Knowing If It's the Real Thing: Discovering the Roots of Intimacy

IF

KNOWING

IT’S THE

THING

Also by Gerald Alper The Puppeteers: Studies of Obsessive Control Power Games Power Plays: Their Uses and Abuses in Human Relations Minding the Other’s Mind: The Factor of Control in ContemfioraryRelationshiljs The Dark Side of the Analytic Moon Blind Alleys Portrait of the Artist as a rOung Patient Control Games: Avoiding Intimacy on the Singles Scene Narcissistic Giving: A Study of People Who Cheat in Relationships The Singles Scene: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Breakdown of Intimacy

IFmL

KNOWING

IT’S THE

THING DISCOVERING THE ROOTS OF INTIMACY

GERALD ALPER

TAYLOR TRADE PUBLISHING Lanham New York Oxford

Copyright 02003 by Gerald Alper First Taylor Trade Publishing edition 2003 This Taylor Trade Publishing hardcover edition of Knowing IfZt’s the Real Thing is an original publication. It is published by arrangement with the author.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission. Published by Taylor Trade Publishing A Member of the R o m a n & Littlefield Publishing Group 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, Maryland 20706 Distributed by National Book Network

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData Available ISBN 0-87833-295-2

@ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO 239.48-1992. Manufactured in the United States of America.

To Sally Lamb

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

CONTENTS ix

Preface

1

1

In the Beginning

2

Everyday Examples

27

3

Obstacles

105

4

Therapy and Intimacy

165

References

185

A b o u t the A u t h o r

189

vii

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

PREFACE

F

or the past ten years I have been a practicing psychotherapist who has attempted to explore in depth what I take to be a paradigmatic conflict of our age: the avoidance of intimacy. Although obstacles to true encounters seem to be not only endless but exponentially flourishing, my hope was that the patient accumulation of pertinent examples would eventually provide a mosaic both rich and convincing. My strategy now, as it was then, is to use an exclusionary definition: By presenting a precise and multidimensional picture of everything that intimacy is not, a core remainder of indispensable attributes will, at least in theory, coalesce. Therefore, it made more sense to begin with a phenomenological survey of the kinds of relationships that are so prevalent today in what Christopher Lasch (1979) once memorably called “the culture of narcissism.” What I did not realize was that what seemed startlingly obvious to me was less than transparent to patients who were both demoralized and mystified by their repeated fadures to connect in all but the most superficial sense with another person. Time 1x

PREFACE

and again I offered a compelling, crystal-clear clarification of a hitherto unrecognized impediment to intimacy, only to be met with glazed eyes, which asked, “But what is intimacy?” Gradually, it dawned on me that because of its remarkable scarcity, there was more than a little skepticism as to whether there really was such a thing as intimacy. Worldly, experienced, intelligent, and often creative and relatively successhl men and women would take me aback by simply and flatly declaring that they had never observed a happy marriage, a successll relationship, or a commitment that seemed truly meaningful and rewarding. They wanted to know, had I, a therapist and an author, who manifestly believes in the value of intimacy, actually witnessed such a wonder. Over the years, such questions have become a challenge, a challenge that could only be met by writing a book on the necessary ingredients of a mature, healthy, enduring, and above all, intimate relationship. Initially, I believed it would be easy. Because I had assiduously studied the myriad obstacles that stand in the path of genuine interrelating, I had toby a process of reversal that I had already introduced (Alper 1995)-concentrate on the other half of the coin, the undeveloped part of the picture. Previously, I had written about its antithesis, what it is not. By turning the tables to examine the antithesis of the antithesis, I would inevitably, logically, if albeit circuitously, reach the heart of the matter. If only it had been so cut and dried. Although years of countless cogent examples had convinced me I had attained an in-depth understanding of an authentic intimate encounter, I realized that in order to explicate what I thought I knew I had to imaginatively and empathetically enter the complicated, largely unexplored territory of intimate relating. This would entail laying bare the dynamics of critical X

PREFACE

components such as intimate giving, intimate listening, receiving, expressing appropriate critical anger, working on recurring obstacles, and more. I no longer had the luxury of uncovering the destructive dynamics of common interpersonal patterns with all the impressive clarity I could muster, and then, my work supposedly done, rest on my laurels. I had to ask what someone who was earnestly invested in the cause of intimacy might do when faced with an analogous interpersonal impasse. To appreciate the complexities of such a task, it might be usehl to review the results of some of my studies over the past ten years. In my 1994 book, The SingZes Scene, I concluded that in the past twenty years there has been a systematic, if unconscious, partly cultural erosion and dispersal of much of what we generally mean by intimacy. As a serious student and practitioner of psychoanalytic psychotherapy it had become increasingly clear to me that psychoanalysis has little to say about love, and even less about intimacy. Although the word “love” occasionally appears in the theoretical writings of Freud, “intimacy” does not, neither in his clinical descriptions of the interpersonal relations of his patients nor in the great case studies in which he plumbs exhaustively the dynamics, as he sees them, of human motivation. The closest that Freud came to the concept of intimacy was in 1910, in his famous discussion of the importance and difficulty of uniting two currents of feelings-the tender and the erotic-into one love object. He was referring, of course, to the developmental task that occurs in adolescence, wherein a young man, spurred by puberty, is driven to seek out an appropriate woman other than his mother-a woman whom he will both idealize and make love to. Freud’s (1905) idea of lovemaking seems

PREFACE

contingent upon the attainment of the functional capacity to consummate genital sex. What is called intimacy today, he would presumably (although this is never explicitly stated) characterize as a relationship with genital sexuality that most likely would be expressed within the social sanctions of a conventional marriage committed to nuclear family values. Intimacy, as then conceived, would be the result of the development of healthy genital sex between two people of good character in love who had decided to make a lifelong promise to the most committed form of relationship. Because he viewed intimacy as an automatic outgrowth, Freud believed that the goal of psychoanalytic psychotherapy (which he was pioneering) would be to remove pathological inhibitions to the attainment of genital sexuality and love. That is, once the various impediments to the union of the tender and sensual currents of love-the splitting of idealistic and erotic components; the defensive retreat into impotence; the aggressive debasing of the woman; the regression into pregeni d , perverse sex-had been sufficiently analyzed so as to be analytically resolved, intimacy would appear of its own accord. Now it is ironic that Freud, who profoundly understood the unconscious resistances to letting go and overcoming mental illness, and who gave us the fundamental concept of working through such blocks, did not have an analogous concept for working through the resistances to the achievement of healthy love-intimacy. This may be because Freud, subscribing to the physician’s credo that it is necessary to remove the illness (with nature doing the rest), believed that the psyche, to a certain extent like the body, is naturally healthy. And that part of being healthy is the ability to commit and to be intimate with the proper partner, which, in accordance with the Victorian paradigm, favored ethical marital relations. x11

PREFACE

Consequently, Freud did not conceive of intimacy as a higher state of relating, something by no means programmed into the human genome. In fact, intimacy requires as much work, if not more, as overcoming deep-seated, maladaptive patterns of behavior. He did not appreciate just how extraordinarily difficult, just how remarkable an achievement it was to sustain an intimate relationship. Freud’s bias has continued with only minor exceptions among psychoanalytic psychotherapists today. Occasionally, a leading psychoanalyst such as Otto Kernberg (1976) will take a crack at love. Robert Stoller, the great researcher and eloquent chronicler of the byways of human sexuality, commented wryly, “In time, a study of hostility in eroticism could lead to a new phase, the search for the circumstances in which affection, tenderness, and other non-hostile components of love participate in, perhaps even dominate, the excitement. The difficulty will be to find suitable people to study” (1985). When the brunt of what a psychotherapist deals with in a practice are the deformations, warps, and pathologies that have to be resolved before any realistic expression of intimacy can be reached, it is not surprising that so little intimacy is found in the therapist’s office. Clinical descriptions of intimate relationships do not appear in professional literature, for the good reason that psychotherapists rarely see it. If one wishes to find a contemporary author who takes seriously fundamental components of intimate human contact such as kindness and tenderness, one will have to read Kurt Vonnegut Jr (1965). What is surprising and revealing is why so little intimacy is found outside the therapist’s office. This book, in effect, is my attempt at an answer. ...

Xlll

PREFACE

Today, intimacy, more often than not, is used to describe couples who do not heedlessly divorce; batter one another; become alcoholicparents; enable or facilitate substance abuse or teenage pregnancy in their children; and do not, in a broader context, offer racist resistance to the currently fashionable multicultural goals of a pluralist society. Unconsciously,intimacy can therefore be equated with the avoidance of the pathologies of dysfunctional f d e s . Occasionally, in a somewhat more hopell vein, it has been seen as a capacity for the enactment ofpolitically correct, nonsexist transactions, for the decent and normative nuclear family or, on a spiritual level, for the attainment of a religious connection. There is something sad in the typically low expectations we have for behavior we consider “intimate.” One example of such complacency is found in the American usage of the concept, after Winnicott’s (1965) definition of a “good mother.’’ This is because although nurturance need not be reciprocal-and parental nurturance, by definition, cannot be reciprocal-ofien it is overlooked that parental intimacy is the highest form of intimacy. Only someone who can respond reciprocally to mature adult love is capable of suffering, in a healthy way, the incredible deprivation of a profoundly nonreciprocal relationship, such as that of parent and child. That is why my heart sinks whenever a patient announces the desire to have a baby as an eleventh-hour strategy to save a foundering relationship. It is neither idealistic nor unrealistic to assert that the creation of a child has the best prospects when it represents the next step for a committed couple who, far from being in a state of demoralization, are in their prime. If the interaction between parent and child is the highest form of intimacy and there is a profound inhibition of the capacity to engage the other intimately, it follows that the averx1v

PREFACE

age mother (and this is probably more true of the average father) is not good enough. This book differs from these and subsequent studies of mine (Alper 1996,1998), in that I do not merely concentrate on the manifold roadblocks to intimacy that have become fixtures of the contemporary interpersonal landscape. Here I will detail the hypothetical countermoves necessary to achieving intimacy. I recognize that the holistic picture of interrelating that I present probably does not exist in a literal sense, if only because we are dealing with a highly differentiated capacity, or suite of attributes, that by definition can arise only selectively. Analogous to the expression of genuine love, which, theological injunctions aside, can happen rarely, if at all, in light of the enormous demand it places on the psyche. In a sense, I am emulating patients who will often try to assemble an ideal suitor out of past encounters. As my model, I am also taking the remarkable picture of what an organismally hnctioning person-if he or she existed-would be like, as given to us in Kurt Goldstein’s great work, The Organism (2000). In my own way, I am trying to accomplish roughly the same thing for intimacy. The point of view of the present book is original. By contrast, other books on the subject tend to emphasize what might be calledhnctional intimacy:the popular but mythological belief that if two people just stay together, in an adaptive, productive, and moderately mutually enhancing way, they will achieve the most that a relationship can offer. Although I do agree that healthy intimacy must entail adaptive hnctioning, it is a serious conceptual error to primarily define it-as a physiologist might an eye or a brain-as simply a group of complex, interconnected, intact hnctions. Conversely, the true self-intimacy I am xv

PREFACE

attempting to depict is a holistic, emergent quality; while the interpersonal pathology I am interested in-instead of the fashionable, clinically identifiable syndrome of dysfunctional behavior-lies in the very neglected area of ordinary, everyday relating. A cautionary note: Although I would like this book to be as useful in as many ways to as many readers as possible, the last thing I would ever want to write is a self-help book. By that I mean a book that says, in effect, that a formula or recipe exists that, when energetically applied, can produce amazing life changes in breathtakingly short intervals of time. Everything we know about the complexities of human nature states that this is simply not so. I must admit I have encountered numerous people who have been undeniably cheered and have had the emptiness of their lives at least temporarily enlivened by the self-help movement’s bold manifesto of limitless hope and personal growth. But as this is a book about intimacy, and as I do not believe there is such a thing as a “technique” of intimacy, I am at pains to make this distinction. My own hope is that the reader will find in these pages a sense of intimacy in its diverse, subtle shadings presented in a richer way, without jargon. Although my presentation rests essentially on the clinical vignette, it is also narrative, anecdotal, and impressionistic. For me, each vignette is a resonating repository of countless observations, impressions, hunches, silent thoughts, and ruminations. In the first chapter of the book I use personal reminiscences and some early case studies to show what I call thrufieutic intimacy,a learned skill that needs to be cultivated. In the second chapter are the most compelling everyday examples of the h n damental ingredients of intimacy. The third chapter explores the dynamics of grappling in earnest with the myriad obstacles XVI

PREFACE

that stand in the path of achieving intimacy. In the fourth and final chapter, I show how these dynamics play themselves out in that nonreciprocal relationship par excellence called the t h e m Cpeutic coufile,while closely examining the intimacy that can exist between patient and therapist. All chical vignettes are based on actual patients I have known and worked with and are presented through the prism of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Accordingly, the focus is always on the solitary person and the singular point of view. Although names and certain circumstantial details have been changed to ensure confidentiality, the events are portrayed and the psychological dynamics are delineated as accurately as possible. While I long ago concluded that my perspective on the nature of intimacy is worthwhile, I look for the reader not to necessarily agree, but to begin to recognize the obstacles to, and possibilities of intimacy that constantly, although often too invisibly encircle us. I would settle for that.

..

XVll

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

IN THE BEGINNING APPRENTICESHIP

I

n the very beginning, therapy was a brave new world to me and all I had to go on were my instincts. My initiation was as a volunteer counselor working for a social service agency that hnctioned as an auxiliary to the family court. We were the last line of defense before a judge would assign a given case (usually, a husband who had been accused by his wife of violently beating her) to the criminal court. In effect, husband and wife, defendant and plaintiff, were told by the judge that if they wished to keep what had happened within the confines of the family court, they had better show good faith by immediately seeking the assistance of family counseling. Invariably, the husband, with no interest whatsoever in counseling but willing to do whatever was necessary to appease the judge, would dutifblly proceed with his wife (generally intent upon revenge and finding someone who would collude by acting as a biased jury) to the nearest available counselor. 1

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

It was my first job. Mrs. Miller, a jovial, good-humored woman who took a fi-iendly interest in cultivating my nascent skills, was my first supervisor. And while Raymond and Lucy were probably closer to my tenth couple than my first, they were referred to me in my freshman year as a volunteer family counselor, and they were the couple I remember by far the best. They were also the couple representing the greatest study in contrasts I was ever going to experience. Raymond, a rangy six-feet four-inches tall, was a militant black man who had migrated from Jamaica as a teenager and who worked as an auto mechanic. Lucy was barely five feet tall, a petite mulatto born in Harlem, whose main dream, after she finished nursing her baby, was to matriculate hll time at a city college. While sessions were joint, they might as well have been individual, for they were used primarily as a platform for Raymond’s rage, with Lucy, cowering in her chair, as audience. Sonorous, sermonical rage was often how I thought of it. For with Raymond’s singsong voice, obvious indoctrination by the rising generation of angry black poets whose workshops he attended, he sounded more like he was wailing away at some biblical turpitude, instead of venting his overblown disgust at what he perceived as domestic and marital injustices. What did my instincts, unschooled as they were, in family counseling, tell me about this couple? They told me that Raymond was dangerous-not to me (“I don’t know if I agree with what you’re doing but I trust you, man”)-but to Lucy. When Mrs. Miller, clearly concerned, pressed me to be more articulate concerning the determinants of my alarm I was unable to do so. I didn’t know whether it was the scary sense of the lack of boundaries to his crescendo-like rage; his fondness for purchasing illegal weapons at martial arts supplies stores and then brandishing them in the face of his terrified wife; or his habit of 2

IN THE BEGINNING

barging in unannounced at his mother-in-law’s apartment where Lucy was staying, rattling the bars of the baby’s crib while laughing devilishly and promising dire consequences if his wife didn’t move back in with him immediately. But Mrs. Miller took me seriously. Feeling that Raymond’s flights of global rage were as overwhelming for Lucy as they were for me, she recommended individual counseling for both to replace couple counseling. The idea, which made sense to me and won my immediate support, was to prevent Raymond from using counseling as a forum to discharge his rage, while thereby gaining precious breathing room for Lucy, and with it, at least the hope of helping her to shore up her fragile defenses. And for the next month, that is what I did, trying my best to function as a container (Bion 1970) and cathartic outlet for Raymond, while endeavoring to find a way to summon in Lucy a spark of resolve to take some initiative with her life. I saw each of them alone, as Mrs. Miller had suggested, and although I thought I noticed some abatement of the previous pathological intensity of their conflicts, I continued to experience (with, if anything, even greater force) a unshakeable dread that Raymond was on the verge of exploding: a premonition Mrs. Miller shared, although she seemed as confused as to what to do about it as I was. Then, about three months after they had originally been referred to me, they both failed to keep their appointments. When neither called, I called, finally reaching Raymond in his brother’s apartment, where he was temporarily staying. On the telephone he was a little too casual (“Something came up, I’ll tell you about it next week”), and when there was a trace of a cough in my voice, he went out of his way to advise me, “Hey, take care of that cold.” 3

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

Two days later, Lucy, whom I had been unable to reach, telephoned me fi-om St. Vincent’s Hospital. She spoke in a faint but audible whisper and seemed genuinely contrite that she had uncharacteristicallymissed her appointment with me. As a way of an apology, she recited the gruesome events of the past few days. Three days prior (the day before I had spoken on the telephone with Raymond), Lucy was standing on a street corner in fi-ont of her mother’s house trying to find a taxicab to take her to her sister’s. Unexpectedly, Raymond, who must have been waiting for her, walked up to her and began amiably chatting about nothing in particular. He was smiling, and when she told him she was in a hurry to see her sister who was ill, he immediately flagged down a cab for her. As it drove up, he bent down close to his wife and said, “Take care of yourself.’’ For a few moments, perhaps half a minute, Lucy did not feel any different, did not sense anything was wrong as the cab pulled away. Then she began to notice that both her skirt and her blouse were slowly and increasingly being stained by some viscous fluid. She could not imagine what it was. Aware of no pain, she slipped her hand underneath her skirt and began to feel around and when she drew it out it was dripping with blood. As Lucy would later learn (through her brother-in-law) what had happened was this: prior to approaching his wife on the street corner Raymond had somehow procured a small stiletto and as he had bent over (malevolently whispering, “Take care of yourself”) he had nimbly plunged the stiletto through the wall of her stomach and swiftly retracted it. In a thin sad voice, seemingly devoid of feelings of anger, hurt, or betrayal, she recounted how she had been oblivious to the penetration of the stiletto. Immediately upon stabbing 4

IN T H E BEGINNING

her (as she was later told) her husband had gone to his brother’s home and enthusiastically described what he had just done. To embellish it and bring it to life, had sat down and drawn a cartoon depicting an unknowing, unsuspecting Lucy with a belly gushing blood. Miraculously, the blade of the stiletto had missed all vital organs and it appeared Lucy might be getting out of the hospital in a week. Meanwhile, a guard had been posted outside her door. A detective had been assigned to the case and wanted to speak with me. Lucy gave me his telephone number and after I had finished speaking with her, I immediately called him, volunteering all the information and help I could supply. I never saw Lucy again, nor Raymond. After being safely released from the hospital, she returned to her mother’s home for an extended convalescence. I spoke with her several more times on the telephone, and I made a point of leaving the door open for an eventual return to counseling. In retrospect, I felt she had been too traumatically demoralized by what had happened to muster the courage to try and continue with her life, and I often wondered what fate had befallen her. Raymond was another story. A few days after he stabbed his wife he joined the army. By the time he was tracked down, his wife was completely out of danger and she had reached a decision not to press charges (perhaps fearing reprisal and thinking the army was the best watchdog available, anyhow). By a curious chain of circumstances, which I never understood, Raymond was allowed to continue unprosecuted, presumably deemed fit to serve his country. Not only for its dramatic and near-traumatic impact, the case was important to me for a number of reasons. First, it vividly highlighted how often the most difficult cases are given to the 5

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S ‘THE R E A L T H I N G

least-experienced therapists. Second, it showed the value of trusting your instincts. A therapist, even if experienced, ofien has little to go on if he or she cannot rely upon his or her instincts-especially in a situation that is utterly novel, such as this one. I had trusted my instincts twice: first by continuing to believe in and act upon my intuition that Raymond was dangerous and then by immediately realizing the necessity of revoking the contract of confidentiality between Raymond and me and switchmg my allegiance to the investigating detective. Subsequently,much has been written on the issue of confidentiality. Laws have been passed in various states purporting to clarifj. the boundary and fine line between a therapist’s loyalty to a patient’s right to confidentiality and a therapist’s loyalty to society’s right to safety from someone about to perpetrate a crime. At the time I was not aware of, and could not have been aware of any of this. In retrospect, over twenty-five years later, I believe-mainly because I was able to rely on my instincts and because they were sufficiently sound-that what I did then was what I would do now. One other thing I learned was the value of support and nurturance from a supervisor. Although Mrs. Miller was hardly sophisticated in the dynamics of psychotherapy and seemed to operate from a point of view that relied heavily on social common sense, her unwavering encouragement and unquestioned commitment to my development as a therapist were a needed boost.

FIRST PATIENT There can only be one first patient assigned to a psychotherapist by a postgraduate professional therapeutic institute and 6

IN THE BEGINNING

Libby was mine. Although expectations of what can happen

when an initial patient meets an apprentice therapist are appropriately conservative, when I look back-our beginning was a therapeutic comedy of errors, instead of the hoped-for slow and steady progress. If there was a mistake to be made, I made it. Part of it was my anxiety: I didn’t realize (not even when I was actually nervously pacing minutes before her arrival for her very first session and I tried to exhort myself, “It’s only a patient”) how important it was to me that I do well with my inaugural professional assignment. Because I was so anxious, my technique of dealing with even a flicker of resistance was to try to immediately quell it by gratifying it. Not surprisingly, I had a terrible time setting required boundaries. Regarding appointments, Libby seemed to almost come and go as she pleased, and I felt baffled as to how to even begin establishing the necessary therapeutic frame. I remember once proudly telling my supervisor about a session with Libby, which I thought had gone exceedingly well for a change, and all he had wanted to know was how long it had lasted. When I innocently answered it had surpassed the allotted time by only thirty minutes, my supervisor simply said, “Well, I think she seduced you.” On another occasion, when I was feeling overcome and literally struck dumb by her incessant resistive antics, Libby had instructed me, “If you’re feeling too depressed to have this session, we can cancel it.” Throughout it all, my supervisor remained serenely hopefd and realistically constructive. In the long run, the fact I had made so many errors, had dropped so many shoes without ever having the other one fall, did me a world of good. Libby stuck with therapy for several years, and by the time she terminated I had advanced far enough in my personal development 7

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

that I was now able to assess (without any help from my supervisor) the progress she had made. For one thing, she had gone from having multiple lovers and dabbling in group sex when she began therapy to making the first serious commitment she had ever made to a young man who apparently took her seriously. (She would tell me years later when I happened to bump into her in the street that she subsequently married him.) There had been other changes as well, all adding up, in my supervisor’s words, to “a developmental spurt.” What I gained from my experience with Libby was my first firsthand inkling that therapy could have an impact and make a difference. What was even more invaluable was the dawning realization that doing good work in therapy seemed to have little if anything to do with the achievement of technical mastery. Not that I had not learned a great deal from working with Libby, but the more I thought about it the less I felt that what I had learned had been proficiency and expertise in something called technique. It would be several years later when I would encounter the one patient who, poignantly, taught me what a life untouched by human intimacy would really be like.

JOEL He was my most patient: the most afraid of women, of his mother, of his own anger, of tension, of losing control of his emotions, and especially of being controlled by hostile others. I first met him when I was doing intake interviews as part of a postgraduate program of advanced training in a therapy institute in New York City. I remember being struck, as I shook hands with him, by his o d d y arresting physical bear-

a

IN T H E BEGINNING

ing. He was about six-feet three-inches tall,very gangly in build, bearded (he was teasingly referred to at the time as “Abe Lincoln” by a coworker in the mailroom where he worked), with a long, melancholy face. He spoke in a very resonant, although halting voice and, when he was anxious, he would begin to stutter slightly. Otherwise, he sat obediently upright in his chair, quite still (he reminded me of a very young student sitting in a classroom) and, though not initiating any conversation, he waited patiently for me to ask each of the perfunctory questions I was obliged to ask in my capacity as an intake worker. He was thirty-seven years of age, single, had no attachments or friends, and had just been hired by a major motion picture company to work in their mailroom shortly after his unemployment insurance had run out. Two months prior to the intake appointment, Joel had moved out of the apartment he shared with his mother and for the first time in his life had rented a place of his own, a small studio in Queens, in spite of his mother’s shrieking protests and her dire prophecies of her son’s imminent doom. But so terrified had he been to defir the woman who seemed to exercise an iron hold on his psyche that he had enlisted his older brother Teddy-who years ago had moved out and who considered Joel’s departure to be long overdue-to literally stand guard by the door and guarantee him safe passage from his mother’s anticipated fury as he walked out, bags in hand. As anxious as he was over living by himself, Joel did not consider that to be his presenting problem. In his view, what had driven him to seek out therapy was the growing sense of nervousness, sadness, and confusion as to what to do with his life, and his fear of the future, which he linked directly to the death of his father two years earlier. 9

K N O W I N G I F IT’S T H E R E A L T H I N G

On the intake form is a mandatory question regarding the person’s sexual history. Sensing just how uncomfortable the subject was likely to make him, I raised it as unthreateningly, matter-of-factly, and gingerly as I could. Joel responded in a fairly straightforward fashion: He had had only one girlfriend in his life, someone who had actually picked him up in a delicatessen in midtown Manhattan, and that had occurred over fifteen years ago. He remembers being extremely tense about having sex with his girlfriend and how disappointed she appeared to be over his inability to achieve an erection, even though they had lain naked together on seven or eight separate occasions. Although he made a point of going to a singles bar every week-rarely staying for more than an hour and usually for only five or ten minutes-he had not had a single date for at least five years. Guessing that he was skirting around a simple but fundamental fact and assuming, given my role as an intake worker, that we would probably never see each other again, I decided it was a safe risk to very mildly confront him. “Have you ever had sexual intercourse with a woman?” I asked. There was a long, memorable pause, during which I could simultaneously predict his answer and feel guilty for what I was about to put him through-and then, “N-n-n-0.” (Later, when I got to know him and he began to trust me, Joel confided in me more than once how my question had helped him to face the reality of his impotence: “I thought to myself, this is the guy who can help me.”) A week after the intake interview I was surprised by the booming voice on the telephone, reminding me of our recent encounter and informing me that the training institute for which I was conducting the intake interviews had just assigned me to be his therapist. Right from the start, Joel struck me as an unusual and rather remarkable patient. I had never 10

IN T H E BEGINNING

met anyone so sensitive, so terrified of the criticisms of others, so utterly convinced he was incapable of dealing with the slightest tension, and whose day-to-day existence seemed so filled with torment. In fact, announcing that he had survived the day (“Well, I got through Wednesday. Two more days to go.”) was often the way he would begin a session. I would ask him what it was he had to endure, and Joel, in his way, would struggle between his need to be an obedient patient who did the “right thing” as he saw it, and his desperate desire to avoid talking about anything that made him feel the least bit anxious. But I had no doubt that days for Joel were miseries, and, accordingly, much of his therapy was devoted to damage control concerning the unnatural psychic pain with which he habitually had to contend. Slowly, over the course of time, and perhaps bolstered by my obvious willingness to try and help him, Joel took me into his world-the world of an aimless, demoralized, thirtyseven-year-old mailroom employee, who seemed to be incredibly tempting prey to anyone who wanted to bait him-and introduced me one by one to his oppressors. First of all there was Birdie, the loudmouthed, abusive woman who was in charge of the photocopy room and who was fond of designating nicknames for new employees and who-in response to Joel’s inquiry as to whether he had been nicknamed yet (thinking he was only joining in the fun)-said, “Your name? You’re El Stupido!” It was Birdie whose unpredictable antics seemed to dominate much of Joel’s waking consciousness, if only because she appeared to him to be socially fearless. She would say anything, do anything, and nobody could stand up to her or control her. There was, for example, the horrible time when she 11

KNOWING IF I T ’ S T H E REAL T H I N G

removed from a cabinet drawer a can of deodorant and began conspicuously spraying an area not ten feet fromJoel who was working at a copy machine. She then glared in his direction and loudly proclaimed, “Someone, I’m not saying who, has just made a hnky smell!” What astounded me about this incident when I first heard of it-far more than Birdie’s sadistic boorishness-was Joel’s uncanny ability to dissociate himself from an interpersonal situation that he found unacceptable, no matter how deeply and blatantly he was implicated in it. After admitting that he had been suffering from gas for much of the morning, that he had taken two trips to the bathroom for the express purpose of passing some gas, and that he had been alone with Birdie in the photocopy room for at least a half hour prior to the incident, he nevertheless managed to express seemingly genuine and profound puzzlement over whom Birdie was referring to in her remark. After discussing this with him, carehl to indicate that it was an open question as to who or what had made the alleged hnky smell, I raised the question as to whether it was possible that Birdie, however mistakenly or insensitively, might have been referring to him. After a painful pause, in which he seemed to be wrestling with my point, Joel responded, shrugging his shoulders, “It’s fifty-fifty.” This was his characteristic pattern whenever he imagined he had been slighted in public. He would under no circumstances ever address what had been said or done to him, retreating instead into a shell where he would speculate for hours on what might possibly have occurred, wracking his brains for scenarios that would get him off the hook. Thus, he would wonder if he had mistakenly heard what he thought he heard; if he had misinterpreted what he thought he understood; if he had overreacted to something 12

IN T H E BEGINNING

that in reality was extremely minor; if he had taken something innocent and humorous in entirely the wrong way; and so on. Whenever Joel was certain that he had heard something clearly and accurately, as in the incident concerning Birdie’s remark about the perpetrator of a certain funky smell, he invariably believed that it was aimed at someone else. And whenever he thought or suspected that a suspicious remark or action was directed at his own person, he would as invariably be unable to recall whatever it was that had been said or done. Try as I might to help him reconstruct the interpersonal context, he would be unable-his fragile ego seemingly instantly repressing any unwelcome agents of tension or anxiety-to retrieve the telltale remark. Had Birdie been his sole nemesis, she would have been formidable enough, but there were others. There was Jenny, the assistant personnel manager, who sat in a glasspaneled office situated directly behind the spot where Joel customarily stood when he was working at the copy machine. Something about her aloof, precise manner and what Joel saw as phony politeness bugged him, and for a reason he did not understand, he felt uncomfortable standing with his back to her office. So, he would periodically, as unobtrusively as he could, turn around and glance into her office to see if she really had been studying him as he suspected. And if by chance their eyes would meet, as they sometimes did, he would hesitate before looking away to see if she were trying to stare him down. If she were staring at him, as he often thought she was, he would make his point the very next time he had to deliver a piece of mail to her office by silently approaching her inbasket, paying absolutely no attention to her, and taking his own sweet time about leaving. Once he may have taken too 13

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

much time-walking slowly and deliberately to show that no one was going to make him hurry-because, suddenly, behind his back, in a clear, audible whisper, he heard, “Get the hell out of my office” (but, of course, even though there was no one else in the office besides Jenny and him, he did not think she was referring to him). But he could never be sure whether people, for reasons he could not fathom, were secretly humiliating him. He was certain that in all the cases in which he wondered if someone might be mocking him, he “had done nothing wrong.” He also knew that although most people were good, some were just mean. So, when he heard that someone who had worked for years in the mailroom was finally leaving and had gone up to him, extending his hand, in order to do the right thing, and saying, “I just want to say good-bye and wish you luck on your new job”-he heard laughter behind his back as he turned to go. Was that laughter directed at him? Had he perhaps been too nervous or too formal in what he had said? But he had done nothing wrong, so why should they laugh at him? He noticed that often he would deliver a piece of mail to an ofice or area in which several people had been previously talking and suddenly the conversation would stop, and, occasionally, as he walked away he would hear that laughter or some sarcastic-sounding remark. Nor did it stop when he left the ofice. Things would be said to him in the street. Dirty looks would be sent his way. Once a man in the street, who thought that Joel had been staring at himalthough Joel obviously thought otherwise-had said in a very menacing voice, ‘yust keep your eyes straight ahead and don’t stop moving if you know what’s good for you.” People in subway trains were forever inexcusably bumping into him, encroaching on his territory, sometimes violently 14

IN THE BEGINNING

pushing him out of their way. Even in the protected social getaway haven of Club Med he was not safe from abuse. When walking forlornly along the beach one evening, a burly man who was sitting with some friends on a blanket had commented out loud as Joel passed by, “That guy looks like he’s light in the loafers.” (With tears in his eyes, Joel explained to me that “light in the loafers means queer” and, as though to support his interpretation, he added that he once heard Johnny Carson jokingly refer to someone on his show using the same expression.) During the years that he was in therapy with me, there were at least three separate occasions when he was physically assaulted. Once, in the West Village, a man who was walking with a woman holding a baby-whom Joel at worst had slightly nudged as they crossed paths and then looked back to see if the man was staring at him-had stopped, walked up behind Joel, and violently punched him in the shoulder, sending him lurching about ten feet down the block. Another time, when he happened to be mixing with the crowds attending a Shakespeare festival in Central Park, a teenage tough and what looked to be his younger brother (“who were looking for trouble,” according to Joel) had passed him by. Perhaps ever so innocently, he had brushed shoulders with the younger boy; again he glanced nervously backward to see if anyone was looking at him and caught the two of them exchanging some words while looking in his direction, at which point the older one shrugged his shoulders and started walking up to him. Panic-stricken and pretending not to have seen what he had just seen, Joel tried to meld with the surrounding crowd, but before he could, the bigger youth had reached his side and instantly thrown a vicious left hook to the body that sent him crashing to the ground. “NOWwhy would he do that?’’ said a 15

