The Black Box.

Perhaps I'm in a tearing everything down mood. After my week off from navigating the complexity of what the NHS thinks therapy should be, the complexity of what parents want therapy to do for their child, and the child sat in front of me who just wants it all to be ok...I'd told admin and a fellow sessional counsellor that I was gone. Well, going. I'd planned to stop working there in October. It doesn't help that the rooms are hotter than the sun. Pro-tip, have laptop continually in YouTube land, playing a vision of the sea, and the sound of the waves.  It helps. This is all I can do! This morning, I'm in the other place and I got the room with air conditioning..and I'm  working with adults who want therapy, and I get half an hour to write my notes. Bliss. After my notes were done for this morning I went back to the letter to my manager at -hotterthanthesun  place, and changed what I'd written during my holiday. Draft one had said that I was leaving  I don...

 Over on substack I've been wading through the words stuck and unsticking, writing the complaint. The complaint I said I'd never make. And at 4am this morning, having woken up in as cold a cold sweat is possible in this greenhouse world, I went back to edit out the name of the therapist's 'ethical body '. I have to view myself through the dominant culture's lens, and agree that I might be malicious and wrong. Unfortunately I'm very good at doing this and the force of it has already stopped me from speaking up when I should, too many times. It has meant that people assume my silence on a matter means that I'm fine. It has meant that I can't see myself as a victim until it is too late. And it still renders me powerless. After editing the post I started thinking about my mother in law who dared not to speak up. So she died of sepsis from bedsores. Yes, they are connected. One thing led to the other. A fundamental principle in her home was of keeping the...

 I'm letting myself imagine writing the complaint. I know - I said that I would never do it. I believed that the victim statement should be enough. But, but...just about everyone knows, therapy is giving a person space, safety and time to reassociate painful memories, catastrophic replay even, in such a way as to create safety and reintegration, to put episodic memory on to the autobiographical time-line. Epistemic justice isn't in the ethical guidelines. Without information about all that had happened 'in his room' I could not feel safe, I was in catastrophic replay and so I was retraumatised. And yes, I can back this all up with quotes and theory and yes David (see previous post) - I can write an elegant and probably correct explanation of what made this therapy harmful. But...as I go through this blog to look for supporting evidence something keeps shouting at me to be heard. This whole psychic paedophilia thing. Sorry, it sounds extreme! It isn't. But perhaps I...

The two books I'm exploring for this section of my investigation into how Eros is handled during therapy, fit nicely together. The books I'm reading are: The story of Mrs Keech - How Prophecy Fails , and David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity . The question I'm thinking about right now is, what makes a good theory? The first part of answering how do we know is to create a good theory. Clearly a compelling explanation isn't always going to be a good theory! Mrs Keech might have had theories about her experience of channeling messages from beyond. Hopefully I will get to read them! Meanwhile what happened is, Mrs Keech received compelling communications from extraterrestrial beings who told her of cataclysmic events due to occur on a very specific date. When on that very specific date the earth failed to crack open and the ocean failed to drown America, and when a significant number of flying saucers failed to appear. The prophecy was, in Mrs Keech's mind, not...

Mrs Keech was queen of the compelling explanation. I'm surprised that her story hasn't been made into a film or stage play! Whilst at the same time her story is so familiar to us all, it might be considered cruel or insensitive to display exactly how mad we can all be. Leon Festinger studied Mrs Keech and her group to understand how disconfirmation affected her, and her group of believers. He was aware that empirical evidence absolutely does not shift a compelling belief! But he wondered what disconfirmation would do to the compelling explanation. His study of what happens next after nothing happens (instead of the great event) is fascinating. And informative! Because the therapist had a compelling explanation about therapy that conflicted with mine and I'd expected him to be interested in the difference! I was interested in his version, primarily because it said a lot about him, and because it was compelling - like an advert, or the words of a car salesman.  It was importa...

This is a problem that anyone who has experienced discrimination or bad therapy, faces. We recognise a wrong because we feel the physical version of the Shepherd tone, an endless descending sense of wrongness, and emotional pain. At this point, most of us think we are being too sensitive. And at the same time we think about all the times something similar has happened, and everything negative anyone has ever said about us. Because it must be us. As self defence clicks in, it is tempting to make an official complaint, trusting others to clarify and adjudicate. So many people, most people, me included ask if what's happening fits a publicly agreed on idea or description of a wrong? And if it doesn't - Ah, how do we know that what is happening is harmful. Self doubt, ignoring pain. We keep on feeling terrible. We hope it will change, stop, get better. We have no idea how this can happen, there is no reason, nor explanation that fits.  We have noticed a problem and tried to underst...