Month: January 2023

I read that Naomi has gone AWOL…which reminded me of this piece i wrote a while back…

I recently persuaded an old friend to allow me into his tennis club for a knock about to celebrate the end of lockdown and the start of summer. I had heard him rave about Timothy Gallwey’s book, The Inner Game of Tennis. Mr Gallwey explores how tennis is as much a psychological game as a physical game. Gallwey writes:

“The inner game: this is the game that takes place in the mind of the player, and it is played against such obstacles as lapses in concentration, nervousness, self-doubt and self-condemnation. In short, it is played to overcome all habits of mind which inhibit excellence in performance.”

Well my celebrations didn’t last long. My normally mild-mannered friend seemed to take an unseemly pleasure in out-playing me. Perhaps it was the hard surface, or the net that was dividing us, or the sports kit we were wearing that allowed us to play out different aspects of our personalities? The psychotherapist Winnicott talked about the importance of adult play, and finding true freedom in such creative acts. Tennis players talk about striking the ball in the sweet spot.

In my desperation to make the game more even, I thought I’d try some mind games. “Out”, I’d shout, aware that there was no umpire, no camera to adjudicate, buying myself a small, if guilty, reprieve. It all came to nothing, and I was duly defeated. Later, he graciously commented that my forehand had some potential. But as a psychotherapist, I was equally attuned to what he had omitted. He didn’t even mention my service, backhand, or net play! Clearly, I reasoned, they were so bad, it wasn’t even possible to talk about them. Nevertheless, my imagination sparked up, as I secretly plotted a comeback match in my head.

This week Naomi Osaka, the 23-year-old Japanese-Haitian tennis player, revealed some of her own “inner game”, away from the court. She withdrew from the French Open, citing the fact that she had experienced long bouts of depression since her first Grand Slam victory in 2018. In recent years, more and more top sports people have shared their inner difficulties. The psychotherapist Winnicott would have a tough time in thinking about the lives of modern sport stars as being about play. Indeed, it seems far away from play, as they are assessed according to their performance and success.

Even so, us ordinary folk might find it hard to imagine how a sports star could be depressed. Osaka is the second most highly rated female player in the world. In 2020 she earned $34 million dollars from endorsements alone. Surely, we would imagine that she is very happy indeed. She seems, at least from the outside, to have achieved most of her goals. But Freud wrote of patients who were “wrecked by success.” Paradoxically, success can engender a set of complex and unbearable feelings. We may wish to go back to our previous less successful state of being. After all, being successful can provoke feelings – real or imagined – of envy and hostility, amongst our friends, families, and rivals.

As we hear her story, who do we side with? Do we back the austere sounding authorities, packed with old white men, who fined her, and threatened to expel her for not following the rules? Or do we back those who support her stance, the fans, the players, the mental health advocates, and feel that the authorities have acted too harshly? Which is correct, the paternal side (fines, rules, punishments), or the maternal side (support, care, rest)? Is she being punished for her outspoken views on gender and racial equality? Do, as she hints, the tennis and corporate organisations need to change, to accommodate her needs?

With a psychotherapy perspective, we might also wonder if Naomi unconsciously wanted to be fined or punished by the authorities because she felt guilty. In therapy, we might look at the unjust institutions, the unfair rules, and so on. But we will also be aware that we may be projecting parts of our inner conflicts onto these institutions, which require closer self-examination. Perhaps the punishment, however temporarily, would provide some relief? Perhaps being expelled by the tennis authorities would allow Naomi to outsource a decision that would be too difficult for her to make for herself. For instance, she might not want to let down her team, family and friends.

But what is she guilty of, apart from being an exceptional player, and a quirky media presence? We might wonder if she feels guilty about being so wealthy, or beating her sister (who was also a professional tennis player and retired aged 24), or achieving more success than her parents (who by all accounts underwent various hardships). We might wonder if she is rebelling against her tennis upbringing, which according to her father, followed the “blueprint” of the famous William’s sisters? However, unable to rebel against her father, perhaps she is now taking on a rebellious stance against the tennis authorities?

Naomi has said that she is introverted. We might imagine that she doesn’t like being looked at all day. We know Freud didn’t like being looked at all day, and that’s one of the reasons he asked patients to lie on the couch, looking away from him! In any case, the global exposure, and press scrutiny, is clearly very difficult for her. For a shy 23-year-old, the constant imperative to perform, talk, entertain, may be exhausting. However, like all of us, Naomi is a mix of contradictory things. She doesn’t want the media attention, but in recent months she has also sought media attention, battling against racial injustice, through wearing clothing on court, highlighting the names of Black people who have died in police custody. Is the outspoken political activist, or the reclusive introvert? Which is her true self, and what is her false self? In her case, given the huge demands of a professional tennis career, which is all consuming, she may not have the privilege of working these things out in private. However, it does seem that she has managed to create some space away from the unrelenting demands of the tennis circuit to focus on what really matters to her. For this, she seems to have drawn support across the board.

The “blueprint”, which has given her so much outward success, is no longer working for her. Tennis is a very physically demanding and solitary sport. There are only 20 seconds between points. 90 seconds between games. Serves fly at 200 kmph. A single mistake can alter the course of a game or match. The sport is relentless and gruelling. But perhaps the outer physical game is the least of talented Naomi’s challenges. Aged 23, a creative personality, who doesn’t fit into the box of professional tennis, is exploring the bigger challenge, her inner game. And I will return to Mr Gallwey for the final shot:

“The player of the inner game comes to value the art of relaxed concentration above all other skills; he discovers a true basis for self-confidence; and he learns that the secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard.” ― W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance

Free Speech?

Elon Musk has recently purchased Twitter, his views on free speech being a seemingly key motivator in his decision
Psychoanalytic psychotherapist Ajay Khandelwal explores the difference between uncensored speech and free speech

The only space rocket I’ve designed was made from a Fairy Liquid bottle with a valve attached. The only car I’ve designed was in pencil and paper in an art class at school. Frankly, I don’t see the answer to the world’s problems being a community on Mars. I don’t see the answer to consumerism and pollution in being the purchase of a new Tesla car. So, what would a mere psychotherapist know about Elon Musk and his recent purchase of Twitter for 44 billion dollars?

Twitter is a reflection of our times. Short, sharp, on point. We live in an era when long form essays and psychoanalysis are considered outmoded. Who has the time to read 10 pages? Who can afford to see an analyst several times a week?

Depth and reflection are out of fashion in our healthcare systems and our culture. We seek concrete measures, metrics, fast results. Our patients seek a mantra, or a tablet that can provide salvation. We seek something we can digest and metabolise quickly. We love stories of transformation, surface, speed and efficiencies.