KNOWING IF IT’S T H E R E A L T H I N G

supportive elderly woman, who extended a hand to help Joel to his feet. Although he was too afraid to go to a doctor, for several weeks after the incident with the teenage toughs Joel continued to rub the ribs on the left side of his body in therapy and to obsess aloud as to whether he might have sustained permanent damage. He was even more concerned the time he surprised me by arriving for his scheduled appointment looking more downcast than I had perhaps ever seen him, with a discernible reddish splotch on the right side of his jaw, which itself seemed slightly swollen. “DOyou know whatjust happened to me?” he asked rhetorically and then proceeded to tell me. He had been walking in the vicinity of the Gulf Western building, before taking a subway train to come to his therapy session. As this was the evening rush hour and crowds of businessmen and -women, in addition to ordinary working-class people, were milling about, he felt comparatively safe. In addition (this being the first of the three assaults) he had never before been physically attacked, and the fact that this could actually happen to him was therefore unthinkable. So, when the swarthy man, dressed in a suit and tie, who looked to him like an arrogant, young, South American executive, and who for some unimaginable reason seemed to be strangely staring at him from a distance of thirty feet in the congested street, Joel did not see any apparent danger in briefly but pointedly staring back just to let him know that, in spite of the fact he was now a thirty-nine-yearold mailroom clerk, he had nothing to be ashamed of. And when the man, with a puzzled, annoyed look on his face began to approach him, Joel-who continued to look him evenly in the eye-was expecting anything but violence, anything but a quick punch to the jaw that knocked him to the 16

IN T H E BEGINNING

pavement and left him asking his fate and me why this had happened to him. Why indeed? It was a therapeutic puzzle that Joel and I would ponder together for years. Part of the answer, I knew, lay in his bizarre relationship to his family. Other than the time he had solicited his brother’s services as a bodyguard to help him move out of his mother’s apartment, Joel had literally not spoken to Teddy for approximately ten years. In fact, a code of silence and a mutual understanding had grown up between them, according to which, each was expected to treat the other as a social leper. At no time and under no circumstances were they ever to acknowledge each other’s presence, to engage in conversation, and, especially,to meet face to face in the home of their mother. Thus, if Teddy were to visit on a Saturday afternoon, word would be passed to Joel through their mother, Irene, of the time of the visit-the time when Joel was expected not to be present. And should there be a mishap, as there sometimes was, and Joel, for whatever reason, would return earlier than expected from an afternoon movie and greet his mother and then, to his horror, hear the sound of his brother in the kitchen, he might-after a deadly silence-also hear the hry of Teddy’s fist pounding the table as he cried out, “WHY, WHY is he here!” (Amazingly,to me at least, whenever I would invite Joel to speculate on the traumatic events that must have led up to such displays ofpsychotic-likerage on the part of his brother Joel, invariably shrugging, would reply, “I have no idea.”) The linchpin of his family dynamics, however, was his symbiotic relationship to his mother, who, from the standpoint of his fragile psyche, was undoubtedly the most important, forceful, and terrifying person in his universe. Not once in the seven years I knew him did he ever report raising his voice to his mother above the mild-mannered, childlike, obedient tone 17

KNOWING IF IT’S T H E REAL T H I N G

he evidently felt was demanded of him in his selfappointed, lifelong role as “the good son.” Not that he was oblivious to the almost constant fiustration he experienced whenever he had dealings with his mother-especially when he incited her stubbornness and willhlness by disagreeing with her in any way. And not that he was unable to fieely vent his hostility toward her within the safety of therapy and the despair he, increasingly, retrospectively felt whenever he revisited how she had treated him as a child: She regarded him almost as a creature without feelings or wishes of his own that were of consequence; his hnction was to do whatever he was told to do without question (e.g., “Pick up my bra over there for me, Joel, will you?”). She once bragged to a next-door neighbor, “I always wanted a daughter and I got one,” and she would boisterously wave away any attempts on Joel’s part to express some of the torture that was his daily life with the demeaning reassurance, “You? There’s nothing wrong with YOU!” Not surprisingly, the one thing he would never doeven when his mother in the last years of her life was confined to a wheelchair, disabled by Alzheimer’s disease and evidencing the mind of a “five-year-old”-was assert that he was a person ofworth, that he had a self to be reckoned with, that he was taking responsibility for a life not meant to be lived for her insatiable gratification. Regarding the reign of terror that Joel appeared to live under from a host of oppressors, I had no doubt that it was not delusional. While he had pronounced paranoid trends, occasional ideas ofreference,a fantastic ability to dissociate himselffrom and to distort unwanted, tension-filledinterpersonal situations, I was quite sure that office coworkers did laugh at him behind his back, that Jenny had stage-whispered, “Get the hell out of my office,” and that impulsive, aggressive men and delinquent teenagers, in18

IN T H E BEGINNING

hriated by his puzzling, detached staring, might knock him to the ground. The key, however, to understanding the peculiar dynamics of his driven inner life, I realized, would come from unraveling the transference-countertransference transactions between us, that is, the underlying subjectivity of both patient and therapist that to some extent is always dynamically in play. In the course of therapy, Joel gradually became aware and often told me that I was the second most important person in the world to him after his mother and the one person he could trust above all others. There were numerous signs that this was true. He regularly confided in me things that he would not dream of telling anyone else. Compared with the states of sometimes phenomenal tension that he often complained about, his demeanor in therapy seemed vastly more relaxed. He never came close to achieving peace of mind, of course, but he often would clown around, crack old vaudevillejokes, kibbutz a little; on occasion, when he perceived himself to be talking in a particularly nervous, herky-jerky way, he lapsed into an instant (near professional) impression of his favorite comedian, Jackie Mason, “So, I say this, I say that, I mean do this!” When he was in what he himself considered a good mood, I could hear him humming or singing softly on the landing outside my office door. Once in a while, he would arrive at an insight by himselc make a surprising connection between disparate events, thoughts, or feelings; or ponder deeply the meaning of his unquestionably forlorn existence. And there were times, after what we both agreed was an inspiring session, when he would trudge out of the office, looking for all the world, and at least momentarily convincing me that he was a soldier of therapy, ready to do battle with the demons of his mind. But, over the years, I was increasingly forced to admit that such flashes of improvement, working-alliance camaraderie, 19

K N O W I N G IF IT’S T H E R E A L T H I N G

and flights into health were at best short-lived if not illusory. Far more significant were his repressed anger or rage, his incredible stubbornness (not unlike his mother’s), and his perverse refusal to respect and to ally himself in any manner with his life instincts. And, of course, because not once in seven years did he ever raise his voice in anger to me, strongly disagree with me, or fail to speak to me with exaggerated deference-in spite of his genuine and considerable affection for me-I realized that much of his rage and hatred for life was directed at me. Since Joel, however, was perhaps more terrified of his negative transference than any patient I had ever worked with, he could never dare to be directly critical of me in even the mildest of ways. But, as soon as he had seated himself on the couch, he would persistently kick at pieces of lint or any minute object lying on the carpet in the place where his feet would normally rest and, which, in his judgment, as he explained to me years later, “didn’t belong there.” Although he was the most punctual patient I had ever known, rarely deviating by more than thirty seconds from the exact time of his scheduled appointment, he made a point of lingering for several minutes at the end of each session, usually by going to the bathroom. He also held the record among my patients for using my bathroom the most, sometimes simply to comb his hair, groom himself, or look at himself in the mirror (often doing this with the door wide open) prior to going out in public afterward. In addition he was perhaps the most silent patient I had experienced, but there was nothing therapeutic in the use he made of the silence. He did not muse, he did not introspect, nor did he attempt to make contact with his self in some deeper way. Instead, as he put it, he would “take a break” from talking, reward himself for the 20

IN T H E BEGINNING

few words he had said, and vanish into a kind vegetative withdrawal. At times he would sit immovable and dazed-looking on the couch, sometimes with a flicker of a grandiose smile on his face. At such times, when he seemed hopelessly distant from me, his fingers might slowly become steepled together, in a gesture of schizoid condescension. So dissociated was his manner of relating at these times that it took me years to realize that often when I believed that Joel was moodily and meaninglessly staring in space, he was in fact staring at me, unconsciously converting the holding environment into a paranoid basic training site where he could symbolically duel with a variety of imagined persecutory others. And once, when I had become too uncomfortably aware of his intense staring to ignore it, yet unable to think of a therapeutic way to broach so delicate an issue, I simply said, “We seem to be staring at one another.” Joel then utterly surprised me by being about as relieved as I had ever seen him. “Yeah,” he sighed and proceeded to reveal to me how for years he had suspected that I had been staring at him, trying to stare him down, and he often fantasized about what it would be like to stare me down. My gradual awareness of my own discomfort with Joel’s staring put me in touch with other countertransferential irritations. I had never liked his habit of kicking and scraping his shoes on my carpet as soon as he had settled himself on the couch. At times, the refusal of me that underlay his silence became almost palpable, and I could not help but take it personally. Once, when he was recounting how he had declined to answer a fellow employee’s question as to whether he celebrated a particular Jewish holiday-justifjmg it to me with one of his favorite expressions, “It’s none of his business”21

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

and remembering how incredibly withholding he could be when it came to communicating psychic news about himself, I suddenly and unhappily realized, “My God, he’s been telling me to mind my own business for the past four years!” By far my greatest countertransferential difficulty, however, concerned dealing with my own limitations when it came to helping Joel with his limitations. I don’t think I ever worked as hard and in such good faith to help anyone as I did with Joel; yet never was I so spectacularly ineffectual on so many levels. It was notjust that in the seven years he was in therapy with me he had only a handful of token dates, never had a girlfiiend, never made love, never had successful intercourse, found a friend, really enjoyed himself, made a plan, or manifested the slightest desire to enhance his self-proclaimed wretched existence. It was that he never tried to fight for himself in any meaninfil way. He lived literally on a moment-by-momentbasis, and the principle by which he conducted his life was that all tension was bad and all reduction of tension was good. I did not seem to be able to get him to see beyond that. What did help, however, was for me to better understand the source of my frustration. I had prided myself on my therapeutic personality, on being adept when it came to quickly reassuring a mistrustful patient and providing the rudiments of a potential holding environment. Like every psychoanalytic psychotherapist, I hoped to be able to facilitate the growth of new self-enhancingpsychic structures, but I did not mind being, for long periods of time, an auxiliary ego or a supportive presence to a patient who required it, if that is all I could be. What I did very much mind was someone insisting, as Joel did, that I become an auxiliary ego. I gradually came to understand that on a primitive level Joel was engaged in a kind of symbolic, mental combat with 22

IN T H E BEGINNING

a world that was perceived as a malign mother who was shirking her duty, which was to live symbiotically his life for him. And Joel was determined that if he could not find someone or some force to live his life for him, he would absolutely refuse to d o it for himself. It was this refusal, I believed, far more than any other single psychic impairment, that kept him so developmentally frozen. With fantastic willfulness he continued to treat himself, as his mother had, as a person almost devoid of an autonomous psyche. (Christopher Bollas’s [ 19871 ideas concerning the “self as object” were especially useful to me here.) Seeing that, I could also see how I had been countertransferentially colluding. In my insistence that he address and take some existential responsibility for the core issues of his life, I was, in effect (regardless of how therapeutic my ultimate intentions may have been), trying to live his life for him by instilling a passion for living that could only come from him, or not at all. In my own way, I was being as stubborn as he was and, moreover, by so doing, I was treating him as though he utterly lacked autonomy; as though the only way he could become autonomous was if I made him so. I therefore began to treat Joel in a new way, as an entirely separate and-his massive psychic impoverishment notwithstanding-autonomous being. I pretty much told him what I have just written here: that I could not hnction as a magical symbiotic mother who would direct how his life would be lived, even if I wanted to; that I believed that he was considerably more capable of dealing with tension than he apparently did, but that he was determined to treat himself more or less as his mother had treated him. And I saw no reason not to tell him just how incredibly, self-destructively stubborn I thought he was. All of which, through countless repetition over time, 23

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

became condensed into three simple interpretations that Joel readily took: (1) “This is your stubbornness.” (2) “As you know, I think you’re tougher and could take a lot more tension than you do.” (3) “Now you’re treating yourself as your mother did-as a helpless child.” I used to think that Joel was well on his way to becoming the kind ofpatient whom Otto Kernberg (1986)once referred to as a “lifer”: someone healthy enough to recognize that there was a real need for therapy, but too sick to sufficiently benefit from it so as to be able to terminate. But one day, after seven years of intensive psychotherapy, Joel walked into my office and announced out of the blue that the major motion picture company for which he still worked had just announced that it was uprooting in a month, relocating in Los Angeles, and taking along all current employees who were similarly inclined. With an excited grin, Joel announced that he had decided to accept the invitation to relocate with his company and that, thanks to therapy, he felt ready for what promised to be “the adventure of my life.” That was how Joel’s therapy, after seven years, ended. But before it did, I had managed to let go of my need to intervene in his fate. If his frustration at not being able to control a ubiquitous, malign mother was so great that he was willing to spite himself by becoming the greatest existential nonachiever he was capable of-so be it! There was nothing I could do and this truth, as they say, set both of us free. For there were many moments in the year and half or so before his departure when I was able to observe a considerably more relaxed and expressive Joel. Although he still did not have a clue as to which direction he wanted his life to go, there was no doubt that when he was at least temporarily released from this torment, he could be oddly humorous, gentlemanly, articulate, sensi24

IN T H E BEGINNING

tive, creatively offbeat, and warmly personal. Now I could see at least the outline of a definite style of being, and although I had no idea as to how, if at all, he would elaborate it, I could say, at last, that I had broken through, made contact with, and achieved a real glimpse of his emergent true self. Finally, it is one more countertransference trap to believe, as therapists, that we can deal with our fear of not meeting our patients’ incessant demands; that we take charge of their destiny by arming ourselves with more and better techniques. It is perhaps wiser instead and more liberating to recognize the pervasiveness of a patient’s transferential enactments of control games and the countertransference traps they set for their therapists. To let go of the desire to not be controlled and to relinquish the belief that we should somehow benignly control the progress of therapy can only lead to a greater availability for the real work that lies ahead. It is now well over twenty-five years since my first patient. In chapter 2, using everyday examples and universal experiences, I present what I think I’ve learned; the building blocks of something quite profound, something invariably taken for granted, something deceptively called intimacy.

25

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

EVERYDAY EXAMPLES “IS THIS T H E ONE?”

Th

ere may be no more common complaint heard in therapy than that of the relationship that once seemed so promising and now lies “dead in the water.” Patients then may question their personal philosophy of love and wonder whether there is a safer way, a more informed perspective from which to plot their future. When a relationship ends badly, a traumainduced revisionism occurs that rapidly subverts the memories of its positive attributes. A complex past now becomes recontextualized from the point of view of a recent, disturbing crackup. Every negative occurrence becomes a significant omen, albeit one that was quite heedlessly overlooked. What once appeared positive and uplifting now, in the bitter afterlight of dashed hopes, seems insubstantial, illusory, and naive. One wants not just a different person, but a different set of values. The disillusioned lover, under the abnormal stress of a traumatic rupture, will now regress to a more primitive way of thinking in which there is only all bad or all good (this being, 27

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

of course, the hypothetical new person who is to be radically different). In other words, that person is unable to integrate the original estimable qualities of the other, on the basis of which a bond was forged. Typically, this revisionist process is so successhl that the person is left wondering what they ever saw in the other. What kind of person was he or she to have been so spectacularly misled? Not surprisingly, a natural reaction formation is to proceed with caution, to learn how to better assess one’s prospects before making a commitment, and to become more aware of the triggers, the special conditions under which they are prone to fall in love. The death of a relationship, similar to that of a growing realization of one’s mortality, can engender a philosophic curiosity regarding the components that supposedly bind people to each other. Usually, this undermines the naive belief that true love or marriage is “forever.” No longer a simply indivisible constant, even the deepest intimacy is viewed relativisticallya dynamic state of being that mirrors the vicissitudes of the relationship. The “right” person now tends to be someone who hnctions best at meeting primary needs, a dramatic shift of perspective on the so-called singles scene, which cultivates the sense of an object to be appraised, and aptly satirized as a “meat-market” mentality. In such an arena of demystitjring transient encounters, being in love comes to mean only something to be negotiated and bartered. A consequence of this is that there is usually a more realistic, although bitter appreciation of the complicated trade-offs that intimacy typically entails. It follows that when a relationship collapses, such trade-offs in retrospect seem unwisely excessive. The lesson to be learned is that next time one should give less and get more. One thus begins a study of the signals of love, a preoccupation with what is 28

EVERYDAY EXAMPLES

genuine and what is a pseudo-hint. Now love is viewed more from a behaviorial rather than an internal and interpersonal perspective. In short, a disappointment in love will often make someone much more of a narcissist when it comes to future attachments (i.e., determined to get his or her share of the goodies the next time). To understand just how radical this revisionism can be, it may be helpful to revisit the initial signs of love. During this period, in which there is an altered perception, there is a feeling that one is being captured by a charismatic outside force, a sense that a new primary object has come into one’s life superseding not only all past ones, but all other object relations in the world. This is coupled with the intoxicating realization that one simultaneously exercises more influence on this treasured love object than does anyone else. It is easy to see that falling in love can seem as though, for reasons that are basically mysterious, one has become magically attracted and attractive to another. This shift in psychic economy, necessitated by a singular mesmerizing object preempting almost all others, typically fosters anxiety that one may have unwittingly put him- or herself at risk by overinvesting. There is then a need for reassurance of the genuine worth and durability of the other’s (hopefully) reciprocal investment. Not surprisingly a kind of covert testing and evaluating of the other’s constancy arises, and there is often a period of envious, obsessive comparisons. You become morbidly sensitive to innuendo or appraisals of your beloved by friends and acquaintances that, inexplicably and disturbingly, do not tally with yours. There can be an irresistible temptation to weigh the evidence, to observe and compute the psychic and interpersonal sacrifices made on behalf of the relationship. Stendhal, in his famous theory of the crystallization of love followed 29

KNOWING IF IT’S

THE REAL THING

by a battle of indifference, in The Red and the Black (1969) and The Charterhouse of Parma (1991), describes this initial phase of romantic intimacy perhaps better than anyone. To sum up, the blind and often willful faith in the value of the beloved is not unlike the stubborn belief of the religiously devout. I admit I was led to this observation when I recently listened to a highly intelligent theologian discussing the basis of his beliefs. It struck me that he was, as they say, preaching to the converted. That is, there was no attempt to consider and bridge the impact of his arguments upon dissenting but discerning skeptics. Instead, there was an implicit grandiose assumption that the theologian knows of course he is right, and what is interesting and challenging is only the denial of others. Such a person in a sense is therefore talking to himself. Although he may often speak earnestly of the truth, he bases it on faith, but, as Daniel Dennett (1995) has noted, he does not provide a reason for his faith, nor does he consider the arguments against faith. For example, people of equally strong faith can and frequently do completely contradict each other, which is a simple proof that faith-based belief can be erroneous, since contradictory beliefs cannot be simultaneously true. What is more, faith can come perilously close to delusional certainty, superstitious belief, and obsessional rigidity. Someone may have faith in ghosts, voices of the dead, the domination of the devil, abduction by aliens, or the existence of flying saucers. How, it might be asked, does faith differentiate or have any more truth value than claims of psychics and fortunetellers? And unlike psychics, those of fervent religious faith never put their faith to any kind of a test based on reason or experimentation: Richard Feynman (1999) seriously questions whether there is any demonstrable difference on 30

EVERY DAY EX AMPLES

the rate of being cured of diseases between those who prayed and those who don’t. The fact that someone in love draws no metaphysical inference concerning the universe but presents only his or her subjective experiences obscures the similarity of an unconscious dynamic of exhilarating but dogmatic belief. By contrast, the revisionist rage so characteristic of a significant relationship gone bad is usually presented not as the final eruption of a lengthy, smoldering process (which, more often than not, it is), but coldly as a rather important message from the superego. The person ending the relationship, as though merely relaying information, says, “My feelings for you have changed.” Or, “I want a divorce.” Or, “If I stay one more minute in this relationship, I’ll explode.” Or, “It was a mistake to have started in the first place”; “I don’t regret what we had, but it is time to move on”; “We’re not right for each other, and it is better for both of us to end it”; and so on. There is sometimes a paltry effort to placate the feelings of the one who is being rejected. But by refusing to own up to the complicated dynamic determinants of an underlying and frequently transparent rage, an impression of hatred or heartless detachment cannot be avoided. Since the final decision to end it is typically delivered as a piece of reasonedjudgment, the effect on the other can be as though he or she has just received the sentence not from a former lover but from a disembodied, malevolent superego. In other words, someone acting out rage in order to maximize its potency will often attempt to divert attention from the pain that preceded the superego’s harsh overreaction by resorting to a display of outrageous aggression. What is missing in this process, and what cannot help but facilitate the kind ofprofound splitting I have been describing, 31

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

is any sense of intimacy’s place in a relationship. While there can be intimacy without love, as in a durable friendship, there cannot be a genuine mature love without intimacy. Thus, patients, who are plagued by doubts as to whether love exists or will ever be reciprocated never seem to question the status or nature of intimacy. It never seems to occur to them that the crucial component of intimacy was never there, or if it was there it did not keep pace with the love itself or was never tended to with the seriousness it so richly deserves.

T H E PARANOID MOMENT Henry, a reserved, thoughtful, rigorously ethical accountant who often felt underappreciated and who was especially sensitive to encounters in which he felt covertly or openly humiliated, came into the session visibly upset. It seemed that regardless of how many hundreds of times he traveled on the New York City transit system, he could not acclimate himself to the routine pushing and shoving and scrambling for empty seats, which constitute the daily life of the metropolitan subway rider. Mild mannered as he was, he could become determinedly territorial whenever another commuter violated his boundaries of space, which he was careful to stake out in his mind on each and every ride. To my comment that he did not appear his usual self, Henry replied he had once again suffered one of those humiliating experiences on the subway, although this time he had at least said something. For once, Henry smiled ruefully, the offender was not a six-foot, two-hundred-pounder (as it often seemed to him), but a short, slightly built woman, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a prim librarian’s look, who 32

EVERY DAY EXAM PLES

succeeded in thoroughly inhriating him by apparently deciding that she could take him on. Although such episodes could leave Henry brooding for hours, even days, the actual event often would usually transpire in a matter of seconds or minutes. In this case, it went something like this: Woman:Am I in your way? Heny (decidingthere was no need to let this seemingmockery pass): What? Woman:I was wondering if I am in your way? Henry: I happened to have lost my balance. You don’t have to take it personally. Woman:I see.

Henry, who invariably would obsessively reconstruct and revisit the scene in the session, said he had been standing in a gathering throng of commuters, anxiously surveying his chances of purchasing some tolerable standing room in a rush-hour crush, when momentarily he lost his footing, causing him to lurch forward. He allows that he may have been unconsciously jockeying for a more advantageous position closer to the subway door that was about to open. Perhaps in so doing he was inadvertently made to appear as though he were deliberately blocking the pathway for a tiny woman he really either did not see or did not deem significant enough to make allowance for. No doubt, reckoned Henry, the woman, having taken offense at what she seemed to consider an intentional slight, had decided to voice an ironic commentary on what had just transpired-a bulky man making haste to prevent a diminutive woman from cutting him off at the pass. This I knew would enrage my patient, who, hypersensitive to insults to begin with,would certainly not want her publicized 33

K N O W I N G I F IT’S T H E R E A L T H I N G

irony to stand as the last word. So he pretends not to understand (“What?”), and she pretends, by merely repeating herself, that there is no need to either edit or retract a statement that is not judged to be inappropriately offensive. When Henry informs her that what actually happened is that he momentarily lost his footing in the teeming onrush and goes on the offensive himself with a reprimand (“You don’t have to take it personally”), the woman retaliates by withdrawing into stoical condescension (“I see”). In the session, Henry relates the heart-stopping effect of “Am I in your way?” On the one hand, he realized full well that the tiny creature daring to confront him scarcely posed the possibility of his being physically humiliated in public, which he so dreaded, and that being thereby reassured, he would be able to handle anything she could dish out (which he did). On the other hand, he could not deny he had been deeply affected by the encounter. For the fifteen minutes they rode together, seated ten feet apart and within eyesight of each other, Henry would periodically steal glances to see if she were continuing to look at him, still smirking, perhaps still muttering to herself about him. This kind of flare-up of fleeting interpersonal paranoia in the anonymity of a public place, where the participants are not likely to encounter each other ever again, is so universal that it tends to be taken for granted as one of life’s necessary evils (especially life in a crowded urban area). Yet, if we simply compare it with its opposite-for example, having first been introduced to someone in a conventional social setting in which there is an entire network of unconscious assumptions and rules governing face-to-face interaction (see especially Goffian 1959)-we can appreciate what is really anomalous about such unconstrained, frank hostility. 34

EVERYDAY EXAMPLES

The anomaly can be better understood if one thinks about the magnitude of the paranoia implied and released in the above encounter. In the space of a few seconds an entire life history has been reduced to a sort of toxic stick figure whose modus operandi seemingly is to shatter the peace of mind of the other. It is not simply that both parties know on some level that they are overreacting and taking out accumulated past frustrations and humiliations on the newest offender (although, of course, they may tell themselves this afterward in an effort to calm themselves down by objectifying the incident). It is, instead, that at a certain volatile moment of release there is an eerie enveloping certainty that they are in contact with the malevolent essence of the other in a way they almost never have been-analogous, perhaps, to an adult version of Spitz’s “stranger anxiety” (1965). What is remarkable is the degree to which a single negative perception-the other as abusive intruder-can hijack the psyche, obliterating in one fell swoop every other possible detail of that person’s life. At such moments the person is much more a disembodied force, an icon, an allegorical figure of evil, rather than a human being. Each has become so demonized to the other as to cease to be human. Not surprisingly, there is entitlement to the release of rage, not unlike a declaration of war on an alien psyche. In an almost pure paranoid moment such as this, there are no redeeming features-each sees the other as malevolent. There is no time to prepare, negotiate, and intelligently defend because the other is perceived as much too dangerous. Analogous to someone who appears to be coming at you with a weapon, there is only time to try to step out of the way, to deflect it, or to counterattack. A paranoid moment is forged when there is a perception of clear threat without any of the customary social mechanisms available to defuse the danger. 35

KNOWING IF IT’S

THE REAL THING

There is only stimulus and response. Realizing that only one will be left standing with dignity intact, the other, in effect, is coerced into either fighting or capitulating. It is natural to feel intense resentment at a confrontation that is externally and forcibly imposed, since prior to the actual encounter, neither person is prepared for the rate of escalation of the ensuing confrontation even if they were already in a highly irritable state, primed to take offense at any imagined or real slight. Yet, in a paranoid moment, in its capacity to suddenly materialize, from seemingly nowhere, an identifiable persecutor can be perceived as a kind of revelation. One discovers who one’s enemy is. This is heart-stopping drama, not a common occurrence. Not surprisingly, there is a tendency to believe that one is experiencing a morbidly meaningful moment of truth. The underlying fragility, superficiality, and distorted thinking, which is characteristic of such an interaction, is masked. A sense of unease and inner chaos can be justified as the price for facing a moment of truth. Indeed to feel paranoid is also to feel authentic. And what should be questioned first-the psychic reality of what is happening-is usually addressed last. In its place, is a tantalizing sense of fate. An answer, or resolution, seems to be at hand. A simple way to look at this kind of an exchange is that two people are starting off on their worst foot. There is a real sense in which a moment such as this is the unlucky product of unimaginably bad timing. Typically, in the sense I describe, two people have been more or less in a mild selfreverie engendered by crowd behavior, fostering the illusion that they are safely ensconced in narcissistic cocoons and therefore free to forget about the other, just as if they really were alone. It is immediately understandable now that part of the situation’s rapid escalation is due to the person being so 36

EVERYDAY EXAM PLES

unprepared for a stranger’s demand for consideration, feeling this is certainly not the occasion to demand interpersonal attentiveness. Two people internally preoccupied in this fashion find themselves suddenly forced to relate to a seemingly hostile outsider. Almost invariably they experience it as a narcissistic injury, the cause of which is then attributed to the other. Compounding this, the anonymity of an essentially selfabsorbed crowd can create a second illusion-that of feeling as if they are nonpersons-and that the only needs that are alive dynamically are one’s own. A solipsistic mood can develop, reinforced by the customary absence of feedback and recognition; the implicit pact between members of a crowd that so long as you do not infringe upon my space, I will pretend you do not exist. You are free to act in whatever way you ill do the same for me. It can often be a rather want, and you w comfortable feeling that one is not lonely but merely invisible in a throng of people and can, if one chooses, materialize at a moment’s notice. I think it is easy to see, given this unusually self-referential context, how the sudden perception that someone is either shoving, staring, or in some unmistakable way disrespecting one’s allotted personal space comes as a violent intrusion of the real that one is never prepared for, no matter how many times it has occurred in the past. Someone who has been minding his or her own business, making no demands whatsoever upon anyone cannot help but feel persecuted at being yanked from one modality (intrapsychic private space) into another (the zone of interpersonal confrontation) and being forced to account for one’s actions. Not surprisingly, patients describe the moment as uncanny, when in the midst of familiar private musings, a voice never 37

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

before heard, in effect, saying, “What do you think you are doing?” Usually there is a flustered attempt at reality testing to make sure that one has heard or seen correctly, as in the instance when Henry, dumbfounded but also trying to buy time, mumbles, “What?” (Unconsciously, someone who has just had his or her sense of reality upended will try to return the favor.) The paranoid moment is a chilling instant when two radically different perceptions of reality collide violently. And when the intruder does not back down-the woman in this case restating her ironic position that it is Henry who has boorishly usurped her space-the battle lines are drawn. Now there is a sense that an interpersonal point of no return has passed, a place where there is no hope of reconciliation. And when one challenges what is perceived to be a persecutory invasion, he or she will do so quickly in order to end the anxiety. A paranoid attack to that extent is a preemptive strike by a person who feels he or she does not have a moment to lose. The panic accompanying a paranoid exchange comes from a haunting perception that one is between a rock and a hard place-between swallowing an unbearable insult or running the risk of hrther inciting someone already perceived as dangerously irrational, if not mad, in choosing to confront him or her. What makes the situation so fraught to those involved is that they are both caught in diametrically opposed paranoid fantasies. Hanging in the balance is not only whether someone is going to be violated but a determination of who is to be declared the mad one. In a paranoid confrontation, each person is fighting for his or her sanity as well as dignity, unconsciously aware that reasonable negotiation has been thrown to the wind. Might makes right, and the one who publicly prevails may also be 38

EVERY DAY EXAMPLES

judged the saner of the two. Psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg (1986) deals with the same issue in terms of the therapeutic treatment of the clinically paranoid patient with his interesting concept of “incompatible realities.” My own approach in trying to help less-disturbed patients understand why a paranoid confrontation, no matter how relatively appropriate and reasonably conducted, tends to feel draining and depriving afterward is to point out that, essentially, they have been fighting against hate and on behalf of hate. I sometimes say to them, “It is much harder to fight for what you do not want to happen, than to fight for what you do want to happen.” At this juncture it might be asked what someone could do, someone who is less in the grip of paranoid thinking and more mindful of the possibilities of intimacy, and not operating from a perspective of hate but fighting for what they want. To be fair, it should be conceded that the kind of situation we have been describing is almost guaranteed to elicit universal paranoia. It would be unrealistic to imagine that even a very secure, mature, well-put-together person with considerable healthy self-esteem could respond with anything approaching basic trust to the seemingly spiteful and paranoid remark, “Am I in your way?” Nevertheless, our hypothetical, more intimate confrontation would be marked by some effort to contain the paranoid theme just introduced. This is what Henry (who had been working for years in therapy on the very issue) attempts to do by quickly cutting through her masking condescension and directly addressing what he sees as the root of her feelings of slight and persecution. By telling her that far from boorishly monopolizing her pathway to the opening subway door he had instead temporarily lost his footing, he first tries to give her information that might help her to correct her distorted thinking. Then, to balance things, he lets her 39

