The Black Box.

  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 to say "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 ...

Horn Ur Marken by THE JANITORS So far I have focused on spirit.. Soul is different... "From the intimate, inner and psychological point of view, the forest is the place of the soul's operations, of inner transformations and purification". Cirlot, Figuras del destino, 43. All I know is that during the year before I told him about my feelings,  I was haunted by the song at the top of this page -  And when I was thinking of asking for my session notes, I was haunted by another song. CRAWLER by IDLES Erik Davis explains the divide. By soul, I basically mean the creative imagination, that aspect of our psyches that perceives the world as an animated field of powers and images. Soul finds and loses itself in enchantment; it speaks the tongue of dream and phantasm, which should never be confused with mere fantasy. Spirit is an altogether different bird: an impersonal, incorporeal spark that seeks clarity, essence, and a blast of the absolute. Archetypal psychologist James Hill...

The process by which experience arises is the same whether we are dreaming or awake. The world is a dream, the teacher and the teaching are a dream, the result of our practice is a dream; there is no place where the dream breaks until we are liberated into pure rigpa. Until then, we continue to dream ourselves and our lives in both the dream and the physical dimension. Wangyal, Tenzin . In the Tibetan view, the body is full of channels (tsa), and mind (tigle) rides on air-currents (lhung) all through the body. So how one sits, one's posture, matters. Exercises such as prostrations stretch out the channels making it easier for mind to flow through the body. In Tibetan theory, during sleep there is little or no input from the body, therefore to observe dreaming is to observe - in Jungian terms - one's spirit unaffected by the external, physical world. Dream yoga is the practice of lucid dreaming - being awake inside your own dream.  A way to observe soul through Spirit. The term...

Before I head back into the subject of Eros and psychotherapy, 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 experience of being human. Not least because I find it difficult to understand the difference between spirit and soul. So many writers have used the term soul for both - or spirit for both! 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 . For it interfaces soul and body and enables consciousness. The mode of communication created by spirit is imagination, the c...

 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...

The 3lack 3ox contained some journal notes, all hastily written into my phone.  When I read those notes I was surprised! I discovered that it had been the Brian Thorne incident that had caused me to seriously consider recording our sessions. I had thought it was being called a minx. I also thought that I'd recorded the 'Thorne' session.  Now I understand why this isn't the case. But way back in February 2021 when he raised an eyebrow, looking directly at me and said....... ....my response, after the rippling shock waves had passed through me and beyond, was to question and doubt   my behaviour , not his.  It was the Brian Thorne disagreement four months later that actually enabled me to doubt him . At the time, or rather during that session, I was so blindsided by the energy of his disagreement! I had no idea what pulled him away from the subject of should there be or not be a governing body who decides what qualifications a person must have to be a therapist ...

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 is it that makes rules that are maintained to 'protect' the client, sometimes 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 - rai...