SIX
But “outgrowing” does not mean “losing.” You can and should keep the child in yourself—not killing the child. You see, the child remains, the adolescent remains, and so on.
—Roberto Assagioli
As we uncover and include the many different aspects of our personalities, there is a deepening of empathy across an increasingly broad range of experience and an increased freedom to respond within this range—in other words, there is a burgeoning of the consciousness and will of “I.”
We become more aware and responsive to our physical experience, whether in the form of our physical needs or the felt sense of our bodies in the moment; to the changing inner atmosphere of our feelings, whether anger or excitement, grief or joy; to the many aspects of our mental experience, from the shape of our here-and-now thinking to the levels of inspiration found in creative expression; and to the inner community of subpersonalities. All of this experience can become a part of the larger meanings in our lives, enriching ourselves and our relationships with others and the world.
BIGGER THAN WE
At some point, however, we may come up against something in ourselves that resists all of our attempts to resolve it. I may, for example, find that I am unable to prevent my internal critic from berating and shaming me, that this incessant, hypercritical voice simply will not let up, leaving me in a chronic, depressed mood. Or, I find that my rage keeps getting me into trouble, that certain seemingly small interactions with others unaccountably make me lose my temper, leaving me regretful and perplexed afterward. Or, I may discover that my spiritual persona continually prevents me from intimacy with others, that while my spiritual practice moves along well, my relationships with others are superficial, unsatisfying, or conflictual.
When we find patterns and reactions in us that are bigger than we are and that seem to run us, there is a need to reach empathically to an even deeper layer of the psyche. Why is that inner critic in me so incessant, so insistent? I may discover that this voice is desperately trying to keep me from making a mistake. To what end? Because to make a mistake will make me feel isolated, abandoned, and worthless—like it felt when my father punished me for my mistakes.
What about my temper? Upon looking carefully, I may discover that just before each flare-up of rage, there is a moment in which I am feeling disrespected, ignored, and shamed—precisely how I often felt in relationship to my mother.
And why do I prefer the spiritual heights to the crucible of intimacy? I am afraid to let people know me, to open up authentically, because they will find that I am very small and empty inside, and I will be attacked—a feeling that I have carried since grade school, when I was mercilessly taunted for being awkward and overweight.
As we have mentioned at various times in the preceding chapters, all of these traumatic experiences are instances of primal wounding. Patterns that seem entrenched in us, that react in ways beyond our ability to guide them, will be found to have their roots in primal wounding. This chapter explores the hidden depths that underpin our daily experience. We shall see how optimum human development takes place, how this development is derailed by wounding, and how these wounds may be uncovered and healed.
In presenting a psychosynthesis developmental model, we need to be clear that, to our knowledge, Assagioli never elaborated a detailed developmental theory. The developmental model that we shall present here, although arising directly from Assagioli’s original thinking, has evolved from our own work over the past ten years, with invaluable assistance from Chris Meriam (see Firman and Gila 1997; Firman and Russell 1994; Meriam 1996; Meriam 1994). We hope that this material will help fill the need for a psychosynthesis developmental theory and spark further efforts in this important area; there also are many implications here for psychosynthesis personality theory and clinical theory, as we shall see.
OPENING THE INNER DOOR
In order to approach the depths within, we must confront a guardian standing at the gates of the inner world. This guardian is not a dragon or an ogre but a simple and pervasive idea. This idea is that our lives take place along a time line that began at some point in the past and extends away from the point of origin into the future. This is illustrated by the arrow in Figure 6.1.
FIGURE 6.1
This ubiquitous belief places infancy and childhood “far, far away” from adulthood—at the extreme other end of this long line, moving us inexorably further and further away from early life. Human growth seems here a matter of leaving those early years behind, of “growing up” and not being so “childish,” “immature,” or “infantile.”
This model, of course, has its place—it represents the fact that we no longer look like infants, that we have learned to walk and talk, and that we have adult responsibilities in our lives. However, it is only one way of looking at our development, and it leaves out crucial aspects of human experience.
Under the sway of this model, childhood seems a vague, shadowy land of half-remembered moments and elusive feelings—it is “far away.” We may only glimpse this misty, forgotten time when looking at an old picture album or indulging in nostalgia with family and friends. The idea that childhood is not only still with us but dominating our lives seems farfetched from this point of view.
However, since the entire history of Western psychodynamic psychology shows us that childhood is in fact not “far, far away” but utterly present in the moment, there must be another model of human development as well; there must be a model that includes the past in the present. Such a model is implicit in any depth psychotherapy, and was voiced by Assagioli to John Firman in this way:
But “outgrowing” does not mean “losing.” You can and should keep the child in yourself—not killing the child. You see, the child remains, the adolescent remains, and so on. Outgrowing does not mean eliminating. Of course that is the ideal process, but we are too stupid and try to kill or repress the past ages. There is the notion that one has to kill the child in order to become mature, or to repress the previous stages. (Assagioli 1973c, edited from audio tape)
Assagioli maintained that each developmental age was not left behind but formed an aspect of the whole personality in a process that he called the psychosynthesis of the ages (1973b). Based upon a sketch made by Firman during the above conversation with Assagioli, this process is diagrammed in Figure 6.2.
FIGURE 6.2
In this developmental model, infancy and childhood are not distant but are at our center, similar to the annual rings of a tree. For example, there might be a six-year-old child within you who feels small and vulnerable among “grown-ups,” or who feels that life is too vast and complex, or who feels sometimes like playing with crayons and clay. Or there might be an adolescent in you who feels painfully shy and awkward around potential romantic partners, or who feels rebellious and angry toward authorities, or who seeks freedom and adventure. And so on.
The point is that thinking in terms of the concentric-ring model allows us to become more conscious of our inner world. These major sectors of ourselves are not people we have been but people we are. They do not live in a long-lost time but in the immediate present. Here the word “childhood” does not mean “that time long ago when we were kids,” but rather, “a deeper substrate of our here-and-now experience.”
Of course, the time line arrow model often is favored by many of us as adults, because it can be a way of pushing into the background the feelings and thoughts of the infant, child, and adolescent. Adhering to this more linear model, we will assume that such “immature” thoughts and feelings have been left behind, and it may even be an affront to our self-image to realize that they exist within us, often seemingly unchanged by the passage of time.
Again, the insight held by the ring model is that all stages are present, all can be engaged, and all have something to offer our current lives. We might then visualize the growing personality as expanding harmoniously outward through the various life stages, accumulating the human potential unfolding at each stage. In the words of psychologist Gina O’Connell Higgins, “Like an extensive set of Ukrainian nesting dolls, we are a collection of selves, simultaneously encompassing all of our previous versions” (1994, 70).
In the presentation of this model, note that the different developmental stages represented by the rings in the diagram are only named in general terms (e.g., infant, child, etc.). We make no attempt here to define the various life stages beyond this, and we focus instead on dynamics that pertain to growth in all stages. Actually, almost any developmental stage theory could be represented by these expanding rings.1
. . . he regresses to his psychic origin in childhood. Once there, he does not uncover sexual dreams of his childhood as might be expected. . . . Rather, he returns to the positve, creative basis of his life.
—Roberto Assagioli
As we shall see shortly, the key here is that with good enough nurture at each stage of growth, there is an ongoing inclusion and expression of all of the multiple perspectives and abilities of the different ages—the blossoming of authentic personality. Let us now explore how this takes place.
AUTHENTIC PERSONALITY
The unfoldment of the personality through developmental stages is of course a matter both of inherited endowment and social interaction—of both “nature and nurture.” Our focus, however, is on the nurture side of this relationship. Here what is crucial in development is that one is recognized, acknowledged, and understood. That is, one needs to be seen as the unique, individual human being one is, rather than as something to meet the purposes and plans of others. I must be seen as “me” by my parents, and not as, for example, “the one who will grow up and make us proud,” or “the one who will save our marriage.” Only if I am seen as uniquely “me”—and not an object of someone else’s desires, fantasies, and plans—can I have a sense of myself as a unique person living my own life.
British pediatrician and psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott, among others, called this type of empathic relating mirroring. Mirroring occurs as the mother (or caregiver) can look at the infant and recognize the unique, individual human being who exists before her. As the infant experiences his or her self reflected in the other’s gaze, the infant is able to realize that she or he is indeed a unique, individual human being. In Winnicott’s words, “When I look I am seen, so I exist” (1988, 134). This type of empathic attunement to the child, generalized to the whole early nurturing environment—called a holding environment—provides for the development of what Winnicott calls a “continuity of being” and a blossoming of the True Self of the child.
The American analyst and founder of self psychology, Heinz Kohut (1977, 1971, 1984), recognized this type of relating as an empathic responsiveness to the child on the part of the caregivers. Empathy allows the understanding of another from the other’s point of view, a seeing into the other’s world of experience (“vicarious introspection”). If caregivers relate to their child in this attuned way, the child is able to develop a sense of self that has “cohesion in space” and “continuity in time.” Where Winnicott speaks of a true self, Kohut posits a deep nuclear self that will unfold its unique destiny or nuclear program in response to empathic attunement from the nurturing other.
