Honoring the Self

by Nathaniel Branden

  By way of further illuminating this point, I offer the following example, an experience I myself have lived. Although I loved my father and our relationship was cordial, we were never close except during the first few years of my life and, to a lesser extent, during the last years of his. He was a shy, withdrawn man, completely unable to relate to any of my interests. Nor was I close to my mother. I never felt comfortable in school; I was bored and restless a good deal of the time. And yet I longed for an older person to teach me things, to offer some kind of guidance. After a while, I repressed the longing. I decided it was impractical and turned more and more to my own resources. My sole form of intellectual nurturing from the environment was through books.

  A month before I turned twenty, I met and became friendly with novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand, whose book The Fountainhead I had greatly admired. Our association spanned eighteen years. I benefited greatly from it and was harmed greatly by it. It came to an end in 1968, when I was thirty-eight years old. As with many relationships that begin in the student-mentor mold, our parting of the ways was rather violent. Our differences were both philosophical and personal. I used to wonder why I had remained in the relationship so long, past the time when it had obviously become detrimental to my development.

  Only when I was forty years old, when I finally reconnected with my frustrated childhood longing for a father—for a teacher and a guide—did I grasp at least one of the powerful forces that had influenced my choices. I recalled that at the age of twenty, when my first article was published, I had brought her a copy; because my visit coincided with Father’s Day, I had autographed the article, as a joke, “To my father, Ayn Rand.” It took me twenty years to realize it was not a joke.

  When I allowed myself not only to recognize my childhood need for a teacher and guide but to feel it, it very rapidly began to fade; the young boy who had wanted a mentor found him—in me.

  Just as self-awareness can be directed at our needs, emotions, and mental states, so it can be directed at our actions.

  I can learn to notice the kinds of actions that enhance my life and the kinds that produce frustration or disappointment. I can learn to pay attention to what works and what does not work. Or, in the absence of self-awareness, I can proceed to act blindly and obliviously, not bothering myself with such questions, blaming others and feeling sorry for myself when my life does not develop as I had hoped.

  Suppose, for example, I feel frustrated in my relationships with other people. Let us say that I am vaguely unhappy and do not know why. In order to clarify my frustrations, I might complete such sentence stems as “One of the things I want from people and don’t know how to get is—,” saying or writing as many endings as I possibly can, as rapidly as I can. But then I follow with the stem “One of the ways I make it difficult for people to give me what I want is—” and “One of the ways I keep people at a distance is—.” Here my attention is directed toward those behaviors by which I contribute to my own disappointment. Thus:

  One of the ways I make it difficult for people to give me what I want is—

  I don’t tell them what I want.

  I act as if I don’t need anything.

  I act as if I am totally self-sufficient.

  When they attempt to reach out to me, I don’t acknowledge them.

  I always find fault with whatever they offer me.

  I keep myself remote and detached.

  One of the ways I keep people at a distance is—

  I don’t meet their eyes.

  I stay detached.

  I get sarcastic.

  I act superior.

  I look indifferent.

  I never show interest.

  I don’t listen.

  I pretend I don’t notice when they are reaching out.

  The essence of self-awareness is learning to notice, learning to pay attention.

  And self-awareness can include a good deal more than I have discussed thus far: the pattern of our breathing and the moments when we interrupt its natural rhythm; the tone of our voice and the messages our tone conveys; the ways we stand or move and the silent statement contained in our stance and posture; the signals we emit through the expression in our eyes and on our face.

  And beyond that: our dreams and the secrets often encoded within them; our fantasies and the longings they contain; the music within us we may never fully share, out of the fear that we may not be understood or approved of—or may not approve ourselves.

  The self is a vast continent whose exploration we can never complete.

  I do not want to conclude this discussion of self-awareness without touching briefly on the subject of subselves or subpersonalities, although this is an issue that properly deserves a book in itself. I merely wish to acknowledge it here because it adds another dimension to our understanding of what self-awareness can entail.

  In addition to the adult self that most of us are familiar with, there is within the psyche a child self—the living presence of the child we once were. As a potential of our consciousness, that child’s frame of reference and way of responding is an enduring component of our psyche. But we may have disowned that child long ago, repressing his or her feelings, perceptions, responses, out of the belief that “murder” was necessary in order that we grow to adulthood.

  By way of introducing clients or students to this concept, I sometimes ask them to enter a fantasy, to imagine themselves walking along a country road and, in the distance, to see a small child sitting by a tree and, as they draw near, to see that the child is the self they once were. Then I ask them to sit down by the tree and enter into dialogue with the child. What do they want and need to say to each other? Not uncommonly there are tears; sometimes there is rapture. But there is almost always the realization that in some form that child still exists within the psyche (as a mind state) and has a contribution to make to the life of the adult—and a richer, fuller self emerges from the discovery. Another way to facilitate contact with the child self is to do sentence-completion exercises, utilizing the stem “If the child in me could speak, he/she might say—.”

