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[...continued from Page 2]
CHRISTY: As much as I can figure out, yeah.
DR. LAING: Well go ahead.
CHRISTY: Well, I think the conspiracy doesn't exist, so I just don't think about it. If I don't think about it, it’s not there too much. But then, people like Peter, people like Dr. Stumph, they tend to make me believe in it again. So I try to avoid those people. I am not going to talk to you any more. [a comment to the doctor, off stage] No, he’s all right when he’s talking about the job.
It appears that she is naming treatment professionals that she has encountered in her Phoenix clinic, and reporting that after talking to them she has an increase in paranoid thinking. Thus she avoids them. Laing responds to this by returning her to her experience of the conspiracy. Interestingly, she is talking about what triggers her paranoid thinking, and he is directing her toward what her thinking is like, its nature, the phenomena of it.
DR. LAING: Is it a benign conspiracy or a malign conspiracy? Is it a conspiracy for good or for evil?
CHRISTY: Well… oh heck if I know. But if anybody messes with me like that [meaning, like the doctor does], I don’t care. You know what I figure is, the mind creates a whole lot of things, I see mind as really powerful. People subconsciously... their minds always interact, they do, I've seen that. And people see what they expect to see, so it stands to reason, if I believe in a conspiracy, then people are going to act like conspirators.
DR. LAING: Ya… so far, okay.
It is my contention that he is supporting her assertions that 'peoples' minds interact,' also that 'what one believes, one sees’. Both these concepts are explored in detail in transpersonal literature and indeed in psychoanalytic literature (Searles, 1966), where countertransference clouds a psychotherapist’s own vision.
The first idea that minds interact is a transpersonal one, displayed in writings about synchronicity, parapsychology, extra-sensory perception, guru-disciple transmission of knowledge, and therapist-client relationships, in which there appears to be demonstrated some form of personal boundary opening between minds that cannot be conventionally explained. As Tart states, “…we may occasionally have psychic contact with events in the “external” world (including the contents of other people’s minds)… so that the simulation we experience as reality may have inputs affecting it other than ordinary sensory input.” (Tart, 1996b, p.190). This would be hard to accept from a client without the personal experience of it or a study of transpersonal literature.
The second comment, that one believes what one sees, is both ancient teaching and contemporary psychological research on human perception. It acknowledges the dramatic way that one's own values, beliefs, culture, experience, and attitudes distort what one comprehends, 'sees,' about a single event. One can learn to observe how one's own version of reality is radically distorted by various conscious and unconscious factors in one's own psychological reality. A transpersonally- inspired psychotherapist believes this is part of the technical meaning of ‘having eyes that do not see’ or ‘being asleep’ (Tart, 1996a), while a cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist believes that this is part of having recurring cognition that needs to be challenged. Laing is encouraging her to notice that she has, sometimes, eyes that do not see. People’s expectations, Christy notes, veil their perceptions.
Christy’s comments represent part of the continuum addressed by transpersonal psychotherapy. She is alluding to coping in the world (ego), to how she experiences merged relationships (interpersonal), to how the mind distorts perception (intrapsychic), and to how she believes minds interact (transpersonal). It appears in her next comments, then, that if she says something negative about her doctor that it comes back to bite her.
CHRISTY: Ya, but I told Dr. Stumph… he walked into the room, just as I was saying something negative about doctors but he denied that he heard it.
DR. LAING: Who walked in the room, Peter?
CHRISTY: Huh?
DR. LAING: Who walked in the room just as you were saying something negative?
CHRISTY: Dr. Stumph, but I don't know maybe I expected him to walk in when I was saying something negative about doctors. I mean, they try! (laughing)
Christy is trying to figure it out: was it just a coincidence or was it evidence of the conspiracy? Laing suggests to her it was just coincidence:
DR. LAING: Well, that sort of thing is happening all of the time, I don't see why you are making a special point of that.
CHRISTY: What do you mean?
DR. LAING: I don't see why you are making a special point of telling me that just now, since that sort of thing, as you know I know, and I know you know, happens all of the time anyway.
He is helping her differentiate coincidence from conspiracy. This confrontation implies ‘you are confusing what you imagine is happening with what is actually happening: it is magical thinking, not conspiracy evidence’.
A solid transpersonal psychotherapy dialogue dismantles false impressions and pseudo-spiritual understandings and maladaptive cognitive-emotional habits. He is helping her develop ego strength here, specifically, the art of reality testing, just as a solid cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist would do.
