Therapy as prayer

One of the things that I enjoy about writing a blog is choosing an image to complement the writing. Usually I type in my title and scroll through the various images and add my blog. This one proved more difficult. To the extent that it’s taken me 24 hours to understand what image I wanted. Initially I Googled “Therapy as Prayer” and was presented with an array of pictures. None of which I liked. People at prayer. Prayers to overcome being Gay. Prayers to help fight cancer. All a sorts of therapeutic uses of prayer, I suppose. But not one that conveyed my view of both therapy and prayer. Nor one that conveyed my idea of therapy as prayer. Then I was sitting in my car waiting for my wife to finish shopping, thinking of nothing in particular when it dawned on me. I knew the image! It was a sunrise. This conveyed my responses to both ideas- prayer and therapy.

Both prayer and therapy are, for me, about openness. Being open to the Light – with all the risks, excitements, disappointments that go with Being in the Light. I grew up in a religious culture that emphasised what I think of as “Slot machine prayer”. I put my prayer penny in the slot, wait a bit and then collect my gift. I may not always like the gift, but my penny will always win a prize of some kind. There is a danger that therapy can become the same. “Anxiety? Put your money in this slot and out will pop a solution.” Depression? The same. Anger? Ditto. Neither of these constitute the real work of prayer or therapy. To quote Mahatma Gandhi “Prayer is not asking. It is the longing of the soul… better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” One could substitute “therapy” for prayer. To borrow again from another thinker, the psychotherapist Carl Rogers said “In my early professional years I was asking myself the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in the way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?”

Gandhi and Rogers both understood something about our relationship with ourselves and the Other. Both prayer and therapy are about what happens when we bring our whole selves into a relationship where we can freely think, explore, muse, play… the list of possibilities is long. And such a relationship is risky. When I sit to pray, I can’t know where that praying will take me. Who or what will I discover about myself and God. (And vice versa.) The same is true in therapy. When I sit down with my therapist, I can’t know where we will visit. (Nor does he! That’s the risk and the pleasure.)

This is a blog, not an essay the links between prayer and therapy. But I have much more that I want to share, so more blogs will follow. Come with me on a journey into the Other.

Women and Men

Image courtesy of National Geographic

In his novel “The Rainbow” D.H.Lawrence describes the relationship between the Brangwen men and their women thus “The woman was the symbol for that further life which comprised religion and love and morality. The men placed in her hands their own conscience, they said to her “Be my conscience-keeper, be the angel at the doorway guarding my outgoing and my incoming.” 

In psychoanalytic language, we might say that the woman was asked to contain the man. In much the same way as she would contain a baby. She would carry it inside herself until it was time to be born and start a separate life. She is asked to hold it safely.(An act that always seems to me to be both “mundane” and miraculous.)

In my last blog I quoted Louis MacNiece’s poem “Prayer before Birth” in which an unborn baby asks to be protected from all manner of assaults from within and without. It seems to me that the Brangwen men were asking the same of their women. To be held. Contained. Kept safe.

I was a psychiatric nurse for many years and thus involved in many different expressions of “Containment.” At best an admission to a ward was an admission to somewhere safe. A place of sanctuary. For many of our patines it was just this. They knew the ward, the staff, and other patients. It was often a better “home from home” than the one they had left. For other patients, who were more disturbed, the containment was much more physical. High doses of anti psychotic medication along with being placed in a seclusion room. This was only used if the patient had lost all ability or will to “Self contain.” It served a necessary purpose of keeping them and others safe from what were often terrifying inner worlds. Stelazine and Largactil were not pleasant but they were better choices than suicide or murder.

