After a month I resigned again. Doctors, pills. Even eating was hard. I did not talk. Just slept. My husband was surprisingly tactful. I started talking and smiling. Only a year later I felt better. Since then, as soon as there is a stressful situation, I change my job. I have changed ten places already. I dont work anywhere for more than six months.»
Back to the actual. It is impossible to stay in the rock any longer, it threatens death. The patient thinks what to do, so do I. Maybe she should call for help.
«Did you try to call for help?»
«What is the use to shout if I know that here people cant get here?»
«Perhaps, someone will be able,» we continue conversation searching for more real way out.
«My head is over an abyss, the river is roaring, and I hear whats behind me,» says L. M.
«Should we go in the opposite direction?»
«Its impossible.»
«Maybe just to relax and to take the weight.» I suggest her (meaning to die and to be reborn, to experience her own death to live).
«This is unacceptable for me.»
It turns out that to get out it is necessary to turn into someone or something, as in a fairy tale. We come to a joint conclusion.
«A stream? A bird? A snake?»
«A stream, going to a mountain river,» decides L. M., but immediately she gets scared. «I can fail to reach the river But in any case, I start to flow.» She exhales.
«Are you out in an open place?»
«Yes, but my soul remained there. My desire is to take a knife and scrape it off. It is a balloon of some kind not scraped off. The place, where my body was, is a cave now. My soul is in it, witnessing from above. I cannot see myself. Ball that you have to push, to pull away from those walls. Transparent. Its like a river of fire down there. I did not notice it before Maybe my soul is afraid? There is no blue coolness, but fiery tongues of flame, like lava.»
«Maybe you can go right or left, if you change your volume?» I suggest.
«Like whom? An ant!» L. M. exclaims and continues her description. «I get out of this cave (It is a huge space for an ant!) and go right. I see cracks in the ground, on the rocks A long road. I dont see any sky, nothing else,» the patient is perplexed.
«Youre an ant,» I guess. «So, you cant see beyond the surface of the stones and the soil!»
«Ive overcome a small stone,» reports L. M. and exhales. «But it is felt as a huge mountain!»
L. M. does not understand where to go next.
«Back?»
«No. There is a river below. To the right! Yes, to the right Now I am in my proper person, trying to go right. No people, no one, nothing. But I have the feeling that, if I go this way, I will reach some place. I must find it I will walk along this path.»
She finishes the session and opens her eyes, now glowing with a completely different light.
Comment. Identifying the «fairy tale, in which a person lives, can be productive. The contact with that patient was interrupted for external reasons after a short cycle of meetings. It was obvious to me that the neurotic facade was hiding (or opening?) serious constitutional problems: emotional instability, sensitivity. The leading characterological radical was cycloidal, «expressed in her appearance (round face, plumpness). Also, L. M. had a thin neck, which questioned her ability to adapt successfully without supporting work.
Four years later I was talking to her again. L. M. testified that, thanks to our sessions, in many cases she was able to stop her anxiety by asking herself: What do I feel? Do I feed it or not? etc., And thus, she saved herself from much stress. However, there was no complete peace of mind. Moreover, six months ago she was in the hospital, being treated with amitriptyline, so she gained weight. She did not have any psychotherapy since then. She worked in two other places. In one case, she resigned because of the difficulties in fulfilling a new job, in the other because of the dissolution of the company. She experienced increased stress because of the difficulties in acquiring additional skills and qualifications at new places of work and because of problems with her relatives with her daughter.
I asked L. M. to describe her present «landscape of feelings. She easily continued the description:
«A high steep bank of the river. The sun is shining ahead. There is a thick forest behind, which is hard to go through. I can go left or right. I am in the state of a deep thought.»
She recollects that for a long time she was thinking about the phrase: «You cannot enter the same river twice» until she decided to talk to her husband. Now she wants to enter this bright river, but the cliff is so high and steep!
«What does this river symbolize for you?» «Its a symbol of the future.»
«Suppose you are already in the river, what happened?»
«If I went into the river, it would, probably, be easier for me.»
