She spoke haughtily, which has a peculiar effect on me: I start questioning my right to think. “You’re speaking of men who acted out with their sexuality, and society is pushing back against…
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Sex addiction stigma debate (part two)
She spoke haughtily, which has a peculiar effect on me: I start questioning my right to think. “You’re speaking of men who acted out with their sexuality, and society is pushing back against that kind of privilege.”
“Acting out? Wait, are we now talking about something different than when you spoke of female sex addiction?”
“The men you indicated are compulsive philanderers, porn addicts, acting upon an exaggerated sense of entitlement. Women are no longer willing to tolerate that.”
“Whereas female sex addiction is…different?”
“Women are stigmatized for simply having sex before marriage. Men aren’t!”
“Okay, but women are not being assessed as sex addicts for simply having sex before marriage.”
She waved her hand in an expansive fashion. “No, but that’s part of the context, that generally lesser tolerance for their sexual freedom. It just makes it harder for women who do have problems to come forward and get help.”
I tilted my head, affecting skepticism.
“I can see you’re having a hard time accepting this.”
“You say ‘accepting this’ like you’ve already landed a truism, and I’m like a holocaust denier or something.”
“Seriously, you don’t think society has traditionally been harsher, more devaluing of women’s sexual behavior than men’s.”
“Traditionally is a key word there. Time’s change. Not sure I accept the conclusion based upon your premise.”
She shook her head. “You lost me,” she said.
“So let’s go back to the earlier point. You say that women feel a greater stigma around their sexuality than men, right? And this stigma, which is a societal phenomenon, is internalized by women, causing extra layers of shame?”
“Correct,” my colleague said cautiously.
“Well, consciousness leads to change. That’s the basic promise of our profession, after all. Now again, we’ve had at least two generations since the so-called sexual revolution, which sought to liberate men and women from sexually repressive values. I think many women now externalize the problem of that stigma you reference. They resent society’s traditionalist constraint of their sexuality, and therefore push back against institutions, including schools of thought like sex addiction treatment models, that would pathologize that newfound sexual freedom. It’s like when political outcasts used to get diagnosed with schizophrenia and other mental illness labels: I think some people think the term sex addiction is a sex police invention, and I think it at least one alternative reason why women especially, as well as the gay community, might reject sex addiction treatment.”
My colleague offered a soft utterance, one aimed at neither agreement nor concession, but merely diffused conflict. I think she wasn’t sure if we were saying different things.
“Interesting,” she said neutrally. “Still, I think the women that I see and talk to retain that traditional internalization, and they hold other women to the standard they believe in.”
“With respect, most of the women you speak to are over fifty, and their husbands are John Wayne-types.”
“Maybe. But I just don’t think men judge each other about sexual misbehavior as women judge other women who act out.”
I sort of rolled my neck, like I was straining to take this in.
“You don’t agree? You don’t think men encourage other men, even boys, implicitly or not, to be sexually active, to have as many partners as possible?”
“I’m not sure that matters with respect to the issue at hand. If women, traditionally or presently, stigmatize men for their sexual misbehavior, and you aren’t disputing that—merely justifying it, sort of—then men will have problems in relationships. Period. It doesn’t matter what the ‘patriarchy’ thinks today. If I cheat on my wife, for example, it’s not like I can say, ‘but my buddy Jay says it’s cool’ and expect everything to be all good with her. And that’s what matters to the men who seek treatment, who are mandated into treatment: they want to fix things with their partners.”
She shrugged coolly, apparently more at home debating this issue amid tangents.
“Seems to me it’s the same for women, only I think history and tradition lingers more than you believe it does. But if, as you suggest, it doesn’t matter so much—this matter of stigma, whether it’s directed by the same sex or not—then what’s this discussion about?” She shrugged again, this time presaging finality. Suddenly, she sounded weary, not so much curious, only I wasn’t done.
“Because it seems important, this question of why people go into treatment and why they don’t—why women don’t seek treatment, which is what you said today, only your bias suggests that women are being under-served, which implies women would choose sex addiction treatment if they were offered it. Like I said, it’s 2016. I think many, perhaps most women are shedding terms like ‘slut’ and ‘whore’, or trying to, anyway—and that places the problem in society, not in individuals. Meanwhile, I think men are internalizing what’s happening to some of their fellow alpha males. That lesser judgement, or entitlement, that you perceive? It has a flip side, one that’s center-stage now. Justly or not, the men I talk to take on board labels like ‘horndog’, accepting their comparison to animals, their compliant exile to the ‘doghouses’ when they’ve ‘strayed’. Then they sit with me, feeling incompetent and saying, ‘I was never raised to share my feelings’, having internalized that feminine critique also.
