Is it your mother’s fault? And your dad’s? How psychotherapy excavates the past to free the present
“Tell me about your mother … ”
There is a misplaced stereotype that therapy is simply a process of psychic archaeology that involves a navelgazing excavation of the past. Unsurprisingly, many question this probing of the past given that they experience their problems so clearly in the present.
In relational psychotherapy we do indeed ask about your mother – and your father, family and friends – but this is in the context of what is now unfolding in your life and in the consulting room. We are only interested in the past as it is lived in the present.
When we are born, we have few internal filters to structure the plethora of stimuli bombarding us. Slowly we begin to develop unconscious filters to organise our world. These filters are shaped by our experiences and by our inherent temperaments. Unconscious filters are extremely powerful and, overall, aid us in navigating the world, but they can become a hindrance.
Psychotherapy aims to unpack these historical filters to free the present from the past.
It has come a long way since Freud. While Freudian techniques have largely fallen into disuse, his insights that we are not always rational, are limited in self-knowledge and contend throughout life with our aggressive and sexual feelings remain perennial and true.
Prakesh, a 40-year-old town planner, was referred by his GP for psychotherapy due to low mood. He complained of feeling depressed and unappreciated, at home and at work. He felt constantly undermined by others – and he certainly undermined himself with critical ruminations.
Prakesh had tried mindfulness, regular exercise and challenging his negative thinking and found these all to be useful. But he still felt low and that his relationships were unsatisfying.
These difficulties soon manifested in the consulting room, both in the content of the session but more powerfully in his style of relating. Prakesh spoke of feeling criticised by his wife when she reminded him to do small tasks and feeling wounded when his boss asked him to make minor adjustments to his reports.
He interpreted these requests to mean that he was a useless and bad person, and he felt resentful that this was unfair. He felt persecuted and incompetent, and a dark cloud would descend over him.
Rationally, Prakesh knew his reactions were overblown but this awareness did not prevent him from being overtaken by them. Delving into his history, it emerged that he grew up in a family in which mistakes were not tolerated and his mother was constantly pushing him to placate his demanding and critical father.
By contrast, his younger sister could do no wrong. Prakesh was stung by this injustice, and in response developed filters that predisposed him to view others as demanding and unfair, and he persistently doubted his own worth.
It is important to clarify that Prakesh’s parents loved him and wished him to succeed in life. Like most parents they were doing the best they could with the cards that they held.
Yet they too were prisoners of their histories, unconsciously enacting scripts from their pasts. Philip Larkin put it most aptly when he wrote:
Understanding the humanity of our parents can be liberating. But knowing the transgenerational transmission of his difficulties provided little relief for Prakesh, and his therapist began to notice herself being drawn into his relational dance.
She described this dynamic as follows:
The therapist went on to relate how memories of hurt feelings and distress surfaced and, as feelings and memories were linked, so too were Prakesh’s past and the present.
This therapeutic moment marked the beginning of a process of healing involving linking thoughts and emotions, past memories and present constructions. This is a process easier said than done, as it requires emotional as well as intellectual insight to expand our freedom to make less historically burdened choices.
“So, tell me about your mother … ” Prof Gill Straker and Dr Jacqui Winship
are co-authors of The Talking Cure. Gill also appears on the podcast Three Associating, in which relational psychotherapists explore their blind spots
Prakesh is a fictitious amalgam to exemplify many similar cases that we see. The therapist is a fictional amalgam of both authors