The world war, the housekeeper, and Freud's last friend.

I fell in love two years ago.

It didn't work out, and we had one of those on-again-off-again relationships which mean you really were in love because no sane person would go back for more of the misery I just couldn't stay away from. It was sweet, really. In a horrible, stripped down to the bone kind of way. I knew I was alive 'cos it hurt to breathe.

This blog entry is about maturity. We can perhaps suppose that being content with our lives will arise from some kind of a mature approach, but what is a mature approach, really? I used to think maturity was about the sense to avoid pain. I don't think that any more, and that is for a number of reasons. Mostly because I fell in love two years ago.

There's a story I like about Fairbairn. He was the originator of Object Relations theory. I have to say I find his writings impenetrable, and I probably don't do any of his theories justice. Like any founder of big ideas, apocryphal stories grow with the legend of his ideas' influence, and so I really don't know, by now, what is true and what is false about Fairbairn. So don't assume what I'm about to say is absolutely true. Truth makes for a poor story, all too often.

Enough disclaimers, by now you should be wrapped up in your bunny rug with a nutmeg-and-milk and ready for the story. Tucked in warmly? Ok, here we go, and be careful not to tip your rocker.

Fairbairn was a medic during World War I. That was a war which happened almost 100 years ago. My grandfathers were both 9 when it started. It was a war which saw the first use of planes and tanks, and mustard gas. It was a fine, modern war, if you will. Millions died horribly and a lot of them died in bloody, muddy trenches out of sight of their enemy. Each side rained mortars down upon the other. This wasn't really a new trick, it dated all the way back to Greeks and Persians, but during World War I there was a mass production process which resulted in mortar-storms of an unprecedented scale.

One of the effects of it raining bombs was that you couldn't really duck. It also involved a crisis of psychological functioning where, no matter what you did, the bombs just kept on dropping. You could pray, lend cigarettes, hoard good will, be a prick, carry a rabbit's foot, curse God, be a poor friend, goldbrick, obey orders, shirk responsibility and still get blown to hell. For some, the only possible option was to withdraw and disconnect from the world. Back in the day, they called that shell shock. Now we'd call it severe trauma, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Or something else. But Fairbairn became famous for explaining it.

There are those who suggest Fairbairn would have been the father of modern psychology, if Freud had never existed. I don't really understand how they do the math on that, but I like Fairbairn because he tumbled to a truth of life that I hold self-evidently true (sorry Benjamin Franklin, but it was a good line and you can think of it as flattery. Now stop spinning or your grave will fall in, there's a good lad).

This truth is: it is all about me. If I am in a trench and I promise to give up smoking if the bombs stop now, or to never swear again, or to write to my dear old mum... but the bombs keep dropping, then sooner or later I will want to shout: WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME? CAN'T YOU SEE I STOPPED SMOKING AN HOUR AGO?

The truth is they can't even see me. They're just over there slinging mortars into the pipes in a vain attempt to live until tomorrow because they've made their own deal with the universe based on rapid reloading and continuous fire. But I don't see that. Fairbairn said the world is a single object, and we relate to it as though it reflects our image of ourselves. And when that relationship malfunctions then we run the risk of some serious mental problems. Well, that's my rephrasing anyway.

I'm still building toward my apocryphal Fairbairn story by the way. He lived in Edinburgh after the war and became famous as a psychoanalyst. He distorted Freud's theory: completely remade it, really, but he achieved something unique amongst his followers-of-Freud peers. Freud really was like a sailor with a psychoanalyst in every port, you know. You may never have considered this, but he had Adler in Austria, and Jung in Switzerland, Lacan in France and Winnicott in England. And way up there in bonny Scotland was the only one of his acolytes to remain on good terms with Freud forever. That's right, only Fairbairn remained on speaking terms with Freud at the time of Freud's death. How remarkable.

For Fairbairn, when Freud got grumpy with him for changing the theory, it wasn't personal. When Freud said, "How could you do this to me? Don't you know who I am? Why are you distorting my great work?", Fairbairn just made him another cup of tea and added a dollop of whisky. Fairbairn got it. Freud wanted to feel that Fairbairn respected him, that Freud got back from his interactions with Fairbairn the kind of respect Freud thought he deserved. Fairbairn didn't need to get upset. The criticism really had nothing to do with him.

