My heart is turned to stone; I strike it, and it hurts my hand.
— WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Othello1
Without empathy we are incomplete human beings. An empathic individual has the ability to emotionally merge with and feel himself into another person’s emotional state. A deep understanding of what someone else is experiencing—pain, joy, fear, desperation, despair, emptiness, rage—is the result. We can actually feel the energy of an empathic person. He takes us in with a special kind of holding. His eyes embrace us, he listens intently, his problems and concerns have been neatly put away. He attunes himself psychologically to our difficulties rather than his own. As the popular phrase has it, “He is there for us.” True empathy springs from an open heart and a dropped ego that is able to focus deep attention and concern upon someone else.
Empathy evolves through contact with loving parental responses to the needs of a child. The child who is cherished and valued for himself learns to treat others with empathy. Empathy begins when the mother and father first hold their baby. Perhaps it starts even earlier, in the womb. Does a child know he is loved as he listens to the beating of his mother’s heart within her body’s walls? The way the mother caresses her child, talks to him, makes eye contact, is critical. Is she tender and warm or rough, indifferent, and cold?
The potential for empathy is born within us. Some individuals are naturally more sensitive and therefore capable of internalizing the feelings of others from the beginning. The major share of our ability to empathize begins with the relationship with the primary caregiver: mother, father, a relative, or a surrogate parent. Mother’s touch, smell, tone of voice, her gaze, are permanently recorded in the consciousness of the baby, throughout his body and mind, his nervous system, organs, within the smallest cell. One of the most beautiful experiences is watching a young mother with her beloved child. Her attention is focused on him, even though she may be performing other tasks. There is a constant dialogue taking place, both spoken and unspoken, between the two parties. Their eyes meet frequently. Mother and child respond to each other in intimate ways known especially to them. The baby reaches for mother and she encloses him in her arms, encouraging him with her soft murmurings. When he is in physical or emotional distress, a mother knows how to comfort her baby. She picks him up gently, rocks him, soothes his concerns with the tone and rhythm of her voice. Mother or the primary caregiver ministers to her child during the day and at times throughout the night, repeating her behaviors of comfort and reassurance. These positive responses are internalized by the baby. He learns that when he is in need, someone will respond in a uniquely personal way. An indelible knowing develops in the baby, a feeling of fundamental security.
Decades ago, the great psychiatrist Erik Erikson beautifully described this steady psychological state: “For the first component of a healthy personality I nominate a sense of basic trust.…By ‘trust’ I mean what is commonly implied in reasonable trustfulness as far as others are concerned and a simple sense of trustworthiness as far as oneself is concerned.”2 With the word “basic,” Erikson is stating that these qualities are not “especially conscious.”3 The baby and small child learn through all of the maternal interactions and ministrations that they are loved and cherished. This foundation slowly builds within him. Eventually this feeling of intrinsic trust will sprout seeds of empathy for others, which flower throughout his life.
The young child feels that he is the center of the universe, that all of his needs must be fulfilled at any given moment. How often have you witnessed dramatic displays of temper in public places like markets or stores, when a toddler insists he must have a particular item (candy, a toy, or some object that attracts his attention). The genuinely loving parent is capable of saying, “No, dear, you are not the center of the universe.” If the bond between parent and child is strong and flexible, these power struggles will act as life lessons. The child learns that mother or father can deny him something that he wants but that they still love him.
Empathy does not mean that a mother or father doesn’t correct his child when he is inconsiderate or mean. Some children have cloying parents who bombard them with endless material possessions, acceding to their every wish and demand. Rewarding a child’s inappropriate behavior is not empathic. It teaches the child that he can always get his way if he is clever and manipulative.
A person never forgets the delight, disgust, rage, or indifference that his mother (or primary caretaker) felt toward him from the time of his birth to the moment of death. Children know when they are not wanted and certainly can sense if they are hated or wished dead. I have known several individuals whose mother or father actually tried to kill them on more than one occasion. Often, these victims of such cruelty and horror are unable to form any close or intimate relationships throughout their lives. They remain in a state of psychological isolation and paranoia, always taking preemptive moves to protect themselves from some imagined attack.
