Reshaping the Self

Reflections on Renewal Through Therapy

Michael Eigen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429918582
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The authorrelates the stories of two patients reshaping their lives into something they could believe in, and examines the complex roles of the therapist and therapy, self/other and mind/body relations, and the dramatic interplay of faith and catastrophe.

Chapter One

Bits of the Processing Puzzle

Les and Lynn were hard-working professionals committed to family life. But for each marriage had become a battleground, and the workplace seemed to make integrity impossible. Both individuals felt smothered by the very choices they hoped would fulfill them.

Both Lynn and Les loved their family and professional lives. Marriage and profession made life richer. Yet Lynn and Les twisted themselves out of shape to make things work. Family and professional life exerted pressure on them to live lies and forced them into distortions of self. The institutions that gave them a place and made exercise of their talents possible also poisoned their existence. The constant need to compromise and perform tasks of questionable value eroded their connection with their selves.

When Lynn and Les began their respective therapies, they did not know what was wrong. They just knew something was not working, something was missing. They suffered from a mute sense that life ought to be different. It could not be this way. Les used a phobia, fear of flying, as an excuse to get help. At first, Lynn did not know why she came or what sort of she wanted. She came.

It did not take long for Les and Lynn to locate many sources of pain and for the stream of suffering to begin flowing. To an extent, therapy moves from pain to pain, from wound to wound. Wounds are like footprints through years, vanishing in points of origin.

Something is Wrong

It takes some individuals years to connect with the sense that something is wrong with their lives. Lynn and Les had many pleasures, many things right with their lives. It was natural to focus on good things and play down bad ones.

Nevertheless, each patient suffered secretly from a sense that things were not as they should be. For many years they kept this sense that something was askew a secret even from themselves. It is not easy to admit something is wrong with one’s life. One may feel helpless to do anything about it or fear one will do the wrong things and make the situation worse. It is difficult to listen to the voice of truth that says we have married the wrong person, gone into the wrong profession, settled in the wrong place, become the wrong self.

We get used to ourselves, our routes, our choices. We settle into what is reachable. We may envy what is beyond us, yet make the most of what we have until the voice of truth that eggs us on pushes through years of relative silence and says, “You’re living a lie!”

This bring on anxieties about the changes needed. Does one have to get a divorce, change professions, move, get a new self? And if one did, would this solve things or would that nagging feeling continue? Would the still, small voice resurface and haunt us Truth can be tyrannical. The voice of truth can get too demanding and eat up existence like a “Pac Man.” Compromise can be corrosive. Even language recognizes this: To be “compromised” refers to loss of integrity. One is caught between truth and compromise. Yet either truth or compromise can be freeing.

This is where therapy comes in. Therapy is a place where one’s truths and compromises can have their say. Too often the self is a chorus in which each section goes its own way. The result is cacophony rather than music. Yet each voice has a right to exist and a contribution to make. In therapy each voice gets a maximum say. Truths and compromises can begin to spin dialogical webs.

A context greater than the sum of one’s products and positions evolves. Truths and compromises interact in unexpected ways. One finds the expanding, interactive field more interesting than being an advocate for a set position. One discovers one does not have to be dominated by truth or collapsed by compromise. One is more than the sum of one’s truths and compromises.

Les’s Background

It is odd but fitting to say that one can be bigger or smaller than one’s life. We hint at this when we say that someone is larger than life. Sometimes we are smaller, sometimes bigger, depending on mood, attitude, circumstances, rhythm. Les never quite felt the right size. He was either too big or too small for himself and his existence.

At times Les and his life came together. It was exhilarating for him to cut a good business deal. During some moments at home with his family his heart filled to bursting. Nevertheless, he felt a nagging sense that he was not getting it right, that he was living the wrong life—or the right life the wrong way. Something noxious would grow in the middle of a wonderful feeling, spoiling the best that he could do.

He imagined buying a camper and taking off. He would start over, leave everything behind, become pure again. Sometimes he imagined taking his family with him. They would live in the woods, far from pressures that warped him. He would experience real difficulties working with nature, not the phony challenges of climbing the corporate ladder.

The truth is that Les loved business and was good at it. But he felt twisted out of shape working in a big company. He hated being subservient to bosses, overbearing to subordinates, manipulative with both. He hated himself for playing the game. Yet he didn’t know what else he could do, or ought to do. He was being poisoned by what he liked doing best.

The twisted feeling gnawed at him. His mother always wanted him to be a big man in a big company. He fulfilled her desire. Indeed, he was her desire. She empowered him. Her faith in him made him successful. She was in back of him, if he lived life on her terms. And for most of his life, his and her terms had been one.

