It has been three years to the day since I wrote this post [+].
And I've spent the last week thinking hard about why I don't step up and make formal complaints. I don't feel OK about not reporting what happened to my friend (over 40 years ago now).
I don't and I won't feel OK about not reporting Kit. [+]
It is Samhain...time to invite in all the ghosts, to listen to them, to honour them, to learn from them - and then, only when they have been heard, when they feel honoured, when they know that they have imparted wisdom, only then have they completed their work and feel able to leave...
Conclusions.
I thought of writing a victim statement - but this blog is it.
I seriously considered making a complaint to UKCP. I believe I have grounds to do so.
I will not do that.
I'm going to stick with, anyone who reads this account can make up their own minds....
And this is where my inner Eskil turns into David.
I will upload a bit of our conversation, in the full knowledge that someone might now recognise who Kit is.
This is a warning to all therapists, that if a client gets in touch and says that there is a problem and you reply with 'Never contact me again'!
I am a coward. What stops me from speaking out? When I was 17 my friend was groomed by her English teacher. Her father had been mad, bad and dangerous to know. He'd torched the family home, he was an alcoholic, my friend's mother gathered up her four children and fled... Seven years later my friend phoned me from the English teacher's house. She has found his photos, lots of photos in a draw. He liked to shave his most precious students, and keep the pictures. My friend had refused. He had left the house, perhaps to buy shaving foam and more razors!
I drove to his house and took her out of there.
After she finished her A levels, she went to a London university. He lived with her there... until she ran away!
But the point is, that draw full of photos. And I've no doubt he continued grooming, in the most literal sense. The point is, I didn't go to the police. I still could. I believe that he is still alive. I didn't go because my friend didn't want me to. And I didn't want to open the door to feelings of shame, or drag her into places she wouldn't want to go. The police station, the court. It would affect her education. Her life was hard enough anyway.
And nor did I want to get involved. I saw them together. I never said a word.
And I knew that he would keep on doing it. Last time I searched, he was still describing himself as an 'expert in teaching emotionally vulnerable girls'. Working as a private tutor.
I didn't do anything.
That friendship ended after fifty years, last year because I discovered that she hadn't told me something truly life changing, about my daughter. Not deception, but a withholding of truth. Same as my husband's withholding of truth when I asked him what is happening... Same as Kit's withholding of open honesty.
I blame others for not doing anything, whilst not doing anything!
So in this blog I have been open and honest about myself. I've dragged Kit's words into the public arena. I've downloaded the complaint procedure from his professional ethical body.
I've named him, to a therapist friend. That was a big step.
But a part of me is seeing myself as just having a tantrum, part of me is saying that he is an excellent therapist, and surely I imagined the minor transgressions? He couldn't have called me a minx just as I was reliving the feeling of shock when my husband first showed his cold, cruel anger.
The negative voice goes on. Kit was right to be disparaging about my ability to write, to hold a coherent and intelligent conversation, and that his psychodynamic policy of sidestepping his human authenticity - was all beneficial. My fault for not engaging correctly.
So it was all my fault that I left his room having to be dissociated from my feelings, having to disconnect the desire to die, having survived another dose of what felt pretty much like gaslighting.
My fault that it took me a year to fathom that his inability to engage with my feelings was due to a previous incident involving his professional ethical body...
Surely I can see beyond apprehension, beyond beating myself up, and bloody do something this time!
It has been three years since I recorded the mp3 and survived how my requests for open and honest dialogue were ignored. I'm still thinking about some of his inappropriate responses to the emotions I felt when I spoke with him; such as how he laughed as I spoke about being paralysed by horror and fear. [+]
If you are reading this blog, you know that my answer to his refusal to agree to any kind of resolution or mediation process has been to publish my therapy sessions, using transcripts. This hasn't been an easy decision to make. A part of me remains uneasy about it. There was an alternative, I had seriously considered making an official and formal complaint and perhaps that would have been better?
Now, in October 2024 we are about eight months away from it being too late as there is a three year window. Actually I'm not sure, I may have more time? And yet the reasons why I don't see complaint as the right thing, remains exactly the same. I think the outcome of an official complaint would be that I write an impact statement, and hopefully I would receive a thousand word apology from him, but I really don't know? Do I want or need that? What I do know is, if my complaint is not upheld I would feel silenced and unsupported. For all sorts of reasons I can't take that. I think what happened here matters. I think speaking up matters to me more than changing his behaviour if I'm honest! There was shame in his reply, and I don't like the way shame makes people hide and lie.
The reason I haven't made an official complaint is primarily my belief that the process of the professional body seeking information could upset him to the point of total dysfunction and rage.
And that would impact his clients.
So?
So...what is next?
By writing this post I know I'm covering old ground, but I think this is a mapping of the terrain before I seek the next direction.
This blog is about how mandatory therapy went so wrong for me! Curiously the situation I found myself in closely resembles 'spiritual abuse'. I see similar themes of power, and the dread of speaking out; there is a feeling of threat and fear which reminds me of accounts from people who have left spiritual systems feeling that they have been cursed.
So, being as I'm not going to keep quiet, and being as I am not going to hide anything - what are the grounds of my complaint?
I believe that to define our conversations as doing therapy is his fantasy. I paid him £40.0 a week for a conversation. It is a fantasy to say that whilst in the room he was only ever a therapist, and it was certainly a fantasy to define me as a client - 'because I pay for sessions'. I didn't talk to him as if he was a therapist. I tried to talk to the man. A therapy dialogue follows certain rules - clients don't ask me about me because they have come to talk about themselves, and in that way they perform the role of client. I wasn't in his room to talk about me. I just wanted to talk, to have a dialogue about anything really. I found him interesting - I loved his mind actually, because I couldn't predict what he'd say next at all!
The reasons I didn't end therapy were complicated.
I needed to hear emotional truth from him or else I'd stay stuck in the half-light, gaslight sensations and playback. I needed to hear emotional truth from him because if I'd known for sure that he didn't feel any attraction for me, I'd simply let go! It is really easy to disentangle from someone when you know that you have been mistaken! Because I didn't hear the emotional truth I so needed, I wouldn't let go, because I hoped to change his mind about speaking openly to me each and every session.
Certainly I'd started as a client but after perhaps four sessions I stopped being a client, I became someone who genuinely found him extremely attractive and I wasn't sure if it was mutual or not. I tried to ignore that for a year. When I finally stated the truth the way he responded; with self-defence, was so like my husband, I felt myself shifting back towards the cliff edge of suicide.
Do I think now that he could and should have predicted this from what had happened to me in the preceding four years? On one hand, from how he spoke to me in our last session, I see no evidence that he had paid any attention whatsoever to the facts.
But I am certain that the basics had been clear; that I'd suffered gaslighting, that I'd asked my husband for the truth - his emotional truth - numerous times and received either hollow assurances, or defensive victim blaming style replies, I'm certain that Kit knew this! And so in the light of that? I judge his responses to my request for emotional truth as very off kilter. And if he wasn't aware, then his responses were negligent.
He is a psychotherapist.
OK, so I have fear.
When my clients have fear I ask them to trust that exploration is important and possibly the only way to get out and through, and I ask - what is the worst that could happen if we look at it and ask some questions?
And so I ask myself again, am I writing to get revenge?
And what is the worst thing that could happen?
So to begin:
Is what I've written here in the public interest?
In other words, will my writing help other therapists to do better.
Will it help other clients to think through their own experiences?
Do my words have the potential to prevent harm to others?
Or is this blog about my own personal grievance?
And then the process itself:
Identify the Issue.
What is occurring and how do you know it?
Document the Facts.
Who Needs to Know.
Make a Decision about Confidentiality.
Make the Call or Submit Your Disclosure.
(2. What is occurring?) My complaint is:
His response to my request for open and honest dialogue constituted a danger to my mental health, and safety.
Unwittingly he repeated my husband's process of belittling my choice of training to be a therapist.
He triggered the sensations I experienced when my husband was lying to me.
If I frame the problem in psychodynamic language, I think I experienced his transference, and my countertransference.
I was prevented from exploring the process of my countertransference, because of the power dynamic.
