Funeral of Ingmar Bergman...

Today was the funeral of Ingmar Bergman at Fårö...

Swedish Television's site about the funeral, hopefully remaining the same over time...

Addition August 19: The photos are taken from the web: SVT, DN, Svd, Aftonbladet, Expressen... Bergman is now buried at Fårö (not in Stockholm where he was born and also lived). The people at Fårö greatly appreciates this. To them he wasn't the great film-maker but more like one of them it sounds... And the funeral was quite "simple". Only with a cello-solo played by a cellist from the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra Helena Nilsson though (the Saraband from Bach fifth cello suite), two songs which the minister sang and two of the most common hymns *) at funerals here. On Bergman's own wish.

*) Hymn 249 "Blott en dag, ett ögonblick i sänder" and 277 "Så tag nu mina händer".

Siblings...

Ingmar Bergman wrote in one of his books about a meeting with his four year older brother Dag… A meeting between two older men, who had grown apart and had nothing in common. Two complete strangers who had grown up together and shared so much then (their mother's love-affair with a ten year younger man and colleague to their father, which noone spoke about and a lot else), but had nothing to talk about - at all, now as old. The silence was compact? There you could talk of the Wall of Silence?? They had developed in totally different directions (Dag Bergman, the ambassadeur, died fairly early, at 70 years. He was born Oktober 23, 1914 and died December 10, 1984. They had a sister Margaretha born 1922).

Something I think Bergman noted with amazement…

I have also thought for a while: how would the (whole) society react if a woman got nine children with six different men and didn’t take care of them but left them to the mothers?? And entirely devoted herself to the work and to be the best there…

Bergman said that his personal life was an entire catastrophe, but he tried to measure it up by trying to become the best workman…

And if I don’t go further than to my own work: for how many male musicians (and maybe all artists) haven’t work work/the playing/music come in first hand? Entirely? And with no thoughts or guilt feelings? I came to think of the pianist Arthur Rubinstein… He admitted that his (very long) life had been about “wine, women and gesang”!!! How sad if he had sacrificed his talent!!??

But through history there are many male composers who never married or got children: Tjajkovsky, Mendelsohn, Beethoven, Schubert…

Bergman made the film “Autumn Sonata” (“Höstsonaten”) about a female pianist which abandoned her two daughters and the very neurotic and tense relation between the mother and her daughters when they met after many years again…

But what film would it have been if it had been about a male pianist abandoning his children? Wouldn’t it have been entirely different? Why you can wonder about?

And I also came to think how one has viewed things: the work-responsibilities were more important than how the man/father was as father!! So what he did at work was worth to get paid enormously - sometimes!! How one values parenthood, children, human beings…

About Ingmar Bergman's father Erik Bergman. But his mother wasn't actress as it stands in Wikipedia, but nurse.

The female Swedish bishop Caroline Krook in Stockholm about Ingmar Bergman and his influences on the Swedish church.

Addition August 12: cow- (or lingon-) berries from the wood... There are may of them too!!

Bergman again...

About Bergman on Sweden.se by the professor Mareet Koskinen. She wrote a book (came 2002) about Bergman based on Bergman’s own archives, and she is the first one who had access to these archives, I read it and reacted. I thought she is very psychoanalytical influenced, so I reacted against her analysis and interpretations of what Bergman has written, done, and what Bergman’s mom wrote in her diaries (Bergman's mom Karin was a very talented writer I think)... But I think Bergman himself approved of her (Koskinens) work (he too was influenced by Freudian ideas even if he never entered a therapy-room if I have understood it right. He was afraid of loosing his creativity if his neurosis was cured, something I think many artists thought then and many years further!? So they struggled with their depressions and neurosis and demons!!?? Which is so very sad! Because I don't think the creativity gets lost. On the contrary I say as non-expert).

The former head Åse Kleveland at the Swedish Film-institute got the message from Bergman that if they could fix a lorry they were welcome to fetch “skiten” (the shit). The “skit” was Ingmar Bergman’s archives with all his manuscripts, notes, synopsis's, sketches, photos and “behind-films”.

Bergman donated this archive to the state (to this country) and the Swedish Television, The Swedish Film institute, Swedish Film-industry and the Dramaten which together should form a foundation to administer the archive. I get an impression this archive is enormous!!

