Such temporary displacements may occur, particularly
in the course of this pathwork, as an interim phase. Let us again take
an example. Suppose you have a problem in regard to a partnership relationship,
a difficulty in relating to the opposite sex. Let us further suppose that
before you have started and progressed on this path, in spite of the existence
of this problem, your pseudo solutions, your idealized self-image, and
your defense mechanisms have given you some measure of fulfillment. Of
course, such fulfillment was limited, problematic, fraught with tension,
and, in the end, disappointing -- for it cannot be otherwise if one attempts
to solve a problem by false means. But, nevertheless, there was some measure
of fulfillment. Progress in this pathwork has begun to dissolve, to a
considerable extent, the pseudo solutions, the idealized self-image, and
the defense mechanisms, but the original problem may not yet be fully
worked through and understood on the deepest levels of your being. Nor
are you quite conscious of your needs and their rightful place in your
life. Hence, you find yourself in the interim in a transitory stage, which
may confuse even you, because you know that you have grown, while experiencing
a greater emptiness than ever before -- in this specific area of your
life. You do not quite know why this is so. Your needs are now less fulfilled
than before, but since you do not concisely acknowledge this fact, the
energy current shifts into another outlet.
Not being aware of the original need, and
its present unfulfillment, is bound to cause it to attach itself to another
situation. Perhaps it produces a tight over-involvement with your work,
where there are now too many intense reactions. Or perhaps it produces
an over-involvement with a specific friendship, into which all the feelings
and needs are shifted.
It does not suffice to be generally aware
of the unfulfilled need of a mutual relationship, the need of a mate.
It has to be specifically recognized that several needs are imbedded in
this expression. For instance, apart from the pleasure principle, there
is the need for being needed and important; the need to give and receive;
the need to be protective or protected, or both; the need for ego gratification.
All these are legitimate needs, provided they are not overgrown and one
is not disproportionate to another. For example, if the need for ego gratification
in a partnership is disproportionately stronger than the need to give
and receive love, affection, and pleasure, then such an imbalance has
to be recognized and the reason found. But even if all these various needs,
in this one form of expression, are healthy in interaction but ignored
in such a temporary phase, then the entire nucleus of needs might be blindly
shifted into another outlet. All these needs might experience a measure
of fulfillment in the new transferred area -- in a different form, of
course. Being fully aware of the substitution will make the shift harmless,
even healthy and necessary. But ignoring the process must create untold
and unnecessary hardship and confusion.
If a boss, an employee, a person you work
for, a friend, or a group of people, or an activity or interest are supposed
to furnish you with all the unfulfilled needs of the missing mate, then
you must become overly tense, hostile, and insecure. Every little slight,
or apparent slight, will hurt much more than if you were aware of what
goes on in you. Such awareness will make you joyfully accept those fulfillments
that can be substituted for, but will not make you expect what cannot
possibly be expected -- therefore avoiding disappointment and frustration.
I do not mean to imply that the pleasure
principle can be displaced into another outlet in its original form, of
course not. It transforms itself. A hankering after luxuries may be such
a transformation, or a craving for food or drink. Full awareness of this
will lessen the intensity and strain, even if the displaced need has to
find some outlet until it can be fulfilled in its natural way.
Let us take one more example, assuming your
main problem is a difficulty to make the best of yourself. In the course
of this work you have found and dissolved the idealized self-image, the
pseudo solutions, etc. Hence, the small, precarious success you had before
is temporarily lessened. You now find it harder to assert yourself because
the defenses no longer work, while you have not yet found the clarity
of acknowledging your real needs without the fear of imagined dire consequences
and false guilt. You now understand that your previous and limited accomplishments
were no satisfactory solution. They were fraught with tension and anxiety,
and in the end ventures always failed, without your really seeing why.
Now you know. But you are not yet in a position to express your abilities
and talents without conflict and uncertainty. It takes a little more insight
and understanding before you can do so. In this interim phase, in which
you find yourself more frustrated than before, the respective needs are
left without any outlet. Unconsciously you seek a substitute channel.
Again, it is important to recognize the various
needs connected with this one issue of vocational self-expression. Apart
from the need to make a living -- which is the most obvious and most readily
recognized -- there are others: the need for creative accomplishments;
the need for ego gratification and self-esteem; the need for carrying
responsibility and coping with a challenge; the need for the pleasure
of accomplishment; the need for self-assertion, as well as the need for
cooperation and interaction. Provided one need is not disproportionate
to others, all of them have their rightful place and should not cause
guilt. By not acknowledging these needs, they are displaced into a relationship,
a side activity. As in the former example, the fact of doing so cannot
harm, provided you are fully aware of it. This prevents you from undue
over-reaction, tension, frustration, and the inner disorder and imbalance
which are always the result of the lack of self-awareness.
Look at your present activities and relationships
in this light. Ascertain any possible over-reaction, lingering or frequently
recurring anxiety, and other negative emotions. Then examine and ponder
the needs behind. It will then become possible to find and clearly determine
the displacement. It is particularly important to then ascertain to what
degree you feel you ought not to have these needs, and whether or not
they are distorted due to denial.
It is essential to verify the various layers
of superimposition and substitution. The more these various layers are
emotionally experienced and understood in their true significance, the
sooner can fulfillment occur. However, the frustration of needs does not
hurt half as much, in actuality, as the fact that, consciously or unconsciously,
one thinks that frustrated needs are painful. This is one of the predominant
reasons for repressing needs -- thereby believing that they cease to exist.
