Music, Empathy, and Humanness: An Interview with The Brilliance

“Our entire ethos as a band is to try to create art that inspires empathy. And part of the reason we would say “art that inspires empathy,” is to be human is to also be connected to something bigger than just yourself. ”

— The Brilliance

With special appreciation to the musicians I have the gift of working with…

-Allie

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Allie Ramsey: So, today we are talking about music and humanness from the perspective of two people who create beautiful music.

David Gungor: Thank you. 

Allie: I was hoping to talk to you on this topic of music and humanness because I think your music, in particular, is something that I go back to over and over again, in order to draw out something in me that feels small that I want to become more robust. Or to draw out something I haven’t been able to fully connect to on my own. Can relate to that, or are there other musicians that do that for you?

David: Thank you. Our entire ethos as a band is to try to create art that inspires empathy. And part of the reason we would say “art that inspires empathy,” is to be human is to also be connected to something bigger than just yourself. 

A lot of times in the West, in America, we tend to think through a Cartesian model of thinking, like, “I think therefore I am,” and it’s only about myself. Our starting point is, to be fully human is always to be a relational being. And we’re always connected to the other. In certain traditions and in certain upbringings, for instance in South Africa, you have the word “ubuntu,” which means “if you are not well, I am not well.” And our connectedness to each other and to the earth and to all of the cosmos. And so part of our band’s ethos is art that inspires empathy. Empathy towards the other will always lead to empathy back toward yourself. Because it’s connected.

John Arndt: I guess my favorite aspect of making music, and The Brilliance is a really great vehicle for this, is it’s an opportunity for me, for us to express ourselves, and to express things we are feeling or things we can’t fully understand, or things we’re struggling with. And the miracle of this process is, in doing that, we create things that somehow resonate with other people. That somehow becomes a voice and a part of their own story. And so in my life as, I am a full-time artist, I’m a full-time writer, and sometimes I’ll have these [moments of], you know, “What are you doing? You should have a salary and a mortgage, and that kind of thing.” And the thought that I have that brings me the most peace about what I’m doing and what we’re doing is, at any given moment on the planet right now, our music is resonating in different rooms. And in different peoples lives, and on some level, our music and our hopes and our dreams are vibrating in the earth and in some way - I hope - making it a little bit more peaceful and a little bit more whole. That thought of the connectedness that comes from us expressing ourselves is a miracle and I’m grateful to be able to be a part of it. 

Allie: That is really true of my experience. Your music has resonated in my soul in a powerful way. 

John: Thank you

Allie: I was curious, given that music is so powerful, and can be such an impactful way of inspiring empathy, inspiring a sense of connectedness to all of humanity, or to others who enjoy that song or piece -- what it's like for you two as artists to wield that sort of power? 

David: I think one, is there is a certain burden, and there is a certain thing where music transcends language. So like melody, if you’re drawn into it you can wrestle with an idea, and you’re feeling it first (and I know this is somewhat metaphorical) but you’re feeling it first in your body, before you’re really comprehending with your mind what’s happening. So I feel like when you have that type of thing with music, when there’s a melody and a thing that’s moving people, there is a certain responsibility to not just try to manipulate things (where you’re trying to write in a certain way that will just cause an emotional response). And a lot of times lyrically that can happen, when you’re writing something, it’s really easy to feel like you’re the hero, or you’re the person that believes the right thing, or you’re the person that controls this power. 

John: So, the huge pit fall in my life in regards to this is I’m always chasing a feeling. My favorite experiences in music, they have to do with hearing something and then having a physical response to it. And for me it's like a feeling in my chest and down my spine, I would say. In general, if I hear something that moves me, it's like a physical sensation. So for me oftentimes, the creative process is an uncovering of that sensation when I discover an idea, or a collection of sounds paired with an idea, that I experience that feeling, and I go, “Ah! This is a thing.” 

What happens when I’m pursuing that on a day to day basis, even in the process of making a song, the big pitfall in my life is becoming a feelings junky. You know, it doesn’t always feel good, and oftentimes it’s work, and how about the 300th time you listen to this same song you’re working on. Just about every song we’ve ever made has been at one point my favorite song I’ve ever heard and my least favorite song that I’ve ever heard. 

(laughter) 

And all of those perspectives on some level are valid. You put a song out there in the world, you’ve got people that go, “That song’s complete bullshit,” and they can have a perfectly valid reason for saying that, and I don’t think they’re wrong, because I’ve probably experienced that perspective too. So what’s tricky then as a result of this, is we want to make music that’s powerful, I want to make music that’s powerful, but then I also want to have a stable emotional life, not get too high, not get too low. So I don’t really have a good answer for that, but I recognize the pitfall in my life. 

Allie: Yeah, that’s so interesting. It makes the music, whatever song you’re working on, sound like its own human to me. 

John and David: Yeah.

Allie: You see all the good parts and all the bad parts. 

John: I was just talking with someone we had been working with that had been sort of offended or hurt by us deleting something. They worked on something, and then we deleted it, and we didn’t even realize, we were like, “Oh, this isn’t quite the right thing,” deleted it, and then it was kind of hurtful to her. And we ended up having this whole discussion about how in my creative life, and in every creative life, the most vulnerable thing about it is you spend all this time, and you discover an idea, maybe its a visual idea, a musical idea, whatever creative idea, and then say you’re working on a film score, working for a client, or whatever, you offer this baby up to them, and oftentimes, you’ll get a response like, “Eh, no. It needs something else, try something else.” Or, “Oh that didn’t really move me.” And you’re like, “It didn’t move you. That’s my baby we’re talking about. That’s my last -- how many hours, how many days?” It’s like, “I was just weeping over that. What the hell are you talking about?”

(laughter)

And learning how to separate yourself, because for me, there’s also this element with creativity where to get to a good idea, you often have to get through a lot of ideas that aren’t that good. But you never would have gotten to that good idea unless you actually took the pathway of these four ideas that led to each other, and all of them end up getting deleted, but they lead you to the fifth idea, which is this incredible song, and you have to be willing to have all this dead stuff you loved as part of that process.

Allie: Yeah.

“A lot of times in the West, in America, we tend to think through a Cartesian model of thinking, like, “I think therefore I am,” and it’s only about myself. Our starting point is, to be fully human is always to be a relational being. And we’re always connected to the other. In certain traditions and in certain upbringings, for instance in South Africa, you have the word “ubuntu,” which means “if you are not well, I am not well.” And our connectedness to each other and to the earth and to all of the cosmos. And so part of our band’s ethos is art that inspires empathy. Empathy towards the other will always lead to empathy back toward yourself. Because it’s connected.”

David: And I think that the most difficult thing about being a person that’s creative, and maybe this will play into relationship ideas as well, but ideas on one hand, we give them human traits, because they come from us, which is awesome. But our ideas are not us. And the reason why I think that’s important, is just like John was saying, if you throw out an idea, and someone for whatever reason rejects it, even if they’re not rejecting it because it’s bad, but just it doesn’t work right now, sometimes we feel like, “You reject my idea, you reject me.” And that’s back to that thing of, whatever your thoughts are, they’re not just you. So you have to be able, in a creative relationship, to have enough humility. And especially in a working environment, your talents and your ego -- I’ve heard this before from my dad, where he’s like, “Your ego is like your fingernails, where if it goes unchecked, it gets really gnarly. (laughter) And on one hand it's good to have some fingernails, you don’t want to have no ego. You want to have some self confidence, you want to have some sense of, “I’m worth this.” But if it goes unchecked, it gets gnarly. If you’re working with people who, [in response to] “Hey, what about this?” are just like, “You’re an idiot. You don’t know. My idea is the right idea, always.” And that’s where I’m like, there's some type of balancing act. It comes out of you, and there is an emotion, there is a baby nature of it because it comes out of you. But it’s also not just you. You are more than just your idea. 

