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improbablelove.com

  • 4/26/21 THE STRANGE CASE OF THE WILLIE WOBBLE, CHAPTER ONE: JUST BEFORE WILLIE 

squareoneandahalf.com

  • 11/1/19   HOW TO GET   MOVING PART 4  
  • 7/23/19   HOW TO GET MOVING PART 3
  • 5/18/19   HOW TO GET MOVING PART 2
  • 11/1/18   HOW TO GET MOVING
  • 6/15/18   BLOG START TERROR ​​
  • 7/25/18   THE DREAM OF THE MAGIC REMOTES​​

boomspring.com

  • 2/12/17  TRUMPWORLD: BIG CROWDS 
  • 8/10/16   ZORG REPORTS: WHAT ON EARTH
  • 6/30/16   DEATH BY OBESSIONAL THOUGHT 
  • 6/9/16     TRIALS OF EMPATHY  
  • 5/27/16   FOUND ART OBJECT SIMULATIONS  
  • 5/13/16   ALLMERICA'S SONG: INTOLERANCE AT THE GATES  
  • 3/22/17   DANGERS OF FAKE CONVERSATION
  • ​8/26/16   TRUMP, OUR HUNGER ARTIST  
  • 5/1/16     LOSS WITHOUT STRESS   
  • 4/28/16    FINAL ACCOUNTING​

How to Get Moving 4

10/29/2019

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Chapter 4
West Coast Offense

Recap: (scroll down for complete chapters)
Chapter 2:  Racing to make a contest submission, I write and draw day and night. I develop Repetitive Strain Injury.  Now my arm hurts when I write and draw for more than six minutes.  I’m rescued from terminal pessimism by my maddeningly upbeat occupational therapists.
Chapter 3:  I escape the humiliation of my incompetence performing assigned OT exercises, by engaging in wild fantasies of creative accomplishment, which are encouraged by my maddingly upbeat psychoanalyst.

I have a dirty little secret to confess.
 
You recall in chapter two when I was getting so excited about my idea for a new Hallmark channel movie, Thera Cane:  A Story of Love and Christmas?
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Sometimes when I am doing my OT exercises, I glance over at the TV and catch a few minutes of a Hallmark channel movie my wife “watches” out of the corner of her eye while she does the Times crossword.
 
Hope is a mental health expert.  She realizes the importance of titrating the relentless tide of news about floods, fires, fentanyl, tornadoes, terrorists and treason with a dose of anxiolytic love story.
 
I agree.  Hallmark distracts me from the numbing repetition of stretches and lifts.
 
Truth to tell, sometimes I get caught up in a movie and watch till the end.
 
The second half is the best part: when the girl ditches the bad boy friend, realizes the other guy, the one she had been discounting all along, is really her one true love, and embraces him with a blissful look as the gently falling snowflakes alight on her unfurrowed brow.
 
Don’t be so surprised.
Did you think I get my brilliant ideas from the interwebs?
 
I’m a little embarrassed about my flirtations with the Hallmark channel.
But that’s nothing compared to the shame I felt when my complete ignorance of anatomy was revealed to my OT team.
 
My OT’s helped me feel better, too.
 
No matter how often I told them I was afraid I’d never get back to writing and drawing, they insisted that I would.
 
 I complained,
“When I started just my right arm hurt.
Now my right arm, shoulders, neck, and back hurt, too.”
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“That’s what you call progress?!”
 
“Marion said, “Those other parts are just jealous of the attention your arm is receiving.”
 
Rebekah said, “All your parts work together, you know.  Isn’t it beautiful, the human neuro-musculo-skeletal system?”
 
Which was supposed to persuade me that having more of me hurt was a sign of improvement.
 
My OT’s had an answer for everything.
 
This is how they dealt with my incorrigibly negative feelings:
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Do you notice a resemblance between the approach of my OT’s and of my analyst?
 
I call it the empathic pivot, as in:
1) “Yes, yes, we know it hurts and you’re convinced you’re never going to get better.
PIVOT
2) “Now let’s get working and fix this.”
 
They never even said, "We know it hurts."
Much less, “Of course you feel terrible. it’s devastating to be unable to do what you love.”
 
They just listened intently to my weekly dysfunction report and moved right on to poking and prodding me.
 
Which worked pretty well.
 
I’m grateful to my OT team
 
They rescued me from the swamp of demoralization.
 
One hundred seventy-seven times.
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It was ultra-embarrassing to admit to my team that I was such a deficient anatomy student in medical school that I had to invent the mnemonic S-E-W to remember the order of the arm joints:
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My classmates had no trouble using the “towering tops” jingle to memorize the twelve cranial nerves in order, Column A à Column B:
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I never could get beyond memorizing Column A.
 
Over the years I’ve struggled to come to terms with my failure.
I think I’m okay with it now.
 
I realize that my take on Towering Tops was different from my classmates’:
 
I never cared much about the order of the cranial nerves.
I liked Towering Tops because it was a spark of poetry and fun in the stressfully boring life of a first-year medical student.
 
I enjoyed daydreaming about the Finn and German, and wondering what a hop is:
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The jingle stayed in my head all these years, so I could take it out and use it for something completely different than memorizing the cranial nerves.
 
Now I take my shame about my abysmal anatomy skills and my discouragement about my upper extremity,
I associate to these awful feeling-experiences from different phases of my life,
I mix and mash and massage them, and out jumps this word/picture story, driven by an organic force along an unpredictable path.
 
That’s what psychoanalysis is all about: sifting through your heavy mental detritus and making something new and light and energetic out of it.
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Something that moves and enlivens you
That connects you to yourself and your fellow humans.
 
