ways emotionally and intellectually and professionally. And I think that that alienated him from a lot of people in that community of of analysts. I think so, too, Yes. But he was all about the truth. So if you broke away, you know, if it was the late fifties, early sixties, and you wanted to break away from the Freudian the Freudian paradigm, you know, you were going to alienate a lot of your colleagues, people that you went to school with and people that you trained with.

And those people might not send you referrals because you were going in a different path that they didn't know or didn't agree with or may have been hotly contested. And what does that mean for the way they've been treating their patients all this time? Does that come into question? Well, it would mean that that was it would tend to be narrow and, you know, be in kind of a box. Yeah. As opposed to what you were saying earlier where Dr. Bail tried to open himself in order to go down a different path. That was not a Freudian theoretical framework.

He had to open himself to something else to see if there was something else there. And he often said that he wanted other therapists, particularly young therapists, to have that opportunity to think outside of the Freudian paradigm, to be able to maybe not even follow in his footsteps, but to explore something else. Yes. And I don't know if there's a lot of room for that quite yet. There tend to be schools of thought and theory, theoretical schools, and they they tend to stay with their kind. And there's there isn't often a lot of crossover. And that's not new in many disciplines.

So either this way or you're either in or you're out. Yeah. So for you, if you don't mind, you can tell me if you do during the course of this work either with Dr. Sherry. Dr. Bail, was there a point where you said, yeah, I get this? I see. I've read about it. I'm here because I'm intrigued, but I really feel this working for me. And then what did that mean for you? Did your did your life change? Did your relationships change? Did your therapy change? Yes. Still, for example, was there something that you some way you grew up or something that you wished you'd done that you didn't, but now you're like, wait a minute, I am entitled to all this.

I think you're asking me about my growth personally and my growth professionally. And so that happened over a period of time, as opposed to the Zen moment where everything in the universe changes. It's usually an accumulation of understandings that begin to show up in your life, and in particular ways like your life works better. It things could be small things. Things get cleaned up, things are a little easier. You don't have the same roadblocks you don't get. Perhaps you don't get sick as often or you don't get as many colds. For me, music when I was very young was something that really captured me, made me feel very alive.

But I. I didn't get too far with that in my adolescence. But through my work with Dr. Cher, which is how I came to understand Dr. Bails work both intellectually and from an experiential point of view. I was able to go back and get a guitar and start taking lessons and bump into all the struggles that I had left behind when I didn't follow through on that. So it wasn't just that, now I'm I'm fine, I'm perfect. I've done this work and I go get the guitar and now I play like this. I had to go get it and then bump into what was what was it that I had been struggling, what kept me away from, from being able to enjoy it and to get somewhere and to do something with it.

So again, that's a piece of work. And so that happened over time. And I play guitar and I play harmonica and I have a band, as you know. A really fabulous band, all super talented. And so I it, it means a lot to me. It gives a lot to me. And I can be on stage and give that to other people. And it's, it's just a great thrill. It's funny because I've had people, guys like my age come up to me in between sets or after a gig and say, Dude, you're living my dream. Like, Yeah, I'm living mine. Yeah. So that's so fabulous. Yeah, yeah. It's a gift. They could be living their dream too.

You know, if you get if you get help and support and you listen to what your dream is telling you about yourself and you have a hopefully you have a skilled person to work that through with, then you can make progress. So I was intrigued when you said that you worked through some well, you discovered that, yes, you're going to pick up the guitar and you're going to play and that was comfortable and you hadn't done that sort of to your dismay, I suppose, as a younger person. But that that didn't mean, like you said, you just picked it up and played and everything was perfect.

There were still issues to overcome, whatever they were. Did you through the therapy then gather some strength to deal with those issues? Well, by bringing in a dream to my analysis over time, my dreams told me and my analyst who helped give me an accurate interpretation of those dreams, I began to understand how I was in my own way. It also becomes clear what you need to do about it. That's not easy. Or I would have done it when I was 12. It's very it was for me, that was the hard work. Everyone has their own hard work to do. So yes, I think that answers.

