7/8/2025 0 Comments Addiction and the TitanicIt's 9am on a Thursday in a substance abuse treatment facility. How do you solicit interest from clients? Try this out:
In 1898, the American author Morgan Robertson wrote a novel called Futility, or The Wreck of the Titan. It features a boat called the Titan that has the following specifications:
On April 15, 1912, the Titanic (actually) struck an iceberg in the Atlantic killing most of the 3000 passengers on-board. Here were its specifications:
I then ask the clients two questions. 1.) How is it possible that an author envisioned a significant historical event in advance? 2.) Which of the two events came/comes first? Answers to the first question typically run the spectrum from "It's just luck" to "That's impossible." And while the answer to the second question seems straightforward, I point out that the answer is more complicated than it would appear. There are in fact at least four answers:
By this point, we're ready to figure out what this has to do with recovery and mental health. I provide two takes on how to utilize this allegory. 1. “Self-fulfilling prophecy” and “self-sabbotage” The more obvious use of the story is to leverage it for knowledge of self-destructive behaviors. Consider this metaphor:
2. Trauma and post-traumatic growth (many deaths) First operative healing principle (again, metaphorically): I sank, I died, I still live.
If: Sinking = grieving = recovering = living = healing Then sinking is… Then relapsing is... Then ending relationships is... Then starting anew is...
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If any clinicians run group therapy sessions and would like to try out something fun, here's a group to try (along with an evidence-based summary and references):
TITLE: Thought Experiment: Spontaneous Vulnerability This group therapy session combines elements of philosophical counseling and techniques from narrative therapy to help clients rehearse an imagined moment of vulnerability. The clinician explained the principle of Gedankenexperiment [thought experiment], the “term used by German-born physicist Albert Einstein to describe his unique approach of using conceptual rather than actual experiments in creating the theory of relativity” (Brittanica). He then provided the following thought experiment.
Clients then responded to the following questions:
The discussion up to that point prepared clients to answer the main question: What story does your phone tell about you, and is that story aligned with the story you like to tell others about yourself? Theoretical Foundations & Therapeutic Alignment
— Increase tolerance for vulnerability in a safe, imaginative frame — Promote group cohesion through shared discomfort and emotional risk-taking — Challenge shame-based thinking by recognizing common themes in others’ responses — Support authenticity in constructing new recovery-oriented narratives Clinical Utility in Substance Use Settings
REFERENCES
Voodoo Dolls have a rich and often misunderstood multifaceted history that branches off into different cultures. Rarely does this history intersect with western therapeutic strategies. This group sought to change that. Németh (2018) reports that "The earliest extant reference to magic dolls is made in the foundation oath of the settlers of Cyrene [Libya]" (179). These dolls, in fact, show up in fragments of text throughout the classical Greco-Roman world. But these dolls, while similar in purpose and effect, at least on first glance, to the "Voodoo Doll" of African and Afro-Caribbean figures, are in fact quite different. When we approach the topic of magic dolls and the Voodoo religious practices, we run into difficult territory. David Frankfurter (2020) explores these difficulties at length. He argues that term often applied to hand-sized, human-like dolls made of fabric or straw, and used for the purposes of inflicting harm on a human identified by the miniature effigy, is "fundamentally misleading in its history of applications and especially egregious in the current debate over the openness of classics to people of color." His argument is worth citing in some detail because the primary points of contention are all valid. First, he shows how "the term Voodoo Doll implies that it is the law of sympathy (“like affects like”) that is the prevailing assumption of the artifact’s users. But these laws of sympathy belong not to the various worlds in which people have used ritual figurines and curse-poppets but rather to the “armchair” synthetic theories of Frazer’s Golden Bough, which strove to comprehend primitive religion in a general, if uninformed, way" (53–54). Second, citing the work of Joan Dyan (1995), he acknowledges how “anything diabolical, irrational, or superstitious became materialized [starting in the 18th century] as the spirit of blackness" (cit. 54). Ultimately, Frankfurter's claim is clear and simple understand: "The term Voodoo Doll should be abandoned, as many more precise ones have long been available to scholars" (54). I don't disagree, but I also chose to use the oft-misused, sometimes offensive word for the title of this group. I had two primary reasons for this choice. First, the milieu of group therapy in substance use treatment facilities is populated by many types of people. The effort to find a "common language" while also teaching and doing valid therapeutic work is substantial. I gravitate toward scholarly sources such as Frankfurter's essay, but I have learned through thousands of hours of experience that most of my clients do not. Since I am well-trained in the art of teaching and have the ability to translate scholarly concepts into different modes of discourse, I frequently lead groups on heady and challenging topics. But, I always pepper those groups with copious pop culture terms and references in order to speak to as many people as possible all at once. In the case of this group, "Voodoo Doll" is accessible as a concept, and so I used its accessibility as a rhetorical gambit to entice clients (aged 19–61) into the hard emotional work that I'll explain below. Second, if and when matters of race, gender, sexuality, stigma, offensiveness, political discord, religious trauma, etc., come up, which they do quite frequently, then whatever gets initially branded as "offensive," regardless of who says it, becomes an invitation to a therapeutic discussion about the emotions that arise around the particular brand of offense one experiences. Nothing occurs in the treatment environment that is devoid of therapeutic value. All problems, especially racism and similarly charged -isms, have the power to reveal something that was previously invisible to one or more clients, even to the clinician(s). So, having hazarded the use of "Voodoo Doll," I was prepared to drop my plan for the group and pivot to a processing group on racism and cultural appropriation. As it turned out, that need did not arise. Clients were at first hesitant about the prompt to construct Voodoo Dolls, but the hesitance dropped away as I provided the set-up and rationale for the group. I began by talking about the difference between self-defeat and self-destruction. Clients were quick to point out the main difference. Self-defeat is a thought-based, self-talk problem. Self-destruction is a behavior that causes harm. For example, self-defeating thoughts take the form of core beliefs such as "I'm not worthy of love." One self-destructive behavior that could follow from that belief is the self-imposed prohibition on making any attempt to connect meaningfully with other people. The harm caused by this behavior is the harm of isolation. Without meaningful connection, the self fails to grow. Another self-destructive behavior, however, could be much more severe. To prove to oneself that one is not worthy of love, a person could inject fentanyl into their neck with the hope of numbing the pain caused the lack of meaningful interpersonal