Once upon a time, there was a group of twelve middle-aged psychologists. They had kept together for four years, had met regularly to learn how to become good psychotherapists. Over the years they had grown fond of this word, "psychotherapist" - to them, it represented something just as grand as "artist". They had three old, wise teachers, who came at regular intervals to show them the way. They were taught a method of seeking the Atlantis or Inferno of childhood - as the case might be. Childhood is where History begins, the history of every individual. This way of learning demanded that one should be both patient and therapist, student and teacher, child and adult, practitioner and theorist. As a consequence, these twelve people had grown close; they had revealed highly personal and shameful things to each other, and had come to be a sort of siblings.
They were, then, twelve historians, in a country which did not grant human rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of thought and not least, freedom of feeling. The freedom to feel cannot exist when the mind is fearful, when parts of History have been forgotten due to severe censorship. It isn't true that "die Gedanken sind frei" in the prisons of the psyche.
This tale is about one occasion when the twelve apprentices had one of their masters among them. She was a gray-haired elderly lady with spectacles; if you had met her on the bus, you would have thought her completely ordinary, at the first glance. At this moment her plump body was seated on a cushion on the floor, happy and relaxed. This woman, Anna, carried her title; psychotherapist, with honor. People like her lend a radiance to the word. For not only had she, in the course of a long life, learned a great many skills, tools, rituals, theories, proverbs, procedures, methods, knacks and tricks. Her learning came from what her own body and soul had experienced; she had wandered through life with a longing for spiritual freedom. So there was something about her that made one think of a pious nun, and at the same time something jolly, which showed that she was well acquainted with the powers of cruelty and sensuality.
One of the female psychologist-disciples, let us call her Astrid, sat on another cushion facing Anna, and her sibling-colleagues sat around them in a circle. What was about to happen? You see, it was Astrid's turn to have her own learning-session, to be the group's center of attention. She was to undertake an inward journey toward her own self, into her feelings, maybe backwards into the past. And Anna was to be her travel guide, her companion - it is good not to travel alone in such a landscape.
On a journey like this, you don't know your destination beforehand. At first, you don't even know your point of departure, this you find out when you're seated face to face with your traveling companion, who looks at you with her mild, attentive eyes. She seems prepared to follow you wherever you go, during the hour your journey lasts. Into evil, murderousness, malice, despair, shame, guilt, fear, childishness, perversity, foolishness, eroticism, lewdness. She is also open to unadulterated joy. There is almost nothing human which is alien to Anna, or makes her shy. And gradually, Astrid has developed so much trust in her colleagues that she feels reassured to see them sitting around her.
The most exciting journeys are those where you don't know from one minute to the next where you're headed; journeys where you follow your inner voice, your hunches. A trembling divining rod bends toward dreadful chasms which one had forgotten, but now want to look down into so that they'll no longer threaten at the brink of consciousness. And your traveling companion faithfully follows your every impulse.
Astrid had been apprehensive and anxious beforehand, because she thought that this time, the journey would lead her to dramatic landscapes, reeking of both madness and suicide. And as she sat there, she felt her anxiety rise even further. Anna noticed that Astrid's look was doubtful and piercing, and asked what it was. These words came out of Astrid: "I think I'm afraid that you'll despise some of the things I discover within me, that you'll be shocked by all my horrid thoughts." Anna: "So you feel that it's difficult to trust me as a safe travel guide? How would it be if we created a fantasy figure, embodying all the worst suspicions you have about me - a figure which represents the negative aspects of Anna?"
Astrid was relieved by this suggestion, both because Anna accepted her bad fantasies about her, and because these could now be crystallized separately by placing them outside Anna, making it possible for her to accept the real Anna as her travel guide. For Astrid understood that the fear she had felt earlier represented resistance to commencing the journey, a hesitation to commit herself to the project.
