Giovanni Stanghellini, René Rosfort. Emotions and Personhood
—
«Each specific feeling-sensation has its own distinctive feeling-flow. For instance, feeling sad is flowing downwards in a sinking movement. Sadness feels like a slow, sagging flow during which the ‘I’ slumps down under its own weight. In joy, on the other hand, the feeling-sensation flows upwards in a radiated manner. In hilarious laughter, we feel flowing upwards in quick, staccato surges. In retaliatory anger, we painfully feel driven forwards, violently attacking. Love makes us flow forwards in a gently binding way. Pride goes upwards as an inflated rising. Humiliation flows downwards in a plummeting manner; it is a quick and violent emotional drop. In repugnance, the feeling-sensation flows backwards. In awe the feeling-sensation flows backwards and downwards in a shuddering way. Fear makes us move backwards in a shrinking and cringing manner, whereas in anxiety we feel suspended in quavering over an inner bottomlessness.»
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«Each specific feeling-sensation has its own distinctive feeling-flow. For instance, feeling sad is flowing downwards in a sinking movement. Sadness feels like a slow, sagging flow during which the ‘I’ slumps down under its own weight. In joy, on the other hand, the feeling-sensation flows upwards in a radiated manner. In hilarious laughter, we feel flowing upwards in quick, staccato surges. In retaliatory anger, we painfully feel driven forwards, violently attacking. Love makes us flow forwards in a gently binding way. Pride goes upwards as an inflated rising. Humiliation flows downwards in a plummeting manner; it is a quick and violent emotional drop. In repugnance, the feeling-sensation flows backwards. In awe the feeling-sensation flows backwards and downwards in a shuddering way. Fear makes us move backwards in a shrinking and cringing manner, whereas in anxiety we feel suspended in quavering over an inner bottomlessness.»
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чугунные тетради
Giovanni Stanghellini, René Rosfort. Emotions and Personhood — «Each specific feeling-sensation has its own distinctive feeling-flow. For instance, feeling sad is flowing downwards in a sinking movement. Sadness feels like a slow, sagging flow during which…
Giovanni Stanghellini, René Rosfort. Emotions and Personhood
—
«The above described feeling-sensations adhere to the ‘I’ as a whole, and as such they must be distinguished from other feeling-sensations which merely adhere to the body.
This is the case for fatigue, in which we feel flowing downwards, as in sadness, but with the important difference that in fatigue we experience going down in a dragging manner. Fatigue drags the ‘I’ down from below. There is, so to say, the sensation of a weight external to the ‘I’, adhering primarily to the body, which weighs it down. The subjective feeling or internal characterisation of an emotion not only entails a feeling-sensation, that is, the experience of oneself moving forwards or backwards, upwards or downwards. It also entails experiencing a corresponding movement of the environment that Smith calls ‘feeling-tonality’ […]
Feeling-tonalities are not felt to be features of the ‘I’, but of the world. We perceive the world as imbued with these flows that appear to be sensuous characters of the world and its parts. We have seen that in sadness the feeling-sensation flows downwards in a sinking manner. Likewise, in the (world-related) feeling-tonality things appear to be forlornly sinking and sagging downwards. In joy the feeling-sensation flows upwards in a radiated manner, imbuing things in one’s environmental surroundings. In the corresponding feeling-tonality, things are characterised by uplifted momentum. In love I flow forwards in a gentle and binding manner; in a similar way, the feeling-tonality flows forwards, towards me. In fear things flow forwards, towards me in a looming and menacing manner, while I cringe and shrink from them. In repugnance, while I flow backwards, the repugnant thing flows forwards, towards me. And in awe, while I flow backwards and downwards, in a shuddering manner, the awful thing is flowing forwards and upwards—towering above me.
We may call this approach to emotional experience a choreography of emotions, since like a choreography it combines the design of the movements of a person (a dancer)with the design of the environment (the scenario) in which these movements are situated.»
