TABLE OF CONTENTS
Premise
1. The implicit philosophy in everyday life
2. How can people hurt themselves in order to protect themselves from sorrow?
3. What do people say to themselves in order to ignore why they do what they do?
4. Love and fear
Conclusions
Bibliography
Premise
A sadder and wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In my opinion ethics and psychotherapy avoid the question of the reasons of human irrationality because the answer to this question forces us to confront the painful side of human existence. Ethics, whether justifying or condemning human actions, shows the need not to know the reasons why people act, and psychotherapy, assuming the existence of intrapsychic or interpersonal causes of behaviors, expresses the same need.
In these pages I will not try to determine what people "should do" or even determine when behaviors are "healthy" or "pathological" (and therefore to be "cured"). I'll just try to explain what I believe to have understood about the reasons why people do what they do and about the reasons why they normally think, feel and act in irrational and destructive ways.
1. The implicit philosophy in everyday life
Philosophers have always dealt in a systematic way with questions that all people are asking and to which, more or less consciously, they don’t give intellectually sophisticated answers, but answers which affect their conception of life. Many people consider philosophers as students of an unnecessary discipline. However it is in fact the same people who every day do philosophy, discuss the philosophical theses of friends and teach their philosophy to their children. Everyone, in one way or another, questions the meaning of their lives and reflects on their reasons for acting. Sometimes people accept bulk conceptions of reality already given (e.g. religious people) and other times they accept or reject any philosophical thesis stated by a journalist or hairdresser, but in any case they are always wondering about reality, death and the reasons why they choose to live in a certain way.
In these pages I will deal with only one of the many issues to which the professional and "amateur" philosophers have always devoted a lot of attention: that which relates to the reasons why people act. The issue is thorny and outlines an area of thought in which everything has been said and everything has been contradicted.
It has been argued that human acts are due to factors that make them unavoidable, but it has also been stated that nothing can deprive people of their freedom of choice.
It has been stated that people express their intentionality when they act, but it has also been stated that intentionality is only apparent.
It has been stated that people always act directly or indirectly to achieve pleasure, but it has also been stated that this conception neglected the most "profound" half of people, that is "ethical".
It has been stated that people act by making rational assessments (consciously or unconsciously), but it has also been stated that at least in some cases they act "driven by emotions" (as if knowledge and emotions were clearly distinct).
These different conceptions have always been challenged with many arguments, but while on the practical issues people are almost always attentive to facts and logic, on the issues most relevant to the choices of life people often tend to justify what they want to believe rather than understanding the reality.
For example, proponents of determinism sometimes become angry with someone who did not act "as they should have", but because they consider personal actions causally determined they do not show much reasonableness in asking others to act differently. In other cases, the advocates of free will justify themselves by saying, "You made me angry", but do not appear reasonable when making that statement unequivocally deterministic that relieves them from responsibility.
Even when they think about the purpose of their actions, human beings easily make contradictory statements. People often say that those who commit certain actions "must have something in mind," but when speaking about themselves, claim that they had acted "instinctively" or "without thinking". So it seems that humans are in need of philosophizing about the reasons for which they act, because they cannot give up on the idea of having some sense of what they do; however, it seems that they even feel the need to maintain beliefs of which they cannot be convinced.
In my opinion this is explained by the fact that, despite the need to philosophize, people are afraid of accepting reality and the sorrow that it entails and therefore think irrationally to feel only what they want to feel.
In the analytical path, clients are helped in examining what they think before acting, and in this way they find out that they often act to avoid emotions that in childhood were unbearable, but now they could tolerate. These experiences allow us to conceive the irrational actions not as mere "errors to be corrected," but as the (unconscious) result of "defensive strategies", aimed at preventing contact with sorrow. When (and only when) these strategies are understood they can be changed.
Analytical work can lead to more significant results than those psychotherapy normally tries to achieve (the reduction of specific symptoms or disorders), because it clarifies that many attitudes and behaviors are part of a defensive existential project that sacrifices the expression of personal potential.
All psychotherapeutic concepts share a misconception and a delusion. The misunderstanding is the idea that people are normally "healthy" and that only in a few cases "mental illness" is caused by some causal factor. The delusion consists of the idea that specific "therapeutic" interventions may affect these "pathologies", restoring people to the normal state of "psychological well-being." Despite this "therapeutic optimism", people cannot "feel good", but they can feel "a lot" (a lot of sorrow and joy) or feel "a little" (little sorrow, little joy and a lot of weird "psychological disorders"). There are many psychotherapeutic schools which claim to be "scientifically based", while using very different and irreconcilable theories. In fact, they share only the questionable general conception of "psychical pathology" and "psychical therapy."
In fact, people do not act in irrational ways due to their past or what others have done, but because they seek to build a certain kind of life. They cannot be "cured", but can change if they understand the reasons why they do what they do.
