Posts
Quite a number of strange things have happened to me recently.
For my most recent assignment I chose to investigate sex addiction. I went to a couple of meetings of Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous – S.L.A.A. The open meetings take place at 7.30 in the morning, in the Mission district. A inconspicuous red door opens and self-confessed sex addicts start to arrive – quite possibly a number of them stop off during the matutinal walk of shame.
Once everyone is gathered around the table, the leader of the group reads out the 12 steps on which S.L.A.A. is founded (it is based on the Alcoholics Anonymous model). I was surprised by the spiritual nature of these 12 steps – at least 6 of them make direct reference to ‘a power greater than ourselves’ termed God. However, it is entirely non-denominational. Thereafter an egg timer is passed around and addicts introduce themselves and air whatever concerns they have for 3 minutes. They will say something like: ‘Hi, my name is Brad, I am a sex and love addict and I have not used pornography for a month.’ Brad’s introduction will be greeted with a volley of ‘Hi Brad’, a pattern which is repeated – somewhat disconcertingly – every time Brad speaks.
The main problem to emerge was the unhealthy nature of relationships. From the male point of view, both gay and straight, relationships often appeared to be variations on the Madonna – Whore complex. A number of sex addicts said that the men and women they were sexually attracted to were not ones they could ever conceive of having a normal, healthy relationship with. And they were not sexually attracted to those people they could have healthy relationships with – ie their partners or spouses. This was a big theme.
After the first meeting I asked the group leader why pornography was deemed such a problem. Personally I would have thought that pornography would be beneficial – a harmless way of temporarily exhausting sexual desire and hence avoiding destructive relationships. However, the group leader explained that addicts might go online at night and watch pornography solidly for 12 hours. Often they would masturbate to the point of self harm. That is the compulsive aspect of addiction.
As I was leaving the second meeting, a gay sex addict slipped me a piece of paper with his name and number on it. His name? Randy. I promise.
I have a Spanish friend staying with me. Last Friday we drove to Napa and went to do a wine-tasting at the Joseph Phelps vineyard. One of the ‘wine educators’ was a friendly silver-haired gentleman. He spoke some Catalan though he was himself Swiss. I told him that I had booked dinner that evening in a Swiss fondue restaurant in San Francisco called ‘The Matterhorn’. He asked me to pass on his regards to the Swiss owners, friends of his. Then he asked me where I was from. When I told him my name he proceeded to lecture me on my family history. Impressive people, wine educators.
That evening we ate at the fondue restaurant, then went on to a small bar called ‘Black Magic Voodoo Lounge’. I was standing outside when I thought I recognized a tall man in his forties. He had a German accent. I asked him if we had met before; he said no. Then I remembered having spoken to him in a lift descending from the Top of the Mark hotel, 9 months previously (when I was in San Francisco over Easter). I had briefly spoken to him on that occasion because of his accent, and because he reminded me of a friend of my father’s. When I told him about our first meeting he did recall it. Then he introduced himself: his name was Claus, and he was originally from Salzburg.
At this point a punk rocker standing next to us joined the conversation. He had a slight accent too. When I asked him about it he said he was originally from Germany but had been living in Brixton, near the Windmill, for the last 6 years.
I promise that I have relayed this with absolute fidelity. It is extraordinary.
We drank quite heavily that night, on my part to still the sense that I was in my own private Truman Show.
On the morning my Spanish friend had to leave, we went for an early morning swim in the bay, just as the fog was beginning to lift. The water was cold and we spent a while warming up in the sauna afterwards. There we met another German. He was a baker (no ‘n’) in the Richmond district, and an authority on Heidegger.
At a Schnapps and vodka tasting in the St.Geroge's distillery a few weeks ago, I met a charming Brazilian confectioner who has set up her own artisanal confectionary business - www.kikastreats.com She invited me to the inaugural International Body Music Festival - www.crosspulse.com - where a Brazilian troupe was due to perform. Body Music is essentially a form of physical percussion – making music using different parts of the body. It combines tap dance, singing, beat-box, slapping, clapping and using the mouth as a sort of human drum. What I saw at this festival fairly blew my mind.
The first performance was by two very beautiful Inuit Eskimo girls. They stood pressed together in the middle of the stage, holding each others hips and giggling girlishly. Both wore jeans and tight t-shirts and bright red boots. I was half expecting some Sapphic nose-rubbing when the most bizarre noises began to fill the auditorium – reminiscent of didgeridoos and tropical frog ponds. The program says:
From Northern Canada, these cousins perform the ancient art of Inuit throat-singing (katatjaq). Two women stand close together, using each others mouths as resonators, producing guttural vocal sounds through voice manipulation and breathing techniques, often ending in laughter.
The next perfomers were Oakland’s Slammin All-Body Band, led by the festival organizer, Keith Terry. Again using no more than their own bodies, they produced a Jazz/Funk symphony replete with haunting saxophone sounds. Beats were achieved by foot work and body slapping which was reminiscent of Austrian Schuplattler.
However, the Brazilian troupe truly stole the show. I had not thought it possible for them to be any more inventive than their precursors, but they were. What is more, they were led by the most extraordinary individual I have possibly ever seen. He was short, fat and ugly with huge lips and squashed nose, and a bizarre tonsure of unruly orange hair. He strutted onto the stage in pink trousers that were much too short even for his stumpy legs. He looked for all the world as if he had just wandered in off the streets. He made his way through the sylph-like dancers to the microphone. He began to make a few noises which sounded initially like farts and belches – he smiled leeringly at this – but soon the noises became lower and deeper until the auditorium reverberated with bass sounds so deep they made your body shake. Then he seized the microphone and stomped up and down spitting and rapping in Brazilian. He was phenomenal, better than anyone I have ever heard.
Later I realized that he was the incarnation of Silenus –
The Silenoi (Σειληνοί) were followers of Dionysus. They were drunks, and were usually bald and fat with thick lips and squat noses, and had the legs of a human. Later, the plural "silenoi" went out of use and the only references were to one individual named Silenus, the teacher and faithful companion of the wine-god Dionysus. A notorious consumer of wine, he was usually drunk and had to be supported by satyrs or carried by a donkey. Silenus was described as the oldest, wisest and most drunken of the followers of Dionysus, and was said in Orphic hymns to be the young god's tutor. This puts him in a company of phallic or half-animal tutors of the gods.
(from Wikipedia)
The Brazilian band is called Barbatuques. This does not do him justice, but watch Silenus here -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E0EJLRkysM
Friday, December 12, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
8. Sweat Lodge
For the intercultural awareness requirement of my Observation and Interviewing class, I had to choose a cultural experience to write about. The one stipulation was that is had to be a wholly new experience. There were a couple of fairly tame suggestions – eg going to a church or to a restaurant where I would be the only representative of my cultural group. However, none of the suggested experiences would have been wholly new. So I asked around and eventually a friend told me that he had heard about Native American Sweat Lodge ceremonies in Marin County. I researched online and found out that Sweat Lodges did indeed take place on Sundays in Marin. The following text (with its personal/intercultural awareness bent) is taken from the paper I wrote for the assignment:
I had very little idea of what to expect. The friend who suggested the Sweat Lodge to me had never been to one himself; he had just heard of someone else who had been. What is more, the website giving directions and instructions was down on the Sunday I intended to go. Fortunately I had written down the directions, and I remembered that participants were required to bring food as well as their own cutlery and crockery for a feast after the ‘sweat’. So, I left San Francisco at half past three, bound for the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin County. On the way I stopped at Safeways and bought a large chocolate cake. My own cooking skills are limited and I did not want to risk poisoning anyone.
I eventually found the address at which the sweat was due to take place. The house was a large bungalow perched on the side of a hill. It was surrounded by decking and one wall was composed of sliding windows overlooking the forest. I parked my car alongside a number of others in the car park and approached the house. I was about to knock when the door opened and an elderly man with Native American features hobbled out with the help of a walking stick. I asked him whether I had come to the right place to participate in a sweat lodge. He appeared not to understand so I repeated my question more loudly. Then the man nodded and told me to follow him.
We descended some muddy steps beside the house to a small, flat clearing in the forest. There was a fire burning in a circle of stones. A few meters from the fire stood the wooden frame of a low, circular tent. The frame was made of sticks tied together with twine. Between the fire and the frame was an altar comprising the skull of a buffalo and a number of small talismanic objects and trinkets. The fire was being tended by Santiago, the ‘fire man’. There were two young white men standing around the fire; they nodded a greeting to me. The elderly Native American man whom I had followed – I later found out that his name was Fred – took a seat in a chair beside the fire. No one spoke for quite a while, until eventually Fred asked me and the other two young men to fetch the blankets from his car up in the car park. We duly did this.