Joanne averted her eyes, like she wanted out of this conversation; it’s ambiguous agenda and questioning of trends. What would she do with this, I could hear her thinking. She finished her coffee, asked a passing waitress where the bathroom was. The epicene worker whom she stopped had an untroubled, these-matters-are-not-on-my-radar look about her. She (I think) wordlessly pointed to a door just beyond our table, concealed by a disorganized gathering. It was a tiny room, this bathroom—not big enough for the café’s throngs, and amongst customers, unbeknownst to café owners, it was controversially unisex.
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Sex addiction stigma debate (part one)
During a local talk on sex addiction to an earnest group of Saturday morning listeners, my two female colleagues, Joanne and Gina, and I gave a modest introduction to the demographics of our business. As we sat listening to one another, we gave supportive nods, affirming all of our thoughts, though in truth, a couple of my one colleague’s ideas had me bristling. One of her chestnuts concerns the under-researched area of female sex addiction: “as shameful as this condition is for the men, it is especially stigmatizing for the women.” She also said something about men being raised with a ‘John Wayne’ model of emotional expression, and were thus constricted, suffering from intimacy disorders, which in turn impacts their partners. Everyone nodded, including me, only more faintly. I didn’t say anything contrary, partly because of time constraints, partly because of the agreeable ambience in the room, and also, frankly…I’m not sure how important this issue is.
It seems worth writing about, anyway. And arguing about, I guess. As Joanne made one or two other similarly-themed remarks, I recalled the comments of her junior colleague, Gina, from a day earlier, during a staff meeting at our shared agency. At that time the context was our much maligned room schedule board, admittedly outdated, but still in use because no one wants to take time to devise a new system, or tear down our old but beloved white board, streaked as it is with cheesy black demarcation strips and years’ worth of dry erase pen smudges. An online calendar would be best, chirped our newest colleague, proclaiming it is 2016, after all, not 1972.
Not 1972. My mind turned back to the present context and Joanne’s assertions. Frozen in time, I think. Afterwards, over coffee, I told her that I thought some of her pronouncements tired and superannuated, though I didn’t quite put it like that. How so? She queried, comfortably unoffended.
“Well, let’s take the one about women and sexual stigma. You say that women feel an extra layer of stigma in society about sex addiction, and therefore shy away from treatment or recovery, which is why we have less research about them.”
“That’s right.”
“Okay, but the point seems moot, because men aren’t seeking treatment either.” Her head sort of went crooked at this point, indicating surprise and perhaps something else; a playful rebuke, maybe. I was nit-picking, or something. Anyway, I continued. “You said later in the talk that many if not most of the men in our program are mandated: there because of a court order, or a demand from a disgruntled partner. So in my opinion the more pertinent question is this: if there are scores of untreated female sex addicts out there, why aren’t their disgruntled partners mandating treatment?”
She was unperturbed by this challenge, but still waffled with unconvincing polemics. Husbands and boyfriends are less forgiving, she opined, and also—many of those women’s partners are also sex addicts; that women are more judgmental of each other’s sexuality than men are. She spoke with authority on these points, as if she had volumes of data at her disposal. We don’t know these things, I contested, though I sort of agreed with the middle assertion, while thinking the first and the third contradicted each other. We danced around items of research for a bit, eventually dissolving the ‘evidence-based’ part of the discussion and finally dropping into what’s left: what people actually think, which is what matters. I countered her first idea: “While there may be something to your first point—the humiliated male being an especially unforgiving figure—I’m not sure that history or tradition shows that the cuckolded man is a fiercer image than the ‘hell hath no fury’ woman. But regardless, as Gina would say, this is not 1272, or 1972, and by the way, millennials don’t even know who John Wayne was.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is this: over the last generation, possibly two, most of the scarlet-lettering that happens in society—at least that which gets media attention—has been aimed at men. Or maybe you can tell me: who would be the female equivalents of Tiger Woods, Anthony Wiener, Elliot Spitzer…Bill Clinton?”
“That’s different,” she said, a bit sharply. It was on.
