Specialness and Ordinariness
The idea I had, which turns out to be very, very far from original i (and, therefore, not special but embarrassingly ordinary) is that I (and most of the rest of the population) get anxious about speaking in public because we are not content to be ordinary. If all I wanted to do was to say my name and that I was there because I’m interested in learning more about the subject, then speaking wouldn’t be a problem. The problem must be that I want to do more than that. I want to speak effortlessly and gracefully and amusingly and with insight and presence. In short, I want to say these few words better than they’ve ever been said before. I want to be very special. I want others to see me as very special. Perhaps, I thought, the cure for my anxiety was to learn to be content with being ordinary. Perhaps, I thought, this could be the cure for pretty much everything. Stung into action by this extraordinary insight I set about seeing if anyone had ever had any thoughts on the subject. Perhaps Google would return a few dozen interesting results for a search for “specialness” or “ordinariness” in combination with “psychotherapy”. You know the rest. Shamed, not into ordinariness, but into grandiose self-loathing, I set about considering what aspects of psychotherapeutic theory and thinking might touch upon ideas of ordinariness and specialness. The answer, I discovered, was – almost all of them. I’ll start with an exception. Thinking about the fear of public speaking, I found that James Hillman has something to say about it, but makes no mention of ordinariness and specialness whatsoever. He talks of Peitha and Suada (the Greek goddesses of persuasion) and statistics on psychological stress which report that the fear of speaking in public is a major inhibition impeding advancement up corporate and governmental ladders.ii Typically, and fascinatingly, Hillman dwells not on the reasons for this state of affairs but on the charm, flattery and seductiveness of rhetoric. This already gives us a clue. If people seeking (in my eyes) to be special are also seeking (in Hillman’s eyes) to be charming and seductive, then we’re already into the transactional realm. I want to be charming and seductive to others. This indicates that I’m not just trying to be special in my own eyes. I want others to see or experience me as being special. The narcissistic personality Thinking of how I want others to see me took me to the narcissistic personality. Eric Berne talks of recognition-hunger in terms of the business of day-to-day social discourse: meeting and greeting and the exchange of pleasantries. “Deliberately withholding [the symbols of recognition] constitutes a form of misbehavior called rudeness”. iii We could take this further. Today, for an increasing number of people, recognition-hunger could be described not just as the hunger for acknowledgement on the street from a neighbour, but adulation on Big Brother from millions. A recognition not of our existence but of our specialness. Of course, this acknowledged sense of specialness is likely to be a trait of the narcissistic personality. In its more extreme forms (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) it is sometimes thought to result from a belief that one is flawed in a way that makes one fundamentally unacceptable to others. iv This belief is usually held out of awareness and the creative intention of the narcissist’s concern with other people’s view of him is to protect himself against the intolerably painful rejection and isolation he imagines would follow if others recognised his supposedly defective nature. In the same vein, Masterson supposes that “the child [who] gives up efforts to support her emerging self [and] instead… relies on her mother’s approval to maintain the esteem of a "false self" v, may harbour a notion of the specialness of that undeveloped and unacknowledged emerging self. Here, then, we’re talking not about someone who feels special per se but about someone who has an idea that they could be special; that there is a special person inside waiting to get out. Hargarden and Sills recount the story of Beatrice who “had grown up feeling insignificant and unloved”. vi Her underlying injunctions, according to the authors, included, “Don’t be important”. Unlike Masterson’s child, who has won the approval of mother, Beatrice has never managed it. Still, the truth will out. After endless efforts to show Beatrice that she was not insignificant, the authors relate that “…as time went on, Beatrice found it difficult to hold on to the belief that she was worthless.” (I like this idea that we are hanging on like grim death to beliefs that no longer serve us. Like hanging on to the bumper of a car that is careering