At this juncture I was primarily intrigued to see how things would develop. I was surprised by the lack of communication among participants but I did not feel that it was my place to initiate interaction and so I held by tongue. I hoped that the other visitors to the sweat lodge would turn out to be Native Americans rather than white Americans. I was aware that, if the other visitors were white Americans, I would feel a slight sense of having been cheated of the real experience. What is more, I would begin to feel part of some new-age cult rather than witness to a ritual preserved by Native American tradition.
Over the next half hour, other visitors arrived in ones and twos. My fears appeared to have been well founded; not a single visitor was a Native American, though there was one man from Guatemala with distinctly indio features. A number of these visitors appeared to be sweat lodge habitués; some appeared to know Fred quite well. We were instructed to cover the tent frame with the blankets to form a layer two blankets thick, then a dark green canvas sheet was thrown over the whole construction. After that we were told to get changed. The girls, of whom there were four, went up to the house while the boys changed around the fire. I had bought a pair of swimming trunks with me, though I had not known for certain that I would need them.
Having changed, we all assembled in a circle around the fire. There were fourteen of us. Fred asked us our names a couple of times and was able to remember each one with barely a mistake. He then began to explain a few things to us. There were four flags marking the four compass points around the clearing. The flags were colored red, white, yellow and black. Each flag represented a quality (enlightenment and innocence were two), as well as a race. As Fred explained this, I found myself wondering why certain colours represented certain qualities, why these qualities had been chosen in the first place, what the evidence for the symbolism was and how I could be certain that Fred wasn’t making this up. My own cultural mindset is one which questions the basis of belief, both my own beliefs and other people’s. Sometimes I am not questioning whether beliefs are true; I question whether they are genuinely held and therefore true for that person. Although Fred was a Native American, no one else there was, and hence I was more suspicious about the authenticity of the ceremony than I might otherwise have been.
While Fred explained the significance of the flags, one of the late arrivals had installed himself and his suitcase next to the altar. He was a gangly young white man with curly hair. He carefully opened the suitcase and removed a number of small parcels wrapped in cloth. With an expression of extreme reverence he opened each parcel, revealing the various pieces of a pipe. He held each piece aloft and closed his eyes with a beatific expression, then he carefully refolded the cloth before fitting the pieces of the pipe together. The procedure was formal and grave; the young man putting the pipe together took his role very seriously. I found myself wondering whether this was genuinely an ancient ritual sanctified by time and tradition. Did the boy performing the ritual believe in what he was doing? If so, then what exactly were those beliefs? And if someone truly believes in what they are doing, then is there anymore that needs to be said? Must people be capable of justifying their actions, or is it just my own cultural mindset which leads me to think that?
When the pipe had been constructed, we walked around the fire in a clockwise direction, taking care not to cross the energy line running perpendicularly through the fire, the altar and the sweat tent (or lodge). I got to my hands and knees to enter through the small doorway of the tent, saying ‘For all my ancestors, ho,’ upon entering. Then I crawled round the very dark interior of the tent until I was wedged between two people with my back to the wooden frame and blankets of the tent wall. Once everyone was inside, Fred took his place by the door flap and the fireman began to carry glowing rocks from the fire and slide them through the flap towards a hole in the ground in the middle of the tent. When four or five rocks were in the hole, the fire man also entered the tent, then Fred closed the flap. One lady had been charged with the task of sprinkling cedar needles on the stones, a task she performed with some relish. Cedars are evergreen; the action symbolized continuity in life. Then a number of the more experienced sweat lodge visitors began to chant what I assumed were Native American songs. The refrains were short and frequently repeated; at times they sounded more like ululations, but they were nevertheless melodious.
At this point the pipe, stuffed with redwood bark, was passed around the tent. We were told to hold the clay bulb in one hand and inhale from the pipe stem which was as long as my forearm. I inhaled dutifully a few times. The smoke was acrid but had no distinctive flavor or psychotropic effect, as far as I could tell. At this point more glowing rocks were added from the fire outside. Water was liberally sprinkled on the stones, raising the humidity and causing me to start sweating. Nevertheless, as a devotee of the Scandinavian sauna, I did not find it very hot in the sweat lodge. It was more memorable for its stuffiness and dampness, the total darkness, the cramped conditions, the fact that an insect crawled up my shorts (I caught it en route), and the lack of any fresh air in a tiny space with fourteen people. However, I never actually found it unpleasant. The sweat lodge symbolizes the womb of the earth and I certainly felt some intimation of that.
There were a few more rounds of songs; I was surprised that everyone appeared to know the refrains. Then we started with the prayers. Each individual in the lodge spoke in turn, thanking the Creator and Life Spirit for his blessings, sharing something about their life and also, in most cases, asking for help with something. It seemed a bit like a form of group therapy in unusual conditions, and in which each individual is hidden by the darkness and hence more readily able to speak their mind without fear of embarrassment. Furthermore, I felt that the heat and the darkness also facilitated a sense of bonding among individuals. It is certainly easier to feel part of something bigger than yourself when your sweaty limbs are entwined with other peoples’ and when you can only hear and feel but not see.
However, even in darkness I was aware of myself as an observer. I am not comfortable in crowds and, although I like team sports and consider myself a social being, there is nevertheless often a part of me which is detached. For me, spiritual experiences occur most readily when I am alone, frequently in the mountains. But I also realize that for some people spirituality is about community and togetherness. So, in my prayer I asked to be able to avoid the excesses of detachment and the pitfalls of cynicism to which I know I can be prone.
Midway through the prayers there was a break during which the door flap was opened and a bottle of water passed around. During the break, participants were encouraged to tell jokes, the dirtier the better. I must confess that I did not find the jokes in the slightest bit amusing. They did not accord in any way with my own sense of humor, but then I enjoy funny stories and spontaneous humor much more than labored jokes. It may be argued that humor is a cultural construct but I must confess that I have a hard time accepting that. When I hear a bad, smutty joke my reaction is ‘that is not funny’, rather than, ‘that would be a very funny joke, if I came from your cultural perspective.’
Fred closed the flap in preparation for the remaining prayers. The lady with the cedar needles used her prayer to thank Fred repeatedly for having allowed her the great honor of scattering the needles on the stones. By this stage I had started to tire of the proceedings and my mind wandered back to my childhood. I grew up in the countryside midway between London and the sea. We had a garden and an orchard. In autumn, rotting fruit lay thick on the ground. I remember a time when I constructed a number of rituals using the rotting fruit, rituals into which I then initiated my brother. I remember building a large pyre of apples and murmuring incantations and setting light to twigs, then we both ceremoniously urinated over the smoking pile. To my child’s mind, that meant something. I don’t remember what, maybe the end of the season of fruitfulness, or maybe my own mastery over nature. In any case, sitting in that sweat lodge I wondered how different my own little rituals were from the symbolic scattering of cedar needles on a hot stone.
After all the prayers had been said there was more singing, then we crawled out of the sweat lodge into the cold night air. We changed back into our clothes, then we deconstructed the lodge and folded the blankets. We made our way to the house where everyone presented the food they had bought. My own chocolate cake was not the most lovingly prepared of offerings, but it was nevertheless well received. Once the food was on the table, we were invited to eat, but we had to respect the order of seniority; Fred and the fire man would eat first, then the rest of us, and finally some children who had materialized.
I took some food and found a seat near Fred. We talked a little and he asked me about myself. There were many questions I would have liked to ask him but it didn’t feel like quite the right time. Fred made a number of references to his promiscuity as a young man and he encouraged me not to be reticent on that front. During dinner a silver bowl was placed on the water cooler and we were told in no uncertain terms that Fred could not charge for the sweat lodge but that any contributions would be very welcome. A succession of $20 dollar bills fluttered their way into the bowl and it did cross my mind that this might just be a way for a libidinous older man to procure sexual partners and to make some money at the same time. However, I banished that thought from my mind. Apart from his predilection for bad smutty jokes, there was nothing inappropriate about Fred. Based on our brief conversation, I liked him. He seemed a calm and balanced person, and I have always felt that it is a hallmark of the sort of intelligence that I value to ask questions and to be interested in other people.
In retrospect, I am still not quite sure how genuine a Native American experience I was a part of. Nor am I sure how much that matters. If people believe in something and wish to honor certain traditions genuinely and with a pure heart, why should it matter that their own Native American ancestry is either non-existent or not at all evident? However, I believe that I took something else away from this experience too. The experience confirmed the thought which, I am just beginning to realize, is my own primary concern in the field of psychology and therapy: I am primarily concerned with the lack of meaning in life, and people’s attempts to find it. I think that lack of meaning lies at the root of many psychological problems. Sitting in the sweat lodge and listening to the chanting and the earnest prayers of a group of young white Americans made me think that what people desperately want is a sense of meaning in their lives. As Nietzsche said: Man can live with almost any ‘how’, so long as he has a ‘why’. One way to achieve a sense of meaning is through feeling oneself a part of a spiritual community. I hope that, for these people, the sweat lodge will answer that need, if not indefinitely, then at least for the time being. However, I don’t think it would work for me.
