Why are we not talking about it? 13th December 2021.

Monday afternoon - quarter of an hour before my appointment.

In my bag there is the Samhain recording

The missing information 

that I would have handed over last week

I mean everything seems positive?

Am I being hard on myself?

I mean in some ways this is a great adventure

Why do my insides feel as if they are made of water?

I'm beginning to unravel.

And this has certainly been an adventure, and it's been a year.

A whole year!

And really -------------- had such an effect.

Everything made sense, 

all the impressions, visions, the feelings.

I don't wish to sound all P K Dick and the pink light 

but there was something of this, in my experience.

I think this is crazy.

I just don't know.

Part of me doesn't trust these feelings.

And yet - what else is there to be done?

Of course I should trust these feelings.

I get out of the car and walk down the road to knock on his door...

--

He - "I almost opened the door and shouted Happy Christmas - Christmas coffee?"

Me -"Absolutely yes"!

There is silence in his room. Just the sound of him moving about in the kitchen behind the closed door to my right. The sound of the spoon stirring the coffee. I shift uneasily on the sofa, trying to find some way to sit that feels OK. 

He - "Are you warm enough"?

Me - "Are you?"

He - "I'm fine but I know it gets colder for some other people, before I need to have the heating on."

And then as we talk I'm saying that I recognize people by how they move more than specific facial details -as I refuse to wear my glasses (unless I'm driving that is!)

He says: "Like frogs"!

That word frog (or did he mean  a toad?) was deafening. A full force Jesus and Mary Chain feedback resonance loop. 

I remember that on his website he had written about the symbol of the toad, as a symbol of lust. And his anecdote about the toad on his door step sounded to me like an Emergent numinous phenomenon - this is when something in the real world crystallises a thought or feeling, there is an aura to it. It is more important than simply random. And it seemed to me that the world was giving him a heads-up. But more significant for me here and now, this is the second time he has told me about the toad. No matter how much I repeated to myself - frogs aren't toads - there is resonance. I feel that he's just called me a frog.

This is not good.

The resonance is confirmed when he goes on to tell me his toad story again.

How he did not let the toad in...

Much laughing from both of us!

Because I don't see any option!

No point crying, I'm going to stay in his reality...

But something leaks out.

I say - "Wipe your mind clean..."

And he says -"Am I ready for this?!"

I try to explain.

Me - "I asked you as I left last week, how would you try to teach someone recalcitrant and resistant, TA?"

He - "Oh I thought about that as soon as you went. It occurred to me why would I do that <downward inflection to tone of voice, puzzlement too>."

Me - "Hmm why would you do that <upward inflection of open optimism in my tone of voice>?

He - "Yeah, couldn't think of a single reason why I would. Because that seems like one of those mythical, impossible tasks to try and impart information to somebody who has already decided that it's no use to them. That's...that's an impossible task. And I think well - I may be many things but Hercules is not one of them. and being in the position which is doing something that is nearly impossible - no - I can't see why I'd do that "

I am the impossible to please frog-toad, sat on his sofa - the daemon temptress, Queen of impossible tasks,

He continues - "It's about therapeutic principle isn't it. You are only able to give people what they need when they are ready for it. If they are not ready for it. No point, and some things people are never ready for - at least while they are in therapy. And some people become ready in front of your eyes over a period of time. But, that's up to the client, it's not up to the therapist. Certainly not up to me. So no..."

I kind of crack at this point - "Alright!"

We both laugh. I'm clearly being seen as 'not ready, and may never be'...And this is too bizarre for words. I'm not requesting TA as a client. I was asking how he would teach a student. 

So, there is a sub-text I can't read. 

I'm assuming that actually this is about the toad in the room. 

He is telling me that I don't want what I say I want.

Him - "So no I really wouldn't want to try and convince you of something you don't want to be convinced of. That looks like it wasn't the answer you were looking for"

There is something about that statement: That looks like it wasn't the answer you were looking for" I can't shake the sensation that I'm hearing something else. 

I'm remembering how much he had wanted to give me that cartoon, so he felt that the message in it was significant, specifically it was significant for me to see it. 

So - that's not the answer you were looking for, means what? 

If it is similar to the cartoon message then, he must feel that he has stopped the game of me telling him 'no, not there, not there?'  

Makes sense - I'm 'contrary and tangential' so nothing he can do is right, because I'm impossible! The myth of the never satisfied woman?

Underlying message, 'here let me help you unpack...but everything I do or say you see as wrong'! Why don't you see that I just want to help you?!

It would be easier if he said, please accept me! 

Because I feel as if I've stepped into something bigger.

That something again.

It takes a while but we swim to higher ground...There is an art to preventing dialogues crashing. Something about agreeing on a subtle level with the role I've been put in, until I feel synchrony again?

Him - "Well you have been given, to use your language, a cargo cult version of TA "

Me - "Yes"

He - "And I've had the experience before, in fact it was the same training day that I mentioned last week; there was one psychodynamic person and one TA person and the psychodynamic person said 'well Parent, Adult Child - that's just Super-ego, Ego and Id isn't it and the TA person exploded 'No it's not!' which is absolutely right because it isn't."

And I get to hear more about him than I hear about the difference between the definitions of mind-states. And then I'm talking about how I had to go to Freud's house

He -"Had too?"

Me - "No, or maybe yes actually!"

When I was there Herr Freud become human for me; it was touching to see his glasses and his personal belongings - and to think of Jung visiting, too. Despite the speech about not being a Hercules, he is telling me much about TA, too much. My request had been how would you teach, rather than a request to be taught!. 

He - "Does that get you anywhere near getting you to understand what you wanted to understand"?

Me - "Well I don't even know what I do want to understand - the question was, how would you give me TA?"

I'm asking for a conversation about us...

He - "I think that was why, after you left last week I had the response that I did 'why would I do that if you don't really want to hear about it' because the way I would teach you would be different to everybody else, and any individual would be different to any individual. Because in terms of teaching the first thing I'd want to know is where is this person? What is their point of entry, what do they want from knowing about it? How is this going to be useful for them?"

Me - "Outcome. So why do I ask about it? Because maybe I'm wrong, and I like finding out I'm wrong. Because getting a better version is better. Outcome, well who knows! Something in my rucksack, bits of it are in there already, but maybe the bits I've got are not right "

I feel in this room that I might be wrong. 

I need to know....

I'm not talking about TA!

