Muriel Schiffman: Good and Bad Marriages

Muriel Schiffman’s famous book Face to the Subconscious has long been a classic of psychotherapy.

Muriel Schiffman wrote her book in the 60s of the 20th century, but the book has not lost its relevance and still - like Newton's laws. Of course, I recommend that you all read this work, especially since the book is written easily and literally “chews” (as is customary with American authors) one thought so that no one dares to say, closing the book, “I did not understand anything – and what to do?”





In addition, Muriel Schiffman is not just an aunt, but a student of Fritz Perls, the founding father of the Gestalt approach to psychotherapy, as we all know.

Today we will talk about the most important, in my opinion, idea, which is also chewed up in the book Muriel Schiffman. I'm going to try to chew this idea even more.

Which marriages are “bad” and which marriages are “good” in terms of Gestalt self-therapyI'll give you an introduction first.

Each of us has certain themes that we treat irrationally, not rationally. These “themes” mean more to us than they really mean. We put additional meaning into these topics, which often stretches from childhood and is associated with childhood psychological traumas – traumatic upbringing and so on.

We always have a violent, emotional reaction to such “themes”, we lose sobriety when faced with such a topic. Simply put, these topics can be called “sick.” Muriel Schiffman calls them “themes we treat irrationally.”





Well, friends. These topics usually don’t coincide. Therefore, we sometimes see the Other with a clear look and say to ourselves: Fuck him. What's he up to? I don't get it. That's funny. No one hurt him, but he started and slammed the door.

Sometimes they match.

“Good” marriages Shiffman calls those partnerships in which both spouses have different painful topics. Or few matching. So one partner can always remain “sober” and not offended, just be perplexed and concerned.

As men sometimes say, "Oh, you can't understand these women." Look, I got hurt again. What for? What's this time?

Shiffman calls bad marriages those in which both partners exactly coincide with the maximum number of such “special topics” or almost all. Then there will be no such complacent reactions, but there will be muzzling and breaking glass on both sides.

Why? What's going on?

“Trace the Inadequate Emotions” – Step OneI’m not going to list all the steps of Muriel Schiffman. For us, the very first step is to track our (or someone else’s) inadequate emotional reaction to someone’s action, behavior in general or words.

To follow up and say, “Yes, I (he) just had an inadequate reaction.”

Here's an example.

You approach your partner (I deliberately don’t specify who is approaching whom, it doesn’t matter).

You go up to your family partner and say, “Please give me three hundred rubles.”

And the answer is, "What are three hundred rubles?" I gave you three hundred rubles yesterday! Do you know how much electricity, gas, heating costs? I don’t know what I’m going to eat next month! Well -- and so on.

There is an inadequate response. The person could just say, "You know what, I won't." No. I barely collected rent, I don't know exactly how much I'll have to pay. I'll pay you today, I'll see what's left, don't piss me off now, I've barely dealt with those damn papers, they're falling out of my hands.

But hysterical and boorish cries about “do you know at all how much it costs” – this is a typical inadequate reaction to the topic of “Money”.

If you personally don’t have any irrational applications of your own, drawn from your parental family, then you will calmly listen to your partner and say something encouraging.

Because you love him, don't you? You are not a neighbor-alkash cocky, but your loved one. You think, "God, what's wrong with him?" Maybe he's in some big trouble. Maybe he's scared, humiliated?





If the topic of “Money” is also irrational for you, then you will arrange such a scandal in response that the doors of slamming them will break off the hinges, and the neighbors will not stand up and die of happiness listening to your concert.

And now I want to take a typical example of another, often "sick" topic: Food. Many (but not all) with the topic of “Food” have irrational attitudes. That's the subject. If both partners have such irrational layers, expect constant frenzied scandals at the table.

Option One: She cooks, he doesn't eat.

How the hell are you?

Al in Milanese salad

Are there truffles missing?

What does "food" mean to her?

For her, the concept of “food” is accompanied by an irrational attitude: “Food is my Love for you.”

(In fact, food is just food.) The main thing is that it was not from the soured foods in the refrigerator, this is what you need to watch for. Remember the classic: “Do not make food a cult!”

What is the concept of "food" to Him?

For Him, food is not love, but an attempt to establish Power and Control.

Why is that? Let's say. . .

She is.

When she was little, her mother did not know how to cook and cooked pasta for a week, ate lunch in the dining room at work, and her daughter ate in an extension.

But when the child came to the grandmother - the grandmother cooked for her luxurious treats and said: "Eat, baby." They don't feed you at all. Grandma baked your pancakes, get up for breakfast. And so on.

Therefore, her “food” still means “grandmother’s care and love”. She also learned to cook – in spite of her mother and in memory of her grandmother.

