We experience our existence in such a way that it seems to us that we live in two separate realities. One is the reality of what goes on outside us, what we call the world. The other is what goes on inside us, our thoughts, feelings, images, sensations and perceptions. To cope with living we have to be able to distinguish what goes on inside us from what goes on outside us, and then to knit together, in some consistent way, our internal and external realities so that we can find a meaning which enables us to carry our life forward and communicate with other people. We have to relate our thoughts and feelings to our perception of the outside world, and we have to relate our perception of the outside world to our thoughts and feelings. This two-way process is what psychologists call ‘reality testing’. If we do not do this very well we are considered by others to be mad, or at least very strange.
Knitting these two realities together is not easy because they do not appear to be equally real. One of these realities seems to be ‘really real’: the other is ‘kind of’ real. For some of us our internal reality is more real than our external reality. For some of us our external reality is more real than our internal reality. This ‘more real’ relates to what it is we sometimes doubt. Some people never doubt what is going on around them but at times they doubt their own thoughts and feelings, and such doubt can lead them to say, ‘I don’t know who I am,’ or, ‘I don’t know what I feel.’ Other people never doubt their thoughts and feelings; indeed, their sense of existence is the one thing they never doubt, but the appearance of the world around them, or even that it exists, is something they do doubt, particularly when they lose confidence in themselves or they encounter a sudden crisis.
Whichever reality appears to be the less real for us is the reality which contains a great danger.
For those people for whom external reality is more real than internal reality, internal reality contains a danger which is felt as an emptiness, a vacancy from which all kinds of unknown and unknowable things can arise. Such people will express this by saying, ‘It’s not wise to introspect too much,’ or ‘I spend too much time trying to understand myself.’ For them the embrace of external reality is not dangerous. What is dangerous is for external reality to drop away and for them to be left alone and isolated, an emptiness in an emptiness. For these people, being left alone, completely abandoned and rejected, is the greatest fear.
For those people for whom internal reality is more real than external reality, external reality contains a danger which is felt as an unknown and unknowable territory from which all kinds of uncontrolled and uncontrollable forces can arise. Such people have no anxiety about introspection, for within themselves is where they live their life, but they often speak of needing peace, which means a quietening down of, or distancing oneself from, external reality. For them external reality dropping away and leaving them isolated is not dangerous, for they live within their internal reality. What is dangerous is the embrace of external reality, because out of external reality can come the forces which confuse, overwhelm and destroy. For these people, chaos is the greatest fear.
When we are coping with our lives and having no difficulty in knitting the external and internal realities together, we can be unaware of the differences in the qualities of the realities we perceive. But once we come under stress the differences in the two realities become more pronounced, and if the stress continues and increases we become less and less effective in knitting our internal and external realities together. Some of us run away from the emptiness we find within and busy ourselves with the outside world, while some of us withdraw into ourselves and shut out the confusion outside.
A simple way of discovering which reality is more real and how we experience our existence and our annihilation of our sense of being a person is to go through a procedure of questions and answers which is called ‘laddering’. This is a technique which I used in teaching, and only in a limited way in therapy. For a television programme, The Mind Box, I demonstrated this method with Sandy, a psychiatric nurse. While Sandy and I were seen looking at and driving cars in some dashing and bizarre sequences of film made on an empty airstrip, our conversation went as follows:
DOROTHY: Sandy, we’re going to play a little game. It’s called laddering, and in this we’ll start with something quite trivial, and then go on to something very important, but the first thing I’m going to ask you is, can you give me the names of three kinds of cars?
[This conversation took place in the days when the UK had a large car industry.]
SANDY: Yes, Rover, Triumph and Ford.
DOROTHY: Now can you tell me one way in which two of them are the same and the other one is different?
SANDY: Yes, Rover and Triumph are all part of British Leyland and Ford is an independent company.
DOROTHY: And which would you prefer, a car from British Leyland or one from an independent company?
SANDY: I’d prefer a Ford from an independent company.
DOROTHY: Why is it important to you to have a car from an independent company?
SANDY: I think I prefer something that’s somewhat unusual, something different.
DOROTHY: And why is it important to you to have something that’s different?
SANDY: In some way, I suppose, I get admiration from other people.
DOROTHY: Why is it important to you to have the admiration of other people?
SANDY: The admiration of other people makes me feel good. I suppose it makes me feel… it helps to establish my existence.
DOROTHY: What would you do if there wasn’t anyone to give you admiration, if you were completely isolated?
SANDY: Completely isolated? I can’t actually foresee myself in total isolation at all.
DOROTHY: But suppose you were completely and absolutely isolated for an indefinite period?
SANDY: In that case I should think I would be withered up, I’d die away. That would be the end of my existence, I think.21
Now Sandy was seen alone in a vast empty space. He looked miserable, but that was because he found making a television programme a nerve-racking experience. In ordinary life he knew he needed people, and he was effective in meeting this need by having a talent for friendship and doing a job which involved people.
We use the term ‘laddering’ because in this process of question and answer we begin with a trivial decision and value judgement and proceed to more and more general, abstract value judgements until we reach the top of the ladder, the ultimate value judgement, which is how we experience our existence and how we experience our annihilation.
Being annihilated as a person is our greatest fear. It is worse than bodily death, for after death we can imagine ourselves, or some important aspect of ourselves - our children, our work, the memories our friends have of us - continuing, but after annihilation there is nothing of our person to carry on. We have gone, brushed aside like chalk off a blackboard, engulfed like a raindrop in an ocean, consumed like a dead leaf in a fire, swirled away like a puff of smoke when the wind blows. After annihilation our body may continue to function but that which was our person has gone.
Sandy was one of those people who experience their existence as being part of a group and their annihilation as isolation. His external reality was more real for him than his internal reality. Had Sandy been one of those people for whom internal reality is more real than external reality, our producer, Angela Tilby, would have had greater difficulty in finding images to accompany our words. Sandy may have made the same choice of cars on the same grounds of wanting something unusual, but he would have gone on from there to talk in terms of personal development and achievement. I would have asked him what would happen to him if he were unable to fulfil his ambitions, and he would have spoken about himself (not his body) being overwhelmed and destroyed by chaos. Not easy images for television to supply, but a fate very real for those of us who experience our existence as the continual development of individual achievement, clarity and authenticity, and our annihilation as chaos.
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