Perhaps we like Twitter because we need to do something with our hands? We used to smoke, drink tea, knit, and have sex. Our hands were busy; now we have phones which act as additions to our body, which require our hands to swipe and scroll. (For more on this, see Darian Leader’s book Hands)

The psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas has argued that the world has become horizontal, where everything is equivalent. Vertical thinking, where there is a hierarchy of thinking, has become harder and harder. Twitter celebrates the horizontal, where each person’s view is the same. That is what its fans celebrate, but there is a loss. Trump did lose the election, and the experts are right.

Where politicians fail, Elon Musk sees an opportunity to improve the lot of humanity. From a psychoanalytic perspective we might say Elon Musk has raging amounts of narcissism and mania. He likes to be talked about and thought about, and that is exactly what I am doing here in writing about him.

Who hasn’t spent at least some of their waking hours thinking about Elon Musk? His takeover of Twitter has resulted in him featuring in news bulletins around the world. In fact, perhaps he gets more attention this way than he does by launching a rocket into space. We all read accounts of his manic activity, not satisfied with running one huge company. He runs many others. He appears too busy to take part in ordinary life. When Tesla was having difficulties in hitting its production schedules, there were stories about him basically staying in the factory 24/7.

So should we feel pity for him or should we be envious? What should we make of his incredible work ethic? Perhaps we need individuals with a fair degree of narcissism and mania to undertake such huge gambles in our civilisation and culture?

Indeed, it could be argued that Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, had good amounts of narcissism and mania. Otherwise, how would he be able to have written so many books? How would he be able to spread his revolutionary new ideas? How would he have been able to bring up six children? And how would he have been able to have dealt with his unpopularity? Mr. Musk has crashed a fair few rockets and many cars.

It seems to me his latest venture is perhaps the most complicated. Psychotherapists have spent a lot of time thinking about free speech. People consult therapists so that they can say what they really think. Outside they may have to put on a front to their family, employer or society; but in the consulting room, they can speak freely.

Freud started off with hypnosis to get his patients talking. Maybe he even put his hand on their forehead. Then he asked them to lie on a comfortable couch while he sat behind them. He created a private and confidential space which made it easier for them to speak freely. His consulting room was full of rugs and ornaments. Patients had a positive transference to him and this made them less inhibited. His dog would sit by his feet and add another dimension to the work. Since then things have changed, but perhaps not a great deal.

Each therapist begins their sessions differently. I wonder if the silent therapist is in the minority. Perhaps, in London at least, the session maybe with some chat, echoing the vibrant activity of the city outside, before the patient really speaks. Some therapists begin with “say whatever is coming into your mind without censoring it”; others may begin with the more ordinary, “so how are you?”

Each analyst has their own character, their own ritual, and it quite possibly changes with each patient. Some people find a receptive and unhurried silence the perfect environment to speak freely; others may find it intimidating and feel they require permission to begin speaking. The point is that most therapists wish to create a dream-like atmosphere, free of inhibition and judgement. Our minds are good at editing, erasing, and distorting our experiences. We may be out of touch with ourselves; we hide things from ourselves and our therapists; we may swerve the truth. Some therapists may point this out; others may proceed cautiously with the concern that any perceived criticism may halt the patients free associations and ability to speak.

It may take days or several years for an individual to speak freely. Perhaps longer term therapy becomes one of the few places left where this is possible. Interestingly, it takes two minds to think our thoughts. The therapist listening allows the patient to think original thoughts.

What happens on Twitter? It allows a type of non-thinking. It allows a type of disassociation, group-think, hatred and violence. In therapy, the therapist’s consulting room and mind can act to contain hatred and negative feelings. These can be spoken about and thought about. On Twitter there maybe moderators that seek to censor some of the most vitriolic outpourings. Yet it also seeks to amplify and generate controversy. It seems to generate splits rather than dialogue and depth.

Musk has said he might introduce different levels of Twitter, just like we have film ratings. So users can chose to have adult or safe settings. He has introduced paid verification for users. But he will never really introduce free speech. Twitter is banned in China and he builds his cars there. He needs money and advertisers are controlling what he says.

Leaving these problems aside, the animus filled nature of much communication on Twitter means that while there may be uncensored speech, that is not the same as free speech.

I was sitting in Leicester Square IMAX, on my second bag of popcorn, having drained my free rose, when the mic was passed to me.

I said, “This is a question for all the cast. It’s a dream-like mystical film. At its heart is a prophetic dream. Did you have any dreams whilst making the film, and if so could you share them?”

There was laughter in the audience, perhaps a bit of unease. The congenial director, Denis Villeneuve, suddenly became coy. Timothée Chalamet became uncharacteristically reserved. His screen mother (Lady Jessica)– played by the actress Rebecca Ferguson – bellowed – “I’m not telling you my dreams!” Zendaya smiled, but didn’t help me out.

When the mystical psychoanalyst James Grotstein was a was a medical student he “witnessed” a dream in which an angel asks, “Where is James Grostein?” Another angel replies, “He is aloft, contemplating the dosage of sorrow upon earth.” This dream was indeed prophetic because he went on to be an analyst, and spent his career contemplating the suffering of his patients.

For Grostein, he did not have the dream, rather the dream “had” him. His lifelong experience of reading and thinking about dreams made him curious about where dreams come from. Who directs them, who experiences them, where does the cast come from, who is the audience?

He often referenced the ancient Assyrians who believed that dreams were the language of the gods, that the gods spoke to each other through human dreams, and that humans were forbidden from attending to them or remembering them. Dreams were a form of celestial eavesdropping. He found such musings much more fitting to describe the dream world than the simplistic brain scans of neuroscientists.

For Grostein it would be hubristic to try and reduce dreams into an ordinary language of science, or even psychotherapy. For him, dreams are revelations of an ultimate or ineffable reality that choses when and how to show its self to humans (Hewitt, Legacies of the Occult, p. 79-81).

There is a quality in the film Dune, where Paul Atreides dream does not belong to him. It is bigger than that.

In Dune, the central dream, experienced by Paul Atreides (played by Timothée Chalamet) prefigures everything of significance, the war, the loss of his friend, and his future love affair and destiny. Time and space are collapsed into series of haunting images.

Similarly, Carl Jung had a series of prophetic visions and dreams in 1913, just before World War 1, which he writes about in his memoir, Memories, Dreams and Reflections.