And now he tries to feed everyone he loves, playing the role of "Grandma."

It's like she's saying to her partner, "You know how I love you?" How much my grandmother loved me! I mean, stronger than anything in the world!

He is.

And over it, the overbearing mother (the hyper-guardian mother) established her Mother Power through food control. She knew for him what and how much he needed to eat. She stood over him as he pressed over the plate and said, "Until you eat all this, you're not going anywhere." I plow at the stove, and you don't eat.

It's been years. . .

The wife prepares food and somehow meticulously and irrationally observes whether the beloved has eaten. He stands above his soul and looks into his eyes. Something familiar, huh?

He immediately sees his mustachioed mother the size of a whale, and rolls to the throat. “I won’t eat it, it’s disgusting,” shouts a little boy inside, who has been bullied all his childhood, forcing him to swallow hateful food, depriving him of choice.

“Are you saying you’re my boss?” the husband thinks irrationally. “Are you going to control what I eat and how I eat?” Are you going to the bathroom to pick me up?

Here is an irrational conflict: She, as always, prepared the most exquisite food for her husband, and he unconsciously seeing this as hyper-guardianship, demonstratively came with a packet of grunt from Macduck, closed himself in a tablet and brazenly chuckles, not intelligently, does not look at his wife.

Or in a particularly boorish way, in response to: “Eat a fresh salad,” he replies: “I actually ate two pancakes on the street, you know, I don’t want to.” And he watches silently: “Did you eat, you old mustache fool?”

And he does not see that before him is not an old mustachioed fool, but his loving wife is young and pretty. And now she's roaring, not realizing why he's mocking her so subtly and killing himself in the street.

He may also become psychosomatically ill on purpose and then proudly say, “You see, I MUST NOT eat everything you cook.”

His message: "Don't you dare feed me."

Muriel Schiffman says: If even one partner did not have an irrational point on the item "Food", he would eventually (in fact very soon) guess that something is wrong with his cute.

He doesn’t respond well to such simple things. Is it really sad to have a nice dinner?

This is a “bad” marriage. Because both spouses have a childhood trauma related to the topic of food.

By the way, what could she do?

Let’s say your wife read Muriel Schiffman’s book and already knows how to track her own inappropriate reactions. She quickly understood why she was suffering, would have remembered her grandmother and said to herself:

Okay. I know what turns me on. I'm being rejected. But is that true?

No, it's just that my "Dance of Love" doesn't suit this man. I don't know why. I'm not a therapist. I'm just a wife. And I know one thing. You have to learn to dance another love dance.

I'm just not gonna dance over him with a half-man anymore. He needs a different expression of my love.Love can be expressed in a thousand other ways. Not necessarily food. Okay, I'm gonna stop dancing at his top with my cooking. But I keep cooking.

Now, when the wife (who, for example, still believes that you need to eat balanced, tasty and only homemade food) will simply leave ready-made fresh food on the stove and in the fridge - herself "indifferently" falling with an interesting magazine on the tajta - the husband will soon eat all that she has prepared for him. Slowly, standing by the fridge, hands, alone as long as he wants. A mustachioed mother the size of a whale will no longer dream of him at this point.

And he'll stop terrorizing his wife with McDuck.

s***

Part two. Clothing theme

Enough with the food. Now let's try to get into the sweater. Do you agree? Perfect.

Here we will look at two opposing stories. Story One.

She dresses “like a kid” or “like a grey mouse.” He sees her in a dress, lace underwear and hairpins.

Many husbands reach a quiet hysteria, because the wife allegedly “mocks” them and deliberately dresses in everything gray, black, unfashionable, old. Jeans and T-shirts. That's her active wardrobe. Everything he's bought her is hanging out.

Attempts to spend money on a dress-shoes, donated for the holiday underwear - cause his wife an angry hysteria and make megera. What's wrong with the girl? After all, many wives and mistresses do not dream about this in their dreams, and everything shrinks inside of her when he tries to dress her “How Befits a Woman”.

Here. As you can see, she has irrational attitudes on the topic of “women’s clothes” or “expensive women’s clothes”.

"Dear" Women's Clothes

As a child, her parents didn’t have the money to dress her well, and she was dressed “like a girl” but the poorest in her class. And as she walked through the streets, she noted only that “cool girls” – everyone, of course, walks with boys, and such “rags” like her – boys are not at all successful – boys are ashamed to go to the cinema and cafes with ugly girls.

In order not to get lost, she changed places.

She began to wear comfortable T-shirts and shorts, and then the legs became like girls, ceased to be chicken. What else do you need to prove that you can be successful too?

And there was a group of other wonderful boys who appreciated that she wasn't a "chicken," that she got on a moped, went to the racecourse, played the guitar in combat, knew all the names of their computer games and played them pretty well.

