TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: I'm going to be out on next Friday. (pause)

CLIENT: Friday is the...

THERAPIST: Third.

CLIENT: Third, yea. (pause) (sigh) So let's see. It's been a week, I guess. (pause) But I guess what I'm struggling to reconcile the kind of urgency of my state of mind, being, et cetera before the trip... last trip to New York [0:01:02] And I don't... my sense of some exigencies that I'm not really addressing right now. Principally among them sort of the job situation in which could potentially be resolved by something in New York that I'm kind of working on but not with a lot of redundancy. And I know this is true for Jennie (ph). And I think it's true for me in a way that it's kind of always been true. But it's sort of household order. It's not even household order. It's like routines of order. [0:02:02] (pause)

I mean, it's clear to me and we've talked a little bit about the relationship between the kind of state of being inside and sort of the immediate external environment. But it's the immediate external environment that is really bothering me at some level. On the implications of not being able to really order or organize myself and my routines and so on are troubling. And reinforce just this feeling of being out of control that I think is very closely related to this real sense of this like immediate emotional sense of distress that I was (inaudible at 0:03:03) a couple of weeks ago.

I mean, just the sense of being at completely at loose ends. It's not with all kinds of direct physiological implications. It's just not being able to sleep and just feeling very undone. There's a feedback loop between them and not being able to resolve that still. I can see the loop but not being able to resolve it still is troubling. I mean, I feel troubled by it. I feel just sort of directly, concretely, tangibly burdened by it.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: I think the last time because when I left I said something my recollection is that I really wanted to come back to the job thing.

THERAPIST: Yea.

CLIENT: That was kind of the point at which we parted ways last. So there is something concrete to hang this on. [0:04:01] But it's really hanging... I mean, I think beyond the practical implications which are significant. It really is a case study as well as (inaudible at 0:04:13). It feels like... it feels exemplary of all of these things from the micro to the macro level. They really all seem to be. Maybe that's just the way that analysis works. But they really also do seem to have a very similar structure and relation to the part to the whole. (sigh) (pause) [0:05:00]

I mean, I guess at the last thing that I'll say is that this morning I finished something and delivered it when I said I would deliver it. And it was decent. But the point being that the sense of ease or fluidity or cogency just sort of emotional sense of mastery that accompanies that is very consistent with the way that this always functions and the inability when it was kind of hanging over me the inability to do anything including ordering my immediate space. And this kind of feeling of oppression that comes along with having something to do that I haven't done yet is also very consistent. [0:06:01]

And I've always hoped, I think or had the delusion maybe that it would be some way of leveraging this feeling of accomplishment and just sort of the general sense of equilibration to spur a change. But I think one of the things that's troubling me right now or that I'm at least chewing over is I don't know a suspicion that it's actually a part of the whole. That this sort of...

THERAPIST: (inaudible at 0:06:41).

CLIENT: Yea. As it's a much of a problem as anything else. It's not a solution. It's not a change in state per se. It's just a kind of a reflection of this dynamic this kind of reverberation between one... a state of dis-equilibration and a state of equilibration. It's not that I can't equilibrate.

THERAPIST: Right. [0:07:02]

CLIENT: It's that I'm finding it very difficult to do so consciously or at the time that it's necessary or that... I mean, there's something interfering. Not with the capacity but with the process. And so a part of the process that's being interfered with is the ability to use... what am I grabbling for? The delusion is part of the process. The sense that if only I could feel a sense of mastery, then I would be able to change this dynamic is a part of the problem. Some external input is necessarily. Right now it's a closed system. [0:08:00] (pause for two minutes)

THERAPIST: I guess I'm trying to think of (inaudible at 0:11:08) going on. (pause) And... (pause) [0:12:02] Well... (pause) [0:13:00] It's not a closed system. (pause) You get to a point in your work or in here where I think the feeling grows that you're kind of doing your part and the other person isn't as in it sort of with you or doesn't have your interest in mind. [0:14:17] And then you kind of stop or shut down and really wait for some indication from the other person that they're with you in some way. [0:15:05] And kind of simultaneously distance yourself pretty considerably from like this sort of motivations and like intentionality for a whole bunch of things to some extent the feeling of being alone. But especially the kind of intentionality about kind of what you're doing. [0:16:17] (pause)

CLIENT: Yea. I mean, the one modification I would make to that model is that often I'll find myself when there is somebody that I feel an affinity for, I'll find myself without as much intentionality as I would like and sort of testing that relationship by one means or another sometimes. Often, in fact, work related or relative to...

THERAPIST: Yea.

CLIENT: ...maintenance regular maintenance. [0:17:12] Functions of regular maintenance that ought to be accomplished on and sort of probing...