“… I was suddenly seized by an overpowering vision: I saw a monstrous flood covering all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. When it came up to Switzerland I saw that the mountains grew higher and higher to protect our country. I realised that a frightful catastrophe was in progress. I saw the mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble of civilisation, and the drowned bodies of uncounted thousands. Then the whole sea turned to blood. This vision lasted about an hour…. Two weeks passed; then the vision recurred, under the same conditions, even more vividly than before, and the blood was more emphasised. An inner voice spoke. “Look at it well; it is wholly real and it will be so. You cannot doubt it”

Similarly, Paul Atreides, the hero/anti-hero of Dune “witnesses” his dream. It tells the story of his life and the downfall of a whole civilisation.

He is a unique man, the product a eugenics programme, he is able to both fight, and intuit, inhabit both his masculine and feminine aspects, and is able to identify with the ruling class and the exploited Fremen people.

He is born into privilege, but he gives it up to fight with the Fremen (the exploited inhabitants of planet Arakis).

In Dune there are no computers. Civilisation is carried forward by humans and their minds. Paul Atreides has the ability to suffer pain in greater doses than any human before him. Therefore he has the ability to dream a big dreamer than anyone before him.

He is welcomed by the oppressed Fremen people as a Messiah. In 1982 I was an extra in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I was an Indian slave, liberated by Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford). As I watched the Dune, I wondered if Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) was another modern re-incarnation of Indiana Jones? I don’t think so. I’m not sure if the late Mr Grotstein ever went to the movies – he was a serious-minded man – but I think he would have said that there is some ineffable about the film, and it reveals some hitherto hidden aspects of ultimate reality.

Marriage….dead or alive????!!!!

Marriage

Post-lockdown I was asked by a couple in their 30s to perform the role of celebrant at their destination wedding. Does love offset carbon I wondered? I accepted and yet I felt strangely perturbed. The bride told me I should make jokes to make sure she didn’t cry. However she found my jokes to rude or off colour and so I was in the predicament where I had to make jokes which were not funny. But joking aside did I have anything to say about the nature of marriage as a psychological arrangement?
How could I hint at the profound decision they were making, this gamble, this entry into an unknown period of life? In previous eras we needed to be married for the purposes of sex or property or religion. Nowadays none of that applies. Furthermore we used to die at the tender age of 40 or 50. Nowadays we live until we are 100. Surely it must be crazy to get married? As soon as you find out who you’ve really married the projections were off no doubt they will change again. You really don’t know what you’re getting in to. And there is no end in sight. Isn’t this really a form of extended psychological torture?
Given I was in Spain I looked up some appropriate sayings about marriage. I found, “getting married is like buying melons you have to be lucky.” I guess this alludes to the fact that a melon can look attractive smell fragrant and pass every other test and yet the moment of truth only comes when we get home slice it open and taste it. Is it sweet and fragrant or rotten on the inside? We cannot tell simply by appearance. Fruit shopping just like marriage is a gamble.
I decided not to use this Spanish phrase but it reminded me of a Hindi saying which had stayed with me from decades ago. It goes “marriage is like a sweet made of pebbles, if you eat it you will regret it and if you don’t eat it you will pine after it.”
In modern day culture where magazines are full of advice about how to have more sex communicate better maximise your potential live your best life marriage is an anomaly. Sure it looks sweet from the outside but as soon as you put your teeth into it not so much gives you a sugar-kick but jaw-ache. It’s not something that can be easily digested we might say.
Another strange thing about marriage is that who we might call disasters of marriage are sometimes more bonded together than masters of marriage. Couples who appear to be in some ill-fated doom spiral often stay the course. Perhaps they have more to work out over their lifetime! Or perhaps they realise that marriage is really a process of mutual confrontation until death. And the more you can bring to the party in terms of that confrontation the more interesting painful an yet ultimately satisfying it may be.
Of course I knew my brief and my speech dwelled heavily on love and the joys of marital union. I really didn’t want to expose them to the more tragic aspects of marriage! And yet as I spoke I was able to mention mount Teide which stood behind me. I knew this volcano was active and also overdue an explosion. When it does explode there is no escape; the north of Tenerife would simply collapse into the sea the bracing waters of the Atlantic will give little respite. It made me think also in marriage there are aspects of ourselves which cannot be escaped and have to be faced. There is no running away. At some point a psychological tsunami will come whether it is called or not.
I might say that marriage is an intricate dance which involves all thoughts of forms of mutual projection and fantasy; it may also involve the dissolving of some of those projections as we come to be known by another more deeply and in doing so we come to know ourselves.
I didn’t say all that. No doubt I recycled something more well-trodden to imbue them with hope. I noted how the marriage takes form in front of our very eyes through a foilorm of mutual witnessing. The assembled guests heard them express their love for one another. The volcano remained peaceful and the sea was calm. The only hint of turbulence were the noisy oil powered lawn mowers from the adjacent golf course.
In thinking about the psychological arrangement of marriage my favourite book is a rather out of print and out-dated obscure book, Marriage Dead or Alive, by Adolf Guggenbuhl Craig. You can get hold of a second hand copy for £15; or borrow an online copy for free. I am thinking of giving a copy to the newlyweds but perhaps I’ll wait until the honey moon is over and make sure it is heavily redacted!
I cut and pasted some quotes from the internet (goodreads) below to give you a flavour.

“The marriage of Zeus and Hera can hardly be reframed into a “happy one” and yet Hera is the Goddess of marriage. Hera and Zeus could be described as quarrelsome predecessors of the Holy Family. For the Greeks they symbolized marriage par excellence.”
“Marriage is not comfortable and harmonious. Rather it is a place of individuation where a person rubs up against oneself and against the partner, bumps up against the person in love and in rejection, and in this fashion learns to know oneself, the world, good and evil, the heights and the depths.”
“For us the question is, has the marriage to do with well-being or with salvation? Is it a soteriological institution or a welfare institution?Is marriage, this opus contra natura a path to individuation or a way to well-being?”
“A marriage only works if one opens to exactly that which one would never ask for otherwise. Only through rubbing oneself sore and losing oneself is one able to learn about oneself, God, and the world. Like every soteriological pathway, that of marriage is hard and painful.”
“For those who are gifted for the soteriological pathway of marriage, it, like every such pathway, naturally offers not only trouble, work, and suffering but the deepest kind of existential satisfaction. Dante did not get to Paradiso without going through the Inferno. And so also there seldom exist “happy marriages”.”
“The noble images of physician and clergyman are forever accompanied by the shadow figures of quack and false prophet. Now the psychotherapist, the analyst, constitutes the meeting ground, in our day, of the images and the practices of physician and clergyman, of physical and psychic healer. It is thus that he carries a double shadow.”
“Through the act of getting married, one has taken on the task of mutual confrontation until death.”
“Many marriages dry up and miss the path to individuation because the couples try to ease their situations through excluding and representing their most essential characteristics, whether these be peculiar sexual wishes, neurotic traits, or whatever. The more one confronts everything, the more interesting and fruitful becomes the path to individuation.”
“Many of the pains and efforts taken to deal with the contemporary marriage are dominated by considerations of well-being, happiness, and biology. This corresponds to the position of contemporary psychology, which distinguishes itself through a deep skepticism amounting to a rejection of anything transcendent.”
“The central issue in the marriage is not well-being or happiness. It is, as this book has tried to demonstrate, salvation. Marriage involves not only a man and a woman who happily love each other and raise offspring together, but rather two people who are trying to individuate, to find their soul’s salvation.”
“We are creatures whose behavior cannot be simply explained as a striving for survival and happiness, for release of tension and contentment.”