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«The above described feeling-sensations adhere to the ‘I’ as a whole, and as such they must be distinguished from other feeling-sensations which merely adhere to the body.
This is the case for fatigue, in which we feel flowing downwards, as in sadness, but with the important difference that in fatigue we experience going down in a dragging manner. Fatigue drags the ‘I’ down from below. There is, so to say, the sensation of a weight external to the ‘I’, adhering primarily to the body, which weighs it down. The subjective feeling or internal characterisation of an emotion not only entails a feeling-sensation, that is, the experience of oneself moving forwards or backwards, upwards or downwards. It also entails experiencing a corresponding movement of the environment that Smith calls ‘feeling-tonality’ […]
Feeling-tonalities are not felt to be features of the ‘I’, but of the world. We perceive the world as imbued with these flows that appear to be sensuous characters of the world and its parts. We have seen that in sadness the feeling-sensation flows downwards in a sinking manner. Likewise, in the (world-related) feeling-tonality things appear to be forlornly sinking and sagging downwards. In joy the feeling-sensation flows upwards in a radiated manner, imbuing things in one’s environmental surroundings. In the corresponding feeling-tonality, things are characterised by uplifted momentum. In love I flow forwards in a gentle and binding manner; in a similar way, the feeling-tonality flows forwards, towards me. In fear things flow forwards, towards me in a looming and menacing manner, while I cringe and shrink from them. In repugnance, while I flow backwards, the repugnant thing flows forwards, towards me. And in awe, while I flow backwards and downwards, in a shuddering manner, the awful thing is flowing forwards and upwards—towering above me.
We may call this approach to emotional experience a choreography of emotions, since like a choreography it combines the design of the movements of a person (a dancer)with the design of the environment (the scenario) in which these movements are situated.»
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Giovanni Stanghellini, René Rosfort. Emotions and Personhood
—
«People with borderline personality disorder are often described as affected by extreme emotional fluctuations and by the sudden emergence of incontrollable and disproportionate emotional reactions. Borderline persons often experience their own self as dim and fuzzy, and they feel deprived of a stable sense of identity and unable to be steadily involved in a given life project or social role. Often they complain of being insulted by the hypocrisy and insincerity of other people, or claim that they are mistreated because of their care for authenticity; in other words, they do not feel recognised and appreciated for their being the kind of person that they are. They may see others as caliginous, cloudy, and their faces as expressionless; and a moment later perceive them as dangerously ambivalent, suspect, tenebrous, with evil intent.»
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«People with borderline personality disorder are often described as affected by extreme emotional fluctuations and by the sudden emergence of incontrollable and disproportionate emotional reactions. Borderline persons often experience their own self as dim and fuzzy, and they feel deprived of a stable sense of identity and unable to be steadily involved in a given life project or social role. Often they complain of being insulted by the hypocrisy and insincerity of other people, or claim that they are mistreated because of their care for authenticity; in other words, they do not feel recognised and appreciated for their being the kind of person that they are. They may see others as caliginous, cloudy, and their faces as expressionless; and a moment later perceive them as dangerously ambivalent, suspect, tenebrous, with evil intent.»
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чугунные тетради
Giovanni Stanghellini, René Rosfort. Emotions and Personhood — «People with borderline personality disorder are often described as affected by extreme emotional fluctuations and by the sudden emergence of incontrollable and disproportionate emotional reactions.…
Giovanni Stanghellini, René Rosfort. Emotions and Personhood
—
«Dysphoria and anger engender very different kinds of existential orientation and enactment, thereby enacting very different configurations of the life-world. Dysphoria exerts a centrifugal force which fragments the borderline person’s representations of herself and others, thus contributing to her painful experience of incoherence and inner emptiness, her threatening feeling of uncertainty and inauthenticity in interpersonal relationships, and her excruciating sense of insignificance, futility, and the inanity of life. But it also engenders a sense of vitality, although a disorganised, and an aimless and explosive one — a desperate vitality (una disperata vitalità), to use the words of the Italian novelist, poet, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1964). The centripetal force of anger restores the cohesion of the self, determines a clear-cut, unambiguous image of the other, and dissipates all doubts and sentiments of absurdity at the cost of acute, though transitory, persecutory delusions. Anger tends to preserve and maintain a precarious cohesion of the self (Pazzagli and Rossi Monti 2000, p. 223), in the same way that a small child might self-inflict physical pain in order to try to keep a sense of being alive and of cohesion.»