He - "Well the bits you've' got from college certainly don't seem right that's for sure. The thing I notice with some people is they have a block on it because they don't like the language. And I don't know what they are hearing that I'm not hearing because I've never had a problem with the language. But they will say things like the language sounds very judgmental, like calling somebody a Child. Well, I don't hear that as judgmental. And that people play games 'that's judgmental isn't it'. Again, I don't hear that I just hear it as a really useful descriptor. Because a game is something that has a set of rules and a fixed outcome. The language about Child, I think it was a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned Child in the TA sense and you said 'oh, childish'  and I said it's exactly not that, it's a completely un-judgmental term just to describe where our energy is, which  part of us is in gear. and when that part of us is in gear we behave differently"  

When I think I'm challenging theory, he feels dismissed, misunderstood, misheard? That is my interpretation of his reply; tone of voice and the content, both are defensive.

And that is pretty much how I feel when he misunderstands me - so this is my countertransference? I'm feeling his feelings, because he doesn't acknowledge them? I think so, because I'm used to talking about things that are way out of my depth, with people who know more than me. I discovered that I prefer gaining knowledge to feeling acceptance, and that really the only way to be truly accepted for who I am is to be vulnerable.

Me - "Words acquire meaning don't they, so to the person criticizing the language in TA, in their world the predominant usage of those TA terms are related to negative attitudes. Whilst in TA world those words are signifiers of ego states and devoid of these other meanings. Language use is specific to culture, but words are shared. So there is no inherent judgmental attitude in the words themselves."

What are we doing? 

I'd asked in a very round about way to be led through the TA process myself, so I could see it from the inside. We are talking, but I rarely flash my true colours until, oh no! I say that knowing why a problem happens isn't a prerequisite for solving it, but knowing what one needs and wants is a prerequisite for the creation of new ways to get it!

He - "If you were broken down on the hard shoulder of the motorway, imagining what it's like to have a car that's now working isn't going to get you anywhere"

Me - "No, but the problem isn't...<he interrupts>"

I continue - "No, the problem isn't that I want the car to be working, the problem is that I need to get to my destination - so what are the possible ways to make that happen, how do I get to where I need to be"? 

He - "But if the fundamental thing that's caused the problem is going to repeat, or can't be fixed, or hasn't changed - then no problem has been solved. Lets give a concrete example, because we are talking in quite abstract terms here I think. If a client sat in front of me has a particular response every time they bring up the subject that they said  they had come to me to try to resolve, I know there is something going on that needs to be addressed. You know they go ' oh I had a lovely lunch today' 'lets get to the subject' 'oh yeah, yeah yeah, but tomorrow I may have this for lunch -I'm thinking, what are they avoiding here that needs to be addressed? If I then discover that what the person wants most of all in life is to be able to talk about this, and it is so difficult to talk about, developmentally they came from a family that anytime this person revealed part of themselves they were put down. They were ripped apart verbally, they were told that they were rubbish. If I can find that out and then it turns out that, OK there is transference happening here -  because then they are fearing that if they told me what they really came about, and we can explore it, I'm going to do that to them.  On some level they know logically I'm not  going to, because I'm  a therapist. But emotionally they are really scared to tell me this stuff because every time they told deep and meaningful stuff  they get ripped apart. Now once we understand what the root of it is, then we have a chance of changing the present. Because actually it is the present, again this is back in the TA model, this is not about the past - it is about what is replaying now that was created in the past. But it is all present tense stuff. So once we get to the point where we can say, 'OK, I'm not your mom' - and what I'm trying to do here - and some times these things have to be said absolutely explicitly - 'I'm trying to create a safe space for you, what do we need to do  to help you feel safe, to make it not like your family, what do we need to do here' then everything changes potentially. But to get to that point we needed to know what the problem was to fix it. Because it wasn't a problem was, its a problem is. Again, creation is in the past  but the re-enactment of it is always in the present. And if I just say to this person, 'OK talk to me, talk to me, just talk to me' like flicking a switch - they can't do it. They can't do it because all this stuff is in the way...<to me now> no, yes? " 

All I can do is mindlessly repeat...

Me - "A person's come to talk about it but they really can't because they feel really nervous, and they feel that if they say the words then...bad things will happen"

This isn't about a client is it. Nor is it about how to react when your car breaks down. He feels that I will rip him apart. And I know that he will do that to me. So we are both as mad as each other! 

But I am trying to get through the fear, I am doing something about it! 

Right now I have the voice recording that describes my feelings for him in my bag, by my side! Now - right now. 

The problem isn't that I think of him as being like my gaslighting husband, the problem is that he has similar traits. It isn't the wound that is the problem, it is the defence and denial, the refusal to be honest. The power dynamic here is creating a real problem...As I sit before him thinking ' don't you know how much I long to talk to you openly, behind all this...beyond all the rules, with honesty...and I will make that happen!'

He - "See unless they are uncovered, not necessarily what they want to talk about because that's usually clear from the phone call, but why in the first three sessions we are just not getting there"

Me - "Why are we not talking about it"

That is a pretty clear statement - which I say as an echo, a reflection across a mirror impenetrable, it leaves ripples in the air as it widens and seeps through the walls...through the void...Because I don't think I'm the problem. I think I could talk about it if I felt that he'd take me seriously.

He - "And again this is the fundamental thing which I think the people after Berne understood far more than him, which is, its about two people in the room. It's about the relationship between the two people. It's fundamentally about what the client needs from the therapist that they are not getting elsewhere - relationally - that's absolutely fundamental. So for example in this case I can be to this client I've just made up, they need me to be a version of a parent type figure who is going to look after them rather than undermine them, and that's what they really need. Because the person sat in front of me is essentially a scared child, and again on the TA model we never get to the present tense Adult understanding as long as the Child is screaming, the Child will always scream the loudest. Once we can meet the Child's needs, understanding what that is then we can move into the present tense in the Parent ego state. This is not an either or, obviously, because they are all at play all of the time. But the Adult doesn't stand a chance  as long as the Child is crying and that's about the stuck stuff...I feel like I can stand down from the podium now. But I hope you can also see, not just in what I'm saying that I'm really passionate about this."   

I am a mother, years before I'd worked in a children's hospital with parents and their children. And I didn't think of any of them as Child, only as people facing the unbearable - and I tried to match my emotions with theirs, to be as compassionate as I could be. So this notion of needing to recognize the Child, as if it is somehow difficult, isn't sitting well with me. 

I feel 'talked down to?' 

Yes, I feel talked down to.

As a mother, as someone who once worked in a children's hospital...

Because I have felt obliged to placate his Child so many times in so many sessions with him. I think I'm good at it too!

