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  3. The Fine Art of Marital Fighting In the morning his secretary quits, in the afternoon, his rival at the office gets a promot

The Fine Art of Marital Fighting In the morning his secretary quits, in the afternoon, his rival at the office gets a promot

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问题                 The Fine Art of Marital Fighting
    In the morning his secretary quits, in the afternoon, his rival at the office gets a promotion; when he gets home that evening he finds out his wife has put a dent in the new car. He drinks four martinis before dinner, and blames his wife a lousy cook. She says how can he tell with all that gin in him, and he says she is getting as mean tempered as her stupid mother, and she says at least her mother wasn’t stupid enough to marry a phony slob, by which time he is bellowing like an enraged moose, she is shrieking and hurling dishes, the baby is screaming, the dogs are yapping, the neighbors are pounding on the walls, and the cops are on their way. Suddenly a car screeches to the curb and a litter man with a tape recorder under his arm hops out and dashed inside.
    This scene is recurrent dream of George R. Bach, Ph. D. , a Los Angeles clinical psychologist and West Coast channel of the American Academy of Psychotherapy. For him, it is not a nightmare but a rosy fantasy of things to come. His great ambition is to set up a Los Angeles Clinical Night Center which any embattled husband or wife, regardless of race, creed, of hour of the night, could telephone and get a fair heating. Trained marriage counselors would manage the switchboards, referee the disputes, tape-record the hubub for analysis at dawn’s early light, and if necessary, dispatch a mobile referee on a house call.
    He always has dreamed to become that referee. He studies human aggression, and he loves his work over the last twenty-five years, he has professionally analyzed 23,000 marital rights, including, he figures, at least 2500 of his own. Gifted marital gladiators in action thrill him as the sunset does the poet.
    Unfortunately, his clinical practice yields so few sunsets that Bach feels the future of American family life is gravely threatened. He recently told a startled audience of newsmen and psychiatrists at the annual meeting of the Ortho-Psychiatric Association that a primary aim of psychotherapy and marriage counseling should be "to teach couples to have more, shorter more constructive fights. Along with a growing number of his colleagues, he says, he has come to believe that proper training in "the fine art of marital fighting" would not only improve domestic tranquility, it could reduce divorces by up to 90 percent.
    What dismays the doctor is not bloodshed per se; it is the native cowardice and abysmal crudity of American domestic fighting style. Most husbands and wives, he has found, will avail themselves of any sneaky excuse to avoid a fight in the first place. But if cornered, they begin clobbering away at one another like dull-witted Neanderthals. "They are clumsy, weak-kneed, afflicted with poor aim, rotten timing, and no notion of counterpunching. What’s more, they fight dirty. Their favorite weapons are the low blow and the rock-filled glove.
    The cause of the shoddy, low estate of the marital fight game is a misunderstanding of aggression itself, says the fight doctor. "Research has established that people always dream, and my research has established that people are always to some degree angry. But today they are ashamed of this anger. To express hostile feelings toward a loved one is considered impolite, just as the expression of sexual feelings was considered impolite before Freud.
    What Freud did for sex, Bach, in his own modest way, would like to do for anger, which is almost as basic a human impulse, " We must remove the shame from aggression," he exhorts in a soft, singsong German accent much like Peter Loire’s. " Don’t repress your aggressions—program them!"
    When primitive man lived in the jungle, surrounded by real, lethal enemies, the aggressive impulse is what kept him alive. For modern man, the problem gets complicated because he usually encounters only what the psychologist cells "intimate enemies"—wives, husbands, sweethearts, children, parents, friends, and others whom he sometimes would like to kill, but toward whom he nonetheless feels basic, underlying goodwill.
    When he gets mad at one of these people, modern man tends to go to pieces. His jungle rage embarrasses, betrays, even terrifies him. " He forgets that real intimacy demands that there be fighting," Bach says. He failed to realize that "nonfighting is only appropriate between strangers— people who have nothing worth fighting about. When two people begin to really care about each other, they become emotionally vulnerable—and the battles start. "
    Listening to Bach enumerate the many destructive, " bad" fight styles is rather like strolling through a vast Stillman’s gym of domestic discord. Over there, lolling about on the canvas, watching TV, walking out, sitting in a trancelike state, drinking beer, doing their nails, even falling asleep, are the " Withdrawal-Evaders," people who will not fight. These people, Bach says, are very sick. After counseling thousands of them, he is convinced that "falling asleep causes more divorces than any other single act. "
    And over there, viciously flailing, kicking and throwing knives at one another, shouting obnoxious abuse, hitting below the belt, deliberately provoking anger, exchanging meaningless insults(You stink! You doublestink!)—simply needling or battering one another for the hell of it—are people indulging in "open noxious attack. " They are the "Professional Ego-Smashers," and they are almost as sick—but not quite—as the first bunch.
