WEBVTT - Scrooge: Post-traumatic Embitterment Disorder 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.920 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:16.480 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:19.680 it is holiday time. It's Christmas time. I mean it 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:22.680 kind of doesn't matter even what you celebrate or don't celebrate, 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:27.040 because Christmas is thrust upon everyone, at least here in 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:30.920 the US. Yeah, it is a juggernaut. Which is kind 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:32.640 of why we want to sit here and look at 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:37.200 a couple of classic Christmas stories this season and plumb 0:00:37.240 --> 0:00:39.920 the depths of Christmas and see if there's a bit 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:43.760 more to it. So we thought we'd start with Old Scrooge. 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:49.920 We're talking about the eighteen three Charles Dickens classic Christmas Carol. Yes, 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:53.000 a Christmas Carol, which, if you like me, you've you know, 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:57.320 you've encountered this story more than just about any other story. 0:00:57.320 --> 0:00:59.760 It's you end up reliving at every Christmas as you 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:03.120 grow up. Different film adaptations, maybe you have to go 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:06.360 to a play version of it. Um Like, for my part, 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:08.560 I don't think I've ever actually read it, Like I 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:11.520 have no desire to read it because I've I've I've 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:14.319 suffered through enough of it on the screen. I mean, 0:01:14.319 --> 0:01:16.560 and that's not to say I don't appreciate some of 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:20.520 the adaptations. I love the musical Scrooge um and and 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:22.759 could easily belt out some tunes from it right now. 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:27.360 But yeah, that's that's my go to Scrooge by the way. 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:30.960 But yeah, it's just you. You can't avoid. It's just 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:35.280 nailed into your head, it is, And uh so probably 0:01:35.360 --> 0:01:37.160 for for a lot of you guys out there listening 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:39.080 to this, this is all gonna sound familiar, but we're 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:41.960 gonna go through it anyway. We're talking about a miserly 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:46.840 old geezer named Ebeneezer Scrooge, and he is visited by 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:51.120 myriad ghosts on the eve of Christmas, including his dear 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:55.320 friend who's now a ghost, Jacob Marley, and then the 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:59.240 ghost of past present in the future. And these visitations 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:02.920 cost Scrooge to rethink his relationship and behavior to those 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:06.400 around him, particularly his employee Bob Cratchet, and his family, 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:10.880 including his infirmed son Tiny Tim. Yes, God blesses everyone's 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:16.239 it's the catchphrase that resonates with everyone. Um it's uh yeah, 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:21.079 it's like you said, it's a story of spirits of time. Travel. Uh, 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:22.960 you could you could say that this is an early 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:25.919 time travel story. I mean, you wouldn't be wrong, because 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:29.919 each of these traumatic spirits takes Scrooge, and the first 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:31.560 one says, hey, let me take you into the past. 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:33.880 This is how screwed up your past is. And then 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:36.040 the ghost of Christmas Present says, hey, let me take 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:37.680 you out into the present. This is how screwed up 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:39.720 your life is right now. And then the ghost of 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:42.800 Christmas Future says, We'll just wait till what I have 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:44.680 to show you. This is how bad it's gonna get. 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:47.359 And uh, and of course the the ghost of Christmas 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:51.240 Future is also generally wrapped up in a personification of 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:54.519 death as well, because that's the icing on the cake. 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:56.240 This is how bad the future is gonna get. Oh, 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:58.840 and you're going to die and nobody's gonna care. You 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:01.160 know what. This is such a bleak story when you 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:04.440 get down to it. Yes, But you know what, I 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:08.040 think all Christmas stories should be bleak because even when 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:11.320 you when you strip away all the consumerism and the 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:15.480 nonsense and the and the fake happiness, like any winter 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:21.480 like Deep Winter Festival is ultimately about hey, everything's getting colder. 