At this point, Tennessee Williams identifies a major “strange attractor” in his life—this being his mother (Grissom, 2015, 2015, p. 147):
“My mother found her happiness in her past . . . and it was one we all might covet—a past in which she was pretty and cosseted and appeared to hold promise. Perhaps that was her gift, her one niggardly ornament in life: a beginning in life that held promise. And suddenly the promise is gone, and reality has taken residence in her heart and head, and it is too much.”
Like his mother, Tennessee Williams is stuck. He repeats the same pattern of destructive behavior in his life. He escapes from this sea by altering his sense of reality—much as the mid-21st-century men and women I write about in a recent book who escape down a rabbit hole to a wonderland of “alternative reality” and false serenity. William speaks of his altered reality as based in his altered memories (Grissom, 2015, pg. 152)
“‘Memory is what cures us of a loss.’ ‘I was stupidly afraid of my memories for so long, because I was afraid to feel, but memories are the ultimate illusion—perhaps the final one—in that they allow us to believe that those we love are forever with us, within us, and now I no longer grasp for greatness, merely for feeling'”
It is in his attempt to free Daniel from being stuck in his distorted and isolating feelings, that Dr. Freud might be doing some of his best work. He has warned Daniel about the perils of navigating on a stormy sea. Dr. Freud then tries to provide some guidance and support regarding this navigation. Most importantly, Dr. Freud is providing Daniel with the opportunity to exert some free will.
Clearly, Sigmund is deterministic in his belief that patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior are established early in life, structure themselves as fractals, and strangely attract thoughts, feelings, and behaviors later in life. However, Dr. Freud does open up the possibility of viewing the sea as a source of nourishment, learning, and progress. Instead of the sea aligning with a Tragic Triangle of Regret, Loss, and Anger, it is possible to envision (and help to create) a sea that is aligned with the Appreciative Triangle of Nourishment, Learning, and Progress.
We see something quite similar to the prospect of Dr. Freud opening the Appreciative Triangle for Daniel, in the perspective offered by Peter Vaill, the guide to white-water environments (Vaill, 1989). Vaill (1996, p. 43) offers us the concept of “learning as a way of being”:
“In the phrase learning as a way of being, being refers to the whole person—to something that goes on all the time and that extends into all aspects of a person’s life; it means all our levels of awareness and, indeed, must include our unconscious minds. If learning as a way of being is a mode for everyone, being then must include interpersonal being as well as personal socially expressive being—my learning as a way of being will somehow exist in relation to your learning as a way of being. In short, there are no boundaries to being.”