But now she felt ready to go on, and she asked one of her sister-psychologists if she would take the role of Anna's negative aspects. The woman jumped willingly to her feet. She knew that it was an honor to be given a negative role, it would help Astrid to elucidate her inner universe, to create contrasts and boundaries. Astrid must have a lot of confidence in her, since she asked her to embody a negative figure from her inner theater. Astrid had to be sure that her colleague wouldn't take it personally, thinking that Astrid saw these negative characteristics in her in reality. The colleague should only step into the role as she would put on a costume.
Now that the anxious fantasies about Anna had been given material shape in the room, Astrid once again felt complete trust in the real Anna. She was able to share with her that she felt empty, that all the powerful emotions she had had before they started working were gone. Anna said softly: "Maybe that's what happens when one's feelings are too strong to be shown." "Yes, it's strange, it's often like this when I'm afraid or apprehensive about something. When the situation I've been anticipating finally occurs, my feelings vanish, and I feel totally numb, I tell myself: 'What was it that was so important? Nothing really means anything. I'm just a person from a comfortable West European background who can allow myself the luxury of having emotional problems, while half the world is dying of hunger, physical illness or wars. So what do my petty anxieties and depressions really amount to? After all, I manage to function relatively normally at work and in social situations."
Anna: "That sounds like a voice of self-contempt speaking in you. Shall we have it manifested here in the room?"
Astrid sensed that this voice was masculine, and asked one of the brother-psychologists to take the role of a contemptuous voice. She felt that he should look full of disapproval, and say: "You're so self-centered. Around the world, people are starving and suffering. Why don't you do something useful instead of sitting around, burrowing into your anxieties and depressions? Pull yourself together."
So Astrid instructed him to say these things which she tells herself so often, almost without knowing it. And when she heard these words issuing from the external world, it intensified her emotional response to them. A wave of self-contempt washed over her: "I agree fully with what he says. I'm foolish and spoiled, self-centered." Anna asked the figure to repeat it - "you're foolish and spoiled and self-centered." Tears streamed down Astrid's face.
"I see you're becoming even more sad," said Anna, "and you look lonely; how would it be to have a witness-figure who can see all your feelings?" Astrid thought it might be soothing. The witness had to be female, she asked one of the other women to play the part. She was to stand facing Astrid, look at her with kind eyes and say: "I can see that you become sad when you hear someone speak contemptuously of your feelings."
When Astrid heard this, something inside her gave way, and she dared to yield to the overwhelming feeling of sadness she had sometimes felt as a child. The child whose life was not at all so far removed from war and evil, who felt afraid to lose its father's and mother's love if it showed feelings like anger and sullenness. What was called being "impossible". For the grown-ups needed so badly a happy, smiling child, a little candle to lighten the dark, cold dread of war.
Anna asked her how old she felt, and suddenly she saw images before her inner eye: blacked-out windows, air raid alert, her body wrapped in a blanket, sitting in a cellar room, a rag-doll on her arm, and around her grown-ups caught up in their own worries. And she felt the fear and sadness which mustn't be let out. She heard herself say four years old, and wondered how it could be possible to be an adult, with an adult's body and mind, and at the same time a child. She felt very clearly that she was present in a time of forty-five years ago, she could almost sense the smells.
Again she felt empty, and thought: "What good is any of this, really? All this brain-shrinking, what's the point of this so-called "therapy", anyway? I should be doing something useful." She communicated this. Anna asked the figure which represented her own negative aspects to say, "I'm going to shrink your brain", and the contemptuous figure to say, "Do something useful!" Then she asked the witness to say compassionately, "I see you're feeling empty." At this, the void in Astrid filled up again with sadness, and she cried great big tears, which she dried away with pink paper towels handed to her by supportive colleagues around her. And now she felt that her sadness was mingled with rage against the sour, contemptuous voice which didn't allow her, the child, the right to have her own feelings. She wanted to throw pillows at the shithead, and shout angry things. Anna encouraged her to do so, and it felt wonderful to put force in her throws and see him cringe in fright, as her inner stage director wanted him to.
