Esther Perel

32:58Bella Freud:man and more than anything with a son i love buying my son clothes and how old is he he's he's just turned 25 and he has a good style anyway but um i love it when he asks me about clothes yeah it's just the biggest compliment it's a compliment it's like you know it's it's not just i trust you because you're my mom i trust your eye on me and and that you will know how I want to be seen. Yeah. And it's almost the opposite of trusting because you're my mom. It's trusting you because you have that eye and you handily happen to be their mother because you're always on the end of the phone. We're saying the same.

33:45Bella Freud:Yeah. Yeah. And you have an an erotic formula, which is attraction plus obstacle equals excitement. And I wondered, what's the difference? What's the balance between that and being self-destructive? So let's analyze the erotic formula. It's not mine. It's from one of my mentors, Jack Morin, who was an extraordinary sexologist. And I think what he talked, what he emphasizes in the statement is that desire is intensified by not having. Right, yes. What fuels the wanting is the energy to try to reach something that is not so easily immediately accessible. So the not having is the obstacle. Now, the obstacle may be your conscience, your self-image, what you think you should like and want and be excited by.

34:48Your obstacle can be the other person not being available. The obstacle can be religion and culture and geography pulls us apart. It's a ton of different things that are obstacles. So I'm drawn to something. There is something that makes it not immediately accessible. and that intensifies the force of my desire. And therefore on the other side comes the arousal and the excitement. If you just have attraction and it is linked with a should, I must, it's what I have to do. It is much more difficult to experience the I want to do. We seem to want more or to be more excited about what we want when it is not what we're supposed to want.

35:43Bella Freud:Yes, yes. Or when it is not a duty that makes it an obligation rather than a desire. Because you talk a lot about, and this I find so illuminating, and about separation creating the oxygen for that thing to do with people coming together. and also the thing the sort of big bombshell for me when I first read Mating in Captivity was the quest for security and how that in itself it didn't give me the security that I thought I wanted and and somehow feeling a level of insecurity made me feel much more in my kind of in myself where I felt better and the too much security just somehow there was none of this sort of the thrill somehow went AWOL and I don't really it was because I've thought about and sort of you know go back to your book and think read that bit again and again and I also know that you You know, my parents' relationship was so full of insecurity that I thought I must have the opposite to that.

37:00Bella Freud:And then I found that it wasn't entirely the solution. So I don't know what I'm asking you anymore. Do you want me to riff on what I think you may be asking? Yeah, please do. Because I think, you know, mating in captivity is turning 20 next year. So I have been doing a lot of thinking myself and writing a new forward about what was this thesis and why did it resonate so much that this book became almost a movement rather than just a book and a theory. And, you know, the same way that Jack Morin's erotic equation really shaped my thinking, attraction plus obstacle equals excitement and analyze that.

37:51I also had Stephen Mitchell, another very inspiring analyst who took ideas from Roland Barthes and Bataille. I mean, there were a bunch of us, you know, playing with the same notion that love and desire, they relate, but they also conflict. and that sometimes the same very things that nurture love, care, worry, responsibility, duty are the very ingredients that at times can stifle desire, which resides much more in a space that wants freedom and autonomy and wanting and choice and risk and even danger. And that we have two fundamental sets of human needs a need for security and stability and dependability and we have a need for adventure and freedom and change and exploration it's ulysses it's home and travel this is an old theme but we have actually what is new is not that we have these sets of needs what is new is that we've never tried to reconcile them into one relationship yeah that was the big ambition of the romantic ideal and um and the idea that at a time when we began to want from our romantic relationship to give us a tremendous amount of intimacy basically to give us what once an entire village used to provide to then say that in fact the erotic elan needs space in order to have an elan, it needs another person to meet on the other side.

39:33It needs a bridge to cross. That fire needs air, that it needs a certain kind of distance. First, it needs the connection and the secure attachment in order to be able to then create that distance, which we then want to close. So this desire wants to open the distance that love has worked so hard to close. Right. Gosh, it's kind of tricky how you keep that going in a long-term relationship. Especially when the long-term has gotten twice as long. Yes, that is the mating in captivity. That is the fundamental dilemma that people wonder, then how do you do that? And is it possible and in what circumstances and what else is available to us if we choose to do it differently.

