Deep Human Connection by Stephen Cope

Author:Stephen Cope [Stephen Cope]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hay House
Published: 2019-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

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Nonetheless, one wants to ask: what would a truly benign adversary look like, and what precisely would “self-sustaining responsiveness” add to the outcome?

Perhaps you have been fortunate enough to encounter one of these benign adversaries? To be honest, I have not. But in my study of great lives, I have found quite a few real-life examples of the power of the truly benign adversary. Let’s take a second look, for example, at the life of Eleanor Roosevelt, who was lucky enough to encounter just this kind of adversarial selfobject.

In review: We have seen that Eleanor Roosevelt was a lost child, the daughter of a doting but ineffective alcoholic father who died following a suicide attempt, and a withholding mother who died when she was eight. And we’ve seen how that crippled her early emotional life.

But we have seen, too, that some of young Eleanor’s early wounds and deficits were massively repaired in her relationship with her teacher, Marie Souvestre. Stunnngly well repaired, actually. And so now, we might take a second look at Souvestre as a noble and benign adversary. (Take note here that it is possible—and very common—for one and the same selfobject to play multiple selfobject roles, just as Souvestre was for a time a container, an adversary, and later, a mirror, for Roosevelt.)

The truth is that the teenage Eleanor Roosevelt would find in Souvestre a benign adversary who could survive anything Eleanor could throw at her, and who in fact relished her charge’s increasing connection with her own naturally arising aggression. We have already seen that when Eleanor took the return trip across the Atlantic to rejoin her family after a mere two years of Souvestre’s love and guidance, she had been profoundly changed. There was simply more of her present. Her story is a dramatic example of Winnicott’s teaching that aspects of self-development can be “held in suspension until an effective container comes along.”

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