TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
THERAPIST: Do you want to tentatively plan on the Tuesday one?
CLIENT: Yes, but I fly back from San Diego late Monday night and it’s supposed to be kind of snowy, my favorite weatherman predicted.
THERAPIST: Would you rather plan on the Wednesday one?
CLIENT: No, I’d rather tentatively plan on the Tuesday one, but I’m not sure what to do about the weather.
THERAPIST: Got you.
CLIENT: So I guess it matters what you would rather do. (pause) [00:01:09]
THERAPIST: I think that Tuesday will be fine.
CLIENT: And if my flight is canceled?
THERAPIST: Let me think about this and just send you an e-mail. We don’t need to think about this now unless you want me to do it now?
CLIENT: No, I can just tell you on Monday if my flight is canceled and you can tell me when there are more times. What was the Tuesday later time?
THERAPIST: 11:10.
CLIENT: Any of those are fine.
THERAPIST: Okay, but the early ones are better? [00:02:03]
CLIENT: Yes, they’re a bit better. What do you want to do?
THERAPIST: Today is Thursday. I will make a note and let you know in the morning. (long pause) [00:03:21]
CLIENT: It’s still light out at 4:30. (pause) I’m worried about [] Buddhist practice.
THERAPIST: Did you say you’re worried about it?
CLIENT: He’s at Yale. He’s delivering lectures. I didn’t know what they were until last week.
THERAPIST: I still don’t know what they are. [00:04:03]
CLIENT: They are some fancy invited series of lectures where Yale pays somebody –usually it’s a poet.[] I just read in this week’s magazine came for lectures sometime early in the [ ] (inaudible at 00:04:29). It’s like six lectures spread out over the semester and they’re in the big theater and there’s a lottery to get tickets. Do you have the sense of []?
THERAPIST: He had one or two pop instrumental songs, but he’s more like a jazz composer guy. [00:05:06]
CLIENT: He’s probably one of the most three or four still alive influential jazz musicians in the history of jazz.
THERAPIST: Oh, wow. I did not know that.
CLIENT: He has spanned so many parts of the evolution of jazz. He’s a pianist and was a child prodigy pianist. He grew up, basically, being a professional musician from when he could play piano and had a sense. He defined his own and had his own way of playing but has also played with some of the most famous and great musicians who aren’t alive. [00:06:08] He has done a lot, just keeping on being creative and keeping on letting the music evolve.
THERAPIST: He’s really a giant.
CLIENT: He’s a giant. Yeah, he’s huge. Some of those pop tunes were nominated for Grammys. Those are a great example of his ability to just reach way into a different direction from the [ ] (inaudible at 00:06:44). He’s giving lectures. I don’t know what he’ll be talking about, but I know about it because the other Kelly in my life, who is a trombonist and a third-year [metho-musicology] (ph?) PhD student at Yale, is the director of our jazz group. [00:07:12] As a graduate student or as anyone, you can apply to be a arts fellow. You get paid a little and you get some money to do the work you want to do. She’s the jazz fellow.
Two music giants are at Yale – [], who has been famous since like the 1960s, and [], who is another pianist, a contemporary, very cerebral, Indian-fusion, and has a PhD in brain music cognition, some interdisciplinary thing he may have. His music is very heady. They’re both visiting. [] has a tenure-track position at Yale starting now, and he’s teaching a class. [] is giving these lectures and they’re both around Waltham a lot this whole semester. So Kelly is kind of helping them both. She started out wanting to take both of their courses or whatever Herbie is doing – I don’t think it’s a formal course – but she is now TA-ing for both of them because they needed someone to help and has showed them around campus. [00:09:05] Our little Kelly-led jazz group is playing his music. We hope he might come and coach us at some point. It should be cool. He offers office hours every week and she really wants us to go to his office hours as a group. So that is the deal. This is not related, but Kelly also asked me to take over for her position when she goes to do field work in South America next year; and I declined. [00:10:05]
THERAPIST: Congratulations, though.
