[From: Bruce Nevin (Mon 920411 08:36:38)]
I had written some comments on David's clinical example but David said
he had not seen them, and I can't turn it up either in my files, so I
guess I never posted that message. I will reconstruct what I can.
A key question for me was, how did the wife know he had to be seduced,
and how did the babysitter know he had to be seduced, with that peculiar
threat "you'd better!"
It's useful to distinguish between sanctioned, overt communication and
other concurrent communication which is covert and not consciously
acknowledged. It seems to me that there is a lot of back-channel
communication that has the effect of people advertising and trying out
for parts in one another's psychodramas. The patterned transactions
that Eric Berne and his students so cleverly describe I think have this
function. (Berne thought they served only to "structure time" and
alleviate anxiety about being caught purposeless, so to speak.)
Another question is, why are so many of us anxious when we have freedom,
so anxious that we rush to construe ourselves as victims or products of
circumstance as quickly as possible? Rather than as authors and products
of our own purposes. Could it be that we learn about this kind of fear
and apparent safety as children in our families, schools, and other
social institutions?
Is this not at the core of being passive-aggressive?
Is he seeking control that he generally lacks in his life? Or is he
seeking to control his perceptions (as all control systems must) without
acknowledging that he is doing so? Without revealing any clue as to his
inner reference perceptions which might make him subject to
manipulation.
The last post from David is more revealing of the wife. Instead of
being a cardboard cutout character in the husband's account of the drama,
representing a figure of some ominous power who robs him of his freedom,
she reveals herself as a woman who feels herself to be the loser in a
relationship that she is nonetheless fearful of losing.
The social role of being a woman requires following the dance partner's
lead. Reading inner reference perceptions from outer signs and
controlling for one's own only while accomodating those of others. This
can work well only with a partner who knows what he wants and
communicates it well. Lacking either of these requisites, the feminine
partner can suffer awkward collapse and embarrassment, or help her
partner to conduct the pair of them in a purposeful way. It is hard for
this not to be manipulative at best. When she has purposes of her own
that she wants to further, then almost anyone would so construe it.
The husband here seems to lack both requisites, he doesn't communicate
his purposes well, not even to himself, with the effect of not knowing
his own wants.
An acquaintance many years ago put it to me this way, speaking out of
her experience as a new mother. The baby expresses some desire in an
inarticulate way. The parent does what she can to figure it out. Even
the best parent can't always. In bad situations the net outcome is a
decision by the child: if I express a desire, I won't get what I want,
I'll get punished for fussing. At best I'll get a pacifier or some
other substitute palliative. If I don't fuss, I might get what I want.
(When the parent is ready. Maybe the diaper smells too ripe.) So I'd
better not even know what I want, lest I start complaining about not
having it. That's an extreme portrayal, but I think there's a germ of
truth in it.
It seems to me that it would be helpful to get down from higher levels
to the immediacy of lower levels of perception. It's suggested that we
resolve intrapersonal conflicts by going up a level. I think we can
undermine intrapersonal conflicts by going down a level as well. In
most communication problems I know about, something is being ignored.
Very often something is being imagined, too, but always something is
being ignored, and it is easier to get acknowledgement of perceptions
that are there than it is to get relinquishment of perceptions that are
not there.
The stair which they both traverse many times every day accidentally and
unexpectedly made a noise. She called his name in the dark hallway. A
key communication transaction. For each, certain perceptions constituted
input for comparison with higher-level references, and other perceptions
were ignored. They live in very different construals of the same
events, construals that are in many ways complementary to each other.
Where one ignores some particular perception that is a key ingredient
for the other's construal of events, perhaps ways can be found for the
other to acknowledge having that perception too, though it may be
irrelevant to the second one's higher-level perceptions or (more
challenging) though it may be inconsistent with them.
Where memories disagree perhaps ways can be found for experiencing some
lower-level perception just as itself, rather than in light of the
higher-level construal; perhaps its ambiguity at the higher level can
emerge; perhaps behind that its essential simplicity, prior to
interpretation in accord with higher-level expectations. Maybe this can
happen where one remembers some lower-level perception and the other
does not. The same lower-level perception can have different
significance for each. Lack of memory on one side can be the limiting
case, where "significance" on one side drops to zero. Or it can be that
the perception on one side was supplied by the imagination loop.
("Screen memories" are a more extreme example.) Or it can be that lack
of memory is due to denial, because the perception is inconsistent with
and implicitly challenges the higher-level construal. In this case
there should be other indicators of a conflict to which the particular
"blanked out" perception is a clue.
Was his heart beating fast as he was sneaking down the stairs? Can he
acknowledge such a perception?
Have you interviewed the babysitter? The wife revealed a bit about the
relationship of the two women. If she's a live-in babysitter who
challenges the wife at her role of seducing the husband, she's very much
a member of this family system.
Hope this is suggestive. Good luck! I have the greatest respect for
you guys who are applying this stuff with troubled people in real time.
Bruce
bn@bbn.com