Belief rests as a possibility, not a certainty, yet it produces an emotional state that goes with certainty, as one can’t rid oneself of belief within the aims of reality. Human beings have an urge to love and hate, a desire for knowledge, a desire to be loved, a fear of being hated and a wish to be accepted and understood.
- Phantasies are generated and persist unconsciously from infancy
- Belief is created from pre-existing phantasy, which has emotional and behavioural consequences and effects.
- The belief in phantasy is attached as facts. Otherwise, a third observer position would challenge the objective perception.
- Once the belief is conscious, it can be tested against perception, memory, known facts and contrary beliefs.
- When a belief faces a reality test, it has to be relinquished, the phantasied object relinquished and mourned, by a repeated discernment of its invalidity.
- Repression of belief renders the belief unconscious but not abolished with some remnants of its effects. The function of the beliefs is suspended, producing a persuasive sense of psychic unreality, an “As if ” syndrome.
- Disbelief is used as a defence against either perceptions or phantasies.
We learn to relinquish deep-held beliefs as we relinquish our most profound personal relationships. Only through mourning can we let go of idealised objects and phantasies. The first stage of relinquishment is establishing a possibility of doubt, combining a subjective experience with objective self-awareness so we can see ourselves believing something. A new third position, a triangular space where the subjective self can be an observer, forming a relationship with an idea.
The basis of the third position is the oedipal scene.
Any new cognitive tie or awareness outside the existing fixed belief system is treated as dangerous, alien, and hostile. These are links that need to be destroyed. Delusions may be substituted to fill a psychic void, where ideas float freely, untested, untethered by belief, giving a facile, often infantile, superficial quality of thinking.
Suspension of Belief
the blindness of the seeing eye, where one knows and yet does not know simultaneously. A non-psychotic form of disavowal in which one believes and does not believe a thing simultaneously. Winnicott introduced the concept of a transitional space (T/S), an intermediate area of experience which is not challenged and whose contents have an “As if” naive form. A place to observe what is mental and what is material, where one can distinguish between belief and knowledge /reality. One who can’t give up their belief despite knowledge remains stuck and immune to the experience of reality. The need for a safe place, a sanctuary where one feels held and contained, needs to be established. Without such a container, one has a sense of falling, fragmenting, and disorientating.
Cognitive thinking depends on two main mental developments
- Development of thoughts.
- Apparatus necessary to contain and deal with thoughts
If either is unavailable, it malfunctions and distorted thinking may generate delusional beliefs. The container forms a protective skin, a shield that protects and gives meaning to experiences and ideas. Suppose a mother fails to provide an appropriate container and is unable to absorb an infant’s negative feelings, experiences and ideas. In that case, the child may fear their mother and become inhibited and frozen as the parent retaliates or responds inappropriately. The continuous identity, uncontained and maintained, is threatened by any new awareness of the reality of self. Psychological change can be catastrophic since the old identity must die, with a sense of disintegration and fragmentation without such a container. Clients can remain paralysed at the frontier of change as they approach a new threshold. If one leaves their sanctuary and allows new ideas to manifest, which accommodates growth, there is a belief they will be shattered and continuously self-annihilated. One may remain confined to a destructive, rigid viewpoint to avoid such confusion or chaos. The individual cannot progress to the depressive position (Klein ) and develop the capacity for symbol formation and rational thought.
Within the depressive position, the child develops the capacity to recognise, remember, and locate anticipatory experiences. To disrupt existing psychic patterns and beliefs of a timeless world of bliss, split off from the terror of persecution or judgment. the awareness of a contrasting experience of joy and terror coming from the same source (mother). A sense of guilt develops as one becomes aware of their hatred for the thing they also love; paradise is lost to good and evil. In mourning, we give up hope and expectation of resurrection or discovery of a new ideal world where we can distinguish between aspirations and expectations, a means of relinquishing the object in the material world and simultaneously installing it into the psychic world. Can one bear the anxiety, frustration and disharmony of new realisations or banish them as bad objects or ideas? An oedipal phantasy may become an effort to reinstate the belief that one has sole possession of the desired mother. An oedipal romance can be preserved by splitting it into an illusion, protecting it from one’s experience.
The pleasure principle is maintained, a reservation of idolatry and autoerotic phantasy.
Subjectivity
A third position exists when one can become a witness, an observer of self and others in interactions. Any effort to introduce an objective (third-person perspective) perspective into such relationships where the person’s subjective (first-person perspective) perspective dominates is experienced as exposure and catastrophic.
- The narcissist is thick-skinned and insensitive to having deeper feelings, identifies with the third object, and adapts to their mode of objectivity. Renounces their subjectivity for a sense of power and control. They are logical and use empirical evidence, ideas are abstract, and perceptions objective / they lack emotional conviction and are deprived of energetic contact
- The thin-skinned self seeks to avoid the third-person subjectivity and clings to its own subjectivity. They embody a deep sense of shame, being flawed, not good enough, disappointing, and letting others down.
