TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: So, (pause) as we were heading for the door – I was heading for the door, there’s a – what came into my mind I think. I’m trying to remember what we were talking about at the time. (pause) But anyway, that it was curious, my assumption that (pause) – Yeah, I mean I think it’s a kind of popular assumption, or at least a caricature that it’s unpleasant to listen to other peoples’ troubles, or lives or stories. [0:01:18]

When I think about it, (pause) it’s kind of exhausting; very strong feelings are, you know, possibly difficult to navigate, especially if you feel some sense of responsibility. I’m imagining myself in your shoes. But the default that assumption is unpleasant was interesting, and I agreed kind of parallel to this iconic (inaudible at 0:02:07). (pause)

And beyond, you know, where it comes from, and what not, certainly if that is the default’s assumption, then kind of my natural inclination is to think that way; it would explain some of why it’s so (inaudible at 0:02.36) (coughing) to imagine myself in these different interactions.

I guess the conversation had been about impracticalities, since it was impracticalities of applying for things, and he said, I think convincingly and maybe a little surprisingly to me, that he felt like I was avoiding the substance; and kind of talking in very broad generalities about difficulty, but not really (background noise) Sorry. [0:03:17] – not really taking your – I guess you had been alluding to that approach and I’ve been avoiding it. I didn’t – that was surprising quite yet. You’d been kind of nudging me in that direction, and I hadn’t taken up your any suggestions?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Or just that I had used such generalities?

THERAPIST: More of that.

CLIENT: It would have been usual to say, “Okay, well I’m having this difficulty and that difficulty.” And instead, I was talking about (inaudible at 0:03:51).

THERAPIST: Something like that; yeah, like -

CLIENT: I’m just turning this down. Yeah.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Sorry. (pause) So, right, anyway. So this thought came. (pause) I mean, you know, work can be unpleasant, and it’s often not what you want to do. But it’s not quite the same thing, I guess. Or maybe there’re different aspects to it that I’m trying – I’m struggling to untangle a little bit. I don’t know, I mean I don’t know if it’s – it’s interesting, I mean it’s not really – maybe it’s also a diversion from the kind of emotional practicalities of the blockage, whatever that might – (pause) [0:05:22]

I mean I guess it’s particularly interesting, because, you know, it relates to our interaction, as opposed to this other episode, which is sort of in a galaxy far far away.

THERAPIST: It impressed me that, for one thing, (pause) it seems, there are things that seem unclear to you about where I am in this. But maybe I’m nudging you to talk about some things? [0:06:12]

CLIENT: No, no; I was just curious, I mean, I guess – (pause)

THERAPIST: Or, (pause) maybe I have like a different idea of what you should be doing? Or how you should be going about this? Or, it’s unclear what I mean when I say I want to talk about something?

CLIENT: Well, I mean you said something that surprised me. So the fact that I was surprised meant that, you know, that I’m illogically or experienced something different, right?

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: So, that’s all I meant. I mean I didn’t have a sense of, you know, if anything nefarious going on. It was just that you said something, and I realized that, yes indeed, this was in retrospect, somewhat (pause) [0:07:09]

THERAPIST: In what items that you’re still not clear where I’m coming from, or quite what I’m referring to? Or maybe that’s not so.

CLIENT: I don’t think so. I mean I think what you said was that, you know, while although for several months, we’ve been talking about my difficulty doing this thing, and although I feel almost a sense of desperation about the ability to do it, I have yet not only not done it, but not really talked, except in very vague terms about it. So that I’m kind of replicating the process of not doing it in this setting; is what you said.

THERAPIST: Okay. (inaudible at 0:07:57)

CLIENT: Yeah; yes it does indeed. So that I guess what I was wondering about when I asked you a moment ago was whether you – it just seemed to you that it would be usual to talk about the practicalities of the block. Or whether you had kind of given, you know, deliberately given me a nudge or an avenue to talk about it, and I had somehow diverted our conversation away from it.

