Hi, sent you a message a few nights ago, haven’t heard back, which isn’t like you. I’m not taking that personally (unless I should be?), but I thought I’d reach out again, imagining you may still be feeling hopeless, as you were last month, mostly because of work.
I hope this doesn’t sound self-serving, but I think my modest, self-published book about drug rehab and community mental health as a whole does provide hope to those who work in this business. Many like yourself are smothered by the platitudes of directors, administrators, and so on while otherwise feeling technocratic shards of glass pierce into their sides. I felt in your reaching words something(s) unachieved in our world: passion, bravery; risk inflected with humility. I could feel it in your depiction of that unsatisfying exchange with your manager. A “nice” man, you said. It reminded me of something an old SN once said to our group of supervisees in the three-year program: “there’s nothing nice about being nice”–it was in response to a fellow student who was struggling to manage frame issues, and justifying a lack of confrontation by declaring that confrontation was…well, not nice. In my book I am scathing, I think, about rigid adherence to procedure–the tyranny of the HR manual–when not just common sense, but common thoughtfulness, decency, but above all realness, is called for.
There are times when I think that the Masterson model can truly be distilled into these qualities. I reflect on my caseload at any one time and I think, with whom do I feel spontaneous? who do I really know? what connections feel real to me? More often than not, the best work feels like a jazzy, flowing sense of knowing…something that feels right. That may sound a little soft, and a lot unreliable. It certainly doesn’t sound very “evidence-based” or scientific, or “quantifiable”. But the thing is this: it sounds reliable to me. The reason? I trust myself, whether others do or not. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Doesn’t it sound like a gift, or a real achievement, if I’m to give myself the credit for doing the work. I’m not saying I’m getting it right with all my patients. I’m saying I can tell who I’m getting it right with, and who I’m not getting it right with.
I agee that being in the quadrants is tantamount to being unsober. I think this was the basis for our original discussions about blending the Masterson model with a 12-step program. I’m working on myself as I flit in and out of defenses; my therapist is fighting me, I think–thinks me defeatist in my self criticism. Among other things, I defend the hard but fair pronouncements that KS made of me last year. I realize that his cool yet cutting approach stirred something vigorous yet frightened in me. It all lingers, the hurt. I was surprised to read that you “identified” (with being seen? or the “bad” experience you referenced), as I specified being seen in a manner that felt menacing, even sadistic. Did I misunderstand you? Were you writing of being scrutinized, and by KS in particular?
You wrote of vulnerability in your last e-mail, “to the toxic foolishness”. I identify with this vulnerability, though I think I have some of the detachment you crave. I’m not entirely free of bad systems. Indeed, there are one or two that are threatening to ensnare me in a fight currently (perhaps more on that in a later e-mail). But TR is nearly two years in my rear view mirror, and completing the book has been, dare I say, cathartic. Anger is draining, despite the sneery, superior tone sometimes evident in the book and especially within this accompanying blog. Whether a handful of people read it (the book), or hundreds more do so, I have cleaned my own internal system of the toxic entity that once dogged me. I have gotten some peace. Like a Schizoid personality, I also have a fantasy, which I’ll share with you: you see, in the future, I imagine achieving a modest, measured (compromised?) fame for my lengthy missive to my peers. I’ll be asked what I think should happen in drug rehabs for adolescents; perhaps what should be happening in all community mental health settings. On the specifics I’ll defer, I think, as I choose to disentangle from Gordion Knots, practice something like a second step, and wait for help from those on the inside. I don’t want to abandon. I don’t want others–least not people like yourself–to give up hope. I just think I need back-up. I need the real selves to present in numbers.
Graeme
Graeme Daniels Psychewriter 