Multiple Selves, Multiple Gods?
Functional Polytheism and the Post-Modern Religious Patient

Adobe Acrobat Version

Lisa M. Cataldo, Ph.D.
Fordham University, Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education

Draft only: please do not cite without permission

The most accurate model of human existence will be able to account for its innate diversity, both among individuals and within each individual. Hence the soul’s inherent multiplicity demands a theological fantasy of equal differentiation.
-- James Hillman1

I have integrated all my diversity, and individualized all my wholeness
-- Hadewijch2

This is a clinical paper, not a theological paper. Or, if I may borrow loosely from the opening sentences of the final chapter of AnaMaria Rizzuto’s Birth of the Living God, this is not a paper about God. This is a paper about people’s multiple relationships with what they designate as God. More specifically, it is about the multiple selves that some of my patients have brought into the psychotherapeutic space and the multiple Gods to whom those selves relate. I will present clinical examples that show if we take multiplicity seriously as a vision of self, we are led to consider that our religious lives comprise a kind of functional polytheism, even if we profess faith in a monotheistic tradition. At the same time, I will explore the limits of multiplicity as a concept of self, and argue that our appreciation of multiple selves is only possible in the relation to a sense of self as unified, continuous, and relatively whole. I will approach this material in four parts: a brief review of the concept of multiplicity from a relational psychoanalytic viewpoint; a consideration of the argument that the sense of cohesive continuous self is an illusion; an explanation of what I mean by functional polytheism, and finally examples which illustrate the different ways that multiplicity of self and God can appear in clinical practice.

Multiplicity

At a recent psychoanalytic conference I mentioned to a colleague that I would be part of this panel on multiplicity. She replied, “Oh, do you believe in multiplicity?” Until then, I hadn’t thought of multiplicity as something one believed in or not, like the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny or God. However, my colleague’s question reminded me that there are those who find the notion of multiple selves unbelievable, or at least, unattractive. They prefer to think of the self as one self, with different aspects perhaps, but a self with a trueness, a reality, a “there there” at the center or the depths. Among these we might count contemporary Self Psychologists such as Frank Lachman (1996) who asks “How many selves make a person?” and insists “Yes, one self is enough.”  At the other end of the spectrum are the relational theorists (e.g. Bromberg, 2001, 1991; Davies 1997, 1996, 1994; Flax, 1996, Mitchell 1993; M. Slavin, 1996; Stern, 2007) who view the self as inherently multiple and changing over time. In the relational view, the sense of a cohesive, continuous self is seen as an “illusion” that develops out of an original experience of discontinuity and disunity. What we know as the self (‘me”) is an aggregate of multiple self-states, reflecting varied and sometimes mutually exclusive experience of self-in-relationship. The multiplicity of relational experiences calls forth corresponding self-states which exist in varied relation to the “I” experienced in the moment.

This multiplicity is not a pathological result of trauma or splitting, but is the normative state that “originates as a multiplicity of self-other configurations” in early life. (Bromberg, 1991, 396) It is only over time that we develop a sense of cohesive or continuous identity, being able to take for granted a sense of being “me,” at least most of the time. The relational model of self moves away from the spatial metaphor of surface and depth or a trueness at the “core” to a temporal metaphor (Mitchell, 1993), wherein the self is seen as a dynamic amalgamation of different, often radically conflicting, self-states originating in specific emotionally–charged interactions, which are evoked from moment to moment in relation to what is encountered in the here and now.3 

This view of self takes dissociation out of the exclusive realm of pathology, and positions it as a normal function of the mind. When we are occupying (or occupied by) one self-state, the others are dissociated to a greater or lesser degree, but are present, out of awareness, having their own subjective experiences of what is going on. This is not pathology, but the way in which a multiply organized mind functions normally. This kind of dissociation must be distinguished from the pathological dissociation – fragmentation and splitting – which results from trauma or significant experiences of deprivation or impingement. (Davies, 1998) Traumatic fragmentation is the result experiences so overwhelming to the person’s sense of “me” that they must be split off and sequestered in order to preserve the feeling of selfhood. At the extreme, this manifests in dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as “multiple personality”). According to Jodie Davies (19980 DID and other forms of fragmentation are the opposite of true multiplicity, because rather than opening up new possibilities of self-experience and relating, they foreclose the ability to live consciously and creatively.  Dissociation, then, exists on a continuum from fluid multiplicity to pathological fragmentation; the more early trauma we have experienced, the more likely it is that some self-states will be split-off and inaccessible to consciousness.  In the best case, we have access to our multiple states, being aware of the “different parts” of ourselves and the conflicts between them.

