John Wheeler, an eminent physicist, wrote, "The past, the present, and the future are all unreal as independent entities, but real as a unity." This recognition should tame our preoccupation with "now," our agony of the past as well as anxiety about the future. A patient's attempt at denial of the importance of the past and the future is a way of defending against anxiety. In return this anxiety deprives one of living in the present. The patient couldn't get beyond his mind.
The German philosopher Ernst Block has this epitaph on his gravestone in Tübingen: Denken heist überschreiten, "To think is to go beyond," which means recognizing and going beyond the frontiers of thinking. The mind can relate only to what it can sense and touch, smell what gives scent, hear what makes sound, and see what is visually present. It can abstract and extrapolate, intellectualize and speculate. All this exists within the mind-made concept of time and space. If we look for things that can be seen, that is what we will see. If we look for things that cannot be seen, beyond the concept of time and space, beyond the enclosure of the mind, then the revelation of unity will come to embrace us with serenity.
Some people fear not only that precious time will be wasted in looking back, but that even a quick glance is a diverting form of sentimentalism or, worse, that such backward looking may paralyze the person and leave him frozen in time. A patient even cited the common misinterpretation of the story of Lot's wife to give weight to his argument: When God destroyed the sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, he permitted Lot and his wife to flee on the condition that they not look back. But Lot's wife did look back, and she was instantly turned into a pillar of salt. He dismissed the alternative explanation: Maybe it was the torrent of her tears, her grief over her loss of the past, that turned her to salt.
Those who do not look back deprive themselves of continuity with their own past, which forms the present. Our early relationships live in our current ones, even though we may not be conscious of them. Our present moods, thoughts, and feelings have a real a priori basis. It is known that our personal unconscious is formed with our own specific circumstances in life and powerfully influences most of our behavior. There is another, less well known but equally if not more powerful unconscious we all have: the archetypal-the collective-unconscious. It is multigenerational, inherited, and tribal. Together the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious form an individual's specific unconscious.
The artchetypal unconscious is inherited in two ways. The first is the genetic one, through the direct incorporation of cell memories of previous generations. The genetically imprinted material passes from our ancestors to us through lineage. The "genetic" transmission in the memories of the unconscious is not limited to the actual passing of genes. Even through the transplantation of cells, one can acquire such memories. In fact, some transplant patients have reported a remarkable experience after having received a donated organ, such as a heart, liver, or kidney. Without knowing anything about the organ donor, they begin to participate in his or her memories!
The second form of archetypal inheritance is the tribal one, perpetuated through our myths. Some expand to the whole of humankind. Such mythical transmission of unconscious knowledge, experience, and memories is a collective source of the human psyche. At times only this archetypal perspective can deal with questions that are insoluble at the individual level.
Therapists frequently are puzzled and frustrated by the lack of success in their work with some patients, who may diligently regress, discover repressed early personal experiences and work through the conflicts of some of their personal unconscious but still maintain the symptoms and behaviors that brought them to therapy. This is because they haven't dealt with their archetypal unconscious. The archetypal unconscious always preempts the personal unconscious.
T. Byram Karasu, MD is the author of The Art of Serenity
