July 8: Unconscious Motivations
If I am doing something that doesn't work, today I will look for
possible unconscious motivations. Early wounds need to be brought up to
a conscious level where I can see and feel them. Repeating
self-destructive behaviors is a futile attempt to correct the original
imbalance.
I look for deeper reasons.
What is so striking in Flaubert . . . is his probably unconscious
insight that behind what pretends to be freedom lies hidden a deep and
very early dependency. It is the dependency of someone who was not
permitted to say no because his mother could not bear it, and who
therefore refuses all his life to commit himself to his partners in the
hope of making up for what was never possible with his mother-namely, to
say, "I am your child but you have no right to my whole being and my
whole life." Since the seducer is able to assume this attitude toward
women only as an adult but not in the early relationship with his
mother, his conquests cannot undo his original defeat, and since the
pain of early childhood is merely concealed, not cured, by these
conquests, the old wounds cannot heal. The repetition compulsion is
perpetuated.
Alice Miller
Tags: Affirmations
