A Deep Dive into Individuation with Dr. Joli Hamilton

In this episode, PolySoCal returns for a deeper, more personal conversation with Dr. Joli Hamilton, exploring individuation, depth psychology, meaning making, and how these concepts intersect with polyamory and modern relationships.

Dr. Joli unpacks what individuation really means, how unconscious material shapes our choices, and why polyamory can function as an individuation path rather than simply a relationship structure. The discussion moves through Jungian psychology, the role of culture in meaning making, midlife transitions, jealousy and envy, and how people metabolize life experiences to become more fully themselves.

This episode is reflective and foundational, offering language for understanding identity, relationships, and personal transformation beyond surface-level behavior or quick fixes.

Alonzo Banx, Patty, Dr. Joli Hamilton,

Transcript

Alonzo Banx (00:00)
Welcome back to the PolysoCal podcast. I am still Alonzo Banks. And today we are doing a deep dive with the absolutely amazing Dr. Jolie Hamilton. You may remember her from the show a couple of weeks back. We got Psy in the house. And today we're to be digging a little deeper and getting to understand Dr. Jolie and some of her background. Hi, Doc. Welcome back.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (00:19)
Sounds like fun for me. Thanks

for having me back.

Alonzo Banx (00:23)
It's awesome. Sigh. Good to have you here tonight.

Psi (00:26)
Thank you, it's wonderful being here.

Alonzo Banx (00:28)
Okay, so for those who don't remember who Dr. Jolie is, and I don't know how you could listen to our podcast and not remember, let me give the bio here. Dr. Jolie-Hannelton holds a PhD and a master's in psychology, is a depth psychologist, relationship coach, and AASECT. Is that a word or is that an acronym? ASAC, certified sexual educator specializing in jealousy, intimacy, consensual non-monogamy.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (00:47)
Asect, Asect, yeah.

Alonzo Banx (00:55)
She has been polyamorous for over 17 years, is a parent of seven, and blends deep psychology with real world lived experience. Not only that, she's also the host of her own podcast, Playing with Fire. How many episodes you got on that now? Wow. Where she explores relationships, power, and transformation in a very human way. Doc, what did I forget? What did I leave out?

Dr. Joli Hamilton (01:11)
Almost 250 now.

I think you really nailed it this time. I guess the only thing is I like to knit. I like to knit a lot, like a lot. Like it doesn't feel relevant here, but I feel like if you really want to know me, you also need to know that the room I'm sitting in is filled with nothing but books and yarn.

Alonzo Banx (01:26)
You

I've been a costume designer for quite a number of decades. So yeah, I understand that. That's a thing.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (01:40)
I love

it. I love it. Yeah, my first degree all the way back in the millions of years ago was in fashion design. So you can't leave that behind once you start. absolutely.

Alonzo Banx (01:47)
nice. It's in the soul. I get it. Sai,

it's good to have you here. And you weren't on our original conversation with Dr. Oli a couple weeks back.

Psi (01:54)
Thank you.

I was not.

No, it sounded wonderful. I did listen to it.

Alonzo Banx (02:02)
good. Doc, tell us about you. I mean, we covered this before, but, all right, first with me, the thing that I messed up, ASEC, what is that?

Dr. Joli Hamilton (02:09)
asect. So asect is the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists. I think of asect as the, when we're looking at people who study psychology, say, right? Like we're all gonna wind up having then sub-specialties. Asect is where most of us go if we want the gold standard speciality of something to do with sexuality.

within our range of our scope of practice. So I'm a sex educator. There are other people who practice as sexual counselors. Those are generally people who hold MDs or DPTs. And then there are the therapists and the therapists, sex educators and sex counselors who are asex certified have undergone a certain amount of training and really jumped through. Honestly, it's just the hoops. we jumped through so many hoops.

We go through so much education and on top of that, a lot of hours of practice before we have those letters behind our name. what I love about that is the term sex therapist, like it's not a protected term. So anybody can say that they're a sex educator or a sex therapist. So ASEC just helps us understand like, oh, this person went out of their way to receive hundreds of hours of training on top of their other training. So it just lets us know, like this person's really, they've

They dug in. They did the work.

Alonzo Banx (03:25)
Okay, so let's get the background. Why did you do it?

Dr. Joli Hamilton (03:28)
You know, it turned out when I was in my late 30s, I turned around and was looking at my life and realized that I had been acting as a sex educator for years. So, and this is something that happens for quite a lot of people. They realize like, I've been doing this in other aspects of my life. So I had been a birth doula and a postnatal doula for years. I had also been an educator of small children.

and had taught sex ed in developmentally appropriate ways in lots of community learning environments because our state level sex education was total crap. So I looked as I was moving into my grownup, on my big girl hat and get all of my degrees behind me, I looked and saw like, ⁓ the theme throughout my life is that I tend to talk to people.

about sex, sexuality, and really anything that makes other people uncomfortable. Like if it's a topic that tends to make people uncomfortable, that's where I'm headed. And so as I was studying, I realized, I'm gonna want to study, I'm gonna wanna weave this into my dissertation. I'm gonna want this to be part of my graduate work, my doctoral work. And so I knew that was gonna be a bit of a tough sell because when you're studying, you have to get your...

your dissertation has to go through something called an IRB. And that process is an ethical review board process where you have to show that if you're gonna research human participants, you gotta show that you got the chops for it and that you're not gonna hurt anybody. Since I knew I wanted all of these things to intersect, I was like, okay, I know how to talk to people about sex. How do I prove to the board that I can do it well? I can do it ethically. And because I'm me, I decided I'll just...

study more. And I went and I got certified as a holistic sexuality educator and then I went for my ASECT certification right after that. you know, then later I served on the board for ASECT and what I found was they were also just they were my people. They cared about topics that most people either feel a little nervous about or feel like they can just speak from lived experience.

