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March 21, 2017 · 7:28 am

Should Woman enters therapy

 

Psychewriter’s office was on the top floor of a four-story building, in a corner, with a window that looked out towards a mountain, not down from atop a mountain. Still, it was a perch of sorts. His followers were figments of his imagination that were starting to separate. Among other things, they were seeming real, which was confusing. Worse, they were individuating, or in plainer terms, were having attitudes, growing. This spelt trouble for psychewriter, for this meant he was losing himself.

“Come in, Should-Woman, I’m ready,” he invited in bored voice.

Should Woman had been hovering about his open door, half-peering inside, half-waiting with affected reverence.

“Are you sure? Our appointment’s not for another five minutes. I don’t mind waiting.”

“I know what you’re thinking. In a minute, you’ll suggest I create better boundaries around time, though you’ll be more polite than you usually are.”

He was right about that last part, though as Should Woman entered and saw him edge behind a screen, she bristled at his presumption.

“What makes you think—wait, you think I’m rude?”

At this point, psychewriter moved away from the screen, but still had his back to her. He was fussing with something. Talk about rude.

“Hmm…okay, not rude, necessarily. Direct, maybe. Blunt. Some people like that. Anyway, how can I help you? Why did you want to see me?”

He stepped towards a black leather chair and beckoned her to sit upon a couch that was opposite. His eye contact was fleeting. Should Woman drew breath slowly, realizing she was more nervous than she had been when this idea came to her. His aloofness was dimly familiar.

“Well, I’m having a problem with my character.” My character. Should Woman had never used that term before. Her expression stilled. Memory left her. In an instant, she observed that she didn’t know much about herself: she didn’t know what her job was, who she was to other people; how old she was, even, or who she was before she became Should Woman.

“What’s the problem?”

“It’s your bias against me. Everything I say transitions into a directive, whether I want to give one or not.”

“Well, if you don’t want to give instructions, then don’t”

“That’s not the point. I…I do want to give directives. When I tell people what to do, I’m making meaningful suggestions, trying to help people.”

Psychewriter shrugged. “Okay, fine. So again, what’s the problem?”

“You! You’re the problem, up here in this ivory tower, passing judgment.”

“It’s Adobe, and I’m not passing judgment. You are. You do that a lot, actually.”

“Whatever. You’re making fun of me, using me to make a point, and making Process Man seem like the better…” she trailed off and frowned.

“The better what?”

She stopped and went blank. At that point the scene changed. Psychewriter transformed into a Victorian-attired figure, wearing a tunic and a floral necktie. Below his ears, handlebar sideburns suddenly appeared, framing a cunning grin. The room illuminated with warm light while a painting beside him evoked fire alongside a dungeon. Behind her, a small terrier dog appeared and started yapping, like it was giving her warnings, telling Should Woman what to do.

“I don’t know. That’s why I came here. Tell me what I am. What am I supposed to do?”

Psychewriter’s face twitched, betraying doubt. The plans of the creator had strayed, it seemed.

“Aren’t you doing what you want?” he asked experimentally. A stuckness hung between them for a few moments. Psychewriter gazed upwards, directing his thoughts into a dimpled ceiling. “See, I can’t tell you what to do, though you might have developed that side of yourself because I neglected you in that way. I don’t know. I haven’t figured that part out yet. It’s interesting though, isn’t it?”

Should Woman felt a surge of anger. “No, it’s not. This isn’t a game. This is my…life? Jesus, what am I saying? This totally is not what I came in here to talk about.”

“What did you want to talk about?”

She fell silent, was dumbstruck again. Though she couldn’t draw from memory, she was sure this was what talking to fathers was like.

“Someone else, huh? Process Man, maybe. Well, it didn’t take long for that agenda to fall by the wayside, did it? That’s okay. That’s the way it’s meant to be, I think. Do you want to sit down and talk?”

Should Woman dithered and looked about herself, disoriented by all the changes, inside and out. The door to psychewriter’s office was still open, and the carpet outside was suddenly yellow and stretched out towards a distant horizon. “I don’t know. I think I want to go home.”

“You’re a long way from home now. I say we sit down and figure this thing out. There. I made a decision, told you what to do. Feel better?”

“Yes,” she said, though her feelings were actually mixed, which was a new experience. “No,” she then said. She plopped herself down on the couch.

 

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March 15, 2017 · 6:12 am

Process Man and Should Woman hang out

 

“These blog entries are sexist,” Should Woman muttered bitterly.

“What?” Process Man’s face was an irritable grimace. Hanging out with Should Woman was a drain upon his energy and cheer, which was already dragged down by a stubborn cough and burning eyes. When not out intervening, he spent time in the break room of mental health mountain, waiting upon assignments. The only nourishment available was through a vending machine. Should Woman was often there too, giving attitude and, as ever, telling people what to do.

“Psychewriter. Your story is called ‘Adventures of Process Man’—typically male description, making you a hero. I get ‘Diaries’, like I’m a housebound teenager, stuck in my bedroom, being a whinny little girl doing something ordinary.”

You probably were a whinny little girl. As Process Man kept rejoinders to himself, he dabbled water upon his red eyes, and chose to air a complaint of his own.

