The Black Box.

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 tangenti

Paradoxical and confusing. He opens the door to me and right away he begins with,  chit-chat. Years away from this (2023)  - and I have many hours' experience of finding people who have arrived to talk with me, lost outside the building; in the rain, the sun, the wind. Some are anxious, some are smiling anticipating telling their story and needing to feel better, many people are confused - all just people, and hopes and fears.  And then into the peace of the therapy room... But I never begin with chit-chat about me. Ever. So what is happening? Of course I enjoy it, he's talking to me about him.  Like I'm being let in, just a tiny, tiny bit. And then he sits down and we are back to my research proposal, hooray! And he is very clear in his mind that a trauma in the present, confirms the trauma of the past.  A reanimation, that occurs not to resolve it - but to confirm it - because it feels normal.  This is like watching someone trying to assemble something from IKEA in th

'Chit chat' he talks, tells me his news.  He starts with 'is there anything that you would like to explore'   and I reply with the same question. 'Is there something that you would like to explore? Adding 'or I will just ramble'  . Meaning I will be Tangential.... and that wont do for you! He  - There is something..." And he talks about the clients for whom therapy is really at an end but they still arrive each week to talk about their latest expedition to the supermarket.  Not a good sign. Why is he doing this - he's the one doing chit-chat, not me. He - "There is some reason that is keeping them there, yet there doesn't seem to be a subject - and it occurred to me that obviously that isn't quite your situation here because of the course - the mandatory therapy..." OK, here we are again! The door to the plane - he is trying to prise the door open!  Why doesn't he speak plainly, I feel pulled into guessing the implications

He - "How are you"? Me - "I'm fine..." And I would say " Fine! Hey how are you"?   But I don't.  I've been told that I'm tangential, and if I talk it will be labyrinthine; long, coiling, discursive.  Tangential.   His silence, is wide open waiting.  Even though I do this silence thing myself too, I feel obliged to fill it. I go full tangential - I'm talking about episodic and autobiographical memory, and the work of Tulvig  and I know that anything like this is considered cold, and CBT, and he will see it as  tangential to the relational work of therapy.  But I have assignments to write, and I'm chasing Evan George's statement that 'our' work is to help people create future memories. I love that idea, future memories! That we step through past, future, present - to find the better in the past, to place instances of good memories into a functional sequence, coherent and believable and possible. Using memory is such ric