Relationship and the Threat of Nonbeing
Understanding the Depth of Our Relational Nature
Relationship
Humans are by nature relational creatures. Feeble, soft, and lacking in biological defenses, we were forced to count on each other for our survival. Because of this, our ability to read unspoken cues and empathize with each other is unparalleled. This need to relate cuts deep into the matrix of the psyche, forming the very basis of our sense of self. Our fundamental position of awareness is relationship. Whether it is with each other or with the world around us, there is a feeling of self and an essential other.
From the second we become aware as infants we begin to relate to the world around us. Early psychoanalytic models have posited that the infant’s perception is a sea of undifferentiated form, a primordial ooze of being that struggles to tell itself apart from the environment. This is however not true. Through research on infants it has become clear to the psychological community that relationship plays a more fundamental role. Indeed for one to have a “merger” or undifferentiated perspective of the environment, one would need to have an already existing sense of self and other. It can therefore be said that infants come into being already having a sense of distinct I-amness that is separate from their environment.
So it goes that the source of being is relational. There is no state of self-other fusion that must be overcome to obtain individual identity. It is innate. This also explains that at our very core, any psychological disturbances are a product of the disruption of the primary state of relationship. As Ann Gila and John Firman describe in The Primal Wound, “It is the violation of this fundamental relational sense of being that can lead to painful experiences such as depression, anxiety, chaotic affective and cognitive states, dissociation, pathological narcissism, and self-other boundary problems” (Firman and Gila, pg. 32). This violation of relationship forms the backbone of relational trauma.
When our fundamental sense of relationship is violated, we not only struggle to relate outwardly to others, but struggle to relate to our true sense of self. Here we can implement a Jungian concept of the ego-Self axis. The Self as Jung described it refers to a totality of identity for an individual. In the same way that many planets orbit a single star, all the various aspects of ourselves, conscious or otherwise, orbit the central unifying center of our Self. The Self is our source of being. It is a function within us that is as close as we can come to being one with God. We operate our lives through the limitations of our ego; a fraction of our total self. Thus we must have a constant relationship with our Self in order to remain connected to who we really are, our sense of meaning, and life direction.
If our fundamental sense of relationship has been violated, we will struggle to connect to this source and our very source of being. Just as when cloudy weather blocks out the sun, we too will be blocked from the main source of life within us. It is important to note that this connection can never be severed. Complete disconnection would result in a total annihilation of being, something the psyche under no circumstances will experience. It is this threat that forces one into dissociation and other maladaptations that split off and protect the fundamental connection. In some instances individuals would rather face physical death (such as with life-threatening addictions) than any true annihilation of this inner relationship.
It is important to note that the Self is found through empathic connections to others and the external world. Though it is a personal process of self discovery and individuation, like any contents of the unconscious it can only be realized through projection. Projection occurs when we unknowingly see the rejected or repressed parts of ourselves in others. This is largely why relationships are so fundamentally important and have such a dramatic effect on our livelihood when violated. When the other fails to reflect our sense of self we don’t merge back into an undifferentiated psychic state—we simply cease to be. If we can’t see ourselves in others, we can’t see ourselves at all, and even worse, we don’t exist.
Let us return to the first occurrence of relationship. If a child is not in an environment where their authentic sense of self can be mirrored by the caregivers, then their sense of relationship will be wounded. The core of relationship is rooted in empathic connection. When the people and environment can act as a secure reflection of the self in the child, the child can feel free to develop this vital connection to themselves. This is known as the holding environment and acts as a unifying center for the psyche. A unifying center is merely an object or other that reflects the nature of Self back to the individual. As we go throughout life we experience different unifying centers; some positive, some negative. When a positive unifying center betrays us, we come devastatingly close to losing our connection with Self. We will discuss unifying centers in more depth later on.