I had very little idea of what to expect. The friend who suggested the Sweat Lodge to me had never been to one himself; he had just heard of someone else who had been. What is more, the website giving directions and instructions was down on the Sunday I intended to go. Fortunately I had written down the directions, and I remembered that participants were required to bring food as well as their own cutlery and crockery for a feast after the ‘sweat’. So, I left San Francisco at half past three, bound for the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin County. On the way I stopped at Safeways and bought a large chocolate cake. My own cooking skills are limited and I did not want to risk poisoning anyone.
I eventually found the address at which the sweat was due to take place. The house was a large bungalow perched on the side of a hill. It was surrounded by decking and one wall was composed of sliding windows overlooking the forest. I parked my car alongside a number of others in the car park and approached the house. I was about to knock when the door opened and an elderly man with Native American features hobbled out with the help of a walking stick. I asked him whether I had come to the right place to participate in a sweat lodge. He appeared not to understand so I repeated my question more loudly. Then the man nodded and told me to follow him.
We descended some muddy steps beside the house to a small, flat clearing in the forest. There was a fire burning in a circle of stones. A few meters from the fire stood the wooden frame of a low, circular tent. The frame was made of sticks tied together with twine. Between the fire and the frame was an altar comprising the skull of a buffalo and a number of small talismanic objects and trinkets. The fire was being tended by Santiago, the ‘fire man’. There were two young white men standing around the fire; they nodded a greeting to me. The elderly Native American man whom I had followed – I later found out that his name was Fred – took a seat in a chair beside the fire. No one spoke for quite a while, until eventually Fred asked me and the other two young men to fetch the blankets from his car up in the car park. We duly did this.
At this juncture I was primarily intrigued to see how things would develop. I was surprised by the lack of communication among participants but I did not feel that it was my place to initiate interaction and so I held by tongue. I hoped that the other visitors to the sweat lodge would turn out to be Native Americans rather than white Americans. I was aware that, if the other visitors were white Americans, I would feel a slight sense of having been cheated of the real experience. What is more, I would begin to feel part of some new-age cult rather than witness to a ritual preserved by Native American tradition.
Over the next half hour, other visitors arrived in ones and twos. My fears appeared to have been well founded; not a single visitor was a Native American, though there was one man from Guatemala with distinctly indio features. A number of these visitors appeared to be sweat lodge habitués; some appeared to know Fred quite well. We were instructed to cover the tent frame with the blankets to form a layer two blankets thick, then a dark green canvas sheet was thrown over the whole construction. After that we were told to get changed. The girls, of whom there were four, went up to the house while the boys changed around the fire. I had bought a pair of swimming trunks with me, though I had not known for certain that I would need them.
Having changed, we all assembled in a circle around the fire. There were fourteen of us. Fred asked us our names a couple of times and was able to remember each one with barely a mistake. He then began to explain a few things to us. There were four flags marking the four compass points around the clearing. The flags were colored red, white, yellow and black. Each flag represented a quality (enlightenment and innocence were two), as well as a race. As Fred explained this, I found myself wondering why certain colours represented certain qualities, why these qualities had been chosen in the first place, what the evidence for the symbolism was and how I could be certain that Fred wasn’t making this up. My own cultural mindset is one which questions the basis of belief, both my own beliefs and other people’s. Sometimes I am not questioning whether beliefs are true; I question whether they are genuinely held and therefore true for that person. Although Fred was a Native American, no one else there was, and hence I was more suspicious about the authenticity of the ceremony than I might otherwise have been.
Layout of Sweat Lodge (click to enlarge)
While Fred explained the significance of the flags, one of the late arrivals had installed himself and his suitcase next to the altar. He was a gangly young white man with curly hair. He carefully opened the suitcase and removed a number of small parcels wrapped in cloth. With an expression of extreme reverence he opened each parcel, revealing the various pieces of a pipe. He held each piece aloft and closed his eyes with a beatific expression, then he carefully refolded the cloth before fitting the pieces of the pipe together. The procedure was formal and grave; the young man putting the pipe together took his role very seriously. I found myself wondering whether this was genuinely an ancient ritual sanctified by time and tradition. Did the boy performing the ritual believe in what he was doing? If so, then what exactly were those beliefs? And if someone truly believes in what they are doing, then is there anymore that needs to be said? Must people be capable of justifying their actions, or is it just my own cultural mindset which leads me to think that?
When the pipe had been constructed, we walked around the fire in a clockwise direction, taking care not to cross the energy line running perpendicularly through the fire, the altar and the sweat tent (or lodge). I got to my hands and knees to enter through the small doorway of the tent, saying ‘For all my ancestors, ho,’ upon entering. Then I crawled round the very dark interior of the tent until I was wedged between two people with my back to the wooden frame and blankets of the tent wall. Once everyone was inside, Fred took his place by the door flap and the fireman began to carry glowing rocks from the fire and slide them through the flap towards a hole in the ground in the middle of the tent. When four or five rocks were in the hole, the fire man also entered the tent, then Fred closed the flap. One lady had been charged with the task of sprinkling cedar needles on the stones, a task she performed with some relish. Cedars are evergreen; the action symbolized continuity in life. Then a number of the more experienced sweat lodge visitors began to chant what I assumed were Native American songs. The refrains were short and frequently repeated; at times they sounded more like ululations, but they were nevertheless melodious.
At this point the pipe, stuffed with redwood bark, was passed around the tent. We were told to hold the clay bulb in one hand and inhale from the pipe stem which was as long as my forearm. I inhaled dutifully a few times. The smoke was acrid but had no distinctive flavor or psychotropic effect, as far as I could tell. At this point more glowing rocks were added from the fire outside. Water was liberally sprinkled on the stones, raising the humidity and causing me to start sweating. Nevertheless, as a devotee of the Scandinavian sauna, I did not find it very hot in the sweat lodge. It was more memorable for its stuffiness and dampness, the total darkness, the cramped conditions, the fact that an insect crawled up my shorts (I caught it en route), and the lack of any fresh air in a tiny space with fourteen people. However, I never actually found it unpleasant. The sweat lodge symbolizes the womb of the earth and I certainly felt some intimation of that.
There were a few more rounds of songs; I was surprised that everyone appeared to know the refrains. Then we started with the prayers. Each individual in the lodge spoke in turn, thanking the Creator and Life Spirit for his blessings, sharing something about their life and also, in most cases, asking for help with something. It seemed a bit like a form of group therapy in unusual conditions, and in which each individual is hidden by the darkness and hence more readily able to speak their mind without fear of embarrassment. Furthermore, I felt that the heat and the darkness also facilitated a sense of bonding among individuals. It is certainly easier to feel part of something bigger than yourself when your sweaty limbs are entwined with other peoples’ and when you can only hear and feel but not see.
However, even in darkness I was aware of myself as an observer. I am not comfortable in crowds and, although I like team sports and consider myself a social being, there is nevertheless often a part of me which is detached. For me, spiritual experiences occur most readily when I am alone, frequently in the mountains. But I also realize that for some people spirituality is about community and togetherness. So, in my prayer I asked to be able to avoid the excesses of detachment and the pitfalls of cynicism to which I know I can be prone.
Midway through the prayers there was a break during which the door flap was opened and a bottle of water passed around. During the break, participants were encouraged to tell jokes, the dirtier the better. I must confess that I did not find the jokes in the slightest bit amusing. They did not accord in any way with my own sense of humor, but then I enjoy funny stories and spontaneous humor much more than labored jokes. It may be argued that humor is a cultural construct but I must confess that I have a hard time accepting that. When I hear a bad, smutty joke my reaction is ‘that is not funny’, rather than, ‘that would be a very funny joke, if I came from your cultural perspective.’
Fred closed the flap in preparation for the remaining prayers. The lady with the cedar needles used her prayer to thank Fred repeatedly for having allowed her the great honor of scattering the needles on the stones. By this stage I had started to tire of the proceedings and my mind wandered back to my childhood. I grew up in the countryside midway between London and the sea. We had a garden and an orchard. In autumn, rotting fruit lay thick on the ground. I remember a time when I constructed a number of rituals using the rotting fruit, rituals into which I then initiated my brother. I remember building a large pyre of apples and murmuring incantations and setting light to twigs, then we both ceremoniously urinated over the smoking pile. To my child’s mind, that meant something. I don’t remember what, maybe the end of the season of fruitfulness, or maybe my own mastery over nature. In any case, sitting in that sweat lodge I wondered how different my own little rituals were from the symbolic scattering of cedar needles on a hot stone.