It does. Yeah. And because I'm going to forget you get to a place where the interpretation is accurate, and that's kind of this group effort between you and your therapist. How do you know that? How does it how does how do you say how do you get to that place where that's it? I mean, I know it's not just a sudden spark, but I mean, as I've said before, I wasn't analyzed. But in talking about some of my dreams with Bernard, we would talk and talk and talk. And finally I would go, I feel something here that I I've been thinking this was yellow all this time.

And look, it's blue. You answered your own question, but I'll. Answer it to. Use it what you did. So again, if we bring a little bit of tracking the body, if you don't mind, and listening, what you did was, as you would describe a moment ago, when you had an understanding of your dream that was accurate, The reason you knew it was accurate, you went, so there was an opening, a softening. Something happened inside of you. There was a knowing. And you were quite clear. Yes. yeah. And that I remember thinking that is just shockingly wonderful. And that, that thing that was so much only about feeling, but it was a recognizable thing to use as a path forward and, you know, created a zone where it's like, I want more of this.

Yeah, that's right. Because it's a it's a it's a deeply good feeling. Even a small one like you were enacting. It doesn't have to be. That was the biggest insight you've ever had in your life. And it's it's a small not even a hand necessarily, but you know, it's like it's a little bit for me, it was like a it was often the feel like a correct understanding of the dream was a feeling. It was like I was going like this and now I was back on track and like, you're like. And so if you see someone and work on your dreams a couple of times a week, you know, once a week can be a long time in between.

If a person is struggling in their life, you have six days and 23 hours where you're not getting this particular kind of help and understanding. So you go off again and then you come back and you in through your unconscious, the production of the dream. And then under standing of that dream, you get back on track and you get back on track. And over time you're like, This feels terrible. I want to get back on track because this is me. Yeah, I know, this is me. This is more me than this is. And that feels all put together like the parts and pieces have all landed.

Where they should be. Yeah, we always have work to do. But you feel like you've got a base that it's like this, not like this. And yeah, you're not white knuckling anymore. Yeah. Yeah. You have a place to start from and, and you've done something. I think just by virtue of investigating your dreams and being open to the idea of the unconscious, which is a huge, vast thing, is can be kind of ominous. It's could be scary. It's like I don't want I don't think I want to go there, but to go there and even have a little hint like that. Yeah, it's not so, you know, it's blue.

Just it's just to have that is so eye opening. You just got to keep going. Well, that those experiences, even though they happen one at a time, they build on each other and they help, you know. Okay, yeah, this is scary. It's hard. I don't feel like going to therapy in a day. I'll just call it I'll call in sick now. But as you get those sort of correcting to get back on track, it sort of builds on itself. It builds strength, it builds reassurance inside of yourself so that you can begin to go, you know, even though it's hard, I don't know where it's going or this unconscious thing, what the heck's that all about?

But if you keep having an experience of coming to yourself that tends to keep you going, you're like, okay, I'm going to go back. Because even on the days you don't want to go, if you have something of that experience, you that helps. And eventually, you know, I'm going to go even though I don't want to go. Sometimes. You might also find out the days you don't want to go. There's something really important going on that's just kind of hard to look at. So you become suspicious of your own, the part of yourself. Maybe the saboteur that Dr. Bail talked about.

I know it's come up here with other talks that you've done. It has been very a little bit about what that is. Just to refresh us laypeople. The saboteur is a part of us that wants to maintain the status quo, that wants to maintain this status quo over here. That's a little bit off track because that's how it's always been. That's what the truth is. Why know that? Because it's what I've felt and believed for 50 years of my life. That's what. So that must be true. And this is part of your unconscious? Yes, it's it's yes, it is. You don't know really that it's a part of you that's keeping you from health.

