copyrighted
Chapter Six
“It’s Me!”
The Alchemical Healing Process:
Right Seeing + Right Intention
What is, is the moment of encounter, is revelation and truth. One’s
response illuminates intention and level of awareness.
Through behavior a child speaks, shares glimpses of inner world, meaning
and expectation of others. A child demonstrates a complexity of feelings
and emotions, but is often unable to provide analytical insight into their
meaning. Even adults have difficulty understanding their feelings and behavior,
so how is a new arrival to our planet to provide such awareness? Yet young
children are frequently asked why they behave as they do. To see rightly,
and to respond with right intention, requires that we view experience through
the child’s eyes, from the child’s perspective, standing in
the child’s shoes. How else can we teach what needs learning?
Thomas
At a 2:00 - 2: 30 PM teacher team meeting, my attention was drawn to four-year
old Thomas, who has attended Beachbrook for one year.
When he first entered school, he seemed lost and unrelated, immersed in
the tangles and confusions of his inner world. Now, he actively participates
in the life of his classroom, and is obviously cognitively bright. His “favorite
color is black”. He will use only black markers and crayons, the
color of loss, mourning, grief and depression.
Thomas’ teacher informed me that for the last week he had begun to
yell and scream strange sounds while on his cot during rest-time. She had
quietly accepted his obvious need to produce these sounds, but did not know
what to make of his behavior. Up until now, I had only superficial contact
with Thomas.
Of his history, I knew that Thomas had been emotionally abandoned,
neglected and abused as an infant by his birth-mother, who was an
alcoholic. He had been rescued by family members. His birth-mother had
struggled to free herself from substance abuse, and was tangentially in
and out of his life. His father was unknown. There were Family Court
battles over custody and visitation rights with his birth-mother who on
the telephone made promises to see him she didn’t keep. Frequently,
Thomas insisted upon waiting long hours, in vain, for her appearance.
One family member was given kinship foster-mother rights, and became Thomas’
primary care taker. She ardently hoped to adopt him.
Thomas openly longed for his loved and mostly absent birth-mother, who existed
for him as an idealized dream. She represented what was lost to him of himself,
and was identified with her. He believed he was being denied access to her
by the very person who had made him “the center of (her) life”.
His painful accusations hurt his foster-mother greatly, though her own feelings
toward his mother were highly conflicted.
The atmosphere he lived in was often emotionally charged, explosive and
combative. Thomas knew he was the ‘eye’ of a storm. He, too,
could be violent and explosive at home.
Only recently had some of his explosive behavior begun to surface in school,
perhaps due to his birth-mother’s more persistent re-emergence into
his life, and the ensuing conflicts this engendered. It is likely that the
accepting nature of the therapeutic work with Thomas by his teacher and
therapist also stimulated disturbing content within Thomas to surface in
school.
One odd behavior stood out from the beginning. Thomas often took the hand
of any unknown woman who entered his classroom, kissed it, looked up at
her smiling and said with feeling, “I love you,” – which
reminded me of the children’s storybook: Are You My Mother? by P.D.
Eastman.
The day after the teacher team meeting, I went to see Thomas during rest-time.
I sat a distance of six or seven feet from him on a child’s chair.
He, sitting on his cot, was emitting strange sounds, “aa,aaa...”
(like the a in at). “You can get louder,” I said softly, wanting
to see how he’d respond to a paradoxical intervention (i.e., prescribing
the symptom). “No,” he whispered back. I sat quietly.
Thomas took his blanket, placed it under his belly, and with head elevated
and face determined, he slithered across the floor to me. He then took a
chair, placed it next to mine, sat on it and very painstakingly covered
us with his blanket. He adjusted the blanket repeatedly until it met his
specification. No words were spoken.
Then, Thomas turned his attention to my face, his own lit by an unusual
flame. He touched my features and hair with the lightness of a breeze. As
he did so I reflected, “I feel Thomas touching my eyes, cheek, hair...”
He lightly kissed my cheek. I could see him moving to kiss my lips. I slowly
averted my face. He said, “I want to put my lips on yours.”
Headlines of child abuse suddenly invaded my imagination and I clumsily
rejected Thomas’ wish saying, “I can’t let you do that.”
