June 2017
There is a rare
neurological disorder known as the möbius syndrome
which is characterized by a facial weakness whereby those with the possibly
genetic condition cannot smile, frown, purse the lips, raise the eyebrows, or
close the eyelids. There are other bodily abnormalities as well, but the facial
ones are more relevant to what I want to explore here. The lack of facial
mobility gives the impression of a blankness of presence.
The condition is named after Paul Julius Möbius, a neurologist who first described the syndrome in 1888. Having a blankness of presence is confusing to other people, because in most human interactions there is a reciprocal dance of mirrored expression and when one person isn’t responding to the dance, the other has nothing much to go on, and communication breaks down.
A similar state of affairs sometimes occurs in severe clinical depression and schizophrenia and other such conditions, and also as an unfortunate consequence of long term use of taking certain antidepressants and antipsychotics. But there is more going on here than a flattening of facial expression (a sort of pastiness, a dullness of facial mobility), there is also a coupling of blunted affect where the person isn’t feeling very much about anything or anyone, coupled with a dulled vocal range. As with the people suffering with the möbius syndrome, they have a profound sense of social isolation, and not much of a sense of other people having their own realities, except as an abstract idea. This is easy to understand because it is in the act of mutual responsivity that there is a reciprocity which connects us. In that mobile engagement there is a you and an I and an us.
We respond to each other, we share our thoughts, and to some extent, our feelings, but we get many of our cues about what is being shared by what we are seeing, as well as hearing, concerning the other person. When in the presence of a person not very readable, we have little to go on, so communication breaks down and as this happens the unreadable feels more and more excluded.
Interestingly, or I find it so, at the same time in history as the identification of the möbius syndrome (actually 30 years previously, in 1858) a mathematician and astronomer named Ferdinand Möbius came up a mathematical morphological figure that describes a looped surface with one continual side. This figure is known as the möbius strip, named after him. It is a loop with a single twist to it, so that when you follow surface A all around you end up on surface B. In other words the usual two apparent surfaces of a loop, when followed around turns out to be a single surface.
The graphic artist, M. C. Escher (1898-1972) endlessly played with the möbius strip in drawing apparently impossible stairs and buildings where up becomes down, and so forth. Continuous looping is used in industry, in recording tapes, in knitting, and other places. It’s a really useful idea, and a beautiful one. You’d think, almost, that the möbius strip and the syndrome came out of the same idea, except for the fact that they were described by actual people, sharing the same surname. Both, though, are very useful in provide a metaphor for connection and conversation and the consequence of breakdown to the interconnection. Surface A (you) and Surface B (I) become us when both of us have the means to actively engage in connection. The problem of healing the other, and self, in order to vivify connection then becomes crucial, and finding a way for this to happen becomes essential. The therapeutic conversation is a very good place to start this. As we know, really, healing starts in the presence of an active listener and one trained to move beyond the level of appearances.
You could say, the point of meeting then allows you to be responsive to me and me responsive to you and thus awakening feelings of inner aliveness and reconnection to one’s own self as a member of a community.