Anna asked her if anyone had been nasty like this contemptuous figure when she was around four years old, and she replied that father and mother sometimes said such things. Anna suggested that the figure should expand his role to represent the aspects that Astrid had experienced as negative of her father. Astrid agreed, and also chose one of the women to play the negative sides of her mother. There they stood, embodied in flesh; her parents in their worst moments, a symbolic rabble of ogres and witches. But because her two companions only acted out the negative aspects of her parents, and not the whole persons as they had been then, she could hate these purebred heartless beings without perishing of guilt. She could even enjoy her own maliciousness to the hilt, by instructing them to look foolish and disgusting.
But all of a sudden she felt afraid of Anna again. "You're going to despise the wicked thoughts I have about torturing them (she pointed to the evil parents) - the way people in the concentration camps were tortured during the war." Anna made the woman who played the negative aspects of herself say, "I despise your wicked thoughts about torturing your poor parents" - and when Astrid heard this, she was able to laugh, and her trust in the real Anna was restored. "You see," Astrid said, "back then it was necessary to empty oneself completely of feelings, in order to save..." "Save what?" "Beauty," she heard herself say. To her surprise, she found that her eyes were streaming with tears again. "What was Beauty to you?", Anna asked softly. "Oh, it was all the feelings I had for people and music and landscapes and things, both love and hate, everything lovely and strong in the world. Somehow, I had to make myself empty and unfeeling in order to save - well, perhaps my soul, all that was beautiful." "And what happened to your soul? Where did it go?" "To heaven, to a safe place, where there was no war and no pressure to lie about feelings."
Anna looked around the room. "I wonder if there's anything here which might symbolize your soul...oh yes, I know. Before we started working today, you showed me a sheet of music you're fond of -one of the most beautiful pieces you know of, I think."
And at once, Astrid felt it was the right choice. She looked at the sheet of music - the cover had BACH written on it in big, old-fashioned letters. And inside it was the double concerto for violin and oboe, since Astrid plays the violin and Anna the oboe, and Astrid had wanted to show Anna what to her was the loveliest music in the world, especially the second movement, where the oboe and the violin seem to speak so gently to each other, and now Astrid understood why she had shown the sheet to Anna before they started working; she had hoped that the two of them would speak together in the same gentle manner. Anna placed the sheet of music on a sconce high up on the wall, and asked how Astrid felt about it. Yes, she felt her tears welling up again, at the sight of her own soul kept safely in heaven. But it was sad, too, to be so empty, to have sacrificed so much in order to save the soul.
Anna pointed at the two negative parent-figures, and asked what it was they wanted to do to her soul. Astrid searched her feelings, then said they would press her to feel only what they wanted - happy, sugar-coated feelings. They wanted to force their way into her own spiritual territory; nothing of what she created inside herself and which belonged only to her, was safe against them. They wanted to grab her soul, perhaps squeeze it to pieces.
Anna said that it seemed as if she wasn't allowed to maintain her own boundaries, and asked if she would like to draw up her territory now, and decide for herself just how large she wanted it to be. Astrid looked around the room, and found some shoes, handbags, books and other everyday objects, which she used to erect a kind of fence around herself. It was fun, in a way, using her feelings to determine the right size. It didn't have to be that big, since she was a little girl; there was still plenty of space left for her colleagues who were seated around the walls.
"But can't you see that your fence has holes in it, that it isn't sealed?" said Anna. Yes, now Astrid noticed, and she felt a little scared when she looked at her evil parents, maybe they could squeeze through the gaps! "I know something you can use for creating your boundary", said Anna. And with that, she took the roll of pretty, pink, soft paper which Astrid had used to dry her tears, and placed it carefully around the edge of her territory. Astrid felt safe, knowing that the border was unbroken and proof against intrusion. Anna took special care over the place where the two ends overlapped. It made Astrid happy that the border was beautiful.
