|
 I
shall now make a small detour. In the summer of
1986, a few months after I left this community, I
reread Donald Winnicott's account of the
psychoanalytic treatment of a little girl. I found
the following passage, describing the fifteenth
consultation:
Gabrielle:
"I'll show you what I can draw, I hardly do
ears, it has long hair beautiful hair -
(the picture of the dog they were drawing)
- look I've spilt over the paper, and on
the table. It's like a scribble.. "
I
said here that it was as if she were drawing to
show me a dream, and some of the dream had spilt
over into waking life. It seemed that this was
what she wanted, for now she told me a dream,
and it felt as if this was perhaps what she had
come to tell me.
Gabrielle:
"I had a dream about you. I knocked on the door
of your house. I saw Dr. Winnicott in the pool
in his garden. So I dived in. ("Daddy saw
me in the pool hugging and kissing Dr.
Winnicott, so he dived in too. Then mummy dived
in, then Susan (here she enumerated the others
of the family including the four grandparents).
There were fishes and everything It was dry wet
water. We all came out and walked in the garden.
Daddy landed on the beach. It was a good
dream.
I
felt that she had now brought everything into
the transference and had in this way reorganized
her entire life in terms of a positive
relationship to the subjective figure of the
analyst, and his inside.
Me.
"The pool is here in this room, where everything
has happened and where everything imaginatively
can happen. She said something about her hands
being wet because she was
swimming.7
Here I
discovered that both mine and Roger's dreams
belonged to a specific therapeutic tradition.
Donald Winnicott was Ronald Laing's psychoanalytic
supervisor when he was training at The Institute of
Psychoanalysis London, in the late 1950s.
In
my own dream the pool is in the middle of the group
therapy room, inviting us to share in its
possibilities. Yet Roger and I had to wait until
the pool was filled with water deep enough to swim
in, and we had to struggle with his desire to jump
in as Gabrielle did. In his own dream, however,
Roger was running away from therapy, from the
challenge of reorganising his entire life, cleverly
using therapy at that point to his own advantage,
and thus avoiding being 'caught out'. Roger's
dream, as an illustration of how he was in the
therapeutic relationship, perhaps shows how the
feeling of waiting is common, or the common
waiting, can evoke a need of surrendering one-self,
through which one becomes aware and attentively
'beware' of one-another.
Thus
we jump into the 'water of life', often seen as a
symbol for childhood and emotional life and, as the
amniotic water reminds us, pre- birth experience as
Laing's book The Voice of Experience
testifies. We want to be able to jump into the
water of life without fear of loss. In my dream,
the combination of water running into the pool and
the timing of the jump together can be seen as the
core of the relationship between Roger, Ester and
myself; it is a picture of the struggle during a
period of 'negative transference'.
As
the neurologist's dream also shows, sometimes it is
difficult simply to wait patiently for an authentic
meeting of two or more human beings and to
recognise how we run away from authentic being -
which we, in the final analysis can't, but still
try to - in order to please others. Suicide seems
to be the only way out in the neurologist's dream.
But there is an alternative: we can also wait for
another dream, to give us something fresh to talk
through. A fresh dream can open up new
possibilities as to where our own healing potential
is drawing us.
Implied
in the question in the dream, "Is this therapy?" is
the continuous musing over, and on, the
proclamation of a therapeutic method, which does no
harm in the often grotesque longing to be secure in
a delicious wisdom of life, to wake up being
one-Self and not a bad copy of someone else. In
contrast, the compulsion of comparing - more often
than not in a competitive mood - the variety of
talented methods and aims of psychotherapy (and
there must be, by now, over 170 Schools in the West
alone) can so often be paralyzingly contradictory,
for it brings fresh suffering in its wake to the
life of patients, their families and friends but
also to the therapists engaged in this
competitiveness. It obscures our longings for
certainty, for a secure base, home - a need of
therapists as much as of their patients.
The
second dream of the therapist
Ronald
Laing and I sat facing each other at opposite
ends of a large room. Our
colleagues sat along both sides of the other
walls. I gave a I long talk about Laing's
work and therapeutic methods.
