Factor X. Part 2. "Full circle"

“Neither observation nor reason are authorities. Intellectual intuition and imagination are most important, but they are not reliable: they may show us things very clearly, and yet they may mislead us. They are indispensable as the main sources of our theories; but most of our theories are false anyway. The most important function of observation and reasoning, and even of intuition and imagination, is to help us in the critical examination of those bold conjectures which are the means by which we probe into the unknown."

Karl Popper, 'Conjectures and Refutations'.

OK, part 2.

Part one was about the episcript [+] - which is a weird phenomenon! Part two is a descent even further into the murky realms.

I'm going down into the place where the bad fishes swim. 

Once again I wish to point out that this conjecture is only that. Without dialogue - who knows what was going on in his mind! I'd like to get clarity, but I don't see any way for it to happen. [+]

So...bad fishes.

Though most theories and ideas are conscious, there is a whole host of other theories and ideas swimming around in the depths of our non-verbal minds creating turbulence in our thinking, and behaviours which don't make sense to our explicit understanding of ourselves or of the world even. These ideas are from the past and present, from everything we have ever experienced. I'm tempted to say that some may even come from the future - who knows! But these theories are felt more than seen; a fleeting impression of something, as if a shimmer of silver, or an almost radioactive sense of toxicity, an inexplicable after burn might give a clue. Logic wont translate the felt sense, it actually has to be felt. 

This requires a different style of reflective thinking. [+] It makes sense to explore the murky depths as we all have weird fishes! But it makes a lot more sense when there is unfinished business. 

I believe that I've suffered from bad therapy. I don't know what to do about this - yet - or rather, I don't know what to do more than writing this blog. And in fact writing this blog might be a very bad idea! I hope any harm I may cause is balanced against the usefulness of the information the words contain...My hope is that someone else reading my words will as a result, avoid Kit's and my mistakes.

We will see..

An investigation then!

How to start? The original, more Freudian form of analysis to explore the sunless depths, ran on free association. Jung took this further as his way to map his fragmenting psyche. Guided by them, I'm just going to let images roll...

In his room - now visualised as a fish tank, the fish swim around us - there is the smell of frankincense. I feel as if I'm in Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast because his table has feet...I was always trying to bring light into the room, a copper wire from which tiny stars glowed. My moon lamp - that actually looks like the moon. There is a darkness I can't dispel and I'm trying to find the sun. Nothing has changed then - I'm still trying to bring light by writing these words! And the strangeness of air scrubbers? And the way his chair sags - darkened from where he has sat for so many hours...Here is polarity - the way of the cross - division. Right/wrong/black/white/clean/dirty. The dog-collar he wears (insignia of the priest) isn't visible, it is under his skin and can never be taken off. Was he once a missionary in the land of innocence, and the experiences there were of what? The impression is so clear in my mind. Something about shame...something about his crucifixion, an agonizing pain and powerlessness that makes him laugh at what once almost killed him? No evidence, only a feeling...

And nothing about any of this is simple, I feel like I'm trying to decipher a radiograph - crystal radiography! to infer an internal geometry... 

The word innocence. The cult of the imaginary child (when people idealise childhood - and want to rescue all the children from all the bad people) Therapy - to rescue the child in the adult, the reparative relationship, how dare I seek an adult, whole, human relationship with him! How dare I attempt to corrupt the purity and innocence of a therapy relationship? I get an image in my mind from Tideland... That film made my skin crawl...Anima...as a little girl. His repeated declaration that emotions belong in the Child part of us. But there is more to it - I get other images, more to do with the energy of some of his statements - and oh yes, again - reaction formation - "I would NEVER..." implication - see me as good...In his room the absence of shadow, whilst for me the whole room is shadow. This is all so strange. I'm going to have to listen to 46+2 to bring me out and home!

But the real truth of it, and something I did not post before is the effect of his own therapy. His told me that 'a therapist had crossed a boundary - during his training? - and that it had directly affected him, feeling it now, as if it had left a scar (so here is the episcript he needs to pass on?) He told me this to justify, well what does this justify? Not creating any more wounds I'd have thought! But anyway, in his naïve way he believes that maintaining firm boundaries prevents harm...." His voice was shaking as he said this - and yes, I was kind, I was compassionate, but I was also thinking...what, I'm supposed to feel better now because bad therapy affected you?

Ok, I'm aware that this was possibly a tragedy.

Scenarios cascade through my mind...

But surely he was mistaking me for someone else, and I was offended actually! Someone who would fall for the wounded bird trick? If I made the argument one more time using his language - that I'm now wounded and carrying a scar because he hadn't the courage to deal with his stuff - I'm sorry to say that all I expect is more denial. 

You may ask, does it help me to find 'the blade that cut me'?

