The motives behind injudicious(不明智的) giving and destructive nurturing are many, but such cases invariably have a basic feature in common: the “giver,” under the guise(伪装) of love, is responding to and meeting his or her own needs without regard to the spiritual needs of the receiver.
A minister reluctantly(不情愿地) came to see me because his wife was suffering from a chronic depression and both his sons had dropped out of college and were living at home and receiving psychiatric attention. Despite the fact that his whole family was “ill,” he was initially completely unable to comprehend that he might be playing a role in their illnesses. “I do everything in my power to take care of them and their problems,” he reported(述说). “I don’t have a waking moment when I am not concerned about them.” Analysis of the situation revealed that this man was indeed working himself to the bone to meet the demands of his wife and children. He had given both of his sons new cars and paid the insurance on them even though he felt the boys should be putting more effort into being self-supporting. Each week he took his wife to the opera or the theater in the city even though he intensely(强烈地) disliked going to the city, and opera bored him to death. Busy though he was on his job, he spent most of his free time at home picking up after his wife and sons, who had a total disregard(忽视) for housecleaning. “Don’t you get tired of laying yourself out for them all the time?” I asked him. “Of course,” he replied, “but what else am I to do? I love them and I have too much compassion(同情) not to take care of them. My concern for them is so great that I will never allow myself to stand by as long as they have needs to be filled. I may not be a brilliant man, but at least I have love and concern.”
Interestingly, it emerged(浮现) that his own father had been a brilliant scholar of considerable(值得尊敬的) renown(名誉), but also an alcoholic and philanderer(玩弄女性的男人) who showed a total lack of concern for the family and was grossly neglectful of them. Gradually my patient was helped to see that as a child he had vowed to be as different from his father as possible, to be as compassionate(有同情心的) and concerned(关心的) as his father was heartless(无情的) and unconcerned. He was even able to understand after a while that he had a tremendous stake in maintaining an image of himself as loving and compassionate, and that much of his behavior, including his career in the ministry, had been devoted to fostering this image. What he did not understand so easily was the degree to which he was infantilizing(使……幼儿化) his family. He continually referred to his wife as “my kitten” and to his full grown, strapping(高大健壮的) sons as “my little ones.” “How else can I behave?” He pleaded. “I may be loving in reaction to my father, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to become unloving or turn myself into a bastard.” What he literally had to be taught was that loving is a complicated rather than a simple activity, requiring the participation of his entire being, his head as well as his heart. Because of his need to be as unlike his father as possible, he had not been able to develop a flexible response system for expressing his love. He had to learn that not giving at the right time was more compassionate than giving at the wrong time, and that fostering independence was more loving than taking care of people who could otherwise take care of themselves. He even had to learn that expressing his own needs, anger, resentments and expectations was every bit as necessary to the mental health of his family as his self sacrifice, and therefore that love must be manifested in confrontation(冲突) as much as beatific(幸福的) acceptance.
Gradually coming to realize how he infantilized his family, he began to make changes. He stopped picking up after everyone and became openly angry when his sons did not adequately(充分地) participate in the care of the home. He refused to continue paying for the insurance on his sons’ cars, telling them that if they wanted to drive they would have to pay for it themselves. He suggested that his wife should go alone to the opera in New York. In making these changes he had to risk appearing to be the “bad guy” and had to give up the omnipotence of his former role as provider for all the needs of the family. But even though his previous behavior had been motivated(有……动机的) primarily by a need to maintain an image of himself as a loving person, he had at his core a capacity for genuine love, and because of this capacity he was able to accomplish these alterations in himself. Both his wife and his sons reacted to theses changes initially with anger. But soon one son went back to college, and the other found a more demanding(要求高的) job and got an apartment for himself. His wife began to enjoy her new independence and to grow in ways of her own. The man found himself becoming more effective as a minister and at the same time his life became more enjoyable.
The minister’s misguided(被误导的) love bordered on the more serious perversion(曲解) of love that is masochism(受虐狂). Laymen(非专业人员) tend to associate sadism(虐待狂) and masochism with purely(纯粹地) sexual activity, thinking of them as the sexual enjoyment derived from inflicting(使遭受) or receiving physical pain. Actually, true sexual sadomasochism(被虐待性变态) is a relatively uncommon form of psychopathology(精神病理学). Much, much more common, and ultimately more serious, is the phenomenon of social sadomasochism, in which people unconsciously desire to hurt and be hurt by each other through their nonsexual interpersonal relations. Prototypically(典型地) a woman will seek psychiatric attention for depression in response to desertion(遗弃) by her husband. She will regale(取悦) the psychiatrist with an endless tale of repeated mistreatment by her husband: he paid her no attention, he had a string of mistresses(情人), he gambled away(赌光) the food money, he went away for days at a time whenever he pleased, he came home drunk and beat her, and now, finally, he’s deserted her and the children on Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve yet! The neophyte(新手) therapist tends to respond to this “poor woman” and her tale with instant sympathy, but it does not take long for the sympathy to evaporate(蒸发) in the light of further knowledge(根据进一步的知识).
