Dear One, Tripura is the ultimate, primordial Shakti, the light of Manifestation.
She, the pile of letters of the alphabet, gave birth to the three worlds.
At dissolution, She is the abode of the tattvas, still remaining Herself.
- Vamakeshvara Tantra

..

One of the most difficult tasks for any addict is finding a way out of the stupor experienced as heaven and hell: one’s drug of choice – whether it be a substance, an activity, or even a person or memory – provides escape from a world of pain and the promise of the beyond. The prospect of giving this up is daunting, for it plunges the addict back into the depths, forced to confront a fate that one had so desperately tried to flee.

This probably explains the isolation of addicts by treatment facilities, away from drugs but also from familiar surroundings and friends. The tactic is favored precisely because of the immensity of the task at hand. If a change is to be made, there has to be a radical break – establishing a different relation to the world and, more fundamental than this, a different relationship with oneself, especially if a new beginning is to be found.

While usually couched in terms of relinquishment ("giving up" one’s addiction), the process is actually closer to self-transformation, one that begins with an inventory of the subterranean forces (and decisions) that maintained one’s marriage to the addiction. This is a subtle shift, in more ways than one, and a radical one, as well. For it requires a commitment to self-understanding more courageous than most people are willing to undertake as their own.

It’s precisely this kind of commitment that’s depicted in the well-known Sri Chakra Yantra, perhaps the most elegant portrayal of what it means to lead a life free of addiction. As a representation of the universe’s creation, as well as its dissolution, it depicts the body of the Divine Goddess: Her descent into the material world and her return to Her original home.

The outer perimeter takes the form of a fortress shaped like a square. This stands for the reality in which She finds Herself, the element of Earth. The fortress also represents the imperative of boundaries for the task at hand, establishing a border between oneself and the external world.

Around its edges are four gateways associated with different Gods, but even these are closed, suggesting that access to their divinity must be cut off. They had once provided access to the Ocean of Nectar within the fortress walls, but that job has now been completed. Attention must turn, instead, to the Island of Gems that’s contained within (and raised like a mountain). For at its summit is the place She wants to be.

The Sri Chakra Yantra describes Her path towards that goal. For those uninitiated in its secrets, it provides a tutorial on what to look for during the journey, and how to mark one’s progress during the work of Her ascent.

In many ways, this Yantra also depicts the five sheaths of the human being, the "veils" that separate the human from the One. Often described as "bodies," these sheaths reveal our spiritual anatomy, including the spiritual forces that shape our lives on earth.

Which provides another rationale for isolating addicts from their addictions, the Gods who made life tolerable and gave it a semblance of meaning. Unlike the Gods that provided access through the Gates, The Goddess resides at the very center around which the entire edifice is built.

Because of these veils, most humans cannot see or recognize what lies within. Instead, they operate with organs least attuned to that task. Which is probably why so many of us are prone to getting sidetracked, looking for the divine elsewhere, looking outward for what already exists in the core as the One.

So, it’s by blocking out the unnecessary – building a protective wall or fortress – that allows attunement to what was blotted or became attached to a substance instead (divinity transferred onto one’s drug of choice).

But once the distractions and dependencies are cut, a different kind of experience is allowed to begin. New sensations become "visible" once all else has been quieted, a new world waiting to be discovered and known.

The first circle or chakra, for example, represents the sixteen forms of desire: the five gross elements, the five organs of the senses, the five organs of action, and the ever-changing mind. Sixteen "Hidden" Shaktis reside on each of its petals, each a manifestation of the Great Goddess Herself, and each praised for their primal attractions, for it’s through their desires that the nature of the Goddess Herself can be divined and known.

This form of praise – puja – is often translated as worship, although it’s meaning is much more than this. In fact, it’s said to involve physical alchemy in which one substance is transformed into another. At the level of this chakra, the shift is represented by chyle, the first substance the body produces when digesting food. Subsequent chakras represent additional stages facilitated by the Shaktis that reside in them, each to be praised for their assistance in leading toward Her goal.

Part of the way in which this transformation is achieved is by becoming more attuned to the body’s constitution and the veils that separate the human from the divine. In learning from these sixteen forms of desire, one becomes aware of what had been hidden before: the inner instrument and the subtle mediums of sensation that – together with the elements, the organs, and the ever-changing mind – act as the (unseen) vehicles of desire.

But not all addictions are created equal, as is illustrated by Christy, the target of much ridicule by viewers left dumbfounded by her story. She lives in what appears to be a hovel, a small apartment in which her father allows her to live. She seems to spend her time in this place alone, getting high and struggling to solve a cosmic puzzle she’s acquired (from where, we’re never told).

It’s a highly unusual portrait of addiction, perhaps the only one of its kind featured on Intervention, since two things soon become clear: first, she spends much of her time at home naked, requiring A&E to censor the images on screen and, second, much of that time is spent with her notebook as if she were still enrolled in school, except the problem she’s working on is nothing like those favored by teachers responsible for the education of our young.

One is God. [He] created the Earth (gravel) and Fire (friction).
He walked 6 days and rested. (Died on the 7th.)
The wind blew Mary making Air and Life, the 5 elements.
Water – Adam & Eve – are started for the test.
Satan turns against God and tries 2 take over the world by trying 2 make all evil.

In place of the what normally passes as knowledge, she’s consumed by numerical sequences and the elements, all of which revolve around the same problem: the battle between Good and Evil, between Satan and God. Those who pass judgment never pause to ask about the origin of this imperative, taking comfort instead in their ability to declare her insane. The program’s producers will describe it as an example of "meth psychosis."

For anyone who’s paying attention, however, at least one thing’s obvious. She’s actually developing her inner instrument, her higher faculties and her capacity for abstract thought. If there’s any confusion that still remains for the audience, it concerns the source of this frenetic activity, why a woman as young as she would turn to these symbols and equations. What’s the problem she’s trying to solve?

The answer is already there in her writing: the problem of Good versus Evil. Even if the terms have little concrete meaning for most people, they clearly have meaning for her: Satan emerged at the end of creation when God disappeared, as if a second being took the place of the first. This left Christy alone to give witness to the hole left by His absence, as much an homage to God as a consecration of her experience of His grace.

In the wake of God’s death, she’s been condemned to fight against Satan. And this might be why, in all her scribblings, the equation that’s most central – the one she has yet to solve – is boiled down to a single question:

(+) Good + (-) Evil = ?

Or, in different terms: what happens when you add a positive with a negative?
Does it equal zero? It is merely nothing? This is a conclusion she cannot accept. If she did, she’d be guilty of blasphemy. She’d also be negating the very truth of her experience of bliss.

With such matters weighing on her mind, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the basics of living come with some difficulty: that when heaven has shifted, her earthly home comes to resemble something else.

It might also explain her constant nakedness, as if flaunting the rules of civilized existence, or what appears to be her delight in taunting others, including her very own sister. It’s almost as if she does it on purpose, as if there were a design behind the madness: as if by eliciting their anger, she were privy to something that had been withheld. As if by virtue of her provocations, a certain kind of "truth" came to be displayed that only she was able to behold.

I’m an Angel.
I am God trapped in the form of a human body.
- God’s eyes –
None of you can take that away from me ever.

If she’s become God eyes – able to see Him and the beauty of Creation – why would anyone trade that in for anything else?

The only one exempt from her prodding, the only one free of her provocations, is her father who drops by for a visit unannounced. Acutely aware of the camera, their conversation is stilted, as if this were a performance for the benefit of others. Playing the role of the concerned father, he declares his intent to "save" her before she’s too far gone. But she resists, refusing the script that he’s decided to follow.

Well, I already saved myself a long time ago
Or else, I wouldn’t be as happy as I am, okay?
- I’m happy you’re happy, Christy, but …
Then, that’s it! That’s it. [end of conversation]
- That’s not it. It doesn’t stop there.
Well, then, that’s your problem. It’s not mine.
- It sounds like you’ve got that selfish thing down really well.
Yeah, and where’d I learn that from?

Clearly, it’s a familiar argument, as is the issue of his divorce from her mother, when at the age of nine she had a mental breakdown. But just as things get heated, just as she’s beginning to challenge his assurance about the nature of her problem, the conversation ends abruptly. The thing is, I have so much to say, but I can’t. I need a drink. I’m too excited right now. Which he takes as a signal to leave. But despite this, she shouts out words of encouragement to the man walking out the door:

Don’t feel bad, Dad.
You should be happy that you gave life to such a cool person !

So, we’re left to wonder why her father – and a conversation such as this – makes her feel like turning to drink. Or what it was she was unable to say in front of the cameras about selfishness but which was tacitly understood.

The Sri Yantra consists of nine chakras divided into three sets of three:

1-3. Chakras of Creation
4-6. Chakras of Preservation
5-9. Chakras of Dissolution

Each set represents the stages in the path of the Goddess in the creation of the universe (moving outward from the center) and its dissolution (moving inward from the periphery). She is the Red Goddess Tripura Sundari, Beautiful Goddess of the Three States, also known as Lalita (The Playful One).

Very few commentaries actually say what these three "states" might be. But from the experience of Christy, it’s clear they refer to three states of consciousness: she has access to states quite distinct from the wakefulness most of us take to be the one and only reality. Like someone caught in the non-culmination of the Sarasvati nadi, however, she zooms from one to another, unable to stay in a single place, in one moment caught in her vision of God, and the next, faced by the Devil himself.

Because of this see-saw motion, there’ll be times she loses her bearings, admittedly made worse by her addiction, unable to distinguish between heaven and hell. One moment, she’s the sister of Jesus, at other times, she’s Satan’s bride.

Sometimes, when I’m under the influence so hardcore,
I’m, like, being possessed by the Devil.
I love it!

This kind of experience is often the result of occult practices that are hidden from public view. Their purpose has less to do with spiritual enlightenment than a form of parasitism that cultivates certain talents and abilities for another’s use. This is a perversion of the two-step process found in some spiritual traditions in which a non-culminating rising is immediately followed by a diversion that directs Shakti to a nadi that can actually reach Her goal.

This takes place when an occult master prepares a student for the harvesting of brain center capacities and does not intend for a diversion to take place, lest the student follow their inner Divine guide rather than the master, who has a vested interest in utilizing the skills the student will gain. The person may become trapped in the master’s service, or be seduced by the powers they gain and want to stay in the occult group.

This is nothing short of spiritual slavery: students groomed for another’s benefit without any consideration of the toll it will take on their body, mind, and spirit. Their higher capacities will be stimulated, producing remarkable talents, but they’ll also find themselves swinging between the poles of heaven and hell. And unless they’re fortunate enough to find a teacher who can instruct them differently, they’re likely to languish and die, yearning for God even while mourning his apparent indifference.

Which might be why, in the Chakras of Preservation, the Yantra turns the adept’s attention to others aspects of the energy body, extending its earlier lessons about the nature and vehicles of desire. The focus here are the nadis, as well as the vital breaths that are meant to activate and flow through them.

Each of these can be damaged, leading to different forms of addiction, and learning to recognize the signs is an important step in working towards healing. When Apana is abused, one is left with an unending hunger, inheriting a deep desire and need to consume, often in the form of sex. Disturbance of Samana leads to digestive and eating disorders, from anorexia to compulsive eating, since the normal functions of assimilation have been impaired. A broken heart upsets the healthy functioning of Prana, leaving the person vulnerable, yearning and with a devotional nature that’s difficult to fulfill. When the upward movement of Udana is squashed, the brain is left with a deficit of endorphins, leaving the person hapless, desperately seeking stimulation for what has been depleted.

Since Vishnu is the Preserver of the Universe and The All Pervading Essence (i.e., Vyana), these chakras resonate with his power. But it’s the Shaktis that reside here that help heal disturbances that lead to dependence upon an external source. Once stabilized, the vital breaths should be directed toward the stomach where the digestive fire becomes magnified, strengthening it’s ability to process what might have previously been too difficult to digest.

Shakti is worshipped as the protector (fire) and takes the form of Ten Deities of Protection. Each corresponds with an Ayurvedic body type: vata, pitta, kapha, vata-pitta, pitta-vata, pitta-kapha, kapha-pitta, vata-kapha, kapha-vata, and vata-pitta-kapha. Since each has its strengths and weaknesses, since each meets its limit in a certain "food" that cannot be processed, these Shaktis help protect against those limitations: balancing the energy body that might have been damaged and healing the addictions that might have arisen, as a result.

For simplicity’s sake, these body types (doshas) are usually discussed in their pure forms – vata, pitta, and kapha – that possess different qualities based upon the elements with which they’re associated: vata, air and ether; pitta, fire and water; kapha, earth and water.

Each has distinctive qualities. Vatas, for example, are typically slender, creative, excitable, mercurial, impulsive, mentally quick, with hands and feet that tend to be cold; they are also prone to anxiety, racing thoughts, irregular heartbeats, nervous stomach, and constipation. Pittas are generally physically strong, mentally sharp, focused, assertive, competitive and passionate; they are also prone to baldness, sarcasm, anger, ulcers, heartburn, and insomnia. Kaphas are said to be easy-going, loving, stable, deliberate in speech and thought, physically sturdy, and slow to anger; they are also liable to gain weight easily, depression, possessiveness, envy, greed, and the accumulation of water and mucus in their bodies.

According to Ayurveda, when unbalanced, each body type is prone to different types of disease. And since food is one of the main ways the balance of elemental energies of the body can be altered, diet becomes crucial in that effort: Kapha’s tendency to accumulate mucus and water can be counterbalanced by the ingestion of foods that are dry and hot; Vata’s "airy" tendency and constipation can be balanced by foods that are grounding and wet; Pitta’s fire can be lessened by cooling foods and by avoiding those that are acidic and spicy, including coffee.

In the end, however, these physiological types and emotional tendencies are but external manifestations of more subtle currents that run through the body. And it’s these that are the focus of the chakras concerned with the nadis, vital breaths, and digestive fires.

Once the nadis have been identified, particularly those most relevant to oneself, this opens the way to examining the flows of energy that have been enabled (or disabled) along the way, and facilitating their movement where they’ve become blocked. This enables a deeper understanding of one’s subtle constitution, including the possible reasons behind one’s physical maladies and their relation to one’s limited ability to digest.

Parallel to the kind of balancing used in Ayurvedic diets, the digestive fires come to be ignited when the five vital breaths are brought into contact with the stomach. The recommended method will vary, depending upon one’s dosha. Vatas are said to benefit from peace and calm, avoiding stress and distraction as much as possible, taking naps when they are tired, and establishing a secure and stable style of life; meditation is used to empty the mind of worries, and surrendering to the fears and anxieties they are prone to suffer. Pittas are encouraged to establish cool and pleasing environments, practicing affectionate and loving behavior while avoiding conflict, ambition, and strain; through meditation, they should focus on positive energies, peace, forgiveness, and artistic creativity. Given their tendency toward laziness and attachment, Kaphas are encouraged to adopt an austere lifestyle, like sleeping on the floor and staying up late, learning to break their attachments, and taking up physical exercise; their meditation should also be "active," focusing on studying, inquiring, reading scriptures, perhaps even singing and chanting.

In this way, vayus that have been damaged can be corrected, opening channels that had previously been blocked, and compensating for inclinations and addictions that later emerged.

After completing this puja – after this alchemical transformation is done – the adept continues to the level of dissolution and the (causal) body of bliss. On the last step of the journey, the adept will find the central triangle, Seat of the Mother which, according to some, is the most creative spot in the universe (Her yoni or womb): the origin of the entirety of creation and the penultimate stop on Her way back home, the final veil that hides the Goddess contained within.

Three "Extremely Secret" Shaktis reside here, at each corner of the Triangle:

Flowering Yoni (Bhagamalini), consort of Brahma
Adamantine Lady (Vajreshi), consort of Vishnu
Lady of Desire (Kameshvari), consort of Rudra (Shiva)

They’re also said to correspond with the gross body, subtle body, and the (causal) body of bliss; the forces of creation, preservation, and dissolution; as well as the the three fundamental tendencies which, by some accounts, belong to the pure tattvas, just short of the One.

Kriya Shakti, the power to manifest
Jnana Shakti, the divine power of knowledge
Iccha Shakti, divine will

It’s almost as, if at this level, all of creation is laid bare, including what’s been most hidden from public view, inviting recognition of how the world came into being.

It’s said that the main obstacle for transcending this sheath (or any sheath, for that matter) is the tendency to identify with it, to mistake it for the Self: the tendency to identify with a certain form of energy, an aspect of mind, or even the gross body itself. It should not come as a surprise to learn that there’s a tendency to identify with the body of bliss, as well.

But if one recognizes that the causal body can be "seen" like any other – observed as an aspect of the microcosm patterned after the Goddess Herself – then it becomes clear that there’s an observer doing this seeing, separate from what’s being seen. This is the Witness. And with this realization, the Goddess of the Three States becomes the Fourth (turiya) and all forms of duality come to an end.

One advantage of the pantheon of Gods found among the ancients is that one’s less likely to confuse a God with The One: once their multitude is recognized, no longer can a single one represent completion. They also possess traits usually taken to be human, turning into babies or monsters when they don’t get what they want. But once the sheaths of the body have been traversed, it’s easier to recognize how the Gods are also shaped by energy and, for someone like Christy, this might even help explain how Satan came to replace the Divine.

There’s nothing necessarily "wrong" with confusing God with The One; in fact, it prepares the ground for the Goddess’s ascent. It only becomes a problem when it creates a stalemate, faced with an equation [Good + Evil = What?] that seems to come to naught.

Those who’re stuck this way are faced with the most awful problem of the spirit: how to honor the Divine without having to sacrifice oneself. The solution to this problem is what’s depicted in the Sri Chakra Yantra. Rather than remaining beholden to a God that’s disappeared, a different kind of Divinity can be found: the Goddess in all Her splendor and Her glory.

She reaches a point where She can say I C MY SELF without qualification or need for confirmation since, at this level, there can be no "negative."

She becomes the Fourth that transcends the Three.

..

..

A&E’s Emmy-Award winning series Intervention routinely warns its viewers about the disturbing content of its program, and it’s good thing that they do so. For the show provides viewers with a disturbing look at the depths to which addicts descend when doing battle against the demons that haunt them, not only in terms of the harm they do to their bodies or even the kind of degradation that becomes their own, but the misery and loneliness in which they suffer their quiet torment. It’s not a pretty picture. But these viewer advisories serve as much to titillate the audience as much as to warn them, for it’s the "drama" of this hidden side of addiction that sustains the program’s popularity, precisely because it promises to provide us with a portrait of lives that have fallen completely out of control.

If the producers were truly committed to the principle of disclosure, they’d include another warning at the beginning of each episode, as well. For the method of intervention employed by this series is but one among many, one that’s come under increasingly attack, and for good reasons, too: for its reliance upon unabashed methods of coercion and the mounting evidence that it may be less effective than we are so often lead to believe. There is another reason even more compelling to suspect the portrait of addiction provided by this program, and that has to do with the unspoken assumptions that frame the very idea of intervention itself: the idea that addiction is the disease rather than seeing it as a symptom of something else. Something much more insidious, precisely because it goes back further than our eyes can see.

Advocates have long worked to overcome the historical stigmas that have come to be attached to addicts and their addictions, stigmas that have undermined efforts to help addicts too frequently condemned for the cravings and compulsions that lay well beyond their control. And coming to an understanding of addiction-as-a-disease was crucial in that fight, for only then could the public come to understand that the addict cannot and should not be blamed. For blame interferes with efforts to treat the addict and the addiction; to shame an addict only avoids dealing with – much less seeking to understand – the compulsion that lies at the root of their afflictions.

But it may well be time to give up this notion, for in clinging to the idea of disease, advocates are in danger of losing sight of the contexts within which addictions are born, the environments within which those compulsions come to be. Which is where A&E’s series comes into the picture. For it says nothing about the well-established fact that the majority of addicts suffered some sort of abuse while they were young, with some studies putting the figures as high as ninety per cent. If this had truly become part of our public consciousness, the interventions that form the climax of each episode would take on a very different flavor: less convinced about an addict’s "denial" or "refusal" to seek treatment, and more humbled by the ways in which a hidden torment comes to eat at one’s very soul.

The Limits of Understanding

How else can we explain cases that deviate from the norm, when the conventional rules of intervention are suspended because they are no longer seen to apply? This is exactly what we witness during the pre-intervention meeting for Brooke when her family is, quite amazingly, instructed to banish the word "addiction" from their vocabulary. Instructed by none other than the interventionist himself.

I don’t want to hear the word "addiction" today. I want that word out of this room. The people she loves most in the world are saying the most horrible things about her when she doesn’t know another way out. It’s not like she was out there at the clubs doing heroin. The behaviors are similar [to those of] an addict, so you put it in the same category as "she needs treatment!"

An unusual line was being drawn that day, one that distinguished between "normal" addicts (those who go clubbing, shooting-up heroin?) and Brooke who suffers from Still’s disease, a debilitating form of rheumatoid arthritis which delivers pain so severe that she can hardly walk. It’s this distinction that allows the interventionist to reprimand those who sit around him, chiding them for what they’ve been saying about their loved one and their daughter who’s become dependent upon her pain medication. And he’s brought in a pain specialist to marshal the authority of science to convince them of the imperative of seeing Brooke differently.

You really have to see some of this through her eyes. Fifteen percent of people like this take their own lives, and many others overdose. So she is, remember, she is really suffering. And she doesn’t want to live like that. So she doesn’t mind being loaded. Eight hours lying unconscious on the floor, to her that’s comfort. As bizarre as it looks, that’s the time when she’s comfortable. … So, you’re seeing the problem, which is real, but from her point of view, it’s really different.

When compared with many of the other interventions typically shown on this series, gone is the "tough love" that speaks in the language of choices and consequences, gone is the anger directed squarely at the addict, gone is the resentment and frustration about how their lives have been held hostage by the addict’s behavior. They are asked to see the world through her eyes, instead.

The following day, as we watch the ambush unfold – for the power of interventions are supposed to derive from their unexpectedness, designed precisely to undermine the addict’s autonomy – we are witness to a young woman quite literally trembling with fear, thinking she’s going to be locked away in a psychiatric facility. Only after she’s introduced to the "expert" do we actually hear her speak.

I’m really confused. You all haven’t understood for years and years. And now, all of a sudden, you have a change of heart?
[turning to the expert] What did you say?
.
I told them the truth. What you’re going through. How much pain you’re in. How
it’s intolerable. And that everybody’s accusing you of something else. They’re all watching your behavior but none of them are living in your skin.

If Brooke’s story is an unusual case – an exception to the rule – it’s worth returning to the question of how the usual business of Intervention treats the addict, particularly when there is no "physiological" ailment that can be used to elicit the sympathy of the family. For in the absence of such a scientific explanation, the door is opened for the expression of a host of shaming behaviors, leaving addicts feeling even more humiliated than when they walked into the room.

This simple fact alone may account for much of the reluctance – and belligerence – evident during so many interventions, forced to listen to weepy and angry letters about how the addiction has impacted everybody’s lives. Forced to sit quietly and listen to the sadness of others, even as their own feelings remain unheard. In the face of such a barrage, it’s a testament to their courage that any decide to accept treatment. Because in doing so, they’ve been asked to carry a burden that no one should be asked to bear, precisely because the secret and shame behind their addiction is allowed to remain buried, an inheritance that none has the strength to face. No one except the addict, who’s forced to carry that shame alone.

Caught – and Stuck – in the Depths

If there’s any lesson to take from Brooke’s story, it’s this: the inability to recognize and respond to psychic pain represents a culture in the throes of death. If the kind of pain with which we are confronted cannot be reduced to a medical condition, one that can be explained by a faith in science, then it’s seen as nothing other than an incomprehensibility. And when faced with the mysterious and unknown, those who cannot understand recoil in misunderstanding and fear. It may as well not exist. As far as addicts are concerned, their pain becomes invisible to the world; and as a consequence, they become invisible too. It’s no wonder so many addicts choose to isolate, for that’s precisely how they already feel: abandoned and alone, robbed of any sense that they can be seen, much less believed and heard.

Such isolation and despair is plainly evident when the addict is allowed to speak, when he or she does is not required to defend against accusations that belittle and demean. Far too many wish they would die, praying to an unseen deity to take their lives, too weak and fearful to hasten death’s arrival on their own. For the suffering is overwhelming and the loneliness so deep that they know not what else to do. And so, at wit’s end, with no other alternatives on the horizon, they turn to their drug, seeking an escape from the kind of misery that has yet to acquire a name. And their families cannot understand.