Ok, we're getting close to the anecdote now. But first I want to tell my story about Julianne. Her name isn't Julianne, but that's irrelevant. I'd known her a while as a friend and I helped her out of a hassle. That led to an invitation to a 60th. Long story, largely ireelevant, but what mattered was I got off a plane at Sydney airport and I took her hand as we walked to the car. Before I took her hand we were friends. By the time we got to the car we were soulmates. And whatever else happen in my life to show me I don't matter, or am inept, or have been forgotten, I will never, ever forget that moment. And, I suspect, neither will she. We were in love.

Inconveniently, as it turned out. We lived in different states and we came from different worlds and neither of us was free to go to the other. And stuff like that matters and erodes hope and forces one to make pragmatic decisions. Bugger. And like that.

Fairbairn was a sensible man. As he was evolving his thory about mortal men in bloodied mudpits, he found a letter from his housekeeper left for him on his table. She'd professed her undying love to him. Couldn't he see they were meant to be together? well, no. Frankly, that would have been inconvenient, and anyway he'd barely ever said five words to her and he just wanted the piano dusted and he had a theory to get on with. The theory is supposed to have coalesced in that moment. He read the letter about what he should feel for her, and realised the letter was not at all about him but all about her. Lucky he hadn't held her hand, or we'd all be lost. Instead, he originated Object Relations. And he couldn't have done it without her.

Immature love, like Julianne and I had briefly, is all about losing oneself in the reflected mutual glory of boundary-less cathexis. She loved me, she was eveything I needed, she understood me and she really listened. She was all I ever wanted, needed. We were one. When I was with her I felt like I was the man I'd always wanted to be. Seriously. And she felt the same about me. If only the rest of the world had got out of our way, we were all we ever needed. No downside, no doubts, no negativity. A bit too little objectivity too, just quietly, but there you go. I couldn't see that at the time. Another word for this love is limerance: it is that wonderful, 'in love' feeling. Highly addictive and hormonally influenced. Love is a drug, and like that.

The problem with being in love is that it is a distraction, and an unrealistic way of looking at the world. unless you actually manage to never be parted, sooner or later someone needs to have an independent thought and then the boundaries come flooding back and we find ourselves in a different, mournful, reality. Then we can either struggle to get back or become melancholy. For a long while I struggled. Now I am coming to the end of my melancholy. Sadly, I think the journey has done me good.

Since I have started this, I'd best whip through the other Fairbairn states. The in-love one is the no-boundary, self-less state. It distracts us from the existential crisis of being all alone and alive, but it is untenable because it is one-dimensional. We need our boundaries to be able to function realistically. We need a concept of not-me. To be lost in someone else is, eventually, to lose ourselves. Think about it if you like. Take your time. See if you conclude the same.

Alternatively we can shrink down inside ourselves. Fairbairn called this the secondary neurosis. So we withdraw inside ourselves. Apparently Fairbairn had four types of this one:

1) Hopelessness. Despair. Lying on the bd and saying, 'There's nothing I can do, it is all impossible. Nothing I do will matter". Giving up is a way to avoid coping, a way to avoid doing the hard yards. A distraction.
2) Anxiousness. Lying on the bed all night running through various contingencies and wondering "What if this happens..." or "But what if that happens..." as if anticipating every bad event will somehow enable us to avoid pain. Its a distraction from crisis.
3) Obsession. If I bake ten cakes, our marriage will work out ok. If I just work harder, longer hours, then our marriage will last. Clover's solution in Orwell's Animal farm. Do the thing you can do, because doing the thing which might actually work is too hard or scary. Another distraction.
4) Hiding. Running away. Not being there any more. Alcoholism, absconding, hiding, not answering the phone, just plain quitting. Avoidance taken to its logical extreme. Absence, physical or otherwise. Not being there is the ultimate distraction.

Ok, so Fairbairn's four secondary neuroses are about shrinking back within the boundary of self rather than tearing down the wall. I don't have time to explain Pink Floyd just now so you'll have to make your own comparisons. Just don't shave the tops off your nipples. Bob Geldoff did enough of that for us all.

