I'm wearing my purry, furry, fake leopard coat.
He says
It reminds him of his childhood...
Both of us laughing.
He tries it on.
And then he says the strangest thing?
"I've never seen a coat like this in the flesh"
Then - oh my heart! - he remarks so deliciously on my warmth seeping from the coat into his skin...
"Goodness - you're warm!"
Just for a few seconds it is as if I have held him, breathing animal heat and a golden radiance into the void of darkness and separation, confronting the narrative that fixes us in time and space.
We are talking about music...lost music. As if heard in fairy hills...And then we are talking about my assignment. He is telling me that the presenting issue a client brings is often like a thin crust over the real problem. And in response I divert us down an intellectual worm hole pursuing the importance of paradox, in therapy - and more to the point - what would a meta-dox be?
Here now in 2023 my ability to be tangential as a therapist, is a key skill in collaborative interaction. The juxtaposition is - I use that word in the ordinary sense - a dialogue that brings different interpretations of reality forward with the aim of synthesizing something new.
And then I'm talking about Leon Festinger and Mrs Keech, how disconfirmation through paradox may also cause people to create a more fantastic work-around story - but how in Gestalt therapy, disconfirmation through feeling how a feeling really feels, instead of believing an habitual interpretation - is in my view - core to therapy.
He explains that for him this is best expressed in the metaphor of ego-states.
He says - "...because things can be true in the child, but they are not true in the parent, and not true in the adult depending on which part is coming forward. and again, you use the word paradox, the paradox of the person being in the present - which we all are literally speaking - but behaving as though it is the past because the child ego state is now in operation. and they are behaving in disproportionate ways because they are responding to something now as if it is something back there. Which is why, in terms of time-lines, there is no past, present or future. It is all past, present, future all the time on the ego state time-line. and again, there is the crossed transaction where you ask someone something as an adult and they respond as a child.. And you can see it in front of your sometimes, you can see the body changing. The body gets smaller, the knees go together, and you see them becoming a little girl or a little boy right before your eyes. The voice goes up, and <he whispers> the head goes down. It's amazing! and then, there's the thing. You address them as a child. No, don't address them as an adult because there is something important happening here! And I suppose that is a bit of a paradox, that we can be different things all at the same time, but actually the different parts don't talk to each other <pause> so yes?"
I disagree in the need for this layer of metaphor, but I'm in his space and I'm using his world view.
I enthusiastically say - "Yes, I see what you mean"
Because I do, when I chose to see through his eyes.
The tone of enlightened exhilaration I put into my words is my response to feeling the ring of personal truth in his voice.
Inside
I'm
like
a
cat
on
catnip.
When I hear his truth, there is contact.
I ask him questions. He continues, he begins to make new associations in his own mind, as he describes his theories....Until he realizes this, and returns to 'the session'. Then forgets, because it is more fun to really think.. And we are back to exploring words and meanings again - but I have to break the fourth wall, explaining that all this about Parent. Child, Adult only makes sense for me as I view it through the lens of the Berne universe. And yet gently and determinedly we return to the same (non TA ) game of complimenting each other and laughing a lot, naming on the way, the 'Bowlby-Berne paradox' - as I seek to create ways for him to tell me more about him...as he turns it around and starts talking about Perls. A strategy guaranteed to get an emotional reaction from me, and lots more laughter.
He - "Goodness me, it's been really interesting today"
Me - "Because if I'm allowed to go off at tangents, this is how it is! Because reality is big, and ideas are connected in all sorts of idiosyncratic ways. And this reminds me of computer games"
He laughs nervously - I'm not even pretending that this isn't tangential!
And I explain the old arguments from gaming forums about how a story is told; and the problem and debate around making a game 'too linear' vs 'open world'. So my 'tangential' interjects are paradox, and possibly metadox, but will lead to something! And he says that he remembers reading an article that points out that linear point making, point A leading to point B, to Point C is a very patriarchal way of thinking, and that the endless circles and circles and circles, lead eventually to a much more complex picture - a much more, non-patriarchal, woman way of thinking...
And then I'm talking about phlogiston and Lavoisier! And paying him whilst saying - "Thank you for the conversation"...Obviously my feelings are that this hour was too short, and surely, surely we really could continue talking and laughing, playing with ideas forever....
Back to earth.
What actually happened?
Was this the dreaded Kohuts in action?
Including the "Goodness me, it's been really interesting today"?
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