9th of August 2021. The first Kohut.

NOTE: 9th August.

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!