I felt a shock of pain course through Thomas’ body as he immediately
diverted his attention to my ring, examining it and asking about it. I responded,
“You wanted to put your lips on mine and I couldn’t let you.
I can see you feel upset about that.”
Instantly Thomas got up and began to line chairs to create a long
curved "bus". Taking me by the hand to the first seat, he instructed me
to “drive the bus.” I made driving motions and sounds. (The teaching
team was in the classroom, seated very near Thomas’ bus, observing the
unfolding drama. Our social worker, speech therapist, and later play
therapist, also came in. The lighting of the room was subdued.)
Thomas looked directly at his teacher, who sat inches from the bus, and
firmly commanded, “Don’t come in here.” She softly reflected,
“You don’t want me to come in here,” and she remained
a silent witness throughout. Thomas then became totally oblivious to the
people observing in the room. I, too, was only dimly aware of my staff’s
presence as I immersed myself in the fantasy Thomas was enacting.
Thomas sat behind me on the bus. He tapped my back lightly. “I feel
somebody touching my back,” I said softly. He kissed the spot lightly.
“I feel somebody kissing my back,” I responded. He repeated
both behaviors several times. Each time I responded as before, accepting
the affection he was longing to express. He said, “I love you,”
to the unknown presence before him. “I hear someone saying I love
you,” I responded. Thomas came forward, standing, facing me, his entire
face illuminated, smiling. “It’s me!” he said. “It’s
you!” I said.
Once more Thomas ordered me to drive. Again I made driving motions and sounds.
“Now the bus is a plane,” he said. “We’re up in
the air,” I said. Next it became a train.
“Oh my God, we have to hide.” Taking me by the hand, we ran
together to hide from “fire, bugs, ants, the boogeyman.” Thomas
leading, we crouched in corners of the room hiding from these sources of
impending attack and threat.
Thomas took me in flight into the bathroom, closing the door behind us.
The sink became a boat, and we, standing near it, were going under. “Oh
my God,” he said frequently in a loud and terrified voice, as hand
in hand he quickly led me from impending disaster to corners of respite
in the classroom.
Thomas again placed me in the driver’s seat of his bus. He took a
small stick, about six inches long, entered a nearby alcove, and striking
the wall several times said, “I’m killing the snake.”
“Thomas is killing the snake,” I affirmed quietly. He came to
me quickly, his hands outstretched together. Into my extended hands he deposited
an invisible “baby snake.” Thomas’ face was smiling. “Thomas
is giving me the baby snake,” I said, moved.
Thomas walked to a nearby area, passing staff members, blind to their presence.
I was still sitting where he had placed me, in the driver’s seat of
his bus.
From this distance, he looked at me intently. Then he spoke: “There
are two dogs, a good one and a bad one.” He paused. I reflected quietly
and deliberately, “There are two dogs, a good one and a bad one...”
With great urgency and intensity of voice Thomas asked, “Which one
do you want?” “Both,” I said softly, yet firmly. He, sounding
totally incredulous: “You want the bad one? But he’s bad!”
“They both need to be cared for,” I responded.
And so ended our time together, and rest-time.
* * *
When I entered Thomas’ classroom, I had come to see what he would
teach me as I observed him, sat with, responded and opened myself to him.
But unexpectedly, within moments, I was drawn into his fantasy and willingly
became a living, active participant in its unfoldment.
Considering Thomas’ soulful and creative fantasy the following
interpretation is provided, and for the sake of
clarity is divided into seven sequences.
One:
In the beginning of his fantasy, Thomas’ strange sounds are associated
to his identification with the baby snake. He feels unformed, collapsed
psychologically, unloved and without legs to stand on, as a young infant.
(A day prior to this fantasy enactment, he was heard to say, “I have
no legs.”) He has not internalized the symbolic security of having
legs to support him in his encounter with life. He lacks the inner structure
to psychologically stand upright, to assert and to be himself. Instead,
in collapsed, baby snake-like fashion, he moves in a lowly prone position,
albeit with serious intention and head held high. This suggests that his
core foundation, normally rooted and formed in the first year of symbiotic
life with the mothering person, is fragile, causing serious fragmentation,
and threatens to undermine ordinary experiencing.
