W e may summarize Kohut's basic claims. Impairments in early relation- ships between the child and selfobjects, for example, the mother, pro- duce a child whose sense of self-coherence and self-worth is fragile.
Even ordinary blows to self-esteem, so-called "narcissistic blows," are
severely threatening to the fragile structure of self-regard. We note that
"narcissistic blows" include anything that imbalances the self. There- fore, good news, an unexpected compliment, a sudden run of good luck, and similar positive events can be just as disorganizing as criticisms and rejections. Both kinds of experience threaten the hard-won stability of self. Adults with a history like M r . Z's are m u c h m o r e vulnerable to suffering fragmentation anxiety. Because such anxiety is painful, people naturally seek ways to avoid fragmenting experiences. W h e n persons w h o are so vulnerable suffer unavoidable injury, a narcissistic blow, they must repair themselves and their sense of intactness.
There are m a n y ways to retrieve a sense of intactness. O n e is to en- gage in sexual actions that provide a temporary sense that one's body matches an internal fantasy of sexual power. S o m e narcissistically vul- nerable persons, for example, m a y find that they have an i m m e n s e need for homosexual contact. For a m a n , the fantasy that drives this hunger m a y include a belief that by incorporating another "large" man's penis into his o w n body he can unite his fragile and broken self with the idealized strength of his homosexual partner. For a w o m a n , the urge to find a homosexual partner m a y be the enactment of a fantasy that by uniting herself sexually with another w o m a n she m a y experience her- self as male and her partner as female. T h e two w o m e n in this instance are not driven to homosexual embrace because of an upsurge in h o m o - sexual libido. Rather, it seems m o r e likely that the unconscious fantasy enacted in the homosexual encounter is that of a male whose penis symbolizes a state of intactness, that is, not castrated, not fragmented.
In this case homosexual contact appears compulsive because the anxi- ety against which it is a defense, fragmentation, is acute and terrible.
Another w a y to avoid fragmentation anxiety is to retreat into a cold, grandiose sense of oneself as untouched and untouchable by the fools w h o fail to comprehend one's superiority. Another w a y is to b e c o m e adept at helping people w h e n they, the other, seem vulnerable and needy. This gives one a role of superiority and makes it less likely that the other will see one's vulnerability. Kohut notes that this latter solu- tion occurs frequently in the lives of persons w h o b e c o m e talented psychotherapists. Such therapists often grew u p with a parent whose depression or other impairment m a d e the parent unable to reflect the child's narcissistic needs. T h e child becomes attuned to subtle clues in the parent's demeanor and, in a reversal of roles, provides selfobject functions for the parent. W e saw this reversal of roles in M r . Z's story. In this w a y such children repair their parents' narcissistic wounds. O n e unconscious motive for doing so is to m a k e the parent strong enough to give back to the child what the child needs and cannot manufacture out of thin air: a sense of acceptance by an idealized other.
Inside the
O c c u l t E x p e r i e n c e
Queen. To w h o m do you speak this?
Hamlet. D o you see nothing there?
Queen. Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
Hamlet. Nor did you nothing here?
—William Shakespeare, Hamlet Let us, furthermore, bear in mind the great practical importance of
distinguishing perceptions from ideas, however intensely recalled.
Our whole relation to the external world, to reality, depends on our ability to do so.
— S i g m u n d Freud, "A Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams"
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that m u s i c — D o I wake or sleep?
— J o h n Keats, O d e to a Nightingale In this chapter, we develop a framework to apply to the stories in the following chapters of occult m o m e n t s in the lives of Saint Augustine ( 3 5 4 - 4 3 0 ) , S i g m u n d Freud ( 1 8 5 6 - 1 9 3 8 ) , Carl Jung 48
(1875-1961), and other writers, including Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832), the greatest German poet.
Some might object that any framework is just another mold into which I force genuine and unique experiences. M y framework might be a procrustean bed. Like that evil character out of Greek myth, I may chop off stories that do not fit m y preconceptions and stretch others that fall short. This is an ever-present danger to anyone w h o wishes to ex- plain experiences as varied and complex as occult moments.