The conscious and especially unconscious emotions that the mother feels toward herself and her baby leave an imprint at the core of the child’s being. The neurological fibers of the nervous system speak in their mysterious ways, revealing whether we were loved or unloved. The thoughts that move through our intellect reverberate with words, looks, attitudes, and emotions that were communicated to us from the beginning. How we treat others—with respect, disdain, aloofness, warmth—reflects how we have felt about ourselves since we were infants and toddlers. Most people cope by pretending that they were loved and cared for. Indeed, there are many individuals who experienced adequate mothering and who consequently feel psychologically safe, grounded, and good. Some of us spend much of our lives undoing the psychological damage of knowing that we were an inconvenience, a nuisance, a threat, an afterthought.
On the surface, the empathy of the narcissist seems to be genuine. With a mastery of social graces and his quick study of human nature, the high-level narcissistic personality appears to care about our deepest and most intimate thoughts and feelings. He uses this ability to tap into the other person’s narcissistic needs for admiration, praise, recognition, and power. Behind the feigned attentiveness and apparent concern is cool calculation. Pseudo-empathy is exquisitely designed by the narcissist to manipulate others so they will fulfill his narcissistic needs.
Pseudo-empathy is packaged as a finely tuned performance, an act that convinces most people. The narcissist focuses all of his attention on you like a laser beam. He gives you the impression that you are not alone as long as he is by your side, solving your problems, anticipating your needs. He makes you feel good: more beautiful (handsome), confident, brighter, entitled, sexier than you could ever imagine. In the embrace of an accomplished narcissist, we can easily be deluded. We stand on the highest peak, arms spread wide, surveying all that is ours. How grandiose we can become under his irresistible spell.
The narcissist always has a variety of scenarios in mind for those caught in his web of enchantment. He wants something that each one can supply him: money, an entrée to powerful connections, a stunning woman or man at his (or her) side, an impulsive sexual embrace, a convivial drinking companion. Like any great predator—an eagle in the highest branch of a fir tree who sees all, a red-tailed hawk figure-eighting in the open sky, a cheetah stalking in the tall golden grasses—he knows whom to single out for the kill and how to fell his prey.
The high-level narcissist is gifted at radiating immense charm when he chooses. This magnetic indefinable attribute is invaluable to all human beings. Charm is an energy, a vibration, a contagious optimistic state of mind. Charm beguiles; it can seduce us to do almost anything. The expression “pouring on the charm” has a truthful ring. It is a magic elixir that sets us soaring. We feel charm’s embrace in the personality vibrations of a great leader or the sexual energy of a gorgeous film star. Small babies possess charm. It arises from them like an incandescent light. When we are charmed, we are entranced. Our fears, doubts, and worries evaporate. We feel giddy as if we are taking a magnificent ride above the gravitational pull of the ordinary world. If we are completely charmed, we feel godlike: all-powerful, omniscient, immortal. Unlike the baby’s, the charm of the narcissist is deliberate and studied. He is watching for your reaction to his advances and compliments. His acting mode is in full blown. He has set out to catch you in his net. Will you be able to wake up, wiggle out, and escape, or will you become another victim of his pseudo-empathy?
Flamboyant philosopher and novelist of best sellers The Fountain-head and Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand played a compelling role as a classic supernarcissist. Grandiose, pathologically self-absorbed, cunning, vindictive, Rand built an intellectual cult of followers who worshiped at her elaborate throne. The darling of a loyal band of Northeastern and West Coast intellectuals, business leaders, academics, and college students, Rand rose to prominence during the fifties and sixties as the architect of a new philosophical system called Objectivism. Objectivism chooses the reasoning process as the sine qua non of human behavior. Irrationality and the spontaneous expressions of feelings are rejected as inferior qualities. The needs and desires of the individual reign over the benefits to the group. Actions must be driven by self-interest. In economics, capitalism and free markets have supremacy over the state.