This was framed as 'you have dismissed any such dialogue'.
I am also responsible for the power dynamic
But I did my best to talk about it.
I don't think that he tried to help me explore it at all.
I informed him of my concerns.
I did not tell him that I would record our sessions.
I exploited a loop hole in his contract.
My rationale for recording the sessions was to check my own sanity!
To actually know what had been said:
to avoid my imagination creating things
or my memory losing information.
(1. The issue) My rationale for sharing my sessions online is:
Other people may experience similar in therapy,
An exploration of the subject could lead to clients being able to name and think about what is happening to them
And to therapists taking a more compassionate approach to clients who fall in love with them.
The problem of knowledge:
The person responsible believes that his approach was correct?
I believe that his surprise when I communicated my feelings about him indicated a lack of awareness.
I had reason to raise the possibility of a similar underlying dynamic in other sessions with other clients.
And I believe that unless his awareness is increased, a similar situation will happen in the future.
I asked for a process of resolution and told him if none was forthcoming I'd put all the information out as 'freeware' because:
I'm not the only person to have fallen in love with their therapist -
Eros, has the potential to kill.
This makes it a legitimate subject to share - to increase knowledge.
Legitimate only if stripped of personal identifiers.
"Your letter read like a threat: do as I say or else ...
Or else what?
You have still not stated what, only more cryptic messaging.
This is deliberate vagueness, of course.
You state only that you are akin to a hacker and:
you will share information
what information?
where will it be shared?
how will it be shared?
with who?
as freeware
I have no idea what that means:
you will create a programme that spreads information from our sessions,
breaking therapist-client confidentiality?
Do not apologise for
"using words in a way that causes [me] to feel
threatened,
and ordered -
and indeed coerced"
when that is exactly what you are attempting to do."
Finally:
Who Needs to Know? // Clients and therapists.
Make a Decision about Confidentiality. // His identity will not be disclosed.
Make the Call or Submit Your Disclosure.// Published.
What else?
Do I need to do more with this information?
It is a great error of mine to think that facts speak for themselves, I think that the harmful dynamic was so obvious - my husband wouldn't tell me what he actually thought or felt because he felt that he had to lie to protect himself (he was scared of her husband!) The therapist likewise wouldn't tell me what he actually thought or felt. It felt like he didn't think he could tell me what he really felt because whatever he said would be dangerous. I felt that there was a sense of shame in both situations.
There is some similarity here with spiritual abuse - the abuser uses 'Holy doctrine' in a twisted way to justify their abuse. Kit twisted the guidance provided by the ethical framework to justify positioning me as 'out of order'. This really isn't what the ethical framework is for. It is possible that he truly believed that I was 'out of order,' essentially being 'wilfully transgressive', so my complaint is of negligence rather than a desire to harm. In my voice message I said that I needed to be able to be honest with him, and I needed to know how he felt.
He felt that I had invited him to break the ethical code, 'if he responded in a certain way'. [+]
End of.
Being a therapist meant to him therefore, that I must not feel able to bring my emotions or genuine feelings into the room. I believe that the courage to use immediacy is an essential part of being a therapist. Immediacy is core to the I - Thou relationship characterized by mutuality, transparency, and presence.
The Gestalt requirement that we are emotionally truthful and vulnerable, honours the client.
I am a better therapist because I know what bad therapy is...but I'm also conflicted about what has happened. I suppose next thing is to write something like an essay and copy the sections into some kind of coherent order to justify my claims. Then the information is all there, and you can decide what you think!
And perhaps then I'll have the courage to let him know?
Or should I make one more request for resolution?
That never contact me again was pretty clear though.
I really disapprove of people hiding information because they don't think that the other person can take it. But I've seen enough horror films to know that this can be true.
Nevertheless:
I think he has a right to know what my complaint is.
It is understood as a magical place, the meeting point of many energy lines and forces.
Many people come to stand there together.
No one single belief system rules, it is free and open to all.
Welcome!
When I wrote the first post of this blog [+] I was in recovery from the therapy I'd received. Let me say that again, after therapy ended - I was in a bad way - because of therapy.
I felt powerless, and silenced.
Again.
During the gaslighting [+] that ended just two months before I started therapy, I had needed to ignore all and any thoughts or feelings that contradicted my husband's version of reality. If I allowed myself to take my thoughts and feelings seriously, I would try to find out the truth. And when I did that....let's just say it really wasn't worth it.
My husband had been lying to me - is the short version - and I've no doubt that if I ever see him again he will still be lying.
In 2020, when I found out the truth, I also found out that my feelings were accurate. The awfulness I'd felt had not been just my imagination, nothing that I'd imagined had been intrusive thoughts due to severe and chronic stress.
But as I couldn't get the truth, I had needed to tell myself that it was all me, all in my mind. Whilst my husband possibly felt sick to his teeth -I imagine - as he knew what he was doing. And as he could see my distress - which evoked his bullying behaviour...
Who knows, I will never know!
All I can say is that the situation was abusive.
And when I allowed myself to look at the implications of what my body, heart and soul were telling me I discovered that I was terrified of this man, I understood that he was capable of harming me to protect himself and someone else...And it benefited him when I believed that I had to be the cause of my own despair. The dagger blade hits when I realised that in his eyes somehow this made me the one deserving of blame.
The truth is, my distress, my need for clarity and honesty was a problem - for him.
He felt shame.
And his answer was avoidance or attack.
And so when I caused the therapist to feel shame, or something I can't identify, my therapy become a continuation of the system I'd just escaped. Almost exactly the same dynamic, I simply needed clear and open dialogue about feelings, about his feelings.
So I was stuck, there could never be a resolution. His feelings about me had to be included in our sessions if ever I was going to be able to make a realistic assessment!
Kit chose to hide behind the psychodynamic rule, that the therapist must be as a blank sheet of paper 'for the transference'. A favoured writer and psychodynamic therapist of his, Balint, explains that clients become emotional when experiencing a therapist who has, to all intent and purposes less emotional repertoire than a stone. This mythos explains that clients who don't receive any emotional feedback from a neutral therapist, regress. And theconcept of regression fits perfectly into Kit's favoured TA model of therapy.
Conjecture and refutation are absent, like Kit's feelings!
Surely I didn't need to say that!
Anyway - to cut this meander short - there is only one other cause of emotionality, as described by psychotherapy; and that is grief!
So when Kit asked me if I was 'suggesting' (his word) that I could possibly be in grief at losing any hope that he might want our relationship to reconfigure - I spoke as if from 'Adult' rather than be fitted neatly into a diagnosis of regression.
I changed the word from grief to it's constant companion - loss.
But why was this so difficult and necessary? Why did I feel the need to be so careful with my words, to attempt perception management even!
Why not explore how our wires got crossed?
To be fair, I think he tried this repeatedly, but his language was defensive, generally along the lines of "What makes you think that...about me!" His tone of voice told me that he thought I was out of order, transgressive..
I was careful with my words because Kit's defensiveness was his normal. Anytime I'd said that I'd felt a misalignment, he would apologise and then a give an explanation of what he'd intended - because clearly I'd misunderstood him! Missing the fact that something had gone wrong, so why not find out? I was always left wondering what had actually happened!
And during this Kit felt...well what?
Shame, attack, guilt?
All I know is that something had happened to him before, something to do with his reputation, and because of it he heard my truth as transgressive. Yet transgressive didn't fit the picture of what was happening in the room, I wasn't wearing low cut blouses, I didn't flirt, and I didn't even dare to make eye-contact (our eyes met only once during two years)!
Kit's memories of that threat to his reputation poisoned our sessions.
And I was silenced.
Almost.
Once I'd realised that I had feelings for him I began recording and analysing, and then I began writing the transcripts. This was therapy for my therapy. As I listened [+I I realised how much impact his avoidant-defensive reactions had had on me, and how much I was still suffering from the consequences.
I decided to contact him and ask if we couldn't try to find a good way through this. I had believed that my request made it obvious that something was wrong, and that communication needed to happen to make this better.
He told me to never contact him again.
He believed that that was a clear enough message for me.
I felt that I was being told that I should just shut up and forget how I felt, ignore too how similar situations are impacting other clients?
