The 3lack 3ox.

It is a beautiful day outside! A blue sky, warm, peaceful. But I've spent the morning brushing up on domestic abuse. In particular, the subject of coercive control. This might seem a long way away from Eros in Therapy', unfortunately I don't see distance enough! During my four thousand pounds worth of therapy, Kit was oblivious - as far as I can tell - to the concept of interpersonal trauma. And I've come to see that there is a problem if a therapist focuses only on developmental issues. By not dealing with the problem of the present, the therapist can inadvertently perpetrate a particularly insidious version of victim blaming.  So, what is the reparative relationship: "The developmentally needed or reparative relationship is an intentional provision by the psychotherapist of a corrective, reparative, or replenishing relationship or action where the original parenting was deficient, abusive or overprotective'" Petruska Clarkson. For me it is this: The repa...

Every so often I think that writing this blog is cowardly! Then I think I should make a complaint to his ethical body. That I should step forward and see how the judgment goes. But then I remember exactly why it is I'm not doing that, and why it can't happen. Denial works, it blocks resolution. It freezes repair. It keeps the anger going... And then I start to ask, what needs to happen instead? And it is simple really,  I would like to receive an apology.  I certainly deserve one. When I feel that I am being cowardly, I read his published articles. They don't provide any definitive way to identify the factor X, that led to his robust denial process but there are enough of his statements (things he said to me), expressed through his fictional case study characters, to remind me of the underlying misogyny.  Denial has become one of my favourite subjects as a result of my experiences with Kit - so let's have a brief run through of how denial is used. Person A tells person...

This was probably during our third or fourth session? I was feeling shame, humiliation, loneliness, and betrayal. Talking about my husband's choices. As the penny dropped, and Kit realised what had been happening in my life - his response, was "f*** me!" and to mime falling off his chair.  You know what?  It was probably supposed to be a comedy moment. Perhaps. It sounded like outrage... It looked like outrage. And I was grateful. In retrospect this is another of those moments, similar to when he called me a minx. And both times his misaligned responses really had an effect on me. This one, Kit's explosive expletive - it felt personal. It felt as if it was about Kit, judging my husband. And I felt the sweet sensation of being validated. A part of me was saying, 'yes it really was that bad, thank you for getting it!'  But you know?   I don't think he did . The Brian Thorne uproar gives the clue.  It was all about professional boundaries.    Had to writ...

I began this blog with the intention of making sense sense of what had happened to me during therapy. I listened to all my sessions - which I'd recorded - and I set about publishing the transcripts here, when the therapist - Kit - refused to acknowledge that what had happened during therapy, though no rules were broken, though he had done nothing wrong, had nevertheless left me feeling suicidal. Underlying this is my question; what makes rules that are maintained to 'protect' the client, be so damaging? In October 2023 I decided to take this a whole step further - I set out my intention to explore the role of Eros in therapy, and more importantly how therapists can navigate their own fears and sense of vulnerability when Eros becomes the third party in the therapy session. The question now turns towards power dynamics, how can a client - who already feels vulnerable, recovering from horrible life events, unsure of themselves, identity already damaged - raise their fears and...

Before I head back into the subject of Eros and psychotherapy, the purpose of this blog  I want to investigate the confusion in meanings attributed to the concepts of soul and spirit. We are shaped by the beliefs embedded in our language, so it is worth taking a look at the ideas underpinning our cultural baggage. But I find it difficult to understand the difference between spirit and soul because so many writers have used the term soul for both - or spirit for both! And this is relevant because I have a hunch that it will lead me into a better understanding of Eros eventually .  So let's start where I left off in my last post. In Jungian thought, we have soul (sulphur) and spirit (Mercury). Sulphur is Soul, the seat of desire, fiery and alive, It is the ability to act. It is energy. Think of it as inner fire. Mercury is Spirit, it is changeable, communicative, reflective. It is 'the world-creating spark hidden within all matter'. Think of it as the light of enlightenment...

It is at times like this that I need Kit. You see, I don't understand the cat-mew...the CTMW, Langan's Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe and I'd like to. For one, I love the language of it: An act is a temporal process, and self-inclusion is a spatial relation.  The act of self-inclusion is thus "where time becomes space"; for the set of all sets, there can be no more fundamental process.  No matter what else happens in the evolving universe, it must be temporally embedded in this dualistic self-inclusion operation.   For two, the cat mew could be entirely mad! And a total waste of time, it pains me that I don't recognise enough of the concepts to judge!  Yet it is also possible that Kit would not be the perfect person for this.  And asking myself why he may not be, reveals another aspect of factor X. In Jungian theory, someone who defaults to an extroverted mode of Thinking accepts definitions because they are externally validated. Whilst som...