The self-states that inhabit our inner world are experienced not as only as abstract concepts or feeling-states, but as people, as individual selves. As Donnel Stern writes, “We do not understand ourselves as concatenations of affects, cognitions, and conations, however reasonable it may be under some circumstances to describe our minds in these terms. Instead, we sense our fragments as characters.”  (11) Thus we might experience the “child me,” the “envious me,” or the “confident me” at different times and in different circumstances. Psychoanalysts who work directly with patients’ self-states, including myself, have found that different self-states have different physiological characteristics -- different postures, voices, and characteristic gestures – and different ways of interpreting the world, including the present moment of the analytic encounter.  Graham Bass (2007), who is both an analyst and a body worker (in separate practices)  speculates that if we monitored patients’ heartbeat, blood pressure and temperature, these too would be different in alternate self-states. (165) Patients sometimes identify their self-states by different names or titles. One very defended woman identified a “little soldier,” a girl of about 8 years old who marched back and forth making sure that no one, particularly me, could get by her to the vulnerable 6 year old she protects. Another woman had a “bouncer” who performed a similar function, while another patient avoids panic attacks by keeping in mind the “wild, red-haired woman” self, who is always angry at the unfairness of life. These patients do not suffer from DID or any such extreme pathology. The fact that these different selves have shown up in treatment is, in fact, a testament to the solidity of their sense of continuous selfhood, a concept I will explore further below.

The focus on multiplicity has influenced the understanding of the goals of clinical work. Notions of integration have given way to the therapeutic goal of accepting and negotiating the multiplicity that is us. Bromberg claims definitively, “Health is not integration. Health is the ability to stand in the spaces between realities without losing any of them.” (1991, 396) Part of standing in the spaces is the ability to tolerate conflict between self-states, rather than to blend them into an “integrated” whole. (Stern, 2007; Mitchell, 1993) The sense of integrated, whole, or continuous self that we do have is an illusion – a fiction that allows us the feeling of agency and autonomy. It is the fictional protagonist in our life story. Clinically, working toward the awareness of multiplicity serves to disrupt and rearrange the assumptions we have about who we are; it allows us to include experiences of self-in-relation that we might not be able to do if we could only be one self. By inviting and including our multiple self-states into the therapeutic conversation (those of the analyst as well as those of the patient), we open up creative possibilities for healing and living.

However, other relational theorists emphasize the necessity of experiencing multiplicity in tension with a sense of a continuous self who is the author and agent in our life-story. Jodie Davies (1998) emphasizes the continuous tension that must be maintained between associative and dissociative processes – the “primarily memory-based connection that give us a sense of psychic integrity and the dynamic processes that threaten to splinter our internal organization.” (195) Without a proper balance, the force of multiplicity threatens to shatter us into chaos. People have different needs in therapeutic work. To the extent that we are traumatized, split, fragmented, the therapeutic task is to “unify our diversity” as Hadewijch states. If we are stuck in a monolithic, inflexible vision of self, the task then is to “diversify our wholeness.” This applies to Gods as well as selves. But in order to look at the Gods that our multiple selves relate to, we need to look at the idea of illusion and its place in the conception of self and God.

The Illusion of Self

Current objections to the concept of a unified or singular self as a model for identity invoke the danger of monolithic visions that invite accumulations of power to those who fit the image of what a self ought to look like. Such a vision of self can create and support a culture of hegemony, and hence all kinds of domination and imperialism, both internal and external. (See Flax, 1996; Cooper-White, 2007) When difference and multiplicity are not valued, we are left with what James Hillman (1983) calls the “Western monotheistic hero-myth,” where whatever falls outside that hero image (e.g. femaleness, poverty, weakness, color) is similarly devalued. This includes those aspects of our internal worlds which do not conform to the monotheistic (Jesus as white hero) ideal. In this view, the continuous, integrated or unified self is an illusion. Even if it is a necessary and healthy one, it is one that we must hold suspect. But from a psychological point of view, the unitary self is a lived experience. What shall we make of this?

In the theories of Winnicott and Kohut, we have seen images of “true self” and cohesive self that have served as models for therapeutic success. From a Winnicottian standpoint, we hope our patients will move from false-self rigidity and defensiveness to true self creativity and aliveness. In Self Psychology, Kohut and his followers claim that a lack of a sense of cohesiveness of the self is at the root of pathology, particularly narcissistic pathology. However, neither Winnicott nor Kohut posit the true or cohesive self as a reified entity with definable content. Instead, the self is a subjective feeling, an experience of being and acting in the world. Winnicott (1960) describes the “True Self” as a state of “tissue aliveness” that permeates experiencing and “feels real.” (110) It is the “theoretical position from which come the spontaneous gesture and the personal idea.” (148) For Kohut the self is a center of relating that enhances a sense of cohesion and stability from which one relates to others. Although the self is never defined by either Kohut or Winnicott, we know it is there because of a feeling of authentic subjectivity and agency in our actions and interactions with others. In both of these views, we are a self because we feel like a self. 

