January 24, 2016 · 8:42 am

Your mind must learn to roam

A line from “Acid Queen”, one of the lesser famous yet wonderful songs from Tommy, The Who’s iconic 1969 rock opera, and the subject of my forthcoming article in the March issue of The Journal of Culture and Psychology. I reference the song “Acid Queen” in my paper, in a section that tracks the opera’s plot-line, thin that it is, plus its themes. The Acid Queen is a seductress, representing sex, drugs and rock and roll, that triumvirate of original rock and roll sin that, like the devil that once seduced blues musicians (the 20s and 30s blues myth), will tear the soul apart. In “Acid Queen”, a narrator ambiguously instructs that Tommy, or the listener, must “gather your wits and hold on fast”, for growing up, with or without rock and roll, is not easy. Straightforward narrative is not one of Tommy‘s strong points, yet a narrative replete with such ideas is what Pete Townshend wanted to give his music, and rock music in general.

In the 1960s, rock had an emerging narrative, albeit one that was mostly implied, and rarely made explicit. Previously, movies and books with a rock and roll ethos existed, but the most in-depth pop artifacts of the period (Catcher in the Rye, or On The Road) seem more like older cousins of the fledgling ‘rock’ sensibility. The groundwork for a different spirit lay in the context of the era: a relatively prosperous space following world war wherein youth had newfound access to disposable income, plus an evolving electronic media that would galvanize voices against the next war on the docket. I think those post-war kids demanded an art form to truly call their own, and rock and roll, more so than pop, jazz, or even blues, was it. In the 50s, rock and roll’s earliest fans, its infants, seemed to have modest needs, basic social needs: to go out and dance, and thumb its nose at adult squares; to have sexual freedom, and flex muscles. Social conscience, an awareness of life beyond borders of various kinds, of political or spiritual purpose: rock’s adolescent period, the now so-called classic rock period, developed a more mature (if still imperfect) outlook.

The Who weren’t the first, or even the most successful artists to push the limits of the form, or inspire society. Clearly, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, and arguably several others were more impactful at the time. Also, The Who were unlikely heroes from the outset of their career: beyond rebellious, they were noisy, nihilistic, and sort of remote from the sexy, peace-loving milieu of the sixties. Boasting “I hope I die before I get old” in “My Generation”, they seemed the antithesis of mature in 1965. If you want proof of this, look no further than footage of their performance at the flower power-inaugurating Monterey Pop Festival of 1967. Observe the ferocity of their act, the extra layer of violence within their notorious instrument-smashing finale. The Who weren’t just breaking through to an American audience that night. They were staking out a position that ran against the grain.

Yet they were raised to fame alongside the aspirations, lies and traumas of the period, and despite the immaturity, the ugliness on the surface, they were as idealistic as any of their peers. Their violence, as oblique as an intelligent audience intuited it to be, was contained within their art and was therefore no more anti-social than a war movie or a western, but no less revolutionary than long hair or a picture of a Campbell’s soup can. Their loudness was an insistence upon being heard, at once petulant and logical; detonating of harmony yet music to the ears. Their legendary squabbles, conflicts of personality, were a microcosm of democratic values, rock and roll style. After a few years of roaming thus, on the road, from stage to stage (The Who were the first British Invasion band to build a following through incessant touring) they arrived at the decade’s climax, stealing the show at Woodstock, and delivering for an unsuspecting (even) larger audience a character–a mythic character–that was uniquely a product of the rock and roll experience.

Tommy Walker is a child of war: his caregivers are stolid and traumatized, and he is disoriented by their emotional absence. Acting out occurs, a crisis happens, and a secondary trauma concretizes insecure attachment, and begins the drama. Thereafter, Tommy goes inward, retreats from this older generation. Disillusioned (or some primitive version of that), he finds his own music within himself (a “vibration” that brings the raucous music of The Who to mind); he plays unusual games, discovers pinball, and becomes a bizarre celebrity through his talent–a rock star of sorts. He finds his voice, literally and symbolically, and seeks to redress social wrongs through spiritual awareness. And his celebrity, ultimately, is a different kind of hero. Not only talented, he is a unique voice, a social leader, reflecting the expectations of a new audience: that he be thoughtful; that he represent the values of youth, and be engaged with the world. Above all, that he be honest.