Afterwards
he came up to me and said: "You know, we
need a new kind of magic to get away and
back to ourselves."
What
does the term "magic" mean here? What 'magic' is
"Laing" talking I about? Perhaps it can be
described as 'producing illusions', or spells
or charms, which could bless rather than
deny the great Unknown, shadow parts of our Self.
We are talking about the "art" of being "deluded"
(Latin: ludare, to play). I can become aware
that I have been deluded, become disillusioned, in
a situation which I took for real and true. We are
being offered a chance to recognise self-deception
together with a distorted perception of what is
going on, thus freeing ourselves from illusions
(which seem true to normal perception patterns) and
hypnotic hallucinations, as shattering as this can
be, yet without destroying the hold on the 'true'
self.
Laing
has described this self-system in his major early
work, The Divided Self (1960) and The
Self and Others (1961). We find in these
studies how we get away from what we are, how we
get away from what we are not in an attempt to find
our 'true' self, often treasured in our dreams and
deep hopeful wishes, floating in the vessel of our
soul. For Laing, to discover our 'false' self is
also to become aware, at the same time, how it
relates to, and depends upon, the 'true' self. The
not uncommon dreams of being on bridges while being
in therapy might here be allowed to be seen as
corroboration of my view that a new magic of
therapy might be like a bridge between the 'true'
and 'false' self, linking and separating them at
the same time in space as illusionary identities.
Both are related by what flows - insight,
intuition, sensuality - between them. Interpersonal
perception is thus guided by "The difference
between people, not people who are
different" as Laing
wrote.8
A
dream answer also came, when I had a dream where my
cousin Thomas (Aramaic: the twin, the doubter)
suggested to me: "Why don't you cultivate sobriety
as a magic to clarify what is going on in our
relationships, in- and outside of our family. "Why
not? Sobrius in Latin means: not being addicted to
intoxication of any sort, be that words, silence,
ideology, hallucinogenics or methods, models,
theories and so on.. It also means, to be unhurried
and thoughtfully calm. In fact the concept:
sobrius, can gather together all the qualities
needed - even for psychotherapists - to deal with
the confusion and disturbance of the social,
intellectual, emotional, spiritual, somatic and
religious aspects of life.
In
my native German the word for sobriety is
Nuchternheit, holding, within itself, the
sense of nightly (Latin: nocturnus) and
daybreak, dawn (Old High German: Uohta). It
dawns on me, remember, how we, as tenders of the
soul, are also in an old monk-like tradition, which
includes an early meditation before we sit for
breakfast, reviewing our excesses, our fantasies
and emotions filled with a prejudice which we have
acquired in and during the course of daily life. In
therapy we can calm emotional-, intellectual-,
somatic- and social-turmoils, we can play, we can
circle round our human faculties, examining them
and making sense of who, what and what for we are
with, as human beings. In this way we practice the
art of Satisampajanna, which is an essential
Langian skill, "the cultivation of being aware of
what is going on, without projecting my own fantasy
system upon it". Unconditional
attentiveness.
The
third dream of the therapist
This
dream contained the question: "What sort of Therapy
is this?"
Winkler,
a garden architect, comes to visit me in my
consulting room. As soon as he sits down on the
couch he begins to talk and mutter in a strange
way about his moods and the problems of living
the way he does. After listening to the story he
tells, I get up and give him my accordion. I
help him to hold it properly, and then we find
ourselves in the garden behind the praxis
room.
There
he begins to play. He jumps up and down, pulling
and pushing the accordion in great anger. He
runs to and fro over the vegetable and flower
beds, dancing to his own music. The scope of his
actions is limited by the garden fence. When he
runs towards it I stand in his way and offer
resistance with which he plays. He is playing
with the limitations of this garden (process) of
growth. He jumps on me, bounces back, then
repeats this again and again. The music and our
voices mingle with sweat and tears.