Still, his feelings of rebellion led to her. He might be grateful that she enabled him to develop his abilities, yet something was “off” at the core of his identity. She was at the center of his being, at the very place where he should be. Nothing he did felt right because it was not he doing it. She stained his achievements.

Does the knight win everything for mother? Les’s innermost feelings said no. Les was fighting for himself, for his own life. He enjoyed the prizes he won, even if tainted. To win one’s own life—is this possible? It was interesting to speculate what a better fit between Les and his life would be like. Or was it naive to think there could be a better fit? Isn’t identity always stained by otherness?

There is freeing as well as stifling otherness. Les never felt so free than at certain moments with Terry, his wife and friend. There were times with Terry when just walking down a street made Les feel, “This is the way life ought to be.” The problem was that they fought most of the time. To an extent, battle is part of freedom. But they wore each other down, made life impossible. Still, Terry saved Les from himself. She did not seem to live someone else’s life. She was simply herself. Her spontaneous presence made Les feel that real living was possible. However, all paths he tried were blocked. If Terry had been enough, Les would not have had to seek therapy.

Les was most deeply moved by his children. But the freedom and happy times he enjoyed with them were eroded by worry. The idea that they might die, be kidnapped, or come into harm’s way was terrifying. Dread of catastrophe gave Les no rest. It spoiled his happiest moments.

You might think any of the above—twisted self, hated job, domineering mother, marital discord, terror of catastrophe—could be enough to send Les into therapy. But Les could only let himself seek help for a more circumscribed problem: fear of flying. Here was something he could give to the therapist without risking too much. He could bring a specific symptom, a little bit of himself. If it changed, his life could go on along the same lines, business as usual. He could hide behind and bring it, instead of himself.

It is easier to seek help if we lie a little. Les could not come in and say, “Here I am, a mess. I’m a wreck and my life is awful. I don’t know what went wrong.” He was used to seeing himself as a big man, someone of importance, a winner. He was high on the corporate ladder, a contributing member of his community, a visible person. He was a good family man, a man who cared. It was tactful of his psyche to give him an excuse, a reason removed enough from his closest self, something “out there” to fix.

What surprised both of us was how quickly his closest self came out. Les had a therapy hunger. It was as if he had been secretly waiting years for the chance to spill, to speak himself out, to cry from the heart. In truth, the “off point” of his life tortured him. A corner of his inner eye never left the lie he lived. It was as if a barium tracer lit up the poison that ran through him; he never dared to look at it directly, nor could he look away.

Lynn’s Background

Lynn, like Les, struck me as a tense person. She was not driven to make big money, but she took pride in her work and strove to do the best she could. Lynn was an art and photography teacher in high school, and was especially dedicated to photography. Being a creative teacher was a constant struggle. The “system” wore her down. She battled not only the inertia and hostility of students but also the crassness and lack of interest of school administrators, who were preoccupied with salary increments and management problems. She persistently had to distort herself and go against enormous pressures to make room for what she wanted to do. Within the system, there were networks of dedicated people who drew strength from one another, although not enough to offset the strain they were under.

Lynn looked to her marriage for nourishment, only to discover new sets of problems. She and her husband jockeyed for position. Their differing tempos and rhythms created friction, and they irritated each other. Although they loved each other, they did not know what to do with each other. Home was supposed to be a haven, and to an extent it was. But it also was a source of strain and tension. Neither Lynn nor her husband wanted to live alone or without each other, yet life together seemed a parade of disturbances.

The odd thing was that deep down they felt united and connected. Theirs was a subterranean oneness, as if deep under the surface their roots intertwined. They fit each other somewhere out of view on an unconscious intercellular or soul level. But on earth’s surface they annoyed each other, and ego clashed against ego. The separation above was not in with the oneness below.

Whichever way Lynn turned, life was a battle. She was close to her family, her parents, brother and sister. She was involved with them, and they with her. Yet they drove her to distraction and, in varying ways, infuriated her. Each relationship was a love-hate struggle. Her relationships with friends offered some solace and relief. But she and they also pulled the rug out from under one another. It was as if relationships had to be tested and challenged. If a relationship survived difficulties, it must be worth something; it must be real.

Lynn oscillated between being pinched and full, between strain and pleasure. A certain tightness rarely left her. To an extent, she thrived on pressure. However, she was also misshapen by the very pressure she needed. I felt that she made herself less than she could be, that she was constantly straining against inner-outer forces and boundaries that constricted her.

Lynn did not offer any reason or excuse for seeking therapy. Nor did she seem to reach out for help, at least not at the beginning. Perhaps she just sought a place that was different, a place outside the system of strains, where she could just wait and be.

Different Approaches to Therapy

Les was propelled into therapy by unsettling fears and terrors. Lynn found herself coming without any clear reason or justification. They were “ordinary” people caught in the treadmill of work and daily chores. They were not “therapy types.” Therapy was not something they sought whenever things went wrong or something they would hold on to for many, many years.

