TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: He's now going to be on a paying system. So I'll just give you cash. This is just going to cover the last two times, but at least it's something. It will take a check to pay the balance. Oh, I thought it was wasn't it $400?

THERAPIST: I'll double check. I'll check on it. [00:01:03]

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: That's the right amount actually.

CLIENT: [I'm mad at her.] (whispering at 00:01:27) So I have this little quiz in my class. It's a minor, little 2 percent of your grade. I feel like okay, the problem is, in general, I get it. If I don't feel 100 percent, I feel like I don't know. [00:02:02] It's not like going in to take an exam where you write. It's going in and you are either able to think very clearly, logically, because it's all about well, I mean that's what math is but especially this because it's all proofs. So not only do you have to get it right, but you have to get it right for the right reasons. Logic is weird how, when you look at something mathematical, you say, "Okay, I'm not going to attack it and say ‘A implies B,' I'm going to attack it and say, ‘Not B implies not A,' therefore I'm going to do the math that way and prove the opposite, which then means that the original statement is true." It's that sort of twisting or thinking, "Okay, I know what I'll do. I'll look at something and I'll do it by contradiction. I'll assume something is false and then back myself into a contradiction and, therefore, the opposite of false must be accurate." It's these weird little riddle things and you're doing math. [00:03:16]

THERAPIST: Yeah, both of those things; and we talked about a couple of weeks ago about the meaning of grappling with a riddle and not getting it right away and the math, too.

CLIENT: And it's tiring. There's something tiring about having to like yesterday I wasn't feeling well. My head was all snuffly and I had a headache and was fighting it all day. I woke up with a headache today and I don't know maybe I just ate something that gave me a headache. I don't know what it was. So the feeling of thinking it's weird. It's almost like in my brain I can see this empty spot, like I could see myself thinking around this empty space and I'm aware of the fact that there's something missing that I can't think that way. [00:04:08] It's almost like it's by relief, this thinking. (chuckles) I'm thinking, thinking, thinking and there's a way that I can't think and it's becoming more acutely aware of not being able to think in that way. There's a thing; you can prove things by induction, which I find troubling. You could say some property about numbers and then you can say, "Well, if it works for N = 0 and N = 1, let's just say it works for any arbitrary K. And if we assume that, let's say that it also works for K + 1." And so you then sort of solve this. It's used in number theory, where you can prove all kinds of things about the set of natural numbers. [00:05:07] So it's infinite and you cannot prove it. You can't just go through example after example after example because then you'd just be proving it infinitely, right? So you say, "Okay, well, assume it's true. If we assume it's true, we can prove it's true." It's a very weird way of thinking; like a chocolate bar a chocolate bar that's divided up into individual little squares. It's always the case that no matter how many squares there are, it will always take you one less than the number of squares to break it up into its individual squares. Clearly that's true. But then going about bending you're saying, "Okay, let's make sure we can prove all cases so that if we had a bar with 50 million pieces it would take 50 million nice little breaks to break it up into a square." [00:06:08] And again, it's sort of like of course, if that works, yes, it makes sense; but having to think formally about, "How do you do that?" so it's a mathematical proof. So you spend a lot of time counting and indexing your counting. I don't know. It's irksome.

THERAPIST: And this may be a funny thing, but how does it feel?

