TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: So, (pause) (sigh) I was a little curious I guess, about your train of thought with regard to envy; that was a very surprising interpretation to me. Not wrong per say, I suppose, although I’m not certain about it. But, you know, I was curious to know what – (pause)

What I recalled having apparently jogged, in my interpretation having jogged your train of thought there was something I said about feeling protective of you. Or at least that was how it seemed to me.

THERAPIST: (inaudible at 0:01:31). (pause) Let’s see, I mean I can imagine my thing was clear in sort of a general way.

CLIENT: Well the meaning is clear, but how it related to our conversation was [overlapping conversation at 0:01:50].

THERAPIST: Right. Though the thing that I remember, well first your thought that you would need to leave here.

CLIENT: Right. Which is a very familiar pattern for me; it’s not a very new development, or it’s not specific or personal in that sense; in a sense that it’s happened many other times. Now I suppose, you know, one could look for parallels and find envy in all of these settings. I suppose that’s possible, but I was curious [overlapping conversation at 0:02:30]

THERAPIST: Yeah, I could not have the idea that (pause) that you had thought about that was unique to this situation. In other words, I didn’t see that as sort of novel [for your own needs] (ph).

CLIENT: It’s not. It’s not. I mean the impulse is very familiar, and it’s been kind of the center of whatever this complex that we’re mattering over is; it’s clearly an important impulse that has been more or less overwhelming in the past. But how that relates generically, or even in this particular case, to this specific, I don’t know, relational pattern I guess you could call it, is – I found myself puzzling over it. [0:03:41]

You know, at first I thought to myself, “Well, you know, I mean, what the hell, right?” And the more that I thought about it, the more resistant; (pause) skeptical, I don’t know. Let me put it this way, I [overlapping conversation at 0:04:01] can finish explaining. Yeah, yeah. No please.

THERAPIST: But if that was, (sigh) what I mean, if that was that in order to actually do the work you need to do, you need to leave. That was your fantasy, which you weren’t saying it necessarily true, but that you had this idea in mind. And in order to actually get started, you knew you would need to leave for mysterious reasons; not a familiar one.

CLIENT: Well no, I don’t think it was mysterious. I mean I think that the rationalization, you know, in other words, the pattern is so clear that one should be skeptical of the rationalization. The rationalization was something along the lines that, you know, we had really kind of clar – and I said this, I think explicitly last week.

We had done I think a fairly good job at clarifying exactly what is going on here, and something about that mode of interaction; something about the way that we talk about things is preventing me from the fantasy, is preventing me from actually implementing what we had talked about and what we had better I specifically, had better understood.

So that if I gave myself the opportunity to, you know, just chatter about it (inaudible at 0:05:27), whichever comes first, then I might well do so. I might well take that opportunity, and I might orient myself in my life outside, in such a way to facilitate that. So, whatever.

THERAPIST: I mean I guess I would say that just from a like a (louder) (ph) point of view, that’s really a very partial explanation, in that it [needs to – why I] (ph) like a big question around, why -

CLIENT: Why I would have to leave.

THERAPIST: Why or really what it is about the way we’re talking about this. I mean, because, you know, we could talk about lots of things that it’s kind of around. Not only it would necessarily prevent you from -

CLIENT: (laughter) (Nausea) (ph). Adding it to an item would be a bad thing. (laughter) (Nausea) (ph); possibly part of the cure. (laughter) A good medic. (laughter)

THERAPIST: So -

CLIENT: Yeah, no, I mean, well taken. [overlapping conversation at 0:06:32] So, what you said a moment ago was that, that statement was not really motivated. But in fact, you know, regardless of what you think of the logic, and I expressly presented this as a fantasy; it wasn’t like I was saying, “Well, you know, this is an ironclad argument here.”