As a therapist I no longer seee patients with this level of disturbance. (Although on occasion I miss the security of a panic button! Fortunately this level of disturbance is rare!) But I am still required to hold and contain my patients. To help them to hold themselves together in the face of an inner world that can be almost as damaged as that of my psychiatric patients. Almost as damaged. (If they were this damaged I would not be seeing them. For their sake and mine.) So, how do I contain my patients? In a variety of ways. Sometimes simply by being willing to sit in the same room as them for fifty minutes and listen while they tell their story in their own way. (No two people tell their story in the same way-regardless of any clinical diagnosis.) Sometimes by actively pointing out the impact they are having on me in that session. Sometimes by working with their dreams (“The royal road to the unconscious” according to Freud.) Endless books have been written on this topic and I have no need to add to them! The central point is to act as a container for their “unborn selves”. A kind of psychological midwife. It’s exhausting. Exciting.Rewarding. Terrifying. Daunting. Painful.Like sny birth.

I can’t think of any better way to finish this blog than with the opening quote from D.H.Lawrence.“The woman was the symbol for that further life which comprised religion and love and morality. The men placed in her hands their own conscience, they said to her “Be my conscience-keeper, be the angel at the doorway guarding my outgoing and my incoming.” 

Unanswered questions

Image courtesy of Paa Kwesi Forson

One of my favourite writers is the late Robert B. Parker who wrote some of the best pulp fiction I know. (He was also a Professor of English literature at North Eastern University and wore his genius lightly!) His main character is a private eye called Spenser and his companion in arms, Hawk. They spend their time asking all those unanswered questions that people do, and don’t, want answering. Some of the time he will ask questions on behalf of his client. Sometimes he will ask questions because “Truth” demands it. Sometimes the two are compatible. Sometimes not. I suppose the maxim “To thine own self be true.” could have been written for him. (And many another!)

I’m nearly at the end of yet another reading of a Spenser novel “Back Story” (No Exit Press: 2003) about an investigation into a murder that took place nearly 30 years beforehand. In this case the request comes from Spenser’s adopted son, Paul, on behalf of his current girlfriend. She has a story about her idyllic childhood that was cut short when her mother was killed in a bank robbery. Her hope is that if the killer can be found, she will have closure. So Spenser agrees to do what he can. Inevitably this means that he discovers that the girl’s past was far from idyllic. Equally inevitably, he will follow the unravelling story to its end. Almost regardless of how much emotional, and physical, mayhem he leaves behind him. But, as Susan Silverman, Spenser’s “significant other” and a psychotherapist puts it “You have no way to know until you get to the end, what the end is going to be.”

The chart above is more commonly used with physical pain but could just as well be used with psychic pain. I was recently asked to describe what it was that I do as a psychotherapist. “How do you work?” I was asked. I could have launched into a long and technical description involving the role of the id, the ego and the super ego. From there I could have moved on to the idea of object relations theory and concluded with a tour of transference and counter transference phenomena. This might have impressed him. But I doubt it. My reply was to quote Freud’s dictum that the point of psychoanalysis is to change neurotic misery into ordinary unhappiness. The caller laughed and we arranged a first meeting.

To return to Spenser. In “Back Story” Spenser says to someone “Do you know who I am?” “Sure” comes the reply. “You’re the guy who asks all the unanswered questions.” He might have added “And all the unasked questions.” That sums up my work. I try to ask all the unanswered questions along with all the unasked ones. I ask these questions as an equivalent to the pain chart above. They help me find the what the psychoanalyst Bob Hinshelwood described as ‘the point of maximum pain.” When we know what this might be, the way is clearer to begin work on pain relief and healing. Wherever that might take both of us.

The Enemy Within

I’ve recently been watching a Manga cartoon about a young man called Baki Hanma who is a martial arts fighter of some talent and renown. There are some interesting sub-themes about self worth and how one finds it. There are also echoes of Freud’s death instinct (Thanatos.)

As the picture above shows, Freud’s idea can be seen in a variety of ways, some curative and helpful. At other times thoroughly destructive. Like all our drives. The Baki series consists mainly of impossibly muscled martial arts fighters attempting to destroy all their opponents and emerge as the One. (Along with this is a wish to know defeat. A possible expression of Thanatos? Perhaps there is a curious relief in knowing that one can be defeated? A reminder of one’s mortality? As Shakespeare’s Henry IV says “Uneasy lies the head that bears the crown.”.)

