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Saturday, 29 September 2007
Graffiti's script part 3
To interpret or not to interpret that is the question
When commenting about Kahless’ two script figures of:
Carrie Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie.
Elizabeth Walton from The Waltons
I said,
But the real question Kahless is what do you see them as representing?
Of course the same applies for me.
I have mentioned Snorky, Eeyore and Marvin. What do they represent for me?.
One of the main things for new trainee therapists to learn is that clients do not see the world the same way as they do. Whilst this seems simple it is in fact a hard thing to understand. Whilst we all know this in our heads that people are different at the Child ego state level it is much harder to accept.
Of course eveyone is like me, aren't they?
When someone says they are feeling angry how do we know what they are feeling?. By recalling our own experience of anger. So their anger becomes our experience of anger. So when someone says they are feeling angry we can never know what THEY are actually feeling. Instead we know what we feel as anger and assume it is the same for them.
Carl Jung defined the concepts of the anima (The female image in men) and the animus (The male image in women). He says that when a man and a woman marry they will copy or imitate one another. So the man through having a close attachment and relationship with his wife will imitate her thoughts, feelings and actions so that they become part of his personality. This then is how he understands the female and her psyche though his own anima or the female part of himself that he has learnt from his wife. So he never really understands HER instead he can only ever understand the female part of himself. All a bit narcissistic isn’t it!!
At least this husband and wife will have colourful anima(s) and animus(s)
So in essence we are like cannibals (as Kenoath suggested). When we form a strong attachment to another we will incorporate and consume their personality into our own. We literally swallow them. This is called the imitative instinct. It is normal, unconscious and unstoppable. We will imitate or consume others weather we want to or not. We imitate their good bits and their bad bits without discernment.
Have you ever watched a young child who is sitting and just observing with their wide eyes and sometimes even their mouth is open. It is like they are sitting there watching mother and father and they are literally swallowing what they see. Taking it all in. As parents we all hope they imitate our good qualities and sort of, somehow, kind of, hope they just don’t see our ‘bad’ bits. Obviously they do, so when father is sitting there watching the football on TV with his sixth can of beer in hand and baby Johnny is hanging around and soaking it all up, don’t be surprised when cleaning his room fifteen years later and you find a joint stashed in his secret hide away spot. (Which, by the way, you of course came across inadvertently).
And my point is?
How does a therapist know what a client is feeling and thinking. Can he only know by his own self examination?
Can a therapist answer these questions for this man?
This raises a much debated point in counselling. Do you interpret what the client reports or not. When you interpret you are stating how you see the client sees it. Of course interpretation in therapy has a long history that began with Freud and his interpretation of dreams. The client would report a dream and Freud would interpret it and feed back to the client that interpretation. You are telling the client who and what they are. So some see nothing wrong with interpreting what the client reports.
There is another school of thought that says you never interpret what the client reports. They would say that what Freud reported back would be his own personality and not the clients. That Freud simply projected himself on to the parts of the client's dream and reported that back to the client.
So to me Carrie Ingalls and Elizabeth Walton are good, sweet, little girls who do the right thing and are domesticated. But that is my interpretation of them and that will be different from everyone else’s interpretation of those to figures. So when I watch those TV shows they will be mildly entertaining to me but that is all. To some they will have much more impact because the TV watcher identifies with them, they see part of them self in the character. That character becomes one of their script figures or “totems” as they are sometimes called.
This is why some sit coms (Situation comedies) can be so successful as people will identify them self in one or more of the characters and thus they will seek out the show repetitively.
What we really looking for on the big and the small screen is ourselves?
For me Snorky, Eeyore and Marvin have a special script meaning and for other people they obviously wont. Those others will find these characters mildly entertaining and that is all. The next question is why do I identify with these characters? What is it about these three characters that has special meaning for me? And this is where we get to the division in therapeutic approach.
For instance if I was a client the gestalt therapist would say, “What is it about those characters that have meaning for you” In fact they would say, “Be Snorky and say stuff about yourself”. This approach is allowing ME to interpret the features of those three characters that has meaning for me. The good part about this is the the therapist is not given an opportunity to interfere by him putting his projection onto the client's script figures.
On the other hand the the psychoanalytic (Freud) approach would interpret the snorky for me and isolate features of Snorky that were pertinent to my personality. The therapist would tell me these things. The danger in this approach is (as I said before) the therapist projects himself onto the client's script figure. The advantage of this approach is that all client’s lie to themselves and that will include lying to self in interpreting their own script figures. By interpreting the script figures the therapist can circumvent the client lying to self.
I recall on weekend group therapy session a long time ago. There was one woman client and she had a great deal of trouble relating to people. She had very few friends and people would just tend to avoid her. In this exercise the clients were to identify some script figure for self. This woman chose a rose. When asked what was it about the rose that she liked she proceeded to describe the beauty of the rose, the lovely reds and whites, the lovely texture and so forth. This is all good and well but it also included a self lie.
What else are there about roses? They are thorny and spiky and if you grab the stem it hurts!! This described the woman in her relationships with friends. She was thorny and would regularly spike people with one of her thorns and thus people stayed away and she had very few friends. She had lied to her self about being thorny and only through the therapist interpretation did she come to realise that and thus the behaviour changed as a result of that awareness which came via the interpreter.
