On the Inability To Say "Good"

Let me tell you a story, sadly, not a bedtime story but more like a nightmare. I tell you because many of you want to hear more about me. But I do not write about me as an exercise in narcissism; rather it is always to elucidate, to help others understand themselves.

Many years ago when my father was alive he came over to see the grandchildren. It was 1969. As he walked in he saw a bunch of papers on the dining table, and said, “what’s this?” I said it is a book I just finished called The Primal Scream. He leafed through it for less than 30 seconds and said, “We know all this,” dropped it and went on to something else. He didn’t have time to read even one page but he knew “all this.” It hurt, of course, but it was the leitmotif of our relationship.

He was a failure in everything he tried, took a correspondence course in law and failed that, and felt very stupid. He was, after all, a truck driver. He then would never allow himself to feel stupid again; hence “we know all that.” And he could be reassured that he was not stupid if he could put me down. Which he did at every turn until I was convinced I was stupid and never thought about college until I was sent to university by the Navy. The idea that his “stupid” son wrote a book was far too threatening to him. He could not let himself try to understand it, and maybe find out he couldn’t.

It is an art form never to say an approving word to your child in the twenty years you spend together. But his inner feelings would not let him do anything else. It was too painful to feel like a failure.

Now two forces were at work. One my left brain: “he couldn’t help himself. He had a driving, disapproving father himself. “ And the other--right brain: I hurt. And my primal was, “Say I’m good, just once, please!” There was where the hurt resided. He never thought about hurting me. He only thought about defending himself no matter what the cost to others. He wasn’t relating to me; only to himself. He couldn’t see the agony he was producing because he was trying to extricate himself out of pain. But his need set me on a lifetime goal of “say I’m good.” And I became good at what I did because I worked like mad at it. But it was always there in my behavior until I felt it in primal.

So you now see the difference between primal therapy and psychoanalysis: one is left brain; “after all”, says the doctor, “you have accomplished so much. You really are good.” And primal: “I feel bad. I hurt, say I’m good, please.” That stops the act-out and lets us rest. So the real feelings are down deep and right brain, while the excuse, the rationale is left brain and helps cover over the right brain. It can bury that brain amidst a flurry of rationales. And alas, it ensures that we spend a lifetime trying to get something in the present that never existed in the past. We chase a chimera, a phantom, some ineffable something that, believe it or not, we are never aware of. The act-out is as unconscious as the feeling itself. The chase is on and we simply cannot relax after that. We go to the beach, lie in the sand, and cannot stay like that for more than a few minutes than the phantom rears is head again. We run from the feeling just like my dad. He was a victim of his feelings which he never knew existed but that kept him from loving anyone. He was waiting for it first for himself.