Being of Two Minds

The Vertical Split in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

Arnold I. Goldberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134902095
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Applied Psychology
• Index: Psychology

From the unfaithful husband to the binge eater, from the secret cross-dresser to the pilferer of worthless items, there are those who seem to live two lives, to be divided selves, to be literally of two minds. This division or "vertical split" appears in a person at odds with himself, a person who puzzles over, and even heartily dislikes, that parallel person who behaves in so repugnant a manner. In Being of Two Minds, Arnold Goldberg provides trenchant insight into such divided minds - their origins, their appearances, and their treatment.

Goldberg's inquiry into divided minds leads to a return to the psychoanalytic concept of disavowal, which forms the basis of the vertical split. Goldberg explores the developmental circumstances that tend to a reliance on disavowal, provides numerous examples of the emergence of disavowal in the treatment situation, and considers the therapeutic approaches through which disavowal may be addressed. He is especially perceptive in discussing the manner in which the therapist's own tendency to disavow may collusively interact with that of the patient.

Goldberg considers the full range of splits to which disavowal gives rise, from circumscribed instances of dissociation to the much-debated multiple personality disorders. He gives special attention to the role of the vertical split in patients with behavior disorders; here his thoughtful insights point to a treatment approach that significantly differs both from the simple ascription of a 'self disorder' and from the usual pedagogical emphasis on issues of self-control and/or punishment. As Goldberg shows, the repugnance felt by many therapists for offensive behaviors emanating from the patient's parallel self are frequently shared by the patient, who commonly despises misbehavior that he is unable to understand. Being of Two Minds begins to formulate just such understanding, to the great benefit of patient and therapist alike.

PART 1

THE SPLIT

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

The morning paper tells a story of a prominent man caught in an embarrassing and compromising position. The radio announces that a Hollywood star has been arrested for shoplifting. In case after case we hear of persons who, although they may not be actors in scenarios quite as dramatic as that of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, do seem to have secret or unwholesome other lives. Sometimes these individuals initially deny but then reluctantly admit these other hidden parts of themselves. Sometimes they claim that they themselves cannot begin to comprehend why they do what they do. All too easily, the public condemns or is shocked to learn about incidents of delinquent, criminal, or immoral behavior in people who are held up as otherwise moral and even admirable. A good number of these individuals reveal a severe and striking split in their personalities, a vertical split in which side-by-side individuals seem to reside in but one mind. By the use of the word split, I mean a significant division of the organization of the personality into a divided pair. The division is not always neat, and the parts are never equal either in frequency of emergence or length of stay, but the experience for the person is one of a separation: a parallel and coexisting other.

Consider a reasonably financially secure woman who finds herself stealing food in the supermarket. She feels both compelled to do it and also horrified that she does it. She says it is as if another person took charge and accomplished the deed, leaving her to deal with the aftermath. The “as if” of another person, however, is always a problem, inasmuch as she also knows and feels it was she. She can neither comprehend nor explain her behavior. This, then, is the split.

This book is an effort to explain and understand that split in psychoanalytic psychological terms and by way of psychoanalytic theory. We shall comprehend this psychological state as a pathological one, a symptom of a disorder rather than a moral failing. I will extend this explanation to encompass a variety of similar psychological symptoms and so aim to raise our consciousness as to the far-ranging prevalence of this vertical split.

This work is a companion volume to an earlier one on the problem of thinking about and treating perverse sexual activity (Goldberg, 1995). Since that book’s publication, the perversions have been renamed and turned by the American Psychiatric Association into the paraphilias (implying preference rather than pathology), and the ideas presented in the book have been extended into a wider net. The resultant larger picture includes an extensive range of behavior disorders similar to perverse behavior, but usually dealing with the substitution of an activity other than the sexual. Thus, misbehavior such as seen in eating disorders, delinquencies, and other ordinarily offensive or forbidden ways of life make up the group. The common element that holds this group together is this split in the personality, which allows the coexistence of the normal alongside the deviant. Once one gets a clear comprehension about this split, it begins to take on a life of its own, and soon it starts to be seen almost everywhere. After this initial burst of excited enthusiasm, a pullback to reason allows a more careful categorization of the split into the four groups that are presented in this book. That grouping consists of (1) circumscribed dissociation, (2) narcissistic personality disorders, (3) narcissistic behavior disorders, and (4) multiple personality disorders, the last being discussed with no representative clinical illustrations. The vertical split is expanded from its significance in the book on perverse behavior to its more general application.

