The Process Underlying Healing the Original Wound (PRSD, Pt. 1A)

Questions posed by a reader regarding the first post on this topic prompt some clarification on object relationship and how unconscious choices affect the authenticity of repeated relationships. S/he also brings up the notion of the transactional and, by association, reciprocal nature of the object relationship that underlies social relationship. Interesting stuff.

Social or interpersonal relationship is how we interact with others, and how they interaction with us. Object relationship is the underlying psychosocial dynamic that sometimes informs and sometimes drives these relationships. Object relationships are not "real", they are representative. When talking about the Original Wound, we are talking primarily about the mechanisms that create the object relationship, where the object is the representative focus of the social system that prompted the Original Wound.

Human social relationship, as defined in this context, exists on three levels. First, there is the object relationship - a relationship driven by archetypes and complexes, to use Jung's terminology. The second level is how the tangible social interaction activates these archetypes and complexes for each of us as individuals. And the third level is the concrete "Hey, I like you - you like me - let's hang out" aspect of the relationship.

Here's an important point. The third level comes first. In other words, we connect with someone based on social commonalities, shared belief systems, agreements of perception, the need to belong and, at some level - and especially with regard to socio-sexual relationships - chemistry, in the real sense of the word.

The levels of archetype, complex and the activation of those elements are secondary to the third level. We don't consciously go looking for a relationship that will provide a stage for repairing our relationship with Mother or Father or God. We just end up there, and that speaks to the question of authenticity brought up by the reader's question.

Recognizing the archetypal elements contained in a relationship and the complex or complexes that they activate do not make the concrete social relationship any less authentic. In fact, we might even consider that it makes that relationship more intimate in that we connect with it and its object on both an unconscious and superconscious level.

To the reader's second question, the discovery of a archetype/complex system underlying a relationship is actually a staging point for personal evolution, not a signal to excise that relationship from one's life. Here's a classic:

Bob has an enmeshed relationship with his mother. He is the apple of her eye and she regularly touts him to anyone who will listen. At the same time, she is slyly unsupportive of him as a result of her own need to please Bob's father who didn't want a second child and has resented him since his birth.

Bob, an accomplished professional, takes a Big Job with a Big Company and soon discovers that his direct supervisor, in forwarding her own political interests, behaves an awful lot like his mother. Predictably, he begins to respond to his boss the way that he responds to his mother.

Someone points out to Bob that he is parentalizing his boss, which is, inadvertently, getting him into all sorts of hot water. Choice point: Should he quit his job and cut is losses, or should he work with the material he has been given and develop new strategies for dealing with his reactions to his boss that will, presumably, generalize to his dealings with his mother.

The more progressive and evolutionary choice would, of course, be the second.

To the reader's third question, the object relationship is, indeed, often reciprocal. I am fond of saying that we are all just a bunch of neurotic habits that fit together like a lock and a key. Our mutually presented needs and offerings, healthy or unhealthy, blend with one another to create the foundation of relationship. So, just as someone in your community may activate you on an archetypal/complex level, you may do the same for them. Or, they may activate you and you don't touch their deeper psychological structures. Or you may activate them, and they not you. It's quite a balancing act, and there are, frankly, no real rules.

Relationships Essential Reads

Episodic Intimacy vs. Committed Intimacy

Don’t Compromise, Create Solutions With Your Partner

One thing is certain and this is that, as long as we are inattentive to the repeated patterns of our relationships, for good or ill, we will continue to repeat them. I often make note of a friend of mine from college who has dated the same woman since he was 17 - sometimes she's short, sometimes she's tall, sometimes a brunette, sometimes a redhead, sometimes Asian, sometimes Occidental...but, always the same woman, and always the same relationship.

All this brings us to our last, and, in some ways, most important point. The musings that you find here, in my blogspace, as well as those of my colleagues, tend toward a negative aspect. That is because we are often looking to point out the flaws in a thing and then offer suggestions on correcting those flaws. It's important not to get trapped on that side of the fence, thinking that we are always coming from a negative place.

For my part, I do not subscribe to the medical model dictating that we are sick and need to be healed, but, rather, I subscribe to a more Eastern perspective, which says we are not broken, but perfect, and have only lost our way a bit. To that point, and, in an effort to both underscore what I've stated above and in response to the reader's questions, we are not talking here about a bad thing. Nor, coincidentally, are we talking about a good thing. We are simply talking about a circumstance, the charge of which lies solely with the individual experiencing it. There is no pre-judgment attached. Another classic:

A woman has a wonderful father; he is loving, supportive, kind, generous and ‘good enough', on all counts. She marries a man who is much like her father. That choice is made, in part, by the archetypal/complex system that resides in her unconscious. Is that a bad thing? A good thing? No, it's just a thing.

The first chapter of the Buddhist compendium The Blue Cliff Record talks about The Highest Meaning of the Holy Truths. The lesson in that discourse, at least superficially, is ‘see what is in front of you and see it for what it is and only what it is' -- a good lesson when considering the fabric of our relationships and what they mean for us.

© 2009 Michael J. Formica, All Rights Reserved

Michael's Mailing List | Michael's eMail | Follow Michael on Twitter

Michael on Facebook | The Integral Life Institute on Facebook