Winnicotte used to say, there is no such thing as a baby, there is only a baby and a mother. He, of course, is describing the intimate symbiosis between mother and child so characteristic of the human species in particular, and perhaps primates, even mammals, in general. Perhaps as a result of this long extended intermixing between mother and child, adult primary relationships are commonly characterized by repeated fusions/confusions about what resides within the self and what resides within the other.
Of late, I have come to recognize one kind of very common confusion in struggling marriages; that is, where belief about the other has come to be confused with who the other “really is.” I imagine that this is in fact true of most marriages, that one’s belief about the other is thought to be who the other really is. When the belief is generally positive this “error in thinking” probably does not as much present as a problem. However, when the belief about the other is persistently negative, as it is for most couples in marital therapy, this confusion between belief and reality often presents as an insurmountable obstacle to healing.
The problem is, as long as “the belief about the other” is believed to be the absolute or fundamental truth of the other (that is, not a belief at all but a perception) no true healing communication can happen between the two. At their rawest, the interactions boil down to some variation of a power struggle over who gets to author reality… “you are this and this, admit it… etc..” The result is “the person authoring reality” at the moment does not get heard for what is truly painful inside of them, and the other in the relationship is left profoundly unsafe and unable to do anything but defend. This becomes a therapeutic mess. (to be continued)
