More needs to be said about the relation between our conversations and therapy, maybe even that our conversations may make the world less worse!
Psychologists are engaged in the business of consciousness. People come to see us about this or that problem, symptom, or trouble in order to become more conscious. We take things apart, that is, analyze problems, feelings, dreams so that they become more conscious.
Consciousness
Now, what is this consciousness? What actually goes on in becoming more conscious? What goes on in conversation? If you listened to a tape of an analysis hour, an hour of becoming conscious in therapy, you would hear a conversation. That’s all it is—conversation. You become more conversant with your dreams, about your relationships, your fears, and your needs.
Consciousness is really nothing more than maintaining conversation, and unconsciousness is really nothing more than letting things fall out of conversation, no longer talking about something—or what Freud called repression.
Conversation isn’t easy. You know how hard it is in a family, what an art it is to keep a conversation going. You know the tortures of the family dinner table, how more and more is left unsaid. So, of course, Freud found repression mainly in the family. It’s a place where conversation often has a hard time.
Or take a dinner party. Strike up a conversation and keep it flow-ing—not a monologue, not only opinions and sounding off, not only firing questions, but conversation as an exploration, a little risky adventure, a discovery, an interesting happening. Parties, doing lunch, and 7:30 A.M. breakfasts are terribly important in a city for keeping its conversation going, keeping the consciousness of the City at a certain intensity, moving its mind adventurously toward deeper discoveries.
Personalism
What doesn’t work, we also pretty well know- personalism—just talking out loud about what we feel. Complaints. Opinions. The information doesn’t work—simply reporting what’s new, where you’ve been, what you’ve heard. And lullabies don’t help either—singing charming little stories to prevent anything from entering the heart or the mind. And boosterism isn’t conversation either—broadcasting, self-advertising what we are doing, have done, going to do. You can’t converse with a sales pitch of positive preaching. All these kinds of talk have to be cured in therapy; they interfere with conversation.
A Good conversation
So, not just any talk is a conversation, not any talk raises consciousness. A subject can be talked to death, a person talked to sleep. Good conversation has an edge: it opens your eyes to something, quickens your ears. And good conversation reverberates: it keeps on talking in your mind later in the day; the next day, you find yourself still conversing with what was said. That reverberation afterward is the very raising of consciousness; your mind’s been moved. You are at another level with your reflections. So, what helps conversation?
- Here we need to look again at what conversation is – The word means turning around with, going back, like reversing, and it comes supposedly from walking back and forth with someone or something, turning and going over the same ground from the reverse direction. A conversation turns things around. And there is verso to every conversation, a reverse, backside.
- It is this verso, this exposition of the reverse version, that is, I think, the work of our talk. Whatever keeps us walking together with something and turns things around, upside down, converts what we already feel and think into something unexpected—this is the unconscious becoming conscious, which means doing therapy!
- And to keep turning means that it’s no use having fixed stands, definite positions. That stops the conversation dead in its tracks. Our aim is not to take a stand on this or that issue, but to examine the stands themselves so they can be loosened and we can go on walking back and forth.
That is why the style of our conversation has to be somewhat upsetting, turning around the first expected direction of a thought or a feeling. And that is why we have to speak with irony, even ridicule and cutting sarcasm. Shocking even: because consciousness comes with a little shock of awareness, keeping us on edge, acute, awake, and a little awry. Instead of electroshock, psychotherapy uses psychoshock—that little twinge or flash that makes a situation suddenly seem altogether new.
This small blog can hardly turn the City around, raise the level of its self-awareness, its reflection, and insight into its unconscious repressions. Yet might these very conversations already be turning on the City Lights? For if we are working at curing our talk and less at talking of cures (for this or that problem) we would be engaged in true conversations, the very activity that does turn all things around.
If you or someone you know is suffering, Do not delay mental health. Even the right decision at the wrong time is too late. Support is always available and never shy away from support seeking. Consult a psychologist today !!