EMPATHIC MIRRORING
So it is through a mirroring or an empathic connection to others that we receive an awareness of ourselves as whole, volitional, and continuous through time—what in psychosynthesis can be called “authentic personality.” This mirroring process is illustrated in Figure 6.3.
The rings here are the same as in the earlier diagram, representing the many developmental ages that form the personality. The seeing eye represents all of those people and situations by which we are seen for who we truly are: perhaps parents and family early in life, then particular schoolteachers and peers, and then the friends, colleagues, mentors, and life partners of adulthood.
If at each stage of life we receive this mirroring, we are able to recognize, accept, and include the unfolding aspects of our experience at that stage. This is precisely the same dynamic that we explored in the last chapter, using the example of spending some time with a good and trusted friend (see the section “Empathic I”). Your friend empathically connected with you, so you were able to recognize and include all of your spontaneous experience within the relationship. You could be all that you were.
FIGURE 6.3
The same relational process happens over the course of development. That is, if our developing independence, sexuality, or cognitive abilities are mirrored, we will be able to recognize these as valid aspects of ourselves: “I am my own person,” “I am a sexual person,” “I am a thinker”—in other words, these unfolding developmental abilities become expressions of our authentic existence, our essence, our I-amness.
Through this mirroring we can actualize all of the richness of our unfolding human potential in an ongoing way; the developmental stages form the “rings” of our personality, each subsequent age of life enduring as an important part of the larger whole.
This development can be termed authentic in that the blossoming personality is a true expression of who we really are. It is as if the mirroring other is a gentle wind fanning the spark of “I,” allowing “I” to glow and come to life, fully expressing that unique individuality through the unfolding developmental stages. “I” might be imagined in Figure 6.3 as being among the various rings, able to engage each and all of them as we live our lives.
Of course, this is not a passive process in which we are empty holes being filled up by the empathic regard of others. Within these empathic relationships, we learn to give and receive, to contact and withdraw, and even to influence the responses of the mirroring other (as when an infant’s responses cause caregivers to modify their behavior). This mutuality of relationship between caregiver and child has been called mutual influence (Beebe and Lachmann 1988), a dynamic, changing process influenced by all parties involved.
SELF AS THE SOURCE OF EMPATHIC MIRRORING
Just as when spending time with an empathic friend, empathic relationships over our lifetime allow the emergence of “I” with the ability to include all of our ongoing experience. So mirroring or empathic attunement allows the flowering of I-amness throughout the life span, a “continuity of being,” creating authentic personality. It is as if our very being flows to us through the empathic relationships in our lives.
However, as we discussed in Chapter 2, and as we will explore further in the following chapters, Assagioli (1965a) held that the ultimate source of personal selfhood is a deeper Self. He speaks of “I” as a reflection or projection of Self, and thus “I” in effect flows from Self.
This implies a tremendous intimacy between “I” and Self. “I” is continuously dependent on Self for existence, as a reflected image is dependent upon the subject reflected. This intimacy in turn implies a profound empathic connection of Self to “I.” Assagioli writes that one may think of Self as a “spiritual Self who already knows his problem, his crisis, his perplexity” (1965a, 204).
It stands to reason, therefore, that these mirroring others in our lives, so crucial to the blossoming of personal being, are somehow conduits, channels, or manifestations of this I-Self connection. In Assagioli’s terms, these empathically attuned others would be called external unifying centers. The relationships between Self, external unifying centers, and the unfolding authentic personality are diagrammed in Figure 6.4
FIGURE 6.4
“I” can be imagined in Figure 6.4 as transcendent-immanent among the rings of the unfolding personality. As “I” is accurately seen by the unifying centers, and so the I-Self connection is intact, “I” is able to engage all of the various life stages as they unfold. All of these stages of development become part of our authentic expression (i.e., become authentic personality).
Of course, this diagram represents optimum human growth; this would be like having good and trusting empathic relationships with all of the significant figures throughout our entire lives. As we shall see, this optimum process is indeed interrupted by primal wounding.
EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL UNIFYING CENTERS
In ideal human development, then, we would at each stage of life experience the primary connection between “I” and Self as facilitated by different empathically attuned or mirroring others. Each stage of growth would have attendant external unifying centers—external others who act as the facilitating medium for the I-Self relationship. In Assagioli’s words, such an external unifying center is
an indirect but true link, a point of connection between the personal man [or woman] and his [or her] higher Self, which is reflected and symbolized in that object. (1965a, 25)
The external unifying center is a “true link” or conduit for the I-Self connection. Thus the optimal external unifying center of early childhood would be the matrix of empathic connections with the caregivers and the extended family system. This early holding environment would mediate the I-Self relationship, allowing the experience of healthy personal selfhood, a sense that “I exist as a unique, worthy, and choosing person, just as I am.”
Later, this sense of self might be facilitated by schoolteachers, peers, and other validating and mirroring contexts such as social, cultural, and religious milieus. At each point in growth, one would be realizing oneself through the different empathic connections at that time in life, as illustrated in Figure 6.5.
FIGURE 6.5
The external unifying centers listed in Figure 6.5 are only a few examples of many possible nurturing life contexts. No particular number or type of external unifying centers is being put forth here and, in fact, it may be that in exploring such centers, we may continually discover new and unique ones. Besides significant other people, external unifying centers can be such things as pets, cherished objects, professional disciplines, political and business associations, nature, and religious or philosophical beliefs.
The point of the current discussion is that a series of relational systems exists—external unifying centers—crucial to the development of the human being. Each center in a different way facilitates the I-Self relationship, supporting the expression of authentic personality.2
Furthermore, as each stage of life is supported and held by the appropriate, empathic, external unifying center, the active interaction with that external unifying center conditions the formation of an inner representation or inner model of that center—an internal unifying center. That is, the experience with the external center would condition the development of an inner center capable of serving many of the same functions fulfilled by the external one.
In psychoanalytic parlance, the internal unifying center might be called an internalized object or object representation, and it develops according to the principles outlined in the section on the middle unconscious in Chapter 2 (cf. Piaget, Stern, and Bowlby). In Winnicott’s terms, the emergence of such an inner center could be described as the outer holding environment conditioning the formation of a similar internal environment (1987, 34). This same process also can be seen in Kohut’s transmuting internalization (1971, 45).
The internal center may be experienced as actual inner symbolic figures, as when we inwardly “hear” the advice of a parent or mentor, or we carry on an inner dialogue with an image of wisdom. But these internal centers also include the beliefs, values, and worldviews developed in relationship to the external centers over our lifetime.
Internal unifying centers thus constitute a context or matrix, an internal holding environment, within which one derives a sense of individual selfhood, personal meaning, and life direction. Like the external unifying centers, the inner centers also are “indirect but true links” or points of connection between “I” and Self, as seen in Figure 6.6.
FIGURE 6.6
Note that Self is not to be equated with any particular internal (or external) unifying center. Self is distinct from them all, yet present in them all. We can relate to Self through many different internal unifying centers: an image of a loving grandparent, a spiritual teacher, or a mandala; a masculine or feminine God-image; a sense of responsibility, values, and conscience; or a philosophical stance toward the world. Self is not only distinct from the multiple internal unifying centers but provides a continuity of being throughout all of our inner experiences, from the peak of ecstasy to the abyss of despair. The I-Self relationship is transcendent of all particular inner contents, yet immanent within them all—it is transcendent-immanent.
The continuity of external and internal unifying centers amounts to a continuous relationship to Self and thus facilitates the experience of continuity in personal being. To say it another way, authentic personality is the authentic expression of I-amness, in union with Self, manifested through the person’s unique genetic endowment and facilitating environment. Figure 6.7 is another way of picturing this continuity throughout the life span.
FIGURE 6.7
To use an early psychosynthesis metaphor kept very much alive in the teachings of psychosynthesist Philip Brooks (2000), this abiding empathic connection to authentic unifying centers allows the unfoldment of the “oak within the acorn,” that is, of the unique character and life direction of the person. The unfolding of authentic personality seems akin to what has been called individuation by Jung (1969a, 1971); the realization of the nuclear program of the nuclear self by Kohut (1984); the actualization of the True Self by Winnicott (1987); and the realization of one’s personal idiom manifesting the destiny drive or “an internal sense of personal evolution through space and time” by Bollas (1989, 34).
But if the primary I-Self connection, facilitated by unifying centers, creates our experience of personal existence, what happens when the unifying centers fail? What happens if our unifying centers are broken or violating? What happens when the unifying centers are damaged “links” to Self, preventing an intimate relationship with Self? Then the unifying center cannot mirror I-amness, and instead of facilitating the experience of personal existence, it creates the experience of personal nonexistence—not the experience of being but nonbeing.
PRIMAL WOUNDING
As stated above, Winnicott’s phrase, “When I look I am seen, so I exist,” describes well the process in which mirroring facilitates the formation of authentic personality: the empathic regard of the other allows a sense of personal being as “I” emerges to include and express the unfolding layers of the personality.
Conversely, we can use the phrase, “When I look I am not seen, so I do not exist,” to describe how psychological wounding disrupts human development: here nonempathic regard creates the experience of not existing, of nonbeing. Winnicott used the powerful term annihilation to refer to the experience of not being mirrored—one is torn from being and plunged toward nonbeing.
