I'M  DESPERATE

SOME PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC OBSERVATIONS

ON A PHOTOGRAPH

December 1996

PREFACE

Once, in the early days of Greek philosophy, "everything was made of water", and later "everything was made of air", and then "everything was made of fire", and so on.

I would like to add another 'everything' to this list: everything is made of stories. This is not a cosmological or an ontological statement, but an epistemological assumption. It means that everything we can tell or know is a story. 

"Everything is made of stories" is not another criterion for measuring our world. It is not an aspect of a philosophical or psychological theory, but a comprehensive assumption, an axiom. I don't claim that this axiom is "right" or "true", but that it is prolific. "Everything is made of stories" means that we can understand any phenomenon as a story or part of a story, and that we cannot understand anything that is not a story.

When a friend of mine, a psychotherapist, heard me saying that everything is made of stories, she told me that there is something in the therapeutic session which is not made of stories. These are the meaningful silences, which have a meaning to both the client and the therapist. This essay is dedicated to the stories behind these silences.

Silence is the stories' territory. Silence is the time for introspection, for conscious observations of our stories. Silence is the link between our personal stories and the 'out there' stories. 

In this essay I will claim that our "integrated cultural stories" are the preconditions for our perception, and I will illustrate my claim by analysing a photograph from various psychotherapeutic points of view.

INTRODUCTION

'Integrative counseling and psychotherapy is the process of selecting concepts and methods from a variety of systems' (Corey, 1996: 448). From this point of view, the goal of this psychotherapy is 'producing a conceptual framework that synthesizes the best of two or more theoretical approaches under the assumption that the outcome will be richer than either of the theories alone (ibis).

In this essay I would like to present the underlying integration which precedes any conscious definition. This integration is an integal process of our mental processes, and as such, it takes part in any cognitive activity, in everyday life, as well as in psychotherapy.

I will do this by analysing a photograph from various points of view. In the first chapter I will explore the many stories which are integrated in our culture. In the second chapter I will review the stories behind the photograph, which are integrated in our mind while we are looking at the photograph. In the third chapter I will examine the photograph through the eyes of famous psychotherapists. Each psychotherapist represents an integration of cultural and psychotherapeutic stories. 

CULTURAL AND PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC STORIES 

Cultural stories derive from all the information sources we have: family, education, experience, the media (radio, television, newspapers, books, internet, etc.). These stories include history, religious beliefs, philosophy, literature and fine arts, political ideas, etc.

In any period of history there is a main belief or idea which dominates all other components of culture and becomes a myth. Such ideas are the monotheism, rationalism, the industrial revolution, etc. I believe that the main idea of the twentieth century is Freud's 'talking cure'.

The psychotherapeutic myth

'It is not an exaggeration to say that Western civilization's acceptance of the "talking cure" has permanently and profoundly influenced the way we think about ourselves, understand others, raise our children, and anticipate the future. We impose "therapeutic" interpretations on practically every aspect and important event in our lives' (Bankart, 1997: 3).

The idea of psychotherapy which began with Freud and continued with his successors has become a dominant myth of the twentieth century. 'Freud's "talking-cure", which served as genesis to his developing theory and technique of psycho-analysis, for good or ill, has shaped our age to the extent that ever-increasing numbers of us turn to such forms of dialogue the moment we are confronted with the mysteries, conflicts, dilemmas and disruptions that intrude and impinge upon our lives no matter how mundane or cataclysmic they may appear to be' (Spinelli, 1994: 21).

The myth of psychotherapy affects all aspects of life. It influences educational programmes, as well as systems of the law. We use the vocabulary of psychotherapy in literature as well as in everyday speech. Psychotherapists work with individuals and groups, in research and in industry, as counsellors and as interviewers.

To live in the twentieth century means to see the world through psychotherapeutic spectacles. I will demonstrate this idea later in this essay. 

Psychotherapeutic stories

The psychotherapeutic myth is a mixture of psychotherapeutic stories. Each story represent another school of psychotherapy. Most of these schools and approaches use the original terms which were  introduced by Freud, although some of them developed and changed Freud's original ideas, and some of them rejected and objected to his ideas.

Each psychotherapeutic approach is a story with which we can identify and understand our world. Laymen usually confuse one approach with another, and have their own story, which is a combination and integration of two or more psychotherapeutic approaches. These combinations enlarge the number of psychotherapeutic stories we use in everyday life. 

I will analyse the photograph of the "desperate man" through the integrative lens of the psychotherapeutic myth, and through the eyes of some of the well known therapists of the twentieth century.