The Passion of Ayn Rand, by Barbara Branden, a close friend and follower of Rand’s for nineteen years, offers a chilling portrait of a woman incapable of empathy. Branden speaks of their first encounter, how she was struck by Rand’s penetrating eyes and the full range of their expression: intelligent, childlike, cruel, cold, desperate, vengeful, enraged, judgmental. Branden describes what was missing, however, in all their years together, through triumph, betrayal, and tragedy: “There was something I never saw in Ayn Rand’s eyes. They never held an inward look—a look of turning inside to learn one’s own spirit and consciousness. They gazed only and always outward.”4
On February 2, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russia, Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum was born. Alissa would become famously known as Ayn Rand. From the beginning Alice (Alissa) had a deeply strained relationship with her mother, Anna. There was never a hint of love or true affection between them. Anna openly told her children that they were unwanted and that she took care of them out of a sense of duty alone. Mother and daughter were polar opposites. Anna was frenetically social, nonintellectual, constantly busy. Anna appreciated her serious, misanthropic daughter for her intellectual prowess and academic achievements. Alice’s relationship with her father, a successful self-made chemist, was tolerable although formal and distant. They engaged in intellectual discussions when Alice reached her teens. Alice was a loner. Children at school avoided and dismissed her as odd and eccentric, and she was removed from the normal social milieu. “From her parents and from the other adults she encountered, love and admiration were purchased by the qualities of her mind.”5
Ayn Rand grew up in a tumultuous period that witnessed the fall of the czar and the rise of the violent Bolsheviks. Forced from their comfortable environs in St. Petersburg, the Rosenbaums fled to the Crimea, where they eked out a subsistence living. Here, Rand was subjected to daily doses of hunger, cold, and fear. The childhood years under the crushing yoke of communism brought feelings of hopelessness and humiliation. It wasn’t the lack of food that caused Ayn psychological pain at that time and for the rest of her life. It was the dreariness, the absence of hope, the incessant grimness of daily life—the total futility of existence itself.
Rand hid her childhood memories from others and particularly from herself. In the words of one of her powerful male characters, she defiantly sums up her attitude toward her early years: “Don’t ask me about my family, my childhood, my friends or my feelings. Ask me about the things I think…the specific events of my private life are of no importance whatever.”6
It is not surprising that a narcissistic core self was born within the psyche of Alice Rosenbaum. She was never accepted for her authentic self: the little girl who felt so alone, overwhelmed by unacknowledged and unexpressed feelings of fear, humiliation, vulnerability, dependence, anger, desperation. Mother openly disliked her daughter, thinking of Alice as a burden. Both parents fixated on the value of her intellect alone. She was the brains of the family, the brilliant student of the academy. To be true to herself, Alice would have had to come to terms with her childhood emotional pain. This was impossible. Worshiped by her parents and others for her intelligence alone, Alice unconsciously fashioned a grandiose false self as a defensive psychological survival mechanism.
At age twenty-one, after college, Alice Rosenbaum obtained a visa and moved to Chicago to live with her aunts. Shortly after her arrival in the United States, Alice gave herself a new name. She chose Ayn, the name of a Finnish writer. She picked Rand when she looked down at her Remington-Rand typewriter. She knew this sounded right. Ayn’s stay with her Jewish relatives in Chicago was very mixed. They were a warm, religiously observant family. Ayn felt awkward and alone in the heart of such a close, caring group. Her visit with them was difficult because of her penchant for self-absorption and her complete lack of awareness and consideration for the feelings of others. Ayn moved to Hollywood, surviving in low-level jobs that she despised. It was during this time that Ayn met Frank O’Connor on the set of D. W. Griffith’s King of Kings—she as an extra, he as a bit player. They were attracted to each other quickly. Ayn always claimed that she was deeply in love with Frank. He was fond of Ayn and in awe of her intelligence. Their friends always wondered if their marriage was motivated by Ayn’s problematic immigration status. She would soon have to return to Russia. Marriage to Frank would solve this problem; Ayn was determined to stay in the United States. It would have not been out of character for Frank, kind and self-sacrificing, to be gallant, rescuing her by forming a marital union. After some work in the Hollywood studios, Ayn published The Fountainhead, her second novel, fated for great success.
