Freedom From Self-Sabotage

by Peter Michaelson

  I wrote back to Jack: Everyone has some level of inner passivity in their psyche, and your reaction in that traffic episode you described reveals your inner passivity. It's certainly challenging at the best of times when drivers are honking at you and crowding you on the road. The healthy response is to minimize your degree of annoyance, fear, and anger. If you get angry and the episode bothers you, say, for hours afterward, you have allowed their aggression to penetrate into your psyche. It is your inner passivity that allows or enables that penetration. Getting angry at them is your defense: "I'm not passive. Look how angry I am!" That anger feels like power, but it is really only a negative, painful feeling that is going to prolong your suffering.

  On a behavioral level, pulling over and letting them pass is an okay thing to do. However, through your inner passivity, their aggression still might penetrate into your psyche, leaving you upset and possibly still fearful and angry.

  The best thing is to be aware of one's inner passivity. When we see our inner passivity objectively, we are able to detach from the symptoms. We don't suffer as much. In the above episode, the anger you felt was painful for you. You will not have to feel the anger (or feel it as intensely) when you see the anger as your attempt to cover up your passivity. With awareness of the inner passivity, you would think or say to yourself, something to this effect, "Oh, wow! Look at how rattled I am. The aggressive behavior of those drivers triggered my inner passivity, producing fear and anger. It won't help me now to get angry at them. I won't use that defense. Instead, I'll just acknowledge my inner passivity. There's nothing shameful about inner passivity. It's just what it is, and I don't need to feel bad about myself because of it. I understand that the more I see this weakness in myself, and refrain from blaming others, the stronger I become. To become stronger, I have to own this passivity. It is my weakness. Even as I'm aware of it, I can still love myself and support myself. Everything is fine if I do not allow the rudeness and aggression of those drivers to diminish my sense of self. Their behavior has nothing to do with my essential goodness and value. I am being powerful and overriding my inner passivity when I protect my integrity in this way and respect myself, even though they obviously didn't treat me with respect. Ultimately, I have to take responsibility for how quickly I can tumble into fear, negativity, and distress."

  [xviii] Paul E. Stepansky, Psychoanalysis at the Margins. Other Press, New York, 2009. xi.

  [xix] Peter Gay, Ed. The Freud Reader. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1989. 558.

  [xx] Bergler has been criticized for the position he took on homosexuality. He adhered to the widely held, pre-1960s psychoanalytic stance that homosexuality was a neurotic manifestation. I claim that he was wrong on this aspect of his work, and my task of championing his ideas has been made more difficult by his writings and position on this subject. I say more about this error in the Appendix of my recent book, Why We Suffer: A Western Way to Understand and Let Go of Unhappiness.

  [xxi] Edmund Bergler, The Revolt of the Middle-Aged Man. International Universities Press. New York. 1954, 1957, 1985. 80-81.

  [xxii] Edmund Bergler, Principles of Self-Damage. Philosophical Library. New York, 1959. 449.

  [xxiii] Peter Gay, Ed. The Freud Reader. W.W. Norton & Co, New York, 1989. 754.

  [xxiv] The Freud Reader, 622.

  [xxv] Almost 2.3 million people were incarcerated in America’s prisons and jails at the end of 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States.

  [xxvi] Elijah Anderson. “The Code of The Streets.” The Atlantic Monthly. May, 1994. 82.

  [xxvii] Greg Donaldson. “Throwaway Youth.” The New York Times. July 3, 1994.

  [xxviii] Don Terry. “Killed by Her Friends, Sons of the Heartland.” The New York Times. May 18, 1994.

  [xxix] http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair07272011.html.

  [xxx] C.G. Jung. The Undiscovered Self. New American Library. New York, 1958. 98.

  [xxxi] The Undiscovered Self. 105.

  [xxxii] http://www.alternet.org/story/149262