Use Your Illusion: Further Encounters with the Illusive Real

Following on from my previous post on the illusive real, I now think it is important to provide a proper definition of what that is, by virtue of a more in-depth interrogation of what is meant by the concept. I also provide examples of how a deeper understanding of the illusive real has the potential to foster a playful and rich engagement with metaphysical reality.

Firstly, given that the word illusion is associated with deception, it is often considered to be a human encounter with something that isn’t real. Etymologically, illusion consists of the Latin components in(against) and ludere (play), which form illudere (to mock) and finds its way to the English illusion, associated with deception. I will argue in this article, that due to this original antagonistic conjunction, the illusion has become over-identified with its deceptive component and has been divested of its important and meaningful associations with play and creativity. Perhaps more importantly, as a result of this over-identification, experience of illusory encounters are perceived to be outside of reality, whereas I argue, they should be considered very much part of it.

Psychoanalytically, the illusion is either a wished-for internal object, forming part of a necessary developmental process, a psychotic defence, or simply, a common, neurotic, untruth which we tell ourselves as a means of tolerating anxiety. Within this epistemology, the deception must therefore be mourned to see reality. As Winnicott understood, the capacity for illusion signifies the beginning of an important developmental process. In the early stages of life, the infant relates to the breast as-if it were under her control. If an infant is fortunate enough to grow up in what Winnicott calls “the facilitating environment”, which consists of “a good enough mother” who can tolerate the infant’s anxieties, then she can become slowly and gradually dis-illusioned, arriving at a place where she can relinquish the phantasy that the breast is under her magical control. This gradual loss of omnipotence is an important developmental milestone, as it introduces the child to an experience of mourning at the earliest stages of life, and bolsters her potential to tolerate disappointment. It also enables her to have psychological resources at her disposal later in life when she faces difficulty, by providing her with the capacity to think symbolically and play with ideas, to see other perspectives, rather than relying on omnipotent defences such as entitlement, superiority, or concrete thinking, all of which relate to the illusion stage of development. Importantly for Winnicott, this process of dis-illusion and mourning form the basis of the capacity to play; the child no longer only acts as if the breast were under her control, she now realises that she is doing so; she can think about what she does and she has her first encounters with meaning. All of this makes sense, as the illusion – as we have seen, etymologically, signifies a resistance to play, and the incapacity to mourn the illusion not only means the continuation of concrete thinking, but also the attachment to a wish, which is a self-deception. There is, therefore, certainly great value in this process of dis-illusion, as it brings us closer to truths about ourselves, particularly because the way in which we deceive ourselves can cause us plenty of problems later in life.

All of the above provides us with a strong argument for the divestment of the illusion, and this divestment becomes a necessary stage of getting at a truth about one-self - but does that necessarily mean that this truth is “reality” itself? I would argue that there is far more too reality than this: firstly, Winnicott ‘s paradigm contains the implicit assumption that the child’s illusion is “not real”, and he explicitly states that all that the arts or religion are really for is to help us to come to terms with, or sublimate our illusions. This is essentially reductive and myopic, for the illusion not only provides one with a means of accessing as-if states of perception in order to play, but also opens one’s heart to visionary encounters with the mystical, numinous, and the sacred, and to tolerate, enjoy, and find meaning from them; the illusion is therefore part of human experience that is entirely bona fide.

As I wrote in my previous posts on relational presence, the immanent longing of adolescence and its concomitant illusion of eternal love, rather than only being part of a developmental or psychosexual phase that we pass through, also becomes an important experience of an orientation towards a transcendent, metaphysical reality. This profound experience of yearning is both elusive and illusory; hence the hybrid neologism of the “illusive real”. Importantly, the word elusive, like illusion, evolves from ludere, though where the prefix of illusion is against, the verb to elude’s prefix is away from.

