Richard Lloyd Jones: A woman is terrified of going to the supermarket. A man loses sleep over being evaluated at his job. A jazz singer is terrorized by her pending success. It can be crippling and terrifying, and it's the third largest mental health care problem in the world. What's going on behind our fears and anxieties? Today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, we'll take another look at this important social health concern.
I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. First, an announcement, especially for my Canadian listeners to Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I'll be in Canada over the next couple of weeks visiting family and friends. So if you're in the Victoria, Vancouver area, drop me an email. I'd love to get together with anyone who's interested to talk more about Norberto Keppe's work. Rich at richjonesvoice.com. If you're in the greater Toronto area, I'll be giving a lecture for any who want to know more about Keppe's important discoveries.
And how they can help you in all aspects of your life. Loyal podcast listeners Lynn McDonald and Jason Coombs have very generously offered their meeting room space, so my presentation in Toronto will be on Tuesday night, July 31st at 7 p.m. Lynn is a psychotherapist and hypnotherapist in Toronto, and her address is 2489 Bloor Street West, Suite 306. You can write me at rich at richjonesvoice.com if you need more info.
I'll have some copies of Norberto Keppe's books to give away there, and I still have copies to give away through the Internet, too, if you won't be close to Victoria or Vancouver or Toronto. Again, rich at richjonesvoice.com. A few weeks ago, I interviewed psychoanalyst Leo Lima about fear, panic, and phobias. I had a number of responses to that program that prompted me to address the subject again.
Lori wrote me from New York City about her claustrophobia and wondered how to get copies of Cláudia Pacheco's book, Healing Through Consciousness, which we mentioned in that podcast. I can get copies of that book for you if you let me know you're interested. Again, rich at richjonesvoice.com. Today, I've invited psychoanalyst Markku Lida to join me today. Markku is a Finnish psychoanalyst at Keppe's International Society of Analytical Trilogy.
He has wide-ranging clinical experience treating clients from Europe and Latin America. He has some very practical clinical examples this time to help us to get to the bottom of these debilitating problems. Markku gives many lectures on this issue as well. Markku, start maybe with the most common fear
Markku Lyyra: that you see. For example, people are very much afraid to see their mistakes. I thought that it's a Scandinavian problem, but it's not.
Now we have been living here in Brazil, me and you, Richard, years, and I see that the problem is the same here. And
Richard: what is going on behind this fear of making mistakes? Because you're right, I hear this a lot. We teach languages here at our school in São Paulo and we hear all the time students say, well I'm afraid to speak because I don't want to make mistakes.
So it's very common in this area. Yes,
Markku: for example it's linked to the narcissism. The narcissistic person wants to be praised. And why are we narcissistic? Because we have a better idea about us than we are. So we have a lot of censorship. Censorship is this this attitude not to see the the mistakes. I have an example of a person. He said that he is very afraid of being evaluated.
He said that he is not sure if his strong points are strong enough. And in the analysis we use used to ask what do you associate, what do you connect with this evaluation with. And he said that it will show his weak points. Now this is the the first thing that I would like to point out, that we are not rational as we think.
We we don't work according to our reason, but we usually all the people we are very emotional. And we if we analyze this question of the weak points, for example if you have a car and the car doesn't work you call the mechanic. And the mechanic says but well look at your car, it's so beautiful, the the seats are excellent, the windshield is so clear and the battery look at this.
But you say oh well but the car doesn't work. Then what needs to be repaired? The part in the car that doesn't work, if it's the carburetor or anything, in order to be able to use your car you need to work with the problem. So in in ourselves is the same.
Richard: You're saying something completely against a lot of the orientation that we have in the world today, which is to forget about your weak points and work on
Markku: your strengths.
Like the psychologists they for example they used to say yeah but you have to see your your strength, you you need to see your strong points, don't
Richard: worry about these bad things to make the idea the
Markku: the self-esteem stronger. But it doesn't become stronger, it becomes more false when you don't see the weak points. Why is that Marco? Because somehow we are conscious of our weak points, we just want to mask it.