“Marriage is one salvation pathway among many, although it contains different possibilities.”

“As soon as we confront concrete marriages with other foreign images-such as well-being, happiness, a home for children-marriage appears to be senseless, withered, moribund, and kept alive largely by a great apparatus of psychologists and marriage counselors. Marriage is dead. Long live marriage!”

The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion wrote that two personalities meeting results in an “emotional storm”. That’s why therapy sessions general last fifty minutes. There needs to be a break to protect both parties from the intensity of the encounter. The time limits allow ongoing and complex work that might otherwise be unbearable. There are of course exceptions. Lacanian analysts may “cut” the session at a key moment, or a significant word, in order to jolt you out of the same old pattern! Other analysts, like Christopher Bollas, have revealed that they sometimes work with patients for intensive periods of one or two days back to back, especially at times when they are breaking down and attempting to build new identities. However, by and large, most therapists stick to the convention of fifty minutes. Furthermore, they go on holiday at what for many people is the most difficult time of the year, Christmas. You might wonder what good a therapist is if they can’t be around when you need them most. So here are some thoughts about how you can survive Christmas without your therapist.

If two people meeting is an “emotional storm”, a whole family meeting over Christmas creates nothing short of an “emotional tornado”. You’re being buffeted by 100 mile an hour gales and there is no escape. Sorry, therapists are on holiday. Except maybe Christopher Bollas, but he lives in America and he’s full booked. Your office is shut. The shops are shuttered. The family doors are sealed and the decorations are up. You could easily get picked up in powerful and unpredictable argumentative blast and end up landing – with a bruising thud – in a unfamiliar or far too familiar psychological territory. Whatever plans you have to be civil and reasonable go out of the window. You regress back into childhood ways. Old wounds are reopened. You have to face the very thing you have spent your whole life trying to get away from. You may wonder why your family is so strange. Are other families like this? All that exposure to each other over the holidays, all that intensity, there is just no relief from “other” people. Your family look like you, and there are similarities, look at the noses, but they are also strangers, “other” than you. They are definitely not like you, you whisper under your breath.

Analyst Michael Eigen says that we all have “psychic taste buds”. As well as tasting your goose and wine, you will inevitably end up tasting each other, psychologically speaking. You may love or hate the taste, or spend hours trying to make sense of the taste, picking out the finer notes, but close proximity with each other means you can’t avoid it. The taste will get into your clothes, skin and bones. Just like odours from the food, the unconscious atmosphere will permeate your mind and body. The closed nature of Christmas family gatherings means that you will be cooking in each other’s juices, like one big stew, even if you try and try and hold onto your own identity.

Jungian theorists believe that the temperature needs to get quite high, and the container needs to be robust, if you are really going to bond as a family. Family members change you in unpredictable ways. The more you can tolerate, the more intense your encounter will be with one another. Watch out for collisions, explosions, and fire. You will be exposed to both the bitter, sweet, and in-between aspects of each other. Siblings, parents, cousins, spouses, friends, children, grandparents, you will be in the mix with them all. You will be confronted with all the things you find difficult to deal with. If you notice yourself getting hot under the collar at the behaviour of a relative, it’s quite possible your relative really is disturbing, an alcoholic murderous brute, but it could equally be you’re encountering a buried, shadowy aspect of yourself. Maybe you need to get a bit more assertive yourself, you limp so and so? In encountering your family you encounter yourself. Families, rather like therapy, can put you in touch with uncomfortable truths. So uncomfortable you may quite rightly want to skip dessert, get some cool air, and get out of the door. Or, follow the example of one of my colleagues, who enjoys his own solitude on Christmas day and in his mind just thinks about each family member one at a time. His rather unusual solution to Christmas seems to work for him.

If, however, you are going to stay in the furnace of family life then maybe Jung has a few ideas to help. In his old age he became very interested in obscure 16th century alchemical texts. These pre-scientific texts relayed how alchemists attempted and failed to turn lead into gold. Many families over Christmas are trying to do the same thing. Modern day alchemists scour the Internet and cook books for the perfect recipe to turn ordinary dull potatoes into a delicious golden creation. Similarly we are all trying to turn our ordinary, complicated familial relationships into something special, even if only for a few minutes. Turning lead into gold is an impossible task, but for Jung, festive and symbolic occasions like Christmas provide an opportunity for us to try our hand. So whack up the oven at 220C, and throw the potatoes into the goose fat, and relish the rich complex flavours that come your way. In January, therapists’ phones begin to ring, service will resume as usual, and many of you will be sharing the aftereffects of the family alchemy.

A Review of Couples Therapy on BBC2

Hit documentary Couples Therapy offers an illuminating insight into the world of couples counselling and the complexity of relationships
Psychotherapist Ajay Khandelwal explores why we find it such engaging viewing
We have couples therapists available to support you here

I was at engagement party in Central London recently, and a guest approached me and said: “Have you seen Couples Therapy?”

“Yes” I replied, even though my attention was distracted by the nibbles that had just been placed on the table next to me, tantalisingly out of reach.

She continued, “I think it’s actually worse than pornography. It made me feel queasy. All those people talking about their relationships.”

Momentarily I felt guilty. I had rather enjoyed watching the first few episodes. Was I secretly enjoying the opulence of the penthouse style therapy room? Or did I like the fact that an aspect of my hidden world of seeing couples was in full-view, thanks to Orna Guralnik and her crew?

Still, I did feel rather disturbed by the programme. After all who would be willing go on TV to talk about the intimate details of their relationship? Grisly and unedifying are thoughts that come to mind. The opposite of the sweet feel-good First Dates. So, there is something going on that these couples willingly took part. Did they believe that the crew was their surrogate ‘good’ family? Did they hope the TV audience would adjudicate; understand them; heal them; know them? Was it voyeurism, or a brave development in our culture?