Allie: Yeah, that makes sense. And that makes me wonder, because I know you two have been creating music together for a long time. I’m curious how you have navigated that process of creation together. What’s your collaboration like, and what is it like to go through that process with someone else? How is it for you, experiencing the creation of something that takes on a life of its own, and then sharing in the refining of that with someone else?

David: I think it's very much like any other friendship or relationship or work relationship. John and I have been friends our entire lives, since diapers, we have pictures of us doing stuff. And it’s a friendship that transcends the work relationship. Within the work relationship, we believe and love each other, but also can be honest with one another. And there have been hard times, but it’s also one of those things like in  any relationship, there needs to be communication. Sometimes we have a hard time working together, [due to] my bad communication or a misunderstanding, or not being able to talk about things. But [we also work on] fostering and encouraging what you’re good at, and knowing when to limit. So for instance, we’ve always worked from afar. And one of the things is I have to learn how to edit better in Pro Tools so that when I send John something, it's not a hot mess. And when he is honest and communicates about it in a kind way, it’s like “Oh, I really need to take time in this.” But sometimes it’d be like any other relationship where it’s “Oh, this was bad,” and “I worked so hard on this, it’s bad?!” 

John: You want me to pick up your laundry man?! You want me to pick up your laundry for you? 

David: Exactly. 

(laughter)

David: And that’s where it's like any relationship, and in any work relationship, there’s gonna be tensions, but I feel like learning how to fight well, learning how to communicate well, learning how to trust each other, encourage each other. Learning how to bring out what you do and your weaknesses and actually try to address those weaknesses. But if you ask, “Well what's the bedrock in that?” It’s our friendship! And it doesn’t have to be the only thing that defines our whole life. If John’s only thing is this friendship from a musical side of things, or a life side of things, that would be too much dependence. So there has to be a healthy independence and also a healthy [dependence]. 

Allie: Yeah, I like that. 

John: I guess the only thing I would say is any song, any album, any project is the amalgamation of hundreds of creative decisions. And so it's really important for me, whatever I can give room, where there is a creative decision I don't feel strongly about or I’m not ready to die on that hill, leave room for your collaborators to express themselves, to offer their best ideas. Like “Oh, I didn't think of that,” Or, “Oh, that’s different than what I thought, but that works!” As much as I possibly can, I am leaving space to that, so that when I get to things that are like, “This has to be, it has to be this, [for me]” it can have some weight. Because it’s really easy, especially coming from a classically trained background, there is this desire, or there is this myth that goes around about the creative genius: this sole person who has all of these amazing ideas and is the mastermind. It can be this fantasy that you can get lost in. But any person is better if they open themselves up for collaboration and editing. There is going to be improvement if you can get outside of yourself. 

Allie: Yeah. Oh that’s so interesting. I could see the draw of that kind of fantasy though, because it seems like it would feel reassuring in the process of all the vulnerability of trying to create something. 

John: Right.

Allie: Another thing I was really curious about - you spoke of the power to move emotions through music and how we start out having a bodily experience of that even before our brain can catch up with it - how do you think about the elements of music and how that impacts humans? Like beat, or I know you included a lot of orchestral elements in your most recent album. What are your thoughts on that? 

John: We grew up in a charismatic church, and my first musical education was, to say it bluntly, how certain sounds change the temperature of the room, and certain sounds can derive certain emotions. So if the pastor was talking about a certain thing, or there is a certain type of prayer meeting going on, one of [my first lessons] in musical education was how music, how certain sounds affect people. But then it was later on that I learned technique and theory and history, but yeah the first thing for me was learning how to manipulate people with music. 

David: My brothers are also both into this. And John is more educated than me on music, so I think he would be able to say it better. But there are ideas of chakras in music, where you hear a frequency, and it affects your body differently. And it is funny because, I don’t know how backed it is by science at all, it might be all pseudoscience, but it’s funny like when you hear a normal A, when someone is tuning, when they hit 440 Hz is an American A. But then you go to certain places and they do it differently. Right now in New York, some people tune to 441 Hz, which means it’s like a little bit more sharp, and it seems a little more intense, while in other music, the A, would be like 432 Hz or something. Which is a little more like chill and it affects you differently.

Allie: Oh, wow! 

John: What’s weird is if you go on YouTube and you search 432 Hz vs 440 Hz patterns, you can see in sand and in water that 432 Hz frequencies (so tuned down a little bit) actually create way more stable looking geometrical shapes in matter. Which is, I don't know what to say about that!

David: So, there are theories then on, I mean John would know this better - John, what have they traditionally said is like the saddest key? Or the saddest chord? 

John: I mean I guess it depends on your perspective. Different composers had [different thoughts], like E flat would be heroic and I think C minor might be the most tragic

(laughter)

David: Which I mean, on one end that is totally subjective, but on another end it is funny that in a way music really does move you bodily. It's an actual physical reaction.  

Allie: That’s intriguing, I love hearing your thoughts on that. Is that something that you take into account as you create different pieces? Or is it more of an intuitive process for you?

David: John how would you respond to that?

John: Would we take into account how it affects people? 

Allie: Yeah, different elements and how that affects people. 

John: I mean, I don’t know how to get anyone to listen to something let alone connect with it. But the idea comes and I’m moved by the idea, then the challenge is, how can I package this idea so there is the least amount of barrier between that idea and the people who listen to it. I find that probably most of the time, I end up getting in my own way of trying to deliver an idea. Like, maybe if I put these sprinkles on top, or I add some extra gravy, it will get down the hatch, get someone to like this idea. And it can easily be overdone. 

Allie: What is most meaningful or rewarding to you in the process of creating music right now. 

David: We’ve had stories -- there’s a person whose wife was giving birth, and the child was born not breathing. And he was totally shocked, the room was totally silent, the doctors and nurses were working on this baby, and then one of our songs from our first album came up, Breathe. And the baby breathed. And for them it was this incredibly emotional moment. 

John: There’s this big long dramatic intro, and then the first lyric is breathe. And the baby breathes.

David: So for him, that song is connected to probably his most traumatic moment but also his most intense moment of life. And there are other stories. A lot of times it’s people getting through sadness. I mean there’s some joy and there’s a lot of sadness, where people have lost loved ones or children and our music has meant a lot to them in those times. Or maybe they’ve been dealing with existential anxiety or loss of faith, or different things, where the music has gotten them through something. And that’s where you’re like, “This is so much bigger than us.” Because through the person who is engaging the music, it takes on a life of its own, and it moves from being just an idea. When it’s shared, now it really does have a life. And that life doesn’t just belong to us. And that’s where we find the most meaningful things: different stories of people engaging with the music, and it's so much bigger than us. John what would you say?

