Homecoming — Trauma, Therapy & The Odyssey EPISODE: 81

What happens to the people who come home from the worst experiences of their lives — and never truly arrive?

In Episode 81, Dr. Michael Baltimore and Dr. Dan Rose use Christopher Nolan's take on Homer's Odyssey as a lens on trauma, PTSD, shame, and the long road back home. It becomes an hour on containment, on why what we can't put into words we're doomed to put into action, on the risk of pushing healing too fast, and on what post-traumatic growth actually looks like when you refuse to romanticize the wound.

Two clinicians thinking out loud about integrating the hardest things we carry.

Chapters:
00:00 — Being heard vs. being fixed (containment)
04:30 — Nolan's Odyssey and the reveal that rewrites the story
08:18 — Coming home from war, but not arriving
14:11 — Calypso as the therapist on the island
25:33 — If you can't say it, you'll act it out
32:31 — PTSD: the event, the processing, the trigger
36:27 — Do no harm: the risk of moving too fast
37:58 — Post-traumatic growth
46:52 — Reaction vs. response
57:17 — What good therapy begins with

Got Therapy? is a production of Midland Studios. Nothing in this episode is a substitute for individual therapy — if any of these themes land close to home, please reach out to a licensed clinician.

Hosts: Dr. Michael Baltimore & Dr. Dan Rose

Got Therapy? makes complex psychological concepts accessible and practically applicable. New episodes weekly.

00:00  Cold open (4th of July)

02:00  Self-esteem as accepting your complexity

03:30  Not-me states — Sullivan, Bromberg, and George Costanza

07:00  Self-compassion and giving yourself a break

09:00  Rigidity vs. flexibility — the stick that bends

10:00  Normative narcissism, Kohut, and the Porsche 911

15:00  Microtrauma and social comparison

18:00  Ethical codes and holding your neighbor

24:00  Ideology, the real, and conflict "all the way down"

27:00  Narcissism on a spectrum; the "phallic" type

30:00  Mirroring and validation in therapy

41:00  Countertransference and owning what's in you

45:00  Self-esteem, validation, and the classroom

49:00  Internalizing the therapeutic moment

51:00  Having vs. being — Fromm, and "cultivate life"

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Baltimore here with Dan Roser. It's Dan right there. Dan, how are you today? You know, I um I can complain, but I'm really good at it. Well, go ahead. I would say uh why not? I mean, if you're going to complain, this is a great place to do it because we can record it and play it over and over again and just somebody tells us.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Well, actually, it it'll be like the way Laugh Tracks works. It'll complain for me, you know? So then I won't have to. You can just put the button. I can relax and let the complaining be.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

I know. We ought to do a a show, uh episode on complaining. Don't you think that would be a I mean, I don't know where the cycle where does that fit in the DSM? Well, it does it probably does. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

There are psychology theories around this because you know, part of what happens in complaining is simply uh uh uh wanting to be contained, right? So what often gets spouses in trouble is that one spouse comes on and uh comes home and wants to sort of complain and whine a bit and the other wants to then jump to fix it, right? Right. It can certainly can be. That's one of the male problems.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Well, there could be. I mean, but it's a problem. Erectile dysfunction and that are big male problems. I knew I knew this was going off the rails right there. But anyway, bring it bring us back.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

What what did you say? So d if someone asks simply to be heard, that's that's what's called containment, right? It is simply creating space in which you are allowed to put the things you're feeling into words, and that allows you then to be able to potentially do something with them, or to simply once someone else has heard them, that is enough, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Yeah, I know. It's almost like um I don't know, venting. I mean, isn't that part of a therapeutic process when a client comes in and says, and you ask, how how's it going? What brought you in, and then the things begin to happen. And and it could just be that I just want someone to hear this situation I'm dealing with.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Like when I come home and I'm given that litany of HR complaints that have been filed against me, I just want my wife to listen.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

I don't want to litany of HR complaints.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

I don't want her to be like, I don't want her saying things like look litany, I don't know how many is that.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

What's a number?

SPEAKER_00 2:16

She said it's like a litter. And so uh what I'm saying is, and then she says, and I this doesn't help. She says, you know, if you keep this up, the police will be involved. That's not really that's not listening.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Um you know, any mention of the police in a in some sort of psychological relationship thing is um it's rough. And and maybe you need to reconsider, maybe think of another way to get attention besides complaining.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Or my wife just she eliminated the middleman and she just bought a middleman and she just bought a taser. So she doesn't call the police anymore. She just that's it.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Stays on those 911 calls because it's really easy. So she doesn't have to do it as much. And a taser. Hmm. Could we use one in the studio? No, no, don't give me me ideas.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

It might be I could borrow my wife's. All right, listen. It's pink, so I don't know if you want to uh you might be uncomfortable. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

They probably have those. I'm pretty sure they do. Somebody has that. Well, it's just it's been a great week. It's just been a wonderful week. That's what no one ever says. So I would start again and say, well, it's been a busy one. Well, it's a busy week, but we managed to to squeeze in a movie. That's right. And that's that's that's right. Everyone's talking about Odyssey. Oh, that's right. There you go. What were you gonna say?

