Talking in Your Real Voice

Horney taught us that it is healthy to tend to the real self and neurotic to invest in the idealized self. (Ten years later, Winnicott said pretty much the same thing.) She didn’t mean that it is pathological to wait until you’re alone to pick your nose, to wear a suit to an interview even though you are more comfortable in sweats, or to feign interest in others when you are having a bad day. She meant that it is pathological to disown the real self because you are disappointed in it, because you are covering it with a performance of perfectibility. Like so many psychological constructs, it’s easier to understand if you think of people as multiplicities, operating in this case with an inner child and an inner parent. Good parents don’t let their kids make funny noises in church, taunt competitors after winning, or masturbate in the living room. But neither do they pretend that their children are saintly, uncompetitive, or asexual.

It is generally engaging when someone speaks in their real voice and off-putting when they don’t. This is because the real voice defines a relationship between two whole people who are in different roles, whereas a false voice defines a relationship between the speaker and a semi-human, who is defined by their role. We see the appeal of the real voice in politicians where, for example—content aside—President Trump only speaks in his real voice, while one suspects that Hillary Clinton sounds very different in private conversation. Every president I can recall sounded like he was speaking in his real voice, while Al Gore, John Kerry, and Michael Dukakis did not. It’s not the only factor in getting elected: Mitt Romney and John McCain sounded real, too (but so did Barack Obama). You catch them speaking accidentally to a hot mic or overhear them speaking to their spouses, and you hear their usual intonation, meter, and personality. (Paradoxically, people with personality disorders tend to have only one voice, so they always speak in it. The real voice doesn't always equate to the real self.)

Actors are trained to speak in a voice that sounds real. Some wag supposedly said that the hardest thing to convey on stage is authenticity, and once you learn to fake authenticity, you’ve got it made. Good actors are trained to say things in their real voices by accessing the part of them that would say that line as written under the circumstances. Analogously, therapists (and parents and teachers) are often called on to say something they would not normally say, like “It’s time to stop,” or “Let’s see where your thoughts go from here.” The challenge is to say such things in their real voice, which is usually facilitated by an understanding of how such statements further the mutual goals of the therapy.

A director could get by in a pinch with only two statements. “I can’t hear you” helps the actor gauge the volume necessary to reach the audience. “I don’t believe you” helps the actor find a truer part of the self to engage with the lines of the play. Good directors do more than this to help actors convey genuine statements and interactions on the stage. Supervisors have the same agenda, listening to trainees not only for whether their lines fit the scene, but also listening for whether they are speaking their lines in their real voice. Then, just as a director helps an actor understand the play and the character, the supervisor helps the trainee understand what therapy is and how to play the role in this particular relationship and situation.

Some false-sounding voices may be considered regional dialects rather than expressions of falseness. Just as an actor with an accent has to lose it to play mainstream characters, some people are raised in subcultures where they are conditioned to inflect all statements as questions or to sound certain all the time, and they must lose these habitual ways of speaking to convey authenticity. Patients and others generally don’t trust therapists or other people who speak too slowly; it sounds as if they are overly concerned that they might say the wrong thing.

Many therapists, as noted, have trouble sounding authentic when managing the frame of the therapy. They became therapists because they want to take care of people, and caring in their minds is overly soothing, gentle, and, if you know what I mean, maternal. They get goopy and saccharine when talking about emotional pain; I imagine they also use a singsong voice to talk to children. Patients interpret the voice as putting them in an excessively needy and helpless role, which many patients actually like, but which does them little good. Other therapists entered the field because they like the idea of explaining things, or being right, or mastering strong emotion, and they come across as knowledgeable, confident, and, if you know what I mean, paternal. They are quite comfortable ending sessions on time but sound awkward when attuning to affect. As in so much else of life, an androgynous approach works best.

Therapists teach patients to speak in their real voice by listening for falseness. When they think they hear it, good therapists slow things down and explore what’s going on. I think of this as expanding the image on a smartphone by spreading two fingers. The therapist might say, “I can’t tell if you’re invested in what you’re saying right now,” or “I can’t tell if you’re saying this to me or in front of me.” The desire to convey something meaningful to a particular person will usually activate the real voice; the desire to hide what is meaningful will typically activate a false voice.

The real voice, like the real self, has needs and is capable of the whole range of human emotions and motives, including especially reciprocity and collaboration. You don’t have to show your sexuality or competitiveness as a parent or as a therapist to convey a real self, but you don’t have to pretend there is no such part of you, either. You can say to a patient with complete authenticity, “I’m curious why you’re focusing on this,” or to a child, “That’s private.”