As a psychotherapist, I’m asked frequently:
Why psychotherapy?
My response:
The core aim of psychotherapy is to expand one’s self-awareness including enlargement of one’s “personal agency” and its implications.
How does “self-estrangement” fit with this aim?
Earlier, I described “authenticity,” as a conscious developmental process. You become “who you are”.
If unsure about “authenticity” you can review my previous entry.
A “new-born infant” is authentic.
We were all newborns.
If a newborn has needs, it experiences those needs. It feels those needs. It cognitively interprets (rudimentary at this point) those needs. It acts (cries) because of those needs. Eventually (and hopefully - but not always), it learns to anticipate those needs being met.
This is, pure, authentic behavior. Conscious cognitive interpretation is always part of authenticity.
After birth we encounter:
Our actual inner selves. This includes our self-interpretive potential,
The external world or our REALITY as we know it,
Interactions between our interpreted selves and our reality. These features of humanness (and their interaction) clarifies “YOU”.
Think of the Scout Law…” A Scout is...trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent…”
Do you agree or disagree with these declaratives?
Most people would agree with these. Why?
If you endorse these “declarative values” you will be emotionally pulled to act in this way. If you act in this way. Say, honestly (versus dis-honestly), in a given circumstance you experience “values continuity”. You are said to be consistent with your interpreted moral self.
When a person acts in concert with one’s own internal values (or one’s moral compass) the person is viewed (by the person and/or by others) as authentic.
We believe (and we sense in ourselves) “good” people, “content” people, “fulfilled” people shape themselves towards authenticity.
As You engage with others (and with yourself; recall self-talk in a previous blog entry). YOU separate who YOU “are” from:
“Who you want others to think you are.”
“Who others think you are (whether you want them to or not)”. This includes family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, enemies, seducers, mentors, etc. including those “indirect others” who you don’t know or will never know.
I allude to the idea of a “face/mask” below to capture this concept.
Think about it. Who you really are is frequently “who other people think (or conjecture) your are.”
“Who you actually are (to yourself).”
Self-estrangement has properties like authenticity, BUT, self-estrangement is more deeply embedded within the human psyche, and it is:
framed in the negative versus positive (ex: self-estrangement is problematic).
more complex and elusive.
not entirely due to your conscious (or interpretive) feelings and actions.
not fully amenable to your conscious influence or control.
Self-Estrangement is NOT authenticity, reversed.
Self-Estrangement involves BOTH apparent and unapparent forces:
Forces we know and have direct access to but aren’t always understandable (example: a person we fear or we feel threatened by, we consciously avoid [but even so, we sometimes remain unconsciously aware of this person].
If we are attracted to another person, we move towards that person [but, paradoxically, we also feel like moving away from this person which then may make the person more desirable], especially if we are really attracted to the person.
Forces we are unaware of that operate in the psychic shadows outside (or beyond) our recognition or understanding. We feel these forces (as impulses to act, premonitions [sometimes strange and other-worldly], tacit sensations, compulsive pressures, obsessive thoughts, an alien sense of awareness (e g., thinking about something and unable to stop thinking about it no matter much you try).
These sensations suggest forces beyond ourselves that coerce or influence us to feel or act a certain way. We don’t sense control over these forces, nor do we understand why or where they come or, for that matter, where their actual power originates (Is it within our without ourselves?). We assume it is within us (even though some might say, “the Devil made me do it”, but those people are usually fooling themselves because these forces are probably us! This is the case even in psychotic episodes where “voices” may command a person to act against the person’s better judgement.)
Voices, Forces, Impulses, Premonitions, Dreams, all processes of which we are only partially aware, but that act on us none-the-less, even in substantial, life-changing ways. I describe this later (in Part II), but think of “delusional behavior”.
Note: I endorse the idea of personal agency - My View: “personal agency” is based on acting: 1. in concert with, 2. against, or 3. in parallel to these vague/ambiguous/powerful intrapsychic forces. When these forces are strong, I label the person as experiencing a “neurotic” or even “psychotic” state.
Is there a psychotic character?
NO: Because Psychosis is a state of mind, not a personality characteristic.
Neurotic forces shape or alter (and can even control) how an individuals feels, perceives, and thinks about the world and the experience of being in the world. Think of “stereotype bias”.
Dr. Jekel & Mr. Hyde
A story by Robert Louis Stevenson about a seemingly respected, kind, intelligent, diligent scientist who (for ambiguous reasons) begins meddling with the darker side of science/occult/medicine. Jekyll acquires and eventually self-administers exotic “powders” that bring out (in him) a 'second' human nature, an alter-ego or Mr Hyde, a badly acting “evil” character who takes no responsibility for his crimes. The mysterious “powder” seems the inflection point.
But is it?
Hyde emerges, supposedly, from Jekyll’s unconscious or from his reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories outside of Jekyll’s day-to-day awareness. Hyde is a “FORCE”. This force (perhaps from the unconscious), is unleashed and Dr. Jekyll turns into an unrestrained “Id-like” character with evil urges & dark desires that ultimately damage him and everyone around him.