Similar dangers confront critics and psychologists w h o advance theo- ries about artistic creation. But it is instructive to go wrong. Therefore, I advance the following ideas about a template. Another more fitting metaphor might be that of a tidal pool, which is a small version of the much larger ocean. It is not a perfect model of the ocean, but it is available for study and so affords us landlubbers opportunities w e might not otherwise have. To extend this metaphor one step further, one might say that occult experience is the tidal pool and religious experience the ocean. This chapter is one person's view of that tidal pool and the life forms which live there.
The framework I construct in this chapter uses a certain class of ideas to categorize a certain class of experiences. W e have already developed some of the ideas: internal world, selfobject, empathy, and fragmenta- tion anxiety. I add to these two new ideas: reality testing and repression.
These are the rungs of a metaphorical ladder whose sides are the long chronological sequence of internal and external events that constitute the occult sequence. This sequence begins with the formation of the selfobject relationship, and continues through the breach in that rela- tionship up to the moment when that breach is healed.
THE REALITY OF THE UNSEEN:
INSIDE T H E M I N D , O U T S I D E T H E M I N D
This chapter began with three quotations, each addressing a single problem: H o w can one judge the truth of occult claims?
The first quotation is a dialogue between young Prince Hamlet and his mother, the queen. Hamlet's murdered father has commanded him to revenge the father's death. Hamlet begins to confront his mother with her guilt when the ghost appears and commands him to stop. Hamlet recoils in horror at this latest visitation. But the queen sees nothing and therefore chides her son for his inability to distinguish his madness from ordinary reality. To put the queen's thoughts into Freudian language, she believes that Hamlet is mentally deranged. The prince has lost the
ordinary ability to distinguish between his wishes (for his father to re- turn to the living) and his perceptions.
The quotation from Freud is from his discussion of dreams and the interesting fact that even the most mature persons experience the nonsense of dream thoughts as if they were real. As they dream, even intelligent persons show major lapses in their ability to test reality.
Freud says the "institution" of reality testing develops slowly from infancy (when wishing dominates perception) to adulthood (when, as with the queen, perception dominates wishing). Reality testing is the ability to distinguish wishes from perceptions. Like other institutions built up slowly, reality testing is always vulnerable to collapse, to
"regression."
Reality testing is an ego ability or an ego achievement. Freud defines it in the same way the queen does: W h a t is inside a person's mind is fantasy; what is outside a person's mind is reality. Reality testing, then, is the ability to distinguish "between what is internal and what is exter- nal."1 This ability develops slowly as the infant learns, after many fail- ures, that its innate response to pain, wishing it away, does not work.
Initially, Freud assumed that all infants attempt to satisfy their needs for food, warmth, affection, and such by calling upon their memory- image of the person w h o had pleased them in the past. To use Freud's terms, the infant spontaneously calls up the mnemonic image of the need-satisfying object and hopes that the evocation is equivalent to its actual appearance.
A hungry infant, for example, driven by its appetites, will sponta- neously call up an image of the nursing breast, the bottle, or whatever object has satisfied it in the past. At this first moment in very young infants, there is no difference between the two images—one based on perception of the real mother, and the other called up from memory.
Freud says that these two images are equivalent and in themselves of- fer the infant no way to distinguish one from the other.
The quotation from John Keats raises a question that troubles everyone caught in a twilight state between unconsciousness, in which dreams dominate, and consciousness, where dreams fade away. The question is, W h e n I a m asleep and dream and m y dreams seem real, how can I distin- guish one state from the other? To put this another way, when I wake and realize that what I thought was real was only a dream, I affirm that this state, ordinary consciousness, is "real."
H o w can w e distinguish mere dreaming from the accurate perception of reality? H o w do infants develop into children w h o can distinguish mere wishes from actual perceptions? Clearly, children need some way to test and validate the source of their perceptions.