And while I value lived experience deeply, there is something beautiful about the intersection of lived experience and some breadth of knowledge, something beyond only lived experience when you're going to work with other people with a multiplicity of perspectives and problems.

Alonzo Banx (05:51)
That's awesome. I'm to jump sideways for a minute and then bring these back together. You had explained depth psychology the last time you were on, but what I'm hoping to have you do is re-explain that for those who didn't catch you in the first and then explain how those work together.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (06:05)
Yeah, yeah. Well, OK, they work together because I make them work together. So depth psychology is it's the psychology before it takes. It really takes place primarily before behaviorism became like the prime mover in American modern psychology. Right. So when we think about depth psychology, we're thinking about Freud, Jung, Adler. We're thinking back there. ⁓ But it is also a modern practice. Right. So it's rooted in

the practices that we see come out of like say Jung's work is what I specialize in, but it's also rooted in philosophy and in mythology. Depth psychology is the psychology you care about when you really take the unconscious seriously. You understand that motivation is not just something we hold in our conscious prefrontal cortex awareness, but also something that happens at a soul level.

I love depth psychology because it's messy. It makes space for non-pathologizing. It makes space for the symptom to actually be an indicator of life force happening, right? So I love depth psychology, but Jungians as a whole tend to stay away from the sexuality realm. Like if you go look at like the general depth texts, they barely treat sex. They really just don't talk about it very much.

and it is my area of special interest. So yeah, I stomped my way through my master's degree and my doctorate just being the girl that talked about sex in every single paper. And it worked. It actually really, really worked because it let me find the correct overlap for me, right? And in depth psychology, what matters most is the relationship between

myself and whoever I'm working with, whether that's an individual or a group. tend to practice mostly in groups, but it's about the relationship. So it also had to be about the relationship between the topics, between the way that I approach the topics. Everything's relationship.

Psi (07:55)
Thank

Alonzo Banx (08:05)
Okay, now you are openly polyamorous and have been for some time. And as you know, that's the centerpiece of this conversation is how we deal with those kinds of relationships and the issues. So how does this all tie together?

Dr. Joli Hamilton (08:17)
So when I think about polyamory, I think about the way that we, as a group, we tend to be a group of people who understand at sort of a core level that people are inherently multiple. Like we have this innate draw to multiplicity. We tend to see through what I think of as the lens of multiplicity. We see multiple perspectives.

that there are multiple ways to meet our needs. We see that there are lots of ways to handle relationships. We tend to lean out of the idea that there's one mono pathway, right? That is a perfect overlap for depth psychology. Depth psychology is all about multiplicity. It is all about allowing ourselves to really experience depth of connection, not just to the self, but also to others, right?

These two things, they fit together so perfectly in my imagination. I, it felt very natural to me as I was practicing polyamory in the early days and I couldn't find, mean, we didn't have, we didn't have poly secure. We didn't have, we didn't have the books we have now. We have the ethical slut. That was pretty much it. And in all the rest of the relationship books I was reading, in all the rest of the papers, the endless papers I was reading, there was nobody talking about

the innate multiplicity of the soul, but Jung does. Jung does. And so I decided, well, to hell with it. I'm not going to wait for this to exist. I'm just going to go be in my Jungian studies and be with the concepts, these beautiful concepts like complexes and archetypes and the concepts of projection and projective identification. I'm just going to be with that and bring my polyamorous self in and see what happens.

And what happened was, ⁓ this is a very, very good fit because the path from a monogamous existence to a polyamorous existence is an individuation path. It is not the only one. There are as many individuation paths as there are humans. But one of the ways we can move toward ourselves is to no longer hold ourselves in these narrow definitions of what's possible in relationship.

So for me, this process of like folding depth psychology and polyamory together was, ⁓ they belong together. They make sense. Depth psychology shines a light on non-monogamy that most people intuitively feel but can't put words to. So what I do is I give language to these really deeply felt soulful experiences by bringing depth psychology into it. And that's honestly what my podcast is about. It's about...

looking at non-monogamy as an individuation path.

Alonzo Banx (10:57)
And I've listened to a bunch of episodes in your podcast clearly when I knew you were coming on. It's awesome. So for anyone who's not out, who was out there, not, hasn't listened yet, you need to. Okay. But I to get one more foundational thing because you keep bringing it up a lot. Union psychology. Explain that as a basis to me because I don't get it.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (10:59)
Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah.

