The Absent Audience (and Sergeant R. Bales)

Each of us needs an audience, someone who listens and hears our words (as we intend them), and responds in a caring way. As obvious as this task sounds on the surface, it is not easy to really hear and respond to another person.

We psychotherapists train for years to master the art. Psychotherapies like ‘Imago’ (invented by Harville Hendricks in 1988 and described in his book  Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, 20th Anniversary Editionare based on the process of mirroring, reflecting back what another person has said. Couples engaged in learning to improve their ability to relate will tell you how arduous the process can be.

As I mentioned above, although the task sounds simple, it is difficult to hear and respond to another person for many reasons. First, we’re busy, distracted, wrapped up in the internal world of our own thoughts as well as our outer world with its daily demands. Therefore, when we listen, more often than not, a degree of distortion occurs, in part deprived from our own needs of the person to whom we’re speaking and supposedly listening. (Hence the role of the impartial psychotherapist uninvolved in a person’s life).

This need for an understanding audience  extends from the intimately personal to the public. We want to be heard and understand by our partners, mates, family,  friends and employers, and ideally, all the people we interact with on a daily basis.

As a psychotherapist I’ve been fortunate to experience first hand how to listen to patients’ words and  avoid acts of violence.  Years ago I had a patient who worked for a large corporation and saw abuses at the workplace. He felt his complaints were ignored and he became more and more agitated when no one took him seriously. He feared he’d buy a gun, report to the work site  and  shoot anyone who crossed his path.

Needless to say, I took him and his concerns seriously. He was not a malingerer but a disturbed man with a thought disorder. His thoughts were tangential, lacking a logical sequence. I wrote letters to excuse him from work and ultimately testified in court to help him obtain disability payments. He was grateful and worked for many years in psychotherapy to understand and avoid confrontations.

David Brooks shares some of my thoughts  in his column of March 20, 2012 (“When the Good Do Bad,” New York Times, p. A18) . “The worldview gives us an easy conscience, because we don’t have to contemplate the evil in ourselves. But when somebody who seems mostly good does something completely awful, we’re rendered mute or confused. But of course it happens all the time. That’s because even people who contain reservoirs of compassion and neighborliness also possess a latent potential to commit murder.”

Even before we psychotherapists recognized the dark side of human nature over one hundred years ago, literary geniuses like Shakespeare and Dostoevsky wrote voluminous and timeless plays and novels based on their innate understanding of the dual nature of the human psyche.

We possess the theory and the tools (to listen, empathize and respond)  to prevent violent acts stemming for our dark side.  But to practice these principles in real life is very difficult.

A responsive, listening audience which hears and processes another person’s words as this person intends, is a rare phenomenon.  We psychotherapists train for years to become ‘good enough’ listeners.

 

Current events have recently given us a tragic example of the ways in which human darkness can manifest if one does not have access to a ‘good enough’ audience.  Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is suspected of having massacred 16 Afghan civilians at night in a village a mile from his post.  He was not taken seriously when he said he did not want to be deployed. He had sustained injuries in combat, lost comrades and recently experienced added physical adversity. Words, signs and symptoms were ignored, disparaged, discounted.

According to the New York Times, the thirty-eight year old Bale,  had “three deployments in Iraq, where he saw heavy fighting, a fourth in Afghanistan, where he went reluctantly. “ He’d “lost part of a foot and injured his head, saw fellow soldiers badly wounded, picked up the bodies of dead Iraqis, was treated for mild traumatic brain injury and possibly developed post-traumatic stress disorder.” He was denied a promotion which would have given him respect and money during what had bee a difficult financial period. (Bales was in danger of losing his home), and although he trained to be a recruiter which would have allowed him to skip overseas deployment,  the Army refused to move him from the infantry. Also, Bales had witnessed the grave wounding of a friend just before the killings. (James Dao, “At Home, Asking How ‘Our Bobby’ Became War Criminal Suspect,” March 19. p. 1)

Conclusion:  As David Brooks points out we are reluctant to acknowledge our commonality in our  potential for violence. While we  possess the psychological knowledge and theory to understand the dynamics of violent behavior, what works against us is the lack of awareness and agreement for the need for proper stress-response systems. Even when those suffering from stress try to communicate it, we ignore, dismiss, or fail to recognize their signals in part because we fail to accept the duality of our psyches.   

Until we acknowledge our denial and learn to listen before it’s too late, we’ll be subjected to more of these catastrophes.

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)