And that saboteur could be sort of screwing with your dreams. And you are thinking, okay, this must mean this. And that's what the saboteur wants you to think, so that you can keep the status quo. But really, this maybe means this. Yes, it's that where you need an analyst with experience who's been in their own analysis, who knows the interpretation of dreams because they've had their own dreams, interpret. You can't you can't do this work without as a therapist, without having. No. Yeah. No, you can't. So when someone feels like I don't feel like going to therapy today and, you know, over time, you, you become aware, you know, if you have the experience, I don't want to go and you do and something important happens.

It helps you go the next time you feel that like, Wait, I am not going to pay attention to that, or even if I don't want to go, I know it's going to be in my best long term interest to go. But yes, we can say that. That's the saboteur saying is don't go today. What one time, Don't worry about it. Save some money and, you know. Watch that movie. Go get some coffee. And you're. Right. I think the other thing that happens is there are moments where you don't remember your dreams, maybe for a few days. And I know for me that's frustrating. Or it used to be frustrating.

Like, I want to write this down. I want to figure out what's going on. And it's like, why can't I dream? And then I got to the place where I'm like, this kind of cool something. Something big is going to come. Well, you know, for the for the therapist or the analyst, if your patient doesn't dream, you may go, let's say this particular patient normally comes in with a dream. Could be elaborate. It could be small, could be one thing, one piece of something. But they normally bring something in. If suddenly they don't. The analyst is like, okay, let's we want to know.

The analyst wants to know what this is about. Why is this perhaps their previous interpretation of the dream wasn't correct. Oftentimes, if the interpretation or understanding of the dream isn't accurate, you won't dream until that piece of work is done correctly and then the patient opens up again. So then is that an opportunity for you as a therapist to kind of go back to that dream and and talk about it some more? Absolutely. You might go back and and and look at that dream again or talk about it or check in with the patient. Maybe the patient was taking care of you.

I see this happens where the patient will take care of the analyst. So but again, if the patient isn't dreaming it, these they're sort of built in guardrails. The analyst being open enough to think, well, maybe this my interpretation the other day was incorrect. Maybe there's something going on. Like you alluded to that kind of big and the patient doesn't want to in a in some way doesn't want to remember because it may be something that's hard to look at. You know, in the same vein, I think you were almost asking this question also, which is people often believe they need to bring in this long story.

This happened in here. And then I was driving a car and then I was the ocean. And then. you have to be entertained. Right? Right. You have to produce. It might be just something like, well, all I remember is something about the color gray. That's enough. You can make you can do a piece of work with that. So the other sort of built in guardrail is that some people will remember what they're able to remember at that given time. And that's okay. That's fine. You go you go with that. Yeah. And you could have an entire 50 minutes around that because the color gray leads you to something.

To something. To something. Sure. What comes to mind was, well, my dad, it was his favorite color. yeah. Right. That there's probably a piece of work there. Yeah. and the other aspect is that Dr. Baily didn't want you didn't want the patient to write down their dreams. because we all tend to edit. If you have a pretty hard dream and you're doing something or involved with something that's unseemly, really, or that you don't think makes you look good, the tendency is to you'll leave it out or you'll make it slightly better. Or so we don't want to edit the dream with our conscious mind.

And writing is very much a conscious. It's a little bit of a complicated activity, thinking about something and getting out out onto the pencil and the paper. There's a tremendous amount of editing that goes on. Anybody who writes will tell you that you write something. Now you scratch out, now that's better. And people write and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. If we can get an unedited version of the dream, what the patient is able to remember on this particular Tuesday, that's much more authentic. Let's say unadulterated. But there's still the potential that that could be edited.

Like I'm telling you, my dream. And there's this part that's super embarrassing. Yes, I'm going to leave that out, but you'll probably. Over time, I think that'll get worked out. Yeah. And sometimes the the opposite happens, which is as you're working with a dream, a piece of the dream will be remembered by the patient also like, yeah. And then this happened and I forgot that because it's all getting stimulated again and, and hopefully being understood. And so understanding is really important when, when a person feels understood, they open up.