So what is it about Snorky, Eeyore and Marvin for me?. The first thing that interested me was how I had lied to my self and changed reality to fit for me. When I put the three characters up a week ago I said that they all did not saying anything. Then Roses and Kenoath produced YouTube videos which showed that Marvin did say plenty. I had lied to myself and changed reality. Then I noticed that whilst Marvin has plenty to say he didn’t actually speak. He couldn’t speak because he doesn’t have a mouth.
Perhaps as a little boy I saw Marvin didn’t have a mouth and therefore I didn’t have to listen to him. Over the years I have changed that in my mind to Marvin didn’t say anything when in fact he did. Why would a character who says nothing have some meaning for me.
This young boy saw Marvin didn't have a mouth
Neurological examination has shown that I am an auditory dyslexic. That means I am sort of deaf. My ears function normally but when the information from my ears goes to my brain it is processed inefficiently. Obviously I do listen and understand what people say verbally but listening is more work for me than for others. So I switch like a deaf person does. If one does not listen then one watches instead. Visual information via my eyes is processed quite normally in my brain.
So in a conversation between two people they for arguments sake 50% listen to what the other person says and 50% watches them for body language and so forth. In my case I listen 10% and watch 90%. So when I am with a client I don’t listen to them I watch them.
So I can understand Snorky, Eeyore and Marvin better because you don’t have to listen to them. (Even though me as a little boy got it wrong with Marvin). They communicate by action alone, which of course is what Marcel Marceau is all about.
And of course it has been said to me many times in my life that I am an observer rather than getting involved in verbal conversation. Of course I can converse with others and do so quite well, but underneath all that I do tend to watch rather then getting involved in verbal interchanges. Which is what I see Snorky, Eeyore and Marvin do. So I see me in them and thus they become a script figure for me in that way.
This may also explain why since the latter part of high school I started writing and have never stopped since. Writing allows me to say stuff without speaking and to understand what other people are saying without having to listen to them. I don’t listen to them I read them which of course is a visual exercise.
There is one other feature which relates to Eeyore which I don’t like and would prefer it not to be there but I understand Eeyore for it. As I look back now as a pre-teen child I think quite depressed and it was never diagnosed. I never complained because I thought it was just normal to be like that. With the information I have now if I saw a child who reported the same feelings, thoughts and behaviours I had then then they would be diagnosed as depressed. The way Eeyore moves and his overall presentation is for me a quite depressed one. So me as the little boy saw that and I suppose I understood what Eeyore was about, or saw myself in Eeyore.
Depression
Graffiti
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Friday, 28 September 2007
Graffiti's script part 2
I went to Rob van Tol's blog and did the personality test.
My results were
Paranoid personality : Low
Schizoidpersonality : Moderate
Schizotypal personality : Low
Antisocial personality : Moderate
Borderline personality : Low
Histrionic personality : Low
Narcissistic personality : Moderate
Avoidant personality : Low
Dependent personality : Low
Obsessive-Compulsive personality : Low
So it seems I am a narcissistic Snorky with an antisocial Marvin.
Graffiti
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Sunday, 23 September 2007
Graffiti’s script
One of the ways to understand who you are and why you are, is to look at the heros, characters or figures that you relate to or identify with. This can be movie stars, singers, dancers or just characters from film, TV or the media.
When I did this exercise a long time ago I instantly came up with 3 characters.
Snorky the elephant from the Banana Splits
Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh
And Marvin the Martian
What do all these three have in common?
Graffiti
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Marcel Marceau
Marcel Marceau
1923 - 2007
A sad day indeed.
If there was ever poetry in motion it was Marcel Marceau.
One person I truely admired for his artistic abilities.
It must mean something for me?
I keep talking about myself being an auditory dyslexic
and keep going on about actions speak louder than words
and the Child ego state believes what it sees much more than what it hears.
I have always thought he would make a great psychotherapist.
He knew how to communicate.
Graffiti
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Saturday, 22 September 2007
Cultural bias in bereavement
QofD states:
I am curious; if you accept that humans only vary slightly in their psychological makeup and subsequent attachments, is the culture in which they grieve meaningless?
For example: is it not feasible that an individual who lives within a culture that embraces a concept of the afterlife and some deeper meaning to existence might be better suited to coping with grief than an individual who lives within a more solipsistic culture?
(end quote)
It seems my bias is showing. When I wrote the post “Cultures vary very little in grief reactions”, I attempted to be aware of the biases that I was carrying into writing such a thing. For example I am male, white and from a western culture who has a scientific view of death. That is when you die you are dead and that is the end of it. I am open to the idea that the spirit of the person does not die, but I would not say that it is a conviction of mine or that I am convinced that an afterlife exists.
Western scientific view of the world. If you can't see it or measure it then it does not exist.
Now a bias has been identified and that is I looked at the death, attachment and detachment from a western psychology perspective, which I suppose is not all that surprising!
The diagram below shows what happens with the sudden death of a very close loved one. In the second diagram one is left in a position of having an attachment to someone who no longer exists with us day to day. This I think I can safely say will happen with everyone, no matter what culture they come from. Any human on the planet who has a significant attachment to another will be in this state when the person dies. That attachment then cannot disappear quickly. It takes time and the feelings of grieving being dealt with appropriately for it to disappear. That is a painful process, indeed it can be a very a painful process.
