Episode 16 -- The Archetype of the Gun
This Jungian Life Podcast
Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, Lisa Marchiano
4.7 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 July 2018
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As three analysts, we explore the archetype of “the gun” from a Jungian psychological view and seek to understand it’s influence in the collective psyche of Americans. Guns play a big role in American mythology from the American Revolution to cowboys and first-person shooter games. Guns are symbols of heroic power—but mythology also sounds a cautionary note about what can happen when humans arrogate super-human power to themselves.
The dream:
When I was a child, around ages 7 to 8, I would dream that my bedroom was covered in lizards. I’d wake up and jump to the floor, run to my parents’ bed, and climb in between them. Sweating, I’d look up to see the eye of a red dragon. Suddenly I was in an old-time saloon and the dragon would just be staring at me. That ‘s all there was to it, but it was repetitive.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to this Jungian life. |
| 0:03.0 | Three good friends and Jungian analysts, Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart and Joseph Lee, |
| 0:09.0 | invite you to join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings a psychological perspective to important issues of the day. |
| 0:17.0 | I'm Lisa Marciano and I'm a youngian analyst in Philadelphia. |
| 0:22.0 | I'm Joseph Lee and I'm a youngian analyst in Philadelphia. I'm Joseph Lee and I'm a youngian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia. |
| 0:27.0 | I'm Deborah Stewart, a youngian analyst on Cape Cod. |
| 0:31.0 | Well, this time we have agreed to discuss to circumambulate a topic that is very much out there in the public domain and that is the question of gun control. |
| 0:44.0 | And it seems that the recent shooting in the Parkland School in Florida |
| 0:50.0 | has elevated this discussion and action and political attention. |
| 0:55.0 | Finally, it seems as if it has tipped the scales into a new aspect, |
| 1:00.0 | a new domain of public awareness about what aspect of |
| 1:05.0 | aspect, a new domain of public awareness about what it means to consider gun control. |
| 1:08.0 | And of course, you know, one of the first places that I begin with this topic as with so many topics these days is how |
| 1:15.8 | polarized the discussion is. |
| 1:19.1 | And as a young Ian, I feel like I'm always trying to hold the both and and boy it's really tough on this one |
| 1:26.7 | So as a country we're very divided on it and it's very difficult to kind of cross lines on this one and have a conversation. |
| 1:35.0 | So I hope we can open it up in such a way that makes that possible. |
| 1:38.0 | Sure. I think it's very hard to abstract any topic where so much suffering and feeling are part of it. |
| 1:47.0 | Oh my goodness, there is so much feeling and especially around this recent shooting in Florida, |
| 1:54.5 | I can feel the tears behind my eyes now, |
| 1:57.6 | and Las Vegas and Sandy Hill, Connecticut, |
| 2:01.2 | and they're the Orlando Night, and there are so many, many shootings. |
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