The analytical work that I do is to be understood as a path of knowledge that makes a better expression of personal potential possible. The analytical work considers symptoms, but is primarily concerned with the land on which they grow. People accumulate tension, twisted forms of hostility, anxiety or confusion rather than confronting in clear emotional terms the painful and unchangeable side of their lives. Organizing their lives in order to feel the intense painful emotions "just a little", they end up feeling even the joyous moods "just a little" and, in any case, they produce unpleasant feelings. Clarifying in analysis the defensive reasons why they do many useless or harmful things and recovering the emotional contact with the experiences never faced and never overcome, people can accept the sorrow of their lives (thus making a valuable experience) and can stop creating tensions or unnecessarily unpleasant symptoms. In this process, people do not "heal", but "change", getting rid of the need to live a "restricted" or "poor" (or seemingly intense) life. The analytical path does not invariably leads to such results, but is designed to make it possible. The analytical work is therefore philosophical analysis because it questions the ways of thinking, feeling and acting irrationally, but it is also psychological analysis because it promotes the processing of painful old feelings.
The analysis takes into account the irrational beliefs of people (such as, "I'm worthless", "I’m special", "I'm a victim", "life is meaningless", "I don’t know what I want", etc..), defensive attitudes (such as condescension, arrogance, envy, detachment, intrusiveness, devaluation, etc.), incomprehensible desires (those of "self-affirmation" of "belonging" and "reassurance" and "distraction", etc. .), the emotions not corresponding to reality (such as, for example, the sense of guilt, non-constructive anger, anxiety in the absence of danger, depression, etc..), the chronic muscular rigidity not due to physical disorders, unrealistic self-image, unconscious and destructive life projects, limitations or deformation of emotional contact and also the particular symptoms. In other words, analysis may lead to a breach of the psychological disorders, but at the price of the acceptance of sorrow.
Children are convinced of being somehow "wrong" because they cannot tolerate the idea of being OK and yet devalued by their parents. They prefer to feel "understood in their guilt" than admit no guilt but be at the mercy of adults who, without understandable reasons, reject them and don’t provide any security. Once they are adults, they may feel vaguely guilty or "inadequate" or treat others with arrogance to stop feeling guilty and inadequate.
The psychological defenses are constructed in very normal childhood because normally children have to manage experiences too painful for their resources. Parents, usually with the best (conscious) intentions devote themselves unknowingly to dismissing or ignoring children and children learn to close, to get by on their own, to become indistinct, to avoid expressing themselves, to dissociate. They grow in conflict with themselves, become unreceptive to their own emotions and not empathetic towards others. They build a life project which is divided into a set of beliefs, attitudes, delusions, pretensions, communication methods that limit emotional contact with the reality perceived as too painful. At certain critical moments of their lives, even after many years, people can produce specific symptoms or discomforts, that are not isolated elements, because they are consequences of a limited and limiting way of life.
Clients (and many psychologists) consider such facts to be "the problem" and in this way ignore the soil that produced them. They ignore, in practice, the problem originating from normality.
The normality, unfortunately, is characterized by totally irrational attitudes (competitiveness, shyness, arrogance, superficiality, idealization of work or absurd "hobbies", indifference, unjustified hostility and incomprehensible fears), and at the social level by iniquity, exploitation, violence, authoritarianism, secular and religious ideologies that are widespread outrage to the rationality of the human beings. The analytical work therefore allows to clarify what some anthropological and psychological researches and some libertarian educational experiences have already documented. There is a gap between the potential of people (in terms of intimacy, sociability and creativity) and the terrible reality of the lives of normal people and normal forms of social coexistence. Social phenomena are obviously not to be analyzed psychologically, but the absurdity of individual acceptance of social irrationality is (and should be) the subject of psychological analysis.
In a sense, analytical work is an "incorrect" response to initial expectations of clients: people begin a path of analytical work in order to to get rid of certain disorders and to go on living in the usual limited and destructive way. Symptomatic psychotherapies seek to satisfy this expectation and therefore do not work or, if they work, they leave people in their condition of insensitivity and internal laceration. Analytical work has another purpose: to make it clear that particular problems are only the consequence of a more general way of life that can be understood and modified.
The theme of the analytical work has as its starting point the disturbances perceived as such by the client and is developed with the analysis of defenses and the recognition of painful not integrated old feelings, from which the client tries to protect himself.
Let’s consider an example of irrational and destructive behavior: X reacts violently to criticism from Y. Those who adopt a moral point of view think that X was wrong and that he ought to have controlled himself. Those who adopt a psychotherapeutic point of view thinks that X has "exaggerated" because of stress or an unhappy childhood. In fact, X confuses (always useful) criticism with (offensive) insults. In his childhood he tried to become "acceptable" becoming "impeccable." The sorrow of his childhood didn’t cause his delusion of “buying love”, because this idea was a defensive (creative) reaction to unbearable sorrow. In fact, all children are acceptable, and X was not rejected for his “sins”, but because his parents could not see his beauty or feel love for him.
