I placed symbols of the four directions. 30th August 2021

This is the session in which I placed symbols of the four directions, at each of the cardinal points in his room.

• A stone in the North.
• A feather in the East.
• A candle in the South and
• The sound of the sea (I played a recording) in the West.

Perhaps I should have dropped this fly-by intuition thing I was doing, perhaps I should have availed myself of his psychotherapeutic knowledge. But, he was my beloved. I had just an hour. And the terror of the Kohuts was upon me - that our laughing together, our getting on, was his deliberate construct - twin ship or some other reparative relationship maneuver.  

Not real. 

No actual connection. 

Manipulation. 

Only his illusion and my delusion. 

And in this room, well our laughter, it felt real. But that question he asks himself, the 'who am I to the client' question and how he seeks to be 'who they need me to be'. 

But I don't need him to be anyone except who he is!

My North star is vanishing. Working out the directions in his room is my grounding ritual, I am able to say: I don't know which way is up or down, and I feel as if my blood has turned to water and my legs wont work, but now I know where the sun is! Focus on that. My experience of chronic stress had taught me the importance of this. When everything is fragile and nothing makes sense, then holding on to where the sun is - is something in a world -  because at a certain point all that is solid, melts into air. The stability, solidity of North, of the Earth  is gone! And I'm telling him about how extreme stress meant that my sense of time was broken, and how it is the hippocampus that deals with time - and how the hippocampus is damaged by adrenaline and cortisol....and how, just a year ago I felt the edges of my sanity starting to break.

He doesn't think that knowing neurobiology is important. I disagree. It was my golden thread. It allowed me to find my way back to the world. It gave me sound and solid reasons why I would be destroyed by self attack and self abandonment. So I held tight to my relationship with direction, space and time - because this is how I hold tight to my place in this world. 

I tell him I had felt - and still do to some extent - as if I'd been shot through the head. And I don't hear him say, 'You suffered such a profound loss of normality, your family fractured and gone. How on earth did you get through that?' But I answer that question anyway; I tell him that I was privileged to get a ring side view, to observe in myself the process that culminates in sectioning. I tell him that because of this, I'm not concerned with the cause of people's vulnerabilities - the attachment issues or any 'basic fault' - I am very concerned with what people are doing that is helping them now. My question is never 'what do I think they need from me' it is always a question to them, 'what's helping you?'

The strategy of therapists to use a concept of attachment and wounds from the past may create a handle for some parts of the experience, but being asked to observe the wound, to concretized suffering just made it worse for me. It avoided now, it avoided my answers and strengths - But I've said this before and I will say it again!

He says - "There is a whole question there of a sense of self isn't there" 

What?

No!

I don't understand?

I've just described the effect of terror, loss and grief!

He continues - "I'm getting at any potential client who might be sitting in front of you who might not have a sense of self and might not know who they are. There are many clients I've come across who describe sensations and feelings and events and experiences, but they have no sense of self to carry them in, and therefore having a framework for self understanding is critical for somebody like that.  Because that's their chief trauma if you like, that I'm going through the world not knowing who I am, and not having a place to put anything. Particularly if somebody has disorganised attachment - because people with disorganised attachment, their chief emotion is fear - and if the background feeling is fear than they are constantly hypervigilant and there is no space for any sense of self"

The sound of the sea had stopped. And I was feeling my own hypervigilance, the feeling that at any moment he'd see into my heart and tell me to go, and I know that right now I'm not strong enough for this, not at all, and I'd just break.

But there is a serious issue here. I'd break now not because of my childhood issues, I'd break because I'm recovering; it takes time for the body to release the panic, when one has been too close to death. 

I find the concept that someone without any serious attachment issues, or a 'basic fault', could cope with what I have been through, as childish...actually. 

But hey, I get it. 

Only people who have lived through it can know. 

When I was at the inquest for my son's friend, I could not imagine why the family hadn't got help. Surely it was obvious how dangerous the situation was? So I remember how profound my ignorance of their situation turned out to be, I'm fortunate, life intervened and ripped up my idiot notions. It is a judgement, pure and simple - a process of subtle blame born from a desire to believe that the world is less random, and more fair than it truly is.

So I guess he doesn't know this. He believes in a more orderly world than I do! Well perhaps no one knows how fragile ordinary can be unless they have lived through it's shattering. Certainly that inquest and what happened to me afterwards taught me to never make judgments again! But no, I'm not going to play along in this conversation today. 

Where I've been, and where others are, is too serious. 

This self, no self thing is angels on a pin.

I said - "I'm not sure where we go next - anywhere - more time travel. The 'unconstructed space' what do we do with this space? I could ask you, what are your best hopes...

He is taken aback: 

He - "What turning the tables and making me the..."

Me - It's not turning the tables, it's a fair question....I'm in a funny position. I could feel uncomfortable about not 'doing' therapy but I don't think I've got therapy to do. But you are a therapist, so if you want to do therapy I will attempt to do therapy. I don't see myself as a client..."

He -  "Well this space is for what ever you want it to be" 

I reply honestly - "But I don't know what I want it to be, except through asking you what your best hopes might be.."

He - "Well not for anything you might want it to be, but within the bounds of...I was thinking actually before you came , I was thinking in my experience going back to training what are the biggest holes in training. The things you ought to cover and don't. And I know what my thoughts are on that, so if we are going to go down that road, and thinking well we ought to cover X and they haven't.."

'Not for anything you might want it to be' ? 

Each syllable a dagger into my heart.

So he knows?

Of course he knows!

Then why has he not said anything!

There is no room for this kind of thinking, it will drag me into anger or despair. I need to stay on firm ground. OK - so I know that I don't want more pedagogy, so I try to explain that in talking about anything I hear how he does therapy - as that is so often a part of what we talk about. I tell him that I hear the heart-essence, his attitude, his tone of voice. I ramble on about theory too, and that what I've got from him is really useful. Some part of me is pleading silently; please cross the river, please let go so we can start again as equals, as people. 

I disconnect from that part, I hold the calm part of me steady...

And he says - "Just press the pause button there for a second! I'm intrigued by what you have said, because I'm wondering now  - of course implicitly revealing something or telling something without doing it explicitly happens all the time of course. But I get the sense from what you have just said that you have got things from me that I haven't directly said - and I wonder what those things are...?"

I respond - "Yes, of course! Your attitude and your responses, a learning through doing or rather I learn your attitude by experiencing it. Learning isn't only following instruction. I learn through observing and feeling...But regarding college - I don't know what we don't know - I've learnt a lot from my other Diploma course!" 

And then he says - "They rarely tell you for instance, how to deal with a client who suddenly says that he is suicidal"

I tell him truthfully that actually they have done their best to teach us to feel confident in such a situation. 

He tells me 'we should ask about suicide, and ask in the first session'. 

He had asked me in our first session and, I lied. I didn't feel safe enough to be honest. Recently I've been asking the suicide question of our clients because it is 'our policy' and done as part of an assessment, but I don't know how useful it is. The people I've spoken to for whom suicide is a possibility have just told me their situation as we spoke. And even before it is said directly, I hear it in the tone of their voice and see in their body language, I feel the future has vanished, a closing down, a shutting off, preparing to go - no future beyond the wall of fear, fury, and rage. I say what I see. I tell them that I need to have the suicide conversation, and I explain that this is about my fear, but I hope it will be useful for them. I don't leave the unsayable unsaid...

And as he speaks I remember the moments clearly; when he asked me about my suicidal feelings it felt like what it was, an assessment question - it didn't even feel like it had come from him!

I say - "It is quite difficult in the first session to be asked that. I found it quite difficult"

Again I experience a nothing, his reply is: "hmm"

I echo it: "hmm"

He says - "Because very often - I know this from others -  someone who is genuinely suicidal can be very, very good at hiding it and therefore it's something we need to get into the open"

And right now, what is happening here, why hasn't he heard me?  I had just said that I'd found it difficult in my initial assessment dialogue with him to be truthful about self harm and suicide. Then he had replied with 'some people are good at hiding it'. So has he heard? Is he talking about me in this moment? 

