| AMIDA TRUST | |
Occasional paper HUNGER FOR LIFE: Eating and Emptiness by Prasada Caroline Brazier |
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PRELIMINARY NOTE This paper is a personal exploration of the themes of hunger and emptiness. As such it draws upon both my experience as a therapist and as a human being and upon literary sources and ideas in our culture. Such ideas provide powerful metaphors through which we may come to understand that which we find unknowable. Their success as literary symbols relies largely upon this quality which they have to touch us and throw light upon our struggles on many levels simultaneously. I have provided illustration from case material. Because the material is both highly personal and universal, I have for the most part used fictionalised accounts. Unless otherwise stated therefore, "case material" is a composite written by myself and not attributable to any one client. It is impressive how much commonality there is between the experiences of clients, in that most of the examples given might well have been said by any one of a large number of people I have worked with. Because much of my work in this area has been with women, most statements referring to groups refer to groups of women. My more limited experience working with men on a one to one basis suggests that there is likely to be a considerable overlap between men's and women's experiences, but I felt it more appropriate to attribute material to women where it was based solely upon experience working with them. This is not intended to deny men's experience, but rather to recognise that there will be differences which I am not in a position to discuss. INTRODUCTION Eating and food are perhaps the most basic material of our existence. Beyond our very breath, food is the next most vital substance which our bodies receive. Almost from the very moment of birth we are fed, or we are not fed. Our earliest sensations must be as full or empty existences. We can only speculate on the experience which each of us has during this newborn phase, but it does not seem unlikely that, as Klein and others have suggested, the powerful forces of hunger and satiation leave traces in the deepest folds of our being. Food and feeding hold huge symbolic meaning. They are so intimately entwined with our being alive, that within our psyches we are bound to find myriad connections and metaphoric significances for their processes. It is thus not surprising that when our psyches seek a means to express the pain and struggle hidden within, food may often become the channel. I have now spent many years working with women, and men, who see food as an area of difficulty in their lives. I have noticed my own fluctuating patterns of eating, and the emotional waves on which they have ridden. I have become increasingly aware of the infinite complexity of the underlying stories which seem to be played out through eating, and of the intractability of the urge to self-feed beyond physical hunger. This paper sets out not to offer an answer, nor to parcel the riddle of eating into one bite sized portion. It offers perhaps one exploration of one aspect of the stories that abound relating to food. It is a story primeval in its power to affect us. A story that we cannot read without being touched. It is the story of hunger and emptiness. HUNGER AND RAGE Women who are mothers, as well as many who are not, and many men who have shared, in close proximity, the world of a new born baby, will recognise the furious passion of the child. The face contorted and red, the desperately searching mouth, the ensuing fury if the feed is delayed. The whole body arches, writhes, kicks. We feel the answering desperation. The anguish of buttons that will not be undone. The fullness of the breast, aching for relief. We feel too the savage clamp of hard gums on the nipple. The angry, hungry, raw experience of the unfed child. It is small wonder that Melanie Klein, herself a mother, set out to explore and define this, our earliest, and perhaps purest experiencing of the world, as the basis for the development of the adult psyche. The baby knows no past, no future to soften the anguish of its emptiness. In each moment of delay it experiences a totality of emptiness and rages at its denial. In that moment, the world of the child is emptiness. As we watch the child, we may re-enter our own early encounters with emptiness. Such early experience can leave no verbal trace, for we had no words with which to protect ourselves from our experiences. At that point in our lives we were what we felt as we felt it. It could not be adjusted to manageable proportions by reason. Yet, somehow, within us stirs something, some lingering trace of that experiencing; a memory whose form is both elusive and pervasive, like a damp mist across our present. Early memories often seem to be held within the body. Adults who have suffered abuse as children often sense the memories of the abuse first as bodily sensations, eerily unattached to scenes or memories of events. Often such "body memories" are reactive. The body huddles seemingly against a blow, the throat gags against an intrusion seemingly before the adult is even conscious that something has been touched in them. As adults in states of severe distress, it is the early childhood sensations we recreate: we lie in a foetal position, we rock (a memory of mother's arms, but perhaps also of earlier rocking within the movements of her body), we seek the comfort of naked contact with a loved one. Thus, in so many ways, we carry within our bodily experience as adults, the shadows of our earliest selves. It would be small wonder that within