tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4425732352511468694.post7654024600776874528..comments2023-08-20T04:55:39.436-07:00Comments on Ars Psychiatrica: Calling Sir GalahadNovalishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10501890494890617030noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4425732352511468694.post-21892654842630328412010-07-23T21:11:11.379-07:002010-07-23T21:11:11.379-07:00Novalis, no offence intended. I don't routine...Novalis, no offence intended. I don't routinely construe other people's misfortune in the comedic light of entertainment value (...errr..only on special occasions..and only when the victim asked for it in many words). No, honestly I only take the piss out of my own tragedies. I will venture to add that it is perhaps because I feel too much that I often (good-naturedly, not maliciously) contaminate the purity of a tragedy with harmless shards of reflected light.<br /><br />Wisdom: most people suffering in the swamps of futile existence just want to be told that some part of their life means/meant something in terms of making a positive difference, however small. A difference no other human could've uniquely made. A tangled thread, rather than an unused reel. An iota of indispensibility in the junkyard of a human existence.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4425732352511468694.post-67130104377380661482010-07-23T14:49:20.754-07:002010-07-23T14:49:20.754-07:00X, thanks for your generous comments. Certainly t...X, thanks for your generous comments. Certainly there could be a lot of (unconscious) communication here: "Feel what I feel. Can you tolerate it? What makes you think you can help? Stay. No, go away." Psychotherapy must make do with the limitations of process without resorting to the temptations of vertical transcendence.Novalishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10501890494890617030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4425732352511468694.post-53251536107471818542010-07-23T14:06:29.315-07:002010-07-23T14:06:29.315-07:00Part 2:
One way to think about questions like thi...Part 2:<br /><br />One way to think about questions like this is that they also represent resistances in that they resist the process of contemplation and exploration by pressuring the therapist to abandon what he or she knows to be the only worthwhile course, which is serious joint deliberation that doesn’t occur in the last minutes of a first session. The patient already knows the honest response to his question: "No, I don’t have such wisdom." But if we give that answer we may end up feeling that we’ve conspired with his helplessness. Perhaps he’s assessing our confidence given that he’s trapped us with no immediately evident way out—just the predicament he feels he’s in. Are we willing to join him in the place he’s at? But he did say there was an 8% chance this could work. In other words, he has a bit of hope; he knows there are answers and he may even believe that there is an 8% chance that you’re the person for the job. I know, that’s not encouraging, but I think he’s letting on that this isn’t an impossible task.<br /><br />Okay, so now I think of his question in two opposing ways. On the one hand, the patient may want to foil the therapy and avoid unearthing unbearable but ultimately healing truths, but in another way he might be attempting to establish whether you’re up to doing the job which will be evident if you don’t give him a worthless, futile lie, showing him instead that you have the courage and the wisdom NOT give him an immediate defensive response. In other words, he’s deeply ambivalent about therapy, wanting and needing help and reluctant to embark on what is potentially a very painful process unless he knows you are seriously up to it, for real.<br /><br />I must mention that I feel quite presumptuous throwing all of this into the pot because I don’t generally feel I can offer serious insight without a lot more information within the context of a give and take process. Perhaps I’m feeling a bit of what you felt, via a parallel process.Dr Xnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4425732352511468694.post-11370888831498359312010-07-23T14:03:48.634-07:002010-07-23T14:03:48.634-07:00Apparently I've formulated a comment that'...Apparently I've formulated a comment that's too long. Here's Part 1:<br /><br />This is one of those very difficult moments in psychotherapy, especially because it comes in the first session. First sessions do tend to lay out the essential problems, usually in the cryptic ways. We only recognize this later when we go back to the first session.<br /><br />A few observations to take with a big rock of salt:<br /><br />It seems that the patient may be given to communicating the most troubling aspects of his internal world by inducing unpleasant feelings in you rather than expressing them in narrative form. I wouldn't suggest a response to him because I have none. The patient’s question and the feelings it induces likely has multiple purposes. The temptation for the therapist is to "get this lousy feeling off of me" in any number of defensive ways that either helplessly concede to the patient’s sense of futility or aggressively strike back in some subtle or not so subtle way. In an ongoing therapy one can simply not respond. In a first session, there is a greater pressure to prove our worth which almost inevitably leads us to respond with banalities that show us to be as inept as the patient probably feels underneath all of the brilliant wit and intellectualization. That could be one part of the purpose behind the question and it presents a challenge: are we going to go down the same futile roads he’s already found wanting?<br /><br />Perhaps the question also tells you about the place where the patient is stuck feeling helpless to do anything about his internal persecutors (the ones that are determined to kill him). So far he only has the bromides he’s heard a million times or his more complicated but utterly futile intellectualizations.Dr Xhttp://drx.typepad.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4425732352511468694.post-85436505303331724382010-07-23T04:16:39.892-07:002010-07-23T04:16:39.892-07:00Oh, Anon, it not permitted to say such things; in ...Oh, Anon, it not permitted to say such things; in quasi-fictional composites like this, we aim for wisdom, not entertainment. I think you are sometimes too dry-eyed for me: per Oscar Wilde, "Life is a comedy to those who think, but a tragedy to those who feel."<br /><br />As in this case, no worldly bitterness is too weighty to utterly crush a basic spiritual urge.Novalishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10501890494890617030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4425732352511468694.post-11685302228248047282010-07-23T03:19:21.726-07:002010-07-23T03:19:21.726-07:0092%...hahha..You should ask him to calculate the w...92%...hahha..You should ask him to calculate the worth of every existential irritant life has to inflict and to what degree it contributes to suicidal necesssity, on its own and in every possible combination with all the others. That should keep him occupied...and provide entertainment for everyone else.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com