It seems that Exupéry understood not only Gestalt therapy, but also systemic psychotherapy, because he “tested” adults with his famous Drawing Number One and Drawing Number Two. He could be seen as a secret predecessor of this approach in psychotherapy, because long before systemic psychotherapists he discovered that there exists a reality different from the one our eyes perceive — and that this other reality is the truly important one when it comes to psychic facts. If you have already read the article about first-order and second-order reality, there is no way you would not notice the striking similarity between the theory of the two realities and his Drawing Number One and Drawing Number Two.
“When I was six years old, I once saw a magnificent picture in a book about the Primeval Forest called True Stories. The picture showed a boa constrictor swallowing a wild animal… In the book it said: ‘Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are unable to move and sleep for six months while their food is being digested.’
Then I thought a lot about the adventures in the jungles, and I too succeeded in making my first drawing with a colored pencil. My Drawing Number One. It looked like this:”
I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups and asked them whether my drawing frightened them.
They answered: “Why should a hat frighten anyone?”
My drawing did not depict a hat. It depicted a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant and was digesting it. So then I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could understand. You always have to explain things to them. My Drawing Number Two looked like this:
The grown-ups advised me to stop drawing boa constrictors from the outside and the inside, and to occupy myself instead with geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar. That is how, at the age of six, I gave up a magnificent career as an artist. I was discouraged by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two.
Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to keep explaining things to them over and over again.
So I had to choose another profession, and I learned to fly airplanes. I have flown a little all over the world. And geography, indeed, has been very useful to me. At a glance I could tell China from Arizona. This is very helpful if one gets lost at night.
In the course of my life I have had a great many encounters with a great many serious people. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them very close at hand. That has not improved my opinion of them.
Whenever I met a grown-up who seemed to me at all clear-sighted, I tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One, which I have always kept. I wanted to know whether he was truly capable of understanding. But whoever it was, he would always say: “That is a hat.” Then I would never talk to him about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.
—from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
In this short passage, the most essential things about the two realities, about adaptation and understanding, about adults and children, are already said — beginning with the two drawings and reaching all the way to the end.
“I have now somewhat consoled myself. That is to say — not altogether. But I know that he went back to his planet, because at daybreak I did not find his body. And it was not such a heavy body… And at night I love to listen to the stars. It is like five hundred million little bells…
But something extraordinary has happened. On the muzzle that I drew for the little prince, I forgot to add the leather strap! He will never be able to put it on the sheep. And I ask myself: ‘What is happening on his planet? Perhaps the sheep has eaten the flower…’ But then I say to myself: ‘Certainly not! The little prince puts his flower under a glass cover every night, and he watches his sheep carefully…’ And then I am happy. And all the stars laugh softly.
At other times I say to myself: ‘One is absent-minded sometimes, and that is enough! One evening he forgot the glass cover, or else the sheep went out without making any noise…’ Then all the little bells turn into tears! …
This is a great mystery. For you who also love the little prince, as for me, nothing in the universe is the same if somewhere, we do not know where, a sheep that we have never seen has eaten — or has not eaten — a rose… Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves: has the sheep eaten the flower, or has it not? And you will see how everything changes…
And no grown-up will ever understand that this is of such importance!”
—from the same book
I began this series of articles about the two realities, about social norms, about moralizing that prunes our souls behind the façade of normality, with a single purpose — to show how important it is to take into account the fact that although we all inhabit planet Earth, the way we walk upon it and live on it is not the same as that of other people. Whether because we have fallen from different stars, or for some other reason, if we understand this fundamental fact, it would have enormous positive consequences for our ability to communicate with other people. Namely:
To be tolerant of other people’s differences, because we know that each of us inhabits a different “planet”.
To remember that they are who they are, and we are who we are, and if it so happens that we are too different, to shrug with understanding and accept that nothing between us will work out.
If we realize that the person in front of us cannot see beyond the outline of a hat, to respect their right to see the world in the way they see it.
And instead of preoccupying ourselves with them, to turn our gaze toward ourselves and attend to the truly important things — such as whether “the sheep” will eat “the rose”.
And not only because this refers to love, but also because from the answer to this question everything changes — whether we will see the sky above our small planet strewn with tears or resounding with countless laughing bells.
Then, like Baron von Münchhausen, we will be able to pull ourselves out of the swamp of our small planet, astonished by the creative power of imagination to find answers that bring us into greater harmony with ourselves.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