Now western psychology has a problem with the second diagram. It defines it as a pathological state if it persists for too long. In the first months it is seen as a normal situation but if it persists it is then defined as “Complicated bereavement” and is seen as a neurotic condition or state of psychological abnormality.
The reason why they see it as abnormal is three fold.
1. The person stops living in the here and now. They are living in the past
2. The child part of them is thinking magically (not scientifically) in that it believes at least partly that the person is still with us and they will behave at some level like the person is.
3. The attachment is not freed up so subsequent relationships are disrupted by that.
There are cultural differences particularly with number 2 and 3. Firstly, what is magical thinking and what is scientific thinking is debatable and in the west we highly value scientific thinking. If university studies prove something then we are certain that must be true in western thinking.
Cultural difference
However this is changing even in western societies as science does not live up to the expectations that were put on it. As we know there are other cultures who believe in some form of continuation of life after bodily death. If this is the case then they may have quite a different view as to the second diagram and its change to the third diagram. There may be less of a view that a prolonged state of the second level of the diagram is in fact a neurotic state, which western psychology says it is.
Western societies are very Free Child focused. If you feel pain or bad then you do something about that so you feel good. This maybe one reason why the prescription of antidepressant medications are at all time high level. Indeed if someone in a state of bereavement goes to their doctor they are likely if not very likely to be prescribed some form of antidepressant. Our tolerance of emotional discomfort is far less than it was 50 years ago, in the west.
Western thinking: "I want now".
Finally one could argue that we in the west are very consumer oriented.
If something is broken throw it away and get a new one.
If you loose something go and buy a new one.
It seems reasonable to argue that we have to some extent the same view of relationships as a consumer item. The rate of divorce would seem to support this as well. With this perspective then the move from the second level of the diagram to the third becomes very important. To start a new relationship it is very wise to have dissolved the prior attachment to a significant degree. Hence bereavement counselling which facilitates that bond diminishing becomes an important task.
Other cultures may have much less of a consumeristic view of relationships than we do in the west. Hence retaining some level of an attachment to a deceased person would be viewed as much less abnormal or neurotic.
However it seems that one fact remains. With all humans on this planet when they form a significant attachment or bond to another human then that is a difficult thing to dissolve. It takes time and pain no matter who you are or where you live in the world. The cultural ritual for dealing with death will have little or no effect on the ability to detach or dissolve the bond. That is a psychological event that is the same for all humans. However the need to dissolve the bond can vary considerably. The second level in the diagram is defined as neurotic in the west if it persists for too long. In less consumeristic and Free Child oriented societies such a state may not be defined as neurotic if it persists for long periods of time.
Human attachment is a very powerful force in everyone's psyche no matter where you live
Graffiti
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Wednesday, 19 September 2007
Cultures vary very little in grief reactions
Kenoath states:
“Not my cup of tea, read with caution , tribal grieving method a-head.
Oh my god, some tribes of cannibals would eat the dead relative until the corpse was all gone to avoid high anxiety and grief.”
(End quote)
Cultures can look very different from the outside
The diversity of human behaviour is astounding indeed as Kenoath points out. In my early university days I studied anthropology in some depth. Fascinating topic.
Kenoath gets some support for this statement from the DSM-III (This is one of the most widely accepted diagnostic systems of psychological problems in the western world). It states about bereavement, “The duration of normal bereavement varies considerably among different subcultural groups” (End quote).
Unfortunately, I don’t believe a word of it.
In fairness to the DSM it is probably politically correct to say such things. To be very aware and tolerant of different cultural groups is so much the ‘thing’ these days so it is definitely proper to express such views.
One needs to distinguish between grief reactions and grief rituals. Without a doubt there are very wide differences between cultural grief rituals. Kenoath provides and excellent cannibal example compared to christian grief rituals where eating the dead would be somewhat frowned upon. Many such western christian rituals don’t even allow the bereaved to view the body let alone eat it! So these rituals and the duration they go on for vary considerably.
These rituals have very little to do with the actual feelings of grief and loss and bereavement that each individual feels when a loved one passes away. Over the years I have studied many different theories of personality. I have never come across one article or book that has described a particular cultural group that has a significantly different personality structure compared to the rest of us on this planet. I can not recall one ever being described.
The theory of personality from a transactional analysis perspective is as such:
So what I am saying is that every person on the planet has the same basic structure of personality, they all have a Parent, Adult and Child. If they live in a large western city or is an Amazon Jungle they basically have the same structure of personality and go through the same developmental stages and have the same basic childhood issues and so forth. Yes different cultures will emphasise different things and do toileting a bit different and so forth, but the basic developmental stages have to be mastered by all humans on the planet. I have never seen any theory that has suggested otherwise.
Which culture is this child from? Who knows, but it still has to grow up like every other child.
One of the main developmental tasks for the young child to master is how to form an attachment to mother. This then influences the types of attachments that you have throughout life. Weather they are harmonious, conflictual and so forth, but we all have to form an attachment of some kind to mother or we basically die.
When we form an attachment this means that the bond becomes and integral part of who we are. It forms part of our basic identity and how we understand who we are. This is why they are so difficult to break down when the other party dies or goes away. We have to alter our basic understanding or sense of ourselves when we detach. We have to change our basic identity to some degree.