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And sharks do not eat gas tanks
It’s not as though suspension of disbelief isn’t a thing. In Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden, the reader has to believe that three children, whose parents have both died of separate illnesses in quick succession, can live undetected by neighbors, schools, police or social services, for several weeks, even as corpses rot in their home’s basement. In Jaws, that trauma-inducing film of my youth, the viewer must accept (or not think too much about) if wanting an optimal thrill, that sharks might leap across boat decks or swallow gas tanks.
In my novel, Venus Looks Down On A Praise Vole, there are numerous events, plot points and situations that stagger credulity to one degree or another, though none are fantastical in nature. Somewhat mundanely, the reader is meant to believe that my protagonist, Dr. Daniel Pierce, a psychologist, can pursue a career while regularly drinking in between sessions; that he could spend several hours in the company of a transgendered individual (admittedly in a pre-op stage) and not notice the person’s transformation; that he could forget names and patient details, not maintain adequate records, stop listening to people, actively dislike some of his patients, and still be a practicing clinician.
Well, that’s why he’s taking a break from his practice. Daniel Pierce goes on hiatus. That’s the opening plot point: his recognition of his falling apart, his need to stop working and deal with issues, some bad habits, and some losses: the estrangement of his son, the recent passing of his wife. But before he’s even fashioned a plan of restful inaction, his working life pushes back, or rather pulls him back into a working stance, only it will be a much different day on the job, what happens next. It will suspend his disbelief, make him think before the adventure’s done that he’s being seduced, patronized, rescued, recruited, chased…scapegoated.
Perhaps the most difficult event to accept is Pierce’s meeting of a former client in a sober living home. Kirkus reviews made this complaint, thinking it unrealistic that a psychologist would drop out of society, drop into a rehab-like environment, and meet one of his former patients, and even have the man as a roommate. Even if I hadn’t given cursory hints that this might happen—indicating that my unnamed setting is a small town; a hackneyed statement that the world is small—I’d grumble about this critique. After all, what’s so hard to accept? That a mental health professional would have a drug or drinking problem, need treatment or a retreat? That he wouldn’t take special care to avoid contact with his client base? Perhaps my reviewer isn’t aware that certain professionals—doctors and airline pilots, for example—do require or demand segregated, occupation-specific services, precisely because of this concern. It’s actually quite strange that the accommodations that are afforded these professional groups aren’t made for psychologists and other professional counselors.
But for me, this rather ordinary discussion misses an important point: namely, that a strict adherence to what is orthodox or realistic isn’t the most important aspect of a fiction; hence the term fiction. I had Daniel Pierce leave the structure he was in, or the rut he was in, because in order to regain his vitality and sense of mission, he has to leave not only his comfort zone, but almost his entire frame of reference. That’s an equally important axiom of drama, surely. Therefore, he has to perform an impromptu therapy in the most unlikely of circumstances; he has to not conform, challenge authority in ways he never has before. He has to observe ugliness that he’d previously been sheltered from; rethink gender, justice, his oldest notions of fitting in. In being responsible, being anything close to a heroic figure, he must consider that he may be right or wrong about the judgments he ultimately makes, but make his decision anyway.
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Flowers Out Of Season
Harry and Marvin, two late middle-age guys, sat quietly in the waiting room of the Find Recovery Treatment Center, straining to make conversation ahead of group. Restless, Harry settled for default mode, remarking on the mid-summer weather, cooler than the usual riotous heat by a good ten degrees.
“Glorious,” he intoned. “I was just telling my wife yesterday that we’re so lucky to live where we do. No hurricanes, or tornadoes. Not even humidity. It’s great.”
Marvin shrugged and chuckled, seeming to agree. He noted the wife reference, thinking he’d follow-up later, when it was Harry’s turn to check-in during group. Marvin liked talking about wives, about his wife: about how much he loved her, wanted to take care of her, especially since she’d started having knee and back problems, and more especially in the wake of…well, ever since his behavior had come to light. Marvin always called it the behavior. It was the reason he’d been coming to Find Recovery every Thursday night for a year, not that he talked much about that. He didn’t like to go there. He preferred to talk about his wife instead.
“Too bad violets aren’t in season,” Marvin said.
“Excuse me?” said Harry.
Marvin chuckled again and shuffled, embarrassed. “Sorry, I was just thinking, since you mentioned your wife, about flowers. My wife’s favorite flowers are violets, only I can’t find them currently.” He air-snapped his fingers in mock-disappointment.
