Breaking the Bonds. Dorothy Rowe

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СКАЧАТЬ real, when we are under stress we find that we retreat to our original position where one reality was more real than the other.

      Which reality is the more real relates to how we experience our sense of self and perceive the threat of the annihilation of our self.

      Those of us who experience our sense of self as being a member of a group direct our attention outward to external reality. Hence the word extravert, where ‘vert’ is from the Latin ‘to turn’ and ‘extra’ means ‘outward’.

      Those of us who experience our sense of self as the progressive development of individuality direct our attention inward. Hence the word introvert, where ‘vert’ means ‘to turn’ and ‘intro’ means ‘inward’.

      (The word ‘extrovert’ is often used to mean lively, talkative, sociable, and the word ‘introvert’ to mean shy, quiet, reserved. It is important to remember that many extraverts are shy and unsociable, while many introverts, as I have defined them, are sociable and talkative. If, as an extravert, you do not think well of yourself, you are likely to be shy and unsociable, while, as an introvert, if you have realized the importance of learning social skills, you are likely to be lively and talkative.)

      The reality to which our attention is turned seems to us not merely more real but safer and more trustworthy.

      Extraverts never doubt the reality of external reality. It is internal reality they find unreal, and they often fear to journey inward. Extraverts who have not confronted their internal reality and made inward journeys of exploration will say of themselves, ‘I don’t know who I am’, or, ‘Inside me is nothing but emptiness’, or, ‘I play roles; I’m never just me’, or, ‘You can go into these things too deeply’, or, ‘I have examined myself too deeply’. The television producer Michael Grade, writing in The Guardian about ‘Me and My Psyche’ said:

      I don’t internalize anything. I work and live all my relationships on instinct, which later takes me a long time to work out. Sometimes it doesn’t happen for years. I know something is going on in my subconscious which leads me to make different choices, because life is all about choices of one kind and another, but what finally informs those choices – upbringing, experience, character – I just have no idea … I’m one of life’s pacifiers. I can’t work by diktat, I like consensus, but I’m bad at getting in touch with my own emotional feelings.¹⁶

      Their profound dislike of being alone leads extraverts to develop ways of keeping people around them. Needing to be liked, they become extremely likeable and charming. Some extraverts are contented to get by with being charming and agreeable, but many others, wanting to give something of value in return for people’s regard, work very hard and strive to achieve. Extraverts who have some doubts about their own self-worth believe that, if you cannot make people love you, you can make them need you. Helping other people ‘feels good’, as Ruth said, because it makes us feel better about ourselves and it creates a bond between ourselves and the people we help.

      Extraverts whose doubts about their own self-worth are even greater, and whose fear of other people is thus as great as their need, people their life with other relationships. They keep pets, or surround themselves with objects like books, pictures, clocks or clothes, or they immerse themselves in a hobby, and in all these activities they turn the animals and objects into human beings. (We all have this imaginative capacity to turn animals and objects which are indifferent to our existence into human beings like ourselves. Doing this can make our world much more comfortable than it actually is, but, equally, we can make our environment seem humanly hostile.)

      Sometimes the people to whom the extravert relates are characters from soap operas, or pop stars, or fantasy figures. Often, when ordinary life is boring or unpleasant, extraverts immerse themselves in fantasies. These fantasies always relate to external reality and are tales of daring, glamour and excitement where the extravert is the admired and loved cynosure of all eyes. Thus, in many different ways, extraverts seek to make sure that they never find themselves completely alone. They do all they can to avoid the feeling of their self withering, fading and disappearing.

      Introverts never say they have examined themselves too much. Examining themselves is the very stuff of their existence. They may not be examining themselves in terms of id and ego, or how they construct their world of meaning, as we learn to do in the course of therapy. Instead, they may be examining themselves, like George, in terms of their relationship to God, or in terms of their moral duties, or in terms of achieving the goals they have set. Whatever terms they use in this moral inspection, their activity is concerned with setting themselves standards and trying to meet those standards.

      Throughout this inward journey of inspection, introverts never doubt the realness of their internal reality. Under stress, when they feel that everything is falling into chaos, introverts feel themselves shattering, fragmenting, crumbling even to dust, but never disappearing. Dust they may be, but dust is still there. Some introverts, when they become depressed, describe their self as becoming ‘two-dimensional’, like a piece of cardboard, but without depth. This is a horrible experience, but the self is still experienced as being there.

      It is external reality which introverts find unreal. We (for I am one) look on external reality as being a passing phantasmagoria whose realness and regularity we have to take on trust. Those of us who cope with living have learned to act as if external reality is real. However, we still get tripped up by our doubts.

      One New Year’s Eve I was staying with my friends Ron and Diana in New York. They were planning a New Year party, and Ron said he wanted to invite a colleague who he knew lived in the same apartment block. ‘I meet him in the elevator often,’ Ron said, ‘but I don’t know his apartment number. I’ll have to find out from the doorman.’

      I was with Ron when he asked the doorman about the apartment number. The doorman searched his list and said, ‘No, there’s no one of that name in the building.’ At Ron’s insistence he checked the mailroom list, and there, too, there was no record of this man’s name.

      I was curious as to how Ron was reacting to this. Ron, I knew, was an extravert. When I ventured a question, Ron said, There’s some sort of mix-up. I’m sure he lives in this building.’

      ‘Do you wonder that perhaps you might have just imagined that you’ve seen him here?’ I asked, knowing that in Ron’s position I would have immediately felt that I had got this bit of external reality wrong.

      Ron thought that this was a stupid question, barely meriting a reply. He never doubted the evidence of his senses. Of course he was right about where his colleague lived. The doorman’s list proved to be incomplete.

      Introverts like me need extraverts like Ron to keep us in touch with external reality. I was reminded of this a few days later when, as I was preparing to leave the elevator on the fifteenth floor to let myself into Ron and Diana’s apartment, the key slipped from my fingers, teetered on the edge of the elevator floor, and then disappeared down the gap between the elevator and the corridor. Immediately my surroundings became unreal. I could not believe that the key could disappear in this way. I looked at my empty hand, the space where the key had gone, and did not believe it. It was not a matter of intellectually not believing it. The actual quality of my surroundings had changed. I could not be certain where I was or what was happening.

      Many introverts when external reality becomes unreal simply do not act. They stay still, or seek the least untrustworthy place they can find, like their own room, and resist other people’s efforts to get them to act, for they dare not risk an action in a reality they do not trust and which might bring disaster. However, what some of us learn to do is to act as if what we see is as it is. This is risky, for we could get СКАЧАТЬ