This nonmirroring is what self psychology calls empathic failure or selfobject failure—events, moments, interactions, and so on in which we were not treated as living conscious human beings but as objects, as things. In Kohut’s words, here we are faced with “the indifference of the nonhuman, the nonempathically responding world” (1984, 18).
In Martin Buber’s (1958) terms, these failed relationships create not empathic I-Thou experiences but cold, impersonal I-It experiences. In these moments, the experience of personal being is broken, and our sense of existing is wounded.
In psychosynthesis terms, such I-It experiences indicate a failure of the unifying center to facilitate a healthy I-Self connection. Since personal being or “I” in effect flows from Self via the unifying centers, a broken unifying center will disrupt this flow and create the experience of not existing. Thus moments of nonmirroring or empathic failure hold the potential for uprooting us from selfhood and personal being, as we face the unimaginable prospect of personal nonexistence, annihilation, nonbeing.3
WHY “PRIMAL”?
We call the effects of these empathic failures primal wounding, not because this wounding is early or primitive, but because it breaks this primal—that is, fundamental or essential—connection to the ground of our being. Some experiences that have been associated with the primal wound of nonbeing include anxiety, disintegration, worthlessness, isolation, shame/guilt, emptiness, and despair (in the following chapter, these experiences will be explored more fully as being characteristic of the lower unconscious).
Have you ever been ignored by someone you looked up to? Have you ever poured out your heart to someone only to find that he or she was not listening? Have your personal boundaries ever been disregarded or violated? Anger can exist in these moments, true, but beneath this is a feeling of not being seen, recognized, and respected as a human being—the list above outlines where we may find ourselves at those times.
Moments such as these can be devastating to adults, so how much more so for the small, vulnerable child who experiences them? Instances of major failures in mirroring for a child will inflict psychological wounding to the child’s deepest sense of self; they are disruptions in the continuity of being, moments of nonbeing.
HOW WOUNDING OCCURS
The events that create primal wounding may be either direct and overt or indirect and covert. The overt type includes obvious violence, sexual abuse, or physical abandonment, but the covert category is perhaps even more pervasive. The more covert types include such things as emotional battering, psychological incest, and identity enmeshment; bigotry (sexism, racism, etc.); compulsions and addictions that remain unrecognized and untreated in the caregivers; denial in the family system vis-à-vis any important aspect of human life (e.g., sexuality, spirituality, death); or a constant, unresolved tension between caregivers.
Even the apparently healthy family can covertly inflict debilitating wounds in the children through the unconscious wounding of the caregivers and others. Such wounds constitute blind spots in the mirroring function that create areas of nonbeing in the child—“When I look I am not seen, so I do not exist.” Here caregiver psychological blindness to certain sectors of human experience leaves vacancies in the child—holes of nonbeing, so to speak, in the unfolding personality. In this way, wounds can be inflicted by the very process of bonding to the wounded personality of the caregiver.
A common, covert wounding, hidden by its often positive appearance, occurs when children or their achievements are idealized and inflated. Here, out of the caregiver’s own fantasies and desires, a child may be seen as a special prince or princess, or as a heroic savior and champion, or even as a best friend or surrogate partner. This idealization is not simple appreciation, praise, and affection but instead the covert demand that the child become this inflated image; the child becomes an actor in the caregiver’s fantasy, the object of the caregiver’s needs. Here, again, the actual individual child—unique and common, ordinary and special, vulnerable and powerful—is not seen, and primal wounding occurs. This wounding can be difficult to recognize for all concerned, because it appears that the caregiver is simply being loving and supportive.4
WHO IS TO BLAME?
It is crucial here to point out that this level of psychological trauma can occur with no conscious intention on the parts of the ones who wound us. As we have said, the mechanism for the wounding can be the unconscious, empathic blind spots of the caregivers, which are in turn the effects of their own wounding.
Given that historians have pointed to the severe lack of empathy for children in ages past (Ariès 1962; deMause 1974; Tuchman 1978), we can imagine a river of wounding flowing down to us through the generations, a river that takes on collective proportions:
So this historical flow of wounding is a social, political, and cultural phenomenon also. We do not believe there truly can be good enough caregiving without a good enough society. For example, if infant girls are seen as less valuable than infant boys by the culture, this attitude will be transmitted by the caregivers at some level, whether conscious or unconscious. We are talking here about wounding from the whole interpersonal matrix of the growing child—any and all of the unifying centers which make up the broadest of holding environments. We are not talking only about those of us who have been obviously abused and neglected, but about the human condition itself. (Firman and Gila 1997, 97)
Primal wounding thus surrounds us from conception, a fundamental matrix in which we grow throughout our entire lives. Our lives are filled with moments when significant unifying centers—intentionally or not—have treated us not as human beings but as objects, as “Its” rather than “Thous.” These wounds might be imagined as empty holes in the developing personality, inflicted at different ages within us. Drawing upon the ring model of the person, primal wounding is illustrated in Figure 6.8.
FIGURE 6.8
Here the personality, rather than expanding in an unbroken way through the stages of development, is seen riddled with primal wounding suffered at different ages (represented by the dark triangles). These wounds of nonbeing are unbearable moments of isolation, fragmentation, and pain that are subsequently pushed out of awareness. The longer triangle in the diagram represents wounding through all ages, which occurs, for example, when we grow up in a family atmosphere of incest, addiction, or violence; or in a society that denigrates or idealizes our gender; or in a culture that is hostile to our race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation.
Rather than experience those instances of nonbeing, we cut off those aspects of ourselves that were impacted by them, developing what Winnicott (1987) called a false self. Instead of being who we are—which is unseen or violated by the environment—we will become what we must become in order to survive the wounding. As mentioned in earlier chapters, this dynamic is the process of turning what we call authentic personality into survival personality (Firman and Gila 1997).
SURVIVAL PERSONALITY
The hallmark of survival personality is survival in the face of nonbeing or primal wounding. Rather than the environment being empathic and welcoming of who we are, we are forced to conform to a narrowed sense of ourselves to accommodate the environment. In Winnicott’s words, “The False Self has one positive and very important function: to hide the True Self, which it does by compliance with environmental demands” (Winnicott 1987, 146–47). Survival personality represents the best that we can do to find some sort of existence in spite of nonempathic or nonmirroring responses from the environment.
The trouble is that to the extent we develop survival personality, we cannot manifest authentic personality. We quite literally forget who we truly are. Charles Whitfield describes what we would call the loss of authentic personality to survival personality:
When our alive True Self goes into hiding, in order to please its parent figures and to survive, a false, co-dependent self emerges to take its place. We thus lose our awareness of our True Self to such an extent that we actually lose awareness of its existence. We lose contact with who we really are. Gradually, we begin to think we are that false self—so that it becomes a habit, and finally an addiction. (Whitfield 1991, 5)
It must be emphasized that since primal wounding seems inevitable, survival personality (Winnicott’s “False Self” and Whitfield’s “false, co-dependent self”) is the starting place for all of us to a greater or lesser extent. Survival personality is not merely a one-dimensional façade, an empty shell devoid of depth and richness; in fact, it often can function well above the average level, commanding truly impressive talents and abilities. Winnicott claims that the False Self can closely imitate the expression of True Self (1987, 147). But even with this high functionality, there is a hidden sense of lack, a feeling that something central is missing in our lives.
Recall the case in Chapter 3 of Ellen, whose survival personality manifested as a talented, committed, worker who was successful in the workplace. Hidden beneath her high-functioning personality was a level of grief, anger, and pain from her childhood, which eventually emerged into awareness. The following statements help illustrate the range of survival personality:
Every time I succeed at something I tell myself it must have been a fluke, that I put one over on people, that who I really am couldn’t do these things.
Although I’ve been in therapy and have some good recovery, it seems like something is missing, like after all I’ve never truly found out who I am.
I have a fulfilling spiritual practice and am held in high esteem in my religious community, but whenever I approach intimacy in a relationship I am stopped by feeling scared and overwhelmed.
These phrases represent well-functioning survival personalities that integrate the true gifts and skills of the person, but we also can sense the wounding beneath the identifications—the feelings of success as a fluke, or not knowing who I am, or feeling scared and overwhelmed. Of course, when we are totally identified with such a personality, we are not aware of the experiences indicative of wounding, remaining instead contained within the limits of the functioning identification.
Clearly, survival personality is not merely a superficial role or social persona with which we meet the world. We can even undergo a surprising amount of psychological and spiritual growth and yet remain well within the grips of survival personality. We can engage depths of past wounding, abreacting memories of childhood abuse (lower unconscious); feel released from many different psychological patterns and subpersonalities (middle unconscious); or move into the heights of the sublime, enjoying the complete transcendence of ego in a union with the Divine (higher unconscious)—and do all of this with the survival personality remaining intact.
Survival personality is not simply one subpersonality within the personality but represents a general conditioning of vast areas of our entire conscious expression. We cannot easily gain distance from and reflect upon—disidentify from—survival personality as we can from many other personality contents. Different subpersonalities and complexes are elements contained within the larger context of survival personality. We can therefore disidentify, become “centered,” and mindfully observe the flow of inner processes, all the time remaining well within the confines of survival personality (see, for example, our discussion of transpersonal identification in Chapter 5).
