The Present Perfect Tale

Firstly I have to admit that a tale with such a name doesn’t exist. Yet I will tell you a tale. It’s from a collection by the brothers Grimm and its real title is “The Hare and the Hedgehog”. The name I gave it is due to the discussion which will follow.

It was on a Sunday morning at harvest time, just when the buckwheat was in bloom. The sun was shining bright in the heaven, the morning wind was blowing warmly across the stubble, the larks were singing in the air, the bees were buzzing in the buckwheat, and the people in their Sunday best were on their way to church, and all the creatures were happy, including the hedgehog.

The hedgehog was standing before his door with his arms crossed, humming a little song to himself, neither better nor worse than hedgehogs usually sing on a nice Sunday morning. Singing there to himself, half silently, it suddenly occurred to him that while his wife was washing and drying the children, he could take a little walk into the field and see how his turnips were doing. The turnips were close by his house, and he and his family were accustomed to eating them, so he considered them his own.

No sooner said than done. The hedgehog closed the house door behind him and started down the path to the field. He hadn't gone very far away from his house at all, only as far as the blackthorn bush which stands at the front of the field, near the turnip patch, when he met up with the hare, who had gone out for a similar purpose, namely to examine his cabbage.

When the hedgehog saw the hare, he wished him a friendly good morning. The hare, however, who was in his own way a distinguished gentleman, and terribly arrogant about it, did not answer the hedgehog's greeting, but instead said to the hedgehog, in a terribly sarcastic manner, "How is it that you are running around in the field so early in the morning?"

"I'm taking a walk," said the hedgehog.

"Taking a walk?" laughed the hare. "I should think that you could better use your legs for other purposes."

This answer made the hedgehog terribly angry, for he could stand anything except remarks about his legs, for by nature they were crooked.

"Do you imagine," said the hedgehog to the hare, "that you can accomplish more with your legs?"

"I should think so," said the hare.

"That would depend on the situation," said the hedgehog. "I bet, if we were to run a race, I'd pass you up."

"That is a laugh! You with your crooked legs!" said the hare. "But for all I care, let it be, if you are so eager. What will we wager?"

"A gold louis d'or and a bottle of brandy," said the hedgehog.

"Accepted," said the hare. "Shake hands, and we can take right off."

"No, I'm not in such a hurry," said the hedgehog. "I'm very hungry. First I want to go home and eat a little breakfast. I'll be back here at this spot in a half hour."

The hare was agreeable with this, and the hedgehog left.

On his way home the hedgehog thought to himself, "The hare is relying on his long legs, but I'll still beat him. He may well be a distinguished gentleman, but he's still a fool, and he'll be the one to pay."

Arriving home, he said to his wife, "Wife, get dressed quickly. You've got to go out to the field with me."

"What's the matter?" said his wife.

"I bet a gold louis d'or and a bottle of brandy with the hare that I could beat him in a race, and you should be there too."

"My God, man," the hedgehog's wife began to cry, "are you mad? Have you entirely lost your mind? How can you agree to run a race with the hare?"

"Hold your mouth, woman," said the hedgehog. "This is my affair. Don't get mixed up in men's business. Hurry up now, get dressed, and come with me."

What was the hedgehog's wife to do? She had to obey, whether she wanted to or not.

As they walked toward the field together, the hedgehog said to his wife, "Now pay attention to what I tell you. You see, we are going to run the race down the long field. The hare will run in one furrow and I in another one. We'll begin running from up there. All you have to do is to stand here in the furrow, and when the hare approaches from the other side, just call out to him, 'I'm already here.'"

With that they arrived at the field, the hedgehog showed his wife her place, then he went to the top of the field. When he arrived the hare was already there.

"Can we start?" said the hare.

"Yes, indeed," said the hedgehog. "On your mark!" And each one took his place in his furrow.

The hare counted "One, two, three," and he tore down the field like a windstorm. But the hedgehog ran only about three steps and then ducked down in the furrow and remained there sitting quietly.

When the hare, in full run, arrived at the bottom of the field, the hedgehog's wife called out to him, "I'm already here!"

The hare, startled and bewildered, thought it was the hedgehog himself, for as everyone knows, a hedgehog's wife looks just like her husband.

The hare thought, "Something's not right here." He called out, "Let's run back again!" And he took off again like a windstorm, with his ears flying from his head. But the hedgehog's wife remained quietly in place.

When the hare arrived at the top, the hedgehog called out to him, "I'm already here!"

The hare, beside himself with excitement, shouted, "Let's run back again!"

"It's all right with me," answered the hedgehog. "For all I care, as often as you want."

So the hare ran seventy-three more times, and the hedgehog always kept up with him. Each time the hare arrived at the top or the bottom of the field, the hedgehog or his wife said, "I am already here!"

But the hare did not complete the seventy-fourth time. In the middle of the field, with blood flowing from his neck, he fell dead to the ground.

The hedgehog took the gold louis d'or and the bottle of brandy he had won, called his wife from her furrow, and happily they went back home.

And if they have not died, then they are still alive.

Thus it happened that the hedgehog ran the hare to death on the Buxtehude Heath, and since that time no hare has agreed to enter a race with a hedgehog.

The moral of this story is, first, that no one, however distinguished he thinks himself, should make fun of a lesser man, even if this man is a hedgehog. And second, when a man marries, it is recommended that he take a wife from his own class, one who looks just like him. In other words, a hedgehog should always take care that his wife is also a hedgehog, and so forth.