Because they see it from the outside, it makes no sense. And far too often they presume that addicts do not understand the destructiveness of their own behavior. But addicts are not stupid, nor are they unaware. Most are quite cognizant of what they are doing to themselves. As such, any attempt to remind them of this only feels like a condemnation or, worse, being treated as a child. Sarah, for example, is infuriated each time her family asks about her addiction, for hidden beneath their concern is a certain helplessness she already shares, not quite knowing what to do about her conundrum.

Sarah: I’m not doing good. Everyone knows I’m not doing good. Why even ask!
That’s all everybody does. They come, they see me, they bitch at me, and they fucking leave. They don’t try to fucking help me. Do you see anyone trying to fucking help me? No!
Dad: We’re trying to see where you’re at.
Sarah: Everybody knows where I’m at. It’s plain to see where I’m at.
Dad: What do you want to do?
Sarah: How many times do I have to tell you! Dad, I know I’m fucked up and I need help. I want my family and son back. I just don’t know what to fucking do about it!!

Those trying to help think that drawing attention to the addict’s drug use will make them more conscious of their behavior, believing that reminders might instill a new respect for living. Little do they realize how their concern only comes across as judgment, precisely because it doesn’t tell the addict anything they don’t already know. As a result, all they can feel is shame, as is clearly the case with Jason who’s also caught in a spiral of helplessness, not knowing what else to do.

Don’t tell me I’m a piece of shit. Don’t tell me I’m gonna die.
I already know all this !
They rub it in my face …

Why should they feel such shame? Why’s the addict so sensitive to the judgment of others? Precisely because he’s already judging himself and – more likely than not –the shame speaks in a voice both ancient and frightening. In the case of Dan, we can see the eerie switch as he quite literally moves from one position to another: at one moment, hanging his head in shame, as if weighed down by something too difficult to bear; the next moment, speaking into the camera in a barely controlled rage in a voice that’s clearly not his own, snarled through teeth clenched in anger.

Look at me … LOOK AT ME !!
I’ll kick your fucking ass, there.
You give me no other choice.

In watching the episode and learning about Dan’s story, we will have heard about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, how being the youngest in the family set him up as the target of an unremitting rage. And in those two postures, we can clearly see one of the most long-lasting effects of such treatment – a demonic transference – where both cause and effect inhabit a single body. The shame of what was done to him, the shame of what was yelled at him, the shame of what was beaten into him, the anger that originally belonged to another. Eternally stuck between the boy who knew too much about the violence suffered at another’s hands and the anger he was never allowed to express for being the helpless victim of a grown man’s rage.

Is it any surprise, then, that addicts do not want to talk about their self-destructive behaviors? That they will cringe from those who claim they’re trying to help? They know too well the voice of judgment. They live with it daily. In part, it’s precisely what so many addicts seek to escape.

Speaking in Tongues

More damaging than this is the conspiracy of silence that hides behind the voice of judgment. Many of the families documented in Intervention already know what had happened to the addict when he or she was a child, yet little effort was made to understand the connection between one experience and the other, how the violence of abuse propels so many addicts to their awful fate. Instead, that history has been submerged in silence, and survivors are encouraged to "let go" of their awful past (it happened twenty years ago, get over it!), as if an exercise of will were sufficient to exorcise their ghosts.

Little do they realize that this imperative to forget began almost immediately after the abuse began. For those who living in the shadow of a father’s anger, violence becomes the backdrop of a "normal" life, where entire families live in denial about what they have to endure, ever watchful out of fear they might trigger his rage. In the process, it’s the children who suffer the most, believing they’ve earned his wrath, the beating and shouting less a sign of his problem than a measure of their own worthlessness. And so, tip-toeing around that raging giant, the family presents a portrait of normalcy to the world and to themselves – "that’s just the way it is" – unless and until someone finally decides to speak up and put it to an end. Far too commonly, that rarely happens at all.

In cases where the abuse is sexual, the child is quite literally forced to live in two worlds: the routine of family life and the private hell that comes at the hands of the abuser, a split enforced by the threats that warn of the dire consequences should they dare to speak of the secret that haunts their miserable existence. Condemned to live in fear of upsetting an otherwise "tranquil" family, afraid of tell or, worse, if they speak, afraid they’ll not be believed at all. This awful fate, so painfully evident in many episodes of Intervention, is exactly what daughters and sons are forced to endure in silence: a muteness that has been forced upon them by their abuser or a parent who just doesn’t believe, as if a child would invent such a horrendous tale.

When forced into silence, other signs come to take the place of speech. And this shouldn’t come as a surprise, since the child is being asked to endure more than a young one should ever be expected to bear. Which is how sudden changes quickly become apparent, a coded message for others to see. For some, bodies become the canvas for their unspoken misery, an effort to make themselves undesirably fat or, alternatively, a sign of their disappearance from the land of the living, seemingly dissolving into thin air. For some, like Amy who asked her parents for help about her eating disorder, even this symptom is met with dismissal. Is it a surprise, then, that others would be hesitate to unveil the awful truth that hides behind it all, somehow recognizing the suspicion with which they’re already held?

When you’re barely eighty pounds at five foot seven,
you shouldn’t have to work so hard to convince your parents you need help.

The unspoken symptoms of abuse take many forms, but all give voice to the burden children are asked to carry and the silence they’ve been asked to endure. Caught between a rock and a hard place, the effect of violence finds expression through the changes of body, the use of drugs, or rebelliousness. Loved ones are silently asked to interpret these changes, to give meaning to what the child is unable to tell. But all too often, these changes are chalked up to genetics, personality, or just plain unruliness. Once the unexplained is dismissed in this way, even the most disturbing can be accommodated and, eventually resented. A sign of a child’s silent torment just waiting to be interpreted becomes the family’s headache, wishing their child could just find a way to be normal.

Such was the case with Nicole who, in the aftermath of her molestation, became dysphagic, something even her mother would deride with suspiciousness ("She can swallow but she chooses not to because she says she will choke"). So for fourteen years, Nicole lives with this symptom, acting out a message that the family refuses to hear: a "temporary" feeding tube leading directly into her stomach becomes a lifelong fixture because the very idea of swallowing induces a panic so deep, she’s left unable to eat.

In many cases, the conspiracy of silence produces symptoms the family takes as a sign of delusion. Such was the case with Linda, who developed mysterious pains and dislocations in her joints, particularly her hips. The pain so severe that she’s come to be dependent upon massive doses of fentanyl, a narcotic said to be a hundred times more potent than morphine. She found that a tiny ritual, one that might even look obscene to passers-by, helps reduce the pain she suffers, as if releasing the pressure that has accumulated for far too long. But because she’s no longer able to work and finds herself home-bound, a younger brother has tended to her for eight years, losing the better part of his young life in the process and coming to hate the sister he once loved. Yet, despite her increasing marginalization from the family, Linda insists they can help, particularly her father.

I was talking to my Dad and he said, "How can we help?"
Because I had said, "You have the potential to heal me.
You can fix my pain a lot. You can make my life so much better right now.
You know, if you would cooperate, you could actually fix me."

But the interventionist and the medical expert brought in to consult bear no such optimism, particularly since she also claims to be affected by electro-magnetic fields, even colors, that haunt her at every corner, energies bombarding her from all directions that require extra vigilance to maintain her own protection. And so, in the absence of a recognizable medical explanation that everyone can believe, Linda is quite literally tackled to the ground during her intervention and subjected to their collective rage. In their eyes, not only has she put them through hell, she’s been asking them to buy into ridiculous stories about phantom pains and persecuting fields of energy that emerge from nowhere. The end result? Institutionalization at a psychiatric care facility.

In each of these examples, but woefully evident with Linda, the addict is reduced to what family systems therapists describe as the identified patient, brought to the attention of doctors and specialists because, in the family’s eyes, he or she is the one with the problem. It’s the most perverse effect of the conspiracy of silence with which a child is forced to live. Such conspiracies, whether intentional or not, are a accomplishment of families that are rarely recognized as pathological, the result of covert collusion or massive denial. And because no one dares to break the spell, the one most deserving of care and understanding comes to be seen as the one requiring intervention and treatment, and if the help is not accepted, punishment instead.

A Crime Inscribed Upon the Soul

Another name that can be given to this conspiracy of silence is severe and chronic neglect. Children require that the truth of their existence be validated and heard. This is one of the crucial roles of a caring parent, one who can mirror back to the child the nature of his or her experience, for only in this way does the child come to recognize the reality of their inner feelings and learn how to calibrate them with the outside world. But when forced to live with a silence that denies the trauma that has given shape to their very being, their lives come to be split in two: the hell which has become their private torment and a the life of a family – and later, the world – in which they’re told it doesn’t exist.

This is why so many survivors of abuse struggle, precisely because they have been taught not to trust their own senses. Over time some begin to wonder whether the abuse ever happened at all; some may even completely forgotten. Wondering whether the images in their heads are dreams or snapshots of a suppressed reality, frightened by the frightening sensations that refuse to go away, perhaps even wondering whether they’re slowly going insane.

Some have argued that this dilemma captures the essence of non-genetic factors that contribute to the development of full-blown schizophrenia, the result of being stuck in a double-bind from which there is no escape. When the people dearest and most important to a child of violence fail to give credence to the trauma, they are basically asking that the child learn how to deny it. There are typically two ways to respond to such a double-bind: a flight into metaphor (the dream world), precisely because the child’s own experience has so forcefully been denied; or a fidelity to what is allowed to be spoken (stuck in a world of numbness), forever banished from the reality of their feelings. These are the two faces of alienation – from the world and from oneself – produced by the conspiracy of silence with which far too many are forced to live. Two sides of the netherworld to which they’ve been banished.

But beneath these adaptations is a long-repressed memory, one that refuses to be squashed, felt in unexplainable panics or a diffuse anxiety that will not go away. And because of the conspiracy of silence, few will be able to make the connection between one thing and another, precisely because they’ve never learned to trust the truth of their senses or their ability to give sense to their world. In this way, the family-in-denial reinforces and sustains a coping strategy of dissociation, cut off from experience and themselves. It’s an automatic and unconscious strategy first learned at the hands of their abusers – in the face of a terror too great to behold -when the young come to be lifted away, only able to see what’s happening from a great distance or through a hazy fog. Families upholding a conspiracy of silence only serve to reinforce this form of self-alienation, turning a traumatic adaptation into a habitual mode of existence. One that comes to be inscribed upon the soul.

Is it any wonder, then, that addicts will describe their drug of choice in precisely the terms psychologists use to describe a dissociative state? That the "high" they seek mimics the strategy that helped them survive the horrors of the past? For echoes of their violation, aggravated by the very silence that seeks to repress their truth, will invariably return: flashes and attacks of panic, or vague and haunted feelings that something isn’t quite right, a deep depression, perhaps. Something that points to the fact that something is terribly wrong. So, when we listen to the words of addicts who’ve found escape in their addiction, it should come as no surprise to hear that they’re describing nothing other than a state of dissociation, numbed to the world.

Jessica: I loved the high. It took away … I guess, everything. It took away feeling. I didn’t have to think about anything. I guess I just found my new best friend and my worst enemy at the same time.
Gabe: It’s like you’re floating on a cloud. And you just sit there, and dream. You don’t get angry, you don’t get happy, you don’t get sad, you just kind of melt.
Sarah: [OxyContin's] a pain killer. It’s like one of the ultimate pain killers, you know? You can’t feel hate, you can’t feel love, you can’t feel anything. It numbs you completely. Emotionally. Physically. It numbs everything.

The paradoxical – and, for many, baffling – practice of cutting is caught in the same spiral, caught between the imperative of silence and the need to escape. Already rendered mute, the cutting gives visible evidence of their suffering, even if it’s something no one else wishes to see. In this way, it becomes a mirror devised by their own hand, precisely because the pain was never recognized by another. And it’s in giving "voice" to their pain, that so many find release, no longer required to repress what torments them from the inside. So, in giving their pain an objective existence, we see once again the power of dissociation, numbed to the feelings, precisely because they’re too much to bear.

Amy: My cutting started when I was really upset and I was like, "Hey, wait, that should hurt but it doesn’t, and I kind of feel better." So, after that, then I started cutting.

Such are the symptoms of a crime that comes to be marked upon the soul, internal demons seeking release precisely because they’ve been forced to live in silence. Undecipherable to all except those already initiated in the darkest of secrets or, more rarely, those who’ve taken the time to learn their code. And in carrying this burden alone – in going along with the conspiracy of silence – not only do survivors take on the weight of what was done to them, they also carry the burden of their family’s inability to recognize, much less respond to, their pain.

In this way, addicts form the unlikeliest of Christly figures, unrecognized precisely because the compulsions and addictions provide a cipher of an unspoken existence and a hologram of their non/place within the family: the violation they’ve suffered in silence and the double-bind their family’s put them in. Bearing the sins of others, the abuser and their family which are sometimes one and the same. The cruelty of this arrangement becomes painfully clear when the survivor becomes the family scapegoat, when shameful silence gives way to its symptoms, when the addict comes to be the family enemy that is condemned for ruining everyone else’s life.

The Addict as Scapegoat and Speaker of Truth

Such is the effect of families that subsist upon the power of silence in which secrets are covered over in the interest of keeping the peace. Such is the pathology that asks the one in greatest need for protection to carry the burden of a family unable to care for its young. And so, as this form of displacement unfolds, the abused comes to be seen as the "problem child," unable to adapt to the demands of living, upsetting the family’s precarious existence. For ailments previous hidden emerge in the addiction, finally demanding attention in ways that cannot be ignored. Since the new symptoms are even further removed from their original cause – transformed by the imperative of silence – the addict is typically seen as constitutionally, even morally, weak. And with this perverse sleight of hand, we witness the emergence of the family scapegoat, the one who seems forever doomed to fail.

Each family has it’s own set of stories, a narrative that speaks of its origin and the path that’s brought them to the present. How the parents met, and how they came to start a family. Whether the pregnancy of the addict-to-be was planned or not, his or her birth is described as a "miracle," one of the highlights of the mother’s life. Other family events follow, as if tracing the haphazard line connecting unrelated events: a divorce, perhaps, another child, maybe a relocation to another city. And if the abuse has become public, it will be included in the story as well, but rarely will it be told from the point of view of the child. Instead, it belongs to a subplot of a child’s decline, a mystery and an irritant, one that slowly grows into a blemish on a family’s honor, with no one but the addict to blame.

Once the addict is seen as sick – and not her family – there’s only one way an Intervention can end. For the terms have already been set, and it’s left to the addict to accept or reject their offer. When loved ones read letters pleading for the nightmare to end, what they mean is a return to what existed before. And therein lies the problem, because this "before" is exactly the horror the addict seeks to escape. Given this gulf of non-understanding, the ongoing terror of the addict remains a mystery, forming an unbridgeable divide between those who say they care and the one that suffers. Only when addicts are asked by a beloved will they let down their guards and try to explain, as Michelle does when grandpa asks whether she’s able to live without the drugs.

Sometimes I don’t think I can. Because now, even when I get sober, it sucks to see the shit because you’re not high no more. And it hurts. All that hurting you never did when you were high, you feel it when you get off of it. It’s schizophrenia, almost. It’s like, "Oh God, how am I gonna get the drug, I need the drug, I need this." And you can’t stop it! You’re whole life, every movement you make when you want it, is about the drug. There’s no label on a baggie of meth [saying] "Caution: Addictive. You will not have anything, even teeth. You will have nothing."
.
I want you to know, I don’t like this drug, either. I hate it. If it was a matter of
I-could-quit-because-I-love-you, I would have never started them. Out of everything I’ve lost, I hated not being able to call you.

She’s made an obvious effort to connect with the man so dear to her heart, despite having been cut out of his life. She’s the one who’s found the courage to unveil her misery, speaking of her struggles and her shame, even while he sits in judgment, trying his best to comprehend. So, it’s not with a little disappointment that she’s met with his continued disapproval. For despite the effort to move toward him, he remains unable to meet her halfway. Speaking to her as if she’s never even tried, unmoved by her story to change the terms of her banishment. Once again, unheard.

You get yourself straight, and we’ll be back [to] where we were.
– I need you !
Well, you’re going to make an effort now to get off them, right?
– [clearly disappointed] Oh, yeah.

Because she has no alternative, no "mirrors" to reflect her pain other than the eyes of her family, she inherits their definitions of her problem, coming to see herself as pathological and sick. In the process, she also comes to be enveloped by shame, precisely because no one has bothered to connect the dots for her, the relationship between her addiction and her molestation, first by a cousin and later, for three long years, by a "close family friend." The inheritance of the scapegoat becomes immediately apparent after Michelle’s failed encounter with her grandfather, turning to the bathroom, seeking another "fix" for her frustration instead.

What we see played out in front of the bathroom mirror is an internal dialogue, the spiral of shame within which she’s caught, abandoned to give meaning to a fate that exceeds her understanding. For whenever she tries to explain, she is met with the same face of incomprehension, seemingly indifferent to her plight. And the single escape available to her, the one thing which makes the pain go away, so cruelly becomes her family’s weapon, even when they’re no longer there.

How fucking disrespectful is that? I would never do that to my granddad. He’s all I ever had! But I wanted my bump. I don’t wanna let him down, and all he asks is not with him. He stuck up and he put faith in me. He put his love in me, the only motherfucker who ever has! And I go and turn to drugs? Fuck that. How can some-one fuck that up? And it hurts. So what do I do? More drugs. Because it’s all I ever know how to do. And I wanna stop so bad.
.
When that happens [when I stop], you’re gonna see my granddad and he’s going to say [with pride], "That’s my granddaughter!"

Because she adores him, because his love and approval are so important, she will enact his condemnation. She actually becomes the identified patient, reproducing his criticism even when he’s gone. Needing no other besides herself to reprimand the addict in herself for her "disrespectful" behavior. Ever convinced that she’s the fuck-up, unable to meet the expectations of the only family she’s ever known.

This is how scapegoats can be seen as both the strongest and most caring of a family such as hers. They carry their shame in private, even making it own, while the rest of the family remains upright in their condemnation. The burden is heavy and the addict carries it alone, the truth of her misery banished from her family’s consciousness. Stuck between a loyalty to the ones upon whom she depended for protection and a fidelity to herself. And in this battle for a child’s allegiance, it’s the family that always wins. For she rarely has anywhere else to turn.

Like in times more ancient, the scapegoat carries the burden of the community, where each bestows their sins upon the faultless one destined to banishment in the wilderness. In the past, it was an animal that served this function, a sacrifice designed to purge the community of its sin. In enlightened times such as our own, this function has been inherited by the family scapegoat – in this case, the addict – who carries the sins of her family, and their unresponsive silence, alone.

But however loving and strong, even scapegoats reach their limits. When pushed too far, they become speakers of truth, identifying the flaws and contradictions no one wants to see, unwilling to carry the burden that maintains the façade of the normal family. For there are times when their coded symptoms are not enough, enacting what no one else has been willing to admit, for the descent into madness carries a cost that’s too great, particularly when its message is never heard. And this is precisely what happens when, in the midst of a personal crisis, Michelle lashes out at her mother, tired of answering the same old question, "Why are you so angry with me?"

I know you love me, okay? I know you can’t help the way you feel. I know that.
– I want to protect you.
But you are not protecting my ass, are you!
– Do you need me to?
Are you [protecting me] ?
– Do you want me to?
You’re not reliable.
– How?
How ?? [incredulous]
– In the last three months …
How ?? [still in disbelief]
– In the last three months …
Three months don’t mean shit! I’m 18 years old. Three months don’t mean shit!
– We’re talking about now. In the last three months, how have I not been reliable?
Right now, I’m eighteen years old. I’ve had 18 fucking years, and you’re not reliable.
– You’re not thinking!
You know what? Fuck you. I’m not coming back. I’ve had enough of this shit!

It’s left to us to decipher the relationship between the accusation of unreliability and Michelle’s molestation at the hands of a cousin and a "close family friend." (A&E makes itself complicit in the kind of silence that has hounded her life, protecting the identity of her second abuser, much the nature of his relation to her family.) Interventionists would probably dismiss the accusations as a manipulation that only seeks to divert attention from the fact of her addiction. And yet, one can’t help notice that Michelle, despite her anger, is both willing and able to recognize her mother’s love. Also remarkable is her willingness to acknowledge her mother’s right to feelings that differ from her own.

What Michelle is unwilling to tolerate is her mother’s incomprehension. For in that stance of unknowing is the face of the silence that pretends that nothing happened, that the present has no relation to the past. But because the mother is still wracked with guilt – her own unspoken relation to the past – she insists that her reliability be measured in months rather than years. It’s also why she requires permission to protect her daughter, as if this were something a mother needed to hear. Yet, in doing so, she reinforces her child’s invisibility and the truth of what she continues to suffer. In maintaining her distance and defending against a guilt that remains unacknowledged, the mother once again puts another’s interest before her child’s.

The speaker of truth cannot fail to raise the hackles of those she condemns. It’s a never-ending battle that can find no end. Unless, of course, she submits to their version of events, their definition of her problem, in which case her understanding of herself – and her dignity – comes to be sacrificed one again.

On the Nature of  Recovery

Which brings us to back to the question with which this post began: what are we to make of a method of intervention, and a documentary series built around it, that assumes the addict’s problem is one of denial? That the way to express love and concern is by pointing to the impact of the addiction upon everybody’s lives? That the way to reach a drug-addled brain is by "raising bottom" by threatening the withdrawal of any affection or support that may still bind the addict to the ones they love? That all ties will be cut and all hearts closed until the addict finally sees the error of his ways?

Each of the images used to promote this show point to the semi-divine nature of such intervention, a helping hand extended to addicts who wallow blindly, stuck in their own version of hell. And while addicts certainly do suffer, the images – and the method – ignore the troubling question that lies at the root of their suffering. For in making the program about addiction and its denial, we are left in the dark about how things came to be that way. Deepening the voice-less solitude addicts so desperate seek to escape. But if we take seriously the proposition that a family’s conspiracy of silence is produced by systematic denial, it becomes even more difficult to think about the helping hand as a gift from above. For unless and until that silence is broken, it remains forever haunted by what has been repressed.

Which raises the question about the nature of recovery, itself, particularly if it remains tied to the intervention of one’s family: to re-cover (cover over) the origin of the addict’s unremitting sorrow and pain or to recuperate what the conspiracy of silence has so diligently sought to banish?

Michelangelo’s famous painting found upon the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel – the Creation of Adam – provides a way to think about this question, and not merely because two hands also form the center of this picture. While commonly seen as depicting the Genesis story in which God creates Adam by breathing life into a lump of clay, recent reminders of Michelangelo’s anatomical training suggest there might be more to the portrait than we have been led to believe: the royal red surrounding the Almighty figure and those in attendance may, in fact, be intended to represent a womb, but also a transection of the human brain, itself.

If it is a womb, then the image might have less to do with the breath of life than a moment of separation, the green scarf a stand-in for an umbilical cord only recently severed. The hands reaching across the sky a measure of the moment’s ambiguity, perhaps even grasping for what has been lost. Having been pushed from the womb, Adam is no longer in possession of the comfort it can provide; those that look to him from a distance also find themselves absent his company. In some ways, this is no different from the situation of the addict, reaching for the kind of recognition and understanding that seems maddeningly beyond one’s grasp.

And perhaps this is how a womb doubling as a brain might be relevant, pointing to the only way in which such a stalemate can be brought to an end: only by coming to an awareness of the nature of that struggle can one sever the source of torment. As long as Adam clings to what has been lost, he’ll forever feel deficient, left alone in a world without the means to make life an affirmation.

A closer look at the "womb" may make the task easier, for once we train our eyes on the family contained within, it begins to take on a very different face: not only is it crowded, its inhabitants don’t look any the more happy for it. The figures that we might assume to be attending angels look more like children, each taking a position around the bearded Father. Some even appear to be crushed by his weight, and the woman some see as Eve also seems ambivalent about her relation to the Almighty by her side. Were it not for the strength of his embrace, she might even attempt to flee.

In other words, this is not an idyllic portrait, whether that be one’s family or a world of perfection that exists in the heavens alone. In either case, it’s what appears to have given birth to Adam, as well as his separation, condemned to live a life apart. Stuck with the image of a Deity reigning supreme over His family in a womb that doubles as a brain.