those shadows, the anguish and rage of the hungry child should echo down the years. The bodily memory of an emptiness that was total, unfillable. An emptiness that engulfed us, that racked us with pain and despair. Each of us, in our earliest selves, has glimpsed the void. FILLING THE VOID The fridge door is open before I know it. I crouch, a frightened animal before it. It is not full. I dare not have too much food in the house. I know I would not be able to resist its pull. From the shelves I am already snatching items of food. I am cramming cheese into my mouth as I reach the bowl of left-over trifle. A spoon. A large spoon. Large enough to fill my mouth at a go. Then bread. Bread spread thickly with margarine and jam. I cram the first morsels into my mouth and swallow, hardly chewing. They choke in my throat. I slow, but I do not stop. Less desperate now, I start to feel with relief that fullness of mouth, that satisfaction. But it is transitory. I must keep pouring more and more food into that pit of my hunger. A yogurt, and handful of dry cereal, I am excited. I devour it. At last I seem to reach satiation. My belly strains beyond comfort, but I am only now aware of it. I stand, dazed in the middle of my kitchen, uncertain of how, once more, I have allowed myself to gratify this part of me that I hate so much. For the person locked into the pattern of bingeing, the desperation of this account will be familiar. Familiar too the overwhelming bodily sense of emptiness and insatiability. An emptiness that seems to bear little relation to present physical hunger. Dorothy Rowe (1983) describes the two irreducible fears of isolation and chaos that she believes underlie all our other fears. It is my sense that these two fears may be reducible to one. A fear that has echoes in the raw experiencing of the child. A fear expressed in the imagery of many clients with who I work. A pit; a dark tunnel; death. It is a place of nothing and everything. A place that echoes with its own emptiness, whilst being filled with a fierce swirling chaos. It is a place made friendly by folk lore, story and reason, but within each of us there is contained that other knowledge of its irreducible horror. There are few of us who have faced this place unveiled and survived, but those who creep to the bread bin in the early hours have perhaps glimpsed its terror at closer quarters than most. They have felt it within them. The emptiness that demands to be filled. EMPTINESS The power of the void to inspire fear and to drive us to almost any lengths in our headlong self-preserving dash for safety may underlie some of our most savage encounters with food. It is a Medusa we will not choose to glimpse a second time, for fear she turn her face on us. But emptiness comes in many forms. Whether we see each experience of emptiness as a filtered image of the void, or whether we take each as a different phenomenon, with its own intrinsically irreducible qualities, the exploration of different aspects of emptiness provides useful insight into eating behaviour. HUNGER FOR LOVE The equation of food with love is deeply ingrained not only within our culture, but also within our instinctive selves. The love bond between mother and child arises, in the first instance, not from any conscious behaviour or thought pattern on the part of the mother, but from the interaction that occurs as the child feeds. Reaching satisfaction, the baby turns her head and smiles at the face which she sees, hanging in the confusion of colour and movement; a still object, perfectly focused, for the baby's eyes are initially fixed to a focal length equivalent to the distance from breast to face. As we grow, this instinctive link between feeding and love is likely to be reinforced daily by lovingly prepared meals, love tokens such as sweets, crisps, biscuits and other treats, and celebratory blow outs on family occasions. We learn to evoke love by receiving and giving food. We learn to punish by with-holding and refusing it. When love is missing from life, the gap can be felt as a yawning emptiness. This emptiness can be felt as a hunger. A hunger that may then be unsuccessfully plied with food. In a group I was running recently, a woman described a vision she had had of the family she would have liked. It was a very different family from the one in which she had actually grown up, where she had felt unloved and unnoticed by her quarrelling parents. In her imagination she was on a family picnic A:I found that I was a child in this beautiful meadow on this gorgeous summers day. A really wild meadow with tall grass and all the wild flowers.. running and jumping, and my mum and Dad were there and me and my brother and sister, and it was just beautiful. I really enjoyed it. C: And if you could pick one word to describe the feel of it.. A: I think really full.... what I did experience was... it was a picnic, there was supposed to be food there, but the food actually never materialised, but what I did feel was that I was so full of happiness and love that I wasn't hungry. In this extract, although the picnic is the central motif, it is in many ways returned to its symbolic role. There is no need to eat the food, for in this family the feeding is already taking place. The child feels full; satisfied. It is loved. This need for love and the substitution of eating for love when the hunger persists is not limited to childhood experience. As adults, too, we all too often feel a lack of love in our lives. This basic need to be closely connected to others, to love and to be loved without conditions or provisos seems so much a part of being human, and yet recent developments in humanistic