KNOWING IF IT’S T H E REAL T H I N G

also know he has feelings, too, which have just been hurt by her accusation (“You don’t have to take it personally.”). Henry, in other words, endeavors to supply the missing piece of reality that he thinks the woman requires in order to achieve a broader, nonparanoid perspective on what has just happened. More crucially, he gives her an opportunity to take into account his own emotional need not to be blamed for something he did not and would not do. The curt reply, “I see,” delivered in the same arch tone, reinstates the galling moral rectitude of her original position, and Henry is thereby locked into a paranoid interaction. At this point, a more intimate approach might be to accept the htility of seeking to change the woman’s perspective and to let it go; something my patient, like most people, could not do. Letting go here means creating a mental division between the toxic paranoia that has been introduced suddenly and the rest of the psyche, especially everything that is nonparanoid (i.e., healthily trusting) in the person. This, in effect, entails disempowering the invasive, accusatory other as best one can, while simultaneously struggling to break the paranoid spell under which one has just fallen. An essential way to break the paranoid spell is, obviously, not to become paranoid oneself, to continue to engage in paranoid ideation (as my patient did), but to somehow remind oneself just how fragile, impoverished, and stunted a paranoid reaction is when compared with the fullness of a healthy, multidimensional human encounter. Probably the most common defense is to attempt to withdraw from what has just become a dangerously charged paranoid field; one tries anxiously to remove oneself physically from the stare, voice, sight, sound, and presence of the other. A difficulty in accomplishing this, however, is that the other 40

EVERY DAY EX AMPLES

may counter by willfully expanding the paranoid field-by staring so that the person cannot ignore the challenge, by verbalizing an accusation so there can be no mistake of the protest that is being lodged. Perhaps an even greater obstacle is that the unjustly accused can thereby become inordinately sensitive to the very real possibility that he or she may be perceived as acting like a guilty coward if he or she does not speak up. From this perspective, it is apparent that part of the spell of the paranoid moment is derived from its capacity in making it difficult for either party to not stand and fight. To counter this, someone with the ego strength to defend against a paranoid attack, but who does not want to be dragged into a no-win demoralizing confrontation, might act not out of hate, but rather decisively or out of determined self-respect. The person will resist the usually strong temptation to degrade the other person, to become enraged, to doubt that person’s sanity, to believe in the power of the paranoid spell. Instead, one reminds oneself, as much as is necessary, that what is happening is just a bizarre or freakish eruption in an otherwise considerably more orderly and benign social universe. Of course, very few people even try, let alone succeed at this. What the example points to, however, is the indispensable value of trust as an ingredient for a potential, intimate encounter by vividly showing the toxic aftermath of the complete pathological absence of just this attribute. The kind of everyday paranoia that is being described represents the antithesis of trust. It follows that the recovery from such an attack of paranoia will always in some measure entail the timely incorporation of a corrective dosage of trust. In the above example, there may have been more trust 41

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

initially, if the woman, say, had granted Henry the benefit of doubt. Although Henry appeared to be hogging her space, he still may have been unaware of what he was doing. Had he allowed the woman to be irritated with his movements without taking it to heart, the episode might never have occurred. Ironically, it is a characteristic of a paranoid exchange, however, that just this giving of slack to the perceived offender (unconsciously, that is, deciding to trust another) is considered a dangerous invitation to further abuse. At this point, it might be asked, what is trust? Perhaps the first thing to be said is that although composed of a number of elements, it has the illusion of referring to just one thing (like the wordfaith). Trust-that is, mature and intimate, as opposed to naive dependence-arises from a contextual way of looking at the other. It is the outcome of a process of summing up and integrating the history of object relations with a particular person, of having arrived at a composite profile of the range of feelings and experiences one is likely to have with the other, a profile that tends to inspire confidence. It is an intuition that nothing so bad is likely to happen that cannot be managed with relative ease. Furthermore, there even may be pleasures and satisfactions in which one can realistically look forward. Such a contextual perspective informing trust, therefore, means that negative experiences can either be effectively contained or offset by reliably positive counterparts. Trust here means there is a kind of unconscious knowledge-not faith-that one can look forward to an experience of safety. It is a rather privileged security, however, in that one can feel safe without having to be defensive. Trusting someone means feeling relaxed in the core of yourself 42

EVERY DAY EXAMPLES

while in the presence of the another. There is a psychic energy readily available that normally would have been expended with wariness or rumination on possible manifest or latent threats to one’s self-esteem. Not surprisingly, trust elicits trust, and there may be no surer way to prevent a paranoid assault than for the would-be attacker to sense, in spite of whatever hostile intentions he or she may be harboring, that he or she is, in fact, somewhat benignly, granted the benefit of doubt. Seen in this light, it is another sad characteristic of the paranoid person who typically has lost the capacity to intuit the degree to which another may be capable or worthy of trust. As R. D. Laing, in Selfand Others, showed brilliantly, paranoia implies a failure of a feedback loop: “He thinks she thinks she has managed to trick him into being jealous, but she (1) may not be deceiving him, she might only be pretending to be deceiving him, so (2) he will only pretend to be jealous, but (3) she might be aware that he is aware that she is not sure whether he really is jealous” (1961). By contrast, trust, which implies granting access to yourself on a number of levels and believing that such openness will be reciprocated, fosters feedback. Feedback-the sense that someone hasjust experienced, registered, and gained a more multidimensional grasp of the other in a variety of subtle, changing ways, a process that is radically opposite to the reductive, onedimensional toxic take that is typical of the paranoid momentnot surprisingly,inspires confidence. It’s easy to see that the perception ofgenuine trust can clear the way for a greater fluidity of self-other interaction. It is not that interpersonal impasses do not arise, but when they do they have a chance of being neutralized or circumvented without the freezing that is characteristicof paranoid ideation. 43

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL

THING

I always think in this regard of the clinically paranoid

woman, who, when asked in a projective test to draw a picture of a tree, produced a rather horrible talon-like shape that seemed to sit on top of the earth. As my teacher commented memorably, alluding to her pathological fear of intimacy, “Notice how the root is not allowed to penetrate the soil but kind of lays in complete isolation on top of the ground.” Paradoxically, trust can also elicit its nemesis and opposite-paranoia. One way to understand this is to realize that part and parcel of the intrinsic nature of authentic intimacy is a certain inevitable, albeit unfortunate, paranoia. After all, there is always the real risk that by repeatedly lowering one’s guard and revealing oneself, someone-perhaps by trusting when he or she should not have-may have unwittingly left him- or herself vulnerable to criticism or, worse, to attack. Again, it is worth mentioning, in the revisionism that takes place in the aftermath of the breakup of a significant relationship, the wounded party feels he or she has mistakenly trusted with disastrous consequences. Because of the unconscious awareness that it is as important to know whom to trust as it is to be able to trust, there is often a latent paranoia-proportionate to the extent in which one has invested in an intimate relationship-that one may very well be misreading the other’s capacity for reciprocity. Could it be, for example, that the object of desire is responding positively to only the narcissistic gratification of being so highly valued rather than to the person? In this light, it is understandable that the uneasiness over having possibly trusted too much can evoke a paranoid desire to test the strength of the partner’s supposed commitment. It follows, however, that the more irrational the paranoia, the 44

EVERY DAY EX A M PLES

more self-defeating such tests will be-trying to see how jealous the other is capable of becoming (as in Laing’s ingenious example) or how much angry criticism or even flatout abuse will be tolerated in order to hang on to the relationship, and so on. On the other hand, trust in a truly intimate relationship will serve a dynamic function: to maintain a necessary tension between the desire to go forward and the impulse to retreat. In such an equation, the capacity to trust will mirror dynamically the vicissitudes of the changing interaction. Because of this intrinsic fragility and susceptibility to suspiciousness, the capacity to trust, to a certain extent, is always being cautiously, defensively doled out. It is a characteristic therefore of even the most seemingly uncomplicated openness that something is typically kept in reserve. Trust almost never shows its full hand. It is forever obsessively testing the waters. For example, one of my patients who, deciding to append a marriage proposal on the last page of his Valentine’s card to his girlfriend, nevertheless felt the need to silently observe and assess her initial response before prompting her to turn the page. It is common for someone on the cusp of making some kind of commitment to try first to tease and tantalize the other in order to draw the other out one more time. Or, trying the opposite strategy, some may overdramatize the seriousness of their feelings, so that, should the other fail to respond appropriately, there is the saving grace that one did not really mean what one said or did. The paranoid aspect of trust is perhaps most evident whenever a person unconsciously decides to move to a significantly deeper level of involvement. In a certain sense, the unfolding and revelation of undisguised trust-in its fairly methodical 45

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

proceeding from level to level, with each advancement being contingent upon appropriately receptive feedback from the other-is analogous to the courtship, sexual, and mating rituals exhaustively studied in the animal kingdom by ethologists (Lorenz 1970,1971). It follows that paranoia will be strongest at the inception of an intimate encounter when-given that by definition there has been as yet no clear-cut positive feedback-the risk of complete rejection is at its peak. Consider the man, enamored of a woman across the room, who courageously begins to approach but catches her, spying his intention out of the corner of her eye, pointedly turning her head away. Nothing is easier to nip in the bud than an overture to intimacy. Which is why, traditionally, the first such move (to introduce oneself, obtain a telephone number, make the initial telephone call, go on the first date, send the first signal that there is a desire for physical intimacy, execute the first kiss, and so forth) is invariably the hardest and most likely to be agonized over (Alper 1994). Therefore, whenever someone feels injured narcissistically in a relationship, the first thing to go, the first thing that needs to be sheltered, is trust, and an almost irresistible way to pay back a person that one blames for having abused his or her faith is to make them earn the old trust back. In this sense, trust is allied to respect (another attribute to intimacy to be taken up later), which is always something that by definition has to be deserved. Someone invested in facilitating intimacy, however, will instinctively resist the temptation to use trust in a spiteful fashion: A person, for example, who attempts to justifjr the fact that he or she is withholding affection or engagement with the other by punitively saying, “I don’t know if I can trust you anymore.” He or she will re46

EVERYDAY EX AMP LES

sist using it as a bargaining chip (i.e., the person who says in effect, “When you show me I can trust you, I’ll think about giving you another chance”) or will resist using it in a seductive way (i.e., a woman who whenever she feels insecure, tells her boyfriend that she loves him, the mother who reminds her child, regardless of the quality of his or her behavior, that “Mommy loves you”). Instead, trust that is based on genuine intimacy is neither manipulatively contingent, used as a bargaining chip, or seductively unconditional. Instead, there is an unconscious awareness that such a capacity to be generously receptive to another, invaluable though it is, is nevertheless quite a precarious entity in need of continuous cultivation and fortification. That it has a short shelf-life and needs to be constantly renewed is not only dynamically in flux but, paradoxically, most vulnerable and susceptible to paranoia when it is at its strongest. There may be no better example of this than the one provided in Dostoyevsky’s great masterpiece, Crime and Punishment (1991 [ISSS]). The hero Raskolnikov, having worked himself into a state of reckless trust and desperate neediness, is at long last ready to throw himself upon Sonya’s love and mercy by confessing to her the cold-blooded murders of the pawnbroker and her pitiful sister. He is suddenly seized by what to him is an inexplicable surge of hatred for Sonya, a hatred that passes almost instantly upon the realization that there is literally no confession, howsoever heinous, that can cause her not to love him. In other words, when he realizes, to his dismay, that there is no point of no return, no line once crossed in terms of how much he can trust making himself vulnerable to her, he finds the courage to accept the relationship at last, to confess to the police, and face the consequences. 47

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

From our vantage point, what makes this scene so touching is that Raskolnikov knows he has done nothing to earn Sonya’s love. He has confessed his gruesome crime more for his own need to confess to someone rather than because of any commitment to be honest with Sonya, and, therefore, he has every right to expect that Sonya, a passionate Christian, will recoil in horror from the human monster about to be revealed. Yet, amazingly, she seems to almost magically sense that beyond this undeniably evil crime is a desperate need to be loved in spite of or because of his profound misery, and the one thing that can save Raskolnikov is the kind of love that only a near-saint like Sonya can hope to provide. Ordinary people do not, of course, have access to such an inexhaustible well of love and forgiveness. It is natural to live in fear, sometimes dread-especially with regard to those whose love or approval they crave-that sometimes, in their haste to show they are not withholding and untrusting, they may have overestimated the other’s capacity for or need to be tolerant and empathic. And in the worst-case scenario, the relationship may be unalterably damaged. The new dimension of the self that is being unexpectedly revealed to the trusted confessor may prove to be so at odds with the mental representation of the person that the other needs to believe in that it simply cannot be integrated. Or, even if it can, the psychic work necessary to incorporate this does not seem worth the effort and it becomes preferable to withdraw one’s investment in the relationship. This explains the invariable hemming and hawing and testing of the waters as the person who is on the brink of confessing what to them is a big secret gropes anxiously for the lifeline of a meaningful hint that, hopefully, positive feedback is in the offing. 48

EVERY DAY EXAMPLES

Not surprisingly, whenever someone is harboring what they believe is an unsavory, potentially shocking secret to tell, there is a kind of “should I or shouldn’t I” right up to the moment of truth. No doubt there is unconscious wisdom in such hesitation. Even if the most carehlly chosen confidant has repeatedly asserted his or her acceptance of a broad range of deviant, perverse, or abnormal behavior, the actual moment of truth is likely to reveal, among other things, how deep such avowed liberal beliefs really go and, even if quite authentic, to what extent can they be usefully applied in this particular case-the only one, after all, that matters. Such are the hazards of trust that, even at its soundest, tends to exist in a context of precarious flux. It should be obvious to the reader that I believe it is a risk not only worth taking but that must be taken if there is to be a chance for true intimacy.

DROWNING OUT THE OTHER Long before something as dynamically complicated as trust can ever hope to take root in a person, there has to be a kind of patient taking-in or what I call recefitivity to the other. As before, to make my point, I’ll begin with a striking counter example. Oscar, a soft-spoken, articulate media consultant, courteous to a fault but quick to assert his rights whenever he feels flagrantly mistreated, was clearly agitated. A year’s effort of doggedly trying to bring an attorney, who had effectively stolen about $1,000 from him, to some type of accountability, had just gone down the drain. A final bitter 49

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

conversation with the chief of the Manhattan legal bureau, specifically designed to amicably arbitrate such claims between client and attorney before they are referred to the court system, had convinced Oscar at long last of the futility of his situation. His hope-that by gaining access to the ear of the bureau chief himself he would at last find an ally who would overturn the recent maddening decision to abruptly close the case without having undertaken the slightest attempt at arbitration-had been thoroughly crushed. Here, in the patient’s verbatim account, is the decisive last conversation. After introducing himself on the telephone to the bureau chief, Oscar gives a rapid, succinct summary of his yearlong frustration at the hands of his game-playing former lawyer and the monumentally ineffectual arbitration bureau. Then this: Bureau Chief(after appearing to be silently empathic): There are some things I see you do not understand about our agency (then proceeding to outline the basic functions of the agency).

Oscar (sensing that the conversation is already moving in a totally negative direction): I was already aware of that. All that I’m asking is that your attorney assigned to this case make a one-minute telephone call to my former attorneyespecially in light of the fact just last week I received a copy of his letter to your agency-stating he was now ready to arbitrate the matter between us. Bureau Chief(feisti1y): Yes. But that letter was sent after the case was closed. Obviously he’s not sincere. Oscar (finding it increasingly hard to even pretend to be diplomatic): I understand, and certainly he may be bluffing. But I have been waiting a year for this arbitration to take 50

EVERY DAY E X A M PL ES

place, the telephone call I am suggesting could be transacted in a minute, and I think it’s worth a shot. Bureau Chief:I hear your hstration, but the case is closed. Oscar: Can’t it be reopened? Bureau Chief(quiet1y emphatic): No. Oscar (equally emphatic): Why not? Bureau Chief (no longer bothering to hide his mounting testiness): My decision is final. Oscar: All I am asking. . .

Bureau Chief(abrupt1y talking over Oscar and then rehsing to be interrupted himself): Everything that can be done has been done. The attorney we assigned your case to happens to be one of our finest negotiators. She told me herself that your attorney did actually make an offer which you rejected. Oscar: That’s not true! Bureau Chief(continuingto talk over Oscar): I didn’t interrupt you and wasn’t rude. I’d like to finish. Oscar (at this point givingup any hope ofever achievinga meeting of minds): I feel all you are trymg to do is brush me off. Bureau Chiej Look. I’ve already spent ten minutes talking to you. Oscar: But it’s okay for me to waste a year of my time with your agency? Bureau Chief: The case is not going to be reopened and I’m going to terminate this conversation now (hangs up).

As this encounter clearly shows, a decision had been made beforehand by the bureau chief to first placate and then quickly get rid of the caller. In such a scenario, there is no

room for mutuality. Once this decision is made unconsciously, 51

KNOWING IF IT’S T H E REAL THI NG

receptivity to the other is regarded not only as irrelevant but disruptive. Instead, there is a kind of psychic push to expel the person as expeditiously as possible, whether diplomatically or not, from one’s inner arena of considered objects. To achieve this, however, it is necessary to hide the blatant narcissism of one’s project by at least a semblance of fairness and a show of interest in the point of view that is being presented. Hence, the pretense of initial empathic listening, which is often employed by someone supposedly in charge such as the bureau chief. In spite of this, the true intent soon becomes apparent once resistance is encountered and-due to their fragile state of underlying, impatient narcissism-any pretence of mutuality is dropped as they begin to engage in a frank power play. This can become quite evident if the person is in a position of authority, which they can then exercise, if they choose to, with relative impunity. Those who happen to be in Oscar’s shoes will find themselves in the position of painhlly realizing that no one will listen to them and that they will face the humiliating prospect of being treated as an inconsiderate and uninformed pest. What begins as a hope that an important need of the self might be recognized and perhaps nurtured collapses and gives way to a sudden panic that they are about to be shamed gratuitously. Understandably, this will seem too much to bear, and they feel almost coerced into asserting the merit of their original request, their right, so to speak, to continue to take up time and occupy the interpersonal space. By this juncture, however, they are as uninterested in the needs of the other as is the authority figure-whose increasingly impatient attempt to oust them is now seen as unmitigated oppression. The only thing that makes sense is to invest their energies in the psychic Sumo wrestling match that is unfolding. 52

EVERY DAY EXAMPLES

The situation that I describe is one in which the person perceives him- or herself as more or less powerless. When that is the case, a common strategy (employed by Oscar) is to resign oneself to the futility of expecting one’s needs to be met, but endeavoring to compensate for it by punishing the perceived oppressor as much as possible. In effect, the person abandons his or her initial show of deference, throws cordiality to the winds-because it is seen there is nothing to be gained by it-and pursues what is thought to be the glaring soft spot in the persecutor’s righteous self-armor. More often than not, this soft spot is the gross hypocrisy of someone who pretends they are merely offering a service-doing what they are doing presumably “for your own good”-while covertly exercising excessive, punitive authority in order to put someone in his or her place and show that individual “who’s boss.” By calling a spade a spade, such a person (e.g., Oscar: “I feel all you are trying to do is brush me off’)-flatly implying they are being dictatorial in a mean-spirited way-can score an embarrassingly obvious point. They are using the power invested in them by their job in a blatantly self-serving way to justify what is essentially a profoundly nongiving stance under the guise of tough love/driving home a lesson that apparently needs to be learned. Now imagine the opposite. It is obvious that between the type of a closed, rigid person we have been describing and someone who is receptive in a genuinely patient, intimate manner there is a profound difference-one that would probably cause the surprised other to feel immediatelygiven to. Because, unfortunately, we live in a predominantly narcissistic culture (Lasch 1979), the recipient may not only feel given to but perhaps special in some way to have earned such serendpitous recognition. Unconsciously there is an awareness that recognition is a corollary of 53

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S

THE REAL THING

psychic investment. To allocate time and be receptive is to allow for the registration of impressions that might otherwise be ignored, thereby facilitating a more particularized sensing of the person. To feel recognized, therefore, is to feel uncommonly regarded. It follows that receptive recognition is the antithesis to the stereotyping that-in spite of its politicization in our culture by the political correctness movement-continues to flourish in the realm of everyday interpersonal relations as an almost universal mechanism. For example, typically in every dynamic interactive moment, unless each person is especially open to what is new or different in the other, stereotyping wiU occur to the extent each party assumes he or she knows (as they usually think they do) pretty much everything needed to know about his or her counterpart. To return to the example of Oscar, had the bureau chief been available for a more human encounter instead of being closed and rigid, he might, in addition to listening empathetically, have drawn Oscar out with timely questions. Being receptive in an intimate way does not mean simply being a passive receptacle. Often, when the occasion presents itself, there will be a concerted effort to facilitate the other’s communicative, expressive skills. It is worth noting, however, that there is a natural unconscious resistance to being truly receptive in this way, a fear that by changing their axis of orientation from self to other (in order to be empathic) they may be precipitously abandoning their own needs and best interests. It takes trust to let go and allow oneself to become invested in what may prove to be an alien persona or a blind alley. Part of the trust implicit in being receptive is the belief that, by accepting an unknown outcome, one will not be setting him- or herself up for disappointment. 54

EVERY DAY EX AM PLES

In contrast, dogmatically closed-off individuals such as the bureau chief who draws out the other are superficially reassuring themselves there will be no surprises-because they are writing the end of the story in advance-which means, of course, the story can never begin. The satisfaction for the rigid person, such as it is, is that while there can be none of the potential adventure or discovery of a possibly stimulating interpersonal engagement, at least there will be certainty. It is easy to see that those in charge in an officious way are most susceptible to a character slander ofjust this sort. First, because they generally tend to arrive unexpectedly; most people are deferential in the face of authority. Second, in spite of this, people in charge are aware, at least on some level, that they are resented for their authority and often disliked. They can never be sure if the smile, the thank you, the look of satisfaction they sometimes receive is for the service provided or for their personal style in delivering it. They are likely therefore to settle-in lieu of validation of their real selves-for a certain deference in their presence, preferring to see it as a sign of legitimate respect. Therefore, someone like Oscar who challenges their authority by unexpectedly addressing a perceived character flaw (“But it is okay for me to waste a year of my time?”) can strike a paranoid chord. In effect, the person wonders, “What am I doing that makes them unafraid to provoke me?” Added to this is that, typically, before such an actual confrontation erupts, the person in charge has been becoming increasingly frustrated that the other-instead of yielding to their show of definitive power-has in turn begun to get aggressive. Not surprisingly, having already been narcissistically injured, those in authority are especially sensitive to the charge of acting in an incompetent, irrational, and bullying manner. 55

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

This example shows that, in its glaring absence, genuine patience is an important ingredient of an intimate encounter. Not only will this hypothetical individual not script the interaction before it unfolds as this man did (and as those engaged in robotic role performances often do), but he will unconsciously allow for an element of spontaneity. He is open to learning something new about himself or about the other. No matter how familiar to him the ground he is about to cover, he realizes each encounter can contain many subtle differences. Even if there is considerable inequity in a particular area of life experience (for example, between lawyer and client or doctor and patient), the other is always an unknown territory to even the most practiced professional. Thus, in the above example, someone in a similar situation but who was unconsciously motivated to deal with this grievance in a more intimate, professional manner, might have respectfully listened rather than placating the other by cleverly letting them go first in the hope that they may be seduced by an opportunity for immediate ventilation. This means accepting the possibility that the grievance may be quite real and, if so, being prepared to carry out the appropriate reparative measures within reason. It is worth noting how much psychic work such a stance of true receptive openness might entail and how tempting it is to unconsciously close off to the other’s neediness. A way to achieve this, as I’ve shown, is to embrace an unchanging certainty, a certainty calibrated to satisfjr as much of one person’s needs as possible. And ironically it could be said that when two people are involved perhaps the only feasible strategy for such certainty occurs when the other’s needs are systematically eliminated in this fashion.

56

EVERYDAY EXAMPLES

“I DID IT M Y WAY” While receptivity may be looked upon as a vital precondition, the dynamic attribute mutuality pertains directly to the actual and ongoing process of intimacy. To show what it is, I begin again with its antithesis. I can think of none better than the following brief profile of a bully. This is someone whose primary defense in the face of interpersonal tension or threat is to be in charge. Such a person, you might say, polarizes power and authority; one party is to have it all, while the other is not allowed to have any weight or say in the matter, as though any influence he or she might acquire could only be used against the bully. The bully, therefore, hasjust one strategy for coping with interpersonal friction: the preemptive strike. He or she consistently and often successfully acts out what the paranoid may only fantasize about. The perceived adversary is reduced and defined as a simple obstacle with no other dimensions to his or her psyche. From this point of view it makes sense for the bully to overpower as quickly as possible, and the aim, therefore, is for the contest to be over before it really begins. This, of course, cannot be done without the use of force and, as a consequence, the bully sees the means ofresolution as based solely on power operations. But where does this kind ofleverage-for the ordinary person who does not hold any special office or rank-come from? The short answer is aggression. Such an individual is typically long-experienced and well-practiced in the art of intimidation. The very fact that someone seeks to intimidate you is itself intimidating. It is frightening that someone seems so willing to use force as a first, instead of a last resort, thus violating a fundamental social taboo (Gofhan 1959) that people are always

57

KNOWING IF I T ’ S T H E REAL T H I N G

accorded the benefit of doubt. And it is natural to think this person must be good at what they do. Part of the reason people succumb as often as they do to bullies is their fear and intuition that bullies have far more to lose than their adversaries do; that, with their prestige riding on coming out on top, they are far more likely to escalate matters into a furious struggle should they encounter unexpected resistance. This is not, as is so often suggested, because the bully is a sore loser; it is rather that he or she does not know how to lose without feeling humiliated. By contrast, the people who capitulate can console themselves that while they may be losing the battle, they are at least winning the fight for self-respect. They can tell themselves that they have refused to take such behavior seriously or descend to a level for which they have little respect. But more often than not, they are tormented by the thought that they have been unable to prevent the other from publicly humiliating them. As a result, the lingering shame and fear associated with the perception that they are incapable of defending their sense of worth in the wake of an unexpected hostile confiontation are probably the most common feelings suffered in the aftermath. (Undoubtedly, it is this unconscious awareness of just how small their opponent is likely to feel that not only motivates but empowers the bully.) It is worth noting, however, that most bullies, unless they are self-congratulating, malignant sadists, do not perceive themselves as persecutors; they are, on the contrary, gritty fighters who, when threatened by the intrusive action of another, are prepared to do whatever is necessary to defend their dignity and preserve their sense of potency. Because typical bullies carry an internal battlefield in their minds in which potential interlopers lurk everywhere, they are unusu58

EVERYDAY EXAMPLES

ally charged and prepared to stand their ground. What such

people do not want to see, however, is just how fragile their sense of self-esteem is, how very little it takes to threaten them, and how paranoid their views of the other’s perceived persecution of them often are. A clinical example can illustrate this. Melanie is a beginning psychotherapist whose forte is kindness, empathy, great sensitivity, and unusual warmth. Her issue as a patient, however, is that she loathes confrontation, becomes immobilized when threatened, and feels worthless when she does not stand her ground. In this particular session, Melanie reports what she proudly considers a “breakthrough,” a glorious moment when for once she stood up to a repulsive bully. The occasion is a local art theater that features the kind of independent films she loves. She is sitting with her boyfhend behind a middle-age couple, holding a rather large bag of groceries, as a result of an impulsive decision to do some last minute shopping, and now uncomfortably aware that the bag is too unwieldy to be placed on the floor. Resigning herself to holding her package securely in her lap, Melanie contents herself with watching the film, in which she quickly becomes engrossed. But after just a few minutes pass, the woman directly in front of her abruptly swivels in her seat and pointedly glares at Melanie. What could it be? Not a word had passed between Melanie and her boyfriend, in part because she was exquisitely sensitive to the disturbing effects upon others of any sounds she might produce in a darkened movie theater. Could it be the oh-so-faint crackling of the bulky package that, in spite of herself, would periodically shift in her lap? Could anyone possibly take offense at that? Thinking that could not be the case, her attention returns to the movie. But a few minutes later the woman 59

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

once again spins around in her seat and this time there could be no mistaking the hostile accusation implicit in her pronounced stare, a stare that is repeated periodically for the duration of the film. There was a time when Melanie would have stood still for such an insult, but, as she obviously wanted me to know, “not this time.” Rising from her seat at the conclusion of the movie, she sees the woman twist yet again in her chair for perhaps a final admonishing scowl, but now suddenly bending her face to within a foot of her accuser’s, she icily inquires, “Is there a problem?’’ Furious, through clenched teeth the woman shoots back, “The noise you were making is very distracting.” “Well, I didn’t hear any noise and it could not be helped. The package was too bulky to be placed on the floor and it’s only human, you know, to occasionally move in your chair.” Melanie’s words are as superior and judge-like as she could make them. Momentarily flustered but refusing to back down at this unexpected defiance, the woman-who is now joined by the man beside her who for the first time turns around to study the source of the complaint-with great emphasis, angrily repeats the charge, “We were both very distracted.” With that as a hopefully instructive contrast, I return to the theme of this section, mutuality, which as I view it, does not mean equality so much as a respect for and a sharing of difference. It is a recognition by each party that space has to be provided for another, something that is considerably harder to do than it sounds. It entails momentarily forgetting about one’s selfwhile being receptive and empathizing with the state of mind of the other. To make room in this way in a relationship for the representation and expression of someone else’s needs and wishes is also a compelling way of inviting the pres60

EVERY DAY EX AM P LE S

ence of that person’s true self. As a result, there is now a possibility that the two subjectivities can interact in a manner that simply does not often exist in ordinary interrelating, wherethough lip service is customarily given to the other’s esteem ( G o h a n 1959)-the overwhelming preference is for one’s own narcissistic needs. This, of course, is in stark contrast to the bully in our example who, in her obsession to be completely in charge, tries, in effect, to shove the unwanted presence of the adversary from the field of dynamic interaction. Only one person is to think, feel, act, speak, and be listened to. From this standpoint, much of what the bully does is a hysterical (and ultimately doomed) attempt to voice over and deny the existence of the other. The only reason such a primitive tactic works as well as it does is because he or she is momentarily able to convert a potentially human encounter into a pure power struggle. From this vantage point only forces and actions matter, not selves. The quintessential opposite to this kind of psychic strongarming are mutual means forgoing the immediate but superficial advantages that power plays provide. Instead, energy is invested into creating a kind of intermediate area where intimacy can arise. It is worth noting that it takes confidence in oneself to do this. It takes trust of the other to indicate you are presently willing to give them a chance to enter a place in which they can be taken seriously in light of the fact that there is always a chance that they will abuse the privilege. It follows that a cynic is someone who simply cannot believe that anything of value can result from granting another the benefit of doubt; whereas a bully is someone who is convinced it is dangerous to trust anyone who is remotely challenging and-especially when confrontation seems imminent-to fail to get in the first and last blows. 61

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

Because mutuality refers primarily to the quality of the interrelating, it is quite distinct from spending time with another, engaging in common activities, and even living together. So, by this definition, long-term marriages can be and often are characterized by a notable lack of mutuality, which, not surprisingly, is one of the first things married people complain about upon entering therapy (their familiar haunting sense of “living with a stranger”). By contrast, someone who relates in a mutual way, by being receptive on so many levels, is thereby afforded numerous opportunities to “know” his or her partner in a kind of in-depth manner that simply is not available in a relationship structured around either the individual or joint pursuit of narcissistic aims. From this perspective, what the bully does is to make it impossible to be mutual regardless of the intention of the other. It accomplishes this, as mentioned, by immediately transforming the incipient encounter into a power struggle. By making it crystal clear that he or she has no other interest except to dominate and humiliate a perceived adversary, the bully forces the person to-if not respond in kind-at least become defensive, combative, retaliative, suspicious, or hostile. Although obvious, it’s worth noting that it is literally impossible to be empathic to someone who is in the act of bullying you. So, does mutuality go out the window in such instances? Pretty much, but then that is the bully’s underlying agenda: to drag the other down to the lowest common denominatorsurvival of the fittest. My patient, Melanie, was a case in point. She, as mentioned, was one of the most compassionate, empathic, and sensitive persons I had ever met in or out of therapy. In other words, a model of mutuality. But in the encounter in the movie theater-a confrontation she judged to 62

E V E R Y DAY E X A M P LES

be a personal triumph, something she was proud of doing afterward-all of these wondefil qualities, by her own admission, were stripped from her. And in their place, what constituted her triumph in her own mind, was simply that she had for once not been afraid to stand up to someone who was trying to push her around. While the encounter was essentially based on the dynamics of power, there were-from the standpoint of mutualitysome subtle differences. For example, Melanie at most only offered measured resistance. She did not attempt to humiliate her antagonist. By pointing out that the unwieldy bag of groceries left her no choice but to hold it on her lap rather than place it on the floor of a darkened theater, she was indicating that not only was the faint if disturbing rustling of the package beyond her control, but that she would have been glad to recti+ the situation had she been able to. In other words, more than just putting someone in his or her place, she was imparting usefbl information. And, by allowing the woman to have the last word-"It was very distracting"-she was letting her save face in probably the only way that mattered to her. In terms of genuine intimacy and mutuality, these are, of course, at best crumbs. Which is why when someone does manage to emerge from such a confrontation with their dignity intact, as important as that is, it stands as a kind of negative success. While one is often relieved, gratefd, and proud of oneself, as Melanie was, for being able to prevent something truly horrible from happening, there may also be an unconscious awareness that this is quite distinct from pursuing and achieving something that is deeply, truly satisfjmg. It follows no one looks forward to or chooses to have an unpleasant confrontation with a bully, even one with a gratifjmgly face-saving denouement (unless, of course, one is sadistically and grandiosely 63