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January 17, 2016 · 9:33 am

Ever since I was a young boy

 
(opening line of “Pinball Wizard”)

Well, relative young boy. More like since I was a late teen or even an early twenty-something. That’s how long I’ve wanted to have an article, essay, story or something published in a bona fide professional or academic journal, about anything, but especially about the following subject. It’s happening finally, so it’s time to explain what it is; what it means to me, and what it might mean to others. See, it’s an everything and nothing thing, this paper I’ve written: a big deal and not.

The paper has an impossible title: “A Question of Pathology: object relations, attachment patterns, and a disorder of self within the rock opera TOMMY”. I can imagine eyelids weighing heavily over the first several words, that dense, psychoanalytic jargon. Only the last three words spark interest, jolting the pop consciousness. Not for everyone, I guess. For those of a younger generation, The Who’s iconic double album of 1969 may be little more than a crusty artifact of classic rock, one whose moment and meaning has long since past. Wasn’t the main guy in The Who busted for child porn some years ago? some might query. Others might know snatches of their songs: “Baba O’Riley”, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, “Who Are You”, and “Eminence Front” will all be familiar to CSI fans, viewers of car commercials, or whatever the products were that my favorite band sold out to. Though their days are surely numbered, The Who continue to tour like cabaret acts of previous eras, even as their two surviving members, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend, glide past the age of seventy. They grind out the hits and the show goes on, seeming more professional than ever, actually. But their relevance to the world around them seems–if not diminished–then perhaps just less clear as time moves on.

That wasn’t the case back in the 80s when I first heard their music, or saw the odd video of theirs on MTV. I didn’t listen to them much at first, but knew of them, was aware they were deemed cool by peers who seemed to speak about music with authority. My family alluded to The Who, but were not fans. “Just noise” my sister opined on occasion, though she seems more respectful today, in deference to me I think. “Didn’t they smash their instruments?” my mother would incuriously ask, just hoping to join in the conversation somehow.  In my household, lighthearted pop dominated: jazzy sounds of Sinatra, Streisand, or the rockabilly of Elvis  stirred my father’s blood; the loving, cheerful beat music of The Beatles or The Bay City Rollers were my sister’s favorites; maybe a wistful Simon & Garfunkel ballad made it into the mix. Don’t get me wrong, I liked all that stuff, but it didn’t move me as The Who later did. Until I was a later teen, music didn’t speak to who I was, or who I wanted to be. Thirty years later it’s still hard to explain who I wanted to be, or how bands like The Who helped. All I can say is that rock and roll seemed more than commonly important back then. Its leading lights had much more than talent, or “class”, as the generation above me uses that term. Instead, there was something else, something more desperate. The giants of the classic rock era had brains and guts, and they played their music like music itself was about to die.

It was easy to get in arguments with friends (Ultimately, I wouldn’t bother with family) about whose favorite artist had the best chops, or the smartest lyrics; about which band was the only one that really mattered. My band was The Who, and for about ten years in my late teens and into my twenties, I was more devoted to them than I was to any girlfriend; more knowledgeable about their story and catalogue than I was of any author’s oeuvre, or any psychological theorist’s body of work. Had I been a thug, I might have defended them against critics like a hard-core gang member. Had they toured regularly during this period I might have followed them like Grateful Dead fans followed their heroes. I was down for The Who, and if I’d had the opportunity, the right context, and the confidence, I would have written about them also.

