“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”
According to the existentialist philosopher, Jean Paul
Sarte, the only way to “live authentically” in the present is to transcend your
past. No matter where you were born, the color of your skin, your parents, what
school you went to, your neighborhood -- all those deeds and events that
largely determine present circumstances and constitute a significant part of
how we came to be who and where we are, none of it really matters when it comes
to making a choice in the present. For Sarte, human beings are “condemned to be
free” and he insists that our freedom is “absolute.” Paul Ryan and Michelle
Obama obviously never got the message.
Aside from national political conventions, things are not
quite that clear-cut in the real, messy world of human sociology. But where I
agree with Sartre is in the following. I have often been told by patients,
after they have said or done something they desperately regret in retrospect,
something like “but I just can’t help it. [Given what happened to me] I just
can’t change the way I act in this situation.” These individuals, in Sartre’s
terminology, are acting in “bad faith.” That is, they are denying their
“freedom to choose” to do the right thing in the present by using the past as
an excuse. They are wallowing in the tyranny of their memories and denying
responsibility for their actions. So, for example, one can continue to define
oneself as unlucky, a victim, or lacking motivation, or doomed to failure, based
on his or her past experiences but they are “free” to choose otherwise. One can
continue taking drugs, regardless of the destructive consequences, but they are
also “free” to choose to do otherwise.
It’s not as simple or easy as all that though. Hence, the
quotations around “free.” Some people have biologically driven extreme mood
swings, panic, and strange experiences that come out of the blue. They require
medication and structured treatment. A lot also depends on the therapist’s
ability to create a safe and trusting environment. Once an alliance is
established though, the work of therapy involves the individual coming to some
sort of tentative understanding and reconstruction of one’s past and one’s own
unconscious motivations, hidden beliefs, prejudices, desires, fears and
anxieties before they can “transcend” them and consciously construct a “meaningful
life.” This understanding cannot just be intellectual. It must be an emotional
and experiential one. We must know what makes our own internal clock tick
before re-setting it. It is only when we examine our lives, and the baggage
that comes with it that we can free ourselves of determinism, internal and
external, establish a new identity and become who we want to become.
No matter how traumatic or disadvantaged our past, or how
damaged and irredeemable we believe ourselves to be, our freedom of choice and
action should not be determined by anyone other than ourselves. Psychotherapy
gives us that second chance, when all else fails, to rise above not only our
past, but in some cases also our character and our temperament. It helps one
understand and integrate painful experiences and lingering wounds into a more
authentic sense of self. So, it helps, if you’ve had psychotherapy, to let go
of ingrained prejudices and expectations, learned behaviors, familial
rejections, social vexations and damaging relationships. The liberty to
emancipate oneself from one’s past, to re-invent oneself in one’s own “authentic”
image thus becomes easier to achieve, but BY NO MEANS is it guaranteed. In the
end, it is up to us to make that Sartean “leap of faith.” Are we brave enough
to make the attempt?
