I am slowly waking up from my post PRITE coma and starting to feel somewhat excited about this year. I have 3 weeks left between finishing my child rotation and starting elective months. Here comes the planning for job search and graduation leading into board exam. I have an elaborate plan in my mind about how I want to spend these last 8.5 months of my residency. We shall see if I can execute the plan.
I am in the 2nd month of our year long psychoanalytical course that is offered through our local psychoanalytical society and is mandatory for our 4th year residents. The course consists of organized schedule that takes one through the history and progression of theories in psychoanalysis, from Freud to modern day, along with clinical case presentations which by far, are the richest part of this course.
During today's class we discussed Sophocles's Oedipus Rex and then came the Sphinx and the riddle part. Somewhere in between listening to the story and trying to stay with it, my mind wandered to the Netflix episode of The Adventure of Puss in Boots. Odd and a little off the charts, don't you think? Clearly it is a little too soon for me to be back on my normal schedule after PRITE. But there is a very good explanation.
You see, the episode I thought about; depicts the Sphinx, the riddle and the Puss in Boots, who has to answer the riddle to get the hour glass or all of the town's children would die. My kids laugh uncontrollably every time the Sphinx spits out a riddle in her valley girl accent and the Puss in Boots truly has no business being there because he can't guess worth a dime to save his own life, let alone save the town. But how did I miss it? The sphinx, the riddle, the cat. This seemingly funny and witty sphinx is not a story book character for children but Sophocles's Sphinx from Oedipus Rex. But what would that makes the Puss then? I am sure there is something there, I just don't know what. It was in this class today that I realized the connection between the animated TV and the old play that remains the major source of debate, inspiration, opinions, theories and clinical work to this day.
In his book Bruno Bettelheim talks about how most of Freud's work has been misunderstood and lost in translation when his German work is translated in English particularly and goes to great lengths to debunk the strongly held beliefs about Freud and his theories and particularly Oedipal Complex. Though Bettelheim has a fair share of his critics and has been portrayed pretty harshly by his critics about his work and his views, but above and beyond all those; I think he makes the seemingly hard to digest Oedipal conflict very natural and human to all of us when he explains it's applications to the psychotherapy and our own personal growth.
His explanations of fairy tales like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast or The Little Red Riding Hood are an interesting way of looking at the world of enchantment given that he was a child psychologist. His explanation of Cinderella in the context of sibling rivalry and a child's natural desperation in the face of one of the biggest calamities of childhood "loss of love" i.e. birth of another sibling or presence of another sibling means having to share the object of love mother/father (according to Freud's Calamities of childhood) makes it clear why we from very young age tend to be fascinated by the stories of witches and princesses and knights in shining armors. Because these fairy tales serve as a safe and benign way of satisfying our unacceptable (to self or others) feelings, wishes and fantasies.
His description of Little Red Riding hood and the Big Bad Wolf is not very well received but anyone who has seen the play or the movie Into the Woods knows that the Big Bad Wolf doesn't want to simply eat the Little Red Riding Hood. The children storybooks are merely a more tolerable container for what we can't contain in ourselves when we are younger or don't want to face in it's raw, volatile reality when we grow older and become parents ourselves.
Ever since I started reading more and opening my mind to the ideas of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic theories, I have been fascinated by how children actually really do exhibit what Freud had described so many years ago. If I have ever seen a young child go through the Freud's phases, it has to be my own son (he is my only window into a little boy's mind; who is growing up in what I hope is a healthy environment). He has gone through an age of being totally dependent on me and his dad for everything as an infant to being a 2.5-3 year old who used to scream at the mere sight of his dad when he was crying for me and I was on call away from home. He then developed into a 4-5 year old, who clearly was in direct competition with his dad for my attention and in his own boyish way would protest and show his anguish, if he disapproved of his dad sitting a little too close to me for his liking. He gradually started to give his dad more attention at around 5.5 to 6 years of age and then grew out of his competition with his dad. He went from telling me that he will be marrying me when he grows up to saying that he will find a girl like me and marry her. He has attained developmentally appropriate resolution of conflicts necessary for a 7 year old per Freud. It has led to him eventually accepting that his mother and father are separate entities than him and he cannot compete with his father, nor his father is in direct competition with him. All of this has happened because he has been provided with a consistent and developmentally appropriate hierarchy in the family unit and hasn't been pathologically triangulated in neglect or overindulgence that leads to pathology due to conflict in Freudian stages.
Of interest is the sibling rivalry that I have seen among my children and has been verbalized by my daughter, who was merely 2.5 when her brother was born. A child who you may think won't remember much but is somehow able to tell her brother that if they had another sibling; he would feel how she felt when he came along and took "mom's love" from her, and then he would know what she felt like. Amazing that a child this young remembers 8 years after her brother was born, what she was going through and holds him accountable for her distress. Her aggression towards him as a rival probably serves a function of feeling powerful over him as an older sibling and a way to be determined to never feel what she felt when he was born. She very well may have guilt for feeling the rage, she probably isn't even aware of it and the mind doesn't want to acknowledge it either, since you are supposed to love your family. She is able to process these feelings without feeling threatened by them because she has learned that she is allowed to have those feelings, along with caring and loving feelings her brother and that she won't be told by her mother or father that she shouldn't have those feelings towards her brother.
More on guilt and shame in a future post when I will talk about Alice Miller's work.
We all hope to raise children who will pass through all the stages of their psyche with appropriate conflict or at least minimal unresolved conflict. We can be sure that as long as mothers and fathers we don't impose our own unresolved conflicts onto our children and allow children to be their true selves with their emotions and feelings, we will end up raising intact human beings. We can be the containers we are meant to be for our children and not the other way around because it is not their job to contain us.