Many of us can live a long while lost in an identification with survival personality, especially if this mode is well functioning, adaptive, and capable of success in the world. However, in many cases, survival personality sooner or later eventually wears thin, revealing the hidden chasm of nonbeing on which it is built. Just because primal wounding is buried does not mean that it is inactive. The pressure from such hidden wounds can and does eventually wreak havoc in our lives and in the world.
ADDICTION/ATTACHMENT
In order to maintain survival personality and to avoid the threat of nonbeing, we are increasingly driven to behaviors and attitudes that become out of control and destructive to ourselves and others. In short, we become attached, addicted, obsessed, or compulsive (for our purposes here, these are treated as synonymous). These attachments/addictions seem endless in variety, and they include such things as compulsive sexuality, alcohol and drug addiction, destructive overeating, obsessive gambling, overinvolvement with the Internet, relationship addiction, and compulsivity in prayer or meditation—in short, virtually any pattern of human thought and behavior can become obsessive.
To the extent that our patterns of living become obsessive, we are using them to manage, to survive, prior primal wounding. Here we become trapped in compulsions and addictions in a vain effort to escape the hidden wounds from the past:
How would I feel if I did not seek comfort and stimulation in compulsive sexual activity?
I would feel lost, alone, abandoned. (threat of nonbeing)
How would I feel if I quit my all-consuming, driven job?
I would feel empty, isolated, worthless. (threat of nonbeing)
Why don’t I leave this abusive relationship?
Because I would feel lost, abandoned, helpless. (threat of nonbeing)
What would happen if I didn’t maintain perfect fidelity to my religious practices?
I would feel like a bad person, ashamed, worthless. (threat of non-being)
So the tremendous power of these attachments derives largely from the fact that they offer ways of avoiding the hidden threat of nonbeing caused by nonempathic responsiveness from others. These are not simply habits and tastes casually gathered over the course of living; they are desperate strategies by which we attempt to avoid nonbeing, to survive primal wounding. This partially explains the perplexing tenacity of addictions, even in the face of pain, public humiliation, illness, and physical death itself—none of this pain is as terrible as nonbeing, annihilation.
Using three different random examples, Figure 6.9 shows the relationship between nonbeing experiences and attachments or addictions.
The arrows in Figure 6.9 illustrate a movement away from nonbeing into the relative safety of the different addictive processes. The negative feelings embody the threat of nonbeing, forming the foundation or “basement” of the addiction.5
FIGURE 6.9
In the psychosynthesis literature, therapist Victoria Tackett has pointed to this wounding beneath addictions, saying, “To anesthetize these interpersonal wounds, we are rapidly becoming a nation of addicts” (1988, 15). Within the Recovery Movement, this same connection between wounding and addiction has been made by Charles Whitfield (1991). According to Whitfield, early wounding causes feelings such as abandonment, shame, and emptiness, which finally give rise to compulsions such as chemical dependence, eating disorders, and relationship addictions (Whitfield goes on to maintain, as we do, that wounding underlies many other psychological disturbances as well).
In our terms here, all addictions, attachments, compulsions, and obsessions are manifestations of the survival personality and its imperative to avoid contact with the earlier primal wounding. Although survival personality, supported by addictive patterns, may allow the management of primal wounding for a time, its protection will eventually falter. Then we are thrown into a crisis of transformation that may feel like the “end of the world”—we are brought to our knees by a major addiction, by a brush with personal mortality, by self-destructive relationships, or perhaps by the loss of a job or loved one. Survival personality begins to deintegrate, and we begin to feel the wounds that were present all along. Here, hitting bottom, we have a chance to reach to the depths to rekindle the development of authentic personality.6
CONTACTING EARLY WOUNDING
Since the true expression of ourselves—authentic personality—has been impacted by primal wounding, we need to accept that our authentic life story now includes the wounds from many ages of life. It is of course true that in reaching to the wounded layers we will regain many lost gifts—new sources of spontaneity, wonder, and creativity, for example—but we also must engage the anxiety, isolation, and abandonment we suffered at various times in our lives. That is all a part of our story, our path in life, our wholeness. We must find a willingness to enter into the world that we have seemingly left behind, the world in which those wounded layers dwell, even now.
In other words, contacting wounded layers or reaching toward authentic personality is a matter of mirroring, of empathic attunement. It was a disruption in empathic connection that caused the splitting off of these layers, and thus it is only empathic connection that can heal them. This is one of the most important points of this entire book and the central organizing principle of all effective work in psychosynthesis. Both wounding and healing are a matter of empathic connection; both wounding and healing are a matter of relationship.
SIMPLE BUT NOT EASY
This approach to healing may seem obvious, simple, and humane, but it is precisely what all our survival tactics have been designed to avoid. The whole raison d’être of survival personality is to function without feeling primal wounding, therefore, an empathic connection to the wounded layers in us goes directly against this prime directive. So while it seems simple and humane, we in fact face our worst terrors.
For example, say my life is being disrupted by anxiety or depression. My survival personality will want to fix these problems so that my life can continue in the way it sees fit. The first thing I will do is blame the environment: “It’s my parents, my boss, my spouse, or my friends who are causing these feelings.” But perhaps after changing bosses, spouses, and friends several times, it may just dawn on me that the issue has to do with me too.
. . . the recognition of the depth and seriousness of human life, of the place of anxiety in it and of the suffering which has to be faced.
—Roberto Assagioli
After this first line of defense fails, I might fall back upon, “I must find the right medication, the powerful technique, the breakthrough therapy, the correct spiritual practice, which will get rid of these feelings and let me live my life in peace.” Here begins a phenomenon in which survival personality plunges into various approaches to therapy and personal growth, seeking to alleviate these feelings. This may in fact work for awhile, offering new insights and self-knowledge, but nevertheless the wounded layers themselves will remain largely hidden. Why?
The reason is that if I am approaching these young, wounded layers of myself with the idea that I am going to fix them or even heal them, I am setting up the same type of relationship that caused the wounding in the first place—a relationship in which the child is not treated as a Thou but as an object, as an It. The wounded layer here becomes simply an obstacle blocking my way to the life I (survival personality) want. There is still no vulnerability on my part, no patient listening to this inner voice, no willingness to change my life in order to touch and be touched by my authentic being. Without a nonjudgmental, empathic, mirroring atmosphere, the wounded layers—and their gifts—will simply not emerge.
So the phrase “healing the inner child” is a bit of a misnomer, while perhaps “healing my relationship with the inner child” is closer to the mark. We must be willing to let go of survival personality, face our worse fears, and gradually allow our younger parts to live with us. It is not a matter of fixing a problem or curing a disease; it is a matter of making a place in our lives for the young, vulnerable aspects of ourselves. Again, empathic failure wounds us, and it is only empathic connection that can ultimately heal us.
Let us now look at the four mutually overlapping phases of working with these levels of wounding: recognition, acceptance, inclusion, and synthesis. These are the same phases of personality harmonization that we explored in the chapter on subpersonalities, although here they apply in a special way to these deeper layers within us.
RECOGNITION
Very seldom, it seems, do we turn to the wounded layers within ourselves, except out of some dire situation in our lives. Survival personality is tremendously resilient and can operate throughout a range that extends from what might be called psychopathology to high-functioning self-actualization to genuine spiritual or transpersonal states of consciousness. Most often our foundations must be shaken, we must be crushed down by life, and we must be plunged into the realization of personal vulnerability.
Early in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), so the story goes, the alcoholics recovering in the fellowship would not accept a person as a true alcoholic unless that individual had lost everything: house, car, spouse, family, career. Not having lost all of these things, one would not have hit bottom and so could not have found the willingness to completely surrender to something greater than ego—the first step in recovery (or on any spiritual path). Later in the history of AA, it recognized “high bottoms” who had not lost everything but who had met with such suffering that there was authentic willingness to face the truth of their lives.
Much the same can be said about reaching to the wounded aspects of ourselves. It seems unlikely that those who have not entered what we have called a “crisis of transformation” will be motivated to look at the dark forces that drive their lives. This is, after all, the gift and curse of survival personality: to carry on, to survive the wounds, and to remain in control by ignoring or smoothing over personal vulnerability, wounding, and pain.
However, as survival personality begins to falter in the face of life’s buffeting, we may become willing to look. This willingness is the beginning of the recognition phase of healing. The next question becomes: “Who are we looking for?”
“KING BABY” AND “THE VICTIM”
In beginning to recognize our young, wounded aspects, a common mistake is to believe that the infant, child, or adolescent in us is simply a self-centered, demanding aspect of our personalities. Psychoanalysis would in fact understand such self-centered structures as archaic, infantile remnants of the early developmental stage of primary narcissism. Freud reportedly used the term, “His Majesty, the Baby,” to describe the supposed inherent narcissism of the infant (Cunningham 1986, 4).
