I have recently allowed myself to become more aware of all kinds of subtle phenomena that I do not understand at all and that have little place in the traditional scientific pantheon. How we pick up or miss insights, how we trust surprising knowings, the meanings of unexpected gut feelings, in sessions and in life.

This might take us into the realm of woo, but I keep coming up against reports of hard-to-explain experiences by eminent people, many of whom keep their thoughts secret for fear of judgement. For example the famous psychoanalyst Robert Stoller wrote a paper which he would not allow to be published in his lifetime which reported dreams of many of his patients, the dreams describing events in HIS life that they could not possibly have known about without some kind of more subtle communication.

Psychoanalyst Elizabeth Mayer’s incredible book ‘Extraordinary Knowing’ is full of findings from both within and outside the consulting room of phenomena that belie scientific explanation. Such 6th sense knowings are of course what Rupert Sheldrake has been writing about for decades, and in part why McGilchrist has been arguing so eloquently about the importance of the right hemisphere and non-cognitive knowing. This all goes so against the current scientific and evidence-based enterprise.

How such intuitions and subtle knowings show up in the consulting room, and in life, is not easy to explain or trust. I am struck by how rarely I was helped to ask myself such questions when training, rarely asked to look inside for different kinds of knowing. All too often I felt there was an answer ‘out there’, or that I was with someone who needed us to know they know. Yet occasionally I found myself in the presence of those who trusted something different in us and themselves, or created a facilitative fecund environment in which new thinking could emerge. Of my supervisors, Margot Waddell and Anne Alvarez stand out in that respect.

I have also been trying to make sense of some of these issues while writing on prenatal bonding, a method devised by the psychoanalyst Raffai. These included getting mothers to communicate to their unborn babies via a form of active imagination and seeing that somehow the foetuses seemed to respond to their communications. Is this woo? In researching the book I kept coming across many such examples, such as how often mothers said that they ‘knew’ the gender of the baby well before any scan revealed this. What is this ‘knowing’?

I have colleagues who seem to accurately smell a particular illness in a patient, or predict events, and yet feel the need to keep it quiet. What do we make of what feel like predictions or forebodings, such as of an impending illness or of something that happened that we cannot know about. I am not the most sensitive or intuitive person or therapist but I often have had thoughts or fantasies in relation to clients only to find out that what was in my mind was what actually happened to them. I cannot prove this of course.
Perhaps it is not clear what this blog is about, and perhaps that is fitting! It is mainly just musings about the places in us and states of being from which we might know things in different ways. It is about wondering how we find and trust those insights. and how the world of rationality, cognitive thinking (which was not what Bion meant by thinking), cannot get us to such intuition and flashes, fallible as they are.

I remember when I was 17 at school and was introduced to synchronicity and the work of C.J. Jung by my friend Rob G, still my good friend. We also, in good adolescent style, delved into spiritual books and in one on Jewish mysticism I remember coming across the word the ‘ineffable’, which I tried to make sense of, and repeated it on my tongue for hours. Now there’s a paradox! But that which can be known but not easily be put into words should not be brushed aside. I was too young then, and in fact there was too much of my inchoate and repressed experience that badly needed to be put into words before i could wordlessly approach anything ineffable. Now though …

This month’s free papers for subscribers

This months we have 2 papers that are free to subscribers, both by the inimitable Alessandra Lemma .

The first, her ‘grief bots’ paper, explores opportunities for the dead to affect current life in ways not possible in pre-digital generations. She is also giving this talk at UCL in a conference mentioned in the Events Listings below

The second paper is only available for about a week, so download quickly!, and Lemma says of it ‘in the wake of the important report by Hilary Cass, we need to continue to think about how we can best support young people who identify as transgender. In this recent paper, I share some thoughts about how to engage young people in thinking about the body and what may drive the need to modify it.’

At 40, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married and had no children, walked through the park in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her favourite doll. She and Kafka searched for the doll unsuccessfully.

Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would come back to look for her.

The next day, when they had not yet found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter “written” by the doll saying “please don’t cry. I took a trip to see the world. I will write to you about my adventures.”

Thus began a story which continued until the end of Kafka’s life.

During their meetings, Kafka read the letters of the doll carefully written with adventures and conversations that the girl found adorable.

Finally, Kafka brought back the doll (he bought one) that had returned to Berlin.

“It doesn’t look like my doll at all,” said the girl.

Kafka handed her another letter in which the doll wrote: “my travels have changed me.” the little girl hugged the new doll and brought the doll with her to her happy home.

A year later Kafka died.

Many years later, the now-adult girl found a letter inside the doll. In the tiny letter signed by Kafka it was written:

“Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.”

More woo perhaps but do watch this extraordinary film of human-animal communication sent to me by my good friend and colleague Jo Violet. I am interested in what people make of it.

Love this quote: (back to the woo?)

Rainer Maria Rilke (below) , who described poets as “the bees of the invisible”. The poet’s role, he wrote, is to collect the world’s nectar, its essence, and then “to store it in the great, golden hive of the invisible”.

