Love and its Shadows

Emmy van Deurzen, Society for Existential Analysis, 25th Anniversary

Conference, 2013

Facebook and LinkedIn: Existential Therapywww.societyofpsychotherapy.org.ukwww.existentialpsychotherapy.netwww.emmyvandeurzen.comwww.dilemmas.orgwww.nspc.org.uk

Emmy van DeurzenPhD, MPhil, MPsych, CPsychol, FBPsS, UKCPF, FBACP, ECP, HPC reg

•Visiting Professor Middlesex University -UK•Director Dilemma Consultancy•Director Existential Academy •Principal New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling - London

13 Books

Existential Perspectives on Relationship Therapy

• Edited with Susan Iacovou

Living with love and its shadows

• What is love?• Why does it matter?• How do we make love happen?• What are its drawbacks and shadows?• How to live with love?

What is Love?

• To be intent on knowing, respecting and valuing an other for what they

actually are and can be

• Letting them be and live as fully and freely as possible, keeping their

welfare at heart, as our own, in a dedicated, attentive and

uncompromising way . I-Thou. Cherishing. Challenging.

Love is not just a feeling

• It is an action, an attitude, an intention, a movement, a way of

being

• Love is the movement towards the other in the spirit of care,

affection, commitment, loyalty, generosity, kindness, intimacy,

tenderness, attachment, trust and truth.

Love is a particular kind of intentionality

• The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings. (Buber)

• Scheler: humanitarian feelings are always accompanied by a hatred of the world. Humanity is loved in general in order to avoid having to love anybody in particular.

• Albert Camus, The Rebel, A. Bower, trans. (1956), p. 18

• There is not enough love in the world to squander it on anything but human beings.

Shadows and drawbacks

• True love requires mutuality

• We cannot truly love unless we love ourselves first

• Risks inherent in loving: it is a very absorbing activity which takes much energy

• Our good will and availability are taken advantage of

• Our hearts may be broken

• We will neglect others we do not love

People are confused about love

• Re-establish communication

• Mutual respect-support• Friendship and love• Understanding• Alterity• Collaboratio• Mutuality

Role of Existential Couple Therapist: work in synergy

Balancing pros and cons after structural analysis

The quieter you become the more you are able to hear

Rumi

• Re-establish peace, calm and willingness to listen

Existential Couple Work: aims

• Focus on shared meaning and human and life issues• Values of couple and how they provoke tension and

conflict• See conflict and daily conflict resolution as a basis of

relationship• Dialogue, understanding and respect as the

objective: creating a good space in the world• Mutuality and reciprocity as a way of overcoming

isolation

Idealized images of romantic love

Christian Love

Love as an altar of self-sacrifice

Jaspers’ Loving Struggle

The teacher of love teaches struggle. The teacher of lifeless isolation from the world teaches peace. Psychology of Worldviews 1919

Existential couple work

• Teach dialogue and listening

• Allow each partner access to what the other partner feels, dreads and hopes for in private

• Create a safe space where partners are able to speak freely and with the confidence of being respected, listened to and understood.

• Provide translation when they do not hear each other.

Love’s executioner or Love’s ally?

• Ally of love• Executioner of infatuation

To understand love is to understand life in all its paradoxes

• Conflict, opposition and change are core forces• You can let it destroy you or let it teach you• Relationships are about tension: fission or fusion• Conflicts are not just with others but with ourselves• Conflict does not have to lead to combat

The cycle of change

• Change happens naturally• It is inevitable for renewal• We try to prevent it to create stability

and certainty• This is against nature: dams up the flow

of life• Leads to fermentation and festering • Rediscover change as a natural cycle

Evolution and development: larva, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly

Relationships and people change

• Loss and transition are about breakdown of the old:

• Instead of breaking down, push through the block to the next level: breakthrough

• In the process we become stronger • Relationships are tested: rupture or consolidate

Couples try to change each other by:1. Secretly wishing for change 2. Getting angry and protesting3. Getting upset, even suicidal4. Demanding or imposing change by bullying or

seducing5. Setting ultimata6. Reasoning and trying to persuade7. Arguing a personal case8. Withdrawing and enduring9. Getting support from others10. Giving up

Female evolution has shifted power balance

• Women are stronger and do not tolerate the same submissiveness and obedience.

