The Black Box.

  Autumn Equinox 2024 . Updated Summer solstice 2025 . This blog begins on Glastonbury Tor .  High up - you can see for miles! It is understood as a magical place, the meeting point of many energy lines and forces. Many people come to stand there together.  No one single belief system rules, it is free and open to all.  Welcome! When I wrote the first post of this blog  I was in recovery from the therapy I left therapy feeling powerless, and silenced.  Again. During the gaslighting  that ended just two months before I started therapy, I had needed to ignore all and any thoughts or feelings that contradicted my husband's version of reality. If I allowed myself to take my thoughts and feelings seriously, I would try to find out the truth. And when I did that....let's just say it really wasn't worth it. The response from my husband would leave me wracked with pain and self blame.  This ended of course once I found out that he had been lying to ...

So I'm fascinated that my thing about Factor X and 'the compelling explanation' brings me back to Freud. I admire him. I'm grateful to him. But I don't like him! I see Herr Freud as Eros's pornographer, unlike Jung, and Hillman, who work from an older symbolism, with awe and wonder. Nevertheless, Freud stands behind modern day psychotherapy, and he certainly had encountered the process I'm seeking to unravel. So, let's go back!  When Freud was listening for the client's 'Factor X' he heard a lot of compelling explanations. Unfortunately Freud thought he knew what Factor X was, because in his view it was always the same one. Freud understood that the client's symptoms or compelling explanation was caused by the client's feelings. Or rather, the client's confusion and compelling explanation was an effect of the client blocking recognition of those feelings. Freud understood that Factor X  was like a rock under the river, causing ...

The 23rd of May has been an an overly significant date, too many times! Without doubt memory is the key to trauma and I'm really grateful for the EMDR I received over a year ago now. The trigger memory for treatment was the sound of the gate and my husband standing there. Waves of disapproval rolling off him, telling me I should not be burning things in the garden...who later that night would be tricked into going round to her house.  Where her husband was waiting... His car was a write off afterwards.  The photo reminds me of how much better I felt once I'd got the truth. Gaslighting ended. The earth was the earth once more, the sky only sky... Truth, even the worst truth is so much better than lies. But the 23rd. Between the garden gate and the car, there is the tree. The memory joins and flows into the feeling of walking out of Kit's room for the last time on the 23rd. The end, Muxia...too close. No smashed car moment, no sense of finally getting the truth. As I sat by t...

I could not understand why Kit thought I'd ever return as a client?  "I wasn't talking about you, I was talking about my principles, my ethical rule, that once a client always a client because you never know what the future is going to bring, and people do come back" ... he wasn't 'talking about me '.  Whilst at the same moment, talking to me  This erasure, this double bind, this? Well what on earth is it when a person uses the term 'you' and then makes clear that they don't mean you? Anyway! This led to me feeling so utterly rejected, disliked even. I'd dismiss it as utter ignorance on the part of the speaker...but, he is a therapist. and he doesn't think there is any need for apology. or reparation, so? So I blog. Experiencing this objectification, of being positioned as a role, classed as this other entity - no longer a person, a forever client - was such a corrosive poison that it has taken; I was about to say, it has taken this blo...

The joy of postmodern therapy, for both clients and therapists is in how a postmodern approach gives value to inspiration, creativity and the imagination. For we seek to recast the future and the past in ways that enable, and no longer disable. For us, the concept of mental illness as a loss of contact with reality , begs the question - whose reality? And that question has to be asked, because it places power at the core of diagnosis.  If, as the postmodern therapist tends to believe, if reality is to a large extent constructed, and if people arrive with different versions of reality, and if someone imposes their version of reality over the other person's...that may well be an abuse of power. It certainly is in therapy where the art is to enable a person to reconfigure their own reality! So the subject of power and how power can be inadvertently misused really bothers postmodern therapists.  It leads us to actively create verbal interactions that will enable our clients to tr...

The person using denial will create an altered reality.  It will be an interlocking web of denial statements and narratives.  They will import reasonable arguments to support their unreason.  They will use deception. They will re-frame using kindly terms for cruel words or actions.  And they will tell you again and again how nice and reasonable they are being... My advice - to myself - go re-read Marshall Rosenburg's book: Non-Violent Communication and remember, judgments of others point to one's own un-met needs.  So, take into account what is going on inside you. But don't do this to dismiss your intuition, gut feelings or fear. Problem.   So, imagine that you are in a situation that isn't OK.  Antidote . Make notes. Make recordings. The purpose of notes and recordings is to raise your awareness. Incidentally, what is it that they want you to rubber stamp for them? When you are clear in your own mind about what you need to change -  You let the...

As my eyes fill with tears... Listening to the track that is my song of the month. [+] Thinking, what is it about the story of this tragic therapy with Kit that matters so much? So much that I have to find a way through this. In other words, where does the energy for all these words come from? The pain in my heart from the unknowing, the lack of clarity or resolution with Kit is one thing. My 'problem' with the conduct of some therapists is another. It is time for me to think clearly about my own Factor Xs.  Factor 1. 'Mrs Stable'. My first marriage was to a gentle and kind man. But his shame, secrecy, out of control spending, and OCD behaviour were too much for me. We had two small children, and his credit card repayment each month was more than the mortgage. I said that we needed therapy.  What resulted was terrible therapy - from a highly qualified psychotherapist.  I'm not sure now that is the case - but esteemed yes, and in private practice.  My husband wou...