By Kevin Murphy, M.Sc.,
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.
If I can, I’m going to try and draw two things together that, on the face of it, seem worlds apart. Let’s take the first thing first. I was talking to a man once who said he hated going on holidays. He didn’t like being away from home, he didn’t like flying, he didn’t like the sun and he went as rarely as he could. Any time he did go away, he felt uneasy, anxious, was prone to panic attacks and the entire experience was miserable for him and for anyone who happened to be with him.
The second thing is that Jean-Gerard Burzstein, doctor of philosophy and teacher and practitioner of psychoanalysis in Paris, was speaking in Dublin on Saturday and Sunday to the Association for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Ireland about issues of contemporary psychoanalysis. As you would expect, he was attempting to bring an understandable focus to a relatively complex array of concepts and theory.
So how on earth would one bring two things like this together; the nuggets of wisdom from complex theoretical concepts, and the position of a man who didn’t like going on holidays? Not an easy task.
Let’s take the man who hated holidays. An interesting thing about him was that, in his view, it was not ok to hate holidays. He should like holidays. All men liked holidays, going to the sun, or distant places, getting a tan, enjoying freedom of choice. By not being able to do it, and by not liking the fact that he wasn’t able to do it, he was somehow less than other men. An interesting place to see oneself, you might think.
Now Jean-Gerard Burzstein – and I had the privilege of chairing his second talk on Sunday – was pointing out why psychoanalysis is efficient, in contrast to the way some like to paint it. It is efficient he said because it focuses on the cause rather than the symptom. So instead of figuring out ways of trying to help this man get to like going on holidays, it would seek to find out the cause behind why he didn’t like holidays and how he could come to understand it in such a way as to bring about change for him.
In contemporary Freudian-Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Mr Bursztein said the things that form us most fundamentally are our experiences as infants and young children in terms of dealing with the simplest of things: being loved, being satisfied, and being frustrated in relation to our primary care givers. These are the earliest experiences we have, at an age and stage when words are not available to us. Put in a slightly more formal way, the 'who we are' (identity) and the 'what we truly wish for' (desire)are the result of intersubjective (between people)dynamic.
The man who hated holidays said that he was never been able to understand why it was so unpleasurable for him. He said he hated the feeling of vulnerability when he was away, the feeling that something bad might happen. Yet when he got home, he looked back fondly on the experience and seemed to enjoy it once it was over.
Mr Bursztein in his seminar spoke about a core concept in contemporary theory, the fundamental phantasy. This is a group of imaginary ideas we have about who we are and what we represent to the world, that we form in the earliest part of our lives, particularly when we measure ourselves and decide on our place in relation to the people we have as significant adults around us. Some of us are very lucky in that we have adults who seem to do all the right things. Some of us are not. And some of us are lucky from the start in that we have the right inner resources to deal with ups and downs while some of us are not.
In terms of the few things he said, the predicament of the man who hated holidays can be viewed in a particular way. Let’s recap for a moment: the fundamental phantasy is an imaginary way that we prop ourselves up in relation to others. It is not always helpful but it can be all we have.
What the man who hated holidays seemed to be saying was that the experience of going away made him feel vulnerable, unsafe. Some vague threat was pending in the wings, something that would affect him negatively. It would, whatever it was, see him overcome in a way that he would not be able to cope with. The threat would have to be human so he would be overcome or overwhelmed by another person or persons in some way. The thought of it was enough to create anxiety.
The fundamental phantasy is our way of propping ourselves up, showing ourselves to be capable of withstanding the feeling of helplessness, a feeling that is with us at the earliest stages of our lives until we become independent beings. It is not always a secure construct, sometimes it gives way. Nor is it always a beneficial one - sometimes it runs counter to who we really are.
The man who hated holidays didn’t like hating holidays. It wasn’t manly, it wasn’t how he liked to see himself. It showed him up as being weak and fearful. He liked to see himself as strong, independent, resilient, capable of doing things like anyone else. The fear he experienced when faced with going away was at odds with how he lived the rest of his life. So the mask slipped, some idea he had of himself wasn’t working very well when he was faced with going away.
Mr Burzstein said that according to the man who reformulated Freudian theory – Dr Jacques Lacan with whom he worked and researched up to the latter’s death - said that neurosis occurs when we sacrifice our own desire to the demands of an other or others who we perceive as significant. This way of managing ourselves begins from the earliest stages of our lives. We carry on the habit as adults. It isn’t terminal, however, as we have a second chance of correcting the situation with psychoanalysis.
The man who hated holidays displayed the same characteristics. A fundamental phantasy was at work in his imaginary life, in which he saw himself as incapable of withstanding the supposed threat that the desire of unknown others would impose on him against his will. It only ever came to the surface when he had to travel to an unfamiliar location. In fact, it surfaced with such force that it was deeply unpleasant for him.
This phantasy was held in check during his everyday life by the conscious belief that he was strong, resilient, capable of doing anything he wanted. But when it came to travelling abroad, that belief system collapsed and didn’t support him. Mr Burzstein in his seminar said that belief systems we have about ourselves that are purely in the imaginary realm will always come crashing down. The antidote is to discover the truth about ourselves through analysis. That way we don’t end up spending vast resources of energy and time fending off imaginary threats that threaten to pull down our imaginary ideas about ourselves.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Learning How to Be A Better Lover
By Kevin Murphy
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.
I was reading a woman’s magazine in a waiting room recently and it prominently featured an article on top ways for a woman to pleasure her man sexually. The tips themselves were hackneyed enough; that is to say, they have been recycled in various formats for many years now. But two things about it caught my attention. Firstly this was the second women’s magazine in a few months to run an article on the importance of women knowing how to sexually satisfy their men. There is obviously a demand for it. The previous article was a little less tasteful and a lot more graphic, despite being a mainstream publication aimed at teens and young twenty year olds.
Secondly, the more recent article introduced the topic along the lines that with the right sexual technique, and therefore a fulfilling sexual experience, love can blossom. If I was reading it correctly, this meant that in order for love to be possible, and by love I presumed it meant the vague multimedia-concocted version that is low on ordinary detail and high on promise, then one had to have a successful first sexual encounter with the man of your choice.
Thinking about it now, it must represent an alluring thesis for any woman. If one can turn oneself, through the use of tips and suggestions from a magazine or tv show or movie, into a modern day Mata Hari, then love is guaranteed. Successful sex, the definition of which is sex that satisfies the man according to the magazines, leads to love. As a formula, it is blindingly simple.
Leaving aside for a moment the often heard argument as to how thirty to forty years of feminism could have lead to this, there is a psychoanalytic perspective that probably needs airing in this regard also. From the latter perspective, the message is a curiously twisted one. On the one hand the woman is required – once again – to take responsibility for all things sexual. She must acquire the knowledge that will satisfy the man. Now while it appears to be putting the woman into the position of power, it also has the curious effect of making the woman into a sexual object.