“At least you don’t have to enter and leave in a ball of smoke everyday. I swear, I’m gonna get lung cancer or asbestos poisoning doing this job. You don’t know the pressure created by that kind of act. People expect golden insights every time. People want magic.”

Should-Woman was not initially sympathetic. “Well, that’s what you get for performing an act. It’s not magic. You should try being real for a change. Try helping people in a practical way: establishing structure, holding people accountable—being there, day after day, instead of coming and going like a ghost.”

“Jesus, here we go. You just can’t help yourself, can you? You know, you almost did something different for a minute there.”

“Excuse me, what are you talking about?”

“Your analysis of adventure versus diaries. That was interesting, and correct, actually. If and when we have an audience with the great psychewriter, we should ask him about the subtext of our characters, see what’s on his mind.”

Should Woman scoffed. “What’s on his mind. Yah, that sounds like a good use of our time.” Sarcasm aside, Should Woman had often wondered what was on psychewriter’s mind. What was her purpose versus that of guys like Process Man? What did he expect of her?

“I’m being serious. That was an interpretation you made earlier. It’s in you, if you try.”

“Don’t patronize me. Just because he gave you a cape and the gift of disappearance doesn’t make you superior. If anything, that makes you unreliable. You probably trigger people’s abandonment issues.”

“See, there you go. You did it again, making a point about the unconscious reaction people might have towards me. I often sense the ambivalence when—”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Look, I didn’t mean to—” This time, Process Man’s words disappeared into a coughing fit, not an interruption. Should Woman softened.

“You should get that looked at. It doesn’t sound good.”

“I know,” he said finally in a quiet sputtering voice.

She walked over, took him by the hand. “Here, come with me.”

“What are we doing?”

“You honestly don’t know, do you?”

“Uh…”

“First, stop drinking soda. It doesn’t help with…well, with whatever’s wrong with you. Next, you should gargle. It will dislodge any obstruction, rid you of bacteria.”

“Obstruction? I’m not choking.”

“You don’t know that. Or it might be phlegm buildup. Regardless, you should take some time off. We should tell psychewriter that you need a lot more rest than a few hours in that miserable break room. In fact, if you want to just rest, I’ll go to him. I’ve got a few things to say anyway. So…”

Should Woman stopped as she glanced at Process Man’s hangdog expression. It seemed he didn’t have strength to fight her anymore.

“What?” she said. “You want me to stop talking, don’t you—stop telling you what to do? Is that what you’re telling me? Is that look your process comment?”

Process man chuckled and shook his head. “No,” he said wearily as he looked deep into her. Should Woman dropped her shoulders and sighed. A wave of fatigue claimed her as she realized one more thing.

“We both need rest,” she said.

In the cuts, from a slightly aerial vantage point, psychewriter looked on, thinking his characters had something in common.

Empathy.

Graeme Daniels, MFT

 

 

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March 9, 2017 · 5:56 am

The Should-Woman Diaries

 

Should-Woman was a more down to earth figure than Process Man. Should Woman didn’t believe in magical appearances or a quasi-heroic vanishing. Should-Woman rang doorbells, gave plain greetings, was stern and humorless, but compassionate. Reality and presence. Day-to-day, for discreet periods, Should-Woman would sustain a role in people’s lives. She would focus upon the practical, that which could be seen, heard, and proven, and she would insist upon continuity.

“I just can’t seem to figure it out,” complained Larry, laying on his couch late morning. Ostensibly, he’d been awake for several hours, but his energy was half-hearted. His days were ever half-activated.

“You should make a plan. People like you need a plan. We should make a to-do list. Now, what shall we do today?”

Larry shrugged. “I don’t know.” He looked around, gazed out the window. Like Ishmael from Moby Dick, he regarded an oceanic elsewhere as if it contained an elusive self and imperceptible limits. “There’s so much out there, you know? The world is like…it’s like a giant, beautiful harvest.”

“Yes, well, let’s try to focus on something real, like a resource list, a list of people to call today, or a goals inventory.”

“A goals list? My goal is to just be myself, and let others be—know what I’m sayin’?”

Should-Woman shook her head faintly and turned away for a brief moment. Collecting herself, she remembered her training and purpose. Tough cases like Larry might ever deflect with meaningless reverie and glib pronouncements. Her job was to keep her mind clean: to not accept deadness but rather model the positive and move forward.

“That’s fine, so let’s start by completing the household chores, then we can go out and work on the community garden.”

“I don’t wanna—”

“I know you don’t, but let’s just take it one step at a time.”

“What steps? Aint no steps?”

“You have laundry, last night’s dishes.”

“There aint no dishes. I ate out of styrofoam. I’ll just throw it away.”

“Well, you shouldn’t eat from styrofoam, and you shouldn’t just throw it away. It’s not good for the environment. Anyway, what about laundry?”

“This aint laundry day. I do that on…Sunday.” He was lying. Larry had no regular laundry day.

“What about that shirt? You were wearing that when I came here last week. It needs to be washed.”

“It’s fine, it don’t matter,” Larry said absently. He got up from his couch and started moving towards his bedroom.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m gonna lie down. I’m tired.”

