Although Jill and I had been friends for nearly ten years and had had some good times together, it was only on my last visit when her inactivity was impossible to hide that she told me about her childhood and her time in hospital. I had met a psychotherapist in Jill’s home town who I knew would understand very readily what Jill had gone through, and I urged Jill to talk to her. But Jill refused. She expected, as she had always done, that once someone knew about her past that person would reject her. She risked telling me because I lived far away, but she would not reveal what she saw as her intrinsic badness to someone in her home town.
To talk about how Jill and Lisa felt about themselves and, similarly, how all of us, to some greater or lesser degree, feel about ourselves, I have to use words like ‘bad’, ‘evil’, ‘worthless’, ‘unacceptable’, but these do not convey what the experience of badness actually entails.
These words are simply outward signs of a very powerful internal experience. We each give this experience a structure by turning it into an image which we locate somewhere inside ourselves. There are, I guess, as many images for badness and unacceptability as there are people to hold them. The kinds of images I have come across are of:
a pit or swamp of utter foulness and blackness;
a translucent centre of purity, besmirched and befouled with black filth;
a small child, naked and alone, consumed by shame, encircled by contemptuous eyes;
a raging torrent of crimson and black fire which will devour all it touches, or a wild, primitive, raging beast which, when loosed, will hack, slice, smash, lay waste, and devour.
I have found that people who have no memory of ever being accepted and valued and whose depression is profound and long lasting have an image of their badness and unacceptability like the first kind, a foul pit or swamp.
People who have brought from childhood some sense of being valuable and acceptable but to whom hurtful, ugly things have happened have images of badness and unacceptability like the second kind, a besmirched pure centre.
People who in childhood have suffered intense shame and humiliation have an image of their badness and unacceptability like the third kind, a humiliated child.
People who in childhood have suffered the kind of experiences which aroused in them murderous hatred but which gave them no opportunity to discharge and resolve this murderous hatred in non-destructive ways (for instance, being punished for shouting, ‘I hate you Mummy!’) have an image of the fourth kind, a raging torrent or a wild beast.
No doubt there are many other kinds of images, just as there are many different kinds of conclusions we can draw about our childhood experience, and certainly our images can change. The first kind of image, so powerfully present in the immobility of deep depression, could, under provocation, change to the fourth kind, and the second kind, with a further series of crushing events, could change to the first kind.
Equally, the images change as we discover that what we saw as undiluted badness and unacceptability was nothing more than the conclusions we drew about ourselves in childhood and which no longer apply, and that those forces inside us which we were told were wicked are actually among our most valuable possessions, for they are the source of our strength, courage, creativity and our joy at being alive. The black swamp becomes a cavern filled with riches, the translucent centre is washed clean, the child is comforted and admired, the fire becomes a flame of purity and hope, and the beast a cuddly pet – or perhaps the images change in ways as many and various as the stars in the sky.
(D 4) To change your image of your badness and unacceptability into an image of your worth and acceptability, it is helpful if you make the badness and unacceptability image clear. You might like to bring it clearly into your mind, or, going beyond that, describe it in words, or in a poem, a picture, a sculpture, or music. Whenever we bring something clearly into consciousness and then put it outside ourselves in words or in something we make, we take control of it and thus reduce its power.
Now it is much easier to ask, ‘How did I acquire this image?’
What Pat, Anna, Dan, Lisa and Jill described of their early childhood is something which, to some greater or lesser extent, happened to all of us.
As small babies we were pleased with ourselves and we pleased ourselves. We slept when we were tired, were active when we felt active, emptied our bladder and bowels as soon as they were full, and, when we felt hunger or any discomfort, we voiced our displeasure and demanded that the world make us comfortable again. If we felt angry with our mother we bit her, and if we did not want to engage in conversation we turned our head away.
Some of us were lucky enough to have mothers who let us go on being ourselves for many months, but some of us were unlucky enough to have mothers who very soon stopped us from being ourselves. However, sooner or later, all of us as babies were shown that we could not go on pleasing ourselves and being pleased with ourselves. We had to conform to what society expected of us.
For some of us the first lesson came when we cried in hunger and were not fed. Perhaps we were not fed because our mother had no food, or perhaps because our mother had been told by people who considered themselves to be child care experts that babies should be fed according to a clock and not according to the baby’s need. As we lay there, our little body creasing with hunger pangs, we drew the conclusion, in images if not in words, ‘If I ask for something the world will not give it to me’.
Some of us were lucky enough to have mothers who met our need for food, but even we, sooner or later, encountered society’s demands that we empty our bladder and bowels at special times and places. Some of us were lucky enough to have mothers who knew that we could not achieve this until our sphincter muscles were strong enough, and so they let us discover at our own pace that society’s rules about cleanliness have some sense to them and can yield a feeling of achievement. However, some of us found that when we could not learn these rules quickly enough to please our mother we were called ‘dirty and disgusting’ and we were punished and humiliated. Whatever experiences we had, we all drew the conclusion that, ‘No matter how I feel, I must make my bowels and bladder conform to what society expects’. For many of us ‘what society expects’ dominates our life, making us carry out rituals of cleanliness and trapping us in a sorry round of constipation and diarrhoea, all of which adds to our worry about how acceptable we are.
By showing us that we cannot expect to be fed just because we are hungry and that our bowels and bladder must conform to society’s rules, our families force us to draw the conclusion that other people’s wishes and needs must be met before our own. If we want something for ourselves we find ourselves being called ‘selfish’, and if we want what others have we are called ‘greedy and envious’. Anyone who is selfish, greedy and envious is bad. If we observe that our families are expecting us to be unselfish in order that they can be selfish, we must keep that thought to ourselves, for if we do not we are punished and humiliated.
Rebecca said, ‘I always felt manipulated. My father would want me to do something and I wouldn’t want to do it, and he’d say, “You’re thinking only of yourself”. I’d think who do you think you’re thinking of? There was one time when I was at college and I was at home and I had an argument with my brother and my mother would not intervene and I went to stay with my grandmother for several weeks because I was having a hard time at home. Then my mother called up and said, “I want you to come home. I feel abandoned. You’re just thinking of yourself.” I thought who the hell are you thinking of? I’m unhappy there. I’m happy here. What right do you have to ask me to be miserable so that you can be happy? I think that was pulled a lot on me as a child. Everything is justified by saying that your parents love you, your parents know best. If your parents love you, does that mean that they’re asking you to do what is best for you? I wanted