TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: Okay. Hello.

THERAPIST: Hi. Good morning.

CLIENT: Good morning, good morning. I meant to bring my checkbook but I'll do so on Friday. So [Jennie] (ph) said good-bye yesterday and I wanted to (laughs) thank you for referring us to her.

THERAPIST: You're welcome.

CLIENT: It was very, very successful and helpful.

THERAPIST: She had that new (unclear) class saying you guys were probably going to finish up soon.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: (Unintelligible)

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah, well the feeling was mutual and it, I don't know, I was very moved. I felt – it was good to let go of a therapist. (Laughs)

THERAPIST: (Laughs)

CLIENT: Actually she mentioned that she had said to you that I might let you go pretty soon, too, but I'm not sure of it as our project is coming. I'm open to it.

THERAPIST: She did not actually mention that to me.

CLIENT: Oh! That's interesting. Ha. Well, maybe I misunderstood her. Maybe what you said was closer to what I understood her to say. Okay, maybe she was just talking about herself. In any case, no, it was nice to say good-bye to her. And kind of a relief to worry about that in this context. Thank God I feel very, you know, better at this point. (Both laugh) But we feel like at least some conflict has been resolved.

THERAPIST: That's great.

CLIENT: Let's see. What else is on my mind?

(Pause): [00:02:00 [00:02:28]

CLIENT: I had a, yeah, this is interesting and troubling, I guess, on the micro-level.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: The macro-level. I had an interaction with a friend of mine Sunday that was extremely difficult. Like I even – it was so difficult, my response was so strong to it that I even considered calling you up and asking if you had any time on Tuesday. But – giving you a long preface without what's going on but – I got through – on Sunday like I just sort of sat and spent two or three hours collecting myself and got through it and felt actually very encouraged by that as well.

THERAPIST: Good. CLIENT: So there are two sides I guess to the story –

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: But it goes on through yesterday. The story is that a friend of mine, good friend of mine, someone I've known since ‘90, so almost 25 years broke up with her boyfriend. They'd been together maybe four years and she'd had a miscarriage during which period they had been separated because he had, I think he's trying to get like a long term visa and you can't come in on tourist visa if you're waiting for that process to –

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: It was some visa issue. So she's going to –

THERAPIST: Geographically separated (cross talk)

CLIENT: Geographically separated and it's not like he can kind of fly in, was my understanding. So she had this miscarriage and you know, she's kind of alone here going through it which seemed horrible.

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: It wasn't totally clear to me whether, you know, what the visa situation was so it was possible that he was just being a schmuck. At any rate, I didn't hear from her for a few months and then I tried to make contact and she said, ‘I'm really in bad shape,' which I took to mean that as I'd been expecting for a little while frankly, they'd broken up. So, you know, periodically just to sort of make contact and see how she was doing and she had said several times in a row, you know, I'm really not up to it, etc., and then finally I sent her a text and she said it was a sweet text and I said you know, ‘do you want to have brunch?' So we had brunch on Sunday. Now I was in the middle of you know, one of my typical writing blockages and just having trouble writing and really, really feeling anguished about it, having said that I would deliver something, etc., which is becoming problematic when you really need to deliver something. It's like urgent. I'm going to be kind of written out of this group, this working group. I'm not and they're not saying that. I've had good conversations and all is good but I need to produce and I'm having trouble producing is the truth. So it was going on Sunday and Sunday I had planned to work and produce and you know it felt like it was urgent to see her rightly or wrongly but I was kind of adamant. And you know she said at a certain point in the brunch, ‘you know, I broke up with [Ofir] (ph) and I said something like, something stupid like, ‘I'm not totally surprised.' What I had meant to say was, ‘I was worried about this in October.' And what I should have said was nothing. I should have said, ‘oh, I'm really sorry.'