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: ...reliability function. I agree. I mean, I think we're in agreement and on the same page about the attachment component. That's... where I'm struggling is with the affected part of it which, again, does seem to follow this sort of cyclical... so the relational component is well described by this model that you just presented. [0:18:00] It doesn't describe the experience very well. Maybe by design, it doesn't describe the experience very well. I mean, the point is to kind of abstract an experience of trying to figure out what's actually going on. But by that same token, at the level of experience of what I feel and the way that I...

THERAPIST: I think I just... something just occurred to me.

CLIENT: OK. Go...

THERAPIST: (inaudible at 0:18:26).

CLIENT: No, no, no. Interrupt, interrupt.

THERAPIST: Maybe the reason that... because there is consistently, I think, that gap that we run into between the model that we have about which, as you say, we're kind of on the same page. And the experience you have, right? [0:18:56] Like we can both say, well, you're sort of simultaneously like shutting down and sort of waiting to get some kind of response or confirmation or something from the other person and sort of probing for that. And in the meantime, shutting yourself off and distancing yourself the awareness that you're shutting yourself off. And you're sort of in some sense unconsciously pulling the string in what's going on. It's like there's the model.

But then your experience of it is very different where you say like essentially, "You can say all that but what I'm aware of is I can't work and I can't clean my house. And then I phone call from Jack (ph) and magically it's all better. Sure the model makes sense. In my head, I get it. But it feels like there's a brick wall between understanding that and actually reacting in a different way."

CLIENT: I mean that would be the external input. That would be what modifies the closed system and yet there's not feedback between them. [0:20:04]

THERAPIST: But here's... so here's the... my point is actually... and I don't think you'll take this critically. I certainly don't mean it this way. The whole way you arrange it is actually quite self-interested.

CLIENT: (chuckling) OK.

THERAPIST: And that's OK. That's what people do.

CLIENT: Expand on that. (chuckling)

THERAPIST: It sure is hell is against the whole ethos that you profess. Not really, but in a way in this situation. So like in other words this thing where you shut down and you don't work or you don't clean. And you're kind of also probing and testing to see what the other person is going to do and whether they're going to respond. Like that's totally about self-preservation. You're worried about your place. You're worried the person isn't going to come through for you. You are backing... I mean, if you were purely collective in a moment like that, you'd just keep working. [0:21:04]

CLIENT: Oh, collective?

THERAPIST: Yea.

CLIENT: Well, that's another wrinkle. That's something we were talking about last week. But I think that's different from the feedback between, I think, between the kind of experience and this attachment model.

THERAPIST: I guess to me it all seems part of the same thing.

CLIENT: You do. (chuckling) I mean, it's literally part of the same thing. I haven't gotten any problem with it.

THERAPIST: I'm right. Yea.

CLIENT: (laughing) I haven't gotten any problem with it. It's the same thing.

THERAPIST: It's the same to me. Yea.

CLIENT: So... but I'm not quite getting the thought. I want to. I'm all for a harsh critique. And then I don't want you to even to caveat it if that would be helpful.

THERAPIST: Sure. (inaudible at 0:21:38).

CLIENT: I'm happy to be self-critical but I don't quite get it. (pause)

THERAPIST: Like the way that I see the sort of relational/attachment piece on one side and the collective vs. individualist piece on the other as kind of being together. [0:22:03] Or being sort of the same thing.

CLIENT: Oh, I see. So it's the dissonance between the two of... I think that was kind of the way I was presenting it last week that the attachment issue is kind of the dissonance between the two of them. It's like you're acculturated in a tribe of Amazonians and you end up on Wall Street. And you kind of have to reconcile the distinction between these two cultures.

THERAPIST: Yea. That you're like acculturated among in a group of people who are sharing underwear and you wind up in New York with people who are... some of whom are sort of very ambitious and that are in it for their own being. And...

CLIENT: And I am too. I mean is that what you're saying that I am, too? I'm also... I mean, not in a kind of culpable way but that, at some level, I'm one of them.

THERAPIST: What I'm saying is that this dynamic that you perpetrate...

CLIENT: Yea.

THERAPIST: ...is considerably self-interested. [0:23:03] Like when you say, "I'm not doing the work for you guys anymore because I feel unsure of my place here."

CLIENT: Yea, that's self-interested.

THERAPIST: That's self-interested.

CLIENT: I'm not being collectivist.

THERAPIST: Correct. And maybe that's why you distance yourself so much from like the way you're carrying it out. I mean, in other words, you never come in and say, "I'm shut down but I can kind of tell. I can feel like I'm doing this probe." It's never like that. It always is like we kind of abstract from what's going on.

CLIENT: And then I say that in fairness. Not when I feel it acutely, though. It's only... that's me. That's me.

THERAPIST: Yea, yea.

CLIENT: I feel it. When I feel the... when the experience is really acute or even kind of acute as I presented it this morning...