For those who are familiar with psychoanalysis, this is the basis of hysteria – the woman becoming the object for an ‘other’ in a way that links in with her sexuality. This discovery led to Freud’s (and Josef Breuer’s) book ‘Studies on Hysteria’ in 1895, the book that is generally credited with being the start of psychoanalysis.
So, in an unintended twist, while taking on the mantle of all-knowing sexuality, the contemporary woman transforms herself into the object of sexual pleasure. The double-edge of this particular sword is that while the woman will undoubtedly attract the attentions of the opposite sex (if that is her choice) she will also run the risk of being defined in particularly narrow and objectified terms. For some it is not a problem, for others it most definitely is.
What of those women who may well be comfortable with their sexuality but who reject the requirement to become expert man-pleasers in bed or in any other part of their lives? And what of those women who suffer varying degrees of disrespect on account of this predominant ideology at the hands of their male partners? And what of those women who are made to feel inadequate because their brand of femininity precludes them from this way of being a woman?
It’s only when you look beneath the surface of things that you get a glimpse of the real complexities at work. The magazine idea of the perfect sexual woman, alluring as it might be, leaves many women behind. As such it represents an ideal for a section of women but not all women. That section, or constituency of women for whom it works, may well be in the ascendant because it is a value system that is most loudly heard. And we must not forget that powerful commercial organisations have a vested interest in promoting this ideology and fuelling its continued rise.
Now there is certainly an argument to be made that sex should be talked about, rather than hidden. Of course that is the case. But once we accept that it should be talked about and brought out into the open, the next question to be asked is ‘how’ it should be talked about and ‘how’ it should be brought into the open. In a way that elevates? Or in a way that diminishes? Often the world we live in is intent on ensuring that the lines between these two positions remain conveniently blurred.
Of course, to even raise such a topic is to be branded as someone with no sense of humour. Such has been the case, listening to the radio recently, for anyone daring to criticize the new Sex and the City movie. It’s only a bit of fun. Well, I can understand that. I jokingly complained at being called too early for my appointment in the waiting room mentioned above because I had only had time to reach sex tip number three. Now I’ll have to make another appointment.
So the ‘fun argument’ is all very well, but humour is a very subjective thing and to require people to find something fun or funny borders on the dictatorial.
Also, despite those who try to pass something off as ‘just a bit of fun’, every piece of humour has a deeper layer of meaning whether we like it or not. And that is something that was known long before Freud’s ‘Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious’ was published in 1905. There’s nothing wrong with being able to enjoy a joke once we can clearly see that the joke is not being made at someone else’s expense.
It is fun to read about sex tips in magazines. We all want to know how we can do things better. And it may even raise awareness of what to do and what not to do to make oneself a better lover. But we also have to remember that other meanings are also being communicated: that 'standards' of sexual performance are now being prescribed; that better sex leads to perfect love; that a woman is a better woman by having more sexual knowledge. But in this rising tide of objectified sexuality something of the richer complexity not just of womanhood but of human relationships is being swept away.
* The next blog will appear on Tuesday June 22nd, 2010.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.
I was reading a woman’s magazine in a waiting room recently and it prominently featured an article on top ways for a woman to pleasure her man sexually. The tips themselves were hackneyed enough; that is to say, they have been recycled in various formats for many years now. But two things about it caught my attention. Firstly this was the second women’s magazine in a few months to run an article on the importance of women knowing how to sexually satisfy their men. There is obviously a demand for it. The previous article was a little less tasteful and a lot more graphic, despite being a mainstream publication aimed at teens and young twenty year olds.
Secondly, the more recent article introduced the topic along the lines that with the right sexual technique, and therefore a fulfilling sexual experience, love can blossom. If I was reading it correctly, this meant that in order for love to be possible, and by love I presumed it meant the vague multimedia-concocted version that is low on ordinary detail and high on promise, then one had to have a successful first sexual encounter with the man of your choice.
Thinking about it now, it must represent an alluring thesis for any woman. If one can turn oneself, through the use of tips and suggestions from a magazine or tv show or movie, into a modern day Mata Hari, then love is guaranteed. Successful sex, the definition of which is sex that satisfies the man according to the magazines, leads to love. As a formula, it is blindingly simple.
Leaving aside for a moment the often heard argument as to how thirty to forty years of feminism could have lead to this, there is a psychoanalytic perspective that probably needs airing in this regard also. From the latter perspective, the message is a curiously twisted one. On the one hand the woman is required – once again – to take responsibility for all things sexual. She must acquire the knowledge that will satisfy the man. Now while it appears to be putting the woman into the position of power, it also has the curious effect of making the woman into a sexual object.
For those who are familiar with psychoanalysis, this is the basis of hysteria – the woman becoming the object for an ‘other’ in a way that links in with her sexuality. This discovery led to Freud’s (and Josef Breuer’s) book ‘Studies on Hysteria’ in 1895, the book that is generally credited with being the start of psychoanalysis.
So, in an unintended twist, while taking on the mantle of all-knowing sexuality, the contemporary woman transforms herself into the object of sexual pleasure. The double-edge of this particular sword is that while the woman will undoubtedly attract the attentions of the opposite sex (if that is her choice) she will also run the risk of being defined in particularly narrow and objectified terms. For some it is not a problem, for others it most definitely is.
What of those women who may well be comfortable with their sexuality but who reject the requirement to become expert man-pleasers in bed or in any other part of their lives? And what of those women who suffer varying degrees of disrespect on account of this predominant ideology at the hands of their male partners? And what of those women who are made to feel inadequate because their brand of femininity precludes them from this way of being a woman?
It’s only when you look beneath the surface of things that you get a glimpse of the real complexities at work. The magazine idea of the perfect sexual woman, alluring as it might be, leaves many women behind. As such it represents an ideal for a section of women but not all women. That section, or constituency of women for whom it works, may well be in the ascendant because it is a value system that is most loudly heard. And we must not forget that powerful commercial organisations have a vested interest in promoting this ideology and fuelling its continued rise.
Now there is certainly an argument to be made that sex should be talked about, rather than hidden. Of course that is the case. But once we accept that it should be talked about and brought out into the open, the next question to be asked is ‘how’ it should be talked about and ‘how’ it should be brought into the open. In a way that elevates? Or in a way that diminishes? Often the world we live in is intent on ensuring that the lines between these two positions remain conveniently blurred.
Of course, to even raise such a topic is to be branded as someone with no sense of humour. Such has been the case, listening to the radio recently, for anyone daring to criticize the new Sex and the City movie. It’s only a bit of fun. Well, I can understand that. I jokingly complained at being called too early for my appointment in the waiting room mentioned above because I had only had time to reach sex tip number three. Now I’ll have to make another appointment.