40:29Bella Freud:And you said vanity with a good dose of humor is wonderful. To be vain is sometimes a form of self-care. And I wondered, is there someone who exemplifies this like even a fictional figure? No, I think the person with whom I really learned that was actually my mother. Somebody once said People with vanity age much better. I mean, they can age less better because they are upset at the fact that they have lost their youth, but they can age better because they're actually taking care of themselves. And I thought, this is an interesting proposition. Somebody mentioned this, I was in my teens. It's not like I had much maturity to think about that.

41:13But there is something in the, I want to look a certain way that makes me invest in it. When I invest in it, I pay attention. Beautification is, you know, we beautify our table, we beautify our gardens, we beautify our skins, we tattoo it, we draw it. I mean, it's part of the humankind to be invested in what is esthetization like, what is beautification like. And vanity involves that. There's lots of things about vanity, but it often has an element of esthetization as well. And I think you can see older people who they are not old because their youth is in the way they esthetize themselves. And it's not just clothes and it's not just makeup and it's not just a particular hat.

42:09And it's a lot of things combined. But you know that they're still looking at themselves in a society where often people have stopped looking at them.

42:19Bella Freud:Yeah, that's so interesting because I heard somebody say how vanity is a really useful drive. It's an energetic force and it gives you, you know, it propels you along and it just has been kind of reduced into something that's supposedly not good. But it's how you just described it, especially getting older. It's really handy to, you know, you want to go forward and stay engaged and be interested. Because what's the other definition of vanity? a kind of self-centeredness yeah sort of pity petty self-centeredness is that it sort of i suppose some sort of um as though it's oblivious of other people but it it isn't necessarily it's completely enrolling unless it's you know some nightmare narcissist or whatever no but the way we describe vanity is with a little bit of humor as well and yeah and an irony to it um it it's that it can be something different but i think that it has taken on one meaning and it has more than one meaning because in in england there's a huge people are often described as attention seeking and children as though that's the most you know kind of heinous thing you could possibly be but But I mean, it's not, children need, everyone needs attention.

43:50Bella Freud:So for some reason, it has a really bad rap in England. And now when I see, you know, if I'm wandering around and I see someone really dressed up, I feel so appreciative. And I love seeing that they've really gone out on a limb to go to work and are dressed up to the nines. And I get something from it, just looking at it. But do you feel less and less looked at? In a society where people are constantly with their heads down into a screen, do you experience the, I mean, we used to be looked at. And we used to look at everybody. We used to sit on a subway and look at people. We used to be on a plane and look at people.

44:34We used to walk the streets. We are looking at people and people are looking at us less and less. There's a paucity of eye contact and a paucity of basically taking in the world visually. We take the world in visually, but through a mediated device. And I think that it is changing a lot. I mean, people after the pandemic, you know, where they basically didn't dress for two years, except maybe a top on occasion, basically have stopped looking and feel that they are being seen. Do you experience that? Well, I'm not.

45:14Bella Freud:I mean, I look at people all the time. I'm always curious about everything, about what they're wearing. And so I look a lot. And I notice people kind of looking, you know, especially on the subway. Everyone's slightly looking at each other, even though they have their phones out. And I, so I haven't, I mean, before, when before Ferns, obviously it was completely different, but I don't know if it's, I quite enjoy nearly catching someone's eye or just scouring around to see what people are wearing or what the fabric of their clothes is like or if they're attractive. so yeah I don't I wondered if you fancy someone and don't like something they're wearing does it kill your attraction to them

46:20no I mean not immediately I if it's somebody I know

46:31I mean I'm known for saying this doesn't look really good yes I'm actually or I like I really like that or uh where's that from I mean there's a way of kind of saying something that says not sure but I don't have to like what people wear necessarily they like they need to like it I it switches but no i don't think one time somebody not wearing something makes me change the way i see them because i see them not just for what they wear the minute you know someone you see them in with multiple eyes at multiple layers yeah it's true because some

