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- There were two central metaphors that developed

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near the end of the treatment.

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Mary's love of colors and flowers

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also became the basis for one of these metaphors.

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As she was sharing with me tearful memories,

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it was of her family when she was a girl

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moving during her childhood away from home,

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that had an specially beautiful garden,

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to another part of the country

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that was more arid and desolate.

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And I had, when she was talking about the moving

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and how sad she was, I had this reminiscence about

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an experience I had years before

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backpacking in the desert after a rainstorm,

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and I told her she reminded me of a desert flower.

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Though she experienced her early environment as arid,

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and she adapted by being all closed up,

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under the right conditions she opens up with emotions,

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showing her colors with such poignancy and radiance,

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the way desert flowers do when it rains.

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In moments such as this Mary would

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smile and cry all at once,

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and she even joined in the metaphor play

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by teasing herself light-heartedly

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that this also explains her self-protective thorniness.

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During the last phase of the treatment

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the second central metaphor emerged

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in a session in which Mary noticed herself

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lapsing from her new found openness back into

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a temporary lapse into a kind of cold,

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bitter and battled attitude towards a colleague.

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But she interrupted her own bleak trajectory

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and reflected with wry humor,

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"I'm at it again", putting a negative frame on everything,

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and she shifted out of it and she coined the term

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"the malevolent picture framer".

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She said, "That's what I do, that's what--

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"I'm the malevolent picture framer".

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And she and I could now chuckle together

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at the appearance of an old scenario,

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one which we had grown over the years now

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to know so well, and which now

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had much less power in her inner world.

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The phrase she coined, "The malevolent picture framer",

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became our private language for the imposition

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of her old cataclysmic and deadening scenarios.

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It became a kind of talisman, the phrase itself,

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a reminded generated within our relationship

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for her to touch base with when she felt herself

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begin to lapse into the old negative world view.

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The two phrases, the "desert flower"

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and "the malevolent picture framer"

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encapsulated Mary's old inner grim and hopeless world,

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while both phrases also represented

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transformations as the utterance of these phrases

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was imbued emotionally with life's new possibilities

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discovered and developed within our relationship.

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I'll read now her commentary

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in the final session and termination.

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Needless to say, I've become very fond of Mary,

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and this was a powerful part of our new narrative

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and it helped her to become fonder of herself.

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Here's her comment in the final session

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on our re-writing of the narrative

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about how I initially did not much like her.

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She said, "I guess in a weird way,

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"even the memories of that conversation

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"we've spoken of so many times,

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"you said you had feelings of liking for me.

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"As a way in which that memory has become

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"more positive than negative it's a useful one for me.

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"It thought the mixed natured of the human condition.

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"Liking is not an all or nothing thing."

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She smiles warmly.

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"There are moments when I can think about a person now,

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"I feel like this person experiences

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"some feelings of liking for me",

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she says it a little bit sarcastically and laughs.

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"At first this can sound like a really bad thing

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"but it's okay, there once was a person

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"who had feelings of liking for me,

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"yet we went on to have a very good friendship."

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Maybe needless to say, but it was by virtue

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of our working through the old patterns

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in the therapy of relationship that Mary could find

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liberation from the imprisonment within

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the old deadening patterns in her ways

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of experiencing herself and others.

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These developments in treatment enabled her

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in her day-to-day life to receive and to feel

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more of life's nurturing elements.

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Now when her boyfriend puts his arms

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around her she can feel his arms around her.

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These developments also helped her to show

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more of her colors to herself and to others.

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A break? Just wanna check-in about the time too.

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Oh, I can, how are we on time for this tape?

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I mean, for this card or whatever?

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- [Voiceover] Yeah, we have 18 minutes left.

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- Okay.
- [Voiceover] On this card.

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- Okay, I'm good to go.

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- [Voiceover] Although, we (mumbling) real quick.

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- Okay.

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Good to go?

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Sound still working?

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Okay.

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- [Voiceover] Let's see, it's four minutes left here,

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or whatever works for you,

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I can do like two or three, or just like...

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- Yeah, maybe I can do four, three, two-- Yeah.

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Okay.

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I'm going to, now, talk about enactment,

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and I'm gonna be making reference to Mary's work with me

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and talk about some ideas about enactment.

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And I'm gonna start with reading a quote from Phil Bromberg,

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very important interpersonal stimulational theorist.

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He says beautifully, there's some overlap,

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there's overlap with some of the ideas

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I've been saying but he says it, I think, so well,

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"In brief, I'm arguing that personal narrative

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"cannot be edited simply by more accurate verbal input.

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"Psychoanalysis must provide an experience

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"that is perceivably, not just conceptually,

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"different from the patient's narrative memory.

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"A central aspect of this process is that

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"the patient-analyst or patient-therapist relationship

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"itself is inevitably drawn into the telling

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"of the narrative and experienced by both parties

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"as a living entity that must be continually

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"renegotiated as the analysis proceeds.

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"The core of the negotiation is that the meaning

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"of the relationship is intersubjectively,

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"though asymmetrically, constructed out of

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"the patient's self-narrative

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"and the differences from it."

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So it's the patient's self-narrative

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that is allowed to develop in the

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therapeutic relationship, but then there are

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the differences from it.

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I'll go on with the quote,

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"It is in this sense that psychoanalytic inquiry

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"breaks down the old narrative frame,

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"the patient's 'story', by evoking

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"through enactment perceptual experience

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"that doesn't fit it, thus allowing

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"narrative change to take place."

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You know, Mary's experience of me as recognizing her

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and being really attune and really with her,

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for example, scrapping experience.

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"Alternative, consensually validated narratives

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"that contain events and experience

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"of self-other configurations formerly excluded",

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those that are the narratives that were formerly excluded,

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"begin to be constructed and symbolized,

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"but not by words themselves but by new

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"relational context that the words come to represent".

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It's the evolution in the new relational context,

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is central to therapeutic action.

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As Bromberg puts it elsewhere,

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"meaningful analytic change comes not

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"from bypassing old object relations

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"but from expanding them from the inside-out",

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getting into them and then working

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one's way out of them.

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"And this requires the therapist openness

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"and capacity to engage with these

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"different configurations."

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There's a kind of redefining of neutrality here

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that some theorists will talk about.

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Neutrality, the therapist capacity to engage

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with various relational configurations

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of the patients, keeping the enactments fluid

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and changing and open and moving.

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And this, as I said earlier, this is,

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this whole view of enactment as part

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of the central part of therapy,

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and repetition, is an expansion of

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Freud's playground in repeating,

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remembering and working through the analytic space

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as a playground where the past is allowed to,

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and the internal world is allowed to come to life,

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but here it's there intersubjective coming to life,

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the relational coming to life of that story.

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Repeating, we might say now,

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repeating intersubjectively,

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revising in the relationship,

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working through in the relationship,

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and internalizing the new experience.

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And here that in Mary's termination statement,

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the revision of her internal configuration

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of self and others, now when she experiences

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something in the world,

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the experience that evolved

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in her relationship with me is there

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and it revises the old grim scenarios.

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Inside is a part of this process,

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but sometimes the inside comes even after

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the relational working through and revision.

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There's a quote, a little quip that

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I really like from an article on repetition

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by Eva Hoffman, and it says, it's a play on the old,

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the philosophy statement,

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"Those who do not understand the past

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"may be condemned to repeat it. But...",

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here's the play on that,

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"those who never repeat it

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"are condemned not to understand it."

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And the idea that is through repetition,

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but repetition with change that we come

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to understand our past.

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It's a beautiful way that Loewald commented on this,

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about how we hold our past inside us.

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"The modifications--", this is Loewald,

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"The modification of the past by the present--"

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It's a really, that's a wonderful

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beginning of a sentence,

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"The modification of the past by the present

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"does not change 'what objectively

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"'happened in the past', but it changes

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"that past which the patient carries within him

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"in his living history."

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And that's what the work with Mary,

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I think, illustrates beautifully her work.

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So, I want to just conclude this section

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on enactment by talking about--

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I'm just gonna touch base with those six themes,

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those six dimensions and themes connected

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with enactment and with Mary, with her treatment.

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And some of it may be obvious but I wanna

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just go through and make a few connections explicit,

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and they overtwine, I mean they overlap

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intertwine with each other.

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Okay, first, intersubjectivity.

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Go to the same six, intersubjectivity,

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the work in that mode to expand and explore

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the inner world, I've just been commenting on this.

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The transference, "you don't like me",

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is both brought by Mary and co-constructed

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in our own particular way with me,

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it's intersubjective, it's subjective,

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it's broad, but it's intersubjectively, it comes alive.

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How does that happen?

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Through her selective attention,

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she pays attention to signs of dislike

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and doesn't pay attention to signs of liking

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or whatever, and through enlistment,

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she enlist me, she evokes in me as well as her.

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In any case, my screen was not blank and it never is.

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Number two, cure by action or interaction.

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It's clear my verbal responses are not

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merely informative, as I emphasized already,

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they're performative, and as the treatment

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and our relationship grew and deepened

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it was the poetic and playful exchanges

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in our dialogue that was hugely important.

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And the metaphor of the desert flower,

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my creation of that image,

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while interpretive, recognizing through the image

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certain aspects of her character,

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is clearly also an action, my generating that

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and sharing that with here is an action,

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it's an expression, that theme it's an expression

263
00:14:39,545 --> 00:14:42,848
of appreciation and love of who she is.

264
00:14:42,848 --> 00:14:43,816
And as Mitchell says,

265
00:14:43,816 --> 00:14:46,986
"Every interpretation is a relational event."

266
00:14:47,086 --> 00:14:49,555
When I interpreted her passive-aggression with the weeding

267
00:14:49,555 --> 00:14:51,925
and her boyfriend it was the lightness

268
00:14:51,925 --> 00:14:54,775
and the playfulness that's part of it,

269
00:14:54,775 --> 00:14:57,096
that's all part of it.

270
00:14:57,363 --> 00:15:00,433
The third area, expressive participation.

271
00:15:00,433 --> 00:15:01,667
I don't, I think I won't even say.

272
00:15:01,667 --> 00:15:04,137
So, runs throughout the treatment.

273
00:15:04,137 --> 00:15:06,572
That, yes, there's analytic restrain and discipline

274
00:15:06,572 --> 00:15:07,736
on how I work with her,

275
00:15:07,736 --> 00:15:11,811
but the expressive participation was crucial.

276
00:15:11,844 --> 00:15:14,547
The fourth point of mutuality,

277
00:15:14,547 --> 00:15:17,383
that was the counterpoint of asymmetry,

278
00:15:17,383 --> 00:15:20,987
the poetic and playful exchanges between us,

279
00:15:20,987 --> 00:15:23,690
that's in the area of mutuality.

280
00:15:23,690 --> 00:15:25,558
My sharing associations, I'm not just

281
00:15:25,558 --> 00:15:27,393
interpreting I'm sharing associations,

282
00:15:27,393 --> 00:15:29,395
the desert flower.

283
00:15:29,395 --> 00:15:32,565
My speaking with conviction.

284
00:15:32,565 --> 00:15:35,201
You're not just some efficiency machine,

285
00:15:35,201 --> 00:15:37,770
it's different from objectivity.

286
00:15:38,771 --> 00:15:42,208
The mutuality of impact, there's a paper

287
00:15:42,208 --> 00:15:44,810
by Slavin and Kriegman about how

288
00:15:44,810 --> 00:15:47,146
the analyst needs to change.

289
00:15:47,146 --> 00:15:49,982
I needed to change, there's a mutuality impact,

290
00:15:49,982 --> 00:15:52,051
it's not just that she's changing,

291
00:15:52,051 --> 00:15:54,186
the therapist needs to change if a deep level

292
00:15:54,186 --> 00:15:56,222
of work is gonna happen, and there's clear

293
00:15:56,222 --> 00:16:01,327
there's evolution in my feelings towards her,

294
00:16:01,327 --> 00:16:06,198
that was a crucial part, the mutuality of this treatment.

295
00:16:06,732 --> 00:16:09,535
The fifth theme was the repeated relationship,

296
00:16:09,535 --> 00:16:11,070
that's what enactment is all about,

297
00:16:11,070 --> 00:16:14,240
but as we said, the repeating intersubjectively,

298
00:16:14,240 --> 00:16:17,810
relationally, not just repeated in the patient's mind.

299
00:16:17,810 --> 00:16:22,915
And the sixth theme, needed relationship.

300
00:16:24,717 --> 00:16:25,918
If you remember when I said,

301
00:16:25,918 --> 00:16:29,555
for example, to Mary, "It helps to have

302
00:16:29,555 --> 00:16:32,324
"a better sense of you in you by hearing that

303
00:16:32,324 --> 00:16:34,927
"there is a sense of you in me."

304
00:16:34,927 --> 00:16:37,663
When I was reflecting and holding on to her,

305
00:16:37,663 --> 00:16:40,399
her vitalizing sense of humor...

306
00:16:41,934 --> 00:16:43,669
And as I said earlier, it's so touchture ,

307
00:16:43,669 --> 00:16:46,472
there were smiles and tears, it's so touchture

308
00:16:46,472 --> 00:16:48,007
that even a mis-herself loathing,

309
00:16:48,007 --> 00:16:50,376
I can hold this positive image.

310
00:16:50,376 --> 00:16:51,744
That's part of the nurturing

311
00:16:51,744 --> 00:16:55,447
of the relationship as well.

312
00:16:58,217 --> 00:17:01,487
And so, concluding this whole section

313
00:17:01,487 --> 00:17:06,492
now on enactment, and the work in this area,

314
00:17:06,492 --> 00:17:10,663
it inherently involves the greater sort of freedom

315
00:17:10,663 --> 00:17:13,132
and spontaneity for the therapist,

316
00:17:13,132 --> 00:17:15,858
and it's part of this counterpoint

317
00:17:16,365 --> 00:17:19,665
with the needed analytic restrain and discipline

318
00:17:19,665 --> 00:17:22,975
of the expressive participation,

319
00:17:22,975 --> 00:17:27,146
and enactment being a co-actor on a stage

320
00:17:27,146 --> 00:17:30,567
involves that spontaneity and that

321
00:17:30,567 --> 00:17:34,887
expressiveness and authenticity.

322
00:17:37,456 --> 00:17:40,893
So that concludes the enactment section,

323
00:17:40,893 --> 00:17:43,329
and we're gonna move on to the last section now

324
00:17:43,329 --> 00:17:47,900
for the course which is a relational view of the mind,

325
00:17:47,900 --> 00:17:50,836
'cause so far all what we've been doing all along

326
00:17:50,836 --> 00:17:53,839
has been focused on the therapy process,

327
00:17:53,839 --> 00:17:56,442
therapeutic style, therapeutic ambiance,

328
00:17:56,442 --> 00:17:59,312
therapeutic options, therapeutic action.

329
00:17:59,312 --> 00:18:01,714
And we've been focusing on that and

330
00:18:01,714 --> 00:18:03,149
the different paradigms.

331
00:18:03,149 --> 00:18:06,585
Now we're gonna shift gears and talk about

332
00:18:06,585 --> 00:18:09,455
the view of the mind, the view of human psychology

333
00:18:09,455 --> 00:18:11,357
'cause in the beginning, as I said,

334
00:18:11,357 --> 00:18:15,227
relational theory has focused on being a clinical theory,

335
00:18:15,227 --> 00:18:19,065
but it also is, does have theories of mind in it,

336
00:18:19,065 --> 00:18:22,935
theories of human psychology, and it's now to that we turn.

337
00:18:23,102 --> 00:18:26,605
As a way of beginning to talk about

338
00:18:26,605 --> 00:18:30,017
relational model of the mind I'm gonna talk

339
00:18:30,017 --> 00:18:32,478
a little bit about Freud's model of the mind,

340
00:18:32,478 --> 00:18:34,713
the relational model is very different

341
00:18:34,713 --> 00:18:38,084
but it helps to contextualize it.

342
00:18:39,485 --> 00:18:42,721
Freud's model of the mind, as you may know,

343
00:18:42,721 --> 00:18:45,858
there's the topography of the mind,

344
00:18:45,858 --> 00:18:47,763
a kind of an archaeological model,

345
00:18:47,763 --> 00:18:51,697
as we've talked about, with layerings and surface and depth.

346
00:18:51,697 --> 00:18:54,300
His original model, the topographic model,

347
00:18:54,300 --> 00:18:58,871
had the conscious, preconscious and then unconscious,

348
00:18:58,871 --> 00:19:01,807
and the repressive barrier.

349
00:19:02,508 --> 00:19:05,077
Later he added the structural theory

350
00:19:05,077 --> 00:19:08,581
of id, ego and super-ego, and held on to both

351
00:19:08,581 --> 00:19:11,750
of those as aspects of his way of looking

352
00:19:11,750 --> 00:19:15,755
at the human mind at the structural features.

353
00:19:15,755 --> 00:19:20,492
And so when Freud talks about the dividedness of the mind

354
00:19:20,492 --> 00:19:23,996
you can think about, well if the mind is divided,

355
00:19:23,996 --> 00:19:27,600
what are the joints between the parts?

356
00:19:27,600 --> 00:19:29,969
And what are the joints between?

357
00:19:29,969 --> 00:19:32,872
Well, the joints are between these layerings,

358
00:19:32,872 --> 00:19:34,573
the conscious and the unconscious,

359
00:19:34,573 --> 00:19:37,376
the id, ego and the super-ego.

360
00:19:38,711 --> 00:19:41,414
A relational model of the mind which is

361
00:19:41,414 --> 00:19:44,819
being developed by various theorists,

362
00:19:44,819 --> 00:19:48,153
very important contributions from Phil Bromberg,

363
00:19:48,153 --> 00:19:52,524
Jody Davies, among others.

364
00:19:53,960 --> 00:19:57,062
We're talking about, as we've been saying, internal--

365
00:19:57,062 --> 00:20:01,867
The parts of the mind, these internal configurations,

366
00:20:01,867 --> 00:20:03,402
this one, this one, this one

367
00:20:03,402 --> 00:20:05,571
multiple internal configurations

368
00:20:05,571 --> 00:20:08,774
of these narratives of self-another,

369
00:20:08,774 --> 00:20:12,311
and so the dividedness is between the configurations,

370
00:20:12,311 --> 00:20:16,249
the joints are there between these different configurations.

371
00:20:16,249 --> 00:20:19,418
And as I'm gonna develop, this is a model

372
00:20:19,418 --> 00:20:21,987
unlike Freud's which was based primarily

373
00:20:21,987 --> 00:20:25,724
on repression between the unconscious and conscious,

374
00:20:25,724 --> 00:20:30,296
this model will incorporate much more dissociation

375
00:20:30,296 --> 00:20:37,736
as the force that holds the parts apart from each other.

376
00:20:38,871 --> 00:20:41,907
And, the notion that we have,

377
00:20:41,907 --> 00:20:43,709
these multiple configurations,

378
00:20:43,709 --> 00:20:48,447
and the configurations become the basis

379
00:20:48,447 --> 00:20:50,916
for states of the self, and that we all have

380
00:20:50,916 --> 00:20:53,052
multiple states of the self.