Can't happen.
Overall, I'm extremely angry about how he responded.
Here are a few posts that help I guess, to tell the story. You, dear reader are at liberty to copy, paste, quote, laugh at, analyse, dissect, empathize, sympathize with everything in this blog.
The session in which he tells me of another client who may have had feelings for him? [+]
The session after I'd given him a voice message, an mp3, telling him how I felt about him [+]
The session in which he tries to get me to think kindly of my husband. [+]
The session where I ask him once more to be completely honest with me. [+]
The page with the mp3 I gave to him, telling him how I felt - that I'd fallen into limerence, or love. [+]
A rush of pain washes over me as I begin to write.
This is the last session.
Then and now, I was really aware that I wanted to leave having done it right.
My integrity is rooted in one statement: love is worth dying for.
Perhaps it is the only thing...
I had chosen not to run.
I had trusted that Kit would stop treating self-disclosure as dangerous.
He didn't.
Instead he lectured me about avoidance, whilst he avoided making any reply to my questions. He ignored the power-dynamic he had created, and failed to understand that it would be maintained by his absence.
I left his room feeling worthless...disempowered, suicidal.
I'd set my coordinates straight for the heart of the storm; my role is to work with the people who get medicated unless we find a way to turn self-attack and justified rage, fear, hallucinations and paranoia into a narrative to be evolved and made beautiful. Overall I have learnt how much I had needed him to be human; to step away from the role of pedagogue, and lawyer; both roles signifying an understandable desire for self-protection.
But ultimately Kit didn't see me as worth it.
Nothing I stood for was worth it, not any of it.
This session as you will read, was almost too much...
I say - "Every time I've paid you I have have offered you money for teachings"
He sounds surprised - "For teachings"?
Me - "Yes, I owe you I think for at least three quarters of all my assignments"
But this isn't all of why I offer him the khata, I'm asking him to respect the difference between us, and respect my reasons for travelling so far to attain wisdom.
Yet he has described me as a person who - at best acting from a wilful ignorance - has in effect made an indecent proposal.
He thinks that I have little regard for the ethics of our profession.
We are both old enough to know better, and to have done better than this.
I offer him the khata, because I am absolutely at the end of my endurance, and I make myself do the best I can do, with my best understanding of the situation, whilst knowing that I don't know and that what ever I chose wont be the best...
He -"Oh, I didn't know that it was that significant"!
Me - "Yes, Balint was so useful"
He - "Yes, he's not somebody who is really ever talked about nowadays...anyway, scarves"
Me - "Oh yes! The khata"
He - "What does this mean - the scarf"
Me - "What is this scarf of which you speak - I just take these things as normal don't I!"
He - "<laughing> Well..."
Me - "Normal for me"
I am folding the scarf into seven folds, and putting the envelope that contains the money inside the middle fold.
I say - "I am treating you as a Lama OK?"
He - "OK, I'm not sure that I deserve it"
Me - "That's not the point"
He - "Don't I have to be somebody Holy and learned to be a Lama"
Me - "How would you know if you are, or are not"?
He - "Well I don't feel very Holy and that's for sure"!
Me - "So a Lama feels Holy"?
He - "I don't know...."
Me - "So, you need to stand up"
He doesn't respond...
Me - "So, you need to stand up...
I explain that the scarf is an offering of honour. The word has a very dear place in my heart, I felt so dishonoured by my husband, it was indescribable, a different sort of pain to any other. I offer the khata to him, and he offers it back to me.
Again, he asks me - "So why - why with the scarf - why give it now and receive it back"?
Me - "Play back how it feels..."
He wont talk about his feelings.
He: "What I often find is useful on a last session, it doesn't mean that we have to do it but it is a suggestion, is to think back to the very first session - and who you were then - and then telescope to the present, who are you now and how did we get from one to the other. And then...
Me - "That sounds like solution-focused to me! Um...yeah...not different, no difference for me. I'm the same person. The only difference...I suppose it is a case of...at the very first, not quite knowing where all the pieces were in relation to each other. I felt as if I'd been dismembered, parts of me in black plastic bags, that was my psychic state"
He - "Hmm....so how did you become"
Me - "Not dismembered"
He - "I was going to say re-membered, and then I realized what I'd said, or what I'd thought"
Me - "But I think that is correct - how did I remember? I had to deal with the not being able to be angry until it was justified. So that is hard, there is justifiable anger, but you can't unleash it until you know that you are correct - it could otherwise be a mistake, missing information has to be found".
He - "How did you know"?
I've explained this in other sessions already.
Me - "It's not possible to know what the criteria will be exactly beforehand, but when it is reached it will be recognized"
He - "In retrospect, how did you know"
Me - "Because my husband lied to me one more time, for no good reason"
Me - "It was the lying that did it. It was lying that was the unfathomable thing, or the malevolent thing. It felt malevolent, it felt like I was being pushed (off a cliff)
Which is exactly how I feel in this final session, now..
He - "Are you saying, not like a lie to cover up - in other words it is about him - but a lie to actually harm you, which means it becomes about you"
Me - "No, I think for him it was a case of, he could not be truthful - he was ashamed. But the effect is malevolent (it clearly did me harm) and I suppose that's the thing that makes me hold back from making judgments or acting... is that the standards I expect from myself, I can't expect from other people. If somebody was in pain because they have been lied to by me, then I would think very badly of myself for continuing to lie. It would be worse for me to experience, than being truthful could be. But that last lie fell into the same mental folder as, being an alcoholic, it is as if lying has become an addiction for him"
He - "OK"
If I was the therapist hearing this I would be thinking....we are clearly not in the last session! That sense of malevolence needs checking - is the husband a real threat to her? But if not, yet she feels that way, what is unfinished, what needs to be done or said?
And the client will say that there is nothing to be done - signifying their sense of powerlessness and overwhelm, their need to be safe by detaching from reality, taking care not to move, not to make any sound. Frozen...
Me - "So, there is no point, there is nothing that can be done with this. There is other stuff going on. Even then, the judgmental part of me says that is pure cowardice on his part, so my question originally was, I suppose, which kind of an infidelity is this? Is this a madness because of all the things we have been through, or is this because you are not an ethical person? That was my question to myself, which way do I think it is? It was the ethics that got me in the end - which is interesting because I feel that you have accused me a lot of times of not being ethical. That could be a feeling left over from that <awareness of possible transference>...I don't know."
He - says something but I can't make it out...
Me - " <Trying to take care of his feelings> Not is a harsh way or anything like that, but with regards to me and the ethical framework.
He - "Well I don't remember those conversations, I don't remember accusing you of anything! I was just saying that it is there for a reason"
Yup, same again, defence. And the word that I used *accused* refers back to a previous session. I'd felt bewildered by how defensive that word had made him - as I'd used it in a mock serious way... But this time I'm not joking, because the way he had responded to me had made me feel accused of treachery (how dare I criticise our professional ethical body!)
I'm puzzled.
The thing to pick up on is, 'the client' had felt accused. I hear his reply now as 'How could you see me as anything other than who I'm trying so hard to be'!
The word I used was accused - which certainly indicates a rupture in the therapeutic alliance.
Certainly in other sessions I was:
Accused of told that I was defiant of the ethical framework.
Accused of told that I was being contrary.
Accused of told that I was being tangential...
Me - <soothing tone of voice> "Yes. So that is what I was saying, it's, there's a wound from - yeah...I will make judgments, but I don't like making them. It just seems that that is the way it is. That yes, his choices were unethical"
He - "Yes"
I speak from Kit's view, to create consilience:
Me - "And so that meant that there wasn't someone worth fighting for, he isn't worth fighting for"
He - "No, it really isn't, no, no"
I don't believe that actually. I truly believe that it should be a hard thing to give up on someone, and never done lightly!
Me - "But it is very hard to reach that point. It is hard to decide when that critical point is reached. I mean I saw my husband reach that point with our son - so people do reach that point, of giving up on others, and where that point is depends on their value system, their belief system, so that means it should take a lot of thought - before giving up on someone.
