Ask Chuck: A Great Question about Self States

Posted March 12, 2024 by chuck bender
Categories: Author, blur, Connecting the Dots Series, Individuation, Initiation, Learning to Think and Work Symbolically
Tags: , , , ,

I was pleased to get an email from a reader asking: “… I had a question about self states or emotional states. How do I get out of a self state or an emotional state? For good.”

The short answer is we want to recognize self-states as important parts of ourselves that historically could not find a way to stay conscious, given our sensitivity and complexity. Growing up and getting stronger means they can start to rattle and make themselves known, and we want to commit to honoring their request to be in relationship, and begin sorting out who are they really and what will our relationship to them be? Some of these emerging self-states are actually the internalized/introjected parental and authority figure “others”, who, populating our complexes, contributed to our rejection of parts of ourselves. Lots more on that via Donald Kalsched’s work with the archetypal predator/persecutor complexes. Not going there now.

Having some additional communications with the person asking the question, I am going to connect some dots tailored to the backstory. Note, recognizing one’s sensitivity and complexity, potentially a mixed blessing at best, seems actually to me like winning life’s most important lottery!

Of note, most of us have grown up believing the key to success in life depends upon the development of a well functioning ego based consciousness, which then can identify and apply best practices in everything we do. It is interesting to remember Donald Winnicott, from the psychoanalytic side, believed a successful, integrative analysis resulted in one achieving a unit – self personality. In contrast, a Jungian perspective recognizes a multiplicity in consciousness as the rule. Jung’s concept of ego and Self, imaged as the ego-Self Axis, is extremely useful. It lends its self to a non-denominational, ancestral, archetypal understanding of consciousness in relationship to the unconscious, or collective consciousness. It also addresses the developmental stage dynamics working for and against remembering what has been unbearable. We will close with more on that below.

I am thinking the reader is familiar with self – states through prior study or analysis, or, has reviewed some of my posts on the importance of the concept (see Philip Bromberg)

In his (my Source Quote) discussion, Bromberg notes when at times he might think a person’s mood has shifted, he has learned rather to consider a shift in self – states as the explanation for the change in mood. He then offers this review:

“For those who are not yet totally at home with how the concept of self – state is different from a shift in affect or mood, let me offer a one sentence clarification: Self – states are highly individualized modules of being, each configured by its own organization of cognitions, beliefs, dominant affect and mood, access to memory, skills, behaviors, values, actions, and regulatory physiology. (Chuck’s bold)

These highly individualized modules of being sound like active, dynamic willing entities with minds of their own!

Take a minute to think about what this (having your own cast of highly individualized modules of being characters within) might mean to you. And, where might they come from?

We can start with orienting to the concept of evoked companions. When I just googled evoked companions, an excellent paper popped up reviewing some of the literature around the concept as it informs the development of spontaneous imaginary characters from early childhood and throughout our lives. And the importance of recognizing this capacity for interacting with these figures as a power, not a pathology. For here, it serves to provide context around our experience of finding unknown presences in us, coming into our world, which can be confusing and frightening.

An early mentor put it this way: After about the first 24 – 48 hours of being born, the infant is never alone, because enough actual interactions have occurred with the mother and caregivers to allow the infant to experience connections with the evoked companions; something of each of those experiences with the actual others taking care of us, provides psyche with enough to begin forming internal representations of the holding environment; when a new need arises, the associated state then evokes internal representations of the presences of the caregivers who have attended to us earlier in our very short time in the world. We are wired to begin connecting, with the help of these evoked companions. See my Developmental Considerations for more on the importance of of the gradual evolution of this internal representation of being held, refueled, and released. Countless traces of interactions, averaged and generalized over time, become the condensed, composite template for one’s Experiential State.