THERAPIST: Right. That's why there's magic.

CLIENT: ...it's kind of the same (inaudible at 0:23:54).

THERAPIST: You magically shut down and magically revived. It's because you're allowed to have those motivations in the moment. And I think the reason for that may be that you keep at a distance. It's like it's a very self-interested kind of...

CLIENT: Self-interested because... oh, so you're saying that being conscious...

THERAPIST: What's actually being said...

CLIENT: ...of the motivations for the action is intrinsically self-interested. And so because...

THERAPIST: Then the whole point is you're pissed off at everybody else because they're being self-interested.

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: And you're acting in a self-interested way.

CLIENT: Like the very fact of untangling it is self-interested and so I can't get near it.

THERAPIST: Yea.

CLIENT: (chuckling) That's interesting. That's an interesting thought. Like even this is self-interested. So I mean, even... I don't know. I feel that... yea. [0:24:55] Well... (pause)

THERAPIST: It's like oh shit. I'm not acting any better than they... than what I'm accusing them of being.

CLIENT: Yea. I can...

THERAPIST: I mean, I think it feels that way. I'm not saying that's necessarily true. It depends on the situation. But...

CLIENT: Well, I guess... let's see. Let me chew on that for a moment.

THERAPIST: Sure. (pause)

CLIENT: At a conscious level, I've completely reconciled myself to the fact that I have not this environment in particular necessarily but I have to become familiar with and bound to a social system and sentence structures is substantially self-interested rather than collectivist. That's clear to me.

THERAPIST: Yea.

CLIENT: It's dawned...

THERAPIST: You're not saying...

CLIENT: ...on me progressively.

THERAPIST: ...I don't want to look for a job. I want to move to a farm or a collective. [0:26:01] I...

CLIENT: No.

THERAPIST: Clearly that's not what you're consciously saying there.

CLIENT: No. I'm saying... I mean the whole...

THERAPIST: It's not about the job.

CLIENT: Yea. I mean, so at a conscious level I've committed myself.

THERAPIST: Absolutely.

CLIENT: The... it's been a process...

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: ...to disentangle myself from a sort of lingering affinity for commitment to a sense of yearning for a different way of operating. But I know that there isn't. It doesn't exist. There's no framework that I could possibly inhabit at this point that would support me that genuinely cleaves to that model and in fact the one...

THERAPIST: Why do you feel exceedingly betrayed by it?

CLIENT: I feel very betrayed by it. That is true.

THERAPIST: There's a presentation as though that model is an ideal.

CLIENT: Yea.

THERAPIST: But I think you very much have a feeling it never was.

CLIENT: Never was and...

THERAPIST: (inaudible at 0:27:04).

CLIENT: ...it was even sort of proposed instrumentally in the way that exploited me. (pause) (sigh) So as far as I am consciously aware at this point, I no longer have that... I no longer labor under that delusion.

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: And I no longer have anything but the...

THERAPIST: Yea.

CLIENT: ...lingering remnants of that yearning which may in fact be a little bit bitter, frankly.

THERAPIST: Yep.

CLIENT: Not too bitter.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: A little bit bitter.

THERAPIST: Yea. But your emotional life is kind of similar also on this issue.

CLIENT: My emotional life is kind of similar also on this issue.

THERAPIST: Yea, so kind of somewhere else.

CLIENT: Somewhere else.

THERAPIST: I mean, as you say, like consciously here's where I'm coming from either capitalism (inaudible at 0:28:01).

CLIENT: My emotional life is, I think, still substantially imprinted by...

THERAPIST: Yea, I think so too.

CLIENT: ...that template and...

THERAPIST: That's what I'm saying, yea.

CLIENT: ...I'm finding it very difficult to as I'm saying earlier to kind of change that dynamic. The dynamic, the sort of oscillation that it implies that this struggle or tension or conflict implies even though the conflict no longer really exists at any conscious level. I'm no longer appealing simultaneously to a sort of social setting in which there is no genuine unself-interested collectivism.

THERAPIST: Yep.

CLIENT: And simultaneously to the sense that that's the way that it ought to be. And yet I'm still behaving as if I was still in the grips of that conflict.

THERAPIST: Yea.

CLIENT: And I don't... I feel troubled by my inability to break free of it. [0:29:03] I feel...

THERAPIST: Hugely troubled.

CLIENT: What's that?

THERAPIST: Hugely troubled.

CLIENT: Yea. I feel kind of panicked at times.

THERAPIST: Yea.

