I have heard this many times before. Why do I keep attracting the same kind of partner into my life? Why do I keep having the same kinds of relationships over and over?
Let’s go back in time to answer that.
In many ways Freud is a dinosaur. Old, outdated, sexist, patriarchal, obssessed with Victorian sex and what not. Some of his ideas have been overhauled, reworked or abandoned entirely, depending on what school of psychology you subscribe to.
But there is one idea of his I’ve found fascinating and which, regardless of which school of psychology you belong to, can’t be denied or overlooked because it refers to something we all do. It is called transference.
As Dr. Freud developed his analytical method he noticed something odd. His patients would behave or say things to him as if he were one of their parents. Why would someone treat their doctor as if they were a parent? Maybe a parent who was long dead.
What Freud discovered was that in relationship something in the psyche gets activated whereby past and present become confused. It is as if the mind is creating a mental “sleight of hand” that fools the audience. In relationship the audience is the partner and the person committing the magic act is not even aware he is doing it.
This is transference, meaning something is being transferred from one psyche to another.
The brain is an amazing super computer. Nothing man made comes close to it. One of is pretty cool functions is that it is efficient (though when you look at contemporary politics you might think anything but). As we learn a new function, a skill, a job, a task, a language, our brain lays down the tracks of learning by forging new neural pathways. Once the learning is done, the tracks are in a sense set. Each time we enter into the situation for which we require the skills, our brain automatically fires those neural pathways and we seem to intuitively know just what to do.
This allows us to read a book, converse with others, drive a car or type without having to re-figure out grammar, sounds, letters, traffic signs, where the “e” is on the keyboard and so on. We just automatically know.
The same is true for relationships. As we grew up, our brains cataloged all the important emotional/intellectual interactions that happened to us. It set a template, a kind of psychological “how to” guide of self beliefs and emotional patterns that we use to navigate in relationships. Then, as we enter into significant relationships in adult life, our brain does what it is meant to do. It goes down the same tracks it already knows.
But this is not always a good thing.
Imagine that little Jenny grew up in a home where a parent constantly yelled at or criticized her. Later in adult life Jenny is in a significant relationship and her boyfriend or husband happens to raise his voice about something. It may not even be related to her. Her body freezes momentarily. She feels weak. Maybe angry. Maybe scared. She thinks I'm not worth much or that she's failed somewhere. These reactions have nothing to do with the present. Though she thinks it is so. The sleight of hand effect has taken place. Because it is a significant emotional relationship, just like in childhood, the brain activates what it already knows. And when something in the present happens that appears similar to what the brain registered in the past, the past and present become blurred. It is an amazing hypnotic feat.
The opposite is also true. Say Jenny grew up in a warm and loving home. As she enters into adult relationships, her brain “tunes in” to what it already knows and seeks partners similar to its programming. Again, the past affects the present though this time there is a “happy end.”
This happens everyday in countless interactions we have with others. Maybe you’ve run into a coworker who has problems with authority. Chances are that person had significant issues with a parent around power. Maybe you know someone with a difficult childhood who keeps getting into difficult relationships and wonders why. It’s all brain chemistry and neural programming.
Are you following the current problems between Iran and the US? Nations are comprised of people. People have brains working in them. The Iranian hardliners, from what I gather from the news, keep seeing us as the Great Enemy, the one we were thirty years ago. And then there is North Korea and all the others with various grievances from the past. I know I know people will yell the US still is the Great Enemy. Racial stereotypes, gender biases, all of these things are a result of prefabricated templates that keep inserting outdated modes of behavior and ideas about something in the present.
Much of the everydayness of life is a search for redemption from the emotional holds of the past. Whether it's an unhappy childhood or a failed relationship or a series of disappointments of some kind. Or whether it is to fill something missing that keeps resurfacing. All the way up to nations struggling to redeem themselves from their past, whether it is poverty or guilt or shame or deprivation. Look how uneasy it is for industrialized nations to admit past wrongdoing on their part. It is tenuous. This mirrors our tenuous openness to some hidden demons in our past. They more they keep us in their grip, the more we keep repeating history. The Spanish-American philosopher/writer George Santayana once wrote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
But it’s hard to go against brain chemistry. They are like the pipes in our houses. Fixed. Sturdy. Reliable. Yet, and yet, it is possible to stop history by trying. For what else is there to do? Progress, personal and collective, is the struggle to overcome the limitations of the past. For to do nothing means life is simply fated. But how is it possible we came from swinging from trees to walking on the moon? Like I said, the brain is amazing what with all the things it can do. One of them is also that it is malleable and adaptive.
It all begins with a slight shift of attention. What would happen if I knew how to make fire myself? What would happen if I could fly like a bird? What if it's not really true that I am unlovable or worthless? Personal and world history is this jumbled, confusing mess in which past and present collide into each other, like overlapping waves in an ocean. Where one begins, the other ends is not always clear and more often than not we’re improvising the best we can. But then again, what else would we do?
Can we leverage the brain's ability to adapt? Yes. But that's for another post on some other day.
