THE GIFT

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

............Much of my life I have waited for someone to give me the gift of myself. That’s what I was always waiting for. In every relationship I looked into the eyes of the other hoping that she will see me for what I knew I almost was. I wanted that special kind of approval that would let me ‘come out’, as they say. It made me a kind of waiting, hopeful child, but over the years I have gradually learned to be more maturely dependant. Less ashamed, that is, of my lifelong infantilism.
...........Realising, too, that this is what therapy is about. Not about finding formulas of the mind or archetypes beyond the mind, not about psychological management, not about curing disorders and dysfunctions. It’s about giving another the gift of themselves, being with them, looking into their struggles with empathy and with pride at what they are edging painfully towards, knowing that they are relying on someone to give them the gift they can’t give themselves.
...........For it is so hard to do it for yourself alone. To give life a kick start it seems as though something essential has to be given. It was true in the beginning of one’s life and, in some sense, it is always true; the audience gives me my role in the play.
..........It’s a strange paradox that the hardest thing to give to myself…is myself!
..........The other person is part of me and if they withhold on me I’m stuck; but we will face anything except the truth of this kind of dependency.
..........Dependency is so terrifying that many people go into what you could call creative overdrive, determined to fashion themselves, to not be reliant, to give to themselves what they need – what they now believe can never, ever be given by anyone else. Thus their primal need and dependency goes underground, still in its infantile form. But being adults they now seek what they need from others surreptitiously. They often become very giving people – generosity with a hidden agenda.
..........It is almost an axiom of pop-psychology that, as an individual, you have to be the source. It’s no good looking to others to give you the gift. Life will only give you what you put into it. The ‘law of attraction’ they call it. This keeps one obsessively trying to create oneself as a worthy attractor. But a gift earned is not a gift.
..........The doctrine that one can make oneself worthy assumes that one has the power to do it. That one has the wherewithal is a puffed-up fiction to bolster the illusion of omnipotence. Nothing is more terrifying than one’s weakness, need and fragility. That’s the place where I know the terrible, terrible truth: I can never provide what I need. I am not enough – that by myself I am simply not enough.
..........That’s the way I started life – and that’s where, in a sense, I always am.
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..........Sigmund Freud was the innovator of the Psychological Age we live in. He invented it. But what has become of psychoanalysis, almost drowned out by the thousands of offshoots it produced? Well, over the last year I have been finding out. Psychoanalysis has evolved quite a bit. Working within Freud’s framework of ideas people like Fairbairn, Kohut, Leowald and others have produced new and valuable ideas. I propose a series a TAAP seminars to examine and discuss all this new material. Dates and times will follow.