Harry mouthed acknowledgement, half-smiling, mildly if inconsequentially confused. Were the more senior members of the group—senior as in seniority—present, they would teasingly school the newcomer on Marvin’s non sequiturs: how to deal with them, indulge them, and if in group, re-direct back to important matters. Just then, Dave, the group leader, breezed in cheerfully and told the guys the group room was ready, as in available. Group always started on time, regardless of who was present. The others would file in tardily, sequentially, making perfunctory comments about traffic, a work meeting running late, childcare needs; the soccer game or swim meet that didn’t finish on time. Dave thinks of his female colleagues, how their women’s group members present the same excuses, only in reverse order of frequency.
Harry struggled through the first half of group. Six weeks in, he was sporadically engaged, speaking when another’s share touched on some aspect of his life; silent and nonplussed if he didn’t relate. At times, Dave would glance over at him and appear to nod, as if this would jolt the new member’s attention. He did this if a member’s eyes appeared ready to drop, a head poised to slump into a chest. Nothing was worse than a group member appearing to fall asleep during another member’s share. Group members could talk about the perils of “judgement” all they liked, but Dave could think of nothing more rejecting, more therapeutically devastating for a client than seeing someone else pass out while they were talking. At the hour mark, Dave called upon Harry as if to rescue either him or the group from this calamity.
Initially, Harry’s share mirrored the norms of group. He said things like “we’re doing fine” to indicate himself plus a non-group member, his wife, like they were a fused unit, inseparable. He declared progress in their communication, a slowly re-building trust previously broken by an ever alluded to but rarely specified betrayal. Dave, the facilitator, dryly noted the irony of all this loving focus on spouses which—while the comment didn’t pass over members’ heads—didn’t exactly re-shape the process, either. Harry pronounced himself patient, prepared to wait for his wife to learn recovery while he did what he could do: avoid temptation, learn about his addiction, stay focused, one day at a time. Focus. Harry had long-known, exploited, abused, the currency of focus.
“What have you learned so far about your addiction?” Dave asked, seizing upon that piece: a generic question, but timely, right on point. Harry stared back levelly, appearing to collect his thoughts, his resilient cool. In the silent interim Dave expanded the preface: “I mean, when you think of those twenty years of visiting prostitutes, spending thousands of dollars and managing somehow to keep that from being noticed, you must have considered what made it all worthwhile. So what was it that justified all those trust-eroding risks? What was it in those women that so turned you on, year after year, one day at a time?”
The sideways glances of the group’s core suggested they’d been waiting for this. Ostensibly, while it was anyone’s prerogative to ask probing questions, invariably it was Dave’s job to go for the jugular, or call out the unsaid. The most senior members smiled ambiguously, half-appreciating a group rite of passage, half finding pleasure in a newbie’s discomfort. Harry admitted he was uncomfortable, but tactfully applauded the process, even before he delved in. Dave was set to protest until Harry—anticipating the critique—suddenly dropped the glibness and dropped instead the following: he liked disinhibition. No, he loved disinhibition; had been craving it throughout his whole marriage, maybe his entire life—he couldn’t tell. And his wife? She just wasn’t into all of the things he wanted; the things prostitutes would not only provide, but also volunteer. And that was the bonus: he wouldn’t even have to ask. Upon Dave’s prompting, Harry named the acts he sought. Spilling it out, he spelled it out.
Nodding heads suggested he was getting somewhere, was being honest in a way he’d never been before, with witnesses. There was a pause in which engaged minds scrolled for the best follow-up questions, the most astute comparisons; the most painful shared experiences. Harry wasn’t done. There was more to share—more tantalizing, ugly detail—but there was a sense in the room that everyone related; that everyone was on board with Harry, ready to support him as he took new risks, was about to join the group, truly, darkly. More deeply. Dave canvased the room, thinking it time to invite response.
“I see a lot of nodding heads. Feedback?”
A hoarse cough heralded a bad turn. Marvin’s once-per-group body shuffle always struck Dave as a strange and disturbing motion. It seemed like the gesticulating action of a suddenly awakened creature. Marvin’s words leapt into the space as he glanced at Dave but then turned, excitably, to face Harry.
“I know this if off topic, but I was just thinking. Have you ever thought of getting her roses? They’re never really out of season, roses. Trust me, you can never go wrong with roses.”