A film critic offers this summary of Baki, “Five of the world’s most violent and brutal death row inmates are gathering to face Baki. Their objective is to taste defeat – their unmatched strength and skill have led them to become bored of life itself, and they now seek out Baki in the hopes that he can overwhelm them and utterly crush them.” (Greenlight Factory)

One sequence in the film caught my attention. Two of the protagonists are in combat. Biscuit Oliva is fighting Yurijo Hanma. We watch Oliva display a dazzling array of moves: kicks, blocks, punches, lightning fast ducks and swerves in a display that would shame any of our current WWF champions. Sadly, Oliva is not fighting the real opponent, who stands behind him watching. Hanma has hypnotised him (although why is not clear). Thus Biscuit is fighting the fight he believes he needs to, in order to win. Hanma is behind him, watching. It is a rather sad vignette but one which struck me as full of psychological meaning.

As a therapist I see many people in distress. I see men who have problems with their anger and women who have problems with anxiety and depression. In most cases the men have an angry father and grandfather standing behind them whilst the women have a depressed and anxious mother and grandmother. In these cases, my patient is fighting the wrong battle. Their challenger is standing behind them watching whilst they tire themselves out fighting the foe only they can see. (But who is still real and alive.)

In the Manga version, Biscuit Oliva is certain that he is triumphing over his opponent. How can he not win? He fights so hard and with such focus, employing his vast strength along with every move he has in his repertoire.. Sadly the real enemy stands behind him. Watching. Unseen. Unaffected. So many of my patients are doing the same. Fighting the battle they believe they have to fight. A husband who doesn’t love them properly. A wife who is out at work all day and “neglects” them. Children who will insist on being their own people.

Much of my work is in helping my patient to understand that they are fighting themselves. The enemy is not Anger or Depression or Anxiety. These are shadows and formidable but not the real challenge. The work is to help them see that they are fighting a shadow who, whilst a part of themselves, is not the Truth about them. With this realisation, the work can then continue. The work is of self-acceptance, of choosing when a battle has to be fought or when to walk away. To use their energy to heal and not destroy.

And before I leave, may I offer my apologies if I have misnamed my fighters. I am not an expert on Manga in general and Baki in particular. If you’re enticed into the world of Baki, he can be found on Baki./Official Netflix Site.

Light and Shadow

“Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western philosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light , but by making the darkness conscious.” (Carl Jung)

The two pictures above play with this idea of Light and Shade. The National Galley in London has been running an exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “Virgin of the Rocks”. It was a delight. I wish I’d gone sooner than I did. But I went in the end! The two figures are the same head with different lighting. It is an interactive part of the display where one can control the amount of light shining in the booths. It picks up on one of the central themes about Light and Shadow. (You can see why this interests me as a psychotherapist!) The exhibition has a quotes from Da Vinci writ large on one of the walls. It says “He who avoids shadow avoids what is the glory of art.” I wanted to change it to “He who denies shadow avoids what is the glory of humanness”. 

Freud observed that the point of psychoanalysis is to make conscious the unconscious. Jung suggested that “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making darkness conscious.” The work of therapy isn’t necessarily to make us happy. It is to make us conscious. Or as Freud so cheerfully put it “To turn neurotic misery into ordinary unhappiness.” Having spent many years of my life trying be Good and a Christian and to allow that I might be “a miserable sinner”, it is now a great relief to simply get on with being Human. One of my many difficulties with Christianity was that I never could see myself as a Sinner. (And, mostly, not as a miserable one!) I always found this a most unhelpful idea. Particularly when working in mental health where so many of our patients were already feeling beaten and persecuted by Life. To then come along and pronounce them “Sinners” always seemed at best unhelpful. At worst, cruel.