But lest we forget, this famous painting is but one of nine portraits from Genesis that graces that famous ceiling, each clustered into a group of three: Noah and the Great Flood, Adam and Eve in the Garden, and the Creation Story with which the Book of Genesis begins. As one enters the chapel and heads toward the altar, these portraits are arranged in reverse chronological order, as if there was a specific story Michelangelo wished to tell, one not reducible to the sequence of events as narrated in the Bible, alone. The nine panels seem to recapitulate the theme already evident here: the passage from womb to brain, an earthly birth that’s transcended into something else.

The first panel depicts a Drunken Noah and the last panel depicts the Separation of Darkness from Light, and it’s the passage from the one to the other that is traced as one walks towards the altar, as if this act of walking were itself a pilgrimage reenacting a transformation from drunkenness into light.

The group of portraits belonging to Noah’s story all revolve around the patriarch and his family. In the first scene, one of his son’s (Shem) points to his father’s drunken nakedness; Shem’s brothers cover over the father’s body, out of fidelity and shame, heads averted from what they dare not see. In the second scene we see the Great Deluge, the foreground filled with suffering while Noah and his family lock themselves away in the ark that sits upon the horizon. In the third, we see the chaotic scene of a family sacrifice: Shem kneels in the foreground, overshadowed by his brothers who have been charged with the task of killing; the patriarch, with his hand raised in the air, watches over and directs this scene of sacrifice, his wife standing dutifully by his side.

Had Michelangelo retained the original sequence of events as found in Genesis, the panels would have been arranged differently: the Flood, thankful Sacrifice, followed by Noah’s drunkenness. But in changing their order, it’s another story that seems to be told, as if Shem’s identification of his father’s nakedness gave way to the Flood and subsequent sacrifice, as if Shem himself was being punished for his crime, as if he had drawn attention to a forbidden truth looking upon his drunken father. For in the sacrificial scene, Shem is the only one to remain entirely unclothed, his family portrayed in various stages of having covered over their nakedness.

If such sacrifice results in banishment, as is so often the case with addicts, many will turn to the arms of a lover for consolation, seeking what has been denied for far too long: a sympathetic ear, affection and understanding. But all too often, the one they find shares in their unspoken fate, seeking exactly what the other hopes to find, each damaged from conspiracies of silence that can only leave their victims dumbfounded in their wake. So, while they might at first believe they’ve discovered their very own Garden of Eden, what they find is a terrible Knowledge instead. That what they find is not the salve for which they were looking, nor the delight they thought they might have found.

Many seek qualities in their mate that compensate for their upbringing, perhaps a strong arm to protect them or someone who understands. But each has their own shortcomings, particularly those still caught in the fog of their unspoken fate, still caught in the shadow of what was done and what was denied. Quite cruelly, lovers able to protect will fail to understand, and those who understand far too frequently lack the means for release. And so, what began as a joyful celebration ends with another banishment, one that feeds the desire to escape with even greater force.

But if they’re lucky, something else might happen, something that Michelangelo places in the exact center of this church, a pivot around which a different story might emerge. For in the Creation of Eve we witness the figure of Adam lying inert against a barren tree, not so different from the pose of the Drunken Noah we had seen before. But rather having that nakedness covered over and denied we are witness to the emergence of Life, a "companion" that had not existed before.

Lest we think of this couple – and their names – merely as personages or stand-ins for male and female, it’s worth remembering the qualities associated with their names. That Adam is the term for a generic human and corporal being, "a passive
subject of providential and creative action," one who had no control over the conditions that gave rise to their existence. Eve, as the symbol of Life, is the miracle that allows "Adam" to overcome this fate, a spark that animates and gives way to growth, precisely the kind of transformations that’s eluded the passively created for far too long.

Which is how "God" finally enters the picture, a powerful figure in the heavens now embracing the recently awakened Eve. In this way, the portrait known as the Creation of Adam could just as well be described as the Creation of God. For all that has preceded this moment has existed in the deity’s absence, as if the Almighty had yet to be born.

And while this might sound like blasphemy, how else are we to make sense of the disappearance of Adam and Eve in all that follows? And how else are we to interpret what can only look like God’s nativity, traveling through a birth canal, emerging into another dimensions of existence, no longer encased in a womb or brain? For in the following portrait, the first in the next set of three, we see the Divinity engaged in the task of Separating the Waters, head bowed and eyes unseeing, as if still a newborn child. And by virtue of separating water from water, discerning which belongs to which, that land finally appears, a place to set one’s foot upon and finally find one’s ground.

Which, in turn, gives way to the creation of the Sun and Moon (or is this an act of separation too?), arms outstretched as if relegating each orb to its place in the sky. With each act, this Almighty figure seems to grow younger, as if each achievement were a step toward the Fountain of Youth. For discerning one light from the other carries as much weight as the separation the waters, each possessing a logic and rhythm of its own, each serving a purpose the other cannot fulfill.

And finally, we reach the culmination of this journey, what would seem to be the point of it all. All that precedes it is a precondition for its fulfillment: The Separation of Light and Darkness. No longer surrounded by attending angels, no longer encased by a womb, no longer yearning for what has been lost or haunted by what has been forgotten. Quite notably, too, this God has grown a pair of breasts, which might explain the disappearance of Adam and Eve. Careful eyes will have already noticed Michelangelo’s proclivity for drawing androgynous figures, blurring the line between the sexes, wedded as he is to the belief in a wholeness that transcends the two.

It’s as if Michelangelo’s making the case that this final set of panels depicts the basis for this transformation, the integration of opposites that need not stand alone. And for addicts who have crumbled under conspiracies of silence, this is crucial: transcending the violence that gave birth to their torment, overcoming the shortcomings of an inheritance unable to defend its young. For one reduced to helplessness, learning to recognize the power within; for one consumed by rage, recognizing the ability to heal. Discovering the missing element within oneself. Laboring tirelessly until it’s finally become one’s own. Learning to name one’s experience: separating darkness from light.

Some have suggested that there are hidden anatomical figures in this portrait too, that hidden in the robe’s wrinkles is a spinal column reaching toward the sky, that beneath this are the very structures that enable our sense of sight. In a way, each underscores the upward thrust at the core of this achievement, and the discernment that makes it so. No longer the passive subject, no longer the object for another’s pleasure. No longer stuck in yesterday’s sensations, no longer living in a haze. No longer the family scapegoat, nor the receptacle for another’s rage. No longer in need of completion, no longer feeling denied.

For the passage of generations in which incapacity and violence is passed from adult to child is a never-ending cycle, an endless spiral of anger and shame. It’s nothing other than an exercise in madness.

And someone has to make it stop.

The experience is like holding a flashlight in the dark, groping for evidence of what is cloaked beneath the cover of night. At any moment, only fragments are illuminated, pieces of a larger puzzle that has yet to be fully recognized much less understood. With each shift in perspective, new elements are brought to light, even as others are lost, returned to the secret place from whence they came … unless they can be retained in the mind’s eye. Until that time, however, like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, comprehension is doomed to the confusion brought on by the immediacy of experience in which one remains beholden to a (partial) picture of what stands before us. A mystery, precisely because the "whole" has yet to be grasped.

This is the experience of watching Dollhouse during its second season, particularly as we are introduced to an increasingly complex web of stories – and lies – about the nature of the Dolls’ existence both within the confines of the House itself and beyond. We learn, for example, that there are many other Dollhouses scattered across the globe, part of a vast network whose ultimate purpose is much larger than the mere satisfaction of the kind of fantasies for which the Dolls are groomed. We also learn of power struggles within and between these subterranean structures, as well as efforts that seek to expose them and shut them down. Given this web of deception and intrigue, it’s quite appropriate that the opening episode of this second season would close with the music of The World, by Earlimart:

The world is all around us, it’s much too big to see.
And the words are seldom honest, so we never disagree.
The world is all around us, so tell me what you see.
Yeah, the world is all around us, there’s little room to breathe.

Oh, the world is all around us, but have you noticed me?
Yeah, the world is all around us, now it’s plain to see
That the world has overshadowed me.

Significantly, this is the experience of the program’s main protagonist, Echo. Not unlike Sophia’s fall into matter. It reflects the nature of her struggle to piece together the different elements of her life, a confusion that is heightened, particularly since special care has been taken to erase all memory of the life that brought her to the present. It is also about her struggle to find meaning, to wrench some sense of coherence from the confusion of tongues with which she is surrounded. This is, in fact, the major storyline of this second season, right up to its conclusion: Echo’s growing awareness of her life as a Doll and her efforts to disentangle herself and others from the stranglehold of that eviscerated existence. Against all odds, she will develop a mind of her own – supplanting the emotions that have been placed into her – and in the process, makes the shift from a Sleeping Beauty to an independent agent working toward her own liberation. Her own White Knight.

As witnesses to this transformation, no longer will we be relegated to the status of passive observers empathizing with her plight. Instead, she becomes a leader and teacher, showing us the way to do battle with – and overcome – the brutal constraints of an artificial existence. Demonstrating the kind of insight and wisdom such an extraction requires.

The Doll’s Dilemma (Revisited)

It’s during this second season that the show’s creators have also provided a more nuanced understanding of the dilemma with which the Dolls are faced. We see more of the lives that preceded their entry into this place, the decisions that brought their "original" selves to this life of servitude. For most of them, it seems to be the result of a trauma too great to bear, one brought on at the hands of another or the terrible weight of an insufferable loss. Leading the brutalized to sign over their lives, in search of freedom from the pain.

For one – known as November – it was the loss of a child whose headache turned out to be the result of an unseen cancer, stealing a child from under her mother’s loving gaze, leaving a yawning absence unable to be filled or overcome. For another – Victor – it was the trauma of battle, unable to return to civilian life after the horror of bloody combat, a cruel inoculation against any kind of normalcy. For yet another – Sierra – it was the experience of being terrorized by a man who would not let her be, literally stalked into a psychic prison, left without any form of protection other than the "paranoid delusions" her doctors readily dismissed as the fabrications of deranged mind.

When seen in this light, the advantage of opting for the life of a Doll becomes obvious. The absence of memory. Anesthetizing the pain. An escape from from an abject existence already gutted of all that would allow for a life worth living. As November describes it:

[The recruiter] told me I didn’t need to suffer anymore:
I go to sleep for five years [and then] I wake up without pain.

Clearly, this is not the kind of escape one might associate with a vacation or a trip to exotic places. The Dollhouse requires their services. Those are the terms of the contract, part of the draconian exchange. And so, while the erasure of the Dolls’ memories protects against the trauma of having to remember, they must submit to the fantasies of others: transformed into personas designed to gratify the needs and desires of the powerful and wealthy. And since they are also Wiped of any memory of these assignments, they are "freed" of having to remember this, their forced subjugation.

This is more than just medical malfeasance or ethics violations.
This is prostitution. Human trafficking. Maybe murder.
They take people and they change them.
Into whatever they want them to be.

Some Dolls find themselves on permanent assignment, in which case they don’t even have the "benefit" of such Treatments, the release brought about by Erasure. Dr. Saunders, the wounded healer who has tended to the damaged, discovers that she, too, is a Doll, confronted by the awful realization that her life as a doctor is nothing but a fabrication. When faced with the lie she had taken to be the very essence of her her life, she is faced with the impossible, particularly when it becomes clear that she’s still bound by the terms of her contract. Forced to comply with the masquerade, she comes to see her life as a prison: the very contours of her existence dictated by intentions that are not her own. Inscribed from without, absent the possibility of escape.

How can I live?
How do I go through my day knowing that everything I think
comes from something I cannot abide?

Even the thought of returning to her previous self is too frightening a prospect to consider: for to let go of her persona – however false it may be – would mean relinquishing the life that has come to define her very existence, one she has come to consider her very own. There’s some security in that. For however much she may have come to despise the FACADE, it still provides a story and a purpose, even if it’s not her own. Choosing something else would be the equivalent of submitting to her own oblivion.

Why don’t you find out who you really used to be?
– Because I don’t want to die …
– I’m not even real! I’m in someone else’s body,
– And I’m afraid to give it up.

But lest we allow this to diminish our sympathies for the other Dolls, it’s worth reminding ourselves about the nature of their existence. For embedded within this alternative universe is a commentary about the kind of therapies designed to ensure compliance with the terms of their indentured servitude, therapies not so different from those to which we turn when faced with dilemmas too large to contend with on our own. The "treatments" that mark the transition from one Doll-state to another are accomplished with the aid of a chair (or is it a modified couch?) and the technology for Wiping old memories and Imprinting new ones merely serves to alleviate the stresses with which they are faced, making their subservience all the easier, perhaps even appearing as if it were the result of their own doing.

The other therapies available to them – in the form of art classes and yoga – would seem to amount to the same thing: the creation of a tranquil environment that would allow the Dolls to continue trying to "be their best," oblivious to the kind of enslavement to which they have been consigned. In short, treatments provided by the very same authorities whose interest it is to peddle the services of artificial Imprints to those in the position to pay for them.

Such is the Doll’s life.

The Power of Imprinting

Imprint: from the Middle English empreynte,
"to print, also to assail or set on with violence.
- Oxford English Dictionary

As with the concept used by ethologists, the imprinting to which the Dolls are subject operates at the level of the body and mind, taking advantage of an innate responsiveness – a sensitivity – through which an external object or command comes to be inscribed upon the soul. Some biologists might attribute this to the power of genes, but to leave it at that would overlook the conditions that give rise to a birth, whether it be natural or not. For "genes" are but the elements, the building blocks, that give way to successive generations, one coming on the heels of the next. Defining the space within which genesis might take hold … or remain stuck.

As we have already seen from the first season, most of the assignments for which the Dolls are summoned revolve around fantasies of love and adventure. The opening episodes of the second season remind us of this, as we witness Echo playing a variety of roles for the (male) clients that have hired her services: as a student and muse for a college professor, an undercover agent to assist in the investigation of an arms dealer, a mother to a newborn child orphaned at birth. And like before, we come to marvel at the sheer variety and veracity of her experience, completely submerged into the personas – and dramas – for which she has been recruited.

Perhaps this is why the Dolls are called Actives: they have been provided with the "architecture" that enables successive imprintings, their brains hardwired for activation as a Doll. They have been altered – not merely by earlier traumas but by technicians of the mind – making them forever amenable to playing the parts created for the benefit of others, taking each as seriously as if it were their own. Submerging themselves within the scenarios provided them, even in the face of certain death. And by virtue of the kind of programming involved, their dedication is complete. No second-guessing, no what-ifs, no wishing for an assignment different or more exciting than the one with which they’re faced.

Quite appropriately, according to the lingo of the Dollhouse universe, these assignments are called Engagements. Not only are the Dolls drawn into fantasies of love, the process of imprinting itself serves to lock each Doll into a predefined script, a piece of a puzzle they are meant to complete. As if it were a marriage made in heaven.

If only it were that simple.

As if to underscore the nature of the constellations into which the Dolls are inserted, an entire episode ("Belle Chose") examines the case of a man who, quite literally, recreates an idyllic family scene using those he’s forcibly recruited to play the women in his (past) life. When one of them fails to cooperate, her refusal only serves to trigger a barely concealed rage and, after killing her, the anger gives way to a compulsion to find another to fill the dead woman’s place, like a robot. Haunted by a long lost ideal of perfection, forever seeking to fill the empty "hole" that’s always (re)created.

Perhaps this is no different from the fury that comes to be unleashed on each of Echo’s previous clients ("A Love Supreme") as the rogue Alpha, competitor for Echo’s affections, finds himself no longer able to accept the fact that she would come to love another. Neither does it seem to be radically different from Sierra’s stalker ("Belonging"), unable to acquiesce to her repeated refusals. And even though the widower that hires Echo to replace the mother of his orphan child would seem to be cut from a different cloth ("Instinct"), at some level, the same logic would seem to be in operation there, as well. For each has come to be obsessively attached to a need that – in their minds, at least – only a Doll can fill.

The Dolls, in other words, are not the only ones subject to a power that seems to exert its control from elsewhere, endlessly grasping for what seems to exceed their reach. Whether it be the murderous passion of a jilted lover or the melancholy of a husband mourning the death of an ideal, these men – those who fill the Dollhouse’s roster of clients – find themselves unable to countenance a world that continually frustrates their desires, forever operating under a set of compulsions they find themselves unable to control.

But while these clients possess the wherewithal to hire the services of an underground facility to feed their barely controlled passions, the Dolls are forcibly subjected to imprints that are not even their own. Yes, the personas are only temporary, but their effects are more far-reaching than we might have imagined, both in their immediate impact upon the body and mind but also in terms of the accumulated emotional upheavals they are required to endure. The modifications necessary for each Engagement are so profound that they alter the bodies of Actives at the physical, sometimes even the glandular, level. Their very physiology altered to facilitate the performances that are expected of them.

This facet of their exeprience is illustrated with particular forcefulness ("Instinct") when we witness Echo become mother to a newborn child. Despite the absence of any "real" connection to the infant, overnight, the young one comes to be the very reason for her living: watching over her client’s son, even as the father lies asleep. And so, quite understandably, when she begins to suspect that her "husband" plans to remove the baby from her care, she loses all sense of composure, willing to fight anyone and everyone to ensure the well-being of the one that she has come to see as her own.

And this is where the pathos of being an Active becomes glaringly evident. For it is precisely the client’s loss that Echo has been recruited to ameliorate, a task that she has been programmed to take on as if her life depended upon it, even if, later, the client comes to the realization that the hole left by the dead cannot be be filled. Not even by a Doll.

This isn’t someone playing make believe.
In Echo’s mind, she planned for this child.
Carried him for nine months, delivered him, and nursed him.
For all intents and purposes, [the child] is her baby. …

You could have hired a nanny, a babysitter.
But you wanted someone to bond profoundly with your child,
Because you could not bond with him yourself.

This is no small indictment. It is precisely this kind of inability that forms the unspoken knot around which the services of the Dollhouse are organized, the kind of need that establishes the very reason for its existence. For it is this neediness that gives rise to the fantasies of its clientele, the Engagements within which the Dolls come to be caught. It’s no small irony that the very same kind of neediness brought many Actives to the Dollhouse in the first place, the trauma experienced at the hands of others unable to come to terms with their own emptiness. And so, in taking on the personas assigned to them, the Dolls unwittingly find themselves subjected to the same kind of demands they originally sought to escape. Except this time – thanks to the technology of Wiping – they will be saved from the pain of recognizing the kind of treatment they continue to receive at the hands of their clients.

Which is not to say that there’s no merit to the kind of services they provide. In confronting the father of the orphaned boy, the Head of the Dollhouse points to the severe consequences of leaving those needs unaddressed, particularly for a child.

The formative months of an infant’s life are crucial.
A child who feels loved is imprinted with a sense that the world is a safe place.
A child that does not feel loved grows up to be
… well, most likely a sociopath.

Clearly, the "service" provided by the Dollhouse is not merely the fulfillment of fantasy. At a deeper level, the Dolls compensate for an abiding absence, a barely recognized need for a Mother whose existence in the outside world has been all but erased but who alone possesses the power to diffuse the demons that lie in wait. And it is precisely this absence that serves as the invisible fulcrum around which a cruel world of Substitutes has been built, set into motion by a dazzling array of Imprints: those which infants receive from those who fail to love them, the various traumas that turn humans into Dolls, the Personas channeled into the architecture of Actives for each of their engagements, and the barely conscious Imprints that compel clients to seek out the services of a Dollhouse.

Within this jumble of needs, only those possessed of worldly power carry the necessary weight to establish the terms of Engagement; the remainder, like marionettes on a string, act out the parts assigned to them, even as they "try to do their best." And so, with the face of pain carefully sequestered from sight, each set of actors is set upon a stage ruled over by what one writer has called a most accursed religion.

For it’s in this way that trauma becomes God, where an unacknowledged power is given reign over the world of the (barely) living.

The Elephant in the Room

There are other names used to describe the effects of being subject to this kind of imprinting, at least the kind that the Dolls have come to bear. For it is accompanied by a certain sensitivity, the kind brought on by the suffering of violence, often experienced as a curse but sometimes recognized as a blessing. When misunderstood, it takes on the guise of the demonic, an unwanted source of persecution. For it comes in a language not easily deciphered: the enigma of a foreign tongue. And when caught in the grip of its shadow, swallowed by a darkness without end, life itself seems to crumble, leaving one forever on the brink of despair.

More often than not, for a Doll, such visions are but an echo from a previous life of which they are no longer aware, reminders about another place and time, the memories of which have been "erased" but which nevertheless always seem find a way to make themselves known.

This is what we witness in the case of Sierra, one of Echo’s comrades in the Dollhouse and fellow chamber-mate ("Belonging"). For her, the unexpected emerges while painting. And what was intended as a peaceful form of self-expression turns eerily into an experience of a different sort, the subject of her creativity overtaken by something darker. While it has no recognizable form, it slowly comes to dominate her simple scene, as if seeking to give voice to a malevolence that has been pushed aside and hidden. And yet, for Sierra, it’s nothing other than a source of bewilderment. So, when asked about her creation, all she can say is,

I don’t like this color.
– [So] why do you use it?
It’s always here … ?

Because Echo has been paying attention – perhaps also because, at some level, she can relate – she brings the painting to another’s attention. To the Engineer, in fact. The one responsible for the Imprints that repeatedly send Sierra out of the Dollhouse for Engagements that are not her own. In bringing Sierra’s creation to him, we see how Echo has become a mother hen to those closest to her, those who share her sleeping quarters, looking out for their best interests, much to her overseers’ dismay. For this kind of behavior falls outside the normal parameters of a Doll. Nevertheless, there she is, painting in hand, inviting the programmer to recognize what’s staring her in the face, plain for all to see.

Sierra made it. Sierra hates the bad man.
– Who’s the bad man?
He’s not like the others. He makes her sad, over and over.
– This is a pretty primitive rendition.
– I’m not sure it is a man, let alone which one.
You’re not looking hard enough. You never do.

In many ways, Sierra’s experience is not so different than Victor’s, the one who has come to be her closest friend and protector. For when she finds him disposing of the black ink in the communal shower ("now you don’t have to use [that] color anymore") their joyful celebration will seek put the paint to another more playful use. But even as they begin to slip into a rhythm of their own, the very elements they seek to appropriate for their enjoyment will turn, triggering a different kind of darkness – invisible to the woman standing in front of him – one that is all his own. The very reason he came to be a Doll. The markings on her face blending into those of another, emerging from a different time.

As he collapses to the floor, he will repeat – like a broken record – the very limit that he’s been unable to master. I don’t want to take control. I don’t want to take control. For earlier, when Echo first become aware of his plan to help Sierra, she congratulated him for his desire to take charge. But now, when faced with the frenzied presence that haunts himself, the man who would be Victorious finds himself crumbling instead, as if paralyzed from without. And so, what began as an act of chivalry and a moment of jubilation turns into a mockery of any kind of aspiration, defeated by nothing short of a ghost. As if playing with the murky ink of one was doomed to bleed into the other. As if the very act of exultation was prohibited to those who still find themselves living the life of a Doll.

Understandably, our attention will turn to the authorities, those in charge of the everyday operation of the Dollhouse, as Echo had already done. Among these, two figures loom large, two personas in their own right: the Engineer and the Head. The "techie" responsible for transforming the Dolls before and after each of their assignments, and the chief executive of operations, recruiter of Dolls and overseer of all Engagements. However, as quickly becomes clear – and despite their declared interest in protecting those in their charge – both will fail, and quite miserably, at that.

The Engineer – Topher Brink – is but a boy, surrounded by the wet dream of any aspiring master of the universe. Gadgets and toys galore. For him, the of job imprinting and wiping the Dolls is nothing other than an opportunity to exercise his brilliance, testing the limits of his knowledge and what the Actives’ bodies are able to bear. Fully encapsulated in a world of his own, even while remaining completely oblivious to the suffering of others. Only after Echo’s accusation does the darker side his experimental "play" begin to dawn upon him and his hyperactive brain, forced to consider the consequences of his dalliances with the minds and bodies under his control.

And so, later, when he consults the (missing) Doctor’s records, he will discover that Sierra’s picture was not the first. Like unrecognized writing upon the wall, he will find himself surrounded by a chorus of other portraits similarly haunted, blotches giving voice to what’s been wiped but not entirely unremembered. Sitting among these gestures toward the unknown, the technician will find himself overwhelmed, out of his element. Moved by the plight of a woman for whom he finally feels responsible, yet unable to make heads or tails of what he finds before him, much less think of anything that might actually help.

In contrast, Adelle DeWitt, the Head of the Dollhouse, will find herself in charge, as always. Cool and collected – some would say icy – she remains dispassionate about the nature of her work, even while reassuring herself (and others) that it’s the Dolls’ interests that she has at heart. For whatever quandary may have brought them to the Dollhouse in the first place, the terms of their service ultimately protects them from the pain of psychic collapse. So, even if the Engagements force them to brush shoulders with the unsavory underbelly of wealth and privilege, at least they are kept safe.