Because fairy tales are not fairy tales if there are no happy endings. There is always more than what meets the eye and what doesn't meet the eye can make a difference between a nightmare and a dream for a child.
I am in the 2nd month of our year long psychoanalytical course that is offered through our local psychoanalytical society and is mandatory for our 4th year residents. The course consists of organized schedule that takes one through the history and progression of theories in psychoanalysis, from Freud to modern day, along with clinical case presentations which by far, are the richest part of this course.
During today's class we discussed Sophocles's Oedipus Rex and then came the Sphinx and the riddle part. Somewhere in between listening to the story and trying to stay with it, my mind wandered to the Netflix episode of The Adventure of Puss in Boots. Odd and a little off the charts, don't you think? Clearly it is a little too soon for me to be back on my normal schedule after PRITE. But there is a very good explanation.
You see, the episode I thought about; depicts the Sphinx, the riddle and the Puss in Boots, who has to answer the riddle to get the hour glass or all of the town's children would die. My kids laugh uncontrollably every time the Sphinx spits out a riddle in her valley girl accent and the Puss in Boots truly has no business being there because he can't guess worth a dime to save his own life, let alone save the town. But how did I miss it? The sphinx, the riddle, the cat. This seemingly funny and witty sphinx is not a story book character for children but Sophocles's Sphinx from Oedipus Rex. But what would that makes the Puss then? I am sure there is something there, I just don't know what. It was in this class today that I realized the connection between the animated TV and the old play that remains the major source of debate, inspiration, opinions, theories and clinical work to this day.
In his book Bruno Bettelheim talks about how most of Freud's work has been misunderstood and lost in translation when his German work is translated in English particularly and goes to great lengths to debunk the strongly held beliefs about Freud and his theories and particularly Oedipal Complex. Though Bettelheim has a fair share of his critics and has been portrayed pretty harshly by his critics about his work and his views, but above and beyond all those; I think he makes the seemingly hard to digest Oedipal conflict very natural and human to all of us when he explains it's applications to the psychotherapy and our own personal growth.
His explanations of fairy tales like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast or The Little Red Riding Hood are an interesting way of looking at the world of enchantment given that he was a child psychologist. His explanation of Cinderella in the context of sibling rivalry and a child's natural desperation in the face of one of the biggest calamities of childhood "loss of love" i.e. birth of another sibling or presence of another sibling means having to share the object of love mother/father (according to Freud's Calamities of childhood) makes it clear why we from very young age tend to be fascinated by the stories of witches and princesses and knights in shining armors. Because these fairy tales serve as a safe and benign way of satisfying our unacceptable (to self or others) feelings, wishes and fantasies.
His description of Little Red Riding hood and the Big Bad Wolf is not very well received but anyone who has seen the play or the movie Into the Woods knows that the Big Bad Wolf doesn't want to simply eat the Little Red Riding Hood. The children storybooks are merely a more tolerable container for what we can't contain in ourselves when we are younger or don't want to face in it's raw, volatile reality when we grow older and become parents ourselves.
Ever since I started reading more and opening my mind to the ideas of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic theories, I have been fascinated by how children actually really do exhibit what Freud had described so many years ago. If I have ever seen a young child go through the Freud's phases, it has to be my own son (he is my only window into a little boy's mind; who is growing up in what I hope is a healthy environment). He has gone through an age of being totally dependent on me and his dad for everything as an infant to being a 2.5-3 year old who used to scream at the mere sight of his dad when he was crying for me and I was on call away from home. He then developed into a 4-5 year old, who clearly was in direct competition with his dad for my attention and in his own boyish way would protest and show his anguish, if he disapproved of his dad sitting a little too close to me for his liking. He gradually started to give his dad more attention at around 5.5 to 6 years of age and then grew out of his competition with his dad. He went from telling me that he will be marrying me when he grows up to saying that he will find a girl like me and marry her. He has attained developmentally appropriate resolution of conflicts necessary for a 7 year old per Freud. It has led to him eventually accepting that his mother and father are separate entities than him and he cannot compete with his father, nor his father is in direct competition with him. All of this has happened because he has been provided with a consistent and developmentally appropriate hierarchy in the family unit and hasn't been pathologically triangulated in neglect or overindulgence that leads to pathology due to conflict in Freudian stages.
Of interest is the sibling rivalry that I have seen among my children and has been verbalized by my daughter, who was merely 2.5 when her brother was born. A child who you may think won't remember much but is somehow able to tell her brother that if they had another sibling; he would feel how she felt when he came along and took "mom's love" from her, and then he would know what she felt like. Amazing that a child this young remembers 8 years after her brother was born, what she was going through and holds him accountable for her distress. Her aggression towards him as a rival probably serves a function of feeling powerful over him as an older sibling and a way to be determined to never feel what she felt when he was born. She very well may have guilt for feeling the rage, she probably isn't even aware of it and the mind doesn't want to acknowledge it either, since you are supposed to love your family. She is able to process these feelings without feeling threatened by them because she has learned that she is allowed to have those feelings, along with caring and loving feelings her brother and that she won't be told by her mother or father that she shouldn't have those feelings towards her brother.
More on guilt and shame in a future post when I will talk about Alice Miller's work.
We all hope to raise children who will pass through all the stages of their psyche with appropriate conflict or at least minimal unresolved conflict. We can be sure that as long as mothers and fathers we don't impose our own unresolved conflicts onto our children and allow children to be their true selves with their emotions and feelings, we will end up raising intact human beings. We can be the containers we are meant to be for our children and not the other way around because it is not their job to contain us.
Because fairy tales are not fairy tales if there are no happy endings. There is always more than what meets the eye and what doesn't meet the eye can make a difference between a nightmare and a dream for a child.
