First Fortnight

Good evening everybody and very warm welcome to the dock. This is our first event of 2018. And I just
want to wish you all a very happy new year. And thank you for your support this year. And hopefully, our
program for 2018 will be as exciting and interesting and we can count on your visit again. Tonight, we
programmed tonight's event as part of the first fortnight festival, which is actually this year seem to
have gained an awful lot of attraction in the media, and a lot of publicity and interest. And the first
fortnight I think, is an amazing festival, which celebrates all sorts of issues to do with mental health and
positivity and positive attitude, related to talking about mental health issues, which are so prevalent in
Ireland at the moment. And that's something that maybe we don't talk enough about. So we're
delighted to have two events here tonight, obviously. And then next Saturday, we're having a
conversation saloon, which is a relaxed, kind of get together we talk about your hopes and ambitions for
the next year. But I'm delighted that Brendan Harding is going to be here tonight. Brendan will be
accompanied by Eleanor Shanley and John Feely who are two musicians who probably don't need
introductions here. Thank you very much. Keep silence and hope you enjoy the evening.
[music]
John Feely. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. This is a presentation about
symbols to show how people use symbols and art to express what's going on in the unconscious, to
express what they cannot articulate verbally. And I'm really privileged to have John and Eleanor joining
me on this presentation. And a little aside if you feel like applauding if you could restrain yourself until
the end if you don't mind because there's a lot of different little pieces to get through. I mentioned to
you also that I'll be reading from my laptop and that's not because I don't know what's going on. But I
spent a lot of time condensing these, this material to get across some ideas that might be new to you,
and as concisely as proper as I can, because if you go off at all, you go into another area that needs
further explanation. So I'll do my best to that anyway. And as we go through it, John and Elenaor will
play some music that will honor the stories that I will tell. And I'm grateful to the people whose work
you will see. They or their families have given me permission to use their material. And all the work that
you see has appeared in a more clinical context in psychology journals. So to begin with, I'm going to
give you a very brief outline of the psychology of Carl Young, and in particular as it relates to the stories I
will describe. so Carl Gustav Young was born in 1875, and died in 1961. And he began exploring his own
unconscious as a young boy, merely by using his dreams. Later, he became a doctor and then a
psychiatrist. And having worked with Freud for some years, he formed his own discipline of analytical
psychology, as distinct from psychoanalysis. And he was a very learned individual who studied the art of
humanity, in many cultures and throughout history. And he drew his conclusions about how the psyche
works, from this research, and from communications a lot with Eric Norman, and from the work he did
on his own psyche. In particular, he studied how humanity throughout history has used symbols, to
speak of things that don't fully understand. The fairy tales of all cultures, for instance, and legends are
basically the same with the same themes. And they represent the journey of the human psyche.
Hansel and Gretel going into the woods is about going into the unconscious, to meet the wounded
mother that we all encounter at some point. By the time he was 40, he had achieved a lot. But
nevertheless, at this time, he had a kind of breakdown. And through that he grew immensely. He got a
new understanding of human suffering because he suffered himself. So before we go any further, some