First the therapist discovers that this pattern of mistreatment(虐待) has existed for twenty years, and that while the poor woman divorced her brute(粗野的人) of a husband twice, she also remarried him twice, and that innumerable separations were followed by innumerable reconciliations(和解).
Next, after working with her for a month or two to assist her in gaining independence, and when everything seemingly is going well and the woman appears to be enjoying the tranquility(宁静) of life apart from her husband, the therapist sees the cycle enacted(表演) all over again. The woman happily bounces into the office one day to announce, “Well, Henry’s come back. He called up the other night saying he wanted to see me, so I did see him. He pleaded with me to come back, and he really seems changed, so I took him back.” When the therapist points out that this seems to be but a repetition of a pattern they had agreed was destructive, the woman says, “But I love him. You can’t deny love.” If the therapist attempts to examine this “love” with any strenuousness(大量的努力), then the patient terminates therapy.
What’s going on here? In trying to understand what has happened, the therapist recalls the obvious relish(享受) with which the woman had recounted(叙述) the long history of her husband’s brutality(残忍) and mistreatment(虐待). Suddenly a strange idea begins to dawn(变得明朗); maybe this woman endures her husband’s mistreatment, and even seeks it out, for the very pleasure of talking about it. But what would be the nature of such pleasure? The therapist remembers the woman’s self righteousness(正义). Could it be that the most important thing in the woman’s life is to have a sense of moral superiority(优越感) and that in order to maintain this sense she needs to be mistreated? The nature of the pattern now becomes clear. By allowing herself to be treated basely(下贱地) she can feel superior. Ultimately she can even have the sadistic(虐待狂的) pleasure of seeing her husband beg and plead to return, and momentarily(短暂地) acknowledge her superiority from his humbled(谦卑的) position, while she decides whether or not to magnanimously(大度宽宏地) take him back. And in this moment she achieves her revenge(复仇). When such women are examined it is generally found that they were particularly humiliated(感到自惭的) as children. As a result they seek revenge through their sense of moral superiority, which requires repeated humiliation(丢脸的事) and mistreatment. If the world is treating us well we have no need to avenge(报复) ourselves on it. If seeking revenge is our goal in life, we will have to see to it that the world treats us badly in order to justify(对……作出解释) our goal. Masochists(受虐狂) look on their submission(屈服) to mistreatment as love, whereas in fact it is a necessity in their never ceasing search for revenge and is basically motivated by hatred(仇恨).
The issue of masochism highlights(强调) still another very major misconception about love-that it is self-sacrifice. By virtue of this belief the prototypical(典型的) masochist was enabled to see her tolerance of mistreatment as self-sacrifice and hence as love, and therefore did not have to acknowledge her hatred. The minister also saw his self-sacrificial behavior as love, although actually it was motivated not by the needs of his family but by his own need to maintain an image of himself. Early in his treatment he would continually talk about how he “did things for” his wife and his children, leading one to believe that he himself got nothing out of such acts. But he did. Whenever we think of ourselves as doing something for someone else, we are in some way denying our own responsibility. Whatever we do is done because we choose to do it, and we make that choice because it is the one that satisfies us the most. Whatever we do for someone else we do because it fulfills a need we have. Parents who say to their children, “You should be grateful for all that we have done for you” are invariably parents who are lacking in love to a significant degree. Anyone who genuinely loves knows the pleasure of loving. When we genuinely love we do so because we want to love. We have children because we want to have children, and if we are loving parents, it is because we want to be loving parents. It is true that love involves a change in the self, but this is an extension of the self rather than a sacrifice of the self: As will be discussed again later, genuine love is a self-replenishing(再充电) activity. Indeed, it is even more; it enlarges rather than diminishes the self; it fills the self rather than depleting(耗尽) it. In a real sense love is as selfish as nonlove. Here again there is a paradox in that love is both selfish and unselfish at the same time. It is not selfishness or unselfishness that distinguishes love from nonlove; it is the aim of the action. In the case of genuine love the aim is always spiritual growth. In the case of nonlove the aim is always something else.