TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
THERAPIST: Good morning. Yeah, hi.
CLIENT: So hi, good morning. Hope it was a good month.
THERAPIST: Yes, which (ph) I hope for you as well.
CLIENT: Well (exhaling), it was interesting, I guess. Let's see, I think the last time we met I was deciding whether or not to go to Egypt for our trip. I think that was our last conversation.
THERAPIST: I don't remember that, but it's possible I just forgot.
CLIENT: Okay. So can I pull out? (Pause) In the end I went. [0:00:54] And in the end I did the panel that they had turfed (sp?) to the deputy minister, which I'd been pretty pissed off about.
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: But, I mean, it was very... I came back pretty mad in Philral about lots of things, and I think in a perfect world I would quit in a second. (Exhaling) (Pause) Phil (sp?) basically scooped the entire project. I didn't get acknowledged at all during this meeting.
THERAPIST: I see. [0:01:55]
CLIENT: The panel... I mean, essentially we waited until... they waited until the day of the thing and just wrote back saying, well, she can't make it. (inaudible at 0:02:11) plant (ph) and gone to some lengths to get good crew for.
THERAPIST: What does that mean, that...? So she being...?
CLIENT: Well, I mean, it was only by default that I ended up running it, and I did it, and I ran it well and gave a presentation...
THERAPIST: So she was... she gave the minister...
CLIENT: She didn't. She decided to bail on the (crosstalk).
THERAPIST: But that's the she you're referring to.
CLIENT: That's the she I'm referring to, right. So I don't know what to say.
THERAPIST: And you pulled a bunch of people together to do it. She was supposed to do it, and she didn't show.
CLIENT: I pulled a bunch of people together to do it. I pulled together a presentation. I gave a presentation in front of 150 in the end, and it went very well. [0:02:57] But I was pretty mad about that. And it's not explicit yet that the question of my salary is resolved, although it seems to have been resolved by default. In other words, we sat down with the point person at the ministry, and it went very well. But they haven't... and her superior said in an e-mail to several people that I need to remain involved. But they haven't explicitly said, okay, well, you're doing this, and this is your salary. On the other hand, Jennie's (sp?) about to give birth. Her schedule is extremely constrained by teaching responsibilities. So having one of us who has a job that's remunerative and flexible that I can work from home on in the immediate future is a good thing. [0:04:04]
THERAPIST: So remind me of her due date?
CLIENT: 28... 26th of October. So, on the one hand, I'm just livid, especially at Phil. The way he's playing this is just disgusting to me, but... and I've said so a variety of times, but it just makes no sense to quit, assuming that they come through with 50% salary. If they don't come through with 50% salary, if it's only 25%, say, I think that becomes more... a closer call, frankly.
THERAPIST: I see. Yeah.
CLIENT: But at least for the moment I'm not going to flip out. The other thing that happened was Jennie and I had a wonderful... two wonderful vacations really on either end of the conference. [0:04:58]
THERAPIST: How nice.
CLIENT: So it was in the middle of the month, it was the 15th to the 18... or I was there I guess the 13th through the 18th.
THERAPIST: Well, that's great.
CLIENT: And in the ten days before that we had a really beautiful vacation to Spain, and then after that we had ten days in Jordan that were really sweet. She introduced me to all of her friends and family. And throughout this entire period I slept beautifully.
THERAPIST: Hmm.
CLIENT: Beautifully.
THERAPIST: In Spain, Egypt, and Jordan?
CLIENT: The whole thing.
THERAPIST: Huh! How nice.
CLIENT: Interesting.
THERAPIST: [That's good] (ph).