So the ‘fun argument’ is all very well, but humour is a very subjective thing and to require people to find something fun or funny borders on the dictatorial.
Also, despite those who try to pass something off as ‘just a bit of fun’, every piece of humour has a deeper layer of meaning whether we like it or not. And that is something that was known long before Freud’s ‘Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious’ was published in 1905. There’s nothing wrong with being able to enjoy a joke once we can clearly see that the joke is not being made at someone else’s expense.
It is fun to read about sex tips in magazines. We all want to know how we can do things better. And it may even raise awareness of what to do and what not to do to make oneself a better lover. But we also have to remember that other meanings are also being communicated: that 'standards' of sexual performance are now being prescribed; that better sex leads to perfect love; that a woman is a better woman by having more sexual knowledge. But in this rising tide of objectified sexuality something of the richer complexity not just of womanhood but of human relationships is being swept away.
* The next blog will appear on Tuesday June 22nd, 2010.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Seeing Indulgence for What It Is
By Kevin Murphy, MSc,
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.
Every once in a while you will hear people say that their experience of going to therapy is one of indulgence. They are indulging themselves. They are indulging their sense of having something worth talking about. They are over-estimating the issues they have to deal with. In short, they are saying it is a form of vanity.
If someone feels this way then the common sense approach would be to let them go with their instincts and simply stop attending therapy. This is the outcome for some. For others, though, the belief that they are indulging themselves is actually an element of their problem. Distinguishing between the two is important for the therapist to do his or her job properly, although in reality it is usually the person in question who makes the call. And not often the right call.
The belief that one is indulging oneself might play well with the current social discourse that people who go for therapy just need a stiff talking to. It plays into the ‘pull yourself together’ school of thought. But the lived experience of people who come for therapy is that they have repeatedly tried this route. They are in therapy because they actually have tried to ‘pull themselves together’ and it hasn’t worked.
Once they start coming, though, something else happens for them. A gradual lifting of their discomfort, of their fears, or of their sadness, and with it a glimmer of personal well-being, and suddenly, often quite quickly, a negative tone emerges. A little voice says, you see, there was nothing ‘wrong’ with you. The broader social discourse kicks in with plenty of examples of people who do not go to therapy. There are any number of ideal lives out there we can imagine that are trouble free and that we want to imitate.
This negative tone with regard to being in therapy contains within it aspects of a broader attitude that people have towards themselves. The negative, punishing sense of indulging oneself, of being vain enough to believe you have problems, of seeing oneself as unworthy of even attending therapy can, for some people, be part of a wellspring of self-criticism that runs deep. It is the voice that doesn’t allow us feel good about pretty much anything we decide to do to improve ourselves. It makes itself known in company, with new people, when new opportunities for career or relationships emerge. It even seeps into existing relationships and ensures we occupy a back-seat position, even while seeming to be fully in control. It is most felt at times in our lives when we need to move forward.
It can often be hard for someone to see this for themselves, although some people are acutely aware of it. It is easiest for an independent observer to pick it up, often immediately. The message that we give ourselves about therapy being an indulgence can be so strong that people simply drop out and leave all possibilities for change unexplored. There is a comfort in that. The opposite of the no-pain, no-gain mantra favoured by sports coaches is the no-change, no-risk mantra of those in this situation.
There is a part of ourselves that wants us to remain as we are, unchallenged, unchanged, unquestioned. If a person is happy that way, then that is fine. But if a person sees therapy as an indulgence, decides to walk away and then finds that their life is still a confusing, dissatisfying, badly joined-up jigsaw, then that is probably clear evidence that the experience of it as an indulgence was designed to stop them in their tracks. After all, that is essentially the effect it had. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is possible to want to feel better but not want to feel better at one and the same time.
On this basis, you could say that the experience of therapy as an indulgence could be the signal that a degree of resilience against it is required, so as not to believe wholeheartedly in what it appears to be telling us. The negative image about ourselves that it tries to portray can often be designed to stop us moving forward, to keep us fixed in the same place. If it arises, the negativity implicit in it, along with its consequences, can usually be found in many other aspects of our lives also.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.
Every once in a while you will hear people say that their experience of going to therapy is one of indulgence. They are indulging themselves. They are indulging their sense of having something worth talking about. They are over-estimating the issues they have to deal with. In short, they are saying it is a form of vanity.
If someone feels this way then the common sense approach would be to let them go with their instincts and simply stop attending therapy. This is the outcome for some. For others, though, the belief that they are indulging themselves is actually an element of their problem. Distinguishing between the two is important for the therapist to do his or her job properly, although in reality it is usually the person in question who makes the call. And not often the right call.
The belief that one is indulging oneself might play well with the current social discourse that people who go for therapy just need a stiff talking to. It plays into the ‘pull yourself together’ school of thought. But the lived experience of people who come for therapy is that they have repeatedly tried this route. They are in therapy because they actually have tried to ‘pull themselves together’ and it hasn’t worked.
Once they start coming, though, something else happens for them. A gradual lifting of their discomfort, of their fears, or of their sadness, and with it a glimmer of personal well-being, and suddenly, often quite quickly, a negative tone emerges. A little voice says, you see, there was nothing ‘wrong’ with you. The broader social discourse kicks in with plenty of examples of people who do not go to therapy. There are any number of ideal lives out there we can imagine that are trouble free and that we want to imitate.
This negative tone with regard to being in therapy contains within it aspects of a broader attitude that people have towards themselves. The negative, punishing sense of indulging oneself, of being vain enough to believe you have problems, of seeing oneself as unworthy of even attending therapy can, for some people, be part of a wellspring of self-criticism that runs deep. It is the voice that doesn’t allow us feel good about pretty much anything we decide to do to improve ourselves. It makes itself known in company, with new people, when new opportunities for career or relationships emerge. It even seeps into existing relationships and ensures we occupy a back-seat position, even while seeming to be fully in control. It is most felt at times in our lives when we need to move forward.
It can often be hard for someone to see this for themselves, although some people are acutely aware of it. It is easiest for an independent observer to pick it up, often immediately. The message that we give ourselves about therapy being an indulgence can be so strong that people simply drop out and leave all possibilities for change unexplored. There is a comfort in that. The opposite of the no-pain, no-gain mantra favoured by sports coaches is the no-change, no-risk mantra of those in this situation.
There is a part of ourselves that wants us to remain as we are, unchallenged, unchanged, unquestioned. If a person is happy that way, then that is fine. But if a person sees therapy as an indulgence, decides to walk away and then finds that their life is still a confusing, dissatisfying, badly joined-up jigsaw, then that is probably clear evidence that the experience of it as an indulgence was designed to stop them in their tracks. After all, that is essentially the effect it had. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is possible to want to feel better but not want to feel better at one and the same time.