love. In either case, the self-destruction hurts. What's more, self-defeat and self-destruction work together like tag-team wrestling partners. The behavior often doubles as proof that the core belief is correct, when in actuality the "proof" is made for the purpose of reifying the belief. My plan was to use Voodoo Dolls to address this problem, a problem with which all clients were very familiar. I proposed that anger is the primary emotion that accompanies self-defeat and self-destruction. The problem with anger, in this case, is often that it gets directed toward the self instead of directed towards the actual instigating object. With this possibility in play, I asked clients to make a Voodoo Doll that represented a person or a specific situation toward which they had unresolved anger and rage. Once they made the doll, the clients were to use thumb-tacks, scissors, and markers to make surgical wounds on the dolls. Each mark or stab had to relate to a specific instance of anger. I asked clients not to hold back. And they didn't. A few minutes into the creation process and the clients were expressing their anger. But then I introduced a twist. I reminded them that the name of this group is "You will suffer." Offered as a fact, not a threat, the group, as the clients know by now, derives its name from Buddhist approaches to wellness and recovery. Suffering exists. It only causes more suffering to pretend that isn't the case. What would it look like to operate from the certainty that suffering will happen instead of avoiding suffering or refusing to admit that we all suffer? In accordance with Buddhist principles, however, each act of violence we direct toward others is an act of violence committed against ourselves (since there is no real self-other/subject-object divide). With that thought in mind (treating it as true), I invited clients to take another look at their dolls. I asked them to watch as the identity of the doll transforms from someone else or some outer situation and becomes a representation of themselves. I asked them to notice: You are already dinged up. Your anger has hurt you. Following from that, I asked them to add more marks to the doll. I asked them to add a new mark/cut/tear for each self-defeating belief and self-destructive behavior they’ve enacted in the past 6 months. Each person in the room groaned and audible sighed. The weight of the idea landed in their bodies. Perhaps reluctantly, each client took up the invitation and made their marks. Another twist. Buddhist approaches to recovery also invite us to meet suffering with compassion. We suffer more when we fail to accept that we cause harm, that we defeat ourselves, that our self-defeat leaks out onto others. As such, I instructed the clients to take a look at their dolls and slowly, with great care, attempt to return the doll to its starting shape as one (or more) plain piece of paper. I asked them to smooth out the wrinkles the best they could. I asked them to do this with the same sensitivity that you might use to wash a baby. In a metaphorical sense, that's exactly what they are doing. They are caring for their dinged-up and disheveled selves, and they are offering the care because they are deserving of it. Next, we observed the wrinkled paper. We imagined ourselves as the wrinkled paper. I said, take a look at that paper. It’s you. You are wrinkled and torn. And since we can never untoast the toast, so to speak, we will never return to a state of pristine paper. But the clean sheet is an illusion anyway. Nobody ever attains it (addict or otherwise). Unless we start from where we are, meaning in this wrinkled and torn state, we cannot truly accept ourselves. I then asked them to keep looking at the paper while I asked some questions. I invited them to feel what comes up when I asked: Do you think anyone wants this wrinkled piece of paper? Do you want to be the paper in this shape? What allows or prevents you from accepting that this is it? If you'd like to see what kinds of responses arise after a session of this sort, I invite you to try out the group in your own environment. This was the second time I conducted this group, and the pleasant surprise that hit me this time came at the very end as I pondered what to do with all the paper and related material. It felt charged. I didn't want to throw it away. To preserve the memory, I gathered it all together and invited clients to think about the pile as our collective pain. When most people think of anger, they think of the color red, of punching and kicking, and of steam coming out of cartoons' ears. But nobody thinks about this tattered stack of paper. And yet, in under 60 minutes, our group had created a beautiful representation of collective suffering. References:
Dayan, Joan. 1995. Haiti, History, and the Gods. Berkeley: University of California Press. Frankfurter, David. "" Voodoo Doll": Implications and Offense of a Taxonomic Category." Arethusa 53.1 (2020): 43-58. Németh, György. "Voodoo dolls in the classical world." Violence in Prehistory and Antiquity (2018): 179-94. Therapeutic references: Feen-Calligan, H., McIntyre, B., & Sands-Goldstein, M. (2009). "Art therapy with substance abuse clients: Evidence-based support for a model program." Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 26(3), 104–110. Kabat-Zinn, J. (2003). "Mindfulness-based interventions in context: Past, present, and future." Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 10(2), 144–156. Malchiodi, C. A. (2005). Expressive Therapies. Guilford Press. Client's don't often come into treatment with any knowledge of (or interest in) art history, so I try to find as many opportunities as I can to introduce them to visual art. Today's art therapy group drew inspiration from the Impressionist Berthe Morisot and the Expressionist Erich Heckel. I showed them Morisot's Psyché and Heckel's Männerbildnis because I wanted them to use Impressionist and/or Expressionist visual language to produce self-portraits. There was, however, a catch. The two self portraits had to be conceived from the perspective of two people: a stranger and someone who knows you well. This constraint, in addition to the artistic mode of expression, produced the therapeutic effect of the group; namely, creating self-portraits through others' eyes helps to make visible how we see ourselves, how we hide parts of our emotions from view, and how we yearn for others to see the parts of ourselves that we hide. Research supports the use of art therapy as a means of fostering emotional regulation, enhancing insight, and promoting psychological flexibility (Kimport & Robbins, 2012; Gussak, 2007; Slayton et al., 2010). The dual self-portrait exercise specifically encourages clients to explore the discrepancy between internal and external perceptions of self, which can be particularly valuable for individuals in recovery who may struggle with shame, self-stigma, and identity confusion (Mezo & Short, 2012; Kim et al., 2017). Since most clients are highly judgmental, especially when it comes to their own perceived lack of artistic skill, I provided a few extra words of guidance:
Therapists looking to highlight clinical themes in exercises like this might notice the following. First, there is a discrepancy between self-image and public persona in the portraits. One client, whose works aren't pictured here, offered an image of her face surrounded by hearts. The second image, however, was a split canvas with one whole-body representation of herself residing in a box. In that version of herself, her heart was broken in her chest and a frowning, disembodied facial expression floated outside of her facial area. I commented, "it looks like it takes a lot of energy to come across as so loving all the time." She replied, "It's exhausting. And I have to keep my sadness locked away." Clearly, the client suffers distress any time she wants to fulfill her own emotional needs.
