TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: So I don't forget – so I (unclear) this Friday and next Friday.

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: I do have openings at 5:15 both Thursdays.

CLIENT: No. I'll be gone both tomorrow and following and if you have something Monday or Tuesday that might work. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, (unclear) as meeting Wednesday.

THERAPIST: Let's see. Let me look to see if I've got something Monday or Tuesday.

CLIENT: Okay.

(Pause): [00:00:46 00:02:09]

CLIENT: I think the bill was for eight sessions, I believe. Is that right?

THERAPIST: I don't know.

CLIENT: You don't remember. Okay. I should have printed it out before I came. Well, I'll cut a check and –

THERAPIST: Okay.

(Pause): [00:02:22 00:04:00]

CLIENT: I kind of lost the thread.

(Pause): [00:04:00 00:04:25]

CLIENT: I'm not sure.

(Pause): [00:04:25 00:04:31]

CLIENT: Hard for me to see where we are, see where I am, directionally. I had a sense that (Pause). I had the sense that we were kind of needing to distill something and I'd like to reconstitute that.

(Pause): [00:04:55 00:05:06]

CLIENT: And constitute the moment we arrived at last week.

(Pause): [00:05:08 00:05:21]

CLIENT: There are times now when I see very clearly, you know, I kind of look forward in myself and there are times when I feel a little bit frightened by my ability to see that. So at the moment it's a little bit clearer in my mind.

(Pause): [00:05:43 00:05:59]

CLIENT: You know I worry about having a kid with an unsettled professional situation and I think I also worry at a grander level maybe about taking a step when the others aren't yet taken, when things are not yet resolved. In other words there are few big things that I want that I didn't know that I want and think one of the things that I've struggled with all along really is intuition probably – not very helpful intuition but a sense that if one isn't – if something isn't resolved, if I'm not ready then I can't take a step in any of these domains. I mean it's a kind of recipe for inaction but that's the sense. In other words if the job situation is resolved I can have a family. If family isn't resolved then the job doesn't happen. I can't run a household then having a family (unintelligible). [00:07:31] So I tried various combinations and this is the one I came up with and I think it's all right but you know, whether it's residual or genuine and pragmatic and probably some combination of the two I worry about still struggling not only to make my way which is hard enough but you know, this problem of working. I had a very simple thing that I agreed to do on Monday and all day it took an hour and a half this morning. It was not particularly involved or high level kind of production but just took all day yesterday and I still don't understand why. I have ideas.

(Pause): [00:08:27 00:08:36]

CLIENT: And I guess I get invested in not understanding why or at least that's the kind of default state. So the truth is that I can probably come up with two or three reasons why but, you know, they would all be plausible, God knows how right or wrong they would be. That's probably not even a meaningful criterion, but there would be ways of making meaning of a very kind of confusing and painful, I guess state of being but I'm not sure how much they help other making me feel –

(Pause): [00:09:14 00:09:27]

CLIENT: And I have them in the moment and I don't feel better so maybe they don't make me better.

(Pause): [00:09:30 00:09:38]

CLIENT: Pre-emptively, no.

THERAPIST: (Laughs) That sounds like a thread.

CLIENT: [I was joking] (ph) [00:09:49]

THERAPIST: Oh, okay.

CLIENT: That was a thread I remembered from our last –

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. Thread, yeah.

CLIENT: Oh, a thread, not a threat.

THERAPIST: Oh, no, no. That's (cross talk) (unclear) a threat.

THERAPIST: Okay.

(Pause): [00:09:57 00:10:28]

THERAPIST: It's a little nihilistic.

CLIENT: Nihilistic? What's nihilistic?

THERAPIST: Well, you know, ‘I have ideas about what it could be. I could figure it out but even if I did. Who knows if it would be right? It would just be to make myself feel good.'

CLIENT: I'm not nihilistic. I'm discouraged. Come on, don't – it's discouraged. I'm discouraged, you know I've been – this thing has been on my back for four years, you know.

(Pause): [00:10:54 [00:10:57]

CLIENT: What do you mean, nihilistic?

(Pause): [00:10:58 00:11:02]

THERAPIST: Are you – first of all it sounds like you're responding as though you're being accused of something bad, or I'm accusing you of something – bad?

CLIENT: Self-indulgent, I don't know. To me nihilism is not productive.

THERAPIST: Yeah, I did not mean it that way at all. I was saying it more like you know, you – maybe there's a way you can feel so lost and distant, basically so much like there's no ground beneath your feet that it seems that even if you have an answer that seems like a plausible answer, you know, truth is so up for grabs that it could make you feel better but there's no possible way to know if it's true and maybe like, that's what I –

CLIENT: Pessimistic. Being pessimistic.