The ethical idea that X would have to control himself is the idea of ignoring the fact that X acts for some reason. And that for some reason he can’t stand any criticism. He fears accepting his own sorrow, crying and make peace with himself. Only if he can manage his old feelings will he be able to appreciate rational criticism without falling into an ancient nightmare of loneliness. Even the idea of psychotherapy is wrong: X does not work today because of his childhood, just as the Italian government does not make new laws because of the invasion of the Huns. X’s childhood is long over and what makes X so susceptible is what he has always had in mind since childhood. X is easily angered because today he is still clinging to the illusion of "conquerable love". X doesn’t need to repent, control himself or even to be "cured", but needs to figure out he is doing many things not to accept the sorrow that has always accompanied him and with which he feared (and fears) to "make peace."
The analysis of defensive intentionality is related to what clients do and to the sorrow that they avoid to feel and accept. The sorrow can neither be compensated nor cured, but can be "processed" and "integrated" through the experience of "mourning" (understood in a broad sense). Analysis can then be conceived as a process of learning and change regarding the overall conception of existence. Such a change is not the effect of "therapeutic interventions”, but consists of a re-decision made by the same person, on the basis of acquired knowledge and of integrated emotional experiences.
In these pages I will try to clarify that people do what they do for love or fear. When acting for love (for themselves or others) they’re easily able to explain the reasons for which they act, while when they act irrationally they aren’t conscious of the defensive function of their behavior. Reality is fascinating, but sometimes it breaks our heart. Reality is tough for adults, but for children it is often emotionally intolerable and they learn by themselves to act in appropriate ways to limit the emotional contact with a too-painful reality. They also learn to justify what they do and hide the (ugly) truth about the fact that they act "defensively", that is, for fear of "suffering too much".
Making my own personal analytical path and accompanying my clients in their analytical path I have formed two convictions.
a) If we move a muscle or turn our attention to something, we always have the intention of doing what we're doing. Knowingly or unknowingly, we consider the consequences desirable if our gesture is expected to promote or believe that such consequences, even if undesired, may at least be acceptable.
b) If we act in respectful and constructive ways we can easily explain the reasons for our behavior. If, instead, we act in irrational and destructive ways, we do so for defensive purposes (usually established in childhood) without realizing why we do what we do. When we try to explain the reasons for such behavior, the statements we make in turn are irrational.
People go to great lengths to match things today with the idea they have in mind and in terms of their past. They want to find a happy ending in adult life to their childhood, or they want to keep the defensive balance achieved in childhood. They don’t face the present with the joys and the sufferings they actually feel. When people "are still there" (in the past), they show a lack of sensitivity to current situations and to other persons. They let life pass without savoring it and don’t know it because they live in the present with the objectives linked to a non-accepted past and therefore they never really overcome their past.
People are not aware of doing so many things "to feel a little" instead of "to live”. Normally they do not know why they do what they do and do not want to know. The fact that they become curious when noticing that they live “a little" and ask for help is a good starting point for an inner search that may lead to accept that sorrow is inevitable and regain the ability to really enjoy and above all to be blissful. Using the term "bliss" I am not referring to a general well-being or joy or great joy. I use the term "bliss" as a background mood that simply expresses the pleasure of being, thinking and feeling. Based on this definition, we can be blissful even in painful moments. If we are in touch with the joy and the sorrow we know for sure that both these emotions are precious, that we are precious and that the life in which we are immersed is precious.
2. How can people hurt themselves in order to protect themselves from sorrow?
A young woman, whom I will call Wilma, asked me in the first interview to help her in her separation so as not to create too many problems for the children (seven and nine years old) or possibly to construct a non-confrontational coexistence with her husband. A friend, in fact, had made her consider the possibility of being an accomplice, not just a victim of the tensions between her and her husband. Those tensions were exacerbated when her husband refused to father a third child because, according to him, Wilma had an "idyllic" and unreal relation with her two sons that resulted in her growing disinterest in the relationship.
Initially we talked about the "faults” of her husband (whom I will call Renato). Since Wilma did not hide her hostility in describing the emotional irritability and poor sensitivity of this "old-fashioned" man, I pointed out that she was talking to me about his limitations, but not personal characteristics of Renato, and those limitations couldn’t justify her refusal and hostility toward Renato.
GF: Everyone has limitations or defects. M.L. King underestimated the commitment to the environment, perhaps Einstein was superficial as a psychologist and Fausto Coppi was a poor skier. It’s easy to find limitations but we cannot rationally hate people for their imperfections. Moreover with the people we love and/or desire the anger is never reasonable. A woman may rationally kick a man in the balls if he is molesting her, but if she (figuratively) does the same thing against a partner with whom she wishes an emotional good connection, she will definitely not succeed in improving the relation. These objectives are not achieved with anger (i.e. fighting), and therefore in those situations anger interrupts the awareness of a sad fact: something is lacking in the relation. The anger in relationships or friendship does not get you what you want, but covers the sorrow for what you would like and you cannot have. We have the possibility of accepting other persons, despite their limitations, or to choose a separation, but a decision can be made with a clear mind and an open heart only if one accepts the sorrow that each of the two possibilities involves.
