TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Hi, come on in.

CLIENT: Hello.

THERAPIST: Hi.

CLIENT: How are you doing?

THERAPIST: Good. Thank you. [00:00:39]

CLIENT: (pause) I feel sort of like a slot machine in the sense that there’s, like, a lot of things spinning where it could stop anywhere. Probably sure that’s exactly the right place to stop. I don’t think we win anything if we stop at the right place, but try. Certainly no money falls out. So I guess I’ll try to just pull out some of the things and then see where we end up. I don’t think this is important to talk very much about, but I’m never quite sure what’s important to tell you. So, Tanya and I had an intense conversation. She would call it a fight because that describes how she felt during this weekend. Because I still don’t have a job moving forward. Still being paid by my advisor. And the uncertainty of what will happen in the future is unsettling to her, which is fine, I understand.

(pause)

So I feel sad and anxious at this moment. And I’m having a hard time, like, finding the things that I had intended to talk about or want to talk about. So it’s — now I’ve said that. [00:03:37]

THERAPIST: Can you tell me about the sad anxious feeling?

CLIENT: So I feel sad. I don’t know how to talk to you about it other than to say I feel sad. We’ve had that part of this conversation a few times before. I think that’s in some ways a response to being here and safe and all of that. Like, I’m sad some percentage of the time anyway, but it’s important to do other things. So do other things. And I think the anxious is — is — I can think of two places that it’s coming from, but I don’t know if that’s all that’s going on or if they’re even relevant. One is that I feel like there are other things to do here also, but I’m sad and so, I’m, like, anxious about not getting to the things that are important to get to. As if the sadness itself weren’t important in some way. And the other is — so we talked last week (chuckles) you sort of — you said very broadly, “well, you need to decide what you want.” Which I appreciate the directness of that. Is correct, but, sorry — did you —

THERAPIST: I was just clearing my throat. [00:06:10]

CLIENT: Sorry. But — and so, I’ve thought a lot about that topic in the last week, but (chuckles) one of the things about desire for me is that I am anxious about talking about it, I think. So —

(pause)

THERAPIST: Yes, what does it mean?

CLIENT: I’m sorry, I didn’t quite follow.

THERAPIST: What does it — when you said, “I’m anxious about talking about desire” because what does desire mean to you?

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. The answers to that are very complicated. The other sort of really interesting thing that you said last time that really stuck out last time, was something like, if I am going to maintain any commitment to commitment, I ought to get something out of that in the sense of, like, I ought to be satisfied or pleased or content, or something positive in the doing of it. Which was, I thought, really interesting. [00:07:52]

THERAPIST: Yeah. I meant that very sincerely because to feel simply just imprisoned by your commitment is not really a great way to be.

(laughs)

CLIENT: Yeah. Thanks. But so, in thinking about both of those topics (inaudible at (00:08:15) so I sort of really was taken aback when you said that. So I think there’s probably a whole lot more interesting implications to that, but I can’t hit them all right now. So I think one of them is that I have a general relationship with responsibility of that kind. Like, sometimes I get some satisfaction out of doing it, but (chuckles) you know, so on a performance evaluation, for example, you mark the box that says, “meets expectations.” Well, I usually feel like I’ve failed if that’s the box that gets checked. As opposed to, like, “exceeds expectations.” That seems problematic, I think, in this same sort of family of, well, we maybe ought to get satisfaction of doing the thing. That was —

(pause)

THERAPIST: Especially when the expectation is a great high expectation.

CLIENT: It’s made graduate school complicated. Yeah.

(pause)

CLIENT: But I’m actually thinking that there’s a way in which that’s a diversion from the point, in that, like, those are the things that I’ve thought about some before that it relates to. But taking it as a more general sort of suggestion, it’s been interesting in the context of desire and in terms of doing the work that I have been doing in the last week. (inaudible at 00:10:44) if you’re going to spend all your time doing it maybe you ought to enjoy it. But I do actually enjoy the work that I do. So it’s been helpful to sort of, like, I don’t know, monitor it in that way if that makes sense. Not everything I do I like. Like, I’m not sure anyone has a job where they just do things they really enjoy. But I actually do really like what I do. So that seems good.