Yeah, I guess the more you test those waters as a patient, like I'm going to share this bit makes me uncomfortable. But they see that you're still sitting there. If you're if it's still if something you're uncomfortable with is met with understanding and a and a feeling of not judgment and a feeling of empathy and understanding. And the goal is one, really, to help you grow as a person over time, you're you're going to take that in and you begin to trust that more and more. And so it's self fulfilling and the process. That's really precious because I think that's, you know, that's hard for us to come by in our day to day.

It is. What do you think are the greatest things to come from understanding dreams, unlocking your unconscious and understanding or honoring this idea of the mother's imprint rather than when I say honoring it, making yourself okay with having an imprint. What's what's what's a great thing about doing that? Well, the greatest thing is that you get over time to come home. That feeling that we were speaking about coming back to yourself, only a deep a true, authentic self, which gives one the feeling of, yeah, that's, that's me. And that's a good feeling.

So the imprint is a little bit the opposite of that. The imprint keeps you in bondage. Now, one of the things that makes that better is understanding your dreams, because that over time that will undo those bonds that are trapping you. And the other is the understanding that, you know what we all have an imprint. You can't get here without one. Some are better than others. Some people are more damaged. We all know that. But everybody has a mother. Every mother has an unconscious. And so we all come into this world with some work. Everybody has an imprint.

And that also helps patients with this idea, which is, you know, people think that Dr. Bail was blaming the mother. It's not blaming the mother because there's no one really to blame. I mean, children can be real victims, especially in families where there's abuse of some kind. But all of us, as we at some point in adulthood were more responsible for our own growth. And in that way, there's you if you begin to understand your mother if you begin to understand your own imprint from your mother, you're going to bump into the fact that your mom had an imprint because.

You're going to say, well, where did her imprint come from? Well, that came from maternal grandma. Well, where did she get her? And so we can start going back. And it's a little bit endless. It is. And at some point you're like, well, who's to blame? Right? You know, great, great, great, great, great grandma. No. And we do have to include fathers in this. Absolutely. Because I think fathers, you know, hopefully more now in these last couple generations are much more involved in pregnancy and in early child care. I think the more a father does that, the better it is for children.

You know, obviously, again, taking away addictions and physical abuse and very harmful things. But I think if a child has two loving parents, that's great. Good, great. Not everybody has that. And healthy kids can come out of any kind of family structure. Doesn't have to be two parents if you have that. And then great. You know, because we know that the fetus at a certain point can hear, hear, hear. The mother and the father can hear them. Yeah. So talk to your baby. Talk to the baby inside there. Talk to the fetus. And that relationship between that couple, the way the father treats reacts to the mother is also delivered to the baby.

Absolutely. I think the baby gets everything in that environment and it's getting the mothers, not only the mother's unconscious, but it's getting the mother's ongoing daily experience through her emotional life and through her biochemistry That goes right to the fetus. Yeah. It seems so simple to understand, and yet. It's hard to do. It is. Because, you know, mom and dad and everybody have to live a life and they got to get food on the table and they have to go to the grocery store and they have to deal with their parents or their neighbors or their siblings.

And, you know, life is complicated. And in that process, too, I think most of us also feel like we have to do all of those things perfectly and that we don't have issues and that it's not okay to have issues and therefore it's not okay to have an imprint. And if we can get to a place where as humans, as individuals, we can say, Hey, I have issues and I'm no less of a person and I'm working through these things and I'm trying to get to who I really am to best self, but I'm going to make mistakes and I'm not here to be perfect. That's a tough road to be perfect because none of us are.