Two:
Thomas’ search and destination, as he slithers across the floor, is
to reach his beloved, idealized and mostly absent birth-mother, whom I represent.
By adjusting his blanket to cover the two in enclosed, symbiotic warmth,
he carefully sets the condition for a nurturing discovery of her.
No longer the cold, isolated baby snake, in the presence of the longed for
and even forbidden birth-mother, he is transformed into an adoring little
boy. He explores his mother’s face with an infant’s delight.
Jolting reality intrudes upon his symbiotic yearning when I assert my real
presence by rejecting Thomas’ need for closer fusion with his birth-mother
through a mutual kiss.
Three:
Though my rejection of the kiss is a painful reality intrusion into Thomas’
symbiotic, fusion fantasy, I think it proved useful. It mirrors his actual
life, which is his birth-mother’s essential unavailability to him,
and fuels a main underlying motif, his need to find, and discover and join
with her.
As well, it draws to his awareness that I can be relied upon to be both
within his play and apart from it. I can be the seer, exercise independent
judgment, and provide, hopefully, what is needed, an aspect of mothering
that Thomas craves.
Four:
My rejection of the fusion kiss led to Thomas’ construction of a bus,
and to placing his birth-mother in the driver’s seat, that is, fulfilling
his wish to have her in charge of his life.
The bus represents a means of escape for mother and child, the desire for
enclosure with her, lonely isolation, and the promise of somewhere new to
go. It is also snake-like and impersonal, with many empty seats, lacking
fullness and the energy derived from nurturing internalized mothering presence.
Thomas turns to his teacher, who is sitting inches from the bus, and firmly
orders her: “Don’t come in here.” (Don’t come between
me and my ‘real’ mother.) In this moment, his teacher represents
his kinship foster-mother, the malevolent mothering presence he believes
separates him from his idealized and longed for, birth-mother.
Inflammatory family conflicts regarding Thomas’ care and custody,
his birth-mother’s repeated appearance and disappearance from his
life, his kinship foster-mother’s inability to sufficiently nurture
Thomas’ symbiotic needs, all contribute to Thomas’ confused,
fragmented internalization of the good/bad self and mothering parts.
Thomas now has the symbolic representation (me) of his longed for birth-mother
to himself. There are just the two of them on this long, empty, snake-like
bus.
Though he is physically close to her, she is alien to him and unavailable
– so near and yet, so far away. He sits behind her (not next to her)
and faces her impersonal, cold back. No warmth comes to him through her.
He is driven to find her, to create her, to make contact with her, a force
which intrudes upon his everyday reality when strange women enter his classroom.
He gently taps her back repeatedly, as if to say, “Look your boy is
here.” Barely kissing the spot he taps, he says, “I love you.”
The therapist-mother’s response during this exchange mirrors the existing
estrangement between Thomas and his birth-mother, yet is empathic to Thomas’
longing for loving discovery of her.
When the symbolic birth-mother is responsive to the touching love of the
unseen, unknown lost child, the child feels encouraged, comes forward, becomes
visible, owns his identity through the full-bodied assertion, “It’s
me!”
Thomas is nurtured by the impact of the moment, feeling received and taken
in by the therapist-mother, and the validating response, “It’s
you!”
Five:
Thomas orders his birth-mother to drive the bus. He wants her to take him
away with her by any means, bus, plane, train, boat. But, escaping with
her leads to, and is associated with, disaster. He exclaims, “Oh my
God, we have to hide!” (Their association is a dangerous one. Is he
not rejected and punished for openly loving and wanting her? Though his
birth-mother committed crimes against him in infancy, is she not herself
under continual attack as well? In this confused and knotty way, Thomas
identifies with her.)
It is Thomas who takes his mother by the hand to flee from sudden assaults
and terror in the displaced forms of attacking monstrous bugs, ants, boogeyman,
fire, drowning. He is joined to her as they flee, but she is of no use to
him. It is a primitive struggle for survival at his core, and to hold onto
his fragile connection to his birth-mother.
