Alternet
All too often, people do hurtful things with impunity and entitlement in
relationships simply to gratify their own needs.
Conventional therapeutic wisdom
aside, people typically don’t hurt each other because they’re out of
touch, unable to communicate, or can’t help themselves. All too
frequently, they do hurtful things with impunity and entitlement simply
to gratify their own needs. It’s an article of faith among many couples
therapists that bad behavior in troubled relationships stems primarily
from good intentions gone wrong. They see their clients as frightened
children, who may hurt each other, but mean no harm. Followers of
attachment theory feel that an underlying “fear of abandonment” drives
couples’ conflicts, and the ultimate therapeutic goal is to create a
warm, empathic experience, at least partly to make up for what the
client missed the first time around.
Thirty
years of working with couples and observing the limitations of this
attitude has led me to develop an approach not focused on clients’
fears, insecurities, or wounded “inner child,” or on the deficiencies of
their early attachments. Instead, it reflects the idea that people
typically don’t hurt each other because they’re out of touch, unable to
communicate, or can’t help themselves because of their early
experiences: they usually know the harm they’re doing, and often it is
quite deliberate. Rather than triggered by fear, shame, or insecurity,
people do hurtful things with impunity and entitlement to gratify their
own needs and wishes. It’s not that they’re “unconsciously recreating
their past,” it’s that they’re engaging in the form of relationship with
which they’re most familiar, one that, in fact, they prefer.
The key to grasping the roots of
this “inner game” is to understand the brain’s ability to map another
person’s mind—what I call “mind-mapping,” a process neuroscientists have
studied as the Theory of Mind for the past 30 years. Mind-mapping is a
survival skill that allows us to predict—and manipulate—other people’s
behavior by understanding their thoughts, feelings, and motivations. The
ability to mind-map generally emerges at age 4, as children’s brains
develop, heralded by the advent of their capacity to tell “fibs.” These
cute, clumsy attempts to lie coincide with a child’s realization that a
parent’s mind is capable of holding false beliefs, combined with the
dawning awareness that what people do depends on what’s in their mind.
Mind-mapping reaches adult form around age 11, when children begin to
understand adult sexual motivations and complex interpersonal agendas.
With the exception of people suffering from conditions like
schizophrenia, autism, and some forms of Asperger’s Syndrome, most
adults have mind-mapping capabilities; however, therapists may
underestimate its role in our relationships.
Marriage
is inconceivable without some degree of mind-mapping: you need it to
share a life with someone and understand what he or she means, wants,
and desires. Of course, it comes in handy if you want to be a good liar,
manipulator, or adulterer. You can’t be a successful therapist without
it, either! Fully appreciating the subtleties of partners’ ability to
mind-map each other can lead to stronger alliances with clients, and
faster, more intense, and farther-reaching treatment. But doing this
type of therapy means being drawn into depths of human motivation that
many therapists prefer to avoid. Consider the following case....
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