PS. A Norwegian friend sent a link to a review of a new book in Norway which a well-known Norwegian man, Trond Kirkvaag, has written about his father Rolf Kirkvaag (Born 1946, thus 28 years younger than Bergman), also a very well-known person in Norway, and how he treated his children. The father died 2002, 82 years old, and short after this Trond's twin-sister also died. This Trond has now cancer, severe?

This book has caused debates i Norway... Which proves that it is still difficult to raise issues like these in society??

People want to believe in the idealized picture they have!!?? Not loose their illusions? And isn't that about THEIR history?

So it isn't easy to reveal such things for a child to such a person?? Not even as grown up... And it was even more difficult earlier!? And then nearly impossible??

I googled on these two persons, and think the father Rolf really looked like a very nice and kind old man!! See here too. Difficult to believe, yes!!?? But I think the son is right!! And what he does means a lot to others I think!! And it was this that was referred to in this readers' letter.

Tillägg 20 augusti om föräldraskap (manligt och kvinnligt) och om Bergmans pappaskap i Tommy Jensens blogg "Lämna plats kvinnor, fast inte så mycket som Bergman fick". Tänker på mängden kvinnliga konstnärer genom historien... Inte minst på musiksidan...

Needs…

There are still programs about Ingmar Bergman. I saw an interview with him and the Swedish actor Erland Josephson the other night. He said that he was raised with bad conscience. And I think they were threatened with the hell and punishment of God and such things, being raised in Lutheran priests family. His father was well-liked by many in his priest-role!!! But he could be fairly violent with his children!!?? So he played different roles, and was experienced differently in the family and outside it!!

Bergman admitted that he had “created” a total fiasco on the humanly level and compensated this with trying to become as great (??) as possible in his work. Managing everything there (ALL technical aspects of making films and theater-performances), being extremely well prepared, having high demands on himself and his co-workers…

He also said that he had never had problems with being alone. Since his wife died (1994??) his social life was reduced to nothing, but he wanted to have it like this. Being alone had never been a problem he said.

He had had an arguing with one of his sons, and Bergman had admitted to his son that he had been a bad (even lousy) father. The son shouted angrily and even furiously:

“Lousy father?? You haven’t been a father at all!!!”

On my walk yesterday I came to think of what Käbi has written in her book about her life with Bergman. Particularly the fact that Bergman wanted to have her for himself. And I also think he wanted to have his last wife Ingrid for himself (a marriage that lasted for 24 years and probably would have lasted till Bergman’s death he thought. He said she was his big love *).

And Käbi left her daughter to her first husband because of that… She accepted his demands… But I think women can have those needs too, needs of a sort of undivided and entire attention. Not being forced to share it with a (demanding) child… (why is a child demanding and needing attention??? Is it unnatural to need attention for a child? What sort of attention does it need? And can that need of attention get perverted? More or less perverted? So we grown ups, in turn harmed to different degrees, feel disgust maybe, i.e. contempt for weakness in the child that doesn’t have more control!!? Horrible!! Observe my irony!! Because we are still denying our early needs?? We aren’t capable of feeing empathy for them, because we haven’t processed these things or felt the feelings that would be adequate: of anger, of being rejected etc.)

Came to think about that Jean Jenson has written about this phenomenon; a grown ups need of undivided attention, in this case a man/husband the boy, Brian’s, father.

Brian’s father Curt was a hardworking man, which came home and liked to take some drinks and then eat dinner and get his wife’s undivided, entire occupation. To assure him of this his wife Carole gave the children food and put them to bed unnaturally early before he came home.

Brian suppressed the anger he felt over that his father monopolized his mothers entire attention, his frustration of lying awaken an hour or more before he could fall to sleep and his feelings of having been abandoned of them both. As grown up he didn’t remember anything of all this.

As grown up Brian seemed to be warm and caring to his wife and children, but despite this he used to manipulate the situation as soon as it was possible so that the children were shut out when he was with his wife. Brian was entirely unaware of what was happening and got bewildered and irritated when his children complained over being forced to wait for help with their homework from school. He thought their demands were unreasonable and told them this.

Jenson mean that Brian’s inability to understand the significance of his children’s feelings when their needs of attention didn’t get fulfilled shows that he is denying his own feelings and that he is incapable of getting in contact with any of the painful feelings in his family.

His wife Kathy, in turn, had had a rejecting, dismissing and critical father, very self-centered, seeing himself as a victim for violations and abuse (the inheritance from HIS childhood), which she had tried to please… Bt there was no possibility hat she should get what she needed from him (and was entitled to get from her father as his child). But her unconscious denied he hopeless in this situation and made her being very sweet and nice to make him glad, and by this capable of giving her warmth and care!!! She even did some of the “adult”-things her mother should have done…

To be there for her father she denied the child’s needs of friends to play with ands she suppressed the feelings connected to all this.