In our view, however, any grandiose narcissism is not an inherent characteristic at all but the result of primal wounding. In fact, these self-centered parts of ourselves are none other than aspects of survival personality that developed in response to early empathic failures. Playing off Freud’s term, chemical dependency counselor Tom Cunningham describes what we call survival personality as King [or Queen] Baby:
These feelings of worthlessness, self-blame, and I-don’t-belong become a central part of our personalities. King [or Queen] Baby—a selfish, demanding being—emerges as a reaction to these feelings of shame and inadequacy. As we childishly strive to be accepted and to please other people, we begin to seek things from the outside to feel better inside. Designer clothes, fast cars, attractive girlfriends or boyfriends, drugs, and the excitement of life in the fast lane help salve our pain. We develop attractive, magnetic, charming exteriors to get our way. Pleasure-seeking, power-seeking, and attention-seeking devices are used to fill the void, but the void remains. (1986, 4)
Note carefully that in this passage Cunningham is not describing a primary structure, not an inborn attitude, but a way to survive shame, inadequacy, and an inner void—characteristic effects of primal wounding. We were not born this way. We formed ourselves in this way to manage profound violations of our spirit. So, no, these attitudes and behaviors are not “childish”—they are not intrinsic characteristics of childhood, but are the expressions of wounding.
The same can be said of a survival pattern sometimes referred to as The Victim. This unfortunate pejorative term, as well as “poor me” and “self pity,” often denotes a wounded personality. Here there is an identification with the suffering of the past in a way that supports a dependent, passive stance toward life (which, as we shall see, is quite different from a dynamic, responsible engagement with our wounding). Beneath this dependence there often is a feeling that the world owes us something because of early abuse or neglect. There can even be a sense of prideful entitlement here, an arrogant demand that claims, “You owe me.”
But, again, like King Baby, The Victim is not a primary reaction to life by an unmolested human being. Both of these are survival formations developed in response to early wounding. These so-called “narcissistic” aspects of ourselves are not the authentic formative layers of our personalities; they are desperate, driven, and ultimately self-destructive attempts to manage assaults to the human spirit.
An irony of these kinds of problematic attitudes is that the world does owe us something; it owes us a recognition of, and response to, the severe damage inflicted upon us when we were helpless to defend ourselves. This is called justice. However, the tragedy of survival personality is that often the very behavior developed to manage the wounding prevents the wounding from being addressed. These extreme attitudes do not in fact expose the wounding and allow healing but instead constitute addictions that actually prevent the wounds from emerging and being healed.
SEEING THROUGH SURVIVAL PERSONALITY
It is important in recognition, then, to be able to see beneath survival personality to the underlying wounds. But often our disdain for these types of personality patterns prevents us from doing this. Indeed, disrespectful and abusive names such as King Baby and The Victim effectively block our empathic connection to the depths of these personality patterns (not to mention words such as “infantile,” “childish,” “narcissistic,” “primitive,” “immature,” and “archaic”). If we demean these patterns in ourselves or others, we can effectively cut ourselves off from recognizing, engaging, and healing the wounding beneath them.
All too often any speaking of our wounding, any expression of our pain, is discounted by the assumption that it is simply indulgent whining and self-pity. But we must be able to distinguish true pain from an identification with suffering, distinguish true victimhood from a victim identification. We all are in fact victims. We all have actual wounds that need to be recognized. And it just may be that we have to grieve long and hard as we touch these wounds, experiencing a confusing mix between authentic and survival experiences.
In the dialogue that follows, Tom, a client in a psychosynthesis therapy session, sees through the survival personality to the wounds beneath. He had been struggling with compulsive bragging, a part of him who always felt compelled to let others know how great he was:
Tom: I’ve discovered my inner child. I call him my inner brat. He’s the one who is always bragging. It’s embarrassing.
Therapist: How does the child feel, hearing that?
Tom: He’s angry and sulking.
Therapist: How does that make you feel?
Tom: A little guilty, I guess. I don’t know. I just can’t stand him always needing to be the big cheese all the time.
Therapist: Ask him how he feels when he doesn’t get to brag.
Tom: He says he feels like he doesn’t matter, that no one sees him.
Therapist: Is that a familiar feeling?
Tom: Yes. That’s how I felt as a kid in my family. I always had to be bigger than life to get any attention.
Therapist: How do you feel towards the kid now?
Tom: I feel sad.
Therapist: How does he respond to that?
Tom: He’s crying. We both are. (Long pause.) He doesn’t seem so prideful now. Just sad and being with me.
Therapist: Is there anything you would like to say to him?
Tom: I’m telling him I can be with his pain if he’ll just stop bragging all the time. He is good. He doesn’t need to prove it.
Therapist: What’s he say?
Tom: He’s smiling. He’s willing to try.
Tom formed an empathic connection to the actual level of wounding that was driving the compulsive bragging survival behavior. Over time, he was able to significantly diminish this behavior by connecting to the wounded world of the child but also—and this is important—by actively setting limits on the problematic behavior. He took time to notice when the behavior recurred and to apologize for it when it was disruptive. Survival personality must sometimes be dealt with in a firm way, much as a good parent sets limits on a child’s behavior, yet remains empathic to the inner feelings that triggered the behavior.
Note, too, that Tom’s work illustrates a point made earlier: his bragging behavior was not some sort of archaic, primitive holdover from a supposed early narcissistic stage of human development; it was a structure designed in desperation to prevent and survive primal wounding.
The recognition phase, then, involves looking for the authentic younger parts within, seeing through any protective, self-centered, driven, demanding behaviors to the deeper shame, inadequacy, and emptiness underlying this stance—to the primal wounding. There, beneath the protection of the shell of survival personality, the depths of the inner children hide.
WILLINGNESS IS ALL
When there is a willingness to see, and a clarity about what we are looking for, many different avenues to the wounded layers magically appear. We may gain insight from books and tapes on the subject; attend inner-child workshops, self-help groups, or enter therapy; become more aware of our vulnerability and hurt in relationships; find memories of childhood spontaneously emerging; be moved by a film or play touching upon our lifelong issues; or have revelations about early experiences in conversations with parents, siblings, or relatives.
However, these younger parts of ourselves appear perhaps most directly in intimate relationships. Remember that we have been wounded by faulty, intimate connections with others. So where might we expect these wounds to surface? Precisely in intimate connections with others.
An intimate relationship tends to bring to the surface all of the many inner levels within us, all of the many inner rings of the personality (see Figure 6.2). Such a relationship is not limited to the adult levels but invites all of the many psychological ages into expression, from the touching and cuddling of the infant, to the spontaneity and play of the child, to the adventure and emotionality of the teen. However, as these various levels emerge into expression, so too will any wounding carried at these various ages (see Figure 6.8).
It is extremely common, for example, that two apparently well-adjusted people will get married and in a short time find themselves immersed in violent and painful feelings toward each other. Suddenly, “small things” that never mattered before become hurtful and intolerable; tones of voice, mannerisms, and habits of our partner now begin to make us feel disgusted and angry, and we find ourselves acting in strange and unusual ways, fighting over superficial things.
But these are not small things. They are only small because we do not recognize the deeper waters in which we are now swimming. We are used to the adult surface of ourselves, not to the younger world hidden in the depths. But within the empathic resonance of intimate relationships, the hidden vulnerabilities and wounds of the younger parts surface (along with the gifts and abilities). Within such intimate closeness, the comment that at one time was a “harmless joke” is now a knife in the heart of a vulnerable child; the thoughtless criticism is no longer insignificant but is felt as an assault on one’s deepest self.
While all of this may be alarming and disconcerting, it is to be expected—we cannot be truly intimate with another without these hidden, inner vulnerabilities emerging. (The root of the word “intimacy” itself means “within.”) Intimate relationships call forth each person’s wholeness—all of the rings of the personality are invited into the relationship. Indeed, this is a fundamental dynamic in psychosynthesis individual sessions; individual sessions establish an intimate, empathic resonance within which relational wounds may surface and be addressed.7
This often painful emergence cannot be avoided in true intimacy. It is only by forging a bond between survival personalities—via mutual addictions, compulsive patterns, and shared illusions—that a relationship can avoid the emergence of deeper material triggered by an intimate, empathic resonance.
From this point of view, a central task for an intimate couple is to accept the vulnerable layers of each partner and to create a safe, secure environment for these aspects of the person. Here we accept that “playful joking” may cause great pain to a wounded child; or that sullen withholding may throw the other into a profound sense of abandonment; or that normal sex may be felt as harsh and abusive due to childhood wounding. Such activities may need to be modified or even at times forsaken for authenticity to grow in the relationship. The couple’s challenge is to welcome these younger parts, to create a safe atmosphere for them to engage their experience, to hear them and respect them, and thus to allow them to find a home within the new relationship.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let us return to the phases of this healing process. After hitting bottom and recognizing the wounded layers in the recognition phase, we are ready to move into acceptance.
ACCEPTANCE
The phase of acceptance speaks more directly to the need for the younger parts to be heard and understood, to be mirrored. This often entails working with the subpersonalities who tend to criticize, discount, and belittle these younger ones. We have seen the terms King Baby and The Victim used in this way, but even when we mutter angrily to ourselves, “You idiot,” when making a mistake, a vulnerable child will feel this and instantly withdraw. Or if we deny or make fun of our softer feelings of hurt, sadness, or joy, the adolescent will not feel accepted and will remain hidden. Or if we find ourselves fed up with our vulnerability, and demand of ourselves that we “stop whining and grow up,” the infant within us will not reveal himself or herself. This type of self-empathic failure is diagrammed in Figure 6.10.
