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CLIENT: (inaudible) (laughing)

THERAPIST: yeah, or just flexibility in scheduling -

CLIENT: (yawning) Ok. I am unusually tired today and I'm probably not unusually but I feel it right now and I think that it's been a little bit harder on the household lately, not acrimonious (ph) but just both of us are dragging and Grayson's entering the leaving-the-newborn-and-entering-the-infant phase which involves a little more fussiness and a) I think more fussiness and less predictability in terms of how like he'll respond to eating (inaudible at 00:01:03). It also-we're aware there wasn't a whole lot that we really had to do other than feed him and now the parenting (laughing) begins. You know getting him to sleep well, how do you get him to sleep? Well, there's a library full of books telling you completely contradictory strategies (inaudible at 00:01:26) some of which are very, very unhappy with each other. So I think we're feeling it's kind of on us right now, at least the initial response has been kind of typical of the two of us in ways that we're concerned about. Yes, but anxious about I suppose. And last night, the whole project last night was the first night that we really made some gesture at least toward putting him to bed at 8:00 and letting the chips fall where they may and it was a complete failure. And I don't think it being a complete failure was so bothersome but, as a result, the night was very unstructured in ways that, generally speaking, a child aside, have been kind of upsetting to both of us individually and to the two of us collectively. [00:02:36]

So, I think I probably have not got any less sleep than other times that I've seen you since Grayson was born (yawning) but I feel a little enervated by that. And Jennie has been depressed and this weekend she kind of said it out loud. She said she was open to seeing somebody and that's good. I mean it doesn't seem like the worst post-partum depression I've ever seen. You know, seems kind of negative and hopeless, just what you'd expect from post-partum depression or any depression. [00:03:23]

So she's been a bit moody and moodier since she said to me, exclusively I think (laughing), I can't remember exactly how the exchange went. I think I said something like, "Sweetie, you seem depressed." And she said, "(makes a noise)." So, she's been a little bit more overtly moody and trying less hard to not be moody since we had this conversation. Which is good! I mean like in any absolute sense, I'd much prefer that than keeping up appearances or something. But on the other hand, it's kind of in my face. So, nothing's I would like to say I respond to it inevitably by just becoming more organized and more competent and just kind of taking up the slack that would be what I would want for myself and for us. That would certainly be more helpful. [00:04:28]

I don't think that's true. I think I've had a bit of paradoxical response to it. I've felt a little bit at sea and not totally satisfied with not my reaction in any emotional sense. It's not like I wasn't supportive and I think that part is okay just like the doing things. I have not responded by just being very overtly on top of stuff and I think that a) I think that's kind of warranted and needed and b) I think I would like that. And my it feels deep or complicated in the sense that my mother [00:05:34]

THERAPIST: You feel like maybe in a way been thrown a curve ball?

CLIENT: Um, I don't know about that. I've been kind of looking out for I mean one does look out for post-partum depression. I think it's pretty common and, again, this doesn't feel extreme yet at least. I guess what I was going to say was that I don't feel like I've been dealt a curveball but it's not in a trajectory that goes always upward. It's not in the sort of fantasized trajectory of raising a child in which you just get more knowledgeable and (laughing) progressively more facile and it gets progressively easier and the diapers kind of change themselves (laughing). You know. [00:06:30]

Actually, the diapers are getting The truth is of all of the possible trajectories of childrearing, the diapers have been by far the easiest. We're getting very good at changing them and he's getting very good at So that's good. (laughing)

So, what I was going to say was though that it's kind of deep, I think, in the sense that my reconstruction, at least, partially confirmed by my mother, has been that, at least with the first child I think it was a little easier with my sister because, among other things, we were no longer living in a different squat every nine months and I was no longer being farmed out to collective (ph) childcare so they could I mean, apparently, the day after I was born at four in the morning, they were back in the restaurant. Shit like that. [00:07:30]