381
00:20:53,052 --> 00:20:55,487
Now, these ideas may not make sense at all yet,

382
00:20:55,487 --> 00:20:59,058
I'm gonna give an example, so if you're not familiar

383
00:20:59,058 --> 00:21:01,327
with these ideas hopefully by the end

384
00:21:01,327 --> 00:21:04,396
these ideas will make sense.

385
00:21:05,097 --> 00:21:06,298
And it can sound this idea,

386
00:21:06,298 --> 00:21:08,834
we have multiple states and multiple configurations

387
00:21:08,834 --> 00:21:11,603
like little homunculus in there,

388
00:21:11,603 --> 00:21:13,339
it can sound strange like we all have

389
00:21:13,339 --> 00:21:17,943
multiple personality or Dissociative Identity Disorder.

390
00:21:18,577 --> 00:21:22,314
And we can think about that as a metaphor

391
00:21:22,314 --> 00:21:24,917
for this structure or model of the mind,

392
00:21:24,917 --> 00:21:26,786
but of course, you know, not that

393
00:21:26,786 --> 00:21:31,356
we all have those conditions.

394
00:21:32,091 --> 00:21:33,792
So first let's begin by talking about

395
00:21:33,792 --> 00:21:36,328
dissociation before I get into models of the mind

396
00:21:36,328 --> 00:21:39,690
'cause it's a crucial concept here,

397
00:21:39,690 --> 00:21:42,068
and it's a concept that covers a lot of territory.

398
00:21:42,068 --> 00:21:45,571
We can think about dissociation as a defense,

399
00:21:45,571 --> 00:21:48,874
like a response to trauma or threat

400
00:21:49,341 --> 00:21:52,511
of being emotionally or psychologically overwhelmed,

401
00:21:52,511 --> 00:21:55,648
you can think about dissociation as a symptom

402
00:21:55,648 --> 00:21:58,717
as in flashbacks with PTSD,

403
00:21:58,784 --> 00:22:01,720
you can think about dissociation as in disorders,

404
00:22:01,720 --> 00:22:04,991
dissociative disorders, and you can think about

405
00:22:04,991 --> 00:22:08,794
dissociation as a dynamic force in the mind,

406
00:22:08,794 --> 00:22:10,496
and that's our focus here,

407
00:22:10,496 --> 00:22:15,086
a major organizer of interpsychic life

408
00:22:15,086 --> 00:22:17,569
having to do with these multiple configurations

409
00:22:17,569 --> 00:22:20,505
and multiple states of the self.

410
00:22:21,974 --> 00:22:24,243
But whichever meaning of dissociation

411
00:22:24,243 --> 00:22:26,011
that we're talking about, it involves

412
00:22:26,011 --> 00:22:28,380
a break in integration, you know,

413
00:22:28,380 --> 00:22:31,917
dis-association, breaks in association of parts,

414
00:22:31,917 --> 00:22:33,919
that's what it's about.

415
00:22:33,919 --> 00:22:37,690
And it has purpose and function to hold apart

416
00:22:37,690 --> 00:22:41,260
elements of the psyche and soma that if

417
00:22:41,260 --> 00:22:44,763
brought together would cause problems,

418
00:22:44,763 --> 00:22:48,100
too much pain, too much strain,

419
00:22:48,100 --> 00:22:49,968
because the parts are too incompatible

420
00:22:49,968 --> 00:22:52,471
or discontinuous with each other,

421
00:22:52,471 --> 00:22:54,206
or maybe kept apart because one part

422
00:22:54,206 --> 00:22:56,942
would threaten to overwhelm, there'd be a flooding,

423
00:22:56,942 --> 00:22:59,645
an overwhelm activation in emotion from one part

424
00:22:59,645 --> 00:23:02,548
that would infiltrate other parts.

425
00:23:02,548 --> 00:23:04,984
So, different reasons, pain, strain,

426
00:23:04,984 --> 00:23:07,686
incompatibility, flooding, different reasons

427
00:23:07,686 --> 00:23:11,590
that the mind holds things apart.

428
00:23:11,857 --> 00:23:13,792
The very different forms of dissociation too

429
00:23:13,792 --> 00:23:16,061
in terms of what they feel like,

430
00:23:16,061 --> 00:23:18,464
you know phenomenologically.

431
00:23:18,464 --> 00:23:22,802
I think of them in two different categories,

432
00:23:22,802 --> 00:23:26,105
one kind of dissociation involves vagueness,

433
00:23:26,105 --> 00:23:30,576
vague, diffuse states that lack articulation,

434
00:23:30,576 --> 00:23:32,711
and another kind of dissociation

435
00:23:32,711 --> 00:23:36,148
involves articulated states but they are disjointed

436
00:23:36,148 --> 00:23:38,750
and disconnected from each other.

437
00:23:38,750 --> 00:23:40,752
So, like with the first one, the vague,

438
00:23:40,752 --> 00:23:43,956
diffuse, think of a continuum,

439
00:23:43,956 --> 00:23:46,771
on one end the most normal kinds of

440
00:23:46,771 --> 00:23:49,862
diffuse dissociative states would be things like

441
00:23:49,862 --> 00:23:52,564
day-dreamy states or so called highway hypnosis,

442
00:23:52,564 --> 00:23:55,267
you're driving along, somehow you got off

443
00:23:55,267 --> 00:23:57,336
at the right exit but you don't remember

444
00:23:57,336 --> 00:23:59,739
having thought about it consciously at all.

445
00:23:59,739 --> 00:24:03,742
We get in these kind of vague diffuse mental states.

446
00:24:04,343 --> 00:24:06,645
On the other end of that though,

447
00:24:06,645 --> 00:24:09,882
of the continuum in terms of problematic vague,

448
00:24:09,882 --> 00:24:12,584
diffuse states, are things like fugue states,

449
00:24:12,584 --> 00:24:16,788
derealization, depersonalization, numbing,

450
00:24:16,788 --> 00:24:19,792
freezing states, numbing states, things like that,

451
00:24:19,792 --> 00:24:21,056
where is vague and diffuse

452
00:24:21,056 --> 00:24:26,732
but in a much more intense and problematic way.

453
00:24:27,366 --> 00:24:29,468
Likewise there's a continuum of severity

454
00:24:29,468 --> 00:24:33,739
for the disjointed states, articulated but disjointed,

455
00:24:33,739 --> 00:24:36,342
the most ordinary would be, you know you say

456
00:24:36,342 --> 00:24:37,710
something to somebody and you think,

457
00:24:37,710 --> 00:24:39,578
"I can't believe I said that, you know?

458
00:24:39,578 --> 00:24:41,647
"I'm like not myself today."

459
00:24:41,647 --> 00:24:45,817
That's an ordinary experience, we all have it.

460
00:24:46,417 --> 00:24:48,687
"I'm not myself today", if I'm not myself, who am I?

461
00:24:48,687 --> 00:24:52,324
The idea that there's some sub-organizations

462
00:24:52,324 --> 00:24:54,526
inside and there's some part of the self

463
00:24:54,526 --> 00:24:57,095
or state of the self that said that thing,

464
00:24:57,095 --> 00:24:59,164
that other states or parts of the self think,

465
00:24:59,164 --> 00:25:02,634
"that's not like me", that's ordinary.

466
00:25:02,868 --> 00:25:05,796
That's one end of this disjointed

467
00:25:05,796 --> 00:25:08,507
or discontinuous experience or feeling,

468
00:25:08,507 --> 00:25:10,709
at the other end is multiple personality

469
00:25:10,709 --> 00:25:13,245
or Dissociative Identity Disorder where there are

470
00:25:13,245 --> 00:25:18,717
really fixed, articulated personalities

471
00:25:18,717 --> 00:25:21,887
that are rigidly kept apart.

472
00:25:23,089 --> 00:25:25,257
Okay, so having talked a little bit about

473
00:25:25,257 --> 00:25:27,493
dissociation...

474
00:25:29,662 --> 00:25:32,664
I'm gonna shift into talking about a case,

475
00:25:32,664 --> 00:25:35,901
and then what I'm gonna do is use the case

476
00:25:35,901 --> 00:25:38,070
to talk about the whole model of the mind,

477
00:25:38,070 --> 00:25:41,006
and dissociation is gonna come back in.

478
00:25:44,009 --> 00:25:49,915
So I'll call this patient John, he's now in his 40s,

479
00:25:50,361 --> 00:25:52,751
as you'll hear he's been in treatment with me

480
00:25:52,751 --> 00:25:55,254
off and on for a period of years,

481
00:25:55,254 --> 00:25:57,089
and he's progressed enormously, so a lot of

482
00:25:57,089 --> 00:25:59,691
what I'm gonna present it's earlier,

483
00:25:59,691 --> 00:26:03,728
so it's when some of his difficulties were more prominent.

484
00:26:04,730 --> 00:26:06,732
But he's in his 40s, he's returned for therapy

485
00:26:06,732 --> 00:26:09,068
after a number of years since his first therapy.

486
00:26:09,068 --> 00:26:13,205
He first came to see me with his then girlfriend

487
00:26:13,205 --> 00:26:16,041
about 12 years ago, and I'm gonna present one--

488
00:26:16,041 --> 00:26:17,542
They came as a couple.

489
00:26:17,542 --> 00:26:20,012
I'm gonna present one vignette

490
00:26:20,012 --> 00:26:23,082
that's from that therapy and then

491
00:26:23,082 --> 00:26:24,950
I'll move forward in time.

492
00:26:24,950 --> 00:26:27,719
And what you'll hear in this vignette,

493
00:26:27,719 --> 00:26:30,522
I'm gonna be working, you'll hear me working

494
00:26:30,522 --> 00:26:32,891
with him around the issue of splitting,

495
00:26:32,891 --> 00:26:35,027
splitting of the other, the object,

496
00:26:35,027 --> 00:26:39,412
seeing another person as all good or all bad,

497
00:26:40,503 --> 00:26:43,568
and I'm gonna contrast that with later work

498
00:26:43,568 --> 00:26:45,270
that I do with him...

499
00:26:45,270 --> 00:26:48,506
Well, we'll get there, I don't wanna get ahead of myself.

500
00:26:48,941 --> 00:26:51,143
So let me describe John a little bit,

501
00:26:51,143 --> 00:26:57,106
he's tall, handsome, very athletic, very athletic-looking.

502
00:26:58,250 --> 00:26:59,985
When he came in with his girlfriend

503
00:26:59,985 --> 00:27:03,555
back then they would come in to the sessions,

504
00:27:03,555 --> 00:27:05,357
they could be very affectioning and friendly,

505
00:27:05,357 --> 00:27:08,126
but they could also be in very heated conflict,

506
00:27:08,126 --> 00:27:10,429
and when in conflict what would happen

507
00:27:10,429 --> 00:27:13,499
they would review their past fights from the day before

508
00:27:13,499 --> 00:27:15,634
and they would get into huge battles in my office

509
00:27:15,634 --> 00:27:17,636
over who had said what to whom,

510
00:27:17,636 --> 00:27:20,105
two different histories to tell.

511
00:27:20,105 --> 00:27:24,376
In one particular session, the same familiar argument,

512
00:27:24,376 --> 00:27:29,147
this time the argument at home had come up around...

513
00:27:29,982 --> 00:27:32,484
He had been doing a project at his desk

514
00:27:32,484 --> 00:27:37,789
and she had come in and asked him if he could stop

515
00:27:37,789 --> 00:27:40,258
and come and help her do something,

516
00:27:40,258 --> 00:27:44,229
and he had been, he is facing a deadline with this project,

517
00:27:44,229 --> 00:27:46,498
was feeling very pressured about it,

518
00:27:46,498 --> 00:27:49,501
and he got very angry, and he saw her

519
00:27:49,501 --> 00:27:51,970
as showing no consideration for his time

520
00:27:51,970 --> 00:27:54,539
'cause she knew he had a deadline.

521
00:27:54,539 --> 00:27:57,442
She had requested his help and at the time

522
00:27:57,442 --> 00:28:00,712
she accused her of being totally selfish.

523
00:28:01,813 --> 00:28:04,283
Years later we would identify a certain state

524
00:28:04,283 --> 00:28:06,752
he was in at his desk,

525
00:28:06,752 --> 00:28:09,821
a state that he would call "ching-ching-ching",

526
00:28:09,821 --> 00:28:14,493
a kind of semi-manic state of working on something,

527
00:28:14,493 --> 00:28:15,688
immersed in that task.

528
00:28:15,688 --> 00:28:18,897
But anyway, so they fought about it,

529
00:28:18,897 --> 00:28:20,934
he said she was being totally selfish,

530
00:28:20,934 --> 00:28:23,669
the fight spilled in over into my office,

531
00:28:23,669 --> 00:28:26,872
he accused her of being totally self-centered,

532
00:28:26,872 --> 00:28:28,807
said he had to protect himself and his interest

533
00:28:28,807 --> 00:28:30,542
so she wouldn't take advantage of him.

534
00:28:30,542 --> 00:28:33,479
She began to argue back that maybe they both

535
00:28:33,479 --> 00:28:37,216
at times could be oblivious to the needs of the other

536
00:28:37,216 --> 00:28:39,985
but she felt that actually she had trouble,

537
00:28:39,985 --> 00:28:43,689
mostly asserting her needs towards him,

538
00:28:44,304 --> 00:28:46,591
and as she spoke he was fuming,

539
00:28:46,591 --> 00:28:49,261
and he was looking away, and he was looking at me

540
00:28:49,261 --> 00:28:52,431
like this, without saying it as if saying to me,

541
00:28:52,431 --> 00:28:54,867
"Can you believe this?"

542
00:28:54,867 --> 00:28:56,568
And before she could finish each statement

543
00:28:56,568 --> 00:29:00,038
he would interrupt and he would repeat this accusation

544
00:29:00,038 --> 00:29:01,640
that she was totally self-centered

545
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:03,608
unwilling to look at her faults,

546
00:29:03,608 --> 00:29:05,744
and he started to like cross-examine her

547
00:29:05,744 --> 00:29:08,180
and sort of badger her into silence,

548
00:29:08,180 --> 00:29:11,817
and then eventually submission and then tears.

549
00:29:11,817 --> 00:29:15,220
And once she was silent and crying he kept going

550
00:29:15,220 --> 00:29:16,989
and he was insisting that his rendition

551
00:29:16,989 --> 00:29:18,318
was 100 percent accurate

552
00:29:18,318 --> 00:29:22,627
and hers was 100 percent distortion, and she sobbed.

553
00:29:22,727 --> 00:29:24,729
And this process was not unusual

554
00:29:24,729 --> 00:29:27,098
when they would get in these conflicts,

555
00:29:27,098 --> 00:29:30,035
he would enter this mode of being rigid

556
00:29:30,035 --> 00:29:32,938
and superior and devaluing her,

557
00:29:32,938 --> 00:29:36,374
and she would be silenced and tearful.

558
00:29:36,808 --> 00:29:38,910
And though he could at times speak quite friendly

559
00:29:38,910 --> 00:29:41,580
and warm and charming, when they were in conflict,

560
00:29:41,580 --> 00:29:44,082
with her, I think with others too,

561
00:29:44,082 --> 00:29:46,151
he could get like this.

562
00:29:46,184 --> 00:29:49,488
So, for me, sitting with them was difficult,

563
00:29:49,488 --> 00:29:50,956
it's difficult to try to figure out

564
00:29:50,956 --> 00:29:53,058
how to try to enter into this process,

565
00:29:53,058 --> 00:29:55,994
and I struggled along in different ways,

566
00:29:55,994 --> 00:29:57,562
but I chose this particular session

567
00:29:57,562 --> 00:30:01,232
'cause it illustrates something I wanna illustrate.

568
00:30:01,266 --> 00:30:04,169
Anyway, I thought, as this was going on,

569
00:30:04,169 --> 00:30:08,307
I though about to myself, "How much he's vilifying her?"

570
00:30:08,307 --> 00:30:11,710
Yet is not that long ago in another session

571
00:30:11,710 --> 00:30:13,812
he did express feelings of love for her

572
00:30:13,812 --> 00:30:17,582
and admiration, bordering on idealization of her.

573
00:30:17,916 --> 00:30:21,353
So the first thing I did was I interrupted him

574
00:30:21,353 --> 00:30:22,988
and I asked him, first I asked him

575
00:30:22,988 --> 00:30:25,957
just what his reaction was to her tears

576
00:30:25,957 --> 00:30:29,761
in the face of his arguing, I wanted him

577
00:30:29,761 --> 00:30:33,832
to take notice first of how much he was hurting her.

578
00:30:35,124 --> 00:30:38,537
No sale, he said, kind of looked at her a little,

579
00:30:38,537 --> 00:30:40,439
but he said he recognized he was angry

580
00:30:40,439 --> 00:30:42,240
and he was being somewhat aggressive,

581
00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:43,808
but he didn't feel badly about it,

582
00:30:43,808 --> 00:30:46,545
he thought she deserved it and he didn't wanna

583
00:30:46,545 --> 00:30:49,681
let her off the hook just because she was crying

584
00:30:49,681 --> 00:30:51,950
for her failure to take responsibility

585
00:30:51,950 --> 00:30:53,585
and for her attempts to blame him

586
00:30:53,585 --> 00:30:56,188
for what he saw as her fault.

587
00:30:56,188 --> 00:30:57,856
He reiterated that he thought she was trying

588
00:30:57,856 --> 00:30:59,424
to take advantage of him and his time

589
00:30:59,424 --> 00:31:02,694
and did never guard for him and his time,

590
00:31:02,694 --> 00:31:05,630
and she wouldn't admit her own selfishness.

591
00:31:05,630 --> 00:31:08,567
And he said, he's thought she was being cowardly,

592
00:31:08,567 --> 00:31:10,602
too weak and too scared to take responsibility

593
00:31:10,602 --> 00:31:13,072
for her own actions.

594
00:31:13,072 --> 00:31:15,607
So then I said to him,

595
00:31:15,607 --> 00:31:21,112
"I know that's how you're seeing her now,

596
00:31:21,112 --> 00:31:23,481
"and I know this is gonna be difficult to do,

597
00:31:23,481 --> 00:31:26,451
"but I wanna ask you to talk about

598
00:31:26,451 --> 00:31:28,587
"how you see her at times when

599
00:31:28,587 --> 00:31:31,423
"you're feeling good with each other."

600
00:31:32,390 --> 00:31:35,293
And after a long pause he reluctantly replied,

601
00:31:35,293 --> 00:31:37,729
but very flat, he wasn't really there,

602
00:31:37,729 --> 00:31:42,300
but he did say, "Well, yeah, at those times

603
00:31:42,300 --> 00:31:46,238
"I think she's beautiful and highly intelligent

604
00:31:46,238 --> 00:31:51,610
"and accomplished and an enrichment to my life, but...",

605
00:31:51,610 --> 00:31:54,613
and he kind of pulled back from it but said it.

606
00:31:54,613 --> 00:31:56,514
And he looked a little bit shaking at first

607
00:31:56,514 --> 00:31:58,917
and then he resumed to a kind of cold,

608
00:31:58,917 --> 00:32:02,420
steely posture towards her.