On this basis, you could say that the experience of therapy as an indulgence could be the signal that a degree of resilience against it is required, so as not to believe wholeheartedly in what it appears to be telling us. The negative image about ourselves that it tries to portray can often be designed to stop us moving forward, to keep us fixed in the same place. If it arises, the negativity implicit in it, along with its consequences, can usually be found in many other aspects of our lives also.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
The Death of a Famous Man
By Kevin Murphy, MSc,
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.
In the wake of the untimely death of broadcaster Gerry Ryan I was talking with a group of people about it and one of them said he could not understand the huge emphasis that was put on it across the Irish media. He felt that more important news was being downgraded while news of the death was given prominence. Now you could put this down to what we call Irish begrudgery. Or was it a genuine astonishment at the outpouring of sorrow, one that pushed everything else off the front pages? Or was it a cynical response to the fact that a mere entertainer could have had such a place in the country’s collective heart?
Why would we not mourn the untimely death of someone who was so well known? It seems such an obvious question doesn’t it? But not everyone gets it. And yet we did display, through the media, a large outpouring of grief for him. You could say we did it for Princess Diana too. Or that we did it for Michael Jackson. Or for any number of famous people who died young or tragically.
The individuals themselves had become symbols of various kinds for us and so we mourned their passing for many reasons. The common element was that each encountered death with all its finality and bluntness. As such, we too had to encounter some of that finality and bluntness in their passing. Death ensures the speaking stops, that no more questions about future possibilities get asked or answered, that all relationships are truncated, that impenetrable absences are created and that living memory must now become a precious archive.
Such deaths bring us face to face with the unexpected. We don’t encounter death as a possibility in our daily lives. It is discreetly veiled off. No matter how many war reports or crime reports we read about or watch, death remains subtly out of view. It is a human thing. We drive cars at break-neck speed because we believe it will never happen to us. No soldier goes to war believing he will meet death. Even though death is the inevitable end to all of us, we could not jump out of bed in the mornings if we kept that thought to the forefront of our minds. You could say we know it and we don’t allow ourselves know it at the same time.
And of course we are helped in that by science which through its advances helps us live longer. And by medicine which ensures that we can overcome most of the serious setbacks and recover, thus continuing on life’s long road. Civil laws too ensure, for most but not all, that we can walk home safely, that our homes will not be invaded, that our towns will not be overtaken by some marauding gang and our lives abruptly ended. Despite the risk of national wars, the prospect of close, imminent, unpredictable death has been staved off. Yes cancer and other bodily diseases threaten us but we don’t expect to be randomly murdered on our doorstep. The possibility has been edged further and further off toward the far horizon of most of our lives. We simply expect to be around for a long, long time. The untimeliness of the deaths of famous people upsets this mindset.
Yet for most of mankind’s history, life was short, brutal and bloody. Our ancestors who built the Newgrange megalithic tomb some 5000 years ago had a life expectancy of 35 years. The same thing existed until recently in remote tribes that still lived in a traditional way. But the onset of democracy ensured at least we had a right to a life without oppression. Along with that, we had advances in medicine culminating in the mass production of antibiotics in the late 1940s thus making us immune to many traditionally fatal infections. Our lives may have gotten longer but the untimeliness of the death of someone famous triggers a dim recollection of a time when life was short, or could be cut short by the most unexpected circumstances.
And so our lengthening life expectancy has brought with it an inevitable belief that life will be long. Not only will it be long, but the enduring peace that has existed in Western society since World War 2 has convinced us that we will not have to face our own death until a long life is behind us. Until someone famous or someone close to us dies, we carry on whistling past the graveyard, as the saying goes.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.
In the wake of the untimely death of broadcaster Gerry Ryan I was talking with a group of people about it and one of them said he could not understand the huge emphasis that was put on it across the Irish media. He felt that more important news was being downgraded while news of the death was given prominence. Now you could put this down to what we call Irish begrudgery. Or was it a genuine astonishment at the outpouring of sorrow, one that pushed everything else off the front pages? Or was it a cynical response to the fact that a mere entertainer could have had such a place in the country’s collective heart?
Why would we not mourn the untimely death of someone who was so well known? It seems such an obvious question doesn’t it? But not everyone gets it. And yet we did display, through the media, a large outpouring of grief for him. You could say we did it for Princess Diana too. Or that we did it for Michael Jackson. Or for any number of famous people who died young or tragically.
The individuals themselves had become symbols of various kinds for us and so we mourned their passing for many reasons. The common element was that each encountered death with all its finality and bluntness. As such, we too had to encounter some of that finality and bluntness in their passing. Death ensures the speaking stops, that no more questions about future possibilities get asked or answered, that all relationships are truncated, that impenetrable absences are created and that living memory must now become a precious archive.
Such deaths bring us face to face with the unexpected. We don’t encounter death as a possibility in our daily lives. It is discreetly veiled off. No matter how many war reports or crime reports we read about or watch, death remains subtly out of view. It is a human thing. We drive cars at break-neck speed because we believe it will never happen to us. No soldier goes to war believing he will meet death. Even though death is the inevitable end to all of us, we could not jump out of bed in the mornings if we kept that thought to the forefront of our minds. You could say we know it and we don’t allow ourselves know it at the same time.
And of course we are helped in that by science which through its advances helps us live longer. And by medicine which ensures that we can overcome most of the serious setbacks and recover, thus continuing on life’s long road. Civil laws too ensure, for most but not all, that we can walk home safely, that our homes will not be invaded, that our towns will not be overtaken by some marauding gang and our lives abruptly ended. Despite the risk of national wars, the prospect of close, imminent, unpredictable death has been staved off. Yes cancer and other bodily diseases threaten us but we don’t expect to be randomly murdered on our doorstep. The possibility has been edged further and further off toward the far horizon of most of our lives. We simply expect to be around for a long, long time. The untimeliness of the deaths of famous people upsets this mindset.
Yet for most of mankind’s history, life was short, brutal and bloody. Our ancestors who built the Newgrange megalithic tomb some 5000 years ago had a life expectancy of 35 years. The same thing existed until recently in remote tribes that still lived in a traditional way. But the onset of democracy ensured at least we had a right to a life without oppression. Along with that, we had advances in medicine culminating in the mass production of antibiotics in the late 1940s thus making us immune to many traditionally fatal infections. Our lives may have gotten longer but the untimeliness of the death of someone famous triggers a dim recollection of a time when life was short, or could be cut short by the most unexpected circumstances.
