Psychiatry Interpersonal and Biological Processes
ISSN: 0033-2747 (Print) 1943-281X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upsy20
Explorations in the Uses of Language in Psychotherapy: Complex Empathic Statements Leston Havens To cite this article: Leston Havens (1979) Explorations in the Uses of Language in Psychotherapy: Complex Empathic Statements, Psychiatry, 42:1, 40-48, DOI: 10.1080/00332747.1979.11024005 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1979.11024005
Published online: 18 Oct 2016.
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Explorations in the Uses of Language in Psychotherapy: Complex Empathic Statements
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Leston Havens I have suggested (1978) that the language occurring to us in personal and psychotherapeutic speech reflects our distance from one another, and that the empathic position in particular evokes emotional reverberations and spontaneous verbal accompaniments which serve to identify that position. I have also suggested some prototypic forms of this spontaneous empathic speech. A clinical anecdote and two observations will illustrate these points and prepare for the discussion of more complex empathic forms. Recently I interviewed a young man complaining of intense burning feelings over much of his skin. He had more or less decided that an unnamed enemy had implanted radioactive material in his brain, and that this caused the burning. In his childhood and youth the patient had been very poorly served by his father; perhaps as a result he had formed an intense attachment to an older man, also unnamed and probably his persecutor; this man had just rejected him. In addition, both his mother and stepmother had forbidden him to come home. He recounted all these episodes very calmly. I attempted to tune myself closely to what he may have felt; I translated these feelings into words (e.g., "that must have hurt"); on saying this last, and in reaction to his account of the mother's rejection, I experienced an intense burning feeling in my own skin that felt to me principally like rage; compare the expression "that burns me up." He in turn spoke more forcefully about what had happened; I felt again the burning, although much attenuated. He himself then lost the burning feeling. I concluded that successful empathy can involve
a transmission or sharing of bodily feelings, and that verbal statements can either initiate or reflect the transmission. I have also noted that the sleepiness so often accompanying interviews with obsessional people is sharply reduced by establishing an empathic position. I have made it a point, when I find myself becoming sleepy with an obsessional person, to make active empathic statements, that is, to go in search of the isolated affects. If I am successful, the sleepiness generally disappears. I have concluded that a more active stance is necessary. Finally, I have noted a paradox in relation to empathy with suicidal persons. Successful empathy with suicidal persons makes the therapist sad; and with this affect goes the appropriate mental content, that is, ideas of failure or even hopelessness. The result is that when we have been successful in sharing the suicidal person's feelings, we may feel unsuccessful or even hopeless. Insofar as we have done well, we should feel badly! The implication is that we need to step out ofthe empathic position and place ourselves at a greater distance from the patient, in order to reach an
Leston Havens, MD, is Professor of Psychiatry, MassachusettR Mental Health Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston. 40
PSYCIllATRY, Vol. 42, February 1979
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THE USES OF LANGUAGE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
awareness that will guard the therapist against abandoning the case should the sense of failure suggest it. We see here the need for taking more than one psychological position, indeed for positioning ourselves at different points at different times, a need that will also be obvious as we approach the empathy of complex mental states. Incidentally, I have not observed that awareness of the phenomenon of suicidal affect diminishes the transmitted affect and related content. Alertness to such empathic phenomena we can term "listening with the fourth ear" -not the third ear of intuitive unconscious perceptions, but a fourth ear to the conscious emotional reverberations that accompany empathy. 1 In the course of these explorations two concepts have been emerging that appear to underpin the whole effort to understand and develop language in psychotherapy. The fIrst concerns the nature of emotion, specifIcally its complexity.2 The small number of names we have for feelings-anger, depression, anxiety, for example-disguises the complexity of the feelings as experienced; hence perhaps the need for the language of poetry. Reaching the other entails appreciating, sometimes verbalizing, the complexity of the other's emotions; hence the need for complex empathic speech. The second concept reflects the therapeutic importance of empathic speech. Empathic speech not only holds the feeling for the moment of expression; it also may provide a vehicle for holding or containing the feelings much longer. It may become, in I Kohut also sharply contrasts empathy and intuition. See Kohut, 1971, pp. 302-305, and Kohut, 1977, pp. 168-169. On the other hand, some-for example, Bergson (cited in Allport, 1937, pp. 530-536), regard empathy as the basis of intuition. The present author believes the critical point is where the observer places himself, whether with the other or himself, a projective or an introspective stance; this, it seems to me, is the operational distinction between empathy and intuition. Shore has made still a further distinction between what he calls self-effacing and self-involving empathy, depending upon whether one attempts to put oneself aside and enter the other's state of mind or to project oneself into the other (in press). I am using empathy onll in the fIrst sense, as self-effacing. I am indebted to Dr. Alfred Margulies for emphasizing the importance of this.
