The Black Box.

Once upon a time psychotherapists truly believed that the task of grieving was a severing; they believed, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the faster we ignore any memories of our lost loved ones - the faster we will recover. The work of grieving was understood in terms of energy, that the energy we had invested in the beloved now flowed into the grave with them. And, the more we remembered, the more we felt the loss.  Put bluntly, in the older psychodynamic model - the dead provide us with no energy - and as our energy cannot be reciprocated by the dead, we should move on, let go, or risk depression.  I cannot for a second, agree with this! In the book, Continuing Bonds (1994) an example is given of psychotherapy at its most heart rending brutal worst. The concept that a refusal to let go of the loved one is a symptom of psychopathology justified a show of strength and resolution by a therapist as he metaphorically performed Chod, on a sixteen year old girl's mother...

I've been keeping an eye on the incoming complaints about therapists, to keep track and to learn what it is that most clients complain about. And the answer isn't predatory sex fiend therapists - a complaint male therapists most fear receiving! No, the most common reason for clients feeling traumatized by therapists is, sudden, inexplicable endings. Especially a sudden ending after a reassurance that therapy wont end without agreement! I'm guilty of doing this - twice - ending therapy without giving a transparent reason. Both situations were complicated by the rules of the agency I was working for/and/or my status as a student/and/or advice from a supervisor. I see therapy culture as the problem here. And I wonder how much of my therapist's catastrophic mishandling of 'my erotic transfer' was a direct effect of his training and his 'developmental issues'. He believed in 'developmental issues' so it is fair and reasonable to assume that they were ...

There is in many of us, obviously, a deep-seated desire to assent to extraterrestrial forces – to be embraced by them, overwhelmed by them, and if possible deprived by them of our own weary responsibility for ourselves. ​— ​“HICCUPS FROM OUTER SPACE”: RUSSELL DAVIES, REVIEWING CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, IN THE OBSERVER, MARCH 19, 1978 Vallee, Jacques. Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults (p. 32).  Eros is deeply, deeply irrational, and traditionally understood as a yearning for the sublime. A chalice of wonder and bliss we can't ignore.  And so we seek the outer to ignite the inner... The quote from Russell Davies made me think. About the sublime. About Eros. About yearning. And I'd not considered how powerful people's yearnings for "The space brothers" a faith in salvation from above, can be - until I read Messengers of Deception . The space brothers, those benevolent and wise aliens, are a symbol. A yearning for wisdom rich, anomalous saviour...

Nigredo, or blackness, is the first stage of the alchemical magnum opus, representing putrefaction, decomposition, and the "dark night of the soul". I am not sitting on rocks looking out at the infinitely blue-black deep of Muxia. Instead, I watch waves of blackness roll through me. YouTube lets me know when he has posted. I don't follow him, but YouTube knows that I care and so...so even if I didn't want to know, I know and it is my habit to  'turn my ear to The Great Below'. It hurts. There is no remedy. No truth. No flux, no dissolution, no nigredo.  The subject of his video? Blackness. Dressed in black, black background. His lecture tears my heart wide open. We are so far apart that we meet. Enantiodromia - Jung, following Heraclitus, so named this phenomenon. In the philosophy of Heraclitus it [enantiodromia] is used to designate the play of opposites in the course of events—the view that everything that exists turns into its opposite. C.G. Jung (1949)...

Back in the library at dinner time. VNV Nation on my headphones. Short cut.  Condense everything to a very short, easy to understand paragraph. Go! I believe that the therapist understood 'therapy' as  a process of separation; child strategies from adult knowledge. Child reality, written in the mind in response to less than perfect parents. In the therapist's understanding these feelings and beliefs are the problem. They created the filter through which the world appears - distorted . Remedy, again I stress that this is simply a model, comes through a dialogue that leads to understanding the filter. New understanding is the basis for separating the self from old beliefs to ways to see and feel.  Method? The nurturing parent in the therapist meets the Child in the client, and the Child feels understood and secure in that relationship. The security enables to therapist and client to speak Adult to Adult. And? And I don't agree. I don't disagree either, but for goodne...

My Substack post is a reflection on my previous blog entry, centering on the problem with the 'reparative' relationship.  Over here... [+] Meanwhile, here is a  Link  to a podcast which explores an extreme example of reparative therapy gone wrong! It was liberating for me to hear that the 'therapist' at the centre of this podcast also uses the police - accusing people trying to get answers, of harassment ! Opening up the question once again, about how to safely communicate complaint to a therapist (my future domain).  I found this podcast helpful because it describes the process a client goes through, of bewilderment leading to dependency, this podcast helps me to understand how compelling the theory of childhood abuse and neglect can be in determining how therapy proceeds regardless of the client's facts, narrative and needs. Now I didn't really buy into the therapist's belief system. Understanding my childhood is a journey I've already taken and I had...

The therapist contaminates your session with their prejudice. Unfortunately I didn't record any of our sessions until after the great rupture  had occurred - the infamous 'Brian Thorne session' - so there are no records from the beginning of therapy.  This means that the recorded dialogues are mostly but not entirely about therapy, rather than therapy.  This post is specifically about my first weeks of sessions, when I'd come to therapy weeks after my husband suddenly left; and I had come to therapy with the hope of being less panicky and more clear headed about my way forward.  But what I encountered in those first sessions, was more like a battle. The therapist took a position on what had happened to me - and demonstrated in how he spoke, and in what he said that I should view my husband as  no good. Underneath this, the therapist diagnosed me as holding on to a fantasy out of fear of letting go . In truth I was holding on despite my very reasonable fear...