CLIENT: Well, that's the thing. It doesn't feel good. It feels very much like all of this is taking place in my head. I can feel it in my head as I think it, as opposed to it's not yet gut-level. It's not yet intuitive. It may be that calculus didn't feel that way either, but now I can sort of feel it. [00:07:09] I can feel its truth because you can see velocities and accelerations and changes in velocities and changes in accelerations. You can graph things out and you can I don't know. There's something about the intuitive notion of continuity that calculus is out there and you can't have gaps; whereas the sum I'm doing now is all about number theory and you're dealing with different sizes of infinity. [00:08:10] The number of positive numbers is equal to all the positive numbers and all the negative numbers. They're the same size infinity. And yet, if you then start taking numbers between the numbers, that's a larger definitive now. And so that is where I'm at, and yet thinking about it in terms of chocolate bars. (laughs) We're just going to think about the positive and we're just going to look at some actual squares of chocolate bar, which is the simplest example I can think of. That's the thing. It feels very much like the horse thing, the horse thing I mentioned a few weeks ago, where we followed all of these and so "no" should equal "false" and "no true." [00:09:18] It feels almost like I understand why I was frustrated as a kid sitting there at the table because it felt like this purely mental thing; and it wasn't like I was visualizing anything because the whole point is the riddle didn't allow you to visualize. If you could visualize it, you could solve it. But then it's a matter of playing these sort of word games thinking, "What is the image?" What's the image? If I can see a chocolate bar, an initially large chocolate bar, then that's tougher to think about. [00:10:09] Or proving things that I always found a little weird. Maybe it's my basic maybe there are just lots of caps in understanding algebra. Maybe I was just not fully grasping that when it was being taught that like the square of two is irrational and you can prove that. It's a tricky, odd, non-intuitive proof. Just the idea of thinking, "Okay, it's so purely abstract." [00:11:07]

THERAPIST: Yeah, just look at calendars, the days of the week.

CLIENT: That's right. I mean as a kid, right?

THERAPIST: Or fireman and firemen.

CLIENT: That's it. You have to take on board definitions and math is, especially in the proof realm of math where you sort of begin true abstract mathematics, you have to be able to use definitions and, not only use definitions, but you have to accept the definitions. And so, there is a formal way to talk about even numbers as opposed to odd numbers. [00:12:04] You have to be able to say, "Okay, any given number can be expressed by two times an integer. Any odd number is two times an integer plus one." So you begin your proof saying, "Let's just start with those findings," which is fine. That's fine. But all of a sudden simple little things become these sort of long, abstract things where you're just using all kinds of letters to say something very basic that an odd number plus an odd number is even; but you can't just say that, which is fine. You want to be able to prove it with all cases. [00:12:59] The thing that bothers me most about this inductive sort of thinking and proving of things is that it's closed in the sense that we live our lives thinking, "Well, tomorrow could be different. Next minute could be different." We don't know what's going to happen. The idea that, "Well, that's been the case for the past 300 days, five million years, whatever, but something new might happen." In math you're saying, "No. You can't give five million examples because if that's true, something different could happen, so you have to prove that for all cases." The weird thing about math is that you prove things for all cases past and into the future, including the limiting thing. [00:13:56] And there's something weird about being able to just say with absolute certainty, "You have a chocolate bar and it's in a million pieces and it's going to take one less than that to break it up." It's like, okay easy to visualize. But more subtle things, it's weird. It's sort of when you're presented with something that's a statement of fact about all numbers, there's no flexibility. There's no flexibility. (pause)

THERAPIST: Yeah, what about that?

CLIENT: I guess it's weird because I feel like, in the pure realm of math, number theory, that's just you're dealing with a set of integers, a set of whole numbers, a set of real numbers, a set of whatever rationals; whereas in calculus it's like there's something dynamic and you're thinking about, "Okay, for this period of time, if you want to get a rocket to the moon, there are all kinds of variables; but if you can figure out what all those things are, then you can get the rocket to the moon." [00:15:31] And you know it's a big distance. It's kind of cool because you can absolutely from point A to point B along a curve. In number theory, we're not talking about rockets going to the moon. It's just saying something larger about something which is already abstract. You're saying something definitive about numbers, which in itself an abstraction. (pause) The analogy that is used and, I guess it's awful talking about this and I know it's probably not satisfying to hear in some way because it would be helpful to actually have a board where you can sort of draw this stuff up. [00:16:31] Instead you have to sort of imagine and sort of take what I say and then visualize it. The analogy used in the introduction is to imagine there is something you want to say about a set of numbers, some proposition about numbers like a staircase and so you don't have to prove that you can go up every single step to show you can get to the staircase. You can get from the first stair to the second stair. And if that's true, then you know how to get up one stair and, therefore, you can get up all the stairs that you have. [00:17:26] The other side of induction, the wrong induction, this uses Fibonacci numbers, where you have to presume the truth of several stairs behind or some arbiter of stairs behind. And if that's true, then you can claim that you can go up to the next stair. So for instance, if the Fibonacci number is the pattern, it's always adding the previous two numbers, which you define the first two, it starts off 0, 1, 0 + 1 = 1, 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 1 = 3, 3 + 2 = 5, 8, 13, et cetera. So to make some proof about those numbers, you have to say, "No, I can talk about the Fibonacci number being four and the one that came before that, because they have to exist for the present one to exist because it's the sum of the previous two... so any way you throw in a staircase, I can find the next one. I can find where I'm at, but I have to know the previous two so let's assume they exist." [00:18:45]