0:03:21.840 --> 0:03:25.000 We can't grow food anymore. Things are dying. Is the 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:26.680 Is the sun going to come back? Is the spring 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:28.520 gonna come back? Are we going to survive? And it's 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:33.200 about finding some reasons to survive and the pit of despair, 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:36.000 like even the Christmas story with the Birth of Jesus 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:37.800 and all. I mean, you could say that that all 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:39.840 boils down to the idea off you have this dark 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:43.600 world that's really doomed, and then there's this one light 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:46.920 that kind of emerges to ultimately redeem everything. But it 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:49.160 comes out of a dark night. You're right, And we 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:51.680 talked about this in the episode That Dark in which 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:55.960 there is the sort of inward move into the dark, 0:03:56.080 --> 0:04:00.240 into ourselves and exploring this terrain. So it really is 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:03.400 kind of perfect Christmas Fair in a way. I wanted 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:06.360 to mention that Dickens wrote the novella in record time, 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:09.960 just six weeks, financing and arranging for the publishing, because 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:12.920 nobody else would publish it and um and the reason 0:04:13.000 --> 0:04:15.280 why he could tear through it so quickly is because 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:19.679 Christmas Carol is actually a territory that he had covered before. 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:24.080 There's a story based on Gabriel Grub, a character in 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:27.120 the story of the Goblins who Stole a Sexton, which 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:30.440 appeared in Dickens's first published novel, The Pickwick Papers, and 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:33.080 in the story a grave digger determined not to make 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:36.480 merry at Christmas is kidnapped by goblins and convinced to 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:39.160 change his ways. That sounds amazing. I want to see 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:41.359 that in this Christmas. I thought that would have publish. 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:45.679 But um, ultimately we're dying might. Here is a tale 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:50.400 of greed and generosity, personal gain versus humanitarian gain. So 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:53.239 we're gonna try to cover a little ground today. Using 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:55.839 Scrooge as our basis. We're gonna look at something called 0:04:55.880 --> 0:05:00.000 post traumatic embitterment disorder. Uh, the unconscious like a fair 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.640 rap and epiphanies, yes, and and the little drugs at 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:08.440 the end, just a little drugs perhaps part of the epiphany. Yeah, 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:11.919 but let's start with post traumatic embitterment disorder because this 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:15.479 may be a thing with a capital T. Indeed, um, 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:18.400 you know to you already mentioned some of the misery 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:21.960 of Scrooge, but it does It is important to point 0:05:21.960 --> 0:05:24.640 out that he was orphaned as a child. His mom 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:28.920 died giving birth to him, and his distraught father abandoned him. Um, 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:31.479 so that is you already have like an ample scar 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:35.520 loaded into the psyche of the young Scrooge. And then 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:37.800 he ends up falling in love with this woman, uh, 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:42.040 and then abandons her in the name of financial game 0:05:42.080 --> 0:05:43.960 because he doesn't have enough money, didn't have it, have 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:47.839 have that portion of his life squared away enough to 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:52.560 continue on with the the particulars of this romance, so 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:55.240 he just lets it go. That's right. So when we 0:05:55.320 --> 0:06:00.159 meet Scrooge on the stage, his pain has intensified, This 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:04.719 bitterness has intensified, and intensifies particularly each Christmas Eve because 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:07.920 at this point it's been seven years since Jacob Marley, 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:11.599 his only friend, has passed, and this really ushers in 0:06:11.960 --> 0:06:17.400 these ideas of bitterness and death and um, you could 0:06:17.480 --> 0:06:22.600 say that that Scritches really grappling with this at this 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:26.039 point when we see him, this this end game of 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:30.080 just embitterment that he's put himself into. Yeah, you know, 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:32.800 as you as you watch any adaptation of this or 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:35.360 or read it, it's easy to just take it taken 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:39.159 these different examples of his awfulness and take those A 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:41.919 is just you know, fleshing out his characters. Is this 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:44.200 is what Froude is like. He yells at people who 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:47.520 are own money. He you know, he chases children away, 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:52.279 He refuses very very nastily to give any money to charity, 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:55.320 all these different things, you know, impolite and and rude 0:06:55.480 --> 0:06:58.359 or down a rude to relatives and employees and all this. 0:06:58.760 --> 0:07:00.680 But you could also see this as like this is 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:04.839 the apex of his his misery and bitterness towards others. 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:07.200 You could say that like that that he has has 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:10.440 just this is the nastiest scrooge has ever been, and 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:14.560 he has really isolated himself as a result. So what 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:17.360 if he became so stressed out about your losses that 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:21.119 you could barely function and you became obsessed with those 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:24.200 perceived losses, which is a lot of what he's doing right. 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:27.000 He's going over old terrain and trying to figure out 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:29.760 what happened to him and feeling very bitter about that. Now. 