[발췌: 스티븐 그로스] The Examined Life

• 출처 1: Stephen Grosz. The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves. W. W. Norton & Company, 2014. 구글도서
• 출처 2: 스티븐 그로스. 때로는 나도 미치고 싶다. 나무의철학 펴냄. 2013년 6월 (2013년 7월 3쇄).

※ 발췌 (excerpt):

How we can be possessed by a story that cannot be told

( ... ... )

But I did learn that Peter had a history of making friends and then turning on them. In his professional life too he'd quietly go about his work, then suddenly get into a row with his boss and quit. This had happened several times. I tried to use this information to show Peter that he seemed to have two psychological positions open to him--acquiescence or blowing everything up. He seemed to agree, but I never felt this idea was meaningful to him. And soon this pattern was enacte in the analysis. ( ... ... )

( ... ... )

Peter's behaviour made it clear that he couldn't allow himself to feel weak. Dependence for him was dangerous. Peter's story might summed up as, ‘I'm the attacker who traumatises, never the baby who is hurt.’ But Peter also felt bound to turn on himself. When Peter assault himself in the church, he enacted the same story. As he tol me, ‘I thought--you pathetic little crybaby. I can do this to you and you can't stop me.’

I believe that all of us try to make sense of our lives by telling our stories, but Peter was possessed by a story that he couldn't tell. Nat having words, he expressed himself by other means. Over time I learned that Peter's behaviour was the language he used to speak to me. Peter told his story by making me feel what it was like to be him, of the anger, confusion and shock that he must have felt as a child.

The author Karen Blixen said, ‘All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a stroy about them.’ But what if a person can't tell a story about his sorrows? What if his story tells him?

Experience has taught me that our childhoods leave in us stories like this--stories we never found a way to voice, because no one helped us to find the words. When we cannot a way of telling our story, our story tells us--we dream these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don't understand.

( ... ... )

* * *

고백할 수 없는 이야기에 사로잡히다

( ... ... )

작가 카렌 블릭센은 이렇게 말했다.

모든 슬픔은 그것을 이야기로 만들어내거나 그것에 관해 이야기할 때 세상에 태어날 수 있다.

그러나 만약 어떤 사람이 자신의 슬픔에 관해 도저히 털어놓을 수 없다면 어떻겠는가? 그 대신 그의 이야기가 그에게 말을 걸어온다면?

나는 경험으로 다음과 같은 사실을 배웠다. 이 세상 어느 누구도 자신의 어린 시절을 적당히 표현할 만한 단어를 찾아내기란 쉽지 않다. 그래서 우리는 도저히 소리 내에 고백할 수 없는 이야기를 자신 안에 남겨놓는다. 그리고 그 이야기를 들려줄 방법을 찾을 수 없을 때 이야기가 먼저 말을 걸어온다. 우리는 그것을 꿈으로 꾸기도 하고, 특이한 증상으로 개발하기도 하고, 때로는 도저히 이해할 수 없는 방식으로 행동하는 모습으로 마주하기도 한다.

( ... ... )