over a cliff.) Just for good measure, Hargarden and Sills also observed impasse theory at work when Beatrice had difficulty in moving out of shame and worthlessness because “she had introjected a sense of herself as shameful”. (I’m interested by their use of words here. My understanding of parental introjects is not so much that I introject a sense of myself, a feeling about myself, but that I introject a parent’s view or opinion of me. Later the authors refer to the same phenomenon as “introjected parent images.” vii This seems more appropriate.) Narcissism and self-image Staying with the theme of narcissism, Almaas asserts that, as we grow up, “the Essential Self is replaced gradually by the ego sense of self, as the latter becomes increasingly established.” An important consequence of this for Almaas relates to narcissism. Since narcissism is usually understood to be a consequence of the “absence of self or a distortion of its sense and structure”, then clearly “the individuality based on self-image is bound to be narcissistic in a very fundamental sense… Ego by its nature is narcissistic.” The reasoning is the same: once we develop an ego, a self image, part of whose function is that of armour or defence, then we immediately acquire a vested interest in bolstering and protecting that self image. If others question it, or can’t see it, then we too will be forced to question it. In this sense, we are all narcissists (except for a handful of self-realised beings who have shed their egos). Almaas goes on talk about just one aspect on narcissism: grandiosity. He asserts that the experience of the Essential Self (the experience of enlightenment or self-realisation) “fills the consciousness with a special kind of preciousness, and with a feeling of omnipotence and omniscience”. In other words, the experience of the Essential Self is what we might describe as grandiose. He reconciles the obvious problem here by further asserting that the Essential Self is complete, indestructible and omnipotent but that a mistake we can make is to imagine that the body-mind shares the characteristics of the Essential Self. The delusion, then, is to equate the Essential Self and the body-mind. viii In this instance we’re talking not about the individual who feels a special person lurking somewhere deep inside, but about someone boldly and publicly asserting their specialness. Perhaps we could call this extroverted specialness? The transpersonal realm “Conventional” Transpersonal Psychology says much the same as Almaas: “Narcissism is the endemic wound that permeates our society. Usually understood as self love it hides a profound self hatred and despair that is as inflated as its grandiose persona. What both obscure is an absence of any real sense of who we actually are and it is in the absence of this that a puffed up self desperately attempts to associate with what ever it deems lofty.” ix Wellings’ article, from which the previous extract is taken, follows Ken Wilber in concluding neatly for us that magical thinking, grandiosity and no end of New Age mumbo jumbo are means of confirming that the universe does in some sense revolve around “me”. Concluding that the universe “meant” something when “it decided” that I should get stuck in traffic this morning is a way of attributing massively more importance to me and my driving habits than any half-way rational soul ought to accept. It’s a way of asserting my specialness. By contrast, Wellings asserts that, “there is a real pleasure in the discovery of a universe that while it does not revolve around me is entirely my responsibility. What I do with the experience of my life, experiences entirely generated by myself, is just up to me and no external fate, force or god. Life is not meaningless but also it is not meaningful but rather it is meaning free.” x By the same token, we might conclude that we are neither special, nor ordinary. These are simply value conventions with no meaning. Specialness is meaning free. This time we’re talking about a sense of extroverted specialness, but one which is designed as a mask or cover for an underlying sense of meaninglessness or worthlessness. Specialness and object relations We can make very similar observations from the theory of object relations. As, according to Melanie Klein, we split off aspects of the ego into good and bad parts, we may develop a very reasonable vested interest in protecting, preserving and showing to the world our special and good side. We may use projective identification to reinforce our view of ourselves, and to “evacuate bad qualities”, which we recognise at some level to be ours, onto others. xi And this avenue leads us neatly to one aspect of the psychology of competitiveness, whether we see it