So a society can have a short grief ritual like many western christian societies have. The funeral and wake is a week after the death and that is about it. Of course the grief reactions go on for much longer than one week and thus we have the difference between grief rituals and grief reactions.
For a person to be able break down or dissolve a significant attachment in a few weeks means they can change their basic understanding of self or identity in a very short space of time. That would lead to a most interesting society with some very unusual relationships!!! I have never heard of such a society being described.
Basic relationships vary very little
So no matter who you are and in what culture you live, the same ‘stages’ of grief are going to be their even if a society approves of them or not. So the DSM statement:
“The duration of normal bereavement varies considerably among different subcultural groups”
is probably just PC B/S.
Normal bereavement across all cultures varies very little in duration.
Graffiti
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Saturday, 15 September 2007
Establishing the foundations of bereavement counselling
Working with grief
Client context
Daughter died a year ago. I do feel such intensity of grief the worst experience of my life. Keep in mind I've been through hell never in a million years did I think this could happen to me. Regardless of my past hell this is the worst experience of my life.
Possible counselling approach
The first thing one does is acknowledges the feelings and asks the person to describe them and have some discussion about them. The client is clearly in considerable discomfort and that needs to be acknowledged, understood and listened to.
A year since the death is a significant period of time so I would question the client as to what has happened in that year. What if any changes have there been particularly in what are called the “level of functioning”. When some one dies those left behind’s level of functioning rapidly decreases. So has the client reclaimed any of that level of functioning in the family life, work life, social life and so forth. The more level of functioning reclaimed the better.
At what level of functioning was the person prior to the death, what extent of a drop was there in the level of functioning right after the death and how much of that has been reclaimed in the year since. For example the person may have had quite an active social life prior to the death, soon after the death that social life dropped to about zero and how much of it has come back with the last year?. As I said before the more reclaimed the better as it shows the individual is moving on or getting over this at least at a behavioural level.
In the year how much, if any, has there been a reduction in pain of the grief. This refers to both the intensity of the grief and the amount of time the person is experiencing the grief feelings. 10 times per day, 1 time per day, 1 time every few days and so forth. How often is the deceased thought about and are there intrusive thoughts.
The secondary gains of the bereavement for the client are established and assessed.
In the counselling the counsellor needs to set up the basic attitude of the grief counselling. These are the foundations on which the counselling is based. From what I have seen many grief counsellors do not do this. Instead they simply start working with what is presented and never address these.
Those foundations are that grief is a temporary thing. The purpose of the grief is to break the attachment with the child. Each time you do a piece of ‘grief work’ there will be less of an attachment with the child in your mind. The child has no attachment with you as they are deceased. When the bereavement is over the child will be a fond memory that you think about from time to time. That will be associated with varying levels of emotion each time you think about the child. Over time those will reduce. The goal of this is to get over the attachment with the child and move on with your life and that includes establishing subsequent relationships. Within 6 months there will be a significant drop in the level of grief and after two years even the most important of relationships will be by and large ‘gotten over’.
Obviously this is quite a list of things and one does not just say it out to the client. What the counsellor does is each time there is grief work done they will drop in an appropriate comment, when appropriate and a appropriate way. So the underlying attitude or foundations are established as the work progresses and the work maintains that underlying focus and direction. The client is not ‘hit’ in the face with it, instead these foundations are just there always in the background.
As I said in the previous posting, grieving is not a complicated process and the Free Child is usually fully invested in doing it. The FC does not want to get stuck in painful feelings so usually working with grief has very little Parent contract at all. As the various feelings and thoughts come up the counsellor assists the client in dealing with them. Quite a simple process really but obviously also quite an emotionally difficult one for the client.
Grief counselling is usually like this. The Free Child wants to get to the other side like the sheep, so the therapist just has to keep them moving. On occasions however the path is much less well defined as described below.
The therapeutic skill can be required when the grieving gets bogged down in secondary gains or other script issues like Be Strong, Don’t feel, Don’t be separate and so forth. One also needs to assess for attachment problems on behalf of the parent, particularly when the child played a significant role in the parents perception of them self or the parent’s own identity. If this is the case then the bereavement process will be far more complex and difficult to achieve.
Graffiti
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Friday, 14 September 2007
Complicated bereavement
I like journalists. In the West Australian newspaper on 11.9.07 a journalist called Tracey Roberts did a section on grieving and bereavement. An entire page was dedicated to the topic! She made yet another significant contribution to grief counselling industry. That billion dollar a year industry where massive over servicing occurs both at the expense of the individual fee paying client and in government subsidised counselling at the tax payers expense. Grief counsellors would undoubtabley by very happy after Tracey’s article. The dollars will keep rolling in.
Here are two comments the first of which comes from a grief counsellor.
1. “The death of a significant person is one of the few occasions where we are out of control and in grief we have to find a way to submit to that”
What an absurd statement. What has control got to do with it?. I and numerous others have lost very significant people and never been out of control. However it does tell readers that such a death leaves you out of control. So how do you get back in control? Call a grief counsellor!! And this statement is from a grief counsellor. She could be meaning that in grief there are strong emotions and that means one is out of control. That also is not true. The vast majority of people can have strong emotions and still be in control.
Homewrecker. Relationships end and people don't loose control, and they get over it.
