Dear Readers, Next week I am moving to the long-waited rehab facility, and after that I will be returning home. Until now, I have been shielded from the costs of disability because of our wonderful and vital NHS. This will change when I get home due to the considerable costs of remodelling the house, and my need for round the clock care.
Hanif, you are brilliant! This piece is marvelous. And as usual, you made me laugh at unexpected moments. i hope your new facility will bring about the needed changes. Carlo thank you for doing this with you dad for all us to be in communication. My best wishes to you Hanif in the new place, and my thanks to Carlo.
Hanif: I did an analysis with a noted Melanie Klein psychiatrist and it healed my deepest wound. We never worked on the subject matter but somehow his reparenting worked wonders. It was a surprise that suddenly that wound had disappeared. However, I found that analysis has its limits and it was not until years of Buddhism and now Advaita transformed me totally.
The place I went for psychotherapy is called the California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco, and they are Buddhists. They only charge you what you can afford to pay, too.
Yes, I am quite familiar. I was accepted at Naropa years ago but instead chose to remain making films. But i researched all the psychotherapy schools. Didn't Ken Wilber teach there at some point quite a while ago?
“It began to flow. I couldn’t stop.” Until Carlo stopped it, as in an actual session. Quite interesting in many ways, including tantalizing brief comparisons of the “schools” of psychoanalysis and the political leanings of past and present practitioners. Worthy of the “small book” you said you would/could write before Carlo’s hands got tired
Having had a very successful relationship with my therapist for almost 30 years, you captured it well when you spoke about how your therapist knows you better than anyone, even your own parents. My therapist died of cancer a year ago. I realized when he died, I had lost the last older person in my life that truly knew me. That provided some kind of comfort because of the deep knowledge they had of you and shared with you.
I have a couple of question that came to me as I read this:
1) Do you go back and edit your work and if so, how do you do that? Does Carlo read it back to you, or do you go through it after he's typed it for you and ask him to make corrections/edits?
2) When you get in the flow, do you ever stop and ask him to read something back to you in order to continue or connect your thoughts? Or does it all just flow in one fell swoop?
I'm so curious as to how you've adapted to writing by speaking. It feels so different. Is it harder?
Hanif, I wish you the best in the rehab facility and I hope and pray that you are able to find more strength and mobility as you go through the program there.
I loved that you included a kind of auto-ergography ... not just your own intimate connections to psychoanalysis, but also a kind of memoir of your odyssey with and through Freud and his follow-on interrogators / interpreters. Vital stuff!
1) I think I love Carlo. What a sensible, helpful son he is. Reminds me of one of my grandsons--maybe of two of them.
2) You wrote about your uncle's words to you as a child--"He told me I wanted to kill my father and sleep with [my] mother"--Haha. You have, of course, heard of projection?
3) Thank you. I will now stop procrastinating my own writing duty--got a review due. :-)
Enjoyed reading this. When starting to train as Psycotherapist I avoided Freud and psychodynamics originally as felt old and irrelevant. A few years later I love how much insight it can give and how relevant and real it is 💜
I don’t have a therapist. But as a child in the early ‘60s after my mother committed suicide I had a wonderful therapist, I only remember the long long silences, and drawing pictures of sailing boats and horses ... Then one day I think I wept with anger. We walked in the park. He gave me a book on sailing, told my dad he was done, and he’d always be there if I needed him. I saw him once in my adolescence and he reassured me my sexual fantasies were okay. I wonder if he’s still alive.
Thanks for your blog Hanif, you’re doing a great thing writing these!
I will gladly send a small contribution to help, but please remember that many of your readers in the United States have no NHS and struggle to get medical care at all. Many working families are forced into bankruptcy because of medical bills and have to go online to raise funds. The family of a dear friend of mine who recently died of cancer had to do this in order to pay for treatment and later for home and hospice care. I hope that wealthier followers than I are able to make larger contributions to help you. Good luck.
Are you familiar with the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and how they took the work of Freud and other behavioral psychologists at the time and used their findings to develop a mass psychology in order to manipulate and engineer consent from the masses rather than to help or heal them?
The term, 'Propaganda' was coined by Freud's nephew, Edward I Bernays. His career is noteworthy and an excellent example of how these principles have been used against us.
What began as a sincere attempt to help people has become an extremely effective science of mind control.
Here is a classic quote from Bernays, who saw his work, not only as profitable, but as legitimate and necessary in the modern world:
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society."