47:12Bella Freud:people have really specific things that they find repellent and like i'll give you an example I have a thing about caps Americans wear a lot of caps in Belgium and in France and especially you don't wear a suit with a cap or you go dressed up and then a cap I have a few friends but one in particular and I'm like half the time can you take that thing off it just really it clashes it's not nice but I think it's totally an acquired taste. If I grew up here, I may just as well have liked caps. There's something about, you know, okay, if you play tennis, if you go running, if you bike, if you whatever, there's an activity, it's called a physical sports activity that goes with a cap, not when you go to work.

48:08So I make comments, but she wears the cap. I'm not holding time next to her.

48:17Bella Freud:I always love those things when something really puts you off or on. It's always, like, exciting to be kind of, to wonder what they could do differently, especially if it's someone you like. So the way, one place where we do this is we have a once-a-year group of friends that come together to do a clothes swap. Really? Yeah. Oh my God, that's such a great idea. And sometimes even twice a year. And it's phenomenal because we go around the circle. Each person takes out the bag that she brought with things. It's really a ritual. It's a magnificent ritual, actually, now that I'm thinking about it.

49:02And then we take out a piece and then people insist that, that's a Bella piece. That's a Jessie piece. That's an Esther piece. I mean, it's like, and then we put this on, the person, and then everybody evaluates. There's no mirror. We are the mirrors. And we're like, that's so you, that is perfect for you. This is yours. Done. And we literally go around like that, but sometimes about 10, 12 of us. That's a brilliant idea. And people live with magnificent new clothes.

49:34Bella Freud:I might suggest that. I love that idea because it's so friendly and I love wearing other people's clothes. I like hand-me-downs. I like people's leftovers, anything that sort of passes on. And you said when your mother died, her absence made room for choices that you wouldn't have dared make if she was there. and I really resonated with that because I felt like my father's parting gift to me when he died was my freedom to think what I liked because I loved my father so much that I would have a sort of secret approval system that he wasn't aware of at all that I thought I needed him to sort of check everything or I wanted him to check everything that I liked and I wondered if he, I had a hunch that when he died, I wouldn't, I would feel kind of liberated in that way.

50:40Bella Freud:And I wondered if you thought that would happen when your mother died.

50:49I didn't have any thoughts before about that. I loved my mother and I adored my father. So that was a different relationship. I also knew my mother had very strong opinions. And in that, I think she taught me to have strong opinions. Simply resisting her strengthened my resolve. But in order to then oppose her or go and do the thing I wanted, whatever it was, travel here, study this, I had to be really sure of myself, even about things that I wasn't sure about at all. so that I could convince her that I knew what I was doing. And that was a very active mechanism. And when she passed, I started working on mating in captivity, which was the first time that I did something that I was absolutely unsure if I was capable of doing.

51:48Until then, on some level, I only did things that I knew I can do so that I could measure up to what I had said and not disappoint myself in front of her. So when I began writing, I felt for the first time that I don't have to take the psychic energy needed to convince her that I know what I'm doing and I could just stay in the not knowing. It was okay. And I experienced the insecurity that comes with that. and do the best I can without knowing if I am capable rather than proving to her that I'm capable and then having to fear the insecurity of maybe not living up to it.

52:39Bella Freud:Yeah. It's as though the horizon suddenly expands and you can go places you couldn't before. Well, you just deal with your own anxiety and you don't have to deal with having to reassure two people yeah it's great it's such a because I remember when I first went to see my analyst who I still see was a couple of years before my father died and I said I I want to know that I won't fall apart when he dies and that I can start preparing my kind of autonomy and um and it worked um How old was he? He was 88 when he died and he was ill and stuff. So we were all preparing for his death. But then rather unexpectedly, my mother suddenly died the same week as him.

53:40Oh, my God.

