The Inner Stage and its many Characters
Dr Matthew McArdle
ACPP Conference, Sydney, 17th August 2024
Prelude
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
From As You Like It, W Shakespeare, 1623.
Act 1
The Stage
Scene 1 Inhabiting the Stage
Shakespeare reminds us of seven stages in our lifelong drama, all playing out in unison on the inner stage of our mind. From infancy to old age, the inner adult and the inner child, the many ages and stages of our experience, these dramas continually acting in our private theatres; the Globe within each of us!
When the stage is adequately set the therapeutic space becomes a theatre of the mind where patients can play with, encounter, dramatize, negotiate, and renegotiate the many voices that inhabit their inner worlds. While we watch and listen these ‘private theatres’ are dramatized before our eyes. Onto the stage walk inner mothers, fathers, brothers/sisters, aunts/uncles, and all manner of inner imagos. These inner voices and characters that have enabled our patients to cope and to survive. They are also the voices and characters that can bring meaning and significance to their lives. However, often these inner voices and their dynamic relationships keep them trapped in damaging, self-limiting and maladaptive ways of thinking, feelings and living
Our role as therapist is to set and maintain the stage with our patients. We need to then listen as their inner voices and characters, not only tell, but also live out their stories both in our presence and with our participation.
Scene 2 Listening to the Different Voices
When our patient speaks there is usually a conscious story being told. She says, “I went for lunch”, “I yelled at my husband”, “I love you” and “I hate myself”. Yet, when we ‘open our ears’, at another level, hidden and unheard stories begin to emerge, not just in the words, but in the cadence, flow, disruptions and interruptions, music, and dance of the conversation. Now we can ask the necessary question ‘who is speaking in this moment? And to whom are they speaking?’
Joe says “I felt lonely on the weekend. I’m such an idiot, so weak”. As he speaks, we already begin to hear and see his neglected child-self, bullied by another cruel ‘caretaker’-self.
Mary says, “I’d tell you, but I already know what you’ll think”. Who is the ‘I’ that wants to tell me? Who is the “I’ that says, ‘you can’t tell’? AND Who am I, the ‘therapist’, in this unfolding drama, already with my rigid, preconceived ideas about her deeper experience?
And what about Jane with unremitting pain in her body? How do we create the stage for her body to speak the words that her mind is unable to find? Can we hear those unspoken, un-worded, even unrepresented voices? There is so much to explore and so little we have time for today.
As we learn to listen (over a lifetime) we begin to hear with a third ear the many voices inside.
Scene 3 Observing the Characters
Different parts of us operate in contradiction to one another, causing conflict and mental pain. We live mostly unacquainted with these hidden actors within us. When the stage is set these inner characters seek to play out their tragedies and comedies.
Our personalities are not unitary. We made up of many parts, each part capable of functioning as separate selves. We need to get these parts to act together harmoniously. Patients bring their inner ‘groupishness’ and a need to end the war within themselves and move towards coherence; an ‘inner democracy’ where all voices can be heard.
Freud uncovered dual aspects of the personality; the self-driven towards both life and destruction, the masculine and feminine, heterosexual and homosexual, passive and active; the list goes on. This dualism exists within each of us and is extremely useful to see. However, without a broader view of our multi-selved natures, this dualism becomes mechanistic and reductive. In this new millennia, we can reformulate conscious/unconscious to finite and infinite. We can consider inner dual-conflicts and the myriad voices and characters clambering to be seen and heard or hiding and unseen as they enter the therapy stage.
Klein told us of the baby’s world divided into two broad categories; Good and Bad; good mother and self, bad mother and self. If we have good enough ongoing (relatively interrupted) early experiences, we synthesize and assimilate good and bad aspects of ourselves and others. In this important paradigm our inner worlds begin by being filled with good objects to be kept and held on to and bad objects to be rid of. This truth of experience is useful in our daily work. Yet, at the same time and at another level, we, also, contain a complex world of multiple ‘selves’ constantly interacting in dynamic, complex and often repetitive ways on the stage of our internal world.
