TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: (Heavy sigh) Hmm.

(Pause): [0:00:23 – 0:00:44]

CLIENT: So, Grayson’s in the middle of a growth spurt and he’s begun to eat a lot and when my mother takes him she’s very good with some things but when he gets fussy I think she gets a little bit flustered, upset, not visibly but she has a hard time calming him. It’s probably just a matter of familiarity. Sometimes she’ll hand him off to me and I’m very good at calming him which is a surprise to me at some level, I think, but very unexpectedly gratifying. At any rate, I was thinking about our last conversation and as I recall, you remember, you can correct me if I’m conflating something but I think when the bell rang I had said something to the effect that we were talking about my poor memory for failure to call to mind at the very least this explanation or narrative or model for what makes it hard to – I’m not even sure what the malady is at this point, but what makes it hard to do things, what has made it hard to identify the malady. I’m not sure.

THERAPIST: I bet that makes you shut down.

CLIENT: That makes me shut down. Okay. What the trigger is. I guess the premise is there’s this trigger that’s specific and identifiable. So you were wondering why I was presenting all of these alternative understandings of the trigger in our conversation and I think that had led you to wonder a bit about what makes it difficult to remember it. And I thought that also what made it difficult to remember and also why I kind of displaced it onto you. Maybe that was the point of entry. And I thought that that might have something to do with feeling put upon by these stories that my reluctance to own, partner-share and or to imagine a partnership producing this story that we’ve come up with has something to do with my sense of caution or suspicion of the narratives that I’ve been handed. I think that’s where we left things. Do you remember it differently?

THERAPIST: No. No. Could you just –

CLIENT: (Unclear) my dad and all these –

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: All these grand schemes, a juxtaposition of very different kind of world views and all that stuff that we’ve kind of strategically, I think, mutually agreed to not dwell on a little bit. At least that’s my sense (unclear). You had said at one point, and Jennie, has said this before that one of the features of Jeffrey (sp?) is kind of insistence on these narratives, on kind of the trajectory from one place to the other. I don’t know whether I’m conflating two conversations but my impression has been that where you, we, it is a little bit suspicious of that hauling out these tropes – these kind of story tropes. At any rate, my thought was though that there was some kind of relationship between my caution or wariness about putting my own stamp of authority on this joint project of ours.

THERAPIST: Maybe the narrative feels like a foreign body or something.

CLIENT: Whatever. I mean what it feels like is a little unclear to me. I don’t think it’s a level of consciousness that I’m approaching with this (unclear). [0:07:00]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: At any rate I was thinking about this when I was walking over. I like to walk over whenever I can.

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: Think about stuff. And the thought that I had was – or memory this hat I had was of interactions with my dad, particularly when I was in college and you know, I would reach this state of shut down and I’d call and he’d come down and I’d end up being able to ride it out ride – write it out – ride it out – and you know at first, and I think that when I had thought about this, and it’s been a while since I’d thought about this, my understanding had always been that it was something like this interaction with Grayson. You know, there’s this parental function of soothing that into ones 20s I’d felt a little – I’d felt some misgivings about in retrospect and the difficulty that I had sort of achieving that space on my own after he died seems to confirm my concern about relying too much on this function of (unclear). [0:08:56]

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: So I guess this is how I’d always understood it and I guess the thought that popped into my head as I juxtaposed those conversations was that you know, obviously, there was some of that going on but it was also like I had called a friend for a life line. I’d kind of called for a rejuvenation of the narrative. It was a little bit more ambiguous, a little bit darker model, explanation, for these interactions I had had with my father as if I was in the process of doing something that really wasn’t for myself that I didn’t want to do that I felt roped into doing and in order to sustain myself on that path I needed to be refreshed in my memory of what was going on by these interactions.

THERAPIST: Wait. I think I’ve lost you a little bit there on the last part.

CLIENT: I couldn’t remember the project. I couldn’t remember the narrative because it didn’t really belong to me. I didn’t have it in my mind and it was very easy for me to forget it.

THERAPIST: I mean I get it that – I thought (unclear) when you were talking about when he would soothe you. [0:10:38]

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And you with Grayson and about how after he died, sort of the way he was no longer there for you, perhaps made you skeptical about relying on people to soothe you.

CLIENT: Huh.

THERAPIST: Is that part of the -

CLIENT: Well, that was scenario one.

