I did an interview recently with psychotherapist and philosopher, James Barnes, who inspired me to think in somewhat more mystical terms than I am wont to do.
It started with a consideration of the theories of British psychologist Donald Winnacott, following an article James wrote recently. Winnacott didn't feel that the psyche is separated off from the world, interpreting and making sense of what happens, but a process, as it were, between the individual and the world. A baby is essentially, even in its own conception, part of the mother, in a way and its reality is dependent on and radically open to experience and others. We are formed by interpersonal relationships - and, more generally, by society, culture, world. That which happens in the world, the situation we are in, shapes us - its not just about how we 'shape it' through our interpretation of it. Relationships - initially with care givers but expanding outward - are not just experiences we have, but parts of who we are.
James used the example of transitional objects, like the 'blankie', a child's blanket, which can 'feel' to the child to be part of herself, part of her mother, part of what it means to feel safe and loved. It's not just an object 'out there' but part of the concept of self.
I thought of some philosophical ideas about the self in which a theorist claimed that for a person starting to suffer memory loss, a note-book, or post it notes, become an 'out-sourced memory', to put it one way, or a part of the self, to conceive it the other way. Just as when we are good drivers (not me) we navigate the car with the same confidence of its dimensions that we have in our confidence of our own bodily dimensions. The steering wheel, wheel, driveshaft, car body and so on have become integrated and are manoeuvred as if we were moving our own body. And on a relational level, a long-married couple may out-source to each other emotional regulation or remembering everyone's birthdays - and when one dies, the bereaved really has lost part of himself.
This changes the way we see mental 'illness' - not as a malfunction of the brain, but a malfunction of the interpersonal space; not as a chemical imbalance but, maybe, as social injustice; not as bad thinking but as bad relationships. The healing, for Winnicott, came through the co-creation of a secure interpersonal 'in between' space between therapist and client. But this model requires that the social circumstances and familial relationships too need to be worked on. This is not to say that the techniques of CBT or Mindfulness may not be helpful - the traumatised person will also influence the interpersonal space by their actions - but they, or drugs, will not be adequate to resolve the harm.
This interplay, interdependence and interconnectedness is also a factor at other levels.
During the pandemic, it has been made clear that we, those of us who were able to stay in our homes, are dependent on the others, many of whom we will never see, who keep supply lines going and shelves stocked, who work in shops and as postmen and delivery drivers, who farm the fields and maintain communication and sanitation systems. And it is always thus. The claim that one is born alone and dies alone is tosh. The whole of life as well as of psyche is co-existent and co-created with others.
Then I considered this connectedness feeling on a more mystic level - the feeling people get sometimes through meditation and more often through drugs of being 'part of everything' or 'at one with everything'. Is that an adult version of what the secure young baby feels in the arms of the care-giver? Far from being an ultimate experience, is it in fact an origin experience?
We talked too about the false duality of Humanity and Nature. We are part of nature - both in fact and in the way that Spinoza and James Lovelock insist. We cannot deny our dependence on this planet, its atmosphere, its flora and fauna, its water, its gravitational pull. Our pretense at independence has created a lacuna in our psyche as well as environmental devastation.
And I remembered how I feel about Dartmoor. Not that it cares about me in some solispistic fantasy, but that it played such a large part in my development - all the time I spent there alone or with pony or dog - that I in a way embraced it as part of my sense of self. That it shaped my view of what consciousness is - waiting and accepting and patient and attentive and receptive. Looking at the Moors feels to me as if I am looking at what pure consciousness is.
Perhaps I should have Six Cs and add Connectedness to the list. Yes. That would be the Crone Manifesto - Compassion, Curiosity, Consideration, Creativity, Connectedness and Cronedom.
Comments