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in the introduction of Winnicott, he spoke of him as one such the like of whom I shall not meet again. This seems. So can we start again, Matt? Just no, no, no, it just pulled for an item. Okay. Let me start again. Okay, can erase all that.
In Kahn's introduction of Willicot, he spoke of him as one such the like of whom I shall not meet again. One unlike any other, extraordinary. This seems a fitting introduction for you. But I suppose my question is, if you started off your practice today, do you think you would still be able to have had such an extraordinary practice and such an extraordinary life?
I don't start off from the assumption that I've had an extraordinary practice or an extraordinary life. I mean, how would I possibly know in a sense? Although I have to say that when I thought I was a goner, when they told me I got lung cancer, which was what now nearly 25 years ago, the Royal Free Hospital, and my mother had died of lung cancer.
I thought that's it. And you are one day, you know, we've all got to say good night. And I thought, well, you know, clearly it's imminent. And I must say my feeling was, well, do you know what I said to myself? I think I've had a pretty good run really. ⁓ I haven't got any complaints. I'd love to do it all again. Not as some people say, oh I'd do it all again nowing what I know now. No I just really were it could be possible time travel or whatever,
do my whole life again, all the upsets, heartbreaks, know, and all the ecstasies and joys and sex and drugs and all of that. Yeah, I'd really love to do it again. There's no two ways about it. But no, I don't know that I think I've had such an extraordinary practice and I can't possibly see anything that would stand in the way were I setting off today that would prevent me behaving in the way that I behaved throughout.
know, my working life as an analyst. I mean, in a way, I'm rather intrigued by the question, because it wouldn't occur to me that the times have changed in such a way, and if they have, in what way, that would prevent any particular way of working, extraordinary or otherwise. I was just thinking that psychoanalysis is in some ways more regulated than it was when
started out. Only if you allow it to be. Only if you, I one of the difficulties about the regulation of psychoanalysis, psychotherapies or whatever, is that actually it kills off thinking. You'll hear it over and over again in training committees, well we can't do that because the UK CP require it. I'm not interested in whether it's a requirement
It's what do we think about it? And I think I could shit on a lot of some of these particular requirements. You know, just two particular examples. One, why, it seems to me absolutely inherently infantilizing, why if somebody's been in analysis and they feel they've had enough of being in analysis for however long, why should they have to be in analysis
through the duration of their training. It just doesn't make any sense to me. I know, and currently there are three people that I know, who are training, or possibly now one of them has possibly graduated, who felt very resentful at this particular requirement. They'd been in analysis for years, for Christ's sake. They'd had enough of it. Whatever they'd gone into analysis for, they felt that they had found their way in relation to something or some things.
That was enough. And yet there was this wretched requirement. And there's no thinking about it. There's no questioning it. Now to me, had I been in their position, I just wouldn't have told anybody. Similarly, this thing that absolutely skews psychoanalytical treatment is the idea that you have to see somebody during your training twice a week for at least 18 months.
That's a completely arbitrary figure. Why 18? Why not 13? Why not eight? But it's also, you know, again, if you were really much more thoughtful about it, why? Psychoanalysis, I always turn to the idea, you mentioned Winnicott in the introduction to this conversation. You know, Winnicott would see families or a child from a family and the parents later on, say once every six months.
And if you read the work that he did and the accounts of those particular meetings, that psychoanalytical, you know, there's nothing un-psychoanalytical about it, the fact that he was seeing people once every six months. So why this fetishization of numbers of times a week? These are things, and again, if I was a trainee, I just wouldn't tell anybody. I'd just let them assume that I've been seeing somebody for X number of months, however many times a week.
I just wouldn't draw attention to it. And I'd hope that I would like to think that unfortunately there are different temperaments that inform training organizations. And there are some people who are very much more on the side of what I place under the heading of discipline and control. And that's not my game at all. Anyway, that's... Have you ever done any other kind of work? I'm interested in sort of...
be interested in more psychoanalytic things, I'm kind of more interested in the other elements of the archive. So have you done any other kind of work other than analysis? Well not really, only when I was like a student you know I worked as a hospital porter for a bit which I really actually quite enjoyed. Somewhere in London? Well this is actually out in Amersham where I was brought up, the end of the metropolitan line.
I've done sort of work at the post office over Christmas and things like that, right? Which again, I enjoyed. What I didn't enjoy, I did it for about maybe two or three weeks. And then I just thought, this is absolutely doing me in. I may need the money, but it's just not worth it. I was working at a pork pie factory. there were these, what you had to do was there were these pork pies that come down on a conveyor belt.
in little tins, which were absolutely, you you burn your fingers picking those tins up, had to get the pork pie out and then stick a lid on the pork pie. And you know what, some of the people, what they were doing, they were flobbing in the pork pie, wanking into it and also putting the lid on. So I mean, was fairly crazy in there, but you know, it killed brain cells. And what was sad was I was working with people and they were in for the duration.
