We can now draw parallels between the person in love and the latently motivated. Both are very keen on establishing contact and very indirect in their gambits (according to this line of reasoning we assume that the person in love is manifestly motivated). For the person in love, his testing is complex because the relationship with the other person is very important and his need for contact is intense.
It is a good survival strategy to put a lot of effort into this testing. The contact rebus of the latently motivated is also indirect and complex as he has the same intense need for contact as the person in love. However, the gambit of the latently motivated person is based on a largely desperate need for survival and is filled with demotivation.
To further clarify what is meant by a destructive contact rebus, it may be useful to examine more carefully the similarities and differences between the contact rebuses of the person in love and that of the latently motivated. Both may employ the same three neutral principles of transmutation: opposition (e.g. aggression), negation (e.g. withdrawal), and emulation (e.g. compliance).
What separates the person in love from the latently motivated is how much they utilize the fourth principle of transmutation: destruction. Since our previous examples of people in love are manifestly motivated, there is only a minor element of demotivation in their constructive contact rebuses. In the latently motivated, on the other hand, destruction is the dominant principle of transmutation (Motivational Work, Part 1: Values and Theory, pages 237 – 277).
Case Study
Ronald, a 25-year-old patient, comes walking toward his unit’s male psychologist within the hospital grounds. Although the psychologist has individual professional contact with some patients in this unit, Ronald is not among his patients. Keeping a good distance between them as he walks past, Ronald starts to shout at the psychologist, accusing him of being sick in the head. Some days later they bump into each other in the unit day room.
Ronald starts when he sees the psychologist, rushes towards him and positions himself less than a meter away from his face, and launches a fresh tirade of abuse about how the psychologist has engineered his (Ronald’s) fiancée’s miscarriage. The psychologist perceives the patient to be threatening, but after a while, Ronald calms down and they can both sit down in the discussion room, where Ronald now talks about his fiancée’s miscarriage, the truth of which the psychologist has previously been informed by the unit staff.
Discussion
The patient here employs a destructive and aggressive contact rebus towards the psychologist, the latter having been subjected to two different varieties of these. When the psychologist first meets the patient on the hospital grounds, he is confronted with an aggressive, verbal destructive contact rebus with which Ronald maintains a distance from him. The contact rebus is built up with the help of opposition, verbally exhibited by the patient through his negative comments.
In reality, the patient has a positive image of the psychologist and wants contact with him. However, using the principle of opposition he turns this into a negative image. His emotional expression of aggression means that he reverses the gambit even more, which he further demarcates by keeping a large physical distance from his target. The patient also employs another principle of transmutation, that of negation, and so instead of approaching the psychologist, he keeps his distance. The patient’s contact rebus thus contains cognition, a feeling, and physical action.
The positive affirmation is hidden within the contact rebus in the form of dissonance, upon which the transmutation principle of opposition rests. The patient expends a great deal of emotional energy in making contact with the psychologist whilst denying that this is the case.
The transmuted positive affirmation lies in the way that Ronald gets closer to the psychologist and, through his emotional commitment, demonstrates that the latter is very important to him; the dissonance is evident in the maximization of his criticism of the psychologist and in the instantaneous change (whereby the patient is suddenly very aggressive, without warning). Finally, dissonance exists in Ronald’s acting in direct opposition to his total life situation: he is in no way forced to have contact with the psychologist but still gravitates towards him.
In this case, the patient is employing the same principles of transmutation as a manifestly motivated person in love. However, as previously explained, the difference here is that the fourth principle of transmutation in the form of destruction is dominant. On their first encounter, Ronald directs his aggression at the psychologist with a destructive outcome, intending to do psychological harm to him with threats of physical violence that are not implicit in the hail of abuse to which Ronald subjects him.
Moreover, if the patient has such a lack of control over his language, he may also lack control over his behavioral impulses. The verbal expressions are also offensive (i.e. they cause psychological damage) and in this way are also destructive. The threat is also evident in non-verbal expressions such as gestures, posture, and tone of voice, through which the patient warns others that he may use physical violence.
By maintaining the same distance between himself and the psychologist, there is destructive transmutation in that the patient is threatening. It is also offensive to keep such a long distance away from someone you are addressing.
The functions of the contact rebus are intensified through destruction, and dissonance becomes even more apparent. Why would the patient expend so much emotional energy on someone he despises and dislikes so much?
When the psychologist and patient later meet in the day-room, the other contact rebus comes into play. Here, the patient also employs opposition in painting a negative picture of the psychologist. The transmutation principle of negation exists in the verbal form in that the patient absolutely does not want a conversation. In contrast, his negation in the form of maintaining physical distance has disappeared and he is standing very close to the psychologist. By approaching the psychologist in such a tangible manner, Ronald is also employing emulation.
The contact rebus is also transmuted by destruction, meaning the patient is threatening in the same way he was with the previous contact rebus. However, in this contact rebus, even the element that is transmuted by emulation is a threat. The fact that the patient is standing in offensively close proximity constitutes an openly destructive transmutation of this feature of the contact rebus, which is also governed by the transmutation principle of opposition through aggression.
Behind the patient’s contact rebus lies a desire to be given the same access as others on the unit to professional counseling. However, since he is so scared and suspicious, his cry for help is indirect. Destruction reinforces the dissonance in his contact rebus in the same way as before: the patient expends a great deal of energy on someone he appears to have no faith in whatsoever. Finally, by having a discussion with the psychologist, the patient switches to a contact rebus that is based on emulation, whereby he is complying with the psychologist’s expectations.