So he knew - at the time?

He didn't 'get it into the open'....so what is he talking about!

I ask a really oblique question to find out.

I say - "I would be going by instinct, by feel - that I'm listening for the 'ring of truth' as they answer the assessment questions. Would you say that that is how it is for you, it didn't feel right (their tone of voice, body language)?"

He replies - "I don't recall that that has ever happened (so that answers my question - unless he is extremely skilled in sidestepping truth?) I've never had clients who've been dishonest about that, but if I did sense - oh this person isn't really telling me - in the first session, I wouldn't push it. I would come back to it. It could be a case of they need to get their feet under the table, they need to feel safe before they can tell me. But I've never been in that position. I've always had honesty. There is one thing that some supervisors suggest which I only did once, under duress and it was a disaster, and I would highly recommend that you never go down this road. The 'no suicide contract' ...I've heard people describe it as a physical thing which you both sign, and I've heard clients describe it as you both shake hands on it - and - I only did it once, but it turned out to be a valuable lesson actually because it is irrelevant. If we really believe in autonomy, then a part of autonomy is that if they want to take their own life then no contract is going to make any difference...But the thing I discovered about this particular client, and there have been other clients since was the great paradox for this person is, that having suicidal thoughts is what kept them alive. The function of suicidal thoughts like that is as an escape hatch that enables them to live - and so not only is a no suicide contract useless, it is potentially taking away their escape hatch! Partly it is this real tension that is always present in a therapy session, I think in the background between all this theory and this knowledge and all this experience of other clients, all of whom are completely unique which I need to understand, which is primary - theory might be useful - but you are primary...but again, sometimes I mean I've had self harming clients and I've said 'what's it all about for you'? And they can't tell me they go blank. Partly it's because they've never talked about it, never expressed it. Partly there is the flavour of shame about it so they become mute, so in circumstances like that I would say  'well in my experience a person usually self harms for one of three reasons - does any of that sound like you?'  And when they say 'yes, sounds like the second one, maybe the third one' you can see the response - ' Oh my god somebody (the therapist) gets it'. Again what you are doing you're just deepening the therapeutic alliance by having a conversation like that. The big picture is, there should be no, no-go areas in what you can talk about..."

 'There should be no, no go areas'!  At at the end of 2021 I tried so hard to cross the divide, to talk about 'us' as two people in the same room. It was impossible for me to disconnect from him without getting the full picture. So now, 2023 my feelings remain exactly as they were.

And as this conversation about suicide went further, the ground became as loose and as wobbly as jelly, and I wanted to be held - I needed it so much... 

I left his room understanding how devastating a non-response can be.

A diagnosis is made only of words. 23rd August 2021.

NOTES:

I sit at his feet gazing upwards. 

the tiny jewel

 in my nose keeps 

catching the light...

I leave feeling empty, hollow.

I'm his client no matter what I say.

I'm not his trusted companion

it bloody hurts.

He is the therapist.

I'm being baby sat...

The hall of mirrors bends the light.

His colours change.

A divine chameleon.

And I sit.

At his feet.

Last week the sudden, 

burning thrill 

as our little fingers touched.

A sensation like hunger 

and going over the crest of a hill 

too fast.

The session.

Into the void...

No plans, I didn't email him before the session to say what the subjects may be. But he follows up a link I'd sent to him some time before; an interview with a psychiatrist who stated boldly that a diagnosis of a mental health condition such as schizophrenia, is made entirely out of words.

He is staggered; how is it ethical to carry out medical interventions, prescribe brain altering substances based entirely on a person's words! And we are together. Both fighting metaphorically, for all and every 'non-compliant service user'.

But we are not equal. I cannot know - or even ask - why he feels this way about psychiatry. He, on the other hand knows exactly why I feel this way. This imbalance in our language, in our knowledge of each other is integral to therapy. Our language as therapists creates a gap, this void, this empty space for our clients to fill.

So, here's a problem - I'm not a client - And this way of talking, in which I'm open whilst he is closed - just disempowers me.

In this session I found myself talking about Mesopotamian stories, of the sacredness of blood, and he's telling me about Leviticus, and how stories are used to bolster ego and maintain insider-outsider groups. We are in dialogue, it feels good, much laughter, and I have the giddy, blissful sense of our souls touching.

Yet, in my notes I write how I feel:

Hollowed out, empty.

As if I'd dreamt that I was at a feast, 

but no matter how much I ate and drank, 

no sense of satisfaction, 

no sense of this is enough.

As if I'd walked into the Fairy hill, 

 A thousand years sped by

 in the whirl of a single dance.

Everything I thought I'd known slips

into dust,

and I'm alone.

The ship of fools. 12th August 2021.

NOTES 12th August 2021. 

At the very centre of our dialogue

The word phantasy ripples through the air

(with a ph)

Idea condensing now into form, 

Professor Couliano slumped, 

a single shot 

through the head.

Metaphor, within a metaphor within a...

bullet.

That extinguished once and for all 

the flame of his life.

Lots of bullet songs in my life right now: 

Filter - 'Hey man, nice shot'.

Covenant - 'Time is like a Bullet'.

Puscifer - Bullet train to Iowa... "Going to be a while before we hit the ground" 

And this connection that I'm imagining,

 or longing for,

 or creating,

 or destroying?

When the waves come

 I am in bliss. 

---

The session.

There is a picture on his wall. I go over and take a good look. 

It is Mediaeval, 

A fayre or market, a festival day?

And in the picture there is a big, stripy box 

Full of people! 

Are they trapped? 

There is a ladder inside this rather large box, 

Has someone placed it there so they can escape? 

No, that interpretation doesn’t seem right.

I’m confused. 

I ask:

What’s happening?

Why are they inside the box…

He tells me it is 'his test for undiagnosed autism'. 

I pause, much taken aback. 

I see no connection at all between people trapped in a big box and autism; does he mean this as a metaphor? But he said it is a test. I 'bracket' the thought that is getting louder -  'I don't understand the picture, so does he now think that I'm autistic?  

I say again, 'no seriously - why are those people in the box'?

The box was actually a travelling theatre! 

What a delight I never knew such things existed! Were they like ice-cream vans? Just turning up any where - seems an amazing idea, it should happen! He told me more, I was awash in joy and hilarity.

He told me that the bag pipes in the picture symbolized male genitalia, and when I said that I honestly didn't understand - meaning, why are they by the bishop and the procession carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary!? It was even funnier as he explained, with his face completely straight, no hint of laughter that - 'it's the shape'. 

Well obviously it's the shape, that is not difficult to see! 

Once I'd stopped laughing, we were somehow talking about The ship of Fools; a visual metaphor representing setting out on the wide sea without preparation, least of all a map. Nobody on the ship of fools has any idea why they are there or where they are off to! 

An apt description.. 

Discussing diverse things is exactly what I enjoy most. As we talk I hear his concepts; his ideas and his expertise. But just after he conflates Dionysus with Jesus, in his next breath he changes the subject back to the notes. 

The notes he made about my assignments. 

Surely by now it's obvious that I would much rather talk about how Dionysus led the dead, dancing their way beyond the Eleusinian Mysteries, ever onwards to the flowery Summerland meadows of the Underworld. I want to talk about the things that give depth and flavour to human experience..

'Back to the notes' -  I felt as if I was hearing 'it is a waste of time to talk with you'.

But I'd just learnt about traveling theaters and bagpipes! 

I wanted more..

He tells me that - "What the client will want from you as a therapist is something that they missed developmentally, in other words, so the sort of transference which is about having a disagreement and that will be ok - because in their experience having disagreement ends in uproar - or having a transference which is called twin ship 'you are like me therefore you get me, the person didn't have that developmentally...so they need the therapist to be that person, so that's why they were called transference relationships "

And I divert this because Kohut gives me the creeps! 

But inexorably, despite my best efforts the talk reverts back to developmental stages.