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«Dysphoria and anger engender very different kinds of existential orientation and enactment, thereby enacting very different configurations of the life-world. Dysphoria exerts a centrifugal force which fragments the borderline person’s representations of herself and others, thus contributing to her painful experience of incoherence and inner emptiness, her threatening feeling of uncertainty and inauthenticity in interpersonal relationships, and her excruciating sense of insignificance, futility, and the inanity of life. But it also engenders a sense of vitality, although a disorganised, and an aimless and explosive one — a desperate vitality (una disperata vitalità), to use the words of the Italian novelist, poet, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1964). The centripetal force of anger restores the cohesion of the self, determines a clear-cut, unambiguous image of the other, and dissipates all doubts and sentiments of absurdity at the cost of acute, though transitory, persecutory delusions. Anger tends to preserve and maintain a precarious cohesion of the self (Pazzagli and Rossi Monti 2000, p. 223), in the same way that a small child might self-inflict physical pain in order to try to keep a sense of being alive and of cohesion.»
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Giovanni Stanghellini, René Rosfort. Emotions and Personhood
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«All types of delusions or delusion-like ideas occurring in borderline persons have an ontic, rather than ontological, character. They are about the basic concerns that characterise our daily existence, including our fears of being abandoned and mistreated, and for the way we appear to others and their opinion about what kind of person we are. This brings the kind of delusions exhibited by borderline persons very close to those that are typical in other ‘affective’ psychoses, like melancholia (i.e. psychotic depression, where the main themes are moral guilt, impoverishment, and hypochondria) and mania (delusions of grandeur like genealogical and mystical ones). Borderline persons are deluded about reality, whereas schizophrenic persons are deluded about the reality of reality (Stanghellini 2008).»
—
«All types of delusions or delusion-like ideas occurring in borderline persons have an ontic, rather than ontological, character. They are about the basic concerns that characterise our daily existence, including our fears of being abandoned and mistreated, and for the way we appear to others and their opinion about what kind of person we are. This brings the kind of delusions exhibited by borderline persons very close to those that are typical in other ‘affective’ psychoses, like melancholia (i.e. psychotic depression, where the main themes are moral guilt, impoverishment, and hypochondria) and mania (delusions of grandeur like genealogical and mystical ones). Borderline persons are deluded about reality, whereas schizophrenic persons are deluded about the reality of reality (Stanghellini 2008).»
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Giovanni Stanghellini, René Rosfort. Emotions and Personhood
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«The borderline person, he [Bin Kimura] writes, is absorbed in an unmediated instantaneity. By instantaneity he means a pure or absolute now devoid of past and future. […] This kind of absolute now has no temporal delimitation, no historical determination, and no linguistic-symbolic articulation. This isolated, ineffable, and absolute now is not able to carry any kind of relation to, or become an integrated part of, the narrative identity of a person. This type of temporality, which characterises the existence of borderline persons, is called by Bin Kimura intra festum. As in the atmosphere of a feast, here we find the irruption of spontaneity and ecstasy, oblivious of the past and the future. Blind spontaneity is the opposite of voluntary autonomy as the rapture of ecstasy is the opposite of engaged care. Moreover, borderline persons are unable to cope with the flux of immediateness, and this flux becomes paroxysmal, and immediateness chaotic. The borderline personality, immersed in the intra festum, is characterised by a short-circuit of selfhood in front of the paroxysm of chaotic immediateness. The absolute now is the night of the self and the disintegration of personhood, since continuity in time is fundamental for a self to be an integral part of the person that he or she is.»