In every childhood, there are tremendous pressures put on the child to conform with expectations to behave, in short. A beautiful image of why this is so can be found in Robert Bly’s A Little Book on the Human Shadow:

“Let’s talk about the personal shadow first. When we were one or two years old we had what we might visualize as a 360° personality. Energy radiated out from all parts of our body and all parts of our psyche. A child running is a living globe of energy. We had a ball of energy, alright; but one day we noticed that our parents didn’t like certain parts of that ball. They said things like: ‘Can’t you be still?’ Or ‘It isn’t nice to try and kill your brother.’ Behind us we have an invisible bag, and the part of us our parents don’t like, we, to keep her parents’ love, put in the bag. By the time we go to school our bag is quite large. Then our teachers have their say: ‘Good children don’t get angry over such little things.’ By the time my brother and I were twelve in Madison, Minnesota we were known as ‘the nice Bly boys.’ Our bags were already a mile long.”

And he offers this gorgeous description of our arrival, ‘trailing clouds of glory,’:

“The drama is this. We came as infants ‘trailing clouds of glory,’ arriving from the farthest reaches of the universe, bringing with us appetites well preserved from our mammal inheritance, spontaneities wonderfully preserved from our 150,000 years of tree life, angers well preserved from our 5,000 years of tribal life – in short, with our 360° radiance – and we offered this gift to our parents. They didn’t want it. They wanted a nice girl or a nice boy. That’s the first act of the drama. It doesn’t mean our parents were wicked: they needed us for something. My mother, as a second-generation immigrant, needed my brother and me to help the family look more classy. We do the same thing to our children; it’s a part of life on this planet. Our parents rejected who we were before we could talk, so the pain of the rejection is probably stored in some pre–verbal place.”

…so the pain of the rejection is probably stored in some pre–verbal place. Somehow, somewhere in psyche, the unconscious, our bodies, all these rejected part of our selves, self -states, remain, continue on, waiting for the conditions conducive for them to re-enter our consciousness.

While we’re here, this pre-verbal place is also the realm of the sub-symbolic mode of experience, in contrast to the symbolic mode. Much more on that later as it informs our vulnerabilities to enactments.

As it is our fate, all starting out as infants, we will be overwhelmed at many points in life, and it is helpful to acknowledge and appreciate psyche’s life-saving super power of dissociation, or what we think of as the splitting off and encapsulation of unbearable, whole episodes of experience. It is as if dissociation functions to take the 110 voltage wired ego off-line in the face of 220-10,000 voltage traumatic physical and emotional episodes of overwhelm.

We can/will go on, but one more key concept for right now: recognizing the blur.

As in “healing only occurs within the blur.” When I first heard my psychoanalytical mentor reference this profound notion, at about age 41 for me, I immediately recognized how important it was to understanding the healing process. He went on to clarify that the blur state represented a betwixt and between state where in what was happening in the here and now, for real, was activating a remote time and space experience of something unfinished in our emotional life. Which is to say, our here and now experience is somehow infused, as if in a dream, with some emotionally charged unfinished business. This can be thought about as a co-created, dissociation enabled re-enactment of the wounding. The blur state refers to the peculiar experience of finding one’s self in this activated state.

Learning to recognizing this it-is-going-to-be-uncomfortable-state is key to begin having more choice in when to go there. Preparing to go there may be psyche’s first half of life task.

For a story like imaging of a number of important inter-related concepts, see my companion pages: Couple Experiential State Complex: Re-enactment of the Wounding and the Couple Experiential State Complex as Activated Threshold.

The key concept here is we all have lots of parts of ourselves that have become lost to us along the way, from birth to now. And our life’s work is re-integrate those split off parts. This requires building the capacity to hold what in earlier life was unbearable. This ultimately requires being able to consciously suffer the powerful affects evoked by unbearable traumatic experiences. Typically, this is the work of the midlife and second half of life. If one is called to this early, the challenge is to know how powerful it is and that psyche has your back. Think of it as a totally precocious midlife initiation. Because it is just that. It can be very helpful to begin to orient to Jung’s Ego-Self Axis Separation and Reunion frame.

