You know there is no time like the present to begin a writing project. So now is my time. I have been talking about writing for years and keep procrastinating. I secretly think that if I do sit down to write that what I have to say will somehow be insignificant, irrelevant or scoffed at. I had such a terrible experience writing my dissertation. The amount of emotional garbage that I ran into with my director was often times unbearable and greatly took away from my focus and project. He wanted to be the center of attention and I just wanted direction. I found over the years that I, consistently, during certain periods of my life, run into what I call “Male Egos”, insecurities, fears and self-doubts of otherwise powerful and intelligent men when in the presence of a powerful and intelligent woman. At those times I often feel like a bird flying into a cleaned glass pane window. SPLAT! I wreck into this barrier while flying what seemed like a clear course. I think I’m conversing or unfolding a concept with someone and POW! I am blind-sided by their defensiveness. Wonder who I just ran into….an ex-wife or old lover more than likely….or….some little boy who just lost the spelling bee to his sister.
It is always profoundly amazing to me when this sudden “stop me in my tracks” phenomenon occurs. It is like the person is saying, “Hey, look at me…Attend to me… now….instead of what you are doing.” Or, at least that is what I think is going on at some level. Nonetheless, every time I am surprised when my nose begins to bleed from the crash.
Enough of this for now. I feel like I am writing to an imaginary audience which I am, but I do feel that inner voice beginning to come alive again. In my younger days I remember never questioning my voice. I would write and instantly know how wonderfully creative my words put to paper were. I remember writing a paper for a philosophy course. When I finished the paper, I knew it was an “A”. I felt like an athlete who had won a hard trained for event. Yea! Right On! However, when I received my paper back from the professor I did not get the reviews I anticipated. Apparently, he did not perceive the excellence in my writing or my thoughts, as I did. So, I met with him, at his request, in his office only to discover that this was his ploy to get female students into his bed. Not for me. The classroom dynamic took on a whole different flavor after that meeting. I called his bluff one day by talking about power/over situations and used the example of teacher/student to en-flesh my ramblings. He was duly taken aback and never played those ‘let’s write a paper and come to my office to discuss it’ games with me again.
Graduate school was an adventure. I entered a world that I never imagined nor even knew about. I was all wide-eyed, eager, and scared to death. I had to acquaint myself with where everything was without losing my mind or my way. I had to meet people who were nowhere near like the tribe I came from. They all seemed very odd to me, and I am sure I seemed very odd to them. One of them called me barbaric and said that I spoke with ‘impoverished speech’. How elitist of him. Others I met there related to me as a mother figure even with my protest and denial. “I am not your mother, nor do I care to be. I have children enough of my own,” I squabbled. Did not matter one lick.
Psychology is one of those strange fields of study that attracts the bizarrely wonderfully weird creatures of the planet…those in need of healing; those who are oddly put together like a platypus; those who are out on the edge; and those who simply want to help others and learn. Since the program of study I chose attracted more folks who lived & thought on the edge, which means you can be brilliant or nuts, it took me a little while to sort them all out.
Getting back to the mother business, during one group therapy session a male group member decided that he was going to relate to me… meaning talk to me and behave towards me just like her talked and behaved towards his mother. When I noticed and commented to him he pulled a Freudian loop on me. Just in case you don’t know what a Freudian loop is let me explain. It goes something like this—someone says something to you about you….you in turn deny the statement saying some everyday thing like, “No, that is not true.” Simple enough statement…right?……WRONG! This is just the bait that a ‘wild’ new psychology graduate student was looking for. A classic example of “Freudian DENIAL” Yes, indeed. To agree or disagree matters not. The Sigmund spider has caught yet another fly in his net. So to be the ‘good student’ I agreed to go along with his projections and told him so. (I thought I could throw in some of my Freudian jargon, too, since we were playing in the defense mechanism sandbox.) Pretty slick, I thought to myself. However, little did I know what I was getting myself in for. I got blasted…..Lots and lots of pent up ‘mother rage & disappointment’. When I said “Whoa, no more of this for me.” He felt affronted and abandoned…the double A syndrome. (See, yet another example of that old “I think it’s a clear window splat & blood” routine.) But I learned from my study of psychology that “mothers” get everything. They are both loved and hated, adored and despised with a wide variety of emotions in between. It’s no wonder we bleed every month. (© Patricia Jameson, 2023)