thinking often leave a sense of confusion. I am often aware of clients' dismay at discovering they need others in their lives. The modern preoccupation with independence and self-fulfillment has left them with a sense that to ally one's life too closely with another is to be weak, dependant and child-like. Yet it is often the person who lacks true emotional connection who feel most at the mercy of overwhelming feelings of dependency (Eichenbaum & Orbach, 1984). It is only when we have felt fully loved that we can start to feel fully free. Nevertheless, such feelings of neediness are often experienced with the same shame as the eating behaviour that accompanies them. THE EMPTY TABLE, STARVING FAMILIES Having explored the role of food as a substitute for love, it is evident that the starvation of love underlying so much eating behaviour frequently begins within the family. The image of the perfect family often revolves around the dinner table. We have only to look at the images that advertisers choose to tempt us to see the powerful icon which the family meal time is for so many of us. It is little wonder then that it is in family meals that we can also feel our greatest dissatisfactions. The Christmas dinner, the Sunday lunch. These are the times when family relationships can be most strained. These times are the times when the differences become most apparent between our image of how things should be, and the reality with which we are presented. It is not surprising, then that it is in these contexts that, so often, the desire emerges to put things right, even long after the events of an unhappy childhood. A woman whose mother was cold and unresponsive, finds herself loading her new family's table with elaborate puddings and cakes. A student whose family never sat down together to eat finds himself inviting huge groups of friends to Sunday lunch every week, savouring the feeling of sitting over food with friendly company. A woman whose large family were constantly squabbling at meal times, year after year invites all those now grown up brothers and sisters, their partners and children along with her ageing parents to a Christmas meal that would have impressed even a Dickensian audience. She does not enjoy it. The cooking takes weeks of planning, and the family continue to squabble as they did all those years ago, yet each year she finds herself caught in the same pattern of hope and despair. Sometimes this urge to repeat; to get it right, can seem to take on such proportions that it may become beyond the control of the person. They can feel in the grip of an alien force, being driven to not only repeat incidents, but to become the parent they have criticised so long. There is a sense of losing existence to the parent. The woman who has always maintained she will have a career and never be a house wife, suddenly realises she is at home with the children as her mother was. At this point she may feel taken over, even possessed. I feel I am becoming my mother. I don't want to be but somehow I am. I can hear myself speaking her words, and it doesn't sound like me. I nag him about his clothes and about watching too much television just as my mother nagged my father. I shout at the kids just like she shouted at us. I always said it was the last thing I wanted, but its happening. I'm really frightened that I'm becoming her. This sense of confusion of boundaries between mother and daughter seems to be particularly strong amongst women who have problems with food. It is a subject to which I will return. In the present context, however, I am interested in the light it throws on the residual emptiness that childhood experience within the family can leave, and the compulsive need that is often felt to make up for those deficiencies. DEATH Whilst the emptiness of childhood may haunt us from the past, many of us are also haunted at some level with an emptiness from the future. The emptiness of death. Jung explored the role of recognising our mortality in creating the "mid-life crisis" and subsequent maturation of the personality. How we face our own deaths speaks much of the ways in which we live or have lived our lives. For many people death and the void are almost interchangeable concepts. In both we find annihilation. So the void may be seen as a metaphor for death; the inescapable into which we all fall at the end. Equally death may be seen as a metaphor for the void, a concretisation of that ultimate fear, a shape for that which has no shape. The fear of death is often voiced by people who eat compulsively in the context of exploring their eating behaviour. One woman whose sister had died of breast cancer talked of her ambivalence at losing weight. There's a bit of me wants to be thin, but as soon as I start to lose weight I just panic. I guess its because S lost so much weight just before she died. But often the fear seems contradictory. The same woman is also too well aware that her weight is such that it is affecting her health, that it brings her nearer to death. When eating disorders are life threatening in their extreme forms, can we still see the fear of death as a significant factor? There are probably many responses to this question. What does need to be recognised is that the playing out of such fears takes place not in the rational, but in the irrational sides of our selves. We may know that if we get very fat our health will be affected. We may know that losing weight need have nothing to do with illness and death. We may decide to do something about it. But nothing will change, because at another, less conscious, level powerful forces are engaged in a different battle. It may be we believe