Second, the role of shame and vulnerability in recovery comes across loudly in the images. Consider the male figure crouched in a fetal position contrasted against the dark background. That image clashes with its partner, a back-view of the man seated in a folded-leg meditative position. The former, likely the image imagined through the eyes of someone who knows the client well, has access to a world of pain that strangers don't see at all. Third, on a more optimistic note, it is possible to see emerging self-compassion as clients explore their authentic identities. A lot of the relational therapy work we do in group settings asks clients to evaluate the percentage of themselves they present to the world on a daily basis. What will encourage us to show all of ourselves? What fears prevent us from showing the important parts? How do we overcome our fears of judgment and insecurity, and how are clients supposed to set aside their chemical coping skills as they find ways to tap into their innate courage? Fourth, and finally, it is possible to see growing insight into the ways social roles and substance use history influence clients' perceived identity. What are these portraits if not glimpses into the roles that each client imagines they are supposed to play on a daily basis? The two portraits presents a choice: play the parts assigned to me or play the part I yearn to play. The intensity of emotion crammed into that choice could fuel at least 10 groups. Fortunately, artistic expression helps "say" things with out needing to utilize words, and that type of silent self-disclosure can sometimes give clients permission to show parts of themselves that they would otherwise keep locked away. Interested in reading evidence-based studies on the effectiveness of art therapy? Check out the following: Kimport, E. R., & Robbins, S. J. (2012). Efficacy of creative art therapy for reducing anxiety, depression, and stress: A meta-analysis. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 29(1), 46-53. Gussak, D. (2007). The effectiveness of art therapy in reducing depression in prison populations. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 51(4), 444-460. Slayton, S. C., D'Archer, J., & Kaplan, F. (2010). Outcome studies on the efficacy of art therapy: A review of findings. Art Therapy, 27(3), 108-118. Mezo, P. G., & Short, M. M. (2012). The art therapy trauma and resiliency model: A theoretical framework for art therapy practice. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 29(1), 8-13. Kim, S., Kim, G., & Ki, J. (2017). Effects of art therapy on individuals with addiction: A meta-analysis. Journal of Social Science & Medicine, 190, 31-39. Moon, B. L. (2010). Art-based group therapy: Theory and practice. Charles C Thomas Publisher. 6/7/2025 0 Comments Wrong-handed HopeIf you've ever tried to throw a ball with your non-dominant hand, then you remember the feeling. Awkward, alien, confusing. Use your "off" or "wrong" hand to brush your teeth, put your contacts in, or write a few sentences on paper, and the experience is similar. Even someone with five decades of life experience can feel new to their body simply by altering daily tasks in this one simple way. Building from that experience, I designed an art-therapy group called "wrong-handed hope" in which I asked clients to draw two different images. One image, drawn with the "wrong" hand, would represent hopefulness. The other image, drawn with the dominant hand, would represent hopelessness. After completing both images, clients placed them in a group that I arranged in a salon-like manner. The group perused the artworks and had to determine which images depicted hopefulness and which ones depicted the opposite. Check out the three gallery images for the results. The activity aimed at accessing several non-dominant "muscles" at the same time. The first of these is the muscle of playfulness, which, if not cared for, atrophies with age. Every time I ask adults to pick up crayons, color pencils, and markers, I hear the same replies. "I'm a terrible artist." "I can't draw." These comments are not much different from the self-judgments of "I'm a terrible person" and "I can't do anything right," both of which I hear too frequently in therapeutic environments. Where do the statements come from? Even when they come out of the mouths of the people I'm working with, I always say that the words aren't theirs. They are, instead, words they were told or names they were called by others when they were younger. If we tell children or suggest to them in any way that their artistic forays are mediocre or just meh, then, given the lack of value placed on artistic thinking in our school systems, it's only a matter of time before the children will infer that they aren't "meant" to do art, or that art is "not for them." This is a catastrophe. Imagine a world in which art is meant for only a few. Sadly, that's this world. And look where's it gotten us. Second, the activity secretly plays mischievously with our sense of certainty. Of all the "dominant" mental "muscles" we have, the sense of certainty is one of the most annoying. It seems so great, as if to not want it is pure stupidity. And yet, the muscle of certainty is, at best, a defense mechanism, and, at worst, an obstacle barring us from true learning. By contrast, the non-dominant muscle of uncertainty is far more useful in the long run. If you're tracking the metaphor that I'm unspooling in this post, then you'll see that uncertainty is the traveling partner of "wrong-handed" activities like brushing teeth with "the other" hand. "Wrong-handedness" and the feeling of weird alienness that it brings into lived experience is akin to privileging uncertainty and not-knowing in the learning process. While that might seem scary or risky, it is in fact the only way one learns anything. To commence learning from a place of certainty would be a non-starter. The only way to learn is to is acknowledge that one does not already know. Thus, uncertainty is the pathway to knowledge. By asking clients to draw hopefulness with their "wrong hand," I am inviting them to conjure into being a sensation that, for addicts, has essentially been foreclosed, and, what's more, to do it while embracing the awkward, alien, and confusing sensation that comes from assenting to non-dominance. In the same stroke, to draw hopelessness with the dominant hand is to silently acknowledge something that is always true but that we don't like to admit. Namely, whenever we become sure that there is no hope, we begin to actualize that surety with the same confidence of a middle-schooler drawing this: You've heard the factoid about how it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile, which infers a connection between the (greater) effort it takes to sustain a negative affect compared to the (lesser) effort it takes to tilt toward the positive. Well, the same principle is in effect here. When we produce hopelessness, we tend to do so with the same surety as we bring to drawing a "Cool S" with our dominant hand. By distinction, when, or if, we produce hopefulness, it usually ends up looking like a child's drawing of hope: innocent, naive, shaky, but brilliant, inspiring, beautiful.