We carry within us all the figures of the past; our loved, feared and hated parents, rival and replacer siblings, other family members (both present and past generations) and then ‘outsiders’, neighbours, and foreigners. We must find these ‘classic characters’ of our human story. In these dynamic conversations we find our rivalry, jealousy, greed, envy, love, longing desire, hope – hopelessness and despair, aggression, and curiosity.
Sometimes these characters are in the words our patient says. Sometimes they are in words unsaid. Other times they are in the responses they provoke in us. We can hear an inner mother : adoring, devouring or seductive or the voice of a Father who set rules, says ‘No!’ and takes mother away. And sometimes we become this mother or father. We must slow down to hear a child full of guilt, shame, and inadequacy; desperately trying to restore satisfaction or relief.
We hear these dramas through disciplined and faith-filled work as we wait for this particular therapy to emerge. Then healing dreams and actions, rewarding relationships, intense and lasting love, and sometimes sublime works of art are created.
Scene 4 Discovering Previously Hidden Dramas
In each patient is a need to create and re-create old dramas to be worked through in the here-and-now of therapy. Also, I believe, each patient longs to dramatize new, undiscovered, and ‘unacted’ dramas for the first time.
As these dramas come onto the stage with us as both stagehands and co-actors meaningful and healing therapy can occur. Patients ‘inhabit’ many different characters, sometimes within the one session. And we are invited to take up many roles throughout the therapeutic drama. Under pressure to ‘take up a role’ we can become blind to the scene being played out. We can become ‘blind’ and ‘deaf’, enacting roles from the patient’s past or from our own unseen inner dramas. We can become a punishing father, withholding mother or jealous sister. At other times, we do not enact a role and maintain a healthy therapeutic stance, yet the shadows of familiar scenes in our patients’ dramas overshadow us and we are seen in ways that are unfamiliar to ourselves.
Act 2
The Consulting Room
Scene 1 Andrew
Andrew sits silently. He begins to fidget. Several times it appears he will speak, then nothing. He gulps, as if swallowing his words. I think of intervening. I decide to wait. As I watch, I begin to see a debate going on in his mind. He is in conflict. Maybe conflict is not adequate; it suggests two opposing sides. There is evidently a dialogue between many going on in his mind.
Finally, he speaks. “Well, I guess I should tell you …... what’s on my mind …… well, what’s the point anyway? I know what you’ll think………I know, I know, I’m just an idiot; a big baby…Yes, yes, that’s right…. A fuckwit!”. Further silence. I say, “so what were you thinking?” but even as I speak, I wonder ‘who am I talking to when I say ‘you’ and who will respond? There is further silence, but the air seems immediately lighter. He tells me about an awkward encounter the previous evening where he felt disappointed, embarrassed, and ashamed.
Scene 2 Sara
Sara arrives with a sense of resolve. “I can finally see what I’m doing. It stops now! I feel like I’ve really made a change this time. I can’t keep hurting myself like this. I can’t keep handing myself over to these men, not thinking, expecting it will be different. I’ve been hurt too many times. This time I’ll be different. With John, it was straw the broke the camel’s back. You know, the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result!” She leaves convinced that she is changed person. I am left wondering ‘what will happen next?’
In the next session she is excited and speaks rapidly. “I had John all wrong! He’s not that bad. We went out and had a few drinks. We talked for hours. We went back to his. It was wonderful. He is wonderful. This time it really is different. I can trust him. I can feel it. He is so wonderful. Sure, he was a bit of a player in the past. But I think we’ve really got something special.” She continues without any possibility of interruption throughout the session. Near the end of the session there is a brief pause. I jump in “You seem different today. I wonder how you are today and what you’re saying relates to how you were and what you said last session?” She looks at me dumb-founded and possibly angry. She is silent until the end of the session.