It is this feeling of self that relational theory tends to depict as an illusion, which comes to be as we accumulate a reprertoire of associationally-linked experiences. The illusion of selfhood is seen from a clinical point of view as necessary and healthy (Bromberg, 1991; Mitchell, 1993; Davies, 1997, 1998), but it is illusion nonetheless.

However, there are two problems, as I see it, with designating the core self as illusion, albeit a necessary one, and the multiple self as by default “real” The first is the same danger of totalization and reification that the postmodern critics of unitary selfhood say want to avoid. When we set up one version of self as the real one, and the other as illusory, we find ourselves once again embroiled in an either-or debate. This is just the situation that psychoanalysis has seemed unable to escape since Freud first excommunicated of psychoanalytic heretics. Even in my ostensibly open-minded, diverse world of relational psychoanalysis, a colleague wants to determine which side I’m on – do I believe in multiplicity or not?

Such a choice implies that we can know what’s “really real” about ourselves, and glosses over the equally important postmodern epistemological critique that all knowledge is mediated, contingent, and partial. Even if we ascribe to the notion that there is some Truth “out there,” we must always add the caveat that our perception of it is “through a glass darkly,” and that at best we can approach it asymptotically, tentatively, metaphorically. Augustine claimed that we can know ourselves because we can know God and we can know God because we can know ourselves. But neither kind of knowledge is absolute. Both are, at the best of times, creative and constructive engagements with experience in the moment. 

This leads us to the second problem with assigning reality or illusion to multiplicity or cohesive, unified selfhood. Experientially, they both “feel real,” and if anything, the sense of self as cohesive and continuous over time feels more real most of the time. Further, these experiences are mutually dependent. The sense of being multiple, different selves with different people or different circumstances, must always be held in tension with the sense of cohesive, agentic subjectivity. In the words of Jodie Davies:

. . . dissociation, even when conceived of as the overarching organization of self and of the multiple selves that constitute ‘mind’ implies the carefully balanced maintenance of an optimal tension state between the primarily memory-based connections that give us a sense of psychic integrity and the dynamic processes that threatened to splinter our internal organization. (1998, 195)

They are mutually dependent, and also paradoxically related. Stephen Mitchell, though he comes down on the side of the continuous, cohesive self as illusion, reflects on the clinical paradox that the more a person gains a sense of continuous selfhood, the more they are able to tolerate divergent self-states. Conversely, the more one comes into relationship with multiple self-states, the stronger their sense of continuity, agency and individual subjectivity become. (1993, Ch.4)From my standpoint as a clinician this paradoxical relationship is not between illusion and reality. The sense of singular, agentic selfhood may indeed develop out of a primary disunity of experience, but that does not make the primary experience more “real.” Instead, we will not be aware of our multiplicity except to the extent that we have a cohesive sense of self. As Mitchell observed, it is that sense of solidity that allows us to venture into the spaces between multiple self-states. The manifestation of this, as I will show in my clinical examples below, is that a patient will feel more singular (rigid, one-dimensional) when they are more fragmented. The patient will be able to experience their multiplicity only when the splits are healed and a cohesive sense of self has been established. So perhaps we begin psychobiologically in multiplicity and develop a sense of unity. But the multiplicity we may embrace once that sense is established is not a return to the “real” – it is of a different order, because it is multiplicity as experienced from and in relation to a sense of continuous selfhood. Who is to say which is the illusion?

I prefer to say both are illusions. This assertion is based on Winnicott’s idea that illusion itself - the ability to experience and enter into the illusion of the transitional experience – is the foundation of what we experience as reality in the first place. More precisely, Winnicott claimed that the “third area of experiencing” between internal and external reality is the location of all creative experiencing and action. The sense of being real, of being any kind of self, is dependent upon the ability to sustain illusion.  Focusing on Winnicott’s insistence on the role of illusion in creating reality underlines that both of these experiences of self are metaphorical constructs, or “theoretical positions” as Winnicott says. Without these illusions of self, there is no self, and also no God (clinically speaking).