“Tired. You just got up. Anyway, if you’re done in here, you should unplug your appliances, the TV and the computer. It wastes electricity.”

“Man, why don’t you go tell someone else what to do, Should-Woman?”

Tough case indeed. Should-Woman held faith, for she knew that people who didn’t know what was best for them would learn eventually. Solemnly, she followed Larry to the edge of his room, knowing a hard lesson was near. Across the threshold, he stepped amongst belongings that littered the floor and aimed a sloppy lurch towards an inviting bed. As he made a last torpidly decisive move, his foot tripped over a solid object beneath a sheet that had slid across the floor. From under that cover, Larry felt the smooth yet sickly texture of liquid swim over his toes. He looked down to see the emerging brown stain of coffee being absorbed into the sheet.

“Shit,” he exclaimed as he kicked the fabric aside, only to see a cracked cup laying above a page of handwriting. Larry scrambled to rescue the last letter he’d gotten from Mary, the woman who had left him a month earlier. He’d taken that letter to bed with him every night, having not wanted to let it—her—out of his sight.

“I told you that drinking and eating in bed wasn’t a good idea,” said Should-Woman, looking down upon the scene. Prostate in grief, Larry crumpled the irrevocably stained letter into a ball and said, “You’re right, Should-Woman. I should be more careful with my things.”

 

Graeme Daniels, MFT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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March 1, 2017 · 4:24 pm

The Adventures of Process Man

 

Rick sat on a stool adjacent to his parents’ kitchen, indulging his father’s Sunday night oratory. Tonight, it was about the latest kitchen renovation, proudly completed just in time for his adult son and his wife’s latest visit. Across the way, Rick’s mother was bending Amy’s ear about something which left Rick’s spouse glassy eyed and feigning rapt interest. Rick’s father was a more insistent speaker. To properly placate him, Rick would need to affirm every sentence with a nod, an appreciative hum, or an occasional query indicating sustained curiosity.

“See how it opens up the space and you can look out into the living room, speak to your guests if you want, carry on a conversation while you’re preparing some food.”

“Yeah, it’s great, dad. Really. I can see how it’s gonna work for you.”

“Well, you might wanna think about it for your own place. I could give you the number of my guy. He’d give you a good price, or if you like, we could help you out. Call it an early Christmas gift.”

“It’s April, dad”

“So what. It’s a very early Christmas present.” This was Rick’s mom chiming in, and releasing her daughter-in-law for a moment. Rick and Amy exchanged a furtive glance.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Rick said with diplomatic caution. He wore the kind of placid smile that he’d been sporting with his parents since his late teens.

“What’s to know. Look, it’s up to you, but see how it opens up the whole place. I’m thinking about your kitchen. You’d be crazy not to do something like this. Look, you can…” Rick’s dad basically repeated everything he’d said three minutes earlier, only now Rick made less effort to oblige him. It was an old pattern, an old diminishing set of returns. While he hung his head, his father continued. Opposite him, his mother resumed her monologue with Amy. Rick sighed.

A flash appeared in the center of the room, accompanied by a plume of smoke but leaving in its wake a muscle-bound, toothy and earnest figure.

“Hi!” said the ephemeral, masculine image.

“Process Man! What are you doing here?” asked Rick

“Who? Who’s this?” asked Rick’s dad, dumbfounded.

Rick quickly collected himself. “It’s Process Man. He’s a legend. He helps people with communication problems—tells them what they’re saying to each other beneath their content.”

“What?”

“That’s right, Rick,” the figure affirmed. “I am Process Man and I am here to help you understand what you’re REALLY saying to one another.” He turned to face the awestruck women. “What you all are saying to one another”

“Wait a minute, what’s going on here?” protested Rick’s dad.

Process Man began his sage lesson, unperturbed. “You see, Rick, what’s being offered here is a parental gift. Your father has money and advice to give you, and will only be satisfied when you allow him to make this gift.”

“I know that, Process Man, but—”

“But what you don’t know or realize fully is that this conversation isn’t over until you give unequivocal support for the idea. That’s why your father is prepared to repeat the information, and will keep repeating it until you agree. He’s the one who decrees when the communication is over. That’s what he’s saying.”

“You know, you’re right,” Rick enthused.

“Wait. I—”

“And Dad, you probably understand that your son’s gotta consult with his good woman, who’s over there listening to your good woman, loyally absorbing the mother-in-law’s words. But what you don’t fully know is that Rick needs to make up his own mind, and the more you repeat your lessons, the less he’ll take in what you have to say.”

“The law of diminishing returns,” Rick’s dad intoned soberly.

“That’s right. You understand.”

“Thanks, Process Man,” said Rick.

“Tell a friend,” said the figure as he and the smoke disappeared.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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February 18, 2017 · 9:22 am

Personality Disorder: the other way (part two)

 

I want to blame someone. James Masterson did also, I think. He will have argued with many over what comprises a real versus a false self, or a personality disorder—whether such a thing exists with some. Were he alive today I think he’d argue with proponents of trauma model, and possibly with authors of novels like The Woman in Cabin 10. Not that these people don’t think that personality disorders exist. They simply call them something else, because mental health services, like any commodity, ultimately, is not just something to be validated by research, or—sorry—evidence-based research. It is something to be sold to the public.