Freud says that they can do this by using their ability to move their muscles voluntarily. For by moving themselves, even slightly, infants can
alter their perceptions of external objects. "A perception which is made to disappear by an action is recognized as external, as reality; where such an action makes no difference, the perception originates within the subject's o w n body—it is not real."2
During a dream, for example, one cannot walk around a group of trees that appears in the dream. W e may believe that the trees are real.
But w e can also note, upon reflection, that dream images are not iden- tical to ordinary perceptions because w e cannot alter their appearance by altering our stance. Dream trees may cast shadows, but those shad- ows do not obey the laws of refraction, reflection, and geometry that govern real shadows from real trees.
Movie versions of dreams typically use mirrors to distort the visual images that appear on the screen. But even these distorted images are much more concrete, and much richer, than the two-dimensional images that occur in dreams. Yet the film images themselves are two- dimensional, not three-dimensional. W e can distinguish them from an actual perception by using the numerous clues of depth, range, and alterations induced by our o w n movements.
One's ability to distinguish the internal world (thoughts, feelings, fan- tasies, wishes, sensations) from the external world (perceptions) de- pends upon control of one's musculature. If w e were to lose control over our motility, our ability to test reality would decrease. In extreme cases, like paralysis or sleep, our capacity to distinguish fantasy from percep- tion diminishes to the point that w e mistake ideas derived from the in- side and experience them as if they arrived from the outside.
The idea that reality testing depends upon the conscious control of musculature gives Freud a way to explain why dreams tend to be hallu- cinatory, that is, reality testing diminishes. During sleep one rarely has conscious control over one's musculature. O n e cannot will one's body to act in a certain way. Therefore, one cannot use the ordinary method to distinguish a set of ideas (or wishes or images) from a set of percep- tions. O n the contrary, dream ideas and thoughts become dream per- ceptions. O n waking w e may quickly realize that there are no monsters under the bed, but during the dream w e had no such assurance. During the nightmare the monster seemed real and our terror was real, too.
Are Other Minds Like My Mind?
Freud's discussion of the concept of reality testing is far more com- plex than m y summary. Yet w e can see one problem that the theory raises for a psychoanalytic understanding of occult experience: If
there is an absolute boundary between my internal world and the external world, h o w can I k n o w that m y internal world is like that of other people? I can listen carefully as they describe their experiences and their dreams, for example. I can report m y o w n experiences and so compare m y direct knowledge of m y internal world with their re- ports of their internal worlds. But I can never enjoy their internal experience. I cannot cross the boundary that separates m y internal world from the internal worlds of other people.
This may not seem to be an overwhelming problem. Most people are not bothered by what seems to be a logical quibble fit only for philoso- phers. But it is a problem for anyone, like Hamlet or Keats, w h o has struggled to understand the source of a vision, feeling, or insight. In its philosophic form, this problem is referred to as the problem of other minds. In its more poignant everyday form this problem is expressed by a young girl w h o once asked, " W h e n I see green and others see green do they see the same green?" This was no random thought. It arose when she felt completely isolated from her family and her schoolmates.
Understandably, as an adult this young girl became fascinated by tech- nical issues in the philosophy of mind. She studied the history of phi- losophy, where she traced the logical issues surrounding the problem of other minds and located its historical sources. In this way she made significant discoveries in intellectual history, and she gained a signifi- cant degree of mastery over her internal anxiety about her o w n sense of self: She was not radically unlike other people.
The academic question, Are there other minds like m y own? becomes a vital question for children. Are there other minds like m y o w n w h o will comprehend m e ? To answer this second question in the negative, to say that there are no other minds capable of comprehending one's inte- rior state, is to say that there are no empathic persons. For empathic persons can, for a moment, perceive accurately the nature of one's inte- rior life, the landscape of one's internal world. As w e have seen in our discussion of Mr. Z and his profound suffering, a child w h o lacks a mini- mally empathic parent lacks access to the most secure defense against fragmentation anxiety. That defense is the child's capacity to find adults w h o can perform ego functions, like the maintenance of self-esteem, that the child cannot perform alone. In other words, the best defense against fragmentation anxiety is the presence of suitable adults w h o can form selfobject links to the child.