Scene 3 Dave
Dave is in a dream-like state. He talks about a frightened little boy. There is a woman, old woman. She looks a bit like a witch. But the little boy is not scared of her. He is scared of the outside world. The old woman controls this boy, and she keeps him in a shed. He is not allowed to leave the shed. He kind of feels safe there. There is another boy. He is the ‘smart boy’. He reads books and goes to school and learns facts. He also feels safe and protected. He can block out the outside world. He is aware that there are parents somewhere, but he prefers to focus on the facts and figures he learns.
He later brings images of a demanding dictator who tells him exactly what to think, what to feel and what to do. Whatever doesn’t fit with the dictator’s demands must be eradicated.
These vivid, ‘dream-like’ images seem to give a nearly direct access to the inner stage of his mind. This deeply traumatised patient needs a protected, sensitive therapy stage to slowly and carefully work through these inner dramas which have both protected and limited him in his life.
Act 3
Our Inner Creative Space
The stage we set is between the limitless inner universe and the restricting world of external reality. This the intermediate area of experiencing for many patients is painfully restricted and often not fully formed. We work to keep the drama unfolding on a safe, playful, and creative stage. In this final act, I will suggest four interconnected areas of our personal knowledge and experience that can help us in this task. I draw upon these creative areas again and again: literature and art, fables and fairytales, and the centrality of Myths.
Scene 1 Learning from Art and Literature
Scenes from movies, dramas and novels frequently occur in the consulting room.
I discover Dr Jekyll in some sessions, recognising with a patient “a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but two”.
I wonder how often we become Frankensteins in our work; creating ‘monsters/daemons’ of a patient and saying, “It’s alive!”. These “half made up” creatures of our own making then carry hated and rejected parts our ourselves from our own unrecognised and unresolved inner dramas of trauma and loss. This is why, as therapists, need our own therapy and lifelong self-reflection to distinguish our inner dramas from those of our patient.
Naomi Klein’s doppelganger has arrived in my consulting room on several occasions. A patient who has ‘multiples’, ‘doubles’, often talked about as other people in the external world. Klein (Naomi!) uses the language of Jung and Dostoyevsky to explore the double and twinned self, which often represents our highest ideals and aspirations; “the eternal soul” or our “most repressed, depraved and rejected parts …. That we cannot bear to see – the evils twins, the shadow self, the anti-self”.
Our Sydney colleague, Allan Tegg, in his recent imagining of an early 20th century Budapest cake shop owner tells the tales of Brodsky. This must-read by an Australian psychotherapist expands our thinking as we learn to bake the exact cakes each patient needs. Brodsky observes, listens, and wonders about each unique client. He decides which is the exact cake that each client needs. I wonder about a sequel where Brodsky realises his clients need not just a cake, but a ‘high tea’ or ‘degustation menu’, an entire assortment of many, varied foods to meet the different aspects of their personalities, provided course by course, of course, over the necessary and often prolonged length of time that each client needs.
There is also art, poetry, and dance. But we don’t have time for all of that today.
Scene 2 Drawing on Fairytales
Who am I and who is the patient in this moment in this unfolding drama of therapy? Who is speaking and to whom are they speaking?
Fairytales come into my consulting room.
(Cinder) Ella enters; not for the first time. She is held back in an isolated, masochistic, and limited life. She attends to others whilst neglecting herself. She is plagued by inner stepsisters of envy and jealousy. Her protection is her capacity to limit life, success, and experience. She fears a hated evil stepmother, but longs for a rescuing prince.
I’ve often been the disguised wolf to many a little red riding hood. Of course, the therapist can’t be trusted, he is just pretending! Red riding hood knows to play along, whilst always keeping distance, fearful of being eaten alive.
I have recently been Hansel with my patient Gretel, both fearing the evil witch who wants to throw the playful and curious children of therapy into the oven. How can we cook up a meaningful and nourishing therapeutic experience without getting burnt alive?
I wonder how such fairytales enter your consulting rooms and minds, aiding you to observe the unfolding psychic dramas of therapy and life?
