Author: ajaytherapy@gmail.com

Therapists around the world are cranking back to work. After the long and sometimes idle days of summer, it can be a shock to the system to get going again. However, too longer in the paradise of summer has its down side too! Too much inactivity, food, drink and sun can make the body cancerous and inert. The fantasy of being on holiday forever, is just that. A holiday forever rarely if ever delivers what it promises. As Carl Jung said, we need problems. Without problems we atrophy, stagnate, and get bored. The human mind and body need a gradient to work against. Too steep and we get demoralised. Too flat and we fail to get stimulated. But if we find the right gradient we are onto something. The Kenyan marathon runners who run hills know that. They develop muscles, they train their bodies to work against something. Athletes who go to the gym know you need to lift weights. Weights provide stimulation to the muscles and bones spurring growth and repair.
Weights even stimulate bone growth. Sometimes we may wish for weightless days of summer, carefree, downhill, and freewheeling. But that only makes sense if we can return to the gravity of our lives. The weight, sometimes burdensome, is also essential for our psychological and physical development.

As we change gears, and the days become incrementally shorter, and cooler, it may be a good time to reflect where we are going. The blue moon is pulling the tide this way and that. Tropical storms are battering the world. Traffic control systems are breaking down and leading to chaos as people criss cross the world. Whilst psychotherapists are increasingly interested in external weather systems, and climate catastrophe, they are equally attuned to our internal weather systems. What is the climate inside us?

As we pack away the sun tan lotion and get back to reality, what have been avoiding, what do we find in our psychological inbox? Are we feeling replenished and revitalised? Are we able to approach difficulties with new vigour and flair? Or are we faced with the same old dead ends? Can we bring some of our holiday spirit to our work?

There are times to go into hiding, and times to emerge and face the world. As August draws to a close, new possibilities emerge. As i find myself transported from the sunny climate of California, to the grey September clouds of south London, the change is inescapable.

Is Jonas Vingegaard human? Is he a marvel superhero in lycra? What does his wife put in his lunch box? Does he have a motor fitted in the back of his bike?

For cycling fans the imperious riding of Vingegaard is unbelievable. The way he put time into his closest rival Pogacar during the time trial was bordering on murderous. Aged twenty six, he has ridden faster than any rider in living memory.

Professional cycling is the hardest of sports. It has been awash with drugs for ever. And that’s just the masseur and team drivers. The riders have fresh blood, needles, drugs, and the kitchen sink. Anything and everything.

Lance Armstrong was taking drugs from the age of 16 at his triathlon club, way before his testicular cancer. He even made sure do another come back so he would definitely be caught out.

When a rider decimates his opponents it usually means doping. However, you may call me naive, but I don’t think Vingegaard is on drugs. He is a drug free yellow bomb. He doesn’t speak much to the press. He doesn’t share his power files. But he is very honorable.

In a previous year he waited for his closest rival who had fallen of his bike, in order to make the contest fairer. Maybe that makes him more sadistic, in that he wants to be honorable, and still crush his opponent. What confidence, what grace, such power!

Still, sometimes a rider comes through that transforms everything. He must have the genes, the talent, the team, and good luck. In Vingegaard we have a true winner. I wish him a wonderful ride into Champs Elysee and hope he is able to savour his true achievement. Thank you Vingegaard for giving us the Grand Boucle!

Listening to the radio today I am enjoying the cricket. As i start typing Chris Woakes takes the final wicket. Australia all out for 317. Looks like England are in the lead, at least for now. But like therapy, we don’t know what will happen. Will England batsmen score centuries, or will their be a collapse. Even if they bat well, will the weather hold? If it rains in Manchester, no days are added on. The weather is a mystery, and could scupper England’s chances. The audience are buzzing, I can hear them through the radio.