So, where does this link with Da Vinci and the lovely exhibition of his painting? Simply the awareness of the value of both light and shadow. It is not possible to have one without the other. Light gives Shadow. Shadow gives Light. The interactive heads are fascinating because as one changes the light, so the head appears different. As the light increases or decreases, aspects of the head change. As does its shadow. It is one of the challenging elements of the work of therapy. We all enjoy hearing about our generous, healthy, loving side. We less enjoy hearing about our greed, our rage, our hatred. Yet the task of a therapist is to bring to our patients’ awareness both sides of their personality. (It’s one of the reasons why, as therapists, we all have to have had our own time in therapy. It can be painful, distressing, liberating, healing, but in any event, absolutely essential!)

I recently quoted the pilgrim father, John Robinson’s words to one of my patients. We were reflecting on the work they have so far done in their therapy with me. Robinson said, of the Bible: “the Lord hath more light and truth to break forth from His holy word.” I commented that this seemed like a good description of our work together and of our future work. They agreed. 

If I had a glass in my hand I would now propose a toast “To Light and Shade!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clown of Chaos

Flickr.com; AntMan3001, all rights reserved.

The picture above is now, almost, iconic. It is Arthur Fleck who becomes Joker, in the 2019 film. We first see him as a clown who is mugged by a group of kids in Gotham City. He is advertising a closing down sale and expertly juggling a sign announcing the store’s closure. He chases the youths down a side street where they mug him and beat him up. They fake great delight in their beating whilst Arthur lies on the ground trying to protect himself. There is something pathetic about this grinning clown whose face is stuck in a manic grin when he is clearly in pain.He later sums up his life thus “I used to think life was a tragedy. But now I realise it’s a comedy.” To see a man lying on the ground in severe pain moves us. We feel for him. But when this man is a clown in full fancy dress, it’s hard to know how to respond. It’s almost a perverse piece of slapstick, an extreme custard pie in the face moment. How should we respond? (This is the genius of Todd Phillips’ film. It is a post-modern commentary on that age old split of Victim / Perpetrator.)

This pain echoes a much earlier part of his life where we come to understand that as a child he was a victim of neglect from his mother, Penny. At one she was admitted to Arkham Asylum, although we are not told why. We also discover that her story about having been a lover of one of the Wayne family, is delusional. (It becomes very difficult to follow this thread but we might see this idea as a grandiose delusion being used by Penny to defend herself from a much more impoverished view of herself. In any event, it gives us a picture of a damaged boy, who becomes a damaged adult, who as Joker becomes a symbol of all that is wrong with contemporary America.

Flickr.com; AntMan3001, all rights reserved

Two days before the outbreak of WW2, the poet W H Auden wrote a poem called September 1st 1939. In it he has the line “Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.” Here we seem to have a clue about the grins of Joker. He is neglected as a child by a mentally ill mother. Born and raised in poverty and social deprivation. Exploited by his boss and mocked by almost all of society. Not surprising that he is angry.

I’ve now seen Joker three times, and will doubtless see it a few more times. It fascinated me and moved me. Despite the violence, I found myself wanting to care for the damaged Arthur rather than to punish the damaging Joker. An unexpected reaction, I found. But I’ve “done” Mental Health work for more than 30 years. So maybe my perceptions are questionable.

Freud goes gardening

As all good gardeners know, we are supposed to plant in threes or fives. This blog is my third “planting”. Five seemed too many given the amount of time we spend in our real and metaphorical gardens. As with all good work, I’ll begin in the here and now. I came in from the garden the other day feeling rather disgruntled. “How did you get on?” asked my wife. “Did you get lots of things done?” I grunted a reply and she carried on typing. I began my blog, I was disgruntled because I’d  spent several hours outside with nothing much to show for it. I’d dug up a couple  of clumps of couch grass and removed yards of convolvulus . But no “Wow!” moments. Just plodding away at routine maintenance. The chief thing I’d done was to plant some bulbs for later this summer. Neatly labelled: “Summer bulbs. Misc.” (I keep careful gardening notes, as you can see!) And at this point I’m going to risk sounding like ‘Thought for the Day’ by using this anecdote as a jumping off point to talk again about the garden as an image for that which I’m going to call “soul”.