For the average consumer of psychotherapy, a diagnosis of trauma, whether that trauma is episodic, chronic, the result of fatefully aberrant events or an aggregate of quaintly termed little ts that shape development (the theorized etiology of personality disorders) is simply more palatable. The word connotes victimization by an external agent, and thus a diminished responsibility for the sufferer. Treatment encourages a present identity of a survivor (very popular), with a possible future of healing. It’s a meet-them-where-they’re-at-thing. Regarding etiology, the accent is upon recent, precipitating events, with an intellectualized nod towards distant antecedents, that complex internalization of others which blurs a simplified reality.

Trauma model practitioners pay lip service to the antecedents of trauma. Prominent authors even co-opt object relations theories without crediting them, and repackage (reframe in the jargon of the field) personality disorder as something like developmental or relational trauma. A good example is featured in Barbara Steffens’ Your Sexually Addicted Spouse, whose target readership is evident by the title. In her text, Steffens describes PTSD as “something that can last a lifetime”, and that relationship trauma entails “painful coping mechanisms ingrained in personalities” Study the work of Klein, Fairbairn, Mahler, Winnicott, Masterson or Kohut and you’d hear the echo of their theories in such pop psychology literature: that psychic pain is integrated into personality over time, generating a disordered self in which such pain is habitually defended against in relationship.

But again, while trauma model educators pay lip service to old patterns, they mostly ignore it in treatment. The reasons are two-fold: A.) Treatment doesn’t last very long in this model. It’s a two week stay in a group home of some kind, or an eight-week course at your nearby hospital. B.) Discussion of problems is intellectual, academic—therapy as education. You’re given homework, even, to solidify the association with school. This is organizing, some say. Stabilizing for the unsafe person who cannot, it is presumed, manage complexity, the uncertainty of not knowing more deeply why something is happening. They are unable to weigh or contemplate their own mind alongside those of others, which are similarly complex, and implicitly dangerous. This danger is cast as objective reality, and anyone who says otherwise is “gaslighting”. Thus, treatment prioritizes affect regulation techniques and procedures, not the contemplation of self and other; it advises the practice of coping skills, self-care activities—all of which is worthy, actually, as adjuncts to growth. Meanwhile, the model’s adherents suggest that the afflicted let go of the actions, opinions, even the feelings of difficult others, while attaching labels. Fuller contemplation is put off until some ambiguously later time, when the person may be deemed ready. I think that readiness is seldom achieved. Time passes. It doesn’t so much heal as fossilize thoughts about self and other. What’s difficult to let go of are the pat understandings imparted by practitioners who recycle the same lessons in one short-term treatment episode after another.

In a longer-term therapy model, individuals inhabit their adult roles and live their lives as opposed to dropping out of society and going to school. They are challenged to do more than learn how to self-soothe or calm down, or take time-outs when mad, or to leave that bad relationship that your friends all think is wrong, only to start another one that’s similar because you haven’t learned what you got from that bad relationship. Instead, some learn (or are challenged to learn) to hang out with confusion, the grey areas of day-to-day life; to tolerate discomfort, stay with the difficult, as Masterson was once quoted as saying. Reality is learning about one’s own mind and being open to those of others, especially those that are not so easy to detach from: bosses, spouses, children; the memory of those absent but still profoundly influential.

What’s your pain today? Who or what do you want to blame, talk about instead of understand; focus on instead of yourself? Do you really know what your pain is about, what it’s backstory is—it’s underpinning? Do you think you really know the story of others? I know. It’s not what you (I’m) thinking.

 

Graeme Daniels, MFT

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February 13, 2017 · 9:19 am

Personality Disorder: the other way (part one)

 

Musing on a recent concatenation: my annual trip to San Rafael to teach intern therapists something about the late James Masterson and his Disorder of Self model; a reading of a novel that reminds me the zeitgeist is elsewhere, teaching a more palatable lesson. A student in the training, an intern in a private practice model, asked me about the fame of JM, or more specifically, about his lingering relevance. Though she’d heard of him before, she’d only known about him from others at this particular agency, she stated. The comment was a muted, polite critique, suggesting an eclipsed influence of a one-time star in the psychoanalytic pantheon.

What a start, I thought. It was the beginning of a six-hour training, so I’d be up against it, hoping to disabuse this woman and others of some chestnut assumptions, biases reinforced by institutions, medical and cultural, as well as academia to some extent. The pressure wasn’t great–mostly self-imposed, I think–but subtle. What is my obligation or prerogative to instruct about the Masterson model? To advocate for an outmoded, if (in my opinion) far more thoughtful take on the concept of personality disorder? Not much, actually. And six hours is a lot, you might think, to shed light on a few things, offer a different way of thinking about an old problem.