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Everybody's talking about the I was I was gonna say that we put the odd in the odyssey until I like that.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Yeah. Somehow I'm gonna I knew that something was happening, but I wasn't sure, so I'm glad I called that back. That's what they call a callback, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

We went to the movies. I think uh I I I assume you were there because I saw you outside the movies, and apparently you were in the nosebleeds. No.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

We were so far up, everything looked minuscule. I I don't know the the the cyclops was very, very small from my seats. I don't know about you. Yeah, we all right. So we're gonna talk about this. And then what um I mean there's a there's a heavy psychological issues throughout this and things we can point to.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

We should say that they're going to be spoilers.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Oh, I will say I don't really care if this spoils anything because if you ever been exposed to this in some world literature class or something somewhere or heard it, um I'm sorry. You need to catch up, and uh we're not gonna apologize for it because we're gonna talk through this entire movie and see what's up.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

But with Christopher Nolan, he put his own spin, and in the third act, of course they do, there is a there's a reveal that sort of changes the the whole narrative you've been before, right? Right. And uh I think Lacan would call that the quilting point uh or potentially a master signifier. Get those confused, and that's when suddenly there is a new quilting point, changes everything that came before it, right? So uh uh the if you watch it I'm not sure about that term, but yes, yeah, yeah. It's that so so there was some suddenly things made sense in a way that now we're in a new there's a retroactive action. So when something happens, it changes the narrative that you've already been in, right? Right. A therapy works like that with an interpretation, or when there's a therapeutic movement, sometimes your history and your past suddenly make sense in a way it didn't before. You've been living the narrative differently, and as a result of therapeutic intervention, you now live it in a way that you didn't before.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

No, I I I'm really glad you you said that. I wanna almost want to stop and pause for just a moment because I think I I I wish that this happened more often in therapy when you get to those those uh inflection points and other things that you could call it. But it's sort of an awakening that happens for clients, sometimes therapists. But uh for the client to really get information or an an emotional load and some other things that happen to go, wait, I didn't know that. All my life I was living under this assumption and though those kind of things. Um that I I I know we're gonna talk about the movie, but that that idea I just wanted to kind of it's a powerful one.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Yeah. Yeah. I will say that I I I'm really good at being able to give my the folks who under my care that sort of experience, but it usually goes like this. By the second or maybe the third session, they'll say, My therapist is an idiot. And it suddenly changes everything that happens in this in this.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Oh, that realization. And it takes them all the way to the third session. So I'm I'm a little wonderful. And this is what I say to myself.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

I said it took you three sessions, who's the idiot? Who's the idiot? Come on.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

It took you that long.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Come on, give me a break.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

I mean, podcast. I really do get that. Well, I just you know, that sudden awakening and suddenly, oh, I got it. And it's it and there's an energy with it, there's a positivity with it, there's something like, wow, I finally figured out. Of course, it could move in a in another direction once you find things out and what it really actually means in your existence.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

But um well, if you want, and this could be the the where we give the spoiler, I guess, or the spoiler comes up. In in the third act, you you you realize that um because the movie the Odyssey is about a guy who's really trying to find his way home, and it's not going so well. In fact, it doesn't go so well for I think twenty, is it twenty years? It's something like that. And um what you find is uh and there's a a point in the movie where the sirens are singing and and they um he uh allows himself to hear the sound of the sirens uh tied to the mast.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Right. And um Alright, we're we're jumping around here just a little bit. We'll come back and get to that.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

The point is that you find out that that through the song and the sirens, it's sort of hinted at, but and then when he's with uh um is it calypso? What is that the name of the nymph? I think that is, um, that he's not been wanting to come home because of the trauma that he experienced at the fall of Troy.

unknown 8:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

And so what happens in a retroactive way is up until this point, you think you're listen watching a standard narrative with monsters and things that are when suddenly you realize, wait a minute, this is not and it's even possible because it this the thing begins with the fur it says uh the the c the title card at the beginning says, in a time of apparent magic. It's even possible that the magical things that we've seen before didn't actually happen. It could be that this is part of the conflict that he has over the trauma with a fall of Troy, or they may have happened, you it's but there's a way to be able to see it that way. And the important part is ah, that's what this is about. He is really attempting to to to own and then it and it goes from an individual level, and maybe we can talk about this too, um, to a societal level because it's also a symbolic movement where certain laws and codes are broken that open up the possibility of civilization's demise. So, you know, that's that's sort of and that's there's a lot of there's a lot of reveal and there's a lot of spoilers in that.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Well, no, I I I appreciate that. It's a little um we have to track that a a little bit, but it um it does seem, and somebody pointed this out, that they uh when they showed the Trojan horse at the beginning, and uh forget spoilers, we're talking about it now, but that that the Trojan horse was really in the Iliad, not in the Odyssey. So they he took some liberties, Nolan took some liberties to bring that in to sort of set the stage, I think, of um, you know, uh uh his his return after the wars or his reluctance to return after the wars or his real need to turn, you know, it begins this journey of coming home.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Which and this is you know, I've done a lot of work with soldiers and um and trauma, and often that's actually the problem. How do you return home after being in things that uh that uh uh war by its very nature violates um some of the most basic tenets of human behavior uh killing, uh destruction, all the witnessing horrific acts, all these sorts of things. And those who experience them often have a hard time coming home. And I work with folks who, you know, it they've been home, but metaphorically, no, they haven't, even though they've been home for years, they still haven't shown up yet. And so in some ways, they're like Odysseus, they are trapped, and in their head there are all sorts of things, like Cyclops and Giants and things like that. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

But uh, I mean you could yeah, we could talk about sort of the fantasy of this, but just one note there was no uh CGI, there was there was no AI in this movie, and uh he was very you know direct about that. So if you saw a thousand people roaming, coming up the beach fighting in the in the wars, then there were a thousand people there somehow, actors that got paid. But that was kind of an interesting notion at the time when AI is becoming everywhere and it's uh you know it's talked about, it's in our finances. I mean, we're you know, are we gonna is it gonna be an AI bubble? And all of those kind of things were sort of set aside with this movie to do the almost the the incredible kinds of things with the the idea of fantasy and magic and dragons and so forth kind of thing. I've heard some minus the dragon. That was that was sorry, that was another one.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Well, you were up high, you may have seen things I didn't it looked like a dragon. I think that was Elliot Page, that wasn't a dragon. No mistakes on this show, I'm telling you right now. All right, go. Uh I've heard some folks say that, in fact, that Matt Damon may have said this, that um this is the last time a movie like this will be made. Right when you mention the AI, that in some ways it's a nod to old Hollywood. And you're right, in the future, large crowd scenes, um all sorts of things will be handled by something else. Right. So and uh Musk has uh threatened he he was so upset with the wokeism quote wokeism of the movie that he's gonna make his own with AI.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Uh okay. Uh somebody has shown a clip, I think. I don't know if this was fake that uh Elon's uh movie beginning or trailer or something like that, but it was horrible. Um and so I I think that's almost that his cry for attention, it's a cry for help, isn't it? I think Elon on this thing, but um we'll have that for a we'll have that to talk about for a long time, I'm afraid, and we'll come back to Elon.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