After all the prayers had been said there was more singing, then we crawled out of the sweat lodge into the cold night air. We changed back into our clothes, then we deconstructed the lodge and folded the blankets. We made our way to the house where everyone presented the food they had bought. My own chocolate cake was not the most lovingly prepared of offerings, but it was nevertheless well received. Once the food was on the table, we were invited to eat, but we had to respect the order of seniority; Fred and the fire man would eat first, then the rest of us, and finally some children who had materialized.
I took some food and found a seat near Fred. We talked a little and he asked me about myself. There were many questions I would have liked to ask him but it didn’t feel like quite the right time. Fred made a number of references to his promiscuity as a young man and he encouraged me not to be reticent on that front. During dinner a silver bowl was placed on the water cooler and we were told in no uncertain terms that Fred could not charge for the sweat lodge but that any contributions would be very welcome. A succession of $20 dollar bills fluttered their way into the bowl and it did cross my mind that this might just be a way for a libidinous older man to procure sexual partners and to make some money at the same time. However, I banished that thought from my mind. Apart from his predilection for bad smutty jokes, there was nothing inappropriate about Fred. Based on our brief conversation, I liked him. He seemed a calm and balanced person, and I have always felt that it is a hallmark of the sort of intelligence that I value to ask questions and to be interested in other people.
In retrospect, I am still not quite sure how genuine a Native American experience I was a part of. Nor am I sure how much that matters. If people believe in something and wish to honor certain traditions genuinely and with a pure heart, why should it matter that their own Native American ancestry is either non-existent or not at all evident? However, I believe that I took something else away from this experience too. The experience confirmed the thought which, I am just beginning to realize, is my own primary concern in the field of psychology and therapy: I am primarily concerned with the lack of meaning in life, and people’s attempts to find it. I think that lack of meaning lies at the root of many psychological problems. Sitting in the sweat lodge and listening to the chanting and the earnest prayers of a group of young white Americans made me think that what people desperately want is a sense of meaning in their lives. As Nietzsche said: Man can live with almost any ‘how’, so long as he has a ‘why’. One way to achieve a sense of meaning is through feeling oneself a part of a spiritual community. I hope that, for these people, the sweat lodge will answer that need, if not indefinitely, then at least for the time being. However, I don’t think it would work for me.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
7. Yo, Semite!
On Tuesday afternoon I left San Francisco bound for Yosemite National Park. Once I had left the coast behind me the landscape became undulating and dun coloured. Modern developments of identical houses besmirched the rolling plain here and there. The views from the highway were almost identical to views of Israeli settlements in the West Bank when seen from a settler road, but here there are no razor wire fences.
Maybe the landscape depressed me, or maybe I was just tired. In any case, I had to pull off the highway a couple of times to nap and to buy a coffee. Each time I found myself in a sprawling strip mall. But the malls seemed to be doing a good trade. Many of the parking spaces were occupied with gleaming new vehicles. I asked myself, what on earth do people do here? In fact, that is probably the question I ask myself most frequently. I understand that in cities people work in finance and everything else supports that, or them, in one way or another. And in the countryside people farm, and there is an infrastructure to support that. But the majority of industrialised nations are not composed solely of cities and farmland, and yet people seem to live prosperously all over. So what do they do? Cottage industries are fine and good, but surely not everyone can live off sewing patchwork quilts, or carving Dalarna horses, or clotting cream. It really baffles me.
It was dark when I arrived in Yosemite. I parked my car at the campsite on the valley floor. On either side impossibly tall trees leant their distant tops against each other. In the moonlight the effect was like an arboreal cathedral. The valley floor was strewn with extraordinarily heavy, sticky, oversize pine cones.
I slept in my car and woke early the next morning. I left the campsite at first light, bound for the smooth granite knuckle of the half dome. After half an hour’s walking I came face to face with a black bear. He ignored me and I photographed him. I continued up to the half dome and took Ansel Adams type pictures along the way. I barely saw another soul all day. It was very peaceful on the summit.
I returned to my car at about half past three and was back in San Francisco in time for dinner. What a place this is.
Maybe the landscape depressed me, or maybe I was just tired. In any case, I had to pull off the highway a couple of times to nap and to buy a coffee. Each time I found myself in a sprawling strip mall. But the malls seemed to be doing a good trade. Many of the parking spaces were occupied with gleaming new vehicles. I asked myself, what on earth do people do here? In fact, that is probably the question I ask myself most frequently. I understand that in cities people work in finance and everything else supports that, or them, in one way or another. And in the countryside people farm, and there is an infrastructure to support that. But the majority of industrialised nations are not composed solely of cities and farmland, and yet people seem to live prosperously all over. So what do they do? Cottage industries are fine and good, but surely not everyone can live off sewing patchwork quilts, or carving Dalarna horses, or clotting cream. It really baffles me.
It was dark when I arrived in Yosemite. I parked my car at the campsite on the valley floor. On either side impossibly tall trees leant their distant tops against each other. In the moonlight the effect was like an arboreal cathedral. The valley floor was strewn with extraordinarily heavy, sticky, oversize pine cones.
I slept in my car and woke early the next morning. I left the campsite at first light, bound for the smooth granite knuckle of the half dome. After half an hour’s walking I came face to face with a black bear. He ignored me and I photographed him. I continued up to the half dome and took Ansel Adams type pictures along the way. I barely saw another soul all day. It was very peaceful on the summit.
I returned to my car at about half past three and was back in San Francisco in time for dinner. What a place this is.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
6. me me me
6. I have continued to meet with the blind lady. When we walk in the street she holds my arm but she always appears to know exactly when we are at the end of a block. I asked her if she counted her paces. She said no, but she could hear whether there was a wall beside her or not. She also told me that she often sits out on her doorstep at night, savouring the smells. She says the city smells so different at night; she can pick up the scent of jasmine and the plants exhaling.
I was recently struck by the emotive power of smell myself. I was driving though the city and picked up the faint whiff of a bonfire. I was immediately catapulted into an English autumn. October is San Francisco’s summer; day after day has been hot and sunny. That faint whiff suddenly made me long for a season which my body tells me is long overdue. Cold nights and misty mornings – they are signs that it is ok to start winding down for the winter. Having said that, the last few days have been grey and I am already looking forward to sunny skies again.
I used to think there was a distinction between becoming a psychologist in order to help others, and becoming a psychologist in order to help oneself. Now I am no longer so sure. There are a number of students at my school who blur that distinction – the recovered alcoholic and the narcissist to name just two. I am beginning to realise that I am really no different - my primary concern is: what should one do with life? Underlying my desire to be a psychologist is the hope that, by helping other people answer that question, I will come closer to answering it for myself. And really the theoretical orientation that you choose says a lot more about you than about the orientation per se. A recovered alcoholic is likely to prefer Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) whereas I am attracted by existential psychotherapy, because that is the most relevant to me me me.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
5. Neptune and Ariel
5.1 It is said that dentists have the worst teeth. I am not sure that is true. However, I do think that hairdressers tend to have terrible haircuts. And, from my experience of graduate school so far, it would seem that psychology graduates are very stressed and struggle to achieve balance in their own lives. One of my professors said that grad school is too stressful to be able to maintain a romantic relationship. I mean, please; it's not like going to war. But then, I can’t really comment, since I am on the moderated program with less modules per semester, and very grateful for it.
I have decided to do some drawings of local wildlife when I am not studying. It is a good way to ensure balance. You should not rush a drawing.
5.2 In my Intercultural Awareness Development’ module I had to list the five cultural groups/ populations with whom I feel least comfortable. The groups could be very loosely defined - race, ethnicity, nationality, social demographic status, sexual orientation etc. At first I thought that I don’t feel uncomfortable with any group; I only feel uncomfortable with individuals who feel uncomfortable with or resentful towards me because I am a white male born into privilege. But then I thought of people who are severely disfigured. People with terrible deformities. That is probably the only group with whom I am not at all comfortable. I feel very sorry for them, I am revolted by their mutations and at the same time ghoulishly fascinated. In any case, I can certainly not engage in any normal way. At least, I don’t think I can, though I am not sure I have ever tried.
The following week the assignment was returned to us, along with the next assignment. In my case it was to find someone with a disability and interview them for 8 to 10 hours over the next two months in order to come to understand them, their lives, their experiences and their relationship to disability.