John: That is a big part, a huge gift. And our conception for making music as The Brilliance has always been: it comes from us it comes from our hearts, but it’s always connected to something bigger. So for some people at first glance the name The Brilliance is like “Oh man, sounds like we’ve got some egos here.” But for me The Brilliance has always been about something bigger than us. So whatever it is, there’s always something bigger in play. So in our lives, we’re partnering with organizations. This fall we were on a tour with Preemptive Love who do all this work in places affected by war. And World Relief, in partnership with DACA Dreamers, and we’re often involved in a mission of some kind, and that feels amazing and also makes it feel like we have a real job and are helping people. I love that. 

But then also in my life right now, I just moved to Paris, so one of my dreams about my Paris time -- and I think this has to do with my midwestern upbringing or something, I have a hard time making music if i don't feel like I’m serving something or working, there's some kind of midwestern work ethic, like, “What is this, all about yourself? You know, you’re just sitting around tinkering around, dilly dallying? You should have a mortgage by now.” That kind of thing. (laughter)

But one goal I have, outside of The Brilliance (we have a lot of music coming up, and a lot of really beautiful stuff that I’m so excited about), I really want to make something beautiful just for the sake of it being beautiful, and not connected to any outside justification, or philosophy... just a beautiful thing. I’m gonna wander around Paris and make something pretty, because I can also do that in this world. And I feel so grateful, I don't take it lightly. So I'm pursuing that as much as I can. 

Allie: Wow. Well thank you both from the bottom of my heart. It's a real privilege for me to get to talk with you.

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The Brilliance, a band made up of long-time friends Jon Arndt and David Gungor, is an eclectic CCM/worship music duo who combine indie pop, folk, and classical elements. They released their official full-length debut, 'Brother,' through Integrity Music in 2015, which garnered critical acclaim, peaking at number 36 on the Billboard Christian Albums chart. 'All Is Not Lost,' the duo's much-anticipated sophomore Integrity release, arrived in 2017, this time reaching number 20 on the Christian chart and breaking into the Heatseekers chart as well. In 2018, the Brilliance turned their creative attention to politics -- specifically DACA and the plight of the undocumented DREAMers facing deportation in the U.S.

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Allison (Allie) Ramsey is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Therapist. Allie works with individuals on a broad range of issues, including anxiety, depression, relational challenges, faith integration, divorce, and aging. 

Dear White Therapists: An Interview with Dr. Lynne Jacobs

Chelsea Small: Dr. Jacobs, in May you came to Michelle Harwell Therapy (MHT) and gave an excellent training on whiteness. In your article "Learning to Love White Shame and Guilt," you speak about the assumption of whiteness and white-centeredness. I am wondering if you can speak a bit about your experiences with white-centeredness in the therapy world. 

Dr. Lynne Jacobs: One thing I have noticed about white-centeredness in the therapy world is how ignorant white therapists are about what their whiteness means—both in the world and in the consulting room. Many white therapists seem to suffer from the “white fragility” of which Robin Di Angelo [a white academic and lecturer] writes. They feel personally insulted/assaulted by being asked to take a look at how whiteness functions in society (and therefore, in the consulting room). They take it personally rather than understanding that we are all caught up in whiteness, whether we like it or not. 

Lynne Jacobs, PhD

Aside from the sense of fragility and/or defensiveness that may inhibit necessary conversations, it also leads to a defensively organized disinterest in learning the history that can help one broaden their understanding of the differing contexts that we each bring into the consulting room. I am sometimes surprised and dismayed, I must admit, by the ignorance that some white therapists have about what it means to be a perpetual “other,” in most contexts. They don’t know much history of white supremacy and white privilege, and some seem uninterested.

I have also met many white therapists who ARE interested, and in fact, eager to learn. In that case, I recommend they start with DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” writings (and her talks available on YouTube), and then go on to find blogs by people of color, and also turn to books that can open their ordinary ideas about our history. 

CS: Do you have any suggestions for how we can begin to make this field more welcoming and inclusive to both clinicians and clients of colors? What conversations can we be starting in our work and other communities? What can we pay more attention to? 

LJ: This question reminds me of the remarks that one of the few people of color at my psychoanalytic institute said. She asked us to imagine what it was like for her when she came to the institute for the first time, walked into the main room, and found photos of our twelve founders on the wall. All white men and women. It concretized for her that she was going to be hyper-visible and pretty much alone in a white space.

While she was a candidate, some folks formed a “racism and homophobia task force.” They have put on some educational programs over the years, and they are sparsely attended. So, what this tells marginalized folks is that the institute is not willing to do its homework, not interested in doing the work of inclusiveness. When people wonder what they can do to make their groups more inclusive, I say, “Begin with self-study.” If that feels too difficult or time-consuming, then admit you don’t want to do the work, and just live with whatever guilt you might have about settling for what is easy.

I co-teach a now-required class on “diversity, power and privilege.” We have the candidates write a brief essay on contexts in which they are centrally socially-located and contexts in which they are marginalized. The essays are fascinating because it turns out most everyone has experiences of being “in” and being “marginalized.” That helps everyone get more interested in the complexity of all our contextual positions, and helps the candidates think more sensitively about the process of “othering.” This is another aspect of self-study.

In my gestalt institute, we have now set aside training scholarships for people of color, and that is bringing more diversity into our program. The faculty is all white, but that will change as people of color come up the ladder, I hope.

Anyway, you ask about conversations…the important conversations to start with, are conversations among white folk about what they need to learn, etc. Word will get around, if that starts to happen. Another thing is to do guest lectures at schools and colleges with people of color in them. 

Since our demographics are changing so much, people of color are going to be more present in the lives of whites, and the more self-study you (whites) do, the easier you will find it, to have conversations about race and ethnicity. 

CS: You mention shame and guilt in the title of your article. Can you speak a bit about how shame and guilt tend to show up in conversations about race and how they can be worked with?  

LJ: Theses feelings show up often when someone of color points out the difference between their social position and the position of a white conversational partner. The white person can suddenly feel the wash of guilt and then shame. A more direct experience of shame happens when the white person is confronted because of racially insensitive remarks they have made. Then, what often happens. is the white person either slinks away in shame, or visibly collapses, and either tries to explain themselves, or beat themselves publicly with their badness. This is the fragility Di Angelo writes about.

I recommend that we white folks develop a different practice. First, don’t make the conversation about you! Your guilt and shame are better addressed elsewhere. What is needed at such a time, is simply a straightforward recognition of your insensitivity, and an apology, and if you don’t understand what you did, and then ask (with curiosity), so that you can learn something.

If you focus on your badness, your guilt, your shame, you are adding insult to the injury you already caused, and you are burdening the other, who now is feeling the pressure to take care of you.

I have developed a strategy. This may sound like cheating, but it isn’t. It is a useful tool. When I find myself being confronted about my insensitivity, or my hurtfulness, or a racist or prejudiced idea I have, I can feel the rush of guilt and shame. But I immediately dissociate a bit. I can feel myself separate my guilt and shame from the rest me. I tuck it away my back pocket, to be dealt with later, and it frees me to be genuinely interested in the exchange I am having. 