CLIENT: Oh, thanks. I was sad to decline. (pause) It’s not glamorous to be a musical leader, especially when I’m not working on music during the day. It seems like it would be a recipe for being torn all the time. [00:10:58] I led our student college [ ] (inaudible at 00:11:04) band at Vassar, which is enormous on campus. [00:11:09] It has a huge presence and I led that my senior year and it was so consuming. My whole heart was in it – and it was probably because my brother is the drummer and Jeremy was in the band, too. But I had recruited, by hand, other people over the course of the year, so it was very tender. I can’t imagine having that different of a relationship if I were to take a leadership role with this group; plus I don’t know when I’d paint. I have all these things. [00:12:00]
I was talking to Kelly yesterday, just in passing, and it seems like most of what I want to talk about always seems to steer people’s condition that they find themselves in to love and attachment and suffering and grief and play, letting things unfold. There is this whole theme that’s emerging in front of me. In my science world, no one wants to say these words or talk at this level about anything, and it’s killing me. It’s really, really hard to be in my lab these days. I’ve scoped out the few people who will sort of be at that level with me and I talk to them all the time. [00:13:03] Kelly is here and I wasn’t really interested in chatting too much, but she engaged me and she is awesome. She’s opened up a lot more to me recently. She was telling me about her boyfriend and that it gets very complicated and this and that and she’s supposed to give a talk on the theology of play as part of this national touring music group that they’re in. She wanted to talk to me about play. (pause) We talked a bunch about that and jazz improvisation. Of course, I also think of other realms, like this. [00:14:05] I imagine if there is some kind of collaborative visual art thing, maybe it would be similar – intense play in the doer, in the person, but also intense opportunities or interactions that seem playful with the other. We talked about it in the context of music, which is really very much in the moment and very (pause) open to countless endings or directions within this structure, kind of like the . . . (pause) [00:15:57]
I’m thinking about what it would be like to want to break down the structure in my jazz group the way I do here and wondering what it would look like. Would I go over to the drummer and take his sticks and try to play drums? Would that be the level or would it be like I decide I’m not going to read the music? Yeah.
THERAPIST: There are analytic readings of that [ ] (inaudible at 00:16:50). Going over to the drummer and taking his sticks. (chuckles) [00:17:01]
CLIENT: Yeah, that could be pretty hot and also would break the rules in multiple ways.
THERAPIST: There’s the sexual part joined together with breaking the rules apart and the taking charge part.
CLIENT: Yeah, and the fact that [ ] (inaudible at 00:17:29) broke my heart [ ]. (long pause) [00:18:02] But of course, I still feel totally like I don’t belong in a jazz improvisation context, like my ear isn’t good enough and I’ve studied way too long and developed way too inappropriate habits around playing, listening. Whatever it is, I have a lot of trouble and I don’t practice. When I’ve tried to practice in the past, I’ve sort of been overcome by an impatience to catch up, but it’s like not a really effective practice. But over the course of the last couple of years, my playing has changed a lot and my attitude has changed a lot. [00:19:02] It’s sort of just like letting it be, not really trying too hard to do anything that’s different from what comes up on Wednesday nights, which is not a particularly dedicated root forever with music. I hope that, at some point, I hope that I will immerse myself in it again. But the times that I feel freest now, again how much I’m not preoccupied or when there is as little structure as possible, but structure of a certain kind; so like his music is so freeing to me. [00:19:59]
Let me see if I can explain. The traditional structure, like a jazz team, is kind of like the way you might imagine a classic American song-book song, where there are a few verses and a chorus and maybe some alternate section – you go back to the chorus and a couple more verses and the chorus. But only the harmonic part of that is kept. You might play the melody once at the beginning. [00:21:01] And then the meat of the experience is you sort of stay within the bounds of the general sound, so the harmony is the same, the chords that are being played by the harmonic instruments, like piano and base, guitar, if there is one. But the melody is completely improvised and that might happen for several rounds with one person playing. Usually the time is pretty standard, like there are four beats to a measure and somehow that’s easy to count and I think that’s how everyone learns. [00:21:58] But in classical music you’re never going to see, other than contemporary stuff, you’re never going to see rhythmic groupings that are different from four, maybe three beats per measure. [] doesn’t really have a harmonic structure. He sort of has this play whatever types of sounds, groupings and notes, and make whatever types of sounds you want. There’s not really an expectation of what you’re improvised melody will sound like, except maybe there is one note that he sort of will come back to over and over again. Then his rhythmic groupings are really whacky. There are some times in seven or maybe five or switching between three and four and three and four and three and four. [00:23:01] It’s sort of like a march with no other expectation other than that you’re marching this weird way, like in seven. That’s what his music is like. It’s very pensive. It’s kind of like a chant, the way that it sounds when he plays it, but it’s not homogeneous. That’s the best I can do without playing his music for you.