Anyway, Disorder of Self is a term Masterson coined towards the end of his career, to provide an alternative to the embattled Personality Disorder label, which is described via a medical lens in the diagnostic standards manual (DSM-V) of the American Psychiatric Association. The term references a syndrome of characteristics, ‘pervasive’ in nature, cutting across contexts and time. For many, it’s not a popular term. It pathologizes, stereotypes, and reduces, mostly because of the way these terms are used, which indeed pathologizes, stereotypes and reduces. The most commonly used terms, Borderline and Narcissist, have seeped into commonspeak like rain spilling over a dam. It wasn’t meant to be, but it’s not surprising  given the flood of opinion. I remember when I was in graduate school, when I was first introduced to the nomenclature. The word Borderline was a byword for difficult client; it denoted (and still does) someone who is volatile in mood, and therefore in relationship; it means someone who is often suicidal, or otherwise self-destructive. They make demands, flood the boundaries of novice therapists. They overwhelm. Narcissists do something similar, only with more self-importance, so-called grandiosity, and conceit.

James Masterson followed the psychoanalytic tradition, cast PDs not so much as a syndrome of behaviors or glibly-described personal styles as a complex map of self and other representations–a dynamic between self and other, not self versus environment per se, as DW Winnicott opined. Following the lead of Melanie Klein, WRD Fairbairn, and Margaret Mahler, Masterson cast Borderline and Narcissistic disorders as derived from intrapsychic structures comprised of interactions between projections and introjections, those experiences of self and others. He mapped out these experiences in object relations units, states of mind activated by splitting defenses, representing false ways of being, strategies of how to operate in relationship, on an unconscious level. My task in these introductory trainings was to read passages from cases, snippets of exchanges between myself and clients, illustrating these states of mind. The utility? To show how a mind works in commonplace ways, basically.

The students were struck by how familiar the exchanges seemed, and by how apt the conceptualizations ultimately seemed as they were described and then depicted in case scenarios.

Someone asked about trauma, a word often used to combat the notion of PDs in some circles, and subtly join with the paradigm in others. We note the ubiquity of the word trauma to denote victimization, the externalization of problems, attributable to fate or social forces and not so much an aggregation of developmental phenomena. It suits us to connect dots, but to do so expeditiously, to indicate identifiable, as in consciously understood and remembered events. And it is a familiar, almost comforting idea, especially for those who don’t know what projections are—who might find it maddening to ever wonder whether thoughts and feelings come from the self versus another, or between an elusive self and other.

Fiction, not so strange fiction, can reinforce this facile prejudice. Ruth Ware’s latest thriller, The Woman in Cabin 10, for example, features a main character who has suffered a home break-in at the outset of the story. This event serves as a backdrop for the subsequent misadventure, in which she sees and hears evidence of a murder, but is gaslighted by a pernicious crew of a luxury cruise-liner, who are protecting a villain in power, and discredit her because she is shaken, prone to depression–on medication, it is discovered. For some portion of the book, the reader is teased by the possibility that the protagonist is an unreliable reporter, filtering her drama through both recent events and a plethora of self and other representations, accumulated over time, and manifest in a reactive personal style.

Alas, the story abandons the tension of such an unknown and quite readily sides with its designated heroine, linking her terror to her recent misfortune, and only thinly to anything pre-existing. Disappointing, I thought, though the story was still gripping. Oh well, I’m back at work tomorrow, and thankfully not dealing with anything as serious as murder, but still following stories with protagonists that will grip my interest beyond a taut 75,000 words. I just have to figure out who the people are that I’m sitting with. That’s their job, ultimately.

Graeme Daniels, MFT

 

 

 

 

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January 28, 2017 · 2:28 pm

Mary and her followers

Because I lost a friend to cancer recently, I’m in a eulogizing mood. Sticking with the theme of social/cultural commentary, I return to my favorite arena—the arts—to pay tribute to a television icon, Mary Tyler Moore. We lost so many icons in 2016 (Bowie, Prince, Muhammed Ali, the heartbreaking back-to-back blow of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds) that it seems unusual to me that I’d choose Moore’s passing to remark on. She was neither the most or the least influential figure on the aforementioned list, but her life is relevant to the themes of privilege and prejudice that are on many of my clients’ minds these days.

As I wrote in my last entry, American television exported many symbols in my seventies youth, but few of them were comic. Britain of the 70s seemed to have enough of its own comedy, so its public had little use for contemporary American stars like Carol O’Connor, who played Archie Bunker (who was actually based on a British character), or Carol Burnett, or Mary Tyler Moore. Following immigration, I watched her on sick days from school, or on indolent summer vacations, when reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show were part of a daily TV diet. Watching Laura Petry, I was vaguely aware that she was modeled upon an early sixties ideal: beautiful, graceful, lightly comic (ala Lucille Ball); aspiring a pre-tragic Jackie Kennedy. Her later transformation into Mary Richards, a character fronting Moore’s eponymous 70s sitcom, reminded me more of my mother: she was still beautiful, still gracious, but now she was unmarried (that part’s not like my mom), dating (though carefully falling short of promiscuity, it seemed), and solidly career-focused. She put the men in their place (“put a sock in it, Ted”), but she was never mean about it. Like all of our favorite social revolutionaries, she smiled a lot.