I'M DESPERATE

Habitat Art Broadsheet (Freedman, 1996) is an art quarterly, a full size poster (70X100 cm.) folded into a magazine format. On one side of the poster there is an art piece (a painting or a photograph), and on the other side some information about the artist and his/her work.

When I received the copy with the 'I'm desperate' photograph by Gillian Wearing on it and looked at it I had mixed feelings about it. I liked the photograph and wanted to keep it, to hang it somewhere on the wall, but I couldn't do that. It can be too depressing (I thought) to have a "negative" message like "I'm desperate" in my living room.

So I took the poster and hung it in my classroom at Regent's College. In that room, I thought, there is a meaning for this message. MA students of psychotherapy can 'bear' this message and even benefit from its existence.

From my experience with that poster, I could come to the obvious conclusion that its meaning is dependent on the context. In this essay I would like to identify these contexts as 'stories', and then to concentrate on "psychotherapeutic stories". 

I can recapture my feelings and associations when I first glanced at that photograph.

First, I was amused. "It's a joke," I told myself, "this man doesn't look desperate". When I said that I thought about my clients, and realised how "not professional" are my feelings, so I said to myself: "Well, it is a piece of art", and immediately it reminded me of the famous pipe of Magritte, and I looked at the printed letters on the other side of the poster and read the photographer's "social" statement about her work, and it reminded me of advertisements in the Jerusalem local newspaper. All of these responses are discussed below.

The comic-book story

When I first said that "This man doesn't look desperate" I had a hidden story in my head. I planted the photograph's story in the comic-book story, which is one of my cultural stories.

Comic-book stories began with books and magazines, but became part of the culture. These stories are based on a succession of illustrations or photographs with balloons around the characters, in which the reader can read their feelings or their words. In cartoon films, even when it is not necessary, because the heroes can talk, the filmmakers still use the balloons to express the characters' feelings (for example, we can see a bell in a balloon when the hero has an idea, or stars when he has been hit).

The use of balloons has a syntax convention in our culture, and has no meaning for a visitor from another planet who knows the meaning of our words, but not the cultural stories behind them (cultural associations).

If I did not apply the convention of the comic-book's story I would simply say that in the photograph I can see a man holding a sign with the words "I'm desperate". I would have no reason to connect these words to the man's feelings.

The "self" story

What I really see while I'm looking at the photograph includes some philosophical and psychological assumptions about the idea of 'self'.

In Homer's terms I would say: "The man's hands are holding a piece of paper with words printed on it. The man's lips are smiling".

By saying "the man is holding a sign" I accept a theory of the self and a theory of intentionality. How do I know that the man is holding this piece of paper, and that the piece of paper is a "sign"? Perhaps the "man" is a statue, and the paper is stuck to its "hands".

The psychotherapeutic story

The psychotherapeutic story gives us explanations for many confusing situations in our daily lives, and enables us to use simple terms for complicated feelings. I can say "I'm depressed" instead of telling the whole story of my unsuccessful love affair, or to say "it is his sense of inferiority" instead of "he behaves as he always knows better than everyone else".

To "talk about it" or "tell me how you feel about it" which is the way we understand the psychotherapeutic story, has become part of our language. To talk about our feelings is to go into the psychotherapeutic story.

This explains my feeling that "this man doesn't look desperate". I tried to locate the man in the photograph in the psychotherapeutic story. I had some alternatives:

1. The man in the photograph does feel that he is desperate. But I don't see any evidence of this feeling in the photograph. This is a contradictory situation.

2. The man in the photograph says that he is desperate, and means it, but it looks as if he doesn't want to talk about it.

3. The man in the photograph is just pretending. He is not 'really' desperate.

The psychotherapeutic story led me to look for a causal connection between the man and the sign in his hands. I didn't think that possibly he found the sign in the street, by chance, and thought that it would be amusing to have a photograph of himself with it. It could also be that he wanted to say something about himself which was not about asking for help or understanding.

As a therapist I am of course aware that a desperate man doesn't necessarily look desperate, but did not use this knowledge and experience in my "everyday" use of the psychotherapeutic story..

A local story

In the Jerusalem local newspaper, as in other local newspapers in Israel, there is a page of personal advertisements like: "I would like to swap a skateboard for a pair of roller skates", or "a white and brown little cat was lost in Jaffa Street on Sunday...". The editors of this page used to illustrate it with a photograph of one of the advertisers, with a sign in their hands, rather like the "I'm desperate" photograph.

My first thought when I saw the poster was: "what does this man want to sell?", and then I was sure that the photographer used this association as a sophisticated statement about the human condition.