The relationship between these ideas and the work of recovery will likely be clear to you by now. For addicts, the future can't help but appear bleak. If they base their image of the future on the experiences of the recent past, then the road ahead is daunting. The work of recovery, however, is essentially the work of honoring your "wrong" hand. You are producing a reality with the fine motor skills of a child. This is not a bad thing. Instead, it's a reminder that the fine motor skills of children are what produce the most imaginative artworks of humankind. After all, Picasso is famous for having said, "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." Such a beautiful reminder for people in early recovery: your aim is not to produce a masterwork like those of the Renaissance elite; rather, it is to play with the aplomb of a child learning what it means to live. 5/10/2025 0 Comments Objects to AncestorsI prepared this text for The Summer Happening residency at Texas A&M, May 2025 I’m going to explain something that is really happening. I’m going to imagine something that isn’t yet really happening. I’d like you to listen to this from a future anterior point of view such that the imagined happening becomes that which will have happened. I. Indigenous Cultures Institute For the 2024 Performance Philosophy conference in Austin, Texas, members of the Miakan-Garza Band informed our group about their ongoing struggle with various educational institutions. The members who spoke to us were: · Dr. Mario Garza currently serves as board of elder’s chair and is the principal founder of the Institute. · Maria F. Rocha, Secretary · Ruben A. Arellano, Ph.D., Consultant Here is a summary of what they told us: "The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) databases list more than 7 million Culturally Unidentifiable Inventoried (CUI) Native American remains of our ancestors that have been unearthed over the years and are kept in “collections” by universities, museums, and federal and state departments. This has happened in a country where it is against the law to disturb a human grave. As of 2015, the remains of 3,454 ancestors were removed from our Texas sacred grounds. Over 2,400 of those ancestors are at UT-Austin. The Miakan-Garza tribe is seeking three of those remains for reburial. “Our obligation, as native people, as Texas Indians, is to obtain possession of these ancestral remains and rebury them as close as possible to where they were unearthed.” — Dr. Mario Garza UT ISSUED DENIAL OF REQUEST TO REBURY ANCESTORS: On June 3, 2020, UT denied the tribe’s request to rebury their ancestors. The Miakan-Garza appealed to President Jay Harzell to overturn this decision and gave him until August 17th to respond. No response was received. On August 20th the tribe issued a press release targeting the university’s unwillingness to turn over the ancestors for reburial. September 7th, the community gathered and united with the UT students to launch a campaign for the ancestors’ release." Put simply, the University of Texas has transformed ancestors into objects. II. The Texas Archaeological Research Laboratory
During the same talk, I learned that TARL made it possible for scientific researchers to rent the remains. That is to say, the Miakan-Garza band cannot repatriate their ancestors because they have been turned into objects, but others who are interested in the objects can pay money to spend time with them. III. Alchemical Research Coalition, a division of the Invisible College Let us imagine that there is a revivification of the Invisible College. Founded by the natural scientist Robert Boyle in the 17th Century, the Invisible College convened around a distrust for knowledge received through inherited institutional frameworks. This ensemble, which included the likes of Christopher Wren, took as its motto Nullius in Verba (‘on the word of no one’), a phrase in which resides a distant echo of the founding Performance Philosophy proposition that we ought to think without knowing what thinking is. The Invisible College’s mission was to think anew by refusing the keywords and presumed certainties that pretended to vouchsafe the bedrock beliefs of the sciences. Engaging in experiment and active observation of the physical world around them, Boyle and his colleagues built their own theories and inspired a new generation of non-conformist intellectuals. As non-philosopher Francois Laruelle sees the discipline of Philosophy as a machine that endlessly produces problems suited perfectly to the answers that the discipline itself produces, I understand the University as an institution that, more and more, seeks to commodify education and produce the language that would legitimate and sanction such an education, all the while blocking students’ paths to forms of learning that would cultivate not workers but life-artists, or, better, performance philosophers. This is something to grieve. The University has not irrevocably ceded ground to the forces of ignorance. But the battle is underway. The question: what is to be done? I have been imagining ways to supplement traditional University offerings with experimentation within the Invisible College. The Invisible College has no defined curriculum but operates within the field of research mapped by Performance Philosophy, and as such it would have two guiding principles: 1.) To think such that we do not know what thinking is. 2.) Doing life is that which we must think. So imagine that this Invisible College is alive. And imagine further a group called the Alchemical Research Coalition. Within this coalition, 4 researchers have formed a multidisciplinary humanities research cluster to function as a node of the Invisible College dedicated to completing the work of the great alchemists of the past. Let us imagine that the names of the researchers are Ahmed Adel Awni Al-Dous, Mays Hossam Jamil Al-Zaanin, Ayla Ahmed Ali Obeid, and Niveen Khaled Saleh Hassouna. They partnered with the Miakan-Garza Band and submitted a fellowship application to the American Council of Learned Societies. The stated goal of the proposed research project was to enact an alchemical transformation of objects into ancestors through a fusion of Occult Philosophy, such as that used by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, and song, such as that produced by members of the Garza band. The project proceeded in this fashion. First, the team used ACLS funding to rent the remains of the Miakan-Garza ancestors from the Texas Archaeological Research Laboratory. Second, once in their possession, the remains were buried on the Sacred Ground of the tribe. Third, the researchers and the tribe members performed alchemy that transformed objects—remains held by the university—into ancestors—participating members in the daily lives of the Miakan-Garza people. The University sued the researchers and found themselves in the position once occupied by the tribe. No longer the ones in possession of anything, they had to request the return of the ancestors in order to transform them back into objects. The tribe denied the request. Thus, a second alchemical transformation had taken place. The University became those who are denied. IV. What can imagining do? It is perhaps an understatement to say that imaginative and creative thinking are needed in the present moment. Is there a way to intervene creatively, perhaps through fiction, in our daily reality so as to produce a kind of change that seems magical upon initial inspection but turns out to be fully material? Might grief be the affective source material upon which we can draw to produce cracks in the smooth façade of daily life? 5/1/2025 0 Comments On not liking asparagusA large part of group therapy in a substance use treatment center is “psychoeducation,” which typically covers topics like the science of addiction, medication information, and models of addiction. Absent from these typical topics are those that students would find in a college or university environment. That absence has been made on purpose. Social scientists tend to disqualify certain topics from the treatment programs in substance abuse facilities because they (appear to) have no bearing on the problem of addiction and the practice of recovery. One example of an excluded topic is epistemology, the study of how we know or come to know anything at all. I have not encountered any research discussing this specific topic within the realm of substance abuse treatment, but I would not be surprised to find comments suggesting that clients either aren’t able to fully “get” epistemological issues (because of withdrawal symptoms, assumed levels of intelligence, or lack of formal educational experience), or, if they “get it,” then the topic itself is too boring and/or disconnected from the real world of substance abuse. People who know me will anticipate that both possible objections hold no water with me, and they may even be able to hear me thinking, “Let me give it a shot. Let me see if I can make this interesting.” And that’s what I recently did in a group therapy session titled, “On not liking asparagus.” I was not going entirely rogue with my decision. The National Philosophical Counseling Association stakes its theory of change on the value of shifting epistemological frameworks in order to see oneself and the world anew. To interest clients in the task at hand, which, admittedly, has nothing to do with addiction, I introduced them to this imaginary child-like statement I first encountered in Slavoj Žižek’s The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989): I’m so glad I don’t like asparagus because if I did then I’d eat a lot of asparagus, and that would be terrible because I hate asparagus. And then I transposed the same logic to a more familiar topic: I’m so glad I don’t go to NA/AA meetings because if I did, and if I started liking the meetings, then I’d be at meetings all the time. The clients laughed and looked puzzled as they encountered the apparent contradiction at the heart of the statements. I asked if the statement seemed illogical or if, to the contrary, they could see a certain logic at work. We collaborated on answering the question and came up with this general epistemological framework that allows the asparagus statement to make sense to the kid who utters it.