Okay, so when we talk about depth psychology, D-E-P-T-H, sometimes people hear it and they think death psychology. That's another thing altogether. Depth psychology, that's a whole host of different theoretical lenses that fall under like, we care about the unconscious, we look past just ⁓ behavior and thought loops, right? We're looking into that area.

Jungian psychology specifically, so the psychology that was first described in very, many words and books by Carl Gustav Jung. Jungian psychology is where we get phrases like the shadow, right? Like that's where we tend to, like if you're on Instagram and you're seeing stuff about the shadow, people are probably pointing toward Jung's work. But Jung also,

I mean, his work is immense. It's absolutely immense. There's so much to it. He's also still, you know, a white man from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So we have to take a beat and say Jungian psychology has also grown beyond the confines of just interpreting Jung. It to me, it's a psychology of the soul. That's what really matters. It's about

the soul, that the spark that is me. For some reason, I find myself existing here, this time, this place, this catastrophe. What's the meaning I make out of that? That's that, what's the unfolding that this, my individual psyche is here to experience. That's Jungian psychology for me.

Alonzo Banx (12:44)
Got it. You're using the term soul. Spiritual, subconscious, what is soul to you?

Dr. Joli Hamilton (12:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, for me, it's just about a way ⁓ a word that I can use as a placeholder, the way some people might use the word universe as a placeholder for God. And it doesn't really matter which way, like it whatever works for you. I use soul in a sense that says, well, there's something more than just your behavior. You are more than just the actions you take. There's something unique about the fact that you exist at all.

I also don't happen to think that humans are the only creatures with souls. Intuitively, I can feel when something or someone has soul, soulfulness. So I definitely don't think of it in any sort of restrictive religious sense. I think of it as something that just denotes a certain level of embodied animation, even if that creature is utterly still, like a rock or a tree.

So very broad definition of the use of word soul.

Alonzo Banx (13:43)
And how would you connect that or not to subconscious?

Dr. Joli Hamilton (13:47)
So subconscious, I tend to use the terms unconscious versus conscious, right? Because I'm thinking about my conscious awareness, that which I can actually talk to you about, I can describe, I can discuss. It's what I am aware I am aware of. My unconscious is all the stuff I am unaware that I am unaware of. It covers the vast majority of what makes up me.

Alonzo Banx (13:53)
Okay.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (14:11)
And then there is that little fuzzy area, right? Where something's like just under the surface. And it can be like, it can be pulled out by something. Something can be like, I can spontaneously experience something. It happens in kink scenes where we might be doing scene work, right? And all of a sudden something sort of comes forward and like, oh, that was right under the surface and I didn't even know it. I don't use the phrase very much because for me, what matters more is.

If something is in my unconscious, my personal unconscious, I am not able to act as responsibly on that as I am on the stuff that's in my conscious awareness. How do I take responsibility for what is in my unconscious? I'm literally not aware of it. That's tricky work. And yet here are humans bumbling about the place, mostly made up of unconscious motivations and experiences.

It's hard to be a person. It is not easy. So subconscious is there and it can be a useful phrase. And for some people, feel like it's the word that they use when they mean unconscious. But I think it gives the impression that something is just like right there and all I have to do is just like peel back one layer. The unconscious is an iceberg largely under the surface. So it's not as simple as just like, I'll just... It's not that deeper than that.

Alonzo Banx (15:25)
Sorry, I think I'm monopolizing the conversation tonight. I mean, you have much chance to talk. I'm sorry.

Psi (15:33)
No, that's absolutely fine because you're asking her more about background and such, I think is super important. My questions were actually a little bit more in particular to some two of her programs that you offer. You mentioned individuation, which for me hits home a lot, as someone that went through major life changes in my mid-40s. And I know you offer a program called Individuation Alchemy. ⁓

Dr. Joli Hamilton (15:56)
Yeah.

Psi (15:58)
And my question, mean, one, if you could share about it and then I would have a little bit a question about that. Thank you.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (16:04)
Yeah,

well, Sy, thank you for asking. So here's the thing, as a depth psychologist, most people imagine that I practice largely one-to-one. I don't. That's not actually my, that's not my preferred way of working with people. I do one-to-one work, but what I find is most of us have quite a bit of experience and exposure to like therapeutic relationship, which is great. I love that. But we miss out on community relationship and we miss out

on psycho education. And that's where I spend most of my time. I am an educator, first and foremost. I love being in educational spaces. I have two programs because, and program is maybe even the wrong word, two communities where we come together and we intentionally spend time in the year of opening, figuring out how to open our relationships. But in individuation alchemy,

We spend time, we spend a concerted amount of time and effort, nine months, experiencing ourselves as unfolding, right? Like you said, in your mid-40s, you go through psychological changes, you go through a whole bunch of life stuff. Life comes at you fast and you start experiencing changes. In alchemy, what we're doing together is staying present to the changes that are happening and learning specific

depth psychological processes that have been proven over the decades to be really effective ways for people to start settling into, I am unfolding to myself. I am becoming more known to myself. It's kind of a messy, long process.

Alonzo Banx (17:38)
And how do you do these? Are these like online classes or these something that you do in a school? How do you make those happen?

