Because of his desperate need for life energy, the latently motivated client tests virtually everyone with whom he comes into contact. In turn, this means that he never means what he says and does, for there is always a contact gambit concealed somewhere in the background.
In this way, he is like the enamored person, who also embodies covert communication in his behavior. When encountering a latently motivated person, we effectively meet two individuals: a visible one, who is a distorted version of the real self; and the real person, concealed within the former. The client’s explicit behavior (i.e. his selection of contact rebuses) not only constitutes the disguise that he must don to survive his encounters with other people and with himself, it also serves as an indirect contact gambit.
Spells and curses cast by witches and evil fairies can be interpreted as a poetic metaphor for how the destructive contact rebus can distort a person. The latently motivated is actually under a spell that turns the real person into another, disguised form – which also creates opportunities for contact and change. The tale of Beauty and the Beast is a good example of this (Motivational Work, Part 1: Values and Theory, pages 304 – 308).
Beauty and the Beast
There once was a wealthy merchant who had six sons and six daughters. The youngest of the daughters was also the fairest, and so was known by all as Beauty. At first, the merchant was very successful and grew very wealthy, until one day he ran into serious financial difficulties and had to travel to a port to meet one of his ships that had returned home with precious cargo. Before he set off, he asked his children what they wanted him to bring home for them.
All of them mentioned all sorts of riches, except for Beauty, who just wanted him to return home safe and sound. The merchant insisted that she ask for a present, and so she said that she wanted a rose from him on his return. It turned out, however, that the merchant’s partner had cleared the ship and there was no money for him to collect. On his way home, a terrible blizzard descended and he feared he would get lost. Suddenly he found himself on a road without snow. The air was warm, the trees were in leaf, and the birds were singing. He followed the road until he arrived at a beautiful castle.
It seemed deserted and so he led his horse to a stable that was open, where he tied it up. Suddenly the great door of the castle opened and he entered, finding himself in sumptuous rooms, beautifully furnished. Finally, he came to a room with a huge table loaded with the choicest meats and the finest fruits. The merchant sat down to sample the delights and called again and again for his invisible host, but no one answered. After his meal, he walked out into the charmingly delightful garden that was filled with roses.
He picked a rose for his youngest daughter, and immediately a terrible hairy beast appeared, bearing its fangs and huge, sharp claws. The monster was furious and accused the merchant of being a thief. First of all, he wanted to kill his guest but then decided to give him another chance. All the merchant had to do was make one of his daughters come to live with him of her own free will. If he succeeded, he would escape the monster’s punishment; if he tried to cheat him, however, the monster would find him and kill him on the spot.
The merchant grew very frightened and told the Beast that never would one of his children sacrifice herself for him. In the end, he went along with the Beast’s proposal, as it was the only way he could escape from the castle. When the merchant arrived home he gave his children their presents, and as he handed Beauty the rose he told her of the Beast’s retribution. Beauty insisted that she would go straight away to the castle to live with the Beast, and neither her father nor her brothers and sisters were able to talk her out of it.
With a heavy heart, the merchant returned to the castle with his youngest daughter, and before he left, the Beast said he could take with him as many riches as he could carry. At first, Beauty was scared of the Beast but soon realized that he was actually kind and considerate, and grew to like him. On several occasions, he proposed to her, but no matter how much she liked him she could not make herself agree to the marriage – for she loved a prince who had appeared to her in a dream, begging her to release him.
In the same dream appeared a beautiful woman, who told her that she would one day be happy, on one condition: that she must never allow herself to be taken in by appearances. Even though Beauty (who was convinced that the Beast was holding the prince prisoner) started to enjoy being at the castle, she also missed her father and brothers and sisters, and so asked the Beast if she could return to them. He said he could not refuse her request and agreed, but told her that if she didn’t return within two months he would die.
He gave her a ring that if turned on her finger would transport her straight back to the castle. When she returned to her family, she was overjoyed and all but forgot the Beast. Time passed, and when the two months had gone by she had a dream in which she saw the Beast lying in the garden, dying under a blanket of roses. Troubled, she turned her ring and returned to the castle. When she found him, he was lying as if dead on the ground. She started to cry but soon noticed that he was breathing weakly. She realized then how much she loved him and she covered him with kisses.
He woke and proposed to her once more, and this time she accepted. Immediately he turned into the handsome prince whom she had seen in her dreams. He told her that an evil goblin had put a spell on him, and his only way to break it was to have someone love him despite his monstrous appearance.
Suddenly, the prince’s fairy godmother and his real mother appeared in a carriage; Beauty recognized the fairy – it was the beautiful young woman of her dream. The fairy asked the Queen if she would accept the prince’s choice of wife. She answered by arranging a wonderful wedding, and Beauty and the prince live happily ever after.
Discussion
One way of interpreting this fairy tale is to see the prince as latently motivated by virtue of the transformation spell cast on him by the goblin. He is destructive in his behavior by being verbally threatening and puts the merchant and his family in a serious predicament that is tantamount to criminal blackmail. There is, however, an opportunity for the prince in his enchantment: if someone can show faith in him and love him despite his distorted form, he will be released.
The spell can be interpreted as an aggressive contact rebus, which, if successfully detransmuted, will render the prince manifestly motivated. The daughter receives no explicit help from her family in seeing the Beast’s real identity, only indirect help from her father, who lets her live with it/him. However, her dream, which is the work of the good fairy, enables her to start to intuitively detransmute the prince’s destructive contact rebus, while the Beast/prince similarly starts to intuitively detransmute Beauty’s compliance contact rebus.
This story is a clear illustration of how a contact rebus is transmuted and how it is detransmuted, with the image of a prince being concealed inside the body of the repulsive monster. The Disney version of the story shows how the detransmutation of the Beast gradually progresses and how the prince’s real features slowly start to emerge, showing us quite clearly how the destructive transmutation has distorted his entire physiognomy.
Similarly, the real, suffering person is hidden in the destructively transmuted contact rebus of the latently motivated client. The Beast also serves to illustrate the latently motivated person’s dire need for life force, which, if not satisfied, can lead to ruin and, ultimately, death.