The Black Box.

This morning, is the anniversary of discovering my husband’s infidelity, and two years after my final therapy session. So I’m thinking about how perpetrators want their victim to be silent - and the many ways they achieve this.  Did the therapist win?  Well, I didn’t make the formal complaint. Some of the reasoning about the risks people face, can be found here:   https://5tarry3kies.blogspot.com/2026/06/dont-speak-out.html In September last year the therapist tried to silence me by going to the police to say that I was harassing him. The harassment was my victim statement, also the physical recordings and transcripts of two therapy sessions. The therapist was no doubt fearful - but of what, the police didn’t uncover. I imagine it was of a formal complaint! He used the fact that I’d posted the transcripts plus flash-drive through his door, as evidence that I’d ‘gone to his home’ which has a certain vibe and implication. I’d posted them through his door because I wouldn’t ...

 I remember how my mom used to make jam-jelly from raspberries. She would boil hundreds (I was a child, it sure looked like thousands!) of raspberries in big saucepans. Then, the red hot glistening goodness was poured into a white triangle shaped bag suspended under a chair put onto the table. A range of empty jars waiting patiently, and one by one, under the dripping bag they would go. It seemed to take forever, and so much raspberry was lost; all the seeds, bits of leaf. Ok, writing feels like this! So much information and different 'voices', or rather, there are different ways to express each point. I could use academic language, or dive directly into metaphor rich description!  I think the warning is on the table in front of me. The book is Continuing Bonds. A colleague warned me, she hasn't been able to read it. But I didn't think it would defeat me, I like heavy books, I love heavy subjects. And as I began reading, I understood the problem. The book is written in ...

I like the sensation of being too sleepy to go to bed - it makes writing easier.  And writing is never easy! See, I've been putting things off, things being a non-descript term for writing. My reasoning is nonsensical, something about how I should be focusing on writing a business plan, and thinking about how I shift more towards specialising in conflict resolution, especially between clients and therapists, rather than keep that promise to myself. See, I made a promise not to keep quiet. To live up to that, for the sake of my integrity, I need to write about this experience, the full blooded, adult version, for print. I've read too many articles that further the illusion that therapists are almost Holy in their ability to rise above physicality of attraction. The last one I read maintained such an ideal version of events, I felt as if it had been written by the counsellor equivalent of a Stepford wife! In this version of something eerily similar to my story (!) this counsello...

My apologies if the title puts you off reading. It would stop me. The hot air, manic panic and argument around the subject of UAPs, the feverish credulity, is off-putting. But... But, we live surrounded by random intrusions of the inexplicable, and our lives are dotted with so many uncontrollable events. Once upon a time religion offered meaning for the apparently meaningless experiences, then Freud began lecturing and selling books, and the increasing faith in scientific method helped replace religious interpretations with psychotherapy theory. If you get to watch 1960s therapy sessions - made for TV - you see the psychotherapist portrayed as a doctor of the soul.  Psychotherapy is being replaced by ufology?   I think so.  The individual who experiences, is no longer seen as suffering from a mental problem, the focus now is on the motive of the participants and the mechanics of errors in perception. We are all becoming very aware that the meaning of an experience is alte...

Here I go again, someone has paid me attention - and I would love there to be more, but we have only met socially; we have intense conversations followed by a flurry of WhatsApp messages. There are some flickers of hope - my friends said 'oh...he likes you!'  But me?  Zero confidence in myself.  I'm a shattered wreck. I burn. I panic The therapist is still in my heart. I can't grieve for the therapist, there isn't enough reality to grasp, to understand even. If I think of him - like now - my eyes fill with tears. And I'm going to say it again! I got over the end of 25 years of marriage in about six months because everything was clear, I got closure. But this, this falling in love with a therapist who refused to talk honestly, simply reacted towards me as if I should have known better...this so called therapeutic approach to this so called erotic transference replicated the damaging behaviour my husband used.  Ambiguous language for a start, some of the phrases s...

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 ...