Anna said that good parents would never step inside Astrid's boundary against her will, and asked her if she wanted to introduce two figures which could play the part of ideal parents - people who have never existed in reality, but whom one has a vision of, a longing for, a wish that one's real parents had been like them.
Astrid tried to feel whether it would be painful or magical or fake to incarnate the ideal parents, but no, her subconscious was curious, and had an irresistible urge to put them on the stage to see what the dream made manifest would look like. And so she asked two of her colleagues to play the parts. They rose at once: "I take the role of your ideal mother"... "I take the role of your ideal father...where do you want us?" It seemed right to place them outside the pink ribbon. It felt good to sit there, smiling and waving at them, and hear them say: "We're always here when you need us, but we won't ever overstep your boundary against your will." She asked them to speak sternly to the negative parents: "Stop tormenting Astrid, she should express whatever she wants to." Oh, how wonderful that someone was speaking up for her! She wanted to see that the ideal parents were stronger than the negative ones, and at once a splendid battle unfolded on the stage. The negative parents tried to force their way into her territory, but the ideal two stopped them with a firm hand. To show how strong the ideal parents were, all the rest of the group were drawn in as their symbolic extensions. It was marvelous to sit safe within her beautiful boundary and see the bastards stopped! Astrid just sat there laughing at the weaklings, and everything happened just the way she wanted it to - they were chased away into a corner where they whimpered and screamed until they finally slumped to the ground as if dead. Anna laughed with Astrid at her joy in being heartily malicious, and uttered the profound words which Astrid was to recall and reflect upon so many times since then: "Cruelty has a beauty of its own, it has so much energy in it." How could this pious person possibly say something like that?
Now Anna noticed that Astrid was looking at her soul up there in heaven, and she asked her if she missed it. And Astrid felt something stir in her which seemed to have been there for a while: it was lonely to sit there all by herself inside her own border, without her soul. Anna suggested that the ideal parents might fetch down the soul so it could join the body. It felt terribly scary to risk it and say yes. They were very kind, of course, but what if they handled it a little too roughly, or dropped it? But her longing was far too strong to refuse. Anna instructed the ideal parents to go over and lift the soul very, very carefully down, and carry it over to Astrid.
Astrid knew that she would never, ever forget the sight of her ideal parents fetching her soul down from heaven and carrying it over to her. She saw how careful they were, how slowly they moved, and how gingerly they both held around the old sheet of music by Bach. It was as if they were carrying the greatest treasure in the world. Many in the group were crying. The parents held it out to her across the boundary, and Anna told her to place it over her heart.
And it was very strange, for it seemed as if she, who was four years old, had a grown woman's feeling; as when, after one has given birth to one's first child, the baby is placed on one's breast.
But she felt that she didn't want to be without other people physically, and so she drew the boundary near her own body so she could sit close to her ideal parents. They held their arms around her and around each other, and also helped her to hold the soul tightly to her breast. She felt her expanding chest grow warm, and breathing became both easy and magnificent. It was good not to have to keep oneself upright, but to be supported by one's parents.
When the soul had entered her breast, she didn't need to be empty, and from now on she could have any kind of feeling, both sad and angry and happy. Her ideal parents would welcome anything that was genuine, and they didn't need her to be a little candle. But just now she felt happy and secure, and very tired from the great emotional work of traveling all the way back to the age of four to find something which had been completely forgotten.
And so the journey was over, and everyone stepped out of their roles and became themselves. Anna told Astrid to rest, so she lay down on a mattress in a corner a little distance away from the others, a blanket was tucked around her, and she was left in peace with her experiences continuing to glow inside her. She kept everything in her heart and pondered it. It was peaceful, lying there half asleep and listening to the distant voices of her friends, talking about what they had experienced during the journey.
References:
Pesso, A. & Crandell, J. (eds.): Moving Psychotherapy. Brookline Books 1991.
© Copyright Albert Pesso and Diane Boyden Pesso 1997 all rights reserved
The Saving of a Soul