If we make a few adjustments, we can see the same logic at work in the statement about the NA/AA meetings. I often here, "I don't like these meetings because they are like church. They're too religious." One client recently said to me, "I didn't put down the bottle to join a cult." And there's a legitimate and valid emotion tucked inside that statement, for sure. But the logic at work smells like asparagus. Church = Bad. AA = Church. AA = Bad. At no point has the experience of an AA meeting overcoded the original equation, and so AA and Church and Bad all live together in the same mental schema. Of course, the clients who think in this way often have very little experience with AA meetings, and so the general tone of their resistance is that old experiences function like prescription lenses with out-dated prescriptions. All things viewed through the lenses are blurry and for that reason unattractice. Clearly, however, some kids grow out of the anti-asparagus logic. By extension, we can imagine that adults can also learn to move beyond the same logic. But how does that change happen? How do we grow out of a way of thinking and knowing grounded in the seeming safety of certainty? How do we change? How are we changed? Again, the clients and I collaborated to create answers to those questions:
What now can we outline in an easy-to-understand manner?
Of the many important take-away messages from this group, I would like to underscore one in particular. If a treatment facility (or any therapist for that matter) tells you that a stay in treatment or a series of sessions will create lasting change, they are promising something they cannot possibly promise. Change will only take place after the possibility of change becomes thinkable and palpable. Therapy sessions are the places where this new way of thinking/seeing/knowing/feeling arises. Life outside the therapy room is where the change takes place.
3/31/2025 0 Comments Get out of your headResearchers of narrative therapy such as Freedman and Combs (1996) and White and Epston (1990) have argued convincingly that healing from mental health issues requires externalizing phrases, images, and emotions that we believe to exist "inside" of us. Once "outside," these phrases, images, and emotions take on new characteristics as they tangle with the material world. Storytelling, for example, accomplishes this goal. By telling our stories, i.e., by narrating our experiences, we package our lived history in ways that appeal to others and, in turn, we create the possibility that others will validate our experiences, shed light on certain mysteries, and provide insights into our personal struggles, thereby fostering a sense of togetherness in the world. I adapted these ideas in today's art therapy group. (See the previous blog post for another analysis of art therapy in action.) This group invited clients to practice externalizing the substance use and mental health problems that they typically restrict to their “internal” or “mental” self. The purpose of externalizing problems, again, is to gain perspective on something that often masquerades as “natural” or “given” but is, to the contrary, constructed, in part through our thoughts and beliefs about the malady. By undertaking this externalization process in a group therapy setting, clients can collaborate on the production of new perspectives and generate viewpoints that could be pleasantly surprising and/or unexpected. Here are the instructions I gave to a group of seven clients
The slideshow shows the results of the activity. I placed the artworks on the floor and asked clients the following questions: What if these artworks were the only things we had to guide us through recovery? What if there were no 12-step programs, no evidence-based practices, no research on addiction? What if you had to figure out how to live your life according to these images alone? How would you go about healing yourself? Of the many take-aways from this activity, here's a vital one. The first line drawn on the page may be someone's unique expression of their struggle with addiction. But the path forward from that point will not transpire in isolation. Others will necessarily add to that first "line." As such, we benefit from working together to produce an artful way of moving from the first line to the caption we'd like to include beneath the finished product of our recovery journey. Works cited:
Freedman, J., Combs, G. (1996). Narrative therapy: The social construction of preferred realities. New York : W. W. Norton. White, M., Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York : W. W. Norton. 3/17/2025 0 Comments "Come to Treatment!"Every Monday at 9am, I lead a group therapy session called "Arts and Sciences." The rationale for the group topic and title is twofold. First, scholars have demonstrated the benefit for artistic therapeutic modalities in substance use treatment settings for numerous reasons. Dingle et al. (2009) have shown how music therapy in this setting compels clients to pair their efforts in recovery with the parts of themselves that derive motivation from music. Heiderscheit (2009) explains how music therapy engages the individual and the group at the same time, thereby making it ideal for substance use treatment centers where most of the day is dedicated to group therapy. Anggawijayanto et al. (2024) and Breslin et al. (2003), though in different ways, identify the process of "finding one's voice" as crucial for increased self-esteem, which, in turn, can fuel long-term recovery. As such, narrative-based art therapies (e.g., poetry or manifesto writing) can provide useful containers into which clients can place strong values and beliefs. Wadeson (1980) explained “that what is more desirable than isolated descriptions of [arts therapy] techniques is a theoretical framework from which to select appropriate materials and methods” (cit. in Hinz 2009, 20). Whichever artistic medium one may choose, the process of thinking artistically gives clients access to parts of themselves that have likely been turned off by drug addiction and alcoholism, parts that were active during childhood but deemed "useless" or tangential to the "true" purpose of life (ostensibly, getting work, contributing to the world, making a difference). And while scholarship is important, my own personal experience leading art therapy groups in the treatment setting has validated my long-held belief that art is transformative and that the therapeutic journey requires more art and less science, especially in treatment settings. My second rationale for leading an "Arts and Sciences" group is that, while the evidence is compelling, clients often have a bias against art, claiming that it is unserious or superfluous in a setting where each group emphasizes the life and death stakes of treatment. Equally as common is the belief in clients that "I'm not a good artist," which is often a narrative they acquired from authority figures who judged or invalidated their artistic expressions against certain ideals or norms. As such, given these biases, I've found it necessary to explain the brain science and cultural studies-like social science behind artistic expression. I'll point, for example, to the work advertising is able to do upon the brain to persuade people of needs they didn't know they had, or to the culture jamming (a la Situationist International) projects that have been capable of challenging and shifting epistemic frameworks that shape how one sees anything at all. Taken together, then, "Arts and Sciences" is a group topic that enables clinicians to play creatively with interventions not typically taught in textbooks of addictions treatment and that enables clients to tap into parts of themselves that store strong emotions that haven't been validated in years or sometimes decades. One of these Arts and Sciences groups asks clients to make three types of flyers that I promise to hang in public spaces. 1 flyer must be a serious or genuine ad for going to treatment. 1 flyer must use irreverence to solicit authentic interest in substance use treatment by utilizing "dark" humor or direct speech to compel attention. 