TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Hi, come on in. (Pause)

CLIENT: Good morning.

THERAPIST: Morning.

CLIENT: Are you doing okay in light of last week's events?

THERAPIST: Yeah, I am. Thank you for asking.

CLIENT: Okay. (Pause)

THERAPIST: Should I ask the same of you maybe?

CLIENT: Oh, I'm... no, I'm fine in terms of... that's... yeah. I was... that's how I would interact with another person under normal circumstances. I was trying to do the same with you. But yeah, doing fine in that front. [0:00:57] Yeah, so I guess we left last time with the question of (pause) why do I have the burden that I do, which you rephrased. But as soon as I left I couldn't remember how you rephrased it, so I've only been thinking about that question in that language. (Pause) So I went to public school. And the public school systems, they have gifted and talented programs, at least in the area that I grew up in. [0:02:01] And so, in a family where all of us ended up in those programs at some point, I was in a sense the exceptional one of that family? So I... there are sort of... I mean, so I guess, in the area that I grew up, I'm very smart or something like that. Certainly I think that's a... Andover is a different context than Houston, Texas, given the university systems in the areas. (Pause) [0:03:00]

One of the results of this was that for a long time... I can remember back to, I don't know, sixth grade or before, having teachers very clearly sort of just be impressed by me. And by eighth grade I remember having teachers tell me directly that I was smarter than they were but that that... there was this clear sense that that didn't... that didn't change responsibilities or that didn't absolve me of some responsibility to do... to follow the norms in the class or to do this or that. A sort of yes, but, response in some ways. [0:04:01] (Pause) I think by ninth or tenth grade my mother was telling me occasionally, have some patience with the rest of us (pause), which is... (Pause)

Somewhere over the course I think of high school... I can't exactly pin down where it was, were... and I'm not sure it was localized in any one event, I sort of developed this sense that, if I had a question about the material, virtually no one else in the class was understanding it. [0:05:12] Or, if I had a question on the material, many of the people in the class also had a question about that or hadn't gotten to the point where they could have that question yet in understanding it. (Pause) For reasons, I think, of being curious, but I'm not really sure exactly why, I was very willing to ask questions in class and have been for a long time. And that sort of added to the willingness, some sense of, like, it was an important thing to do also. It wasn't like I was monopolizing this class. [0:05:56] There's this... it's also serving the other people there. (Pause) Had a couple of experiences at... I don't know if there's something similar in this area, there's summer residential programs for... that are application-based. They're called Governor's School programs in Texas. I don't know if there's a...

THERAPIST: At universities?

CLIENT: Yeah, I guess they're usually at universities, yeah.

THERAPIST: Yeah, I think most of the universities have high school programs, summer high school programs.

CLIENT: Okay, all right. Then it's similar to that. These are all sponsored through the state of Texas. But I guess all the schools are state schools anyway, so I'm not sure it's that meaningful (chuckling).

THERAPIST: Is Texas A&M a state school?

CLIENT: It is, yeah.

THERAPIST: I didn't realize that.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: That's interesting.

CLIENT: Yeah, one of the oldest public schools in the country (laughing). Brown's slightly older, and so they have this big... they care a lot about who's older, but...

THERAPIST: Interesting.

CLIENT: Yeah, public school. [0:07:01] One of the reasons I went, I was an in-state student, and it was a lot less expensive. And I was fortunate in that my father had committed to paying half of my education. But I had to pay the other half, so... one of the reasons I went. (Pause) So I had some experiences at these programs. There'd be a sort of very domineering personality often in the groups, and (pause) I had the experience of responding to them in a way that took them down a notch in a circumstance and having other people say in a different context, I'm really glad you did that. [0:08:08] It was (chuckling)... that person was getting to be too much. So there's sort of a sense of (pause) being exceptional makes it possible for me to do things that other people can't. And it's useful to do them or something like that. And so I think that is... that's the best answer I have to, where does this come from? Where does this sense of burden come from?

THERAPIST: And do you think...? I guess I'm not understanding the specific context about what you're... what you were more free to say or do. (Pause) [0:09:00]

CLIENT: So in the classroom setting I'm understanding the lecture almost entirely most of the time. Not everyone else is? And so, if there's a point that's unclear (pause), I am situated differently to recognize the point as being unclear or something like that. Is that any better?

THERAPIST: Yeah, so...

