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tisdag 16 oktober 2007

Psykoanalys som indoktrinering...

Gör en hel plåt lasagne till lunch och kommande matlådor.

Fick intyg idag från en av våra större musikhögskolor på kurs (15 högskolepoäng), som jag avslutade juni 2006. De har så otroligt mycket att göra i administrationen så de skickar inte ut intyg/betyg automatiskt, utan man måste be att få ut handlingarna! Så har det aldrig varit förut… Den person som är ansvarig har varit sjukskriven för ”utbrändhet”…

Men att jag satte mig ner vid datorn nu var för att jag skulle vilja citera ur artikeln ”Psykoanalys som indoktrinering” ur tidskriften ”Impuls – Tidskrift för psykologi, nr. 3/2007, årgång 51 (s. 72-88), som jag fick mig kopierad i mejl (ur denna artikel, det nedan citerade finns i denna längre artikel en bit ner), där står (min översättning från norskan) i detta blogginlägg (inte i första hand skriva om mat och lunch och kursbetyg! :-)):

”Det har sagts mig att en del människor efter lång tid i psykoanalys får problem med realitetstestning, därför att ingenting längre ser ut [att vara] som det det är. När relationen med terapeuten som en verklig person görs ogiltig, implicerar (innebär) det att oavsett vad en terapeut faktiskt säger eller gör, är detta utan betydelse. Varje negativ reaktion på terapeutens beteende tolkas som en projektion. Klienten kan inte längre lita på sina perceptioner/varseblivningar. Det svarar mot den form av verklighetsförvrängning och ogiltiggörande av erfarenheter som Axelsen (1997) påpekar är en starkt medverkande faktor till psykiska problem [!!!].

Det starka beroendet, som är en förutsättning för psykoanalytiskt orienterad behandling, kan ge grogrund för ett utsträckt bruk av maktutövande [dvs. till maktmissbruk, från i första hand terapeutens sida, men i förlängningen också utanför terapirummet, för att klienten blir så osäker på om hon/han ser rätt!?? Och också i värsta fall för övergrep i terapirummet av annan natur också, däribland sexuella i olika grader?]. /../

… ett mönster som ofta är identiskt med det klienten har upplevt tidigare i livet [är detta menar artikelförfattaren. Precis som växlingen mellan omsorg och straff, som författaren menar också kan ske i terapi i subtila former i form av accepterande och avvisning]. Det är knappast tillfälligt att det som i kommunikationsforskning definieras som kontrollstrategier (Wieman & Giles 1996) svarar mot psykoanalytiska behandlingstekniker som tystnad och undvikande av blickkontakt. På så sätt lär sig en klient snabbt vad som är acceptabelt att säga, mena och tro [det som Pia Melody kallar överdriven kontroll av verkligheten!? Vilket hon ser som en kränkning, av barnets integritet, och alltså faktiskt ser som övergrepp!!! Brist på respekt! Ibland allvarlig brist!], och vad som inte är det, och accepterar därmed analytikerns/terapeutens tolkningar och definitioner för att slippa avvisandereaktioner. För en psykoanalytiker kommer det alltid att handla om att göra och upprätthålla kontrollen med avsikten att upprätthålla auktoriteten [den autoritära, totalitära föräldern igen, men nu i ny skepnad, en som kanske är ännu svårare att genomskåda, för att det hela nu sker i ett sammanhang och med en person där man förväntar sig hjälp och räddning i och av, som Miller skriver en hel del om i sina böcker!? Och just därför kan bli ännu skadligare än ursprungstraumat t.o.m.!]. Detta ligger implicit/underförstått som en grundläggande premiss då det antas att klienten inte vet sitt eget bästa [”for your own good” gör terapeuten detta, han/hon vet bättre/bäst, har ”kunskapen”!!] och därför av alla krafter kommer att försöka manipulera terapeuten [!!!! Hemska tanke!!]. Det farliga i detta är att analytikern/terapeuten då kan förlora det som t.ex. Gullestad (1996) refererar till som ’den oberoende positionen’ (??).

När en klient får en ’negativ terapeutisk reaktion’ dvs. är missnöjd över att inte få den hjälp han eller hon behöver och därför slutar, är det i den psykoanalytiska traditionen alltid klienten det är något fel med, inte terapeuten eller terapin. Axelsen (1997) hävdar att terapeuter som har tagit avstånd från offerklandringstendenser ser klientens negativa reaktioner som terapeutens ansvar genom att terapeuten inte bemästrar sin del av samspelet i den terapeutiska relationen [så ser Miller det också!].

En psykoanalytiskt orienterad terapi kommer därför oftast att vara en ny form av uppfostran med stark prägel av det Alice Miller (1980) kallar ’den svarta pedagogiken’, en ny variant av ’identifikation med aggressorn’. Målet för behandlingen är att ersätta ett gammalt superego med ett nytt med hjälp av klassiska indoktrineringstekniker. Om en patient blir ’motstridig’ [börjar opponera sig] och insisterar på rätten till sin egen verklighet och nekar att godta terapeutens tolkningar, är det inte ovanligt att terapeuten ’ubevisst’ agerar ut sin egna föräldrar och tar samma uppfostringsmetoder i bruk mot patienten, som han själv blev utsatt för som barn (Miller 1981). Några av dagens analytiskt orienterade terapeuter använder beteckningen ’motstånd mot terapi’ om sådana patienter. ’Sund motståndskraft mot indoktrinering’ kanske andra skulle kalla det [ja, exakt!!!].

Se Miller igen i "Vägar i livet" kapitlet om Helga och de om guruer, t.ex. Hon kallar det som beskrivs ovan för (ren och skär) hjärntvätt. Men Miller menar också att vi troligen inte kan ändra en dålig terapeut och därför borde lämna denne/denna så snart som möjligt... Men detta är nog tyvärr svårare ju mer man behöver hjälp...Kanske mer om detta senare.

Är de som borde vara det mest ägnade att hjälpa människor? Se också inlägget om "Hjälp till självdestruktion" och ur inledning till Kirkengens senaste bok i det senare inlägget.

fredag 12 oktober 2007

Responsibility…

Thinking out loudly (walking like a cat round porridge, maybe talking in riddles): What is each individual responsible for? And what not? Is each person responsible for all and everyone? Or for what? Especially if it is about grown ups!!!???

Between two or more: has only one part the responsibility and the whole responsibility? Was and is the other (opposite) part a complete human being, compared to me? He/she/they had no part in the whole? Or what was this about? I.e., who is the guilty one??? Actually?? This is a court, isn’t it?? But what sort of court?

Things were made actual again through a communication…

A child is entirely powerless against all sorts of abuse; emotional/psychological, physical, sexual...

Addition: and how does a totally dependent child experience abuse??? Can she/he afford to acknowledge, sense, see or feel it? To what degree? And when can it more and when less?

And who are more prone as adults in doing something about their own problems, usually? How do adults handle their problems? Are there differences?

torsdag 27 september 2007

Things I have thrown down in my diary recently…

Even on a political level: perpetrators play on shame feelings in the victim or the victims!? Leaders that are sound/sounder don’t have to play on such things in people???

Further; insight isn’t enough to change a behavior… Experiencing something that sounds alarming to the amygdale… But what it is about; I mean I can imagine and interpret the possible events that are underlying… Jenson writes that if you rewrite your story/history the failure will be inevitable. Then I am not really open to what it’s really about!? I invent a truth that protects me against the real truth, or that's the risk??

And the alarm can be about all unprocessed things? Things that are triggered more or less? Instead you should need to, or try to, meet the fear more “unprejudiced” (probably not easy at all and feeling almost impossible? Probably feeling extremely scary?).

If the child had been allowed to react adequately with fear, anger, rebellion etc. and got an opportunity to process what she/he experienced, difficult, painful events (which the grown up maybe didn’t think was difficult or even painful), if she/he got an opportunity to express what she felt, and got help with that, including see who was failing, then she/he shouldn’t have had to suppress less things??

Addition in the evening: if already the baby had been allowed to express feelings and needs (anger, fear etc.), without making her/his mom feeling as a lousy mother, or maybe making her angry... Or without making her/his father angry, irritated etc....

Addition September 28: who had the responsibility for whom? For her/his feelings and needs? Actually? And who should have responsibility for the other part? On whom was it and should it be possible to put demands? And on whom not?

Why should (and still shall) the children have to understand someone that maybe ever tried to understand himself or never showed hardly any fingertip-feelings towards others (and least children)? Where the understanding wasn't mutual...

Neoliberals (also confessing to the objectivism) what are their needs about? Are they perverted needs? Do they allow others to exist? To coexist? Really?