And now we need to go through the mask to have a realistic vision about ourselves. It's the same if you if you practice for example to play an instrument. If you're a piano student and your written me is bad then you need to pay attention to the rhythm, otherwise you you will play out of rhythm or everything that you play. So it doesn't help.
Richard: I was thinking of this in terms of a game like golf. And if they have a weak point like putting, for example, they have to develop that. So this idea of only focusing on our strengths is something that's very prominent in the world today. But this causes us to miss the weak point. And if the weak point is something inconscientized in Keppe's language, then we're in big trouble, aren't
Markku: we?
Because then we don't have access and we feel always nervous when our weak points can appear. Marco, also you
Richard: talked a little bit in our pre-interview about these intentions that we have that are hidden from our view. And maybe this is an area too where these weak points can appear. If we don't want to see the problems maybe we're actually avoiding seeing an intention that we have that we don't want to see.
Yeah.
Markku: I remember a couple of weeks there was a person in therapy and he said that he was going to a job interview and he got some forms and he should have filled the forms in and sent to the job. But then he said that he lost the forms and now he was looking for the forms everywhere in his home and he didn't find them.
And then in the analysis we asked him what do you associate this work interview with. And he said opportunity and chance. So now we have to see what is the intention of this person. He says my intention was to get that job but he threw away those forms. He doesn't see the thing like this, that he threw them away, because he said, I lost them.
And now we come to the question of the intention. For example, if you receive a letter that you can go tomorrow to that and that place to receive the money that you got in the lottery, $10,000, do you forget it? Do you throw that paper away? Oh, I lost the paper. I don't remember where was the place. Where could I get that $10,000?
You don't throw that paper away. But if you do, we know you have a very bad intention. You have a
Richard: very, really bad
Markku: intention. But we have to see that we have bad intentions, but we are not conscious of them. Or that we have bad intentions and we inconscientize them. This is the question. And if the person only sees in himself and in the others good intentions, then he feels that he is a victim, that it happened to me.
But if he dares to see that he has also bad intentions against his own life, that sounds irrational, doesn't it? Yes. Because we could say, how could I have bad intentions against my own life? It's impossible, but it is what happens. You know,
Richard: Marco, I had a letter from a listener recently, sort of questioning this idea that we could have bad intentions, because this is something we've talked about on the program before.
And he had the example of a neighborhood he's familiar with where the builder situated every home without taking advantage of the gorgeous views that are surrounding. And he said, but house is a bad intention. This is just incompetence on the part of the builder. So
Markku: in this case, we could say that the builder is very envious because he doesn't want to see and he doesn't want that the others see the beautiful landscape, the beautiful view.
This is the definition of any... Envy of Dr. Keppe. Dr. Keppe says that envy, it's an attitude not seeing what is good, what is original, what is beautiful in life. And it leads the person, it makes the person to make decisions that even he cannot explain. But in this case it's very clear, we can explain at least.
Richard: Marco, what are the consequences of this, of hiding these bad intentions?
What does this cause in the human being?
Markku: It causes that the person loses the chances. He throws those chances away. He destroys the relationships. For example, I remember Dr. Cláudia Pacheco, she said once that the person is afraid of something that he wants. He's afraid to see that he wants this. So we are afraid to see our bad intentions. Very much afraid.
What about
Richard: this other example you were telling me about, about somebody who was afraid of the future? How did you see
Markku: this? One person in the lecture, she said like this, yes, but I'm afraid of the unknown. But why are we afraid of unknown things? For example, kids are expecting to get some Christmas gifts. And they are very excited to open the Christmas gifts.
But they are not afraid at all the opposite. They are very happy to open the Christmas gifts. Even if they
Richard: don't know what they are. They don't know
Markku: what's inside there because they don't create any bad idea about it. So this is an important thing to see that we create bad ideas about the future because we also have bad intentions with our own future.