that we are invincible, immortal. It may be we have struck a bargain with the gods. That we have reduced the impossible fear to "if I am good and keep my weight below six stones then you will reward me by keeping me young for ever". It may be that physical death is less feared and less imminent than another psychological or spiritual death. Whatever the form, a fear of non-existence is often a strong motivator for eating problems. Sometimes this fear is overt, but more often it is disguised. The woman who exercises daily and spends huge sums of money on facials may well hope to cheat death by never ageing. The woman who has lost interest in her own life and says that she lives through her children may also be seeking a kind of immortality. The woman concerned to build a career and a home and to amass a fortune may also be trying to cheat death by erecting a series of ramparts between herself and the inevitable. GENDER Eating problems have commonly been associated with women. Although the notion that eating problems are exclusively a women's preserve has increasingly been challenged by the number of men coming forward for help who see themselves as suffering from difficulties around food, there are specific issues connected with women's lives which can be seen as leaving them more vulnerable to this kind of problem. At its most simplistic, a woman's life is often more closely bound up with the provision of food for herself and particularly for others. The woman traditionally plans, shops, prepares, serves and clears up after the family meals. This pattern is still largely in place in much of western society, despite changing life styles. Even where it is not in place, most women will have grown up surrounded by role models of older women who were the providers and nurturers. Such values do not die easily, as can be seen in any viewing of advertisers imagery. It may well reflect a deeper instinctive role. Women after all are equipped to feed the young. No social change, short of medical intervention, is likely to alter this biological fact. Feminist writers have made much of the message of hunger which is conveyed to women brought up to nurture. "Food is for other people" seems to underlie the ideal of womanhood. The mother who starves whilst feeding her children becomes a common image, bringing hunger for the mother and guilt for the child. For the girl child such guilt is intensified by the mutual identification between mother and daughter, which creates an ambivalence for the mother. For her there is a need to not only feed, but also to convey the message that nurturing cannot be relied upon to continue (Eichenbaum & Orbach, 1985). If the traditional message for the woman was of one hunger, the new message given to women may be one of emptiness. Kim Chernin (Chernin 1986) explores the idea that women have moved from lives which felt unfulfilled and empty as a result of traditional role limitations, to lives which have gained a level of fulfilment at the cost of taking on aspects of male identity. This appropriation of male characteristics, she suggests leaves women with a sense of emptiness at their core resulting from the loss of a sense of distinct feminine identity. Instead they have taken on an identity that takes no account of being a woman. The issue of identity as a product of gender-specific characteristics is one that may be as equally applied to men as women. The last few decades have seen fundamental changes in role between men and women which have at some level touched most of us. Differentiation of the sexes has become markedly less defined in occupation, dress, roles within relationships, parenting, and sexuality. Women have become more like men, whilst men have often struggled to develop the feminine aspects of their personalities. Although the extremes of this shift towards an interchangeability may be limited to a few, the threat of appropriation of traditional roles by the other sex, as well as the denigration of sexual stereotypes has left a wide ranging unease. The recent rise in the men's movement may well reflect a discomfort in male identity which mirrors that which gave rise to the women's movement two decades earlier. Perhaps then we see a parallel in the rising reports of male eating disorders. IDENTITY & SELF Whilst a sense of one's identity may well be linked to a sense of gender identification, the definition, and even existence of something that can be called a self is the subject of considerable discussion within different groups in the therapy world. We use the words self and identity to mean similar things in common parlance, but may in fact be looking at quite different phenomena. The word identity is linked with the word identify. Ask anyone who they are and you are likely to be given a list of things, people, ideas with which or whom that person identifies. If a person is pushed to answer the question again, further identifications arise. It is as if we all see ourselves through a myriad of mirrors. Reflections of ourselves. But if we search for something beyond that collection of mirrors what do we find? The question of whether a self exists within this circle of images has concerned philosophers, psychologists and thinkers from many approaches. Often it seems more a matter of belief than experience whether we are able to define a self separate from the reflections. What does seem apparent, however is that most of us develop some sense of something which we call self, a something which at least in part functions as a centre to our existence at those times when we look to see if it is there. If we are asked, "who are you?", we at least have a sense that there is an