It's weird because you have to assume something. You have to assume something exists in order to prove it exists. I find this to be it's just the nature of recursion. I find it peculiar. I found it peculiar with the programming as well because recursion is done a lot in programming. It's a [...] (inaudible at 00:19:16) powerful tool. (pause) It's just odd. It's one of these things that once you have experience with it, it becomes much more natural and so forth; but it feels like fractals in a way. It's like you see it and you imagine it and it starts out okay, but there's [...] (inaudible at 00:19:48) and let's assume that they're there and go forward. [00:19:52]

So how does it feel? It feels like a low-grade headache, that's what it feels like. It feels like I don't know quite where to begin. Do you begin in the present? (pause) Zeno's paradox is an issue in dealing with the notion of time and displacement. Can something truly move? Does time really pass? Those are the paradoxes and they're very troubling; and so even in quantum physics it's the case that you don't need time. You don't need sequence. Things can happen out of order. But in our life, that's not our experience. (pause) [00:21:04] And yet there's something odd. You talk about the calendar when I was a kid, right? And days having colors and so forth. It's odd. I'm thinking about days as rectangles like midnight comes in the next rectangle; so there's the abstract way of seeing days, but that is not our actual feeling of time. We can do these recursive things in math and we can see rectangles or whatever we're dealing with. It's not the feeling of it. I don't know. [00:22:01] Maybe I wouldn't be so troubled if it was (pause) easier. I feel like whatever is happening in this course is the thing that has always bugged me about math. It's the weird little, small things in logic that the definitions are built on; and using them, manipulating them and building up from them. And I feel like I get stuck, even though I can do all of this stuff and do it very well and it's not easy for most people who've studied math. There's a feeling of just staring and thinking, "Why is this so hard?" (pause) I don't know. [00:23:19]

THERAPIST: What does it mean to you that it's so hard? (pause) It was interesting about the gap and the burning or how did you put it?

CLIENT: Yeah, especially writing such a strong induction, which is notoriously difficult. I'm happy to know that at least it's something that's troubling. It's weird to feel like of these five proof methods that we've learned, I can sort of think, "Okay, I can do them." [00:24:11] It's this other strange method where recurring is used you know, all Fibonacci numbers but that's a simple example where just the notion of we need the stuff that came before. We have to assume they exist. In my mind I feel like I'm sort of walking around this hole. I'm thinking, "How strange. I am aware of the fact that I don't get it and I can't generate it unless I'm looking at it. If I look at it, I can write it out longhand and begin to see the logic of it." That's the thing about math, too. It's so economical that this proof is given without explanation, and so what I did for this proof there's a proof that's called the division algorithm. It's just a proof that division works; that for all cases division works, no matter what you do with it. [00:25:16]