  Another self (subpersonality), as Jungian psychologists have long proclaimed, is the female self in each male and the male self in each female. This self is usually unconscious, usually disowned, but when brought to consciousness, accepted, and integrated, it is an invaluable source for the total personality—a source of growth, expansion, energy, higher awareness, and higher efficacy. Jung suggested decades back, and subsequent studies bear him out, that creative men and women in general exhibit a much higher level of integration of the male and female within their personalities than do average people; they are less willing to disown those aspects of the self that do not conform to cultural sex-role stereotypes; they are more open to the totality of their inner being.*

  I have already mentioned, earlier in the book, that which I call the sage self—the wisest, most daring, and most intuitive part of us, that within us which is often most aware of our deepest needs and highest possibilities. The sage self may be the voice of evolution within us—the voice that whispers to us in our dreams, or in moments when we are alone, or when listening to great music, or when making passionate love, that our journey is not finished, that it is never finished, that higher possibilities of creativity, joy, consciousness lie beyond the next mountain range in our awareness. Because it is a voice that speaks only in whispers, it is easy to ignore; it does not scream as the child self sometimes screams. If, in reading these words, you are aware of some resonance within you, a vaguely familiar trembling, that is the voice of the sage self signaling for your attention.

  This passing introduction to the issue of subselves or subpersonalities represents, necessarily, a simplification of an extraordinarily complex subject. The various subselves or subpersonalities (the potential for different mind states, different frames of reference) that exist within us—and there are many more than I have mentioned—generate emotional tensions and problems if disowned and repudiated,
but, if recognized and integrated, can enrich and enliven enormously that which we call our “self.”

  So: Internal signals can be organic sensations, desires, emotions, memories, thoughts, images, fantasies. Any can be allowed into awareness, and any can be shut out of awareness. Some signals go unheeded simply because they are so faint they remain unnoticed. Some signals disappear from awareness because we have no frame of reference within which to understand them or because they seem to conflict with what we think we know. And some signals are avoided because they threaten our equilibrium, disturb the precarious structure of our security or self-esteem. This is what makes the attainment of self-awareness a continual challenge.

  Which leads us, once again, to the subject of self-acceptance.

  Without self-acceptance, there is a limit to how far self-awareness can proceed.

  Sometimes we become aware of a feeling, a thought, or a memory, and then involuntarily we begin to tense against it, feeling powerless to control our response. Self-acceptance in that moment seems impossible to us. The solution is not to try to resist our resistance; if we cannot accept a feeling (or a thought or a memory), we should accept our resistance. If we stay with the resistance at a conscious level, it will begin to melt.

  We become off-center when we try to fight ourselves; when we flow with what is, we regain balance and control. This is the essence of the art of self-acceptance.

  When we fight ourselves—when we refuse to practice self-acceptance with regard to our experience—we obstruct the integrative function of mind. We keep ourselves in a state of conflict and tension. We produce a sense of self-alienation. If we permit ourselves to experience that which we are denying, we reestablish contact with ourselves, we make it possible for unwanted feelings to be discharged, and we unblock the integrative process that maintains our internal equilibrium and well-being.

  One of my favorite ways to demonstrate this is when someone in therapy or in one of my seminars complains of being unable to speak freely because of an overeagerness to win my approval. I typically will ask the person to tell me several times, clearly and firmly, of the desire for my approval. After seven or eight repetitions the person is usually relaxed and smiling and proceeds to say something like, “I feel calm and clearheaded. I don’t care what you think of me. There are certain things I want to say, and now I am going to say them. I feel free and good.”

  The difficulty in speaking openly is caused, not by the desire for approval as such, but by resistance to that desire. By expressing the desire either aloud to the person concerned or internally, we increase the sense of self-respect and autonomy. We also free the mind to be aware that there is a wider context, other needs, and that the most important need in this particular situation is to say what we want to say rather than to gain approval.

  We can better practice self-acceptance when we understand that it is not unwanted feelings that impair healthy functioning but the denial and disowning of those feelings. It is the act of blocking that gives rise to a different set of responses than would occur were we in solid contact with our inner experience.

  A woman who does not permit herself to know when she feels assaulted and mistreated, for example, condemns herself to feeling helpless and impotent, a state in which self-assertiveness is impossible. A man who does not permit himself to know when he is afraid cannot be aware of the defenses restricting his growth, and thus he cannot take action to correct the situation.

  Unfortunately, many persons desiring to change begin by repudiating what they are, looking toward what they seek to become. Even when these ideals are valid, we cannot move toward them successfully by pronouncing the self a nonvalue in its present state and disowning what we are now.

