TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

(inaudible 00:08)

(Silence)

(inaudible 02:20)

THERAPIST: Hi.

CLIENT: Good morning.

THERAPIST: Good morning.

CLIENT: Did you have a good trip?

THERAPIST: I did, thank you. (Coughs) Excuse me.

CLIENT: I also had a good trip.

THERAPIST: Good trip.

CLIENT: Went, and I worked hard, and I got done what I needed to get done, and then came back, and that was good. (Pause) It's been a while since I've been here.

THERAPIST: Yeah, it has been.

CLIENT: I guess I we've sort of had a thread of conversations going, and I guess I've lost track of that so extent. Not exactly clear what thread is the right one to pick up on, if that makes sense. Here we are.

THERAPIST: Yes. (Pause) Does it feel odd to be back? Here.

CLIENT: Not particularly. It's more like this part of the conversation where I'm not exactly sure where we should go or where we're going to go is always the comfortable part. (Pause) No, this feels familiar.

THERAPIST: (Coughs) Excuse me.

(Silence)

THERAPIST: What are you thinking about?

CLIENT: Well, I was thinking about, clearly, we should talk about something in here. It's not particularly clear what we should talk about, so I was thinking maybe it would be helpful to start with some formulation of what has changed in the last month or something like that. But (pause) I don't have a particularly clear story to tell of what has changed. I went to Ohio. Worked a lot. Came back, and things are back to, in a sense, how they were. So there's been a time (inaudible 06:02) where things were very different, but things are not that different now than they were last time I saw you. So...

(Silence)

CLIENT: I guess I've seen all of my thesis committee members, because they were all in Ohio, where they belong. And so, I will graduate sometime in the next few months, which is a good thing. I'm going to go do something else, which I think is also a good thing. Get out of this strange you know, and I'm finishing a degree in biomechanics. [I'm not] (ph) anywhere near biomechanics. So being out of that, I think, will be a good thing for me, personally. It was nice to be back in a lab.

(Silence)

CLIENT: I think I may have suggested that I want to do things that are important or useful in the past. And I think, to a large extent, since I've seen you, I've adopted a pervasive nihilism (ph), in the sense that nothing that we do matters very much in any longer time scale. So it doesn't matter particularly what I end up doing. So that's been helpful. (Pause) It's been helpful in the sense that it's difficult to formulate any rigorous criteria for importance. [It sucks] (ph) just to say, well, yes, that's the case. Find some other less rigorous criteria, and go with that. It's (ph) helpful. [00:08:52]

THERAPIST: Is that, in particular, in terms of your job search?

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah, particularly in that context. (Pause) It's like, so say I started doing some job and extended a billion people's lives by a month. We might argue that's a good thing, but it might not be a good thing. But even if accepting that it is, they're all going to die anyway. The net change is relatively small, so... you don't seem yeah, no one seems to be a fan of this view. So, sorry.

THERAPIST: Have you been sharing it?

CLIENT: Not frequently, but occasionally, when it's seemed relevant, [sort of polite] (ph). Some will say, "Well, that's not important." Well, in what context do you mean important? None of the biomechanics that we do is important in a meaningful sense. You can make more drugs for pharma. You can make more bombs for the defensive industry. You can do something else. None of those things is that important, so the (pause) the criterion of someone else says it's important because they will make a lot of money off of it is maybe not that helpful criteria.

THERAPIST: Where does this nihilism (ph) come from?

(Silence)

CLIENT: Sorry. I got stuck on thinking that you probably pronounced that word correctly, and I got lost there.

(Silence)

CLIENT: Yeah, they don't know particularly. In the sense that I can't trace its roots very easily, other than (pause) other than how I've already formulated it, in the sense of I've been looking for some way to judge what is important to do. And anything that one sets up as kind of axiomatic for importance itself is not that important. So then many people who do biomechanics will set up, like, saving lives as their axiomatic important thing. [00:12:11]

What I'm seeing in labs is not that important because the people are going to die anyway. All you can do is improve quality of life and sometimes extend life. And yeah, those are good things, but they're not, like, all-consumingly important things, because they don't change any fundamental fact of the world. People are going to die. People are going to suffer. We're not going to eliminate all of those things, ever. And any argument that we should focus all of our efforts on eliminating those things is like saying that (pause) we should not accept the real boundaries of what it means to be human. So that's sort of an example, trying to explain how I got to this. [00:13:07]

THERAPIST: I guess from that, how do you determine the importance in anything, though?