During the period when she was writing her most ambitious novel, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn met a young couple, Barbara Weidman and Nathaniel Branden. A few years later Ayn and Frank celebrated their wedding. The Brandens became the center of a worshipful circle surrounding Ayn Rand, named the Collective. Several years into the philosophical movement, it became very obvious that Ayn and Nathaniel, a psychology student twenty-five years her junior, were sexually attracted to each other. As the liaison progressed, Ayn called a meeting with Frank and her two “dear friends,” Nathaniel and Barbara. Without emotion or fanfare, Ayn flatly announced that she and Nathaniel would meet one afternoon and one evening alone every week, no exceptions. After a short while she decided that their union would be total—sexually, intellectually, romantically. She assured all of the parties that the two marriages would not be disrupted, that the bond between her and Nathan was necessary and inviolate. Ayn insisted that there was one rule that could not be breached: the arrangement between her and Nathaniel must be kept secret forever. Ayn calmly explained that the length of the affair would be conditional, a year or a bit longer, nothing more. She placated the spouses: “If Nathan and I were the same age, it would be different….An affair between us can only be temporary.”7 As if struck by a hypnotic trance, Barbara and Frank capitulated to Ayn’s demands. Obsessed with her passion for Nathaniel and her psychological fusion with him, Ayn rescinded her promise of a short affair and insisted that the romantic and sexual arrangement be permanent. She needed and deserved no less than full possession of her youthful heroic lover.
Ayn imposed her will on the three other individuals involved in the intimate arrangements. She offered them no alternatives. Ayn, a middle-aged woman, in choosing Nathaniel as her young lover was acting out the fantasies she had conceived and given life to through the characters in her novels. Each party to the secret liaison was devastated in his own way. Frank acquiesced quietly to the arrangement, greeting Nathaniel twice a week at his door and leaving his own home while this youthful, handsome, virile man made love to his wife. Frank kept his pain to himself. He headed to the only destination that would give him temporary respite, a bar. There he distracted himself with liquor and convivial companions in a repeated destructive pattern that led him down the road to intractable alcoholism, which destroyed his health and killed his spirit.
Barbara suffered years of paralyzing panic attacks as a result of Ayn’s cruel selfishness. These horrific episodes generalized throughout her life and caused intolerable distress, terror, limitations, and feelings of grave uncertainty. In response to Barbara’s psychological pain, Ayn wrote a paper on the subject of Barbara’s excessive emotional reactions. Ayn reached a new level of cruelty on a day when she and Nathaniel were together. Out of sheer rising intractable terror, Barbara called and asked if she could speak with Ayn and Nathan in person. In response to Barbara’s desperate plea, Ayn snapped: “How dare you invade my time with Nathan?…Are you indifferent to my context?…No one ever helped me when I needed it!”8
Although Nathaniel was a less innocent member of the famous quartet, an enthusiastic participant in the affair whose ego soared in its wake, Ayn frequently upbraided him for not treating her with the ardor she demanded. Their student-mentor, lover-adversary relationship spanned a period of eighteen years. During all of their time together, Ayn constantly analyzed Nathaniel’s psychological blocks and deficiencies. Her reckless skewering spared no one. Nathaniel sums up the startling lack of compassion in Ayn’s fateful romantic obsession: “As to Barbara’s feelings, I doubt if Ayn seriously considered them. She wanted me to override two marriages, the age difference and every kind of conventional objection—and I did so.”9
During meetings of the Collective, Ayn would launch into open-attack mode if she was philosophically challenged. Her assaults were brutal and relentless. She laid bare the private psychological world of her humiliated helpless victims. On one occasion, she let Nathaniel perform the dirty deed. Barbara Branden observes: “That evening, Ayn exhibited a lack of human empathy that was astonishing.” As Nathaniel pointed out a young woman’s character defects, Ayn’s reaction was predictable. “Each time, Ayn chuckled with appreciation—and clapped her hands in applause.”10