(pause)

CLIENT: Yes, also in a sense which that you have to decide what you want might really mean. You have to decide what you want more if the things that I want kind of conflict. [00:12:08]

And that gets into an area where I really struggle. I feel like, most people have some, like, straightforward access to their desires if that makes sense. But I feel like I have spent a lot of time not wanting to impose on people. As a result, like, suppressing or diverting that sort of first order recognition of desire. And it actually seems to get more true, like, the more in crisis something is, so — and sometimes, like, the worse Tanya is, is usually the crisis that we’re talking about. But it’s, like, it would take a lot of work if I were going to a restaurant with several friends to, like, pick the restaurant. It would take a lot of work if I were asked what I wanted to do. Because I have a desire for everyone in the group to be satisfied by what we do and usually, I don’t actually have very strong preferences about restaurants. And so, that sort of, like, well, just take mine more or less out of it because I have this other desire for some sort of group satisfaction that is more easily met in a computationally reasonable amount of time we count fewer people’s strong desires. So —

(pause)

THERAPIST: Well, even if you have sort of clear access to your desires, they might not sure everybody has just very clear access, it still doesn’t mean those desires can conflict. [00:14:45]

CLIENT: And not that it’s very important. Do you think that most people do or do not have clear access to their desires?

THERAPIST: It’s a complicated question. I don’t exactly know how I’d answer that.

CLIENT: Okay. Do you feel like many people feel like they have direct access to their desires?

THERAPIST: No.

CLIENT: Okay, interesting.

THERAPIST: Maybe some.

CLIENT: Interesting. Thanks.

THERAPIST: Certainly not across the board in all areas of one’s life.

CLIENT: Interesting. Thanks. Well, yeah, that’s right. And then it’s their desires of, like, radically different kinds. How do you resolve that? In the relatively useless restaurant example, like, if I have a strong desire not to go to a particular type of restaurant that might come in conflict with my desire for the group to be happy if everyone else wants to go there. But if I’m allergic to everything on the restaurant, then I’d probably say I can’t eat there. You know, that would feed back into everyone else’s presumed desire to, like, eat with me. So, yeah, I — [00:16:24]

THERAPIST: That’s an interesting example, because I think about it in the context of a cult.

(laughter)

THERAPIST: You know, where individual desires (inaudible at 00:16:36) under group desire. Presumably the individual desire is — corresponds with it and so, therefore, it’s not a problem. Although one could argue that individual desire can be one’s individual desire is always going to be somewhat different than a group regardless even if the values are very similar and so forth.

CLIENT: Right. Yeah, and I think that the similarity between the group desire and the individual desire is actually part of the hook of the cult. So like, you want these things, we can give you these things. In some sense it costs you these other things, but — or you have to give up these other things in order to get these things. So —

(pause)

CLIENT: Yeah, that sort of thing seems like a reasonable and interesting context to put it in. It’s a little complicated because I was, you know, a young teenager when I left. So I don’t have any real, like, adult exposure to that experience, but it was certainly formative. But it’s also filtered through, like, or entangled with my parents and the — what I would guess, but I have no idea whether it’s reasonable or not, relatively normal sense in which children’s desires conflict with their parents desires. It seems something like the parents responsibility to sort out where that is, like, you know — whether that conflict needs to give in one direction or the other. But actually, I’d be interested in your feedback on what I just said because it is contextualized and I grew up in a cult, so I don’t actually know how reasonable that description of parent/child interaction is. [00:19:21]

THERAPIST: What part of it are you — would think might be different?

CLIENT: Well, aside of the range of experiences people have is very different. That’s not really — so I think the question of asking it, like, in a crude way is, like, how crazy are my parents? I think. How strange was my upbringing? Or like, was it bad in some way?

THERAPIST: And it feels like an answer that I would have.

(laughter)

THERAPIST: I mean that (inaudible at 00:20:18). I know it sounds like a funny way to put it, but I actually wasn’t meaning it as a joke.

CLIENT: A lot of things strike me as funny that aren’t jokes. So — yeah, absolutely, it seems like an answer you might have. I was actually — I think that the reason I laughed is that right before you asked the question, I was sort of thinking if you did have an answer to that question, I don’t expect that you would give it. Because I would expect you to have an opinion on the subject, but not like a — like — it’s sort of like, how could you possibly have a, like — have knowledge on the subject. Does that make sense? Like, without having been there, how can you know? Because I asked incredibly large, vague, ill posed questions. See, I expected you’d have an opinion. [00:21:43]

THERAPIST: Well, let me — there’s a reason you asked that question. I mean, you think there’s something brewing in your mind about asking that question about how crazy are your parents. It’s a question you’re posing to yourself too.

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah.

THERAPIST: And in that way.

