NURTURING IN HEALING THE MIND
THE ROLE OF LOVE.
(From the forthcoming book: «Nurturing in Psychotherapy»)
My rudimentary work on nurturing started in the seventies at the Anaclitic Clinic of the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada -which I founded and directed for years. It was based not on «talking-understanding» but on feeling-experiential work accompanied by talking. It was perfected and refined as time passed by.
The fact that it represented a «pioneering» work reflects only the male mind’s primitive level in Psychiatry. Its extensive efforts to avoid, recognize and accept love’s fundamental role in our psychic-emotional lives. It is just not a macho thing!
Today, if you hit the Internet in search of «NURTURING,» you will find it all over the place -whatever they mean by it.
Nurturing involves the recognition of a human self by another as lovable. Technically you could say that. It is the act of mirroring back, by whatever means to another human being his intrinsic, God-given lovability –where many «parents» pathetically failed -but passed «unknown» in even our «advanced» societies.
Not yet, a theory to my knowledge has surpassed our view that the self functions in part as an information system, open at the beginning and gradually closing through life. Its core or fundamental informational center is the so-called «Lovability Principle» (Joaquin Sousa-Poza 2005.Vol.9 Number 2 The International Journal of Psychotherapy)- the child’s proto-cognition that we are unconditionally lovable at 100% level of certainty. Thus, there is no more significant existential trauma than not to be loved early in life.» Because it leads to the self not forming, aborting and remaining truncated in a sort of spiritual-psychological crucifixion by lack of love; not different from that of The Christ. Except that humanity is fixated on the wooden cross, not on the psychospiritual one. The Christ, most likely, experienced both. As Mother Theresa of Calcutta said: when he said «I Thirst» he meant: by lack of love! Macho-man psychiatry does not like to hear that! -it ought to be some malfunctioning of the brain, no brother? Because, for you, a «real man» lack of love ought not to hurt! So why do you, so often get ritually drunk when dumped by a lady?
As such, it Is subject to the second law of thermodynamics or entropy law of decay -and it needs input in the form of what communication theorists call «confirmation.» psychologists as «mirroring» and similar terms. As we said time ago, the self, like the eye, does not see itself, and it needs to be seen and mirrored by another self to exist ( Martin Buber: «There is No I Without Thou»).
Under high loads of entropy, the self collapses agonizingly (In «The Dark Night of the Soul» of the Grand Mystics. St. John of the Cross poetically and clinically describes the suffering of the collapsing self). Due to that fact, there is no punishment a hardened prisoner fears more than extended periods in isolation.
Here are some examples of nurturing sessions carried out with another item we pioneered at the Anaclitic Clinic of the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec: the utilization in psychotherapy of small IM doses of ketamine hydrochloride. (today popular on the Internet. A usual, in male-mind Psychiatry, for the properties of its chemical formula, not its psychological powers.)
All patient names are fictitious. In the Canadian Medicare system, patients must be referred to a specialist by their family physician.
[1]To minimize distractions, reparenting sessions are conducted in an undecorated, silent soundproof room, with the lights dimmed. It was often preceded by fifteen-twenty minutes of respiration-focused meditation to calm the mind
Alfred, a 43-year-old man, was referred to me suffering from depression and a history of excessive dependency in his relationships with women. At the time of referral, his second marriage was falling apart. He writes of his first session with myself (18th month of therapy):
A Total Connectedness
[note: this might prove too much for macho-man or for sex-obsessed indoctrinated psych0analysts; my first therapy…]
I started with my head against J.’s chest. I could hear and feel his comforting breathing. After I had closed my eyes, I felt this high strength and warmth around me. I knew that this was something I had never gotten from my biological father. Before today I had no idea how good it felt, had nothing to compare.
This wonderful euphoric feeling of closeness was getting stronger, and I just wanted to give in to it, to accept it. I felt like a young bear in the cave of his daddy bear; it was dark and warm and smelt wonderful. There was an instinctual masculine power that I was absorbing from which I was getting both strength and
security. I was feeling happier and happier with this feeling; I felt no shame, no embarrassment; I wanted to laugh aloud. There was a total connectedness; I felt exposed, vulnerable, yet safe; it was as though we had become one; it was beyond thought or reasoning. -There seemed to exist a smooth rhythm between J. and myself, both in sound and movement that came from breathing and being. Hours later, writing this, I still feel profoundly and wonderfully affected by what I experienced. I’m left feeling that this has been a special milestone in my life.
By his sixth surrogate father session, «the child» is visibly growing up:
Men Do Not Have These Feelings
There was such a feeling of a father/son relationship. Closeness and love that was always missing with my father. `Men do not have these feelings.’ I was very aware of the physical closeness, and I was very comfortable with it.-I am no longer feeling as though I’m drawing on his strength but that we are both sharing our strengths. My own identity is becoming very real and strong; I feel very «self» sufficient without seeking approval and acceptance from others. If this were the one thing I got from this therapy, it would be more than most get out of a lifetime of living.