music from John, and this is a piece from the immigrant song. I think that's the title of the song as well
as the album, which he composed himself. So, thank you, John.
[music]
So, this is a very brief outline of the psyche as young anointment saws. This is the whole of the psyche,
the personal, the conscious world, and the unconscious. And the personal unconscious is what Young
called the shadow. Here are the parts of ourselves that we have not integrated, parts of ourselves we
don't like, what we might call unhealed complexes. At the beginning of life, we're completely
unconscious. We think that our selves and our mother are the one person. And gradually by about age
one or thereabouts, we realize that the finger and sucking belongs to myself. We're so close to our
mothers that humans are considered to be still in the uterus until they're about one year old. So we
become increasingly aware of ourselves and this process continues until we may have formed a
reasonable ego. I becomes something a musician, a nurse, I get a blue car, I get married. And if we
achieve our goals in life, or if we don't, we get to a place where we ask the question, is that all there is?
this is what people sometimes called the midlife crisis. But it's a situation that can arise at any stage.
John Lennon might be a good example, who achieved so much in the world and then began to question
what life was all about. And so that's when we begin the real journey of life, the first half of life is to
develop an ego with its associated personas. These are the masks that we wear, when we're talking to
different people. And the journey of the second half of life is the journey to the self, the real center of
the psyche, the place where we can be at peace, where we can live less conditionally, and we have
maybe a greater sense of service. We can connect temporarily with this experience, with a self
experience. Perhaps when you have a child born, or a feeling of oneness with nature. Which Young
would describe as a numinous experience and an experience of expansion of being connected in a way
in the world that's not just about yourself.
In his work with patients and in his own explorations, Jung wrote that art expression, and images found
in dreams are helpful in recovering from psychological pain and emotional distress. And he often
painted and drew himself and he recognized that this activity was more than recreational. Art and
images can be used, he wrote to repair, restore and heal. And one of the many essential things that he
realized was that depression is usually caused by a wound in the unconscious and unhappy possibly
frightening or demeaning experience and experience of loss and an event or situation that could have
happened in infancy, childhood, adolescence or adulthood.
When people are depressed, if they can open their hearts, and feel the real pain inside, they can heal
themselves. They do this with a companion or friend or a therapist or through spiritual seeking. And in
this context, depression is a growth process, not an illness. Using symbols in this process makes it more
efficient and deeper. With regard to the collective unconscious. This is about a part of our psyche that
has access to knowledge that we have acquired over our history as human beings. A baby knows how to
walk. It knows because man has learned this over the ages. And we also have access to the meaning of
symbols. Certain objects have carried meaning for people for many centuries. The forest means the
unconscious. A butterfly symbolizes transformation from the caterpillar to the butterfly. And all of us
have access to these, the meaning of these symbols at the unconscious level, not necessarily
consciously, and you'd see in the stories we show you.
Young also highlighted the phenomenon of synchronicity, which is a connection between things that's
nonlinear. It happens on its own, but it's connected in some intuitive way with something else. It's a

connection outside our normal way of logical thinking. He discussed these ideas extensively with
Wolfgang Pauli and contributed significantly to Polly's ideas on quantum mechanics, for which Pauli won
the Nobel prize at the time.
I have worked with clients using symbols for 25 years, and in the security of the inner work encounter
the confidentiality, the room or space, the presence of a large collection of objects. The desire of the
person to find an answer to their pain and the tray of sound in which clients can place the objects to
make a picture, the unconscious is accessible and becomes active. Jared Adler, a contemporary of
Young, wrote a book about the self, the dynamics of the self, the real center of the psyche. And he said
it wants to become conscious. And this energy deep in your psyche wants to come more conscious. And
to do so will push you into situations that may could be difficult for you and cause suffering. The idea is
that the ego ends up in the service of the self. The self drives the ego rather than the ego being out
there on its own. Sometimes Self Realization is mistaken for ego realization. For instance, if I do a course
that makes me more confident about things, that's good, it's useful, but it's about ego. The if I was
dealing with the self I'd be saying well why are you lacking confidence. So it's in this environment the
unconscious becomes active. What is truly amazing about the process is that Young did all of this work
on his own. The rest of us need someone who has been in that journey before to accompany us. So,
would have some more music, please.
[music]
Inside every man, there's an internalized woman, a feminine energy that's undeveloped, often rejected.
And the same in a woman, an inner man or masculine energy. And Young called his feminine energy in a
man, the Anima, the Latin word for soul. And in a woman, the masculine form of this word, the Animus,
the internal, masculine energy. These energies are unconscious, at least in early life. But when we fall in
love, they become activated. And when we meet someone that is attractive to us, there is something
about that person that gives us energy. They have a hook, on which we project our unconscious
feminine side, speaking from a male perspective, and so that through them, were in contact with this
unconscious energy in ourselves. We feel exhilarated. We hope there's a new energy available to us. A
new excitement about life. And the hook. The reason we project it is often a psychological one. That
person has a quality that connects us to our mother or father energy.
This is a little model based on the kiss by Brancusi, suggesting to becoming one. If the relationship works
out, we begin to own the projection. And the quality that we saw in the loved one, become conscious in
ourselves. And we need the other person less. We're less needy, but we start loving them. In a more
giving way. We may feel less in love, but we're acting at a different energy level than we first met them.
And our psyche has become used to it. It's a bit like when someone who is depressed he lists themselves
by dealing with a wound in the unconscious. And they also feel energized and a new figure for life. And
this settles after a little while because they become used to it.
This is a model of a cast of the hands of Elizabeth and Robert Browning of their actual hands. It's a piece
in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. And it would be often used to symbolize the connection
between masculine and feminine and also used to symbolize friendship. And it is the quality of
relatedness that is more important in these relationships and physical attraction. This is some poetry
from the center of Mount Carmel by St. John of the cross, a Spanish mystic, the person who developed
the arc was started that phrase that you've heard, I'm sure the Dark Night of the Soul. And he used to
speak about his longing for God as if he was a female lover of God.

