Projections on the Faces of Masks - (SC #4)
...if an environment exists which is not good enough then the self fails to form and in its place there comes into existence a False Self. - Samuels
The last post about the Survival Complex described how the objectification of the individual leads to a sense of emptiness and how this emptiness is covered by a mask or persona.
Follow Along on Miro: Survival Complex Map on Miro
A person running from an internal emptiness is always looking for a way to fill it. In the Survival Complex one way to deal with the emptiness is to cover it with a mask and decorate the mask with accomplishments. Another way to improve it is by being pleasant. A pleasant, productive mask is liked and approved of by others. And if the masked person has a family it will be important that their family is pleasant too.
Pleasance is the lie that allows family dysfunction to continue. It is the belief that everything is fine and everyone is happy. Pleasance is the expression on the mask that each of the family’s members wears.
The pleasant mask is worn in the service of the family image. Just as each member’s value depends on how much its mask is esteemed by others so too the family’s image depends on others’ esteem.
One of the problems with pleasance is that it is short-sighted. In order to maintain pleasance a family member will do whatever is necessary in the moment to maintain it. This can involve reimagining the past, ignoring the future or willfully misinterpreting the present.
The maintenance of pleasance creates a fear of negative emotions and their repercussions. The negative emotions of the family are ignored or met with admonishments for gratitude, acceptance and other virtues abused for the sake of pleasance.
The masks and actions of the parents and child make up the family image. The image, like their masks, are what they imagine they are presenting to the world. Maintaining the family image is really about maintaining the family’s belief that others are seeing the good image that they want others to see.
While the goal is to be a happy, healthy family what is produced is only an image of a happy, healthy family. The image looks the same as the goal but there is a difference as large as the emptiness.
The child’s effort to make contact with the parent is met with the mask. Without a self to offer the parent can only give the child the offerings of its mask which is what it can do and provide. The parent offers the child stuff and help.
Parents who fail to offer their children satisfying holding, mirroring, and soothing, provide substitutes in food, toys, money, etc. - Kalsched, The Inner World of Trauma
The child’s self is only making contact with images and objects. The child learns that value is in images and objects, help and stuff; not in who it, or the parents, are. The child’s self begins to wither and its emptiness begins to grow. The child begins to work on its own mask.
...if an environment exists which is not good enough then the self fails to form and in its place there comes into existence a False Self. - Samuels, The Father
The child watches the parent wear a pleasant mask for others. When the others leave, the door closes, the mask loosens. The child listens to the parent’s criticisms of the others. The parent’s pleasance is prompted and seems false. Their criticism is spontaneous and seems true. The child notices that the parent is pleasant to it and that the pleasance is false. If it wants to know its parent then it must construct them. The child’s construct is made of what it knows to be true which is the collection of criticisms it has gathered. It knows that what is public is a positive lie and that what is private is a negative truth. It knows that nothing true is good and nothing good is true.
The child’s negative construct becomes a phantom that floats behind it. The phantom is never seen but is always heard. It tells the child what others think of it. Because the phantom is negative the child’s experience of the world is negative.
...the persecutory, anxiety-ridden inner world of trauma is recapitulated in outer life and the trauma victim is “compelled to repeat” the self-defeating behavior. - Kalsched, Inner Life of Trauma
The child doesn’t trust others because it knows they are pleasant, lying masks. It ignores the other person as they present themselves. The child only interacts with the image it projects onto what it believes are their masks. It is not really talking to others; it is talking to its constructs, its phantom, itself. The child’s relationships are interactions with projections on the faces of masks.