answer even if we have no clear way of reaching it. For the purposes of this paper, I do not intend to go further into the debate on the theoretical nature of self. As a phenomenological therapist I am interested in the nature of our experience, and recognise that that experience can be viewed through many filters, all of which give some, but never complete insight into the character of the whole. HUNGER Emptiness may be experienced in different ways. One of those ways is hunger. Hunger is an active emptiness, an emptiness that seeks to devour. The new born infant experiences not just emptiness, but an active, voracious hunger. It is that hunger that drives us to hunt, to scavenge, to fight, even to the death. It is hunger that reduces our humanity. Our civilisation rests upon a bed of three square meals. In many cases already described, hunger is perceived as emptiness, but sometimes it demands a more active metaphor. Sometimes it becomes the dragon within. The dragon within: Dragons are hugely powerful, hugely frightening creatures that inhabit dark places and devour anyone foolish enough to cross their paths. They breathe fire. When they venture out and fly on their great wings, their shadows fall across the land, and the people beneath quake. Sometimes they are placated by offerings of human flesh, usually virginal. Sometimes they are slain by armoured knights with shining swords. When a dragon dies there is rejoicing. Nobody mourns a dragon. The image of the dragon within is one brought to therapy by many people. In one shape or form they tell me of the monsters that they secretly hold in their bellies. These monsters may be placated with food, but they are hungry. They are rarely satisfied for long. Generally the person is certain that should they stop feeding the dragon, it will come out and roam abroad, terrorising everyone in its path. These dragons can take many forms. Some may be half recognised by the person, others may be too dreadful to look at. Dragons are very good at changing disguise too. Anger: Probably the most easily accepted dragon is the angry one. Despite its fiery breath, and loud roar, in some circles this dragon is becoming quite a celebrity. Nevertheless for people with eating problems, anger can often be a feeling that is not permissable. So food becomes a means of placating the dragon. As teeth bite through, tearing the crusts of bread apart; as quantities of biscuits are rammed down, so the dragon is silenced. The person can return to their situation and carry on without ever expressing anger or frustration, but the angry dragon will be looking for sly ways to escape. He will need constant guarding and constant feeding. Guilt: Guilt is another dragon which may be placated with food. A sly, creeping creature, it is able to creep out at the most unlikely moments. Unlike its more productive cousin remorse, it does not stir the person to action, but holds them against the rock face, unable to move. Guilt too may be a friend, however, for guilt is a dragon that is able to hold off other dragons. Once it has hold of you, it is more likely to play with you than to eat you up. It will defend you from more ferocious neighbours. Fear: The fear dragon comes in many forms. It gnaws at your bones and eats up your insides, leaving huge yawning holes that need to be filled. Sexuality: A dangerous dragon at anytime, the dragon of sexuality is often not recognised until it is too late. Masquerading as other, less fearsome dragons, this beast is unpredictable. Often it appears to sleep, but even as it sleeps, it slips its long talons into the flesh of our bodies, filling them with unfamiliar desires. This dragon can rise up from the depths in a moment, shattering our lives with its great wings. The sexual dragon can be kept at bay in many ways. We may distract it with mouth watering morsels. We may starve it. We may swallow it and then vomit it back out. We may bury it in a huge fatty grave. But the sexual dragon has a way of returning. FIGHTING DRAGONS One thing that is apparent when we talk of these dragons is how well the metaphor stands up. It is a metaphor that will hold for many parts of ourselves that we find undesirable. What is significant to me is the way in which that part is perceived as something that is inside but alien. It is within the person, but not a part of the person. As such it is perceived as parasitic, invasive and dangerous. Emptiness equally becomes a danger because emptiness allows the dragon to emerge. In therapy many women I see are terrified by silences. Terrified by unstructured sessions. Such times leave space into which dragons can breathe. Many women will talk endlessly about anything. They will struggle to get me to join them in creating elaborate barriers of words. As we talk, I feel their fear. I also respect the basis of that fear. We all have dragons lurking in our depths. Perhaps some of us have just got a little more wily in keeping them under cover. On the other hand a dragon that needs to be placated with trolley loads of food may well need to be fought. Learning to live with silence may be a first step to finding the courage to take up that fight. In therapy we are often engaged in giving voices to dragons which have been silenced by many years of food abuse. There is often encouragement to own those parts that have been "split off" in this way, but we need to be sensitive to the experience of the host in this uncomfortable symbiosis. To own the dragon is a courageous act. OBJECT WITHOUT SUBJECT The loss of self: The loss of, or failure to develop, a sense of identity is frequently cited as a strong factor in the development of eating disorders (eg Duker & Slade, 1988). Women frequently speak of the utter confusion which they feel inside as soon as the eating stops or starts. Food becomes the anchor and the measure by which they can gain some sense of their own existence. To lose that anchor is to be cast into the void. The sense of self which I hear described by the people with whom I am working is complex. Sometimes the model which speaks of a lack of a sense of self seems appropriate. Othertimes one may wonder if the person has a sense of anything beyond self. The discussion of this mental conundrum is complicated not only by the difficulties in conceptualising the mental frameworks of others, but also by the value-ridden territory surrounding this aspect of psychology. Reflections of emptiness: Much of my work as a therapist is with women who have difficulties around food. As I listen to these women talking, I am aware of the frequency with which they describe looking to others as if looking for a mirror in which to see themselves: I walk into a room and I think "am I bigger or smaller than that woman?". I enter the cinema and think "I could sit in that chair because it is near the aisle and has extra room to accommodate me." I listen to you talking about your sadness, and I feel moved, I guess I never realised how sad I felt inside. Often it is others who are given the power to create or destroy: When he appreciates my work, I feel good about myself. When he does not notice, it is as if I do not exist. I did it because she believed in me. He told me that I was happy with him, so I didn't leave him: I decided he must be right. Sometimes the reflection is not so much what the woman believes she is, so much as what she would like to be that is reflected. We become fascinated by other reflections; by who we might be: I sit on the train and notice the woman across the aisle from me. She wears torn jeans and half unbuttoned shirt. Fascinated for a moment, I watch as she laughs and jokes with the two men over their cans of beer. She is bright and confident in her manner; flicks her long hair over her shoulder, and touches the shoulder of the man next to her as she talks. I do not want her to see me looking at her. If she were to talk to me I would feel awkward, even threatened. I remember girls like her at school. They slept around and skipped lessons. I guess my mother was always glad I wasn't friends with any of them, but there wasn't much chance of that. I could never have let myself know then how much I envied them, yet now as I watch her, a bit of me does wonder how it must feel to be so at ease with life. This marked reliance on an external frame of reference seems particularly strong for women in the groups I am running. Often too there is a sense of emptiness. An awareness of not only the reflections, but also of the void within. But the term external may itself be a misconception. The sense that it is something other than the self which forms the focus of life may itself be an illusion. These are, after all reflections, and reflections are not objects in their own right. Whilst I hear women describing themselves in terms of their surroundings, or investing attention in external things, it is striking how often the perception of surroundings is endowed with qualities of the woman herself, which are often unrecognised by her. Perhaps they are qualities she would like to own. Perhaps they are qualities that she is afraid of owning. So the woman whose interest is entirely focused on the other people in the room is not truly seeing the other people as individuals with three dimensional lives of their own. She is only aware of the interface between herself and them. She sees them as bigger than me, smaller than me, more successful than me. Each is viewed through the filter of "me". Similarly, as she looks at the objects in the room it is often in terms of "Do I like this?", "Could I sit in this chair?", "How might it feel for me to live here?" The constant checking of reflections in order to maintain a sense of self seems a feature of the lives of many of the women with whom I work. It is also a behaviour which keeps them locked into an isolated world of mirrors, where nothing is allowed to be more than a looking glass. Mothers and daughters: Women in therapy who suffer from eating problems frequently describe complicated relationships with their mothers. - I feel as if I am becoming my mother. I don't want to. Far from it, I've always struggled to be totally different. I studied to get away from home. I've worked hard to build up a career, to be independent, but suddenly I find myself shouting at my partner when he's late home, and my words could be her words. I'm even bothered if people are coming and the house is in a mess. I never used to be like this. - My mother worries about me all the time. She phones me every day, and if I'm not in, she phones the next morning to ask where I've been. I can't stand it, and yet I find myself phoning her if I'm on holiday just so she won't worry. - When Tony, my son, was born, she was thrilled. She was never away from the house. She used to do everything for him. I think she was glad when the breast feeding didn't work out so she could feed him. At first I didn't mind because I was tired after the delivery (it was a difficult one), but now he's three he just doesn't want to come home. He'd rather be with her. It feels as if its all gone too far. Sometimes their relating is seen by themselves or others as too close. Other times it feels intrusive. These feelings are often two sides of the same coin. The feeling of identification can be overwhelming, whether it is desired or not. Mother and daughter can