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

aggressive). Not surprisingly, a typical aftermath of such an encounter, when the thrill of a relatively successfd defiant stand has worn 06is that of lingering suffocation: one has only managed to survive an ordeal in which someone has tried to squeeze the life out of the self. Again by contrast, mutuality, an active state of mind characterized by a readiness to distribute the available psychic economy between self and other, can lend a sense of breathing room. This is more than a simple, democratic taking turns, or switching who gets to talk and who gets to listen. It involves nothing less radical than transforming the habitual narcissistic way in which one engages the world into a group activity. The I becomes we, or in Martin Buber’s (1937) terms, I and you become I and thou. And whereas receptivity, patience, and trust are essential preconditions for interrelating, mutuality refers to a considerably more dynamic ingredient of an ongoing intimate engagement. To show just how difficult it is, however, to adhere to the principle of mutuality with another person, I offer the following example. Billy, a John Goodman look-alike, is a “people person” as he likes to say, who enjoysjust about every facet of his life as a successhl wine salesman. However, he is aware that he possesses an almost insatiable thirst for attention and approval. In therapy, he is especially concerned with the quality of his relationship with his wife, Anna. A woman of strong feelings, who is equally immersed in her own career as an art director in a leading advertising agency, she is as needy for love and recognition as her husband and has managed to find a therapist of her own and seems similarly committed to the goal of working on the interpersonal issues. From the standpoint of intimacy, therefore, they seem well matched, but periodically,as is often the case, in spite of their best efforts, they 64

EVERYDAY EXAMPLES

find themselves caught up in disturbing, sometimes uncontrollable and even ugly fights. One of them particularly stands out in my mind. It revolved around the issue of food or rather who gets to feed whom. Billy is ashamed to admit but acutely aware that the lower he feels in spirits, the greater his desire to be fed a tasty meal by his wife. Although he understands that the late-night office hours both he and Anna habitually keep make this no simple task, he justifies his demand to himself by pointing to the many sacrifices he has made on behalf of his wife. On the night in question, Billy, especially exhausted, angry, and ravenously hungry, arrives at his train stop around eleven in the evening and, as is his custom, goes straight to the nearest pay phone to notify his wife of his impending arrival home. She often welcomes the news, but this time she immediately informs him, “You’ll have to make your own dinner. I just got home myself five minutes ago.” During the ten minutes it took to walk from the train station to his apartment, Billy did what he could to bridle his rising temper. He knew, after all, he had worked for years in therapy on the very issue of how his infantile neediness could, if ignited and indulged in, provoke a sudden flare-up of paranoid rage. So he reminded himself that he was filly capable of adequately and quickly feeding himself, that it was more than reasonable that a woman who worked as hard as Anna would be just as depleted as he was, and that if her admittedly curt tone had been less than hospitable, well, wasn’t he himself equally irritable? All of which worked well enough until the moment he opened the door of his apartment and saw his wife lolling in front of the television set, her back toward him, as she bent forward to eat the meal she apparently had just prepared for herself. The thought that, tired as she was, she had 65

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S

THE REAL THING

seemingly found the energy to whip something up for herself in no time; that she had put nothing out for him, not even the glass ofwine he habitually drank upon arriving home; that she did not even turn her attention away from the television set to acknowledge his presence as he entered the apartment, enraged him. Now this, as Billy was aware, was the critical moment, the time when it was essential that he hold his tongue, but he could not do it. Standing silently, accusingly over her as she slowly digested her meal, stonily staring in a way he knew she detested, he had only to say, “I see that you’re eating” to instantly inhriate her. And in about thirty seconds-in a manner entirely predictable if you were privy to the tortured patwere literally, tern of Billy and Anna’s fights-they psychologically, and physically in each other’s faces, their noses inches apart, as they spewed forth words of such intense, well-aimed toxic hate that they would reverberate and wound for days thereafter. It is worth noting that even though Billy and Anna were committed to working on this issue, had been immersed for years in the process of psychotherapy, and had long ago identified and raised to consciousness the idiosyncratic hot spots, buttons, and triggers that could ignite their rage, they had not only been unable to, but had spectacularly failed at nipping in the bud a quite preventable outburst. Although they both understood that mutuality in this charged situation would mean not giving in to their own narcissistic injury and outrage but instead trying to see the other’s point of view, it is just that-as my patient would later painfully confess-at the very moment when he is most fragde, it is so extraordinarily hard to pull of€. Why? I think only a little reflection will show that when a person is feeling narcissistically injured, deprived, and deval66

EVERY DAY EXA M PLES

ued, it is only natural to assume that the first thing he or she will try to do is to restore themself, something that especially anyone who professes concern for that person should instinctively understand. The problem, however, is that, on the contrary, it is no simple matter, even for someone who does care, to clearly recognize that the other is indeed in urgent need of tender, loving care. It is much more common for the person to perceive that the other is apparently being either selfish, demanding, inconsiderate, in a bad mood, or just complaining-a perception that is very oftenjustified. After all, someone who is feeling unfairly treated by life will almost automatically tend to minimize or be unreceptive to the legitimate needs of whoever else is around and will therefore be a decidedly poorjudge of whether his or her own need for special attention is being transmitted in a user-friendly way. In other words, someone like Billy who is being needy in an angry, aggressive way-far from appealing to the other’s sympathy and empathy-is likely to alienate his or her potential comforter with behavior that is regarded as unacceptably babyish. Needless to say, when that happens the party of the first part, the self-anointed, officially aggrieved one, cannot help but become furious. As though that person does not already have enough to deal with without being charged with fresh misconduct, such accusations are invariably regarded as outrageouslyinsensitive. It now becomes immediately apparent that when one’s partner, as in this case, the patient’s wife, unfortunately happens to be in a comparably fragde and needy state, a predictable explosion culminating in a horrible fight will ensue. And not surprisingly, in my experience, these are the precise dynamics of many of the worst fights in even the most intimate and healthy relationships. In short, to feel you are at your most vulnerable and then to be attacked-by the person to whom you feel closest-for 67

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

being in effect little more than a thin-skinned crybaby is simply too much for just about anybody to bear. It is here, of course, where the principle of mutuality, at least in theory, could come to the rescue. By merely realizing that the other is either not in the frame of mind at the moment to quickly snap to attention, or may actually be feeling pretty much as you are, is to remember at a critical juncture a central truth: In a relationship there can never at any single time be just one person’s needs to consider. That, of course, is not to deny that one person’s issues may in a given situation be far outweighing the gravity of the other’s. It is to say that even when this is the case, the other’s needs are always important, and always potentially vulnerable to slight. Nevertheless, as the example of Billy vividly shows, it can be quite daunting, when you are deep into your own private world of hope and fear, to find it necessary to remember the existential truth that to the other their existence, howsoever different, is every bit as precious. What therefore conceivably might have avoided his ugly confrontation, as Billy would subsequently realize, was a little restraint. If only he had remembered the history of his fights with his wife, kept his complaints and sarcastic remarks to himself until both of them had time to unwind and settle in together, and said whatever he had to say at a more opportune time-something he had worked on rather successfully in the past and would do so again in the future, if only because he was invariably spurred on by disasters such as this. To sum up, at times of great stress and tension between two people who customarily rely on the affirmation and nurturance of each other, the ability to see not only two quite separate points of view but, especially, the way in which they are likely to dynamically interact (based on past en68

EVERY DAY EX AMPLES

counters) can be invaluable. Being mutual therefore means being able to function from the enriched but considerably more complicated and precarious vantage point of two perspectives. Although this may seem self-evident when put this way (and I hope it does), it can take years and years of steady practice to develop the requisite skill and sensitivity to make it viable.

RESPECT In some ways, respect is analogous to trust. Essential to it, as mentioned, is that it must be earned (not used as a bargaining chip, although, of course, it can be). Respect basically means regarding something or someone as worthy of investing one’s time and energy. It is therefore a sign of respect that one pauses and seemingly earnestly considers before replying. Instinctively one wants to give the better part of oneself to what is valued. Accordingly, a response characterized by respect will more often than not tend to be full, thoughtful, and emotionally authentic, involving diverse parts and layers of the self. By contrast, it is a classic mark of disrespect to treat the other in a way that plainly shows that not only is there little or no time available for whatever they appear to want (e.g., the unreturned telephone call), but also that whatever is being asked for can be addressed and resolved almost immediately. In other words, the narcissistic preoccupations of the person just prior to the specific encounter are of considerably greater importance than what happens to be of interest to the other. Such an attitude of disrespect typically manifests itself in the way the person tends to regard the other’s 69

KNOWING IF IT’S

THE REAL THING

presence as basically an intrusion and a narcissistic injury; the supplicant soon realizing that they cannot wait to be rid of them. Not surprisingly, someone who feels disrespected will often feel infantilized. The inequity and complete lack of reciprocity are reminiscent of how one was treated as a child, and a common aftermath of feeling slighted in this fashion is to question one’s competency as an adult, to wonder if in some unbeknown way one is coming across in an uncharacteristically frivolous manner. (As we have seen, in cases of radical mistreatment, when, for example, there is a sudden paranoid confrontation, there is a temptation to question even one’s sanity.) Again by contrast, it is a sign of respect that time tends to slow down or fade into the background as there is now a brief suspension of ordinary narcissistic interests and their management. Instead, there is a sense of nonlinear time, of internal process, and of an altogether different psychic rhythm. The person to a certain extent is in awe of the object of their respect and is thereby willing not only to make time in order to engage with it, but to step back a little to create a necessary distance, while unconsciously endeavoring to expand his or her mental space and receptivity with regard to it. (It follows that an act of deepest disrespect is, in other words, “getting in someone’s face.”) In short, a characteristic of respect is that people are prepared to work on its behalf, and one of the principal reasons someone is liable to resent or fight against a person who clearly does not share their regard for someone or something is that they are aware of what they have invested and the effort they have expended to cultivate their interest. The object of respect is therefore a clearly held symbol of what they consider worthwhile, and it cannot help but seem that the person who apparently knowingly denigrates this is thereby violating 70

EVERY DAY EX AMPLES

an integral part of who he or she is. There is then an almost immediate paranoid feeling that if one lets that go, there may be no end to the abuse one may suffer at the other’s hands. The irony, however, is that your detractor may feel exactly as you do. Compounding this is that if one is intent, for whatever reason, to dispose of something or someone as quickly as possible, it makes sense to continue to devalue it. Thus, one of the things that often happens in a polarized paranoid confrontation is that it is unfortunately reduced to a contest of who in the final analysis is going to be respected or disrespected, what will get valued, and what will get trashed. As mentioned, what makes paranoia such a disturbing game is that there is room for only one winner. (It is obvious but worth mentioning that whatever respect one seeks to achieve in a paranoid stand off will have to be extracted and coerced. The one who succumbs to the other in the end is intimidated by backing down, knowing that to defer in this manner is in effect to pay tribute to an adversary’s superior psychic aggression. This backing down is then taken as a substitute for respect, the closest thing to respect he or she is likely to receive in spite of the fact that unconsciously, on some level, there is an awareness that respect, like affection or love, has to be freely given if it is to mean anything. On the other hand, although the intimidator, bully, and paranoid aggressor understand that they are always resented if not hated for their power, such resistance is nevertheless viewed and rationalized as a grudging tribute to the authority of their stance. Although undeniably punitive in their actions, they may feel themselves moralistically so (like a judge passing sentence). Punishing the other becomes equated with dispensing justice. The inevitable hard feelings and resentment of the one who is being punished and put back in his or her place is attributed to the bad conscience of 71

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

the guilty. It is after all their inability to satisfactorily monitor their own behavior that necessitates someone else forcibly restraining them. Thus, the paranoid person who triumphantly punishes a person perceived to be persecuting him or her no more expects gratitude and affection than a judge delivering a sentence. By contrast, the respect that is sought by someone engaged in an ongoing intimate relationship is akin to an autonomous recognition of the worth of the true self, or at least some important aspect of it. Like trust, however, it is not a constant and can be expected to dynamically shift as the relationship does. Invariably then there will be moments or times when the respect that is seemingly being paid will fall below an acceptable threshold. And this will almost always problematize the relationship, the other now being presented with a dilemma: Is the apparent lack of basic appreciation an indication of unwarranted disrespect and, therefore, something to be confronted? Or is it, instead, the product of an accurate perception of the person’s shortcomings? Or is it just a sign of the other’s waning interest? Or is it none of these, but only a symptom of the person’s fragility, insecurity, or paranoia? It follows that how someone answers and interprets these questions w i l l determine the manner in which he or she responds or does not respond. It is characteristic, for example, of someone who is intimate to be aware of not only his or her own need but also the need of the other for respect, as opposed to a narcissistic or a paranoid relationship in which there is concern for only one’s own prestige. Instead, there is an instinctive awareness of the consequences of inadvertently delivering a blow to their partner’s self-esteem through oversensitive, premature accusations, or attributions of negligent regard. On the other hand, they are painhlly cognizant that if 72

EVERY DAY EX AMPLES

they say nothing and continue to suffer in silence (a typical reaction) they are likely to do more harm than good. Compounding this is the intrinsic difficulty of trying to solicit respect. Time and again patients who are in this position have told me, “If you have to ask for it, it’s not worth it”-which then becomes a powerful rationalization for either denying there is a need for any confrontation or for adopting an opportunistic wait-and-see, passive-aggressive strategy of giving the other enough rope to hang him- or herself. What feels even riskier, however, is to attempt to express one’s need for greater affirmation without thereby sounding insecure or unsure of oneself. It is a mark ofintimacy, however, that the person trusts they have built up enough credit in the eyes of another that they can afford to take such a risk, that there is a sufficient margin of safety for them to make mistakes, to fail, to put their worst foot forward, and still be basically accepted for who they are. Furthermore, if the couple has a history of investing in and really working on the issues in the relationship, there will also be an appreciation that it takes considerable self-confidence and trust to candidly admit real weaknesses. And paradoxically, the relationship may be strengthened, few things being more reassuring than actually witnessing the other radically lowering his or her customary defenses when in your presence. By dropping any pretense of a smooth social front-the relatively idealized image of oneself that usually feels considerably safer to present-and in its stead revealing the messiness of the self, a sense of realness and truth may emerge. But what if something goes wrong with even this best-case, therapeutic scenario? In point of fact, more often than not the respect that is supposedly given does not seem enough and because of the difficulty in admitting this to oneself or especially to the other, it is hard to know whether one is simply 73

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S

THE REAL THING

complaining, is genuinely trying to earn even greater respect, or is really subtly trying to coerce appropriate deference. Although people vary considerably in this regard, each person has a threshold, as previously mentioned, beyond which he or she finds it unbearable to either wait for more respect or patiently strive to earn it. If such a person happens to be in an intimate relationship and is sufficiently aware of the toxic side effects of trying to coerce it, he or she may feel that there is no choice left but to fight for it. Fighting for respect, in the sense I am using it, means realizing that someone is not being narcissistic to assert that he is being shown insufficient regard. He is not thereby being unappreciative of the affirmation already accorded, nor is he being greedy and insensitive to, in effect, demand more consideration. Nevertheless, although it is easy to state, it is extraordinarily hard to pull off. A common strategy therefore of someone with this goal in mind is to wait for a clear instance of an unambiguous slight-that is to wait until the other has been caught red-handed in the act of devaluing the other-and to then use that to press his or her point. Because such a person feels doubly vulnerable-first to perceive him- or herself as disrespected and then to feel obliged to discuss this with the other-it obviously helps to come from the strongest possible position, that is, to first gather some powerhl ammunition against the one you intend to confront. Someone who feels decidedly unappreciated and who unexpectedly confronts the other with an allegation of having just dealt an unfair blow to his self-esteem, is therefore using a kind of preemptive strike. And no matter how respectWy, how unjudgmentally this is presented, the recipient cannot help but immediately become defensive; he cannot help but feel that he is unjustly accused. Now even if, in the best-case scenario, he 74

EV E RY DAY E X A M P L ES

quickly senses the validity of the charge and is genuinely apologetic and willing to make some kind of reparation, there is invariably a part of him that will experience a narcissistic injury at being brought to accountability in this way, if only because people in our culture are so rarely direct with one another. It is understandable then for the person being confronted to wonder if anything he or she really did could have been so bad as to have justified the embarrassment of being summarily called up on the carpet; or, if this is not the case, is he or she instead being subjected to a coercive demand? (This is why such a person typically feels so much better and so much more empowered when, instead, they are the one who initiates the apology with the other, who is now in the reverse position of feeling gratefd, given to, and let off the hook from having at last to be confrontational.) However, when someone is caught off guard (which is usually the case), confronted, and conscious of reacting in a defensive manner, that person will invariably not feel good about him- or herself. To the degree to which that person perceives him- or herself as having been caught red-handed, the individual is likely to harbor doubts about the esteem in which he or she is held. To call another to account, therefore, is to unconsciously know that you are pulling the rug out from under their customary mode of relating, shaking them up, andsince confrontations are almost never expected-throwing in a surprise element. There is also a sense in which-by upending the other’s customary composure through an unanticipated confrontation-the person may be unconsciously transmitting knowledge of what it feels like to be suddenly disrupted by another. In other words, the person is simultaneously empowering him- or herself while disempowering the other. It follows that confrontation, no matter how well intended, must by its very nature commence with a serious inequity. 75

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

However, since a key ingredient in intimacy is mutuality, as mentioned, it follows that it will be exceedingly difficult to have what might be called an intimate confrontation. In the best-case scenario, individuals will be aware they have temporarily seized a power advantage by calling another to accountability over a perceived slight and will endeavor not to unfairly exploit whatever interpersonal leverage they may have thereby won. Instead they will struggle earnestly to remember that threating their partner’s equilibrium is only justified if it is in the service of greater intimacy.

T H E REVIEWER

If the indispensable quality of mutuality tends to fade away when two people confront each other, it is perhaps no less absent when someone elects to don the mantle of a critic. Recently a woman came into my office and without a word handed me a copy of an anonymous Internet review ofher book. Just a glance at the opening sentences, studded with phrases like n 7 t it”; “unbelievably bad”; “don’t buy this book”; 6 6 ~ ~ u l dfinish “typos and grammatical errors galore”; “stick figure caricatures,” told me why. My patient, a well-regarded professional freelance author who had published numerous articles and books, had never in her life experienced such a wildly trashing, frontal assault on her sensibilities. Although she had done her best to prepare herself for a shock, having been forewarned by a friend who had first spotted the review, she was surprised and upset by how shaken she had been upon initially reading it. Each word registered with the force of a verbal slap in the face. What especially troubled her was that although she had almost immediately realized that the 76

EVERY DAY EX AMPLES

self-anointed reviewer was as unprofessional as could be; was not remotely familiar with the subject matter; expressed him- or herself in a rather childish and petulant manner; and seemed basically motivated by a desire to be as negative and mean-spirited as possible, she felt powerless not to be affected by the review. It seemed that no amount of well-recognized, solid, professional accomplishment over the past fifteen years could eradicate her wish that this reviewer, too, would join the ranks of those who admire her. Indeed, when she thought about it retrospectively in an effort to restore herself, she had to admit that during the first twenty minutes of aftershock, probably no single person’s opinion in the universe seemed to count as much as the point of view of that anonymous, Internet sniper. Plainly ashamed and conhsed that she could still be so sensitive to negative criticism at this rather advanced stage in her career, she had wanted at least my validation that the review had been as demeaning as she had perceived it. And reading the whole of it I had to concur that on the face of it, it seemed comprised of venomous, if childish, lashing out. Yet, I could not help noting, along with my patient, just how potent it had been; a potency magnified by the anonymity afforded by the Internet where identities, even gender, can be shed, played with, and exchanged at will. It seemed a particularly clear, if extreme example of how the person who chooses to relate in the mode of the critic will often unconsciously grant himself carte blanche to eradicate most of his humanity. Perhaps it is somewhat analogous to what Freud (1923) once pointed out; that for the soldier in wartime conditions, a war superego will supersede the ordinary individual superego. There is a process by which someone, motivated to render a critical judgment, whether professional or not, will begin to identifjr with a higher, more objective authority (i.e., 77

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

the critic’s superego) that is meant to override the vicissitudes of the ordinary discriminativefunction. Not surprisingly, once this higher authority has been assumed, one will somehow feel free of the customary obligation to relate to the other as a person and then be able-so long as one seems to be maintaining a facade of objectivity and passable intellectualism-to be simply critical (as though it is ever possible to be just the embodiment of a pure critical function). It is worth noting that our ready acceptance of our immense complexity being reduced in this way can be linked to comparable experiences at the hands of our own superego, especially those times when we feel judged in an excessively punitive or unforgiving manner. Added to this are those times when we are painfully aware of how another seems to be perceiving us in an almost wholly negative manner. To counteract this, there is the social contract we have referred to, in which everyone, provided they have not violated some essential group taboo, will be accorded at each encounter a certain minimum status (Gohan’s [ 19591 “saving face”). It follows that what makes the critic, professional or otherwise, so feared is the license seemingly afforded by the adoption of the critical stance to merely skip over the need to relate. Such a critic, as long as he or she does not appear to have an ax to grind or to be indulging in an ad hominem attack, is comparatively free to delete the humanity of the subject of the supposed review. As though what is taking place is a dialogue between two superegos with information being exchanged, an analysis perhaps being offered, and a mind merely being exercised. Nevertheless, there is often an awareness on some level that criticism, even at the hands of the most professional reviewer, is always to a considerable degree subjectively derived. This, coupled with the common obser78

EVERYDAY EXAMPLES

vation that criticism is frequently intentionally destructive, blatantly aiming to devalue or put the subject in his place, makes it galling, particularly when the critique is perceived as toxic. Moreover, one is expected-at the price of appearing thin-skinned or defensive-to act as though one has only been subjected to an unpleasant opinion with which one happens to disagree. The venom that is unfortunately characteristic of so many reviews derives in part from the disempowered position of the aspiring critic. To be a critic, after all, is to adopt a critical function, which in turn means assuming a neutral stance. To be a critic is to be an audience to another who is presumed to have created something worth commenting upon. Being a critic means that something has occurred within the context ofyour life that has been sufficiently arresting to have engendered the need to set aside time to reflect upon the experience and to begin to organize and clarif). one’s thoughts on the matter. From this perspective, a critique, whether publicized or private, is always in part a preemptive strike against being unduly influenced by something perceived as a creative object . The degree to which the creative object has been experienced as intrusive can often be correlated with the amount of deconstructive fury manifested by the review. Viewed this way, a criticism-far from being a disembodied exercise in objective analysis-is interactive, interpersonal, and more often than not retaliatory in nature. And because there may be unconscious recognition that frequently the critic has not initiated but been provoked into a critical stance that is as much a defense as it is the articulation of a mature, conscientiously objective point of view, there is resentment. Critics then cannot help feel that they have been bullied into a psychic corner 79

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL

THING

by a superior creative force and made to spell out just what

they really think on a subject that was hardly in the forefront of their consciousness. If this is true, what would a review characterized by what I am calling intimacy be like? Most likely it would be one in which the reviewer displayed a generous appreciation, if not a love, of the subject at hand that would not disallow a healthy, stimulating difference of opinion. When this happens, it is shown most clearly by the critic’s obvious enthusiastic affection, the fact that the act of exercising an analytic function seems to be a source of pleasure. Such a critic, even when there is considerable constructive criticism, will demonstrate a desire to nurture the work in question. He or she will not only be an ally of the work, but someone who is ready to help it along and will often show a sound grasp of the intricacies of its construction. It follows that such an intimate review, by definition, would entail a substantial degree of reciprocity and engagement; the reviewer would thereby have an appreciably broader understanding of the core of the work than someone who is content to basically dissect the subject matter in a mean-spirited way. When I think of how essential I personally consider the ingredient of appreciative love to be to an intimate review, I invariably remember the time when I was offered the opportunity myself. To my surprise, I was asked by the editor-in-chief of a major psychology reviewjournal in the United States (someone who had shown unusual generosity in allocating time and space for my own books to be reviewed) to write a five-hundred-word critique of a new book by a prominent psychotherapist. Although I had never consciously entertained aspirations of being a reviewer and had more than a few reservations about the legitimacy of the role itself, I felt I could not very well say no. In 80

EVERY DAY E X A M P LES

retrospect not feeling entitled to be more selective regarding the book and author I was agreeing to review was my greatest mistake. Despite having read widely, I had never heard of the author in question, but I quickly rationalized that it didn’t matter as there were many first-rate writers and marvelous books I had not heard of or had never read. Much more crucial was that once I had received the book and had dipped into only a few pages, I immediately knew that there was not an affinity between the author and myself, so irreconcilably divergent were our respective philosophies of psychotherapy. Although it soon became apparent to me that the author was a highly intelligent, dedicated, scholarly, and quite sensitive man, qualities I greatly admire, he was also a torturous, tedious, and rather painhlly unimaginative writer. In other words, had I not made this commitment I would never on my own initiative have purchased this book, and had I done so, I would almost certainly have stopped reading after a few pages. But this was a luxury I could no longer afford because I now felt obligated to not only read but also to study this book as thoroughly as I could. Which is what I did. For about fifteen hours I pored over this slim volume. I then spent an additional ten hours trying to construct the most conscientiously honest review I could manage in just five hundred words. My greatest concern, however, was whether I would be as nurturing to both book and author as I wanted to be-in keeping with my philosophy-something I do think I finally accomplished. Not surprisingly, however, the entire experience proved nerve-wracking and exhausting. What I learned the hard way, and have never forgotten, wasjust how indispensable it is to have a prior love and appreciation for the thing you are undertaking 81

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

to critically evaluate; that is, if there is to be any hope of connecting and resonating with it. And with that painfd but iUuminating experience in mind I made a resolution-one I have managed to keep-that I would never consent to review a book or author that I did not truly love. Now let us look at the very same issues from an institutionalized, legal perspective. There probably is no better example of what is considered to be an exercise in objective criticism than that which is contained in the existing requirements for serving on ajury of either a civil or criminal case. What is striking about these criteria-that the prospectivejuror be literate, have some education, manifest no political, social, or racial bias that could affect thejudgment of the case, and be capable of being fair and impartial-is the degree of mistrust of the individualjuror that is implied. By trying to hold the prospectivejuror to a standard of conduct that plainly does not exist-that they be without bias or irrational thought whatsoever-they betray a wariness of allowing the person who is to serve to function in a real way, which involves more than just being an impartial student of the evidence. It involves intuitions, feelings, empathy, imagination, life experience, and so on. Ourjudicial system in this country, however, seems to want it both ways. They want a selection of jurors based on the most nondiscriminating, democratic process possible, and they want the jurors who are chosen to possess a highly developed skill to think in a rational, objective fashion. Since unconsciously it is recognized that the chances of this happening are almost nil, a facade is settled for in which jurors and trial attorneys collude in the pretense that an objective body of people has just been assembled. After which, to ensure that jurors at least attempt to adhere to a standard they cannot realistically attain, the court does its best to intimidate them. 82

EVERY DAY EX AMPLES

From our standpoint, it is worth noting that creativity does not seem to be considered a necessary ingredient for jurors who are supposed to arrive at an objective decision. Instead, it is thought sufficient if they can be induced to conform to an arbitrarily decreed prescription for how presumably sound, fair-minded decisions can be reached. What I personally find remarkable in this, however, is the underlying narcissistic assumption that the judicial system somehow knows enough about complex group dynamics to meaningfilly lay down rules by which a random pool of people can arrive at a valid consensus. A great deal seems to follow from this tacit assumption that is rarely examined. Most obviously it influences the trial attorneys who must selectjurors on the basis of their perceived ability to exercise the hypothetical decision-making skills they presumably need. More crucially, it will affect the presentation style of their cases, geared as it is to inspire confidence and trust in the imagined minds ofjurors. As a psychotherapist in Manhattan, the annual site of a prodigious number of civil and criminal court cases, I’ve had the unique opportunity to listen to patients who become jurors reveal their innermost thoughts about what it felt like to serve on a jury. Without fail the patient was eager to discuss the process and could hardly wait until the verdict had been reached so as to be released from their obligation not to speak to anyone about the proceedings. Considering them as a group, I was struck by some common denominators in their behavior. Each of them was initially reluctant to serve, then increasingly fascinated, and eventually empowered by the experience. All of them felt intimidated by the overall process. All felt that the procedure by which jurors were selected (voir dire) resulted in a kind of charade and performance where answers were given-especially in the areas of being unbiased, 83

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

fair-minded, and capable of rendering an objective decisionon the basis of what they imagined the respective trial attorneys who were interviewing them wanted them to say. Afterward I remembered thinking that the court had been lucky to get my patients-each of whom was college-educated, conscientious, empathic, and intelligent-to serve as jurors. But I was also impressed by the baffling complexity of the group dynamics and how utterly unpredictable the final outcome had proven to be. Perhaps because of this, and in reaction to it, we have the reassuring myth that this process can actually be reduced to just a few legal instructions from the presiding judge-and thereby controlled (for a detailed analysis of this intricate dynamic, see Alper 1996). It is worth noting, too, what a dim view is taken here of the individual psyche, how profoundly uncreative a procedure is that bans outright any consideration of interesting or speculative hypotheses. Even if it is accepted that there is no room for creativity, that only cold, naked truth is wanted, by attempting to filter out every psychic quality except fair-minded, bias-free rationality, it is hard to understand how they can honestly believe they are constructing the most sophisticated and reliable deliberation process conceivable. Now, plainly, the model that is being followed here for arriving at the elusive underlying truth is the debate: The traditional American idea that if two opposing advocates (e.g., prosecutor and defense attorney) vigorously clash, the truth will emerge when the smoke has cleared for the jurors to see. What is overlooked is that this is precisely what debates do not achieve. Instead, debates are “won” not on the basis of who is more truthfd than the other, but on who more forcefilly exposes the weaknesses of their opponent’s side, while persuasively arguing the merits of their own case. (Nowhere is 84

EVERYDAY EXAMPLES

this clearer than in a political election where two sides fiercely and sometimes viciously contend with each other, wherewhen the dust has settled-the only thing that really emerges is who has been more popular.) If a courtroom is the scene of a kind of debate, then it is a very supercharged, special one, with a defendant’s most basic freedoms hanging in the balance, with the gravity of the occasion being used to justify the heavy restraints placed upon the normal decision-making process. Of particular interest is that ordinary discussion and interrelating among members of the jury are activities that are considered necessary to constrain. Jurors are forbidden to speak to one another about the case until it is time to officially deliberate; and, more significantly, they are not allowed to exchange a single word with either the prosecutor or defense attorney. What this means is that, on one hand, the truth is supposed to emerge-as mentioned, from a clash of opposing sides-in what is clearly a group process. On the other hand, there is to be absolutely none of the customary feedback except for a rigidly circumscribed period of time earmarked for sequestered deliberation. The stern taboo against the freedom to relate among members of a jury has been carried over and practiced, albeit, admittedly, in a nonjudicial fashion, between the professional reviewer and the targeted subject. As though contact might contaminate, objectivity needs to be compartmentalized and protected from the disturbing influence of spontaneous emotion. The psychic isolationism that is adopted by the critic is justified as being a necessary self-discipline in order to attain a higher level of functioning. What is denied is an underlying paranoia that the recipient of the criticism-especially if it is in any way seriously negative or perceived that way-will vigorously object and, if given the chance, intervene on his or her 85

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

own behalf. Although obvious, it is worth noting that because of this there tends to be a world of difference between face-toface critiques and impersonal ones. The point was driven home to me many years ago when I was working in an editorial office alongside a rather distinguished looking, middle-age man who had been a somewhat famous author during his twenties. This man, a Southerner with an irreverent streak, loved to retell tales of past literary wars. One of these involved what became his defining novel, published before he turned thirty. Shortly after it was published, a prominent New Tork rimes critic roundly panned it, writing that the author’s self-conscious literary style was no more than “an obnoxious imitation of Ernest Hemingway.” Understandably, that particular phrase, as well as the review itself, had lodged itself in the author’s brain, although seemingly not in the reviewer’s mind. For as luck would have it, several months later they ran into each other unexpectedly at a literary party and were formally introduced for the first time. The critic, beaming broadly and with no trace of awkwardness, immediately thrust out his hand: “Oh, so glad to meet you.” To which, without missing a beat while staring stonily at the extended hand, the author responded: “Fuck you!” As he relived for me the delicious moment when the famous reviewer could do nothing but let his jaw go slack, I could see just how much this “dream-come-true”moment of hand-to-hand combat with the critic of his nightmares had meant to him. There is, however, a deeper and more personal reason for my admitted sensitivity to the effects of toxic criticism, one that dates to my own beginnings as a psychotherapist. In my book, Portrait of the Artist as a Toung Patient (1992), I described my years of experience dealing with struggling, frustrated young artists who would sometimes invite me to listen 86

EVERY DAY EX AM PL ES

to their music, to attend their concerts, their openings of group shows located in the New York art scene, or their appearances in off-Broadway plays. I described how early on I realized my patients, knowingly or unknowingly, presented me with a challenge. Since their artistic creations were what they most prized about themselves and since any reaction, howsoever sophisticated, has a strong subjective component, it seemed that by honestly revealing how I felt about what they did, I would simultaneously be disclosing my personal feelings about a core part of their true self-something that would definitely seem to be a violation of my professional obligation to maintain neutrality. When I raised the question of how to handle this very problem with one of the first artists I had ever treated, my classically trained supervisor at the time suggested that I tactfully decline the offer, explaining that I could better serve the therapy by maintaining my neutrality. Despite my initial and persistent qualms, it was advice I adhered to for the few years I was in supervision with a man whom I greatly admired. Subsequently,however, when I had graduated from my training and felt sufficiently confident to realize that only I could ultimately decide what therapeutic stance I felt best suited me and the needs of my patients, I began to rethink the matter. The more struggling young artists I saw, the more it seemed to me that it was simply unrealistic to believe that they could accept my refusal to be audience to their works without feeling seriously rejected. While it was certainly true that, for example, by attending a play or concert in which they were performing, there was always the chance they might feel too gratified by the extra attention and thereby view me as unprofessional, it nevertheless appeared worth the risk. But when I acceded to their invitation to experience their art work, a second, and to my mind 87

K N O W I N G I F I T ’ S ‘THE R E A L T H I N G

deeper dilemma presented itselfi How could I review the work in a meaningful way unless I had the freedom to be honestwhich, of course, means the freedom to say whether or not I thought something was truly bad? In this way, very early in my career as a professional psychotherapist, I was brought face-to-face with the problem of how to simultaneously be a critic while relating in a sensitive manner to the other. Instinctively I recognized that to denigrate the work in question in any way-the staple, as mentioned, of the traditional review-would be devastating to both the artist and to our relationship. Instead, I needed to find something I could genuinely appreciate, resonate with, and talk about. In the background of such remarks would be any legitimate criticism I might have, but always constructively framed. Although I was anxious at first that I might not be able to discover any redeeming features, I quickly realized that once someone is motivated to find something with which to connect, rather than something to disparage or put in its place (as the professional critic is wont to do) it is surprisingly easy to carry off. And not because I happened to be someone who likes just about anything. On the contrary, I prided myself on being quite a discriminating critic, yet someone who also approached the work in question in an empathic and nurturing, rather than a detached and categorizing, frame of mind. Once I did so, I found that I could almost invariably connect with what I experienced. This was because the artists I saw were usually not only above average in intelligence but far superior to the ordinary person when it comes to creativity. It is for good reason that someone decides to invest a significant portion of his psychic energies in fashioning an original symbolic form for expressing himself. From that perspective alone, 88

EVERYDAY EXAMPLES

there is always something unusual and of interest in any serious artist’s endeavor. Not only could I do this, but to my delight I discovered that by relating in a meaningful way to their art, I was also fashioning a bond with their true self. As I developed more skill at this over time, what had begun as a defensive reaction-a fear I might be hurting the young artist’s feelings by declining to be part of their audience or, by contrast, doing so but betraying an insufficient appreciation of what I had witnessed-had turned into something distinctly beneficial. Repeatedly, these patients said that they felt understood not only as people but as artists in a way they had not previously experienced. Looking back, my obvious readiness to find some meaningful link between the highly idiopathic manner in which they had chosen to creatively express themselves, and my own equally subjective view of the world-far more than any critical sophistication I was able to bring to bear-proved the decisive ingredient. From that and similar experiences, I learned the importance of never forgetting to include the human equation whenever one opts to be a critic, professional or otherwise. To sum up, from the standpoint of intimacy the critical function would not be superordinate to, but rather in the service of the potential engagement between reviewer and subject. From such a perspective, it is immediately apparent that if one truly hates something, one does not invest his time in publicizing his point of view. To the aspiring intimate reviewer, toxic criticism of the kind my patient incurred on the Internet is simply edited out like bad writing. That, of course, is considerably harder to do than it sounds (as I learned when I attempted to positively review a book I truly 89

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S

THE REAL THING

did not like). It is harder because it requires greater psychic investment; since being an intimate critic means relating as well as analyzing, it involves far more of the self. This is why it is so much easier to lapse into devaluation, condescension, or outright trash-talking (one of the popular indoor sports of our time).