He continues - "Now the thing about idealisation - this is a really important process for the child. Now what will happen when a child can't go through that, if the child feels 'my parents don't look after me' there is no where that the parents can fall from, what very often happens is the person ends up having really unrealistic relationships with people because they end up idealising all kinds of other people who of course, can't bear it. They can't bear it in literally two ways, it can be 'get away from me, who are you turning me into?'  a full rejection. Or they bear it in a more abstract way, but nobody can be idealised for two long. We are all fallible people therefore what tends to happen is they have not gone through this important developmental process  then there is this boom and bust of idealising people as perfect, and then feeling completely crestfallen and 'god, the world is this rubbish' so they go and idealise somebody else. And so the idea is that they can go through that process with the therapist - the therapist will inevitably have a fall and they are in an environment where they can talk about it in a much more healthy way in which they can understand and therefore break the cycle. Does all that make sense?"

And I'm off again, scattering this sensible, coherent image as if it is mercury. An explanation is only that. There are many. They need to be criticized, or rather they need to be taken to bits and checked out.  But Kohut's theory and the common sense explanations deriving from developmental theory are, I think, an integral part of Kit's identity. So I don't say to him that I've been idealized, it made me feel safe. It is strange to be a muse, and it can be frustrating. It can also be incredibly powerful! And it makes sense to idealize someone when you need to. And sure, it hurts when they aren't the one, it hurts more when they decide that you are no longer the one! Or you could find perfect love with your twin-flame, if there really are twin-flames. And they die in a car crash, or waste away slowly with some horrible disease. Or, more likely they were never the one. But it was lovely when they were! Or you could negotiate and navigate with a good friend into something that remains blissful and exciting for years. I was actually 'swept off my feet by a tall, dark and handsome man' (my husband looked like Frank Zappa!) despite my rejection of all inner and outer Princess stereotypes! And I think my husband really did his best to be loyal to me, and it was wonderful while he idealized me!  But I'm also sure that he enjoyed finding others to idealize - and I'm beginning to wonder how many times he had done this - it was no doubt very exciting and a lot of fun for him. 

But being idealised didn't cause me to want to push him away. I didn't worry about failing to meet his expectations. 

Go figure!

I've seen the most unlikely of relationships work beautifully. 

I don't have a concept of perfect love. 

Love is, itself, perfect.

But me...do I idealize?

I wish I could say that Kit was 'just another one' of many people I've idealized. But no, I love in a very deep and consistent way, I know that I don't undo love easily, I don't just move on. I honestly do not see Kit as perfect...he's just energetic and intelligent, god damn it!

But anyway yes, I get your message Kit! 

He says - "I think the bottom line is not saying, which of these six categories' does this person fit into - a bit of danger in that - but just really focusing on, I'm listening for the clues, what does this person need from me, what's missing that they now need me to fulfil. And some of that you can do, and some of it you are just not a person who can do that. Some of it can't be done in therapy anyway, and they need to identify it for themselves and do it outside of therapy. But all of that is important to identify I think"

I am not going to talk about Kohut! 

But is all this him telling me that he thinks that I idealize him?

The picture of the people in the box, the travelling theatre is still in my mind and I am horrified that he would diagnose someone from how they responded to a picture. Not going to go there! I stay with the time-frame suggested by the painting, I am telling him that I see so much of psychotherapy as a rewrite of mediaeval concepts, Neoplatonism -  the idea of pneuma and soul. And people have and always will beleive so many different things - and so we get then into epistemology, and as I'm Popperian - seeking refutations to move us forward - he sees this as being contrary. 

So ~I switch subject, I'm explaining my research again and my view that it is important to consider the narratives people create to explain what has happened - and how tragic stories transform with alternative narratives - and my question, where does this fit in with how post traumatic growth takes place. 

 He says - "I'm not sure everybody gets to post traumatic growth...."

 I say -  'that's why this research is interesting"'

Even if  it was only one person ever - that would make it even more intresting!

 He - "Or would even couch it in those terms, of learning a lesson from it"

Clearly he is annoyed. I've not agreed with him, and I am persisting in spouting theories that he seems to believe are rubbish. What is behind this, what is behind his despair? That is something I would love to know!

And it is sad that he doesn't seem to hear that I reject all monomyths - I don't think his ideas are wrong, only that they don't go far enough! And if I had permission to talk with him about how he feels in this moment I would say, 'something about the way you speak, gives me the impression that the depth and power of trauma you have experienced is being missed out in how I speak about trauma? 

I don't say that. 

Talking about his emotions isn't allowed in this room.

I say instead - "These are things people do say about overwhelming experience, but people do find a way out and they look back and say that the experience has connected them with the rest of humanity rather than isolating them" 

He replies - "Ah well there's a key thing with grief, you mentioned before the re-organisation of our internal furniture, if you will. And that's really what grief is. The world was like this and I knew how it worked, something has been taken away from me , or I've lost my job, or I've split up from my partner ...somethings end and we are glad, but it would be hard to imagine someone saying 'I'm glad I don't have my left leg anymore even if the amputation saved their life, they would still wish they had got their leg, so it's reconstitution..."

And he's telling me about Kubler Ross. Completely missing the point - because my research is about that period of heightened awareness, times when the writing really appears on the wall. And how experiences such as those, catalyse something new.

I talk about when he asked me if I recognized my denial.

Underneath this subject is my aim - I want him to understand my view that hearing what people say, and meshing with their belief system is fundamental to their healing...it isn't about us, it isn't about 'truth' it is about their process! 

And to do this a therapist has learnt how to let go of all and every theory - nothing matters more at any moment than my ability to respect and to honour someone else's truth. Regardless of the TRUTH, the place to start is where they are...then traditional pathologizing concepts dissolve. I see those concepts (and diagnosis) as cruel theories that perpetuate the absurd notion that distress, and emotions are diseases! If you really take on board what I've just said then you will understand how shocked I'd felt when I realised that he was diagnosing denial; dismissing my actual thoughts, words, feelings. 

He had not heard me explain, even though I had told him, why I wasn't going to give up on my marriage until I knew that it was the right time to do so. 

I had said that I couldn't make a decision without knowing what was actually happening. I said that I don't judge people until I'm certain about the facts, but as my husband didn't answer my questions truthfully I was stuck. 

I didn't know if my husband was metaphorically stumbling around, knocking things over, breaking things, because he'd experienced seeing his son attempt suicide and if this fear and rage he enacted was similar to my son's psychosis? In which case, like my son - he would eventually come to face the whole of it, and get through, and then return to love. 

Or was my husband now purposefully smashing my home up, because he wanted us gone, because he had no intention of facing anything!

Is there a test for this - other than asking?

He says - "Isn't that denial of information, which was your experience, information in itself?...But you weren't being given it - what I'm trying to say is, wasn't that information in itself, that you were being denied what you needed. That's information about his behavior""

So welcome to the head f**ck that is psychotherapy. And if you know how to determine when someone who needs you to believe that he is telling the truth, is actually lying, let me know! And this statement from Kit so echoes my current dilemma - if Kit intuitively knows how I feel about him, he isn't giving me the information I need! 

I'm still recovering from being lied to, I can't take more deception.

He - "See I remember for thinking for quite a few sessions that I was looking at denial".

That was obvious.

He - "There were all the memories of what you had been and could still be.."

And I say - "But we weren't a cartoon couple. We got on and were friends, we had a code of conduct and it didn't make sense to destroy everything. Therefore I needed to think very carefully. That his code of conduct 'went out of the window' was different. He'd already framed it once as a massive mistake...But I was waiting for the 'gone too far' to be proved - once it was proved, I hit destruct"

And then we are back together talking about psychiatry and the vagal nerve, and he's talking about how faith cures can stop people getting appropriate treatment...and we are together and apart. And then many diverse topics as we get closer again.

The hour ends.

And he says - "My that went very quickly"

Both of us laughing, sounding like the very best of friends.

The first Kohut. 9th of August 2021.

NOTE: 9th August 2021.

Calm acquiescence.

Really?

As I sit here in a car too hot for dogs,

radio on, 

belly full of fluttering butterflies.

I watched an old documentary about Eric Berne this morning.

