Are we doomed to only be subjective

Food for Thought

by Michael Sieck, Ph.D.

This time, we will continue our exploration into the depths of “who are we anyway?” To do this, we will look more deeply into the problem of language and naming and explore ways to move beyond this realm. Our studies will inevitably take us into non-verbal realms – and we will particularly explore the realm of the senses, emotion and the use of the body as source rather than as object or even actor.

Consider the following as you prepare for our upcoming retreat.

Language is a double-edged sword. It . . . makes some parts of our experience less shareable with ourselves and with others. It drives a wedge between two simultaneous forms of interpersonal experience: as it is lived and as it is verbally represented. . . . Language . . . causes a split in the experience of the self. It . . moves relatedness onto the impersonal, abstract level intrinsic to language and away from the personal immediate level intrinsic to . . . other domains of relatedness. (Daniel Stern)

To function, language utilizes the process of reification that we have previously explored and creates and/or utilizes object relationships as well. It is also a relatively late arrival in our consciousness from a developmental perspective.

Considering all the above, it is evident that what is lived cannot be and certainly was not fully captured in words! This is a price we pay for constituting a mode whereby we can begin to both reflect on and share experience. Let’s see if we can circumvent some of this and live an even richer life!

What are emotions and how do they fit into all this? First, it’s evident that speaking is a different register than what we feel. Lacan (1977) addressed the relationship between words and feelings this way: “The symbol manifests itself first of all as the murder of the thing, and this death constitutes in the subject the externalization of his desire.” Heavy stuff! Are we doomed to be only subjective then?

We experience the combination of interoceptive sensations (those arising from within our organism) and exteroceptive (from the outside) sensations and an urge for physical activation as an emotion. Such physical activation is not random but is based on genetically determined “action tendencies” that, by the time we’re adult, have been conditioned to all manner of previous exigencies. Thus, the experience of emotion results from a rather complex process involving the pairing of internal and external maps and information with genetically pre-programmed motor sequences and conditioned (altered) motor patterns to ultimately “motivate” an “appropriate” action.

For our current purposes, the final step of this process is that a movement is made or altered in some manner. OK? So what? So there is a “bottom up” processing of information that starts with genetics, utilizes the various sense organs and connects the processed data into action via emotional priming. The verbal naming and elaboration on all this occurs last. It can affect future movement and partially control current movements (in select circumstances) via feedback loops but derives its power and focus from all the underlying machinery/processes.

We have explored how attention is focused awareness and pursued some exercises to move it onto the somatic and underlying processes of consciousness and we will continue to elaborate and deepen this during the current retreat. Thusly, we will explore ways to get beyond the exaltation of words and to utilize the rich information available if we do. We will pay particular attention to blocked or incomplete movements as foundations of character, personality traits and much of human suffering. During group and individual work, we will explore what happens when we free up and complete these aborted or controlled sequences and also explore why it is often so difficult to even locate them in the first place!

For now, consider the following: Why do we rely so heavily on words? What are the risks and benefits of this? How does the tyranny of words (narratives, shared scripts, etc.) influence us as therapists and/or clients? What is the role of emotion in all this? How do interactions between the verbal and emotional worlds create and sustain a sense of self and of what is real? Can this be clarified or altered?

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My response to whether we were doomed to only be subjective . . .

Child clients embody this problem the best. Those who were traumatized during their developing years appear to have a particularly difficult time expressing themselves through language. In fact, this is how their avoidance defense mechanism gets formed. I suppose this is how when we're grown even with better resources and trauma is triggered it becomes an emotional problem. In other words, even though an adult can know better, he can't keep trauma neurons from firing and doing the same damned stuff again. With therapy these triggers can be caught, but depending on ones needs continued support might be needed particularly if the current community (ecosystem) does not meet this need.  A good example is when doing somatic support stretching exercises with one another, our instructions were for us to find someone about the same size and height to help with the cooperative/ supportive stretches. I couldn't possibly do that with someone who is almost a foot taller than me and more than twice my weight. So even physical support/stretching to unwound those bound up neurons in this scenario is an impossibility.

Therefore, one gets stuck with conditioned firing/trauma vortex/ subjective emotional experience (both in words and body?).

Words are relied on heavily for it is what sets us apart as human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom. The risk of relying heavily is that emotions and trauma are reified, if you will, and therefore murdered. We stay with cerebral information, or the murdered thing, and therefore also further inculcate the blocked or incomplete movements. The benefit is that we are able to communicate certain information.

Preliminarily when I have read this food for thought, I noted that my blocked or incomplete movements get triggered whenever conflict arises. Any opportunity to second-guess or doubt myself is easily delved into.