Ayn Rand, the self-appointed priestess of morality and reason, conducted her professional and personal life often without access to these qualities herself. Explosive, venomous, sadistic, Ayn tore into her intimates and cult followers like a male lion chomping on a fresh kill. While she preached reason, her god, Ayn acted out her fantasies impulsively and recklessly without the slightest regard to the harm it was causing others. Ayn accepted only blind obedience. Those who questioned her philosophical tenets were instantly lambasted and humbled. She was incapable of admitting mistakes. Ayn’s narcissistic lack of empathy and her reflexive ability to blame held steely firm: “The fantasy self-image of perfection that she had spent a lifetime constructing was not to be toppled. The destruction of her relationship with Nathaniel could only be his fault, his evasions, his guilt.”11
The last scenes in the Ayn Rand opera were melodramatic and unseemly. When Ayn discovered that Nathaniel had secretly been having an affair with Patrecia Gullison, a young member of the Nathaniel Branden Institute, and had withheld this information from her, Ayn turned vengeful and physically violent. In one ugly exchange, she lambasted Nathaniel and slapped him with an open hand. During an endless harangue, Ayn screamed: “Your whole act is finished! I created you, and I’ll destroy you,” and “You would have been nothing without me, and you will be nothing when I’m done with you!”12 Ayn wrote an open letter to all the members who received the Objectivist newsletter describing Nathaniel’s moral decrepitude. She directly stated that she had forever ended her alliance with Barbara and Nathaniel Branden and insisted that she was entitled to take back all of Nathaniel’s interest in the magazine. The relationship between Ayn and Nathaniel and Barbara was irrevocably severed.
Ayn Rand’s fame as a novelist and philosopher continued to grow; her novels sold with momentum and promise. For many, the philosophy and mind-set of the characters achieved biblical significance. In stark contrast, the last years of Rand’s life were filled with emotional emptiness. Her husband, Frank, died, leaving her without the consummate adoring partner willing to sacrifice his life for her. Her health steadily declined despite successful lung surgery. Her heart was severely weakened, the ravages of arteriosclerosis.
As if by design, Ayn successively alienated her most loyal friends. Her demeanor with old associates who had defended and stood by her became brittle and acrimonious. She demanded that others believe exactly as she. Those who fraternized with anyone outside of her exclusive circle were ousted and vilified. Ayn’s misanthropic isolation deepened. She spent hours playing solo Scrabble. One fateful morning in March 1982, Alissa Zinovevna Rosenbaum, creator of the great Ayn Rand, was dead. Next to her open casket stood a six-foot-high dollar sign, a quintessential personal symbol. She was quiet now, all alone. She had neither loved nor been loved. She died as she had lived, the ultimate narcissist, incapable of compassion or empathy.
The heart possesses a special intelligence. It contains within it every life experience of our existence—each sense impression, thought, terror, abandonment, joy, rage, resentment, secret. On an emotional and psychological level, when we open our hearts, we become more complete human beings. As much as we can learn with our intellects, the heart knows more.
Hatha yoga, created and developed in India over thousands of years, uses a series of specific body poses to heal the body, mend the mind, and awaken the soul. Many of these postures, combined with concentrated breathing, are designed to open heart energy that expands inner awareness and promotes health.
For millennia, Indian yogis and holy men strove for a deeper method of expanding consciousness. Among their pursuits was a system that would integrate and heal the body, mind, psyche, and soul. In the course of their search, they discovered dynamic energy centers (called chakras in Sanskrit). According to the yogic system, healing takes place when energy centers are unblocked, through the use of breathing techniques and specific body positions or postures. Tensions in the body are released and energy flows more freely throughout all the systems of the body. When the body is at peace, the mind and the emotions are steady and calm. Many yoga students report that another gift of this practice is a greater awareness of their capacity for giving and receiving compassion.
