Dangling Conversation

"It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality." -D. Winnicott

The unexpected sometimes happens in a conversation, a spark of creative energy, as if there is borrowed energy between the parties that increases the potential for original thought.

The other day at the market I ran across an acquaintance with whom I have had many friendly exchanges about psychotherapy. Though my friend has a complicated life, she tends to dismiss the potential of counseling to help her negotiate complexities.

I have tried a number of pathways to make headway with her with little progress. I have compared counseling to coaching, focused on the notion that all teaching involves talk, and pointed out that developing musicians use talk with their mentors to hone their skills. Her friendly skepticism around 'talk therapy' has never lifted despite my efforts to convince her that talk is central to human exchange.

During our conversation this day she was telling me a story about a conflict at work and asking for some advice. She began her story with a little pause and barely whispered words, almost to herself, 'Well I guess I can tell you this...' She then narrated for a few minutes a complicated scenario giving specifics which culminated in the need to confront a colleague with their differences. What struck me was that the interaction at work seemed benign, certainly there was not enough to the story regarding either privacy or embarrassment to account for her whispered words, 'well I guess I can tell you.'

I responded to her story by observing, 'you know if I heard something like this in a counseling session, I would be paying more attention to what you prefaced the story with, your whispered comment about whether you should share the story or not.' I pointed out that the scenario she elaborated seemed relatively innocuous, so why the hesitancy to tell it? My friend paused and smiled. I then reciprocated her smile and commented, 'You don't have hangups around anger or aggression do you?' She immediately confessed with a degree of seriousness that she indeed did, implying there was more than a fair amount of expressed emotion in the household where she grew up.

My friend was in a very receptive mood to talk further and I told her that in learning to be counselors we are taught to listen to those things a patient expresses that hint at psychic tension.' Those of us in the trade of course call this 'resistance.' The conversation with my friend then lightly shifted to more immediate concerns in the store and we amicably parted ways.

Reflecting back on the conversation I realized I had had a teaching moment. I have a tendency in discussions about counseling to focus more on what we do rather than how we listen. It is the latter, when we are at our best, that allows trained professionals to pick up on subtleties that might not be noticed in social conversation but are crucial in informing the direction of our work. Sometimes the loudest therapeutic voice is that which is whispered.

I also learned from this exchange with my friend that I might pay more attention to demonstrating what we do in therapy as opposed to selling it as an enterprise.

This moment of my own sudden insight harks back to Winnicott and some rather deep psychological concepts. In the collection of essays, "Playing and Reality," Winnicott stressed the iimportance of social interaction on individual development. Adult conversations in many contexts are a form of play during which the mind becomes relaxed and fluid. Talking to my friend on this occasion I had no sense of urgency to convince her of the merits of counseling, after all, we had had this conversation many times. Bringing up the subject of counseling felt a bit like playful teasing as we are comfortable with our differences. Little did I know that my relaxed and playful impulse was fertile ground for unexpected insight, The un-seriousness of the moment led to a serious and productive insight: we often are most able to influence others through enactment. By calling my friend's attention to how our conversation might occur during a therapeutic hour I was demonstrating rather than explaining.