Bukowski's On Psychiatry

[Meh]

On grocery store speaker there was a poem that stuck with me. It was The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski.

I started looking up some of his poetry and then it brought me to this.

I'm thinking to myself that maybe I shouldn't post it, maybe it's offensive. Please don't take it that way if it doesn't apply or is not your thing.



ON PSYCHIATRY:
"What do psychiatric patients get? They get a bill.
I think the problem between the psychiatrist and the patient is that the psychiatrist goes by the book, while the patient arrives because of what life has done to him or her. And even though the book may have certain insights, the pages are always the same in the book, and, each patient is a little bit different. There are many more individual problems than pages. Get it? There are too many mad people to do it by saying, "dollars per hour, when this bell rings, you're finished." That alone will drive any near-mad person to madness. They've just started to open up and feel good, when the shrink says, "Nurse, make the next appointment," and they've lost track of the price, which is also abnormal. It's all too stinking worldly. The guy is out to take your ass. He's not out to cure you. He wants his money. When the bell rings, bring in the next "nut." Now the sensitive "nut" will realize when that bell rings, he's being fucked. There's no time limit to curing madness, and there's no bills for it either. Most psychiatrists I've seen look a little close to the edge themselves. But they're too comfortable...I think they're all too comfortable. I think a patient wants to see a little madness, not too much. Ahhhh! (bored) PSYCHIATRISTS ARE TOTALLY USELESS! Next question? "


When he says: there are many more individual problems then pages. Get it?

I like that part!

Made me think, does he mean each person has more problems then there are pages or that there are so many different types of problems.

I think he really means since every person is different each person gets to have their own unique problem.

But I kind of like thinking that I have many more problems then could even ever fit into THE BOOK. That way the whole idea of being cured is completely ridiculous.

Kind of takes the pressure off. The pressure to get cured.

At the moment it's reassuring to me to think that THE BOOK just doesnt fit everybody and everybodys problems. I mean I know that but it's nice to read someone else that thinks so.  

Sometimes I think to get cured would mean to erase me in totality. That fundamentally I am just messed up in an unfixable way and would require complete rebuild.

I mean, I identify with every thing that is "wrong" with me. I have become accustom to the unacceptable imperfect parts. Doesnt mean that I like them but I view the messed up aspect of me as ME.

I feel like the object of hate all of a sudden after writing that. Oh well. enough for now.

[Hopalong]

whose hate?
that made me sad, that you felt a blast of hate.
Was it self-hate?
Well, of course...no, probably FOO hate.

I'm sorry.

For me, a great shrink is one who learned the Book really well, and has even some of their own pages that don't fit the Book, and have come to understand it's a dance...not just of diagnoses (bow, plie) but with flying darts and dreams and explosions and floods, and if they're good, their goal is to maintain compassionate contact with you, faith in you, while all that's happening and the Book's pages are fluttering around the room sticking to each other.

Maybe what you're describing, Boat, is a feeling that loving your "dysfunction" is the only way to defy hate and it's actually your way of loving yourself.

Maybe that's from demonizing your dysfunction. When it's really emotional weather. Some weather nourishes crops and some rips up the field. When one demonizes something one gives it a lot of power. It can keep on going and become a little god. When it's just weather. Rough.

I just think persistently visualizing yourself with a lot less dysfunction (not none) and persistently visualizing a peaceful safe artistic future, however modest...isn't the same as abandoning or not loving yourself.

Screw hate. That's just the crappy weather being given demon-status. Doesn't deserve it. Demons are junior gods, obsessed with promotion.

Hops

[sKePTiKal]

At the moment it's reassuring to me to think that THE BOOK just doesnt fit everybody and everybodys problems. I mean I know that but it's nice to read someone else that thinks so. 

Sometimes I think to get cured would mean to erase me in totality. That fundamentally I am just messed up in an unfixable way and would require complete rebuild.

I hope I can find a way to validate the above - without essentially disagreeing with Hops said, because I DO agree with her view. I've learned that what she's saying about this being "weather" is absolutely true.