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: That would have been the right thing to say as a therapist, I'm sure. (Both laugh) Something you worry about, saying the right thing you know in moments of difficult revelation, right? Well, what I said was not only excessively transparent but put very wrong like I was expecting this to fail and now –

THERAPIST: I see. CLIENT: She took it so strongly that I couldn't quite understand why she would leap to the assumption that I was like, whatever I said was hurtful in its intent. Like, oh you know, I never – and I wrote to her afterwards and I said something like, ‘I didn't understand why you called that ‘wish fulfillment', we just moved on.' She said something about wish fulfillment and that I moved on. I was like wish fulfillment? What are you talking about? Why do you think I would want you to go through such a –

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: – painful experience? And she wrote back this angry message saying, anyway, she wrote back an angry message and I responded, I said, ‘listen, I don't want you to feel any pain and I don't know why you think that I had something against [Ofir] (ph).' I was just trying to go through the various possible meanings of what she was saying.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: Anyway. We went back and forth a few times and she – in the course of which she got increasingly angry at the end of which she said that when she first told me they were getting together I wrote that I heard this guy's name maybe twice before you told me that you guys were seeing each other. I didn't know him. I didn't know much about him. And she wrote back that I had told her when we were having dinner and she told me that they were seeing each other and I said, ‘[Ofir] (ph) you must be really lonely. You should hear the terrible things that so and so says about him.' Which is absolutely shocking to me. I mean, such a mean, ‘you must be really lonely?'

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: One of my oldest friends.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: So, it was very shocking to me and I wrote back suitably, like I have no memory of it. I have a memory of the discussion. I have a memory of the dinner. I remember this. It wasn't – it's not like my memory is completely foggy, but I remembered it completely differently. I have no memory of saying anything like this. So anyway I wrote back a kind of shocked and contrite message and she wrote back a still angry but forgiving message and it seemed like we'll get through it, but one of the various things that are troubling to me in thinking about it that I would say such a thing, that I would not remember saying such a thing, and that and I mean this is not directly related to my psychological state, but you know that our relationship over the last four years, five years or so could have proceeded with this terrible event in the heart of it and me being completely unaware of it and her, like I reinterpret our interactions in a completely different way. You know, this is a relationship that's meant a lot to me. So, anyway. But the psychological part of it really is troubling. I know that (unclear) valuable and I know that it's effected by all sorts of things but that I'm capable of interacting in that way is sobering. And just not feeling like it's something that I'd said that I shouldn't have let out, you know it's one thing to say something hurtful and unintentionally direct and say, ‘oh, Jesus, I'm so sorry I misspoke. That's awful.'

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: But, I so completely didn't feel that way, I even remarked on it. Or you know, maybe another interpretation is that it was a real Freudian slip and it was a little bit altered. Several people said to me, ‘oh, you know, in 2008 you were really in an altered state.' You know you really weren't doing well. So, anyway. So that's disturbing.

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: That, that kind of event takes the measure of your capacity to be a total cad and asshole. Cad isn't really it. It's mean. It was mean to somebody that I'm close to. Anyway. That's on my mind.

(Pause): [00:12:17 00:14:04]

CLIENT: And at the time I was very lonely.

(Pause): [00:14:08 00:14:16]

CLIENT: Which in some ways I guess makes it worse.

(Pause): [00:14:17 00:14:27]

THERAPIST: Why? Did that make it worse?

CLIENT: You know. That if you feel something like it's a comprehensible, hypothetical model and to feel bad and to respond by trying to make somebody else feel bad seems –

THERAPIST: Like you were (cross talk) or something.

CLIENT: – very twisted.

(Pause): [00:14:46 00:14:59]

CLIENT: It's complicated. This is not complicated but the situation is complicated by the fact that all of her friends really dislike the ex-boyfriend, [Ofir] (ph), really didn't think much of him and belittled him and my memory is clearly not reliable about this particular event, or presumably not reliable about this particular event, God knows, right? But my recollection is, very strong recollection is that she had been very defensive even in saying that she was seeing this guy.

THERAPIST: Why?