THERAPIST: Okay. And then the thing that you’re producing darker was like, oh my God, maybe a bit of a set up yesterday where you were – maybe not what you meant?

CLIENT: What was a set up yesterday?

THERAPIST: Where you kind of came in sort of needing me to like refresh the narrative for –

CLIENT: Two days ago.

THERAPIST: I’m sorry, two days ago, yeah.

CLIENT: Yeah, I guess I hadn’t made that that week but – I think this is interpretation or narrative, you know, the same interactions and the same kind of relations. It’s less about soothing a child and more about telling them the story that you want to kind of guide them. It’s more instrumental.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: In that one implication of that particular narrative is that there was a good reason why I couldn’t remember exactly what I was doing in these moments when I kind of would collapse – why I would collapse because I was being roped in, I felt at some level, to doing something that I didn’t want to and it was as if –

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: Whatever I needed, another session with my control in order to resolve refreshed

THERAPIST: Where you’re working on a project and you sort of collapse about it and you don’t remember why you’re doing it.

CLIENT: Why I’m doing it or where I am.

THERAPIST: But you can (unclear) but it wasn’t really necessarily your motivation. (Cross talk) Yeah, to be dramatic, but brainwashing. [0:13:31]

CLIENT: Yeah. I don’t think I’d put it exactly like that but (Pause). And you know, I think that that might explain a little bit better why – at least the procession of that going on, would certainly explain why I’m leery of –

THERAPIST: I’m smiling because something just occurred to me.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Which is the – I’m teasing you a little bit now. No, I think I’m having a little bit of trouble now because what you’re describing is essentially very much in keeping with “my narrative”. In other words – and the thing I’m laughing about or finding like –

CLIENT: I don’t have a problem with –

THERAPIST: Funny. Like I don’t mean to be (unclear) – is like that seems reassuring to me is that it is actually your narrative. You know. In other words, when you say part of why I may have trouble remembering your narrative, is kind of a throwback to what happened with my dad. It could feel that way to me, Galen. Where I kind of can’t, I don’t trust the project from the beginning and who it’s really for so I kind of need to – I mean that’s what happens with you every time you collapsed. In other words, not just between you and me but when you have trouble writing.

CLIENT: Agreed.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Okay.

CLIENT: Oh no, no, no. I mean I don’t –

THERAPIST: You saw it that way too.

CLIENT: Yeah. This was not a –

THERAPIST: I think you were talking about –

CLIENT: The proposition forward in the interest of defending this space and –

THERAPIST: I thought you were sort of referring more specifically to the part about forgetting or like –

CLIENT: I was trying to understand. I was struck by your question or sort of dilemma that you posed, you know, the problem of the extra-modularly model, what it might be that makes it difficult to have the model, the collaborative model in mind at the moment when it would be particularly useful and it occurred to me that the same kind of parental interactions that on the face of it seem very just almost by definition, benign, can also take on a more difficult, more troubled interpretation and the same is true of our interactions which are not parental. They are other but it’s in theory at least also a nurturing relationship. So, you know, there is a tension between these two kinds of scenarios.

THERAPIST: Right. And I think what I’m saying is what you’re referring to now as the extra-modularly part, I think is actually pretty much the same as the model itself.

CLIENT: You had said that you don’t understand why I forget.

THERAPIST: And the thing you forget is why when something goes wrong, with the relationship at work or in some sense in the household, you kind of shut down and you are done with whatever the project is that you’re supposed to be working on, or you can’t get started. That sounds a lot like what you’re talking about now as being extra-modularly. All I’m saying is, the thing that you’re – it makes a lot of sense to me – the thing that you’re talking about happening here and between us and that’s kind of a throwback to stuff between you and your dad, I think is the exact same thing we’re talking about happening in the workplace, with you and Jennie, in a way or whatever the context is where there is trouble.

CLIENT: Well, the way that you formulated it most recently – you.

THERAPIST: Me. Right.

CLIENT: Is in terms of providing home or space for operation. Some kind of room. You expressed it in spatial terms and this seems like a rather different concern. In other words, by definition, an institutional space just to take that particular kind of relationship, is something that is imposed on you by some outside authority. You’re accepting a nomination, you’re accepting an appointment from an institution that is allowing you into its story.

THERAPIST: Yeah, I guess I (unclear) for me with your dad would be that he actually made a space for you where the point is to work like – okay, let me back up. So with the institution making the space like that, in a way it seems like it’s a joint project where both you and the institution appreciate that it’s for both of your benefits.