If you can accomplish this simply by walking through a wall on Platform 9 3/4, King's Cross Station more power to you.
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I’ve had to put a s---load of effort into it.
 
Come to think of it, you’re not going to become a paragon of self-development simply by walking through a wall at King’s Cross Station.
 
There’s the whole Hogwarts curriculum to get through.
Not to mention extra-curriculars like dementor dueling and quidditch competitions.
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As George Bush famously said about everything, "It's hard work."
 
Do you know who else is working hard?
Visually gifted neuroscientists, who spare no effort to further enhance our ability to memorize the cranial nerves, in order.
 
Thanks to them we have two compelling 21st century visual mnemonics:
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Number Cruncher looks frightening, but he’s really a rather tame cyborg who swears by Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.
Ms. Digital Delight will annoy you with her insistently sunny disposition, but she’s a whiz at doing your taxes.
 
I have to make a difficult choice now.
 
I can wrap up this chapter now, as planned.
Or I can tell you what happened today.
 
If I tell you what happened today, I will destroy the carefully planned chronological architecture of my story, How to Get Moving.
 
According to my plan, we’re not yet up to today in the story. 
Right now, as of the cranial nerves, we’re in February, 2018.
 
But something bad happened today.
October 15, 2018.
Something traumatic.
I want to tell you about it.
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If I tell you about it now, it might not hurt so much.  I might feel a little better.
I definitely should tell you now.
 
But If I tell you now, the entire chronological architecture of How to Get Moving will get messed up.
​
No question, I should tell you later.
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What to do? What to do ?...........
 
Come to think of it, the chronological architecture is already totally messed up.
Maybe a list will help me figure this out:
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This isn’t helping!
It’s only making things worse.
I’m caught up in chaotic time warp!
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SCREW CHRONOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE!

​Today Rebekah told me she’s leaving her job at Freedom Physical Therapy and moving
to Seattle
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How can she do this!!!???
She doesn’t even plan to live there forever.
It’s just for sh---s and giggles.
She and husband are coming back in a few years.
 
I don’t need her in a few years.  I need her ​
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We made a plan today for my last three visits and for after she leaves.
 
F—K THE PLAN!
 
I feel like a little kid.
Rebekah and Marion have always been around to help me get better.
How am I supposed to keep on getting better when my team is falling apart?
 
I’ll have to do more on my own.
 
F—K DOING MORE ON MY OWN!
 
They can’t take half of my team away!
Can they?
I’m suing!
Can you give me the name of a good rehab attorney?

Now all my doubts have returned.
 
I feel sad today.

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Update (1)
I can’t believe next Tuesday is the first anniversary of Rebekah’s departure.
Rebekah’s had a baby.  She still lives in Seattle.
 
I felt tearful for a whole week after Rebekah left.
Gradually my sadness wound down.
 
I haven’t felt very sad since.
About Rebekah, anyway.
 
I'm fortunate that I still have Marion to help me   with my  upper extremity rehab.     
If I want to make her laugh, I say, “Now don’t get any ideas about dry needling!”
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Thanks to the physical and mental ministrations of Rebekah, Marion, Hope and my small but devoted band of  supporters at Freedom Physical Therapy and Square One and a Half, I’m back to blogging.
 
Life is pretty much as it was before RSI struck, except for some minor adjustments to my daily blogging schedule:
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I don’t know if my arms, shoulders, and neck are back to normal, because I don’t remember what normal was.
 
No doubt I’ll never be the same as I was before RSI came into my life.
 
Are we ever the same after something as we were before?
 
​Update (2)
This is going to be the last chapter of How to Get Moving.
I think.
 
What more is there to say after you get better?
 
No, wait!  There is more.
 
I go back to bed in the middle of writing these postscripts and have a dream:
Hope and I are about to get off a train.  I panic because I can’t find my duffel bag of clothes.  Hope walks out onto the platform, but I don’t follow her because I have to keep looking for my bag.  I can’t accept that it’s gone.
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I wake up with a bad feeling in my gut.
I’m awake, but I’m still trying to find my duffel.
If I only look long enough and hard enough…
 
As I give up my search, I feel something coming on strong:
Love/Time.
Love/Time is what you feel when you realize you should show the people you love that you do, before it’s too late.
 
Especially Hope.
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Also, my children, my relatives, and my friends.
 
And Greta Thunberg, for trying to save our planet.
 
If you want to hear the music, listen to this James Taylor song.
 
Thanks for being here!
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How to Get Moving 3

7/23/2019

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Chapter 3
Thera Cane Games: A Mind Unleashed

Over many months of treatment for my Repetitive Strain Injury (see HGM Chap 2) I  developed a variety of pained exclamations in response to my occupational therapists‘ pushing and prodding.
 
Often, I was unable to contain myself and would cry out whatever came into my head.
 
Rebekah and Marian were so impressed with my feedback, they hatched a plan to monetize it by creating a set of bobble head dolls that mimicked my outcries, and marketing them as a tool that:
1) OTs could use to assess pain levels, and
2) patients could use as inspirational comfort objects.
 
I said I’m in for 20% of the profits.

They said okay as long as I keep generating highly original outcries on a biweekly basis.
 
This was our prototype plan:
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My wife Hope, whose experience growing up in a small town made her an expert in public relations, wondered if high decibel expletive emissions might alienate staid suburban customers.
 
Of course, I didn’t listen.  We went ahead with testing, which went well until an unfortunate outcome with the 20+ pain bobble head.
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We decided to put the 20+ pain model on ice.
 
Rebekah and Marion decided I should do more therapy at home.

I warned them that I suffered from lifelong visual-motor incompetence syndrome.  But the more embarrassed and hesitant I became, the more they plied me with encouragement.
 