And so, to the paper. It started around 2006, when I was taking part in a study group with the West Coast Masterson Institute, led by my friend Joe Farley. In illustrating some point long since forgotten, Joe made some comment about modern musicals, narratives and psychopathology, and might have mentioned Tommy–I don’t recall the specifics. Anyway, we talked further, and Joe suggested I write up my then idea, which was to give the The Who’s deaf, dumb and blind boy a diagnosis or two. It was a fanciful suggestion, but little did Joe know how serious I was. Sometime later I presented him with a 3000 word essay that he thought worthy of passing on to Dr. Masterson, then still active and living in New York. Well, Dr. Masterson (who vaguely recalled meeting me once) read the paper, liked it apparently, but said it was too long for the institute’s then newsletter. Instead, he suggested I hawk it to academic journals, which I’ve been doing ever since.

Now, if you’ve ever submitted a manuscript to an academic journal, you are likely familiar with the lengthy delays, re-writes, and rejections that often follow. Between 2007 and 2012 I submitted my paper to about a half a dozen different journals: one Bay Area-based, the rest national, and in two cases, internationally-based. This might not seem like an ambitious spreading of the net, but let me explain something: When you submit to an academic journal, editors request that you not submit concurrently to other journals, as they are committing themselves to a rigorous review of submitted work and wish to have assurances that they are not wasting their time lest an author’s head be turned by another. Fair enough, but the commitment meant that I’d spend close to a year with each journal consecutively, four out of six of which expressed significant interest, requests for re-writes, before ultimately rejecting my work following a staff voting process.

By 2012, I was jaded with the sporadic task, forgetful of my original purpose, and ready to mothball my paper to the shelf, there to sit amongst my self-published, occasionally lauded but nonetheless un-celebrated collection of novels. Then in 2014, two things happened. First, The Who announced its 50th anniversary tour–likely its last. Secondly, I read an article in another journal, a psychoanalytic review of Henry James’ Portrait Of A Lady, that was similar in structure and style to my paper. Now, the journal in question had already rejected my work, but as I glanced at my 2007 list of prospects, I saw that there was one journal I’d yet to solicit: The Journal of Culture and Psychology.  What did I have to lose except a bit more hope and narcissistic fuel? I thought, and thus I submitted my journeyman paper once again.

A familiar pattern ensued, save for one aspect: in the spring of last year, the journal contacted me, saying they were enthusiastically interested, but requesting changes. Sigh. Here we go again, I thought. Still, I soldiered through, reminding myself that this was, after all, a labor of love and there are much worse ways to spend my time than writing about my favorite rock band’s most famous work. Anyway, I made the changes, working hard on the paper over a space of a month, and resubmitted. I went about my life as patiently as ever until September when I received an e-mail suggesting I had just a week to meet the journal’s deadline for re-submission. Huh? I e-mailed a polite WTF to the editor, and within three days received an embarrassed admission that my re-submitted manuscript had been misplaced–lost in their system. I laughed sardonically, thinking this thing was just not meant to be. But once again I re-submitted, this time thinking what’s another six months or so in the life of an itinerant piece of literature. By this time, the lifetime of the project was a fifth of the length of The Who’s career. An apt parallel was happening, I mused.

The journal moved swiftly thereafter, however, and in early October I was told the paper was accepted. Hooray. Three months later, its modicum of copyediting completed, I was informed of a March 2016 publication. So that’s the backstory. My commentary on the paper itself is still to come.

 

 

 

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January 4, 2016 · 8:49 am

Somewhere in the notes

 

Somewhere in a pile of notes I found the sheets that I’d used last year for the presentation in Marin. There were several problems, and that wasn’t counting the main problem from last year: I’d taken too many sheets, overestimated, as is my habit, the size of my class. This year I’d get that part right, by taking fewer copies. But looking over a page, it occurred to me that I might not take any. First of all, the print was too bulbous and thus barely legible, the result of having been copied too many times. And the reason for that? The sheets were old, outdated. See, the top half was all about the DSM-IV.