CLIENT: Because like I'm a little bit out of the loop that she was feeling defensive of, because people said that he was not trustworthy in relationships with women. And when I heard this I felt very upset and I called a mutual friend of ours just to ask her if it was possible that I could have said such a thing and she said the only thing that one can say in that situation which was, ‘I have no idea.' (Both laugh) One of the things she said was that, yeah, that most, many people were very skeptical of her relationship with [Ofir] (ph). Anyway, I mean, so – I don't know, but I feel troubled by my participation in this. And I feel troubled by my, the distortion of my memory and just general loss of the ruling part, you know – executive function, I think they call it these days. That's funny. The ruling part is Marcus Aurelius executive function I think is nonconscious reiteration of it but it's the same thing as the –

THERAPIST: (Unintelligible)

(Pause): [00:17:32 00:17:46]

THERAPIST: Yeah, I mean I'm not (unclear) because one of them is –

(Pause): [00:17:48 00:17:55]

THERAPIST: – both in terms of what you said yesterday, or Sunday, and allegedly said years ago, clearly you felt two very different ways. You know, you on one side if you said those things, presumably there's some truth to your sort of feeling that way, and on the other hand, you feel really bad about that and wish you had done different and care deeply about her and want her happiness. So –

CLIENT: Well, that was what she wrote back, basically, not quite as, not (unclear) put it but – [00:18:40]

THERAPIST: Yeah. So it would seem you feel both that you wanted is harder to get a hold of. Another curious thing is like what you allegedly said a few years ago. I mean no matter what you thought of him, what you said was as much sort of directed at being hurtful towards (cross talk) – [00:19:11]

CLIENT: Yeah! Now that's something that I really feel bad about. You know, saying (cross talk)

THERAPIST: (Unclear) an asshole. [00:19:17]

CLIENT: Yeah, if you say that's a bummer and probably would make it a little awkward to hang out together which we did not hang out together afterwards for reasons that I didn't understand because I didn't remember this, but, no it was saying, ‘you must be really lonely,' I mean that was just like, I don't know, forgiving that is a challenge. A challenge. I don't know. I hope I didn't say it.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: Like there's no, there's nothing to say about it. If that's the way it registered. That's it.

THERAPIST: Right. And then on Sunday as well what you said hearing they'd broke up. Yeah, I don't know as does that include why at that moment what –

(Pause): [00:20:37 00:20:43]

THERAPIST: – sort of mattered more to you as having been occurring than saying something about it like, ‘sorry to hear it,' or whatever.

CLIENT: She said, ‘you may have figured out by now I broke up with [Ofir] (ph) and I said something like, ‘yeah, it wasn't a total shock.' I said something like, ‘yeah, I kind of figured out and it wasn't a total shock,' or something like that. Something, it was, yeah, I mean she said – she got very mad you know, like I kind of thought that this was coming a few months before and she got very mad and said – or not, she didn't like yell and scream and there wasn't like a break in our conversation but she said something like, ‘no we had not broken up for January,' I guess, Spring/Winter break, ‘that must be wish fulfilling.' And then there was a silence and we just kind of stopped and moved on. You know, obviously the conversation was much more halting after that which, a fact I actually attributed to my being distracted, like I didn't – clearly I saw that this was a break in our, in the conversation. This was like something that I had to write back and explain or something. Since I wrote that in my e-mail but I didn't in the course of the conversation and this very upset feeling that I had later that day, I didn't identify it as being related to this conflict that we'd suddenly come into.

THERAPIST: Wait a minute. So she says, ‘you may have figured out that [Ofir] (ph) and I broke up.'

CLIENT: Based on interactions that we'd had in the new year.

THERAPIST: Yeah, okay. CLIENT: In the new year.

THERAPIST: Within the year.