All too often their confidence was mistaken:
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​It was humiliating to report my failures.
But nothing could shake their faith in my capacity to progress. 
 
As soon as I mastered a few elementary exercises, they rewarded me by prescribing new in-home activities employing simple props, like Thera Cane, an affordable deep pressure massaging tool.
 
For frequent travelers, Thera Cane Max dis-assembles in seconds for convenient fit in your carry-on.
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The Thera Cane Owner’s Manual is replete with easy to follow, annotated drawings.

Easy for users who are not visual-motorically challenged.
For me, it was far from straightforward:
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​At which point Hope, ever consistent in her promulgation of healthy restraint, said: ​
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I didn’t want to disappoint her expectations, so I did what I usually do.  Got in deeper.
 
I told Rebekah and Marion I was determined to master equipment-assisted self-massage.
 
They recommended more intensive practice, so I purchased the portable Thera Cane Max, which I could pack when flying to visit my ancient Aunt Lenore in Orlando.
 
One evening I got so frustrated trying to replicate the pictures in the Thera Cane Owner’s Manual, I threw T.C. Max on the floor.  He landed with a clatter on top on T.C. Regular.  
 
Suddenly I got an impulse to try to pick up Max without disturbing Regular. It took some concentration, but it was such an engrossing challenge, I felt inspired.
 
I immediately ordered a multicolored assortment of Thera Canes.  When the boxes arrived, I tore them open and threw all the canes on the floor.
 
That was how I invented the game Pickup Canes, a large-scale version of the children’s classic, Pick-Up Sticks, which I found a lot more therapeutic than operationalizing the anatomical and mechanical complexities of deep pressure self-massage.
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From there my Thera Cane thinking really got rolling.
 
I dreamt of a new Thera Cane game, 16 Cane Pickup, based on the classic “game“ 52 Card Pickup, in which the dealer (plotting perpetrator) throws an entire deck in the air so the cards land strewn across the floor.  The other player (unsuspecting victim) must pick them up:
 
Classic 52 Card Pickup:
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Frank’s 16 Thera Cane Pickup
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​Hope interrupted my pleasant reverie with more words of wisdom:
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​The next morning, I confessed to my analyst, Mel:
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"Help me out.  I can’t stop making up new Thera Cane games. What a waste of time.  No doubt I’m defending myself against my terrible embarrassment about my abysmal visual-motor abilities, and my horrible discouragement about my slow progress with my arm rehab."
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​"Richard, you’ve really got something going with your Thera Cane games.  If you keep up this creative flow, nothing can stop your recovery."
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"​You think my right upper extremity pain and dysfunction is all in my head, don’t you? And you call yourself a 21st century analyst!"
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"Mind over matter."
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"Mel, advancing age has fried your brain."
After my session I thought about this for a long time.
 
Indeed, I was having a lot of fun inventing Thera Cane games.
Just as I have writing a blog, which I hadn’t even imagined before my analysis. 
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I channeled  Pascal's Wager, which I learned about in Mr. Herold’s high school French class.
 
Blaise Pascal, the famous 17th century mathematician, scientist and philosopher, was riven with doubt about his belief in God.
 
Fortunately, his interest in gambling led him to found modern probability theory.
Which he then applied to his God problem.
 
Pascal reasoned:
 
“I can believe in God or not believe.”
 
“If I believe In God and live my life piously, and God exists, I will enjoy an afterlife of eternal bliss. (infinite gain).
If God doesn’t exist, I’ll have given up some pleasures for no gain. (finite loss).”
 
“If I don’t believe, I can indulge in some idle pleasures (finite gain), but I could miss out on an afterlife of eternal bliss. (infinite loss).”
 
Pascal decided to bet on God.
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My analysis was already helping me in so many ways.
Why not bet on psychoanalysis?
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No sooner had I opened my mind to this possibility than I felt a sudden creative
Impulse.
​
An idea for a feel-good rom-com I could submit to the Hallmark channel:
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Hope got behind it immediately.
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"Romance, Christmas and a challenging health condition. How can they turn it down?  Write up and submit it today!  Remember you obsessed so long about sending Final Accounting to the NYT Magazine, they published someone else’s piece about the untimely death of their accountant!"
What I love about Hope (among many other things) is that she can see the upside of my most far-fetched fantasies.
 
I started working in earnest on my Thera Cane screen play.
I began to believe that psychoanalysis could help me beat my RSI.
I felt better.
 
Can’t get enough of How to Get Moving?  The next installment, Chapter 4, West Coast Offense is coming soon to Square One and a Half on a browser near you!
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How to Get Moving 2

5/13/2019

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Chapter 2
​SECRETS OF THE UPPER EXTREMITY

There is more than one way in which my second post, the comic Dream of the Magic Remotes (7/25/18) gave me grief.
 
Back in the summer of 2017, the work on Magic Remotes was going so slowly I decided to set a deadline to complete it for submission to an online contest.
 
It seemed like a good idea at the time. What I didn’t realize is when you compress writing a long post into a short time, you create the chronological version of a “blivit,” which is ten pounds of s—t in a five-pound bag.  (blivit doubters click here)
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When blivits explode, bad things happen, like precipitating my second obscure neurological disorder, Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI).
 
RSI is a condition in which the prolonged performance of repetitive actions causes pain and functional impairment.
 
In other words, if you write and draw hour after hour, day after day, the nerves and muscles of your arms and neck get aggravated and exhausted.
 
When they can’t take it anymore, they rebel.  
 
This is how you get RSI:
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​This is how I got RSI:
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If I had only seen the flow chart soon enough, I might have escaped my fate as depicted in the lower right corner. 
 
Or if I had followed the example of my wife Hope, who lives comfortably within the limits of reasonable exertion.
 