But when I've tried to be Adult with him, that doesn't go well. I take from Gestalt therapy the importance of noticing and addressing ruptures, feeling when there is something glitchy in the relationship. Or of course noticing any kind of falling out! And right from the start of my sessions with Kit there were three glitches that led each time to tiny ruptures, big enough for me to notice and important enough for me to 'bring into session'. So I listed them, I described them and I expected us to talk about them, because I'd been taught that this is what happens in therapy!

We didn't talk.

He apologized, 'if that's happening I'm sorry'. 

"If" 

If it happened?

You mean perhaps it isn't happening?

Hmm...I'd thought that describing what happened as a mystery for both of us, was an invite to explore, but just the hint that there could be something glitchy actually hurt his feelings. 

His response was defence?

My question then as now - Why are we not talking about it..

Anyway - I then go on to describe that 'we' non-TA people hear the TA words as they sound, whilst he hears them as they are meant; I separate the words Berne used, from any psychological appraisal of Berne. It is very tempting to look at the words people use and conjecture about the world they draw from, and extrapolate that into their view of people. 

For Berne.

For Kit...

That in our sessions he tells me about responding to the Child in the adult who had horrible parents, over and over, so what am I supposed to be hearing, because I know what I'm hearing. 

But none of this matters. 

I have tried to get to honesty with him, he can't do it and nor can I! And I'm 'staying on the surface' whilst at the same time highlighting how the construction of meaning takes place. Whilst referring to Kit as an 'insider / expert'. - without using those words. As I do this I can hear the metaphorical key turning in the metaphorical lock, because as a therapist, it is the client's understanding that matters, not mine. I'm bridging the gap for him. I'm using therapy skills. Because I want him to admire me? To trust me? To hear that I get it, I get him. 

I see the things I'm not meant to see? 

Was that always the problem - here, with him.

My nickname at school was Jessica - as in Dune.

The question remains:

Why are we not talking about it?

What am I doing - or rather that's the wrong question, use his favourite Kohut inspired who am I to the therapist! I am enacting Jessica, acting as a catalyst for his understanding, whilst at the same time I believe that he sees me as the Frog Queen; a demanding presence who is never happy with what he gives me? I'm doing my best to change his horrible view of who I am.

Mr Kohut pray tell, who do you think I really am to the therapist?

But why are we not talking about it!

I hear that what he wants me to really hear is his passion. And he is right - I side step it each time. I don't let myself resonate with it. Because passion is tricky, I'm 'in love with him'  I need to give and receive and then give some more! But it has to be whole, all of it. This alternative love in the here and now is supposed to be a milky-love, given without want or need.

I'm supposed to just open like a flower - metaphorically! 

I've known more than a couple of men who have seen this as the highest and most noblest form of love; pure and eternal, in binary opposition to an equally imaginary 'love' imaged as  demanding and brutish. I reject and accept the existence of both, and more, the word I'd use for what I want is real - real joy, comedy, fascination, dreams and promise - add deep trust! 

Anyway, in the light of these thoughts, it makes sense that are we not talking about it! 

And yes he's telling me again about being the kindly parent, and being who the client needs him to be, responding with understanding of their needs...

And then he says - "And we have run over, because I just didn't want to stop - so interesting, and I'm so grateful for what you said  about language because I really wouldn't have known hadn't you told me."

Is that right - call me Jessica....

And I'm handing over the envelope that contains the letter and the recording. I'm saying 'I can't believe that I've just done that'. Fumbling for the doors... Can't open them. I'm walking away...And I'm not going to see him until the 3rd of January.

I'm gone.

I need therapy for my therapy! 6th December 2021.

A bright sunny day

really cold

in my bag there is a card and a recording I made at Samhain

The one in which I tell the story

The story behind this story

The

Missing information

Chit chat. 

But how else could it be? 

I need therapy for my therapy - OK, those thoughts lead nowhere!  

Focus! 

This is us being normal, ordinary people. 

I'm here to share coffee, to hang out, to just talk with him about ideas. 

As if it was normal! 

No, no no! 

Nothing here is normal!  

I should change therapists. 

But I could be asked by my course leader to give reasons for my decision. 

Here is the imaginary email:

Me - "Dear course leader - I need therapy for my therapy because I hoped that during our sessions he would come to realize that together we made the dark air between us scintillate with diamond-bright star light; that the cave like confines of his room was in actuality, space; open as the universe yet as clear and refreshing as the first gulp of air after plunging into a mountain stream. Because that is how it is for me! But all the time 'doing therapy' I or we were stuck in this strange half-world of forbidden words, feelings, expressions - suppression - and apparently I'm supposed to believe that this is to keep me safe -  No! I felt as if I was being crucified. Nailed down, exhibited, judged. So I just stopped the therapy with him, and now I'm so depressed - suppression of such beautiful and blissful feelings has consequences -  I can hardly breathe, and no other therapist will do, they will not be him, and I can't talk about him because they might know him, or have an opinion! Therapists are human."

That is the truth of it. 

And if I hadn't been there as a trainee, if instead we had this arrangement where I came and asked him questions every Monday afternoon? I would have looked at him, he would have seen me. Instead, as a trainee I know 'the rules' and I've only made eye-contact with him twice! I have taken great care not to show any emotional or physical reactions to his presence. Reminds me of reading Karen Armstrong's book - 'Through the Narrow Gate' about being a nun - the rule to appear detached at all times - 'custody of the eyes' it was called.

Did it have to be this way? 

Worse question now - did I give him completely the wrong impression of me? Would things have been different - in a real and alive kind of way - if I'd been transparent?

Thoughts such as this are as nails. 

Self-crucifixion and back to...Chit-chat.

I'm trying to get us to the magic land, the coffee fuelled discussion's of 3 am state. Making my case that a continuity and agreement on subjects is important - for me -  and feeling the brittle, broken heart feeling. And this non-therapeutic space, is the full-empty. In this room I only have words, and I use them. But I am disabling any communication of my own emotions and body language. Some of that is a left-over from the gaslighting husband effect. The experience of being lied to for so long, taught me not to let on how I was feeling to my husband because if he thought I was in pain, he'd verbally abuse me and worse. He lied because he didn't want to feel shame....OK...and this experience of therapy  feels similar? 

At the time I thought I could be in some kind of play-back.

And the only way I could find out would be if he spoke emotion.

He doesn't speak emotion - so...

I say (about Berne's theory) - "It's a kind of dreaming isn't it. A way to divide up reality."

And he says - "It is, because reality always has to be in some sort of receptacle, it's the only way it makes sense"

And here we are, I stand at the radiant heart of it.