There was no exit for them. And you just thought, what an awful occupational life. So there's just a few examples of sort of, know, but no, I mean, I tried to stave off what one might call having a proper job as long as possible. Because initially I thought of the life of, you know, a university life as an academic would, but there was actually a seminal moment when I was at the
Institute of Criminology, we went on a visit, think, to, I think it was something like the sort of Home Office Research Centre. And I was talking to a bloke who's probably about four or five years older than me who was working there. And he was telling me that actually the research they'd done was that set in that era, I really don't know about sentencing policy for inverted commas, "juvenile offenders" today.
But he said in those days people would be sent for what was called a short sharp shock to a detention center. And he said their research was that far from deterring anybody from crime, these were like short sharp education into crime. actually was that their research showed that actually it facilitated people going on with a life of crime rather than deterring them. And so I said, well, I
I'm not entirely surprised that that's your findings, but what will happen about that? And when he said, well, in all probability, it would just gather a dust on a shelf, I thought, you know, that life of an academic looks like a wasted life to me, you know, writing these papers and, you know, however erudite they may be, but they're not really, what impact do they have on the world? It's just a closed system.
So I thought, no, no, even though that to me looked like, to me, if you were an academic, you'd have to pinch yourself that that's really working. And that's when I thought, no, no, I want to do something different than that. And so it's at that moment when I was probably about 22, that I thought, no, I think psychoanalysis, partly because I'd come across psychoanalytical thinking about why somebody might conceivably commit a crime.
I was at the Institute of Criminology and all the sociology was saying, well, it's to do with, and that was the vocabulary of the day, coming from a broken home, poverty or whatever it might be. And I thought, but hold on, there's lots of people who come from poverty and they don't commit crime. There are loads of people who come from so-called divorced parents in a broken home. don't commit. It just doesn't stack up intellectually. But then, and I always say this thing about
it was wanting to be in inverted commas back to Oedipus, which we were talking before this interview about the play - that I wanted to be in the place of who or what my mother took to bed with her, because by her bed for many years was this, it had a green cover, a book by Winnicott. And initially I didn't particularly read that book, but by the time I was at university,
I don't know what's in that book. And it was there that I read this idea that I think originated with Freud, but Winnicott was very eloquently recycling it, in which this notion that actually it's guilt precedes the crime. It's not that people feel guilty because of the crime, it's guilt leads them into crime because then the desire, unconscious or otherwise,
is that then you commit the crime consciously you want to avoid ever being caught but at a certain level you allow that that is a genuine possibility you're caught you do your time and that expiates the guilt that led you to commit the crime in the first place and I thought that's more the thinking I like that looks really interesting and that that to me is intellectually satisfying so
Anyway, what does that got something to do with what I did before?
You said that R.D. Laing could have claimed that the analyst is the one who is supposed to enjoy or following in Winnicott he is supposed to play. Would you say you are playful? It's a word you use 345 times in your book on football. I remember when you said somebody the last to put last list of questions, I thought.
To the best of my ability, I really have no desire to have any thoughts about myself. I have no interest. Am I playful? I would never describe, I'm not interested in describing myself as being like this or like that. I'm almost phobic in relation to I'm not interested in identity and so on and so forth. I just, what I'm really interested in, which is my understanding of what it is to be present,
is what comes next. I don't want to waste a moment thinking about my wretched self. So I haven't got a clue. It's not for me to say whether I'm playful or not. Other people may describe me in that way and so on and so forth. And good luck to them. Me, count me out. I've no idea. But the tradition that maybe you're pointing towards of Winnicott who's saying that if in psychoanalysis you're not as yet playing,
then you need to be paying attention to what might facilitate those possibilities. I have to say that I think that's an impeccable statement. Whether do I adhere to it or not, I can't really say.
One of the thoughts when me and Eric were talking, I was interested, think, in not entirely sure, you're... 80. you're 80. I trying to not be too, too inquisitive No, no, that's absolutely fine. But you've lived through quite a large transformation in the way psychoanalysis is kind of orientated and placed in our culture. I mean, from a time when it was kind of semi-marginal, to a time when it was definitely being expelled as use-less and a kind of fraudulent, you know, middle class or something.
the time in which we might almost say it's kind of everywhere now in various forms, in mutated forms, in strange forms, but that kind of relationship to the world of psychoanalysis in a sense originated, that it seems to be now much more prevalent, much more widespread. So how does the transformation feel to you? Well, when I came in, in a sense, at the back end of what one might call
the golden era British psychoanalysis, know, where there were sort of seriously important psychoanalytical thinkers. We've mentioned Winnicott, people like Bion, Barlint, I'm sure that Masood Khan has also been name checked. Ronnie Laing is another, you know, and, you know, we haven't even touched on people like Melanie Klein or Marion Milner or a number of people who were genuinely names,
right And this was a golden era. And it may have been, you you may have been able to in some way install in some way a very loose sort of circumference around this particular, if you like, sort of subculture. And I would absolutely agree with you that in a curious way, maybe whatever we understand by certain sort of psychoanalytical tropes, psychoanalytical forms of
understanding how we are in relation to ourselves and relation to others is now in a sense ubiquitous. It's everywhere in some way. But there's still, of course, many people who are very critical of it. The person I'm involved with in Stockholm only this week was saying, a book's come out saying, I think the title is And Freud Never Cured Anybody.
