“I’m fighting things I cannot see,
I think its called my destiny,
that I am changing, changing,
Marlena on the wall…”
-Suzanne Vega
This line pops into my head from time to time, though I have not heard the song in many years. Today, after reading more of Beck’s “Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders” (1979), and after having had a really good conversation with my therapist, the line came to me again. I was thinking about the concept of a self-story, or schema. Such a story is much more than a self-image. It can be thought of as a combination of a “working model” (ie paradigm, internalized model of reality and all within it), undisturbed (and unchallenged) self-concept and self-image, and a story of struggle that places the past, present, and future in context of the above.
The story seems central to me. Its everywhere. What I mean by this is that the concept of a story or schema is applicable to the understanding and communication of any therapeutic experience(* or any growth experience where the individual is aware of a reconceptualization and comcommitant behavioral changes and perceptual changes).
Backing up, I’ve also kept coming back to a particular podcast on “Shrink Rap Radio” with Dr. David van Neuys in which a psychologist consulting for HMOs is interviewed. He’s excited by the data which suggest that the one key correlate in determining the positive outcome of various kinds of therapy available in the marketplace is the therapist.
Yeah, it sounds like nothing. But this means that it is the quality of the therapist, or rather perhaps some quality of the therapist which is most determining in the quality of treatment. So, out the window go all the various schools of psychology, all the theory, the setting, length, client type, type of coverage, presenting conditions, etc.. All that really matters in picking a therapist is: “Are they successful at what they do”?
Its deeply satisfying to see data support a simple and generalized conclusion over and above nuance, theory, and argument. I think the value of generalizable rules-of-thumb can be greatly underestimated, and when such rules re-emerge from fields of thought that can be greatly mired in disagreement, there is a chance at some insight into what has been happening across the board.
This story sits in my mind, and as I read the various cornerstones of modern psychology, and as I go through my own psychotherapy, I look for such deeply simplifying and integrating understanding. One thing that has occurred to me, and to which my therapist agrees is that the relationship is also undeniably central to all successful psychotherapy.
So, we have: Past Success as predictive of future success, and the Relationship between therapist and client as probably determinate in all psychotherapy.
Why is it that these apparently obvious things are also powerful insights? I think because they can guide us in strengthening some of the deepest rules that guide our choice-making. As our foundations are firmed up, the questioning of more superficial subjective rules becomes easier.
So, what is so interesting about Suzanne Vega’s line?
“I’m fighting things I cannot see,
I think its called my destiny,
that I am changing, changing,
Marlena on the wall…”
This also sticks like a thorn in my mind: That when we ‘fight’ on the inner battlefield, wrestling in the dark, we may well be struggling against things that would be better accepted, while accepting things that would be better challenged. But also, when we fight things we cannot see, we are literally ‘in the dark’. We can’t tell if we’re fighting a giant or a mouse, or if our struggle is having any effect. Forces from the dark are by nature, boundless. The question arises: “Is it infinitely horrible, or merely infinitessimal”? We only fight things we are impinged upon by. Things we do not want in our domain.
However, what about when we fight things that we do see? Here again, I’ve often been struck by how capable we (human beings) are of accepting our struggles or indeed projecting and creating them, and then concretizing them. IE, we rationalize.
If I suggest that “Divorced Men should pay 100% for their kids”, and then make it a mission to do something about this belief (vote, argue, feel superior, etc..), its quite likely that I’m doing this for a reason beyond my conscious awareness. I feel like I’ve made a choice: “I will rally a protest at the statehouse”, but I may well be enmeshed in projection, over-identification, misconception, role-taking, or any number of things.
Indeed, those that struggle with any tangible thing may or may not see the side of that thing that is still in the darkness, still unseen.
This is annoying of course, because it means: “Fighting unseen things and fighting seen things is potentially (and likely) self-deceptive and not about reality”.
So, is it struggling, fighting, that is the problem? On some level I actually think that the answer is yes. Yes, in that resistance and acceptance of what is happening, of reality, by nature seems to push us into an unreasonable realm. That concepts of power and change lead us to a well of deep confusion, not to nirvanna or even simply real understanding.
But of course, on another level it cannot be that struggle is simply wrong. We are biological. To continue to live we often have to struggle. To give up living is in itself a resistance. Our nature is to live. So, total acceptance means also the acceptance of unacceptance, or struggle, or resistance. Keep in mind that when I say “acceptance” I only mean “accepting that what is, is, and that what is not, is not”, not the advocacy of anything per se, but merely awareness.
Suzanne Vega says “I think its called my destiny”. If we repeatedly find ourselves in similar situations, struggling with similar people, relationships, situations, or objects, it would be easy to conclude: “This is my destiny”. But even Arjuna, in the Bhagavad Gita, comes to accept his destiny, although on a different level.
We see here with the term “Destiny”, if we look closely at the concept, how there are often quite distinct connotations of powerful words and concepts. Often there is a concept with divine or spiritual meaning that is also used in what can best be termed, a ‘counterfeit’ manner. Is Vega using it in one way or the other?
“I think its called my destiny”. There is the answer. She’s telling herself a story of how she comes to face the same demons over and over again. She doesn’t actually feel the opening feeling of “taking up one’s ultimate role in the universe in accord with the divine”, but rather is “stuck in a role who’s nature is hidden, in the dark, immutable, but justly resisted (its not good)”.
Her destiny is “changing, changing”. Again, a sense of powerlessness and sadness permeates, rather than something else. And we can be sure of this with the last line: “Marlena on the wall”. She has a portrait of Marlena Deitrich on her wall. She’s looking for meaning, for a purpose that would explain her resistance, explain the recurrance of these demons. To tell her who she is. She reaches out to an image, internally, and externally. Marlena Deitrich.
Even as I lambast Vega here, I resonate with the experience. Perhaps we all go through this on some level: The turning to imago, to role taking, to social metaphysics, to ‘meaning’, in the face of our struggling. The struggle and the resistance (and turning to meaning) are part of the same thing that binds us. This is attachment.
But its also story-telling. And when we open ourselves to a new story, we sometimes break these ‘destinies’. Maybe a person can live without the obfuscating clouds of struggle and resistance at all. That’s something worth ‘struggling’ for, isn’t it? 
” (female)