Some time ago I visited a monastic on the celebration of his eightieth birthday. A small crowd gathered outdoors in a green valley amidst lacy trees, flowering shrubs, and singing birds. On first meeting Brother, I was struck by the exquisite blend of his spontaneous joy and kindness. His humility and startling realness were palpable. As he spoke to each one of us that day, his gaze was direct and personal. No trace of fear or ego could be felt coming from him. Brother was in perfect attunement with each person there, as if he had known us all of our lives. A subtle, powerful energy vibrated from him, like a flower shining in full sunlight. His heart brimmed naturally with overflowing love, simplicity, sweetness, and great humor.
The narcissist is emotionally blocked and cold, like the deepest recesses of a long-deserted tomb. Life’s warm persistent breath has no residence here. No birdsong or soothing wind enters this frozen emptiness. Psychologically, the heart of the narcissist is constricted, numb, and inert. It does not move to the rhythm of life; it cannot celebrate with a full-blown laugh, a twinkling wide smile. It is untouched and untouchable, incapable of real tears of sorrow, joy, or forgiveness. This heart is unmoved when others, even close relatives and friends, are struck by serious illness or tragic life circumstances. Those who ask for mercy from the narcissist are left at the doorstep, abandoned. He can offer all the polite socially acceptable utterances, but when the moment of desperation arrives, the narcissist has vanished. The suffering of others does not stir him. He may give to charities, but this is often conditional, dependent on great fanfare and public exposure that applauds his generosity and goodness. One on one with life-and-death issues, the narcissist fails, falters, runs. Being human is an estrangement.
The Buddha told us on many occasions that the essential reality of human existence is suffering. The cycle of life beginning with birth takes a natural course from early childhood, to the verdant freshness of youth and adolescence, through the bright dreams of adulthood, into prime middle age, to a slowing drumbeat in old age, and finally death. Dealing with these inevitabilities alone causes each of us to suffer as we visualize and later experience the ultimate dissolution of body and mind. Part of handling these human verities is the recognition that the true nature of reality is impermanence. In our lives, one way or another, we must come to terms with these truths in order to ever attain any form of inner peace.
Innocent children suffer from the effects of intergenerational abuse, coldness, psychological instability, emotional indifference. In some instances, a pernicious pattern of cruelty and neglect crystallizes and becomes the legacy of parent to child over many generations. Some children simply do not survive; they are the victims of too much hatred, neglect, and abuse. At an early age, they die under the weight of their pain by means of an “accident,” physical illness, or suicide.
Each person finds a unique way to deal with his suffering. Most deny it, defend against it, or project it onto others. They believe the family fairy tale that they came from a good home with normal parents, or at least tolerable ones. Nothing went terribly wrong that they can remember. These individuals stick with their life’s working script. Most people, unless they are forced by extreme crises or tragedy, become defensive and angry at the implication that their childhoods were less than idyllic. Some of us cling to the happy family story despite profound life reverses. It is simply too painful to acknowledge the truth. For some, it is secreted and hidden away in a reservoir of repressed memory.
No matter how empathic our parents have been, we all carry some remnants of deprivation, trauma, and loss. Some children, as a result of a difficult genetic endowment or congenital circumstances of birth, have greater needs than can be fulfilled, despite their parents’ best efforts. Beneath the surface of a cheery, politically correct family history, a chronic emotional numbing grows, like a wayward virus. Through psychological anesthesia, we block pain and access to our deepest feelings. We become incapable of experiencing great suffering, great joy, or great love.
I have noticed that many people are always “fine.” They respond to you in dry, banal generalities. “My job is great, the kids are doing well in school.” “We’re in the middle of a remodel that’s taking up a lot of our time.” “Our teenage girls are ‘good kids’” (translation: they’re not rebelling). These individuals behave in a predictable choreographed manner. Their psychological barricades of long standing are fully reinforced. If you are “not great,” “not fine,” or even worse in “dreadful shape, quietly or unquietly falling apart,” it makes them squirm psychologically. While sucking in impatient breaths, they pretend to listen, maintaining a tight politeness. After a few moments they hurriedly mutter an excuse: “I must get back to my project,” “I have to walk the dogs,” “I have errands to do,” “I have a meeting.” Some wordlessly turn on their heels while you are mid-sentence in explaining that you are “not fine.” Your “unfineness” makes them feel so ill at ease and embarrassed that they must remove themselves from this melodramatic, over-the-top spectacle. They are so numb that their sole reaction is one of acute avoidance and annoyance, often seasoned with ragged edges of disgust.
