mark Jabbour's Blog - Posts Tagged "relationships"
Somebody to love - seriously, is there any other topic?
this is old but relevant
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Sigmund Freud believed that insight and interpretation were the keys to unlocking human potential, and freeing the mind from the restraints of hysteria and dementia praecox, what we now call neurosis and psychosis, that inhibit or prevent love and work. As a therapist he was mostly unsuccessful, not because he was wrong about the healing properties of insight and interpretation—but because of his intransigence regarding his theory of sexual energy, aka, The Oedipus Complex, as the sole cause of psychological and emotional problems. In short—his interpretations were often wrong. He was successful as a therapist when he abandoned his own doctrine of belief and methodology, and instead was open, warm, and affectionate with his patients. Of course, this behavior was predicated upon the person falling in love with him.
Love heals. Love is a natural state. We are all born with the capacity for, and indeed, the expectation of love. Healthy love is a behavior that engenders wellbeing. We all need it to thrive.
Everybody needs somebody to love.
The problem is, as with many things,iiiiiiiiiiikiu99999999999 [the cat on the keyboard:] is that love is conditional—meaning it can be unlearned. And instead of being reciprocal, can be replaced by an abusive, self-serving hierarchy. This distortion of love sucks love from those below, passes on through the subject, and then is deposited (in the form of worship) to those above. Sound familiar?
Let me clarify who I am. I am a fiction writer—writing about the human condition. In the writing of fiction I am subservient to no one's interpretation (including the Authority) of the "facts." I am free to put forth my own interpretation of truth and let that stand, or fall, on its own validity. I am formally educated in Anthropology, Psychology, and Social Work. I have worked in the Field with abandoned, neglected, and/or abused children and young adults, all of them hostile, some aggressive, and some violent. And, I have never ceased learning. My curiosity is almost infinite.
I think I know what love is.
Love cannot be faked, but it can be distorted, abused, and misrepresented. It is not possible to love fully and completely without being loved fully and completely. Love is reciprocal. If you, like I, have had it stolen from you—it is very difficult to get it back. To do so, you must enter into a non-abusive relationship, a loving one such as the therapeutic interaction that Freud sometimes, inadvertently, fell into with his patients and colleagues.
There are five elements to the successful recovery, or discovery, of your loving Self:
1) There must be collaboration between partners (not a hierarchy) to fight against anti-love.
2) Together you must identify unhealthy situations and patterns of behavior.
3) Together you must strive to stop and/or block those situations and behaviors.
4) Together you must make a commitment to change.
5) Together you must begin to practice new loving behaviors.
These five elements aren't necessarily, and probably never will be, in sequence, with the exception of the first one. They will develop within and as, a spiral. Some of you may recognize this as the ideal therapeutic relationship. It is, but it's truly hard to find. I think it is as likely as not to be found in the relation understood as friendship. Outside of the restrictions of the professional practitioner/client interaction, that partnership is free to advance to a sexual/romantic one. Within the pay-for-service relationship, the partnership must dissolve and a clean break be made. Unfortunately, this could cause a retraumatism, because of the separation and loss, and start the cycle over again.
So, who am I to say all this? I am not your therapist. I am not a man of faith. (I am an atheist.) I am not a self-help guru or a doctor. I am not your grandfather, father, or brother. I am simply a friend—who like you—is looking for somebody to love.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Sigmund Freud believed that insight and interpretation were the keys to unlocking human potential, and freeing the mind from the restraints of hysteria and dementia praecox, what we now call neurosis and psychosis, that inhibit or prevent love and work. As a therapist he was mostly unsuccessful, not because he was wrong about the healing properties of insight and interpretation—but because of his intransigence regarding his theory of sexual energy, aka, The Oedipus Complex, as the sole cause of psychological and emotional problems. In short—his interpretations were often wrong. He was successful as a therapist when he abandoned his own doctrine of belief and methodology, and instead was open, warm, and affectionate with his patients. Of course, this behavior was predicated upon the person falling in love with him.
Love heals. Love is a natural state. We are all born with the capacity for, and indeed, the expectation of love. Healthy love is a behavior that engenders wellbeing. We all need it to thrive.
Everybody needs somebody to love.
The problem is, as with many things,iiiiiiiiiiikiu99999999999 [the cat on the keyboard:] is that love is conditional—meaning it can be unlearned. And instead of being reciprocal, can be replaced by an abusive, self-serving hierarchy. This distortion of love sucks love from those below, passes on through the subject, and then is deposited (in the form of worship) to those above. Sound familiar?
Let me clarify who I am. I am a fiction writer—writing about the human condition. In the writing of fiction I am subservient to no one's interpretation (including the Authority) of the "facts." I am free to put forth my own interpretation of truth and let that stand, or fall, on its own validity. I am formally educated in Anthropology, Psychology, and Social Work. I have worked in the Field with abandoned, neglected, and/or abused children and young adults, all of them hostile, some aggressive, and some violent. And, I have never ceased learning. My curiosity is almost infinite.
I think I know what love is.
Love cannot be faked, but it can be distorted, abused, and misrepresented. It is not possible to love fully and completely without being loved fully and completely. Love is reciprocal. If you, like I, have had it stolen from you—it is very difficult to get it back. To do so, you must enter into a non-abusive relationship, a loving one such as the therapeutic interaction that Freud sometimes, inadvertently, fell into with his patients and colleagues.
There are five elements to the successful recovery, or discovery, of your loving Self:
1) There must be collaboration between partners (not a hierarchy) to fight against anti-love.
2) Together you must identify unhealthy situations and patterns of behavior.
3) Together you must strive to stop and/or block those situations and behaviors.
4) Together you must make a commitment to change.
5) Together you must begin to practice new loving behaviors.
These five elements aren't necessarily, and probably never will be, in sequence, with the exception of the first one. They will develop within and as, a spiral. Some of you may recognize this as the ideal therapeutic relationship. It is, but it's truly hard to find. I think it is as likely as not to be found in the relation understood as friendship. Outside of the restrictions of the professional practitioner/client interaction, that partnership is free to advance to a sexual/romantic one. Within the pay-for-service relationship, the partnership must dissolve and a clean break be made. Unfortunately, this could cause a retraumatism, because of the separation and loss, and start the cycle over again.
So, who am I to say all this? I am not your therapist. I am not a man of faith. (I am an atheist.) I am not a self-help guru or a doctor. I am not your grandfather, father, or brother. I am simply a friend—who like you—is looking for somebody to love.