So, I mean to the extent that it’s rationed, or to the extent that it’s patterned, it’s obviously not rational. In other words, to the extent that this is an impulse that I’ve had on a number of other occasions, there’s something well beyond, or beneath, or you know, exceeding rationality at work here. To the extent that I rationalized though, explicitly in presenting it, it wasn’t like unexplained. Do you know what I’m saying?

In other words, so there are a couple of levels going here, and I don’t see why we need envy as an explanation. And it’s not like, if the shoe fits. I feel like I’m the kind of person who would be willing to wear it, and I mean I think it might be worth talking about envy in other contexts. [0:07:45]

But I was surprised to think about an envious relationship between the two of us, because as I said also last week, you know, I really – what I’m aware of, is just identifying with your sense of vocation. In other words, I don’t – I’m not at all aware in this particular interaction relationship of feeling as if, you know, you’ve got something that I feel resentful of, as well as feeling like I’m reaching toward.

I feel – I mean, how do you distinguish between an envious relationship in a more, I don’t know, healthy sense of (pause) What’s the nonpathological version of envy? If you have, you know, a friend, or you have an acquaintance, or you have a colleague, and you say to yourself, “Well, that person does x very well.” Or, “That person has a nice car.” It’s not like, [overlapping conversation at 0:09:03] If you don’t necessarily need to – yeah, I mean you don’t necessarily need to have that car. You don’t need to say, “God dammit, that mother fucker, you know, they’ve got this, and I want that car. Why do they get this car and I don’t get this car?”

You know, there’s a kind of normative aspect to it, that I don’t think is necessarily true here, and I don’t think necessarily embedded in my sense that it might be time to go. I mean, you know, when it’s like the end of the hour, or 45 minutes, or however we’re defining it for official purposes. It’s time to go, at 4:30 today, it’s time to go.

We have, as that time approaches, we’re in the middle of a conversation, which doesn’t necessarily conform precisely to the clock time. And we have to make a kind of a evaluation that’s often very unspoken; it involves a sort of implicit relational exchange between us, you know, about when, for our purposes, 4:30 is going to be; when it’s time to go. [0:10:15]

And I don’t know, I think that there’s also another version of that, which is kind of long, or our therapeutic interaction is going to extend itself, and it doesn’t seem to me quite so, I don’t know, kind of fucked up to – and this is a relation that I find very troubling, I guess. Maybe you didn’t mean it that way.

THERAPIST: Well, here’s (pause) that you find very troubling?

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know.

THERAPIST: It seems to me that there is something sort of dark.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Well, and I don’t mean just envy, but I mean apart from the issue of envy, with what’s going on here, in that like (pause) there’s some very important way in which what you came here to work on and fix isn’t fixed. [0:11:35]

CLIENT: That’s true. And I’ve said that, it’s very, I don’t know, anything to say about yourself, and I said that poignantly; I said that with a lot of emotion attached to it.

THERAPIST: I know, I’m not – I know, but the (pause) this idea that, well let’s not analyze the things about where you need – about feeling like you need to go, because this process is getting in the way of your -

CLIENT: When did we say that we weren’t going to analyze it?

THERAPIST: Well, if you leave, because leaving is the only way to actually get to work, then that means that we’re not going to analyze why you would feel the need leave here and stop doing this, to be able to start working.

So it seems to me [0:12:35]

CLIENT: Look, I mean, (sigh) there are many things in life that can’t do until you do it on your own. And, you know, there -

THERAPIST: But I don’t see any reason why this would need to be one of them whatsoever. And in fact the idea that it would be, seems that it must be related, especially given that this isn’t like some incidental thing, this is the very thing you came for help with; came for help for.

CLIENT: Agreed.

THERAPIST: So like, the idea that then that would just turn out to be something that actually really at the end of the day, you need to do on your own,

CLIENT: So my fantasy is fantastical?