And now, I guess, at some paradoxical level, I’m wondering if, you know, by having this thought in the midst of that discussion, I’m not diverting it again. (chuckle) But anyway, so that’s the recap. I think I don’t have a sense of some great divergence between us in understanding.

THERAPIST: I agree, I agree; I don’t either. But and somehow like mixed into that, is the thought you had about (inaudible at 0:09:04)

CLIENT: Well, it’s a funny response to have to your intervention. You know, it was something specific; it was some very minuet -

THERAPIST: Referent.

CLIENT: Referent in some summation or whatever that you have made. Anyway, and I wondered – I found myself wondering about something completely different from what we were talking about. (pause) I mean I guess where it ties in to the, who knows, at the topic at hand, is a kind of concern as sort of a characteristic concern about, you know, the investment of the other in the interaction of relationship, right? [0:10:15]

(pause) If I’m projecting this on to you, then assuming that we’ve set things up right here, I’m probably projecting it on to other people. And if I’m projecting it on to other people this kind of diffidence – is that a fair way of characterizing it? Or I don’t know just -

THERAPIST: Like a [sinus repetition] (ph)

CLIENT: Not sinus; it’s like, it’s don’t care. It’s not -

THERAPIST: Well you said, it was don’t like it. You actually seem to be different again.

CLIENT: Oh yeah; true. True; true. [0:11:04]

THERAPIST: Like maybe unpleasant.

CLIENT: Unpleasant; right. Right. (pause) You know, making it even more likely that it would – the relationship or the connection or interaction would be shed readily, for (inaudible at 0:11.26) provocation.

Now you know, I mean, from this stack for awhile, so it’s not -

THERAPIST: And why I’m wondering is whether maybe that probably it has something to do with the prospect of getting the particulars; like if we get into the nuts and bolts, or the weeds, or whatever it is, you know – (pause) then I’m really going to not like it’s very unpleasant or – (sigh) (pause) [0:12:11]

CLIENT: Boring; I don’t know; repetitive. I’m just trying – again, I’m trying to imagine this caricature, or reconstruct this caricature; unpleasant, repetitive, unsurprising, you know, not creative.

THERAPIST: Or a pedestrian.

CLIENT: Pedestrian. Or, you know, just kind of – what’s the word I’m looking for? [0:13:00] (pause) I don’t know. I mean something – something – I don’t know; I’m having trouble articulating which one; I could assign it or something. The word that came to mind, and I’m not sure it’s the one I intended; it was kind of pathetic. But, not arousing in pity or compassion, better – and attention, you know, in a clinical and professional sense, but rather repulsive. And that everybody is repulsive in this particular way, you know, all of the people who’ve come to (inaudible at 0:13:59).

So that doesn’t feel right. I mean, you know, maybe I can validate you a little bit, but I don’t think that – it feels like – it feels like a projection. And if it is – you know, assuming it is kind of a projection, then it says something more (inaudible at 0:14:29) or interesting about the way that I’m relating to these things.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: Right? It says something about my diffidence or my sense of repulsion. (pause) And I don’t know where that leads us. (pause) I mean that was the interesting characteristic of the – as you mentioned, I think, you know, a little while ago, that it wasn’t so much that it seemed – there was something repulsive about the exchange. It was something that felt unpleasant about it – that familiar (inaudible at 0:15:23), you know, pedestrian -

THERAPIST: Right. There are probably more, but I can’t imagine sort of two angles; one is that you are, as you say, repulsed by those things. And another is you feel like they make you repulsive in some inherent feeling way. So they could be you don’t like them yourself, or it could be that for whatever reason -

CLIENT: What’s the referent here? Because I think the referent is floating around a bit. I mean it is floating around.

THERAPIST: The details of, you know, who it’s been difficult to work.