This is true and has been noted by independent journalists for a long time. People whose minds are molded by the prevailing ruling class's rules, and who cite the mainstream propaganda media as backup for their cuckoo ideas, are causing serious problems for democracy. Patrick Lawrence just wrote an excellent book about it called "Journalism and Their Shadows" and he delves into this issue at length.
My Freudian analyst was Irish and had a cheap print of 'Dr Tulp's Anatomy Lesson' hanging in his waiting room. I was seeing him after falling down a mountain in the wake of my lover jumping ship. He said I was living in a dream world - but we never talked about my dreams. I just rambled on around my lover, a surgeon like Dr Tulp, until, years later, he said 'But it isn't real!' What he may have meant was that it wasn't a problem that needed solving. It was just one of life's bizarre juxtapositions.
I saw one for years after nearly committing suicide due to clinical depression. I did not go to a Freudian and never would. But the therapy I did receive saved my life and I have never fallen into depression again, however angry and outraged current events make me.
That's good to hear. Obviously, I wasn't saying that I wouldn't need therapy, I'm sure that it's of great help. But I'd be too shy to share my thoughts with anyone.
I like your writing when it just keeps going wherever it will like a river or no perhaps a stream just steadily trickling along over the stones and up the banks and joining other waters. Carlos has spoken! he is the gates shut momentarily on that flow. I did enjoy it. Not having the resources to be in any other therapeutic relationship than with myself, this is how I have conversated and got along - I do value dreams they are the other half of my life.But you! you sound very alright, and looking ahead to the uncertain future - so much to think about not least the money to fund it all. There will be help for this and you must ask for it. I particularly like your account of the psychoanalyst who was very expensive -it is true that a value must be put on things for us to respect it - I am terrible at not wanting to charge anyone for anything - it must all be free, but I do understand the reasoning behind charging. Everything does have a price whether it is money or something else/ I think I have paid in other ways- you see what your writing, flowing freely like the stream always does to me it makes me join in. Thank you Hanif - with love from the tiny village in North Yorkshire,Maddi. ps just finished watching Strictly it was loud frenetic gushing entertaining and now I must vote for my favourites. XX
Hanif, you are brilliant! This piece is marvelous. And as usual, you made me laugh at unexpected moments. i hope your new facility will bring about the needed changes. Carlo thank you for doing this with you dad for all us to be in communication. My best wishes to you Hanif in the new place, and my thanks to Carlo.
Ruth E Sanchez
Hanif: I did an analysis with a noted Melanie Klein psychiatrist and it healed my deepest wound. We never worked on the subject matter but somehow his reparenting worked wonders. It was a surprise that suddenly that wound had disappeared. However, I found that analysis has its limits and it was not until years of Buddhism and now Advaita transformed me totally.
The place I went for psychotherapy is called the California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco, and they are Buddhists. They only charge you what you can afford to pay, too.
Yes, I am quite familiar. I was accepted at Naropa years ago but instead chose to remain making films. But i researched all the psychotherapy schools. Didn't Ken Wilber teach there at some point quite a while ago?
“It began to flow. I couldn’t stop.” Until Carlo stopped it, as in an actual session. Quite interesting in many ways, including tantalizing brief comparisons of the “schools” of psychoanalysis and the political leanings of past and present practitioners. Worthy of the “small book” you said you would/could write before Carlo’s hands got tired
Having had a very successful relationship with my therapist for almost 30 years, you captured it well when you spoke about how your therapist knows you better than anyone, even your own parents. My therapist died of cancer a year ago. I realized when he died, I had lost the last older person in my life that truly knew me. That provided some kind of comfort because of the deep knowledge they had of you and shared with you.
I have a couple of question that came to me as I read this:
1) Do you go back and edit your work and if so, how do you do that? Does Carlo read it back to you, or do you go through it after he's typed it for you and ask him to make corrections/edits?
2) When you get in the flow, do you ever stop and ask him to read something back to you in order to continue or connect your thoughts? Or does it all just flow in one fell swoop?
I'm so curious as to how you've adapted to writing by speaking. It feels so different. Is it harder?
Hanif, I wish you the best in the rehab facility and I hope and pray that you are able to find more strength and mobility as you go through the program there.
Sending you all the best from Canada.
Brilliant stuff here, as always -- sharing with my 300 undergraduates here in my #nakedsouls23 course at SDSU. https://eyegiene.sdsu.edu/2023/nakedsouls/index.html
I loved that you included a kind of auto-ergography ... not just your own intimate connections to psychoanalysis, but also a kind of memoir of your odyssey with and through Freud and his follow-on interrogators / interpreters. Vital stuff!
