Do you remember from your adolescence or early adulthood how difficult it was to imagine being... OLD? We couldn't picture it, or at least I couldn't. I recall that at 19 I tried to imagine myself as an old person, but I ran into a blockage: I couldn't seem to picture myself much beyond my early 30s. Naturally, I thought that my inability to imagine myself in the future meant that I had no future, as if not being able to imagine was somehow (magically) an ability to predict the future.
In fact, my later life has been completely different than I imagined, or even could imagine. Here I am, an old person, and I completely and consistently failed to imagine how it might be to be this particular old person. Just when you think life has no surprises for you (or at least no good ones), it turns you in a direction you could not possibly have foreseen. And that means that as (if) I get older, my imagination will not now reach all the way to that me that then will be (if I make it that far) when I am 80 or 90.
I hear younger people going through a version of this frequently. I heard a young (30s) woman say that she saw no point in "going on", as she couldn't imagine living in the future without whatever it was she thought she had to have, like her husband or coffee-pot or whatever. What could life possibly have to offer me? she said. I can't imagine going on without [whatever], she said. So what's the point? she said. It's as if she were saying to the Universe that if she couldn't have what she now wanted, she would just resign. She couldn't imagine a different life, so she didn't believe she could have one.
It's hard to think of a kind response to this kind of shortsightedness. I don't mean to trivialize her pain, but her failure to imagine was only part of the problem. The future is not only difficult to imagine, it is impossible to imagine. Which of us could have imagined 25 years ago that we would be living as we do now? That our lives would be as changed as they have been? And how could we have imagined it? People have gone through unimaginable changes and made a wholly different life for themselves. I wonder how many people have lived through tragedy and unimaginable loss and suffering, and who later made gold from the straw of their lives? Not only have they conquered the bad changes and transmuted them, they have made total changes in direction and concept and made them work too.
The next question for us to consider is this: Why should we think we have to imagine something good to be able to look forward to life? When our imagination fails us, as it must inevitably, why should we think that this gives us no further goals? What do we need goals for, anyway?
I can now imagine that my life 20 years from now, assuming I make it that far, will be entirely different from anything I CAN imagine. I don't need to imagine it, in fact, I just have to keep living it one step at a time, and I can certainly imagine that some of those steps will be difficult ones. But some of them will be wonderful. Perhaps it's our task to take the things that happen for good or for ill and to create something better for ourselves from them.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Friday, October 26, 2007
Calling a therapist
People mostly call psychologists (or any shrink, for that matter) when they're in trouble. It's because they have made a mess, or because someone intimately involved in their life has made a mess. What do they think we're supposed to do?
A few months ago a new patient is overwhelmed by grief in my office because she has just found out her husband has had an affair. "Lady, I can't fix that!" I want to say, but she already knows that. She just wants someone to bear witness to her unhappiness, to have someone say to her "That's a shame. I'm sorry you're hurting." Hearing that won't fix anything, but somehow she will feel validated in her misery.
Where are the friends and family that should be standing witness to this sort of event? We've become so fragmented that we seem to have lost our natural support systems, and we're reduced to hiring a sympathetic ear to make real what has happened to us. Maybe the young people with their cell phones and instant messages have the right instinct. Maybe out of the deep human need to escape isolation they are re-creating their own tribes.
My job as a psychotherapist is to help people change. The absolute worst time to try to make a considered and thoughtful change is in the midst of a catastrophe. Granted, a catastrophe, especially one that you create yourself, establishes a dramatic context for the necessity of change, but nobody can think clearly while overwhelmed with misery, desperation or grief. To know what you want to change requires that you know who you are. You have to start from where you are, not from where you want or ought to be. That requires clear thinking, not desperate emotionality. "The court told me I have to see a psychologist" is possibly the worst possible starting point for anything useful.
A few months ago a new patient is overwhelmed by grief in my office because she has just found out her husband has had an affair. "Lady, I can't fix that!" I want to say, but she already knows that. She just wants someone to bear witness to her unhappiness, to have someone say to her "That's a shame. I'm sorry you're hurting." Hearing that won't fix anything, but somehow she will feel validated in her misery.