This detailed discussion of the vertical split begins with an effort to define it and show its occurrence in certain selected case examples. The first chapter is designed to distinguish the vertical split from the number of other similar problems, ranging from ambivalence to repression, or the horizontal split. This is followed by a chapter that focuses on the major structural problems in this split: a failure of synthesis or integration in a self that becomes and remains divided.

The main theme in understanding the development of the vertical split is that these different forms derive from a childhood in which such splitting was a necessary part of existence. The parental directions given to the child, both explicitly and implicitly, demanded a division of one’s personality into these side-by-side sectors. One cannot, of course, prove this assumption, but the case examples support it and may convince the reader of its likelihood. A chapter on parental collusion is followed by one on development, which is an effort to spell out in detail just how growing up in this environment allows this particular form of difficulty to emerge. The limitations of this chapter are inherent in any work on the choice of symptom and the degree of pathology. One can make some educated guesses but not much more; nevertheless the study of developmental issues is crucial in explaining the origin of these conditions.

The second part of the book is devoted to the treatment of the disorders associated with the vertical split. I start with a chapter that may initially seem unnecessary but is essential to working with some of these patients; this chapter concerns the issues of boundaries and commitment. The chapter that follows is a paradigmatic one that presents infidelity as one prevalent and familiar symptom of a vertical split found in many of our patients. This theme appears in a debate about socially acceptable versus socially condemned behavior characteristic of the split.

The specific treatment issues outlined in the ensuing chapter extend the main theme of the book in that the childhood and developmental origins of the split become reproduced in the transference. This reproduction is represented in a correlative and reciprocal manner in the transference. No doubt this will be the most controversial and problematic point of the book, inasmuch as it calls on therapists to struggle with a new version of the responses that patients evoke in us. The manner and method of addressing and working with this matched split between patient and therapist is the center of this chapter.

The four varieties of split mentioned earlier are showcased in the next chapter with illustrative case material that becomes either reintroduced or newly presented. Here multiple personality disorders are noted, but hardly anything crucial can be said about them owing to sheer lack of my clinical material. It remains a problematic and controversial topic.

The chapter on empathy and judgment is an effort to make some more general claims about the vertical split as it applies to themes that extend beyond those of our individual patients. The hope is that the concept does have more widespread application, and anticipates that more detailed studies will extend the concept to other arenas of interest. Once again the vision of the split becomes a part of our perception of events in the world at large and in our entire field of depth psychology.

The final chapter is filled with disclaimers. They are meant as markers or points of orientation to tell the reader that none of the present-day excursions and interests in psychoanalysis are being ignored or neglected in this old-fashioned type of book. A reprise of the experience of the split is used as the finale.

There are a number of cases presented, some at length and some briefly. Because they are all actual rather than fictionalized accounts, every effort has been made to disguise them as fully as possible. In the interest of disguise most of the cases are designated as male, although there was an equal gender distribution. After each disguising effort, another reader has been asked to make a further disguise. In a few cases and where possible, the permission of the patient has been obtained; several cases were discarded because permission was withheld. It is impossible to be absolutely certain that no confidentiality or privacy has been breached, and, short of writing entirely fictional reports, there seems no possible way that one can safely navigate between a duty to one’s patients and a duty to our need to learn. I have done as well as I could.

Chapter 2

THE PROBLEM

Being of two minds is a state familiar to just about everyone who has had to make a choice between two equally appealing selections. The red or the blue, the pie or the cake, the one car or the other, elicit in us all of those conditions of an equal psychological balance or suspension that may even on occasion bring about pain and ultimately regret, as we come down on one side or the other. That experience of ambivalence or indecision begins with a choice that ordinarily has a similar or even identical endpoint in mind: the dessert should taste good, the car must drive well, and the color should be pleasing. This simple start, which contains the onset of ambivalence, takes a further significant step when the goals or aims resulting from the choices begin to separate and thus betray a significant difference between them. The cake versus the Jell-O has a different configuration of disparity, inasmuch as in deciding between cake and pie one cares not for calories whereas now one aims for some sort of dietary control. So, too, does the dilemma between the sedan and the convertible highlight a distinction between goals, ones that perhaps reflect a different lifestyle and an opposing overall presentation of one’s image. Such differences begin to turn what is an ordinary run-of-the-mill ambivalence into more of a struggle between forces in opposition. Of course our supposedly simple ambivalence is made more complex because of whatever unconscious factors lay claim to one decision or another; if one adds together those unconscious determinants, which may traverse a wide range of wishes and fantasies, with the clear distinction between aims and goals, then we begin to approach a separation that seems to reflect two opposing personalities. So this further extension and elaboration of being of two minds results in more of a vertical separation, a division into side-by-side ways of thinking, or perhaps even one of personalities with differing aims, goals, and values.