But well, I think with Elon the problem we may have is that um if uh people will realize that uh for certain folks, especially if you're you know um pre-adolescent, there's no such thing as bad attention. So even if people are saying bad things about you, it's it's not bad attention is better than no attention.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

So I often wonder you know that's how it's going right now.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

How much he's just saying this just so that people will he can live in their minds, you know, it's a way of being carried.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Yeah, well that's what that's what happens when ketamine takes over your brain. But uh never mind on that, we'll come back to it. But all right, so this is really a um a journey of Odysseus coming home. So it starts with the war, but the war he's kind of looking around, it shows him sort of looking at the horrors of war, and that's probably had a big effect on him in the way that they portrayed it in the movies.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Yeah, and you it it it at first there's just sort of a uh it's it's in an image that reoccurs of him at the fall of Troy, but it doesn't imply what actually happened. And he's he has um Athena is sort of accompanies him throughout the story, and it's uh Zendiah, is that her name? That's the actress uh or the actor who plays uh uh Athena. And um one of the big reveals is she is uh a girl that he saw beheaded during the fall of Troy. And so this trauma is so woven in, and when we find and and it the where the reveal is, and where he's on this island trapped, and I th I think it's Calypso, isn't that isn't it deep?

SPEAKER_02 14:25

I think that's wrong.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Is there a Calliope or Calypso? I I I I I should have looked at this before. But it's almost like a therapy session because she is getting him to start to talk and she's asking questions. So, in a way, she is the therapist, the psychoanalyst at the end of the film that helps that helps him to integrate and name his trauma. At first, she's feeding in the lotus to ease his mind, and then at some point he keeps eating the lotus because he's trying to forget and not feel it. And you know, there's a point where he's uh uh collecting uh bits and pieces of uh the ship that uh that found her, and um uh and she's talking to him, and uh and there's a he he says, you know, I I don't I think she said he says something, I'm not planning on leaving, and she says, and why are you gathering the pieces of a ship to build a raft to leave? And so sh again, she's like the therapist. She is the therapist in the film who guides Odysseus um home in a way.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

But she has uh self-motivated some reasoning for for h his uh his relationship with her. He wants she wants to keep him there, but at the same time revealing this information in some way, uh that is pushing him further away. So that's a kind of interesting notion.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Well, I think that the the way it sort of i is implied is that maybe it's it that that she began, or at least the way she says it, she she gave him the lotus to ease his mind and then he keep kept eating it. And she sort of makes it sound like he wasn't ready to own this, which is how therapy works. Someone doesn't show up one, you know.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

And it you know, uh if I think he was there seven years. Yeah. And uh that's kind of brief if it's psychoanalysis.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

So it was that that's kind of interesting to see could kind of um reframe that as her being the therapist because I think you know, we assumed that it was a selfish motivation for for her, but at the same time you can see those therapeutic elements where you things are being revealed in a time that isn't uh enough for the person to sort of handle that information, manage it in some ways, and start to draw some conclusions. Well, that was interesting, but he was under uh not a spell, but more or less a drug induced eating the lotus. Yeah, so there was a lot of things were were happening for this. But that was part of this journey he was trying to get home, and then okay, let's set aside seven years out of this.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Uh but I mean and again the parallel with therapy, it can take a long time for people to come home. And if in his heart there was conflict, because I think that he felt because of the horrible things that he had done, he didn't deserve to be home. I've heard soldiers say that to me. I don't deserve to be here. Um I he thinks because ultimately it was his cleverness that he came up with the idea of the Trojan horse. And in doing so, and this takes us to another level too, uh all throughout the movie they talk about Zeus's law, and it's um it's it's sort of a variant on the golden rule. You're supposed to to to uh you're supposed to take care of the traveler. You're supposed to you that you have a a debt to um to open your gate and accept those who are outside of it and in need, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

And in a way, by generating that horse and saying it's a gift, they trick Troy by the very the the the basis of the law that holds civilized civilization together, they use that to destroy Troy. And um there's a motive that occurs all throughout the the film about uh the people of the sea who were coming and destroying villages and whatnot. And there's I think there's an historical context of that that the Bronze Age may have been destabilized by both the people of the sea. But one of the big reveals is is that the he and his men were the first people of the sea. That it turns out the very thing that everyone is afraid of was them. And there's all these times in the in the where they're walking around and they're you know, say, why are people running from us? We're Greeks, we're not we don't have them to worry about it. We're we're we're you know, we're we're we're we're good guys, we we do this. Not realizing that they have set in motion something that means that civilization itself is going to fall apart. And again, another big reveal, as Odysseus is uh writing off into the West, he says, Well, I hope people will remember this story, but I doubt they will, and this will keep happening again and again, and that we are destined to forget the to and uh so it will this will continue to happen that we will we will continue to uh break Zeus's law, resulting in the collapse and continual collapse of the civilizations we build.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

So wow, that was prophetic. I think yeah, we are repeating things over and over again. We don't learn from our past. I mean, we've seen that bumper sticker, you know. Are you calling Trump the Cyclops? Uh all right, that that was a sudden move. I wasn't ready for that. But some uh when am I ready?

