In the every-day course of our lives, our sense of who and what we are – our identity – is often felt and assumed to be identical with the daily experience of our selves with each other. In fact, however, our complete reality is not limited to our current or past experiences of our self, but includes that within us that makes the creation of our experience of self and others possible.
What we experience daily of ourselves, each other and our world is a complex, dynamic organization of what we together have already come to learn, imagine, know and believe of our own and the world’s reality. Our complete reality, however, is this complex dynamism of experience informed, challenged and sustained by our innate and essential capacity to inquire, learn, know and imagine what is possible. Our “selves” and our identities, in community or alone, are the constellations of what we have already learned and imagined; all new knowledge and imagined possibilities require willingness for these constellations to be questioned, altered and re-formed by this inner creative capacity and dynamism; a dynamism we share with each other.
Donald Winnicott, an English psychoanalyst, has profoundly influenced my understanding of work as a therapist. He portrays a beautifully clear and moving description of human development. His descriptions, like that of the French psychologist, Jean Piaget are essentially epistemological – that is, about how we process our experiences with each other. How we come to know ourselves with each other.
If I may state a great oversimplification of his thinking, Winnicott’s model of human psychological development is characterized by a continuous transformation of our desire and our capacity to imagine through engaging with the realities of the people and circumstances of our daily lives.
Within the living web of influencing each other in our relationships, we meet the world through the mutual casting of our desires, dreams and their expectations. The meeting of our different expectations and dreams challenges us to reshape and reformulate them; reshape and reformulate in order to meet anew. These phantasies and desires, of course, are not simply discrete thoughts or feelings, but projections of our world-views – our beliefs, assumptions and desires about the nature of the world and one’s place in it. The experience of our being a person with each other is essentially the ongoing and mutual casting of our dreams, desires, expectations and beliefs with each other. The transformation of our desires and expectations in our meeting each other and the world always involves some challenge, suffering and possibility of loss. Yet it is through the endurance of that loss that new possibilities between us are discovered and new dreams together becomes available.
In a very straightforward way Winnicott’s idea can be summarized in two simple sentences:
- To dream and desire together is to live.
- To endure the mutual surrender and alteration of our dreams and desires together is to grow.
To the extent that we cannot endure the disappointments involved in the transformation of our desires in our meetings with each other, we become locked in the repetition of our memories and beliefs and less aware of a sense of what could be possible for each other and ourselves.
The metaphor of a wheel can pull some of these ideas together and help see their application to life and therapy. Metaphors hold complex ideas in a form simple enough to keep the integrity of the whole in view.
In this metaphoric wheel there are three spokes:
- The first spoke is that of desire and love
- The second spoke is that of loss and risk
- The third spoke is that of the caprice of life over which we have little control.
The forces of these spokes are kept in balance by two circles:
The outer rim of the wheel and the inner hub.
The rim of the wheel represents our relationships. The dynamics of the three forces, love, loss and caprice, are experienced and played out in our relationships with each other. Indeed, they are the substance of our relationships.
The inner circle or hub is the force that keeps the wheel working and intact. The inner hub is some perception of the reality of hope; hope in the realization of new possibilities between us.
There are many ways to look for a basis of hope in the dynamics of our relationships.
In Love and Knowledge: The quest for personal meaning, the possibilities of hope lay in the realization that we are not trapped by our experiences with each other. The realization that, in any given moment or circumstance, the reality of our being together holds possibilities beyond our current expectations and definitions of experience. As we’ll see further on, a key focal point in supporting this understanding of hope rests on the distinction between reality and experience. Understanding this distinction brings to light the implications it has for our sense of individual and communal identities.
So, there we have the wheel:
desire, risk and caprice working within our relationships revolving around the realization of hope in new possibilities between us.
***
Then how do we understand psychotherapy within this frame?
Psychotherapy can be understood as a unique relationship. A relationship that is designed to provide conditions wherein a person can realize they are not trapped by current or past experience.
The pathway to hope is through the experience of realizing new possibilities and learning something new within and about relationships.
***
Such learning, as presented in Love and Knowledge, has a major condition.
The condition is this:
There can be no knowledge, learning and understanding of human relationships without risk and discomfort.
The risk necessary for new learning is experienced as the often-intense discomfort of tolerating confusion and uncertainty while facing the unknown. The discomfort of not completely knowing what’s occurring within and between us is required before new insights can be experienced.
Within the therapeutic relationship, it is a risk shared and endured by therapist and client alike.
In life, we may find ourselves giving preference to the discomfort and pain we know rather than enduring the unfamiliar pain or discomfort of the unknown.
