Читать книгу Wisdom from the Couch - Jennifer Kunst - Страница 12
ОглавлениеIF YOU’RE NOT MOVING FORWARD, YOU’RE MOVING BACKWARD
WHETHER YOU SUBSCRIBE TO THE theory of evolution, intelligent design, or creation, it is plainly evident that all living things are wired with the express purpose of surviving. Human beings are no different in this respect. We have a strong drive toward self-protection. We all know what it feels like to be galvanized by the instinct to flee or fight in the face of danger, whether that danger is physical or emotional. But we humans are unique among living things because we are also wired with the express purpose of growing psychologically. We have an innate urge to grow our minds by learning from and making meaning of our experiences.
There are other ways to describe this basic orientation to psychological development. Some would say that we are wired for love, which would seem to put the emphasis on the relational aspect of being human. I like that, too. We could say that human beings are wired for work, play, creativity, self-expression, generosity, and many other things. But, for me, growing seems to be a way of describing a central dynamic of human existence that encompasses all of these other aspects of life. And growing is what makes being alive so interesting, fulfilling, and challenging.
Growing is that aspect of life that pushes us beyond mere survival, even beyond adaptation—to become more than we need to be, to become more of what we want to be. It is that aspect of ourselves that motivates us to lean into life’s challenges, even though we might be frightened or intimidated by them. People with a strong drive toward growth tend to live life with gusto. I am not talking about people who love bungee jumping, high-stakes gambling, or whirlwind transcontinental travel. In fact, I would describe myself as someone who has a strong drive for growing, and yet, as my sister says, I am risk averse when it comes to adventures like these. I prefer staying at a bed and breakfast over camping, and I like to play poker for M&M’s rather than real money. What I am talking about is the human orientation toward development where love of learning and the desire to face life honestly, earnestly, and passionately win the day, more days than not. If you are a person well-endowed with the natural urge toward growth, then you know that curiosity, hard work, and learning through experience make life worth living.
This may sound pretty straightforward, but here’s the rub: Sometimes—perhaps more often than we would like to admit—the urge toward survival is in direct conflict with the urge toward growth. This may not be readily apparent, since one would think that growing is simply the logical next step once you’ve got surviving down. But it is often not so. Growing fundamentally involves risk taking. It requires that one let go of that sense of security so essential to survival.
To use a very ordinary example, growing means taking off the training wheels from the bicycle. We lean into the potential of developing more independence and competence but must run the risk of falling over. Our safety is threatened. This challenging dynamic is at the heart of almost all of life. Often we prefer to play it safe by hiding out in what we know, rather than letting go and learning something new. It feels more secure to avoid change than to risk trying and failing. It feels smarter to keep our thoughts and feelings to ourselves than to share them in an intimate way.
While the balance between the urge toward survival and the urge toward growth varies from person to person, we all feel these tensions. At some level, we are all drawn to living in our bubbles and hiding under the proverbial covers, comfortable with what we know and protected from the dangers of what feels like a big, bad world out there. And yet, at the same time, we are drawn out of our bubbles by curiosity and a longing to engage.
Both Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein believed that all people struggle with these two psychobiological forces—what they called the life and death instincts. The life instinct is that internal force that pushes us to grow and develop, to take risks so that we can be all that we can be. Here, growth is prized for the sense of satisfaction, enrichment, and deeper security that it brings. The death instinct is that force within that pulls us toward homeostasis. Here, self-protection is valued more highly than self-development. It is better to hide under the familiar rock and die than to venture out into the unknown world and be killed.
Think of Darwin’s evolution of the species. Those species that survive over time are those that can engage the challenges of life—adapt, evolve, and develop ways to thrive despite obstacles. Those species that become extinct are those that cannot adapt, those that shrink from life and wither away. Klein believed that all people have a relative balance between the life and death instincts, some leaning more toward growth and others leaning more toward self-protection.
