Читать книгу The Myth of the Shiksa and Other Essays - Edwin H. Friedman - Страница 11

Very well. As I said, one of the major differences between a God and a human being, according to Genesis, has to do with power. A God just speaks and things come into being.

“In the beginning was the Word.”

Unfortunately, it was kind of slurred. Actually, in the beginning was a thought. A God doesn’t have to speak. In true omnipotence, all you have to do is think the thought, and your will becomes reality.

Sounds like the fantasy of some people I know.

Where do you think they get it from?

Transforming thought into matter is the hard part, isn’t it?

You are talking about creativity. I am trying to focus on relationships. Haven’t you ever noticed that the worst symptoms in families always show up in communities marked by intense will conflict? Schizophrenia, suicide, anorexia, abuse, and many physical deteriorations almost always show up in families where people are trying to will one another to change. They harp, they cajole, they seduce, they argue, they implicate, they preach, they warn, they threaten, they remind, they guilt, they charm, they accuse, they point out. Find me a polarized relationship and I will show you the will conflict.

And the same would be true for institutions?

Exactly the same. Almost all forms of neurosis and psychosis come about from the effort to will what can’t be willed. You can will going to bed, but you can’t will sleep. You can will going to the dinner table, but you can’t will appetite. You can will physical contact, but you can’t will orgasm. You can will being together, but you can’t will togetherness or symptoms or relationships or morality.

So by seducing everyone into willing, you make them deny that they are not omnipotent.

Omnipotence always leads to impotence.

Why can’t you apply the same to helpers?

That’s what I was getting to. You can.

This is going to be good.

I no longer spend much of my time trying to get people to will one another to conform to their thoughts. I now confine myself to those who try to will them to stop willing one another. I cover far more territory that way. Instead of trying to tempt twenty different families or organizations, I just tempt their consultants. The efficiency has gone up logarithmically. You see, it is the nature of humanity to resist efforts to be willed. Nothing slows someone down faster than trying to will them to speed up. If you don’t believe me, come up behind somebody in the fast lane and blow your horn hard in an effort to get them to pull over and let you by. Those “by-ways” go all the way back to the Garden.

But the kind of willing counselors do is for their own good.

Whose own good? Anyway, the intent is irrelevant. The point is, the average person will resist efforts to will them by willing the wilier with equal determination to stop willing, or by applying their own will to themselves. In a way that frustrates the will of the wilier.

That is utterly perverse.

If I don’t say so myself.

You “snake in the grass.” You have turned the good will of good people against themselves.

And I have developed a terrific support system.

I don’t think I want to hear this.

I have moved up a notch to the supervisory level. The same logic that made me focus on helpers rather than clients led me to realize that if I can tempt supervisors to will their supervisees to will their clients, my efficiency would reach astronomical levels.

How do you do this?

By getting everyone to focus on method and technique, rather than the nature of their presence.

But isn’t there such a thing as being a professional?

Or a hack.

And how do you distinguish between a professional and a hack?

They may both do what they do with polish. But the hack is not transformed by his experience.

I am beginning to see where you are going.

As long as I can focus helpers on the right technique, the less they are affected, themselves, by the outcome of what they do; and the more they leave out the variable of their own growth and presence, then the more they miss the Creator’s focus on becoming; and the more frustrated they become at not being able to will, then the harder they try to exert their will; and the harder they try to exert their will. . . .

I get it, I get it. The more they act like they are omnipotent. And this fits in with omniscience, doesn’t it? On the one hand you get everyone to keep willing insight into unmotivated people and on the other you get publishers to perpetually produce books on technique in order to preserve the illusion of power.

Actually we have a secret agreement, the publishers and I. Recently we made a compact. They publish books full of data and technique, and I seduce everyone into violating the omnipotence limitation. It works well for both of us. It’s a huge conglomerate and includes publishers in the world of therapy, religion, education, management, government.

Have you given it a name?

What would you think of Faust Publications?

Your persistence and stamina are truly extraordinary.