Back to the party. I still hadn’t got to the nibbles. Nevertheless, the chilled Albarino wine was flowing freely. Clearly the newly engaged couple had unleashed something into the air. Another guest approached me. “You seem to be getting on really well with my husband. Could you see him for therapy?”

I politely declined.

“I’d happily meet him for a cup of tea. But I can’t see him professionally, because I know you, even if it’s only been for five minutes. In any case why are you trying to find therapy for your husband? I guess it might be more interesting for you to think what drew you to him and explore that.”

At that point I managed to get myself to the delicious nibbles before they were gone.

We spend our lives hoping to find the magical ‘other’, believing this will change everything. Then we find them, and the magic wears off, and then we start our next quest to change them. If only they were different, then everything would be OK.

Orna, the therapist at the heart of the series, is onto this. She listens intently for her couples to get out their score cards, and to decide who is at fault where, and how many times. She is frigid and controlling, and he is lazy and deceitful, and so the usual relationship tropes are thrown around. But, like any good couples therapist, her patient is the couple. Something must have brought them together, consciously and unconsciously. To one seemingly hen-pecked man, who can’t seem to get a word in, yet is smirking, she offers, “so you enjoy getting attacked and humiliated?” noticing the pattern in the relationship. He is not a pure disinterested bystander. His indifference is part of what precipitates his wife’s anger.

Orna’s psychoanalytical and systemic orientation means she is alert to the unconscious patterns constellated by the couple, and how much they may be invested in them. It takes two to tango. There is no magical other.

Orna has a dual identity. She has a prior degree in film. We can see this production as a confluence of her interests. She has become a film maker and analyst and her patients have become her cast. Is this her unconscious at work, or theirs? Has she achieved a creative synthesis, or has the series watered down her craft?

Personally, I choose never to write about my patients. It’s private! Some analysts write about their patients, with their consent, in heavily disguised form to further clinical knowledge. Exceptionally, I know of analysts who have co-written books with patients. Both analysts and patients write personal memoirs. It’s a complex area, and reams of papers and books have been written on the impact on the analytic relationship.

Orna is a pioneer, and the co-production with her patients is a serious undertaking. She looks at the couple as a system. She often implores them, “let me do some work,” in order to dismantle the system that the couple are perpetuating. She notices her own biases, as she discusses the couple with her supervisor. She notices when she is taking sides, or when a member of couple is about to run out the door and stop the process in its tracks. She is attuned to the complex dance of the couple, without rushing into answers. She notices when the past of the couple is projected into the present moment. It seems like a valuable experiment. For individuals and couples watching it is illuminating. It allows room to allow for the fact that the couple has large areas driven by the unconscious.

A therapist colleague once told me a story. A patient approached a revered couples therapist at a train station, with the intention of thanking her for her writings and musings. It had helped him save his relationship! She replied, “Fuck off! Can’t you see I’m having an argument with my husband!”

What does this story make you think? Do you think, well that shows that the couples therapist is a charlatan, a fake, a hypocrite? Surely, a couples therapist wouldn’t shout in public at train stations? Surely, they wouldn’t lose control like that? At least they’d find a private room to do their shouting in! Perhaps she needs to see an anger specialist? Or maybe she needs to move on! Maybe they don’t have enough sex? Maybe they have too much sex?

Maybe. But most of us we would see this moment in time as part of the normal fabric of a long-term relationship. There are relationships that are calm, and there are relationships that are volatile. Is the calm relationship avoiding some difficult aspect of reality, whereas the volatile one in a process of harder growth and development, wrestling with bigger things? It’s hard to say which is better. However, if you chose the path of a long-term relationship, it will put you in touch with a particular type of hell.

You will be known, and know another unlike any other relationship. Sexually (even if you don’t have sex); biologically (your breathing, digestion, functioning); psychologically (what’s really under the bonnet and what you don’t even know is there). And there will be things you encounter in your partner, which you never thought you would ever have to face, or may have even spent your whole life avoiding.

For some people this type of encounter holds a special value. What is your material, what is their material, what is joint material? What do you have to sacrifice to be in the relationship? What suffering does it put you in touch with? Long-term relationships can be a particular type of torture, but one that may come with certain hard earned satisfactions and ecstasies. In our extroverted culture, which measures things by outer symbols of success, perhaps only each couple knows the precise value of such a private and particular type of experience.

Ajay Khandelwal is a psychotherapist in London and online

Breakdown or Breakthrough?