These observations helped Wilma to not consider obvious her silent or sometimes aggressive anger. With some difficulty, Wilma followed my line of reasoning and admitted that she felt unjustified hostility towards Renato and that she contributed to the defensive reactions of Renato by denying him sexually and also, in the broader sense, affectivity.
In the first sessions we identified two main themes to be clarified: the conflict of Wilma and her femininity and the exasperation of her maternal role in the family. Wilma occasionally bought beautiful and "feminine" clothes but always ended up not wearing them; she also truly loved the two children, but smothered them with an attention that was oppressive for them, or at least for the older one. In her mind, the husband wasn’t her companion, with whom she could enjoy the pleasures of life (all pleasures, and not just the pleasure of seeing their children grow up well), but was only a good person who had provided a good seed.
We clarified that Renato found it unbearable to be frustrated with the excuses relating to their children whom he truly loved and wanted to raise with Wilma. This simple man did not want to understand or talk about everything, but wanted the intimacy at the same rate as the co-parenting. This "old-fashioned" man didn’t feel able to express crying the sorrow he felt and therefore ended up having occasional outbursts (without, of course, exceeding certain limits). Perhaps if he had been a bit more in touch with his own emotions he would have cried more and might have asked for a separation rather than accepting the idea of a second child. Now, the idea of a third child seemed a terrible threat to him.
Wilma, by now, had already realized that she helped bring out the worst in Renato and that her provocations against her husband had some connection with her being so close to her mother, a very cold woman.
I’ll now recall a session in the sixth month of analysis. The work already done on the relationship between Wilma and her mother had considerably loosened the tension with Renato. The "desire" of a third child, however, was still perceived in all its intensity.
W: The considerations already made seem to make sense, but I still feel that I would like another child.
GF: What excites you the most, about the experience of motherhood? Pregnancy, childbirth, changing diapers, breastfeeding, weaning, first steps, the fact of not having time to do many things?
W: While you listed these things, which are almost all annoyances that I don’t need, I had a thought: the baby needs me and I can respond to its needs and satisfy them.
GF: You could also do a few hours of overtime and send the money to a volunteer organization or charity! Why do you feel this "need" for another child?
Children are a wonderful thing, but they are not a "thing" that can be "wanted". They ask a lot and do not give anything more than their beauty and vitality in exchange; in any case, they don’t become the "personal property" of the parents. I can understand that you love children and that you can feel the willingness to do anything for their well-being, but I don’t understand why you don’t feel the same willingness to dedicate yourself to Renato.
W: I understand. Adults are self-sufficient, they know how to take care of themselves. Maybe I'm afraid to let myself go with an independent adult.
GF: And what frightens you about adults that doesn’t about children?
W: In adult intimacy sooner or later I would feel the need to ask ... to curl up like a puppy to feel secure.
GF: Find the "subtitle" of this picture you just saw.
W: "Keep me with you" [smiles].
GF: No smiles: let's talk about your life, which is a serious matter. Want to do a little work?
W: Yes.
GF: Imagine repeating your sentence ("Keep me with you") to a newborn. Repeat it as if you were meditating with this mantra.
W: [While she mentally repeats her "mantra" she’s moved].
GF: Now imagine that you are the small child you’ve seen and imagine that you are in the arms of an adult and repeat the same words to this adult person.
W: [While mentally repeating the words, she becomes stiff, grits her teeth and is no longer moved].
GF: What differences did you feel between the two exercises?
W: In the first exercise I felt tenderness. In the second I felt a distance, as if the person holding me were "far away." I was afraid to be in that thing.
GF: I know. We'll have to go back there if you want to be at peace with this need, which is certainly not a need for today, but that is still present and still painful. But you have to note that no child can give a happy end to a personal experience that is settled. Concluded. You can be in peace with it if you accept, but you cannot find the peace of fulfillment.
A client, who I'll call Antonio, had already understood that his "psychophysical disorders" were not "caused" by his “depression,” but that he depressed himself (with or without psychophysical symptoms) and in this mood enraged with everything and everyone, without any actual reasons. In the moments when he felt the need to cry sometimes he let himself go, but almost always he anesthetized himself and felt anger. He felt anger especially with his girlfriend, whom I will call Piera. He knew it, but he had not interrupted this tendency because still feared to cry. He felt better, but not as much as he could because he still limited the awareness of his sorrow (and bliss, of course). He made use of more circumscribed and "normal" symptoms (fighting rather than mysterious "psychophysical disorders"), but it was not a real turning point.
At this stage of his analytical path, he tells me that he had another fight with Piera who, among other things, is very good at frustrating him or accusing him injustly when she has problems with her parents, to whom she is very attached. In the session recalled below, Antonio tells me he had “relapsed”.
A: I took the bait. I knew that she wanted a war and the idea that she throw her frustrations on me made me mad.
GF: No: you preferred to get mad rather than ... ?