If we look at this through the lens of secular materialism, the “illusive” signifier bars access to play through deception in the ways described above, and this access is only granted once the infant comes to terms with the reality of her omnipotent self-deception. However, I would argue that, although the mourning of the illusion can help the child to play due to the newly acquired capacity for as-if states of mind, the disavowal of the reality of the illusion forecloses versions of play which are not based on mourning alone. Moreover, as the illusion is not considered to be real in materialist terms, this compounds the occlusive impact of these two prefixes and forecloses playful engagement with the illusion. If, on the other hand, we can countenance the counterintuitive notion that the illusion is part of the very fabric of reality – which, as an idea, I aver, is inherently playful - then this can broaden and enrich our experience of reality itself. In this way the prefixes of illusion and elude indeed bar us from play and creativity, but this does not mean that we should disengage from them, as if we perceive them only as indicators of hollow deception (not real). Instead, we should do the opposite, and playfully engage with these strange trickster-like elements of language so that we see them for what they are, as sphinx like ciphers which hold the potential of experiences of the unchartered real. This now equips us with a means of engaging with play at a greater depth, and we become more open to experiences of the anomalous, the numinous, the mystical, and the sacred. Children intuitively know how to play in this way, and they engage with the illusive real without any problems. As they grow up, they may become artists, and discover ingenious ways of playful engagement with the illusive real, through Surrealism, Dadaism, ritual theatre, and automatic drawing; they may grow up to become magicians, who engage through the I-Ching, the Qabalah, or tarot cards; the magician is a perfect archetype for the illusive real as s/he represents engagement with play, esoteric knowledge, and eternity.

Whether children, artists, and magicians engage with illusion through play, artistic practice, ritual, or esoteric knowledge, all are driven by a curiosity to know what lies beyond, and, to play with reality. Use your illusion, but remember it is real.

Relational Presence (2): The Illusive Real: Adolescent Love

Interview with Taproot Therapy

The Witches' Cauldron: How we develop a 'cursed' identity

The developmental background to the curse position: The primary and secondary curse.

On the Curse Position and Intuition

On the curse position, and how using your intuition in a new way can help you to feel less of a victim of circumstances to move towards a place of agency and creativity.

On Relational Presence (part 1, video)

How relational presence can enrich and deepen our relationships to others

The Living Stones of Colquhoun and Rodin (Article)

“There is no time in this Cathedral; there is eternity”. Auguste Rodin, The Cathedral is Dying

In December last year, I was fortunate to enough to visit Notre-Dame a week after its official re-opening, following the devastating fire five years earlier. Despite the freezing temperatures, it was a tremendous experience standing in the square, witnessing the splendor of the full moon above the cathedral’s two towers, listening to the cacophonous bells as the evening congregation – and hundreds of tourists – flowed out of the lower portals of the western façade. As my gaze moved slowly beyond the portals, and over the gallery of kings, it settled upon the rose window above the balustrade.

As I attempted to focus on the detail of the window, this became increasingly difficult, as now the bells gathered a savagely sublime momentum, an exhilaratingly captivating speed of sound. The bells dissonantly clashed one moment, melding into a sonic symbiosis of overtones the next; with each attack they seemed to gain greater consciousness of one another, dancing in playful conversation. I could now witness subtle shifts in colour in the rose window; it had now become a synesthetic, kaleidoscopic mandala, a spinning gyre within which sound and vision had become one, dissolving each micro-phase of time in on itself, every temporal shift promising a glimpse into the eternal. Although I was very much swept up by the emotional intensity of this experience, I also took time in this moment to allow myself to sink into a deeper reverie and enjoy fondly thinking about the times I had been to this cathedral before, staring up at this magnificent creation.

It was only as I reflected later on my experience of Notre-Dame, that I began to think about the animistic nature of the way I had related to the cathedral, where I had become attuned to the bells as living, breathing subjects, and this, in turn had animated the rose window with its unforeseen colours. The artist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun deeply understood the importance of this animistic relationship to one’s environment, and the way this becomes a means of connecting with one’s ancestors and the deepness of time.

