The Good Enough Sinner

In The Late Show, my previous posting to The DNA Exchange, I bared my soul about how one of my personality quirks – a perhaps overenthusiastic commitment to punctuality – insinuated itself into my genetic counseling practice. Shortly after writing that piece, I headed off for a trip to Berlin and Prague. In Prague, we visited The Museum of Communism, a quirky little place that felt like an attic where someone stored a bunch of leftover random items from the Soviet Era. While strolling through the collection, the note on the time card rack pictured below (with the note in the original language and a translation for museum visitors below it) caught my eye:

Time card holder from the Soviet Era, displayed at The Museum of Communism, Prague, The Czech Republic.

Okay, so even I admit that you can sometimes take a personal obsession with timeliness a little too far for its own good. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that time card wall!

In response to The Late Show and Through A Counselor Darkly, my two previous postings to The DNA Exchange, several readers have rightly pointed out that the language used in those pieces was inherently judgmental, phrasing such as “unconscionably late” or “going on and on.” No argument from me there. In fact, that was the point of expressing my thoughts that way. What I have been exploring in these recent postings is my struggle between the personal Robert Resta and the professional Robert Resta. Personal Robert Resta can be a judgmental guy; Professional Robert Resta hopes that those judgments do not manifest themselves so blatantly when he interacts with patients.

In subtle and not so subtle ways, we feel pressure to be saintly counselors who always have pure thoughts about our beloved patients. In fact, though, most of us – and most especially me – are all-too-human sinners, not saints. Prick us and we will bleed. As a genetic counselor, I have plenty of impure thoughts and experience near occasions of sin, many of which can sometimes slip into my counseling sessions like a stealth bomber from my id. My counseling style will ineluctably reflect my personality, warts and all. In much the same way, my Catholic upbringing informs the imagery I use in these confessional pieces.

On the other hand, there are some good parts of my personality that I want very much to come out in my genetic counseling – wit, warmth, some measure of wisdom, compassion. I aim to be saintly when I am actively engaged in genetic counseling, but I try to maintain an active awareness of my human frailties and limitations. I am coal hoping my diamond shines through.

One can hear echoes of  Donald Winnicott‘s theory of The Good Enough Mother here (nowadays, we might say The Good Enough Parent). In Winnicott’s paradigm, The Perfect Mother is, paradoxically, an inferior parent because the child develops a fantasy bond based on an omnipotent and infallible parent, which no parent can ever be and which does not prepare the child for developing healthy, reality-based relationships with family members and the community. Instead, the Good Enough Mother’s inherent flaws are actually critical to normal child development and encourage healthy separation from dependence on the mother. I think this is what Annette Kennedy was trying to make us aware of more than 15 years ago when she wrote about supervision in genetic counseling and suggested that we should strive to be Good Enough Counselors (forgive me, Annette, if I have misrepresented you). In my version, we strive to be Good Enough Sinners.

By articulating my inner thoughts, insecurities, and feelings and sharing them with the genetic counseling community, it provides an opportunity for me to grow and to better mediate between Professional Me and Personal Me. Humbly, I like to believe that others may profit from this experience as well. If even a few of us become slightly better counselors as a result, well, Amen to that.