by Dairlyn Chelette
The I&C committee did a beautiful job of elucidating their thinking about identity in the theme statement of the brochure, with transformation as a subtext. Yet it was the notion of transformation, as it is introduced in the theme, which stirred my most vivid associations.
The critically acclaimed series, Breaking Bad, swept the Emmy awards this year. Superb acting and scripting aside, its enormous appeal lies in the fact that Breaking Bad is fundamentally a story about transformation; to the dark side for sure, but transformation nonetheless. Walter, the impotent, weak and un-noteworthy high school chemistry teacher receives a diagnosis of terminal cancer. The diagnosis gives him new life and explodes his emotional cocoon. He uses his knowledge of chemistry to become a master crystal meth cook and, in order to keep his operation running, transforms himself into a notorious outlaw who is willing to kill.
We watch him descend into a secret world that unleashes aspects of his unrealized self. In a pivotal scene, Walter’s wife, fearing for his life, urges him to turn himself in, plead for mercy and return to the limited, contained man he was before. But it is way too late. Walter is too far along in his transformative journey. His ego has been opened to his sense of power, and he can never again deny the full range of who he is. “I am not in danger,” he snarls… “I AM the danger! Who are you talking to? Who is it you think you see?”
At the other end of the spectrum, psychoanalyst Ethel Person, in her book, Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters, explores the transformative power of romantic passion, including the related dynamics associated with erotic transference. She notes that falling in love creates a situation in which the self is exposed to new risks and enlarged possibilities. “Love arises from within ourselves as a creative act that aims to fulfill our deepest longings, our oldest dreams, and allows us to both renew and transform ourselves. Though seldom endless and never perfect, it is an extremely powerful force.” Whether self-transforming or self-deluding, under the sway of romantic passion, a part of the personality is freed. It is a force capable of changing the lover in profound ways.
In his remarkable book, Traumatic Narcissism, Daniel Shaw delves deeply and personally into the traumatic impact of narcissism in interpersonal relationships in which one person’s identity and subjectivity (needs, feelings, perceptions) is seen as a threat to the narcissist’s sense of moral superiority, and must be suppressed. He identifies this dynamic as the “traumatizing narcissist’s relational system,” which is characterized by “the complementary moral defense;” an emotional system in which claims of moral superiority and unyielding infallibility on the part of the narcissist require that the other accept and carry the burden of badness and moral failure, or risk abandonment. In this system, one is always wrong, and cannot win.
For Alice, it was as though she were perpetually on trial before a kangaroo court, on charges of moral turpitude. At the age of eight, she dreamed that a favorite toy, her beloved stuffed guinea pig, was suddenly staring at her, and as she watched it terror, it said, “You can say one thing before you die.” Her last word before waking, was “Me.”
At stake is her psychic survival: i.e., her ability to experience herself as a subject, rather than as the depersonalized, dehumanized object of the other’s requirements, demands, and judgments.
He gives a moving account of his own narcissistic lapse with this patient.
Initially when I feel myself under attack, I cannot see my own badness. Most often, with Alice, what I can’t see is that sometimes when I think I am helping her, I am actually hurting her, and instead of being willing to recognize it and acknowledge it, I get mad at her for being hurt when I think that what she should feel is helped. Whatever I said that triggered her or made her shut down or panic may have been right, but my rightness is not as important as the pain I am evoking in her. If I can let myself feel my own shame about the pain I inflict, we can get somewhere.
Transformation out of objectification occurs in the process of repairing relational disruptions: acknowledging fallibility, being accountable for doing harm, apologizing, making amends, forgiving--all of which are intersubjective processes.
Transformation can lead us down a path for good or ill. Whether it comes in the form of a powerful emotional experience, or through the painstaking and careful dismantling of outmoded defenses, the essential element is its ability to throw personality in flux long enough to make room for buried aspects of the self to be revealed. Psychotherapy’s value lies in its capacity to offer opportunities for freeing the self from the cocoon of limiting patterns. Our hope for our patients and ourselves is that we may come to know a fuller range of who we are and of life’s possibilities. What I value so much about the Academy is its unique invitation to all of us to explore together what it is that transforms us in our work and in our lives, and to risk asking…who is it that you think you see?