PSYCHIATRY, Vol. 42, February 1979
other words, an integrating force. I will return to this point in the discussion at the end. What I have called simple empathic speech (1978), noises, exclamations, and translations, can either express our emotional response to the other (passive empathy), or be used to reach the other's feelings (active empathy). Obviously, complex emotional states will not be easily ex-. pressed or reached by simple empathic speech. For example, if too little of the other's mental state is translated, he will feel misunderstood, even ridiculed, and distance himself from the speaker; or the speaker may not fInd any point of empathic contact; or there may be many and contradictory feeling states to 'get with.' The material that follows suggests three bridging phrases to help deal with these difficult situations: 'Noone ... " 'No wonder ... " and 'How awful to want both. . .. ' Each has the impersonal and exclamatory elements I noted in empathic translations (1978), and in addition, something more. (1) Empathizing with the Nonempathizable: 'Perhaps no one understands' Ostensibly, 'no one understands' translates a feeling of being misunderstood or abandoned. The statement contains a systematic ambiguity, however, which allows it to be still more serviceable. 'No one understands' implies that both 'I' and 'no one' understands-it implies 'I understand that no one understands.' As a result, 'no one' statements stand in relation to other empathic statements as scouts do to the main body of soldiers. Both reconnoiter unknown territory. 'Perhaps no one understands' adds to this tentativeness. Suppose that we mean to empathize with someone whose background, appearance, personality all offer no point of empathic contact.3 If such a person does not feel 3 Freud sharply separated empathy from identification. Empathy was what one had to exercise in order to understand someone with whom there was no preexisting emotional tie; the latter made possible understanding through identification (1921).
41
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LESTON HAVENS
understood, we can certainly understand that, since we ourselves do not understand. At this point in the relationship a shared 'not understanding' is the only point of contact. The use of 'no one' avoids creating the impression-dangerous for real empathic contact-that the speaker understands more than he does. Understanding must be demonstrated, not claimed; indeed, it is best felt. Until this has been accomplished, the speaker can only empathize with the difficulty of empathizing. In short, 'no one' statements are minimal empathic statements. 'No one' statements also postpone stating who in particular has not understood. The patient may not feel comfortable accusing particular persons of not understanding him or her. The patient may feel, for example, guilty or fearful about making such accusations. Being with the hearer means being with this reticence or fearfulness as well as with the feeling of not being understood. Shortly I will discuss clearer examples of such double or multiple empathic statements. Furthermore, 'no one understands' creates a tension between the patient's projected state of mind and the world to which the phrase 'no one' points. Instead of focusing exclusive attention on the mental state of not being understood, it points outward to the wide world which could be expected to contain someone who does understand. (In other words 'no one' is mildly externalizing; Alfred Margulies has termed this "empathizing against.") The tension springs from resentment of the 'no one' by the person who experiences the feeling state. For this reason such statements should be made in expectation of a later, franker externalization. The speaker must be prepared for the hearer's disclosing, perhaps suddenly, who that 'no one' is. 'No one' thus introduces a phenomenon that 'no wonder' statements will expand. While the negative may not be, as Freud asserted, a part of unconscious functioning, it is a profound impetus to interpersonal functioning. Perhaps because opposition is built so deeply into the evolutionary equip42
ment of human beings, the statement 'no one understands' invites the reflection 'some one should have understood' and also 'so and so did understand.' It opens memory to territories jointly to be visited. It is thus history-taking. The externalizing tendency can be reduced by emphasizing the feeling state-by extending its description ('no one seems in any way to understand'). The externalizing tendency can be increased, in a similar way, by emphasizing the 'no one,' or by adding another externalizing phrase ('no one understands that that remark hurt,' as opposed to 'how much it hurt,' which is more empathic). Nevertheless I want to underscore again that no mastery of language alone will be empathic. The speaker's interest, attentiveness, and ability to contain the other's feelings determine the effectiveness oflanguage however appropriate. Indeed, a powerful empathic ability can redeem language that is otherwise prying or even critical. Before one attempts any expressions of empathy in language it is best to tune oneself, that is, place oneself attentively near the other, alert to expressions of feeling (not solely or even largely to the verbal content) and then listen with one's fourth ear. At fIrst no particular feelings or their verbal expressions will come to mind, then a variety of staticlike fragments, some seemingly unconnected to the patient, others interpretative or reflective, until we catch noises or phrases rising to our lips that suggest feelings states of the other.4 Perhaps the most striking evidence of successful empathy is the occurrence in our own bodies of sensations that the patient has described in his or hers, as in the earlier example.
