Dissociative
it means not being able to identify with “them”
When I was trying to escape from my marriage, and even more importantly, from my own self-defeating, suicidal, psychological condition, I had frequent dreams of an underground railway staffed by all black people. They hid me and protected me in dream tunnels. They comforted me, they smiled at me, they patted me and sent me along. I felt so loved — these were amazing, life-saving dreams. But where did they come from?
I’ve read many accounts of white people who were scared to death, abused in one way or another, and who found strength from inner images of people of color. I was reading just last night about a white woman who was sadistically raped by family members for her whole young life. She could not afford to be angry. Being angry could get you killed. So she had another part of herself who held the anger. That part was named Shirley, and Shirley was a black woman.
Many whites do not seem to have trouble identifying with people of color — unless they are angry and violent. We can identify with feeling hurt, but not with rage. We love MLK, not so much Malcolm X. There’s no place for rage in our own psychology. We dissociate! We dis-identify. We say, NOT ME, I’d never act like that, or I could never FEEL like that, I’d be more forgiving...
I am exploring this tendency in myself. I said I wasn’t going to talk about therapy any more, but guess what? Maybe I will, selectively. My therapist confirmed my self-diagnosis — dissociative disorder. I’m still mad that she didn’t tell me earlier, that I had to ask. Many people don’t believe it’s even a thing. Oh well. Maybe I am making it up… it doesn’t matter. We can still work with these so-called “imaginary” parts of me that hold the feelings I am not supposed to feel.
At the end of the session my therapist said she wanted to hear about my anger at her. I said I didn’t feel angry right then. She said she wanted to talk to the part who was. I felt myself go into another role, like an actor. I sat back, faded out, and let another character speak through me. As I’ve mentioned before, I can’t remember much of what is said when this happens, but I can remember the feeling of the conversation. There she was again, slicing my therapist to bits, intentionally. Hates her, doesn’t trust her AT ALL. Sees her as privileged, protected, a shallow do-gooder who really just wants to make money, and doesn’t get it AT ALL.
“What is your name?” my therapist asked.
“Slicer,” she said.
“Slicer!” my therapist says, obviously recognizing the name.
I recognized it too, and that popped me out of the role for a few minutes. We were both surprised. I’d been trying to come up with a name for this character for more than a month, ever since she first appeared in a session. My therapist now remembered having talked to Slicer the last time I saw her for therapy, 15 years ago. I remember nothing of that, but the name certainly rang a bell.
My therapist opened the discussion with, “I need to talk to her because she’s a problem.”
That brought Slicer right out. A problem??? She was all over that. I don’t know if my therapist insulted her on purpose to bring her forward, or if it was accidental. I’ll ask next time. So, if you want to talk to someone who is angry, you could start by calling them a problem. That might get them talking. You can’t be too nice. I saw that. My therapist would smile, as though she thought she was talking to a small child, and Slicer would make a remark to castrate that smile. “Don’t smile at me, you fool.” She didn’t say that out loud, Slicer kept her thoughts to herself, she was intent on slicing, not revealing anything.
I could also tell that, although Slicer was brutal and didn’t give an inch, she appreciated being invited to the table. There was a glimmer of hope behind the slicing tongue. That invitation to come to the table was a first. Again I feel angry. Why the fuck did that take my therapist so long? Why did I have to spell it out for her, ask for this so pointedly. Why did I have to teach my therapist what to do, and how to approach it?
She was probably never abused. Maybe she doesn’t have feelings like I have. But she’s supposed to be a therapist, an expert. Well, she’s rising to the challenge. I feel hopeful.
But what about the neo-Nazis? They, too, are full of rage, obviously. Can we find a way to identify with them? In our discussion, before Slicer got to talk, my therapist warned me, quite firmly, that she was not going to take abuse. She would quickly find a way to stop it. I felt insulted. The front person would never abuse anyone! But in the back rooms, this was very comforting. We don’t want to alienate the therapist! Most of us don’t, as far as I can tell. Even Slicer wants to be reached, I could feel it. But she is not going to make it easy. She is not going to fake anything, the way I do. She is not going to try to get along. Slicer is going to be real, she is full of rage, but she is reachable.
Restraining people who propose to do harm is the best thing you can do for them. That makes them feel safe, believe it or not. But it can’t stop there. The flavor of punishment should have no part in rehabilitation. An out of control toddler really wants to be stopped, does not really want to alienate or “kill” their caretakers, but only to be heard. So it is, I believe, with every single person who is enraged. If possible, they should be prevented from doing harm, contained, restrained with only the necessary amount of firmness, and then listened to with patience and curiosity and kindness.
We don’t have to make somebody into the devil because they are behaving terribly. An angry person must have a reason to be so angry. We need to try to keep everybody safe, and we need find out WHY the anger, on all sides. I know this for sure, on a very personal level. I say the government should invest in therapists! Jails and schools should be swarming with competent therapists. Communication skills and emotional literacy are way more important than algebra. People have to be trained for this kind of thing. Even my therapist, as good as she is, has a hard time with rage, did not take the initiative to invite it into the room. We want to avoid it, avoid those angry people, those “others,” make them disappear, put them away, both within ourselves and out in the world. But that never works. Only understanding can heal. And it doesn’t come cheap, doesn’t come quickly, can’t be faked.
Here’s a very important and relevant discussion between a family member of a neo-Nazi who participated in Charlottesville and a former skinhead who now seeks to rehabilitate others like him.