This is the same thing I do when patients confront me. Whatever rising guilt or shame I feel gets tucked away for later so I can stay in the conversation. I hope this doesn’t sound too crazy. Because it does work. Then, when I get home, those miserable feelings come roaring back, and I try to learn from what happened, and I also try to explore how it is that I came to make the “mistakes” I made, I try to explore my ignorance, and explore how it is that I have been so ignorant. What am I not-seeing? Why? I do that exploration by myself, or with a trusted other white person.

CS: In your article you mention working with race and racializing your whiteness in your work with patients. Could you share an example of how you do that?

LJ: The more comfortable I become with “race talk” in generally, and amongst people of color and white folk, the easier it is to talk race with my patients, regardless of color. I bring it into the conversation pretty early. When working with a patient of color, I may be the first person who asks if what they are talking about as they describe a scene has anything to do with race, as in, “and was that critical boss an angry white person, by any chance?” Once I break the ice like that, race discussions can flow freely. When a patient of color hesitates in describing a race-based humiliating situation—getting stopped by cops, for instance—I look for signs that telling the story to a white therapist adds to the humiliation. I will often ask.

But let me provide something from my first article I ever wrote about working as a white therapist, because it shows my beginning awkwardness. The article is called, For Whites Only, and I included snippets throughout the article about my work with a black patient:

….

…. I found myself wondering why she had chosen to see me, a white therapist, rather than one of the many black therapists who practice in the LA area. I wondered if she knew of the availability of African-American therapists, if she purposely chose a white therapist, or if the fact of our race difference was unimportant to her. That last thought embarrassed me, confronting me with the reality of how her race WAS important to me, and I felt vaguely guilty, as though I ought not be having any awkwardness or discomfort, or to be thinking of her as, among other things, a “black” woman. I was being bitten by a common bug in our culturally diverse and racially divided country, and it is an element of the subjectivity of most white therapists. I call it white anxiety. I shall discuss it further at a later point.

“Many white therapists seem to suffer from the “white fragility” of which Robin Di Angelo writes. They feel personally insulted/assaulted by being asked to take a look at how whiteness functions in society (and therefore, in the consulting room). They take it personally rather than understanding that we are all caught up in whiteness, whether we like it or not.”

...At any rate, back to my story. You can see from what I have written, that I made the usual white background assumption that unless I picked up evidence to the contrary, the woman I was to meet would be white. Joyce is a sociologist with a particular interest in racial consciousness, and racial experiences in LA. When I did ask her, in our second meeting, if she had given any thought to finding an African-American therapist, she said that she had gotten my name from a colleague she trusted (a white sociologist whom I had seen for therapy a few years earlier), and the referral was more important to her than color. My question also seemed to raise her level of defensiveness slightly, and I knew that she was already quite embarrassed that she was seeking therapy in the first place, so I did not inquire further. 

Several weeks passed and the therapy lurched along with few references to her race, and none to mine. She would occasionally mention a difficult interaction or situation, and in the process of exploration I sometimes asked her for the race of the person with whom she was struggling. She would appear relieved and identify the person as white. At that point we would explore the possibility that the difficulties arose in part as a result of the racial prejudices or ignorance of the other person. But I always had to initiate the race-based discussions. 

I continued to be uneasy that we had not overtly acknowledged our racial difference. I could not see that she was uneasy, but I was. I became tangled in doubts of almost obsessive proportion. The doubts took my thoughts in various directions. I was reluctant to impose a figure into her process of talking about her own interests if that figure was an enactment of my anxiety. I wondered if perhaps I wanted to offer an African-American therapist so that she would leave and relieve me of my anxiety. Or, I wondered, perhaps I wanted the overt acknowledgment of our racial differences so that I could establish myself as different from “those other” whites. Then again, I wondered if perhaps I needed the acknowledgement of our racial difference because I was not as developed, in terms of my racial consciousness, as I thought I should be. On the other hand, I hoped that maybe, just maybe, such an acknowledgement might be helpful to Joyce, who might need me to take the initiative. 

One of the striking “symptoms” of my anxious self-doubt is the harsh tone of self- doubt and self-criticism in them.  This is a not uncommon experience for other whites who are racially sensitive. This may be a manifestation of white guilt, something I will address at a later point in the paper.

…. 

“I recommend that we white folks develop a different practice. First, don’t make the conversation about you! Your guilt and shame are better addressed elsewhere. What is needed at such a time, is simply a straightforward recognition of your insensitivity, and an apology, and if you don’t understand what you did, and then ask (with curiosity), so that you can learn something.”

One day Joyce started talking about the details of a study she was conducting. She mentioned that she always had to allow twice as long for interviews with white people than with other interviewees. She said it took the white interviewees an extra hour or so become comfortable enough with her to speak freely and openly. They had to overcome their anxiety over whether they would make a racial faux pas, and their worry of being harshly criticized by my patient. She said that the whites in her study lacked a vocabulary for addressing multi-cultural themes, whereas the other participants were highly articulate. 

I was reminded, as she spoke, of my first few awkward sessions with her: my anxiety, confusion, twinge of self-conscious shame, not knowing how to acknowledge our racial difference, not knowing how much it “ought” to matter. I decided to tell her what I was thinking. I described the tangle of doubt and confusion I experienced in not knowing whether I was being more racist by mentioning race, or by not mentioning race. We both had a good laugh, and the atmosphere between us underwent a palpable change for the better. I believe that this was a signal to her that we could talk about the effects of racism on her life, but also, and perhaps more importantly for the development of our relationship, that we could also talk about my “whiteness”, and my racial consciousness, and how both of these factors influenced our work together. We have both been looser, freer with each other since then.

My point in sharing this, is to say, awkwardness may haunt you until you get more practice. 

CS: What would you recommend to someone wanting to learn more about this topic and about themselves within the racist system? Any books, articles, podcasts, workshops, exercises you have found helpful? 

LJ: There is so much good material now.

• If you haven’t read Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege: Unpacking the White Knapsack, it is a must.

• Also DiAngelo’s White Fragility.

• A terrific article online (originally in The Atlantic) by Ta-Nehisi Coates, called The Case for Reparations.

• Also by Coates, Between the World and Me.

• Kendi - How to Be an Antiracist.

• There is a blog site called Medium. You can set it up to pick out articles on race.

•  A good, short video on what it means to be a white friend.

• Another video featuring a poem entitled “Black Privilege”

• A Poem for My White Friends: “I Didn’t Tell You”

• You can find stuff I have written on being a white therapist by looking me up on Academia.edu. It is free!

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Lynne Jacobs, Ph.D., lives in two psychotherapy worlds. She is co-founder of the Pacific Gestalt Institute and also a training and supervising analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis-Los Angeles. She has written numerous articles for gestalt therapists and psychoanalytic therapists. She has a private practice and is involved with the Soldiers Project in Los Angeles.

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Chelsea Small, MSW, is an Associate Clinical Social Worker, ASW #78503 working under the supervision of Saralyn Masselink, LCSW # 28617. Chelsea believes in the wisdom of the therapeutic relationship to ignite transformative growth. She has extensive experience working with people impacted by trauma, domestic violence, and the effects of emotional dysregulation.

Humans of MHT: An Interview with Maria Elena Marquez

Lauren Ziel: Hi Maria Elena! I am really excited to talk with you today about humanness. I think this is the second to last interview we’re doing with all of our clinicians. And the first question we lead off with in this series is: What does humanness mean to you?

