This post is full of questions; not all of them have complete answers. However, these are questions that will make us think, ponder, and wonder about aspects of the human condition, about reality, about possibilities and impossibilities…

People Seated – Edward Morland Lewis. 1935.

“How can one know anything at all about people?”

Anna Freud

This quotation by the youngest daughter of Sigmund Freud reveals her pessimism about knowing ‘anything at all’ about others; but are there ways of learning, even just a little, about another person?

What does understanding another person even mean? Similarly, can we actually make ourselves known to another, or are we destined to be forever locked in our own, private world?

• Can we really communicate our emotions?

Afternoon talk – Kunffy Lajos. Wikioo.

“Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?”

Leo Tolstoy

It is, indeed, not easy to talk about the deep, inner thoughts and feelings we have. We need to be as sure as we can that the other person will listen and attend to what we say and that they will not judge or betray our confidences.

John Tenniel – Illustration from The Nursery Alice (1890)

“One of the hardest things in the world is to convey a meaning accurately from one mind to another.”

Lewis Carroll

If we do manage to confide in someone, can we ever be sure that they understand us? How can we discern whether we have been heard and seen by another?

Sometimes, people make it harder to be understood than usual; perhaps they are defensive and secretive because they are afraid, or they feel shame or guilt about their feelings.

I Lock My Door Upon Myself. Fernand Khnopff, 1891. Wikimedia Commons.

“No matter how honestly you open up to someone, there are still things you cannot reveal.”

Haruki Murakami

Even when we do express our feelings, perhaps we hold back and do not tell everything? Can we ever tell everything? Perhaps we deliberately keep some things private, which is our right. In addition, we do not actually know everything about ourselves, so we cannot possibly reveal to another what we do not consciously know.

Degas – Melancholy. Late 1860’s.Wikimedia Commons

“How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known?”

Orhan Pamuk

This quotation poses yet more deep and concerning questions…can we understand someone whose experiences we have not had? It would appear that the partial answer to this question lies in the fact that we can never really know what another person’s experience is, for we are different from them.

Even if we think that we have had ‘the same’ experience, such as the death of a loved one, divorce or other painful events in our life, these can never be experienced in exactly the same way by two different people. Saying ‘I know just how you feel’ may sometimes be reassuring to hear, but it can never be totally accurate.

However, we have all had some kind of loss in our lives. We all know, broadly speaking, what it feels like to lose, to suffer, even though this may be quite different from others’ loss and anguish.

We can, therefore, offer care and understanding to another, whilst knowing, and perhaps communicating where appropriate, that we can never, truly, get inside another’s skin. In this imperfect world, that will have to do.

• Realising there are no absolutes

Struggle for perfection. 1998. Roald Bradstock. A symbolic visual artistic representation of the Olympics and the Olympic movement. Wikimedia Commons

“Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?
We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person’s essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?”

Haruki Murakami

These are yet more difficult questions to answer; however, it must be emphasised that there cannot be any ‘perfect’ answers, any more than human beings can achieve ‘perfect understanding’ of others.

Many people are not aware of the fact that there can be no perfection in our lives and they imagine that, somewhere, some time, they will reach their impossible goals. They strive for the absolute, whilst constantly, and inevitably, falling short of their desired, self-imposed,  but impossible, goal.

Relativity, by M. C. Escher. Lithograph, 1953. Wikimedia Commons

“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

This is the key to coming to terms with this issue in general: gaining a real understanding of the fact that there can be no absolutes…no absolute truth, no absolute perfection, no absolute version of reality. It is also not possible to completely know another person. We cannot neatly put them into boxes, ‘types’ or ‘genres’ of human beings.

“If we relate to people believing that we can categorize them, we will neither identify nor nuture the parts, the vital parts, of the other that transcends category. The enabling relationship always assumes that the other is never fully knowable.”

Irvin D. Yalom

Believing that these absolute categories of humans do exist reveals a blinkered and unyielding kind of approach to life, one that will result in a limited and bigoted mindset, and which will render us unable to understand anyone, least of all ourselves…

The formulaic nature of such ways of thinking leads to an immovability, a manner of asserting one’s views that brooks no contradiction, no alternatives, no other possibilities, no difference.

This will mean that we cannot be empathic, for we will insist that everyone must think as we do. We will give advice, instead of being able to respect, reflect and accept the other person’s differences.

“Empathy begins with understanding life from another person’s perspective. Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It’s all through our own individual prisms.”

Sterling K. Brow

We can try, however, to really be there for another person, to the best of our ability. In a relationship where there exists mutual respect and care, whether in therapy or in life, this can be a remarkably successful enterprise.

“Accustom yourself not to be disregarding of what someone else has to say: as far as possible enter into the mind of the speaker.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

The power of language, in whatever form, to express our feelings, is enormous. We have only to look at the written words of great orators and writers, to discover how graphically we can describe our own, and others’, states of mind. This creativity enables us to have a real look at what another person is thinking and feeling.

Woman Writing at a Desk – John Lessore.1966. Wikioo

“Good writers are in the business of leaving signposts saying, Tour my world, see and feel it through my eyes; I am your guide.”

Larry L. King

• Seeing through someone else’s eyes.

“Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes.”

Oliver Sacks

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?”

Henri David Thoreau

It is, of course impossible to actually look at the world through another person’s eyes; however, we can gain a real sense of how they see the world through what they say. This will only be possible if we really listen, being clear and as free as possibly from projections of our own biases and prejudices.

Marianne von Werefkin – Couple in Conversation.Before 1939. Wikimedia Commons

“To completely understand me you must first accept that I am not you.”

Ross Caligiuri

Károly Patkó. Brick-yard 1930. Wikimedia Commons

“To try to understand the experience of another it is necessary to dismantle the world as seen from one’s own place within it, and to reassemble it as seen from his.”

John Berger, a Seventh Man, 1975

These are two deeply meaningful quotations, for, unless we are all able to clearly differentiate between ourselves and the other, we will be unable to understand anyone at all. We will forever confuse their world, their experience, their opinions, with our own. 

Unless we know ourselves, we will see others, and the outside world, through a lens clouded by our own imaginings, projections and distortions. In addition, we will be unaware of this bias, if we have not examined ourselves psychologically.

If we do gain self-knowldge and awareness however, then we will be enabled to understand and put into action John Berger’s words. He is telling us that we need to temporarily deconstruct our own ways of thinking in order that we can clearly ‘reassemble’ the world of the other.

“We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.”

Louise Erdrich

Empathy.

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible
Comfort of feeling safe with a person,
Having neither to weight thoughts,
Nor measure words–but pouring them
All right out–just as they are
Chaff and grain together,
Certain that a faithful hand will
Take and sift them,
Keep what is worth keeping,
And with the breath of kindness
Blow the rest away.

George Eliot.

In spite of the fact that we might never be able to completely experience another’s way of thinking and seeing the world, we may still strive to understand their thoughts in an empathic way.

We can only try to express our thoughts honestly, with due consideration and discretion. We can only attempt to understand another’s thoughts and ways of being.

With open and flexible thinking, challenging our assumptions and our subjectivities, it is likely that we will move in the direction of perceiving reality about self and other.

We can then value this extraordinary journey, whilst being fully aware that we will never reach its endpoint. If we have one or two people in our lives who we understand and who understand us, then we are, indeed, fortunate.

“My friends and the people who are close to me know what I am. And that is enough.”

Jeanette Winterson

It is important to recognise and value our differences, and to see them as great gifts, accepting different viewpoints and ways of thinking.

Voetgangers in Ginza Night of Ginza

“What a wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”

Charles Dickens

© Linda Berman