A: Rather than accept that "she had gone away again". However, there is a limit to what a person can accept. When Piera breaks my balls it’s really unbearable.
GF: I do not want to set any limits in which anger might be "right." The real point is: anger means fight and fighting serve to get or reject something. You get angry with her and she doesn’t calm down. At best, you get her to distance herself more, but what you want is to have her close. So, your anger, directed toward a person you love and desire is nonsense. It’s useful, but only as a defense. Piera doesn’t change if you fight, but your ability to feel does, because the anger will dissociate you from the awareness of a painful fact: she loves you, but when she’s afraid of feeling deep sorrow, a sorrow perhaps very old, she betrays you. She betrays you, yes. She doesn’t run away with a Russian sailor, but with her anger. She really goes “back to her family". You can run away like her and make things worse, or remain present and at least reduce the damage. You can even leave her, but not with anger, because she is not a bother you just want to get rid of, but a woman who you're fine with, if you’re not under attack. Couples should be separated, if it’s really the case, only when they’ve reached respect and affection.
A: I know. We’ve talked about it for a long time, but beyond a certain limit I can’t handle living without anger.
GF: Bullshit! In the past you said you couldn’t maintain an openness that is now normal for you. You can continue to accept only part of your feelings, but you can allow yourself to feel everything. You know very well, through the experiences you’ve already had, that exceeding the limits you give yourself leads only to more of the same sorrow. However, it involves a sorrow that is already in you, since you love and want that woman.
A: But really, I can’t cry forever!
GF: This is psychological terrorism. The alternative to crying once a month with me here because I push you, is not crying "forever," but crying when you need to”.
A: Beyond that limit, though …
GF: What do you feel beyond that limit?
A: [He does not answer and becomes sad. He holds back his tears, but he feels something and stops bickering.] Why would someone wait thirty years to find the right woman, live together, have children and then have to return to that loneliness?!
GF: Which lonelliness?
A: You know it and I know it. I don’t know if I want to feel everything.
GF: That’s your decision. But at least now the situation is clear. It’s not true that you can’t handle anything beyond a certain limit, like in weightlifting. You establish that beyond a certain point you turn away from emotional contact, from reality and from Piera. If you’re happy that way, you can choose so. In any case, you don’t feel well, and you lose pieces of your life; painful pieces, but also pieces which are a pity to throw away and that one day you might regret having thrown away.
A: It is not easy.
GF: I know.
The session I am going to recall shows that not only certain emotions can be irrational and defensive, but that even simple sensations can be "activated" or "distorted" when a person is defending from painful old feelings.
A student, whom I will call Sonia, is currently living with a guy in an apartment with some friends. In this first “real” relationship she felt new sensations that cannot easily be explained: annoyance or impatience when the guy (whom I will call Enzo) touches her or expresses sexual interest. Such sensations contradict the fact that when Sonia didn’t feel in love with Enzo she found great pleasure in physical and sexual contact with him.
GF: In practice you react to him as if he were an "old slobbering man" or a man that bothers women on the bus.
S: Yes, but Enzo is young and is a nice guy. He always knew how to touch me and that hasn’t changed. Those sensations bother me during sex and sometimes lead me to avoid intercourse. This also applies to the impulses of anger, which I may not show, because it does not make sense, but I feel.
GF: Here, with me, you can "take out" this anger and disgust without any fear of irreparable consequences to the relationship. Would you like to work?
S: All right.
[Without going into details, I can summarize that in this work Sonia expresses a lot of verbal and physical hostility toward Enzo. She shouts insults, rejects him while punching the sofa. Then she feels her mouth as the epicenter of her anger and I suggest her to bite a towel and shouts what comes to her mind. At one point she stops and talks to me].
S: I was no longer biting Enzo, but my mother, and I did not want to destroy with my teeth, but I felt the need to take something that had escaped me.
I ask Sonia to repeat these words to her mother and, recreating the scene, Sonia cries.
S: [After having quieted down] I’ve never felt protected. When something happened I was never sure to be safe. Never. Now I understand why I’m hostile toward Enzo. It’s not what he does that irritates me, but what he cannot do: he can’t "protect" me. Since the relationship become intense, my ability to feel deeper things has grown.
In subsequent sessions we found other aspects of Sonia’s defensive strategy that determined her hostility toward Enzo. However, after this session their sexual relationship improved.
How many people reduce or interrupt their sex life without knowing why? Living with their partner for years, perhaps telling themselves that the passion of youth inevitably fades away "due to" the passing of time, cohabitation, children, and a thousand other things that have absolutely nothing to do with this change. They sometimes try to find new sensations in another relationship and invent a thousand excuses both for the fact that “they can’t” leave their husband or wife and because "they can’t" leave their lover. How many people avoid to change their job or way of life, telling themselves that they cannot change anything, even if they could change a lot of things? How many people see their children grow up without trying to learn something about their world and delude themselves thinking that they have a good dialogue with them? How many people, barely willing to love the nearest persons in their lives, tell themselves they feel bad because they don’t feel loved?