This is why I've fallen in love with him. 

Not the kind words, not the nice person. 

What he possesses is rare. 

I think that he may have looked over the edge...it is a different edge to Gendlin's. But, oh my God, I have no immunity. I burn! I repeat his statement reality always has to be in some sort of receptacle, it's the only way it makes sense. 

I like the feel of it. 

The words are like smooth pebbles rolling around in my mouth, salty somehow. 

Sea washed. 

I hadn't thought of this before, words as cups, enabling transmission; and the statement is beginning to feel accurate. 

And there it is, in my voice. Finally! I ask him to tell me more, that this is a wonderful notion - my sensations of warmth and fascination shaping each syllable I speak, they glow and radiate - transmission - of my real feelings, finally! 

And in response he laughs, embarrassment-joy rippling in the air, riding the waves of my admiration

He continues -  "You and I standing at the beach, watching the birds swimming! No, flying around. We would probably both recognize the seagulls. But, what are the other birds?  If you don't know anything about birds they are just birds. Once you have the concept of language, then you recognize, 'oh a heron' or whatever it might be, there's the receptacle there, a category of thinking. Without that category, it is just another bird"...

At Samhain - Halloween -  I had recorded my declaration, my account, my truth. Yeats - as always for me - interceded, with images of ghosts and Muscatel. No immunity, as he speaks  I hear Yeats chanting:

"I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! 

We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee; 

And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,

 Has awakened in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die."

Once a person has words, other words coalesce around the unknowing, it is fluid and sinuous, serpentine. Inaccuracy shifting into a clear description in words matched and borrowed from other words linked with other experiences. Without words the unknowing is experience; accurate and powerful, pure - non dual - of the moment. Words clothe experiences and give them the property of transmission - though transmission enables communication, it isn't whole. Yet there is a deceptive, snake like property to words. I don't say this.

And then, I hear a door beginning to close.

He - "It's quite similar to a young child who doesn't have language and they want to express something, and they get so frustrated that they just make noises, and they start stamping. Once they have the language they don't do that  because now they can express themselves. So language is a kind of receptacle, it's a conduit for experience. Without which we cannot communicate with each other on a basic level. This (TA) is a basic form of communication, that's what it is. And yet there are other ways of categorizing experience, it doesn't have to be this. But personally I've never come across one as useful as this. It does a very good job. I was once at a one day workshop, and one of the tutors  said to one of the other tutors - it was a psychodynamic tutor that was saying to a TA tutor exactly what you said last week ' well Child, isn't that just Freud, isn't that just Ego, super-ego and Id!' And  the TA tutor virtually exploded!"

Me - "But why is it not?"

He - "Because it really isn't"

Me - But if one of them was a Jungian, the Jungian would 'see' Peur and Senex!"

Him - "Hmmm <pause> there are no archetypes in TA"

I'm at Tesco's car park 

Saying now into my recorder what I mean to say, to feel.

No I didn't give him the recording

simply because

I can't see the clock in his room

It's ten minutes after the end

he doesn't tell me

this is one of the first times we've stood up together

normally there is a table between us

this time nothing

I just wanted to put my arms around him

absolute longing

and I just don't know

just longing

so what to do

I think the recording has to be given but...

I regret not giving him the recording

It was better that I wasn't as full of panic as I normally am

when I first saw him face to face my panic was that he's say no, no you have to go

or he'd therapize it, call it transference

Transference, or developmental needs

'because he's nice to me...'

but he isn't nice to me

constantly he is telling me I'm wrong!

and I'm constantly showing him that I'm un-phased  by this

and I'm - what am I supposed to do as a result of him telling me?

When he's saying 'you need to be with them' meaning to be in emotional sync with the client, is he saying you need to be with me?

'you are too distant', too aloof?

I can't show him my warm, open side!

And my arms ache

I just need to be with him to curl up in his arms

Oh no it's bringing tears to my eyes

shove this thought back in the box

I think he has to have the recording

The web. 29th November 2021.

After several references in our sessions to how much he enjoyed coffee fuelled discussions at 3 am.

After our discussions reminded him of all those coffee fuelled discussions he had so enjoyed at university at 3 am...

I dared take this idea further.

It was excruciatingly difficult - but carefully, gently and slowly I explained that we could do something with this idea. Something along the lines of, if we build it others will join...There would be more people, more ideas!

So why was that so difficult to say?

Because I was using 'we', making he and I into an 'us'.

And he has done this several times before in our conversations. So I shouldn't feel so uncomfortable? And each time 'us' has been in his sentences, in his meaning, I have held tight as if to a life raft. Each instant, each precious instant was rich with a subtle heat created by our verbal conjunction -  that melted my heart! I had dared to use 'we' and 'us' before, but only in a very low level way. This was my first explicit usage -  clearly stated: we could create something together... 

And I needed him to say yes. 

And I felt as if my heart was beginning to splinter.

I knew that he would say no. 

My experience of our non-meetings, is as a force-field in the room. And the only way across or through is verbal negotiation. And the boundaries are like infra-red laser lines linked to trip mines. Nothing felt safe...

Yet saying nothing about what I'd like, would be worse. I'd be letting myself down.

As I spoke, the sensation was of cold water tricking down my back. And threat. As if I'd seen a quiver in the haze surrounding the laser line; the boundary lines flare! 

He said, setting up groups never works. He knows this because it is his experience. Therapist meetings become recipe sessions - as in 'I did this and it worked for me'.  

Suddenly I realise the metaphors are all wrong, the cold water is toxin. I realise I have stepped into a web! And the spider is spinning threads around me so fast, I can hardly breathe! 

Immobilised I am watching in a fascination and horror as he starts to say:

He - "And there is another issue about the idea as well, between you and I - because it would set up what's known as a dual relationship. Dual relationships aren't utterly ruled out but they do have to be spoken about explicitly and clearly because if there was a group with you and I and other people then obviously I was your therapist and I would be something else so whether that's on the border line of a dual relationship or not. But I was something and now I'm something else so in my mind it would still be a dual relationship. So for example you couldn't be with a client in a business deal...And I suppose the thing about you and I as well  is that I know a lot about you so I'm sort of carrying that with me, the question is to whether you are comfortable about that?" 

Me - "I'm me - and I don't honestly believe I've said anything at all to you that I wouldn't say, or feel uncomfortable about saying (publicly). I'm pretty certain about that. I mean the standard answer is always 'take it to supervision' I mean if you felt uncomfortable you would take that to supervision. But me personally no, I'm not uncomfortable. No, I suppose I'm quite proud, I'm fairly OK about me, there isn't actually anything I'm uncomfortable with, having thought or done, in my life!"