CLIENT: Yeah. Well, one reason that I think that I asked that question, I think, is that, you know, I had just asked you, like, how normal is this experience that I have? And you said, actually, it’s very normal. And I was surprised by that. So it’s sort of a — they’re related in that way, I think.

THERAPIST: Right. So your questions are kind of revolving around some — trying to get some band of normality and then what are the outliers of that? Which sometimes I may have some doubts about, but these are also really hard questions. And also, I’m largely interested in your experience.

(laughter)

THERAPIST: Which I feel most attracts from getting some sort of scale. You know, staying with your experience seems like it would be deterred by talking about ranges. It gets away from, well, what is your experience, though? That there’s a truth to your experience that maybe even supersedes any sort of averages for lack of a better term. [00:23:15]

CLIENT: Sure. Certainly my experience, though, is that, like — but — and so, this is actually that piece of the experience is heavily related to the context in which you brought it up, of, like, hey, you grew up in a cult, like, I’m very aware of the ways of the fact that growing up in a cult colors my experience and my sense of normal, and sometimes that’s not a good thing. And so, I think that’s really it here also. It’s like, my experience of it was that it was just normal, like, and actually, not just normal, like, abnormal in the sense that not everyone obeys their parents, or believes that parents should take responsibility for the actions of their children or anything like that. But I thought that was a good thing. So, my experience is very much one of, like, this is how it should be and how it is, and it’s not perfect, but, like —

THERAPIST: Did you — you mentioned a couple of things. But did you feel like they were, you know, aside from, like, the women being encouraged to have sex with the leader, that there were particular things that were really detrimental to people’s wellbeing that was asking them?

CLIENT: At the time I didn’t. I certainly do now. And so, as of, like — I actually don’t have all of the — I thought very hard about this a couple of months ago. And I sort of left it aside in some ways, like, other things been going on and thinking about it. So, it’s sort of, like, on a gross scale, I think that something has to be giving you a whole lot to be worth 10 or 15 percent of your income. Except they sort of — they expected 10 and, you know, you were supposed to give more. [00:26:05]

THERAPIST: That’s a lot of money.

CLIENT: Right. So, that seems like — unless you’re getting a whole lot back, that’s potentially — (inaudible at 00:26:15).

THERAPIST: What did they do with the money? Did it go to the people in charge?

CLIENT: It did, yeah. It went to — a key point, the headquarters of the cult and on a couple of other properties that they had that were used as, like, training for the next set of leadership. So it’s like a campus in a sense. Separate from the main campus and so, as well as salaries for all of the staff. I mean, it’s in some ways like the same things that donations to churches normally get too. But so, it wasn’t like, you know, some of the more complicated televangelists, where they are millionaires personally. I don’t think that was the case for any of the people in charge, which, you know, it sounded kind of interesting because I think they really believed it too. That sort of its own sort of kind of scary thing for me. It’s like, there’s definitely a plausible story in which the guy in charge really thought it was okay or, like, necessary and important for him to be sleeping with other men’s wives. Like — and that’s a particular kind of disturbing. It’s a little different from, like, I found this place of power and I’m going to abuse it intentionally. [00:27:50]

THERAPIST: Yeah, cause one is more sociopathic and one is more psychotic. They’re both problematic.

CLIENT: Can you give me a —

THERAPIST: Sociopathic is more kind of intentionally exploiting people. You know, knowing that what you’re expecting — not really caring if it’s right or wrong. That you want something and you exploit someone and it really doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong. That’s more sociopathic. Sort of a disregard for the rules and disregard for other people’s needs or treating them like objects. Whereas, this is good for, you know, having sex with married women. This is good for them, good for me. That’s a psychotic fantasy. You know, it’s divorced from reality. It’s probably easily a lot of counter evidence from reality, it’s a delusion that is then embraced as reality. And it’s not to exploit from the person’s perspective cause that’s — they feel, actually, that they’re doing something good. You know, from the outside it seems very exploitive. [00:29:01]

CLIENT: Right. So, I think that is the — that’s my guess as to what was going on, is that. I don’t have any real way of knowing. But that particular — you’re asking, like, did I think — do I think it was destructive? I think that’s the kind of destructive it was. It encouraged beliefs about reality that are obviously contrary to fact.

THERAPIST: Were they against education?

CLIENT: No, not really. Which is weird, like, in a sense of like, they just, you know, thought they had a more correct story than people who knew more sometimes. But this was this other part of what they were doing is, like, one of the hooks was, like, the teaching you to do biblical research. This is how you learn what is in the bible. So, it’s tied up in education in some ways too.