The possibility of switching states of consciousness to be able to relive the past had been anticipated as early as 1963 by Dr. Hassan Azima, the pioneer of deep regression in psychotherapy. Quoted as stating: «…the evoked events are more than as if or instead experiences, and ARE identical in their intensity and lived quality with their genetic origins'» (Ibid., p. 30). That is, you don’t «regress» anywhere. You stay put, and you don’t suck your thumb nor indulge in any other «regressive» forms of behaviour, like wetting your diapers. You lift the imposed defensive exclusion and let it be what it always was but had to be suppressed at an early age for the convenience of cultures dictated by the male of the species. And the trick here is that cultures dictate customs and mores and constitute prescriptions for being concerning the self’s formation. Given certain conditions, the human mind can return to the past and experience it exactly as it was. Thus, this McGill University psychiatrist paved the way for my work many years later; however, it was by serendipity that I learned about him while still writing that paper. I was fortunate to have been taught as a McGill University resident by his widow, the late Dr. Fern Azima, a McGill University Professor of Psychiatry and a distinguished therapist and author. It was she who tipped to her late husband’s little-known pioneering work in anaclitic psychotherapy and the true meaning of regression.
Alfred, now working with his surrogate mother, illustrates of his third session the extent to which a patient can switch states of consciousness, to the point that sometimes it is total and the «adult onlooker» (technically known as the «observing ego») is no longer present. In such a case, the self is so close to again being the Lovability Principle that there are no barriers to the flow of love and reparenting becomes highly effective (11th month of therapy):
The Blissful Journey
At first, I felt nervous about being that physically close, but as I became more comfortable in Y.’s arms, I felt as if I were travelling in a warm misty haze into the past back to childhood. There was still part of me (my adult mind) that resisted, but I was not afraid. I was feeling very safe and secure; Y.’s breathing and warmth- along with soothing, loving words, helped create the blissful journey. There were moments when I totally escaped the adult onlooker and briefly touched great sadness; I am not sure what caused it. It seemed as though instinctively, I was mourning the loss of a love I never had. The love I was receiving and feeling at this time was beyond anything I’ve ever felt before; I wanted to stay curled up in these arms, I wanted more and more of this, I felt so safe and secure. The connection I felt with Y. was beautiful, my heartbeat, and breathing, all felt like one with her. It was good knowing I was acceptable as I am, without having to be `good’ or something unique, that I was lovable just by being me. Each time this feeling happens, I want to soak it up more and more, and I always feel so special receiving this; I feel it’s the answer to the world’s problems. If every child could receive this kind of love, there would be no more hate. This connectedness with mamma is so incredible that it is above and beyond the everyday mundane; it is pure bliss. I have no memory of ever feeling like this. That makes me sad; it is a feeling every child should know. Without this work, I shudder to think where I might be now. Y.’s genuine concern is something I have never known and only wish I had received from my biological mother.
Alice Mille is one of the few psychotherapists who openly acknowledge that she was emotionally wounded early in life. In her 1979, highly acclaimed book, Prisoners of Childhood (The Drama of the Gifted Child), she exposed the devastating and long-lasting effects of child-rearing in the absence of parental love. It’s of such magnitude of harm that does to the body; there would be an instant and massive widespread outcry. But not if it is the mind that is wounded because it is challenging for the deformed masculine mind to deal with feelings it is equated as «weaknesses» in the distorted macho code.
Trained in psychoanalysis, which frowns upon «regression» and physical contact (the latter under the puerile notion of «no retribution,» it is not surprising that she resigned herself to never being able to redress the love not obtained in childhood, concluding, in her 1994 revised edition:
«As adults, we don’t need unconditional love [yes, no «needed to form a self, because it should already be formed] -but, if we learn how to time-travel the mind to the point -of the trauma of not been loved while the self was in formation, and with the judicious use of ketamine IM, sure we can repair what was damaged to a good extent] not even from our therapists. This is a childhood need, one that can never be fulfilled later in life, and we are playing with illusions if we have never mourned this lost opportunity. If a therapist promises unconditional love, we must protect ourselves from him, from his hypocrisy and lack of awareness.» (Alice Miller. The Drama of the Gifted Child)
Obviously, by that time, the power of Azima’s «mind travel» was not known. Yes, if you know how to revert the adult consciousness to that of the child’s state at the moment of the trauma, the child can experience love. Now, the exciting thing is that the adult is aware (watching?) what is happening in the meanwhile.
That only indicates her bad experiences with men. Because in a professional lifetime of practice -including the nurturing of prostitutes (better hanky-panky detectors do not exist) never-ever did a female, or male for that matter, patient of mine made the complaint on sexual grounds -not uncommon in British Columbia at that time. Let me affirm that physical contact is necessary to transmit love. But certain cultures with ultra-distant proxemics and emotional coldness as part of what defines them as an «on the know» will have a big problem in their hands because sexuality being one of the most potent, the zipper becomes trickier in those countries.
No brother, I am nothing special. I just had healthy, untabooed sexuality, loyalty to those who put their minds in my hands and good common sense and fairness in undergoing as many therapies as possible before admitting another human being as a «patient» of mine.
Easy to understand the expediency of just prescribing a pill?
Oh yes, brother, but «thou shall not cheat your patients!»
Technoscientific achievements aside, human life’s quality is visibly undergoing an accelerated deterioration under the male-mind aegis with no end I sight.
Too much greed, but too little compassion, love and zilch understanding of who we are and what we are doing in the incarnate state.
Lousy job, brother! Very bad! and, you, sister are not helping much. On the contrary, in the name of «equality,» you are becoming more like him!
Sad to watch!