Dr. Joli Hamilton (17:45)
So I run my programs online and I do that because I like working with people all over the world. I have clients all over the place. Right now I'm running everywhere from Australia to Belgium and everywhere in between. So they're online, they're weekly programs that we get together, but they're also, they're not. So something I think people have come to expect out of ⁓ being grownups and going back to seek out education is if you go online,

saying the word program tends to lead people to think that it's like a great big space and I'm just gonna be like another nameless Zoom box. And that's just not my vibe. It's not how I feel connected to each person. And in individuation work in particular, individuation is the ongoing process of becoming myself, right? Like I'm trying to become more and more attuned to myself. And in order to do that, I need...

to be in actual relationship with other people. So my group programs are, they're small groups, they're 20 people or less. And we get together week after week, it's the same people. You know this, what happens if you get together with the same people, telling your story, unfolding yourself, learning how to have vulnerability in the right dosages so that you can actually receive the mirrors that you need? That is life-changing.

That's the psycho education that I think most of us long for, but we don't even know that we're longing for it. So I find people who are like, yeah, I've done decades of therapy and I love it, but I'm still missing something. This is that missing something. It's the opportunity to be, not just show up and say, I'm gonna empty the bucket that is me and I'm just gonna say all this stuff, but also to receive.

to receive new ideas, to have a concept or a practice suggested, and then you try it on and you see how it fits and you see what it reflects to you. It is a process of also really engaging with like, well, how do I want to become me? Like, what's that like for me? Like, we're all so different. How do I want to do that?

Psi (19:44)
Okay.

Alonzo Banx (19:46)
How do people even get started in something like that if they don't have the opportunity to join one of your groups? Do you have writings or the things that they can listen to? I mean, talk about this individually. How do you start if they don't have access to the amazing Dr. Jolie Hamilton?

Dr. Joli Hamilton (19:52)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, so the cool thing about individuation is we all are, we're all on a path. Everybody is experiencing their life at the pace that makes sense for you, right? So there isn't a right or wrong time, but often sometime in midlife, in my experience, women tend to start somewhere in their mid 30s, men a little on the later side than that. There is this awakening to like, there's something more.

If you sense that there should be or there probably is something more, if you're getting that itch, that's a great time to reach out for writings that go beyond pop psychology. The work that goes beyond just explaining away how things work. And I like to sit, I have a whole reading list and people can grab my reading list. If you go to my website, you can find it. have a huge reading list, but I also strongly recommend that people

do use podcasts as a learning method because language enters differently when we hear it, when we hear people in conversation. So that's why my podcast Playing with Fire is it is a process of listening to not just me, but me talking to my anchor partner about our ongoing experience. It's not just about how do I fix this relational problem or that it's about how are we being people.

I also have ⁓ a private podcast that people can download called Inner Alchemy. That's an introduction to what do I mean? Like, why am I even using this word alchemy? People have started using the word alchemy as if it's a synonym for transformation.

When I think about ⁓ alchemy, I'm talking about a very specific psychological process of going through that dark night of the soul. And then that dark night of the soul, by the way, it's not a night, we all know, that's not a night. It's often months or years feeling like you're wandering, often feeling very, very lonely. And then through into...

the next phase, to see like glimmers.

So the use of the word alchemy is very intentional. Like I am talking about the experience of going through this negrado phase where everything in your life feels like it's breaking. Everything feels like it's breaking, like nothing makes any sense, where you're confused, where the things that used to work all of a sudden don't work. Moving through that into dawning reality of like, well, I have some insight.

And often when we get to insight, we feel like, okay, I'm there, but no real change has happened. And then having to stay present to what practices, how do I need to be in my life? And that takes us through the phases of citronitis and rubato. So I'm using the phrase individuation alchemy to mean this is a process of becoming yourself that other people have experienced too. Other people have experienced the

the wilderness and feeling alone when they're in transitional times. But often when we're there, we feel like we're the only one who's ever experienced it. And for me, that my initial really deep dark night of the soul came from coming out as polyamorous and being completely ostracized from my community, just utterly and completely ostracized. And what that meant was I was going to go through this process, this alchemical process

and I didn't have any language for it. I didn't know what was happening. I had no idea that there would be moments where I felt like I had insight and I should not pretend like that meant the process was over. I didn't know that there would be times when I felt like I was finally in a place of knowing, but that I didn't know how to integrate that knowing into my life, right? Especially when it had to do with me becoming more myself was about me loving differently than most of the people around me.

which meant my relational language didn't match up anymore. My me didn't feel like it fit. And meanwhile, when we're all going through these big changes, our life's still just cooking along, right? Like there I was still raising all those children, like still having to make breakfast every morning, get up and go to work, do all the things. So we go through these processes and we need the language around us and the community around us to support us in, well, okay, how could this?

happen and feel good. How could it feel like even when it feels horrible, it's got meaning. That's the kind of good I'm looking for. I'm not looking for nice.

Alonzo Banx (24:19)
Now, I gotta put this in context. You said you had your children around you. approximately what age, and this was pre-education or post?