Windows
fly open in the neighbouring houses and people
look out to see what's going on. I think that
they might think: "What sort of therapy is
this?" I feel an answer suggesting itself:
It is drama and dance. Here is his
music, we are becoming attuned to one
another. We are together in his element,
the garden. It is like a ritual fertility
dance. He plays the accordion in accord with how
he feels, and we communicate out there in the
open air as strongly as we possibly can. I am
protecting him and helping him cultivate the
ability to respond. Call it drama-therapy or
art-of-living-therapy.
Then
we are back in the consulting room, panting with
exhaustion, breathing deeply. We begin to
discuss how we experienced what we have just
been through. We speak about our deepest
desires, feeling the breath of Psyche
flowing through us and giving voice to it;
feeling free to experience its limitations and
its boundaries in our embodiment, which must be
respected. We have been and are still on common
ground; we heard the music of his heart's desire
which provided the rhythm and pulse for our
mutual experience. We were experiencing the
innermost desire, spirit and fire of the child
within us.
At the
beginning of the dream we were two strangers,
meeting to explore what it was that brought him to
see me. Then, as we became attuned to each other we
found ourselves in the place of his professional
competence. There he felt safe to let go and
experience guided catharsis as a creative act. When
he headed for the fence, I provided resistance,
protecting and containing him so that the play
could continue. Then came the central question
about what I thought was going on, for which I
projected myself outside, looking as if I were
someone else (neighbours) into the garden of
therapy, seeing and naming the risk - to hurt and
be hurt, to loose and be lost, to disturb and be
disturbing - that was involved in being together in
this way. Finally when we became exhausted, we
returned indoors to my f sphere of competence to
reflect on what we had been through: a
choreographic movement from interior to exterior -
integrating opposites - but also from introversion
to extraversion, soul as personal to soul in the
world! At the end of the dream, we are back to
where we started from, yet somehow changed.
The
fourth dream of the therapist
A
month after this dream, I had another dream which
involved the question: Where is my communal praxis?
- which brought the circle (cycle) of questions to
a new closure. It concerns my search for a place in
the therapeutic community and the place of my own
therapeutic practice within it.
I
am outside my practice-building at the back door
looking up to the second-floor windows, which
belong to the practice rooms. Then I am in my
consulting room with Elisabeth who came today
for her final (session, having been in therapy
with me for three years. It's evening, the hour
of fair-well. I give her the opportunity of
spending the last night sleeping on the couch,
while I sleep on the floor in front of it. I
suggested that we tell each other our dreams in
the morning and then take our leave of each
other. She agrees to my proposal and I put out
the light. After a while there is a noise
in the hallway and the light goes on)
again. Some of Elisabeth's friends are
standing in the room. I look at them intently.
They say that Elisabeth invited them without me
knowing, as a surprise. I say that this goes
against our agreement and they will have to
leave, otherwise we would have to leave. Then my
wife and colleague, Heidemarie, comes into the
room, complaining about all the noise, saying
she can not sleep, so we all leave. In the
hallway I come across a printer who is
sorting out his prints, he stays in the building
while we all leave.
Now
I am alone in a neighbourhood with a
variety of shops, workshops and restaurants, all
assembled in one building complex. The next
morning / find myself going into the
basement of my practice-building, accompanied by
Dimitrij and Anatol, my two sons. We all carry
wood and enter a video-clip advertising firm
which has rented a room at the front of the
basement where the wood fire furnace is located.
We put the wood in the fire to heat the practice
rooms. We go back outside and I am alone
again.
I
meet Barbara who now lives in Le Vaud (the
Woods). I haven't met her since my return to
Switzerland five years ago (1981), after nine
years in London. (We met during the first year I
was in London.) I invite her to come and see our
practice. As we go towards it, she is replaced
by Francis Huxley. We enter the building by the
southwest door, but once inside I can't
orientate myself. So I ask a cleaning woman: "Do
you know where the printer's shop is?" She
answers: "No, why?" "Well", I say, "Next to it
is the Gemeinschaftspraxis." "Ah", she replies,
"Try up the stairs in a northerly direction." We
climb up the stairs but only find a theological
bookshop. Francis picks up a book and browses
while / look down another stairway leading to
the eastern part of the building. I put my hand
on the bronze railing and notice that it is
decorated with a dragon's head, and that these
are the 'Spanish Steps' in Rome.