2. “Remember that grief may take years to work through”.
(Translated - you need grief counselling for years) This is simply wrong. With the loss of a close loved one within the first six months there should be a significant reduction in the level of grief. If not then there is what is called “Complicated bereavement” which is a ‘neurotic’ state where the person for some reason is not grieving correctly. Within two years the vast majority of grief should be gone even for the closest of relationships, even for the loss of a child.
Its sad to say goodbye
How often do you hear people say, “You never get over the loss of a child”. Fifty years ago children used to die all the time. People suffered the great loss of the child and then got over it and got on with life. In recent times death has been made bigger then Ben Hur which is great for the grief counsellors and their bank accounts.
So why does grief even occur in the first place?. I can give the psychological explanation of this. See this diagram.
So grief is the means by which we can detach from some one whom we had an attachment with. This frees us from the past and allows us to make new relationships in the present.
There is one other thing that needs to be considered about bereavement and that is what is called primary and secondary gain. Primary gain is the purpose of the psychological symptom or process. As I have just stated the primary gain of bereavement or grief is it allows the person to detach from someone who is no longer present.
Grief or the grieving process is very susceptible to secondary gains. A secondary gain is where the person uses the symptom or process to influence or manipulate others. What happens when someone close to you dies? How do others react to you? Most often people will be quite sympathetic. They say and do nice things, they make contact to see how you are going, they bake casseroles to help out and maybe help with the kids or even help clean the house, you get time off work and so on and on and on. As you can imagine this feels very nice to most people. Indeed those people who have a craving for affection and positive strokes this will be very appealing indeed.
This then can encourage the person to keep grieving. They know that when they get over the deceased (complete the bereavement) then all that kindness and love greatly reduces. So there are considerable secondary gains for staying in the grieving process for long periods of time.
Graffiti
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Wednesday, 12 September 2007
The contradiction of counselling
In counselling how you get to where you are going is just as important as where you are going. As I have mentioned before this in some ways makes counselling a unique occupation.
Do the ends justify the means? There are varied views on this in counselling. Some say yes and some say no. A good example is aversion therapy. Here is a picture of Alex from the movie of A Clockwork Orange. He is under going aversion therapy.
He was being treated for his aggression problem. His eyes were pinned open and an eye dropper was used to keep his eyes moist. His head was positioned so he is kept looking at pictures which were very violent in nature. He was given medication so he felt quite sick. Thus in his mind the violence becomes associated with feeling very ill, and that is the process of aversion therapy. I must add that this is a very dramatised version of what the therapy is but that is the basic process.
Some time ago alcoholism was commonly treated by a drug called antabuse. You don’t hear much about it these days. If you have taken antabuse whenever you consume alcohol it makes you feel very sick. A type of aversion therapy I suppose.
The problem with this is what else does it teach the Child in you. The goals of the treatment are obvious and one would consider them very valid. But maybe in counselling how you get there is just as important as where you are going. How you get there also includes the relational or the relationship between therapist and client. Many argue that this is the most important aspect of the therapy.
What is the therapist saying to Alex when he suggests such a treatment and actually goes ahead with it? When some one supplies the antabuse to an alcoholic what is the therapist saying to the client? Does it value the client as a person? When one uses a ‘painful’ form of treatment what does that say about what the therapist thinks of the client?.
I myself use painful techniques. At times I suggest and partake in regressive techniques with a client. Some of these can result in considerable distress and painful feelings for a client. Confronting figures from one’s past can be very painful. So what am I saying to the client when I do such a thing?
In such circumstances the therapist is giving permission to the client to hurt self in quite a powerful way. If a person feels like it is OK to hurt self then that to some extent undermines their sense of self worth. So unless you have a therapy that is very tranquil and non-confrontative then you are to some extent showing them first hand to hurt self and that implies they are not OK in some way.
Laughter in counselling is essential is says a lot about what the therapist thinks of the client
Maybe we have arrived at another explanation of Carl Rogers’ Client Centered Therapy and its effectiveness. Of all the types of counselling this would be one where the client experiences the least painful techniques. The therapist by and large meets the client with unconditional positive regard and thus you don’t get the ‘bad’ side effects of such things like regressive techniques, which contribute to the client's sense of not OKness.
Of course it works the other way as well. In my counselling there is often humor of some kind. It is a common way that I interact with a client. This means we have FC to FC contact. This also then forms part of the therapeutic process. Humour is often seen as a definite plus as it gets the FC of the client involved. Perhaps there is more as well. If the therapist shares a good laugh with the client what does that say to the client? Does it value the client as a person? I think one could say yes. Laughter feels good and thus it is giving the client permission to treat self well and in a nice way. It could be said to value the client in this sense and promote their sense of self worth.
So there is an inherent contradiction in therapy any time the therapist agrees to go along with some process where the client feels pain. The therapist is being directly complicit in eroding the client’s sense of self worth. There will be those who will argue that by explaining to the client that short term pain for long term gain will stop this contradiction. I simply don’t agree with this. To the Child ego state actions speak volumes more than words.
