He sees my surprise!
And says - "What, you are going to change your mind today? Well, I thought, you never say no so why did I need to wait!
As I sit down I'm saying that I've had enough of writing my assignments, that I just want to be 'let off'
He asks - "Is writing associated with coffee!"
I reply - "No, just my sense of time has gone wrong, and I'm out of sync, things happening at a different speed..." My voice trails away.
He - "So have you finished your assignments"?
Me - "Oh god, no. I wont be finished for ages yet. They are relentless, finish one, another begins"
And then I'm explaining how our three years of assignments are squeezed into two years. I am exhausted, and on the verge of being insane. And I'm talking about Unit 13, counselling children and how much I dislike Erik Erikson (stages of development) and transitions.
I explain again - "The art is to work out what the tutor wants, how to make it fit what I think the question means and fit the two together."
He - "Hmm, yes...unfortunately unless you do a Phd...you are not allowed to have a mind of your own. You are not allowed to use your own brain cells....What's wrong with Erikson?"
Erikson - Erik - describes age related life challenges. Even when we did this in college we were in fits of laughter as we described our life challenges, not described by Erikson! Basically, life presents problems is all we are sure of. Erikson didn't stop with children. At my age according to EE I'm heading for the integrity vs despair challenge.
Story of my whole life!
Bring it on..
Me - "Nothing, but you know when you feel as if you have been force fed something. I know some people feel like that about The Archers but I'm OK with the Archers! 'What, not the Archers again, how many times has that been on? Twice a day, BBC Radio 4"
He - "Yeah, but you don't have to write about The Archers - I presume!"
Much laughter.
Me - "Well, I don't know. They did get mentioned in a 'Safeguarding' once, the Helen and what's his name's story"
He - "Helen and Rob. Rob Tichenor"
Me - "Not Titchmarsh!"
He - "Yeah, that would be different wouldn't it"
And then we are talking about group dynamics. A tutor who asks us to 'to talk about the elephant in the room' and I for one was never convinced that there was an elephant. I always thought it was his thing, so he should name it!
He - "What modality is he?"
Me - already laughing in anticipation of the eruption. "You are not going to like the answer. It begins with a G"
He - "Oh, Gestalt! Oh when you said G, I thought you were going to say Jungian"
Why G for Jung - the J sounds like a Y, and Jung is young? He knows how important Jung was for me.
Me - "Oh, don't you like Jungian psychology?"
He - "Well it's not Jungians, it is Jung really"
Me - "You don't like him? I would have thought that he would be OK, but Jungians might be a bit tiresome?"
He - "I don't think I've ever met any Jungians in the flesh"
Me: "It takes so much money to be one!"
He - Well Gestalt is founded on conflict isn't it because the person who founded it was.."
I describe how a rift was created in our class through a group exercise, and this rift was never healed - so - my conclusion is that the sowing of mistrust and allowing feelings to be hurt is pointless!
And then he is describing Group Process - "Like being in a Quaker meeting, but with lots of shouting - you sit around, and there is no agenda, and somebody starts talking, and somebody responds and basically what you have in terms of ego-states is a room full of Children - with the emotional needs of children - and sometimes you have some Critical Parents, and so they clash with the children. and what you end up with, it's really interesting, there have been sociology studies about the way groups work. And they always come to the same thing, which is that groups work very well when there is a person who is considered to be the facilitator, and the group has a clear goal. And if you get a group together where there is no leader and no particular goal it quickly implodes - which is what happens in group process. So it is all entirely predictable. But this is apparently a must for a psychotherapy course which is at Masters level"
And onwards.
Until I paraphrase Steve de Shazer:
"understanding a problem doesn't necessarily provide a cure.."
He says - "But you can't have resolution without understanding, you have to have cognition of something before you can act upon it?"
Me - "No, people need to know the outcome they desire - I don't believe I need to understand something when there is nothing I can do about the mechanism. It often hides a desire, such as 'if only that person understood - then they wouldn't do X'" knowing how to get to X, or what else could be X is it!"