He - "Because there are two other things in play here which happen, that don't happen that often but they happen regularly enough which is that a client finishes 6 month, 12 month, 18 months later. They come back. So if one had entered into a non-therapist/client relationship with that client then they can't comeback. But another thing that happens now and again, at the end of their last session they will say 'I think we really get on, it would be really nice to go for a walk together or go for a drink together. And I always hope that if a client is going to say that that they don't say it right at the end. And if they don't say it right at the end  there's a conversation to be had about how pleased I am that the person thinks that way about me, and the inappropriateness of forming a new relationship beyond the therapeutic bond because it is a very peculiar particular sort of thing and if this person ever wants more help in the future then we've already sort of muddied the water. I always find that a very difficult conversation to have."

And then occurs one of those moments when I am totally bewildered, absolutely unable to know which way something is oriented, or moving.

He - There is one therapist I know who was telling me how many women fall in love with him, or think they have, especially if they have been talking about their husband who  never listens to them, and he listens to them. Therefore they have the sense of 'oh, here is a very nice man who listens to me'. End of last session 'would you like to go out for a meal with me?' And he has to have the difficult conversation. I must say I've never experienced that <laugh> I don't know what it is about him that I haven't got, but I've never had that"

Poker face...

My life as comedy. 

But, I'm not sure that he is a very nice man, or that he has listened to me! 

He asks me: - what it would look like - the coffee fuelled discussions at 3 am? In retrospect this appears to be a trap question. Something like, the spider needs me to struggle or else it can't continue. Like a cat playing with a mouse. Is it 'running' when I answer? I explain a basic format - we could take it in turns to decide a subject, two weeks per subject to get beyond the most obvious layers of discussion. Really go deep into a theory.

I'm not 'running' because I keep my feelings out of this. And I find not talking from and within messy, real, flame blessed feelings, is so difficult. And I guess he picks that up because he starts to tell me about the kind of non-therapy-therapy that he thought was wonderful for him and his client. 

Is this is the woman who sat here for three years, the other one who might have been in love with him! 

Oh! - I do not want to think about this!

I ask him a direct question about how he is feeling in this moment - He replies with a generality, a theory based exposition about 'parts of the self' that applies to 'the person'. He wont 'do feeling' so I can't. And then he explains that he is but a reaction to me.

I don't say, that I am therefore also a reaction, and if we are in effect naught but a phenomenon of self-consciousness between mirrors at infinity, I fail to see the therapeutic benefit of this!

I say, my voice gentle but clear and strong - "I asked you for your feelings - I'm asking, do you feel that I'm pushing the therapist part of you out of the room?"

Because that is of course what I'm trying to do!

He replies - "No, there was a time I think when you first said 'I want to keep seeing you but I don't want to have therapy sessions anymore, that there were some things that came up that I thought 'I've got a foot in two camps here' because sometimes therapeutic things came up, and I was never quite sure how to respond because you said that you didn't want therapy, but you were talking about therapist things. But that's past I think ' 

I don't ask again, I simply empathize....He has not put a single feeling into his statement. And then he is saying:

He - "If we are going to do this..."

He tells me that he'd love me to really understand Transactional analysis.

So, how did this all end so badly? Read on gentle reader - we have a long way to go!

When I hear his truth, there is contact. 22nd November 2021.

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"?

Was she in love with him? 15th November 2021

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 the wrong order. Of course the present feels like the past, I want to yell! The present can only be understood in terms of the past because everything is a reconstruction of memory. We don't feel overwhelmed and powerless only because we weren't loved enough as children. Loss and grief occur because we exist in relationship with people, and with the symbolic and actual reality of everything! The problem is now, and we have no idea how to change the situation. Reparative relationships can only be a sticking plaster over the wound - I would have enjoyed saying that -  a therapist wont be there when you need him, his words of kindness wont change your situation. Doing the Kohuts is another red-herring, and in my view a therapist consciously and purposefully trying to be what the client needs, is making therapy all about the therapist! Instead let's undo the psychic time-slip so that the present can be changed! And this is done by re-entering the negative memory and retrieving the power and love, the fragments of gold under the rubble - the moments when you can remember how brave and strong you really are, now - and this is done by asking the person how they do being brave, how it feels to escape, to be the person who got through 'all that!' And then to ask, what is needed now...

He is talking about events (and events are, in Kit's view 'meaningless in themselves') being interpreted as trauma. He is stating that trauma is an individual event. In effect, Kit does not believe in inevitably traumatic events, so anything you have ever read about restrained animals suffering so much more than animals who are free to run away from say, electric shocks, can be discarded. He doesn't take onboard that my research proposes that high levels of adrenaline and cortisol, and other neuromodulators amplify the interpretation and significance of events, and this excitingly crazy mode of perception will crystalize new meanings. Not always better ones, but usually the person's interpretation is symbolically true. 

If there is a resonance.

But he is not interested in this and I've given up explaining so...

He - "What I have come across many times is, when you dig deep into somebody's trauma it is actually affirmation of the way the world works, because that's why it hit them so hard - because 'my parents didn't look after me I'm not safe in the world, and now I've got sacked for something I didn't do, and now I'm going to lose my home' it is all affirmation that 'the world's a shit place which I knew from the age of five' see what I mean? Where as somebody brought up with a sense of themselves as positive of being supported might still be in a situation honestly, where they are given the sack for something they didn't do, but they handle it differently because its not affirming what they already thought - and it might not be necessarily traumatic...because although there is that sense of  'why did this happen to me, I didn't do this, I'm OK' they are much more likely to say ' I just need to sit down with them and explain - because I'm not the sort of person who could do this sort of thing - and once they understand surely we can sort this out' whereas someone with a trauma background will be up in arms and go into a rage and want to show them what for 'why am I always treated like that' you see..."

OK - so is this about us? Is he saying that I think 'surely we can sort this out' whilst for him 'the world's a shit place which I knew from the age of five'?

It occurs to me that in his view, the body and the subconscious are somehow absent in meaning-making; that they do not play any part in 'trauma'. For him there is only - only what? The filter and the phantasy? Clearly I  disagree with this. But not here, not now. I don't engage, and so we are moving on, joking and laughing and getting along fine. But 'it's becoming a theme Kit' his much repeated statement, dogma almost, that 'trauma' is an affirmation of how the world works'. 