609
00:32:02,688 --> 00:32:04,790
I started to speak further but I could see

610
00:32:04,790 --> 00:32:07,659
that he was protecting himself from the impact

611
00:32:07,659 --> 00:32:10,729
of what I was saying by looking often to space,

612
00:32:10,729 --> 00:32:13,932
he wasn't making eye contact with me nor with her,

613
00:32:13,932 --> 00:32:17,703
she was still crying, so I asked him

614
00:32:17,703 --> 00:32:21,673
if he would look at her while I spoke,

615
00:32:21,673 --> 00:32:24,075
and he did look at her, she's still crying,

616
00:32:24,075 --> 00:32:27,745
he's looking at her, and I make the following statement,

617
00:32:27,946 --> 00:32:31,750
I said, "While you feel justified and righteous

618
00:32:31,750 --> 00:32:34,186
"in punishing the coward who blames you

619
00:32:34,186 --> 00:32:35,754
"for what is her fault,

620
00:32:35,754 --> 00:32:38,523
"the one that is too weak to admit it,

621
00:32:38,523 --> 00:32:41,459
"the problem is that at the same time

622
00:32:41,459 --> 00:32:43,828
"you're punishing the one who is the most important

623
00:32:43,828 --> 00:32:45,664
"source of enrichment to you,

624
00:32:45,664 --> 00:32:49,401
"the one who is beautiful, and whom you greatly admire.

625
00:32:49,401 --> 00:32:52,437
"When you punish one, you punish the other,

626
00:32:52,437 --> 00:32:54,839
"there's no getting around that."

627
00:32:56,207 --> 00:33:01,079
And as he looked at her now, and she's still crying,

628
00:33:01,079 --> 00:33:05,717
he finally shift, he shifts, and dramatically,

629
00:33:05,717 --> 00:33:09,388
and he did two things that both of which he rarely did

630
00:33:09,388 --> 00:33:12,657
at that point in time, though much has changed,

631
00:33:12,657 --> 00:33:16,828
but he said, one was he started to cry,

632
00:33:16,828 --> 00:33:19,465
and the other was that he apologized,

633
00:33:19,465 --> 00:33:24,870
he said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

634
00:33:28,006 --> 00:33:31,743
And that session was a very, very meaningful

635
00:33:31,743 --> 00:33:35,714
piece of work, it was a matter in the session

636
00:33:35,714 --> 00:33:38,250
working to resolve a kind of splitting in his mind

637
00:33:38,250 --> 00:33:41,419
of the all good and the all bad girlfriend,

638
00:33:41,419 --> 00:33:45,951
and his tendency to get into that mode.

639
00:33:47,959 --> 00:33:52,630
But to bring this now, to frame our focus now,

640
00:33:52,630 --> 00:33:55,367
'cause I'm gonna continue talking about John,

641
00:33:56,446 --> 00:33:59,404
what I'm gonna focus on now today for this

642
00:33:59,404 --> 00:34:03,208
is not just how he's distorting his view of her,

643
00:34:03,208 --> 00:34:07,746
of the object, but also I wanna take the focus

644
00:34:07,746 --> 00:34:11,950
more into the internal for John,

645
00:34:11,950 --> 00:34:16,454
the internal configuration of self with other.

646
00:34:16,454 --> 00:34:20,191
There is, in other words, there is a self inside

647
00:34:20,191 --> 00:34:22,727
who is seeing her that way.

648
00:34:22,727 --> 00:34:26,131
And to expand this idea to multiple states of self,

649
00:34:26,131 --> 00:34:28,800
that each state of self is organized

650
00:34:28,800 --> 00:34:33,204
around specific configurations of self and other.

651
00:34:33,204 --> 00:34:35,406
So here's the thing, it's not just

652
00:34:35,406 --> 00:34:38,643
how does he see her at this moment,

653
00:34:38,643 --> 00:34:41,813
how does he see the other person at this moment,

654
00:34:41,813 --> 00:34:44,415
the question it's more to the point of

655
00:34:44,415 --> 00:34:48,487
where I'm getting to now, who is it in him

656
00:34:48,487 --> 00:34:50,822
who sees her that way?

657
00:34:50,822 --> 00:34:54,826
And then, who is it differently in him

658
00:34:54,826 --> 00:34:56,761
who sees her in another way?

659
00:34:56,761 --> 00:34:58,630
There's a whole internal configuration

660
00:34:58,630 --> 00:35:01,533
of the self that's paired with the way

661
00:35:01,533 --> 00:35:03,835
the other is seen.

662
00:35:05,537 --> 00:35:09,174
So, to illustrate that, more on the treatment.

663
00:35:09,174 --> 00:35:13,778
The couple's therapy, they broke up amicably,

664
00:35:13,778 --> 00:35:15,246
they broke up with each other

665
00:35:15,246 --> 00:35:17,182
so the couple's therapy ended.

666
00:35:17,182 --> 00:35:19,551
He continued for a time in individual therapy

667
00:35:19,551 --> 00:35:22,954
with me back then and made some reasonable progress,

668
00:35:22,954 --> 00:35:23,755
and at a certain point

669
00:35:23,755 --> 00:35:27,267
he left treatment after some progress.

670
00:35:27,267 --> 00:35:29,995
And then he called me a few years ago

671
00:35:29,995 --> 00:35:34,432
and he said that he had a different girlfriend now,

672
00:35:34,432 --> 00:35:38,002
but he recognized, and you can hear the growth,

673
00:35:38,002 --> 00:35:40,438
he recognized that he still has issues

674
00:35:40,438 --> 00:35:43,107
and it makes him unable to be involved

675
00:35:43,107 --> 00:35:44,809
in a healthy way in a relationship,

676
00:35:44,809 --> 00:35:46,912
and he wants to work on them.

677
00:35:46,912 --> 00:35:50,415
So he comes back, we start to work individually,

678
00:35:50,415 --> 00:35:57,488
and then about a year into that he made a request to me,

679
00:35:57,488 --> 00:36:02,294
he asked if I would meet with him

680
00:36:02,294 --> 00:36:06,398
together with his current girlfriend.

681
00:36:06,398 --> 00:36:07,932
And we talked about that,

682
00:36:07,932 --> 00:36:10,852
I debated about that in my mind,

683
00:36:10,852 --> 00:36:12,704
they were talking about maybe going

684
00:36:12,704 --> 00:36:15,006
into couple's therapy, it was clear that

685
00:36:15,006 --> 00:36:16,975
they weren't gonna do that with me,

686
00:36:16,975 --> 00:36:18,710
and I was clear about that,

687
00:36:18,710 --> 00:36:21,713
but I was trying to help them kind of

688
00:36:21,713 --> 00:36:25,016
get over the hurdle to actually do that,

689
00:36:25,016 --> 00:36:29,888
so I decided to, agreed to a few sessions

690
00:36:29,888 --> 00:36:31,656
to meet with the two of them.

691
00:36:31,656 --> 00:36:35,059
It's a little unconventional but anyway I did that.

692
00:36:35,426 --> 00:36:37,028
So, I'm gonna be presenting process from

693
00:36:37,028 --> 00:36:41,065
both a couple's session and from individual sessions,

694
00:36:41,065 --> 00:36:45,103
and again, what I wanna illustrate here

695
00:36:45,103 --> 00:36:48,573
is not just how he can have disjointedness

696
00:36:48,573 --> 00:36:52,076
and how he views the other person but working more directly,

697
00:36:52,076 --> 00:36:55,513
kind of internally, with the state of the self

698
00:36:55,513 --> 00:36:57,415
that is experiencing this other person

699
00:36:57,415 --> 00:36:59,684
in this different ways.

700
00:37:01,653 --> 00:37:04,422
Here's a bit of process from one of the couple's,

701
00:37:04,422 --> 00:37:07,191
one of these few couple's sessions.

702
00:37:07,191 --> 00:37:10,561
They begin the session warmly towards each other,

703
00:37:10,561 --> 00:37:12,964
she put a reassuring hand on his knee

704
00:37:12,964 --> 00:37:16,134
which he accurately sensed that she's preparing

705
00:37:16,134 --> 00:37:20,038
to bring up heated stuff for recent conflict.

706
00:37:20,038 --> 00:37:21,639
His state, and I'll be coming back

707
00:37:21,639 --> 00:37:23,875
to say more about this but, his state,

708
00:37:23,875 --> 00:37:25,510
he starts to get very anxious,

709
00:37:25,510 --> 00:37:27,378
he has a look of dread on his face,

710
00:37:27,378 --> 00:37:30,615
he gets a bit pale, his shoulders hunch forward a bit,

711
00:37:30,615 --> 00:37:33,251
he's leaning but he's leaning also lean back,

712
00:37:33,251 --> 00:37:35,019
and his hands are gripping his legs,

713
00:37:35,019 --> 00:37:36,988
he's very, very anxious.

714
00:37:36,988 --> 00:37:41,059
She begins to talk about a recent conflict

715
00:37:41,059 --> 00:37:42,360
when she was angry with him for

716
00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:46,698
something he had said, then there was a familiar process,

717
00:37:46,698 --> 00:37:49,367
they started to have a diametrically opposed views

718
00:37:49,367 --> 00:37:52,103
of the history of that argument,

719
00:37:52,103 --> 00:37:54,339
they're in the office disagreeing about what,

720
00:37:54,339 --> 00:37:57,909
"No, I said this", "No, you said that", "No, you didn't".

721
00:37:59,447 --> 00:38:02,414
And part of their argument had been in person,

722
00:38:02,414 --> 00:38:04,616
part had been on email, so he starts to

723
00:38:04,616 --> 00:38:09,454
now shift in this back and forth of disagreement

724
00:38:09,454 --> 00:38:11,489
from anxious to anger.

725
00:38:11,489 --> 00:38:15,654
And she starts to argue his case,

726
00:38:16,862 --> 00:38:19,598
and she disputes him, and now he starts to

727
00:38:19,598 --> 00:38:21,933
really ramp up in anger, and now we're seeing

728
00:38:21,933 --> 00:38:23,968
a pronounced shift into a different state

729
00:38:23,968 --> 00:38:25,670
from this anxious state.

730
00:38:25,670 --> 00:38:28,539
His body leans forward, his posture straightens,

731
00:38:28,539 --> 00:38:30,541
he's at full height, his arm comes up,

732
00:38:30,541 --> 00:38:32,744
and he's pointing his finger with staccato movements

733
00:38:32,744 --> 00:38:36,147
towards her like this, and his speech is getting louder

734
00:38:36,147 --> 00:38:38,449
and more pressured, and the content becomes

735
00:38:38,449 --> 00:38:41,085
kind of threatening, not literally threatening,

736
00:38:41,085 --> 00:38:42,787
but it has a quality like that.

737
00:38:42,787 --> 00:38:45,423
He makes prosecutorial references to evidence

738
00:38:45,423 --> 00:38:47,959
that he's got on his email, he can show her

739
00:38:47,959 --> 00:38:53,231
that what he's telling is the truth, and that she's wrong.

740
00:38:53,231 --> 00:38:56,339
And I feel as I'm watching this, he,

741
00:38:56,369 --> 00:39:00,405
I see this activation of his anger and I felt anxious,

742
00:39:00,405 --> 00:39:02,173
I mean I didn't literally felt frightened

743
00:39:02,173 --> 00:39:03,608
that he was gonna do something physical,

744
00:39:03,608 --> 00:39:07,646
but it's this sense of anxiety with how intense he was.

745
00:39:07,646 --> 00:39:10,548
She reacted by putting her hands up like this

746
00:39:10,548 --> 00:39:12,751
and leaning away, frightened.

747
00:39:12,751 --> 00:39:14,386
And he protests saying he's not even

748
00:39:14,386 --> 00:39:16,982
being that aggressive, yeah, he's angry,

749
00:39:17,366 --> 00:39:20,825
but not that intense, he's just arguing the facts.

750
00:39:21,526 --> 00:39:23,707
Now, what you'll hear next,

751
00:39:23,707 --> 00:39:26,598
and this is getting into the theme

752
00:39:26,598 --> 00:39:29,734
for the section of the day here,

753
00:39:29,734 --> 00:39:33,438
I do not work so much with the content

754
00:39:33,438 --> 00:39:35,773
of what he's saying now, you know like,

755
00:39:35,773 --> 00:39:38,242
years before I was working with the content

756
00:39:38,242 --> 00:39:40,812
of how he was seeing the prior girlfriend,

757
00:39:40,812 --> 00:39:42,580
the good girlfriend, the bad girlfriend,

758
00:39:42,580 --> 00:39:44,749
the content, but now I'm gonna work

759
00:39:44,749 --> 00:39:48,085
more directly with his state.

760
00:39:48,920 --> 00:39:51,923
So when he's like this, with this grimness

761
00:39:51,923 --> 00:39:54,659
of anger and leaning forward and finger pointing,

762
00:39:54,659 --> 00:39:58,530
I jumped in and I asked him, I asked him not to move,

763
00:39:58,530 --> 00:40:01,933
just to stay like he is, and I asked him to take his,

764
00:40:01,933 --> 00:40:04,569
if he would take his attention away from her

765
00:40:04,569 --> 00:40:08,172
and just attend to what does he sense in his body.

766
00:40:09,774 --> 00:40:12,143
And he sits there for a moment, and he's like this,

767
00:40:12,143 --> 00:40:14,779
and he sits there, his arm and finger extended,

768
00:40:14,779 --> 00:40:17,448
his jaw still clenched, the blood is pumping,

769
00:40:17,448 --> 00:40:22,787
he's in a state of rage, he's extending into her space.

770
00:40:24,558 --> 00:40:27,592
And then he softens a bit, he looks a bit limp,

771
00:40:27,592 --> 00:40:30,628
his upper body, and he begins to speak,

772
00:40:30,628 --> 00:40:35,099
and he's a little bit dazed and tense,

773
00:40:35,099 --> 00:40:38,369
tentative, but he starts to admit that he's been,

774
00:40:38,369 --> 00:40:39,804
he's actually being pretty aggressive,

775
00:40:39,804 --> 00:40:42,907
he's realizing that he's being pretty aggressive.

776
00:40:43,407 --> 00:40:45,776
He'll tell me, in an individual session

777
00:40:45,776 --> 00:40:49,647
the following week, he would then tell me that he came,

778
00:40:49,647 --> 00:40:51,482
it was only after the session

779
00:40:51,482 --> 00:40:56,053
that he really came to realize how aggressive he gets,

780
00:40:56,053 --> 00:40:59,190
how pumped up with anger he gets.

781
00:40:59,190 --> 00:41:02,494
In the session itself he kind of didn't want to admit it,

782
00:41:02,494 --> 00:41:04,896
he tells me later, he acknowledged it

783
00:41:04,896 --> 00:41:07,265
but he didn't really want to admit it fully.

784
00:41:07,265 --> 00:41:09,500
But during the week in-between after that

785
00:41:09,500 --> 00:41:10,735
couple's session and the next week

786
00:41:10,735 --> 00:41:13,037
when he and I meet individually,

787
00:41:13,037 --> 00:41:15,239
he's tuned into it, he's now aware of it,

788
00:41:15,239 --> 00:41:18,476
and he's realizing what state he's in

789
00:41:18,476 --> 00:41:20,645
and how incredibly angered

790
00:41:20,645 --> 00:41:23,881
and aggressive he is in that state.

791
00:41:24,382 --> 00:41:27,927
And then we start to explore that state,

792
00:41:27,927 --> 00:41:31,756
"John the righteous, angry avenger",

793
00:41:31,756 --> 00:41:33,324
and with the pointing finger,

794
00:41:33,324 --> 00:41:36,894
and there's a wonderful openness for him

795
00:41:36,894 --> 00:41:41,204
of really overtime looking at that state.

796
00:41:41,866 --> 00:41:43,401
And he's acknowledging all this

797
00:41:43,401 --> 00:41:44,902
in a reflective way, how we--

798
00:41:44,902 --> 00:41:47,140
He's like ever right and ever righteous,

799
00:41:47,140 --> 00:41:49,173
lose no battle, take no prisoners,

800
00:41:49,173 --> 00:41:52,276
vanquish the opponent in the argument,

801
00:41:52,276 --> 00:41:54,212
and they're 100 percent wrong, and...

802
00:41:54,212 --> 00:41:56,914
And he's working on that now over a period of time

803
00:41:56,914 --> 00:42:00,050
in the therapy about how he gets this way.

804
00:42:01,252 --> 00:42:04,522
And we explored kind of the whole associational networks

805
00:42:04,522 --> 00:42:06,958
in his mind connected with that state,

806
00:42:06,958 --> 00:42:09,093
and it comes up through the visual image

807
00:42:09,093 --> 00:42:11,796
of his father doing the same thing,

808
00:42:11,796 --> 00:42:15,499
and associations to a heroic father.

809
00:42:15,499 --> 00:42:19,237
And he loved his father, as a boy he loved his father,

810
00:42:19,237 --> 00:42:21,172
he still he loves his father,

811
00:42:21,172 --> 00:42:25,243
and admires his father deeply.

812
00:42:25,376 --> 00:42:27,712
But he starts to explore and open up

813
00:42:27,712 --> 00:42:30,147
to all kinds of memories and experiences

814
00:42:30,147 --> 00:42:32,550
and visual images connected with his father

815
00:42:32,550 --> 00:42:35,686
who would be in that same mode.

816
00:42:35,753 --> 00:42:38,456
Never lose the argument.

817
00:42:39,190 --> 00:42:41,659
So a bit of background about John

818
00:42:41,659 --> 00:42:46,264
to connect this, and his father.

819
00:42:46,264 --> 00:42:47,898
He...

820
00:42:48,899 --> 00:42:50,034
This is another case where a person

821
00:42:50,034 --> 00:42:52,169
whose family moved a lot, they moved a lot.

822
00:42:52,169 --> 00:42:55,773
His father worked as a very high-level executive,

823
00:42:55,773 --> 00:42:58,510
he ran factories, and in different parts of the world

824
00:42:58,510 --> 00:43:02,513
they lived and would move to various countries

825
00:43:02,513 --> 00:43:05,116
in Asia and the Middle East,

826
00:43:05,116 --> 00:43:08,519
and the father worked at these very high levels.

827
00:43:08,519 --> 00:43:09,987
And he described his father as getting

828
00:43:09,987 --> 00:43:11,689
into this "ching-ching-ching" state

829
00:43:11,689 --> 00:43:15,059
with his frenetic pace with his work projects,

830
00:43:15,059 --> 00:43:18,029
kind of glossy-eyed, half-stunned, completely immersed

831
00:43:18,029 --> 00:43:20,464
in the next project.

832
00:43:20,965 --> 00:43:23,634
And the father was just, he described him,

833
00:43:23,634 --> 00:43:26,270
he's such a powerful figure, he's this powerful,

834
00:43:26,270 --> 00:43:30,174
admired figure, larger than life, very macho,

835
00:43:30,174 --> 00:43:33,277
kind of a drinker and a carouser and a bad boy,

836
00:43:33,277 --> 00:43:35,504
and he had his bad boy buddies

837
00:43:35,504 --> 00:43:36,981
that he get together with.