Thomas cannot count on maternal nurture and protection. It is he who must
seek places to hide and places of respite. This he accomplishes within the
classroom, (the external world) and within himself (inner world). His inner
resources, psyche, fertile imagination and fantasy life, enable him to work
to make whole what is torn and broken inside him.
In his flight, Thomas is identified with his vulnerable, helpless, addicted
and mostly lost-to-him, birth-mother. Like a shadow, she accompanies him,
but she offers little substance, real nurture or respite, the true state
of affairs. The two lost ones hover together, unified by their desperate
condition. In shared fright and flight there can be the illusion of oneness.
Six:
Thomas again places his mother in the driver’s seat where she may
be of use to him. He then moves a short distance from her to “kill
the snake”, to symbolically destroy the bad, useless abandoning and
abusive split-off destructive internalized mothering part, while preserving
the good, useful mother whom he has placed in the driver’s seat, the
one he needs to care for him.
Thomas identifies with the unformed, confused snake-mother-part, with what
is weak, helpless, mean, violent and monstrous in himself, and by killing
the snake he attempts to rid himself of the poisonous presence, and to master
his own powerful, destructive, impulses.
From the poisonous mother-snake, Thomas delivers the invisible unborn baby
snake and gives it life and protection by placing it in the hands of the
‘good’ nurturing mother for safe holding – a return to
the original theme at the beginning of Thomas’ fantasy. Thus, the
cold, unborn, unloved baby is given an opportunity to be born again. Only
in the presence of a loving mother, can this unseen, undeveloped baby have
life, become warm blooded, embodied and evolve into the human potential
of a whole boy, the potential which Thomas, himself, contains.
Seven:
The acceptance of the baby snake by the ‘good’ nurturing mother
leads to a more evolved symbol, the two good/bad warm blooded, child-like
dogs, who represent primarily the good/bad splits within Thomas. They indicate
his difficulty with self-acceptance, his lack of toleration and integration
of the negative or shadow qualities of being.
Thomas moves to still another area of the classroom, (which his more evolved
perspective requires), but is not far from the ‘good’ mother.
Having taken in her nurturing power to give life to the baby, he discovers
her, at last, as a potent source for the solution to his terrible and tormenting
question: Is he responsible for his fate?
Thomas anticipates the worst, but in his heart, soul, spirit beat hope and
courage. The assumption that has satisfied his experiences of abandonment,
cruelty and deprivation is that he is bad. In this moment though, he stands
at the precipice of doubt.
He fixes his gaze upon the ‘good’ mother and dares to ask: “There
are two dogs, a good one and a bad one..., which one do you want?”
When Thomas receives the answer, “Both,” he appears at first
dumbstruck and then astonished. He asks, “You want the bad one? But
he’s bad!”
Thomas’ response provides the ‘therapist-mother’ with
the opportunity for healing intervention, for the injection of restorative,
unifying, self-accepting medicine through the words: “They both need
to be cared for.”
From the moment that Thomas departed his cot to journey into uncharted waters
as he slithered across the floor to me, ordinary reality became suspended
and transformed. I felt shaken and riveted by the sudden, unexpected call
to leave the shore of the known for the organic depths of the unknown. Where
it would lead, and what would be revealed – like life itself –
was a mystery to me. Yet, I was aware that what was occurring had meaning,
originated from the realm of the transcendent arts, and was charged with
potential restorative energy, his, mine, ours.
Thomas journeyed to me, the mothering presence, and I, to him, by receiving
him. Thomas’ call, and my response, made possible the unfolding, transforming
fantasy.
My participation required that I shed the usual constraints of being myself,
that I drop self-consciousness and the consideration (though not entirely)
that many eyes were upon me. Entering Thomas’ world was freeing, emotionally
moving, and at times exhilarating.
This was not an academic journey, it was Thomas’ original creation,
his passion play – and I was fortunate and privileged to have a part
in it. I felt in awe of Thomas’ unconscious, of how well it worked
to serve him.
Through the enactment of his fantasy, Thomas and I permeated each other’s
world. Through this permutation something new was created. That something
profoundly altered each of us.
<back>
Copyrighted
Manuscript
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| BEACHBROOK THERAPEUTIC NURSERY SCHOOL |