CLIENT: Okay, I mean I think the thought that was floating around very introspectively in my head was more general than that. In other words, the details are one specific instance of, you know, the formality, or the life or the [0:16:24]

THERAPIST: I know, I find this unpleasant a lot of the time.

CLIENT: You find -

THERAPIST: I find this unpleasant a lot of time; the projection is a pretty global one.

CLIENT: Yes, I find this unpleasant a lot. I just wanted extremely to (chuckle) (inaudible at 0:16:40) Yes (inaudible at 0:16:43) (laughter). I find this unpleasant a lot of the time. Why do you feel, you know, necessary to qualify a lot of the time?

THERAPIST: Because you’re saying that talking about [0:17:02]

CLIENT: Oh, as opposed to just someone -

THERAPIST: Or in that particular instance.

CLIENT: In that particular instance, yeah.

THERAPIST: In a broad -

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and I think that’s, you know, in other words, this kind of thing is unpleasant. So, I don’t know, I guess projecting backwards from this -

THERAPIST: Another thing it makes me think of is, (pause) you do theorize often, I think it’s safe to say (inaudible at 0:17:44). And I mean, you know, I guess I’ve always thought about it being sort of how you approach things generally; you think abstractly, you think in terms of sort of modeled theories; and like pretty (inaudible at 0:18:01).

It occurs to me know though that maybe there’s an aspect of that that’s also about retaining my interest, or making this less onerous, if, you know, part of the goal is to like make sure we’re getting somewhere with the ideas, or moving the ideas forward, or discussing things in those terms rather than more kind of pedestrian terms, “This happened; that happened. I felt this way and that way.” But I don’t know. Maybe they’re (inaudible at 0:18:38).

CLIENT: I don’t know; I mean sure, I feel happier when, you know, I’m fluent in my discourse, and concise in my conceptualizing. I mean it’s just – I feel better, and probably some component of that is me feeling more delightful, or pleasant to talk to. I think that’s probably generically true; not specific to our relationship or interaction in particular. So I don’t know; maybe, possibly. [0:19:20]

What I was going to say was that projecting backward from, you know, this sense of unpleasantness or repulsion, makes some sense possibly, among other things of these – not that we don’t have other alternative models, or mechanisms, or theories, or hypotheses or hypostases to make equal sense of them. But one could also take into this framework, these abnegations, or departures, or difficulty sort of grasping the projects from where I am, and just sort of abandoning – abandoning things. They just are unpleasant, and it’s just kind of hard to keep (chuckle) I don’t know. [0:20:24]

(yawning) This is always the model that I struggled against, you know, but I just didn’t want to do it. And because I just didn’t want to do it, I didn’t do it. I just stopped doing it; so there’s some dialectic between that; there’s some dialectic between this unpleasantness theorem, and you know, anxiety theorem or anxiety about connection theorem; a sense of disconnectiveness theorem. In one, I’m the agent, and the other, the other is the agent. [0:21:09]

THERAPIST: I watched you a little bit there.

CLIENT: I don’t know, maybe it’s – in other words, if – this is starting to feel like, you know, some kind of [tomeutical or a caudalistic theosophy] (ph) here. You know, the idea that work in particular is unpleasant, and vocation is unpleasant, is accepting the idea that I’m projecting on to you something that I myself feel, is plausible.

There, I’m the agent; it’s a kind of disconnection; a disconnectedness, in which I’m the person who threatens to interrupt the commitments or the association. In other words, like the allegiance, whereas in many of these other instances that we’ve pointed to is kind of (clarity-matic) (ph) examples of, you know, the things that provoke my difficulty working. It’s a fear that the other person will disconnect; and that is – that’s the cause. And so, they’re sort of perpendicular to each other in some way; (inaudible at 0:22:48) (pause)

THERAPIST: And [there’s even a tendency] (ph), is that the other person does do something that signals that are, or might or have pulled away, and then the work becomes really unpleasant.