(Pause): [00:11:57 00:12:00]

CLIENT: Philosophically pessimistic. I mean –

THERAPIST: What I mean is like actually I don't mean to be attacking in a physical way. I mean to be very specific which is it sounded to me as though you were expressing a belief that even the feeling of something being true about your experience, you know, is only – it doesn't have much substance to, like it just happens to be the thing you believe at the moment and that's hopefully comforting at that moment and there's nothing more (unclear) worrying about it than that which, you know, sounds consistent with this feeling of disconnection from – you know, you're talking about other things from last week. That's really where I was going. It's a very anxious sort of state. That's why I'm making (unclear) by it. [00:12:58] Although I –

CLIENT: Yeah. No, I hear you.

(Pause): [00:13:03 00:13:12]

CLIENT: You know, I no longer have the sense I guess or the confidence – maybe that's better – that you know figuring out what's going on is really of any value in changing it.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: Or maybe a more moderate way of constructing that is that I feel burdened by my inability to take any of that insight to kind of reality test it or assess it and act on it in a way that creates some kind of change. I just don't – I see a persistent – I see it's persistence and I think I'm pretty good at coming up with conceptual frameworks for these things, some of which may make sense, some of which may be fanciful. But I clearly am not good at implementing some response to these things. It's still there.

THERAPIST: I see what you're talking about. (Unclear) is I guess –

CLIENT: I'm not as anguished as I might be in another circumstance and I was ultimately able to do it. I'm not failing so maybe that's some progress.

THERAPIST: I think what's going on is this. I think often in the past clearly you've wanted to make sense of things. But I think there's also a way in which you sort of or anyway tried to make like at times a kind of pseudo sense of things, I mean something particular by that, like you're incredibly good at coming up with sort of models and ways of arranging things you know, that fit the data. The difficulty for you, I think often can be that that goes on at a kind of intellectual level that can be at some distance or kind of disconnected from other ways you feel about what's going on. Like there's sort of a gap there and I think it's because of that disconnect that the models don't last. They just crumble over time. They go away. There's – some make sense which they haven't sunk in or don't capture important aspects of what you're feeling and I think you don't believe in that way of doing business in the way that you used to and that's what you're talking about in terms of not believing, nothing's making sense.

CLIENT: Okay. Anyway. Yeah. I mean, maybe. That sounds reasonable. (Laughs). But, I don't know, I can't, I can't – I'm having a hard time connecting that with my experience.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: And at some level, you know, my experience is not really in a domain in which that makes sense either. In other words, you know, sort of a classic problem or what must be a classic problem of trying to describe in this rationalistic way experience that's (unclear) rationalistic. So – I don't know. I mean it's just not rationalistic, not rational. You know why it's just, it took a day and a half to do this task that took an hour and a half has nothing to do with – I don't know, I'm not sure, I'm finding myself at a loss. All I know is that basically for the last, what – seven years now, seven and a half years I've been sitting – I'm not coming back to this, so (laughs) I'm aware of that, too. But you know I've just been like noodling it for seven and a half years and it's still like the same thing. You know it's not different. It's not that – and I think I've come to a great deal of insight and I think that all of these things are to the good. I'm not disputing that. But I've just – right now at this moment, and obviously not for the first time, but at this particular moment the familiar feeling that I'm having is just being burdened by the challenge of implementing insight or have an answer or what have you and taking something from one domain of experience is kind of – you know the domain in which these analyses make sense to a completely different domain and experience which is the domain of which you know, my executive functioning is impaired.

(Pause): [00:18:51 00:19:03]

CLIENT: Or maybe a completely different domain [Gall] (ph) comes back to bed.

(Pause): [00:19:11 00:19:16]

CLIENT: I just start screaming. A domain I have no conscious connection to. So what do I do about that?

(Pause): [00:19:22 00:19:48]

CLIENT: And just the last thing I'll say at this moment is that you know as I say these things I don't feel like sometimes when I'm in this mode I know it comes up now and again, but you know I really feel like actively despairing. I feel okay, you know, like I finally got up this morning and I sent this thing in. I had to get up at 3, 3:30 and deal with it and you know it took me longer than I would have liked but you know I did it and that's fine. So I let it – as I say this, you know it's almost an echo itself. It's like right now I'm feeling okay and I can talk about whatever, but like I don't know, I feel challenged by it in a way that is not dependent on actively feeling just dislocated. Do you know what I'm saying? I feel kind of equilibrated right now, I feel kind of centered. I don't feel, I don't have a sort of anxious, upset, disconnected feeling internally and yet this is really burdening me, the burden [lives] (ph).