There he gave me his breast
There he taught me a sweet and loving presence.
And I gave myself to him, keeping nothing back.
There I promised to be his bride.
And he's talking about a mystical union with God. And Young spoke about John of the Cross and so
many people that this represented John of the Cross talking about his Anima. He didn't of course know
any of these terms or didn't think like that, but it just happened naturally.
[music]
Maria was an executive level lady in her 50s with two children and a demanding job. On several
occasions in the past, she had been hospitalized with severe depression. On one occasion, she had left
home and was found by the police wandering along the highway, a few miles from home, not knowing
where she was going.
She felt this depression coming on again. And a friend of hers who had worked with me suggested she
see me. At her first session, she talked about her family. How would it been for her when, as she put it,
she fell apart. Her things at work, which were normally difficult became unbearable, and how intense
these episodes were, how she suffered deeply, and the effect that had on her children, and on her
husband in particular.
And then she created this image. And she said only one thing about it. She said, The Grim Reaper.
Can you hear me okay? Very good.
That's all she said. But in the images her unconscious has spoken clearly, directly. And specifically. This is
the same image. And I'm going to talk about that the image symbolically. In the center is a bridge, a
symbol of transformation, the bridge is a symbol of transformation of crossing over, moving beyond the
situation moving to a higher state of consciousness. And at the back, there's a Round Tower. And a
Round Tower is the place of protection. It's also unsafety. It's also a phallic symbol. And protection is an
aspect of the masculine that's really important. If you've read the book, The Second Sex, you really get a
sense of how vulnerable women have been and still are unaware just because of their physicality and
how particularly vulnerable they are when they're pregnant. On the bridge, there's a mermaid. And it
looks like she's jumping into the water. Now the water is a symbol of the unconscious. The ocean, three
fifths of the planet are covered with the ocean. And we all know its power, particularly recently from
Eleanor was on the loose. [audience laughing]
But in the water. There's a wounded man, or a wounded person. We call him a man and descent
situation. And let's just say that the water in all cultures has represented the unconscious. So we're
looking at a picture here where there's a mermaid, looking as if she's going to jump into the water to
query, rescue this wounded man.
Now, at our second session, you might say there that she has depicted her animus, the unconscious man
who is wounded. Now at our second session, Maria talked about her childhood. This is after the event.
Over the space of the next second and third sessions, she talked about her childhood. And when she was
young, she suffered with urinary tract infections, and spent a lot of time in hospital. And her experience