Especially when these needs are "exercised" on behalf of others!!?? is that a sign of not perverted needs? But struck me; these unfulfilled needs (and the following egoism) can't it be hidden and "disguised" under a mask of good behavior and good manners?? As our foreign minister's??? Arrogantly floating on top of everything, not seeing himself forced to answer questions he doesn't like?? (and what is that a sign of too? Abuse of power? Now he has the power, so he can allow himself this, and do it very arrogantly??? What people's feelings and reactions? Over injustices and strange things?).

Back to childhood: the children were taught to be really, really good, even this wasn't necessarily outspoken:
"If you are (I am) really, really good and don't have any demands (i.e. becomes entirely invisible, in a way, and in others ways not, because the child wasn't allowed to put her/his light under the bushel either!! Talk about contradictions!? Confusing??) - then!!"
The false hope strengthened!! Including denial of needs (natural, original, underlying, adequate and completely justified childhood needs, not only of food, cloths and shelter)...

The child had to protect her/his mom, had to
"think of mom!!"
So whose needs was it about actually??? The children's or the grown ups (and not only the mom's but also the dad's)? But who has and should have responsibility for a grown up? In first hand she/he her/himself and secondly another grown up - shouldn't it??

lördag 15 september 2007

Therapy...

I threw some words down a couple of days ago when I was rushing to work, to not forget a thought I got. Saw these sentences now. It stands:

“It isn’t as the adult now I ought to take it, not from that angle... As one perhaps already have done, already early in life… And has been doing much too much, with all what that means. For oneself and for ones environment.”

What I was thinking of was therapy… When the therapist replies to a comment from the client about a parent which demanded something from the child the client once was, or when the child then reacted or felt something she/he didn’t get, because the parent was so extremely occupied with everything; a lot of other kids, the household, the work and conditions there, and occupied with a marriage with a lot of problems…

If the therapist says something in the style:

“One can lively imagine how he/she felt/had it (his problems)!!”

Or something about that the mother’s lap already was occupied and there was no place for another child there! A fact the child hadn't got help to confront, to stand?? (what rubbish!!! A child has her/his needs no matter what the parent can fulfil or not or of what reason she/he is unable to fulfil these needs! Of course the child reacts!!! And should be allowed to react! Express its disappointment, anger or whatsoever! Needs the child ought to get filled whether its parent could fill the or not. And by this stay in contact with its feelings, and also by this develop empathy for itself and in the lengthening for other people. True, genuine compassion and empathy).

As if the child then didn’t understand that!!???

Could that be a/the problem: that the child understood that all too well??? And pushed her/his needs, feelings, emotions etc. down?? And was forced to do that too, to survive, maybe even before many feelings and emotions (with following insights about the true situation) reached the consciousness??

And the child resorted to defences, as false hope for instance: If I just - then!! They will see me, I will get what I need (but I am not sure a child always can put words on what it needs, it just feels things, that something is wrong etc.?)? Or to false power denial of needs: “I don’t need that! I don’t care! I can manage without this and that!” Or to false power anger? And by this it got a feeling of control and strength, though illusionary. And the latter grown up get an illusion of a power he/she in fact maybe don’t need in the circumstances when this feeling occurs?? With all what that mean of problems in relations etc.!?

The client in therapy need to try to see it (and take it) from the child’s view and perspective in some way, with support of an empathic, compassionate, knowing, enlightened therapist, whom her/himself knows through personal experiences what it is about, how it was seen from the child’s perspective… And the client need to be safe that the therapist would never use or exploit the client when she/he get in contact with the help and powerless child’s feelings and emotions, and connected to this maybe memories and pictures of events…

The client doesn’t need a pedagogue once again?? Which teaches the client and tells her what to think, feel etc.??

And something quietly I felt I wanted to say to a person which thought I showed excessive charm that couldn't be true or? yes, that's probably true, that I struggle and have struggled enormously the whole life to be liked!! But quite frankly and quietly there are things that are quite ok in and with me... And maybe I am worth to be liked... Even if I am just a human being... Not that perfect, but quite ok!?

And in fact there was a person that said that I am pretty easy to like... And that person knew me quite well, and we had had contact for some years at that moment...

He had seen that I tried my best and was hard working with everything (but silently doing it)? And wanted to be honest, not lie... Reacts strongly and emotionally against dishonesty (which probably has reasons).

söndag 9 september 2007

Tanja Tamb and beds...

Was searching for something else in one of Kirkengen's books (about hypothyreosis) but found the story of Tanja Tamb (in the book "How Abused children..." which is in Norwegian, pages 86-87 in this book).

There it stood that Tanja was a loved child to her uncle and aunt who had no own children and visited them occasionally. They cuddled her from she came till she left. But the uncle put her to bed every night, and the ritual then contained both care and violation. Therefore Tanja couldn’t find out why she hated this time of the day. The kind uncle couldn’t be guilty to the disgusting things which occurred in the bed in the evening.

To help herself she blamed the bed (thought it was the bed's fault??) for what happened and developed a phobia for beds. At home she suffered from insomnia and got headache in the end of the day (when she should go to bed). Their primary care doctor gave her sleeping pills already from she was five years!! But neither he nor her parents worried about or asked themselves why she couldn’t get to sleep in her (own) bed, but everywhere else and in all other places, as under the stair, in the bathtub or behind the sofa etc. Or why she hided when it was sleeping time.

In a pharmalogical manner Tanja became intoxication and drug dependent as teenager. And in a psychological manner she got favourite with the boys, a spoiled sexual play-toy (as Kirkengen writes) for a gang much older boys. This promiscuous behavior was used against her when she as 18-year old reported her uncle. The kind man who had loved her almost too much, had a credibility in the court as the dissoluted and intoxicated young woman only strengthened.

That her life was the proof of a violated dignity noone saw.

The self-respect was taken away and was never a theme in the court. Tanja had to bear the shame for having accused her uncle, when her self-devastating way of living was obvious. She got judged as the origin/source to her own destructiveness and was judged and treated according to this.

The medical care Tanja had got didn’t protect her from becoming a drug-addicted and an expanded addicted. Tanja had “chosen” a sort of self-treatment (freely???) to handle her difficult, in fact troublesome, life.

She got or developed, no wonder, a basic insecurity about boundaries and a deep self contempt.

A row of studies have established such a connection both in boys and girls tied to the following phenomena: depression, suicide attempts and suicides, self-damage (??), early and many sexual relations, lacking prevention against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, addiction to alcohol and narcotics, unwanted pregnancies, eating disturbances and damages caused by violence.

And in a Norwegian study (from 2001) 31 % among 710 young people said they had been forced to sexual acts.

Thoughts that came for me spontaneously: Depreciated, disparaged, belittled as a living human being, worth nothing. Seen on with deepest contempt. Already by a parent (I see a father here)… The lacking respect the child was treated with is now shown again in therapy and medical care (as in Tanja's case in a court). Even to socially functioning individuals! Disrespect for what the client tells, for what she/he has understood and wondered about!!! For what he/she has read and the conclusions the individual has drawn from that.

And even contempt for her/him and what she/he tells, for what he/she is, is thinking and has understood as if the person was nothing, noone, a mosquito. Yes, would this therapist have treated another person different, which had a high position in society? I can’t help wonder!!

And are men treated differently? Even if the woman in question doesn’t suffer from drug-abuse, has been socially functioning, has a long education!!

Diminishing and belittling signs and also what the person tells. And maybe also disbelieving it?? I am extremely ironical! And I would like to tell all and everyone what can happen in a closed room!! By persons with high educations, maybe with a high reputation too, which are maybe also seen as highly competent?? How they actually can behave (behaves)!! How actually contemptuously!!! And in fact not respectfully at all!!

When a client tells about almost irresistible suicide-wishes and the therapist gets very excited and is no stone-face anymore, but smiles!!! And the client never gets any explanations on what was so good about this. And at last leaves the therapy with a lot of questions which has never been answered!!

To dare to do that, question a therapist, you have to have a high reputation yourself (and sound and look very "normal")!!??? (ironically) So watch so you have such a "reputation" or appearance or how I shall express this!!! If not you won’t be believed or trusted!!?? You rather risk being labelled and diagnosed if you question and point out facts you have experienced… The “helper” doesn’t risk so much?? He can lean back fairly calmly?? Not many will really believe you? And such a therapist can go on working calmly...

Addition: Isn't there parallels between the father watching he child with contempt, coldly (or how I shall express it: just seeing the child/young individual in front of him with no feelings, maybe neither warm nor cold either?) and without love in fact (no warmth, no real, genuine warmth), and the therapist also watching the client there in the chair in front of him, with contempt for her (his) inability to handle things (her/his life), for her/his weaknesses??