through the lens of the poison of envy or through Oedipal theory. Projecting our bad qualities immediately reinforces our suspicions about the untrustworthiness of the other and reinforces our sense of the relative worthiness and trustworthiness of the self. In this cycle, the sense of specialness of the self is continually reinforced. In this cycle, we can see the I+U- life position created and reinforced and the paranoid personality emerging as we become familiar with the projected sense of untrustworthiness. Specialness and life positions Ken and Mary Woods have written at length about life positions. On this subject they note that “some mass murderers have an elevated sense of their OKness while some philanthropists struggle with a sense of their not-OKness. xii The latter, at least, could be seen, perhaps, as having a grandiose expectation of being able to do even better than love their fellow men, which is already, as Nancy Porter has observed, an attachment to achievement way beyond the “the possibility of simply Being, without condition.” xiii In this instance we’re talking about people who don’t yet feel special and are driven by the shortfall: the gap between their current best efforts and their ideal. Ken Woods has also written about the manic defence, warning therapists to watch out for clients (often criminals) whose grandiosity means that “the more OK these individuals feel about themselves, the more dangerous they become”. xiv Here we’re into the realm of “specially good” and “specially bad”, where enormous amounts have been written about psychopaths, bullies, concentration camp guards and more. To précis perilously, some of this work has focused on the perceived ordinariness of guards and others whilst daily performing state-approved atrocities; other writers have focused on the self- righteousness of cruelty; and so on. Specialness and righteousnessTalking of life positions and righteousness brings us to Mavis Klein. Klein sees “the quest for righteousness as at the core of the defensive structures of our egos”. Linking a different type of self-righteousness to each of Kahler’s miniscript drivers, Klein asserts that the drivers are the defences we use, “the pseudovirtues we deploy to convince ourselves {and others] that we are good”. The five faces of righteousness that Klein identifies are duty, need, expediency, togetherness and sex. She asserts that each of these manifestations of righteousness replaces love in some sense. So duty, which is the righteousness component in the Be Perfect driver, says in a relationship, “You are a deep disappointment to me and are not worthy of love. However, I married you (or otherwise committed myself to you), so I will not let you down. You will find me faultless in the fulfilment of my obligations, but that is all to which you are entitled. Loving you is not part of my obligation.” xv Reading this and the painfully separated-off, characteristic statements issued by each of the other righteousness components, it’s clear that the self-righteous individual must have developed a pretty special sense of self. Not surprisingly, there is an echo here of the self-righteousness underlying the statements issued by large corporations, political parties and governments and politicians and underlying the bulls and encyclicals issued by churches. Reading again Mavis Klein’s imagined statement of the self-righteous component of the Be Perfect driver (quoted above), it’s easy to see that this position leads effortlessly to the role of Persecutor in the drama triangle. There is a righteousness and a sense of specialness associated with each of the roles in the drama triangle, although the ways in which they are demonstrated clearly differ. For example, the Victim’s sense of specialness is likely to be held more tightly, turned inwards, concealed from the world but fed indirectly by the treatment and responses that the Victim seeks out and finds in the outside world. This brings us back to examples of what I have called introverted and extraverted specialness. Specialness in fairy tales Sooner or later, most fairy tales confirm the specialness of their underdog heroes and (more particularly) heroines. As I understand it, Harry Potter moves from an ordinary world where he was criticised or punished for showing signs of specialness, to a magical world where he was supremely special. (I say ‘as I understand it’ because I haven’t read or seen any Harry Potter and this makes me feel rather special, or at least unusual, even though for you it may only confirm some less flattering opinions you may have about me.) Other fairy tales (Cinderella, obviously) seem to confirm for us a belief, more recognisable this side of the Atlantic perhaps, that modesty and humility are