Winnicott also claims the transitional space as the location of religious experience. Here the ability to sustain illusion (the “capacity to believe in”) allows the individual to interact with “objective” religious symbols, those “household gods” that are part of the familial and cultural surround. The images we hold as sacred -- God as One, as Trinity, as pantheon, as Mother, Father, Suchness, the Absolute, as Love, are illusory in the same way as our sense of self is illusory. It is illusion which allows us to construct, believe in, assimilate, or play our household and personal Gods in a creative and life-enhancing way.

Without a sense of cohesive, continuous self, we have nowhere to stand. Or rather we might ask who is standing in the spaces? Bromberg does not say, but I cannot help but think of Winnicott’s image of the child who has not had good enough holding in infancy; this is the child (and later, adult) who experiences him or herself as “falling forever,” a terrifying way to exist, as we will see in the case of Jaya below.  As much as I have experienced and affirmed my own multiplicity, I keep coming back to the question, “if we are only standing in the spaces, what keeps us from falling forever?

I think we need to expand Bromberg’s idea that the creative space is in the spaces between selves. The creative space is not between selves only, but in the space between a sense of self as multiple and a sense of self as unified and continuous. They are mutually dependent illusions. It is moving between these illusions that gives us a sense of “real” – the more we are able to be both multiple and singular, the more we are able to play in the real world of our experience. And the more we are able to play with multiplicity and unity as possible images of God.

Multiple Gods?

If we accept the view of the self as multiple, it would seem to follow that the one person-one God formula is psychologically untenable. To the extent that we have multiple selves with their own more or less developed relational worlds, we also have multiple Gods. Even if we are able to stand in the spaces, negotiating successfully the mutually-dependent illusions of multiplicity and unity, the different self-states we inhabit can contain vastly different relational configurations and worldviews. There are days, for example, when I feel alive and energetic, hopeful about my work, my future, and the world. From this self, things look bright indeed and there is a peacefulness about the way I negotiate the inevitable obstacles that arise for a New Yorker on any given day. Other times, perhaps when I am lacking sleep or anxious about something, I can view the world from a very different subjective position. Things will go wrong, the leaks in my apartment ceiling will never be fixed, I will never resolve this impasse with a patient. Peace is not possible (for me or the world). From these divergent self-states, God looks very different. In fact, the Gods of these two self-states have virtually nothing in common. For the peaceful, hopeful self, God is a binding force, a web of connection among all that exists, the erotic power that fuels the universe. For the anxious, negative self, God is absent, or at least an arbitrary chaotic force that has no “plan,” no “history,” no power (except perhaps the power to impose cruel and undeserved injury).  Depending upon how deeply I am immersed in a given state, the God of the other state is more or less inaccessible to me.

It is this experience of multiple Gods that I mean by the term functional polytheism. You might ask if I mean God-images, or part-gods, or even “idols,” but I chose my words carefully here, because I am talking about clinical, not theological ideas. I am not positing multiple Gods as a matter of faith, although one could certainly do that (see Miller, 1972; Paper, 2005), but as a matter of experience. Just as different self-states have different mothers or bosses, and just as they have different physiological characters and emotional attitudes, from the clinical vantage point, different self-states have different Gods. These Gods have distinct characters, forms and functions, and recognizing them is as important clinically as recognizing the different selves within the patient. It is true that a God of a particular self-state can be experienced as “one,” but that one God does not look the same or function in the same way as the one God who is the object of worship (or disdain, fear, or hatred – or is just nonexistent) in another self-state.

James Hillman (1975, 1983) has argued that all psychology, if it is to reflect psychic experience, ought to be polytheistic in its approach. He sees the person not as moving toward a “whole” or unified archetypal Self which is the image of a unified and whole God. Instead, “the soul’s inherent multiplicity demands a theological fantasy of equal differentiation.” (1975, 45) He re-visions Jung’s idea of Self as wholeness, and posits instead a Self that resembles "stars or sparks or luminous fish eyes."

Theologian David Miller (1972), noted that Hillman’s vision of Self makes “Babel a psychological improvement’ over the idea of Self as the wholeness or the unification of opposites. The Self, as the imago dei, is not singular, but multidimensional, its facets addressed by any number of gods. A polytheistic psychology, Hillman argues, "reflects more accurately the illusions and entanglements of the soul." (Hillman, 1971. cited in Miller, 1972, 516) Hillman’s focus on the archetypal leads him “to a statement of polytheism as a therapeutic goal, culturally and personally.” (515) for Hillman, this means reconnecting to the pantheons of Greek and Roman mythologies, as well as the mystery religions. I am advocating a somewhat different understanding of polytheism. The Gods of our patients do not, and need not correspond to the gods of any historical mythology, including that of their own tradition, although they may do this. The God-images found in Biblical, liturgical, mythological, or community sources are there to be drawn upon (as the “household gods”), but what one makes of them internally and in personal religious life is shaped significantly by psychic patterns and self-other experiences, just as the self-states are shaped. (see Rizzuto, 1979)4

