From Gatsby To Rhett Butler

Lately I have been thinking about the destructive nature of love.  I had read Wuthering Heights many years ago before I started working with patients as a psychiatry resident.  Heathcliff and Catherine seemed like nothing out of ordinary other than what was apparently out of ordinary.  Then a few months ago I read The great Gatsby, and this time Daisy Buchanan and Gatsby seemed more than just cross eyed lovers; who were dealt a bad hand by luck.  Daisy's power over Gatsby is no coincidence just like Catherine's effect on Heathcliff now seems more than the great love story of all times.  The need for one human being to completely dissolve themselves into another, and blur or almost obliterate the boundaries of self identity, has deeper roots than just an exaggerated need for love.

I come across people who love very deeply and without any reserve.  They cling to other human beings who are more or less like them.  There is a greater distinction to be made between loving passionately and loving pathologically.  One must understand that passion can become pathological when it can't be contained even in the face of suffering to self.  Just because it seems agape, doesn't necessarily mean it is.  I don't see Gatsby as a selfless lover who was willing to move mountains to create a life with Daisy after the train had left the station.  I however, am inclined to say that he had clearly crossed into; what some people have described as pathological passion.  He ignored bull horn warnings and refused to see that Daisy in her own narcissism and equally strong materialism was incapable of reciprocating the reality he was dreaming.  Left at the climax of his utopia he crumpled under the weight of his life around him and couldn't recover in the face of reality.

I call these kind of relationships destructive because of the enormous power one party has over the other.  The disequilibrium of loyalty and caring, eventually translates into disequilibrium of power in such relationships.  When the object of affection realizes his/her place in the relationship; the rinse repeat cycle of use and discard can be very hard to break.

For people who grow up in chaotic households, where the chaos is more than a mere occasional occurrence in the daily grind but the very fabric of existence, and probably a means to survival; love doesn't take center stage as a grounding force.  It rather peeks from behind closets and doors, never materializing into something tangible but always a fantasy.  

Children who grow up with neglectful and/or abusive caretakers, know love in it's inherently violating nature so often and so pathologically, that they never learn to contain and tame it.  For an abused child, an abusive mother, father or caretaker, models a love that doesn't respect boundaries and doesn't nurture nor comforts.  They learn to live with it to survive the force of it's blows day after day.  Freudians often talk about Identification with the aggressor in abused children and how it serves as a coping mechanism against fear and impotence the victims feel, as Mcwilliams puts it.  If not corrected early on these experiences lead to reenactments of the trauma in adult relationships over and over.

I have seen that for some of my patients, it is so natural to handle relationships that resonate with the kind of love I described above.  It may seem odd but for them the idea of dealing with a constructive, caring relationship is full of fear.  The fear of losing a caring relationship is the kind of hurt they are not equipped to deal with, while staying in a relationship that consumes and eats at it's very core, is a familiar territory.

The art of loving and being loved is taught at a very young age and is life long.  From the moment we are born till the moment we die, we are the lucky ones, if we have been held, fed, hugged, kissed, loved and re-loved in the face of good moment, not so good moments, bad fights and good laughs; without judgement and reserve but with respect for our boundaries and limits.

My goal as a therapist is to make sure that the patients that I see have an opportunity to learn the art they were denied and deprived of, for whatever reasons.

The road from Gatsby to Rhett Butler might be long and at times scary but in my humble opinion often necessary and therapeutic to the effect.  There is nothing more empowering than being able to walk away from the marble staircase that showcases the object of one's affection, knowing deep in your heart that it was tainted all along, and that you deserve better.