I began therapy last week. I've had two sessions so far, both have been superficially uneventful but beneath the surface there is a great deal of movement. It is something I am aware of physically in the shifting patterns of my eye twitch and my panic attacks and the various physical manifestations of anxiety I experience. It is something I am aware of emotionally as I have found myself near tears twice in a week and generally I feel rather out of control in regards to my emotions. Powerful feelings seem to possess me and take command of my decision making mechanism (what Freud would call the ego, I'll get to that in a moment) leaving me with an overall mix of excitement and fear. I'm excited in that these explosions of emotion represent to me a thawing out of a part of myself which has been frozen for roughly 10 years. I'm fearful for the same reason. What is coming lose within me I see as a great potentiality. It is my true self and I find myself confronted at last, after years of putting it off with the task of figuring out what the hell I really am.
What I know is that I am different. I am strange...odd, the sort of person that people are drawn to pay attention to but aren't sure if they should smile or snarl at. One thing I understand about these feelings that are returning to me is that as they were preserved so to speak, frozen they are feelings of my younger self. As I feel them I am flooded with memories of having had them, like putting on an old familiar jacket. A familiar memory that has accompanied an equally familiar feeling is the deep wish that I wasn't different. In recent years I have taken to defending weirdness, even exalting it as a virtue. And while it is true now that I do generally find "weird" people significantly more interesting than "normal" people, and while I can make an impassioned case on behalf of us weirdos everywhere by citing case after case of people who have changed the world...I still wish deeper down that I wasn't weird. It is terribly lonely and as much as you are afraid of us I assure you it is exponentially more frightening to be staring back at the room full of puzzled and concerned faces knowing they are all united by their recognition of your oddity.
As I said before on the surface the sessions have been uneventful. I have began to recount to this recent acquaintance (my therapist) the various trials and tribulations of my life. The first session focused largely on my anxiety and its hypothesized genesis, namely having been beaten by my step father for roughly 3 years. I'm sure reading that sentence is as uncomfortable for you as it is for me writing it. In recent years I have developed the tendency to sort of hit people over the head with that detail of my life as a way of shocking them away from prying to close to me. In my current state I again find myself reverting to older feelings and in this case I feel weird and burdensome for disclosing that reality, even to you the hypothetical reader. At my near core I feel a strong desire to apologize to you all for being weird, for saying things like that out loud. The second session was even less eventful on the surface of things. It began with a discussion of the previous week and included a guided meditation.
Beneath the surface though I feel tectonic shifts in my emotional awareness. I believe these shifts to be occurring not so much as a direct result of therapeutic methods but rather as a result of some dynamics intrinsic to the act of going to therapy at all. Those being #1 I have sought help. The mere act of seeking help is an enormous one for me because I fundamentally don't believe I deserve help. Another uncomfortable thought but there it is. #2 The relationship which forms between therapist and patient is built upon massive trust. The knowledge that she is legally and ethically prohibited from revealing things is helpful but of course there is a personal relationship built. It is comforting to me to know that she has standards of conduct which act as firewalls against my general propensity to destroy relationships. #3 The act of speaking things out loud to a person is in and of itself cathartic and helpful. It is not enough but it is something. I've come to believe generally in life the more we find the courage to make ourselves vulnerable the more we grow and the closer we get to some kind of lasting happiness. I am proud I have done that a bit in my first two sessions of therapy.
So having gone that far I am presently occupied with the task of building an intellectual fence. At least that's what it feels like. The fence is made of ideas and my understanding of them which will allow me to hide from anything too uncomfortable that may arise as a result of therapy. Meaning I'm coming up with ways to call bull shit on the whole field of psychoanalysis. In my hyper-analytic mind that means voraciously consuming major works in the field of psychology, researching contemporary responses, applications and criticisms of those works as well as major movements in the field. At the present I am reading a primer of the major theories of Freud. I started to read The Interpretation of Dreams a couple years ago but I found it to be laborious. Scientists always have to defend every step they take by fortifying every inch of ground they've covered by defining terms, summarizing previous studies both supportive and at odds with their view, and then mounds of evidence. I don't mind the evidence so much, particular in dream theory but it just takes so long to make a simple point. So I've started with a primer on Freud, got another on Jung in the pipeline. I've been reading Man and His Symbols by Jung for a couple weeks, pecking away here and there. I had begun this post with the intention of talking through my understanding of Freud thus far but I've filled enough of your screen with my self-indulgent bull shit for one sitting. Perhaps I'll return to Sigmund another time. I should probably start saying something half way interesting to the rest of the world out of civility to any god forsaken readers of this drabble out there.