Pamela Cooper-White (2007) makes a strong and detailed case for the theological repositioning of God as multiple and fluid, as a way to counter hegemonic visions of the One God that can “justif[y] schemes of domination.” This vision, she claims, “need not completely subvert faithful expressions of God as a transcendent unity, a loving ‘All-in-All.’” (72) To my mind, holding on to God as a transcendent unity somehow hints at a oneness that overarches multiplicity in the same way as for some theorists a vision of true selfhood lies behind or beyond images of multiple selves. I think Cooper-White in the end is advocating a both-and approach to God, much like I am advocating it for self, but when writing theologically from a Christian point of view, there is a certain stake in preserving monotheism.

The problem we face if we want to preserve monotheism as a therapeutic goal is that “monotheistic traditions have constantly to argue their monotheisms against the human tendency to relate functionally to multiple numinous entities.” (Paper, 2005, 3)  Clinically, we do not have the same constraint. It is not the theological concept of monotheism that I am critiquing, but I am echoing Paper’s assertion that human beings, as multiple selves, tend towards functional polytheism. In my clinical experience, it would be hard to imagine it being otherwise.

At the same time, the mutual dependence of multiplicity and unity that we seen in selfhood is reflected in patients’ religious lives. As with the self, God, in order to serve a healthy psychological life, has to be experienced both from the multiplicity of self-states and from the unified, continuous self. For monotheists, when there is only one self and one God, something is out of balance. When there is no space between Gods, our images must be disrupted and our unity differentiated. When there is no connecting unity, the diversity of our Gods calls to be answered by a unified God who connects to our sense of unified self, so that our God also has a place to stand. 5  In other words, for patients in a highly fragmented state, the clinical goal seems to be movement toward a more stable and unified sense of self and God, while for others, the unified sense of self and God are in need of disruption and differentiation as the header quote from Hadewijch suggests. The clinical examples to follow are meant to show how the tensions of multiplicity and cohesiveness, of self and God, come alive in the clinical encounter. 

Clinical Examples

Following are three clinical examples that demonstrate the way in which patients’ religious experiences and relations to God reflect the sense of self. In the first two short examples, the patients cannot sustain conflict between self-states, Jaya because she has no sense of wholeness, and Marisol because she has no sense of “diversity.” The more extended example of Ted describes long-term work in which the patient was able to “diversify his wholeness” by becoming aware of conflicting self-states and their corresponding Gods, resulting in a more “integrated diversity” where there is a cohesive sense of self and an experience of a God who is totality and “unconditional love.” 

Jaya

Jaya had the following recurring dream in childhood: I am sitting on a hard, cold wooden chair. I’m naked. There is no floor, no ceiling, no walls. Nothing. A bright light is shining in my eyes. I am in a cold sweat, and feel like I’m falling. It’s a sickening feeling. There is no bottom.

This is the experience of someone without a sense of core self. Jaya has little sense of her own continuity, and even less of any cohesiveness of self. She occasionally what she calls “solid,” but much of the time is disorganized, anxious and reactive. Whatever sense of “feeling better” she gains in our therapy sessions totally disappears within a day or two. She cannot hang on to me, our work, or herself.

Jaya cannot stand in the spaces, because there is nothing but space. There is no ground from which any self might observe and relate to the various other selves she might be. Instead, each self-state is discreet, separate, isolated. From a diagnostic standpoint, this Jaya negotiates the borderline territory. Her self-organization is characterized by fragmentation and disconnection. She cannot hang on to more than one state at a time, because early trauma prevented her from forming a sense of “trueness” about herself. She describes it this way: “I have no personality. I don’t know who I am. I depend on other people to let me know who I am, but then when that person’s not there, I’m not there either. I’m someone else.”  And further, “it’s like I have the Grand Canyon in my brain. One side is yelling to the other, ‘hellooooo,” but they can never connect.” One could describe this borderline state the way Ann Ulanov (personal communication) does, as an “archipelago,” islands of self-experience that appear completely independent of one another, but are connected at a deep level, if only we could see under the surface.

While some might dispute the “deep down” metaphor, this description seems clinically accurate. If there were no connection among my patient’s seemingly isolated self-states, Jaya would manifest dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality) or psychosis, but she does not. Despite her position on the borderline, she has enough connection, albeit invisible, among her self states not to fall forever (though remember that is her fear expressed in the dream).

