Listening in a Different Way
Afternotes |III| I ⋅ On the Maverick Family Therapist Carl Whitaker
The planned serendipity of overhearing someone speak about you: that is a vital part of what family therapist Carl Whitaker valued about the inclusion of co-therapists and therapy consultants into his work. And indeed what he valued about families and groups rather than tradition one-on-one work. For the communicative options available to one expand exponentially with the addition of each person, and provides more relational “room” in which to maneuver.
Whitaker addresses this throughout his works, but his excerpt from the filmed family therapy session I linked in my last letter is particularly noteworthy. He notes that as a consultant “you’re much more intellectually competent, you’re much more creative, and you’re much less imprisoned by the responsibility, the sense of empathy, the sense of belonging, that the therapist is stressed by and stuck with.”
As a former therapist I can absolutely identify with the “sense of empathy, the sense of belonging that the therapist is stressed by and stuck with.” It’s a powerful force, and it has some benefits but also some limitations. Which is why a co-therapist or a consultant is so useful, as he or she can fill the vacuum inevitably left by the limitations of the therapist role.
And one way to take advantage of this role is to speak openly about the client in the third person:
“I didn’t want to talk behind the families back because I want them to have the experience of hearing the voice tone and the muscle function of the therapist when he talks to me about them in front of them. The best metaphor I have for that is that it’s like listening to your father talk to the man next door about your tennis game. You believe it in a different way, it’s a different distance, it’s a different quality of communication. I want all the comments the therapist makes to me about the family something they can listen to, because then I think they listen to him in a much different way.”
A minor example of this he gives at one point is this dialogue from a family session:
You say to a 9-year-old, “Listen, did you ever think that the reason your mom is mad when dad comes home 2 hours late is because she thinks he is playing with his secretary after hours?”
She says, “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, I just had this thought. How’s school going?”
“Oh, pretty good.”
And you have, by misdirection, left a pill in mother’s and father’s teeth that they can’t deny and they can’t not have heard and all sorts of funny things happen in the next two interviews…
With indirect communication (and particularly when paired with misdirection) you have a prime opportunity to throw seeds that are otherwise impossible to plant. Such is the power of groups and the wise (and pleasurable) use of them.
Once or twice in my life I’ve had the experience of overhearing people talking about me, and I can confirm it hits different. It’s almost like gaining a third person perspective of yourself - you become slightly more real after it (as silly as that may sound). Eric Hoffer wrote that “Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.”
But even more so when overheard.
And it’s a shame that such consultations are exceedingly rare in modern therapy. It’s a oversight, and one that I wish other institutions would spring up to take up the slack. I’m forever surprised at the lack of innovation in the “mental health” sphere, the lack of outside the box thinking or attempts at anything radically different than our current very much lacking systems.
When I was a kid I used to have this repeating dream where I would be in heaven or something and I’d have access to this machine where I could tell it to show me whatever I want. And occasionally I’d ask to hear what anyone had ever said about me.
Wouldn’t that be fascinating? And here I might be opening myself up to the charge of egotism but obviously there are vital things about ourselves that other people have a better vantage to be able to see. It’s valuable information and feedback that most of us probably don’t get near enough of.
For you teachers or group leaders out there, one interesting exercise a graduate class I took had us do at the end of the semester was to pass around papers, each with one students name on it, and everyone would write down one thing they liked about that person.
What was overwhelmingly my feedback? They liked my honesty, and wanted me to keep it up.
I’m trying, Practicum Supervision Class 1, Lord knows I’m trying.
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Rules to Stay Alive
This was a short list written by Whitaker specifically for therapists and their personal lives, but I'd like to think it applies more broadly. I’ll include some of my own notes in italics and some Whitaker quotes from elsewhere in non-italics under some in what may be a misguided attempt to clarify:
Relegate every significant other to second place.
“Many times the interpersonal relationship that does not work has involved a process of giving oneself away, of uniting with another person… This type of relationship becomes a bilateral lie: ‘If you will let me be Number One in your life, I’ll let you be the most important person in my life.’ Factually of course, I’m the most important person in my life, and no one else can take that place… I am the only person in my skin…
Learn how to love. Flirt with every infant available. Unconditional positive regard probably isn’t present after the baby is three years old.
Develop a reverence for your own impulses, and be suspicious of your behavior sequences.
Enjoy your mate more than your kids, and be childish with your mate.
Fracture role structures at will and repeatedly.
Roles become deadening shackles unless you are free - when appropriate - to move out of them.
Learn to retreat and advance from every position you take.
Guard your impotence as one of your most valuable weapons.
Impotence means freedom for Whitaker because if what you do doesn’t matter than you are freed to a relative extent from the felt shackles of responsibility. In family therapy (as opposed to individual therapy) the family is much stronger than the therapist so his position of weakness means he is granted freer reign to be “crazy” - i.e. alive.
“There is no danger of you, the therapist, harming the family, say I from on high. The only question is if you make any dent at all. The question is whether you will be just one more flea that will happen to pass by.”
Build long-term relations so than you can be free to hate safely.
You can only love to the extent that you can hate. And without either, there is no growth.
Face the fact that you must grow until you die. Develop a sense of benign absurdity of life – yours and those around you – and thus learn to transcend the world of experience. If we can abandon our missionary zeal, we have less chance of being eaten by cannibals.
Develop your primary process living. Evolve a joint craziness with someone you are safe with. Structure a professional cuddle group so you won’t abuse your mate with the garbage left over from the day’s work.
“Cuddle group” is Whitakers name for a group of professionals who meet on equal terms and take turns being patient and therapist to each other as they go over case notes. It’s a way of breaking out of the dangers of the isolation of therapeutic work.
As Plato said, “Practice dying.”