Zelik S. Mintz, LCSW, LP

In working with patients and in reflecting on the special relationship I had with my identical twin brother, I’ve thought a lot about how people yearn for symbiotic relationships.  Without realizing that total symbiotic relationships are a fantasy – whether with a romantic partner, a parent with a child, friendships or others – people enter relationships with the unconscious need to be completely known and understood.  When there is a break in the symbiotic fantasy – when one feels the other does not understand, expresses anger, criticizes or functions differently – the shock of separateness can cause a primal rupture that threatens the relationship and evokes feelings of insecurity and instability.

Symbiotic rupture is most frequent and most threatening between romantic partners and between parents and children.  The unconscious yearning to have partners and children be a reflection of ourselves is very powerful.  We fall in love, have children, and create close friendships with the desire that we will merge with the object of our affection and be safe from our innate aloneness.  When this merging is threatened, we feel rejected or confused and judged.  Instead of the beauty of the other’s differences, we feel the loss of the other’s sameness and protection from isolation.  Instead of celebrating and learning from the other, we experience the pain of separateness.   This pain threatens feelings of having found “our other half” or our children being a reflection of us.

Being an identical twin gave me the primal experience of near complete symbiosis with another person.  Not only were we a merged unit from before birth – albeit also two separate individuals – we looked very much alive and sounded almost identical.  It seemed natural for me to go out into the world expecting the same symbiosis in my relationships with others.  It was with a lot of difficulty that I learned that the kind of relationship I had with my brother could not be repeated with others – whether partners, friends, or children.

This window into the special merging experienced in my twin relationship illuminates the yearning and desire of those I work with in my practice.  Through my own acceptance of the limitations of relationships other than the one I had with my brother, I help my patients work with the pain of not being able to fulfill the unattainable fantasy of total merging with others.

Intimacy between two people does not evolve from having the other be one’s own reflection.  Rather, intimacy grows because of the excitement and discovery of the other’s differences.  Working through differences that are both complimentary and challenging deepens the bond and the intimacy we crave with others.

Empathy and understanding are the cornerstones of the analytic process.

Being an identical twin has profoundly influenced my life and my perception of others.   From birth I had an intimate knowledge into how another person experiences and relates to the world, an experience that has left me deeply empathic.

My brother and I had an abbreviated language that conveyed what we were feeling and thinking; we understood each other thoroughly.  As I look back at our relationship, I realize that this intimacy has enhanced my ability to empathize with other people.  Because my brother and I were so alike, the empathy we shared taught me to have strong empathy with others – an enormous gift in my work as a psychotherapist.

Along with empathy, my brother and I shared a deep understanding of each other.  This has left me particularly sensitive to the feeling of being misunderstood by others.  With those I work with in my practice, this sensitivity sharpens my diligence such that I ensure others feel heard and understood.

Although not universal, the desire to be understood and to share a world view presents itself frequently in the course of an analysis.  As an analyst, my experience as an identical twin invaluably illuminates my work.

I’ve been thinking more about Wallace Shawn’s comment to me that a psychotherapist and an actor are much the same thing.  Aside from it being a funny comment, I find much truth to it.

Exploring background, motivation, and reaction with the characters I played or monologues I studied seems very analogous to my work as a psychotherapist. With the people I work with as an analyst as well as the roles I had played as an actor, I explore how they experience the world and function in it.  Both involve how I perceive others and how I function in relation to them.

The difference between the two professions are also intriguing.  As an actor, I attempted to merge myself with the character I was presenting which is part of the nature of acting.  As a psychotherapist, I have to be diligent that merging doesn’t happen.  If it does, I explore whether what is happening could be projective identification - feelings felt by the person I am working with that are intolerable and, hence, unconsciously projecting into me; or my own countertransference - feelings that come from my own emotional makeup.

Considering this analogy between the two disciplines, I can see why acting was always such an alluring profession for me.   Now that I am a psychotherapist, much of what drew me to acting is now expressed in my work with the people I treat.

After some thought, what initially seemed like a funny statement from Wally Shawn now seems quite insightful.

In my early adulthood I imagined myself being a therapist.  Although knowing nothing of what that entailed, I was always a people person and interested in who people were and how they got that way.  I remember when in my 20′s, new alternative therapies like Fritz Pearl’s  ”Gestalt Therapy” and Arthur Janov’s “The Primal Scream” were very popular.  Living an alternative lifestyle myself, these new ideas were exciting and very interesting.  I particularly took to gestalt therapy.  With no training and only a BA in Sociology, I imagined being a good therapist if that is what I decided to study.   I also imagined that being a good therapist would be easy for me because of my curious and warm personality.

I never pursued therapy as a profession back then.  I had always loved acting and moved to New York in 1980 to pursued that profession.

(As an aside, a couple of years ago, I was in a food market and somehow happened to talk to Wallace Shawn, the playwright and actor.  He asked me what I did for a living and I told him I was a psychoanalyst.  He also asked me what I used to do before that and I told him I had been an actor.  Upon hearing this, he stated that being a psychoanalyst and being an actor were very much the same.  I thought that was pretty funny.  Coming from Wally Shawn, who had appeared in numerous Woody Allen movies, that observation seemed like it belonged in one of those films.)

 

When I eventually went back to school in my 40′s for my long training as a psychotherapist, I quickly learned how little I knew about theory and how it informed being a good and insightful therapist.  The more I learned the more I realized how little I knew.