Caroline's Therapy I

The Two Selves Hypothesis

Inner experiences such as feelings and emotions serve to separate us from our external environment somewhat, thereby helping to define an autonomous sense of self. At the root of many of these affects are childhood adaptations; nevertheless, subjectively they often seem to derive from the person’s genes. Consequently, most people see life as a journey of self-discovery, a journey wherein a person finds out what his "genes" will let him become, in terms of talents, interests, and ways of responding to experiences.

If a person completely accepted his childhood indoctrination, there would be no motive to grow psychologically, and therefore there would be no psychotherapeutic professionals and no self-help books on bookseller’s shelves. The fact that "talking cure" therapists flourish and self-help books abound is evidence that many people find themselves in conflict. The conflict, I believe, is between the person’s real self--the self that lives in the person’s affects--and the person’s wished-for self. The latter is based on the person’s more mature assessment of what he should be able to do and how he should be able to feel. It is a self, however, that enjoys little affective support, precisely because it is primarily based on observation of what seems to be true about others.

For most people, the conflict becomes expressed most intensely during adolescence, because it is at this time that a person seeks to put his wishes into practice. Typically, however, the growth achieved during this period is minimal and highly focused (usually around career issues), so the person eventually resigns to "settling down" with the self of his childhood, which has escaped modification in most fundamental respects.

If people were actually able to settle down with the selves of their childhood, there would again be no therapeutic profession. But we constantly measure ourselves against others, in terms of what we and they can do and have and in terms of how they and we seem to feel. These continuing unconscious assessments keep the conflict alive, and many people live with this conflict their entire lives without doing much about it.

There is no psychological necessity operating here. All there is is the fact that we don’t teach people how to grow. We don’t even study growth. After all, there is no Journal of Normal Human Development, no research centers similarly named. If you want to read something focused on psychological growth, you have to turn to self-help books, which often misrepresent or oversimplify the process.

The subject of normal human development is important to CM, because all of the patients its practitioners treat are constitutionally normal. They merely made mistakes in childhood, mistakes of types any other normal child would have made under the same set of circumstances. A case in point is Caroline, whose therapy I would like to discuss in a series of installments in terms of the Two Selves Hypothesis.

What Caused Caroline To Seek Therapy

A person in conflict between a real and a wished-for self has no way to resolve this conflict in favor of the latter except by seeking experiences that confirm the legitimacy of the wished-for self. Before seeking therapy, Caroline had taken a step in this direction with respect to her wished-for identity as an artist. She sought to discover whether a respected institution would agree with her or her parents, whether, that is, such an institution would judge that she was seeking an artistic career probably because of talent, rather than merely because she was being disagreeable, as her parents had charged. And she received a measure of the confirmation she sought. Not only was she admitted to the art school, she received a scholarship, to boot.

But there was a problem, a problem that was one of the factors leading her to seek therapy. The problem was that as the first school semester drew near, she lost her motivation to go.

One reason for this, I believe, is that the artistic component of her wished-for self was tainted. Since it was developed in opposition to her parents’ wishes, she couldn’t be certain that it was something she wanted for herself or was merely a symptom of what her parents saw as her obstinate nature. In fact she was often obstinate in the face of her parents’ unreasonable demands, which was another way she stepped in the direction of actualizing her wished-for self. Unfortunately for Caroline’s wish to attend art school, her parents eventually endorsed the move upon discovering that the school was a good one and that Caroline’s attendance there would reflect well on them.

A number of times during her therapy, Caroline became confused as to her motives when she found herself in agreement with her parents. The reason is that her parents’ intrusiveness deprived Caroline of the experiences she needed to develop the skills necessary to seeking an independent self, so she had no real way of judging whether art was a true interest. All Caroline knew for certain while growing up is the what her parents (and particularly her father) wanted for her was almost always detrimental to her self-esteem. Choosing goals that were contrary to her parents’ wishes was the best she could do in defining goals that were right for her. But now everyone was in agreement. Suddenly art became a suspect goal.

Another factor that contributed to her apparent loss of motive was the imminent reality of art school. She had gotten the school to accept her, mainly on the strength of her fine academic record. But very soon now, artistic professionals would begin taking a close look at her artistic abilities. What if she didn’t measure up? What if they found out that talent could not be the driving force in her seeking artistic training, that it must be something else, perhaps pure obstinacy, as her parents had said? It’s wonderful to have dreams; it’s horrible, however, to have them dashed, especially when they are your only dream. And what if these teachers were as dogmatic as her father--how would she handle that?

It would be natural and normal for someone to become concerned about measuring up when about to begin an advanced course of study, even if no pathogenic beliefs entered the picture. Given Caroline’s situation, it seems plausible to believe that her pathogenic fears transformed normal trepidation into a total lack of motive.

The second, and more important reason Caroline sought therapy was the fact that she was out of control. She was possibly jeopardizing her future and her life through alcohol and drug abuse and a Mr. Goodbar style of sexual behavior. She was afraid of what might happen to her, but this was not enough to make her stop. So she sought help.

In trying to understand such behavior it is necessary to understand three things: 1) how the behavior is related to her past, 2) how the behavior functions in her life in the present, and 3) the role it plays in defining her future. As for the past, it was said in the Case Conference that she was being compliant with her parents, who used alcohol and drugs and engaged in free sex. That’s not quite true. Her parents did all of this discreetly, behind closed doors. As far as the outside world knew, they were perfectly respectable. Caroline, on the other hand, dropped the sham. She openly became what her parents were, thereby telling on them, in effect.

As for the present, that was best described by Jessica, who said, "Her dangerous behaviors, which were unconsciously motivated, served to keep her from knowing about and acting upon her potential." They also served to distance her from her parents. The necessity for that was demonstrated the year before when her father tried to make her his "golden girl" when the eldest daughter fell from his graces by dropping out of law school. It was at this time that Caroline started her dangerous behavior, which gradually consumed her life more and more.

Caroline saw herself as the black sheep in the family, as the one who didn’t fit in, the one her father loved least if at all. It is possible to see Caroline in this as the loser in the struggle with three other women for the father’s attention and love. I think, though, that there was more to it than that. Again, her father hurt her repeatedly, as he had done to all of the women in the family. I think Caroline purposely sought to distance herself from her father to the extent that she could. That was her strategy for maintaining some semblance of self-respect. Not even that strategy would assuredly keep her father at bay, however. It became clear, therefore, that she needed to break with him in some way, and there was no better way than to tell on him, something he feared most.

Caroline was at a crossroads. She needed to break with her parents. She had no clue about how to establish an independent identity. And she was filled with fears about who she might be. She needed help. Her behavior and the close calls she experienced because of it served to dramatize that fact to her. She would stake her future on what a new therapist could do.

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