CLIENT: So I think those two pieces are probably the biggest take home from all of this. I just slept beautifully. I don't know whether it's being able to defer all of this, whether it's... well, not that these are mutually exclusive, but one variable that has occurred to me is just the usual being able to defer things on vacation somehow. [0:06:06] Another is just sort of being in a different social constellation, which I guess is part of the same thing. Another is not having... not looking at the computer all of the time. Maybe there's some melatonin-related, (inaudible at 0:06:27) related phenomenon. I don't know. But somehow I really regularly slept seven or eight hours every night. And when I woke up, as I sometimes did, I just went right back to sleep. So that was interesting. And I think we were both struck by how generally stressed out I was and more... we were kind of happier, and I was happier. [0:07:04] And it was... probably both of us were less stressed out. And it was odd because... in some ways because Jennie's father was very seriously ill, and he went into the hospital two days before I got there, with an intestinal complaint, but a serious one.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: So in theory there was a lot of stress on the system, but somehow... we were aware of it, and we were dealing with it. But it didn't really affect our interaction or sense of... we came back really feeling very good. So on one level there's this complexity, and there's the resume sending and job searching and all of that kind of stuff. [0:07:58] And on the other hand there's just this real sense of, I don't know, commitment, desire to preserve whatever it was that... whatever formula it was that we found over July. But I think those are... kind of navigating those two things is kind of my agenda for the moment. I mean, I guess the third thing I would like to find again is my desire and kind of vision for finding some productive work or work that feels productive for myself, whether it's putting (ph) a proposal together for dissertation or something. [0:08:57] I just want a project that feels meaningful and productive, that feels important. It could be, I don't know, anything, something, training. Feels like that is an important missing piece that I'd like to find over the next month or so. (Pause) [0:10:00] [0:11:00]
THERAPIST: Well, I guess I'm not quite sure what to say. Nothing's (ph) coming to mind. (Pause) [0:12:00]
CLIENT: Well, I mean, I guess it's kind of a funny segue into our long-term discussion, in the sense that basically the usually... with regard to this project at least, that's sort of paying a modest salary for me, the usual formula is inverted. [0:12:56] Instead of getting very upset about things that are ultimately kind of the usual interactive give and take, here there's a really serious breach, kind of... at least I feel very clearly... and several... numerous people have confirmed my sense of a kind of breach of trust. And yet I'm not leaving. To the contrary I'm saying, well, I need to hold on. There are kind of external factors that dictate just kind of not taking off. And so in some sense I'm stuck in an unenviable position of having to sort of swallow it. And in another sense, I guess, maybe I'm taking my medicine.
THERAPIST: I see. Uh-huh.
CLIENT: I'm... and I'm stuck with something for a number of years when at numerous junctures my impulse has just been to flee. [0:14:01] So I guess that's maybe an interesting development. I don't feel very happy about it, but I guess it's kind of my bed in the sense that (inaudible at 0:14:15) over the last twelve months I could sort of have done things which would make it unnecessary. And my... they put me in a position of weakness, I guess, which Phil's exploiting (pause), really to his discredit. [0:14:48] The other thing, I guess... question I have or the question that's sort of pressing to me, I guess, as I talk about this stuff is just that what... I find myself still struggling to understand and respond to this question of why it's so difficult to put myself on the job market.
THERAPIST: Uh-huh.
CLIENT: It seems like an important part of this, too, and still difficult. Like, I finally prepared the resume, but I'm having difficulty sending it. And I have a totally reasonable idea of what kinds of things I would apply for...
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: But it's still tough. And that difficulty is a little mystifying to me, as I'm sure it must be mystifying to other people. It's a good resume.
THERAPIST: It's a good resume?
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: Is it? Yeah. [0:15:57] (Pause) [0:17:00] [0:17:58] Maybe a job search... maybe it seems like an even more bitter medicine.
CLIENT: What do you mean? (Pause)
THERAPIST: Well, you describe continuing to work for this company as kind of taking your medicine, as being a bitter one, because of the way that you're being treated (pause) and particularly, I guess, taken advantage of. [0:19:02] And I guess I was thinking how often people find job searching kind of (pause) insulting in some way.
CLIENT: You mean because you're a supplicant?
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: And you have to fluff people.
THERAPIST: Yeah, and you get all your stuff ready, you try to make it perfect, and you send it to them. And maybe you'll hear back, and maybe you won't. Or maybe it'll be (inaudible at 0:19:32) six weeks, and maybe it'll be in three weeks, but then they'll tell you they'll get back to you in two more weeks... just the...