POSTMODERN INTIMACY: I CAN’T COMMIT Continuity and staying power have long been held to be trademarks ofintimacy. But against this, and chipping away at it, is the changing ethos in which we live. For what our postmodern age privileges above all else is perspective. By replacing the timehonored center of consensual truth/reality/essencewith an inexhaustible multiplicity of points of view, it represents, in one respect, perhaps the most narcissistic philosophy in history other than solipsism. (The difference being the narcissist, in contrast to the solipsist, who believes “My point of view is the only one in the world,” says, in effect, “Mine is the only one I care about.”) The implicit narcissistic element in postmodern philosophy therefore is that by investing so much in decentering the primacy of external reality, it covertly aims to displace truth with gratification. Viewed this way, postmodernism constitutes a powerhl narcissistic rebellion, resting as it does on an unconscious equation:

authoritarianism = truth being something that exists outside of me = not me = that which is therefore a narcissistic injury The great psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas (1995), who has often written positively about the multiplicity of selves, 90

EVERYDAY EXAMPLES

has nevertheless acknowledged the postmodern excesses in this regard, while noting in effect that everyone, even postmodernists, seem to require at times “the illusion of a unified self.” I would add, especially in an intimate relationship, that the sense of permanence necessary to maintain a commitment, requires a belief in the unity of the other’s self. Once postmodernism is looked at pragmatically in this way, from the standpoint of intimacy, its deficiencies become rather obvious. For if it is so extraordinarily hard these days for one person to make a substantive commitment to another, then the idea of committing not to a single, but to a potentially infinite number of multiple selves is that much more inconceivable. Not surprisingly, therefore, those who try to apply the postmodernist belief in a multiplicity of selves to an actual relationship soon find it does not work. As a matter of fact, in all my years of experience treating singles (Alper 1994) I never encountered anyone who seriously tried to make it work, so far as intimacy goes. By contrast many people, consciously or unconsciously, have used a watered-down, pop version of postmodernism to justifjr flirtation, infatuation, promiscuity, and the chronic inability to commit. Multiplicity, pluralism, and relativism are used as a convenient rationale for elevating relational transience to a respectable modus operandi. They are used as a convenient rationalization for leaving any relationship one does not like; as a denial of the relevance of commitment; as a cautionary, philosophically legitimate reminder that long-term involvement can essentially be either a trap or the avoidance of the healthy exercise of existential choices. They are used-when postmodernism trumpets as its credo, “the center does not hold”-to projectively identify with a supposed lack of substantiality; an emptiness that in reality resides in its own core. Finally, they are used to convert a sense 91

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

of inadequacy and an inability to stay the course into a narcissistic triumph. Someone is not shifting their point of view or changing relationships because they are frightened of the tensions and challenges of an intimate connection; they are instead simply choosing not to do so because of an enlightened vantage point and sophisticated appreciation of the diversity of opportunities that are available. To better understand the defensive and strategic advantages afforded by the adoption of the postmodernist stance, it may be revealing to take note of everything that accordingly has been dispensed with from the standpoint of relating. One does not have to work seriously on issues (one has only to find a more satiseing partner and then switch); one does not have to weigh whether one wants to make a commitment (since relentless change is the rule of the day); one does not have to try to understand in depth (since there are no depths); one does not have to make reparation for harm one may have caused the other, because it is not possible to know in advance how the self states of two separate people are going to interact; and so on. In sum, postmodernism rings true because it mirrors our sense of fragmentation, isolation, alienation, and bamement at the overwhelming complexity of the world (Bollas 1995).But instead of trying to painstakingly and meaningfully face this, it attempts to convert it into a dazzling philosophic way of seeing and being in the world that, at least from the relational point of view, seems patently and grandiosely self-serving. In light of this, it seems obvious that someone who is in the process of investing in an intimate relationship-irrespective of their conscious philosophy of life and love-cannot be a postmodernist when it comes to the object ofdesire. Instead, the person seeks the reassurance of permanence and constancy, it being 92

EVERYDAY EXAMPLES

a characteristic dread of someone in the throes of romantic love that what seems to be an exclusive purchase on the affections of another may prove to be but a fleeting infatuation. And much of the work that is done to iron out the inevitable conflicts of interest and occasional rough spots in the bond of even the most kindred of spirits is performed in the service of fashioning ajoint hture, sufficiently durable to be believed in and trusted. It follows the sense of time changes when one is in an intimate relationship, and the difference can be quite dramatic at critical junctures: that is, in the beginning when there is the haunting question, “Is the other going to reciprocate my love?” and, as the relationship seemingly continues to wane, “Is this the end?” Over the course of a close relationship, the sense of time wiU shift in a distinctive fashion. Intimate time is therefore characterized by being more dynamic than nonintimate time, which tends to feel more linear and metronomic; more experiential in that it bears a lived quality (being more embodied and less like an unrelated, external measurement);more memorable (I have repeatedly as a therapist been taken aback by the wealth of convincing details with which patients seem to recall significant, emotionally charged experiences); and more variable, ranging &om moments that seem torturously slow to stretches of time that breathtakingly seem to flash by. In short, time in an intimate relationship seems more organic, more like a magical facilitator or a malign oppressor. Depending on what it seems to be ushering in or signifjlng, relational time can appear like a window opening up on a golden hture; like a cruel sentence that has been imposed on you; like something that has been given and granted as a blessing; or like something that is being punitively withheld. I hope I have shown that someone who commits to a relationship is therefore also committing to time; that is, to how 93

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

one intends to spend one’s time in the future, specifically as regards the company one plans to keep. But to the extent that committed time is future time, it is also abstract, and part of the difficulty in making a decision is getting oneself to believe that it is really possible to predict what one’s preferences are going to be. Since committed time is also contracted time, it is natural to fear that someone may discover that they are capable ofhonoring their obligations, but not of enjoying them. To the degree that such fear predominates, a person may secretly wonder if they are unwittingly foreclosing opportunities for spontaneity and the stimulation of diversity. Is one, in other words, purchasing security at the price of freedom? Of course, those seriously contemplating investing in an intimate relationship realize on some level that they cannot know in advance the answer to such a critical question. What they will have to accept instead is that the future is unknown and hence risky. Part of the enhanced self-esteem that almost everyone experiences once they initially commit to a significantly intimate relationship is that they are well aware they are displaying a certain amount of courage. What is really difficult about being in a committed relationship-engendering many of the issues comprising the so-called working-through phase-is negotiating the inevitable trade-off between losing a considerable amount of individual freedom and enjoying the added range of the pleasures of a shared life. Looked at this way, it is the mark of a mature, intimate engagement that each party can find new ways to experience freedom within the relationship. Indeed, what one fails to understand, when immobilized by paranoid fantasies of being devoured by the chains of intimacy, is how the presence of a sensitive, nurturing, empathic, companion (functioning in the unconscious as a kind of safety net should they fail) can actually 94

EVERY DAY EXAMPLES

allow each partner to take greater risks than he or she otherwise would have been taken. Furthermore, intimacy affords opportunities for adventurous exploration of another self that simply do not exist in a superficial uncommitted relationship-the freedom, for example, to explore oneself, emboldened that one now feels loved and accepted in a way hitherto unexperienced, to a depth not previously undertaken. Those confident that they are truly loved by a trustworthy person can afford to relax their customary defenses to a degree that would be unthinkable with any other person in the world. This is analogous to how a patient can sometimes regress to more unconscious levels of thinking and feeling within the protected environment of a therapeutic setting. Few things are more liberating than that. Few things are more satisGing than feeling you can simply be yourself without worrying about the need to perform, to live up to the expectation, to satisfy the demands, or to ward off the always possible disapproval of the other. That is a pleasure-of being as unafraid as one can be in the presence of another. That cannot, of course, be achieved alone (as Winnicott [ 19651 once famously wrote in the “Capacity to Be Alone,” it derives from the ability of the infant to be alone in the presence of the mother). For all of these reasons, making a commitment is a daunting project, involving on an unconscious level a major reenvisioning of how one normally relates to another. Depending on the past experiences of intimacy and the imaginative capabilities of the person involved-since no matter how experienced a partner one has been, every potential relationship is profoundly different and therefore needs to be rethought on its own terms-the prospect may or may not seem a worthwhile investment of one’s psychic energies. 95

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

INTIMATE GIVING Lastly, but perhaps in this case the greatest component of intimacy-combining in various measures the hnctions of receptivity, trust, patience, mutuality, the ability to be critical in a nurturing manner, and the capacity to commit-is intimate giving. Once again, let me begin with its opposite. Narcissistic giving may be defined as a defense against the anxiety of being exposed as someone with an impaired capacity to nurture the interpersonal needs of another; by pretending that one is not only giving enough, but is giving more than enough, that is, gratuitously. To understand this better, it might be helpful to examine what it is that narcissistic giving is defending against. What follows is a basic scenario. Someone feels notably deficient when faced with the obligation to nurture, to empathize with, or to relate to a specified need perceived as outside the sphere of familiar self-interests; they are confronted with an unexpected or unwanted request for assistance that is typically rationally presented and thereby difficult to deny without exposing the underlying fraghty of the capacity to give; and they respond with a kind of stopgap grandiose bluff that (for a variety of reasons) works amazingly well. There are, however, in this basic scenario at least three important elements, each of which is capable of drastically lowering self-esteem: (1) the activation of the hidden “basic fault” in the area of nurturing another person; (2) the potentially shame-inducing but unavoidable interpersonal situation calling for at least a minimal ability to relate (and thereby threatening to expose its absence); and (3) the resultant defense that is little more than a makeshift display of pretentious acting out. In Narcississtic Giving (1998), I give 96

EVERY DAY EXAMPLES

an exhaustive catalogue of everyday examples of narcissistic giving. Compounding this is the fact that the other side of the coin of narcissistic giving is narcissistic injury. As narcissistic giving is a grandiose defense against a lingering suspicion that one has little true substance or nurturing to give, there will be an understandable touchiness, even paranoia, about eventually being exposed. To the narcissistic giver, unable to admit the underlying fragdity of his or her lavish pose, such exposure can only seem persecutory. After all, if he or she is really giving far more than is required and is still being rejected, then it can only be because nothing the person will ever do will be respected. It is easy to see when this is the case, the response is often a paranoia-induced narcissistic injury. Now, for its opposite, an act of intimate giving, by contrast, begins with a clear focus on the other’s needs, implicit in which is an empathic reading of the underlying dynamics of the specific request, which are often exceedingly complex. To reach the interpersonal vantage point from which someone can meaninghlly and realistically be nurturing to another person, even in a seemingly trivial way, it is necessary that one will have managed, at least temporarily, to have set aside normal but interfering selfish needs so as to be able to invest the required energy. Since this investment of energy can often be considerable, the individual must be prepared to spend a sufficient amount of time. It is therefore a general characteristic of an act of intimate giving that before it is initiated, there will be a decision that, somehow, the appropriate time will be found. That is why the antipodal characteristic of impatience-which can be defined as an irritable attempt to hurry up a process that one feels promises only to frustrate instead of gratify one’s 97

KNOWING IF IT’S

THE REAL THING

desires-is a hallmark of narcissistic giving and a sure sign of the hndamentally bogus nature of its claim to be humanly available for someone else’s anticipated needs. Finally, it is important to realize this conception of time is not measured, as time traditionally is, in standardized segments, but rather in terms of being available for as long as it takes to respond in a nurturing way; that is, the inner clock that it goes by is developmental. Because an act of intimate giving begins typically with a clear and in-depth perception of what is behind what the other seems to be asking for, it is almost always empathic in nature. It is never purely informational even when the other seems to be seeking nothing more consequential than, let us say, the correct time of day. The reason for this is that it is primarily concerned with the interpersonal context from which the question emerges. So, for example, if the person requesting time is really expressing a sense of being somewhat discouraged with the way his or her time is progressing, the other might-after providing the desired information-also communicate, nonverbally, that there is an awareness that more is needed than just information. To put it another way, it is a mark of intimate giving that it sizes up and takes into account, consciously or unconsciously, the relational and developmental possibilities that are present. In so doing, it transcends the immediate here and now need and anticipates the future. In addition, intimate giving is:

1. Congruent: There is a matching of what is truly needed with what is really being given.

2. Nurturing: Although characteristically it is taken for

granted in any posture of giving-that which is being offered is, of course, going to be helphl or at the very least 98

EVERYDAY EXAMPLES

is intended to be helpll-it is surprisingly rare when help that is given is even minimally nurturing. Real nurturing implies help that is more than patchwork-that is developmental inasmuch as it is capable of facilitating, via a timely and benign relationship, a person’s progress in a healthy direction. Intimate giving, because of this, is more often tilted toward the developmental future (best long-range interest of the individual) as opposed to the immediate assuagement of transient difficulties. It is therefore nurturing and is perceived that way, in a sense that narcissistic giving or even legitimate but superficial helpfulness can never be. I think this is borne out by the fact (when you think about it) that it is infrequent for someone to have the experience of being really grateful for the right help having been given at the right time. 3. Meaningful: Because an act of intimate giving generally strives to reach some part of the core of the other’s psyche, it cannot be the meaningless experience that narcissistic giving essentially is. 4. Reciprocal: It is characteristic of an act of intimacy that it aspires to make contact with, to resonate with, and to be known by, as well as to know the other. From an interactive standpoint, therefore, it typically tends toward reciprocity. It is a tendency reinforced by an absence of a power-orientation, which traditionally depends on the advantages conferred by hierarchical distancing. The result is an intimate transaction whose center of gravity, more likely than not, will be the same for both parties. 5. Revelatory: When someone is deeply attuned to what the other wants-in spite of the fact that attention and energy seem directed away from the self-there is an inevitable and significant disclosure of who one is. By its 99

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S

THE REAL THING

nature intimacy entails a relaxation and readjustment of one’s boundaries, that is a prelude to the expansion of and flowing out of the self that is part of its process. To the degree that an act of intimacy entails such an expressive movement of the true self, it will tend to reveal what otherwise would be hidden or at least clouded by normal defensive operations. 6. Serious: Narcissistic giving employs a host of strategies designed to trivialize, diminish, shrink, and reduce the other as a means of relieving the internalized pressure people feel to constantly relate interpersonally. By contrast, an intimate interaction is characterized by its intuitive grasp of what is most existentially pressing to the other. Accordingly, it cannot help but take the situation of the other seriously, respect it, and therefore use language as expeditiously as possible in order to express issues of the self and not (as is common in narcissistic giving) to erect a diverting, noncommunicative facade of desensitizing superficiality. 7. Forthcoming: Unlike narcissistic giving, which relies heavily upon tactics of emotional withholding, an intimate act is one in which a person elects to reduce the psychical distance between self and other in order to be in close enough range to make greater contact if desired, as well as to be taken in more fully by another who is so inclined. The result is that the receiver of intimate giving often has the novel experience of another self that is approaching or forthcoming but neither in an intrusive nor an aggressive fashion. 8. Binding: Even a fleeting intimacy can have the effect of inaugurating a bond between two people-who previously were not otherwise connected-which can later 100

EVERY DAY EXAMPLES

be built upon. In this sense, intimacy is really a foundational glue that binds people together and is probably the best predictor of longevity in human relations. As an authentic bridge between psyches it is resistant to normal interpersonal wear and tear, and unlike its polar opposite-narcissistic giving-it does not tend to crumble like a house of cards upon the first frontal attack. 9. Profoundly personal: Implicit in many narcissistic giving transactions is the grandiose belief that efficient and productive impersonality can be a suitable and sometimes complete substitute for the hndamental need of the self to be confirmed in any interpersonal encounter, no matter how fleeting. By offering the benefits to be plausibly derived from an impersonal, professional, or business relationship you have thereby delivered something of such value that the need to relate in a genuinely human way can be justifiably relinquished. In sharp contrast to this, an instance of intimate giving, whatever else it may be, is always on some level profoundly personal. While it may also be realistic or objective, it is never abstract, dry, or simply logical. It is not politicized. Regardless of the belief system that is held, there is the sense that the person is relating according to some distinctive inner logic that in turn is in harmony with his or her true self. These are just some of the key traits that characterize intimate giving. There are others that have already been indirectly touched upon in the book. Intimate giving, for example, does not rely upon the tactics ofpower, does not attempt to gain deference through intimidation. Instead, it strives for the respect from the other that is freely given in response to an experience 101

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

of being nurtured. It does not reduce complicated emotional requests, which may involve multidetermined, dynamic, and often unconscious forces, to the status of pedestrian onedimensional questions. It does not employ sleight of hand. It is not subversive, bullying, or pseudological. It is not an agent of the false self. It does not attempt to appear giving by courageously revealing a shameful trauma from the past. By contrast, the intimate disclosure that is a fundamental component of ongoing intimacy transcends the simple, howsoever dramatic, telling of painful, horrible secrets. An act of intimate giving, as opposed to narcissistic giving, is a process rather than a one-time, cathartic experience. It is not a confession. It is not looking for release from pent-up childhood traumas. It is not the expression, or cultivation, of a “victim” identity. It is not melodramatically larger than life, sensationalistic, or titillating. When conflict is involved, it typically will hinge on the capacity, on the one hand, for reciprocal nurturing and, on the other hand, on the attendant anxieties concerning incorporation, transgression or dissolution of one’s boundaries, and the paranoid fear of the dangers ensuing from too much closeness. What’s more, such conflicts as do exist will be contained rather than acted out. Finally, sensation will not be overvalued and pursued for its own sake. Relationships will not be viewed primarily as a means for the achievement of exciting experiences. Instead, they will be appraised for their power to nurture-not from the standpoint of whether one is getting or is likely to get what one wants. The philosophy of Machiavellianism, so preferred by narcissistic givers, will not be substituted for the practice of honestly negotiating and endeavoring to work 102

EVERYDAY EXAMPLES

through substantive relational differences. While satisfactions are, of course, sought, their attainment tends to be deferred and the pleasures they bring are more likely to be the aftermath rather than the immediate aim of the interaction. This is because there will be what Bion (1992) has referred to as the capacity to tolerate frustration, normal depression, and the pain intrinsic to emotional development. An intimate transaction, therefore, is never the product of a hunger for overstimulation, suspense, or immediate gratification-the kind of hunger that is regularly fed by televised daytime soap operas. Instead, it finds its gratification typically in meaningfd discovery, developmental unfolding, and a cohesive sense of process. Yet, if it is true that it is the factor of intimacy in a human relationship that ultimately most deeply satisfies, why is it, as I have tried to show, that there is so much narcissistic giving? The answer, I believe, is that it is easier to become involved in a relationship that promises short-term gratification and predictable, swiftly attainable pleasures than to try to cope with and to pursue the elusive, generally delayed, far more risky rewards intrinsic to the type of human bonding characterized by intimacy. But for that reason it is incomparably more profound, satisfjring, and even entertaining. The great psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott (1965) once noted that moral education is no substitute for love. To which you can add that the technique of intimacy, whether as practiced by the mental health profession or by the individual who is looking for a shortcut, is no substitute for intimacy. Yet, as I wrote in frhe Singles Scene, every psychotherapist and student of human nature has seen instances of true intimacy and intimate giving and knows that it exists. There would 103

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

be no point in writing this book otherwise. It is important that it occurs, and when it does-even if the final outcome is not a happy one providing the expected gratification-there are few who do not feel that all the effort and the trouble were well worth it and that the process itself was inherently enriching.

104

OBSTACLES WORKING I T THROUGH

Wth

e will now take a closer look at what it means to work on e formidable obstacles that stand in the path of intimacy. Freud, as mentioned earlier, gave us the hndamental concept for working through the blocks to overcoming mental illness; however, he did not have an analogous concept for working through the resistances to the achievement of what is perhaps the essence of healthy love: intimacy. To initiate such a discussion, I will rely once again on my method of reversal and start with some very common, classic examples of not working it through.

“My feelings for you have changed” In over twenty years of dealing with patients who feel stuck or doomed in troubled relationships, this may be the most beloved of exit lines. Almost invariably, it portends a kind of terminal diagnosis for whatever life two people have managed to fashion 105

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S

THE REAL THING

for themselves. By pointing to an apparent sea change of basic feelings previously taken for granted, the person suggests that forces beyond his or her control have intervened and altered the quality of interrelating. There is therefore no point in continuing to be together, no point in trying to fix whatever is wrong because feelings are not something that can be fixed. Change, afler all, is a constant of nature, so it is better to accept it and move on without hard feelings because no one is to blame. In short, unpacking all the layers of superficiality swathed in those six words would take pages, so I’ll content myself to sayingjust this: There is probably no easier, more vacuous, and meaningless way to end a serious relationship.

“I don’t want to talk about it” Here, the implication is that the wound is so deep, the abuse so egregious that it is simply an insult to pretend that the matter is suitable fare for a conversation. This, then, is the seeming reverse of the above strategy-where the person apparently takes responsibility for the demise of the relationship, but only in a bland way-inasmuch as there is an attempt to go on the offensive by attributing presumably blameworthy, although unnamed, abuses to the other. And there is the added kicker of simultaneously standing on their rightstheir right to self-determination, to autonomy to speak when they choose to and to not speak when they choose not to. This is a ploy that is considerably more risky to challenge because you are likely then to incur their righteous wrath. What therefore typically gets overlooked in the ensuing tension is how much of this maneuver is simply smoke and mirrors. Under the banner of silent suffering, the person manages to avoid any responsibility to the other’s sensibilities, especially 106

OBSTACLES

to any consideration of the impact their announced withdrawal w ill have on the ongoing relationship. (Patients have often told me how the protracted silence of their partners in this regard can be experienced as a particularly unbearable mental torture.)

“No problem” This is an increasingly popular strategy for not working on something that is most often employed in a business setting when someone who is responsible for providing either information or services, for some reason, fails to do so sufficiently. Typically, it is set in motion by the disgruntled customer who proceeds to point out the lack of or need for hrther help. Should the other actually provide it to the customer’s satisfaction-who predictably will feel obliged to express thanks-the opportunity will be present to assume the mantle of giving by replying, “No problem.” In other words, what more often than not has been a deficiency of proper service or interest is transformed into a magnanimous gesture. (This is a sterling example of what I call narcissistic giving. So generous is the other that instead of expressing annoyance at the person’s request for extra attention-often the implication is that the customer is on the verge of being a pest-the other will go out of her way to reassure the person she has been unaffected by the weight of that person’s needs.) Crude though this tactic may be, it is surprisingly effective. The recipient, who characteristically feels somewhat embarrassed by having to request additional assistance and worries that the other will judge him to be either incompetent or demanding, tends to be relieved and gratefd on two counts. First, that this request was met and second, that no apparent irritation 107

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

is being manifested. And there is the added crumb that the other has not only seemingly completely accepted the person’s difficulty in understanding or being satisfied, but has perhaps enjoyed the opportunity afforded to offer extra service. As a result, and what is of interest &omour point of view, is that no one seems to grasp, let alone challenge, the other’s underlying assumption of implicit superiority.

“The War of the Roses” One of the most effective ways to end a long-term relationship-without having to delve into the painful complexity of one’s reasons for doing so-is to start a fight instead. There may be no better example of this than what occurs in the movie The War ofthe Roses, in which Kathleen Turner plays a dutiful wife who has stifled her own identity for over eighteen years in the service of her husband’s flourishing law career. Michael Douglas plays a paterfamilias so sure of himself that he does not see marital disaster coming until it hits him in the face. In the pivotal breakup scene, the husband, away on a business trip, suffers what appears to be a serious heart attack, but what turns out to be only a minor hernial strain. Sobered by what seemed a near brush with death, he waits in the recovery room to celebrate the good news with his wife who has been notified and who, he has no doubts, d l pick him up and drive him home. As the hours drag on, however, it becomes increasingly clear that she is not coming. Despite feeling hurt and abandoned, he travels home by himself and upon arriving immediately queries his wife as to why she did not bother to visit him in the hospital. Matter-offactly she tells him after learning it was just a false alarm she 108

OBSTACLES

did not think it would be necessary. And desperately wanting

to believe this is an acceptable excuse, the emotionally drained husband puts himself to bed. At an ungodly hour, Mr. Rose is rudely awakened by his wife, who proceeds to inform him that she is “very upset.” Unable to sleep, she has been troubled as to why she did not immediately leave to rush to her husband’s bedside-especially when she had been first notified-long before he was pronounced out of danger. Her initial reaction, she remembers, was that she was “terrified.” It was, however, her subsequent reaction that electrified her. Her startling realization that what she was really most hghtened of was the possibility that her husband “might not die.” Understandably, Mr. Rose is stunned to hear this and as he gropes rather pitifully to find words to express his profound indignation and dismay, his wife, at last owning her long smoldering fury, snaps, “I want a divorce.” Unable to handle this second bombshell, her husband resorts to a familiar bullying tactic-“Well, you can’t have one”-which utterly fails to impress Mrs. Rose, who flaunts a steely resolve that until now had never even been glimpsed. After a few tense moments, when it begins to dawn on Mr. Rose that no longer can he intimidate his wife, he rather plaintively recites what he considers his major accomplishments as a dutiful, well-providing husband and father, concluding in a wounded voice that “After all these years, I think I am entitled to an explanation.” “You want an explanation?” snarls his wife, and already the audience can sense whatever is to come d be unspeakably foul. “Because whenever I see you I want to smash your face.” Infuriated and unwilling to back down after being so taunted, her husband thrusts his face within inches of his wife and dares 109

KNOWING IF IT’S

THE REAL THING

her, “Go ahead, smash me in the face,” whereupon she punches him with all her might in the jaw. For me, although that is only the beginning-the first ugly, bloody shot of what will be “The War of the Roses”-it is the most riveting moment in the fdm. Although the movie is a studiously and brilliantly crafted black comedy, it reflects in a hyperbolic but unforgettable way a very common and profound inability of many couples to deal with the stress of a foundering, long-term relationship that is on the brink of breaking up. The fact, as mentioned, that there may be no better way for skirting the responsibility for empathizing with the extraordinary pain that almost always attends such breakups than to initiate a major and unforgivable altercation. Now, it no longer makes sense to talk, negotiate, communicate, or help each other understand and, if possible, actively collaborate to mitigate the impact of the looming catastrophe. Now the only thing that matters is fighting, surviving, and winning. From this perspective, even the most bitterly contested divorce imaginable-as depicted in The War of the Rosesseems natural and inevitable. It all seems to follow with the irrational but relentless logic of hate from that initial, unspeakable act of aggression. But how different this is from what we call working something through, even if that “something” is the growing realization, as it often is, that the relationship is essentially dead and needs in the most mercifil way possible to be put out of its misery. If we apply this outlook to the Kathleen Turner character, then, such a person, before the terminal, explosive confrontation, might have expressed on many appropriate occasions her sense that her success-obsessedhusband was almost completely taking her for granted; that she was primarily valued for what she could offerin the way of facilitatinghis career; 110

0BSTACLES

that she was not seen as a person in her own right apart from her necessary role as a trophy wife and mother, as well as a voluptuous sexual partner. Furthermore, such a hypothetically honest person would have been forced to acknowledge and take responsibility for her own considerable marital failing. For example, Mrs. Rose has harbored massive resentment for many years. She almost never voiced her real feelings on any issue that mattered to her; she accepted without protest the stereotypical roles foisted upon her and in certain cases quickly pursued them; and finally, she manifested remarkably little interest in developing herself in any direction that did not safely lie within the familiar sphere of her husband’s overweening ambition. But let us, to illustrate our point, slightly rewrite this scene and imagine instead that the Kathleen Turner beleaguered housewife who dutifdly stayed in character for eighteen years suddenly underwent one small but significant change. In addition to her first epiphany, realizing to her horror that her best chance for freedom would be for her husband to die of a heart attack, she experienced a second-that it would be better to express her long-suppressed wish for a divorce in the most honest, open, empathic, and mutual fashion she was capable of. Another way of saying this, of course, is that Mrs. Rose would be trying, instead, to work on her recent epiphanic need for a breakup. As I think the reader can see, our hypothetical change, changes everything. Such a person would then immediately realize that there are few things more painful than having to deliver the traumatic news, especially to a totally unsuspecting other, that, in effect, his company is unbearable. The first and perhaps most difficult step, therefore, is to accept the responsibility for not only informing but also helping the soonto-be discarded lover, along with oneself, to survive the crisis 111

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

that is about to be staged. Furthermore, such a person, regardless of how deprived and cheated they may feel (and it is rare that someone about to terminate a serious, long-standing relationship does not feel this way) will intuitively understand they are not thereby off the hook. Analogous to how a person participates in their own psychic pain, to some degree, the interpersonal pain of a relationship is something that is jointly fashioned (although typically unconsciously and rarely in equal measures). It follows that such a person would instinctively sense that here is a situation that calls for empathy as few do; the very last thing they would do to achieve the desired separation would be, as the Kathleen Turner character did, to attempt to violently and thoroughly degrade their partner. She might instead, however, point out she is not merely a victim but an active agent in what went wrong between them. She has come to realize that there were many instances in which she failed, or deliberately avoided, recognizing and addressing what in hindsight were clear enough danger signals. She also knows that her husband, in addition to his shortcomings, had certain strengths that she did not have. Leaving the relationship is not meant to be an abandonment or a denigration of her husband’s worth, but an honest, absolutely necessary if excruciatingly p a i d , acknowledgment that for a long period of time, for many complicated and intertwined reasons, the marriage had grown far more restrictive and stifling than liberating and expansive. The damage, in short, seems so pervasive that even if it does not seem beyond repair, it would be hard to justifir the extraordinary work that two people working diligently, steadily, and collaboratively would have to invest in its salvation. From the standpoint of the person who is being left, one of the cruelest things about a sudden breakup is the realization 112

