My Heroes Are What I Am Not

I did not know how I would address this subject until I started to write and suddenly realized that all my heroes possessed similar characteristics. Many were men and all possessed characteristics that I thought I lacked physical agility, stamina, clear-sighted goals, persistence, and emo-

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tional resilience. Below I will review the heroes of my life, reflecting on what I have learned in psychoanalysis about some of the reasons I have needed them.

My first public hero was Edmund Hillary, the tall, lanky, New Zealander who became an instant, worldwide, heroic figure following his conquest of Mt. Everest in 1953 with his Sherpa guide. I was 13 and he was 33, single, and appealing in a rugged sort of way. I read all books I could land my hands on about Mt. Everest and Tibet and continued to admire Hillary, who had accomplished something unique despite his shyness, a trait I shared. He never capitalized commercially on his accomplishments as a mountaineer and explorer, and became known in Nepal for his humanitarian work on behalf of the Sherpa community.

Later, mentors provided me with professional guidance in college and graduate school. I admired them for their intelligence, proficiency in their subject matter, reserved and quiet demeanor, and accessibility. They paid attention to me, something for which I yearned. I was urged to publish papers I had written and commence a doctoral program. Their mere suggestions proved sufficient for me.

Much later, in my psychoanalytic training, I began to trust my male analyst in that unique and intimate setting. Over the years of my analysis, trust in my analyst grew and I cast him in the role of father-confidant and sometimes in the role of mother. He possessed the resilience, intellect, humor, insight, and persistence that I admired. He drew me out, patiently waiting as my ego and fragile self-esteem grew stronger and provided me with the empathetic attention I had missed in those early years. Always, these heroes and mentors urged me to make a name for myself—to be my own hero—but their attention and support were sufficient for me.

As I relived segments of my early life in psychoanalytic treatment, I learned about the origins of my need for

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heroes and my characteristic responses. During the Second World War, my father served in the South Pacific for three years and my family life was quickly disrupted. We moved, my mother and grandmother went to work, my eight-year-old sister went to school, and at age three, I spent three years in dismal day care, where I was largely neglected by surrogate caretakers.

In day care my sense of security evaporated and my ability to cope shrunk. I recall being lonely, always waiting for the end of this loneliness. My memories are scant: eating very salty, canned spaghetti; being hit with a ruler on the top of my hands for venturing to the side of the building to view a distant, downed electrical line; and sitting outside in the cold as I stared at a bare tree on wintry, gray days. I think I was forced into a state of endurance or suspended animation well beyond what a tyke can take. Where were my mommy, daddy, and sister?

Recently, all these feelings came back to me. In the dark, early hours of an autumn morning, I anxiously awaited the results of numerous tests that my husband had undergone during an emergency hospitalization. I stared at the clock, willing the time to pass, but the hands on the clock simply would not move. I could not stand it. This is what I must have felt during those early years. I do not fault my family; they were making do as many wartime families were. Now I fear loneliness and anxiety spikes to great heights. Yet no one would know how I feel as I present a reasonably contained facade.

Upon reflection, there were also female heroines and mentors. My sister, a successful, self-made woman five years older than I, was someone I literally looked up to when I was a child. I took to heart every thought she voiced and every behavior she recommended until I realized that her worldview was not mine. We were born of the same womb

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and shared many similarities, yet still were different.

One college classmate was a married woman in her 40’s whom I admired for her ability to read people while being gutsy in an entirely feminine way. I eagerly accepted the very reasonable assistance from another woman, a college supervisor who treated me as an equal. Most recently there were two mentors: the first, a control analyst; and the second, an analyst working in academia. Both were assertive, outspoken, and held positions of authority. I consciously tried to take in their advice and model myself upon them. This worked only to a point, until I realized that professional self interest motivated them far more than their relationship with me. Could my relationships with women be replays of losing the oedipal competition?

I think my analyst, heroes, and mentors possessed those characteristics which I value and which I lack, or have in small supply. I idealized these folks and placed them on pedestals. The men became my knights in shining armor in my rescue fantasies, and the women were nurturing mama figures, more aggressive than my sweet, loving, and reticent mother.

All these thoughts about the nature of my own heroes and mentors rose to consciousness very quickly as sometimes happens when analytic insight occurs. I realized the whys and wherefores of a topic I had heretofore never considered.

We humans need heroes to help us make sense of life, to remind us of what good humankind is capable of, and to develop within us a sense of empathy for others. Heroes fulfill the faith and hope that humans will, on balance, endure, succeed, and forge progress without wallowing in the basest of human behaviors. I recall Hobbes’s dismal description of human lives in their natural state as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” This can’t be all there is, I mentally scream. I remain amazed at what humankind is capable of

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enduring and mastering. Perhaps I too can develop sufficient resilience to deal with whatever life presents.

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