He - "But I remember in some of our sessions, for quite a long time, for you your husband was worth fighting for because of what had been. And you wanted to get back what had been. And as I saw it the shift was to become more and more aware of what is - and that what has been, has been, and is no longer"
Yeah, just throw away 25 years, during which, most of the time, we were good friends! The shift came about because I was remembering who I am without my husband, instead I was remembering the person I decided to be...My memory of the early sessions is of Kit telling me that 'my husband wasn't worth it'. I found his attitude unhelpful...I thought at the time that it said quite a lot about Kit, and had little to do with me.
I wondered at the time if he wanted me to see that he is better than my husband? I thought it could just be a male thing - that my husband offended him as a man - but either way it was a part of my questioning and wondering about Kit, wondering if he did have feelings for me?
And here it is again!
Me - "I can feel the energy in you about that - that version. Um, no... people work stuff out, things change, things can get recreated. It is whether people are willing to re-create, no not re-create, to create, or whether it is about destruction due to despair. I see that as the difference. He had reached the point of despair, he felt that there was no point, and whatever winds of change, whichever way his life was going, he felt that he needed to be doing something else.
He - "I think my perception was that it took you a lot to get there.
Me - "Well he had to lie to me again - but this time I knew it was a lie because already for the first time I already knew the answer to the question I'd asked him! Before that it had always been ambiguous! So then I wrote down exactly the way I thought and exactly the way I felt about it"
He - "How do you feel about him now"?
Me - "I sort of wonder if at some point he will wake up and think 'I did that wrong'? How do I feel about him - I am still scared of him, there is still fear"
He - "What are you afraid of"?
Had I not already said before in other sessions? To me he is as Ash, the synth in Alien. I don't recognise him as human, humanity has gone, he had and still has an agenda that included smashing us to bits (my son physically, me psychologically - and that is truly scary.
Ash attacks when Ripley works out that Ash will kill the whole crew - and that is exactly how I still feel (20th September 2024) nothing has changed...
Me - "The lack of recognition, I don't know or recognize who he is"
He - "Ah, OK"
Me - "But also the amount of actual rage I feel. My own rage"
I'm giving a text book answer - unlike many of my counselling sisters I'm not scared of rage, but I learnt that I needed to be very wary of gaslighting! It is a real threat to my sanity.
He - "Yes - are you afraid of that?"
Me - "No, I just don't want to feel it. Am I afraid? <pause> No, it is disgust, it is disgust. The image that was very clear and I remember writing it in journal, the way - it was interesting the way themes from the Alien film did crop up"
He is laughing - but I'm not laughing...In my voice you can hear that I'm in contact with primal fear and the gut wrenching awfulness of what happened.
What I'm feeling is a visceral horror, a direct encounter with sex and death conjoined and entangled; I'm remembering that energy affecting my husband. Or did it come from him? Was it was his energy? I don't know - Libido and Thanatos; the pairing, or conjunction is clear in the first Alien film. I experienced the presence of these forces as synchronicity - but also more powerfully as the poltergeist. My interpretation of it (and the 'car and the CD incident!) comes from Jung - Catalytic Exteriorization.
But no, this isn't funny.
I'm not laughing. I made light of the poltergeist at the time but it seemed to be trying to hurt me.
And I was scared..
This is a place Kit can not go - he is actually laughing - have I not said how awful this was for me? And I'm back there - it is in my tone of voice.
I want him to hear, he is not listening - he is actually laughing...
Me -"The men who took my son to be sectioned, in the van, were working for a company called Prometheus - the name of the spaceship in the film Alien Covenant (Covenant the band that got me through) it is almost - I could, if I was that way inclined...but that is just the way it was, and it was just chance, but the coincidences are factually true. I literally did listen to Covenant (The Swedish Electro-Goth band) and the mixture of the singer's calm voice, so I needed that music and that band is called Covenant. And the last film we saw with my son before he went completely down, was Alien Covenant. But the Prometheus van, how was that for my son, with the resonance with the film? But it just seemed to me what my husband had done was, because of having unprotected sex with someone else and hiding it all, being inhuman - having a different agenda somehow - just reminded me of the character of the android, the synth (Ash). The android has been programmed with the imperative to sacrifice the crew to get an alien onto the ship, the Nostromo, somehow. We were the crew - my sons and myself...the agenda created the feeling that comes from gaslighting. What is happening is harm it is harmful, and it will destroy. Somebody who does it that way (path of lies and deception) there is no need for it to be underhand"
He - "When you put it that way, it sounds like you are drawing parallels between the activity of the company and their unseeing agenda, and your husband and his unseen agenda - like there are two agendas going on that are not really connected, but both are operating simultaneously, and both undermine you and your son, in a way"
Undermine?
"in a way"
You mean, hitting, bullying, lying are possibly just a little bit undermining?
This from Kit as therapist - has had the effect of seriously undermining my confidence, Kit added his weight to the reality that 'people don't care about what happened to us, because neither of us - my son or myself - matter. What happened was so awful it shattered our family. Kit's distancing mirrors my husband's attitude. I feel that I will never be able to talk about how I actually felt...Kit's reaction has added a force of disrespect, he was laughing. I can't let it silence me! I can't curl up and howl in pain. I can't - I will stay rational and assume I made a mistake in how I said it, that he could have understood if I'd used the right words.
Me - "No, it was my husband, he was acting like the synth - Ash - there was an agenda, and the synth actually tries to kill Ripley, the character in the film who questions him, so, you know...because she might find out. So he has to - no has to but...he has to kill her basically. He doesn't want someone getting in the way of the agenda, but meanwhile this thing is incubating in John Hurt's character, and it is going to destroy the whole ship - unless Ripley blows the damn thing out of the air-lock! The company, the name on the van, Prometheus was just synchronicity, something that takes you down to the underworld I suppose? No, Prometheus suffered for giving man, fire, so no, nothing to do with that layer of myth. But for my son, Prometheus is not good - two big burley men dressed in black, putting him in a van.."
I also try to forget that I felt that my husband tried to physically harm me - I felt that he put my life in danger - in a way that would have appeared to have been an accident. And I can't even bring myself to write it. I remember a succession of jolts and tears come to my eyes as I'm writing now - I still feel it and my disintegration when I got back home to safety, crawling into a ball, simply unable to stop shaking unable to breathe. When the person you believe is your partner, when every fibre of your body says, this man has just tried to kill you, but he's making out that it was just a moment of rage...of course he doesn't want you hurt...and you don't want to believe what you know...remembering the other time, a knife.
Both times he was so angry with himself...
I was the living proof of who he is...That is how it was dangerous.
And why when I demanded the key back so he can't get into my home, I was shaking and screaming.
I still have the broken knife.
To remind me.
He - "It's strikingly bizarre, isn't it. Why would a company that does that call themselves Prometheus? Can you talk about all of that now as something that happened, rather than feeling its live presence. Does it still have any live presence for you?"
Me -"To talk about it it has to have a live presence! To talk about something...I suppose there are two things. It could be like a hijack, a flashback, the event horizon - the image is just frozen and if you get too close you will be sucked into this devastating, again the image of dismemberment. And then there is the writing about something, and it has to have life to be written about. I could talk about it at the time. Part of me was like - there is so much here! But, it is also so different to normal life. It is difficult to speak it or write it in a way that allows it to mesh, for other people to get up to speed with it. Because unless you have been in that situation; there is a whole swathe of television dramas, documentaries, people's opinions, consensus reality about what mental health problems, and care is like. And in writing about something - well there is either truth seeking or truth preserving. Truth preserving will get a bigger audience and people will understand what you say faster because you are using ideas that are already existing. But truth seeking requires me to ask myself what I think has actually happened, and it is more an edge of awareness thing, so I do prefer that. I think your question is another question - is it dealt with?
He - "That's what I mean by live, is it 'unfinished business'? Or it is something which is - it might have some emotional content to it, but it doesn't feel like its raw and unfinished and unresolved"
He laughed...how can I be open or honest with someone laughing about this!