Later Brian became the symbol for which Kathy could continue her childhood struggle. Suiting her unconscious needs perfectly, because he, like her father, seemed to need somebody’s attention “to feel glad”.

Neither Kathy nor Brian was aware of this dynamic.

I also saw a half hour long interview with a Swedish psychotherapist yesterday evening. She came here when she was 23 I think and met a Swedish man, he too psychotherapist. In her 50s she got breast cancer and one of her daughters gave her a book with white pages with the words:

“Write!!”

She had then been to England, where she was born and grew up and said goodbye to her dying father. All these things together, including the tough treatment for her cancer, suddenly awoke memories which she put in print. About her upbringing, very abusive… She was sexually abused by her father (which she had suppressed till then???). Her mother was only 20 when she was born, and very submissive…

This female therapist has written several books. She said all except this one above in Swedish. The book about her upbringing she had to write in English.

The reactions from readers were very positive, but not all her colleagues reacted this way… Some (half of them??) thought a therapist shall not be so personal or not personal at all.

The interviewer asked how one can survive being abused in the way she had been…

She answered that from the child’s point of view she didn’t understand how she could become exposed t such things, but now, after having processed it and being in her 60s she cold see it from the adults point of view and understand her father (and mother, and grandmother)… And that she felt a sort of reconciliation… Yes, she follows the wordbooks??? She is still satisfying others (not least all teachings and all her colleagues and teachers and masters???) by doing so? But she said with emphasis that she wasn’t that sort of person any more; the compliant, the girl trying o satisfy al and everyone…

What I wanted to come to, after having read in Jenson again, is of being steered by the unconscious… Trying to satisfy unconscious needs, without being aware of it. Even more important not to if you are a helper of any kind, or a parent!!?? How easy it is to do that (despite the best intentions!!!) and what this can mean and cause. Not least for someone seeking help… And for own children. In other relations it is A LITTLE different?

But this unconscious always causes problems, bigger and smaller??

And, at last, I thought she was a bit superficial still… Still hiding herself behind a mask…

And maybe this only says a lot about myself??? I am trying to capture (catch?? ) something here…

PS. Awareness isn’t enough…

By the way; the summer came at last!!! When it’s time to start working!! I’m bathing in sweat sitting here writing. Despite the windows are open!! It’s already over 24 Celsius degrees now at 10.00 in the morning!! Tonight it was extremely warm! At 6.00 I thought it was no idea trying to sleep more, so I went up and ate breakfast. And I think I will wait with walks till this evening!!! I don’t see any clouds here!! But it is blowing!

*) Bergman said that when he married Ingrid von Rosen at 52 years age he had just left teenage (she was 15 years younger??)!!! So then on he didn’t need a lot of new conquests!?? Or any at all any more!!?

I seem to have a need to pour out things!!! As if you have opened a water-tap or faucet!! Just pour and pour!!

Addition at 21.12: See this Readers' letter at Millers web about an artist and the experiences his son had with him!!! An artist about his childhood with a famous father!!
And this about a man (?) whose mother now can show empathy and apologize.
And this letter about being sick because of suppressed feelings.
And this and this about psychotherapy and therapists/counselors and at last this about "Birth trauma and psychedelics".
This readers' letter is also worth reading.

Addition August 8: I write very rapidly!!! And despite I play piano I don't press some keys hard enough!!?? So afterwards I see letters are missing... Hmmm... And see other misses too... Very spontaneously writing, full of feelings...

Tips om artiklar...

Krönika av Åsa Petersén i onsdags. Om pojkfotboll som manlig fostringsmiljö.
Åsa Petersénkrönika om avgående Jämo Claes Borgström. Borgström lär ha sagt:

”Kvinnor har förflyttat sig hemifrån och ut på den offentliga arenan under de senaste åren, men män har stått stilla. De är en rigid grupp.”

Ingmar Bergmans svärson Henning Mankell om sin svärfar.

Citat om män/quotation about men…

Citat om män av en man:

”Det finns inga fullvuxna män. Därför får kvinnor välja det barn som passar dem bäst” (Ingmar Bergman).

Eller välja bort män ur sina liv?

