Personalities - 2
Jack
Jack’s father started drinking when Jack was 8 years old, and he would often be woken in the night by sounds of fighting and his mother being beaten up. As Jack grew older he wanted to challenge his father and protect his mother, but she begged him not to intervene as it would only make things worse. Jack promised himself never to treat women in this way. When he was 17 there was a major confrontation with his father in which Jack's rage erupted and he knocked his father to the ground. He left home the same day and never returned. Jack had a series of relationships with girls from dysfunctional families, who took advantage of his kindness but eventually left him. His inability to show anger made him pathologically nice and kind, but also weak and boring. Jack was disturbed by sadistic fantasies which made him feel very guilty, but he couldn't get an erection without them.
We don’t know about Jack’s early life, but between 8 and 14 as he is beginning to mature physically and sexually he is angry at his father, feels protective towards his mother, and is reduced to impotence by her begging him not to act. He will have learned to associate relationships between men and women with violence, and possibly feels very ashamed of his masculinity. This is one part of his personality, which gets abruptly abandoned after the fight with his father. He then creates a new part, based on being nice and kind, and seeks out girls to rescue in a way that he couldn’t do with his mother. With the inner angry core being sealed off, he is unable to be totally himself in relationships, resulting in his partners leaving him for someone more exciting. Despite his best efforts the suppressed layer leaks out in the form of fantasies, mocking his attempts to be different from his father.
Jill
Jill was an assertive, bossy tomboy in her early childhood, and always got her own way. At the age of 9 her mother had a nervous breakdown which led to her parents splitting up and Jill being looked after by her grandparents. Her grandmother had strong views that young women should be brought up to be docile, obedient and submissive. When her tomboy ways broke through Jill's grandfather was brought in to deliver corporal punishment, which her grandmother said was a man's job. Jill's grandfather felt guilty about doing this, and compensated by being overly generous to Jill, buying things for her when grandmother wasn't around. When Jill was old enough to have relationships she tended to end up with men who were physically violent, although when they were not beating her they were often remorseful and tried very hard to make amends. Eventually Jill decided she had taken enough abuse, and reverted to her "tomboy" self, becoming a strong aggressive, assertive businesswoman with strong views on women’s' rights.
In Jill we can see three layers – the tomboy, the submissive and the businesswoman. The inner and the outer get on quite well together, but the submissive part is repressed. Since the submissive part contains much of Jill’s capacity for forming relationships, this is the area of her life that she finds most difficult. The men she chooses are modelled unconsciously on her grandfather – alternately punishing and remorseful. Jill’s female friends can never understand why she chooses the men she does, and rejects out of hand men who would seem to make much better partners.
Jack and Jill both have dominant and submissive aspects of their personalities - Jack is suppressing his dominance because of the negative associations with his father's behaviour. Jill is suppressing her submissiveness because it led her into abusive relationships. Note that dominance and submissiveness are not the “cause” of Jack or Jill’s problems, they are just characteristics that get caught up in the problems caused by the splits in their personalities.
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