I could have said that therapy works when a client does the problem differently and thus the whole problem dynamic changes. This sort of thinking drives him up the wall so I skim around and through the subject, keeping contact with the words alone, and I don't explain the real concept underneath. It is more important I synthesize something we can agree on.
The truth is, I'm never going to have understanding of what he really thought about me, so just as well I can tell myself that outcome is more useful than knowledge...
He says - "But a person needs to understand their reaction"
Me - "No, I stop with need - what is it that you need in this situation. I think most of the time, things are actually simple - you can disagree with me it's fine"
He - "That is a very simple view, that's for sure. I think that the reality is often more complex"
I give an example and in so doing he finds that we are on exactly the same wavelength, just of course, our language is different...
I ask - "So do you know what the theory must be behind this group process, this arena, this gladiatorial contest"?
He - "What group process? I've asked several people who run psychotherapy courses 'What's group process for? What's the point'? I've never had an answer. Only one person came up with something which was an alleged answer, but it wasn't really an answer at all. And the alleged answer was; 'the sorts of things that come up in group process are the sorts of things that will come up in a therapy room. Well, that may or may not be true, except they won't come up like that; because you wont be in a room with twelve other people, you will ne one to one or two to one if it's a couple. You certainly wont be in this gladiatorial arena, you will expect empathy, you will not expect attacks. It's completely a free for all, group process - it should not be a free for all in a therapy room because it should be a safe space. So all the context is utterly different , so as an answer it just doesn't work. And I said so and there was no reply.
Me - "Did you say it in group process"!
We both laugh.
He - "But I think the real answer is, because we have to, otherwise UKCP wont rubber stamp the course. But nobody can tell you what it is for"
Me - "Well it sounds like that is what our tutor is trying to create"
He - "It does remind me of Fritz Perls, who seemed to get a kick out of bullying his clients, and if they refused to be bullied he called them a phoney which was his sort of catch-all insult to anybody"
Me - "He was big on personal shame...But I understand where he is coming from and I would have liked to have had a few sessions with Perls because I think that he had a heart of gold. I know that you disagree with me!"
Much laughter from him!
He - "A heart of granite!"
Me - "Granite - no I don't think so. I think Carl Rogers had an iron fist under a fluffy bunny exterior"
He - "Really"?
Me - "Yes"
He - "Why?"
Me - describing Jungian 'shadow' theory - "Because like the kids who scared the grandparents because they looked like hell-beings, the scary is on the outside. You can see it. But the kid in the suit with the neat tie, he's the one you need to worry about. It's the ones who seem normal - they are the scary ones! So Perls, I think Perls was quite vulnerable in many ways"
He - "I'd like to see the evidence for that"
Me - "He was human, he was very honest about himself - he wrote about himself just straight"
He - "Hum!"
Me - "Willing to be vulnerable is what I'm saying, whereas I'm not sure that Rogers was so honest"
He - "Oh, have you read much Rogers"?
Me - "Yes. I have. Sorry Rogers I've had enough"!
He - "Mmmm - I'm still not sure where this..."
Me - "Where this is going"
He - "Where this whole exterior idea comes from"
It is pure Jungian!
Me - "I think that Rogers was psychologically quite tough. I'm not so sure that Perls was. I think Perls would break down quite a lot. Perls was very much about contact, and I understand that, I really appreciate that. And I think that Rogers took a lot from Perls and twisted it slightly. Perls was writing before Rogers, and if you read the theories ...I'm looking at your quizzical brow! It is difficult without being able to show you the references. The whole contact with experience"
He - "Perls...I think I've got no evidence that Perls ever did have any contact with experience at all"!
Me - "Such a sweeping comment"!
He - "No, really! If you read his works which are virtually unreadable"!
Me - "They are not, they are very readable"!
He - "If you look at the way he operated. Basically somebody being in a room bullying somebody. Calling them a phoney if they don't go along with him. That's not contact"
Me - "It is straight. Perls was straight"
He - "Well that's the word he used"
Me - " It is the word I'd use"
He - "Perls was not straight at all"
Me - "Is it not straight to be..."