There was no guidance in terms of how or where to find our interviewee, and since I barely know anyone in this city and certainly do not have access to a network of contacts, I was a little stuck. However, that very afternoon I went swimming in the bay at the Dolphin Club. I was minding my own business and happily splashing from buoy to buoy when I heard loud, repeated shouts of ‘blue cheese!’. I looked up to see a huge man with a white beard who looked like Neptune; he was treading water a few metres away from me. There was a lady swimming a few metres beyond him. I looked at him as inquisitively as possible through my swimming goggles; was this the drowning cry of a maniac? However, he continued to shout at the lady and ignored me, so I swam on and thought to myself that it takes all types.
I was sitting in the sauna after my swim when the enormous Neptune man came in. He had moved to San Francisco from Texas to play ‘go’ several decades ago. He had a very idiosyncratic way of speaking, punctuating his conversation with what appeared to be a slight variant of the Indian acha-cha-cha-cha-cha. I asked him why he had been shouting ‘blue cheese’ while swimming. He explained that the lady he was swimming with was blind and this was one of their code words.
When I next saw Neptune I asked him whether his blind friend might consent to being interviewed by me. This was of course slightly delicate since I wanted, as far as possible, to avoid having to confess my own discomfort with disability. I wanted to present myself as having a desire to learn about disability, rather than admitting that I had been given an assignment based on my own personal shortcomings. So, I wrote a letter to the blind lady which I left in Neptune’s locker at the Dolphin Club and I am very happy to say that she has agreed to be interviewed by me.
5.3 Last week I met the blind lady for the first time. I am going to call her Ariel; she has tattoos of mermaids and dolphins all over her arms and shoulders. She suggested that we meet at the Bombay Bazaar, an Indian ice cream parlour in the Mission district. Ariel is 47 years old. She arrived in a flowing dress with a thick garland of leaves and flowers on her head. Her arms and shoulders were bare; I observed on them the tattoos which she has never seen. Ariel grew up in South Africa; she had her eyes removed when she was eight months old owing to retinal cancer. Since then she has used glass or plastic eyes which she takes out when she goes to sleep. I did not realize that her eyes were plastic until halfway through our meeting. Ariel arrived accompanied by her boyfriend who then left us.
My remit for the initial interview was to establish Ariel’s biography. I stuck pretty much to the facts of her life. However, I think this may be a very interesting and illuminating assignment, not least because of Ariel’s openness and warmth. I walked the two blocks home with her from the Bombay Bazaar. She very lightly held my elbow, or rather, her hand hovered with my elbow in the gap between her thumb and index finger. Then she hugged me on her doorstep.
5.4 A few days after the interview I was shopping in my local supermarket when I saw a middle aged lady with a truly horrific facial disfigurement. She had an enormous livid tumour covering half her face, distorting her mouth so it hung half open and squeezing shut one eye; she reminded me of Joseph Merrick. The thought that makes me wither within is to imagine that happening to my own child. That truly makes it real and breaks down the distancing defences. I realised that is the lady I ought to be interviewing. I considered approaching her and asking her, but how on earth to do that? How to ask anything, especially when you are already struggling to control your emotions? Well, needless to say, I chickened out.
I have decided to do some drawings of local wildlife when I am not studying. It is a good way to ensure balance. You should not rush a drawing.
5.2 In my Intercultural Awareness Development’ module I had to list the five cultural groups/ populations with whom I feel least comfortable. The groups could be very loosely defined - race, ethnicity, nationality, social demographic status, sexual orientation etc. At first I thought that I don’t feel uncomfortable with any group; I only feel uncomfortable with individuals who feel uncomfortable with or resentful towards me because I am a white male born into privilege. But then I thought of people who are severely disfigured. People with terrible deformities. That is probably the only group with whom I am not at all comfortable. I feel very sorry for them, I am revolted by their mutations and at the same time ghoulishly fascinated. In any case, I can certainly not engage in any normal way. At least, I don’t think I can, though I am not sure I have ever tried.
The following week the assignment was returned to us, along with the next assignment. In my case it was to find someone with a disability and interview them for 8 to 10 hours over the next two months in order to come to understand them, their lives, their experiences and their relationship to disability.
There was no guidance in terms of how or where to find our interviewee, and since I barely know anyone in this city and certainly do not have access to a network of contacts, I was a little stuck. However, that very afternoon I went swimming in the bay at the Dolphin Club. I was minding my own business and happily splashing from buoy to buoy when I heard loud, repeated shouts of ‘blue cheese!’. I looked up to see a huge man with a white beard who looked like Neptune; he was treading water a few metres away from me. There was a lady swimming a few metres beyond him. I looked at him as inquisitively as possible through my swimming goggles; was this the drowning cry of a maniac? However, he continued to shout at the lady and ignored me, so I swam on and thought to myself that it takes all types.
I was sitting in the sauna after my swim when the enormous Neptune man came in. He had moved to San Francisco from Texas to play ‘go’ several decades ago. He had a very idiosyncratic way of speaking, punctuating his conversation with what appeared to be a slight variant of the Indian acha-cha-cha-cha-cha. I asked him why he had been shouting ‘blue cheese’ while swimming. He explained that the lady he was swimming with was blind and this was one of their code words.
When I next saw Neptune I asked him whether his blind friend might consent to being interviewed by me. This was of course slightly delicate since I wanted, as far as possible, to avoid having to confess my own discomfort with disability. I wanted to present myself as having a desire to learn about disability, rather than admitting that I had been given an assignment based on my own personal shortcomings. So, I wrote a letter to the blind lady which I left in Neptune’s locker at the Dolphin Club and I am very happy to say that she has agreed to be interviewed by me.
5.3 Last week I met the blind lady for the first time. I am going to call her Ariel; she has tattoos of mermaids and dolphins all over her arms and shoulders. She suggested that we meet at the Bombay Bazaar, an Indian ice cream parlour in the Mission district. Ariel is 47 years old. She arrived in a flowing dress with a thick garland of leaves and flowers on her head. Her arms and shoulders were bare; I observed on them the tattoos which she has never seen. Ariel grew up in South Africa; she had her eyes removed when she was eight months old owing to retinal cancer. Since then she has used glass or plastic eyes which she takes out when she goes to sleep. I did not realize that her eyes were plastic until halfway through our meeting. Ariel arrived accompanied by her boyfriend who then left us.
My remit for the initial interview was to establish Ariel’s biography. I stuck pretty much to the facts of her life. However, I think this may be a very interesting and illuminating assignment, not least because of Ariel’s openness and warmth. I walked the two blocks home with her from the Bombay Bazaar. She very lightly held my elbow, or rather, her hand hovered with my elbow in the gap between her thumb and index finger. Then she hugged me on her doorstep.
5.4 A few days after the interview I was shopping in my local supermarket when I saw a middle aged lady with a truly horrific facial disfigurement. She had an enormous livid tumour covering half her face, distorting her mouth so it hung half open and squeezing shut one eye; she reminded me of Joseph Merrick. The thought that makes me wither within is to imagine that happening to my own child. That truly makes it real and breaks down the distancing defences. I realised that is the lady I ought to be interviewing. I considered approaching her and asking her, but how on earth to do that? How to ask anything, especially when you are already struggling to control your emotions? Well, needless to say, I chickened out.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
4. Which doctor?
4.1 Over the summer I have been chewing people’s ears off about my plans for a more bohemian existence here in San Francisco. In particular, I said I wanted to build my own furniture. I didn’t think it could be all that difficult. And even if the resulting pieces were a bit haphazard, they would have a rustic charm. So, having moved into my new flat here, I set about finding a timber merchant within walking distance. There weren’t any, so I found one online and phoned to inquire about deliveries. And that is when the full absurdity of the enterprise struck me. I had no idea what type of wood I’d need, or what tools, or how to build even a simple chair. And having a sitting room full of timber and sawdust doesn’t appeal that much either. I am going to wait until I move to a rustic setting before I start making my charming rustic furniture.
However, I thought I could remain half true to my vision by eschewing contemporary urban minimalism and buying cheap antiques instead. I went to a number of antiques malls and warehouses. I saw some stuff I liked – old wooden chairs which looked like they had been left on a beach for half a century; tattered, smoky green leather sofas; rusty wrought iron tables. They were the kind of objects you might see being fly-tipped. The only difference is that, since they are in an antiques mall, they cost ten times more than they did when new.
The only thing I have acquired is an old globe on a stand. For ten days it was my only piece of furniture. It is not very practical but I have always wanted one. And it will be an excellent prop for armchair travel, when I have an armchair.
In the end I swallowed my pride and ordered online from Ikea. It took me four and a half hours to put together my desk yesterday. I did it so badly, and the result is so haphazard, that it looks like an original rustic piece which I built from scratch. That consoles me.