And the mother who should have been there; her abilities to protect, and to see (perceive), was beaten out of her and she had been degraded in other manners in her turn...
"You shall not think you are someone!!! (And never forget that!!)"
Said to be of love and care and for the child's best!?? And the child also has/had tendencies to blame itself... Which is considered to be a defence...

Who should she have her settlement with; with rage and fury for what it has caused: not only for her personally but also for her children in turn!!??

And that father with his look at his own child/children; why is he so (maybe even totally) shut off? So there doesn't exist any contact in fact between him and his children?? And did the child blame her/himself for this too?? That it was its fault, its character that made him unable to connect to them? Or see it? Or wanting to speak to it, unless he didn't have to pour anger over it, that disgusting, awful creeping creature??

What did this create in the child?? It started to try to be good enough in a lot of different ways, to be better, not so evil, not that devil as it was seen as,not as the nuisance, burden etc.?? Though with little or no success! And when she later enters the therapy-room, she is met with contempt again for this weakness and all her trials to get things hat doesn't exist!! Not with real compassion, empathy or understanding from deep in a therapist hat knows, understand or can imagine on a deep level what this is about actually!!!

That this is understandable behaviors seen to what this individual probably has experienced very early!! That this s telling a story that hasn't yet really been told?? And by telling it the individual there in front of her/him will slowly abandon these behaviors... The individual will slowly understand that these behaviors isn't needed anymore, and will never lead to anything!! Because what she/he is striving for doesn't exist and has never existed, and that this nonexistence isn't his/her fault, and in fact has nothing to do with her/him either!?? And that a child has all rights in the world to have needs and demands and feelings, and to react etc.!

And by lifting this bandage from the eyes, the individual will probably view the world differently; suddenly see opportunities and possibilities she/he hasn't seen before, even if they lay there right in front of them??

See this readers' letter from Miller's web from a man in therapy and his thoughts...

Struck me now while I was making lunch and eating it, about a therapist commenting the clients problems with people around, thinking it is really problematic and wanting to deal with it really and understand why she (he) has these problems... Honestly wanting to deal with them. And the therapist answers (a bit ironically and impatiently over such a stupid, insensitive client - no wonder she/he has problems!?) in the manner:
"But what is your part of the problem???"
That the client has no idea about and has never ever thought of?? Never, ever been blaming her/himself for being so lousy handling things!!!

But actually, is that the main question: the client's part of the problem? If this person never questioned her/himself (i.e. didn't blame her/himself ever or ever took any responsibility whatsoever for anything) should she/he ever contact a therapist or seek help?? How, in what way, does this contribute to a solution?? Maybe it does?? If the client then gets an opportunity to reflect upon it?? And if things are allowed to be uncovered? But are they allowed? Can a sensitive client feel and sense this? Maybe not really consciously? And answer to this, by not bringing things about the therapist doesn't want to hear???

The question of guilt again, who's guilty???

I feel very ironical again...

lördag 8 september 2007

Therapy...

A child growing up with real, genuine respect, respected as a living human being, in her/his feelings and reactions (which are seen as adequate responses on something, which is perhaps not seen immediately), does that child have impulses or destructive/self-destructive drives which has to be controlled? Controlled by the environment or him/herself?

But, yes, I think children with violent urges exist. But why are they violent? And violent in that manner… Came to think about the first case Jonathan Pincus writes about in his book, a teenage girl which stabbed a teasing class-mate (or maybe a girl one or two years older), another girl, to death in a school-bus, with a lot of witnesses. This was the first case Pincus was confronted with? Pincus writes about what that girl experienced… And she was probably so harmed that it wasn’t possible to help her recover.

Most of us aren’t treated in that violent manner…

A sign of psychic sickness is to put the blame outside oneself? To blame others is to put the responsibility outside oneself!? To deny ones responsibility…

Professionals (at least some?) talk about impulse-control. More or less lacking… But one can be too controlled in their eyes too? What is enough? Clients have to learn this, mechanically?? But what is it the clients have to control?? Actually? Inherited drives? Destructive/self-destructive impulses that comes from nowhere?

Or is it about feelings that have causes? That was forbidden then? Feelings that are adequate to what the child experienced?

And if these feelings are uncontrolled in that manner, the client is probably not aware about the roots to them? At all.

A child which is totally frigid –has that child been met with empathy and compassion, or by a total lack of these things?

A child has to control feelings and emotions that are adequate, or would be adequate, to how it is treated (or has been treated)!? To avoid more of the same (punishments for example for questioning and reacting) and to survive.

Can the regime in some households/homes be so brutal that NO strategies ion the world helps? And can homes exists where hardly any strategies helps? And others where SOME helped sometimes?

I think of a client in therapy wanting to sort things out, not being able to constructively deal with things, being aware of it too… Coming with a wish to handle things… Telling the therapist about problems in her/his life… With people involved… Reacting over the environment…

But, you know, you shall not put the blame outside you!!!

“What have you done actually, yourself? Haven’t you contributed to the whole? Or maybe, everything lies on you, honestly!? (maybe you should seriously consider this!!?)”

What help does that client get actually? Any at all?? Stuck there?

Because what does this therapist believe in? In drives?? Erotic feelings in a child? And that stuff? But if the client would say that, he/she would be labeled as denying her/his problems??

The client has to admit to her/his drives, inherent!?? If he/she does, then the real work can begin, or what?? In controlling drives and urges??

That a child can be violated and abused not only physically or sexually, but also emotionally – what bullshit?? And in this case the client hadn’t been physically abused, that was for sure. Just once, but what is that??

If this had been a proper therapy, what would have been uncovered? Maybe neither physical nor sexual abuse, no. If we leave that, yes, let’s do that! But exposed to emotional humiliations of different degrees, some fairly mild (as we see it). And disrespect and disregard, but what longterm consequences does this give?

Don’t forget; a child needs to learn to give up (avstå), need to learn to handle frustrations, which the life always will be about and contain!! Frustrations that there are other kids in the family, that mom’s lap already is full, that the father's mood is so stretched that he can’t control his outbreaks (even the slight, small ones), that he need to use a child for work…

Think about what you experience as grown up!! What concern frustrations! And to be forced to do things you don’t really like etc. If you haven't learned this early!!

If you haven’t learned this properly then, which you probably didn't learn, which is why you have problems now and need to come to me as therapist now, you poor thing!! Maybe your parents didn’t manage to be firm and consequent enough (were too kind to say it straight, not strict enough, or??)…

And think if you missed steps in development which you have to take back now!??? Let’s explore this together!?

Some morning-thoughts a rainy morning…

I have a lot more thoughts that I keep for myself, for now at least…

But: if you don’t benefit from such a treatment, then… There is something really wrong with you!!?? Then you must be really sick??

And if this had been (what I think) proper therapy, what would have been uncovered, as noone couldn't see or maybe even imagine?? Where no physical abuse existed (except for that one occasion) and no sexual abuse (except for...)... What was that to speak of?? Which also happened just once!!

Bosch talks about the first resort a child takes, to a defence she calls the Primary, where the child blames her/himself for what she/he is (or has been) exposed to, and this defence can even mean that the child believes she/he actually wanted this too?? Even if this state is painful, it is less painful than realizing the truth Bosch means.

And isn't it exactly this tendency, to blame oneself, this sort of therapy above mean is the way to recovery and healing???!!! When it actually is to strengthen a defence - said straightly?? And thus rather distancing the client even more from her/his truth??

A clever client can probably "live up to" (fulfill) this, to all expectations from all and everyone and even the therapist's... And many also does, and even more clients have done during all years therapy has existed!?

But the ones that questions this view... And dare to speak this up... They are labeled? What they say is seen as resistance, as proofs of a sickness that isn't curable? They are seen as... yes, what? They are paranoiac, which doesn't trust in the therapist and his/her ideas or methods??

Alice Miller in an answer to a readers’ letter:

“To me, real love is never harmful and abuse is never love.”

The Italian woman (therapist??) mentioned in this letter and her home-site (in Italian though).

Addition at 15:28:

I got a new book yesterday about the cooperation in the use of psychiatric treatment and care. In the end there is a chapter about the power-relation in a therapeutic context.

There it stands that the most central question in all work with human beings - is the question of power. A fundamental condition, prerequisite which has to be made clear in all treatment-work. They mean it is about making clear responsibility- and role-allotments (??) between the therapist and the client, not about loosing or giving power away.