Disappointment about change

• Men don’t realize they need to change as much as women.

Negativity in depicting men

Not patriarchy or matriarchy: equality and mutuality

• Fairness is most important

Fairness and equality, not oppression and exploitation

Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir: a different view of relationship

a dangerous liaison, Seymour-Jones

"to maintain throughout all deviations from the main path a 'certain fidelity’, de Beauvoir.

Necessary and contingent loves

Sartre’s lack.

• The existence of desire as a human fact is sufficient to prove that human reality is a lack. (Sartre, Being and Nothingness:87)

• We are nothing trying to be something.

 

The Look: Sartre’s Other

• The Other looks at me and as such he holds the secret of my being, he knows what I am. Thus the profound meaning of my being is outside of me, imprisoned in an absence. The Other has the advantage over me.

• (Sartre, Being and Nothingness:363)

Sartre’s possession

• Thus the lover does not desire to possess the beloved as one possesses a thing; he demands a special type of appropriation. He wants to possess a freedom as a freedom. (Sartre B&N:367)

Competitive relationships

• Domination: sadism.• Submission: masochism.• Withdrawal: indifference.

Cooperative relationships

• Mutuality: reciprocity-equality• Generosity: giving of oneself• Collaboration: working together (sparring partners)

Relationship is essential to freedom

• “A man alone in the world would be paralyzed by...the vanity of all of his goals. But man is not alone in the world” (Pyrrhus and Cinéas, 42),

• The other, as free, is immune to my power• Common commitment to a shared goal

• I can only be truly free to pursue my cause if I can persuade others to join it.

Simone de Beauvoir the second sex, the woman in love identifies

• The supreme goal of human love, as of mystical love, is identification with the loved one. The measure of values, the truth of the world are in his consciousness: hence it is not enough to serve him. The woman in love tries to see with his eyes.

Couples may have different views of love and life

• We need to bring them together

What does it mean to live as a couple?

Space in the relationship

Physical space

Social space

Personal space

Spiritual space

Four dimensions and couples

• Physical: how do we divide physical space? How do our bodies relate to each other? Sex? Cuddles? Comfort? Possessions? Nature? Cosmos?

• Social: how do we relate to other people together? How are we situated in public life? Cultural pursuits? Friends? Family?

• Personal: how do we define ourselves in relation to each other? Do our private worlds connect? Intimacy? Loyalty?

• Spiritual: what are the values we adhere to as a couple? Personal beliefs? Religion? What ideas are important? Can we challenge each other?

Rules for good relationships

• Respect each other’s authority & responsibility• Make as many demands as contributions• Give as much appreciation as criticism• Agree on how time and money are spent• Be fair to self and other• Agree on values and objectives for future• Let conflict and controversy be your guide• Teach and learn from each other • Be loyal and make relating a priority• Have good physical connection• Communicate regularly• Be yourself as well as together• Have a joint narrative and ideal

Loving your Life

• Loving your fate and destiny in all its manifestations

• (Nietzsche’s Amor Fati)

How to create value in life?

• Through committed and engaged action• Step by step• Diligently proceeding no matter what

challenges come on your path• Steady progress comes from undaunted focus

on your project• Flexibility and finding joy in the process rather

than aiming for success or happiness

Existential therapy is about a different way of life

A psychology for life, not just for pathology or happiness

Existential couple therapy: how to live together to make life worthwhile

What is Love?

• We need to think about it

Childhood

• Yum • Yuck

• We like what feels of value, pretty, pleasant, interesting and good

• We dislike what feels wrong, dangerous, unpleasant and bad

Different types of love and their shadows

• Narcissism (self love) : solipsism• Need love (child/physical need) : addiction• Infatuation (obsessive): blindness• Erotic love (Eros/sensual love): objectification• Romantic love/emotional love: possessiveness• Companionship/community (Philia): betrayal• Neighbourly/hospitality (Xenia): hubris• Maternal/parental love (Storge): smothering• Divine/Mystical/Unconditional love (Agape) :sacrifice

Helen Fisher’s stages

• Lust : mating (1.5-3 years) pheromones/amphetamines: pleasure centre.