4.2 Earlier today I walked past Ghiradelli’s World (?) Famous Ice Cream Parlor. Inside there were twelve nuns clad in white habits. Some were white, some were African, others were Indian; all were ancient. They looked like missionaries gathered from the distant corners of the globe. Each nun was tucking joyfully into an enormous ice-cream Sunday, bedecked with whipped cream and crowned with a cherry.
4.3 In my Observation and Interviewing class we have to do a fair amount of role-playing. I hate role-plays. I am a dreadful actor and, in any case, there is a lot of material in the literature about the importance of authenticity in the therapist-client relationship. That makes sense to me, which is why I find role-plays such a struggle. I don’t believe in my role or the other person’s.
However, I was asked to be the client in our first session. My partner was a large, cheerful lady in her fifties. I decided to base my client character on one of Irvin Yalom’s psychoanalytic cases from his excellent collection, ‘Love’s Executioner’.; I thought that would make it easier for me to believe in the role. Yalom describes a wealthy, elderly Jewish man (‘I can live off the interest of my interest’) who has started getting migraines. The elderly man’s doctor refers him to Yalom – the psychoanalyst - because wasn’t able to find anything wrong with him. Yalom discovers that the migraines have coincided more or less with the man’s retirement and that, on closer investigation, the retirement has stirred up all sorts of existential anguish.
So, I introduced myself to my ‘therapist’ (the cheerful 50 year old) as an elderly Jewish man, much to her surprise. However, it wasn’t until she started to question me about my wife that I recalled the other salient feature of Yalom’s case, namely that the migraines coincided precisely with the first instances of impotence in the elderly gentleman’s life. My ‘therapist’ was a little taken aback when I announced in front of the class that I couldn’t get it up. However, she diligently pursued her line of inquiry, forcing me to admit that I was only truly happy when my wife held me in her mouth – another case detail. My ‘therapist’ went on to draw me into more and more intimate pseudo-confessions and I was relieved when the session was over. My performance as client was praised and it wasn’t until I was walking home that the full ridiculousness of the situation struck me.
4.4 I have taken to swimming in the bay here. There is a rickety old wooden house on the beach which belongs to the Dolphin Club. You can pay to use their facilities for the day as a guest. The water is pretty cold and murky. Most of the members of the Dolphin Club - they call themselves dolphins - appear to be quite senior citizens, though their hardiness cannot be denied. There is a group of them who swim every morning at 6am, even in winter, in the fog and the darkness.
Shaking with cold after my first swim, I headed straight for the sauna. Inside I listened to three elderly dolphins chewing the fat:
Dolphin 1: I felt a seal brush against my leg today. They’re getting frisky.
Dolphin 2: Yes, I saw him, and smelt him too. Awful fish breath.
Dolphin 3: I had a sea lion jump over my back yesterday.
Dolphin 1: Really? But did you sea the tiger shark last week?
Maybe they were just trying to scare me. They succeeded.
4.5 An interesting excerpt from one of my textbooks:
"In one sense psychotherapists are a genus of the world species of witch doctor. We are a bit more refined, but no less confident, and not much more effective than an Ethiopian spirit doctor, Peruvian curandero, Puerto Rican espiritista, Navaho medicine man, Hindu guru, Tanzanian Mganga, or Nigerian healer. We are faith healers. We all cure people of their suffering by capitalizing on our power, prestige, communication, sensitivity, and rituals while playing on the client's expectations and trust. All healers work by naming what they think is wrong (diagnosis), assigning meaning to the suffering (interpretation), and intervening in some therapeutic way (herbs, medicine, reinforcement)."
The Imperfect Therapist by J. Kottler and D. Blau.
However, I thought I could remain half true to my vision by eschewing contemporary urban minimalism and buying cheap antiques instead. I went to a number of antiques malls and warehouses. I saw some stuff I liked – old wooden chairs which looked like they had been left on a beach for half a century; tattered, smoky green leather sofas; rusty wrought iron tables. They were the kind of objects you might see being fly-tipped. The only difference is that, since they are in an antiques mall, they cost ten times more than they did when new.
The only thing I have acquired is an old globe on a stand. For ten days it was my only piece of furniture. It is not very practical but I have always wanted one. And it will be an excellent prop for armchair travel, when I have an armchair.
In the end I swallowed my pride and ordered online from Ikea. It took me four and a half hours to put together my desk yesterday. I did it so badly, and the result is so haphazard, that it looks like an original rustic piece which I built from scratch. That consoles me.
4.2 Earlier today I walked past Ghiradelli’s World (?) Famous Ice Cream Parlor. Inside there were twelve nuns clad in white habits. Some were white, some were African, others were Indian; all were ancient. They looked like missionaries gathered from the distant corners of the globe. Each nun was tucking joyfully into an enormous ice-cream Sunday, bedecked with whipped cream and crowned with a cherry.
4.3 In my Observation and Interviewing class we have to do a fair amount of role-playing. I hate role-plays. I am a dreadful actor and, in any case, there is a lot of material in the literature about the importance of authenticity in the therapist-client relationship. That makes sense to me, which is why I find role-plays such a struggle. I don’t believe in my role or the other person’s.
However, I was asked to be the client in our first session. My partner was a large, cheerful lady in her fifties. I decided to base my client character on one of Irvin Yalom’s psychoanalytic cases from his excellent collection, ‘Love’s Executioner’.; I thought that would make it easier for me to believe in the role. Yalom describes a wealthy, elderly Jewish man (‘I can live off the interest of my interest’) who has started getting migraines. The elderly man’s doctor refers him to Yalom – the psychoanalyst - because wasn’t able to find anything wrong with him. Yalom discovers that the migraines have coincided more or less with the man’s retirement and that, on closer investigation, the retirement has stirred up all sorts of existential anguish.
So, I introduced myself to my ‘therapist’ (the cheerful 50 year old) as an elderly Jewish man, much to her surprise. However, it wasn’t until she started to question me about my wife that I recalled the other salient feature of Yalom’s case, namely that the migraines coincided precisely with the first instances of impotence in the elderly gentleman’s life. My ‘therapist’ was a little taken aback when I announced in front of the class that I couldn’t get it up. However, she diligently pursued her line of inquiry, forcing me to admit that I was only truly happy when my wife held me in her mouth – another case detail. My ‘therapist’ went on to draw me into more and more intimate pseudo-confessions and I was relieved when the session was over. My performance as client was praised and it wasn’t until I was walking home that the full ridiculousness of the situation struck me.
4.4 I have taken to swimming in the bay here. There is a rickety old wooden house on the beach which belongs to the Dolphin Club. You can pay to use their facilities for the day as a guest. The water is pretty cold and murky. Most of the members of the Dolphin Club - they call themselves dolphins - appear to be quite senior citizens, though their hardiness cannot be denied. There is a group of them who swim every morning at 6am, even in winter, in the fog and the darkness.
Shaking with cold after my first swim, I headed straight for the sauna. Inside I listened to three elderly dolphins chewing the fat:
Dolphin 1: I felt a seal brush against my leg today. They’re getting frisky.
Dolphin 2: Yes, I saw him, and smelt him too. Awful fish breath.
Dolphin 3: I had a sea lion jump over my back yesterday.
Dolphin 1: Really? But did you sea the tiger shark last week?
Maybe they were just trying to scare me. They succeeded.
4.5 An interesting excerpt from one of my textbooks:
"In one sense psychotherapists are a genus of the world species of witch doctor. We are a bit more refined, but no less confident, and not much more effective than an Ethiopian spirit doctor, Peruvian curandero, Puerto Rican espiritista, Navaho medicine man, Hindu guru, Tanzanian Mganga, or Nigerian healer. We are faith healers. We all cure people of their suffering by capitalizing on our power, prestige, communication, sensitivity, and rituals while playing on the client's expectations and trust. All healers work by naming what they think is wrong (diagnosis), assigning meaning to the suffering (interpretation), and intervening in some therapeutic way (herbs, medicine, reinforcement)."
The Imperfect Therapist by J. Kottler and D. Blau.
Friday, August 29, 2008
3 On Writing
3.1 The other day I drank so much that I had to vomit in the street. This happened in San Francisco's red light district, amongst the brothels and the seediest strip clubs. The area is called the tenderloin, apparently because policemen used to be paid more to work that beat and could therefore afford to bring home the choicest cuts of meat. It amuses me that an area of seedy strip clubs is called the tenderloin.
3.2 It might be thought surprising that, as a 30 year old graduate student of psychology, I am still capable of drinking until expurgation. To tell the truth, I was a little surprised myself, though I don't regret it. It's not something I like to do too often, but once in a while I think it's important. Also, I don't think you can fully claim to live in a city until you have left a little bit of yourself on its sidewalks; until you have marked your territory. And urinating on street corners is too easy. I'll leave that to dogs and tramps, both of which are plentiful here.