This diagram illustrates that the adult level—dominated by the survival orientation—is sending messages (arrows) designed to suppress the younger layers of the personality. Whether through negative criticism, beliefs, or attitudes, the child is kept down and, more importantly, so too is the primal wounding (dark triangle). As long as the inner atmosphere is polluted by these negative dynamics, the child and the nonbeing wounds will remain inaccessible.
The repressive arrows in the diagram do not only represent failures in self-empathy but failures in the environment as well. If there are people in our lives who ignore or belittle our vulnerabilities, these relationships also operate to maintain the break with our inner layers: “Big boys/girls don’t cry,” “Quit being a victim and grow up,” “You’re too needy,” or “Get over it.”
Under the onslaught of these inner and outer messages, survival personality will remain in power, and we will continue to be susceptible to addictions, compulsions, and destructive interpersonal relationships. Remember, ignoring these wounds does not mean that they are inactive, but quite the contrary—that we are unconsciously controlled by them.
In short, until we can be open to these younger parts of ourselves without pressure to change, without shaming, and without hurtful criticism, there is no way that we will ever rekindle the unfoldment of authentic personality.
FIGURE 6.10
ENTERING THE CHILD’S WORLD
Perhaps the biggest challenge at the acceptance phase is to be with the actual direct experience of the younger levels within us. Ironically, this experience often eludes us not because it is far away from us, but because it is so very close to us:
A man and woman were reading side by side in bed one evening, when the man reached over and began caressing the woman softly on the arm. Slightly irritated, she said, “Stop that,” pushed his hand away, and continued reading. Inwardly the man felt hurt and angry, but said nothing. They continued reading as before, and an outside observer would have noted nothing remarkable in this small interaction.
Nor did the woman notice anything until later, when she found him withdrawn and uncommunicative. She asked him if anything was wrong, and he sullenly said, “No,” and rolled over to go to sleep. The woman felt guilty but had no clue as to what she might have done. They both lay there in silence, she feeling guilty, confused, and abandoned, he feeling hurt, angry, and vindictive.
She finally broke the silence and vehemently demanded to know what was happening, and he angrily countered, “Nothing! Can’t you just leave me alone and go to sleep?!” This then escalated into a long fight about everything in the world except the small, subtle, and now forgotten interchange that began the entire incident.
This is a good example of early wounding beginning to emerge within an intimate relationship. Here the comment by the woman—“Stop that”—inadvertently touched upon a hidden vulnerability of the man’s childhood level. Unbeknownst to the man, there was an important aspect of his relationship to his mother in which he was rejected by her, and a child layer in him was still carrying this wound. Thus the woman’s action did not feel like a mild rebuff but a devastating disparagement of himself as a person. He felt that his reaching out in love and openness had been met with cold, violent rejection. He felt unseen, shamed, and discounted—the primal wounding he unknowingly had received from his mother.
Furthermore, his sullen reaction in turn pressed upon the vulnerability of a wounded younger part within the woman. Her feelings of guilt and abandonment flowed from the wounding she had suffered in her relationship with her father, who had been inappropriate with her sexually as she was growing up. Indeed, her initial rejection of the man’s caresses also was an unconscious reaction to her father’s mistreatment of her, and the irritation in her voice was the visible tip of her rage toward her father. So she too was reacting from her early wounding, and the stage was set for an explosive conflict whose intensity seemed out of proportion to the observable triggering event. Each was, in effect, stepping on the hidden vulnerabilities of the other’s younger part, and both were struggling in the dark to protect themselves from being retraumatized.
PROJECTION?
Some would call this interaction an example of projection occurring on both sides. According to this view, these two have merely projected their earlier relationships onto the current relationship. But it is more complicated than that. First of all, the woman’s “Stop that!” and the man’s sullenness were in fact empathic failures vis-à-vis the other. So, no, this is not simply a case of projecting or transferring a past relationship onto the current one; there actually are empathic failures occurring in the present. These empathic failures, however, are felt strongly by each person because of the vulnerability from this earlier wounding. This is not a projection of the past onto the present but the retraumatizing of long-unhealed wounds in the present.
Clearly, it is difficult to be with the feelings of the childhood level here because these feelings can be painful and overwhelming. These are not the feelings of two adults having a mild disagreement at bedtime, but those of two young people living in a world of violation, abandonment, and despair. To engage this existential level of experience directly, much less to accept it, is to leave the safe, well-lit surface of the adult world to step into a dim, strange, and sometimes terrifying world.
On top of this, however, acceptance of this inner world means a threat to our adult identity and perhaps to relationships with other adults. For these two people, to accept the magnitude of their feelings means that they may appear “overly sensitive,” “childish,” or “in a victim role”—not at all conforming to their image of themselves as mature adults, nor to the image each may wish to maintain in the eyes of the other. Owning the depths of their inner worlds means to risk appearing weak, vulnerable, and dependent, belying the notion that they are adults who are in control and grown up. And then the question may arise: “Will my partner accept these feelings in me, or will this be the end of the relationship?”
THE SURVIVAL CONTRACT
Acceptance, then, of early wounding is no small matter, but another challenge can still exist in the acceptance phase, a challenge brought by the question: “How did I come to have wounds such as abandonment, rejection, and loss in the first place?” This may threaten long-held images of our childhood, ourselves, and our families.
For example, if the man in the above example enters therapy and begins exploring the experience of rejection, he might be shocked to realize just how rejecting his mother was of him as a small child (especially if she was outwardly loving and supportive). As he explores this rejection further, he may feel as though he is betraying his mother, that he is going against a sacred taboo. This sense of betrayal or disloyalty, a common feeling in this process, arises because he is breaking the contract that founded his survival personality: a contract to see himself and his mother in a certain way in order to be accepted by her. To break this implicit contract, to speak about the hidden, destructive side of the relationship, means the younger parts will face being ostracized by this crucial early caregiver—they face nonbeing, annihilation.
Survival personality is based on psychological contracts that require us to be a certain way in order to be accepted by the early caregivers. Think of Ellen’s contract to be the self-effacing helper within her family (Chapter 3), or Mark’s contract to be the Worker to gain his father’s respect (Chapter 4). These contracts offer security, a sense of belonging and identity, a knowing who we are—and so an avoidance of nonbeing. But the price we pay for this secure identity is the repression of authentic personality, a disowning of important aspects of our experience. And if we begin now to listen to the actual experience of these younger layers, we may begin to uncover a whole experiential world that reveals our early lives as being far more difficult or destructive than we or anyone else had ever realized. This revelation will challenge our secure identities, again bringing up the ancient threat of nonbeing.
“But my family was fine. Sure, we weren’t perfect, but all in all, I had an okay childhood.” This may be absolutely true for aspects of our childhood. This does not rule out, however, deep sectors of abandonment, violation, and pain; there seems to be no caregiver or other unifying center that can be connected to the experience of children in a completely empathic way.
It has been found that the refusal to accept suffering can often create neurotic conditions, while generous acceptance of unavoidable suffering leads to insight, growth, and achievement.
—Roberto Assagioli
However, let us be absolutely clear that accepting the full phenomenological world of early wounding does not mean blaming our caregivers for everything wrong in our lives. True, empathy with ourselves may mean clearly seeing our parents’ destructive side or accepting deep rage toward them, but blaming has nothing to do with this. What matters here is honestly understanding and accepting the childhood layers within us, wounds and all.
Note, too, that an awareness of these early layers is not necessarily a matter of remembering the exact events that caused the wounding. Keep in mind the concentric ring model of the person—we do not have to go anywhere but into our here-and-now experience to recognize and accept the deeper layers within us. The task confronting the couple in our example is not to regain memory of the past, it is to uncover the deeper feelings and thoughts underlying their conscious interactions. The focus here is not upon remembering the past (although remembering often is a by-product) but upon connecting empathically to the younger parts that live within us now.
THE HEALING ENVIRONMENT
In any type of healing environment, such as counseling or therapy, for clients to break the survival contract and accept the experience of early wounding usually depends on practitioners who have done these things in their own lives. Only if we have wrestled with our own survival personality and faced our own wounding are we equipped to mirror the wounding of another.
If we are unaware of our own wounded layers, remaining controlled by our own survival personality and survival contract with our caregivers, we will find it difficult to connect empathically to these layers within the client. In fact, if we are confronted with emerging wounding in a client, we may in all good faith attempt to help by moving the client away from the experience of the vulnerable child. The client may, for example, be encouraged to sympathize quickly with the plight of the early caregivers, to undergo techniques designed to gloss over the pain before truly understanding its depth and meaning, or to engage a premature process of forgiveness. Therapist and author Alice Miller says:
The religious notion that a “gesture of forgiveness” will make you a better person has also found its way into psychoanalytic treatment. As if this gesture could do away with something slumbering deep within a person since childhood that can be articulated only in neurosis. (1984b, 213)
Such misguided attempts at healing actually amount to the repressive dynamic illustrated in Figure 6.10. They prevent the younger parts within us from finding a new empathic connection, may lead to further wounding, and will further entrench survival personality. So for practitioner and client alike, acceptance of these deeper layers often demands personal transformation.
