Losing Our Sense of Who We Are - 4

By Kevin Murphy MSc.,
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.

To conclude on the subject of anxiety, I finished last week on the idea that in anxiety we revert from having an objective sense of who we are, from a position in which we can stand back, evaluate, view ourselves relatively dispassionately, to an almost primal sense of vulnerable subjectivity. We come to painfully inhabit ourselves in a way that is so intense it paralyses us and shows us a frightening and fragile sense of control and incompleteness within ourselves.
Our identity establishes itself with an embrace of the visual image while the reality of fragmentation and un-coordination are essentially repressed, a point of division if you like. So, modern Lacanian psychoanalytic theory proposes that anxiety brings this moment of division crashing back into consciousness: it undoes our defenses, breaks the bonds that hold our sense of who we like to think we are, and so it leaves us open and vulnerable. But to what?
I cited a fascinating article two week’s ago that appeared in the 2002 edition of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis and that was written by Dublin psychoanalyst Dr Olga Cox Cameron. It looks at the question of anxiety by considering the characters in Ian McEwan’s novel ‘Enduring Love’.
According to Cox Cameron, under the pressure of severe anxiety, and remember this is an invisible fear that has very primal roots in all of us, the visual image, or rather the object-ness on which our identity has been formed, collapses.
But, she says, it does not collapse into nothingness. Instead, and much more disturbingly, it collapses in a way that brings about an excess of our sense of ourselves as someone without supports. We are an object of our own anxiety but this time an object that is acutely, painfully and helplessly aware of the experience.
The intensity of anxiety can range all the way from mild but uncomfortable self consciousness to anxiety- ridden panic attacks and beyond. But this excessive experience of self is at the core of the anxiety experience that prompts people to seek treatment.
It is a ‘too much’ of ourselves, an intense focus on ourselves and on the uncontrollable fear that ruptures all other connections to the world around us and the supports and anchors that normally operate. We are cut loose, free floating, with only fear and an intense sense of our isolated presence to accompany us.
It is this experience, as Freud pointed out in his 1894 ‘Anxiety’, that is the polar opposite or the reverse side of, desire. It is marked by the lack of comfort, security, happiness, confidence, wholeness and peace of mind. And not only is it lacking in these ‘anchors’ but it is characterized by an excessive sense of ourselves as being present in the experience.
The final conundrum is why some experience it and others don’t. Some experience it acutely but most experience it in a mild and controllable or less disturbing form. Either way, it is part of the human condition, a result of childhood experiences and re-ignited or reinforced by life experiences and the stresses and strains of living.
The pressure of modern life is keenly felt by some, particularly those whose sense of identity is prone to being unsettled or whose sense of confidence and happiness is delicately balanced. Anxiety shatters the careful and, in some cases, tenuous bonds that tie us together and give us a sense of wholeness.
Along with wholeness, these bonds give us a comfortable sense of who we are as complete, coordinated and grounded individuals by sustaining a necessary distance from our weaker qualities. It is the overwhelming sense of ourselves as less than capable or competent or resilient or whole that anxiety floods us with.
Psychoanalytic theory offers practical tools with which to examine the particular experiences of anxiety that particular clients undergo. This is not a one-size-fits-all therapy. It is the therapy of the individual, and everyone is different, everyone has a particular set of meanings, non-meanings and truths that are not the same for anyone else.
So, what does the theory offer us in terms of searching out meaning, non-meaning and particular truths? It asks where the person is situated in terms of their network of human relations. What is the quality of relationships? Is there a sense of connection or rupture in them? If rupture, what are the parameters of that? It also asks about the nature of the person’s identity, their real bodily image, their imaginary image of themselves, and where both fit in relation to the ideals they might have about themselves and the ideals they feel others have for them? This is not the complete list but the psychoanalytic approach offers a matrix of essentially human guy-lines along which the often complex nature of therapy can steer itself.
But in the same way that it is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ therapy nor is it a quick-fix therapy. By the time some people come for help they want an instant cure. Years of ignoring the signs have allowed anxiety build to the point of being unbearable.
Anxiety is experienced directly as a confusing and overwhelming fear. But behind the scenes it is usually made up of a number of different strands. Its power derives from the fact that its energy comes from a number of different sources, much like a powerful river with a number of tributaries feeding into it.
The work of psychoanalytic psychotherapy involves an investment of time in picking out these various strands so that the force with which anxiety strikes can be lessened and dissipated.