CLIENT: But I don’t feel like it’s for my benefit.

THERAPIST: I think it depends on how things go. When there’s trouble that’s what happened. That’s why.

CLIENT: Maybe.

THERAPIST: I mean it seems very much the same for me with your dad. Maybe I have this wrong. Maybe I’ve over generalized things. But what I have in mind is like when you collapse and you say, ‘oh my God, this project really isn’t for me,’ that’s very much the same as, ‘oh my gosh, this really isn’t about me at all. I don’t really have a place here.’

CLIENT: True. So what? So you’re saying that – I see. Okay. I see what you’re saying.

THERAPIST: Like if the first thing is I’m saying that what you’re pointing out about things here (unclear) is very important and makes a lot of sense to me, certainly. I agree. I’m just saying – [0:21:42]

CLIENT: You’re saying that they can be reconciled.

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: Yeah, no – definitely.

THERAPIST: And (unclear) to me because the model you’re proposing now is – you proposed it. I wasn’t there. You thought of it. You suggested it. You remembered your dad.

CLIENT: I don’t have an investment in this not being –

THERAPIST: Sometimes you do have an investment –

CLIENT: You’re sense of trying here is a little misplaced.

THERAPIST: I don’t feel triumphant. I just think it’s –

CLIENT: I mean it’s not ironic in the sense that I agree with you. As I said, just, I don’t know, 120 seconds ago – it’s our joint project.

THERAPIST: I know you do.

CLIENT: I wouldn’t be doing this for so long if I didn’t believe that, obviously.

THERAPIST: Right, but you also wouldn’t be doing this so long if you didn’t believe in it.

CLIENT: (Heavy sigh)

THERAPIST: In other words, when there’s a problem that is the problem.

CLIENT: That’s also true. That’s also true. Right. So there’s this weird tension in the therapeutic relationship –

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Intrinsically between ‘I want something from you. I want you to give me something,’ and the reality that if you’re going to do anything productive in this particular psychic space it needs to be very collaborative.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: So that’s one. And there is an analogous, historical tension in my relationship with my father that has recrudesced in all of these different settings in a way that has been extremely debilitating between a need for something from someone and my real countervailing or reciprocal need to have something that’s my own so that I can own it and feel as if I belong to it.

THERAPIST: Yeah, that’s very much how it seems to look in reality.

CLIENT: So, okay, so there’s no extra-modularly model. There’s no questions I need you to –

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: (Unclear). Okay. I mean (heavy sigh).

(Pause): [0:24:27 0:24:38]

CLIENT: Jennie said something very smart to me this afternoon as I was having one of these moments. She said that in a transitional phase like this the most difficult thing and the most important thing is just to kind of consciously and by an act of – she put it much more elegantly and directly – basically, to own whatever it is you’re doing so if I want to produce these manuscripts then I should be for this period at least, a writer. And that part of the difficulty that I’ve been having sort of organizing myself in that direction might be alleviated by commitment to needing something or doing something.

(Pause): [0:25:47 0:26:06]

CLIENT: Which is another way of saying that one way out of this dilemma is to see if I can rely on myself to see if I have resources of my own for defining the space and the terms of operation and production. I think I fear that I can’t. And so I’ve gravitated toward all these very high powered institutions and then been unsatisfied by them because they’re frequently not gratifying in the way that they kind of validate my sense of belonging. You have a look you get when we come to the end of the hour.

THERAPIST: Oh. No. I mean, we’re not close to the end of the hour. The thought that was occurring to me was (Pause) I wonder if you miss having your dad do it for you as much as that was problematic.

CLIENT: Oh yeah. No. I’m very aware of missing my father doing it for me.

THERAPIST: I think the thought was kind of like, you say you worry about being able to do it yourself.

CLIENT: Sure.

THERAPIST: But I wonder if that’s partly like not wanting to do it yourself because he’s supposed to be here doing it.

CLIENT: Well, you know the more I have understood our relationship and his life and his agenda, the more troubled the thought of being enfolded in this particular embrace becomes. And so I become more mature and I understand the relationship and what it meant for both of us a bit better, but sure, at some level I kind of, I never really found it. I never really allowed myself to find it. I mean part of what I think I’ve been shedding over the last couple of years is a network of relationships that were really formed in the crucible of my just being feeling completely bereft of that direction or definition when I – and that’s exactly what I meant earlier when I said I would call Evan and he would supply the narrative by that space or definition and it’s very double-edged.

