Every day, we experience giving and we experience
receiving. It seems so simple, at
least on the surface. One person
expresses a need, and a second person steps forward to help fill that
need. If it is so simple, why does
it so often go very wrong.? Givers are often left feeling scammed and
unappreciated. Receivers are often
left feeling shamed and further victimized. This is not always the case, of course. But I would say that giving and
receiving is just as likely, if not more likely, to produce hurt as well as
help. Is that because somebody did
something wrong? Or is it just
built into the pattern of giving and receiving? That is the theme of the next series of lectures.
Carl Jung wrote extensively on one particular type of giving
and receiving – the analytical relationship. In particular, he delved deeply into the phenomena he called
transference and countertransference.
One of the key skills of an analyst is to recognize when analysands are
projecting something onto her or him, and to use that in order to assist in the
healing process. For example, I am
not actually your father, but if I were your analyst, you might start thinking
about me and acting toward me as if I were your father, because I remind you of
him somehow. My job as your
analyst would be to help you recognize the unhealed aspects of your relationship
with your father, using that transference as a valuable opportunity for you to
work through it with me. On the
other hand, I might recognize that I am also projecting something onto you –
perhaps treating you as a child, having parental feelings toward, even working
through my own parenting issues using the analysand as a fill-in child. That is
called counter-transference, and it is the analyst’s obligation to minimize the
detrimental effect of it on the analysand’s healing process, perhaps even
withdrawing from the analysis if it detracts to much from the analysand’s
needs.
In this series, I will not be talking much about the
analyst/analysand type of giving and receiving. Instead, I will be exploring the types of giving and
receiving where neither party is trained or obliged to deal with the
transference or countertransference.
For instance, there is the parent and the child, the medical doctor and
the patient, the philanthropist and the charity, the employer and the employee,
or even two friends. Lacking awareness of the deeper processes going on, givers
and receivers revert to more common, emotion-laden vocabulary to describe their
experiences – like exploitation, gratitude, scamming, generosity, enmeshment, self-sufficiency,
and unconditional love.
As I put together this series, I starting thinking about
giving and receiving as involving agreements, many of which go unspoken or even
unrecognized by both parties. When
I give, even when I insist it is unconditional, there is some sort of agreement
about it. And the same is true
when I receive. There is some
insight that can be gained from that approach, but I have decided not to use
that model. For one thing, it
involves too much ego process, which means that it leads to solutions that are
just too simplistic and makes it all seem like a transaction. As long as we have clear, mutual
expectations and agreements, it will all turn out happily, right? Just ask someone with a pre-nuptual
agreement if it guarantees a happy marriage. Sometimes, helping just hurts, and that is exactly what it
must do in order to serve something greater, to serve a higher purpose. The agreement/transaction approach
simply cannot get to that level of insight.
Instead, I have opted to use the analogy of drama, like the
drama we experience in the form of films or stage plays. In fact, you can translate almost all
of Jung’s essential theories into dramatic analogies. Every film or movie has a larger plot or narrative, which
renders the roles of the individual characters meaningfully related. Events transpire, some of which are
wildly unexpected, some of which are natural consequences of decisions made by
characters. Characters confront
these events, react to these events, interact with one another through these
events. Sometimes the characters
fall into old ruts, old patterns from their personal history, and they are held
back from taking the action they need to take, caught in side stories of fear
and avoidance. Eventually, there is usually a dramatic turning point – a character
triumphs heroically, fails tragically, gains a new insight, makes a bold
decision, and is often transformed or reborn as a result. In Jungian terms, the big patterns or
themes are the archetypes, often carried by nearly every member of a culture or
society, passed down from untold numbers of generations. The events of the
unfolding plot are synchronicities.
The old ruts and side stories of fear and avoidance are personal
complexes. The plot line that leads to transformation and rebirth is individuation. And who is the playwright? That would be our Higher Power,
whatever you know that to be, which expresses itself in us as the transcendent
Self.
There are thousands of potential dramas, but a smaller
number of themes come up over and over, in the theater and in life. The tragic love story, the thriller,
the avenging hero, good triumphing over evil – all worthy themes that have
dominated untold numbers of lives.
And the theme of giving and receiving is among the most compelling and
transformative of these themes.
Who, among us, has not been drawn into giving or receiving, only to get
much more than we anticipated? How
many of us have discovered who we really are, or gained a new insight into
someone else, by either giving or receiving help?
Giving and receiving is perhaps the major theme of my
life. Professionally, I have spent
nearly my entire career raising funds and turning those funds into grants for
others. I am continually a
receiver and giver, and I have innumerable stories about how that can go
terribly wrong. In my personal
life, the last two years have been dominated by my offering help to young gay
men and being caught up in the ensuing dramatic twists and turns, tearing me
down to my most basic assumptions and fears, challenging me in ways I never
imagined. And, for all the grief,
I am so grateful for it.