1960s looked modern.

Shock to see people smoking.

Once so normal...

And 

People expected answers, 

psychotherapy//Enlightenment!

But mostly...

I'm terrified why?

Undertow

Kit gives me back everything I give him

He doesn't reply to my emails anymore..

What has happened?

I feel his warmth, but I'm what?

Stupid I guess.

Getting to the point where I tell the truth.

Just say it

I'm in love with you...

And you must know this, feel it, see it?

This session is almost too painful to recall and write. There was so much 'us' in it. It didn’t feel as if there was an agenda. We talked as if we are friends and equals. But returning to this session and thinking about it - I feel my heart break - because what if this sense of equality was nothing but a result of his technique, and therefore I've been deceived, in which case - I truly am an idiot. 

But I also need to think seriously about my conduct at this point.

Am I gaslighting him?

I don't see how he can't feel the undertow...why doesn't he ask me?

In gaslighting one person's power to make informed choices is restricted by the other's choice to withhold information, or to lie, or to dismiss the victim's concern. 

• I am trying to prevent him making choices that could be too painful for me.
• I don't trust him..

Gaslighting becomes coercion when the victim requests the truth, and truth is denied. I also think there is bullying in gaslighting -  the perpetrator choses to maintain the victim's distress - as proof that the victim is getting upset over nothing. 

But this dynamic ends when the victim gets a clear picture of what is actually happening. Instantly their power to make an informed choice is restored. 

• I hate the fact that this could be affecting him negatively - I just don't see any safe alternative. 
• I do not want or value confusion and disempowerment. 
• He isn't asking...so if he knows, he must be OK with this?

I am assuming that he is aware of it, the undertow? 

So why isn't he asking me about it? I take this to mean that he would ask if he was aware - would he? And if he isn't aware, then perhaps I'm really good at hiding my feelings. But am I? How realistic is this? I felt like I was hanging over a cliff, holding onto nothing but blades of grass, constantly waiting for him to give me a push! It was my fragility, not Eros that stopped me speaking openly. His moralizing was the cause of this problem.

But during this session thoughts like these were a very long way away. I had every reason to believe that he likes me - as a person; that this isn’t work, and certainly it isn't therapy. Most of our dialogue was playful and easy, and it was about ourselves. The real stuff which I shall not write here.

He says - "I think that is such an important therapeutic process, to revisit and resolve stuff, and say it the way they want to say it and be heard, and it changes things".  

But after I had described in the previous session some of what happened to me, I hadn't felt heard. I still wanted him to hear me because I believed that he could understand. Now this Russian roulette of daring to be more myself, of wanting to be wanted, was my dopamine and serotonin. I believed that we both enjoy exploring underlying patterns and ‘speaking lost languages' and true edge-of-awareness work requires trust and daring. 

But both people have to be equally open.

 Now, here we are. Face to face and this isn’t going anywhere. I blame it on my use of images, metaphors. I expect him to use them with me too. He doesn’t. The hope that we could explore real edge-of-awareness things together once we were face to face had once sustained me. Now, the only reason that talking about what had happened to me doesn't lead to a crash is because I’d fallen in love with him, or rather - I'd fallen in love with the other one, the person interested in diverse and complex other things ('the brother'). 

He says - "Do you want to return to what we were doing two weeks ago"?

And I talk about watching that 1960s documentary in which Eric Berne is portrayed as ‘The Great Man’. It was a film made during the time when psychotherapists were all Great Men, evoking the eerie and weird, and the promise of self actualization. Basically they were regarded as Gurus, offering enlightenment.

Looks like he doesn't want to talk about why psychotherapy was on TV in the 60's...

Certainly in my reply I have answered with a 'no' I clearly don't want to talk about games.  So, as an attempt to create a common preference I explain that I was looking at trauma and can’t remember for the life of me how games fit in! 

And he says - "Games and trauma are intimately connected because very often people play games to reinforce their trauma, unconsciously…."

I reframe this concept, expressing my belief that people make the same mistake until they find a better way to resolve the issue. Sometimes people retell a story over and over as if they have never told it before. But the story always points to an unresolved feeling, which points to an unmet need. The story illustrates and populates the scene with characters, summing up a feeling in 360 degrees. Finding the need and naming it is a first step, recognizing its presence through absence, owning it, is the second step...then taking considered and sensible action.

He says - “Well trauma feels like home, people try to get - what people are doing in games is they are trying to get back to home…”

I say - "I have some problems with Eric Berne’s theory…"

He is explaining that it is a game because - "A game has a particular set of rules, and an inevitable outcome.."

I say -  but Berne gives the impression that people should know better, and I don’t think that they do until they learn better eventually. Then they have, in effect, upgraded their theories. People do things because they believe they will work, and when the outcome of not working is ambiguous - a person thinks 'perhaps I did it wrong? Try again!' and 100 and 1 reasons, or ways to approach it must exist. Accepting FAIL isn’t easy for anyone.. 

And he says - “I think what Berne was doing was saying, here’s the code, here’s the key - and when it is decoded we can behave in a more healthy way”

A tool, by using the TA process, something else changes? Dividing responses into 'ego-states' externalizes them, allows them to be contained and handled; it imports a sense of control, and thus empowers the client. 

And then he is talking about open honest game-free connection.

And how games rupture any chance of intimacy.

And here right now this is serious and too real. I need to say “I long for us to create something together, and I need us to let go of words and dive into the blue-black void of bliss - because I think you can understand, and I think you know the things I don’t know, and I want to know you and I really want you to know all of me” And I dare not come anywhere close to saying this; if he should report me to my college- it has power over me. If he should tell me I have to leave..

And then he tells me about how he works with people, and we talk about ideas and I think this is as close to intimacy as we have ever been. Yet in truth we are stuck. Both of us. I see him each week, I give him money for his time. He signs a bit of paper to say ‘she has attended therapy’. 

And he says - “I’m well aware we are quite a long way away from grief theory”.

Then I make the mistake. I talk about how I work - And we are still laughing together. But suddenly and absolutely we are now on different pages!

He: “If someone sees themselves as a worthless worm, what will you do then?” // “It’s beginning to sound a lot like Ellis to me”...

Kit's language - closes dialogue, instead of opening it up. Regardless, I turn it around. And then more laughing and talking about matching ego states, and then there is the cat looking into the room - and he is talking about not letting the cat come in, the cat who wonders into his garden and gazes longingly through the window…and I know exactly how that cat feels!

He says - “In ‘self-psychology' there are ‘transference relationships’ . To know how to address a client you need to know  who you are to the client, they came up with the ‘reparative relationship’ to enable them to repair what went wrong for the client…and there is one relationship where someone desperately needs you to disagree with them and for it to be OK…and they need that from the therapist. And ‘twinship transference’ they need to have an experience of you being like them, because ‘if you are like me, you get me’ . There were six of them. What really matters is, know the client and know why they are asking, and know what they are asking of you, and this will help you to know what questions need to be explored”.

Ah yes, ‘who am I to the client’? Implying that the therapist is in effect in role-play, so the basis of the client-therapist relationship is not what it appears, and is in fact warped, deceptive, false. And here now there is nothing that I can do or say to answer this most horrible of questions; is our talking, our laughing together nothing but him earning his money by giving me what he thinks I need -  'reparative relationship'?  

I don't know, and I wont know until I'm strong enough to find the answer.

But always, always I'm going to be troubled by this concept of the reparative relationship, and especially realizing as he is telling me about 'the Kohuts' that this is probably what he is doing in this conversation. I felt stupid and used - I felt manipulated actually. And this is supposed to be 'good for clients'...So much for Carl Rogers!

 

I had believed in Kit as a fellow explorer, a trusted companion. Nevertheless, nothing at this moment is clear - and the emotional contact I've had with him, or rather with the person I perceive as real - not the therapist - certainly has had an effect on me, and it sure isn't reparative...it is like flint and metal!

Blurred lines. 2nd August 2021.

 

After a passionate plea.

Sent as a voice recording. 

I said it was about the past.

I had needed to tell him how I felt. 