How does this Jaya conceive of God? There are two God-images between which she seems to move. One is a complete mystery – a hidden yet omnipotent God who mysteriously arranges things, sends dreams, creates synchronicities, and “makes everything happen.” The other is a kind of anti-God or devil. In fact, Jaya claims to have seen the devil at the age of three, in the form of a malevolent shadow on the living room wall (her mother, a religious Catholic, confirmed that it was in fact the devil). Sometimes she saw or felt this devil in other places, like the bedroom at her grandmother’s house, where she stayed after recovering from her many childhood surgeries. This evil force lurks in the world, similarly to the benign force, and is the object of fear and worry. The two figures are opposites, and are never invoked at the same time. When Jaya sees the devil, she is feeling anxious, victimized, and powerless – the traumatized self. When she experiences the omnipotent God, she is afraid as well, but not victimized. Then she is the more “together,” world-functioning self.  The presence of this God is just overwhelming. What frightens her is the sense that there are powers and forces that are beyond her understanding. For one self, these powers are evil and dangerous; for the other self, they are benevolent and dangerous.

There are undoubtedly more parts of Jaya than these two, and more Gods than the good one and the evil one. Very recently, after six years of therapy, Jaya began having dreams in which she was accompanied by “another girl who looks like me, but with dark hair” who is a little older and a little more “together,” as well as dreams of abandoned babies that she has forgotten about. She is unable to entertain the idea that these figures are parts of herself (“I have no connection to that at all,” she says), but as her therapist, I am hopeful that we are moving in the direction of unifying some of Jaya’s diversity so that she can feel more like there is a Jaya and she has a story to tell.

Marisol

Marisol is a highly successful Latina businesswoman widowed at the age of 40, came to me expressly to talk about a crisis of faith. She had devoted herself to God since the age of 12, and had always ascribed to her Evangelical church’s view of the Bible as the inerrant word of God – a book of “rules to live by” wherein “God tells us what he wants us to do and not to do.”  As part of her conversion, she resolved never to disappoint God by doing something Jesus “would disapprove of.” She assured me repeatedly that God, for her, was an all-loving and forgiving Father. But she also said (often in the same sentence) that she tried to live strictly by the rules of the Bible because she didn’t want to go to hell. One could always count on God’s love, but you’d better follow the rules exactly “just in case.” For her, there was no gray area in ” her whole life of faith had been based on a cruel lie and God was not real, or at least not good. When she thought about taking the former path, she was left in a state of rage and disappointment at God that was intolerable to her. If she took the latter, she was left without any God, without any faith, alone in the abyss feeling duped and again enraged. Unable to tolerate the idea of conflict, Marisol was looking for a definitive answer to a paralyzing dilemma, and she came to me to get the answer.

Marisol and I only worked together for a short time. She was determined to arrive at a decision within a few weeks, and was disappointed that I would not “debate the issue” with her as she desired. Any suggestion that perhaps there were different parts of herself that had different feelings toward God (and her parents) were met with incomprehension. Her parents were good, forgiving and loving, as was God. If either became punishing or judgmental, it was because she had done something wrong. To preserve her sense of herself, Marisol engaged in the classic Fairbairnian schizoid defense – taking the bad on oneself in order to preserve the good object, since conflict about the object threatens the sense of self. So for Marisol, all parts of God had to be packed in the same suitcase (labeled “good”), as all parts of herself were packed in the suitcase labeled “bad,” or “prone to badness.” Unpacking either would create chaos.

From the point of view of multiplicity, Marisol exhibited the other side of the Hadewijch paradox: her concepts of self and God were each so “unified” that there was no space at all between them. Instead, conflicting and completely opposite aspects of herself were not recognized as different; nor were her conflicting images of God. Unable to accommodate the idea of conflict, Marisol was paralyzed at a seemingly definitive decision point. The work that needed to be done of unpacking the suitcases with their variable and conflicting contents was not tolerable to her at the time of our work together. Not surprisingly, Marisol continued to see me as “all good” during our time together, despite the fact that I could not resolve her problem as she wished. Instead, she left therapy – without paying her final bill. I have no illusion that I did my best work with Marisol. There was a way in which her either-or approach to God and herself aroused an impatient negative countertransference reaction in me that I was not able to fully work through in our brief therapy.