feel as inseparable as image and reflection. Reflections of the past: A form of reflection which we all carry within us is that of our pasts. Our early experiencing of others leaves an imprint which we carry into our adult relationships. The strongest of these imprints is that which we carry from our parents. This imprint forms another filter through which we view the world which we encounter, a filter which brings us to see others as having qualities which actually belonged to our parents, and behave towards them accordingly. This transfer of expectations and behaviour is called transference. Its study forms the basis of analytic approaches to psychotherapy. Two forms of transference have been identified, corresponding to the two main phases of the child's early development as defined by Freud and others. Freud originally defined transference as relating to the oedipal phase of the child's development, characterised by ambivalence, sexualisation and rivalry. Kohut later identified what he termed the narcissistic transference which occurs in two forms: the "idealising transference" and the "mirror transference." He saw these as rooted in the earlier narcissistic phase and reflecting the early relating of child and parent. The idealising transference is characterised by a global investment of power and authority in another person, which places that person in a role of provider or refuser. There is no real empathy for the person upon whom a strongly narcissistic transference is placed. The term "mirror transference" is used, meanwhile, to describe an expression of early feelings of a basic need for "empathic resonance"; the fact that without mirroring from others the young child can never learn to feel real, accepted or worthy of value. Nor can he value others. In the natural order of things it is through the parents', and particularly the mother's love and the "mirroring" that arises naturally as the parent responds to the child, that the child develops a sense of self. Jacoby (1984) describes the ways in which this process may become interrupted: Patients who form a mirror transference have usually had some distorted mirroring in the past and therefore have difficulties in knowing who they are and in feeling welcome on this earth in a realistic enough way. They have developed over-sensitive "feelers" which pick up the slightest sign of possible rejection, with a traumatising effect on their sense of self. One defense against this constant threat is the development of an overcompensatory conviction: I do not need anybody at all, I can be completely self-sufficient. This is in fact an unconscious identification with infantile feelings of omnipotence - with the "grandiose self" to use Kohut's terminology. Of course people with this psychic constellation come into analysis only if the overcompensatory defense system gets shaken. First of all then, their sense of self-importance has to be restored; they thus form a mirror transference in the sense that the analyst has no right to an autonomous existence of his own, but is reduced to functioning as a mirror to reflect their grandiosity, specialness, and self-sufficiency. The countertransference response of the analyst is often to feel devalued, useless and impotent. Jacoby goes on to discuss different views expressed by Kohut and Kernberg as to whether this counter-transference should be interpreted. For the person-centred therapist there is a parallel dilemma about whether the therapist should be empathic or congruent. Jacoby himself feels that the client's primary need is for the therapist to perform an empathic or "holding" function. He does recognise the client's need for genuineness, but sees the separation of this from the therapist's own feelings of inadequacy or frustration as essential. Such development of an adequate sense of one's own existence precedes, then, the ability to see others as separate entities with needs and feelings that are different from ones own. The resolution of this early narcissistic phase permits the child to enter a phase in which it achieves a sense of the mother as a separate entity from itself. Differentiation, separation and the disruption of the narcissistic relation to reality are developed through learning that the mother is a separate being with separate interests and activities that do not coincide with just what the infant wants at the time. They involve the ability to experience and perceive the object/other (the mother) in aspects apart from its sole relation to the ability to gratify the infants subject needs and wants; they involve seeing the object as separate from the self and from the self's needs. (Chodorow 1989 p103) Although a detailed study of transference and separation issues is not appropriate to this paper, I hope that this digression will have thrown some light upon one theoretical approach which offers some insight into the feelings described. HUNGER FOR LIFE If we return to the sense of emptiness from which we began, we can recognise the emptiness of a world in which contact with others is constantly filtered through a complex set of projections and hopes. If we see those around us as potential providers of (probably idealised) parental love, we are bound to feel constantly starved of that love. There is a story of a hell in which the inhabitants are surrounded by food, but unable to eat because they are supplied with chop-sticks which are too long. It is not until they learn to feed each other that hell can be transformed and their hunger satisfied. If we are caught in a world of mirrors, we are never touched by others, nor are we touched by the world. Experience is held beyond arm's length by