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«The borderline person, he [Bin Kimura] writes, is absorbed in an unmediated instantaneity. By instantaneity he means a pure or absolute now devoid of past and future. […] This kind of absolute now has no temporal delimitation, no historical determination, and no linguistic-symbolic articulation. This isolated, ineffable, and absolute now is not able to carry any kind of relation to, or become an integrated part of, the narrative identity of a person. This type of temporality, which characterises the existence of borderline persons, is called by Bin Kimura intra festum. As in the atmosphere of a feast, here we find the irruption of spontaneity and ecstasy, oblivious of the past and the future. Blind spontaneity is the opposite of voluntary autonomy as the rapture of ecstasy is the opposite of engaged care. Moreover, borderline persons are unable to cope with the flux of immediateness, and this flux becomes paroxysmal, and immediateness chaotic. The borderline personality, immersed in the intra festum, is characterised by a short-circuit of selfhood in front of the paroxysm of chaotic immediateness. The absolute now is the night of the self and the disintegration of personhood, since continuity in time is fundamental for a self to be an integral part of the person that he or she is.»
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Robert Kegan. In Over Our Heads
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«The root or "deep structure" of any principle of mental organization is the subject-object relationship. "Object" refers to those elements of our knowing or organizing that we can reflect on, handle, look at, be responsible for, relate to each other, take control of, internalize, assimilate, or otherwise operate upon. All these expressions suggest that the element of knowing is not the whole of us; it is distinct enough from us that we can do something with it.
"Subject" refers to those elements of our knowing or organizing that we are identified with, tied to, fused with, or embedded in. We have object; we are subject. We cannot be responsible for, in control of, or reflect upon that which is subject. Subject is immediate; object is mediate. Subject is ultimate or absolute; object is relative.»
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«The root or "deep structure" of any principle of mental organization is the subject-object relationship. "Object" refers to those elements of our knowing or organizing that we can reflect on, handle, look at, be responsible for, relate to each other, take control of, internalize, assimilate, or otherwise operate upon. All these expressions suggest that the element of knowing is not the whole of us; it is distinct enough from us that we can do something with it.
"Subject" refers to those elements of our knowing or organizing that we are identified with, tied to, fused with, or embedded in. We have object; we are subject. We cannot be responsible for, in control of, or reflect upon that which is subject. Subject is immediate; object is mediate. Subject is ultimate or absolute; object is relative.»
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чугунные тетради
Robert Kegan. In Over Our Heads — «The root or "deep structure" of any principle of mental organization is the subject-object relationship. "Object" refers to those elements of our knowing or organizing that we can reflect on, handle, look at, be responsible…
Robert Kegan. In Over Our Heads
—
«[…] given individual may over time come to organize her experience according to a higher order principle suggests that what we take as subject and what we take as object are not necessarily fixed for us. They are not permanent. They can change. In fact, transforming our epistemologies, liberating ourselves from that in which we were embedded, making what was subject into object so that we can "have it" rather than "be had" by it-this is the most powerful way I know to conceptualize the growth of the mind. It is a way of conceptualizing the growth of the mind that is as faithful to the self psychology of the West as to the "wisdom literature" of the East. The roshis and lamas speak to the growth of the mind in terms of our develing ability to relate to what we were formerly attached to. The experiencing that our subject-object principle enables is very close to what both East and West mean by "consciousness," and that is the way I intend the term throughout this book.»
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«[…] given individual may over time come to organize her experience according to a higher order principle suggests that what we take as subject and what we take as object are not necessarily fixed for us. They are not permanent. They can change. In fact, transforming our epistemologies, liberating ourselves from that in which we were embedded, making what was subject into object so that we can "have it" rather than "be had" by it-this is the most powerful way I know to conceptualize the growth of the mind. It is a way of conceptualizing the growth of the mind that is as faithful to the self psychology of the West as to the "wisdom literature" of the East. The roshis and lamas speak to the growth of the mind in terms of our develing ability to relate to what we were formerly attached to. The experiencing that our subject-object principle enables is very close to what both East and West mean by "consciousness," and that is the way I intend the term throughout this book.»