1 flyer must be for "meaning in life," and I leave it open-ended so as to see what clients make of that invitation. The role of irreverence in this activity is important for many reasons. One, the ability to laugh at oneself and at others like you is, generally, an ability to truly see yourself in the world. As Simon Critchley writes in On Humor (2002), “The object of laughter is the subject who laughs” (14). He goes on to say, “A true joke, a comedian’s joke, suddenly and explosively lets us see the familiar defamiliarized, the ordinary made extraordinary and the real rendered surreal, and we laugh in a physiological squeal of transient delight, like an infant playing peek-a-boo....Thus, jokes are a play upon form, where what is played with are the accepted practices of a given society” (10). One may not immediately think of a client in treatment as a "comedian," but there is no doubt that clients in treatment are in the best position to help society challenge the accepted stigma against addicts and shine light on the ostrich-head-in-the-sand behavior that leaves substance use treatment in the category of "Things we just don't talk about." As such, by using humor capable of breaking through the wall of silence around addiction in society, clients become powerful change agents. If clients are comedians, per se, then they certainly ought to be empowered to engage in comedy during a time in their life beset by mirthlessness and feelings of failure. Here's an example of one of the flyers made by a client at Nova Transformations where I work. If we take a moment to analyze this, we see the arts and sciences at work. First, note the handmade appearance of the flyer. Compared to the AI-generated group of people engaged in serious conversation in a group setting that one is likely to see on treatment websites, this flyer feels quite human. More than that, it feels childlike. In a public forum like the public library or a grocery store bulletin board, a handmade aesthetic like this will catch people's eyes. Second, the childlike, handmade aesthetic clashes with the large "Free Drugs" that pops into our vision first. Third, the clash produces an incongruence that compels further inspection. If, fourth, the inspector is a person who uses drugs, then the words "Free Drugs" will entice them even more, but, fifth, the "sale" of free drugs is undercut by the smaller print that reveals the entire pitch: "be free from drugs." The spectator is then forced to act: stay and think or recoil. Talking about this particular flyer in the group, each client recognized the habitual, anti-authoritarian response to such appeals that still lives in them even as they sit in treatment. "Don't tell me I need help!" That adolescent defiance is a hallmark of in-built defense mechanisms that, far from actually protecting people, often lead them into commerce with "the devil they know." All the clients in this group know this defiance because I always chip away at it, ask them to perform it, and ask them to over-emphasize it thereby drawing it out into the light where it withers upon inspection. The clients know that spectators of this sign will elicit strong responses, and that's precisely why this client chose to design the flyer in this way. It's a provocation. It is irreverent. It effectively winks at those who know and then gets real to say, no, really, come join us. Come to treatment. Anggawijayanto, Erydani; Putrikita, Katrim Alifa; Widanarti, Mulianti. (2024) Improving the Generation Z's Self-Esteem and Decreasing their Mental Issues by Creative Expression Art Therapy. Journal of Educational, Health & Community Psychology (JEHCP), Vol 13, Issue 3, p849. https://doi.org/10.12928/jehcp.v13i3.28667
Breslin, K. T., Reed, M. R., & Malone, S. B. (2003). An Holistic Approach to Substance Abuse Treatment. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 35(2), 247–251. https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2003.10400006 Critchley, Simon. On Humour. New York: Routledge, 2002. ]DINGLE, GENEVIEVE A.; LIBBY GLEADHILL, FELICITY A. BAKER. (2009) Can music therapy engage patients in group cognitive behaviour therapy for substance abuse treatment? Drug and Alcohol Review. https://doi.org/10.1080/09595230701829371 Heiderscheit, A. (2009). Songs, music and sobriety: An overview of music therapy in substance abuse. In S. L. Brooke (Ed.), The use of creative therapies with chemical dependency issues (pp. 136–161). Charles C Thomas Publisher, Ltd. Hinz, L. (2009). Expressive Therapies Continuum: A Framework for Using Art in Therapy. New York: Routledge. Wadeson, H. (1980). Art psychotherapy. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 11/25/2024 0 Comments Desire and Addiction![]() You are likely familiar with the expression, “I just need to get out of my own way,” as it pops up, for example, in therapeutic contexts. Clients will say something to the effect of, “I know what I need to do, I just need to do it.” The tacit claim beneath that phrase has at least three parts. 1.) There’s a cognitive part of one’s self that understands, logically, what steps must be taken in order to solve a problem. 2.) An action-oriented part of the self is in some way being prevented from acting. 3.) There is some invisible part of the individual that is blocking meaningful action. Hence: if the obstructive part gets out of the way, then the action part will do what the cognitive part knows needs to be done. None of that is simple or straightforward. What, afterall, is this invisible part that is blocking the action part? What would motivate any part to serve a blocking function? Are we so sure we have or are made up of these “parts,” or is that a helpful metaphor that might lead an individual to an insight needed to overcome fear and produce change in their life? There is no getting out of the way of oneself. The problem is altogether different and more complicated. It is a problem identified and described at length by Jacques Lacan; namely, the “self” is not substantive at all. It is, rather, an “extimate” creation produced from the outside. An individual comes into existence and begins to construct a sense of self through the way the individual seems to be perceived by caretakers and others in their most intimate circles. Not only are individuals constructed from the outside but so too are individuals caught in a lifelong enigma: Am I what others desire me to be? If so, then is my own desire commensurate with the desires of others? If not, then how am I to be desired by others? Whichever angle we choose from which to approach those questions, we have to deal with desire, understood here as a mysterious, attractive (as in, pulling toward) force. It is desire and not “the self” that demystifies many psychological and psycho-somatic problems. Desire is a particularly important facet of addiction. In order to understand how this is the case, however, we have to tarry with desire as Lacan presented it. This is no easy task, but it’s worth the effort because understanding the role of desire in addiction can help therapists cut quickly to the forces that keep addicts locked in subservience to alcohol and other drugs. Lacan poses desire as an equation: Demand - Need = Desire Let’s get oriented in the conceptual landscape where these terms function. Chronologically speaking, regarding the three words of the equation, need comes first. Humans are born and the needs are apparent straight away. We need warmth, touch, food, and safety. But humans are also born into conflict insofar as the world into which we are born is dominated by language (verbal and nonverbal). What language is required to get our needs met? To achieve a need, we must employ language correctly, and, according to Lacan, at the moment a need gets articulated through language (e.g., crying out) it becomes a demand. Pure need is thus relegated to a necessity, but one that must be earned through participation in the symbolic order of discourse. Temporally prior to the need of an individual, language and the Symbolic order exists. Once born and needing, the individual’s need becomes enveloped in the Symbolic order and becomes a demand so that the need may be met by another. Desire comes into focus as the difference between Demand and Need. It is not substantive. Rather, it functions as something like a black hole. When need is removed from demand, a void is created. The gravitational pull of the void leads toward desire. Since desire is not itself a thing, one can never actually attain a desire. If desire was attained it would cease to be desire and become a possession. According to Lacan, our drives propel us toward desire, though we never actually intend to reach the destination. Instead, we circle around desire, careful not to get sucked into the void. That which both motivates the movement toward desire and also keeps us at the event horizon of the void, so to speak, is the stand-in for our desire, that which Lacan calls the objet petit a (where “a” is