Thoughts on knowings

We obviously live in complex times but one question that has been deeply preoccupying me is about what we can trust, what information, ‘facts’ and ideas, and indeed which people (when they are even people!), can we rely on in this ‘post-truth’ world.

As the great Hannah Arendt said ‘Facts and events are infinitely more fragile things than axioms, discoveries, theories, which are produced by the human mind.’ Arendt’s thinking is threaded through this, as in this extraordinary quote.

Obviously philosophers have always known that reality is not just a thing ‘out there’ to be discovered and that the world we see is always one that fits into our existing conceptual frameworks, influenced by our cultures, immediate states of mind, histories and current beliefs etc.
I remember how shaken I was in mid to late adolescence when realizing that what I took to be reality might not be so unequivocally real. I was excited and terrified at the same time by Buddhist ideas and philosophers like Kant, realizing that there was no knowable reality, by Freud and Jung revealing that we were driven by forces out of consciousness, by Marx that there was something called ‘ideology’ which we might believe irrespective of any truth. It was indeed as a 17 year old that I was first introduced to Hannah Arendt’s work by my headteacher, Jeremy Rosen.

As psychotherapists with even a modicum of understanding of the brain, we know this all too well. Think of the child exposed to violence whose brain and very being reacts with terror or rage to a slight turn of the lips or raised brow, sensing danger when most of us would see nothing untoward. Think of the white police officer operating in areas of racial tension who is saturated with unconscious bias and sees a gun when a black man takes out their phone. Indeed think of therapy and the transference and its distortions.

We see this in politics increasingly, especially in the American election. Deep fake lies being taken as truth, unconscious fears (such as of the ‘immigrant’) skillfully being whipped up, bald falsehoods from bad actors affecting elections. I have particularly been struck by the powerful closed paradigms around the Middle East. Are Israeli Jews in fact white settler colonialists committing ethnocide, or are they people with traumatic histories who genuinely feel their very existence is threatened? Too dangerous to go into but I have been on whatsapp groups of both sides where horrendous brutal violence against one group is shown by one side, but never by the other. Paradigms can be like tight closed defensive citadels not allowing any other ideas to seep in. Bion wrote beautifully of the terror of the new idea but my goodness this has reached new proportions in this moment. Hannah Arendt again had it right in this rather terrifyingly worryingly statement she made so many decades ago.

But what can psychotherapy contribute to these issues? I think a lot. We know that in times of major stress and uncertainty strong leaders can become powerful, whether Trump, Orbán, the far right in Austria or France. Even more so when we do not know what to trust, as Arendt says. We can see this as a defensive reaction. We give away our power and trust to another. a bit like Bion’s basic assumption group. This goes with splitting and projection of course, with finding someone to blame. When stressed we also grab hold of things to cling on to; that this (food group/school of therapy/politician/idea) is good and another is bad. In such scenarios we lose any middle ground, all Keatesian negative capability. More worrying for me is that we then do not learn to look inside and trust our senses, our intuitions, our guts and body or heart wisdom. Iain McGilchrist was right here, if we rely on our left hemisphere too much it can close down the ability to be uncertain, to be body aware, to trust our senses. The left hemisphere loves clarity. But in these troubled times we so need to bear and hold onto uncertainty, as difficult as it can be, to look inside, to dare to wait and listen to little inner signals.

These are dangerous times, too dangerous to allow strongmen to rule and to give up our trust in ourselves. I leave the last word to Arendt here, and she is talking about how we can find our bearings, our internal moral compass, our sense of what we trust to live by. Psychotherapy can most certainly help us find that.

Thinking of truth ……

Thanks again for being a subscriber. As it takes a really long to to make these, and the different software has costs, I am adding a voluntary patreon button if anyone is inclined to donate. Really no pressure, but for anyone who can and wants to, the suggested donation is about the price of a North London cappuccino

Womb life is nearly out, and I have ordered proof copies.

 

I am seeking about 10 newsletter subscribers who are willing to be advanced readers to offer to read and then post a review on amazon? If so please email me. I am thinking that this can be a mixture of ebooks and paperbacks. Fast readers and diligent reviewers please!!

