Christy Matta, M.A., interviewed me at her helpful and informative blog Dialectical Behavior Therapy Understood regarding my mom, borderline personality disorder, and DBT. Check it out here. (The picture is not my mom.)
Here’s some additional background about Christy.
A friend recently asked me, as people often do, why my students have signed
up for Latin. (Her tone indicated this was a nutty choice in 2011.) I offered all the usual reasons. Some are interested in law or medicine and believe that Latin will help them with the vocabulary of their professions. Music majors want to decipher the Latin words they are singing. History scholars have an interest in classical times, and aspiring theologians hope someday to read, say, medieval Latin texts. Often, of course, students have to fulfill a language requirement, and my class fits into their schedule. Distressingly, too many have told me recently that they’re giving Latin a try because Spanish was too hard for them. I do not like hearing this.
I could go on, and sometimes do, about the practical benefits of Latin. It increases your vocabulary, gives you a solid footing in grammar, prepares you for studying other Romance languages, introduces you to great texts and great ideas of Western culture, and helps you understand allusions to classical mythology. (See Nike.) This is all true and important.
None of it, however, has anything to do with why I really teach Latin. I teach Latin because it’s fun.
Not for everybody, of course. For some people, Latin is torture. It is to them as statistics is to me. People have different sorts of minds, and I don’t regard those statistics people as Philistines. For me and for others, crazily, untangling a gnarly Latin text is enjoyable.
Today, one of my older students referred to his weekly Latin assignments as a spiritual exercise. We’re not reading church Latin, by the way. We’re reading the outrageously scatological novel The Golden Ass by Apuleius. He meant that the discipline of sitting with his Latin text every week was both bracing and meditative. I said, “It’s satisfying,†and he seized on that word.
“Yes,†he almost shouted. “It’s satisfying. I’d rather do my Latin on a Sunday afternoon than watch the Browns.â€
What would you rather do than watch the Browns? What do you like that other people think is crazy?
I was thinking about the disdain we sometimes express toward objects. “Those are just things,” people might say about their belongings. “I care more about people.” Christianity promulgates this attitude, unless it’s pushing affluence and abundance, a la certain TV evangelists. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” Jesus told us in last week’s reading. Who cares about those coins containing Caesar’s face (crafted and beautiful though they may be)? We should invest instead in the eternal Platonic ideals, things that last.
What about the people whose very vocation is making things? What about sculptors and painters? They craft physical objects, intended to appeal to our physical senses. Do we dismiss these creations as mere things?
Edmund De Waal
Edmund De Waal makes pots. He’s concerned not only with how they look, but how they feel. In The Hare with Amber Eyes, he writes, “How objects get handled, used and handed on is not just a mildly interesting question for me. It is my question. . . . I can remember the weight and the balance of a pot, and how its surface works with its volume, I can read how an edge creates tension or loses it. I can feel if it has been made at speed or with diligence. If it has warmth.”
De Waal’s book concerns 264 things, a collection of netsuke passed on to him by his famous family, the Ephrussis, comparable to the Rothschilds in their influence and wealth. These beautiful, whimsical little Japanese sculptures have traveled an astonishing odyssey throughout Europe, back to Japan, and, for now, to an old home in London.
How often are you changed by a book? I’m not talking about learning something new or having your mind changed by an effective argument. I’m talking about how you perceive the world when you finish the last page. De Waal’s story is elegantly told, tragic and enlightening. The single aspect of his book I’m concentrating on right now is that sensitivity to objects. I am able write about my mother and borderline personality, about sentences and paragraphs, imagery, word history, and Latin versification, but I could never write that paragraph about pots and tension and edges. I don’t think that way. I’m more open now, though, to the texture of the things around me.
After reading Edmund De Waal’s lovely and harrowing book, I feel differently about objects.
We freqently travel a busy four-lane street that’s a thoroughfare (perpendicularly) for many squirrels. The other evening, after braking two or three times for squirrels making a mad dash, my husband addressed the squirrels thusly: “What? There aren’t enough nuts on this side of the street?”
Looking back at my life, I am rethinking previous, fraught relationships in light of what I have learned about borderline personality disorder. I recall a very difficult friend who was diagnosed with depression and was always getting mad at me. Hence, I was constantly apologizing. I remember thinking, “Of course, I might be at fault and need to apologize. On the other hand, how come my other friends never get mad at me?†Now, I recognize the BPD symptoms she displayed – turbulent emotions, feelings of victimization, black-and-white thinking, and so on.