It's an impossible task that that tends to never let up. You know, where it's people who wears people out. But if a mom, a pregnant mom can say to the baby, you know, I'm feeling so disappointed in myself because I didn't do this right. But I know I'm trying to be perfect and this doesn't have to do with you. Just even saying those words, I think is a is a good step. I think some talking to your baby, if you're sad, tell your developing baby in utero that you're sad and it's not because of the baby that's lovely. And and that baby then also I think because we were talking about a baby that can read your facial expression when we were talking with Dr. Kross and and learn to know when you're happy or sad and know that a smile means happy and a frown doesn't in utero, then it would be the same thing with a voice that baby could hear sort of the rumble in your sadness or, you know, this little squeaky ness and your laugh and and begin to take on those things.

In the in the developing fetus will experience the mother's emotions, like I said a moment ago. So if mom is sad the whole biochemistry going on in mom that comes with sadness or depression is is experienced by the baby, as is the happiness, the smile. The baby also gets the smile. And so it's interesting that the when a baby, a newborn is breastfeeding so the baby can focus, the newborn infant can focus at about 12 inches after three days, which is really fast. That's about the distance, the mother's eyes and the breastfeeding baby. That's exactly what Dr. Krauss said.

It's true. In another part of my professional life, I studied early infant development. And and and that's also why Dr. Bail's work appealed to me, because I had already been very interested in fetal development and early infant development, because it's so such an important time. But isn't that amazing that nature, You know, you're brand new and you're growing and nature's giving you a little bit more scope at a time and to settle in, this is all you got to do right here, just right. Here. That's why it's really important for a mom who's breastfeeding to look at that baby and not be on her phone, for instance, or whatever, or on the other phone or watching TV and, you know, pay attention and look at the baby and in a loving way and get then everybody gets that oxytocin and all those those those good things.

And I think that nature, like you were saying, it did that as a survival make. It helped. That helps human infants survive. They can't do anything. They can't stand, they can't talk, they can't run. They can. We're really helpless. We're still relying on mom. And so if you make contact with mom and mom makes contact with you and mom makes a bond with you through visual contact and the feelings that come with that, she's going to take care of you. So nature provided us a way to survive because that's the job, number one. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a little piece of physiology that helped our survival.

I think. It's interesting. And again, I still think it's hard to grasp, even though I get it, that for example, as a pregnant mom, something happens. You feel fear. I don't know. Maybe you're almost running into the car in front of you and your heart starts to beat. Yeah. And your blood starts to move faster. Well, that's happening to the baby. Yes. I mean, that's just clear. Why is then it's so hard for us to understand that everything we're doing is happening to the baby. Well, people still have an old, you know, pediatricians know this stuff.

Someone people who study early infant development know these things. But I think in general, most new parents and most people think, the baby doesn't know anything. It's not really feeling stuff. You have you poke with a pen, it'll have a reaction to physical pain. But, you know, it's it's it's not really thinking, it's not really feeling. It can't talk. So nothing is going on. Yeah. So you can yell and scream with your neighbor and it doesn't matter. And the, and the thing that you hear is people say, well the baby I'll never remember or the baby experiences that and it's unconscious remembers.

And that experience may come up in the dream if a dream is correctly understood, if it if let's say that experience is a part of the imprint, if it was something of the imprint being acted out, it'll show up. Because our unconscious stores all of that stuff. Is that right? It does, yes. It's all in there. And I think also, you know, in some way, we're asking a lot of new parents who are under tremendous pressure to start taking care of this baby as a fetus, yet, you know, wait till after the birth. You have to start now. Talk to it and take care of it.

Assume that it's not intellectually understanding everything, but experiencing everything. And, you know, dads used to think, well, when when or she can walk and talk and then I can throw a ball, then yeah, call me. Yeah. There's so much going on though in the life of that pregnant person that keeps you away from doing what you're suggesting. You just the fear alone of I'm bringing this human into the world. What if I don't do it right? I don't. I've never done this before, or I've done it four times before, and I got all those other kids to take care of.