The examples above show that people really do exert a large amount of effort in order to not know the reasons why they do what they do. The defensive irrationality manifests itself both in destructive behaviours and in invented "explanations" of such behaviors. I want to list a few simple questions and some answers that, unfortunately, are representative of the very common ways to avoid any examination of the reasons of irrational behaviours.
"I can’t stand my wife because she’s cold. She’s always been cold, but I married her because she had and still has so many qualities.” [Question: "If her coldness is unbearable, did her other qualities justify such an important choice?”] “We were engaged three years, but I didn’t realize she was so cold.” [Question: "Then why did you have four children with her?”] “We had four children because we were already married”.
"I’m not going to study because I don’t think I’ll pass my exams. I’ve successfully passed two, but I think I just got lucky. I don’t feel like taking the next one because I don’t think I’ll be able to keep up the average. I couldn’t stand failing and having a bad evaluation. I’d feel like an idiot." [Question: "How do the students feel when they are really not clever?"]. "For others, it's different.” [Question: "Why?”] “I don’t know, but I don’t like studying if I’m only going to feel stupid."
People explain what they do with "arguments" of this kind. They’re satisfied with explanations that don’t explain anything. They don’t know why they act, but they don’t stand the idea of not having any explanation. For this reason they invent some "justifications" that don’t justify anything, but allow themselves to continue to not know why they do what they do.
I think people do not normally want to know that they act primarily to forget the sorrow of their lives. They’re able to not tell themselves the truth just to avoid asking themselves the "right questions", i.e. the uncomfortable ones.
When people act they actually perform two actions: they do what they do and they allow themselves to do it. Besides, any allowance to do something in a certain way and at a certain time refers to a framework that includes the idea of themselves, of reality and of others. It refers, most of all, to the fundamental decisions taken consciously or unconsciously about how to spend their lives.
The quality of life, from my point of view, isn’t unsatisfactory when it doesn’t correspond to an abstract ideal, but it is unsatisfactory when it doesn’t match one’s personal potential. It is of little importance if a person hasn’t made an important scientific discovery or did not win a medal at the Olympics; what matters is that they did everything they could to live their own life. This leads to dying without regrets.
From this perspective, understanding why people do what they do has nothing to do with the discovery of the "mysteries of the psyche." Unfortunately, psychotherapy was born right after a curiosity of this type. Freud, with the passion and coolness of an entomologist tried to locate strange "complexes" in his "patients". His colleagues and students placed the difficulties of people in other very "heavy" (and not very "human") theoretical (or pseudo-theoretical) frameworks. Real lives boxed and labeled in such a way seem understandable without really being understood. I do not try to give "interpretations" to my clients, but I try to learn from them what they know "deep down" about the reasons for their decisions and actions. In the examples above, Wilma told me that she focused on the role of mother not to feel the need to ask; Antonio told me he got angry so he wouldn’t cry; Sonia told me that she created particular sensations not to stay in touch with an old feeling of loss.
People usually suffer in confused, angry and anxious ways and therefore suffer superficially. They prefer this unnecessary and strange kind of sorrow because they produce it and can "handle” it. This is bad business, but they do what they decided to do (reasonably) in the years when they couldn’t stand to feel powerless and rejected, invisible, not accepted, not protected.
Why do people do what they do? Why so often do they take on unnecessary suffering and make people they love suffer? I believe that all people are capable of loving, but they often feel their fears more than their love. And then, they obstinately try to protect themselves from inexistent dangers and give up looking for and creating possible and real bliss. They dedicate their lives avoiding sorrow which is still a part of their lives and seeking bliss that can only be found by children held in the arms of a mother or a father. They disregard the fact that they can meet older or younger people, but they can no longer be little and protected by adults. They can experience harmony, but not receive nurturing and safety. Only if they accept their sorrow for an irreparable and definitive loss, can they discover that they can no longer die of sorrow. In this way they will never be free of sorrow, but from the fear of sorrow. Only the real process of mourning makes the conclusion of mourning possible, and this conclusion involves both the integration of an effectively accepted sorrow and the appreciation of the other aspects of life. Such acceptance of irreparable sorrow restores emotional openness to new joyful experiences.
4. Love and fear
Many concepts are commonly used in confusing ways because this confusion distracts from the awareness of painful facts and favours the justification of irrational attitudes. I therefore believe it is useful to place these concepts into a framework that is both coherent and respectful of some obvious facts.
First of all I think it is necessary to distinguish between the concept of desire and the concept of love in interpersonal relations. Often people confuse the desire to be with someone and the desire that that person is happy. The two things can coexist, but are distinct because in desire one seeks his own gratification, while in benevolence the gratification sought (even at the cost of renunciation) is the bliss of the loved person.
Since the term "love" is used in a thousand backdrops (in novels, poems, treatises on philosophy or theology, in songs or in a chat in a cafe) it’s appropriate to speak of love as a feeling of benevolence. It should also be clarified that in interpersonal relationships desire and love can coexist. Moreover, I use the terms love, affection, acceptance, kindness and friendship to indicate different shades of the same emotion.