SPEAKER_00 19:45

I don't know, but if it were the parallel to this, because you know, there's uh all the while he's on this this this journey, his his his wife, she's having to delay these suitors. And um uh they're sort of this rapacious folks who uh they've invited in because that's what you do, but they're taking advantage, eating all the food, taking everything, abusing the dog. All these things are happening, and so it it represents already sort of a sus uh the fall of a societal um of societal norms. And then it toward the end, um she's about to give in because the people of the sea could show up, and if they don't have a uh a king, then they could fall. And so is it a desperate move? She was about to, you know, make someone king who would who would have done horrible, horrible things. And there's a parallel there, I think. Sounds familiar. Yes, that's right. You know, you uh if you give uh the robber bear and the keys the key keys to the kingdom, what happens, you know? Well, look around.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Yeah all right there you go. Uh that's really yeah. There's so much going on in this. No wonder this um this story has lasted so long and has been you know, now and and the movies putting it back in front of people so that you can kind of grapple with some of these issues. This is not a happy kind of the hero in the white hat uh notion uh riding off in the sunset. This is a s a man's struggle um and really it is a struggle about returning home and what it's going to be like. And he ends up uh disguising himself when he finally gets to the shore. So it's a lot that he is grappling with. And I think that's what the audience members have to do and if we get to kind of put themselves into that that scenario as well.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

And maybe by disguising himself as a as a beggar, he sort of, you know, he he he allows us to think that we can all be on this journey. And if we continue to think about this as a journey of trauma, I mean part of what happens that um um there was no way he could return as a king. Not with what he knows. Like he he he had he had he had felt as if he had uh betrayed the the basic. Things that made it okay for him to be a king, so he could no longer fit in that place in the symbolic order. And so I think that there was no way for him to show up triumphantly because that's not I mean he he he needed to show up at his at his most humble and at his most vulnerable, right? Right? That's he couldn't show up as a king, he couldn't show up as a soldier.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

I mean lost his army too along the way with that. Well, do you think that he is um he he regrets going to war with Troy to Polyponesia? I I think at the at the end he he he is um I mean he's a parallel right now that's not happening in our current context in the world in 2026, but well, I mean I think with No regrets, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

I I I think that you know it he didn't really have a choice to go to war. It wasn't his idea. Agamemnon would basically looked a lot like Darth Vader.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

Uh and when when is the Iliad coming out?

SPEAKER_00 23:04

That's the next one, right? It might be but uh he had no choice. This was not, you know, um and throughout the film, like there's even like whenever he goes on a hunt, he twang his bow to give the the prey a chance. Um he uh goes out of his way to be so he's he's painted in the best possible light as a benevolent king, someone who cares about his men, someone who cares about his wife, someone who wants to do the right thing. And I think that's what makes him in some ways the the perfect foil for this, because in the end, it was the good guy, the really good guy, who set in motion the fall of civilization. I mean, this is not he was not, you know, in in the the in the the original Odyssey, he's often played as sort of um too clever and uh uh narcissistic in sorts of ways that this does not. I mean, he is there's even a moment where he could have gotten out of the Cyclops cave, but he jumped back in because he didn't want to leave his men alone, right? Right. So, you know, but he is he did turn back and and put an arrow in the in the uh cyclops and then angered him even more, which yeah, by that time I think they were already screwed.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

But but still But in the guy this men, you know, uh turned from pigs back to humans. So he was looking out. There was a certain you know canning in this.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

And as uh as she was um um what's her name? Oh, I'll think of her name. Um I'll think of her name. Okay. Um I don't know, I can't help it. The the the sorceress um who did that. But when she was turning the back, she said, back into your disguises. Yeah, seriously, that's it. Yes. She said, back, back into your disguises. You know, so the pigs is they they were big. Pigs were the real. She didn't turn them into pigs, she turned them, she she took away the mask. She said, I'm gonna I'm gonna, you know, and she says, back, back to your disguise.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Some reason I wasn't thinking of that at that moment. But yeah, okay, yeah, that's right. Yeah, it makes it absolutely make sense.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

So if you want to think about this, what where this could sort of have a a connection with, say, mental health things, in some ways, this is a movie about trauma, and it's about the journey and integration of trauma. In some ways, it it shows what the role of a therapist potentially could be. Um it also shows psychoanalytically that you know part of what kept him from coming home is the trauma in his heart, right? Right. That there was that there was that the the guilt, um, the shame, um, that he could not vocalize and if you can't put something into words, then you are doomed to put it into action. And so over and over again, he sort of found ways, you know. He even chose not to go the direct route. Like when Agamemnon and everybody was sailing off, he was like, No, no, I've hung out with them long enough. Let's go this way. And they're like, Why go this way? This sometimes, no, no, we'll we'll get there faster. But he was his conflict was inherent even then, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Right, and he was having so much of this mental. I mean, we we i I think it's more in the writings than it was in this movie, those struggles and the you know, the that some of those glances off, and he sees these horrible things of of war and the head cut off, all those kind of things. And but it it it doesn't stay with that too long, but just enough so that you kind of know his struggles were going on, and so is all this cognitive stuff he must have been somehow processing in a way that is therapeutic in a way, because you know, this it's the trauma that happens, but then what do you do with the trauma and you carry it with you and you kind of ruminate and it comes up and sounds remind you, and those kind of things.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

And it can come up and notice that there were moments in the film where at the beginning all we saw the fall of Troy was sort of his face, and it would look like um ash floating around him, and then it would show this um statue being with its head cut off. I think it was a statue of Athena, and it's having its head cut off. Right, rolled down, yeah. And rolled down. And so trauma in that sense often shows up um, even though there's an attempt to dissociate from it, there's an attempt not to experience it, it still has symptomatic elements that can show up in ways that are confusing. And it wasn't until you begin to integrate it that the actual the statue was the head of a real person who was Athena in his mind. Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

And the the ashes that we saw fall were the buildings that the And if I I'm not mistaken, I may be mistaken on the chronological uh the movement of this, but the next scene had him looking at the the Trojan horse that fell against the building. And so there was that the uh connection between what what he had done and what just happened with the it was being cut off.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

It was his cleverness. It was and and he he weaponized the very order that kept things in check. Right. And so he in subverting that he sent things in motion, right? And it um and what was being kept in check by the wall of Troy, I guess the men had been out there so long they became increasingly angry. So when they f when they breached the walls, they massacred everybody.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