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:33.560 According to Dr Michael Lyndon, a German psychiatrist, this is 0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:37.200 a concept named post traumatic environment disorder or pte D, 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:41.400 and in his two thousand three paper, Dr Lindon noted 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:45.240 that pt e D is similar to post traumatic stress 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:49.600 disorder PTSD, except that those with PTSD suffer intense fear 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:53.480 and anxiety after experiencing a life threatening event. But those 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:56.520 with pt e D who are bitter, he says that 0:07:56.560 --> 0:07:59.680 they were hard working and mentally healthy people until a 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:03.240 true ring event destroyed their core values and shattered their 0:08:03.240 --> 0:08:06.440 basic beliefs. So in a sense, you could say that, 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:08.640 I don't I don't know. I would say that Scrooge 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:11.920 was mentally healthy, but perhaps the breaking point for him 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:15.200 was when he did lose Jacob Marley, who might have 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:19.520 been sort of his last real connection too to what 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:23.880 it felt like to have a good working relationship. Yeah, 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:27.200 and probably a model too of what he should be 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:29.840 doing with his life and and what is the correct 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:33.960 path to take now. Lyndon first began to piece together 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:38.080 this idea of post traumatic embitterment disorder when he observed 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:43.760 it in disillusioned and embittered patients after German reunification. And uh, 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:46.440 and it's it's worth noting that it's we're talking about 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:50.800 a mixture of depression, helplessness, hopelessness, all all sort of 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:54.320 swirled up into one. It's easy to to just think 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:57.560 of bitterness as uh, to just dismiss it. It's just 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:00.600 kind of an easy negative character, a trade like oh 0:09:00.760 --> 0:09:03.920 something something crappy happened to this person. They're just bitter. 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:06.200 They're just bitter, Like it's a choice that you make, 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:08.640 you know, to to be bitter instead of be happy 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:10.680 about something. But in one of the articles we were 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:13.640 looking at, psychologist A Stephen A. Diamond, I thought he 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:19.160 had a really nice, like just robust explanation of bitterness itself, 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:22.040 not even getting into post traumatic embitterment disorder. But he 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:26.439 said that it is a kind of morbid characterological hostility 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:29.920 towards someone something, or towards life itself, resulting from the 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:34.280 constant repression of anger, rage, or resentment regarding how one 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:37.439 really has or perceives to have been treated, a pro 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:42.720 longed resentful feeling of dis empowered and devalued. Victimization. Yeah, 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:45.640 victimization is key here because there's a lot of blame 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:49.440 on other people. Are circumstances. Yeah, yeah, So scrooges in 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:52.040 this situation where yeah, he's looking at all these institutions 0:09:52.080 --> 0:09:55.360 around him, he's looking at the culture around him, and 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:57.679 to him, he's not the you know, he's not the 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:00.120 the nasty guy that's just not going with the Oh. 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:04.280 He has been pushed into this corner by the circumstances 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:07.320 in his life. Uh, and and and here he is, 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:09.440 you know, looking up at it as if you know, 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:13.080 from a pit. Now, the core criteria pt D are 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:17.920 one a single exceptional negative life event which precipitates the 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:21.040 onset of the illness. So again, perhaps Jacob Marley to 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:24.800 the present negative state developed in the direct context of 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:28.720 the event. Three the emotional response is embitterment and feelings 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:32.440 of injustice. And four repeated intrusive memories of the event, 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:37.839 so again obsessing about it. Five emotional modulation is unimpaired. 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:41.160 Patients can even smile when engaged in thoughts of revenge. 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:46.280 And six no obvious other mental disorder that can explain 0:10:46.280 --> 0:10:50.360 the reaction. So that's where it gets a little bit 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:55.439 murky because Lyndon found that pte D patients also suffered 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:58.920 from a suite of other emotional complaints. Um, some of 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:03.439 them just had general adjustment disorders, some of them had 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:07.560 general depression or something called this just by mia, and 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:10.600 then there were anxiety disorders as well. So it's kind 0:11:10.600 --> 0:11:12.800 of a poop poop platter here. Yeah, And therefore it's 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:16.080 also easy to misdiagnose it then, to say, oh, well, 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:20.080 this person is just suffering from from a generalized anxiety disorder, 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:22.600 and you're not necessarily treating the root cause of of 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:25.240 what's going on. But what definitely some of the hallmarks 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:28.960 here are isolations like you get you become so obsessed 0:11:29.200 --> 0:11:32.040 with how you feel that you have been wronged in 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:35.000 life that you began to think about these details and 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:38.560 blame people and and really cut off your social connections. 