So, what is it about giving and receiving that can produce
such drama and such transformation?
For one thing, it involves at least two human beings, sometimes more,
each of which carries their own history and plot line. A chart from Volume 16 of Jung’s
Collected Works, slightly modified for this topic, can be helpful.
I call this the “six way” diagram, because it illustrates
how, in any human interaction, there are actually six relationships being
played out. The blue line is the
most obvious relationship, and it is the one that we usually
over-emphasize. This is the
relationship between the ego of the giver and the ego of the receiver, the blue
arrow in the diagram. At this
level, we talk things through on the conscious level. I have a sense of who I am and why I want to give help, you
have a sense of who you are and why you need help. It can all seem so simple on this level. Of course we can make this work, of
course our motives are pure, of course I am giving unconditionally, of course
you are receiving with just the right amount of gratitude. If only that were the whole story.
Let’s move to the green arrows now. The ego of the giver has some level of
relationship with her or his interior life. If that relationship is strong, the giver has a relationship
with the interior feminine or masculine, with the complexes, and even with
those embarrassing things he or she would prefer not to be true about him- or
herself, called shadow. Similarly,
the same could be said of the receiver and the aspects of his or her interior
life. In the vast majority of
cases, however, that interior relationship is not strong, perhaps even
nonexistent, and so the giver tends to project all of that material outward,
onto the receiver. And visa versa,
for the receiver. That brings us
to the black lines, which is the relationship of the ego to the interior life
of the other person. How does this
play itself out? Here is an
example. A friend asks me to loan
him some money so he can make his rent this month. On the ego level, all seems fine – the terms of the loan are
mutually acceptable, the giver can affordit, the receiver shows gratitude. But, just as the giver is handing over
the check, the receiver says, “I guess you finally have me where you wanted
me.” The giver is shocked. Where did that come from? The receiver says, “Don’t get bent out
of shape. I only meant it as a
joke. At that moment, the receiver has a look of shame and disgust on his face,
and the giver catches a glimpse of it.
The ego of the giver has seen the shadow of the receiver.
As if that weren’t complicated enough, Jung adds the sixth
dimension to the situation, the red arrow in the diagram. In ways that our egos don’t even
recognize, my interior life is interacting with your interior life. My unhealed
psychological wounds are constellating your unhealed psychological wounds. In our simple example, although the ego
of the giver seems shocked by the somewhat cutting statement made by the
receiver, suppose he does feel a little surge of satisfaction at having some
power and superiority over his friend.
He does not acknowledge it consciously, but on the unconscious level,
the giver’s unconscious need to have power of his friend is gratified by his
friend’s feelings of shame at needing help.
Just imagine all of the different ways that something can go
wrong in giving and receiving help!
Problems can happen at any of the six levels, and since some of the
levels are unconscious, it may happen with a great deal of surprise and even
savagery.
As if that weren’t enough, there can be disconnect around
the nature of the need being expressed.
Here is a chart of Malow’s hierarchy of needs:
Suppose the receiver is thinking of the request as simply
involving a physiological need – help getting shelter for a month. But, to the giver, the loan involves a
belongingness need. By giving you
this loan, I am showing you that I love you, and by receiving it, you show that
you love me back. Or, in another
example, I am going to refuse to loan you the money, because I feel that if you
work hard and earn the money yourself, you will acquire a sense of
accomplishment, meeting a higher level esteem need. But you are just afraid of
sleeping on the streets tonight and getting mugged – a safety need.
There is one more concept I would like to introduce this
week, to which we will return in future talks in this series – the power
shadow. It is implicit in some of
the examples I have offered, and it seems to be unavoidable in the drama of
giving and receiving. To ask for help is to acknowledge a need, which sets up a
power dynamic. If the person
needing help has experienced trauma associated with power, that power shadow
will permeate the entire situation.
It could dissuade the person from requesting or accepting help in the
first place, and it could prime that person to expect abuse from the
giver. If it is the giver who has had
a negative or ambivalent experience of power in the past, the results may be
even more unpredictable, ranging from a smothering level of rescue, infantilization
of the person in need, or asserting an exaggerated level of control over the
situation.
So, given all of this, is it possible to help without
hurting? Can a person express a
need for help without feeling shame or repeating past traumas of abuse at the
hands of people with power? Can a
person really offer help unconditionally, and have it received in the same
way? Once you see the six levels
of relationship, and the further complications around the type of need and the
pervasive power shadow, helping without any level of hurt seems pretty
unlikely. But that should not
dissuade people from enacting the drama of giving and receiving in their
lives. Like all of life’s dramas,
giving and receiving holds tremendous potential to grow new levels of
consciousness, to bring things to light that have long festered in the
darkness. We can’t undo past wounding by re-enacting it in the present, but we
can learn the lessons that were left undone back there in the past, and perhaps
finally move further on in our path toward individuation.
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