of this was that she was a burden on her mother. Her mother didn't like her. I was useless, good at
nothing. And she had never really acknowledged that before, because she had a lot of shame around it.
And as she moved into that experience, she realized that it wasn't herself maybe was the problem that
her relationship with her mother had something to do with this. And as she moved on, she said with
surprise, you know, my mother was a battle axe. And as she admitted this to herself, she realized that
her mother had not been quite fair to her father, and in fact, had treated him quite badly. And without
the respect that she now realized he deserved. So this is an important point about symbols that I just
want to deal with in a little more detail. Because a lot of people will say, Well, did you tell her this or
how did she know this? And what's really important to understand is that she doesn't have to
understand this, in the way I've described it. The story has been told. It's no longer in there in the
unconscious. It has been expressed in the conscious world, in the language of the unconscious, which is
symbols.
And if she had come the next time and didn't talk about her childhood, just moved on to other things.
The same effect would be on her, she would have been healed, she would have began to feel better
about all these things. But when she looks at... when she has the courage to look at it fully in the face, if
you'd like to bring it to full consciousness, she's then very aware of the fact that she has an unconscious.
She will see that she had made that... she had told the story in symbols to begin with. But she doesn't
have to. And do we interpret the trays? No, because although I know quite a bit about symbols, I don't
know what a particular symbol means for a particular person in a particular moment. So I don't know for
certain what this is about at the time. Secondly, if I didn't know what it was about, and I tell this lady
that your mother has been a problem in your life, then she may say, Well, the reason I've had all these
depressions is because my mother wasn't, didn't love me properly. And so you don't want to force that
on somebody. The psyche is very fragile. And you must be very respectful of it and not start telling
people about how they are. It's up to the client, to come to terms of these things.
So, but this lady did have the courage to take this on fully, consciously, and her mother was still alive.
And in her fourth picture, she produces this, and it's as if, in consciousness, she has accepted this
wounded part of herself. This is the mother image in herself. And she's accepted it. And there's a kind of
air of forgiveness or compassion. So when she would get depressed, what was happening is that the
sense of the mother energy coming towards her as a young child, is what bothered her.
So, in this picture, maybe seven, she has an oak tree, a symbol of the self, and the energy of the horses
and the eagles. The white horse, if you've seen is a symbol of the mother. And that came out also in the
film into the West, have you seen it, where the white horse represented the spirit of the mother. The
Eagles are solar birds connects to the sun and positive masculine energy. And in her ninth and last
picture, she has what we would call an image of the self. Masculine and feminine united. And this we
would see as the rescued wounded man in the first tray. He's now on the bridge, he's alive again. And on
a bridge suggesting further transformation. And from this piece, this lady's life took a different direction.
She had dealt not only with the wounded mother peace in herself, but the wounded animals. The
wounded masculine side of her to which her mother had contributed, and her relationship with her
husband improved dramatically and she went out into the world in a way she had not thought possible.
[music]

Thank you. So we dealt with healing of the masculine side of a woman. This is healing of the Anima, the
feminine side of a man. Gordon was a 54 year old mechanic. He needed emergency surgery for an
obstructive intestine due to a tumor in the secum, which is part of the large bowel beside the appendix.
I removed the tumor with half of the large bowel, which is the operation for this condition. And in two
weeks, when he had recovered from the surgery, he came to do some sand play work. And he made this
image. And in it, there's a boat on the church. And this suggests... the boat suggests a journey. It's the
place where he lived as a child, and it looks a bit bleak. As you can see, one of the regrets, very
important regrets he had was that he'd never had an education.
You can see as he got into this process of image making, that there's more energy. The cars represent a
lot of energy. And the train, there's a train there. And there's the boat is is in the water now. But some
weeks later, he made this image. He says that he trusted his wife and he felt very betrayed. This is a
close up. This is how I felt when my wife left me. Many nights I cried myself to sleep. And he's describing
the loss of his Anima. He has used this image as he talks about his wife leaving him and he's lost contact
with his own Anima. And he's in pain. And this is the wonderful thing about symbols that while it very
accurately describes his anguish. The symbol is from the day of death culture in Mexico. And he knows
about this unconsciously, through the collective unconscious that we spoke about. He doesn't know it
consciously, but it's there. And this symbol implies also resurrection. In Mexico, people have parties
around the graveyards, and they dress up like this. And it's about a dance that reminds us of
resurrection. As the week's progressed, his images became richer, but he developed more pain in his
tummy. And in consultation with the oncologist, I eventually had to operate on him. Myself and another
consultant, open him up, and we found that the tumor had spread. And there was nothing we could do
really, except to remove the section of his bowl that was almost obstructed and causing his pain. And
after his second surgery, from which he recovered quite well, he came again and made this image and
he says it's myself and the girlfriend, his imaginary girlfriend looking out at the sea, it's himself and his
Anima, if you like. The grid are known as before the MTC the unconscious. The grid dissolving, and
there's an error of kind of expectancy. Is something going to happen? And something does. An island
appears. On this island has mostly on a wounded creatures. He said, he gives a dream I went to
Labrador, and on the way back the boat sank. I lost all my money but we were rescued by a helicopter
and a boat. I felt great the next day. The boat took the cancer away. I had lots of dreams like that. I
didn't make any money but I got better. Cancer isn't the path of life to strengthen you up for the things.
Cancer has told me that grandchildren are important. When I think about the tray it occupies my mind.
And these are the characters. The day of death figure he used initially.... another day of death figure, the
Wicked Witch of the West, an angry caveman, tin man who had no brain or heart, next up cat woman.
So wounds in the unconscious are coming up. And he's attempting to deal with some of these unhealed
complexes in himself on his journey to death. And this happens with many people who are in the dying
process. They can deal with material that they haven't dealt with already.
So it can be a very rich time for people. So he's afraid of them and he's still resisting. them, but there's a
bridge connecting to that island. Now these are the same characters. But there's a bridge. And here we
have an anchor and a centurion. So he's still defending. And then he relents. He says, you can offer them
food, and you can give them wine. And he has creatively made under band. And he has made a ban
there, you can see these, there's a saxophone, there are several instruments there that you can't see, as
well as the ones that you can see. And so he's being kind these, this part of himself that he didn't initially
like, didn't accept. He's being kind to his complexes, if you like. And all the food here in this context