Maria Elena Marquez: Great question. What does humanness mean to me...it's where I feel most grounded, the most connected…to myself. And in this case it means with food and those around me. So, for me humanness is a sense of calmness in myself.

L: You mention food and your connection with food as this space of feeling grounded, feeling connected…it's so interesting because that’s such a primal thing. It's in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – it’s the baseline, you know. And on one hand it's survival but it can also be a way to connect socially and a lot of the activities we have are based around food. I am wondering for you how food is the mechanism to which you find your humanness. So, why is it FOOD for you?

ME: Food for me is a place in which I can be in my five senses. I can look at this dish, I can smell it, I can see the smile of the person bringing it to me; and just talking about the ingredients, it takes me to a place; it either takes me to my childhood or to a place in my adulthood maybe where I am going to a new restaurant and trying a new dish and we’re both discovering this new dish together. So, it’s a sense of being connected to my past or just in this present moment and both of us are just enjoying this, and talking about it; talking about the ingredients and if anything feels familiar or totally not familiar to you. So, that’s the connection part for me  - the connection with the other person that’s sitting with me or a group of friends and we’re really just connecting and enjoying this present moment with this food and it's doing something, and just connecting to your emotions and your warmth in your body or the coolness when you're eating something like sushi… so that’s a little bit about my process with food.

L: I can see you light up when you talk about it. Like even as you describe it you are completely going into the memory of.  I mean, it radiates off of you! I was also thinking as you were talking it also sounds like a mindful meditation practice - using all of your five senses, being in the moment, if there is someone with you connecting with them in that moment. It just sounds like a really real-world practical way you can be mindful and present. I hadn’t thought about it in the context of food but there a little ‘light bulb’ moment.

So food being an extension of a place of grounding for you, I can totally see how that applies perhaps on a personal level, how does it show up for you in your work as a therapist?

ME: As my work as a therapist, I feel it really helps me be in the moment. When I am with clients I try to calm myself down in the process of looking at all these processes the client is going through. So it reminds me to calm down and go piece by piece, ingredient by ingredient with a client. And also I use it outside of therapy for me - it's my self-care - in actually making an intention to go out with someone or maybe by myself and try new food just to get me in the state of acknowledging what’s in front of me instead of always being in my head and trying to process client work. It’s really a place for me to calm myself down and just enjoy my surroundings, the person serving me, this dish. I feel it helps me to be more grounded and just more mindful of what’s in front of me, whether it’s a client or maybe an amazing dish. 

L: This is a little off the sheet perhaps but I’m really curious what’s a recent meal you had that just blew your mind because it reminded you of something or that it was completely new and exciting? I should have eaten before this…

ME: Well, a dish that took me back, or a restaurant that took me back to my roots, which is Salvadorian and Columbian, was actually a Mexican restaurant here in Highland Park. I was with a colleague and we had plantains and black beans, a nice queso fresco; we had some fresh avocado. And just the way it was plated was so beautiful. To me it was very simple, it was very humble because that’s the type of food I would have in El Salvador so it took me back. It was really nice.

I was eating with this coworker and I was able to go back with her and tell her a little bit about myself and a little bit about my culture. Though I was in a Mexican restaurant, all these ingredients and all the spices and how it was plated was so home-based that it was just a great way to start my day.

“[It’s] a place in which I can be in my five senses. I can look at this dish, I can smell it, I can see the smile of the person bringing it to me...it’s a sense of being connected to my past or just in this present moment.”

L: I mean, I was thinking about kind of an analogy - you're in a Mexican restaurant but then there are all these familiar flavors - its almost as if…I mean, sometimes I find myself in front of a client and I don’t share their cultural background, or I don’t have parallel experiences to them, but there is always this sort of ingredient or this flavor of “I see you. I understand”. Anyways, that was a little off the cuff but… its really lovely to hear how food is this one connecting thing; how you bring your culture in your work with clients, how it helps you stay grounded, how it keeps you full so that you are able to be that for the clients that you have. Its just really awesome. I would have never thought ‘food’ but I totally see it now.

ME: Yeah! And that’s why we should make a date and have a group dinner, and we can really enjoy and dive in and be mindful and just engage with a different place within ourselves.

L: Love it. I love it. Well it was lovely to interview you here and I am definitely going to go have food now . But thank you Maria Elena. I appreciate it.

ME: You're welcome. Thank you.

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Maria Elena Marquez, MA, is a bilingual Spanish-English Associate Marriage and Family Therapist, IMF #103470, working under the supervision of Michelle Harwell, PsyD, LMFT.  As an art therapist, Maria is passionate about helping clients unravel complex cultural beliefs and family pressures through the use of expressive art.

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Lauren Ziel, MSW is a Registered Associate Clinical Social Worker, ASW #76483, working under the supervision of Gabrielle Taylor, PhD. Through the use of movement and mindfulness, Lauren develops specialized treatment for anxiety, depression, eating disorders, challenges in life-stage transitions, relational difficulties, and identity/intrapersonal development.

A Place to Dwell: An Interview with Annie Choi, Owner of Found Coffee

Annie Choi, Founder and Owner of Found Coffee in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles. 

Lauren: I’m with Annie Choi from Found Coffee here at Michelle Harwell Therapy....Well, Annie it’s so good to meet you.

Annie: So lovely to meet you, too

Lauren: So we’re talking a lot about the idea of home here at MHT and we’re wanting to know how you came to find a home at Found. So, to get started, maybe you can just tell me a little bit about what drew you to pursue 3rd Wave Coffee and eventually establishing Found?

Annie: Actually that’s a really great question because I was in the process of switching careers - I was working in entertainment and I was working post-production. And so for me, something that’s really important is storytelling. And so I thought “OK I’m going to tell stories in TV.” And when I was working in post-production, I was actually behind a screen for 12 hours a day with headphones, so it ended up being very isolating and lonely. And I’ve always wanted to open a coffee shop - going to coffee shops and coffee shop-hopping has been a hobby for me.  So, when I entered coffee, the first two weeks of being in coffee I felt like my lifelong friends.

I think it’s because just being in the service industry, too, people are welcoming and they know about customer service. And so for Found I wanted definitely to create a space where people were comfortable.  And I think also the church for a really long time has been a place where people have been able to find community.  And I think LA has changed and I go to church, but I feel like as I was working in coffee, I found a lot of regulars found community in the coffee shop. And so I wanted to create that kind of vibe and that kind of atmosphere at my own coffee shop.  And I think Eagle Rock is the perfect place for it because everyone here is so supportive of small businesses and I have SO many regulars. And I think the regulars are the heartbeat of my coffee shop, they allow me to pay my guys, they come every day, we know their kids, we know their dogs, so I think in that sense for Found I wanted home for a lot of people. And a cup of coffee is very comforting.  And I think that too creates a sense of home and a sense of familiarity. And so I was really excited to do that and it’s kind of evolved to be that for a lot of people, especially in this kind of community.

Lauren: Beautiful - how you’ve been able to transfer that desire for community into your passion for coffee. Can you tell me about the first cup of coffee you really enjoyed?  Where was it? Who was with you?