He - "The Gloria films - Perls says 'I manipulate the patient' that's not contact. And you can see how self satisfied he is, and you can see when Gloria for example gets very angry with him how he says something like ' yeah, that's it' or 'now we are in business' or something like that. He actually wants to rile her because he somehow thinks that this is therapeutic to actually poke somebody with a stick until they respond"
Me - "He would like her to realise that she is his equal"
He - "That isn't what he is doing. See what he does is, he basically calls her a little girl"
Me - "He does"
He - "Basically shaming"
Me -"He says 'Are you a little girl'? that's the point because she isn't a little girl. And from his point of view she is being manipulative, she's practically saying in body language, 'let me off I'm just a little girl' and he is saying 'are you?'"
He - "Compare with Rogers who saw the little girl in her and treated it with love. At one point she is talking about what a very, very difficult relationship she had with her father and always felt that her father disapproved of her, and he says something like 'I think you would be a lovely daughter to have' I mean, there's contact, I mean there's care and inclusion. Not poking her with a stick like Perls would do"
So much I could say; about the lack of contact with me when I've gone into feeling, with how I need honesty and truthfulness. This contact thing isn't going to be resolved.
I say -"But that's not the same thing as contact with her experience"
He doesn't get it, I'm not going to explain it to him. Contact is the immediacy and simplicity of the actual. For Perls, being able to experience what is new as new, is health! The contact boundary is the meeting place between the self and the world. The place where all expectation ends and experiencing begins - and this is where all psychological growth occurs, at the edge of the known, the beginning of knowing the unknown. Challenge in Gestalt therapy is important - to let go the security blanket of ideas that even though they might not be nice, they are familiar. But they can be changed. Perls would and did, challenge that security blanket in Gloria. Rogers didn't do that...
Me - "Instead of taking her deeper in to those feelings about her father, Rogers was colluding with her"
He - "No, Rogers was taking her into something new, into a relationship she had never had with her father. And what happened some years later - or a year later - she continued a life long relationship with Carl Rogers and they used to meet up occasionally and wrote lots of letters to each other. And I think that she used to address him as my therapeutic father. And the seed of that was that client and the Gloria film! That's therapy! Not 'I'm going to pin you against the wall and slap you about and if you don't submit I will call you a phoney"!
My heart is aching as I type this. Why were my needs for contact - in the Rogers and Gloria sense - ignored and dismissed. Why did he treat me as if what I'd said was totally out of order. The paradox is, he reminds me of Perls. But Perls had a better grasp of the workings of the human heart. Why doesn't it cross his mind that talking about maintaining contact with Gloria, accentuates the pain of not responding to me - or rather my feelings? Because I don't play little girl, I guess? And he didn't remind me of my father.
But he would have liked that more - if I'd been a 'vulnerable' 'little girl?
Doesn't make any sense to me!
And I'm saying again - "I would have gone to see Fritz Perls - it is hard to explain, because I do know Gestalt theory - but seeing him, not knowing the theory, because I agree with him that whatever it is that you are in, that's what you are in - and it isn't about the past - so, be it! It isn't about deficits and a need to be reparented (reparative relationship) . With Perls it is about finding the block, there is something about the experience you have not 'got' and you need to get that (whatever that is). Be it, embody it, fearlessly.
He - "Well that is deficits isn't it"?
Me -"Embodying it - it's not a lack - it sounds like your model is about deficits because a person needs to get an experience they have not had - so Rogers saying in effect 'I am the good father - now you are getting the good father experience'. With Perls it's 'You haven't got a good father, that's the way it is' there is no recovery by me, from me ' I'm not your father but I am with you as you feel what that is like - because you can get over it and through it. It is all of you and what you are'
He - "How can somebody get over and through being bullied by Fritz Perls"
Me - "Yet it sounds like it is normal in group process, to allow people to bully other people"?
He - "That is what happens in group process, yes...and clients will come with a whole range of conflicts which they will enact before you in any way. The last thing that they need is someone trying to stir up additional conflict. That's not therapeutic. What is therapeutic is care, consideration; a safe space in order that they can air their internal conflicts in a safe environment and understand them better"
And there is a lot of laughing together at this point.
