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Do
No Harm
Charles
Larsen
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[Five key expressions of a healthy
relationship.]
Relationships are what therapists often try to manipulate when helping
those who are out of harmony with their external or internal environments.
An often-sought goal of psychotherapy is the facilitation of healthy
relationships. In exploring this subject in the context of human beings
and their environments, we may also allow dogs, cats, and other critters
into the equation.
Even my relationship with the sharks and other large fish I have interacted
with may offer a couple of keys to healthy relationships. Because
sharks are mysterious to most people, they seem an excellent way to
illustrate two essential qualities of all healthy relationships. I’ve
had the good fortune to swim with sharks on many occasions, even in
the Florida Aquarium. Having observed their sinuous movements and
apparent indifference to me, even to the extent of having one brush
me as he swam between my legs, it seems that they and I have a healthy
relationship. We do not harm each other. Once upon a time I was a
shark hunter, fishing for them from the shores of Key Largo. Killing
them. Their collective unconscious, contrary to the opinion of one
of the Jaws sequels, holds no grudge. They provide me with an unparalleled
aquatic experience and, hopefully, they gain something, too.
No one is ever harmed in a healthy relationship. This is not to say
that relationships can’t result in heartache, anger, sadness,
and pain on occasion. They often can. If my wife is ill, I am worried.
If my dog is ill, I am worried. If I speak to either in a cruel or
unfeeling fashion, they experience pain, perhaps anger. I feel guilt.
But the overall quality of a healthy relationship is that there is
not worry about payback for slights, and there is almost always a
willingness, in both parties, to own up to their own responsibility
in any interactional friction. Like the sharks and me, no grudges
are held and no one is intentionally harmed.
The occasional ill effects of relationships are not small potatoes.
However, they have little to do with the health of it, unless they
are a part of an ongoing lack of mutual respect or an ongoing attempt
to inflict harm on each other.
This leads to the further question of what harm is. Syntonicity, for
psychotherapists, is a harmonious state of being. Starting with the
individual, we may say that a person’s choice of vocation is
“ego syntonic.” That is, the person’s work fits
their personality well. Some couples, married a very long time, seem
to be in continual verbal combat, yet they also seem happy with their
relationship, devoted to each other. A state of syntonicity exists
between them. Those who conform to the prevailing mores of society
are said to be in a state of syntonicity with society, conforming
to expectations and causing others no grief (as defined by society).
Society, in turn, allows them to exist without interference.
Syntonicity, in terms of society, is based upon societal expectations.
Fifty to sixty years ago, the mode of dress and behavior for business
men was examined in the sociological treatise, The Man in the Gray
Flannel Suit. With the exception of some folks in Greenwich Village
who were known for their quirkiness, conformity in dress and grooming
was a hallmark of the so-called greatest generation. Now society accepts
modes of dress for men and women that would have resulted in arrest
in those times. It seems that society is healthier in this acceptance,
and the world has not crashed because of it.
Individuals may be in a healthy relationship with society and their
peers even though they are irritants to those groups. Persons with
a strong sense of social justice or with great concerns about the
environment – so long as those are syntonic with their own psyches
– can be said to be in a positive relationship with the very
society they irritate so often. Marjorie Stoneman Douglas is an example
of such a human being. Because of her passionate writings and advocacy,
efforts are being made to save the river of grass. A healthy relationship
indeed.
Bonnie and Clyde offer an interesting example of syntonicity within
a couple, but a dystonic relationship with society. They loved robbing
banks together and dicing it out with the police. However, their chosen
vocation was not well received by the social power structure.
If we look at the psychological state of people, we’ll see that
some appear to be in a chronic state of anxiety or depression. They
seem to be willing to live in what, to others, seems a state of disorganization.
This also applies to some major mental disorders. A friend of mine
was a successful song writer for major artists of the thirties, forties,
and fifties. He would compose all day and night. He had boundless
energy. Only when there was no longer a demand for his work did he
seek help for his bipolar disorder. He was manic, but for most of
his sixty-five years, he had been living in an ego syntonic manner.
Was he in a healthy relationship with himself and society in his heyday?
Using the definition posed, his disorder fit his lifestyle and societal
needs for most of his life. He was in harmony until he no longer produced
songs which gratified him and others. Had he lacked talent, he might
not have gone untreated for forty years… and the world would
not have had his music.
The notion of healthy relationships in pairs is relative to many internal
and external variables. The health of a relationship in a couple is
dependent upon the era in which it takes place. During Queen Victoria’s
reign, the sexual relationship was one of female submission and male
assertion. In the current era, it seems those rules have changed very
rapidly. Most psychotherapists seem to take the approach that what
happens between any couple is their private business. Hence, we do
not necessarily assess a mutually agreed upon sadomasochistic pattern
as unhealthy.
Healthy relationships are basically those in which the individuals
are in a comfortable fit with their own psyche, with their partners
and others close to them, and with society as a whole. The key expressions
in a healthy relationship are to do no harm, to hold no grudge, to
accept yourself and others, to be productive in your social role,
and to embrace your individualism.
Charles Larsen, L.C.S.W., has been
practicing psychotherapy and hypnosis for over thirty years. St.
Petersburg. (727) 894-3088.
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER
2004
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