What is the name of the problem where a person – a family member, in the two scenarios presented – sees another family member through a film? A film not over the eyes but the mind, a vacuformed sheath over every hill and depression of the brain, a film of attitude, emotionalized philosophy, feeling, assumption. A film of superiority, or of inferiority; of child-feeling, or of false-adult feeling. A film the seer doesn’t know exists and would, despite a general perspicacity, deny the existence of. And if they could effect some gracious or intellectual distance from their true nature for a moment and admit the existence of the film, it would nevertheless remain, after the flicker subsided, like a pilot light or a heartbeat.
It is a
problem of identity because it is carried everywhere, not just to the family target,
though it will be even more covert in the general environment than in its assimilation
in the family atmosphere. Does that make
it a personality disorder? It is a problem
of identity because it began in childhood, became part of the analgesic self
and therefore more and more critical and structural as loss, pain and time went
on. And because it remains part of the
self now.
It seems not
to be a personality disorder because its essence is projection, one defense. A shame-bent girl, for example, represses her
shame then “sees” the dying and pathetic potential in another person, whom she cannot
disappoint in a favor asked or a hope floated, upon pain of mutual disintegration. Things that I will never know happened in my
1950’s family where some need or hurt in my sister was met by my own passive
personality. I can suggest generic causes
– jealousy, absence of love, contempt – but will never know what built her character
that must be patronizing and assuming even in its sad and helpless moments,
fifty years on.
“Glad you
responded to Dave’s query.”
Bestow upon
me the blessings of your approval and encouragement, always-older sister! This is the kind of parenting artifice – pats
on the head – that shapes little boy into a good person, as he absorbs these
words of moral light delivered from high to low, is altered by them.
It is this subtle
and gentle solipsism, this film transparent yet suffocating, that more than anything
else led to my leaving the family.
Thinking,
now, of a client, there is a poisoning I find hard to describe, where one
changes in the gaze of another. In
general, a child reduces herself to fit within the neurotic constrictions of a
family. A result is “pain comfort,”
where she feels connected and possibly loved by being the inferior, or reduced,
or labeled one. This is the unruly child,
the mild defect, the invisible one, the class clown, the good student or the
computer genius. In an orbiting-moon dynamic,
a parent or sibling, hurt but not able to be aware of it, will see one weaker
child in a skewed way, thereby making her live that new way, a self-indentation,
a delivered identity. Inarticulate, she
cannot dispute the powerful person’s delusional disapproval or branding. She carries it into the world, limiting her
in any number of ways. But it is in the
home, where the seed was inseminated, that the worst regressive effects will
happen, where the rape will continue to happen.
The pre-biopsychiatric era concept of Expressed Emotion generally describes this effect:
“Expressed
emotion (EE) refers to care giver’s attitude towards a person with a mental
disorder as reflected by comments about the patient made to an
interviewer. It is a significant characteristic
of the family milieu that has been found to predict symptom relapse in a wide
range of mental disorders. The empirical
data show that EE is one of the major psychosocial stressor[s] and it has
direct association with recurrence of illness.
The importance of EE depends on research that has consistently
established that persons with mental illness, such as schizophrenia, who live
with close relatives who have negative attitudes, are significantly more likely
to relapse. . . . .
“The
construct of EE comprises of [sic] the following factors/behavioral patterns:
Criticism, hostility, and emotional overinvolvement (EOI). Like many other environmental stressors, EE
behaviors are not pathological or unique to families of mental disorders, but
they can cause relapse of psychiatric symptoms among people with a
vulnerability to stress.”*
My client**
has never been able to reject her family, a family that is as demeaning and
projecting as any I have known of. Forty
years of pain, of being seen through a film that projects her defectiveness, her
paper-thin significance. Forty years of
having blind parents and a brother who feel they are all-knowing about
her. Most recently, she raged against
the indignity of being replaced in a family tradition by the sister-in-law. In the face of her mature defense and
generous apology, she was attacked:
“We had every
right to chastise you for your comment for being outrageously rude to our guest
[the parents’ term for the very center-stage sister-in-law].”
“Your inferiority
complexes are only in your mind.”
“Are you that
selfish you cannot let your brother’s wife to be a part of our tribe?”
“Your feelings
of inferiority and insignificance need to be addressed with a support group,
religious group or fellowship.”
“I do worry
what will become of you. You have
outlined the downfalls of your life. Now
find a way to improve your circumstances.”
“You have
excused yourself with your limited apology and your ‘I, me, my’ excuses why you
should be permitted to act as you did.
So [your] letter is purely a demand for our sympathy for your ‘hardships’
and your needs to . . . right your imagined wrongs. That isn’t gonna happen.”
“I don’t know
about your memories, since they are faulty.”
My client had
appealed to the “tribe”:
“Finally,
although I have tried not to carry the negative points of [past conflicts] with
my mother into the present, I still feel that it is too easy for mom to
overreact in a negative, accusatory manner to something involving me. Truly, when an ‘incident’ presents, I try to
use my better-self to communicate, but there is so much history of disagreement
and negative interactions that it inevitably reverts back to a dysfunctional
dynamic.”
When this
explanation was rejected and abused by her parents, she fell backwards into the
film’s projections, and requested an emergency session.
Throughout my
career I have found it difficult, sometimes futile, to work with clients who
seemed immaturely dependent on bad-object (see post “Strength,” Jan. 17, 2014) parents,
seeing this mostly as a developmental abort.
But now, feeling the regressive pull of my sister’s comment – Glad you responded to Dave’s query – I
understand how someone cannot fight or even clearly see what is invisible and
denied, and in the past. I see better
how a dysfunctional family will always be in its childhood home, the dynamics remain
the same, and all are hurt. The one who
is less needy can leave the ring, the needy one will go down for the count.
* * *
What is
required for someone to see her family member objectively, as objectively as
she might see a stranger? Wanting to is
probably required. The question of why
one would want to see that clearly, from a distance, is a personal one. A more fundamental necessity is to be
significantly free of drugs – the drugs of self-medicating projection and
delusion. I could say that’s a desirable
state, but in fact it may not be: To be self-stripped of the family feeling, of
the comforts of attitude and the cloak of assumption, may leave a person naked
and hollow, and returned to childhood alone.
That is because family is forever, even when it is rejected.
- - - - - - -
- - - -
* “Expressed
Emotion in Schizophrenia: An Overview,” National Center for Biotechnology
Information, Indian J Psychol Med. 2012 Jan-Mar; 34(1): 12-20.
** My client
has given me permission to quote from her family’s letters.
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Comments are welcome, but I'd suggest you first read "Feeling-centered therapy" and "Ocean and boat" for a basic introduction to my kind of theory and therapy.