continuing

Let too many days go off - now had trouble locating this blog - forgot my password!!!! Meanwhile some nice comments received - Thank you.

My idea in starting this blog was to keep proceeding daily from the "now" and then insert biographical material - however when I allow so many days to go by I feel a bit overwhelmed with all the "current" ideas that have accumulated and I realize also that this way of writing may be too disjointed for readers.  I am torn with too many goals, and imaginary readers that are so different from one another that I cannot choose my direction either.

In the US, friends have often suggested that I write an autobiography - indeed there have been exciting periods in my life, what with war years, changes of cultures, and, these last 20 years, traveling around and doing very varied workshop.  However, my biography has been written - in German - and pulished in 2004 - I don't feel like translating it, and my life has been quite eventful since.  Furthermore  it does not truly  represent how I feel about myself - or rather, how I now look at my life - past and present - although there are detailed descriptions of events.
There's quite a story about this biography - might as well go there, now.  - So:

One day, in  Spring l999, at the conclusion of a workshop in Germany, a young woman, Sigrid Roehl, approached me and told me point blank that she wanted to write my biography, and would I let her interview me?  My first reaction was to be critical: - Did she realise, even if I agreed, that this would involve many many hours, which I could not dispose of easily as I was traveling around in various places - furthermore it would be a waste of time as she would never find a publisher even if she wrote it.  Howeve she was adamant - she was an experienced journalist,  she would meet me here and there, she would adapt to my schedule, etc.  With much reservation, which I expressed, and partly to test her, I told her that we could only have a couple of hours this week, and next week I would be in France,  and later in the US. .......

To make a long story short, over the next four years Sigrid kept her word.  She followed me to France (even arranging for her husband and two sons to go with her!) and then of course met with me during and after a number of other workshops in Germany .  At one point she came to the US - San Mateo - during which time she recorded piles and piles of tapes as she got me more and more involved in her project. I found that I could be very honest about my many mistakes and at various points added theoretical insights and ideas I had contributed to the body of TA theory.  For  instance in regard to rackets  theory I used my own rackets as examples, having identified them only after having developed the theory. After a few years I myself became intrigued with the development of this book and the possibility that it might serve as a teaching tool in the future, using examples out of my life, so near the end I also visited with Singrid a few times,  for meanwhile she had resumed teaching at a grade school to balance her budget...

Finally the book was finished.  I did not expect her to find a publisher (and had warned her about it many times over the years),  but , again, I was to be surprised.  Evelina,and Klaus Vopel, of Isko Press,  immediately agreed to publish the book when she submitted it to them.  They insisted on entitling it: Fanita English - about her life and Transactional Analysis - although  I had wanted a more anonymous title, more like a case history to illustrated theory. (A new edition is appearing now with just such a title, which, in my  opinion better represents the value of the book for a potential reader, especially perhaps a professional woman in her fifties  or sixties - or a man  married to such a woman.)

In truth, I was quite shocked when the book finally appeared, in August 2004.  Even though, I was always quite open with my workshop participants in regard to how I saw them, when it came to my own life I still operated with the belief, instilled into me through years of psychonalysis, that the less they knew about my personal life  the more effective would be our work in regard to issues of transference and projections. 

During the four years of cooperation with Sigrid, my  atttitude about the biography had gone from detached and sceptical to more and more  involved, as the interviews had increasingly helped me to insights and I became increasingly open about my experiences. Indirectly these interviews became well=nigh therapeutic, certainly more valuable to me than the 8 years of psychoanalysis I had endured from l956-64.  However I truly  never believed  - 1) that Sigrid would ever complete the book  and 2) that anyne would ever want to publish it.(In fact sometimes I felt quite guilty about Sigrid's investment of time and money in the project except that in the course of these four years I helped Sigrid relate to her own teen-age children and the grade children she was teaching in very different ways than before, with great results). Anyway, was sure that even if the book would see the light of day it might happen long after I ceased doing workshops..

Now, here was the book;  - in bookstores - in August 2004 just in the middle of the summer when I had a number of workshops scheduled! Well, perhaps none of the participants would be aware of it?Wrong!  What happened was worse.  Some participants, in August and September, did see the book, and some did not -inevitably the book became a topic of discussion in the first workshop after publication, but I still managed to keep it subdued.

By Spring and summer  2005 , when I did a number of workshops in Germany, all participants there had read the book in advance before attending a workshp.  However none in France or Italy (where I also worked that summer ) had done so, since it was in German . And here  is the interesting thing that happened:-
It  was no harder working in Germany, with those who  had read the book, than working elsewhere, where they had not.  In fact, in many instances participants seemed to be more open, freer, from having read the book, and we could joke about some issues that had happened in my life. So my fears were unnecesssary!

By now I feel convinced that transparency about the therapists's  own life is never harmful, and often actually accelerates therapy.  Of course  a precondition is for the therapist to allow herself to be comfortable with the view of her as  a very imperfect individual, prone to elementary mistakes.This offers hope that you can pull yourself out of a ditch - even if you've fallen into a similar one many times before, but sooner or later you can learn to improve - at least to the extent of managing yourself in relation  to others (and to yourself, most of the time!)  Also it is important not to inflict one's experiences onto clients.  A book gives them a choice - read or disregard - or both.  For all this, what is important?

In my opinion,  learning about ego states - and experiencing their differences - is a major contribution from TA.  This aside is due to having today received an e-mail from a therapist thanking me for having introduced her to elementary TA (i.e. ego states - mine and those of others ) It's good to be reminded how important ever-increased awareness of differences of ego states has been to my own mental balance. I must write much more about this some time.

So......having brought up this 2004 biography , I must add that although it is factually totally accurate, with more information about me than I might wish, I still feel it does not really represent me - somehow, with a third party writing, feeling tones are left out.......Will this blog compensate?