And so our lengthening life expectancy has brought with it an inevitable belief that life will be long. Not only will it be long, but the enduring peace that has existed in Western society since World War 2 has convinced us that we will not have to face our own death until a long life is behind us. Until someone famous or someone close to us dies, we carry on whistling past the graveyard, as the saying goes.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Women in Love*
By Kevin Murphy,
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.
What would you say to a woman who repeatedly gets herself into relationships in which she is exploited? Or what would you say to a woman who is cheated on repeatedly by the same partner? Or what would you say to a woman who knows she has an emotionally abusive partner but still believes it is her best hope of love?
It would make you wonder, wouldn’t it? And I don’t mean make you wonder about these particular women. Rather it would also make you wonder about the position of women generally.
There are many, many women who are intelligent, educated, independent and living contemporary, liberal lifestyles who yet operate on an almost old-fashioned model of what it means to be in a relationship. They find themselves playing curious second fiddle to their partner. And yet in their more public life, if anyone suggested they take up the same position with regard to career, society, or education, they would instantly oppose such a move and rightly so.
Why is that? I ask because we are at the tail end of a revolution in terms of women’s position in Western culture, one that has seen a great deal of the unfair, unequal and undemocratic practices of previous generations completely abolished. Yet now, at a time of greatest freedom and opportunity, we find a great many women occupying a paradoxical position. They enjoy the right to display their femininity as powerfully as they wish – in varied lifestyle and career choices – and yet despite this some can still display profound uncertainty around their position within emotional relationships.
Now obviously there are women who remain impervious to these issues and who can rise above most interpersonal obstacles through sheer force of will. They are interesting too but we might consider them another day. For the moment, it remains a conundrum that so many women can ‘appear’ strong and resilient and yet find themselves on the receiving end of disrespectful and undermining behaviour. And while most who find themselves in this situation can articulate what is going on, few find themselves able to do much about it.
I was reminded of this while reading an article by psychoanalyst Jacques-Alain Miller** in which he sought to apply some deep theoretical notions to this area. Key to any psychoanalytical understanding of the different positions that men and women take up, is the idea that women occupy a rather special place in terms of the road they take to adult maturity. Not for them the rather uniform developmental path that exists for men. Instead, contemporary psychoanalysis sees something of a healthy incompleteness in the path that girls take to becoming women. That’s not to say that women are incomplete, far from it. It is an attempt to show that women are to be found, because of this incompleteness, on the side of the infinite, emotionally unbounded and yet sharing in a connection to enigmatic forces, whereas men are pretty much a finite set.
What this means in reality is that when it comes to love, women are directed at much, much more than a satisfaction of bodily pleasures, although that is important too. There is something of a ‘beyond’ at work to which they intuitively respond.
And if men, by contrast, are pretty much a finite set well that makes them ideal for forming armies and churches and nations and all those other institutions that centre around distant, and not-so-distant ideals. The women we are referring to, on the other hand, have a greater understanding of the here and now, the importance of ordinary things, the basics, the necessity of speech in the conduct of love relationships, the place of human-ness, love and mystery.
But how does this impact on the place some women, such as those suggested above, find themselves in their relationships today? Well, according to the contemporary theory of sexuality, the first action at work in keeping women ‘stuck’ in these kinds of situations is this very thing. Their sense of infinite-ness is one that orients them towards love as a quantifiably different thing from men’s love, a love that, as outlined above, is based on a living, demonstrable, almost tangible sense of itself. This is their way of evaluating the ultimate success of a relationship.
The second action at work is that the person they choose to remain ‘stuck’ with will have, from the outset, represented an ideal so powerful that they will find themselves emotionally invested to a degree they would not have imagined possible. This unconscious ideal will have formed around a great deal of the experiences of the woman’s past life, the figures in it who were important to her, the values they will have represented and these will have combined with her own inner forces driving the imaginative constructions that place the man in this ideal position.
The third action usually at work is the absence of satisfaction, a desire not met, a dream unfulfilled in the relationship but, paradoxically, with the promise of it happening always just out of reach. We are never more hungry than when we are given the promise of food and likewise our desire remains strongest when it is not wholly satisfied.
This is the contradiction of our times. Freedom is available to most women in the developed world, a freedom fought and struggled for, and one that is allied to financial, intellectual and emotional independence. Yet some women, despite partaking in these new freedoms, find an older regime is at work within them when it comes to love relationships.
*The next blog will appear on Tuesday 11th May, 2010.
** ’Of Distribution Between the Sexes’, J-A Miller, in Psychoanalytical Notebooks, A Review of the London Society of the New Lacanian School, Issue 11, London, December 2003, pp.9-27.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.
What would you say to a woman who repeatedly gets herself into relationships in which she is exploited? Or what would you say to a woman who is cheated on repeatedly by the same partner? Or what would you say to a woman who knows she has an emotionally abusive partner but still believes it is her best hope of love?
It would make you wonder, wouldn’t it? And I don’t mean make you wonder about these particular women. Rather it would also make you wonder about the position of women generally.
There are many, many women who are intelligent, educated, independent and living contemporary, liberal lifestyles who yet operate on an almost old-fashioned model of what it means to be in a relationship. They find themselves playing curious second fiddle to their partner. And yet in their more public life, if anyone suggested they take up the same position with regard to career, society, or education, they would instantly oppose such a move and rightly so.
Why is that? I ask because we are at the tail end of a revolution in terms of women’s position in Western culture, one that has seen a great deal of the unfair, unequal and undemocratic practices of previous generations completely abolished. Yet now, at a time of greatest freedom and opportunity, we find a great many women occupying a paradoxical position. They enjoy the right to display their femininity as powerfully as they wish – in varied lifestyle and career choices – and yet despite this some can still display profound uncertainty around their position within emotional relationships.
Now obviously there are women who remain impervious to these issues and who can rise above most interpersonal obstacles through sheer force of will. They are interesting too but we might consider them another day. For the moment, it remains a conundrum that so many women can ‘appear’ strong and resilient and yet find themselves on the receiving end of disrespectful and undermining behaviour. And while most who find themselves in this situation can articulate what is going on, few find themselves able to do much about it.
I was reminded of this while reading an article by psychoanalyst Jacques-Alain Miller** in which he sought to apply some deep theoretical notions to this area. Key to any psychoanalytical understanding of the different positions that men and women take up, is the idea that women occupy a rather special place in terms of the road they take to adult maturity. Not for them the rather uniform developmental path that exists for men. Instead, contemporary psychoanalysis sees something of a healthy incompleteness in the path that girls take to becoming women. That’s not to say that women are incomplete, far from it. It is an attempt to show that women are to be found, because of this incompleteness, on the side of the infinite, emotionally unbounded and yet sharing in a connection to enigmatic forces, whereas men are pretty much a finite set.
What this means in reality is that when it comes to love, women are directed at much, much more than a satisfaction of bodily pleasures, although that is important too. There is something of a ‘beyond’ at work to which they intuitively respond.