How I felt about my son, my husband, the fear..

But it was in the time of Covid, 

Zoom, 

I was in the house. 

Impossible to speak freely.

Now

I need to tell him how I felt. 

An hour isn't enough time! 

I want him to know who I am.

I sit in the car about to go.. 

This is not therapy!

I had sent him a voice message full of blurred lines, and five months later the blurred lines had sunk into the mud as trenches surmounted with razor wire...in a minefield. 

I had no way to know this as I hit send.

As I prepared myself to knock on the door and start this session I believed in him as a trusted companion. I wanted the enormity of my journey, the weight of it, the devastation, all of it to be witnessed and acknowledged. I was trusting him to see. And I needed an emotional, whole, a real interaction. 

There had been a blurring of the lines. There was a difference between his replies to me as he spoke as a therapist, contrasted with his responses when he spoke as a person.

The replies from the person seemed to come from someone else, in my mind this version of him is names as the brother.

The brother is the emotional, whole person, including therapist. All of him, and everything, good and bad. The brother is the missing energy, form and substance. I hear him sometimes; I hear him when he slips through the therapy filter and when Kit speaks his personal truth. The brother is the underlying and unsaid. He is real, and I loved that realness. 

But this session - 2nd August 2021, I'm about to talk with the therapist, the man of cloud (the 'cloud-wolf' if you have played The Path). Insubstantial, there is no solidity. Fire and light, steam, heat, nothing to hold onto if I was to dare cross the tightrope of memory, and so I needed to keep tight control least I fall.

It began well enough. 

I'd wondered how he would react to the voice recording? 

He said that he was so pleased. 

So I went through my collections of files and songs and artefacts, I narrated and illustrated my journey through the past. And I left him holding my notes. And as I left I didn't feel that I'd been heard. He had listened, but too much was missing. No reaction, he wasn’t there with me.

NOTE -Next day. 3rd August 2021.

I need therapy for my therapy. 

I've got to let go of fear and simply love.

"Grief" - 25th and 26th July 2021.

25th July 2021.

Notes

A day full of physical panic, my body full of crawling spinning electricity. 

Not a nice feeling, not nice at all. 

Then suddenly I was washed through and through.

And the weaving, spinning, churn stopped.

 I stood for a precious moment in the still point at the centre of the Sun - and I felt love once more.

Mostly the laughing, that we laugh together...

And that I am culpable. 

It stops the panic. 

Stops me waiting for the hammer to fall 

 Stills my expectation of a coming time, my trial by language.

What is my worst fear?

More hours, weeks, months of blaming myself for feeling anxiety. 

So, more of the same then! 

I could tell - when my husband was lying.

My anxiety was well founded.

Just no information...

What do I want to know?

Only good and positive things. 

I'm beaten up.

The greater my need for positive, 

the harder it is to accept there can be negative consequences 

for honesty... 

26th July 2021. Discussion.

There is that cough - he tells me not to worry, it isn't Covid.

He -"Do you want to start with grief"?

I say - "Games - what I think - from putting things together - the way that you describe games -as if a person is trying to create their home-system, with disallowed emotion. A feeling they don't like, but if they can get you to have it there is something familiar about it. So there is the con and the gimmick - it's projective identification, really. Person A, will be the gamer - and person B is unsuspecting, has favoured and non favoured feelings. A starts off saying something that sounds reasonable, and person B picks up an implication from this first line of the conversation - if it has for B an emotional 'fizz' to it, and so they respond, they are hooked in because they will respond in an emotional way and Person A is evoking an emotion in B that I want to say, is 'behind the screen' for both of them, and I think this is at the heart of it - you described it as trying to get back to home"

He -"Yes..it isn't...emotions are involved of course, emotions are part of the payoff. And it may be about banned or allowed emotions but I think that's not the heart of it. Depending on what perspective you are reading, it is a way of reinforcing the phantasy (with a PH), or the RIGS (Stern) representation of interactions that have been generalised (the concept of how things should go). So a game is a way of reinforcing your phantasy or your RIGs, or in TA your script which is always running in the background, so in a way a game is an extreme version of something which is happening all the time but with a game it is far more noticeable and I'm trying to be ever so careful with my words. Because it is obvious. It's obvious that there has been a relational rupture, but it's not noticeable in the sense that the person who is playing the game, will have no idea that they are doing it, They just think 'I feel awful, why do I feel like this', or very often and this is the easy way to tell a game, people will say things like why does this always happen to me, why are people always like this, um...why can't I ever get what I want. Universal statements - and that makes it the game, if you like, it's the mountain peak of something that is happening all the time

I found it weirdly enticing to feel the undertow of my past creating coils and loops of disaster as I feel the shattered edges of my life; my son's psychosis, an errant husband. And I'm in improbability drive at the still centre of a chaos star, looking at all options, all possibilities available to me in this very restrictive, restricting and restricted space. I don't need this to be easy, though that would be nice. I just want it to be open and playful.

I feel like I'm in a field with a bull!

I say something in reply about being in sync and out of sync, but I don't know where I'm going there is no rope for me to fix to this cliff; in sync means to use words as in jazz, to play, to follow the rabbit down multiple holes, and let the mind associate and create something new and of this moment - to turn towards knowledge - to turn around within one's own ignorance, to turn away from appearances. I'm trying to describe epistrophe...

"Epistrophē implies return to multiple possibilities, correspondences with images that can not be encompassed within any systematic account. The particular virtue of the psychological mind is its twisting of the given; seeing through, hearing echo and implication, turning back or upside down. The psychological mind makes the given imagistic, fantastic. Hence its affinity with both the pathological and the poetic, and hence, also, its distance from the programmatic of action and the formulations of the sciences. Where scientific abstractions seek to posit what is really there in the given, substitutive for it and constitutive of it, our abstractions seek to drop the bottom out of the given."

James Hillman.

I fail to say this in any recognizable way...

He continues -"we are back to the filter again, because this is the filter, this is everything. What I mean by the filter is really what in TA is called the Script, it's not quite the same but there's not much difference.

I say (optimistically) - "The organizing principle"?

He talks over me - "Because it tells us who the world is, and who am I in relation to the world so it's really basic stuff. The thing about the script is it's easy to miss, because we can get caught up in trying to be too complicated and the script is always very, very simple because it has been decided by a child. I will give you an example. So little Carol comes home from school and says "mommy, look what I made" and mother says "Do you never shut up!" oh god, ok so she goes to daddy "Daddy look what I made" " Not now love I'm too busy, go and ask your mom". Now this becomes a daily reality, so she is very hurt, very missed. These are, a mother who is labelling the child as someone who never shuts up and all she's got are the normal needs of a child so this is a mother giving her stuff to the child, of course she doesn't think that she is doing this, she just thinks that it is an annoying child. Dad doesn't understand the needs of a child because for whatever reason, he thinks oh this is more important than attending to my child wanting a bit of attention, a bit of love. This is a child who is really really missed and this becomes a chronic thing. So from her experience she understands the world's a pretty hostile place. Not in a big dramatic way, in an ordinary, everyday…

Me - "Her fundamental needs will not be met"

He - “So what she learns is 'I can't be noticed' 'my emotional needs can't be met' and 'I'm not allowed to talk' that becomes the script."

At this point I'm under his spell. I have 'a thing' about having to keep quiet which relates to blacking out when I was attacked, and the impossibility at the age of 14 and in 1970's Britain, of telling anyone what happened to me. And then later, in my 20's once again I had to repeat my personal gagging order this time to save others. Ultimately the first experience strengthened my resolve and ability to cope, and so I didn't black out. But the memory of both incidents is heavy. And I'm identifying with Carol...But even if I'd had the perfect childhood! We are hard-wired to freeze in relation to overwhelming threat, and that's what I did. But I learnt from my experience and when I was in a far more terrifying situation years later, this time I remained aware of exactly what was happening. In fact the first experience empowered me for the second - and so no one died. I like to believe my ability to stay calm made that critical difference.

He - "And then what she does, and this becomes the precursor of the game, she'll 'collect stamps'".

