Attachment is the really tough issue for me. When I went off to seminary, I thought I'd be learning how to be remote, rational, and rather chilly, but protective and thoughtful. In my own interest as well as others'. Too many people wanted to be my "friend" for their own goals, hoping to use my energy and ideas without attribution. Not all were men. The management in city government was largely lesbian. (I am not, but I discover that Montana jeans and cowboy shirts on women translate that way.)
In seminary I didn't find that the pulpit was a defence. Instead I discovered a new source of attachment which I didn't share. I mean, I was supposed to attach to people in the denomination, to leaders in the congregations, etc. But instead I attached to a novelist professor, a bookstore, and Lake Michigan. No one else did.
For others, the UU seminary, classmates, and Jimmy's tavern were the points of attachment. Alas, few attached to the UU faculty. Today the seminary building has changed hands, the classmates are retiring, and Jimmy's has been closed for years. But the former seminarians organized a newsletter to keep in touch. https://uurmapa.org/publications/ This is the publication of the retired UUMA ministers, people who love and support each other. Enviably! In this instance including gays but not other marginal groups so much. I mean, there just aren't many brown or black peope and, of course, no American Indians. Attachment wants to be specific and familiar. It is also expensive to participate physically with a national organization because it is based on travel across the continent, a great middle-class pleasure and preoccupation even in retirement.
Attachment, which is a less romantic term than love, is -- like human beings -- almost entirely governed by the unconscious. It is not a rational decision. The unconscious is perfectly capable of evasion, rejection, and denial. Rationally, this is lucky. Getting attached too much or unwisely is not happy. Attachment across distances can be a problem, though modern internet helps. Written correspondence persists there. Even the "frame of expression" between persons is possible on Skype.
For a minister standing in a pulpit once a week, inevitably those in the pews who have no taboo and who are open to impression will become attached to the minister. Some, wanting more, will come for "counselling." Others will invite the Rev to dinner, maybe to a meal with the whole family as a kind of relative. Some frankly called me sister. Older women thought of me as a daughter.
Attachment is a mammal mother characteristic, though some reptiles (turtles, snakes) can get conditioned by food. To succeed, mammals must feed and clean their babies and the babies must not wander off. That can be extended to petting from humans who are also mammals. This attachment to mother can end when the babies are weaned, though some can form buddies into adulthood. Sometimes the mechanism goes berzerk so the mother kills the babies, or males can interpret them as food and eat them. In this cat colony of mine it took a while (and some swats) for the yearling tomcats to realize that kittens are not mice.
In our own human partnerships and colonies, it is too common for males to punish, torture and kill females, which is a deranged form of attachment. Sometimes the children are "owned." The object of the violence is needed as much as the object of "love," a perversion of the same force. In other animals attack also can mingle with sex, maybe a necessary prerequisite, mixing sources of arousal between antagonism and mating. Cats screaming in coitus.
Maybe because of being subconscious, attachment is closely linked to sensory information. It can be triggered if it brings back a past attachment. Some valorized images seem instinctual, like the barest indication of a human face -- a circle with two eyes and a mouth -- that will get attention from an infant like potential attachment to a stuffed animal with button eyes and an embroidered nose. Animals can attach across species, nurturing and protecting even species that would be more naturally killed as prey, a lion cuddling an antelope. Size mismatches like a cat with a horse make us smile.
Curiosity is another potential characteristic of attachment and can lead to the impulse to control. We want to know the true nature of those we love. If we are disappointed by what we find, we feel the impulse to stigmatize, to limit, and to destroy. Maybe like taking something apart to see how it works. The Biblical translater's euphemism for fucking is knowing. "Trannie deaths" happen.
Our craze about celebrities derives in part from our conviction that feeling this attachment will cause their characteristics and good will to somehow come into us. This is "identifying" in the sense of trying to capture the admired person's being, almost reinforcing one's own persona. But also, particularly as youngsters, we identify with family members, teachers, and other close authority figures in hopes of being like them. We might not make good choices of whom to follow and may not have anyone available. Attachment mixes with entitlement to intimacy.
Sorting out rational versus unconscious attachments, or even conscious versus unconscious, is the kind of thing one does with a psychotherapist or when writing.
A key element is the culture, which will valorize and legalize some things but forcefully suppress others. Consider China, which clings to authority and uniformity, punishing diversity and ignoring what those in the West would consider justice. I have never heard of a Chinese analyst, though they make very good internists, considering rationally all aspects of their patients.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_Attachment_Disorder If you look at the wiki for attachment, you'll find an analytical, rational, qualified, checklist description of kinds, degrees, treatments, causes. Very rational and reconciled. This is useless in confronting the unconscious aspects of attachment, which can only be suspected through dreams and other arts created naively -- that is, without planning them rationally. The unconscious can be felt or suspected and sometimes betrayed by emotional response, like desire, but putting it in a manuscript of diagnosis or insurance compensation is a construct, not a reality.
Maybe when dealing with a subconscious there IS no reality, but only an indication of a constructed brain diagram of the world. Then the "four kinds of attachment have some usefulness. Each has results in the adult who learns it in early years.
The four child/adult attachment styles are:
- Secure – autonomous;
- Avoidant – dismissing;
- Anxious – preoccupied; and.
- Disorganized – unresolved.
No comments:
Post a Comment