Porcupines and Understanding

Metaphors and I have rekindled our love. A few measly embers were left after high school, and I am pleased to announce that reading Schopenhauer’s Porcupines blew on the embers and the fire is burning strong again.

I find metaphors to be a unique way to deeply understand something, and in turn, feel understood.

Schopenhauer’s Porcupines: Intimacy and Its Dilemmas by Deborah Luepnitz is a fascinating collection of five stories of psychotherapy.

The title, itself a metaphor, is based on a fable by Arthur Schopenhauer, a German philosopher. The fable, summarized by Dr. Luepnitz, goes as follows: “A troop of porcupines is milling about on a cold winter’s day. In order to keep from freezing, the animals move closer together. Just as they are close enough to huddle, however, they start to poke each other with their quills. In order to stop the pain, they spread out, lose the advantage of commingling, and again begin to shiver. This sends them back in search of each other, and the cycle repeats as they struggle to find a comfortable distance between entanglement and freezing” (Leupnitz, 2003).

The fable is commonly interpreted as a metaphor for intimacy and boundaries, and how there cannot be love without pain.

I found comfort in this fable, written in 1851, about my own struggles to balance being vulnerable and maintain my sense of self.

There are so many things to dissect in this fable. I think it’s particularly interesting that there was no conflict, no pointing fingers/paws at quills, and no shame, in the cycle of pulling away and drawing closer. The porcupines seemed to understand that they each needed to draw away to heal because they felt the same pain.

I’m sure we can all think of a time in our lives that we needed to create space for ourselves to heal, and another person didn’t understand our needs. It’s when this disconnect occurs that unhealthy pain occurs, the dirty pain that’s tied up in other people’s pain.

Adding on to Winnicott and Freud, I believe the goal of psychotherapy, and life in general, is not only “to love, to work, and to play,” but to love, to work, to play, and be understood.

References: Luepnitz, D. A. (2003). Schopenhauer’s porcupines. BasicBooks.