Looking at it, all of this stuff introduced, it says N = MD + R, so M is an arbitrary integer; D is the divisor; R is the remainder N is some number. Fine. And you can prove this all day long just by filling in the numbers. This division works. This division works. This division works. But then how it's defined in the proof of it reading, and all of a sudden there's greater than or equal and you have four different things that are greater than or equal, so the qualities are difficult, especially when you have to sort out how four inequalities actually relate to each other. It's this nested thing. This is less than that; and this is greater than that; and this is greater than zero; this is one or greater. Okay, exactly how do these things fit? Because seeing how they fit together is key. It's just one and one. (chuckles) So I wrote it out and draw squares and it took me forever to figure this out. I was so delighted that Joy and Lee Ann were equally flummoxed; and they're both engineers, so I was very pleased about that. [00:26:54]

THERAPIST: Yeah, I think that's kind of an important observation your feelings about it that what I was imagining, is kind of like asking to enter into a system of logic and rules that isn't very, as you say, intuitive or easy to feel like this comes naturally or readily to me. In fact, there's a kind of psychologically, an uneasy kind of relationship with it in some way. It's like, "Wait. I don't understand what this thing is trying to talk to me about. I don't feel like we're on the same page," almost. (chuckles) [00:28:08] And yet I see you really wanting it to be wanting it to be a smoother relationship or something like that. What actually was coming to mind to me was something about what came to mind last week as we were talking about what makes a good boyfriend. And what happens when you're not inside that definition instead of (chuckles) definitions and principles what that means about who you are as a person and in here I think you're talking about what kind of mind. [00:29:09] It's asking you to relate to the way other people have thought or some way of thinking and it's like, "Yeah. This is more visual. I don't relate as easily to it." That's kind of a simplistic way to look at it, but it's captured something about it. And I find these other partners struggling with it, too, I would imagine it would almost open up the space for you to not be that person and still belong in some sense; not only as someone intellectually capable, but as a man in mathematics even. (pause) [00:30:27]

CLIENT: You know I often reference those books in juxtaposition to mathematics and the issue of trying to think about ideas and hold on to them. (pause) I don't know. What do you learn in those subjects? It's about organizing big ideas and little ideas and how big ideas are into big ideas and where is the intersection of some things and just creating in one's mind; then diagrams and flow charts and sequences, in terms of the language and things like that. Being able to decipher when something doesn't follow and being able to glean good ideas and when they're defined, come up with some other ideas. (pause) [00:32:32] I feel like kind of this I don't know. I was just thinking there are people who read and they get really hung up on, if they're reading something like this, perhaps, they get really hung up on little things and they really stick it to a thinker and they try to think, "Well, you said that here and you said that there and this doesn't jive with this person over there, so there's conflict. Everybody is wrong," and this sort of stuff finding contradictions and being suspicious. As opposed to my approach to things, which is give the person credit. They follow this and sort of see where it goes. Just accept it. Let it digest it. Let it sit with you for a moment. And it creates a mood. What mood do you have when you read through it? What mood do you have when you read it? As opposed to tearing each part, being the most literal. [00:34:03] Feeling like maybe I should be in it or that feeling of being more critical as opposed to sort of letting it wash over me. Now I'm doing something where very single word or symbol matters, and it is not metaphorical. It is accurate, precise, exact, and it is deceptively powerful that a little sentence in math-speak (pause) says something massive and true. [00:35:09] And it's not available. (pause) There's something weird about that because here there's a lot of flexibility. There's a sense of a way you can look at it historically. You can look at a person's own psychology, where they are coming from. What would they have response to? What were they trying to correct in their tone? Were they speaking with a notion of absolute conviction on a certain topic or was it said in passing, right? [00:36:05] That's how we can see social theory because there are so many unknowns that you can bend it to your liking. People don't like Freud because they're offended by certain parts of Freud and so, therefore, everything is seen through that lens of, "Ugh. I don't like that part. So, therefore, I'm going to have an axe to grind intellectually against that theorem." Whereas, you can't do that in math. You can't have an axe to grind against a certain theory. You can't go, "I don't like that theorem. That's wrong. I don't like it. I don't like that mathematician." That's not a part of it. So it's oddly or quintessentially impersonal, which is weird because the rest of life is personal. [00:37:16]

THERAPIST: It's completely abstract. It's like removed from the personal, removed from that.