They destroyed, you know, and the whole thing was started because potentially at least Agamemnon wanted control over the trade routes. Like he wanted he wanted more financial power and all that sort of stuff. That's the way the movie plays it. So it wasn't like, you know, there was it was um it was and uh there's a moment where um the Sinon is sort of sacrificed, he's left there to to tell the uh Trojans about the the the that this is a gift, you know, that and um and in being a gift they are obliged to take it in and they they kill him, and um uh Odysseus is inside the horse and he can hear Sinon die, and that also sets up some of this, you know, like this this this um um that you know that and Sinon in the movie was someone who um was uh uh he they drew lotteries uh lots to see who went, and this poor uh shepherd guy um his son went and someone paid to take the place.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

And as a result of that, you know, this person wasn't even supposed to be there. And um, you know, so there was there there's all this sort of inequity, there's all this sort of conflict around it, and Odysseus is aware of this, is it, you know, and he he carries the um the lot with him. Sinon um says to give this back to my father, and I think it uh at one point he shoves it in the mouth of the person who's the really bad guy, Robert Patterson, who's also Batman, by the way. And um The Twilight. Yeah, she did the Twilight thing too.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

He was a sparkling vampire guy. This is what happens in the in our um in our culture as we go. Let me ask you a question though. Is this movie um anti-war? I mean, I I hear that in some of the news um, you know, the thing feeds that pop up, but was it really? I kind of wow, I have my own thoughts about it, but what do you think?

SPEAKER_00 30:26

Is it well I think that it certainly shows the effects of war in general. I think that you could make a case that um uh because you could make a case that it might be in it may it may be in favor of an ethical war, that if if if the rules were followed, then it's possible to have, you know, um there's a famous saying, I forget who says it, that war is just uh um diplomacy by other means. And uh which I but uh I there's also a saying too that um um war is for people who are bad at conflict. And I kind of like that one that went better.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

Yeah, I like that, yeah. That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Because I think that conflict is is inevitable and maybe even necessary, but there is a symbolic order that keeps at bay um the real of destruction, that it, you know, that there is that we are driven in certain ways, and if we want to get Lacanian about this, we're there there is at the center of us a drive, death drive, whatever you want to call it, that is always rattling the the order of things. But our fidelity to the basic rules of the symbolic order are necessary to keep things growing and not being destroyed. There's a point at which civilization tips into chaos and then we have to start all over again, which is sort of what this thing symbolizes. So I would say that it's not necessarily anti-war, but it is, or it's it may be pro-conflict, but anti um um I guess if there's such a thing as a just war, because I always think about that. That that's the word war already carries with it such weight. So maybe maybe it's anti-war and pro-conflict. I'm not sure. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Okay, well, it's a it's a tough question, but it certainly has a lot uh to do with war, like evidently. But also uh post-traumatic stress disorder. I mean, we just talked about PTSD on this guy, he's coming home, he's struggling, he's he's not sure, he's seen the horrors of war, he's committed some of the horrors of war, and now he's back, lost all his men, all of those kind of things happen on the journey back. And um Yeah, you so you can see that symbolically everyone that goes to war and is faced with this is gonna have a struggle inside to sort out what's happened to them. So it's the the event that they witnessed, then this that processing of it, and then it just sort of pops up in their w i without therapy, for example. They these things just pop up. I remember a client with PTSD that the son was using the basketball through the hallway, bouncing the basketball through the house, and this triggered some things for for this particular veteran. But it is the struggle of veterans in this.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Yeah. I mean, I've worked with a number of folks who'll go to the mall and the movement of people all around them, like they'll see people moving in the periphery. Right.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

And they're suddenly it might be a sniper, it might be somebody. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

And you know, in in some ways, um, there's a term um it's often used for psychosis, but it also it can be used for folks with severe PTSD. They're often uh the term is they uh I think it may have been Lacan that came up with this, but it's called they they're orphans of the real. That most of us to be able to deal with the world as it actually um uh to be able to deal with the real, and that's different than reality, because reality is constructed. We need something to bubble wrap it, we need narratives that inevitably don't tell us exactly what it is, and but if you go to war, that gets shredded like tissue paper. You now know things that you couldn't have known before and experience things, so it's hard for you to walk around in the same sort of ignorant bliss and share the same narrative with other folks. Yep, right? So, so part of what happens is how do you integrate you can't become ignorant of what you now know. That innocence is lost and gone. So you have to find a way to integrate it, it has to become woven into you in a way that you can accept. So, and at the end of the movie, we could say that maybe that's what happened to Odysseus, because he says in a way, he said, I'm no longer, I can no longer be part of this place, I can no longer be king, but I'm going to my wife and I, and with folks who want to go with me, we're going to go and we're going to see what else we can make of the world, right? Right, right. So there was a potential for a new beginning, and that's how the movie sort of ended itself. Yeah, I like that, didn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Yeah. It was kind of a positive um thing that for an for an ending. Um, well, it it was really great storytelling, too, was it not? Uh uh, it just seems that these um there's so much of the common man, there's so much of the beyond the normal, and all of those things kind of packaged in a story that had so many facets of it that can we we can use it in our lives in a in a in in uh and then the storytelling itself was just it's just amazing. Like I said before, it just lasted so many centuries now that um and it and it's still relevant to what we're doing. So what are the takeaways from sort of a uh a quick therapeutic uh view of this, because that that's all we had today, but uh but but w what would you say would be some sort of therapeutic construct or idea that we should take from it? It might help in some ways because we're dealing with war right now.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Well I I think that we could we could take our few uh cue from Calliope. I hope I'm saying this right, 'cause I think it's I think that was Calliope. Um there is a way, you know, if someone is attempting to integrate a trauma, this is a place where we can create uh you know our goal is is is to do no harm. But this is a place where there could be serious iatrogenic effects where the um the intervention makes things worse or causes negative symptoms symptomatic reaction. If you move someone with trauma too quickly to try to integrate that, something bad can happen. Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:43