«Why?»
«I would feel saved from thirst and heat.»
«So, are feeling heat now?»
«Terrible heat. My soul burns».
«Coals or open flame?»
«Flame.»
«What your state does of it express?
«Anxiety for loved ones.»
«How many such «alarms do you have?»
«Five: unsuccessful marriage of my daughter; absence work and fear of work; the relations with my mother-in-law; worries for the husband, for his health, for my younger daughter.»
«How many percent of your force does it take?»
«Fifty, at least. I am thinking about it all the time. When I am talking to someone and thinking about the problems, my fear is amplified. When I have a pleasant talk (I have a neighbor who can reassure), the flame ceases. When I talk to my daughter, the flames blazes.»
Comment. Note that all the experiences of L. M. are actual and real. Her daughter, for example, is unhappy in marriage. She is in the position of a slave with a stingy husband, who is much older than she and blackmails her, threatening to take away their child.
L. M.s reaction itself is natural. But the intensity of her worries about the unresolved problems harms her own health and the very solution of those problems.
The diagnosis of cyclothymia in this case is not excluded, taking into consideration the constitutional features of the patient.
As a doctor, I was pleased to hear that she had irrevocably left the «cave in the granite rock. Her hesitation in entering the river of the future was a problem. Working on her «landscape, it would be necessary to achieve «smoothing of a cliff, so that she could feel herself close to water, or in the water.
Although the «landscape work can be effective, it is, in my opinion, not the best one. The most convenient way to achieve levelling, «smoothing of the cliff is by identifying the feasibility of such worries, by redirecting sensations of heat-heaviness inside the body. The landscape will be changed by inner calmness.
A stone in seaweed
Working with the images who are you? and where are you? are like working with concentric circles from a stone thrown into water. If you want to get the stone that on the bottom of the reservoir, it is better to dive into its center. The seaweed, growing around, can be mixed up, and the search under water can be difficult.
The advantage of turning to inner feelings is that they convey information about the main thing, which is the state of the one who sees everything directly, not implicitly. Everyone is in the landscape, which they are ready to be in.
A stone in seaweed
Working with the images who are you? and where are you? are like working with concentric circles from a stone thrown into water. If you want to get the stone that on the bottom of the reservoir, it is better to dive into its center. The seaweed, growing around, can be mixed up, and the search under water can be difficult.
The advantage of turning to inner feelings is that they convey information about the main thing, which is the state of the one who sees everything directly, not implicitly. Everyone is in the landscape, which they are ready to be in.
Of course, it is possible to perceive circumstances in a synchronistic way, as equal to the state. Zen Buddhists are known to equate the expressions «It is hot, that is why I sweat,» and «I sweat, that is why it is hot» (Alan Watts). This is correct if we proceed from the belief that nothing depends on the will of a person. However, if to adhere to European «active life position and choose what depends on a person not indirectly, but directly, the thesis" Start with yourself» still has a meaning. In this case, among others, there can be the question: «Shall I sweat or take an umbrella?»
F. Perls divided «consciousness into three zones: self-awareness, awareness of the world and awareness of what lies between those two22. He proclaimed the principle of «from the actual.» But what is offered to the patient in therapy is rather the «reality of things.» D. Simkin testifies that in gestalt therapy he seeks to adjust his patient to the perception of what is happening «here and now. The patients «can see the room in which we are, hear sounds or feel their body, which is comfortable or uncomfortable in the chair, etc.23». There is no shift to «unusual perception with this approach.
Let us summarize this chapter.
Whats inside is primary
When closing their eyes, people begin to see with their inner vision the composition of their world. There is a correlation between the things, which are the charges they carry in themselves, and the world in which they live, their position in it, and their environment.
While exploring the nature of their charges, they can choose what to feed and what «to turn off. With this inner transformation they anticipate their entry into the new world. The new world appears as soon as its contributor is ready.
Somatopsychotherapy focuses on the elaboration within the component of bodily sensations.
