Nobody
knows what it’s like to be Jennifer. She cannot be summed up. Even how Jennifer
sees herself is not the real truth. She is more than even she knows. Some would
say, as in a eulogy, that she was generous, open hearted, a good mother and neighbour;
others, that she was somewhat self-centred and dominating; or that she
sometimes drank too much. But none of these categories tell the truth. To get
some idea of the whole person, she has to be seen as her story unfolds in context
– without judgment or philosophizing, just as she appears in all her multisided
contrariness.
Perth,
Western Australia, in the 1960s had hardly immerged from the prewar Australian
mindset. At parties, women and men hung out separately and there was something
about the atmosphere that was still vaguely out-back Victoriana. As a teenager
at this time Jennifer had advanced ideas. She was rebellious and sexually adventurous.
She would let it be known that she would sleep around with whomever she
fancied. And before long this news reached a tutor at her night school who, as
it happened, had divorced his wife some two years previously and was suffering
from a certain feminine deprivation. An illicit liaison soon developed. After a
suitable time, of course, Jennifer’s family found out; there were almighty
ructions and the police were called in since Jenifer was under-aged.
Not
to be outdone, the couple maintained contact through a mutual friend and
arranged that they would elope to another city on the very day she turned 18. That
day came and they found themselves together on the other side of the continent
in Sydney. Amazingly, the relationship worked in spite of the age difference.
He got a job in a clothing factory and within a year she bore him a son – within
two, a daughter. The birth of her firstborn, Simon, was difficult and Jennifer
came out of it with a hatred of the infant. After a fashion, she mothered the
boy, but had as little to do with him as necessity would allow. He was bottle
fed from the word go, often left alone with the bottle propped up against a
pillow. As the Simon grew, Jennifer maintained a covert hostility towards him, at
times ignoring him and at other times domineeringly helpful. He had a mother,
though. She was always there, a sort of absent presence; it was reliable, but
he was in a permanent state of waiting for something else, waiting for what was
missing. When you are very young and waiting like this, you don’t even know
what you are waiting for. So that later in life, when what you want is
available, when it’s suddenly right before you, you can’t recognise it because
you are waiting for something that’s missing. Whatever is actually there, is
never it. Permanent waiting blinds
you to what you are waiting for. In much the same way that you can’t see your
keys right in front of you because you are looking for them. Your keys are
invisible because you’ve lost your keys.
By
the time her daughter left home, Jennifer was in a second relationship, this
time she married a successful corporation man who turned out to be severely
dominating and towards whom she became a submissive wife. At parties he would
move briskly around, chatting here and there, with Jennifer trotting meekly
behind. Within two years he had died of cancer leaving her a wealthy widow.
Now
she was living alone with Simon, her son who, at 25 had become a recluse,
attached to his mother by an invisible and unacknowledged bond. He had a job
which he hated and spent his spare time in his room reading about the history
of warfare. He was highly intelligent, analytical and depressed, a combination
that fanaticized the world as a complex, malignant and hostile ordeal. He had
no friends; or rather he lost them as soon as he made them, invariably finding
them incompatible. There were one or two girlfriends who had put up with him
for a while, but they very soon went the same way, causing him long periods of
conflict when he would analyse the situation and himself to destruction.
Over
time, Jennifer’s attitude to her son changed. In her heartfelt empathy for his
suffering she tried to show him that he should change his lifestyle, get out
more and give up smoking marijuana, but he was hostile to anything she tried to
give him. What he did take from her he took without recognition or acknowledgement.
Jennifer
was not blind. She knew that his suffering was at least partly due to what she
could not give him as a child. It could be easily said that her worry about him
was driven by guilt, but she had discovered something in herself that was more
than this, even though it was guilt that uncovered it. It was something she had
never really felt before. It felt like love.
Jennifer
discovered that there are heartbreaking lessons to be learned from loving. The
hardest of all was giving up trying to change someone for their own good, to
drop one’s fantasies for them, to give up generosity whilst staying true to
one’s care, to abandon hope whilst hoping still, denying oneself the relief of
detachment.
Prior
to this transformation Jennifer had been driven by guilt to help her son. For
so long this had continued the old relationship, only with the roles reversed:
she was the one neglected whilst her son did the rejecting. This reversal of
roles might appear to be a sort of psychic justice where each now experienced
what the other had suffered all those years ago. Perhaps it was a sense of nemesis
– each enduring what they had once inflicted on each other. But effectively, it
was the same old relationship with a flip.
At
last, Jennifer realised that it wasn’t just Simon that was difficult. Her very
concern and helpfulness had a part in maintaining the statement. This insight
in her was enough to break the deadlock, not only for herself but, though
osmosis, for her son as well. Something subtle had changed, holding some
promise. He still lived at home and smoked too much. What was most welcome,
however, was a relationship between mother and son that allowed some movement.
*
Making
up this tale was for me an experiment. I can’t stand psychological case histories.
It’s impossible to tell anyone’s
story – it’s always second hand and fraudulent. Just as a session is absolutely
indescribable. A true story has to be a happening
and you have to be a part of that happening. A true story is its own invention
not someone else’s replication. The truth is the event itself. So I wanted to
see if an approach like that of the novelist would help find a language and a
medium to communicate what therapy – no, what people are really about. Was
there a way of reaching greater fidelity without violating anyone’s privacy? Could
a ‘person-centred’ event happen imaginatively, within the process of writing? I
found that if you throw bits and pieces of other people’s stories together, it
will create an original situation, and unique personality will emerge that is
quite independent in its own right; it becomes a person; and the miracle is that
she will develop a life of her own and suffer all the realistic happenings that
would undoubtedly accrue to such a person in real life.
In
my blogs I’ve experimented with fictional characters to illuminate a
psychological point. I want to free psychology from psychology. What prompted
me to go further was a piece I read by Julian Barnes:
“Fiction
more than any other written form explains and expands life… Novels tell us the
most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we
enjoy it and value it, how it goes wrong, and how we lose it. Novels speak to
and from the mind, the heart, the eye, the genitals, the skin…” *
In
our case, maybe showing us what it is like to be Jennifer.
*
Barnes, Julian. Through the
Window: Seventeen Essays and one short story. Kindle Edition
contact: stanrich@vodafone.co.nz
(03) 981 2264
No comments:
Post a Comment