At one time, I may have thought her a poor woman’s Jane Fonda or Sally Field, two of my favorite female movie stars of that era. Ordinary People changed that. Playing a middle-aged woman grieving the loss of a favored son, she dropped the winning persona, lost her smile, and delivered a performance of such complexity that Ordinary People (for a while, anyway) became a staple of graduate school counseling programs, as a teaching tool illustrating dysfunctional families coping with loss. Tyler Moore’s character, in particular, seemed to absorb so many viewers’ projections. She was cold and unsympathetic, yet compelling. Easy to dislike, her manner of coping was too familiar, too relatable, to be dismissed. After OP, her career seemed to wane, as she drifted into mediocre TV movies. Her focus turned to charity, being active in animal rights issues; was sadly beset with alcoholism and diabetes.

I sort of waited for a worthy heir apparent, and thought Julie Roberts and Sandra Bullock fit the bill—Jennifer Aniston, too. These stars were wonderful, but something had changed. I had changed. By the nineties I was noticing Hollywood’s lazy feminism. Murphy Brown, a late eighties sitcom, seemed to keep alive the semi-tradition of lauding independent women, with the implication that social equality in all areas was being promoted. But at this point something else was being suggested of male figures who were career-focused, unmarried, and sexually liberated. Represented by the likes of Jerry Seinfeid, the male cast of Friends, the various roles Charlie Sheen has inhabited, the “independent” men of TV were usually roguish, or at best inoffensively feckless (as in the case of Seinfeld). Their independence was spun as emotional detachment, became a source of parody. They were relationship-phobic. The phrase, “afraid to commit” became a chestnut feminine critique.

The feminists of my mother’s generation seemed to yield to a generation of tiresome male-bashers, largely oblivious to their reversed double standards. This seems to have influenced a number of backlashes: right-wing social movements, reactionary politics; uber-sexist male celebrities. Remember Andrew Dice Clay? He was so obnoxious I once thought him a leftist plant: a kind of pop media Manchurian Candidate, sent by principals of a progressive movement to illustrate the wrongness of an arch-conservative demographic. There have been plenty other provocateurs since, each increasingly provocative, representing new waves of established thought, with fresh, distinctive voices, perhaps, but with ever more ugliness, on both sides of the social/political divide, if I’m honest. If light comedy with a social comment still exists, I’m struggling to find it.

Graeme Daniels, MFT

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January 14, 2017 · 9:39 pm

What it means to be white…and English

 

Got a reading assignment recently, from a loving man and friend who brings me fruit from his garden. Note the word ‘assignment’. You might glean that I was feeling resistant, a bit prickly about what happens next. The book in question is Robin DiAngelo’s What Does It Mean To Be White, a semi-academic, somewhat incendiary text whose subtitle, Developing White Racial Literacy, previews the author’s attitude. My friend had asked me to read this book leading up to and in the wake of Donald Trump’s election, believing a crisis was afoot, and that white people, in particular, need to change the way they think and talk, about race.

I pronounced myself interested, if not zealous like him. In truth, I am cautious about being recruited to something, though I am drawn by the premise. Indeed, some topics need to be addressed, and after 169 entries to date, I figured it was time I addressed this one*. Anyway, I’ve finished my reading so I’m ready for a good chat. I’ll likely start by acknowledging certain points. That our “dominant” culture views racism as a binary—you are or you are not ‘a racist’—thus blocking a meaningful discussion because this bias elicits defense, seems correct. I also agree that our collective privileging of philosophies like individualism, meritocracy, and universalism (platitudes like, “under the skin we’re all the same”) similarly deflect from realistic discussion. On the negative side, I don’t care for the application of terms like ‘literacy’ (implying the corollary, illiteracy) to preemptively derrogate dissenters. It seems not only pedantic, but superior in tone, fanatical. A turn off. Lesser offensive is the book’s ignoring of nationality as an aspect of diversity; further, the notion that racism is a white problem because that term indicates a pervasive, institutionalized phenomenon, while terms like prejudice or stereotype are more appropriately applied to individual situations, seems correct on the one hand. At this point in the text, DiAngelo had already outlined the economic, legal, and social disadvantages largely experienced by people of color. However, if one is subject to an individual act of prejudice, be it dangerous or otherwise harmful, it will seem merely academic what term is applied, which lends an element of so what to this portion of her book.

With that preface, I will next ask my friend if we might sideline the intellectual part to focus on the personal. This is what I thought might be explored at length in What Does It Mean To White, and what I hope to make room for.

When I was a kid (age 0-10), there were few peers or adults of color in my community. I lived in semi-rural areas of Britain, within outskirts (British term for suburb) of UK second cities, Manchester and Birmingham. I recall small populations of Indians, people from the Middle East, but no one of what we now call Asian heritage, and hardly anyone Black or of Hispanic heritage. To me, Black meant someone of African background, and some lived in the inner cities, I somehow learned. I discerned much from TV. I will have learned about slavery from Roots, the celebrated Alex Haley book that became a miniseries, and something of a media sensation. Slavery was horrible, I observed, and was told. It doesn’t exist anymore, adults added.

