In the
past few months, I’ve seen quite a few clients who find that their balance
is off. The balance I am talking about the balance between excitement and
safety, unpredictability and predictability…between being a “Good Boy” and
a “Bad Boy” (womyn readers, feel free to consider it your “Good Girl/Bad
Girl” balance…the ideas are universal).
Many of
us need to embrace our inner Bad Boy. You know him, he’s the one who has
so much fun and sometimes goes too far and drinks a bit too much and may
be too blunt or too loud or occasionally is way too sexy for his own
good. Don’t think you have one? Dear Reader, you’re lying to yourself.
We ALL have one. Okay, don’t call it Good Boy/Bad Boy. Freud called it
the id/superego balance. The id is the instinctual, primitive part of us
that wants to eat when we want to, sleep when we want to, fuck when we
want to and to never have to compromise or wait for anything. We want it
NOW, dammit! That’s the voice of the “Bad Boy” id.
The
superego is the “Good Boy” voice of caution, worry and concern about
future problems or dangers. It’s the voice that says, “Oh, you better not
do that, you’ll be sorry tomorrow.” Or “Doing that is going to get you in
trouble.” Nancy Reagan and her “just say no” campaign (remember that?) is
the superego incarnate. It wants to protect us and keep us safe.
Meanwhile, the id wants us to have nothing but fun, fun, fun. These two
need to balance each other. If you go too far in either direction, you
end up unhappy: either you’re indulging all your impulses and already
regretting the trouble you’ve made or you’re so good and sweet that you’re
bored out of your mind.
Freud
didn’t leave the id and the superego to battle it out alone. He created
the concept of the ego: the mitigating force between too much “Good Boy”
or too much “Bad Boy” behavior. When we go too far in either direction,
our ego warns us: “Baby, your balance is off. We gotta do something to
get back to a happy medium. Now, what’s it gonna be?” The Buddhists call
this happy medium “The middle path”; it allows you to have healthy
helpings from the Good Boy and Bad Boy smorgasbord of life. When clients
tell me, “I’m so worn out from my life.” It may be because they’re
bouncing back and forth between extremes; they haven’t yet found their
Middle Path. For example: Mr. A tries so hard to do the right thing, to
eat right, go to the gym religiously, volunteer for a worthy cause, be
kind to other people, work overtime whenever the company needs it…you get
the picture. However, Mr. A hardly ever let’s himself go. His superego
is so strong that he is locked into perpetual Good Boy mode. If he keeps
this up, eventually he’s likely to have a strong reaction in the opposite
direction. He’s likely to get so fed up with being so good that he’s
likely to drink too much, score some crystal meth and let some guy (or 2
or 3) fuck him silly without a condom. And then he’ll come into my office
and ask me, “How did I let that happen? I know better than to do that.”
And he’ll be full of grief, sorrow and self-punishment. He ignored his
inner Bad Boy for so long that it came out with a vengeance!
Continued