Me - "I don't think that much of it felt raw and unresolved at the time. Because I was there, in it and present, constantly on the edge of this is too much-I can't bear it, but there was only one incident after my son had been in surgery (after his suicide attempt) for seven hours, and we couldn't find him, we were walking through dark corridors inside the place where the worst things happen, he didn't seem to be on the computer system, and eventually we were directed to a small waiting room where all the leaflets were about living with severe head injury. We had already been told that he had 'life changing injuries' and I thought - this is not a good sign...seven hours in surgery, he is being moved to intensive care, what state is he going to be in? But actually post op, he was sane then because he had been given enough opiates, so he was normal, not psychotic in terror, or rage, which proved to me - it was absolutely clear and a wonderfully beautiful experiment, I thought well, that is all it is then! If all it takes is for his brain to create the right amount of endorphins, he will recover his sanity. The equation was simple, if a person has a lack of endorphins, then their state of mind can be altered into psychosis. I'm fortunate, I've read the work of Jaak Panksepp, I don't see mental illness as complicated! Endogenous opioids, diminish the feelings associated with the grief and panic system, here is the evidence. So I knew my son would be OK, it wasn't like that for my husband or the rest of the family though. But in that waiting room, before we found that he was OK, that was a dark despair. I don't know what I believe in terms of schizophrenia and other concepts, as real things. I think the original diagnosis of such a thing was mostly a failure to recognize syphilis! But I do know that the medical drugs given to 'cure' mental health conditions are horrendous.
He - "Absolutely, absolutely"!
Me - "Unbelievably bad, truly messing up people's systems - So nothing at the time felt like, no I don't want to talk about it, or was painful, it didn't at the time, it doesn't now. My hesitance comes from thinking that the other person really wont be able to understand - and I'm not sure that I have the ability to transmit, I mean I haven't dedicated my time to trying to write better! I write, but I don't try to write better - so if I was a better writer I could do it. But it isn't as though I can't talk about it, nor at the time it wasn't like that.
He - "Yes...it puts me in mind of some of our enforced screen time sessions in the early days when you were very careful about what you did and didn't say because of other people being in the house"
Me - "Oh god, yeah! I did want to talk about it then, yes! But I suppose that's different, it was a need to put the events into order and make sense of it. So perhaps that is the question, do I feel as if I have made sense of it? It just feels like....like I was given the most...it's a bit like reading all the works of Jung. I was given so many rich ideas and images, and such an intense learning experience. So, I've actually seen the truth of things, this is what it is really like for somebody to be called service user, this is what it is really like to be sectioned, this is what it is really like to be a parent watching that happen. This is experience you cannot get in any other way, no way without having to take all of it. So...I did ask for this, crazy as that sounds, I did ask."
He - "In what way"
Me - "That sounds like a semi-mystic thing, like I asked and the universe listened! No, what really happened was I perceived that this might be what my future would hold. That is more likely. But, if you recall, it started with my son's friend who died on the rail-track. When I asked my son what had happened to him I saw something, an expression I couldn't translate pass across my son's face. So I investigated, and it didn't make sense, none of it made sense. So I went to the inquest and it didn't make sense. None of this story made sense. So I had lots of thoughts about that and ways to look at it, but still none of it made sense. I could not understand how it had happened. The phrase is ' in this day and age!' the feeling is, surely we are better than this! Where was this young man's care plan, where was the mental health care, team? Where were all the things that are supposed to happen? Because between it happening and the inquest I took a course on mental health and the course made it appear that there is some kind of logical process underpinning psychiatric care. So I had so many thoughts and opinions about mental health care, suicide, and what had happened. and every single one I faced and learnt a lesson from. I lived every single part leading up to my son's friend suicide, and then I faced the what comes after. A part of me thinks that his friend knew what comes after and that is why he is dead...because he had already experienced being in a psychiatric ward. But it was at that inquest I listened as his doctor described how at his final appointment; he had seemed happy, he was clean and tidy, and his mental health was stable. She gave him a repeat prescription for his SSRI, and asked him if he would like to talk to a counsellor. And I thought, ‘well why would he want to see a counsellor, why would he want to talk to a nice middle class lady who talks like his mom's friend, just why!? None of my son's friends would want to see a counsellor - so, I have to become the sort of counsellor they would want to see. So, there we go. So I have to be the sort of counsellor who can deal with people who are extremely upset, and in altered states. Because what I understood from my son in particular was, though there is long term work. But the people who do effective counselling in the present tense, with a person in insanity in full flow, that is a different skill, because that is not about looking at the cause of the pain - because that kind of thought amplifies it - it is entirely about taking what that pain is for that person, and finding a way to turn it a few degrees so it shifts out of the nose dive. So, I needed to find 'the psychic lightning conductor'! "
He - "I'm trying to remember his name - 1960s - psychotherapist who wrote a book about what was probably called then, madness. We wouldn't use that language now of course"
Me - "No, they wouldn't use it but they still mean it! The replacement terms still have exactly the same weight"
He - "But what he was...the whole book was that we think that people who we call mad make no sense, and the whole book was about, if you know how to listen to it, it does make sense. It makes sense for the person saying it, and it is up to us as the listener, as the therapist, to find out what that sense is..."!
I'd say that the feeling people have that things must make sense is part of madness (I like the word, madness, it indicates a transient experience)
J.Panksepp writes:
...psychotic fantasies are generated by a grossly over aroused SEEKING system. It is interesting to note that stress can elevate dopamine activity in the frontal cortex. This may explain how severe stress helps promote paranoid, schizophrenic thinking patterns.
Panksepp, Jaak; Biven, Lucy. The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions (p. 109).
Me - "You don't mean R D Laing, do you - of course you do! Well yes, people do stuff, and it makes sense, though it doesn't to others, but it sort of does. And then Jerold Bozarth too, if you want to look at the pure, person centred interaction - he was completely UPR, that was it! No more, no less"
Time is slip, slip slipping away....
He - "So, what's next for you, have you got your placement lined up yet?
Me - "No. And there is such a lot to do, find a list of placements, find a supervisor, find another therapist - and I am sorry about that."
He - "Yes"
Me - "And that will be at least £200 a month, and I don't think I can afford that money, or rather I need that money. And I was ranting to my son about my last assignment, because I wrote that assignment about my existing placement - a placement not accepted by my college so my 70+ hours there will not be counted as part of my 100 - so that assignment was literally a put that it your pipe and smoke it, in my opinion my course leader is out of order for disregarding that work, which I hope I've made plain in that assignment! I am sick of people missing the post-modern therapies. These are the facts, this is the contract we use, this is the way clients arrive, this is the ethos of the place. So, I was certain that assignment would fail."
He - "And it has"
Me - "It passed, because it does fulfil the criteria demanded by the ethical body, and by the college! But I was angry, so this means I have to do a 'top-up degree', and do extra training to be called a psychotherapist and then I can come back and tell them why, why, whenever you have dismissed me, the other training I received, and what I've said - you are wrong! But you are not going to listen to me until I've got letters after my name. So, I need money for that!
He - "So, the assignment passed, does that also mean that it now counts as a placement"?
Me - "No, god no! My hours don't count as a placement there!"
He - "Isn't that a contradiction"?
Me - "We are dismissed, yet it is counselling. For I would say that someone who says that they are psychodynamic, or person centred, but they don't make a relationship with their client, they don't feel the changes in the atmosphere as the person speaks - then they are not doing counselling! As opposed to someone who is listening and is aware, and uses space and time. And even if they are not doing 'counselling', they are actually doing counselling. And there is the theoretical underpinning, and that seems sound enough for me! I know that you quote Balint, but I disagree with you. I wrote as if I agree with you Balint, but I don't, I really don't"
He - "The basic fault"
Me - "Kind of - the 'fault' is part of a person, this is who they are now. This is true. I don't disagree with that. What I disagree with is that it is fixed through awareness of what's gone wrong, and talking about it. There is the reparative relationship, that is important. But it is not as important - in my view- as working out what that person is doing in the here and now, that is working. And how they get more of that. That sounds like avoiding, it sounds like rescuing, it's not. It is literally using their skills and asking them to be creative, creative thought is very important."
He - "I think you have just described your course leader's point of view, and why she sees a difference"
Me - "But I disagree that that standard view is what counselling should be, that that standard view isonly what counselling can be. Avoiding? Ordinary counselling avoids what the person wants, and enjoys and needs."
