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revdorothyl at 02:30pm on 16/07/2003
revdorothyl at 02:30pm on 16/07/2003Continuing my search for meaning and inspiration, with the help of my Freud facsimile, my
“pseudo-Sigmund.” This time around, we finally get around to touching on the "big O" (that's OEDIPUS, of course -- why, what were you thinking?).
Me: I’m sorry I wasn’t able to keep our appointment last week, but my parents came for a visit from Tuesday to Friday, and that sort of ate up most of my time.
Freud: Tell me about this visit. How did it feel to spend that much time with your parents?
Me: Um . . . It felt pretty good, for the most part. I mean, I wasn’t a basket-case when they left or anything. In fact, I’m enjoying the lack of clutter in my apartment, at the moment, as a result of all the cleaning and tidying I did before they came to my place for lunch on Wednesday. With their help, I even got some things out of the way that had been hanging over my head for some time, including finally setting up the DVD player they gave me for Christmas in 2001—which had been sitting in the box gathering dust ever since then, in spite of my desire to see the “X-Men” DVD I got that same Christmas.
Freud: So, a completely positive visit, then? You had no ambivalent feelings at all?
Me: No, I didn’t say THAT. But it didn’t destroy me, and since I can remember times when
visiting with my family for a few days left me feeling shattered into a million pieces (requiring a side-visit with my friends in order to put my fragile ego back together again), I count this as a good visit. Heck, my dad even LISTENED to me and asked for my help understanding some family systems theory concepts that he’s supposed to use in a course he’s currently taking. That felt very good. He said my explanations were really helpful to him.
Freud: That pleases you greatly.
Me: Well, you know me: I like to be helpful, to feel needed and wanted.
Freud: Don’t you normally feel wanted when you’re relating to your parents? Is being able to offer a service that someone else needs the only reason they might want you?
Me: Oh, let's not go there, shall we? Our family’s not big with the “warm-fuzzy” or the “touchy-feely” stuff. We just don’t know how to do that. We always seem to prize being smart and clever over being soft and nurturing.
Freud: I see.
Me: Yeah, having my folks ask for my intellectual input was especially nice, ‘cause they don’t usually seem interested in what I’m studying or writing about, beyond being able to tell people that I’m presenting a paper at this or that conference. Of course, then I took them to see the movie “Whale Rider,” a great little film which I’d already seen and thought we’d be able to talk about, but my folks didn’t have much to say about it afterward. They thought it was a fascinating glimpse into a different culture, or had something to say about misogyny in some of the characters. Apparently, it didn’t resonate for them on an emotional level, like it did for me and the other people I’ve talked to, . . . or at least
not in any way they could acknowledge or talk about. Oh, well.
Freud: I see.
Me: Is that all you have to say?
Freud: No, but is there anything else about this visit that you’d like to talk about?
Me: Well, I guess I feel kind of relieved and pleased that I wasn’t more upset by my parents’ lack of response to the movie, or their inability to understand my interest in pop culture, generally. It feels like we’ve come to terms with one another and accepted that there are things about each other that we can’t or don’t understand.
Freud: It sounds as though you’ve been in mourning and are now letting go of some things, in relating to your parents.
Me: “Mourning and Melancholia,” right? That was a really useful piece you did there.
Something about how you need to know WHAT exactly you’re mourning and what-all it means
to you, before you can start to de-cathect, to let go and move on, wasn’t it? Or, as I put it in my notes, “If you don’t know you’re in mourning, no one can bring you casseroles.”
Freud: Huh?
Me: It’s a Midwestern thing: when someone dies, the women (usually) of the community start
baking, so that they can bring casseroles and other foodstuffs to the bereaved family, to help them get through the initial shock and keep their strength up, and to affirm life by sitting down to EAT with the grieving family. The shorthand version is, casseroles are a way to help you go THROUGH your grief and eventually move on. But if you don’t know and acknowledge that you’ve lost something, or don’t know what that loss really means to you, then you can’t move on and the melancholia thing takes over.
Freud: Alright, that makes sense. It was also a good attempt at deflecting attention from the subject of what YOU might be mourning.
Me: Ooh, . . . busted! Okay, I guess after all these years in therapy and studying psychology and feeling sorry for myself, I’m finally nearly done mourning for my parents—not the parents I have, and whose deaths I’ll have to mourn sometime in the future, but my parents as I wanted and needed them to be when I was younger and tried to convince myself they were. You know, the parents who could have SEEN me, and understood me, and approved of me.