THERAPIST: Do you want to play some of it?
CLIENT: Sure.
THERAPIST: It’s up to you.
CLIENT: Will you pull something up of his? I don’t have anything with me. [00:24:04]
THERAPIST: Sure. Do you mean on my phone?
CLIENT: Yeah. Your iPad might have a better speaker, but you’re recording. It’s going to be [ ] (inaudible at 00:24:19).
THERAPIST: It’s only like [ ] (inaudible at 00:24:42) if you’re on a phone.
CLIENT: I might ask you to put on headphones, but it’s fine. [00:25:00]
THERAPIST: I have headphones if that’s better.
CLIENT: Yeah, but then we don’t get to listen to it together. This is [ ] (inaudible at 00:25:09). (music playing)
THERAPIST: Can you turn it up a little? I’d like to hear it with headphones.
CLIENT: [00:25:54] (music playing) [00:26:56] That’s the end of his written melody. (music playing) [00:32:18] You can stop it now. There’s another five minutes. I realize that it might be hard to react to that in a vacuum like that, [without something more] (ph?) standard to compare it to, but that’s his music. (pause) [00:33:25]
THERAPIST: I imagine you wish I could clearly understand and relate to it better.
CLIENT: Sort of. I’m not overcome by frustration or disappointment or anything. It’s kind of nice to just share it with you without too much of your own [higher-ness] (ph?) [00:34:01] So I think it might be nice the other way, but it is nice this way, too. Also, what they were playing is just sort of pure, spontaneous, and interactive sound without really any precedent for it. And now we’re at the part where it should sound like the chorus and the part that should sound like the verse. [00:35:03] When we play it. it obviously sounds very different. I don’t have too, too much to say on my horn, so there are not as many notes; but somehow it’s much more freeing for me to play his music where there is no sense of what it’s supposed to sound like. But there is a really strong rhythmic cycle of seven that’s odd enough where, if you can just get the feel of the seven and play with it and ply it, that’s enough of a stimulating act for me to just hang out there. [00:36:07] People like Jeremy and Kelly, who have a lot to say in the standard paradigms, are having trouble with this music. (long pause) [00:37:24] When we got done playing and Kelly and I were talking for a while, I was talking about love with and without attachment. She was talking about it with me and was like, “We should really go and sit down with him. He sort of checks out this stuff, too.” [00:38:03] “Like what stuff?” He’s got a pretty intense – whatever – practice and has contributed somewhat to our Buddhism dialog. He practices Nichiren, a style of Buddhism, which is this Japanese chanting. The biggest formulation of it is in this group; I’m forgetting their name. The word [gokai] (ph?) is in it, in this chanting practice or lineage. [00:39:03]
THERAPIST: It may be a little culty. I’m not sure.
CLIENT: I know. This is why I started with it, but I’m worried about Herbie’s Buddhist practice. It’s really bothering me that we’re not all doing the same thing. There is this other girl that I ran into from college or something and somehow it came up that she does transcendental meditation. I have the same really worried preoccupation, that we’re not all . . . There are so few people who practice in this style in any realm of this style who aren’t focused on believing in God. [00:40:10] I don’t know why that seemed like the alternate to me and why there has to be only two choices. It feels like there are only so few people, but then within . . .
THERAPIST: You’re not even thinking together.