838
00:43:36,981 --> 00:43:39,150
And there was also something in essence

839
00:43:39,150 --> 00:43:41,185
of a boyhood looking up to his father

840
00:43:41,185 --> 00:43:44,255
as his father being such a large presence

841
00:43:44,255 --> 00:43:45,589
that he was kind of,

842
00:43:45,589 --> 00:43:47,325
he could live on the margins of society,

843
00:43:47,325 --> 00:43:49,593
he could be above its rules.

844
00:43:49,593 --> 00:43:50,861
His father just, there were stories

845
00:43:50,861 --> 00:43:53,464
about his father that was just omnipotent

846
00:43:53,464 --> 00:43:56,601
and fearless, there were stories of them living

847
00:43:56,601 --> 00:43:59,370
and working in areas where war was breaking out,

848
00:43:59,370 --> 00:44:01,539
and people shooting father, having the situations

849
00:44:01,539 --> 00:44:06,110
of being shot at but continuing to work at the factory.

850
00:44:07,045 --> 00:44:09,480
And he was just heroic in John's eyes,

851
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:14,151
and John was his beloved protege from a very young age.

852
00:44:14,151 --> 00:44:16,354
There were stories about John as a little,

853
00:44:16,354 --> 00:44:18,989
fairly little boy being taken with his father,

854
00:44:18,989 --> 00:44:20,491
his father would take him around with him

855
00:44:20,491 --> 00:44:22,193
and kind of sit him on the counter,

856
00:44:22,193 --> 00:44:24,962
even at the bars and he didn't let John drink

857
00:44:24,962 --> 00:44:27,498
as a kid but he would take him with him,

858
00:44:27,498 --> 00:44:29,700
and he would be there with father and his buddies,

859
00:44:29,700 --> 00:44:32,770
and he would see his father getting in arguments

860
00:44:32,770 --> 00:44:34,472
with some guy in a bar and his father

861
00:44:34,472 --> 00:44:36,273
would like stare the guy down,

862
00:44:36,273 --> 00:44:38,843
and the pointing finger, and would win,

863
00:44:38,843 --> 00:44:40,945
and he can see his father

864
00:44:40,945 --> 00:44:44,982
really, really just dominating other men.

865
00:44:44,982 --> 00:44:48,319
And anything about people, about weakness,

866
00:44:48,319 --> 00:44:51,155
like employees who worked for him who made mistakes,

867
00:44:51,155 --> 00:44:53,124
or where, you know, messed up on things,

868
00:44:53,124 --> 00:44:56,727
the father had this powerful kind of wrath

869
00:44:56,727 --> 00:45:01,399
toward these people, and putting them down,

870
00:45:01,399 --> 00:45:04,201
or people who would disagree with his father.

871
00:45:04,201 --> 00:45:07,405
And they were, he was also his protege

872
00:45:07,405 --> 00:45:09,640
that would go out and occasionally sort of

873
00:45:09,640 --> 00:45:12,610
doing little pranks together.

874
00:45:12,977 --> 00:45:14,979
Anyway, one other thing about the father

875
00:45:14,979 --> 00:45:17,648
which relates to relationships with women,

876
00:45:17,648 --> 00:45:19,850
father expressed a lot of sexist attitudes,

877
00:45:19,850 --> 00:45:22,186
some devaluing women sometimes in terms

878
00:45:22,186 --> 00:45:26,724
of them being irrational and things like that.

879
00:45:27,124 --> 00:45:28,926
And father made clear to John that he was

880
00:45:28,926 --> 00:45:31,162
to be a man's man from an early age,

881
00:45:31,162 --> 00:45:34,599
to be independent, and to be hard and not soft.

882
00:45:34,599 --> 00:45:36,300
He had one particular memory,

883
00:45:36,300 --> 00:45:39,370
though most of his memories were of his father

884
00:45:39,370 --> 00:45:41,505
being very affirming of him,

885
00:45:41,505 --> 00:45:44,708
but he had one particular memory about age nine

886
00:45:44,708 --> 00:45:48,746
of feeling shamed by his father for crying.

887
00:45:49,746 --> 00:45:52,350
John was talking to his father about his fears,

888
00:45:52,350 --> 00:45:54,748
they were in a particular scary situation,

889
00:45:54,748 --> 00:45:58,155
John was in a street situation in one of the countries

890
00:45:58,155 --> 00:46:00,458
where they lived, and the father's response,

891
00:46:00,458 --> 00:46:02,293
John was really scared and upset,

892
00:46:02,293 --> 00:46:04,195
the father's response was,

893
00:46:04,195 --> 00:46:05,630
"Well, you know, that's nothing compared to

894
00:46:05,630 --> 00:46:08,499
"what happened in this other city",

895
00:46:08,499 --> 00:46:11,202
and John had been crying, he felt really ashamed,

896
00:46:11,202 --> 00:46:13,971
and he vowed he would never cry again.

897
00:46:13,971 --> 00:46:17,875
And he said until therapy he had mostly held to that.

898
00:46:17,875 --> 00:46:19,276
There's a real disavowal,

899
00:46:19,276 --> 00:46:23,948
a need to disavowal the vulnerable states of the self.

900
00:46:24,655 --> 00:46:26,050
I'll just say a little bit about his mother,

901
00:46:26,050 --> 00:46:28,319
she was much more of a shadowy figure.

902
00:46:28,319 --> 00:46:31,088
He's fond of her, they have a reasonable

903
00:46:31,088 --> 00:46:35,059
relationship now but, and he's a supportive son

904
00:46:35,059 --> 00:46:37,795
but his memories of being raised by her,

905
00:46:37,795 --> 00:46:41,499
she's in many ways more benign but sort of

906
00:46:41,499 --> 00:46:45,436
ineffectual in his eyes, and emotionally pretty cut off.

907
00:46:45,436 --> 00:46:47,338
He saw her as kind of being cheaper

908
00:46:47,338 --> 00:46:52,877
and kind of minimizing, if he was upset or something,

909
00:46:52,877 --> 00:46:54,512
so it wasn't that he felt he could go to her

910
00:46:54,512 --> 00:46:57,548
with his vulnerable self.

911
00:46:57,781 --> 00:47:02,586
But his father was so much the dominant figure for him

912
00:47:02,586 --> 00:47:06,857
in his mind and what he talks about.

913
00:47:09,793 --> 00:47:12,263
And the presence of his mother sort of pales

914
00:47:12,263 --> 00:47:15,800
in comparison in his mind.

915
00:47:16,334 --> 00:47:18,602
One little bit of his, a little bit more

916
00:47:18,602 --> 00:47:21,205
in his history and then we'll get back into the process.

917
00:47:21,205 --> 00:47:24,141
The things changed in a big way

918
00:47:24,141 --> 00:47:27,002
when he was about 10, the family,

919
00:47:27,002 --> 00:47:28,813
father stopped working internationally,

920
00:47:28,813 --> 00:47:31,415
the family moved to the United States,

921
00:47:31,415 --> 00:47:34,752
and he, John, was sent to boarding school,

922
00:47:34,752 --> 00:47:40,090
and so there's this shift from this tremendous closeness

923
00:47:40,090 --> 00:47:42,426
and being the beloved protege to this

924
00:47:42,426 --> 00:47:46,163
beloved heroic figure of his father,

925
00:47:46,163 --> 00:47:49,199
to being suddenly relocated, sent to boarding school,

926
00:47:49,199 --> 00:47:50,868
he's no longer...

927
00:47:50,868 --> 00:47:52,937
He felt overseas, he was kind of often

928
00:47:52,937 --> 00:47:56,941
the cool American, he was kind of more unusual among peers,

929
00:47:56,941 --> 00:47:58,475
now he's put in a boarding school,

930
00:47:58,475 --> 00:48:02,479
in a prep school with kids who, where he's now,

931
00:48:02,479 --> 00:48:04,415
he wasn't academically as prepared as they were

932
00:48:04,415 --> 00:48:06,517
so he's near the bottom of the class,

933
00:48:06,517 --> 00:48:08,319
he was late in these growth spurts

934
00:48:08,319 --> 00:48:11,322
so he was the smallest in the class.

935
00:48:11,322 --> 00:48:15,726
And so here he is, separated much of the year

936
00:48:15,726 --> 00:48:20,564
from his beloved heroic father in the boarding schools,

937
00:48:20,564 --> 00:48:24,168
and feeling at the bottom and the smallest.

938
00:48:25,435 --> 00:48:28,805
Very difficult situation for him.

939
00:48:29,373 --> 00:48:31,175
He then, he got a growth spurt,

940
00:48:31,175 --> 00:48:35,012
he got taller, he took up boxing

941
00:48:35,012 --> 00:48:39,650
and he became very strong and adept at boxing,

942
00:48:39,650 --> 00:48:43,354
so there were other ways in which his, he found ways

943
00:48:43,354 --> 00:48:47,158
to develop certain skills and develop his self-esteem,

944
00:48:47,158 --> 00:48:51,795
and he emerged eventually running now

945
00:48:51,795 --> 00:48:54,831
a successful Internet business.

946
00:48:56,300 --> 00:48:58,169
And he's had a series of girlfriends,

947
00:48:58,169 --> 00:48:59,770
but none of them have ever,

948
00:48:59,770 --> 00:49:04,008
hasn't worked out for the reasons that we're talking about.

949
00:49:04,008 --> 00:49:05,342
So that's as much background

950
00:49:05,342 --> 00:49:06,777
as I'm gonna give about John,

951
00:49:06,777 --> 00:49:09,647
I wanna get back into the, some of the process

952
00:49:09,647 --> 00:49:12,883
and then illustrate these models of the mind.

953
00:49:14,351 --> 00:49:17,054
So to set way into the next vignette,

954
00:49:17,054 --> 00:49:20,190
the next clinical piece, what I'm gonna illustrate here,

955
00:49:20,190 --> 00:49:23,594
a couple of things about relational model of the mind.

956
00:49:23,594 --> 00:49:26,530
One is the idea of these multiple

957
00:49:26,530 --> 00:49:29,867
internal configurations of self-another.

958
00:49:29,867 --> 00:49:35,673
Two is that they form the basis for states of the self.

959
00:49:35,673 --> 00:49:39,376
Third point is that these multiple self states

960
00:49:39,376 --> 00:49:43,447
can become rigidly dissociated from each other.

961
00:49:44,882 --> 00:49:46,183
And then I'm gonna, fourth,

962
00:49:46,183 --> 00:49:50,821
I'll be talking about how to work with this in therapy.

963
00:49:53,057 --> 00:49:55,392
So here we go.

964
00:49:56,060 --> 00:49:57,361
I'm gonna interweave talking about

965
00:49:57,361 --> 00:50:01,665
John's clinical process and these ideas about the mind.

966
00:50:02,066 --> 00:50:03,768
Same process, once while telling me

967
00:50:03,768 --> 00:50:07,565
of a reason fight with his current girlfriend

968
00:50:07,565 --> 00:50:10,741
in a regular individual session, John starts

969
00:50:10,741 --> 00:50:13,277
to get ramped up, and he starts,

970
00:50:13,277 --> 00:50:14,845
he says, as if she's in the office,

971
00:50:14,845 --> 00:50:16,614
and he's saying, "You know, she said this,

972
00:50:16,614 --> 00:50:18,149
and I was like, 'you know'",

973
00:50:18,149 --> 00:50:20,784
and he's feeling it, and then he notices it

974
00:50:20,784 --> 00:50:23,353
because he's become more self-aware,

975
00:50:23,353 --> 00:50:26,190
and he starts to inhibit his own activation

976
00:50:26,190 --> 00:50:28,726
of his own, this angry state.

977
00:50:28,726 --> 00:50:30,728
And I said to him at this point,

978
00:50:30,728 --> 00:50:36,233
I invite him to let this angry self be here

979
00:50:36,233 --> 00:50:39,436
and let's have this here, I said,

980
00:50:39,436 --> 00:50:41,638
"Maybe you should just stick with it,

981
00:50:41,638 --> 00:50:45,075
"why don't you stick with it here, don't inhibit it,

982
00:50:45,075 --> 00:50:46,877
"this is the place for it."

983
00:50:46,877 --> 00:50:48,045
And I invited him, and he did,

984
00:50:48,045 --> 00:50:49,747
he got more and more into his anger,

985
00:50:49,747 --> 00:50:51,949
continuing to argue as if she's there,

986
00:50:51,949 --> 00:50:55,385
and the staccato movement with his finger.

987
00:50:56,086 --> 00:50:58,388
And then, and then he starts to back away

988
00:50:58,388 --> 00:51:02,107
and I keep inviting him, and what I suggested him is,

989
00:51:02,107 --> 00:51:04,595
"You know, your arm and your finger,

990
00:51:04,595 --> 00:51:07,798
"your hand, they're very, they're expressing a lot,

991
00:51:07,798 --> 00:51:11,769
"stay with it and sort of tune into it,

992
00:51:11,769 --> 00:51:15,473
"like it's not just to sort of point your finger

993
00:51:15,473 --> 00:51:18,876
"but feel what it's like to be doing that, feel,

994
00:51:18,876 --> 00:51:21,345
"experience yourself doing that

995
00:51:21,345 --> 00:51:23,914
"and let's see what comes up."

996
00:51:25,916 --> 00:51:29,086
And he starts to, you know he gets more into it,

997
00:51:29,086 --> 00:51:31,589
the anger, but it doesn't last long,

998
00:51:31,589 --> 00:51:34,058
and the staccato movements, and then he starts

999
00:51:34,058 --> 00:51:36,460
to soften and he looks pained,

1000
00:51:36,460 --> 00:51:37,961
and this surprised me, I didn't expect this,

1001
00:51:37,961 --> 00:51:39,963
he looks pained, and he says,

1002
00:51:39,963 --> 00:51:42,666
again as if speaking to her,

1003
00:51:42,666 --> 00:51:46,002
"You're supposed to care about me."

1004
00:51:46,370 --> 00:51:49,406
And then he started to cry.

1005
00:51:49,406 --> 00:51:52,509
And this and other moments like it opened up

1006
00:51:52,509 --> 00:51:57,214
new connections to a whole other state of the self,

1007
00:51:57,214 --> 00:52:01,014
the vulnerable, needful boy self,

1008
00:52:02,152 --> 00:52:04,955
and he starts to become aware of how vigorously

1009
00:52:04,955 --> 00:52:07,558
he fends this off and uses other self states

1010
00:52:07,558 --> 00:52:11,929
like this one, the "staccato, angry avenger",

1011
00:52:11,929 --> 00:52:15,266
to fend off this particular self state.

1012
00:52:15,266 --> 00:52:17,367
And he senses, it's really hard for him

1013
00:52:17,367 --> 00:52:19,369
to sit still with it.

1014
00:52:19,369 --> 00:52:22,539
And we've worked a lot with that self state.

1015
00:52:22,973 --> 00:52:25,142
It's genuinely disavowed, and he says,

1016
00:52:25,142 --> 00:52:27,211
when somebody criticizes him

1017
00:52:27,211 --> 00:52:28,846
he gets immediately defensive, he says,

1018
00:52:28,846 --> 00:52:30,948
"No, I didn't. No, I didn't."

1019
00:52:30,948 --> 00:52:33,483
in a kind of knee-jerk reaction.

1020
00:52:33,483 --> 00:52:36,387
And he can feel when somebody says he messed up

1021
00:52:36,387 --> 00:52:38,956
on something, he starts to feel a lump in his throat

1022
00:52:38,956 --> 00:52:42,259
and he'll shift into either "No, I didn't"

1023
00:52:42,259 --> 00:52:44,094
or he'll shift into jocularity,

1024
00:52:44,094 --> 00:52:46,063
he'll shift into something to stay away

1025
00:52:46,063 --> 00:52:49,366
from this vulnerable state.

1026
00:52:51,001 --> 00:52:53,003
We started to try to explore why does he need

1027
00:52:53,003 --> 00:52:55,205
to stay away from this state,

1028
00:52:55,205 --> 00:52:58,508
and what we started to find were a set of,

1029
00:52:58,508 --> 00:53:03,647
a kind of fusion of two sets of things in his mind.

1030
00:53:04,948 --> 00:53:08,585
On the one hand the idea of making mistakes,

1031
00:53:08,585 --> 00:53:12,155
of being wrong, of being imperfect,

1032
00:53:12,155 --> 00:53:15,325
of even of having vulnerable or needful feelings,

1033
00:53:15,325 --> 00:53:18,295
vulnerability and imperfection are parts

1034
00:53:18,295 --> 00:53:23,000
of the human condition, but for him any of that,

1035
00:53:23,000 --> 00:53:26,570
any of that is immediately fused with feeling

1036
00:53:26,570 --> 00:53:30,641
like he's a loser, he's a weakling, and he's screw up,

1037
00:53:30,641 --> 00:53:33,076
and otherly devalue itself,

1038
00:53:33,076 --> 00:53:35,946
is completely paired with anything about

1039
00:53:35,946 --> 00:53:39,383
experiencing imperfection or vulnerability.

1040
00:53:39,383 --> 00:53:41,051
And we started to explore

1041
00:53:41,051 --> 00:53:44,454
why is this packaged together like this?

1042
00:53:44,454 --> 00:53:46,390
To experience himself making a mistake,

1043
00:53:46,390 --> 00:53:48,325
or being vulnerable and needful,

1044
00:53:48,325 --> 00:53:50,261
is a loser, weakling, screw up.

1045
00:53:50,261 --> 00:53:53,130
And in the exploration of this,

1046
00:53:53,130 --> 00:53:55,732
the connection through these experiences,

1047
00:53:55,732 --> 00:53:57,934
of his father...

1048
00:54:01,104 --> 00:54:02,272
A couple of different experiences,

1049
00:54:02,272 --> 00:54:06,377
one is the way his father would go at people

1050
00:54:06,377 --> 00:54:09,680
who made a mistake, or him when he was crying,

1051
00:54:09,680 --> 00:54:11,818
somebody who's vulnerable or needful,

1052
00:54:11,818 --> 00:54:14,651
somebody who's made a mistake, who's not perfect,

1053
00:54:14,651 --> 00:54:16,386
the way the father could just really go

1054
00:54:16,386 --> 00:54:19,589
at somebody and humiliate them.

1055
00:54:19,589 --> 00:54:22,359
So that, yes, that person, if you make a mistake

1056
00:54:22,359 --> 00:54:25,295
or if you're vulnerable like that you're a weakling,

1057
00:54:25,295 --> 00:54:27,397
you're a loser, you're a screw up like that.

1058
00:54:27,397 --> 00:54:30,067
That was one way that we looked at

1059
00:54:30,067 --> 00:54:35,905
the developmental forging or fusion of these two things.