autre, other). What motivates me to cry? The other. That one over there with the milk. Here we begin to see the problem of focusing on “getting in the way of myself” instead of attending to “desire.” The former speaks of an obstruction whereas the latter speaks of a search and the momentum involved in undertaking the search. If we dedicate time to removing an obstruction, we only delay the search for that thing outside of ourselves that motivates our activity in the world. The former also invites the image of absurd leap out of oneself in order to produce substantive change. Getting out of the way of myself is akin to the turtle shaking off its shell. The latter, instead, renders a movement toward that sates itself with proximity to a suitable object of desire, but, at the same time, also resigns itself to the possibility of a primal lack of fulfillment. That is to say, a focus on desire is also a focus on right and wrong action. Or, if you prefer, action/behavior that produces fulfillment and action/behavior that leaves one wanting. In the world of addiction, there is a temptation to highlight the substance that disables the true intentions and satisfaction of an individual’s authentic self. We ask about one’s “Drug of choice,” for example. But the substance itself is not as interesting as the mechanism that reaches for, say, alcohol. The machinery is that which must be deconstructed, and that is why the phrase “I just need to get out of my own way” is not enough. One is never in one’s own way. Instead, one mistakes substances as, at best, the medium that grants access to desire or, at worst, the very thing one desires. In reality, alcohol and other drugs are most often fuel for a drive that believes itself to be guiding the individual toward desire but is, to the contrary, always off course. Alcohol, in other words, will only lead to alcohol, not to that which one desires. As such, learning what desire is all about is the prerequisite for leaving alcohol by the wayside. Desire, in addition to being equivalent to Demand - Need, is a force that Lacan says we must obey. Because one must obey desire, there is no option of not desiring. The distress caused by alcohol and other drugs comes from the ridiculousness of attempting to betray one’s desire through allegiance to a substance that is masquerading as a desired object (or experience, or person, or feeling). The drive fueled by alcohol will only ensure that desire is never reached. In fact, one cannot reach desire. Instead, desire will absorb you. Problems arise when we interfere in the absorption, which is to say that problems arise the minute we are born (or probably the moment we are conceived). Obstructions abound from Day 1, and the chief obstruction is the medium of language that converts needs to demands. Language and the things of which language speaks will always be incommensurate with each other. Through using language we already find ourselves apart from the thing of which we speak. More importantly, through using language we find ourselves already apart from our needs. (This is why a demand will never fulfill a need once and for all.) And, worse than that, we cannot speak our desire into being. We can only, at best, orient ourselves toward desire with language and then work to let go of the stand-ins that spring up as ventriloquists of desire so as to be absorbed fully by the void. (This is not the space to elaborate, but: the void could well be death.) The same conundrum shows up in Lacan’s famous expression: “Love is giving something you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it.” Tucked into that pronouncement is a paradigm shift for conceptualizing desire. Recalling that the “self” is really a negative space that comes into view through individuals’ best guesses about what others want them to be, the notion of “giving” love to another is ridiculous. Not only, according to Lacan, do we have nothing to give; we are also fully constructed around a fantasy of what we presume the other desires. The inequality between what we imagine the other desires and what the other actually desires ensures that whatever love (that which sets desire into motion) we intend to give will not be that which one actually wants. As with Magritte’s paintings, we find ourselves perpetually in a situation where we, for example, go to look at our reflection in the mirror only to find the visage of ourselves, seen from behind, in the act of looking. The “reflection” we seek is desire, the difference we sense is substantively there but we never “see” it. The endeavor of loving and desiring is not futile and doomed to end in frustration. We recall that Magritte is not showing us an actual scene. He has painted a canvas. Our perception turns the image into a frustrating missed encounter with that which we would hope to see in the mirror. The situation is the same with love. If we think a romantic relationship is itself love, we are wrong. Rather, the relationship is the “painting” and our perception is the generator of meaning. We need not perceive a missing reflection (i.e., the absence or presence of love). We can recognize, instead, the relationship as the passageway that permits each partner to sense love and desire beyond the “stand-in” of the person we claim to love. I don’t strive to see a reflection in the Magritte painting. I derive enjoyment from seeing a person in the act of looking where I had anticipated him to perceive his own likeness. Likewise, I don’t “desire” my wife. I derive enjoyment, happiness, titillation, etc., from engaging in the passageway to desire with my wife. This is the problem with alcohol and other drugs. Let’s say we long for meaningful connection with another human being. Such connection, however, is blocked by inhibition. People believe that alcohol functions to dis-inhibit oneself, thereby unlocking the door that typically blocks one from connection. But this is not what happens for the alcoholic. For him, alcohol distorts one’s understanding of the other’s desire. He/She/We fantasize(s) that the other desires us to be dis-inhibited, but by using alcohol to produce disinhibition we merely present the fantasy we have of the other’s desire to the other. If the other accepts what is offered, then they have accepted a fantasy. The inhibited self, which has been discarded as incommensurate with the fantasy of what the other wants, can thus never be chosen. Not only will it never be chosen, which is to say the alcoholic will never be chosen by those he “connects” with by disinhibiting himself with alcohol. The alcoholic will never even be seen at all since alcohol will mask the self attempting to be disinhibited. The alcoholic using alcohol to “connect” will thus merely give something he doesn’t have (i.e., a disinhibited self) to someone who doesn’t want it, where “it” is the absent self that has been discarded through the act of drinking. It’s amusing to zoom in on the way language functions in this formulation. “In-hibit” means “to hold in” or “to keep back.” It is a “negative” phrase insofar as the substance of the inhibited thing is denied and kept from view. The word helps us glimpse the holding back, not the thing being held back. In the scenario about the alcoholic above, alcohol seeks to negate the negation of “in-hibition.” What is produced is a double negative: “dis-inhibition.” At no point has anything positive been produced. There is no connection to be had because the entire operation revolves around negating a negative attribute. Alcohol simulates connection but actually keeps true or meaningful connection at bay. Alcohol does not dis-inhibit. It actually redoubles the inhibition by keeping back the very thing one imagined one was originally unable to produce (i.e., connection). Look at how writing about this also seems to push meaning farther away such that continuing to read brings you no closer to the substance we seek. This is alcohol’s off-track escapade to the alcoholic. For sure, it drives. But where it drives you is nowhere you want to go, or at least nowhere near your destination/desire. … When we encounter Lacan’s ideas, we experience what some people call “counterintuitive” thinking. For example, for Lacan, our desire is not something we actually want to reach. And, psychotics are actually the ones who are not “duped” by discourse and language. With desire, the issue is the “split” that constitutes the subject such that desire is always something we can’t name or understand completely. Fantasies take the place of desire, and desire itself always remains out of