CHRISTY: Ya, well – ‘cause they are watching us [pointing to the cameras]!
DR. LAING: Well, ya, alright… we better stop that [laughs]. Well, I mean, this whole set up is an enormous conspiracy, you are right in the heart of the conspiracy, just now.
CHRISTY: Oh.
DR. LAING: So you haven’t… If you came to Phoenix to get away from the conspiracy, you haven't done very well [laughter]!
CHRISTY: What do you mean?
DR. LAING: Well, you are in this situation.
CHRISTY: You mean that the conference is a conspiracy?
DR. LAING: Ya...of course!
CHRISTY: What kind of conspiracy?
DR. LAING: Well I have got a plane booked to get to Boston Sunday, so I am not going to see what sort of conspiracy it is, because I want to go on that plane, you know, in good order, as far as I’m concerned. No, I think that it is quite a benign conspiracy. It is certainly a very concerted deep plan. And it involves… it’s much wider than the number of people who are actually here; seven thousand people have flown in. That's sort of a minor conspiracy in terms of the galaxy, but it is quite a big conspiracy.
While this appears to be a deft paradoxical intervention, where the therapist now seems crazier then the client, I believe it as more than that. I believe that Dr. Laing is expressing his own genuine understanding of some of the meta-dynamics that surround the long-term work of humans to develop themselves, and labeling that effort a benign conspiracy. He is alluding to a genuine 'conspiring' by the large group of people present to promote conscious human development towards the good and the true. He is not just ‘reading from the paradoxical intervention playbook’. This is evident from his next responses:
CHRISTY: What do you know about it?
DR. LAING: Well I guess… I think that the Universal Mind has been asleep a bit as far as this planet goes. I mean in this galaxy, and this planet. It’s uh… it is itching a bit. And it’s sort of waking up a bit to do something about it.
Here Dr. Laing is using the terms "asleep" and "awake." Although he attributes them to the Universal Mind, they are transpersonal concepts (Metzner, 1998; Tart, 1987) associated with human behavior and cognition as being mechanical, habitual, unaware ("asleep"), versus coming to objective awareness, coming up out of that sleep ("waking up") so as to be better able to comprehend the nature of existence. These terms are most fundamental to transpersonal philosophies, and frame the understanding that most of what human beings regard as conscious action and behavior is in fact conditioned, unfree, rote response and reaction. With this language various states of 'higher consciousness' or 'wakefulness' can be differentiated from lower ones, and technical forms of effort can be prescribed to cultivate that consciousness. In asserting that the Universal Mind has been lagging, sleeping, however, he engenders more of her bitterness in her response:
CHRISTY: It is capable of doing anything? [sounding not convinced]
DR. LAING: Well, Jesus Christ 'has got no other hands but ours.'
CHRISTY: Oh.
DR. LAING: It’s certainly capable of doing what we do. I mean as far as we are concerned.
He refers to the psychomystical observation that the earthly is a manifestation of the Divine, that the work the Transcendent is work done right here on earth. He is trying to engender hope and is alluding to Christ’s comment that ‘the Kingdom of God is within’. Her response:
CHRISTY: Are you a Christian?
DR. LAING: Well that depends who I am talking to.
While one can speculate as to the meaning of this comment for Laing, Christy’s adaptation to it demonstrates that it was frustrating for her:
CHRISTY: Just tell me.
DR. LAING: If I am talking to you? Well I am not sure what I should say about that. I am a Christian in the sense that Jesus Christ wasn't crucified between two candlesticks in a cathedral; he was crucified in a town garbage heap, between two thieves. In that sense, I am a Christian.
This is a phenomenological comment, alluding to the actual crucifixion circumstances of Christ that anyone present could witness. Laing is contrasting the living-breathing activity of ‘being present, witnessing objectively’ and ‘having eyes that see’ with institutionalized rituals that commemorate the one who taught that. But it confuses his client:
CHRISTY: You’re a what?
DR. LAING: What?
CHRISTY: I didn't hear your last words.
DR. LAING: In that sense, I am a Christian. But in another sense, in another sense I mean I wouldn't admit to being a Christian in most Christian company. Why? Are you a Christian?
CHRISTY: Hell no.
DR. LAING: Huh?
CHRISTY: I don't think so. I think God doesn't know what he is doing. So, who knows, maybe Jesus had a mental problem you know?
