No Such Thing As a Baby

How does therapy work? Putting aside all notions of theory, skill, and personality,one aspect is simply the biological magic activated by the face-to-face presence of 2 humans paying attention to one another. I have long marveled at how much more powerful it is to recount a dream or work with an image in the presence of another, as compared to on my own.

As a therapist, I have a very full toolkit of ways to work with issues -- and I happily use many of those tools on myself. There's an unmistakable difference between the work I do alone and the work I do in the presence of another person. Having another human's nonjudgmental attention (s/he doesn't have to be a trained professional) helps me go further than I can go on my own.

Perhaps it's because as infants, we're wired to develop and grow through the loving attention of another person. Unique among mammals, humans require years of care from a parent before they're able to successfully launch into the world. D. W. Winnicott summed it up concisely when he said, "There is no such thing as a baby; there is a baby and someone." We develop in relation to another -- a nonnegotiable biological fact that's behind much of the joy and pain of being human.

I'm thinking the imprint of this innate biological predisposition is part of what's working in the therapy room. How could it not be?

Guilt vs. Remorse

At first glance neither of the above emotions seems particularly attractive, but I've come to believe there's a profound difference between the two. Namely: remorse is workable; guilt is not.

We're all familiar with guilt. Feeling bad about something we've done, we slide into self-recrimination. Often we try to distract ourselves from this unpleasantness with a favorite addiction. The situation just keeps getting worse from there. Guilt is a sticky, dense, unpleasant emotion -- the essence of stuckness. Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche points out that guilt, like pride, is really just another way of reifying the self, making it solid and 'real' -- only this time, the 'real' self is 'bad.' From a Buddhist perspective, guilt is simply ego-clinging, and a particularly unpleasant version of it at that.

Guilt is both sticky and stuck. When we're in it, we're not free to do much else. Remorse, on the other hand, offers the opportunity for real transformation. When we come to the honest understanding that we've behaved in a way that's hurt someone, we have the opportunity to make amends. We can alter our behavior from that point forward. Genuine remorse sees the pain that we've caused, and resolves to not do it again. There's an opportunity for action in remorse that isn't available in the stuckness of guilt.

Even if we're not able to speak with the injured party, we can work it symbolically through ritual: set up a photo, light a candle, write down our apology and our new intention, burn the paper with the old pattern of behavior, vow to do it differently next time. Making a clear commitment to a new way of acting -- to speak the truth in the moment, say, rather than hiding behind our fears of 'hurting someone' (often it's just a coverup for our own fears) -- is the liberating secret hidden in the apparently painful mess of remorse.

Thanks to Jungian analyst and astrologer Liz Greene for pointing my thoughts in this direction a long time ago, in her book The Astrology of Fate.