“Anger and tenderness: my selves.
And now I can believe they breathe in me
as angels, not polarities.”
~Adrienne Rich, from Integrity
In psychotherapy, we are often striving for integration– the dream of wholeness. We imagine a reclamation of all the pieces of ourselves that were disowned, broken-off, fractured, fragmented. On some level, we intuit that the tough tensions of contradiction warring within us generate all our strife and longing. If only we could be consistent, unified, complete. If only we could gather all the misfit parts in the gentle mother-arms of understanding and whisper, You are also welcome here.
When we face overwhelming experiences– whether they are the rare terrors of explicit abuse, or the universal tragedy of growing into our solitude– we often break them up to take them in. By splitting complicated, heart-breaking “wholes” (like a parent who cares for us and also fails to meet all of our needs) into fragments, they seem easier to hold. We divide the labor between conscious and unconscious, between us and them, projecting what we cannot bear to keep. We do not do this purposely, of course. It is inherent to the nature of human psyche and its power to divide-and-conquer.
But these fragments create tension that ultimately grows unbearable. Like opposing magnets, an invisible force seems to tug, distorting all the space between. Our inner worlds become further removed from what is, as we divide experience up to render painful things digestible– like separating an image into line and color, never letting them combine. The problem is that holding the whole obliterates the clean logic of conscious thought. It renders us defenseless, vulnerable to the touch of a world that is harsh as it is beautiful. The sensation of this resistance to combination is paradox.
Paradoxes are seemingly absurd– fingers pointing at themselves– and yet, so much of what we do in therapy is following their lead. Paradox reveals polarities that have been split, and to play with them is a love-act of knitting things back together. The hope or fantasy is one of resolution: we will crack the code, outsmart the conundrum, learn which side is “right” or “true.” Then, we can rest. We can begin to accept. We will not need to try so hard. But, as Suler (1989) intimates, “the paradox ultimately frustrates and cracks open any intellectual attempt to resolve it, for the solution is not logical. The solution is an experience” (p 222). The “solution” is a felt-space, a place seemingly beyond our every-day, conscious sense of self. To play with paradox is to penetrate the wild unconscious.
Rather than resolving polarities into neat ordered places, so much of our work as psychotherapists involves supporting our patients in holding ambiguity. Perhaps a patient traces the origin of their pain to parental shortcomings. Yet blame fails to sit comfortably on the parents’ shoulders, as the patient understands their pain in turn. Maybe a patient compassionately discovers that they are not their symptoms, or their cause, and yet they find themselves responsible for what to make of these.
We have done “good” and “bad” but fit neatly into neither. And the people who have loved us well have also broken our hearts. Accepting this means letting others be separate from us– a truth that enriches our lives through real relationships, but also triggers fears of loss and abandonment.
These seeming opposites rack the conscious self, the ego charged with mitigating warring factions of our psyche. Yet, in a truly therapeutic climate, we hope our patients (and– yes– ourselves, as well) learn that they can stretch to hold the tension between the poles. The magnetic force of paradox makes the air between sing with sensation, and tolerating the ambiguities implied seems to animate the world with an aliveness, a realness. With such a practice, perhaps we can grow more resilient, accepting, and curious. Perhaps we can allow the tension of ambiguity to buzz within, and step into an all-too-human inheritance: the blend of grief and wonderment. Here, we mourn the loss of a hoped-for perfect world, but gain the open eyes and heart to take in the world as-it-is.
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Reference
Suler, J. R. (1989). Paradox in psychological transformations: The Zen koan and psychotherapy. Psychologia, 32, 221-229.
By Lauren Traitz