It’s important that the power relation which will always occur in the relation caregiver-user is also acknowledged by the therapist. The client will always be the one exposed and under seen from a power-perspective.

The power-perspective acknowledges and builds its tools to create equivalent conditions, so that the client’s voice gets a decisive place in the development of the therapy.

This will demand a strengthened professionalism to pick up the clients experiences and base the arrangements upon what is put forward. Especially important is a good knowledge of alternative methods which can be adapted to the individual client.

Besides one has to keep and develop a critical stance to ones own attitude towards the client and towards ones role as therapist. And it is exactly this that is so exciting with such praxis. But it demands a professional quality on a high level and that the therapist is confident in his/her role and has a repertoire of methods.

Oh, what wonderful music, “An die musik” by Schubert (I think). Am sitting here writing with the TV on with a program from the Dramaten in the memory of Ingmar Bergman, Peter Mattei, baritone, and Roland Pöntinen, piano, playing!! See separate posting later!!

Watch this from the Metropolitan! With Mattei.

söndag 19 augusti 2007

Afterword to For your own good...

From: For Your own Good – Alice Miller

Afterward to the Second Edition (1984)
(from For Your own Good – Alice Miller)

This text was not originally part of the book. It was written four years after the book's first publication.

WHEN Galileo Galilei in 1613 presented mathematical proof for the Copernican theory that the earth revolved around the sun and not the opposite, it was labeled "false and absurd" by the Church. Galileo was forced to recant and subsequently became blind. Not until three hundred years later did the Church finally decide to give up its illusion and remove his writings from the Index.

Now we find ourselves in a situation similar to that of the Church in Galileo's time, but for us today much more hangs in the balance. Whether we decide for truth or for illusion will have far more serious consequences for the survival of humanity than was the case in the seventeenth century. For some years now, there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of children take their inevitable toll on society—a fact that we are still forbidden to recognize. This knowledge concerns every single one of us, and—if disseminated widely enough—should lead to fundamental changes in society; above all, to a halt in the blind escalation of violence.
The following points are intended to amplify my meaning:

  1. All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection.
  2. For their development, children need the respect and protection of adults who take them seriously, love them, and honestly help them to become oriented in the world.
  3. When these vital needs are frustrated and children are, instead, abused for the sake of adults' needs by being exploited, beaten, punished, taken advantage of, manipulated, neglected, or deceived without the intervention of any witness, then their integrity will be lastingly impaired.
  4. The normal reactions to such Injury should be anger and pain. Since children in this hurtful kind of environment are forbidden to express their anger, however, and since it would be unbearable to experience their pain all alone, they are compelled to suppress their feelings, repress all memory of the trauma, and idealize those guilty of the abuse. Later they will have no memory of what was done to them.
  5. Disassociated from the original cause, their feelings of anger, helplessness, despair, longing, anxiety, and pain will find expression in destructive acts against others (criminal behavior, mass murder) or against themselves (drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, psychic disorders, suicide).
  6. If these people become parents, they will then often direct acts of revenge for their mistreatment in childhood against their own children, whom they use as scapegoats. Child abuse is still sanctioned— indeed, held in high regard—in our society as long as it is defined as child-rearing. It is a tragic fact that parents beat their children in order to escape the emotions stemming from how they were treated by their own parents.
  7. If mistreated children are not to become criminals or mentally ill, it is essential that at least once in their life they come in contact with a person who knows without any doubt that the environment, not the helpless, battered child, is at fault. In this regard, knowledge or ignorance on the part of society can be instrumental in either saving or destroying a life. Here lies the great opportunity for relatives, social workers, therapists, teachers, doctors, psychiatrists, officials, and nurses to support the child and to believe her or him.
  8. Till now, society has protected the adult and blamed the victim. It has been abetted in its blindness by theories, still in keeping with the pedagogical principles of our great-grandparents, according to which children are viewed as crafty creatures, dominated by wicked drives, who invent stories and attack their innocent parents or desire them sexually. In reality, children tend to blame themselves for their parents' cruelty and to absolve the parents, whom they invariably love, of all responsibility.
  9. For some years now, it has been possible to prove, through new therapeutic methods, that repressed traumatic experiences of childhood are stored up in the body and, though unconscious, exert an influence even in adulthood. In addition, electronic testing of the fetus has revealed a fact previously unknown to most adults—that a child responds to and learns both tenderness and cruelty from the very beginning.
  10. In the light of this new knowledge, even the most absurd behavior reveals its formerly hidden logic once the traumatic experiences of childhood need no longer remain shrouded in darkness.
  11. Our sensitization to the cruelty with which children are treated, until now commonly denied, and to the consequences of such treatment will as a matter of course bring to an end the perpetuation of violence from generation to generation.
People whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood, who were protected, respected, and treated with honesty by their parents, will be—both in their youth and in adulthood—intelligent, responsive, empathic, and highly sensitive. They will take pleasure in life and will not feel any need to kill or even hurt others or themselves. They will use their power to defend themselves, not to attack others. They will not be able to do otherwise than respect and protect those weaker than themselves, including their children, because this is what they have learned from their own experience, and because it is this knowledge (and not the experience of cruelty) that has been stored up inside them from the beginning. It will be inconceivable to such people that earlier generations had to build up a gigantic war industry in order to feel comfortable and safe in this world. Since it will not be their unconscious drive in life to ward off intimidation experienced at a very early age, they will be able to deal with attempts at intimidation in their adult life more rationally and more creatively.

From this site.
About the therapy-situation in Sweden, a discussion in this forum.

torsdag 9 augusti 2007

Silent morning thoughts...

Came to think here this morning about therapy… Here cognitive-behavioural therapy is very popular. Doesn’t take a lot of time (and thus not a lot of money either)!? Quick fixes??

Changing dysfunctional behaviors to a functional one… What does it actually change? Aren’t changes on a deeper level possible? And if they aren’t, would it be even more important to inform about the effects of mistreatments?

Is it for satisfying the therapist/s? Whether it is conscious or not for him/her...

And if the client come to realize nothing hasn’t changed much, that he/she wasn’t especially clever (ironically)?? What then? The client blames her/himself (this defence is strengthened. See Bosch about Primary defence)? But where lays the fault? (now also in the therapy and therapist?? Kirkengen actually writes abut this, for instance in her book “How Abused children Becomes Unhealthy Adults” in the third part of the book “Structural Phenomena”, about “Destructive Authority” and for instance in the chapter “Abuse of the Role of Caregiver”, see link to the excerpt in English to the left in the link list. Yes, is it in fact abuse of an authority role???).

Also came to think about a child’s needs… A child’s very natural needs… The less they are satisfied the more demanding the child? Maybe the child is even seen as unnaturally needing? Needing more than children in general!??

But these “unnaturally big needs” can they come from that the child’s needs has got fulfilled so little? That the child had to live on starvation diet? And maybe also did this cleverly, because there as no other options?

And if the child got what it needed how would that adult behave? Which needs would she/he actually have as grown up? What are we seeing around us everywhere? Over the whole world?

Needs for which the grown up was (and maybe still is in old age) totally insensitive for? Can’t see or sense at all?

So we have to resort to coping-methods? Just to survive? Which isn't strange and nothing to moralize about!!??

Sometimes I feel and think it's even worse that so called "experts" don't understand these things than that parents don't... If experts doesn't understand and know can we then demand this of parents?? Not that I want to protect them either...

See blogpost "...on presciptions of sleeping drugs..." with additions today.

söndag 5 augusti 2007

Four readers’ letters on Miller’s web…

Four letters I thought was interesting, the first four in August.

“After knowledge – what?”
>“Is contemporary psychoanalytic thought just another wolf in sheep’s cloth?”
Where a student of contemporary psychoanalytic thinking writes about the tradition in therapy to “blaming the child and protecting the parents”. This person mentions the work of a James Fosshage and thinks this seems to much different from the classical psychoanalytic emphasis on interpretation and the ALL-KNOWING ATTITUDE of many psychoanalysts and psychotherapists!!!

She (or he?) wonders
“Has contemporary psychoanalytic thinking really understood and effectively responded to ‘the old tradition of blaming the child and protecting the parents’ /…/ Or, is contemporary psychoanalytic thought just another wolf in sheep’s clothing? Have you changed your thinking about the value of psychoanalytic psychotherapy?” (which has influenced other methods and therapy-concepts more or less??)"