Here is a paper for subscribers about prenatal life and how it is is relevant to adoption, which I recently published and might whet the appetite! It is called:
‘Unsafe foetuses and risky wombs? Why we need to take prenatal experiences more seriously, especially when working
with adoption’

 

This will be in the IJPBE journal soon

NEW ONLINE COURSES

 

This month I have added a fourth course. This one is about the importance of thinking about cultural differences and ways we can approach this. As always it is packed with video clips, research and fascinating facts. Courses are £15.99 now but newsletter subscribers get 20% off with this code newsletter20 at checkout

So far 4 courses (see below or click here) based on Nurturing Natures

 

• The Incredible New born
• Play
• Prenatal Life
• The importance of Culture

I hope to add one every month or so.
Each course is full of information and videos etc

Newsletter subscriber discount code of 20% off, use this code

Thanks so much for all who showed interest in the trauma and body cpd. the initial pilot is now nearly full EXCEPT I have a gender imbalance so I am opening it up to 2 male therapists or counsellors. Anyone? email me if of interest. And hopefully it will run again, either at the Tavistock or privately.

A longish but really powerful poem by a poet whose work I had not known but is amazing
What if by Claudia Rankine
What does it mean to want an age-old call
for change
not to change
and yet, also,
to feel bullied
by the call to change?
How is a call to change named shame,
named penance, named chastisement?
How does one say
what if
without reproach? The root
of chastise is to make pure.
The impossibility of that—is that
what repels and not
the call for change?
ii
There is resignation in my voice when I say I feel
myself slowing down, gauging like a machine
the levels of my response. I remain within
so sore I think there is no other way than release—
so I ask questions like I know how
in the loneliness of my questioning.
What’s still is true; there isn’t even a tremor
when one is this historied out.
I could build a container to carry this being,
a container to hold all, though we were never
about completeness; we were never to be whole.
I stand in your considered thoughts also broken,
also unknown, extending
one sentence—here, I am here.
As I’ve known you, as I’ll never know you,
I am here. Whatever is
being expressed, what if,
I am here awaiting, waiting for you
in the what if, in the questions,
in the conditionals,
in the imperatives—what if.
iii
What if over tea, what if on our walks, what if
in the long yawn of the fog, what if in the long middle
of the wait, what if in the passage, in the what if
that carries us each day into seasons, what if
in the renewed resilience, what if in the endlessness,
what if in a lifetime of conversations, what if
in the clarity of consciousness, what if nothing changes?
iv
What if you are responsible to saving more than to changing?
What if you’re the destruction coursing beneath
your language of savior? Is that, too, not fucked up?
You say, if other white people had not . . . or if it seemed like
not enough . . . I would have . . .
What if—the repetitive call of what if—is only considered repetitive
when what if leaves my lips, when what if is uttered
by the unheard, and what if
what if is the cement of insistence
when you insist what if
this is.
v
What is it we want to keep conscious, to stay known, even as we
say, each in our own way, I so love I know I shrink I’m asked
I’m also I react I smell I feel I think I’ve been told I remember I
see I didn’t I thought I felt I failed I suspect I was doing I’m sure
I read I needed I wouldn’t I was I should’ve I felt I could’ve I
never I’m sure I ask . . .
You say and I say but what
is it we are telling, what is it
we are wanting to know about here?
vi
What if what I want from you is new, newly made
a new sentence in response to all my questions,
a swerve in our relation and the words that carry us,
the care that carries. I am here, without the shrug,
attempting to understand how what I want
and what I want from you run parallel—
justice and the openings for just us.

Consulting Rooms in The Huddle Practice: Space available (Londoners).
This is probably best for adult, adolescent or couple work.

 

4 of us currently work there, looking for anyone (nice!) wanting from half days to whole weeks (pictures above and below)

Some upcoming events

A few events of mine and a few others of interest below:

November 23, 2024
UKCP Conference: Energy, Spark and the Body: Challenging hopelessness in therapy, life and the world

!st UKCP Conference in person since Covid
Organiser: America Square Conference Centre, London, details here
February 1st. 2025 Sunflower. Womb Life (details to follow)

February 7, 2025
Respark. Working with dampened down states (Adoption Plus)

Days training for those working with children
Organiser: Adoption Plus : online details

March 1, 2025
Linking neuroscience and clinical practice: Respark

Organiser: Canadian Association of Psychoanalytic Child Therapists (CAPCT) Location: online

March 14, 2025
Trauma Recovery Global. Conference on Neglect with Betsy de Thierry.