Since you’re reading this book, you must have some relative leaning toward the life instinct. Otherwise, you wouldn’t bother. I have been concerned that some people would be turned off by the ideas in this book because they are too hard. I don’t mean that what I am writing about is hard to understand, but the ideas are awfully hard to live. As I understand it, there is this fundamental truth about life: If you want to grow, you must take Robert Frost’s “road less traveled.” Or embrace the Buddha’s principle of nonattachment. Or discover Jesus’ narrow way. These wise ones all understood that a meaningful life is fundamentally about change. You’ve got to take up the cross and follow. I don’t mean that you have to walk in their very footsteps, but that you have to get up and get going on your own way, knowing that hard work, determination, and sacrifice are inevitable parts of the process of growing.
If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we don’t like this idea at all. When the alarm clock goes off at 6:00 a.m., it is as if I am hardwired to hit the snooze button. For nine minutes (sometimes eighteen minutes), I give in to the death instinct. I want to stay in the womb, to cocoon in the warmth and protection of the blankets. I dread the day. I feel persecuted by its demands. I forget how much I love life and the satisfaction that it brings. And yet, soon after I rise, shower, and have my delicious coffee, I begin to wake up to the life instinct. Optimism, energy, and curiosity gain in strength. It is the inevitable rhythm of my morning. Each day, I must engage in this mini-struggle with the part of myself that wishes to shirk from life’s challenges because I have temporarily lost contact with its many rewards.
I am always struck by this dynamic as it plays itself out in an ordinary way between fitness trainer and client at the local gym. Have you ever watched (or ever been) the client who whines throughout her workout, complaining to her trainer, “Why do you make me lift such heavy weights?” Or, better yet, “Why do you always make me sweat?” It is a frustrating yet rather hilarious moment when one realizes that one cannot get the benefit of the workout without the strain, that—in fact—one has intentionally put oneself in that position in order to grow. Deep down, we know that the saying is true—no pain, no gain—but that doesn’t mean we have to like it!
Resistance to growth is something that we don’t like to recognize in ourselves, yet in many ways it is essential to acknowledge if one really wants to grow.
Resistance to growth is something that we don’t like to recognize in ourselves, yet in many ways it is essential to acknowledge if one really wants to grow. The reality of resistance to growth explains why so many of us try to change but cannot. In Romans 7:15, the Apostle Paul speaks about this common problem when he writes, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Many of us relate to this frustrating experience. However, when we can step back to acknowledge it as Paul did, we gain a valuable perspective. We begin to see how we actually contribute to our own troubles, fueling the fire rather than doing what we can to put it out.
It takes a lot of effort for us to grow because, as we can tell from observing ourselves, we human beings tend to unconsciously invest, over and over, in supporting the status quo, even if it is problematic. Freud called this the repetition compulsion, a highly charged dynamic in our inner worlds that keeps us trapped in vicious circles, making the same mistakes, hitting the same dead ends, and backing ourselves into the very corners we are trying to get out of. The conscious voice says, “I want to change!” and yet the unconscious voice says, “It is too dangerous! Keep doing what you know. You haven’t died yet.” This unconscious train of thought shows one of the key reasons why we resist change: We are afraid of dying.
Now that may sound a bit dramatic, but the inner world is populated by some rather dramatic characters, the first and foremost being our baby selves. While the most adult part of our personalities might have good judgment and motivation for dealing with reality—and might be quite invested in growing—there is a central part of the personality that, just like an infant, comes into the world frightened, needy, and 100 percent dependent on another person for its survival. In a very real sense, there is a baby self within each of us that fears for its life. This is the starting point of personality development. The baby self, having no sense of time, lives on as if it were living in the first and most vulnerable days of life.
I hope you find this metaphor as helpful as I do. I think it is a good alternative to the old metaphor of the psyche being like a wild horse (the id) that needs to be tamed and bridled (the super-ego) by a strong rider (the ego). I can relate better to the contemporary depiction of the psyche being more like an internal family in which internal parents work to help comfort, feed, discipline, and raise an internal baby, because it feels so much closer to my experience. I know I have a baby part of my personality that can get cranky, confused, irrational, and impulsive and needs the help of my more grown-up self. I also know I have a baby part that is curious, playful, and creative, and wants to learn more about this fascinating world of ours and wants to become more capable of handling it. So many of the psychological forces of life come from this baby part of the personality. I have found that getting to know and having a good relationship with her is key to being well and living well.
