AHP Perspective is a magazine published bi-monthly for members of the Association for Humanistic Psychology. It includes interviews, articles, essays, updates on member activities, conference announcements, and book reviews. Members receive the complete AHP Perspective as part of their membership.

AHP PERSPECTIVE June/July 2002 Table of Contents

I Can Remember when Psychotherapy and Counseling Were Fun! Can You? — Len Bergantino

Carl Whitaker once told me that the way he saw the field of psychotherapy going, with the defensive mode of what appears to be safe and therefore satisfies the ignorance of the general public and appeases the Board of Psychology, was that he would rather be a plumber or a carpenter. Basically, risk and aliveness abounded by a sense of courage have been removed from the field through surgical legal precision. What we now have is “risk manage-ment for the behavior modification of flatulence,” and it is called psychotherapy. Further, the youngsters don’t know it was ever any different. Thus, I share examples of when counseling and psychotherapy were fun!

FIRST COUNSELING CASE I can remember in my early days counseling in an all African-American High School. I had just become licensed as a psychologist but had not moved into the area of private practice. I was counseling a young athlete basketball player who was the star of the school two years before, got into a fight with the coach and transferred to another school within the city, where he did not play basketball. Now it was time to graduate and some community colleges were looking at him. He did not at all strike me as a player who would play team ball at his own expense. I said, “You strike me as having a gut that is an emotional bag of shit. You ought to find a coach who realizes just how good you are who is willing to kiss your ass and build his team around you, otherwise you will never play for anybody!” He said, “That’s exactly how I am! You ought to be a psychologist!” I blurted out “I am a psychologist.”

Then there was the question of his graduation. He missed 42 days of school, first period English. I asked him why just first period English? He said, “I am living with my girlfriend, and I really wanted to get up and go to English, but she always had my cock in her mouth, and she would just keep sucking it and sucking it everytime I tried to get up to go to English class. I gave this a moment of pensive thought and I said, “I know of no method of psychoanalysis or behavior modification that would cure this problem!” He blurted out almost simultaneously, “You ought to be a psychologist.” I blurted out “I am a psychologist.” His meaning was that he felt so understood by the nature of my responses (no matter how bizarre they seem to an outsider).

Building Good Will and Referrals Today everyone is politically correct, which to me means no one says what they really think or feel about anything when it comes to race. I had a great shot in basket-ball. The greatest pure shooters I ever saw were Bill Sharman and Larry Bird, both of the Boston Celtics. While I never was a great basketball player, I was a great one-on-one player and in shooting from the foul line to the back of the circle, now called three-point land, and the far corner. I went to the head basketball coach and said “I want to coach shooting.” At first he looked stunned and then he laughed and said alright. I took turns at lunch time demolishing the starters one on one and then I hit 86 out of 100 behind the foul line and circle in a shooting contest. This gave me credibility in the school. I could do what I said I could do.

It was one hot summer day and I was roasting in the counseling office (pre-air-conditioning days). My star athlete did not graduate on time, and had to attend summer school to make up English, and he took another class taught by the girl’s basketball coach. I went down to her room and requested to see the young man for counseling. As soon as he got outside, I said, “All I want to talk to you about is shooting.” We talked for forty-five minutes about the nuances of Larry Bird and Bill Sharman in terms of shooting, and he had done enough research that he carried a great deal of the conversation, meeting me on my turf but within an African-American population, as if to say, “You are a great white shooter!”

About an hour later when I got back from lunch I heard the woman’s basketball coach wanted to see me, and I thought, the shit is going to hit the fan for my taking a student out of her class. When I caught up with her, she said “I hear you know more about shooting than anybody around here. Will you help the girl’s basketball team with shooting?” I was delighted to get such a request.

What I am saying is: Blacks came to like a White Guy because he was what he was and didn’t try to be anything else and didn’t make any bones about it.

SECOND COUNSELING CASE I was asked to sit in on a Depart-ment of Childrens’ Services case of a recalcitrant fifteen-year-old boy who was a gang member. Social workers meant well, and they were talking him down, and he was look-ing at them like he was hearing the biggest bunch of bullshit he ever heard in his life in terms of their attempt to get him out of gang life. He described it much as the legend-ary Hatfields and McCoys. His grandfather came over the boundary and killed my grandfather, so my father went over the boundary (imaginary city divisions) and killed his grandfather, his son came over and killed my father, so my brother went over and killed his father, etc.

One social worker asked a very intelligent question. She said, “What is to become of you at the age of 22?” He said, “I never gave it much thought. Nobody in my family ever lived that long!”

All that time both the Black social workers and the boy were looking at me as if to say, “What the hell could this White Honky possibly have to offer to this situation?” So near the end of the session I said, feeling I had only one shot, “Look, I am just a White Honky from the West End who doesn’t know jack shit about you or your people or your situation, but I have counseled a guy who was in the Mafia and I know what he did to get out!”