  Another example, a personal one, may help clarify further the relationship between self-acceptance and the self-healing, integrative function of mind. Some years ago, while I was writing The Disowned Self, a young man came to my office to discuss entering therapy with me. He did not have a great deal of money, and coming to Los Angeles had not been easy for him. I liked him and found him interesting, but I saw that he needed far more personal attention than I was in a position to give. This was during a period when I was confining my work as a therapist exclusively to groups; I had ceased practicing individual therapy because I needed time for writing.* I explained why I was unable to accept him as a client and recommended him to a colleague. Although he handled himself with great dignity and composure, I could see that he was sadly disappointed. When he left my office, I felt troubled, depressed, and guilty. I felt that I had somehow been cruel. Then I told myself that my feelings were nonsense; I returned to my desk to resume writing The Disowned Self and to explain to future readers the importance of accepting one’s feelings. My feeling of distress continued, despite my impatient efforts at dismissal. Then I appreciated the contradiction between what I was doing and what I was writing.

  I got up from my desk and went to sit in a chair. I closed my eyes, began to breathe deeply, and whispered to myself, “I’m really feeling bad right now. I feel troubled. I feel miserable. I feel depressed. I’m wondering if I am not lacking in compassion because I did not find a way to stretch my time. I see the look of sadness in his eyes as he departed, and I feel low, terribly low.” Within a few moments, the troubled feelings were gone; my head cleared, my spirits lifted, I saw the whole situation in realistic perspective, and I calmly returned to work.

  I didn’t need to give myself a sermon; I needed to allow myself to feel regretful for a moment—even to feel self-reproachful—without reproaching myself for feeling self-reproachful. Then my wider context returned of its own accord, restoring harmony.

  Integration is central to every aspect of the life process. An organism is a complex integrate of hierarchically organized structures and functions. It sustains itself physically by taking materials from the environment, reorganizing them and converting these materials into its means of survival, achieving a new integration. We can observe an analogous phenomenon in the process by which the mind apprehends reality—from the integration of sensations into perceptions, the integration of perceptions into concepts, the integration of concepts into still wider concepts, the integration of new experiences into conceptual knowledge. Just as integration is the cardinal principle of life, so it is the cardinal principle of mind.

  To integrate is to bring together into a nonconflicting, noncontradictory unity those elements that are being integrated, in accordance with a goal, need, or standard that operates as the organizing principle. The ultimate biological principle of integration is, of course, that which is required for the life of the organism. All self-healing, at the psychological level, entails the principle of integration: for example, the integration of traumatic experiences, so that they lose their negative charge; or the integration of a single troublesome situation into the wider context of our knowledge, as in the incident concerning the young man who came to me for therapy; or the integration of new skills into our repertoire of behavior so as to facilitate a higher level of effectiveness.

  Evasion and repression are, by their very nature, antiintegrative processes. When evasion and repression have obstructed the integrative process, the task of reason, self-awareness, and self-acceptance is to remove those obstructions. Ultimately, of course, most integrations take place beneath the level of conscious awareness, at deeper levels of the psyche, but the stimulation for the process of integration is provided by the means I am describing. Even when, in the context of psychotherapy, explicit awareness may seem to be bypassed almost entirely—as in hypnosis, for instance—this merely means that the acceptance required for integration is triggered elsewhere along the continuum of consciousness.

  In the course of their work, many psychotherapists have been impressed by the frequency with which self-healing and growth-inducing integrations occur when previously avoided material is brought into conscious awareness and is appropriately experienced—experienced organismically, one might say, rather than
merely grasped cerebrally. The self-repairing process observable on the physical level of our being clearly has an analogous process on the psychological level, evidenced by this phenomenon of spontaneous integrations. The self-repairing tendency is not infallible, neither in body nor in mind, but its existence on the psychological level is indisputable—and the challenge for those involved in psychotherapy is how to use it creatively. For example, after a long string of sentence completions in which significant material is brought to the surface, I might give a client the stem “As I begin to understand what I am saying—,” and that stem activates the integrative process. Individuals who learn to work with sentence completion on their own may employ such a stem for just the same purpose. Other such integrative stems include: “I’m beginning to see—”; “It is slowly and reluctantly dawning on me—”; and “Right now it seems obvious—.”

  Since so much of denied and avoided material consists of repressed emotions, and since their release often leads to dramatically successful results, there has been an understandable emphasis, for some decades past, on the liberation of feeling as a cardinal therapeutic goal. If it becomes our primary concern, however, anti-intellectualism, indifference to reason, and self-indulgent subjectivism may result. Contact with feelings may often be the beginning of the process of self-healing, but it is hardly the end. It does not automatically generate the thinking, honesty, integrity, and attitude of self-responsibility our well-being requires.

  Successful functioning entails the ability to be aware of the facts and requirements of external reality and of inner experience without sacrificing one awareness to the other.

  Suppose, for example, that a man is ill and knows that a surgical operation is necessary. He experiences considerable fear at the prospect of this operation. It would obviously be self-destructive for him either to capitulate to the fear and avoid the needed surgery or to be aware only of the need for the surgery and to be oblivious of the fact of his fear. A fear that is experienced and acknowledged can be dealt with; a fear that is denied, in a case such as this, can actually precipitate shock.