In closing, here is an observation which suggests what we can try do to reconnect with our precious little lost selves: do your best to create/embrace opportunities to dance with your inner child:

“In healthy families, a baby forms a secure attachment with her parents as naturally as she breathes, eats, smiles, and cries. This occurs easily because of her parents’ attuned interactions with her. Her parents notice her physiological/affective states, and they respond to her sensitively and fully. Beyond simply meeting her unique needs, however, the parents “dance” with her. Hundreds of times, day after day, they dance with her. … There are other families where the baby neither dances nor even hears the sound of any music, in these families, she does not form such secure attachments. Rather, her task – her continuous ordeal – is to learn to live with parents who are little more than strangers. Babies who live with strangers do not live well or grow well.”

Be well and, borrowing from Joyce Vance,

We’re all in this together,

chuck

Comments: 3 Comments

Caution: Work in Progress!

Posted February 8, 2024 by chuck bender
Categories: Uncategorized

I encountered a doubling glitch in my guide to Pages menu – to the right of this space – and I am starting to look at restructuring this blog to assist ease in accessing these offerings. You may arrive here and have more trouble than usual finding stuff! Your patience is appreciated.

chuck

Comments: 1 Comment

The Importance of Getting Triggered

Posted September 1, 2023 by chuck bender
Categories: Communications from the Dream Time, Complexes and More, Connecting the Dots Series, Conscious Enactment, Initiation, Poems, Transference and Countertransference
Tags:

As part of my work preparing for co-leading an embodied, community dream group, I have been reviewing some of my earlier conceptual stuff and have revised this one a bit.

The dream group offering is very exciting and will focus on bringing in dreams and support for being with them in more depth. How precious is that?! This will not be so much a thinking about and analyzing them. That being said, I came across a favorite Whitmont and Pereira quote which puts complexes right at the center of dream life: “… every dream points to an unconscious complex and to the archetypal dynamism behind the complex’s emotionally charged layers.”

This observation is very intriguing to me. We can consider dreams as out-picturings of inner life, ie: the image and affect based dream symbolism points directly to unfinished emotional business. Consider then the role of enactments, in waking life, in bringing subsymbolic material into our shared, waking world. I am thinking it will be helpful to consider dream symbolism and enactments as being on a continuum. Our core defenses work to protect us from being re-traumatized by still unbearable, repressed experiences. (See post on Freud’s discussion of compromise formations.) I want to distill my view of complexes down into a everyday life kind of familiarity. How might we usefully orient to unconscious complexes, their emotionally charged layers and the archetypal dynamisms behind them? This early post is one broader way into all of this stuff. May the force be with you!

ARCHIVAL POST (9/15/2018): Thinking about my conceptual frame Couple Experiential State Complex as Activated Threshold, I have been struck this week by the importance of focusing on tracking when we, self and others, get emotionally triggered.

By using the word triggered, I am hoping to tap into our collective, universal sense of knowing we are getting hijacked by something intensely emotional. As in getting your button(s) pushed.

This shift in emotional intensity is the simplest indicator we may be activating, or activated, announcing to all who can perceive, the emergence of the blur.

From this perspective, when caught in the middle of a microfracture in communication, can we recognize the experience as meaningful? Is it possible this really is an unbidden (not ego driven), spontaneous opportunity for healing? What if there is no such thing as (fighting over) little stuff with regards to our archaic wounds to loving?

Fred Kaufman has a post on LinkedIn Every Emotion Is A Love Story. I find this to be a great opening assertion! If true, in accepting the validity of the emotion, under what circumstances is this present  emotion appropriate? We call for any associations, feelings, sensations, and memories that can help us understand the true context/setting giving rise to the emotion. When and where was this emotion a normal reaction to what was happening? As Rumi advises in A night full of talking that hurts…: Everything has to do with loving and not loving.

Preparing oneself to enter into such a healing moment includes learning to see the power struggle as a co-created complex. From this perspective, the ritualistic elements reflect what we think of as repetition compulsions or re-enactments of the wounding. In alignment with Bromberg’s description of co-created dissociative enabled enactments, these bring the essence of our unfinished business palpably into the present moment. This is the layer which drives the transference and counter-transference dance. In this blur, how are each of us standing in for the important others populating our complexes?