OBSTACLES

that the other is, in effect, cutting her losses. The horrible recognition is thereby forced upon them that everyone has their price, that as much as they thought they were loved, it was by no means unconditional (everyone’s unconscious fantasy). What they are witnessing instead in the most unromantic but vivid terms is the unsightly act of their former beloved coldly quantifying and calculating the benefits as weighed against the losses. How great the resultant deficit is presumed to be can be rather readily measured in just how unbearable they now find it to be in the other’s presence. It is an exquisitely painhl, graphic estimate now being placed on their true self that is probably the most brutal psychic accounting anyone will ever see. How to manage such a final dissolution, as difficult as that may be, still represents only one, even if the last, conflict. By its very nature, an intimate relationship in the course ofits evolution will either touch on or unearth many issues that could benefit from sorting out. To recognize and address this in a constructive, responsible way constitutes working on the relationship. Such a person will therefore not wait until the bitter end, or the eleventh hour, before trying to repair what is wrong. Although it is almost impossible to do this on a consistent basis, they will try to deal with tension as it appears, sensing that it will require all of their receptivity, patience, empathy, mutuality, commitment, and so forth. In my experience, nothing is more taxing than this, deficiencies in this area being the Achilles’ heel of most relationships, especially those that fail. By comparison, some of the other indispensable ingredients that induce or compel two people to unite in an intimate bond-chemistry, falling in love, sexual attraction, passion, compatibility, and so on-are not only easy but natural. Although it arises out of 113

KNOWING IF I T ’ S T H E REAL T H I N G

a deep, inner need to preserve and protect what is most cherished in the relationship, this capacity to more or less steadily work on everything that is perceived as negative or anxiety-producing typically does not come naturally, and might be said to be more a matter of decision and character. From this perspective, working on a relationship is a second and more profound kind of commitment-not just to the future time that one plans to spend with the other-but to the quality of the interrelating. As a therapist, one rarely encounters people expressing a desire to strengthen their ability to work on a relationship. Far more often they complain-even when their presenting problem is the unhappiness their current relationship is bringing them-about what might be called self crises. They are feeling stifled, unloved, neglected, misunderstood, unappreciated, pressured, manipulated, or intruded upon by their partner. Perhaps the main reason for this omission-in addition to its degree of difficulty-is that typically, when someone begins to flounder in a relationship, there is an almost irresistible tendency to be preoccupied with one’s perceived narcissistic injuries. As I think I have shown, that can weigh heavily against any realistic chance of rescuing a sinking relationship. SELF-HELP

Paradoxically, one of the obstacles to working either on a relationship or on oneself is the belief in the potency of self-help teachings. Patients, in my experience, who seek self-help do not want psychotherapy and vice-versa. That is why my heart always sinks a little bit when someone I am working with in114

OBSTACLES

forms me he or she has recently become captivated with the philosophy of one of the proliferating gurus who currently populate the movement. To a certain extent, however, the undoubted though limited effectiveness of self-help seminars and books can be attributed to the placebo effect: The proven ability of innocuous remedies or ideas in which people have placed their faith to produce beneficial changes. Perhaps the well-known mutative effective that a positive transference can have in therapy can also be attributed in part to the placebo effect. In other words, the patient who enters therapy, who typically wants to believe that the therapist is in possession of a potent cure, and who subsequently manages to achieve the not-always-easy feat of genuinely liking and trusting their therapist (that is, arrives at what is called the positive transference), will, in effect, automatically benefit, at least initially, from the placebo effect. They will begin to feel better immediately, since unconsciously that is what they come to deeply believe and expect from their new therapist. Should the therapist, however, be less than competent, someone who does not actually merit the blind faith now being placed in him or her by the placebo effect of the positive transference, then such an effect will wear off rather quickly. Because fortunately there is a difference between a pill and a person; that is, the infinite complexity of a human being will guarantee a dynamically changing relationship that is not possible in the vastly more static relationship between an individual and a changeless pill. On the other hand, if the therapist who is the beneficiary of an initial positive transference proves trustworthy and really does help the patient, then not only will the initial placebo effect not wear off, but there will be a reinforcing, second placebo effect; something, I think, that is an 115

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

important though insufficientlyappreciated reason why successful psychotherapy works when it does. Unlike psychotherapy, self-help seems predicated on the magical, placebo-like belief that there is almost nothing that cannot be achieved if one works hard enough and really believes in what one is doing. Not only that, it promises results in amazingly short amounts of time. In this sense, it is a refusal to recognize that life is replete with obstacles (Phillips 1993). By asserting that almost any complicated human task can be reduced to a clear, cognitive problem that is solvable in a limited number of steps, it denies the complexity of human life. The credo of self-help effectively eliminates the need for outside assistance-beyond, of course, the “indispensable” book, tape, or seminar-and thereby fosters a pseudo-sense of autonomy. Self-help devotees typically believe that not only do they not need real psychotherapy, but that they are substantially healthier, more developed, and more goal-directed than just about anyone they meet. They are often characterized by a kind of naive boastfulness and an air of determined cheeriness. They now have, after all, goals that they did not have before, hopes they did not have before, perhaps dreams they did not have before. No longer do they have people or impediments blocking their path, because these represent negative thoughts and attitudes and these have been banished. That which previously seemed the impenetrable aura of unavailable success has now been demystified with the aid of guaranteed tools and a roadmap to personal achievement. What those who are invested in self-help and positive, or motivational thinking, however, do not realize is the extent to which they are being thereby unconsciously infantilized. To seriously assert that life’s complexities can be broken down to a series of simple, manageable steps is to attempt to indoctri116

OBSTACLES

nate a fully grown adult with a recipe for survival that is strangely reminiscent of what grownups tell children who need to be comforted and encouraged-that there is a way to overcome one’s doubts and to master insecurity; a way to deal with new people in school, to stand up to bullies, to not be afraid of the dark, nightmares, sickness, and death; in short, that there is a blueprint for happiness and self-gratification in an amazingly puzzling, often cruel and difficult world. It becomes immediately apparent that under the label and stigma of negativity, the self-help philosophy boldly boycotts everything that is problematic, stressful, tragic, and dark about the real world. They assemble one potent slogan after another: “One day at a time”; “If you give a man a fish, you buy him dinner; teach him how to fish and he can feed himself for the rest of his life”; “The Serenity Prayer.” By compressing an undeniable part of wisdom about life into a memorable or catchy phrase-something immediately understandable and indisputable-a magical effect is created so that what previously seemed incomprehensible, formidable, or threatening is now totally accessible to one’s personal power. To listen carehlly to the flood of ever more popular infomercials that pack the airwaves is to be witness to a process of infantilization. First, people’s intelligence is insulted by a designated marketing person who makes one absurd claim after another with a straight face. Second, their personal dignity is demeaned by painting what is taken for granted as the deepest dream of their intended audience in terms such as becoming a millionaire, a successhl entrepreneur, or a satisfying lover in so many easy steps. In short, the world they promise to usher their enthusiastic followers into is a toy one, chockfull with shiny objects and trophies of a consumerism gone berserk. 117

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

From this perspective, what self-help offers and sells is a kind of accessible narcissistic world of magical instant gratification. It is not surprising that those who pin their hopes on this kind of hlf2lment would also resist the sometimes intense scrutiny of underlying motivations that psychotherapy can present. Instead, a person who is susceptible to the blandishment of self-help, for example, often will gravitate to a therapeutic technique that favors clear-cut instructions to patients. Such patients can easily be disappointed if results are not immediate and may then pointedly ask for “homework” assignments. They tend to be fond of receiving formulae for problem solving and “answers” to their deepest questions and puzzles about life. When they do not receive this, they palpably feel shortchanged. It is no accident that they instinctively prefer brief psychotherapy. They think of insight as not something that comes from within, and they look for concrete results, the sooner the better. At this point, my readers will not be surprised to learn I do not believe in a so-called technique of working on a relationship, or even that such a thing is possible. Against this, however, are principles (those that I address in this book) that can be applied in a highly individualistic manner. In short, rather than patients being tailored to fit in with one preferred psychotherapeutic technique (as so often happens), the method or general principles relied upon are to be adjusted as sensitively as possible to the needs and dynamics of each unique patient. (In this regard, I will mention that at the behest of several screenwriter patients of mine, I have just read William Goldman’s classic, Adventures in the Screen Trade. To my surprise I found this the best how-to book I have ever read-both the mechanics and dynamics of constructing a winning screenplay are laid out with truly re118

OBSTACLES

markable clarity. In light of that, I was especially interested to note that Goldman-in spite of his own notable achievements, which include two Oscar-winning efforts-is at pains to point out how little his memoir, if at all, can be used to help someone else actually learn to write. And this I felt was refreshing honesty-a characteristic that is all too often sorely lacking in my own field where professional psychotherapists regularly turn out how-to handbooks on supposedly surefire techniques. It follows, by contrast, that the capacity to actively work on long-standing internal conflicts is a crucial determinant of how much progress a given patient can make in therapy. And a therapist, therefore, is in a unique position to witness the benefits that can be reaped when someone seriously and honestly confronts and takes responsibility for resolving his individual issues. Fortunately, there is a fairly close correspondence between someone who has the ability to work on personal problems in real life (although this ability may have hardly been developed) and someone who can do the same within the sanctuary of a therapeutic setting and with the facilitation of a skillful psychotherapist. Someone in everyday life who has this capacity will instinctively understand:

1. As opposed to the philosophy of self-help, which

preaches that essentially nothing is beyond one’s control and problems can therefore be autonomously solved, conflicts in intimacy can only be resolved collaboratively. To do that one is almost forced to address the dependent parts of the self more deeply than ever before. It follows that at probably no other time is someone aware ofjust 119

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

how important another human being can be to them than at these common relational crisis points. Realization of this kind of vulnerability can be fiightening and is therefore a primary reason that many people stop short of making a commitment to a genuinely intimate relationship, professional or otherwise. 2. Working on a relationship is a process that involves recognizing one’s hndamental need for the other, while not only containing the anxiety this invariably stirs up, but unconsciously using it to motivate one’s self to consider the most constructive and reparative steps possible. 3. In addition to accepting one’s dependency, there are certain characteristic anxieties that go along with working on a relationship. There is the dread of discovering, for example, in the course of an honest airing of mutual grievances, that the rift is far greater than one thought, or that the work necessary to repair the damage may not be worth the effort, or, if it is, that it is beyond the person’s ability. There is also the realization that the person may be too fragile to withstand the ensuing free rein and flow of criticism, and that the invariably less idealistic, more pragmatic view of the self that emerges from such a discussion may be one with which the person does not want to live. In opening the door to freedom of feeling and expression, unprecedented anger, contempt, even rage on the part of both parties may surface. Therefore what starts as a well-meaning attempt to lay one’s cards on the table can, and often does escalate, into a horrible fight afterwards that will be bitterly reported for a long time. Finally, perhaps the most prevalent paranoid fear associated with initiating a particularly frank discussion is that such freedom will provide 120

OBSTACLES

the spur-for one or the other-to announce they wish to end the relationship. Since all these fears are legitimate, they tend to make the process ofworking through not only risky but intrinsically unstable. The result is a backward and forward movement, with now one, now the other party boldly advancing the dialogue into uncharted territory, or hastily retreating or cautiously testing the waters. For this reason, even the best of intensely honest unburdenings tends to be short-lived, with both parties quickly getting psychologically winded and gasping for air. What allows people to get through this process with some measure of success is a recognition that the alternative-to keep one’s wounds or paranoid doubts silently festeringis often far worse. There is also enormous benefit to be gained by proving to oneself and the other that the relationship cannot only survive the most honest critique, but that it can actually grow from it and that, perhaps most important, while the outcome of such confessions cannot be safely predicted, the value of the intimacy thereby attained is simply worth the best fight one has in them, regardless of the result. For all of these reasons, the process of working on a relationship is with few exceptions inherently painful. Not surprisingly, most people are instinctivelyreluctant and unconsciously adept at avoiding occasions for confrontation. For my part, I continue to be impressed with the conspiracy of silence that so often surrounds highly sensitive, but central, long-standing interpersonal conflicts that at least, from the perspective of the therapist, seem to cry out for clarification.The analogy that frequently comes to my mind in these instances is that of the person who has suffered for years with a serious but undiagnosed pain, but who does not want to go to a doctor because he is 121

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

ahaid he will be told he has cancer. In terms of unexpressed interpersonal suffering, the fatal diagnosis that the person dreads hearing about is that for whatever reason they just do not have what is necessary to llfX the needs of the other. In short, because working on a relationship represents facing the music, people are almost universally wary of it. It follows that the therapist is in a unique position to gauge how frightened people really are, inasmuch as he or she can appreciate how much psychic work is required for any individual person to enter into this process, especially if there is no immediately pressing reason for doing so. I therefore often tell patients who have been demoralized by their inability to be even minimally honest with their partner about what is really bothering them about the relationship that part of the problem-unlike facing the continual pressure of one deadline after another to perform at a job, or being, for example, the recipient of a direct ultimatum by the other to change in some significant way (which, by the way, typically signals the end of a relationship and is a reason often given as to why people have sought out couples therapy)-is that in the ordinary course of even an intimate relationship there is usually no special urgency to be exceptionally honest. In other words, working on a relationship represents a very high form of commitment and engagement, one that can only be autonomously invested in and cannot be imposed from without. It is fraught with risk and uncertainty as to its outcome and is therefore extraordinarily easy to defer. Which is why I personally always consider it a high watermark for progress in therapy when a patient, often after years of mute surrender to fears of disclosure, begins at last to take the plunge into honesty and openness. Such a leap, as mentioned, is invariably painful. And adding to this, as I am apt 122

0BSTACLES

to forewarn patients who are ready to dare to be confrontational, is the distinct possibility that the other may not only be unreceptive to the unexpected new level of self-disclosure, but may positively resent it, consciously and unconsciously doing what he can to drive the person back into her customary reticent stance. This is done typically by attacking what she says and construing it in the most negative terms possible. What it amounts to then, of course, is an innervating but classic stand-ofX If someone is finally ready to grow in what has been a long-term static relationship, but the other is most definitely not (which more or less is the rule), then, unfortunately, what represents healthy growth to one individually is only a toxic threat to the other. By now it should be clear that the benefits of working on issues concerning intimacy take considerable time in order to be realized. First, the recipient has to both survive the danger posed by the unanticipated spurt of growth and neither flee nor sabotage the existing relationship. Then the one who is initiating the attempt to change the interpersonal status quo must, for his part, endure the second thoughts and panicky fears that are part and parcel of the process of disclosure of usually unsuspected and highly sensitive feelings. The good news, however, is that afterward, if all goes reasonably well, as often happens (because generally someone does not undertake to work on an obstacle to intimacy unless he has arrived at a certain inner trust and is ready and able to deal with whatever comes up) there is considerably greater confidence in the relationship on the part of both parties. It comes from the sense that things are now on a surer footing, which in turn is derived from the perception that what they have between them has somehow become more real. Few things are more genuinely reassuring than 123

KNOWING IF IT’S T H E REAL THI NG

the fact that someone has, so to speak, just faced the music of interpersonal reality and survived.

COUNTEREXAMPLE To illustrate how quickly an effort to connect can completely misfire, I include the following vignette. Bobby, an industrious young businessman whose work schedule left scant time for socializing, made a point of grasping at any opportunity, no matter how fleeting, to make a connection with another person. On this occasion, standing in a line with his purchases before the checkout counter of a supermarket he became aware, immediately ahead of him, of a rather stout, somewhat toughlooking, middle-aged woman with a bag by her side. It was the boy with his adorable fresh face and golden-colored, curly hair-immediately reminding him of the kind of son he planned on having-who captured his attention. As he could later explain, all he wanted to do was pay a simple compliment to the woman on the spectacular good looks of (he assumed) her son. So, mulling this over and psyching himself up (as he was intensely shy as well as excruciatingly lonely), with an effort of will he managed to make himself say, “His hair is beautiful. It is dyed?,’ As soon as he said it, even before the woman began eyeing him as though what he was really doing was accosting, rather than complimenting her, he knew it was wrong. It surely did not sound the way he meant it. Intended to be a spontaneous, light-hearted expression of appreciation for the beauty of a child, it came across instead as clunky, even weird. “Dye it?” mimicked the woman, who not only was not charmed but was made suspicious by the remark. “Does it look dyed?” “No,” replied Bobby glumly, wondering if he 124

0BSTACLES

should explain that of course he did not actually think it had been dyed, but that he was trying to say that his hair looked so incredibly natural that someone might think it was. Deciding that the self-conscious explanation might only make matters worse, he bit his tongue as the woman, growing more and more annoyed, would periodically mutter to herself, as though she could hardly believe her ears, “Does he dye it?” I choose this incident to show how precious small the window of opportunity is to make a social connection of even pseudo-intimacy: just a few seconds. During that time frame the other has to decide, among other things, whether the unexpected overture is: truly friendly; safe; intrusive; devious; a ploy to get something from the person; covertly or overtly sexual; and so on. The unconscious answers to all these questions and others will usually be made instantaneously and will determine whether and in what manner the person wdl reply. Also, the speed required to make the decision, added to the shock of suddenly being accosted by a total stranger will tend to produce anxiety as well as pressure. Not surprisingly the typical response, unlike the woman’s in the supermarket, is to play it safe-to reject the overture of seeming friendliness is to risk alienating someone whose potential for hostility is completely unknown-and at least go through the motions of appearing to be a reasonably amiable person. This is usually accomplished by saying something innocuous, general, or impersonal, the goal being to reveal as little of oneself as possible; that is, until one gets a better sense of what, if anything, is lurking beneath the overture. The risk, of course, is that the other is not amiable, but paranoid, as this woman perhaps was. What the example shows, therefore, is how essential both trust and knowledge of the other are to any interaction; and 125

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

that once absent, there is almost no chance of developing a relationship. A case in point is my patient who afterward racked his brain for how he might have responded (e.g., “Of course, I knew you don’t dye it. I just meant how unusually natural his color was”; or, perhaps even more relevantly, “Look, I meant no offense. I was just paying the kid a compliment.”). Eventually, however, even the most felicitous riposte left a sour taste in my patient’s mouth, falling far short of even the brief moment of rapport he had hoped to establish with this woman. In sum, and from this perspective, all such responses are no more than damage control (analogous to Melanie who finally had to speak up for herself in the movie theater). As opposed to this, of course, there is our hypothetical person who is willing to invest considerable psychic energy into the myriad stresses involved in what we are calling working on a relationship and to whom we now turn.

T H E DYNAMICS When it comes to intimacy, each individual has a certain style, a preferential mode, finding it easier to be intimate in some areas than others. Someone, for example, may find it not only not taxing, but an actual pleasure to engage in a drawn-out, heartfelt conversation with the other; while the prospect of exploring and sharing in some simple but untried, unfamiliar activity (dear, however, to the other) may prove irritating and anxiety producing. Part of the problem in working on a relationship issue of any magnitude is the inherent difficulty of having to imagine and to empathize with the obstacles that the other experi126

OBSTACLES

ences. The tendency, instead, is merely to endeavor to be more intimate in all the old, customary ways. In other words, to just work on your obstacles as you see them. But since the other’s grievances-say, not spending nearly enough time doing basic things together-do not seem important to you, it is hard to take them seriously. Because of this, someone who does take the time and trouble to change his customary mode of being and relating, to walk in the other’s shoes, so to speak, can convince that person as perhaps no one else can that he is really making a meaningful effort to enter into the other’s world. Working on a relationship in this way can then mean not only seeing the other’s perspective empathically, but experientially trying it on. And there can be no greater reward for the one who does this than discovering she may actually enjoy it: that is, instead of an experience thought to be trivial or meaningless, the individual begins to see in it genuine possibilities for satisfaction. Another way of saying this is that to empathically work on an interpersonal issue can be equivalent to experientially recontextualizing an existing relationship. That is, whenever there is a barrier to intimacy, an issue to be worked on, a broadening of one’s present context of the relationship has to be accomplished. One adds, or more precisely, constructs, a new, more reciprocal, less narcissistic perspective. To attempt to do so, however, is to encounter difficulties almost immediately. Separation and individuation issues, for example, that developmentally have to be mastered by a child in order to consolidate a sense of an autonomous self, may find themselves revived in adult form. There can be an instinctive, one might say, perspectival resistance and paranoid suspiciousness. Is one-in broadening his interpersonal horizon-really 127

K N O W I N G I F IT’S T H E R E A L T H I N G

expanding his outlook or allowing himself to be subtly brainwashed? As Gregory Bateson (1972) once noted, few things are harder to change than one’s implicit, fundamental overview of the ways things are or should be. Compounding the matter is the disturbing realization that typically the motivation to change in this manner comes from the desire to resolve a conflict or to forestall the dread of perhaps losing the relationship. In other words, there will be pressure of one sort or another to change. It is worth noting, on the other hand, that, in spite of this, there will be occasions-most often when someone feels so enriched by the other-that she will be inspired to autonomously work on the relationship in the hope of not only solidifying what it is her good fortune to have, but to make it even better. Someone who takes seriously the challenge of trying to honestly mend whatever seems dysfunctional-those times when he or she feels particularly devalued-in an ongoing relationship will more often than not discover that her partner hardly shares the same therapeutic zeal. It will then be especially important not to let the other off the hook by allowing him to beat a hasty retreat. Such a person will consciously, or unconsciously, remove the easy outs by being careful not to provide the other with a convenient excuse for either getting angry, becoming insulted, or starting a fight. The most common mistake in this regard is to reveal how demeaned they happen to feel (often communicated in a manner meant to mirror and reciprocate the other’s perceived contempt) with the unfortunate result of giving the other sufficient cause to distance himself even further so as not to have to deal with the person’s bill of grievances. Our hypothetical person committed to working on the relationship, therefore-no matter how wronged she may feel128

0BSTACLES

will suppress her accusatory indignation and act instead-not

wounded-but curious and concerned. By thereby converting a narcissistic injury into a nagging interpersonal puzzle, she indicates that instead ofwriting off the relationship, she is willing to consider the possibility of a benign explanation into what many would regard as clear-cut abusive treatment. She shows enough trust in the other to allow the other a chance to make reparation. Indeed, the very fact she seems at least ready to listen to what the other has to say seems proof that she has not rushed to judgment. Finally, by allowing the other the opportunity to put his own spin on what happened, and the time to do it, she displays an undeniable self-confidence, in turn reassuring to the other because it strongly suggests that no great harm could have been done. It follows that a key element in working on a relationship is to find a way to create a space for reparative measures to be taken. Once this is the goal, it becomes immediately clear that everything that is deemed likely to cause distance-typically judgmental, accusatory, or punitive anger-must be held in suspension. In the worst-case scenario this means, even when one knows one has already written the other off and most likely, will never invest in him or her again, one will be at pains to behave in the opposite fashion, so as to offer that person a last chance. When there is a real future, when someone earnestly wants to strengthen an ongoing relationship that is temporarily floundering, it means giving that person, in effect, not a second chance, but as many chances as are necessary. That, however, is considerably harder to do than it sounds. It means suspending final judgments, no matter how much one has been hurt; almost always holding the door open, always viewing the relationship as a work in progress, and never as a finished product. It is only when 129

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

someone truly tries to do this that they realize just how much it goes against the grain, which, especially in times of crisis and of great stress, is often to close off, categorize, or end relationships (in this regard, I find Bollas’s concept [ 19951 of a terminal object quite useful). As mentioned, a major obstacle in undertaking such a project is the daunting uncertainty that lurks in the wings. A person simply cannot know when she begins to explore in earnest a relationship sore point whether she is going to discover, as hoped, a path toward greater closeness or, as feared, uncover the hll extent of a dying relationship. This is a main reason for the popularity of the psychiatrist’s standard practice of making a diagnosis at the beginning of treatment. Once the diagnosis has been officially delivered, there is the tacit assumption that everything the psychiatrist does is in the service of a cure. Compare this to intensive, psychodynamic psychotherapy where often there will be no diagnosis for months, with sometimes years of uncovering before even a tentative diagnosis is reached. Not surprisingly, it can then seem as though one is exploring in the dark, and there may be an understandable paranoia over what eventually will be lying at the end of the journey: the labyrinthine underpinnings of a hitherto unimagined and shocking core illness or an unsuspected appreciation of a range of unconscious options that ultimately is inspiring, making the preceding psychic excavation seem somehow worth it (the hoped for result, of course). If we now apply this to the everyday case of a worried couple trying to sort out a relationship impasse, we could say this is very much like a lay person trying to treat himself. The natural confusion as to how either partner is going to diagnose what they personally think is ailing them can be a powerful rationalization for not even bothering to try, while 130

OBSTACLES

the alternative-to forgo diagnosis and just explore whatever seems to be the problem in an open-minded way-can seem even less appealing. Yet another deterrent, equally hard to articulate, is that working on a relationship can mean fighting for oneself, which in turn can carry the negative unconscious connotation that there is something the person urgently needs to have. Thus, he or she may deem it a considerable narcissistic injury to have to spell out in painful detail to the other how much they have come to depend on the well-being and continuance of the relationship. To do so can easily seem as though they are risking wearing their dependency needs on their sleeve and there is then an understandable paranoid uneasiness that if they have seriously overestimated the other’s investment, they will have thereby inadvertently provided them with ammunition for future use. Each partner may therefore fear that initiating a project to improve the health of their bond may instead provide a convenient rationalization for the other-being superficially reassured by the manifest good faith of their partner and thus subtly let off the hook-to just sit back and watch. By contrast, they may feel they simply are not worthy of fighting for something, no matter how important, no matter how much they may want to, and to do so is to run the risk of coming across as narcissistic and aggressive. They may accordingly prefer to think of love as something natural and transcendent with a life of its own-it’s there or it isn’t-that is not subject to the vicissitudes of human will power. From such a perspective, working on a relationship can seem a cheapening of an unconsciously held ideal of autonomous, unsullied love. I am trying to show how difficult it often is for someone, regardless of how much pain the individual happens to be in 131

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

because of a relationship, to actually initiate on his or her own a project to honestly uncover and address whatever the underlying problems are. It is quite rare within one’s therapy practice to see someone undertake this all by him- or herself. It is almost as rare to see someone undertake the same project, even with the facilitation of a competent therapist. No matter how much I happen to believe in the value of working on a relationship (and implicitly or sometimes directly I communicate this to my patients), I am forever surprised at how resistant even the most sophisticated and motivated person can be to this process. This becomes crystal clear when-often after some particularly poignant, lucid, specific, and thoughthl account by a patient of just how deep the pain and suffering she has perhaps been receiving for years at the hands of their significant other-I simply ask, “Well, did you communicate any of this at the time?” I often hear in return, sometimes after a blank stare the equally simply response, “No.” Should I then gently try to explore this after allowing time for her pregnant omission to sink in, typically I receive one or the other of the following excuses: “It would have made things worse”; “He wouldn’t have understood”; “I wouldn’t know how to put it in words”; “It never occurred to me at the time.” I will then often point out that the words they had just used were more than adequate, and that the issue seems to be an emotional rather than an intellectual or linguistic one (an interpretation they almost always accept).

0B STACLES Hopefully, both the complexity and perils of working on a relationship have become clearer. It is worth noting, however, 132

0BSTACLES

that when attempts to address some issue pertaining to intimacy fail, they invariably do so at their incefition. It is there that the formidable psychic obstacles arrayed against them are at their killing best. Following are some brief, quite extreme, but, sadly, almost ubiquitous examples of an unconscious dynamic that is played out millions of times daily in our culture in one way or another.

Barry Barry, an obsessively and compulsively honest man who prided himself on never having incurred the slightest debt to anyone, was no less rigorous when it came to collecting whatever was owed to him, especially when it involved a supposed friend. So he was at his wit’s end when Ralph, who had absolutely vowed that he would immediately repay the loan of over $200, continued to be in arrears well over a year later. Here, verbatim, is the final, exasperated attempt by Barry (via the telephone)-before permanently writing the relationship off-to get his erstwhile friend to take just a little responsibility. Barry (wasting no time): Hi. I still haven’t received your check. RaCph (unfazed): You didn’t get the check-My God. Barry (no longer buying this): You said a month ago that you had mailed it. RaCph (laughing, as though he is equally baffled at the absurdity of a situation, over which he does not have the slightest control): Damn. I don’t know what happened. It was supposed to have been mailed a month ago. Bamy (now trying to curb his rising anger): I didn’t get it. RaCph : Look, what if I send it certified mail? This way you’ll 133

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

have to sign for it.

Barry : I won’t necessarily be around for it. Ralfih : How about UPS? Barry : I also might not be around. How about priority mail? Ralph : Okay. 1’11 send it tomorrow morning. But if you get the other check first, don’t cash it. I’m canceling it now. Not surprisingly, Ralph’s check, despite such repeated promises of good faith, never did come. The example, although extreme, is so common these days as to be nearly universal. What it shows is an almost pathological inability to take responsibility for the consequences of his actions, especially their impact upon others. This is immediately apparent as Ralph-confronted yet again with another promise that will be broken-retreats instantly into denial (“You didn’t get the check,” as though he had sent it) and pseudo-empathy (“My God!”). Barry, who has been through this sad routine with his former friend one too many times, disregards this and keeps the pressure on by calmly going over the relevant facts once again (“You said a month ago that you had mailed it.”). Cornered, Ralph offers another dose of token empathy (“Damn.”) and then has no other recourse but to repeat his disavowal of personal responsibility (“It was supposed to have been mailed a month ago.”). Now there is a faint hint that culpability is being shifted to the Post Office or perhaps to Barry himself, necessitating a reiteration of the irrefutable fact (“I didn’t get it.”), thereby making it clear that he has no intention of either accepting the slightest blame for the failure to locate the check or letting Ralph off by pretending to believe that the cause of the missing letter is in any way mysterious. So the subtext is clear: Ralph is to accept responsibility at last and take immediate corrective action. To which Ralph, cornered again, ups 134

OBSTACLES

the ante and resorts to a manic defense; he’ll send it certified mail or UPS (in other words, there’s no amount of trouble he won’t go to in order to make amends). When Barry replies he could not be counted on to be available for such extreme measures, Ralph blithely ignores him. He then instructs Barry not to cash the first check should it arrive (now in full stride, he returns to his first lie that he had actually sent it) and informs him he is going to cancel it (yet another senseless boast). Ralph thereby returns to a safe, superordinate position in which the spotlight is now presumably on Barry’s capacity to carry out instructions without screwing up. The implication is that he might be capable of irresponsibly cashing two different checks for the same amount.

ROY

In this second example, Roy, a fantastically hard-working, but struggling young actor, is at pains to make sure his agent, who has a habit of ignoring whatever he says, understands that his availability in the upcoming months is extremely limited. He tells him: “I’m available for regional theater work, beginning April 1. It has to be then. I’m committed to an off-Broadway piece that begins in June which could run for at least two months.” To which his agent cheerfully replies: “Okay. I’ll tell the casting director your dates and get back to you.” And two weeks later this conversation occurs: Agent: Okay. Everything is set. The casting director will be ready to meet with you beginning in June.

