August 13, 2020
In 2014 I moved back to New York - my home of 10 years - after living in Sweden for what I thought might be forever, but ended up being a year. When I landed in my old neighborhood, I felt like a bat who'd lost their powers of echolocation. I was sending out "pings", but nothing was where it used to be: I'd given up my apartment, left my job, and learned a language spoken by nine million people who, along with my ex and my cats, were in a country 4,000 miles away. Worse: the things that were still there: the coffee shop from a life I no longer lived, the musician I passed every day as I exited the subway on my commute home - a commute I no longer took to a job I no longer had.
If you were a bat (am I the first person to ask you this today?), if you were a bat, what are some of the things you send "pings" out to, as a way of knowing where you are, who you are?
Heinz Kohut, founder of the theory of Self Psychology, called these things "self objects". They can be anything: status-indicators (like your job title or relationship), but also places, familiar sights in your neighborhood, or the particular smell of your office's kitchen. Fun fact: we often don't know about these self-objects until we lose them, as if their absence makes them visible.
According to old Heinz, when we're young and want these self-objects, but can't have them, we lose our ever-loving shit. (He calls this "frustration") How do we learn to survive? Kohut posits that every child needs "tolerable disappointments": a healthy dose of frustration + empathy from caregivers. This is called "optimal frustration" and it builds our internal structures for self-soothing later on. Too much frustration and too little empathy, and we get "traumatic frustration". Why hello, 2020. Didn't see you standing there...
What self-objects have you lost?
When, in your day, do you experience empathy? Who gives it to you?
Who are you showing empathy for? What self-objects might they have lost?
In all of his work, Kohut refused to define the self (what a stinker!), believing that "The self...is, like all reality...not knowable in its essence." He did think the "self" transcends the job title, the relationship status, and even the smell of your office kitchen. So, I'd like to re-visit bats. When bats echolocate - sending little chirps and pings into the atmosphere, they listen for what comes back, and use that information to orient themselves, right now, in this moment. "Where's the food...where are my friends...is that a tree?" They hold this information crucially, but lightly, as it will change. As I look around the room I'm sitting in, I hear the ticking of a clock my dad received from his dad. I hear cicadas, who must be wondering why they picked 2020 for their every-13-year emergence. I remember my eight year-old delight at picking their shells off the crepe myrtle trees on my street.
What do you hear and see? Right now.
What does this information tell you about who you are?
Now, close your eyes. Cover your ears. What about you is still true? What do you love? What are you good at? What's there - inside you - regardless of your surroundings?
Think of a time you have lived through a big change in the past? How did you survive it? What part of your self evolved? What stayed constant?
P.S. If you're reading this far, I want you to know that I learned that dolphins echolocate too, and they can determine the difference between a ping pong ball from a golf ball based solely on density.