Me -"So each time it happens…

He cuts me off.

He -"You can't have a game without stamps - it goes back to the days of Green shield stamps."

Me -"A lot of TA I see as a map, this is like learning the rules of ...ok yeah."

He - “No, no I'm just giving you an illustration of how it works…"

Me - “Sure”

He - “In Games people Play...it's not a case that there are a fixed number of games. You know what game someone is playing by sitting and listening to them because the game is according to their biography. So if you and I played a game, well no one has ever written a book about me, and I guess no one has written a book about you. So if I play a game or you play a game it will be peculiar to your biography. So I think having a book of games is all very well and helps us understand how the mechanism of a game works, but it's not a handbook that I can flip through the pages and find your game, it doesn't work like that.

I try to explain how my husband would repeat the same emotive situation; one which he could be sure would lead to me feeling bereft and hurt simply because it always did. My husband would then become angry, or as I came to see it, he believed that he had a legitimate right to be angry with me. I couldn't understand that he didn't love me on any level any more, because it didn't make any sense, because he said that he did! But the what I now see as goading (bullying) was truly, truly awful, my heart was shattered again and again and I thought it was all my fault - until I listened to the recordings I'd made.

As I remember, as I describe trying to fathom that memory I am feeling echoes of the pain of those days and evenings and...he ignores this.

He - “So little Carol, she’s had this really terrible experience with her parents - not anything you would call social services over. Just ordinary everyday emotional neglect really . So she goes back to her relationships and what she is going to do is collect stamps - like you know, you collect stamps, put them in a book and when it’s full you cash it in, and in this case..<He and I are of a similar age - Green Shield stamps, and the blue Co-op ones. Evidence!>…you cash it in for a game. So her particular stamps would be little everyday occurrences which she can store up one by one, of not feeling listened to, of feeling emotionally neglected, of feeling dismissed and they are more likely to be connected with the people who mean most to her. So it will be her relationship with her family, if she’s got one at this point , and when she’s got enough stamps she can play the game - of course this is all unconscious, but what she will do is, pick someone she can play the game with, because otherwise there won't be a gimmick to pull the person in."

Me -"A belief a person has about themselves that’s precious to them and it is being confronted at his moment."

He - "“Yes, the best person to play a game with in this instant is somebody who is like a parent, somebody who isn’t a very good listener, somebody who just talks about themselves. So this person anybody else could recognise as you don’t have a conversation with this person because they can’t do it - but she will pick this person and try to do it - and then she can get the pay off. Let’s say she is with a group of friends and they are all talking about X, and she says well I’m going to talk about Y, and they are all talking about X so they aren't listening because they have already been talking about Y for ten minutes. So she deliberately, though unconsciously talks about Y, and so she can then go ‘‘Nobody listened to me, I’m sick of this’ and storms out. Leaving her friends going ‘ What? What just happened? Now I don’t remember Berne or anyone writing this - but the next bit that happens, when you have emotions which are disproportionate, partly that’s a judgement call - but I’m talking about something that is really obvious like this event with her friends, you know for sure the person is in the Child ego state, and almost certainly they are playing a game."

Me “- Seems so cruel to call all this ‘games’ it brings me a feeling that ‘People should know better’. Berne speaks from…it’s almost as if he is on a pinnacle (looking down). The word ‘game’ feels unfair. The person isn’t aware that they - in Berne’s terms - are playing a game …the scientist part of me asks, is this true."

He - “Absolutely, I see it again and again. Especially if you ever see couples, they are all collecting stamps from each other. But you see it with individuals . See I’m very firmly of the opinion that theories are great because they are limited, and not about you or me, and the thing to do is to wear theory lightly. The person who is sat in front of you will always tell you what they need if you know how to listen to them. That’s not about theory, that’s about the relationship . And if you miss it they will keep telling you until you listen. Every time, every time! And I think, any therapist who says to a client ‘This is what is happening to you, I’m the expert on this, listen to me!’ is being borderline, not even borderline, abusive. Therapy is about empowering the client. So when I talk about games with a client…I’m never sitting there going ‘This is a game, you don’t get it! Let me tell you about it’ And sometimes you see the magic happen when you offer a framework, or occasionally a client will go ‘no’ and I might have got it wrong, or I might have got it right but the client isn’t ready to hear it yet. But either way - maybe they will pick it up later. But it’s always important to give the power to the client, that’s what it is all about."

Me - “To go back to what we said before; people don’t necessarily know…to take the hypothetical example of the woman who marries a man like her dad because she needs to change her past in the present. It doesn’t feel true to her, to believe that she cannot make him change. And in TA I get the feeling that there is a belief that everyone knows ‘the truth’ really - that you can't change others - and this may well be true (!?) I don’t know (I think the whole point of therapy is to help people change themselves, I don't see why that enabling capacity is restricted to a 'therapy relationships'). But I also think people can be completely deluded and go to their graves completely deluded. A person’s belief that they can change someone; there are a lot of stories, be they simply fiction or fantasy, narratives that give the impression that this is possible. So I don’t put so much responsibility on the person, they may be making a mistake, but I can understand that a person can have a really strong and solid belief that conflicts with mine."

He - “But I think it is important to understand from the client, where that comes from - I mean we did some of this work"

Me - “And I thought…you do not understand where I am coming from. You were assuming that I can’t let go of my fantasy. But it wasn’t a fantasy, I was fighting for a real person - the person I am married to. I saw my husband’s actions as like a massive tantrum, understandable in the light of what we had been through, and people do things they will regret later. Also it is better to negotiate, so I was holding the door open for that. After twenty-five years of marriage, it isn’t black and white. I was saying that our relationship is at it's worst, is at least 60 - 70% good, we are friends, we get along and so I believed there was something we could reclaim. At the time I thought you (Kit) don’t get where I’m coming from. I give people chances, until I know from them what’s happening, and when I know, then I make a decision. "

And that statement - that I only make decisions when I have all the facts, or enough of them to assess and to judge, is integral to my identity. It is integral to what is happening here in this session, and it integral to why I am opening up the black box, it is why I'm writing this blog.

Kit ignores what I've said and offers me his misinterpretation...

He - “In my mind it goes back to that image of you as a girl, pouring your dad’s drinks down the sink. The original relationships in our lives, the family, the setting, the blueprint for how life is - because it is important. So when you are not giving up on your dad, you are making sure that you are not going to let him pour himself into oblivion. So you are pouring his drink down the sink instead. That’s setting up a pattern".

Me - “Yes, I’m not powerless. I will do what I can, until I know that this is their choice" .

He - “Because it raises some very important questions for your future self, because there are going to be times when you can’t help a client. There are times when the paradox is they have come to you for help that they don’t want - and it usually comes out in the first session - they have been sent, or they sent themselves in order to convince somebody else. And the convincing is appearing in front of you. Or, in the choice between the known ways of dealing with emotions such as alcohol, cocaine or promiscuity, or actually having a look at themselves, finding out what’s there. Don’t want to know - cocaine it is then. There will be clients like that and you won't be able to save them <expectant pause>

So why is he dumping this on to me? Whose concern is it that there are 'clients who don't want to know'? This certainly isn't my concern. I generally ask, 'Seriously, what is so good for you about cocaine/sex/alcohol - because we are hard-wired to want more of those things for sure, so it makes total sense to me that you would want more. But cocaine and alcohol in particular will have negative consequences, so I'm just wondering - what is it that they are helping you to feel'? And then we talk about the good feelings and how to get more, and from that place of safety the conversation can go into the sadness, or anger or wherever! Kit has missed that for me all that matters is that I do something, that I engage, that I don't look away or walk away until I know that the other person doesn't want me to intervene.

And in the room now with Kit, I just hold the silence. 

He - ….I’m aware that we started off with games and we’ve been all over the place"

Me - “That’s fine, that’s the way it should be”.

He - “So do you want me to put it back to games”?