Me (continued): Believe it or not, the “Buffy” stuff we discussed in previous sessions plays into that. I mean, ever since I first became a fan of “Star Trek,” I’ve been using the heroes and morals of favorite TV shows as sort of substitute parents. When I couldn’t be LIKE my parents, or even spend much time with my parents, I could spend time with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock and imagine what it might be like to inhabit their universe, to adopt their values.
Freud: The hero myth as ego-ideal.
Me: Pretty much. It was "Star Trek" and the Bible, plus a couple of favorite books by Andre Norton and Anne McCaffrey, that I turned to when I wanted to feel that the world makes sense and that there are good people whom I can try to emulate. And then, finally, in "Xena" and "Buffy" there were kick-ass female heroes on T.V.--WOMEN I could identify with, and who were doing the world-changing, world-saving stuff that I used to think only male religious leaders got to do.
Freud: Why is that important to you?
Me: Well, here's where I have to leave you and turn to Winnicott, instead. But since all those Object Relations Theory folks really got their start from your "Mourning and Melancholia," I guess we can still talk about it. It comes down to realizing that my issues stem from the pre-Oedipal maternal relationship, rather than all that Oedipal father-daughter stuff you thought was so important. For me, the kick-butt mothers I saw in "Terminator 2" and "Aliens" and "Xena" seemed like water in the desert. And then, with "Buffy," I saw a kick-butt daughter. I haven't worked it all out, yet, but I think I need to believe in a cosmic mother who survives all efforts at destruction and reserves her fierceness and anger for the effective defense of her child, . . . of me. And "Buffy" is about learning to become that for MYSELF, to finally grow up and have the courage and strength inside me, rather than expecting everybody else in the world to give me the unconditional love and approval I never got.
Freud: Okay . . .
Me: Don't worry if you don't understand all that. Like everything else, it's a work in progress. See you next time?
Freud: I'll look forward to that.
“pseudo-Sigmund.” This time around, we finally get around to touching on the "big O" (that's OEDIPUS, of course -- why, what were you thinking?).
Me: I’m sorry I wasn’t able to keep our appointment last week, but my parents came for a visit from Tuesday to Friday, and that sort of ate up most of my time.
Freud: Tell me about this visit. How did it feel to spend that much time with your parents?
Me: Um . . . It felt pretty good, for the most part. I mean, I wasn’t a basket-case when they left or anything. In fact, I’m enjoying the lack of clutter in my apartment, at the moment, as a result of all the cleaning and tidying I did before they came to my place for lunch on Wednesday. With their help, I even got some things out of the way that had been hanging over my head for some time, including finally setting up the DVD player they gave me for Christmas in 2001—which had been sitting in the box gathering dust ever since then, in spite of my desire to see the “X-Men” DVD I got that same Christmas.
Freud: So, a completely positive visit, then? You had no ambivalent feelings at all?
Me: No, I didn’t say THAT. But it didn’t destroy me, and since I can remember times when
visiting with my family for a few days left me feeling shattered into a million pieces (requiring a side-visit with my friends in order to put my fragile ego back together again), I count this as a good visit. Heck, my dad even LISTENED to me and asked for my help understanding some family systems theory concepts that he’s supposed to use in a course he’s currently taking. That felt very good. He said my explanations were really helpful to him.
Freud: That pleases you greatly.
Me: Well, you know me: I like to be helpful, to feel needed and wanted.
Freud: Don’t you normally feel wanted when you’re relating to your parents? Is being able to offer a service that someone else needs the only reason they might want you?
Me: Oh, let's not go there, shall we? Our family’s not big with the “warm-fuzzy” or the “touchy-feely” stuff. We just don’t know how to do that. We always seem to prize being smart and clever over being soft and nurturing.
Freud: I see.
Me: Yeah, having my folks ask for my intellectual input was especially nice, ‘cause they don’t usually seem interested in what I’m studying or writing about, beyond being able to tell people that I’m presenting a paper at this or that conference. Of course, then I took them to see the movie “Whale Rider,” a great little film which I’d already seen and thought we’d be able to talk about, but my folks didn’t have much to say about it afterward. They thought it was a fascinating glimpse into a different culture, or had something to say about misogyny in some of the characters. Apparently, it didn’t resonate for them on an emotional level, like it did for me and the other people I’ve talked to, . . . or at least
not in any way they could acknowledge or talk about. Oh, well.
Freud: I see.
Me: Is that all you have to say?
Freud: No, but is there anything else about this visit that you’d like to talk about?
