Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life

by Adam Phillips

The familiar, and indeed salient, example Malan gives is of anger. ‘If a child is consistently punished for the expression of anger,’ he continues, he will begin to get anxious when angry and will learn ways to avoid its expression. Let’s say that passivity and withdrawal become the child’s strategies of choice for avoiding the experience and expression of anger (and its feared consequences). Eventually, he may retreat to this position so automatically that even he is unaware of feeling angry inside. The defences come to replace the feeling itself and can result in character pathology (e.g., passive aggressive or avoidant personality disorders), affecting all future relationships. This, one could say, is a story of the genesis of someone not getting it, of a person over time not recognizing their feelings; they experience themselves as withdrawn or passive or blank when they are in fact angry; and so, by the same token, making it impossible for the other person to recognize what they are feeling – I experience you as a shy person when you are in fact someone who desires me or loathes me.