Beneath: Exploring the Unconscious in Individuals

By Helene Smit

BENEATH explains the WHY and the HOW of the deepest roots of human behaviour in a simple, comprehensible, but academically rigorous way to ordinary people. It offers a synthesis of depth psychology, without the jargon. It explains the logic of mental structuring and resultant behaviour, and it is in fact, fundamentally logical.

BENEATH will help ordinary individuals develop an understanding so that they can think through the following types of questions for themselves:

1. Why do I sometimes want to do one thing, but end up doing the opposite?
2. Why do I sometimes instinctively like some people, and yet take an instant dislike to others?
3. How do my character traits develop and how can I change them?
4. Why does it feel that I cannot access my full potential?
5. Why do people do things that are so obviously destructive?
6. Why do we hurt the people we love sometimes?
7. How can I change the behaviours in myself that I do not like?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9780992235666

Book preview

To the wisdom and creativity of the unconscious self in all of us, and to all those who work patiently towards its unleashing.

Copyright 2014 in published edition Hélène Smit

Copyright 2014 in text and photographs Hélène Smit

First published in 2011 by Moonshine Media

www.moonshinemedia.co.za

This edition published 2014 by The Depth Leadership Trust

www.depthleadership.co.za

Editor: Pluto Panoussis

Publishing Manager: Dominique le Roux

Text Editors: Louise Naudé, Roxanne Reid

Designer: Pluto Panoussis

Proofreader: Lesley Hay-Whitton

Indexer: Cliff Perusset

eBook conversion: Trace Digital Services

Photographs: Hélène Smit

Cover Design: Pluto Panoussis

Illustrations: Werner Burger

Chapter Heading Drawings: Jaco van Schalkwyk

Homage Portraits: Johan de Jager

Photo Manipulation: Pluto Panoussis, Gillian Coetzee

Printed book ISBN 978-0-620-49950-7

eBook ISBN 978-0-9922356-6-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system or translated into any language in any form or by any means, that is electronic, mechanical, magnetic, optical, chemical, manual or otherwise, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of the author.

BENEATH

EXPLORING THE UNCONSCIOUS IN INDIVIDUALS

Hélène Smit

with

Pluto Panoussis

POETRY CREDITS

 'Sky at Night' by Leopold Staff, published in 1983 by Bloodaxe Books

Extract from 'Olorum Nimbe' by the Yoruba People, published in 1988 by Faber and Faber

'I Spoil Everything' by the Vandau People, published in 1988 by Faber and Faber

Extract from 'Childhood' by Arthur Rimbaud, published in 1988 by Pan Books

Extract from 'Knots' by R.D. Laing, published in 1971 by Penguin Books

Extract from 'Girls’ Song for the Game of Pots' by the Didinga, published in 1988 by Faber and Faber

Extract from 'The Voyage' by Ted Hughes, published in 1960 by Faber and Faber

Extract from 'A Kind of End' by Nichita Stănescu, published in 1975 by Anvil Press

Extract from ‘Boy on a Swing’ by Oswald Mtshali, published in 1988 by Faber and Faber

Extract from ‘A Face’ by Yannis Ritsos, published in 1979 by Princeton University Press

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hélène Smit has been a lecturer and practitioner in the areas of psychological literacy, group dynamics, change management, diversity management and facilitation for 20 years. She lectured at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business for 15 years on the MBA and a variety of other programmes. She was the Programme Director for the National Diploma in Facilitation offered by the South African College of Applied Psychology for five years. Her company, Feather Associates (Pty) Ltd, has been working with many of the country's leading corporations, educational institutions, non-governmental organisations, and local and national government offices since 1992. In addition, Hélène has taught and facilitated organisational groups in Botswana, Egypt, Tanzania and Zambia. She is the author of two other books: The Depth Facilitator’s Handbook and Depth Leadership.  She recently established the Depth Leadership Trust, a social enterprise that promotes greater awareness and understanding of unconscious processes and the impact these have on our lives, our work, and our organisations. She lives with her family in Prince Albert in the Karoo in South Africa.