Many people have had a disruption in their initial holding environment and thus their first experience of empathic relationship. As is exceedingly the case, many children don’t receive genuine empathic relatedness in the way they need. The caregivers in these circumstances, having only known their own primal wounding from childhood, unconsciously push their wounding onto their children. As Alice Miller points out in her book, Drama of the Gifted Child, a mother may unconsciously project her own needs onto her child. Though it may appear as love and support, she is unconsciously shaping the child into someone who won’t abandon or mistreat her. Since this love is covertly conditional, the child grows up developing a false self to please the parent; their own need for empathic relatedness squandered.
Loving another with genuine empathy often looks like respecting the individual and their needs. If we respond with outward affection and the person in question is not in a place or comfortable enough to receive that affection, they will feel violated and quite unloved. In this way it is not genuine empathy, but an act of love out of selfishness. The same holds true for the child, whose base needs are of feeling accepted and loved for who they are. This allows the child to feel safe in their holding environment and learn to develop a true sense of self rooted in empathy, curiosity, and authenticity.
Unifying Centers
Let us now return to and clarify unifying centers. To recap, the I-Self relationship (the ego-Self axis) is the “essential empathic connection by which we experience a continuity of being in our lives” (Firman and Gila, pg. 72). As we progress through the various stages of our lives we experience this relationship through different empathic, validating, and mirroring contexts. Each stage of growth has a respective external unifying center, or in other words “some external other who serves and acts as a facilitating medium for the I-Self relationship” (Firman and Gila, pg. 72). This other can be any matrix of supportive relationships: teachers, peers, and validating social, cultural, and religious milieus included. Fundamental to all these unifying centers is that they make the individual feel validated and worthy of existence.
It is important to note that the Self is not these relationships. Though it is present in them, it is also transcendent from them. It is reflected in each stage but also stands as a single unity existing across all space and time. Self is profoundly singular, acting as a unity of multiplicity. Therefore, it is equally present in any empathic connection with an external unifying center across the entire development of the individual.
When we engage with these external unifying centers, we create internal approximations of them as well. This conditioned inner center can behave in the same way that the original external unifying center has. These coalesce to create an internal holding environment that can reflect the Self back to the individual maintaining the empathic connection. It is important to note that it is not the image of the other that is internalized as a unifying center but the relationship with it.
Though we can internalize the external world we can never be truly free from it. Throughout life our sense of self is continuously flowing to us through different relationships. We will always have a sense of dependence on others for this reason. It is a large reason the western drive for complete independence has left many feeling isolated and alone. We need each other to know who we are.
When we are able to empathically relate to different unifying centers throughout our lives, we cultivate a continuity of self that stretches from infancy to the present. We do not repress outgrown parts of ourselves but accept them as genuine parts of the personality that we can still access. This connection to our own mythos has incredibly grounding and potentiating effects on our psyches. An integrated individual will be able to reason like an adult, shift into the playfulness of a child, and shift again into a rebelliousness of the adolescent. They can move through and relate to all their subpersonalities, all the while remaining transcendent and congruous with their connection to Self.
Disturbances in Empathic Connection
Sadly, many often experience these external unifying centers failing to empathically reflect our sense of self. Since these connections are responsible for giving us our sense of self, any disturbance to them brings us the threat of nonbeing. As is pointed out by Firman and Gila, this disturbance is a normal experience for most everyone, though it is certainly not natural.
These disruptions happen within the specific relationships in our lives. Often a single person will betray our empathic connection, wounding our connection to Self. This relationship wound is felt so deeply because it “undercuts our sense of personal self, threatening that self with fragmentation, abandonment, and annihilation” (Firman and Gila, pg. 89). As mentioned previously, people will go to great lengths, even preferring physical death over the fear of self-annihilation.
What this often looks like is a splitting between the good and bad aspects of the relationship, or in other words the unifying center itself. The positive parts are overly idealized, while the negative aspects are often repressed. If severe enough, the individual will oscillate between these two poles; first pedestalizing, then demonizing the external other. Since the unifying center is thus split, so is the connection to Self. One experiences the same idealizing and demonizing nature towards themselves, feeling peak experiences of bliss and excitement only to tumble down into feelings of unworthiness and shame.