According to the tale, the story of the hare and the hedgehog took place at Buxtehude. This village is for the Germans what Podunk Hollow means in American English, a place in the middle of nowhere which we associate with what we mock, what we consider small and insignificant and unworthy of mention. Yet, in our world, in Greece, in Germany, and elsewhere, there is always a Podunk Hollow. If we are to remain open to our world as it is, we will need to benevolently pay attention to what we usually ridicule and want to ignore.

So that’s where the story of the hare and hedgehog takes place. At that remote place where the hare is not just a hare and the hedgehog is not just a hedgehog: They can speak and speech is specific to man. This is a challenge for us. It invιtes us to consider their story as our own story.

The two “lessons” of the tale shows us the direction. They sound like moral guidance but they are not. They don’t teach how we must live, but how we live. They are the laws of our living in the world. These laws, and I am referring to something else, but I remain on the same, in Antigone’s words from the homonym tragedy by Sophocles, neither god nor mortal made them and nobody knows where they come from. We will consider the lessons in sequence:

First lesson

Its law says that the distinguished and arrogant one somehow, somewhere will stumble on the lesser one and will be crushed.

We will attempt to see in the therapeutic encounter how this concern us. How are we towards our client? We have taken over his therapy. We have a “model” of mental illness, madness, but also a model of mental health, towards which we try to guide him. For this to happen, we must understand his madness and explain it. The first, the understanding, happens with what is known as “empathy”: We put ourselves in his place, we identify with him, and we feel what he feels. The second, the explanation, we seek it by connecting and relating what he says, according to the school we follow, to details from his past, to his relationship with us, to neurochemical processes of his organism etc.

By understanding and explanation, guided by our model, we construct a representation of his madness. Our interpretations and advice are influenced by this representation. This is what "we work" with. The representation of madness gives substance to madness, it gives it meaning and raison d' être. The representation of madness becomes dominant over the madness.

Since the representation is in principle a construction of the therapist, the therapist takes on more or less clearly a superior position. Of course, very often the client himself has constructed his own representation of madness, which is expressed, among others, in his "demand". Sometimes it's even submitted to us for a shorter or longer period. Either way, the human mind considers its construction superior to the madness itself. In fact so superior, that the madness is conceivable to us only through some kind of representation.

Yet the explanations and interpretations, when you think about it, are never entirely satisfactory. They stumble somewhere. The madness is ahead of us. Each time we try to find it in a representation, it's already here and challenges it in spite of the therapist and the patient. After all, it's this stubbornness which goes against us and we call "resistance". It's in this stubbornness that the madness manifests itself while at the same time hides.

Of course we are tireless. Like the hare, we say in many and different ways, "back again" and we retract in an endless back and forth on the principles which determine our representations, such as environment and heredity, reason and feeling, soul and body, sickness and health, I and you, psyche and reality, turning each time to the one or the other. It's like the top and the bottom side of the field. The first time we head towards the one and the second towards the other and so on. That is why in sciences "research" never reaches solutions, but with each step the difficulties and questions multiply.

In any case, our endurance shows that we are still far from the seventy-fourth time. Yet, this time will come, sooner or later, for me, for you, in Athens, in Tavistock. Then and only then, when, like the hare, "blood flows from the neck" of the therapist and the patient, we might leave the models and the representations and turn to the madness itself, as it presents itself each time, and a therapy finds its way.

The madness is "already here": present perfect tense. The greek word for present perfect is parakeimenos, meaning literally "lying beside…". The madness remains always adjacent, lying near us, always before and besides us. It's our shadow. But the only man who has shooted faster than his shadow is Lucky Luke.

Second lesson

Its law says that "when a man marries, it is recommended that he take a wife from his own class, one who is just like him". It's like he already knew this woman, since always. What does that mean?

"As everyone knows", the story tells us, "a hedgehog's wife looks just like her husband". We shouldn't hear this as an absolute similarity between two different and distinct beings. The hedgehog, the one hedgehog is at the starting point, at the top side of the field, and yet it's already at the finishing point, at the bottom side.

This is not so strange to us as it seems initially . When I left my office to come to "Titania Hotel", I was already here. This already gave me the direction and opened the way for me.

We are always here and at the same time we are already there to where our paths are directed. This is the reason why each arrival has the nature of a peculiar homecoming. It is characterized by a silence, like that of the hedgehog who sits quietly in his furrow. Our movements are penetrated by a strange stillness.

The hare ignores this. Having faith only in his legs, he believes that "there" must be conquered. His path is an empty space between two points he must cover. Someday, no matter how fast he runs, he will get tired and fall down.

The path of the hedgehog is a circle: beginning and end are the same.

It's more or less the same with our desires, needs, with each of our pursuits. We usually behave like the hare. We believe that all makes sense only when there is fulfillment and satisfaction. Our frustration is privative and unbearable.

But, there is also the way of the hedgehog. Then everything is already here, adjacent to us. Then our goals and pursuits need to be understood differently, not in terms of deprivation and satisfaction.

The tale of the hare and the hedgehog speaks of the adjacent. It's a present perfect tale. Now the adjacent is everything that concerns us. It's already here, before thinking and knowledge, before impulses and feelings. It needs a different approach. It probably needs no approach. We just need to pay attention. Without feeling, that is resigned from empathy, and without thinking, that is resigned from interpretations and explanations.

We have learned to be sensitive, to be exact. Perhaps we haven't learned enough how to keep our eyes open.

Such a message I received from the inhabitants of Podunk Hollow, as much as I was able to follow their language.

I am conveying it to you, as much as I was able to tell it in our own language.

Translation: Maria Soupou, Psychotherapist

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse