The Dilemma of the Psychopathic Character Style
Michael Mervosh’s Lecture for PSEN Training Spain
November 8th, 2013
In a romantically inclined culture, we all carry some tendency wish or want to be ‘the
special one’. We have carried the desire to hear “You are my one and only.” The issue
for the psychopathic character is that we have to see in our adult lives all the ways we
have unconsciously learned to be loved conditionally. We seek to be someone’s ‘one and
only’, only until we do not rise up to meet the expectations of what another’s fantasy is
of their special one. Many of us have learned to be loved by rising up to meet the high
expectations and emotional needs of others. Then as we grow older, we in turn insist
that someone else has to rise up to meet our expectations, in order to be special to us.
To heal from this illusion about love and specialness, one that is intimately tied into our
identity and self worth, we have to understand the dynamics of seduction and betrayal.
Ultimately, we have to learn to see the ways that we have unconsciously played out a
pattern of self-betrayal in our relationship to life.
It is important that we suspend self-judgment as we do this. We can’t afford to use the
tool of self-examination as a weapon – as a way to accuse ourselves of having done
something bad or wrong, and turn against ourselves in self-blame. This will be our
opportunity to simply see that we have lived out a pattern that we know all too well, but
something about that is mistaken, even if it makes sense to us and feels familiar to us. It
just doesn’t work. We have to see this so that we can make an adjustment to that error
and a correction to our course. Then we can make new choices that create a better way
of life and love.
As we look within at the dilemma of the psychopathic wound, transformation begins as
we see that we have seduced ourselves out of our own true life and therefore we don’t
live from what’s really true and right for us. We see how much we would prefer to be
special to somebody else than true to ourselves.
Of course, it is painful to see the truth of our misguided approaches to self-worth and
love. So when we see our pattern of self-betrayal clearly, it hurts and it wakes us up.
This is an important pain to experience, because it has had the very real consequence of
making poor choices that have limited or impoverished our lives.
But if we can bear this painful clarity without being too disappointed in ourselves, and
without immediately rejecting ourselves, we can soften into the acceptance of our pain
and our life’s mistake. This softening within is what creates the opportunity for deeper
self-acceptance and self-compassion.
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Once we accept our pain, we can finally learn what it’s like to be ordinary. We can
understand that being ordinary is not a curse or a shortcoming, it does not mean we’re
mediocre or just average, it simply means that we’re human and we are like everybody
else. This is a tremendous relief to discover, once we get over the disappointment of our
realization that we are not all that special, that we are simply a lot like everybody else.
At the same time, there is always a young, childlike part of us that will cling to the wish
for specialness, and will feel like we really need to feel this way to someone. We do
need to experience being significant to someone else, but not in a way that makes us
more than somebody else. So, when we seek out places to be special, what we actually
do is we reject the part of ourselves that could actually do the do-able, ordinary things
that would make us significant to someone.
We also have to confront that we may afraid that we can’t do the do-able that many
others can do, or we may insist that we shouldn’t have to do them. In order to mature,
we have to look and see that the things that anyone can do – and this is hard to look at –
we just don’t want to do. When we think that we’re special, we begin to think that we
shouldn’t have to do what everyone else has to do.
Now here is another dilemma: It’s human nature to want to be special, but it’s also a big
problem when you insist upon it. Do you know what the problem is with being special?
We don’t experience it only positively. We will experience that same sense of
specialness negatively as well – as being worse than everybody else.
In case you haven’t already noticed, human beings have a tendency towards grandiose
thinking. We sometimes just don’t realize we’re not that special. Then we have the
same problem negatively - we tend to be grandiose about our fears. We think that if we
don’t rise to the occasion, people will actually hate us or want nothing to do with us. If
we don’t rise up to the occasion, we will think there’s something terrible about us that’s
unredeemable. This is where self- rejection is deeply rooted. Because we really think
there’s something terrible in us, it won’t matter what other people think about us when
it is positive and good. The best that we can do is put those thoughts aside for a little
while, we are constantly being reassured by others.
We all know that feeling of being vulnerable to rejection: “Oh my God, now I know I am
terrible - because I made a bad mistake. I’m terrible because I did something really
wrong. I’m terrible because the person who I live with is no longer speaking to me and I
have no idea why…” It just goes on and on like this in our heads.
The other root of this bad feeling is the feeling of helplessness or worthlessness. The
feeling of worthlessness is underneath all the terrible feelings we hold about ourselves.
This pervasive sense of helplessness originates from being young children who couldn’t
make the people who were important to us love us for who we were. No one can make
someone else choose to love us. They either are willing and able to do that, or they can’t
or don’t that. That’s the vulnerability.
