Healing Within the Blur

“The principle aim in psychotherapy is not to transport the patient to an impossible state of happiness, but to help him acquire steadfastness and philosophic patience in face of suffering. Life demands for its completion and fulfillment, a balance between joy and sorrow.” (C.W. 16, par. 185)

Thanks to Elie Humbert for this selected quote. Humbert, Elie, C.G. Jung – The Fundamentals of Theory and Practice, p. 136, 1984.

“A night full of talking that hurts,
my worst held-back secrets. Everything
has to do with loving and not loving.
This night will pass.
Then we have work to do.”  Rumi poem translated by Coleman Barks

Thinking about “a night full of talking that hurts,” and the difficulty in knowing how best to proceed with the work by day, I continue to try to find the words and images that can guide us to the discovery of the disconnect and the return of felt relationship with the lost others within. This level of recovery, evidenced in one’s increasing capacity to re-member painful relational failures, with their depth of emotion, is necessary to being seen. As long as one is hiding something from one’s self, others will be suspicious about what is really going on behind the mask, wall, protesting, denial.

Getting back into the boat consciously is about choosing to prepare one’s self for dropping into original scenes of overwhelm, with enough support to enable us to tell the story with the full range of emotion. This can occur spontaneously with the help of our inner guide, who holds us and helps us bare witness of the episode; more often, it can occur in unusual openings, as in “a night full of talking that hurts.” Therapy is one place to practice finding these openings and dropping into the emotional connection and flow of water that seems to come with healing the split.

In terms of practical applications, paying attention to the dream time is a great way to explore the possibility the guiding Self within is real and at the ready to help us integrate the entire life trajectory. Compiling an inventory of known episodes of upset is a simple way to catalogue specific scenes of relational failings which, averaged and generalized over time, comprise the Experiential State. In her work with Skeleton Woman I believe Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls these archaic wounds to loving stories.

“The cross, or whatever other heavy burden the hero carries, is himself, or rather the Self, his wholeness which is both God and animal … the totality of his Being, which is rooted in his animal nature and reaches out beyond the merely human towards the divine. His wholeness implies a tremendous tension of opposites paradoxically at one with themselves, as in the Cross, their most perfect symbol.”  CG Jung

This quote is striking to me in the way such a few words could suggest so much. Jung’s formulation of the Self is most challenging. How can we orient ourselves to such a mysterious reality? Where do dreams come from? I am thinking this image has the ego carrying the Self, and struggling to do so. Can we recognize contributions from the Self reliably? How can we open to the Guiding Self?

This is the opening quote in the essay on Ave Marie, excerpted from a work by Jenny Koralek, published in the latest Parabola: Divine Feminine. My apologies for not having the Collected Works volume and page number.

This is the opening of a 12 page discussion about intimacy and power.

“Power infuses all relationships, but today there’s a new paradigm: Only equally shared power creates happy individuals and satisfying marriages. Increasingly, it is the passport to intimacy. …

Shared Power Is the Only Power

Although many people associate power with manipulation and coercion, contemporary psychologists and philosophers have forged a new power paradigm: They view power as the capacity of an individual to influence others’ states, even to advance the goals of others while developing their full self. It doesn’t require observable behavior, let alone force.

If a woman is as influential as her partner is, then a relationship lasts, says John Gottman. But if he’s much more influential than she is, the relationship doesn’t last. For the dean of relationship researchers, an “interlocking influence process” is at the heart of a balance of power. “It’s really about responsiveness to your partner’s emotions. If you have power in a relationship, you have an effect on your partner with your emotions. That’s a good sign for the long-term stability of the relationship and the happiness of the partners. But some people have very high emotional inertia; they weigh a lot emotionally; it’s hard to move them.” See Love and Power

One of the most important concepts to get working in your own language is captured in this single powerful quote within a  quote:

“… microfractures in communication between patient and analyst are vital because they allow the transference to become ‘the engine of analysis, by contributing raw material from the patient’s internal world and history’.” See  Wilkinson on Microfractures

This observation applies to the transference arising in our personal relationships as well. We all need a way to recognize the raw material which will find a way to present its bill, as Alice Miller observed.

Emotionally charged reactions to what might normally be considered small breakdowns in our communication point directly to the raw material of unfinished emotional business.

In a blur moment, the hurt or offense taken by one or both parties at some level can be understood or seen as an out-picturing of an experiential state scene.

