“BEING & CARING, A PSYCHOLOGY FOR LIVING” by Victor Daniels and Laurence J. Horowitz, 1976, 1984

Highlights from the book chosen by The Happy President.

CHAPTER FOUR: INTEGRATION AND FRAGMENTATION: PULLING OURSELVES TOGETHER

The old German word Gestalt, passed on to us by the Gestalt psychologists early in this century, means “form, pattern, whole, configuration.” It has to do with how the parts of something fit together as a consistent whole – or fail to do so.

Similarly, if I’ve found ways for the elements of my personality to live together comfortably, in a relatively “integrated” fashion. I can know the different parts of me and have them available when I need them. Otherwise I’m somewhat “disintegrated,” like to keep parts of myself out of my awareness and to work hard to avoid perceiving how my different sides conflict.

BECOMING A WHOLE PERSON

There are two ways to view being whole. In one, we are all by definition whole: Somewhere in this mind-body-spirit being that I call “me,” everything that’s part of me exists, available to me when I find a way to get to it.

To the degree that I’m in contact with all of myself, I am whole in the second sense of the word: I have the many sides of me available when I need them.

In both our older and newer parts, there are places where we don’t let our life energy flow: thoughts we stop ourselves from thinking, emotions we stop ourselves from feeling, and actions we stop ourselves from taking. Perls spoke of those places as “holes in the personality,” aspects of ourselves that we don’t allow ourselves to recognize or experience. Each contains a dimension of myself that’s lost to me as long as I keep that part of me “off limits”.

My personal power and inner richness becomes available as I reopen and “reown” the disowned parts of myself. An important element of this is having and using alternatives – diverse ways to deal with myself, people, and events. Such alternatives emerge, in part, from recognizing my most habitual way of responding. That awareness opens other possibilities.

Freud drew attention to a process that functions like an “internal executive” to determine which parts of us can express themselves when, and how. It “tests reality” – checking out what’s real and what isn’t, so we don’t make unnecessary mistakes.

This is ego function, not to be confused with the pop usage of the word in which we say someone “has a big ego” or “is egotistical,” meaning the person thinks himself or herself more important or “better” than other people.

Freud used ego as one of the principal actors in his psychic drama. There is id, or the processes of responding to hunger, thirst, aggression, and sexuality; ego, which serves as the mediator between id forces and the restraints and constraints of outside reality; and superego, a conscience that “includes…the rules and precepts handed down by parents and authorities and the ‘ego ideal’ fashioned by the individual, i.e. the kind of person he or she aspires to become…Like ego, the superego is but partly conscious.”

Now lets’ return to the other meaning of ego, where as Alfred Adler declared, “Man is but a drop of water…but a very conceited drop”. There are different elements of this kid of ego: Infantile ego is my process of saying “Am I getting enough?” A “no” response leads me to demand, “Me! Me! Me!” Image-based ego is my process of asking, “Am I good enough?” It isn’t present in early life but develops as the social self grows out of our perception of other people’s evaluations of us. One side of image-based ego is self-glorification. This is telling myself and others, and wanting others to tell me, how marvelous I am.

The other side of image-based ego is self-depreciation: telling myself how worthless I am and imagining that others see me that way too. Self-glorification and self-depreciation both grow out of my anxieties about my value, lovableness, or competence.

Feeling separate and isolated is an important part of infantile and image-based ego. I see how you and I are different, and how you may want to hurt me, but I have a hard time seeing how we are the same and how you care.

As I learn to take better care of my emotional needs and to value myself as I am, I feel less need to put others down, “win,” or seem “important” – and I more easily give what others need and get what I want.

THE SHADOW

According to mythology and superstition, a person without a shadow is the Devil himself – or herself. Even today, most people are cautious with someone who seems “too good to be true”. Knowing who we are involves facing our shadowy sides as well as our sunny ones.

Jung used the term shadow for our unacceptable and unacknowledged sides. Like Freud’s ego, shadow is not a “thing” but a process, a useful metaphor. It refers to the parts of us that we hide from our conscious mind – including desirable qualities that we’ve learned to think of as “not part of us” – and the way we hide them. As a guideline, the narrower the standards and definitions that govern our life, the more powerful our shadow side.