(Silence)

CLIENT: Well, so, if you accept the axiom (ph) that saving lives is important, or you modify it a little bit to say that quality of life for the people that are alive, mediating or eliminating suffering is ameliorating is [the word I'm trying to find] (ph). Suffering is a good thing. Then it's fairly clear what important. But I think that (pause) I think it has to get some recognition that you've drawn an artificial boundary of, like, these things are important to do. It is important that we seek after this thing, so we go and seek after it. It didn't seem to be helpful for anyone else. (Laughter) And I'm sorry if it's like okay.

THERAPIST: I'm not thinking at all it's not helpful. I wanted to know how you're feeling about it.

CLIENT: Okay. Well, I feel very good about it, actually.

THERAPIST: How so?

CLIENT: It's freeing to acknowledge that none of these things are important to or are (pause) not susceptible to some sort of "yes god" response. [00:15:07]

(Silence)

The world is much easier if there's, like, good things and bad things. (Pause) But most of the things in the world are not that separable. And so, there are some things that are fairly good or mostly good. (Pause) And that's enough, in some sense. It's not we shouldn't try to make it better or seek for better, but...

(Silence)

CLIENT: I think it's easy to be susceptible to argumentation like, "Well, that doesn't do this thing, so it's not important." Particularly in disciplines that are funded largely by Arthurs, taxpayer support (inaudible 17:28). (Pause) It's easy to get trapped into a world where the (pause) the only dimension in which one is allowed to access worth is financial. So is this generating, you know, ten billion dollars in new drug company revenue? Like, adding jobs to the economy, or something like that. Well, those aren't the only dimensions that are important in the world.

But then an important question becomes, like, how do you decide between dimensions? So, like, if there is no these are axiomatic things. You say, "It is important that we, like, do things that make money. Or it is important that we do things that help people. Or it is important that we transmit knowledge." And then you have to decide (inaudible 18:36), which is I know of no logic that it's evil to do that. And so, you have nothing. But none of them are that important. So it's okay. So you pick one and you go with it, and it's fine. Maybe you could figure out between multiple competing ones, but there isn't that there is, to my knowledge, (pause) no valid way to decide between them. (Pause) So people just decide. It's not like people go pick between these axioms (ph), but there is no way of doing it. I guess my way of doing it is saying, "What does it matter which one you pick? None of them matter anyway."

THERAPIST: But one of them might matter more to a particular individual.

CLIENT: Yeah, and that's fine.

THERAPIST: But that's a big difference between not mattering.

CLIENT: Well, no, it's fine because it doesn't matter.

THERAPIST: I guess it depends on what you mean by it doesn't matter.

CLIENT: Yeah. I mean in a, like, cosmic, global, universal. Some big contextual sense. It almost certainly doesn't matter. (Laughter)

THERAPIST: Yeah. I guess I'm not following that part of it. I mean, if you're a teacher and your students value and feel like they get value from you, it matters. Does it matter to the universe? No, but it matters to the people involved.

CLIENT: Absolutely. Absolutely.

THERAPIST: So when you say it doesn't matter, you mean to everybody? I'm not sure whom it doesn't matter to.

CLIENT: Yeah, there's no, like, grander sense that the level in which you're analyzing this, the correct level to analyze it on. There's no grander sense in which it matters, I think. Or if there is, then it's only in the sense of, like, having agreed to be in that teacher-student relationship. Are you living up to your requirements or agreements or something like that?

THERAPIST: Does thinking that way feel like a big shift for you? [00:20:56]

(Silence)

CLIENT: No, it feels more like the I mean, in some sense, yes. It feels like a rapid shift, but it also feels like the end point, in some sense. Like, (pause) the end point is [I find] (ph) a way of deciding between these different dimensions, like deciding what is important [or enough on some way] (ph) of deciding between what's important. This is, in a sense, the latter.

(Silence)

THERAPIST: I keep thinking that I haven't seen you for a month, and I don't really know how you're doing.

CLIENT: Well, you could ask.

THERAPIST: Is that part of the problem, my not asking?

CLIENT: I don't know. (Pause) I certainly don't want to [go anywhere] (ph) you're saying there's a problem. I just...

THERAPIST: Maybe what I think is implicit should be made explicit?

CLIENT: Maybe. Maybe.

THERAPIST: I think that that's implicit. And when I see you and I haven't seen you for a month. Well, I haven't seen you for a week, but if I haven't seen you for a month, I really want to know how you're doing. (Laughter) So maybe that's not but maybe that's not clear.