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: Do you feel like it's primarily in that... or it was primarily in that context? In a more intellectual setting, I guess? (Pause) [0:10:00]

CLIENT: I do? Although certainly I was in different religious organization than most people and had... (Pause) And had a great deal of devotion to that and, as a result, had somewhat different moral views than other people. So yeah. (Pause) [0:11:01]

THERAPIST: Because I was thinking at some point, maybe from the beginning, it generalized. Because what we were talking about last week certainly was not about sort of intellectually understanding things per se. I mean, there's a piece of that. But it was also about values and how people choose to live and... more generally.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Or certainly a different sphere.

CLIENT: That's right. (Pause) Yeah, so, for example, my family had a sort of prohibition on gambling of any kind. [0:12:01] So my mother wouldn't buy raffle tickets, effectively, because it's a sort of lottery-based system. So it's... that's perhaps extreme, but...

THERAPIST: Well, especially since so many raffles are for charities.

CLIENT: Yes (laughing). Yes, or as fundraisers for school events or things like... yeah... well, I guess that was... [knew those count] (ph) as charities. Yeah.

THERAPIST: They're not simply for winning the prize.

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: It's not people's primary motive.

CLIENT: Right. So (pause) the difference is that (pause) there wasn't any real expectation that that was oriented toward some end goal? [0:13:00] That wasn't serving any greater purpose other than just a personal moral choice. And so (pause) maybe... I don't know where or when [it generalized] (ph) exactly. I mean, I feel like college is where it started to happen. But certainly it seems reasonable, I think, to think that being used to doing things differently for moral reasons makes it easy to generalize in that fashion. If I grew up being used to just not participating in any gambling of any kind, well then I sort of am trained to say, well, no, I have a moral reason for not doing that, and just not do it. [0:14:03]

THERAPIST: So does that apply to the stock market? They never invested money in the stock market?

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: Wow.

CLIENT: I think that's right.

THERAPIST: That puts them at a financial disadvantage.

CLIENT: (Laughing)

THERAPIST: It's true.

CLIENT: It does. Yeah.

THERAPIST: (Crosstalk), otherwise you get 1% or 2% from the bank.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And, if you made more money in the stock market, you'd have more money to donate to charitable causes.

CLIENT: (Laughing) It's true.

THERAPIST: There's a lot of ways you can cut it (chuckling).

CLIENT: That's true. (Pause) I do think the stock market's problematic for reasons unrelated to gambling, but I think that certainly unregulated stock markets are hugely problematic, so... [0:15:00] (Pause)

THERAPIST: Well, it's interesting to put it in that context, because what we've been... what you've been saying in terms of different moral decisions or different decisions that have a moral option is that, if people simply had more knowledge, they would make the right decision. That was your diagnosis of the problem, is that there's a lack of understanding, whereas I've sort of been challenging you on that. But I can understand in the context of what you're describing that that's usually what you assess as the problem. Like, if the Brown students understood the tax code more, they would more likely make the choice that they had to make, I guess, or not make the choice that the trend is to make.

CLIENT: Right, and certainly you challenged that, saying they (ph) just don't want to. They've found a good excuse not to in not understanding. [0:15:58] (Pause) Yeah, I don't know. (Pause)

THERAPIST: What are you thinking about? [0:16:59]

CLIENT: Thinking both about whether I actually think the Brown students would behave differently if they knew more and also where this generalizes, as you've asked. And, on the one hand, I don't know about the Brown students. That's sort of a question for each of them individually. On the other front, there's a section in yesterday's... or sorry, in last week's Science magazine on undergraduate education and the future of stem education. (Chuckling) And I didn't read all of it because I didn't have time to devote to that, but one of the articles was by a Nobel laureate in physics who has sort of shifted from doing physics research to trying to teach physics to undergraduates. [0:18:05] And his... at some point, I think, after getting a Nobel Prize, he kind of looked around and wondered, well, why, when I teach these undergraduates, at the end of the course do 60% of them still not understand some of the most basic things that I've been trying to teach them for an entire semester? And he thought, well, maybe the problem isn't them, maybe it's me (chuckling).

And so he started trying to employ research-based practices to better his teaching and the sort of normal story. And he came up with basically the same notes that everyone else who's ever tried to employ research-based practices did, which is that working in small groups and not devoting 50 minutes to lectures works much, much better, about twice as well, of one trusts his sampling and numbers. [0:18:58] (Pause) Which is relevant, because I had this deep sense when I got to Texas A&M that the teaching was just wildly ineffective for me personally in that I had this bias towards thinking that how I am receiving a lecture matters to everyone else or says something about how everyone else is receiving to the whole system. And it spanned departments. It didn't have anything to do with which department I was in. Didn't really have to do with taking introductory courses only because I was taking several 300 level, you know, upper level courses in my first semester. [0:19:57] So there was just this sense of systemic failure. So I think that was probably the start of generalization. I didn't really know what to do about it at the time.