(2) Celebrating the Naturalness of a Feeling: 'No wonder' 'No wonder you were frightened'-here the exclamatory element is underlined. And like an earlier example, 'you must have been frightened,' the personal pronoun 4 Compare Rogers' (1951) distinction of empathic and nonempathic language, pp. 44-45.
PSYCHIATRY, Vol. 42, February 1979
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THE USES OF LANGUAGE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
'you' is depersonalized by the implied, 'any- sons dear to them or persons on whom they one would have been frightened'; the state- were dependent recall 'wondering' "How ment equals 'no wonder it was frightening.' come mother is doing that?": mother's beIn addition to the exclamatory and imper- havior was a source of wonderment or insonal elements, however, something fresh credulity. As long as it remains a source of appears. wonderment or incredulity it is denied; the This is contributed by 'wonder.' While event causing the wonderment is not con'no one' reconnoiters the field of blame, 'no nected to the ordinary conception of the wonder' clears it. Speaker and hearer join parent and, as a result, the parent and the in a celebration of the naturalness of what feelings precipitated by the event are kept was felt. This is an active use of empathy: apart. Breaking down the denial means not only a sharing offeeling, but a justifying breaking in on the wonderment. Therefore 'no wonder' is a denial of a of feeling. The speaker places himself between the feeling and whatever precipitated denial: 'It was no wonder.' Because the it, connecting the two. He implies: in view patient's denial is actively maintainedof what happened it is natural to be that is, defended by any need to maintain frightened. the old image of the offending persons The celebration or justification is -denial of the denial may fill the space achieved by placing oneself at the point of between event and feeling for a moment, denial. Hitherto the connection between but the two will soon be pushed apart again. event and feeling was either only tenta- Permanently breaking down the denial detively made or denied altogether. There pends upon frequent reiteration of the 'no was, so to speak, an empty space between wonder' and a change in the patient's conevent and feeling, created by a pushing ception of the offending persons. apart of the two. In my experience the In time, 'it is natural' replaces 'I wonder.' event is pushed away from the feeling be- By placing oneself at the point of separation cause the person involved cannot believe again and again, event and feE>!ing are rethat the persons responsible for the event peatedly connected: they are seen in relawould have done such a fearful thing. In tionship to one another, reconnected. 6 The other words, to maintain a nonfearful image power of this repetition to reconnect is not, of the person involved, feeling and event however, due to the repetition itself, nor are separated. due alone to the increased awareness of the I believe this pushing apart is character- connection. Reconnection is in part a funcistic of denial, and is different from the tion of something else, the empathic expepushing down of feeling, event, or both rience. In essence, the hearer this time has feeling and memory characteristic of not had to face the incredible alone. repression. This explains why, in denial, Introducing the state of wonder to the event and feeling are both "known," but hearer who has wondered, and still wontheir connection is not. 5 ders, places the speaker where the hearer Now it becomes possible to grasp the is. They come together in the state of wonimportance of the word 'wonder.' Patients der. As a result the hearer is no longer alone recalling the unexpected behavior of per- in either his wonderment or fear. Speaking later about events patients have denied, they often say that denial would have been 5 We can distinguish psychotic from neurotic denial. unnecessary if there had been someone In catatonic denial the feared person or event is obliterated, as in negative hallucinations. In manic denial with whom they could have shared and the actuality is transformed into its opposite, e.g., reality-tested the events. The empathic expoverty into wealth. The feature that has most struck me about the neurotic's or normal person's denial is perience provides that someone. his or her capacity to avoid being in the presence of fact and feeling at the same time; for example, the obsessional person can isolate feelings when discussing an emotional event or keep his mind blank when feeling something.
