Dr. Erik Goodwyn is a practising psychiatrist with a background in neurobiology who bridges the worlds of neuroscience, Jungian psychology, and fantasy. Erik is co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Jungian Studies and has written dozens of academic papers along with books on the neurobiology of the gods, dreams, and archetypes. Last year he published his first fantasy novel, King of the Forgotten Darkness, which won the Literary Titan Golden Book Award.
In this return visit, we dive deep into who actually creates the dream – the Invisible Storyteller that isn’t your conscious self. We explore the neuroscience behind this, discussing the Default Mode Network, Salience Network, and Executive Control Network, and what they reveal about dreaming, meaning-making, and the deeply non-egoic nature of consciousness. Erik shares clinical insights into Dissociative Identity Disorder as evidence of an underlying organising principle, we tangle with what it means for consciousness to be “non-egoic,” and we work through his groundbreaking definition of archetypes through Cognitive Metaphor Theory. It’s a conversation that challenges everything you think you know about who you are.
🔗 Links
- Erik’s website: https://erikgoodwyn.com
- Erik’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theimaginarium
⏳ Timestamps:
00:00 Intro - The Invisible Storyteller
01:39 Greeting and reflections on James’s reading
03:35 What is the Invisible Storyteller?
06:01 Jung’s avoidance of reductionism through mythic language
08:16 The Default Mode Network and dreaming
10:27 The three networks: default mode, salience, and executive control
15:27 Memory consolidation, identity formation, emotional regulation, future planning
18:29 Is the Invisible Storyteller the unconscious?
22:18 Deeper processing independent of conscious ego
25:58 Recurrent dreams and the role of conscious engagement
28:40 The Invisible Storyteller as meaning-making
31:07 Dreams versus storytelling: memory Olympics and metaphor
36:58 The role of the right hemisphere and symbolism
41:04 The Invisible Storyteller as process or personality?
44:18 Dissociative Identity Disorder and organising principles
50:33 DID as evidence of an organising intelligence
55:43 The specificity of dissociative amnesia
58:22 Non-egoic consciousness and emergent properties
1:02:14 Consciousness arising from complex systems
1:05:44 AI image generation as analogy for dream creation
1:10:56 The Invisible Storyteller as personality versus ancestry and genome
1:15:32 Jungian vision and updating Jung’s theory
1:18:40 Archetypes through Cognitive Metaphor Theory
1:22:37 Spontaneous thoughts and universal challenges
1:25:58 Primary metaphors and innate mappings
1:29:20 Danger and darkness as innate mappings
1:32:17 Definition of archetype and falsifiability
1:34:47 Building on Gary Clark’s work and Anthony Stevens
1:36:25 Gratitude and future conversations