CLIENT: Yeah, it's different if you're unemployed and not earning a salary and if you're employed and doing things. I mean... I think. I think that dynamic is different. And the jobs you're applying for are different, and you kind of approach it in a different way if you have something... [0:20:00]
THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.
CLIENT: Than if you don't, is my sense. Maybe that's not true. I don't really know. I mean, I would imagine that your kind of mental landscape differs depending on how much you want it or need it. There's nothing... I mean, I guess I can say this, and maybe this is the place to start even. There's nothing that I really want. It's not like there's a job that I just really badly want to do.
THERAPIST: Uh-huh.
CLIENT: That might be... that may be the point of departure. There's not, like, at this point, there's work that I really want to do, that I feel so inspired by, that I would do anything to have that job. [0:20:57] Maybe I'm just exhausted by this long and ultimately unsuccessful effort to kind of find a vocation. Maybe I feel a little disillusioned by the things that I thought that would sort of supply a (pause) place in the world to work. But between one thing and another, when I think of sending my resume out, it's like, well, you know, we need to support ourself. It's not like, wow, I'm just on fire to do this or that. (Pause) So from that perspective, I guess, on the one hand, production might be difficult. [0:21:58] But, on the other hand, the anxiety might be less. Maybe this is just... this sense of uncertainty about how much I really want it is just a kind of defense mechanism out of the intuitive understanding that, when I really want something, that actually becomes a problem for me...
THERAPIST: Hmm.
CLIENT: Or some combination thereof. But I do find that I can't really think of something that I'm just on fire to do at this point. The truth is (pause), I was very happy not to be in front of a computer for most of July. (Pause) [0:23:00] My computer ran out of juice in the airport and my power supply was frayed, so I tried to plug it in, and it blew a circuit. And I never replaced it the whole time we were in Jordan. And one time I had to send off a couple of e-mails, I just used Jennie's. (Pause) So I don't know where that leaves me, because all of the four categories of things that I'm applying for imply sitting in front of a computer. But I... at this moment in time? To be honest, I kind of feel done with it. I'm just like, fuck it. [0:23:56] So I'm not sure that's the best frame of mind to be entering career change and job search and all of that. That doesn't seem like something you would say in an interview (inaudible at 0:24:05).
THERAPIST: (Chuckling) (Pause) [0:25:00]
CLIENT: (Exhaling) (Pause) [0:26:00]
THERAPIST: (inaudible at 0:26:27) my train of thought. One of my thoughts was (pause)... well, I understand what you're saying. And you clearly feel it... or, to me, to feel it strongly as you say it, about just not being excited about doing the sorts of things that you'd apply for and, to the contrary, not really wanting to do them. [0:27:04] (Pause) My next thought was, I don't know to what extent you're kind of... in some ways it sounds like you're kind of avoiding getting yourself together to apply less than you were before, which is really quite a big deal, I think.
CLIENT: Yeah. No, I mean, I think not walking off in a huff is also a big deal. I mean, again, at some level it doesn't matter whether it's a coping mechanism or whether it's genuinely true and yet despite it I'm kind of going through with it. [0:28:01] It is... it's like it's a practical necessity, and it's enforced by another dependent party, completely dependent party. So yeah, you're right. A big deal? It's certainly a deal. I still haven't actually... I mean, I've prepared these things, but it's taken some months (crosstalk).
THERAPIST: Right, so this was my next thought, was (pause) there has seemed at least thus far to be something of a kind of, [well, what] (ph) we talked about...
CLIENT: Inhibition.
THERAPIST: A lot of inhibition and avoidance, yeah.
CLIENT: You've called it. You've called it. [0:28:58]
THERAPIST: And so my... this is a two-parter. (Chuckling) Part one was (pause), huh (sp?), really not wanting to do the work, makes sense and so forth. But it doesn't... it's not clear to me where the kind of anxiety is there, do you know what I mean? I mean, you're saying, I'm really in a way not that excited to do this stuff, but I know I need to, which makes sense. But I have a hard time squaring that with inhibition and avoidance, which usually relate to something that's more worrisome or scary or something. But... that's part one. And part two was, maybe what's scary there is something about having to kind of suck it up and do something or pursue something that you really don't want to do. [0:30:03] Maybe it feels like there's... maybe there is some kind of real threat posed by that.