CLIENT: We’re not. We’re just doing all these things and they’re doing crazy things. (pause) I met this -ren guy on a bike. He wasn’t following me, but he sort of latched onto me when I was on my bike and he was on my bike, coming off the [ bridge] (ph?) and biking into Waltham. [00:41:02] He started talking to me and I was talking to him and in the 12 blocks we rode he told me all about this practice and what it’s like. [It didn’t seem like the transcendental meditation that you can know about. It doesn’t sound like you can know much, the way that it’s structured.] (ph?) You have to sort of be in.
THERAPIST: I don’t know much about it. [I’ve heard about it,] (ph?) but I don’t really know.
CLIENT: They both strike me as being another defense or another shield. [00:42:07] I don’t know what the Lotus Sutra chanting – that’s what they chant in Japanese . . . I don’t practice it either, so I can’t really say much; but what to do with thoughts and feelings in practices like those seems like they kind of get treated as being in the way instead of the way. So I don’t know if I want to talk to []. [00:43:05] I’m pretty nervous about it, too. He’s so big. (pause) I had a lot of youthful, charming charm in college, where I had no fear and would jump at opportunities to meet people like this and I did it whenever I could. It was always sort of exciting and charming.
THERAPIST: Something just made you self-conscious when you said that. Do you know what it was? [00:44:00] (pause)
CLIENT: When you smiled at me I felt naïve, not like broadly naïve, but naïve about what we’re doing here and how, in that moment, I felt more aligned with you than with either of those practices; with you and with this practice of insight meditation, and that you were smiling because it’s like maybe I was taking a Jay-centered view about the way and not the way. [00:45:12]
THERAPIST: I didn’t follow the part about you feeling naïve. I get what you feel about what you assume I was thinking, but I didn’t get what you mean about your thought that I imagined you were being Jay-centered.
CLIENT: I said something about what I thought the way is, and it’s formed by such a youthful, narrow first-impression. [00:46:00]
THERAPIST: I see. It’s a little like you were wearing the big grown-up shoes?
CLIENT: Yeah. (scoffs)
THERAPIST: And I was smiling in a kind of amused and maybe patronizing way?
CLIENT: No, I don’t think it was patronizing, but yes, amused and also maybe touched. (long pause) [00:47:41] But not for the reasons that what I said was Jay-centered, like for some other reason that I don’t know.
THERAPIST: I guess it made you feel a little unguarded. I’m not saying you’ve been especially guarded. I guess I did have a thought while you were talking about music that it was a little like taking me on a ride. I don’t mean taking me for a ride or in the sense of [gravity controlling bus driving,] (ph?) but showing me stuff that matters a lot to you and that you know a lot about and that you were introducing me to or acquainting me with. [00:49:08] I guess somehow that turned a bit and, instead of feeling more grown up and knowing – not in a bad way, just more grown up and knowing – I guess maybe what it was, was that you said something that could have sounded that way, then being a very nice turn of phrase. [00:50:00] But it caught you off guard a little bit, like you were trying or you don’t really know as much or something.
CLIENT: Yeah, and maybe like you do know or you know more.
THERAPIST: Right, like “I thought I was this grown up, but now – oh, my God, these shoes are too big. My clothes are too big.”
CLIENT: (laughs) Yeah. It’s hard to explain why those types of meditative practice bother me, in the first place. It has something to do with feeling like I’m in clothes or shoes that are too big and it’s like hard enough and big enough and [lifetime-ready] (ph?) enough to just wear them or keep checking them out. [00:51:11] There are all these other big clothes and shoes out there that other people are wearing. You are wearing yours and they fit you and they are what they are. I don’t really know what they are, but maybe in that moment I imagined that they were the same ones that I was trying to wear. (pause)
THERAPIST: I think maybe there is a part of it captured – actually, maybe both sides are captured pretty well by [], in that on the one side, he’s a giant. [00:52:02] In a way, I could imagine that could make you feel small and, on the other hand, be actually skeptical and critical.