CLIENT: And I said, ‘well, I kind of figured that this was happening in November, I don't know, I don't remember exactly how I put it after her miscarriage. I didn't mention miscarriage explicitly but – and then she got upset and said, ‘no, we had not yet,' I mean you know, she's going through something and so some of it is the fact that she feels hurt and upset and confusion I'm sure about the timing of their breakup. I mean to be perfectly honest like you break up with somebody four months after you have a baby together and she miscarries, well, she's alone. I mean you know, allowing her to break up with you unless she just said, ‘[Ofir] (ph), I don't want to see you anymore which kind of isn't the way it sounded like. I don't know. I mean I don't want to be prurient, or prying or whatever, but it doesn't sound right. Something doesn't sound right. Anyway, she was upset that people would think, I don't know, whatever. I'm having trouble untangling it. But that was the way it unfolded. She got very angry about this and I'm prone both apparently to feeling like it's my fault when somebody else feels pain automatically and actually causing them pain without really knowing it, or being aware unconsciously, supposedly. Maybe that's what's so difficult about this. It's like that's probably it. It's like the nightmare situation come true. I've kind of come to a consciousness that in fact it's usually not my fault that when people feel pain and hurt I'm not the one who is responsible for it. And now all of a sudden, it is my responsibility. There is a very direct sense in which I really was not only culpable – no, was not only responsible, but actually culpable. Like I did something that was sort of morally wrong and caused pain and –

THERAPIST: Well.

CLIENT: – I'm just exaggerating a little for the sake of effect but that's why it's so upsetting to me I guess, is that I kind of come to a sense that in most of these cases or in many of these cases the default assumption in such case where somebody else is feeling difficulty and I'm feeling responsible for it that's a neurosis and here is an instance in which there's apparently a fact of interaction, that it's not a neurosis, that I actually am responsible.

THERAPIST: Yeah, I'm not convinced it's not at least in part the neurosis. (Chuckles)

CLIENT: Okay. I'm just telling you what's –

THERAPIST: No, no, sure – here's why I'm wondering about that. You know when you first said it you said, ‘oh, yeah, she told me she broke up with this guy, and the first thing I said was this is – I may not be any of it verbatim – this is how it, sort of the sense of it seemed to be as you said it.

CLIENT: You can play the tape. (Laughs)

THERAPIST: Okay. Was, you know she says she (unclear) for four years and just had this miscarriage with and yet the first thing I say is, ‘oh, yeah, you know I kind of thought that might happen. And you know, I, it's clearly not what I should have said and I feel really bad about having said it and I should have said something,'

CLIENT: I'm sorry.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Like, ‘I'm sorry.'

THERAPIST: Yeah. But then you tell a little more of the story later and you said, "well, in fact, she said, ‘well you may have figured out from what's going on that he and I broke up' and you say, ‘yeah, back in November I kind of thought that might be happening." That's very different, at least to – that's a very different context for you to have said that. I mean you know, she's saying, ‘you may have figured this out and you know back then I had an idea,' and then she like has a cow about the timing. ‘Wow, it wasn't that (unclear) [00:27:40] You weren't like, that actually doesn't sound to me – yeah, that's not quite the same thing as she just sort of puts it out that they broke up and the first thing you think of is well you kind of knew it was going to happen, you know? That's a pretty different story.

CLIENT: She brought it up a few times.

THERAPIST: She brought up the timing and also attributed the knowledge of it to you. She said, ‘oh, you probably knew.' And you said, ‘yeah, I thought so.'

CLIENT: Anyway.

THERAPIST: She made makes a big deal about the timing and then –

CLIENT: That's why you come to a shrink – to feel better.

THERAPIST: (Laughs) And then she has a cow about it and then you feel horrible and you come in and tell me what you probably have been feeling which is, ‘oh my God, I'm such an insensitive prick.' Look what she said and look what I said,' but that's not actually what happened. And of course this makes me wonder like, and what did happen four years ago, you know? I mean who knows – maybe you weren't as dickish at that moment as she made it sound, but I'm not convinced based on what happened on Sunday, you know? Both in that you like, the two of you seemed pretty willing to agree on a pretty different version in the way of what was going on on Sunday and so –

CLIENT: Okay. Well prior to, I mean,

THERAPIST: Obviously, I don't know what happened a few years ago – CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: I mean it may have been just as she said but –

CLIENT: Sure, sure. I wrote back. I said, ‘what are you going to do?' I just said like I don't remember it that way at all. If I said such a thing I was just a horrible cad, basically, and –

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: And I feel ashamed at the possibility of having said it and I'm very sorry that I hurt you. And that was it and she responded in a conciliatory fashion, so –

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: I don't know. I mean, whatever. Like the, yeah, I mean it's the reverberations that are interesting, I guess, from our standpoint, it's not the reality of the situation.