Will these kids wear bicycle helmets when they grow up
I always find myself chuckling when a client reports an early scene where mother who is just about to spank Johnny says, “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you Johnny”. Or when the parent who has a few wines most night tells teenage Jenny not to smoke marijuana. Is it really surprising that most teenagers do. To my mind the explanations the parents come up with are just so they can feel better in themselves about having done the right thing when they really know they are directly giving the child permission to use drugs. So when Jenny sees mother’s bottle of prescription valium in the medicine cabinet, the Child ego state sees what it sees and no amount of words can explain it away.
Maybe as counsellors we need to accept this contradiction in psychotherapy rather than trying to eleviate our own problem feelings with it by trying to explain it away with some fancy words and theory. May be that is one reason why we have such elaborate theroies of treatment in the first place. Our Child ego states know what is really going on and we keep trying to explain it away to ourselves.
Graffiti
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Saturday, 08 September 2007
Regression
Regression as a defence mechanism
This is the process whereby the individual reverts to a former behavioural expression in order to deal with stress. For example a mature person going into a sulk. This does not provide a realistic way of dealing with the difficult situation.
The adult person behaves in a child like fashion when confronted with a difficult situation. So it is said that the person has regressed to a childlike state.
The person in a regressed state is like this.
Humans have this ability to regress and it has both good and bad consequences. As has just been noted it can act as what is called a defence mechanism. The adult uses a child like means to solve a problem which obviously does not work.
If a person continues to behave in a child like manner what will usually happen? Eventually some organisation or some person will come along and solve the problem for the person. For instance if the husband sulks and continues to sulk for days on end what does the wife usually end up doing. She will usually eventually bring it up or some how set out to resolve the problem.
The hard core sulker can be very difficult to deal with.
This is sometimes seen as the secondary gain of regression. Firstly a regressed person gains the advantage of just being able to avoid the problem rather than having to solve it. Secondly by being regressed they can often ‘get’ someone else to solve it for them. They manipulate the other person to behave in a way that they want.
However there is also a positive to this ability that humans have of being able to regress . Firstly when a person regresses they are not playing, or acting or taking on a role. The person actually regresses psychologically so they feel, behave and sometimes even think like a 6 year old. Being able to regress allows us to deal with emotionally difficult situations at an appropriate time.
This could have been a spontaneous regression. "When things get too much I will do something really wierd and then they will know I need help" (Possibly?)
For example if the boss gives you a very hard time it is not possible to behave in a regressed way and tell him to “F**k off”. If you do that you can loose your job. However you can put it on hold to deal with it later. So when you get home you can then regress with the wife and tell her angrily about how bad the boss was and express the feelings then. Indeed if you were traumatised in childhood this can then again be brought up thirty years later. In counselling the therapist can employ regression techniques so the client becomes regressed to that earlier state and is thus given an opportunity to resolve their feelings and thoughts about the trauma. So the ability to regress has some distinct therapeutic advantages.
People vary however on how easily they can regress. For example there is a system of treatment that is called reparenting and this is used with very disturbed people. They live in at an residential treatment centre and are encouraged to become very regressed. Indeed you can get a twenty year old man who will regress to a very childlike state and wear nappies and be bottle fed and treated as such. This can go on for a number of months.
The average person can not do this. Whilst we can all regress the degree and age of regression varies. People will have a tendency to regress to the stage at which they were originally fixated. In childhood we all don’t fully complete each developmental stage and thus we have a tendency when we regress in adulthood to go to that point of fixation. If one is fixated at the stage where there are temper tantrums then in adulthood this person will at times behave like a petulant child who throws tantrums. Or if one is fixated in the anal stage of development then when regressing in adulthood they will behave in a way that is fastidious, with perhaps compulsive cleaning and so forth.
One childlike solution to a problem. If things get too difficult just pretend it isn't there.
So only people who are fixated at very early stages of development can they regress there for any length of time as is the case with reparenting. Often when a person is in a regressed state and you ask them how old they are they can quite easily answer that question with a specific age.
Why do we continually regress to the same age, perhaps because the child will repeatedly try to resolve the issues that lead to the fixation at that stage of development in the first place. It certainly cannot do that if it never goes there in the first place. So with the child like sulking husband, he is trying to again get mother to do what it was that she did not originally do in that stage of development.
Chronic cigarette smoking can result from a fixation in the oral stage of development and thus it is a regression to that stage
There are many, many regressive techniques that can be used in psychotherapy. One of the more notorious ones was use of LSD in the 1950s. This drug was found to facilitate the client regressing, Indeed many mood altering drugs can cause a regression in the drug taker. One reason for using regressive techniques is to achieve what the person does spontaneously as was just mentioned above. When the person is regressed they are then again at their point of fixation and then the therapist has an opportunity to facilitate the client gaining some resolution of the initial fixation.
Graffiti
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Thursday, 06 September 2007
Changing relationships
I was speaking with someone the other day and they asked if it is possible for a client and therapist to become friends after the the counselling is completed. It is an interesting question that raises other issues about what is a relationship and how do they change.
Friendship is an interesting relationship
Obviously relationships can change over time and I am sure we have all been involved in such relationships. As far as the therapist-client changing to more of a friendship I have been involved in that over the past 20 years but has been rare for me. I actually have been involved in it both ways. Over time a client of mine I have formed some sort of friendship with. Also as a client I have formed a friendship with someone who has previously been a therapist of mine.