Then again if this therapy thing maintains its current trajectory perhaps I'll also resume the writing practices of 10 years ago. In those days I believe I was capable of intellectual stimulation delivered in an entertaining manner. Then again I was probably just trying to get laid, or as Sigmund might say my id was working to achieve a release of tension in regards to the sex instinct which result in a release of psychic energy to the ego which manifested itself as my silly little ramblings, right Dr. Freud.
Good Times.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Monday, June 10, 2013
draftback
I started this a couple weeks ago and didn't finish it. Didn't want to let it die forever in my draft folder...
My thoughts tonight have turned towards the destruction and delusion of the self. I consider this an evolution in my personal ethos born from the experience of the past several months. I think often lately about something I said in an extremely rare fit of massive over confidence; I was speaking to some friends and I blurted out with anger that I was ready to conduct professionally. I believed it at the time and in full disclosure I do experience these cycles of self confidence and self hatred which at the apex of the cycle lead me to the conclusion that I am one of the best conductors on the planet. Of course at the worst they lead me to the conclusion that my mere existence on the planet is a drag on the species and the most moral thing I could do with my life is stop living. Nonetheless the memory for me encapsulates a former version of myself which has been destroyed in the past few months.
The story as I tell it begins with the boring details of my own wallowing and bemoaning of the fact that I begged and prayed unsuccessfully for 10 years that an accomplished conductor would take an interest in me. Then suddenly beginning in mid-March of this year I had within a 3 week period of time validation from several conductors I respect highly. One of them even offered to teach me and so I made my way to him and what followed was the destruction of that previous self described previously in my memory.
This man is a marvelous musician with a powerful artistic voice which is simultaneously exhilarating, compelling, inspiring and terrifying. It makes you on the one hand want to drop to your knees and worship him while on the other hand leaves you feeling eviscerated and embarrassed. It just leaves no room for anyone else. And that's what a good conductor is supposed to do I think, to make you feel like their interpretation is the only possible correct one in the universe. What accompanied this feeling and magnified the terror aspect of it was an encyclopedic knowledge of the craft and most relevantly the score. Any score really. We talked through scores of works he was studying with his students, works he was conducting with his group, works I was planning to conduct which he had no problem reciting off hand as if he had just finished writing it. There was a breadth and depth to his knowledge that stripped my silly talent naked and then laughed at me.
But of course that way of looking at things is the problem isn't it? Rather than view it as some terrible process I should see the beauty and the purposefulness of it. Out of that destruction came a rebirth and I know that to be true. I appreciate it deeply and am grateful immensely to have experienced it. It was the first bit of genuine conducting training I've ever received and while it painfully revealed the scope of my ignorance it also left me for the first time feeling as though I know which direction to travel. What happened though is I think best described as a genuine destruction of self, or at least some part of my self. This person with confidence and a sense of being ready to conduct professionally was suddenly stopped cold and instead I became consumed with humility and awareness of the work to be done.
Then I saw a video of a man speaking about the fundamental human delusion being that of the self. Really I think he may have been speaking more about the narcissistic self which elevates our own fears, priorities, desires, opinions and values above all others.
My thoughts tonight have turned towards the destruction and delusion of the self. I consider this an evolution in my personal ethos born from the experience of the past several months. I think often lately about something I said in an extremely rare fit of massive over confidence; I was speaking to some friends and I blurted out with anger that I was ready to conduct professionally. I believed it at the time and in full disclosure I do experience these cycles of self confidence and self hatred which at the apex of the cycle lead me to the conclusion that I am one of the best conductors on the planet. Of course at the worst they lead me to the conclusion that my mere existence on the planet is a drag on the species and the most moral thing I could do with my life is stop living. Nonetheless the memory for me encapsulates a former version of myself which has been destroyed in the past few months.
The story as I tell it begins with the boring details of my own wallowing and bemoaning of the fact that I begged and prayed unsuccessfully for 10 years that an accomplished conductor would take an interest in me. Then suddenly beginning in mid-March of this year I had within a 3 week period of time validation from several conductors I respect highly. One of them even offered to teach me and so I made my way to him and what followed was the destruction of that previous self described previously in my memory.
This man is a marvelous musician with a powerful artistic voice which is simultaneously exhilarating, compelling, inspiring and terrifying. It makes you on the one hand want to drop to your knees and worship him while on the other hand leaves you feeling eviscerated and embarrassed. It just leaves no room for anyone else. And that's what a good conductor is supposed to do I think, to make you feel like their interpretation is the only possible correct one in the universe. What accompanied this feeling and magnified the terror aspect of it was an encyclopedic knowledge of the craft and most relevantly the score. Any score really. We talked through scores of works he was studying with his students, works he was conducting with his group, works I was planning to conduct which he had no problem reciting off hand as if he had just finished writing it. There was a breadth and depth to his knowledge that stripped my silly talent naked and then laughed at me.