Break-point 20/10/22

I recently decided to take up playing tennis as I thought it was a fairly safe sport. I enjoyed its creative and competitive nature. I was enjoying a game against a friend in the October sun. The trees were rustling. The air was languid. I felt relaxed. There were no clouds in the sky. A young woman appeared to blow away the autumn leaves with a noisy contraption.
My tennis partner suggested we move court to enable her to finish her job. I took a position deep behind the baseline. I was playing looping top spin forehand. My right arm was stretched fully. I was on my toes. My body was twisting through the air. I made sweet contact with the ball.
At that moment I felt the most excruciating pain I had ever experienced. I fell to the ground. I screamed in pain. This was a totally new experience. My mind searched furiously for antecedents. What could this be? What did this mean? I imagined I had snapped a tendon. I recalled many years ago reading an article in a Sunday paper about what snapping a tendon felt like. I tried to feel myself through the lens of words to diagnose my injury. I wondered if the pulsating throbbing sensation in my arm right arm was due to the tendons trying to reattach themselves to my bone. Is this what an octopus feels like when it loses a tentacle I wondered?
Understandably the ambulance service algorithms placed me at the lowest priority. The call handler told me I should make my own way to A and E. Well if I could I would! But I was unable to move. Those around me wanted to lift me up and move me to a car. But any attempt to move would leave me screaming. I settled in for a four hour wait. Other tennis players brought me tea blankets and pain killers.
I felt totally helpless. A club official came to take my name and put it down in the injury register. I found this rather annoying but complied. In my mind I felt like I was on a Netflix drama stuck in a crevice on Mount Everest waiting for a rescue team. Sure it was a balmy 19 degrees rather than minus 40 and yet I had the strange feeling of being in no man’s land. I knew something was terribly wrong and yet I could not communicate it in words or experience. I was in an unknown area as were the group around me.
Fortunately the ambulance service were experiencing a quiet time on that Monday afternoon. I was very lucky. After an hour I was attended to by a paramedic and a trainee paramedic I was given a pain relieving gas miraculously I could walk to the to the ambulance. The paramedic was a climber in his spare time, which allowed me to cling onto the idea I was felled by a mountaineering tragedy rather than a fluffy yellow ball. Morphine provided me with further sustenance. The involuntary gasp of the X-ray department team of a local A&E hospital illuminated me further. I had fractured my humerus. Snapped it in two.
Yes I am writing this piece by voice recognition software…
From a psycho analytical perspective the research on fractures is fascinating. Various studies show that there is not a great deal of difference between surgical intervention and the body’s own natural healing process. In 80% of cases the arm heals itself. In 48 hours blood flows to the affected area. Overtime a soft Jelly forms. Eventually the bone begins to harden and heal itself. Even with a fair bit of inner deformity the arm is able to regain most of its function. Of course surgical intervention may speed up the healing process. It also leads to slightly higher rates of bone union. So how does one decide between the natural healing properties of gravity and rest versus a knife and metal?
How does therapy work? Should the therapist simply provide the equivalent of a humeral brace which provides a container for the healing arm. The humeral brace exerts a gentle and continuous pressure around the broken bone; The body does the rest. Is this similar to the therapists consulting room? Does the therapist provide a field which facilitates healing? Or is therapy more like surgery? do the therapists interpretations act like surgical incisions? Is the therapist responsible for introducing psychic metal work to stitch together a profound wound? Should the therapist get the patient back on the tennis court of life as soon as possible?
As part of further investigations into my arm I had an MRI. This was an uncanny experience. It was claustrophobic, regressive and terrifying and at moments poetic and sublime. The experience of actually feeling my arm resonating at various moments over the one hour long MRI was a profound feeling. The MRI is clearly a very expensive an advanced piece of machinery. It allows deeper investigation into the nature of bone and muscle. It is more forensic than the data that can be produced by an X-ray. It allows us to examine pathologies that are hidden from even the best trained eye.
Psychotherapy uses an ordinary piece of kit. Well both ordinary and extraordinary. The human mind. The analyst and the patient are constantly scanning each other both consciously and unconsciously. At moments it may be true to say there is a form of magnetic resonance between the two. Uncanny things happen. Suddenly there are moments of depth and infinity. In my experience the unconscious can be a more powerful machine then both an X-ray and an MRI.
In the rich western world MRI scanner sales people are enjoying boom times. Everyone loves the idea of a machine that can see deep into you and tell you what is wrong with you. Perhaps it’s also something to do with the fact that the machine does all the work? And yet there is still a place for the low tech kit of the human mind.
Perhaps a really good therapist has a mind like an MRI scanner that can really see into us? But of course the patient can also see into the mind of the therapist. Perhaps a less good therapist has a mind like an X-ray which can only pick out major breaks and traumas. But of course therapy involves the meeting of two subjectivities. it involves it involves two minds and two bodies. Nowadays of course we also assume that the patient has a mind with X-ray or MRI like qualities. Both the patient and the therapists minds are constantly interacting and resonating in the therapeutic field. It is this interaction which perhaps makes the therapy most efficacious. The MRI report from a psychotherapy session is the joint production of two parties.
As I came out of my MRI appointment I chanced upon an article about the famous tennis player Boris Becker. He is currently serving time in a category C prison for tax evasion. According to newspaper reports he has lost seven kilogrammes and he is helping many other prisoners with their physical and psychological regimes. Rather than completely breakdown it appears that his experience in prison very unusually has enabled him to find something deep within himself. At the same time as undergoing some form of self -repair he is finding that he is able to help others. Blessed with superhuman athletic abilities he also has the ability to implode. Yet at least for now his guilt and remorse seem genuine. Rather than evading his predicament he appears to be fully embracing his situation. As I think about Boris Becker dancing at the net, his ability to be highly creative, to transgress, and to come back from the brink, I feel hopeful about the ability of the human body and mind to bounce back. We all face break points in our lives. We may lose. We may breakdown in body or in mind. And yet we may also regenerate and find a way to get back onto our feet. I have a feeling we haven’t seen the end of Boris Becker quite yet.

I am part of the long running number 42 group practice.

Please feel free to call me, or email me. I can be contacted on 07925709696 or emailed at ajaytherapy@gmail.com

Well, for cycling fans, that was a thrilling finish to the 2020 Tour de France. A 21-year-old Slovenian rider, Tadej Pogačar, unexpectedly storming to victory on the penultimate day, after an awesome super-human time trial finish on a climb!

As I watched, I hazily remembered my experience of riding a 175km stage of the Tour de France many years ago, secretly fantasising that I had the potency and legs of Pogačar.

In truth, rather than the explosive power of Pogačar I remember going into a trance-like state as I climbed the Aubisque, a 2000-metre wild monster in the Hautes Pyrénées, which went on for 17km, hanging on for dear life. I can remember being surrounded by an eerie pin-drop silence as riders went deep into themselves, simply spinning the pedals as the mountains kicked up. I remember hallucinating as the climb went on. Many cyclists have lost their minds on this climb. Octave Lapize famously said of the organisers when they introduced this mountain stage, “Vous êtes assasins!”.

Memorably, Van Est, otherwise known as The Locomotive and Executioner crashed descending the Aubisque in 1951. His life had already been punctuated by poverty and tragedy, being the second youngest of 16 children. He had served jail time for smuggling tobacco to support his family. Before riding the Aubisque he had never even seen a mountain. He fell 70 metres into a ravine and was pulled out by his team metres who created a rope by tying together 40 inner tubes together. Van Est was inexperienced and reckless on the mountains. He recalled:

“I wanted to go left, but the bike went straight on. Nowadays there is a wall (on the same corner) but not in 1951. I was lucky because I unwound the pedal straps just before I started to descend. When I fell, I kicked away my pedal straps, and held my head in my hands. In a few seconds I saw my whole life flash in front of me. My fall was broken by some young trees, and caught onto one of those trees.”

He landed on a slim ledge, with a 600 metre drop on each side. Afterwards, he become famous for cashing in on his near-death experience, by advertising a watch – “Seventy metres deep I dropped, my heart stood still but my Pontiac never stopped.”

Where the Tour de France and psychotherapy meet
Van Est, the Locomotive, the Executioner, appeals to us, because he lived out, in the most dramatic style, some of the forces we all contend with in psychotherapy and life, and he lived to tell the tale. Van Est was always on the edge, wrestling for survival. In psychotherapy we often experience creative and destructive forces; the life instinct and the death instinct. As Van Est hurtled off his bike, he was defenceless, yet, miraculously, he was able to protect his head, and grab on to the young tree to break his fall. He did not break any bones. Van Est flirted with death and destruction, but the life force within him saved him. Perhaps this is the why the Tour de France has such a hold on some of us? Just like life, we never know what is going to happen next.