So, my reconstruction is that my mother was very anxious and depressed when I was at this age and that during my early childhood I kind of had the sense of needing to make it easier for her. My father certainly wasn't making it easier for her. This is my ex post facto reconstruction at any rate, you know long before Jennie's (sp) postpartum depression, and I think as I reflect on it, moving toward our conversation today, I think that one of the reason that my response is not what I would have wanted or expected entirely I mean I haven't been egregious . I'm not saying just like, "Fuck you" but you know I'm kind of sleeping through when he's crying a little bit. [00:08:26]

And this morning I got up and she asked me to feed him and I fed him and I put him back to bed and it turned out he was still kind of awake and I was in my office, etc. I mean, you know, not totally on point and not totally in charge of organization the way that I have been since September. And I think it's like, there's some residual I don't know resistance, reluctance, something, to being cast in the role of caregiver again even though the situations are obviously completely different and the relationship is completely different. It's not a realistic analogy between my relationship with my mother and my co-parenting, intimate relationship with Jennie (sp). [00:09:30]

But there's something that has stuck to it. Anyway, that's as best as I can understand this resistance because there's some resistance. That's what I'm feeling or sensing or theorizing. (pause) Instead of this recognition of Jennie being depressed spurring me to help her and us it hasn't been dramatically the opposite but it kind of has, I feel. I mean, Jennie said that after my mother's visit, she felt that I kind of regressed, which may be true but I think is not quite specific enough. And she was talking about very superficial things like leaving the cupboard doors open and things. [00:10:26]

But it is more specific than that because her depression really became manifested right about the time my mother came and my mother's visit, wonderful as it was to have her sleeping through the night with Grayson, I think exacerbated it a little bit. It was just somebody in our house for eleven straight days. So maybe it's just kind of a proximity effect, but I think it's a little bit more specific than that, at least that's how -

THERAPIST: (inaudible at 00:11:11) (long pause) The timing of this is that Jennie's depression seemed to start or worsen during your mother's visit -

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: and, at least according to Jennie, in these kind of superficial ways, you began regressing a bit when your mother left. Is that right?

CLIENT: I don't remember whether it was in her (inaudible at 00:12:22) remember that way while she was here or after she left. Something (coughing) Timing was at least overlapping. We were all I mean, my mother's visit was very hard in the kitchen area. That's the place where it was hardest. Other places were kind of not so bad. She's not a great diaper-changer it turns out, which was a surprise. She reminded me that she used cloth diapers. Fair. But, yeah, so, it was the kitchen. The kitchen was really tough. She really wanted to cook and she's extremely spacy. [00:13:14]

THERAPIST: Yeah. (long pause) Yeah, I guess (pause) [00:14:25]

I guess I'm standing a bit by the curveball theory in that it seems to me what's been difficult for you is feeling like Jennie, in a way your mother actually on leaving, and even in a funny way like Grayson haven't quite been there for you in the same way that they were, in a very kind of subjective (inaudible at 00:14:59)

CLIENT: (yawning) My mother is established. Jennie-you mean by being depressed she's not being there for me?

THERAPIST: Yeah, she's not part of the team, not I'm not blaming her.

CLIENT: Yeah, well, I guess that's true in some concrete sense, but I don't understand the Elaborate, please, on the implications (crosstalk)

THERAPIST: Sure. I mean, it seems to me this is what's thrown you.

CLIENT: That Jennie is not there for me?

THERAPIST: That Jennie some combination of Jennie, your mother and Grayson. [00:15:40]

CLIENT: I don't care if my mother's there for me. I mean, you know, frankly at this stage in my life, I no longer rely on my mother emotionally or practically. It's a harsh thing to say maybe. She's a very sweet person, but -

THERAPIST: Yeah, I don't really have in mind that like -

CLIENT: She's just a presence to be managed. It's not -

THERAPIST: Yeah, I guess what I don't have in mind that she was there in some way three weeks ago or when she was visiting Not that you expected to have long heart-to-heart talks. Not like that -

CLIENT: It's not about having heart-to-heart talks. It's about when she comes over will it be more of an energy suck or an energy contribution and I'm not shocked that it turns out to be kind of toward the energy suck and it (inaudible at 00:16:40)

THERAPIST: Well, and this trip it was actually both.