On the other hand, I so know the experience of being able to entertain a belief Boat - that one is so messed up and essentially unfixable that the only "wish" one has, is to crumple up the paper, toss it toward the basket, and start over again with a new blank sheet of paper or canvas... sometimes, this was because I had the wrong definitions in my head, about just how "bad" a dysfunction is or isn't.

And I can also relate to the feeling of the dysfunction actually being part of me. In exactly the way you described - take the dysF out and I'm erased. In my case, it's a lifelong campaign of almost intentional self-harm/sabotage that would erase "me" if it were gone... or so I "feel" way deep down in my core self. It's like gum on the bottom of my shoe... I may want it off and work to get it off... but dang it... I can still feel that foot sticking to everything with each single step...

But you know what I'm beginning to think? I'm beginning to think that my dysF is actually my "voice" - a real one - it's a form of trying to communicate to other people how awful I feel/felt about myself, my experiences, my FOO... and she's like some fire-brand celtic warrior princess... trying to tell the whole world: THIS SUCKS! IT'S WRONG! HELP ME CHANGE IT!!

So I have been trying to help her. Something big shifted awhile back - before Irene - and I'm still studying it, trying to understand what is different... still can't talk about it anymore specifically than this.

[Guest]

ON PSYCHIATRY:
"What do psychiatric patients get? They get a bill.
I think the problem between the psychiatrist and the patient is that the psychiatrist goes by the book, while the patient arrives because of what life has done to him or her. And even though the book may have certain insights, the pages are always the same in the book, and, each patient is a little bit different. There are many more individual problems than pages. Get it? There are too many mad people to do it by saying, "dollars per hour, when this bell rings, you're finished." That alone will drive any near-mad person to madness. They've just started to open up and feel good, when the shrink says, "Nurse, make the next appointment," and they've lost track of the price, which is also abnormal. It's all too stinking worldly. The guy is out to take your ass. He's not out to cure you. He wants his money. When the bell rings, bring in the next "nut." Now the sensitive "nut" will realize when that bell rings, he's being fucked. There's no time limit to curing madness, and there's no bills for it either. Most psychiatrists I've seen look a little close to the edge themselves. But they're too comfortable...I think they're all too comfortable. I think a patient wants to see a little madness, not too much. Ahhhh! (bored) PSYCHIATRISTS ARE TOTALLY USELESS! Next question? "

Boat, haven't read / digested the other comments but wanted to say that the above made me laugh. And I'm sure it applies to many psychiatrists. Many are nuts. I've met a couple. They're both nuts. Small sample, but hey.

[Meh]

Hiya,

This popped back into my head and it occured to me that if all 8 of the therapists I had been to were interviewed about ME and what they understood about me, in synthsizing their responses into a synopsis of all the counseling sessions...well I imagined that it would be very vague and impersonal, bland as if they really didn't know me.   

[Meh]

@Hops,

Thank you, you always have something warm hearted and thoughtful to say Hops.

I think bits of kindness in all forms really do matter to me in little ways but I don't always realize it or don't want to admit to it. For example when I was in the grocery store I was stretching and stretching to try to reach a top shelf package of mushrooms that were fresher then the ones in front. Then a woman volunteered her "tall gentleman" to get the package for me! And he even made sure that I was satisfyed with the package he grabbed. It's sort of silly but I almost started crying!   

I hope it doesn't sound like I was eliciting sympathy, because I do write a lot about my woes on here! So now I have to justify: Really, feeling "Hated" wasn't my motivation for posting that, I discovered a poet that I liked over a grocery store intercom! Thought it was serendipity that he also wrote the above about therapy and people's problems being so personal or unique, thought that was serendipitous also. I think when I get writing on this board I process more then elsewhere in my life so when things come up I just write them down on here for the sake of my self expression (voicefulness). I'm just having weird times in my life as you are aware and I will just leave at at that. There is always something that is not getting processed and is being suppressed then in just appears.  

[Meh]

And I can also relate to the feeling of the dysfunction actually being part of me. In exactly the way you described - take the dysF out and I'm erased. In my case, it's a lifelong campaign of almost intentional self-harm/sabotage that would erase "me" if it were gone... or so I "feel" way deep down in my core self. It's like gum on the bottom of my shoe... I may want it off and work to get it off... but dang it... I can still feel that foot sticking to everything with each single step...