As I groaned, I logged onto a DSM V site on my laptop, not having my expensive, thick volume with me. That’s one of those false norms, I thought, referring to the habit of placing books of presumed importance on the shelves of my office. Truth is I hardly do any reading there. My office is where I talk and listen, but not read. If I have a break or cancellation I make calls, or go for a coffee, or hit the phone and read e-mail, my favorite internet sites. I don’t read at my office, not in the old-fashioned sense at least. That I do at home, so there I was ready to read, but frustrated by an empty hand. Not for long. I found the necessary file, and soon I was scrolling down over the details of Narcissistic, Borderline and Schizoid disorders, the subjects of my forthcoming presentation. Having not bothered to review the now three year old descriptions, I was feeling precipitately sheepish, but also prejudiced. Footnotes about Schizoid personality regarding the less than 1% diagnosed with that condition had me scoffing with disdain, thinking some things will ever be missed, but the rest had me raising an eyebrow. Ten minutes later I was left impressed by the inclusion of fresh elements, or elements spoken of for years by many, but exiled from a generation by the DSM-IV edition. See, it’s now indicated in the diagnostic lexicon that Narcissistic personalities manifest an underlying vulnerability, one that has clinical utility, which is a crucial implication. Meanwhile, the new volume notes that Borderline personalities are not only labile in their relationships and emotions, but more broadly, disorganized in various aspects of their lives, and prone to fierce self-criticism.

These distinctions have been less emphasized over the last two decades as far as I can tell, and the impact upon training programs has been profound. The last time I provided a training to interns regarding James Masterson’s disorder of self model, I found that students, like my contemporaneous colleagues, tended not to observe the helplessness defense of the Borderline, or the exquisite sensitivity of the Narcissist–at least, not such that these qualities would determine the style of intervention. My biggest challenge over the next two Wednesdays is to convince relative novices not to explain too much, or to find solutions, problem solve or give ‘tools’ to their patients. It will be too late for some. Those committed to CBT, DBT, or whatever other fashionable methodology exists will want to know what to do long before they really understand who they’re sitting with. That’s the nature of our business, especially at the ground level, where everything is meant to happen quickly.

What’s meant to happen is difficult because patients in psychotherapy are largely unaware of how they block their own growth, or behave self-destructively. Therapists who think that statement disrespectful–not sufficiently positive–collude with the defensive intrapsychic structures of their patients. To the person engaged in a flight into health, proclaiming positive change in the immediate aftermath of calamity, they nod in passive support, vaguely unaware but not speaking to the patient’s likely effort to not deal with past damage. Regarding the patient who is late, not making appointments, saying “I hope you can find it in your heart to not charge”, they give slack, believing they are being flexible, empathetic, “meeting the person where they’re at”. To the person who is detached from emotion, uttering phrases like “it is what it is”, brushing off loss and pain, they are virtually applauding. Such “interventions” don’t hold people responsible for their behaviors or foster a sense of reality, and are actually disrespectful, for they don’t hold the standard or expectation of maturity.

I know I’ve thought these things for years, so I don’t really need the DSM-V to change anything with its subtly added footnotes. I just need to organize my notes.

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December 20, 2015 · 8:56 pm

Gene splicing and AI does not catch my eye

Source: Gene splicing and AI does not catch my eye

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December 20, 2015 · 5:16 pm

Gene splicing and AI does not catch my eye

Christmas. Shopping. Sigh. A writer is biased towards a book as a gift of choice, but it’s not an easy task, and it’s not getting any easier. As I strolled along aisles of a fantasy book store in Berkeley, and then its companion shop, a comic/graphic novel satellite, I gave my neck a workout, bending it right and left to read spines, recognize names of authors or perhaps be drawn by an eye-catching title. When I was a kid it was the front covers that caught my eye, especially those teasingly magical renditions upon fantasy or sci-fi novels. I remember how disappointed I was by the dense, plodding narratives that didn’t match the promise of the art as far as I was concerned. I abandoned fantasy as a genre somewhere in my teens; now I’m back, searching with discomfort on behalf of the next generation, and thinking the invention of Kindle is a good idea after all.

