Spirituality Studies 10-2 Fall 2024 35 Jeffrey Katzman, Ben Bernstein, Matthew Ponak ported many people in the Warsaw Ghetto before he was killed in a concentration camp: God, blessed be he, is to be found in his inner chambers weeping, so that one who pushes in and comes close to him by means of studying Torah, weeps together with God, and studies Torah with him. Just this makes the difference: the weeping, the pain, which a person undergoes by himself, alone may have the effect of breaking him, of bringing him down, so that he is incapable of doing anything; But the weeping, which the person does together with God – that strengthens him. He weeps – and is strengthened: he is broken- but finds courage to study and teach. It is hard to raise one’s self up, time and again, from the tribulations, but when one is determined, stretching his mind to connect to the Torah and Divine service, then he enters the Inner Chambers, where the Blessed holy One is to be found; he weeps and wails together with him, as it were, and even finds the strength to study Torah and serve him. And yet another experience of the Self through connection to God involves a sense of equanimity: “The cause of equanimity is attaching the mind to God. The one who is connected and joined to the mind of God, even though people do things to him, he does not feel it. He does not pay attention to ‘soothsayers and diviners’.” (Isaac ben Samuel 1981, 281–282). These descriptions add to the more reified, structured, idea of the Self through an understanding that when this Self is ultimately experienced as connected to something greater, something that connects us all, experiences from ecstasy to sadness to balance are felt. And it is in these experiences that we find our own sense of becoming “real”. 6 Fracturing of the Self 6.1 Psychoanalytic Perspectives Ultimately, as Winnicott described through the process of False Self development, the True Self cannot endure and relies on protection to survive. In a sense, it becomes buried beneath the protection of the False Self. Fairbairn goes one step deeper in the discussion of what happens to us internally – a description of the processes of our mind. On some level, as a minister, he could speak a slightly different language than other psychoanalysts, also bringing a sense of spiritual background to his ideas. Fairbairn outlined our birthright not as a “True Self” as Winnicott described so simply and eloquently, but rather referred to this same entity as the “central pristine ego”. Like Winnicott, he explains that it is not possible for us to continue as a central pristine ego or True Self. We ultimately must accommodate to some extent. Even if the external world isn’t so wonderful, we must adapt – and we must see those that care for us and on whom we are dependent as good. We need to eat, to have a place to live, and someone to generally look after us, even if the situation isn’t the best. We may idealize our own upbringing in the name of this survival. What of the badness, then, that we experience from those that oversee us from the earliest moments? Where does it go in our quest to see our caretakers as good? Fairbairn explains that it is introjected. Energy is taken away from our central pristine ego in the development of what he termed “endopsychic structures”. The Self becomes structured – now impure. We develop internal subsidiary selves. He refers to them as “internal saboteurs” and a “band of fifth columnists.” This process takes energy away from our central pristine ego, which is in a sense dulled. Energy is taken from the central pristine ego along with the badness that could not be seen in the external world of our caregivers. It is internalized, and it is repressed. We are unaware of the process. These internalized subsidiary selves wreak havoc on the Self. If we try to feel good, these will keep us down. They represent the equivalent forces of our home in early life. Fairbairn (1952, 65) writes: By this means he seeks to purge them of their badness; and, in proportion as he succeeds in doing so, he is rewarded by that sense of security, which an environment of good objects so characteristically confers. To say that the child takes upon himself the burden of badness, which appears to reside in his objects is, of course, the same thing as to say that he internalizes bad objects. The sense of outer security resulting from this process of internalization, is, however, liable to be seriously compromised by the resulting presence within him of internalized bad objects. Outer security is thus purchased at the price of inner insecurity, and his ego is henceforth left at the mercy of a band of internal fifth columnists or persecutors, against which defenses have to be, first hastily erected, and later laboriously consolidated. The process of psychotherapy for Fairbairn is one in which the patient comes to trust the therapist sufficiently to face and experience the impact of the original source of badness. With enough trust in the therapeutic relationship,
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