The great John O’Donohue knew what Rilke was talking about:

To Learn From Animal Being

by John O’Donohue
Nearer to the earth’s heart,
Deeper within its silence:
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.
Stranded between time
Gone and time emerging,
We manage seldom
To be where we are:
Whereas they are always
Looking out from
The here and now.
May we learn to return
And rest in the beauty
Of animal being,
Learn to lean low,
Leave our locked minds,
And with freed senses
Feel the earth
Breathing with us.
May we learn to walk
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear-eyed stillness
So that our minds
Might be baptized
In the name of the wind
And the light and the rain.
~ John O’Donohue

Some upcoming events

A few of mine and a few others of interest below:
June 7, 2024

Resparking. Working with numbed states

A days training
Organiser: Darren Bottrill www.futuredays.org.uk.
Location: St Austell
June 21, 2024

Traumatic roots of forensic presentations: Early experience and attachment, with Gwen Ashdead

Conference Organiser: Sussex Partnership NHS Trust
Location: Brighton
July 6, 2024

When Empathy is Not Enough: The role of challenge

Event Link
CPD event for Sunflower, primarily for child and adolescent therapists
Organiser: Sunflower
Location: online
September 13, 2024

Violence and Aggression in Children (Adoption Plus)

Other events here

And a few other amazing looking ones:

Amazing looking conference honouring Freud’s Standard Edition Relaunch , includes Karl Friston, Mark Solms, Daniel Pick, Jaqueline Rose and Alessandra Lemma will give the ‘griefbots’ paper (that can be downloaded above) there, details here

The Tavistock trauma unit have a really exciting new course starting next year in the service led by Jo Stubley which is really at the cutting edge of trauma work details here

Brent Centre: Adolescence Now June 22nd details here
Reveries: Dreaming Across the Lifecycle : Great speakers here, in Manchester 6th July details here

MINDinMIND are honouring the trailblazing and brave therapist Valerie Sinason for a legacy interview, details here

A few interesting podcasts

Anyone not seen My Octopus Teacher? an amazing film about an octopus, kelp forest and a friendship between man and the octopus . Well here’s Tim Ferris interviewing the person who made, and lived, the film and I found this interview very inspiring and moving listen here

There have been a few episodes in which sportspeople in macho cultures talk about the value of therapy. here is the West Ham footballer Michail Antonio in an interview about his career in which he also talks about how therapy saved his life! listen here

In memory of the great Daniel Kahenman here is a podcast on the often fascinating Hidden Brain listen here

A guardian podcast on the Cass Review and gender controversies listen here
More controversially ‘is transgender a mental illness’? thanks to friend and colleague Sharon Lewis for pointing this one out listen here

A few recently read, mainly non-therapy books

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

A novel ….The Great Circle:

A big wonderful novel, taking in early aviation, loss, love, adventure .. elegantly written and constructed it grabbed and didnt let me go details here

Matrescence by Lucy Jones is that rare thing, a gripping book about the process of becoming a mother, taking in the latest science and clinical thinking, quoting many psychotherapists, taking a historical sweep, critiquing society and our systems, but really talking about the serious challenges of becoming a mother, all brought to life by moving autobiographical stories, a book that I think will be of more help to new mothers than kilos of textbooks details here

The psychoanalytic book I have been re-reading, Bion’s Brazilian lectures/

What can i say? The man was a genius, often inaccessible, and too complex for my little brain, but these lectures for me are as understandable as he gets as well as inspiring

Below are some of the more woo books I have been looking at in the last month or so. I am certainly not recommending them and do not believe everything in them all, but they have stirred up curiosity and shaken some of my beliefs.

Still the best for me, Extraordinary Knowing, by Elizabeth Myer, a psychoanalyst who gives a tour de force of rigorous research, personal and clinical anecdotes the science of things like remote viewing and so much more

Judith Orloff’s Second Sight , a psychiatrist who takes in the power of intuition and uncanny sensing in her descriptions of her own life, her work as a psychiatrist and other research findings

After by Bruce Greysen explores the world of near death experiences , the evidence, what we can learn from them, and again is full of extraordinary and of course hard to believe stories

Moody’s Life After Life was the first and most influential book describing Near Death Experiences (NDE’s)

Joe Dispenza You Are The Placebo: Is he a charlatan, hero or what? He makes claims about using neuroscience and understandings of quantum physics and the placebo and he claims to have helped facilitate seemingly miraculous healings in his large (and expensive) events. But he is genuinely challenging the conventional scientific materialist view

Some blogs

Below are my books as always, with ways to buy. Hopefully my website will be revamped shortly with more possibilities.

I am getting back to the pregnancy/prenatal book which I hope to get out just after the summer (the cover will probably look a bit like this)

In case you forgot (!), Nurturing Natures 3rd edition!

‘RESPARK’ is also available in all the formats below

A ‘cheaper than Audible’ audio version of Respark is available here

The ebook version is available and there is a 25% discount with this link
Audio here and on Spotify and other platforms

The physical book and ebook is available from amazon or psychological therapy books or Karnac here,

Please do leave a review anywhere you buy it, it really helps a lot

Affect and Emotion (the new edition)

An ebook version of Affect and Emotion is available here at £4.99 and a further 25% discount available with this code xedc7el on this link
Also on amazon … or psychological therapy books …. only about 6 quid too!

Click on links below to view or buy these:
Nurturing Natures,
Affect and Emotion
Nurturing Children,
The Good Life,
From Trauma to Harming others

For other journal papers and chapters and blogs etc see here

Phew, that’s it! Thanks for reading everyone