CLIENT: Right. I see, so it’s – you’re reintegrating them. But until then, the work is pleasant. [0:23:32]

THERAPIST: Pleasant enough anyway. Yeah, that’s – sometimes it is pleasant. I mean I’ve heard you get excited about things that you’ve done at work.

CLIENT: But I think that that’s a different case study. Because here, we’re talking about something that’s completely unrelated to how, you know, the other person’s relating to me; it’s just sort of a global assessment of unpleasantness. You know, this of global feeling that all of the people who you see in psychotherapy are boring; this kind of global feeling that being in a job where you came in at the same time, and met in the hallway with your colleague, and talked about, you know, a bunch of realities, is unpleasant. [0:24.29]

It’s not about whether or not they accept you; it’s not about – it’s just sort of a state of being, right?

THERAPIST: Mm-mm.

CLIENT: So those are two; they’re complimentary, and I can see how the function in similar ways, but paradoxically, one of them leads the agency, you know, the agency is kind of exogenous, and the other one, the agency is kind of endogenous.

Now I don’t know if any of this helps us, but that was the thought. (pause) I mean one of the things that you said, that I was struck by, was that (pause) you felt like despite my (prepostations) (ph) to the contrary, you know, I really did have a lot of anxiety associated with even with just talking about what I would need to do to send out this massive flood of applications that’s necessary in this job market. [0:25:40]

(pause) And that’s interesting to me; sufficiently interesting for me to divert the conversation, which I have successfully done. (pause) Also interesting I suppose is that my recall of our previous conversation (chuckle) is almost perfect. I’m not sure if that’s a (inaudible at 0:26:15). (pause)

THERAPIST: I imagine (pause) your sense of my finding talking to you among other people unpleasant, has been a part of your general feeling here. [0:27:44]

CLIENT: (pause) Presumably. Presumably; and I – go ahead.

THERAPIST: And I was going to say, you know, maybe disunintangling that somewhat and saying, “Oh, maybe Marshall actually doesn’t feel that way.” Even though I’m sure there there’ve been moments where it’s felt like I haven’t. But, can sort of recognize that you’ve been up in the air for you, and then to separate it out from, you know, your sense of the reality, has kind of felt like it must be released.

Because she needed to talk to somebody who finds it unpleasant to listen. I mean to extent that that has sort of colored your sense of the (pause) [0:28:41]

CLIENT: Yeah, I don’t know; I don’t know. I don’t know what to make – I honestly don’t know what to make of it. I think that (pause) I think it is true of any of my interactions, that I make this assumption.

THERAPIST: Yeah, I honestly feel like sort of people you work for and kind of have been, sometimes sort of in a way, not very committed. Like having one foot out the door, but you know, not really in it (pause) in a positive way.

Where I was going was to say that maybe if you feel some relief there, and made you feel more connected, that – [0:29:45]

CLIENT: Oh, that a discrepancy. (sigh)

THERAPIST: Maybe, I don’t know.

CLIENT: It’s interesting; interesting (inaudible at 0:29:53). (pause)

I don’t know why, I’m thinking about yesterday; it was really a literally shitty day. I wanted to take Grayson to the (lab sit) (ph) at the library, and we got as far as Central Square, and he was just crying, and fussing and it was cold out. And so finally, I took him back home, and we went Starbucks instead, which was not exactly what I had in mind. [0:31:38]

Then he had a massive shit explosion, and while I was changing him, he reached down and grabbed some shit. (chuckle) Yeah, I had to clean him up before he could put it in his mouth, and he kind of did, and then he put his hand in his mouth. And that happened like twice. I’m just thinking to myself, “Jesus, f***, from Washington DC to shit in the mouth.” I was just feeling, feeling really crappy.