He - "Well there is a huge debate to be had there, but we are not going to have enough time in four minutes. Yes, I'm expending a lot of energy at this moment avoiding going down that path, because ..."
Me - "So if we could quickly do this, so, if you said what you needed to say, what difference would that make for you"?
He - "It wouldn't make any difference, which is why I'm not saying anything"
Me - "If you could say it, just by pass the sense of time, what difference would that make for you, what would change for you"?
He - "Nothing at all"
Me - "You wouldn't be having to hold it down, there or.."
He - "Are we swapping roles here"!
Me - "Yeah, we are"
He - "No"!
Me - "Yes, only briefly, only briefly because...<tears in my eyes> OK. I step back"
He - "Yes, do that, yes. So, this all arose because I was asking you if you have a placement and you haven't"
Me - "That's this week"
He - "That's what you are going to do this week"?
Me - "To go through the paper work and work out - because I haven't had a week off since..."
He - "yes"
Me - "There are a lot of hours spent on admin, and a lot of hours seeing clients (at the other place that is counselling but not counted as counselling by my college) so...."
He - "So if you have done all the academic stuff of the course, you haven't done the placement for the course. What's the procedure? Do you send paper work in, now and again? Without actually ever attending?"
Me - "Yeah - you can ask for tutorials, but yeah, we are satellites"
He - "So I've only ever heard of that arrangement before, when somebody ends their course and they haven't got their hours, when the hours are intended to have been done by the end of the course. I've never heard of it arranged so that you would end the course without having done the hours. That seems very strange"
Me - "That is why all the assignments are so concentrated, and we do two years worth of assignments in six months. That is why it was continual, endless writing to the point of insanity.
He - "So, have you had your last meeting of the course"?
Me - "No, that's tomorrow and Wednesday"
He - "Oh, OK"!
Me - <pause - I'm breaking> "What you are seeing is...let's call it, 'agree to disagree', if I'm honest..(no I'm beaten I can hardly speak).There it goes <I gesture, indicating putting it behind me> So, I don't know what we are doing tomorrow, but the next day we are going out for a meal.
He - "OK, so it is almost going to be the equivalent of the last day of school where you play games and watch TV"
Me - "Bloody 'In Therapy' - that's time I'm never getting back. With Gabriel Byrne
He - "I've never watched that, it was mentioned to me, I've never watched it. It's not worth watching by the look of it?"
Me - "I don't know - it is entertaining. But it isn't the best use of time is it <Last session. Last minutes and we are talking about TV, this is awful > It is a made for TV story, that viewers are meant to be piecing together, basically the cop interview scene without the plot, and different sort of cop.
He - "Right, well times up"!
Me - "Right, times up"
He - "Yes <pause> So I hope all goes well, and that you come out the other side of it with what...because last time we spoke you were not quite sure what you were going to do with it "
What didn't you get about ' I have to be the sort of counsellor who can deal with people who are extremely upset, and in altered states'? My aim is to work with families who are being bullied by the mental health services, actually! Mediation and translation, meshing opposing worlds to create something better for all. My criticism of SFBT is that it was developed by social workers who wanted to be therapists.
My aim is to be a counsellor who re-invents social work!
A long silence from me...
Me- "To keep listening"
He - "And I'll put my computer on in a minute and send you the final form.
Me - OK, thank you - I kind of hoped it was going to be my score! My rating -as a client! I'd give you, Xerpa, two out of ten."
<we both laugh - and we have laughed. I can't end this, I just can't>
He - "Hmm - take care, bye"
Me - "Bye"
--
Closing the door I turned towards the road, to walk to my car, to drive to the Waitrose closest to the tracks. This is my ritual of confirmation - my promise to see all of this out until the 'end'. And I wasn't brave enough to face the trees; the ones closest to the embankment where my son's friend had gone one cold December morning, to end his life. The same trees I'd insisted that my husband and I walk to after I'd tried to say how sorry I was...and that I would do anything to make things right. The depth of anger this inspired in him never made sense, nothing about his rage made any sense.
I was at the edge of complete disintegration. Then and after this awful, awful session.
A semi-psychotic vision, a truer view filled my mind...I wrote it down and then recorded it.
Above clouds, between the void of space, above the pull of earth. I am drowsy between reality and anxiety.
At times like this when I have sought the glittering edge, I’ve longed for a simple way in; the perfect drug, the perfect word, the instant translocation....
Again, I've not posted the rest here.
He - "When you are writing this, is it a stream of consciousness or.."
Me - "It's a putting together of the things I think"
He - "And does anything change at the end of this, do you go through the process of writing it then some new connection is made, or the satisfaction of clarity, or or what"?
Me - "I enjoy writing it. Um, what's the question - what changes because I write"?
He - "Or does anything change"?
Me - "Does anything change because I write. Everything changes, but does anything change because I write. This is like you are talking to the real person, but I'm aware that things must change, but I can't say what changes"
He - "Well it's not necessary that everything changes"
Me - "It must do, it is impossible for it not to. It is not possible for things not to change. Things can change slowly or quickly"
He - "So what are you heading for"?
Me - "The ring of truth - that's all"
He - "And what is that - what is the ring of truth in part 4"?
Me - "How do I know the ring of truth? Like when you cook bread and you tap it, there is a sense of it's cooked"
He - "But my question is, what is the ring of truth? To distil part 4 into a phrase, what would it be"?
Me - "I don't know what it would be. It seems very strange like ' which shelf in the library will this book be put on'.
He - "It's just almost every sentence there's a reference to something which isn't - which is implicit, rather than explained"
Me - "Yes"!
Yes indeed Kit, you were trying to find the something, the constructor...
I think basically that all I've said in part 4 is that the plane is going to crash. The imaginary Mr Perls - as quoted and referenced in the text - is reminding me of the Buddhist view (that he probably paraphrased from Trungpa, as they were at Esalan together!) and that now more than ever I need to remind myself that the only way I'm going to cope with what's coming (the end of our afternoons) is by escaping into awareness of the present moment - don't look down / don't try to save yourself.
He - "So I'm thinking with all these implicit references, what's all that pointing to"?
Me - "Fritz on the plane, criticizes me"
He - "A very combative one - but that's.."
Me - "But that's Fritz, his own way, yes. But the words were from 'Gestalt Verbatim' but it tickles me that it is the same stuff (Trungpa) but he misses it. And he is treated as a lama, but lama he is not."
He - "No, really not. Yes. Is there going to be a part 5"?
Me - "Probably"
He - "So it's like walking through a library isn't it - just flicking through the shelf and referencing it. Is there any satisfaction in there? "
Me - "I've always enjoyed writing, yes. A satisfaction in going through the shelves and connecting the dots. I do believe, as I've said before, that everything makes us who we are, so when something goes from your life, then that is part of my identity lost "
When something goes from your life.
This.
You.
He - "So this is you heading towards a personal constitution"?
Me - "No, I don't have a personal constitution - do I? Do the best with what you have, make it up as you go along, that's it! What do I believe in? I believe in FimFim and the trolls that live in the forest!"
Meaning, I don't know that anything that I think that I know is either true or false!
He - "There must be a basis for that"?
Me - "What's the basis?"
Originally, fallibilism (from Medieval Latin: fallibilis, "liable to err") is the philosophical principle that propositions can be accepted even though they cannot be conclusively proven or justified, or that neither knowledge nor belief is certain. The term was coined in the late nineteenth century by the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce [+]
He - "Because for example..."
Me - "The basis? Well behind all of that it is very simple - May all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness. May they be free of suffering and the cause of suffering. May they never be disassociated from the supreme happiness which is without suffering. May they remain in the boundless equanimity, free from both attachment to close ones and rejection of others - so if you start with that as the basis then the question is, how is that to be played out? So, one can never know the whole situation or the whole story so one is always going to make mistakes. Therefore, doing the best you can with what you have is the answer and the awareness that you do not, cannot have perfect knowledge. It is as simple as that"
He - "With all those books in the library, and all those references, there has to be a basis for, filtering. There has to be a basis for saying I'll take this bit but I'm not going to take that bit because there has to be a basis for saying that"
Me - "No, I don't think so? So, why those selected instances"?
