The Black Box.

Freeware was never the correct term. Yet the term freeware captures the sense of my intention. When I finally found enough courage to write to the therapist asking for some kind of resolution process (February 2024) he maintained that as he hadn't done anything unethical, there could not be a legitimate problem. He told me that I needed to 'let it go'. I said that unless there was a resolution process the whole thing would be 'freeware'. In retrospect, this is how I let it go.  Creative Commons doesn't sound as exciting as freeware. This blog is CC, not freeware exactly, but my intention is the same. It means no copyright restriction. This story can't belong to me alone...it would live and die with me, and that wont do. As I have said elsewhere: copy and paste - this is the original.  From here on, the 3lack 3ox is Kit-less. Outcome - he now stands as a symbol for any therapist who makes it impossible for their client to understand what is occurring in ...

  OK...so I honestly do not know where to start, because I've heard someone explain exactly what happened between Kit and I, and I feel sick and relieved, sad...but all of this, my whole blog and everything I've said. I feel like I stand at the edge of a cliff and I have to climb, not let go. The sensation of metaphorically throwing myself off is about oblivion, ending all my thoughts about this, letting go and just surrendering to a great big nothing - well that scares me more than trying to climb down. Because if I did that I'd be letting others down. The lecture has brought me to the edge! So there was a lecture about 'Erotic Transfer' from a person who had done his Masters researching how therapists understand their erotic feelings for their clients. As he explained his research and findings I felt as if I was being pulled in so many different directions; laugh or cry? I cried. He explained each stage I'd noticed about Kit's 'process' to such a ...

Not sure where I'm going with this, so I will just write and see.. Someone pointed me in the direction of Kendra, a woman who posted a succession of films about falling in love with her psychiatrist. I've only watched two YouTubes about her story so far - one from an expert in AI who was commenting mostly on how the 'magic mirror' quality of LLMs can reinforce error, as Kendra took to talking to two AIs about what happened. And the other YouTube is from a Dr in Seattle.  Briefly, this is the complaint Kendra makes against her psychiatrist is that because he had feelings for her, he 'bread crumbed' her into staying in therapy with him for four years.  This would be incredibly difficult to determine! But I think that question about intention is missing out something vital. What if all the usual questions about boundaries and ethical conduct fail to address the real issue that underlies the problem? What If the psychiatrist acted in the best and most ethical way an...

Every so often the pain of it takes my breath away. A sensation of being crushed, unable to breathe in, and too exhausted to breath out. As if I'm trying to hold back a river, trying so hard not to drown. Reading my notes on the philosophical underpinnings of psychiatry just now, the trigger word was positivism. How positivism privileges objectivity so that the subjective truths of distress and panic wrapped in metaphor and sensations can be dismissed as brain chemistry...Or in Kit's words, how a statement such as 'my love is like a red, red rose' makes no sense when viewed through the lens of logical positivism.  And I feel right now as if I'm standing on a seesaw, trying to find the balance point as each side of my conflicting views of what happened, seeking understanding of what was actually happening, battle for dominance. He said something about a rose, something about logical positivism... Again I felt as if he was close making us incestuous brother and sister...

I'm sitting in the library, a notebook, mango juice - just eaten my supermarket sandwich before I go back to work . I was trying to draw a mind map , to gather my thoughts. But I think writing here will help me to clarify... I'm very aware that complaints don't work out well for the person who complains. Recently a friend of mine walked out of her job. She had made a complaint about the behaviour of a male colleague - and her complaint was substantiated by other members of staff, but when she spoke about this with her practice manager things did not go well. She left her job. He got promotion. How this happened is so far inexplicable! Enough to say that she felt bullied and undermined by the complaints procedure itself. She felt that her conduct was instantly the focus of the complaint rather than the conduct of the person that she had complained about.  How did that happen? She felt 'as if the attack dogs had been released' and so she ran... It looks like ignori...

 "Good reasons" not to speak out...? Unfortunately there are plenty! Because this isn't a perfect world, this is real life. Fear is a legitimate response to threat, and an inequality of power. So, be aware of the way power and threat works. This can give you a way to think through how best to tell your story, and how best to alert others. To help you to identify what's happening, here is a list of the most common ways people are coerced into staying silent. 1. I can't bring public shame upon the community. This occurs a lot within spiritual abuse. Talking about the harm you know is being perpetrated by a fellow practitioner, or a beloved teacher is framed as your lack of compassion, forgiveness, wisdom or your lack of skill. It will be seen as a sign that you haven't worked hard enough on yourself. It will be seen as proof that you cannot forgive or show respect, or see the bigger picture. Therapists feel this too. We don't wish to bring our profession in...

Where does attraction live? In our heads? In our hearts? In the vagaries of the autonomic nervous system? Heading into darkening skies, stars flickering into vision, twilight. Following a path that was always there. As the sky dims a sensation of momentum and gravity brings you to the edge of a lake. Here the smooth water is so deeply blue, so silent. The air is perfumed, everything is waiting, and the trees seem to quiver as the moon rises. A quiet hush surrounds this eternal infinity.  This moment is old, it is primal, it is universal. And all it takes is your total surrender. As self dissolves into the void. -- I imagine that Kit would assess my previous post as indicating my closeness to a resolution?  As if by naming the harms done to me in the name of ethical conduct, I'm showing that I'm ready to move on. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing has changed, nothing can change. I can't resolve the fragments, too many missing pieces. Hieroglyphs without the Ro...