Interesting idea, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

And I've literally seen that happen. I've I've I've worked with folks where I I wasn't listening in ways that I needed to, and I pushed things in a way where so there was decompensation, they fell apart. Right. So part of what we're gonna think about in notion. So we want to be able to, you know, that's why the lotus lee, the lotus may have been necessary, and it may have been necessary for him to be um uh by himself with this person over a period of time before his mind would be able to accept it. Okay. So part of what we want to think about this is, you know, we're gonna be able to move slow as we don't we wanna and in some of the um some of the new sort of evidence-based treatments like CPT and whatnot, they they sort of it's not that they are against this, but they often say no, that you know, that people can move much quicker than if you know with this than then you're giving them credit, and maybe that's true. Maybe um I've had I've I've went through the training for that, but um um I still think there is something about respecting and creating a space where it is possible to begin this integration, and that's part of what happened on the island he was trapped in, right? That there was something there. I also think it's important to to think about like um there is the possibility of something called post-traumatic growth, and that's what we saw when he sailed off into the horizon. That there is the potential after a trauma, the uh the the way that you saw the world is now taken, it's gone. Like uh when if I work for someone who's like um sexual assault survivor, for instance, they often uh lived in a world where it was they thought it was safer than it actually was, that they could trust people or the world in ways that the tr when the once the trauma hit, so how do they now live in a world where that trust has been broken? And it may be a good idea not to to to move to try to recreate that level of trust because it gets you hurt again. So you can grow in ways that you couldn't before. It could be that you know that um it doesn't mean that you give up completely the trust you have in the world, but you have to build up some inner resilience and some inner strength to be able to move in the world in some ways that you didn't have to before. And so now you have the ability to do things you couldn't before, possibly. We don't want to, I mean, so there's is the potential for post-traumatic growth, there is a potential to be something, you know. Um uh for uh there certainly will be scars, but there's also a testing and a resilience that you've been able to build as you've moved through these things. So that's the possibility too, right? So and and um you gotta be careful because you can romanticize trauma in a way that I don't think is fair because bad things are bad things, that doesn't make him redeemable. Um that's why I think that, like in some ways with the movie, he didn't have a choice. I mean, it's possible he could have said to himself, I mean, probably what generated the conflict for him is in his mind he said, I want to get off this this beach. We've been here for ten years, and in his desperation to go home, he came up with the idea for the horse. And as a result of that, home became conflictual, if that made sense. No, that that that totally totally makes sense. So it his that's why he didn't feel he didn't deserve to go home, because he did that. It's like if you know, if you you know um blew up a school bus because you wanted to get home, when you got home, you'd be like, Well, I gotta remember the school bus I blew up, blew up, right? There's there's there's something about that action. And so that's where I think you know, concept, psychoanalytic concepts can be really, really, really powerful because the mind in conflict often keeps someone from integrating. So it's not always just the enormity of the experience, but it's the conflict that that experience generates. I worked with soldiers before where they feel such a guilt that they didn't, that they came home and others didn't. And that they're like secretly, what if, what if I, you know, wanted them to die, that I wanted them to take the bullets so I would be okay. And sometimes that's something you have to unravel. Right. To be able to say, you know, well that's deeper. I mean, did you know, and the conversation could be, well, it it could be at a cognitive cognitive level to be able to say something like, Well, it sounds like when the bullets were flying, all you did was try to stay alive like the rest of them. Did you throw someone on in in front of a bullet to save yourself? And then they said, Well, no, actually, no, I didn't say that. I said, It's you you were attempting, you were doing what everyone was doing. And you were doing probably the same people on the other side, too. As you were shooting at them, they were trying to stay alive, and then you were trying to stay alive, and there therein lies, you know, the possibility for um for Odysseus to come home to be able to say it was not his choice to go to war. The um the world around him pushed him into this place, and now he is there. And sometimes that allows someone to to to untie the knot of conflict. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 41:51

Well, well said. I I I appreciate that. You know, it it um it does seem that we have this wherewithal and the skill, the ability, or at least we think we do, as we move throughout life. But send someone to war and all of a sudden that scale that works so well with you kind of managing things in life all of a sudden goes up uh through the roof, and you've experienced something and you have to manage it and you have to grow some new skills, it seems like this uh post-traumatic growth is a great notion. We probably need to talk a little bit about that, how to prepare, but you know, a war is such a trauma, it just overlays everything, it just crushes uh those kinds of things. And so if you have that going in, some level of skill, then you know, with with the right uh experiences afterwards, maybe even therapy, you could kind of work through some of that to begin the growth again that you that you uh that you need.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

And and maybe that that there's a parallel with this too, that we m trauma doesn't have to be capital T trauma as was in war. There is a a continuum where you know I've worked with folks who um were in managerial positions and um um they had to fire an employee. And so they had to come they had to do something that to to to let someone go that they knew they knew the impact it was gonna have on them and their family, but at the same time it was that was the orders they were given, it was necessitated by some sorts of sort of thing. And they come to speak of it in uh therapy, right? So this there is something it doesn't generate PTSD, but it is a trauma. Right. And there's usually some traumatic element that brings folks into therapy. Um we've say it here uh lots of times that the goal is not to end suffering but to get better at it. To get better at suffering is to accept the fact that there are things that you do that are gonna hurt or hurt others, inevitably, whether you mean to it or not. I've worked with folks who accidentally hit people, like pedestrians. And you know, and it isn't that they suddenly have these um um it's not that they necessarily develop PTSD. I work with folks who um will feel bad because, you know, when they were growing up they were uh mean to a sibling, um, and they feel guilty about it. And we begin to unpack it, we begin to see the family dynamics and the fact that you know that the the adults weren't doing their job, and as a result of that, this this you know created and so it's uh it becomes a narrative that they've told themselves that, you know, I'm a bad person, or um didn't necessarily have to be a war or something horrific in that. Somebody who grew up with a depressed parent, say a depressed mom, and so they're sort of driven to be able to to make sure they keep doing the right thing because if they do, they're don't, they're afraid their mom will die. There's a kernel of trauma in that. There is a bit of the real that is that hasn't been processed, right?