Richard: So our fear of the unknown things in the future is actually the fear of our own intentions towards our present and our future.
Markku: Yes, and we are afraid of our fantasies
Richard: that we have created. It can seem, it can appear that what you're saying now is very negative. You know, that we have bad intentions, that we have intentions that we don't perceive, that we want to destroy our future, that we're afraid to see our mistakes, that we keep these images of ourselves that are false and not true.
And so all of this can seem like a negative aspect. And so this is where we hear, oh, no, you can't get into that. You have to think positive. How do we deal with this in a therapeutic sense
Markku: with clients? It's very important that you took this question up. When we see the bad, When we see the bad intention or the bad fantasies, then we start to have consciousness of the bad.
Because the bad is not something original. Originally, we are good. We have good intention. We are linked with God. This is all good. The nature is good. The life itself is a great present. It's an enormous present that we cannot even measure the beauty of life as a present. This is all good. But what we create against this is the bad. We deny it.
We destroy it. We create the bad. And this is the point. When we become conscious of this, how we create the bad, then we can hold it. We can control it. And we can diminish it. Wow. The bad doesn't exist in itself. We are not attacked by the bad, but it's something that we, without clear consciousness of it, we create. If we don't control them, they control us.
Richard: What about a fear of responsibility? That's something that I hear of a lot of people when they have an opportunity to be promoted. How would you see that in your psychoanalytical point of view, Marco? Last
Markku: week there was a person that told that his boss said that he could be promoted but he said no. And of course the boss was very surprised.
And he took up this question in his therapy session. And then we asked what do you associate this promotion with. And he said responsibility. Then we could ask if responsibility is something bad because he tries to avoid it. Somehow he feels that there is something negative. What is responsibility? Responsibility is to work with the things, with the good things and with the problematic things.
It's the end of the childhood somehow, that we cannot continue to be alienated or childish anymore. We have to take the things in our hands and start to work with them. Of course, everybody, we can have difficulties in working with the difficult things in work. When we practice something, when we have to find solutions, it is difficult many times. But anyway, the person who takes the responsibility, he accepts the new chance that he has.
Many people want to be alienated. They want to be like far from the life and just look at television, forget about the job at five o'clock when they go home. This is the life that even the power system offers to people, not more responsible life.
Richard: And yet within responsibility, there's a lot of personal growth. So we can maybe say even that this person who's avoiding responsibility doesn't want to take on more responsibility.
They're avoiding in some way some development for themselves, some growth for themselves.
Markku: Yeah, the person doesn't want to have success. It sounds very irrational, but many, many, many people don't want to have success.
Richard: I think this point that Keppe has made in his psychoanalytical method is really interesting to see. That the person has intentions against something and doesn't want to perceive that. That we we have attitudes against but because we don't want to see those we think that the problem is something outside us.
Though the problem is my parents didn't raise me to take responsibility, or I've been very afraid of taking steps forward because my family is going to hate me, or I'm going to be alienated from my family. We use a lot of these external things to avoid seeing this internal part. You must see a lot of this in your in your
Markku: practice. Yeah actually Keppe is the only and the first person who speaks about the bad intention because he goes in his psychoanalysis, he goes into the interior, he goes and shows how we act against our own life.
Intellectualizing for example, you smoke and someone says that uh uh you know that smoking is dangerous. Then you say of course I know, yes I know, but it uh makes me calm, it it helps me to concentrate. Then it's a defense mechanism because you know that you are destroying yourself. Every smoker knows this. It's not a secret. But the person covers this kind of deeper knowledge with this kind of explanation.
Why do I smoke? And that's an intellectual explanation. It's not true. It's a lie. What about fear of success? Yes. Do you remember when we were young kids, me and you Richard? What do you mean
Richard: when we were young, a little bit younger than
Markku: now? Then the artists they had to be corrupted, they needed to destroy themselves with alcohol drugs and so on.