THERAPIST: And maybe in a way, the sort of tension you describe between you and me, in other words like the way some of this played out has to do with you looking for the way that you and I can feel like we’re working collaboratively without – and that part can feel nice without your having to be as wary or concerned about it being my project or operating more in my own interest as you sometimes worry.

CLIENT: No, I mean, yeah, explicitly, that’s what was in my head when the thought came to mind. I think my sense is that I think I express this in almost all of my relationships so it has become, or has always been a very primary way of relating to people. Sometimes the tension feels more urgent than others. But yeah, and I mean I guess this is a theme that is something that I’m very attuned to at various levels of consciousness I guess. There’s a kind of basic balance in all human interactions so it’s not that exceptional that it should come up in any of these relationships. You always have to kind of mediate between these two polarities – things that you ask for and things that you kind of bring into being. In corporations, somebody – any relationship has a tension between those two things. But I’m so attuned to it.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I’m so attuned to it in ways that I think are unusually and unnecessarily painful.

(Pause): [0:31:48 – 0:33:36]

THERAPIST: Here’s what I was thinking through that what’s striking in a way it felt like you were like in a way so far behind where we had been on Tuesday in the sense that like the model was gone and today it feels like you’re ahead, like the things I’m saying in some ways seem new to me or newish, or, ‘oh, that’s what I meant,’ or, ‘I understand it.’ And clearly you do. And it’s like where it was gone Tuesday, you’re thoroughly versed in it today and so I’m wondering when that happened. And a part of it is you’re (unclear) to think about things. But I think there’s more. I don’t know if it was – and part of it also is having this sort of memory or association to your dad calming you down. I’m not saying it’s like you never remembered that before but the way you kind of connected it up and stuff.

(Pause): [0:35:08 0:35:31]

THERAPIST: And it reminds me a little bit of like sort of the magic switch we’ve seen happen sometimes where the other person reaches out and that’s usually what causes it. But, I don’t know. Maybe there’s probably more to that than at least I’ve understood.

(Pause): [0:35:53 0:36:34]

CLIENT: I mean all that I can, assuming that what you say is indeed true that there’s something that was functional in our conversation today that was not functional in our conversation on Tuesday and I’m not sure I totally endorse that but let’s just run with it. All I can see is there was a good narrative that kind of helped us tease it out, a kind of framework for talking about it that allowed us to make it clear. It’s like an epigram or something, an anecdote that you tell at the beginning of the chapter that allows you to make things that were abstract more particular, more specific. This was a powerful anecdote or powerful kind of hook to hang some things that were a little bit murky and we didn’t have that on Tuesday but we had it today. And that’s what comes to mind. And maybe that’s not very helpful in trying to extrapolate from our conversations to real life in the sense that – maybe it is helpful. I mean maybe it’s useful to think about the reassurance I get from people as a kind of narrative hook or a story that I can tell myself, maybe that’s a useful analogy. But I don’t see any immediate application of the apparently active influence of this anecdotal mention or from college, I guess, knowledge.

(Pause): [0:39:02 0:39:16]

CLIENT: What does occur to me just –

THERAPIST: Yeah, I had another idea.

CLIENT: You have another idea. Alright, so the last thing that I’ll say is that resuscitating more of your model, you know, the point about connectedness, you know, I think that’s very much a part of the story about my dad and I think that’s a very close parallel with these lifelines that I request, agitate for, from people that I’m working with when they reassure me and really incarnate for me the story of our relationship, the story of my functionality within some (unclear). [0:40:11]

THERAPIST: I wonder if some of the things I said on Tuesday felt a bit like that and that may be part of what –

CLIENT: I honestly think that it has come up enough times, both in these conversations and with the two other therapists that I’ve worked with that it seems like a pretty pervasive feature of my interaction around these things, like, who gets to own the model. And who gets – how much participation I’m willing to acknowledge when I had an idea. You know, is it my idea or is it that kind of thing.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: That seems like a pretty common theme.

THERAPIST: Yeah. We should stop.

CLIENT: We should stop. Alright. Okay. So Tuesday.

THERAPIST: Tuesday.

CLIENT: See you then.

THERAPIST: Okay.

END TRANSCRIPT