Skådisen Gunilla Nyroos sa om sin senaste filmroll, som mamma till en flygvärdinna som har problem med sitt egna privatliv och flyr från bearbetandet av det in i sitt yrkesliv av flackande runt i världen, att ”många kvinnor nöjer sig med en halvtrist karl av rädsla för alternativet – ensamheten!”

Ja, är det så?
-//-
Quotation about men by a man:

”There are no fully grown men. Therefore women have to choose the child which suites them best” (Ingmar Bergman).

Or choose to have no men in their lives?

A Swedish actor Gunilla Nyroos said about her last role-figure in a film where she is an submissive and alcohol-drinking mother to an air hostess which in turn can’t create a real own life and is fleeing from dealing with her problems by her roving (kringflackande in Swedish) life, that “many women are content with a half-tedious man/guy of fear for the alternative – the loneliness!”

Ingmar Bergman is dead...

Ingmar Bergman died in his home on the isle Fårö this morning . See DN and Aftonbladet about this and on the SVT-site (the Swedish television's site).

His Sommar-program in Swedish radio summer 2004.
In English on "Face to face". Another site in English. Svenska filminstitutet (in both Swedish and English). Even more.

Addition August 3: a tip from Helle Klein's blogg. And the site "Face to face" again. My "entrance" to Bergman is through his former wife, the pianist Käbi Laretei, and I haven't seen many of his films (hardly any) but read almost all his books, and from his mothers diary, and a book by Mareth Koskinen based on Bergman's archives, which he doanted some years ago to I am not sure right now... This last book I reacted against, because it was so psycho-analytically influenced!!

Käbi wrote a book some years ago about her life with Bergman, and she in fact mentioned Alice Miller!! I wonder if her son Daniel Bergman had informed her about Miller's existence?

And I think artists of all kinds have been influenced by Freud unfortunately. But Bergman was sceptical towards therapists, so he never entered a t herapy room, as far as I have understood. And I wonder if that wasn't a luck after all...

I also read a chronicle/column, "The day when Bergman phoned me", yesterday in one of our evening newspapers by a young female journalist, Belinda Olsson, who had reacted against Bergman as a father (he was a really lousy father). Bergman phoned her and she thought she was exposed to a joke, but it was Bergman, that was amused over what she had wrïtten, and they had a one hour long talk. Unfortunately this column is only in Swedish.

Käbi Laretei and Ingmar Bergman influenced and inspired each others mutually!! He admired here enormously, admired her intelligence and talent... And Bergman was very interested in music, but thought he was tone-deaf, visited concerts every day almost, when he lived in Stockholm.

Girl- and women power… Or?

More high thinking and threads in many directions maybe… A. had written a blogpost about ”Because I’m a girl” and this together with other things triggered things… About voice again and language and communication… I have chosen a work where the language is music… The expression is music. Only spoken words aren’t enough to express everything a human being need to express! And we need other sorts of “nutrition” too? And definitely not only material things, but artistic expressions of all different kinds and other people around us not least…

And music is about communication too! It IS communication! Is it this that is so scary (see blogpost yesterday)?

The spoken language isn’t the main thing in my work, or in a way it is, too, honestly. Because that’s what I use when I teach pupils and students, together with showing, singing (I am singing a lot!!) etc. And many musicians have the spoken and written language too. As the pianist Käbi Laretei for instance (which came from Estonia as refugee as 18 years old woman and she write better than many Swedes) and her former husband Ingmar Bergman. Many of Bergman’s women have written books, and books interesting to read I think: Käbi, Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullman… And his first wife Ellen Bergman has written a book too, or initiated one at least!!! She came with a book together with one of her grandchildren (photographer??) one or two years ago, called “Three Questions” if I remember right.

What I wanted to come to was that the emotional language is less reliable or trustworthy than the “rational”?? The more emotional language the less reliable? And it has become even more the last years? The one expressing her/himself very emotionally can’t be taken really seriously?

And to connect to the blogpost I mentioned in the beginning; the emotional language could also be called “the female language”, if one should generalise. And the rational is “the male language” (but there are men having the emotional language and women which have the “rational”. Too.)

But today the emotional language is needed more than ever???

Also struck me yesterday, if I shall switch to something entirely else, about working hard and utterly diligent: when we did something with dad; papering walls, painting houses, hay harvest or something like that, we should do it extremely rapidly and swiftly!!! A enormous restlessness in him or to get it done immediately or both and more things under this? His enormous impatience? He was like a bulldozer!?