Yet they were not totally naive about therapy. They had ideas about what therapy was like, or should be like. They were educated, verbal, active people. At the outset, both dominated sessions with verbal outpourings. In time, they were to take very different directions in therapy. Each sought or created different core experiences. Each made of therapy a very different journey.

Both Lynn and Les had sparkle and élan. They were alive, busy people who looked as if they were capable of enjoying themselves. They expected to be appreciated, to be celebrated. For Les and Lynn, life was enlivening. They were very different from patients who come in collapsed and lifeless, crushed by events, lost in meaninglessness. Lynn and Les were not dead or lost. They were not done in by life.

In a mirror, they could recognize themselves and like what they saw. But they also might see tense and nervous versions of themselves, distortions of themselves. Les was normally jumpier than Lynn. He was used to anxiety streaming through his body, driving him to action. Lynn sat on it more. To an extent, both Lynn and Les were twisted out of shape by anxiety into caricatures of themselves.

Les and Lynn were both used to living with a high degree of tension. In some measure, tension fueled their lives. Their existences would have felt strange and empty without a lot of tension. In addition, both were used to and needed a high level of activity. The paradox was that although Lynn and Les thrived on tension and a high activity, there were ways in which their personalities could not keep up with the tensions they generated.

Their personalities courted and engendered more tension than they could handle. Personality changes evolve with tension levels. In certain situations we tense up. Physical muscles tighten in characteristic patterns. Psychological muscles tighten, too. Expressive features and self-feelings change together. Personalities get distorted, explosive, fusional. We are not the selves we want to be. We are afraid of ourselves, sit on ourselves, hide, feel unable to handle the flood or face the barrier.

Les was used to acting like a big businessman. He filled the therapy space with self-importance. He dictated the order of the day, set the agenda. Therapy would be about what he wanted. He treated therapy like a business deal. It was a matter of finding the right combination of factors to achieve the desired results. Something was wrong; find out what and fix it. Les took for granted an ideology of mastery.

If a car does not work, a mechanic makes necessary repairs. Similarly, a surgeon cleans tubes, splices channels, removes offending material. Les’s manner was brisk, hurried. He did not have time for hemming and hawing, sloppiness, uncertainty. He believed that we are creative, goal-oriented machines, captains of our fate. The idea that we are also mysteries was terrifying to him.

Les expected me to be the captain of the therapy ship. He knew what he was doing in his business. I ought to know what to do in mine. The idea that growth demanded openness, time, evolution bothered him. He wanted control. The tone and pace of therapy was slower and less cluttered than daily life in business. Les regarded my pace as slow motion, my calm deathlike. I had more questions than answers. In fact, I had no answers at all, and scarcely any suggestions. My office was another planet.

In therapy our worlds clashed—two different temperaments, two sets of rhythms, two mindsets. Les tried to quicken the pace, create an aura of control, stimulate hysteria, while I tinkered with reality, offered background support, and questioned assumptions. The battle between openness and control was on.

Lynn also was active, verbal, and controlling but felt that she lost something in the struggle for control. She was more aware than Les of liabilities attached to an ideology of mastery and control. Whether she won or lost a battle, she lost herself. She became keenly aware of how she tightened and stiffened in the fight to win. She was good at having her say and not backing down, but the price was chronic and great. She asserted herself but lost fullness of being.

It was important that Lynn stick up for herself. She had to fight for what she believed in at the workplace and at home. She would be less a person if she did not. Nevertheless, the importance of fighting stole Lynn from herself. If she did not fight, she lost herself. However, in fighting she lost herself also. She became a smaller, more brittle version of herself. She could feel a smallness in her pinched face, tightness between shoulders, stiffening of lower back. She tightly held on to herself and was terrified of opening. She was used to holding herself in without quite realizing that she was squeezing herself.

Lynn was used to asserting herself and did not know what to do with the sense that she held herself back. She felt the strain of gearing for battle. Her voice sounded metallic. She would get a variety of physical symptoms, aches, and pains. Her way of solving problems was more self-assertive, more tightening, more pushing. She could feel her body and insides contracting, but she did not know what to do.

Lynn wanted to contact herself at a deeper level. Whereas Les wanted feelings in order to master them, Lynn simply wanted them. She wanted to feel feelings, to feel herself. She did not want to go throu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Bits of the Processing Puzzle
• Chapter 2 Defining Moments in Les’s Therapy
• Chapter 3 Key Stages in Lynn’s Therapy
• Chapter 4 Self-Other
• Chapter 5 Mind-Body
• Chapter 6 Faith and Catastrophe
• Chapter 7 Primary Process and the Wound That Never Heals
• Bibliography