At
the foot of the Steps, there is a crowd of men,
women and children, of all ages. The children
are playing, there is a carnival atmosphere.
They are watching a dragon dance. At this point
I see the entrance of the practice building "Hey
Francis," I shout, "I can see the entrance to
the practice." Whereupon, I jump down the Steps
and join the people assembled there, watching
the dragon-dance. It's all very like Chinese New
Year. I call Francis again, looking back at him,
and see he is still reading a book. "Hey
Francis, come down here!" He finishes the book
and puts it back, then comes down the Steps with
enormous leaps, ending up in front of the
dragon's head. He plays with the dragon, coaxes
it into a chase and runs, with the dragon at his
heels, to the back of the building, where the
back door of our practice is. All I can see is
the dragon's tail, moving as if it is chewing
Francis up. I feel an urge to run after them,
but stay where I am for the time
being.9
10
This
dream brings me full circle - from its beginning
(which takes place) outside the practice, to
the end (which takes place) inside it. After
the opening of the dream there are three main
episodes.
The
first is in the practice and is a final session
with a patient; conducted in a variation of the
Aesclepian therapeutic tradition; the second takes
place outside again, in the neighbourhood, and
going down into the basement (alchemical store), to
heat our practice rooms, together with my sons; and
finally, finding my way to my communal practice
accompanied first by Barbara then by Francis
Huxley.
Through
my apprenticeship with Ronald Laing, I entered the
tradition which grounds itself in what we know as
the medicine of Aesclepius, son of Apollo, disciple
of Cheiron and friend of dogs and snakes, having
underworld connections with Hades and Dionysos.
This tradition, from 600 BC until about 200 AD
seriously practiced as a healing cult in Epidauros
in Greece, believed that there is a power or
energeia, which attracts an illness, brings
it out into the open, and can also heal it.
Therefore, in order to heal, that energeia
had to be actualised or cultivated. This was
done by a process of incubation. This took place
underground, in old snake holes, where the
patients, after cleansing and singing rituals,
spend a day and night of healing sleep. Some say it
was for three days and according to other writers,
with psychedelic substance, and/or with snakes in
company. On re-emerging the patient would tell
their healing dreams and visions to the therapist,
who often does nothing but listen attentively with
unconditional love. The healing dreams would direct
and form the basis of the treatment.
It
was this vision of healing which is based on
internal knowledge, which in my dream, I had
intended to be the finale of the therapeutic
relationship with Elisabeth. Some stay with us in
therapy for quite a while, as an advent, to get
ready for the healing dream or dreams, freeing
their minds, physis, emotions and social relations
of the habitual contamination and turn in to a
releasing experience of being re-born. We shall
never know what sort, of lead Elisabeth, of the
dream, would have been given, since we were
interrupted by her friends whom she invited without
me knowing it. Perhaps the preparation for the
final incubation included her ambition to surprise
me in order that the ritual could not take place.
Perhaps she wanted to consummate the process
without taking the risk of going down, in and
re-emerging afresh. After writing the first draft
of this essay, in 1986, I found an essay by Ronald
Laing, of which I was hitherto unaware. It was
first published in Italian, in a collection of
essays by Franca and Franco Basaglia-Ongaro, in
1975, the year I first met Ronald Laing in London.
Entitled: 'A Dream of Peace', it exactly addresses
the theme of this paper. Laing shows that our
tradition can help to mitigate and finally heal our
fundamental anxieties about separation. The first
and most traumatic is at birth, latter from the
breast feeding mother, our dual-unity, in growing
up and adult life from .lovers and friends. Again
and again we suffer the echo of the shock of
cutting the umbilical cord. In the ritual of
therapy we can have a chance and an experience,
writes Laing, of communion in common to find peace
of mind, soul and body, embedded in the
socio-cultural environment in which we happen to
live.11
Back
to the last dream. Wandering around Sankt Gallen I
am in the local neighbourhood where I know people
and they know me and what I do. When I go into the
basement with my two sons to light the furnace
which heats our rooms, it indicates to me that my
experience as a father now informs my work as a
therapist, and as my children warm my heart, so I
try to warm the chilled souls of others, one of the
original meanings in the word
'psyche-iatros'.