THERAPIST: But people like you, others went to public schools and (inaudible at 00:30:06) got education (inaudible at 00:30:07).

CLIENT: Yeah. And that wasn’t discouraged. At least not that I know of (inaudible at 00:30:13). And since my parents got that pressure, I didn’t know about it. I don’t think that that was there. Yeah.

(pause)

CLIENT: And so, I think that that’s part of why I am sort of — part of why I’m asking the, like, normalizing questions. It’s like, does this experience from that set of people actually correspond any way to reality? Or to what — you know, I guess I trust you in your opinion to, like, what you think is reasonable also. And that’s — I guess that’s a tough place to put you in both, like, to ask your professional opinion and your personal opinion in a not very distinguished way. But that’s what I’m doing. [00:31:35]

THERAPIST: I would say I don’t have a strong opinion about it. And if I did I would share it with you.

CLIENT: Thanks.

(pause)

CLIENT: So do you have more questions in this direction or —

THERAPIST: No. I mean, I always do, I think, kind of not at the moment that it sort of really strikes me.

CLIENT: Okay, then I’m going to take this in a different direction. So it’s been a while now, but you talked at one point about, in that series of conversations, in which I said I love you. But you talked about that being a tool for getting at desires potentially. So I guess I wanted to raise that note. And then, I actually wanted to tell you what my favorite television shows are. Because I think that that actually is really it in some way. So my two favorite television shows are “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” and “Veronica Mars.” Are you familiar with either show?

THERAPIST: Familiar very — familiar with “Buffy, the” — I do not watch much TV. Familiar with (inaudible at 00:33:47).

CLIENT: I deduced that. (laughter) [00:33:48]

THERAPIST: I don’t think — I don’t even know if I’ve ever seen — was it Sarah Geller, is that Sarah Geller or something or other?

CLIENT: Yeah, it’s (inaudible at 00:33:55).

THERAPIST: There’s still not too much familiarity.

CLIENT: Okay, that’s fine. Actually, do you read books?

THERAPIST: Um-hmm.

CLIENT: Sort of curious as to how you fill your time. Obviously, you do this, but —

(pause)

THERAPIST: You’re gauging time remaining?

CLIENT: Yeah. Sort of as a, like, I’m situating myself. I seem to do that a lot. So I’ll give you a brief synopsis of each of the shows because it seems like, you know, it was important enough for me to mention them as well. Follow through in that way. So Buffy is a young woman who is summoned by some — or becomes through some mystical occurrence that’s never really explained, becomes the vampire slayer. So she’s essentially like a 16 year old girl who’s a super hero and is tasked with saving the world from vampires and demons, and all of the other evil things. And so, her struggle throughout the course of the show is one of, like, in some sense finding herself as this person who has these unusual abilities, but also wants to live in the world. And so, my friend, Franco, describes it as, like, her struggle with fate because she’s had this thing imposed on her, and so she sort of struggles with does she want it or not want it? [00:36:18]

There’s a sense in which the — this survey level description is actually not that helpful, but sort of — so I think, last week I said that one of the reasons I like watching well written television is sort of like, I like to watch other people grapple with difficult things to sort of see how they do it. And that is a way of, like, processing how I respond to situations as well. So, it’s a show that has a lot of dramatic or dire situations that the characters grapple with, some of which are, like, strikingly normal and some of which are very abnormal, but they’re still people dealing with it. So, that’s — “Veronica Mars” is a television show about a girl who’s the daughter of a sheriff in a small town in California and her best friend is murdered. And it’s about her dealing with her best friend being murdered by solving the murder. So again, I’m not sure that, like, that other (inaudible at 00:37:57) description is like that helpful, but there’s some (inaudible at 00:38:04) on it.

THERAPIST: Well, clear — matters and thoughts about how you describe the shows and why that you would like them. That, what are your thoughts about it? Aside from them being well written it sounds like. [00:38:31]

CLIENT: Yeah. (inaudible at 00:38:33). I think they’re authentically written in the sense that I think people have authentic experiences and I enjoy that. So, I identify with both characters. They’re both, like, young and very evil in some way. And (inaudible at 00:38:48) that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a thing they have to deal with, and it’s a thing they also, like, experience good things as a result of (inaudible at 00:38:59). I think that’s one main draw that sort of, I’m actually more curious in your response to my descriptions. So, it’s sort of like, I’ve thought a lot about why I like the shows and I guess I — but not thought a lot about how to describe why I like the shows to someone who’s not seen the shows.

