Part 5: Easy example (continued and conclusion)

This simple conversation becomes even more complicated in its potential implications and outcomes if we now apply to son B all of the variations that we applied to parent A.

Son conscious B may be fully aware of parent’s unconscious A desire to wound and hurt him.

In this case son conscious B would recognize that parent unconscious A had deliberately chosen the timing of the request to clean the room in order to ruin the son’s enjoyment of the first date. If son conscious B was especially shrewd he may guess that parent conscious A has a hidden agenda too. He may not know what it is (the secret guest) but might have a shrewd guess that his cleaning the room is of some special importance to parent conscious A. He may or may not cooperate as a result.

If son conscious B is unaware of parent unconscious A desire to wound him and is also innocent about hidden agenda, his own wounded unconscious B may “take over” the thinking, feeling and reaction for him. He might comply and use the request to clean the room as an excuse to cancel his date or have a miserable time during the date.

If son conscious B is especially resilient and adept he might deliver a zinger in return to parent’s unconscious A. For example, son conscious B might be aware of what problem or personality disorder in the past generated parent unconscious A’s desire to wound and hurt in the first place. Hmm. Son conscious B could be generous in this knowledge and use his response to the room cleaning request to soothe some of parent unconscious A’s drive for meanness. Son conscious B might toss parent unconscious A a bone by letting parent conscious know that son conscious B is hurt, but at the same time have a balanced response to the cleaning room request. I call this “playing dead.” If you have an aggressive and mean parent or partner sometimes you just have to play dead and let them get their mean rocks off by shaking you. I dealt with my own dysfunctional human mother this way, when I was a child and I recognized her unconscious A from the get go.

But like I said, son conscious B might deliver a real zinger in return if he knows about parent’s unconscious A and recognizes that unconscious A has picked a fight with him in order to hurt him and ruin his first date. He might think, “Oh, so you want to hurt me? I’ll find a way to hurt you back double.” If he knows that parent unconscious A’s desire is to hurt and wound (and if he has insight as to how that disordered condition first came about) he could set up a future scenario that really socks it to the parent. He might set it up so that the other parent witnesses a future attempt by parent unconscious A to hurt him. Ah ha! That would be a good one. Nothing like getting unconscious A parent “getting what it wants” and having someone with a big stick and who disapproves witness it.

The other way to zing is to be passive aggressive. Son conscious B never lets on that he is hurt and may even obsequiously thank parent A for their guidance. If parent unconscious A wants to inflict pain this type of conscious son B might arrange his actions, thoughts and feelings so that unconscious A is never gratified by the infliction of pain by masking that it happens. Conscious son B will never forget, however, that his own parent, albeit unconsciously, wanted to see him hurt and suffering.

Conscious son B might up the ante in dealing with parent unconscious A. He might say that it’s hard to clean his room when the parent never bought him the organized closet set that he needs to store his things. He might ask for an increased allowance to pay for dry cleaning to “relieve the household of the clothes washing chores.” He might decide to pack all his belongings and give them to charity, doing a good deed, and hence needing money to buy replacement up to date goods (and if he guessed about the guest that would put the show off parent in a bind, who would want to have the chicest room to show off to the guest, but have to spend dollars to do it and having been unsuccessful in hurting the son! Here the son is thinking of charity when he ought to be hurt, devastated!) So conscious son B might make parent unconscious A have to pay a high price (literally) for his or her dysfunction and picking a fight before his first date. If he’s really smart he puts all those payment needs out at the same time so that parent unconscious A at least gets some of his or her mean jollies by saying “no” to some of the requests.

So you see how in any given conversation there are four separate but of same origin threads of dialogue taking place. One of the things I excel in is “hearing” all four strands of conversation. The only thing that is sometimes problematic is identifying if someone is being conscious or unconscious in their statements and actions. That becomes clear very quickly though. If I have a bias it has been to think that people are unconsciously dysfunctional rather than consciously dysfunctional when I first interact with them. However, I’ve revised that kindly assumption some goodly years ago as I realize that most people I speak to are playing conscious parts and scripts. I do recognize that many of their faulty beliefs that allow them to be so phony come from genuinely unconscious drivers (like wanting to be smarter than “God”).

Speaking of God… now that you have seen how dysfunctional and fraught with peril conscious-unconscious and unconscious-unconscious dialogue can be… imagine how risky it is for an unconscious driven human to think they discern “hidden” and “mystical” information about or “from” the very real and entirely conscious God.