“Stones that whisper, stones that dance, that play on pipe and fiddle, that tremble at cockcrow, that eat and drink, stones that march as an army - these unseen slabs of granite hold the secret of the country’s inner life”. (Colquhoun, p.64)

It is now clear to me that a profound relationship to the sacred cannot occur without this animistic regard for the subject of its gaze - in Colquhoun’s case here - the neolithic monuments of Cornwall. It is no accident then that Colquhoun and the artist Auguste Rodin appear to have independently used the term “living stones” to describe the vitality and deep reverence that they held towards the sacred creations of history, whether they were neolithic, as in Colquhoun’s Cornish study, or Romanesque/Gothic for Rodin. In Rodin’s essay The Cathedral is Dying the whole cathedral becomes an animate structure comprised of living stones, and experiencing it in its fullness enables one to experience its essence:

“For all holds together, the least element of truth evokes the truth as a whole, and the beautiful is not distinct from the useful, no matter what the ignorant may believe” (Rodin, p.19).

Rodin attributes this essential convergence of beauty and utility to Gothic genius and the architects’ capacity to imbue their towering constructions with the spirits of nature. Rodin, like Colquhoun, Swedenborg, Baudelaire, and many an occultist, understood the importance of observing correspondences in nature in order to access a particular kind of spiritual essence and thus find a means of appreciating its mysteries: “the jubilant uncoils into ornaments like a snake in the sun” as he so beautifully put it.

“Both flower and fruit were models for the Gothics. One learns much by studying sequences, correspondences and analogies – for the same law governs moral and emotional life – providing one already has an understanding of this general law.” (Rodin, 2020, p.27).

It is by understanding “the law” of correspondences which therefore deepens one’s spiritual and emotional connection to the world, and whatever may lie beyond it. However pompously authoritarian it may sound, Rodin does not intend “the law” to mean that we must learn “rules” from a didactic manual, rather that we would enrich our experience of life by practicing a particularly Bergsonian form of intuitive engagement, which would allow the imagination and the intellect to work together, leading us to appreciate “the harmony of oppositions”.

For Rodin, it is by studying correspondences in nature that we gain a greater understanding of the essence of an object and its analogous relationship to other objects in its environment: through this attitudinal shift object (it) becomes subject - thou in Martin Buber’s terms. Rodin laments the absence of this form of relating in a world that fails to appreciate the spiritual treasures of the cathedral, or its profound connection to nature; “these rose windows whose magnificence was inspired by the setting sun or the dawn” (Rodin, p.33).

For Rodin, this respect for correspondences also applies to one’s relationship to time as it enables us to forge a deeper bond with the creations of the past and what it might have felt like to have lived at that time. I an aware that these “how we used to live” type exercises can become quite puerile if they are only done in a historical way, so it is therefore important to allow oneself to imagine, using the trusted tools of reverie and day-dreaming.

When Rodin visits a cathedral, he is “imbued with past centuries, the venerable centuries that produced these marvels” (p.39). For Colquhoun, it concerns what she refers to as “the psychic life of the land” (p.57).

granite, serpentine, slate, sandstone, limestone, chalk and the rest have each their special personality dependent on the age in which they were laid down, each being co-existent with a special phase of the earth-spirit’s manifestation”(ibid).

Colquhoun underscores the individuality of each age of creation and its concordance with spirit and matter: art, religion, magickal ritual, and walking in nature are all potential ways of coming into contact with the many different “personalities” of the past. For Rodin, it is the cathedral’s bells which become the unifying voice through which bygone ages speak to us.

“They are not dead! They speak in the voice of the bells! These three strokes for Angelus that sweetly strike against the sky know no obstacle or limit either in space or time; they come to us out of the depths of the past, they rejoin our Chinese brothers and the deep vibration of the gong” (Rodin, p.39).

Rodin believes that it is our dislocation from the past - to which the deep vibration of the bells unites us - which is the cause of our alienation. I would argue that this alienation is driven by our preoccupation with the future, leading to anxiety and fear as we lose touch with the whole that we may call God, or perhaps instead, the infinite, Ātman, The Real, The Dao, and so on and on. Fear and anxiety are connected with a fragmented, mechanized, reality that we have created which has become almost entirely disconnected from the unifying whole of correspondences and the natural world where the forests of the mind connect with those of the cathedral, or whichever sacred place we are visiting.