THERAPIST: When your teachers communicated this to you, that you're smarter than them, how did that feel? I can imagine it could feel a lot of different ways. (Pause)

CLIENT: It's a little confusing. It's a little, how would you know that? (Chuckling) How would you measure that at all? There's a knowledge disparity, so they know a lot more than I do. And so by some metric, particularly the ones that I have [I think] (ph), that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. [0:20:57] On the other hand, it's not like I wasn't aware that I was very bright, so (pause) yeah, it feels good. It feels nice to be exceptional and to have that recognized and to have it valued. Yeah.

THERAPIST: Okay. Did you get that...? Well, it sounds like you were talking about this a little bit before, but did you get that same feedback from your parents?

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. (Pause) Certainly from my mother. My father plays his cards a little closer to his chest, I think. Not that he's cold or anything like that, just that... (Pause) [0:22:00] He's much more likely just to say that he's proud of me and he loves me than anything specific like that. So... (Pause) I mean, the other thing that I should probably add to that in terms of the message I was getting from them is that, for as long as I can remember, the message was not that we had to do well in school. We had to do as well as we could in school. So if that meant we came home with Bs or Cs or whatever then that was fine if we'd been doing as well as we could. So there's...

THERAPIST: Did you feel like your mom gave the same messages to your siblings, or do you feel she communicated there was something distinct and unique about you? [0:23:03] (Pause)

CLIENT: The latter. (Pause)

THERAPIST: What are you thinking?

CLIENT: Well, I have been somewhat anxious to talk about this in the terms of, it has generated anxiety to prepare to talk about this. [0:24:05] And so I was thinking about why that is. I think that it relates to... (Pause) Not everyone responds well to someone who thinks they're exceptional.

THERAPIST: And what would the not well response be?

CLIENT: In your case, I have no idea. And moreover (chuckling) I don't see you giving a not good response. So I... it's not really a... (Chuckling) I don't think it has anything to do with you particularly. In a more general sense, it's like walking into a new organization. [0:24:56] One of the (pause) easy mistakes to make as a new leader in a new... in an existing organization is to come in and start making changes immediately because you think you know what's going on. And that generates resentment and outrage and uproar. And so I... similar responses of resentment and the ways that that plays out in... can arise from... have arisen from thinking that I'm exceptional in new circumstances where people don't know me. (Pause)

THERAPIST: Do you feel because your mother communicated that in terms of your intelligence that she preferred you over your siblings? [0:26:02] (Pause)

CLIENT: No is the response to the question you asked. Do I think that my mother preferred me over my siblings? Yes. But I don't think it was because I was smarter.

THERAPIST: Hmm. Do you feel it was because of anything, or was it just her preference?

CLIENT: Whoo (sp?)... (Pause) [0:27:00] I worked hard to behave well? And so my mother would have to continually ask my older sister to clean her room, and that would almost inevitably end up at some point in them yelling at each other. So whenever they went to doing that, knowing that my mother was going to be going around to everyone else's room, so I would just clean my room. (Chuckling) Sort of a... like, conflict-avoiding. But also, like, I had no reason to want my mother to be upset. And, if this upset my mother, well, just do it. (Pause) So I felt like it was related to that sort of thing when I was younger. Now, I don't know. [0:27:58] (Pause) Yeah.

THERAPIST: So it's somehow related to obedience, or not quite?

CLIENT: Yeah, I think that's right, yeah.

THERAPIST: It made me think of... I don't know if it was you or Tanya who described you this way, of... that you were born 40.

CLIENT: (Chuckling) Yeah, that was Tanya quoting one of our family friends, who knew us through the cult. So... (Pause)

THERAPIST: Does that ring true, that feeling? (Pause) [0:29:00]

CLIENT: I mean, in a very loose sense. I have felt older than I am but not really 40. That's (chuckling)... when you're ten, 40 is much, much older than you are at that time. So no, I don't think I ever... part of the gifted and talented programs in the schools is, reading levels and so forth are measured and kept track of. And so, if I'm reading two or three grades ahead, doing math a couple of grades ahead, then I feel older in some sense. But again I don't feel like an adult. So... (Pause)

THERAPIST: Did this feeling exceptional impact your relationships with friends or other kids? [0:30:01] (Pause)

CLIENT: I can't think of a way in which it did, but that doesn't mean it didn't. (Pause) [0:31:00] I mean, it influenced who my friend set was in the sense that high schoolers tend to cluster into people who are similar as best I can tell. So that influenced who my friends were, but... (Pause) I'm sure if I thought about it for long enough I could come up with ways it did. But I don't know whether that would be meaningful (chuckling) or whether that would be sort of imposing a narrative structure on the past that is convenient. [0:31:56]

THERAPIST: Like in the example with the raffle and your mom, to me it seemed a bit narrow-sighted.