CLIENT: Yeah. That's what I'm saying. You know if it had only been the kitchen, it would have been obvious. She was very Look, she's just thrilled about this grandchild and it's beautiful to see them together and you know I'm touched and I find it wonderful to see this relationship blossoming. I remember My relationship It's funny Random tangent. I didn't have a particularly close relationship with either of my grandmothers. My mother's mother was just kind of a basket-case. She was just totally out there. My father's mother was a very intelligent woman who a) never recovered from her double refugee -the outcome of fleeing from World War I into the front of the Russian Revolution in 1918 and I think she left her apartment in Long Island maybe ten times after her honeymoon and so she was kind of fearful and she was [00:18:03]

THERAPIST: You mean like literally went out of the house only ten times?

CLIENT: She got out of the house. She would leave the house. She wouldn't leave Long Island -

THERAPIST: Oh, ok. I just -

CLIENT: willingly. You know, she went to visit us -

THERAPIST: Wait. Let me stop you there because I'm a little (inaudible at 00:18:19). So, you say she didn't leave I don't remember exactly how you put it but it was unclear to me whether you meant she was agoraphobic and housebound or whether she just didn't travel much or what you meant -

CLIENT: She just didn't travel much.

THERAPIST: and so I asked, "Do you mean she literally didn't -" There was a what struck me was what was pretty clearly to me like a kind of a defensiveness in your response as though I was pathologizing which-

CLIENT: I was pathologizing. I mean, she was wounded. So I maybe. That would be interesting, if so. I'm totally unaware of having that response. My what I was consciously in touch with was just totally sort of setting the record straight. [00:19:14]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I don't feel protective of Grandma. She was, you know, in her own way, her own kind of limited way, she was a very tough woman. So, she didn't really need protection. She'd [give you a piece of her mind] (ph) if she needed to. Anyway, she was a loving grandparent but somehow just distant and when she died we found balls of yarn in the closet the kind of hoarding behavior you might kind of expect (inaudible at 00:20:03) included in that. You know the pathology (ph) a little better than I do, but in my lay understanding of what kind of an impact such a trauma might have on somebody, making sure (laughing) you [brought the string] (ph) might be part of it. And also a kind of emotional reserve might also be part of it. My sense is that my father and uncle did not you know, she didn't have this reserve with them. But when I think of my two grandparents, she was far less of a warm, giving, emotional presence than my grandfather who was just, by universal acclamation, a very lovely man.

Anyway, so it's interesting to watch my mother just sort of blossom in this relationship with her grandson. My sister has seen it for eight years now but this is my first opportunity to see it. You see it close up and it's so sweet and wonderful and I want to promote it in any way that I can just as a service to the human race. [00:21:15]

But in terms of her contribution to our household, I don't really have any expectation. My best hope is she'll be a slight positive contribution because there are ways in which having her around just drives it doesn't drive us up the wall-it's just like not helpful. It's not helpful for her to cook. It would be nice if it were helpful for her to cook. It would be nice if it were helpful for her to come over and keep the house in order, but no way. I mean it just ain't going to happen and, in fact, we have to kind of do some fancy footwork on the assumption that she's coming for a month in January to make sure that it just doesn't really become a debilitating thing where she comes in the house and sort of blows up our sense of order and control. [00:22:08]

So, at best, I think it's not that my mother would let me down because I don't really have expectations of my mother doing anything great. I basically just want her to kind of maintain.

There's a very hipster checker at the supermarket by our house and you know I'll go through the checkout line and I'll say, "How are you doing?" And he says, "Maintaining." (laughing) That's become kind of a byword in our household. We just want her to kind of maintain. (inaudible at 00:22:49) (pause)

This is a side note, but I feel very encouraged somehow by my capacity just now to take some fairly complex things and weave them into a single narrative without getting lost. (laughing) I mean I'm functioning as rudely and crudely as all that. [00:23:19] (long pause) [00:24:51]

You know I was struck again by your Spartan approach to office revision (ph). (pause) I guess I kind of understand it or I have an understanding of it theoretically in the sense that if you're psychoanalytically oriented you want the associations to come from the person rather than being provided by the office space. That's my understanding of (inaudible at 00:25:34) probably more a matter of taste but (laughing) I guess that's my understanding of it.