Except for her unbounded devotion to family. 
Which is why you will find her at 3:00 a.m. assembling IKEA furniture whenever one of our children moves into a new apartment.
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It’s easy to avoid RSI:
Use good posture, take breaks, and optimize your work station ergonomics.

It is hard to treat RSI.

The treatment for RSI is occupational therapy (OT).
That’s not what I had in mind.
I was hoping for something quick and definitive, like
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​These were the actual facts on the ground:
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If you like quick and definitive treatments, don’t get RSI.
​
It took many months of OT  to get me back in shape.
 
When I started, I hurt too much to
-lift a bag of dog food
-crank a can opener or twist a doorknob
-write or draw for more than a few minutes
 
I can live without dog food and doorknobs, but not without drawing and writing.
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I cried a lot.
I didn’t want anyone to see, so most of the time I cried inside my head.
A clever tactic, but not without its drawbacks, e.g.
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​Feeling too despondent to cry was another flawed tactic:
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​​I also felt
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It took many months for me to get back in shape.
I felt my progress was so slow, I’d never be able to function like I used to.
 
Rebekah and Marion, my occupational therapists, disagreed.
They were surprisingly optimistic.
 
They said, "All you need to do is follow this prescription:"
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I fell under their infectious influence.
 
A straightforward, non-invasive treatment!
No blue pills with dreadful side effects!
No terrifying surgical procedures with unpredictable results!
 
Overnight my whole attitude changed.
 
I wish!  Actually, it took a long time.
 
Following their simple prescription turned out to be a lot harder than I thought.
 
Exercises included stretches and glides.
 
Under their guidance I performed 6789 stretches the first year, a challenging task for someone not known for his visual-motor coordination or spatial relations aptitude.

I particularly enjoyed some of the more expressive stretches, such as:
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And
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I also performed more than 1376 nerve glides.
Nerve glides are exercises that aim to restore mobilization of inflamed peripheral nerves.
 
I came to enjoy the novelty of nerve glides that required me to navigate my upper extremities into weird positions:
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You might not realize there is an intellectual side to OT.  
​
How many people even know what a nerve glide is, much less how to perform one?
 
Or that, ergonomically speaking, your head is the equivalent of a ten-pound bowling ball.
​
Which is why it’s important to try to keep your head on straight:
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That’s hard to remember.
And that’s only the physical part of keeping your head on straight.

​Fortunately for me, Hope helps me keep my mental head on straight.
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Another physical intervention I “enjoyed” was trigger point release.
Trigger points are tight bands of muscle you get from too much strain. 
 
Your therapist presses on your trigger points till they hurt.
When she finds one that is particularly painful, she presses harder and longer.
 
Rebekah is a firm believer in the therapeutic value of trigger point release.  She executed at least 779 of these between August 1, 2017 and July 30, 2018.  For example:
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And
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After a half hour of trigger point release, you ache so badly, you forget all about the tightness in your arm and shoulder you came in with.
 
Marion favors dry needling for trigger point release. 
 
You get to experience two kinds of sharp pain,
1) when she inserts the needle
2) when your muscles jerk uncontrollably
 
Dry needling feels awful, but you do get immediate relief – from these iatrogenic pains –after the needle is withdrawn.
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Marion would have dry needled me every day if I had let her.
I didn’t let her.

As for Rebekah, I discovered I could get her to stop pressuring my trigger points by asking her an academic question.

For example, what is the structure and function of the brachial plexus?
Some OT’s would have shrugged off my question and continued the torture.
​
Some might have answered, 
“The brachial plexus is the network of nerves that sends signals from your spinal cord to your shoulders, arms and hands,” and let it go at that.
 
Rebekah would respond by grabbing a white board and markers and delivering an illustrated mini-lecture:
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A double bonus for me.
1) Interrupts torture for a few minutes
2) I’m incapable of absorbing anything anatomical without a multicolored diagram.
 
Week after week, the same routine: appointments, assessments, exercises, ergonomics…
For a long time, I could barely sense any progress.
 
Nevertheless, thanks to the devoted ministrations of Hope, my OT team and my analyst, Mel,
I persisted
And
Inadvertently learned many of the moving secrets of the upper extremity.
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What’s that you say? I just thanked my analyst, but you can’t find a trace of him here in Chapter 2?
Isn’t this blog supposed to be about psychoanalysis?
 
My apologies.
Analyst Mel has never had a role in a blog before.
He’s a little anxious about his debut.
I’ve suggested a remedy, but he has a different idea:
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​I hope he knows what he’s doing, because I’m planning to feature him in an important scene in my next post, Chapter 3 of How to Get Moving, Richard’s Wager, coming soon to Square One and a Half on a browser near you.
 
Thank you for your patience.
Stay tuned to this space!
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How to Get Moving

10/25/2018

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Chapter 1
COMIC CHALLENGES

I’ve been going through a lot while you’ve been gone.
Where have you been?
I’ve missed you.
 
I know, I haven’t been in touch for a while.
But I feel a little let down, as if you left me. 
Isn’t it strange each of us sees him/herself as the center of the universe?
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Anyway, I’m so glad we’re back together.
I’ve been through a lot since we last met.
 
Here’s what’s happened:
Some of you said some nice things about my second post, [Dream of the Magic Remotes].
I took a chance and allowed myself to feel pleased I’d created something kind of cool.
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Immediately I felt there's no way I can create anything as cool the next time.
Not now.  Probably not ever.

The likelihood is less than Match.com replacing Tinder as the millennials’ top dating app.
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Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that.
Would you believe a lot more complicated?
 
I started to draw Dream of the Magic Remotes last year. 
It was taking me a really, really long time. 
 