PSYCHIATRY, Vol. 42, February 1979
6 For a discussion of the therapeutic importance of "gaining connectedness" see my "Therapeutic Rationale of l
ISSN: 0033-2747 (Print) 1943-281X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upsy20
Explorations in the Uses of Language in Psychotherapy: Complex Empathic Statements Leston Havens To cite this article: Leston Havens (1979) Explorations in the Uses of Language in Psychotherapy: Complex Empathic Statements, Psychiatry, 42:1, 40-48, DOI: 10.1080/00332747.1979.11024005 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1979.11024005
Published online: 18 Oct 2016.
Submit your article to this journal
View related articles
Citing articles: 14 View citing articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=upsy20 Download by: [Australian Catholic University]
Date: 08 October 2017, At: 11:25
Explorations in the Uses of Language in Psychotherapy: Complex Empathic Statements
Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 11:25 08 October 2017
Leston Havens I have suggested (1978) that the language occurring to us in personal and psychotherapeutic speech reflects our distance from one another, and that the empathic position in particular evokes emotional reverberations and spontaneous verbal accompaniments which serve to identify that position. I have also suggested some prototypic forms of this spontaneous empathic speech. A clinical anecdote and two observations will illustrate these points and prepare for the discussion of more complex empathic forms. Recently I interviewed a young man complaining of intense burning feelings over much of his skin. He had more or less decided that an unnamed enemy had implanted radioactive material in his brain, and that this caused the burning. In his childhood and youth the patient had been very poorly served by his father; perhaps as a result he had formed an intense attachment to an older man, also unnamed and probably his persecutor; this man had just rejected him. In addition, both his mother and stepmother had forbidden him to come home. He recounted all these episodes very calmly. I attempted to tune myself closely to what he may have felt; I translated these feelings into words (e.g., "that must have hurt"); on saying this last, and in reaction to his account of the mother's rejection, I experienced an intense burning feeling in my own skin that felt to me principally like rage; compare the expression "that burns me up." He in turn spoke more forcefully about what had happened; I felt again the burning, although much attenuated. He himself then lost the burning feeling. I concluded that successful empathy can involve
a transmission or sharing of bodily feelings, and that verbal statements can either initiate or reflect the transmission. I have also noted that the sleepiness so often accompanying interviews with obsessional people is sharply reduced by establishing an empathic position. I have made it a point, when I find myself becoming sleepy with an obsessional person, to make active empathic statements, that is, to go in search of the isolated affects. If I am successful, the sleepiness generally disappears. I have concluded that a more active stance is necessary. Finally, I have noted a paradox in relation to empathy with suicidal persons. Successful empathy with suicidal persons makes the therapist sad; and with this affect goes the appropriate mental content, that is, ideas of failure or even hopelessness. The result is that when we have been successful in sharing the suicidal person's feelings, we may feel unsuccessful or even hopeless. Insofar as we have done well, we should feel badly! The implication is that we need to step out ofthe empathic position and place ourselves at a greater distance from the patient, in order to reach an
Leston Havens, MD, is Professor of Psychiatry, MassachusettR Mental Health Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston. 40
PSYCIllATRY, Vol. 42, February 1979
Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 11:25 08 October 2017
THE USES OF LANGUAGE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
awareness that will guard the therapist against abandoning the case should the sense of failure suggest it. We see here the need for taking more than one psychological position, indeed for positioning ourselves at different points at different times, a need that will also be obvious as we approach the empathy of complex mental states. Incidentally, I have not observed that awareness of the phenomenon of suicidal affect diminishes the transmitted affect and related content. Alertness to such empathic phenomena we can term "listening with the fourth ear" -not the third ear of intuitive unconscious perceptions, but a fourth ear to the conscious emotional reverberations that accompany empathy. 1 In the course of these explorations two concepts have been emerging that appear to underpin the whole effort to understand and develop language in psychotherapy. The fIrst concerns the nature of emotion, specifIcally its complexity.2 The small number of names we have for feelings-anger, depression, anxiety, for example-disguises the complexity of the feelings as experienced; hence perhaps the need for the language of poetry. Reaching the other entails appreciating, sometimes verbalizing, the complexity of the other's emotions; hence the need for complex empathic speech. The second concept reflects the therapeutic importance of empathic speech. Empathic speech not only holds the feeling for the moment of expression; it also may provide a vehicle for holding or containing the feelings much longer. It may become, in I Kohut also sharply contrasts empathy and intuition. See Kohut, 1971, pp. 302-305, and Kohut, 1977, pp. 168-169. On the other hand, some-for example, Bergson (cited in Allport, 1937, pp. 530-536), regard empathy as the basis of intuition. The present author believes the critical point is where the observer places himself, whether with the other or himself, a projective or an introspective stance; this, it seems to me, is the operational distinction between empathy and intuition. Shore has made still a further distinction between what he calls self-effacing and self-involving empathy, depending upon whether one attempts to put oneself aside and enter the other's state of mind or to project oneself into the other (in press). I am using empathy onll in the fIrst sense, as self-effacing. I am indebted to Dr. Alfred Margulies for emphasizing the importance of this.