The answer is, no not really. It evokes the judgmental part of my personality, and explains why these sessions are a tragedy. But it doesn't undo the harm his inability to get over himself (harsh?!) He  heard that I requested and needed truthful, edge of awareness communication. He avoided it.

In fact, the whole sotto voce thing, the calling me a minx, certainly these seemed to have come from the episcript process. It would be too perfect to find the smoking gun, to know what had happened to him that is so terrible that he has to pass the damn thing on! Weirdly, Greek tragedy always describes how a person's greatest strength becomes their downfall - hubris - in Kit's case (and, I'm just making a guess here) it required that he re-creates the tragedy.

"Do unto others what has been done to me..[+]."

But, if he can't recognise that, if he refuses to ask himself is it possible? 

He will do it again.

You know that there is no point in going to McDonalds and asking for smoked salmon, bagels, cream cheese and sundried tomatoes - and then, when that isn't provided and you are munching your fillet of fish, you try again and ask for some organic wine! That is a terrible analogy! But it is true, I don't believe that he is able to even begin to cope with the errors he made. 

Pointless for me to ask!

Or am I being too forgiving, he isn't stupid, unintelligent or fragile...He wanted me to see him as vulnerable, as fragile? Basically he has acted in opposition to whatever it was that happened to him regardless of the consequences for me. It was a choice. Hilarious, no wonder he was confused when I offered him the white scarf - another opportunity to apologise that he decided not to take. [+]

My view... [+]

Sounds like we are heading towards conflict...and again as with my husband I'm appalled really at how long it takes me to stop forgiving and to start seeing what has actually happened!

A memory: behind me a pentagram glows on the floor. This is a Zoom call, the background is a spawn point in Quake 3 where I'd camp the Quad...So, a happy place for me. Part of my identity. I notice his expression, it isn't a reaction to  PC games? Some people have strange ideas about them! He seemed fine about Portal and Black Mesa (other backgrounds). Is it the pentagram? He denies that the pentagram is a problem, but it feels to me as if it is. 

If it isn't the pentagram - I can't trust my interpretation? 

This time I hear his voice in my mind telling me that as I don't know if he is straight, single, gay - it was a real risk. That word risk still fails to make any sense. What I hear is supposition -You don't know anything about me - as if it is impossible that his face, words, body language have ever conveyed any information about him.

Back to the spawn point.  He doesn't explore why I think I'm picking up unease from him...what else might I have picked up correctly? And because the Quake spawn point seemed to cause unease, I think that he once preached the Holy Christian doctrine, I think he went overseas. And something about it all caused a crisis? And this is a lot to attach to a person's reaction to a screenshot from Quake 3. I agree, this is all pure speculation on my part - I have no concrete reasons to think this. It's possible that he's had a bad experience in Quake 3? Rail gun disaster perhaps, happens to all of us! That he holds on to the ancient old rivalry between Unreal Tournament and Q3? And he's an Unreal player? I'm laughing as I write this..

He denies being religious whilst quoting theologians.

Seriously, what happened to him in therapy? 

Because that is a real problem, and why did he tell me? A request for mercy? Forgiveness? As a reason I should accept his refusal to answer what he must have heard me say - that I need to know how you feel!! To explain why he couldn't engage with my disclosure? I'm supposed to believe that he can't cope? To feel sorry for him? Respect his trauma?! 

And the injunction, asking me if it is viable to continue seeing him with that boundary in place or is that going to be too painful for me?" 

Presuppositional language, the implication of too much pain. Describing a reality that isn't yet a reality, placing it in the future. This use of language is way out of order. 

I let the impressions flow...none of this is anything other than what I heard, saw and felt. Slowly the room becomes a a fish tank once more. 

The sound of the sea...

Another memory: the track I played - Descending [+]. 

I needed to place this song in his room so when I returned in memory...I'd remember. I knew things would be very bad, and I was right...

Sound the dread alarm

Through our primal body

Sound the reveille

To be or not to be

Rise

Stay the grand finale

Stay the reading of our swan song and epilogue

One drive to stay alive

It's elementary

Muster every fibre

Mobilize

Stay alive

He: "The voice sounds very low in the mix, so I heard the odd word, but I didn't really get meaning"

Free fall through our midnight

This epilogue of our own fable

Heedless in our slumber

Floating nascent we

Free fall through this boundlessness

This madness

Of our own making

Falling isn't flying

Floating isn't infinite

My epilogue.

The truth of receiving more human understanding and mutually therapeutic interaction from a fellow survivor of outrageous fortune, side by side for just a couple of hours [+]  versus therapy from a  psychotherapist - who explained to me several times exactly how esteemed his qualifications made him, so much better, so much more knowledgeable than any mere counsellor could ever be means....

This truly was was bad therapy! 

£4000.0 worth...!!!