(Pause): [00:21:06 00:21:30]

THERAPIST: You seem also as someone who is probably like mostly, unconscious to feel I think in a kind of a struggle with me over it. I'm not – you know I don't think you're sitting there sort of consciously thinking that way but in the ways you sort of feel accused or ask me, ‘so what do I do about that?' It felt a minute ago like you're kind of, in a very mild way, sort of throwing down a gauntlet, saying you are more or less frightened.

CLIENT: Yeah. You were suggesting that I'm having an impulse or a tendency to sort of strike myself in relation to people in a state of conflict. At least that is what I took from what you said.

THERAPIST: Yeah, I think there's some kind of feeling or substrate of like we're kind of wrestling over this in some way.

(Pause): [00:22:29 00:22:36]

CLIENT: I don't know. I mean I remember distinctly that on Friday I felt very good natured and not like I wasn't, if I was doing that and I trust you that I was, not only was it unconscious which would be interesting, but it was not accompanied by the kinds of feelings or emotions that usually accompany conflict. In other words I wasn't feeling anything but benevolent towards you. I wasn't feeling like you are not benevolent. It was like, it was purely psychodynamic in a, I mean it was like, it had to do with I don't know, just the way, sort of basic motive interaction is – I'm fumbling for something. It wasn't like I was angry. I mean like with the emotions that one would think would go with conflict, weren't there.

(Pause): [00:23:47 00:24:16]

THERAPIST: (Laughs) I'm taking up a (unclear) – yeah, they kind of were. I asked you what was on your mind and you gave me the finger and you were kidding around but you did and I said like, ‘hey, what's up with that?' And you had sort of constructed a situation in which I kind of had some answers and was withholding them and was pushing you to work and I said, ‘no, I really don't know what to say.' It's sort of like I need to hear –

CLIENT: But that wasn't – we talked about that. It wasn't that construction was so very long-term construction. It had to do with my assumptions about the way that this relationship was constructed. It was not as if in the moment I felt like we were in conflict I was angry about.

(Pause): [00:25:04 00:25:08] CLIENT: I don't think. Maybe, I don't know. Entirely my assumptions, but. I have a very distinct recollection of just feeling not amused, just enjoying our repartee and I have in the past sometimes gotten feedback that what I enjoy as repartee felt more like conflict to somebody else, you know that they felt like I was jousting in a way that was sometimes they didn't enjoy as much as I did. But okay. I mean, you know, well taken. But, I don't know. I don't remember, I don't remember feeling pissed off. I don't know if that's meaningful. I don't remember feeling pissed off. I remember not feeling pissed off and feeling kind of – I felt, I guess, kind of in control in a way that one wouldn't if one was in the middle of a conflict. Now, that being said, you know, many of, you know, yesterday and just in general, I had an assignment – a funny way of putting it to begin with when I have put some work I'm trying to produce – it's inevitable that there will be another party that I'm imagining expecting this, you know, being dissatisfied with what I'm producing so that there's some conflictual relationship that is ratcheted up the longer it goes without my being able to produce it.

THERAPIST: I think –

CLIENT: You know, so this tendency to create conflictual relationships or to, you know, constitute a conflictual character to a particular relationship is, you know, as strong as, particularly strong when in the process of trying to make something out. Whatever it might be. You know, my initial, I don't know, sort of stream of consciousness is that is specifically related to the writing process, but the truth is you know it could be room cleaning, it could be just any particular task and often is. It's not specific to one kind of production, one mode of production (unintelligible). [00:28:03]

THERAPIST: (Unclear).

CLIENT: As the Marxists would say. It's not specific to knowledge production or industrial production.

(Pause): [00:28:11 00:28:29]

CLIENT: I don't understand why I'm not running. It's completely bound up in my sense of needing to produce things. And what delays my writing is the sense that if I run I won't be able to do the things that I need to do over the course of the day but as I discovered yesterday, I don't end up doing those things either until at length, I just have to go to bed a little bit early and wake up at 3:30, just a stupid way of dealing with it. So I don't understand it. I don't understand why this sense of conflictual and threatening recipient of what I'm working on should interfere with an activity that so clearly is beneficial and satisfying to me like writing. I think in the past you proposed that I was punishing myself for something. It doesn't – it's possible that I can kind of see how that would work but it doesn't really jive with my experience. What jives with my experience is that this conflict or threat just crowds everything out, like crowds the ability to do everything out. It's just all just forced out of there, you know, including my ability to really think things through by this sense of threat.

