Tuesday, December 2, 2008

The Road to Desire

By Kevin Murphy, M.Sc.,
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
Dublin, Ireland.


I was at a lecture given by a colleague last week. She was talking on the subject of female hysteria. In particular she was talking about the notion of women’s sexuality and how, in part, it is constructed around the idea of identification. To identify with someone is, in pure linguistic terms, to be the same as. So in order to position oneself as a desired and desirable woman, a woman can identify with the images in the world around her, real or virtual, that exemplify this characteristic most.
There is a comfort in identification – it satisfies a tangible desire to have an ideal, to have a goal worth striving for, and it presents us with a formula for success that actually exists. It is a tried and tested route to achieving desirability. And desire, human desire, is a profound and unrelenting driver of our lives.
It was an interesting idea but it was something else my colleague said that intrigued me.
In the process of this identification, of becoming ‘like’ or ‘the same as’ someone else, there is another feature that is sometimes overlooked. The downside of identification is that we stop being ourselves, or rather never even become ourselves in the first place. We ‘construct’ ourselves according to a blueprint that has been designed by someone else, who in turn got it from someone else, who in turn… and so on. And, indeed, this can happen in men as well as women.
But my colleague gave an anonymous example of a female client who was seeking to escape a troublesome identification with an ‘other’ in order to ‘find the real her inside’. In becoming identified with someone else, she had lost sight of who the real ‘her’ was inside. I found this intriguing because one can see so many signs of identification today that can have troubling consequences. When women give themselves over to an ideal of womanhood that belongs, not to them, but to another or others, where does that leave the real person inside?
Well, for starters, one can spend one’s life looking for a partner who validates the ideal that one is striving to be. This gives us an entirely new perspective when it comes to the relationships that the person enters into. The notion of loving someone and being loved by someone now moves to the arena of loving someone who loves us back in a way we want to see ourselves being loved. Being loved is not enough now, one has to be loved in a way that fully validates the identificatory persona that has been adopted. And so a seemingly simple process now has a few added twists and turns to it.
Equally, it brings with it the possibility that, if we bury the real person behind a façade based on identification with another, how then are ‘our’ needs to be satisfied? Especially if ‘our’ needs never really come into it in the first place?
It is interesting when it comes to the therapy room how many women, particularly young women, describe the feeling of not being successful in relationships despite doing everything in their power to give those same relationships their best shot. In their view, the lack of equal effort from their partners is a puzzle. And yet when you consider it in the light of this notion of identification, it becomes a little clearer.
Entering into a relationship with the desire to be desired involves taking on the persona of another whom we imagine is perfectly desirable. This is the identification that I spoke about earlier. It is not a consciously planned thing but goes on almost automatically for most people. In this way, the person will dress, laugh, talk, walk, think, speak and love in a way that has been prescribed by the invisible hand of another or others. And by ‘other’ I mean real people, or media projections, or culturally accepted forms of womanhood.
So when it comes to 'the relationship' we have to ask ‘who is it that is entering into this relationship’? Is it the real person or the acceptable façade? And if the love relationship is not working is this question of authenticity at the root of it or not?
These are tough questions for anyone to ask of themselves. Some find it easier than others. And some women, particularly those whose identifications work best for them, whose outer persona and inner self are more closely aligned, know when they are not the problem. But for those whose identifications are not serving them well, who are trying to be something they are not, then this conflict can be a major factor secretly undermining their attempts at successive, and successful, relationships.

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