SPEAKER_02 44:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

That you are no longer the kid experiencing this. And so part of what happens in therapy is an opening up of that, like the um we've talked here before that Winnicott's idea that the thing that we're afraid of most is the thing we've already survived. So it's often we're trying to prevent something that has already happened, we've already survived, and so we and we can develop a relationship to ourself, to others in the world. So that's what transference is.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

Right.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

You know, someone who if someone comes in and they're talking to me and I can see that they're, you know, I I can think of uh I can think of examples of people that seem initially very almost obsequious, like it's very important that I have to be happy, you know. And if we're scheduling an appointment, they'll say, Well, you know, okay, well, uh, but let you know, I I and I'm like, I don't I think this is a burden on them, and yet, and so in those moments there is the way in which the past, which has that traumatic kernel in it, is suddenly in the present.

SPEAKER_02 45:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

And it's possible, like Calliope, again, I hope I'm getting that right, say it could be on the island, can can ask the right question is where have you been here before? What is playing out with us right now? You've been here before.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

Wow, right? That's a that's a strong theme.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

And that would you will and that would create that retroactive action. It would be like Odysseus suddenly waking up and saying, Yes, I'm afraid that if I truly say what I want, the worst could happen, right? Right.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

And but but as you just said, uh the worst is already happening. Yeah. Uh that he's been uh uh been through that and it just brings it back up because that's the uh that's sort of the tripwire of uh PTSD too, because either a sound or an event or a person or a situation is going to trigger something that you've been tr haven't worked through yet, but is still on the edge for you, and it immediately flashes up and is something you have to deal with in the moment. And if you're not prepared for it, you can respond in not so in not so great a way.

SPEAKER_00 46:58

And and your response will be that tyranny of automaticity we've talked about. It will be reflex, it will be reaction and not response, right? Right. And so part of what can happen in therapy is someone can begin to say, ah, wait a minute. I right now I want to do this because it's been the way I've always done. But they have suddenly that moment of reflection. They have the capacity to catch their mind and their body mid-flight, and there's a possibility of a choice in there, whereas before it was simply just automatic.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

It's just the automatic movement that occurred over and so much easier to let the automaticity just sort of roll, and you don't have to be aware, you don't have to really concentrate, you don't have to actually live in the moment, which we talked about here so much all the time. You gotta be in the moment. But um yeah, so so it's it's different. It it introduces a complexity, as you've said, but it introduces almost like, okay, now I have to deal with this again, and no longer can just be the automaton and just let it roll. So you have to participate in your own life a little bit here, sort of saying.

SPEAKER_00 48:08

And this thing was I was listening to um I was listening to this uh um, I think it was a it was a uh uh Lacanian psychoanalytic dude. Uh was listening to one of these lectures while I was at the gym at three in the morning, like everybody else. I mean this is a big thing. Oh, for Pete's sake. All right, go ahead. So I'm at the gym, and it really is three in the morning. And I'm at the gym, and I'm uh I'm lifting weights, and I'm listening to this guy talk about this, and something he said is really important is that something the guy that was lifting weights said? No, no, no, it was just me.

SPEAKER_01 48:37

Oh okay. I wouldn't it was in the earphones. I was thinking, this guy, we gotta get him in the studio. He sends the movie. All right. There was nobody no one was there. That was the thing we need to talk about. All right, go back to this story.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

There aren't a lot of Lacanians at the gym. It's just not in any gym. Not anywhere on planet Earth.

SPEAKER_01 48:55

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 48:57

But what he said was it's something's really powerful, and it's that, you know, that from a from a Freudian perspective, psychology perspective, that the idea that we act out of reflex doesn't take us off the hook. Right? You could say, like, well, you know, I did this simply because, you know, my dad beat me. And you know, you're right, man, you did. Freud actually offers it's even worse because what Freud says, though you you have complete responsibility for your unconscious acts, you you you have you because you you you are it is beholden to you to attempt to keep growing, it is beholden to you to be aware of and mind your own house, and in not doing so, you you you there is an ethical violation. So to the person who says, you know, I did this because my dad beat me, is to say, well, I'm sorry your dad beat me, but you know, you um you you you have not worked toward waking yourself up, and as a result, you keep doing these things to people, right? So you're not off the hook. You we all of us have unconsciouses, all of us have the potential, we all of us have reflexivity and automaticity. Yeah, but it is beholden to us to do something with them.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

Oh. Yeah, some reason I knew you were gonna say that, and I have work to do. I have more work to figure out this life thing I'm in. I suddenly find myself in trying to figure out life for some reason. Well, I'm not gonna do it today, that's for sure. But what I can say is that um if if this unconscious that you talk about, you and Freud talk about, well, he doesn't. Anyway, uh this unconsciousness is a result of all of my actual conscious living. And I've got to get that right because it my unconscious may be really off kilter, and I've I've got a lot of things that keep me awake at night. So to have a what do you say, have a peaceful, restful sleep, I've got to undo some of this unconscious trauma by living a better life. Well I think I'm all right, I'm working on it.

SPEAKER_00 51:02

We'll come back to that. I mean, the goal might be to to build a continue to build a better life. Yeah, but I think ultimately the first and the most important step is to just recognize that you're not alone with your sleepless night. All of us are riddled with conflict. We don't have to be uh uh Oedipus who you know who who got Troy sacked. Uh we can just be anybody to say that as we move throughout the world, we in turn suffer and cause suffering. Oh and the goal is to be able to say this is what it is to be a human. Right. And in doing so, you have the potential to then free yourself for action because guilt can also bind, it can cause you to dissociate and not integrate and own things that you you know. But if you could say, ah, this is what it means to be a human being, that's the first step to saying, I will sleep as well as I can tonight, and the morning I will wake and do better. That in of itself would be very freeing, I think.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

I I love the references to sleep sometimes. That that um you know, let me sleep on it overnight and I'll have the answer tomorrow. I kinda like that, that idea. Uh but sleep uh with a guilt-free conscious sort of idea that you don't have anything that you haven't settled, and now you can go to sleep and have a restful sleep. And you're just telling me that that doesn't exist. We're all dealing with our struggles. It's it's a wonder we can sleep. What little bit we get. Some of us get more than others, evidently.