And if men, by contrast, are pretty much a finite set well that makes them ideal for forming armies and churches and nations and all those other institutions that centre around distant, and not-so-distant ideals. The women we are referring to, on the other hand, have a greater understanding of the here and now, the importance of ordinary things, the basics, the necessity of speech in the conduct of love relationships, the place of human-ness, love and mystery.
But how does this impact on the place some women, such as those suggested above, find themselves in their relationships today? Well, according to the contemporary theory of sexuality, the first action at work in keeping women ‘stuck’ in these kinds of situations is this very thing. Their sense of infinite-ness is one that orients them towards love as a quantifiably different thing from men’s love, a love that, as outlined above, is based on a living, demonstrable, almost tangible sense of itself. This is their way of evaluating the ultimate success of a relationship.
The second action at work is that the person they choose to remain ‘stuck’ with will have, from the outset, represented an ideal so powerful that they will find themselves emotionally invested to a degree they would not have imagined possible. This unconscious ideal will have formed around a great deal of the experiences of the woman’s past life, the figures in it who were important to her, the values they will have represented and these will have combined with her own inner forces driving the imaginative constructions that place the man in this ideal position.
The third action usually at work is the absence of satisfaction, a desire not met, a dream unfulfilled in the relationship but, paradoxically, with the promise of it happening always just out of reach. We are never more hungry than when we are given the promise of food and likewise our desire remains strongest when it is not wholly satisfied.
This is the contradiction of our times. Freedom is available to most women in the developed world, a freedom fought and struggled for, and one that is allied to financial, intellectual and emotional independence. Yet some women, despite partaking in these new freedoms, find an older regime is at work within them when it comes to love relationships.
*The next blog will appear on Tuesday 11th May, 2010.
** ’Of Distribution Between the Sexes’, J-A Miller, in Psychoanalytical Notebooks, A Review of the London Society of the New Lacanian School, Issue 11, London, December 2003, pp.9-27.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
The Question of Sexuality
By Kevin Murphy
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.
It’s easy to presume that when the word sexuality is mentioned nowadays that we are talking about homosexuality or transsexuality or some strident form of heterosexuality. Either way, the word conjures up some exceptional connotations.
Indeed the flip side of this is that the other kind of sexuality, the ordinary business of being a man or of being a woman, is beyond question.
But the 'ordinary' business of being a man, or of being a woman – an issue central to the whole notion of sexuality – is very far from being beyond question. At the heart of most problems that surface in the consulting room of therapists the world over is this very thing. I am not talking – as my presumption above might lead you to believe – about the question of whether one is a transsexual man or a gay woman. I am referring to the 'ordinary' question that has relevance for everyone as to ‘what kind of man or woman am I?”
I suppose I ask this question because a major international congress of psychoanalysis is taking place in Europe in June and it is going to bring speakers from all over the world who will give their ideas on these very topics. The 8th International Congress of the New Lacanian School is taking place in Geneva on June 26 and 27 and the theme – Daughter, Woman, Mother in the 21st Century - is very much around these ideas.
Psychoanalysis has, since Freud and latterly since Jacques Lacan, focussed a great deal of its attention on the issue of sexuality. In particular it has edged further and further into the notion of what it is to be a woman. Now any consideration of what it is to be a woman naturally brings you into considering what, equally, it is to be a man. Hence the focus, in the first instance, on these seemingly obvious issues.
But there is nothing obvious about them. What is it to be a woman? Or to be a man? We take the questions so much for granted that we don’t even ask them anymore. Why should the questions even be asked? A man has a penis and he loves women. A woman has breasts and a vagina and she loves men. Is there any more to be said?
If we move for a moment to consider those who offer a clearly different perspective on this question, where does it leave men who love men? Or women who love women? These men have penises. These women, too, have female genitalia. The object of their sexual attentions however is for people of the same sex. Are they any less men? Or women?
And where does it leave someone like Caster Semenya, the South African 800m Olympic champion who, according to latest reports, has male reproductive organs and yet is a woman?
Psychoanalysis has long said that biology does not determine gender. You can adopt a male position even with a woman’s body. One can equally adopt a female position with a male body. There are no guarantees when it comes to the sex that we evolve into. And although social conditioning does have a part to play in it, why has it not influenced the growing population of homosexual people around the world?
The answer, according to psychoanalysis, is that the more powerful determinant of what we decide we are comes from within. The recent biographical movie with Sean Penn as US activitist Harvey Milk is a case in point. During his life, particularly his political life, he had almost an entire society telling him he was wrong. And did it make any difference? No, it didn’t.
Because to have accepted what society was telling him – much as it is for anyone with a different sexuality – would have been to deny who he was; it would have been to deny the person that he knew and believed himself to be. To accept that, is to live each day as a lie. And since we only get one life, one has to ask how bearable can that be?
And that, interestingly enough, brings us back to my first point. The ‘ordinary question’ of what it is to be a man and the ‘ordinary question’ of what it is to be a woman suddenly becomes a much richer thing now. We are no longer dealing in clichés anymore. It is no longer as simple as the man goes to work, the woman stays at home, the man plays golf, the woman has babies, the woman dresses pretty, the man acts tough, the woman uses her charm, the man uses his brawn, the woman is emotional, the man is not… The list goes on and on, added to over the centuries by various ideas about what makes a man and a woman.
Freud puzzled over the woman part of the question and didn’t quite answer to his, or anyone else’s, satisfaction. Jacques Lacan took up the challenge after him and brought it to a much more elevated psychoanalytic place. We choose our sex, at an unconscious level, and we choose it under the influence of our parents in the first instance. And that choice is not made until after puberty.
There is no instinct at work that tells us how to be a man and how to be a woman. We puzzle over it long after we have reached adulthood. To help us know what to believe we use whatever cultural sign posts are available and very often some of these are least helpful to us. Consider the body image issues that afflict people today.
Quite simply, as Jacques Alain Miller, Lacan’s son in law, has said, there is an absence of real knowledge available to us about what one must do, how one must live, as a male or a female. And it is from this perspective, from the almost ‘never settled’ position of our chosen sexuality, that we engage in relationships and adopt ideas about ourselves and live up to ideals throughout our lives.
In the context of the consulting room, it is not so much about having all the right answers, as having the broad theoretical framework with which to ask the right questions.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.
It’s easy to presume that when the word sexuality is mentioned nowadays that we are talking about homosexuality or transsexuality or some strident form of heterosexuality. Either way, the word conjures up some exceptional connotations.
Indeed the flip side of this is that the other kind of sexuality, the ordinary business of being a man or of being a woman, is beyond question.