CLIENT: (pause) I don't know. Maybe statistics is more satisfying, right? Maybe number theory is just irritating because it's purely abstract, whereas you know. Now in number theory it's really cool because there's a pattern and statistic allows for a team be down a touchdown, two touchdowns, and then come back and get 52 points. [00:38:44] It's sort of like, "I wasn't expecting that. Wow." [...] (inaudible at 00:38:49) and so in statistics sort of anything can happen, right? It may be unlikely, but it can happen. Whereas number theory, it's like this can't happen. It can't happen. That's it. It's foreclosed, which there is something sterile about it. (pause) It's here, right? There's that feeling of, "Well, maybe I disagree a little bit here, but no. Maybe he's right. Maybe we can prove him correct in the future. We just don't know enough." It's always incomplete. And now, in math, especially with what we're talking about now, no, it's complete. In the literal world, it's incompleteness. It remains to be seen. We'll see. Here the past few weeks I've been focused on saying, "No. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever true," which is strange. [00:40:12]

THERAPIST: Yeah, it's like truth. It sounds like it's just being able to really hold onto something true and certainty in a way. It's kind of like God.

CLIENT: Yeah, but then what is it? To say, "Okay, two infinities are the same. All right. Okay. I guess I can wrap my head around that. But so what?" (chuckles) It's like it's true, but it's not true in my brain. There is this little thing there was this very vexing little problem; and it's stupid how little things can be so irritating. [00:41:10] In game theory we had this problem to solve where no game is played, things are in two stacks, and there are rules in which you can take things away from the stacks. Depending on the size of the stacks you should be able to determine the pattern and then be able to figure out which player should win, depending on who starts. So one is a player one win and one is a player two win and, mapping out all possibilities, it quickly becomes massive. It quickly becomes this thing you just can't that you need a computer to sort it all out. Before you get to that level of the stacks being really big and you need a computer, you should be able just to see a pattern and figure out okay, player one should win; player two should win and think, "In what case will it deviate? [...] (inaudible at 00:42:09) and so forth and then prove it. Prove the case. Prove that player one won when given these conditions. [00:42:28] (pause) Why did I bring that up? (pause) I forget why I brought it up, other than it was something which is dynamic, and yet maybe it's the thing where I don't like playing cards. It's fine, but I just never really got into it. I don't know. I was always playing checkers or something. I guess growing up it was fun playing Hearts and Rummy. Maybe I enjoyed checkers. I don't remember really liking checkers or really playing it that much. It sort of felt like there's something auto-rhythmic about it and I don't feel like using my brain in that way because it feels like, "If I were analytical I could always win, and I don't really enjoy this." [00:43:55] I remember sitting. At the time, I remember being very distracted and just very unhappy, but I went out where my friend's girlfriend lived. We went to her house. We were sitting at the table and there was some card game being played and then I was like, "I don't feel like being that person." And just not being able at all to pay attention, just not getting it. And them looking at me like, "Why don't you get this?" I guess it was because I didn't have I was thinking about other things. But it felt like this purely arbitrary thing where you could just (sighs) I don't know. [00:45:04] There was this face where I just did not like taking pictures because it reminded me of death, right? A snapshot of something and realizing that that moment has passed and then it's like oops I lost time. It just started divorcing oneself from feeling and just looking at cards and then trying to calculate what's still on the table in the deck. I'm thinking, "I don't care." We were playing a game I was tutoring (ph?) some time ago. If the kids did their homework they could then play games, so if they worked for 45 minutes to get 15 minutes of playing a game. Some of them were playing Connect Four. I'm tutoring them on all kinds of stuff, right? The kids play Connect Four; and I would always lose, you know? It's sort of like I'm thinking the teacher should win sometimes because the teacher is supposed to be the smart one, right? [00:46:25] There's something that's scary in it. I don't get it. I'm thinking that something about this I'm not getting. I know you're supposed to get four; I understand that. It wasn't like I was just dropping things randomly, but it was like I didn't figure out quickly enough, perhaps, or ever, the answer to it where you'd always win. I felt like that's sort of the way the game is. Connect Four is a game that, if you really know it, you should always win. If you know how to play checkers, whoever starts ought to be able to always win. There is an optimal way to do it. [00:47:22] I mean it's limited, it's finite. There is whatever 16 letters in 16 rows or something. So it sort of leaves me cold. I'd much rather just draw a picture or something than have to think about Connect Four. Monopoly is great. It's still castic in the sense that there are dice, but there is the element of randomness and so, because it's random, anything can happen. It's sort of like why the replacement reps are kind of fun, right? Interest in the randomness. Teams who should win, didn't win because there was this wild card on the field. It's the joker. [00:48:37] Now it's sort of like the refs are good and things should go a certain way. I don't know. I think we talked about this before, but like poker I've never played it; I have no interest; zero interest. I see it when I flip the channels sometimes and see that the heads are low with the sunglasses. Come on. People getting ripped up and talking smack the machismo of this whole slang that's developed. I don't get it. And yet my dad... I remember he talked about playing poker not actively, but he used to, before I was born, played poker. Also thinking he has this remarkable, uncanny ability to, when you play cards, good luck. I mean he'll win. [00:50:08]

