I am
realizing after almost 2 years of psychoanalysis that I have feelings I hide
so well that I thought I did not have them. I am confused, feeling scared
and vulnerable, but still very engaged to the therapy process and trying
to understand myself. And when things seem to get better, something happen
and I feel miserable again. Ok, now I am more resigned that this is the way
it works.
A few
weeks ago, I encountered one of the female clients of my analyst at the elevator,
just that, and I felt so jealous! Jealousy is a feeling that I had never
felt with anyone else (even with my husband) or this is the way I thought.
I don’t know why I felt like this, because I sure know my analyst has
other clients, right? But I felt rejected. I wondered if she is more intelligent
and interesting than me, if she is making more progress than me and if she
is in love with him as I am (and when I think so I can feel a little compassion
for her because I know how it hurts, but still I do not want her to feel
like that – can you see how far my feelings go?) I want the impossible,
I want to be the only one.
Because
of you (thank you for your website), I have encountered courage to talk about
these feelings of love and, after that incident, jealousy. It is difficult
to talk about this mainly because it does not make any sense at all (I keep
feeling silly because it looks like as if I am demanding, asking for something
that I already know I will not get, it is too embarrassing). He has comfort
me saying that only if I talk, even if it makes no sense, we can work on
what is behind these feelings.
My question
is about the meaning of jealousy. I have not found much of this subject when
it is not related to a real couple (husband and wife). Thank you in advance
for your attention and sorry about my English (although I understand well,
I am not good at writing).
For those professionals who have been trained properly,
the unconscious does
have its own language and its own logical structure, but, for the average
person, the unconscious really does not make much sense at all. That is why
many persons will try to make psychotherapy into something they can
control. Usually
they do this, as you yourself have done, with two characteristic self-protective
strategies: they hide things, and they try to make the psychotherapist like
them. In short, they turn psychotherapy into a game.
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Now, in the pure
sense of the word, a “game” refers to a process of social interaction
that depends on procedural rules to ensure that all participants know what
to expect of each other. If you were playing chess and your opponent suddenly
pulled out a gun and shot you, you would be at a clear disadvantage. Therefore,
because any participant interested only in the acquisition of power will
dominate the others, games require rules of conduct to provide a certain
fairness, so that true expertise, rather than raw force, should decide the
outcome. Accordingly, politics is a game. Business is a game. Warfare is
a game. And, like it or not, even romance is a
game.
Nevertheless,
even though life is full of games, not everyone will always play by accepted
rules. Some persons can feel so
victimized
and “out of control” that they will resort to pseudo-games, making
up their own “rules” to gain an advantage.
Terrorism is
an example of a flagrant disrespect for civilized rules. Other pseudo-games
can be more subtle, using tactics of deception and feigned
honesty made possible through the use of
language;[1]
a client refusing to talk about certain things and trying to make the
psychotherapist like her—through deceptive words, clothing, and
behavior—is an example of this. |
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Therefore, it
sometimes takes a psychologist to figure out the game. In fact, figuring
out the “game” of the client, and helping him or her to move on
to honest
interactions, is what the psychologist has to do in the psychotherapeutic
process.
Now, in your
case, you are only beginning to reveal your secrets to your analyst. You
are still playing a game, using your own secret tactics. Jealousy is one
of those tactics, and it relates to the game of romance as played out in
the erotic transference.
As I said above,
because romance is not based in
true love, romance
is, in technical psychological terms, a game, and to play this game you must
put yourself in competition with everyone else playing the same game. This
explains the essence of jealousy: in your fear
of losing what you desperately want—that is, your analyst’s
admiration—you hate any client who might come between you and what you
want.
You can overcome
this jealousy in your psychotherapy, however, if only you do what your analyst
has already said: talk, even if it makes no sense. By talking honestly,
without playing games, you can work to understand what is behind your feelings,
and you can begin to respect, rather than
fear, the
unconscious.
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1. See Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental
Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. (Jacques-Alain Miller, Ed.; Alan Sheridan,
Trans.) New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1981. See also Berne, Eric.
Games People Play. New York: Ballantine Books, 1964.
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