CLIENT: Well, I think it's very clear to me that the anxiety (pause) is... the anxiety, the inhibition, the avoidance, etc, have had to do with not wanting to confront the fact that I'm not excited about this, that... more ontologically, I guess, that I'm... (Pause) How can I put this? That I'm embarking on a kind of life in which work will not be vocational...
THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.
CLIENT: Will simply be remunerative. And I think that feels... that feels scary and threatening and upsetting to me on many levels...
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: A number of different levels, ranging from the (pause) need to renounce any kind of world-shaking ambitions to the need to figure out how to produce things when I kind of don't care about them at some level. And I don't believe in them at some level. It's a little bit... it's not the way that I feel myself constituted to do things, particularly when for me the cost of writing and so on is fairly high or has been fairly high. [0:32:04] Now, which comes first, the chicken or the egg, I think is an open question of course.
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: But at least on the face of it my writing process involves commitment of a very significant kind (pause), the disruption of my sleep and kind of mood, all sorts of things. (Pause) So the idea of producing that in a kind of... motivating that process by a kind of quotidian (pause) [I don't know] (ph).
THERAPIST: You're really putting... yeah.
CLIENT: Wage slavery is... I'm exaggerating for the sake of effect here...
THERAPIST: Sure. [0:32:59]
CLIENT: But I think... that seems to me... I don't know whether it's true or not, but that would seem to me a plausible threat. That would seem to me a threat that could potentially motivate the sorts of behaviors that we're talking about.
THERAPIST: mm-hmm.
CLIENT: And I guess at some level that kind of a dynamic is the way that others have interpreted my disinclination to follow through. So at some level I'm... if we run with this, we're kind of admitting that they're right, that it's not about my sense of annoyance or pique or outrage at having other people take advantage of me. [0:33:52] It's more... really what's leading to the avoidance isn't outrage. It's just kind of... it's really a Bartleby situation rather than something else. I really just would prefer not... (Pause) You know Bartleby. You don't know...?
THERAPIST: Yeah, I know of Bartleby, I never read Bartleby. I... yeah.
CLIENT: (Chuckling) Okay. It's not important to read Bartleby.
THERAPIST: Okay.
CLIENT: The tagline pretty much says it all. But he would just... he would prefer not.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: And that's not... entertaining that possibility, stripped of all the kind of grand ambition and sense of moment about my vocation and my role in the universe... entertaining that kind of... the possibility that that schema is really what's motivating all of this is a little bit sobering, difficult to swallow. [0:34:56]
THERAPIST: [I guess] (ph)... -those things don't sound so different to me, your having to kind of really put yourself into something in a deep way, involving a kind of intense effort and sense of sacrifice when it isn't meaningful to you, and a sense of being taken advantage of. I mean, I understand that there's a way in which it may not literally be true. I mean, if you're doing some job that somebody's hiring you for and going to pay you for and you've signed up for and they're asking you to do something, they're not actually taking advantage of you. But [could be] (ph) the feeling of then being taken advantage of or being angry at the same time as having made the sacrifice, it seems like those may not be so far apart.
CLIENT: Okay, at any rate... (Pause) [0:35:57] At any rate, that sounds plausible.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: Whichever end... so imagine a spectrum between these two poles, and any given interaction probably involves some oscillation between them. That sounds like a plausible etiology for an inhibition or for the kind of inhibition that we've been zeroing in on.
THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. (Pause)
CLIENT: So the trick... (Pause) (Exhaling) I guess what I'm struggling with then... so I have three things that are... kind of feel like they're on my plate for the next few months. One of them is just zeroing in on this job search. Another is kind of motivating and following through with this project despite its difficulties. [0:37:09]
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: And then the third is figuring out something that I'm doing that feels good and meaningful and useful to me...
THERAPIST: That does provide...
CLIENT: And all of them kind of are situated in some configuration on that spectrum.
THERAPIST: I see. I guess this is a bit of an aside, but is...? So the World Bank is out?