It was the first full comic I’d ever drawn.
 
Comics look easy, until you try to tell a story by cramming all your words and pictures into the rigid confines of identical panels.
Disaster threatens at every turn.
 
For example, your drawing is too big .  Or too small.
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​You can work really, really hard, and still fail miserably, unless you can learn to think inside the box.
 
When you chop up your story into little bits, it’s subject to unanticipated fluctuations in your mental state that derail your productivity and wreak havoc on your innocent, unsuspecting characters:
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When you are comic challenged, your sleep is disturbed by nightmares that confirm it is your destiny to be haunted by your comic drawing incompetence for the rest of your life:
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​​If you are fortunate enough to be in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, you can discuss your comic failure nightmares with your analyst. In no time at all your nightmares will be transformed into comic success dreams:
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Did I mention in a previous post that in psychoanalysis you have to tell the truth?

“Yes you did.  Blog Start Terror, June 15, 2018.”

You’re impossible! Are you an untreated obsessive-compulsive, or do you just take me too seriously?
 
Alright, I just lied again. It might take some time for your nightmares to be transformed by psychoanalysis.
 
Doesn’t everything really worthwhile take time and effort?
Was Rome built in a day?
​
Did Einstein write the three key papers explaining how the universe works immediately after taking his first breath?
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No!  It took him 25 whole years, and he was super smart.
 
Psychoanalysis takes a lot less time than that! 
 
It isn’t so bad that it takes some serious time and effort to turn your nightmares into dreams.

​Lots of good things happen along the way, like turning some of your nightmares into dreams.
 
By the time you say good-bye to your analyst, some of your most cherished dreams will have become real, like the Velveteen Rabbit’s. *
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I get such a thrill out of sharing my favorite books, I'm tempted now to mail you a copy of the The Velveteen Rabbit if you send me your address.
 
Please don’t do this.
 
Nightmare scenario: 
I can’t resist sending you a copy.
You love Velveteen Rabbit (V.R.) so much, you write about it on Facebook.
Pretty soon thousands of people are sending me their addresses, expecting me to mail them their free copy.
 
The IRS becomes suspicious when I list over $150,000 of V.R. purchases as a business expense. 
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Every time I send out a copy I’m moved to relive my V.R. experience by listening to the Meryl Streep recording.

Each time I listen, especially to the ending, I get teary remembering reading V.R. to my children and thinking about how they grew up so fast and how love makes things real.
 
I shed so many tears I get severely dehydrated, which leads to a serious medical condition.
 
My serious medical condition takes up so much time and energy, I have to discontinue my blog.
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​Wouldn’t it be sad if I met the psychically daunting Comic Challenge and then had to stop writing my blog because of a devastating medical condition secondary to severe dehydration?
 
We’d miss getting together on Square One and a Half, wouldn’t we?
 
Seriously, please don’t send me your address.
 
Hmm…  Come to think of it, maybe I can avert this disaster by consulting my psychoanalyst before my sadness completely overwhelms me.
 
Let’s see how this plays out:
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​Seriously, don’t send me your address.
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The Dream of the Magic Remotes

7/23/2018

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Case File: Mr. Willy Takeoff
Subject tags: beginning analysis, finding hope

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Blog Start Terror

6/15/2018

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​​I’m pretty disturbed right now.
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I’m too frightened to start my new blog, despite having put forth my best effort ever to overcome profound psychological obstacles.

First I had to struggle through a challenging childhood with loving parents who did their best but couldn't overcome their inadequacy. They were so anxious, they were frightened of their own shadows.
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My mother’s inhibitions were so profound, she would rather risk serious musculoskeletal injury dragging home six monstrously heavy bags of groceries than learn to operate a big piece of equipment that makes terrifying noises and might crash into random things.
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My father’s frustration tolerance was so low, his face made cracking noises like a frozen pond whenever he had to wait in line for more than three minutes.
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I was so uncomfortable in my real world, I spent much of my time inhabiting other galaxies.
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I’m going to skip over the struggles of my adolescence and adulthood.  If I included those, my Word file would be so long and pathos filled that when I pressed Save, my laptop would seize up and I’d be confronted by the spinning wheel of death.
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Of those years, I will say only that I worked my way through 5.5 serious unsuccessful relationships, 1154 sleep deprived nights, 1 major and 2 minor surgeries, and an obscure neurological disorder. I’ve tried 12 psychoactive medications and seen at least 7 psychotherapists.
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I’m very frightened by the spinning wheel of death.  The spinning wheel of death is my nemesis.  Once hatched, it spawns hordes of terrifying offspring who think nothing of feasting on arms, legs and internal organs, with a particular predilection for brains.
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The spinning wheel is like the black marble in Stephen King’s 1999 mini-series Storm of the Century.   If you see the black marble in your hand when you open your eyes, the bad guy takes your beloved child from the village and you never see her again. 
 
Don’t watch this!  Unless you really like horror movies.  I never look at them, except accidentally when someone else is watching and I walk by unsuspectingly, and then only for five minutes.
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I better bring you up to date and be done.
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Recent challenges I’ve faced include:
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Despite all this, I feel myself gaining some momentum from talking with you.  You might worry that I’m out of touch with reality. After all I’m not talking, I’m writing. And there’s only me here.  But look, now, as you read this, don’t you feel like you’re talking back to me?  If I’m crazy, so are you.

Stop worrying! This is psychoanalysis. We can experience anything we like and still walk out the door certifiably sane.
 
Right now, I’m still pretty disturbed, but not quite as disturbed as before.  Thanks to our conversation, I’m kind of excited.

Maybe I’ll take my blog live before I lose my courage.
But wait!  What if I can’t tolerate the massive exposure and there isn’t an Undo button???
 