CLIENT: Yeah. I just found this out. I’ve been listening to [] for ten or twelve years. This new piece – it doesn’t really matter to me what he is too much when I listen to his music, but somehow the prospect of meeting him or him being around or giving lectures, his whole person-ness is seeming more important. (pause) [00:52:59] It’s not like I have tried all these practices and have lived a bunch through each of them and have what I have and then I’m going to talk to []. It’s like I have just put on these clothes and I have not grown into them; and I’m going to go ask him why he’s wearing his brand or something. Maybe I’m not going to ask him anything, but in my head I’m asking. (pause) [00:54:24] So why did you smile?
THERAPIST: When you said that? (pause) I’m not entirely sure. [00:54:59] If I can think of a reason that it seems like is useful to say, I will say; but I don’t want to speculate until I’m clear that it would be useful and appropriate, I guess.
CLIENT: I think that’s the heartbreaking thing about this right now. (long pause) [00:57:06] I’m thinking that could be heartbreaking. I feel sorry for the fact that that’s how it feels to me. I could see how it doesn’t have to be; maybe you smile and maybe I smile and that’s actually where the real amnesty is, not in hearing what you have to say. It felt like I just speculated a whole bunch and didn’t actually have anything useful to say myself, but still I talked. [00:58:06] (long pause) [00:59:15]
THERAPIST: There are moments and things that make this feel like it’s more an analytic relationship; and then there are heartbreaking moments like this. [01:00:22] (pause)
CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) I don’t know what an analytic relationship is. [01:01:14] I don’t know what it really looks like except for what we have which, as you said, sometimes feels [ ] (inaudible at 01:01:22). (pause) And maybe that’s what an analytic relationship is here. (long pause) [01:02:50]
THERAPIST: I think there are probably [closer ways] (ph?) to talk about it. (long pause)
CLIENT: Yeah. (long pause) [01:04:52]
THERAPIST: I’ll have to do some more thinking about this, but my immediate association is to an experience of mine when I was a senior in high school. There was a college that I really wanted to go to and visited and spent a weekend. I had some friends who were there. I went out with them and went to the theater or something and helped clean up the set afterwards. It was very comfortable and easy. I felt a part of what was going on. And then I didn’t get in. That’s what I’m reminded of. I’m not saying it’s the same. (pause) [01:05:56]
CLIENT: I can’t concentrate on what we were talking about because you told me a story about yourself.
THERAPIST: I hesitated because I thought of it and thought that it would probably convey, in ways that I’m not yet clear enough to convey, more explicitly what your experience is. Then I was also concerned because I kind of imagined it felt a little bit seductive in a way. [01:07:08]
CLIENT: I think I’m past that.
THERAPIST: Okay. Yeah, we talked about it. We talked a lot about it in here.
CLIENT: You think if you really, really tried, if it seemed like you were trying to seduce me or if I . . .
THERAPIST: I don’t mean . . . Go ahead. Finish.
CLIENT: I think there are two different things. There is neither person is trying to seduce the other person.
THERAPIST: If the college had said, “You know, Jay, why don’t you stay the whole week?” or “Why don’t you go tell us which dorms you really like?” That’s what I mean.
CLIENT: In telling the story? [01:08:07]
THERAPIST: That’s my concern, but it may be unwarranted. At this point, it may not matter. I don’t know.