As children, we did not have the ego strength to see that the deficit was in the
environment; we only have the capacity to see the deficit as being inside of ourselves.
We internalize the failures of the environment around us, and take them upon ourselves.
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Our deep sense of unworthiness and helplessness are the places that we tend to reject
about ourselves. It creates a downward spiral, especially when we are left to our own
devices. This type of embedded unworthiness we can’t heal only by ourselves, which
also frustrates us. We feel despairing that we can’t make these feelings go away. We
withdraw more and more from the world and from our authentic self.
What allows this feeling to heal? How do we get okay again when we feel worthless?
How does this healing process happen? For starters, not by ourselves. This is a kind of
good news and bad news at the same time. On the one hand, we feel less alone. On the
other, we feel our need for other people. This kind of ruins our grandiosity.
We all need somebody else’s presence when we are at our most vulnerable. Some of us
haven’t yet realized that genuinely needing somebody else in our lives is a sign of health,
and it can be a strength. We need other people to help us when we’re struggling with
our own deep worthlessness.
Our deepest psychic pain originated in relationship to other people, especially those
who were significant to us and responsible at one point for our wellbeing. You can’t heal
something by yourself if it originated from somebody else. So the big risk for the
psychopathic character in particular, but for all the character styles, is that we have to
let the presence of another person being there with us matter to us, or else nothing will
move inside.
When we do this, we co-create a relational field between us and the person who is
becoming a significant companion to our healing journey. We let them be there, we care
that they are with us, and their presence makes a difference. We don’t treat them like
they’re the cashier at the convenient store. “Here’s my problem, tell me what to do. I’m
done, thank you. I feel better!” or “I don’t feel better, nobody really helps me anyway”.
We have to be available for the presence of the other person, so that we feel them both
with us and for us. And that’s what makes us feel so vulnerable.
Why we feel so vulnerable in our time of need, especially when confronting feelings of
worthlessness? Because it feels unbelievable that someone would be present to us if we
weren’t living up to the expectations that we are unconsciously projecting on to them,
sort of like an archaic parent. If we are struggling with feeling worthless and just are
not okay with ourselves, we can’t quite seem to believe another person would be
interested and available to us.
Our unconscious expectation of the other is that they are going to be disappointed in us,
agitated with us or bored with us, and we have to work through that. We have to let a
new outcome or new encounter become possible. Then we explore how to let them
provide us with something that we don’t already have inside, which confronts even
more grandiosity. We are humble that other people would have something to offer us
that we didn’t think of, didn’t already have or already know. Then we have to learn how
to receive it, take it in, and take it to our heart.
Learning how to do this is key! If we are willing to accept the ordinary presence and
good will of others, everything becomes possible. What was previously unthinkable
now becomes doable, and that is very empowering. The working through of being
helped confronts our specialness and our negative grandiosity. If we are sure no one
will support us, we don’t ever have to open up.
So when we look at exactly how we have rejected about ourselves, it’s the beginning of a
rescue mission. We go back to those places where we were most hurt or rejected, the
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opportunities for healing encounters are quite doable and also quite transforming. We
find that if we are willing to go to new spaces inside that need healing, that there will be
many people who could be there with us in it. How are we currently rejecting that very
possibility?
So what if the reality is that there are many decent and kind people could be and would
be present to us in our time of need. How do we manage to think that most people are
not willing enough or good enough for us? Can we see how much rejection we tend to
project out into the world? It’s very, very humbling to confront one’s grandiose
thinking about the deficits of others. I’ll tell a story about my grandiose thinking.
We were in a Gestalt training group and we eventually came to realize that we were
being a difficult group to run. We knew this for sure when new facilitators came in. For
some reason I don’t recall, they had to work with us because the other ones couldn’t or
wouldn’t, and we were at a standstill. We were Gestalt therapist trainees, mind you! As
a group, we started to take some pride in our resistance and so not much was ever
happening in there. Lots of heavy silence.
So the new therapists are just sitting there with us, and sitting there with us, and we
were sitting there, too, saying and doing nothing. And then one of the therapists says
brilliantly: “There doesn’t seem to be much happening here.” I made the mistake of
speaking up. I said: “Well, of course not, because it’s not safe in here. That’s why nobody
talks.” He said “Oh, so you don’t feel safe.” I said: “No.” So he looks at me and says: “So,
tell me, which one of these fine people is about to cut your balls off?” I said: “Oh well, I
guess it’s not that unsafe after all!” Things started moving after that. That’s an example
of a grandiose thought. It helped to cast a spell over everyone in the group, and
especially over myself.