Dr. Joli Hamilton (24:27)
Yeah, so I did all of my education while my kids were with me and while I was practicing polyamory. So the outline of my life looks like I married my childhood sweetheart, married my high school sweetheart, got engaged when I was 17, got married when I was 20, lived a very monogamous life. I didn't even know anything else existed until I was 32. And when I was 32, I found out about polyamory and

essentially immediately fell in love with someone else. And I'm sure as you already know, when that happens, everything hits the fan, right? And at that point I had four children. It was very, very messy. With an 45 days, my life was broken into a million pieces because I don't do anything the gentle way. Or at least I didn't back then.

I found myself living in a house in a triad, now raising seven children together. And 17 years later, I am still with one of the people from that triad. The other one wound up leaving us. And during all of that time, that's when I went to school. I went back, I did a bachelor's, a master's, a doctorate. Then I went back, got another master's because, you know, who doesn't like more?

and did all of my other psychological training on top of that. And I did that while I was raising the kids. And when I think about the individuation process, I think everybody's life is messy, but we're going to go through our process anyways. The inner process is going to happen anyways. So do you want the language for it or not?

Alonzo Banx (25:56)
That is awesome. Zai, I you had something you to throw in,

Psi (25:59)
so I'm curious regarding the individuation process Does this often correlate to what would be typically considered midlife, labeled midlife crisis? And also, does this tend to happen primarily to women?

Dr. Joli Hamilton (26:12)
So individuation is for anyone, right? It is, it's a process. I think of it as an opt-in process, right? So a dark night of the soul, an awakening, right? That can happen to anyone at any age, right? You could have that happen to you at 22, at 42, at 92. What you do with it though is going to be context dependent, right? I definitely had some...

earth-shattering, soulful moments happen in my early 20s, I didn't know what to do with it. And the appropriate context, like for me then, I was still building my ego strength. I was still building my ability to exist in this world as it is, right? So I wasn't ready to embark on a journey of my interior. So when we say, like, does it correlate to a midlife crisis? For many people, the awareness will happen with

Ooh, my life does not fit anymore. And no, it's not just women, although women tend to be a little bit, at least in the United States, middle-aged women tend to look for support and name what they're going through. In my experience, the men have had a tendency to push this stuff down, delay it. I often see men come into my individuation program.

way later. They're coming in in their late 50s, 60s, 70s. Not because they've never had an awakening, but because they shoved it aside because their friends weren't having conversations about this. Women often are, at least amongst their friends, getting together and talking about like, what the hell is happening? What is going on? We also have an amazing hormonal shift that happens. I'm right in the middle of it myself right now.

⁓ I'll be 50 this year and I am smack dab in the middle of it and we can't avoid the fact that Everything is changing. Whereas the guys can cisgender men can choose to avoid that Longer if they if they want I don't recommend anybody avoid it. The thing though about individuation is I said it's an opt-in process You don't have to if you enjoy life

Like if you enjoy the way you feel held by your life, like if the way that you have made meaning and sense out of the world, if it holds you and you feel sufficiently met by that, great. I think of individuation as an opportunity to say, nothing fits, everything feels unfamiliar, I'm confused. Individuation is a framework, it's a way to think about this.

that can lead me to making meaning out of what seems meaningless, right? When I'm in a time of total confusion, wait, what if there is reason for this? And I don't mean reason like everything happens for a reason. I mean reason like what if I can make meaning from my own suffering, from my own experience? If I can do that, perhaps this life becomes a little bit more livable.

Psi (29:02)
No, it's wonderful what you offer. I wish that I had a group like that when I was going through this. I mean, even now, there are not people that are walking around talking about it. I know, again, what I went through and clearly what many other and I will say women, because I think my experience is that again, typical midlife crisis, I'm calling it and the individual is an individuation process. You know, I think of with men,

You know, men will want to buy a fast car, just have an affair. And with women, I feel like there's a much deeper.

Alonzo Banx (29:32)
that is such a... Hang on, hang on, hang on.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (29:33)
Hahaha!

Alonzo Banx (29:35)
I gotta push back on that one, okay? That is a symptom of what men feel. Men don't want to run out and buy a flashy red car. Men hit a realization that they are now getting older and are trying to recapture a piece of their youth. And one of the symptoms of that is a, you know, long blonde hair, big boobs, and a flashy red car.

Psi (29:37)
Okay.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (29:52)
Well, and-

Psi (29:53)
Yes.

Alonzo Banx (29:58)
You

Psi (29:59)
And that's great. And with my sense though, with women though, is there something way beyond deeper of I just want to feel young again? It's, no, I'm not that same person I was. And who am I?

Dr. Joli Hamilton (30:11)
Right. Well,

yeah. So here's the thing. This isn't a guys versus girls issue. It's not. This is a what meaning has culture given us? Societally, men are cisgender men are, they are stripped of all, there's just no meaning making happening. So now that is a problem they need to take on as a group. That is absolutely true. Right? ⁓

sports car, a babe, none of that is going to actually address the issue. But the meaning-making has been stripped away and all of this is a symptom of the patriarchy. All of this is a symptom of the control of capitalism and white supremacy. All of this. It's all rooted in the exact same problems. Men are suffering from it differently than women and women, because we do have

a set of cultural norms that supports us talking about these things, we stand a chance of actually like co-creating. So if you and I met when we were in our mid forties, likely we would talk, Cy, and we would say things to each other that led us to realize, I'm not actually going through this alone. The dudes are not being presented that, especially dudes over a certain age. Now I will say my elder,

cis men children are they have a different experience. I do hold out hope that Gen Z is going to do things differently. I hold out some hope that this is that there's a generational gap here. But I see men coming in honestly to both my programs because I see men coming into the year of opening honestly with some of the same hopes like can I get laid more?

