A little while ago in response to a previous post on real conversation, Dafna asked whether real conversation could occur on a blog.  I answered “no” because it requires one person being with another.  Now I tossed this off pretty cavalierly, and since then I’ve been thinking about what I meant by this “being with” and how Dafna has put her finger on the great issue that underlies the topic of real conversation.

The great, precious jewel

The make-up and problem of “being-with” is everywhere in philosophy, psychology and religion.  Who are we, and how are we, in relation to another?

The problem is probably best defined by this negative instance I heard a psychoanalyst give.

It may sound strange to say this but there are more people around than one may realise that do not really see that there is another person there that is different from me. And if I’m in that state, I will try to drag the other person into my own mode of being. (1)

“Being-with” or Mitsein is a special instance of the key concept of Dasein (Being there) for the philosopher, Martin Heidegger.  “Being-with” underlies Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue and the “I-Thou” relationship, as well as the radical asymmetry of the Other in the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas.  It’s all through the courses I took at Landmark Education, so heavily influenced by Heidegger, and it’s also key to counselling methodologies such as that used in Imago Relationship Therapy founded by Dr Harvill Hendrix in the US.

Today I want to look at Imago because it focuses on the crux of the matter of being-with: the great precious jewel we’re seeking in all our interactions with others, to wit, emotional presence.

Finishing childhood at last

Hendrix begins with a startling proposition – that the whole (unconscious) purpose of marriage is to help each other

… finish childhood. (2)

When looking for a partner, he says, we all unconsciously bring to the search the “template” of our own caregivers.  In fact, we search not only for our parents, we search for the negative aspects of our parents.  We do this, Hendrix says, because we are looking to satisfy our unmet needs from childhood.

Oh huh.

Yes, this means exactly what you think it means.  Once the spell wears off, we find our “dream” lover has morphed into our “nightmare” person, the very same type of person who didn’t meet our needs in childhood.

And conflict starts or escalates.

Partners stay away from home, drink, gamble, have affairs, and so on.  And because in our society we’ve been conditioned to view conflict as something to fear or suppress, when it arises in our marriage or relationship, most of us can’t be with the chaos and we attempt to “restore order instead.”  For example, Hendrix says, we decide to divorce or lead separate lives or live in a “hot” marriage, which is not anything as appealing as it sounds, rather, it’s a life of constant argument.

Yet, he says, if we can resist the urge to restore order, we might come to see instead that

conflict is growth trying to happen.

For here, in the midst of the conflict and the chaos, is the golden opportunity, the opportunity we’ve been waiting for since childhood.  The opportunity to finish childhood and be free at last.

Did you get that?  The ramifications?  For it means that the great opportunity of intimacy comes not on wings of romance and fulfilment, but through, and only through, conflict.

How amazing is that?  How contrary to all our conditioning.  What’s even more amazing is that we can take up this golden opportunity, resolve the conflict and finish childhood by one simple means: real conversation.

One core need and one solution

Imago proposes that the unmet needs of childhood, though they have different flavours, boil down to one core need – the experience of connection or emotional presence.  Many or most parents may be caring, even loving, yet not be emotionally present to the child.  Being emotionally present to the child means really experiencing the child experiencing themselves, and not substituting the experience with the parents’ own expectations or ideas of what the child should be feeling.

Imago proposes that this one core need, and the rupture or failure of it in childhood which we carry into adulthood, has one solution: dialogue, or what I’ve been calling real conversation.

“I see you”

Imago teaches couples a highly structured form of dialogue and to become skilled in it you should consult an Imago practitioner.  In any event, the exact form of the dialogue is not as important as the key elements and why it works.  The key elements include the simple technique of mirroring, a kind of manifest demonstration of curiosity and a final empathising statement.  The isolating of the curiosity dimension is really interesting because it’s curiosity that first signals,

I’m paying attention to you, I see you.

It’s the element that most clearly announces you have stepped over the threshold – the threshold of one’s own ego – and are becoming “fully dialogical.”

And when you become “fully dialogical,” you become, at last, emotionally present to another, and you have the peerless experience of profoundly and accurately knowing another person.  By engaging in this kind of dialogue with your partner, the unmet needs and scars from childhood begin to be healed and the marriage or relationship can begin from a whole new place.

You will marvel

To know another human being in all their particularity, in every way they are, and in every way they are not – and in turn, to be known in this way – is what we all long for.  And when it occurs you will never forget it and you will marvel.

For more information about Imago Relationship Therapy, click here.

*****

Image: The Conversation (1908-1912), Henri Matisse

Notes

1. Dr Neville Symington, “Loving Companions”, Encounter, Radio National, broadcast by Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), May 16, 2010

2. I have paraphrased Dr Hendrix’s ideas from a talk he gave in the radio program listed in (1).