I had somebody come to see me recently. He had a number of issues from his youth which he needed to resolve. He talked. I listened, and I made some observations en route. At the end of the session he commented that this had been helpful. He’d talked about more issues that he’d planned to and felt relieved. I asked him if he wanted to come  back. He thought for a moment and said “No. This session had been helpful enough.”  I wasn’t persuaded that he had resolved the underlying difficulties but it was his choice. Others stay much longer. With these patients I can spend a lot of time double digging, removing the entrenched weeds and trying to see what lies buried beneath years of bad planting and poor care. There is a satisfaction to this kind of work, although at times it feels like hard labour! Hard labour with no “wow!” factors to mitigate it. I remember one patient who spent two and a half years with me. Each session seemed to last forever. I did not look forward to seeing her. (It was probably mutual!) We met faithfully each week, seemingly getting nowhere new. Then, suddenly, six months before the end of her course, something shifted. In her. In me, I’m not sure. But new growth started to emerge. Like those early buds in spring. I think we did more work in the final six months than in the previous two years. Asked her why she had stayed when so often our work felt fruitless, she commented that she trusted the process- and me! We both learned a lot from that therapy.

The link here is, I think, about patience. My miscellaneous summer bulbs will flower in due time. I’ve done the preparatory work. Now I have to leave them alone and “trust the process”.  I find it hard , at times, not to want an instant result. I was discussing two of my patients recently with my supervisor. I complained that I was running out of ideas on how to help them. She commented on my sense of frustration, underpinned by a certain crossness. “I’ve been working with this one for several years. And still we go over the same ground, week in, week out. Then they complain at me that we seem to be spending a lot of time going over old material!” The indignation in my voice could have been heard throughout the town! She was sympathetic and reminded me of Bion’s maxim that one should approach a therapy session with neither memory nor desire. It’s a quote I knew but had lost sight of in these cases. She reminded me that it was not my task to make my patients better. My function is to manage the process and, thereby, help my patients towards their solutions. I’ve taken her reminder to heart and feel more relaxed and less irritated.

As a gardener I can’t make my plants grow. All I can do is to provide the right conditions for any given plant. The rest is, mostly, outside my control, which sometimes comes as a great relief and sometimes exasperates me. Just like my patients!

 

A good garden may have some weeds

My last blog made some links between being a therapist and being a gardener. My garden reflects the way I do therapy. I’ve never managed to plan a garden in the abstract. (I much admire those who can.) I work with what’s there now and plant around it. I tend not to slash and burn in the garden. I’ll work out from my Acer and see what will grow around it or underneath it. Given how much shade it produces, not much thrives beneath it. A few Arum lilies and some ivy. So I don’t do much here. Simply pull off the bindweed from time to time. Elsewhere in the garden I’m more active. I recently made a new bed and filled the space with dark purple geraniums. They still looked lonely so I added some low growing pink geraniums in front of them. It’s a work in progress, but I’m confident they will work well together. And so on over the length of the garden over 20 years. Adding some plants here, moving some there, creating new spaces.

I work in therapy in much the same way. I’m wary of patients who want to kill everything in their emotional garden. I explain to them that I don’t do “glyphosate therapy”. When we meet, I do an assessment of their current Soul garden. We look at what’s growing well. What has self-seeded and what is a weed, (You’ll know the definition of a weed. “A wild plant growing where it is not wanted.”)  We all have plenty of those!) We’ll look at their feeling about their soul garden. How do they feel about it’s current state? Too many penstemons and not enough buttercups? Too many hydrangeas and not enough ferns? That’s useful information. My task is not to make a new garden according to my preferences – I have my own garden for this. My task, with my patient, is to think about their garden. If this plant is not thriving, why not? Is it in the wrong place? If we moved it to a sunnier place, would it thrive? Similarly this plant might not be doing too well because it needs to be  in a more sheltered spot. The glare of full sun is too much for it.