Sacred instruments such as the bell, gong, or tanpura therefore help us to find the sound of eternity within, where each tone becomes an Aeon, and its corresponding overtones phenomenologically create a continuity of experience across those Aeons. Paradoxically, although the overtones fill the space between the notes, it is they which, through the embodied nature of the experience and its trance like nature, allow space to open up to us in the fullness of our minds and bodies.

References

Colquhoun, I. (1957). The Living Stones: Cornwall. Peter Owen

Rodin, A. (2020). The Cathedral Is Dying: Auguste Rodin (Ekphrasis). David Zwirner Bookss

On “Empaths” and “Narcissists” (Brief Article)

In depression, in certain cases, it strikes me that there can be a an inner reversion to which we might call something like “oceanic striving”, where the individual unconsciously wishes to return to a state of fusion with the original caregiver(s). One may also look for partners who are seen to have the capacity to fulfill this wish, and who will later become co-conspirators in a particularly destructive union.

In this wished for scenario, there are no problems anymore, and growing up is unnecessary. I suppose this is something like what Michael Balint called “malignant regression”. The partner is recruited to become an idealised lost mother object of yearning, and together the pair then enter a vortex of mutually destructive longing from which it is very hard to escape. The partner has also been chosen as they are wounded in a destructively complementary way; the individual experiences the wounded aspects of his/her partner as a potent “empathic” elixir which he/ she feels will satiate the oceanic striving. You will perhaps have seen plenty online about “empaths” and “narcissists” which often over-simplifies the dynamic I briefly describe, by locating all the “badness” in the other, and encouraging people to continue to oscillate between idealisation and denigration of themselves and other people. This unfortunately continues to bolster an unconscious strategy to avoid mourning, and ensures that the individual remains walled in by depression and self-loathing (melancholia). This can become very destructive as it is a malignant spell, and which prevents mourning of the wounded self.

In order to begin healing from this form of depression, it is therefore important to recognise the hurt in oneself, and the associated feelings of aggression, rather than locating them in others as “narcissists”, or any other terms which limit the spectrum of human experience.

On Relational Presence (Part Two)

As we enter adolescence we are often confronted emotional truths that are not easy to come to terms with. This is a time of burgeoning desires to individuate, fuelled by fantasies of liberation from the shackles of parental projections, rules, and regulations. An important driver of the teenage rebellion is an increasing awareness of the fallibility of one’s caregivers, and their depressing capacity to disappoint. After all, cherished memories of care can soon become tarnished through disagreements, misunderstandings, abandonment, and, in the worst cases, neglect and abuse. All such experiences become the blueprint for the way we relate to care as we move through our lives, and the way in which we give and receive love. 

When one falls in love for the first time, nothing else in the world exists; it is a state of becoming which is experienced as infinite, though this affective experience of eternity is quite different from that of the childhood experiences of love (relational presence) that were adumbrated in the first article in this series, it nonetheless stems from there; yet this adolescent manifestation is infused with a libidinised, intoxicating, abandon to which we can only surrender. Uncertainty and a sense of precarity are important drivers of this form of desire. When reality inevitably rears its ugly head, a nagging gargoyle reminds us that we should have heeded the dangerous signs as a warning, and seen beyond the immediacy of gratification. This is a harsh reminder of love’s evanescence, presenting us with a painful emotional reality: if love cannot survive its initial fires of first passion, only ashes will remain; there is no phoenix rising. Thus, we must accept love’s loss, no matter how much our hearts yearn for its resurrection.  This form of love promises the return of early relational presence, but its inherent excitement is driven by a deeper knowledge that this is illusory.