Annie: So, I didn’t actually start drinking real coffee for a while, until I was in college. I can’t tell you when I had my first cup of coffee but I can tell you my best cup of coffee.  When I was switching careers, during my gap year, I went to Costa Rica on my own and went to a coffee plantation and I had the best cup of coffee in my life. The beans were grown there. And I like to put sugar and milk in my coffee sometimes, and the sugar was grown there, they had a sugar plantation, it was crystalized there, too, the milk was milked from the cows on the farm...So it was just this natural, everything organic, wonderful cup of coffee that I had gotten from the source. And I realized how much work went into it and so that’s definitely - it was just - it was so incredible. 

Lauren: Yeah and I feel like that ties into community, too.  It’s not just an isolated cup of coffee.  There are people who harvested the beans, there’s folks who milked the cows...

Annie: The family who owned the farm...yeah they put a lot of hard work into it.

Lauren: In this day and age, and especially in Los Angeles, 3rd wave coffee shops have become a place for people to meet, artisan coffee is a common topic of conversation, it’s even a listed interest in many instagram bios…what is about coffee specifically that you feel draws people together in Los Angeles?

Annie: Well, I think 3rd wave coffee just started to explode in the last 5 years. Thankfully, there have been coffee shops for ages and ages, but I think specialty coffee, because there is such craft and care that goes into the product -   a lot of specialty coffee shops are independent, mom and pop shops - because of that I feel that a lot of people in LA, especially, know what is a good product.  They also want good product and quality.  In 3rd wave coffee there’s just so much effort that goes behind it.  I don’t know if anyone has explained to you what 3rd wave coffee is, but this is what I tell my guys whenever I interview them.  First wave is instant coffee, mass commodity delivered to your home, immediately available.  Second wave is the fast-food culture of coffee.  3rd wave is where you’re actually caring about the origin of the bean, everything is hand crafted by the cup. And so there’s a lot more care that goes behind it. And I think because of this artisanal food movement, there’s so much love that goes behind it, there’s a lot of passion.  People are drawn to that.  Because they know it’s been made with love. 

Also, I think with Found, especially, - I was instilled with this knowledge when I was working in my first coffee job - my old boss told me, “You can’t teach personality.” And I think customer service is a big part of my shop in the sense that all my staff, they’re very kind people.  They’re very warm.  Thankfully I have control over who I can staff.  I think people are drawn to that too.  With other shops, I hear this a lot, “I hate it when in 3rd wave coffee shops, the baristas are so snobby.” Whereas for me I don’t like to say that we’re “coffee snobs,” we’re “coffee enthusiasts.” With my guys I stress to them that they be friendly.  In the interview process I see if they have a good heart.  With the bigger chains, it’s harder to handpick people that are good-hearted because they have so much volume and they just need people to work.  Whereas for me, I’m definitely smaller and I get to choose. And I’ve told my guys too it’s really important for them to develop relationships with the regulars.  To know their first names, you always get their name. 

Lauren: It’s not just the product they’re getting, but there’s a human behind the coffee and what the human is showing is love behind the coffee. There’s passion.

Annie: It’s the connection.

Lauren: Beautiful. Well, when I was hearing you talk, I was thinking it sounds like coffee is sort of a means to an end - coffee is the means, and the the end being community, human connection or - home.

Annie: I like the way you put that, it’s actually right on the ball.

Lauren: We’ve been reading a psychoanalyst called Robert Stolorow, here at MHT and in his works, he writes about the importance of finding a relational home.  He shares about, and I’m liberally paraphrasing here, how mismatched or shattered pieces of our story need to discover a home within relationship - with friends, families, coworkers, communities.  How do you feel Found coffee represents a kind of home for mismatched pieces in that way?

Annie: Hm. Well, maybe not mismatched pieces, but the vast array and types of people that you meet in a coffee shop are so different. I think being a coffee shop owner, I get to meet these people, and their stories all add to mine. I love hearing people’s stories and where they’re from and I think behind it all is that everyone struggles, everyone struggles well, everyone has joys, too.  And so I tell this to my staff, “if you have a rude customer, give them the benefit of the doubt in the beginning.  You don’t know their story, you don’t know if they’re having a bad day.” 

The type of people, the network of people I meet, they are the mismatched pieces, and the connection between them all is that they are human.  I am so thankful because I get to meet so many different types of people. Something I like to do, on a personal note, is to connect people to each other. So, for instance, we had a guy who was a recruiter at an entertainment studio and I know that my friend has been wanting to animate forever and so I connected the two.  And I asked, “Can I do an intro?” And they both were like, “Yeah!” 

And then also on the other hand, too, I think coffee shops are a really special place where people who are on the shyer side, I get to bring them out.  We have a little bar area and it’s three seats, it’s very close to the barista making the drinks. When I first opened, a girl, I could tell was into coffee, but she didn’t want to talk.  And as she came every other day for weeks I got to know her, I slowly got her to talk, and then I realized she wanted to intern at Found.  So I interviewed her and she is one of my best now.  I told her on the first day, “You need to learn how to need to talk! It’s ok to talk.”  And she said, “I know, I know. I’m a little shy.“ And I said, “That’s ok. We’ll find a way for your passion to come through, too.”

Lauren: There are people who have their own unique stories as customers. They feel care in the product, or they feel the care in customer service, they’re understood, there’s a patience there.  We’re all human.

When I think about coffee itself, it draws to mind aspects similar to community - it is warm, comforting; it perks you up when you’re having trouble getting through your day; it is rich and flavorful - even to the last drop.  What do you consider on a daily basis (from coffee composition to design of your space to interactions with people) that helps Found Coffee consistently feel like home for your customers?

Annie: When people ask me why I call Found Coffee "Found," I have two main reasons, and then a third one.  First one is that a lot of things in my shop are Found.  They are vintage, upcycled.  They have been loved, and they will be loved again.  Secondly, I want community to be found, it’sa very big thing for me.  In the beginning I had one communal table, now I have two.  I’m really eager for people to meet each other and not to be a Laptop City.  I love introducing regulars to each other, because then they know the person in their own neighborhood. It’s really great! The third reason why I called Found Coffee “Found” was because I really found who I was in the last 5-6 years, and one of those parts is I found myself in coffee.  And I think with all these elements, the communal tables especially, that’s a big part in just providing a space and a place where people are able to find each other in community.  It allows for people who haven’t seen each other in a long time to meet.  And I think also with the design of the shop, it’s not 30 single tables.  I also like to keep it very bright.  You see some coffee shops, they’re darker, they’re a little more somber.  For me, even the espresso machine is yellow!  I think the reason is, you know a lot of Subway restaurants are painted yellow, the walls yellow because it invites people.  For me, I took that into consideration for the machine, the main workhorse of my shop, so people feel welcomed, feel invited.  And then yeah, it’s just a place where I hope people feel comforted in that everything is close, you don’t feel like you’re stepping on each others’ toes, but also, you have people are nearby. 

Lauren: There’s so much there.  There’s a sense of closeness with the people you are with, there’s also space to be who you are, and there’s also space to connect. There’s intentional space to connect, where you turn to your right and there’s a person that you can connect with.

Annie: Also a big thing for me is displaying local artists on my walls, allowing creativity from the community to be displayed.  They’re all local artists I’m really proud to say that.  For instance right now is a family.  The father took black and white photos, their 3 year-old girl drew on them and the mother is a weaver and she wove those pieces.  Even in the artwork, I hope to convey family. You know?

Lauren: That’s a huge part of home, it feels like family. There’s elements of that.