true virtues and that those who practise them best may, if they’re lucky, be rewarded by prizes (wealth, love, kingdoms and dominions, power) that will demonstrate for all to see the recipient’s true worth, in a way that cannot be hidden or glossed over by their native humility. To stay with Cinderella for a minute, we can see the knee-jerk denials of our own specialness when it’s observed and commented on by others as a classic form of discounting. (This is the exercise we probably all did right at the beginning of Year 1, when we had to hear another person saying warmly approving things about us.) Here we’re talking about the individual with a (perhaps quite well- developed) sense of their own specialness but who has learnt to deny it to the world because family, manners, school, class or caste, church or other tyrant teaches that self-effacement is the only way. Specialness and limitations Emmy van Deurzen makes a crucial point when she talks of “living in tune with your intentions”. In the case of someone who wanted to be in control but tended to give up because they could never be fully in control, this would mean “the recognition of limitations on being in charge, rather than a striving for absolutes.” Striving for absolutes is the striving for specialness as against a recognition and acceptance of ordinariness.xvi This recognition of limitations involves both a recognition of quantitative limitations (we can strive to be rich without striving to be the richest person in the world) and of the limitations of reality (in a fantasy world we may be able to fly, drink from the fountain of eternal youth or whatever, but in the real world we very probably can’t). Here we’re talking again about the possibility of specialness. This may be like our Type 1, who believes there is a special person inside waiting to get out. But it may also reflect, instead, a sense that there’s a pool of specialness “out there” which is up for grabs by anyone who tries hard enough (another link to miniscript drivers). Technology and ordinarinessThus far, I’ve concentrated almost exclusively on specialness. The most obvious inverse of specialness is ordinariness and there’s a point to be made about technology and ordinariness. Technology and social relations are intertwined. This is most obviously true of communication technologies: e-mail, telephones, etc. But the technological changes that have transformed our society – industrialisation, air travel, cheap everything, instant news, etc. – have also transformed the way that we relate socially, both on a macro, class/status level and on a micro, one-to-one level. Changes in technology have led to changes in boundaries and how we see them. Overall, advancing technology tends to have a levelling effect socially: more opportunities (not all) become more equal. Access is opened up to people and places that were previously not accessible. Celebrity becomes an issue because it’s open to anyone and not just the rich or well- born. Celebrity has to do with specialness, as discussed earlier. Access to specialness makes the absence of specialness more poignant. For the English peasant at the time of the Black Death, who knows what hopes and dreams of specialness may have existed. But we can be fairly sure that there were few who held realistic hopes of becoming rich or famous or even special, outside a very small family or village circle. Today, in much of the technologically-developed world, lotteries, talent shows, internet start-ups, access to loans and venture capital and a dozen other developments open up the realistic (but still unlikely) possibility of wealth, fame and specialness for everyone. So what? Well, if becoming special is a realistic possibility, then remaining ordinary becomes doubly disappointing. The poignancy of the absence of specialness suggests another type who nurtures a sense of bitter grievance against the world, his wife, his parents, his employer, fate or whatever and whose mission becomes that of confirming that he can never get what he deserves. Here, we can’t avoid thinking of the Transactional Analysis notion of life scripts. The classical approach I have talked about contemporary society’s particular attraction to specialness, whether engendered by technology, social mobility, the exaltation of the notion of individuation, or whatever. But, notwithstanding my earlier assertions about English peasants, the desire to be special is there before us in all history and in our oldest myths and legends. In this sense, one way of understanding the phenomenon, and the one preferred by the disciples of Freud, is to focus on the early experience of the child in the family. The craving to enjoy the attention of the parents and to be preferred to their siblings