Janus, the two-faced god
A particular student has also been coming to mind. He was diagnosed with depression and had suicidal thoughts. He had great difficulties learning Latin, and I tutored him outside of class and made accommodations on quizzes and homework to help him through the material. I found a former student to tutor him, too. Near the end of the year, the tutor confessed to me that this student loved and valued her but resented me, he told her, because I hated him and was trying as hard as I could to fail him.
I’m remembering how hurt and angry I was to hear this. I was devoting my free time to tutoring him, even though I never saw substantial progress. I often visited his counselor, partly to commiserate over him, but also to discuss stratagems for passing him in the course and to find out more about his history and diagnosis. I tried to be kind and warm in person, and I bent over backwards to assist him. Whenever we met, he told me I was the only teacher trying to help him. I took that with a grain of salt, but I believed he was grateful.
All this, just to be accused, behind my back, of being out to get him! At the time, I didn’t think about this betrayal as symptomatic of his illness. I thought he was two-faced and hypocritical. Worse, I felt odd dealing with my other students for awhile. They mostly seemed friendly and appreciative, but how could I tell they were sincere? Maybe they all harbored suspicions they weren’t revealing.
Now, at last, I understand. My student had developed a crude coping skill of flattery, hoping to ingratiate himself with the person he was with. He wasn’t hypocritical so much as desperate. He was inclined to see the world through dark-colored glasses. He was inclined to feel victimized. Moreover, since I was someone who corrected him and often wrote bad grades on his papers, in his dichotomous world, I had, therefore, to be the bad guy.
His depression, in other words, was something else, or, at least, something more. I believe now that he suffered from BPD. The unpleasantness I experienced was not him, but his illness. So challenging are these symptoms to deal with, however, that I can still dredge up anger over the hurt he caused. I understand it better, but can still feel the sting.
I’m lucky to live in a walkable neighborhood–sidewalks, relative safety, nice houses and people. Even luckier, an adjacent neighborhood is more beautiful. (Oakridge Drive, for those of you who might care.) The houses are big and old, and so are the trees. The trees are majestic, even, and on this gorgeous fall day I’m trying to resist the word “dappled” for the sunlight streaming through them.
A friend recently moved into modest circumstances situated in a similarly deluxe neighborhood of Cleveland Heights. He likes to regard the streets surrounding him as his estate. As lord of the manor, he can walk for blocks and admire the well-manicured lawns and gardens. His workers take such good care of his domain!
Typical servants' quarters
I was imagining the same thing as I walked the streets of my affluent neighbors this afternoon. What a good job my servants are doing! Since I’m still canine-bereft, I’m also appreciative that many households maintain friendly dogs to fulfill my canine needs. A certain Snowball stopped and let me pet her while I chatted with her caregiver. As though reading my mind, Snowball leaned her whole weight against my legs and looked up adoringly into my eyes.
Do you “own” a park or neighborhood for walking? A place the world maintains for your benefit?
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle. Attributed to Philo of Alexandria
I had a remarkable, even miraculous experience on Saturday night. As we left my high-school class’s party, my husband asked if I’d had a good time. “I feel like Cinderella,” I said. “I feel like this evening made high school worth it.”
We had gathered to celebrate our 60th birthdays this year. The mood was celebratory, but, even so, everyone’s kindness was inexplicable. What happened was that bunches of people said bunches of nice things to me. I can’t account for this, because they weren’t so forthcoming at previous reunions, including our 40th two years ago.Â
“Boys” who never glanced at me in high school (or so I thought), whom I would have dated in a heartbeat, approached me to say astonishing things. One revealed that he had always felt a connection between us. Another said he was glad I was always there. Two female classmates–with whom I’m pretty sure I exchanged not a word in high school–said…well, they just said a whole lot of nice things. This happened over and over, all night. None of these people were drunk, as far as I could tell.
Philo
Finally, near the evening’s end, an Adonis I had always admired from afar told me that my smile helped get him through high school. I looked behind me to see who he was really talking to. He smiled and pointed directly at me. “I had a terrible time in high school,” he said. “And when I came in tonight and saw you, I remembered how much your smile meant to me. I just had to come over to tell you.”
Then he told me a little about his adolescent struggles, coping with a family death and other problems. I told him I had had no idea. I thought his life was hunky-dory. (It was mine that sucked.) “I was good at hiding my feelings. I covered everything up so I wouldn’t have to deal with it,” he told me. Didn’t we all.