But of course that way of looking at things is the problem isn't it? Rather than view it as some terrible process I should see the beauty and the purposefulness of it. Out of that destruction came a rebirth and I know that to be true. I appreciate it deeply and am grateful immensely to have experienced it. It was the first bit of genuine conducting training I've ever received and while it painfully revealed the scope of my ignorance it also left me for the first time feeling as though I know which direction to travel. What happened though is I think best described as a genuine destruction of self, or at least some part of my self. This person with confidence and a sense of being ready to conduct professionally was suddenly stopped cold and instead I became consumed with humility and awareness of the work to be done.
Then I saw a video of a man speaking about the fundamental human delusion being that of the self. Really I think he may have been speaking more about the narcissistic self which elevates our own fears, priorities, desires, opinions and values above all others.
letting my conscious mind tire itself out...
Some very rough thoughts emerging from reading Carl Jung's "Man and His Symbols".
1. The starting point for consciousness is that it became necessary to ensure that we are not overloaded with information. We select the important information for conscious thought and the rest remains in the unconscious. This is an evolutionary adaptation and it is a new phenomenon. Jung describes it almost like it's a beta version of the newest software. He says it's buggy and prone to malfunction. It's new and we're still getting used to it.
2. A friend was describing a computer hard drive he bought recently which is separated into two sections. One section is a higher quality storage system which is less prone to problems and the other is a more standard hard drive with moving parts that can break. The hard drive adapts to user patterns over time and stores the most commonly accessed information in the safer higher quality portion of the hard drive in order to protect it. This seems to me to be a crude form of consciousness. The machine is processing the information and the sorting it based on importance, as determined by usage.
3. When a composer writes a great piece of music they connect with something powerful in the unconscious. When a conductor conducts a great piece greatly they connect with that same powerful force in the unconscious. Therefore it seems possible to transmit and communicate the unconscious directly. What remains is a mystery is whether all the performers of a piece are connecting to the same unconscious force and the implications of that idea. Very confusing for me to think about at this point.
4. Is it that I believe my unconscious is smaller and less powerful than others or is it that I'm afraid to find out? Is there even a such thing as "my" unconscious or is it all the same thing? If it's just one big unconscious then the concept of universal identity doesn't seem so far fetched does it. If you strip the self away are we all the same consciousness and therefore all the same being, like cells making tissue or tissue making organs? Do cells and tissue and organs have consciousness then? Is that what the buddhists mean when they say the buddha resides everywhere?
1. The starting point for consciousness is that it became necessary to ensure that we are not overloaded with information. We select the important information for conscious thought and the rest remains in the unconscious. This is an evolutionary adaptation and it is a new phenomenon. Jung describes it almost like it's a beta version of the newest software. He says it's buggy and prone to malfunction. It's new and we're still getting used to it.
2. A friend was describing a computer hard drive he bought recently which is separated into two sections. One section is a higher quality storage system which is less prone to problems and the other is a more standard hard drive with moving parts that can break. The hard drive adapts to user patterns over time and stores the most commonly accessed information in the safer higher quality portion of the hard drive in order to protect it. This seems to me to be a crude form of consciousness. The machine is processing the information and the sorting it based on importance, as determined by usage.
3. When a composer writes a great piece of music they connect with something powerful in the unconscious. When a conductor conducts a great piece greatly they connect with that same powerful force in the unconscious. Therefore it seems possible to transmit and communicate the unconscious directly. What remains is a mystery is whether all the performers of a piece are connecting to the same unconscious force and the implications of that idea. Very confusing for me to think about at this point.
4. Is it that I believe my unconscious is smaller and less powerful than others or is it that I'm afraid to find out? Is there even a such thing as "my" unconscious or is it all the same thing? If it's just one big unconscious then the concept of universal identity doesn't seem so far fetched does it. If you strip the self away are we all the same consciousness and therefore all the same being, like cells making tissue or tissue making organs? Do cells and tissue and organs have consciousness then? Is that what the buddhists mean when they say the buddha resides everywhere?
