Yesterday I had a conversation with my therapist about structural dissociation, and “parts work,” and integrating different aspects of one’s personality into a cohesive whole. As I understand it, these types of theories are controversial in the psychology world (but what theory isn’t, frankly?), perhaps because of their passing resemblance to debunked Freudian models of the split self. But that doesn’t mean they’re not useful, if just as a metaphor to help you understand your own brain.
As I was pondering this in the bath after my therapy session, I wondered if I would ever find a psychological model that neatly explained all my issues and experiences, like the twist at the end of a mystery novel: Ohhh. Of course. But the more that I do therapy and learn about how brains work, the less certain I am that any theory of the mind can universally make sense of human thoughts, fears, traumas, and experiences. Our psyches are just too tangled and constructed for there to exist some primordial backend explanation that covers all the bases and sheds all the light.
But my desire for an omni-sensical Answer To It All persists nonetheless. And it feels very much like my belief in a soulmate, a perfect match, The One.
This, too, is something I’ve had to dissect with therapists before. Every time I started dating someone (or, occasionally, just met someone and wished I was dating them) who struck me as deeply perfect for me, I started whipping up elaborate romantic fantasies about our idealized future together. Everything clicked into place: bleep bloop, engage soulmate mode! But then, inevitably, each of these people would eventually disappoint me, or betray me, or break up with me, or just start to bore me, and I was forced to re-draft my entire imagined future in my mind. Often this new future looked bleaker and wearier than what I’d craved before, which contributed to the crushing grief that accompanied these relational tribulations. It was as if I’d lost the key to a very important door and didn’t know how I’d ever open it. What was behind the door? Eternal happiness, I suppose, or the false promise of it.