But if you find it hard to picture yourself having an inner world that is populated with internal babies of all ages, as well as internal parents trying to have relationships with them, try to start thinking about it in another way. Picture the psyche as a tree trunk. All the layers of the self, through all the times and seasons of our lives, are preserved inside—alive—like rings in the trunk of a tree. The core of that tree trunk holds a lot of power, both in the beginning and throughout our lives. Being the oldest part of self, it also has a lot of influence because we have been relying on it for so long.
The core of the tree trunk is the baby part of the self, the center of the personality. I like to call it the baby-core of the personality. Put simply, we are often unknowingly responding more to the baby-core’s needs and demands than to the needs and demands of the outer layers, or “adult” part of our personalities.
So, if you can allow yourself to engage with this vivid metaphor about the baby-core of the personality, you might ask, “What is such an infant to do if she wants to survive?” As you can guess from what I’ve been sharing so far, one approach is that she can give in to the death instinct and try to flee from danger. That is, she can use the approach of avoidance. Kleinian analysts call it “getting unborn” or “becoming an unborn baby.” You can try to stay in the womb (metaphorically speaking) forever. Avoid risk at all costs, underachieve, hide out. This approach is something that we are all prone to using, at least from time to time, and I see it more and more in young people today. I call it “failure to launch,” borrowing the term from a romantic comedy. These are the twenty-eight-year-olds still living with overprotective moms and dads, sheltered from the dangers of life and falsely convinced that they can have all of the goodies in life without getting born into the world and growing up.
The problem with the approach of avoidance is expressed in the simple truth of the adage that if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward. To further develop the gym analogy, we all know that muscle, if not exercised, will atrophy. If you sit on the couch long enough (for example, playing video games or surfing the Internet), you’re going to have some problems—with your body and your mind. This is the place where a vicious circle can get set in motion. Our confidence deteriorates the more we avoid facing life’s difficulties. The less we face life, the less capable we feel. And the less capable we feel, the less we try. We can’t get up off the couch. If we’re not moving forward, we’re moving backward.
While the couch potato analogy is a good one to understand the cost of avoidance, it doesn’t really capture the severity of the problems that tend to arise. I try to highlight this with my patients, as vividly as possible, by describing avoidance as leading to the Mold Effect. They usually cringe when they hear it described in this way—as they should. Living things, left alone in the darkness, tend to grow bad stuff. If you are so afraid of the dangerous world out there that you hide from it, you will be left alone with your fears—and fears, like mold, multiply when unattended. The only real way to diminish your fears is to face them.
The other popular approach used to cope with fears of dying in the face of life’s dangers is denial. We can pretend that we are not afraid at all. Melanie Klein put a finer point on this approach by calling it manic denial. The manic part of manic denial is an illusion that we can cleverly conjure about ourselves (unconsciously, of course). In our minds, we can puff ourselves up, imagining that we are as invulnerable, invincible, and masterful as Superman himself. You can see the magic in this way of thinking, as needs, fears, and limitations disappear in the blink of an eye. Manic denial is such a common approach to coping with life that I am going to devote a whole chapter to it, but for now, let me give you a preview of coming attractions.
In our culture, we find a well-known and accessible depiction of the use of manic denial in the story of Peter Pan. The psychology of the story is so classic that psychologists have even coined a term to describe it: the Peter Pan Syndrome. It is the story of a little boy who never grew up because he didn’t want to. Instead, he created an imaginary world run by children without any parents. He tried to deny his need for parents by living out the fantasy that he could have all of the benefits of being a grown-up without the hard work that growing up involves.
I offer the story of Peter Pan as an example of how we often use manic denial to cope with the anxiety of being babies: We masquerade as grown-ups. The details of the story say it all. First, Peter denies his smallness—he is arrogant, boastful, grandiose, and as full of himself as any little egomaniac could be. Then he denies his need for his parents—as one version of the story goes, when Peter was an infant, he abandoned his parents for the crime of having another baby. If that’s not enough, he denies reality—simply by thinking “happy, wonderful thoughts,” he can fly! And, above all, he denies his fear of dying—he is always putting himself in harm’s way, appearing fearless and cocky, even to the point of saying, “To die would be an awfully big adventure!”
