The Boundary Paradox: How Limits Create Freedom

This Jungian Life Podcast

Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, Lisa Marchiano

Jungian, Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Psychology, Dreams, Jung, Relationships, Selfhelp, Society & Culture, Psychoanalysis

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!⁠⁠⁠

Boundaries define limits in relationships, work, and the psyche, balancing autonomy and connection. In relationships, they prevent enmeshment and detachment, fostering respect. Professionally, they maintain ethics and prevent burnout. Intrapsychically, they regulate self-cohesion and unconscious influences.

Cultures shape boundary norms, with individualistic societies valuing personal space and collectivist ones emphasizing connection. Myths depict boundaries as transformative thresholds, like Janus symbolizing transition. The key dialectic is between rigidity and permeability—too rigid isolates, too porous exhausts. Healthy boundaries require self-awareness, clear communication, and adaptability. They are not barriers but tools for navigating relationships while preserving identity and well-being.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to this Jungian life.
0:04.2	Three good friends and Jungian analysts, Lisa Marchiano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee,
0:09.7	invite you to join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
0:19.4	I'm Lisa Marchiano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia. I'm Joseph Lee,
0:24.9	and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst,
0:31.1	and Cape Cod.
0:49.9	Thank you. Today we're going to be talking about boundaries, and this was a topic that was brought forward by you, one of our listeners.
1:15.2	If you have a podcast topic you would like to suggest, please go to our website, thisyengenLife.com, and then go over to the podcast page, and you'll see there right at the top of the page a button where you can submit a podcast topic. We really appreciate it. We read through them. So bring it on. And we love this one. So boundaries are a very popular topic and kind of pop psychology on Instagram. Boundaries help us navigate the world. They help us differentiate between inner and
1:22.0	outer. And it's not much of a psychoanalytic concept in the way that it's used popularly.
1:29.4	But I think we have a lot to say on this subject.
1:31.9	We're going to be able to kind of bridge the boundary between a more popular concept
1:37.9	and a more kind of depth psychological aspect of this.
1:41.9	I'm aware just to do a little bit more on setting the context that this is a
1:47.9	term that really came online, so to speak, in the 90s in sort of the self-help section of a lot of the
1:57.8	bookstores. And, you know, as we thought about it and talked about it
2:03.2	amongst ourselves, it has tremendous depth. And that the collective psyche came up with a term
2:10.4	that embraces so many analytic, social, physical concepts, it's a great container for an important and multifaceted process.
2:28.5	Yeah, so I think when we start thinking about it psychoanalytically, actually there's a real
2:34.0	developmental use of the term
2:36.9	or of the concept. And Joseph, I wonder if I can toss that to you.
2:40.9	So we could say that the entire idea of ego formation has to do with the differentiation.
2:49.3	And differentiation, in a sense, takes something and puts it into
	...

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