I mean, there's so much pressure. It's a lot of pressure. I mean, I can only imagine what that pressure is like and that sense of responsibility that comes with that of being the nest and carrying the, you know, having a human being live inside of you. It's pretty I I've never been able to get over that. It's quite the miracle. That's the way we come into the world. We grow inside of another person for nine months. How can that person not be an influence on you? To me, the imprint to me made sense immediately because of that, Because I already knew something about fetal development and infants.

And so I'm like, Well, of course you live in that nest. It's going to influence you. But this idea I find so often rejected. You know, I think, again, it it requires it means there's going to be another level of responsibility. And some people don't want that, especially if they have busy, hectic lives or if they're struggling with their own life. They're, you know, usually occupied with themselves. Yeah, there's. No I have to take now I have to take care of and that's someone else. Right. Right. And I mean, we almost all of us sign up for it on some level.

Yeah. And then you're in too deep. The you, you want it to happen typically or for those that do want it to happen, it doesn't then come unburdened. You know, it's you know, as you go along, it's all these things that you see that you're responsible for in addition to what you're already responsible for. Yeah, it's a lot. It is. But in the same way as we were talking about therapy and and analysis. And when you have an understanding and you have this good feeling, you get that also with your kids and you get it back and that helps keep you going.

You that sometimes it's good not to write down dreams. And now in this podcast we often suggest that you might write down your dream before you forget it. We're also in a place where we're talking with people who don't have access to therapy potentially. What do you think about Lay people perhaps writing down their dreams and kind of going back and reading them and maybe accumulating them and finding patterns? I guess basically I'm getting to two things. Is it totally detrimental to write down your dreams? And can people who don't have access to therapy become curious enough to where they can start to help themselves a little bit?

Well, it isn't like a rule that you you're going to get your hands full if you if you break if you come in with a dream that you wrote down. But for the reasons that I stated in general, the way I was trained with Dr. Bails work is you want the you want a patient to begin to remember their dreams. And really, I can tell people say, well, I don't remember my dreams. What it is, is it's a habit. So if you can remember the color gray and then a few dreams later, you'll remember a gray picture. And then that it was in the living room. And so when you when you begin to make remembering your dreams a habit you remember, you tend to remember them again, whether it's long or short.

Now, if you're not in an ongoing analysis where you're working with the dreams once or twice a week or whatever it may be, then writing it down is a way for you to keep track over time of your dreams. I think that's that's a good thing. And reviewing them can be really helpful. And you may see patterns and things emerge that that you wouldn't ordinarily. And so that's different than when you're in an ongoing therapeutic situation where you're working with dreams in an ongoing way. But I think and you I think we can train ourselves to remember our dreams.

Yeah. It's again, like I said, it's a it's just a habit. Yeah. And it's one that everybody can learn. Yeah, but if you want to have an ongoing record of that, perhaps what I would do is try to remember my dream. Think about the dream that you remember or the portions of it you remember. If you feel done with that, then go write it down. Yeah. I mean, again, that's not like some hard and fast rule. And that's what occurs to me so. Well over the course of time. I haven't in a while I wrote down so many dreams, and every once more I go back and look at them and I see how they changed and morphed into this, to this, to this, to this.

And I can put it together with how I see how I think I've changed and how it's amazing to see that kind of correlation. You're to go back to Young for a minute and your rug here. He would say that, you know, each dream is like one little piece of this complicated pattern of this rug. And so when you can look at them over time, you'll see more of the big picture, I think is what you're describing. Yeah, but if I if let's say I was going into therapy and somebody said, this is just this little piece, I'd be like, Jeez, I got a long way to go. Yeah.

So I have this big question about creativity. I'm going to narrow it down. But I think a lot of us have some ability to that that we're creative on some level music, art, cooking, whatever it may be singing. But I think a lot of us aren't able to have a safe place to express that, like it's stifled, whether it comes from society or family, our parents or And I feel like humanity's truly missing out because so many of us have closed ourselves down to that. What do you think about that? I think everybody has some measure of creativity. I think it doesn't get supported very much as you're I think is part of what you're alluding to in culture.