CLIENT: I don't know if (it's) out...
THERAPIST: Okay.
CLIENT: But it's just... there's always something that's supposed to solve it, and so apparently Jim, whatever, got very mad and fired some people. And so supposedly it's all back on track, but they put it in the hands of this guy who's really kind of glad-handing, I don't know, something or other. [0:37:56] So we left it... basically my two contracts were up.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: And they said, oh, okay, we... Jack talked to Luke Masterson, the communications adviser, and he wrote me a very nice note saying, well, write in about a month-this was a month ago-and we'll see... we'll probably have something for you then.
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: But the truth is that A, the mechanism for paying me to do that is kind of unclear, since there's a specific rule that people on short-term contracts can't do that. And B, I don't know, I feel at some level that it's not very good for me to be in that system. The level of agonizing that I was engaged in to do it just wasn't worth it.
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: It's very remunerative, and we need the money. [0:38:56] But it's not clear to me that it's productive. It's not clear to me that what I would be asked to do would be satisfying to me. And it's not the... it just seems kind of ridiculous. It seemed kind of ridiculous, I felt. I don't know. But there might be something there. Just in a purely mercenary kind of sense it's not completely out. It's clear to me that there was enough of a breach in our relationship that Jim personally is not going to go out of his way to say, I'd like you to do this. And the whole thing with our interaction in May and the kind of nonexistent follow-up to it, I have no idea what that means, but it was very weird. (Pause) [0:40:00] I mean, it was this $80,000 consultancy, and nobody ever followed up with me for the final report. There's just kind of this sense of discombobulation.
THERAPIST: Did they pay you?
CLIENT: Yeah, they paid me.
THERAPIST: Good.
CLIENT: But it was this weird... the whole bureaucratic handoff was just kind of bizarre.
THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. (Pause)
CLIENT: So, I mean, in terms of remuneration, maybe if I really pushed and pursued it, there would be something there. But it's just... I would just feel like I was sponging, basically. And I'm willing to do things to keep our household going but not that far. [0:41:02] There's a limit.
THERAPIST: Yeah. Well, it does sound in a way like a more extreme version of how a lot of things are feeling.
CLIENT: Sponging?
THERAPIST: No, like...
CLIENT: Oh, just that it's...
THERAPIST: Having to do something you really don't want to do.
CLIENT: It's just kind of fucked up. The whole thing just seems kind of fucked up. At least my participation in it seems kind of fucked up. Is that what you mean? I'm not sure.
THERAPIST: If you pushed and put yourself out there and worked hard at it, you might get something, but it wouldn't feel right. It certainly wouldn't be what you want to do. The whole thing would feel kind of yucky.
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: And (pause) it's not, in a way, literally the same. But with the other job searching, too, it sounds like, uuuuhhh (sp?). I mean, you push, put yourself out there, make an effort, and wind up with something you don't really want to do, and that doesn't feel good, and that feels like you're sort of making this... [0:42:03]
CLIENT: Well, that I have to do. I have no choice.
THERAPIST: Right, I'm just... yeah.
CLIENT: I mean, the situation with the Egypt project for the moment is stable. But it's obvious that, for a variety of reasons, it's kind of a perennially unstable situation.
THERAPIST: [Of course] (ph).
CLIENT: So I have to push.
THERAPIST: We should stop...
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: For now.
CLIENT: Okay. You're gone for the week.
THERAPIST: And I'm gone for the rest of the week, so I'll... the... I'm good for starting up next week on our usual schedule.
CLIENT: Usual, on Wednesday, okay. All right.
THERAPIST: Yeah, Wednesday and Friday.
CLIENT: See you then.
THERAPIST: See you.
CLIENT: Okay. Have a good time, wherever you're going.
THERAPIST: Thank you.
CLIENT: Where are you going?
THERAPIST: Down to the shore.
CLIENT: Nice. Do you have a regular place that you go there?
THERAPIST: (inaudible at 0:42:47)
CLIENT: Just hang. Okay, see you next Wednesday. [0:42:57]
THERAPIST: (inaudible at 0:42:57)
CLIENT: You, too.
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