CLINICAL EXCERPTS

SANDY'S CONFRONTATION WITH HER THREE SELVES

Jane Simon

I have worked with Sandra, an actress now in her late twenties, for about five years. She began treatment when she was a struggling acting student. When we first met, she was barely able to function. As she walked down the street, she saw not people's faces, but human faces transformed to those of hungry foxes and wolves. Attending her acting classes was akin to enter- ing a war zone.

The man with whom she was living at the time insisted that she enter therapy. He was willing to pay for it. He had had 10 years of therapy during his teens and twenties which he regarded as having sayed his life. Now he was doing adequately well in his teaching profession.

For Sandy, living with him was a mixed experience. He was paternal, but, as she discovered, in a belittling and critical manner. In the course of analy- sis, she came to realize that he was a father substitute, the kind she didn't want. She also began to see him as having qualities of a vulnerable little boy who depended upon her for reassurance. His weaknesses, apparent to her as her vision broadened in her therapeutic journey, rendered him unattrac- tive. In her eyes, he appeared to take on many characteristics of her despised self. He was needy, vulnerable, and unsure of himself. She left him after about two years of analysis.

The interim between boyfriends was an extraordinarily difficult time for Sandy. Her dependency needs became desperately obvious to her. She lost a great deal of weight and barely functioned professionally. She was acting in a play but isolated herself socially, and went from extremes of fasting to binging on peanuts.

She soon met and quickly moved in with a very talented man who works in the movie-making industry. Within a year of knowing him, she became pregnant, married, and had a child, in that order. Her husband is a very energetic, competent, patient, and generous man who is tolerant of Sandra's problems, though at times has pointed out her shortcomings. Recently he

Jane Simon, M.D., Medical Director, Institutes of Religion and Health, New York.

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis © 1982 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis

Vol. 42, No. 2, 1982 0002-9548/82/020159-0451.00

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has said, "Everything seems a bit too much for you. You're so violent inside. Everything I do for you, you spit back at me."

For Sandy, one of the major pride-invested areas is the question of "needs," "neediness," and "being loved." Sandy comes from a large immigrant family where everyone, including her mother, orphaned at 3 years of age, was so "needy." According to Sandy, no one's needs could ever be satisfactorily met. At age 2, Sandy remembers wait ing for her mother to come home from her evening job. She remembers banging her head and rocking her body in order to soothe herself to sleep. In spite of having two young children and a third on the way, their economic "needs" drove mother to work. During the daytime she also helped her husband in his struggling business, as well as performing household duties and taking care of her chi ldren. Needless to say, there was no t ime for mother's individual needs to be fulfi l led, as well as little for the indiv idual needs of a developing young chi ld. As long as Sandy can remember, she has envisioned her mother "wait ing" at the win- dow, "needing" her father to come home after his long day at work. The word "wait ing" is another pride-invested word for Sandy, laden with sym- bolic meaning, and is l inked to being "needy."

Sandy associates, "to be needy means to be let-down, disappointed, humil iated." Humil iat ion, of course, implies hurt pride. Hurt pride set Sandy on her path of vindictiveness. Sandy says, "If they offer me a crumb, I'll th row it in their faces." She continues:

I see myself at an archway, waiting to enter a room. "Not now," someone says from the dark recesses. And then, again and again,

"Not now. Not now." And I wait. And I ask again. And again the answer is "Not yet." And I am humiliated. I become timid, afraid to ask. I hear the voices: "Get out." And I will not ask again, never. I am innocent. I want to be welcomed.

In the room, now my imaginary room, are my mother and father. If I go in, I'd wilt. I hear yelling, "Get out, get out," as if they have slashed me, as if the words are actually slashes and not words. I wait for a nod of approval, of affirmation. I begin my inner monologue. There are no nods. Every time I am disappointed. I go back a step and then another, shivering and quaking, humiliated and sad. A little girl's voice asks, '~Vhy can't I come in? It's cold and lonely out here."

And then, when they finally say, "Come in," I say angrily with rage, "Never, I'll never come in. It's too late." I want to hurt them. My turn has finally come to get back at them. And besides, if I let them know I need, they will only leave again.