Can I open my marriage because that'll be, I'll finally feel not just about wanting to feel young again, but wanting to feel the spark of life within again, wanting to feel something. And that is, therein lies the, if I could ever be accused of bait and switch, this is the place I would be accused of it. My program called The Year of Opening is called The Year of Opening. And it is a very practical re-education in how to have conscious relationships.

But my real purpose is always, and I'm very, very clear about it, but people usually don't hear it or don't know what to say about it. My purpose is to serve your individuation. So everybody who comes in is invited to become more and more themselves over time. And just today I received a message from somebody who said, we're eight months in and I'm now realizing that this was never actually about opening my relationship. This was about opening up to me. Yeah.

Psi  (32:23)
Thank

Dr. Joli Hamilton (32:37)
There we go. That is why depth psychology and polyamory. It's because opening up is an opportunity to see how much we've been missing of ourselves. Any other sex you get, that's gravy. It's wonderful. I love that. I'm slutty as hell, but that is not the point. The point is what does it do for my psyche?

Alonzo Banx (32:56)
I gotta jump in on a question, because you've hit on it about four different ways. You've talked about culture, you've talked about the United States, you've talked about traveling, you've talked about around the topic of environment. So how much of what we face is environmental, is cultural? How much changes as we travel?

Dr. Joli Hamilton (33:15)
Yeah. Well, okay. So I think travel will, of course, I mean, it's what better education could we ask for in a modern age where we are not getting, we're not being met at a deep level by, there's so much of our life is so superficial. However, the homogenization of our current world becomes a problem, right? Like I can't necessarily travel enough and actually immerse myself.

in another culture. Also, is that even reasonable? Have the other cultures that I am visiting, are they actually inviting me to immerse myself? Like travel, for Joy's sake, has its own purpose. That's wonderful. But when we talk about like an education for the soul, I need to immerse myself in other ways of being, in other ways of knowing. And so travel itself won't do the job. I'm going to have to open myself up and then also be received by another culture.

Alonzo Banx (34:09)
I think I may have missed that question just a little bit. I may have misstated. Do the other cultures have the same issues that we do? And as you travel, have you seen that? wasn't as, I appreciate that. Forgive me for misstating that question.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (34:20)
Yeah. No, no, no,

that makes sense. That makes sense. So intact cultures, right, cultures that have not been colonized have a completely different way of making meaning than my own. And I certainly can't speak to, here I am, I am a white American middle-aged woman. I cannot possibly speak to the meaning-making functions of even say black American culture, right? Like completely different meaning-making structures. Now,

I have worked with people who live in my same society but have different cultural norms and contexts. We can all be on an individuation path and the intermingling of those meaning-making functions is important, but it is inherently, and like at a root level, there's this, I can't know. Like I couldn't possibly answer your question Alonzo because I would have to be a part of

another culture and immersed in it, not just as a visitor, but I would have to experience it from the inside to even begin to understand whether my way of making meaning, which is individuation, even makes sense. It may be an irrelevant term to them. It like that term might not make any sense. So I think of individuation as a way to make sense and make meaning that grows out of the Western tradition. Right. It comes from European psychology.

Psi (35:29)
Thank

Dr. Joli Hamilton (35:40)
So it makes sense for me, it makes a lot of sense because that's actually my heritage, that's my history. And I need to take that seriously. So when I work, for instance, with mythology, I tend to work with Celtic, Greek, and Norse because those are also, those are historically appropriate for me. What, I have a client who I've been working with now for over a decade. She's Chinese and she makes a completely different meaning.

out of some of the same exact life events that I've gone through. Like she has just a completely different way. Her context, her culture provides her an utterly different way of being. It's always going to be an individual experience within the context of the culture and then within the context of the cultures that I am able to interact with. Does that make more sense?

Alonzo Banx (36:26)
Absolutely. again, I got to dig one more definition. You keep saying meaning making. Explain that.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (36:31)
Yeah.

I think meaning making is the easiest way to capture what it is for me to have an experience and then to actually metabolize it. Like to experience it ⁓ at a biological level is one thing. So let's say, so I have, my entire family of origin is dead. My mother, my father, my brother have all passed. I have gone through their deaths. I walked each of them to the edge and then

They departed. I had a physical, physiological experience of losing each of them and then coming to know myself as a person who has no immediate family that way. That as an experience of like, I could just state it as facts. We could talk about the data of that. Like, Jolie is X years old when she loses this person and loses this person. That's all data. The meaning making though. What did I do when I was now motherless?

What did that mean for me? What did it mean for me as a mother of seven to be motherless at 35 when I didn't expect to be? And what does it mean for me to have not been able to stop the deaths that were happening around for me? What is the meaning I made out of that? That meaning making function, that's what it is to be a human. Like that is the thing that I feel like across every conversation I've ever had.

