February 2018
When I have any
dental treatment I have nitrous oxide. I have had so much extensive dental work
over my life time that now I cannot bear to have fingers and instruments in my
mouth at all while in ordinary consciousness. And thus I receive nitrous oxide,
otherwise known as laughing gas. I am not amused, by the way, more really
interested in the kind of consciousness I experience. In fact I use the
experience to examine the levels of awareness: of having a sense of being in a
particular place, of body sensations, of what is going on between my dentist
and his assistant, of his accounts of travels through India or scuba diving
trips and the way in which he speaks of these things, of my own feelings and
thoughts, as well as my discursive processes, and my detachment
from all of these. I am intrigued that I am able to follow everything that is
said and remember it, even though much of the time I am in an altered state of
consciousness.
It is these layers of
awareness that interests me and is a primary reason I am motivated to work in my
profession. I like exploring the edges of consciousness and noticing how each
level and kind of awareness has the capacity to effect change in myself and
others.
Naturally I do not
use nitrous oxide in my work, I am a mere psychotherapist with no access to the
stuff, but the space of therapy itself is anyway a thick and rich one where
focus and comfort (cum forte, Latin for “with strength”) are both employed to create a healing
place. I am reminded here of Erv Polster’s comment that therapy occurs in the
spaces between a light hypnotic trance and a deep one (From the Radical Centre, 1999). Some have spoken of it as a crucible and the work an alchemy,
some see it as a play with reverie, but I am keen to view it as a really
valuable place where consciousness is not only explored but used to bring very
particular awareness of lives as lived. There is in here an acute feistiness
that may be effectively nurtured. And I’m speaking here of a normal counselling
session that may, or may not, also employ hypnosis.
I do do hypnosis when
specifically requested to by my clients (it costs a bit more than a
psychotherapeutic/counselling session mainly because it is intentionally more
focused, much like a psychic lathe). Hypnosis is a state that deliberately
explores the levels of consciousness as a particular tool. It should be noted here
that not all personal health and relational issues are particularly helped by hypnosis
but when it is useful both the client and the therapist have a unique access to
both our personal and collective unconscious so that problem behaviours,
iterative thoughts, sleeplessness, and so on may disappear, or be reduced.
So why
the title, “Charcot and Me”? I came to be thinking about such things while re-reading
Charcot, the Clinician: The Tuesday
Lessons: Excerpts from Nine Case Presentations on General Neurology Delivered
at the Salpetriere Hospital in 1887-88 (translated and published in 1987) which
explored levels of awareness in relation to psychopathology and being intrigued
yet again that present at these lectures were the luminaries of Babinski, Gilles de la Tourette, Pierre Janet, Freud and William James, among others: all
thinkers and clinicians that literally shaped neurology, psychology and body-mind
philosophy into what we know today.
Reading this material
is kind of like attending a gathering of family and friends. Old ideas are
chewed over and the good bits relished, while the bad spat out (politely, under
a neatly placed napkin).
The business of
consciousness and the exploration of levels of awareness is as much part of my
life as it was theirs. Last year, when I bought this book on Charcot’s Tuesday
lectures, I took a photograph of myself holding it up, calling my photo: “Charcot
and me”, for it is as much a source of useful knowledge as connection with my
intellectual genealogy and I have a certain fondness for the man.