PSYCHIATRY, Vol. 42, February 1979
other words, an integrating force. I will return to this point in the discussion at the end. What I have called simple empathic speech (1978), noises, exclamations, and translations, can either express our emotional response to the other (passive empathy), or be used to reach the other's feelings (active empathy). Obviously, complex emotional states will not be easily ex-. pressed or reached by simple empathic speech. For example, if too little of the other's mental state is translated, he will feel misunderstood, even ridiculed, and distance himself from the speaker; or the speaker may not fInd any point of empathic contact; or there may be many and contradictory feeling states to 'get with.' The material that follows suggests three bridging phrases to help deal with these difficult situations: 'Noone ... " 'No wonder ... " and 'How awful to want both. . .. ' Each has the impersonal and exclamatory elements I noted in empathic translations (1978), and in addition, something more. (1) Empathizing with the Nonempathizable: 'Perhaps no one understands' Ostensibly, 'no one understands' translates a feeling of being misunderstood or abandoned. The statement contains a systematic ambiguity, however, which allows it to be still more serviceable. 'No one understands' implies that both 'I' and 'no one' understands-it implies 'I understand that no one understands.' As a result, 'no one' statements stand in relation to other empathic statements as scouts do to the main body of soldiers. Both reconnoiter unknown territory. 'Perhaps no one understands' adds to this tentativeness. Suppose that we mean to empathize with someone whose background, appearance, personality all offer no point of empathic contact.3 If such a person does not feel 3 Freud sharply separated empathy from identification. Empathy was what one had to exercise in order to understand someone with whom there was no preexisting emotional tie; the latter made possible understanding through identification (1921).
41
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LESTON HAVENS
understood, we can certainly understand that, since we ourselves do not understand. At this point in the relationship a shared 'not understanding' is the only point of contact. The use of 'no one' avoids creating the impression-dangerous for real empathic contact-that the speaker understands more than he does. Understanding must be demonstrated, not claimed; indeed, it is best felt. Until this has been accomplished, the speaker can only empathize with the difficulty of empathizing. In short, 'no one' statements are minimal empathic statements. 'No one' statements also postpone stating who in particular has not understood. The patient may not feel comfortable accusing particular persons of not understanding him or her. The patient may feel, for example, guilty or fearful about making such accusations. Being with the hearer means being with this reticence or fearfulness as well as with the feeling of not being understood. Shortly I will discuss clearer examples of such double or multiple empathic statements. Furthermore, 'no one understands' creates a tension between the patient's projected state of mind and the world to which the phrase 'no one' points. Instead of focusing exclusive attention on the mental state of not being understood, it points outward to the wide world which could be expected to contain someone who does understand. (In other words 'no one' is mildly externalizing; Alfred Margulies has termed this "empathizing against.") The tension springs from resentment of the 'no one' by the person who experiences the feeling state. For this reason such statements should be made in expectation of a later, franker externalization. The speaker must be prepared for the hearer's disclosing, perhaps suddenly, who that 'no one' is. 'No one' thus introduces a phenomenon that 'no wonder' statements will expand. While the negative may not be, as Freud asserted, a part of unconscious functioning, it is a profound impetus to interpersonal functioning. Perhaps because opposition is built so deeply into the evolutionary equip42
ment of human beings, the statement 'no one understands' invites the reflection 'some one should have understood' and also 'so and so did understand.' It opens memory to territories jointly to be visited. It is thus history-taking. The externalizing tendency can be reduced by emphasizing the feeling state-by extending its description ('no one seems in any way to understand'). The externalizing tendency can be increased, in a similar way, by emphasizing the 'no one,' or by adding another externalizing phrase ('no one understands that that remark hurt,' as opposed to 'how much it hurt,' which is more empathic). Nevertheless I want to underscore again that no mastery of language alone will be empathic. The speaker's interest, attentiveness, and ability to contain the other's feelings determine the effectiveness oflanguage however appropriate. Indeed, a powerful empathic ability can redeem language that is otherwise prying or even critical. Before one attempts any expressions of empathy in language it is best to tune oneself, that is, place oneself attentively near the other, alert to expressions of feeling (not solely or even largely to the verbal content) and then listen with one's fourth ear. At fIrst no particular feelings or their verbal expressions will come to mind, then a variety of staticlike fragments, some seemingly unconnected to the patient, others interpretative or reflective, until we catch noises or phrases rising to our lips that suggest feelings states of the other.4 Perhaps the most striking evidence of successful empathy is the occurrence in our own bodies of sensations that the patient has described in his or hers, as in the earlier example.