Roy (exasperated, but very patient): But don’t you remember? I told you I would not be available startingJune 1. I’m in an off-Broadwayplay, that could run for months. 135

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

Agent: Oh. Very sorry. But don’t worry . . . if you can’t meet with the casting director then, you can always do it next year. Roy (increasinglyhaving to struggle with his composure):But, look, I’ve been really counting on meeting that director for a long time. It means a lot to me and I don’t want to postpone it. Agent: I see. Well, they only have certain times available, but I’ll relay this to him, and get right back to you. Here is perhaps even a clearer example of not listening to the other. In the session that immediately followed this, I could see my patient’s agitation as he groped for a possible explanation of such a baffling miscommunication. After all, hadn’t Roy, who could be so articulate when he wanted to, bent over backward to make a meeting with the casting director? So he wondered aloud if this was a portent: that they wanted to get rid of him but were trying to let him down gently; or that they had never been serious in the first place; or they were interested, but were playing games, showing him who’s boss. Or, in spite of how improbable it seemed to Roy, there could actually have been a legitimate misunderstanding. Although possible, of course, it is rare when such disconnects between people do turn out to be purely innocent and unintentional. It is much more likely that there are deeper and muddier motives. Whatever those motives were in the case of Roy’s agent, it clearly and characteristically was not expressed. The point here is that much of interpersonal exchange is built on an analogous foundation, one that is designed to skirt issues of the true self. Thus, these two examples are two sides of the same coin. The first shows rather vividly the type of profound and sometimes pathological resistance to being direct that can be almost instantly mobilized. The second, much more com136

0BSTACLES

mon, effectively depicts the result of such resistance-the kind of eerie misperception that leaves the recipient hanging in space. A precondition for working on something-whether it be the embarrassment of failing to send a long-overdue check (as in the first example) or the uncertainty and anxiety over whether any given actor meets the requirements of a particular role-is the ability to confront often painful feelings. In therapy, where you regularly see how mightily someone has to struggle in order to express the simple truth about his feelings and thoughts (a truth that has never before been aired), you can appreciate the psychic forces arrayed against this and how irresistibly tempting it can seem to just let the matter rest. To do otherwise would have entailed at the minimum, in the first example, admitting he had consciously not sent the check, which, given the frequency of this occurrence, would be tantamount to revealing a disturbing character flaw. In the second example, it might have required confessing to a basic disingenuousness and a rather shameless leading on of an idealistic, gullible young actor. But the tendency, as with all painhl feelings, is avoidance and defense. This, coupled with the fact that the only necessity for dealing with painful feelings is the necessity one imposes upon oneself, makes it easy for the concept-of the value of working things out-to be simply not in the consciousness of the ordinary person. What, then, allows a person to have the ability to acknowledge the need to confront unpleasant, problematic feelings? There could, of course, be many factors: chief among the ones I’ve observed is a type of introspectiveness that can show that often negative or unwelcome thoughts and emotions are as much a signature of who one is as their more positive counterparts; a past history and memory of 137

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

having engaged, witnessed, or experienced the benefits of expressing oneself directly; a recognition of the manifest damage that can accrue from holding on to strongly critical or guilt-based feelings; and, perhaps most important of all, the inner confidence that one can raise fraught issues without either unduly falling apart or unintentionally alienating the other.

Sarah Sarah, a very lonely, middle-aged woman who yearned most of all for a feeling of community and contact with other people, could not have been more disappointed. For weeks she had been looking forward to the gathering in a neighborhood church of perhaps her favorite activist group. In attendance, she thought wistfully, might be one or two of the speakers whom she had so faithfully followed on the radio and who, in many respects, seemed more real to her than almost anyone she actually knew. Perhaps she would strike up a conversation with someone in the audience that would lead to an acquaintanceship, which would then grow into that rarest of thingsa new friend. At the very least, she would be treated to a scintillating discussion of some of the most important issues of our time by truly brilliant minds. Therefore, at the end of the evening, and later in the session, she searched for the cause of her bitter deflation, but she could not put her finger on anything in particular. A woman who sat next to her had started what seemed to be a promising conversation, but then abruptly asked Sarah if she would mind watching her seat and effectively disappeared. Two aging hippies in nearby rows, after ascertaining that she was single and perhaps available, made eye contact of a sort and then 138

OBSTACLES

drifted back into their separate worlds when she made no response. The scheduled speakers, while sounding remarkably like they did on the radio, somehow seemed less animated, more subdued, and flatter in person. Instead of the incandescent, magical glow she had been fantasizing about for weeks, a pall seem to hang in the air. Up close, these people-far from being inspirational-struck her as rather dispirited, self-absorbed, depressed, distracted, and apparently without any discernible interest in making any connection with anything but their own needs. In trying to make sense of this, Sarah revisited her ideological youth. Although not particularly activist herself, she had always counted Abbie Hoffman’s appearance and talk in the library of City College (as a leader in the late 1960s in the bold attempt to shut down the school) as one of the most thrilling events of her life. And the 1960s forever stood as the greatest and most meaningful time in her life. But Sarah is not alone in canonizing the 1960s as the cradle of ideological humanism and activism. For many, as for her, the 1960s represent a kind of bursting forth of humanistic life force (I go into this in greater detail in my discussion of what I call the politicized psyche in Narcissistic Giving [1995]). It can then seem-and almost always presents itself this way-as though the committed activist has successfully transcended the narrow circle of pressing narcissistic needs in which many ofus conduct our lives, and has moved into a more universal, global arena where it is only the major themes and conflicts that most drive humankind that exercise them. Thus, it is the plight of the disenfranchised everyman-not the wounds of the private self-that arouses the deepest passion. It follows to the ordinary person, who may often share in fantasy such idealistic principles, that the activist who dares to 139

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

act out can easily appear to be an ideological warrior, someone who time and again is prepared to make a stand on matters of conscience, regardless of the consequences. To therefore remain apart from the crowd in this way and to represent a kind of incarnated ego ideal cannot fail to be charismatic. One then cannot help but wonder where such courage comes from. The answer suggests that it is derived from a greater fund of disinterested compassion for others, a clearer sense of life’s priorities, and a refusal to be ruled by and to cater to the petty vicissitudes of one’s daily needs. This in turn may seem to be the ideological counterpart of that existential clarity that often visits a person who has just survived a brush with death, mobilizing him to spend whatever remaining time allotted on the things most dear in his life. From this point ofview, the activist is particularly impressive for his ability to prioritize often without the benefit of an external traumatic event. This point of view, I might add, is the long-range one, reflecting the fact that few people get the opportunity, as Sarah did, to observe up close what often lies behind such seeming charismatic idealism. A very different picture often emerges, revealing, among other things, the sense of deprivation and deep dissatisfaction with the innumerable narcissistic injuries that are part of daily life, which can cause someone to believe that the only possible meaning in life must lie elsewhere, such as the pursuit of some higher cause. This type of fanaticism, such purity of motives, may serve as an antidote and ideological antidepressant for a singularly squalid personal existence. And, in this light, activism may represent, a kind of reflex flight into programmed action rather than principled deeds. (Behavior of h s type is an unconscious release of unresolved intrapsychic and interpersonal tensions, reminiscent of Joyce McDougal’s [ 19891 concept of action symptoms and operational thinking.) 140

0B STACLES

But perhaps the biggest shock to the distant admirer such as Sarah, enraptured from afar by the rhetoric of political activism, is the often rather blatant narcissism that emerges with dramatic clarity as soon as the interpersonal spotlight is focused on them and forms the soil out of which their most fervently held ideological beliefs are nourished. This can become particularly evident if one listens to radio talk hosts (to which my patient was not surprisingly addicted) who go out of their way to specialize in shock tactics: freely insulting certain telephone callers who manage to irritate them by referring to them as “stupid”; “ignorant”; “pathetic”, and so on. It is obvious that the radical nature of their strong opinions-a staple of talk show hosts-is used in the service of entertaining their listeners: to provoke, titillate, and even agitate them into a state that, whatever else it may be, it is not boredom. In this case, the link between a decidedly narcissistic personality who cannot bear to be unstimulated, ignored, or bored and someone who can create for him- or herself a persona flamboyant enough to be projected regularly and successhlly on the airwaves is clear. My own litmus test to determine whether a person’s seemingly idealistically grandiose beliefs are rooted in narcissism is based on the immediate and specific impact he or she has on me. That is, if someone wants to seriously publicize that he is in possession of a far better way for a large segment of the population to be conducting their lives, then before I can possibly begin to take their ideas seriously, I require a very simple demonstration. I need to go away from an encounter with them, howsoever brief, a moment or two will do, feeling that in some at least miniscule way my life was enriched and that I am therefore better off, if only infinitesimally, after having met them than I was before. If this does not happen, or, especially, 141

KNOWING IF I T ’ S T H E REAL T H I N G

if the reverse takes place-and this I might add is the overwhelming aftermath of almost everyone who experiences in person a figure she has ideologically revered from afar-then I am hardly interested in that person’s blueprint for transforming humanity. In short, I believe this is what Sarah did not see from afar but saw all too well up close: the narcissistic underpinnings of her activist heroes. By contrast, then, what might have represented a less grandiose and more intimate setting for my patient? Well, one in which the focus was not exclusively on the specialness, the urgency, the greatness of the beliefs to which they ostensibly adhere and for the pursuit ofwhich they have convened; but rather, a setting which allows for the recognition and validation of the selves of the individual members as well. I could put this more simply by saying people are more important than either their rights or their ideals. Which means the individual person always has more inherent worth than the politicized person (see my Narcissistic Giving, where I develop the concept of the politicized psyche). Yet this basic need of the self to be personally recognized gets not only lost but so distorted that when something fhdamentally human gets politicized, it is often radically denied: One comes to believe that it is the principle, not the person, the cause, or the individual, that above all must be preserved. By contrast, it is a touchstone of intimacy to never politicize the act of relating. Another way of saying this is: where there is love, there is no politics, and where there is politics, while there may be passion, there is no love. Nor is this a matter of two people who are in love being willfblly and collusively blind to the exigencies of the politics of relating. Rather, it is a case of politics being irrelevant. Someone who is engaged in an ongoing intimate relationship with another willin his tendency to respect the whole person in a very deep 142

0B STACLES

way-almost certainly respect the other’s individual rights; so much so that even when there are substantial differences vis8-vis the so-called politics of gender, almost invariably these are worked out. In other words, there is an unconscious realization that the intimate relationship he is currently involved in is what, above all else, is to be preserved and honored. Finally, and perhaps most telling15 the contempt for most people, especially those who do not subscribe to their beliefs, that so often is expressed by ideological advocates for their imagined adversaries can be directly linked to an inability to relate to people on a one-on-one intimate basis.

Morris The need to be related to means the need to be recognized, to be valued. It follows that someone in a position where the approval of another is of critical importance is decidedly vulnerable and at risk for anyone who happens to choose to abuse his power. In the following example this is exactly what happens. The patient, Morris, is a successful freelance writer who has submitted a proposal to a prominent agent on which he has worked for ten months. Here is their conversation in which Morris, after failing to receive any word over a period of months, finally gathers his courage and resolves to bite the bullet and speak to the prestigious agent directly: Morris: You said you’d have my manuscript read by this time.

Agent (cheerful):I did and I have. Morris (nervous but refusing to engage in chitchat):Good.

Agent (pausing, before emitting a slight hollow laugh): I just didn’t get it. I didn’t get it at all. (pausing again) So obviously I would not be the right agent for you. 143

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

Mom> (determined not to ask why): All right. You’ll send the manuscript back? Agent: Of course. (pausing) You must be very proud of yourself! Mom’s: Hmm? Agent: You must be very proud of yourself. M o m > (determining not to take this seriously): Uh-huh. In this example, the author is both professional and courteously direct. He has been led to expect his manuscript would have been read by this time, he obviously is eager for a response, and he gets right to the point. To which the agent responds in kind, briskly and seemingly pleasantly (“I did and I have.”). But Morris has been burned as an author too many times in the past to trust anything short of unequivocal endorsement. So he politely, but uneasily says, “Good,” and then waits, putting the ball firmly in the court of the veteran agent, who, of course, knows the crucial time has arrived to deliver her opinion of the work. Up until now, we have only been depicting the bare bones mechanics of the initial author-agent interaction. It is what happens next, the manner in which she presents her personal take on the proposal, that pertains to our theme. After a tiny, mirthless laugh, a salve to go along with the cruelty to follow, she renders her long-awaited opinion that she “just didn’t get it .” Now, what is extraordinary about those simple words is how swiftly they succeed in killing off any prospect of hope for the expectant author. The entire authorial point of view, the purpose, the aesthetic focus of the book so eluded her, failed so utterly to take shape in her mind, that she could not begin to intelligently identify, interpret, and assess the mean144

0B STACLES

ing of her responses. All she could do was throw up her hands and retreat behind a defensive pained laugh. Yet, topping even that was her strange attempt at reparation immediately thereafter-“You must be very proud of yourself”which was even more damaging, at least according to my patient. For so radically at odds and decontextualized from the conversation at hand did this seem-should Morris be proud that he had labored for nearly a year on a book that had failed to even register on the consciousness of the other-that the remark could only be received as almost unbearably patronizing. And any doubts on this score, that it was, for example, only a misunderstanding, were removed when-refusing to accept her less than worthless compliment Morris had instead concisely expressed his own bafflement at whatever she thought she was doing (“Hmm3”)-only to receive back the identical, carefully enunciated compliment as though, too important not to be heard, it was worth the added emphasis. Well, then what would a more intimate response have been in this case? Let us suppose that the woman really was out of her element in regard to the manuscript in question and was therefore uncertain as to how to discuss it. For one thing, she might have said as much, sans the toying laugh and the condescension. Had she been just a bit more generous, she might have then ventured to say something genuine about her own limitations as a critic and why it may be that certain works escape her critical net. Going further, she might have honestly offered that perhaps the lack of receptivity was therefore a failure on her part, rather than on the work’s part. She might even have empathized with the author’s predictable disappointment upon hearing her nonreaction and in turn expressed disappointment with her own inability to be more appreciative. Given that the author in question happened to be an accomplished writer with 145

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

a proven track record, she might have taken the trouble to legitimately pinpoint one or two notable strengths in the manuscript-there are strengths in almost any work, provided one is willing to search hard enough for them-and comment upon them as best she could. Above all, she would not have savored the moment as she so obviously did.

Negative Closure One of the most effective ways to nip intimacy in the bud is to seek what might be called negative closure. Negative closure is premature closure. It means establishing a consensus that nothing further can be done, that whatever can be transacted has been transacted. The sometimes outlandish abuse of this popular strategy has been justly and famously satirized in the line, “That’s not my job.” Humorous connotations aside, this simple phrase is another masterpiece of nonrelating, fully the equal of Morris’s agent’s “I just didn’t get it.” First, it categorizes human behavior into discrete packages, neatly segregated. Implied is that the other is asking for something that cannot be given and is therefore making an inappropriate demand. Further implied is that the other is ignorant of the scope of the services the person is responsible for and to that extent is invalidating them by not understanding and appreciating what it is they do and do not do. From this point of view, someone who does not take the time or trouble to find out the person’s limits is disrespecting him. By pressuring the person in effect to do another person’s job the person is implying that the respective skills involved are interchangeable; that what is distinctive about the one to whom she is talking is not important; that what really counts 146

0BSTACLES

is the degree to which the person proves instrumental in servicing the other’s needs. It is an accusation that is almost impossible to counter, inasmuch as the only person who could conceivably define what constitutes the dimensions of thisjob is the one who holds it. To challenge that in any way-by, for example, trying to go over the person’s head-is to leave oneself open to the charge of being arrogant as well as misinformed. Now, even supposing the assertion “It’s not my job” to be technically true instead of, as is more often the case, a failsafe tactic for expeditiously getting rid of someone you find inconvenient, what might have been a more sensitive, empathic, and interpersonal response in such a situation? Such a person would not nearly be in the hurry that someone who wants to bail out typically is. She might, for example, take the time to hrther draw out the other to see if there is anything else that could be offered. The person might, even if the relevant expertise that is being sought does lie elsewhere, recognize that she still undoubtedly knows more about what is being asked than the other, and, therefore, be willing to present whatever clarification she could. The person might see the occasion more as an opportunity to possibly help someone rather than an annoying interruption of more pressing work. She might take the trouble, even if engaged in the act of referral, to specifyjust what it is that the different department can offer. More significantly the person might take into consideration the underlying anxiety that usually accompanies a request for important information. She therefore would relate to the other more as a person than just an abstract, statistical seeker of what to her are routine facts. In short, she would realize that empathy tends to be factored out of such transactions and that simple kindness may be more what is needed than cold facts. And all this would be accomplished, assum147

KNOWING IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

ing the person is practical and motivated when it comes to the art of relating, in a matter of minutes.

Deferred Intimacy Negative closure, prevalent as it may be, is only one of many ways to bail out of, or forestall, the possibility of relating to someone else. Another equally popular strategy is to not disclaim, but merely postpone the need for dealing with an interpersonal obstacle; what might well be called from the standpoint of our theme, deferred intimacy. A patient’s recent heartfelt complaint over what she considered the shabbiest service imaginable illustrates this. Increasingly upset over what she considered an unsightly wartlike growth on her foot, she had sought out, upon the advice of both a friend and satisfied customer, an over-the-counter skin treatment called Plantar’s Wart. In the neighborhood pharmacy the clerk, a young woman barely out of her teens, after a quick check of the shelf pronounced the store out of stock. Not to worry, though, for she could order a supply that would arrive in about two weeks, at a cost of $20, exactly double the amount her friend had paid for the same product at this very store only weeks ago. Her suspicion thus aroused, my patient decided to check for herself. Returning to the aisle and the shelf in question, and after searching for only a minute, she was able to locate a package of Plantar’s Wart, at a cost of $10. To my patient, who was morbidly sensitive to slights of any kind, such blatantly sloppy service could not help but be taken personally. For me it was yet another example of the extraordinary ease with which it is possible to kill off the inception of an intimate contact, howsoever brief. As is abundantly 148

OBSTACLES

clear to my readers, I find the vast domain of American business a fertile arena rife with innumerable examples of this. In part, this is because so-called intimacy is flatly regarded as secondary or even irrelevant in nature. In turn, this means that the intimacy needs of both employee and customer (which, howsoever muted, are always operative), are being paid scant attention, are more or less left to fend for themselves. And not surprisingly, the result can be those grotesque caricatures of intimacy scattered throughout this book and so prevalent as to be almost universal. This particular clerk, then, was either indifferent, or, as is often more common, someone who simply hates herjob. Typically, someone who hates her job will, in addition to putting in a minimum of effort, as this young woman obviously did, try to think up ways to end the interaction as quickly and simply as possible. For example, by seeking negative closure-the classic one being, as mentioned, “That’s not my job”-which is to put all of one’s energies into finding plausible reasons for agreeing to terminate the current transaction. But another equally important tactic is deferral: For instance, they can help and do want to, but the timing is all wrong (e.g., they are out of Plantar’s Wart, or they do have it, but it has to be ordered, or the famous “Fax it to me”); or that what the customer is looking for is no longer being marketed or not what he or she really needs now that there is a better product that should be considered. Hatred of a job manifests itself most forcefdly in the interpersonal realm. Here, the other can quickly sense that the person could care less about really satisfylng the customer. Instead, disgruntled employees seem far more preoccupied with trying to manage the fluctuating levels of boredom and inconvenience that they are constantly struggling with. Accordingly, 149

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

they tend to appraise each service transaction on the basis of the perceived additional stress that may or may not be added to their workload. It follows that it is hard not to resent something one does not want to do, but feels one has to do. The person then cannot help but feel emotionally enslaved and from that perspective servicing the customer is likely to be viewed as an unwelcome reminder of her disempowerment. This leads us directly to those seldom asked but rather profound questions: How much to give? When is one giving too much and when too little? When is one giving because one really wants to and when is it merely the hlfillment of a sense of obligation? Questions that are universally hard to define in any relationship if only because the line between genuine nurturance (autonomous giving) and morality (mandated, obligated, compulsory, or guilt-ridden giving) is notoriously blurry and dynamically unstable. Morality, for example, can often mean being taught in one measure or another from childhood onward that there are things that must be done, that ought to be done, whether we want to or not. From the point of view, therefore, of the moral self, the deep pleasure that one can sometimes get from meeting the needs of the other is secondary to the obligation one has, painful or otherwise, to uphold the dictates of conscience and society. It immediately becomes apparent that love differs from morality inasmuch as it represents passion, choosing, freedom, and a kind of abandonment of everyone in the world except the couple. Love therefore stands opposed to compulsion and when an injunction is added, such as the Christian one to love their neighbor, it begins to resemble morality. By contrast, intimacy represents an amalgam of love with at least a dosage of morality. This is because there is almost always-should the relationship develop into an intimate 150

OB STACLES

one-a transition from a honeymoon phase to a gradual recognition of the necessity of maintaining the union with the love object. There is a commitment to safeguard it and an incremental understanding that the complexity of forging a durable bond between the two very different people will at times require considerable work. This will lead to internalized responsibility for best meeting the needs of the other as well as oneself, followed by a sense of moral guilt and anxiety for the inevitable occasional failure to do so, and, finally, culminating at times in an inevitable sense of compulsion, compliance, and at times entrapment. To be clear, therefore, in a relationship on whatever it is one is doing or not doing with the other is tantamount to being clear on the delicate interdependence of all these diverse forces, which, needless to say, is extraordinarily difficult. Instead, sometimes genuine wanting and desire seem on the rise; at other times guilt, fear, and an anxious compliance to perceived pressure seem to be the prime movers of the relationship; while most of the time one is too preoccupied to sort out the difference. It is customary to become aware of these distinctions only during periods of extreme intensity: when, for example, one is in the throes of a yearning, nascent love affair or, antithetically, when one is feeling oppressed by the consciousness of seemingly unending demands forever being placed upon one. From this point of view, being a parent encapsulates perhaps the paradigmatic relational conflict, wherein one tends to become biologically attached (the norm, as opposed to becoming genuinely loving and nurturing which is far more challenging), while simultaneously being culturally, societally, morally, and legally enjoined to remain that way. Although it is therefore a piece of folkloric wisdom to say that people cannot 151

KNOWING IF IT’S

THE REAL THING

choose their parents, it is overlooked that it is perhaps equally true that adults, while they may choose to reproduce, certainly cannot choose the children that are delivered to them. This means they quite literally are stuck with what they get. No longer can they even attempt to turn back the clock, undo whatever damage has been done, wipe the slate clean for a fresh start by choosing to abandon the parental relationship, at least not without dire legal ramifications. Which is why I believe that from the standpoint of intimacy, being a good enough parent (in the Winnicottian sense) is the most difficult relationship of all. By contrast, even in the most intense and intimate adult relationship there is always an implicit understanding that the commitment as such is founded on an existential choice, rather than on morality. Which means there is always the freedom to leave, given that there is a profound enough change in how the other is viewed. How then does one who feels confined and resentfd in an interpersonal situation or relationship, as everyone does on occasion, deal with the resultant tensions in a more intimate fashion? Perhaps first of all, he might not act out at the expense of the other. If, for example, the person happens to hate hisjob and its constraints and demands, he will recognize that it is his responsibility to do something about it. He does not distance himself from any real contact with the other in an effort to flee from a situation he finds onerous. He does not scapegoat the other. Finally, the person resists the temptation to reduce the interaction to one in which the entire focus is on the frustration he is feeling, with the other being viewed primarily as an obstacle in the compulsive quest to soothe himself. In sum, in spite of the fact that he may be under unusual stress, he does not forget to contextualize the relationship. 152

OBSTACLES

THE PROBLEM OF PACING The antithesis to the fundamental problem of intimacy-how to overcome the myriad and formidable obstacles to givingis the important but neglected issue of what occurs when one is not only giving too much, but perhaps too dangerously. This was once put to me succinctly by a patient who had immediately plunged from one long-term, rather intense relationship to another. He suddenly and traumatically realized, in the aftermath ofhis first major conflict, that he had unwittingly gotten himself into something for which he was hardly prepared. When I then suggested that perhaps the root of his trouble was that he had moved too fast, he disarmed me by somewhat poignantly asking, “But do you go slow?” This sensitive young musician, who had struggled for years with poor impulse control and a serious substance abuse problem, had had many love affairs. He seemed to effortlessly charm attractive, vibrant young women into becoming involved with him, but had never once until now given any thought to the question of the appropriate pace of a new relationship. For him there had only been one speed that made sense-to go as fast as he could. This, in a nutshell, is the problem of pacing. For some, as for my patient, part of the problem is that they do not think there is a problem. Others are too conscious of the problem: That is, they are so afraid of making a critical mistake by entering into an intimate relationship in which they are likely to be hurt that they cannot muster the requisite trust for building an authentic bond. Not surprisingly, the result is that they tend to settle for a safe, shallow, and manageable relationship. Most people, of course, fall well between these two extremes. So what we see is a dynamic, ever-changing intermixture of some 153

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S

THE REAL THING

trust, offset by considerable hesitation and holding back, but rarely does someone feel confident they have found the right balance. The problem is compounded by the complex, delicate, and ambiguous nature of trust (one of our indispensable ingredients of intimacy), which is beautifully summed up in the old joke, “Yes, it is important to trust, but who?” In other words there is an unconscious recognition in almost everyone that there are some people who are not only unworthy of trust, but who are simply dangerous to trust (bred into children in such universal warnings as “Never take candy from a stranger”). Implicit in this, of course, is that there is no one in the world more worthy of trust than one’s parents. That more often than not this is blatantly untrue is one of the many disillusionments with the residual claims of one’s infantile parental idealism that adolescents are fated to endure. The bitter fact that parents are frequently profoundly deserving of mistrust can make the task of learning to trust an adult strangerenough to seriously contemplate an intimate engagementthat much more daunting. In spite of these common failures of parental trustworthiness, it is obvious that people do tend to trust their family of origin more than anyone else. This is due in part to the fact that family attachment and deep bonding, which is not only biologically driven but culturally and massively reinforced, seems more instinctive and comes more naturally. In short, children are simply not given the option of making a decision as to whether or not they should be close to their parents. From this perspective, it is infinitely more difficult for an adult, with no biological or specific cultural cues to guide them, to select on their own in a universe of billions of strangers the handhl of people or single person most worthy of trust. 154

0B STACLES

Education, society, and culturejust do not and really cannotsince these are profoundly individualistic issues of intimacyprovide the tools with which to address this problem. From my own experience, the question we are posing is such a frightening, existential one that most people do everything in their power to avoid considering it deeply. Typically, when it does surface, it does so, as with my patient, in a decidedly negative way. That is, it becomes painfully apparent that someone, for whatever reason, has trusted the wrong person too much. But when is too much? Well, usually when it appears that there are far more negatives than positives; that the relationship as a whole seems to have become toxic; that there does not seem to be a way to restore it to its former state; or that the strenuous self-sacrifices required to either salvage or maintain it do not seem worth the trouble. Compounding this again, however, is the unconscious realization that intimacy as a dynamic process is often characterizedeven, and sometimes especially, when it is working well-by a paranoid suspiciousness that one is investing too much, yielding too much personal freedom, and therefore compromising one’s deepest needs to a dangerous extent. So there is an understandable fear that one may be wrong in thinking he giving too much when in reality he is simply satisfjling a defensive need for building a rationale for pulling back, just in case. As a therapist, then, it is easy to see that the great majority of people engaged in relationships tend to err in the direction of one extreme or another, giving either too much or not nearly enough. Rarely does the person in the best of circumstances manage to strike the right balance when it comes to the appropriate dosage of trust and investment in the other. This is very much akin to the equally classic problem of what the 155

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

right amount of anger is and how to express it to the other when you are angry. And almost universally here, as in intimacy, people tend to veer erratically toward the extremes: either far too much anger (overtly hostile and aggressive) or far too little and too late (compliant, passively indirect, resentful). Determining whether to give more or less is, however, only the first step in an arduous process. The decision to alter the tempo of the relationship almost inevitably raises the questionas it did with my patient--“To what extent and how?” For example, as soon as one chooses to pull back, a host of fresh questions immediately present themselves. Perhaps foremost is whether or not to honestly tell the other up front that one intends to seriously curtail her prior investment in the relationship. Or, is it prudent to keep one’s counsel to oneself and just incrementally, and as painlessly as possible (the much preferred method), withdraw oneself? Or, then again, is it better to just apply the surgeon’s knife and get it over in one fell swoop (as with the ever popular exit line, “My feelings for you have changed”)? Even if this makes sense from a selfish point of view, what is the most thoughtful and considerate way to disengage from another who is clearly still deeply and emotionally involved with you? Finally, should there be a conflict of interests here, as there almost always is, what is the nature of one’s obligation to lessen a partner’s pain? Does morality come into the picture here, and if so, in what way? If on the other hand the choice is to go forward-aside from all the complex issues already discussed, that are raised in making a commitment-one is immediately faced with the problem of how to define the new relationship in which one is considering investing. For typically, after a serious fight, whether for better or for worse, a relationship has been changed. The argument, even if not talked about, is not easily 156

OBSTACLES

forgotten. It will tend to be remembered or unconsciously evoked, especially whenever tensions revolving around the issue of trust come up. In my experience, it is harder in some ways to reinvest and recommit than to do so initially because now the person has some very specific, concrete, and vivid examples of just what can really go wrong fiom his or her point of view that cannot easily be rationalized, idealized, or fantasized away. Reinvestment, in other words, to the extent the person honestly intends to address the interpersonal tensions likely to arise, entails more involvement than just entering into a new relationship where nothing has really been established. To the degree that a recommitment means taking something seriously that one now knows an a h 1 lot about, both good and bad, it is more authentic. It is easier the second time around as the person now has a great deal more experience on which to appraise the relationship. In addition, continuance of even a troubled relationship can come to represent a decision to stick with what one knows, to avoid making any premature radical changes in lifestyle, to buy time if necessary-in short to play it safe. By contrast, pulling back can represent, depending on the person, either cutting one’s losses, or, at the other extreme, rehsing to settle for less than what one really wants. What would someone who is interested in being intimate do in either of these hypothetical situations? Well, primarily, I think one would recognize that his decision in whatever direction-inasmuch as it affects the otherjust as much or perhaps more than oneself-is something not only to be shared but to be incorporated into the fabric of the relationship. He would sense, consciously or unconsciously, that the underlying conflict causing the present tensions is not only unpleasant but meaningfd as well. Something that can, if both parties 157

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

can endure the pain of revisiting and reexamining it, shed valuable light on the scope and complexity of their differences and misunderstandings. As I have tried to show, an important element of intimacy is a paranoid mistrust of the other’s motives and perceptions. There is no better opportunity for sorting out the inevitable distortions of self and other than to engage in an honest postmortem of one of these typical flare-ups; where two people who are mutually and candidly discharging and acting out in the white heat of an out-of-control argument the most judgmental and punitive thoughts and feelings harbored for the other. That is, of course, if they are willing to do whatever is required in the service of intimacy.

LETTING GO

All of the obstacles to intimacy listed in the previous chapters have in common the necessity of first letting go of the respective maladaptive defenses in order to move forward. That’s easier said than done. To illustrate the point, here is a brief clinical example of someone who tried to do just this. Tim is a soft-spoken forty-five-year-old teacher who is troubled by his inability to express himself emotionally, veering between being distant and mute or overdramatic and sometimes even hysterical. On this particular Saturday afternoon, Tim (who is fond of setting himself therapeutic tasks as a kind of homework assignment) had resolved to do something he had never done before: buy himself a suit. In the past he had typically relied upon the women in his life for this task-his girlfriends, his two wives, especially Sally, who had been more or less devoted to his needs for the past fifteen years. 158

0B STACLES

But first there had been his paranoid mother, whose symbiotic link with her sensitive son had been the anchor saving her from fiank psychosis; whose overmanagement and involvement in every aspect of his life extended particularly to his appearance. To this day, Tim can conjure up, with a shudder, his mother’s penetrating brown eyes-traveling along his face and body-as she scanned for specks of dirt, stains, hidden flaws that had been carelessly overlooked. From his earliest years, the message had been given that decisions regarding his public image were out of his hands, too important to be dealt with by anyone other than his ever-watchful mother. As a result, Tim, if left to his own taste, preferred to dress in baggy clothes, a way of hiding, not defining, not letting anyone see his limits. To Tim, dressing to the best of one’s ability suggested a sense of oneself sufficiently finished to meet the world. It was a way of staking one’s claim. Dressing baggily on the other hand seemed to represent the much safer statement that one is still in an unfinished, developmental stage, not quite ready to occupy one’s station in life. For Tim, therefore, wearing a well-tailored suit was unconsciously equated with assuming a role, and a personal dress code was regarded as the personification of an established style of self. Precise and characteristic dress was therefore regarded by him as a supposedly unambiguous projection ofjust who the person thought he or she was, a self-image that one was proud enough to present to the world. Although Tim had managed to return home that Saturday afternoon with two tastefd, well-fitting, conservative suits in hand-that even met with the enthusiastic approval of his fastidious, clothes-conscious wife-the experiment had not been without its cost. Throughout the day, and especially in his dealings with Sally, with whom he felt free to discharge his feelings, 159

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S S H E R E A L T H I N G

he had been hysterical and then paranoid-typical reactions for

him whenever his anxiety passed a certain threshold.

