Image courtesy of National Geographic

In his novel “The Rainbow” D.H.Lawrence describes the relationship between the Brangwen men and their women thus “The woman was the symbol for that further life which comprised religion and love and morality. The men placed in her hands their own conscience, they said to her “Be my conscience-keeper, be the angel at the doorway guarding my outgoing and my incoming.” 

In psychoanalytic language, we might say that the woman was asked to contain the man. In much the same way as she would contain a baby. She would carry it inside herself until it was time to be born and start a separate life. She is asked to hold it safely. (An act that always seems to me to be both “mundane” and miraculous.)

In my last blog I quoted Louis MacNiece’s poem “Prayer before Birth” in which an unborn baby asks to be protected from all manner of assaults from within and without. It seems to me that the Brangwen men were asking the same of their women. To be held. Contained. Kept safe.

I was a psychiatric nurse for many years and thus involved in many different expressions of “Containment.” At best an admission to a ward was an admission to somewhere safe. A place of sanctuary. For many of our patines it was just this. They knew the ward, the staff, and other patients. It was often a better “home from home” than the one they had left. For other patients, who were more disturbed, the containment was much more physical. High doses of anti psychotic medication along with being placed in a seclusion room. This was only used if the patient had lost all ability or will to “Self contain.” It served a necessary purpose of keeping them and others safe from what were often terrifying inner worlds. Stelazine and Largactil were not pleasant but they were better choices than suicide or murder.

As a therapist I no longer see patients with this level of disturbance. (Although on occasion I miss the security of a panic button! Fortunately this level of disturbance is rare!) But I am still required to hold and contain my patients. To help them to hold themselves together in the face of an inner world that can be almost as damaged as that of my psychiatric patients. Almost as damaged. (If they were this damaged I would not be seeing them. For their sake and mine.) So, how do I contain my patients? In a variety of ways. Sometimes simply by being willing to sit in the same room as them for fifty minutes and listen while they tell their story in their own way. (No two people tell their story in the same way-regardless of any clinical diagnosis.) Sometimes by actively pointing out the impact they are having on me in that session. Sometimes by working with their dreams (“The royal road to the unconscious” according to Freud.) Endless books have been written on this topic and I have no need to add to them! The central point is to act as a container for their “unborn selves”. A kind of psychological midwife. It’s exhausting. Exciting. Rewarding. Terrifying. Daunting. Painful. Like any birth.

I can’t think of any better way to finish this blog than with the opening quote from D.H.Lawrence.“The woman was the symbol for that further life which comprised religion and love and morality. The men placed in her hands their own conscience, they said to her “Be my conscience-keeper, be the angel at the doorway guarding my outgoing and my incoming.”