ON FINDING AND BEING FOUND

. ..............................................................by Stanley

One of the unique experiences in therapy and good counselling is that of discovery – of finding oneself, as they say. When it happens it is nearly always a finding something unexpected and surprising. Well, perhaps not totally unexpected because the appearance of a hidden aspect of oneself is usually preceded by a vague penumbra, a foreshadowing. When it comes, it has the quality of recollection, of remembering something you always knew, but didn’t.

Some people in therapy are full of surprises. Different aspects of themselves continually come into view; it’s like riding the rapids. For others, the unexpected appears more like a ripple in a gently flowing stream. It’s all highly relative; how great or small the turbulence is relative to who you are and what you are used to.

But what I want to emphasize is the aspect of finding, of self discovery in therapy. This is not the same as imagining. People tend to worry about this, particularly when some vague image occurs that could be a memory or not: ‘Am I remembering something or just imagining it!’ The person is really not sure whether they are manufacturing what occurs to them or whether they are discovering something. ‘Is this vague image of a woman my mother of long ago; or do I just want it to be? Is it a memory, or am I just imagining?’Such questions and doubts do not have that quality of finding.

When you find something – a forgotten memory for example – there is the sense of opening, of something being revealed. It can be a jolt, making irrelevant any idea that you are making it up. There is recognition. The question of whether it is literally the image of my mother of long ago seems less pressing. Destructive questions lose their power. It feels like I am looking out at her from my cot before my actual memory began. The possibility that this was how my mother seemed to me is exciting. I don’t have to make a decision about it. The effect is felt physically. I have found something – not merely found an image, but an emotion, as though I have found a part of myself. More importantly, the discovery calls me further down an unknown path.

Therapy is not a question of finding yourself as a final act of self discovery, or even some final truth about you. Therapy sessions merely provide the conditions in which the process can happen. In calling this a ‘process’ we simply mean that it is finding a way. As though you had been in a dense forest and had come unexpectedly on a path. You follow it and suddenly there is a clearing that lets in the light – showing, too, where the path leads on.

Of course, what you find in therapy is by no means always recovered memories, but more often a sudden stumbling over an emotion, a mood, an attitude you may have been familiar with, but had no idea was so definite and strong; maybe something you had always dismissed as trivial and unimportant. But the whole thing has this same characteristic of finding. It can be a sudden flash, wherein what had been confusion suddenly organises itself into clarity; not by the usual means of trying to work the confusion out, but a finding of clarity that instantly rearranges everything. It is a clarity you didn’t produce: you found it.

And incidentally, don’t worry about changing your attitudes in life; find the ones you have.

All these ways of finding are each one, also a being found. Each time one has the sensation that the person sitting listening to you has found you. Not only have you found yourself, but you have been found.
You know, babies that used to be abandoned, swaddled on church doorsteps, were called ‘foundlings’.

I too am waiting to be found, waiting for someone to find me, but find me with kindness.
Because if there is no kindness, I’d rather not be found, thank you very much!
I’ll stay in hiding

The Association for Analytical Psychology Inc.
Box 32121 Christchurch
email: taap@paradise.net.nz

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