Questions arise from the story:
Are Hyde and Jekyll the same or different people?
Is the potion the cause? Perhaps Hyde was always inside Jekyll to begin with?
Why did Dr. Jekyll engage in this chemically-induced dalliance in the first place?
Did Jekyll secretly want Hyde to come out?
Do we all have an alter-ego? Are we all at risk to this alter-ego?
Is the alter-ego always “evil”, “bad”, “unrestrained”, “harmful to self and others”?
One scholar of “self-estrangement”, David Shapiro (see Psychotherapy of Neurotic Character, 1989, Basic Books, NY, NY.) presents several cases of what he calls neurosis (or neurotic thinking). Clients in emotional pain, sometimes acting “odd” or “counterproductive” or “nonsensical” or even “self harmful”. This is during the process of psychotherapy.
He asks:
What’s at the root of maladaptive Thinking Feeling and Acting?
SELF ESTRANGEMENT!
(excerpt from Shapiro) Patient begins therapy agitated…” What’s the matter with me Doctor? I’ve got to end this thing! There’s nothing in it for me! I get nothing out of it! I can’t even talk to him! He has nothing to say, nothing at all! In fact, he is a nothing! I get nothing from him, ever!
…I can’t seem to end it! Why do I continue to do this? It’s like I’m addicted to this guy! My God! I’m addicted to this guy! Why can’t I stop!…sobbing…
What’s wrong here?
There are clues about “what’s wrong”.
Note: The client says: “What’s the matter with me?” She berates herself. Not really speaking to the therapist, it seems, while she is going on and on in a misery cycle. She, at times, seems to be speaking to herself!
Berating herself!
Why?
It’s like she is her own “punitive” parent. Chastising herself for her stupidity, her inabilities.
In this vignette try substituting the pronoun “YOU” for “ME”. Doing so, you have a dialogue with, perhaps, a punitive parent chastising an inept daughter.
This client disapproves less of her “lover” or “partner” than of herself!
The client states imperative after imperative (I get nothing out of it!). The client may have forgotten the therapist is even in the room!
She appears to be getting more frustrated with herself, demeaning herself the whole time. It’s like she can’t stop! ultimately sobbing in pain and frustration.
The client thinks she is “ADDICTED” probably because this word suggests that something else, a drug, is controlling her behavior, taking away her agency. The client feels out of control, or Is she BEING CONTROLLED BY SOMETHING ELSE BESIDES HER OWN WILL?
The client senses forces acting on her. These forces have altered her awareness of herself. This is an example of SELF-ESTRANGEMENT in action.
client: …I can’t seem to end it! Why do I continue?…It’s like I’m addicted…
Therapist says: Perhaps you are in love with the client.
client: (looking indignant at therapist). That’s IMPOSSIBLE!
Therapist: “That’s Impossible!” does not sound quite the same as “I’m not.”
As the therapy continues, the client starts describing her problematic partner. The client uncomfortably discloses that the partner, to her, is: Good Looking, A Nice Fellow, Amusing, Funny, Personable…but then says:
“He’s not the sort of man that I had in mind, the sort who was right or appropriate for me.”’
Question: Who? is actually talking here. Is it the client? Is it the client’s alter ego? Is she rehearsing an embedded self-tape that is playing in her head, perhaps, from a past memory of an interaction with a powerful other (a parent)? Not even the client seems to know. This is how “self-estrangement” works. The client as befuddled as the therapist.
This woman is terribly conflicted; but not with her spouse, with herself. She is describing herself as “addicted” to a man who has features she actually likes and may be attracted to. YET, She states that it is “IMPOSSIBLE” for her to conceive of “loving” or even “liking” this person.
She uses the word, “IMPOSSIBLE”. This is a really, indirect word. Impossible suggests that even if she was attracted to this man, it is “impossible” to act on it. Why?
She doesn’t can’t take ownership of her feelings around this issue even though she, as the story goes on, seems to live a reasonably normal life, say, at work. But, in this situation, the client uses words like “appropriate” as if there is some other standard, rather than her own personal standard guiding and shaping her thinking and feeling.
This woman is caught up in the TURBULENCE of SELF-ESTRANGEMENT!
If you read an earlier “After-the-Session” blog, you learned that the word, TURBULENCE is a specific term that identifies a psychological process that could partly describe the manifestation of Self-Estrangement.
In depression, Turbulence looks like this:
In psychosis, emotional turbulence has a very different look, partly because psychosis is more disorganized and non-reality based than depression (which is not psychosis).
There is not a discernible picture I could draw to depict, in a one- or two-dimensional frame, how psychotic turbulence operates, but the fact is, it does operate in a somewhat unique, but predictable manner. However,
Psychological Turbulence operates overwhelmingly in psychotic self-estrangement because when a person is experiencing psychotic self-estrangement, the person is describing a state-of-being that is “seemingly” themselves (as in the female vignette above), but this is not who the person really IS? However, in psychosis, the turbulent reality is overwhelming, entirely, the perspective of the individual.