It’s an amazing thing to walk around constantly saying that the world is not safe, and
then putting pressure on other people to do something about that for me. The world
just doesn’t work like that. Part of the exploration that we do as facilitators is: “Tell me
what’s not so safe? How exactly don’t you feel safe?”, because we get so used to our
stories that we believe them, and then we lose sight of what is actually doable.
In order for us to heal, we have to be willing to keeping doing what’s doable. As clients,
we have to confront our pain of how we reject what’s most true or real for us,
particularly wherever we feel vulnerable, or when it doesn’t meet a high expectation we
hold of ourselves.
As a therapist, or practitioner, we have to call into question the grandiose thinking of
our clients. “Nobody here is capable of supporting me.” In our vulnerability and in our
illusions, we tend to make grandiose statements: “My pain is so great, nobody could
contain me.” That’s a real feeling we have sometimes. “My fury is so big, nobody could
withstand it.” “My fear is so big, I won’t withstand it. I will be annihilated!” Then, the
real work is saying: “Well, let’s do a doable step. Let's explore exactly what that might
be, and what is actually too much.” And then in this way, we confront and work through
our specialness of “Hmmm, if it’s doable, I’m not so interested…” For example, although
speaking authentically in our Gestalt group was doable, we were choosing not to talk,
and instead we were compelled to act something out.
As practitioners, we have to learn to let the client’s pain be the client’s pain, and we can’t
afford to identify with the projections of how great we are as facilitators if we contribute
towards their feeling better, or how terrible we are if they are not getting better right
away.
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We will have to be willing to challenge somebody’s belief system a little bit, gently
sometimes, other times more firmly, “Nobody really understands me…” You know this
feeling, right? “Okay, maybe I am not going to be able to understand you. Are you sure
no one can? How does that come to be? Are you making the effort to make yourself
understood? Do you feel like you’ve made enough effort to reveal yourself?” Because
the client is the one who has to do the work, and the facilitator can’t get pulled in to
compensate for the disbelief of the client. That is tiring, and never really works.
Then there is the oral character’s unconscious demands of “You should understand me!
I shouldn’t have to say anything about it. We should magically merge about my needs, so
I don’t have to do the work!”
But for us with the psychopathic character dilemmas, we probably have merged with
other people’s idealized projections on to us, so we feel a terrible pressure to rise to the
occasion, and we feel terrible about ourselves when we don’t. And the terribleness and
the pain of that is the beginning of the work to find one’s true self.
We have to come to realize that the pain that we feel when we’re not rising up to
somebody else’s expectations is where we have lost and betrayed ourselves. And that
hurts. It’s supposed to hurt, and we can bear the hurt.
There’s a certain kind of internal motivation that can awaken when we feel a certain
kind of pain. We need no other motivation than that, as it pulls us together in a new way
to say to ourselves: “I do not want to live like this anymore!” That’s different than
bitching about how “I’m so sick of living like this, I can’t stand this, I’m tired of living like
that!” That’s just whining to discharge enough energy to stay the same.
Sometimes healing is letting something bother us enough so that it goes into the core of
our being in a way we’ll never forget, and rather than judging ourselves or turning on
ourselves or other people in blame, it inspires us to awaken to wanting to live
differently.
That’s hopeful! Again, this becomes a softer pain as well as an undeniable pain, and it
makes us want to be who we are really capable of being. And so then we’ll need to let
the people we are with to matter to us, and let them be good enough for us. We notice
that they look upon us and they behave towards us with acceptance, and simple loving
kindness, in ordinary ways that we can bear. They don’t make our pain special, or our
talents special, nothing has to be special about us for them. That comes to be a relief to
us. And them just maybe that can create the conditions for what’s really most authentic
will shine through.
Specialness has a gloss that kind of reflects everything, but authenticity kind of shines
through from within. It doesn’t matter if it’s our sadness or our joy that is pouring forth.
It also won’t really matter if our clients are really angry, scared, joyful, laughing, or
content, all we have to do as the facilitator is to be embodied, mindful and present authentic, without trying to make someone feel good. We can simply tell them what we
see and what we feel when we are present to them and with them. Very human. Very
doable. Everyone here is capable of it.
It’s very, very humbling to see our grandiosity being illuminated. And it can be really
quite exciting to shed this for something else. Well, I suppose it’s okay to be grandiose
in our thinking for a little while; it kind of gets some energy moving, and then we will
have to ground it down. Unlike the oral character structure, the psychopathic character
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doesn’t need to grow up. He, or she, has to grow down, like the schizoid has to learn.
Just come here to the ground level and be ordinary with the rest of us, which is always
such a tremendous relief, once the disappointment of specialness brings us back down
to the ground.
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