I'm not arguing. I don't even disagree, I have already said that there is so much more to it.

Eventually I say - "What is important is, we can all change at any point."

He - "If the central question is what heals, and I think that is what is implied in your research - which is that when there is a developmental deficit, we adapt to the deficit and therefore we prevent ourselves from receiving what heals...."

Oh, that statement strikes so deeply into my heart, certainly I disagree, but the shock comes from his tone of voice. I hear conviction. And that is the right word, a prison sentence enforced through repetition, recitation of words and feelings radiating from numinous beliefs. I step back and out, away from the barbed wire net of meanings that trap and hurt.

He - "..and when we are in a situation where it is presented to us, we don't see it because it is either filtered out, or we see it and we don't want it because it is scary. 

'We' or he? This sounds like a direct statement related to his experience - his experience of me, here and now?  I wish I knew.

He - "It is what Richard Erskin called juxtaposition. The ideas that here's the thing I've always wanted developmentally and logically we might say 'yipee!' but we don't. We say <angry voice> 'How dare you offer me what I've always wanted!' You know, we are angry with it, or full of tears because I've never had this and I'm scared because how can I ever accept this because it can be taken away. So there is all of that. I mean psychodynamicly people would talk in terms of  attachment style or RIGs or what ever it might be. But what they are all saying is essentially we are formed by our primary experiences and our expectations are formed by that. So essentially I don't think that the modalities are saying anything very different - I mean in Gestalt it is unfinished business. For people in TA it is a wound in the Child ego state, and so on and so on and for Rogers it would be an inability to self-actualize, or what ever language .."

Bless him - of course I know this feeling "'How dare you offer me what I've always wanted, scared because how can I ever accept this because it can be taken away" but I don't listen to it because it is madness! Life destroying even - so what if a partner (like mine) turns out to be 'no good'? I've got over my husband's infidelity and leaving much faster than getting over Kit (clearly I have not got over Kit!). I kind of knew my marriage would end as it did - possibly heightened neuromodulators give insight! And I know that I'd have been so wrong to have given into fear, to have been sensible and not to have taken that chance, to have said no to all that joy and love! Oh certainly Prince Charming was out there (I'm laughing as I write that! Basically, life is short and I loved the man I married) The choice is simple, do you want love, then be brave, open and vulnerable - or no - then stay safe, shut up, and shut down, and demand that others do the same to keep you safe.

And then he is talking about the Gloria films, where Gloria is talking to Carl Rogers about her difficult relationship with her father - and Carl replies that she would make a lovely daughter. Kit explains that Gloria can't accept this love from Carl, because what she experiences is the emotional reaction Erskin calls juxtaposition...I think she is seeing an old man actually, and he is way out of order!

He - "Her response is not 'how lovely' it's 'but you don't even know me'....and his response was, 'I know my experience of you now and I would like to know you more' and she didn't accept it...but she did later but not in that particular session. and again, there's an important thing because very often I see, well - two things happen - the client will tell you what they want and if you don't listen they will keep telling you until you listen, that's one thing, if you miss it they will keep telling you. But it also happens the other way around - you try and give a client what they need, what they clearly need and it's invisible to them, they can't see it because they are filtering it out, and you keep giving it to them until they say 'OK, I'm ready for it now. And I mean you don't keep on giving it to them and they are resisting and then they bolt out of the door and never come back. I mean you keep having it in mind, and giving them a little bit more until it looks like they might be ready for it...For example I had one client for was it three years..."

He tells me that she sat where I am sitting. 

He interpreted her body language as saying '

"I'm not going to accept any love from anyone at all least of all you". 

And then he says - 'after three years she reached a point where she 'completely transformed.'

How would you interpret what I've just heard?

Here is Kit's view.

He - "And again there's that juxtaposition, I'm coming here for stuff that I want. But don't you dare give it to me. Because it is fear, that developmental fear 'I'm not allowed to be loved, I'm not allowed to be accepted' but I desperately want it. And there's - it's what my supervisor called 'the client's dilemma' which I think is a wonderful phrase, because everybody has their dilemma that they bring to therapy. In other words the internal contradiction that is keeping them stuck - and very often the answer is, 'I want you to help me to heal by giving me what I didn't have - but don't you dare give it to me. Is all this adding up?"  

I can never know exactly what she went through.

But I can imagine and the word ordeal comes to mind! 

Three years is a long time and a lot of money to sit here and feel what? 

As I feel perhaps? 

What made her come back, week after week if it is true that her body language said that she wasn't going to accept anything. Well, this is Kit's interpretation, and I'm frantically asking myself is this about me? Or put another way, am I going mad? In my head I'm asking myself, was she in love with him? Was the 'completely transformed' moment when she realized that whatever is going on here in this therapy thing, it is just too messed up and plain too weird to fight against? At which point I like to believe her sanity intervened, flipped the switch and she left! Saying to herself, 'it is time to leave, but do it gracefully and do not under any circumstances let him know what's happening! That is after all, the safest ways out of the client-in-love-with-the-therapist dilemma. 

As he related this tale to me I was thinking, but she probably needed your arms around her and the promise of a future in which she could tell you how much she loved you!  Three years! What did she want? What made it worth her while to sit where I now sit? The reasons why I'm not sitting here tense is only Wim Hof method, that I practice controlling my autonomic responses. I've been educated by my counselling training to stay in touch with whatever I feel and, more importantly I don't beat myself up. 

But if she felt as I feel? Poor woman - just tension and silence, if she was too scared to reveal her need for this charade to end and reality to begin, that makes total sense in this therapy room! In this room pain is gloved and delivered softly. But in almost every therapy room any invite from the client indicating a need for the therapist to be a whole person is deflected with kindly meant words.  'I'm wondering what this means to you -  to feel this need to know me - where do you think it may come from...'. 

In short, the communication or ability to create dialogue by a client in the therapy room, is traditionally restricted by convention and skewed by theory. 

I expect that if they had met in a bar every week - she wouldn't have greeted him with the clenched fists and tension, he describes. 

The therapy situation can feel inhumane, restrictive and wrong. 

But perhaps this situation wasn't as I imagine - who knows!  

I'm clearly seeing her as a sister! 

And now he's telling me that for years, Gloria and Rogers would write letters to each other, and she would address him as my therapeutic father. 

I think her daughter Pammy said that Gloria called him 'my ghost father'. His problematic body only words, Air and Aethyr. No masculine intrusions, even of the ectoplasmic kind!