In the acceptance phase, then, the task is to open ourselves up to the phenomenological world of the wounded layers without allowing survival personality to cover this up. But let us acknowledge that accepting the broken world within us can be tremendously anxiety provoking and should proceed at its own pace. As we have seen, the entire process is hemmed in by the threat of nonbeing, and only respect and safety can support this uncovering and acceptance. This process is not something one can force. Throughout this work, we are simply attempting to become more and more empathically attuned to the world of the younger ones within, and we cannot establish an empathic relationship through pressure, clever techniques, or coercion.
So, having hit bottom, recognized the world of childhood wounding, and attained some amount of acceptance of this world, it becomes possible to include the younger aspects of ourselves more fully in daily living.
INCLUSION
The phase of inclusion also can be called the phase of “living with.” A useful metaphor here is that you have found an abandoned infant, child, or adolescent, have adopted him or her, and have brought this young person home to live with you. Perhaps this is more than a metaphor. Take a moment and think about this: if you brought a sensitive child home, a child who would be with you every second of your day, what in your life would need to change?
Inclusion is an ongoing, moment-to-moment process, whereby we adopt the younger parts of ourselves and begin to live our lives in an intimate relationship with them. Inclusion does not mean that these inner children are “integrated,” in the sense that they become submerged within the larger personality, nor does it mean changing them to suit the needs of survival personality; rather, it means making whatever lifestyle or attitudinal changes necessary to accommodate them in our daily living. Only by creating such a space in our lives will these younger parts find a new unifying center, a new empathic holding environment, by which to heal and grow.
EVALUATING RELATIONSHIPS
In bringing these inner children consciously into our lives (they have always been present and active unconsciously), it often will be necessary to evaluate how current personal and professional relationships affect them. Do we have friends who criticize and belittle us “all in good fun”? Do our partners give us the message, in word or deed, that our vulnerability and sensitivity are not okay? Do our supervisors or coworkers set a nonempathic, even an abusive, tone in the workplace? Such questions can point to ways in which our lives need to change so that the younger parts within us have a place to live and grow.
An example of this type of change is Ellen, whose journey we followed in Chapter 3. Having had some amount of recovery and healing, she began to realize how destructive her workplace was for her. Initially, identified with survival personality, she simply could not see the sexual discrimination, unreasonable workload, and high pressures that surrounded her—to do so meant feeling the pain of it all and so placing her at odds with the workplace survival contract. In retrospect, Ellen reported brief moments in which she was aware of these injustices, but she had quickly reasserted the “Everything is okay” of the survival stance—her survival-contract role in her family of origin and now in the workplace.
As she worked her way through her crisis of transformation, her awareness grew and she saw the situation more clearly. She began remaining connected to her inner child, giving the child what she needed in her off hours so they could make it through another stressful workday. However, the situation finally was revealed as being intolerably unjust, and she began to challenge her employer’s behavior and policies. Although she did make some changes in the situation, she ultimately chose to find a new job in a much healthier environment.
It is of course not always possible to alter the situation as Ellen was able to do. We often have to learn to survive in oppressive environments. But can we do this without forsaking these younger, more sensitive aspects of ourselves? Can we find for those younger parts within us—the inmost layers of our personality—places of safety and nurture in our lives?
Many life relationships of course will easily change so that the younger parts may be included. Simple, direct statements and requests about our needs may be honored by those who respect us, and our inner children can find space to live within such relationships.
Note again that the emphasis here is not on “shaping up,” “fixing,” or even “healing” the child so that he or she will fit neatly into our current relationships. The emphasis is on changing our relationships so that the childhood layers are welcomed, made safe, and thereby allowed to emerge, heal, and grow.
TAKING TIME
Having a new child means making parenting a priority. Spending time with the child is crucial if you expect to get to know this new addition to your life. Relationships only blossom with attention and care, so you both need time to sit down and communicate with each other.
Through a variety of different methods we can learn to communicate with these younger parts and gradually develop an understanding of their wants and needs. Is there a need for time alone? More peace and safety during the day? Time to play? More adventure? More intimacy? The needs of these deeper layers of us usually are quite easily satisfied within the course of normal living. In fact, meeting the needs is not nearly as hard as remembering to create the time and space to meet them.
For example, a man in psychosynthesis therapy made an agreement with a wounded inner child to spend an hour hiking in the hills during the next week. At the next session the client reported that the child had not been around all week, and that compulsive, self-destructive behaviors were beginning to reassert themselves. As he explored this, it turned out that he had forgotten to spend that hour hiking. He had become caught up in a busy work week, the agreement had been forgotten, and so the child had withdrawn. Here is a small retraumatization of the child, an empathic failure that moves in the direction of survival personality. As it turned out, the man discovered that he was treating the child just as his father had treated him when he was young. The survival, workaholic personality of the father, and now of the son, had not been able to see and meet the child.
So the inclusion phase is an ongoing process. It is not one moment of insight, one breakthrough experience, or one important abreacted memory (although these may be valuable aspects of the process). Inclusion means relationship. It is consciously living with the children in us and making daily choices so that they—with no pressure to change—can live securely in our lives. Again, since empathic failure split off these inmost levels of us, it is only through empathic relationships that we will be able to reconnect with them.
HEALING RELATIONSHIPS
Throughout this ongoing inclusion we will of course make mistakes, committing empathic failures under the sway of survival personality. An important point here is that these failures need to be mended. For example, the man who forgot to hike with the child needed to apologize to the child and do something else for the child in order to make up for the broken agreement.
Empathic failures such as inner self-criticism, indulging in rages, forgetting the child by immersion in T.V., radio, newspapers, or other media (media addiction), or exposing the child to abusive situations all need to be owned and healed. In fact, any addiction or attachment blocks our access to these inner layers of ourselves. As with any relationship, making amends forms a resilient foundation of respect and safety that allows us to navigate the mistakes that will surely occur over time (if the amends are followed by real change, of course).
Taking responsibility for survival personality also can include making amends for interpersonal pain when our criticism, revenge, or dark humor hurts other people. And as many have learned in twelve-step programs, this making of amends for the transgressions of survival personality can be taken into the past as well, with great healing effects. Members of these programs make a list of everyone they have harmed, become willing to make amends to them all, and make those amends, except when to do so would cause further harm (Anonymous 1976, 1985).
Such work is not about the past as much as it is about transforming the present. It helps establish an empathic holding environment around us and allows us to become safe for the deeper layers of other people as well. In this way, empathy and intimacy may begin to infuse many of our relationships, creating unifying centers by which the child may again learn to live and breathe. Here the rewounding of the child is stopped, creating space for the unfoldment of authentic personality.
It thus seems clear that working with these inner layers of ourselves is not only an intrapersonal process but a profoundly interpersonal one. We were wounded in interpersonal relationships, and we need to be healed in them as well. We and our younger parts need the support of empathic others as we seek to heal our relationship with them. Whether friends, family, self-help groups, or therapy, there needs to be a healthy holding environment for healing to take place. Such new unifying centers facilitate the inclusion of the children in our lives and eventually lead toward the formation of internal unifying centers that support the continuous and stable unfolding of authentic personality.
SYNTHESIS
In working with subpersonalities, the phase of synthesis is one in which subpersonalities may begin to relate to each other in new and creative ways, forming expressions that respond to the most meaningful values in our lives. This phase marks a development of authentic personality, a movement into more conscious Self-realization (the contact and response stages of psychosynthesis).
Much the same can be said for the phase of synthesis when working with the early levels within us. However, in this case, the phase is most clearly understood as the formation of two fundamental relationships: (1) an ongoing, committed relationship with our early, inner layers; and (2) an ongoing committed relationship with Self.
JAMIE AND PURPOSE
Jamie was a forty-six-year-old lawyer who had been in recovery from drugs and alcohol for ten years. She had been struggling for some time with a sense that she had wasted her life, and that she desperately needed a vocation that would finally give meaning and purpose to her existence. She felt that she had lived over half her years, and that time was running out for her.
She attended courses about discovering vocation, took different aptitude and interest tests, and avidly devoured self-help literature about finding a life’s calling. But she simply could not find a life path that drew her, and she was falling deeper and deeper into despair. A religious woman, she also felt angry at God for not showing her the way after she had walked her long, painful journey out of addiction.
Fighting a growing depression, Jamie began antidepressant medication and psychosynthesis therapy. In therapy, she all but demanded to find her purpose in life, and she was irritated whenever her therapist seemed to fail in producing this. On the face of it, Jamie was asking a perfectly reasonable question, especially of a practitioner trained to facilitate questions concerning meaning and purpose. But even though the question was approached in a variety of ways—dream work, imagery, creative expression, sand tray, and dialogue with inner figures of wisdom—she constantly received messages about developing patience and listening, which simply irritated her further.
Her frustration grew as time passed, and she began to feel even more acutely the underlying sense that her life was wasted, with attendant feelings of despair and worthlessness. This increased intensity forced her to listen more closely to these feelings, and she found the part of her, a child, who felt this sense of waste and hopelessness. In connecting to this level of herself, she began unearthing the experiential world of this child, a world haunted by an alcoholic father, a severely depressed mother, and an abusive older brother. At this fundamental level she did not feel seen or held in her family system beyond her role as caretaker to her younger siblings. This child felt that she could not live her own life, that her life was being wasted.