(Pause): [00:30:02 00:31:17]

THERAPIST: Yeah, there's certainly the sense that, or I have the sense that it's like if you were to take a break from this – and the fantasy is that if you were to take a break from the struggle let's say to work, and go running, you know – all would be lost.

CLIENT: Oh, yeah.

THERAPIST: Yeah, you wouldn't be able to get – I mean clearly it's not the half an hour or hour the running takes that, you never (unclear) [00:31:50] that it's, you know the kind of fantasy about something not going right that would really get in the way of the work. And I guess the image that's coming to my mind is that though you're in a wrestling match and if you stop and think about something else for a few minutes, you're going to get pinned.

(Pause): [00:32:09 00:32:25]

THERAPIST: At least to me (unclear) goes together with the idea that even in your sleep you're often holding on pretty tight to that – or pretty consumed by it. It's hard to let go of it there, too.

(Pause): [00:32:42 00:32:49]

CLIENT: It doesn't ring a bell. At the risk of saying, ‘no,' it might be true what you're saying, but it doesn't ring a bell. So far as I can reconstruct it, the thought process is something like, ‘you know, I really should be working.' You know, working means sitting at the desk. It doesn't mean going out and running. That's kind of recreational. You know, it's what a lay about might do. I don't want to be a lay about. You know, it's just kind of these self-critical troupes and I say to myself, ‘well, you know, if I run I exert myself.' Random stuff like that. I mean it's not, I don't recall ever thinking that I don't know, maybe that's the same as what you said. Maybe it overlaps.

(Pause): [00:34:10 00:34:16]

THERAPIST: It's really curious to me, I mean, the idea that running is lazy and what a lay about would do. CLIENT: Somebody that has a lot of leisure time. Too much leisure time.

(Pause): [00:34:29 – 00:34:40]

THERAPIST: It's significant I think like ‘lay about' is somebody who is being lazy which seems to be at odds with somebody who's out running and similarly, I would guess if anything, work probably helps – I mean running probably helps you think and work. At least that's often the case for people. It sort of goes against what you, I mean –

CLIENT: And yet the last two months I haven't been running. What does that tell you? After having gotten myself to a state where I was in really good shape –

THERAPIST: Right. I guess I'm referring to your thought you know, running would really get in the way of work.

CLIENT: I know. I'm not agreeing with it. I'm not promoting this idea as (cross talk) analysis.

THERAPIST: My point is like (unclear) and say, ‘see, you're wrong and something,' and he says like, ‘these are curious thoughts to have about – ‘

CLIENT: Yes. I agree. I agree that they're curious thought to have whether or not, they're certainly not doing me any good that I can see but they're very persistent and difficult to dislodge.

THERAPIST: And they do, I think, both of them –

CLIENT: Look, look – can I tell you how I experience this?

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: It's like when I was running there was a framework in which it made sense. Like I was getting out every day and I was incrementally increasing my distance and it was just like it made sense. And then something intervened. Something related to work and I suddenly lost the framework, lost the conceptual structure that surrounded it and made doing this daily activity a regular phenomenon. And its regularity somehow just went out the window almost overnight for reasons that I can't quite fathom and then it ceased to exist. Then after it ceased to exist, getting it back is almost impossible and this applies to projects, it applies to relationships to some degree. I mean it's like that's what happened – I mean my experience of this happening is that like the image of it was lost. Like this platonic image in its relationship to form and it's relationship to the world of men and women was just somehow lost. I can't see it now. I can see the shadow of it on the wall of the cave, but I can't see it.

(Pause): [00:37:25 00:37:33]

CLIENT: And you know it's clear to me that what intervenes in this process is clearly the process, or cognitive phenomenon, is clearly very important to my ability to relate to things, is anxiety about work, principally. You know, about my prospects, about my relationships, about these various things that appear and reappear in my thought world, but I don't know how to get it back. I've lost it. Or I'm challenged to get it back once I've lost it. And there's some creaky, very creaky sort of mechanism that makes it much more laborious to get it back once I've lost it. That's how it feels. Whatever it is, is another story, but that's kind of how I feel.

(Pause): [00:38:33 00:39:16]

THERAPIST: So (unclear) is off on Monday or Tuesday, otherwise I'll see you (unclear) from today.

CLIENT: A week from today. All right. See you then.

THERAPIST: Okay.

END TRANSCRIPT