Over time the extremes of both are repressed for a more stable, yet less animated personality. Both polarities are pushed to the subconscious, and the individual is left with a watered down sense of self, albeit one not tormented by idealized perfection or trauma-induced pain. When we attempt to repress the extremes we lose out on our experience of genuine, positive, empathic connections to Self and others. Our connection to a deeper sense of divinity is stifled, while our ability to feel and relate to our pain has vanished. Of course, they are still projected from the unconscious, resulting in a constant seeking of idealized perfection in external objects or a constant running away from external pain. However the deeper reason will remain cloaked in unawareness.
By repressing the pain of a relationship and idealizing it we can convince ourselves that the relationship is good for us. The prevalent threat of nonbeing is so extreme that we would rather have a relationship that is bad for us than face our own inner “void” of nonbeing. This longing is not for an authentic empathic connection, but rather a desire to not face the true pain of non-existence. In this way, we can see why so many people will stay with relationships that are not conducive to true, empathic self expression.
Furthering our need to have a bad connection over no connection, we will often develop a false self to continue relating to the manipulative unifying center. This is essentially a survival personality, one marked by abandonment to the true sense of selfhood. This blossoming of unique individuality that would have occurred given a positive empathic connection is replaced by a need to continue relating to the disturbed unifying center in question.
This is usually the case in childhood, where the child is not seen in the way they need to be and thus adopts a false self to please the parent or caregiver therefore avoiding the threat of nonbeing. As Firman and Gila say, “the unifying center does not respond to the essential I-amness of the person, but instead views the person as an ‘it’ to be used for the unifying center's own ends” (Firman, Gila, pg. 164). When the connection is vital to the person’s sense of existence, like a child to a parent, they will go to great lengths to assure it remains intact. This survival personality can remain with the individual throughout their entire life, as it is the only sense of self they truly know. Rediscovery to the real self is only possible by first facing one’s own void of nonbeing.
Additionally, when we split our negative and positive experiences and repress the negative, we can run the risk of a grandiose inflation of self that leads us to a disillusioned connection with divinity. Having over idealized the positive experiences, one feels a deep connection to the otherworldly, archetypal realm. While the nature of the experience itself is not disillusioned, as it is indeed a reflection of the vital empathic connection, it is disillusioned because it is not connected to the full realm of experience. It is an attempt at reconnection with the expansive vitalizing Self, yet falls short in the end.
Any interpretation of divinity from this place becomes a form of escapism: trying to reach a glorious, heavenly realm that is removed from the very real, painful life we all must live. If we want to have a complete, grounded, and embodied experience of reality it must include the entirety of being, both negative and positive.
This concept is perhaps more important and prevalent in the constant seeking of different therapies that will finally cure our wounds. Unable to face the direct pain of our repressed wounding, there is a constant seeking of the thing, relationship, or experience that will finally help you make sense of the world and feel at ease. However this never comes and the only way to truly feel this is by accepting one’s pain and, even deeper, one’s threat of nonexistence. The only way out is through.
Summarizing our discussion thus far it has become increasingly evident that relationship plays the most fundamental role in our experience of reality. We cannot exist without a distinct sense of I-am that must relate to the entire world around us. Furthermore, this sense of self requires the need for an external other to reflect back to us our existence. Without anything to reflect back to us who we are, we are faced with the horrifying threat of nonbeing.
Anytime the external other fails to reflect back an accepting, validating, and empathic self, we undergo a process of splitting, or in other words, dissociation. Psychological wounding is not just for those with classic trauma, but for nearly every single one of us. If we are to cultivate a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in our lives we must do all we can to heal this primal wound.
If you liked this article I highly suggest reading The Primal Wound by John Firman and Ann Gila. They go much more in-depth into the idea of relationship and nonbeing and the primal split that happens when our relational nature is violated.
- Recommended Reading -
The Primal Wound by John Firman and Ann Gila
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