I will quote Miller’s whole reply:
“Thank you for your letter. You seem to be on the right track. No, I have not changed my opinion on psychoanalysts and self-psychologists and think today even more strongly than before that they avoid confronting the issue of child abuse, which confrontation I think is absolutely unavoidable if "empathy" should mean more than a nice word. Words are often used to pretend something that doesn't exist. The Church loves to use the word "compassion" but allows without any restriction that children are being beaten so that God could "find pleasure in them.” For 2000 years NOBODY ever protested against this practice.
As most of us were beaten children, we NEITHER learned TO HAVE EMPATHY with ourselves nor with the plight of other children. We learned to deny our pain to survive. But this is a big handicap for a therapist. Kohut, whom I knew personally, tried at first to open our eyes and hearts for what a child has to endure, but he felt very isolated in the psychoanalytic community. So he returned to their concepts at the end of his life, the concepts that Freud invented when he himself suffered from the rejection of the whole society after he had disclosed the sexual abuse by parents. As soon as he declared that patients talk only about their fantasies and not about real events he found a huge amount of followers that still seem very stable in their denial of the reality of child abuse.
To answer sufficiently to your very important question I would need to repeat what I have written already extensively elsewhere. Try to read the article on indignation on this web site (Dr. Lachman whom I mention there is actually a self-psychologist) as well as the last articles on my concept of therapy. If you have more questions concerning this issue you can write us again."

A grandmother wondered about a grandchild’s sleep disturbances.

Another reader wrote about “Schizophrenic families” which also is worth reading!!

Miller replies for instance as follows:
“It is true that incest families have much in common with families of schizophrenics where it is forbidden to see the truth and demanded to believe in lies. Because families like that seem to be much more frequent than healthy ones, we have trouble to be heard when we write and say the truth. Almost everything Laing wrote was right, but psychiatrists of today hardly mention him. We must conclude perhaps that they also learned very early to deny their truth and are afraid of coming in touch with it. So instead of listening to the patients and their stories, they make them silent and even more confused by giving them drugs."

fredag 3 augusti 2007

So called helpers…

Many of them lack abilities to cure their clients/patients!!?? Therefore they use the methods they use!? Coping-methods, which they think has helped themselves. By forwarding them they don’t have to realize or acknowledge the truth about themselves more than on the surface. Too many don’t have to, and haven’t, seeing up to their teachers as if they were complete and with no faults?

They just forward a faith, and by forwarding it they don’t have to confront their own stories (which they are deadly scared for? Which is probably reasonable, but no excuse for their behavior - at all!?)!? Miller writes about this; therapy - and society - steered by the fourth commandment in her first, revised book, and her last two books, of which the last is “The Body Never Lies”. And in “Paths of Life” about guruism…

Symptoms are treated, not the underlying causes!? Things are seldom or never really processed. Which would be possible; as therapists like I. Bosch, psychologists like Jennifer Freyd and physicians like Anna Luise Kirkengen thinks. Processed to a much higher degree and processed n most cases, with few exceptions, fewer than we believe?

And once again - I think only getting the opportunity to narrate your story/history would be of help for many, maybe in many cases the only needed help?? And be of help for all others too, even the most harmed!!

måndag 2 juli 2007

More thoughts…

Came to think about defences yesterday when I had gone to bed… Something in the style that we can’t control those defences with our consciousness. Because of the nature of the unconscious. It’s an automatic reaction, to protect the grown up against truths he/she couldn’t experience consciously as a child… And I searched for this in Jean Jenson’s book and found a lot else when I read in it (rather skimmed it again).

And I have also thought of exploring the topic power and control, and needs connected to this (the needs for power and control and from where they come, to what extent a grown up actually needs this, what is actually grown up needs concerning this and what in fact re childhood needs more)…

Let’s see if come to those issues now or in blogposts later!?

I also came to think once again about what Kirkengen writes about violations of integrity in people, small and grown up. Violations of boundaries. Thus violation of people’s integrity. This (violations of integrity or boundaries) is a little different if it is about a child or a grown up (if it isn’t about a relation with a power differential, such as helper, caretaker towards a patient or client?). A grown up usually have options and many more choices than a small child. But here power comes in too, both for small people and grown ups… And circumstances…

A grown up can feel helplessness, consciously or unconsciously though and feel it very real or be unaware he/she reacts like this. But if he/she reacts like this it has a reason that hasn’t been processed and could be processed – I think and want to believe in. A feeling that he/she is unable to defend her/him against other grown ups. Yes, does Freyd’s power differential come in here?

Now I am thinking highly again…

And a grown up can feel helplessness even when he/she isn’t actually helpless. And these feelings stems from early in life, triggered in the present… And these feelings can be very real. And protect the grown up from seeing and realizing that this is actually about the past. The mind protecting the grown up against things that has already happened, things that were so painful so the child or young person then couldn’t experience the event consciously…

The problem is to see or understand what is what (and I truly believe this isn’t easy, even very difficult, but I want to believe it is possible though, perhaps with a lot of struggles though)?? When strong feelings and reactions are triggered. And in this state you are easily manipulated… When you are in that child state… See Freyd and about telling/narrating in for example a therapy-relation and not being abused afterwards OR during it…

Jenson also points out that violations aren’t just physical or sexual but also emotional and psychological. And she also writes that what is still made light/belittled and paid no attention/neglected is the extent to which all forms of violations and abuse hurts and damage a small child. And the long-term effects, if they haven’t been processed.

She also means that most of us have been violated in some way some time during our childhood, emotionally if not physically or sexually.

And sometimes it isn’t enough just to learn new, corrected behaviors, or often it is not enough to change things more radically… This can be a comfort to be aware of and know??

What I also wanted to come to is (as Miller writes in “Paths of Life”?) if one blames the client for failures because of old methods alleged infallibility one unavoidably lands in the same fairways as the guru’s which promises total liberation… And she includes regressive methods among those old methods!!!

So I want to question whose fault a failure actually is. Want to question if it is the clients automatically. Want to raise the question and even assertion that it can be the therapists fault as much!!!

It also stood in Jenson about unrealistic expectations on the child. My comment: far beyond its capacity right then and in that age!!?? And even higher than on a grown up sometimes!!?? And perfectionist demands on it: so where does perfectionism in a grown up come?

Unprocessed things from early has damaged our ability to process things later in life constructively… We put too much or too little in situations, events and circumstances… And are more or less incapable (depending on how hurt we are) to protect ourselves adequately against persons and things we should need to protect ourselves against and sometimes we protect ourselves against those we shouldn’t need to protect ourselves against? Which can be very tragic.

Freyd writes about a too great or too small willingness to trust, and both are tragic solutions to life (I really like what Freyd writes!!).

Jenson means that it is those which react too strongly which seek therapy, not the ones reacting too weakly or little (to simplify it a bit??).

And she also writes something in the style that “It wasn’t so long ago as suppression of all emotional suffering was admired, to ‘clench your teeth’ was seen as a sign for ‘self-restraint’ and ‘good upbringing’.” But so it is still; the ones that have their emotions under control, in check, are logical and not emotional are put higher and more trusted than the ones that express their feelings and emotions directly!!??

Jenson also writes that even if we as parents, as is already said, can’t give our children all they need in a perfect way it is still what our children need. This causes pain equivalent to the degree and extent they don’t get what they need. The more defective and/or imperfect the parents are the greater the pain and the risk the child feel as left out and without hope as a prisoner in war. This is the reason why small children can’t allow themselves to be aware of that they parents don’t measure up (possibly to the extent acknowledging that they are dangerous - though) without risk jeopardizing their security. To protect the child against this risk the psyche intervenes with the help of the unconscious so that these facts and their meaning become blocked. This blockage is called suppression.

lördag 30 juni 2007

Bosch on the creation of ”safe places”/Bosch om skapandet av ”säkra platser”…

Bosch writes at page 99 and forward in her book "Redisovering the True Self":

“Many therapists also use the strategy of creating a ‘safe place’ when
working with traumatized clients. The therapist helps the client to think up an
imaginary place in which she feels completely safe where she can retreat to
whenever she feels overwhelmed by her feelings. Although this might sound nice
to some readers, why would we need to have an imaginary safe place? We would
only need such a place if we were not truly safe in the present and we were
unable to change our situation. Such thinking implies it is possible that our
feelings cold really hurt us, and that we could actually be overwhelmed by our
feelings. Both these ideas are explicit in the concept of the ‘safe place’. The
‘safe place’ concept prevent us from giving in to our worst childhood feelings
while knowing that there is no actual danger, and therefore it takes away the
opportunity to come out on the other side of the feeling unharmed [and the
possibility to experience that this is actually possible. And possible again and
again till we don’t need it any more, as many times as we maybe need. And the
possibility of experiencing that it for each time gets a little bit easier and
is a little bit less frightening].
Knowing that it is safe to feel all old
feelings, that we won’t be devoured by them, that they will pass by eventually,
and that they are not too much for us to feel, is an important part of the
healing process. It can be painful and unpleasant, but we will come out unharmed
and one step closer to being healed.”