The Reality of Hamlet and
the Reality of Ghosts
Hamlet's question to his mother was, essentially, D o you see what I see? W e recall that Hamlet had recently lost his father through a
violent crime, had seen his mother remarry in haste, and was forced to see his rightful place, the throne of Denmark, usurped by his un-
cle, w h o m his father's ghost had declared to be an incestuous mur- derer. Hamlet's mother, the queen, took Freud's side in the matter and argued that because she saw nothing in the spot toward which her son gestured, Hamlet was mad. Hamlet's vision must have been an internal event, projected out into the Danish night. Shakespeare, however, did not side with the queen in this matter. H e had already indicated that Hamlet's faithful and eminently reasonable colleague Horatio had seen the ghost. Indeed, Horatio had tried to speak to the ghost and attempted to strike him with his pike. So the ghost was perfectly real—that is, valid—within the drama as well as within Hamlet's tormented mind.
There might be a better way of saying this. For to say the ghost is real
"within" Hamlet's mind is to use Freud's radical dichotomy between inside (the inner world) and outside (the external world). W e might better say that Hamlet's "mind" is not coextensive with his brain, or for that matter, any part of his solid flesh. W e might, in other words, distin- guish Hamlet's brain, a biological entity encased within his skull, from Hamlet's mind. Hamlet's mind is that rich set of ideas and capacities that exist between the prince, his friends, his family, and his kingdom. As the anthropologist Gregory Bateson suggests, the concepts and ideas evoked by the notion of mind are far more extensive and complex than those evoked by brain. O n e can speak at length about the mind of Socrates, for example, and dispute with others the correct interpretation of Socrates' intentions. O n e cannot speak about Socrates' brain, since that mass of flesh and tissue dissolved into dust long ago.
Hamlet's mind exists. It is a real entity. The ghost of Hamlet's father exists, too. It also is a real entity. W e can understand both entities, de- scribe them, and respond to them even if they are not ordinary three- dimensional objects, existing in ordinary space and time. In a similar way w e can speak seriously about Hamlet's character, Hamlet's mind, and Hamlet's fate, even though w e refer to a fictional entity, entirely the product of Shakespeare's mind. W e can do so because Shakespeare's mind, Hamlet's mind, and our o w n minds are not defined or limited by our brains. O f course, w e cannot point to Hamlet's mind in the same way w e can point to ordinary objects, like books and coffee tables. Neither can w e point to Hamlet himself, except as an idea shared by most per- sons educated in Western culture.
Yet w e do not want to conclude that Hamlet is not real. O n the con- trary, he is intensely real. In fact, it is far easier to love Hamlet than it is to love most ordinary mortals. Hamlet influences us, stays with us, and will outlast us. Like the concept of mind, or the concept of selfobject,
the idea of Hamlet as a character occupies a realm distinct from that of ordinary objects and ordinary persons. Yet minds, Hamlet, and selfob-
ject relationships are all real, not mere fantasies like bad dreams or phantasms like imagined ghosts in haunted castles. Selfobject relation- ships are real, even if they are not measured by objective instruments.
Socrates' mind and Hamlet's character are real also, even if one cannot use objective instruments to dissect them. I stress the similarities be- tween these three entities—Hamlet, selfobject relationships, and Socrates—because they are also similar to occult events. Occult events do take place: that is, people attest to them, find them valuable, and respond to them. Yet w e cannot treat this kind of real object (an occult experience) empathically if w e expect to examine it using objective in- struments. Some believers in occult sciences m a y object to this claim.
Such believers might feel that I have trivialized their scientific claims.
I do not wish to dispute the objective accuracy of all occult claims. I suggest that w e can understand occult experience better if w e treat it as an entity similar to selfobject relationships, Hamlet's character, or Socrates' mind.
To advance an empathic account of occult experience w e must aim to elucidate, using external language, features of a purely internal ex- perience. W e must cross the conceptual boundary that separates other minds from our own. To cross that boundary w e must explore the oc- cult mood.