Anyway (pause) the chairs are very comfortable though.

THERAPIST: (inaudible at 00:26:02)

CLIENT: (short laugh)

(pause)

THERAPIST: Well, I think you probably have a mixed relationship with my decorating style and [in this respect] (ph), that, in a way, it might be nice to have more stuff around but also I think you wouldn't want to feel like I think you probably also want to feel self-reliant, like you wouldn't need it or like you can bring your associations, yourself. Thank you very much for that. [00:27:08]

CLIENT: I mean, at the end of the day, it's an office building, such that you need to have a noise machine to cover the sound of the ventilator or whatever, it's the standard shrink noise machine, but it's an office building. (pause)

I think the way that I find myself intersecting with this question which is not especially often, is something along the lines of and not completely consciously, but if I press on it a bit (pause) [00:28:15]

It kind of looks like Marshall is getting ready to go somewhere, like he could pack up and leave at any moment which is an interesting thought. When I feel when I become of aware of it, it's because there's this vague sense of anxiety and I think that that's probably what underlies the anxiety. You know like with an office in which you have bookshelves I mean it's not like you couldn't pack up (laughing). It's just an office. It doesn't take that long to pack an office.

THERAPIST: This is your fantasy.

CLIENT: Yeah, this is my fantasy. So, I think that's kind of the emotional quadrant that this consideration inhabits specifically. And then, whatever rationally or wondering whether there's theoretical justification for it I remember we had an exchange some time ago about you training with somebody who kind of had a Spartan approach. That my recollection of or just when you began counseling you kind of I don't know. [00:29:29]

THERAPIST: What's the thought?

CLIENT: What I understood you to be saying or have since modified my recollection to have had you say was something along the lines that you come from a you were taught by you went in Cambridge or something You had a practicum in Cambridge or in Greenwich or somewhere where there was very low amenity office space and you just kind of got used to that. That may be complete fiction on my part. (laughing) That's what I remember.

THERAPIST: Yeah I might have mentioned doing (inaudible at 00:30:09) for a year at a place which was very sort of famously shabby, but that hadn't -

CLIENT: This was when you had many fewer things. You had like very, very few things, decorations, in the office. This was like late 2011, early 2012, something like that. We had a conversation about it and you said, "Yeah, I'm getting more stuff. I'm kind of " whatever And then you said whatever this was I remember clearly in a way that's not historically accurate. But yeah, so my the reason that it seems emotionally valent (sp) for me is that my kind of intuitive understanding of it is that it makes it easier for you to go and I guess that is of concern. [00:31:22]

THERAPIST: Yeah. (pause)

CLIENT: But I have had offices in the last few years I've put almost nothing up and I've never maintained one for more than a year. My current office at home is very cluttered, not in a way that makes it impossible to function but there's a lot of saturated colors and (pause) there's a lot of stuff in there three bookshelves, a rug, fabric on the walls, dark not dark, but you know kind of brown chiffon. Is chiffon the right word? I don't know. I think it's something else. Anyway, I have this sort of diaphanous brown fabric curtains. You know it's nice. It's harmonious but full. [00:32:37] (pause)

But until the baby came, I didn't move in there either. You know part of getting ready for Grayson was moving into my office (inaudible at 00:32:59) And I guess, if I were again to kind of push on it a little bit, there would be a sense that I might be leaving or I might be moving on or there was no stability in this relationship, this household. This is kind of our household, right?

THERAPIST: Yeah, at the end of the day -

CLIENT: Well, and some others. So I guess when I notice it, there's some vague concern that there might not be stability in this household. (pause) The truth is it's actually, at this point, quite nice and harmonious. I assume these are the artworks they gave you when you moved in? Or are these yours? [00:33:56]

THERAPIST: Those are mine.