You see, until recently I’ve been a snob about Kindle; or rather, just an old-fashioned Luddite. Give me a bound volume with a solid feel to it, I’d say, joining other preservationists. Give me a redolent reading space filled with high shelves, with books squashed together in the thousands, astonishing visitors with the collective literary effort of mankind. When I visited the Oxford University library in 2013 a guide said that (once) every book published in the UK found a place in its rooms (meaning, one copy). No longer. As I concurrently understood, there are simply too many titles now being published for such a collection to exist under one roof. This fact is both sobering and healthy, though I don’t spend too much time considering the pros and cons of a more democratic literary landscape, one in which there are more books but fewer book stores. I keep the perspective personal, and thus suppose that while the situation has enabled the publishing of my thoughts, it has also thrust me out to sea, there to drift alongside countless other creators.

My drifting eye stirred my mind: I wondered what I might write that would compete with the fare on offer. I saw one older title, ‘Shades of Gray’, and felt sorry for its author, thinking that if he’d just added the word fifty he’d have been onto something. Finding a teen section, I sniffed haughtily at titles like ‘You Suck’ and ‘Bite Me’. I noted that these books were not Indie contributions; inside, there was evidence of agents and traditional publishers, which made me think that I was getting it terribly wrong, using proper words and aiming at reader erudition. Getting over myself, I found I was even more intimidated when revisiting the sci-fi section. Of course, science has always kicked my ass, knocked down my GPA, and generally lowered the self-esteem. I do not forgive, but I gave the back-page summaries a worthy effort, though old feelings of inadequacy soon arose. As a result, a character born of gene-splicing and artificial intelligence soon left me cold, rendering my effort short-lived. A book proclaiming an XY conspiracy was slightly more compelling, mostly because it seemed a feminist provocation, which sometimes intrigues me.

As ever, I found it necessary at some point to step back, take in the overwhelming volume, and silently ask it for help: Come, good story…come find me.

“Have you found it yet?” This was my wife intruding upon the reverie, thinking we were on a schedule. If that were the case, we shouldn’t have come to a book shop, I was poised to say. I hadn’t, I replied (referring to a kind of book my teen nephew wants), but concealed inefficient method by critiquing the shop’s organization. “I’d forgotten how difficult this was,” I lamented. In the end I cheated by texting my sister and asking her for specific ideas, therefore giving up on inspiration and old illusions. Big sister texted back soon enough, but back-tracked on a previous suggestion, that of a graphic novel series called Saga, which I’d vaguely heard of. It might have porn in it, my sister now worried. Well, I wasn’t quite sure what her standards (as in porn threshold) were, but soon realized that if I were to find a comic or graphic novel without scantily clad women, I’d likely have to find an old Archie comic, or something else with bubble gum fifties innocence all over it.

I did find something, actually: a darkish, yet sexually neutered yarn about witches that looked compelling, and was contemporary in its production. The artwork looked cool, anyway. As I approached the clerk, a middle-aged woman with an air of genial connoisseurship, I felt the irony of selecting a title by an old criteria that hadn’t worked for me. I managed to find humor with respect to the sex barrier, saying, “You know, I think this might be the first time I’ve looked through a magazine or book specifically to see that it DIDN’T feature naked breasts.” I got a laugh plus a feeling of success as I left the store. Mission accomplished, I thought, though I’m still seeking my kind of story.

 

 

 

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December 13, 2015 · 6:54 pm

The Orb

 

The spherical object sits atop a glass coffee table between myself and my patients, apparently inert save for the qualities Maggie, Ray, and Joe assign to it, and which they absorb. Maggie, my regular ten o’clock on a Wednesday, gives the object a forlorn glance whenever she feels stuck in thought. Briefly, it seems there may be inspiration in its translucent green, or refuge in its fetching diamond patterns. Soon her eyes move away, tracking mid-morning light spearing in from the East. Maggie notes the illusion of choice.