As a therapist, I was struck with how a hysterical reaction can breed paranoia in someone not otherwise so disposed. I

realized that the sense of being chaotically out of control could not help but make one profoundly distrusthl of one’s own defenses, adulthood, and capacity to take care of one’s needs in an autonomous fashion. Being hysterical therefore can unconsciously represent an enraged infantile protest, in the form of an adult tantrum, in which a person demands that they be taken care of. Simultaneously, however, they may dread that anyone can hear, understand, and be motivated to help them. In this sense, hysteria is the language of pain, pain being the most substantive and perhaps the only message that the hysteria is communicating, at least consciously (see Christopher Bollas [2000] for a brilliant discussion of the unconscious dynamics of the characterological hysteria). Because the hysterical person typically feels he has nothing to offer others from whom he is desperately soliciting help, he has little hope of building trust. He is therefore understandably paranoid about any chance of capturing his listener’s attention short of overstimulation and theatrical overkill. When the hysterical fit dies down, as it invariably does, it is characteristic for the person to try to save face, while the recipient who has been cornered into acting as an involuntary audience will often feel resentment. It follows that someone who has been hysterical will often feel in the aftermath as though he or she has done the equivalent of attempting-in the manner of an infant-to vomit emotions that seem too unbearable to retain inside. This is shown by the fact that patients who report hysterical responses to their therapist, as Tim did to me, almost always treat these ex160

0B STACLES

periences as disturbing, uncharacteristic of them, and, although they do not use these words, as beneath their dignity. They look to therapy to help prevent a repetition of such behavior, to provide a plausibly satisfjmg explanation, to contain the lingering side effects of such an emotive outburst. They tend to see such incidents as confirmatory in some way and that there is something dysfunctional,something woemy lacking in their defense system, in short, something wrong with them. So how does someone, especially one who is mindfd of the considerable destructive power of a hysterical fit to undermine the complex and sensitive structure of an existing intimate bond, realistically attempt to make reparation? Well, here is what my patient, Tim-who happened to have been actively engaged in trying to strengthen the intimate bond that existed between him and his wife-did. Perhaps foremost, he did not shy away from taking responsibility for his behavior. He acknowledged to himself first and then to his wife that he had suffered a mini-breakdown, temporarily regressing to an infantile self. He accepted, howsoever reluctantly, that he had acted in a way that he could only regard as shamefbl. He also realized that in so doing he was not only displaying admirable honesty, but acting in a strikingly self-confident manner, thereby bolstering his self-esteem and reinforcing his determination to do what was necessary to make reparation. This point was first driven home when I saw the twentyyear-old tennis genius, John McEnroe, play in the year-ending Masters Tournament featuring the eight best players in the world. Although playing brilliantly, at one point McEnroe-so famously hard on himself that he believed he should win almost every point-dropped his racket after missing what he obviously thought was a makable shot. He threw his head 161

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S

THE REAL THING

back and in pantomime started strangling himself. This was an obvious reference to the quintessential act of a failure of nerve in competitive sports known as choking. But as a lifetime fan of big-time tennis, I had never once seen a star tennis player make such a dramatic public admission. What I immediately realized about McEnroe’s psyche then-borne out time and again over the next ten years-was that he possessed almost magical confidence in his natural ability. For the ordinary person who understandably does not possess unlimited faith in his own natural talents, it may take even greater courage to turn a searching light on the most flawed aspects of his self. Very often the other appreciates this, knowing how rare it is for someone to be so painfully candid, while simultaneously realizing that only a person who both trusted and was deeply invested in them would bother to subject themselves to such an excruciating process of selfdisclosure. For this reason, paradoxically-providing, of course, that the damage done by the hysterical outburst has not been too great-at such times two people often feel authentically closer and more trusting than ever before. As this example shows, letting go involves nothing less than abandoning one’s preferred defenses at a critical time in the course of the relationship, typically after a very stressful period. The basic conflict involving letting go is that on the one hand there is a strong sense that one needs his or her most familiar defenses; and on the other there is a deepening realization that certain defenses-especially those that the person is now striving to let go of-have had a decidedly negative impact on the other. Whether the person succeeds in the attempt to change will depend, of course, on the strength of that person’s motivation. In either case, however, the desire to salvage or to improve the relationship will intensify the underlying 162

OBSTACLES

conflict and not allow the person to coast in his customary defensive way.

SECOND THOUGHTS Almost as soon as the process of letting go is initiated, a typical paranoid reaction sets in. Such a person begins to fear, consciously and unconsciously, that they (1) are not really ready to let go; (2) have overestimated their resources; (3) have succeeded only in making themselves more defenseless; (4) have, in addition, misjudged how much they can actually trust the other; and that (5) far from acting in the service of their own best interests or the interests of the relationship, they are merely being compliant; and so on. Should they succumb to this initial wave of paranoid doubts, a second paranoid reaction (in response to what has just happened) usually sets in (triggered by the accumulated memories of how destructively defensive they have been in the past) and they now become afraid that far from having come to their senses (as they were just thinking), they are really setting themselves up for a disastrous relapse. It immediately becomes clear that this stage of the letting go process is dynamically unstable. Characteristically, the person senses this and tries to keep the inner struggle to let go a secret until determining whether he or she can truly change. It follows that there is a desire to silently experiment with letting go before admitting to and reassuring the other that a new leaf has been turned over. Typically if there is a legitimate moving away from an identified, toxic, interpersonal pattern, the partner, on some level, will immediately recognize and appreciate the change. Finally, even if the person is unable to 163

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

make much of a dent in the entrenched pattern but is nevertheless perceived as sincerely trying to, very often the other will show added respect and trust for him or her. To summarize, then, the basic obstacles are: Being called upon to commit to an unknown relationship and an unknown future. Having no preparation from our society, our upbringing, and our culture for dealing with issues of intimacy. The fact that the average person feels at a loss when they find themselves in the deep waters of a troubled relationship, one that calls for conscientious, intelligent, and collaborative work. Our culture’s tendency to objectify, compartmentalize, categorize, and, generally, vastly oversimplify the depth of emotional problems, with relational issues being seen as just as soluble as any other. But in point of fact people caught in the morass of a dysfunctional relationship discover instead that the so-called rules are profoundly unconscious and that most of what they have heard regarding how to manage and resolve interpersonal tensions does not seem to either work or apply to their particular case. The basic American interpersonal defense seems to be to bail out. By contrast, I’ve tried to show the kind of benefit that can be had for those who approach issues of intimacy with the respect they deserve. In the next chapter I will examine how some of these very issues play themselves out in the therapeutic setting.

164

THERAPY AND INTIMACY WHEN A THERAPIST LOVES A PATIENT

T

o the public mind, this generally connotes romantic or sexual love-something the overwhelming majority of mental health professionals, myself included, agree is perhaps the most destructive relationship a therapist can enter into with a current, vulnerable patient. Not surprisingly, because of this professional taboo, little is found in the literature about another kind of therapeutic love: one that is sublimated, nonromantic, nonsexual, and compatible with a l l l y professional, ethical, therapeutic alliance with a particular patient. Therapists, therefore, who are talking shop about various patients-especially those who are provoking their most personal feelings (what is called countertransfrence)-wi~ rarely admit to loving a patient. If they do, they tend to put it in a new age way, in other words, asjust another manifestation, albeit professional, that they are basically humanistic, spiritual beings who care about the people they treat. Or, once in a while, a therapist d toss off that at particular patient is 165

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

charming? “adorable,” or “a delight,” but again this is almost always presented as merely a simple example of their affectionate, good-hearted, people-loving side. It follows that rarely does such a therapist concede that behind his or her affection for a patient lies a complex, deep, and even perhaps conflicted relationship. Once again this is reflected in the professional literature, inasmuch as admissions of negative countertransference (how, for example, the therapist might feel upset, threatened, bored, conhsed, mistrustful, angry, punitive, envious, frightened, manipulated, or seduced by a certain patient) are far more numerous than their counterpart confessions of unusually positive, affectionate, tender, or loving emotions toward a particular patient. This was vividly brought home to me once by a close colleague and friend, a woman whom I’ve long regarded as a superb clinician and one of the most empathic, compassionate, sensitive, yet professional therapists I had ever met. In the midst of a rather playhl fantasy conversation in which we were considering the things we might do if we were to suddenly become instant millionaires, she startled me by saying she would immediately give a large sum of money to a certain patient. The patient, a woman, for years had had her heart set upon a dream house but, along with her husband, had been unable to afford it. Although my initial reaction was to think that this was ajoke, I soon realized that my friend was not kidding. When I then pointed out how such a gratuitous act of philanthropy to a patient would seem to violate every canon of professional neutrality we had both been taught, she simply shrugged, “I don’t care.” She went on to say, however, that this particular patient happened to be one of the most extraordinary people she had ever encountered, in or out of therapy, a poignant, poetic soul with exquisite sensitivity, gentleness, b<

166

THERAPY AND INTIMACY

and kindness who had suffered enormously and deserved a break in life, if anyone did. Now, while I could not conceive of personally ever doing such a thing, I nevertheless began to realize the kind of impact that certain very select people can have upon their therapists. Furthermore, I saw that what was at stake here was not a question of a lack of professionalism on my friend’s part-although I emphatically took issue with her judgment here-but the plain fact that she really loved this patient (which she freely admitted) as a person. Intrigued by this unexpected realization, I began to review in my own mind my long career as a psychotherapist,scanning the great diversity ofpeople I had treated for anyone whom in hindsight I could say that I had “loved.” To my surprise, a tiny handf i l of remembered patients presented themselves, each of whom I retrospectively assigned to a category. There was, for example, the patient who seemed to me to be the epitome of the daughter I had never had but had often fantasized about having; a gentle, sensitive, touching soul who could elicit those daddy’s-little-girl feelings in me. When I tried to make sense of this, I realized that there had been special preconditions that needed to be met before I could allow myself in good conscience to develop such strong and personal attachment feelings. Freud once said that for each person there were conditions for loving, and it now seemed to me that this was also true, notwithstanding the substantial differences between actual and professional loving, when it came to the special objects of affection among one’s patients. Perhaps another way to say this is that for every therapist, if he or she could only be open to it, there is an unconscious profile of the potentially loved patient. For me such a profile would be of 167

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

someone with whom I had established an obviously productive and therapeutic relationship; who manifested an undeniably positive chemistry; who was unquestionably receptive to my most genuine therapeutic skills; and who, therefore, had plainly blossomed in what Winnicott (1965) calls the holding environment of the therapeutic milieu. In short, such a person would be someone who seemed especially ripe for the therapeutic impact that all of my talent and training had pointed me toward. What are the signs, then, that a therapist loves a particular patient? With hindsight, they seem obvious. You become aware of a surprising and persistent affection for the chosen patient. You find yourself looking forward to upcoming sessions. Often there is an expectation that the therapist w i l l be energized by the session. There is a consciousness of pleasure and satisfaction, at being in the company of the favored patient. The normal motivation to do good professional work is even stronger in this instance because now the therapist tends to feel amply rewarded and validated for his investment. Accordingly, the customary restraints and sacrifices that are called for by the professional responsibilities of being a therapist also seem eminently worth it. Not surprisingly,memories of these sessions tend to linger longer, are more fondly recalled, and are often taken home. There is a marked tendency to be more protective, nurturing, concerned, and responsive to such patients. When they are in obvious pain, as every serious patient is at one time or another, it is especially upsetting to the therapist. It follows that it is apparently harder to put pressure on such a patient, to either confiont him or her, or to be passive in the face of his or her discomfort, embarrassment, or anxiety. It is particularly stresshl to perceive that one is disappointing such a patient, 168

THERAPY AND INTIMACY

that they are feeling let down, misunderstood, underappreciated, perhaps even manipulated. The therapist may even note that they are charging this patient a lower fee, are more affably tolerating delinquent payments, cancelled appointments, and late arrivals. When such a patient becomes involved in a clearly abusive relationship, it can be almost unbearable to have to sit and try to maintain the standard facade of neutrality. (In actuality, at those times one is most likely wrestling with fantasies of rescuing the endangered patient.) What effect, then, does a special feeling on the part of the therapist have on the progress of the therapy, which, of course, is the main goal? In my experience, the overall impact can often be quite beneficial, providing the natural bent to gratifi. the patient is contained and the special place they occupy in their therapeutic affections is not communicated directly or subtly to the patient. Of course, although all patients fantasize at one point or another about being secretly privileged in the eyes of their therapist, in actuality (mainly due to professional neutrality) they have few legitimate clues as to how their therapist really feels about them. Because of this, I can say that in over twenty years of experience not one patient ever had a very clear understanding as to how I felt about them. Certainly none of the few who had a special claim on my affections seemed to know it. On the other hand, each of them could not help but realize that I truly liked them, was comfortable in their company, and motivated and eager to work with them. I believe that is what all patients hope for but invariably are insecure about-again due to the stance of clinical objectivity and professional neutrality favored by most therapists. An obvious affectionate concern for a given patient, providing it is 169

K X O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I X G

appropriately and professionally contained, can be quite beneficial. In this way, it can help foster what is called positive transference. It can also facilitate a nontransfrential trust-a trust based on a realistic perception of the therapist’s genuine humanity and compassionate regard for another human being who happens to be in obvious psychic pain. This is a trust that can go a long way toward developing the kind of working alliance that is indispensable for real progress in therapy to occur. I can therefore honestly say that, as a rule, the patients I most cared for were the ones who received the greatest benefits from therapy.

WHEN A THERAPIST HATES A PATIENT The great psychoanalyst W. R. Bion-when asked about the necessity for a therapist to like his or her patients, once pithily remarked, “Well, a therapist can’t only like patients who are likable” (1973). In other words, if you intend to seriously embark upon a professional career that routinely endeavors to elicit and interact with powerful personal feelings, it is important to expand the range of personality types with which you can comfortably engage. That comes down, of course, to being able to like a rather broad spectrum of humanity. Now if one keeps in mind that people who seek out therapy are often self-involved, difficult, moody, angry, bitter, bored, depressed, agitated, needy, withdrawn, noncommunicative, mistrusthl, paranoid, manipulative, narcissistic, aggressive, hostile, seductively hysterical, and so on, it immediately becomes apparent that this is no easy task. It requires, 170

THERAPY AND INTIMACY

in addition to the years of training and experience, a very concerted and generous effort on the part of the therapist to put aside personal preferences and instead become a kind of combination humane receptacle, empathic mirror, and participant observer to a potentially limitless stream of incoming humanity. Not surprisingly, it is a task that has to be worked on daily. So, do all therapists like all patients equally? As I think I have already shown, obviously not. Do therapists then vary considerably in their capacity to like different patients? Obviously they do. Well, if it is not required to like all patients equally, then what is required? As I see it, what is essential is that someone does not continue to work with a particular patient whom one knows one actively dislikes. To do so, I believe, is simply unethical. In order to prevent this from happening, it is important to be able to find-in even the most difficult of patients-qualities that are genuinely redeeming and that can therefore offset the more abrasive aspects of their persona. There are several factors that help therapists in this regard. First, by the nature of their professional role, they are in a much better position to appreciate the complexity of an individual psyche, as opposed to the ordinary person’s instinctive tendency to expeditiously stereotype the other. In addition, they tend to see the most vulnerable, childlike, confused, frightened, and wounded parts of the self; parts that are most likely to evoke a compassionate response. Furthermore, patients-notwithstanding the fact they often vigorously deny this-are in a dependent, underdog position in relation to their therapist and are therefore much less threatening than the typical stranger. Also, therapists, by their training, are practiced in suppressing their basic social needs 171

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

for gratification, recognition, and deference from the other, concentrating instead on being-as fully as possible-in the service of the patient’s progress in therapy. The therapist is helped to do this, of course, by being remunerated for such sacrifices and inconveniences. Finally, the therapist is often made privy to the seldom seen drama of a private self in search of some kind of actualization. The therapist also has an opportunity to make a genuine contribution to another’s personal evolution-satisfaction in short supply in today’s “culture of narcissism” (Lasch 1979), and that can go a long way as compensation for the various hardships of what Freud once called “an impossible profession.” Because of their training and professional emphasis on neutrality, therapists are loath to admit that a given patient can get to them emotionally. Although they will often concede that a particularly difficult patient is either a nuisance or upsetting to be with, this is invariably couched in a self-possessed, clinical manner as though they are merely venting about a personal irritation, an annoying obstacle that had to be put up with in the course of their professional day. Almost never will a therapist admit that a personal dislike for an individual patient has so gotten the best of them that they are behaving less than professionally. Yet every experienced therapist is destined to encounter at one point or another a patient whom they find unbearable. In my own case, I think of someone whom I was unlucky enough to meet shortly after I had tentatively launched my career as a private psychotherapist in Manhattan-a time when, not surprisingly, I was especially vulnerable. Although everything that transpired between us occurred within the span of fifteen minutes, the memory of the experience would haunt me long afterward. The patient was a young, 172

THERAPY AND INTIMACY

superintense graduate student, and it did not take Freud to see that, among other things, he was aggressively sadomasochistic and very paranoid. Whatever I said during those critical opening minutes was greeted with skepticism, denial, refutation, or outright contempt. The more he frustrated my attempts to get the session off to a promising start, the more defensive and uncertain of how to proceed I became. To my dismay, I realized that I was debating rather than being engaged in a therapeutic process with the patient. After about fifteen minutes, he did something that no patient before or since in over twenty years has ever done: slowly rising from his chair, he icily observed “The room is filled with tension” and proceeded to make his triumphant departure. At the time, it was all I could do to restrain myself from begging him to reconsider. My sole reaction after he had left was to feel thoroughly humiliated. It dawned on me in retrospect there had been much too much at stake for me in terms of gaining this particular patient’s approval and in having the initial session go well. My defenses against what is called the negative transference had hardly been formed, with the result that I was unable to react in a reasonably poised, professional manner. I would subsequently understand that I had responded in an emotionally charged, personal manner, one that my ferreteyed new patient had been quick to exploit as evidence of my lack of professionalism. As a consequence, I was flooded with crippling feelings of glaring self-doubt and worthlessness. For several days thereafter I questioned myself as to whether I had chosen the wrong profession. My confidence was lower than it had ever been, and I wondered how-if I continued to seriously pursue my dream of being a well-respected, skillful,productive psychotherapist-would I ever muster the belief in 173

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

myself that is so necessary a part of instilling trust in a prospective patient? Not surprisingly, many of these feelings were projected onto the patient who now seemed to be the principal cause of my misery. I found myself almost instinctively hating him. It is worth noting, however, that the fact that the entire toxic encounter had lasted no more than fifteen minutes helped me considerably to recover from my therapeutic debacle. In retrospect, as time went by and I became more and more experienced, I realized how ironically serendipitous it had been, at least from my point of view, that the would-be therapy had proceeded to self-destruct almost as soon as it had begun. For I was beginning to understand that when a toxic relationship starts to take shape between therapist and patient, there can be no better remedy than to terminate the relationship. Is this then tantamount to quitting on the patient, spinelessly throwing in the towel at the first upsurge of his or her resistance? I used to think so and for years would feel ethically and professionally obligated to doggedly treat anyone-no matter how obnoxious-as best I could and for as long as I could, providing it was not immediately clear that I was not adequately qualified to handle the patient’s specific needs. I no longer believe this. For I now believe that for every therapist, even the best in the world, there are innumerable patients who, for a variety of complicated if sometimes irrational reasons, would do considerably better with a different professional. Why is this so? Mainly because of what is called chemistry, the unconscious, irrational attraction or repulsion between any two people that either draws them together or drives them apart. This factor is perhaps even more significant when it comes to forging the required working alliance (that is, a rela174

THERAPY AND INTIMACY

tionship built on trust) than all of the accumulated professional and personal expertise of the individual therapist. When a relationship between a therapist and a patient becomes toxic it is because of the same reason a personal relationship goes sour. That is, as mentioned, it is essentially when two fragdities, two psyches at their weakest points, violently collide and go spiraling out of control. In the above incident, in my own case it was because of my insecurity concerning my extreme lack of experience, my anxious need to prove myselfin a challenging and somewhat mysterious new profession, my admitted sensitivity in the face of rejection and hostility, and my inability to draw boundaries between what was and what was not my responsibility. As for my patient, it seemed that his paranoid suspiciousness, his intense demand and need for immediate control, and his panic and rage at being confined with the wrong therapist had disastrously clashed with my obvious nervousness and defensiveness. What would have been a more mature way to deal with such an extraordinarily touchy and fragde patient? What, for example, might I have done-if fate had given me a second chance with such a patient-but at a time when I could draw on years of experience? In retrospect, I think the primary difference would be that I would not have made the same mistakes. Having encountered many difficult, aggressive, destructive, and willfully noncooperative patients over the years, as has every psychotherapist, I would have been considerably less intimidated and immobilized by this patient’s manifest need to devalue and control me. I would have immediately realized that his hostility was a symptomatic expression of the very pathology for which he was coming to treatment. This of course was not something he was about to admit, but it would have helped me not to take it personally. 175

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

In short, I would have done everyhng I could to not take his hostile arrogance to heart, while acknowledging to myself that, of course, I could not help but be affected by his overt abusiveness. I would therefore have considerably lowered my expectations, recognizing that most likely this was not going to be the kind of receptive patient I could work with. I would have reminded myself that I am at my best with people who are in need of well-timed dosages of nurturance and kindness; who are capable of receiving, reflecting upon, and collaborating with and integrating sensitive insights into the relevant underlying dynamics of self-defeating, maladaptive, and outmoded defensive strategies. I am at my worst when I am required to enter into psychic combat with an enraged patient and somehow whip him or her into shape. And although no therapist is taught to admit this, I would have taken comfort in the fact that most likely this patient-given his instinctive dislike of my style, coupled with his pathological inability to tolerate hstrationwould not have chosen to continue with me as his therapist. I would also have admitted that my own needs, important as they are to me, are very secondary to the patient’s and that whatever is in the patient’s best interests is what comes first. So if if the treatment was to be very brief, lasting only a few or even a single session, I would have wanted it to be as professionally meaningfd as I could make it. Although not an easy task, that would have meant first of all being as nondefensive as I could, refking to be drawn out into the kind of covert sadomasochistic relationship that this kind of patient thrives on. Within the treatment I would have done my best to encourage him as nonthreateningly as I could to reflect a little bit upon the wellsprings of his compulsive manifest hostihty. I might, for example, have pointed out that in an amazingly short time, he had managed seemingly to arrive at some sweep176

THERAPY AND INTIMACY

ingly negative opinion regarding the possibility of ever working productively together. I might then wonder if perhaps that was an indication of a deep mistrust of others, especially of a stranger who was going to presume, in a relatively short period of time, to understand and to help him. If it were an unconscious wish to create an adversarial rather than a collaborative relationship. If it were a way of sabotaging the therapy before it starts, a way to seize control of the relationship by backing the therapist into a defensive corner. A way of communicating to him a kind of internal warfare the patient lives with by acting it out and personifying it. Finally, if it were a way of capturing the therapist’s attention and so on (or, of course, all of the above). But even if I had met this patient at my hypothetical best, it is entirely possible that the chemistry-something no amount of training or experience can really influence-would have been so bad that he still might have decided, after only fifteen minutes, that he had had quite enough. Nevertheless, even if there had been a similar outcome, the quality of the interaction, brief though it might be, would have been substantially different. For one thing, the patient would have seen that his unconscious attempt to emotionally blackmail the other with threats of toxic rejection had failed to either capture the therapist’s attention or respect. That in itself might have been therapeutically sobering. In sum, when a therapist finds himself in a seriously and mutually hatehl relationship with a patient, it is of paramount importance to nip this in the bud-even if it means having to abort the treatment. Until such a dire point is reached, however, the therapist can endeavor to restore his professional equilibrium by stepping back and bolstering his stance of neutrality. He can thereby demonstrate to the patient that no 177

K N O W I N G I F I T ’ S ‘THE R E A L T H I N G

matter how abusive, he will rehse to respond in kind. The message the therapist hopes to deliver is not the Christian one of turning the other cheek, but simply that for someone who values the dignity of the true self there has to be a more satis+ng way to express oneself than by the release of toxic hate. Finally, the very fact that the therapist can conduct himself in a comparatively reasonable, restrained, and engaged fashion without being either compliant, defensive, cold, or distant-even in the face of flagrant provocation-can be a humbling experience for a patient. This is especially true for a patient who has relied on the turbulence and grandiosity of explosions of hate in order to feel sufficiently loved, respected, and alive.

T H E INTIMATE BOND

As I have shown, at one end of the spectrum there is the tiny handhl of patients that a therapist can maturely, personally, and professionally love. While at the other end of the spectrum-allowing oneself to get caught up in a mutually hatehl relationship with an ongoing patient-there is the most destructive and therefore least professional conduct that a therapist can engage in. What’s left, of course, is the midrange of behavior, or what lies between these two polarities. This is the place where most therapists work most of the time. In terms of intimacy, it is a relationship that can be characterized, at its best, by what I call an intimate bond (in my chapter on “The Double Bind” in The Portrait ofthe Artist us a rOung Patient [Alper 19921, I discuss this in detail). In what sense, then, can a therapist be said to be intimate? Perhaps the first thing to be noted is how unprecedented this 178

THERAPY AND INTIMACY

type of intimacy really is. Nothing shows this so well as simply to compare the different requirements and constraints governing the therapist’s so-called acts of intimacy with what ordinarily transpires in the everyday interpersonal world (essentially what this book has been about). It then immediately becomes apparent how profoundly nonreciprocal and asymmetrical the therapeutic relationship can be. The therapist, guarded by the concept of professional neutrality, is restrained from engaging in just about all of the typical expressions of intimacy that our society, culture, family, educational system, and our intrapsychic and interpersonal development make available. He or she, for example, not only refrains from expressing any personal feeling about the patient, but typically does not reveal any ofeven the most harmlesssounding biographical data. He or she instead is a rigorously trained professional secret keeper. He or she is obliged to act and interact in what, in the best case scenario, is an artificial manner. Where then is the intimacy? It lies in everything that drives or should drive this artificial stance of neutrality. It lies in the fact that the therapist is sacrificing conventional avenues of personal expression and affective release in the service of concentrating with abnormal dedication upon the troubled inner world that is being ushered into his or her ofice. Beneath the facade of professional distance and clinical objectivity there can be a compassionate concern for the pain the patient has suffered and a corresponding resolve to facilitate a less tormented, more integrated, meaningful lifestyle. Although therapists are trained not to make any promise they cannot keep, they can make an inner commitment to do everything in their power to at least introduce, in a realistic and enriching fashion, a way of being in the world that is of179

KNOWING IF IT’S THE REAL THING

ten considerably less depriving and restrictive than the patient has previously known. Finally, I believe that it takes a person with a tremendous capacity for empathic resonance with the other to be able to give in a way that is both generous and profoundly nurturing (regardless of how it is professionally packaged) that comes very close to the kind of intimacy this book has been about. If this is so, then what would represent intimacy in the therapeutic setting on the part of the patient? First, it is obvious that patients are required to reveal themselves with unprecedented candor, far more, for example, than they have ever been required to do with their families, their friends, or even their most intimate lover. More significantly, patients are seriously invited to let go of their most cherished, if maladaptive defenses; to confront their deepest life problems with a level of honesty that is expected of almost no one else in the world. (The most likely analogy here is the Catholic confessional. But that experience takes a matter of minutes compared to what can be years of often stressful self-disclosure-exhaustively exploring their psyches and painstakingly acquainting themselves with innumerable, unexamined nooks and crannies, necessitating in turn a kind of radical intimacy from which even great artists are exempted.) It is obvious that in order to bare one’s soul to a professional stranger, it takes reserves of trust and courage that are not comparably expended in this way in any other conceivable social, business, or even personal relationship. In addition, it requires considerable self-discipline; a setting aside of one’s ordinary narcissism in which one searches, automatically and unconsciously, for the most comfortable and convenient way to deal with whatever comes up. The result, if all 180

THERAPY AND INTIMACY

goes well, is a growing commitment to a less immediate, more ruminative, thoughthl, freer, and much more contextual perspective on one’s life with a corresponding determination to persevere in what at best is an arduous journey. What this comes down to is deeply respecting the core qualities of one’s self and of the other. And this, while acknowledging the arbitrary, laboratory setting in which such transactions are meant to transpire-and the sad fact it all too often can misfire-is, as I hope I have shown, the very stuff of intimacy.

CONCLUSION Throughout this book, my hope has been that the reader will find in these pages a sense of intimacy in its manifold, subtle shadings presented in a nonjargonistic, richer way than has previously been done. The style of presentation, although at times narrative, anecdotal, and impressionistic, rests primarily on the clinical vignette. My rationale has been that for me each vignette is a resonating repository of countless observations, perceptions, hunches, silent thoughts, and ruminations. I have assembled the most compelling everyday examples of what I consider the hndamental ingredients of intimacy. I have explored the dynamics of grappling in earnest with the myriad obstacles that stand in the path of achieving intimacy. I have also shown as clearly as I can how these dynamics play themselves out in that nonreciprocal relationship par excellence called the therapeutic coupb,while taking a close look at the kind of intimacy that is possible between patient and therapist. 181

K N O W I N G IF I T ’ S T H E R E A L T H I N G

Some of the more fundamental ingredients of intimacy are:

Tmt, which arises from a contextual way of looking at the

other, of having arrived at an inner profile that inspires confidence; Recefitivity, which does not mean being a passive receptacle but entails an active recognition and exploration of the richness and complexity of another sele Mutuality, which involves nothing less radical than transforming the habitual narcissisticway in which one engages the world into a shared activity, the I becoming a we, or in Martin Buber’s term, I and you becoming I and thou; Resfiect, which is akin to trust inasmuch as it is something that has to be earned, that basically means regarding something or someone as worthy of investing one’s time and energy; Criticalfinction,which is the capacity to exercise the ordinary critical function not in a typical superordinate fashion, but from the standpoint of intimacy and therefore in the service of the potential engagement between the critic and the subject; Commitment, which is the ability, when appropriate, to make a serious commitment to a trustworthy relationship; Intimate giving, which combines in various measures the functions of trust, receptivity, mutuality, patience, the ability to be critical in a nurturing manner, and the capacity to commit. Some of the chief obstacles to achieving such intimacy that were examined are: the dread of expending the considerable psychic energy that is required to work through whatever is 182

THERAPY AND INTIMACY

threatening the relationship; the inability to accept that there is no magic formula, no instant gratification when it comes to issues ofintimacy; that in contrast to this, the process ofworking on a relationship is with few exceptions inherently painful; the difficulty in marshaling the requisite trust that is always a precondition of entering into a more intimate relationship with the result that one often becomes prey to negative, paranoid thinking; the intrinsic precariousness of initiating a new relationship with the unfortunate result that nothing is easier for the other than to nip intimacy in the bud; the natural unconscious desire to avoid having to confront painful feelings; the inability not to engage, especially when convenient, in negative closure, or deferred intimacy; the inability to determine when to give to the other and when not to give; the problem of pacing; and the classic dilemma of learning how to let go of toxic, maladaptive interpersonal defenses. In terms of the therapeutic relationship itself, the paradoxical nature of what intimacy would be for both the therapist and the patient was explored. And finally, what constituted the intimate bond between therapist and patient, in the best sense of the word, was considered.

183

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

RE F E RENC E S Alper, G. 1992. Portrait of the Artist as a rOung Patient. New York: Insight Books. -. 1994. ‘The Singhs Scene. San Francisco: InternationalScholars Publications. -. 1995.Narcissistic Giving. San Francisco: Austin and Winfield. -. 1996. Control Games. Northvale, NJ.: Jason Aronson. -. 1998. Blind Alleys: Obstacles along the Road to Intimacy. San Francisco: International Scholars Publications. Bateson, G. 1972. Stefis to an Ecologr of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books. Bion, W. R. 1970.Attention and Inteqretation. London: Tavistock Publications. -. 1990. “Brazilian Lectures: 1973, SQoPaulo; 1974, Rio de Janiero.” New York: Karnac Books. -. 1992. Cogitations. London: H. Karnac Books. Bollas, C. 1987. 7he Shadow of the Object. New York: Columbia University Press. -. 1995. Cracking Up. New York: Hill and Wang. -. 2000. Hysteria. New York: Routledge.

185

REFERENCES

Buber, M. 1937. I and Thou. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. Dennett, D. 1995.Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. New York: Simon and Schuster. Dostoyevsky, F. 1991 [18661. Crime and Punishment. New York: Penguin Books. Feynman, R. 1999. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Books. Freud, S. 1910.A Special 3 p e of Choice of Object Made by Men. (C.P. IV, 192, S.E. XI) -. 1923. The Ego and the Id, Standard Edition. London: Hogarth Press. -. 1949. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. London, S.E, VII, 125. Gofhnan, E. 1959. Interaction Ritual. New York: Pantheon. Goldstein, K. 2000. The Organism. New York: Zone Books. Kernberg, 0. 1976. “Barriers to falling and remaining in love.” In Object Relations Theory and Clinical Psychoanalysis. New York: Jason Aronson. -. 1986. “Technical strategiesin the treatment of narcissisticpersonalities.” In Severe Personality Disorders. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. -. 1987. “Projection and projective identification: Developmental and clinical aspects.” In Projection, Identification, Projective Identz$cation. Madison, Conn.: International Universities Press. Laing, R. D. 1961. Selfand Others. London: Tavistock Publications. Lasch, C. 1979. The Culture of Narcissism. New York: W. W. Norton. Lorenz, K. 1970. Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, vol. 1. Trans. Robert Martin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. -. 1971. Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, vol. 2. Trans. Robert Martin, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. McDougall, J. 1989. Theatres of the Body. New York: W.W. Norton. Molino, A. 1997. Freely Associated. New York: Free Association Books. 186

REFERENCES

Phillips, A. 1993. On Kissing, TicUing and Being Bored. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Spitz, R. A. 1965. The First Ears of L ; f . New York: International Universities Press. Stendhal. 1969. The Red and the Black. New York: W. W. Norton. -. 1991. The Charterhouse of P a m a . New York: W. W. Norton. Stoller, R. 1985. Observing the Erotic Imagination. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Vonnegut, K. 1965. God Bless Tau, Mr. Rosewater. New York: Dell. Winnicott, D. W. 1965. “The capacity to be alone.” In The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. New York: International Universities Press.

187

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gerald Alper, M.S. is the author of T h e Puppeteers; Control Games: Awoiding Intimacy on the Singles Scene; and Portrait of the Artist as a sung Patient, as well as many articles on psychoanalytic topics. He has been a practicing psychotherapist in New York City since 1979.

189