But even she recognizes that there is a line that should never be crossed. Upon hearing of Sierra’s repeated Engagements with the psychopath responsible for sending her to the Dollhouse, DeWitt will confront him in no uncertain terms. You have made me an accomplice in something vile, Mr. Kennard. And it ends now! And yet, even this vigorous defense will come to naught, as the Head is reminded that she is but a link in a much larger chain of command. And so, when orders come down from on high that she’s not to interfere with this client or the details of his Engagements, she will be left powerless to do anything else to defend her charge, particularly if she hopes to keep her job.

Meanwhile, the boy-technician, finding himself in the grips of a novel moral dilemma, will seek to help the one who’s been pounded to the edge of sanity, allowing her to meet the "client" as her original self rather than a Doll imprinted to serve his every need and desire. What the Engineer hadn’t counted on, however, was the kind of rage that lay just beneath the surface, the blotch of darkness having already come to infect her very soul.

As the outrage finds expression through a knife repeatedly plunged into its target, the Engineer comes to be confronted with yet another side of his impotence, and not merely by virtue of the death wrought by an anger that had simmered for far too long. For the killing brings no relief, and the boy-child who merely wanted to help will have to face the distraught woman once again, asking what had come to pass under his watch. Both soaked in the bloody stain of a deed that can no longer be undone.

DeWitt, the Head, will come up against similar defeats, forever reminded that she does not hold all the power, that others will exercise authority with more viciousness and confidence than she could ever wield on her own behalf, much less those of her Dolls. And so, over the course of this second season, we will witness a slow and steady decline, as she struggles with – and fails – to come to terms with this, her "castration."

This Head who had aspired to be King will finally hit bottom ("Stop-Loss") even as one of her favored Dolls – Victor – is released from the Dollhouse, only to be kidnapped by the very forces that had haunted him for so long. In this way, she will find herself caught between a rock and a hard place, leaving her desperate for even the semblance of comfort, whisked away to the nether regions of oblivion …

Such are the different faces of the Impossible, the unavoidable collision between past and present, when Play runs up against the problem of consequence and when Responsibility confronts the awful limit of its own powerlessness. All the while, the haunted figures in the background – the very ones these personas of authority would seek to protect – are left alone with their half-erased misery, watching from the sidelines, even as they’re recruited to service the needs of others. Imprinted for (and by) their clients’ dramas, acting out scripts that are not their own. The dream of a different life seemingly beyond their reach.

Like five blind men, each held in the grip of the "sense" that’s uniquely their own, these figures will remain divided, even as each tries to do their best. Stymied in their efforts to wrest the reigns of control, precisely because the "whole" has yet to be understood.

Beginning the Ascent, Overcoming the Splits

Each of these characters – and others – will come to be constellated around Echo, as if they had been nothing but disembodied voices reverberating in her sleeping chamber, waiting to be recognized as her own. But before that can happen, she first needs to locate her center, the place that will hold them together, one that had yet to make itself known.

That long and excruciating process had already begun when we last met her at the end of the first season, a glimmer of awareness that had just begun to emerge, the other voices in her head she would eventually come to recognize as her own. The Imprints that had come to define her lives in the Dollhouse. By the time we meet her again, Echo will have already begun to recognize this pattern more fully, no longer deprived of the memory her captors continually sought to erase.

I remember everything.
Sometimes I’m someone else and then I come back.
But I still feel them. All of them.
I’ve been many people: I can hear them, sometimes suddenly.
I’m all of them, but none of them is me. Do you know who’s real?"
– Caroline
I want to find her. I want to find all of them, real them. They can be found.
We are lost, but we are not gone. Will you help me?

The man to whom Echo speaks is her new Handler, appointed by the Dollhouse to watch over her transitions from one persona to another, replacing the one who came before. His name is Paul Ballard, the former FBI agent whose crazy theories about an underground prison finally paid off, bringing him face to face with the one for whom he had been looking. But because he’s still operating under the impression that it’s his role to play the white knight, he still believes the objective is to rescue Echo from her Doll-state and return her to Caroline. But despite the lingering fog of confusion, Echo will have already come to a different conclusion, recognizing that all the people she’s been must have a place in whatever she has yet to become.

It’s a conversation they will have on more than one occasion. For the two have bonded in ways that exceed the intentions of the powers that be, a secret union committed to undoing the House in which they find themselves. They have also committed themselves to helping Echo develop a better sense of her emerging memories, recognizing that she will be both student and teacher in that process.

All of these things that happened to me, I feel them.
– I know, Echo. I know you remember everything.
Not remember. Feel.
I was married: I felt love and pain [and] fear. It’s not pretend for me.
They made me love my little boy, and then they took him away.
They make it so real; every time they make it so real.
Why do they do that?

For this, he will have no answer. But when he broaches the possibility of allowing the Engineer to Wipe these rediscovered feelings, she will protest. Despite the pain that they bring, as far as she’s concerned, it’s better than the alternative. Feeling nothing would be worse. That would be like before: asleep. I’m awake now [and] I don’t want to go back.

Later, through a series of unexpected events, the two of them will find themselves outside the confines of the Dollhouse. But just for a minute. (Three months, to be exact.) And it is during this time ("Meet Jane Doe") that Echo goes into training with the full expectation of returning to the site of her former captivity, preparing for the final escape in which she hopes to save herself and the others held imprisoned there. Working on her mind and her body, developing the skills she will need for that eventuality.

At first, her mind will protest. Ravaging headaches drop her to the floor, as painful as any assault on the body. In a way, it’s a measure of her very ambition, seeking to break the barriers that have been put in place since time immemorial, accessing selves content to remain oblivious of the others’ existence. Pushing through protections meant to maintain the safety of distance. It will be next to impossible to put this experience into words, but when Paul Ballard asks, she will try:

It’s like a wave, everything rushing over me.
And then the wave pulls back and you see what it washed up.
Picking up the shells and the smooth stones from the shore.
Collecting myself.

Later, with practice, the movement between these separated spaces will become easier, no longer experienced as the rush of panic or pain. No longer drawn into the whirlwind of emotions brought on by excavations of the ancient, the accumulations of countless pasts. And with this development comes a new sense of possibility – a new certitude – including an answer to the question about who she might be.

So how exactly does this work? You accessing other personalities?
– I used to have to make an effort to switch between Imprints
– But now I can slip back and forth without even thinking.
Who am I talking to now?
– Echo. You’re always talking to Echo.

When Echo finally returns to the Dollhouse, she will be thrown into solitary confinement, as if underscoring her new understanding of what is means to live within its walls. For the Head is none too pleased with Echo’s extended absence, suspicious of how a Doll could survive without her "protection." Responding to those who would protest the harshness of her punishment, she’ll only bark her defense. – Pain reveals who we really are. Let’s see who this girl really is. – As if secretly hoping that Echo will find a way to overcome the obstacles put in her path. As if this new form of torture was an initiation for Echo’s transformation on her own behalf.

In some ways, this eventuality was already predicted. Her (original) Handler had warned of what might come of her newly emerged determination, suggesting that the course she had set for herself could only end in disaster.

You’re pushing [everyone]. The actives, the staff.
What you’re doing could have consequences you couldn’t predict or control.
Some people aren’t ready to wake up.
– I don’t care. Something bad is coming. Like a storm.
– And I want everyone to survive it. They need to wake up.
Echo, [if] you stir things up, you might bring the storm on yourself.

It’s a strange conversation, bespeaking a familiarity – and candor – quite uncharacteristic of relations between Handlers and Dolls. Hinting at another dimension of Echo’s past that had yet to make itself fully known. And yet, from their conversation, this much is clear: both are now aware that the Doll’s Engagements are nothing but a distraction. For Echo’s new mission is nothing short of finding a way to wake "them" up.

Stilling the Waters, Coming to Consciousness

Perhaps for a moment, caught in the trap of doubt, Echo might wonder whether this confinement has been self-induced, a storm she has brought on herself. For the place to which she’s been banished – ominously referred to as the Attic – has been a place much discussed but rarely seen, a place to which the defective and disobedient are consigned, never to be heard from again. It is the price to be paid for crossing those to whom one has been sworn to obey.

And so, when we see the Head – newly invigorated after returning from her own visitations of the depths – standing over Echo and pronouncing her indictment, it would seem as if all hope has been lost ("The Attic").

You’ve disrupted countless Engagements, brought Alpha into my house, deceived me with the help of Paul Ballard [your Handler], dragged [the Engineer] and [Security] into the fun, and now Victor and Sierra. You leave a wake of destruction wherever you go.

There’s only one place for a Doll as irreparably damaged as you.
– The attic … !
They say it’s whatever hell you imagine, but I think it’s something far worse.

And as if alerting us to what is yet to come, we will overhear the Engineer and Security speaking about this mythical place from which no one returns. Wondering what will become of the Doll who has become an unexpected friend and ally in a conspiracy designed to bring an end to the Dollhouse and the Corporation for which it stands.

No one comes back, Boyd.
– But why? What do they do to them there?
No one knows. Experimenting … torture …
I think they’re testing the limits of the human mind.
The brain is kept in a fear-induced, adrenalin-fueled overdrive state.
Like a problem you can’t solve. Either the nightmare lasts forever or …
– Or it doesn’t last, at all.

Of course, for those stuck in the Attic, this is not something they can know. For as the Engineer has already recounted, it’s a trap contained entirely within the mind, fueled by fear that refuses to go away. Leaving its captives filled with panic and the imperative of escape, but without the requisite knowledge or signposts to show them the way.

In what follows, we come to witness what’s contained within Echo’s mind, as well as the way she learns how to escape it. For it requires a different attitude – a different stance – toward what would pretend to be real, a deceiving presence that appears right before her eyes. It means coming to recognize that there’s a pattern not readily apparent in the immediacy of her experience, one that’s detectable only when, amidst all the noise and confusion, she finds a way to loosen the grip that "reality" has over her.

Which is no small feat. The first impulse that takes hold is the imperative of rescuing her friends – Victor and Sierra – who have also been condemned to this place. But each time she tries, her frantic efforts will be crushed, as the two lovers are struck down by armed guards, even as Echo is caught behind a plate a plexiglass, helplessly watching, unable to intervene on their behalf. But just like a video game, after each assassination, she will find herself returned to her sleeping state, only to repeat frenetic attempts at search and rescue, hoping against hope that this time she will have learned how to outsmart those who would kill her friends.

It will not take Echo long to see through the nature of this deception – that it’s all a cruel trick of the mind – realizing that she must let her friends "die" if she is to find her way out of that awful place. And so, as she braces herself for the violence of her imagination and allows the guards to let loose with their rain of bullets, she will turn her attention elsewhere, looking for another means of escape.

What she discovers – like an Alice climbing through the rabbit hole, only in reverse – is a scene of what would appear to be nothing short of a mini paradise. Snow falling on a silent landscape, home to a twisted, yet beautiful, tree that stands alone. It’s an abrupt change from what came before, angry blasts of fire replaced by the calm of frozen water falling from the sky. Which will leave Echo not a little confused and disoriented, not quite knowing where it is that she finds herself.

Is this still the Attic or is it someplace else?

As Echo looks around, she will recognize scenes from her past, snapshots from long lost lives that have brought her to the present. Some of them will be familiar to those of us who have traveled with her for part of that journey; by necessity, others will remain an enigma to everyone but her. However, in either case, the portraits are no different from what appears to those on the brink of death, at least those who have returned to tell of their experience. Life flashing before one’s eyes. Except in this case, Echo’s not dead.

Or is she?

Even the tree beneath which she stands comes to be seen as familiar, a silent totem from her childhood home.

But even as she begins to orient herself to these visions of the past, a shadowy figure begins to circle ominously even as she finds herself met by familiar faces – like her original Handler – that slowly morph into something else: ghoulish figures seemingly intent on undermining any semblance of sanity she might still recognize as her own.

Boyd, where am I? What am I doing here?
– Echo, if you stir things up you might bring a storm on yourself.
– There are not a lot of good people here.
There aren’t? What about my friends? Where are my friends?
– [laughing] You have no friends!!
– Now be quiet. [transforming into stranger]
– Or I’ll find something to stuff that mouth with!

And then she bumps into an enemy from her past, the chief of Dollhouse security who had been sent to the Attic at the end of the previous season. So, even though there’s no love lost between them, Echo is once again put in the position of trying to discern the real from her imagination, realizing that he could be stuck in the Attic along with her: Is this man yet another paranoid creation or is it possible that two people could actually find a way to communicate in this god-forsaken place? So, once again, Echo is forced to find a way to distinguish between a healthy fear that seeks to protect and one that merely serves to prolong the delirium induced by the Attic.

When the two of them determine that the other is indeed "real," they will also deduce that he has stumbled upon a way into her mind. Armed with this knowledge, Echo will press him for the lessons he’s learned – what he’s discovered about the Attic and the telepathic travel he seems to have mastered – even as the shadowy figure who calls himself Arcane continues to haunt them from a distance.

So you travel from mind to mind?
– I guess so, yeah.
I need to know how. I need to find my friends.
– Well, he’ll probably go after them. He targets newcomers.
– He might even lead us right into their heads.
How do you track him? How does he get in and out?
– He can sense fear. He finds something that you’re deeply afraid of.

And we’ll see that it is precisely such fears that have embroiled her friends – the Lovers she’s so desperate to save – finding themselves stuck in an infinite loop, endlessly reliving their worst of fears. Unable to find a way out.

As we already know, for Victor, that fear is the terror he’s come to associate with his tour of duty, caught in an interminable battle for his very survival: hand-to-hand combat with a man who, despite the foreign garb and the absence of a military uniform, appears to be none other than a version of himself. The two of them fighting each as if their very lives depended on it. As if the existence of one were a mortal threat to the other.

At the same time, somewhere on the other side of this psychic prison, Sierra enjoys a quiet evening with none other than Victor, the one who so unexpectedly entered her life while both served at the Dollhouse. Which doesn’t seem so terrible, until she opens hers eyes, that is. And in place of Victor she finds the man who had brutalized her, the monster responsible for sending her to the Dollhouse in the first place, somehow returning from the realm of the dead. As if her new lover had become indistinguishable from the horror she had struggled so hard to push out of the bounds of memory.

Later, the two of them will compare notes about the hell they finally managed to escape:

In my scenario, I was constantly fighting myself, at war.
Just trying to get home to my girl.
– In mine I was constantly making love to you
– And then you’d turn into the rotting corpse of a rapist I killed.

Meanwhile, as Echo begins experimenting with what she has learned about psychic travel, she suddenly finds herself transported to another place and what would seem to be another mind. By all appearances, it seems to be Tokyo. And she will discover that the man sitting in front of her remains quite oblivious to the fact that his tranquil existence is but an artifact of the Attic. Instead, he believes he’s protecting a secret on behalf of the Corporation, knowledge about a weakness in their computer mainframe that must not get out.

He will hear nothing of her protests, brushing off all talk about the Attic. For he is convinced of the responsibility with which he’s been invested, trusted to safeguard a key vulnerability in Rossum’s operation. So when Echo warns of the Shadowy figure and the violence that might come to wreck havoc on his idyllic prison, he will dismiss that that too, quite unaware of the amputations that keep him rooted to this in-between state. And sure enough, the one called Arcane will come and kill him. But rather than allow this to send her in a panic, Echo will find the strength to turn her attention to the practical task at hand.

From Arcane, she will learn that the "killings" are meant to dissipate the power of the Attic, to sap the energies that have been mis-directed there. In the process, we will be witness to something quite remarkable, for Echo has begun to develop her powers of discernment. Which is not merely a matter of learning to puncture the nightmare visions that seem to spring from nowhere. Neither is it merely a matter of learning how to distinguish the real from the unreal in this mental prison. She is also quickly becoming an adept in the skill of traveling between the ghosts that populate this place and, as if that weren’t enough, learning how to disentangle herself from the fears – and associated forms of blindness – she meets along the way. Refusing to be drawn in, and finding the strength to avoid being repelled. After all, they are what they are. Nothing other than the psychic protections developed to contend with the darkness thrown our way.

And it is from these lessons that Echo will find a way to save herself and her friends, first from the crippling fear that has kept them entranced in the face of death and, later, from the Attic itself. For when all her friends and allies are finally assembled, it will become clear that their primary objective will be to find a way out of the psychic hell that has kept them imprisoned there.

But this is no small task. As they all know, each of them is plugged into an other place, somewhere different than where they currently find themselves to be. The banished expert who helped create this place will describe how the Corporation – which, perhaps, is nothing other than a mode of living – draws upon the adrenalin and fear generated by the Attic, asserting that the most obvious solution to their conundrum, finding someone to pull the plug, would do nothing other than turn their brains to mush. After all, their bodies are still lying inert, elsewhere, fully engaged with with the Corporate machine that sustains itself from the very force of life they willingly, if unknowingly, relinquish through their visions of hell.

And then a flash of brilliance: if the problem is this enthrallment, why not submit to the opposite? Not merely the mental exercise of distinguishing what is real from what is not but by putting an end to the very connection that gives rise to the world of shadowy appearances in the first place? Before the others can voice their protests, Echo will allow herself to be shot, providing the attendants of the Attic the very excuse to disassemble the elements of her prison.

For, at that point, she and her body will already be dead.

Her friends, Victor and Sierra, will submit themselves to the same fate – as if The Lovers were no other than her own – fully expecting that staring into the face of the unknown will provide them with the strength and insight to come out through the other side, with Echo’s help. Fully believing that their deaths will finally put them on the path toward awakening.

And so, Sierra will submit to the fear she’s always dreaded more than death itself: annihilation in the arms of her lover. After saying their final goodbyes, Victor will plunge the depths of her gut with a sharpened blade, silently watching as the life slowly drains out of her body. And as her lifeless form turns cold upon the barren floor, overcome, he will turn to the mob-infested streets outside, allowing himself to be swallowed by the very kind of violence that’s haunted him for an eternity. Sitting passively, he will wait for the torture to come, welcoming the fate he had, until recently, fought so tirelessly to keep at bay.

However crazy the idea may have seemed, each of them discovers how death of the old gives way to the possibility of resurrection. And with that feat accomplished, Echo will finally find herself surrounded by a constellation of friends and allies not unlike the one already formed in the Attic. As if the one had given way to the materialization of the other. A community of "others" committed to the same task, no longer divided by self-interest or fear.

Surprisingly, this constellation will also includes the Head – (or is it the feet?) – who, earlier, seemed nothing other than a sworn enemy of this quest. But as we soon discover, we have been subject to a certain kind of deceit, finding that all is other than what it seemed. For Echo and her Head have been in quiet collusion, fully aware from the very beginning that her mission required she sink into the underworld … precisely so she could find her way out.

They say it’s whatever hell you imagine, but I think it’s something far worse.
I think the Attic is where Rossum is keeping some of its darkest secrets.
They’re rabid in their protection of whatever’s hidden there.
– And you want me to go in?
I need you to go in.
Far more importantly, I need you to come back and bring the secrets with you.
It’s the only way we’ll ever gain an edge.
– "We"?
We can bring them down.
– [But] nobody else has ever gotten out of the Attic.
[That] nobody else is you.

Toward a Different of Future, Unplugged

If Echo’s task so far has been about (re)integrating the splits with which she has been surrounded – giving coherence to what has been fractured, i.e., putting her House in order – then the part of the journey that remains is about re-negotiating her relationship with the world beyond. For her fate was not born in a vacuum. And this means developing an understanding of the Imprints she has received at the hands of others, and coming to terms with them.

As we see in "The Hollow Men," this is precisely the task to which the newly constellated members of the Dollhouse have committed themselves. Having overcome the world of the Attic, this means turning their attention in a new direction, toward the powers that have worked so hard to keep them quietly obedient in their subterranean prison. It also means returning to the past, paying particular attention to the ways in which trauma, trust, and betrayal has led to the life they now seek to put behind.

Through a series of flashbacks, we will witness how Caroline’s life led to Echo’s emergence. For in that former existence, she was a self-described terrorist. It began during her college years, after learning about the kind experiments the Corporation used to develop and market its products, becoming even more radicalized after meeting members in the animal liberation movement. But as if to demonstrate how her energies have been misdirected, just as she finds herself on the brink of destroying a key research facility in Rossum’s corporate kingdom, Caroline will have noticed a room not included on the blueprints in her possession. What she finds there will force her to reconsider her cause, including the course of action to which she had been fully committed: humans plugged into machines, not quite dead, but neither fully alive. Guinea pigs for an ambition more frightening than she could have ever imagined.

But before the charges she has planted can be undone, the explosion will come, and she will find herself on a path that can no longer be corrected, marking the end of one life and the beginning of another. And in what may have been the first of many splits to come, she leaves the side of her co-conspirator – her "sister" – more for the protection of the other than herself. Choosing the life of an outlaw so as to preserve the life of the other. And so, when she finally finds herself standing face-to-face with the kind of Authority she had so furiously come to hate, the spokesman will make an offer that cannot be refused. Surprising, not so much because she had a choice (she didn’t), but because she was allowed to live.

Which isn’t to say that the offer was a godsend, even though those who inhabit the halls of power clearly see themselves entitled to act as if they were the very incarnation of the divine. For with power comes the kind of certitude that only belongs to the Gods. And although she will not have known it at the time, those of us in the audience will recognize the one making the offer as no other than the man who would later become her first Handler, the one whom she would later come to trust with her very life: Boyd Langton.

It would seem they had come to an agreement not much different than the one Echo would later make with her Head, one that required that she willingly submit herself to her own extinction. Except in this case, the cause for which she’s recruited was in service of the Corporation itself, and its leaders. She will be told that she has been identified as "special," unique in ways that are crucial for their survival. The words used to describe her – and the mission for which she’s been recruited – are nothing short of the language deification: Caroline is both savior and their salvation.

You’re the key. The key to everything.
You’re going to save us all. …
Inside that body of yours is everlasting life.

It’s an insidious form of seduction, for it plays on the kind of insecurity that plagues us all, inviting Echo to believe that their absence – precisely what they lack – is the only measure of her worth, one that can only be realized under their direction. And so, like anyone who finds life’s meaning by the reflections thrown their way by more powerful others, she will insert herself into their organization and their prison, trusting that the life being offered is the only path worth following. Much like the rest of us who put our faith in the (hollow) men and women who would claim to know our future, allowing ourselves to believe that their cause should be our own.

But as Echo later discovers, this life is no different than the one found in the Attic. For she was set-up for an existence in which the privileged and powerful shamelessly tap the life of others, nothing but parasites dependent upon the very Dolls they have come to despise. Cruelly, only much later will she learn what it meant when they said she was the key to their salvation: The mind doesn’t matter. It’s the body we want.

Every time your nervous system blocks an imprint,
it leaves neurochemical tracers in your cerebrospinal column.
We’ve tried to replicate it, but we can’t. It’s unique to your physiology.
So we’re going to harvest it from you.

But because all of this has been Wiped from her mind, Echo will have to find a way to recover what has been lost. Reclaiming knowledge of what was done to her, and the ways she was led astray. And so, using the skills that she had learned to develop while in the attic, she will finally find the courage to access the memories of her former self – Caroline – in an effort to piece together the elements of the story that had long eluded her, even as she continued playing her part in it.

What she finds there will give her the courage and conviction for what follows: confronting the one who banished her to the Dollhouse in the first place. As much a condemnation of herself as the man who brought her there, even as he insists on taking credit for the person that she has managed to become.

I believed you!
You pretended to care for me, and I believed you …
– I did – I do care for you. More than you’ll ever know.
– Who do you think allowed you to grow as an individual, as Echo?
– While they were sending you out to bed half of Los Angeles,
– I was here making sure you had the space to become your own person.
You said you’d protect me and I believed you, you son of a bitch!
– I did protect you. Now it’s your turn to protect all of us.
– You’re going to be the savior of the world.
I trusted you … I loved you …

On the heels of this confrontation and realization will come yet different kind of explosion, as much a destruction of the secret pact that had been formed between them as a measure of the energy brought to the surface as a consequence of her release from it. For in more ways than one, Boyd Langton had become her father. As her original Handler – and, later, as chief of Security for the Dollhouse – he had provided Echo with a sense of safety and protection, even if it rested on a belief and trust that, in retrospect, could only be seen as hopelessly misplaced.