THERAPIST: Is that right?

CLIENT: He just and my mom is that way, but my dad is better. My mom is that mathematical person and my dad, somehow, has this weird ability and he's also just lucky. (pause) I guess playing cards I wasn't (pause) wrapped up trying to figure out the cards that remained; whereas my dad, that was on the front of his mind, always remembering what was played. I'll never forget we were playing it's like a super-game memory when we were growing up; Concentration, right? Whatever it is. Only certain things are exposed. You have to keep remembering. [00:51:13]

THERAPIST: You have to make the pair.

CLIENT: Yeah. And feeling like, "Oh, brother," so maybe it's just a weakness on my part and, therefore, I'm against it. I'm not a natural in that way. And yet, (pause) I don't know.

THERAPIST: It's funny. You feel sort of defeated.

CLIENT: Well, yeah. I feel defeated. I know why I brought up the whole game theory thing, because I was trying to solve this where I took a bunch of paper clips. We went to buy some paper clips. I was going to bring them and just set them down, begin to play with it and show Barb, because it's not rocket science. It's an easy-to-learn game. I was thinking about how to actually prove how the game works. [00:52:13] She was all, "No. I just want to enjoy my wine." In a funny way, like she goes, "I'm not that complex." I thought, "Yeah, I'm tired, too. I don't care either." But she's willing to just sort of say, "You can sort it out. That's fine. Good for you. But I don't want to be playing this game." I was thinking, "I don't want to either, really. I have to because it's one of the five problems that I have to solve." But some people, perhaps, would have this real high energy towards this and try and be competitive and try to psych out the game and figure it out and immediately win it. Whereas me, you hear these stories of that guy (ph?) super competitive he wants to win everything. And I think, "Well, what if I'm not that person?" I don't know if I care enough to always win if I'm not interested. [00:53:15] It irritates me if I don't know how to win; and that does bug me. I'm usually pretty unsuccessful at Connect Four, which delighted the kids, but I was like huh? (pause) This science that we'd been studying, I was walking along and I did a double-take. I'm like, "I know this person," and I kept walking. I thought, "Oh. Dr. Oz." Dr. Oz was doing this science thing, some conference. As I was walking, of course, I'm in my mind trying to solve these problems and I'm thinking, "Maybe he's the person who just sort of looks at things and just sort of," I've never seen the show, but you see it advertised all the time "who's just sort of like, oh, okay, right." Or other people who just sort of and I'm not saying that even, who knows, right? Because I assume that he's a bright guy. [00:54:34] He's saying something simple kind of things, maybe American culture primarily, but you imagine people who would say to themselves if they choose to, just to solve the problem. If they'd just choose to put their mind to it, they'd do it.