As Jamie established a strong empathic relationship with her child, the depression increasingly turned to grief, a grief that spilled out as she saw the plight of this child, the loss, the waste. Through her empathy and fidelity to these feelings, Jamie became an authentic unifying center for this child, allowing her story to be told, heard, and felt, and thus bringing this lost, young part of herself back into her inner community.
AN ADDICTION TO PURPOSE
At the same time, Jamie came to see that her driving need for a vocation was in fact a reaction to the feelings of this important layer within her. Her efforts had not in fact been a simple, straightforward search for a calling in life but were largely desperate attempts to avoid the emerging feelings of the child. In effect, the quest for a calling had become an addiction, functioning as any other addiction in preventing primal wounding from entering awareness.
In retrospect, she also recognized a pride and an inflation that infused her quest—she was looking for a purpose grand enough to wipe out the felt sense of waste and worthlessness, a motivation that had led her to subtly ignore or abhor vocations that seemed unworthy of her.
So Jamie continued living with this childhood layer of herself, and in so doing, she began to respond to the child’s wish to do drawing and painting and also to spend more time in nature. In the early stages this seemed like a sidetrack from her quest for a vocation, but as she gradually understood the desperate drivenness of this quest, she became increasingly willing to spend time with and for the child.
Then a quite unexpected thing began to happen. Jamie began to feel a peace and a passion in these times with the child. She became more and more interested in her art. She took classes at a local community college, began experimenting with a variety of media, and eventually even entered local art shows. It was as if the child was a lost seed that, once recovered and nurtured, could now blossom in its current life. And as this direction unfolded, her driven search for a grand life purpose begin to evaporate.
As her pressing need for an exalted vocation waned, so too did her anger with God. Her spiritual practices became times of a felt connection to God, and in fact, she realized that she felt most connected when doing her art. She struggled with this, however. She wondered if “just doing art” was “serving” enough in the world. Honestly facing this question—now without the pressure of finding her “Supreme Life’s Purpose”—she realized that what she was doing was service. She felt that simply staying with her art was making her a better person and in turn was transforming her relationships with friends and family, society, and the planet as a whole.
To date, Jamie’s art remains what others might call a hobby, but it is in fact a powerful authentic unifying center in which she is holding and being held by her deeper nature; it is a central crucible of her Self-realization, an ongoing connection to Self that infuses and guides her relationship to the seeds of her authentic expression in the world.
In Jamie’s journey we can see the two fundamental relationships in the synthesis phase. There is a committed, empathic relationship with the wounds and gifts of the deepest layers of our personalities, as well as a committed, ongoing relationship with Self via authentic unifying centers that hold us while we hold ourselves.
These two relationships can be seen emerging during psychosynthesis therapy: the empathic relationship with the therapist operating as an authentic unifying center, holding clients while they uncover their heights and depths; or, working in imagery, clients might find themselves holding a younger aspect of themselves while they sense a larger presence holding both of them; or, even the younger layers of the person—which can have a direct relationship with Self as well—unfolding to give wisdom and guidance to the adult. In all of these ways and more, we can see these two relationships forming the backbone or axis of authentic personality.
PERSONAL, SOCIAL, AND GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION
As authentic personality blossoms through the healing of inner and outer relationships, there is an increased empathic connection with ourselves, with other people, and with the world at large. This can, in turn, lead to social action as we engage a world that often is profoundly nonempathic to human vulnerability. Here we can see the deep, unbreakable connection between the transformation of ourselves and the transformation of world—two levels that are frequently, for some reason, seen as being mutually exclusive.
For example, in the above cases in which Ellen was led to quit her job, or Jamie discovered her calling, we can note a natural progression from personal healing to social healing. They were both led to act in ways that did not support the status quo and that pushed for social transformation. They can be considered active agents of social change, struggling with oppression in their own ways.
Social action arising from personal transformation also can be more dramatic, as when people find that they can recognize and report sexual harassment around them; pursue legal action toward perpetrators of abuse; work politically to pass legislation that protects the vulnerable among us, the young, the poor, the disabled, and the elderly; or fight against the massive abuses of the natural environment that threaten the holding environment that every one of us shares—the planet Earth itself.8
Indeed, the very substance of working with the depths within us seems to be addressing abuse and oppression perpetrated by larger systems, beginning with the family. This empathic process of opening up to authentic personality moves naturally from healing the individual and family to healing the wider society and the planet as a whole.
Such concern for the world can of course take the form of economic, religious, artistic, and political agendas beyond the single issue of children. The point here is that a great deal of human suffering is not blamed on the Divine, evolution, nature, or “the way things are” but largely on human empathic failures and/or the structures that embody a lack of empathic responsiveness. And this is a focus about which we can do something. Here we can look deeply into the roots of the broken human condition and begin to discern strategies for healing it. Here service can become a serious effort based on clear insight into the entrenched nature of wounding, suffering, and human evil.
Thus inherent in connecting to deeper levels of our experience, and thereby reestablishing authentic personality, is a larger concern for others and the world. If, however, we refuse to recognize our wounds and our path of healing, we will find it difficult to render true service to a wounded world.
THE PATH OF AUTHENTICITY
As our inner and outer relationships heal, authentic personality begins to unfold. As the blocks to these relationships are unearthed and addressed, as there is more empathic communion among all concerned, and as there is an ongoing commitment to keeping these relationships alive in our lives, we begin to shift away from survival personality and toward authentic personality—into the expression of our true nature, our essential I-amness with other people and the world.
. . . synthesis . . . tends to transcend the opposition between individual and society, the selfish-unselfish polarity.
—Roberto Assagioli
From the point of view of the individual, empathy is thus the force that “integrates” or “synthesizes” the personality. Through self-empathy we can hold all of the different parts of us, allowing a sense of inner multiplicity and unity at the same time. We have sometimes said that “empathy is the glue of the personality.” At a social level, empathic connection functions much the same way; empathy is the source of a solidarity with others and the planet that can hold both unity and differences.
It might even be said that living these inner and outer relationships amounts to our life path or journey—our Self-realization. This journey begins as we grapple with the “egoism” of survival personality and see through the illusions by which we have been living. The journey proceeds into a letting go of addictions and attachments, generated by the survival motivation, toward an acceptance of the profound depths of human vulnerability hidden beneath these.
From this confrontation with attachments, we move into a new relationship with ourselves, others, and the world that is grounded in a sense of the interconnection of all things. In psychosynthesis terms, this is a healing of the primal break between “I” and Self, a communion of personal being with Universal Being.
Thus grappling with our compulsive behaviors and enthrallments and then searching the inner depths for the wounded ones within us can lead to wondrous and creative lives. It is not uncommon to hear someone say, “I am a grateful alcoholic,” or, “I am glad to be an adult child of a dysfunctional family,” or, “I thank the struggles I have had in my life.” As Assagioli (1973c) used to say, “Bless your obstacles.”
Such sentiments do not indicate an identity as a victim, a “poor-me” or blaming stance in life; nor do they entail a condoning of the brokenness of the world; rather, here there is an acknowledgment that suffering can be redeemed. Such statements say: “This is the actual road I have traveled to become who I am today, and I am grateful for the goodness I have found on the journey.”
This journey from survival to authenticity is not one that we finally complete, finding ourselves eventually in a state of blissful perfection. Authenticity is not an enlightened state to be grasped but a direction to be walked. We will always experience some mixture of survival and authentic personality in our lives; we shall always be human beings in an imperfect world.
The point is that we can be human beings in recovery. We can be people who admit our brokenness, face in the direction of authenticity, and walk with others who are traveling this same path. It may even be that the distance we travel is unimportant, and that the real gifts are the fellow travelers we meet along the way.
IN CONCLUSION
So when we are treated empathically by the unifying centers in our lives, we develop authentic personality. We find ourselves aware (consciousness) and intentional (will) within a broad experiential range, and we have a sense of something greater than ourselves that invites us into meaningful pathways of attitude and action. In psychosynthesis terms, authentic personality is a function of our connection—moderated by unifying centers—with Self.
We have seen too, however, that when this connection with Self is broken by nonempathic unifying centers, we undergo primal wounding. This wounding violates our sense of continuity, self-empathy, and relationship, causing us to split off parts of ourselves—to become nonempathic with ourselves—in order to survive in the face of the wounding. This splitting can later be recognized in the intense conflicts among subpersonalities; in surprisingly strong reactions to impingements by the environment; in a vulnerability to attachments, compulsions, and addictions; and in survival personality cutting us off from deeper layers of ourselves.
However, there is another splitting that we have been encountering throughout this book: the splitting between our heights and our depths, between our wounds and our gifts, between our losses and our blessings. Whether with Ellen engaging the pleasures and pains of a more authentic range of experience (Chapter 3), with Mark discovering the early suffering and creative qualities of his subpersonalities (Chapter 4), or with Jamie uncovering the wounds and gifts of her inner child (this chapter), it seems that healing involves the bridging of a split between our brokenness and giftedness.
These examples all point to a more general splitting within us, which seems to pervade all other aspects of the personality—the splitting of higher unconscious and lower unconscious. As we shall explore in the next chapter, this split between our heights and our depths is a major effect of primal wounding.