The quote suggests these unintended ruptures, in letting the raw material into the space we hold together, become the engine of the analysis. These are the grist for the mill. While we can always try to do our best, planning for the inevitable microfractures that will show up allows us embrace the blur with awareness and curiosity, not negative judgement. What can we learn about ourselves, each other? (see discussion on getting one’s buttons pushed)

This is another way to understand the positive aspect of “healing only occurs in the blur.” We need to support the necessity of going there with enough consciousness to gain our freedom from the unconsciousness driving the re-enactment of the wounding.

I first came across the story of Skeleton Woman in Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. It came up this morning in conversation and I wanted to post this link to a lovely hand rendered short movie directed by Edith Pieperhoff:  Skeleton Women

This is a very easy way to drop into an important piece of work for all who would feel. Estes offers it as teaching for couples with an emphasis on the idea we can’t really become intimate with each other without/until, we can survive an encounter with Skeleton Woman, representing the third between us, carrying all of our archaic wounds to loving. As in a dream, “she” is not primarily symbolic of the woman in the work, rather, she is standing in for deep feelings and our relational nature. Something like that. I would say symbolically speaking we have all experienced the opening scene. Check it out…

My thanks to the man who found this version and shared it with me.

I generated this sound bit two years ago, and taking another look today, my heading seems a little harsh. Of course analysis is all about empathy. Here I am entertaining the idea that the point of analyzing complexes in the blur is, simply put, to increase one’s capacity to stay centered enough so that one may choose to empathize deeply with and be moved by the acute suffering at hand (provided by the activation the blur.) Granted, this is difficult if one is feeling personally attacked.

Ideally we can sense when we are getting triggered. “Getting one’s buttons pushed” indicates the activation or constellation of a complex. Unless reflected upon, such an activation threatens to hijack consciousness and push/pull for unconscious enactments. Jung referred to this level or layer of betwixt and between, consciousness blurred with unconsciousness, as the participation mystique. For a beautiful collection of Jungian and psychoanalytic essays see Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond.

Why must we go there? (unconscious enactments) The bottom line may be they enable time transport, compelling us to return to the scene of some important unfinished business.

Not primarily for the purpose of suffering again the original wounding, though that seems to be required, but in the service of providing us with the opportunity to re-act differently. This difference looks something like waking up from a bad dream and finding you have the power and lucidity to dream the dream onward towards the best resolution possible. Together, might we agree to support each other in finally going there?

First we recognize those relationships we hold dear. If we believe in our loving and best intentions, how might we understand the experience of repeatedly failing to show up in loving and supportive ways?

If you keep a journal for the purpose of documenting episodes of emotional upset, it is likely you will begin to see common patterns. When you gather them together, mindful of the similarity of emotional tone, before, during, and after each episode, you will be gazing upon composite elements of your experiential state.

Consider the possibility the quality of the intensity of the emotional tone alerts you to the presence of the blur.

The blur affirms the reality of an emotional connection between the here and now conflict and an earlier breakdown in loving.

To the degree a painful memory has been effectively repressed, psyche will hijack a here and now potential for conflict in order to project the involved parties onto the environment. This is how what has been unconscious begins to find its way into consciousness. What is unconscious, that is to say, we are not consciously relating to the detail, is ripe for projection. If/when we can reflect on the experience, we can perhaps see the interior scene matching the outer world perception. This is the idea of the exterior image revealing an out-picturing of an inner reality.

I am trying on the primal scene frame to suggest the archetypal origins found in the nucleus of every complex. When the intensity of a trauma is sufficient to overwhelming the ego in the moment, psyche provides access to ancient, primordial knowledge from the collective, stored in the archetypal blueprints. Something like that…

From one’s history, we can imaging those scenes likely to have initiated archetypal resources. See discussions about complexes and their nuclei.

“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.”

(Dan) Hughes quoted by Colwyn Trevarthen in The Healing Power of Emotion, p. 55. Complete reference to follow)

“After a long life and a long night, I think most men do not know what love is because they don’t ever love as equals, and the master never really loves the slave.” “To love an equal – it takes big men and big women.”

Clare Luce Booth quotes from “Clare, in love and war” Vanity Fair, July 2014, adapted from Price of Fame: The Honorable Clare Luce Booth, by Sylvia Jukes Morris, Random House, 2014.