• Attraction: specific focus of mate• Attachment: bonding: oxytocin/vasopressin

Robert Sternberg’s triangular theory

• Intimacy: bonding• Commitment: permanence• Passion: sexual attraction and romance

• Rubin:• Attachment, • Caring • Intimacy.

Sternberg’s overview

Existential Love

• Love is an action (Fromm)• Not just a feeling• We need to work at it• It demands commitment, dedication,

devotion, caring, loyalty, understanding, freedom

• Seeing and knowing the other and letting be• I/Thou rather than I/It

Absorption:Stop all the clocks

W.H.Auden

• He was my North, my South, • my East and West, • My working week and my Sunday rest.

Victor Hugo:Les Misérables

• “To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”

Flaubert: Madame Bovary

• Love, she thought, was something that must come suddenly, with a great display of thunder and lightning, descending on one's life like a tempest from above, turning it topsy-turvy, whirling away one's resolutions like leaves and bearing one onward, heart and soul, towards the abyss.

Love is like lightTolstoy: Anna Karenin

• “He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”

Love, like light, throws shadows

• These are important.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Götz von Berlichingen

• “There is strong shadow where there is much light.”

Love and HateMartin Luther King Jr.,

• Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

Love is like oxygen

• Sweet - Love is like Oxygen 1978Love is like oxygenYou get too much you get too highNot enough and you're gonna dieLove gets you high

True love: still leads to loss

George Eliot: Adam Bede

• "What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?"

Erich FrommThe Art of Loving

• Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.'

• Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'

Lao Tzu.

• Being loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone gives you courage.

What is the other side of love?

• We daren’t think

Elie Wiesel

• “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference..”

Impingement, smothering, suffocation

• smoth·er (smr)• v. smoth·ered, smoth·er·ing, smoth·ers• v.tr.• 1.• a. To suffocate (another).• b. To deprive (a fire) of the oxygen necessary for combustion.• 2. To conceal, suppress, or hide: Management smothered the true facts of the case. We

smothered our indignation and pressed onward.• 3. To cover thickly: smother chicken in sauce.• 4. To lavish a surfeit of a given emotion on (someone): The grandparents smothered the child

with affection.• v.intr.• 1.• a. To suffocate.• b. To be extinguished.• 2. To be concealed or suppressed.• 3. To be surfeited with an emotion.

WE HAVE TO COMMIT TO LOVE TO MAKE IT GROW OR SEE IT DWINDLE

Nietzsche in Daybreak:The most dangerous kind of unlearning: One begins by unlearning how to love others and ends by no longer finding anything loveable in oneself

Anaïs Nin

• “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”

We have to open up to love

• Open our hearts

C.S.Lewis The Four Loves

• “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

Onto-dynamicsLearning to live in line with the laws of life Paradox, conflict, difficulty and dilemmas are

our daily companions When crisis comes we need to have the

courage to descend to rock bottomFrom there we can build something better

The art of living is to be equal to all our emotions and experiences rather than to select

and cultivate only the safe or pleasant ones

There are many opposites of love:Indifference, hate, suffocation, and

most of all: fear

Four kinds of ways of being conscious

pride

jealousy

anger-despair

fear

sorrowshame

envy

hope-desire

love

joy

SadnessLow

HappinessHigh

AnxietyExcitementEngagement

DepressionDisappointmentDisengagement

Compass of emotions

evd 10

Overview of conflicts, challenges and paradoxes on four dimensions

World Umwelt : where? Mitwelt : how? Eigenwelt: who? Uberwelt: why?