He says - "So she accepted what he gave to her, but not straight away. He was a surrogate father for her, and that's rather wonderful....which is where Heinz Kohut who was really psychodynamic but thought he was humanistic -  Self-psychology, and I don't think that he said much that was useful but one thing that was useful was the question of who am I to the client which he called transference needs....."

And yes, we have been here before...And if we had ended with an invitation from him for me to keep writing to him? Well gentle reader, you wouldn't be reading about my sessions. I would have felt respected and valued, instead of SPOILER ALERT!

Demonized as a Toad Queen, l33t hacker!

He - "And that's all keyed in with, what is it that the client needs to hear, what are the developmental deficits. The only odd one out I think is going to be CBT which goes, I don't really care what is happening in the past, think yourself better! Well that's not going to work is it...."

I am tempted to be equally as brutal as I begin to answer this, and then stop myself! 

And I'm left with this problem:

His faith in the theory that clients are only ever tense and stuck because of their developmental issues, raises a lot of questions about therapists, therapy techniques and dogma.

"Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose". 8th November 2021.

'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 of his words. I'm thinking that surely this is because he perceives how I feel about him, in his heart, in his very bones. And he can't, wont talk about it?

As much as I empathize, it is horrible being on the client end of this!

So no I don't talk about light and fluffy things, I was trying to talk about memory last week...then had to change tack to something less neurobiological!

Whatever.

Isn't this all another way to say that he wants me gone?

But I would think that, because catastrophe is so much more attractive to the mind!

Right then, being as I don't know, and it isn't my role to ask the questions I'm just going to stay on the surface. He's going to have to work a lot harder on putting his feelings into words if he wants me to actually know what he thinks. I wont play guessing games.

He - "Sometimes I think the subtext is in what isn't said, in other words if somebody is paying for sessions  and they are talking about seeing their aunty and how full the shops were the other day, what are they avoiding? And they are still coming, and they are still coming. What are they avoiding? That's something that is worth asking directly I think -  'I notice that we are talking about...' and 'I get the sense that that really isn't why you are here' you know, there are all sorts of ways of addressing that"

I ask - "Does that usually work"

He - "yes <pause> yes..."

Me - "It gives them permission to talk perhaps"

He - "There is also something about the subtext, because the reason they are here <pause> may not be to do with anything you are talking about - It's back to that thing I've spoken about before, 'who am I to the client'. And what am I providing that they can't get anywhere else"?

He's said 'they are avoiding saying something' 

I certainly am!

And I've said 'they need permission to talk' 

And I certainly do!

I wish I could feel safe enough to tell him, but I really don't.

So I'm talking about an assignment, for my other course. I begin with the notion that Freud derailed his patient's entrapment in the inexplicable, by making it explicable with a powerfully shocking explanation that could never be tested, or ever talked about by the patient with anyone other than Freud!

Actually I see Freud as a great showman, rather like Charles Dickins! Freud's shocking narratives sold books, and filled lecture halls. And his words have made me laugh out loud so many times! 

An example:

Our patient gradually learns to understand that she has banished clocks and watches from her room during the night because the clock is the symbol of the female genital. The clock, which we have learned to interpret as a symbol for other things also, receives this role of the genital organ through its relation to periodic occurrences at equal intervals. The special fear of our patient, however, was that the ticking of the clock would disturb her in her sleep. The ticking of the clock may be compared to the throbbing during sexual excitement. Frequently she had actually been awakened by this painful sensation...

Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (p. 157). Kindle Edition. 

Throbbing clocks - oh my! Good to know (I'm being ironic) that Freud's patient finally gave up her positive denial and mocking doubt, and accepted his interpretation:

In the working out of the interpretations I had to hint and suggest to the girl, and was met on her part either by positive denial or mocking doubt. This first reaction of denial, however, was followed by a time when she occupied herself of her own accord with the possibilities that had been suggested, noted the associations they called out, produced reminiscences, and established connections, until through her own efforts she had reached and accepted all interpretations.

Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (p. 156). Kindle Edition. 

Why was she in therapy?

A nineteen-year old, well-developed, gifted girl, an only child, who was superior to her parents in education and intellectual activity, had been wild and mischievous in her childhood, but has become very nervous during the last years without any apparent outward cause.

Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (p. 155). Kindle Edition.

She had become nervous for no apparent reason, but it was all fine once she accepted Freud's interpretations. 

Which sets me off talking to him about the alternative, to create a space in which a client is able to explore their edge of awareness feelings. This was Gendlin's work, to enable a person to sense the resonance between words and their inner sense, their wordless thinking process. 

And right now I'm challenging Kit's view of the therapeutic interaction. 

I sure feel subversive. 

And heretical. 

And through his words I think I'm hearing that he doesn't understand edge of awareness, he imagines it to be 'lightbulb moments' those flashes of insight when a person suddenly gets why they think in the way they do, or why they did x,y or z. 

But that isn't edge of awareness.. 

Anyway I agree with him - rather than explain. Because if I said 'no, edge of awareness is closer to the process Jung used when he wrote his Black books (later to become the Red Book)' we wouldn't have got anywhere good.

I agree with him, so he agrees with me. 

And on we go talking at 'crossed purposes' and getting on really well. 

Or perhaps he is hating every second? 

I will never know.

I ask him about Wittgenstein's 'Language games'. "All language undoes itself" as a hint and commentary on our process. Latter - after a brief diversion around Logical Positivism and postmodern foolishness.. 

He says - "But there is something beautiful about language isn't there..."

We are speaking via Zoom.

He says..."I can't quite see but it looks as if there are red roses behind you... who was it...Scottish poet, I can see his face - died young - had lots of babies all over the place, wrote lots of poetry about women but didn't really respect them, clearly - Um, there's a day named after him!"

Me - "Oh Robbie Burns?! 

He - "Yes! My love is like a red, red rose - which of course is nonsense in terms of logical positivism, but we all know what it means, it is still meaningful - it is conveying something about somebody's beauty"

Oh no...arrows. 

Those words straight and true, fly direct into my loving heart. Red, red, roses are emblematic of rich, sensual love. But my red roses are poppies, the emblem of hallucinogenic - death like - painless sleep / mother of morphine. Arrows...needles. I gather my self, reconnect psyche, body, pneuma...and tell of Robbie Burns using a diamond tipped pen to engrave poems on pub windows. Granted, this may seem tangential; far from the numerous meanings enfolded in the red lips of the rose with its connection to the twenty-two paths between the sephirot, the totality of experience - the discursive paths traversed to unite the shattered worlds...

Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,

Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those

Who sought thee at the Holy Sepulchre,

Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir

And tumult of defeated dreams...