In his discussion of complexes in their favorable aspect, John Perry observes: “The repetition compulsion, as has been pointed out so often, provides the ego the occasion again and again to encounter these rejected components of development in order finally to assimilate them in some happy moments…” My sense of what he means by rejected components of development is simply the recognition in the absence of elder functions being available at the time of the wounding to help protect the vulnerable child or adult, and/or help metabolize the unbearable affects, the unmediated violation is certain to overwhelm the vulnerable psyche, necessitating the activation of archetypal layer defenses, ie: a trauma complex. What was needed at the time to understand and work through the emotional overwhelm is still needed. We can see that we really need now is what the elder knows, the functions needed to bring us through… We keep looking for them in anyone we intuitively sense may be carrying them.

I have played with this in thinking about the function complexes serve in my Musing on Metamorphosis: the Complex as Chrysalis post. I have to confess for me teleology is a big word, but, I believe it works!

The complex as chrysalis supports imaging the chrysalis as the container functioning to hold the original episode in a state of suspended animation (not inert however!), preserving the episodic memory based trauma in it’s original, unabstracted wholeness. Each reflects a developmental layer, ie: what anyone would see if you had a baby cam recording of the episode, as well an archetypal, evoked node layer. Here, think of it as Psyche’s lending library of hardwired, genetic memory, image/affect based guides to survival templates. The developmental, experiential state image overlaps with the archetypal evoked node, as each is comprised of the same components; the archetypal comes in when the level of intensity evokes the hardwired resources for survival.

Until we can more consciously experience this trauma complex, it will remain un-inventoried, un-integrated, and located in Bromberg’s subsymbolic mode of experience. My consideration of the conceptualization of the teleology of the complex as chrysalis, acknowledges the reality these subsymbolic mode trauma episodes complexes are the depositories of our split off experiences; they contain the original whole episodes of experience, intact and highly charged, along side of time and space. When the conditions later in life support the piercing of the containers, it is as if a time machine appears, ready to transport us back into the original experience, enabling us direct, conscious enough access to that which at the time could only be handled through life preserving dissociative defenses.

In closing, I have included the graphic above to highlight the Participation Mystique &/or Trauma Portal detail.  We are all involved all of the time with some deeper level of consciousness, a multiplicity of self-states if you will, which wants to inform us about what more is going on. Because I tend to think about getting hijacked into negative emotion enactments, I find the idea getting triggered serves the blur’s function in opening a portal into the associated trauma. The repetitive couple complex enactments do seem to provide a portal into our most painful relationship failings.

Clearly, we need each other to approach going there. What is needed may be as simple, and as difficult, as dropping into the original scene, so that we may feel all of it, within relationship, bear witness together, and get the story told. (See Sandner and Beebe for an articulation of what it takes to heal a split.) This reflects the conceptual notion traumas, until they can be suffered consciously in the service of re-integration, are incomplete initiatory experiences. Creating the conditions, essentially accessing a consciousness that can bear to suffer the wounding without splitting, is the work.

If we can only hold onto the here and now, this world enactment – what you/he/she/they did or did not do to uphold our loving – we are doomed to continue with our co-created dissociated enactments. Best practices to stay regulated and calm and more, are great and important, but they will not protect us from going there when psyche assesses the conditions are right for suffering a transformative descent and rebirth. All in the service of integration and healing.

Why not make a dedicated effort to sit with our deeper selves? We have to find a way to get to what was my part in initiating or participating in the dissociation just now? Can we strive to bear to feel as vulnerable as we may be feeling? To be continued…

Comments: 3 Comments

Consultation Services Update

Posted April 15, 2023 by chuck bender
Categories: Author, Learning to Think and Work Symbolically
Tags: , ,

Greetings! And thank you all for your continued interest in some of what is going on here.

First, I am pleased to announce I am planning an official start for my consultation practice for fall of 2023. By then the major construction and landscaping projects will be complete and my office will be very accessible again. Until then, I have established 2-4 days per month office hours and am available to schedule in person or remote individual, couple, family, and case consultations. Please see my Professional Disclosure page for details on fees and services.

