by Lorrie Goldin, LCSW

THE BOSS KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT GHOSTS AND ANCESTORS, AND ABOUT HEALING

I recently watched the 2018 film, Springsteen on Broadway, based on the Broadway show drawn from his memoir. It made me think a lot about therapy.

Springsteen recounts his life in song and story. Underneath the consummate performer is a man haunted by pain and anger. He clearly comes by this honestly; story after story reveals his difficult relationship with a hard-drinking, constantly wandering father. 

So many people come to see us caught in dual lives of their performative and hidden selves. Often they are highly successful on the outside but scarred on the inside. Many times we uncover a redemptive grace and depth of resilience, but not always. 

Midway through the show, Springsteen’s wife, Patti Scialfa, comes on for a couple of duets. Her presence transforms Springsteen from wayward rebel into a mature man who is burnished rather than undone by his pain. Springsteen first met Patti when they were performing in the same bar. The first words he heard her sing were, “I know something about love.” Evidently.

Their connection reminds me of an axiom of attachment theory. Despite significant damage caused by early attachment failures, healing can come from a good, long-term love relationship -- or a good, long-term therapy! Springsteen describes his marriage in a way that’s just as apt for therapy:

“Trust in a relationship is a fragile thing. Because trust requires allowing others to see as much of our real selves as we have the courage to reveal . . . it means allowing others to see behind our many masks, the masks we wear, overcoming the fear. Or rather, learning how to love and how to trust in spite of it. That takes a little courage, and a very strong partner.”

Springsteen recounts a surprise visit from his father. Right before Springsteen’s first child was about to be born, his father drove 500 miles unannounced (“As was his style,” Springsteen remarks). They were sitting together at 7:30 a.m. over beers (“That was also his style”), and suddenly, “My dad, never a talkative man, blurted out, ‘You’ve been very good to us... And I wasn’t very good to you.’”

The importance of this almost imperceptible semi-apology is not lost on Springsteen:

We are ghosts or we are ancestors in our children’s lives. We either lay our mistakes, our burdens upon them and we haunt them. Or we assist them in laying those old burdens down, and we free them from the chains of our own flawed behaviors. And as ancestors, we walk alongside of them, and we assist them in finding their own way, and some transcendence. My father, on that day, was petitioning me for a role in an ancestral life after being a ghost for a long, long time. He wanted me to write a new end to our relationship, and he wanted me to be ready for the new beginning that I was about to experience. It was the greatest moment in my life with my dad. And it was all that I needed.

Our clients yearn for such moments. They make such a difference. Ghosts and ancestors. Our work is replete with them both.