** this entry is a fiction
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You must not run away
“No one is after you! No one, I say! You all ran away–and now I know why. I sat by the lake, and there came a fly. The fly ran away in fear of the frog, who ran from the cat, who ran from the dog. The dog ran away in fear of the pig, who ran from the cow, she was so big! The cow ran away from the fox, who ran as fast as he could in fear of the man. That man heard a thump, and away he. It was just a sheep, with an old tin can.
I looked at them all, and then I could tell they all had no fear, and now all was well. They all went away. They all waved goodbye. SO…I sat by the lake and looked at the sky.”
–from A Fly Went By, by Mike McClintock
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As dark as it gets
“Around ten o’clock, Andrew revealed a surprise: he’d been in therapy before, as in before he’d ever called me. And not even therapy, but analysis: for two years. He left because he didn’t like what he started to feel, a parallel between his drug addiction and emerging sexual compulsion. Though tired, I perked up, sensing something coming. Andrew spoke theoretically, about chasing highs, going back to an original experience. It felt like a prefacing explanation, his talk of addiction, its bedrock principles. Then he told me about his first time, the predictable, clandestine grope with an older girl, when he was eleven, she fourteen. The dreams of that girl, and his lust for teenage girls in general had never gone away, but he wouldn’t tell me more, not while there were legal issues pending, files not yet written. With that stuff looming, I wondered why he’d tell me anything, but then, I am ever struck by the desire to be known, by someone. Andrew’s loneliness gripped my heart, even as he retreated from memory, back to theory. He had an idea about pedophilia, he said, lowering his voice. It related to that original experience, that primal desire to be a child, experience pleasure as a child—natural, he argued. Shortly thereafter, his face broke, as if the pain in his soul had just hit him: that unsolvable clash between ancient fantasy versus the demands of growth.”
— a passage from Venus Looks Down On A Prairie Vole
Several points here, will touch on just a couple for starters. In this chapter, Daniel Pierce, my troubled protagonist and therapist, has serendipitously reunited with a patient he’d A.) thought he’d lost after a bad intake session, and B.) is the man whose privacy he is being pressured to violate by a rogue former prostitute and later, lawyers. Check out my novel and you’ll find out why.
The above conversation happens in the “privacy” of a shared room in a sober living environment–both men’s retreat. What Andrew (alias Derek) reveals here he would likely not have in the structured, orthodox forum of the therapist’s office. The thoughts Andrew shares are of a kind that few, in my opinion, share unless a near-profound alliance has been established. The reference to analysis, as distinguished from therapy, implies the depth divide between models of care, and further suggests what Daniel and Andrew tacitly have in common: they both tend to leave before the going gets tough.
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Politics and psychotherapy
“Hi all, been thinking about political content on this list-serve recently, especially after a member was recently rebuked for posting a link in support of Bernie Sanders. I asked administrators for the policy pertaining to such posts and saw in the supplied policy an item that asks members to refrain from making political endorsements.
Endorsements of what? I wondered, as the policy didn’t specify endorsement of individual candidates or campaigns, which appears to have been inferred. What about endorsement of political opinions, or of political realities (via presumed consensus), as they are implicitly described sometimes in this forum. For example, when members post articles about single payer/payor systems, or police brutality, or white privilege, the articles don’t so much endorse candidates or specific referendums, but they tend to presume consensus as to what our world is like. So, when clinicians speak of “bringing awareness” about a social condition, they are not inviting debate so much as asserting authority, more or less dispensing what they think are facts about a world situation.
This sets up a tricky situation for mental health professionals and for this list-serve. If we have clients who proclaim a mental health condition that is dominantly attributable to an external reality, such as a social condition or political situation, versus a greater weight of attention to an internal disorder, then the onus is upon us to become educated as to that external reality, (perhaps eschew focus upon internal pathology) to educate colleagues about that external reality, which in effect means we will be endorsing a social/political view, and instructing those who don’t appear to perceive the political reality, such as others on a list-serve.
In light of this, it seems arbitrary to censor endorsements of individuals or their campaigns–merely a rebuke of the unsubtle–when the infiltration of politics into our profession is another kind of reality.”
—
That’s from a message I posted last week on an EBCAMFT list-serve. About the same time I fielded a compelling suggestion from a client who hadn’t read my post, to the effect that politics were a part of people’s lives and are therefore a valid topic for psychotherapy. Didn’t I agree? she more or less challenged. Sort of, I more or less replied, intrigued by her argument, but not wanting to study up on each political topic she seemed to want my interest in.