When I peruse through this blog, following active links, I am reminded of how much work I was able to put in while maintaining my full time private practice. I am also struck with questions about who is this person, writing this stuff? In truth, I find some of it remarkably clear and radically helpful . . . if only it can be comprehended and applied. I recognize there is an important offering here: a book, a graphic novel, a series of YouTube mini-presentations, a program of live interviews for illustration purposes, a group workshop dedicated to exploring the role of conscious enactments in the service of healing splits.

We are all challenged to find our own way, our own language, into our full lives. I am dedicated to finding shared language.

My posting guidelines moving forward are to be more spontaneous, less anxious about my inferior editor functions. I really am looking for more of a conversation with you.

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Moving Forward

Posted January 31, 2023 by chuck bender
Categories: Author, Complexes and More, Initiation, Learning to Think and Work Symbolically, Poems, Soul
Tags: , , ,

I am a little surprised about how long it has taken me to get back to making an entry here! I have enjoyed a steady stream of what promise to be juicy next offerings, only to then watch them slip away, no longer seeming to be the one I really want to work on next. A few days ago it hit me: Of course! This is the experience of being in liminal space. Recall, as formulated so well in the Stein and Stein essay: Psychotherapy, Initiation, and the Midlife Transition, liminal space is a betwixt and between, tomb and womb, has been and not yet kind of place where we are shown our depths beyond the usual, known, dominant organizing principles of who we have known ourselves to be. Separations and losses trigger this guided, archetypal, Initiatory process.

Symbolically, the process of letting go of the known identity requires one find the corpse and bury it. This then opens one’s self up to being in liminal space: many sandcastles may be constructed, only to inevitably be washed away. The challenge is to stay with this energy, practicing the art of alert reflection. Through this process, we get in touch with the bedrock of our true depths.

Letting go of 50 years of clinical practice, of doing my best to hold space for wounds to the soul, the deep emotional self, has understandably triggered a shift in my moorings. Consciously recognizing this is helpful. And yes, it is a birthing process. What might/will the latest incarnation of me/Chuck look like? We shall see.

I will soon be posting office hours available for scheduling through a link here to my Simple Practice website.

“I Am Not I” by Juan Ramon Jimenez

I am not I.

            I am this one

Walking beside me whom I do not see,

Whom at times I manage to visit,

And at other times I forget….

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Retirement Letter with Resources

Posted August 6, 2022 by chuck bender
Categories: Uncategorized

Dear Esteemed Clients,

As most of you know from our ongoing discussions, I am retiring from clinical practice on August 31, 2022. This timing marks my 50th year anniversary of clinical work, and it feels like the right time to step back from direct clinical service. It has been a privilege to work with each of you over these decades. I want to express my deep gratitude for the times and ways we traveled together. From my heart, thank you!

My work life balance will decidedly shift in the direction of life and play! However, I am not retiring from psyche and soul. After a four-month sabbatical, I expect to embark on special projects and some consultation hours. Details will be announced on my website.

For follow-up billing questions or any other post retirement administrative requests, please contact my practice manager, Amy via email: office@amyvukovic.com.

For more personal communications, please contact me directly through my website or my secure email address: counseling@chuckbenderms.com. If I don’t get back to you soon, I may be out soaking up the sun or traveling – so please be patient.

For those wanting to continue with psychotherapy, I highly suggest reaching out now to locate a new therapist. It is very challenging to find openings at this time. If you are using your insurance, I would reach out to your carrier for a list of in-network providers and start there.

I will gladly provide a phone consultation to your new therapist at no fee. I have also included some psychotherapy and mental health resources with this letter.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions. Those who have worked with me over the years sometimes let me know about significant developments or achievements in their lives. I welcome such communications.

In gratitude,

Chuck Bender

A Walk

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,

Going far ahead of the road I have begun

So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;

It has its inner light, even from a distance –

And changes us, even if we do not reach it,

Into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are;

A gesture waves us on, answering our own wave . . .

But what we feel is the wind in our faces.

–Rainer Maria Rilke

Resources

For referrals, your insurance provider can provide a list of therapists in your network. Insurance care managers may have the most up to date information on which providers are accepting new patients.