WB Yeats.  

With Yeats in my mind we end, talking about with Francesco Petrarca, not Ficino or Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and certainly not Yeats.

He says- "I'm wondering you know - because we've been all sorts of places today - I find this so interesting. On the course do you ever get the chance to have conversations like this?"

Neoplatonism?

No - it has not come up as a subject during my training - and yet its concepts underlie so much of what we are taught...!

Me - "No"

He - "When I was a student we had lots of coffee fueled conversations until 3 am which were very exciting when you are in your early twenties. It was great, and I loved it. and it's a great sadness to me that I've never ever been able to capture it since."

OK, well I've done my very best!

 WOULD that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!

We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;

And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,

Has awakened in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.

 

A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled, the lily and rose;

Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,

Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:

For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam: I and you!

 

I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,

Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;

Soon far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the flames would we be,

Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!

WB Yeats. 

1st November 2021.

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 rich work! This is fundamental to how we construct 'I' 'Me', 'Us, relationship, belief and meaning. 

He doesn't join in. 

I change tack.

I'm talking about seeing the film version of Frank Herbert's Dune.

He - "So who was the character that you were likened to by your teacher"?

Me - "Jessica..."

He - "And who is she..."

Now, I'd got the impression from his initial response that he had read the book? In which case, how would you not know who Jessica is! I'm assuming that this is some kind of Kohut tomfoolery and head into comedy mode - again - as I say that I hoped my son would be the Kwisatz Haderach! 

He doesn't join in.

We join together on Marx, via the phenomenon of how people suffer exploitation via mythologies that mediate and control who has power. And then he brings it back to memory, and we are talking about how stories fill in the gaps, often creating what seems to be a cover story. And the moral dilemma when a person's cover story doesn't correspond with anything the therapist considers ethical. 

My answer is to work with the story - always! 

But I'm curious what his version will be. 

So I ask.

He - "The difficulty comes if you recognise that the framework in which somebody puts their experience is in itself problematic"

Me - "Could you say some more about that please, could you give me an example of a problematic framework"?

He - "Well if a client's way of life involves visiting certain websites and identifying scapegoats, and they are going to tell you that that is really helpful because now they know who to blame - then what do you do therapeutically?"

I'd just ask them what difference it makes for them to know who is to blame, and how it helps them, and then ask how else they can get those moments in more positive ways. But I'm only going to be talking about this if they say that there is really is a problem here...otherwise, I would be making a value judgement about their life. 

I don't say that.

Me - "Thank you for clarifying. Yes...what do you do therapeutically?"

He - "In my experience it doesn't come up that often, but it does come up. Then it is a dilemma when they are absolutely hell-bent on convincing you. And they don't think that the therapeutic space will work unless you are convinced - then we are into very tricky territory."

Me - "There are two things here. Their explanation of the cause of their discomfort, which you can hear in their diagnosis and their cure for the problem. And then secondly their need for someone else to confirm it. That for me is the curious part."

He - "It is what Heinz Kohut would call a twinship transference need, in other words the client needs to think that the therapist is a person like me. A person who 'gets' me because he or she is like me. Now some people don't have that belief and some people do. And if you do then if I know that its all the Xs fault, then I know its all the Xs fault as well. The reason Kohut called it a transference need is because it is about developmental deficits. So somebody as a child felt as if no one understands me, no one gets me, no one knows what it is like to be me, and nobody really made the effort to have the child feel as if they belonged, then that's going to become a chronological need for the person. And a person like that is likely to think that their therapeutic needs are going to be met by having a therapist on the same side as them - which of course we want to be anyway - but that will mean very particular things for that sort of person. 'I know what's wrong with the world and you do as well don't you - it's all the Xs fault isn't it' and then you are in very, very difficult territory".

Me - "Yes, it is very difficult...what do you do?"

Oh! I'm doing twinship...

I don't say that!

Instead we both dissolve into laughter!

He - "Well I mean there is a book in this isn't there! A very tortured book I think that ends with - well, here's a few good ideas in here but there's no good answer to it! - I mean when somebody wants to tell you that they know who is secretly running the world and they want you to agree, well it's a matter of integrity isn't it"...

Me - "Ultimately though...it is a person's explanation for what is happening to them"

He - "But I think that there is something very important emotionally going on, which is 'I feel isolated in the world and I don't want to feel isolated. I'm one of the very few people who know the secrets of how the world really works, and most people don't know. And I don't want to feel isolated. So agree with me...' I think that is what is really going on....it's a symbolised re-enactment of their childhood experience. 'I am in this family, and people are against me, and no one even notices me the way I want to be noticed'. Becomes, 'I am in the world and the world is malevolent and I'm not even noticed in the way I want to be noticed' it just transfers across, so they look for the therapist to be an ally - so that they are noticed by somebody who knows X is 'controlling everything' " 

Or do they simply feel that now they know the true state of affairs it is abhorrent for them to watch 'innocent' others suffer? And my task is to hear and reflect what they can do that will do good and not cause harm,

Me - "But in terms of interaction - I'm assuming from what you have said it would mean that you couldn't work with them"?

He - "I have worked with clients like that. It's really hard going....The work, as far as I'm concerned is exactly as I understood that you were saying before therapeutically. That is, helping the client come to the understanding that how they are symbolizing their experience is a core experience, and how that is being re-enacted in the world. I mean these are beliefs, of course. Which are reinforced by the people they choose to associate with. And you are coming in and challenging that potentially, by saying 'Well I don't think it is X' or actually you don't need to say that, just not agree with them - if that's what they are looking for. And in my experience it is possible to go as far as getting someone to recognise that was my core experience, and what I'm experiencing in the world now is replicating that"

Unless of course their perception of reality was correct and your assumptions about their assumptions were incorrect? The only question that matters is, do they intend to do something that will harm others as a consequence.

No, I don't say that.

Me - "So it would be a focus on emotional tone, texture."

He - "Absolutely, you can do that much. Taking the next step to say ' and therefore there is a question mark over whether all this conspiracy stuff is actually true'...that's the hard bit. Because that's getting them to recognise that they are replicating, but going the next step to say 'does it feel true because I'm replicating  something that was true, or is the replicating replicating something that was real, but now isn't real'? - that's the hard work"

Unfortunately new and fearful realities in the present that are too different to anything a person has previously experienced can only be understood by them in terms of what has come before - this is something Aby Warburg called cause projection -  until a new understanding is created the present inevitably feels like replication! And there may have been much more going on in the original scene too...

No, I certainly did not say any of that!