He - "Well for example you are having a dialogue with Perls"
Me - "Why did Perls turn up?"
He - "Well it could be Perls or anybody else in the dialogue. You are going to take a stance, and that stance has to be based on something because we are either going to accept or reject what Perls says or what Perls stands for and we can only accept or reject the basis"
Me - "No, no <laughing> the path of the cross (binary oppositions, love/hate. Stay/go!?) it is more complex than that. His words came from the book, Gestalt Verbatim. It has always tickled me the similarity - so I took what he actually said from that book. You ask why did I select those particular bits. Because?"
He - "I'm not asking why you selected those particular bits"
Me - "OK"
He - "I'm saying that if you're going to, everybody has a filter and I'm asking you about the basis of the filter because we don't accept everything we are told, we don't reject everything we are told. We accept or reject on a particular type of basis"
Me - "Do we? So I took the words that were particularly related to - so he is talking about interaction, how there are four layers - This whole accept/reject thing is anathema to me, sorry! It is making me laugh. I cannot accept or reject his words, I'm using them for my own purpose. I manipulated you, Perls! I took your words and used them"
He - "We are all accepting and rejecting all the time"
Me - "Are we."
He - "of course we are"!
Me - "Accepting or rejecting? No, you can hold true and false equally because you do not know. So with the understanding that one cannot know means that choice is only the best guess. You cannot know"
He - "Yes, but that best guess has to be based on something, it has to be based on a principle"
Me - "On experience - memory of previous experience, and desired outcome which is also based on previous experience, probably"
He - "So desired outcome is the filter, the basis"
Me - "Well trying to get the fulfilment of need is the basis for all actions, is it not?"
He - "But even then there is a filter"
Me - "I don't know about a filter, there are definitely preferences. Are they filters? Is a preference a filter?"
Breaking the fourth wall now, this dialogue is one of the most insane I've ever had. and because I keep writing the word filter, and thinking about filter.
Me - "There are experiences people have that they do not chose or reject. And experiences people reject and then experience by accident, finding out that the experience wasn't what they had imagined it to be. So perhaps there is something like a filter based on a concept of one's identity - the 'I' don't do that - until I do! But more to the point, as a person experiences something unexpected, there is a gap where either the old settings kick in and nothing changes, or new awareness widens the person's 'identity filter'. So the unknown changes us, which is what I was saying in Part 4. Fritz was saying that you can't change anything, though he is saying almost that time can be split into 'dots' or moments, and that in a moment a person is what they do. But a person is changed by going into (accepting) the potential of the experience (rejecting the process of rejecting). So you can block or allow potential. But is there a filter? Surely the filter here is one's concept of identity"
He - "Well the filter is what we call in TA the frame of reference. Or in PCT it is self-concept. Because there is no such thing as an experience in itself"
Me - "There is potentially"
He - "No, experience is always experienced by somebody"
Hilarious - he is out-Buddhist-ing me again ;-)
But I took this trip there and back, dissecting existence/non-existence over the course of a week's worth of teachings with Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche. So I don't believe there can be one, certain, true position.
Being open to all possibilities, remain playful!
Me - "This is the tree in the forest, if it falls and no one sees it, it didn't fall. Obviously the signifiers that describe it's fall are in human language, so one could say it hasn't happened because no one described it. But that's not true. The tree fell!
He - "It's not the tree in the forest at all. It's exactly not that. That's not relevant to what I'm saying"
Me - "But if a tree falls and no one hears it - are you sure this isn't the same argument"?
He -"There is no such thing as an experience without an experiencer"
Me - "It is the same thing, because something happened regardless of being experienced."
He - "No it isn't the same thing. The experiencer has a filter, and the filter shapes the experience. So for example, if there is a fire in the house and a child who has no understanding of fire and needs to be grabbed has one particular understanding because they are a child. Someone who is seeing their whole life go up in flames has a different filter, because they are about to experience a great tragedy"
Me - "OK, so the word filter..."
He - "And the fire fighter arrives, and it is his job is to get all the people out of the house and make it safe has a different filter."
Me - "So the concept you are using as filter, I use as theory. The child has a theory about fire and it isn't a comprehensive theory because it has not been informed by enough experience of fire. Or not enough experiments, so the child hasn't a comprehensive theory of fire because they have not seen, heard or felt - because it has to be through reaction with reality that knowledge is created. So the word you are using, filter is a way to look at it, but a filter has.. its as if the filter has a mesh that can be made bigger or smaller"
He - "It sounds entirely cognitive and I mean more bigger"
Me - "Hmm I also mean something much more bigger by the word theory. Theory contains everything one knows about something. There are a lot of inexplicit bits of knowledge within a person's theory about stuff. So I believe if I drop this cup it will fall. That is an explicit theory, but I probably have feelings about this cup. As I look at it I have feelings about the whiteness of it, but unless I give it attention, this is just an inexplicit feeling . OK, so when you cross the road you don't need to use a stop watch and do the calculations. You can feel the timings when you cross, that is inexplicit, like if the cup falls and I automatically put out my hand to catch it, I don't need to think, 'oh the cup is falling I need to put out my hand'."
He - "My original question was about the basis of what's kept and what isn't kept in the reference library"
Me - "Why have I got all this junk in my library - is that the question? Well this is my understanding about the journeys that people make I guess. And the use of fantasy with reality, that interface (writing as an interface). The use of 'virtual', I've always used that "
He - "Could there be somethings that are in your library, and somethings that aren't? Are there somethings that you wouldn't want in your library?"
Me - "I don't know about that - <I'm reacting to the idea of not allowing a book, an idea, a feeling to be in 'my library'> - all books can have their place."
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Rumi - Translated by Coleman Barks
He - "Really"!?
Me - "Yes, I'm pretty sure! Because they are just going to be there, and what I do with their information will be up to me. "
He - "But if you know where to look, for example, there are manuals on how to successfully commit suicide, or how to successfully kill another person, or how to make home built fire-arms"
Me - "Yeah, I know but"
He - "But they would be welcome in your library"?
Me - " They are welcome. But if you are asking would I prefer them to be excised, as if, as if I could make the world a pure, perfect place? No, no not at all. No, they can sit there and what I do with their information is up to me. There is no 'getting rid of' "
He - "But you would refer to them how"?
Me - "Why would I want to read them, you mean"?
He-"Well if you don't, why would they be in the library"?
Me -"Because they are a part of the place I am in. They are a part of reality."
He - "Yeah, but I'm not talking about the world, I'm talking about your personal references, which is what the story is about."
Me: "Yeah, why is Alistair Crowley sitting there (I'm imagining Crowley, whose writings have influenced so many of the people whose books are part of my 'personal library' sitting in 'the empty chair'). He does make me laugh, sometimes his writing was so terrible, I don't understand how he was seen as such a terrible person! "The udders of the cat of slime" I'm still waiting for an opportunity to use that description, or expletive! I would love to have asked him why did he use that description! If I could have that dinner party with all the most fascinating guests - I would definitely have asked him to attend. I think this is called fearlessness, what you are seeing in me. That I think that the worst abuses of power are quiet, and appear to be nice and happy and positive, and they are done by people simply doing their jobs and signing forms without any thought. I go back to the fact that I try not to be, but I actually am a Buddhist - I can't help it - I have taken 'refuge. I have promised on bended knee before High Lamas to follow certain precepts and vows. So it is impossible for me not to know that it is up to me what I do with what is in front of me, I can't blame books or my knowledge for making me do something! And actually I had a relative whose plan it was to commit suicide. She had arthritis and felt that she could manage the sufferings she had, but not more than this. And when she was on the verge of death - feeling really ill - she had called an ambulance. And when it arrived they received another call and she asked them to take that call and return later to her, and this was how she died. So all her talk about wishing to kill herself - and she had the manual - it had been a comfort for her because she didn't want to suffer. Or perhaps sending the ambulance away was a compassionate act of suicide? So you can have those books in the library of the mind, because for people who feel that their futures could be so terrible and scary, they can read about their suicide and imagine it. But it is a visualization, not the act. I don't have a point of view about that. I have a point of view on what I would do if they were trying to kill themselves in front of me - that I need to assess and act. And here and now, I can't even tell you what I would do. If I'd found my relative unconscious in what was clearly a suicide attempt, knowing that she had planned this and had told me that she wished to have the power over her own life...do I respect the law, or the person? I wish that I could always know with certainty, what is right and what is wrong but I know that I don't, ever."