represents spiritual food. One of the times he came around this time, there was a quick or him playing
on the CD, and he liked it very much. And we played for it in a minute. So he's coming to Greece, these
figures he was initially reluctant to meet. And in this image, they've been integrated. The wicked witch is
here playing the bass, the deaf death figures are there. Yeah. And straw man is here and the angry man
is here. These complexes have been accepted and integrated. And so when that happened, he's gone a
new sort of part of his journey. These negative images have gone, some of them are buried under the
sand in this picture. And it's like I taught myself, he's going to meet the ancestors, the people who have
gone before him. He says, you can work so hard at things that you don't need. I used to see people
playing golf and think they were crazy. Now, I think they're right, you should enjoy the simple things.
There isn't anything in this world that comes your way that you're not given the strength to deal with.
And these are courageous words from a man who is close to death.
That's a close above. This is probably himself on the last part of his journey. And this is his last tray, just
a week before he died. And it shows a woman in white, arriving at the church that was there in his first
tray. And we would see this figure as the figure you saw in the third tray is Anima, which had been so
hurt has been healed. And he's actually chosen a graduate to represent her. He's graduated on this
journey, where he did not maybe graduate in the academic world. So she's arrived at church, we would
see this as a kind of sacred marriage that John of the Cross was talking about, and that many, many
clients make when they get to the end of a long process. They make images of a sacred marriage. And it
all comes from alchemy, which I'm sure you've heard of, but was an activity that was well documented
in the Middle Ages, and which Young brought back into our consciousness now. And this is the song.
[music]
We live and breathe in the power of the sun, our star, unconditionally giving love personified. And when
evening shadows fall, we see 1000 stars. Have you any thoughts about this image? What do you think
the person who created this worked out. He was a 51-year-old man and had surgery for a tumor in his
bowel. At the time, I felt a single lesion in his liver, you've examined the abdomen when you're to make
sure if there are any other secondaries or anything. And this was disappointing to find the single lesion.
But however, the oncology team felt that it was operable. And so it was planned that he would have
another operation to remove this lesion in his liver with the hope of curing him. So when he got over his
first operation, he came to my office, and he made this image. And he talked about his life as a hunter
and the hunters guide. He talked about his family the death of a friend a few years previously in a
hunting accident, and about his optimism for his upcoming surgery. And there was some sadness in the
room at the end of the session, and I perhaps thought he was perhaps sad about his life. The fact that he
had maybe been killing animals throughout his life. He said he had killed at least one moose every year
since he was 17. In and this was in contrast to myself, you know, the doctor saving lives in inverted
commas. This is what I thought he was thinking. Two weeks later, during surgery, he died on the
operating table. And he had been granted a painless end to his life, as he had spent his time providing
for the animals. And the picture shows a moose at the center of the tray. A native people all over the
world have regarded hunting as a sacred activity. It's taught that the animals offer themselves for the
good of the hunter, part of life is given your life for something else. On the left is a horseshoe. But the
horseshoe is meant to be with the open end up to hold your luck. And on the right there is an owl and
we're familiar with the owl as a symbol of wisdom. The Wise Old Owl, but in fact, the owl is mostly
associated in most cultures with death. And to the right is a starfish, a symbol of healing. And a star is a
symbol of love. Unconditional Love. And the sun is our star. It gives its light and warmth continuously