Physical:survival

Nature:Life/Death

Things:Pleasure/Pain

Body:Health/Illness

Cosmos:Harmony/Chaos

Social:affiliation

Society:Love/Hate

Others:Dominance/Submission

Ego:Acceptance/Rejection

Culture:Belonging/Isolation

Personal:identity

Person:Identity/Freedom

Me:Perfection/Imperfection

Self:Integrity/Disintegration

Consciousness:Confidence/ Confusion

Spiritual:meaning

Infinite:Good/Evil

Ideas:Truth/Untruth

Spirit:Meaning/Futility

Conscience:Right/Wrong

Paradoxes of human existenceDeurzen and Adams

challenge gain loss

Physical Death and pain

Life to the full Unlived life or constant fear

Social Loneliness and rejection

Understand and be understood

Bullying or being bullied

Personal Weakness and failure

Strength and stamina

Narcissism or self destruction

Spiritual Meaning-Lessness and futility

Finding an ethics to live by

Fanaticism or apathy

To love requires work and imagination to go beyond your inclination

• “Men think that it is impossible for a human being to love his enemies, for enemies are hardly able to endure the sight of one another. Well, then, shut your eyes--and your enemy looks just like your neighbor.”

• Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love

Love is learnt

• Nietzsche in Joyful Wisdom:

• One must learn to love. This is our experience in music: we must first learn to hear, to hear fully and to distinguish a theme for a melody, we have to isolate and limit it as a life by itself; then we need to exercise effort and good will in order to endure it in spite of its strangeness…

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

• “Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”

To love is not to be blind (being in love is blind) but to learn to see someone or something as they actually

are..

• This takes time and attention

Too much hard work?• To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible

deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.

• Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all. Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot see Søren Kierkegaard

Love transforms usWhen one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love.Kierkegaard, Søren. Works of Love. 1847.

New possibility emerges

• “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey

Resilience

Work with a couple with Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD)

• Cathy and Cliff married for fifty plus years, (73,78)• Ten years previously split up for a year because Cathy had become

suicidal • She could not stand living with Cliff any longer, feeling he was

sufficient unto himself and critical rather than loving of her• They had three children and Cathy felt they were critical of her for

splitting up• The couple got back together after Cliff was diagnosed with

Asperger Syndrome and Cathy realized she too had some autistic traits

• She became elated at having found a reason for why the marriage had been so difficult and could not stop talking about this

• Cliff was wary of this but glad they got back together• They came to see me to try and mend the relationship

Complaints from ASD partners

• I never seem to get things right

• I have high standards (for tidiness, for sameness, for time-keeping or other things) but these are not respecte

• I often feel exhausted and over-stressed, but no account is taken of this

• She uses sex/ he uses money to pay me back or to control me • I’m frightened that he/she will give up on me • I want to be close, and yet when we are together I feel all my

routines are upset

Cathy and Cliff’s relationship at start of therapy

• Both were unhappy about the marital problems

• They were not used to resolving problems by effective communication

• Cliff came across as angry and scathing and unable to bridge the gap

• Cathy came across as desperate and often had suicidal thoughts

Cliff’s world

• Cliff was most self-sufficient, content with his routines and enjoyment in various hobbies, reading, watching cowboy films etc.

• His world was physically well regulated• He had been a librarian before retirement• Was socially undemanding and kept others at

a distance by cynical and witty humor.

Cathy

• Highly intelligent but frustrated in feeling no longer as effective in her work as before partial retirement

• Her world was physically marred by high sensitivity, social isolation, lack of confidence

• Felt judged and rejected by her children, several of whom had autistic traits as well

• Felt unloved by Cliff who did not have the knack for giving her the reassurance so needed

Cathy and Cliff: renewal

• Cliff needed to understand that Cathy was sensitive and fretted greatly over his non verbal communication, glaring at her: making ‘that face’. He meant nothing by it, but was unaware that he came across as sarcastically putting her down and condemning her.

•He accepted very easily that Cathy needed support from him and that his love was crucial to her.

•He understood that he needed to make her physical and social world safe and in some way protect her. He rose to this challenge very rapidly.

Cathy’s learning

•Cathy needed to believe that Cliff really did not know what his impact was and once she began to do so became able to see that her disapproval of him was devastating to him. She was in the habit of making strongly critical remarks about his behavior and was unaware that this had made him ever more defensive and private.

•She had long known Cliff had AS, but realized that she herself had a female version of this which made her particularly vulnerable to misinterpreting his non verbal communication

•She accepted very easily that she was entitled to being understood and supported and learnt to ask for what she needed from him, in the sessions.

Cathy and Cliff’s worlds

•His world was physically well regulated, socially contained by isolation and cynical distance when with others, personally content, spiritually aspiring to a quiet life with clear routines.