1060
00:54:37,074 --> 00:54:39,810
Another aspect was, there was John

1061
00:54:39,810 --> 00:54:41,178
at the boarding school,

1062
00:54:41,178 --> 00:54:44,715
there was John in relation to his father,

1063
00:54:44,715 --> 00:54:48,051
with his father as the protege to this heroic man

1064
00:54:48,051 --> 00:54:50,687
where he could feel strong and great about himself

1065
00:54:50,687 --> 00:54:52,489
in a kind of sense of perfection,

1066
00:54:52,489 --> 00:54:54,525
and then there's John at the boarding school,

1067
00:54:54,525 --> 00:54:57,509
at the bottom of his class, the smallest kid,

1068
00:54:57,509 --> 00:55:00,230
and not having the immediate connection

1069
00:55:00,230 --> 00:55:03,734
to his father to help support his sense of self.

1070
00:55:03,734 --> 00:55:07,070
So there was this kind of swing back and forth

1071
00:55:07,070 --> 00:55:10,474
between the value itself and then devalue itself,

1072
00:55:10,474 --> 00:55:14,678
that was another contribution to this vulnerability,

1073
00:55:15,212 --> 00:55:18,815
to the feeling like he's the screw up, the weakling.

1074
00:55:21,084 --> 00:55:24,388
And all of this helps explain, you know

1075
00:55:24,388 --> 00:55:27,791
when I said the couple's session when his girlfriend

1076
00:55:27,791 --> 00:55:30,294
placed the reassuring hand on his knee,

1077
00:55:30,294 --> 00:55:32,362
and he could tell that she was about to bring up

1078
00:55:32,362 --> 00:55:34,998
a conflict where she was angry with him,

1079
00:55:34,998 --> 00:55:38,702
and the anxiety that he showed, that's what,

1080
00:55:38,702 --> 00:55:41,271
as he and I understand it that's what that was about,

1081
00:55:41,271 --> 00:55:44,675
it's the threat of "She's gonna criticize him,

1082
00:55:44,675 --> 00:55:48,011
"he's imperfect, oh, he's this devalued weakling,

1083
00:55:48,011 --> 00:55:49,279
"screw up guy."

1084
00:55:49,279 --> 00:55:51,548
It was the threat of that where his anxiety is

1085
00:55:51,548 --> 00:55:54,451
and then he fights it off as the "angry avenger",

1086
00:55:54,451 --> 00:55:58,088
kind of restoring his connection to the heroic father.

1087
00:55:58,088 --> 00:56:00,223
Those were some of the ways we've been understanding it

1088
00:56:00,223 --> 00:56:04,494
and working with it, these different states of the self.

1089
00:56:04,561 --> 00:56:08,465
Several other states that have emerged,

1090
00:56:08,465 --> 00:56:12,302
another state, what I would call

1091
00:56:12,302 --> 00:56:16,473
"the good guy, one of the guys, one of the bad boys",

1092
00:56:16,473 --> 00:56:18,878
that's a single title,

1093
00:56:18,878 --> 00:56:22,391
"good guy, one of the guys, one of the bad boys".

1094
00:56:22,775 --> 00:56:24,148
And I'm gonna describe some stuff,

1095
00:56:24,148 --> 00:56:29,052
here's a remarkable piece of the illustration

1096
00:56:29,052 --> 00:56:32,055
of the dissociative phenomena.

1097
00:56:32,222 --> 00:56:36,093
In this state he's jocular, he's agreeable,

1098
00:56:36,093 --> 00:56:38,628
he's easygoing, everything's cool,

1099
00:56:38,628 --> 00:56:42,266
he seems very friendly, but sometimes

1100
00:56:42,266 --> 00:56:44,167
when it's in a more defensive mode

1101
00:56:44,167 --> 00:56:49,172
it feels disconnected from kind of being present,

1102
00:56:49,172 --> 00:56:51,842
and he's come to recognize this himself.

1103
00:56:51,842 --> 00:56:54,211
His girlfriend doesn't like this state,

1104
00:56:54,211 --> 00:56:59,583
and I can feel distanced by it when he's in this state.

1105
00:56:59,583 --> 00:57:01,184
It's kind of like he's not really there,

1106
00:57:01,184 --> 00:57:02,953
it's like a persona.

1107
00:57:02,953 --> 00:57:04,788
And he's learned, he'll come into session

1108
00:57:04,788 --> 00:57:07,157
sometimes in this state and he'll say to me,

1109
00:57:07,157 --> 00:57:08,191
"You know, I can just tell

1110
00:57:08,191 --> 00:57:10,794
"I'm not really in touch with myself."

1111
00:57:11,661 --> 00:57:15,298
This is a dissociative phenomena.

1112
00:57:17,501 --> 00:57:20,270
Here's one place where the state came in.

1113
00:57:20,270 --> 00:57:23,273
He was telling me about a recent fight,

1114
00:57:23,273 --> 00:57:25,041
and this is an individual session,

1115
00:57:25,041 --> 00:57:27,244
a recent fight he'd had with his girlfriend,

1116
00:57:27,244 --> 00:57:29,279
and he'd been at the dinner table

1117
00:57:29,279 --> 00:57:31,181
with her and her kids,

1118
00:57:31,181 --> 00:57:34,585
and he was talking with them,

1119
00:57:34,585 --> 00:57:36,520
this is the story he's telling me,

1120
00:57:36,520 --> 00:57:37,454
he was at the dinner table

1121
00:57:37,454 --> 00:57:39,022
with his girlfriend and her kids,

1122
00:57:39,022 --> 00:57:41,057
and he was telling them stories,

1123
00:57:41,057 --> 00:57:43,560
escapades about a friend of his that drinks a lot,

1124
00:57:43,560 --> 00:57:45,896
he's a kind of drinker and carouser,

1125
00:57:45,896 --> 00:57:48,098
and he was saying to them,

1126
00:57:48,098 --> 00:57:50,734
"You know, this guy, he really gets himself in trouble,

1127
00:57:50,734 --> 00:57:52,302
"he shouldn't drink like this,

1128
00:57:52,302 --> 00:57:55,038
"it's really bad for him that he drinks like this."

1129
00:57:55,514 --> 00:57:58,008
And his girlfriend became very angry with him

1130
00:57:58,008 --> 00:58:00,544
and accused him of encouraging her kids to drink

1131
00:58:00,544 --> 00:58:02,412
by telling these stories.

1132
00:58:02,412 --> 00:58:05,882
And he says, "No, I didn't, I was telling,

1133
00:58:05,882 --> 00:58:09,553
"in the story I said it's really bad that he does this."

1134
00:58:09,553 --> 00:58:11,321
And he had a fight with her.

1135
00:58:11,321 --> 00:58:14,157
But when he told me the whole story

1136
00:58:14,157 --> 00:58:17,427
I asked him to kind of relive it, you know,

1137
00:58:17,427 --> 00:58:19,696
tell me, so what did you tell them at the dinner table?

1138
00:58:19,696 --> 00:58:21,531
So he starts to tell me the stories

1139
00:58:21,531 --> 00:58:23,256
that he told them about his friend,

1140
00:58:23,256 --> 00:58:25,869
the drinker and carouser, and I can see that

1141
00:58:25,869 --> 00:58:29,372
as he's telling me the stories his eyes are kind of,

1142
00:58:29,372 --> 00:58:31,541
he's kind of rolling his eyes but smiling,

1143
00:58:31,541 --> 00:58:35,646
and he's clearly delighted with the stories,

1144
00:58:35,646 --> 00:58:37,714
and chuckling with fondness and admiration

1145
00:58:37,714 --> 00:58:39,516
for his wild and crazy friend who's out there

1146
00:58:39,516 --> 00:58:41,685
drinking and getting himself in trouble,

1147
00:58:41,685 --> 00:58:43,587
on the wild side.

1148
00:58:45,288 --> 00:58:50,326
And so I asked John to tell me...

1149
00:58:52,629 --> 00:58:54,598
What I asked him to tell me,

1150
00:58:54,598 --> 00:58:56,639
what is he experiencing right now

1151
00:58:56,639 --> 00:58:59,236
as he's telling me these stories?

1152
00:58:59,236 --> 00:59:02,506
And he totally gets it, he realizes that

1153
00:59:02,506 --> 00:59:04,241
when he tells the story of his friend,

1154
00:59:04,241 --> 00:59:07,077
the drinker, even if he's saying the guy shouldn't drink,

1155
00:59:07,077 --> 00:59:11,114
it's a problem, he's full of excitement with this guy,

1156
00:59:11,114 --> 00:59:13,883
with the stories, and he realizes now

1157
00:59:13,883 --> 00:59:15,986
his girlfriend was absolutely right,

1158
00:59:15,986 --> 00:59:20,023
that he was, not explicitly but implicitly,

1159
00:59:20,023 --> 00:59:22,792
he was encouraging drinking

1160
00:59:22,792 --> 00:59:24,761
by telling the stories with all,

1161
00:59:24,761 --> 00:59:27,664
because of the affect with which he told them.

1162
00:59:27,664 --> 00:59:31,835
So, you know, now John he really realizes it,

1163
00:59:31,835 --> 00:59:37,355
he gets it that she was right,

1164
00:59:37,355 --> 00:59:40,110
but that he's tuning into his own state,

1165
00:59:40,110 --> 00:59:44,180
in the session, and that's what I wanna,

1166
00:59:44,180 --> 00:59:48,118
I'm emphasizing here is a matters of the state of the self,

1167
00:59:48,118 --> 00:59:50,554
not so much the content but the state,

1168
00:59:50,554 --> 00:59:52,389
'cause as therapists we often tend to focus

1169
00:59:52,389 --> 00:59:54,891
on the content, the narratives, the stories

1170
00:59:54,891 --> 00:59:57,360
and people's feelings,

1171
00:59:57,821 --> 01:00:02,599
but this is about focusing on shifting states.

1172
01:00:02,599 --> 01:00:04,367
And now in the session when he's sitting there

1173
01:00:04,367 --> 01:00:06,970
with me saying, "She was right, you know?"

1174
01:00:06,970 --> 01:00:10,373
I was so excited when he realizes he was so excited

1175
01:00:10,373 --> 01:00:12,876
when he told the stories that he is encouraging

1176
01:00:12,876 --> 01:00:14,678
drinking to her kids.

1177
01:00:14,678 --> 01:00:16,613
Now he's in a reflective state,

1178
01:00:16,613 --> 01:00:18,415
it's a very different state than he was

1179
01:00:18,415 --> 01:00:20,550
just a moment ago in the jocular,

1180
01:00:20,550 --> 01:00:24,087
"good guy, one of the guys, one of the bad boys" state

1181
01:00:24,087 --> 01:00:27,357
when he's enjoying his friend's drinking escapades.

1182
01:00:29,659 --> 01:00:33,363
So on the one hand he can be in the state telling me,

1183
01:00:33,363 --> 01:00:36,466
and now he can be over here reflecting on the state,

1184
01:00:36,466 --> 01:00:38,368
not inside of it but seeing it

1185
01:00:38,368 --> 01:00:41,571
and reflecting on it, stepping outside of it.

1186
01:00:41,571 --> 01:00:45,408
So he can be partly in the "good guy, bad boy" state,

1187
01:00:45,408 --> 01:00:48,545
and he can be outside of it, and that illustrates

1188
01:00:48,545 --> 01:00:51,948
a central concept about the, an important

1189
01:00:51,948 --> 01:00:54,484
narrative development that Bromberg talks about,

1190
01:00:54,484 --> 01:00:58,054
the capacity to stand in the spaces

1191
01:00:58,054 --> 01:01:00,990
between these different self states.

1192
01:01:01,712 --> 01:01:07,130
And that's what John is developing as we're working,

1193
01:01:07,130 --> 01:01:10,300
he's not sort of stuck in the jocular,

1194
01:01:10,300 --> 01:01:13,103
"good guy, one of the guys, bad boys" state,

1195
01:01:13,103 --> 01:01:14,604
or the "angry, avenger" state,

1196
01:01:14,604 --> 01:01:16,908
he's learning to shift out of the state

1197
01:01:16,908 --> 01:01:19,609
and be able to reflect upon it.

1198
01:01:21,611 --> 01:01:24,247
But now, after all that work,

1199
01:01:24,247 --> 01:01:27,083
and we did this work on that particular issue

1200
01:01:27,083 --> 01:01:30,320
of he really wasn't encouraging the kids to drink,

1201
01:01:30,320 --> 01:01:31,654
a few weeks later--

1202
01:01:31,654 --> 01:01:34,458
It's just remarkable the power of dissociation,

1203
01:01:34,458 --> 01:01:37,060
he came in a few weeks later and he's in,

1204
01:01:37,060 --> 01:01:41,331
he's clearly in the "good guy, one of the guys" state,

1205
01:01:41,331 --> 01:01:44,300
and he's jocular and he's friendly,

1206
01:01:45,235 --> 01:01:46,636
and he's again aware, he said,

1207
01:01:46,636 --> 01:01:47,837
"You know, I'm not so in touch with myself

1208
01:01:47,837 --> 01:01:49,406
"but I'm in a good mood."

1209
01:01:49,406 --> 01:01:53,243
And he brings up that fight, he forgets in the moment,

1210
01:01:53,243 --> 01:01:55,845
he forgets that he's talked about it with me,

1211
01:01:55,845 --> 01:01:58,248
and he says, "You know, I had this dinner

1212
01:01:58,248 --> 01:02:01,451
"with her and the kids and I was telling stories

1213
01:02:01,451 --> 01:02:03,520
"about my friend and how does he drink..."

1214
01:02:03,520 --> 01:02:05,922
And he repeats the story

1215
01:02:05,922 --> 01:02:07,624
as if we've never talked about it

1216
01:02:07,624 --> 01:02:09,459
'cause he's forgotten that we talked about it,

1217
01:02:09,459 --> 01:02:11,928
that's okay, so he repeats the story.

1218
01:02:11,928 --> 01:02:14,431
But then he says, "So she tells me

1219
01:02:14,431 --> 01:02:15,965
"I'm encouraging her kids to drink,

1220
01:02:15,965 --> 01:02:17,000
"can you believe it?

1221
01:02:17,000 --> 01:02:18,201
"I mean she's totally wrong!

1222
01:02:18,201 --> 01:02:19,903
"I didn't tell them, I told them it was bad

1223
01:02:19,903 --> 01:02:21,805
"that this guy drink."

1224
01:02:21,805 --> 01:02:23,740
So what happened?

1225
01:02:23,740 --> 01:02:27,010
It was as if we never had the prior conversation.

1226
01:02:27,010 --> 01:02:30,947
That dissociation, and it's not just John,

1227
01:02:30,947 --> 01:02:33,216
we all have, Bromberg wrote about this,

1228
01:02:33,216 --> 01:02:37,720
we all exhibit this, we all have this.

1229
01:02:37,954 --> 01:02:42,725
It's, in different states, our memory state depended,

1230
01:02:42,725 --> 01:02:44,627
depends what state we're in.

1231
01:02:44,627 --> 01:02:47,964
Is it true that John no longer knows

1232
01:02:47,964 --> 01:02:50,534
that we ever talked about this?

1233
01:02:50,534 --> 01:02:53,770
No, that's not true, as soon as I remind him,

1234
01:02:53,770 --> 01:02:56,139
I said to him in the session,

1235
01:02:56,139 --> 01:02:58,808
"You know, we did talk about this."

1236
01:02:58,808 --> 01:03:00,729
And I ask him, "Do you remember

1237
01:03:00,729 --> 01:03:02,278
"when we spoke a few weeks ago?"

1238
01:03:02,278 --> 01:03:04,848
And as soon as it clicks in he's like,

1239
01:03:04,848 --> 01:03:06,449
you know like, "Oh my God", you know,

1240
01:03:06,449 --> 01:03:09,385
he couldn't believe that he didn't remember it,

1241
01:03:09,385 --> 01:03:12,789
and he feels kind of sheepish that he blinded himself

1242
01:03:12,789 --> 01:03:17,861
to something that he knew and he shifts state

1243
01:03:17,861 --> 01:03:19,696
right in the moment, when I tell him,

1244
01:03:19,696 --> 01:03:23,333
he's now no longer the jocular, "good guy" state,

1245
01:03:23,333 --> 01:03:25,268
he's now more kind of centered and

1246
01:03:25,268 --> 01:03:26,761
he's self-reflective, and he's like,

1247
01:03:26,761 --> 01:03:30,607
"I can't believe I didn't remember that."

1248
01:03:30,607 --> 01:03:33,877
So who is it who doesn't remember

1249
01:03:33,877 --> 01:03:35,411
and who is it who does,

1250
01:03:35,411 --> 01:03:37,547
and feel sheepish for, you know,

1251
01:03:37,547 --> 01:03:39,482
that the other guy didn't remember?

1252
01:03:39,482 --> 01:03:42,418
So we're talking about these different states of self,

1253
01:03:42,418 --> 01:03:45,989
and the dissociative forces that keep them apart.

1254
01:03:49,259 --> 01:03:51,327
Freud wrote about this too, even though

1255
01:03:51,327 --> 01:03:54,998
he emphasized repression.

1256
01:03:54,998 --> 01:03:58,235
There's a concept called "the unthought known",

1257
01:03:58,235 --> 01:03:59,870
Christopher Bollas writes about that,

1258
01:03:59,870 --> 01:04:02,928
Freud originally wrote about something

1259
01:04:02,928 --> 01:04:05,441
that you can think it--

1260
01:04:05,441 --> 01:04:07,577
You can know it, but you can't think it.

1261
01:04:07,577 --> 01:04:09,345
Here's a quote from Freud,

1262
01:04:09,345 --> 01:04:12,348
"Forgetting impressions, scenes or experiences

1263
01:04:12,348 --> 01:04:14,684
"nearly always reduces itself to

1264
01:04:14,684 --> 01:04:16,353
"just shutting them off."

1265
01:04:16,353 --> 01:04:18,955
This is dissociation, this is John not shutting off

1266
01:04:18,955 --> 01:04:22,692
the memory that he and I spoke about this thing.

1267
01:04:22,692 --> 01:04:25,095
More on Freud, "When the patient talks about these

1268
01:04:25,095 --> 01:04:29,232
"'forgotten' things he seldom fails to add,

1269
01:04:29,232 --> 01:04:31,868
"'as a matter of fact I've always known it,

1270
01:04:31,868 --> 01:04:35,238
"'only I've never thought it'".

1271
01:04:36,573 --> 01:04:39,008
So Freud is talking about this,

1272
01:04:39,008 --> 01:04:41,077
that we have different parts of ourselves

1273
01:04:41,077 --> 01:04:43,146
and the different parts remember different things

1274
01:04:43,146 --> 01:04:45,615
and forget different things.

1275
01:04:45,615 --> 01:04:48,618
Here's how Wachtel talks about this,

1276
01:04:48,618 --> 01:04:52,455
"Mental contents are not simply conscious or unconscious",

1277
01:04:52,455 --> 01:04:54,524
it was the original Freud M.O.,

1278
01:04:54,524 --> 01:04:56,759
"they are capable of being experienced

1279
01:04:56,759 --> 01:04:59,296
"and being articulated and elaborated

1280
01:04:59,296 --> 01:05:01,398
"to varying degrees depending on

1281
01:05:01,398 --> 01:05:03,600
"one's particular state of mind,

1282
01:05:03,600 --> 01:05:08,504
"and on the situational, relational and cultural context".