the projection of our inner world. Often I hear of a longing to break away. To escape. Images of open spaces, clear air, sunshine. But such longing is often just another mirror. Make it possible, and it doesn't happen. Real satiation more often seems to come, at least initially, in the mundane, every day contact: a group learning to listen to one another, a parent learning to play with their child, the discovery of new life in an old relationship - or a new one. It may also come from a wholehearted involvement in some project: a new job, a spiritual path, an enthusiasm. It may come simply from living in the moment. EMBRACING EMPTINESS Death is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or.... a migration of the soul... Now if there is no consciousness but only a dreamless sleep, death must be a marvellous gain. I suppose that if anyone were told to pick out the night on which he slept so soundly as not even to dream, and then compare it with all other nights and days of his life, and then were told to say, after due consideration, how many better and happier days and nights than this he had spent in the course of his life - well I think that even the Great King himself....would find these days and nights easy to count in comparison with the rest. (Apology of Socrates, par 40, Penguin translation) So far this exploration of emptiness has focused predominantly upon negative aspects of emptiness, emptiness as the void, that hole of terror into which we might fall. Yet this is not the only view available. Emptiness has been the goal of many mystics. Thinkers and philosophers of many back grounds have echoed the belief that it is existence and not non-existence that confronts us with pain and difficulty. Socrates' last words at his trial reflect this openness in the face of the void. For many women who have reached a peaceful co-existence with their dragons and learned to face the emptiness within and without, there can be recognition of the desire for emptiness; for space. Many women whom I work with, as they begin to become more comfortable with silence, start to value space within their lives. Some actively seek it through meditation or spending time alone. Finding space can become as much a struggle as avoiding it. SPACE In my work with women who see themselves as having eating problems, personal space seems frequently to become an issue. This may be a struggle for time within a relationship, a struggle for distance from parents (in many cases to psychologically separate), a preoccupation with living space, be it their house, bedroom, or an area of a room such as a desk, or many other instances of fending off people or pressures which are experienced as invading forces. Sometimes this sense of invasion seems linked to memories of an earlier, more traumatic, invasion of their physical or psychological selves, such as sexual or emotional abuse. For such women, eating can provide a way of preserving inner space. The hunger can be felt not so much as a need to keep down inner forces, as a desire to keep out invading ones. Body size itself can become a barrier protecting the self from the world. (Orbach 1979) SUMMARY Feelings of emptiness and hunger are primitive and compelling forces in our lives. It is the hunger for knowledge which drives us to learn, the hunger for adventure which sends people across oceans in tiny craft or up dangerous mountain ridges despite the ravages of the elements. It is the hunger for love which drives us to risk and risk again in the struggle to find another with whom to be close, and the hunger for sexual expression which leads us into situations which our more rational selves might deplore. When our hungers are unsatisfied, we may face again the torments of emptiness. Our world is an interaction between the people and objects with which we identify (Brazier 1992) and that elusive phenomenon which we call the self. For many people experiencing problems with food, the self is perceived as under threat. It may feel empty, having no effect upon its surroundings, seen only as shadowy reflection in the outer world. It may feel threatened, a small oasis needing protection from the onslaught of unfriendly forces. It may feel dangerous, infiltrated by dark forces which need to be kept at bay lest they escape and hurt others. This paper has offered an exploration of some of these paths. It is my attempt to record something of the vivid accounts of struggle which I hear daily as a therapist. It does not offer one coherent theory, for I do not believe that one exists, but it does point to some directions. Working with eating problems is a challenge to us all, therapists and sufferers, for, at the end of the day, we are all on the same rock face. Some of us may have found a ledge that is a little wider and more comfortable on which to rest, but if we are truly to face the forces we are working with, we must all be prepared to look down; down into the depths. BIBLIOGRAPHY BRAZIER, D: 1992. Eigenwelt & Mitwelt Eigenwelt Occasional Papers CHERNIN, K: 1986. The Hungry Self Virago, London CHODOROW, N: 1989. Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory, Yale U.P., Yale USA DUKER & SLADE: 1988. Anorexia nervosa & Bulimia: How to Help, Open University Press, England EICHENBAUM, E & ORBACH, S: 1985. Understanding Women, Penguin, England EICHENBAUM, E & ORBACH, S: 1984. What do women want, Fontana, Glasgow JACOBY, M: 1984 The Analytic Encounter Inner City Books, Torronto ORBACH, S: 1979 Fat is a Feminist Issue, Hamlyn, UK PLATO: Last Days of Socrates, Penguin Classics, England ROWE, D: 1983. Depression, the way out of your prison Routledge & Kegan Paul, London P.C.J. Brazier |