Uh-oh, I’m getting more and more excited and scared.
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Hello again.  I know it’s been a while, but I have a good excuse. Turns out I got so excited and scared I swooned.
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I debated whether to drop the word “swoon,” which seems kind of outmoded.  Then I was reassured by a google graph that after a substantial period of decline, “swoon” has been on a sharp rise since 2001. Then I debated at length whether to show you a screenshot of the graph:
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​​Or a drawing:
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I obsessed for a couple of days about this, occasionally stopping to eat a bowl of generic rice krispies or take a nap.  Then I made a table:
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Unfortunately, the table only clarified that my choices were of exactly equal goodness (and badness).  I was about to fall into a paralytic stupor, when suddenly I recalled the power of free association that I learned from doing analytic therapy.  I gave up thinking about it logically and let my mind wander.  Suddenly I thought of Hegel’s dialectic, which is the only thing I remember from my comprehensive study of the history of Western thought:

Thesis + Antithesis  —> Synthesis
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In no time at all I came up with this elegant solution, a combination screenshot/drawing, which I call a “scrawing.” It may not be the prettiest thing out there, but it does maximize graphical goodness. I think.  
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I could have shown you my scrawing to begin with, but I wanted to demonstrate the awesome power of psychoanalysis, which can free up your mind to develop a flow that takes you to places you didn’t know you could go, to create things you didn’t know you could create.

Back to “swoon.”
In your staid, traditional dictionary, “Swoon” means “to faint from extreme emotion.”
 
In your hip, up-to-the-minute, online Urban Dictionary, it means “to be so excited about a thing or person that you get all bubbly on the inside.”
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Turns out “swoon” is an awesome model for living.  Just when you think it’s about to die out, it adapts and keeps going. It evolves from fainting to bubbling. So, I’ve left swooning in.
 
The trick with swooning is to wake up relatively quickly after you faint. 
Psychoanalysis has been known to increase your wake-up efficiency.
I used to be unconscious for days after a swoon.  Not anymore.
In fact, what with you and my psychoanalysis helping me out, I think I’m finally ready to turn my blog loose and post my first post.
 
What’s the worst thing that could happen? You don’t visit. You visit once, and you never come back.  It’s all the same to me. I’m doing all this for myself anyway.
 
Sorry, I just lied. In psychoanalysis you have to tell the truth.
Isn’t that a b---h?
 
If you don’t visit, I’ll feel bad.
If you do visit and don’t come back, I’ll feel worse
Since you’re here, I’m definitely in danger of feeling worse.
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​Don’t make me feel worse!
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I have a real treat for your next visit: a comic with the alluring title Dream of the Magic Remotes, which I’ll be posting in a couple of weeks:
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​If you want to see the rest of the comic you'll just have to come back.

​Please come back.  I need you to come back.  Will you come back?
​To paraphrase Princess Leia, "This is my most desperate hour. Help me, Square One and a Half visitor.  You're my only hope." *
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If The psychoanalytic Force moves you, you can help me right now with a comment below.
 
*If you want to relive the original, try: www.starwars.com/video/help-me-obi-wan-kenobi
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Dangers of Fake Conversation

3/22/2017

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Some years ago, I fell asleep behind the couch while conducting a session of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. My patient, a young man named Michael, turned around and caught me with my eyes closed.
 
“Are you asleep,” he asked. I jolted awake and scrambled for an answer. “No,” I said, “Just resting my eyes.”  Michael lay back down, unsatisfied.  “I don’t know,” he said, “I’d like to believe you, but I don’t.” He went on voicing his doubts, asserting himself in a way I’d never heard before.
 
As the seconds turned into minutes, I grew more and more uncomfortable until I could no longer bear my feelings.  I admitted the truth.
 
In the wake of this incident Michael wanted to quit. He moved from the couch to the chair, where he could keep an eye on me. Over the next few weeks he expressed his anger and disappointment. He struggled to square his new disillusion with his trust in me based on years of fruitful alliance.
 
In the end he decided to stay, now protected and energized by a new attitude: “Trust, but verify.” This experience spurred his development into a mature adult who recognized his responsibility for himself.
 
Michael never again used the couch, but we continued the partnership that enabled him to conquer his fears and achieve his goals — starting a business, marrying, and becoming a father.
 
What enabled me, compelled me to admit my failure, despite my shame and fear, was the imperative to tell the truth, born of my own moral code buttressed by my identity as an analyst.
 
In analytic therapy we work hard to unearth distortions of truth that block forward movement toward creative loving and living. Succeeding at this task depends first and foremost on the mutual efforts of analyst and patient to maintain an honest conversation.

Today, in the world outside the consulting room, we truth-seekers find ourselves strangers in a strange land, presided over by a man whose rise to power rests on his instinct to stir up what is base and false in us, rather than what is good and true
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Our compromised leader engenders enthusiasm in his followers by engaging in false conversation, monologue disguised as dialogue.
 
Followers in a false conversation think they have a say, when they are actually following a script in which only the leader has a voice:
 
Leader: We all know it’s a shame, what they try to do to us. We know it’s them, not us, don’t we?
Followers: Them, them!
Leader: We have no choice but to round them up and put them away.
Followers: Yeah, round them up and put them away!
Leader: Now there’s a suggestion for you.  I couldn’t have come up with a better one myself.  I knew you were smart!  Round them up and put them away!
Followers: Round them up!  Put them away!  Round them up! Put them away!
 
Fake conversation is pervaded by lies planted in the midst of unsuspecting followers. It provides the means of turning demonstrable truths into their opposites. Laws that deprive citizens of the vote become laws that protect us from voter fraud.  Empirical evidence of climate change becomes fabrication for a hoax. 
 
