truth to power

The unspoken derives its power from its very mystery.  To make explicit is to deprive of power. The psychotic patient knows this, perhaps better than we.  Psychotic patients often seem in touch with a deeper, animal reason.

Mr. B. behaved like nothing so much as a cornered animal in the locked psychiatric unit.  Behind closed doors, he admitted his demons to his worried mother, who relayed them to us; but to the doctors he was close-lipped and angry, hiding with insults his fear at what had happened to him.

His threatening, hostile stare fairly made the air vibrate in the room... yet the moment the attending asked of him, frankly and without guile, "Why are you staring at me?" the spell collapsed, deprived of all its power.

"I'm not staring at you," was his only, weak recourse.

But it was nothing so simple as her bare words that disarmed him.  I pictured the same patient on a gritty street corner, leveling his rapier gaze at a fellow thug.  The same phrase spoken in an equally hostile tone by a burly, puff-jacketed swaggart would have but escalated the situation.  It is the opt-out, the calm inquiry, the untroubled curiosity, that undercuts the threat.

Good therapists wield this tool with skill and precision.  They refuse to play the game, choosing rather to analyze it.  All of us, as humans, have some understanding of this complex social game.  We approach and retreat, feint and parry, dance an endless dance of human relations - all without a word, a world of interactions parallel to but separate from our explicit verbal exchanges.

People who play the game well become leaders, extracting what they wish from others while retaining their loyalty and affection.  People who have a shallow or incomplete understanding of it become recluses, frustrated at every turn by interactions that go awry.

But whether they play it well or poorly, in the normal course of human behavior the game is never made explicit.  To make it explicit is to undermine it entirely.  The therapist does this in a controlled manner, slicing the game out of its skin and dissecting it apart, displaying its innards openly to his patient's wonder and, perhaps, dismay.