I consider it important also to distinguish the concept of desire from that of need. It's obvious that when it’s cold we need suitable clothing to protect us from the cold weather, just as it’s obvious that we would desire a blue coat or a grey coat without really needing a garment of a certain color. Nevertheless, on a psychological level the two concepts are often confused and people often use the term “need” when some frustration is related to a mere desire. You do not need a girlfriend or a boyfriend. The fact that a person gets depressed if his/her partner interrupts the relation does not demonstrate that he/she really needed that partner, given that many people live without having a partner at all. The same applies to the so-called “needs” to have friends, be part of a group, have children, etc.
The psychological needs of adults are very few. Adults inevitably go into "psychological collapse" (temporarily) when subjected to sensory deprivation experiences and in this case we can speak of a need for sensory stimulation. I would add, however, another psychological need, even if this idea is far from obvious. I am referring to the need for a respectful and loving internal dialogue.
We humans, if we complete our psychological development under satisfactory conditions, have the ability to converse quietly with ourselves and this ability makes us immune to the "sense of loneliness." We have this ability, but it is normally limited by our defensive intentionality. In any case, if people function psychologically on an adult level, they constantly speak with themselves to confirm their "inner experiences" (feelings, desires, emotions, thoughts, doubts, etc.). The same person speaks, listens and responds. People can do all this daily, even when conducting business or talking with other people.
If, while repairing a window I say, "Let's try it this way", "Here’s the solution!" or "Too bad, it’s really difficult to do" I encourage myself, I appreciate myself if I’ve succeed, I cuddle myself if I’m in trouble and anyway I keep myself company. If I say to myself, "You’ll never make it because you’re stupid as usual, I’m no longer good company and am probably "playing back the tape" recorded in the past by a parent. A tape that was heard and accepted only because, at that time, the bad company was preferable to loneliness.
Children don’t have an internal dialogue. They gradually become self-conscious, able to speak, to interact and finally to talk with themselves. The process is slow and until its conclusion, their dialogue with their parents constitutes the fundamental experience that prevents the (intolerable) experience of loneliness. If the parents, instead of offering the (interpersonal) "external dialogue" - the antidote to loneliness or emptiness - create painful experiences that the child can’t handle, children build their psychological defences and in this way they don’t pass from the reassuring external dialogue to the respectful internal dialogue.
In analysis we try to get people to talk to themselves about their desires and therefore also about their sorrow. They oppose and resist, but when they arrive at their sorrow they realize that they have the ability to process their sorrow, and don’t "collapse" or die, despite the subjective sensation of unbearable sorrow. At that point they no longer feel the "need for others," but only the (understandable) desire to meet other people; and to get close to them without fear of rejection, since they know they have the "necessary minimum": their own constant, clean, unconditional and loving companionship.
Another distinction, which for me is important to keep in mind, is that between love (in its various shades) and esteem. The first is a feeling (or emotion), while esteem is a conviction. We can love a person that’s not estimable as a musician or as an athlete or as an intellectual and we can esteem a very talented person, that we don’t love. Love and esteem may overlap, since it is possible to love a person whose qualities are appreciated, but the two concepts should not be confused.
Esteeming (for sex appeal or culture or other talents) a person or loving a person may arouse the desire of intimacy or friendship, but not necessarily. Desire, need, love and esteem are distinct, aspects of our daily lives and only an accurate use of such terms makes a greater clarity in our thinking about human behavior possible.
There is a great deal of confusion about feelings. With anger we reject an unpleasant or intolerable situation that we can change; with fear we prepare ourselves to deal with a situation that could be unpleasant or intolerable; with joy we show the pleasure derived from a gratifying situation and with sorrow we get used to absence or loss. With love we show acceptance and helpfulness toward people that we consider important for what they are, regardless of whether they can be useful to us or not. If we are not too "busy" fighting or seeking gratification, we’re able to see the beauty in people and recognize that every person has a precious life. If we see a person "up close" enough and without shutting down the heart, we won’t have any difficulty in feeling love.
Various aspects of analytical work justify the idea that the depth of our love for others and for life in general depends on the depth of our love for ourselves. In other words, the more we love ourselves, the more we’re able to love. From this point follows the corollary according to which inciting others to be loving is not rational. For example, if we are in conflict with our fragility, we’ll find it hard to love children or small, non-aggressive animals (except in the case in which we protect them just to feel strong); if we are in conflict with our sexuality and affectivity, we’ll find it hard to love exuberant, sensual, or "open" people; if we are in conflict with our pleasure, we’ll find it hard to love art, nature or those who like to spend their time without doing a lot.
