When Forced Fluids are Indicated

The Queer Nation Manifesto

This morning I read an article in the New York Times an article that made mention of Queer Nation protesting in New York. Good to see them back. Modern social movements have seemed to lose the power needed to disrupt the status quo and bring about meaningful social change.

The website History as a Weapon has printed the text of a manifesto originally passed out by people marching with the ACT UP contingent in the 1990 New York Gay Pride Day parade. I'm reprinting the manifesto here. 

It reminds me of a time when social change was about liberation and freedom -- not conformity and becoming part of the status quo.

Queer Nation Manifesto

How can I tell you. How can I convince you, brother; sister that your life is in danger. That everyday you wake up alive, relatively happy, and a functioning human being, you are committing a rebellious act. You as an alive and functioning queer are a revolutionary. There is nothing on this planet that validates, protects or encourages your existence. It is a miracle you are standing here reading these words. You should by all rights be dead.

Don't be fooled, straight people own the world and the only reason you have been spared is you're smart, lucky, or a fighter. Straight people have a privilege that allows them to do whatever they please and f--- without fear. But not only do they live a life free of fear; they flaunt their freedom in my face. Their images are on my TV, in the magazine I bought, in the restaurant I want to eat in, and on the street where I live. I want there to be a moratorium on straight marriage, on babies, on public displays of affection among the opposite sex and media images that promote heterosexuality. Until I can enjoy the same freedom of movement and sexuality, as straights, their privilege must stop and it must be given over to me and my queer sisters and brothers.

Our Days Go By So Quickly

Sonia Nevis sends out occasional letters to the Gestalt community. I received this yesterday and reprint it with her permission. She wrote, "certainly use this letter on your blog. What would be better than to have hope spread around for more and more people."

Our Days Go By So Quickly – What Can We Do About That?

Recently I have realized that I am 86 years old, and there is nothing I can do about it, since each day that passes us is lost forever.

I take short walks, love my work, cherish my clients and have wonderful friends. I have loving children - I hope you can see how lucky I am.

Yet I wake up each day - sad that yet another day has gone.

Up to now I thought there was not much more I could do - but now I feel as though my life has a long carpet to walk on: it lives on.

I have begun to see that all lost days are alive.

The experiences and memories of the life that we have lived and are living, as well as the fiction we have read and the images we have seen in the theater and the films, all contribute to the richness of our being.

Once we understand how much we hold within our hearts, we easily turn them into stories – stories which will live long beyond us.

Realizing this has shifted the way I feel, and how I am looking at my life. I’m amazed at how it comforts me.

But what matters the most is how much I can still do in this difficult world:

• I want to turn my interest to even more people I have never met and talk to them. That might be one of the roads to peace.

• I will keep paying attention to my generosity. There is so much needed that I can be giving.

I hope my long carpet stays very long. I will keep enjoying my life and doing all the things that I love.

I hope you all join me.

Fondly,

Sonia

Sonia March Nevis, PhD, is co-founder of the Gestalt International Study Center and has practiced and taught Gestalt and family therapy concepts worldwide for over thirty-five years. She was a founder of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland where she created the Center for Intimate Systems, devoted to the training of couples and family therapists. You can read all of Sonia's letters here. 

Vintage Gay America: Crawford Barton

I almost passed by this image. It appears on first look to be a rather uninteresting scene of late 1970s New York or San Francisco. After looking a little closer and dwelling on the afternoon light illuminating the men, I decided to dig a little deeper. The glowing afternoon light gives these men the appearance of coming out into the light.

“I tried to serve as a chronicler, as a watcher of beautiful people - to feed back an image of a positive, likable lifestyle― to offer pleasure as well as pride.”

American photographer Crawford Barton (June 2, 1943 - June 10, 1993) chronicled the rise of gay culture in San Francisco from the late 1960s through the devastation brought on by HIV and AIDS in the 1980s. 