If I can meet someone and hear how they make meaning out of their life experiences, and they can hear how I make meaning out of my life experiences, we can connect across any other seeming divides. And our meaning-making function is, yes, contextual, but also it's very, very personal. It's entirely subjective. I'm experiencing it in here. It's happening not just because of what I've been told, not just like through being indoctrinated and like,

I'm applying this creed of meaning making, but it's happening natively. It's happening within me. I am making meaning because I exist, because I'm a human and because humans are inherently meaning making critters. We, it's why we tell story because we desperately always want to make meaning.

Alonzo Banx (38:35)
How individualistic is that compared to cultural? do people, like, how does that work when you're talking about multiple people?

Dr. Joli Hamilton (38:44)
Well, that comes back to that question of, so if someone feels very held in their cultural context, right? Let's say somebody is deeply invested in the church that they were born into and raised in, and they're like, the stories from that particular faith, they just, they make sense to them. It lands. And so every experience they have, like gets slotted in and filtered through that lens of that faith. And it feels okay for them. They feel like it feels...

If lands right in their body, there's an embodied sense of like, yep, this feels good. And they feel held in that. That person may wind up finding that their meaning making function is largely a product of what they've been taught. And they may have a wake up call that happens at some point where all of a sudden something like cognitive dissonance happens and they're like, my lens, that lens, that filter isn't working to make meaning. Another person could be raised

in a church, not in a church, in a deep culture or not, but just not like it. Like I grew up in a church, but I threw it off. was like, ⁓ it doesn't, no, this doesn't make sense for me. It doesn't. So I started to develop my own individual meaning-making function. And then over time, I found that that fell flat too. I didn't like that feeling of my individualistic perspective being the only one, my subjective perspective being the only one.

And that's when for me depth psychology actually filled that gap. That's the primary lens through which I make meaning. So I will look at things and I will make meaning through terms like individuation or symbol or projection. Like I'll take terms like that or complexes and I'll say, okay, I'm looking at my life. I'm feeling my life. Let's say my husband just came home and he was at a protest and he got asked on a date. I have this experience of like,

now he's, ⁓ okay, maybe he's gonna be seeing somebody new. I filter that experience through not just my polyamorous values, but all of my meaning making function. And I notice like, ⁓ I felt some stuff. And that's where for me, depth psychology rises up around me and like helps me make meaning ⁓ in a way that feels good. It feels right to me. So I don't think we should all share exactly the same. I think this should be something that we

We all find our particular way. And an individuation path is by definition, like it starts with your interiority, it starts with your individuality, but it has to be relational. It's not something where I can just say, I choose me over and over again until I'm a sadistic nonsense creator. It has to be relational as well, or it's not actually gonna be meaning.

Alonzo Banx (41:19)
So forgive me if I'm little late to the table here, but let me see if I understand this. The idea is that we have to understand our meaning making and then we evaluate them to see if they make sense.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (41:32)
think most people start off, and I'm guessing you did as well, we have a meaning-making function that just starts, it just exists. Humans just make meaning. Little kids make meaning. They point at things and they tell you how they think the world works. They start to draw correlations and causations like they just automatically do, right? But then they're also given instruction about this is how the world works.

But then they have lived experience and their lived experience might not line up with how they're being told the world works. And the inner experience of trying to grapple with that, that starts when we're little, little, little. And ideally it continues. Ideally, now in the midst of cultural upheaval all around us in the United States, ideally we are grappling with the dissonance between the world we thought existed and the world that clearly does exist.

It's not going to be all a cognitive process though, right? If this has to be like lived in the body, has to be felt, we have to experience it. If all we do is talk about this, we're going to actually miss the deeper opportunity, which is to live our life and not just try to like explain it, right? I'm not talking about using a meaning-making function as a way to explain something. I mean, does this matter?

Like all those deaths I talked about, they inform every aspect of my relationships, every aspect of my teaching, every aspect of my way of giving in my community and being. But I don't walk around talking about death all the time. I don't use that as an explainer. They just inform me. It is part of what makes me. And therefore I would count that as like, they have a strong impulse.

toward.

The, toward treating life as something that is finite, to understanding finitude. That's a way that I have made meaning in this messed up world that we live in. And it works for me. Somebody else might be like, that doesn't land at all. don't, whatever. It just doesn't. That doesn't land. Doesn't have to. It's okay.

Alonzo Banx (43:32)
side.

Any thoughts?

Psi  (43:34)
⁓ You have

Dr. Joli Hamilton (43:37)
and.

what you're referring to is project relationship. That is a book that I wrote a while ago. Honestly, I think of it as it's like the it's it was the starting ground. I wrote that book because I woke up one morning and realized that I if I weren't around when my kids were starting like were like starting to have grown up relationships, there were things that I was going to want to have said to them. So I wrote it all down and I published it.

It is not, it's not the foundational text of my work though, that's for sure. I wrote it for a young person. I wrote it for like a woman in her late twenties, like trying to figure out like what they're doing versus my work now, which is really aimed at people who are in midlife and going through it.

Alonzo Banx (44:22)
So then what is your foundational text?