Peter Pan is an archetype, a kind of character who speaks to us about ourselves. He does not want to face his vulnerability, his need, and even his desire to grow up, so he pretends he can rise above it all. He lives out the fantasy that Neverland is so wonderful that he could not imagine ever leaving.
Despite the exciting tone of J. M. Barrie’s incredible tale, beneath the surface there are rumblings of a more vulnerable, tender reality that cannot be denied. If we pay close attention to the story, we see Peter, at least now and then, revealing that he feels uncomfortable, lonely, and afraid. Beneath his bravado, he is constantly anxious and worried about being haunted by crocodiles and Captain Hook. When offered a chance for a real childhood back in London, for a brief instant, he considers going back with the Darling children to a real mother and father. Though he tries to cover it up, we know that he has no real peace of mind.
Because of Peter’s denial, we can only see glimpses and make assumptions about what is going on in his inner world; we see through the cracks for only a moment. But the other characters in the story are more in contact with the breadth of feelings in their lives, both wonderful and dreadful. In other words, they are more whole. If you know the story, you might remember the eldest child, Wendy, with her strong maternal instinct, concern, and fierce judgment. Or her brothers, John and Michael, with their fears of flying and fighting, along with their desire to go home. And who could forget Tinkerbell, with her jealousy and protectiveness?
For me, one of the most touching images in the story is that of the Lost Boys—Peter Pan’s “gang”—a group of boys who lost their parents, were snatched from their baby carriages, never to be found again. The Lost Boys seem to represent a good, wholesome relationship between children and their parents, offering an alternative to the relationship that is so twisted and turned around in Peter’s character. According to Peter, children have no need for parents, so he is not a lost boy at all. And while he tries to peddle this propaganda to the Lost Boys, they do not believe it for too long. Deep down, the Lost Boys are able to stay in touch with the painful loss of their parents—whom they love and on whom they depend. They know they are lost and they jump at the chance to have parents again.
This dynamic was touchingly portrayed in the stage version of the play I saw a few years ago in Los Angeles. I welled up with tears at the moment when the Lost Boys decide to go back to London with Wendy and her brothers, and they joyfully sing, “A mother, a mother, we finally have a mother!” They embrace the very longing that Peter sadly must deny. It is sad because he cannot really experience the joys of love, dependency, and growing up. And it is sad because he is left to fight his battles alone, battles that will never be won but only perpetuated for all of time. By not facing his own anxieties in the realm of the real world, he can never defeat them or be free of them.
While the resistances to growth are tricky and powerful, they can be managed if one understands and faces the underlying factors. If you are following closely, you can see that one of the main factors that must be dealt with is anxiety. When it comes to resistance, it is a frightened baby who is running the show. We each need to develop a good relationship with that inner baby, so that she can be less frightened and learn how to face her fears. By facing our fears, we have the opportunity to grow up and, in so doing, experience the satisfactions of love, inner security, and peace of mind.
In February of 2006, I had the good fortune to attend a worship service celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the Graduate School of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary, my alma mater. Dr. John Ortberg, also an alumnus, preached a moving sermon about the essential aspects of growing. To an audience of Christian therapists, he spoke poetically and pointedly about the joys and frustrations of helping people change, about how meaningful it is to be part of their healing process, and how difficult the work can be. His sermon was centered on three essential features of the growing process—a formula that he borrowed from another well-known Christian therapist, Dr. Henry Cloud.5 I had never heard of Cloud’s “essential ingredients of growth” and was deeply moved to hear them delivered by such an insightful speaker as Dr. Ortberg.
Ortberg began by talking about the first two ingredients—grace and truth. He described grace in the traditional Christian way as “unmerited favor,” and by this he meant that we human beings really need to have an engaged, nonjudgmental support team available if we are to do the hard work of growing. I take this to be true for the inner world as well as the outer world. We need parents, siblings, and friends in our external and internal worlds to be there for us, to encourage us to get out of bed, to get born into the world, and to face our anxieties. Grace has a special place in the Christian understanding of growth, too, for here God at God’s best is seen as our chief supporter and most loving, forgiving parent.