But the 'ordinary' business of being a man, or of being a woman – an issue central to the whole notion of sexuality – is very far from being beyond question. At the heart of most problems that surface in the consulting room of therapists the world over is this very thing. I am not talking – as my presumption above might lead you to believe – about the question of whether one is a transsexual man or a gay woman. I am referring to the 'ordinary' question that has relevance for everyone as to ‘what kind of man or woman am I?”
I suppose I ask this question because a major international congress of psychoanalysis is taking place in Europe in June and it is going to bring speakers from all over the world who will give their ideas on these very topics. The 8th International Congress of the New Lacanian School is taking place in Geneva on June 26 and 27 and the theme – Daughter, Woman, Mother in the 21st Century - is very much around these ideas.
Psychoanalysis has, since Freud and latterly since Jacques Lacan, focussed a great deal of its attention on the issue of sexuality. In particular it has edged further and further into the notion of what it is to be a woman. Now any consideration of what it is to be a woman naturally brings you into considering what, equally, it is to be a man. Hence the focus, in the first instance, on these seemingly obvious issues.
But there is nothing obvious about them. What is it to be a woman? Or to be a man? We take the questions so much for granted that we don’t even ask them anymore. Why should the questions even be asked? A man has a penis and he loves women. A woman has breasts and a vagina and she loves men. Is there any more to be said?
If we move for a moment to consider those who offer a clearly different perspective on this question, where does it leave men who love men? Or women who love women? These men have penises. These women, too, have female genitalia. The object of their sexual attentions however is for people of the same sex. Are they any less men? Or women?
And where does it leave someone like Caster Semenya, the South African 800m Olympic champion who, according to latest reports, has male reproductive organs and yet is a woman?
Psychoanalysis has long said that biology does not determine gender. You can adopt a male position even with a woman’s body. One can equally adopt a female position with a male body. There are no guarantees when it comes to the sex that we evolve into. And although social conditioning does have a part to play in it, why has it not influenced the growing population of homosexual people around the world?
The answer, according to psychoanalysis, is that the more powerful determinant of what we decide we are comes from within. The recent biographical movie with Sean Penn as US activitist Harvey Milk is a case in point. During his life, particularly his political life, he had almost an entire society telling him he was wrong. And did it make any difference? No, it didn’t.
Because to have accepted what society was telling him – much as it is for anyone with a different sexuality – would have been to deny who he was; it would have been to deny the person that he knew and believed himself to be. To accept that, is to live each day as a lie. And since we only get one life, one has to ask how bearable can that be?
And that, interestingly enough, brings us back to my first point. The ‘ordinary question’ of what it is to be a man and the ‘ordinary question’ of what it is to be a woman suddenly becomes a much richer thing now. We are no longer dealing in clichés anymore. It is no longer as simple as the man goes to work, the woman stays at home, the man plays golf, the woman has babies, the woman dresses pretty, the man acts tough, the woman uses her charm, the man uses his brawn, the woman is emotional, the man is not… The list goes on and on, added to over the centuries by various ideas about what makes a man and a woman.
Freud puzzled over the woman part of the question and didn’t quite answer to his, or anyone else’s, satisfaction. Jacques Lacan took up the challenge after him and brought it to a much more elevated psychoanalytic place. We choose our sex, at an unconscious level, and we choose it under the influence of our parents in the first instance. And that choice is not made until after puberty.
There is no instinct at work that tells us how to be a man and how to be a woman. We puzzle over it long after we have reached adulthood. To help us know what to believe we use whatever cultural sign posts are available and very often some of these are least helpful to us. Consider the body image issues that afflict people today.
Quite simply, as Jacques Alain Miller, Lacan’s son in law, has said, there is an absence of real knowledge available to us about what one must do, how one must live, as a male or a female. And it is from this perspective, from the almost ‘never settled’ position of our chosen sexuality, that we engage in relationships and adopt ideas about ourselves and live up to ideals throughout our lives.
In the context of the consulting room, it is not so much about having all the right answers, as having the broad theoretical framework with which to ask the right questions.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Escaping the Phantasy
By Kevin Murphy
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.
What is it that goes wrong for us when, say, our relationships seem to end in disaster? Or when we repeat patterns of behaviour that are not good for us? Or when our lives are plagued by a sadness that we cannot understand? Or when we simply find it impossible to be ourselves when we meet a potentially interesting partner, sometimes to the point of avoiding new prospects? When I ask this question, I suppose I am asking it in the broadest sense of ‘what is it’ that goes wrong.
I was prompted into thinking along these lines while listening to Paris-based psychoanalyst and philosopher Jean-Gerard Burzstein who was in Dublin last weekend giving a lecture on behalf of the Association for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in Ireland (APPI).
Now most therapies might start looking for answers to these questions in the actual conditions of the complaint. So if it was to do with relationships, they’d immediately start looking at the way you view relationships and so on. If it was a repeating pattern, they’d begin looking at the triggers that make that behaviour swing into action. And if it was a lifelong sadness, they’d start examining the things that made you sad. Burzstein was in Dublin to remind his audience of psychoanalytic practitioners that while psychoanalysis might begin similarly, the ‘thing’ it looks for is entirely different.
As far as he was concerned, and I concur with his views, contemporary psychoanalysis operates on the basis that what goes wrong is something of a different order. People engaging in difficult, problematic, symptomatic, negative and unproductive patterns of behaviour are, even to an outsider, easily perceived as being ‘stuck’ . In psychoanalytic terms, however, this being ‘stuck’ is elaborated even further to include the notion of being ‘trapped’.
And what is it that people are trapped in? Well, to put it simply, we become trapped in ideas we have about ourselves and the world that we inhabit. Now it is not just a case of coming up with ideas that do not serve us well and then becoming trapped by them and in them. There is, according to Bursztein, a little more to it than that.
From the very earliest age our thinking becomes conditioned by what we see around us of our close family, particularly mother and father. This in turn gives us our main set of ideas about who we are and who or what we perceive ourselves to be. This process happens incredibly early in our lives and it happens at the imaginary level, often contrary to things as they appear in real life. We are filling in with our imagination what we are still incapable of understanding fully. This helps explain why good folk can sometimes produce confused kids. Equally it helps explain why sound adults can emerge from troubled backgrounds. But it also helps explain why in an age of relative peace, of greater sexual and personal freedoms, along with great strides in science and social progress, we have increased numbers of depressions, anxieties, phobias and addictions.
According to Bursztein, each of us develops a fundamental phantasy within ourselves. This is a core notion, if you like, about what our position in the world is in relation to our primary carers, usually our parents. It works invisibly, behind the scenes, informing our actions, our choices and our ideas. It can inhibit us, prohibit us and can see us doing the same thing over and over again with no positive results. It comes into being as our way of dealing with the realisation - that each and every one of us comes to very early in our childhood - about our place as either a male or female child of male and female parents. It is, in turn, determined by the nature of the adult people who are raising us, by our adaptation to the myriad developmental changes taking place, and by our capacity to accept the necessary ups and downs of the process.
