intuitionism n. the doctrine that all things are apprehended in their real nature through intuition Webster’s New World Dictionary
There’s the rub! It is on this interface that Jane and I slip. I dare not go on. For twice I have tried to write this blog and the computer ate it up. My rational mind tells me that I am probably doing something wrong. My intuitive mind (perhaps not a contradiction in terms) says that on some levels I don’t want to write this, that perhaps Jane is right in her assessment and I am defending against it. Jane and I have wrestled over her latest comment (see The Sixties Redux). I reminded her of an exchange in Judgement at Nuremberg, a film she enjoys because of Spencer Tracy’s performance as the judge. In a conversation he has with the defending lawyer, the brilliant mouthpiece, Maximillian Schell, he cautions him by saying that all the logic in the world does not make it right, referencing the Nazi actions. We are all invested in either know/feel or know/think; often we favor one generally over the other. The average and “normal” human being has a healthy blend of both. That is why the “all” in the definition above is too extreme.
As a working therapist I endeavored to have clients use reason, to make choices, to reason out as their behaviors inflamed them with aberrant actions at times. However, for me to understand them I had to often going inside myself and metabolize all that they presented to me — pauses; dress; attitudes; acting in; dreams; defenses — splitting, rationalization, denial, reaction formation. I took in reservoirs of behaviors, often inundated by the swells and waves of the torrents given me. Some of this responding to reason, some of this responded to my ability to touch the client –with words — emotionally, to make tactile feelings subject to awareness. It was here I was best effective. Psychotherapy is not common sense; it is also not the applied use of reason, like paint enameled on a closet door. Therapy is always relationship and relationship, it is my belief, is mostly conscious and unconscious feelings, what I call the substrates of our shared human dialogue as individuals.
If you think about rationality in the extreme or in a humorous extreme instance, reason distances. It provides cool, objectivity as opposed to subjectivity, keeps one safely apart and afar, makes sense, gives order, abets decision-making and so on. Feelings are flipping fish in one’s grasping hands, disorderly, close and hot breathing, demanding, warm, often intractable, often endearing and moving. Consequences for a rationalist are ending results, a sense of completion, the aha experience, prove for x, young man. Consequences emotionally often have deep and profound impacts, think of the moon pockmarked by meteorites. And I will now go out on the limb. I believe that no client leaves therapy “cured” because of the application of reason. Human beings are moved and are changed by feelings — and reason — but essentially by their emotions; the therapist must find a way to instruct the client in the wonderful uses of reason to make his way in the world and must profoundly make a difference in how the client uses his emotions to be moved into changing him into a conscious and self-aware human being open to all the varieties of human experience. All the insight in the world does not make you human.
As to Jane and I. I believe Jane invests in rationality for her own personal reasons, not to be cited here. And I am deeply invested in feelings, ergo, I write books, became a therapist, “the impossible profession.” Jane can deal with squeaks on a bike’s tire and I need to apply three-in-one-oil. So be it. I ooze, she stands firm. She reasons, I emote. It all comes down to, I imagine, to how we dispense our favorite human ploys.
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