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Introductory Notes / Einleitende Bemerkungen
Introductory Notes / Einleitende Bemerkungen
As years go by my supervisions and seminars have acquired even more definitely the form of a self-presentation as a therapist. I refrain from an encyclopedic education, from indicating right and wrong, from the claim a theory to be taught and appropriated like a Bible, from the ambition to serve or to promote a school.
I offer myself to the inclined learners, that is I offer them the possibility to get to know a therapist. By learning, talking and getting involved, among many others, there will be shaped up an own way in which they are going to act as therapists.
The following notes are my own comments, which I sometimes bring into the discussion. Regarding their content they vary: theoretical matters that occupied me recently, therapeutic snapshots etc.
Über die Jahre hin haben meine Kontrollstunden und Seminare immer entschiedener die Form einer Selbstdarstellung meiner als Therapeuten angenommen. Ich halte mich ab von einer enzyklopädischen Bildung, von Hinweisen auf richtig und falsch, vom Anspruch, dass eine Theorie im Sinne der Bibel erlernt und angeeignet werde, vom Ehrgeiz, einer Schule zu dienen oder eine solche zu zustandezubringen.
Den geneigten Lernenden biete ich mich an, d.h. ich biete ihnen die Möglichkeit an, einen Therapeuten kennenzulernen. In der Ausbildung, im Gespräch, im Einverständnis und in der Auseinandersetzung mit ihm wird sich, unter vielem anderen, ihre eigene therapeutische Art herausbilden.
Die folgenden Bemerkungen sind eigene Kommentare, die ich am Anfang einer Kontrollstunde zur Diskussion stelle. Inhaltlich sind sie vielfältig: theoretische Fragen, die mich neulich beschäftigt haben, eigene therapeutische Momentaufnahmen u.s.w.
Supervisions
Supervisions
Without knowledge
Holding...
What should I do?
The happy hours
I have nothing to hide from you
On the mutual invisibility of the participants in psychoanalysis
Without knowledge
The poem is not an innanimate text; it is spoken language; it is a "breath", if I may use a word favourite to Seferis. Just as a piece of music becomes real only by its performance, the poem speaks only in its recitation. Therefore let us hear the first line once more:
angelic and black light...
What does this breath tell us? It is a calm and deep voice, it pronounces the words carefully, it lets to each one the whole weight of its saying. It persuades us.
angelic and black light...
You may hear how familiar, how from the bottom of the heart these strange words sound, how the poet says and means them, in a way that the best actor with the most perfect articulation would have never accomplished.
The words <angelic> and <black> are known to us as opposites: angelic refers to the luminous and the celestial, black to the dark and the chthonic.
angelic and black light...
The words, said by Seferis, have nothing antithetical; there is no contrariness that would make opponents out of them. We hear them and we say, yes, the light, angelic and black!
Here we do not hear the "and" as conjunction, but as explanatory: angelic, that is, black. Not understanding is not, should never be the reason to doubt what we have heard. Only when we distance ourselves from live language, when we ignore its saying, when we insist to understand, we will perceive the friendly ones as opposites, we will get stuck in their mutual contrariness and conflict.
Our job has the seldom privilege to be concerned with live language, to be by nature a dialogue. But in order to be adequate talkers, we have to hear. And in order to hear we often have to stop thinking, to stop trying to understand.
Holding...
The corresponding attitude of the therapist emerges as a response to "Hold me!", a phrase which the client would utter in some manifest or latent way, or which the therapist might think so out of his own image of his job.
We often forget that this appeal does not have to do with the intensity or the gravity of the situation. Someone might never make it, some other might make it just for nothing.
I would say that "Hold me!" refers rather to the habitual way, in which a client or a therapist perceives a problematic situation.
In case that "Hold me!" is an autistic perception of the therapist, he could see it and forget it.
In case it is a habitual way of his client, he could hear it as just one of those habitual attitudes that drove him to the impasse he is stuck in.
What should I do?
[A woman about 45 years old who has been sexually abused by a relative when she was a child. His presence is still following her.]
- What should I do in order to free myself from him?
[Me laughing]
- Analysis!
[She laughs]
(I detach the matter from the field of knowledge.)
The happy hours
[She split up with X two years ago. She keeps thinking of him.]
- How do you think of him? What images, what situations come to your mind? Do they have something in common?
- It is the happy hours we spent together.
[To the seminar members: "If you had heard this, how would you have heard it? If you were going to say something, what would you say?
...
What I said:]
- X you are thinking of, is X with whom you were happy. There is though also X who left you, who said to you "No". This one seems to be missing from your memories.
I have nothing to hide from you
Once master Hui-tang went with layman Huang-schan-gu in the mountains. Suddenly a fragrance flowed upon them. Hui-tang asked: "Do you feel the scent of resedas?" When Huang-schan affirmed it, Hui-tang said to him: "I have nothing to hide from you."
Byung-Chul Han, Philosophie des Zen-Buddhismus, p.118.
The legend of the advertisement says:
For those who have nothing to hide.
What is the difference?
The master has nothing to hide as he is through and through scent of resedas. He isn't an ego-subject who perceives the scent of the resedas in himself as his own experience. For the master this interiority of the ego doesn't exist.
The car driver has nothing to hide because the beautiful and expensive car nourishes his ego, impregnates it, his ego becomes a continuity with the car, and now this ego-car has nothing which it could be ashamed of and should keep it secret. It is open and shows off.
On the mutual invisibility of the participants in psychoanalysis
There has been a lot of discussion about this and the aspects mentioned are more or less meaningful.
In my viewfirst of all it is a matter of the invisible itself in its literal meaning: It is about an encounter, where the element of sensual perception is being removed to a great extent.
Acclimatisation in a talking where the tangible participation of the therapist (facial expressions and gestures, touching, often the voice itself) are missing. And there can occur such a habituation to this way, that even the missing can be missing.
The utmost figure of this talking could be so delineated:
It is as if somebody were talking to a dead. And if someone has come to the point of talking with the dead, the he can talk to the living too. [Cf. The Letter A, "Death"]
Which means that the attitude of the therapist isn't the abstinence from behavior regarding issues that concern him, but his presence in the mode of the dead - Things coming up don't concern him, in the same way that they don't concern the dead.
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