THE MONKEY MIND

Gurus and teachers of meditation somewhat disrespectfully call our wandering attention the ‘Monkey Mind. In trying to focus on breathing, for example, I am distracted by thoughts and fantasies. The Monkey Mind heads off on its own trip with rehearsals of the future or fantasies of the past, quite ignoring what I’m supposed to be concentrating on. Past and future is not what meditation is about; they are distractions from being able to live in the here and now. Monkey Mind is a well known Buddhist term meaning that part of the mind which is unsettled, restless, and uncontrollable.

The Monkey Mind’s non-stop chatter is about unimportant trifles. Even when not meditating I think silently most of the time, sometimes bordering on talking to myself, like an internal dialogue – much of it trivial chatter. Yet such trivia became the very tools of psychoanalysis. Rather than trying to ignore or overcome the Monkey Mind, Sigmund Freud decided to pay close attention to it. Of course, Freud didn’t use that term, but we’re talking about the same thing: the stream of consciousness.

The analyst would sit in a chair behind the patient who reclined on a sofa. Not even the sight of the analyst must distract the patient from reporting his ‘trivia’. The patient’s instructions were to say whatever came to mind without censoring or omitting anything. Capturing one’s passing thoughts, actually being aware of them, is no easy task because this stream of images, thoughts and wishes are almost unconscious; almost, but not quite. Moreover, it is subjected to varying degrees of self-censorship and self-disapproval.

Freud called speaking out this stream of consciousness ‘free association’.  It is, he said, the “fundamental technical rule of analysis... We instruct the patient to put himself into a state of quiet, unreflecting self-observation.” The patient is to report any passing thought or idea, taking care, he said, not to "exclude any of them, whether on the ground that it is too disagreeable or too indiscreet to say, or that it is too unimportant or irrelevant, or that it is nonsensical and need not be said".

What’s interesting is that the Monkey Mind does not just wander aimlessly as it appears to do. Free association is not free at all. It is anchored and hovers around and returns to certain underlying issues that are anything but trivial: they are connected to painful memories or unpleasant urges and impulses – all the disagreeable things that have been neglected or stuffed into the unconscious. The so-called trivia are disguised symbols representing deeper things. They are watered down ciphers, disguised by their apparent unimportance. The Monkey Mind does a good balancing act of reminding without remembering. The trivia doesn’t worry us, but it doesn’t let us forget either.

Sometimes though, the Monkey Mind only partially hides a hidden anguish, as when a present-time problem becomes such a symbol. The present-time worry represents, without revealing, something repressed and forgotten. The pressure from the unconscious leaks through, attaching itself to a present-time issue, making this appear bigger than it actually is. The Monkey Mind deceives us that the present-time issue is the real problem. Again the Monkey Mind provides a defense from and compensation for the pain of the real thing.

The analyst is supposed to work all this out by listening to the patient with a third ear, matching it up with his Freudian theory and divulging his conclusions at the end of the session. Sometimes he gets it right, but more often than not his conclusions are off key, too bogged down with theory.

Freud looked upon free association as a tool, but Ferenczi, one of Freud’s early colleagues, thought differently. He said, ‘the patient is not cured by free-associating, he is cured when he can free-associate'.  The implication of this would seem to suggest that the act of free associating is what benefits the patient, not the analyst’s interpretation of it. In hindsight we can see how very true this was. Firstly, being aware of what is going on almost out of sight and then revealing it to another person whom one trusts – that’s what does the trick !

There is no need for the analyst’s interpretation. It is irrelevant, even counterproductive. What is needed is simply for the therapist to listen with a non-judgmental attitude and allow the client to explore his own reality. Later, this is exactly what Carl Rogers, the founder of counselling and person-centred therapy, recommended; and 90% of the time it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

For a stubborn and unyielding difficulty a little more suggestive intervention is required, based on the hard-won knowledge that a persistent or recurring problem in present-time derives its intractability from an early trauma or conflict. Such events may even be within the person’s range of memory, but cut off from any feeling of what it was like. Still, the Monkey Mind will hover around its present-time incarnation, giving us plenty of clues of what it was like. The emotions and anxiety that the present-time problem evokes can almost be guaranteed to be exactly those of the original trauma. The task of the therapist is to point the person in the direction of the original situation, not just to recognise it cognitively, but to begin to feel the connection.

Why the past is so important. Well, really it isn’t. It is the repression of it that does the damage. Even if the person can cognitively remember, the emotion of the incident is repressed and it is this that leaks through in the worry about the present-time problem. A lot of nervous energy is spent keeping the emotion of original at bay. One does this by concentrating on the present-time problem; but because the present-time problem isn’t the problem, it cannot be solved in its own terms. Thus the same type of present-time problem occurs again and again. Each recurrence is an incarnation of the original repression.

contact: stanrich@vodafone.co.nz

(03) 981 2264