This is my 3rd blog entry. In each of the previous two, I've spelled out the relation of the appearance of psychological symptoms to a person's repression of anger.
In this blog entry I will focus more on repression, but in this case it's about the issue simply of remembering.
So, please remember that repression is always about how memory or remembering is conquered and rendered as erased. When you've got repression, you've got amnesia for the remembering.
WARNING: The anecdote described here is real, and for children it may be a bit X rated, although I believe, essentially harmless.
Introduction:
The Innocence Project has shown that eye-witness reports do not always have first level validity. Many people can witness the same event and report what they saw in disparate ways. That is to say, different people seeing the same event, can and often do remember it differently.
Case Example:
Some years ago I worked as a staff member (psychologist) at a state mental hospital. It was in the dead of winter on a blustery snowy day in February when one of the hospital patients who had ground privileges (was not a patient on a locked ward) made his way toward the woman's dormitory, stood near a tree facing a long line of the windows of the dormitory, and sure enough, as soon as he saw a woman at one of the windows, he exposed himself, all the while making sure that she saw him. She shouted: "A man is exposing himself!" In the following few seconds, all of the windows were occupied with female patients getting a clear view of this naked unfolding drama.
After about 20 seconds or so of the guy doing various gesticulations with what he had, he ran away. The hospital security patrol was called and they arrived within minutes. One of the patrol cars searched the grounds for the guy while two other security personnel questioned the women.
Results:
There were about 10 or 12 women who were interviewed. None of them could describe his face or tell much about him at all while all of them did in fact describe his penis. Some said he was tall while others swore he was short. His age was tagged at anywhere from early 40's to late 60's. They even had disparate things to say about his penis. Some said it was large, others said medium while two or three of the women said his penis was actually small. In other words, even though they all saw his penis, there was no unanimity as to its physical dimensions. And parenthetically speaking, the entire interview process became a controversy over what his penis looked like rather than an attempt to try to elicit a common description of what he looked like other than what his penis looked like.
The point of this part of the story is that the anatomy of remembering depends a great deal on what interests you and where you are looking, and even then, one's memory is subject to huge validity problems.
He was found!
The safety patrol at the hospital found him trying to hide under and along one of the hedges on one side of his own building. Apparently he was afraid to reenter his building because he thought he was surely recognized and would be apprehended if he returned to his room.
He was then interviewed by one of the psychiatrists and by me. According to his hospital chart, he was 55 years old.
I asked him why he did it, what motivated him to do it, and did he at all know why he did it? He answered in short sentences mostly saying he didn't know answers to any of my questions. I then asked him how he felt when he woke up that morning. And with that question was born the answer to his motivation to expose himself.
He said he woke up feeling good, and he took a shower. Standing naked after his shower he was still feeling rested and peaceful and without anxiety, and he gazed at himself in the vertical mirror hanging on the bathroom wall. And he was happy that his penis was big. Then he stopped talking, looked directly at me and confessed to having different feelings about his penis. In a nutshell, what he meant was that he had various feelings about his penis that were dependent on his emotional moods. If he was feeling good, then his penis looked big, and if he was feeling bad, then he was convinced his penis looked small. And usually he was feeling bad so that he was almost constantly experiencing negative feelings such as depression, and anxiety, and was usually also suffering with an ego-deflated sense of self.
His wish was to be seen as adequate not as an ego-deflated non-entity and he was frequently disgusted with himself (codeword for angry) for having the bad genetic luck of not being better endowed. He then said he was occasionally surprised because sometimes he felt his penis was quite adequate and this was when he was feeling good - especially in the mornings. And it was at such times that he wanted to share the good news.
"You see everyone (women), I'm okay!"
So, his acting-out in his exposing himself was his little delusional idea that everybody would be happy with his good news. And to top it all, he denied having any erotic or libidinous feeling concerning the act. It was pure pleasure to feel reassured and that could only be possible if a woman could confirm his good news so that he could be even more certain that he was correct in his perception.
Therefore, assuming we believe him, we would understand it all by seeing that he was usually angry at himself (and at women) for feeling and perceiving that his penis was small, and he would assume that this smallness only could be confirmed by a woman. Therefore, his anger got its chance to become transformed into an assertion that in his exhibitionistic emotional/psychological symptom was motivated (acted out) because of his new found belief that all was well with the world, and therefore his wish was realized - he did have an adequately sized penis.
If there was any therapeutic benefit for this man it was a result of his sudden realization that his moods determined his self-perception. I couldn't help but slip in that he should consider the possibility that his bad moods were really self directed anger. It was my attempt to have him cherish the memory of his realization. Remember, remembering is crucial.
He promised: "I'll never do it again."
I couldn't help but wonder if the operative term in this, his last sentiment was "never" or "again."
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In each blog entry I will also offer what in my book Love Is Not Enough: What It Takes To Make It Work, I refer to as a "wisdom," but which my patients in my private practice usually call "Henryisms." So, henceforth I'll call them "Henryisms."
Henryism *:
Making gut-wrenching attempts to do something valuable for yourself is
one of the only dignities. It can lead you to care about others as well.
*Love Is Not Enough: What It Takes To Make It Work
In each blog entry I will have a section titled: The Dictionary Corner. Here I will define terms and phrases that are relevant to emotions, personality, and disturbances of the mind.
The Dictionary Corner*
Free floating anxiety: Equivalent to generalized anxiety whereby no single event or person has yet been identified as the cause of the tension and disturbance.
Compulsion: A behavior that the person feels must be done. Usually arises from an obsession (idea) about what must be done and culminates in the behavior or urgency in getting it done (action) - the compulsion itself.
Malignant psychosis: The type of psychosis (failed reality testing; craziness) that continues to worsen into an extreme dementia.
* Dictionary of Psychopathology