Jaya and Marisol are examples of what it might look like when multiple self states and their relational configurations, including their respective Gods, are either too fragmented (nothing but space) or too monolithic (no space). In neither case is there a sense of fluidity, a sense of moving between and among the different self-states, or between the experience of self as multiple and the self as unified. Neither patient is able to acknowledge disparate selves (or Gods) simultaneously, and so their sense of wholeness or cohesiveness is either missing, in the case of Jaya, or fragile and “false,” in the case of Marisol.

Ted

Ted was immediately likeable, with a shy smile and a tentativeness in his movements, like he was trying to take up less space than he naturally would. He was a highly intelligent mathematician, an up-and-comer in his field. But at 35 years old, Ted was deeply depressed. He continually found himself in sado-masochistic relationships with women (emotionally, not sexually) that left him feeling submissive and emasculated; this engendered a corresponding feelings of rage and fantasies of violent revenge. He would attempt to exert control women (including me) with his intellect, constructing elaborate explanations to persuade the other to “understand” him. What he sought was “true love,” a complete harmony of minds, total union of souls, and most importantly, perfect unity of wills. The alternative to this kind of merged love was complete isolation, abandonment, the abyss.

In our four-times-per week analysis, we began to identify several self-states that held dissociated aggressive, sexual, and dependent feelings, as well as experiences of rejection and abandonment and almost desperate longings for merger. Along with these self-states, Ted presented many different Gods. Sometimes a God would be directly linked to a self-state; at other times the self-state or the God would come into the treatment independently, and only later could I understand where that God might fit in to Ted’s configuration of self (some, I still don’t know). As with self-states, Ted’s Gods sometimes overlapped. Often religious imagery came out in the transference, where I was cast in the role of one God or another. What follows is a description of Ted’s self-states, the relational experiences they embodied, and the God whom they believed in (or not). I want to note that Ted’s self-states are not pathologically dissociated in the sense of DID. When we are working with them, he has full access to his “me” consciousness in relation to the state.

Early in treatment, Ted expressed that to him, I was a “figure of awe.” At first, Ted called me “the Sphinx”, the powerful, all-knowing but withholding creature. I knew the answers, but would not tell. Our work together was a test, and Ted had to guess the answers that would please me. If he pleased me, we could go on. But if he didn’t, he would be killed, or worse, banished, abandoned. Even if I didn’t physically throw him out, I would withdraw my attention, and he would be in the abyss, desperately and totally alone.

Soon I became not only the Sphinx, but the witch or sorceress, the Goddess, the Ice Queen. These images appeared in dreams. First, there was the dream of the witch or magic woman who could manipulate the movements of the moon. She had awesome power which inspired both awe and dread. If I could command the heavens, what couldn’t I do? There was no power except that which I might deign to share, and this would only happen if Ted “got it right” by anticipating my desires, doing my will, and subjecting himself to my instruction.

The Ice Queen appeared in a dream of a frozen landscape. She again had power to alter nature, and Ted’s associations to this figure were again of me. “You’ve risen above emotion. You’ve transcended it – so that you can be objective, removed. You don’t suffer your feelings like I do. This is what I aspire to –the transcending of myself. Being above all these feelings of helplessness.” But of course the Ice Queen could have no feelings for him, either. “It’s not personal,” he said. So the impersonal transcendent one is not subject to the slings and arrows of emotion or relationships. She is cold perfection, and her interest in him merely clinical.

These images of me have been filed by Ted under the title of “the Goddess.” The Goddess is the source of all goodness, nurturance, love. She is the supplier. But she is fickle and even cruel. She gives when she wants, withholds when she wants. It’s Ted’s job to figure out what the Goddess’s needs are and to supply them, but the cold Goddess gives no overt clues. He must read her mind, anticipate her wishes, and fulfill them. When he does, all is warmth and love. When he does not, he is punished by banishment from her presence, left to cry alone, not understanding what he had done to deserve the most awful of fates.

The self that worships and fears the Goddess is a part of Ted that can manifest in several ages from infancy to an adult. This is the self that experienced his mother – who was depressed and ambivalent about having another child – as both loving, warm, and embracing (almost smothering) and as a hostile, angry, and rejecting. Ted was actually conscious only of the loving mother for some time. But he revealed his childhood fears of deep water and of drowning in quicksand. This self both longed to be merged with the mother and feared being swallowed by her. But this was worth it if he didn’t have to bear the angry mother’s (Goddess’s) rejection, which was tantamount to annihilation.

In time, and with deliberate inquiry on my part, we began to identify other self-states in Ted that held particular experiences. The first to emerge was the “boy in the oubliette.” Ted described the part of himself in the oubliette as the small child of “bad” desires (the impulse to take off his clothes and run naked through the yard, or simply the one who wanted to say “no.”).  This child and his feelings were sentenced to perpetual isolation and suffering, best forgotten. Yet all along, crying out to be found and liberated. For the boy in the oubliette, God was a heartless judge. Bad behavior was swiftly dealt with by this God, and the punishment was an eternity in the isolation cell.