I recently enjoyed reading Mike Brearley’s latest book, Turning Over the Pebbles. He had a dual life as a philosopher, England captain, and then as a psychoanalyst. He approvingly refers to another analyst, saying that analysis is liking mining for rare metals. I like that idea. But I also think about the damage that mining invariably causes. I think about the cold war between China and the USA as they tussle over advanced microchips and rare minerals. But perhaps I am being too literal. Surely, what he is saying, psychologically speaking, if you keep digging, if you go beyond the surface, you will be rewarded with treasure. Rare minerals are esoteric. They are precious. We can behold their potency. We can put them to use. But first we have to find these psychic treasures. In the meantime I need to find the exact quote, and will need to keep manually scouting through the paper pages. I can’t find it in the index. But there is a pleasure in digging through the book, that allows me to read half remembered pages….

The final episode of the HBO series Succession showed the sibling rivalry and search for acknowledgment amongst Logan Roy’s children at its most intense
Psychoanalytic psychotherapist Ajay Khandelwal explores the family structure

Families, in the broadest sense, are the crucible in which we are shaped. It’s not just the parents, but the grandparents, uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins, and family friends that influence us. This truth is captured in the multi-generational Succession saga.

Succession is rich with psychoanalytical material. What great case studies! What perfect clinical vignettes. Freud based many of his theories on research on upper class Viennese women. He worked with the individual. But in reality, we are all part of sprawling chaotic groups.

The family therapist John Byng Hall argued that we are all part of “family scripts.” He meant that family life really is like a play or TV drama. We sometimes even know what each family member is going to say before they say it. We all draw on a treasure trove of family myths. Some conscious and some unconscious. We may not have a coat of arms or board room but we can all imagine what our family motto might be.

We all play roles in relationship to these scripts. We may repeat and replicate them, or we may edit and rewrite them. Or we may seek out an entirely new script for ourselves.

The Roy family is a dynasty based on an amalgam of the Murdochs, Maxwells and the writers’ imagination. Every pathology, every shadow area, every narcissistic trait is dialled up to full intensity. Perhaps that is why it is a vivid canvas for us to project parts of ourselves onto. It helps to amplify our own imaginations.

All four children crave their parents’ love and attention. The family business is central to their identity. The siblings either try and inherit the business, or take it over, or fight against it in a dynamic and ever-shifting psychic landscape.

The ending of the whole series, seems like a good time to look back to Series 1 Episode 7 when the father, Logan Roy recruits a corporate therapist to conduct some family therapy.

At the beginning of the therapy he tells the therapist “everything I’ve ever done is for my children.” The children look at each other incredulously. The father then gets on his phone “to buy a TV company.” The very double speak and dissociation inherent in the emotional weather system of the family is constellated in that very moment.

The father has gathered his children together to ostensibly talk about their feelings and in that very moment he turns away to the more tantalising world of mega business deals. This is familiar emotional territory to his children. To his credit, the therapist challenges the father to keep the therapy on track. But it becomes crystal clear that the father has absolutely no interest in delving any deeper. The whole thing is a publicity stunt to bolster the standing of his company. It’s a media circus and the therapy ruse is simply good optics for the company’s stock market valuation.

The therapist suggests taking a break. But he is seduced by the family. Does he think he’s a friend or a therapeutic butler? Is he corrupted by the family’s power and glamour? He dives head first into their swimming pool and smashes his front teeth. He has to go to hospital and the therapy is aborted. He has underestimated the danger of working with this family. Under the benign surface there are hidden complexities. He has lost his analytic stance and ending up “losing face” as a result. In the end he is a comic distraction and a casualty from the power tussles in the family.

At various points the patriarch Logan Roy has promised each child they will be his true heir. They always, in their desire to be the chosen one, fall for it. But he leaves them hanging. This sibling rivalry means that their is always a tension between the children. They are allies. They understand each other. But they are also deadly competitors.

The siblings struggle in their own lives and struggle with intimacy. The eldest son, Connor, makes a tragic attempt to run for president. His girlfriend is an escort and he pays for her interest in him. Money secures love. Kendall is ravaged by addiction, and struggles in his relationship with his ex wife and children. Roman has complex sexual involvements with work colleagues that unravel. Shiv, the only daughter, remains emotionally distant in her on/off relationship with her husband.

Like all families they have their problems. The father, Logan Roy, has visible scar marks on his back. The children all exhibit less visible damage. But it is still there in their psyches. Like all of us they have to contend with their family legacy and unconsciously or consciously decide on what to take forward and what to leave behind.