I
take Barbara (Gr. barbaros: stranger) back
to the practice so that I can show her (who was
there from the beginning with me in London, in the
strange land and community where I first learned my
art of healing), where I am now practising what I
preach, and preach what I practice. However, the
dream also marks the threshold of our friendship as
she gives place to Francis Huxley, my companion in
the search for the 'Gemeinschaftspraxis', where, as
he once said: "we can garden love with one
another".
The
last and longest part of the dream is dominated not
only by this search, but also by the dragon.
Interestingly, 1988 is the Year of the Dragon in
the Chinese horoscope, and I was born in 1952, also
the year of I the dragon. My grandparents (on my
mothers' side) and my parents have all been living
in China for many years. My maternal grandfather,
Hans Scheurer, wrote a short story on the
Dragonking in the province of Guangzhou
(Canton).
Francis
Huxley has written about the Dragon as "the nature
of spirit and the spirit of nature ". This mythic,
beautiful beast, as some take it to be, can be see
as my totem for therapy, in its feminine, goddess
and matriarchal imago. Her true form becomes
visible through continued devotions, showing her to
be, "the goddess of compassion and the guardian of
childbirth", writes Huxley.12
The
medicine wheel of the old North American Anazazi
has different meanings associated with its
different points. The southwesterly point is the
place of the sacred dream, and this is the point at
which we enter the I building where our practice is
located in. Once inside, however, I can't 'orient'
myself, and turn to a guide who takes the form of a
cleaning woman, someone who cleans up and gives us
room to move. Via an indirect question - asking
about the printer's shop - she indicated how we
might 'find' the practice. To go in a northerly
direction we found the theological bookshop. North,
on the medicine wheel is the place of the
philosophy of life, spirit and airs.
In
his book on dragons, Huxley writes the following:
"If there is one reason for dragons haunting the
imagination, it is surely here: they are the outer
aspects of an inner knowledge, both animated by
that desire which the Upanishads also call hunger
and death. These three aspects of the One form the
triple bond of Destiny - a bond the Greeks knew as
telos, meaning the toils of fate, the issue of a
struggle and the completion of things by ritual
initiation, by marriage and by
death."13
When
I though about the image of the bronze dragon's
head on the Spanish Steps in Rome, I was reminded,
it was there (here) where Shelley and Keats
attempted, through their poetry, to come to terms
with time (another meaning for telos). I felt in
the dream as if I too was making that attempt, as I
touched the Dragon's head. I felt 'oriented',
finally, as I noticed the carnival atmosphere which
surrounded the people of 'our' community who were
taking part in a Dragon dance. It was at that point
that I saw the 'entrance' to the practice, and
called Francis. All these images - the Dragon
dance, the Door of the Practice, the people, old,
young, children and middle-aged dancing together in
a carnival spirit - came together in a new level of
Self-awareness, of sensual enlightenment. I felt
that I knew where I was going.
Eventually,
taking his time, Francis joins us and jumps in
front of the dragon, getting it to chase him, and
it ends with what appears to be the dragon eating
him up. Perhaps this is saying that now my personal
mentors of therapy are being taken in and back to
their archetypal source: in the Aesclepian Dragon!
Although I felt a tremendous urge to go and see
what was happening - my own creativity wanting to
be released, to become a witness and take note - I
held my ground. I felt strong enough to remain
where I am, for the time being, grounded securely
within my practice and the local community.
Finally,
remember, how Ronnie Laing, may his soul rest in
peace, taught us to cultivate the reciprocity of
perspectives and innocence of vision by asking us:
"Why don't you try to imagine what you would
feel like if you were one of them, patient,
and treat them in the way you would like them to
treat you, if you were m their position.
Feel
Free!
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