I talk about what happened - I'd been on a trip to Arron. I'd got tickets to see the band that got me through my son's psychosis. They cancelled. I looked for my lost daughter. I couldn't find her.
He's asking me, 'what was it like?'
One more Portal map, one more weaving straw into gold, one more challenge that appeared to be impossible. And I got through with out breaking or crumpling or giving up!.
He says - "It's still very present isn't it"
I say - "Is it? The memories are clear - present? It is unfinished. But it's me doing the best I can do..."
He says - "So why is there a problem now"?
What? If I hadn't talked about where I'd been - I'd be talking about the endless writing assignments nightmare that is college! I'm not here to process my expedition to the North. I was only sharing my adventure. In my family the recitation of heroic disasters was a thing!
Regardless I stay with his 'reality'.
I say - "I would like more, the music to play and the credits to roll. For everyone to say to me 'well done'. No one says well done!"
He says - "Who would say ' well done'?
I have already said it - no one will say 'well done' - those were my words! My family is shattered, the people who would have said well done, are gone. So I answer with who I would like to say it, and I say how much I deserve the well done!
He replies - "It doesn't sound quite enough"
I think it probably is!
At a certain point there is an invite to 'play philosophy' because I've referred to a 'self'. Philosophy is a game I enjoy. But I feel dejected and helpless. And it isn't good. I've been told that what I say I want isn't what I want.
And then we are talking about institutional injustice and I feel that I'm hearing him when he says that sometimes it is the therapist's job to help a client write the letter to the solicitor, to support their choice to go to the police - or not...Now we are on the same page! And then away, and back via my assignment to where he started; which is that in his opinion human development is all of what counselling is about.
So I say - in reply to his explanations about transactional analysis -"Seems so complicated - why don't you just ask the client what he wants?"
He says - "Because it wont work, they wont know - because all that will do is reveal the stuckness of the Child (ego state) 'well what I want is that but I can't do that because it will make me a bad person'"
I don't say - Oh, I'd ask them - 'I hear you say doing that will make you a bad person, but I'm wondering what it is about that thing you can't do or have, that would make your life better? - Instead I stay with his statement.
I reply - "I suppose I'd hope by asking that I'd get to the Adult "
He - "We can never get to the Adult - if the Child is standing in the way. The Child will scream and shout and stamp until the Child is satisfied. Or until the Child has understood that this isn't going to get me what I want. But we have to address the Child.
Me - "How do you address the Child"?
He - "I would...I want to talk to the Child in the person sat opposite to me. so I might ask something like 'Yeah, but if I stand up for myself I'll be a really bad person' and I would say something like 'who told you standing up for yourself was bad'? And usually, sometimes straight away, we get there. and we talk about the implacable Parent, about the emotionally punishing Parent, and you locate where that comes from. Once it is located where it comes from, the Child is recognized. Once the Child is recognized, the Child can start to be happy. 'Oh you can see me now, I can relax now' and then we can move into Adult. I mean this is why this is why development isn't a bit of counselling, this is all of it. Because it is all developmental in the end. And this is why I say time isn't linear because all that stuff a person experienced as a child is what is called in Gestalt Unfinished Business' and it keeps sticking around until it is finished. And it can never be finished until it is recognized, and recognizing it takes work, it usually takes a lot of work. Usually its a bit like, the body going through the windscreen of a car. You pick out all the big pieces of glass that's easy, and then for weeks and months and sometimes years later, little tiny pieces that you never noticed before that had worked their way into the skin. That's what it's like - is this making sense?"
My view remains unchanged; acknowledge that life is complicated, embrace the truth that we are making it all up as we go along. We are all attempting to navigate the inevitable crashing rocks and stormy seas of life. Follow the energy, and trust in love.
Plato believed that Eros would take us into a Higher truth and mystery, and Jung agreed. As Freud continued thrashing around with scissors snipping cruelly at Eros. Blood and feathers falling around him like tears. 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 explains that Eros was understood as the aspiration to transcendental Beauty. Plato places Eros as the link between physical existence and spiritual essence, we fly with Eros. In opposition to this - and Freud is regarded as the father of advertising - Eros becomes chthonic, wingless, primal desire (libido) demanding in an inarticulate way, that the outside world satisfies our desire. To avoid prison the energy of Eros is blocked and redirected by the nume
It has taken me almost two years to admit the obvious. I don't want to say that I'm a victim, but it is a therapist's responsibility to know what is going on within his or herself, and not let it 'contaminate' sessions. But really - surely what happened here is his transference and my countertransference. If I'd been 'the therapist' I hope that I would have noticed and understood that it was countertransference, because we would have spoken about it! But in his room -I wasn't able to ask him for his feelings or to describe what was happening to him, so I just couldn't get a clear enough picture. But this feeling of dissonance kept reoccurring. His reaction to my recording telling him of my feelings doesn't make any sense. I hadn't 'broken' any rules when I was honest. Nothing about his 'moralising' adds up. So - his transference and my countertransference? I need to get clarity - I needed it then, I still need it
After several references in our sessions to how much he enjoyed coffee fueled discussions at 3 am . Said after the obviously coffee fueled type of discussions I create with him. After the fact that our discussions obviously remind him of all those coffee fueled discussions he had so enjoyed at university... at 3 am... I dared to take this idea further. It was excruciatingly difficult for me to put what I wanted into words. But carefully, gently and slowly I explained that we could do something with this idea. It was along the lines of, if we build it others will join... More people, more ideas! So why was that so difficult to say? It still seems entirely reasonable - and indeed I'm part of a CPD group run by my first therapist - as a group of therapists we are all vulnerable, in fact being vulnerable if the only way to be in the group, and all 'have each other's backs'. The difficulty is in the language, because I was using 'we ', making he and I into a
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