An Internet search will bring up associations and therapists, including information on therapy approaches and issues. Two resources that may be helpful are:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/wa/vancouver

https://www.goodtherapy.org/

Teletherapy could be an option if you cannot easily find someone local and are open to a secure video call. Searching “psychotherapist wa state” results in multiple listings. Talk with your insurance provider to determine coverage options.

If you find yourself or a loved one in crisis and need help right away, the contact information for the crisis line is:

https://clark.wa.gov/community-services/clark-county-crisis-services. The 24/7 phone number is (800) 626-8137. Someone requiring an immediate on-scene response in an emergency is advised to dial 911. Also, hospital emergency rooms can address me

Comments: 1 Comment

Announcing Retirement from Direct Patient Care

Posted August 6, 2022 by chuck bender
Categories: Author

Dear Esteemed Clients,

As most of you know from our ongoing discussions, I am retiring from clinical practice on August 31, 2022. This timing marks my 50th year anniversary of clinical work, and it feels like the right time to step back from direct clinical service. It has been a privilege to work with each of you over these decades. I want to express my deep gratitude for the times and ways we traveled together. From my heart, thank you!

My work life balance will decidedly shift in the direction of life and play! However, I am not retiring from psyche and soul. After a four-month sabbatical, I expect to embark on special projects and some consultation hours. Details will be announced on my website here.

For follow-up billing questions or any other post retirement administrative requests, please contact my practice manager, Amy via email: office@amyvukovic.com.

For more personal communications, please contact me directly through the website or my email: counseling@chuckbenderms.com. If I don’t get back to you soon, I may be out soaking up the sun or traveling – so please be patient.

In gratitude,

Chuck Bender

A Walk

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,

Going far ahead of the road I have begun

So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;

It has its inner light, even from a distance –

And changes us, even if we do not reach it,

Into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are;

A gesture waves us on, answering our own wave . . .

But what we feel is the wind in our faces.

–Rainer Maria Rilke

Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke – A Translation from the German and Commentary by Robert Bly

Full letter and Resources

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Images of Self: Dream Time Encounters with Robert Bly

Posted January 7, 2022 by chuck bender
Categories: Active Imagination, Author, Communications from the Dream Time, Dream, Images of the Self, Individuation, Initiation, Learning to Think and Work Symbolically, Soul, Waking Reflections
Tags: , ,

In recognition of Robert’s passing late last year, I will be posting a series of big dreams from my work with Robert and the mytho-poetic gatherings of men he inspired and fed so well. For me, these dreams helped bring me into a more conscious relationship with the Self (see Edinger on the ego-Self axis). In recognition of the Jung’s spirited and courageous engagement with the unconscious through his Black Book journals, I will also be posting some of my active imagination transcripts (AI). This is in alignment with my belief that sharing these dream + AI offerings, straight up without interpretation, has value. I would welcome the opportunity to post some of your Robert Bly dreams here. The most recent of the manifestly (as in Robert shows up as a recognizable figure) Robert Bly dreams came the week before I was to begin a six session series of Embodied Dreaming group sessions conducted by Kimberly Christensen as part of her doctoral work. Here is the dream:

Dream 10.12.19 5:47 AM Timeless Robert Bly & Flying/Arriving

“Lengthy dream sequence ended with me catching up with my wife waiting for me at an outside table at a small restaurant on the ground floor, inner courtyard space of multiple storied, huge, sophisticated department store-like building in New York, or? We had become separated working our way down from the upper floors (4th?) when I took flight, without really giving her notice, literally stepping out into space and slowly flying, exploring, descending in this huge open space, which allowed me to see vast amounts as I dropped down.

Just before, having landed in a different corner of the complex, a black, grey, slightly shadowy corner with a lovely water/nature feature by a descending stairway, I encountered a very old but exceedingly spry, slow moving man, who was walking towards me, having just come down the stairs from a balcony; he was wearing greys and light and deep purples, elegant clothing, sophisticated, timeless, wild hair barely shorn, aristocratic, and, like himself, Robert Bly, with a rock star touch of Rod Stewart; and he looked at me and had this impish smile, and we both slowly passed each other; and I said “not bad!” in a low key, trickster way of acknowledging the impact of his startling presence and his carrying something quite amazing and special. He smiled back at me; we kept walking, and then both slowly turned back for second looks, and I was thinking, ‘No, you/I didn’t need to say “It’s me, Chuck.” We both know who we are. We go way back; how delightful to find him so alive and well, so vital, here, in a cultural/business center.