As with all my disciples, it comes naturally, from our lack of self-regulation. Let me give you one of my latest success stories. I have just tempted the supervision committee of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy to rule that all supervision must view family therapy in the context of sociological and cultural factors. In other words, the counselor and the therapist and ultimately the client must be focused on these irrelevancies to maturity.

You make it sound as though a person’s background is unimportant.

Cultural camouflage is one of my greatest inventions, and the focus on cultural diversity one of my most attractive temptations. But culture is as irrelevant to maturity as gender. In fact, whenever people explain their functioning in terms of their background, that is not more information to be stored; such moments are exercises in denial of personal responsibility. As I have it now set up, many trainers with great savvy who disagree with an exclusivistic focus on culture and who might have stood in my way are going to be rejected or forced to conform their thinking to the new standards.

But that is the committee’s right.

Don’t you get it? I have gotten them to squelch diversity in the name of diversity. I just love the symmetry.

I suppose you would say that’s one of the spin-offs of seducing people into thinking omnipotently.

Of course. It’s one thing, after all, to set standards for theoretical knowledge, or clinical experience, or personal growth. That doesn’t lead to omnipotence, but saying there is only one true way to do things does. Why, I haven’t had such success since Torquemada, Judge Jefferies, or Cotton Mather. In religion, this would be called inquisitional, in politics it would be called totalitarian, in business monopolistic. And they’re doing it in the name of heaven, or at least democracy. The AAMFT committee on supervision is going to bring back the auto-da-fe.

But no burning at the stake.

Today that’s all done by disenfranchisement from the health insurance plans.

This may be the most disturbing thing you have said yet.

Wait till you hear what’s coming.

You know; what you are saying tends to undercut the importance of gender differences. I suppose you are opposed to the women’s movement.

How well I have disguised myself. On the contrary, I am delighted with all the recent freedom movements, particularly the liberation of women. Having women seek equality everywhere is just what I have been waiting for. As I said earlier, I always thought Eve had more on the ball than Adam. Equality for woman has made them more of a challenge. In the old days, women were just too easy to tempt. All I had to do was be charming. But now it’s much more exciting.

Next thing I know you will tell me that feminism was your idea.

Not quite, though over the centuries I have succeeded in converting most isms into some form of idolatry, eventually.

What about Judaism?

Especially JudaISM.

I fully supported the women’s movement in the beginning, but then I realized that it could get out of hand. It was all right for Adam to have all of that power because he generally squandered it. But Eve and power, I saw that could really be dangerous, so I did my usual thing to throw them off course.

And you do this by . . . ?

By doing the same thing I did to the Marxists, by getting them to equate power with maturity, to confuse equality with spirituality, and to politicize intimacy.

And the temptation is?

Getting their leaders all focused on the issue of abuse.

Now wait a minute. That is absolutely ludicrous. Abuse is a very serious problem.

Obviously, men abusing women is an important issue, but it is not the most dangerous aspect of their relationship. There is something men do that is far more harmful and enslaving than physical abuse, or even the abuse of economic or political power.

That’s sure news to me.

Once again, I have so well tempted flesh and blood to focus in one direction that they cannot see what is most obvious. Haven’t you ever noticed that if you go into any medical building in the country, or mental health care clinic, that the women patients far outnumber the men? What do you think that’s about? Only a very small percentage of those visits is driven by violence. You see, far more women have been done in by passive husbands than by violent ones. Again, it has been going on since the Garden. Women are constantly being snookered into taking the emotional responsibility for their families, for their husbands, for their children, for togetherness, for the future. Violence really has severe limits as a form of social control because ultimately it becomes intolerable, but not passivity. Especially when it is disguised by innocence and charm. That kind of stress, precisely because it is not as painful, tends to remain chronic. And chronic conditions are always far more destructive because sooner or later they become withering. . . . I see that you are speechless, so I will go on. While gaining economic power and political equality can be liberating to some extent, equality does not free people from relational binds. Ultimately the power to be free has to do with the internal factors, the inner resources I enumerated earlier.

Yes, but if your body isn’t free what good is freedom of the soul?