    An interesting subgroup here are the "Chain-Reactors," specialists in what Bach has characterized as " throwing in the kitchen sink from left field. " A chain-reaching husband opens up by remarking, "Well, I see you burned the toast again this morning. " When his wife begins to make new toast, he continues, "And another thing... that no-good brother of yours hasn’t had a job for two years. " This sort of fight, says Bach, "usually pyramids to a Valhalla-type of total attack. "
    The third group of people are all smiling blandly and saying. " Yes, dear. " But each one drags after him a huge gunnysack. These people are the "Pseudo Accommodators," the ones who pretend to go along with the partner’s point of view for the sake of momentary peace, but who never really mean it. The gunnysacks are full of grievance, reservations, doubts, secret contempt. Eventually the overloaded sacks burst open, making an awful mess.
    The fourth group are "Carom Fighters". They use noxious attack not directly against the partner but against some person, idea, activity, value, or object which the partner lovers or stands for. They are a whiz at spoiling a good mood or wrecking a party, and when they really get mad, they can be extremely dangerous. Bach once made a study of one hundred intimate murders and discovered that two-thirds of the killers did not kill their partner, but instead destroyed someone whom the partner loved.
    Even more destructive are the " Double Binders. " People who set up warm expectations but make no attempt to fulfill them, or, worse, deliver a rebuke instead of the promised reward. This nasty technique is known to some psychologists as the "mew phenomenon" : "Kitty mews for mill. The mother cat mews hack warmly to intimate that kitty should come and get it. But when the kitten nuzzles up for a drink, he gets slashed in the face with a sharp claw instead. " In human terms a wife says, for example, " I have nothing to wear. " Her husband says, " Buy yourself a new dress— you deserve it. " But when she comes home wearing beautifully, he says, "What’s that thing supposed to be, a paper bag with sleeves?"—asking, "Boy, do you look fat!"
    The most irritating bad fighters, according to Bach, are the " Character Analysts," a pompous lot of stuffed shirts who love to explain to the mate what his or her real subconscious or hidden feelings are. This accomplished nothing except to infuriate the mate by putting him on the defensive for being himself. This style of fighting is common among lawyers, members of the professional classes, and especially, psychotherapists, It is presumptuous, highly alienating, and never in the least useful except in those rare partnerships in which husband and wife are equally addicted to a sick, sick game which Bach calls "Psychoanalytic Archaeology—the earlier, the farther hack, the deeper, the better".
    In a far corner of Bach’s marital gym are the " Gimmes," overdemanding fighters who specialize in "overloading the system. " They always want more; nothing is ever enough. New car, new house , more money, more love, more understanding—no matter what the specific demand, the partner never can satisfy it. It is a bottomless well.
    Across from them are found the " Withholders, " stingily restraining affection, approval, recognition , material things, privileges—anything which could he provided with reasonable effort or concern and which would give pleasure or make life easier for the partner.
    In a dark, scary back corner are the " underminers," who deliberately arouse or intensify emotional insecurities, reinforce moods of anxiety or depression, try to keep the partner on edge, threaten disaster, or continually harp on something the partner dreads. They may even wish it to happen.
    The last group are the " Benedict Arnolds," who not only fail to defend their partners against destructive, dangerous, and unfair situations, forces, people, and attacks but actually encourage such assaults from outsiders.
    Husbands and wives who come to Psychologist Bach for help invariably can identify themselves from the categories he lists. If they do not recognize themselves, at least they recognize their mate. Either way, most are desperate to know what can be done. Somewhere, they feel, there must be another, sunnier, marital gym, a vast Olympic Games perhaps, populated with nothing but agile, happy, bobbing, weaving, superbly muscles, and incredibly sportsmanlike gladiators.
What is the effect of treating marital fights as a sport, setting them in a "marital gym" and calling psychotherapist a "referee"? Does Alexander treat the subject satirically or merely lightly? Explain.
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答案In the article, Alexander treats marital fight as a sport, sets them in the marital gym, calls a psychotherapist a referee, by which he uses a figure of speech of metaphor to make the subject of marital fighting lightly, so that people can understand the problem in a relaxed way. In this way, he makes his research more interesting and attracts more people to pay attention to the subject.
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