W.B. Yeats depicts this painful transition in his poem ‘Ephemera’ : the ‘child’ of short-lived passion is worn out, and can no longer be roused. Indeed, when love dies in a romantic relationship we are often heartbroken, and in the midst of our grief, we feel that the child of our earliest experiences of relational presence has fallen asleep forever; we have become dis-illusioned; all that now remains is a heart-rending nostalgia, a haunting specter of what once was. In the aftermath of this experience of loss, one may feel that it is one’s own desire which is the problem, and if only one had only not felt this desire that this love could have lived on. This is a cruel illusion.

It can be easy to write-off falling in love for the first time as an illusory phenomenon, though this ‘illusion’ is created by very real experiences. In this respect the most beautiful works of art are illusions. For William Blake, lost love represents the loss of innocence; his ‘The Garden of Love’ sees flowers cruelly replaced by tombstones. Although it is the beauty of nature for which the poet yearns, it is also that which, in the end, cruelly strangles the joys of his youth. Gérard de Nerval employs similar imagery of flowers and tombs to depict the agony of lost love in his ‘El Desdichado’ (The Disinherited). The poet pleads for the restored unity of the rose and the vine-leaf, longing for a near-symbiotic union; yet I wonder whether it is the ardor of the poet’s pining which causes these two symbolic lovers to become so intertwined that they could no longer see each other.

In Oscar Wilde’s poem ‘From Spring Days to Winter’, lost love is represented by the dove, whose golden wings are now broken, perhaps depicting a loss of contact not only with the beloved, but also with a sacred and enchanted dreamworld. In Wilde’s poem, and for the Romantic poets before him, there is an apparent parallel between the loss of Romantic love and a bygone transcendent ‘Jerusalem’; an Atlantean mythopoeic haven for which the poet yearns, an illusive real which becomes the basis of Romantic desire. 

Returning to Nerval’s stirring line in ‘El Desdichado’ - ‘Et la treille où le Pampre à la rose s’allie’ - beyond the individual relationship to the symbols of the rose and the vine-leaf, for the Romantics more broadly, it is art which becomes the treille upon which the rose (love) and the vine-leaf (the enchanted world) can alchemically unite. Indeed, Nerval’s individual longing is one that cuts across the Romantic experience; an inner search for a transcendent, unifying eternal which is also driven by the paradoxical awareness of mortality and threat of strangulation by the binding forces represented by the horrors of Blake’s Urizen: modernity. 

The spirit of Romanticism was becoming overcome by realism, like a candle being carried into a room fitted with electric light (Holmes, p.262).

Time and the progress of modernity are enemies of the Romantic, a lover who stubbornly and naively ‘holds a candle for’ one who has since long since moved on. Yet this pertinacious grip is the nucleus of the Romantic spirit, and its childlike naiveté is the creative fire at the heart of the illusive real. However, looking once again at Nerval’s ‘El Desdichado’, one can clearly see how this candle also casts a haunting shadow upon the Romantic’s dreams. Where Nerval pleads ‘Rends-moi le Pausilippe et la mer d’Italie’ (give me back Posillipo and the sea of Italy), there is a demanding, almost entitled nature to his wish for the past’s healing reprise, and as the poet’s demand appears to go unheeded, then I can only imagine this is felt to be a rejection of his love. Importantly, it is out of the feelings of rejection inherent to lost love that resentment and bitterness are often born, and it is this resentment which lies dormant in Romanticism. This resentment becomes more explicit in the Gothic and Decadent movements where these tenebrous affective aspects are now brought into sharp relief, continuing to forge a link between the developmental difficulties of adolescence and the cultural creep of modernity and its concomitant loss of wonder and mystery. 

As respective examples of the Gothic and Decadent movements, both Dracula and Dorian Grey - in their own unique ways - limn a Romanticised, Luciferian rebellion against the vulnerability of humanity. Aside from their supernatural gifts, both characters are incapable of real human love or tenderness. In part, it is this particular emotional deficit which drives their destructive actions, and with whom anyone whose love has been rejected can, at the deeper levels of the self, identify. Indeed, the adolescent identification with characters such as Dracula and Dorian Gray often begins with an experience of loss or rejection of one’s love. This loss is libidinised by a resentment towards an almighty, depriving other who is deemed to have shattered the precious illusion of eternal love and/or worldly enchantment. This resentment may relate to the earliest experiences of rejection: from one’s caregivers, in friendship, romantic relationships, or any combination thereof. This rejection relates to the adolescent’s closeness to the most isolated part of the self: the outsider.