As I continued up the stairs, a procession of people, all much younger, were slowly coming down the stairs. This seemed to be his group; they were breaking for lunch or something like that; they seemed bright, interested, interesting; men and women; I paused on a short section, against the railing just outside of the opening, and one woman came nearer, stopped; we looked at each other intently, softly; she was very attractive to me; her gaze held me; I sensed she was/would be a very lovely person/lover. Tracking their arrival, coming down the stairs, I put Robert with this group; he, the elder. I had the thought “Oh, this is where Robert has been spending his time; sitting with, being available to this group of next generation creative types; as in, the work goes on, even when unseen; this is where he has been working away, out of the limelight.”

Realizing this corner of the lower level was not where Karyl was, I turned to flying again and negotiated a slow, swooping crossing of the large atrium, dropping down to the ground floor of the atrium, and I spotted her at the restaurant; I walked over to her, coming up behind her, and I could see she seemed a bit upset, and I assumed it was because I had lost track of her, become separated unintentionally, in choosing to glide down/explore. The chair next to her, my place, had a beautiful, circle of large whole tomatoes and vegetable salad plate; her plate, right next to mine, was different but equally elegant; I sensed she was sad, tearful, hurt about me having my disappearance/vanishing?; I said something like “Oh, there/here you are! How lovely, and you ordered for me…as I took my seat. I was aware, and surprised, at my having avoided acknowledging her upset directly.

Before all of that, several other scenes within the same huge interior space, with lots of levels and all kinds of shops, stuff going on; I had been walking along an upper level sidewalk with a man I happened to meet, happily, a patient I felt close to in his interest in bringing his soulful life review to our meetings; we both had experienced psychotic mothers and not helpful enough fathers. We had a bit of a twinship transference going around appreciating each other’s choices in comfortable, classic clothing. His round of work was a meeting with many tears, together, over a number of years.”

I often note any waking reflections (WR) that come to me as I capture/record a dream. I didn’t record any at the time, but I remember immediately connecting with feeling delighted that such a vivid dream would show up at just such a time when I was looking for the dream I would bring to the embodied dream group experience; thinking, this is it; wow.

My next journal entry at 8:57 PM, on the same day, opens with “Time for re-entry and dialogue.” I will post this active imagination experience separate from the dream itself.

And, I must say, it is really difficult to not try to offer some additional information about the dream. In recognition of the category of dream-time-encounters-with-Self, the dream embodiment group process provided a wonderful opportunity to re-enter the moment, in the dream, when Robert and I turned back for second looks. This is the image I want to track through a number of dreams. There is also the compelling experience of how flying works for me in my dreams…

But for now, I want to get more dream material on the table.

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Donald Kalsched: on …”When the relational environment … fails … to provide “good enough” attunement and empathic responsiveness for the growing baby”

Posted November 9, 2021 by chuck bender
Categories: Complexes and More, Connecting the Dots Series, Individuation, Initiation, Learning to Think and Work Symbolically
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It has been a while since I’ve posted any of my musings! Here is one more source quote with a few very important ideas and conceptualizations. Enjoy.

“Object-relations theory and interpersonal theory provide the best understanding of how trauma develops but, missing a grasp of the self-curative capacities of the psyche’s inner world, they do not adequately envision the healing of trauma that comes about through other than personal resources. The self-care system comes about as a result of acute or chronic failure by the relational environment to provide “good enough” attunement and empathic responsiveness for the growing baby. Trauma occurs when this “failure” falls outside what Winnicott calls the “area of omnipotence,” by which he means experience the baby can make sense of or “metabolize” within its own tolerance-limits or its own nascent symbolic capacity. Events that fall outside this area are “unbearable” or “unspeakable” and constitute nothing short of “madness,” by which Winnicott means literally a “breakdown” of infancy that cannot be remembered and around which the growing child (with the aid of primitive defenses) must erect a false self, like a tree growing around an absent center hollowed out by a lightning strike.