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Richard Gipps
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Good old fashioned psychotherapy is SO MANY DIFFERENT THINGS. Some of the following overlap a little, but what interests me is making a list of *mutually irreducible therapeutic endeavours*. […]
1. Sometimes I'm 'just' a trustworthy recognition-affording ear. My patient's thoughts & feelings spontaneously up-well, self-organise, firm up in my presence. Her subjectivity then blooms; now she can grow as a person. It can feel to me like I'm "just listening" while she's doing all the work. Listening to dreams can be like this. Leave aside interpretation for a moment, and think on how very personal they are. My interest in someone's dreams; my recollection of them sometimes years later: it's truly an interest in them.
2. Sometimes my patient is over-burdened. Her problems aren't particularly 'inner' except in that her constitution is non-Herculean. But a life-problem articulated, heard: it's more bearable. Nearly all therapy should sometimes be - but not only be! - supportive therapy.
3. Sometimes there's been a developmental dearth of "good objects". My patient remains timid, lacks virtue clarity, knows not how to self-soothe/encourage. But if I can naturally model courage, clarity re asserting needs / being aptly accommodating to others, mentalising, owning my faults, making amends, appropriate self-concern and self-care, then they now can grow through identifying with / internalising me for a while. Making some gentle noise for an ethic of love: this is important too I think.
4. Sometimes my patient who suffers a depressive deficit in self-assertion, or is overly empathic and bleeds out into others, benefits not through identification but through being challenged, stood up to, by me. I refuse the tacit invitation to see him as helpless and his pain as inexorable. I gently and firmly suggest: think and live otherwise.
5. Sometimes a patient needs to rehearse out loud the new self-understandings he's arrived at over the week. It helps him firm these up. It makes it all more real, less solipsistic. I can offer acknowledgement to these efforts and also say if something doesn't really sound right.
—
Good old fashioned psychotherapy is SO MANY DIFFERENT THINGS. Some of the following overlap a little, but what interests me is making a list of *mutually irreducible therapeutic endeavours*. […]
1. Sometimes I'm 'just' a trustworthy recognition-affording ear. My patient's thoughts & feelings spontaneously up-well, self-organise, firm up in my presence. Her subjectivity then blooms; now she can grow as a person. It can feel to me like I'm "just listening" while she's doing all the work. Listening to dreams can be like this. Leave aside interpretation for a moment, and think on how very personal they are. My interest in someone's dreams; my recollection of them sometimes years later: it's truly an interest in them.
2. Sometimes my patient is over-burdened. Her problems aren't particularly 'inner' except in that her constitution is non-Herculean. But a life-problem articulated, heard: it's more bearable. Nearly all therapy should sometimes be - but not only be! - supportive therapy.
3. Sometimes there's been a developmental dearth of "good objects". My patient remains timid, lacks virtue clarity, knows not how to self-soothe/encourage. But if I can naturally model courage, clarity re asserting needs / being aptly accommodating to others, mentalising, owning my faults, making amends, appropriate self-concern and self-care, then they now can grow through identifying with / internalising me for a while. Making some gentle noise for an ethic of love: this is important too I think.
4. Sometimes my patient who suffers a depressive deficit in self-assertion, or is overly empathic and bleeds out into others, benefits not through identification but through being challenged, stood up to, by me. I refuse the tacit invitation to see him as helpless and his pain as inexorable. I gently and firmly suggest: think and live otherwise.
5. Sometimes a patient needs to rehearse out loud the new self-understandings he's arrived at over the week. It helps him firm these up. It makes it all more real, less solipsistic. I can offer acknowledgement to these efforts and also say if something doesn't really sound right.
