Each year on Halloween, as children and grown ups joyfully embrace the hiatus from the mundane and transform into powerful creatures—superheroes, animals, and spirits—I am reminded of the darker themes of Halloween. We fancy an ability to conquer Death as we play with power, transformation and the potential for destructiveness whether we’re five, 15 or 73. For one patient, Daniel, these themes of change and power, merge into a dance with the ultimate mystery and source of terror and transformation—a dance with death.
“I did more drugs than he did that Halloween,” Daniel said proudly in one of his first sessions. He was referring to the actor River Phoenix who died of a drug overdose on the morning after Halloween in 1993 at the age of 23. Daniel was also a young man back then. He, too, is an artist. When he came into my office a few years ago well into his thirties, his struggle with his demons was wearing him thin. Still, this victory over a modern day prince, a celebrity, who perished where he triumphed, was the undercurrent of his pride—how powerful he was if he could accomplish such a thing.
Often, however, what manifests in reality is the opposite of a person’s secret truth. Unconsciously Daniel felt weak and frightened—he defeated a prince but felt like a pauper. He felt unworthy of a decent stable life. He was frightened of such a life since it was something he has never known. He would often go on tirades of contempt for the kind of stability that would enable the things that many of us find rewarding—a family, a fulfilling work life—for the sake of wild impulsivity he thought inspired his creativity. “Is it possible to be creative and stable? Are they mutually exclusive?” I would ask. The hatred for safety and stability was in fact his secret wish for those things, and his fear of them as an unknown.
Over time we unearthed the fear of losing parts of himself if he created that kind of life. But what would he lose? Would he lose his creativity? He would have to give up the hard drugs and drinking that made him feel powerful but also caused black outs. When he came to from these black outs he would find himself in dangerous situations, at times life threatening, the most dramatic being climbing on the cables of the Manhattan Bridge. How could he be creative if he didn’t live to create? How would he ever know if there is another way if he didn’t try?
In Halloween, we symbolically conquer the powerful by transforming into them, we break rules by having endless amounts of candy and by imagining death is not the end but a place from which we may return. In Daniel’s recklessness he was succumbing to demons, not conquering them. In his wish to transform he first had to peer into an abyss in order to realize that he’d rather live and return. Daniel’s truly bold act has been quitting the drugs. He has managed to become a social drinker but we watch his drinking carefully. Rather than flirting with death and seeking destruction through oblivion, he is courageously facing his pain at a pace he can stand.
Michal Tziyon is a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist in private practice. Her website is www.nypsychotherapy-mtziyon.com. E-mail her at michal.tziyon@gmail.com
