Psychological Problems and Their Big Deceptions. David W. Shave

thinking, you don’t see that your expressing anger about your boss has anything to do with me, and I, as your listener, don’t either. Illogically it does, but only on an unconscious “part”-oriented basis, made possible by predicate-equating.

      If you had a lot of recently stored anger that arose not only from your relationship with your boss, but from other origins where your basic emotional need was recently frustrated, all those different origins could now be equated with that “bad” or “disliked” part that you unconsciously perceive in me. What could result is that small equated part that you unconsciously perceive in me could become a much larger perceived “bad” or “disliked” part, just like a “good” or “liked” part, unconsciously perceived in me, can become larger with your having a greater unmet basic emotional need. That “bad” or “disliked” part becomes larger because you have more stored anger, and there is more predicate-equating involved. The anger that you now might express to that unconsciously perceived part in me, could become more recognizable to me, because of the size of the stored anger you had that is presently being expressed. I might then accuse you of inappropriately expressing anger to me. You might deny that there was any reference to me in what you were angrily telling me. You might tell me that I’m getting a little paranoid to be thinking I was talking about you. Because of your recognizable anger to me, I might not want to talk any more with you. If I didn’t recognize that anger as having an illogical personal reference to me, I might want to continue talking with you, because if I was unrecognizably doing the same as what you are unrecognizably doing with me, we’d both be reducing the amount of stored anger we have. We’d be doing this while simultaneously reducing our unmet basic emotional need from unconsciously perceived “good” parts. With less stored anger, and a better met basic emotional need, we’d become more emotionally comfortable.

      If you didn’t have that much anger stored in your unconscious, and you expressed that anger subtly, and I didn’t recognize there was any anger being expressed toward me in anything about which you might be talking to me that has made you angry in the past, I wouldn’t feel that any of your expressed anger had a personal reference to me. By talking to more people than only me, where you might unconsciously find a small “bad” or “disliked” part in each of those other people that could be equated with your boss, or equated with those other origins of your stored anger, any anger subtly expressed to a single “bad” or “disliked” part in any one listener would now be in a lessened amount. There wouldn’t be any large “bad” part unconsciously perceived in any one person. You’d be subtly “spreading your anger around.” You could get rid of all the anger that was associated with your boss that might have been recently stored to an uncomfortable level in your unconscious, and getting rid of any other stored anger from your past, by spreading out that anger expression with your talking with your friends. You could express it very subtly to unconsciously perceived small “bad” parts of those friends with whom you are involved in talking, that share a common predicate like, “frustrates my basic emotional need.” Additionally, you could get rid of any stored anger by utilizing other predicates such as, “doesn’t treat me right,” or “disagrees with me,” or “makes me angry,” or anything else that essentially is a frustration of your basic emotional need, and as such, is disliked. In our talking with friends, we could be unconsciously spreading our anger around like we unconsciously spread the meeting of our basic emotional need around. What this means is that we don’t store up anger from the past. We can too easily get rid of it in our talking with others, who are probably doing the same.

      If we understand this predicate-equating that our unconscious can do, we might now come to the realization that our unconscious can equate any two or more very different entities in reality, or any two parts of two very different entities. There are no two different entities in the entire world that can’t be equated by our unconscious! Our unconscious can even do it when the commonly shared predicate involves a mutually shared lack of a characteristic, or attribute. For instance, an experience from my past, and a part I am unconsciously perceiving in you right now, as you listen to me talk, can be made identical in my unconscious if they share in common the predicate “doesn’t make me angry,” or “doesn’t give me pleasure.” Those parts wouldn’t unconsciously meet what might be unmet of my basic emotional need, nor would they unconsciously allow me to get rid of any recently stored anger, but those equated parts may “set the stage” for unconsciously perceiving other parts that would. Our recognizing that our unconscious can equate anything, with anything else, by predicate-equating, is the “Rosetta stone” to our understanding how, in our extended talking with others, about anything at all, our unconscious can meet what might be uncomfortably unmet of our basic emotional need, and can get rid of any stored anger from any previous frustrations of that need, at the very same time!

      An unmarried chemist, whose work was her life, came to see me when she became depressed. She was a person who met little of her basic emotional need from talking with people. Instead, she was a person who met a predominance of her basic emotional need pleasurably working alone in a laboratory where she had become quite successful. In one of her later sessions of talking with me, she told me how she very much disliked social events but was recently obligated to attend a work-related social function where she stood alone, feeling very much “out-of-place” and “unwanted.” She told me another woman at the social function, in seeing my patient standing alone, came up to her all “bubbly” and said, “I’m a housewife and a mother. Do we have something in common?” Feeling now even more uncomfortable, my patient told the woman she wasn’t a housewife and wasn’t a mother. When the resulting conversation didn’t go well, the woman left my patient and became involved with someone else in conversation. It was then that a young man came up to my patient and said, “I couldn’t help but overhear what you just said to that woman and I believe we both have a lot very much in common. I’m not a housewife, and I’m not a mother either.” My patient told me the remark “broke the ice.” Both he and she laughed. She told me she found it was easy to make “small talk” with him. As a result, she enjoyed talking with him on that first encounter, and she was now seeing him weekly. She told me that she looks forward to talking with him, and that as a result of that talking she now does with him, she now feels she is a lot less depressed.

      A metaphor is an analogy which is made to show that two different entities are identical when they share in common some characteristic. It is derived from the Greek word meaning to “carry across.” Metaphors seemingly “carry across” feelings, characteristics, images, or ideas of one entity, to another entity, when they actually don’t. There is no “carrying across” because the two entities of the analogy have become identical from predicate-equating! Because they become identical, the understanding of one entity is applicable to the understanding of the other entity. To understand a metaphorical presentation, suppose I were to tell you, “It’s the early bird that gets the worm.” Though I don’t mention you by name, you know what I say has a reference to you. You know that what I tell you isn’t just about an early arriving bird getting a worm which is something that the bird very much desires. What I tell you is a metaphorical presentation in which the early arriving bird is being equated with a person who arrives early, and as a result of this, is rewarded with what he or she very much desires. I’m also equating that person with you. “Arriving early and getting what is greatly desired” is the predicate that equates the bird with the person, and what that person greatly desires, or needs, and those two entities are equated with you. I’m giving you “good advice,” by this metaphorical means, about the advantages of arriving early. The bird, the person, and you become identical such that what is said about one, fits with the other. There is no “carrying over.” The entities are the same! This predicate-equating is recognizable to you, as well as to me. Both you and I recognize that what I’m telling you about the early bird is metaphorical. What we both may not be aware of, is that this metaphorical language is based on predicate-equating. We’re consciously doing, in understanding figures of speech, what we might have erroneously concluded only schizophrenics do!

      If I had told you, “It’s the second mouse that gets the cheese,” I’m using metaphorical language to present an opposing view to that presented about the early arriving bird. The mouse that doesn’t arrive first at the trap, avoiding a terrible personal disaster, while a little later getting what it greatly desires, is being equated