Wittgenstein and Winning Enlightened Communication Games

Some middle ground between shrieking reactivity and domineering rationalism (and still shrieking)

It’s a very good thing to put thought and energy into your emotions and relationships, and it’s a very counterproductive thing to turn emotions and relationships into weird games that you’re somehow out to win.

I’m really happy that there are communities and professionals out there who crank out the tools and the practices and the analyses and the general vocabulary that help us gain some clarity and insight into our feelings and how best to share them and how to best tune in to and be in harmony the feelings and needs of others - it’s also somehow landed me in conflicts where the other party has hissed a bunch of jargon at me and left me feeling like they’re trying to assert superiority over me in the domain of emotional connectedness.

Of course, that’s just my interpretation of things, but it’s left me present to the possibility of setting out to accomplish one thing (harmony, connection) and having that process generate the opposite while still flattering you into thinking you’re doing everything right.

I’m reflecting on this as I read Wittgenstein’s complaints about Freud, as reported by various lecture attendees and friends. Wittgenstein’s life and philosophy were rather radically altered by an encounter with psychoanalysis when he and his sister went in to work on their relationship (domineering rich-guy father, several of their brothers had committed suicide, etc.) - his later philosophy has been described as “therapeutic”, seeking not to answer philosophical problems as to address the issues that lead to their arising in the first place, philosophy less as a quasi-divine calling and more as a restless and relentless itch to scratch.

Reflecting on psychoanalysis, Wittgenstein sees it as guilty of the same issues he sees in scientific rationalism - namely that trying to map all of our normal ways of being with each other onto an arcane technical vocabulary doesn’t help us actually feel resolved and connected with each other. If someone approaches me and says “I’m sad” it helps more to say “I see that you’re sad” than to say “Wait, don’t you really mean to say that the central pattern generators in your amygdala are oscillating at frequencies at least 30% below optimal parameters”? Similarly for psychoanalysis, if someone says “I’m happy that I got a raise today!” it helps more to say “I’m happy for your success!” than to say “I’m happy that you can finally pile up a tremendous stack of cash since that stack of cash represents your penis and your relentless desire to surpass your father in sheer heft of dick!”

There’s way more to it, but for now I want to pivot and talk about how technical-emotional-relational vocabulary actually works for me. It works when it gives me just enough of a rational remove from my emotions to give me and others a clear access to them without yanking the focus away.

My mind does a fantastic job of constantly generating an awareness of impending disaster and worst-case scenarios - I know these possibilities aren’t “real” or “justified”, but they can show up all the same. What works for me is to be able to distinguish a) the stories themselves, b) the potential stimulus for why these particular stories are in my head right now, c) the old pain or shame that got touched by that stimulus, and then to wrap it all up and say “hey, I know this isn’t true but I’m super afraid that [x] and think it’s because [y] happened which set off [z] inside me and I don’t really need you to prove it wrong so much as just help me feel less alone with this pain.”

That’s a semi-formal way of communicating, with a bit of structure to it but not too much, maybe a more fleshed-out understanding of shame fluttering in the background, one that keeps in mind the core goal of “sharing myself” more so than “demonstrating that I have superior genius ideas in the domain of self-knowledge and communication”.

Or maybe it doesn’t do that and I’m full of shit. Either way, it’s led to something better for me that’s in between screaming and reacting all the time and screaming and reacting all the time but with a sexy technical vocabulary draped over it.

If you really want to scream, I’m certainly not going to stop you.