Barton's partner of 22 years, Larry Lara died of AIDS related illnesses shortly before Crawford Barton joined the overwhelming chorus of creative men dead from AIDS on June 10, 1993. It is estimated that more than 650,000 have died in the United States from this plague.

There are used copies of a book of Barton's work available on Amazon. The GLBT Historical Society in California holds all of Barton's papers and studio work. Here are a few of his images. Let them invite you into a world when the gay community was just waking up and discovering their own liberation.

Titicut Follies: An Asylum for the Criminally Insane

"They was gonna take my balls out of me... I told the doctor before I come here that I didn't want my balls taken out of me, so they took the cords out instead."

Titicut Follies, a 1967 documentary film by Frederick Weismann, depicts the miserable and inhumane existence of inmates living in Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

 It's not easy to watch. It hasn't always been easy to find a copy of the movie to watch, either.

Shortly before screening at the 1967 New York Film Festival, Massachusetts sought a legal injunction banning the release of the documentary. These actions come at a time when there was significant negative press about the institution and the state's handling of people with mental illness.

Despite the filmmaker getting permission from all the people shown in the film as well as the superintendent of the facility (who appears to have used the documentary as a tool to try to get more funding), Massachusetts claimed that the permission was not valid. In the end, the film was screened at the New York Film Festival. However, a year later Massachusetts Superior Court judge Harry Klaus ordered the filmed removed from distribution because of claims that the film violated the patients' privacy and dignity.

Wiseman appealed the superior court decision to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The court allowed for a limited distribution of the film allowing it to be shown only to doctors, lawyers, judges, health-care professionals, social workers, and students in these and similar fields. Further appeals to the US Supreme Court were refused.

For years hardly anyone saw this film. For years, the men at Bridgewater languished, often naked and in solitary confinement. This institution was one of the myriad examples of  people with mental illness being treated like unwanted animals.

Who were the men at this institution? How about the man who painted a horse? One inmate was sent to Bridgewater in 1938 because he painted a horse with stripes to make it look like a zebra. He was a fresh fruit vendor and in order to increase sales and get more attention, he though it might be a good idea paint his horse. He was arrested for public drunkenness at age 29 and died at Bridgewater from old age. He was supposed to serve two years.

Mondays with Alan: The Problem with Life

Dear Young Therapist: Sometimes We Can't Put Humpty Back Together Again

Meeting Humpty Dumpty/Joanna Pasek

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

--Mother Goose

We don't like to admit that things that are broken cannot always be repaired. We develop empirically supported interventions that demonstrate our facility for erasing symptoms of mental illness and curing the ills of the psyche. Chemists and biologists develop powerful substances that right the wrongs of the miniature chemical metaphors for mental illness inside the synaptic cleft.

We wrap ourselves in god-like metaphors of power, control, and authority. We heal the wounded. We restore the broken to a state of wellness. We right that which was wronged. 

We try to place all of the evils, pains, and terrors of our world back into Pandora's box with the hope of this cure called psychotherapy. Our way out of mental illness, a hope for a different future, has become interwoven with these notions of restoration and repair. Returning things to the way they were.

I've grown convinced this is not always possible. Even if it was, I'm not sure it is advisable. 

...and for those we can't repair? We call them treatment resistant. We tell them they don't want to get well. We tell them they are not ready to get well. We find any number of ways to subtly make them responsible for being broken, for not allowing us to repair them, or for having experienced a trauma from which there is no repair.

I don't think that's advisable at all. 

On any given day any number of survivor stories pass by my eyes on the internet about those who have experienced sexual abuse. As our seemingly endless "war on terrorism" slogs on, I see an increasing number of wounded soldiers displayed for pubic consumption. Stories like these make me angry and sad, hopeless and hopeful. Thousands of tales of lives broken by sexual and physical trauma. Thousands of tales of lives restored through the power of hope, courage, caring, and empowerment. 