CLIENT: I don’t know either. My first instinct was to say that I’m past that. It would be like you saying, “That’s very, very generous and I would love to stay a whole week, but I know I’m not coming here.” [01:09:02] That’s sort of how I feel. It’s different because the seductive currency here means – I don’t think it’s seductive – but the inviting currency here, I think means a lot on its own, by itself, in the moment. Also over the course of my life, having those exchanges with you, like whether or not I get in or if you stay a whole week at one college but you’re really going to go to another college, it may not actually mean a whole lot in the end to you to be offered to stay the week. [01:10:13] Maybe it means a lot to be offered but . . . (chuckles) This is getting . . . (both laugh) I think we’re getting to the edge of the college. Maybe not. I take it back. It’s sort of how I feel. I’m not going to another college. I’m not going to college or something. (both laugh) (pause) [01:11:14]
THERAPIST: There are parts of you that, in various ways, want a different kind of relationship with me and I think there are times when you’re talking when you are in the fantasy that that’s what this is; at other times, clearly, [even not here,] (ph?) where it feels like it’s not. [01:12:11] (pause) I think it was slamming into that a few minutes ago that made you feel heartbroken and that you were referring to it when you were saying that’s how this is heartbreaking. [01:13:04] (pause)
CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) That part to me is very dodgy. What I mean is like yesterday, a lot happened yesterday. The German word [fensucht] (ph?) – I think that’s how you pronounce it – I came upon the German word when looking up the Portuguese word. There is this concept in Brazil that I didn’t know existed. [01:14:05] I knew the concept existed. I didn’t know there was a word to capture it. It came up in some music review in some very, very powerful South American music. It’s the word that the Tuareg people use to describe their music and was really similar to this concept in Brazil, [Faudade] (ph?). I feel so relieved that this is an important enough human condition that there is this whole cultural weight around this word in Brazil, Faudade. [01:15:03] I don’t just run away with this super-fast train with Faudade and it’s encouraging me to talk to Brazilians, of which there are a few on my floor and read about the way this word is used. I think I know everything about it. I don’t need to hear anything. It’s kind of like if it were like maybe you should talk to someone else about transference, it would be like why? It would be interesting to hear somebody else’s experience, but I don’t need it. The direct experience is too strong or so strong that I don’t need somebody else’s direct experience to inform mine. [01:15:59]
THERAPIST: [ ] (inaudible at 01:15:59) Waltham is.
CLIENT: Yeah. So Faudade is an emotional state or a condition where you feel a yearning or wanting for something and maybe you kind of know what it is, but you don’t really know what it is and it consumes you. It’s very heartbreaking, but it’s also very happy because maybe you have nostalgia about the way things were or maybe you have a fantasy or maybe it’s even less defined than that; you just have these peaks and valleys of joy and sorrow. [01:17:01] So the way that the Tuareg person described his music is between happiness and sadness. It’s like what the space between that is and it feels lost, longing, yearning, sort of a very big, profound state. (pause) So I think there is an awful lot of that here. (pause) [01:18:13]
THERAPIST: I also think sometimes here it’s integrated and sometimes here it’s a little bit more split. (pause) It used to be more split, where you’d feel more of the positive parts here and more of the negative parts outside. I don’t think it’s like that in the same way anymore, but that’s sort of what I had in mind and also maybe it shifts at different times. [01:19:03] (pause)
CLIENT: I think it’s really hard to know whether I know that I’m not getting into the college. It feels really different from earlier on, where I’m a lot more comfortable with the fact that I want lots of things that I won’t get. [01:20:04] It was really, really, really unsettling that I wanted them. It’s also unsettling that I won’t get them, but that’s what’s changed a lot, too. I don’t know if it’s as simple as “I’m over that, Jay.” I think it’s like I’m over it, but it still breaks my heart; and anyway, it’s not binary like that, so it’s hard. [01:20:58] (long pause)
THERAPIST: I’m not sure, but I think there may have been a bunch going on in that moment that brought you up short a little while ago.
CLIENT: The moment where you . . ?
THERAPIST: Where I said that, basically, I’m not going to say why I smiled when you said that.
CLIENT: Yes, unless it’s useful or appropriate. [01:22:02] (pause)
THERAPIST: You had just finished talking about how that was a moment where you had felt unguarded and small.
CLIENT: I’m right that I may have touched you.
THERAPIST: Yes. (pause)
CLIENT: It felt like then you go and close the gate.
THERAPIST: Yeah, and I said I’m here to work.
CLIENT: Like oh, sorry. [01:22:58] (pause) (sighs) But it’s not that simple because the way you said it was . . .
THERAPIST: Yeah, you’re right. I’m misrepresenting my tone.