Another way of thinking of it is as the Tour de Psyche. It’s not simply a geographical odyssey, but one of the group and individual mind and its workings. The structure of the Tour allows each rider to go on an inner journey into their mind, finding new places and experiences, unknown flaws and hidden reserves; and to find new ways of being in the group of their team, and the bigger group of the peloton. All this is infinitely complex; just like living in a family and being part of wider society.

The sight of a top team riding in perfect formation, moving through and off, as if one living organism, creating a web of power and energy, is the representation of a well-oiled psyche, with each part working with another. However, such moments are short-lived in both the human psyche and the Tour. More often than not, there is a far bit of jostling, in-fighting, scheming, and aggression in both the Tour and the human psyche and wider society. In the Tour riders are going smoothly one minute, and then touch wheels and crash the next. Human consciousness and turning the pedals both require huge amounts of effort.

The Tour is a curious mix of love and hate, supreme aggression and selfless co-operation. One minute riders are working together in unison, giving each other shelter and support, and the next they go on a ruthless attack. This volatility reflects the human experience, where nothing either good or bad, but a mixture of both.

The Tour witnessed the top rider of the top team, Egan Bernal, race favourite from team Ineos, “crack”. He has the world’s resources and technology behind him, but the mountains crushed him, pitilessly. What collapsed inside his mind and body? The test of reality, the TDF, humbled his ambitions and his grand team. Like all of us, life crashes into our dreams, illusions, and pretensions, and sometimes we just have to keep turning the pedals, wishing away the probing cameras, and wishing the earth would swallow us up.

Reality is a brutal teacher. So often in life, our ego, the “race leader”, gets a battering. We no longer get to wear the yellow jersey. But life carries on, inexorably. Something comes in to fill the void. In the case of the Bernal, another rider from his team may be crowned as the new king, another team will take the limelight, everything will be reshuffled. The psyche adapts to reality, to the wounding caused by reality. In the TDF Mr Bernal doesn’t die a literal death, but a symbolic death of his podium dreams, which we can all relate to.

What does the Tour de France capture about life?
The Jungian analyst, Edward Whitmont, argued in his book The Symbolic Quest, that much of human life is really not about concrete things, but their meaning. We are symbolic creatures, using language and image to make sense of the world around us. The TDF represents just this impulse, albeit in a particular, modern, largely Western, highly masculine idiom. A group of men leave home (the grand depart) and we know that not all of them will make it back home. Just like life, we don’t know who will puncture, crash, fall sick or even die, as they leave the start line. What we do know, however, is that the journey will not be smooth, not like the well-laid French tarmac, for very long.

Symbolically the TDF is interesting because just like life, bad things happen due to the riders own failings, and then bad things happen through no fault of their own. Life doesn’t distinguish between inner and out causes, we still have to get back on our bikes, however unfair. For instance, a rider may come down due to other riders riding dangerously, or through a catastrophic bike failure. But there is no remedy for this, it is left to the rider to decide how to respond; do they continue with the race, or do they withdraw? The clock keeps ticking. Unless the are unable to continue due to serious injury, the riders almost always elect to continue, and simply absorb the “bad luck” they experience as part of their fate as Tour riders.

Every now and then riders may see extreme danger ahead, such a wet mountain top descent, and boycott the stage, in order to avoid catastrophe. However, such moments are rare and Tour riders are a stoic group. The personal and collective pressures they must experience to ride on must be huge. In life, we may find ourselves in a similar predicament, and we may need to make a choice whether we continue to turn the pedals or dismount and hang up our cleats.

The Tour will be full of hazards, rough pave, and sheer mountain drops. There will be few if any days without painful and unavoidable crashes. There will be broken collar bones aplenty. Blood oozing from road rash, when riders lose their skin as they hit the ground. Concussions as riders are shovelled back onto their bikes after a fall. There will be humans and animals wandering obliviously into the line of racing cyclists. There will be unseen traffic bollards, manhole covers, and road furniture. There will be accusations of doping, cheating, and lies. There will fines, penalties, and tantrums. The Hautes Pyrénées, with their unending gradients, at a lung-busting 10 percent, going on as far as the eye can see, is perhaps the ultimate, humbling, and humiliating reality that will sort out the race winner from the rest of the peloton.

But the race is highly symbolic. There is a point in the race a week in, where the adrenaline wears off, and the riders are tired, and realise how far they still have to go. They ask each other, where are we now? “I don’t know, maybe Angers”….which is a way of saying we are in non-descript part in the middle of France. Rather like mid-life, the riders realise they are past half-way, they are past their peak physically, they are bored, missing home, and yet they know they have to dig deep to summon their innermost reserves, even though everything is expended, in order to get through the mountains, and to complete the second half of life/ the race. The sirens are wailing, the temptation to drink a jug of EPO, or spend the day under a duvet, escaping the interminable race, becomes ever harder to resist. In the second half, the riders seek meaning.

There are acts of honour and kindness. The race leader is respected and protected, and if he loses his chain, or has a mechanical mishap, his competitors will not attack him. They do not wish to anger the cycling gods! The race leader becomes more and more dependent and connected to those around him. He realises more than ever he is not a self-made man. He needs his self-sacrificing super domestiques to protect him from the wind, the mountain, his own arrogance, and the unrelenting prodding and attacking from other teams. He is surrounded, by specialists, the grimpeurs, the rouleurs, the sprinters, but they are all in service to him, and ultimately, the race itself, the grand spectacle, which transcends them all.

On the penultimate day, they drink champagne on their bikes, as they prepare for their home coming to the Champs Elysées. The riders are at a literal homecoming, but they are also coming home to themselves, with a deeper understanding of their own psyches, and those of the riders who have traveled alongside them. That is why their is such a close bond between riders when they are out of the competitive situation – they have had the courage to share and endure a profound challenge together – and they are enlivened by the inner experiences and memories.

HOSTILES, a great film, puts arch enemies together for a harsh trip across America. It’s a riff on the emotional nature of long term relationships

I recommend this powerful and tense film. I promise not to give away the story. But I will share the premise. An American captain finds himself cornered into a situation where he has to protect a feared and hated enemy on an arduous and dangerous journey. It’s my view that it’s an important aspect of what a long-term relationship is really like. Once the initial projections wear off, and you have face things that you have been blind to, but have been there along.

In our culture we are generally shown images of people getting along well on TV, in rom-coms, in adverts, in Sunday supplements. Isn’t that model of e-harmony, a dating website that is supposed to match you with another person, just like you, based on a secret algorithm? Just answer the questions correctly, pay the fee, and in fifteen minutes you will be matched with your potential true love, or your money back. A life time of foot massages, bubble baths and “love you” notes awaits you.