Contact details for Hélène Smit:

[e-mail]

[phone]

PO Box 152

Prince Albert 6930

South Africa

ABOUT THE DESIGNER

During the course of his career, Pluto Panoussis has been a designer, an illustrator, a writer, an architect, and the director of a number of award-winning productions. He has co-written and directed two television series, exhibited as a fine artist with five solo exhibitions to his name, created the corporate identities of a number of companies and designed and headed the publicity campaigns of numerous local and international theatre productions. He is co-founder and art director of the social commentary cartoon strip ‘Skaapstad’, and founder of iMPAC (Initiative for Motion Pictures within the African Continent) — the latest initiative in his ongoing commitment towards fostering a culture of exploration in the visual arts. Currently he is head of the Film Department at the Open Window School of Visual Communication.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Beneath has been my biggest project to date. It has taken years to develop the thinking behind it and to articulate the ideas in what I hope is an accessible format. For the last five years, it has been an active project. And so, there are many people who helped to bring this book into existence.

My most profound gratitude goes to Pluto Panoussis. He has been a creative companion for many years, and the co-creator of this book. I approached him with some ideas five years ago and he patiently, but persistently, encouraged me to put those ideas into writing and so unleashed the writer in me. Then he helped me edit every word at least twice. He challenged my thinking and entertained me every step of the way. Someone else once said of Pluto that he changes moments of difficulty into ones of love, and I have continually been reminded of the truth of those words.

Pluto designed Beneath and in the process has taken my rough scribbles and amateur photos and made them into works of art. I could not have asked for a better companion for this project. He taught me about the creative process and the patience and stamina required for the manifestation of one’s creative lifework and, through it all, most importantly, fostered a love in me for alternative country and western music.

Thank you to Dominique le Roux, my publisher. She makes things happen and has inspired me with her capacity to deeply engage with the material and allow herself to be moved and changed by it. She has been supportive and practical and has helped to make the dream a reality.

The material in the book represents a synthesis and personalisation of a range of concepts developed by many different authors and practitioners in the field of human psychology. The homages at the end of each chapter pay tribute to the thinkers that have had a major influence on my thinking.

The authors listed in the bibliography have all also contributed to the distillation of the ideas in this book. However, I have had the privilege of personal interactions with the following thinkers, authors and practitioners which have deepened my engagement with the material intellectually and personally:

Rod Anderson

Ruth Eastwood

Marc Feitelberg

Arthur Colman

Pilar Montero

Arnold Mindell

There have been several editors and contributors who have worked with a part of or on the entire document. I would like to thank:

Louise Naudé for her empathetic and insightful editing

Roxanne Reid for her helpful suggestions and unnerving efficiency

Bruce MacDonald for his willingness to read the whole thing and offer useful, although characteristically sarcastic, comments

Lesley Hay-Whitton for editing the boxes and the homages and for her meticulous proofreading, and to Michael Angelopulo for his superb final proofread

Louise Malan, Gillian Coetzee and Werner Burger for assisting with the laying out of the book and patiently implementing many changes

Cliff Perusset for his elegant index and his warmth

To the artists and illustrators involved:

Werner Burger for his inspired help with the illustrated diagrams

Jaco van Schalkwyk for his sophisticated chapter heading drawings

Johan de Jager for the compassionate homage portraits

In my capacity as a researcher of psychological processes, I would like to thank the clients and students who allowed me to work with them, and (although this was not the primary purpose of our interactions) for allowing me to learn from them in the process. Ideas can only be refined when they are experienced and challenged, and my work as a teacher and facilitator of psychological processes has been enormously informative in developing my understanding of the psyche. There have been others who have influenced and supported my creativity. Thank you to the writers and artists who shared their experiences with me. I am also grateful to my companions on the trips to the Antarctic Peninsula and Tanquary Fjord in the Canadian Arctic. They were strangers who became friends. I would like to thank Maria, Helen and Minas for generously housing us and feeding us during this lengthy process. Finally, and most importantly, I am surrounded by family, friends and a support system that keeps the show on the road. I would like to express my love and gratitude to them all:

My immediate and much treasured family: Bodo, Sylvan and Sophia – for genuinely supporting my passion.

Suzie Daniels, my assistant for most of the last fourteen years; you are a solid and precious part of my foundation

My friends who listen, advise, commiserate and laugh at it all with me

My mother, Reyna, for getting me started on the career that led to this book

Katriena and Fransiena, the two women that raised me with love despite the deprivations of Apartheid

My father, James, for his enduring and significant support

INTRODUCTION

Beneath introduces the everyday reader to the concepts behind depth psychology. Depth psychology is essentially concerned with the idea that the human mind does not consist only of a conscious part, but also contains a part that is unconscious. The unconscious part of the mind influences how we perceive the world and how we behave in it as much as the conscious mind does.