The primary neurosis is the bumping of boundaries. Make way for me, I need more space. I want you to give me what I ask so I can see you recognise my importance. This is the aggressive blame game which forms the basis of the whole 'why are you doing this to me?' debate that kicked it all off. If you yield, I know I mean something.

"Let's have a baby", he says. "Well, let's not," she says. "If you truly loved me, you'd do this for me." "And if you loved me, you'd give up the idea." Bumping boundaries. And evey statement based on the premise, we have a problem and you're it: if only you'd give me what I want, we'd have no problem. This cycle goes on and on, if both people are up for the game, on the basis that the problem can only be solved by the other giving in. He is a prisoner of her lack of desire; she is a prisoner of his insistence on wanting to procreate. Neither one can fix the problem because each says it is the other who truly owns it, who is making the difficulty. "Can't you see what you are doing here? can't you see how you're making me feel?"

Fairbairn's housekeeper couldn't be happy because Fairbairn hadn't married her yet. She'd be fine if he'd just marry her, show her how she really was the one for him, validate the truth she needed affirmed by the world handing over the goods. Her wellbeing was out of her control. She was a prisoner of his behaviour. She'd decided that in her mind, he had to propose to her.

Hey!! Hang on, isn't it aggression when someone decides to separate the whole mind and body thing? My mind says your arms and legs ought to... that'd be aggression, wouldn't it? And the withdrawal thing, that's passivity. So does that make the limerance, in-love deal assertiveness? Have we found the solution to interpersonal relations here, based on the last blog entry?

Nope. Let me break it to you. Julianne and I didn't live happily ever after, and most couples like that don't. A healthy self needs healthy boundaries, so we need to achieve something else to find the Fairbairn solution to resolving a crisis. It's called mature loving, or mature ambivalence. It is two-dimensional feeling.

The best example I can think of is my own. Isn't that always the way? Julianne and I could have made a commitment to be single and committed to each other in chastity until our kids were grown and one of us could have moved to be with the other. We didn't. Ten years of solitude just wasn't a practical answer for either of us. We had to become two separate people again, or drown.

Let's return to the bloke who wants a baby, and railroad him through a sequence of thoughts. "I want a baby, and she isn't ready for that. So we have a problem. What is my part of the problem? There's a gap between what I want and what I have. I'm in a relationship I don't want to leave, and she's not ready for kids. The truth about me is, I'm pining for something I haven't got. My problem is I want to have kids with someone who doesn't want them yet."

Now he's talking. He has identified the thing about him that is disconnected. He wants something other than what he's got. Now he can begin to tolerate the situation, instead of whine that someone else must change it. HTFU? Maybe, or grieve. Both are possible solutions... they're responses to the situation, not helpless prison cries.

I own an embroidered cushion which announces: "Life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I respond." This truth is the basis of object relations, the basis of Frankl's solution to Auschwitz, the basis of Freud believing that talking about troubles could heal them. Life is not about what happened, it is about how we respond. And love, especially so.

So we hit a crisis. Immature love says it must be something waaaaay external, some enemy's fault 'cos my love wouldn't do this to me. Secondary neuroses recommend we just give up, be distracted, go away. The primary neurosis would have us fight for what we want, especially with those we love. Mature loving, differentiation, mature ambivalence, would offer the solution: "Given I am in a circumstance I don't like, what is my best response? What has the most integrity? What action will I respect most about myself? What is my most assertive self?"

Mature ambivalence is the capacity to hold two conflicting ideas in one mind simultaneously. She values something different to me, and yet I want to be with her. He doesn't love me, and I love him. She's the most wonderful person I ever met, and we can't be together.

Mature ambivalence is assertiveness with oneself. It is our best chance for growth. It is having insight, and tolerating the uncomfortable so we can respect our own behaviour. Let's face it, it is being very grown up.

I was in love with Julianne and we couldn't be together. I'd have had to leave my children behind. I think of Julianne every day, and I wish her well as I try to get on with my life. I parent my children and I work at my job. I try to be a good friend to my mates. I'd say I'll never get over her, not really. I may yet have a good life, and I'm grateful I met her. My heart aches, and still I respect my own decision.

What small contentment I have from an impossible situation I owe to the housekeeper of Ronald Fairbairn, and how he responded to her.