THERAPIST: Well, certainly what (inaudible at 00:39:38) I imagine there’s other layers too, but on the most obvious layer it seems to describe what you feel. You know, not that you feel you’re a super hero, but that you have abilities, that you need to use those abilities to help others and to be able to understand things. And that maybe that, in a sense, conflicts with other things that you might want to do. And that your level to commit and help out isn’t obviously what you want. And so, the interesting sort of the — I don’t know if it’s a twist, but, like, with Buffy, it sounds like is this really her or is this something imposed upon her? Is this truly in her character, or is it something that she’s sort of almost trapped by that maybe she would actually want to be liberated from? It’s not clear it sounds like in the show. So, it’s not clear. [00:40:30]

CLIENT: That’s really interesting. Yeah. So certainly over the course of the show, she, like, comes to accept and own it. She grows into it in some sense. And there’s a one in particular episode where she thinks it’s gone away. Where in her response to that is essentially, like, who am I if I’m not this? Which is a very interesting — cause it’s like, she has not been this person for 16 years and then this is like, two years after she’s — but it’s become a very integral part of her identity. So, that’s the answer for the character. I don’t know (inaudible at 00:41:28).

THERAPIST: I can see so many parallels (inaudible at 00:41:32). I mean, you very much identify this is not quite — you very much identify with yourself as a person who adheres to commitment and sticks — you know, has a very high and specific moral code. And you’re identified with that person and that identity. And so, then doing something different, if you think about it, does that mean you’re a different person than who you thought you were?

CLIENT: Yeah. I think that’s a very powerful insight. [00:42:14]

THERAPIST: To put it on a more positive spin is, do you want to evolve and change? You know, even if it’s different, does that — have you just not revealed your true character, or do people change over time? And the one thing about a cult that I think is, you know, there’s several things that are problematic. But there’s (inaudible at 00:42:45) a static motion of people. There’s no development or evolution. Even though the cult often has the psyche that it’s evolving and expanding (inaudible at 00:42:54). But individuals don’t grow and evolve and expand in that. That’s not the point of it.

CLIENT: That’s so true. Yeah.

THERAPIST: And so (inaudible at 00:43:08) good thing. You could just change. Your values change. Your desires change. Your interests change as you develop and grow and encounter situations you haven’t encountered before.

CLIENT: So do you have a clear sense of what I ought to do here?

THERAPIST: Un-un, no.

CLIENT: That’s fine. I don’t know that I really expected you to. But you could say some of the things you’re saying, like, as a, like — as guiding me in a particular direction or just in, you know, guiding or helping guide, or helping sort out what is going on. Does that make sense? [00:43:51]

THERAPIST: Yeah. I mean, this is probably too strong a statement. And I’m not even sure I’m that committed to it. But I feel like that would almost be cult like.

(laughter)

THERAPIST: A) and also, what decisions you make, most notably about your marriage, but we’re talking about a lot of things, but certainly, your marriage is the more kind of conspicuous one. I feel like it’s an important decision in itself, and there’s some things that will be constants in either decision. But there’s also just making that decision and feeling good about it. That it’s not the actual decision you make, but it’s the process you go through and then the sort of the health of that process that points to a decision that feels like a healthy decision for you through a healthy — I’m using the word “healthy” (inaudible at 00:44:58).

CLIENT: That’s fine.

THERAPIST: You know, that coming to that decision in a good way is — such as, I am going to stay with Tanya because I feel imprisoned by my commitments. That’s a bad way to come to a decision.

(laughter)

THERAPIST: It’s not necessarily a bad decision, but if that’s how you arrive at the decision, that’s problematic. [00:45:18]

CLIENT: Right.

(pause)

CLIENT: Right. And this is — this seems like it’s very much bounded by the context of, like, making longer term decisions, as opposed to, like, making your decision in a moment. So, like, a contrast to that is, like, when training for anything, like, often one wants to quit, like, while one is in the intense moment of it. But that would actually be a bad reason to stop doing it. So —

THERAPIST: (inaudible at 00:46:16) need to stop. I didn’t mean to cut your off in mid thought.

CLIENT: That’s okay.

THERAPIST: And I’ll see you next (inaudible at 00:46:21). Okay?

CLIENT: Thank you.

THERAPIST: Okay. Bye-bye.

END TRANSCRIPT