He - "Ever"?
Me - "Ever - never can I know completely, totally, that I'm right. And I hate that. I hate having that amount of knowledge. I wish I could be simple, I wish! I wish I could see things in black and white. So I can believe that what someone is doing isn't right, but I cannot know"
He - "Isn't that a contradiction in terms"?
Me - "To not know, and yet to believe? I don't know that what I believe is true.
He - "Now, that is semantics"
Me - "It is a certain 'place of mind', a certain edge of something - I can't describe it. But it is the position I've always taken"
He <This refers to a part of the conversation I've not included>:"And yet you can be very sure that a person is a bad person, and not a 'good. misunderstood person.'"
Me - "I am sure that this is a bad person, yes. Because I am sure that this person is in control and choosing of their own volition to do these things."
He - "And you are very sure about that"?
Me - "Well, with the information I've got, that is how it appears"
He - "And yet you say that you never know what is right"?
Me - "I don't know what is right! I only know what I would do in that position, what I believe to be right! <I'm laughing now and saying 'this conversation feels like deathmatch (Quake 3!)'> I have opinions, but I don't know that my opinions are right! <I sigh in exasperation!> it is only my best guess, that is how it all appears to me!"
He - "So you would be willing to be persuaded"?
Me - "Who ever it was would have a hard job to persuade me. But they would be welcome to try. For instance, I believe that someone who sets out to kill people in an indiscriminate way, based only upon a nebulous concept such as 'nationality' is totally in the wrong"
He - "Oh, so you do know what is right"!
Me- "<Laughing> So you are putting yourself in the position of God, you are on the high cloud saying that you know what is right and wrongs! I am saying that to set out to kill people for reasons that are ideological doesn't make sense to me. If someone was threatening to seriously harm my children, yes, I would act to do harm to that person"
He - "So what I'm saying is, the theory and the practice don't match up. If the theory is 'I never know what is right" a world-class example..."
Me - <interrupting> The theory is never whole, there is more to find out. I, you, can never know everything about anything"
He - "But you seem very sure about X being a bad person"
Me - "I'm not very sure about anything"
He - "Now we are into just complete contradiction!"
Me - "You are at it again, calling me contrary..."
He - "No, I'm just testing you out!"
Me - "Testing me for what! Do I get a gold star <laughing>
He - "No, I'm only reflecting back to you what you said"
Me - "Another standard thing ... or not in my terms. You are putting me in a strange place, you are asking me, is person X justified - no, hang on you are not asking that - no, hang on. You are asking me if person X is good! I don't know that! I think this person's actions are not good, they don't serve life, and I personally stand on the side of all beings should be free from suffering"
He - "So you do have a sense of what's right when given a concrete example"
Me - "Are my values right? Again, we cannot know. I can only know my values. You cannot know!
He - "Really? But you just said that you did know. You did know that what person X is doing is wrong!"
Me - "From my point of view, yes. I don't know if it is right or wrong from another's view. I own my stuff, I know what I think and feel, and what I would do. But I don't know if it is right or wrong in the grand scheme of things. I cannot know!
He - "So what person X is doing might be OK then"?
Me - "It might be. I don't see how - oh OK, the only image I have for this is the opening scene in John Carpenter's The Thing <film> when it appears that stir-crazy scientists in an isolated Antarctic base, just decide to shoot a dog from the helicopter. This looks so wrong. Until you know what has happened. You know, it looks like perhaps a rebellious dog that causes fights maybe, a dog no one likes. A brave, plucky dog running for its life. Or perhaps it had escaped and it will die a slow cold death on the ice, and shooting it is a mercy! Yeah, watch the film! If someone put the gun in my hand and said ' you need to kill something, someone, because of reasonsX.Y and Z' I would have to weigh it up very carefully, but fundamentally I have a vow not to kill, but that would have to be broken in certain circumstances! There is no abdication from responsibility - but I will never know, probably will never know that I made the right choice."
He - "It sounds very clear"
Me - "It is clear. It has to be clear when I chose, I may not feel happy, I may feel conflicted. But if I have weighed the situation up - that's what I do. But it is only my best guess"
He - "Yes - so you do have a sense of what is right and wrong"
Me - "No, I don't have a sense of what is right and wrong. I only have theories about how it appears to me. I know what I think is right and wrong, I don't know that I'm right or wrong"
He - "What's the distinction"?
Me - "That I don't have the bigger picture. I don't have the totality, nobody does"
He - "Hmm. But you still have to act in the world"
Me - "Yes, so I act. Obviously."
He - "Yes, but there are complicated examples like the dog in the film, and there are less complicated examples like bombing men, women and children who are non-combatants and just trying to live their life. Difficult to see how that could be complicated isn't it, and say well I don't know what is right and wrong in these circumstances".
Me - "But there isn't somebody telling me to do this. It is different if it is me. I can't judge what other people do, or rather I'm unwilling to, because of course I do - but I judge what I do and I'm damn sure that when I make a decision that it is fitting various criteria, this is important. I could get annoyed and rage about what other people do, but it is just hot air"
He - "But you could have views about what other people do, because your response about person X was very clear"
Me - "I can have an opinion, yes"
He - "So are we going to get part 5? That's going to be two weeks from now, and five, six and seven, who knows <Oh...the arrow in my breaking heart, for how can there be more. I'm never coming back. Why doesn't he see this>"
Me - "I don't know"
He - "Are you writing these for yourself, or writing them to bring here"?
Me - "To bring here because what is there to do with this time? And also it is related to here."
He - "Yes...yes...<sigh> yes. <pause> A lot of Perls today"
Me- "<I laugh>
He - "Without an A"
Me - "Without an A?
He - "Because Fritz doesn't do those, no pearls of wisdom"
Me - "You are terribly hard on him, that's very unfair"
He - "I don't like Perls. I'm very clear on that. I don't like thugs and Fritz Perls is one, of course he is a thug or was a thug. and a hypocrite. I'm not keen on hypocrites really"
Me - "He was human, a messy compost heap of a person sometimes. No hypocrisy, it was all there in his writing, he was very open"
He - "Hmm not sure about that!"
Me - "What do you think he kept hidden? I think 'In and Out of the Garbage Pail' is pretty straight forward, no pretence; he is disparaging about himself, he is cruel too"
He - "And he made a career about giving that to other people..."
Me - "He was one of the 'Kings of Esalan' because at the time there was a such a groundswell, such a sense that the old religions and leaders had led us into two world wars - so this new, humanistic sensibility; of finding oneself, and doing what we feel, and encountering emotions allowing them to explode, as Fritz put it - then, at that time, he was a figure head representing this alternative. But, he took Trungpa's words, that is what I'm saying. He took the language - things arising from the full-empty, you know, figure-formation in Gestalt - and yet he took concepts from the Vajrayana and turned them 180 degrees. Which is so interesting, it is fascinating. Our conversation about mandalas, thinking about how Jung describes a mandala as a picture of the mind seeking integration creating individuation of the different aspects to make a whole (a gestalt). And once - I think it was The Golden Dawn, I came across a rite or ritual - it was The Ritual of the 37 Mandalas - and it was an attempt to write 'Mandala offering' which is a part of the Nundro, as a way to cast a protection circle! This is like saying that a 'clothes horse' is a ritual representation of a horse, kept in the family's home and dressed in damp and clean garments to further the spiritual development of the family! Honestly, there is no end to how bonkers explanations can be when spoken with authority, by someone who doesn't care about lineage! This is why lineage is so important"
He - "This is happening all the time isn't it, when you take something from one cultural context and put it into another, then the meaning changes"
And then we are talking about the original Ark story - Atrahasis, and not Noah...
So, what happened in this session?
To be honest I still do not have a clue. I felt 'tested' rather like Chell in Portal! As if I'd been sent though some kind of philosophical assault course, is the best description.