reach. Our drives propel us toward the fantasy with no intention of reaching desire, and thus we find ourselves endlessly re-iterating our fantasies in different forms in the hope of achieving something we don’t actually want. In the case of psychotics, they have gained a visceral awareness of the arbitrary nature of “normality.” They cannot accede to the “sense” of what we call “normal psychological functioning,” that to which we need to submit if we want to have any purchase in the day to day reality of “normal” life. Instead, they see and experience endless shifting between signifiers and signifieds, unable to understand how a person could think any such relationship is stable. But “counterintuitive” thinking is often simply a matter of perspective. Consider this demonstration of three-dimensional shapes viewed within various two-dimensional frames. In the video, we are not seeing multiple different shapes. Rather, we are seeing one shape from different perspectives. Lacan asks us to look at Desire, Psychosis, the Subject, the Object, the Other, and many more things from angles typically occluded by dominant discourse. We can play around with this perspectival shift by translating the equation “Demand - Need = Desire” into a diagram, one viewed first from an imagined bird’s-eye, 2-D viewpoint, and then from an on-the-ground, 3-D viewpoint. Beginning with the first diagram, we find need comprehended by demand. In a sense, pure need becomes swallowed by demand, which is to say language, once the subject enters into the symbolic register soon after birth. In the second diagram, we find desire, but we do not find it as a substantive something; rather, we see it as something like a hole, one into which we (think we) want to dive. This whole is equivalent to the difference produced once need is subtracted from demand. The “hole” is both something and not. Consider the example of the baby that cries because it needs something. The mother, accustomed to feeding the baby, offers a breast and begins feeding the baby. The baby’s cry, however, was signifying a need other than hunger (e.g., it signified the need of being held). The baby (Subject) both gets a need met and doesn’t. It receives food, which is a need, but it does not get the primary need (e.g., being held) because it has not gained fluency in the interplay of signifiers and signifieds. We can imagine questions arising for the baby: Is this my need? Do I know my own needs? Is the breast equivalent to being held and I just don’t understand that yet? With these questions, the need has been subtracted, or voided, from demand. Desire results, but the baby doesn’t really know what desire is. If it is anything, it is equal to a lack of comprehension (i.e., not seeing one’s face in the reflection of the mirror). Throughout life, the Subject who was that baby will project fantasies upon that lack in an effort to reach desire. This will never happen, but various drives will ensure that the Subject never gives up the search. Lacan says that the most a Subject can do is “to not give ground to desire,” which means, phrased positively, to allow for desire to attract us while we throw up as few obstacles as possible so as not to impede the attraction. Societal demands, however, or at least symbols one perceives to be demands, will thwart the Subject repeatedly.
Addiction, again, offers multiple glimpses of this process in action. Consider again the alcoholic. In particular, a Subject who, when intoxicated, tends to “black out.” (Keep in mind the blacked out hole in the diagram of desire.) The next day, he is told that he was enraged, that he broke furniture, that he yelled at the dog about something having to do with God and promises. What’s more, this is his pattern. He frequently enters this blacked-out state. But both the Subject and his loved ones who tell him about his behaviors have difficulty understanding where this all comes from. When sober, the Subject is a friendly, if meek, individual who seldom asserts his wants and needs. I frequently hear, “It’s like he’s a completely different person.” From the Subject I hear, “I don’t know who that person is, but he isn’t me.” Of course, it is one and the same Subject. The two personas are indicative of the imbalance of positive and negative forces that shape the Subject. 1 + 1 = 3. Performance of Self in Everyday Life + Hulked-Out Rager = Symbolic-Subject + Real-Subject + Desire. In scenarios such as these, desire shows itself through the form, not the content, of the Subject’s language while blacked-out. This form is first of all marked by an internal difference, that difference between the affective force of the rage and the Subject’s meek presentation when “sober.” What appears first to the family, and then to the Subject himself when he hears of his drunkenness? Precisely the way in which it is NOT like him, the Uncanny Self. A non-thing has appeared, and that tips us off that desire is close. Second, the form is marked by what I think of as firehose speech. Opposed to the laminar flow of speech within the transactions of everyday life, this speech explodes with such force that it would appear to be an attempt at extinguishing a raging fire. And there is something like a fire present at all times in one’s life, the fire of desire. For this Subject, however, he only lets himself interact with it directly when intoxicated and, in a sense, turned off. Alcohol enables rebellion against the dominant discourse of the Symbolic Order (what Lacan calls the Name of the Father, which is a “quilting point” that produces what Deleuze refers to as the “sense” of discourse). When acceding to the Symbolic Order, the Subject is Symbolic-Subject. The drive to no longer participate in that discourse—to become Real-Subject—is in fact a motive force propelling alcohol abuse. The alcohol itself, however, is a fantasy, one that the Subject “knows,” unconsciously, can move him closer to Desire. The fantasy is in part authentic. Alcohol can move him closer, but, at the same time, the fantasy stands in for Desire and actually bars the Subject from Desire. When conscious and sober, the Subject does not permit himself to rebel against the Symbolic Order, likely because he believes the Other desires him to be submissive. (This is the whole problem with being-in-language and entranced by the Discourse of the Other.) But the attraction of Desire will not relent and so the Subject cedes to the part or version of himself that will speak the Truth and thus obtain, he thinks, what he desires. Alcohol (as fantasy) is the medium required to accomplish the secession. But desire will not be reached, and the coup of self, if we can call it that, will fail, precisely because the form and content of the speech and its object of desire does not “make sense” to anyone, not even to the Subject or the dog. This is how we know alcohol is or provides only a fantasy. Alcohol seems to offer access to what the Subject desires, but it only perpetuates a misunderstanding that further frustrates the Subject and moves him away from desire. The drive propelling the return to the fantasy is only capable of this trajectory: propel toward desire, miss it, and return. Then, repeat. What does the Subject desire? What is being sought while blacked out? The answer to that question is variable and unique to each Subject. The only way the Subject can get closer to knowing what that desire is will be to translate the form and content of the blacked-out speech into the speech of the Symbolic-Subject in daily life. This is another way of saying that the client needs to enact the coup of self without the fantasy of alcohol. The problem that clinicians and the Subject himself will no doubt encounter is that the Subject doesn’t actually want to know what that desire is. (Recall the mantra “I don’t want to know” that Lacan puts in place of the Aristotelian “I want to know” that founds the classical Subject.) As such, at least initially, therapy will resemble the Magritte painting: the Subject will go to therapy to look himself in the mirror only to find himself looking at himself looking toward a mirror. But slowly over time, if the Subject speaks freely (a la parrhesia), the desiring Subject will produce stones that the clinician and Subject can cobble together to form a path away from the painting and toward desire, one that no longer requires alcohol. |
AuthorWill Daddario is a historiographer, philosopher, and teacher. He currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina. Archives
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