Did you eat "chicken angels"? I'm friends with boys, too.

Since then, shorts and a t-shirt have grown to her like a frog skin, becoming the mascot of Her Female Success. And he wants to burn that skin, you idiot!How dare he!

Now he'll throw her back in the seral, level her with those chicks, make her compete again in the quantity and quality of skirts, dresses and cardigans? Yes, she will never catch up and overtake them – by knowledge of “brands” and names of details of women’s clothing and by stupid ability – for hours to study clothes! And she doesn't. She learned a lesson from her childhood: No matter how you dress, these chickens will dress better, it's in their genes. Better shorts and a crumpled shirt with a beautiful figure and a smiling face.

Or maybe he’s just ashamed of me. Maybe he's turned into that boy who only likes expensively dressed angel girls. Or has he always been?

So meets any attempt of a generous and loving (unsuspecting) husband - to dress and dress his beloved wife "like a doll" - resistance, incomprehensible aggression and hysteria with depression.

If he does not have his own irrational attitudes on the topic of “Clothes”, he will see that his wife is acting irrationally and will think about how to help her with her “trouble”.

Story two.

She wants to dress a lot, expensive and rich. He makes scandals because of every rag she bought (even with her money) For Him, a beautiful woman's dress and the smell of spirits is death. Red rag for the bull.

This is what his mother always looked like when she left him.

How he hated these dresses and perfumes since childhood. "You're leaving me again?"

And then... The beautiful dress led the ugly alien uncle. And now they shout “Bitter”, and this one entered the house.I hate beautiful women's dresses. They are put on before they are thrown.

s***

It was necessary for such a man to meet his wife, who also has an irrational attitude on the topic of “clothes”.

What are women's clothes for her?

For her, clothing is Life, it is Love, it is Victory over all enemies. Final victory. A bunch of fancy dresses for her is armor. God forbid you deprive her of this weapon.

They lived poor with their lab-based mom. Dad wasn't here. Girlfriends laughed. "Girls." Sheep! But there were none. . .

She wasn't quoted in the yard. She laughed at her mother too, which she couldn’t stand. Fighting, shitting slowly to those who spoke especially contemptuously about my mother.

And then they had a Dad. He drove to the yard and everyone closed their mouths, after they opened wide in amazement.

And everything changed immediately. Mom's blossomed. They both bought dresses. Dad turned out to be a man. And then they left that house altogether and began to live a new happy life.

In her fashionable dress, she first realized how beautiful and strong she was. Women are afraid of her. And how men began to notice her. They used to look through glass.

s***

If a husband had read Muriel Schiffman’s “Face to the Subconscious,” he would have noticed that his reaction to his wife’s new clothes was irrational. " What does that remind me of? he would ask himself.

And at the end he would say, “What a stupid thing!” Dresses and perfumes do not mean that you are abandoned forever and betrayed. I'm not a boy in pajamas, and she's not my mom. It's time to grow up. Let your wife buy her clothes, what's the problem?

s***

So, let's summarize. Muriel Schiffman offers a simple method by which so-called bad marriages can be saved. One of the spouses, who has mastered the technique of Gestalt introspection, simply learns to say “Stop!” and ask himself:

“Was my reaction adequate right now?” ?

Why am I broke? Why did I cry?

One adequate person with one inadequate is normal. Each of us, says Muriel Schiffman, has had and still has irrational themes of life.

And sometimes we will give lights to our lovers.The secret of happiness in marriage is that the second person can react understandingly and supportively, and then despair and the whole ugly scene quickly and painlessly disappear.

In the end, I will give my favorite example, which Muriel Schiffman herself gave in the book.

The husband comes home from work angry and immediately yells at the children, making them remarks.

The wife has an irrational attitude towards the subject of "wife and mother." She believes she should be the "perfect mother and wife." The husband who yelled at the children said the following:

“You're a bad mother. What freaks have you raised.”

Naturally, the wife runs to the site of the quarrel and starts yelling at her husband in defense of the children: "Why are you yelling at them?" And so on.

When a wife is not irrational about Wife and Mother (or is reading Shiffman), she sees only the bare fact: “Husband came from work with no face on him.” It's gray as a wall.”

And at this point, she will behave in the most appropriate way - rush to find out what happened and how she can help.

Read the book about Gestalt self-therapy “Face to the subconscious”. Let’s not have bad marriages. published



Author: Elena Nazarenko

P.S. And remember, just by changing our consciousness - together we change the world!

Source: live-and-learn.ru/catalog/article/khoroshie-i-plokhie-braki-s-tochki-zreniya-gneshtalt-samoterapii-myuriel-shiffman/