No doubt almost everyone has had this sort of experience, in which coexisting feelings, which lead to different and opposite results, live within us. The struggle between eating heartily versus dieting effectively is but one example of a host of contradictory configurations that mark much of everyday life. It is not enough to say that one wants the one thing or the other, when one clearly and unambivalently wants both. And so preference often and regularly comes down to stilling the voice of the one, so that the other is not only heard but is allowed to dominate. The caloric overindulger must not listen to, must ignore, must literally deny, the claim to caloric control. She may do so momentarily or at length, but the denial or disavowal opens a gap or separation between these coexisting personalities; that is, the aim of one is temporarily the master of the mind while the other must take a holiday.

Most such vertical splits or separations are both innocent and short-lived. Indeed we all seem to have at times reckoned with these internal divisions because our goals are rarely both formed and clear, and so we may often struggle with divergent aims. The basis for this opposition lies sometimes, or perhaps usually, with our lack of clear and well-defined aims or values, such as the struggle between the pleasure of the moment and a commitment to longer-range goals. And, of course, these values stem from both conscious and unconscious principles of life and its direction. The simple virtues of honesty, beauty, fidelity, and so on, are always made more complex by the host of parental injunctions and prohibitions that come to compose other parts of our psyche (e.g., the superego). The same can be said about our personal expressions of how and when we find ourselves to be worthwhile and desirable individuals, and how we make choices with that in mind. But this struggle that takes place in many of us in its sometimes painful resolution of deciding upon one path or another is, for the most part, a struggle felt as such, and ordinarily is seen as residing in one person. That one person decides to do this or that, and the decision becomes owned by the same person. The shortlived split is resolved by the winning side claiming a victory over the entire person, and the losing side ceasing to clamor for attention and concern. It is only when we begin to see that victory does not always have a worthwhile resolution, and that neither side is able to tolerate losing, that we start to delineate a pathology. These splits of everyday life are not what we shall concern ourselves with in our consideration of the vertical split of pathology.

Perhaps the clearest presentation of the beginning pathology of disavowal and the concomitant vertical split can be seen in the complex patterns that followed the loss of an important relationship—a loved person or perhaps a pet animal—or even loss of a possession. The well-recognized denial that accompanies much of mourning work usually consists of various efforts at insisting that the loss has not occurred. From the occasional imaginary sighting of the lost object, on to the rarer maintenance of the room and possessions of the departed loved one, we see the range of efforts to undo the reality of the loss, to disavow what has been known to be true. This denial is usually and hopefully time-limited, as the bereaved individual proceeds through and by way of mourning to reinvest his or her interests elsewhere. It is rare to find the persistence of this denial of reality, and when that does happen, it is usually considered to qualify as a delusion. Indeed, it is the connection to an imaginary or unreal vision of the world that is said to cause a rent in the personality or ego of the person who cannot be committed to a single view of the world, but who finds it necessary to live in two worlds: sometimes simultaneously and sometimes sequentially. If one can, over time, reconcile oneself to a unitary vision of the world, then the grief is usually at an end. But until that time is reached, the psyche seems to move back and forth between one reality and another and, not surprisingly, it pays a heavy emotional price as long as this failure of reconciliation endures.

Persistent mourning may be rare, but other evidence of a personality that is divided, and remains lastingly so, is common. Before explicating the conditions that do reflect persistent separations, it is worthwhile to consider whether a unified or integrated self is ever to be taken for granted. The modern origin of unification goes back to René Descartes, who, although ordinarily thought of as a dualist in separating mind and body, also claimed that one’s conscious awareness is the “I” or the person who observes and thinks about the world and so therefore exists as a unity. The undoing and effective demolition of that idea surely belongs to Sigmund Freud. Freud demonstrated a mental region that was not only not conscious but seemed to thrive in another place, with access available only under special circumstances and with special techniques. This separate part of the psyche conducted its affairs according to a different set of rules, and so it was claimed to be split off from the conscious arena; this was often illustrated by the use of a horizontal line called the repression barrier. The hoped-for unified self of Descartes was thus forever cleaved in two, and the effort to bring the disparate parts together was, in some eyes, seen as the fundamental work of psychoanalysis (i.e., to make the unconscious conscious). To now introduce a further exception, a vertical split as opposed to the horizontal one, demands a different kind of distinction between the two parts and a different form of psychoanalytic or psychotherapeutic work.

