an old Chinese saying, which I apply in my everyday life, that ‘everyone you meet is your mirror’.29
In contrast, the writer Edna O’Brien, when interviewed by Miriam Gross, revealed herself as an introvert. Miriam Gross asked to what extent she felt that writing was a way of explaining oneself, of making up for the failure to communicate fully in ordinary life.
It’s a stab at it. I think it was Beckett who said - I’m paraphrasing - that you write in order to say the things you can’t say. It’s a cry, or a scream, or a song. Whatever form it takes, it is definitely an attempt to explain things and put them right.
Did she feel that if women had more confidence and a more active role in the affairs of the world, they would invest less energy in their emotional life?
I do. But, ironically, I think that much as our longings might hurt us, they also enrich us. Because finally, when the curtain is down, I mean, when one is dying, what really matters is what took place inside, in one’s own head, one’s own psyche. And people who acknowledge the relative failure or paucity in areas of their lives - either in love or in work - are in a way more blessed than the others who pretend or who put on masks. Though you suffer by not being confident and you suffer by not being befriended or loved as you might like to be, you are the sum of all that need and at least you’re alive, you are not a robot and you are not a liar.30
These are two successful people, successful not only in terms of fame and wealth but in developing a way of life which allows them to be themselves, to live within and to extend that which gives them their sense of existence. Linda Evans was eminently lovable, on screen and off, as they say. Edna O’Brien used everything that came to her, whether it caused her pain or not, to develop her own clarity and understanding in ways which meet with enormous public approval. However, when we do not develop a way of life which allows us to be ourselves, when we cannot live within and extend that which gives us our sense of existence, we suffer great fear.
Ken had come to be cured. As soon as he sat down he announced, ‘I have a good, secure job. I’ve got my own house and no money worries. I’m forty-two and I’m in good health. There is no logical reason why I should be anxious.’
He had been off work for six months. He was so overwhelmed by anxiety that he could not attempt the simplest task. He spent most of his time going over in his mind technical work he had done in past years in the homes of neighbours and friends, trying to convince himself that he had not made any mistakes and that the people living there were not in danger.
He was an engineer, a practical problem-solver. ‘That’s my job,’ he said. ‘When there’s a problem, they come to me to solve it.’ He liked people looking to him to solve their problems. I asked him why. He said, ‘It gives me satisfaction.’
At that time the UK was in the midst of a huge strike by coal miners, and this had created a series of problems at his place of work. As he would solve one, another would be created. There was no way all these problems could be solved simultaneously. He felt that he could not afford to let his staff and his superiors see that there were practical problems which he could not solve because that, he feared, would diminish him in their eyes.
A friend, ‘the most logical and competent chap I know’, had committed suicide. Ken had found him. ‘It didn’t upset me particularly,’ he said. But, in fact, inside he was greatly upset.
In later discussions Ken told me how his mother, a very strong-willed woman, had insisted that he achieve and that he help people. He had to accept what she said because she had ways of enforcing her orders. He told me how one day, when she discovered that he had lost his best sweater on his way home from school, she had come to the cinema where he was happily watching a film and, in front of all those people, had hauled him home to look for his sweater. The shame he felt then was the shame he feared if, through his own carelessness, he caused the people he had tried to help any suffering.
He had come on his own. I asked after his wife.
‘She says I’m getting her down.’ No, they didn’t discuss things much.
At that first meeting it was not until he was near to leaving that he said, ‘My sons have their own friends now. They don’t need me any more.’
Ken was unable to say, ‘I feel that I am alone, abandoned and rejected. I fear I shall disappear.’ In contrast, Ella was able to describe her fear.
Ella nearly died in a road accident. Four years later she was still weak and shaky and prone to tears. She had not returned to work, and she found driving a car a frightening experience.
‘I just want to hide myself away,’ she said. ‘I don’t want people to see me like this. I used to be so confident and in control.’
She had always had to be competent, but only in the feminine skills of housekeeping. ‘My mother thought that a girl didn’t need an education. A woman’s fulfilment was to be a wife and mother. I won a scholarship to grammar school but she wouldn’t let me take it up. I got married and had a family, but I’ve always done something more. I’ve always worked. But now, I’m back to where I started. I’ve achieved nothing. I’m weak and frightened, and I’m just what my mother wanted, a wife and mother and nothing else. No personal achievement. And that’s what life’s about, isn’t it?’
Ella’s statement that life is about personal achievement is just what an introvert would say, though introverts cover a wide range of activities in what they call personal achievement. Extraverts say that life is about other people, though they cover a wide range of possible relationships with other people. Both extraverts and introverts need to achieve and they both need other people, but for extraverts achievement is to strengthen their relationships with other people while for introverts achievement is what life is about. Introverts need other people to stop them disappearing into their own internal reality and losing touch with the world around them, while extraverts need other people to provide an essential part of their sense of existence.
When we are small children we are aware that we have certain talents and powers. We may not be able to put a name to them, but we know that whenever we use them we feel an enormous joy. The passionate pleasure of acting creatively and successfully in and upon the world has always given puny human beings the will and power to go on striving in a vast and dangerous universe. As children, if we are lucky, our talents and powers are approved of and encouraged by the adults around us. If so, we can then use our talents and powers to develop and make ourselves safe. If we are extraverts we use our talents and powers to gather people around us and keep them there, and to fill the empty space within us. If we are introverts we develop our talents and powers to gain clarity and personal achievement and to relate our internal reality to the external world.
However, if as children the adults around us do not recognize or approve of our talents and powers, we are forced to neglect and to deny them and to learn skills which we know are not in us. This leaves us with a sense of feeling ‘not right’, in some way always an impostor. We are left with a sense of longing. We may not be able to put a name to the object of the longing, or we may know the name but be too ashamed to admit it. How could this delicate wife and mother admit that all she ever wanted was to sail her own boat round the world? How could this rugby-playing company director admit that all he ever wanted was to be principal dancer in a ballet? How their families would laugh if they said these things! Perhaps they dare not even admit these longings to themselves. Then all they become aware of are certain passionate dislikes. She ‘cannot stand’ Clare Francis, who was such a brilliant sailor, while he refuses to accompany his wife to the ballet, saying that he has better things to do than watch ‘those poofs’. The prevalence of envy in our society shows just how many children have been prevented from developing their talents and powers and being themselves.
Both extraverts and introverts need other people. Extraverts need other people to establish and maintain their existence. Introverts need other people to help them gain clarity by setting standards and giving approval. When I was discussing this with