1283
01:05:10,297 --> 01:05:13,276
Well, the last state that I'm go--

1284
01:05:13,276 --> 01:05:15,411
Actually I already made reference laying out

1285
01:05:15,411 --> 01:05:18,415
different states that John gets in,

1286
01:05:18,415 --> 01:05:21,484
and as we're saying, there's some dividedness

1287
01:05:21,484 --> 01:05:23,920
between the states.

1288
01:05:24,387 --> 01:05:25,989
I've already talked the, what we call

1289
01:05:25,989 --> 01:05:27,323
the "ching-ching-ching" state,

1290
01:05:27,323 --> 01:05:31,094
it's a kind of semi-manic,

1291
01:05:31,094 --> 01:05:33,563
completely immersed in something, kind of state,

1292
01:05:33,563 --> 01:05:36,466
he does kind of air typing when he tries

1293
01:05:36,466 --> 01:05:38,568
to portray that state to me,

1294
01:05:38,568 --> 01:05:39,869
and it identifies very much

1295
01:05:39,869 --> 01:05:42,982
with his father and himself.

1296
01:05:42,982 --> 01:05:44,140
So here's what we're leading up to,

1297
01:05:44,140 --> 01:05:46,142
I'm gonna take all that material now about

1298
01:05:46,142 --> 01:05:47,877
these different states and how they work

1299
01:05:47,877 --> 01:05:49,979
in some of these vignettes, and we're gonna

1300
01:05:49,979 --> 01:05:53,483
now talk about a relational model of the mind.

1301
01:05:53,483 --> 01:05:56,352
Normatively, the normative,

1302
01:05:56,352 --> 01:05:58,788
normal relational model of the mind

1303
01:05:58,788 --> 01:06:00,824
that involves multiple self states

1304
01:06:00,824 --> 01:06:04,294
and dissociative forces, and we're talking about

1305
01:06:04,294 --> 01:06:07,263
how it becomes problematic.

1306
01:06:12,502 --> 01:06:15,405
So, self states based on structures,

1307
01:06:15,405 --> 01:06:18,508
based on internal configurations self-another.

1308
01:06:18,508 --> 01:06:21,277
And, I'm gonna make reference to John,

1309
01:06:21,277 --> 01:06:23,946
so I'm just gonna, just gonna summarize

1310
01:06:23,946 --> 01:06:26,115
like five states that we've talked about.

1311
01:06:26,115 --> 01:06:28,518
There's the "ching-ching-ching" state,

1312
01:06:28,518 --> 01:06:30,687
there's "the righteous avenger" state,

1313
01:06:30,687 --> 01:06:32,889
always right, always perfect.

1314
01:06:32,889 --> 01:06:34,290
There's the jocular "good guy,

1315
01:06:34,290 --> 01:06:37,960
"one of the guys, one of the bad boys" state,

1316
01:06:37,960 --> 01:06:39,396
and then there's these two other states

1317
01:06:39,396 --> 01:06:40,997
that get fused together.

1318
01:06:40,997 --> 01:06:45,302
There's the fallible, vulnerable, needful boy

1319
01:06:45,302 --> 01:06:49,105
who is not perfect, but that gets fused with this

1320
01:06:49,105 --> 01:06:51,874
devalued, loser, weakling, screw up.

1321
01:06:51,874 --> 01:06:55,411
So those are some states that, of the self,

1322
01:06:55,411 --> 01:06:57,947
that we've identified.

1323
01:06:58,548 --> 01:07:00,983
Now to move to the larger model.

1324
01:07:00,983 --> 01:07:03,386
We all have internal configurations,

1325
01:07:03,386 --> 01:07:08,558
we all have multiple, organized centers of awareness

1326
01:07:08,558 --> 01:07:11,594
and agency within the mind, they're like

1327
01:07:11,594 --> 01:07:14,363
multiple sub-organizations,

1328
01:07:14,363 --> 01:07:17,859
and multiple personality is a metaphor.

1329
01:07:19,335 --> 01:07:22,872
Each such sub-organization has specific

1330
01:07:22,872 --> 01:07:27,544
associational networks, like John with this

1331
01:07:27,544 --> 01:07:29,145
and the associational networks

1332
01:07:29,145 --> 01:07:31,714
through experiences with his father.

1333
01:07:31,714 --> 01:07:35,434
And each state of the self sub-organization

1334
01:07:35,434 --> 01:07:39,255
has particular narratives about self-another,

1335
01:07:39,255 --> 01:07:42,158
thematic storylines, certain emotions

1336
01:07:42,158 --> 01:07:45,495
that are more prone to, certain physiologic states,

1337
01:07:45,495 --> 01:07:48,089
imagery that are more characteristic

1338
01:07:48,089 --> 01:07:50,800
of that configuration.

1339
01:07:50,800 --> 01:07:53,269
Here's what Jody Davies says about this model

1340
01:07:53,269 --> 01:07:57,440
of the mind that it "emphasizes the dynamic interplay

1341
01:07:57,440 --> 01:07:58,908
"of multiply organized centers

1342
01:07:58,908 --> 01:08:01,811
"of agency and awareness", as I said.

1343
01:08:03,613 --> 01:08:07,016
"The setting up of discontinuous veers

1344
01:08:07,016 --> 01:08:09,285
"of a associational communication,"

1345
01:08:09,285 --> 01:08:13,055
these continuous veers of associational communication

1346
01:08:13,055 --> 01:08:15,725
within the spheres, "the partitioning

1347
01:08:15,725 --> 01:08:18,895
"of mental contents into non-communicating centers

1348
01:08:18,895 --> 01:08:21,664
"of awareness and activity."

1349
01:08:21,664 --> 01:08:24,081
That's actually Davies talking about

1350
01:08:24,081 --> 01:08:28,204
some of Freud's very early writings about the same thing.

1351
01:08:28,204 --> 01:08:30,073
And in this ordinary example,

1352
01:08:30,073 --> 01:08:31,941
"I'm not myself today.

1353
01:08:31,941 --> 01:08:32,875
"You know, I said this thing,

1354
01:08:32,875 --> 01:08:35,011
"that's not me, I'm not myself today",

1355
01:08:35,011 --> 01:08:40,916
that's exactly this phenomenon in a totally ordinary way.

1356
01:08:44,721 --> 01:08:48,136
So how is it that we don't all have multiple personality?

1357
01:08:48,691 --> 01:08:49,625
What about--?

1358
01:08:49,625 --> 01:08:51,494
'Cause there's something about a sense of self

1359
01:08:51,494 --> 01:08:53,095
where there's the opposite of this,

1360
01:08:53,095 --> 01:08:55,264
there's a sense of, and in health we wanna think

1361
01:08:55,264 --> 01:08:57,600
there's something about continuity,

1362
01:08:57,600 --> 01:09:00,903
sense of self, continuity, cohesiveness

1363
01:09:00,903 --> 01:09:03,731
as well as vitality and authenticity.

1364
01:09:04,469 --> 01:09:06,742
So, how does these two things fit together?

1365
01:09:06,742 --> 01:09:09,179
The idea that a sense of self would be continuous

1366
01:09:09,179 --> 01:09:11,581
and integrated, and yet it's all

1367
01:09:11,581 --> 01:09:14,050
discontinuous and disjointed?

1368
01:09:14,050 --> 01:09:17,820
Here's Davies talking about exactly that,

1369
01:09:18,621 --> 01:09:21,593
she uses the image of a kaleidoscope

1370
01:09:22,325 --> 01:09:23,693
and she's talking about the unconscious,

1371
01:09:23,693 --> 01:09:26,596
it's just differently viewed than the Freudian unconscious.

1372
01:09:26,596 --> 01:09:29,398
"We deal not with one unconscious but

1373
01:09:29,398 --> 01:09:33,903
"with multiple levels of consciousness and unconsciousness,

1374
01:09:33,903 --> 01:09:38,368
"a multiply organized associationally linked network

1375
01:09:38,368 --> 01:09:43,246
"of meaning, attribution and understanding.

1376
01:09:43,246 --> 01:09:47,016
"Within such interactive, dynamic system,

1377
01:09:47,016 --> 01:09:50,019
"past experiences infused to present,

1378
01:09:50,019 --> 01:09:51,721
"and present experiences,

1379
01:09:51,721 --> 01:09:55,458
"evoke state dependent memories of formative,

1380
01:09:55,458 --> 01:09:58,027
"interactive representations."

1381
01:09:58,261 --> 01:09:59,362
Let's pause there.

1382
01:09:59,362 --> 01:10:01,531
Past experiences evoke,

1383
01:10:01,531 --> 01:10:03,433
and present experiences evoke the past.

1384
01:10:03,433 --> 01:10:07,603
Somebody criticizes John, he suddenly like this,

1385
01:10:07,603 --> 01:10:10,606
past experiences of John with his father,

1386
01:10:10,606 --> 01:10:13,142
watching his father, somebody arguing with his father,

1387
01:10:13,142 --> 01:10:16,012
criticizing his father, and his father doing this.

1388
01:10:16,012 --> 01:10:19,282
So there's an associational set of networks

1389
01:10:19,282 --> 01:10:22,084
that's linked with this state of the self,

1390
01:10:22,084 --> 01:10:24,854
and it's very different from the jocular,

1391
01:10:24,854 --> 01:10:28,257
easygoing, good guy state,

1392
01:10:28,257 --> 01:10:29,592
or some of these other states,

1393
01:10:29,592 --> 01:10:33,529
it's a specific configuration within that state.

1394
01:10:33,897 --> 01:10:35,874
"In previous writings", this Davies,

1395
01:10:35,874 --> 01:10:37,800
"I've compared this organization of mind

1396
01:10:37,800 --> 01:10:40,569
"to the working of a child's kaleidoscope".

1397
01:10:40,569 --> 01:10:42,238
Think about a kaleidoscope,

1398
01:10:42,238 --> 01:10:46,576
"Intricate patterns varied but finite,

1399
01:10:46,576 --> 01:10:49,211
"conflating and reconfiguring themselves

1400
01:10:49,211 --> 01:10:51,665
"from moment to moment.

1401
01:10:51,665 --> 01:10:53,649
"These are patterns whose components

1402
01:10:53,649 --> 01:10:56,653
"will become recognizable over time,

1403
01:10:56,653 --> 01:11:00,456
"they are patterns, yet whose parts will come to light

1404
01:11:00,456 --> 01:11:04,860
"in different constellations of prominence and obfuscation,

1405
01:11:04,860 --> 01:11:07,630
"in different states different things come to light

1406
01:11:07,630 --> 01:11:10,232
"and different things are hidden.

1407
01:11:11,385 --> 01:11:13,436
"Those patterns that repeat themselves

1408
01:11:13,436 --> 01:11:17,439
"with regularity inherit representations,

1409
01:11:17,439 --> 01:11:19,275
"and later elaborations, of the most

1410
01:11:19,275 --> 01:11:21,877
"essential formative relationships,

1411
01:11:21,877 --> 01:11:24,547
"it's elaborations of the central configurations

1412
01:11:24,547 --> 01:11:29,385
"experienced early on, come to form a sense of character,

1413
01:11:29,385 --> 01:11:31,520
"order and agency.

1414
01:11:31,520 --> 01:11:33,556
"There will make us knowable to ourselves,

1415
01:11:33,556 --> 01:11:37,360
"familiar patterning within the kaleidoscopic settings,

1416
01:11:37,360 --> 01:11:39,929
"make us knowable to ourselves and others

1417
01:11:39,929 --> 01:11:45,189
"despite the kaleidoscopic melange of multiple selfs.

1418
01:11:45,189 --> 01:11:48,838
"They order our world, they create order

1419
01:11:48,838 --> 01:11:52,008
"out of chaos, and they're personal templates

1420
01:11:52,008 --> 01:11:53,776
"of constructed meaning."

1421
01:11:53,776 --> 01:11:58,174
So there is a sense of continuity of the self,

1422
01:11:58,528 --> 01:12:02,051
and when there's not excessively rigid dissociation

1423
01:12:02,051 --> 01:12:05,621
then there is much more the sense of continuity.

1424
01:12:05,621 --> 01:12:08,190
Let me try to illustrate this with John

1425
01:12:08,190 --> 01:12:10,912
'cause that's very complex,

1426
01:12:10,912 --> 01:12:14,163
this whole kaleidoscopic thing...

1427
01:12:15,498 --> 01:12:19,402
Think about this, what I'm gonna do is portray

1428
01:12:19,402 --> 01:12:27,510
an scenario of John in the most least dissociative state

1429
01:12:27,510 --> 01:12:30,346
but still illustrating that there are multiple parts

1430
01:12:30,346 --> 01:12:35,084
that comprise something that does not look disjointed,

1431
01:12:35,084 --> 01:12:37,954
so this is the more normative picture of

1432
01:12:37,954 --> 01:12:42,133
how multiple configurations and multiple self states

1433
01:12:42,133 --> 01:12:44,927
can kind of come together in an averaging

1434
01:12:44,927 --> 01:12:48,697
and interspersed way, fluidly moving

1435
01:12:48,697 --> 01:12:51,934
rather than rigidly stuck on one particular

1436
01:12:51,934 --> 01:12:54,803
setting of the kaleidoscope.

1437
01:12:55,471 --> 01:12:57,840
Here's the example, the scenario,

1438
01:12:57,840 --> 01:13:00,510
say his girlfriend criticizes him

1439
01:13:00,510 --> 01:13:08,317
for not attending to something,

1440
01:13:08,317 --> 01:13:12,988
not buying groceries when he was supposed to buy groceries.

1441
01:13:15,057 --> 01:13:18,027
And now I'm gonna portray John,

1442
01:13:18,027 --> 01:13:19,161
and I'm gonna portray him with

1443
01:13:19,161 --> 01:13:21,397
a series of reactions to her.

1444
01:13:21,397 --> 01:13:23,532
What you're gonna hear are the different self states

1445
01:13:23,532 --> 01:13:26,476
but I'm gonna portray in a way that is more fluid

1446
01:13:26,476 --> 01:13:29,738
and doesn't have a disjointed sound.

1447
01:13:30,206 --> 01:13:32,842
So the girlfriend say, this is hypothetical,

1448
01:13:32,842 --> 01:13:35,277
she criticizes him for not buying the groceries,

1449
01:13:35,277 --> 01:13:37,746
at first he's a little argumentative

1450
01:13:37,746 --> 01:13:38,848
and a little defensive, you know,

1451
01:13:38,848 --> 01:13:40,783
"Come on, what's the big deal?"

1452
01:13:40,783 --> 01:13:46,454
So we hear, this is just a little bit of this,

1453
01:13:46,454 --> 01:13:48,190
"the righteous avenger", but not rigid,

1454
01:13:48,190 --> 01:13:50,926
not stuck, not intense.

1455
01:13:50,926 --> 01:13:53,963
Then he's a little playful, he's "Well, alright."

1456
01:13:53,963 --> 01:13:56,599
You know, it's, "Come on, can't we just,

1457
01:13:56,599 --> 01:13:57,733
"can't we just, you know, like

1458
01:13:57,733 --> 01:14:00,136
"not make too big a thing of it?"

1459
01:14:00,136 --> 01:14:02,338
Now we see this is shifting into the playful

1460
01:14:02,338 --> 01:14:05,374
"good guy, one of the guys" jocular self.

1461
01:14:05,374 --> 01:14:09,078
Then he says, "Well, you know, I just didn't feel like it,

1462
01:14:09,078 --> 01:14:14,383
"I was tired, and I just didn't wanna go get the groceries."

1463
01:14:14,383 --> 01:14:15,885
So we hear a little bit of, he can be

1464
01:14:15,885 --> 01:14:18,487
a little bit vulnerable, he's tired.

1465
01:14:18,487 --> 01:14:22,858
And then he remembers why she gets so upset,

1466
01:14:22,858 --> 01:14:25,594
because he knows that she has a history,

1467
01:14:25,594 --> 01:14:27,963
she grew up with very neglectful parents,

1468
01:14:27,963 --> 01:14:31,133
and so he's like, "Oh, that's why she's so upset.

1469
01:14:31,133 --> 01:14:32,535
"You know, I didn't buy the groceries but,

1470
01:14:32,535 --> 01:14:35,504
you know, she grew up with a lot of things

1471
01:14:35,504 --> 01:14:36,872
"not being done for her."

1472
01:14:36,872 --> 01:14:39,575
And all of these things, these bits and pieces,

1473
01:14:39,575 --> 01:14:41,410
are things that have come up in sessions,

1474
01:14:41,410 --> 01:14:42,745
that's the kind of awareness,

1475
01:14:42,745 --> 01:14:45,448
he does have that kind of awareness.

1476
01:14:45,448 --> 01:14:46,515
And then he says, "You know

1477
01:14:46,515 --> 01:14:48,784
"I'm sorry I didn't buy the groceries."

1478
01:14:48,784 --> 01:14:50,186
So what I've done is,

1479
01:14:50,186 --> 01:14:52,712
I just put together a kind of flow

1480
01:14:52,712 --> 01:14:55,057
of trying to portray what it's like,

1481
01:14:55,057 --> 01:14:58,727
how can we make sense of this kaleidoscopic--

1482
01:14:58,861 --> 01:15:01,330
These different settings of the kaleidoscope.

1483
01:15:01,330 --> 01:15:04,033
But when the kaleidoscope is more fluidly moving

1484
01:15:04,033 --> 01:15:06,502
rather than getting stuck in one setting,

1485
01:15:06,502 --> 01:15:08,871
and you can hear different elements of John

1486
01:15:08,871 --> 01:15:13,208
come through in a more fluid way,

1487
01:15:13,509 --> 01:15:14,877
where here's a little argumentative,

1488
01:15:14,877 --> 01:15:18,681
he's a little playful, he's a little tired,

1489
01:15:18,681 --> 01:15:21,483
and then he's sensitive to her that she's this,

1490
01:15:21,483 --> 01:15:23,619
not getting the groceries has a big impact on her,

1491
01:15:23,619 --> 01:15:25,688
he can understand that, and he's reflective, and...

1492
01:15:25,688 --> 01:15:28,490
So we hear, in the way I've portrayed that,

1493
01:15:28,490 --> 01:15:32,862
that kind of flow where the kaleidoscope doesn't get stuck.

1494
01:15:32,862 --> 01:15:36,061
That's, that's what I'm getting at here is,

1495
01:15:36,061 --> 01:15:40,569
how you can take this model of multiple configurations

1496
01:15:40,569 --> 01:15:44,907
but not have somebody look like they're all disjointed.