Many use escape mechanisms to quell their suffering. They drink too much, take drugs, gamble, act out sexually, work compulsively. Working too hard has become one of modern life’s greatest virtues. Our society places more value on time and productivity in a career than the personal parental care of children. Conveniently, we have nannies, babysitters, and the technological viewing of the child while he is at day care and we are at work.
When an individual drinks regularly and becomes high or drunk, he is escaping from his pain. Numbing one’s pain with an alcoholic chaser appears to work. What a fix! It feels so warm, so good, so right. However, the pain reappears and he must drink again to get relief. The cycle of drinking is unending, as is the suffering. Escapes are always transitory. They delude us into believing that our suffering has evaporated and will not return like a recurring nightmare. The moment we feel the liquor working its sensual blurry way into our system, we believe the wish-fulfilling dream that the pain has ceased to exist.
Suffering is transformed by following it to its source, by visiting the truth of our life experience. The core wounds—of not being wanted, lovable, or loved, of being thrown away, discarded, or abused—must be reexperienced through a conscious process. Wounds need to be emotionally felt, not just intellectually acknowledged. This can be achieved through the psychotherapeutic process, working with a gifted professional. Careful in-depth research to find the right therapeutic fit is worthwhile.
Many therapists are so dysfunctional and inept themselves that they are unable to uncover and deal with their own psychological issues let alone those of their clients. There are psychotherapists who offer treatment only to clients who can afford their exorbitant fees. When a therapist I was seeing (highly trained and psychologically savvy) continued to raise his hourly fee, I suggested that he would soon be treating only the wealthy. Had his professional focus become skewed in a monetary direction despite his gifts as a therapist?
A therapist who has worked through his own core psychological issues and is capable of true empathy can assist his patients in uncovering and healing their hidden psychic pain. Good psychotherapy (which is rare) can help to resolve primary childhood issues, but the experience of healing stretches out beyond the horizon. It is multilayered, lifelong. We are never finished products but growing, dynamic individuals.
When we learn to live and appreciate our own truth, we become more merciful toward others and therefore capable of deep empathy. Most people resist moving through psychological pain. The earliest childhood wounds are the deepest. They occur when we are the most vulnerable and helpless. A little child of three who is terrorized by physical threats and psychological torture and beaten regularly sustains enormous damage. Some children, because of their genetic endowment, position in the family, temperament, disposition and level of sensitivity, are more resilient under severe stress, abuse, or neglect. Some therapists call these children invulnerable. No one is invulnerable. Even the strongest and most emotionally adaptable child pays a price for the inflicted abuse or careless neglect he endures.
Individuals who appear the most “normal” are often concealing depths of despair, emptiness, and rage. The externals—achievement in the world, monetary success, ambition, drive, outward appearance, social skills—are often very deceptive. We need not look very far to view huge psychological fissures appearing from the central core of the personality. The suffering is there. It can be seen in the deadened eyes that emit no light, the hollow monotone of the voice, the rigid posture, the frozen affect. Bringing pain out of the deep freeze, thawing it through purposeful awareness, and working through the thorniest psychological childhood issues bears the best fruit of all—becoming fully human.
Another route toward developing empathy is through a spiritual path (in the form that it takes for each individual). The spiritual route is not quick, easy, or smooth. Some are forced in this direction as a result of some overwhelming trauma or an accumulation of lifelong suffering that can no longer be tolerated. We want to die, even kill ourselves. We have tried everything else: addictive behaviors, sexual acting out, intellectualization, numerous marriages, excessive spending, burying ourselves in a series of careers. Excellent psychotherapy does not cure all psychic ills. It can take us to a point of psychological insight and emotional working through. Psychotherapy can be exceedingly valuable. Therapy alone has limitations.