(2) Celebrating the Naturalness of a Feeling: 'No wonder' 'No wonder you were frightened'-here the exclamatory element is underlined. And like an earlier example, 'you must have been frightened,' the personal pronoun 4 Compare Rogers' (1951) distinction of empathic and nonempathic language, pp. 44-45.
PSYCHIATRY, Vol. 42, February 1979
Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 11:25 08 October 2017
THE USES OF LANGUAGE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
'you' is depersonalized by the implied, 'any- sons dear to them or persons on whom they one would have been frightened'; the state- were dependent recall 'wondering' "How ment equals 'no wonder it was frightening.' come mother is doing that?": mother's beIn addition to the exclamatory and imper- havior was a source of wonderment or insonal elements, however, something fresh credulity. As long as it remains a source of appears. wonderment or incredulity it is denied; the This is contributed by 'wonder.' While event causing the wonderment is not con'no one' reconnoiters the field of blame, 'no nected to the ordinary conception of the wonder' clears it. Speaker and hearer join parent and, as a result, the parent and the in a celebration of the naturalness of what feelings precipitated by the event are kept was felt. This is an active use of empathy: apart. Breaking down the denial means not only a sharing offeeling, but a justifying breaking in on the wonderment. Therefore 'no wonder' is a denial of a of feeling. The speaker places himself between the feeling and whatever precipitated denial: 'It was no wonder.' Because the it, connecting the two. He implies: in view patient's denial is actively maintainedof what happened it is natural to be that is, defended by any need to maintain frightened. the old image of the offending persons The celebration or justification is -denial of the denial may fill the space achieved by placing oneself at the point of between event and feeling for a moment, denial. Hitherto the connection between but the two will soon be pushed apart again. event and feeling was either only tenta- Permanently breaking down the denial detively made or denied altogether. There pends upon frequent reiteration of the 'no was, so to speak, an empty space between wonder' and a change in the patient's conevent and feeling, created by a pushing ception of the offending persons. apart of the two. In my experience the In time, 'it is natural' replaces 'I wonder.' event is pushed away from the feeling be- By placing oneself at the point of separation cause the person involved cannot believe again and again, event and feE>!ing are rethat the persons responsible for the event peatedly connected: they are seen in relawould have done such a fearful thing. In tionship to one another, reconnected. 6 The other words, to maintain a nonfearful image power of this repetition to reconnect is not, of the person involved, feeling and event however, due to the repetition itself, nor are separated. due alone to the increased awareness of the I believe this pushing apart is character- connection. Reconnection is in part a funcistic of denial, and is different from the tion of something else, the empathic expepushing down of feeling, event, or both rience. In essence, the hearer this time has feeling and memory characteristic of not had to face the incredible alone. repression. This explains why, in denial, Introducing the state of wonder to the event and feeling are both "known," but hearer who has wondered, and still wontheir connection is not. 5 ders, places the speaker where the hearer Now it becomes possible to grasp the is. They come together in the state of wonimportance of the word 'wonder.' Patients der. As a result the hearer is no longer alone recalling the unexpected behavior of per- in either his wonderment or fear. Speaking later about events patients have denied, they often say that denial would have been 5 We can distinguish psychotic from neurotic denial. unnecessary if there had been someone In catatonic denial the feared person or event is obliterated, as in negative hallucinations. In manic denial with whom they could have shared and the actuality is transformed into its opposite, e.g., reality-tested the events. The empathic expoverty into wealth. The feature that has most struck me about the neurotic's or normal person's denial is perience provides that someone. his or her capacity to avoid being in the presence of fact and feeling at the same time; for example, the obsessional person can isolate feelings when discussing an emotional event or keep his mind blank when feeling something.
PSYCHIATRY, Vol. 42, February 1979
6 For a discussion of the therapeutic importance of "gaining connectedness" see my "Therapeutic Rationale of l