Clients have been scared and thus hindered in their healing during history??? This is awful I think! And this because of the therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists and other helpers own fears for their own truths? Bosch means, and writes, that these fears is actually a defence the child once needed against the truth, defences adults doesn’t need any more, adults can survive those feelings even if it doesn’t feel so. These defences aren’t necessary any longer. The harm that we are so afraid of has already been done and can’t harm us any more. But it doesn’t feel so; it feels as we are in danger here and now… But nevertheless we can survive them… Many clients have been scared instead of helped to overcome this fear, and scared for their own truths… Even more scared instead of less. And have used a lot of energy on controlling these feelings and hold them in check, energy they could have used on much more constructive things!!!!!

She writes at page 98:

“Quite a few therapeutic schools reinforce this fear of feelings we carry
with us. Most therapists do not recognize that the belief, about feelings being
potentially harmful, is actually a defence we needed when we were children.”

No, they don’t even recognise this for themselves?

See also what Freyd has written about healing. That she doesn’t agree with Daniel Goleman (see that blogpost).
-//-
Bosch skriver på sidan 99 och framåt i sin bok "Redisovering the True Self":
”Många terapeuter använder också strategin att skapa ’säkra platser’ när de
arbetar med traumatiserade klienter. Terapeuten hjälper klienten att tänka ut en
inbillad/maginär plats i vilken hon känner sig helt säker och dit hon kan dra
sig tillbaka närhelst hon känner sig överväldigad av sina känslor. Även om detta
kan kännas trevligt för vissa läsare, varför skulle vi behöva en tänkt ’säker
plats’? Vi skulle bara behöva en sådan om vi inte var verkligt säkra i nuet och
var oförmögna att förändra vår situation. Ett sådant här tänkande låter oss
förstå att det är möjligt att våra känslor verkligen kan skada oss och att vi
verkligen skulle kunna bli överväldigade av våra känslor. Båda dessa idéer är
uttryckliga i konceptet ’säker plats. ‘Säkra platsen’ konceptet hindrar oss från
att ge efter för våra värsta barndomskänslor samtidigt som vi vet att det inte
finns någon aktuell fara och därför tar det bort möjligheten att komma ut
oskadad på andra sidan av känslan [att verkligen få uppleva att det faktiskt är
möjligt. Och möjligt igen och igen, så mänga gånger som vi kanske skulle behöva.
Och att få uppleva att det för varje gång blir en aning mindre skrämmande].
Att veta att det är säkert att känna alla gamla känslor, att vi inte kommer
att bli förtärda av dem, att de slutligen kommer att passera och de inte är för
mycket för oss att känna, är en viktig del i helandeprocessen. Det kan vara
smärtsamt och otrevligt, men vi kommer att komma ut oskadade och ett steg
närmare att bli helade.”

Klienter har blivit skrämda och på det viset hindrade i sitt helande under historiens gång??? Detta är fruktansvärt tycker jag! Och detta på grund av terapeuters, psykologers, psykiatrikers och andra hjälpares egna rädslor för deras egna historier?? Bosch menar, och skriver, att dessa rädslor i själva verket är ett försvar som barnet måste ha en gång mot sanningen, försvar som vuxna inte behöver längre, vuxna kan överleva dessa känslor även om det inte känns så. Detta försvar är inte nödvändigt längre. Skadan som vi är rädda för har redan skett. Men det känns inte så, det känns som om faran finns här och nu. Men vi kan överleva dessa starka känslor. Många klienter har blivit skrämda istället för hjälpta att komma över sin rädsla och rädda för sina egna sanningar… Ännu mer rädda istället för mindre. Och har använt en massa energi för att kontrollera dessa känslor och hålla dem i schack, energi som skulle ha kunnat användas på betydligt mer konstruktiva saker!!!

Hon skriver på sidan 98:

“Inte så få terapeutiska skolor förstärker denna rädsla för känslor som vi
bär med oss. De flesta terapeuter erkänner inte att denna tro, att känslor är
potentiellt farliga, faktiskt är ett försvar vi behövde när vi var barn.”


Nej, de erkänner det inte ens för sig själva?

Se också vad Freyd skriver om helande. Att hon inte håller med Daniel Goleman (se det blogginlägget).

Freyd on narrating/Freyd om berättande…

Jennifer Freyd also writes about communication and narration in her book ”Betrayal Trauma – the Logic of Forgetting Childhood abuse” in the chapter ”Creating connections – Injury and Recovery” at pages 170 and forward.
She writes:
“Dana Jack has observed that ‘mind and self come into being through
communication with others. One cannot heal the self in isolation. The healing
role of communication in psychotherapy may partially relate to the recording of
sensory and affective information in shareable ways, just as the original
traumatic amnesia may relate to blockage of such recording. By talking or
writing about the traumatic memories, the client spontaneously creates an
episodic interpretation and integration of previously disjointed sensory and
affective memories (see also Herman1992; Nelson 1993; Pennebaker 190; Squire
1992). /…/ Some people seem to be able to do this sort of narrative
recording without actually speaking to a therapist or a trusted other. For some
it is enough to write the words down, or even to engage in mental dialogue about
the memories, although for most people actual communication is important. The
power of language is not only the external act, but it is also the internal act
– the use of ‘voice’ to reconstruct, to recode, to make new connections [I jump
the discussions about policy round these things; societal change etc.] /…/ [it
is] sometimes essential to focus on healing before looking outward to the world.
At other times it is necessary to change, or at least escape from, a toxic
environment before healing can occur. And sometimes action on both fronts is
required.
There is a long sad history of psychiatry and other mental health
fields silencing women and victims of oppression and abuse. Many ‘healing’
interventions can be understood as designed to cover up the very symptoms that
point toward the oppression and victimization of women, children, and others /…/
in too many cases the professionals endowed with the power of professional
psychiatry or psychology not only implicitly cover up oppression and
victimization but in some cases also exploit and sexually abuse their female
patients [and abuse and violate their clients emotionally, yes, in some cases
commit emotional rape!!??] /…/ the therapists who may acknowledge oppression and
victimization within the therapy room take no role in promoting or encouraging
political reform. I believe that this tendency of even gifted healers to avoid
political activity and to infantilize women victims of interpersonal crimes may
have its rots in the forces that have allowed psychiatry to silence victims of
oppression and violence (see Masson 1988 for an insightful and provocative
critique of psychotherapy). When the goal of therapy is reintegration into
society, the assumption is that it is the individual who must adapt, and the
society that is healthy.”

As it has been (and still is) with the neurasthenics and burn out/exhausted!!! As an individual disease, rather than as the result of an ingrained social disorder, as Freyd also means.
She continues:

“While I agree with many of the concerns raised by critics of therapy, I
believe that some therapy relationships can play an important role in some
survivors’ recovery. Perhaps the crucial factor for recovery is that the abuse
survivor have a relationship (whether with a therapist or someone else) in which
the truth can be told without recrimination, a relationship in which the
survivor can trust that the truth will be heard and believed without the
listener’s subsequently abusing his or her power. According to Jonathan Shay,
‘Healing from trauma depends upon communalization of the trauma – being able
safely to tell the story to someone who is listening and who can be trusted to
retell it truthfully to others in the community’.”

See earlier blogposts about narratives. I would also want to write about how Bosch resonates round the use of “safe places” in therapy and what that can cause and if it is necessary at all, and how she looks on children and their anger.

A sidetrack and short note: Veterinaries seem to be afraid of standing on the animal’s side in animal protecting matters because they are afraid of losing customers according to my brother who works with animal care (he is agronomist)…
-//-
Jennifer Freyd skriver också om kommunikation och berättande i sin bok ”Betrayal Trauma – the Logic of Forgetting Childhood abuse” i kapitlet ”Creating connections – Injury and Recovery” på sidorna 170 och framåt.