As someone recently mentioned to me, some do come out of a traumatic experience stronger. Some find a certain kind of beauty in the growth that occurs after a trauma. Some isn't all. In fact, some is a far way away from all. 

Every 65 minutes a veteran of the US Military commits suicide.

Adults who have experiences sexual abuse are twice as likely to have a suicide attempt. 

What happens when that which was broken cannot be restored? Who speaks for those who are broken and either cannot or will not be repaired?

A huge industry of self-help groups have grown up around the books A Courage to Heal and Victims No Longer. While both books, in many ways, put childhood sexual abuse on the map, they both also perpetuate a disturbing trend toward a wish to repair that which remains unrepairable. An industry has grown up around us depicting survivors of sexual and physical traumas as strong, proud, and invincible warriors. I wince every time I see this meme replicated. I realize saying this may make me somewhat unpopular in some circles of the sexual abuse healing industrial complex.

I think we've lost our way, young therapist. In following our culturally prescribed roles to be powerful healers we've forgotten that not everything we touch can be restored. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

I'm not even sure it is important that we even try.

It is not that I am against strong, proud, and invincible warriors. I think those who find their journey takes them to these places are mighty fine. They've found their voices and found ways to make their lives a life worth living. 

What about the ones who find that no measure of gold or silver can hold the pieces together again in a fashion more beautiful than that which existed before? What of those who tried kintsukuroi and found they have nothing but a pile of pretty broken pieces?  What of those who, like Humpty Dumpty, have fallen and learned that all the kings horses and all the kings men cannot put them back together again?

Who speaks for them?

“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” -- Ernest Hemingway

Somewhere along the way, young therapist, we've forgotten that our most powerful tools are not those which fix broken things. Our most powerful skill is our presence and our attention. 

Don't get lost in the illusion that therapy is about fixing the broken parts of people. It's nice when we can fix things. Don't get me wrong. It's just that fixing isn't our most important task. Somewhere in our training and acculturation as a therapist we learn to stop listening and get lost in our own theories of how to fix things. We move from being having a role of a midwife of dialogue to the role of a high-tech mechanic. 

The map is not the territory. -- Alfred Korzybski

The description is not the described. -- Jiddu Krishnamurti

The map is not the thing mapped -- Eric Temple Bell

Sometimes we therapists have a very helpful map to offer. Other times our maps are a hinderance and obscure the road ahead for our patients. In the end, the best maps are those which our patients create. The ones we have to offer are just temporary aids. 

Therapy is about helping people see the broken parts of themselves. Therapy is about being witness to that which was broken. Therapy is about co-creating a space where our clients have a place to feel fully broken, to feel helplessness and despair, and for clients to discover in their own ways the contours of the territory ahead. 

Don't forget to listen, young therapist. Create the space for people to be broken. Allow your patients the dignity of the agency to decide what lay ahead. 

Help them find their own maps and their own territories. 

Do not accept any of my words on faith,

Believing them just because I said them.

Be like an analyst buying gold, who cuts, burns, 

And critically examines his product for authenticity.

Only accept what passes the test 

By proving useful and beneficial in your life.

--The Buddha 

I can describe the mountain, but the description is not the mountain, and if you are caught up in the description, as most people are, then you will never see the mountain.

-- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Or as my mentor Joseph Shay used to say, "I'm just one guy talking."

For more letters to a young therapist see Dear Young Therapist: Don't Be Afraid of the Dark; Dear Young Therapist: That Time My House Burnt Down; Dear Young Therapist: Cultivate Patience and Listen to the Music; Dear Young Therapist: Consider Your De Rigueur Requirements | The Post-Doctoral Tie Incident; Dear Young Therapist: Are You Ready to Jump; Dear Young Therapist: Perspective is Everything; Dear Young Therapist: Sometimes We Can't Put Humpty Back Together Again; Dear Young Therapist: Sometimes Race and Sex Matter; Dear Young Therapist: Don't Be Afraid to Love; and Dear Young Therapist: Allow for the Unexpected.