Later I found out that only Israelis can have this association, but I didn't change my mind about the "artistic" value of the photograph. On the contrary, I believe that a meaningful piece of art has more meanings than the artist himself can intend.

The psycho-social story

In London as in many other big cities around the world, you can see people sitting on the pavement with a sign in their hands: "I'm hungry", or "I'm homeless", etc.

These "new-beggars" can be young and health, but their message is clear, and no one will bother to ask them what do they mean or what do they want.

The text of these signs summarise the story of a social problem which everybody knows, in order to manipulate the feelings of the passerby.

The photographer's story

Gillian Wearing, the photographer, named her exhibition (the photograph is one of hundreds of the same composition) 'Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say' (Freedman, 1996).

It looks as if the artist had some social ideas and intentions, but in an interview she exposed her "psychological" intention: 'I've always wanted to get behind the scenes of people's minds. Just to go up to somebody and ask them what they are thinking' (ibid). The artist expresses her understanding of the psychotherapeutic story. She confuses "what's in people's minds" with "what they are thinking".

The artist's belief is that what people say (or print on a sign) is what people think which is what people have in their mind. She demonstrates this idea by using the conventions of the comic-book story, which she knows everyone understands.

The story of art

An observer who lives in the twentieth century and has some knowledge of the history of art, and especially in Surrealism, could not avoid the association of this photograph to Magritte's painting, "This is not a pipe".

In the famous painting we can see a painted pipe, and in the sign under the pipe we can read the sentence: "This is not a pipe". The contradiction between the figure and the sign is similar to the contradiction between the smiling man and the sign which says: "I'm desperate" (it could be a photograph of a man who looks desperate, with a sign which says: "I'm not desperate").

It is impossible to ignore the association of Surrealism, which was based on some psychoanalytic ideas such as the unconscious and the meaning of dreams.

Colin's story

Colin Mansfield is a young man, 28 years old, a cashier in Barclays bank's branch in Wembley.

One gloomy morning, while Colin was on his way to work, thinking about his unsatisfying job which he can't leave until he finishes paying his mortgage, he met a photographer. She gave him a piece of paper and asked him to write down anything he'd like to say.

Collin wanted to say that he would like to find a new job and have a better salary and move to a better neighbourhood where he can meet a nice woman and have a love affair, and that he knows that it is impossible to achieve it right now. But this was too long and Colin had to hurry so he wrote: "I'm desperate", which was the essence of his feelings.

The psychotherapeutic story enabled Colin to express his feelings, his thoughts and expectations in one word: desperate.

Conclusion

It is impossible to look at a photograph without using our cultural stories, and locate the photograph within them.

Psychotherapy is a central myth of our time, and our cultural stories are influenced by the psychotherapeutic stories of our time.

These psychotherapeutic stories include many therapeutic schools, approaches and methods. We, as laymen, cannot avoid integrating all these psychotherapeutic stories into one simple glance, when we look at a photograph.

7 PSYCHOTHERAPISTS AND ONE DESPERATE MAN

Laymen see the "I'm desperate" photograph through integrative psychotherapeutic spectacles. How would psychotherapists, as professionals, look at the same photograph?

A forum of seven well-known psychotherapists was gathered in a conference to discuss and analyse the photograph from various points of view. 

Freud:

'I may say at once that I am no connoisseur in art, but simply a layman... Nevertheless, works of art do exercise a powerful effect on me' (Freud, 1990: 253). What is art if not a dream? By analysing a piece of art we can reveal the unconscious of the artist. Look, this photograph is mostly dark, so the observer has to concentrate on the white paper in the middle, and read the text. But don't let this manifest mislead you. This young man is not desperate. There has to be a disguised meaning to these words. 'here is what seems to be a more serious slip of the pen' (Freud, 1976: 168): in a new order of the letters on this sign we can read: 'I'm separated'.

Perls:

Come on, Freud, this is nonsense. Do you feel separated now? Why don't you put your separation on this chair and talk to it? What do you want to say to your separation?

Freud:

You will excuse me, young man, but I want to continue my analysis.

Perls:

'You want. I don't want any "wants". There are two big lies: "I want" and "I try"'. (Perls, 1978: 247).

Freud:

Who is this man? Let me continue. Separation is the message of the latent meaning, and it helps us analyse the young man's appearance easily. The white sign in the centre of the photograph is another deception. This sign separates the upper part of the body from the lower part, which we can see in details (the face, the shirt and the tie), and the lower part of the body, which is dark and has no details at all. There is a separation between the man's consciousness (his head, his smile) and his sexual organs (which have no shape and colour in the photograph). It is important to notice the role of the right hand (the hand with which we write, the write hand). 'We may say that this hand forms a very singular, unnatural link, and one which calls for explanation' (Freud, 1990: 265), between the upper body and the lower body.