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:43.840 And bitterness can have some severe physiological ramifications as well, 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:46.600 it seems, um, and of course that's kind of forecast 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:49.400 by the third ghost who points out, hey, you keep 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:52.520 down this path, it's going to kill you. Right. According 0:11:52.559 --> 0:11:57.480 to Carston Wash, a professor in Corcodia Sor, a professor 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:00.720 in the Concordia University Department of PSI Cology and a 0:12:00.720 --> 0:12:03.400 member of the Center for Research and Human Development, quote, 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:09.040 bitterness may forecast patterns of biological disregulation, a physiological impairment 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:13.200 that can affect metabolism, immune response, or organ function and 0:12:13.360 --> 0:12:18.000 physical disease. It's kind of a downer, yeah, but this 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:22.360 is Christmas. If you if you engage in cognitive behavioral therapy, 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:27.160 it could be really helpful. That's what Lyndon had found. Um, 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:29.079 the problem is that a lot of people don't seek 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:31.600 help when they're in a situations, especially if you have 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:35.000 cut yourself off from almost everyone around you. Because I again, 0:12:35.080 --> 0:12:37.880 look at Scrooge, who's reaching out to him like a 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:41.800 few people. Basically his nephew is the main one who's saying, hey, 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:46.440 come have some human companionship. Uh, you know, be be 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:48.800 a decent person. Uh you know, I'm I'm here. And 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:51.480 that's like the one of the few remaining lifelines that's 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:53.080 still being thrown to him. So, yeah, you're in a 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:55.680 situation like that, You're you're not getting a lot of 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:59.040 lifelines anymore. It's true. All right, let's take a quick break, 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:01.959 and when we get we're gonna take a quick detour 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:11.400 into the unconscious. All right, we're back. Yeah, let's discuss 0:13:11.480 --> 0:13:16.480 the unconsciousness of heaven user Scrooge, right because as we know, 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:19.960 again he has had all these different life events stacked 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:23.160 up one after the other, and so obviously that's going 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:26.280 to not just color his worldview, but that is going 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:29.959 to color his unconscious And we'll dip right back into that. 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:32.440 I know we've talked about it before, but David Eagleman 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:35.640 in his book Incognito, the secret life of the brain. 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:39.520 He claims that the brain is running the show incognito 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:43.680 and that this consciousness, this I feeling, is just kind 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:47.679 of this bit player that is on the sidelines of 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:51.600 this vast network of circuitry. And so he says, we're 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.080 not at the center of ourselves. Instead, we're like the 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:56.080 Earth in the Milky Way and the Milky Way in 0:13:56.120 --> 0:14:01.040 the universe, and we're far out on that distant hearing 0:14:01.960 --> 0:14:06.200 little of what's actually transpiring. Yeah. Philosopher and cognitive scientists 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:07.800 Dan denn It puts it this way. A person is 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:12.840 approximately one trillion little cellular robots, an army. We emerge 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:16.679 from that. Consciousness emerged from that. So the Scrooge that 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:18.720 we encounter is is due to uh, you know, a 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:21.840 lot of storms raging underneath the surface, and where he 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:27.200 himself is only encountering surface level Scrooge. So what's interesting 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:30.880 about this is that along comes this tour through his past, 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:34.200 present in future, which you could say would be it 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:36.840 might be a dream, or it might actually be ghosts 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:40.160 that are visiting him. In any case, there has been 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:42.760 this idea put out there that it is a kind 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:47.000 of psychotherapy of the unconscious that is uncovering all of 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:51.000 these things for Scrooge. Okay, so these are manifest manifestations. 