3.3 When I say vomit, I mean vomit. Not the polite behind-the-hand semi-cough which passes for vomiting amongst girls, and which amazes me. No, vomiting for me begins in the depths of my being. It is a cataclysmic internal event, a retching and a spewing, like the eruption of a volcano. The muscles of my thorax convulse and contract; I cannot breath. My eyelids close to prevent my eyeballs popping out. Finally the burning magma is ejected and stomach acid sears my nasal passageways like hot lava.
Afterwards my eyes are weepy and bloodshot. I wipe away the elastic strings of drool. The expectorated matter cools and hardens on the pavement. But these are wonderful moments; all is calm, all is peace. Gone are the discomfort, the dizziness and the saline saliva that heralded the event. There is a sense of great serenity, of unity with the universe. That is how to vomit.
3.4 For me writing novels is very much like vomiting; both spew things into existence.
3.2 It might be thought surprising that, as a 30 year old graduate student of psychology, I am still capable of drinking until expurgation. To tell the truth, I was a little surprised myself, though I don't regret it. It's not something I like to do too often, but once in a while I think it's important. Also, I don't think you can fully claim to live in a city until you have left a little bit of yourself on its sidewalks; until you have marked your territory. And urinating on street corners is too easy. I'll leave that to dogs and tramps, both of which are plentiful here.
3.3 When I say vomit, I mean vomit. Not the polite behind-the-hand semi-cough which passes for vomiting amongst girls, and which amazes me. No, vomiting for me begins in the depths of my being. It is a cataclysmic internal event, a retching and a spewing, like the eruption of a volcano. The muscles of my thorax convulse and contract; I cannot breath. My eyelids close to prevent my eyeballs popping out. Finally the burning magma is ejected and stomach acid sears my nasal passageways like hot lava.
Afterwards my eyes are weepy and bloodshot. I wipe away the elastic strings of drool. The expectorated matter cools and hardens on the pavement. But these are wonderful moments; all is calm, all is peace. Gone are the discomfort, the dizziness and the saline saliva that heralded the event. There is a sense of great serenity, of unity with the universe. That is how to vomit.
3.4 For me writing novels is very much like vomiting; both spew things into existence.
Friday, August 22, 2008
2. My hubris.
2.1 I very nearly got kicked out of my university before it even started. Admittedly, it was entirely my own fault. My hubris.
I was offered a place on the condition that I completed four online prerequisite courses. I duly signed up for these with the best intentions. They were courses in abnormal psychology, learning theory, statistics and psychometric tests and measurements. However, I had not realised how time consuming the courses would be, nor how boring. Abnormal psychology was the exception. It was very engaging and I completed it. A 500 page text book accompanied the course. It is the only text book I have ever genuinely enjoyed reading. There was something fascinating on every page, e.g. that there is a phobia known only in Japan - the fear of offending other people either by one’s physical appearance, or one’s own perceived deformities, or by blushing, or by emitting an offensive bodily odour. It is called taijin kyofusho.
The abnormal psychology course was examined by a number of online multiple choice tests which I could do in my own time. I was allowed to use the text book and, since all the answers were in the text book, it was possible simply to use the index to look up the answers. I completed the course and concluded, based on the laughable way it was examined, that it was surely a mere formality.
The other courses were not as interesting. Learning theory was simplistic to say the least. Every week you had to do some online reading on a particular psychological school (eg behaviourism, cognitivism etc) then answer the following question in less than 200 words: Discuss how (insert psychological school) relates to your own understanding of the therapeutic process. Every week I pointed out that I have very little understanding of the therapeutic process; that is, after all, why I want to study here. The limited understanding that I do have is based on psychoanalysis which is really fairly irrelevant as far as most of the more recent schools are concerned. That’s pretty much what I wrote week in, week out.
So, based on my experiences with the abnormal psychology and learning theory courses, I approached statistics and psychometric testing with a fairly lackadaisical attitude. The subject matter was not as dry or as dull as I had anticipated – I could actually see the point of it. However, the nature of the course was regrettable. I had to watch hours of online Powerpoint presentations of statistical methods, delivered in a monotonous drawl by an instructor who frequently, and unsuccessfully, attempted to stifle his own yawns. Hardly very inspiring. On top of that, trying to do the homework on a Word document to email to the instructor was a nightmare. Word was not made to deal with numbers, fractions and a plethora of different statistical symbols.
I read the relevant text books but decided not to waste my time with the homework. In the first few weeks I was still doing some work related to the publication of my novel, then I had a wedding and a stag weekend in Spain, and a birthday weekend in Italy. I had moved out of my flat at the beginning of July and I share the view of Kipling’s Kim:
'Kim considered it in every possible light...a boy's holiday was his own property.'
I was, however, punctilious about transferring the first term’s fees to the university.
So, upon arrival in San Francisco I was aware that I had not completed the courses, but I really didn’t think it would matter very much. In fact, I wasn’t even sure that the university would know. Furthermore, I knew that all incoming students would have to sit a statistics and writing diagnostic exam during the first week. Anyone who failed either of those would have to take remedial classes during the first term. Having seen last year’s exams I was pretty confident about passing. And if I didn’t then I’d take the remedial classes. Big deal.
I went to the university campus to introduce myself to the woman in charge of international students on the day before orientation was due to begin. I had spoken to her on the phone in April and we had nattered at some length; she had told me that she was going on a tour of the gardens of Kent in May. I found her room, knocked and introduced myself to a likeable silver-haired lady. We picked up where we had left off, discussing the glories of Lady Churchill’s roses at Chartwell, when the door burst open to reveal the ashen-faced but still rather pretty Director of Admissions.
- You haven’t completed the online courses!
- Ah yes, I know. I was meaning to talk to you about that.
- What happened?
- Well, I was rather busy with a book tour (self-aggrandising lie), and then I had my wisdom teeth removed (bigger lie), and…
- You will not be allowed to enrol! Your visa will be revoked! You will have to reapply next year!
Well, you can imagine the rest. This was, apparently, a BIG DEAL. The Director of Admissions made an appointment for me to see the Dean of Admissions upstairs. I sat in a chair in the corner of the silver-haired lady’s room, mentally reeling yet managing to maintain a cheerful auto-pilot patter about Kentish flora.
After twenty minutes or so I was led upstairs, essentially to plead for my life. The Dean of Admissions was an imposing, middle aged black lady. Lady of colour, as they insist on saying here.
I sat down. I apologised. I explained. I lied. I requested. I entreated. I cajoled. I besought. All to no avail. She was adamant. I could not enrol in August. I would have to enrol in February and start studying then. That means my visa will be revoked and I will have to go back home, I said. And I no longer have a home, I added pathetically. For some reason – I am still not quite sure why – the Dean decided to call the silver-haired lady at that point. It was a glimmer of hope. The Dean was silent on her end of the phone for a long time. Then she replaced the handset and said, You can enrol now, but you will be on the moderated course (less modules in the first year), and you will have to retake the online courses.
Thank God for Lady Churchill's roses.
As I walked out I felt a rush of gratitude for the Dean too. And now, thinking back, I find it quite extraordinary how she made me feel just like a little boy again. A little boy who has been naughty. There are perverts who would pay a lot of money for that. Independent, 30 years old, validated by my creative output…how quickly it all crumbles. And when I say rush of gratitude, that is probably not quite honest either. I felt a sort of love, a small boy’s love for the mother who doesn’t reject him.
I was offered a place on the condition that I completed four online prerequisite courses. I duly signed up for these with the best intentions. They were courses in abnormal psychology, learning theory, statistics and psychometric tests and measurements. However, I had not realised how time consuming the courses would be, nor how boring. Abnormal psychology was the exception. It was very engaging and I completed it. A 500 page text book accompanied the course. It is the only text book I have ever genuinely enjoyed reading. There was something fascinating on every page, e.g. that there is a phobia known only in Japan - the fear of offending other people either by one’s physical appearance, or one’s own perceived deformities, or by blushing, or by emitting an offensive bodily odour. It is called taijin kyofusho.
The abnormal psychology course was examined by a number of online multiple choice tests which I could do in my own time. I was allowed to use the text book and, since all the answers were in the text book, it was possible simply to use the index to look up the answers. I completed the course and concluded, based on the laughable way it was examined, that it was surely a mere formality.