So, with this unleashing of forces, we come face to face with the true meaning of an apocalypse. A cataclysm and a revelation. The force of one feeding into, even magnifying, the strength of the other. Its magnitude giving evidence to the powers that had been held in a precarious balance but which – with the lynchpin finally removed – leads to a thunderous release that ultimately leads to her own salvation.

And this is how we come to see Echo furiously running.
Like a bat out of hell.

Out of the Ashes

As if to underscore the kind of unraveling brought on by this kind of termination, the show’s creators provide us with a bleak post-apocalyptic vision, a dystopian future that lies ten years into Echo’s future ("Epitaph Two: Return"). For even though she has managed to break through barriers both great and small, the story is not quite over. Life beyond the confines of the Dollhouse brings an entirely new set of challenges, not all of which could have been foreseen. And it is the exploration of these that provides the closing chapter of this epic journey.

What we find is a world in chaos in which the majority of the population is divided between "butchers" and "dumbshows" – those for whom long-restrained passions have come to be unleashed and others who have merely fallen into a state of mental evisceration – both the consequence of Rossum’s technology let loose beyond the carefully controlled confines of the Dollhouse. In the streets, where life is reduced to a battle of all against all, it’s the butchers that prevail, while up in the suites, the rotting remnants of the Corporation continues preying upon the bodies they still manage to make their own.

And it’s within this context that Echo and her allies will resume their battle, still seeking to put an end to Rossum while fighting off the butchers that threaten to kill (and consume) anything that moves. Quite ironically, Echo will have also acquired a new moniker, one that, were it not for the kind of stakes involved, would seem to mock the very cause for which they fight: "messiah."

The great and terrible Caroline.
The one who knows how to save us all.

The words are not spoken without a hint of irony. For there is a new division in the ranks, less the result of the kind of fractures and splits that characterized their lives from before, than the differences that arise when trying to overcome that kind of past. For what is one to do in the aftermath of an apocalypse coming on the heels of a life as a Doll? On one side are those who yearn for a life of peace and quiet, much like what is provided by Safe Haven, away from the noise and brutality, one that allows them to piece together a life of normalcy. On the other side are those, like Echo, fully committed to continuing the fight, armed to the teeth in their efforts to bring the Corporation down. But in addition to this, there is also a running debate about the place of Dollhouse technologies in that battle, between a new breed of tech-heads, those that aspire to become Super-Dolls, and those that shun any and all imprinting whatsoever, even if that would leave them handicapped in the ongoing war with Rossum.

But amidst the chaos and bickering, we will witness some profound transformations, ways in which key figures in Echo’s inner circle have managed to overcome their (previous) limitations, evolving into something new. For if it hasn’t already become obvious, in important ways, this is a story of opposites and the possibility of reconciliation.

And so, one of the first faces we’ll see at Safe Haven is the one belonging to the ice queen, former Head of the Dollhouse, now making her home in the quiet of the countryside far away from the noise of battle. Not only has she found a way to relinquish the kind of unilateral control she wielded so mightily in her previous existence, she’s found access to another side of her self – almost maternal – that no one would have ever predicted. We see this most clearly in her protective relationship to Topher, the Engineer, who has all but crumbled in the aftermath of the Dollhouse’s destruction, collapsing under the knowledge of what was accomplished by the doing of his Hands.

And yet, despite what would appear to be a complete collapse, the former boy-genius has found a new new sense of direction and responsibility, no longer enthralled by the possibilities of a science unconcerned with the consequences of its application. We also witness how his mental dispersion transforms into calm when he remembers the place he had made for himself immediately after the Dollhouse’s fall. For in the very place that once housed the Dolls we see what can only be described as a sacred space, with one of the sleeping chambers transformed into a room of his own, surrounded by statues of the Buddha and a prominently placed copy of "The Road Less Travelled."

In fact, the entire group will return to the site of their former enslavement, precisely because Topher discovers a way to undo the evil borne of his deeds: a device that will reverse the effects of Corporation’s Wiping of the world’s population.

Quite miraculously, when they reach the Dollhouse, they will find that it is no longer in the state of destruction in which they had left it. However despised, their former home has been returned to its former glory. Except this time, it’s being run by a friendly compatriot, a convert in his own right: none other than the (former) rogue Doll, Alpha. Like others of his kind, he has given up on the battle that rages without. Instead, he has turned his attention to helping those not so different from himself, Dolls unable to protect themselves against the Butchers raging on the streets. Keeping them safe until the time when they may finally be able to fend for themselves.

In different ways, each of these fiercely independent figures has found access to other side of themselves that, in a previous life, had remained firmly repressed. Each discovering, in their own ways, the kind of compassion that would have made their previously incarnations shudder or cringe with embarrassment.

It would seem that Echo is the only one left untouched in this way, ever the committed soldier on behalf of the cause. It is, in fact, the source of a number of inside jokes and, as always, is mirrored in the (divided) relationship between The Lovers. But despite the acrimony, even they have not remained unchanged. For they have reverted to their former names, no longer carrying the identities bequeathed to them by the Dollhouse. As if, during the course of the intervening years, they had been liberated from at least part of the burden of that inheritance.

Between the two of them, it is She that has become the peacenik, particularly since they now have a son who’s being raised without his father. What she hates most is the fact that He has joined the ranks of the tech-heads. In her eyes, this is nothing short of a perverted assimilation of the very technology that turned them into Dolls in the first place. Much to her dismay, even His face bears the traces of that appropriation, metallic hook-ups he and his colleagues use for imprinting themselves, providing them with the kind of portable skills they believe gives them an edge in the battle against the Corporation. However noble the cause may be, for her, this appropriation of Doll technology is nothing other than mockery what they had fought so hard to become, voluntarily relinquishing their humanity by turning themselves into walking machines designed for nothing but war.

For his part, He resents the fact that She fails to recognize how the decision to join the ranks was born of love – a sacrifice – given their agreement to keep their child away from the technology. And what greater love is there than that of a father who would willingly leave his family in order to fight on their behalf? But all She has to say is that He chose to stay steeped in the tech, was seduced by it, choosing "Victor" over his heart and his child.

Echo and Paul Ballard find themselves embroiled in a similar standoff, as if giving voice to another manifestation of the feud we’ve already witnessed between The Lovers. Except in this case, it’s Paul who complains about the other’s unwavering commitment to the fight. For Echo’s forever eager to get on with the business of battling the Corporation, unable to sit still even for a moment. So, when she anxiously asks about what might happen when they need to sequester themselves after the Engineer detonates his device for reversing Rossum’s Wiping of the population, Paul will use it as an opportunity to speak to his understanding of the problem.

I think for a good long while, you’re going to have to be where you are.
And I think that scares you.
– Ugh, I hate when you pretend to know me.
That’s not a claim I’d make.
I’ve been knocking ten years [and] you still won’t let me in.
– I’ve let you in a few times.
[Yeah,] when you were sure we were gonna die.
What happens if you’re sure we’re going to live?

Perhaps it’s the time she spent enslaved as a Doll, but what he asks feels like nothing short of an impossibility, or a luxury, during these times of war. But perhaps this reluctance is a measure of her accomplishments, all the barriers that have been brought down in her fight for liberation. Leaving only one, perhaps the most frightening barrier of all, the destruction of which would leave one standing naked before an Other irreducible to oneself. So rather than answer, she will throw the question back on him.

You’re my analyst now, tell me what you think!
– I think you’ve got a hundred people living inside your head.
– And you’re the loneliest person I know.
That’s kind of sweet.
– Not for the person who’s with you.

Whatever she might have thought about the exchange, her life will become even more difficult when, a few minutes later, as they push through a riot of butchers, just a few paces from their sanctuary, Paul is shot to death. And finally, she’ll find herself completely alone.

Strange as it might seem, it would appear that the solution to the difficulties of these Lovers comes from a videotaped lecture that the Engineer consults as he continues working on his anti-wiping device. For in that speech, cloaked in the language science, is a lesson of another sort.

Welcome to Lecture One in a three-part series entitled "neuroplasticity in relation to cortical imprinting." The most effective way to imprint new pathways is with a timed electrostatic charge. It simulates the natural rewiring process of the brain.

Basic neuroplasticity. Every action affects our neural topography: we literally become what we do, not what we’ve done or [even] what we will do. We’re best defined by our actions in the moment.

With a wavelength of more than two meters, little damage is done to the surrounding tissue.

The "plasticity" of neural pathways speaks of nothing other than the possibility of change, the ability of the brain to accommodate shifts in behavior. And according to this speaker, the matter is quite simple. Our brains, and by extension the very essence of who we are, are determined by our actions and not the other way around. And should the process prove too difficult, a burst of energy – an electrostatic charge – will help nudge the process in the right direction, one no less than two meters in length.

And should we have failed to catch the significance of this, the Engineer will pick up on this last piece of information. Greater than two meters. As if this measure, larger than the height of the average human, were sufficient to undo the perverse effects of Imprinting. As if the mere exposure to a power greater than oneself were sufficient to begin the process of rewiring the habits that have hardened from the traumas of the past.

Is it any surprise, then, that the newly converted Alpha will be the one to provide Echo with the missing piece that provides the solution to her conundrum? For in the wake of Paul’s death, she has come to recognize an absence she had never noticed before, one that has little to do with the kinds of projections to which she had been submitted before. So, as the (former) Dolls prepare themselves for a long winter in an underground bunker, the one who had previously insisted that Echo’s salvation lay along the path defined by Nietzsche’s conception of the super-man will leave her with a very different kind of gift, instead.

Ironically, it rests on the very chair that had come to be the source of so much consternation, the site of repeated Imprinting and the cause of so much pain. And yet, this time, housed there is a disc containing a copy of Paul, not so much for the purpose of "becoming" him than allowing for a neural rewiring that will create the kind of space where she can finally let him in.

Am I … ? Are we … ?
– You wanted me to let you in.
Are you sure you’ve got room? 
I’ve got a lot of baggage. Childhood stuff.
– We’ll work through it. We’ve got time.

And just as Echo submits herself to what may well be her final Imprint, and a voluntary one at that, we will see that The Lovers have also found the path toward reconciliation, as if the one were not unrelated to the other. For the "victor" has found it in himself to recognize the dark side of the interminable battle against the Corporation, including his dependence upon the technology used in that fight. Less a matter of the uses to which those enhancements were put than the emotional thrill of acquiring skills the easy way, absent the kind of work necessary for mastering them the old-fashioned way.

If we’re going to rebuild the world, I want to do it myself.

His wife will also have found it in herself to let go of her anger about what she took to be yet another betrayal, finally allowing herself to trust the man who had hurt her so deeply, despite everything they had been through together. Believing that change – in oneself and the other – was not only a possibility, but the only path worth following. What else could be more important for (former) Dolls previously doomed to a life of indentured servitude than finding a way out of the maze of projections and defenses that had hemmed them in for so long?

And so, as the series finale comes to an end, we will find Echo returning to the chamber that had once been her prison, and see that she now sleeps alone, no longer split among her alters. We will also see that the space she claims as her own now sits atop of a pentagram no longer inverted, her descent into matter finally transcended. And what had once been her ashen place of confinement now bears the deep glow of wood, the very element that one system of thought places at the apex of this five-pointed figure and which others have come to equate with Spirit. In light of this, would it be outrageous to wonder whether this might be one version of the Tree of Paradise?

Whatever the case may be, the five that we found in the beginning groping around in the dark have by now found there home in the one. And by this story’s end, we will find Echo in precisely that place.

Finally at peace.

While unfortunate, it’s not surprising that Past Life was canceled after only three episodes had aired. After all, executives had decided to run it on Thursday nights against the juggernaut of Grey’s Anatomy. A measure of over-confidence in their product perhaps or, more likely, its reverse: lacking the conviction that this series about reincarnation could find a home. Which is a shame. For Past Life is much more ambitious – and way more insightful – than the suits seem to have admitted, even to themselves. For in the making of Past Life, there is a subtle sleight of hand, one that tells a certain kind of story in order to reveal the truth of another. A truth that’s less outrageous than we are so frequently led to believe, particularly when it comes to thinking or talking about the lives that preceded our own.

The very first episode alerts us to the nature of this kind of double-vision, citing Albert Einstein to make a rather unscientific point: “The greater the doubt, the greater the awakening.” Should it come as any surprise to discover that this quote is itself nothing other than a minor deceit, the words coming not from the preeminent scientist but from another continent in another time? A kind of puzzle that has come to be known as a koan.

The greater the doubt, the greater the awakening.
The smaller the doubt, the smaller the awakening.
No doubt, no awakening.

Thankfully, Fox has decided to allow the remaining episodes to air to completion (Friday nights at 8 p.m.). So, for those of us willing to grant leeway to an unorthodox exploration of lives both past and present – and the effect of one upon the other – we have the chance to discover what its makers would have us learn. About ourselves and the nature of cycled existence.

The Principles

In form, the program is a hybrid of a medical drama and investigative thriller. The two principal characters – Dr. Kate McGinn and former detective Price Whatley – reflect competing approaches to the cases that are brought to them, premised as they are on different understandings of the world and the ultimate causes of human behavior. But despite these apparent incompatibilities, they will discover the benefit of eyes different than their own, forms of sight that compensate for the blind spots in their own vision of things.

She is an expert on past life trauma. Her interest, we are told, emerges from an experience with past-life regression as a young adult, and this is what subsequently motivated her desire to help others suffering from the same kind of affliction. According to Fox’s “bio” for Kate McGinn:

Using therapy and her natural gift for reading people, Kate helps solve the mysteries of her troubled clients by investigating their consciousness. She believes there are levels of consciousness and explanations for human behavior that science can’t begin to explain.

It is this reliance upon a kind of second sight which will give her partner pause. As a former homicide detective, he has been trained to believe in facts and facts alone; it also gave birth to a certain kind of cynicism about human nature, particularly when it comes to making sense of the senseless. But he is a fallen soldier in that fight, expelled from the police force after losing his wife. And so, battling grief – as well as the bottle – he will be a reluctant partner to the therapist who unabashedly embraces the idea of reincarnation, at least until that “craziness” actually begins to make some sense. At which point, he will begin to defend his new occupation against those who would doubt his sanity.

We don’t catch ghosts. We save souls.

Is this a set-up for a possible romance between the pair? Perhaps. Is it a corny and predictable premise for yet another television program about a mismatched pair eventually coming to appreciate the world of the other? Maybe. If it appears predictable, there is probably a reason for it that cannot be reduced to what we might consider to be the laziness of the show’s writers. And that reason can be found in the very nature of their work: clarifying how the past impinges upon the present, how past lives so frequently interfere with our own, and how the course of love itself is caught up in the webs that refuse to bow to the imperative of time’s passing.

Despite her experience and training, even the Doctor is not above doing battles of her own. Therapists, healers, and shamans are rarely free of the woundings that have given birth to the gift of seeing what is not readily apparent to others. And we will see this battle played out in the privacy of her home, living with her mother, unsure of which one is taking care of the other. Both caught in different versions of the same dilemmas: one preferring the solitude of her own company, the other surrounded by suitors yet unable to give in to the calling of her heart.

Visions and Compulsions

The word used to describe the “interference” from a past life is regression. According to the Doctor, it’s intimately tied up with the idea of reincarnation: when certain conditions are right – or, more accurately, when they’re wrong – what is normally repressed returns, often with a vengeance. And that’s when the visions and compulsions begin.

The idea of reincarnation is the idea that we’ve all been here before.
We’ve got memories of past lives.
Normally, those memories stay in our deep subconscious.
But sometimes, when our souls are in conflict,
those memories come up to the surface.
It can be very traumatic. We call that a regression.
That’s when a person goes back and experiences events from his past life.

It’s during such times – when our souls are in conflict – that the trauma of past lives return, forcing the person to re-experience events from a previous existence. For a trained observer, particularly one with personal experience of this kind, the signs are easy to recognize. The proliferation of rituals and compulsions that either calm or excite. Repeated behaviors that have no apparent meaning, other than the urgent need to complete them. Sometimes this is evident in things brought home, from the store, from the street, or secretly pilfered from another. Talismans that have taken on a special significance. At times, even something resembling a shrine may be built, honoring a person or an event just beyond one’s field of vision, for all intents and purposes unseen and unknown. Whatever these compulsions may be, they leave their victims confused, angry or depressed, exerting a power over them, as if some autonomous force took delight in asserting its authority, reminding the reincarnated that they will never be the masters of their own destiny. Becoming strangers even to themselves.

And then there are the visions that seem to come from nowhere. Sights and sounds reserved for the reincarnated, alone. Even though no one else can see or hear them, the visions overwhelm those subject to their doings. Another dimension of experience layered on top of the reality the rest of humanity takes for granted, these reverberations from another life invade and penetrate the senses. Flashes of light, incoherent images swallowed by others that quickly pile up on each other, people and places with no relation to the present, forever taunting, dreamscapes of the undead.

Those subject to these visions will doubt their sanity, feeling they’ve been driven to the edge. For if no one else can see or hear them, what are they other than a sign of one’s craziness?

According to the Doctor, such assaults on the mind will produce attempts to numb the senses. By whatever means are available. Many teens, for example, hide themselves, covering their heads and ears; frequently, they will channel music into their brains, cranked to the max, hoping to drown out the sounds of the unwanted. Cutting themselves off from the world in a womb of silence, or its opposite, a wild echo chamber that offers the promise that one might forget. Preferring pained isolation from others to the terrors of the uninvited. Others will turn to substances, primarily sedatives (like alcohol and barbiturates) that also serve to dull the pain. As another kind of isolation, the “highs” they chase will seek to quiet the visions that come from beyond.

The problem, of course, is that such efforts usually fail. At best, they act as a stop gap, a temporary fix for a problem that will not go away. The Doctor has developed a stump speech that addresses precisely this point: the visions are real – and relentless – and unless something else is done about them, they will continue.

You can feel the visions coming on,
but you don’t know what causes them.
They started out as flashes.
They’ve gotten worse, more intense, more detailed.
They’re scary [but] that’s not the worst part.
The worst part is the pain.
They make you feel. Not being able to control them. …
Believe me, if we don’t do something about it,
it’s going to get even worse.

The unwanted visions and the unrelenting pain are the classic signs of regression trauma. Regression, because it speaks of the past’s return, a prior life that refuses to go away. Trauma, because of the awful effects of this temporal migration. The searing pain but also its aftermath, the accumulation of wounds left upon the mind and the body. Over time, the two begin to blend together – the past life trauma and its traumatizing effect upon the present – an unholy marriage of one affliction aggravating the other. A spiral growing out of control.

The Intertwining of Past and Present

For the uninitiated, Past Life can only come across as a form of entertainment poorly conceived, lacking the kind of excitement one has come to expect from a passive relationship to the screen. According to one critic who panned the show:

The only way the premise of Past Life could have been remotely watchable is if the writers had been willing to truly take the theme of reincarnation to the limit, to have victims haunted by caveman crimes, or still tortured by a bad experience at Gettysburg. Then at least it might have been decent pulp entertainment. As it is, Past Life is just a bad premise executed badly, and very unlikely to be given a second life season.

What’s missed in this kind of dismissal is a recognition – much less an appreciation – of the kind of stories that are being told. Despite the familiarity of the form, its primary purpose is not (pulp) entertainment alone. And even though it airs during the eight o’clock family hour, the glimpses we are provided into lives both past and present are more frightening than most R-rated fare, if only we are able to look with eyes different from the ones to which we’ve grown accustomed. Yes, all of the stories involve murder and death, but that’s not what makes the stories terrifying. Rather, it’s the lingering effects of one life upon another, leaving its victims helpless to the unrelenting terror of their previous existence.

In the series pilot, for example, we are introduced to a teenage boy. In the midst of a basketball match, he is overcome by a vision more aural than visual – barks of anger, more animal than human – that sends him into a sweaty panic, frozen in his tracks and unable to move. Later, upon beginning work with the Doctor, he will be plummeted into another side of this regression, confronted with a man carrying a bat bearing down on him. And this will send him cowering into a corner, transformed into a little girl, frantically tugging at her hair, terrified of the fate that is nothing other than death’s arrival.

In the episode “Dead Man Talking,” a young woman is confronted by scenes of falling to death, endlessly repeating the moment of her demise where frantic efforts to secure her footing, desperate grasps at anything that might prevent her fatal plummet, ultimately fail. There is nothing to learn from the experience, no new strategies or unseen footholds that can be implemented. Instead, the best she can expect is to see herself continually dying. For when one vision stops, another invariable returns, as she is returned to a hurtling descent once again, the ground rushing up to meet her face. An endless cycle of death, endlessly careening toward one’s annihilation. Again and again and again.

In the series’ fourth episode, while in the midst of competing at a spelling bee, a young girl suddenly finds herself marked with what appear to be the signs of the stigmata. Her hands gashed by wounds inflicted by a force unseen, tears of blood giving witness to a torture belonging to another person in another time. Despite the claims others will make about the blessedness of these “spiritual” markings, for the child, this piercing of the body is nothing other than an unholy visitation. A torment that has descended without warning, absent reason. Leaving her unable to do anything except tremble in the face of its senselessness. The media, ever on the lookout for stories that can be sensationalized will – quite cruelly – come to dub her Saint Susan, as if she held the secret for deciphering the nature of the divine.

What makes these more frightening than celluloid visions horror and violence made available to us by means of the Hollywood machine? The bottom line is this: the stories told there, no matter how gruesome, are typically about survival. The lone hero – whether that be a woman or a man – survives the apocalypse, overcomes the never ending stream of beasts, demons, and enemy fire that seems singularly intent on annihilation. But in the end, a survivor stands alone, victorious against the agents of darkness. While there may have been tremendous losses to bear, whether they be the death of a loved one or the decimation of civilization as we know it, when all is said and done, life triumphs over the forces of death.

The trauma of regression, on the other hand, has no such happy ending. There is no survival. No hero that stands amidst the rubble who is able to say, “I survived.” Instead, it is an unrelenting assault that one cannot control, insistently repeating its story in a way that snatches the body of its victims into an unrelenting vortex of terror. There is no pause button. No credits that roll across the silver screen. No commercials during which one can make a run to the kitchen. So even as those caught in the grip of a past life regression may desperately attempt to cobble together a life of normalcy, the compulsions and visions invariably return. An awful reminder that any effort to play the part of a “hero” will come to naught. For the life that’s being relived is about death – not the business of living – and no amount of courage or determination can ward off the imperative that comes from an earlier existence. One that comes on the heels of the soul’s death.

Triggers, Memories, and Soul Work

The year of ensoulment, as we learn during one of the earlier episodes, refers to the period during which the life of a previous incarnation crosses over into one’s own. One could say it identifies the time that gave rise to the migration of the soul. It’s ironic, given our notions of reincarnation, that the experiences its victims are given to see are not fantastic, neither are they remotely romantic. Those who suffer the violence of unwanted visions and visitations would be the first to challenge the kind of sentimentality one so often hears in relation to the idea of past lives.

When the Doctor first meets a client, the visions are usually nothing but a confused jumble of images and sensations. They feel violent precisely because they typically focus on the most traumatic aspect of the soul’s previous existence: specifically, it’s death and extinction. Rushing to the ground from a dizzying height, the tear of flesh that accompanies the piercing of one’s hands, the raucous barks that mark the moment of one’s passing, the body of a girl lying in a pool of blood. In light of such terror and pain, the Doctor’s first task is to identify the triggers that give rise to the visions. Figuring out which aspects of the person’s current existence elicit the sights and sounds that once belonged to another.

This is not as easy or obvious a task as it might seem since much of the experience exists under a turbulent fog of confusion. But it’s certainly easier than trying to identify the soul’s conflict – the clashing of forces – that elicits the visions of the dead. For it typically exists at the edge of consciousness, too, banished from the light of day. Much better to work with something one can get a handle on, something that connects this life with the one that came before, signs and symbols that harken to the soul’s passing in its previous existence.

Which isn’t that easy, either. Particularly since triggers do precisely what their name would suggest: they set off a terrifying explosion, unleashing a reserve of energy that had remained dormant just beneath the surface, a reserve so vast that it threatens to annihilate those subject to its workings. The enormity of this power is clearly evident on the faces – and in the bodies – of those so afflicted, a measure of the pain and terror that comes with witnessing the awful circumstances leading up to one’s passing. So it should not be surprising that those seeking the Doctor’s assistance will resist her efforts to help, precisely because doing so will bring them face-to-face with the very thing the soul has sought to avoid.