Another self-state emerged, who we called the “exuberant boy.” This child, who could be anywhere from 3 to 10 years old, is fascinated with nature. He loves exploring the natural landscape of mountains, rocks, streams. He collects stones and crawling creatures. He is turned on, sexual in a young boy’s way. He is fascinated with fire, longing to feel the power and beauty of combustion, explosion, consummation. This self is “all boy” to Ted. He experiences this self as the sturdy, aggressive, masculine, phallic boy he could only be in secret. This self and his God seemed connected to Ted’s experience of his father, who was always kind and polite, but whose family had a history of aggressive and hostile father-son relations (the self-state first appeared in a series of dreams about homicidal fathers killing their sons). The God of this boy again had two faces, both male. In good moments, this God protected Ted from danger (like playing with fire). But the other side of this God was jealous and murderous. He would retaliate against Ted for daring to usurp his territory. If we were Freudians, we would call this the Oedipal God.

In one session I inquired about Ted’s seeming attachment to his sado-masochistic relationships with women, despite his insistence that he hated these situations. Ted replied that there was a part of him that wanted to engage in this way, because it was better than the alternative of total isolation. He named this self “the conscript,” a boy who was conscripted to guard the vulnerable baby self and keep it from experiencing the bottomless well of grief that seemed to threaten its existence. Here is an excerpt from our conversation. My words are in brackets. “He doesn’t want to do this job. But he has to”. [He’s only a boy, and he has to carry a gun] “He has to. It’s his job. No one is getting past him” [even me?] “He doesn’t know he can trust you. Everyone leaves, anyway, everyone betrays you.” [I suspect that because we have to end the session now, he’s going to see that as proof that I’m just like everyone else, abandoning you.] “That’s right”. [I just want him to know that even though we have to end the session now, I will keep him in mind] (pause) “He’ll take that under consideration.” (smiles)

The conscript doesn’t think much of God. God doesn’t really care about him, and God doesn’t care about the crying baby. This God plays cruel jokes on people, getting them to trust that there’s a “plan,” that “everything happens for a purpose” when it’s all bullshit (Ted never curses – this self speaks quite differently).

As we became acquainted with Ted’s various selves, his depression lifted, although he was instead plagued by often overwhelming feelings of grief and anger. At the same time, his religious practice changed. Ted had been attending a mainline Protestant church when we started our work. He appreciated the worship, and the absence of images that reminded him of the strict Catholicism of his childhood. Eventually, he became a member of a new-age church, one which preached a message of positive thinking, and the power to manifest one’s desires through right prayer. Ted felt affirmed and freer there, and began to experience God in a different way. 

“I feel the presence of something like unconditional love,” he said. It’s there all the time, like a parallel universe, and we can just step into it.” It’s ours, and we can have it. Ted was moved and awed by this feeling, and he experienced a deep and profound sense of gratitude. In these moments, I feel as if I am seeing a different Ted, a more solid Ted, a “real” Ted. There is an authenticity and humility in him that touches me deeply. But Ted is also afraid as this more solid self emerges, because standing there, as himself being loved by his God, means incorporating (integrating, if you will) the feelings of loss and grief that he had never experienced such love from those who were supposed to love him the most.

“If I surrender to this feeling, this unconditional love, it seems dangerous.” [how is it dangerous?] I will be obliterated, lost. It feels as if, if I give in to this, I won’t be any more -- it feels like death. How could anything be so good?” [Someone said that it’s better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than innocent in a world ruled by the devil] Yeah – but being a sinner in a world ruled by God feels like hell to me. [Sure, but at least it makes sense. You were bad, now you’re in hell.] “Yes, and there’s always some hope that if I work hard enough, I can be redeemed. I can somehow get back in God’s good graces.” [Yes. You have to do that by doing the right thing, being the right way].  “It’s better than the alternative, which is unimaginable. At least you can think you have some influence on things, some power. Otherwise it’s just chaos, and I don’t know who I am at all.”

Of course experiencing this more unified self and unified God does not erase Ted’s multiplicity. His other selves, his other experiences are still pressing for expression. But the more Ted feels like “himself,” the more access he has to these feelings and experiences. Lately, from this self, Ted has begun to look on his other selves with compassion instead of fear, horror, or disdain. From here, he feels that God loves all these selves. Maybe he could, too.