What is evident here is that beneath the disguise of the arrogant, vindic- tive adult lies the hurt, lost, and dependent child who wants to be "loved" and has real "needs." Another problematic and pride-invested area has been the extremely rapid rhythm with which Sandy moves and speaks. At times she has spoken so quickly at audit ions that she has failed to get parts for

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whichshe has been suited. Unable to slow down, to give herself the time and space "needed," she can't find herself in a particular role.

Mother always moved with great speed in order to survive, in order to accomplish the impossibly long lists of tasks in her daily l i fe- in her hus- band's business, her own job, the household, and child care, often left until last. If a child did not perform tasks quickly, he was called "lazy," "a loafer," or "a good-for-nothing." Sandy said, "If I stop running, I'm nobody. II have no identity. I can't do anything." To stop would mean to hear the silence which she calls the "void" and which I associate with alienation. I imagine the silence as analogous to what happens when one knocks on a door and receives no answer. Someone is there, but I am not able to reach that per- son, to make him hear. He is simply too far away. That symbolic person is the voice of the real self.

I imagine the speed at which this entire family has had to run. It is as if their whole lives have been spent running in a marathon race. The rapid pace is an attempt to outrun the despised self, which contains all the unac- ceptable "needs." The despised self for Sandy is as hungry as a wolf, the im- age she externalized onto others during her most desperate time when I first met her. She feared that the hungry wolf within herself would devour indis- criminately. He is capable of killing or maiming, out of hunger or simply out of rage. As a result of vindictiveness, the wolf might devour all those who attempt to come close, because they are offering love, etc., too late. They missed the right moment, which occurred in the far distant past.

At the imaginary finish line is the idealized image of what she must be- come. The image rests on a pedestal, far above mere humans. She is com- posed of perfectly chiseled marble. She has no needs, no hungers, no rages, and no struggles. Though structurally splendiferous, she is unable to make contact with anyone or anything. But then, human contact is not necessary, since in her needless state she is totally self-contained, completely indepen- dent from any worldly ties. She is everything and never has to wait for any- one or anything ever again.

In the course of the race, the real self has been left far behind, covered with dust from the race track, churned up by the racers. She lies like a buried antique hidden away in the basement, long forgotten, her real value unrecognized.

A main focus in our work together has been to have Sandy slow down, stop her race, take her time, palpate her natural rhythms, the rhythms of her real self. She has come a long way. She describes her confrontation with the real self as follows:

I have an imaginary mirror in my mind's eye. In it, I see a girl. She resembles me. She has short hair, dark skin, and dark eyes. She wears exactly what l'm wearing.

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But she looks freer. Her hair swings. She breathes freely. She has no imaginary fears. She looks as if she lives in the Carribbean. She feels loved. She is confident and patient. She flows. There is an ease and simplicity about her.

I can see myself flc~wing at times. I experience this girl as a seduction. She is seducing me. "Why don't you come to me?" she whispers. I experience her request as a seduction, in a sexual sense. To go to her is to give in to her. I have lost, but I have won. Life comes in and takes over and flows.

I feel so generous. I have a center. Everything flows. I can take care of things at the moment they happen. I can take the time to change a flat tire on my bicycle, and take my time at an audition and find myself in a role. I give myself the time and space. I can allow a process. I do not have to be instantaneously perfect.

I am still working on accepting my needs. To want sex I still, on some level, ex- perience as bad, as a need.

Yet this girl is seductive and sensuous. She has openly owned her needs.

Sandy is well on her way to embracing her real self, with its genuine needs and rhythms. She has left the race track behind, though she experi- ences sadness as she watches her family continue the marathon. She has tried to reach them, especially her older sister, whom she sees as very simi- lar to herself, in order to explain how therapy has helped her, but she has been unable to convince her sister. Sandy has the courage to go on. The new-found rewards are numerous. They are in her work, in which she has become very successful, and in her personal life with her husband and child. An interesting aside is that she describes her husband as possessing the qualities she struggles toachieve, qualities of her real self: confidence, the ability to handle a problem as it arises, the ability to flow and feel and trust himself as well as others.