1) I think I love Carlo. What a sensible, helpful son he is. Reminds me of one of my grandsons--maybe of two of them.
2) You wrote about your uncle's words to you as a child--"He told me I wanted to kill my father and sleep with [my] mother"--Haha. You have, of course, heard of projection?
3) Thank you. I will now stop procrastinating my own writing duty--got a review due. :-)
All the best at the facility and for your eventual return home. Hopefully more pleasant, soothing dreams on your horizon.
Enjoyed reading this. When starting to train as Psycotherapist I avoided Freud and psychodynamics originally as felt old and irrelevant. A few years later I love how much insight it can give and how relevant and real it is 💜
This is your best yet. Fascinating.
And thanks to Carlo.
I love this post Hanif!
I don’t have a therapist. But as a child in the early ‘60s after my mother committed suicide I had a wonderful therapist, I only remember the long long silences, and drawing pictures of sailing boats and horses ... Then one day I think I wept with anger. We walked in the park. He gave me a book on sailing, told my dad he was done, and he’d always be there if I needed him. I saw him once in my adolescence and he reassured me my sexual fantasies were okay. I wonder if he’s still alive.
Thanks for your blog Hanif, you’re doing a great thing writing these!
I will gladly send a small contribution to help, but please remember that many of your readers in the United States have no NHS and struggle to get medical care at all. Many working families are forced into bankruptcy because of medical bills and have to go online to raise funds. The family of a dear friend of mine who recently died of cancer had to do this in order to pay for treatment and later for home and hospice care. I hope that wealthier followers than I are able to make larger contributions to help you. Good luck.
Are you familiar with the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and how they took the work of Freud and other behavioral psychologists at the time and used their findings to develop a mass psychology in order to manipulate and engineer consent from the masses rather than to help or heal them?
The term, 'Propaganda' was coined by Freud's nephew, Edward I Bernays. His career is noteworthy and an excellent example of how these principles have been used against us.
What began as a sincere attempt to help people has become an extremely effective science of mind control.
Here is a classic quote from Bernays, who saw his work, not only as profitable, but as legitimate and necessary in the modern world:
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society."
This is true and has been noted by independent journalists for a long time. People whose minds are molded by the prevailing ruling class's rules, and who cite the mainstream propaganda media as backup for their cuckoo ideas, are causing serious problems for democracy. Patrick Lawrence just wrote an excellent book about it called "Journalism and Their Shadows" and he delves into this issue at length.
My Freudian analyst was Irish and had a cheap print of 'Dr Tulp's Anatomy Lesson' hanging in his waiting room. I was seeing him after falling down a mountain in the wake of my lover jumping ship. He said I was living in a dream world - but we never talked about my dreams. I just rambled on around my lover, a surgeon like Dr Tulp, until, years later, he said 'But it isn't real!' What he may have meant was that it wasn't a problem that needed solving. It was just one of life's bizarre juxtapositions.
I admire those people who see a psychoanalyst. I don't think I could ever do that.
I saw one for years after nearly committing suicide due to clinical depression. I did not go to a Freudian and never would. But the therapy I did receive saved my life and I have never fallen into depression again, however angry and outraged current events make me.
That's good to hear. Obviously, I wasn't saying that I wouldn't need therapy, I'm sure that it's of great help. But I'd be too shy to share my thoughts with anyone.
I like your writing when it just keeps going wherever it will like a river or no perhaps a stream just steadily trickling along over the stones and up the banks and joining other waters. Carlos has spoken! he is the gates shut momentarily on that flow. I did enjoy it. Not having the resources to be in any other therapeutic relationship than with myself, this is how I have conversated and got along - I do value dreams they are the other half of my life.But you! you sound very alright, and looking ahead to the uncertain future - so much to think about not least the money to fund it all. There will be help for this and you must ask for it. I particularly like your account of the psychoanalyst who was very expensive -it is true that a value must be put on things for us to respect it - I am terrible at not wanting to charge anyone for anything - it must all be free, but I do understand the reasoning behind charging. Everything does have a price whether it is money or something else/ I think I have paid in other ways- you see what your writing, flowing freely like the stream always does to me it makes me join in. Thank you Hanif - with love from the tiny village in North Yorkshire,Maddi. ps just finished watching Strictly it was loud frenetic gushing entertaining and now I must vote for my favourites. XX
Carlo is doing an amazing job of bringing us the lively, cheeky Hanif that we all love. Reading these pieces always puts a huge happy grin on my face.