On June 23, citizens of the United Kingdom are being asked to vote whether or not we should remain faithful to the European Union. Should we try to patch things up and make it work? Or, perhaps citing “irreconcilable differences,” opt for a separation and divorce? Stay or go? Such a stark, black-and-white choice in a scenario characterised by multiple shades of grey. Does it feel too good to leave—but also too bad to stay? There are push and pull factors on both sides of the ledger: Stay: pull factors • We like Europe and the Europeans, and they like us. The way you wear your hat, the way we sip our tea. We learn from each other. Our doors are always open to each other. We’ve known each other such a long time. We’ve been through such a lot. We work well together. We’ve more or less kept the peace for decades and our joint finances are successful. Let’s stay together.
Go: pull factors • We’ll be free without you. You’ve been holding us back all these years. Unshackled, a great deal of joy and energy will be released and we will surely do great things. We can become the person we have always wanted to be. And we can see other people! Already we’ve flirted with China, Brazil. It’s all very exciting! Unchain my heart. Go: push factors • For the xenophobes, anti-immigrant hysterics, little Englanders, Daily Mail readers, empire nostalgists and Social Darwinists, the decision is easy. They’ve never liked you, and never wanted anything to do with the arranged marriage. And they think they’re better than you—“we” are surely good, whereas “you” are surely bad, lazy, criminal, dirty, weak, perverted, bankrupt, corrupt, attracted to peculiar foods. We don’t think those things, but we’re tired of being treated with contempt. We never get a say, our opinion doesn’t matter. We always have to compromise and do it your way. You are maxing out our joint credit card. You are too bossy, aggressive or passive-aggressive. You make the rules, we have to follow them. You’re just not very generous, and you're never going to change. And we’re just too different. We can still be friends, but if we stay married things will only get worse. Love will tear us apart. Your relationship referendum The EU referendum is powerful metaphor for your more personal, intimate relationships, partnerships, marriages. Are you unhappy? Should you stay or should you go? Again, there will be a tapestry of circumstances. Some push factors foreclose any other considerations, for example domestic abuse. Others can be big but not necessarily insurmountable, such as an affair or betrayal. And there are always pull factors keeping you together: your shared history, the convenience of the status quo, and, above all, children. And how will it be on your own anyway? The stereotype is that women feel the immediate emotional impact of a break-up more than men, but long-term fare much better on their own than men do. A piece of research from 1972 suggests that marriage is bad for the mental health of women, which given the power dynamics of some very traditional marriages isn’t surprising, although later figures show no gender difference. You imagine a glamorous bacherlorhood perhaps, free of obligation and duty, exploring all those things you wanted to do but never had the time. Maybe the reality is you are home alone in an indifferent world. There are no invitations to dinner or weekends away. Just you and the deafening sound of the phone not ringing. Who wants to be lonely? But maybe some loneliness would be good for you? Preliminary investigations • Jannah Walshe recommends a clear-headed assessment of the relationship—not so much the other person—first alone and then together, with questions like these: Is this relationship serving us both or just the other person? Do I spend more time questioning whether the relationship is right or wrong than enjoying it? Is there more to learn for me in this relationship, or can I best learn and grow outside of this relationship? Would leaving this relationship be an act of self-care? • Similarly, Bruce Derman Ph.D. offers 7 questions to ask if you’re thinking of divorce, starting with: Were you ever really married? Was there a time when you has an us, with reciprocal, mutual intimacy? Or have you always been a bit like flatmates who sometimes have sex? • Take Relate’s relationship MOT quiz. It’s good to talk The best advice if you’re not happy is to return once again to a simple, four-letter-word: talk. It’s not easy, especially if one of the problems in the relationship to begin with was not talking. • Relationship and marriage expert Dr. John Gottman claims couples wait an average of six years of being unhappy before speaking out. You will never get those six years back again. • Belgium has the highest divorce rate in the world, 71 percent, and the second-highest suicide rate in Western Europe. These facts are often attributed to “binnenvetter”—a characteristic Flemish personality who bottles things up inside. • It is so much easier to talk with a mediator, referee, coach, guide—a couples counsellor. Find one online or through organizations like Relate or the Tavistock Centre. In “Hold me tight,” Dr. Sue Johnson advocates “emotionally-focussed therapy”: “seven conversations for a lifetime of love” that explore and promote each partner’s emotional responsiveness to each other. “Emotion comes from a Latin word emovere, to move,” she writes. If a couple is going to reconnect, they have to “let their emotions move them into new ways of responding to each other.” Tough decisions can be made with compassion • In his book ”I love you but I’m not in love with you,” Andrew G. Marshall says “the ILYB conversation,” with 100 percent honesty, can lighten the path to a relationship renaissance—or to the exit sign. If the latter, the ILYB talk will help you to make sense of the breakup. Having a clear, truthful narrative about why the partnership ended is crucial to the mourning process—to be left, cheated on or suddenly “ghosted,” without explanation, can cause months and years of misery. • Whether you stay or go, it’s never black and white, and you have some control over what the shades of grey look like. In “Rewriting the Rules,” Meg John Barker writes that you don’t have to follow the old stereotypical rom-com/sitcom rules of a break-up which dictate it’s completely over, there’s a good guy and a bad guy, and the former will never speak to the latter again. Relationships don’t end, says Barker, they change. Breaking up with someone with love and respect can spare a lot of pain all around. Stay or go? Or something else? Perhaps if you listen, you might just hear the generous, loving voice of your own wisdom. It knows it's not all your fault. It knows it's not all your partner's fault, either. It has compassion for you both. It knows what to do. Trust it. To partners past, present and future—to Europe—let’s give thanks, and be grateful. We had some really special times together, didn’t we? We’ll always be there for each other, on some level. Things die, love lives on. Long considered a sexist dinosaur with a cocaine habit and some bizarre ideas—does anyone believe that little boys literally fear castration, want to kill their fathers and have sex with their mothers?—Sigmund Freud is enjoying something of a renaissance. As Oliver Burkeman recently outlined, the therapy Freud invented, psychoanalysis, is at last gaining some much-needed empirical support, while at the same time the default treatment on offer in the U.K., quick fix, symptom-focussed cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), is increasingly looking like some sort of snake oil. CBT appeals to our common sense. But common sense isn't as common as we'd like to believe. Freud’s revelation was that we are not necessarily always logical, rational beings making optimal choices as we navigate through life’s vagaries, that we are in fact to a large extent strangers to ourselves.