Actually I mentioned this to mom too, as if I was struck by an Aha-experience evaluating the days work and how I had done it (and how I do other things too, maybe everything??), that I have adopted this pattern really?? And I don’t know if I like this really? In the long run it isn’t healthy?? But dad lived till he was over 83 and had a very strong heart the doctors thought when he lived and lived and lived after they had taken the drop with nutrition and liquid away, because they meant he would die soon with the growing metastasis in the brain and they didn’t want to prolong the struggle…

Mom laughed and immediately said about my comment on working hard, that dad’s oldest brother (four years older than dad) had got fairly irritated (and tired?!!) when he should help dad (and us?) with the hay-harvest, because dad worked so hard!!! And he dared to express it too!!!

I got a picture in turn, of me and my three year younger sister (I was 16 or 17 then) when we stood at the hay-loft and dad and my one year younger brother stood on the ground below throwing hay to us up there. We worked and worked and worked. But it didn’t help much; suddenly we stood there with hay to our chins, sweaty, itching on our whole bodies of hay, dust and sweat, coughing of all dust too and had to shout to them down there to take it a bit easy. They slowed down a bit, but very little?? Or one of them came up to us, sighing over our weakness?? And at that time I had tested my, what we call, condition and it was the best of all girls in my class, and I had fairly strong legs too because of all riding, so even if I am small and short I was fairly strong!! That didn’t help!! Even if I probably was stronger than many in my size (it’s extremely important to be clever!!??)!! I am both angry and ironic writing this, now. Never really good enough or “fitting”??? What I even achieved or managed!!??

Irritatingly fast, rapid, swift and effective when I do things?? And yes, sometimes too much!! In all spontaneity… Have to balance all carefulness???

Pause in writing.

Took the car to the village. In the car I came to think about the voice-teacher me and my niece and one of my nephews (and two of my nephews male friends) took eight lessons for last fall. She said that I sound so positive on my voice! And when she had spoken with me on the phone she thought I was a much younger person than I actually is… I feel a little ambivalent over this, or very ambivalent… The positivism: a teacher’s disease? Overly positive?? Forbidden to sound negative or angry or irritated?

And, as I have written before, alexitymi is increasing in the world, which is lack of emotional language; you have no language for expressing feelings and emotions. And maybe among many researchers a Swedish stress researcher has established that people with alexitymi are at risk of developing heart- and vascular diseases. Here comes that to narrate again!!?? To tell your story, your history, to narrate it! And express your feelings round this narration too?

Addition: Read some words in a couple of readers' mail on Millers webb (from yesterday and today. The words "irrational" and "body-language"... Apropos what's actually rational and apropos language.

Ingmar Bergman archives recommended for inclusion in the Memory of the World International Register...

Here information about this; the first in English and two in Swedish: here and here. :-)
It stood that Alfred Nobel's archives are also recommended at the same time. Astrid Lindgren's are already included.

Bergmans arkiv - nytt världsminne! Tack Anja för tipset!! :-)

Addition at 14.10: Am about to pack my car and going north on a trip. Probably stepwise to Norrbotten? Let's see. So blogposts will be fewer and not so long as they have been? But you shall never say no!? Maybe I write nevertheless on the portable computer and as much, and just log in shortly on he net for publishing them on the blog?

I am taking some books with me, for instance an anthology about Astrid Lindgren I got today and that has come recently. So maybe I want to write about her too? :-)

The healing effects of guilt feelings?

If you have been badly treated early you feel guilt. The worse you have been treated without being allowed to question the treatment or seeing it as wrong the more guilt feelings, in relation to the violation and abuse that was inflicted. The child reacts with:

“It’s my fault! I deserved it, to learn, for my sinfulness and evilness and badness!!!"

If there had been someone in the environment which could have helped the child on some level to process it, and see who actually was at fault – then the child shouldn’t have felt so guilty, or much less guilty, and maybe would have been able to feel anger, fury, disappointment etc. which though normally are and have been forbidden feelings? I.e., justified anger was actually forbidden and thus too dangerous for the child to feel on its own, to feel adequate feelings would mean that the child should have to confront and see the truth about his parents and what they did, and the message that actually lay in this treatment and behavior, though it was said to be for “your own good".

See the blog post about extremely (or less extreme?) “Low Self esteem” *) as the result of being severely abused. If you have a very low self esteem then you have been severely abused when you grew up (including humiliations of many different kinds probably during many years) I think. Low self esteem doesn’t come from nowhere or the blue!! It has reasons, and the one with low self esteem isn’t helped by contempt or more abuse of the same kind?? By contempt for weakness (and why are so many of us reacting with contempt for this inability to value oneself? Of not being able to take you in the collar and love yourself?? Does this say more about us who reacts like this than the one with these problems, maybe even severe problems?).

