Natural History Museum, Oxford. Monday. Cretaceous period

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Memories/Memoir and/as Therapy

I’ve been reading Jonathan Franzen’s "The Discomfort Zone". It’s primarily a memoir of his childhood and adolescence, his relationship with his mother when she was terminally ill, with the sale of the former family home after her death as the initial point of departure. As almost always happens when I’m reading other people’s memoirs about their childhood, I
find myself recalling little scenes or sense memories from my own past, and these ripple and echo and repeat, firing and refiring the neural connections that have been stimulated so many times before: reinforcement, reinforcement, reinforcement…

Similarly, I could reflect that these ‘automatic’ recollections of these familiar images and feelings (the things that I like to recall, and to wallow in) are analogous with the repeated responses and behaviours that are firmly embedded in my unconscious repertoire, in my psychology, in the physical substrate on which those psychological structures have been built;
in my way of thinking about myself (and my self), my attitudes, the way that I ‘am’ in the world.

And it might be more important to reflect that it’s not these familiar, often-looked-at images that I need to re-examine again if I am going to change my course (or at least vary the range of experiences that I open myself up to – habit, damnit): on either side of each familiar image, and above and below them, there are darker, less visited places; the places where you don’t want to shine the light because the things there are too difficult and frightening; the underlying/embedded structures of your life and behaviour that you skirt around/ignore through habit or by (conscious or unconscious) design. These places might be illuminated by a few simple questions or observations from those people that know you and love you best, or by you posing those questions to yourself. However, because you’re a bit sensitive and difficult and cowardly and habitually evasive and in denial, you don’t ask those questions – not really – and you tend to steer clear of people and situations that might throw you, that might force you to confront these weaknesses or difficulties; the things that might expose you or make you vulnerable; and you only allow people who ‘respect your space’ (physical and psychological) to get close(ish) to you – the people who won’t ruffle your feathers, who won’t press you too hard about what’s really going on with you and your life, who will (with the best intentions and respect for you as an autonomous individual) help you to carry on being who you are and behaving in the way in which you’ve become accustomed to behaving (i.e. in a way that protects and perpetuates this established, habituated self/persona).

And thus you remain in this emotional/behavioural holding pattern, repeating what you have done before, revisiting the places and people and states that bring you solace, and continuing not to find things beyond the familiar and comforting, things beyond what you have already known and experienced, sometimes rationalising this as a way of maintaining your current state of stability/happiness/contentment, while simultaneously knowing that there is something different underneath these professions of objective rational analyses.

[too private]

And these repeated patterns become fossilised, atrophied, stuck. It occurred to me that it might be interesting (and potentially useful) for me to track back to my own childhood, adolescence and adulthood in order to deconstruct/reconstruct some of the formative experiences, sensations, images, relationships and stories: the habits, conflicts, addictions, patterns of thought, affectations, camouflages, screens and maladaptive behaviours (and patterns of thought). To uncover and illuminate for myself those darker corners beyond the things that are now so over-familiar as to have become transparent.

Next: I am born