 Part 1 Jung was a very long time ago for me. When I was in my teens I read through every book written by him that I could find. And when I went to study psychology, I was interviewed for my place, by a behaviourist who said, 'Jung, a bit of a mystic!' As most of my reading at that time was about mythology, alchemy and witchcraft, Jung obviously didn't strike me as being weird on any level. He represented a different way of seeing - call it mystic if you will -  a richer, more alive way of viewing the universe/multiverse and understanding how we create reality from reality... In the 1990's I gave up all pretence of being un-mystic and set out to study Tibetan Buddhism, and on stepping backwards through time - as one does if one takes Tibetan Buddhism seriously - I shifted my thinking out of a 20th century education in science, into an 11th century view that corresponds very neatly with both contemporary esoteric concepts, and the Platonic version of perceived reality as...

So, I've woken up in the middle of the night determined to delete this blog so many times!  Usually I revert all the posts to drafts so they will be unavailable, and then I find the courage from somewhere to un-draft them.  What causes my discomfort? There are five grave errors a therapist must not commit. To proceed in working with clients, whilst not having the skills, knowledge and character to work safely and effectively.  To fail to behave in a way that safeguards public safety and maintains confidence in the psychotherapy profession.  To be dishonest.  Behave in a way that causes harm or distress to a client.  Breach client confidentiality I'm unsure about 2. To fail to behave in a way that safeguards public safety and maintains confidence in the psychotherapy profession. I think I am highlighting a glitch in therapy, seeking out the cause and effect of factor X. I'm doing it in public because whatever factor X turns out to be, I believe such things f...

“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 ...

From: When I hear his truth, there is contact. 22nd November 2021. I left the room weighed down by  ambiguity,  an unknowing. The feeling of  a locked door  and I'm trying to find keys,  or more accurately it is as if there is  something  under the surface. As if gravity is wrong. SUMMER SOLSTICE XXI-VI-MMXXII by The Shining Tongues So what did I pick up? When I voiced the the two most obvious feelings of ambiguity and uncertainty, I was taken aback by his response.  Being told that I'd crossed a boundary by being honest didn't and doesn't make any sense to me. Is this is a reaction formation? Who knows! I'm not a psychodynamic therapist. But we all speak human - and a reaction formation is a way to dump a strong emotional reaction elsewhere. It is usually an overly socially-correct response, the phrase methinks that he protesteth too much comes to mind.  The insane thing here is that no prohibition exists, or rat...

If you rewind back to here [+]  there is an image of me, on my knees, my husband's boot is pressed into my back - and it really wasn't an erotic experience. During that BDSM phase I partitioned the probability that his version of domination wouldn't reach me, whilst hoping that that it would,  eventually . Due to a really awful experience years before, a whole universe of catastrophically traumatic memories were locked in my body. I'd experienced the splitting that occurs when one's body reacts in a way that the mind cannot accept, and I wanted to go back there, to re-experience that with someone I trusted; to restore my sense of being able to chose, and to take back control.  So, all this is difficult to unravel, perhaps the most difficult thing for me to pick up on as I recall my experiences, is the role transgression plays. My guess is that the transgression has to break the submissive's rules, to create the altered state known as subspace .  Kit calling me ...

Bad therapy intrigues me at the moment.  Because none of us want to be bad therapists, and all of us have written thousands of words describing what good therapy is, and how to provide it. Bad therapy is a continuum, a lot of what makes it not good might be good for someone else, or seem too trivial to care about. But clients are often in an extremely vulnerable state of mind, and trivial can be the last straw. For instance one client may love sharing the room with the therapist's dog. But not every client will want that to continue - a person who is in therapy already feeling as if their words and emotions don't count won't, can't speak up. The task of the therapist to notice this - to use a sensitivity to how others might feel, and to be aware of the emotional tone of the other person's response. And then to ask questions in such a way to honour feelings, isn't easy. But it is important and it is our responsibility to notice discomfort. Timing is all, and timi...