Where are the friends and family that should be standing witness to this sort of event? We've become so fragmented that we seem to have lost our natural support systems, and we're reduced to hiring a sympathetic ear to make real what has happened to us. Maybe the young people with their cell phones and instant messages have the right instinct. Maybe out of the deep human need to escape isolation they are re-creating their own tribes.
My job as a psychotherapist is to help people change. The absolute worst time to try to make a considered and thoughtful change is in the midst of a catastrophe. Granted, a catastrophe, especially one that you create yourself, establishes a dramatic context for the necessity of change, but nobody can think clearly while overwhelmed with misery, desperation or grief. To know what you want to change requires that you know who you are. You have to start from where you are, not from where you want or ought to be. That requires clear thinking, not desperate emotionality. "The court told me I have to see a psychologist" is possibly the worst possible starting point for anything useful.
Monday, October 15, 2007
The function of truth in therapy: Comments on Kaiser
Helmuth Kaiser's theory was that therapy occurred when at least two people were together and at least one of them said what s/he meant and meant what s/he said. He believed that people pretended to understand one another rather than accept the total separateness and isolation of their lives.
While I believe there is some validity in the first statement, I'm not at all sure about the second. Suppose, for instance, that there is a therapist (I'll use male references) and a patient. When the therapist "says what he means and means what he says", who changes? One? Both? Imagine now that the therapist spends the entire hour talking "truthfully" about himself. How could that possibly be effective treatment for the patient? On the other hand, how can the therapist induce the patient to say what he means and mean what he says?
Instead let's look at the issue from a standpoint I have proposed in previous notes. When the therapist gives a truthful response instead of following the social rules, s/he destabilizes the situation. That is, by breaking out of the social role and responding authentically to the patient, s/he makes it possible, or even necessary, for something new to take place. Now the patient can think and say something new, something that is not a social cliche or a comfortable lie. Of course the patient can invent new lies, but that takes a great deal of creativity and is hard to sustain in an ongoing interaction.
So I think the therapist moves the therapy along by speaking the truth, however uncomfortable, by saying what he means and meaning what he says, and thus makes it possible for the patient to think of himself in a new way, one that is more honest. This can be an uncomfortable process, certainly an anxiety-provoking one. (There are many examples in the "Dishonesty Dialogues.) When I pay attention to my interactions with other people, it is astonishing to me how much of the time I hide behind socially acceptable lies. If I tell the truth in social situations, however, no matter how tactfully and kindly, it doesn't take long for the room to empty and for people to find more comfortable and less challenging conversations. But the few that stick around or come back for more are worth getting to know. When I tell the truth in a therapy session, the patient is freed to change, think, get more in touch with himself, make his meanings and words fit together.
While I believe there is some validity in the first statement, I'm not at all sure about the second. Suppose, for instance, that there is a therapist (I'll use male references) and a patient. When the therapist "says what he means and means what he says", who changes? One? Both? Imagine now that the therapist spends the entire hour talking "truthfully" about himself. How could that possibly be effective treatment for the patient? On the other hand, how can the therapist induce the patient to say what he means and mean what he says?
Instead let's look at the issue from a standpoint I have proposed in previous notes. When the therapist gives a truthful response instead of following the social rules, s/he destabilizes the situation. That is, by breaking out of the social role and responding authentically to the patient, s/he makes it possible, or even necessary, for something new to take place. Now the patient can think and say something new, something that is not a social cliche or a comfortable lie. Of course the patient can invent new lies, but that takes a great deal of creativity and is hard to sustain in an ongoing interaction.
So I think the therapist moves the therapy along by speaking the truth, however uncomfortable, by saying what he means and meaning what he says, and thus makes it possible for the patient to think of himself in a new way, one that is more honest. This can be an uncomfortable process, certainly an anxiety-provoking one. (There are many examples in the "Dishonesty Dialogues.) When I pay attention to my interactions with other people, it is astonishing to me how much of the time I hide behind socially acceptable lies. If I tell the truth in social situations, however, no matter how tactfully and kindly, it doesn't take long for the room to empty and for people to find more comfortable and less challenging conversations. But the few that stick around or come back for more are worth getting to know. When I tell the truth in a therapy session, the patient is freed to change, think, get more in touch with himself, make his meanings and words fit together.
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