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:54.280 These are like yung Gian figures that are emerging from 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:58.160 his subconscious h and he's forced to to to actually 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:02.200 confront them. Yeah, especially if you consider that every Christmas 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:05.280 Eve for the past seven years he's had this crisis, 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:09.240 and for those seven years, perhaps um all these things 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:12.320 have been going under the cover of his consciousness and 0:15:12.360 --> 0:15:15.640 they now show up in this kind of form. So 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:20.920 the idea here is that these spirits goes aliens immune, 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:23.760 and the manifestations, whatever you want to call them, uh, 0:15:23.840 --> 0:15:27.520 that they are providing a form of psychotherapy. Yeah. The 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:32.200 American Psychological Association says there's several approaches to psychotherapy, including 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:36.200 cognitive behavioral which we already mentioned, interpersonal and other kinds 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:40.360 of talk therapy, and that helps people sort of work 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:44.520 through their problems. It's grounded in dialogue, a lot of talking. Again, 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:47.560 it provides a supportive environment that allows you to talk 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:52.760 openly with someone who's objective, neutral and non judgmental. And 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:54.920 I don't know that you would say all the spirits 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:57.760 are non judgmental, but I remember them being a bit 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:02.200 dispassionate and being sort of like here, here's this, here's that. Yeah, 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:05.640 I mean, especially the last one is rather dispassionate. Uh 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:07.920 but but yeah, Well, it's easy to think back on 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:09.720 those three spirits and just focus on the fact that 0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:13.560 they are showing him things and showing him these visions 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:15.400 of things that have been and things to come and 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:17.440 things that are. But there is a lot of talking. 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:20.880 There's especially with the first two spirits. So the last 0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:24.560 one doesn't really say much, but with the first two especially, 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:27.240 there's a dialogue going on between Scrooge and the ghost, 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:28.960 and you could you could easily say that that is 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:31.600 a kind of psychotherapy. They're saying, look at these look 0:16:31.600 --> 0:16:33.600 at these events, look at what happened here. How do 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:37.400 you feel about that? Now? This is interesting. Psychiatrist Stephen E. 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:42.000 Wars has presented on this particular topic a number of times, 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:44.720 and he goes so far as to suggest that Jacob 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:52.400 Marley is Scrooge's primary physician, referring Scrooge to psychological spirit guides. Yeah, 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:54.440 he does. He does have the interaction with him where 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:58.280 he's like, Scrooge, yeah, it's terrible, you don't want this. Yeah, 0:16:58.320 --> 0:17:01.480 he's saying I screwed up, my path ended up being 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:04.600 the wrong one. I can't really help you, but here 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:07.040 are three specialists they can Yeah, and you had mentioned 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:10.159 Stephen Diamond. He says that in UNGI in terms, we 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:14.040 could say that his unconscious self scrooges, unconscious self starts 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:17.000 speaking to him on that cold and lonely Christmas Eve 0:17:17.119 --> 0:17:21.640 via his dreams. Dreams, as Freud found, are the via 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:24.680 riggia or regal road to the unconscious and can be 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:27.960 understood as forms of communication from the unconscious. Yeah. I 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:30.920 think that's a solid interpretation. I like that. Yeah, so 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:33.280 you could make the case, yes, that these uh, these 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:37.879 spirit guides were taking him through an accelerated pace of 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:42.240 psychotherapy and order for him to arrive at an epiphany. 0:17:42.320 --> 0:17:44.040 And as we all know, epiphanies are. They're kind of 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:48.040 weird things. They seem again like those sort of aha moments, 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:50.640 when in fact they have been bubbling under the surface. 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:53.840 On that note, let's take a quick break and when 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:58.440 we come backphanies and we're gonna hit rock bottom here, Yes, 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:08.479 all right, we're back. Epiphany's epiphanies are the stuff of 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:11.880 great stories. Um, well, at least there's the stuff of stories. Um, 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:14.560 you're in a constantly encountering characters who have that just 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:18.480 extreme aha moment, right, um and uh, and you do 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:20.560 see that in Scrooge. Right, he wakes up from all 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:23.359 of this and he realizes I had it all wrong. 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:26.159 I'm changing my life. And you see this in an 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:28.600 other Christmas stories to um, um, you see this in 0:18:28.640 --> 0:18:30.600 It's a Wonderful Life too, Right, he has that epiphany 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:33.600 where he realizes, hey, life is worth while living. It's 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:35.960 worth climbing out of the pit. Four. I am going 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:39.000 to survive this horrible season. But the pit that's the 0:18:39.040 --> 0:18:42.080 important part. That's the rock bottom that you usually have 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:44.760 to hit in order for you to be able to 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:47.000 get a handle on what it is you need to confront. 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:50.560 And you know he's another fictional character, uh, semi fictional 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:54.200 character who hit rock bottom before before everything got rolling. 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:58.600 Dante Dante. Okay, you know he reaches this this dark point. 