Others make a tactile move. Reaching for the object, Ray sometimes remembers that despite paying for the hour, he is a visitor and therefore asks permission to handle my belongings. “What is this?” he more specifically asks, a fraction of a second before an entitled, if gentle seizing. “It’s an orb,” I say proudly. I found this thing in a consignment store about five years ago, and was struck then by its occultish mystique; its compelling, Kubrickian appeal. Placing it center stage in my office, I imagined it might pique interest, or perhaps graze the unconscious, stirring wonder of an alien presence amid frenzied thoughts about self. Ray appears to envy the undisturbed demeanor of the orb, thinking it a symbol of coveted stolidity. I’ve known him to study it in detail, gazing about its every inch as if determined to see inside to discover secret contents, like a way of being. Like many objects that remind of childhood, the orb is shiny and promissory of concealed riches, a garden of delights within. In such memories, I think the world is like Christmas morning: made up of rainbow pastures ever beckoning yet beyond reach, teasing with magic, and not yet disappointing with empty spaces, the residue of a dull, grown-up’s contrivance.

Maggie says she gets lost when she “spaces” on objects like the orb. Her purpose is escapist, she declares ambivalently. The orb, the seductive toy, compels rumination: a speculative inventory of its details; an imagined backstory as to its production, even its merchandising. Upon hearing my tale of discovery and purchase, she cooed like I’d just described the story of an abandoned animal rescued by me. Had Maggie found it, the orb would have spurred a poem, and thereafter a ceremonial place in her heart. In session, after frozen minutes contemplating the orb’s essence, Maggie’s foiling of herself is complete: she has forgotten something, the terrible thoughts and then feelings that search for release, only to find a dead end doorway. Sometimes I envy the orb also, though not in the sense of wanting its qualities; more in that Kleinian, spoiling the object sense of the word. At these times I want rid of my cursed ornament and its solipsistic, self-blocking evil.

Joe on the other hand satisfies the repressed urge, performing that which I can’t do myself. And he does it ingeniously: without conflict, self-consciousness; without giving it a moment’s thought, bless him. He doesn’t even ask permission. Slumping on my couch, his slovenly adolescent frame stretched out, he grabs at the orb on his way down and begins a gifted juggling act as part of a session norm. Over the course of fifty minutes he intermittently tosses the orb from one hand to the other, ignoring its aesthetic value entirely, instead focusing upon the action; the soothing, mind-and-body organizing action. For Joe, the object is a baseball substitute, which is in turn a sublimation of something, but isn’t any longer since Joe got kicked off the team for smoking too much weed. But hey, repression doesn’t really work, I say encouragingly. “Damn right,” he replies, a little too pumped by the notion. I clarify that defenses, like people, aren’t meant to be perfect. “Right on,” he says after a seemingly thoughtful pause—a pause which breaks his rhythm, causing the orb to sail beyond the unadapting reach of his left hand, descending like a breaking curve ball towards the perfect glass of the coffee table. A moment later I am shaken by the cracking sound of impact, the vision of a spiderweb pattern now spread over splintered glass. “Oops,” says Joe, looking inert.

**this story is a fiction

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December 9, 2015 · 7:32 pm

Four Star review of The Situation

Fewer words from me this week, more quiet satisfaction. And so, a guest blogger of sorts. I’ll read along Affirmation at last

Source: Four Star review of The Situation

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December 9, 2015 · 7:28 pm

Four Star review of The Situation

A great review of my novel, ‘The Situation’ about the picaresque adventure of a young man left for dead in more ways than one

graeme daniels's avatarGraeme Daniels Psychewriter

Fewer words from me this week, more quiet satisfaction. And so, a guest blogger of sorts. I’ll read along

https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/the-situation/

Affirmation at last

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December 6, 2015 · 8:28 pm

About Psychewriter

Source: About Psychewriter

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December 6, 2015 · 5:50 pm

Neuroplasticity and a dog’s guilt

 

So let’s tie the dog story in with that thing about neuroplasticity, the previous blog essay. Recall that according to the likes of Daniella Schiller, retriggered memories can be ‘reconsolidated’, that is re-scripted or deleted if, during a critical period, a subject is given either a protein-blocking agent, or is presented with new data that contradicts a conditioned response. Other researchers Gorman and Roose interpret that the timing of interventions must therefore exist in proximity to reactivation of traumatic material, as the Schiller experiments imply.