For example, there is a co-dependent aspect of our relationships that strikingly demonstrates the avoidance of the risk and discomfort when new ways of communicating or interacting are attempted. Conversations in such relationships, so avoidant of communication, are more like “parallel monologues” or a “dance of foregone conclusions” than true dialogue. In co-dependent aspects of our relationships, the other must conform to one’s expectations; beliefs and assumptions or we must conform to theirs.
Our imposition of this conformity upon each other is a method we sometimes use to maintain inner emotional balance within ourselves in relationships.
The interaction in a co-dependent relationship is designed to confirm assumptions, not question them. To allow the other’s or one’s own difference to question the unstated rules of the relationship is felt as threatening. Usually, strategies of avoidance and manipulation mark this kind of communication and interaction.
The co-dependent manner of relating can be a source of deep emotional suffering. However, the discomfort of risking the unfamiliar required for questioning, learning new ways of relating and discovering new possibilities between us is strongly avoided. Such questioning risks a sense of uncertainty and confusion as well as anxiety.
There is an underlying dilemma that lies at the root of co-dependent interactions:
It is the unwritten rule that we are expected to understand and know ourselves and each other without being allowed to question or being given or allowing the means, method or permission to inquire and find out.
This rule effectively blocks the validity of questioning the relationship. Dialogue, that is conversation that leads to discovery and exchange of new information, requires a willingness to be uncertain and question the experience of one’s self and the other in the relationship.
***
What must we realize before we can reasonably expect to muster the courage to face these difficult feelings in order to be free from this dilemma?
As presented in the second chapter of Love and Knowledge, the first goal of learning is to realize that:
There is a true distinction between experience and reality.
The release from feeling trapped by current experience comes with the realization that in our complete reality, we are more than what we currently experience. We are that within us that makes the capacity to create experience possible. This segment of the book focuses on the foundations of a strong identity.
When locked within the co-dependent dilemma, identity is felt limited and held to current or past experience. Without the allowance, taken or granted, of questioning our experience of being together, our understanding and sense of self, past and present, is primarily a limited interpretation of what we have come to believe and assume about the nature of things and the limits of possibility in our relationships. Learning to challenge and question that interpretation for oneself and with the other is learning to live and love true to the articulation of our unfolding reality.
With the growing realization that there is a valid distinction between our current experience and our unfolding reality, our identities becomes more firmly anchored in that potential within us and between us that actually creates experience. We become aware of a growing confidence in the validity of that un-definable core of potential within and between us to imagine and create new meanings and understanding. We realize a capacity to imagine and understand new possibilities that accommodate the realities we discover in each other and ourselves.
We discover that intrinsic intelligence, our power of inquiry and capacity to imagine and understand novel possibilities, is the core of our being human; the root and foundation of our identity.
Entrapment in the co-dependent dilemma stifles that discovery.
***
How do we begin becoming aware of restrictive underlying beliefs and assumptions – beliefs that limit our sense of new possibilities in relationships – in order to start to question them?
Relationships can be looked at in a variety of ways.
One view of our relationships is that they are characterized by patterns of mutually defined expectations.
Our expectations are powerful, though often taken for granted. Expectations are, so to speak, the “tip of the iceberg” of our most basic assumptions, dreams and beliefs about the nature of the world and our place in it. As such, expectations represent an access door to our deepest and most cherished, and often unexamined assumptions and beliefs; beliefs that we, and those with us, hold about the kinds of things we desire and believe are necessary for our happiness and survival.
The arena in which we learn to deal with the discomfort described above is in the act of attempting to examine, question and negotiate the expectations we hold for ourselves and that we experience between each other in our relationships.
This act of negotiation implicitly affirms the validity of uncertainty and questioning as well as the fact of at least two realities and not just one in any relationship.
It also implies a mutual willingness to redefine who we assume we are and reconsider one’s premise and position.
For example, the freedom not to react to one’s own or another’s expectations without clarification, negotiation and dialogue is nourished by the realization that there are more possibilities within and between us than our current experience of each other and ourselves. It is the freedom to pause and take time to respond and not react.
To return for a moment to the metaphor of the wheel, the modification of one’s dreams and desires is made tolerable and possible by some realization at the hub of the wheel: a lived realization that we are neither trapped nor totally defined by the present moments of our experience.
***
Although the concept is simple, the struggle is fraught with all the ambivalence involved in approaching a actual transformation in the experience of one’s person.
This is poignantly witnessed as couples struggle to approach valid dialogue. Couples struggling together discover that this process is more of a helix than a straight line.