And so, in many ways, the Doctor becomes a terrorist, using her knowledge about triggers to return her clients to the place from which they flee. Inducing the very kind of pain that they have so desperately sought to avoid. For it is only by returning to the original scene of the crime that they can learn about what happened in their previous existence, the kind of death that has left nothing but terror in its wake. The Doctor will have to reassure her patients, even as she continues to push them harder, letting them know that, however painful the process may be, everything will be all right.

Much of what we witness during each episode of Past Life is precisely this: the violent vacillation between escape and return, the impulse to flee and the imperative to investigate, to discover what it is that lies behind the noise and confusion. Seeking to uncover the secrets of the dead. It is a journey that few of us have the courage to embark on since it requires repeatedly confronting one’s demise, the black pit of death and the violence of one’s own annihilation.

Added to this is the torment brought about by gender confusion since, in many visions, the previous body belongs to the opposite sex, in which case the Doctor’s clients are confronted by a person completely foreign to what they would take themselves to be. So, in addition to the teenage boy who reverts to a helpless girl petrified of the fate that was to be her life’s termination, the young woman who continually sees herself falling discovers that, in her previous life, she was a grown man. Similarly, the girl some would call a saint, the one seemingly crucified in the midst of a spelling bee, comes to see herself as a young African American boy.

Each are confronted by a being so completely different from themselves that the visions can only leave them dumbfounded. The pain and terror of death compounded by a confusion that turns their very sense of identity upside down.

As if this weren’t enough, many come to be wracked by an overwhelming sense of guilt, feeling that the deaths they see – not all of them their own – are the result of their own doing. That the limp and tortured bodies that fill their eyes were killed by their own hand. So not only do those in the grip of regression trauma find themselves assaulted by the sights and sounds of the dying, they come to suspect that they are the ones responsible for having taken another’s life. For the visions are typically composed of the body of the dead and a witness, a mutilated body and the one who watches over the scene. And it is through the eyes of the one who watches – the witness – that their visions come, as if they were the ones responsible for the crime of murder.

Isn’t the whole idea that whatever horrible things I did in my past
I have to pay for them now?
What if this is the life I’m supposed to have?
- The idea of karma is that we have the ability to reset the natural balance.
- That’s what we’re going to do.
The girl is dead. She’s not coming back.
How do you reset that?

And this is where the Detective’s skills become crucial, since relying on the the visions alone is not enough. Certainly, the Doctor’s role in pushing her patients past their fears is imperative, for it is only after they are able to confront the initial visions of death that other details come to the fore, other aspects of the previous life that make themselves known. But there are always gaps that need to be filled, cryptic messages that require deciphering, unrecognized connections to be made. The visions, in other words, are never self-evident. The language they speak is not readily apprehended, which is what makes them so confusing. The same goes for the rituals and compulsions that creep into one’s daily routine, long-lost messages from the dead.

The point of the Detective’s work in assisting the Doctor is to broaden the field of vision beyond the site of trauma itself, to help the patient recognize the larger picture that surrounds the moment of death. Working together to identify the context, people, and places within which one’s previous life came to an end. Only in this way can the pieces be put together in a way that explains the original trauma, as well the reasons behind its return.

It’s only because of this kind of work that the girl who (mis)took herself for a killer will learn that her previous incarnation was as a musician. A child prodigy, in fact. One of the main triggers at the spelling bee was the clock on the wall, less its visible appearance than its repeating ticking, the sound of a metronome. They will discover that he had committed suicide by gunshot wound and that the police had found massive scars down the middle of his hands. As if these marks – and the death itself – were a sign of the death of his creativity, his very being. But the unanswered question continued to remain: why?

By following the clues found in subsequent regressions, they will discover that the boy had turned the gun on himself rather than kill, choosing self-termination rather than submitting to the orders he received from another. The one who asked that he mutilate himself as a test of his fortitude and a sign of his commitment. The one who put the gun in his hand, and pointed it at another, saying he amounted to nothing. That his weakness was reason enough for him to die.

And who was this mysterious authority demanding blind allegiance, the one who would require a child to learn how to kill? The answer is found in the second trigger at the spelling bee, in the word the girl was asked to spell. That word was: pedagogue.

As for the one constantly falling, her visions are filled by images of a room in disarray and a dead woman lying in a bed splattered with her own blood. On the floor below – fallen to the ground – is a lamp, an image that repeats itself endlessly, as if it were a needle stuck on a broken record. Or a flashing neon sign. And with her is another man, one insisting that they keep the girl’s death a secret. As lawyers, he says, they have an obligation to the murderer. It’s called attorney-client privilege.

“You’re not supposed to tell. It’s against the rules.”

Wracked with guilt about the knowledge that’s been forced into hiding, the man in her vision heads to the place where the murder weapon – the lamp – has fallen, desperately looking for the object that would shed light on the reason for the girl’s passing. But like the lamp itself, he will find himself falling to the ground, unable to save himself and unable retrieve the evidence that would bring the killer to justice.

When it comes to deciphering the visions, then, there seem to be (at least) three personas to disentangle, particularly when it comes to understanding the guilt so many of its sufferers share: the body of the dead, the witness to the events in question (who also comes to die), and another figure of authority and power. Someone wielding an undue influence on the soul, in the past as well as the present. Ultimately, the question boils down to identifying the nature of the relationships between these figures, for it is this knot of relations that holds the secret to the torment that has migrated from one life to another, the unrecognized link that binds the living and the dead.

This is the nature of soul-work. Finding the strength to push through the immediacy of the pain brought on by the visions so that, ultimately, the cause of death can be found. This work also involves clarifying the kind of responsibility the soul can reasonably take as its own, and more importantly, the kind of guilt that it shouldn’t. For it is precisely the burden of the unwarranted that causes the soul’s reincarnations to live in a constant state of fear, forever falling to their deaths, suffering the torture of public crucifixion, or cowering in a corner like a child … because the circumstances surrounding their previous incarnation’s killing was never fully recognized, much less understood. And it is only when that happens that the torment will come to an end.

Soul Mates

Like the mystical aura that surrounds popular conceptions of past lives and reincarnation, the idea of soul mate similarly floats among the clouds of a lofty ideal, wedded to the belief that nothing short of fate has brought two souls together. It is what springs to the lips of lovers drunk in the joy of their union, falling into each other’s eyes, believing their hearts have finally found their home. If we’re lucky, the experience happens to all of us.

And yet, if we allow ourselves pause, it’ll quickly become clear how this notion is far from romantic at all. For what it ultimately means is that two souls have no choice in the matter, that whatever they may wish for themselves or desire, fate will intervene and dictate differently, insisting on something else, another future already preordained. It also means that this kind of inevitability will follow its protagonists from one life to another, relentlessly imposing its will from one incarnation to the next. An endless chain of imperative absent the possibility of escape. Doomed to repeat itself. Forever.

Such is the dilemma at the center of the episode entitled “Soul Music.” During the week before her wedding and much to her personal horror, a woman finds herself mysteriously – and uncontrollably – drawn to a man other than her future husband. It’s not the first time she’s been hounded by compulsions she didn’t understand. But now they seem to have returned with a vengeance. The period of calm she had taken to be their remission was but an illusion. And the wedding she had so lovingly planned and anticipated comes to be threatened by an external power, like a demonic force.

I’ve had panic attacks ever since I started dating.
I’d be out to dinner or at the movies or in bed, and I would wig out.
Guys just couldn’t deal.
- But Cole [your fiancee] hung in there.
Sometimes he’d just hold me.
When we moved in together, they stopped.
But now the attacks are back, and they don’t make any sense.
And I’m seeing these awful things.
- What kinds of things?
In the visions, I’m with this man and we’re having sex.
And it’s crazy. And erotic. And dangerous. And it feels good.
I love Cole so much. Why am I seeing myself with this other guy???
- It might have to do with past life trauma.

Unlike the other cases brought to the Doctor, this one does not merely revolve around death, although there are hints of that here as well. Instead, she sees a melange of images both dangerous and exciting. Riding in a shiny convertible, a handsome boy at her side, with a bagful of money. Simultaneously, another set of images – also from her point of view – of a man removing her blouse, his hands roaming the length of her body. It’s the stuff of adventure, illicit desires seductive enough to allow oneself to get carried away. Strangely, in the background she hears the thin melody of a music box.

And then she meets Him, or someone who reminds her of Him. And that’s when fate steps in, despite the fact that her wedding is just days away, despite the fact that she’s already committed herself to another whom she loves deeply. For there’s another world out there that’s beckoning, one filled with the kind of thrill that married life could never offer. But lest we take this as a mere preference for one kind of man – or one kind of life – over another, it’s worth recalling that this is not what she wants.

How could I do this to Cole? He’s my life and I’m about to ruin everything
because some twisted obsession with a guy I don’t even know!
- You’ve got to stop beating yourself up …
You don’t understand! Cole is it. He’s the one.
- You were acting on forces out of your control.
- Your regressions have been a mixture of of passion and violence.
- Your soul’s obviously in conflict.
I’m getting married tomorrow, and all I can think about is this stranger!

If it was merely a matter of finding a resolution to this conundrum, her dilemma wouldn’t be so bad. But she is also haunted another set of visions, not unlike the others with which we’ve become familiar, in which she finds herself running through the streets in panic. Frantic. Everything that surrounds her is a blur. Only the feelings she carries with her remain in focus, sharp as a razor’s edge: sheer fright, running to save her life. Moments later, after escaping into an alley that turns into a dead end, the sounds of gunfire come. Immediately after, screaming bullets that pound into her chest. And then darkness comes.

At first, she will think that He is the one responsible for her death. That for some perverted reason, she is drawn to her own killer. But with the benefit of additional regressions, they will discover that the both of them were running – chased by the law – and both were met by the same fate. So with this newfound knowledge, her hesitations will melt away, the wall of protection lowered, giving in to what fate seems to have in store for them, despite the fact that, at some level, deep down, she already knows it will end in her death.

So, on the day of her wedding, she will find herself eloping, irresistibly drawn to this other man, the echo of the One from her visions, much to the chagrin of the Doctor. With the help of the Detective, they had already learned that they were dealing with two timelines here, not just one. It is the first, the adventure and the excitement of an illicit desire, accompanied by the sounds of a music box, that has caught her in its grip. Even the convertible reappears. The second, the one marked by visions of their deaths, is clearly set in a different time, gunned down by officers of the law. But the connections between the two have yet to be made, leaving the Doctor unsure of the causes of the compulsion, much less the reasons for the two souls to repeatedly seek out the other, from one life to the next.

But after her initial light headedness has worn off, the woman will soon discover what some of those connections might be. Other aspects of her visions which she had managed to forget force themselves back into her memory, in large part because He reenacts the very script before her very eyes, one that would seem to be already written. Perhaps because of the excitement of their trek into the territory of the forbidden, carried away by the thrill of the taboo, he will commit a robbery, using his gun in the process. Out of the blue, the bag of loot, the shadow of which she had seen before, will become a reality. And the stain of blood will begin to blot the dreamy landscape she thought she was entering and was ready to call her home.

When she comes out of that trance and begins to raise her (wavering) protest, his demeanor will change. The prospect of her changing her mind, asserting a will different from the fate they’re supposed to share, will send him into a rage. At first, he will attempt to persuade her, convince her to reconsider, not realizing the appearance of the gun will have already sealed her decision. And so, even as she finds the courage to break away from the compulsion, he will fall into it even deeper, unable to imagine a life without his lover, the one to whom he belongs and who, in turn, belongs to him. Taking her as hostage and cover in the face of officers already poised to play their role: putting them out of their misery so that, in yet another future incarnation, they can play out the same scenario once again.

The compulsion – and the dilemma – is a two-way street. It is as much hers as it is his. And the task with which they’re repeatedly faced is finding a way to refuse the hand of fate. In this lifetime, it’s something she found the strength to do. Telling him this cycle of love and death had to come to an end. But as is so often the case, it is He who wavers, unable to find a different way through the noise and confusion, another way of dealing with the irresistible urge that draws him to another. To her.

But he can’t help it. The Doctor calls it a case of soul recognition: when two people feel each other even when they’re not present. For this pair, in this lifetime, the fateful occurs in the Doctor’s office when, on the heels of one of his regressions, he “sees” her through a one-way mirror. Shocked and taken aback because she thought her presence was unknown, she will first be frightened and then, later, enthralled by the scary thrill of being seen in this way, through a darkened glass. The EEG readings from his regression will show that he was still in a deep hypnotic trance. He may have looked like he was awake, but his brain was asleep.

Both the Doctor and the Detective will mull over this experience, trying to find an explanation for this eerie pairing of souls, an attraction that would seem to cross lifetimes.

Maybe their souls always reincarnate together, reuniting time after time
trying to solve whatever unfinished business there is between them.
- Yeah, except they never get the chance.
- In each lifetime, Jenny winds up dead.
You’re right.
And in the regressions, [she] feels like the victim and [he] feels like the attacker.
He follows her. He seeks her out.
- Is there such a thing as a soul stalker?

For her, the answer to the dilemma will come when the Doctor finds them at the motel at which they’ve been staying. She brings with her a music box, much like the ones in her visions, and this will help trigger additional memories that had, until now, remained beneath the surface. She will see the events leading up to the kind of adventure that had filled her eyes until now. Something closer to home when, in a previous life, she was caught between the thrill of an illicit love and the disapproval of her father. In the midst of the struggle, she had grabbed the closest object at hand – a music box – striking her father over the head. Killing him with the sounds of childhood.

She would stand transfixed by the accidental death brought about her hand – a killing in defense of her lover – unsure of what she should do next. Until she heard Him calling out to her, saying they should run away together. In a split second, the decision was made, and they would become outlaws, in their own eyes as well as others. Her father replaced by another. Caught up in the excitement of a Bonnie and Clyde, like the two adolescents that they were. Unaware of the death waiting for them just around the corner, or the number of lifetimes in which they would be doomed to the fated task of repetition.

It’s in this way – revisiting the events surrounding her previous incarnations – that she’s finally able to extract herself from the workings of fate. Learning to recognize what lies beyond the adventurous excitement and the thrill of the taboo, forcing herself to see the violence that will by necessity come as a result, thereby putting herself in the position to make a decision different from the one made by in an earlier existence. For now, she’s no longer a teen. No longer does it have to be a choice between an illicit love and an empty existence. Now that she’s had the opportunity to learn from her soul’s previous mistakes, she grabs the opportunity, no longer willing to put her life in jeopardy. No longer willing to submit to the one who would claim to call her his own.

As for the soul stalker, as we know he comes in many shapes and forms. But for him, the task is no different. It involves the same kind of soul work which she has so painfully undertaken. He must learn to divine the relation between what he sees (in her) and the very essence of his being, the soul that reincarnates from one lifetime to another, tracking how the powerful draw is tied to those travels, as well as the original year of his ensoulment. The trauma that give birth to it all. For when this work is done, one will be freed of the awful tug of compulsion, the kind of neediness that so often falls under the name of fate, finally free to live a life of one’s own making. A life aligned to what one wants rather than what is compelled by the past, and the awful secrets hidden there.

For those who find their way out of such a predicament, whether it be on this day – or yesterday – or another that is yet to come, it is surely a cause worthy of celebration. For it’s nothing short of liberation, the effect of which is like being born again, freed of the terror of one’s previous deaths.

Happy Birthday!
May you live a long and happy life.

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Wizard’s First Rule:
People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs,
and most of it is false, yet they think it all true …
Because of [this], the old wizards created Confessors, and Seekers,
as a means to finding the truth.

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Jungians must be having a field day with this one. Or they should be. For Legend of the Seeker provides a mythic portrayal of the voyage of discovery that some call the process of individuation and others identify as the search for the divine. An archetypal journey if ever there was one. Perhaps this is why we are never really told what it is the Seeker is actually seeking. But this apparent omission is of little consequence since, according to Jung at least, "The goal is important only as an idea; the essential thing is the opus which leads to the goal: that is the goal of a lifetime." In other words, the actual purpose of the quest lies elsewhere, unrecognized until it has already been accomplished: the steps along the way that, surprising as it may seem, lead back to the very origin of life.

Accordingly, Legend of the Seeker should not be seen as just another cheesy television offering of fantasy-adventure but, instead, as a wondrously intricate depiction of such an opus: with each character representing different aspects of the (disavowed) personality, the purpose of this "adventure" is to confront – and ultimately assimilate – disavowed aspects of the Self. Whether they be deemed the epitome of Evil or the personification of Perfection, the ultimate task is to recognize how these are but fractured elements of a whole, projected onto and embodied by others.

The distinct advantage of a television series – over film – is particularly evident here, as it provides the show’s creators with ample time to explore the different aspects of this journey, what Teresa of Avila called the different "dwelling places" of the Interior Castle, and what might hold the significance of the Mandala, itself.

An Impossible Love

On the other hand, Legend of the Seeker is also a love story – more specifically, a tale of "impossible love" – that defines, and to some extent defies, the Seeker’s quest. One might be tempted, as some Jungians would be, to interpret this "love" as merely symbolic, as an externalized representation of the soul, in which the object of affection is merely a displaced, because unrecognized, aspect of oneself (i.e., his anima or her animus). But to do so would reduce the complexity of this tale, and the import of the Other. For as useful as the concept of animation may be, particularly in alerting us to the unconscious forces that direct our behavior and our choices, there is such a thing as matter – and things that matter – beyond the internal life of the (male) Seeker.

The fact that this "impossible love" is reiterated time and again throughout the first season – in terms of the bond that develops between the two protagonists, as well as its impossibility – is an indication of another imperative, one that acquires its authority from elsewhere. Significantly, this other imperative is not their love. Rather, it’s the journey that trumps the heart’s desire, an objective that exceeds the comfort provided by another’s embrace. (An entire episode, Revenant, is dedicated to precisely this point: an object lesson about the perils of surrendering to love’s seductions.)

Some have called this "impossibility" the sword of separation that intrudes on all intimate relationships. It is the distance – and loneliness – that invariably settles in uninvited after love’s rapturous beginnings. It is evident in the hardened edge of resentment, as well as the dulled familiarity of routine, that worms itself into the lives of lovers who, despite the most valiant efforts, are unable to recapture the ecstatic flight that first brought them together. Often, particularly for men, this intrusion leads to the compulsion to find love elsewhere, as if any encroachment of space into a relationship were an unholy visitation to be escaped at all costs, running into the arms of another for reassurance against the void that haunts us all.

For those of us lucky enough to find ourselves in such a relationship, this is about the lovers’ opus, learning to re-cognize the other – and one’s self – independent of the ecstasy of union. The sword of separation sets the lovers aflame, for desire is but the torment of alienation from one’s very reason for living. It brings a certain kind of death with which all lovers must contend, an extinction of the kind of idealization – and idolization – which no person can ever satisfy. In this sense, the "impossible love" that binds these protagonists is not necessarily about what is forbidden to them. Instead, it is about the limit of what draws one to another, as moths to flame, the asymptote of desire that finds its passionate, and inarticulate, impossibility in a wordless embrace … and the yawning gulf that refuses to disappear.

For those of us not in a relationship, or who find themselves unlucky in love, the task is ultimately the same: to find the Divine so easily attributed to the distant, unreachable Other. In ourselves.

Easier said than done.

Introduction to Another World

Like many tales of the fantastic in which the protagonist is male, Legend of the Seeker begins with a woman in distress who interrupts the uneventful life of the hero, seemingly out of the blue. Given our exposure to such tales, we might be tempted to interpret this opening scene as reinforcing antiquated notions of a woman’s need to be rescued, a sign of her inherent "weakness." It is, in fact, a measure of quite the opposite. For, despite the title of the series, this is as much her story as it is his. Even more.

As the pilot episode opens, we witness this woman as she’s hounded by a band of armed men. In evading capture and death at their hands, she will find herself confronted by a magical border that separates two worlds. On one side is the world in which she currently finds herself and, if she remains, where she will surely die. On the other is sanctuary from her tormentors, or at least that’s what she’s been led to believe. The story begins, in other words, with her desperate – yet courageous – crossing of a frontier separating two worlds, absent the reassurance that what she seeks there will be found. The fact that the armed men will follow her through the wall is to be expected, for her "escape" is not an escape at all. Instead, it’s merely a shift in the terms on which the battle will be fought.

As we soon learn, this "damsel in distress" is a leading figure in an on-going battle that has lasted for centuries, and one not unrelated to the fact that she’s a woman. Which is probably why, quite notably, the Seeker-to-be has remained completely ignorant of the raging conflict. In fact, it is precisely his obliviousness to this world – and her entrapment in it – that suggests we are not merely witness to "magic" but to the meeting of two subjectivities and, equally importantly, two diametrically opposed understandings of the very nature of reality: one that accepts the taken-for-granted and mundane at face value, and another in which one’s very existence is at stake, caught-up in an enduring conflict against those who, if given the opportunity, would steal one’s soul.

Within minutes of this opening scene, our introduction to The Legend of the Seeker, we are witness to the collision of these two realities, one where she, a refugee of war, brings an entire retinue of angry men and related dangers in her wake, while he can only drop his jaw in astonishment, wondering where he had been his whole life, pondering the far-reaching consequences of his innocent offer of assistance to the hounded one.

In fact, it is not only armed battle to which he will be introduced. Along with the hazards of physical combat, Richard Cypher will learn more about this other worldly realm so foreign to him, another dimension of reality which he would never have thought possible. One in which monstrous beasts and malevolent curses are the norm, and which requires that he learn how to muster the courage – and shed his incredulity – so that he doesn’t remain forever immobilized by fear or confusion … or, if such a thing were possible, return to his life as it existed before.

Although he doesn’t quite realize it yet, in offering to join in the battle, he has already committed to saving himself, since his obliviousness to the on-going conflict was already an indication of his conscription by the forces against which she fights. It is an irony that will only dawn on him slowly, a measure of the twisted logic of domination that has managed to capture countless others in its treacherous web, and an indication of the signal importance of the journey itself.

The Wise One

It should not come as a surprise, then, to learn that Richard is not the one she had sought out when crossing the boundary that separated two worlds. Their initial meeting was unplanned, an accident. Instead, it is the Wizard who also lives on the other side of the barrier that she was after. For it was him – and him alone – who is reputed to know where to find the Seeker.

Of course, Jungians would suggest that this "wizard" stands in for the protagonist himself, Richard Cypher, and his own – even if unrecognized – wisdom. (Or perhaps it is theirs, as both come to know the Wizard only after her magical crossing, in search of him.) Until then, Richard had dismissed the old man as a crazed hermit with a predilection for standing naked under the night sky, speaking to chickens while gazing upon the moon. However, as he soon discovers, this "lunatic" is a Wizard of the First Order, and provides the first irrefutable confirmation of these challenges to his credulity. As if the world he had taken to be "real" until now was but a lie.

His name is Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander and, as the alliteration suggests, in many ways he signifies the end of the Seeker’s journey. In the meantime, the wizard is the one who will serve as Richard’s mentor and guide. He could, in fact, be considered Richard’s "familiar": the fact that the Wise One’s assistance comes in the form of "magic" should come as no surprise, and neither should it be dismissed, since it indicates his access to the miraculous that exceeds normal understanding. At least for Richard. For – like Neo of The Matrix, another version of the same story – it could be fairly said that he’s "not that bright."

As such, and despite what might have been foretold, Richard’s future as the Seeker has certainly not been earned; neither is it an inevitability. It is also why his tutelage under this strange old man is a necessity.

It is appropriate, then, that Richard acquires the Sword of Truth, not from the woman who will share in his Quest, but from the Wizard. It is a time-honored symbol not only of combat, which he will surely require in battling the demons that will come his way. More importantly, it is a symbol of the power of discernment, of being able to cut through the nonsense and illusions that befuddle us all. With this rite of passage, Richard Cypher will acquire the name of Seeker, a reminder of his new calling, one radically different from what he had previously taken to be his life. He will discover, too, that the woman also possesses a name different than the one he has come to know, just like the strange old man who, all this time, had lived on the edge of the village and the margins of his consciousness.

But there is a sleight of hand going on here. For despite the familiar tale of the stranger disrupting the uneventful life of the protagonist, we are being introduced to a trio of characters that will define the heart of this story. We could just as well call them the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, although that wouldn’t be quite right. In either case, it is the travels – and travails – of this trinity that will drive the quest, and not just the whims and desires of the Seeker alone. He is, in fact, dependent upon the others, since they possess the knowledge and wisdom that is (still) foreign to him.