But you know what I'm beginning to think? I'm beginning to think that my dysF is actually my "voice" - a real one - it's a form of trying to communicate to other people how awful I feel/felt about myself, my experiences, my FOO... and she's like some fire-brand celtic warrior princess... trying to tell the whole world: THIS SUCKS! IT'S WRONG! HELP ME CHANGE IT!!

So I have been trying to help her. Something big shifted awhile back - before Irene - and I'm still studying it, trying to understand what is different... still can't talk about it anymore specifically than this.

Yes, I do feel understood by what you have put down here.

That sounds quite profound to me about the dysfunction having it's own voice as well.

It's weird the way the same subject matter gets mulled over on this site and still some things I feel like I have to sit with them afresh as if it's all new again.

Thank you PR.

Yeah (This sucks, it's wrong, help me change it) I can relate to that. I think you have boiled it down there.

You know, I think I feel a little relieved just reading that phrase (THIS SUCKS! IT'S WRONG! HELP ME CHANGE IT!).



 

[Meh]

Boat, haven't read / digested the other comments but wanted to say that the above made me laugh. And I'm sure it applies to many psychiatrists. Many are nuts. I've met a couple. They're both nuts. Small sample, but hey.

Well I'm glad it made you laugh! It made me subversively cheerful also. I thought it was a rarely expressed perspective.

[Meh]

Just wanted to say Thank you to Dr. G for this board since the Bukowski commentary above was anti -psychiatrist in nature didn't want to intend a blanket statement about all people in the profession. 

I am very glad for finding this site and reading everyone's stories on here.

[Hopalong]

I'm really, really glad you post here, Boat.

(Didn't occur to me for a nano-second you were "soliciting sympathy" but if I thought you were, I'd gladly give that too....lord knows I seek sympathy, and drink it up like a dry sponge when I find it.)

In a lot of our FOOs and in this unkind culture I think it goes:
--having things rise up and need to be witnessed with compassion is often seen as somehow against some "rule" and that if one needs something (like validation, kindness, simple recognition) one is by definition being "needy", and therefore one should be denied what one needs.

Who's the crazy?

Challenge for those who see it, is to find a way to make a peaceful life within it. Not throw themselves on the culture's pyre...

and maybe writing here is a way of making one's own map, to get to peace.

xo
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

Huh.

I think Hops has hit on something worth taking a long "think" about. The idea that it's OK to be "needy" and vulnerable and beset with emotions and not knowing where to start - or even where it ends... to be cared about, supplied with a witness, a listener, a shoulder to cry on... someone to share the long, inconsolable wail... and that remains to pick up the shattered pieces and help put them back together... and then cheerfully leaves one to "it" - with the understanding that they may someday need the favor back, for themselves and that they'd even go to "round 2", if it's needed.

It "happened to me" - wasn't a conscious, volitional choice - to pay someone to do the above for me. And it was educational in the long run... as I realized all we were doing was the above. What people who are close to and care about each other do. Who KNEW? I didn't....

Au contraire, I'd conned myself into believing the "I don't need anyone", "I'm self-sufficient and can take care of myself"... idea. That hasn't worked very well for me, personally over the long run. It's the yang side of the yin self-harm crap. And it's still something I'm no master of... that balance of autonomy and relationship. Still a student. Not always able to read the "signs" of when I really do want to just be alone and watch clouds... versus "available" to give attention to and be with others. Way too often, I feel it's my purpose in life to do the latter on the other person's schedule... still. When there are all kinds of signals that I need to hibernate for a day or two.

Totally unrelated to anything here... except Boat's experience of connecting with the poem and what it stated... I saw the last half of "Don Juan" - a movie with Marlon Brando and Johnny Depp. So, OK... I just wanted to feast my eyes on Depp for a bit... but I quickly picked up the plot, etc in the movie... and what it was saying about psychiatry. I got wrapped up in it while everyone else fell asleep... all the way to the end. There was a lot of philosophical back & forth in the movie... about who was "crazier"... and why... and a lot of asking the question: what is reality? sanity? Hardly what I would've expected from the cable blurb:

Psychiatrist attempts to help man who believes he is Don Juan. I liked the ending!