And his diaper leaked like, you know. So, I don’t know, I mean I guess if I was trying and reconstruct the chain of associations, it might look something like, “Well you know, here’s this thing that I love and that I’m very happy about. And yet, yesterday was directly and specifically unpleasant. I mean it is just not pleasant; baby crap or no. (chuckle) Less concentrated populations of ecoli or no – (laughter) it is not pleasant, you know, to be risky in shit; it’s just not – [0:33:04]

THERAPIST: Yeah, to not make it to the library; [overlapping conversation] it’s not pleasant to not make it to the library. Yeah.

CLIENT: You know, to have him – he’s napping weird. You know, whatever; all of these things. And not pleasant to have this train of thought with the things I’m writing, and to be diverted from them and not to be able to get to them.

So what is that? What? I offered (inaudible at 0:33:38) the spirit of what comes to mind. But this, it seems like there is some kind of association there that might be – that might be productive. Like I suspect we’re coming toward the end of the therapeutic hour.

THERAPIST: We got about five minutes – we’re fine.

CLIENT: I guess, you know, I’m thinking a little more didactically, which can’t hurt. The lesson would be something along the lines of, “Well, you know, sometimes it is unpleasant.” And probably listening to me and anybody else, it can’t be (pause) it can’t be fun all the time. [0:34:30]

That’s something that one has to accept in constructing one’s life around things and regularities. One of the premises in regularity is that it is a kind of consent along with everything else that kind of varies around it. You know, sometimes it’s rainy; sometimes it’s sunny; sometimes it’s boring; sometimes it’s funny, or exciting or engaging. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles, which is (inaudible at 0:35:14) intellectually I guess, but maybe not in that the level of (inaudible at 0:35:18). (pause)

THERAPIST: It does seem like there’s something (pause) really unpleasant for you about the prospect of there being moments where I’m sitting here bored, or wishing I was somewhere else or whatever.

CLIENT: Well, I want you to enjoy – I mean I’m just reflecting this as we talk. I guess I would like you to enjoy our conversations. You know, I certainly would prefer, you know, that it not just be about the insurance reimbursement and what not. I would prefer that there be a kind of human connection that transcends – at the very least, transcends, if not, supersedes a, you know, kind of institutional process by which we came into contact with each other. [0:36:40]

Yeah, so you know, I think in the most f***ed up scenario, it’s just that I want to entertain you into that met other directive that I feel like I need to keep you entertained all the time. But I think there are more generous possible constructions or (inaudible at 0:37:09)

THERAPIST: Right. And (pause) but there’s a negative side there as well, which is – and we’re wondering about, which is, what is it like when you imagine it’s not like that, or I’m not entertained, or my head is somewhere else, or something? You know, like I can imagine a whole range of bad ways I could feel. And for you, my stance is like, there’s a kind of hollowness in the sort of (appearance) (ph) of something beyond the kind of transactional (inaudible at 0:38:08) aspect of things.

CLIENT: Say – repeat the last sentence.

THERAPIST: That there’d be something that feels very hollow or (inaudible at 0:38:26). I mean those come to my mind. You know, if you were to feel like I’m here for the insurance.

CLIENT: But that’s really important I think, actually as I think about it, because really what we’re talking about with the applications and the – you get the businessy side of things. You know, I mean the other stuff develops along the way, or it’s like what you bring to it. But it’s really the businessy side of that we’re talking about here, and if that’s hollow, then you know, some things fall into place a little bit. So that’s a good thought. [0:39:14]

Yeah, I mean that’s really important. It can’t be hollow, or it can’t feel completely hollow; it can’t feel, you know, how could you sustain the something? And what am I demanding of it for it not to be hollow? In other words, you know – anyway.

THERAPIST: What are the conditions you need -

CLIENT: What are the conditions that needs filled in our interaction by transference, or counter-transference or wherever the hell we are for the transferring.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: Yeah right, you know, what are the criteria?

THERAPIST: Yeah. We should stop.

CLIENT: Yeah, okay. So I will see you on -

THERAPIST: Yeah, Thursday. [0:40:11]

CLIENT: Thursday. (pause) Take care.

THERAPIST: You too.

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