The unconscious develops as a direct result of the complexities of managing ourselves in the world. In order to cope effectively with the multiple forces around us and inside us, our minds split into more than one compartment and we do not retain conscious access to all of these compartments of the mind. The parts that we are unaware of nevertheless influence our behaviour, and while our minds are split, there will be a component of our behaviour that we are not able to understand or control. By becoming aware of the unconscious in ourselves, and starting the process of integrating it into the conscious mind, albeit piece by piece, we become more able to manage our own behaviour and the impact that our behaviour has on others.

This book tries to explain how the unconscious develops, given our human context and the forces acting upon us, and provides some understanding of the implications of having an unconscious mind.

WHY A BOOK ABOUT THE UNCONSCIOUS?

The focus of this book is the idea of the unconscious, or that which lies beneath the surface, because it is one of the most powerful, yet mysterious determinants of human behaviour. The human unconscious is intangible and invisible precisely because it is by its very nature potentially disturbing, and may even be dangerous to other parts of the person or social system. The effects that can result from the unconscious functioning can be devastating for individuals and/or groups if not managed with care, and yet many of us do not even acknowledge the existence of such a part of ourselves.

General knowledge regarding the conscious (above-the-surface) determinants of human behaviour has consistently grown over the last hundred years or so. This knowledge is now generally available to members of the public. However, we are reaching the limit of the capacity of above-the-surface psychological concepts to explain, predict and influence human behaviour.

Studies of the unconscious have tended to be relegated to the world of specialists, and have not yet been included in mainstream thinking. Those of us who are not specialists often do not have a name for the unconscious, but have in some instances discovered ways that provide access to it and methods of intervention based on varying degrees of rigour.

As a direct result of the complexity of the unconscious, approaches differ in the way they regard its content and dynamics. Different schools of thought in depth psychology – generally originating in the work of either Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung – are rarely integrated. Individuals who seek psychological assistance often do not have sufficient psychological literacy to distinguish between different psychological approaches, let alone to choose between therapists who follow one tradition rather than another.

Individuals need knowledge about the nature and functioning of the unconscious. Few accessible and for mal bridges exist between the theory and practice of working with the unconscious and the psychological literacy of the general public. More bridges need to be built, and Beneath aims to make a contribution

THE SUBJECTIVE LOGIC OF THE PSYCHE

As much as there have been great developments in the last two thousand years in terms of understanding, predicting and managing human behaviour, much of it still remains a mystery. Some human behaviour can be explained through overt logic, and some of it seems to require leaps of faith and imagination. However, one of the basic tenets of depth psychology is the idea that all of our experiences are laid down inside us in the form of a set of logic paths. My experience is that, on closer examination, most individual behaviour has an inherent, but subjective logic to it. The difficulty with subjective logic, however, is that sometimes the logic is buried far from conscious awareness, and the logical steps resulting in a particular behaviour extend over different contexts and periods of time. It takes effort and attention to figure out how it works.

When someone comments that a person is crazy in his/her behaviour, what they are saying is that they regard that individual’s behaviour to be lacking in objective logic. The issue is not that the behaviour of the individual is illogical, but rather that his/her logic is deeply personal and complex. Few of us take the time to trace someone’s subjective logic back to its roots, thereby unearthing the clear logical line that leads to some inexplicable behaviour. If we were to do so, the world generally, and our relationships specifically, would probably make a whole lot more sense.

After I taught this psycho-logic idea to a group of students, one of them shared the following story with me that illustrates subjective logic:

The student’s three year-old son (who is a sturdy boy) was swinging on the towel rail in the bathroom. Predictably, the towel rail broke away from the wall. The boy’s mother came running in and was understandably upset. Motivated by the theory of subjective logic, the student suggested to his wife that he would handle the situation. He did so by trying to unravel his son’s logic and asked the boy why he had been swinging on the towel rail. The boy explained that he had been told to do so at school. After further prompting it emerged that they had monkey bars at school, which children are encouraged to use to develop their motor coordination. In the boy’s mind, swinging on a bar was a good and praiseworthy activity. The equivalent activity at home was swinging on a towel rail. What was required in this situation from the parent was not punishment, but a little gentle redirection. In order to trace and understand the logic behind our own behaviour and that of others, it is useful to understand the origins and mechanisms of the unconscious mind.