CLIENT: (Chuckling)

THERAPIST: Did it feel that...? I'm not sure in your telling of it if that was part of the point. (Pause)

CLIENT: Yeah, I think maybe? I was trying to get at sort of the intensity of belief, which I think that manifests itself in some ways as (chuckling) narrow-sightedness.

THERAPIST: That's interesting because I took it... because you were talking about feeling about people lacking understanding. And so I thought you were giving that as an example of how your mother doesn't... lacks understanding. I don't know if it was only... because that's not... she's not understanding something pretty basic. [0:33:01] (Pause) Unless she is and she doesn't care.

CLIENT: (Laughing)

THERAPIST: Upholding her specific moral beliefs is more important than contributing to the greater good.

CLIENT: (Laughing) I guess I want to say that it's also possible that she thinks that upholding specific sets of moral beliefs is upholding the greater good. And I think that's probably true in her case. Do I think she's actually correct in the raffling case? No. I don't think that raffles are destroying our society. [0:33:56] I think if you want to point to something that's destroying our society you could find many, many things that are much easier to draw a line (chuckling) than raffles to raise money for charity. (Pause) I wasn't really intending to suggest anything about (pause) her lack of understanding there, but it is interesting that you draw that analogy. In a place that I've had to deal with the lack of understanding question much more directly is with other religious beliefs, like evolution. That's not a... the conflict between religious beliefs an empirical evidence. [0:34:58] But... and there I do feel like she just lacks understanding. And so this is... I mean, this is where it gets complicated, right? I love my mother very much. And so, if she can be just so mistaken and act accordingly like that, that says something about the tolerance with which I should treat people who are wrong.

THERAPIST: How do you mean?

CLIENT: Well, so how should I respond to her if she wants to talk about evolution as some sort of conspiracy or myth or just not true? [0:35:57] I probably shouldn't respond in the angry way that I see most defenders of evolutionary theory respond because A, it's not going to be helpful and B, it's not very nice. So I certainly don't want to respond that way to my mother whom I love. And so why would I respond that way to someone else who's making the same mistake? Is that...?

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: Did she have a...? Was it primarily around evolution, or were there a lot of ways in which her religious beliefs conflicted with other sort of scientific knowledge?

CLIENT: That was probably the biggest one. Yeah, I mean, she does not think the earth is flat, for example, which is a good thing (chuckling). But (pause) yeah, I think that was the biggest scientific one. [0:36:58] Obviously there are other moral ones, right? The gambling issue. I mean, (chuckling) it's a small issue in some ways, but when it dictates pieces of your life it matters, so...

THERAPIST: Did she feel like... did she feel...? Well, I mean, you were also living in a particular community, religious community that had similar beliefs. But did you feel like she felt her beliefs were antithetical to other beliefs, not necessarily scientific but just moral?

CLIENT: Absolutely, yeah. You know, one of the strengths of conspiracy theories is that evidence against the conspiracy is actually just evidence of covering it up. And so... which isn't always true but is true enough for here. And so I think that was one of the main ways that the cult exerted its influence on people after a certain point, is to kind of say, people will try to respond to you in this, that, or the other way. [0:38:03] And that is just something like evidence of (pause) demonic influence running the country or something. So it's sort of like, yes, your beliefs will be under fire, but that's just more evidence that your beliefs are correct, or something like that.

THERAPIST: Well, it's certainly portrays a world of danger because why else would...? If your beliefs are... why would someone put your beliefs under fire versus just saying, okay, we think differently? Beliefs go under fire when they're seen as dangerous. (Pause) [0:39:00]

CLIENT: Hmm. (Pause) I think that makes sense. (Pause)

THERAPIST: It certainly portrays a world of us against them, which is not a very safe place. (Pause)

CLIENT: I mean, on the other hand, the world is not strictly speaking a very safe place for humans, but...

THERAPIST: How?