Hon skriver:
“Dana Jack har iakttagit att ’själ och själv blir till genom kommunikation med andra. Man kan inte hela självet i isolering. Den helande rollen hos kommunikation i psykoterapi kan delvis sättas i samband med inregistrerande av sensorisk och känslomässig information på ett sätt som kan delas, precis som den ursprungliga traumaamnesin kan relateras till en blockering av sådant inregistrerande. Genom att tala eller skriva om traumatiska minnen, skapar klienten spontant en tillfällig/episodisk tolkning och integration av tidigare osammanhängande sensoriska och känslomässiga minnen (se också Herman 1992, Nelson 1993, Pennebaker 1990, Squire1992). /…/ En del människor verkar kunna göra denna sorts berättande (in)registrerande utan att alls prata med en terapeut eller annan person man har förtroende för. För en del är det tillräckligt att skriva ner orden, eller bara att engagera sig i en mental dialog med minnena, men för de flesta människor är faktisk kommunikation viktig. Makten i språket är inte bara yttre agerande, utan det är också en inre handling – användandet av ’röst’ för att rekonstruera, koda om, skapa nya förbindelser /…/ [det är] ibland väsentligt/oundgängligt att fokusera på helande innan man tittar utåt mot världen. Andra gånger är det nödvändigt att ändra, eller åtminstone fly från/undslippa, en förgiftad omgivning innan helande kan ske. Och ibland krävs agerande på båda fronter.

Det finns en lång och sorglig historia inom psykiatrin och annan mental hälsovård med tystande av kvinnor eller offer för förtryck och övergrepp. Många ’helande’ interventioner/åtgärder kan ses som ämnade att dölja exakt de symtom som pekar mot förtrycket och återoffrandet av kvinnor, barn och andra /…/i alltför många fall så inte bara döljer professionella, förlänade med psykiatrins eller psykologins makt, förtryck och återoffrande underförstått, i vissa fall utnyttjar och sexuellt förgriper de sig på sina kvinnliga patienter /…/ terapeuterna som skulle kunna erkänna förtryck och återoffrande i terapirummet tar inte på sig rollen att befordra/främja eller uppmuntra politiska reformer. Jag tror att denna tendens även hos begåvade helare att undvika politisk aktivitet och att infantilisera kvinnor som är offer för mellanmänskligt våld kan ha sina rötter i krafter(na) som har tillåtit psykiatrin att tysta offer för förtryck och våld (se Masson 1988 för en insiktsfull och provokativ kritik av psykoterapi). När målet är återintegration i samhället, så förutsätts det att det är individen som ska anpassa sig och att samhället är friskt.”
Som det har varit och fortfarande är med neuroastenikerna och de ”utbrända”!!! Som en sjukdom hos individen snarare än som resultatet av en djupt förankrad social sjukdom, som Freyd skriver.

Hon fortsätter:
“Medan jag håller med många av de bekymringar (???) som rests av kritiker till terapi, så tror jag att en del terapirelationer kan spela en viktig roll i vissa överlevares återhämtning. Kanske är den avgörande/kritiska faktorn för återhämtning att överlevaren efter övergrepp har ett förhållande (vare sig det är med en terapeut eller någon annan) i vilken sanningen kan berättas utan att bli motbeskylld, en relation i vilken överlevaren kan lita på att sanningen kommer att bli hörd och trodd utan att lyssnaren senare/efteråt missbrukar sin makt. Enligt Jonathan Shay, ’Helande från trauma hänger på gemensamgörande (???) av traumat – att tryggt kunna berätta historien för någon som lyssnar och som man kan lita på kan återberätta denna sanningsenligt till andra i gemenskapen’.”
Se tidigare blogginlägg om berättelser och berättande.

tisdag 26 juni 2007

Thoughts during a bike tour…

A bike tour dressed only in an armless dress and a t-shirt yesterday evening… It’s sun today too and seems to be a warm summer’s day.

Of some reason I thought about therapy cycling in the summer nature…

Just to change ones behavior, from a dysfunctional to a functional, how genuine is that? Does changed behavior change ones feeling and emotions, and how changed are ones behaviors actually? How radically does a changed behavior change one feelings and emotions, in long term? Maybe they become for those that are least hurt and less traumatized? But those that are more, or a little more...? Does a functional behavior on the surface change ones feelings especially radically? Does a sensitive client feel genuine, not false?

Does unprocessed things reveal themselves in other areas instead? I.e., you react symbolically in other parts of your life instead?? And have the same problems but changed to other objects and parts of the life? What does this cause? What can it cause in a client that want to be genuine and honest? Does this give self respect and self love? Or maybe the opposite? So how healing is this method in fact? Even if it feels liberating at first (because if you have satisfied the therapist with behaving right and thinking and feeling right, you feel satisfied yourself at first at least for being a good patient!?? As you maybe ones was the good girl or boy!? And you haven't drawn the therapists anger and displease over you!!! How many dare to challenge this really?? Or are allowed to really??).

A clever client will do this (maybe do it very intelligently too?) to the therapists satisfaction, to please him/her and get her/his "love", maybe without even being aware of it? Because the client is often very sensitive to very small signs (unconscious even to the therapist maybe, unconsciously manipulating) in the therapist what behaviors and thoughts etc. the therapist likes and approves of??

Maybe exactly as the client once did early in her/his life to get love and to avoid outbursts, being mad totally invisible, being punished in different ways?? And how healing is that? In long term…

I wonder if things won’t be revealed in other areas and circumstances and relations in life??

And many clients most surely also feel relieved and satisfied with changing their behaviors to something the therapist (expert and authority) like and approve of!!?? Used to satisfy? And the ones that haven’t used this strategy as their main don’t seek therapy, not voluntarily???

But sooner or less this clever client will feel that not much has actually changed: he/she still feel this and that, still have similar problems?? Is still unsatisfied with a lot of things??

And what can this result in and cause?

Can tendencies to blame oneself be strengthened instead?? As the small child once did.

“I am a hopeless case? I am worthless, bad, impossible!!!”

Ingeborg Bosch thinks this tendency to blame oneself stems from earliest in life: to blame oneself, which already the very small child does, to survive that hr/his parents didn’t know what she/he needed… It’s easier to blame yourself… For being such a failure, for feeling this and that, for having those needs, feelings, reactions… It’s the child’s fault – and maybe signs the child is sick?? For not being able to take care of her/himself,,,

And this, the first defense (which Bosch calls the Primary defense) we take with us up in adult life, more or less strong or powerful, depending on how little or much we got from the earliest care takers in our lives. Did we get that care and respect and sensitivity from these first care takers, then we have less needs to fulfill them in adult life and can live more fully and with better relations and less problems of different kinds…

And a therapy that strengthens this defense instead of the opposite is bad – or even harmful to say it straight!!??

Addition at 14.37: Got a tip from a friend in Norway about a short note in a paper in Norway where a professor is cited, he says something in the style that it can be a risk to criticize the power/caregiver and the whole apparatus round treatment; you easily get diagnosed as mad or disturbed... But it is necessary to criticize psychiatric treatment, even if people working in this profession can experience this as hostile, the author of this short note thinks... Yes, if you criticize it is a risk you get diagnosed!?

Can the use of diagnoses and statements about others to them be a way to avoid saying: "I feel... You scared me!" or something? Thus to admit what was awoken in you, maybe also admit them to yourself and by exposing this reveal a vulnerability, feelings of power- and helplessness to which fears of being misused or even exploited and abused in this vulnerability are connected?? Contempt for weakness? But can the strength/powerfulness lie in this "weakness" (and this thought is extremely scary to many??)? To dare to expose this weakness? Dare to take that risk?? I don't know... But exposing them to a one that is worth it, came to think about what Kirkengen has written about narrating... See the last blogpost about that.

Feelings you don't want to admit or maybe even be aware of yourself too??

Just some thoughts... And does his understanding have limits too? Maybe it shall have??

Addition June 27: Got another tip from a Swedish friend on the theme therapy. A short cartoon sequence in Swedish, with a client lying on the therapist's coach saying to his therapist something in the style:

"I get such an ache in my foot sometimes..."
The therapist reflects upon this:
"It's because you dislike our therapist sessions, Spix!"
And continues:
"Unconsciously you punishes yourself for this dislike through experiencing the pain in the foot."
A sudden aha-experience in the client, which spontaneously replies, surprised:
"Oh, damn!"

onsdag 20 juni 2007

More morning reflections...

I am sitting here waiting for my new computer... Reading, thinking... When it has come I am going to go to the super market. Have invited people this afternoon. And I have thought of doing some changes with the new blue linen dress I have bought but not used yet, to wear it on Midsummer. It felt so narrow, so I am going to try to put a fastener or zipper (blixtlås) in the side. This will be tricky, but I hope I find a solution... (I need to see things I have done literally too!?? :-)). And I use to solve things like these... :-) The extremely clever, un-needy big sister, who manages everything on her own (???)!

Thought further on the themes from yesterday...

Came to think of a very cute group of siblings, many and coming close... Many small children needing help at the same time... For instance if it was winter with all the cloths then. Mom making piles with sweaters, socks, woolen gloves, woolen caps, winter shoes...