Another reaction to being badly treated and even very badly treated is to push all guilt away or rather pushing the guilt away for what you do as adult?? As Ingmar Bergman did when he came home to his wife waiting their fourth child lying in bed for the night. When he came home and told her that he was going to leave her for another woman. He saw her look at him full with pain and helplessness, but decided at that moment to push all such feelings far away the rest of his life!!! Because he thought the look he got was so painful, and guilt-instilling and probably threatening to bind him **) !???

Either your guilt burden gets enormous by very bad treatment OR you skip all such feelings totally? If you are severely abused, and have been exposed to emotional black mail too as a child? The more sever the abuse the more guilt feelings??? So some sorts of guilt feelings are in fact a sign of bad abuse during ones childhood?? Guilt feelings that can’t be related really to the present are sign of that!!??

And guilt feelings a parent has towards grown up children: one can (and maybe should?) try to talk and communicate about what one has on ones mind? Without instilling even more guilt!? Difficult, yes, probably. Admitting and taking full responsibility and asking forgiveness. Talking grown up to grown up. But I think there is a border for the parent too??? I mean a grown up child is after all grown up, and have a certain responsibility for her/himself… So if he/she can’t meet this as a grown up to a certain degree or at least after thinking about things and maybe more communication about the whole (and this isn’t a one-time talk either?)…

I can imagine (I don’t know if I am wrong?), but as a grown up I have responsibility for myself and my life (and with this also the right and permission to do what I want, to do this sort of work too etc.) and try to communicate as that grown up (if it is possible) with my parents (if they are alive), yes, with siblings and other relatives too??? With all rights to be respectfully met and listened to… Maybe clearly say: “With all I know and all work I have done I think that and that was extremely harmful! And it is no excuse for what happened!!! You shall not do things like that at all!! I see this clearly and I don’t want and won’t let me be asked to deny this or talked away from this!!” Or something.

This was different themes on the topic guilt; feeling it yourself and being confronted with other persons guilt, preferably people standing near and which you are more closely tied to, whether this closeness and “tiedness” is healthy or not?? And by the way hasn’t Miller written that if it was the healthy bond between the child and mother (father!!??) then the child develops to an autonomic individual?? The sounder the relation was the less tied up the later grown up child? Which in fact makes the adult relation much, much better and more open too!! When it is a relation between two adults, which are grown up even as human beings?? And if you aren’t it’s because you have been damaged, your integrity hasn’t been respected early, and nothing other mysterious (as too many “helpers” claim!!??).

And here comes guilt in another circumstance: in therapy. When a client enters therapy to process extremely burdening guilt feelings maybe too!!! Because these feelings feels unbearable!!! But many maybe enters therapy of other main reasons? But somewhere guilt becomes an issue!!??

And behind that guilt are shame feelings?

Miller writes in her book ”Breaking Down the Wall of Silence – The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth” about therapy in which the guilt became confirmed rather than dissolved. About therapy that rather added the burden of guilt feelings.

By claiming that forgiveness is necessary for healing (and for being able to leave the chewing on childhood and its miseries). And by asking the client to understand his/her parents. Which is exactly what many children have learnt, more than enough, but obviously not enough in some therapist’s eyes?

Without being able to explain why the grown up child shall forgive parents that have never understood her/him or tried to understand her/him and not her/himself either. Why forgive a parent who hasn’t even any insight in what he/she has done?

Or forgiveness can be asked more implicitly by asking the client to understand (this also implicitly) to understand the parents situation. Even lively understand and imagine it. As if the former child hadn’t done exactly this and probably still does/did and therefore had a lot of problems in her/his life, including maybe even paralyzing guilt feelings!?

Isn’t this more of the same? Because who enters therapy generally, on her/his own initiative? Is it those who feels less guilt and blames themselves less?? Thus the most or less hardened?

Has this tendency to understand instead stood in the way for liberation, for being able to cope better with ones life, including understanding those people and phenomena in life that is worth understanding and standing closest? And not putting energy on persons and circumstances not worth any energy or efforts at all maybe?

Instead of those standing nearest and the ones that should be most worth one efforts and energy and time?

