Idealising and demonising: the tension between goodness and badness

20 Oct

This tension feels as though it’s almost the foundation for all other tensions – that basic wrestle between what is helpful and what is harmful in life. It’s the ultimate polarisation and has lead to philosophers, healers, artists and many others developing theories, ideologies, artworks and psychodramas in order to try to capture these fundamental positions. In the therapy room, people are often trying to make sense of the parts of themselves or significant others that are experienced as ‘good’ versus those that are perceived as ‘bad’. It can lead to mindsets, individuals or groups becoming villains or heroes, victims or persecutors. With associated feelings of innocence and/or guilt. On an intellectual level we can just about grasp that life is too complex to be put in such simple boxes, but when it comes to our emotional realms, we are regularly drawn to the soothing simplicity of this dichotomy.

Sometimes the way that we cope is by ‘splitting’, a psychodynamic term for the situation that arises when we pour only bad elements into one aspect of the self, a person or a community and perhaps pour only good elements into another. It can make the uncertainty of a situation feel slightly more tolerable as our loyalty isn’t torn. We can attach fully and wholeheartedly to one ‘pure’ thing at a time. This may have started when we were young as a way of managing complicated dynamics that we were too little to comprehend. It’s hard to see the goodness in a person who does bad things, or see the badness in a person we love. The demands on the psyche are potentially too great for young people without the relevant neurological architecture and who rely on more powerful others for survival. However, this cognitive pattern can become a personal or cultural habit, triggered especially when anxiety increases.

Ideas for engaging with this particular tension:

BODY: tie something that has a little weight to it (such as a heavy bead or a pebble) to a piece of string so that it can act as a pendulum. Hold it comfortably in your hand and allow it to swing loosely from side-to-side or back-and-forth as you watch it move towards each maximum position and then return. Let it settle in its own time and find its centre. It may still twitch and wobble depending on the type of micromovements that your body is making. Observe how it obeys gravity and finally finds an almost resting point. Play with its direction and see if it also moves in circles sometimes. While you do this, lightly hold in mind something you are seeing in quite ‘either 100% good or 100% bad’ terms in your life and allow your grip on your ideas to loosen as you let the pendulum dance. Let your thoughts oscillate alongside it and soften back any resistance you feel towards letting them shape-shift. This exercise isn’t about compromising any life values that you hold – just exploring your stance and seeing if there is any new information that you can gather.

MIND: recall a time that you either saw an aspect of self or another person/group as being entirely bad, even if that was only for a brief time. Be mindful when selecting here as you may not want to choose something that is associated with deep trauma. Try to capture one aspect of that irredeemable badness and connect with what happens physically, emotionally and cognitively when you do this. As you get curious about those feelings, thoughts and sensations, experiment with giving that badness a form in your imagination. It may be an abstract shape, a colour, a light, a character, an animal or part of nature. If you don’t or cannot generate an image, try to get a sense of what it feels like to try to relate to the badness. It might have a voice or trigger an impulse to engage in particular behaviours such as avoidance. Often we have a tendency to shun or distance ourselves. See if you can instead turn towards and try to understand a little more about it (while not trying to force yourself to approve of it necessarily). Welcome any defences and any insights, which may help you to learn more about your inner world.

SPIRIT: on a deep level, how do you reflect on good and bad in the world? Are these concepts attached to a faith or a spiritual belief system? Can they reside within humans or are they only expressed via acts? If they may be housed within people, are we born with them and can they be passed down through the generations via our genetic make-up or through some other type of transmission? Meditate on these energies and which you feel drawn towards. Do they change when brought into contact with one another and are there other energies that arise from this meeting, or already exist outside of this duality? Imagine moving to another part of the solar system and meeting life forms that do not have concepts of good and bad. How would they organise life and interact. What might they make of the poet Rumi’s lines: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense.”?