Unlike authenticity, where the person is aware that this is who they are, or NOT (e g., you dress up and look nice, but inside you feel awful). Self-Estrangement is when you believe (or feel) that this is who you ARE, but, the fact is, YOU are not actually the “real” YOU, but someone else (Hyde, in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde).
YOU have unconsciously TAUGHT yourself not to be YOU.
How does a therapist/psychologist/psychotherapist know that a client/patient/person is experiencing “self-estrangement”?
The answer is: By the amount, intensity, frequency of Emotional Turbulence evident (or expressed) by the individual when he or she is describing his/her problem or issue (or situation) to the therapist.
From the vignette at the beginning of this entry: The woman/client says: “What’s the matter with me” or “It’s like I’m addicted to this guy!” These are neurotic expressions of emotional turbulence. Emotional Turbulence is “variation” from the life-course line.
Note below: If your life was a pure authentic horizontal line, it would be straight, no deviations (see below). You have needs/wants, you cognitively interpret your need/wants, you act in anticipation of meeting those needs/wants. Your action addresses those needs/wants. THINK OF THE NEWBORN!
But, in the presence of forces that push you off that horizontal line (deviations from the line); this is when life gets circuitous and difficult to negotiate, especially as these forces push you back and forth, up and down, above and below the line. Some of these forces are unknown to you, but the whole experience is confusing (recall the vignette: (What’s wrong with me? Am I addicted to this man?) It is these forces creating the seeming problem for you, but
you DON’T KNOW IT and YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT!
Deviations are the manifestation of “self-estrangement”.
As a psychotherapist, I operate through lenses (or theories) of behavior that guide my understanding and appreciation of human beings as more than what they say or look like, even stated feelings can be misleading. Psychotherapy is as much a “sensing art form” as it is “a science of behavior”.
Every human being has a fully developed internal world that consists of multiple states-of-mind including: fantasy, uncertainty, alternative realities. People can focus on what they want (or what they think they want) or they can be distracted (WITHOUT a diagnosis of ADHD). They can be pulled emotionally by forces both within themselves and outside their control. Emotional turbulence is different than personal contentment, but estrangement is not the opposite of contentment. In fact, my view is that messages are within emotional turbulence because the turbulence is being created by the person to HELP the person become aware that there is “some” important reason that the person is not adapting well. Emotional Turbulence is a gauge or a sign, painful as this might be, marking that something is not right.
That the person’s reality is not consistent with who they really are!
Turbulence is a “state-of-emotion” governed by forces within and outside a person’s awareness, but in all cases, these forces emerged and are engage by the by the individual him/herself to adapt better to the world. Self-estrangement is JUST ONE mechanism to alert the individual that something is NOT right and the psyche is creating a state of mind/awareness to protect the person from what is wrong!
Think about the phenomenon of disassociation in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In therapy or life, disassociation is viewed as a problematic symptom, but the fact is that it emerged as a protective strategy from deep within the individual’ psyche to separate the whole/true person from the horrific act the person was experiencing at the time of the trauma. Done, likely, to protect the person from the overwhelming negative force of the traumatic event. After the fact, however, disassociation may stay in place, may even alter, wholly, how a person sees or experiences the world. May, as time goes on, limit the persons ability to fully experience the world. However, it remains now a part of the psyche that gets built into the psyche as a quasi-permanent fixture, no matter whether the person wants it there or not, until the person is able to deal more comprehensively and completely with the earlier trauma without this psychologically protective mechanism in place.
In my next entry, I will present more details about the female client in the case above.
Does she get better?
Does she figure herself out?
Does she solve her problem with her spouse or herself?
The answer to these questions depend on several things:
Realizing the that problem is not HIM (partner), but HER.
Understanding that there are features of herself that are trying to message HER. Trying to “help” her deal better with her (actual) self in this relationship situation.
Appreciating that there are ways to change one’s entire framework or paradigm of thinking about her predicament?
Experiencing a sense that there is “hope” for this person in this situation. That in understanding herself and the forces operating on her, comprehending their meaning - which may be positive although it may feel awful as they occur - and focusing her energies to address the meaning of the “turbulence” and move towards her actual “SELF” this client will eventually work through her issue. This is a fact! I’ve seen it work time and time again.
Successful adaptation is much more than simply quieting the turbulence, that’s why psychotropic drugs can sometimes work against addressing the real issue/problem. Better is to understand one’s self, learn how to respond differently to one’s self in problematic issues, and also learn the deeper meaning of one’s misery experience (so, one is less likely to find ones-self back in the same situation in the future).
Self-Estrangement is a complex topic. When the number of readers reach or exceed 100, I will write, Part II: Dealing with Self-Estrangement.
Psychotherapy, when it works well, can be a life-altering process, but it is never without work, effort, and generative understanding that the benefits of therapy are realized.