Characteristics of what is found in the body
In case of introspection, no one found bones, muscles, vessels, nerves, but only a variety of light and darkness, heaviness and lightness, heat and cold, density and sparsity. These are the peculiarities of human self-perception. In rare cases, which apply mainly to doctors or lovers of scientific and popular medical literature, the patients begin to talk about their feelings of, for example, vessels in the head. «Are they thick or thin?» we specify in such an unusual situation. «Are there one, three, five, or ten of them?» Pretty soon, people of such «natural- scientific mindset stop to transfer their once acquired knowledge, and move on to describe their real inner sensations in the categories of weight, color, consistency, material, temperature, etc.
The quasi-material
The artist Kandinsky complained that in the physical world there are no colors that convey the colors of the metaphysical world. We can only talk about the similarity of sensations from the contemplation of the first and second ones, but, in any case, not about the identity of impressions24. The characteristics of the world of the open eyes are used to describe things of the world of the closed eyes. It is obvious that we can talk only about the similarity of what is felt inside as physical pounds, centimeters, and degrees. Things of consciousness are described by the characteristics of material things.
Jung used to say the same about the so-called «landscape images. «The principle of conscious life is: Nihil est in intellectu, quod non prius fuerit in sensu. (There is nothing in consciousness that was not previously in sensation (lat.). But the principle of the unconscious is the independence of the soul itself, reflecting its images in its game: not the world, but itself, even if it uses the illustrative possibilities provided by the conscious world to make its images clear (emphasis by A. E.)25" In the somatopsychotherapeutic process, a patient also uses «illustrative opportunities provided by the outside world to clarify what they are experiencing inside. Of course, there cannot be literal understanding of the patients report: «I have a kilogram of wood in my head.» Both the patient and the doctor understand that they talk about sensations.
Heat in the feet
There is a contour of sensations, adequate to each of the normal human states. In particular, the state of rest corresponds to the coolness of the forehead, warmth in the hands and feet, as noted by I. Schultz and as it is advised by the proverb: Keep your feet warm, and your head cool. Joy corresponds to the feeling of being filled with inner light. Love gives the feeling of subsistence of the whole being with warmth and light and readiness to fly.
Being in one of the negative states (resentment, anger, anxiety, etc.) corresponds to the disturbed contour of sensations. Feelings gather in one of the areas of the body, a persons soul «shrinks and «pupates.
A touchstone
In one of the philosophical conversations my opponent declared: Is there any criteria of truth of life of a person? I answered him: Yes, there is! They are the sensations in the body. If the sensations are evenly distributed, the warmth reaches the tips of the fingers and toes, and there are no concentrates plundering the filling at the level of the head, or chest, or abdomen, you are on the right path. But, if there are some concentrates, if the hands or feet are cold (or the forehead is not cool), something is wrong.
Spinoza said: «Veritas est index sui et falsi» (Truth is the criterion of itself and of lie). This is absolutely true. The even distribution of filling in the body is the «touchstone both of itself and of lie.» However, it should be clarified if the examining is not in winter and not of a long-armed asthenic, the heat in the hands is not a result of the drug or does not occur due to hypersthenic constitution.
I would also include the patients relatives in the concept of a «human body. If in their bodies the sensations are evenly distributed according to their activity, then they live right.
Heat heaviness
Perhaps this is what the Hindus called prana, the Chinese qi, Mesmer magnetic fluid, Freud libido, Reich orgone, and his follower Lowen bioenergy.
It is difficult to talk about the nature of this phenomenon. Wilhelm Reich (18971957) asserted confidently: «Cosmic orgonic energy exists in living organisms as a specific biological energy. By this capacity it controls the whole organism and is expressed in emotions, as well as in biophysical movements of organs26.» However, he decided on it not at once. «What is biopsychic energy?» he asked a rhetorical question. Further he answered: «This question for me, as a clinician, who had to treat sexual disorders in people, in other words, neuroses (Reich equated neuroses and sexual disorders. A. E.), remained unanswered after 60 years of sexual research in the world of science, 40 years of development of psychoanalysis and almost 20 years of my own work on the theory of orgasm27.»