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Dr. Laura
So if you have not seen the show In Treatment my god are you missing out. HBO canceled it after 3 seasons because it didn't get very good ratings but it is one of the best things I've ever seen in my life. It is about a therapist named Paul and in the first season you pick up with him as he's just taken on 4 new patients (Alex, Sophie, and a couple that comes to therapy together Jake and Amy) and a year into therapy with a patient named Laura. Paul is a remarkable man, brilliant and perceptive and a great practitioner of awareness. He is insightful and cares deeply for his patients. His marriage however is falling apart and the first seasons (what I've seen so far at least) revolves around the destruction of his marriage, the corresponding difficulty in treating his patient Laura who is herself brilliant and has fallen in love with Paul, and Paul's attempt to sort it all out in his own therapy with Gina, a former supervisor with whom he has a complicated past. The show it absolutely genius and touches on so many universal themes that it positively captivates me.
One thought that has stuck with me is how deeply mindful and aware both Paul and Gina are in their sessions. The perceptiveness is so high, they are keenly aware of everything the patient does and try to expose the meaning and significance in every minute action, universally to the annoyance of the patients. On the one hand this is impressive and admirable and I see this behavior in Paul and Gina as admirable. On the other hand I find it interesting that their awareness if always confined to express itself as analysis. The thought occurred to me that perhaps the great tradition of western thinkers has been successful at enlightenment when it has been because of its practice of deep awareness and has fallen short it when has because of it's limited engagement with the present in its narrow focus on rational thought and analysis.
Furthermore as a hyper-analytical thinker myself I was moved deeply by the scene which I have transcribed below. Here Laura and Paul are talking and Laura is absolutely refusing to concede that her feelings for Paul are anything less than real and powerful and important. She is an amazing character. Unbelievably intelligent and persistent and emotionally confident and damaged and beautiful. It's better to see the episode for yourself and the actors are unbelievable, which adds several dimensions of beauty to the art but the transcript itself I think still contains sufficient thought provoking and moving substance so as to warrant consumption:
.........
Laura: I know that as a therapist you tell yourself that it's part of therapy to find out why I'm in love with you and how that's linked to my past and all that. But isn't that always the way it works Paul? Doesn't our past always determine who we fall in love with? So what if you can trace it back to the withholding mother, the narcissistic father, the parent who's missing in action, does that make our love any less real?
Paul: But sometimes circumstances are, let's say, less than ideal...
L:I know that. I know you can delude yourself into a thing. Only I am not deluded. Not about you. Not about how I feel about you. Why I feel it, there's always gonna be an explanation but that I feel it is irrefutable. I don't know how to convince you anymore Paul... I mean you think that I've idealized you, that I've convinced myself of some fairy tale, that I've idolized you. You think this is a case of a miserable patient sitting in front of her therapist imagining that you're my superman...perfect, savior, mentor, I don't see you that way at all.
P:How do you really see me?
L:I see you the way you are. Your imperfections. You're not at ease with your body, with your profession, with who you've become. I don't know much about your life, but I imagine you're not happy at home. Something in you is restless, damaged, there is a yearning there and I know it when I see it. And I want you just the way you are. Damaged and restless. Yearning, warts and all.
P:So you can fix me.
L:God you can be such a fucking prick when you wanna be you know that...
P:(interrupting) So I can fix you then?
L:(long pause) You know um, next month I'll be thirty. And I've been thinking to myself, I've hated myself for thirty years. It's enough I don't want to anymore.
P:Why do you hate yourself?
L:You're surprised?
P: I've never heard you say it before.
L:Well I guess you save the best for last.
P:That's the best Laura? That you hate yourself?
L:I don't know Paul, I don't know. You're surprised? It's something people realize about me after an hour.
P:I didn't realize it after an hour. I didn't know it after a year. It's not easy for me to hear you say that.
L:Maybe you should try to find out why it's so hard for you. Maybe you should see someone.
P:Yea, been thinking about that. Seriously um I think the reason it's hard for me to hear it is because I know that you have so many reasons to love yourself. So many things to be really proud of yet you choose to ignore them why?
L:Haven't you ever hated yourself?
P:Yea. I guess I did. Once. When I was a kid, my mother she was in pretty bad shape and I took care of her. But uh I couldn't, I couldn't save her from herself you know. I guess I hated myself for that.
L:Was she sick?
P:She was in a difficult emotional state. I thought that I could pull her out of it. I used to cook her all these elaborate meals. She wouldn't eat them. I couldn't understand it. Like every kid I thought it was my fault. I thought it was something I had done, something I hadn't done. Maybe I could do something else.
L:But you know that's not true.
P:I know that now, yes.
L:Have you forgiven yourself.
P:I think so. It took a long time.
L:How does that feel? I mean, really I'm curious.