CLIENT: These are yours. Ok, well they work. They fit, colorwise. You painted the wall? The accent wall?

THERAPIST: I chose the color.

CLIENT: You chose the color. (pause) It's good but generic.

THERAPIST: The wall color or the art?

CLIENT: The art. (pause) Anyway, yeah, so (sigh) [00:35:05]

THERAPIST: I think (pause) I think that their generic quality speaks to something that you feel, which is a worry that you are generic. For example, to me, who might just pack up and move at any moment.

CLIENT: That I'm generic. Sure. I mean I guess I would that's an interesting way of putting it. I see where you're going with that. I think what I have felt and struggled with quite a bit in continuing this relationship is that it's kind of a fake relationship. So, less the way that I understand what I think you're talking about is just that it's artificial rather than that it's generic. Maybe that's the same thing. I'm not sure. In other words, within the parameters offered by psychotherapy where one person just tells the other person everything about them and they only talk about that person and the other person tells the other only de minimis insofar as it's useful and kind of creating transference or counter-transference as the case may be How can you really have a human connection there? And how can you really kind of usefully engage together in the way that you would need to -

THERAPIST: I think that's something about you that's not -

CLIENT: I'm just (inaudible at 00:37:29) understand this here. I'm not talking about how you feel or -

THERAPIST: No, no, but you are You're not just telling me how you feel, you're telling me how it feels to you it is.

CLIENT: How it feels to me ?

THERAPIST: In other words, you're not saying, "You know, my experience of this is like this." You're saying, "What I have found about psychotherapy is that it is this way and here are the generic conditions -

CLIENT: Oh, what that -

THERAPIST: that inevitably lead to this experience of it. And those are quite different things.

CLIENT: I'm not totally following I got lost.

THERAPIST: Sure. So, you're saying, "What it seems to me I've learned about psychotherapy is it's like this. The relationship is set up this way and it is [00:38:23]

CLIENT: I didn't That was Maybe that was a Freudian slip but that wasn't what I was trying to say. What I was conscious of trying to say was I worry about this generic thing in slightly different terms. The terms that I worry about it in have less to do with kind of facelessness or lack of personality and more like I'm more conscious of worrying about stuff like, "Can we make a human connection?" "Can we It's not so much, "Do I have personality that's unique to me?" and more like, "How do you really create a relationship with somebody such that you can you know?" To me, I think ideologically or in principal or in some important way, you can't I'm continuing with the process, so on some level I've been willing to give up on this conviction but it really has to be mutual and the lack of mutuality is troubling to me. [00:39:38]

So, it's more That that I think I've struggled with and less with the generic thing, although I've mentioned that on various occasions, like, you know, one comes in and the other goes out and there are all sorts of people that you're seeing and that troubles me I guess on some level that's closer to what you're calling this struggle with the generic. But usually, the way that that plays itself out in my mind has less to do with my own generic qualities or the office space's generic qualities or your generic qualities and more to do with how we could possibly relate to each other within these strict, kind of customary parameters. [00:40:31]

But I do think it's the same thought at some level. Now as to whether I was saying that psychotherapy Is this way, meaning what? It is a fact that -

THERAPIST: (crosstalk) complex going on there which is that you're saying that you have this kind of a deep question about how to relate to me in a way or how to have an experience of like a kind of personal experience of our relationship given the customary parameters. [00:41:29]

And then I think you do that same thing to me a little bit when you say, "Psychotherapy is set up kind of this way and this is how -

CLIENT: Oh, you mean I'm making you generic? Huh. Yeah, I think that's a fair and interesting comment and we've, within the confines of the relationship, you have gone to great lengths You know we've both sort of made it our own in various ways ranging from billing to other kinds of things which don't have to be done and I guess maybe that's the definition of personal relationship is doing things that don't have to be done given the social framework. I think we're coming to the end of the hour, so (laughing).

Ok, so you're going to let me know about either tomorrow or Thursday and that would either be 1:30 or 3:00?

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: Great. All right. Sounds good. See you then.

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