Me - Let's say Perls is like the 'Protector' Mahakala, and Rogers is like Chenrezigs - but different people require different therapists.
He - "I'm just remembering times when clients have come with massive, massive levels of conflict which sometimes - even couples, come to think of it, only with couples- that will erupt into the room. After all the smiles, after twenty minutes and if there is conflict there it will be in the room. And of course the conversation has to be had that goes 'that's not how we are going to do things' you know <laugh> and I'm just thinking, what would Perls do! He would be rubbing his hands with glee going ' now we are at it now we are in business'! But it's not helpful"
Me - "But I don't think it is like that, I don't think that is what he was after. When he said to Gloria 'are you being a little girl?' that is what he saw, and that is what he said. But for Perls it is all about power. He had a real distaste for people being bullied - it really angered him. So to see somebody playing it small, acting as a child.."
He - "But he was a bully"
Me - "...And he wanted people to tell him, to stand up to him, to say stop it!
He - "That's a complete lack of understanding of basic human interaction, it really is, that's woeful. Because if a client comes with a basic process of 'I am not allowed to speak for myself, my voice doesn't matter and I've taken this huge leap in trying to get my voice heard by going to a therapist' and then they are cajoled and bullied and backed into a corner - what's that going to do to the person! That's an appalling way to treat somebody. And the other thing in this is I see people all the time switching ego-states in front of me. Often from Adult to Child when we are discussing not necessarily their childhood, but I see them retreat into the Child-ego. And I can see them vocally, physically turning into a Child. And sometimes I say, most often I don't, particularly when I first notice it - because it would be too exposing. What I do is notice, and treat them with the particular sort of care that their Child needed, as I understand it. What I don't do is 'ha ha! Caught you out! You are a child aren't you. You little boy, little girl, whatever' no, that's bullying"
Me -"That would be you in a Child state, using Child language - 'haha caught you out'. He said 'Are you a little girl - are you'?
He - "Yes, but he didn't say it with care. He said it with a sort of playground bully sort of voice - 'aha got you' no, looking very, very self satisfied"
Me - "Because that would be the thing, like 'I've worked out what your problem is 'your problem - client is'...
He - "That's the thing that you hate the most!!! Oh my goodness! What's happening here. You have turned 180 degrees!"
Me - "I haven't turned 180 degrees. I simply disagree with your fundamental assumptions about me. I am saying that Perls - to paraphrase his meaning - 'I've caught it, I've noticed what you are doing - I've noticed your problem Gloria..."
He - "That's the thing you hate the most. That's what you have told me many, many times. Being categorized and labelled by the therapist who tells you what your problem is!"
Me - "Whilst missing my real problem. Going back now, in my situation it was a waste of time and I'm annoyed about that. Because when I say this is my problem - yes indeed -this actually is my problem. Not what somebody else imagines it to be. What ever a client says is the problem, that's what the client and I will be dealing with first before anything else. What ever a person says is the problem, that is where we begin. We do not begin anywhere else, it has to be with what they say"
He - "Well again, that is completely contrary to the way that Perls worked."
Me - "I don't know. But what Perls had in his mind was, 'I've spotted it, I can see what she is doing. She wants an adult relationship, but she is acting like a little girl. and so I (Perls) am going to call it out - are you a little girl?
He - "See there's the bully"
Me - "He was calling it out! Ah, yes! I see - it is a Gestalt thing 'the client wont break' it's not Rogers! The client can take it. I'm not convinced that that is true, I know that I can break. So I hope that you are not mistaking me for Perls, I'm not actually very Perls-like when I talk to people I am very much on their side and listening to hear what they are doing their best to tell me"
He - "That thing about the safe space - I mean, the best therapist is somebody who if you say I'm really stressed and I can't sleep at night because I don't know if I have enough money to pay the rent, lets say. And somebody who says I haven't slept for six days because I can't stop thinking about killing myself, then the best therapist is one who responded in just the same way to both statements; which is with calm acceptance. I can't see Fritz Perls doing that."