Me - “Do you want to put it back to games”? Erm…I’m here and I’m paying. The meander around subjects is fruitful …

He -”There is a wonderful cartoon I meant to print out - it shows ‘the switch’ in the Game beautifully, it’s a beautiful illustration of it. A couple who clearly have just moved house and they are getting stuff out of boxes into the kitchen. And the first panel ‘Darling would you come into the kitchen and help me unpack’ and the second panel, he’s getting something out and he’s putting it somewhere and ‘No! Not there!’ And the third panel, ‘No! Not there darling’ and the next panel ‘No!!! Not there!’ you know in increasingly big letters and so on. Of course, in the end what she does is explode on him ‘Don’t you know anything! Don’t you know where anything is supposed to go!?’ while he’s got a picture out that he is ripping apart…and there's the original invitation ‘Darling come into the kitchen and help me unpack’.

Me - ‘‘So I can discharge my frustration on to you and shout at you"

He - “It has nothing to do with the present tense, it is clearly a game. He was invited in with the ulterior motive. That’s how it always starts. There's a cover story that somebody always tells themself. I mean in the cartoon this is a new kitchen, there is no right or wrong place. There can’t possibly be a right place”

Me - “But why isn’t he saying, ‘where would you like it to be’?

He - “Oh, I thought they were a couple, her being in charge and him being the servant!”

Me - “So if he said, ‘where would you like it to be then he would be a servant’?

He - “Well it’s their kitchen isn’t it, surely they are a couple"?

Me - “Ah, but she is clearly emotionally invested in the position of this object - clearly she must have somewhere in mind to perceive that it is being placed wrongly. Or he could say, ‘No, I really like it here’ and then they could have an argument. ”

He - “The point is there will be a story here, it’s part of her script, it’s replaying - probably - a parental relationship”.

Me - “But is he not also stuck in a parental relationship…”

He - “No, he just thinks it is an innocent request. But his gimmick is…

Me - “I’m a kind and loving man…”

He - “Of course, of course.

Me - “So, he’s being a servant. But it matters to him to make her happy. But as to why he doesn’t say ‘OK, where do you want it…puts it there, and then does something else!

He - “Well possibly the parental relationship that built up to the RIGs is that “Nobody can meet my needs”

Me - “So if he said to her, ‘where would you like it, wouldn’t that just drain the energy”?

He - “When somebody is playing a Game, if somebody crosses the game, the person plays the Game harder. So if he said. ‘Where shall I put it’ she would say ‘over there’ - and then, ‘No, not there. I meant there!!!’ and so on”. And somebody in this cartoon script might turn up in therapy, ‘Why is my marriage so bad - why does my husband never listen to me’? And the best thing to do is to look at her part in it, he’s not here - she is, And that’s how we are going to discover Games in therapy, generalities are never going to get there. And what I do is, I slow it right down, second by second. And I want to know three things really - physically what was happening, cognitively what were you thinking, emotionally what were you feeling. Because the power for the game is usually physical, cognitive and emotional. So for example, this little girl whose ‘stupid parents never listen to her’ and that will have been real - then storms off to her bedroom, shouts at her parents and has a good cry, in all likelihood the power for the game will be precisely that, cognitively, emotionally and physically in the place of trauma which gave rise to the game in the first place. So it just repeats on a loop. And then she will have dispensed all of that, by storming off, or not talking for three days, or whatever she is going to do - and then she will start collecting more stamps. That’s how it works …And the thing I love about it, anybody can understand Parent, Adult and Child. And the other thing is, if you read the DSM and some psychodynamic writers, who will give you a label, you will have this sort of disorder and that sort of disorder - it’s bullshit really. What that is doing, it’s saying look I’ve got this person in front of me, what category do they fit, so what you are doing is trying to ram a client - but the thing about Game theory and ego states is the opposite of that, you are saying I have an empty framework, what material can the client give me, which is entirely personal to this person ”

Me - “So it gives a structure to describe a person’s reality, and this allows a person to have power over it - there is no such thing as ‘ego states’ but it is useful and it works. It gives a name for ‘it’ as a handle to shift the problem”

He - “Berne said that we are always interacting with people in a way that measures the minutiae of people’s responses to us. Even the word ‘hallo’, so a person can feel aggrieved when another responds with less than a hello, than they gave to them - even that is a transaction, or it could be a stamp!”

A sore point for me...he would start a session with 'how are you?' and I'd be stuck, wanting a deep conversation! [+]

Me - “but with me, I’m usually perfectly fine in this situation - and I’m different in different situations. So the question “How are you” is a request for a status report. And how I am is different in different environments. So moving on from that, to ‘Family Systems’ - we choose partners and friends who could be a member of our family. Is that true?

He - “ it was first done in the 1970’s and done many times since with the same result. And I think it explains a lot, because all that’s happening is we are picking up signals from people without knowing we are doing it. And in early years it is a matter of personal survival, because if a child feels safe in their parents company, they will watch in a particular way that says ‘I feel safe, I don’t have any ongoing concerns’ a child who is scared of their parents will be observing in a very different way. I find that people with traumatic backgrounds tend to be much more aware, of their own observing, but not always where it comes from but very aware of their observing. And often picking up signals in an exaggerated way, because if you are used to loud noises meaning that you are about to be attacked, or sudden movements" which mean I’m about to be attacked…sudden movements. And really the family systems experiment is just an experiment that asks, what do we think of people when we can’t talk, what do we think of them"

Me -” it just seems unscientific, let’s start with that".

He - “Why is it unscientific”?

Me -”I’d need to see the results - the papers - myself. I’m not disagreeing as such.  I believe in a concept of 'kin’ , that people chose someone as a partner who feels like kin, there is kinship there. That can be the main part of it, but it could be that you have decided to be someone else, different to who you were. But thinking of my sons, both have fallen in love during recent weeks with very different, really different girls - but each fits who my son would say he is - both sons had a similar upbringing, so it’s sort of strange if you see what I mean.”

He -” Family systems is exactly as scientific in the way black holes are”

Me - “ They are explanatory…”

He - “We do the same experiment and get the same result and we don’t know why, so from all the information we have what is the theory that would explain why we always end up with the same result”

Me - “My partners always seem to reflect who I am at that time, there may be a core in me that is the same, but I’m not the same - but let’s take the screen idea - I don’t disagree that families have preferred names for responses to an event. So one family behaves to an event and they run around like chickens, while the same thing happens to another family and they get really angry perhaps. So there are preferred reactions and emotions, emotional tone.”

He - “ In families people are assigned different roles”

Me - “Bowen family systems, where the family dump all their anxiety on the ‘preferred / identified patient’ and blame ‘the black sheep’ if they worry about me it solves this crisis. 'Identified patient' is an interesting one. I've thought about that a lot in terms of my husband’s family. It provided a workable model for his family, explaining what I was seeing - which was unbelievable…

He -” There is a lot of magical thinking, I think there is nothing in there, or useful that isn’t better written in other places…."

Me - “was it Jodorowsky, he was talking about - when you ask a group of people to play the part of your family, but you ask them to stand in a position that feels appropriate to the closeness you feel to them..." [+]

He -”it really doesn’t matter that you have never met these people and will never meet them or what your impression would be if you did meet them because what matters is who are they to the client, and you will know that because the client tells you. And again it’s getting inside the client’s filter, knowing how the client sees the world, because there is no real world just the way the client experiences the situation. And if ever you are going to do something, and therapeutically you need to do this sometimes to undo the way the client sees the world because it is keeping them stuck. You don’t impose, you offer the client tools, you ask ‘how does it look when you use this framework’ and then the client will do all the work themselves"

Me -” they want to be out of their pain, and as soon as you have heard (your self say) an idea it becomes a part of you"

He -” because you can’t do it for the client anyway, and that’s <laughing> I wonder why this always springs to mind in some point of our conversations, that’s why I’m not Gestalt because there's no manipulating. And that’s a word Perls used, manipulating the patient".