The ideational material or psychological contents that live behind the horizontal split or the barrier of repression are said to be actively withheld from consciousness. It is not ignorance that prevents a connection to this arena (Freud, 1927); rather, it is an active force that keeps it apart. Although some (Davidson, 1991) would claim that a form of conversation does exist between consciousness and the repressed, for the most part the unconscious is felt to connect and communicate in only the most devious ways, as in dreams, slips of the tongue, and transference. The contents of the vertically split-off segment seem different. Rather than being inaccessible, as the repressed is, one can attend to them, they are similar in form in the sense of being characterized as a secondary rather than primary process, and they manifest an organization reflecting a total personality. It is often only in respect to their relationship to the world that something different and even strange may be seen. For instance, in his discussion of fetishism (Freud, 1927), Freud held that the little boy had to cling to a bit of unreality—that of the existence of the little girl’s penis—to form and maintain his split. Initially Freud joined repression to disavowal by maintaining that the idea was repressed while the affect was disavowed, but over time and throughout psychoanalytic history, as we shall see, there has been no easy solution to the relation of these two defensive operations. Suffice it to say that we now understand repression and disavowal to differ in development, construction, and content. But whereas the one—repression—seems to dominate the study of neuroses, the other—disavowal—seems to be of major significance in other forms of pathology. These latter conditions that center on disavowal seem most representative of the predicament with which we are concerned: that in which a person seems to inhabit two worlds.

To proceed past mourning to the pathological manifestations, perhaps the most outstanding example of this vertical split is found in the category of behavior disorders, which are characterized by a single individual behaving in seemingly contradictory ways. The honest teacher who sporadically steals books he may never read, the faithful housewife who regularly or irregularly picks up strange men in bars and goes to bed with them, the married heterosexual family man who visits gay bars and engages in furtive homosexual affairs, are all but a few of the examples of people who live parallel but contradictory lives, of people who seem to manifest evidence of being truly, at times, of two minds and so existing in two worlds. The split is striking in behavior disorders and less so in some of the other conditions that I will investigate. These behavior disorders primarily encompass the addictions including eating disorders, perversions, and delinquencies.

For the most part anyone who struggles with a repeated presence of a disparate part of himself or herself over time develops an attitude of either negative or tolerant or perhaps even positive valence toward its emergence. The honest and upright citizen despises his occasional foray into the men’s washroom to pick up a young boy, the binge eater may have come to some sort of acceptance of her episodes of high-calorie sweets and the substance abuser may claim that all he desires is his fix as much as he regularly pledges to abstain. There is no predictable and regular reaction to one’s parallel personality, nor can one ever be sure that any sort of attitude will carry the day. Sometimes the substance abuser does abstain, and sometimes the resolute bearer of virtue seems to give in all too easily to what he claims to abhor. Over time one may indeed discern a pattern for the emergence of what is, for some, a misbehavior. Not surprisingly, however, the real initiators of this misbehavior are elusive and so become subject to a series of rationalizations and excuses and even acceptance. Parallel, divided personalities often seem able to live with one another.

For Freud, the opposing set of thoughts and feelings was just that: opposite and demanding of opposition. The boy had vigorously to deny the possibility of castration by assigning a penis to the girl and so, of necessity, had to insist on truths that contradict. The failure of a unified vision is necessitated, and so all of the efforts to reconcile, to unify, are variations on the impossible. There is a fascinating neurological disorder called “alien hand” syndrome seen in patients who have had surgical severing of the corpus callosum, the structure that connects the two hemispheres, and in patients who have had anatomically similar brain damage from strokes or trauma. After surgery, for example, the patients feel that one hand is theirs and is owned by them, whereas the other feels foreign and alien. Indeed, this alien hand seems to have a life and will of its own, and its behavior seems not only to escape from the control of the person to whom it seems to belong, but it is more often at odds with the aims and intents of that person. An individual with a severed corpus callosum may struggle to keep the alien hand from doing or undoing something that the owned hand wishes to do. Sometimes the one hand holds down the other to keep it from a potential misbehavior. Although the patient so afflicted will tell you that he or she is clearly wanting and planning to perform a certain act, he or she seems as well to harbor a saboteur who is not heeding these directions and is bent on a different course.

One must, of course, be very cautious in claiming any one-to-one relationship between neurologic findings and those of psychological investigation, but a couple of authors (Levin, 1991; Basch, 1983) have suggested that one may indeed make such a connection between these disciplines in the explanation of disavowal and repression. One seems unable to escape the experience of duality, of contradiction that besets so many, and all sorts of explanations have been offered to determine its origin. As Montaigne (1588) says: “We are, I know no...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Part 1: The Split
• Part 2: Treatment and the Vertical Split
• References
• Index