Dr. Joli Hamilton (44:24)
So I am currently working on several pieces of writing that... So I have an offer out to write a book, but I don't like separating myself. I've had a lot of people ask me to publish my jealousy work in a book format, but I don't like separating my jealousy work from my relational work, from my individuation work. So...

My foundational text is still becoming. Really what it is, my foundational work is in the year of opening and in individuation alchemy. I have about 1500 pages that I work from inside of that that are all written. But I don't, I have a really strong aversion to handing people a whole bunch of knowledge and saying, good luck. I so much prefer to be in conversation with people about

one idea at a time, weaving them together. So my work's really in my programs.

Alonzo Banx (45:18)
I love your jealousy work. I see you here, but I want to make a comment. I love your jealousy work. In fact, ⁓ after you were as a guest on our roundtable, it gave me some very deep insight that I had to spend a little time thinking about the line of demarcation between my jealousy and my envy. And that was something that you brought up the last time that actually impacted me quite a bit after our conversation. I had to really sit there and sit with that for a while.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (45:23)
Thank you.

That makes me really happy Alonso because the work that I do with jealousy is really about utilizing our conversations of our jealousy and envy to know ourselves better. So if you can sit with that question of like, wait, what is this? We get so reductive around emotions like, it's just jealousy. There's no such thing as just jealousy. Jealousy is...

such a rich emotional experience and envy points directly toward the things we wish we were. What better way to get to know myself than to be able to look straight at my envy? But we do spend so much time cloaking ourselves from it, trying not to be it and trying not to experience it. Yeah, so if I inspired that in you for even a minute, I'm happy.

Alonzo Banx (46:25)
You did, and you made me, again,

it was very cathartic. It was actually a good conversation for me. Cy, you had something you wanted to bring up. See if your bandwidth is going to work with us this time.

Psi  (46:34)
Yes, had.

Yes, the pleasure experiment is something that you.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (46:40)
The experiment, yes, that is out there. Yeah. So I have this thing I like to do. I like to make little private podcasts for people when I'm like, there's a little gap of information. So the pleasure experiment exists as a private podcast that anyone can download. You can just go to my website and find it. It's these little micro episodes inviting people into micro pleasure practices. I also have a private podcast for alchemy.

Psi  (46:43)
Yeah.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (47:06)
for the same thing. like to give people these like tiny doses. Cause as you noticed here, like when you bring up any topic and combine it with depth psychology, it gets really intense, really fast. Like the language, like the way that we have to talk about something, it immediately becomes obvious like, ooh, this kind of a lot. And one of the things I care about the most is breaking down big concepts and trying to make them as digestible as possible.

The pleasure experiment was born of a desire to like, hey, let's just make that moment when somebody says, I don't even know what I want or need. I have no idea. well, if you can't feel pleasure, if you don't even know where you find pleasure, it's going to be really hard to figure out what you want and need. If you don't know what you want and need, you can't actually make agreements with anyone. You can't make agreements with anyone. You can't do relationships very well.

The Pleasure Experiment is one of my micro products that's just there to be like, here, try this, start here. And it's free. It's just out there in the wild, easy for people to get.

Psi  (48:04)
Thank you.

Alonzo Banx (48:05)
So anything else tonight, we're going to start wrapping this up.

Psi  (48:07)
That's all. Thank you.

Alonzo Banx (48:08)
Dr. Lee, what have we not talked about tonight that we should?

Dr. Joli Hamilton (48:12)
⁓ I think we really, we covered a gamut, but I think I just would drive home the point that my way of making meaning in the world and my talking about individuation, it's one way. It's one way. It's a way that I have found very, very valuable. And I have noticed that for some people, they hear these words and they don't really know why, but they're like,

I need to know more about that. I know I need that in my world. So if you felt that ping, I encourage you to lean in. There are a million different ways to learn about individuation. There are wonderful things to read, wonderful things to listen to. But if it didn't ping you, that doesn't mean that you're shallow. It doesn't mean that you're not doing your work. It means that you need a different language. You need a different path. That's actually built into the concept.

It wouldn't be individuation if everybody needed the same path. So like Jungian psychology works for me. But if another path speaks to you, I have a good friend who has traveled this path with me now for several years, but her work is now leading her deep into tantric Buddhism. And it is taking her into the depths of meaning making. And we see the overlaps. Wherever your path is going, if you can feel the pull from inside, that's the clue.

Follow that clue. Don't follow. Don't follow me. I am not a guru. I am just a person out here who's like, I've been down some paths. If you want to walk down them, I got some maps. That's all. That's all.

Alonzo Banx (49:41)
Doc, it's been an absolute joy to have you back on tonight. Thank you so much for your time. And we got you coming back on the roundtable here in a couple of weeks too. Yeah. We have a lively crew sometimes. Sai, was great having you on tonight. Thank you for being here. As always, I am still Alonzo Banks. This has been the Polysocal Podcast, and it has been great having you here. Dr. Jolie.

Dr. Joli Hamilton (49:49)
Yeah, I can't wait to chat it up with everybody. That'll be fun. I'm to talk about desire, right?

Excellent.

Psi  (49:59)
Thank you very much. Thank you.

Alonzo Banx (50:09)
Thank you so much. We'll talk to everyone soon. Good night.