The gardens for Chelsea flower show need to look good for a few days. My patient’s gardens have to last much longer. I can’t import a few tons of top soil, some trees and a water feature. The work we do together needs to last long term. This requires preparation. Deep rooted weeds do need treating. Trees do need pruning and cutting back. Poor soil needs enriching. Acid loving plants won’t thrive in alkaline soil. Plants need a soil that nurtures them and suits their needs. The wrong soil is toxic. Heathers love an acid soil whilst lavender needs chalk. It’s about knowing what grows best in any given place.

This observation from Liberty Hyde Bailey sums things up “ A garden requires patient labour and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or fulfil good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.”

 

The Freudian Gardener

Like many another person, I like gardening. I even, occasionally,  get to sit and enjoy it! I’m restless if I’m gardening. I always see the gaps; the unfilled spaces, the patch of untreated weeds. It’s a relief to visit a garden owned by somebody else.That’s not my responsibility. The convolvulus can climb to its heart’s content; the dandelions can glow and the couch grass can thrive. It’s not my problem! At home it’s a different story.  Ask my wife, who, when I complain about how hard I’ve worked in the garden, reminds me that, “It’s your choice. You don’t have to!”. (You can see she’s not a gardener. Of course I have to do it! What would become of us if I didn’t spend a 37.5 hour week in the garden. Walt Disney observed “I don’t like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It’s just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.” What he didn’t say was how much work is involved in making a wild garden look “natural”

Over the years I’ve read various gardening blogs, books and articles. I’ve looked ups which plants like a sunny spot in late October, Which plants are companions to a weeping copper beech. How to control my runaway geraniums. I’ve carefully measured the length of my border and noted its width. I’ve then got a sheet of graph paper and planned my garden. Down out each plant to scale. Penstemons here. Delphiniums there. Lillies at the back. All along the border in perfect rhythm and harmony. Season by season. It looked lovely. So I took my piece of graph paper with me and went to the Garden Centre. Came back with the complete border. Just put add soil, water and enjoy my G&T. Foolproof. Bob Flowerdew, eat your heart out. Only it didn’t quite work. Somehow my perfect border “didn’t feel the love”. Rather than a continuous river of flowing colour that changed with the seasons I ended up with a border of what appeared to be random plants in no particular sequence  or connection.

Then I thought I’d do things my way. Instead of trying to plan a whole border, let alone a garden in advance, I decided to work with one small patch at a time. I took an existing feature – the patio with its Wisteria – and built around that. First with some perennial geraniums, then some clematis followed by some ferns in the shade of the fence. Then I moved from here across the bit of garden next to the patio. There was a determined peony already planted so I worked with this, adding plants as I moved up the garden. After two years I quite liked what I saw and followed the same principle throughout. That was twenty years ago and my garden is slowly filling up in a way that Disney would like. I certainly do.

For many years I worked as a psychiatric nurse. One  essential task was to write what was called a Care Plan. This was considered to be at the heart of our nursing care. Every so often one was expected to sit down with one’s patient and write up a plan of their care. Typically one might say, “Michael will come for a cigarette every hour.” Or “Jane shall have 30 minutes escorted leave per shift.” This was duly agreed and signed by both parties and had pride of place in their nursing notes. What it didn’t say was what happened if Michael was asleep at nine in the morning and wanted his cigarette at half past nine – as agreed in his Care Plan.  He would be told that he had missed his allotted time and to come back at ten. If he complained he stood a very good chance of being seen as aggressive, dangerous and threatening. This would then trigger a response from the nursing staff. Michael would find himself restrained, medicated and secluded. (“Teach him to keep to his boundaries. It says in his Care Plan that he can have a cigarette once an hour.”) Jane was equally likely to not get her walk. If the shift was too busy then her 30 minutes didn’t happen, and if she had the temerity to ask for an hour in the afternoon she was told that her walk was 30 minutes per shift. Nothing was carried forward. Having seen what happened to Michael, she was unlikely to demur! I mention these anecdotes because they chime with how I garden. And how I worked as a nurse and work now as a psychotherapist.