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чугунные тетради
Richard Gipps — Good old fashioned psychotherapy is SO MANY DIFFERENT THINGS. Some of the following overlap a little, but what interests me is making a list of *mutually irreducible therapeutic endeavours*. […] 1. Sometimes I'm 'just' a trustworthy recognition…
6. A patient will sometimes be caught up in an inner conflict of which he is, as we say, 'unaware', leaving him in touch only with anxiety and other symptoms. He needs to grow a more capacious mind which can tolerate the feelings, esp love AND hate, which haven't yet developed because of the anxiogenic clash. I can offer 'interpretations' which help clear the ground so that latent feelings may now become patent. Anxiety etc then settles.
7. A patient can self-regulate using harsh and demoralising, and hence backfiring, self-admonition. This is sustained by, and in turn sustains, a sense of self as unlovable. The habit and effects of this need noting; alternatives are to be developed; a joint stand can now be taken against this rather noxious 'superego'.
8. Containing projections. A patient, unable to tolerate her guilt or shame or sense of hopelessness or overwhelm, acts out in such a way as to fill me with these feelings. My job is to withstand and understand them, and over time help her become able to know and tolerate them.
9. Reality testing. When anxious, my patient struggles to know well the difference between realities and fears. Fantasy becomes too real. At just that point when he needs to grow by discovering he can face reality, a reality which is less insurmountable than he fears, he instead gets overwhelmed. But he can borrow both my confidence and my capacity to reality test, and over time take this away with him.
10. A patient will sometimes show an intolerance of her conscious feelings. This leads her to flail around, trying to suppress or remove or flee from the feelings. But, well, this doesn't work. I however can help her stay with her feelings, show her ordinary understanding, and allow them to pass in their own time.
11. The self sometimes over-organises itself around an unhelpfully narrow narrative array, and correlatively attends to the world in a hope-less, demoralised mode. This is a problem because we are self-interpreting animals: who we think we are affects who we are. I might now hope to highlight what the narrative therapists (for some reason) call 'unique outcomes', i.e. help augment the minor, more hopeful, themes.
7. A patient can self-regulate using harsh and demoralising, and hence backfiring, self-admonition. This is sustained by, and in turn sustains, a sense of self as unlovable. The habit and effects of this need noting; alternatives are to be developed; a joint stand can now be taken against this rather noxious 'superego'.
8. Containing projections. A patient, unable to tolerate her guilt or shame or sense of hopelessness or overwhelm, acts out in such a way as to fill me with these feelings. My job is to withstand and understand them, and over time help her become able to know and tolerate them.
9. Reality testing. When anxious, my patient struggles to know well the difference between realities and fears. Fantasy becomes too real. At just that point when he needs to grow by discovering he can face reality, a reality which is less insurmountable than he fears, he instead gets overwhelmed. But he can borrow both my confidence and my capacity to reality test, and over time take this away with him.
10. A patient will sometimes show an intolerance of her conscious feelings. This leads her to flail around, trying to suppress or remove or flee from the feelings. But, well, this doesn't work. I however can help her stay with her feelings, show her ordinary understanding, and allow them to pass in their own time.
11. The self sometimes over-organises itself around an unhelpfully narrow narrative array, and correlatively attends to the world in a hope-less, demoralised mode. This is a problem because we are self-interpreting animals: who we think we are affects who we are. I might now hope to highlight what the narrative therapists (for some reason) call 'unique outcomes', i.e. help augment the minor, more hopeful, themes.