THERAPIST: Well, they're both interesting. I mean, of course you want to know if you'd said it and if you did deal with whatever could have led you to say something like that.

CLIENT: Can I bring up something completely unrelated?

THERAPIST: Whatever you wish.

CLIENT: That has come to mind as we were talking.

THERAPIST: Yes, please.

CLIENT: Forcefully?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: So one of the things that was going on, in fact, the thing that I thought was going on that was causing me to be so upset and not this –

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: – was that I wanted to work and felt great disturbance over the fact that I wasn't working.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: And generally that I ought to be working and yet was not working. I remember feeling this very distinctly and coming home and just being wrecked. Wrecked and feeling as if what was wrecking me had nothing to do with this which it may well have done –

THERAPIST: I follow you.

CLIENT: – but in fact was my inability to work. As we were talking, as you were reacting and reflecting on what I'd said, the thought in my mind was, ‘I really should be working.' I'm really going to need run fast to get home to do work – work that I have not been able to do effectively for the last four weeks or so despite getting a fairly munificent tithe. You know, things are beginning to move and I fear that they'll move on without me and I'll be abandoned and it's this same impulse just to go back and work and not to engage in this process that comes to mind when I can't run. Like I can't run. I need to be working. You know, working, sitting and working precludes my running – I can't, do you understand what I'm, I'm making an association between –

THERAPIST: Yeah, between – CLIENT: two or three different settings.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: And there's consciousness of just being pulled towards something that I actually can't do. In fact, I can't do and feel very brutalized, almost by – if that's not too melodramatic, by not being able to do this and wanting to do it and just being diverted from it and yet it's a pull, you know, the thing that I'm not doing is just this black hole into which all of these interactions and non-interactions and not avoidance of other –

THERAPIST: Well, in each instance there is a kind of opportunity to give some space to ways you're feeling bad about yourself and that could help you feel better that you anxiously don't want to take advantage of. I'm sitting here saying something reassuring among other things, perhaps, reassuring about what happened on Sunday and you think, ‘oh, jeeze, I really ought to be working. What am I doing here? I'm going to have to book it home and get to work.' Or when you're trying to go running I imagine it's hard like you want to be going running, it's good to be going running, then it feels like it could break and something you kind of feel good about, clear your head or whatever and you kind of can't let yourself do it sometimes because of the sort of anxious, probably guilty compulsion to go to work instead. And maybe it was like that on Sunday as well where you wanted to think about what happened, or go over it, or something that was a little less clear because that was maybe painful as well and you think, ‘oh, jeeze, I really ought to be working. I've got to get to work.' Maybe it was that you actually finally seeing your friend after a while and whatever. I suspect there was some opportunity there to like get some space on how you felt and think things through or do something that was going to make you feel better but you kind of couldn't allow yourself, you're feeling that you ought to work instead. And I think it seems to line up –

CLIENT: It does line up. It's not that it's mysterious.

THERAPIST: Yeah. CLIENT: It's just – it's not mysterious. I don't even – it's not like a complex mechanical, psycho-mechanical phenomenon, it's just striking. I don't know. I'm struck by it. You know, what it means is that this state of mind of feeling like I need to work, feeling like not working is damaging to my relationships and to other things, it's capacity to suck everything else inside it is extreme.

THERAPIST: I see. Yeah, it seems a bit different to me. Like – it's not that I disagree with what you say – I don't actually, but it sounds to me it's much like you use the work in this sort of masochistic way.