First of all, that’s reversible. Secondly, you seem to be forgetting religious history. How does it go? “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit.”

Wow, the devil can quote scripture.

Look, my point is simply this. You asked how I tempt humanity to deny its essential nature: the fact that it is not omnipotent. And I was explaining how I seduce them into thinking in terms of power rather than soul. My success with the abuse issue is even greater than anything I did to pervert the Marxists. It has so distracted the functioning and thinking of the helping professions that I could not ask for anything more. It has produced more one-issue people than almost anything I have ever tried. The books, the conferences, the sermons, the court suits, and especially the polarization. It’s wonderful! But the joke’s on them. I shouldn’t tell you this, but in the not too distant future men are going to become irrelevant to procreation. A major breakthrough will be made in the genetic code, and women will be able to fertilize themselves.

How could that be possible?

Even in your time there are species that reproduce parthenogenetically.

Then men won’t be needed any longer: Wait till I tell some persons I know about this.

Hold on. I said they won’t be needed for fertilization. Their presence will always be essential to differentiation.

You, sir, have just betrayed the fact that you are male, after all.

I didn’t know ideas had gender. And you have just given the term ad hominem new meaning. Women, you see, have far more relational power in families then men. If only they knew how to use it. Maternal investment may be the most powerful force on earth. It can promote genius or schizophrenia, talent or retardation. The male of the species is almost invariably far more emotionally dependent. The transference from mother to wife is far more intense than that from father to husband. What women really have to do is to stop seeking confirmation from their partners and work on their differentiation from their own mothers instead. Then the power would naturally gravitate towards them.

Once again, a brief example would help.

Very well. If women want to prevent their daughters from being abused in one generation, all they have to do is stop being charmed by their sons in the previous generation.

Well, maybe we should go on to that third issue you mentioned, immortality. This one is a little hard for me to swallow. The way you have reframed the gender issue... well... I would have to change a lot about the way I look at life. Besides, you are coming close to treading on very sacred ground.

I suppose you mean sexual abuse in religion and therapy? Look, let me give it to you straight. Salvation has always been cunnilingual.

You are playing on the word, of course. You mean great preachers are always cunning linguists.

I know what I said. Religion, politics, therapy, they always go with sex. This is nothing new. Read Chaucer. Read The Decameron.

The Decameron was pre-Reformation.

And I suppose everyone stopped enjoying it after Luther. Look, go back to the Israelites. It is right there in the temple cult, temple prostitutes, male and female. He, or if you prefer, she, created them.

But they cleaned that out.

For the time. They only purified the institution. I am not talking about morality. I am just showing you how easy it is to tempt flesh and blood when they are involved in matters of the soul. Salvation has always been salacious. That’s nothing new. That’s why I love religion and therapy.

You know, as some traditions have it, you got pretty close to your counselee yourself.

I never touched Eve. That’s one counseling tradition I will never accept responsibility for.

Then how do you explain Cain?

Bad seed. That’s all. Frankly, I was more attracted to Adam. By the way, have you read the recently published correspondence between Freud and Firenze? Firenze was one of the great early theoreticians, you know. It turns out, he takes a mother and a daughter into analysis separately and winds up in bed with each of them. All institutions institutionalize the emotional processes of the founding families.

You’re saying humanity cant change its institutions?

Not until they get on the other side of willing it. If you really want to stop sexual abuse in therapy and religion, open it wide up. Let everybody screw their brains out.

And I suppose you would stop speeding by getting rid of the speed limits.

And hijacking by getting rid of those damn-fool metal detectors. Force everyone to carry a gun on board.

But in every one of those cases you’d harm a lot of innocents along the way.

A small price to pay. That’s a very short-sighted view. By fostering self-regulation you would nullify the power in the temptation all the way to eternity.

You want to free-float morality like the dollar. This is absurd. What’s the matter with me? I’ve forgotten whom I’m talking to. I’ve allowed you to seduce me into thinking the unthinkable. Let’s get on with immortality.

I can’t wait.