Adolescents form aggregates rather than groups, and by looking alike they emphasize the essential loneliness of each individual (Winnicott, 1963, p.190)

For the Gothic and Decadent spirit, it is the bitter resentment of the rejected outsider which is romanticised; the lamented dead flowers and tombstones of the Romantics become the Decadent and Gothic raison d’être, an embrace of decaying, terrifying beauty (Dorian Gray), or a dreadful fascination with tombstones, death and the night (Dracula). Although it may appear that the supernatural powers which these anti-heroes possess provide compensation for feelings of resentment and suffering, on a deeper level they appear to be continued punishments for a repressed Romantic longing, a mocking retribution for the hubristic rejection of the real of mortality and modernity: Dracula possesses superhuman powers, yet he is also condemned to depend on the blood of mortals for his survival - he is still very much tethered to an illusive real that is divested of all creativity and love. Like Faust, Dorian Gray enjoys the promise of eternal gratification, but it is his enjoyment of the illusion which leads to his fall, rather than the illusion itself. 

Both Dracula and Dorian Gray are doomed outsiders and cannot exist within the prosaic confines of society, and once again, herein lies their appeal. Yet surely, beyond their apparent psychopathic tendencies and lack of conscience, it is ultimately an absence of the capacity for love which is their undoing. It is this missing link which perhaps leads both characters to transgress the illusive and become moths to the flame of the real. This transgression is a defensive maneuver formed from the archetypal infant need to know what is going to happen. Indeed, to enjoy the illusive aspects of the real (mystery, wonder, negative capability), we need these early foundations of security and predictability, though not everyone of course is fortunate enough to benefit from such solid emotional foundations, to have been gifted a mythical ‘trellis’ on which the ‘rose’ of mystery and ‘vine-leaf’ may climb. Knowledge and realisation of this lack may cause great resentment, envy, grief, anger, and sadness; yet the mourning of what one has lost is the beginning of a path towards the mysteries of the illusive real.

Holmes, R. (1985). Footsteps. New York: Harper Perennial.

Winnicott, D. W. (1963). Communicating and not communicating leading to a study of certain opposites. In The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. New York: International Universities Press, 1965, pp. 179–192.

On Relational Presence (Part One)

The world has become a busy and particularly noisy place. Even if we live in remoter, ‘rural’ areas, access to quiet contemplation is often hampered by the rumble of planes, or the grinding screech of power tools on an otherwise sleepy Sunday afternoon. However, although it is tempting to do so, the intention of this article is not to bemoan the abundance of noise, but instead to think about the value of what I call ‘relational presence’ as an antidote.

What is relational presence? When we are in silence with another person, if we can allow ourselves to get beyond the initial anxiety of experiencing its lack of mental or emotional stimulus as an impingement, relational presence can become a means of reverie, contemplation, and a deepening of one’s connection to one’s own thoughts. Relational presence does not necessarily have to include the physical presence of the other: when we are in the midst of a day-dreaming reverie for example, we may think about someone of whom we are fond, and in doing so, this brings us comfort. The person may be far away, or perhaps no longer even alive, but in our reverie we are brought closer to them, and, at some level, we feel that the experience is intimately shared. 

I cannot call to mind where or when, in my childhood, I had seen a stained glass window in a church. Nor do I recollect its subject. But I know that when I saw her turn round, in the grave light of the old staircase, and wait for us, above, I thought of that window; and I associated something of its tranquil brightness with Agnes Wickfield ever afterwards.

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

In this beautifully poignant piece of writing, the stained glass window becomes animated through the ‘tranquil brightness’ of David’s love; it is the emotional content of the memory of Agnes which brings what William Blake calls the ‘divine image’ into being. Perhaps one might say that David’s love for Agnes is what brings him closer to the divine image, and as we have seen with experiences of the numinous, the sacred is very much part of our emotional lives, and it is through our emotions that we can reach it. 