Skeptical analyst Richard Tuch challenges this finding, suggesting that the material of analytic patients is too complex to be modified by such behavioral techniques.

So let’s look at my shaggy dog story and identify the different elements that seem relevant to the issue: the CS or conditioned stimulus; the conditioned response, or CR; the observed outcome of an informal effort to reconsolidate. To recap: a car rolls down a slight incline, bumping into another car because…well, we’re not sure why, but it seems as if a dog had something to do with it. You see, a taciturn Doberman had been sitting in the driver’s seat at the time of rolling, so I speculate that the animal had inadvertently dislodged the car’s emergency brake, thus sending the vehicle on its way. When the owner (not ‘driver’—the distinction was important to her) appeared minutes later, she seemed concerned, but more defensive than, say, remorseful about the accident, or relieved that the misadventure hadn’t caused more harm.

My friend, another therapist, tried to intervene on this latter point, timing his explanation of averted consequences about as proximately as was possible to the accident, the putative trauma. But was it the trauma? What actually happened in this scene, and did it lend itself to things like reconsolidation of new data, contradicting a conditioned response and so on. It didn’t appear so. As I’ve previous written, the woman in question appeared to bristle at my friend’s sober counsel, rejecting it on what I sometimes describe as ‘process’ not ‘content’ terms. Meaning, her response—‘I don’t need to be counseled’—seemed not so much a rejection of an observation (the ‘someone could have been hurt’ truism), but rather of my friend’s prerogative to make the point, regardless of its validity.

In this instance, it seemed important to consider not only the timing of an intervention, or even the nature of the intervention (a confrontation versus, say, an empathetic overture) but firstly, to consider what exactly had been stirred in the woman. Not that I’m feeling critical of my friend—what he said was necessary for someone to say—I’m merely interested in a different phenomenon. By my passive and thus detached observation, it seemed from the outset that the woman was far from horrified by the disastrous possibilities of her car rolling down a hill. Initially at least, there was no sense that she would thereafter feel afraid to get in her car, or park it elsewhere, or even leave her dog in the car unattended. Immediately, she seemed more concerned with the matter of blame: whether she was being cast as the driver versus the owner; whether she’d be held responsible for the apparent damage to the vehicle her car and dog had lightly struck. If I were to guess I’d say she was embarrassed at being the center of negative attention, the object of suspicion, perhaps ridicule, due to the absurdist nature of the scene. Her backstory—or trauma, if you like—likely had little to do with car accidents, much less tragedy, but rather a memory of public humiliation, entailing a dressing down by righteous figures, perhaps more commonly male. That’s my guess.

And so it seemed that my friend’s intervention failed—partly because of its timing, I suspect (she might have been open to instruction later)—but more pertinently, because the experienced and therefore salient trauma material was not contradicted by the intervention, because it did not constitute ‘new’ data in the sense that is being discussed. If the negative memory is about humiliation and blame, then the CS—being criticized, especially by a man, or a stranger—perhaps reconsolidated old data, rather than introduce a cautionary tale about driving or concern for others, the putatively intended ‘new’ data. Therefore, a CR—defend oneself—was readily enacted and was, if you like, reinforced by the ensuing interaction, though in my opinion, the woman’s reaction was inflected more by her projections than by reality, which again, analysts would cite as complicating factors which…wait, I think I know what you might be thinking.

Are we over-thinking this?

If you really think this then you should probably stop reading my blog, and don’t even bother with my books, because you will often think this of me. Anyway, I wonder if the woman will re-visit this episode, perhaps talk it over with someone she trusts; someone who might, in turn, instruct her as my friend did, to which she might say, “That’s what this guy said, who saw what happened”—in response to which an astute and curious listener might begin a different process, introducing a new layer of data. See, that person might ask, “And what was that like? Did it stir anything up for you?”

 

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