But Ortberg went on to say that grace alone is not sufficient; we also must engage with the truth. He used the concept of truth in the same way that I am using the concept of reality. We must face the truth about ourselves; we must deal with reality as it is. I love that he promoted the idea that God is fundamentally on the side of the truth. I think that reflects a view of God at God’s best too—not a magician taking us away from the problems of the world, but a parent who lovingly holds us accountable to facing the truth about ourselves. It is the combination of grace and truth that is so essential, for grace without truth would never lead to substantial change. And truth is nearly impossible to face without grace, for it is too hard and too painful, and so we wish to avoid it.
I would have been quite satisfied if Ortberg had stopped there. I would have left the worship service feeling like he had spoken about something substantial in the psychological and spiritual journey. I would have felt that he had validated an approach that I had understood and tried to practice in my life and work. But he went one step further. The next step was such a wonderful surprise, it made me gasp. I’m not kidding. He said that there are three essential ingredients to lasting change and growth: grace, truth, and . . . time.
I exclaimed to myself silently, “Time!” That’s the ingredient we so often wish to leave out. That’s the bit that cannot be left out. It’s the secret to yeast, to a good marinade, to fine wine. It is the key to making a lasting and deep love relationship, to fighting an illness, to grieving the loss of a loved one, to maturing in faith, to making peace, and to growing up.
In the presence of someone who is struggling, it is a common, sympathetic response to say, “It just takes time.” That is a lovely sentiment, but it is not quite the whole truth. It does not just take time. It takes grace and truth, too. But it does take time.
So let us ask the next question. Why does growing take so much time? It is an understandable question, after all. I often ask it. My patients often ask it. We are in good company, because even physicians in Freud’s day asked him the same question. Freud tells the story of a colleague who once wrote to him, saying, “What we need is a short, convenient, outpatient treatment for obsessional neurosis.” Freud commented, “I could not supply him with it and felt ashamed; so I tried to excuse myself with the remark that specialists in internal diseases, too, would probably be very glad of a treatment for tuberculosis or carcinoma, which combined these advantages.”6 Growth in psychoanalysis mirrors growth in life; it takes more time than we expect.
But why does it take so much time? Growing takes time for two main reasons. The first is that there are many forms of resistance to growing. In the body, resistance to healing is a particularly thorny problem in treating tuberculosis and cancer. Confused, the body fights against its best interests, even against the treatment itself. The same is true of the life of the mind. We get in our own way. Mostly out of fear, we maintain the status quo and turn away from change. All of this resistance has to be worked through and, bit by bit, overcome. One of my patients once told me of a sculpture of Sisyphus, pushing his boulder up the mountain, just as the story goes. But this sculpture added a new dimension to the image. There, on the other side of the boulder, was another Sisyphus, pushing the same boulder back down the mountain. We work against ourselves.
The other reason that growth takes so much time is because that is simply how it is. That is reality. That is how we human beings are wired. This is an essential part of reality that we must make peace with, and it is a hard one. A story that illustrates this point is an episode from The Brady Bunch television show. In using it I know that I date myself, but I happily grew up on that show and, all these years later, I can see how many wonderful psychoanalytic lessons can be found in its stories. This particular episode stands out to me as a great illustration of the reality that growing takes time, even under the best of circumstances.
Poor Bobby, the youngest of the three brothers, is painfully overtaken with envy that Peter and Greg are so much bigger, taller, stronger, and smarter than he is. So he tries to take a shortcut in the process of growing. The boys have an exercise high bar over the doorway to their bedroom. Bobby grabs hold of it and hangs on, for hours, hoping that he will be able to speed the process of growing by stretching out and getting taller. This is an image we can all relate to, even though it is quite ridiculous. It is ridiculous because we all know that you cannot speed up the process of growth. It is also hilarious because, even if it worked, he wouldn’t be taller—his arms would just be longer!
Growing takes time. As someone once said to me, the only way to grow is to eat your Wheaties. All we can do is do all we can do to make the conditions optimal so that growth can take place. We need grace—the committed love and support of others. We need truth—the experience of facing ourselves and our lives, exactly as they are. And we need time—time to face all that we resist and then to let the natural process of growth unfold.