I learned what ‘Americans’ were from cop shows. Americans, to my 7-10 year-old self were white, spoke in canned voices and said words or terms like ‘wow!’ or ‘holy cow!’ a lot. The ‘other’ Indians, or Native Americans, were…well, I didn’t know where they came from, and I won’t have thought about it. Those cop and/or action shows delineated the stereotypes and hierarchies: white guys were in charge—were the heroes, but also, mostly, the villains. Black guys were bad, as in thugs, generally, but also, sometimes, the hip, as in more knowing partners of the white guys in charge. Asian people were clearly subordinate, the people in charge of the computers and other machines, whether fixing them or else declaring their failures in critical moments. An exception, it seemed, was Star Trek, with its weird Scotsman whining, “Cap’n, I canna git ni pewer!”.

Emigration to the US didn’t change much. There were more Latinos (as in Latin America versus Spain, I inferred), more people of mixed race. Still not many Black people, as I still lived a middle-class life, now in suburbs, not ‘outskirts’, and the socioeconomic segregations seemed largely similar to what they were in the UK. I experienced largely benign, if irritating prejudice in middle school and (somewhat) into H.S. Peers teased my accent, stock British phrases which I didn’t use but had crossed the ocean via media (I blame PBS, Jane Austen, Benny Hill, The Royal Family, The Beatles. Thank God I got through school before Harry Potter!). I was unhatefully called a ‘limey’ sometimes—a reference, apparently, to Elizabethan era English sailors who, lacking vitamins when crossing oceans to conquer foreign lands, contracted scurvy and thus needed fruits like limes as a remedy.

“Okay,” I would say without interest when this was explained.

A genuinely upsetting experience happened in 9th grade, when I frequented a friend’s home that also attracted his sister’s friends, one of whom was a friendly, same-aged Black girl who went to a local school, not mine. She was pretty—had a lovely smile and her hair was curly, with Shirley Temple ringlets down about the base of her neck. Mostly she was charming, and as she hung around me and my friend a bit more than his sister, we bantered easily. I was careless, I think. Awkward as a teen for reasons that are beyond the scope of this entry, I’d say the wrong thing at times. I don’t believe that what I said to her was prejudiced, or racist. On the surface, at least, race didn’t seem relevant to the offense. Anyway, I’d said something, and thus on the third, or maybe fourth—and sadly, last—occasion this girl was in our company, she was morose and distant. I asked my friend what was up with her. According to him, she’d said one or two things to me that he deemed flirtatious, and I’d brushed her off.

I didn’t know what to do—what I wanted to do. Dealing with the feelings of girls, women was…hmm? Long story short: never saw her again. I’d like to share this memory with my friend, tell him that I’ve been thinking of this story as I read the DiAngelo book. It was and is relevant to our important subject, because among other things, what was somewhere in my mind the time that girl was in my company were the following assumptions: you (I) don’t have relationships with Black people. They live elsewhere, have different lives. They don’t like you, wouldn’t like you, much less want to be close to you. Was any of this conscious to my teenage mind? No. Robin DiAngelo, paraphrasing psychoanalysis, would likely argue that this doesn’t matter in so far as we have a responsibility to search our minds and upon that endeavor, to be honest. Fair enough.

By the way, I have a teasing question for my friend when we get together, about that fruit he’d given me the last time we saw each other: why was he giving me limes?

  • Actually, the entry “Don’t look at me” (August 2014) is centrally about race

 

Graeme Daniels, MFT

 

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January 7, 2017 · 10:07 pm

Memory of skittles

 

Do you remember going to movies as a kid, expecting colorful, fun adventures; a gripping, if not especially meaningful story? And do you recall those films whose lulls in exciting action, featuring longwinded dialogue (by my youngest standards, that meant all dialogue besides the phrases “look out!” or “we’re running out of time”) that left you confused, or bored, or possibly disturbed? Some stories, books or films, deposited ideas that I failed to grasp when I was young, but they left residues that my mind later absorbed, reorganized, and therefore put to different uses. Like…

I’ll eschew a Jungian pretense, a scholarly attempt to know the cross-cultural and time immemorial derivatives of modern storytelling. If Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, the first ever film my parents took me to see (that I recall) is based upon, or is meant to parallel some Biblical or otherwise mythical antecedent, I was and still am ignorant of such information. When I saw the film when I was four, or maybe five, circa 1972 or 73’, I came away from the experience, like many other children I think, delighted by the color and mischief of the story. The rainbow images were childlike psychedelia, and an apt reflection of the candy ephemera I and most kids seem to fall in love with. The characters and story of Willy Wonka seemed fun and mildly comic; I was inclined to smile, laugh or even squeal at the playful action. At the same time, however, I recall feeling oddly disoriented by the menacing character that was Willy Wonka, and vaguely concerned for the sympathetic hero, the “honest” Charlie Bucket.

The morality aspect was not lost on me, even as a four or five-year-old. I was, after all, supposed to be downloading guilt around about this time, so a timeless cautionary tale about honesty or greed was actually, uh, well-timed, developmentally speaking. I recall the theme of gluttony being most impactful at the time. This may have been because I was at a movie theater, where candy snacks will have been (as they are still), with no sense of irony, sold in oversized portions to parents and children. I may have been more conscious, via experience, of greed and gluttony issues. Lying or treachery versus faith and honesty were likely not yet my cutting edge concerns. Maybe for me life was more about what I could do, when I could do it; when it was time to play, to stop playing; when is it time to notice too much of a good thing. The theme of patrimony, of passing down a legacy—notions of continuity and mortality—to a worthy heir, was lost on me.