THERAPIST: Not just fantastical, but surely indignative of something important that it must be hard to look at, or we’d know it already. (pause)

CLIENT: And how does the model of envy fit that bill? I mean why pull that out in particular? [0:13:35]

THERAPIST: Because, (pause) it may be wrong. I mean it does fit, but yeah, it does fit very neatly, in that you would be demonstrating to me that ultimately, like analyzing things, my job isn’t going to get the job done.

CLIENT: Oh.

THERAPIST: Or that -

CLIENT: No.

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: I mean, maybe, but no. That’s, if anything, it’s a phenomenon that we’ve come upon many many times, which is that, you know, I want to do it myself. That’s a very different thing. It’s not that you’re wrong in that I have an interest in proving you wrong, because I don’t want you to fulfill your vocation.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: It’s that, (pause) you know, I mean it -

THERAPIST: Like what? [0:14:45]

CLIENT: (sigh) For a long time, I still have no idea whether psychotropic medication is the way to go. And for a long time, I refused to even take anything.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: Because I felt like if I was not going to do it myself, I was not going to, you know, solve the problem. In other words, there was an aspect of -

THERAPIST: It was a kind of ownership -

CLIENT: It was a kind of ownership; it was crucial, I mean it was like, seeing the whole thing about – you know, presented itself to me, and presented itself to me as a kind of I don’t know, (jingsy) (ph) and obstructed will. And if I just sort of surrender my will to a blue pill, then what exactly has been achieved? Nothing. [0:15:41]

If I simply – and so the meaning our interaction for me is, in this fantasy; in this particular space, in the space of this particular train of thought, which you know, I would say appropriately cautious of, is that at a certain point, I need to take the reins. And while our interaction in this conceptual space is fruitful, and has insight attached to it, and has rapport between us, and the development of this relationship has felt productive, and good, at some point, I need to implement. And maybe implementation is kind of performative.

In other words, maybe there’s something about the dynamic of psychotherapy that -

THERAPIST: Well I guess the [overlapping conversation at 0:16:47] thing is that somehow while you’re here, while you’re continuing to see me, and continuing to come in here, and talk with me about this, there’s some way in which the reigns are not entirely in your hand.

CLIENT: Yes, that’s the fantasy.

THERAPIST: And somehow for you to actually be out there doing the stuff, you’d need to have the feeling of the reigns being fully in your hand?

CLIENT: Yes, the much – whatever. I mean that’s much closer to what I understand the -

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: No, you know, I have felt intensely envious, and angry and resentful of I don’t know, Phil, for example, with his million dollar house and fucking Kelly. And there was one, I remember we took one trip, where we both had a ticket and he upgraded to first class. I was just so disgusted, and angry, and resentful and jealous, I guess, at some level. I’m not quite sure; I’d prefer to think of it as a purer emotion than that. But, you know, I mean that’s probably some of that there. [0:18:08]

THERAPIST: But look, you’ve already, you’ve convinced there that at the very least, the most and needed thing, and maybe even both of the things, is what you’ve just said; that there’s some kind of – there’s something about like our both having our hands together on the reigns, because you’re here. Or, my having one hand, you’re having – I don’t know, whatever the -

CLIENT: For some people, that’s sharing. I mean it seems to me about sharing, it doesn’t seem to me about -

THERAPIST: Right, I buy it.

CLIENT: All right. Well, and I don’t know why that felt so important to me, you know, that I actually chewed on it quite a lot, even more so than usual, over our layoffs. But -

THERAPIST: Well I had that thought; one possibility seems to me it’s like, what you’re talking about seems to involve a much more positive feeling about this, or about me, like we are doing this together. And even if you feel like that means you can’t do it entirely on your own, that there’s some way that we’re more together in it. Whereas, my grain of envy suggests – well, okay. (laughter) [0:19:26]

CLIENT: Great (instructives) (ph) today.

THERAPIST: Or maybe I just don’t get it.

CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) (sigh) It’s also about the social relation, I suppose, you know. I mean there’s a hierarchical implication of envy that I think is uncomfortable. There’s a kind of moral implication of envy, which is also unappealing. But maybe, let’s dispense of the word for the moment, and get to the specific observation that you were making, which was that, you know, it’s very painful for me to be without a vocation.