Event Link
Exploring emotional neglect, impact and recovery through the power of transforming relationships.
Location: Bristol

March 14, 2025
Respark and clinical issues with children and young people: Respark

Organiser: Adelphi University New York online

June 27, 2025
Why prenatal life is so important. Talk for OXPIP (Oxford Parent Infant project).OXPIP lecture

My events here
And a few other amazing looking ones:

Interesting looking one, A Pluralistic Approach to Trauma, Nov 15/16th, online, Vikki Reynolds, Divine Charura, interestingly a self-selecting fee details here

The Tavistock Trauma unit’s monthly lectures continue, next up on November 7th is the wonderful Deborah Lee who has developed a compassion focused trauma model details here

MINDinMIND Spotlight on Margaret Rustin, a true leader and pioneeer in child psychotherapy, her legacy interview details here

TR together. November 15th The Psychology of Erotic Fantasies and Behaviours: Curing Sexy Couples details here

A quick piece on why there is no such thing as an unhealthy attachment, in an excerpt from a video shown in this amazing looking conference with speakers including Bessel van der Kolk, Stephen Porges, Janina Fisher, Dan Siegel, Pat Ogden, Richard Schwartz, Eboni Webb, Steven Hayes, Paul Gilbert on 28th October. Details here

Here is the one I did with Piers Cross again, also here on spotify

A few interesting podcasts

Yuval Noah Harari on the podcast I love, How to Fail, discussing so much that was fascinating about knowledge, truth and contemporary challenges such as AI listen here

An interesting discussion on experiential dynamic therapies that challenge defences, like ISTDP listen here

I thought a fascinating talk on Jean-Paul Sartre and his Being and Nothingness, a book I wish I had understood when I was younger, on the London Review of Books podcast listen here

I am a fan of great lives, so many brilliant ones, but I relistened to this one with Philippa Perry on Montessori and also this great one with brilliant singer Laura Marling about the amazing Lou Andreas- Salome who was a psychoanalyst and Nietzche’’s muse. (Marling has an amazing new album out too)

I just loved this interview with Marina Abramovic on the BBC’s This Cultural life , what a powerful extraordinary woman

Less books read this month (sigh of relief?)

( you can get links to the books by clicking on the pictures or titles)

This is shortlisted for the Booker and I thought it was an astounding novel. Using the theme of a single raindrop and its journey over time, with water as the theme, Shafak weaves several stories into a beautiful moving novel moving from the Tigris to the Thames and the present back over the centuries. I didnt want it to end read here

Another shortlisted for the Booker, a very different kind of book, beautiful, poetic, not an obvious story but depth and some passages which will long stay with me. eg this one linked to the themes of the blog ‘”Invisible as the radio waves and cosmic rays that pass through us, the seiches and forces of history that restrict us, shape our assumptions, compassions, freedoms, judgements; the regrets of one generation passed down as hopes for the next, the germs and spores of limitation and expectation we absorb from the social atmosphere. How a bird struggling against the wind can appear motionless.”

book here

What a painful and amazing book. I am not the greatest fan of Nick cave’s music but this memoir in collaboration with Sean O’Hagan moves from the pain of losing his son to the nature of creativity to his spiritual life to how he trusts his artistic side to redemption and the hope in pain. Quite a man I think see here

I put a sample chapter in a recent newsletter, Jeremy Holmes’ reflections on literally the spirit of psychotherapy, full of wisdom, questioning in Jeremy’s erudite and questioning way. Here is a sample chapter, book available see here

Shorter readings and blogs

This is a challenging one perhaps, can conscious enter alternat dimensions while we’re dreaming? Some science suggests yes! read here
A good piece on the vagus nerve, which has been in so much thinking for the last few decades but perhaps less well understood read here
Is the Universe Conscious? A nice shortish piece taking in pan-psychism, Richard Goff, Donald Hoffman and more read here
A fascinating Aeon piece on how culture is archived in our bodies read here

Might evolution be purposeful .. interesting thoughts here

There’s a new Shopify page which means that books can be bought not from Amazon!

here is the shopify link or click on the picture below

And finally …
Its time for this month’s corny jokes t
Someone stole my antidepressants.
I hope they’re happy now!
St Peter visited me in my sleep and told me i would live until 100, so i had botox, hair transplant and an eye lift, i was immediately hit by a truck and met St Peter again, You told me i would live until 100!
Sorry i didn’t recognise you!!

I’ve been accused of being a plagiarist. Their words, not mine!!

Phew, that’s it!