Shakespeare
For a non-fiction book about medical issues, William Shakespeare pops up an awful lot. In fact, Shakespeare rears his head so often that he attains the level of recurring imagery, especially during the many times over the course of the book in which his plays are directly quoted, such as this example which engages the Bard as commentary on the significance of language and the loss thereof:
“All trauma is preverbal. Shakespeare captures this state of speechless terror in Macbeth, after the murdered king’s body is discovered : `Oh horror! horror! horror! Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee! Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!’ Under extreme conditions people may scream obscenities, call for their mothers, howl in terror, or simply shut down. Victims of assaults and accidents sit mute and frozen in emergency rooms; traumatized children `lose their tongues’ and refuse to speak. Photographs of combat soldiers show hollow-eyed men staring mutely into a void.”
The Shadow
Arguably, perhaps, the most intense and possibly even disturbing use of imagery comes not as the result of the author’s own words, but a quotation used as an introductory preface to a specific chapter. The attribution of the quote is complicated enough that it is reproduced here in its entirety along with the excerpted quotation. For the record, this quote which introduces Chapter 14 is itself preceded by yet another quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
“We can hardly bear to look. The shadow may carry the best of the life we have not lived. Go into the basement, the attic, the refuse bin. Find gold there. Find an animal who has not been fed or watered. It is you!! This neglected, exiled animal, hungry for attention, is a part of your self.
—Marion Woodman (as quoted by Stephen Cope in The Great Work of Your Life)”
Mammalian Behavior
One of the most fascinating uses of imagery—both visual and verbal—in the book is that which draws a distinct parallel between the behavior of mammals. From humans to apes to dogs, there is a shared system of emotional regulation. The snarl of one human being toward another turns out to be not nearly as far removed from the aggressive baring of teeth by one dog toward another as we might think. This animal/human imagery permeates throughout the text:
“Yelling at someone who is already out of control can only lead to further dysregulation. Just as your dog cowers if you shout and wags his tail when you speak in a high singsong, we humans respond to harsh voices with fear, anger, or shutdown and to playful tones by opening up and relaxing. We simply cannot help but respond to these indicators of safety or danger.”
Repetitive Self-Traumatizing
Why do so many people keep repeating the same actions which bring them pain and shame and misery? The author points out that Freud devised a theory that repeatedly re-enacting an original trauma is an attempt to gain mastery over it. The author immediately rejects that theory based on lack of evidence. The evidence that this compulsion to re-enact a traumatic event is overwhelming, however:
“My patient Julia was brutally raped at gunpoint in a hotel room at age sixteen. Shortly thereafter she got involved with a violent pimp who prostituted her. He regularly beat her up. She was repeatedly jailed for prostitution, but she always went back to her pimp…A brief relationship with a classmate quickly went sour—he bored her to tears, she said, and she was repelled by his boxer shorts. She then picked up an addict on the subway who first beat her up and then started to stalk her. She finally became motivated to return to treatment when she was once again severely beaten.”
