THE CRITIC

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

.....Many people are aware that they have a troublesome inner critic, realising that they can be, at times, far too harsh and judgemental on themselves. ‘I’m my own worst enemy’, they will say.
.....Over the years this internal critical in the personality has been given different labels. Freud called it the super-ego. Searching to name it, a client of mine came up with ‘The Clobberer’ – very descriptive. Fairbairn called it ‘The Anti-Libidinal Ego’ – good, because it is critical of any form of pleasure; later he called it ‘The Internal Saboteur’ – full marks, because that is exactly what it is.
.....But whatever we call it, it is that part of you that makes you wrong, useless, ugly or stupid. It specialises in accusations that you are – on the whole – a failure; and whatever you do is wrong. Sometimes this internal critic is in the background, sometimes right in your face.
.....The Internal Saboteur makes one very sensitive to other people’s criticisms; then both internal and external attacks join together to make a devastating onslaught.
......There is little one can do directly to change this setup. Strategies, like positive thinking, designed to live over the top of it, are useless. The Internal Saboteur is a real problem and it is not subject to control. It is, as they say, ‘its own person’, with its own agenda. I am not speaking figuratively. It is structurally separate from your own ego. Often it opposes with subtle and ‘reasonable’ criticism. Needs and wants that are already a bit shaky are easy targets. It makes impulsiveness and pleasure suspect.
.....The Internal Saboteur is a split off part of your own psyche you would have given birth to a long time ago. It would very probably have been a time when you were dependant and an essential relationship failed you. You went on trying and failing to get what you needed until eventually you turned against your need. ‘I don’t want it – I don’t want them – they can go to hell’. The whole thing is then repressed and dissociated, but goes on fighting every needy impulse from then on.
......It is a brilliant solution when you are a child. It turns off the pain and you feel independent. The problem is that it is not just a denial of ‘them’, it is a denial of yourself, the most central part of you: the core life impulse that moves you forward every moment, urging what you want, what you need. By this act of self-preservation you have created another centre in your personality – one that essentially denies that it wants what it wants. It splits you off from yourself. It can make you painfully ‘good’, afraid to put a step out of line in case you cop it. The Internal Saboteur will keep you in line.
.......But if you retain a rebellious spark of life in you, you are up against the Internal Saboteur. Everything that is really good for you, this other centre in you sabotages, opposes, criticises, downgrades. It can be unbelievably cruel. This situation can be so bad that it can destroy every impulse in life that’s worthwhile. It can lead to depression and suicide. Or it can continually harass you like a low-grade infection. Or it can lie in the unconscious waiting for you to feel particularly self-satisfied before it attacks.
......I tell you, the Internal Saboteur is no joke; no mere metaphor, but a stubborn fact as real as your body.
.....You have to really get this before you can work on it. You will realise what I mean by ‘getting it’ if you re-read my last post on ‘Notes from a Groundhog’. There it is, not jibbering in the background, but right out in front – a full frontal attack.
......My experience there is an example of how the Internal Saboteur can strike in reaction a personal win, a soulful breakthrough. It simply cannot stand any hint of narcissism or self-satisfaction – and so it bursts out of hiding, revealing itself in all its viciousness. In my case, I can own it, guilty not of what it accuses me, but acknowledging it as a starving, angry and repressed part of myself; acknowledging also that I gave birth to it as a way of surviving when I was in dire straits, long, long ago.