Thus the imagined pain of frustration is supposed to be eliminated while,
in reality, the displacement and substitution result in much more severe
and bitter suffering than would the relaxed admission of an unfulfillment.
Let us now consider the possibility of these
various layers of substitution. Originally the need exists. This is one
layer. But you may unconsciously, or vaguely half consciously, feel that
you, as a mature and good person, ought not to have it. You therefore
deny its existence. This denial is the next layer. In order to make the
denial successful, you over-produce its opposite. You not only try to
convince yourself that the need is nonexistent, but you prove it by emphasizing
the opposite. This, then, becomes compulsive -- just because of the process
involved. That is the third layer. As a further result, there must come
resentment, dissatisfaction -- the fourth layer. As a fifth, guilt about
the resentment. As a sixth, there is confusion, because all of these powerful
emotions cannot be dealt with. They are merely a result of denying the
original need or feeling.
Displacement, as discussed here, is horizontal,
as it were. One layer covers the other. Vertical displacement is when
one substitutes one form of self-expression with another. Compulsiveness
is also the result of vertical shifts, just as in the horizontal ones.
The intensity of preoccupation, resulting from such displacements, applies
to both forms.
If you are afraid to be rejected in love
and, subsequently, displace the respective energy current into the channel
of vocational success, then the slightest real or imagined rejection in
that field hurts infinitely more than a real rejection in the original
area.
Discussing such a topic must, perforce, happen
in an over-simplified way. When it comes to the dynamics of the human
psyche there are many details which must be taken into consideration and
it ceases to be a question of clear-cut denial or admission. It is often
somewhere in-between -- a half measure, which is no more satisfactory
than a complete lack of awareness of these processes.
If you find yourself in an involved situation
and you examine yourself from the point of view under discussion, the
mere fact that you acknowledge your needs, even though you may not yet
be able to distinguish between distorted and healthy needs and emotional
attitudes, acknowledge them for better or for worse. This is bound to
relieve the involved situation of surplus intensity and painfully twisted
and conflicted emotions. You may try with all your might to understand
a painful and involved situation by analyzing yourself and the other person,
but as long as you do not find peace, you may be sure that something has
been displaced.
Seeing this over and over again with all
of my friends -- with some to a greater, with some to a lesser degree
-- makes this lecture of special importance. Regardless of how good your
will is and how sincerely you try, you still often fail to look in the
right direction. Much of what I constantly tell you is forgotten at the
time.
I recently discussed the topic of transference.
Of course, transference is also a form of displacement or substitution.
But often this term is not recognized in its full significance and its
various details. Displaced needs are also a sort of transference of them
-- just as one may displace, or transfer, the feelings one originally
had for a parent to another person. I discussed in the lecture dealing
with transference that it is necessary to determine a negative feeling
toward a person which is persistent and cannot be resolved by finding
that you originally felt in a similar way toward a parent, but did not
dare to acknowledge this. The moment you now feel the original feeling
toward the parent in connection with the new person, the negatively involved
situation must clear up -- while you have grown considerably in this process
of facing the truth within yourself. This is the identical mechanism with
displaced feelings and needs.
Are there any questions now?
QUESTION: I have the feeling that,
due to my childhood, there exists in me a childish greed which manifests
by a need for special consideration now. Do I displace or superimpose
this original need?
ANSWER: Yes, you are quite right. You
so completely denied this childhood greed until recently that you go way
overboard by denying yourself every gratification and fulfillment. You
feel extremely guilty, not only due to this still undeveloped part in
yourself in which the childish greed exists, but also due to the legitimate,
rightful desire to receive. You feel just as guilty about the one as about
the other. Therefore you go way overboard in denying yourself any gratification.
The fact that you can even ask this question
indicates a tremendous step forward for you and a vast new opening of
insight into yourself, of clarification. This will prove of more crucial
importance than you even realize at this moment.
QUESTION: In an involvement with a
new person, how can one be sure that it is not a question of transference
of the parent?
ANSWER: One can be sure only by deeply
examining one's feelings and ascertaining the parallels, the similarities
of reactions. But a relationship need not be shied away from because it
may also contain elements of transferred emotions. Not only can one grow
in such a relationship, particularly when being alert to oneself, but
it is seldom the case that spontaneous, direct feelings toward the real
person in question do not also exist, which might make the relationship
rewarding for both. To the degree one recognizes oneself, to that degree
the relationship will grow more real and less a repetition of old patterns.
I would also like to advise that you examine
your unconscious motivations for this question, in that you might have
hoped to hear that it is indeed "merely" a transference, and therefore
no good. This might appear to imply certain disturbing questions.
This topic, although not entirely new, may
open more new doors for many of my friends than a completely new topic
at this time. It is essential for all of you to work through.
Let me go from you with loving, warm blessings
for each one of you, in your own way -- also for those who read this lecture.
May all of you receive and feel this love, even if some of my friends
may, due to their current problems and misunderstandings and their temporary
involvements making them blind, not realize how much I am with them and
for them. Be blessed, be in peace, be in God.
The Guide
by Eva Pierrakos
January 10, 1964
Copyright 1964, the Center for the Living
Force, Inc.
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