1497
01:15:45,541 --> 01:15:49,011
So, and the contrast of that is when

1498
01:15:49,011 --> 01:15:51,595
the kaleidoscope get stuck, that's when

1499
01:15:51,595 --> 01:15:53,816
she's annoyed he didn't buy the groceries

1500
01:15:53,816 --> 01:15:56,218
and he's like this with her, and he stays like this

1501
01:15:56,218 --> 01:16:00,689
for the next half hour, and he can't consider anything else,

1502
01:16:01,123 --> 01:16:03,459
where she's upset about the groceries

1503
01:16:03,459 --> 01:16:05,694
and he's only the light-hearted,

1504
01:16:05,694 --> 01:16:07,296
"good guy, one of the guys",

1505
01:16:07,296 --> 01:16:09,431
"Come on, honey, you know, don't worry about it,

1506
01:16:09,431 --> 01:16:10,799
"why are you so worried?"

1507
01:16:10,799 --> 01:16:13,102
And he's just in that mode, and that's where

1508
01:16:13,102 --> 01:16:15,337
the kaleidoscope is stuck in another way.

1509
01:16:15,337 --> 01:16:18,307
And neither of those modes are effective

1510
01:16:18,307 --> 01:16:20,442
in terms of relating well to somebody,

1511
01:16:20,442 --> 01:16:22,611
when the setting get stuck.

1512
01:16:22,611 --> 01:16:26,782
That's what I'm trying to illustrate with that piece.

1513
01:16:27,616 --> 01:16:31,153
Here's how Davies describes and talks about that.

1514
01:16:31,153 --> 01:16:33,989
She talks about when you have the averageable

1515
01:16:33,989 --> 01:16:37,826
and containable, versus the irreconcilable,

1516
01:16:37,826 --> 01:16:39,628
and what I portrayed in those two examples,

1517
01:16:39,628 --> 01:16:42,131
the first one where's different elements

1518
01:16:42,131 --> 01:16:44,834
of John can be averageable and containable

1519
01:16:44,834 --> 01:16:48,037
in one conversation, and the contrast it

1520
01:16:48,037 --> 01:16:51,835
when this kaleidoscope get stuck and it's irreconcilable,

1521
01:16:51,835 --> 01:16:54,877
so he's only in this mode or something like that.

1522
01:16:54,877 --> 01:16:56,712
Here's what Davies says,

1523
01:16:56,712 --> 01:16:59,014
"This view of the relationable unconscious

1524
01:16:59,014 --> 01:17:03,920
"suggests a dissociatively-based system of average,

1525
01:17:03,920 --> 01:17:06,322
"of on the one hand averageable,

1526
01:17:06,322 --> 01:17:08,724
"and on the other hand not averageable,

1527
01:17:08,724 --> 01:17:12,628
"irreconcilable representations of self and other."

1528
01:17:12,628 --> 01:17:15,464
And, so when they're averageable then

1529
01:17:15,464 --> 01:17:16,665
there's the fluidity,

1530
01:17:16,665 --> 01:17:19,635
when they're irreconcilable you get stuck

1531
01:17:19,635 --> 01:17:21,603
and the person can't shift out of state,

1532
01:17:21,603 --> 01:17:25,207
they can't stand between the spaces of the different states

1533
01:17:25,207 --> 01:17:27,209
and they get stuck in one state,

1534
01:17:27,209 --> 01:17:28,977
and then they're thinking in a way,

1535
01:17:28,977 --> 01:17:34,182
and emotions and everything gets stuck in that character.

1536
01:17:37,353 --> 01:17:39,422
What Bromberg talks about,

1537
01:17:39,422 --> 01:17:42,524
not only the capacity to stand in the spaces

1538
01:17:42,524 --> 01:17:46,599
between different states of mind without losing any,

1539
01:17:46,599 --> 01:17:50,432
and he says, "The capacity to feel like one self

1540
01:17:50,432 --> 01:17:53,102
"while being many others."

1541
01:17:53,102 --> 01:17:55,671
Another quote, I love it where he says,

1542
01:17:55,671 --> 01:17:58,907
"To thine own selves be true".

1543
01:17:59,742 --> 01:18:04,146
And instead of compartmentalization

1544
01:18:04,146 --> 01:18:07,116
there's to use term mentalization,

1545
01:18:07,116 --> 01:18:10,019
the capacity to kind of hold behold picture

1546
01:18:10,019 --> 01:18:12,221
rather than stuck in one compartment.

1547
01:18:12,221 --> 01:18:14,857
Bromberg uses the sort of compartment metaphor,

1548
01:18:14,857 --> 01:18:18,227
Davies is using the kaleidoscopic setting metaphor,

1549
01:18:18,227 --> 01:18:20,963
but they're getting at exactly the same thing.

1550
01:18:20,963 --> 01:18:25,034
Now that we've talked about this whole

1551
01:18:25,034 --> 01:18:30,540
relational model of the mind, the kaleidoscope,

1552
01:18:31,201 --> 01:18:35,711
the multiple self states, role dissociation,

1553
01:18:35,824 --> 01:18:39,214
fairly complex ideas and try to illustrate

1554
01:18:39,214 --> 01:18:42,017
that with John's different states,

1555
01:18:42,017 --> 01:18:46,188
I wanna now talk a bit about trauma,

1556
01:18:46,188 --> 01:18:49,558
really major trauma, and specially situations

1557
01:18:49,558 --> 01:18:52,995
of early developmental trauma, trauma in relation

1558
01:18:52,995 --> 01:18:55,731
to central attachment figures,

1559
01:18:55,731 --> 01:19:01,570
because this is kind of the ultimate in irreconcilable.

1560
01:19:02,171 --> 01:19:05,808
There's my parent who maybe sometimes takes care

1561
01:19:05,808 --> 01:19:08,510
of me and sometimes seems to love me,

1562
01:19:08,510 --> 01:19:11,571
and there's my parent who flies into a rage

1563
01:19:11,571 --> 01:19:14,595
and beats me and locks me in a closet,

1564
01:19:14,595 --> 01:19:18,120
and how is that emerging young child,

1565
01:19:18,120 --> 01:19:21,190
how is the mind supposed to put these things together.

1566
01:19:21,190 --> 01:19:25,260
And dissociation is needed as a defense,

1567
01:19:25,661 --> 01:19:28,430
it's really necessary.

1568
01:19:28,430 --> 01:19:30,766
Partly is kind of a quarantine model,

1569
01:19:30,766 --> 01:19:35,925
when things are that bad in certain states

1570
01:19:35,925 --> 01:19:38,106
there need to be other states where that

1571
01:19:38,106 --> 01:19:41,277
doesn't flood in, where it doesn't leak in,

1572
01:19:41,277 --> 01:19:44,959
and so there tends to be more rigid,

1573
01:19:45,620 --> 01:19:52,020
a need for more rigid dissociation and fragmentation,

1574
01:19:52,020 --> 01:19:54,189
and this tends to cause in early development,

1575
01:19:54,189 --> 01:19:57,293
if there's profound and ongoing trauma,

1576
01:19:57,293 --> 01:20:00,996
enormous fragmentation, and in the formation

1577
01:20:00,996 --> 01:20:03,899
of the internal representational world,

1578
01:20:03,899 --> 01:20:07,703
these narrative configurations of self with other.

1579
01:20:07,703 --> 01:20:09,137
And it has adverse effects

1580
01:20:09,137 --> 01:20:11,807
on all aspects of development.

1581
01:20:11,807 --> 01:20:15,577
Davies describes this really, really well,

1582
01:20:15,577 --> 01:20:17,479
"The deeper--" She's talking here about

1583
01:20:17,479 --> 01:20:19,748
the deeper relational unconscious

1584
01:20:19,748 --> 01:20:24,486
where the trouble resides, here's what she says,

1585
01:20:25,387 --> 01:20:28,124
"But what of those representations of

1586
01:20:28,124 --> 01:20:32,060
"self and other that elude codification,

1587
01:20:32,060 --> 01:20:36,698
"those that are unencoded, irretrievable, yet ever present?

1588
01:20:36,698 --> 01:20:38,867
"Those experiences of self with other

1589
01:20:38,867 --> 01:20:42,004
"that feel irreconcilably different,

1590
01:20:42,004 --> 01:20:46,775
"strangely incompatible, linguistically inexplicable,

1591
01:20:46,775 --> 01:20:50,286
"or affectively uncontainable?

1592
01:20:50,286 --> 01:20:53,249
"They fall away into the nascent underpinnings

1593
01:20:53,249 --> 01:20:56,051
"of the relational unconscious.

1594
01:20:56,051 --> 01:20:58,187
"In a fanciful use of metaphor,

1595
01:20:58,187 --> 01:21:00,355
"I like to think of these unformulated

1596
01:21:00,355 --> 01:21:04,259
"dyadic representations as the 'free radicals'

1597
01:21:04,259 --> 01:21:06,128
"of the relational unconscious,

1598
01:21:06,128 --> 01:21:10,232
"roaming the mind in a hungry search for vulnerable moments,

1599
01:21:10,232 --> 01:21:12,901
"using their magnetic charge to disrupt

1600
01:21:12,901 --> 01:21:15,604
"the established order and to pull the patient

1601
01:21:15,604 --> 01:21:21,476
"into all forms of mystifying, inexplicable reenactments."

1602
01:21:24,580 --> 01:21:27,549
The case of Harriet to talk about this,

1603
01:21:27,549 --> 01:21:29,117
to illustrate this.

1604
01:21:29,117 --> 01:21:30,452
Harriet...

1605
01:21:30,452 --> 01:21:32,654
I've been working with Harriet for a period of time,

1606
01:21:32,654 --> 01:21:39,061
she's in her 40s, she's a survivor of horrendous,

1607
01:21:39,061 --> 01:21:43,465
horrendous physical and sexual abuse at the hinds of her,

1608
01:21:43,465 --> 01:21:45,434
all of her central attachment figures

1609
01:21:45,434 --> 01:21:49,867
throughout her childhood and into adolescence.

1610
01:21:50,305 --> 01:21:52,274
Through tremendous personal strains

1611
01:21:52,274 --> 01:21:56,812
and resilience and two long-term psychotherapies,

1612
01:21:56,812 --> 01:21:58,914
she's been able to build a life

1613
01:21:58,914 --> 01:22:01,650
with self-respect and integrity.

1614
01:22:01,650 --> 01:22:06,521
She's a mother, she works with elders at a day care,

1615
01:22:06,521 --> 01:22:10,492
she genuinely does both of those things very well.

1616
01:22:10,492 --> 01:22:15,063
She can be loving, generous, warm, empathic.

1617
01:22:15,063 --> 01:22:18,417
She can be kind of feisty, she can be playful,

1618
01:22:18,863 --> 01:22:22,804
though she's anxious about people,

1619
01:22:22,804 --> 01:22:24,673
but she can move through that anxiety.

1620
01:22:24,673 --> 01:22:27,342
And she has some close friendships

1621
01:22:27,342 --> 01:22:32,014
and can really relate very well to people

1622
01:22:32,014 --> 01:22:35,116
when she's in a constituted good place,

1623
01:22:35,116 --> 01:22:36,685
a constituted state.

1624
01:22:36,685 --> 01:22:38,621
But she's vulnerable to being triggered

1625
01:22:38,621 --> 01:22:41,590
into highly fragmented states.

1626
01:22:41,590 --> 01:22:47,195
For example, say a situation with her young daughter

1627
01:22:47,195 --> 01:22:48,864
where there's some conflict between them,

1628
01:22:48,864 --> 01:22:50,432
they're arguing about whether or not the daughter

1629
01:22:50,432 --> 01:22:53,969
can go to a certain place or not,

1630
01:22:53,969 --> 01:22:56,305
the daughter gets angry and the daughter starts

1631
01:22:56,305 --> 01:23:00,709
to grab at her, at Harriet's leave,

1632
01:23:00,709 --> 01:23:04,379
and starts to get aggressive with Harriet.

1633
01:23:05,163 --> 01:23:07,616
That's one particular example, there are others but,

1634
01:23:07,616 --> 01:23:11,820
where it just sent her and Harriet was just

1635
01:23:11,820 --> 01:23:15,591
completely flipped into a different state of herself,

1636
01:23:15,591 --> 01:23:21,346
highly activated the old traumatic experiences.

1637
01:23:21,346 --> 01:23:24,466
That's the associational network now that's vibrating,

1638
01:23:24,466 --> 01:23:28,662
even though she's not at every moment conscious of it.

1639
01:23:28,662 --> 01:23:32,574
And she's completely activated, frightened,

1640
01:23:32,574 --> 01:23:36,611
and she becomes enraged and flooded.

1641
01:23:36,611 --> 01:23:41,884
And the self other configurations that are now active,

1642
01:23:41,884 --> 01:23:44,074
are the other person, the other person

1643
01:23:44,074 --> 01:23:45,854
is dangerous and malevolent,

1644
01:23:45,854 --> 01:23:48,791
and the self is under terrible threat.

1645
01:23:48,791 --> 01:23:53,862
And physiologically she's completely activated

1646
01:23:53,862 --> 01:23:55,297
in terms of the fight flight

1647
01:23:55,297 --> 01:23:57,466
but into freeze kind of mode,

1648
01:23:57,466 --> 01:24:00,402
the emotions are terror and rage.

1649
01:24:00,402 --> 01:24:05,374
And her behavior, she has enough awareness to hold--

1650
01:24:05,374 --> 01:24:06,875
She holds on to some awareness when

1651
01:24:06,875 --> 01:24:08,577
she's with her daughter,

1652
01:24:08,577 --> 01:24:11,613
some awareness that this is her daughter,

1653
01:24:11,613 --> 01:24:18,153
and that it's 2014, but only it's a thin strand of awareness

1654
01:24:18,153 --> 01:24:20,355
so she can become, at this moment,

1655
01:24:20,355 --> 01:24:23,492
she can become very harsh, yell in ways

1656
01:24:23,492 --> 01:24:26,295
that she later feels terrible about.

1657
01:24:26,295 --> 01:24:28,197
And then, but mostly she withdraws

1658
01:24:28,197 --> 01:24:29,431
because she knows enough,

1659
01:24:29,431 --> 01:24:31,166
she wants to protect her daughter,

1660
01:24:31,166 --> 01:24:34,269
so she'll withdraw, and she'll end up retrieving

1661
01:24:34,269 --> 01:24:39,207
into her room, she can lose hours of time curled up,

1662
01:24:39,207 --> 01:24:47,449
flooded with terror and rage and shame, specially shame.

1663
01:24:47,449 --> 01:24:49,951
And flashbacks, she'll have lots of

1664
01:24:49,951 --> 01:24:55,056
disjointed bits and pieces of memory images

1665
01:24:55,056 --> 01:24:58,326
of her abused as a child.

1666
01:25:01,730 --> 01:25:03,098
And yet she can be in these

1667
01:25:03,098 --> 01:25:06,034
other states and be so different.

1668
01:25:06,034 --> 01:25:08,637
So each state has it's characteristic

1669
01:25:08,637 --> 01:25:12,040
kinds of representations of self and other,

1670
01:25:12,040 --> 01:25:15,745
those configurations, the emotions that

1671
01:25:15,745 --> 01:25:18,480
one is prone to in certain states,

1672
01:25:18,480 --> 01:25:22,150
physiological aspects of the state, etcetera.

1673
01:25:25,353 --> 01:25:28,256
I wanna talk about implications for therapy.

1674
01:25:28,256 --> 01:25:30,091
Davies writes really well about this,

1675
01:25:30,091 --> 01:25:33,629
the idea of essentially working

1676
01:25:33,629 --> 01:25:36,798
associatively versus dissociatively,

1677
01:25:36,798 --> 01:25:39,868
the idea that as a therapist we can try

1678
01:25:39,868 --> 01:25:44,806
to facilitate association, or reassociation,

1679
01:25:44,806 --> 01:25:48,577
if somebody is prone to too much fragmentation.

1680
01:25:48,577 --> 01:25:52,714
Or we can, in that sense we're trying to relief

1681
01:25:52,714 --> 01:25:56,318
the dissociation and bring back reassociation.

1682
01:25:56,318 --> 01:25:58,387
Or in other way, in another way of working,

1683
01:25:58,387 --> 01:26:01,523
we invite, actually invite the dissociation,

1684
01:26:01,523 --> 01:26:05,527
and I'll illustrate each but I'm gonna start with Harriet.

1685
01:26:05,527 --> 01:26:08,797
When she gets into these kind of states

1686
01:26:08,797 --> 01:26:12,234
I am not trying to facilitate more dissociation,

1687
01:26:12,234 --> 01:26:15,704
I'm trying to work with her to help her reassociate

1688
01:26:15,704 --> 01:26:17,806
because those states, when she starts

1689
01:26:17,806 --> 01:26:20,042
to talk about things in a session,

1690
01:26:20,042 --> 01:26:22,010
she'll start to experience that,

1691
01:26:22,010 --> 01:26:25,947
and she can go into these full-blown states in the session,

1692
01:26:25,947 --> 01:26:27,816
and she can no longer hear me

1693
01:26:27,816 --> 01:26:29,351
when things get that far.

1694
01:26:29,351 --> 01:26:31,786
We've worked to try to not let them get there

1695
01:26:31,786 --> 01:26:34,322
but it does happen.

1696
01:26:34,322 --> 01:26:36,759
But once she's in that kind of state

1697
01:26:36,759 --> 01:26:39,613
we spend a lot of time trying to help her recover

1698
01:26:39,613 --> 01:26:41,796
and she genuinely doesn't fully recover

1699
01:26:41,796 --> 01:26:43,131
even by the end of the session,

1700
01:26:43,131 --> 01:26:46,868
she recovers a great deal but she's still very shaking,

1701
01:26:46,868 --> 01:26:51,502
and so I try to interrupt this early

1702
01:26:51,502 --> 01:26:54,776
and try to work with her around reassociating.

1703
01:26:54,776 --> 01:26:56,778
Here's what I mean, just to illustrate

1704
01:26:56,778 --> 01:27:01,416
working associatively rather than dissociatively.

1705
01:27:03,719 --> 01:27:05,454
When she shows some,

1706
01:27:05,454 --> 01:27:08,156
there's certain characteristic signs,

1707
01:27:08,156 --> 01:27:11,092
physiological signs, and certain gestures,

1708
01:27:11,092 --> 01:27:13,762
that I've come to know in her that show

1709
01:27:13,762 --> 01:27:15,864
that she's starting to enter that state,

1710
01:27:15,864 --> 01:27:19,901
and she starts to lose her visual focus on the present,

1711
01:27:19,901 --> 01:27:22,370
her eyes move around but she's not

1712
01:27:22,370 --> 01:27:24,439
really focusing on what she's looking at,

1713
01:27:24,439 --> 01:27:27,275
and if you watch you can see that,

1714
01:27:27,275 --> 01:27:30,300
and you can see the sort of activation

1715
01:27:30,300 --> 01:27:34,182
of her way of breathing and things like that.

1716
01:27:35,751 --> 01:27:38,787
So when that starts, rather than

1717
01:27:38,787 --> 01:27:41,456
inviting a deepening into that,

1718
01:27:41,456 --> 01:27:44,893
I will say things like the following,

1719
01:27:44,893 --> 01:27:47,629
I might say to her, "Can you feel your feet

1720
01:27:47,629 --> 01:27:49,731
"on the floor right now?"