This sobering and compelling story about the effects of early trauma represents a partial truth, but it is not the whole story. There is something essential that Winnicott leaves out of his completely interpersonal metapsychology, namely, the “nonhuman environment” outwardly (Searles, 1960), and the “prehuman environment” inwardly, in other words, the archetypal layer of the psyche (Jung). The child is not just in relationship to the mother, but to the “world” beyond and the “world” within—poised, as it were, between two great, beautiful and terrible mysteries. It is the mother’s job to help mediate these Titanic realities. Without the mother’s “good enough” mediation, the child will be exposed to these inner and outer beauties/terrors and this will inevitably lead to traumatic symptoms in relationship, for example, unresolved omnipotence and grandiosity, insecure/disorganized attachment, and so forth.

But the child will not necessarily be “mad.” The Self Care System (SCS) will come to its rescue, and this system will recruit the archetypal powers of inner and outer Nature in its “effort” to save the child’s spirit – its core of health. The many myths that retell the story of children being abandoned and exposed but rescued by transpersonal powers or wild animals record the “saving” miracle by the SCS (Otto Rank). True, without an adequate human relationship to mediate “psyche and the world” the traumatized child will have life-long difficulties in intimacy with others. Born of broken attachment bonds, its SCS will not allow it to trust a process of reattachment with others for fear of retraumatization. But the self that grows around these limitations will not necessarily be a “false” self and may in fact be more creative than mad, perhaps with a rich inner world, a privileged access to “non-ordinary reality,” a deep cultural life, and a huge passion for a capacity for life. In the language of Jerome Bernstein, these individuals will occupy a “Borderland” between the worlds rather than be “Borderline” personality disorders (Bernstein, 2005).”

“Working with Trauma in Analysis,” by Donald E. Kalsched, PP. 281-295, from Jungian Psychoanalysis: Working In The Spirit of C.G. Jung, Edited by Murray Stein

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Torment and Atonement?

Posted April 14, 2021 by chuck bender
Categories: Connecting the Dots Series, Individuation
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We have so much going on right now in the world, and, we are all vulnerable to getting triggered, or from a trauma complex perspective, activated. I wanted to bring forward a couple of paragraphs from a source quote which may answer some questions we have not consciously formulated. My source quotes collection, see bottom right of page, are simply some of my favorite quotes, without anything from me. Enjoy!

From Images of the Journey in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Charles H. Taylor & Patricia Finley, 1997

“On Torment and Atonement – Two kinds of suffering: (pp. 158-160)

“There is profound psychological meaning in the sometimes excruciating pain of purgatorial suffering: the crushing stones borne by the proud, the choking smoke enveloping the wrathful, the fire hotter than molten glass searing the lustful. Those who are saved are not sinless – far from it. Rather, they are those who have come in time to know and take responsibility for the shadow qualities that split their personalities and cause them to act destructively toward themselves and others.

The secret of salvation in Dante’s world … is insight into the nature of who one is, how one injures, what it feels like to be oneself the victim and to make others the targets of one’s desirousness, rage, pride, and deceits. Those who make it to Purgatory are not less shadow-driven, narcissistic, obsessed, or pathological than others, but they have not refused to make conscious what they are, to bear the burden of themselves, and to come in time to take full responsibility for their own natures. By coming to know what operates in us behind appearances, whether driven by unconscious instinct and aggression or by more deliberate betrayals we can choose to take a stand against whatever in our personal character moves us to wound others and our larger selves.

Atonement, the poet says in many ways takes time; the passage of time is central to the work of purgation. … It is psychologically true that a new level of self-awareness can be achieved only with sustained effort over an extended time, but how much time depends in part… on the attitude of those who are central in our lives. Taken objectively, this expresses the reality that the caring concern of those who love us can accelerate our growth and act as a catalyst for inner healing. Taken subjectively – in terms of what we can do for ourselves – prayerful engagement by the ego with the inner figures of parent, beloved, or child, as a means of reaching out to the larger powers that seek our development, often moves the process more swiftly.”

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