I mean, in our public schools these days, there aren't any art classes in public school. Yeah, it was one of the first things ago. Art and music. we're going to make the day shorter. So they go and often then families, there may be a prejudice because it may be that parents don't see an artistic life or a creative life as being a viable way to make a living. And depending on the discipline, it certainly can be hard. And often there's people very at the top of music or art that make a lot of money and everybody else is broke. So it isn't that some of those things aren't true.

But in general, I think parents get scared that their kids are going to go on this path of being the starving artist and they want they don't want that for them. Yes. So they tend to look at the economic picture rather than what's going on in this kid. A lot of kids like me in terms of art and drawing. I think I stopped around the fourth grade in fifth grade and I just thought, well, I'm not good. I can't do that. My brother was a really good artist. He's a painter. And I thought, Well, he's the one. And everybody in my family thought, Tony is the way He's got all the talent.

He's the artist. Tom will do something else. So I'm like, Well, they know what they're talking about. But again, it's, you know, you're you want to set your kids up for survival. So you get a job where you get a paycheck that's not going to work so well if you're an artist in their mind. Yeah. I mean, painting still life is not. Most parents don't consider that as a no, as a way to make a living. No. And it kind of isn't. But. Well, it can be. It can be really tough. But every time a kid has an interest in art, which almost every young child does, doesn't mean they're going to go on and want to be an artist or a painter.

But I would say you encourage and support creativity wherever you see it in your kid's lives. Just let it play out and you don't have to be so worried about it. Let it play out. It seems almost to me like that creative comes from so deep within us that it's it's us being able to express a little bit of our true self. And even if we have this fabulous job at the bank, I feel like it's a healthy thing for us to find an outlet to, in addition to the bank, find something that you can do that is creative. Like it's maybe it's just me that thinks it's that it's just seems like another tool that you can use to discover who you really are is to find that zone where you can just express yourself.

That's absolutely true. And that's something when you have a creative outlet, it's something. So if you're at a bank, there's not a whole lot of personal expression that is is that environment is not conducive to that per say, that's okay. That what that is, when you have a creative outlet, something is coming directly from you. If you paint you like, that's my painting, that's that creative place or your expression of it isn't something anyone can take away. It's a beautiful thing. And nobody else can do it quite that same. Way. That's right, Yeah.

So what about this idea. That's worth nurturing? yeah. Supporting it is. You want that. You want that to grow. You don't want to squash that. As soon as it comes up, you want to let it grow and see where it goes. And that expression of our true self, if it comes through this creativity, is such a great thing to share with other people and could perhaps even lead them to think about their creative outlet because. We're all similar in many, many ways. And so your unique expression in some creative outlet is going to have something of your own humanity in it, and other people are going to say, You know, I that's how I thought, what a great way to say that, or what a great way to express those feelings about loss.

All those poems that you've read where you're like, my gosh, I cannot believe that you put everything I'm feeling into those words. Yeah, on that page you. Helped me because like, I couldn't quite say that. Yeah, I think as far as we know, human beings have been doing painting and caves, you know, whether it's the hunt, you with the buffalo or or even just the hand. I love the hands in the caves, etc.. That was a personal expression, you know, that was only that one person's hand. And there was storytelling and things like that and acting out and dramatizing.

And those are human and deeply human activities. So this idea of getting to your true self and like I said, I had this feeling of, that feeling, that experience of getting into your unconscious. Is there something spiritual about that? I think the work is I experienced it. We're working with Dr. Bails theories and his way of understand the dream. I think it opens when you get connected to yourself. When that happens, we don't close off, we open up. You have to open up for that to come through your connection to yourself. You have to be open to that and bumping into the scary things and the things that go bump in the night.