To this comes the power of narrating things, power of narrative, and healing effects just through sharing things… Kirkengen has written about this, the Swedish stress researcher has written about this, see also Pennebaker… Just articulating things can probably be enough for many people, and it would make things easier for those who are more hurt too…

That will be a coming blog post?

*) Learnt not to value yourself, but the opposite: ”Don’t think you are someone! That anyone can love someone like you! But if you try then maybe- but just maybe!!! (the child should never be sure!! How smart! Then it was totally in check!? And low self esteem can result in self destructive behavior, sometimes a very subtle behavior, so the surrounding hardly sees it... Sees it even less if it is a mother who shows it and the child is small and still living at home...

**) escaping what? He had been let down by his mother, probably severely, and now he had a need to punish other women when he didn’t dare to react against at his own mother so grown up he now was? The mother that had betrayed him so badly?

See earlier blog post on the same theme:
On “The Wall of Silence”)”.
And about spanking children in the blog post ”Spanking as Sexual Abuse…”.
And the blog post about physical integrity, what that sort of integrity is according to Ingeborg Bosch.

Om Käbi Laretei/about Käbi Laretei...

Got stuck at the computer before fixing up here! Reading blogs and googling... Found a site about one of my former teachers Käbi Laretei which was one of Ingmar Bergman's wives... In Swedish though... But there was a site with links in English too!!!

I had her for four years in all, and what she contributed mostly with to me I think was to stimulate my intellectual interests? She talked fairly a lot about Bergman and seemed to be a real admirer of him! But their life together was fairly stormy... And Käbi herself contributed to this much! :-)

She has written about their life together in her recent book "Såsom i en översättning" ISBN 92-0-010410-8 ("As in a translation" or something in English) which came 2004.

They stimulated each others mutually I think. Seeing things from two different angles... And this enriched them both, both in work and privately... As the creative persons they both were and are. But Käbi made Ingmar Bergman loose his childish enjoyment of music and Bergman Käbis childish enjoyment of theater and film. Because when they visited concerts, theater, listened to music the expert-part critically commented the performance! :-)

But Bergman had other women besides and even got a daughter out of marriage with the woman which became his last wife Ingrid von Rosen. She then lived in a marriage where she already had three children...

Käbi and Ingmar Bergman got a son, Daniel, which is also director, but not at all as famous as his father...

Now some fixing up...

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Fastnade vid datorn innan jag hunnit börja städa härhemma! Hade egntligen tänkt skriva ett mejl till en vän om något jag tänkte på i duschen, men tappade den tråden när jag började läsa några bloggar och googla!! Pust! Googlade på en av mina f.d. pianolärare Käbi Laretei och hittade denna site, med en massa länkar på henne.

PS. I haven't tried to get visitors or readers of this blog really yet... Don't know yet where I want to go with it...

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In the midst of fixing up here: their life was no dance on roses though, despite success and fame... For none of them!! They have been writing quite openly about this in their books... So...

In a way I get an impression that Käbi behaved like a diva... Spoiled. In many ways... When she at the same time also could sit with us at the fire and drink tea in cups of all different colors and sizes (maybe not even so well-washed either :-)).

They were and still are very interested in their own childhoods... But I think influenced by Freud to that degree that they haven't shaken this off yet? But Käbi mentions Alice Miller in her last book!! I think either her daughter (in my age) or her son has raised this interest?!

Käbi turns 85 July 14 and Bergman 89 the same day!!! So artists gets old??

And Freud was sort of idol for many artists back then when they were active? His ideas led to endless fantasies and of course probably creativity!? Ideas that never ends!? For instance about unanswered love to a mother/father!? The competition with the parent with the same gender... I just sigh over this... And of course ideas from Freud what art is expression for... Phew!! Sublimination... And they were afraid of loosing their creativity if they "got free" from neurosis... I have in a way experienced this time, even if I was very young then, and also a child... So I think I remember the atmosphere then.

To say it very quietly, but from deep in my soul and feelings: what rubbish!!??

So both these two are still very neurotic - no wonder... Which is so sad... They have got stuck with these ideas?? Not been able to shake them off? So indoctrinated with them?

Behind what they have written and told you can imagine how it actually was, quite lively... In a way Bergman is very aware I can think...

Bergman donated all his writings to a foundation (I don't remember what foundation, maybe the Film institute in Stockholm?) and a woman Maaret Koskinen has written a book, using this material, called "I begynnelsen var ordet" ISBN 91-46-18345-0 (something in the style as "In the beginning there was the word"). And she is very psycho analytically influenced too... If I ever would have written a book and a book with this material I would have written an entirely different book!!