The kid looked at me thinking it over for quite a while. Then he said, “Your gang is bigger than mine. I’ll set up some sessions with you to listen to what you have to say.” I was an Italian and I told him a true statement and I told him an aspect of my life that earned me instant respect. Further, I didn’t pretend to be or know anything I wasn’t or didn’t.

THE WOMAN WHO WANTED TO KILL HERSELF With all the diversification moves of psychologists, I thought I would try a nursing home. I only did it for a couple of weeks as it wasn’t my bag. However, the first week I knocked on the patient’s door and said “Hi, I’m Dr. so and so. I’m your new psychologist. She was in a wheelchair, having had a stroke, and her tongue was dislocated and she spoke very slowly. As she struggled to get up, the first words out of her mouth were, “I want to kill myself!” This shocked me as an opener, so I said, let me try this one more time. I walked out of the room, knocked on the door and said, “Hi, I’m Dr. so and so. I’m your new psychologist.” She said, “I want to kill myself!”

Then I sat down face to face right across from her and I said, “Look, Lady, if you want to kill yourself, you came to the right guy! Jack Kevorkian is a personal friend of mine! All I have to do is spin twenty cents in that telephone, call him up, get him over here, and you’re dead.” (This was prior to Kevorkian’s conviction and jail sentence.)

She, in her slurred speech, and slowed words via dislocated tongue, said, “What’s your hurry!”

THE ACCOUNTANT WITH THE AGING MOTHER “My mother is 87 years old and I just got a call again from her neighbors that the grass is five feet high, the house is unkept, and there are rats in the place. I am going to have to go up there and put her in a home, but she won’t let me in the door, so I have to have a pretense.”

My experience of the man speak-ing was someone who was socially “nice,” but not authentic to experi-ence, in a nonmanipulative way. I said, “Does your mother like you?” He said, “Yes, why?” I said, “Well, you seem like one of the most mani-pulative sons of bitches I ever met. If I were her I wouldn’t let you near the place, and I would probably call the American Civil Liberties Union for fucking with her civil rights!”

He said, “The neighbors are worried that she will burn the house down.” I said, “Does she smoke?” He said “Yes.” I said, “And the house hasn’t burned down in 87 years?” He said, “That is correct.” I said, “Well what the hell makes you think she is going to burn it down now?” He said, “Well the neighbors are concerned that she might, and that the lawn is unkept, and there are rats all over the lawn and in the house.”

I said, “Have the neighbors ever been in the house?” He said “No.” I said, “How do they know there are rats in the house then?” He had no answer. I said, “Look, some people like to eat steak, others like fish, and some people like to eat rats, what’s the difference?” He started to say, “Well, the neighbors . . . ” and I blurted out “What do you give a shit about the neighbors for anyway?” He said, “Yeah, why do I?” Then I said, “Look, call the neighbors up and severely chastise them for not helping out an 87-year-old lady and mowing her lawn for her! Get on their case for being lousy neigh-bors!” Then he had an insight. He said, “I don’t have those kind of skills.” I said, “Precisely my point.”

Then he said, “Besides if the neighbors went over there (to this so-called feeble old mother of his), she would come out with her gun and shoot them!” I said, “Well then they could shoot back and kill the old bitch and you wouldn’t have the problem anymore!”

It became clear to him that his so-called feeble mother had more strength and courage to defend and take care of herself than he had. I said, “Do you ever talk to her?” He said (with affection), “Oh, yes, every week by telephone. Of all the children in the family, I am the apple of her eye.”

SUMMARY I have written about situations and clients’ point of views that were turned around with an “authentic trickery” that was a lot of fun for me as a therapist. In retrospect, these responses are the kind that when one looks back upon them, you have to chuckle a bit. I have used the exact language in which I stated my case, not changing it for the boring realms of professional journals, but to show you how it once was to feel alive when you worked. My question to you is, in today’s professional world, how many of you would feel free to make the quality of responses that I made that turned things around as quickly as they did? I am certain every lawyer, every Board of Psychology member, and every malpractice carrier would tell you not to do it, and it is in this manner that effective psychotherapy has been legislated out of existence —and, deservedly so, psychologists’ fees have diminished!

It is unfortunate that psycholo-gists have conspired against them-selves in helping to create a profes- sional image that now colludes with Boards of Psychology, malpractice attorneys, and even misguided and ungrateful patients to create therapeutic impotence and nonbeing as a way of life for the therapist.

Bion, the great British psycho-analyst, once said, “Sometimes you see them and you only see them once,” referring to patients who may only reveal themselves on the first session, even if they come for a seven-year analysis. When I heard that, I figured I better “Get ’em on the first shot, before they know what hit them!”

LEN BERGANTINO, Ed.D, ABPP, is retired as a clinical psychologist after 30 years. He is pursuing a career as a musician.

AHP PERSPECTIVE June/July 2002 Table of Contents

AHP Perspective Editorial Guidelines Advertising Information