I hesitate to write about this because of how self-serving it sounds. Trust me–I was not a saintly presence spreading love and good will in my high school. I was quiet, confused, judgmental, afraid, self-conscious, overly serious, and largely oblivious to other people’s pain.
My surreal, moving, and hilariously unlikely experience last weekend demonstrated that I had no idea what was going on around me at Oakwood High School circa 1969. Nobody escapes high school unscathed. The cool people were, perhaps,  just as unhappy as you. And maybe the cool people in your life right now, the ones you envy, find encouragement in your sheepish smile.
Your thoughts about high school, reunions, and Philo of Alexandria would be very welcome.
Last week, a student asked me a question I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. He’s in his thirties and seems like a responsible guy, but I don’t think he’s ever studied a foreign language before.
He’s already several weeks behind. After showing me the tiny amount of work he’s completed so far, he posed a question about the verb endings in Chapter One. He was referring to the familiar (if you’ve ever studied Latin) basic conjugation: amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant. This translates I love, you love, he (she or it) loves, we love, you love, they love.
“Do we have to learn those endings?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered calmly, suppressing my temptation to be sarcastic. Or to shout.
“They just seem so complicated,” he said. “I thought maybe we could just flip back to that page whenever we need them.”
My empathetic self thinks this poor fellow has no idea what he’s in for. If he were caught up, he would already have encountered about twenty noun endings that need to be memorized. Latin is about nothing if not endings. Which have to be memorized. My student’s head will explode when he gets to Chapter Two.
And that brings up my less empathetic reaction. What does it mean to learn a language? Flipping back in the book to find answers? How could you imagine that you don’t have to learn the endings and words and grammar that’s in the textbook? What’s the point of taking a language class if you’re just going to rely on the textbook?
I guess if you’ve never learned a foreign language and you’ve never studied English grammar, which most of today’s students haven’t, then you wouldn’t know about conjugating verbs and it would seem to be an abstruse and exotic activity. Hence the young man’s question.
A long time ago, I watched an Oprah episode I never forgot. At the time, I thought the guest and his theories were wacky – so farfetched as not to be believed. I’ve always had trouble remembering the guest’s unusual name (and had to do a search just now to find it), but I never forgot his unusual ideas. As the years have gone by, I’ve come to believe that he makes a lot of sense, and, recently, I’ve been seeing connections with BPD and relationships.                                                         Â
Harville Hendrix. Maybe I'll remember now.
Harville Hendrix wrote the best-seller Getting the Love You Want, and with his wife Helen LaKelly Hunt developed Imago therapy. In seeking out mates, their theory goes, we choose partners who resemble our parents. We’re attracted to people who exhibit our caregivers’ strengths: a sense of humor, warmth, or demonstrativeness, for example. Unconsciously, however, we’re also selecting partners who possess some of our parents’ flaws. The purpose of marriage, in Hendrix and Hunt’s view, is to resolve these psychic wounds from childhood, to give it another go. What our parents didn’t provide the first time around, maybe we’ll be able to get this time. So we select someone like our mom or dad to see if we can get them to salve that wound from childhood.
For instance, suppose your dad had an excellent sense of humor and stalwart integrity but was not so good at showing affection. You loved and respected your dad, but you always suffered (maybe unconsciously) his apparent coldness. Chances are you’ll find a guy like your dad—funny as hell, honest and true, but unlikely to hold your hand or remember your anniversary. Your job in the marriage is to resolve this inner wound, and your spouse’s job is to recognize your need and try to change a little, to become a little more cuddly and affirming. Presumably your husband also carries a psychic wound from childhood, and your job is to adapt to meet his needs in turn.Â
Perhaps you can see why, on first hearing, I found this theory elaborate and weird.
In the intervening years, my thoughts have often returned to Hendrix, and I finally read his book. I’m pretty much a convert at this point. The theory doesn’t work for all couples, to be sure, but how many people do you know who harp on the one thing that bothers them about their significant other, frustrated and angry that the other won’t listen and change? They seemed to choose the exact wrong person, the one unable to tend to their needs. And if you could step in and fix things, you’d suggest to the spouse that maybe if he or she just picked up the baby now and then, or brought home some flowers, or made a point of being on time, or stopped leaving the wet towels on the bathroom floor, it really would make a difference. The complaining spouse would see that you’re really trying to meet him or her halfway. A positive relationship should make you a better person, one more likely to empathize and willing to evolve into someone more responsive.
Next time, how this theory connects to borderline personality disorder. Your thoughts are welcome.