Analytical work always reveals that when clients become familiar with the deep and delicate aspects of their inner life (thus creating the conditions under which they can respect and love themselves), they easily increase their empathy for other people. In short, the base of love for others is empathy. If you are able to consider another person as a subject rather than an object, you inevitably consider that person very precious. Obviously, not being able to know the other people from the inside, we can only imagine their inner life by putting ourselves in their shoes. If "in our own shoes," we do not feel the richness of our emotional life, how can we consider the life of other people important? If we’re afraid of crying and accepting our sorrow, how can we think that people we care about are vulnerable and are to be treated with care?
Ethics and moral education are based on the misunderstanding of these facts: wisdom or "goodness" cannot be cultivated through self-control, the determination to pursue an ideal or the shame for personal limitations. These are qualities that emerge naturally when we become aware of our inner life, our deep feelings, our suffering, our bliss, and therefore our inner richness.
These ideas are not derived from metaphysical speculations or optimistic prejudices about human nature, but simply from the experiences of analytical work. When clients begin to understand that they act defensively (in order to avoid old feelings whose roots are in their childhood), they begin to confront these old feelings. Passing through this experience, they discover that they are more vulnerable than they’d imagined, but they also discover themselves to be stronger than they’d thought. They then find a richer and more exciting inner life and begin to consider others as persons and not just as objects to be exploited or rejected or to be feared. Analytical work, if it is successfully done, does not free people from sorrow, but from the fear of sorrow. Once the unconscious project to live so as not to suffer becomes conscious and seen as destructive, it is easily replaced by the project to live so as to express personal potential.
The fear of not being able to process sorrow (as in childhood) and the love for oneself and for others are the opposites that affect our choices. It’s hard to love life, since many "pieces" of it fall on us like tiles and hurt us, but only the determination to save what we are and what we love, even when the pain seems to destroy everything, allows us not to enter into a spiral of closure, depression, hatred or revenge. This is, in my opinion, the crucial focus of any meaningful reflection on the reasons why people do what they do. Philosophy and psychology are both essential. People need to use rationality to expose all their delusions, prejudices and defensive rationalizations, but they also need to understand that they think, feel and do irrational things for fear of feeling “too much” and for fear of feeling too much sorrow. Only with this knowledge they can clarify what they are afraid of and can overcome that fear.
At the root of psychological defenses there is a rational fear experienced in childhood: the fear of "sinking" in sorrow. The irrational permanence of a fear that is reasonable only in childhood leads adults to act in incomprehensible ways which can’t be clarified with either the speculations of ethics or with the theories of psychopathology. The important challenge for us (even if we often feel small in a big world), lies in trying to use the tools of our adult age, in order to accept the emotions that were devastating in childhood. Our challenge is to "be present and disarmed" and to make sure that we feel enriched by the compassion for ourselves, by the company of ourselves, by the experience of crying and of wiping away of our tears, by the experience of smiling and of feeling that we are still in the game. The game of life … until death. Our challenge is to be able to die knowing that we’ve lived a life that was truly our life.
Conclusions
Life is always today and today we need our sorrow to keep us company and to overcome our ancient sense of loss. Individual and social irrationality is, unfortunately, an aspect of normality and normality is therefore a nightmare. Fortunately, it is an imperfect nightmare. Even hateful people love someone or something; even the most insensitive people are sensitive to something; even the most dogmatic recognize some aspects of reality; even the most superficial have moments of compassion. Humans try to stifle their inner life, but it never stays completely crushed.
What emotions can we tolerate? All of them.
It’s inhuman never to be afraid. It’s human to do what’s worth doing, even if we are afraid.
When we can’t avoid sorrow we must get in contact with it and accept it as a constitutive element of our experience. The more sorrow becomes familiar, the less we'll fear it.
In order to avoid sorrow sometimes we try not to desire what we lack and sometimes we delude ourselves into being able to put everything in place by bending others or becoming "better". But the sorrow remains, even if submerged. Human existence is not something that can be "put in place" because it is in place as it is, with the joy and the sorrow that it includes. Only if human existence is accepted will it be known as a valuable reality in which to do valuable things, as long as there is time.
Being lovable is a fact. It remains so, even if someone does not realize it.
When we realize we are lovable for what we are, we begin to respect the lives of others and want contact with others. In this way, we start taking pleasure in it.
Wanting to be loved by everyone is a very common and very naïve aspiration. We can’t really do anything to be loved by others. It just depends on them to see or not to see our beauty. The only thing we can do is to let ourselves be known and see what happens.
No matter how hard we try, we can neither "become good", nor "become bad". It's much more useful to understand why we do what we do and clarify if we are deluding ourselves.
We can’t "feel good"; we can feel a lot or feel a little. A little sorrow, a little joy and the weight or the noise or the boredom of our closures; or all the sorrow and all the joy of our life and the bliss of never being far away from ourselves. Only then will we know that our inner world is greater than our nightmares. Only in this way will we want to do good things that only we can do.
Our time is not that which is measured by the clock, but that which we spend well. Everyone has their own way of spending time well for themselves and for others.
If, when dying, we have regrets, we’ll regret what we didn’t do, not what we have not received. For this, now we can be grateful for what is given to us, weep for that which is denied and build a life that is truly our own.
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