But hang on a minute. In our heart of hearts we know this is an illusion. Lies, deceit, infidelity, incompatibility, irritation, boredom, hatred, contempt, despair, low level of warfare, aren’t these actually a better description of major stretches in long term relationships? If only your partner would change, or die, or shut-up, or apologise, everything would be ok! Not that there isn’t a great pleasure too, but it seems to be mixed in with the other stuff: the pensions, the laundry, the rota, the in-laws, the children, the extension, the gum disease!

Why stick with this. Why not leave. Or freeze them out. Or just have the most minimal contact on a need to know basis? Why not create impregnable defence systems? In the case of the American captain travelling with his sworn enemy, maybe he should shoot him and be done with it, and create an alibi? There would be no witnesses, or he could get them all to go along with his story.

The analyst Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig reckoned that is worth sticking with it during these demoralising periods in relationship in the name of profound development. His thinking was that a genuine encounter with the things we find hard to bear in ourselves or others was a path to growth for the individual and the couple. Faithfulness and fidelity would make the experience of the encounter more painful, as there is no escape, but it would also be potentially more bountiful on the other side. The concern would be that if you just left or had an affair, you would be likely to repeat the same pattern with the new person, in a different form; the opportunity for development would be missed. It doesn’t mean you have to just put up with things. The famous quarrels of Zeus and Hera, in a long term relationship, still result in lightning! But even sticking in there, and arguing your point, has a value. According to this viewpoint, what is in the hostility, where will it lead to, these are the questions.

In modern life, we don’t need to travel across country in dangerous convey for week and weeks. Yet, we do still need to travel psychologically, for even longer periods, as we live much longer than they did in 1892. We would do well to respect the difficulty of this journey, and draw on all the resources we can to survive and develop through it. This is where an analyst can be of great help. The analyst can help you pore over these intricate and seemingly insurmountable difficulties with a view to thinking about what is in you, what is in them, what has been created by you as a couple. Anyone can get along with sameness, but facing the opposite in yourself, or in your partner, opens the door to something deeper, something more.

The Undoing, a new drama on Sky Atlantic, features the seemingly perfect couple, played by Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. They ooze the Upper East Side version of the American dream, even though the husband (played by nowadays sinister Hugh Grant) has a jokey-posh English twang.

No it’s not the latest John Lewis Christmas advert, but a whodunnit/murder mystery.

But hang on a minute. Isn’t this all rather familiar? Isn’t Hugh Grant revisiting old territory? In 1995 he was dating model Elizabeth Hurley, when he was arrested for having sex with prostitute Divine Brown (Estella Marie Thompson) on Sunset Boulevard. His relationship with Hurley ended, but he was able to resurrect his career.

It seems twenty-five years later, as an actor, he is still mining some of these recurring themes of sex, transgression, regret and reparation, but with better lighting effects, costumes, and being handsomely rewarded for this efforts! Freud would have called this “repetition compulsion”, where we are drawn back to recreating the same situations, again and again, in order to somehow finally get a grip on them.

A million dollar kitchen in Manhattan
Their kitchen is so spacious and well-thought-out for such a prime piece of real estate, but not too obscene! The breakfast scenes look more like a soft-focus medieval painting rather than a snap shot of a busy two parent working family in the middle of Manhattan.

Psychologically speaking, this might represent the first phase of a relationship, where everything is surface, veneer, polish and projection. There are no shadows. The kitchen cupboards haven’t been chipped. The worktops haven’t degraded by lemon juice and turmeric. It is the marriage of two egos; the conscious, visible, and obvious. Health abounds. There is no sickness in sight. The murderous, rageful and deceptive aspects of any character or couple are hidden from sight.

Where did she get that ruffle green double breasted coat with hood?
They have it all. They radiate charm, beauty and wit. They are intelligent and emotionally-attuned! They have socially approved professions. No hedge fund managers or property developers here. Jonathan (Hugh Grant) is a loveable healer of children, through his work as a paediatric oncologist. Grace Fraser, (Nicole Kidman) is an astute adult therapist, providing valuable insights to neurotic divorcees and same sex couples.

Perhaps they are on first name terms with “healer” and President elect, Joe Biden?

Grace’s dream-like red lustrous wavy hair speaks volumes, bouncing through the frames, signifying her high status, her dynamic living and being. She wears a boutique double breasted chameleon ruffle textured green coat, designed by Danish costume designer, Signe Sigmund. It has a hood, but it’s not a hoodie! However, beneath the pristine surface, chaos reigns.

The dark feminine
A mysterious working class, ethnic, possibly Latina woman, Elena (Matilda De Angelis) enters their rarefied life. Elena’s son gets a place for her son to the elite Reardon school, because of a scholarship place. Elena joins the fundraising committee, and the other mothers notice something “passive aggressive” about her breastfeeding during their meeting.

She doesn’t say very much in the opening scenes, although she does speak through her body, striking a strident pose, in front of Grace, fully naked, when she bumps into her at the gym.

Elena, enters their marriage like a tempest, wreaking havoc.

How can Grace, with her charmed life, and her training as a therapist, rich father, active sex life, great kitchen and coats, have been so totally deceived? How did she not know that her husband was having an affair for several months, and that he had lost his job and money?

How could it be that he even had sex with Elena and her on the same night, without her noticing? She is supposed to be sane. But is she crazy? Does she know who she is? Does she know who her husband is? Does she know her own father and her own parent’s marriage?

The shadow marriage
As a long-term relationship progresses, we may become aware of the destructive, even murderous thoughts and wishes within ourselves and our partners. The Undoing is about whether we choose to stay engaged with what we find within ourselves and our partner.

This psychological process is as grisly as stumbling upon the crime scene in The Undoing.

Grace is good at noticing the patterns in her clients struggling relationships and infidelities. Indeed she sees infidelity as a form of communication.

She is gifted at seeing things out there, but catastrophically unable to register what is going on closer to home.

During the same therapy session, she breaks out of the therapeutic frame when her phone buzzes mid-session. This is rather unusual. It’s a call from the school. No therapist would pick up their phone mid-session.

However, maybe we can see this call as communication from her unconscious. The very issue the client has brought has revealed a fault-line in her own life.

She is no longer sitting assuredly in her expensive consulting room, offering life changing insights.

Is her husband the murderer? Is she the murderer? Is she aiding and abetting a murderer? Is it Elena’s partner? Is it an unknown “other”? We all have our theories and hunches.

Perhaps, rather like good therapy, we just don’t know. We just have to tune in every week, and see what happens.