and unconditionally. And it is no surprise that in many cultures, including our own, the sun has been
thought of as a God. As a representative of what God might be, utterly powerful, totally given, totally
given. It's very appropriate. And then when night comes, we see 1000 stars. And to the right is a starfish,
a symbol of healing. And a star is a symbol of love. Unconditional Love. And the sun is our star. It gives
its light and warmth continuously and unconditionally. And it is no surprise that in many cultures,
including our own, the sun has been thought of as a God. As a representative of what God might be,
utterly powerful, totally given, totally given. It's very appropriate. And then when night comes, we see
1000 stars. And the starfish itself is a great healer it can grow again from any wound. Six months after
these events, it was December. And I was looking at this image again, and thinking about this man. And
during the last six months I had an unease in me every time I thought about him. I thought about how
sanguine he was. How he spoke about how important it was, particularly as a guy to make sure that the
animal died painlessly. I thought about how in New Finland, every part of the moose is used afterwards.
And for some poor families, it would represent a big part of the winter food supply. So moments of
insight are moments when we see our own shadow. And what I began to see was that this man hadn't
been thinking that his life wasn't as good as mine. That's what I had been thinking about myself. I felt I
was better than him. And I realized that this wasn't true. And it's not really what you do or what your job
is, but how you do it. And whether you do it committed or not. And hunters were around before
physicians too. So I began to realize more deeply how privileged I was that people trusted me. And that
evening in December 25 years ago, I was heading on an overnight flight to London and it was snowing.
And when we got above the clouds, William was still very much in my mind and this real realization I had
and I leaned forward in my seat and I look out the window into the clear night sky with all those stars
and among those 1000s of stars I saw Orion, the hunter.
[music]
We're going to talk about a 20 year old man called Joe, who arrived into the emergency room of the
hospital I worked on a Friday afternoon. I was asked to see him, he had abdominal pain. And the nurses
told me that he was neglecting. He had been neglecting his children, and they had been taken from him.
And it turned out that he had been to the outpatients many times, and to the emergency room many
times as well in the past year. I examined him and I decided that he didn't have appendicitis, but I
decided to admit him. And later that evening, I go to his room to have a chat with him. And this is his
story. Over the next one that evening, and he came to see me to do some of this sampler work for a few
sessions. And the story Italia is a story that emerged in these sessions. When he was about three, his
mother left the home. This is a big trauma for a child. After a year, she came back, but after another
year, she left again. And his father then also left the home and he went into care. And then he went into
a foster home. And the fostering didn't work out. And he went back to care. And then he went into
another foster home. And this, the last foster home did work out. And he still felt grateful to these
foster parents. But he got married kind of innocently when he was 17, to a lady who was very troubled
herself. They had three children, two of whom had learning difficulties. So without going into the sad
details, the mother couldn't cope. The children were taken from them, and the marriage split up. And
once when I was asked by some people around the hospital, I worked with to work with an eight year
old child to get him ready for ready for fostering. He was in care. And during that time, when I worked
with the NHS social workers and child psychiatrists and psychologists, I asked them, What happened to
these children that they were looking after children between the ages of maybe 6 and 10. And they told
me that one third of them would probably be okay, one third of them would move on to the adult

