The “unexpressed and unthought known”: the tragedy of not expressing your truth

If we were to count the number of times in a day that we don’t tell the full truth to somebody (and to ourselves) I’m guessing we would be surprised by how often we do it. I’m talking about even in the littlest straying from the truth.

I imagine that human life would be impossible without some degree of “management of the truth.“ Of course so many times it’s reasonable and appropriate not to tell everyone the whole truth. For example, when somebody asks you how you’re doing, of course they’re not looking for a full answer, they are just being polite, they are interested to know whether you are OK or not but unless it’s somebody very close to you, they don’t really want to know the actual answer. It’s more like saying, “I hope you are doing well today.”

But that’s the simplest kind of example. There are so many other kinds of examples. And of course one big example these days has to do with politics, which many if not most people seem these days to feel is the most important thing you could possibly know about somebody else, ranking their political beliefs in some instances above all other things, eclipsing any other consideration; which of course I think is an astonishingly superficial assessment of what human life is actually all about. But for the “true believers,“ that is the way they see things.

But that particular topic is a distraction from what I’m actually interested in pointing to, which is all the little ways in which we fudge the truth. It is so ever-present. And it’s not just what we say, even more importantly is what we DON’T say, that vast silent reservoir of the thought, but unspoken.

So it’s not just a question of lying— and of course I’m speaking mostly of what we call “white lies”— but much more common is that we don’t say things, we don’t say the truth.

If you were to observe throughout any average day how often you or others clearly have things to say that you or they choose not to say. All of those pauses, sometimes “pregnant pauses,” where it’s obvious that someone or yourself is thinking something, but decide not to say it for whatever reason. I mean, we must think 10 or maybe even 100 things and out of those numbers only say one.

So there is this whole universe of unspoken things. Just think of how vast that universe is. Just think of the interpersonal and societal deficit that occurs when we feel that it’s best not to say what we think, which usually leads to not even thinking about what we potentially could think about and express.

So the question of “freedom of speech” is not just a societal one, it’s even more profoundly an interpersonal question, an interpersonal phenomenon.

Some things don’t need to be spoken, that’s perfectly OK, you don’t always have to tell someone that you love them or care about them or that you’re concerned about them. Very often silence is actually more profound and communicates far more than words. But of course, that is not the kind of silence I am writing about here. I think that most of our silence is not profound, it’s the opposite: it’s a barrier that PREVENTS PROFUNDITY, PREVENTS DEPTH OF THOUGHT AND FEELING.

Sometimes silence is profound, and sometimes it is just empty, and most likely the latter condition is the more common one.

Probably the bulk of our silence occurs when there are plenty of things that we might feel an impulse to say, but we decide not to. Just think of what is lost! Just think of all the potential things that could happen if we actually said what we thought—including asking for what we want! But of course, we all learn in life not to ask, that asking can lead to disappointment or even being threatened or rejected, in some subtle or not so subtle way. And that’s why we start keeping our thoughts to ourselves until we don’t have thoughts anymore, they are lost forever in some cases. We learned not to think, and not to feel, which means not to assert ourselves, not to be creative, not to be alive, not to share ourselves with others, including our love.

Of course there’s a reason why we don’t say what we think and that’s because we are concerned about the consequences.

So in a sense, we are all in a gigantic “lying club” which consists of an unspoken agreement between us to not say out loud certainly the majority of what we think. Just think of what is lost! Not to mention the enormous damage that is done, the damage that is done to ourselves and to the world by not speaking our version of the truth, by not saying what we think and feel, and by condemning or punishing what others think and feel! What are we so afraid of?!

There is a whole universe of unknowing, a whole potential world that is forever kept a secret, that will never be born or created. And of course, this is what leads to the destruction of relationships, for example. Little tiny lies buildup over the years until the relationship is broken and irreparable. And that’s not just our close relationships, that’s every single aspect of our interaction with the world and all of its details on every level.

So there is a vast unspoken world that lingers and hovers all around us at all times. Just think of what lives and dies in that world without ever having been expressed! Just think of what is lost! Just think of what could happen—maybe some good things— if we tried harder to be rigorously honest and brave, andtake the chance of making ourselves of vulnerable.

When we don’t speak, we don’t think. That is because THINKING IS A COMMUNAL PHENOMENON, NOT JUST A PRIVATE ONE! Have you ever noticed how you are only able to think of certain things around certain people? Around certain people, usually the people you are closest to, your friends, the people you love, around these people you were actually able to think of things that you would not be able to even think of let alone express in the company of some someone else. You actually become more creative and more expressive and more intelligent and more articulate around certain people, and the reason is because YOU INSTINCTIVELY KNOW, BEFORE YOU HAVE EVEN HAD A CERTAIN THOUGHT, THAT IT WILL BE UNDERSTOOD, APPRECIATED, AND ACCEPTED BY THAT PERSON! And those are the kinds of people you want to be around!

When we don’t speak our minds, we shut down not only our brains, but our whole bodies, every organ and every cell, because OUR MIND IS ACTUALLY OUR WHOLE BODY! our mind is actually our whole body, not just our brain! So what we are talking about here is not just that our brains are impoverished by not speaking our minds, but in fact, our whole body is impoverished, our whole physiology is affected and deadened. We lose our vitality. That is the cost of not speaking our minds. Not speaking your mind means “not speaking your body.”

So we live in a kind of darkness that we create by what we don’t say, and what we don’t say quickly becomes what we don’t think.

So there is a vast “unthought known,” to use a term that the psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas coined.

If you don’t know and express your thoughts, you are not knowing and expressing your body, your whole being. You are not expressing your truth, and therefore you are being prevented from or preventing yourself from adding to the general supply of truth in the world that we live in.

“Thought is a function of plasmatic life, a unique manifestation of our organ sensations. We do not think with our brain, but with our whole body system.…when he [DH: the average person] resists knowledge, he degenerates into a strange monster which senses what it is unwilling to experience and strikes out at it…. Right thinking goes with strong, pleasurable organ sensations, and often with a shudder of delight. There is an ecstatic feeling of well-being that comes with true insight. Man does not resist correct thinking because he is ‘stupid’ or ‘bad,’ but for the simple reason that he is frightened of contact with things, and above all, because he is afraid of bodily pleasure….he fears everything, without exception, that moves forward in the stream of the living. He sets himself against it, he besmirches it, misconstrues it….People do not want to think correctly, they are afraid of the consequences of thinking…. thinking [is]…an autonomous manifestation of life which insists on understanding itself and on existing at all costs. Understanding is as essential to it as breathing is to life.” (Reich 1936/1990, pages 34-43)

TRUTH IS A NATURAL FUNCTION..." (Reich 1953/1956, page 217, emphasis in original) "Truth, as a manifestation of Life's fullest contact with itself and its environment, is inextricably bound up with Life's energy economy. Truth, accordingly, if lived fully, stirs up the deepest emotions…”. (Ibid., page 220, emphasis in original) "People avoid the truth because the first bit of truth uttered and lived would draw more truth into action and so on indefinitely, and this would rip most people right off the customary tracks of their lives....people....support the lie because the lie has become a crutch without which life would not be possible. Therefore, in common human intercourse, the truth, and not the lie, is suspected as being phony." (Ibid., pages 226-227.

Reich, W. 1936/1990. Wrong Thinking Kills. Orgonomic Functionalism Vol. Two. Rangeley, Maine: The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust, pages 34-43.

Reich, W. (1953/1956). The Murder of Christ. Appendix: The Weapon Of Truth. New York: Pocket Books.