CLIENT: I mean the feeling engendered by the conflict that no longer exists is so strong. And I mean you saw it two or three weeks ago. I was just... I mean, I was utterly devastated. I mean, Jennie (ph) was begging me to find some psychotropic solution because it was so... it was just so disruptive. I was just suffering. I was suffering for something that doesn't exist anymore. It was like a conflict that no longer exists what's making me suffer like that. As if, I don't know, you were to walk around Nagasaki today and all of a sudden just be swept off your feet by this atom bomb. [0:30:00]

THERAPIST: Yea. (pause)

CLIENT: So I don't know what to do about that. I feel and to make this a little more concrete I don't know what to do about it in the specific context of needing to figure out how to build some redundancy to my employment prospects without really having a clear sense of why it's so difficult.

THERAPIST: Well, I think you're still really a believer. And really upset at having been betrayed in it. [0:31:00] And so you find instances everywhere that replay it.

CLIENT: (sigh) Still really a believer, huh?

THERAPIST: Yea. You act that way and you feel that way a lot. (pause) [0:32:00]

CLIENT: So your job is to destroy my belief. (chuckling)

THERAPIST: That's an interesting way of putting it. (chuckling)

CLIENT: I'm joking, I guess.

THERAPIST: I know you're joking. But I think that's also probably a very telling joke and a projection in a way. (pause)

CLIENT: Maybe. (pause)

THERAPIST: Like where you set it up, you divide your dilemma and give me half of it. [0:32:58]

Where in that version, you kind of want to nobly hold onto it or loyally hold onto it. And I want to take it from you or tear it down.

CLIENT: What would you prefer?

THERAPIST: I would prefer figuring out what's going on with you. And helping you to make somewhat more conscious decisions about how you handle this.

CLIENT: OK.

CLIENT: And also help you (inaudible at 0:33:47) whatever grief you have over it. (pause) Those are the things I want. (pause) [0:34:00]

CLIENT: (sigh) (pause for one minute) Obviously grief is the right word. And I guess by that token or metaphor, there's no need to destroy it. It's gone. (chuckling) It's gone. At least not living. (pause) That explains some things. Metaphor or one thinks about it. I mean, grieving for somebody when what's happening, you're managing some coordinate organizing interaction and it's inexistent. [0:36:08] It's OK. (pause) Fair (ph). (pause) (sigh)

THERAPIST: Maybe that's one reason that sort of internally you had to protect this version or kind of vision of the world or how it should be is because it must feel, in a way, like everybody around is trying to take it away or show you that the world works differently. [0:37:15]

CLIENT: Some of them are. (pause) Some of them have been very kindly, I think many of them. I see... when I think of interactions that I've had that have been characterized by my avoidance of this and other people's attempts to clue me in, I see kind faces. Not mean ones. [0:38:02] But it's been cruel. It's been very cruel. So... (pause) So your argument is that the closeness of the emotional dynamic is a product of the difficulty of confronting this sense that I've come to that this is not living anymore. [0:39:03] This other mind. (pause)

THERAPIST: Maybe probably that and maybe probably a sense that you're actually acting in the moment in a way that sort of betrays it as well by being self-interested.

CLIENT: (sigh) I don't know. It makes sense. But again just the vocabulary of the feeling in the vocabulary of the model is so different. It's hard. I mean, I think I just would have to chew on it a little bit.

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: I'm not sure there's anything more to say on that front. I can't. (pause) [0:40:01] What's interesting and I'll just say in passing is that... interesting and I don't know maybe to some degree is a way of interrogating how far you can push this is that the tension is something that I can remember from a very early... from a very relatively early childhood. So the model that you're presenting is one that requires considerable intellectual capacity. In other words, it's the product of fairly high level analysis of social interactions and politics and all of these things. And yet at least the behavior of my consciousness of this kind of behavior really preceded any possibility ability to engage in that. [0:41:03]

THERAPIST: I can imagine...

CLIENT: This kind of splitting off and...

THERAPIST: I can imagine you picking some of the gist which I gather was very much in the air by the time you were three and a half, four years old.

CLIENT: OK. That's consistent with it.

THERAPIST: I mean, not a sense of the sort of historical context.

CLIENT: Sure, sure, sure, sure.

THERAPIST: Or any of that. But the sense of, well, how much are we in it together? How much are we in it for ourselves? Here's what we believe. It's a bad world out there and believes a different way. And we're trying to sort of shelter in an old... the way were into a vision of the world as being we're in it together. (pause) [0:42:00] That's partly because (inaudible at 0:42:10) is very much in the air and partly because you're really good, I think, at picking up that kind of thing out of the air. Some kids really sort of do that and other kids don't.

CLIENT: There was a study that correlated people's... the outcomes of some kind of attachment evaluation and their ability to perceive untruth. And found that people with attachment disorder are really good at telling when somebody is lying. (chuckling) (pause) [0:43:00]

THERAPIST: Well, we should stop.

CLIENT: OK. I'll see you on Friday.

THERAPIST: Yea.

END TRANSCRIPT