When Sigmund Freud was attempting to leave Austria in 1938, he was forced to sign a statement supporting the government. Freud asked to add a sentence, “I heartily recommend the Gestapo to anyone.” Reduced to the status of a refugee dependent on the beneficence of the functionaries of a persecutory regime, he used his gift for irony to inject a final dose of truth, an element of honest conversation, into a body of lies.
 
The founder of psychoanalysis was able to make his way to freedom because he recognized the fundamental frailty of the human mind, our craving for the fulfillment of wishes for dominance, admiration, and love.  He understood how our emotional needs, forged in the heat of trauma, blind us to the realities of the worlds inside and outside of us, how our vulnerability as individuals allows us to be conscripted into mass movements in the misuse of power.
 
Psychoanalysis has evolved enormously since Freud’s day.  Its expanded insight gives us far greater capacity to help people make creative use of the good and true for the benefit of themselves and the societies they inhabit.
 
The progenitors of the base and false may expand their reach by harnessing our fears of vulnerability and uncertainty, but they rarely make progress in the depth and complexity of thought and feeling.  That kind of progress, which gives rise to a more humane and innovative society, requires real conversation, authentic dialogue that promotes conflict and compromise, empathy and mutuality.
 
That is why my experience as a psychoanalyst gives me hope and energizes me in these discouraging times.
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Trumpworld: Big Crowds

2/12/2017

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PSYBC Presents Meet the Mess with Chuck Prod

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Chuck:  We’re hearing some amazing things from the new administration this week. Yesterday, President Trump’s press secretary, Brawn Slicer, came out swinging about the press misrepresenting the crowd size at President Trump’s inauguration.  Here’s what he said.

Brawn: Contrary to lies told by the sick, disingenuous mainstream media, yesterday President Trump’s inauguration was attended by the largest crowd ever. And that was only in the U.S. Actually, in Washington, D.C. alone. If you count the other continents, it was the largest crowd in the history of our solar system. If you add the two closest galaxies, it was the largest crowd since the Big Bang. Come to think of it, it was the only other Big Bang since the original one.  Probably even bigger than the original.  Louder, and with more moving parts.
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Chuck: Later that day I had the privilege of a private audience with Brawn.  Here’s how it went.

Chuck: Wow, what a first press conference. Well, not a conference exactly.  More like a press beat down.  Tell us how it happened, Brawn.
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Brawn: Yeah, the Boss made me do it. He didn’t exactly say, “Go out there and lie.”  He said, “I’m great, am I not?  Everybody knows how great I am.  Even you.  Wouldn’t the greatest leader in American history have the largest crowd ever?  Now go out there and tell it like it is…or else!
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Chuck: This morning I had the opportunity to interview the President’s advisor, Carry-On Con-Woman, to seek further enlightenment on the attendance issue:

Chuck: So, let’s talk about Brawn Slicer’s press announcement yesterday. Don’t you agree the inauguration size was wildly exaggerated?

Carry-On: Let’s focus on the numbers that the American people really care about. Like how many dyspeptic, Planned Parenthood-despising angels our amazing President can fit on the head of a made-in-America pin. And how many times he can say “forgotten white men” and “American exceptionalism” in 24 hours.
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Chuck:  Carry-On, you’re not really answering the question.

Carry On:  What question?  Is there a question?
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Chuck:  Yes. Why are you lying about the size of the crowd?

Carry-On: Were you there? I mean did you cover the entire solar system? Did you even report from Pluto?​

Chuck: Pluto isn’t a planet anymore.

Carry-On: Just because the International Astronomical Union says so?  Are we going to cede our sovereignty to an international cabal? Have you talked to the hard working, white middle class Plutonians who lost their jobs under Obama? Donald has! Lying Hillary thought she was too good for that little excursion.  Anyway, the next Executive Order will dictate U.S. withdrawal from the Interstellar Association of Sane Species.  Put that in your e-cigarette and vape it!
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Chuck:  Be reasonable, Carry-On. PSYBC is not funded by plutocratic billionaires. We can’t cover demoted planets.​

Carry-On: Just as I thought.  A mere 4.67 billion miles is too much for you arrogant liberal weenies. Not to worry. When we drain the swamp, we will be pumping the waste water under the ground of the east and west coasts. When you add that to the rising sea levels caused by global warming, by 2020 the entire feculent progressive professional class will be six feet under.
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Chuck: I thought you Trumpists don’t believe in global warming? Didn’t President Trump call it the hoax of the century?

Carry-On: We never called it a hoax. You just did.​

Chuck: Let me play you a video of your boss’s campaign speech in Hilton Head, South Carolina, on May 5 2016:
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Carry-On:   Uh, oh.  Chuck, let me consult my notes…​

Let’s see, maybe he did say that. But he didn’t mean it. He says a lot of things he doesn’t mean. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t amazing. Or false. He did mean it, but he un-meant it later. He meant it for unemployed white people, but not for important people who do great, great projects.  Or maybe—OMG—I dropped my cheat sheets in a puddle. Who put this puddle here, anyway?! My boss promised to eliminate all puddles in his first five days.  Oh, but look at my reflection in that one, aren’t I awesome?
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Chuck:  (Speechless)

Carry-On:  As Brawn said, Me and My Boss, we’re the loudest noise in the history of the alternate galaxy.​

Chuck:  The alternate galaxy?  I’d call it the fabric of infinite falsehoods!
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Carry-On:  Haven’t you read The Theory of Everything? 

Chuck: Isn’t that the awesome collection of Roz Chast cartoons?

Carry-On: No, you ignorant liberal flunky.  That’s Theories of Everything.  I’m talking about Steve Hawkins, the science guy.  He says that every alternate reality already exists.
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Chuck: I thought you guys didn’t believe in science.