A very sweaty procedure for all!! When it was finished and all children out at last, the smallest needed to pee, and had to be taken in, and undressed enough to do that...

Think what a work for that mother!!! Think how clever she was. With so many small children! And others who thinks two small children is enough and more than enough. But noone have ever thought of or mentioned how this was for the small children... This is entirely out of question. It just doesn't exist... Honestly a bit strange I think today as grown up since fairly many years...

Three small siblings visiting their mother at the maternal hospital, when the fourth sibling had been born, a boy. In fact just round midsummer... The smallest (a girl then just two years) allowed to sit in mom's lap... The oldest (five years) wasn't allowed. Not said explicitly then, probably not needed any more?? Just a reproaching gaze if needed further (that the mom was so exhausted with everything, and "don't you see, the lap is already occupied!?" Yes, she had to be very "understanding" for grown ups, siblings, all and everyone from very early, probably very, very early. She was never jealous at her little brother 15 moths older her mother has said. And what alternatives does a small child have compared to an adult? She/he just has to find her/himself? Usually a grown up doesn't have to, isn't forced? If she/he isn't too paralyzed by her/his story?):
"But you are big now!!! (Or aren't you, maybe??? a little sarcastically, and in fact contemptuously - and how loving is that??? I just wonder. Contempt for a small, dependent child!?)".
But a five year old child is small... I realize now when I have pupils which are almost as small. And I think I have seen this with other small children around...

No, the minority, the majority, the more damaged, or less (and what do we know about that actually. But this is no competition either about who is the most damaged!? Or shouldn't be!), smallest, biggest, youngest, oldest etc. doesn't ought neither to be allowed to take more nor less space???

So that the big, "clever" etc. should have to step back (or any other should have to), of consideration, of thinking on, without the right to demand anything maybe, making her (or maybe him) almost if not entirely invisible? Or at least not allowed to demand things of real importance!? Given surrogates instead of real time, attention and love!?

Who are to blame? Who should have been blamed and questioned? Who were responsible for that the children didn't become equally or fairly treated? Was it an individual child's fault? Was it the responsibility of any of the children? Whether small or big... Clever or a little less (!!!) clever...

When you aren't allowed to question the ones with power (which would be too threatening, emotionally, but also in the imagination of the child: what would happen? Would it be abandoned? Driven out of the house?) where do you then direct your anger including all the other forbidden feelings? What objects are convenient? And if there aren't any convenient objects (a big sister doesn't beat a smaller!!)?

But the big, clever shall not be given more space either! Not less and not more! Maybe not easy, but this should be the strive??? And not least should the parents be naturally sensitive to these things... That they aren't has probably a corresponding explanation, but therefore it isn't naturally or rtaher autmatically an excuse... Or at all any excuse in any case.

And how many doesn't claim:
"But there doesn't exist any perfect parents!!!"
No, it doesn't, and maybe it will never do??? But that doesn't matter for the child's feelings or in this whole issue! The child feels what it feels, it feels as it feels!! That's the fact. And it has probably reasons, hasn't come right out from the blue. And I think the child should be allowed to feel just and exactly this feeling! I.e., be allowed to be as angry, disappointed, sad and crying as she/he actually is and feel... And not hindered in this feeling or moralized over. Or not tried to be talked away from it either, and not least! Including not distracted with something else!!

How many therapists (not least psycho analytically influenced - and how many therapists aren't influenced by these ideas) talk about feelings, for instance envy, jealousy etc.? They just talk about it!! The message easily becomes a message (how well intentioned the therapist even is, and maybe not even aware over what he/she does) that the client should be ashamed over these feelings!!??? Maybe as much as the small child was then; for being so bad, feeling wrong and not being as not begrudging (unnande - ett heligt bud!!!?? Att unna, inte vara svartsjuk, avundsjuk, missunnsam - hu så hemskt!!! HEMSKT!) as it should and as it would want to be!!! And as she/he in fact would be, so angry,upset, raging, maybe even hating, seen to the circumstances and situations that occurred then, i.e., most justified feelings!!!!

Because the truth is that the parents aren't treating their children alike, and their behavior is even, to say it straight, loveless!!! ') How much latter therapists even try to intellectualize this and embroider the issue feelings (lägger ut texten, broderar ut) in all endlessness!!! In all their cleverness and so called knowledge and authority!!! Do they have contact with the little child they once was one can wonder???

And what does this do in the client? Does this makes her/him feel less guilty for being so bad and incapable of coping better with things and for not having her/his feeling better in check, and not even this day that is today, not having their feelings in better check! Or feeling even more ashamed and guilty, maybe much more, as a failure, a hopeless case? (How therapeutic and healing is this? And I think this also makes the client even more blind, even for what the therapist does and maybe also am? And can some, worse therapists, even have an interest in this whether it is conscious or not??).

They have all this in check themselves, and how many doesn't literally think they have and are??? Even if their lives clearly show something else too??? (as Bob Sharfs' reflection in his article "What Is Not Therapeutic in Therapy" for instance).

*) But does that matter??? Yes, I think it does! I think it matters to the child there and then.

Addition: a tip about a readers' letter on Miller's web from a woman whose parents were mental health professionals; her mother psychologist and her father psychiatrist at a prominent medical school!!! Despite having educated parents she got abuse, severely by them I think. Emotionally??? Her youngest sister died in colon cancer... Even if one should suppose her parents would be better than other parents, they weren't!? Can this say something about the competence and enlightenment in this profession???

tisdag 19 juni 2007

Morgonreflektioner/morning reflections...

Förnuft eller intellekt räcker inte för förändring?? Insikt är inte tillräckligt? Det måste till något ytterligare?

Så om du inte lyckas ändra saker bara med detta (insikt och intellekt) så är det inte konstigt... För det är inte tillräckligt tror jag... Även om det kan vara ett första steg och nödvändigt för förändring över huvudtaget... Ibland kanske denna insikt är ett stort steg? Men oftast bara ett litet, första...

Dessa förändringar kräver en massa arbete... Tufft arbete!? Men utan detta arbete sker egentligen bara ytliga saker... Ganska litet förändras i slutänden? Och de flesta är nöjda med det?? Framförallt är inte alla tvungna att göra detta arbete; livet eller förhållanden runt omkring har inte tvingat, tvingar, dem inte???

Medan andra, och kanske ganska få, inte har så mycket val? De är tvungna att göra detta arbete? De har kanske inga val? Och denna brist på val kanske snarare handlar om omständigheter som individer inte alltid rår över?

Kanske framförallt de behöver höra som har en tendens att klandra sig själva, för att så litet händer har inte med brist på insikt att göra, utan på andra saker?? Fast kanske ändå nånstans brist på insikt?? :-) Inte minst bland så kallade hjälpare skulle jag helt frankt vilja påstå!!??

Jag utvecklar detta vidare här under på engelska.
-//-
Sense or reason isn't enough for change?? Insight isn't enough? There must be something more??

So if you don't succeed to change things it isn't strange... Because this isn't enough I think... Even if it is a first step, and necessary for any progress at all... Sometimes maybe this insight is a big step? But usually only a small, first...

These changes demands a lot of work... A tough and hard work!? But without this work nothing changes, more than on the surface?? In the end rather little has changed!? And most people are satisfied with this?? Particularly, all aren't forced to do this work; the life or circumstances around them doesn't force them, hasn't forced them?

While others have no choices, they have to do a hard, tough work, some just doesn't have so many choices?? They are forced to do it, this work?? And this lack of choices maybe rather is about circumstances which the specific individual has no influence over, than the person in itself? These just don't have "that luck"??? But in the end: who is the most "lucky"? The one walking through life with no crisis or troubles, or...? So who is actually the "lucky" one?

The Swedish religion psychologist Owe Wikström, professor at the University of Uppsala at the faculty of theology (Swedish site) *), means that that people have existential crisis show that these people are alive, living human beings... And to have crisis is sound... And thus not having any crisis at all during a whole life would then be that those people aren't living, their existence is less sound? Those persons are instead living on the surface really, not on depth?

But Wikström mean that we don't have to seek or create any crisis... :-) They will come by themselves, maybe in the order they have to come in? And they will come whether we want them or not, in times we haven't chosen neither when they would be "appropriate"... That's how life is? Not able to control in fact?? At least not these sides? Some things we can and shall control and don't put the responsibility for on others; on God or the destiny or something? Others we can't control, and that's how life is??

Maybe it is not least those who need to hear that lack of success doesn't have to do with lack of insight?? But at the same time somewhere a lack of insight?? :-) Not least among helpers I would say frankly!!?? And ironically and angry!!

*) Owe Wikström's home site (though only in Swedish?).