Masochism & The First Lie: Why We Punish Ourselves with Dr. Loren Weiner

In this riveting session, Cynthia Marks and Dr. Loren Weiner unpack masochism as a deep, often invisible style of living driven by unconscious guilt—the felt sense that we “deserve” to suffer or deny ourselves good things. Loren traces the guilt back to Dr. Bernard Bail’s imprint theory: the fetus unconsciously takes on the mother’s unprocessed pain and wrongly concludes, “it’s my fault,” a “first lie” that later fuels self-sabotage, procrastination, and staying in punishing relationships. They show how dreams reveal this pattern—from lost purses and missed deadlines to violent head blows—mapping the original psychic “blast” and the mind’s attempt to wall it off. Cynthia shares personal dreams (like a book titled “Life Is Torture”) that capture resistance to joy and the pull toward old operating manuals. Loren explains how this inner guilt scales up into culture—why groups, institutions, even nations repeatedly choose policies that make everyone suffer. The antidote isn’t moralizing but honest dreamwork, daily self-questioning, and claiming the birthright to love and pleasure. Start inside, they insist; shift the inner operating system and the outer systems begin to change.

• 00:00 — What Is Masochism?

• 07:20 — The First Lie

• 14:40 — Head-Trauma Dreams

• 22:00 — Working the Pattern

• 29:20 — “Life Is Torture”

• 36:40 — Self to Society

• 44:00 — Allowing Love & Pleasure

• 50:49 — Closing Invitation