DR. LAING: Maybe he didn't have time to mature, they got him too young.
Here he is staying with her metaphor, and suggesting that we all need time to mature, to grow, to develop. He does. She does. Christ did. But she is talking about her alienation from the Divine Presence now, and that does suggest that she feels far a field from her Supreme Being.
CHRISTY: Ya, or maybe... I was talking to my friend about this the other day. I told him that I don't believe in God and he said he believed in many Gods, and they eat their disciples after they die.
DR. LAING: Oh?
CHRISTY: So maybe that is what Jesus does.
DR. LAING: Well, worse things could happen than if when I die, I was eaten up by Jesus, sounds quite gross for him!
CHRISTY: You think that it would be okay? Well, I thought that it might be better than getting eaten by the devil.
DR. LAING: It might be indeed.
CHRISTY: But then, it might be better not to be eaten at all.
DR. LAING: Well, I don't think that you can help it. I mean -- we're either in the bowels of hell, or in the bowels of heaven, or both, at one time.
Without debating the ideas she proposes or labeling them disturbed or psychotic, he is alluding to the de facto nature of our being here in the spiritual predicament that we are in. He understands that in a certain sense we have little to do with the meta-forces that are at work in the cosmos, we are indeed very small in the face of the All and Everything. And that we endure the bowels of heaven and hell right here on earth.
CHRISTY: The what?
DR. LAING: The bowels.
CHRISTY: Oh. Yeah. I think that is awfully mean, but then, that is just what my friend said, it doesn't mean that it is true.
DR. LAING: Did you think that it is fair? You say that is awfully mean.
Again he is exploring for her suffering and for her experience of her own worldview.
CHRISTY: I think that it is awfully mean, that humans...are at the consciousness that we are at. We are just halfway, someplace. We are intelligent, but we are not intelligent enough. At least I haven't figured anything out. Have you? You are older.
Her ideas about humans being ‘halfway someplace’ are repeated by many authors in the tradition of the perennial philosophy (Huxley, 1944). Just being here in adult form is not quite enough. We have work to do in our project of conscious evolution. We have to be engaged in deliberately developing ourselves. Dr. Laing points out that mere chronological aging does not help:
DR. LAING: What difference does that make?
CHRISTY: You have had more time. Have you figured anything out?
DR. LAING: You don't get any wiser when you get older. [audience laughs]
This self-disclosure admits his limited knowledge of the metaphysical concepts they are discussing. It has the impact of demythologizing him as a psychiatrist, and as an 'older person,' and puts him squarely on the earth with her as a fellow human. It is a good joke too.
CHRISTY: See! [hearing audience reaction]
DR. LAING: Well, that got a laugh! [both laugh, then silence]
DR. LAING: What about your mom and dad, and that sort of thing. What sort of… are they alive?
He now re-directs her into her family of origin, exploring for some psychodynamic material that may be relevant. This is part of the transpersonal spectrum, too, the understanding that the 'Freudian layer' is a genuine arena of data and conditioning, and can be seen as a source of a great many of the client’s current difficulties. ‘Are your parents alive?’ he has asked, a question about the present times.
CHRISTY: Who, my parents?
DR. LAING: Yeah.
CHRISTY: Ya.
DR. LAING: What sort of chap is your father?
CHRISTY: Oh well -- he is a Christian preacher.
DR. LAING: Oh, I didn’t know. [sounding surprised]
CHRISTY: Yeah, my parents are very religious. At least they say that
they are.
DR. LAING: Well… you are very religious.
He is giving her an opportunity to identify as a valid religious person. She does not go that direction, and indeed takes the comment as if it were some form of imposition or insult. She prefers to continue on the topic of her parents and who they are, away from the comment about religion.
CHRISTY: Yeah, I guess I am [sounds like she is grimacing]…
DR. LAING: Oh, it's not meant as an insult!
CHRISTY: And my parents are currently running a shelter up in [Midwestern state]
DR. LAING: What? [astonishment]
CHRISTY: They are running a shelter.
DR. LAING: Oh, yeah.
CHRISTY: Yes.
DR. LAING: Where was that?
CHRISTY: [names the city]
DR. LAING: How do they feel about you? [said with ironic, gentle laughter]
CHRISTY: [laughing too] I don't know! I wrote them a letter, and asked them and… I haven't picked it up in the mail yet. I asked them if it was okay to send a Christmas present. That’s… I don't know.