Annie: And I think also, our regulars see the same baristas every day.  And so, that is actually intentional, too.  So they don’t feel, for instance, out of place.  I’ve been very fortunate my current staff has been with me for a while.  They’ve actually maintained regular relationships with the locals so that’s really exciting to me, they ask how they are, I think some have friended each other on Facebook.

Lauren: There’s so much thought that went into designing this. You get an amazing product and a sense of connection in a city you so often get lost in. 

Annie: I think something God has gifted me in as an entrepreneur is I am able to create spaces that gather people.  And so I love, I used to hate when my worlds collided, but now I’m just like OK fine you guys have gotta meet each other, so I love that Found is a place where people can just come together.  Something else, is I used to be an event coordinator, and so because of that experience, too, I know what draws people in.  I don’t want my space to feel so cluttered where people feel uncomfortable but where it feels airy, it feels light.  It’s not too over-designed.  Keep it simple so people can do their thing.

Lauren: They can be themselves.  I’m even thinking about the brightly lit space at Found, you can actually see one another, you can actually be curious about the people around you.

Annie: Right, something that I really value is transparency, the reason why my bar is open is you get to see how your coffee is being made from the bar so if people have questions, I’m not gonna look down on you. I don’t know everything, but if you want to learn about coffee and how it’s made and what temperatures it’s at, etc, etc, we’re totally open to tell you, and also to talk about it with you.  So I think people see that, too.  They see that, “Oh, they’re not going to look down on me because I don’t know a lot about coffee.” So specialty coffee -  because it’s a bit more particular, a bit more crafted - it can seem daunting to people.  But I tell my guys, “Be open to it.  Talk to people - they want to learn.” You can tell when people are really eager to talk to baristas and we just engage them in conversation.  So it’s just about being transparent about what you do know and what you don’t know. 

Lauren: If someone is curious you’re responsive to them.  Well it’s been such a pleasure hearing more about your story.  Is there anything else you’d like to add about Found Coffee?

Annie: Yes, something that is really important to me is I don’t want Found to be a place where people feel awkward and excluded.  I am actually quite sensitive to that.  I want to be inclusive.  That’s a big part of community.  And I think community is not defined as a people who are all uniform, and the same.  I think coffee is really lovely because most people love coffee, and we have something to offer most everyone, even with tea, we have tea too.  I feel like it’s a simple meeting ground where people can engage and have a similar interest with people that are different from them.  Community is basically broken people or people who have different stories coming together.  That’s my community at Found and I am super thankful.  

Annie Choi is the founder and owner of Found Coffee in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles. She is also the co-founder of FrankieLucy Bakeshop, a collaborative coffee and pastry shop that will soon open in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.

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Lauren Masopust, MS, MFT Intern has extensive experience working with young adults, adolescents, and couples, and specializes in areas of trauma, identity development, and multicultural issues.

Clinical Candor: An Interview with Dr. Karen Maroda

M: I'm at the tail end of my analytic training and I’ve become fascinated by how my mind has shifted in the process of training. How in love I am with this process, this way of thinking but how inaccessible it feels to the masses. I don't think it has to be. My idea with my newsletter and blogs, similar to analysis, is how can we think more complexly about simple ideas and think more simply about complex ideas. Karen, I think you excel at this. You have a great ability to speak about ideas in a really clear and approachable way. Before we jump into the idea of candor, can you give us an idea of how you got interested in psychoanalysis.

K: My mother, who we did not have a college education, was naturally psychologically minded. She would observe our emotions and if it wasn't clear to her what I was feeling or why, she would inquire. She would say, “Well, Karen you seem a little down or you're not as lively coming home after school. Did something happen?” She always knew of course. She was very intuitive. She was just asking, “did I want to talk about it?” So, in a sense, my mother was psychoanalyzing me from the time I was young and inducting me into the whole notion that you don't just accept what someone says at face value, that you should trust your feelings. I think that my mother introduced me to the whole notion of trusting my emotional intuition and that asking someone about what they were feeling was an expression of love.

K: It’s been life pursuit, a way of being. I was speaking in Indianapolis a few months ago and I was pleased to hear a candidate talk about psychoanalysis not simply as a profession, it’s a calling. It’s a life.

Dr. Karen Maroda

M: Yes! I had this experience when I was developing as a young clinician where I would get around analysts and I couldn't always keep up with the terminology used but their minds were so alive to me. They had this spontaneous quality. It reminds me how you shared the origins of the word candor is candid which evokes a sense of freedom and spontaneity. There was a flexibility and freedom to explore, play and reflect that was more than the sum of its parts. And I could just feel the difference between their mind and my own. It's a way of thinking and being that that evolves overtime...

In your paper on counter-transference, you talk about how clinicians, by our nature we are often empaths. We feel, we care, we listen but we are not very good at being direct or honest both clinically and in our lives.  How do prepare your client for the role of honesty in therapy?

K: Well, most people don't really understand what an analytically-oriented treatment looks like. I tell them the three basic rules are: they have to show up, they have to be as open as they reasonably can be given that no one is completely open, and they have to pay. (laughs)

M: (laughs) Good basics.

K: Then I usually explain about transference. That any of their feelings toward me are not out of bounds. Anything that comes up and particularly anything that's repetitive that they're feeling either positively or negatively toward me is important for them to express.

M: This idea of having candor, of being direct, the fear is, in speaking up, you might shut the client down. How do you negotiate this: keeping lines of communication open given that generally the analyst is in a position of some kind of power?

K: The idea is there’s candor and then there’s candor.  You know what I mean?  You don't just blurt out anything that you may be thinking which is like, “Boy, was that a stupid thing to do.”

M: Right, right.

K: So I take a moment to gather my thoughts and think about how it fits in the context of the person. I seek to complete the analytic task to gain perspective on their behavior historically and currently. But you know if somebody did something really stupid then I am more likely to say, “Well, it seems to me that this behavior had a pretty bad outcome for you. You know, probably not one of your finest moments.” (laughs)

M: (laughs)

K:  I use humor a lot. It cuts the tension. I'm agreeing that they screwed up without saying you're screwed.

M: I'm thinking about this on two levels: what are you trying to create within your client through the use of candor; what are you hoping that they bring into their lives through this process? The other part I'd love to hear more about is, the fact that our patients don't just want empathy, or I should say, sympathy, they also crave sincerity. There's relief when we can speak directly to all parts of the self, even negative ones.

“Being authentic without being insulting or cruel. Finding a way to constructively give feedback, whether positive or negative. So the positive isn’t too over-stimulating or generate too much expectation of a repeat performance. The whole notion of not waiting until your own feelings are so intense that you have trouble managing them and being in control of them when you’re talking. It’s easier to be honest when you’re in control of how you feel. Most people white knuckle it.”

K: Absolutely. I think people want feedback. Particularly, as I wrote in “The Power of Countertransference” if they are seeking it, then I don’t understand why you would not be responsive to a direct request for feedback. I think where we get into the delicate issue is when you're not sure, or when the patient is provoking possible feedback but not asking for it directly. Then you have to explore it and make a decision which may or may not include asking them if they want feedback. I think it's a no brainer when the patient is literally saying I want to know what you are really thinking or feeling about me?

M: Yeah, yeah.