I never could write Care Plans. I saw them as a pointless waste of time. My Care Plans were mostly “Terry will meet Michael for an hour each week to talk.” It worked for me! I practice psychotherapy in the same way that I garden.  I never sit down with my patient and draw up a Care Plan, I never set goals or give homework. I don’t do Learning Outcomes or build in Review dates. That’s the domain of my CBT colleagues who can work in that way. I can’t and don’t! I’m much more inclined to sit down and talk with my patient about their (internal) garden. About how difficult it can be to find a plant to fit a particular spot. Or how their Roses are now thriving since they started adding a regular potash feed. We’ll talk about how their father always forbade any gardening on a Sunday – and how difficult it has been to override that rule. Or how scared my patient was of roses when he was small. The thorns were sharp and seemed to be waiting for him to go past so they could scratch him.

So that’s my approach to life, psychotherapy and gardening. As Elizabeth Elliot observed, “Don’t dig up in doubt what you planted in faith.”

The space between us

For a number of reasons recently I’ve been thinking about space-albeit a very special kind fo space. The space found when two people meet. As a psychotherapist I meet with a lot of people. And meet them in a particular way. I see them in my consulting room at a set time on a given day for 50 minutes.  Mostly I don’t begin the conversation. I sit in my chair and invite my patient to talk. About whatever is on their mind. It’s a particular way of working. It always reminds me of watching a child at play. What will they do with that elephant or that car? How will they combine them, if at all?  My task as a therapist is to watch this play.Be involved in it when required. And to comment on what I see, asking my patient what they think of my comments.

As so often, the Greeks had a word for this. They called it a Temenos. A sacred space reserved for the worship of the gods. The psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, used this as a metaphor for the work of therapy. A special place dedicated to communing with the Other. A place with both a physical, geographic location but also a place out of time. A temenos was the location that enclosed a Hieron, a place where everything  belonged to the gods. Here even the most mundane of objects became sacred. (Another powerful image for the therapeutic space where everything and anything can be valued and given fresh meaning and importance.)

I’ve had patients bring their dog, their car or their house into this space-metaphorically! These represent something important that they need to  bring to the temenos. Having brought it here, it stays here for future reference. Until it is no longer needed and can be left behind and forgotten about. Rather like a child’s toy when it has been outgrown.

Most therapy sessions have spaces in them where neither of us is talking. Some people are comfortable with this and sit, quietly, for some minutes. Others want to fill the space with words, fearing the silence. I once had an enquiry from someone asking if I was one of those therapists who asked a question and then sat back waiting for a reply. I said that Yes. I was such a therapist. They didn’t come back to me! ( I wondered how else was I expected to work?)

The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott uses the picture of the baby at the breast and asks “Who owns the breast? The mother or the baby?” He suggests that this is the point where play takes place.(He includes religion, creativity and magical thinking under this heading.) He further writes

“Of the transitional object it can be said that it is a matter of agreement between us and the baby that we will never ask the question ” Did you conceive this or was it presented to you from without…? The question is not to be formulated.”(Winnicott :Playing and Reality) There are many everyday examples where this is the case.One which comes to mind is in the Eucharist. Who transforms the ordinary bread and wine into something with a metaphysical importance? The priest or God? With the image of temenos, one wonders who owns the gift about to be given to the gods? The giver or the gods? Conception seems another good example. Who “owns” the growing baby? It is developed in the womb but could not have got there without the father. the same question arises in therapy. Who created this idea we are now thinking about? Me, the therapist, or you, the patient? It is an unanswerable question.

All of which brings me back to Buber and his observation that the space between us is sacred.