psychiatric services. And guess what would happen to the other third? Third end in prison, yeah. Now,
these children hadn't chosen to the upbringing they had. None of them are criminals. But when you
ensure trauma at an early stage in your life, your psyche is not quite as resilient as someone who doesn't
have these traumas. So you're at a big disadvantage. And then when you when you get to age 17, it's
difficult to live within the boundaries that society says you must live by. And so you act outside. And
what happens, you get sent. You have to be contained. And the way we do that, at present is put people
in prison. And maybe there's no other way to contain people like that. But when we do this, we ought to
do it with respect. Because so many of these people, we have failed them in childhood. And now we're
going to punish them for our failure when they're older.
So this man was a little bit like that he had got on the wrong side of things, you know. And But anyway,
he came to my office and this was his first tray. And you can see that there's a boat there. And as we've
said before, a boat is about a journey. A boat is about taking control of your life in a way. Work of some
people end up with the queen of a ship or a boat to say I'm ready for the journey again. And there's an
image of a boat here and you can see the back hand is a little bit longer than the other hand. It seems so
to me anyway, like it's stretching back to put his hand on the tiller. In his next tray, he had lots of boats
and kind of getting ready for the journey of life again, you might say, and over in the corner. There's a
small lighthouse and the lighthouse is a powerful symbol guidance, you know, can you imagine what it's
like to be out on the rough seas in a hurricane and on the Atlantic, and you're waiting to find that
lighthouse. It's so important. The difference between life and death.
And then his next tray, all the boats have left, perhaps this little canoe there represents his old life. And
there's a bigger lighthouse here as well. And he relates this scene to a summer camp, he had met a
person who was at the head of the camp. And he established a very good relationship with him. At a
difficult time in his life, this man in this camp was really important to him. And so if you like he went on
his merry way. He didn't come back to the hospital anymore. And I met him a year later, he was in great
form, and told me he was in a new relationship. And this is a good example of when the person has pain,
emotional pain inside, that cannot find expression, or cannot find a place to be heard. Then it comes out
in the body. And both Young and Polly, all those years ago when they were working together, said the
psyche, and the body are a continuum. And the scientists are all again, repeating the same thing. The
body and mind are one spectrum.
So, in celebration of this man's delight. We have a dance tune from john. And it's called Carolyn's
planxty curly with John's own arrangements.
[music]
Thank you, John, we're coming to the last song. And the last little piece about Young. And so we're going
to share with you a special song and some pictures that I've taken a few years ago, and a few
synchronistic events that happened on a trip I took to Tanzania three years ago. The song is My Angel.
It's available on iTunes. And all the proceeds go to the Laura Lee, hospice for children. You might have
seen it on the radar see show a few weeks ago. We'll come back to it. So here's an example of that. I was
walking along out on the plains in Tanzania. And I saw these ladies coming along. And I wanted to take a
picture, but I had nothing to offer them in return. And so I just let go of it. And we were crossing a
bridge, you can see the sign of their bridge is a symbol of transformation. They smiled at me and asked
me to take their picture.

But on the first day that I was there, I assisted another surgeon to operate and a three-month-old child
called so on. And on the second I come back to him on the second day I arrived on the ward I found a
man who would be made up during the night with 65% full thickness burns. And he was under a kind of
brownie blue blanket, a cage supporting it to keep it off his body. And it was kind of overwhelming to
me, I kind of knew in theory what I should do, but I'd never done anything like that before. And in
Ireland, someone like that would go to a specialist burns unit to be handled by plastic surgeons. And I
was... one of the mainstays of treatment is fluids. And when we started that, but I just didn't know what
I was going to do. And one hour later, a plane arrived behind the hospital small plane. And in it was a
plastic surgeon, Dr. Peter oduor, from Kenya. And the two of us worked with that man for three or four
days, but he did die. And that was not unexpected. But later that day... in the next... later that week,
that little boy that we operate on the first day was not doing well. And I pushed to operate on him again.
And I didn't know at the time that it's not usual, to re-operate on someone who had not got over a first
operation because the support services are not good. But I sort of didn't know this. And we operated on
the little boy together, three of us. And he had a leak in his bowel. And we removed that and sewed him
up again, joined the bowl back together again. And he got better. And he left the hospital before I did.
And when I was on my way home. For me it was one of the highlights of my time there in Tanzania that
that little kid got better because it was like he needed some extra energy that wasn't normally available.
And I provided that or I thought I did. And I felt part of the bigger, something bigger than myself. I
happened to be there at the right time for that kid. And you might call that a minor numinous
experience. An experience of being part of something bigger than yourself.
And one final synchronistic event was that when I was back in Ireland, three months later, I was looking
at a short piece of video that I take and of the sisters working in Mike Yongo hospital. And Eleanor
recognized us, and she recognized that because she had recorded the song. These nuns were singing in
Swahili. But Patrick Bergen had translated the song and had asked Eleanor to record it with him, which
she did. And it's the song I'm talking about now. And so the... we're going to play that song for you
again, and show you some slides from Tanzania. And one last thing I want to say a sincere thanks to a
few people.
To Shyvana Maroni for recommending this presentation to first fortnight. And to first fortnight for
accepting it. To Sarah Shearson, the manager of the dock. Keith Conroy and sound thank you very much
Keith. To the people whose stories have we've talked about. Gordon who faced death with celebration.
William who showed me my own shadow in his quiet way and Joe who, despite the many setbacks, he
had showed a lovely energy for a living. And to the children I met on the plains of Tanzania, who asked
me to photograph them. And last but not least, to the sisters who worked in that hospital in Tanzania,
who would be we would consider as working from the self.
[song playing]