Me: Well, I guess I feel kind of relieved and pleased that I wasn’t more upset by my parents’ lack of response to the movie, or their inability to understand my interest in pop culture, generally. It feels like we’ve come to terms with one another and accepted that there are things about each other that we can’t or don’t understand.
Freud: It sounds as though you’ve been in mourning and are now letting go of some things, in relating to your parents.
Me: “Mourning and Melancholia,” right? That was a really useful piece you did there.
Something about how you need to know WHAT exactly you’re mourning and what-all it means
to you, before you can start to de-cathect, to let go and move on, wasn’t it? Or, as I put it in my notes, “If you don’t know you’re in mourning, no one can bring you casseroles.”
Freud: Huh?
Me: It’s a Midwestern thing: when someone dies, the women (usually) of the community start
baking, so that they can bring casseroles and other foodstuffs to the bereaved family, to help them get through the initial shock and keep their strength up, and to affirm life by sitting down to EAT with the grieving family. The shorthand version is, casseroles are a way to help you go THROUGH your grief and eventually move on. But if you don’t know and acknowledge that you’ve lost something, or don’t know what that loss really means to you, then you can’t move on and the melancholia thing takes over.
Freud: Alright, that makes sense. It was also a good attempt at deflecting attention from the subject of what YOU might be mourning.
Me: Ooh, . . . busted! Okay, I guess after all these years in therapy and studying psychology and feeling sorry for myself, I’m finally nearly done mourning for my parents—not the parents I have, and whose deaths I’ll have to mourn sometime in the future, but my parents as I wanted and needed them to be when I was younger and tried to convince myself they were. You know, the parents who could have SEEN me, and understood me, and approved of me.
Me (continued): Believe it or not, the “Buffy” stuff we discussed in previous sessions plays into that. I mean, ever since I first became a fan of “Star Trek,” I’ve been using the heroes and morals of favorite TV shows as sort of substitute parents. When I couldn’t be LIKE my parents, or even spend much time with my parents, I could spend time with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock and imagine what it might be like to inhabit their universe, to adopt their values.
Freud: The hero myth as ego-ideal.
Me: Pretty much. It was "Star Trek" and the Bible, plus a couple of favorite books by Andre Norton and Anne McCaffrey, that I turned to when I wanted to feel that the world makes sense and that there are good people whom I can try to emulate. And then, finally, in "Xena" and "Buffy" there were kick-ass female heroes on T.V.--WOMEN I could identify with, and who were doing the world-changing, world-saving stuff that I used to think only male religious leaders got to do.
Freud: Why is that important to you?
Me: Well, here's where I have to leave you and turn to Winnicott, instead. But since all those Object Relations Theory folks really got their start from your "Mourning and Melancholia," I guess we can still talk about it. It comes down to realizing that my issues stem from the pre-Oedipal maternal relationship, rather than all that Oedipal father-daughter stuff you thought was so important. For me, the kick-butt mothers I saw in "Terminator 2" and "Aliens" and "Xena" seemed like water in the desert. And then, with "Buffy," I saw a kick-butt daughter. I haven't worked it all out, yet, but I think I need to believe in a cosmic mother who survives all efforts at destruction and reserves her fierceness and anger for the effective defense of her child, . . . of me. And "Buffy" is about learning to become that for MYSELF, to finally grow up and have the courage and strength inside me, rather than expecting everybody else in the world to give me the unconditional love and approval I never got.
Freud: Okay . . .
Me: Don't worry if you don't understand all that. Like everything else, it's a work in progress. See you next time?
Freud: I'll look forward to that.
awake
(no subject)
From this post, though, I'm not entirely clear if you mean that you wanted your parents to be more like you? Or just different (more empathetic?) people generally. Or possibly both....
p.s. since you are thinking about families and Buffy, you might want to take a look at the discussion going on in
(no subject)
(no subject)
The critical thing is whether they can accept, and adapt successfully to the situation, when their children turn out rather different to what they had in mind.
Tricky.
(no subject)
That's a lot harder to do than it sounds. I know my family is proud of me for what I am, but I think they also expect me to be someone who reflects their values and to do the things they see as priorities. In some cases I do, but that part of my life (like my job) seems forced and artificial to me. I also sometimes feel left out because I can't fully enter their world. I've come to terms with it, knowing we still love each other, but it's something I dread happening between me and my daughters.
But there are lots of people in the world who can enter into your interests, and the internet makes it even easier to encounter them. We can't expect any one or two people to define our existence, even if they are our nearest and dearest.
And you do have that strength inside you, or you wouldn't have come as far as you have. Identifying the issues may not be half the battle, but it's the most important part.
(no subject)