I mean I guess if that was the point of departure at any rate, you know, it was just this confusion, and pain, and really I don’t know, a kind of rootlessness, that I don’t quite understand. I feel a sense of incapacity to; even to conceive of myself in a vocational setting.

THERAPIST: [overlapping conversation at 0:20:59] infinite (logic) (ph), which you [overlapping conversation at 0:21:02]

CLIENT: In other words, it’s -

THERAPIST: That is it’s been sort of a (laden) (ph) term, and wondered if I at least consciously, you know, how with the semantic range I had in mind was, or something.

CLIENT: Ah-huh, and you said broad as I recall. Or maybe not; maybe that was just -

THERAPIST: Yeah, I sort of – I don’t remember; I remembered us sort of continuing to move on with the other things and not that. But anyway, I did not have a psychosexual (laughter) (vocation) (ph) particularly in mind, it just seemed to be the term that fit. And -

CLIENT: Powerless.

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: Is that, I mean in, what sense did you use it?

THERAPIST: I guess I like it better than powerless, because it has the feeling that they’re really something that matter, and that one should be able to do something that one is feeling very unable to do, and (inaudible at 0:22:08).

In other words, powerlessness is like, made in a very powerless over that we expect to be, like the weather, you know. But this is something that like, you know, expectably, you should be able to do it; you want to apply for jobs, you’ll be able to apply for jobs. Or you want to sort of develop a vocation; you should be able to do that. And then there’s a sense of like being paralyzed in trying to do that, but -

CLIENT: Jennie got mad at me this afternoon, because her parents came over, and they were taking Mitch; Grayson, and then I wasn’t doing productive things in the house. And on the one hand, I was like, come on. On the other hand, she was totally right. And I did feel kind of powerless to conceive of the things that I needed to do; to perceive of them, there’s question about that.

And this is a funny metaphor these days, from the perspective of your preferred therapeutic approach. Because on the one hand, you want to say, well there’s a real, you know, disability. On the other hand, it’s uniquely susceptible of instrumental intervention. [0:23:26]

But yeah, I mean, (sigh) I don’t know, it’s hard – I take your point, and yet I guess, and maybe the metaphor is very good; in the same way that somebody who is sexually impotent has this confusion between the organic and I don’t know, characterlogical failures.

It’s sometimes hard for me to (pause) accept the possibility that the obstruction of the will is really something that can’t be overcome by the application of a little bit more effort; the application of a little bit more, you know, (pause) character. [0:24:29]

By the very fact that I’ve been coming here two days a week for the last two and a half years, presumably, I have a sense that it’s not something that I am capable of doing unaided. And yet, maybe getting back to what we were talking about a moment ago, I feel as if I should be able to, and it’s unclear to me whether it’s simply an indulgence to imagine that such obstacles can’t be overcome unilaterally. (pause)

THERAPIST: I know that you also feel it’s very important (sigh) that (enable) (ph) you to be.

CLIENT: Overcome unilaterally? [0:25:33]

THERAPIST: Yeah, in other words, like yeah.

CLIENT: It’s very important that they don’t overcome unilaterally in the end.

THERAPIST: In the end you mean?

CLIENT: Something like that, yeah. That there’s some value to overcoming something unilaterally.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: Specifically.

THERAPIST: Yeah, I mean for example, otherwise, yeah, you know, I’ll do this for other job applications, and all that stuff, while I’m here talking to Marshall, and (advice) (ph) that will come up and we’ll look at it. At some point after that, once I’m a little more settled in, presumably before future rounds, we’ll stop, and then I’ll do the rest them myself.

Like maybe this time, it’s important (sigh) to do them yourself. (pause) And to show that you can. (pause)

CLIENT: I lost the last ten seconds. I was thinking about Jennie and her parents, and (pause) this expectation (pause) that these next two and a half weeks will be used – [0:26:56]

THERAPIST: They’re in for two and a half weeks, is that so?