Therapy today Freud’s influence was far-reaching and profound. But he was a flawed character. You get the feeling he started to believe in his own myth. Patients often had to fit into his theories rather than the other way round. Any dissent might be met by indignant harrumphing or an ended friendship. He was capable of exploiting his position as a white male authority figure for personal ends. His work was sometimes more to do with furthering the legend of Sigmund Freud than with healing. Some of his ideas and speculative musings have great metaphorical and symbolic value, yet he invited ridicule by insisting on speaking in absolutes and the rigid certainties of hard science. He was somewhat obsessional, detached, and ironically perhaps not so much of a people person, once writing, “I have found little that is ‘good’ about human beings on the whole. In my experience, most of them are trash.” The best they could hope for was “common unhappiness.” In photographs, his facial expressions run the gamut from utter foreboding to grim disdain. Freud claimed psychoanalysis worked. He would identify unconscious motivations and unhelpful patterns, explain them to the grateful patient and, thus fortified, the patient would make better choices going forward. Except that very often they didn’t. Today’s therapists who work at any depth will, like Freud, want to uncover your blueprint, your patterns, your unconscious processes. They might explore your childhood, interpret significant memories, analyse your dreams, which for Freud were the “royal road” to the unconscious. But they know that, while self-knowledge is helpful, it only takes a client so far. Lasting change and healing comes from the heart as well as the head, through acceptance, support and love. Research shows it is the therapeutic relationship itself which heals. Good therapists are not inflated with their own importance, nor blinded by their own certainties. They treat clients ethically, not just because there are codes of ethics to abide by, but because ethical therapy is inherently good therapy. Above all, they are fully engaged with the client, noticing what is happening between them, and always working in partnership with them, in their best interests, rather than lording over them as they lie on the couch, prostrate and exposed (whether as a client or a therapist, I prefer to sit chair to chair and eye to eye). A good therapist cares. It’s not enough to know and be known. To thrive in this life it helps, too, to love and be loved. An important ending warrants cake. And at a meeting of therapists, what better than a cake bearing Sigmund Freud’s face? How very Freudian. The father of psychoanalysis would likely regard biting into his face as a highly Oedipal act. He might note our obedience to the pleasure principle: we get cake, we eat too much, then the reality principle sets in—we feel gross and our super-ego makes us feel guilty. He would chuckle at our cake-related repetition compulsion. He'd probably say the whole thing was all about sex. What actually did Freud have to say about cake? A quick online search of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud reveals a handful of mentions. A retelling of an interpretation of a cake-related dream. An analysis of an irritating, unfunny joke involving cake. A 1909 letter to Ferenczi offering “most cordial thanks for the very splendid holiday cake.” And this little tale, courtesy of one of Freud’s closest chums, Dr. Hanns Sachs: “Our maid is particularly fond of a certain kind of cake. There is no possible doubt of this, as it is the only thing that she always makes well. One Sunday she brought in this particular cake, put it down on the sideboard, removed the plates and cutlery of the previous course and stacked them on the tray on which she had brought in the cake; she then put the cake back on the top of this pile instead of on the table, and disappeared with it into the kitchen. Our first idea was that she had noticed something that ought to be put right about the cake, but when she failed to appear again my wife rang and asked: ‘Betty, what has happened to the cake?’ ‘How do you mean?’ replied the maid, not understanding. We had first to point out to her that she had taken the cake away with her again. She had put it on the pile of dishes, carried it out and put it away ‘without noticing’. “Next day, as we were about to eat what remained of this cake, my wife noticed that there was just as much as we had left the day before—in other words, that the maid had rejected her own share of her favourite dish. When asked why she had not eaten any of the cake she replied in some embarrassment that she had not wanted any. “The infantile attitude is very clear on both occasions: first the childish insatiability which did not want to share the object of her wishes with anyone, followed by the equally childish defiant reaction: ‘If you grudge it me, keep it for yourselves; I don't want anything at all now’.” |
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AuthorJohn Barton is a counsellor, psychotherapist, blogger and writer with a private practice in Marylebone, Central London. To contact, click here. |