Of course we are often most aware of the value of relational presence when it is no longer there: we do not know what we’ve got until it’s gone. This loss of relational presence is depicted in Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man with great sensitivity, where its protagonist George must come to terms with the loss of his beloved partner, Jim.

Only after a few instances does George notice the omission which makes it meaningless. What is left out of the picture is Jim, lying opposite him at the other end of the couch, also reading; the two of them absorbed in their books yet so completely aware of each other’s presence.

I first read A Single Man thirty years ago, yet the very particular affective nature of this short passage and the experience of being ‘absorbed’ into one’s own imagination whilst maintaining an emotional awareness of a loved one has stayed with me; it is such a moving and profound example of gentle and tender intimacy, and a deep expression of love. Indeed, it is this emotional tenderness which not only becomes a means of emotionally holding the other, but clears the way to the imaginal; the safety to explore one’s inner world stems from relational presence, and a closer relationship to the inner world of the imaginal can only enrich our relationship to the outer world. Relational presence is unconditional; nothing is expected of the other, though like George, one would feel a deep loss should they no longer be able to have an embodied experience of their loved one’s presence. After all, in the midst of grief, the memory is but a shadow. 

Despite the emphasis placed upon quiet at the beginning of this article, this by no means excludes conversation as part of relational presence; in fact it is a very important aspect of it. However, the conversation of relational presence has a particular quality to it that is distinct from ‘having a chat’. First of all, there is little impulse to hasten to fill the spaces between words that are exchanged; pauses are mutually understood as parts of a relational tapestry, a lunar equivalent to the solar of words, one might say. Pauses are paths which pave the way to shared contemplation; they are invitations to dream together, perhaps of shared memories which neither party has thought about for many years. The mutual dreaming of the memory brings it to life once again, and, as with David Copperfield’s stained glass window, its colours are painted with the palette of a shared emotional response; feelings of fondness, nostalgia, wonder, dread, regret, or sorrow. 

If we are fortunate, our earliest experiences of relational presence are those we cannot remember; of being cared for and treasured. As we grow up, we - hopefully - then begin to form memorable experiences of being cherished and cared for. These memories often take place in very ordinary ways, and such care is not usually part of a ‘big gesture’, yet we feel profoundly safe and loved in those moments. There is an important temporal aspect to these experiences too, because when we feel loved and cared for, we are then saved from an awareness of the ephemeral nature of these precious times, especially when we are still children; when we feel loved in this way it is as if we are held in the arms of eternity. As William Blake put it, ‘If a thing loves, it is infinite’.

Thank you for reading.

The next article in the series considers the way in which we relate to our early experiences of love and care later in life, particularly if we have suffered childhoods where care has been absent. I also consider the way that the loss of relational presence is portrayed in literature, with particular regard to examples from romantic, gothic, and decadent texts. I conclude the series by thinking about relational presence and its relation to the numinous.

Podcast Interview on Back from the Borderline

https://shows.acast.com/back-from-the-borderline/episodes/the-curse-position-trauma-supernatural-psychotherapy

Hermitix Podcast Interview

The Devil’s Culpa

In ‘Trauma and the Supernatural in Psychotherapy’ I write about the psychic interplay between guilt and evil that arises in cases of relational trauma.

When one experiences developmental trauma at the early stages of one’s life, one’s caregivers’ needs can easily become confused with one's own. As a result of a complex interplay of factors beginning in the deepest recesses of the mind, the individual feels that they are a ‘bad person’. This is because relational trauma takes place at a stage when one is not yet equipped with the psychological and emotional apparatus to make sense of it. If one’s caregivers are perceived to be responsible for the neglect or abuse that has taken place, this creates a significant deficit in terms of the absence of having a caring mind to help one to begin to make links between events and one’s feelings about them.