Me -”Well Perls is Perls but underneath, I will put him on to that chair - ‘Perls, you and I get on fine because you remind me of many consultants - NHS - I have worked with who were complete bullies, really….but I could cope with them. Perls was like a lot of consultants. He took knowledge from other people and put it together. Was he doing therapy or not? Possibly abusing, possibly manipulating but me I’d just laugh and say ‘ yeah Perls, that’s an interesting idea’ . But there is important stuff in there, so instead of the PHantasy and filter, there is the Ground and ideas arise from Ground and the clearer the figure formation the more awareness of the whole the person has - then the person can move on and experience in a new way. Then it’s back down to the fertile void, the Dharmakaya level and then ideally new concepts will arise in association with actual need. So in awareness of one’s reality, one’s needs, actions and ideas will arise to create a really clear figure. So the figure arises from the ground and it becomes clear. When people are stressed and their emotional state is chaotic because of the adrenaline, then the figures.<interrupt>."

He-”Absolutely”

Me-” are all over the place, they are not clear and they are competing. The point of Gestalt is to allow the person to get in touch with the primal feeling, or whatever is unfinished - and from there questions arise about how to move, through play, through feeling, through recognising the edge of awareness feelings into completion. I love the openness of that. But Perls to Gloria ‘Are you a little girl’? He wanted her to say back to him ‘so what if I am trying to manipulate you too!’ The argument is fine with him."

He -”if the client in front of you is a little girl, what a therapist who is actually compassionate will do is look after the little girl.

26th July 2021.
Notes:

He didn't come out to wait for me.

Mostly I remember his green socks, and feeling lost and hopeless.

But I am really tired.

Nightmare last night.

So glad I have a week to process all this.

Psychotherapy: Eros and magic.

Plato believed that Eros would take us into a Higher truth and mystery, and Jung agreed. But Freud grabbed the scissors snipping cruelly at Eros until there was nothing but blood and feathers falling around him like rubies and snow. 

I am certain that many of psychotherapy's best theories and explanations are a continuation of much older concepts and ideas - repackaged so as to appear new. So when Kit talked about fantasy 'with a PH'' I was trying to recall Ioan P Couliano's book: Eros and Magic in the Renaissance. 

Couliano, looking at the works of Bruno in particular, explains that Eros was understood as the aspiration to transcendental Beauty.  But in our time,  Freud describes Eros as chthonic, wingless, primal desire (libido) demanding in an inarticulate way, that the outside world satisfies our desire; the energy of Eros (id) is blocked and redirected by the numerous twists and turns of our internalized representation of our culture, our family, and moderated (repressed) or re-directed (sublimated) by the Super-ego. 

Viewed this way, Freud appears to see Eros as the unsocialized, inner child we become when we - to use another of his reifications - regress. Freud's ignorant Eros is continually tricked via advertising's fantasy representations of life, society and society's norms. In psychodynamic therapy, awareness of the regression and denial allows us to know what Eros is up to, which helps to stop the tantrum, and undo future self-deceptions. Then we  - the ego - can allow the Eros child to walk hand in hand with reality and stop making a fuss, be a good citizen. 

But Plato had placed Eros as the link between physical existence and spiritual essence; we fly with Eros. 

[[QUOTE.

Born in 428 BCE, the philosopher (Plato) was among the first generations of young boys who were systematically taught to read. He was also destined to conjure up one of the top-selling metaphysical notions of all time, a notion that irrevocably marked the rationalism, religion, and mysticism of the Western world: the theory of the forms. Plato held that another world exists beyond the realm of temporal flux and gross matter that we perceive with our senses. This otherworld is a pure and timeless realm of perfect ideas; the sensual things we perceive around us are only faded Xeroxes of these ideal forms. Davis, Erik. TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information.]]

The Platonic view describes body and soul - much in the same way that we now describe brain and mind. In the contemporary understanding of biology we see millions of synapses conveying K and Na ions, transmitting information about body and world; a potassium and sodium cascade so that the brain can integrate information to create the imagined, the virtual symbolic representation of us, the world and it's systems - which we experience as both real and as the mind. 

So, what is spirit? 

Couliano translates spirit as made of the same stuff as stars, pneuma. The Spirit is body shaped, but it is made of such subtle stuff that it can represent the finer, more ethereal soul to the perception of the body. This works the other way around too, spirit represents the body to the soul; thus allowing both some awareness of each other. Without spirit, soul would be blind to the outside physical world and without soul the body would simply be earth, air, fire and water set to disintegrate! 

So, to recap: the sidereal pneuma, spirit, the body made of stars translates the sensations, sounds and images from the body's senses into a format that soul can read, and vice versa. 

For the soul cannot grasp anything that has not first been converted into phantasms. And the soul communicates to the body through pneuma.

Pneuma is the inner sense, translating between soul and body. 

Aristotle viewed intellect as phantasm, much as we today regard thoughts. And soul is energetic, it is the vital force that animates. Now we find the parallels with Freudian concepts. 

Freud regarded his talking cure as psychodynamic - he should have called it pneuma -dynamic, but pneuma is already taken by lungs and air. In Freudian psychodynamic therapy Eros is usually, no always the cause of the patient's problem!

In Freudian theory, energy (affect - sensation and outcomes of the emotion) is invested in an object of desire. The person longs for the other, thinks about them all the time! This process is called cathexis. If that energy is blocked because it is transgressive to want that particular person (such as one's therapist for instance!) or because the person has died or can no longer be contacted, Freud explains that the cathected (blocked) libido (life energy) will express itself as regression, aggression, or obsession, until other outlets are found. 

This diagnoses grief as something we have to get over; and unbearable, catastrophic distress as a disorder. Freud is thinking in terms of energy only, not about relationship and identity and the shattering of one's world. The cure for loss - according to Freud -  is to shift the energy, to fall in love with someone else, and move on. 

I imagine Freud and Sinead O'Connor in the Underworld. Sinead is singing 'Nothing compares to you' Freud isn't moved. He pauses, feels obliged to dispense wisdom and then proclaims that her singing is an attempt to cathect her libido.. 

Anyway, Couliano goes on to explain that the Pythagoreans spoke of vital pneuma circulating in the blood. Students at the school of 5th Century Empedocles of Agrigentum believed spirit to be a subtle vapor moving in the arteries of the body. The heart was therefore the central reserve for pneuma, and phantasy, and this is why the heart is so affected by love.

There is still a belief that phantasy is more attractive than real life! 

And this way of seeing underlies a view of addiction; that people become enraptured by phantasy. For we place our starry phantasm within the other. And as phantasy is star-stuff, far more beautiful than muddy, messy, chaotic real life, we are addicted to the radiance that is actually our own projection (I mean the language - projection being a psychotherapy term!).

This ancient way of understanding also predicts that the physical real body of the beloved can never be as beautiful as our projected starry-phantasm, that we believe is the beloved. So love can't be forever because what we love is us! The phantasm of the beloved is nothing but one's own pneuma! 

In this explanation a real other person is evoking desire, creating phantasms made of our pneuma. As advertising tries to do, to capture our own energy, to sell us the phantasy. Or so runs the Platonic explanation now conflated with Freud! 

Though it seems mostly harmless the theory leads to ideas such as if you wear the wrong clothes, the rapist can't be held responsible for the effect and his actions. He was enraptured by the effect on his pneuma. This bad explanation is usually, but not always, aimed at women who are then treated as dangerous and disruptive.

A more common psychological variation of this power of phantasm concept, imagines that there is a problem stopping a person seeing through their phantasy. 

The phantasy becomes psychological diagnosis:

They only fell in love with me because...

- because of their script.

- because they projected onto me

- because of  their transference....

- because they are a narcissist'.

- etc.

Meanwhile Plato's theories also lead to the concept of courtly love with its "vocation of suffering" . In this modification, the power of the phantasy is harnessed and used as the path to wisdom.

A vocation of suffering is chosen by a true believer to create the path to wisdom by a purposeful withdrawal from the beloved before any physical consummation, or satisfaction can occur - so it is too late if you have had sex, or if there is any real love and partnership! For then, it is said, desire may never be quenched...oh dear. But, fear not. There are other theories! This directs us to look East, towards Mircea Eliade (Couliano's mentor) and towards Tantra...