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чугунные тетради
Robert Kegan. In Over Our Heads — «[…] given individual may over time come to organize her experience according to a higher order principle suggests that what we take as subject and what we take as object are not necessarily fixed for us. They are not permanent.…
Robert Kegan. In Over Our Heads
—
«Does William meet the claim upon him (and upon every one of us) to be aware of the way his personal history inclines or directs him? […]
Many therapists have found themselves puzzled about why clients differ so in their ability to "make productive use" of the insights psychotherapy can generate. In the face of their perfectly accurate assessment that two different clients are each "capable of insight," why should it be, they wonder, that for one person it leads to a real change of whatever magnitude in the way they construct their experience (an accommodation, Piaget might have called it, of their meaning-making system to the insight), while for the other the present system of meaning-making is unchanged or even fortified by the insight (an assimilation of the insight to the present system)?
William might, for example, make the powerful connection we describe [his childhood’s history] and yet continue to hold Betty responsible for the painful feelings her need for bedrest evokes in him! And he would see it in just that way: Her needs and behaviors create in him painful feelings. He would know better why they do but would continue to construct that they do as her responsibility. As I have been intrigued and dismayed to discover in my own therapy practice, he might even hold her more responsible when he has come to the insight in the context of couples therapy: "You were here listening to all this. You have heard what I went through as a kid, and you know now how difficult this would be for me, yet you still have these periods when you must take to your bed."
William's third order consciousness makes it possible for him to discover patterns and themes to his life history, make connections between past and present, and have insight into why he feels as he does. But his lack of a fourth order consciousness makes it impossible for him to "do something productive" with the insight, just as it is one thing to have an inner psychological life one can experience and report as internal (a third order capacity) and quite another to see oneself as the constructor of that inner psychological life. If one's inner experiences just "show up" there, so that the self-conscious self is an audience for its inner experiencing, then insight turns out to be insight into why the audience reacts as intensely to the content as it does, rather than into why or how the author writes the noscript or drama as he does.
The requirement that we “be aware of ‘our issues,’” as it is popularly expressed, that we be aware of the way our personal history inclines or directs us, is actually an expectation to do something more. It is a claim that we be able to see the way our personal history tends to filter our reading of experience so that we do not hold others responsible for the way we feel in response to their actions or choices.»
—
«Does William meet the claim upon him (and upon every one of us) to be aware of the way his personal history inclines or directs him? […]
Many therapists have found themselves puzzled about why clients differ so in their ability to "make productive use" of the insights psychotherapy can generate. In the face of their perfectly accurate assessment that two different clients are each "capable of insight," why should it be, they wonder, that for one person it leads to a real change of whatever magnitude in the way they construct their experience (an accommodation, Piaget might have called it, of their meaning-making system to the insight), while for the other the present system of meaning-making is unchanged or even fortified by the insight (an assimilation of the insight to the present system)?
William might, for example, make the powerful connection we describe [his childhood’s history] and yet continue to hold Betty responsible for the painful feelings her need for bedrest evokes in him! And he would see it in just that way: Her needs and behaviors create in him painful feelings. He would know better why they do but would continue to construct that they do as her responsibility. As I have been intrigued and dismayed to discover in my own therapy practice, he might even hold her more responsible when he has come to the insight in the context of couples therapy: "You were here listening to all this. You have heard what I went through as a kid, and you know now how difficult this would be for me, yet you still have these periods when you must take to your bed."
William's third order consciousness makes it possible for him to discover patterns and themes to his life history, make connections between past and present, and have insight into why he feels as he does. But his lack of a fourth order consciousness makes it impossible for him to "do something productive" with the insight, just as it is one thing to have an inner psychological life one can experience and report as internal (a third order capacity) and quite another to see oneself as the constructor of that inner psychological life. If one's inner experiences just "show up" there, so that the self-conscious self is an audience for its inner experiencing, then insight turns out to be insight into why the audience reacts as intensely to the content as it does, rather than into why or how the author writes the noscript or drama as he does.
The requirement that we “be aware of ‘our issues,’” as it is popularly expressed, that we be aware of the way our personal history inclines or directs us, is actually an expectation to do something more. It is a claim that we be able to see the way our personal history tends to filter our reading of experience so that we do not hold others responsible for the way we feel in response to their actions or choices.»
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