(Pause): [00:36:34 00:36:39]

CLIENT: Masochism implies that I get pleasure out of it.

THERAPIST: Okay. Self-flagellating.

CLIENT: Work into self-flagellating. What does that mean?

THERAPIST: Like you're sitting here talking to me. You feel horrible about some of the things that happened with your friend, really disturbing. I'm saying, ‘hey, (laughing) (unclear) maybe you weren't such a bad actor, you know? Like, who knows? But –

CLIENT: And that moment, at the moment you say this, at the moment that you offer me reassurance, I bring up something completely different which is painful.

THERAPIST: Yeah. And that I imagine – yes. Short version – yes.

(Pause): [00:37:22 00:37:30]

CLIENT: I feel fear about the work. I mean it's kind of all-pervasive right now.

THERAPIST: But it wasn't so pervasive, like it wasn't what just talked about for a half an hour.

CLIENT: And that was true.

THERAPIST: It became scary I think right then when I was talking.

CLIENT: Ha. And the hypothesis that you're offering it's really, it's very strong right now, like at this moment it's very strong. Suddenly, it's just sort of taken over. What you're proposing is that this thing which was not here until you offered encouragement was invited, invoked because you had offered encouragement because at some level I feel as if my natural state is not to be without some reason for self-recrimination. Wow! You sticking to that? (Laughs) Okay. What do we do?

THERAPIST: (Laughs)

(Voices outside)

CLIENT: Maybe we should ask that guy. (Both laugh)

THERAPIST: Building maintenance I believe. (Laughs) I've consulted him before. CLIENT: Did you consult him through the door? (Both laugh)

(Pause): [00:39:30 00:39:47]

THERAPIST: There's one other way I could frame it that might be a little simpler. It's sort of like I'm saying, ‘hey, maybe you weren't such a fuck up over there,' and immediately you think of –

CLIENT: ‘Hey, look over there!' (joking, laughing) (unclear)

THERAPIST: (Both laughing)

CLIENT: Maybe I wasn't a fuck up over there but I'm definitely a fuck up over here.

THERAPIST: Exactly.

CLIENT: Oh! I don't know, man. It's sounds like something somebody could do.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I feel a little disembodied from it, I confess.

(Pause): [00:40:20 00:40:41]

(Alarm sound)

THERAPIST: Sorry.

CLIENT: Does it mean anything?

THERAPIST: (Both laugh) Not that I know.

CLIENT: Okay.

(Pause): [00:40:43 00:40:52]

CLIENT: Even if it is my fault.

THERAPIST: (Both laugh)

CLIENT: You win again. Yeah! I mean if it's true I am operating at some level in a way that is very automatic.

THERAPIST: Yep.

CLIENT: And what I can say using the resources of my conscious mind is that I'm not aware of doing this.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: So what when you say it, I say to myself, ‘whoa, wow, that sounds like something you might read in a novel, but I don't feel like an intimate connection to it, it just feels like something that if I'm doing sounds very weird.

THERAPIST: It isn't (cross talk) the story you told me about Sunday. CLIENT: That I felt, oh – yeah.

THERAPIST: But you made yourself out to be much more of a fuck up and it worked.

CLIENT: I made myself out to be much more of a fuck up and it's also true that I didn't know I was feeling bad.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I was feeling bad for reasons that just in some sense seemed disconnected from their cause almost as if they were a completely separate phenomenon which you're proposing they actually were. These feelings, these feelings are distinct from the causes that I attribute to them. And that's really what you're saying, right? You know, if you know if the feeling bad is primary and the reasons for feeling bad that I'm adducing are irrelevant so that if you reassure me about one I immediately come in with another, then it's really feeling bad is primary. I feel like I need it – I'm kind of wedded to it. But we'll talk about this on Friday. Yeah. I got you now. All right, Josh. I'll see you then.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: There was some relevance to that a lot wasn't there.

THERAPIST: I guess there was.

CLIENT: I'll see you.

THERAPIST: Take care.

END TRANSCRIPT