Being involved in the profession of psychotherapy and the training of psychotherapists what has most commonly happened for me is the client also joins the field in some way (as a counsellor or trainee counsellor) and you have contact through that. So the relationship does not go from client-therapist to friends. Instead it goes from client-therapist to colleagues to friends (but this is not always the case). Also it certainly is not a rapid process and for me at least it has not been common but it has occurred.
This also raises the question of, can two people who have had a relationship (like male female), end that relationship and become friends?
Relationships come and go for some of us
So what actually happens to the relationship. Well it is easy to do behaviourally. Two people being client and therapist stop doing that and then they simply start doing friend like things, such as going to the movies, or go bowling, or go kangaroo shooting, meeting for a coffee and a chat, and so forth.
Of course it is more complicated than that and it would seem to also involve some sort of change in one’s psychological perception of the person. A change of attitude perhaps and that is much harder and slower to change than simple behaviour. What this is it would seem is harder to describe.
With change one always has to acquire new skills
To me its changing the whole way you look at, and understand the other person. Friends is much more of an equal equal thing whereas a therapist obviously does not perceive the client as an equal. The therapist at least to some extent is responsible for the client whereas friends are not responsible for each other in the same way at all. So the therapist would have to ‘drop’ that feeling and attitude of responsibility.
How does one do that? Maybe it is similar to how a client changes in psychotherapy. One could say that the client is changing (in their head) their relationship with the parents from long ago. Some say the successful client is the one who ends up with a friendly divorce from their parents. Thus the relationship with the parents is changed. So maybe one can say that the client and therapist would have to have a similar type of divorce from each other and then there is a possibility of a friendship developing.
Perhaps further evidence of how it is done is when a child stops being a child and becomes an adult. They grow up as we know and mine are doing that right now (18 & 16 years old). I can feel myself at this time being forced by them to change my perception of them. Its like I have to do that in order to maintain a workable relationship with them. So yes this is a good example of how I have changed my basic perception and attitude about someone.
As they grow up it forces parents to have a different view of the youngster. The relationship has to change or else....
It seems reasonable to assume that the same dynamics would be at work when a client and therapist change similar views of each other. It takes a bit of time and almost a flexibility in ones thinking and attitudes. That of course results in feelings of sadness at what you are loosing, times of confusion and wondering ‘what the heck am I supposed to do now’, excitement a the new things happening, scare about seeing a very loved novice go into the world where other more experienced people could take advantage of them, and so on. Well there I go, maybe I have started to identify some of the psychological dynamics that are necessary for me in order to change my basic view of a relationship with another person.
Graffiti
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Wednesday, 05 September 2007
Obsessive Compulsive
I have been working with a guy recently and have not come across someone with such a degree of obsessive thinking. It is awesome what he reports. The degree and consistency of his thinking is quite surprising. His mind really does go at a hundred miles an hour and does not stop.
So, so many thoughts!
As we know with the Obsessive Compulsive personality (O/C), the person thinks obsessively and acts compulsively. Some can have the compulsive behaviours and not the obsessive thinking whilst others can have the the obsessive thinking and not the compulsive behaviours.
With obsessive thinking it is non-goal directed thinking and serves no purpose, does not solve any problem or lead to any action that is beneficial to the person. It is thinking for thinkings sake. In this instance it is repetitive thinking about relationships, things he could do at work to make this and that better. Endless different scenarios about what could happen in his relationships like wondering what it might be like in 5, 10, 15 years down the track and so forth. Thinking about his social activities and sporting activities, again with endless hypotheticals. What he reports is a relentless thinking regime. He does report that is gets very frustrating and he can get very tired of it. He reports very few, if any compulsive behaviours.
For the O/C order equals safety
Obsessive thinking needs to be distinguished from intrusive thoughts. These are very typical in Vietnam veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. They report that they just start thinking about traumatic events that they have been through in the war. It’s like these memories intrude into the person’s consciousness. This type of thinking is to be distinguished from obsessive thinking.
Compulsive behaviours are those that again serve no practical function and the person feels compelled or driven to do them. For instance the person on leaving a room may have to walk in and out the door way three times before being able to leave the room. The other common one is compulsive hand washing or other forms of cleaning.
The man in this instance whilst never proceeding very far academically I think is probably quite intelligent. I have asked him to do an IQ test but he is yet to do this. It has been said before that the higher the IQ the more likely you are to be neurotic. The more you are able to think up the neurotic thoughts and various scenarios in the first place.
The triangle of human functioning.
What is missing for the O/C?. They think obsessively and they behave compulsively. The feelings are missing except perhaps for fear or anxiety. Why does a person compulsively touch the same spot on the wall when they enter the house? Because it feels right. If they don’t then they quickly start to feel distress or anxiety. The compulsion makes them feel safe or less distressed.
So the solution? What is the lack of safety, what is the insecurity in the first place. What is the compulsion really keeping them safe from, what is the perceived danger in the first place?. If that is dealt with then the need for the compulsion reduces.
One thing the O/C certainly does not have is this sort of freedom. This can be a great therapeutic advantage.
With obsessive thinking it can simply be a distraction. If you are thinking about all the obsessive things then you don’t have any room left to think about other things. So the person is asked if they were not allowed to think what would happen? Usually they report that some distressing memory or feeling would come up. The repetitive thinking allows them to distract from those distressing feelings. Deal with those feelings and then the need for the obsessive thinking reduces. Easier said than done most often, but it does provide a reasonable solution.