K: For example: most of my clients become much more successful as a result of their treatment and they want to know am I going to resent them? Especially if their parents were very competitive with them. If they are too successful will I try to destroy them, take it away?

M: So what do you think benefits your clients in being able to ask you those questions in terms of their growth and development?

K: I think it gives them a tremendous confidence in their own intuition because I think one of the greatest contributions of neuroscience and the whole notion of unconscious to unconscious communication, is that clients already know what we are feeling. We already know what they’re feeling. I think the art is to determine, ultimately, what's most beneficial to actually discuss to get to the bottom of what’s going on. What's important to the work and what isn't. Will some of our ideas, notions shut down the patient experience, I think inevitably yes! That's the nature of relationships, whether it's analyst and patient or mother and child or spouse. There are ways you just cannot relate to someone else or you can't promote it.

M: A client having to contend with the real you rather than just feeling it.

K:  You know, I successfully treated someone with severe borderline personality disorder. That was where I first experimented with expressing rage. She thought everything was somebody else's fault. She would talk about her husband and blame the poor guy for everything. He was responsible for every feeling she ever had. She wanted me to endorse that. That he wasn’t sufficiently empathic but he was!  He martyred himself for her, whatever it took. She really needed somebody to stand up to her.

M: You made a comment about our culture not leaving room for negative emotions. I see this an an epidemic in parenting. We've got the hover parent generation where parents can't give feedback to their children or they have to sandwich it with so much goodness. To me, it's about emotional clarity, right? Sometimes it's not about positive or negative. It's about being clear with emotions and our intentions.

K: Yes. Being authentic without being insulting or cruel. Finding a way to constructively give feedback, whether positive or negative. So the positive isn’t too over-stimulating or generate too much expectation of a repeat performance. The whole notion of not waiting until your own feelings are so intense that you have trouble managing them and being in control of them when you're talking. It’s easier to be honest when you’re in control of how you feel. Most people white knuckle it. Neuroscience shows us that negative emotions are rarely outside of our conscious awareness. (They are felt and known even if not explicitly acknowledged). So we need to talk about it….

M:. You alluded to something earlier that I’ve been processing for a while, personally. I have a tendency at to be effusive with my language, you spoke to how we can say something positively in a way that is not too overstimulating.  Candor is about being clear in feedback. I have an awareness  of my tendency to slant towards hope and it has impact. Not always negative but I have to watch it. The truth is I have these little awareness all the time in session and I think ‘bookmark’ I need to go back to that. But how often do we, have the internal candor to take a deeper look?

K: Bookmark is a great word. That’s the beauty of the whole analytic approach. You bookmark it and you're curious about it. You don’t just blurt it out to the patient. You bookmark it and think about it. You wait to see, is this more about me or more about the patient. Because transference is repetitive, it will always come up again, and you don't have to figure it out in the moment.

M: So, what I hear is with candor, there's a certain amount of measure. Working towards an internal space that is curious. Curiosity to pay attention to the tiniest movements inside, an internal honesty that translates to a clinical (relational) honesty. 

So with enactments, there can be a dishonesty there. I mean, of course, we fall into things but I think you're putting more onus on the clinician to pay attention. 

K: Absolutely, and I think that if you look at the literature most of the enactments are not positive, they’re negative. But if you have transcript of sessions you would see there are just as many positive enactments as negative going on, but we don't yet care about those. Because those generally are not disturbing the universe of the relationship. (laughs)  I will notice with a patient that I really like or admire we do this little mutual admiration thing, you know? It is a sense a form of acting out. A little flirtation, something.

M: This is where the awareness comes in. How much of that is unconscious to the analyst?. There's a part of you that's just feeling good and maybe another part has the passing thought..I wonder if this is something?

“Be thoughtful, of course, but be courageous. If you have any anxiety when you’re practicing, that’s good...Take risks. If you’re never afraid and you’re just offering soothing, comforting things you’re probably not giving the person everything that person really needs.”

K: Right, it depends. If it’s happening too often (repeating) then it's like OK, well, wait a minute.  The enactments that we talk about in literature are mostly negative ones. I have yet to talk to a therapist where they were not aware of some negative feelings before the enactment. An enactment comes typically after an impasse that’s lasted a minimum of days if not a weeks or months. The impasse is broken by an enactment or treatment is destroyed by the enactment. I think that since I started using self disclosure regularly I have almost no enactments. I currently have one patient I have regular enactments with on a regular basis because she cannot accept negative emotions mine or hers. She simply won't allow for an emotionally honest exchange. You cannot eliminate enactments with everyone.

I think if you are sitting harboring negative feelings and thinking about them, no treatment is taking place. That’s why my new line I'm going to be using a lot in my next book is, “what is the analyst’s fiduciary responsibility to the patient? (laughs) What is clinically beneficial and to what extent are we stealing their money? When we sit white knuckled and think ‘this guy is a pain in the ass.”

M: Well, it’s another aspect of coasting in the counter-transference right?

K: Yes, like what you were saying about parents being overly effusive or overly positive. Therapists do this too. They try to be super positive or uplifting and affirming. Of course we want to do that to a point but that's not really what most people come to treatment for. Most people who have a lot of positive attributes and good relation skills get reinforcement in the world. They come to us to help them work through the obstacles and the negative behaviors that they can't work out anywhere else and the pain.

K: Right. I was thinking about submitting a presentation to Division 39, “Did Winnicott kill psychoanalysis?”

M: (laughs) Oh no!

K: Of course I’m tongue and cheek but we are so enamored with good enough mother which is about always being positive,  always being the cheerleader. I think most therapists are so masochistic and they allow patients in small and large ways to be abusive towards them...

M: Yeah I thought that that is what is revolutionary about your paper. In the first paragraph you talk about why as therapists we're drawn to this profession to help but simultaneously you are calling out our own masochism.  The way we feed off our ability to hold pain in the service of someone, to contain, soften…

K: To be saint like.  We're so overly invested in ourselves being the perfect mother to all of our patients. As if  the perfect mother is somebody who would just lie down, puts up with everything. It’s not.

M: Well, thank you for jumping in with me to explore the concept of candor and your clinical practice. Your mind is so alive. It’s been a pleasure.

K: You know, I end my most of my lectures with this:  Be thoughtful, of course, but be courageous. If you have any anxiety when you're practicing, that’s good.

M: Ah! I love that.

K: Take risks. If you're never afraid and you're just offering soothing, comforting things you're probably not giving the person everything that person really needs.

Karen Maroda, PhD is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and a board certified in psychoanalyst by the American Board of Professional Psychology. In 2012, she was elected Fellow status by the American Psychological Association for her contributions to psychology on a national level. She is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis. She has been in private practice for over 30 years and lectures nationally and internationally. She is the author of three books, several book chapters, and numerous journal articles and book reviews. She is passionate about the change process and has made it her life’s work to innovate psychodynamic techniques, making the process more interactive and collaborative. 

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Michelle Harwell, MS, LMFT is an expert trainer, respected speaker, and licensed therapist in trauma and attachment. She is noted for her specialization in areas of development, attachment, trauma, and neuroscience, and her ability to communicate complex topics with clarity and humor. Michelle is currently completing her PhD in Psychoanalysis from The Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. She received her BA in English Literature from University of Oklahoma, MA in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, and MS in Marriage and Family Therapy from the Fuller Graduate School of Psychology.