Tony White

 

Basic relationship diagram

 

 

 

I gain my sense of self or my identity in two ways.

 

Who I am as an individual? Margaret Mahler and others talk about how a child must separate and individuate. The child not only has to psychologically separate from the mother but it also has to individuate or define who it is an an individual separate from others. This is shown as the individual self in the relationship diagram.

 

Who am I in relationship? Whilst we can gain a sense of our identity by who we are as an individual separate from others, humans are also relational beings. They have an ever present desire to be relational. Of course when in a relationship they form an attachment and thus there is a merging of boundaries between self and others. The other becomes part of who we are. Thus our own identity or sense of self is also defined by our bonds or attachments to others. Our own identity is to some degree dependent on the personality of others. The relationship self in the relationship diagram.

 

As a result one could draw the following diagram. The circle of “Me” indicates who I am because of my individuation and because of my attachments. Thus my identity is a combination of my individuated self and my attachments.

 

 

 

If one person would suddenly die then I am left with a problem. Part of my self or my identity becomes confused as an attachment still remains but the person is now deceased.

 

 

 

With the death one then is supposed to grieve. One psychological function of the grief could be to get one’s own identity back in order. To realign it such that there is not the confused aspect any more of having an attachment with a deceased person. The completed grief process could be diagrammed as such:

 

 

 

The attachment is expunged from the sense of self or identity of the individual. So in this sense grief is quite a narcissistic act. It also further explains why some people find grief such a difficult process and will go to great psychological lengths to avoid it.

 

Our sense of identity is obviously very important to us and is not an easy thing to change. It can’t change quickly so upon a death one realises that this change of identity is going to be quite a process and quite a painful process. Hence all the tricks we play on ourselves to stop the Child ego state accepting that the deceased is actually gone for ever.

 

There are some people who are like this

 

 

 

Their sense of self is overly dominated by their attachments as their own sense of individuation is weak. They let those with whom they have relationship define who they are. As their sense of self is weak they seek out others so as to gain some sense of self. To have a poor sense of self is very difficult to tolerate. We humans do not like it at all and will go to great lengths to attain it some way.

 

This diagram explains how a young child comes into the world. It has a very poor sense of its own individuality so it latches onto mother’s identity and borrows hers for a time. It also shows the circumstances for some vine swingers. Those who swing from one relationship to another. When a relationship ends they are most uncomfortable and have a strong need to seek out a new attachment. To have a weak sense of identity is very uncomfortable for us and people will go to great lengths to get a more solid sense of identity. One way to do that is to get someone else define it for you by forming a bond with them

 

 

 

Finally this diagram is domestic violence waiting to happen. A woman like this is very vulnerable because to end the relationship is so psychologically devastating for her and her sense of self. As a consequence she will tolerate high levels of abuse without leaving. There maybe threats to leave and short term separations but no long term split.

 

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I ran an all day workshop last week and as I look back on it now I did a bit of an unusual thing. In the morning session I ran a demonstration therapy group using the redecision method of therapy. This means the group members who attend the workshop are also the clients in the group. So people get an opportunity to get some personal therapy and to see me demonstrate how I do such group therapy.

In the afternoon the same set up was used except it was group therapy using the Relational approach. This is a very different style of group therapy and this is the part that I have thought about. I cannot recall ever doing such a thing in the past or seeing such a thing being done. That is where you have two very different styles of group therapy done with the same group members one in the morning and one in the afternoon. It was not until afterwards that I realised what was being done in this sense.

 

It truly did demonstrate the different methods, assumptions of the therapy, the therapeutic goals that the different styles set out to achieve. In both methods people did gain personal insights that they had not done so before and reported to achieve therapeutic gains. That is one of the things that impacted on me was how two very different methods still worked on the same group of people.

Some of the theory behind why the workshop was constructed as it was. In the morning when doing the redecision group therapy of course I used the redecison therapy techniques like two chair. This is shown in the diagram below

 

In this situation there are three components in the therapy setting. The client, the therapist and the techniques.
At point 1 the therapist directs and facilitates the client doing the technique which is point 2. There is also another thing going on at the same time and that is point 3, or the relationship between the client and the therapist. One has both the techniques and the relationship going on at the same time.

As we know in the literature there is quite a large group who state that it is the relationship between the client and the therapist that really has the curative powers. The client doing the techniques is good but it is point 3 that really has the profound effects.