Graffiti
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Do statistics lie?
Do statistics lie?
(I asked Kahless)
I received a letter today from the Prime Minister of Australia!! Aren’t I special!!
But no, it seems he has sent a letter to every household in Australia. He must have got an awfully sore tongue licking all those stamps!!
With an election just a few months away every household has received a booklet titled “Talking with your kids about drugs” as part of the National Drugs Campaign.
Parents and kids communicating is no doubt a good thing.
A good message indeed to encourage parents to talk with their kids. I agree with that. In the booklet it has a section on the facts about drugs. It is very well worded and states:
“Mental Health. In 2004, people aged 18 years and over who had used illicit drugs in the past month were twice as likely to report high levels of psychological distress as those who had not”. (end quote)
Do statistics lie?
Statistics tell the truth
Graffiti
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Monday, 03 September 2007
Ethnology and aggression
The Queen of Dysfunction asked:
What is it with the men and the sports?
Quite by coincidence I have been preparing a workshop on anger and came across some notes I wrote a long time ago about the different perspectives on anger.
One such perspective is put forward by the ethnologists, most notably, Knorad Lorenz who wrote the landmark book, “On Aggression”. His also did ground breaking work on the process of imprinting:
Konrad with his geese
He removed the real mother goose so he was the only ‘mother figure’ present when these baby geese reached the crucial age when they are biologically programmed to imprint the mother figure in their minds. So he became their mother and thus they followed him around as geese do with their mother.
Ethnology sees aggression as instinctual. This approach is coming from the biological perspective and draws on studies of both human and animal behaviour to deduce that aggression is innate. They suggest that in humans, physiologically sexual and aggressive arousal are very similar. There are fourteen similar physiological changes in the human body and only four that are dissimilar. Often one response can quickly change into another. The sexual act can quickly become aggressive, and quarrelling couples can often end up in bed. An unfortunate confirmation of this comes from research on domestic violence which finds that many women report that sexual abuse is viewed by their partners as the finale to a beating.
The sexual and aggressive responses are quite similar in humans.
The conclusion that aggression is an innate drive like the sex drive, leads them to the conclusion that aggressive tensions gets damned up just as does sexual tension. Thus it needs release just as does sexual tension. The ethnologists suggest two solutions. One is to provide opportunities for individuals to have cathartic release and the other is to structure society in such a way so as to reduce the build up of aggressive tension.
Are humans instinctually aggressive?
It is the second one that always has interested me. The ethnologists propose that society should have "...ritualised, competitive struggles between members of the human species which does not result in slaughter"
Hence we get to football which is precisely that, a ritualised, competitive struggle. However I have a double reaction to it. Is this over-analysis and football is really JUST football. Like sometimes a cigar is really JUST a cigar.
But on the other hand it does make some sense. That football could be simulated war with no actual slaughter.
Graffiti
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Bereavement as a narcissistic act
It never ceases to amaze me how much magical thinking and what we call contaminated beliefs there are about death. I recently made this comment on a blog so I thought I would ‘replay’ it here.
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I have at various times wondered what I would want my loved ones to do with me after I depart the land of the living. I have never really come up with a satisfactory answer.
The best I could think up was to get my nephew who has a degree in pyrotechnics (yes such a thing exist in Aussie!) to stack the old ashes in a whopping great big skyrocket and send them off with a big bang high in the sky.
Then the other day I saw this guy on TV who is dying. He has built a pyramid in his backyard and is going to be mummified upon his death. It jumped straight out at me!! At last I had my answer!!! I am going to be mummified when I kick the bucket. Not the pyramid in the backyard but rest of the egyptian thing is so chic these days. The cat statues, hieroglyphics on stone, some coins for the after life, a woman slave would also be great but I don’t think the government of the day would go for that (or the slave woman for that matter). At last I have my answer to the after life.
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It really did provide a sense of ‘completion’ and I felt it just fitted right.
This is amazing as I will be DEAD!!!!
I wont know anything about it but it is important for some reason.
As I have mentioned before. People are very good at lying to themselves. Pretending that what isn't, actually is. This allows us to protect our view of ourself that we see as 'right' or 'good'.
A few days ago a woman was buried in the city where I live. This got a lot of press because she had been murdered and was a nice woman and so forth. Many, many attended to pay their respects to her. Of course they are not paying their respects to her, she is dead and knows nothing about it.
Perhaps people who go to a funerals then it is all about me, me, me. But it is passed off as doing a very nice thing for the deceased. Clearly it does nothing for the deceased.
People who attend a funeral are in this frame of mind:
They are very much focused on self in an emotional state. But I am sure the many people at that funeral the other day would think they are doing it from a nurturing or caring position to the deceased. As a gesture of good intent to the deceased. When of course that is completely magical thinking. It is really all about themselves.
This woman is not crying for her son but she is crying for herself. Quite a narcissistic act when you think about it.
I have always felt a mild sense of confusion at funerals I have attended and perhaps I have just elucidated to my self why. I am thinking I am doing it from a position of respect to the deceased when intuitively I knew it was really all about me.
Graffiti
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Sunday, 02 September 2007
A hammers win!!!
Well done the Hammers
3 - 0
Graffiti
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