Positive people are marked by a sense of resilience. They get that from an early age. People who can enter into successful relationships have a confidence about them. They also get that from an early age. People who do not spend their lives repeating patterns of behaviour are relatively free of the need to re-find something that was lost; they have accepted loss, whatever it might be, as part of the human condition and they move on. This too is learned at an early age.
For those people who are unable to live in this way, the fundamental phantasy is at work, strongly tying them to an unyielding and unhelpful set of convictions about themselves. Psychoanalysis does not work by simply telling someone that they must change their beliefs about themselves. Bursztein made the important point last weekend that it works by using the person’s own language to trigger and unlock the old meanings.
He called this effect, ‘retroaction’. The key to psychoanalysis is retroaction, in a sense. It is not speaking for the sake of speaking. It is the release of new meaning by an effect of going back. In the same way that each sentence we utter is only possible to understand when the last word has been spoken. We understand every sentence in this retro-active way. And so too with the experiences of our lives, like half-finished sentences our experiences are made clearer to us by the act of speaking them out, of finishing them in the dynamic presence of a trained other. And where is this retro-action being directed? Towards the fundamental phantasy, first in establishing what it is and then in allowing the person step away and free themselves from it.
Sometimes this happens without the person even realising it. I have written before about people saying they have no idea how they feel better after therapy but they do. For others it does not happen because they have been unable in their speaking to allow themselves get close to the simple experiences of their lives. By that I mean simply speaking about themselves.
But the act of speaking still remains the great liberator. It is not rocket science. But it is not simple either. It involves a continuous effort to overcome our own resistances to speaking, particularly about ourselves. Yet if we manage to allow ourselves the ultimate freedom, as psychoanalysis requires, to speak about ‘everything and anything’ that comes to mind, without censorship, without editing, then we are half way there.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.
What is it that goes wrong for us when, say, our relationships seem to end in disaster? Or when we repeat patterns of behaviour that are not good for us? Or when our lives are plagued by a sadness that we cannot understand? Or when we simply find it impossible to be ourselves when we meet a potentially interesting partner, sometimes to the point of avoiding new prospects? When I ask this question, I suppose I am asking it in the broadest sense of ‘what is it’ that goes wrong.
I was prompted into thinking along these lines while listening to Paris-based psychoanalyst and philosopher Jean-Gerard Burzstein who was in Dublin last weekend giving a lecture on behalf of the Association for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in Ireland (APPI).
Now most therapies might start looking for answers to these questions in the actual conditions of the complaint. So if it was to do with relationships, they’d immediately start looking at the way you view relationships and so on. If it was a repeating pattern, they’d begin looking at the triggers that make that behaviour swing into action. And if it was a lifelong sadness, they’d start examining the things that made you sad. Burzstein was in Dublin to remind his audience of psychoanalytic practitioners that while psychoanalysis might begin similarly, the ‘thing’ it looks for is entirely different.
As far as he was concerned, and I concur with his views, contemporary psychoanalysis operates on the basis that what goes wrong is something of a different order. People engaging in difficult, problematic, symptomatic, negative and unproductive patterns of behaviour are, even to an outsider, easily perceived as being ‘stuck’ . In psychoanalytic terms, however, this being ‘stuck’ is elaborated even further to include the notion of being ‘trapped’.
And what is it that people are trapped in? Well, to put it simply, we become trapped in ideas we have about ourselves and the world that we inhabit. Now it is not just a case of coming up with ideas that do not serve us well and then becoming trapped by them and in them. There is, according to Bursztein, a little more to it than that.
From the very earliest age our thinking becomes conditioned by what we see around us of our close family, particularly mother and father. This in turn gives us our main set of ideas about who we are and who or what we perceive ourselves to be. This process happens incredibly early in our lives and it happens at the imaginary level, often contrary to things as they appear in real life. We are filling in with our imagination what we are still incapable of understanding fully. This helps explain why good folk can sometimes produce confused kids. Equally it helps explain why sound adults can emerge from troubled backgrounds. But it also helps explain why in an age of relative peace, of greater sexual and personal freedoms, along with great strides in science and social progress, we have increased numbers of depressions, anxieties, phobias and addictions.
According to Bursztein, each of us develops a fundamental phantasy within ourselves. This is a core notion, if you like, about what our position in the world is in relation to our primary carers, usually our parents. It works invisibly, behind the scenes, informing our actions, our choices and our ideas. It can inhibit us, prohibit us and can see us doing the same thing over and over again with no positive results. It comes into being as our way of dealing with the realisation - that each and every one of us comes to very early in our childhood - about our place as either a male or female child of male and female parents. It is, in turn, determined by the nature of the adult people who are raising us, by our adaptation to the myriad developmental changes taking place, and by our capacity to accept the necessary ups and downs of the process.
Positive people are marked by a sense of resilience. They get that from an early age. People who can enter into successful relationships have a confidence about them. They also get that from an early age. People who do not spend their lives repeating patterns of behaviour are relatively free of the need to re-find something that was lost; they have accepted loss, whatever it might be, as part of the human condition and they move on. This too is learned at an early age.
For those people who are unable to live in this way, the fundamental phantasy is at work, strongly tying them to an unyielding and unhelpful set of convictions about themselves. Psychoanalysis does not work by simply telling someone that they must change their beliefs about themselves. Bursztein made the important point last weekend that it works by using the person’s own language to trigger and unlock the old meanings.
He called this effect, ‘retroaction’. The key to psychoanalysis is retroaction, in a sense. It is not speaking for the sake of speaking. It is the release of new meaning by an effect of going back. In the same way that each sentence we utter is only possible to understand when the last word has been spoken. We understand every sentence in this retro-active way. And so too with the experiences of our lives, like half-finished sentences our experiences are made clearer to us by the act of speaking them out, of finishing them in the dynamic presence of a trained other. And where is this retro-action being directed? Towards the fundamental phantasy, first in establishing what it is and then in allowing the person step away and free themselves from it.
Sometimes this happens without the person even realising it. I have written before about people saying they have no idea how they feel better after therapy but they do. For others it does not happen because they have been unable in their speaking to allow themselves get close to the simple experiences of their lives. By that I mean simply speaking about themselves.
But the act of speaking still remains the great liberator. It is not rocket science. But it is not simple either. It involves a continuous effort to overcome our own resistances to speaking, particularly about ourselves. Yet if we manage to allow ourselves the ultimate freedom, as psychoanalysis requires, to speak about ‘everything and anything’ that comes to mind, without censorship, without editing, then we are half way there.
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