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Is it necessary to lie down on the psychoanalyst’s couch in order to decipher your unconscious? Not at all. After all, it manifests itself in dreams, forgetfulness, erroneous actions. And although this is not an easy task, everyone can learn to receive and read his messages. They hold the keys to a more harmonious life.
“I forgot about our wedding anniversary again,” lamented one. “What a shame, yesterday I called my boss mom,” says another. Who among us has never experienced frustration, and sometimes terrible awkwardness in such situations? A surname forgotten during an important meeting, a date that we miss, although we shouldn’t have, a document that disappeared from our hands at the wrong time … No one is immune from such misadventures, which sometimes entail sad consequences.
From the point of view of psychoanalysis, there is no doubt: in most cases, the unconscious is responsible for such incidents. But these are not just evil pranks, but persistent signals coming from the inner universe. It makes sense to listen to them in order to restore the connection between conscious thinking and the most irrational part of us and to become more aware of our actions. We offer you a guide created in collaboration with psychoanalytic psychotherapist Elena Ratner.
Open up to the unknown
How to deal with manifestations of the unconscious, unpredictable and uncontrollable? First of all, let’s follow a simple rule: instead of justifying our mistakes with fatigue or absent-mindedness, let’s look at them without fear and shame, let’s listen to conflicting internal impulses.
By allowing them to manifest, we will have a chance to find out what our unknown side is reporting. Is this method of interpretation simple? Of course not. Self-analysis is difficult for someone who actually avoids knowing about himself. But if we are willing and open to new information, this solitary exploration of our depths is quite feasible.
1. Notice what is being forgotten (repression)
When we forget or fail to remember a proper name, this is a sign of repression. One of the reasons: this name reminds us of the name of a deceased person dear to us.
Example: At work, 29-year-old Anna has trouble remembering the name of her assistant. That was the name of her best school friend who died. Here, oblivion can be facilitated by a survivor complex: “Why did I survive, and not she?” Even if we want to stop asking this question, it comes back from the past. When we forget the name of someone we know, it is often associated with repressed thoughts about someone who shares the same or a similar name. For example, conflicting feelings often occur between brothers and sisters or between friends: bitterness, jealousy are mixed in with them … Forgetting the name, we may unconsciously resort to silent “mental execution”.
Tip: when we find ourselves forgetting or failing to remember something, we can think, “Why do I have so many ambivalent feelings? What do I perhaps have to say but keep to myself?
To discover manifestations of the unconscious requires some openness. This is even more true in the case of reservations – our own unconscious can put us in an ambiguous position.
Example: Alexei Kudrin, who served as Russia’s finance minister in 2010, once said: “The fight against corruption today is the main evil.” Reservations often leave us with a taste of shame. Why? Because they often hide repressed anger… which eventually comes out in the most unexpected place. This anger may come from not being heard or from not being able to be ourselves.
Tip: instead of trying to forget about everything as soon as possible, ask yourself questions: “Why did I make this reservation in front of this person, under such conditions? On whom is my anger directed? Sometimes we find that the root cause has to do with a moment in our personal history when we felt misunderstood. But, in any case, it is better to explore the source of anger than to let it control us.
3. Cope with the loss of things (to make up for the absence)
Who is most likely to lose their belongings and why?
Example: Nikita, 19, regularly loses her keys, and Marina, 34, leaves her wedding ring on the sink every time she washes her hands. Why? Let’s not rush to generalizations, but it is known that some compulsive “confusions” are those who did not have a containing (accepting the child’s emotions) mother nearby. They did not feel supported and safe in the mother’s presence, so some later begin to lose things in order to repeat their experience of the missing object (mother), creating for themselves the illusion that they themselves control his / her absence.
Tip: if we think that the mother was inattentive to us, it is better to consult a psychotherapist. Because when it comes to the primary relationship between mother and baby, this is a deep problem, it is difficult to solve it on your own.
4. Detect erroneous actions (cautions)
We all live under the rule of our own history, in which there are good and bad sides. The problem is that until we identify the bad sides, they continue to act on us.
Example: 40-year-old Igor was thinking about the possibility of a divorce. At that moment, he was playing with his two-year-old son, throwing him into the air. And the misfortune happened. The fall, the ambulance, the relief that everything worked out … But why did he drop his son, thinking about how to dissolve the marriage? What did this erroneous action indicate? In the course of introspection, Igor transformed the question: what did he really want to get away from? At the age of two, he lost his younger brother due to an accident. This tragedy left an imprint on his psyche: jealousy for his brother, who took his mother from him, made Igor wish that he would disappear, which eventually happened, leaving him with a sense of relief, but also guilt, and a fantasy of his own destructiveness.
The age of the son reminds of this tragedy and makes, on the one hand, try to forget about his guilt and the feelings that it causes. On the other hand, it gives rise to fear for the well-being of their own child and the fear that that old history may repeat itself again. This answer did not come immediately. But Igor decided to think, slowly, before getting a divorce. He realized that it was not about the relationship with his wife, but about the desire, on the one hand, to forget the past, on the other hand, to protect his son.
Tip: analyze your history so you don’t repeat it.
5. Discover the meaning of dreams
You need to learn to analyze your dreams without falling into caricature interpretations. Ask Freud: if you want to know the meaning of a dream, you should write it down and then develop free associations to almost every word. It must be taken into account that dreams carry out displacement and condensation.
Example: displacement – when feelings that are actually caused by one acquaintance are experienced in a dream in relation to someone else. Condensation – when the main character of a dream combines the features of several real faces: he can dress like A, talk like B, walk like C, and so on.
Tip: solve dreams like little puzzles, gradually and patiently.
6. Listen to your body
In addition to the psychic unconscious, we also have the somatic. Heartbeat, breathing rate, sweating are unconscious processes. We rarely notice how our body works. But it speaks to us through bodily symptoms.
Example: chronic pain, overweight, dermatological diseases – these problems seem to be becoming more common. Many of our contemporaries have a bad relationship with their own body and serious gaps in their body image. We develop sensory deficits that form the basis of physical suffering. How to replenish it? The best way is gentle gymnastics or bodily relaxation, which allows you to realize that the body is not just a mass of flesh. You can lie down and try to feel what the ankle feels when we turn the foot. Feel the size of your hands…
Tip: if during relaxation you feel pain somewhere in the body, try to work with associations. What does this pain remind me of? What is another name for this area? This is not always easy to do alone. It is good if you have a loved one who can ask these questions and listen carefully to the answers, without imposing their own considerations.