SPEAKER_00 52:31

It would be great to be able to um uh bear your conscience, knowing that every uh everyone else has one, and in that universality, to be able to say this is what it is to be a human, to be aware of the things we've done wrong and right, that um uh the di the image that often comes to my mind is is you can imagine the difference between um a maelstrom uh and a uh a kaleidoscope, that if it's a storm, if it's a swirl of things, that it may not make sense. But in a kaleidoscope, there is a there is a moving complexity.

SPEAKER_02 53:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 53:09

And when we are able to um um give ourselves the possibility of owning or knowing that there are parts of us that suck and don't suck, and there are all these sorts of parts of us, we have the possibility of having a some minimal order in the form of that kaleidoscope. Whereas when we're in conflict with ourselves, when we set ourselves up to say, like whenever a patient says, I, you know, I shouldn't feel this way, that is not a kaleidoscope moment, right? That is not owning, because I hate to say this, when you say I shouldn't feel this way, you already feel it. It's not like you know, you know, it's not uh and we've talked about this before, you have no control over what you feel. Oh, come on. All right, they have some control over what you do with it, but you've your feelings come unbidden. They're gonna show up, man. It's just what it is.

SPEAKER_01 53:59

These feelings get me in trouble every time.

SPEAKER_00 54:01

And this may be uh um uh uh a a place we could end on because it's it's it's slightly uh slightly wrong. Uh I remember working with a guy um uh he was actually a soldier. Well, PTSD wasn't the main issue, but he uh came in and he said um he was talking about you know like how he'd gone to uh I think it was like someplace like Disney. They'd come back, they'd gone to Disney World. And uh he always used to make these comments to his wife about the women around him, just to I think to tease her, but also he was sort of and um he saw these um these two girls from the back, and he made a comment about how you know their their voluptuousness or certain secondary sex characteristics were.

SPEAKER_01 54:42

This this this person uh obviously has not been married very long, or he needs to come to my here's what you need to do in a marriage. Yeah, don't do this, yeah, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 54:51

But he said this, and his wife turned and said, That's our daughter. And suddenly it like hit him like, oh my and you know, part of what is he'd been away in deployment, so his daughter had changed, so he, you know, even though he he he had been around is he still hadn't, you know. But he was like just really just sort of like this shook him to his core, right?

SPEAKER_01 55:13

Yeah, it should.

SPEAKER_00 55:15

And maybe but the idea would be that you know, and this is a Freudian notion, this is where it gets wrong. Um, if you catch your attractive daughter out of the corner of your eye, you're going to notice her attractiveness before you notice notice her daughterness.

SPEAKER_01 55:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 55:30

Because that's what it means to be a human being. The goal is not to say uh I'm a horrible human being, but to say, okay, I need to live with the fact that I have an attractive daughter, but I, you know, I'm I'm going to, you know, I'm I'm I'll do better, or I'll uh I'll give this a name is humanness. And in his case, it may make him think about women in general, that he may need to be very careful not to objectify the people around him of the opposite sex, and that could be a place of growth. But there's lots of things that could happen, but none of that could happen if shame just shut him down, right? Right. Because part of what happened is that he had he was having conflict with his family, and he was like being really strict on his daughter, and you know, really like you know, um took the door off her uh uh bedroom and did all these things. And as we begin to talk about it, part of what he was punishing his daughter for the feelings he was had and the shame he felt over those feelings. So you can literally see all these sort of binding him in a way, and when he was able to say, you know what, you're you know, the little girl who you could wrestle with now has secondary sex characteristics, and now this suddenly has a troubling consequence that you're gonna have to live with. Right, you know.

SPEAKER_01 56:44

He's gotta he's gotta work to correct that uh very quickly, I would imagine, in this day and time, and of course we have the other examples out there where people do not self-correct, and maybe we get themselves into trouble. All right, so let me ask you uh final question here. In good therapy, what's the first thing that should happen between a therapist and a client if it's really good therapy? The check clears.

SPEAKER_00 57:14

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 57:15

Uh the check clears or the credit card.

SPEAKER_00 57:20

The credit card is accepted.

SPEAKER_01 57:22

Uh approved. Yeah. Okay. Well No, I know that was that was a ridiculous question to throw at you in. I may have to edit this out anyway. I don't know how this is gonna go.

SPEAKER_00 57:32

Well, because the this this is sort of what else is going on. This is a premonition. We want to be we're thinking talking about this book. We want to be able to generate a book called Good Therapy, and we so we want to think about the beginning. The beginning of the book, but also the beginning of therapy. I would say, and this is, you know, we'll have to find a way to maybe to think about this, yeah, because what I would say is the beginning of therapy, um, this is gonna sound cheesy, it has to begin with love. That the very moment you meet someone, you need to have your heart and mind open in such a way as they can feel like this is at least a temporary home. That just like with, you know, that something about the island that Oedipus was trapped in for so many years, there was something about that that he could make his home until he could broaden his homeness. And so that there's something about a parallel there. In the first few seconds, are you loving and connected? Is there a music there that makes that person feel like this is a place that I can be for a while? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 58:34

You know, I was I was regretting asking that question, but hey, that turned out to be a pretty good answer over there. So uh you get some points for that. I think you regret every question you ask me. It's like, man, why do I keep doing this? First of all, he actually heard a question that I asked him. But anyway, ladies and gentlemen, this is Gott Therapy. I'm Michael Baltimore. We'll see you next time.