I have had strong reactions recently to various posts on how to be an academic, and to one on leaving the “fast track” and finding fulfillment. I reacted to the latter post because it reflected the trajectory Reeducation thought appropriate for me, when my own nature is research oriented even though I was told throughout the late eighties and early nineties that to be research oriented was unfeminine and bespoke a psychological problem.
I reacted to the posts full of instructions because the advice, although good enough, is so standard. When I was only a small stela and wanted to discuss matters, I could not get a two way discussion but only an outpouring of this selfsame standard advice — advice I could by now recite and gloss as well as anyone. That meant I never had my own experience addressed or my own questions answered, except by those who wanted me to leave the fast track to a world that might be softer.
In those days I was sacrilegious because I wanted to move to a more challenging, not a less challenging level of things. I was incomprehensible because my primary objective was not safety. I was irrational because I said the most dangerous thing I could do was not to express my ideas but to limit my work toward their refinement.
Eventually I accepted these characterizations and the recommendation that since I was sacrilegious, incomprehensible, and irrational I must not make any of my own decisions, but simply do as I was told. The standard advice I had already heard so often was repeated again and again. If it did not answer my question, the problem was that the standard advice had not yet stamped out my very ability to ask questions. The standard advice was repeated again and again until I grew completely silent.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
The double bind: Dunk her in water and if she screams and curses and survives, she is assuredly a witch. If she dies during the process, well she might have been human after all, but better safe than sorry.
Precisely. My issue is, how did I ever fall for this discourse? My answer is, torture works. But periodically I have to remind myself of this.
It isn’t just that (the torture), it’s also that there are people complicit with it who operate with the best intentions, who have good will, who simply cannot seem to see it for what it is, or who have themselves already been tortured sufficiently to have made accommodation with it. Because there are so many people of good standing like this, we often do not trust our own vision.
Sooo true, and sooo key!
“Eventually I accepted these characterizations and the recommendation that since I was sacrilegious, incomprehensible, and irrational I must not make any of my own decisions, but simply do as I was told. The standard advice I had already heard so often was repeated again and again.”
I hear you on this. Maybe this will only make sense if you no longer work in an abusive environment, but I came to feel sorry for the people who told me these things in my former job. They were themselves psychologically worn down and needed to believe that the only way to “succeed” there was to accept abuse like they had. They were, as Jennifer says, people of “good will, who simply cannot seem to see it for what it is, or who have themselves already been tortured sufficiently to have made accommodation with it.” I felt badly about making them uncomfortable, and then angry with my refusal to go along with “reeducation,” but I decided that they were responsible for their choices, and that I had to be responsible for mine.
What a fascinating and kind response. I did not realize at all that my reaction was to abuse – although in retrospect, I might have known. I tend not to realize there ARE non abusive environments. But I see what I am reacting to primarily and it is the Emeritus Professor … although what you also reveal is that I’ve worked in a lot of abusive environments. *Very* interesting. Merci, Historiann.
IN class society, an abusive character structure is the most common one. People conditioned by class society believe it to be necessary, and even consider that they possess a kind of esoteric knowledge about the ways and means in which it is necessary. They feel that those who believe otherwise must be weak-minded dreamers. They are very wrong about that, but sometimes they imagine that if they let the benign mask drop a little, and show me something of the raw, snarling fury underneath, I will comply with the programme that we “all” must suffer under.
Such an approach doesn’t cause me to comply, of course. It just gives me the opportunity to respond with the tough-mindedness I have been trained in, all my life.
J – true, key, and really worth remembering that this is the most *common* character structure, i.e. not the aberration.
I fall prey to the benign mask but the raw, snarling fury backfires.
Within myself, I do not always know what is tough minded and what is submerged rage.
Within myself, I do not always know what is tough minded and what is submerged rage.
Since submission with gritted teeth (and the esoteric learning about S&M that comes from it) is considered to be tough minded, it can be difficult, in this culture, to figure out what is really tough minded (apart from the mode of developing submerged rage).
I see the greatest toughness in the most tranquil-minded of people. Do you know that one of the principles of boxing is to keep mentally very calm and focussed? Your really don’t need to puff yourself up like a puffer fish, or dog with its hair on end in order to be able to defend yourself.
Now that I think of it — it was that calm that Reeducation took for “denial.” That was Reeducation’s key move.
It can seem like denial, and maybe there is some level of truth to that, because if you do not seem to realise that the majority of life is worked out on a sadomasochistic level, then you can seem like the last of the innocents, who simply hasn’t paid their dues to the nature of the system, which is suffering.
So there is a certain amount of truth to this condemnation for you innocence, or seeming innocence. My interpretations of post-Kleinian psychology put the spotlight onto the degree to which making others carry your burden of anxiety for you is part of the hidden nature of class society. You think that when you sign up for a job, it is to do what is written in the formal contract, but actually, because of the psychological nature of institutions, the more significant hidden work is to become the container for the anxieties of others within the system, who want to slough off their uncomfortable emotions onto others, in order to achieve stress relief. The higher the formal status of the individuals, the more they feel like this is their right. And if you are not already guilty-natured enough to be a good emotional container, there will be those in the system good enough to try to break you down to make you useful to others in this specific way. After all, female means lower status, across the board. And your calmness looks like you want to remain self-contained, rather than become the container for others.
And when I use the term, “women as container”, I believe I am describing the most common situation with regard to institutions most aptly. In Kleinian psychology it is the “mother” who (in Bion’s post-Kleinian terms) acts as “container” for the emotions and sensations that the infant wants to cast off, as so much mental poison — sensations that are too hard for it to process as actual ideas. The mother, then, does the work of processing these negative emotions on behalf of the child — thus the term, psychoanalytic DYAD. She interprets them and gives them back as facial expressions or other forms of containment, through her “reverie”.
But the same process takes place in institutions (See Isabel Menzies Lyth), and in that case, the mothering role is less “containment” and more like the kinds of intrusive mind-rape described by Donald Meltzer, in his book, The Claustrum.
I remember my absolute disgust when I finally saw the light for the first time — that what others had been putting on to me as if they were legitimate complaints and concerns for me to find an answer to were actually no more than poisonous emotions that they no longer wanted to carry for themselves. This can seem like mind rape, or container as scapegoat.
That really is spot on and it incidentally explains why I am in this odd position (MOTHER) of feeling oppressed by people “below” me. A man could be a good or bad leader but still have autonomy. A woman if not a bad leader gets especially projected into … which is why to escape, you have to become a man … hmm!
However I am making inroads toward regaining the calmness. Time to pour it on.