B. Taking The Blame, Dealing With Injustice Collecting And Psychic Masochism

This is something that I have tried to teach to every patient I have seen for the last 35 years; it is that important.

The statement is simple: whatever happens to you, assume first that it is your fault.

There are a number of reasons for this and a number of benefits. First, let's deal with Bergler's discussion of psychic masochism and injustice collecting (page 359).

Recall that in the quotes from Bergler, it was pointed out that this malady is found in nearly everyone and that it is based on projection. To collect injustices, you have to start with the assumption that you are the innocent victim of someone else's malice. But if you take the blame, there goes the injustice and there goes the projection. Assuming that whatever happens to you is your fault in one step breaks the pattern of psychic masochism.

That is one advantage of this technique. A second advantage is, once stated, more obvious. It has three parts. First, you can change yourself, you can not change the other person. Blaming the other person leaves your behavior unexamined and therefore unchanged. You have gained nothing by the experience. Second, no matter what the other person did, there were things that either you did that contributed to it or things that you failed to consider that allowed it to happen. Finally, by blaming yourself first, you can start to see patterns in your life such that this type of thing tends to happen. In other words, by blaming yourself first you get a window into your character.

Footnote 100. But be careful that you do not then start to use the idea of taking blame as a new form of masochism (that would involve a coping mechanism I am not discussing, the mechanism of secondary gain.)

A third advantage is based on our discussion some time ago that emotions are a result of cognitive evaluation. Outside of evolutionarily inherent fear reactions to physically threatening events, all emotions — in this case your emotional reaction to the event or the series of events — does not say anything about the event; it says something about you. Again outside of inherent fear reactions, no emotion is inherent in any situation. Any emotional response you have to any event is not a function of the event; it is a function of your nature in relation to the event. To the extent that you hold yourself blameless and the other person guilty, to that extent you are treating your emotional response as not of your making, not of your (subconscious) choice. To the extent that you blame the other person for "what he (or she) did to me," to that extent you are viewing yourself as passive and without choice.

Three good reasons to blame yourself first. Now what do you do with that approach? How do you use that technique to get at your character?

Before I can address that issue, there are some basic rules of self-study and self-restructuring that I need to lay out.

1. Gather Data, Don't Make Changes

The goal is to gather data, not to make changes. The changes will come by themselves as you work back to the underlying concepts. Without data you will never uncover the underlying concepts. Change simply leads to symptom substitution and to the exact same character system being presented in a different form. Pictorially, if you are looking for the rabbit in one hole, you won't see him escape out another hole.

2. Behavior Is Over-Determined

Behavior is over-determined. We get the concept of over-determined from Freud. It means that a given behavior or set of behaviors does not arise from a single source; it or they arise from the confluence of several sources. Finding one mistaken concept that undergirds your data will not result in change. You need to chew the data, always looking for yet another and then another concept that feeds into the observed data.

3. Data Needs Constant Reanalysis To Be Useful

You observe something about yourself. You, properly, ask: why am I doing this?; why am I feeling this?; in what way is this given behavior characteristic of me?; in what way is this behavior unusual for me?; what part of this behavior is ego-syntonic and what part ego-dystonic?; what were other possible response and why did I either (a) not choose (what prevented me from choosing) any of those other possible responses and/or (b) what personal catastrophe would I expect to happen if I chose any given other response (mainly, why do I expect that other response would result in anxiety)?; what other ways can I label or group or view this behavior?

The most common error in self-study is to observe a behavior or an emotion and use a now familiar and timeworn label and explanation. That is not self-study, it is rehearsal of pathology. We will examine this again when we get to the language of emotion, but the principle is general. Keep trying to describe the situation using new words.

At this point, when teaching this to the people I treat, I always have to deal with an unasked but implicit question: how will I know when I am right, how will I know if I have chosen a right word or a wrong word?

There are two answers to that question. The first and most important answer is: it doesn't matter. Just assume you are right and examine the situation, behavior, emotion, etc. You won't know whether you are right or wrong and it doesn't matter. The important issue is the investigation, not the answer.

The second answer is that if you hit on a good one your body will tell you. When you hit on a new description or a new conceptualization that is close to the right one you will get a body response. Perhaps a shiver, perhaps a flush (hot or cold), perhaps a tightening in the pit of your stomach; you will get some body response.

That is one of the beauties of a Reichian approach. It makes the body more responsive to affect and it makes one more sensitive to their feelings (that is, more sensitive to changes in body sensation). Speaking for myself, when I happen on a good way to think about something (in a different way) I get a shiver up my spine; that tells me I am on to something.

Footnote 101. See footnote 3 on page 15 for the distinction between affect, emotion and feeling.

4. You Are Fighting Your Own Character

This is the old "lift yourself up by your bootstraps" problem. You are using your own flawed character to study your own flawed character. Your own character stands in the way of you discovering your character. There is no way out of this conundrum. The only thing you can do to fight this circularity problem is to try ever new ways to think about an issue. The more outlandish your new way is the more likely you are to hit on a valuable and right answer. This problem is especially intense when it comes to dealing with feelings. The answer is the same, but I will hold off a full discussion for a few pages till we get to language and emotion in the techniques section.

5. Wants Become Functionally Autonomous

The principle here is easily stated — and thus easily ignored.

You never want what you want you want the wanting!

Don't just read the above sentence and pass on; give yourself a few minutes to concentrate on it and examine yourself in light of the principle.

Initially a want starts out as just that: something we want. But over time, the want itself becomes autonomous (independent) of the original stimulus and takes on a life of its own. It become its own life-style repetition compulsion (page 411). As adults we have character-based things that we seek. But, it turns out, that by the time we are able to actively seek to satisfy those wants, they have already become autonomous of their original stimulus and we only act "as if" we want a result. In fact the want itself has become its own motivational element and we now live out the wanting as its own dynamic.

Examine your own wants (marriage, kids, money, fame, security, etc.) and you will, hopefully, discover in what way the want has become functionally autonomous. Let's take children as a example. Initially you had dreams or phantasies of what it would be like to have a child. You envisioned teaching the child things, of family trips, of revisiting Disney Land now as an adult such that your children could experience the same joy you experienced when you were a child.

Then the child comes and you never have time for family trips, teaching the child all the things you have learned becomes conflicted instead of the imagined fun, and the trip to Disney Land becomes a nightmare of long lines and a bored child. But the reality of having a child does not quiet the want. If this child is not the one you wanted, the next one will be. The want (for a child) has become functionally autonomous and continues with its own dynamic.

Having laid out the rules of self-study, now I can get back to the issue of using the technique of blaming yourself first to discover your character.

Footnote 102. This phrase is historically associated with Alfred Adler, who took it from a philosopher of the time.