•Her world was physically marred by high sensitivity, social anxiety, a personal world full of dread and doubt about the effect of the relationship on her as a person and a spiritual world full of guilt over having failed both with her husband and children, who she perceived as against her.

•First five sessions (hour and half each) spent in collecting information about their experiences, their fears, their hopes, their aspirations, their love for each other, their worries and despair.

•Listening to each for twenty minutes to half an hour, then translating what I heard to the other, helping them understand each other’s experience.

Outcome

•Once they had agreed to make it work together they were keen to use the sessions to explain their experience to the other, with the help of the ‘interpreter’ or ‘referee’, who could remind them of what the other had intended.

•They became better at finding words to overcome the negative body language and non verbal communication that had trapped them in a negative spiral for so long

• They began to work as a team and to take on dealing with communication with the children and third parties, together, as a couple, learning to stand together and support each other.

Cathy’s journey:

• Series of pictures drawn in a session without Cliff present

• First picture of how Cathy was before she met Cliff

• Bubbles of thought, spikes on her: inhibitions and lack of ability to get on with people

• No mouth: not sure what to say or not to say

Second picture

• First meeting with Cliff• Neither has a mouth: didn’t know how to talk

to each other: were talking over each other’s shoulder

• Spikes are now going in rather than out, thought bubbles have gone

• He is getting to her and becomes more like him

Cathy and Cliff with their kids

• Cathy is now bigger than Cliff as the children need her more than him

• The two boys have thought bubbles and are sensitive like her, the girl is more like dad

• Half circle under the children is the safety net: it had plenty of holes in it through which the kids could fall

• She cut herself off from the children in order not to provoke Cliff into vengeance for her being too close to them

next Picture

• Cathy and Cliff at their worst: too much going on in Cathy’s head

• Red arrows from Cliff invading her• She feared he enjoyed invading her space• Worry-lines on forehead• But because of worries she now has a mouth

and has to learn to express herself.

Cliff’s pic of Cathy pulling at him.



Cathy and Cliff Now

• They are whole people now rather than just heads

• There are lots of people in the background as they have joined groups

• But Cliff too close to his screens: telly and computer

• She has her plants and books• She is glad he is now polite and tries to show

affection for her

Cathy and Cliff in an ideal world

• Children are more of a presence • Cathy and Cliff more substantial• In contact, though not holding hands,

companions• Independence remains important for them

both

Cathy as she is now

• Shoulders straight: a new pride in herself• Lots of mouths, for lots of moods• Can’t be smiley all the time• The thoughts are still there, but more under

control and varied• Asks questions and that is good• Feminine pleasure in her necklace

Outcome

•Once they had agreed to make it work together they were keen to use the sessions to explain their experience to the other, with the help of the ‘interpreter’ or ‘referee’, who could remind them of what the other had intended.

•They became good at finding words to overcome the negative body language and non verbal communication that had trapped them in a negative spiral for so long

• They began to work as a team and to take on dealing with communication with the children and third parties, together, as a couple, learning to stand together and support each other.

Cliff’s pic of them now.

We affect others and are affected by each other

• The Interbrain: the connections of the chain gang:

Tantam 2009

• Butterfly effect: each action causes re-action, each emotion has an impact on the other

Learning to be a couple:• Is learning about life, each other and

ourselves; we learn to be, by living and overcoming our mistakes and pay attention to each other and ourselves.

We are never but an aspect, an element, a part of a wider context. Relationship is essential to our very survival and inspires everything we do. (Deurzen, 1997: 95)

Kierkegaard

• Most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, frightfully objective sometimes –

but the task is precisely to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others.

• (Kierkegaard, 1998: 72)

Jaspers (1941:17)

The individual cannot become human by

himself. Self-being is only real in

communication with another self-being.

Alone, I sink into gloomy isolation – only

in community with others can I be

revealed in the act of mutual discovery.

My own freedom can only exist if the

other is also free.

remember to face up to life together:

• It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

• (Nietzsche, 1844–1900)

If you are serious about your life

Give love a chanceDon’t be afraid of the shadows it casts

Drag picture to placeholder or click icon to add

PLAY with the shadows

Shadows provide depth and reality

Don’t cling, don’t be casual

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