Merging
I confess I have not thought about merging as a possible issue in teaching before. I have definitely spoken to individual teachers about their inclinations to merge in specific instances. But those conversations have been about individual people and their personal urge to merge. I haven’t thought about merging as possibly
intrinsic to modern-day teaching.
First, a definition: Psychodynamic merging is when Person 1 blends so completely with Person 2 that Person 2 basically disappears. The only person left standing is Person 1.
Merging can happen when we fall in love — when we find someone with whom we are attuned on virtually everything! When both of us are absolutely, unbelievably perfect and fantastic! When no one ever takes offense or disagrees or feels hurt! When love means never having to say you’re sorry!
Merging happens when fathers (usually) identify so completely with their athletic sons that they feel themselves to actually be on that field. Merged fathers yell at the refs! They yell at their sons! They hold winning — even if the team is made up of 2nd graders — as mandatory! And losing as shameful or, at least in the moment, unbearably disappointing.
Merging happens when we feel empathy. We can absorb another’s experience so completely that we can’t tell where we end and the other begins. We’re simply the same.
Merging can happen when someone doesn’t do things the way we do. When it is INCOMPREHENSIBLE that someone would leave a towel on the floor or squeeze a toothpaste tube in the middle or yell out in class when they know they’re supposed to raise their hand! That feeling of confusion and shock and outrage, of inconvenience and astonishment — that’s a sign of possible merging. In this case, we’re not grabbing someone else’s reality and making it our own, as when we feel empathy. We’re imposing our reality on someone else, trespassing in their garden and digging around at will.
Merging happens when we stop seeing another person accurately and instead absorb them or their work as our own. A common classroom example is when I read a student paper and cannot help but cross out the words or phrasings I don’t like and replace them with mine. Or when I ask a question and wait for a student to give me the answer that is in my head. Or when I so identify with a cause or project that, in my mind, it cannot exist without me. Merging doesn’t just erase another person; it crushes the Nth.
Merging is so quiet and automatic that it’s difficult to know when you’re doing it. It is stealthy. It is insistent and absolute. It creates a reality that is totally convincing.
Merging is also difficult to call out when it’s done to you. And, except in the case of falling in love, it feels terrible. In my experience, people when they merge are like
body snatchers.
They invade you and insist that they are right about you when, at some level, if you’re lucky, you know they’re not. Pulling a merger out of your body can take a heckuva lot of determination and energy.
The antidote to merging? Boundaries. Strong personal boundaries. Respect for others’ boundaries. The discipline to pay attention to your psychic surroundings. Are you in your garden? Are you reaching into someone else’s? Are you actually weeding their garden or planting your own flowers there? If so, what anxiety are you managing by merging? Do you have the willpower to work through your anxiety on your own (or, better yet, with help)?
Is it possible that the field of education depends on merging? Or at least encourages it? And doesn’t know how to see it? Or do things differently?