The other courses were not as interesting. Learning theory was simplistic to say the least. Every week you had to do some online reading on a particular psychological school (eg behaviourism, cognitivism etc) then answer the following question in less than 200 words: Discuss how (insert psychological school) relates to your own understanding of the therapeutic process. Every week I pointed out that I have very little understanding of the therapeutic process; that is, after all, why I want to study here. The limited understanding that I do have is based on psychoanalysis which is really fairly irrelevant as far as most of the more recent schools are concerned. That’s pretty much what I wrote week in, week out.
So, based on my experiences with the abnormal psychology and learning theory courses, I approached statistics and psychometric testing with a fairly lackadaisical attitude. The subject matter was not as dry or as dull as I had anticipated – I could actually see the point of it. However, the nature of the course was regrettable. I had to watch hours of online Powerpoint presentations of statistical methods, delivered in a monotonous drawl by an instructor who frequently, and unsuccessfully, attempted to stifle his own yawns. Hardly very inspiring. On top of that, trying to do the homework on a Word document to email to the instructor was a nightmare. Word was not made to deal with numbers, fractions and a plethora of different statistical symbols.
I read the relevant text books but decided not to waste my time with the homework. In the first few weeks I was still doing some work related to the publication of my novel, then I had a wedding and a stag weekend in Spain, and a birthday weekend in Italy. I had moved out of my flat at the beginning of July and I share the view of Kipling’s Kim:
'Kim considered it in every possible light...a boy's holiday was his own property.'
I was, however, punctilious about transferring the first term’s fees to the university.
So, upon arrival in San Francisco I was aware that I had not completed the courses, but I really didn’t think it would matter very much. In fact, I wasn’t even sure that the university would know. Furthermore, I knew that all incoming students would have to sit a statistics and writing diagnostic exam during the first week. Anyone who failed either of those would have to take remedial classes during the first term. Having seen last year’s exams I was pretty confident about passing. And if I didn’t then I’d take the remedial classes. Big deal.
I went to the university campus to introduce myself to the woman in charge of international students on the day before orientation was due to begin. I had spoken to her on the phone in April and we had nattered at some length; she had told me that she was going on a tour of the gardens of Kent in May. I found her room, knocked and introduced myself to a likeable silver-haired lady. We picked up where we had left off, discussing the glories of Lady Churchill’s roses at Chartwell, when the door burst open to reveal the ashen-faced but still rather pretty Director of Admissions.
- You haven’t completed the online courses!
- Ah yes, I know. I was meaning to talk to you about that.
- What happened?
- Well, I was rather busy with a book tour (self-aggrandising lie), and then I had my wisdom teeth removed (bigger lie), and…
- You will not be allowed to enrol! Your visa will be revoked! You will have to reapply next year!
Well, you can imagine the rest. This was, apparently, a BIG DEAL. The Director of Admissions made an appointment for me to see the Dean of Admissions upstairs. I sat in a chair in the corner of the silver-haired lady’s room, mentally reeling yet managing to maintain a cheerful auto-pilot patter about Kentish flora.
After twenty minutes or so I was led upstairs, essentially to plead for my life. The Dean of Admissions was an imposing, middle aged black lady. Lady of colour, as they insist on saying here.
I sat down. I apologised. I explained. I lied. I requested. I entreated. I cajoled. I besought. All to no avail. She was adamant. I could not enrol in August. I would have to enrol in February and start studying then. That means my visa will be revoked and I will have to go back home, I said. And I no longer have a home, I added pathetically. For some reason – I am still not quite sure why – the Dean decided to call the silver-haired lady at that point. It was a glimmer of hope. The Dean was silent on her end of the phone for a long time. Then she replaced the handset and said, You can enrol now, but you will be on the moderated course (less modules in the first year), and you will have to retake the online courses.
Thank God for Lady Churchill's roses.
Lady Churchill's rose garden at Chartwell
As I walked out I felt a rush of gratitude for the Dean too. And now, thinking back, I find it quite extraordinary how she made me feel just like a little boy again. A little boy who has been naughty. There are perverts who would pay a lot of money for that. Independent, 30 years old, validated by my creative output…how quickly it all crumbles. And when I say rush of gratitude, that is probably not quite honest either. I felt a sort of love, a small boy’s love for the mother who doesn’t reject him.
Monday, August 18, 2008
1. First Impressions
1.1 I took a taxi from San Francisco airport to my hotel on Lombard Street. My taxi driver was a lady with electric blue streaks in her hair. She was a divorcee with eight grandchildren. She told me that she worked as a taxi driver to finance her studies. Having completed an MA in psychology a few years ago, she recently realised that her true vocation was painting, on account of her extraordinary sensitivity to colour. The car swerved dangerously as she rummaged around in her handbag for postcards of her paintings. I took my time looking through them, wassilating. Then I told her that they reminded me of Kandinsky. She was delighted. I don’t actually like Kandinsky all that much.
1.2 As we drove into the city I saw the mist cascading over the hills in the middle distance; beyond them lies the ocean. It was an impressive sight – a tsunami of cloud that plunged over the raised lip of earth before evaporating in ragged swirling tendrils.
1.3 On my first night I wandered down to Fisherman’s Wharf where my ‘school’ is. On the way back I stopped for a drink in a bar called ‘Dirty Martini’. A girl with a black eye sat down next to me. She explained that she had received the injury when she was mugged in front of her hotel – The Four Seasons – the night before. She went on to tell me that she came from a very old and wealthy family. Then she asked what I was doing in San Francisco. When I told her I had come here to train to become a clinical psychologist she replied that she had been a heroin addict and a self-harmer. Then she showed me her left forearm – it was a crisscross of livid scars and welts. I was tired, unenamoured and I wanted to go home. However, this was a dilemma: if I continued talking to the girl for too long I was in danger of giving the wrong impression, but if I left too soon or too abruptly I would presumably confirm the negative self image which had led to the self-harming in the first place. Eventually, finally, a suitable opportunity presented itself. I seized it gladly. As I wandered back to my hotel I wondered what I have let myself in for.
1.4 I have now moved into a hotel on Broad Street where the rooms only cost $150 a week. It is surrounded by strip clubs and within spitting distance of the City Lights bookstore. The narrow hotel corridors reek of marijuana at all times of day and night. There are some odd people slinking around, as well as a few cats (real cats). My room is tiny, about the size of the first room I ever had at school. That seems quite appropriate.
The City Lights bookstore, which was founded by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1953, was the country's first to specialise in paperbacks.
1.5 I was walking through Chinatown when I saw a mixed race gay couple pushing a young child in a buggy. They were both big muscular men. The white man crossed the road to have a closer look at a restaurant. His boyfriend remained with the buggy in front of a shop selling dried chicken’s feet which dangled behind him on strings. In a camp, petulant voice the black man shouted to his partner: ‘Ramon! Ramon! Do they have booze? If they don’t have booze I’m not going in.’
1.2 As we drove into the city I saw the mist cascading over the hills in the middle distance; beyond them lies the ocean. It was an impressive sight – a tsunami of cloud that plunged over the raised lip of earth before evaporating in ragged swirling tendrils.
1.3 On my first night I wandered down to Fisherman’s Wharf where my ‘school’ is. On the way back I stopped for a drink in a bar called ‘Dirty Martini’. A girl with a black eye sat down next to me. She explained that she had received the injury when she was mugged in front of her hotel – The Four Seasons – the night before. She went on to tell me that she came from a very old and wealthy family. Then she asked what I was doing in San Francisco. When I told her I had come here to train to become a clinical psychologist she replied that she had been a heroin addict and a self-harmer. Then she showed me her left forearm – it was a crisscross of livid scars and welts. I was tired, unenamoured and I wanted to go home. However, this was a dilemma: if I continued talking to the girl for too long I was in danger of giving the wrong impression, but if I left too soon or too abruptly I would presumably confirm the negative self image which had led to the self-harming in the first place. Eventually, finally, a suitable opportunity presented itself. I seized it gladly. As I wandered back to my hotel I wondered what I have let myself in for.
1.4 I have now moved into a hotel on Broad Street where the rooms only cost $150 a week. It is surrounded by strip clubs and within spitting distance of the City Lights bookstore. The narrow hotel corridors reek of marijuana at all times of day and night. There are some odd people slinking around, as well as a few cats (real cats). My room is tiny, about the size of the first room I ever had at school. That seems quite appropriate.
The City Lights bookstore, which was founded by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1953, was the country's first to specialise in paperbacks.1.5 I was walking through Chinatown when I saw a mixed race gay couple pushing a young child in a buggy. They were both big muscular men. The white man crossed the road to have a closer look at a restaurant. His boyfriend remained with the buggy in front of a shop selling dried chicken’s feet which dangled behind him on strings. In a camp, petulant voice the black man shouted to his partner: ‘Ramon! Ramon! Do they have booze? If they don’t have booze I’m not going in.’
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