If that is the case then lets try one other thing. Lets have therapy without any techniques. Lets have therapy where there is just the relationship. This is what happened in the afternoon Relational group therapy as is shown in the diagram below

 

In this instance the techniques are discarded and the therapist and client simply relate.

 

Overall a quite unusual and unique therapeutic experience I think having the combination of those two in the circumstances that they were presented.

 

 

 

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I am a people watcher. I just find it fun and ti watching people. Now this is probably a good thing being a counsellor and all, where observing people is kind a of a thing you have to do.

For many years I have had the habit of going to restaurants and cafes by myself. If I find a particular one that I like which has a dish that I particularly like then I will tend to frequent it by myself. Instead of cooking a can of baked beans at home by myself I will go to a cafe repeatedly and order the same dish each time. Usually on the same day of the week and usually early evening when things are not too busy.

 

 

 

When there I tend to befriend the staff and suck up to the chef by getting the wait staff to pass onto him lots of strokes for the meal I just ate. After a time the chef often will come out and have a chat with me and then of course he puts in extra effort on the meal. When I first go to a new one I will disclose very little about myself and I see them looking at me kind of funny.

They think, “Who is this person who comes regularly, by himself and says very little about himself. I wonder if he is a food critic for a magazine?”. So then they really put in a lot of effort on the food and service.

However so much for my manipulative ways. Over the years when I have told people that I go to restaurants by myself some reply that they could never do that. They would be too embarrassed as the other diners would look at them as though they are lonely and desperate and that is why you dine by yourself. Such a thing had never even entered my mind until I was told it. Maybe the other diners do look at me like that and even worse maybe I am a lonely and desperate guy! But either way it does not worry me and I keep doing my little solo dining out.

 

The other reason I do such a thing is that it’s a good place to watch other people. You see all sorts of combinations of people come into restaurants and I just find it interesting to watch them and what they do and how they get on. Most often I can’t hear what they are saying so I just get the video and no audio. I don’t do it from a judgmental or critical point of view, I just find it fun to watch what they do.

I did another bit of people watching yesterday that was not in a cafe but in my local supermarket and it made me smile. It was unusually busy so there were lots of people around and at the checkout line one had to wait about 5 minutes before being ‘checked out’ which was much longer than usual.

There was this woman waiting in the line two people in front of me. From her attire she obviously had just been to aerobics or was just about to go. She was quite pretty and was noticeably thin. Very well presented, probably had a boob job as a woman who is that thin would not usually have such boobs. Her lips also probably had been recently injected with pig fat as they looked very African-American. This woman spent a lot of time and effort on her physical appearance.

But the thing most noticeable to me was how thin she was. The vertebra in her neck and between her shoulders were clearly visible. I would not call her dangerously thin but she obviously did not eat a lot of pizza.

 

At the check out there were the usual magazines and trays of chewing gum, throat lozenges and lollies. As you wait people often do that last bit of impulse buying and pick up a little extra thing. The woman mentioned had two items, a tray of very lean meat and a tub of diet, low fat yogurt. So there we stood for 5 minutes waiting amidst the trays of impulse buying items.

Finally when it came to her turn the checkout chick scanned one item and just before the second one was scanned the woman quickly turned around and reached over a long tray of chocolates and picked up a chocolate bar. She had been standing next to them for 5 minutes, why did she wait right until the very, very last moment to make her purchase. There were probably a dozen different varieties of chocolate bars and she reached over all the others to pick up hers right at the end of the tray. This woman knew exactly the type of chocolate bar she wanted and she knew exactly where it was.

This made me smile. There it was, human nature in action. The Child ego state in full display. Further evidence that the Child ego state always wins out in the long run. At the very last final moment it had got what it wanted, a chocolate bar. She probably has a huge 5 volume rule book in her head about what she can and can’t do. A large internal critic that clamps down hard on the Child and what it wants and telling it all the exercise it has to do and all the good foods it can’t eat and all the fun it cannot have.

 

If I was counselling her I would do the usual things like listen for the cough. Bulimics often have this light repetitive cough because the throat gets irritated by the stomach acid. Drop in the, do you self harm or throw up question when she is not expecting it and look for the slight shuffle of discomfort. Circle around her possible use of amphetamines or other stimulants of some kind. As she was so thin she could also be a heroin user.

The other interesting thing about people who clamp down heavily on their Child is it works both ways. They are highly restrictive on what the Free Child is permitted to do. It is punished with a comprehensive set of rules and regulations. On the other hand not uncommonly the fun and pleasure of the Free Child also gets very specific. For instance with bulimics they can have a highly specific ritual around their eating which is quite pleasurable to go through.