DEALING WITH THE COMPLEXITIES OF THE TASK

This book is attempting to communicate very complex concepts in a two-dimensional format. It is also using a static medium to explain a dynamic world. The human mind (or psyche) is a continually evolving combination of process and structure. In order to capture this complexity and to do it justice, the book combines the use of text in the form of a narrative, diagrams in order to illustrate complex processes, images in order to engage symbolic understanding, and psychological explanations in order to ensure academic rigour.

The book attempts to arrive at a comprehensive model for the psyche from a depth psychology perspective that is accessible to the layperson. This is an ambitious project because the psyche is an incredibly complex and interactive organic system. In the process of writing this book, it has become apparent to me exactly why this is such a challenging task. The psyche cannot be reduced to little boxes with any real success: in order to explain complex psychological principles they have to be simplified, but in simplifying, we lose important aspects of the complexity of the psychological process. However, acquiring a grasp of how the psyche functions, even in this reduced form, is still infinitely more helpful for an individual than having no knowledge of the psyche at all.

I have made a significant and lengthy effort to be as rigorous as possible, and to investigate the logic behind the assertions in this book. Of course, certain phenomena still defy general understanding and there are obvious limits to one person’s interpretation of a complex set of theories. Therefore this book represents a particular perspective at a specific point in time; it cannot and does not claim to be definitive and exhaustive.

PERSONAL METHODS

This book is the result of a set of eclectic research methods. I combined reading and study with personal experience and reflection. All new concepts were tested against my own psychological process. I have spent fifteen years in formal Jungian analysis, and also seven years working with a psychotherapist who practises from a far more varied foundation. Both these individuals generously shared their psychological wisdom with me, in addition to guiding my psychotherapeutic process.

My career has involved working as a facilitator transforming group dynamics in various organisations for the past eighteen years. In addition, I have lectured at a business school for much of that time, where my task has been to introduce adults who are not psychologically trained to some of the ideas of depth psychology in order to enhance their leadership and facilitation skills. As a result, I have had the opportunity to cross-check my thinking against observations and interactions with numerous students and clients.

Striving to live more comfortably has always meant trying to understand what really goes on psychologically between me and the people I am interacting with. This book therefore offers a way of understanding the human psyche based on my life experience, but modified by the continued input of other thinkers, practitioners, students, clients, employees, business associates, friends, romantic partners, and most importantly, my two children, Sylvan and Sophia.

PERSONAL VISION

Since I was a small child, I have been fascinated by the idea of Antarctica. I often had dreams in which I was walking in an ice desert. In 2006, I finally made it to Antarctica. Confronting the ice desert of my childhood dreams, with the perspective of an adult and the training and experience of long-term psychol-ogical work, confirmed to me the aptness of using water and related symbols as a visual background for the depth psychology concepts in this book.

I wrote this book because I wanted to document my ongoing exploration of the inner world, and I wanted to demystify psychological concepts and their implications for individuals and the groups in which they live and work. It is my wish that the book will help individuals and organisations choose ways of being and doing that may be more constructive and sustainable than those they may currently be using. 

All this is underpinned by a dream and a hope for a world in which people do less harm to one another because they are more conscious and more self aware – a world in which the cycle of the wounded wounding others is broken, and new paths are chosen that shift our human focus from re-enacting the dramas of our pasts to creating different futures.

TECHNICAL NOTES

There is a great deal of technical terminology available when discussing the theory of human psychology. Some of this terminology is explicitly included in this text, and is referenced and explained when it appears. All other terms are intended to be understood as they would be used in common language.

The decision about how to deal with gender terminology is always a difficult one. In this case, I have decided to use the masculine and feminine genders alternatively between chapters.

SOURCES

Many (if not most) of the ideas in this book come from the work of thinkers and practitioners who devoted their lives to the understanding of the human psyche. Over the years I have read countless books and articles written by a variety of academics, clinicians and popular writers, who have significantly influenced my thinking.

First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge the fundamental influence of the work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, considered to be the fathers of depth psychology. In the list below are the names of other individuals who have been important to the development of my thinking. Some of these people developed ground-breaking new theories and others significantly refined those original theories. Their ideas are included in one way or another in the theory of this book.

Alfred Adler                                                 

Andrew Samuels                                          

Arnold Mindell                                             

Arthur Colman                                             

Donald W. Winnicott                                    

Donald Kalsched                                          

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross                                  

Hester McFarland Solomon                           

James Hollis

John Bowlby

Melanie Klein

Otto Rank

Robert Johnson  

Robyn Skinner

Victor Frankl

Wilfred Bion

1

BIRTH OF THE INDIVIDUAL

Setting the Psychological Scene