As a result of these deficits, and the unthinkable aspects of the trauma, the child unconsciously takes on the ‘bad’ aspects of the caregiver, and then begins to blame him/herself; to ‘take on’ what Fairbairn (1943) calls the ‘burden of badness’. Those who have taken on this burden often feel that they weigh heavily on other people throughout their lives. As a result of this burden, one then experiences feelings of rage, disappointment, or despair as manifestations of one’s badness/ evil, and unconsciously feels that expression of these emotions will only lead to abandonment and compound one’s immanent sense of badness. One begins to see one’s innate needs for love or affection as acts of selfishness, or capricious indulgence. This is the net result of what Ferenczi called 'identification with the aggressor' (1988), to describe instances where the child takes on the guilt of the perpetrator. This combination of guilt and the ‘burden of badness’ then conjoin to form a harsh, punitive conscience.

Satan in Paradise. Gustave Doré

The individual consequently experiences an ontological shame at the core of one's subjectivity (faulty); if something goes wrong, one is ‘at fault’ (guilty); and, finally, is often afflicted by the overarching sense that he/she has somehow invited the actions of the perpetrator due to inherent badness, or evil. This relational process is redolent of the folklore of the vampire: the winged revenant does not, after all, go anywhere without an invitation.

As a result of the developmental trauma and its associated unconscious phantasies, the child consequently feels culpable and evil in equal measures; a paralysing psychic state which, in ‘Trauma and the Supernatural in Psychotherapy', I call ‘culpevility’ or ‘the Devil's culpa'.

Like the vampire, we often think of the Devil as an archetypally evil entity: when we speak of someone as ‘Devil incarnate’, this betrays this perception, as unlike most of us, the Devil lives without a conscience to contend with. In this sense the Devil is only evil, and simply gets on with being bad, carrying out his malevolent deeds without compunction.

However, we may also perceive the Devil through another mythological lens, this time as an outcast, unjustly expelled from heaven. This may feel closer to the traumatised individual’s familial experience of alienation. This version of the Devil is Milton’s romanticised Lucifer, a Promethean hero who rebels against a dictatorial supernatural authority. By drawing on these two different mythological perspectives, we can see how one may take on the disavowed conscience of the ‘evil’ perpetrator (guilt and the ‘burden of badness’), but perhaps at the same time identify with the more Promethean/ Luciferian aspects of them: one feels an affinity with the perpetrator as a ‘co-outcast’: a kind of trauma bond, if you will. This is however driven by an unconscious phantasy that one can somehow replace the ‘evil’ perpetrator with a loving and caring parent, thereby reversing the original trauma. Sadly, in this way one only creates a romanticised and nostalgic ‘pseudo’ tenderness.

Importantly, in having taken on the guilt of the perpetrator, the individual is deprived of agency later in life by confusing his/her own responsibilities with those of others, thereby reenacting the relational dynamics of infancy. As the individual continues to find his/her own aggression unbearable, he/she may only be able to locate feelings of rage in others, or equate feelings of love and tenderness with contempt. This is because the individual feels that they must always defend against the feelings of vulnerability and fear of abandonment that threaten them to their emotional core.

Psychotherapy can therefore help one to find one's sense of agency through a process of mourning; by understanding what belongs to whom, and acquire a temporal sense of where responsibility lies in one’s life story, as one develops a better sense of self and other. Through this grieving process the individual can begin to foster a clearer relationship with one’s ideals aside from being ruled by culpevility. This means that responding to one’s own needs, desires and dreams is less likely to be experienced as a transgression against one’s inner God/ gods.

If you would to like to read more about this subject and matters related to it, my book on trauma and the supernatural is available now.

Fairbairn, R. (1943). The Repression and the Return of Bad Objects (with Special Reference to the War Neuroses). In W. R. Fairbairn, Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality . London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Ferenczi, S. (1988). Confusion of tongues between adults and the child – The language of tenderness and of passion. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 24: 196–206

The therapeutic power of drawing

I was asked by artist Jude Cowan Montague to be part of this research article into the therapeutic power of drawing/ illustration