I recall one delightful bulimic woman who I saw on and off for a number of years. She had this elaborate ritual where she would go to a specific supermarket, at a specific time of day, purchase a specific brand of chocolate, and a specific type of chocolate in that brand and it was always a 250g block. She would then come home, sit in her lounge room with the TV on and reading the newspaper and proceed to eat the block(s) of chocolate. You don’t need three guesses to work out what her first homework assignment was. Do the whole ritual and chocolate eating but no TV or newspaper.

For the woman in the supermarket that could have been her ritual that she has done a hundred times before. But what I would be alert to is how her Free Child gets some fun and pleasure. It could easily be odd, highly ritualistic, specific and also very secretive. Especially around food, sex and other sensory interests. She is certainly not going to tell a counsellor about them in the first sessions so just circle around the topic and wait.

 

People watching is fun.

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I have always found it an interesting distinction between adversarial psychotherapies and the non-adversarial ones. The different types of therapies of course have different ways of conceptualising what emotional problems are and thus have alternative therapies to remedy those problems. 

 

For instance take the four main forms of Transactional Analysis listed below and the which part of the personality (ego state) that they tend to focus on.

 

 

Adversarial therapies have been around since time began such as with Freud and psychoanalysis. He posited that the conscious and unconscious were adversaries. That these two aspects of the personality were combative. The unconscious was constantly trying to force itself into the conscious and the conscious was trying to avoid that happening. 

 

He even came up with the idea of the defence mechanisms. These allowed the conscious to be defended against the unwanted unconscious material. Of course one only needs a defence if one detects some kind of attack. Clearly a very adversarial explanation of personality where we have one part of the personality continually putting up defences against perceived attacks by another part of the personality. There is no concept of harmonious coexistence in such a theory.

 

In Transactional Analysis theory this view is typified by the Redecision school of therapy. They say one can explain human emotional problems by the three degrees or types of impasses a shown below:

 

 

Type 1 - the P2 and C2 ego states are in conflict

Type 2 - the P1 and C1 ego states are in conflict

Type 3 - the P0 and C0 ego states are in conflict

In each the Parent is seen as inhibiting or chastising the Child and the Child is seen as fighting back against that - a combative view I think one could say.

The impasses are explained as:

 

 

Therapy techniques like two chair are often used in these theories of therapy and are directly conflictual in nature. One pits the potency of the inhibiting Parent ego state against the needs and wants of the Child ego state. The goal of the therapist is to facilitate the Child overcoming the Parent and thus psychological growth is afforded. A directly combative approach is suggested by the therapist to the client.

 

One problem I have with with these theories and thus therapies is they say that such conflict is normal and is indeed deeply embedded in our psyche and personalities. As such conflict is inevitable, thus one has a winner and a loser context. There is no win-win dynamic in such therapies. The therapist is directly stating to the client that conflict and a combative approach to problem solving is OK and really the way to deal with such situations. Direct permission to seek a win-lose situation rather than win-win is given to the client through the therapeutic relationship and really the entire structure of the therapy.

 

 

Alternate to these are the non conflictual theories and therapies. A good example of this is client centred therapy as proposed by Carl Rogers. He suggests that if a client is placed in a unconditional positive environment in the therapy setting then that person will slowly develop due to their inherent tendency to grow towards health. It lacks any combative component. The good part about this is that it also says to the client that you are OK as you are. In the conflictual therapies the therapist is saying to the client that one part of them is not OK. Indeed the client’s Child ego state may hear being told that part of them self is bad.

 

Also what are now called the positive psychology approaches tend to be of this vein, like Abraham Maslow and many of the Life coaching approaches. The gaol is not to change things in the client but to take their positives and work with encouraging those. Again there is much less focus on the negatives or pathology in the client. So in the very nature of the therapeutic relationship the client is getting the message that they are OK.

 

In more recent times some Relational Transactional Analysis approaches are also non combative in nature. Some may even be regarded as completely pacifist in their view. The act of even diagnosing a client is considered insulting the client or shaming them. Whilst I don’t fully agree with this I do understand what they are saying and I do see its place with certain clients as is described below.

 

Some clients have a large and very vitriolic internal critic or Critical Parent ego state sitting in the back of their heads. Some times these people can use therapy to further their pathology  by giving the internal critic a good work out every session. By the very act of coming to counselling and identifying their script messages, or the games they play, or their racket feelings they are thus getting confirmation from the therapist that there is some thing wrong or bad about them. The counselling is simply used to provide further evidence for the Critical Parent with which to flagellate the Child within.