DR. LAING: No reply?
CHRISTY: I haven't been to the post office yet to pick it up. If they did reply... they probably did.
DR. LAING: Do you expect them to send you a Christmas present?
CHRISTY: I don't know. Let’s see I was… I had some Christmas gifts, so I thought I’d send them some, ‘cause I was making crafts for Christmas.
DR. LAING: Because you were making...?
CHRISTY: Crafts.
DR. LAING: I would have never thought of writing my parents and asking them if it was okay for me to send them a present for Christmas. I mean, why wouldn't it be okay?
This gentle confrontation attempts to assess how estranged she is from her parents.
CHRISTY: Maybe they hate me after all I... after being an unfaithful daughter.
DR. LAING: Unfaithful to whom? Them?
He goes on to explore for the nature and the causes of her negative self-image. This is important: note the sequence of her self-descriptions in the interview: first, unfaithful to the Universal Mind, then to unfaithful to the doctors, and now unfaithful to her parents. The repeating theme demonstrates clearly how she sees herself, a way of self-seeing that begs for identification and disruption by the work of the therapist. The hypothesis is that this is a derivative, surfacing unconsciously, provoked by an inner negative psychic structure.
CHRISTY: Yes, I haven't visited in years.
DR. LAING: Uh-huh.
CHRISTY: And in fact I don't communicate well with them either. But you see -- I have my own life to live. You know, I hope that they understand that, but maybe they don't.
DR. LAING: Well, if you are faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ, how can you be unfaithful to your Father? Well, I mean, He said, that didn't He, that 'unless you hate your father and mother and follow me, you cannot be my disciple'.
CHRISTY: Ya.
DR. LAING: What does your father make of that?
He is using a psychological interpretation of Biblical verse to support her right to differentiate from her parents, as well as to allude to the tremendous conditioning that a person receives in the family setting, and to a way out of that bind. He is here following along with the derivatives above, where her ‘unfaithful client-patient-daughter’’ self-image might be reframed as a ‘differentiating woman’ instead.
CHRISTY: Well, probably that … well this current Christian emphasis on family is … is against the teachings of Jesus. You know, the modern Christian emphasis on families.
DR. LAING: Yeah, I guess. I mean I don’t’… do you know that passage where Jesus… I always said I thought that there was something wrong with that translation. It said, 'unless you hate your father and mother, brothers and sisters, you cannot be my disciple.' In the English version. I think it means unless you "prefer" me to you father and mother.
CHRISTY: I don't recall that it said, "hate". Something like "deny."
DR. LAING: Yeah -- I asked a guy, an Aramaic scholar, but he said he thought that it meant, “unless you are happily indifferent to them."
CHRISTY: That makes a lot of sense [laughs]!
DR. LAING: Ya, call his bluff!
Again, he is encouraging her to differentiate, to consider a teaching of Christ as embodied in the more direct commentaries that were offered to the disciples rather than in the parables offered to the masses. These kinds of commentaries are noticeably outlined in esoteric Christian literature (Koester & Lambdin, 1981; Nicoll, 1999; Pagels, 1979). He is not talking about "honor thy father and thy mother," as does exoteric Christian literature.
CHRISTY: ‘Cause if you are not happily indifferent to your parents, they would be on your case all of your life!
She takes in his idea about differentiation from the parents. It is therapeutic to have personal and spiritual support for doing something that one has believed was “unfaithful” behavior. It relieves one bruise of the negative self-image, reframes it for her, legitimizes a part of her that troubles her.
DR. LAING: That is right! I have to go back, now. I am going to go up on stage and talk.
CHRISTY: Okay.
DR. LAING: All right, I will see you later.
CHRISTY: Okay.... Hey can I come out?
DR. LAING: You want to come out?
CHRISTY: To see what you say, yeah. [audience applause; Christy and Dr. Laing leave the room and come to the stage together]
Christy’s request here demonstrated a remarkable bond with Dr. Laing. Suddenly, here and now, she was faithful to the significant other! Could it thus be assessed that their conversation had strengthened her ego-state, or that Laing was functioning as an auxiliary ego for her here? Did she feel perhaps radically understood, seen, stronger?
In any case, the impact of her sudden unanticipated gesture was dramatic, with many of us literally weeping with a sense of inclusion, of encouragement, of pleasure at what we were seeing and hearing. It was, simply put, astonishing. It appeared to be ‘a sense of communion that is unspoken,’ as Dr. Laing went on to say later.