Me - "You don't know and nor do I. Perls. whose dying words were 'Get Off. let me do this myself!' I don't remember. But he was dying of cancer struggling to get out of bed and the nurses were pushing him back. I like that he was fighting to the very end."
He - "Wasn't there something about a chair? That his father hit him across the back and the chair broke, not his back and he was very proud of that. What does that say about him as a person!? No"
Me - "What sort of a person? It was a creative adjustment."
He - "Yes, that's one way of putting it"!
Me - "He adjusted his way of thinking about it, and ended up as the winner. He didn't give in to the bully"
He -"By becoming one"
Me - "But compared to many hospital consultants his behavior was tea-party at the vicarage level - compared to consultants"
He - "You are talking about psychiatrists"?
Me - "No, hospital, surgeons, in theater throwing bloody - literally covered in blood - swabs. So perhaps it is because I am habituated to de-escalating angry men, maybe that's it. Definitely part of the job!"
He - "How does anybody get away with that"?
Me - "Because the consultant is not replaceable"
He - "I do know it is a very macho world, being a surgeon. I mean you need to be a certain kind of person to just unzip somebody and saw bits off and take bits out and replace them with other bits. and I couldn't do it even if I had the dexterity to do so, goodness no"
Me - "It's one of those things isn't it, if I was the only person there, and I had more knowledge than anyone else in the room and something had to be done right there and then. It's hard! But then, to someone else, its a bit like when somebody is really upset - standing one's ground - not really standing one's ground, but not getting on the boat with them and going down, drowning in their story. Being able to understand that somebody is in a lot of psychological pain but the best thing for me to do now is just to be present, to be a calm presence. But I couldn't even give and injection to be honest! And people slip into objectification; seeing a person's pain as insignificant, it is a burn-out response. It happens. Then their pain is something just getting in my way. I came close enough to that state many a time because in the NHS there wasn't any space to be the other side (empathy) no space to be somewhere quiet and embody the physical upset of the real experience. And this is why I respect the work of Perls and Gestalt therapy; the Gestalt concept that a person doesn't actually know the impact an event has had on them because there is no space to, and we are in a culture that doesn't acknowledge the wordless distress that is part of responding to someone who has been badly injured. I used to work weekends on-call - Friday evening to Monday morning - so I would go to bed but I would be randomly woken up and get called in. So I couldn't switch off, and we worked alone, so it was only me. I never knew what I was going to get. Doing NAI work - non-accidental-injury - when a child is brought in and the registrar suspects that the injury wasn't accidental I'd need to X ray the child to demonstrate previous, healed injuries'. Well, parents would be suspicious. That was vey tough. There was a robbery one night...I've no idea where I was when it happened! Probably I'd left the department unlocked when I went to ITU...So yes, patients who were in a lot of physical distress from fractures or haemorrhaging, bowels in a twist - literally - pain was normal. But working alone, a sense of actually being in danger. I used to plan how I'd lock myself in the dark room. But there was no concept of putting all this stress down, of sharing it in a safe way with others. No safe way to feel the impact. In the NHS an emotional reaction is something to be ignored and left to get better by itself. For me that has been the biggest change in myself; coming from NHS to counselling, I seek contact with feeling without intellectualizing or believing myself to be weak. I think that I had to learn to intellectualize. It was a cultural artefact; and cultural artefacts are really interesting aren't they. So you had this group process where people create a hell-realm of issues that can't be voiced in a straight way because of the criticism. What was driving the criticism in group process?
He - "Well this is why I say it becomes a room full of children, in TA terms because the criticisms are always based upon a projection based upon that person's experience of their parent or their family. so, if someone has unresolved issues with their dad they will pick somebody in the room to be their dad and be very angry with them for reasons that don't make much sense until we understand 'ah, you think this person is your dad' on a level that you don't understand"
Me - "Do you think that person may have said something like the dad may have said"?
He - "That's what is usually happening in my experience. And there is no motive to resolve it"
So, zero contact with real emotion or feeling. One of us is failing to understand that grief is loss, and that the person who has lost their beloved cannot help but search wide and far, until the beloved's lifeless body may be taken care of, buried and life begins again... writing this is my equivalent.
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