CLIENT: Yeah, another two and a half weeks. (pause) (sigh) I don’t know; I don’t know man; like I feel (pause) I feel, I feel kind of broken when I, you know, as in a mechanism that’s broken, when I think of this strange lack of facility at (pause) me myself. And it is hard for me to imagine how through an interaction, that kind of dialogical interaction like this, you know; I can undertake the actual process of rooting myself. [0:28:00]

Like you know, intellectually, I know how I can be; it’s not that complex, it’s not again, as you said a moment ago, there’s no reason I would have to stop coming here in principle for, you know, two days every week, while I was in the process of rooting myself in from the most superficial way to the most profound way.

In practice, it’s not an obstacle, but in principle somehow, somehow it feels inimical to it. And in some sense, I think, every vocational setting that I’ve ever been in, or potentially vocational setting that I’ve ever been in, has also felt inimical. [0:29:20]

THERAPIST: To actually getting work done at some point?

CLIENT: Yeah. Bizarrely, since those are the places where Windows work; presumably. (pause) (sigh) And I don’t – (pause) (sigh) it’s not true that I don’t know why, (pause) although I’m not sure that I am as interested in thinking about and teasing out the question of why and causation, that’s I might once have been. [0:30:29]

But it’s true that I don’t know why. I guess there’re two levels of causation here. Number one is why do I have this complex, and, you know, there’re probably some reasonable answers for hypotheses that we can come to. Why I’m not sitting down to do the job applications, I really don’t know.

And I think that’s what you were trying to answer last week, and I’m not sure that the notion of needing to do it myself, or having an impulse that is necessary to do it myself, and it can’t be done except, you know, unilaterally, to use the terminology I was a moment ago, I’m not sure why they would interfere with my process of doing it right now. [0:31:35]

So maybe we’re talking, I mean in other words, I guess, I guess what I’m wondering is whether we’re still talking at the wrong level. There’s still something very mysterious going on, and it doesn’t seem to be explained even by a further the clarification and elaboration of the thought that you were having; it’s not explanatory.

THERAPIST: Which thought?

CLIENT: This question of why I had the fantasy. In other words, the fantasy of, you know, needing to leave is, in keeping with the kind of familiar dynamic, and one that kind of ontological sense, has been very troublesome. But it doesn’t seem to be exactly what is impeding my ability to just work on a very moment to moment (inaudible at 0:32:25) level. (pause) [0:33:25]

THERAPIST: Is it possible you worry that somehow you’d be doing the applications for me instead of for yourself? Unless I was kind of out of the picture? (pause)

CLIENT: (sigh) Possibly. I mean again, that doesn’t make sense, but possibly. There’s no reason I couldn’t do it for both. You know, both to give you a sense of satisfaction in your vocation, and (laughter) [0:34:32]

THERAPIST: Right. To move forward with your own.

CLIENT: You know that would be a good solution; it’s like everybody wins, right?

THERAPIST: Right. Yeah.

CLIENT: Why shouldn’t everybody win? It’s not, you know, so the implication of what you’re saying, I guess, is that in some intuitive space, there’s a zero sumness that is kind of assumed.

THERAPIST: But another possibility, which may or may not relate, is you might also feel you’re being deceived a little bit about how much it’s for you. I’m just thinking about stuff that’s happened at work, where like you kind of think you’re in something together with somebody, and then it’s kind of (bent) (ph) that you and them and everybody’s going to win. And it turns out, you don’t. [0:35:41]

CLIENT: I don’t know if I was deceived, but I was disappointed.

THERAPIST: Okay. Sure, I don’t (pause) yeah, I mean you didn’t feel that there’s somebody actively trying to trick you. It’s more like, yeah you were disappointed when they really let you down. I think there is often a sense of like having been in something together with people, and then finding out that like they more self-interested than you thought, in a way.