CLIENT: Oh, I mean, we're just very fragile beings. [0:39:58] (Chuckling) The United States is fairly safe for people. We get upset when three people die. You can kind of read the news, there's an earthquake in China just afterwards. 300 people dead. A building collapsed today or yesterday in India. 80 people die. I mean... so the United States is much safer in that regard. But (inaudible at 0:40:20).

THERAPIST: (Chuckling) It's interesting. I feel the need to have discussions with you about these sorts of topics because my initial response was, not really. For some people it's safer.

CLIENT: Well...

THERAPIST: In St. Louis someone dies every day, the same with Philadelphia. So it's interesting. But I almost feel a little pull to have these sort of moral debates, which is interesting.

CLIENT: (Chuckling)

THERAPIST: I don't know what to make of that, but...

CLIENT: (Laughing) But you don't want to have those de-... I mean, you...?

THERAPIST: No, I'm just... it's not that I don't want to. I actually find them very interesting...

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: But just sort of what the... I mean, there's a... my focus is primarily or really exclusively on understanding you and helping you. [0:41:02] So why I get pulled in that direction versus a gazillion other directions is interesting.

CLIENT: (Laughing) It is interesting. Absolutely. I am speaking about some specific socioeconomic strata of the United States is very much safer, you're absolutely right. (Pause)

THERAPIST: Did your... I mean, does your... was it your mother who felt about... had ideas about conspiracy theories? Was it the religious organization you guys were a part of? Was it both?

CLIENT: Oh, so, I mean, the complicated thing is that the religious organization believes or claims to believe in the existence of a immaterial world, a spirit world, where there is a god and there is some host of angels and there is Satan and some host of effectively dark angels or demons or something like that, that actually influence the real world. [0:42:19] And so, (chuckling) if you want to attribute every bad thing that happens to the dark forces, then the world looks like a hostile place where there is someone attempting to harm you and those around you and so forth. And so then giving moral ground on any issue is yielding to the forces of darkness. And so I think it's... I think that's a nearly fair portrait of their worldview. [0:43:02] It's hard to paint a fair portrait of something you really don't believe in, but...

THERAPIST: And so is darkness anything that goes against one's beliefs? I mean, darkness can be conve-... (Crosstalk).

CLIENT: Well, so this is the thing, right? So, if as the organization claims God doesn't kill people-God is only good-then anything bad that happens is either purely chance, or, if you throw out chance at all, then it's evil working its will. And so, if you then claim that your beliefs are the beliefs of good, then anything that goes against your beliefs, yes, is the working of evil.

THERAPIST: Well, this is... maybe I'm stretching this too far, but how does one know that they're themselves not taken over by demonic forces? [0:43:58]

CLIENT: Well, that's a really good question. That... I was probably 12 or 13 the first time I had that question, but I don't think I ever asked anyone that because I could see that there wasn't a good answer. They... I feel like tried to address the question, and they tried to say basically that the text tells you everything, period. So the Bible tells you everything that is correct, and if... even if you were able to resolve every inconsistency in the Bible, which they certainly worked to do, (chuckling) I'm not sure that gives you enough information because it doesn't... the Bible saying that it is valid and them saying it is valid is not actually outside verification. You've picked an axiom, but you have not demonstrated in any way the axiom holds. Yeah, so... yeah. [0:44:56] They don't have a good answer to that question, so I don't have a good [answer on their path] (ph). Apparently the answer of the Bible as axiomatic is good enough for most people, but...

THERAPIST: Did you feel like you mom was more heavily influenced by the group than your dad? Like, did your dad not believe in evolution, for example? (Pause)

CLIENT: My mother was more vocal about her influence than my father. She just is more vocal in some ways. And she has a... the, I think, distinct personality trait of, regardless of the subject, when she has an opinion she holds it fairly strongly. [0:45:56] So I think my father holds his opinions less strongly in some ways? But I'm not exactly sure. So did my father, who trained as an engineer, is the director of public works of a small town, because he's an engineer...? Yeah, I think he did not believe in evolution, but I'm not sure. (Pause) At some point the organization asserted that debt was wrong. And so I think that there was a sense in which he went along with that, but at some point he said, well, there's got to be limits here because you can't live in the world without some loans under most circumstances. A mortgage, for example. So...

THERAPIST: I know we'd talked about that before, about your house being under mortgage, you having a mortgage, and the implications that your church felt about holding the services there, I think. [0:47:00]

CLIENT: Right, yeah, that's right.

THERAPIST: You know, James, we're going to need to stop for today.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: I will see you next week.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: Okay, take care. Bye bye.

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