Rocks and Doves

Posted on January 14, 2015 | Comments Off on Rocks and Doves

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I remember the summer before I started Graduate School was fairly intense. We were married about one year and money was very tight. I had been teaching in a Catholic high school for three years and this was not going to be a long term career choice. I think I finished there making about $6500.00 per year. My wife was making between 8-10,000.00 and having a family was really not going to be possible with our limited resources.We both agreed graduate school would open more doors. I was accepted into George Williams School of Social Work and would start in the fall. After my high school class finished I was able to get a summer job as a security guard thru one of our friends. I was probably the worst possible choice for this. This was during my post hippie peace and love days. One of the jobs required us to wear a gun. On our rounds. I would carefully remove all the bullets before my round. Thankfully I never had any problems. The one good thing about the job (besides the pay) was it gave me time to read. George Williams had recommended a number of books to read before starting class. I just remember Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams and General-Introduction to Psychoanalysis. I would read and study these books and pictured myself in the analyst mode.

The first week of school I was given a field placement at Hines VA Alcoholism Treatment Center. At that time the VA was vast—almost a totally separate city. I found out that there were people who literally would go from VA facility to VA facility depending on the season. They would have a summer VA and a winter VA. This was happening right after the Viet Nam war ended. Vets from that and from WW2 and Korea were the patients.

So I started in all my new found Freudian grandeur. My first patient was an African American guy in his forties. He had been thru a number of programs without any real success- by our standards. By his he had found a way to survive. Our first few meetings consisted of me sitting in an old desk chair and asking him questions. I would sit in this chair and ask a question and rock back in the chair while I waited for him to answer. The chair was quite old and the floor it was on was old linoleum tile. One day I rocked back, the chair slipped and I ended up flat on the floor with the wind knocked out of me. My “patient” was standing over me inquiring about my welfare. I don’t remember much else about him or the course of his treatment. What I do remember is that it was the start for me of not taking myself too seriously

I think it is important to have a theoretical framework, but that framework should never come between meeting a person where they really are. In the beginning we all think we have to have theories and techniques. In the end we realize that the most important therapeutic instrument we have is ourselves.

There is an old story about Picasso walking along the beach with a reporter. The reporter asks him where he gets the ideas for his creations. Picasso picks up a rock and asks the reporter what he sees. The reporter says “A rock” . Picasso says “I see a dove” . The reporter is confused and asks where is the dove. Picasso says “I just take this rock and carve away everything until the dove appears”.

I am still chipping away at my rock. Sometimes the dove is very clear and sometimes not so much—I just have to keep chipping.
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