The Black Box.

The two books I'm exploring for this section of my investigation into how Eros is handled during therapy, fit nicely together. The books I'm reading are: The story of Mrs Keech - How Prophecy Fails , and David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity . The question I'm thinking about right now is, what makes a good theory? The first part of answering how do we know is to create a good theory. Clearly a compelling explanation isn't always going to be a good theory! Mrs Keech might have had theories about her experience of channeling messages from beyond. Hopefully I will get to read them! Meanwhile what happened is, Mrs Keech received compelling communications from extraterrestrial beings who told her of cataclysmic events due to occur on a very specific date. When on that very specific date the earth failed to crack open and the ocean failed to drown America, and when a significant number of flying saucers failed to appear. The prophecy was, in Mrs Keech's mind, not...

Mrs Keech was queen of the compelling explanation. I'm surprised that her story hasn't been made into a film or stage play! Whilst at the same time her story is so familiar to us all, it might be considered cruel or insensitive to display exactly how mad we can all be. Leon Festinger studied Mrs Keech and her group to understand how disconfirmation affected her, and her group of believers. He was aware that empirical evidence absolutely does not shift a compelling belief! But he wondered what disconfirmation would do to the compelling explanation. His study of what happens next after nothing happens (instead of the great event) is fascinating. And informative! Because the therapist had a compelling explanation about therapy that conflicted with mine and I'd expected him to be interested in the difference! I was interested in his version, primarily because it said a lot about him, and because it was compelling - like an advert, or the words of a car salesman.  It was importa...

This is a problem that anyone who has experienced discrimination or bad therapy, faces. We recognise a wrong because we feel the physical version of the Shepherd tone, an endless descending sense of wrongness, and emotional pain. At this point, most of us think we are being too sensitive. And at the same time we think about all the times something similar has happened, and everything negative anyone has ever said about us. Because it must be us. As self defence clicks in, it is tempting to make an official complaint, trusting others to clarify and adjudicate. So many people, most people, me included ask if what's happening fits a publicly agreed on idea or description of a wrong? And if it doesn't - Ah, how do we know that what is happening is harmful. Self doubt, ignoring pain. We keep on feeling terrible. We hope it will change, stop, get better. We have no idea how this can happen, there is no reason, nor explanation that fits.  We have noticed a problem and tried to underst...

I fell asleep at half five this afternoon and I awoke at ten thirty -three hours ago. It's now early morning. I'm reading, making notes, I'm in my element.  Glad nothing is booked for today! I'm reading The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. It was my rare good fortune to have been part of a couple of forums (Listserv, remember that?) with him during the early 2000's and so here I am, learning from David again, by asking how do we know what we know? This is epistemology, it is the beginning, and possibly the subject, of the whole book. Relevant to me because epistemology is a large part of my personal research into the mechanism of the compelling explanation. A compelling explanation often has only an emotional component to make it an explanation.  'We don't know how it works it just does ' isn't a good explanation. It doesn't create knowledge, and how knowledge isn't made, how it is suppressed and destroyed is also epistemology. David w...

One of the legacies of my therapy is that I doubt myself about how bad the end of my marriage was. The therapist dismissed my fear and it was too easy to feel that he was right...and something of that injustice remains. Finding my diary shows me that things were much, much worse than I remember. It shows me that when I heard fear in my voice as I spoke about my husband to the therapist, my fear was justified.  So what had happened on April 4th 2020? I'd asked my husband the question again 'is it over (his relationship with a colleague) because it doesn't feel as if it is!'  Five months later, there was the final lie in September 2020. After that I was well on the way to understanding my true predicament. The metaphor was  'Alien' the film. My husband, like the synth - the character Ash - had had an agenda. The crew - our family - were expendable. And we had been unwitting hosts to something that was unable to stop itself tearing us apart from the inside out. Fo...

I was looking through photos on an old phone and I came across this capture - one more evening in Hell with my lying husband.  A Friday night six years ago. I had felt shock, pain, grief. I couldn't see his wedding rings! And so I dared ask the question. His response, how could you doubt me?' was aimed like a dagger at my heart, my feelings, my love, aiming to make me feel uneasy, to doubt myself, said with a warning tone. And this was December - he was already 'giving her lifts home'... He wasn't wearing his wedding rings because he had already gone, just too scared of her husband to make the move a physical reality. Had to wait until May for the grand revelation. For some reason - oh yes, because he was scared of her husband - he had to make me think everything was all about our son, that nothing was wrong between us. So when the therapist said (several, many times) 'what makes you think that I...? '  Well now, where have I come across a similar sidestep...

  To read the post: https://open.substack.com/pub/3lack3ox/p/question-one? My Substack posts are more logical, better English versions, distillations of the contents of this blog. But to the question, is unconditional positive regard from your therapist all an act? My answer is, no. Or, yes - it could be. Therapy is a vocation for many therapists. And many therapists discover that therapy isn't about feeling rewarded by following their vocation. Others discover how to balance on a tightrope that stretches between hope and fear. And because they can do this, their clients likewise pick up the skill. Not being phased isn't an act. It comes from a genuine trust in oneself. The vocation only led you here. Now you better find out what it's all about! Going back to the subject, authenticity. Once the dreaded Kohuts were mentioned - read the post! I could not trust the therapist at all, well not as a therapist. He'd already blown his therapy credentials to bits by calling me a...