CLIENT: Yeah. I think I like things to be explicit. Yeah, maybe that is implicit in me coming here and you opening the door. You are curious as to how I'm doing. (Pause) But maybe the struggle is actually I'm not exactly sure how to answer that question anyway. [00:23:35]

I feel like part of this discussion, having this, is a way of saying that I am okay with part of my place in the world, and maybe in a way that I have not always been. Like, I truly can't communicate it well to anyone else, but it works okay. I do feel like there are some things that are more important, but I feel like they're not justifiably more important in any (pause) bigger way. So it's (pause) it's enough to feel that it's important myself and make the relatively local argument of, "No, this thing is important to some students," or something like that.

(Silence)

You know, I'm married to a woman who wanted to kill herself for a while. And (pause) I don't particularly understand what that means. (Pause) Going back to the place where I had been doing biomechanics (inaudible 25:42). Not always particularly happy. You know, it's hard. Doing research is something like (pause) being lost in a desert, potentially with not all of the resources to find your way out. But occasionally, someone will drop a helpful hand. And bits and pieces that's fun. And bits and pieces that aren't fun. And depending on how good (ph) it goes does change how much fun it is for me. Sometimes you discover new places. And sometimes it's just desert, and it's desert in every direction. And that's not a lot of fun, because it's hot.

I learned some interesting things about myself while being there. So I was working, like, 90 hours a week, which requires being there for more time than that. I was staying with my advisor, which was a strange thing. Everyone in the lab agrees that that's (pause) a strange arrangement or an uncomfortable one. Or it would have been for all of them. It wasn't particularly problematic for me. But so, I'm working hard. And Arthur (sp?), my advisor, has a set of safety rules that he kind of established about a third of a way through my degree. He doesn't want us working alone, ever, which is prudent. (Pause) But often hampered my ability to do work because I often wanted to work later than anyone else was around. And so, it was kind of hard to keep doing things.

The more important thing that I learned while I was there this time happened to coincide with two of my lab mates doing a, like, very intense series of experiments on an instrument where they had to, like, basically buy all of the instrument time for a week-and-a-half, so they couldn't leave. So there was always someone there, so I could always keep working. What I found was that it's not uncommon for any particular day to start out going fine, and then rapidly go downhill. Doing air-sensitive (ph) biomechanics just goes that way. Sometimes things happen. Sometimes I mean, we're trying to make air-sensitive (ph) biomechanics has been done for 150 years. We're trying to do things that are new. That's a lot of people who have worked, so the things that are left are hard in some sense. [00:28:43]

So it's hard. It's a frustrating business. But I like it. And one of the keys is that, at some point, when everything goes badly, one needs to regroup, and then start again. But if you have to go, about the time you have to regroup, you have to start again the next day. And there is an emotional burden that's carried from day-to-day. Whereas being able to, like, regroup and start again an hour later, which I was able to this time. By the time it was time to go home, I kind of wrap up everything that was there, and leave things in place for (ph) coming in the next day. It was not a burden. It was kind of something to look forward to again. So it was a really that was a helpful thing to learn about myself. And I guess, in a sense, about how I need to structure this sort of endeavor. I don't know if I'm really answering how am I doing, but it's all part of it.

There's a series of four compounds that I tried for several years to make. I have made an isolated (inaudible 30:16), and I was going back to make that one again, and send it out to some collaborative to examine (inaudible 30:21). Somebody volunteered to do some more characterization on it. Interesting. So we decided to say, "Okay, we'll do this." So I spent some time trying to make the other three related compounds while I was there. And I got some of the first evidence they actually exist that my advisor will accept as evidence. [I'm seeking color changes] (ph) strong enough evidence. So I have some characterization data on it. You know, it's sort of like (inaudible 30:48) you go and make the one compound. Really would have been nice to isolate some of the others. We didn't. that's just how it is. We have a project (inaudible 31:00).

(Silence)

CLIENT: Yeah, and then I'm back here. Tanya didn't kill herself while I was gone, so that's good.

(Silence)

THERAPIST: And you seem upset to me today.

(Silence)

CLIENT: Yeah, you know, maybe (inaudible 32:20) I have to.

(Silence)

CLIENT: Yeah. I guess I'm not particularly happy in my marriage, and I don't really want that most of the time because I don't have any solution to it. Yeah, there's couples counseling. You know, (pause) you kindly sent me a referral. I finally called him once I got back, because it was going to happen while I was there. It was too much to try to coordinate Tanya's complicated schedule and mine. Couldn't do it.