CLIENT: Yeah. It didn’t sound like you were conflict free about it. It seemed like there was some thought and care and recognition of how kind of relaxed it might be to speculate or not speculate about that. [01:23:57] (long pause) Why do you often look at me after I look at the clock? (chuckles)
THERAPIST: I wasn’t aware of that.
CLIENT: You do it. (pause) Or maybe those are the times you’re looking at me and it feels . . . [01:25:07]
THERAPIST: Like you feel self-conscious?
CLIENT: Yeah, or like where the other times, I usually don’t. (pause)
THERAPIST: Another thing that I was thinking of when we were talking a bit ago was about how you use the couch, which I think today is ha, ha, ha, ha – (chuckles) sorry – with the same tension.
CLIENT: Yeah, like getting in or not getting into the college. Or like being invited to stay for a week or not being invited to stay for a week.
THERAPIST: Have you?
CLIENT: [ ] (inaudible at 01:26:28)?
THERAPIST: It’s like this is not going to be traditionally another thing, but it kind of is. (pause) [01:27:01] There is a lot that happens between us because we’re looking at each other, which I guess I think there is something about that. I guess what I have in mind captures something about the word, but the word you just said, the Brazilian word. [01:28:07]
CLIENT: F-a-u-d-a-d-e.
THERAPIST: Faudade. (pause)
CLIENT: It’s sort of not like a real choice. It feels like this made-up choice. Here is this history of this field and here are the functional uses of using the couch in a traditional way and here is how other people do it and here is what it was like when I was trained. [01:29:02] None of that really means anything that much to me, so it’s like I don’t use the couch the way that all those other things might have me . . .
THERAPIST: None of that is your tradition.
CLIENT: Yeah, like if you had asked me to use the couch in a certain way, that would bring a really different meaning to it. I still might not do it (both chuckle), but that brings it into the room. Whereas the other things . . . I don’t know. Maybe if I knew more about the tradition or had a more traditional root to getting here, maybe I would be more respectful of the traditional couch use. [01:30:07] (pause) We don’t know what’s going to happen. (pause)
THERAPIST: What do you mean?
CLIENT: Like maybe my use of the couch might change some day. I’m not dead set against it; it just doesn’t fit. [01:31:04] It doesn’t feel like a fit right now. (pause)
THERAPIST: I guess I’m just saying I think it feels like it doesn’t fit for reasons related to what we’re talking about. [It feels] (ph?) too far away, I think, and also restrictive and like it was depriving you of the way you manage what’s going on and how you’re feeling. [01:32:07] Sometimes you like to sit up and I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m just saying I think it’s . . .
CLIENT: I think that’s an unnecessarily proactive reading of it. I agree with you. I think it is partially about managing, but why is it also about receiving? (pause) I want to receive things from you that I can’t when I’m in this position, in this configuration, with respect to you. It’s partially about managing, but why is it also about receiving? (pause) I want to receive things from you that I can’t when I’m in this position, in this configuration, with respect to you. [01:33:06] (pause)
THERAPIST: I think I had that in mind when I was referring to it as feeling somewhat more distant, but then you wouldn’t see me or take in my reactions.
CLIENT: Yeah. You’re not just a voice. [ ] (inaudible at 01:33:51). (both chuckle) Never mind. [01:34:01] I feel a weird mix of feeling self-conscious about my use of the couch and being disrespectful to something that I don’t know anything about that might arise if I used the couch differently and sort of not honoring your tradition. (pause) I also feel a little bit like who asked you what you thought about my use of the couch anyway? (both laugh) Why does that have to come into it? (pause) [01:35:02]
THERAPIST: I see. I think I’m feeling to you – whether in some sense I’m being this way or not, we put that aside – but I’m feeling to you a bit distant and traditionalist and maybe imposing.
CLIENT: No, you’re just feeling like a challenge, which is good, I guess.
THERAPIST: If I thought it was better for you to do something in a different way or I didn’t like this, I would say something.
CLIENT: Yeah?
THERAPIST: Yeah. (pause)
CLIENT: Okay.
THERAPIST: We should stop.
END TRANSCRIPT