Laing and Christy joined a group of panelists on stage.
BILL MCCLOUD: Perhaps I could ask if any of the panel would like to make a comment before we go for questions and answers, and comments from the audience? How is that for you [Christy] now that you see there is a large group of people here? Thank you for your graciousness for being here by the way. [applause]
CHRISTY: [to the audience] You are very nice to clap.
MODERATOR: An acknowledgement of your courage. So we will take questions from the audience, if anybody would like to come up and address a question to a member of the panel.
FIRST AUDIENCE MEMBER: I am only getting up because no one else did. And I wanted to tell you that my impression was that our young lady is extremely bright. I would like you to know from my point of view that one of the reasons I am at this conference is to get answers to some of questions about life that you are looking at through your eyes. I appreciate you being up there.
SECOND AUDIENCE MEMBER: [to Dr. Laing] Yes, I was wondering what you thought really went on therapeutically in that interview? [sounding skeptical, critical, frustrated]
DR. LAING: What do you think went on therapeutically? [returning her fire]
SECOND AUDIENCE MEMBER: I am mystified to tell you the truth. Maybe you could explain it to me.
DR. LAING: If you are mystified, I can't explain it to you.
This comment can be made about any process of learning how to learn (Shah, 1978) actually. At some stages the student cannot take in what is taught, is too filled up (with, in this case, her sense of skepticism and her lack of understanding). The state of ‘being mystified’ is indeed one that prevents ideas and information from entering.
SECOND AUDIENCE MEMBER: Did anything go on?
BILL MCCLOUD [MODERATOR]: There is an observation, perhaps, you could make as to who is up on the platform, which might partly answer your question.
By emphasizing the phenomenology of the event, the actual unanticipated fact of sometimes-paranoid Christy choosing to place herself in front of a large audience, the moderator suggests that this is confirming that 'something actually went on' in the interview. Phenomenological, present, obvious, experienced, ordinary reality is commonly referred to in transpersonal literature as the arena in which events will be verified or refuted.
THIRD AUDIENCE MEMBER: A couple of days ago, Dr. Laing, you spoke about creating a kind of transpersonal reality. Not creating, but stepping into something that is a shared reality between you and the person you are working with. That spoke to me, very deeply. I was really interested in hearing from the young woman, that you have been interviewing with, and also from you, about the experience of moving into that place. You, the young woman, mentioned some feeling of Dr. Laing having read your mind earlier, and I would like to hear anything you have to say about that experience. Either as his stepping into your head, or the two of you being in some kind of shared reality.
[an exchange of whispers occurs here between Dr. Laing and Christy]
DR. LAING: Neither of us knows how to answer that question. [audience laughter] But I'll start putting a few words to this and [aside to Christy] tell me if I strike a wrong note. It is with the greatest reservations that one can talk about transpersonal reality. It is certainly non-verbal and it is fundamentally, essentially, impossible to express in the content of words. It is possible to convey it, however, more, through words, in the music of words, in the manner of words. And then there are other ways which I was trying to explain, two days ago, we communicate with each other interpersonally.
If that realization is present, of the transpersonal field, then nothing needs to be said between those people who are aware of that transpersonal field. When one tries to explain one's awareness of that transpersonal field to people who are not aware of it.... and I know that in this company there are a lot of you who are aware of it and many of you who are not aware of it.
To those of you who are aware of it, you know how difficult it is to talk about. And to those of you are not aware of it, I would say this. Don't... be too impatient. Don't, because you don't understand it, because you are mystified, don't get angry. Something IS happening... something is happening... something is happening between us in this hall, at this very moment. You can't express it in words.
There is a conspiracy. There is a divine conspiracy, which has brought us together. There is a divine conspiracy as well as conspiracy of the devil. I am not going to go on, and say any more about that just now. But as I tried to say before: It makes all of the difference if there is a sense of communion which is unspoken. It doesn't have to be said. It shouldn't actually be spoken about anymore than it sometimes needs to be. Out of which interpersonal communication occurs and which links up with the intrapersonal.
If that is there it makes all of the difference. If that is absent, sort of going at it like this: making interpretations, trying to understand, trying to do psychotherapy, whether it is behavioral therapy, psychotherapy, psychoanalytic therapy or what not, it will come to nothing.
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