I think that those artists Jimmy Hendrix and so for sure they were afraid of having success, because having success means that you need to work with your your envy. You need to work. You need to see that you have an intention that is hidden to destroy your success. And when you start to have success, then you need to be careful not to do destructive things.
Have to be careful with smoking, have to be
Richard: careful with
Markku: drugs. He needs to take care of his life, of his body, of his relationships, of everything that is linked to the work. He needs to treat himself as a creature that has a lot of value. We don't want to feel that gratitude. We have received a lot. An artist, for example, he has received his beautiful voice from God.
It's not his creation, his own creation. It's something that he has received as a gift.
Richard: In sports, we used to talk a lot about how it's relatively easy to get to number one, but to stay number one is really, really difficult. And I think it's because of these intentions we have that we don't want to proceed.
Markku: Yes, and when we want to maintain our capacity and condition, we need to limit our life.
We cannot do all the destructive things that we are accustomed to do. For example, the singer cannot continue his bad habits. He should limit himself. Yes, especially
Richard: as when we're young, starting our climb for success, We can have a lot of bad habits, so-called, and we don't notice it because our body's young. We can cope. But as we get older and start to develop the success, then we get to the place where suddenly our body can't cope with staying up till four in the morning.
You know, all of these kind of things that we have a life of excess that we could tolerate when we're younger. We can't as we get a
Markku: little bit older. I cannot drink seven beers anymore. And play in the hockey game the next day. Success obviously is something good. And because of the inversion like Dr Keppe says, we are inverted, so we don't accept what is good.
It sounds like that if you are on the they say like in Finland for example when you're on the top of the hill there is a lot of wind. It gives an idea that success is something dangerous, something that
Richard: is not comfortable. Inversion. And so, actually, we're not afraid of success, but we don't want success. We try to destroy our success somehow.
Markku: Success is something good. And we are, because of our envy and inversion, we are against the good things. We start to associate success with responsibility, difficulties, pressure, these kind of things very easily.
Richard: Let's talk very quickly about social phobia, panic. Leo and I talked about this a few weeks ago, but I'd like some sort of specific examples from your clinical practice.
Markku: I remember I read in a study that they counted in England there are two million social phobics.
It means that they are people who don't dare to go out from their home. They don't dare to go to supermarket and so on.
Richard: They don't want contact with people in a social setting. Yeah,
Markku: they are very afraid in a panic if they get out of their secure home.
Richard: What's happening here? How do you understand this?
Markku: So, for example, I had a client and she said when she goes to supermarket, she gets in panic and she feels very bad.
She cannot breathe. Her heart is beating 200 per minute and so she feels like she's dying. And in the analysis, we asked her, what do you associate that supermarket with? And she said, a lot of people and I cannot control. So this was the key word, that control. She tries to control even the behavior of the other people because she puts herself on a very high, very theomaniac level in her mind without perceiving, of course.
This is the attitude that Dr. Koeppe calls theomania, that we feel that we have the truth in our hands, we have the control, we have to control everything, and we cannot do that because we are just ordinary people. We are not gods. And in this kind of situations, she feels a lot of feelings, but she doesn't dare to feel those feelings. And then she starts to somatize.
Panic is not something original. It's a consequence of the denial of the feeling that she should feel herself very regular, very ordinary. But she doesn't want to feel that. Because normally we try to control the consciousness that we get through the other people. So in those places where there are a lot of people, of course, the amount of consciousness is very big.
And then the very theomaniac person feels that he cannot deal with all those pieces of information that come to deal processed with. It's interesting because we
Richard: often think of a person who has panic attacks or has social phobia as being insecure, as feeling that they're they're lower. But you're actually saying this person puts themselves above the situation. Yes, makes themselves
Markku: bigger than the situation.
Yes, he feels insecurity when he needs to see that
Richard: he is not the God. There is always much in Keppe's work that goes deeper than we're accustomed to, but it's always based on solid clinical and theoretical foundations. This helps us cut to the core of our problems. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Thanks a lot for listening.