Jung:

This morning I was thinking about the lower part of my body. I am not as young as one may conclude from my name, and I was thinking about my sexuality. On my way out of the hotel room, with a briefcase in my hand, I walked into the bathroom and looked at my reflection in the mirror. Then, I lifted the briefcase and held it in front of my chest. I could see my upper body in the mirror, illuminated by the bathroom bare light, but the briefcase concealed the light and the lower part of my body was dark. It seemed to me like a meaningful message which I could not understand, for I didn't know anything about this photograph until I came to this conference two hours ago. 'The problem of synchronicity has puzzled me for a long time' (Jung, 1995: 30), although I know that Professor Freud would say that it is just a coincidence. I know that it is more than a coincidence. 'Meaningful coincidences - which are to be distinguished from meaningless chance groupings - therefore seem to rest on an archetypal foundation' (ibid: 34).

Laing:

I prefer not to judge a piece of art, just as I don't judge my patients, from a pathological point of view. This is a photograph, and I respect the risk that both the photographer and the man in the photograph took 'in being understood... or even simply in being seen' (Laing, 1990: 44). 'We cannot help but see the person in one way or other and place our constructions or interpretations on "his" behaviour' (ibid: 31). It is easy to analyse this photograph, and the man in it, through my therapeutic lenses, but I prefer 'to recognize the other to be the person he takes himself to be' (ibid: 35). I can see this photograph as a symbol of our culture. As Freud said, this is a photograph of a separation, of a divided self. This self is not divided visually, as Freud said, but it represents a message of dividing. This man says that he is desperate, but he doesn't look, and maybe he doesn't feel desperate. If he was my patient I would like 'to help him realize that, the fact that he does not think there is anything the matter with him is one of the things that is the matter with him' (Laing, 1985: 5).

Frankl:

My dear friend said that this photograph is a symbol of our culture. I can follow this observation, and add that this symbol, or metaphor, represents 'a widespread phenomenon of the twentieth century' (Frankl, 1985: 128): the existential vacuum. When I see the man in the photograph, it doesn't matter what his problem is, what is his life story. It is not important. I know what he feels, and I know what he needs: to be 'fully aware of his own responsibleness' (ibid: 132) and to find a  meaning for his life. I know that this is only a photograph, but I really feel sorry for this man. There are many like him around us, and we, as therapists, can help them. When we meet a patient like this, we can help him by encouraging him 'to do, or wish to happen, the very things he fears engenders an inversion of intention' (Frankl, 1988: 103). For example, if this man in the photograph comes to see me, I would ask him to plan the whole week as a despairing week, by writing in his diary, in each day: 'a despairing day'.

Rogers:

With all respect to my colleagues, I would like to forget all my presumptions and psychotherapeutic knowledge for a minute, and spend a minute with this moving photograph. As always, when I look at a real piece of art, I forget that this is a piece of art. That's what I feel now. It seems to me that this man is standing right here, in front of me, and all I want is to hug him.

Perls:   

This is bullshit.

Rogers:

You say that this is bullshit. I can feel that it makes you very angry. Very very angry.

Perls:  

Don't play this game with me.

Rogers:

You understand my behaviour, my interest, as a game, and it makes you angry. This anger enables you to introduce your own opinion. I will be very pleased to hear that.

Perls:

I can't believe it. Are you blind? Can't you forget all your sophisticated psychotherapeutic old ideas for a moment? It is clear as day. This photograph is a simple illustration for the main technique of Gestalt therapy, which becomes a central component of our culture. All we have to do is to see the 'here and now' in this photograph. We don't see the unconsciousness of this man, but we can see what he is doing. He is taking responsibility for his life, and confronting his feelings. To write 'I'm desperate' on a piece of paper and to hold it, is the same as putting your desperation on a chair in front of you and to talk to it. The main message of this photograph is not that the man is desperate, but the way he copes with his feelings. This is an optimistic photograph, and we can all learn something from it.