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:00.399 That's why he has to go through hell and then 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:03.280 purgatory and finally haven't all right. So you see there's 0:19:03.320 --> 0:19:08.200 a rich literary tradition here. John Skalski and Brigham Young 0:19:08.320 --> 0:19:12.000 University psychology professor Sam Hardy conducted an in depth study 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:17.159 of fourteen people who experienced profound, sudden and lasting change. 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:20.760 I will take issue with sudden though, right UM it 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:24.520 says that the parallels they found with participants in Scrooge 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:26.880 is that they all had hit rock bottom in their lives, 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:30.160 and they all had a trusted friend like Marley who 0:19:30.160 --> 0:19:34.680 opened up their perspective on their perceived life tragedies, allowing 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:37.320 them to recast and recover from them. Now I want 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:40.320 to throw in here that rock bottom doesn't necessarily mean 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:43.199 I was in in a gutter or I was at 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:44.879 the bottom of a grape. It can just mean like 0:19:44.960 --> 0:19:51.400 you've reached like maximum stress level, maximum emotional psychological angst 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:54.879 over a particular thing. Yeah. Again, these are these are 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:57.840 huge life events. A lot of them had to do 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:01.919 with money. To write, like, people were uh pretty tied 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:04.800 to their associations with money and their status with money, 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:07.040 and then the kind of world we built for ourselves. Indeed, 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:10.560 and when they were um, when that was taken away 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:12.720 from them or they lost that fortune, than they had 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:15.119 to confront what it meant to be that person that 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:18.840 they were inhabiting. So that's what's interesting about this. UM. 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:21.479 You can find more information out about it in the 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:25.600 Humanistic Psychologists that the January issue. But we brought it 0:20:25.640 --> 0:20:29.520 up because we thought, well, Scrooge, he's definitely hit rock bottom. Indeed, 0:20:29.560 --> 0:20:31.560 now in that study that there's also something I like 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:33.520 to think of as a Marley factor is that the 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:38.040 most study participants described the presence of a living, trusted 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:40.920 other person during their experience. So again the can sort 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:44.440 of give that value to Marley. Yeah, and again that's 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:47.840 that person who can provide that perspective shift because we 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:50.160 all need that. Right when you're down in the dumps, 0:20:50.320 --> 0:20:53.320 you've hit rock bottom, you need someone to say it's 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:57.800 okay like you, You're you're breathing right now. There's there's 0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:00.680 food available to you hopefully, So when you know someone 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:03.360 to say, you can go on. Yeah, you can say 0:21:03.359 --> 0:21:06.479 Marley's a sponsor. I guess you know it could be. 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:10.320 So he hasn't really kicked his condition, since he is 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:14.879 presumably a denizen of Hell, right, doesn't have a motivation 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:18.600 to anymore. He's just shackled, right, He shackled to his 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:21.520 ledger book right something along to some sort of symbol 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.240 symbols of his his preoccupation with money and book keeping. 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:28.360 The chains he forged in life. And I do want 0:21:28.359 --> 0:21:31.119 to mention another reason that I love that Scrooge musical, 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:34.080 the film Addictation with Albert Finney, is that Scrooge actually 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:36.439 goes to Hell. In it, there's an actual hell with 0:21:36.520 --> 0:21:40.720 like big beefy demons walking around, big beefy demons. Yeah, 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:44.919 it's like it's big, like muscular, red painted demons busking around. 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:47.560 And there's a scene with ghosts flying through the air. Okay, 0:21:47.600 --> 0:21:51.320 So why didn't NBC air that instead of Peter Pam Live? 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:54.160 As much as I like seeing Christopher walking like sort 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:57.359 of oddly drunk dancing as a pirate, I don't know. 0:21:57.480 --> 0:21:59.240 Maybe that could be the next one, because the whole 0:21:59.240 --> 0:22:01.399 thing is like they have to do live productions of 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:04.800 musicals or plays, right, they could do Scrooge. It's a 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:07.040 it's it's a musical, and it's got some wonderful numbers 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:08.919 in it. So do that next year. Maybe I'll watch it. 0:22:09.000 --> 0:22:12.159 They could, and they should. Now there is something a 0:22:12.160 --> 0:22:16.040 little something called altruism that Scrooge was able to finally 0:22:16.200 --> 0:22:20.000 tap into when he had his epiphany. Tap into is 0:22:20.040 --> 0:22:22.040 putting it ladly, because he really he didn't just turn 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:25.719 on the tap. He'd like hacks into the keg with 0:22:25.800 --> 0:22:29.160 an axe. He just goes crazy, given out stuff, right, 0:22:29.240 --> 0:22:31.600 and that's always the big scene where he's it's toys 0:22:31.640 --> 0:22:35.200 for everyone, it's giant turkeys for everyone. It's just because 0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:36.919 it's built up a right. He has all of this 0:22:37.440 --> 0:22:39.920 do gooderie. He could have been doing, all this altruism 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:41.800 that that he that he could have been engaging with, 0:22:42.280 --> 0:22:44.840 and he hasn't for years and years, I mean for 0:22:44.960 --> 0:22:47.760