There is a prelude to the actual beginning of honest negotiation.
The process starts with a willingness to realize and accept that each one is unique and there are real differences to be negotiated. Two people in a dialogue actually mean two worldviews, histories and two actual capacities to change and be influenced.
It is amazing that we often acknowledge our differences from each other … usually in our complaints … but on some deeper level, genuinely have a hard time really believing, allowing its validity and accepting it!
With the honest acknowledgement and acceptance of the reality of difference comes a decision point to make the effort to truly understand and see the validity of the difference. The allowance of this decision is the foundation for a true commitment to oneself and the relationship.
This often involves the sharing of one’s story and understanding the unique meanings that have evolved from each one’s life experiences.
Learning how to listen to oneself as well as the other is a key element in this phase of the process.
With this acknowledgement comes a gradual sense of the validity of the differences between us … and a growing respect for each other’s uniqueness. Surprisingly at this point the differences become less defended and open to negotiation.
There is, however, a paradox in this process: at the point where the differences become valid and, therefore negotiable, the anxiety about the reality of separation in the couple can become acute. Each one is faced with a true and more open understanding of one’s self.
The outcome of this process has to be discovered and not predetermined if genuine negotiation is to take place.
As the co-dependent premise is weakened, each person in the relationship has the opportunity to reclaim responsibility for his or her own emotional life. With that reclaiming, the possibility of losses past, present and future, is faced as real and, hopefully tolerable within the support of the therapeutic relationship they have created with the guidance of the therapist.
As this point is approached, genuine dialogue and real negotiation of expectations becomes more possible.
***
Throughout this always moving and awesome adventure of the human spirit, there are three values that underwrite and support the process:
- The first is the value of risk and loss despite their discomforts.
Often we are encouraged to avoid risk and discomfort or see them as threatening. However, instead of seeing risk and discomfort as a torpedoes to the present, we can come to realize their value as a pathway to the future.
The future is not a matter of numbers of minutes from now. The true future is the discovery of new possibilities that lead to new experiences.
- Second is the value of not knowing.
Our society often promotes “being in the know”. But in fact, there cannot be real learning unless one is willing to question and realize the value of not knowing or assuming.
- The third is the value of not completely knowing and defining who and what you are.
Our society often confuses a strong identity with an overly defined self. The reality of our being is not limited to the current experience of our self. It is the value of acknowledging something essential within and between us that cannot and should not be fully defined that allows the possibility of release from the tyranny of current experiences of our selves; to the realization of new and available possibilities between us.
***
Hope, the hub of the wheel of relationship, resides in the un-definable core of our being and our capacity to re-discover and re-imagine together new possibilities and new ways of relating to each other
READINGS
Augustine. The City of God. Translated by M. Dods. New York: Modern Library, 1950.
________ The Confessions. Translated by J. K. Ryan. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960.
Berger,P.L. Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. New York: Doubleday, 1963.
Buber, M. Between Man and Man. Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith. New York: Mcmillian, 1965.
________. I and Thou. Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958.
Burtt, E. A. (Ed.) The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha. New York: New American Library, 1955.
Flavell, J. H. The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget. Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1963.
Haley, J. (Ed.) Conversations with Milton H. Erickson, Vols I-III. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1985.
________. Uncommon Therapy: The Psychiatric Techniques of Milton H. Erickson. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1973.
Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. Translated by D.C. Lau. New York: Everyman’s Library, 1994.
Merton, T. The Way of Chuang Tzu. New York: New Directions, 1965.
________. Zen and the Birds of Appetite. New York: New Directions, 1968.
Piaget, J. Biology and Knowledge: An Essay on the Relations Between Organic Regulations and Cognitive Processes. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1971.
________. Genetic Epistemology. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1971.
________. Principles of Genetic Epistemology. New York, W.W. Norton & Co.,1972.
Reps, P. and Nyogen, S. (Ed.) Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A collection of Zen and Pre-zen Writings. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1994.
Suzuki, D. T. Manual of Zen Buddhism. New York: Grove Press, 1960
Tielhard de Chardin, P. The Phenomenon of Man. translated by B. Wall, with an introduction by Julian Huxley. New York: Harper and Row, 1959.
Walker, B. Hua Hu Ching: The unknown teachings of Lao Tzu. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992.
Winnicott, D. W. Collected Papers. New York: Basic Books, 1957.
________. The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment. New York: International University Press, 1965
________. Playing and Reality. London: Travistock, 1971.
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© 2009 James Donnelly, DSW.LCSW
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