one cannot say. No child in this situation can afford to test the validity of his belief. He must compromise by bridling his passion and suppressing his sexuality. I shall illustrate this process with the following cases.
Margaret consulted me because she was depressed and felt that her life was empty. She was an attractive woman in her middle thirties and a nurse by profession. She had never married, though she had had many relationships with men. None had worked out satisfactorily for her. Years earlier her depression had been so severe that she was suicidal. Her suicidal tendencies had diminished through psychoanalytic treatment, but her depressive tendencies continued. However, she had never ceased to work. She was a hard worker and was highly regarded in her profession.
The outstanding expression of Margaret's body was its lifelessness. If she didn't talk or move, she might be taken for a wax figure. Her eyes were dull, her voice flat. However, from time to time while looking at me her eyes would light up and her face would become alive. It never lasted more than a few minutes, but it was an astounding transformation. When it happened, I was aware that she regarded me with feeling. Usually she appeared preoccupied and was aware of me only to communicate her thoughts. As we worked together I realized that her lifelessness went quite deep. When she opened her eyes wide, they had an almost hollow look. Her breathing was very shallow, her movements never animated.
The therapeutic task was to help Margaret discover why the light faded from her eyes. Why was she unable to maintain the glow of life? What was she unconsciously afraid of? Margaret's lack of life was the result of self-negation and a self-destructive attitude. In most neurotic persons this attitude is unconscious. Margaret was aware, however, that she was self-destructive. She said, “I am always trying to kill my body by not eating properly, not sleeping enough, by being worried about my image, and by being frantic about my work. I am never ‘there’ for myself, I am never able to enjoy myself, I don't take care of myself.”
When I asked Margaret how and why that attitude developed, she replied, “I was literally destroyed by my mother, so frequently that I identified with her.” Margaret had told me earlier that her mother used to beat her regularly. She described her mother as a hypochondriac who lay on a couch all day reading and complaining. However, the mother was really ill. She was a diabetic, but Margaret said that she was also self-destructive in that she took no responsibility for her own life. She died of heart trouble in her fifties. “But,” Margaret said, “my father was equally self-destructive, working twenty hours a day and never taking time for pleasure. He was Christ, the martyr. He died of a heart attack in his forties.”
She added, “My father was a burden to me. I felt I had to save him. He was in my mind all the time. He made me very sad and unhappy. I could never reach him. I remember looking at him when he was suffering from heart trouble, and he had such a pathetic look. It was actually worse than pathetic. It was the look of suffering. He was a sufferer. I need to help people.”
We cannot understand Margaret or her problem without a picture of the family situation in which she grew up. In that picture the most important elements are the personalities of the parents. They affect the child more by who they are than what they do. Children are very sensitive and pick up their parents’ moods, feelings, and unconscious attitudes by osmosis, as it were. This was especially true for Margaret since she was an only child. Her parents’ influence was unmitigated by the presence of other children. Consider the following.
“My mother said my father was a rough lover. I realize that I choose men who are somewhat like him in their suffering and in their rough intensity of sexual need. I don't see the suffering in these men until I get socked with it later. Then I find that I am taking care of them, helping them, and there is nothing in it for me. This is one way I am self-destructive. But I don't know if I could like anybody who is not suffering. My heart wouldn't open to that person. The last man I was involved with attempted suicide. I had a long line of men I had to help. It seems that if I can't do the neurotic thing, there is nothing else.”
What exactly was Margaret's relationship to her father? She says that her mother told her that she was very close to her father until the age of four or five. She has no memory of that closeness nor any knowledge of why it ended. All she remembers is that her father was beyond reach. She felt close to him in her heart but there was no contact between them. “It was like in a dream. I am still in that dream. I relate to men on this basis. I build enormous fantasies of what life would be like with them, only to discover after a few meetings that they couldn't possibly fulfill my dreams.”
From the above it is clear that in her contacts with men Margaret is looking for the kind of relationship that she had with her father before the age of five. It was a search for a lost paradise. She was trying to find her Shangri-la. She asked me, “Why am I always getting cuddled by men at bars? I must give off something.” Her manner and her expression indicated that she, too, was a sufferer. Just as she is drawn to those who suffer, so they are drawn to her. Each hopes the other can relieve his suffering, but each only brings suffering to the other. Neither has any joy to offer.
From the above it is obvious that Margaret suffered a severe loss at about the age of five, when the loving relationship she had with her father ended. The depressive tendency is conditioned by such a loss.1 Undoubtedly, there had been an earlier loss of love in her relationship with her mother, but the early loss had been mitigated by the warmth of her contact with her father. When that ended, Margaret was lost. She survived by a great effort of will, manifested today in the set of a grim and determined jaw. But memories of the time when she glowed in the warmth of her father's love are still reflected in the momentary brightening of her eyes and face.
What happened to cause the destruction of the loving relationship she had with her father? Why did it have such a devastating effect upon her personality? Margaret had no memories of that time. They were completely repressed. However, she has had many years of psychoanalysis and is familiar with the oedipal problem. During our discussion of this subject, she remarked, “I don't remember any sexual feelings for my father, but during my analysis I had a dream of sleeping with him. Having been in analysis for some time, I felt that I could have this dream without thinking I was crazy. However, in the dream I felt I couldn't let go. I couldn't really enjoy it.”
Margaret still doesn't enjoy sex. She still can't let go and have an orgasm. She uses sex for contact and closeness. She cannot give in to her sexual feelings because she is afraid they would overwhelm her and drive her crazy. I shall explore this aspect of the fear of sex in a later chapter. My intention here is to show the relation between the neurotic character and the oedipal problem.
What really went on in her family? What was the relation between the parents? Margaret said, “I used to have the fantasy as a child that my parents were very close to each other and that I was the outsider. I felt isolated. Then, as I grew older, I saw that my mother was alone and my father, too. I realized that she talked about him as if he was a stranger.” She did recollect a scene in which her father tried to throw her mother out of the window, but she doesn't know why. We can guess. Like so many other marriages, her parents’ relationship had started on the high note of romance but ended on the bitter one of frustration. This is the terrain in which the oedipal problem develops. The frustrated parent generally turns to the child of the opposite sex for sympathy and affection.
The feelings between Margaret and her father were very deep. Despite the barrier between them, he was close to her heart and she to his. Margaret said that she was told that when she won some awards at school and church he cried. Why was any expression of these feelings restrained? There is only one answer. They had become sexual on both sides. The danger of incest seemed real. The father had to withdraw from any contact with the girl, and she had to be made to suppress her sexuality since it threatened him.
The child's sexual desire for the parent is an expression of her natural aliveness. The child is innocent until the parents project their sexual guilt upon her. Margaret was the bad one because her sexuality was alive and free.