is well enough documented over time (starting, say, with Jacob and Esau). The craving to be special in the eyes of the psychotherapist seems also to be familiar enough. Peter Lomas says, “Someone who has not been able to attain a sense of ordinariness compensates by seeking an exclusive, special relationship, first and foremost with the mother. In this case he or she becomes unduly dependent on one particular relationship, and the qualities which would lead to greater self-confidence are not their real qualities but only those which happen to have importance in one person’s eyes.” Here, of course, we have come back to the ego defence.xvii The ideal of ordinariness Also lurking in Lomas’s observation is the idea of “attaining a sense of ordinariness”: that is of a sense of one’s own ordinariness being a desirable objective. This takes us back to Almaas, out to the realms of Buddhism and to esoteric religions. Type 4 in the Enneagram (The Connoisseur or Romantic) – and not to be confused with the numbered types of specialness that I’ve been listing - is typically seen as wanting to produce exceptional quality and be special. For Type 4, the state of deep and complete connection is lost in a world that abandons, leaving something important missing, leading to envy and longing. As a result, there is a never-ending search for love, or for a situation that is unique, special, missing and believed to be fulfilling. (The never-ending search takes us to holy grail myths among other things.) “4’s have a core belief that there is something missing deep inside them. They see others as happier and complete in comparison, and may envy them. This leads to internal feelings of deficiency and longing, yet also a sense of uniqueness and specialness.” xviii This sounds familiar. It relates to the Victim’s sense of specialness and to ideas of Special - where the not-OK person can find solace in being particularly not-OK (or really bad). Menezes neatly summarises the ideal of ordinariness thus: “Finally, but most importantly, be ordinary. Meditators love to see lights, have out-of-body experiences, get visitations and tumble through past lives. If you are experiencing any of the above, you are nowhere near the end of the tunnel yet. The ‘enlightened’ man, for lack of a better description, is an ‘ordinary man’. His very ordinariness of course is extraordinary as the rest of the world seeks to be special. Forget about enlightenment, becoming a Master and thousand-petalled lotuses…hello Joe Bloggs.” xix © Michelle Smith Michelle Smith is a mind control specialist at Triarchy Press. She can be found online on Facebook and at: http://independent.academia.edu/MichelleSmith i My colleague Andrew Carey introduced me to several of the writers referenced here and has been a continuing source of compassionate insight. ii Hillman, J. (1995) Kinds of Power. New York: Doubleday. pp.167-168 iii Berne, E. (1980) Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy London: Souvenir Press. p.84 iv Golomb, E. (1992) Trapped in the Mirror. New York: Morrow. pp. 19-20 v Masterson, J. F., The Hollow Self at http://www.mhsanctuary.com/borderline/masterson2.htm vi Hargarden, H. and Sills, C. (2002) Transactional Analysis: A Relational Perspective. London: Brunner- Routledge. vii ibid. p.4 viii Almaas, A.H. (1988) The Pearl Beyond Price. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications. pp.276-279 ix Wellings, N. (2002) On Wearing Purple, Puffers and Magical Thinking. Bath: Forum for Contemplative Studies. x ibid. xi Cooper, C. (2002) Psychodynamic Therapy: The Kleinian Approach. Handbook of Individual Therapy (ed. Dryden). London: Sage Publications. p.57 xii Woods, K. and Woods, M. (2002) Some Reflections on Simple OKness. Transactional Analysis Journal, Vol. 32, No.1. p.66 xiii Porter, N. (1981) What do we mean by I’m OK, You’re OK? Transactional Analysis Journal, Vol. 11, No.2. pp.116-117 xiv Woods, K. (2002) OKness as it Pertains to the Manic Defense. Transactional Analysis Journal, Vol. 32, No.2. p.124 xv Klein, M. (1992) The Enemies of Love. Transactional Analysis Journal, Vol. 22, No.2. pp.76-77 xvi van Deurzen, E. (2002) Existential Counselling and Psychotherapy in Practice. London: Sage Publications. p.202 xvii Lomas, P. (2005) Cultivating Intuition: A Personal Introduction to Psychotherapy. London: Whurr Publishers. xviii Langford, H. (2005) “The Personality Genome”: Leadership and the Enneagram in Australian Universities. Sydney: Oliver & Langford. p.6 xix Menezes, G., Mystical Realism, http://server81.blogspot.com Credits and references: Jeremy Bailenson, Dan Merget, Nick Yee and Ralph Schroeder Alfred Bester Judith Donath (go to p.31) Marc Fabri Neurobonkers |
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