Carry-On: That was yesterday.

Chuck:  And that’s all for today’s MTP!
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PsychNotes: The world that you and I live in provides ample opportunity to experience ourselves as ordinary and insignificant.  Such opportunities are anathema to the pathological narcissist, who is constant danger of a precipitous fall in self-regard. Healthy people fend off threats to self-regard with ordinary internal and external resources – reminding ourselves of our worth, seeking feedback from people who appreciate us. For the pathological narcissist, such measures are difficult to take, and in any case insufficient. But he does have another, albeit drastic option at his disposal: change the world to conform to his needs by substituting an internally generated fantasy version for the version most of us agree is real. Thus do little crowds become BIG. The frightening thing is that such desperate alterations can be applied to far more important bits of reality than crowd size
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Trump, Our Hunger Artist

8/26/2016

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The fortunes of a demagogue lie in the way we resolve the conflict he stimulates in us between our dark fantasies of power and glory and our mature strivings toward love and reason…
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Sigmund Freud likened the work of a psychoanalyst to that of an archeologist, who digs down through layers of history, searching for fragments that enable him to reconstruct the past. The fragments Freud sought were his patients’ foundational childhood experiences, which often hold the key to re-awakening thwarted development.
The creator of “the talking cure” took almost as much interest in the origins of words and names as in the origins of neuroses. I was reminded of his enthusiasm a few months ago, when I heard that comedian John Oliver, in an effort to deflate the brand of Trump, revealed that the surname was derived from the ancestral Drumpf. The transformation from the pedestrian to the powerful patronymic may have occurred in the late 1600’s.
 
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the verb “trump” derives from the Old French tromper, to blow a trumpet or a horn or, metaphorically, to deceive, cheat, or act the fool.  Quacks and mountebanks attracted the public by blowing a horn, then cheated them into buying things like magic medicines, mesmerizing audiences with stories, jokes and tricks. The term mountebank derives from the Italian imperative monta in banco, meaning get up on a bench.
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Have you seen any images this year of a man on a platform crowing, gesticulating and yarn spinning as he tries to sway his audience to purchase potent potions of resentment? One picture tells a thousand-word story.  One word unveils a thousand poignant pictures.
 
We know that Donald was a troubled boy whose unruly behavior inspired his parents to send him to military school, which he credits with shaping him up. But it’s not the troubled demagogue who’s on the couch here; it’s our relationship with him.
 
Back in May, I watched him use an entire hour-long speech to stoke the destructive fires of xenophobia. I wanted to tear myself away, but I was drawn by an irresistible force.  I was fascinated by the vulgarity and hostility that provoked protest which, in turn, provoked more hostility, in a darkening spiral. Despite my better instincts, I was enjoying the thrill of participating in a lurid fantasy and hoped the coverage would go on. At the same time, increasingly unable to deny the realness of the frightening event playing out in front of me, I wished it would stop.  My attention was riveted by the clash of these two desires, both my own.
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In Kafka’s short story, A Hunger Artist, a public performer who starves himself in a cage resents his promoter, who forbids him to fast longer than forty days, believing that after such time the sympathy of his audience inevitably declines. Despite the artist’s fame he feels dissatisfied and misunderstood.  He erupts in fury whenever a spectator tries to comfort him.  When public fasting goes out of fashion he joins a circus, where he is barely noticed.  Just before he dies he abjures admiration, insisting that he only fasts because he can’t find food he likes.  Big crowds flock to view his replacement, a young panther who radiates vigor.
 
Trump is the hunger artist of our time.  He comes complete at no extra charge with himself as his promoter. Trump the self-promoter tries to get Trump the hunger artist to play within bounds that provide just enough titillation to keep the show going, but not so much that we lose interest or become too afraid. Their act offers the unmatched spectacle of a man who needs no nourishment other than our adoration.  His awful feats are limited only by the barriers we erect to contain him. He yearns to vanquish whatever restrains his power to subjugate our common decency to our primitive desire to hurt and hate. We are the audience without whom his act could not exist. Even those of us who profess the most rabid disagreement with his program and persona legitimize his performance with our insistent attention.
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Now, embittered by diminishing popularity and mounting criticism, the hunger artist of our time grows ever more desperate to break out of his limited act.  We spectators see his window of opportunity closing and move on to the the next big spectacle, the Olympians of Rio, NFL 2016, the return of The Walking Dead.  But he cannot bear our changing the channel. Unable to tolerate loss, he agitates his followers with paranoid visions of violent resistance to a “rigged” system. Even now, we underestimate his power to manufacture virulent variations of himself at our peril.
 
Will his next mutated act rule the circus or be contained?  Strangely enough, the outcome depends on our ability to empathize with him, i.e., to feel the sad dynamics that drive him and his most ardent followers.  Digging deep into our own words, we discover the disguises we live by. Aware that we, too, have the capacity to be hunger artists, to attempt to survive on the empty calories of grievance and self aggrandizement, can we risk feeling the pain and vulnerability that a hunger artist cannot? Can we overcome paralysis induced by trauma and maintained by fear?  Can we be moved to mobilize against the dark elixir of the mountebank, to passionately pursue more lucent remedies?
 
In this humane pursuit lies the commonality between psychoanalysis and social justice, between the reflective individual and the sane society.
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Zorg Report: What on Earth!

8/10/2016

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Third graders on field trip discover Earthlings' unique approach to climate change...
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"Look! They're entering the 
​Climate Change Era!"
"We call this the Resort Obliteration Phase.
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​"It looks bad but remember, 
the Species Unification Phase is next..."
​"...usually...

Back Talk

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