Revisiting Books Long Since Read 22 - Dr Anthony Storr

The Integrity of the Personality. Published January 15th 1992 by Ballantine Books (first published 1960)

An analogy for self-development, I think, would be that of doing a rather complex jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces are there intermingled and pattern-less and our project for life is to put the picture together. Working with this analogy, I think many of us only succeed to a limited extent in getting a full picture of who we are or of what our project in life is. I suppose the more mentally ill among us, or the less mentally whole or the less mentally integrated among us have the pieces scattered all over the place. I believe also, that it should be axiomatic that no one ever gets the whole jigsaw done as that implies complete integration.

Dr. Anthony Storr

I have referred to my favourite psychiatrist in these pages before – that is the late great Dr. Anthony Storr.  Anyway, one of my favourite books by Storr is The Integrity of the Personality. When I read this book it really blew my mind away, if I may be permitted a rather stupid pun, as to what personality really is and as to how it is shaped. It confirmed most of my own beliefs, consolidated old facts, enlightened me of new ones, but most of all gave me a handle on my goal as a person. My goal as a person is to integrate as far as possible all those shadowy aspects of my unconscious, all those complexes which Jung alluded to or, if you like, all those sub-personalities into a whole integrated unity of a being called me. I will return to the lessons learnt from this book later if I get the time. However, his overriding idea is, for my purposes here, in keeping with my analogy of jigsaw making. Remember, it’s only an analogy, only a metaphor – hence there is no fundamentalism allowed! 

When we examine our past lives we are rather like hikers or mountaineers (analogy 2) who are now looking back on our rather interesting, if arduous, ascent to where we are at on the mountain (= in our life) at this moment in time. We can now, from our vantage point, discern a path or a pattern in what to a great extent has been a mixture of chance with some free choice. Human beings love patterns – we see patterns in our past and indeed patterns in our future. Whether these patterns are there objectively or not is beside the point. Philosophically, we see things as we are, rather than as they are phenomenologically in themselves. Anyway, we see a shape, a form, a pattern, a plan and then we make others by continuing on from these perceived patterns. Early in life, our plans may be something like: be a great civil engineer, having been captivated by those wonderful suspension bridges; be a teacher because you are enthralled by the beauty of sharing knowledge; be an artist because of the beauty of those paintings by van Gogh; be a bus driver because you are fascinated with buses and means of transport; or be a carpenter or plumber to make and shape things that are useful in daily living and so on and so forth. In this way, we plan and shape our little lives.

Later we add other more human and spiritual aspects to our plan like spouse and family and service to the local community. Others add more lofty cultural and ethical aspects to their project – they become workers for international peace and justice and fight for human rights under the umbrella of some organization or other. The bolder among us found our own organizations like John O’Shea, founder and original CEO of NGO Goal. Along the way, we meet obstacles which buffet and sometimes even wreck the small brittle ship of self (analogy 3) we have been laboriously building. There will have been accidents, illnesses, arguments, petty jealousies, failures and deaths and all of these can run our little ship aground and even for some wreck it on the jagged rocks of calamity. We have to, if we are to survive with some authenticity and equanimity, assimilate all these things into our character and personality. This takes courage, strength and a willingness to accept help from others in our hour of need.

And then, there are those awful dreams and nightmares that hit us from time to time; old problems and even traumas that we have never coped successfully with, that we had suppressed into our unconscious because we could not deal with them when we were younger; the more disliked aspects of the self that we could not accept years earlier; our faults and failings, even our sheer greed and selfishness – maybe even our disloyalty to a friend or partner; or our sheer infidelity – all of these have to be integrated if we are to be whole. Otherwise, we are shattered or dis-integated or even de-vast-ated – scattered to the four winds and have lost any centre of gravity that would make us an integrated unity or personality.

As I looked at my beautiful demented, disintegrating and de-vast-ated mother (who died of dementia some two years ago at 95 years of age) I looked at the breakdown of her wholeness and unity. I looked at the scattering of the pieces of jigsaw that she had so laboriously constructed. But that is all right, too, because that is nature’s way. She had a long life and had the opportunity to construct her jigsaw as she saw fit, unlike so many poor others who either don’t get or even don’t take the chance.

The beauty of life is in the constructing of the personality, the shaping of it, the painstaking putting together and shaping of it. Indeed, I believe therein lies life’s very meaning if it has any. We need our dreams. We need to construct our very own unique, if brittle ship, to sail the seas of destiny. We cannot afford to believe in chaos or nihilism because within that scheme or lack of scheme of things no dream ship of individuality can hope to be launched onto the seas of fate.

If you are a believer in integration (a term used by Dr Anthony Storr which corresponds to that of the concept of individuation in Jung’s analytical psychology and the self-actualization of Carl Ransom Rogers) as outlined above and wish to apply it to your life then this short book by Dr Anthony Storr is worth having in your library.