I love popping into borough market on Friday. Tas is super quiet and the preferred cosy place for a catch up with fellow therapists. Monmouth coffee, with its ceiling fans, exquisite coffee and pastries is a delight. Soak up the conversation, cute dogs, and cool bikes. I’m looking forward to trying Rambutan the new south Indian on stoney street.

I always have a conversation with my friend “Hercules” as he is known in the market. He has the best cheese toasties and he sometimes looks after my dog. In recent days he has been super busy and there is always a twenty deep queue.

The hub bub of the market makes a wonderful antidote to the hush and seclusion of the consulting room. It’s useful to know that even after the most intense private conversation we can melt into the big group experience of a market.

I was driving along this morning. The sun was shining, but the breeze was cool. I put on the electrical heating on the steering wheel and the seat. Ah an in car sauna on a summery day. This was all that was both good and bad about living in late capitalist tech. The polluting car, creating public squalor, whilst shrouding the driver in a temporary cocoon. Psychotherapists might call such an experience a “psychic retreat.” Reality is too hard to bear, so we all need to retreat from time to time. That’s why we have room service! That’s why we can draw the curtains in the day. But for some people they can’t emerge from such a psychic retreat. For some people post COVID it is hard to throw oneself back into the painful world where there are no heated seats or steering wheels!

I was reminded of this as the radio 4 presenter reported on runners in Scotland being attacked by buzzards. Clawed no less with great violence. That was more real. They are being advised to wear helmets when running outdoors! Momentarily, I was in awe of the tough runners of Scotland ! I imagined them running around with bits if their ears missing ! A talon shaped gap in the scalp ! What a contrast they formed with my heat saturated body encased in an aluminium carbuncle-coffin! At least they were dancing with the gods. They were living, painfully, in the real world. What legendary stories of heroic deeds they could share with their friends!

The attack buzzard made me think of the world’s most perfect couple. Is it Beyonce and Jay z? No. I was thinking more along the lines of Nancy Sorrell and Jim Moir. It was love at first sight when they met over twenty years ago. What we would call a very powerful projection in our trade. But one that propelled the couple together and helped them create a family, and a fruitful artistic and professional union.

Often projections wear off, but in this case it appears to have stuck. He is still besotted with her and can’t quite believe that she still hangs out with him. Her bright plumage and red lipstick play on her position as his siren, his artistic muse. Even though he has a benign brain tumour and is totally deaf in one ear he can miraculously hear everything she says. He is tuned into her. Has he swallowed a John Gottman manual ? Every time she makes a bid for his attention he responds in kind. He doesn’t stonewall, act sarcastically or shoe contempt. He shows love and kindness and she shows energy, humour and curiousity.

Perhaps it’s a business deal and he’s just trying to get on TV and she wants to promote her make up range. Maybe they are a fabrication like Trump and Mrs Trump. Maybe. But I’d like to think not. They seem to exhibit what Mary Morgan calls the “couple state of mind”. Guggenbuhl-Craig might say they help each other “individuate” and become more of who they really are.

In any case I would strongly recommend their new TV show Jim and Nancy Painting with Birds on Sky Arts. They travel around the country painting British birds, meeting bird focussed artists and catching up with friends. A wonderful scene is the conceptual artist Cornelia Parker making an architectural sculpture out of chips. The art work has an inbuilt obsolence as the sea gulls destroy the work chip by chip.

In another scene in they paint each other without sight of the paper. These blind portraits capture the subjective truth of the other. They truly see one another.

Look. I would really urge you to run without a helmet in Scotland and brave the buzzard filled skies. But if that is just to much reality to bear, make a cup of tea and settle into this soothing show. It’s like a heated seat but better. A psychic retreat with fluttering, cavorting, ever changing birds.

There is an arresting scene in this episode when on off couple Tom and Shiv are at a party. Suddenly, everyone fades into the background. Shiv tells Tom that he never really got beyond the surface. That he never really had any tangible impact on her. That her true love was the one before him. All of this back and forth feels charged. She teases him about his attraction and desire to other women in the room.