CLIENT: I mean what I would – the way that I would – I mean I don’t know why precision is so important to me in this particular instance or connection. But I would say that I have been very aware of suspending my skepticism about peoples’ intentions, and I think in part, because of a sense that it was a little bit pathological, this skepticism, even paranoid. You know just kind, just through a sheer act of will, keeping it at bay, and then discovering that just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. [0:37:06]

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: You had a thought.

THERAPIST: Yeah, my thought was, when you said, I don’t know why I’m so interested in precision, one thing that occurred to me is, you know, maybe it sort of making sure that I’m not speaking for you in a way that doesn’t represent you correctly.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: Which, I guess in my mind, isn’t just of matter of being precise, although there’s that. But also like, I’d sort of be taking over a little bit. Which just seems to fit with the content of what you’re saying.

CLIENT: Right. Yeah, I mean sure. I guess I would imagine that everybody who sits in this chair, you know, is kind of interested to make sure that you characterize what’s going on in their emotional world correctly and precisely, rather than -

THERAPIST: Well, it varies in their different reasons, you know, like one person might want to make sure they’re (inaudible at 0:38:15), because they’re worried about like being voiceless, and sort of having somebody else speak for them. And the person might feel like any number of other things.

Some people don’t want, they’d much rather have me mischaracterize. (chuckle) You know, like I guess I’m saying, sure at the end of the day, absolutely, but during the day, it’s complicated.

CLIENT: I see. (sigh) Well yeah, in that kind of sense, it is important to me not to be mischaracterized, and it is important to me, I guess, not have somebody misspeak for me. But it’s also (sigh) (pause) Yeah, yeah, I don’t know, Marshall. But (pause) (sigh) [0:39:23]

THERAPIST: Maybe an [alter ego] (ph), maybe what was more important what you were saying a minute ago about (pause) like I seem to be proposing a sort of zero sum model in your mind. I’m like, why would that have to be, you know, why couldn’t everybody win?

CLIENT: So. So I’ve lost my train of thought.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: And I lost my sense of, you know, kind of fluency. And I think we have – you have rightly stressed the kind of relational significance of those moments. So maybe now would be a reasonable juncture at which to take stock of why that might be. [0:40:38]

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: I’m under slept; under slept for really dumb reasons. You know, Jennie and I watched a movie last night, then I stayed up another two hours doing bullshit. Then I went to bed; Grayson, you know, had an episode, and was out for 45 minutes or so at 2, 2 and 3, and then I went to sleep. Then I woke up at like 8. And I feel, I feel much under slept, than I do sometimes when not asleep.

And I had this four-hour episode after Jennie parents came over; it was very unproductive, and just kind of a waste of time, basically, as she rightly pointed out. Although, on the other hand, I felt kind of intruded upon, and that made me – you know, to be intruded upon in a state of some disarray, is much more disarranging, or deranging, as I think we called it in the past, than just being intruded upon in general. [0:42:00]

So, when I showed up here, I was a little deranged. But something about the way that we were interacting has compounded that, and I’m not sure what it might be. One possibility I supposed is that this zero sumness to the process of, you know, kind of with doing the analysis, is alienating.

In other words, I feel discomforted by your taking – your assumption as the burden of summation or of stocktaking.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: Maybe I feel – yeah I don’t know; I don’t know. I mean I want something at this juncture; I feel some (sigh) despair I guess even. You know, I feel a sense of real, real, real woe with regard to all of this stuff. And it’s weighing on me, and it has been weighing on me for some weeks now. [0:43:34]

THERAPIST: We’re going to stop in time.

CLIENT: Yeah, we’re going to have to stop for second; that’s okay.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: So yeah, I feel, I feel a bit divorced; our rapport. But we’ll consider this then.

THERAPIST: Yeah, at one?

CLIENT: At one. Okay, see you then.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

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