53:41Bella Freud:That is a blue. She went into hospital and they said, you have a week to live. And she died four days after him. completely, you know, it was like an outsider racehorse. She came in and they weren't together or anything like that. So it was kind of, yeah. That's a total castle crash. Yeah, it was really strange indeed. And you have a very handsome husband who's a painter and also a therapist who specializes in trauma. And you said, my husband deals with pain. I deal with pleasure. And they're intimately acquainted. And I wondered how if he sometimes disappears into the pain and how you deal with that.

54:38no I don't feel like he disappears into the pain because he creates

54:49he also understands the passage from pain to pleasure from destruction to rebuilding from rupture to repair so actually part of how I began to conceptualize working on eroticism and the centrality of eroticism much more than of sexuality was in conversations with him and the work that he was doing at the time when he co-created the Center for Victims of Torture and Political Violence at NYU. And I asked him, how do you know when people who have experienced torture, forms of annihilation, such wounding, when they can come out of it do they come out of it and how does it look and what does it require what are what are the the the mechanisms that let you know that someone is coming back to life basically and and one of the first things was when people are once again able to take risks because as long as you are in a constant state of utter vigilance you are just making sure that you are safe but you can't look outside.

56:07Yeah. And you make sure that the outside doesn't penetrate in. And then the second thing was when they are able to create again because creativity is an active engagement with the unknown. And the unknown and to let the unknown in demands a certain level of trust and openness. And then the third thing is when you're able to be playful because playful is about unselfconsciousness and irreverence and the opposite of responsibility and structure. So those are three things that I think he probably is exploring constantly in painting, but they are part of working with trauma. It's understanding that these are elements that are not just what you get when you have worked through the trauma, but they are in fact part of the medicine themselves.

57:02Yeah, yeah. And when I said he deals with pain, it's true. I stand by the statement, but it's also because he starts in one place and then comes to the center, and I start in another place and come to the center. And these experiences are interrelated.

57:22Bella Freud:God, it's very, it's so beautiful the way you put it because when people do describe extremely awful situations, it's, you know, there's almost nothing to say because it's so devastating. But without anything, then there's nothing. Erotic recovery is part of trauma healing. God, that's interesting. It's not the reward at the end. Yeah. That's the difference. And I think we both come together around that construct. Yeah. Yeah, my closest friend, Karma, we talk about something we call the beauty alongside, which is books, pain, you know, anything to do with creativity. Nature. Yeah. Nature too. And it's so great having that.

58:19Bella Freud:And the pain, there it is. And then there's these other things that you can go like a two-horse carriage. and it sort of makes it possible to bear things instead of... People create in the most dire of circumstances. They sing, they move, they recite poetry. They, I mean, you know, the most erotic poems are spiritual and the most spiritual poems are erotic. you give the impression impression of having a lot of confidence in your body and i wondered did you receive validation when you were going through that transition from girl to young woman you know i often think if i had the confidence of today with the looks of them yeah but because honestly what makes the difference is the confidence not the looks I I was perfectly fine as a young woman but if I didn't feel it what good did it do yeah I could be doubtful I could be insecure like many young women are I could want something else that wasn't the way my body was um I I had plenty of things that I didn't particularly like I don't I think that even if you are reinforced by the people that are close to you as you transition from girl to woman or as you go through puberty for that matter society doesn't necessarily reinforce that society is based on you being critical so that you can purchase new things that are going to make you feel better you know so um i i think that what changes is you mature that you know yourself better.

1:00:12You start to become more accepting of who you are. You take yourself with the pros and the cons and you become more of a complex being. And that maturity is what makes you look at yourself very differently. So honestly, I don't think that many people in their late teens, early 20s, or full 20s for that matter, go around feeling great about themselves. Yeah. Neither physically nor in other parts of their life. I think that comes with age, with maturity, with a sense that the acceptance is more from within and less from outside, how I should be versus how I want to be. And that applies to looks.