While shadow tendencies remain hidden, suggests Fordham (1966), they grow in strength and vigor, and when they burst through they may overwhelm the rest of the personality. One Half of you must understand the Other Half or you will tear yourself apart.”

Refusal to face myself can keep me stuck in repetitive, self-defeating patterns, since unconsciously I disavow other possibilities. Integration of feelings and form becomes the first order of business.

OUR INTERIOR DRAMA

The philosopher Martin Buber declared that wholeness depends on the quality of an individual’s dialogue with himself or herself (1971). We are each multiple, complex, and interdependent, like a collection of different people, or “characters,” living together in one body. When I have two of my characters fighting for control, I can both sabotage and torture myself.

DEVELOPING OUR UNDERDEVELOPED SIDES

Creativity exists when we find new ways of understanding relationships and relating to the world of things. It can occur at the easel, at the kitchen table, or at an insurance executive’s desk. Creativity includes perceiving and responding to the world anew, out of the “sense of wonder” – the ability to enter a situation and see it “as if for the first time.”

Jung’s Psychological Types

Thinking, Feeling, Sensing, and Intuiting.

Anima and Animus

Jung gave the names anima and animus to two groups of qualities that exist in the unconscious – anima in men and animus in women. The Adam and Eve story, he suggested, points to such a splitting-apart, and then to the continuing effort to find one’s other half and achieve again the primal unity we knew in the beginning.

Jung used the term anima for the presence in the male personality of a group of qualities often considered “feminine”: receptive, nurturing, soft, intuitive, drawing on the depths of the inner world and the unconscious.

Jung called another constellation of traits, those that often are part of a woman’s unconscious side, the animus: assertive, achieving, rational, problem solving, outgoing.

In a balanced personality, “masculine” and “feminine” elements intertwine. There aren’t really “two sides” at all, but a multiplicity of qualities that occur naturally in both men and women. I’m a many-sided being – and I need all of me.

Berne’s “Parent, Adult, and Child”

Psychiatrist Eric Berne (1961) described another polarity in each of us, which he calls our parent ego state and child ego state. As children, we were influenced to varying degrees by one or more adults.

When we reaming in touch with spontaneity, we can still be playful and childlike, even as adults. This is our natural child.

As my little professor, I figure out how things work and how to get what I want. I’m curious about and interested in everything.

My adapted child as learned ways to avoid punishment and get rewards. I may along with the demands on me or run  away from them: I turn into a “withdrawn child” who is distant and unresponsive; a “rebellious child” who says “no” to almost everything; or a “compliant child” – a “good boy” or “good girl” who does everything I’m told to.

With our “inner parent” as with our “inner child.” we make choices about how we do and don’t want to act. If my parent nurtured and cared for me with great love and concern, my “parental” care-taking is likely to have some of those same qualities. We might call this my nurturing parent. If my parent gave many orders, punished me often, and was cold and distant, then I may express some of those qualities. We can call this my judgmental parent. Or if my parent smothered me with so much affection and protectiveness that I had a hard time learning to stand on my own feet, I may try to do too much for you and not encourage your self-determination. This is my overprotective parent.

Whatever my past, in my present I can move toward being less judgmental, less overprotective, and more nurturing in taking care of myself as well as my children. My rational adult is the part of me that has learned to deal with myself and my world as effectively as I can based on the information I have available. My emotional adult is the part of me that has learned to appreciate and live with my feelings.

THE MEDICINE WHEEL

“Each person is a unique Living Medicine Wheel, powerful beyond imagination, that has been placed up one this earth to Touch, Experience, and Learn. To the North on the Medicine Wheel is found Widsom…The South is the place of Innocence and Trust, and for perceiving closely our nature of heart…The West is the Looks-Within place, which speaks of the introsepctve nature of man…The East…is the place of Illumination, where we can see things clearly far and wide…” – Hyemeyohsts Storm in Seven Arrows.