Masson:

I wish I could be so optimistic. This photograph makes me sick. If it was not so sad, it could be funny. This photograph made me angry because I had an insight (Oh, how I hate these terms). In one glance I became aware (the hell with these psychotherapeutic words) of my failure. In my book, 'Against Psychotherapy' (Masson, 1988) I proved that psychotherapy, any sort of psychotherapy, is dangerous and abusive in principle. I spent a lot of time lecturing and talking about these ideas, and I had some satisfaction in doing something for the benefit of other people. But now I know that I failed. A photograph like this couldn't exist if psychotherapy hadn't expanded like a cancer. This photograph wouldn't be understood by anyone without using and accepting psychotherapeutic terms. Now, when each of us uses these psychotherapeutic terms, we create a new class differentiation. We can easily use these terms to abuse each other by judging and labelling. The desperate man in the photograph is not in danger of  psychotherapists as I thought, but in danger of his surroundings, of himself. All I want now is to be far away from all this. To go to sleep and dream in Sanscrit.

CONCLUSION

The artistic photograph, "I'm desperate", was created in a sequence of events: Collin Mansfield printed the words "I'm desperate" on a piece of paper, and agreed to be photographed; Gillian Wearing, the photographer, took the picture; Carl Freedman, the curator, chose the photographer and her photograph for an exhibition in the Habitat chain, and published the photograph in the art-letter he is editing; the observers, including me, look at the photograph and do something with the poster.

Each of the events in this sequence couldn't exist without a psychotherapeutic assumption. Collin Mansfield understood his task, without being asked to, as expressing his feelings and summarising them into one psychotherapeutic term. The photographer played the role of a cultural psychotherapist by "getting behind the scenes of peoples' minds". The curator couldn't accept a collection of psychotherapeutic messages as the content of an art exhibition, unless his own psychotherapeutic assumptions were part of his cultural and artistic assumptions. The observers can hang this photograph on their walls as an artistic object, because they take the psychotherapeutic message for granted.

Cultural integration

It is impossible to open our eyes and look around without using our cultural lenses. We cannot identify anything in reality that cannot be generalised, and we cannot generalise without a cultural assumption.

Our cultural assumptions and generalisations include many ideas, assumptions, or "stories". These stories derive from many sources, and we can't be aware of all of them all the time. Most of the time we use them automatically, without being aware of most of them, or all of them.

In every glance we take, we integrate many assumptions which are associated with the subject of our observation. This integration is the main activity of our perception, and it enables us to identify, to understand and to associate better than the most advanced computer.

Psychotherapeutic ideas and terms, which are part of our culture and our language, play a significant part in this integration.

Psychotherapeutic integration

Each of the seven therapists which I mentioned above created a unique and and a clear personal approach to psychotherapy. Each of them had his own special way of working with his clients/patients, understanding them and "helping" them. Each of them worked in a different way.

But behind those differences there is a similarity. They all integrate other psychotherapeutic and cultural assumptions within their theories. Sometimes they integrate some of their own ideas, and sometimes they use, consciously or unconsciously, ideas of their predecessors, and cultural ideas of their time.

I believe that most of the psychotherapists nowadays have an integration of the main psychotherapeutic approaces in their mind, and when they are looking at a photograph like the "I'm desperate" photograph, they all can "hear" the fictional conversation which I presented here in their mind.

This means that in our mind's eye there is an integration of "cultural stories", as well as "psychotherapeutic stories". It does not mean that by integrating all psychotherapeutic approaches in their minds, psychotherapists use them in their practice. But it does mean that this integration has an effect on psychotherapists, although they have their own special way.

It will be very interesting to investigate the influences of the integrated cultural and psychotherapeutic ideas on each psychotherapeutic approach, but I cannot do this here.

REFERENCES

Bankart, C. Peter (1997), Talking Cures, Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.

Corey, Gerald (1996), Theory and Practice of Counselling and Psychotherapy, Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.

Frankl, Viktor E. (1985), Man's Search for Meaning, Washington Square Press.

Frankl, Viktor E. (1988), The Will to Meaning, A Meridian Book.

Freedman, Carl (Ed.) (1996), Winter 96/97 Art Broadsheet, Habitat.

Freud, Sigmund (1976), The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, The Penguin Freud Librery, Volume 6.

Freud, Sigmund (1986), The meaning of dreams, The Essentials of Psycho-Analysis, Penguin Books.

Freud, Sigmund (1990), Art and Literature, The Penguin Freud Librery, Volume 14.

Jung, C.G. (1995), Synchronicity, Ark Paperbacks.

Laing, R. D. (1985), Knots, Penguin Books.

Laing, R. D. (1990), The Divided Self, Penguin Books.

Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff (1988), Against Therapy.

Perls, Frederick S. (1978), Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, Zmora Bitan (Hebrew).

Rogers, Carl (1995), The Carl Rogers Reader, Constable.

Shinoda Bolen, Jean (1982), The Tao of Psychology, Harper & Row, Publishers.

Spinelli, Ernesto (1994), Demystifying Therapy, Constable.