The primary objective that will define the first leg of their journey (Season One) will turn around these three as they do battle with Evil. The "evil one" will be given a name but will rarely be seen, as if an omnipresent force lurking in the dark that has yet to show its face or reveal the full extent of its power. While invisible, its dangers are felt everywhere, and not just on the battlefield, since the conflict is as much concerned with effects that plumb the depths of one’s soul. For the absence of a flesh-and-blood antagonist is no measure of its (lack of) influence, for it’s precisely this void that accounts for its far-reaching power.

Each episode – each stop on their Journey – will bring them closer to a final showdown with the Unseen. But when these three travelers finally come face-to-face with a fourth, it will not be the one they had expected. And this will require re-imagining the story they had been telling themselves about their Quest, as well as the nature of the Evil against which they have been doing battle.

The Confessor

Her name is Kahlan Amnell, and she belongs to a select Order of women distinguished by their power to identify the truth. In fact, only one has the privilege of leading the Resistance with the Seeker in their battle against Evil, and she is the first in a thousand years.

When Richard witnesses her settle disputes among feuding parties – one of her primary duties as a Confessor – this will consolidate her station in his (and our) eyes. Even the Wizard will recognize her authority, voluntarily submitting to her judgment concerning a set of accusations leveled against him. Among other things, this signals her advancement over Richard, particularly when she is later elevated to the status of the Mother Confessor. For while he remains dependent upon the (external) Wizard, she has already found her own access to wisdom of another sort.

It’s likely that some women will not fully identify with the Confessor, either in terms of the chaste relation she develops with the Seeker (their "impossible love") or the fact that she is deemed "his" Confessor (for all Seekers require one), particularly since it so closely resembles the spiritualized half of the Madonna-Whore complex whereby all that is "unsullied" in woman is elevated into saintly depictions of feminine perfection, a curse precisely because it diminishes all that would make a woman real.

But Kahlan’s authority as arbiter of Truth is but one side of her power as Confessor. More consequential – and more frightening – is her ability to forcefully "confess" those that are hostile to the principles for which she stands. And this other power is what hints at something darker in her, something that sits uncomfortably with the lofty and pastoral portrait of the immaculate Confessor. Although relatively rare, such "confessions" remove all conscious intent in those subject to her touch. Effectively enslaved, they become compliant and willing servants to her every request. Understandably, the prospect of losing one’s autonomy in this way accounts for the respect accorded to the power that all Confessors bear. It also (partly) explains why she and the Seeker can never consummate their love, since this "ability" of hers would similarly reduce Richard to a bondsman. And this would undermine the very quest both have sworn to follow.

The Confessor’s power, in other words, is not to be borne lightly, particularly in light of the ease with which it can be abused. In fact, Kahlan reserves her harshest judgment for fellow Confessors who have succumbed to this temptation, using their abilities for personal comfort and convenience. While found primarily in women, it has also been discovered that men who inherit this ability – an exceedingly rare occurrence – are uniquely incapable of carrying the responsibility it brings, inevitably turning into tyrants that recruit mindless followers to do their bidding (Episode 10: Sacrifice).

About halfway through the first season, the name given to this power is Love. At first blush, this can be confusing, given the "violence" by which the personalities of those so confessed are erased and reduced to appendages of the Confessor’s will. But this can also be seen as the power that anima exercises over men, where the "violence" is less a measure of what she exacts over another but what he – entranced by his soul – succumbs to when she allows him to fall in love with her. In this sense, Confessors can be seen as the embodiment of the "anima woman," particularly those who are conscious of and deliberate in their use of this magnificent, yet terrible, power.

Needless to say, this also explains the burden the Confessor is doomed to carry on her own, forever banished from the innocence of love’s beginnings: exiled from ever believing that she – her flesh, her blood, her heart, her mind – is the object of a man’s affection, rather than the power she wields over him. It also helps us understand why Confessors would become a hunted people, just like the Seeker, since their influence is unacceptable, particularly when not beholden to the principalities and powers of those that aspire to possess her as their own or otherwise seek to delimit the terms of her existence. It also explains the ferocity with which she defends her cause.

For much of the first season, Richard is painfully unaware of this "darker" side of the Confessor’s life. (It could not be otherwise, for how could he know?) To discover that there is even more than this hidden behind her calm demeanor comes as a surprise, even to her, when both witness the vortex of anger that wells-up within her, something of which she had heard but never seen – the Confessor’s Blood Rage – and which would not have otherwise shown its face, until she had committed herself to the journey and saw the fingers of Evil grasping at the Seeker’s throat (Episode 15: Conversion).

As disconcerting as this discovery may have been, it also indicates the path that leads to redemption, for it is only in a flesh-and-blood confrontation with Evil that this Blood Rage has shown its face. Not only does it speak to the long fought battle that the Confessor and her sisters have waged against Darkness, it also points to the only conclusion that will mark the completion of her journey. The same conditions giving rise to that rage will need to be recreated so that this blind fury can give way to another resolution. One in which it is her higher faculties and powers that are brought to light.

The Powers of Darkness

Both Kahlan and Richard will face challenges. Prime among them are doubles and dopplegangers that will test their senses – they will find themselves unable to recognize each other – tricked by schemers and fakers motivated more by the promise of fortune or the thrill of adventure than the sacred promise of the quest. They will also find their lives endangered, hunted down by those with no respect for the journey on which they find themselves, seeking easy access to its rewards without the requisite trial of discovery and sacrifice.

Prime among the "wicked" is the one known as Darken Rahl, under whose orders the assassins originally sought to kill the Confessor. We could call him a stand-in for the (unassimilated) unconscious – or, in Jungian terms, the Shadow – but to leave it at that would risk underestimating the "dark side" and its power. Much better, perhaps, is the vocabulary of older traditions that speak of demons, deathly curses, and unalloyed Evil. For that kind of power, like the Confessor’s blood rage, is a terrible sight to behold. Like the Confessor’s touch, Darken Rahl also plumbs the depths of the soul, giving rise to a blind obedience that its followers would take as their own. But unlike the reserve with which she exercises her power, Darken Rahl’s is deployed with impunity, ever dissatisfied with the millions that already pay obeisance to his vision of the world and the way it should be.

While the forces of Darken Rahl may have been responsible for the Confessor’s "distress" in the series’ pilot, Richard soon discovers that he – as the Seeker – is threatened by them as well. Darken Rahl has not only ordered the death of the Confessor and Seeker, he also seeks to appropriate the powers that properly belong to them, and them alone, and it is the removal of this threat that is the trio’s primary objective during the first season of Legend of the Seeker. This is no small task, since his powers are everywhere, worming their way into all facets of living, rarely visible and hardly ever recognized as the work of the Dark One, at least not until it’s (almost) too late.

But they are not without guidance in this massive struggle. It is, in fact, the Book of Counted Shadows that the Confessor was carrying with her when she first crossed the magical boundary separating the worlds. And while Richard had not known it, this book is known to contain the secret for ending Darken Rahl’s reign, written in a script decipherable only to the Seeker. In light of the Jungian understanding of the Shadow, this would make perfect sense: its language is specific to its owner and, as a consequence, the cipher for untangling its coded message rests with the reader alone, and no one else.

That this is also a book of counted shadows suggests that this Journey, initiated by the Confessor, requires confronting more than one shadow, and that each must be accorded its place. Like the series of training grounds in The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, each requires a certain form of endurance and demands the development of specific skills to overcome that which threatens from without … and within.

In addition, extricably linked with Darken Rahl (the dark one who would undermine their quest) and the Book of Counted Shadows (the map of the Seeker’s relation to the dark), are the Boxes of Orden capable of unleashing great power. As Richard discovers, much to his chagrin, it is precisely their magnificent power that has required that the boxes be kept separate from each other – fragmented – so as to avoid the disastrous explosion that would result if summoned by the uninitiated (Episode 16: Bloodline). For contained within them is an awesome force that must lie dormant and remain hidden, at least until the pieces can finally be put together, like a puzzle that unlocks the secret of one’s soul.

Ironically, then, it is these powers of darkness that provide the gateway to Salvation, and it is the Seeker’s task to discern how this is so without giving in to the (fearful) impulse to destroy what he does not understand. For it will be one of these forces of darkness – pain in the guise of a woman – that will play a pivotal role in his Journey.

A Thousand Deaths

One of the Seeker’s most feared – and respected – adversaries are the Mord’Sith, removed from their families as young girls and trained under the supervision of Darken Rahl. As the name already suggests, they represent a certain kind of death for Richard, not quite real ("synthetic") but neither one to be dismissed as inconsequential. In many ways, this "death" is not radically different from the training they have already received at others’ hands, designed to break any semblance of will, compassion, or respect for authority other than that paid to the Dark One. So, while their leathered attire might resemble the costume of a dominatrix, the ritual torture performed on Richard exceeds the forbidden pleasures associated with sado-masochistic play. Instead, for the Mord’Sith, the task is to introduce the Seeker to her world, a dungeon suffused with and dominated by pain, so that he, too, may be broken (Episode 8: Denna).

Separated from the Confessor and absent the counsel of the Wise One, Richard is subjected to repeated bouts of torture more excruciating than he could have imagined, held captive in a prison of unrelenting despair. She will be merciless in his education, even on the look out for his efforts to escape the pain by conjuring the face of the Confessor. No appeal to her humanity – or heart – will soften her resolve. Over time, she will manage to replace the Confessor as his closest and most dependable companion. For she will have shown him the unexpected comfort gained from the predictable sting of the unwanted; in the place of distant visions of tranquility, she will offer Richard the searing immediacy of awful presence. Lofty and idealized imaginings of love will be displaced, as he learns to embrace that which renders the body mute, on the edge of sane (and sanitized) existence.

For Richard, this is the underbelly of the Sword of Separation, signaled by the very absence of the Wizard and the Confessor. It is an agony that he suffers alone, where the pain of separation is transformed into a palpable reality, one that he has no choice but to accept as his own. This dungeon of a thousand deaths gives birth to a different set of sensations and a different mode of evaluation. Richard learns to welcome the aversions he had been taught to keep at bay. This is no mere numbing of pain, although the Mord’Sith is certainly teaching Richard about his "sensitivities," as well. Instead, it is a different kind of marriage, an embrace of torment not unlike the addict chasing the flood of the visceral or the cutter who finds release by virtue of inflicting a different measure of pain.

This "marriage" will also demand a certain kind of loyalty, requiring that the Seeker choose between this pain and his "impossible love." In declaring his fidelity to the Mord’Sith, Richard will be required to accept a certain kind of bondage, one not unlike the enslavement that comes from the Confessor’s touch. But this offer brings certain rewards, not least of which is the very kind of consummation unavailable to him in following his heart’s desire. It is the face of addiction, in which the certainty of pain becomes one’s life partner. It is also a choice many accept, precisely because such a relationship is so easily seen as better than the available alternatives, or none at all.

If it weren’t already clear that this Mord’Sith is a stand-in for the Confessor’s dark side – or, more precisely, the dark side of their relationship to each other – we are presented a fleeting portrait of Kahlan dressed in drag, her uniform of saintly white replaced by the blood-red of the (other) Sisterhood. For regular viewers of the show, this ruse carries a certain humor precisely because so improbable and so improbable because they are but two sides of the same figure: unrecognized because the twin has been pushed from (his) consciousness, and not unlike the Seeker and his "double," Darken Rahl.

As we will discover by season’s end, the Mord’Sith will have a key role to play in the resolution of this drama, one that exceeds the education Richard receives at Denna’s hand. For if Darken Rahl can be taken as that which has been disavowed by the Seeker, the Mord’Sith can similarly be taken as that which has been cut-off from the Confessor. And if the two are one and the same, and demand to be recognized as such, the journey will not be complete until they are able to repair what has been rent asunder.

For, ultimately, it is in service of wholeness – and the recovery of what has been lost – that this tale is dedicated.

"Reckoning"

As the season finale opens (Episode 22: Reckoning), all the pieces are in place for the completion of the Seeker’s quest. Or so it would seem. A ritual space has been cleared with the fear-inspiring Boxes of Orden carefully placed at its center. Sitting across from one another, and separated by the Boxes, Richard and Kahlan begin the task they have set for themselves. For in the days leading up to this moment, they had come to the conclusion that the three elements so assembled – the Seeker, the Confessor, and the Boxes of Orden – would set the stage for the overthrow of Darken Rahl’s reign. In the words of the Wizard,

"The Book [of Counted Shadows] tells [us] that the dark power of Orden
can be tempered only by the Confessor’s touch:
The Seeker would be enslaved neither by Love nor by Evil."

When the fractured Boxes are finally reassembled, their awesome force bursts forth, as if uncoiled from a long and enforced slumber and allowed to see the light of day for the first time. And as the Wizard had predicted, the Confessor’s touch protects Richard from the Boxes’ massive force, just as his access to that primal energy tempers the unconscious pull of the Confessor’s power. With this newly calibrated balance of forces now at his disposal, all that remains of their plan is to unleash this power against Darken Rahl himself, putting an end to his cruel reign.

But … as if to remind the pair that this is not merely the Seeker’s Quest, the Mord’Sith interrupt the proceedings, pointing to the unacceptable exclusion of a "fourth" from their holy trinity. The subsequent explosion, and the surreal events that follow in its wake, are but the logical outcome of this "correction." They also provide a formal depiction – and recapitulation – of the Journey and the demands it makes upon those that follow its path, challenging the grand resolution all had come to expect, i.e., the fairy tale ending, as if Evil could be done away with so easily.

Hence, rather than the glorious defeat of the Dark One that had been anticipated, this confluence of forces – resembling a train wreck – produces an explosion that propels the Seeker and the Confessor to different times and, reminiscent of how this story began, to different worlds: they will find themselves returned to a state of separation more absolute than the "impossibility" that had defined their journey so far. And as they find their pairing undone, each will be faced with a dilemma that must be confronted alone. An eventuality that no ritual magic could erase, and a reckoning that could at best be delayed, but not avoided.

Like a man transported on the wings of love to the bright and delicious future he imagines is waiting for him and his beloved, Richard finds himself conducted to another place and time. Fifty-eight years into the future, in fact. But to his horror and dismay, he finds that the Confessor is not there. In her stead, he finds a woman clad in red – a Mord’Sith – the very one who disrupted the rite designed to put an end to Darken Rahl. Despite their shared fate, surrounded as they are by the ashen desolation of a world gone wrong, the Seeker and Mord’Sith will raise their weapons against one other, continuing a battle having its origins in another time.

The Confessor will also find herself alone since even the Wizard is gone, having been burned by the explosions’ flames. Without the company of those that have shared in her journey, she will discover that her lone interlocutor is Darken Rahl himself, and that he intends to make her his Queen. Outarmed and outnumbered, she will be forced to choose between his dungeon and his bed, even as she desperately tries to figure out what happened after the Mord’Sith arrived on the scene, and how it might be undone.

Both the Seeker and the Confessor, in other words, find themselves confronted by an enemy that speaks as much to what they have so desperately sought to avoid as much as it reflects the shadow of the other. For if their relationship until now had been defined by an "impossible love," they now find themselves committed to a different kind of marriage, one where the Seeker is finally forced to come to terms with the Pain of Brokenness, and the Confessor has no choice but to face the Darkness that has haunted her since time immemorial.

The two scenes couldn’t be more different: one world shrouded in monochromatic desolation, reflective of the very absence and decay that defines its own space; the other veiled in vibrant opulence, its excess a very measure of what lies hidden beneath. Yet, despite this asymmetry, it is the figure in red that unites these two scenes. For the Confessor, gone is the uniform of white, having embarked on a different kind of mission, that of giving birth to a confessor child, one she hopes will live long enough to help the Seeker find his way back from the place to which he was taken. And as the Confessor finds herself giving birth to new life, at the other end of time, the Mord’Sith will find herself the lone survivor of her Sisterhood, their deaths an outcome of the very path to which she had so faithfully been committed.

Each will find themselves swung to opposite poles, relinquishing the place that had defined their very being. The Confessor will be forced to embrace the blood of life (and death) in more ways than one and radically different from her previous ethereal existence, while the Mord’Sith (her "sister") will be forced to reconsider the nature of her life in defense of pain, since it had always been in service of another goal.

The Seeker is not – and cannot be – a passive observer in all of this, since he finds himself stuck in desolate time with the Mord’Sith, his fate seemingly bound to hers. He will need to come to terms with his own role in bringing them to this place that reeks of death, even as he must learn to overcome the enmity that has kept them at each other’s throats, establishing a new basis for relationship that accords her the respect and autonomy that she deserves.

For she is the submerged element of the Quest, the hidden – hence unrecognized – source of all Journeys. Richard’s initial ignorance of the battle, much less the existence of the two Sisterhoods, is itself evidence of what had been repressed but which, nevertheless, continued to coexist with the phenomenal world. Ever present, yet rendered mute by virtue of this exclusion, the war continued to rage, claiming more victims in its awful wake. While ignorant of this history, the Seeker can no longer claim innocence, for his unknowingness was already a victory for the Dark. And the desire to embrace one half of the sisterhood at the expense of the other would ultimately have the same effect, contributing to the same kind of submersion that gave rise to Evil in the first place.

The fact that the Mord’Sith Cara later joins the trio as they continue on their journey (in Season Two) suggests that the Seeker learns to make this transition, perhaps finally recognizing that her name, far from signifying death and destruction, actually gestures toward a different kind of relationship, as friend and beloved. And while this might not have been spelled-out for us in the audience, it’s there for all to see.

For if there is a challenge in The Legend of the Seeker, it is this: learning to see with different eyes and discerning how they are – and have been – connected to the unspoken pain of the heart.

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"Courtly love [never advocated] unfleshly love,
but was rather a discipline of eroticism that united life and death,
like the Hindu Tantra, with the lady enacting the truth of the Goddess.
Here Eros and Psyche, Charity and Courage, can be united on a human level
- disappearing neither into the upper world nor the underworld."
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Perhaps it was inevitable that Defying Gravity would not find an audience since it sought to blend genres in ways that have yet to be properly recognized, much less appreciated. Understandably then, even as the program promoted itself as “Grey’s Anatomy in Space,” viewers did not take the bait. Since the program was less about matters of science than human relationships, the tagline was not entirely inappropriate. But it ultimately undersold the ambitions of the show’s creators and, as a consequence, underestimated our ability to embrace it. For the characters in its story were grappling with the very mystery of living, and the questions humanity has pondered in the face of the unknown.

As is revealed quite late in the season (Episode 9: Eve Ate the Apple), the astronauts at the center of this story were kept in the dark about the actual purpose of their mission. When that secret is finally revealed, the crew – and we – discover an object sublime beyond what’s possible to apprehend through the senses alone. And in light of this revelation, they discover that their trek is no simple adventure across the solar system but, rather, is designed to trace the hidden link that connects the planets, tracing the line of a divine blueprint of which they – along with the rest of humanity – had been blissfully unaware. Now, with the benefit of this newfound knowledge, the familiar orbs circling the sky acquire a different significance, a microcosm reflecting the glory of the cosmos itself. What in previous eras us mortals had come to call Heaven.

As astronauts, they aspired to something greater than themselves, even if they remained fumblingly inarticulate when it came to saying exactly what that might be. Yet, this much is clear: the “gravity” they sought to elude was precisely the pull of earthly forces, powers that drag one into mindless routine as well as the very illusions of escape offered in compensation for the imperatives of such a dulled existence. What they sought, instead, was the very purpose of their earthly presence, one in which the seemingly disparate strands of past and present meet, and where the most lowly and most exalted fall into place, giving evidence to the very rhythm and intent of the divine.

However, the mere unveiling of this truth – the purpose of their mission – would not change their lives overnight. Importantly, each astronaut carries a ghost, hauntings from previous lives that speak to the very core of their being, dilemmas that have come to define who they are. Secrets and regrets, traumas and injuries, anxieties and fears trail them like a shadow, despite their success at having escaped earth’s orbit and the pull of forces against which they so mightily struggled to become who they are. Each lives with these ghosts alone, the weight too difficult or dangerous to share, but the ship will magnify these hauntings of the imagination. Glimmers of light and echoes from elsewhere taunting their senses. The astronauts’ handlers on Earth will call them hallucinations, saying they’re a side-effect of the “halos” they’ve been required to wear in the interest of abstinence. But, as quickly becomes clear, a different picture soon begins to emerge, one in which private visions point to their larger mission of traversing the solar system, to the secret knowledge the planets have so patiently borne, until now.

As the gulf grows between these explorers of the unknown and their counterparts on Earth, they will find themselves uncomfortably dependent upon artificial means of communication, the only remaining form of contact available to what has been left behind. Friends and lovers will have to rely on airwaves that transcend space and time, unable to discern the needs of the other, denied the immediacy of touch and sight, or the reassurances they provide.

Isolated in this way, the astronauts will also struggle with the deceits that have brought them to where they are: secrets that have been kept and the lies told to hide the truth. As their faith is tested, they will grapple with the seemingly false pretenses under which their original commitment was secured and wrestle over the (new) purpose of their shared mission, just as they will continue to suffer the tormenting visions that can only cast suspicion on their mind’s hold on reality.

The two characters at the center of Defying Gravity’s ensemble cast, former lovers who now find themselves fellow explorers in the deep of space, will labor under their own versions of this dilemma. Why they are no longer “together” is not quite clear. One of them had a rule against mixing their celestial mission with the mundane pleasures of earthly delight. There was also the unexpected emergence of new life, terminated because it too interfered with aspirations for the beyond. He is haunted by the tragedy that came on the heels of his previous mission (to Mars); she struggles with lingering uncertainties about where to place her trust. More lies will be told, either to protect against further embarrassment and pain, or to honor the process of unfoldment. And yet, amidst this fumbling, they discover that they share the same dream, one in which he witnesses her ascent, merging with a Sun awakening from its eclipse, and pregnant with a new future. They will also find themselves the sole astronauts on the brink of another mission – this time, to Venus – as each continues contending with the stains of the past, seeking to regain a footing on the path toward the very purpose of the soul.

These dilemmas and aspirations were telescoped from the very beginning, in the program’s first episode, when one of their colleagues is confronted by a different sort of crisis: discovering that the path he had taken to be his life’s destiny had been closed-off to him. Bereft, he takes on the guise of Ganesh – The Remover of Obstacles – and allows himself to drift into space. While there, surrounded by the vast expanse of emptiness, he sits with this extinction, allowing the old to die. For knowingly or not, this dark night of the soul becomes the prelude for a different calling, and the best one can do is prepare for a new understanding of what is to come. And allow oneself to hear it.
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Like its protagonist, A&E’s The Cleaner has a mission. It aspires to teach its audience about the ghastly experience of the addict and the torture of kicking the habit, even as it provides an entertaining and inspiring hour of television. This is no small task, but it succeeds. And this is not an insignificant achievement, particularly in light of its deliberate avoidance of the tactics of competing “reality television” programming that deals with similar issues.

The program’s official website describes the show as follows:

Inspired by the true story of real life “extreme interventionist” Warren Boyd, who also co-executive produces the series, “The Cleaner” stars Benjamin Bratt as William Banks, a recovering addict who must balance his unwavering dedication to helping others get clean with an increasingly rocky personal life and the ghosts of his addictions. … With every success and failure, William wrestles with his commitment to his work and his love for his wife Melissa (Amy Price-Francis) and their children through an unusual relationship with God.

The opening frames of each episode declares that William Banks’ crusade does not make him a “cop”; neither does it make him a “superhero.” Instead, we’re told, “He’s just a man with a Calling.” This commitment, as we learn during the pilot episode, is a consequence of the depths to which he had sunk when he found himself “slamming dope” even as his wife was giving birth to their second child. While not a religious man, he made a pact with God: get him and his family through that day – and the addiction – and he would become his “avenging angel.”

In a sense, this “calling” is the fervor of the convert: an attempt at expiation or atonement, seeking to make things right. Ironically, it also threatens to destroy the very family he hoped to save in the first place.

It is precisely this tension between his role as “avenging angel” and his standing as husband and father that provides much of the drama of The Cleaner, leaving us to wonder which of these two domains is the appropriate measure of the man. Or any man, for that matter. Is it the heroic measures he employs in his public life in service to others or is it the length to which he is willing to go in order to understand and care for the ones he loves?

Family in Crisis

The fact that he spent most of the first season on the couch and now finds himself living on his own is a measure of this dilemma, a dilemma not much different than what we have imposed on the “modern woman” – the working mother – and with which she struggles alone. (Ironic, isn’t it, that the problem of the “working father” has never acquired the same sense of urgency or caused as much personal anguish?) But this is precisely the problem that confronts William Banks: he has been unable to find a balance between family and work. As a result, he now finds himself living – and sleeping – alone.