Bergman was the second child in line of three. Had a four year older brother Dag (that died of a disease fairly early, in his 70s, in something that suffocated him) and has a four year younger sister Margareta, which is married to an Englishman and has four sons with him...

And I get the impression Bergman really had needs to "maintain his rights" * by really showing his geniality!! But there was no immediate success... His father, priest in the Swedish church, was very strict and could get enormous outbursts. His mother held her children very tied up!! There I guess one can talk of emotional incest...

And his mother Karin, met a ten year younger man, when the daughter Margareta was fairly small, he was also priest and colleague to her husband, and they had a love-relation which almost ended in catastrophe... Her husband Erik, got a nervous breakdown (I wonder if he wasn't what we today call burnt-out; because he worked enormously, probably to be good enough to his mother and father in law!!! And also tried to flee into work when he got to know about his wifes love-affair) and this put an enormous pressure on Karin, and the whole resulted in that she stayed with her husband. Also talked back by her, in turn, very dominating mother! Think of the shame!! To leave a husband and three kids in their position too! Out of question!

Even if Karin's mother in the first place didn't like this alliance between her daughter and Erik Bergman! Now she had to bite in the sour apple!

And how was this all for the children? All that happened in the shadows and as noone could talk about openly that time!?

Karin got cancer, abdominal, I think and died in her 60s if I remember right. And Erik grieved her till he died... Despite his psychological problems he got fairly old. Over 80 I think.

Their lives are in fact rather tragic I think... And Bergman live a very quiet life now and have done for many years on the isle Fårö near Gotland (since his wife died more than 10 years ago only 63 years in abdominal cancer)... A diligent concert-visitor when he still lived in Stockholm...

Their lives are absolutely nothing to wish for I think and feel... No... Not at all.

* And from where did these needs come? So strong needs as he had!? Yes, both his parents were very strict!! It was a lot of talk about sin and that God saw them... And on the surface they lived a very normal social life, with a lot of people home, hard and diligently working... Karin really lived like a priests wife and took all these duties, unpaid!! The house was big and so on...

Erik was even priest at the Royal court and had other employments too at the same time... To queen Victoria I think... He demanded good reports from the children, and sat boasting about them at the dinner-table? Or scolded the children (to say it mildly) if they had failed. In front of all the other family members!

But under the fine surface/facade a lot grew... Noone in the surrounding had the slightest idea about how it actually was? And didn't want to know either?? They wanted to believe in the model family, the happy family? Wanted and needed to look up on authorities? At successful and highly educated people with a high reputation and a fairly high position in society? Even with connections to the Royal Family!

Sitting here writing with rubber gloves - not so practical!!! :-) Half ways fixing up!!! And now I am starting to get hungry too, with this prolonged fixing up, interrupted by writing!!! :-)

The raising-method was to instill shame and guilt!? A burning shame (a shame that wasn't possible to experience consciously!?). Used to manipulate the children... Both consciously and unconsciously!? But as grown up Bergman give us a picture of one such occasion when he experienced and could remember how it actually was, the literally burning pain... Very expressively in his book "Söndagsbarn" ("Sunday child" if you were born on Sunday you was a blessed child...). This book his son Daniel made a film of...

Very authoritarian... Honor thy father and thy mother... And You shall have no Gods... The air they breathed... So of course they couldn't see through what was going on in Germany when they visited friends there. Later as adult Bergman could see this though... I wonder if Erik Bergman had Nazi-sympathies... It wouldn't surprise me from what I know...

This blog post started with Käbi and ended with Bergman. Maybe I should rename it to "From Käbi Laretei to Ingmar Bergman"? :-) I have never met Bergman. Not seen him in real life.

Now finishing the fixing up here. And get some food. My blood sugar is turning lower and lower!!! I need something in my stomach so I don't suddenly faint here!! :-)

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While writing and fixing up at the same time something lifted from my soul and mind and shoulders??? Did I articulate something important?

Or is it that I am slowly realizing I have time soon... With other things? To relax, to read, to write, to do nice things??? With vacation in reach. And, too, it is summer warmth suddenly!! Hopefully to stay!

I wonder if I shall buy strawberries - wonder if they have come yet? And fresh potatoes and "matjessill", Matie herring in English!!! To a very late lunch! Think if they have rhubarb too?? Then making a rhubarb-cake and eat it with strawberries and whipped cream!? Delicious!!