Scene 3 Utilising Fables
Fables are so useful in life and work.
I have been the Emperor with no Clothes wanting to offer a patient my cloak of understanding whilst truthfully feeling lost and confused.
I have watched as the dog walks to the water’s edge, looks at that other dog’s reflection who has such a wonderful bone; so much better than mine! The patient (dog) then feels dejected, embarrassed, ashamed, and humiliated that what they have doesn’t measure up and drops their bone (their value, worth and capacity).
Many a patient wishes, even demands, the ever-replenishing magic pudding.
Midas does often seem to have a magic touch, but what is turned gold is so often hard, dead, and emotionless.
Some patients hide within false skins to survive. In this skin of another they feel relief, power, and protection. But when the sun rises the skin shrinks and can destroy the true ‘self’ inside.
Scene 4 Knowing Myths
Then there are the deep and enduring human Myths that inform the truth of our human experience.
Is my patient Andrew another Oedipus? We hear a lot about his crime, wanting his mother all to himself and destroying his father. But do we hear and see the traumatised and abandoned Andrew-Oedipus. He feels alone, neglected, and unwanted; left on the mountain to die. Andrew-Oedipus longs for good parents who will take him in, and both bear his traumas and allow a new story to emerge. He is at the crossroads. Can we be there with him? Andrew-Oedipus is in conflict between searching for truth and evading awareness of reality. He feels compelled to fate. Can we sit with him while he finds agency in his own life, whilst remaining aware that so much will always be outside of his control.
Sara sometimes plays out a Garden of Eden drama. Wanting to live in a pain, thought and awareness free paradise. A paradise she may have been deprived of in early life, but a paradise that can now trap her in the unreality of a no-growth environment. Does she see us and the work of therapy as the destruction of her Paradise? Can we watch and wait and participate as Sara-Eve moves from an ‘idyllic’ isolated, frustrating unawareness to the rewarding and satisfying, but painful world, of reality?
I see Dave as an Odysseus needing me to go with him on his Epic journeys out of a solitary shed and into the world. Perhaps he is also Siddhartha, unsatisfied and restricted by a castle-shed, needing to find a world of meaning. Also, he might be Gilgamesh needing the dramas of therapy to discover the unreality of his ‘smart boy’ self.
There is Icarus, Narcissus, and Sisyphus. We have not considered Celtic, Chinese, and Southeast Asian myths. And on this continent of deep time myths, there is the Dreamtime which we are only beginning to discover.
There are modern retellings and reimagining’s of old myths that need to be heard. New and previously unimagined myths need to be staged for the first time.
Freud talked about the excavation of an ancient civilisation. Bion talked about the discovery of an ongoing catastrophe. Today I ask us to consider therapy as the potential site of many co-existent generations and civilisations built one upon the other, all continuing and co-inhabiting different layers and levels in our minds. Each with the dynamics of family, clan, and village. How far can we look back and how deep do these layers go? There are layers of our current day to day lives, layers of adolescence, childhood, toddler, and infancy. But, what of those even earlier levels of the placental connection? An embryonic connection? Do we even dare disturb the universe and wonder about connections passed down through the generations, inherited in our DNA?
The inner world is the theatre where meaning is generated.
End
References
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Bion, W.R. Attention and Interpretation
Freud, S. 'Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through' Standard Edition, XII, pp. 147–56. 1914
Grimm, J & W. The Complete Grimm Fairytales. Canterbury Classics. 2011.
Grotstein, J. But at the Same Time and at Another Level. Karnac Books. 2009
Homer. The Odyssey. Penguin. 2010 (700 BCE)
Klein, M. Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms.
Klein, N. Doppelganger, A trip into the Mirror World. Penguin Random House UK. 2023
McDougall, J. Theatres of the Mind. Free Association Books. 1986
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Sanders, NK. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Penguin 2020. (original Sumerian poems 1600 BCE)
Shakespeare, W. As You Like IT. Act 2, Scene 7.1599.
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