LIVING AND SEPARATING
Barrie Simmons
In the text, Barrie Simmons addresses the central theme of life: separation. The first true separation to which man is called is birth: from the death of the embryo to the person "thrown into the world," expelled from the embryonic paradise.
Subsequently, life is nothing but a succession of separations, the last of which is death. Throughout his existence, man strives to seek an illusory protection, like the original one he has lost.
How does he delude himself?
Rather than connecting with what is, men employ a series of defensive strategies that in Gestalt therapy are called "interruptions of contact." Men can use confluence, introjection, projection, retroflection, and deflection to avoid connecting with what is, with the aim of recreating a substitute womb for the mother's.
As humans grow, they specialize in creating dependent relationships, dictated by two polarities: hatred and attachment. Both polarities isolate and separate, preventing relational encounters with others. Childhood is the first period of life in which dependence is learned as a means of survival and growth.
The child initially depends on his parents who act as a protective shield, determining in adulthood a series of problems related to the relationship with power, the tendency to confluence and the inclination towards dependence.
Humans use countless and diverse methods to cling to events and people. Although life is a succession of losses—just think of the different stages of life—humans have enormous difficulty with separation.
Most psychotherapy clients are people who refuse to part with a phase of their lives, with someone or something. It's difficult to part not only with what we love, but also with what we hate. The adaptive response to mourning what we love is sadness, while mourning what we hate is joy.
However, our culture teaches us to inhibit the feelings evoked by loss, as they are socially unacceptable or difficult to sustain. Clinging to the past is the result of unfinished situations, such as childhood ones, which block direct expression and fuel indirect satisfaction through fantasy.
How do you keep the unfinished alive?
It is through chronic bodily tension, inhibited breathing, and the secondary gain of remaining in the past, holding onto the "I'm right" stance while awaiting a resolution to the conflict, that man continues to cling to the past. For separation to occur, the unexpressed, unfinished business must be expressed.
The emotional process of separation requires letting go of what is no longer there, learning to say goodbye. Yet, people persist in avoiding farewells by keeping busy, pretending nothing has happened, inhibiting emotions, and clinging to past experiences. deadHowever, these strategies cause physical symptoms (e.g. ulcers) and emotional symptoms, such as lack of affectivity, depression and the inability to form close relationships.
Health is connection, and functional relationships are those that thrive through the constant oscillation between fusion and separation. There must be a habitable space between me and the other, in which an authentic encounter can take place. "He who can truly separate from the other, can truly encounter the other." Separation requires a farewell.
The emphasis placed on the phase of saying goodbye, of saying goodbye, was one of Fritz Perls's notable contributions. Through therapy, it becomes possible to become aware, to express what has remained unexpressed, even if the person to whom it is addressed is no longer physically present.
Only through farewell does it become possible to forgive the hated person, to let go of the resentments that served to keep the person or the relationship alive, even to arrive at a certain love, to accept the person as they are or were.
Acceptance of the past is the only and inevitable path to the present and, therefore, to freeing oneself from old situations.
According to this model, living one's life is the only way to come to terms with death. I cannot accept my death if I haven't lived, if there's so much within me that hasn't been expressed.
What we have said so far about the difficulty of separating from a person, when there is unexpressed and unfinished material, is also true in the intrapsychic relationship, between that "I" and that "you" who are both myself.
Paradoxically, only by fully experiencing all the separations of life, do I live and prepare for death.
"To the extent that I have lived, I can afford to die."
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