It isn’t today, of course, but as I watched Willy Wonka recently over the holidays (it somehow seems an appropriate Holiday feature), I considered that the themes that resonated with my five-year-old self, that were implicitly deposited then, and which lingered thereafter, are still the ones that resonate most today. An addict is someone who is drawn by a figurative candy store; is seduced by an anticipation of pleasures: if not color or adventure, then of joyful affiliation, like-mindedness and play. The consequences of eating too much, of being self-centered, entitled or arrogant, are observable, but more so by onlookers, not the actors, save for a hero, the one survivor who will be redeemed, and rewarded with a happy ending. As a kid, I didn’t fully understand Charlie Bucket’s happy ending—that piece about inheriting the kingdom, whatever that was about. I just thought he’d been rewarded for not being too greedy. I might have looked at my mother to see if she were directing my attention, hoping I’d get this message, and thus I’d pick up my empty wrappers and not ask for more.

When people taste freedom for the first time, or for the first time in a while (going off to college, life after a separation), there is a sense of loss, one that may be felt palpably or tacitly, like the original losses. Buried. Not Buried. This is when the candy store opens its doors.

 

Graeme Daniels, MFT

 

 

 

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December 31, 2016 · 10:11 pm

Holden Caulfield would understand

 

Final day of 2016. Possibly the last time I will focus on my most recent novel, the one featuring my most cryptic of titles, Venus Looks Down On A Prairie Vole.

“What the hell is a prairie vole?”, complained one reader, who further implied that he didn’t like obscure metaphors in popular art–that is, until I pointed out that his favorite book was Catcher In The Rye, and that his favorite film was To Kill A Mockingbird, and that his second favorite was One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

“Fine, you’ve made your point,” he conceded, only to add, “But pretty please, so I don’t have to bother Wikipedia—what the fuck is a prairie vole?”

“Fine,” I replied. Fine, I think finally: I will explain more pointedly, more comprehensively than I have before, my oh-so-obscure metaphors. I guess I’ll start with the second one: a prairie vole is a monogamous rodent. I’ve written that before and left it at that, feeling cheekily evasive. But there’s more, of course. I learned about prairie voles a couple of years ago, from the book The Compass of Pleasure, a non-fiction about addictions, whose author, David Linden, wrote with similar cheek about creatures that didn’t fit the masculine stereotype of wanton promiscuity—hence a passage about prairie voles, who not only put a ring on it and devote themselves to one partner, they behave aggressively towards other females who impinge. How romantic. What real men prairie voles are.

The latter trait doesn’t necessarily pertain to psychologist Daniel Pierce, my recently widowed and ever faithful protagonist—at least, not until he meets Lira, a former prostitute antagonist, with whom he engages with tense debate, contesting her careless feminism, which underlies her effort to expose one of Daniel’s patients, who is accused of child abuse, among other things. Because of Daniel’s resistance to her, Lira presumes his solidarity with masculine license, and is only mildly convinced by his grief-stricken diffidence, and much less by his ethical stance on privacy. Still, over the course of the story his reluctant attraction to Lira becomes evident, adding to the air of sacrifice in his character.

Which leads me to the other metaphor, the less obscure term, Venus. No one has asked me about the meaning of this one, which is disappointing on the one hand, and mildly gratifying on the other. I guess that readers get the idea. I think. Anyway, though I believe most readers are aware that Venus is Roman mythology’s answer to Aphrodite, and means goddess of beauty and love, what may not be entirely clear is the term’s relevance to the story.

Well, firstly, and most sentimentally, Venus is a reference to Mary, Daniel’s recently deceased (from cancer) wife, who is “looking down” upon her ever faithful husband, lovingly. You’d think this alone might render Daniel likable, or at least sympathetic, and thus gird him from the wrath of readers who might (like Lira) upbraid him for not later doing the right thing, from an average point of view. Because the average view is that therapists and other mandated reporters can and should, if they have the information, violate their patients’ privacy if said information might help the investigation of child abuse and thus yield the protection of children.

Daniel rejects the simplicity of this argument and therefore represents, as my hero/anti-hero, what I imagine to be one of, if not the most unpopular position that any responsible adult might take in today’s society: the protection of a possible sex offender’s privacy. I was acutely aware when I was writing Venus of how this might affect a reader’s sympathy for my central character.

And as a male writer with a male protagonist, I position center stage the opinion of women, especially. What does Venus, the symbolic everywoman, think of Daniel? Would she think him a hero? Probably not. Merely decent? Maybe. Look down on him, so to speak? Would it be enough for Daniel, to be considered decent? Is being decent enough for men? For Women? It seems to me that many in our culture are reappraising heroism: what counts as heroism—who gets to be a hero. Women seem to feature in more traditionally heroic roles in cinema these days (note the deliberate effort in the Star Wars series, for example), so a millennial, unlike a traditionalist, might chide Daniel for being cowardly, but not rely upon him, necessarily. Lira, for instance, will pursue her cause with or without Daniel’s help. She might not need men anymore, though—and here’s my truly final (not to mention obscure) spoiler—she might join them.

 

Graeme Daniels, MFT

 

 

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