What’s most compelling is the idea that a person’s external reality, the community (or polis) in which people live, is inextricable from a person’s psychology, no less so than a person’s intimate relationships, or their unconscious functioning. I am reminded of a discussion some years back with a Mastersonian consultant, to whom I asked about the cultural lens within the Masterson model. It’s not there, she said, though I’m paraphrasing her. Indeed, it’s not explicit or otherwise clear, unless you comb through libraries worth of material, that the discipline of psychoanalysis has ever been influenced by cultural relativism, though it surely has by politics (think influence of two world wars on notions of death instinct and repetition compulsion).
However, I think the reverse is true. Take the concept of internalized oppression, for example. This idea, derived firstly from Sigmund Freud’s writings, latterly from object relations theory, holds that individuals formulate representations of self based upon what is introjected from caregivers. Thus, if a child is demeaned, he or she will formulate a negative experience of self and act accordingly. Cultural relativists simply take this principle and apply it to peoples, especially those marginalized. And so this is part of the individual’s experience, this attachment to a community, a system. Well, that’s a lot to fit in the room, at least.
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The problem of listening
“Thanks,” said the man in the bad shirt to his group. He kept a peripheral eye upon me, picking up my distaste in the air, my discrepant air. The process moved on, with my journeyman skills keeping things in order, neutral—not taking sides, not standing up for anything yet; not saying much of anything, even though talking’s easier than listening. Talking’s way easier, believe me. Storytelling: now that’s a cinch. Neutral is how I am, professionally and, now that I’m alone, also personally. Wanna know what listening looks like? It’s a stifled yawn pinching oxygen; a blank stare held together with tautened facial muscles, and a soft, metronomic nod providing faint reinforcement, possibly a tease, because maybe it’s a nothing, this service I give. Some really want it, and I’ve been like this for years: a cipher into which people deposit their brokenness, and then leave. Not much of a story here, you might think. If you’re a film producer, you’d say, “I’m not touching this, it can’t be done”, thinking this dull: unwatchable, or unreadable. Pornified eyes wouldn’t like it. But in the unlikely event that it hits big, is binge-read and wins awards I’ll gladly take the stage, drunk, saying “For twenty years people tried to write this script but everyone said it couldn’t be done. So and so tried it and failed. So did whatsisname, that other really famous guy.” That’s when I’d punch stuffy air; thank doting mom and rival dad, the wife and kid for their support, God for doing whatever he does, and say goodnight.
In group I became restless, started saying some things I shouldn’t have said, slipping from the listening stance: fighting with men as well as women. It’s what happens when people stop listening.
— a passage from Venus Looks Down On A Prairie Vole
Part of a polemic that runs through the novel: I set up a binary between notions of listening versus doing. Therapists don’t do anything. That’s the sometimes comic refrain that Daniel Pierce expresses, at times to punctuate a dramatic event. It’s not a popular image, this one of therapist neutrality, this sense that we sit back in our cozy offices, smugly observing pathology, remarking on it but not acting as agents of change. Not really. See, the task is to render it invisible…the change…so you won’t notice.
Not good enough, of course. For the general public, I mean: this traditional stance of not doing is not good enough.”I’M A DOER”. Isn’t someone scoring political points with this currently? When parents bring oppositional teens into therapy (as in Working Through Rehab), when wives call up and make appointments for their depressed husbands, when a couple presents for therapy needing help with a ‘crisis of communication’, and when people get out of line with respect to drugs, violence, and especially sex, people from officialdom call, asking for therapists to do something.
And so I chat the other day with an amiable lawyer, a good guy looking to represent his client and mine, someone who did something he shouldn’t have done, with a girl who was younger than she should be if doing what she was doing. But it was his fault. No argument there.It’s just that this lawyer wanted to know…what I was going to do. He knows what therapists do. He knows that we listen; that we don’t judge. But could I give him something, anything, live or in a letter, that he could share with a court and sound, ya know, convincing. He even voiced his suppositions, as if he’d hacked my association’s list-serve and scrolled through the typical ways therapists market themselves. Would I offer coping skills, he asked tentatively? Teach ‘tools’ for affect regulation (actually, he didn’t ask that).
Empathy. Victim empathy.That’s what I offered. That plus the hope that what my client did he would not do again.
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Graeme Daniels Psychewriter 