During one of their arguments, his wife accuses him of substituting one “fix” for another, unfurling the kind of indictment that would make any (former) addict cringe: that he is completely unaware of a new addiction that has come to consume him, blind to that which has become an obsession. Of course, he protests. She doesn’t understand the importance – or imperative – of his work. Not really. And this is the stalemate in which they find themselves. The dance of anger and resentment that has wrapped them in its deathly embrace, and from which it becomes increasingly impossible to wrench a quiet moment of peace.

That they love each other is obvious. That they are devoted to their children is clear, as well. There is no unforgiveable transgression or egregious failure on anyone’s part. Nevertheless, the difficulties and tensions refuse to disappear, despite everyone’s best efforts. His wife has seen – and endured – too much, and is no longer quick to forgive the short temper, the forgetfulness, the unceasing attention to the imperatives of other people’s needs over those of his family. A similarly embattled terrain encircles William Banks’ relationship with his teen-aged son. Only the daughter remains devoted to him. But her faith seems to be wavering as well, since the mounting evidence suggests that the Daddy she has deified is only human.

The Face of Addiction

While the program provides a primer on the myriad substances used to induce highs (or lows), how they are distributed and acquired, the means by which they are ingested, the signs and life-strangling effects of their use, as well as the death pangs of withdrawal, The Cleaner also provides a nuanced and loving portrait of the contexts within which those addictions emerge.

These  portrayals focus on the constellations within which addiction is born and within which it eventually spirals out of control, rendered tenderly precisely because they emerge from an empathic understanding of the dilemmas – and tyrannies – that surround the addict: the mother who find herself swallowed by obligations to others, chewed up by the demands and obligations that leave her spent; the aspiring actress confronted by unyielding assaults on her dignity, obliged to submit to repeated humiliations in pursuit of the recognition she so desperate desires; athletes convinced that their bodies and lives can and should be sacrificed in service of career and fame; husbands confronted by the realization that they do not wield the power to make everything alright; teens who have (barely) survived the traumas of childhood or who are required to compensate for a parent’s inability to love them as they deserve; the family secrets that everyone pretends do not exist, except for the one who, for whatever reason, is left to bear the pain of the past – and its memory – on his or her own.

Such constellations illuminate this other side of addiction which has less to do with the physical effects of the substances crammed into the body than what is injected into the web human life. Strung out, with only a thread holding together a coherent sense of oneself and the world. Ever on edge, while the inarticulate thunder of resentment lies in wait. Fists and other missiles unfurled in the face of a frustration that knows not what else to do. Blackouts and the loss of sense, as other imperatives take hold of the body and mind. Thievery in support of a habit that has grown out of control. Selling anything and everything at one’s disposal, including whatever uses can be made of one’s body.

Possessed and dispossessed by what – in another age and time – went by a name that has all but been expunged from our vocabulary, but which conveys the agony so easily missed (and misapprehended) by the sanitized language of addiction: Daemons.

The Authority of Experience

It is by virtue of having survived this pit of despair that William Banks draws his confidence; it is what fuels his mission to “save” others. It is also what accounts for the “extreme” measures he and his team favor, in contrast to the rules of civility characteristic of more conventional forms of intervention. For William Banks, confronting the shadow of death requires unbending resolve and a willingness to use any and all means necessary, to defeat the enemy that cripples the soul and desiccates the spirit.

And yet, despite the reputation that brings clients his way, he is continually met with doubt and disbelief. Friends and loved ones stuck in the trap of blind faith – and the perverse whorl of co-dependence – are never easily convinced that matters are as dire as William Banks claims they are. Invariably, they cling to a certainty that the addiction can be slain in the name of love, that it will submit to the power of their resolve. It’s as if William Banks and his clients belong to two separate worlds, shouting across a gaping divide, unable to develop a shared understanding of the problem of addiction, much less what is required to defeat it.

It’s only when the addict trembles between life and death that their confidence begins to crumble, and they’re ready to admit another truth, another way of making sense of the awful fate that is beckoings them.

Vigilance

Each member of his crew understands this. For they are familiar with the tortured depths of hell, as well.

Strangely (or perhaps not?), they also find themselves solitary figures in this battle against addiction. As if a commitment to leading the clean life means traveling the path alone, without family or loved ones.

In addition to their work on behalf of clients, each is hounded by the temptations of old addictions – and the illusory promise of escape – that invariably arise when confronted by the tribulations of living, when frustrations and disappointments pile up upon the other, unceasing and seemingly to no end. Stripped of the “innocuous” bottle of beer or glass of wine that awaits others at the end of an exhausting day, or the free-flowing lubricants of the “happy” hours that pepper the North American landscape, those seeking to lead lives free of addiction are forced to find other ways of contending with that which saps the spirit and that haunts the soul. They must find other means of exorcising the demon that speaks only their name.

As Season One comes to an end, we find William Banks freshly evicted from his home and faced with precisely this turmoil. His “talks” with God are what he reaches for during those moments of frustration and doubt, one of the few tools at his disposal as he struggles to put an end to the senselessness and achieve the kind of alignment – and peace – to which we all aspire.

Split Affinities

Why would anyone want to watch this show?

In addition to the focus on addition – and the possibility of liberation from its torment – it provides a slate of characters that provides the microcosm within which the protagonist’s life unfolds. As with any other television program, they provide sites of identification (“That’s so true! She’s just like me!”) as well as the lure of the mysterious (“I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about him … “).

William Banks’ associates are his “chosen family,” those who share in his mission to save the afflicted, precisely because they count themselves among the lucky, the precious few that have escaped death’s embrace. His connection with his wife and children, on the other hand, is less straight-forward, precisely because it is not mediated by the shared experience of having battled addiction’s torment. In this sense his family is irreducibly “foreign” to him, yet they connect him to an existence beyond the world of addicts. His relation to them is both an affirmative choice and one that demands he learn to step out of himself.

And where do his clients fit in this picture?

They’re nothing but different versions of himself. The question is: how do they fit in the constellation of the more permanent – elective – figures in his life? In other words, his family, his loves, his blood?

Only time will tell.

Intimations of the Future

But it need not be left to chance since, for William Banks, the pieces are already in place. Even if he has yet to realize it.

If his clients are merely versions of himself, his quest to save the world – one person at a time – is also a valiant effort on his own behalf, to reclaim what was previously lost, diminished, and disavowed. To the extent that he remains unaware of this, his “mission” will remain an imperative external to him and his family, always competing for his time and attention, demanding a demonstration of his continued commitment to the cause. Eternally on the edge of exhaustion and the brink of madness.

If, on the other hand, he is willing to treat his clients as Other, rather than replicas of himself, he stands a chance of learning something from them. If, he is willing to grant them a degree of mystery that exceeds what he already knows about the terrors of addiction, he puts himself in the position of enriching his understanding of himself and others.

During the course of the first season, we saw glimpses of this. Not always recognized by William Banks but evident in what he was able to bring to his encounters with his family. This happens, not when he’s trying to fix something or solve a child’s problem, as fathers are “supposed” to do; not even when he tries to be honest, disclosing a truth about himself in an effort to communicate with his wife, as husbands are “supposed” to do.

Rather, they sneak up in the midst of quiet conversations, independent of the obligatory roles of concerned father or caring husband. He finds unfamiliar words emerge, words that speak to something he’s witnessed or heard from elsewhere. Words that have settled into his heart or mind and found a home there, evidence of moments in which self and other have touched in unexpected ways. And to everyone’s surprise, including William Banks himself, these new sentiments speak in a different tongue, the sentiments of a man different from the one he thought he was.

Change.

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For my original reflections on Dollhouse, go here.

In the final two episodes of this season, Dollhouse has provided us with a brilliant proclamation of the program’s aspirations, what it intends to convey in serving up the bizarre (yet fascinating) world of the Dollhouse and the characters that inhabit it.

It’s nothing short of revolutionary.

The Dollhouse Dilemma

In the season finale – Omega – we are presented with the Dollhouse version of the prisoner’s dilemma. Like the version many of us have learned about as students, it revolves around the conundrum of dealing with a less-than-complete pack of cards: what decision can a prisoner make when crucial pieces of information are missing, particularly if one’s partner is being held and questioned separately?

In the case of the Dollhouse, the enigma revolves around three features of the Doll’s captivity that constitute the knot of their existence: the empty “lives” they are expected to live during their term of indentured servitude, the unreality of the “personalities” that are imprinted upon them for their assignments, and their Original Selves – the ones responsible for their captivity in the first place – of whom they have absolutely no knowledge.

In this fictional universe, we may call this the Dollhouse Dilemma.

The answer to this dilemma is not merely escape since, in their current condition, the Dolls would be quite incapable of living in the outside world. And even if escape were a possibility, their Original Selves would still be held captive, the computer “wedges” symbolic of the very alienation and separation that defines their hollowed existence. It would seem that they are doomed to complete their sentences, earnestly attempting to “do their best” while rendered completely unaware that this “best” is premised on the evacuation of all that defines them as human.

What’s a Doll to do?

Übermensch: Overcoming the Many

Alpha – the rogue Doll about whom we’ve only heard, but not seen, until the final two episodes of this season – believes he has found the answer to this question. Due to a freak accident during his final “treatment” and just prior to his escape, all forty-eight personalities used in his previous engagements have been imprinted onto him simultaneously.

This puts Alpha in a unique position. After all, the other Dolls are regularly “treated” to remove all conscious traces of their assignments. One might say, then, that Alpha has attained “enlightenment.” At least that is what he believes. He understands how his desire “to be his best” was but an implant in service of an illusion. His newly acquired consciousness, in which he can recall each of his “assignments,” has allowed him to develop a new understanding of the purpose of his existence: to supersede his life as a Doll. In his words:

“Übermensch. Nietzsche predicted our rise. Perfected. Objective. Something new.

He even uses the language of ascension and evolution. And this is understandable, for what dignity is there in abject – and unconscious – servitude to an invisible master? To be unconscious of this fact is to be condemned to a form of life that has no meaning other than that which is forcibly inserted to one’s head by others. Mere puppets animated by unseen hands and for purposes unknown.

The Stakes of the Game

While we can leave it to the academics to bicker over Nietzsche’s notion of Übermensch, we should not fool ourselves into thinking this is but a “philosophical” debate. In the context of the Dollhouse, it is but one answer to the Dollhouse Dilemma, one side of the on-going struggle for making sense the Dolls’ fate. For us, it’s an opportunity to reflect upon the nature of our own existence, defined by its own versions of servitude, empty-headedness, and illusions.

Part of the “reality” of the Dollhouse involves the imprints – the personalities – given to the Dolls for each of their assignments. In this connection, it is worth noting that person and personality derive from the Latin persona, a word used to denote the mask used by actors in the performance of a play. The illusion, therefore, concerns the veracity, the truth, accorded to these performances and masks, in the Dollhouse and otherwise. For they are but the requirements for the parts we play. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Alpha’s vision of the Übermensch understands this and seeks to transcend it. To ascend.

But ascend to what?

Echo’s Alternative

These are the stakes of the battle between Alpha and his “Omega” who, upon her “ascension,” proceeds to reject his vision. In its place, she chooses another path to salvation, one that seeks not escape but something else.

And that something else is her Original Self, the one who abandoned her to the misery of the Doll’s life. True to her name – and like the Echo of Greek mythology – she is aware of how she is condemned to repeat the words of others, cognizant that her life is but a replication of scenes written by and performed for the benefit of others. But unlike her nemesis, Alpha, she seeks liberation not by building upon and “transcending” these artificial performances (and personas). Rather, she seeks her original source, the Self that gave birth to this alienated existence in the first place.

Yes, the Original Self has betrayed her. It is the Judas in all of us complicit in our alienation, servitude, and sacrifice. Yet this betrayal lays the foundation for an emancipation – and reconciliation – that is yet to come. It is the painful, yet necessary, condition for release … for without betrayal and banishment there is no Garden that awaits one’s return.

Future Anterior

Significantly, it is the previous episode – Briar Rose – that provides us with the clues as to what this might look like. However, rather than taking Nietzsche or Gnostic wisdom as its point of inspiration, it uses something with which we are already familiar: the story of Sleeping Beauty, a.k.a. Briar Rose.

The Rose Bower, Edward Burne-Jones

While a significant portion of the episode introduces us to Alpha and his brilliant plan for rescuing “Omega” from the Dollhouse, it is the second – and apparently inconsequential – story that is most relevant here. Echo is assigned to assist a young girl who is trapped in her own version of hell, a torment that has transformed her into a contemporary version of a “briar rose.” What has brought her to this point is not something she can speak about, particularly to the adults in the world about her, as they surely will not understand.

But Echo can. She has been imprinted with a future version of the girl, with the same memories and traumas minus the debilitating after-effects that have imprisoned the girl. The point-of-entry is the story of Sleeping Beauty which infuriates the girl:

Girl: This is crap!
Echo: I don’t think her parents told her about the curse.
Girl: If she knew, maybe they could have hid her! Or, she could have just run away! Or, what about this: she could have woken herself the hell up!

The story of a Sleeping Beauty passively waiting for her Prince enrages the girl, perhaps because she wasn’t rescued herself or because she’s tired of waiting for something to happen, a change that never arrives, leaving her to suffer her torment alone. More importantly, the story of the gallant Prince ignores her own heroism, of what she’s been able to endure, and of how she’s learned how to care for herself.

But Echo invites her to interpret the fairytale differently:

Echo: Read it again, ok? But this time, think of yourself as the Prince.
Girl: I didn’t save anyone …
Echo: Hey, remember what you said: “The Prince shows up at the last minute and takes all the credit.” That means Briar Rose was trapped all that time sleeping, and dreaming of getting out. The Prince was her dream. She made him. She made him fight to get her out.
Girl: But the Prince was a boy.
Echo: Yeah. But that’s not his fault.

Rather than dreaming of a valiant Prince to save the day, we are encouraged to identify the dreamer as the one who wields the power to free herself. Not only does this invert (and challenge) the cynical portrait of the universe as nothing but a dream of an indifferent God, it also rejects the fantasy of passive salvation dependent upon another. Instead, the power of transformation, emancipation, and release comes precisely from the one under the curse of sleep, only seemingly dead to the world.

Isn’t it appropriate that the closing image of the season’s finale is precisely this: a close-up on Echo’s face as she lays down to sleep in her own chamber, whispering a name that should be unfamiliar to her, a Great Unknown, giving voice to what a different age might have even called the Almighty:

“Caroline”

(According to Namipedia, Caroline means “free.”)

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This new show from Fox is an ambitious project and may even have bitten off more than it can handle. But its ambition should be applauded, as there are few programs emerging from the Hollywood machine that even attempt to achieve what Lie to Me seeks to address. For it uses the character of Cal Lightman and his company, The Lightman Group, to help us understand the nature of truth in today’s world, whether it concern contemporary politics, the world of business, or the intimacies of our relations with others … and ourselves.

The Story: The Science of Microexpressions

As anyone who has seen the publicity for Lie to Me knows, the program’s “hook” is the science of reading the body, specifically, the body’s relation to truth and deception. As described on its official web site:

LIE TO ME, the compelling new drama from the producers of 24, stars Tim Roth (“The Incredible Hulk,” “Reservoir Dogs”) as DR. CAL LIGHTMAN, the world’s leading deception expert who studies facial expressions and involuntary body language to discover not only if someone is lying, but why. When someone shrugs one shoulder, rotates a hand or raises the lower lip, Lightman knows he’s lying.

Based on the real-life scientific discoveries of Paul Ekman, the series follows Lightman and his team of deception experts as they assist law enforcement and government agencies to expose the truth behind the lies.

As such, the program is clearly situated in the “crime show” genre, in which Dr. Lightman and his colleagues are regularly recruited to assist in various investigations, both official and unofficial, to identify the hidden truth. The difference from conventional television dramas involving police detectives and private eyes, however, is the science touted by the Lightman Group, which regularly confronts those that doubt the veracity of its claim to read the signs of truth unavailable to those not trained in its secrets. At it’s core is the assertion that “microexpressions” – fleeting and involuntary facial expressions – communicate one of seven universal emotions that their owners seek to hide or otherwise suppress: anger, fear, contempt, disgust, sadness, happiness, or surprise.

Increasing the program’s bonafides, the official web site includes a blog (“The Truth Behind Lie to Me“) in which Dr. Ekman, the “founder” of this approach to truth and deception, explains the “science” behind the episodes, providing tutorials on the major concepts introduced in each episode – emblems, gestural retreat, emblematic slips, distancing language, hot spots, etc. – and the extent to which the program departs from his understanding of the truth.

Pedagogy of the Suppressed
“The body contradicts the words”

But there is more than science going on here. For in the course of introducing us to the knowledge behind this method, Cal Lightman and his colleagues are shedding light on how the body functions, that it is more than a shell or instrument that acts according to its owner’s intent but, rather, has a “mind” of its own. It is this split between an autonomous body and the thinking mind that is brought to our attention, and not merely as an “objective” fact, but one that speaks to the heart of the mundane realities that define our everyday existence in which body and mind are engaged in a continual struggle for dominance. Microexpressions and other tell-tale signs of deception are merely the methods by which the body challenges the unilateral decisions made by its other “rational” half.

In other words: Science is deployed to shed light on a different kind of truth, one less concerned with the world of facts and evidence, than a different way of understanding ourselves and our ways of being-in-the-world. Science is but the portal to this other mode of sight.

One simple way this is achieved is through the statistics included in the program, which also populate the show’s publicity materials (and its official web site) (e.g., “98% of teens say they lie to their parents”). Numbers of this sort speak to our rational minds, and actively invite comparison – “Where do I fit in that picture?” In all likelihood, they invite judgment, as well. For example, do we find the numbers surprising (or not)? How do we compare with the statistical norms: “do I lie that frequently too?” What do the figures tell us about ourselves, individually and collectively? Is the picture they offer to us something in which we should take pride or is it merely the way it is? In laying the ground for questions such as these, the numbers provoke an intra-psychic moment in which we can calibrate our connection to truth – and deception – vis-à-vis the (statistical) others presented to us.

This kind of “scrutiny” is quite literally modeled for us in the character of Cal Lightman who peers into the television screen during the opening credits (you can see them here), as if to decipher the emotional traces on our own faces. During the course of each episode we also see him peering into the faces of suspects, politicians, parents, their children, and oversized projection screens upon which video recordings can be examined in greater detail – and in slow-motion – for the giveaway signs of what is hidden. And as if to underscore this legibility of the suppressed, The Lightman Group offices and hallways are lined with photographs detailing the minute and myriad signs, not only of deceit, but the whole range of human emotions, from sadness, fear, and contempt, to happiness and surprise.

As members of the television audience, we are being trained in the art of deciphering what we so often hide behind our personal masks. Fox’s home page even includes a battery of quizzes through which we can test and refine these new-found skills in reading this other – and often ignored – language inscribed on the body.

Who thought learning about emotional intelligence could be so cool … or fun?

The Social Unconscious
“The question is never if someone is lying. It’s why.”

In addition to stimulating our curiosity about this silent cipher on the body, Lie to Me also points us in the other direction, to the “outside” world, which bears a similar language of its own. This other language gives evidence of another kind of split, in this case between the world-of-appearances and the world-of-forces that lie immediately below the surface. This split is something with which we are all familiar, as we struggle to navigate the conflicting tensions that pull us in different directions. In fact, it can be said that these contending forces are what account for the the cases that come to the attention of The Lightman Group, cases that can be considered symptoms of the very fractures that saturate our lives.

When understood in this way, the storylines of each episode can be understood as tracing the tangled webs within which these symptomatic cases arise. At times, the plot resembles a medical drama in which doctors, baffled by a mysterious illness, chase down various diagnostic dead-ends until they finally stumble upon the correct identification of the patient’s disease. In the case of Lie to Me, however, the “dead-ends” do not lead nowhere, for the program is not merely a mystery which is tidily put to bed at the end of an entertaining hour. Instead, the investigative stop-and-starts paint a portrait of the knotted interdependencies that define the world within which the original “case” is embedded. Perhaps even within which it was spawned.

For the point is not so much to identify and punish the guilty – providing us the perverse satisfaction of vengeance exacted at a distance – than it is to unveil the nature of the environments in which all are implicated in sustaining ways of living that give birth to precisely the problem identified at the beginning of the story. The answer to the puzzle, in other words, is not a hidden psychological truth but a set of social relationships within which those emotions, desires, or ambitions are brought into existence.

In one episode – “Life Is Priceless” – members of The Lightman Group investigate the cause of a building collapse that has killed two men and trapped three others below. They interrogate several people connected to the construction of the building, including: a worker caught using opiates on the job; the city’s site inspector who, upon accepting an anonymous bribe, fudged his report; one of the workers trapped below who continued working on the job, despite being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis; the mayor, who cut corners and fast-tracked the issuance of the building permit. Each of the people to whom we are introduced are examined and prodded to decipher the camouflaged language of the body, and each of them is found “guilty” of something. But the truth exposed here does not involve the motives hidden behind their faces but precisely the maze of forces that exert their influence on whomever is caught in their web. Each of them had “good” reasons for their behavior: the loss of medical insurance to pay for pain medication, the imperative to bring business to a failing economy in order to provide jobs for the unemployed, the need to save one’s home from foreclosure, or just to put food on the family’s table. In the end, it matters little who the actual (human) culprit is since we are provided another – more significant – portrait of the (inhumane) forces that converge on the construction site.

Many of the stories featured in Lie to Me may seem to be taken from the headlines. In a way, they probably are. The difference, however, is how we understand them, and this is the service that Lie to Me provides: it sheds light on the social unconscious which – when laid bare – gives evidence to the often unacknowledged structures and practices that organize our mundane existence and give birth to the kind of diseased symptoms that are the focus of The Lightman Group’s investigations. In this episode (“Life Is Priceless”), we see how the conflicting yet “normal” imperatives of business, politics, and family produce the very conditions for disaster.

Yes, this is about character, but it also about the web of imperatives and obligations that, at times, makes it virtually impossible to act with integrity. The pressure we may feel to lie or deceive – particularly about our public behavior – gives evidence to those forces that threaten to tear us apart.

Calibrating (with) the Suppressed
“Who made you who you are?”

The drama of Lie to Me lies between these two domains of the suppressed: the emotional life that exists beneath the body and the social unconscious that pulls us in opposite directions. This in-between space is inhabited not just by the “suspects” to whom we’re introduced, but the members of The Lightman Group, as well. For they are human too. And over the course of several episodes, we come to learn about their personal histories and character. Through this, we begin to see how their understanding of deception has been shaped by the specific elements of their biographies, and gain a better appreciation of how their personas reflect a certain mode of relating to the truth …

… as well as certain forms of blindness: for their compulsions and outbursts illustrate how their personal “truth” is as much a mystery to the them as it is to us. The promise of watching Lie to Me resides in the promise of discerning this other relation to truth, clarifying the emotional ties that bind, and those impulses that compel action beyond reason.

Much of this is evident in the contrast and tension that emerges between Cal Lightman, the founder of The Group, and one of his newest recruits, Ria Torres. As we learn during the eighth episode – “Depraved Heart” – Cal Lightman developed his special interest in emotional research on the heels of a personal tragedy, one he feels he might have averted if he had been more astute about this hidden language of the body. Ria Torres, on the other hand, is a “natural”: what has taken Lightman years developing as a scientific method, she can accomplish instantaneously without a second thought. What’s hinted at, however, is that her special talent has come at great personal cost. It is the unexpected benefit of a much darker set of experiences in which this “skill” was but a necessary response that ensured her emotional and physical survival. (See episode 5: “Unchained“)

As we become more familiar with these characters, what we learn is that such a hidden cause-source of talent produces its own blind spots. It brings certain compulsions of which its owners are only partially aware and over which they have little control. What makes emotional investigators such as Cal Lightman and Ria Torres “special,” in other words, is precisely their “dark side,” that which rarely sees the light of day. But as becomes evident during the course of this first season, calibrating with this underbelly of feeling is a necessary aspect of their work if they are to do it well. And this not only includes coming to terms with the past which gave rise to their relation to truth, but also those triggers that evoke the compulsions that lead to the loss of one’s composure.

In short, the job requirement is to “know thyself” … in ways more challenging – and perhaps distasteful – than most of us would care to take on for ourselves. The “science” can only work when one is dispassionate about one’s emotional attachments and, as a consequence, can dive into precisely those troubled waters that have created one’s aspirations in the first place.

In other words: to recognize the dangerous Other as oneself.