dagblog - Comments for "Preface Draft Part 2"

Psychotherapy is the art of

Elusive Trope — Sun, 18 Aug 2013 23:28:32 +0000

In reply to Interesting that I came upon

Psychotherapy is the art of listening. A skilled therapist listens and knows when to turn the answers back to the patient. That's all any of us can do when we come across someone with the kind of psychic pain that requires a complete washing, drying and hanging out. We can listen. We can't cure.

One of the hardest thing to do is to be fully present for another human being, to sit and listen without letting one's own thoughts to jump in and take up space. Thoughts like what one is going to say after the other person is done talking.

It is a normal reflex to relate what someone is saying to us to our own personal history. In therapy, when the client is discussing such things as a break up with a significant other or the death of loved one, this becomes even more acute because of the nature of the events and feelings being discussed.

When listening to someone discuss a bad relationship, a great therapist won't sit there and think about the break ups in his or her own past, bringing along with them all the personal emotions about those events, which means the therapist isn't really listening to the client, hearing the subtle and not-so subtle messages being sent.

One of the reasons it is so crucial that the therapist really listen is that not only are others not capable of knowing how we experience something, we are not capable of knowing just how we are experiencing something.

Recently I had a total hissy fit because someone not only said something to me that I took as being disrespectful, but did so with a backhanded go-away hand gesture. I was a bit perplexed at the intensity of my outrage. It was weeks afterward when I flashed on a memory of a past girlfriend who had done that same gesture to me towards the end of our relationship.

Camus commented in his absurdity essays that a part of him will always remain a mystery to himself. This is true for all of us. Of course, he started the essay with the:

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterward. These are games; one must first answer.

I think about this a lot. I

moat — Sun, 18 Aug 2013 21:52:16 +0000

In reply to Preface Draft Part 2

I think about this a lot. I am very close to what Rilke said in your last quote. I removed a previous comment because it sounded like I had an angle on your question. I don't.

Great post, my friend.

It's so much more comforting

Michael Maiello — Sat, 17 Aug 2013 01:46:27 +0000

In reply to Preface Draft Part 2

It's so much more comforting to think of the mask as something we put on and take off, at will or, at least, on cue. But the idea of it as something we peel at, like skin after a sunburn, that is in the end, irremovable...

Stay well, Trope. I might want a Camus breakfast sandwich (I hear there's nothing stranger...)

His story is so fascinating

Ramona — Sat, 17 Aug 2013 01:04:20 +0000

In reply to Can't help looking at

His story is so fascinating it could be a movie script as it is (and probably will be--not that he'll reap the benefits, unless those stories are true about being able to look down and see how the world has treated your demise). When I told my husband about it he thought first off that it was just another internet hoax. I had to show him the story in the KC paper before he would believe Manley actually went through with it.

Interesting too that there are now three of us on dag (See Natasha Gural's piece) who came at the story from entirely different POVs. He got what he wanted, all right, but I don't know. . .something's missing when he's not around to react to the public attention he so obviously craved.

Can't help looking at

NCD — Sat, 17 Aug 2013 00:53:22 +0000

In reply to Interesting that I came upon

Can't help looking at Martin's story with humor.

It has a plot in there for a Woody Allen movie, obsession, compulsion, self absorption. However a plot change, just before the deed is done, a FedEx guy knocks at the door, informing Martin he has won an all expense paid trip (in November!!) to the French Riviera in a contest his sister entered him in.

This throws into disarray all his exquisite planning and cancels his denouement.

In France, he meets a rich aged French widow, marries, and later rescues a boatload of refugees while off Italy in the yacht. Whereupon he devotes his and her waning years to relief for boat people of the world, meeting his end a couple decades later as an internationally recognized philanthropist.

Interesting that I came upon

Ramona — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 22:30:26 +0000

In reply to Preface Draft Part 2

Interesting that I came upon your piece right after reading about Martin Manley, the former Kansas City Star journalist who committed suicide yesterday. He did it, as planned, on his 60th birthday and recorded the reasons why on the website he published a short time before he pulled the trigger.

He said there was nothing wrong; he had always planned to kill himself before he got old. He was happy, he had no job worries, he had no money worries, he did not think he had mental issues. He simply feared life as an old person more than he feared death.

He obviously spent a lot of time honing his website so that not only his death but his life would have meaning. He hoped that his prefacing and the description of his own suicide might come to the attention of the folks at the Guinness Book of Records. He was sure nothing like it had ever been done before. He hoped the pages of his website would be studied by psychotherapists specializing in suicide so that they might better understand how it can happen and why.

What struck me about Martin Manley is that, even knowing he would not be here to witness the effect his actions might have on his family, friends and the general public, it was important to him to make sure anyone coming upon his website would understand what he was all about. But there is no way for mere mortals to ever understand another person, even if that person lays it all out there in what he or she thinks is the ragged truth.

We witness through our own eyes, with our own thoughts, our own prejudices, always putting ourselves into the picture: How would we feel about this? How DO we feel about this? And always, no matter how articulate the writer is, if something doesn't fit according to our own perceptions, we still ask "Why?" And then we attempt to answer ourselves in our own way. Because we're human and that's what we do.

I guess what I'm getting at is it's probably futile to expect that others outside of our own skin will ever know us as we know us. Psychotherapy is the art of listening. A skilled therapist listens and knows when to turn the answers back to the patient. That's all any of us can do when we come across someone with the kind of psychic pain that requires a complete washing, drying and hanging out. We can listen. We can't cure.

Martin Manley wanted us to believe he was the only person on earth who did the deed while sane, rational and happy. If I don't believe it, does it mean he failed? And in the end, does it matter what I think?

Trying to guage how much one

Elusive Trope — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 21:25:17 +0000

In reply to This was written at the end

Trying to guage how much one is loved by others is something that can get one's head spinning. And even if one is able to guage it, one is still not sure if who they love is actually on the mark. A t-shirt in a shop window read: I am still in love with my false image of you. That has stayed with me.

[Sorry if right now I am on the disillusioned side of things these days.]

This was written at the end

artappraiser — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 20:25:18 +0000

In reply to Preface Draft Part 2

This was written at the end of the recent death notice of a dear dear friend:

"A heart is not judged by how much you love, but how much you are loved by others." (Wizard to the Tin Man)

I and many others are still struggling with broken hearts from his unexpected death. And I keep coming back to that quote.

"A heart is not judged by how much you love, but how much you are loved by others." (Wizard to the Tin Man) - See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/jsonline/obituary.aspx?n=tim-david-kueh...

A heart is not judged by how much you love, but how much you are loved by others. - See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/jsonline/obituary.aspx?n=tim-david-kueh...

"A heart is not judged by how much you love, but how much you are loved by others." (Wizard to the Tin Man) - See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/jsonline/obituary.aspx?n=tim-david-kueh...