You have to work through those. And so I think if you connect to yourself that deep self, that does connect you to humanity, because we're all we're the same species and we all have similar struggles and we're all in spite of people having lots of theories, we're all trying to figure out what the hell's going on here, what does this all mean? So we're all involved in similar struggles over time. I learned. So there was one moment where I felt like, this work is really spiritual work. This is spiritual work because I'm cleaning stuff out. As I do that I feel better.

As I feel better, I'm more open and as I'm more open, I feel more empathic and more connected to the world and the people around me, and even people who are not around me. So to me that is very spiritual. And that that you just described is spiritual. And I think that that happens almost unknowingly. I mean, you can one day at one day sit down and, go, yeah, I see that the way I approach the world, the rest of humanity is different than it used to be. But I think it just comes from you. Then naturally, once you've discovered who you really are, because you can't help but be your true self without truth.

I think you know, another way to say it is that if you've if you've worked to diminish the internal saboteur, you become more empathic with yourself. Yeah. You don't want to beat yourself up anymore, right? That's hard work. It is. And once you feel good, you don't want to feel bad anymore. So it also opens you up to other people's struggles, which is a way to say you're more empathic, you're more empathic with yourself, and you're more empathic with other people's pain. Because again, our pains are all pretty, they're pretty similar. And if you no longer need to beat yourself up, you don't really need to beat up anybody else.

No. You don't want to. Yeah, you don't. Because you know what that feels like because you've probably had a lifetime of it. Yes. So you said me the other day that the dream may be the purest expression of the unconscious. You've probably explained that in this conversation, but is there a simple explanation? Well, I just think that we're not. The dream happens when we sleep during REM sleep, when we're not awake. We're not occupied with other things. We're not thinking about other things. We're not distracted by outside stimulation. Yeah So we're not responding to both visual stimulation, auditory physical stimulation and that sort of quietness allows that part of the mind to come forward and give you here's here's something to think about.

Everything else is pretty still here. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It's sort of like if someone says, you know, I want to think about such and such, I'm going to go for a walk. It's a way of having a quiet time, and sleep is pretty much a quiet time. Everything of the conscious mind is quieted, so we're not getting that stimulation and. And once people discover their unconscious is there's so much hard stuff to contend with. Is it pretty easy for people to get rid of the idea of thinking that they're being punished? Let's say you've got to face all this bad stuff about yourself and your parents and your ancestors, and think of it as a gift.

I mean, some people may come in with that. I think most people have to do a little some some amount of work to begin to to value the dream. You know, you may come in. dream work. That sounds interesting, but you don't really know what's coming down the road, which is, you know, you're going to bump into the very things that your mind is been. You've spent a lifetime sort of holding off, holding at bay. So usually I think it happens over time as you get to have those moments of, you know, you begin to say, my unconscious is not telling me how bad I am in the dream.

Like, I have to work on this. And now I to work on that. And it's helping you on the road to develop and grow as an adult, whatever age you may, you may be. Dr. Bail Use that legal analogy analogy. Once he said the case is never closed. That's true. It's now. Closed. So you can see that as, you know, an ever oppressive thing or you can see as unlimited growth. We have infinite growth in front of us. And there's always something to learn, something to know. And if this makes me feel this good, why wouldn't I want to continue? Yeah, because it can only get better.

What a concept. Yeah. Well, thank you for being here. I am so happy to talk with you. And I'm glad we've had many opportunities to speak about this. And in addition to having you here and learning so much from you and having our our audience learn so much from you, I've learned so much about Bernhard, and I know through you things I did. I'm really. I'm touched. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate the invitation. it's great. It was great for me to be able to talk about his work. So is there something else you'd like to say that we haven't covered? I think you did a good job.

You did a good job. We did a good job. Thank you. Joining us. We look forward to seeing you next time and check in with any questions or comments because we're here. See you later.