(Silence)

CLIENT: Tanya and I, we're not fighting. Our relationship is amicable. But (long pause) I don't trust her to be able to handle her own problems. I'm not particularly interested in sharing mine with her. It's not really it's not helpful. It's not good. It's not like it's not what a relationship is or is supposed to be like. So...

(Silence)

CLIENT: You know, one of the other features of being back is seeing the effect that my absence has had on a lot of things. So, like, not being in that particular lab, I had been doing maintenance on some of the larger or more important pieces of equipment. Other people are doing it now, and they don't have, perhaps, the attention to detail that I have. (Pause) There's thing like that. And then, like, not being there has an impact on everyone else there, and that's not always a good one. So it's like (pause) seeing the effects of Tanya's illness on other people that are not directly connected to her. It's a thing that it's not just been about her. It's not (ph) just been about me. It's impacted a whole lot of people. [00:36:30]

THERAPIST: You feel it's pulled you away from other responsibilities.

CLIENT: Oh, yeah.

THERAPIST: And then impact your being unable to attend to them as impacted other people.

CLIENT: Yeah. And it's not that the other people have been unwilling to release me from the responsibilities, but...

THERAPIST: I doubt, for you, that's the point.

CLIENT: Right. (Laughter) Right. It actually is nice that that's the case. It would be nice if they were particularly bothered by it. But...

(Silence)

CLIENT: You know, [I think] (ph) I came here because the order of priorities seemed at least clear enough or (pause) it seemed important to be here. But...

(Silence)

CLIENT: Yeah. Now, it's not quite so clear to me that I don't know quite a right way to phrase it. It's not clear to me that Tanya's wellbeing is my is a thing that I can control or impact that much anyway. But maybe it is. Me being here. She seems better than she was when I was gone. Why is that? I don't know.

THERAPIST: The clarity you had about what's important to you and how things would more or less go in some general sense has completely been muddied, and it's disorienting. And today, I hear you being quite frustrated. And I actually think you have a whole lot to talk about, but you're feeling really frustrated.

CLIENT: Yeah, that's probably right. That wasn't as clear to me when I came in the door, but it's more clear to me now. Yeah, I think that's right. I'm not exactly sure (inaudible 39:16). Probably not enough time to talk about everything, right. But there's never enough time to talk about everything. That's one of the (pause), you know, we live things and we talk about them. We can't do both (inaudible 39:30).

(Silence)

CLIENT: Yeah, I guess I don't know what frustration goes where. So I've had this series of, like, shipping incidents. So I stay with my advisor. My advisor and his wife, you know, they're in their mid-50s. They're kind of fairly traditional people, so I want to send them a small thank you gift for hosting me for two weeks. It seems the reasonable thing to do. So I packed an appropriate thing and they shipped it to me. And they shipped the wrong thing. So this person I was in touch with actually was the most helpful person that I've talked to in the last several weeks. She just had she was really sorry, and she put the wrong thing in the box, and would send the right thing with the shipping label for the wrong thing to be returned. Just exactly the right solution to a problem that makes it, you know, a little bit annoying but not a big deal.

So I left some samples in Ohio that were important and supposed to be shipped one of my collaborators. And (pause) sorry. I had one of my friends in the lab ship them to the collaborator over the weekend. I filled out the form remotely, and I printed it off at the printers, because you can do that via the network. So I filled out the form. I know the form was filled out correctly. I have a copy of what the form said. He took the form down and mailed it. They were supposed to overnight it with Saturday delivery, because that was what ended up having to happen. The shipping people just didn't send it Saturday delivery, so it arrived on Monday. The sample seemed to have been fine, but there was no leaving it in the hands of UPS for three days was a terrible idea and clearly not what I wanted. But when I spoke through calmer e-mail, very calmly with the woman in charge of it, she basically said that, "Even though you checked the box for Saturday delivery, no one ever really wants that. So we just assumed you didn't want it and didn't bother to contact you, and sent it the way we thought you wanted it." [00:42:03]

So I'm telling you about those things because they're frustrating, and I feel like most of the things in my life are going in that way right now. Neither of us has had (inaudible 42:17).

THERAPIST: No one is doing what they're supposed to be doing, and it's making your life more difficult.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But, like, at some points, no one is doing what they're supposed to be doing. Does that change with the definition of supposed to be doing is? (Chuckles)

THERAPIST: Do you feel like you're more upset than you're aware of, or you just didn't want to talk about it?