INITIATIONS
Depression in Adolescents

Hello again
If you’ve seen the video Jung and Symbols you’ll be familiar with the idea that depression is a
growth process. And I just wanted to say a little bit about adolescence and young adults who get
depressed. The reason I mention it is because you hear so often that some of these people take
their own lives and it seems such a great, great pity. But one of the things I think about it is to
acknowledge that this is a very special time when young people or adolescents get depressed it
is often their first real experience of suffering, assuming things have gone fairly well up to this
point. And if they get through this period of suffering they will grow, their sensitivity to other
people will increase and they will have a new zest for living. But it could be important to let them
know that this is a kind of initiation into adulthood and to treat it as a very special time, rather than
that they have an illness. And if people in their environment acknowledge their pain, acknowledge
that this is a special time, they might be consoled. They might understand that this is going to end
and that this is going to really make me a better person. So if there was that approach to people
who get depressed in young adulthood or adolescence I think it could be helpful.

THOUGHTS ABOUT PEOPLE IN JAIL
Confinement

Hello again
Just a few words about some of the topics in the video. And this is about people who are in
confinement, in jail. At one stage in my career I worked in Northern Ireland and that was when I
became familiar with BBC Radio 4. And I kept hearing reports on that station coming from the
police that most people who were in jail had come from disturbed families or had psychiatric
illnesses. During that time also I was asked to work in the NHS for a short while to deal with a
particular child. And during that time I got to know social workers and healthcare workers in the
NHS and they told me that of the children they were working with they could predict that one third
of them would be ok, one third of them would end up in the adult psychiatric services and one
third of them would end up in prison. Now these children were completely innocent at this point,
they were not criminals. They were in difficulty because of circumstances that they had absolutely
no control over. And we do know that if we had enough social services and support, that we could
help these children a lot more and that these things wouldn’t be happening when they were older.
But what happens is that when these folks get to be seventeen, eighteen or whatever age, they
act out and they have to be confined and confinement is done in a kind of punitive way. Ok, if you
have behaviour that is not socially acceptable it’s very reasonable to say that you need to be
confined, you need to have boundaries, and part of the reason that this is happening is because
these children did not learn boundaries when they were young, and they live in really a different
world than we do. So, I’m talking about people now who are in confinement, in prison, and I really
hope I don’t offend anybody in prison talking this way. If I do, I apologise, but I do believe in what
I’m saying about this and I think it would be really good if the general public could understand
this. So, these folks are in jail because they have been neglected when they were children and
that’s the reality of it. Another point I would like to make is that, if you consider any normal
population, it’s distributed in the form of a bell curve and I made this thing myself. That’s a bell
shape. And the part that’s underneath this here, this edge, this area here, about 5 percent of the
population, no matter what the population is there, and another 5 percent here. You can’t have
that piece in the middle, that big 80/90 percent of the population, without there being a 5 percent
at the edges, or 10 percent. It makes complete sense. If you believe in the theory of evolution we
have evolved into our present circumstances almost in a process, with variants along the way.
There have to be people outside the norm. We can’t all be inside the norm. So that as our society
works some people are confined and they’re actually having this experience so that the rest of us
can have the experience of being ‘normal’. It’s a requirement of me sitting here in this chair and
not being in trouble with the law, at the moment anyway, it’s a requirement that there will be
people in trouble with the law, who will be outside the social parameters that we set. So once
again, if we do need to confine people, we should do so with respect. And I use that word

cautiously, because I know that in some prisons this is almost a dirty word, because some Prisons
Officers demand that the prisoners treat the officers with respect, but they don’t treat the
prisoners with respect. And the Prison Officer has complete control. On the other hand, let me tell
you about Sweden where Prison Officers train for three years to be Prison Officers and they share
meals with the prisoners and the recidivism rate in Sweden is something like 17 percent whereas
it’s over 70 percent in the UK. And I’ll just mention too that in the UK and the US, the conditions in
these prisons are considered to be little short of torture as defined by Amnesty International. So
anyway, that’s just a few words about people who are confined.

Thanks.