1:01:02so I feel better about how I look today even though I probably may have looked better before

1:01:10Bella Freud:yeah it's something like that yeah I find exactly the same it's so fun being alive and you know having a body and having the confidence that I didn't have before and also the shame another thing that I love about your work is the the just the absence of shame I mean obviously you talk about it and you you know it's not like you don't I just feel on but you can look confident I don't think I looked necessarily different or acted differently I've always love dancing I've always loved dressing but internally I had a lot more self-doubt and I was a lot I had a lot more turmoil and lack of certainty than I have today I I think that's what's misleading is that you can see I mean we can look at a lot of what are culturally deemed beautiful people and actors and creators who we look up to, etc.

1:02:17And their experience internally is not necessarily one that is peaceful, that is confident, that feels home. I think our bodies, for some of us, are like a chateau. And it has multiple rooms. And we like to visit from one room to another and we like to linger in there and when you're young there are rooms in that chateau that you never want to go in yeah but you are happy to go to other rooms and when and then there are other people for whom it's not a big castle like that it's actually a prison a cell from which you can't wait to get out of it doesn't feel comfortable it's not a place in which you take deep breath that expand and that really make you feel like you're coming home inside your home, which is your body in which you live.

1:03:12And my work is often helping people to change, maybe not from a cell to a castle, but certainly from a cell to a place of freedom and liberation and acceptance and dignity. And clothes sometimes participate in that, sometimes have nothing to do with it. But everybody knows when they're leaving prison and when they no longer feel imprisoned or entrapped or clouded in dark thoughts about their bodies and about what was done to their bodies or their experience of their bodies. And they become kinder to their bodies and they become more willing to receive through their bodies what other people are giving to them.

1:04:02Touch, kisses or clothes, all the same. Yeah, that's wonderful.

1:04:12Bella Freud:I've been enthralled by your work and it seems odd to be sitting here with you lying there, Freudian style. And I wondered, how does it feel for you? The interesting thing is that I've never done analysis. I've never been in analysis. I've been in loads of different therapies, but not analysis. My husband has. He was for six years, five times a week. So I'm familiar with other people's experience, not my own. And I totally can see why lying down and looking up and not making eye contact and not being organized by your gaze, even though I can imagine it, but it's not like I'm watching your facial responses to me and all of that.

1:04:58And by definition, you say more when you're lying flat. It reminds me of a session that I did on my podcast, Where Should We Begin? And it was a couple that was having harsh arguments. And at one point I said to them, would you please lay down on the floor, both of you?

1:05:18Bella Freud:Really? So they laid like me, one next to the other on the floor. And then I said, now continue fighting. It's impossible to do. Because your body that fights is a body of which the shoulders are up, the teeth are clenched, the fists are tight, and the body is leaning forward because you're on the attack. You're having a fight. To lay open like this, by definition, is a vulnerable position. I cannot defend myself. I can't do anything. So it is much harder to continue arguing while I'm lying flat looking at the ceiling. And I'm just reminded that I should use this more in my sessions. Maybe not to do analysis, but to understand how the different position of the body, I can't see myself.

1:06:11So I can't even see what I'm wearing I can forget that too I can't see you um if I can't look out I end up looking more in yeah and to do that with two people that is my suggestion to you one day have two people lying there in front of you like you just did with me yes well maybe a couple it'd be a fascinating yes thing to watch how how this unfolds the same kind of conversation but done with two people and it makes me want to do a whole session lying down like that with two

1:06:47Bella Freud:people well if I ever get in a fight with someone I'm gonna try the lying down because it's such it's a brilliant idea I'd never never thought about it but whenever I do lie down just see what it feels like I suddenly find my mind goes into my heart and it just sort of my thinking comes from my heart more than my critical self and suddenly there's something else there. Because when I'm lying and I'm talking out loud and I don't see anyone, it's almost like I'm talking to myself. And if I'm talking to myself, I can dare to say a lot more things than I would say to other people especially when I'm aware of them so my awareness of you is changed by my position gosh well thank you so much Esther Perel for being on fashion neurosis it's it's just meant so much thank you I've loved every second of it thank you so much it's really it's an adventure yes

1:08:01Thank you.