ON INSIGHT AND RESPONSIBILITY: taking charge of oneself.

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (12/11/05)

Many years ago a new client on her first appointment came armed with a small paper-back book, entitled Living with Bi-polar Disorder. As though the paperback were a shield and buckler, she announced, "I’m a bi-polar with episodes of depression." She used a diagnosis as a personal identification akin to being a Republican or a mother or a Methodist. She transformed an insight about her personality into a justification for her behavior rather than a reason for change. She defined herself by her disability.

She went on to say that her previous psychotherapist, a psychiatrist, had recommended that she see me because I might be able to help her through hypnoanalysis. One of the reasons for psychotherapy is change. If there is no change, it means either that the patient resists change, that the psychotherapist has failed, or, worse yet, both.

After introducing herself as a bi-polar, she went on to point to her husband as the chief culprit in her life. He was an aero-space engineer who every morning before he left for work tacked a graph paper flow chart on a large cork board in the kitchen. His alleged concern was his wife’s inefficient use of her time.

By way of retaliation, she always told him to be careful on his drive to work as he walked from the kitchen to the garage. Sure enough, he would become enraged at her admonition and drive off in anger. Affecting innocence, she said, "I don’t know why he gets so angry. All I was doing was telling him to be careful."

Of course, her husband interpreted the admonition as an infantilization, recalling his mother’s similar admonition when he went off to school as a boy. He interpreted the comment as one more extension of female control, recalling his mother’s attempt to control him by hinting at his incompetence and questioning his masculinity.

They had been married 30 years. They had repeated this morning ritual for 30 years which meant repeating the ritual about 6,750 times. I concluded that no one could possibility fail 6,750 times and that more than likely they succeeded 6,750 times. After a while, "if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again," will change into "if you fail a lot, try something else." It is not unreasonable to assume that the outcome of a repetitive behavior is more than likely also its motivation.

People can possibly fail a few times but not 6,750 times. As a small boy, I pulled a girl’s pigtail sitting in front of me in school as a way of charming her with attention. She turned around saying, "That hurt! What’s the matter with you?" She wasn’t smiling and dismissed me as a "bad boy." I repeated the pigtail pulling the next day, but my motive was not win her favor but to irritate her in retaliation for dismissing me. I stopped the maneuver when she threatened to tell the teacher. "I’m going to tell Miss Foxx on you."

Of course, the engineer’s motive was to subordinate his wife by treating her as an employee. She liked to see him lose self-control. A dysfunctional family, it was closely held together by mutual retaliations and recriminations. Psychotherapists have a fancy word for it, "homeostasis," which means that the situation remains the same, constantly destructive. They sabotaged each other, and, sadly, sabotage is a tactic used best against enemies.

Negative emotions are stronger bonds than positive ones. Positive emotions tend to release couples from each other’s grip, but negative emotions are like Super Glue. A pleasant lunch with an old friend is soon forgotten, but a bitter one is cause for endless cud chewing.

Somewhat of a horse’s ass, in the days of slide rules he even wore his slide rule in a sheath holstered to his belt to church and parties as a kind of penis enhancer. His face never showed a trace of emotion or reaction. He was not a fun guy but real load.

His wife justified her admonitions "to be careful" as expressions of affection and care. She was the epitome of the grey lady, grey hair, grey skin, grey eyes, and grey clothing. She cocked her head, giving the message that she was not a threat by exposing her jugular. A female cocked head may be cute in children, seductive in adolescents, but in adults it is akin to a dog rolling over on its back and exposing its belly as a sign of submission. She was slightly stooped with down-cast eyes. Her mouth turned down at the edges which made it difficult for her to smile. In short, she was an emotional sufferer. Her redeeming quality was that she tried to assert her dignity in the face of his constant humiliations, but she paid a frightful price and did not succeed.

As did her previous psychotherapist, I failed. With hypnoanalysis we were able to identify the unconscious motivations, but the rewards of recriminations were greater than those of release and change. We found that she had been subordinated as a child by a domineering mother who was constantly displeased with her. Her father was indifferent. The trigger for her was not so much the flow chart, but a condescending tone in his voice and the phrase "now, look" with which he always began his explanation of the flow-chart. Her mother also used the same phrase when beginning to admonish her.

We also found that he had been controlled by a single mother who had invested her life in her son, seeing him as an extension of herself. She was especially invested in his success. He felt he had to assert his masculinity, fearing he was wanting if he did not dominate other people. His work as an efficiency expert in a large aerospace firm was well suited to his need to dominate others.

My client’s self-diagnosis was wrong as are almost all self-diagnoses. If self-diagnoses were worth a damn, the patient would not be coming to a psychotherapist but improving and changing on his or her own. Self-diagnoses are generally self-justifications which means that they are reasons for stabilizing the dysfunctions or, worse yet, the malfunctions. With her self-diagnosis as a bi-polar she was able to validate her depression as endogenous to her personality and, therefore, a behavior for which she was not responsible. In short, she implied she couldn’t help herself.

I failed to destabilize her self-diagnosis She was not a "bi-polar with episodes of depression" as she was want to claim. She was frustrated, angry, and depressed because she was paying a very high price for her failures. She was living a miserable life of mutual recriminations to maintain her dignity in the face of her husband’s humiliations. She was unwilling to find other mean’s to assert her dignity, largely, I believe, because it was easier to become angry and indignant than to assert herself positively. One way was to develop an interest outside of her marriage which would render his attempts at subordination irrelevant. However, such a project would take work. Positive is always harder than negative. She had been invested in her role of retaliation for so long that nothing else seemed possible to her. The two of them were dancing a danse macabre.

She reminded me of the Lord’s admonition in the Book of Jonah in which Jonah is angry at the inhabitants of Nineveh. The Lord asked Jonah, "Do you do well to be so angry?" Jonah replied, "I do well to be angry, angry enough to die." The issue was the Lord’s graciousness toward the Ninevites which pissed-off Jonah who had a whining, off-pissing personality.

The whole story of the belly of the whale in this delightfully witty allegory is not about the feasibility of living in the belly of a whale, but about the futility of running away from God’s graciousness even as far as a whale’s belly. The point of the story is that eventually God will puke us up on some foreign emotional shore.

In his poem, "The Hound of Heaven," Francis Thompson wrote,

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days,
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat--and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet--
All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.

There is no running away from the self-betrayals of our self-justifications. Insight used as a justification for behavior is a form of self-betrayal. People pay incredibly high prices to maintain the illusions of their self-diagnoses. Maintaining angers, resentments, grievances over the years as a self-justification is a high price. It eats away at the soul and self as it draws us back into repeating the past.

Knowing why we are angry is not enough. Insight is futile unless it begets responsibility and, as a consequence, freedom. Responsibility is simply the awareness that we are accountable for our emotions. We choose them. We are not helplessly caught in their webs.

Some people are stimulus-bound. They allow themselves to be controlled by the stimuli of their environments and histories. They see themselves as helpless. Others are respond-bound. Their responses to stimuli are bound by their intentions, by what they want to do with their lives. The stimulus-bound personalities are perpetual victims. The response-bound personalities are victorious, even in adversity and defeat.

In a sense, we are not free to choose our destinies, but in how we respond to them. With what sex we are born, where we are born, into what kind of families we are born, what abilities and talents are given to us are all matters over which we have no choice. Our freedom is in the way we respond to whom we are and what has happened to us. All of which means that insight is not an end in itself but a means to manage ourselves more effectively. Rather than an identification, insight gives us the power of choice, to remember who we are and what we want to do with our lives. It’s called freedom.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2005