CLIENT: So I think in normal conversation, there are some, like, polite formalities that get one through the first few minutes of the interaction, which (pause) I find awkward under most circumstances, actually. The first couple of minutes of an interaction. [I don't particularly] (ph) hear hypothesis about safety is probably relevant here. You suggested that having some expectation of what will happen is a key to safety (inaudible 43:49). You phrased it better than that. I found that insight very helpful into both myself and other people. People drive terribly because there are terrible at assessing the probability of an accident. That's it. So they just can't assess how dangerous what they did was, because it doesn't have an immediate consequence the first time or the second time or the third time. So they keep doing it. It makes perfect sense why people do unsafe things. They feel safe. So that was helpful. And so, like, I started that for a reason. I don't know what that was about.

THERAPIST: Well, I was commenting about your being were you -

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: Being upset.

CLIENT: Right. You know, I think I know that I'm upset, but it's perhaps strange for me to walk in and just say I'm upset. And the other piece is like it's not like you don't know what is going on in my life. I really do mean that not much has changed in the last month. And, like, the set of things that is wrong in my life has not changed from month-to-month.

THERAPIST: Yeah, but the way and unless no, I actually think that the way you're thinking about it is somewhat different, and that's changed. So not simply events in your life. I mean -

CLIENT: Right. But (inaudible 45:09).

THERAPIST: Well, I'm not hearing anything that I haven't heard before per se. Actually, I'm not really sure that's even true, because I am hearing something different. I'm hearing a higher level of dissatisfaction, and a little bit more despair. It's not quite that intensity of despair. Despair, but a little bit more than nihilism (ph), however you say it.

CLIENT: No, I think you said it right. It's from the Latin (inaudible 45:40).

THERAPIST: Yeah. That quality. I mean, what were you going to say? I'm sorry I interrupted.

CLIENT: No, sorry. I think I interrupted you, actually. I think that's right. I think that you have an accurate window into it. The difficulty is, like, (pause) it's harder to remember exactly what I was feeling a month ago. You have a clearer window into that -

THERAPIST: I do.

CLIENT: than I do. And so...

THERAPIST: I can see the delta.

CLIENT: Right, right. Sitting here trying to say, well, what is different? I go to facts first because, in some sense, that's, like, well (ph), ideal and in my scientific life, it's like, what are the facts? And then we draw conclusions from the facts. But I couldn't see any different facts to tell you to sort of get at the emotional facts that you are more interested in, and rightly so.

THERAPIST: Do you I'm not saying this because I'm worried about you in some immediate sense. But do you want to come back in the week to talk more? You're really upset. You seem really upset to me. I'm not, like, worried you won't make it (laughter) till next week. It's an invitation. I know you probably have a lot to do as you've gotten back.

(Silence)

CLIENT: Yeah, if you have time, I think I'd like that.

THERAPIST: Okay. I do. Let me just grab -

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah.

THERAPIST: I'm pretty sure I have something later morning Friday.

CLIENT: Oh, I can't come back this week. I'm sorry.

THERAPIST: Are you -

CLIENT: Because Tanya and I are going to a wedding this weekend, so...

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: I guess...

THERAPIST: I mean, I have something tomorrow. If you wanted to come back tomorrow, you're welcome to. It's up to you.

CLIENT: Sorry, you were saying about Friday you had -

THERAPIST: Friday, I have an 11 o'clock on Friday. And I have a 3:50 tomorrow.

CLIENT: Yeah. So we're supposed to fly out, like, 1:00 in the afternoon, so I don't think 11:00 is really going to work. And tomorrow, I'm the collaborator with the sample. So I'm going to go help him doing something tomorrow. I'm actually excited to do that.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: But I'm fine, in some sense.

THERAPIST: (Crosstalk 48:20)

CLIENT: It seemed like it was -

THERAPIST: It wasn't an offer because I was worried about you.

CLIENT: Thanks.

THERAPIST: It was more, like, you know, if we wanted to take an opportunity to continue it this week, we could.

CLIENT: Yeah, and it seemed like a good idea in the sense of, like, I feel like I'm talking to you again, and that's a good thing.

THERAPIST: Well, let me I also may have something earlier on Friday. If I do, do you want me to e-mail you?

CLIENT: Yes, please.

THERAPIST: Okay, I will do that then. I might have something a little bit earlier, but I won't know till later today.

CLIENT: That's okay.

THERAPIST: Okay, very good. And if not, I'll see you next week.

CLIENT: Okay. Thank you.

THERAPIST: Okay, take care.

END TRANSCRIPT