THERAPIST: Right. Right.

CLIENT: So then it puts you in a position where, if you actually choose to pay attention to something and you can't... (pause) I sort of back in to understanding something, as opposed to seeing and reading it correctly the first time and sort of, "Okay, okay. It's one of those types of problems." Tch-tch-tch-tch. [00:55:33]

THERAPIST: We have to stop in just a minute, but it does kind of just get into that notion of what it means again to struggle and grapple with something. It sounds like when you do there's an association to the idea that there are people out there who look at it and just do it; and it feels like that can feel very defeating to you. It also can lead to an experience of "what does this mean about me and who I am?" I think the Connect Four and the card example is an illuminating metaphor because it's kind of like, "If I can't play well, should I even bother playing the game at all? [00:56:35] Especially when there's somebody who just knows how to win right away." There's a loss of an enjoyment out of the game. It loses the opportunity and the space for fun and enjoyment. It's kind of (whack) collapsed. That must mean that sure, math, struggling with these proofs, for instance, the experience of it is structured along those same lines. It's not like there is an easy open space for you to kind of I mean it sounds like there can be. [00:57:33] It's not unilaterally this way it doesn't seem to me. If you're struggling with it is there room for it to be interesting and enjoyable, like a brainteaser. (chuckles) It's like if a brainteaser is such an evaluation of whether or not you're smart, it's not fun to do a brainteaser then. (pause)

CLIENT: The two women I'm studying with it's always an issue how much studying [one makes time for in a university.] (ph at 00:58:22) They have a hard time explaining what's happening. They struggle and they struggle and they struggle, and then they just sort of [right now clearly understand this,] (ph?) even though they have no proof. [...] (inaudible at 00:58:46) is that my homework is so massive because every problem is written with a preamble of like thinking each step is done in detail and then there's like an explanation of why I did this, and I have to do it. So this one problem that could have taken one page took me two pages, which just ripped me up. Writing and writing and writing. And they're just baffled. So I read it to them and they went, "Oh, man." It was great. They were sort of like, "We should have written that." And I'm thinking, "I wish I didn't have to write that. I wish I didn't (chuckles) have to be expansive in order to back into something." (pause) [00:59:44]Again, a word person doing math as opposed to a math person trying to come up with words so they're engineering people who are struggling until they actually use English; whereas with me it's struggling to use equations, and we get to the same point. (pause) You need both. You need both. Anyway. Here's the deal, we'll come in here and I'll talk about math.

THERAPIST: What is it like? What is it like?

CLIENT: I don't know. It's weird because I'm not sure I know other things are going on in life, like there's an open house tonight, we looked at houses yesterday. All Barbara does is look at houses online. That's been going on. [01:00:45] She made some chili, which she hasn't made before, and it was pretty good. There are all these real-life things going on. There are football games, there is being sick, there is having a headache, there is this, there is that; and yet, I'm fixated on inductive proofs, which are just exposing some sort of weird intellectual weakness. If I could just let it go, (laughs) I would say, "Let's enjoy football."

THERAPIST: I also get the feeling like it's talking about math and it's also a way to talk about something else; almost like math is a way to talk about something more universal, which is what it's totally set up to do. Math is kind of a universal language. [01:01:51]

CLIENT: Yeah. Is it that we talk about philosophy or do we talk about male psychology or shortcomings. What is math a symbol of exactly? What is it I'm drawn to, even though I'm clearly not one who can play Connect Four or Rummy or checkers, or has any interest in any of it, even though they're inherently mathematical.

THERAPIST: All right. I'll see you next Monday. It's Columbus Day. I will be here.

CLIENT: Next Monday is? Oh. The second Monday. It's when business people stay home.

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