 

 

However back to the very non adversarial approaches where one is reluctant to even diagnose a problem. To do so as I said before is seen to insult the client and they would see this as interfering in the relational or the relationship between the client and therapist. They would then argue quite rightly that it is the therapeutic relationship that is usually seen as the thing that has the most curative powers and thus one wants to avoid disrupting it as much as one can. Weather making some kind of diagnosis does insult the client and thus disrupt the relational is a matter of debate but one does want to avoid disrupting the relational.

A further interesting point is that these approaches can not really be called psychotherapies. They cannot actually be a therapy. As soon as one engages in some kind of therapy then that automatically implies that there is some difficulty or problem that requires remediation. If there wasn’t then there would be no need for any therapy in the first place.

 

This leaves one a quite an interesting juncture. Two people can get together and investigate the relational contact between them where there is no therapeutic goal. It is simply a matter of investigating and understanding the relationship. So it is not therapy and it is not ‘just’ a relationship. A new entity or one could even say a new organism has been created. I am still looking for someone to have such relational contact with.

 

 

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I have always found the area of social engineering a most interesting subject of study. When humans use the law to attempt to make people behave in certain ways. It is a very perilous task indeed, especially when they are trying to curb or modify basic human drives.

The most obvious example of this is the sex drive. Governments throughout history have tried to legislate on who can breed with who and it just does not work. Apartheid tried it, the Nazis tried it and it just does not work. Thank heavens for that. Imagine what we would be like now if governments discovered that they could actually make such laws that were effective in that way. Of course this has a downside to it as well and that relates to child sexual abuse. Such laws are just not much help in this area. They are good laws to have but one must be realistic about them. You can’t make laws that attempt control the human sex drive and expect those laws to be particularly effective.

 

I recall many years ago when I was studying anthropology in university and it was stated that every society ever studied always had a significant proportion of its members who used some kind of mood altering substance. Lets face it, humans like getting stoned in some way. Weather that be hallucinogens, stimulants like nicotine, opiates, alcohol and of course marijuana has a very long history of use in many, many societies.

So when governments try to curb this basic human motivation by using the law one needs to be realistic about how effective they are going to be. And with such social engineering there are always side effects that pop up like black markets and so forth.

In one of today’s newspapers (West Australian) there was a long article by Karl O’Callaghan who is the Police Commissioner or the top cop in the state where I live. He was noting the apparent success of alcohol restrictions in very remote aboriginal communities. A decrease in violence and alcohol related accidents and so forth.

 

The actual cause of decrease is a matter of some debate but he does note that children and women are better off and there seems to be less alcoholism. That does indeed seem to be a safe conclusion and a very good one. There is however one point that he fails to mention.

I can cure a person of alcoholism easily. A guaranteed cure using geographical therapy. You simply place the person on a desert island that has no alcohol. Alcoholism solved as the person can not drink. There is just one problem. For it to work long term the person is in essence imprisoned. They can’t get off the island.

Karl O’Callaghan is promoting a similar policy of aboriginal imprisonment. These remote communities are in essence islands because the distance to other communities is difficult to traverse. To remove access to alcohol from them is in essence imprisoning these aborigines on their alcohol free desert island. They can’t leave. If they do leave and go to another community or town in Australia then they will be confronted with every possible type of alcohol known to modern man available to them 365 days per year. What will they do then? To answer this question one needs to look at what happened last time.

 

250 years ago the aborigines did indeed live on an alcohol free desert island called Australia. As a result there was no alcoholism. Then one day the British decided to go for a bit of a sail in their boats and eventually landed on the shores of “Terra Australis” as it was known then. They also brought along with them their barrels of rum. Eventually the aborigines gained access to this rum and 250 years later we are where we are now.

The social policies promoted by Karl O’Callaghan in the newspaper of today create the same situation. It imprisons the aborigines on their alcohol free desert islands. They can’t leave. If they leave one can assume the same will happen that happened 250 years ago. They start drinking or at least a portion of them will.

 

Social engineering in action. One solves the alcoholism by yet another period of aboriginal imprisonment. This then of course creates a new aboriginal underclass. Because they can’t leave and because they are in very isolated areas they can only ever have a small impact on the politics and commerce of this country. Social engineering in action. The creation of a new aboriginal underclass because they are imprisoned in the deserts of Australia.

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