1721
01:27:49,731 --> 01:27:51,233
There are lots of grounding techniques,

1722
01:27:51,233 --> 01:27:53,769
there are a lot of different styles therapists use,

1723
01:27:53,769 --> 01:27:56,171
and people who work a lot with trauma.

1724
01:27:56,171 --> 01:27:59,207
But more to the point of what we're talking about today,

1725
01:27:59,207 --> 01:28:01,943
of the dissociated self states,

1726
01:28:01,943 --> 01:28:05,146
I might say something like the following,

1727
01:28:05,146 --> 01:28:07,215
but I have to say this soon before

1728
01:28:07,215 --> 01:28:08,817
she gets too into that state,

1729
01:28:08,817 --> 01:28:12,153
because then it's harder for her to hear me and process it,

1730
01:28:12,153 --> 01:28:13,955
but I might say something like,

1731
01:28:13,955 --> 01:28:16,491
"The terrified and enraged child in you

1732
01:28:16,491 --> 01:28:19,988
"is activated right now, but that part of you

1733
01:28:19,988 --> 01:28:23,631
"doesn't know that you're here in my office.

1734
01:28:23,631 --> 01:28:26,468
"There are other parts of you that do know that,

1735
01:28:26,468 --> 01:28:29,637
"that you're here now, that it's 2014,

1736
01:28:29,637 --> 01:28:31,072
"that you're a mother,

1737
01:28:31,072 --> 01:28:33,808
"that you work in a day care for elders,

1738
01:28:33,808 --> 01:28:36,978
"that you're sitting here in my office with me,

1739
01:28:36,978 --> 01:28:39,414
"and that nothing is gonna happen to you

1740
01:28:39,414 --> 01:28:41,616
"while you're sitting here with me."

1741
01:28:41,616 --> 01:28:44,686
And trying to speak really firmly

1742
01:28:44,686 --> 01:28:49,090
and directly to her as she's starting to collapse

1743
01:28:49,090 --> 01:28:51,760
into a part of her mind that is completely

1744
01:28:51,760 --> 01:28:54,429
the kaleidoscope of the rigid setting

1745
01:28:54,429 --> 01:28:57,499
and it compartmentalizes away everything else.

1746
01:28:57,499 --> 01:29:01,770
I'm speaking to her to try to help her reassociate

1747
01:29:01,770 --> 01:29:04,139
to other states of her being,

1748
01:29:04,139 --> 01:29:06,941
other senses of herself,

1749
01:29:06,941 --> 01:29:11,346
and help her restore also a sense of time and place.

1750
01:29:11,346 --> 01:29:14,049
That's trying to help her reassociate,

1751
01:29:14,049 --> 01:29:16,956
and trying to help her stand in the spaces

1752
01:29:16,956 --> 01:29:18,487
and get out, in particular,

1753
01:29:18,487 --> 01:29:24,125
stand outside of this, the trauma state.

1754
01:29:27,028 --> 01:29:32,700
Contrast that with John when I,

1755
01:29:32,701 --> 01:29:37,305
when I invited him to...

1756
01:29:37,305 --> 01:29:41,109
Now, this is a completely different example,

1757
01:29:41,109 --> 01:29:44,145
different from the trauma, this kind of problem

1758
01:29:44,145 --> 01:29:47,382
of a trauma and complete over-activation

1759
01:29:47,382 --> 01:29:51,219
and catastrophic dissociation that happens

1760
01:29:51,219 --> 01:29:54,689
where Harriet, where I'm trying to help her reassociate.

1761
01:29:54,689 --> 01:29:56,991
If we think about, say the exemplary talked about

1762
01:29:56,991 --> 01:30:00,995
with John where he's in an individual session

1763
01:30:00,995 --> 01:30:03,665
doing this and he starts to inhibit it,

1764
01:30:03,665 --> 01:30:06,234
and when I invited him, I suggested that

1765
01:30:06,234 --> 01:30:09,104
he stay with this, right?

1766
01:30:09,104 --> 01:30:13,608
That, what I'm doing in doing that is I am inviting,

1767
01:30:13,608 --> 01:30:17,980
I'm inviting in a specific kaleidoscopic setting,

1768
01:30:17,980 --> 01:30:21,149
John "the angry avenger", I'm inviting that in,

1769
01:30:21,149 --> 01:30:24,185
I'm encouraging him to let himself enter

1770
01:30:24,185 --> 01:30:28,156
and be in that state and to dissociate away,

1771
01:30:28,156 --> 01:30:31,259
'cause when he starts to inhibit it he's got

1772
01:30:31,259 --> 01:30:34,063
other self states that are telling him,

1773
01:30:34,063 --> 01:30:38,233
that are more reflective, but for the purpose of a therapy

1774
01:30:38,233 --> 01:30:40,935
to work with this particular state,

1775
01:30:40,935 --> 01:30:43,488
I'm inviting dissociation by saying,

1776
01:30:43,488 --> 01:30:46,474
"What if you let yourself get more into that?

1777
01:30:46,474 --> 01:30:49,210
"What does your hand and arm, what does your finger want?"

1778
01:30:49,210 --> 01:30:51,012
I'm really inviting him physically,

1779
01:30:51,012 --> 01:30:54,549
physiologically, viscerally, and

1780
01:30:54,549 --> 01:30:57,051
emotionally and psychologically into this

1781
01:30:57,051 --> 01:31:00,655
"angry avenger" dissociated state.

1782
01:31:00,989 --> 01:31:03,758
Why do I do that? I do that to explore it,

1783
01:31:03,758 --> 01:31:06,394
but I also do it because, unlike Harriet,

1784
01:31:06,394 --> 01:31:09,364
I'm not worried about him, I'm not worried

1785
01:31:09,364 --> 01:31:13,401
because I don't sense that this is gonna be,

1786
01:31:13,401 --> 01:31:15,770
cause him to crash and regress.

1787
01:31:15,770 --> 01:31:18,573
That he'll be able to enter that

1788
01:31:18,573 --> 01:31:20,175
and he'll be able to get back out of it

1789
01:31:20,175 --> 01:31:23,611
before the session's over, and recover his ability

1790
01:31:23,611 --> 01:31:26,347
to stand in the spaces again, not to be caught

1791
01:31:26,347 --> 01:31:29,250
in that one configuration of this,

1792
01:31:29,250 --> 01:31:32,187
not to be caught in that kaleidoscopic setting.

1793
01:31:32,187 --> 01:31:34,622
So because I think he can tolerate it,

1794
01:31:34,622 --> 01:31:36,824
and because I think it can help to explore it,

1795
01:31:36,824 --> 01:31:39,728
that's why I invite the dissociation

1796
01:31:39,728 --> 01:31:41,830
further into that self state.

1797
01:31:41,830 --> 01:31:43,831
And as we saw what happened, he started

1798
01:31:43,831 --> 01:31:47,168
to get more ramped up, the staccato gesture,

1799
01:31:48,168 --> 01:31:51,139
and then he started to,

1800
01:31:51,139 --> 01:31:53,475
something deepened by doing that,

1801
01:31:53,475 --> 01:31:55,643
and that's when, you'll remember,

1802
01:31:55,643 --> 01:31:59,180
he started to, he then shifted after he had permission

1803
01:31:59,180 --> 01:32:02,650
to really get into it, he shifted and softened

1804
01:32:02,650 --> 01:32:05,119
and that's when he said, speaking to her,

1805
01:32:05,119 --> 01:32:07,989
as if speaking to her, "You're supposed to care for me",

1806
01:32:07,989 --> 01:32:10,692
and he started to become tearful,

1807
01:32:10,692 --> 01:32:14,829
and it opened up to the vulnerable, needful self state

1808
01:32:14,829 --> 01:32:18,099
that this was fending off.

1809
01:32:18,099 --> 01:32:20,435
So sometimes it's kind of like,

1810
01:32:20,435 --> 01:32:23,204
you can't get around it, you have to go through it.

1811
01:32:23,204 --> 01:32:25,206
We were going through, we were entering

1812
01:32:25,206 --> 01:32:29,277
more deeply into this, the "righteous avenger" self state,

1813
01:32:29,277 --> 01:32:31,145
and by going through it, able to reach

1814
01:32:31,145 --> 01:32:34,649
and access another self state which is the one

1815
01:32:34,649 --> 01:32:36,084
he really needed to get to was

1816
01:32:36,084 --> 01:32:39,821
the vulnerable, needful boy in him.

1817
01:32:39,821 --> 01:32:42,185
So these are two, you know they're really different

1818
01:32:42,185 --> 01:32:46,227
ways of working, trying to facilitate association,

1819
01:32:46,227 --> 01:32:49,130
reassociation with Harriet, and trying to invite

1820
01:32:49,130 --> 01:32:52,300
and facilitate dissociation with John.

1821
01:32:52,300 --> 01:32:54,702
Now, with John there were other moments

1822
01:32:54,702 --> 01:32:59,073
when I did vary, where I was working associatively.

1823
01:32:59,073 --> 01:33:02,076
If you remember the session, the couple's session

1824
01:33:02,076 --> 01:33:07,515
when he's ramped up like this with his girlfriend there,

1825
01:33:07,515 --> 01:33:09,184
this is the current girlfriend,

1826
01:33:09,184 --> 01:33:10,652
when he's ramped up like this,

1827
01:33:10,652 --> 01:33:12,720
you know the session when I said to him,

1828
01:33:12,720 --> 01:33:15,390
"Can you just be still right where you are

1829
01:33:15,390 --> 01:33:17,792
"and sense what's going on in your body?"

1830
01:33:17,792 --> 01:33:20,228
And that's when he became aware of how aggressive

1831
01:33:20,228 --> 01:33:23,899
and angry and enraged he was, and pumped up.

1832
01:33:23,899 --> 01:33:27,268
What I did in that moment was different,

1833
01:33:27,960 --> 01:33:31,506
he was stuck, his kaleidoscopic setting was stuck,

1834
01:33:31,506 --> 01:33:34,442
and I sensed that he was just gonna stay stuck there,

1835
01:33:34,442 --> 01:33:36,344
and just be in the "righteous avenger" mode,

1836
01:33:36,344 --> 01:33:39,781
and he had lost his capacity, in that session,

1837
01:33:39,781 --> 01:33:41,449
in that moment, and inhibited it

1838
01:33:41,449 --> 01:33:43,418
because his girlfriend was there,

1839
01:33:43,418 --> 01:33:45,953
he'd lost his capacity to work more flexibly,

1840
01:33:45,953 --> 01:33:47,989
to be able to stand in the spaces,

1841
01:33:47,989 --> 01:33:50,458
and then he was just gonna get stuck in this.

1842
01:33:50,458 --> 01:33:54,529
So when I said to him, "Can you just be still

1843
01:33:54,529 --> 01:33:57,565
"and notice what's going on in your body?"

1844
01:33:57,565 --> 01:34:00,568
That is calling upon self-observation,

1845
01:34:00,568 --> 01:34:04,172
that's calling upon a part of his mind that is outside,

1846
01:34:04,172 --> 01:34:07,475
that stands outside of the "righteous avenger" part

1847
01:34:07,475 --> 01:34:10,845
in order to observe himself, self-awareness,

1848
01:34:10,845 --> 01:34:13,915
and then that moved into self-reflection.

1849
01:34:13,915 --> 01:34:17,961
So I in that question I was calling upon him

1850
01:34:17,961 --> 01:34:20,455
not to get more into the dissociative state

1851
01:34:20,455 --> 01:34:23,358
but to reassociate outside of it

1852
01:34:23,358 --> 01:34:26,727
in order to work with that state.

1853
01:34:28,463 --> 01:34:31,566
And it seems like that was helpful for him.

1854
01:34:31,566 --> 01:34:35,136
So whether or not we work associatively,

1855
01:34:35,136 --> 01:34:37,538
trying to help the person stand in the spaces

1856
01:34:37,538 --> 01:34:39,173
and get outside of the state,

1857
01:34:39,173 --> 01:34:41,142
whether or not we work dissociatively

1858
01:34:41,142 --> 01:34:42,543
entering to the state,

1859
01:34:42,543 --> 01:34:44,912
it depends on the situation and what's going on,

1860
01:34:44,912 --> 01:34:49,617
and what the goals are, and what they can tolerate.

1861
01:34:49,684 --> 01:34:51,419
You know, with Harriet as I say,

1862
01:34:51,419 --> 01:34:53,921
when she's in that state she can't tolerate that,

1863
01:34:53,921 --> 01:34:55,256
it's not tolerable.

1864
01:34:55,256 --> 01:34:57,892
So the only option I feel is to try to help her

1865
01:34:57,892 --> 01:35:04,032
reassociate until there's enough developmental capacity,

1866
01:35:04,032 --> 01:35:06,834
once she has enough capacity we do

1867
01:35:06,834 --> 01:35:08,436
wanna go into those trauma states,

1868
01:35:08,436 --> 01:35:11,372
we do wanna enter the realm of those memories,

1869
01:35:11,372 --> 01:35:13,474
but not when she doesn't have

1870
01:35:13,474 --> 01:35:15,243
the capacity to tolerate it,

1871
01:35:15,243 --> 01:35:17,044
when she's gonna get stuck there.

1872
01:35:17,044 --> 01:35:18,846
So that's the difference in terms of,

1873
01:35:18,846 --> 01:35:23,317
technically, working associatively versus dissociatively.

1874
01:35:26,654 --> 01:35:28,989
Okay, that...

1875
01:35:29,657 --> 01:35:33,394
That concludes the section,

1876
01:35:33,394 --> 01:35:37,398
the final section on the relational view,

1877
01:35:37,398 --> 01:35:40,234
a relational model of human psychology,

1878
01:35:40,234 --> 01:35:42,136
of the structure of the mind,

1879
01:35:42,136 --> 01:35:45,106
and working with some new ounces around that

1880
01:35:45,106 --> 01:35:48,877
about more normative situation,

1881
01:35:48,877 --> 01:35:52,747
ordinary kaleidoscopic melange,

1882
01:35:53,948 --> 01:35:58,319
intermediate levels of difficulty like John had,

1883
01:35:58,319 --> 01:36:00,988
more pronounced dissociative dividedness

1884
01:36:00,988 --> 01:36:03,652
and difficulties like Harriet,

1885
01:36:03,652 --> 01:36:07,429
in situations of early trauma tend to cause that.

1886
01:36:07,429 --> 01:36:09,564
And then some considerations about,

1887
01:36:09,564 --> 01:36:11,766
therapeutically, how to work with those

1888
01:36:11,766 --> 01:36:14,502
under different circumstances.

1889
01:36:15,102 --> 01:36:17,772
So I'll just say now that overall,

1890
01:36:17,772 --> 01:36:20,508
just looking back over the whole course,

1891
01:36:20,508 --> 01:36:25,046
tried to present a foundation of relational theory,

1892
01:36:25,046 --> 01:36:27,949
how it evolved from the early paradigms,

1893
01:36:27,949 --> 01:36:32,854
and its relationship to the earlier paradigms,

1894
01:36:32,854 --> 01:36:36,724
and to present, as I say, both the clinical theory

1895
01:36:36,724 --> 01:36:39,160
and the theory of mind.

1896
01:36:40,595 --> 01:36:44,332
And although I've discussed these theoretical paradigms

1897
01:36:44,332 --> 01:36:48,303
as distinct conceptually I just wanna say,

1898
01:36:48,303 --> 01:36:51,072
when we look at any therapy,

1899
01:36:51,072 --> 01:36:54,141
whether we're looking at the level of the clinical moment,

1900
01:36:54,141 --> 01:36:57,239
or whether we're looking at an entire therapy,

1901
01:36:57,945 --> 01:37:00,381
I think it's tremendously enriching to be able

1902
01:37:00,381 --> 01:37:04,485
to look through multiple theoretical lenses.

1903
01:37:05,570 --> 01:37:07,421
We talked in terms of multiple lenses,

1904
01:37:07,421 --> 01:37:10,691
we talked about three different ways of looking at

1905
01:37:10,691 --> 01:37:15,463
how we are therapeutic as "interpreter",

1906
01:37:15,463 --> 01:37:18,132
most associated with the classical paradigm,

1907
01:37:18,132 --> 01:37:21,762
as "nurturer", most associated with the self paradigm,

1908
01:37:22,424 --> 01:37:26,198
as "co-actor", most associated closely

1909
01:37:26,198 --> 01:37:28,776
with the object paradigm into personal theory,

1910
01:37:28,776 --> 01:37:30,411
relational theory.

1911
01:37:30,411 --> 01:37:31,612
I would say there's a--

1912
01:37:31,612 --> 01:37:34,282
I think there's a fourth that I intentionally

1913
01:37:34,282 --> 01:37:37,351
left out today because it's not part

1914
01:37:37,351 --> 01:37:39,754
of the foundation of relational theory.

1915
01:37:39,754 --> 01:37:40,889
For those of you familiar with it,

1916
01:37:40,889 --> 01:37:45,092
it's the client, contemporary client model,

1917
01:37:45,092 --> 01:37:47,228
where in addition to "interpreter",

1918
01:37:47,228 --> 01:37:49,463
"nurturer" and "co-actor" I think

1919
01:37:49,463 --> 01:37:52,533
there's really a fourth model which is "container",

1920
01:37:52,533 --> 01:37:55,269
a lot of the contemporary client work on therapist,

1921
01:37:55,269 --> 01:37:57,472
analyst does "container", but that was

1922
01:37:57,472 --> 01:38:00,174
beyond the scope of what we were talking about today,

1923
01:38:00,174 --> 01:38:03,244
but I did wanna just mention it.

1924
01:38:04,745 --> 01:38:06,314
The relational, as we've been saying,

1925
01:38:06,314 --> 01:38:08,983
relational places particular emphasis

1926
01:38:08,983 --> 01:38:12,119
on the "co-actor" aspect and enactment,

1927
01:38:12,119 --> 01:38:16,224
but of course any in-depth and effective therapy

1928
01:38:16,224 --> 01:38:21,395
involves the therapist in all these different functions,

1929
01:38:21,395 --> 01:38:26,867
interpreting, being nurturing, co-acting, etcetera.

1930
01:38:27,044 --> 01:38:29,637
And in any moment of our responding,

1931
01:38:29,637 --> 01:38:33,908
as I said earlier, we may be embodying any or all of these,

1932
01:38:33,908 --> 01:38:36,744
any or all of these three in the same utterance

1933
01:38:36,744 --> 01:38:39,680
rather than to be overly simplistic

1934
01:38:39,680 --> 01:38:41,282
in how we look at these things.

1935
01:38:41,282 --> 01:38:44,252
So in the same utterance we can be interpreting,

1936
01:38:44,252 --> 01:38:45,186
we can be nurturing,

1937
01:38:45,186 --> 01:38:48,522
we can be acting something out, co-acting.

1938
01:38:48,522 --> 01:38:53,783
And my last utterance for this course is that

1939
01:38:53,783 --> 01:38:56,197
I hope it's been interesting,

1940
01:38:56,197 --> 01:39:00,334
I hope it's been helpful for you as you continue

1941
01:39:00,334 --> 01:39:04,334
on in your learning and in your work.