P:It feels like a relief to tell you the truth.To know that that burden is gone. The burden of blame. And to know deep down, that it never belonged there in the first place.
L:Hmm. Maybe that's why you became a psychologist. To help others with their burdens.
P:Yea. Maybe.
L:So you're a product of your past too. (long pause). So uh (smiling) will that be cash or check?
One thought that has stuck with me is how deeply mindful and aware both Paul and Gina are in their sessions. The perceptiveness is so high, they are keenly aware of everything the patient does and try to expose the meaning and significance in every minute action, universally to the annoyance of the patients. On the one hand this is impressive and admirable and I see this behavior in Paul and Gina as admirable. On the other hand I find it interesting that their awareness if always confined to express itself as analysis. The thought occurred to me that perhaps the great tradition of western thinkers has been successful at enlightenment when it has been because of its practice of deep awareness and has fallen short it when has because of it's limited engagement with the present in its narrow focus on rational thought and analysis.
Furthermore as a hyper-analytical thinker myself I was moved deeply by the scene which I have transcribed below. Here Laura and Paul are talking and Laura is absolutely refusing to concede that her feelings for Paul are anything less than real and powerful and important. She is an amazing character. Unbelievably intelligent and persistent and emotionally confident and damaged and beautiful. It's better to see the episode for yourself and the actors are unbelievable, which adds several dimensions of beauty to the art but the transcript itself I think still contains sufficient thought provoking and moving substance so as to warrant consumption:
.........
Laura: I know that as a therapist you tell yourself that it's part of therapy to find out why I'm in love with you and how that's linked to my past and all that. But isn't that always the way it works Paul? Doesn't our past always determine who we fall in love with? So what if you can trace it back to the withholding mother, the narcissistic father, the parent who's missing in action, does that make our love any less real?
Paul: But sometimes circumstances are, let's say, less than ideal...
L:I know that. I know you can delude yourself into a thing. Only I am not deluded. Not about you. Not about how I feel about you. Why I feel it, there's always gonna be an explanation but that I feel it is irrefutable. I don't know how to convince you anymore Paul... I mean you think that I've idealized you, that I've convinced myself of some fairy tale, that I've idolized you. You think this is a case of a miserable patient sitting in front of her therapist imagining that you're my superman...perfect, savior, mentor, I don't see you that way at all.
P:How do you really see me?
L:I see you the way you are. Your imperfections. You're not at ease with your body, with your profession, with who you've become. I don't know much about your life, but I imagine you're not happy at home. Something in you is restless, damaged, there is a yearning there and I know it when I see it. And I want you just the way you are. Damaged and restless. Yearning, warts and all.
P:So you can fix me.
L:God you can be such a fucking prick when you wanna be you know that...
P:(interrupting) So I can fix you then?
L:(long pause) You know um, next month I'll be thirty. And I've been thinking to myself, I've hated myself for thirty years. It's enough I don't want to anymore.
P:Why do you hate yourself?
L:You're surprised?
P: I've never heard you say it before.
L:Well I guess you save the best for last.
P:That's the best Laura? That you hate yourself?
L:I don't know Paul, I don't know. You're surprised? It's something people realize about me after an hour.
P:I didn't realize it after an hour. I didn't know it after a year. It's not easy for me to hear you say that.
L:Maybe you should try to find out why it's so hard for you. Maybe you should see someone.
P:Yea, been thinking about that. Seriously um I think the reason it's hard for me to hear it is because I know that you have so many reasons to love yourself. So many things to be really proud of yet you choose to ignore them why?
L:Haven't you ever hated yourself?
P:Yea. I guess I did. Once. When I was a kid, my mother she was in pretty bad shape and I took care of her. But uh I couldn't, I couldn't save her from herself you know. I guess I hated myself for that.
L:Was she sick?
P:She was in a difficult emotional state. I thought that I could pull her out of it. I used to cook her all these elaborate meals. She wouldn't eat them. I couldn't understand it. Like every kid I thought it was my fault. I thought it was something I had done, something I hadn't done. Maybe I could do something else.
L:But you know that's not true.
P:I know that now, yes.
L:Have you forgiven yourself.
P:I think so. It took a long time.
L:How does that feel? I mean, really I'm curious.
P:It feels like a relief to tell you the truth.To know that that burden is gone. The burden of blame. And to know deep down, that it never belonged there in the first place.
L:Hmm. Maybe that's why you became a psychologist. To help others with their burdens.
P:Yea. Maybe.
L:So you're a product of your past too. (long pause). So uh (smiling) will that be cash or check?
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