Shiv then introduces a game. “Bitey”. The rules are that you have bite the other person. The one who says stop first loses. This game plays on aggression. How much can pain can we inflict on another ? How much aggression can we display? How much can we use another for our gratification? What are our limits ? How much do we experience pain? How much do we empathise with the pain of the other?

The psychoanalyst Robert Stoller said

“In the absence of special physiological factors and putting aside the obvious effects from the direct stimulation of erotic body parts, it is hostility – the desire, overt or hidden, to harm another person – that enhances sexual excitement. The absence of hostility leads to sexual indifference and hostility. (1979)”

There is no lack of aggression between Shiv and Tom. Shiv initiates this aggressive game and finds to her surprise that Tom is able to both tolerate pain (her bite on his arm) and inflict pain that tips her over what she can bear (his bite on her arm).

The psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg could be writing about this scene when he says

“Erotic desire includes a sense that the object is both offering and withholding itself, and sexual penetration or engulfing the object is a violation of the others boundaries. In this sense, transgression involves aggression against the object as well, aggression that is exciting in its pleasurable gratification, reverberating with the capacity to experience pleasure in pain, and projecting the capacity onto the other. The aggression is also pleasurable because it is contained by a loving relationship”

Kernberg, 1995

This public foreplay leads them to the bedroom where they have sex. They both, fully clothed, report on it being very “nice.” The game of bitey has led to mutual satisfaction. Unusually, there is no irony flickering across their faces. They then talk about other taboo subjects such as love, money and ambition. They talk about jewellery, watches, suits and other objects that make them feel good about themselves. They talk about their aggressive drives, but within a loving context.

What is key here is not the bite in itself. That would be just painful. It would be a turn off and possibly an assault. What the game of “bitey” is about is how aggression and love are interwoven in the dynamic of any given couple.

Hewison says

“Where aggression is missing, erotic satisfaction is stunted or impossible. Where aggression is used in the the service of love, to get through to someone, to connect deliberately (and rapturously) breaching the boundaries of personal space and body surface in sex, relationship has the potential to deepened through mutual satisfying erotic needs. Where aggression is paramount, eroticism is curtailed and becomes routine; connection between the couple is limited to acts and roles, boundaries (emotional and physical ) are turned into objects to be used, or used by, and love dies

(Hewison, 2009)

I don’t agree that Shiv and Tom are monsters. Sure you wouldn’t find some of their lines on a valentine’s card. But in truth, perhaps these characters, and their couple relationship, is more accurate in its portrayal of love and hate in a living relationship. These fictional characters provide us a screen, a space, to explore aspects of ourselves.

I am grateful to couple psychoanalyst Mary Morgan’s : A Couple State of Mind (p 143-144) for her exploration of aggression and these quotations

When Tom gives Shiv an encased scorpion in a red jewellery box we know this is going to be a great episode. What sort of present is this? Is it an insult or a joke? Who finds it funny? Tom does. Shiv looks pained. Tom has found a perfect image to represent how he thinks of his wife. Toxic, poisonous, scaly, dangerous.

Later, in a block buster scene, they really go for each other. She calls him a snake. A good retaliation. He says she shouldn’t have children. She calls him a conservative hick. She accuses him of stealing her father. She tells him his wine smells of wet dog.

We are all narcissistic to some degree. But here it is poetically rendered. She says he only married her because he wanted to fuck her phone book. Even as they try and get close they are pushed apart.

They try and have a real conversation. They try to get beyond “projections.” But all they really do is articulate each others vulnerabilities.

Still every couple will relate to this episode. Parties throw up so much material. She wants him to stay up forty five minutes more. He wants to go to bed. He wants everyone to leave. Both are terrified of losing their jobs and status. But neither can provide solace to the other.

There is a strange love in their insults. They don’t shout or hit each other. But they know each others scar tissue and shadow areas. If marriage is “mutual confrontation until death” (Guggenbuhl Craig), then they may have a talent. The gods of marriage are Zeus and Hera, and when they argue the heavens rumble ! I feel there is so much condensed in this argument. They know each other. But whether they will combust or transform is all in play. Riveting stuff.

In couples therapy all of these snake-scorpion dynamics are at work. Under the surface each argument is often a microcosm of the psychodynamics between the couple.