Life is a dynamic event. Like a great river, it crests, swerves, and meanders in cadence with the features of the terrain it embodies, the winds that blow, the sun and moon that rise and set upon it, the fish that swim in its waters, the seasons that define its force and shape. Spiritual waters are without boundaries. The spiritual connection is personal, constant, and present. There are no horizons here, only the deepest blue. For some, eternity is a beatific future; for others, it vibrates brightly in this moment.
Following a spiritual path is often discouraging, humbling, tedious, boring, mystifying. It requires that we acknowledge our shortcomings and failures without defensiveness. It asks us to become naked to ourselves and eventually transparent. A person who possesses the spiritual quality of transparency is always the same, despite the people or circumstances that he encounters. He moves through life with calmness, grace, and equanimity. He treats everyone with respect and lifts the psychic weight off others. His heart is strong and soft, resolute and adaptable.
Rosalie, a forty-nine-year-old book researcher, was a well-educated woman. As a child, she was expected to control her emotions above all else. Her mother, Cleo, was a cold, demanding woman. Nothing—not even perfection—was good enough for her. Rosalie’s father, Raymond, was a different sort, a dreamer, almost a child himself. A public servant at work, Raymond played the role of servile child to his wife. Cleo ran the family enterprise like a warrior. Rosalie’s brothers and sisters called their mother the Little General behind her back. As the oldest daughter, Rosalie was expected to take over the maternal functions that Cleo was either unwilling or unable to fulfill. Cleo worked two jobs, preferring this arrangement to staying home with a bunch of kids. By the age of three, Rosalie had become so adept at keeping her emotions under complete control that she simply felt numb.
With her fine linear brain, Rosalie earned two master’s degrees: one in business, the other in English literature. She worked as a researcher for a prominent nonfiction writer. Rosalie met Mark in graduate school. After a short courtship, they were married. Within two and a half years they had two daughters, a toddler and an infant. It was very difficult for Rosalie to display a lot of warmth toward her children. As soon as each child was three months old, she returned to her career. Her work as researcher filled her with a keen sense of accomplishment. She went through the motions of her married life, often ignoring Mark. She gave most of herself to her work.
Rosalie and Mark had been married for twenty-five years, and their children were away at college. One evening, Mark told Rosalie that he wanted a divorce. His rationale was that the children were practically grown and that he needed warmth and attention in his life. Rosalie was nonplussed by this sudden announcement. It was as if a bomb had been dropped on her head. For weeks she couldn’t believe that Mark was leaving her. Was he joking? Just going through a phase? Could she possibly get him to change his mind? What would happen to her without him? On very short notice, Mark moved out of the house and retained an attorney. Rosalie was forced to seek legal counsel, despite her state of shock. After much acrimony, the settlement was completed.
Six months after the divorce, Rosalie discovered that she had an aggressively growing lymphoma just below her abdomen. Surgery and chemotherapy were recommended, and Rosalie followed the course of treatment. During these long months she began to break down emotionally. Uncharacteristically, she cried constantly and experienced feelings of overwhelming loss and regret. She had a small circle of friends who assisted her through the surgery and chemo and provided emotional support. Feeling that she had hit rock bottom and no longer wanted to live, Rosalie sought the help of a professional therapist. Through intensive psychotherapy, she began to experience emotions that she had never acknowledged in her entire life: helplessness, rage, fear, shame, unworthiness, dark despair. At times she was terrorized that the medical regimen would not work and she would die. On other occasions, she longed for death and a quick reprieve from what felt to her like an impossible situation.
Rosalie began to thaw emotionally for the first time in her life. Faced with death, she was finally able to acknowledge the psychic pain that she had endured as a child, to reexperience it and to mourn the deprivations she had suffered. Rosalie reached out to a spiritual community and began a daily routine of meditation and prayer. She received great comfort and valuable insights as a result of her spiritual practice.
As time passed and her cancer receded, Rosalie emerged as a new person, someone whom she would not have recognized in the past. Now she could express her emotions without fear or shame. She began to experience love for others, particularly her children. Out of these life-and-death circumstances, Rosalie was reborn.