it still can set up certain sort of antagonisms and so on and so forth. But one of the things that I have noticed is this notion of significant psychoanalytical names within, if you like, the cultural firmament has really receded. mean, today, the only two, you know, are there others? But mainly the two main names, say, in British psychoanalysis today,
are Adam Phillips and Darien Lieder. I don't know of anybody else who's arrived at that status where their name becomes a name, which is a very, very interesting phenomenon, which Laing was subject to, and I think at a certain level actually drove him to some degree a little mad, of people speaking in his place, saying they knew what Laing thought. And he was saying, you don't know me?
and you've certainly misunderstood anything that I've been trying to say, but more importantly, you think you're entitled to speak in my name. And basically, just fuck off. Something that's been said about the way you work is that it includes an experience of enjoyment, be it as analysis or be it as supervision. And I can testify to this, that enjoyment seems to be
at the heart of your practice. So I suppose I've got two questions in relation to this. Is this something that can be taught or is it about an experience? Or put another way, could there be a Chris Oakley School of Analysis in the way that there's a Kleinian School of Practice?
Well, I very much doubt it. It's certainly not something that I think spend a moment ever sort of thinking of or dreaming of or whatever it does. I just think it's seriously unlikely. And when the organization that I trained with you know Laings' Philadelphia Association and when that sort of split up and quite literally split 50 50 and actually
Initially, I was slightly sort of, what does that mean? But many people that had been seemingly drawn to me, either had been an analysis with me or in supervision with me, elected to stay with the organization that I and my wife at that time, Haya, were leaving to set up The Site. They stayed with the PA. They didn't follow me in some way.
And as I say, initially, suppose I was slightly sort of, you know, maybe more than a little, maybe I'm downplaying it, but you know, slightly disconcerted by that. What's that about? But then I moved to feeling, actually, that's good. That's very much what actually I would be shooting for. It's not my desire that people would become a follower, you know, sort of, you know, a fan. What I really want...
is that they have the freedom, because that's to me what is the great appeal about psychoanalysis, that basically it's a project of emancipation of freedom, the freedom to find the forms of enjoyment to give oneself a good life in whatever shape or form that might take. But if I can just add a little bit further, because one of the things that I teach my students, I say to them, quoting you actually,
that psychoanalysis doesn't just have to be about suffering, can be about enjoyment. Well, it's rather based on, in a way, I mean, it's very ill thought through, let's be clear about this. But my understanding of what a parent can bestow upon their child is
that the child feels that they're enjoyed. That to me is absolutely crucial, if you like, what one can give to the other. And so that informs, there's a complexity to it. mean, some people have, when I say, and it's a play on this Lacanian axiom, the analyst is the one who's supposed to know, and I say,
up, maybe, but I would also want to say, and it's not, I don't think that Laing was ever saying that, and I don't think I've ever said that I think that that sort of informs Laing's initiatives. Maybe it does implicitly, but I don't think it ever was explicitly. But for me, we're the one who's supposed to enjoy, because if somebody comes to see one, and they go away, and they go away and sort of just privately sort of think, yeah, I think actually
the stories I was telling about my life, I think that that was enjoyed by the other. I just think that there's something to use that vocabulary therapeutic in that. It just enhances somebody's life. I'd like to think that there are other moments in which they've felt that they've been genuinely enjoyed by significant others. Now some people sort of get a bit confused as if they, as if what they hear in what I'm saying that the other
supposed to be enjoyable and I would say no no because of course there are certain people that come to see one that the truth is no I don't find them intrinsically enjoyable but nevertheless there's a potential enjoyment in trying to really put one's mind to what is it that they do that I don't find particularly enjoyable.
Now, and this is where we move into what, to me, is a very, in a sense, sort of treacherous terrain. And this is linked to the Winnicott, because by and large, I never think that people who come to see me are suffering from a particular condition that I'm going to play some part in curing them from. I'm with this anti-psychiatrist, David Cooper,
Curing is what we do with bacon. And I never, you know, I mean, there's somebody who sees me and she's very, ⁓
amicable, cheerful about it, but she says, I know, she says this with a big smile, I know it's not true, but I cannot, she says, I cannot let go of the thought, and she said also possibly a desire, that the truth is that actually you're sitting on a diagnosis and you're just not telling me. And we both laugh, because it's, well, it's risable. says, I am not
interested in diagnosing anybody. It never occurs to me to do that. The next question I just to quickly follow up on. It's only now that at 63 that I've come to my own practice, realized or experienced that part of the what's so vital in the treatment is to be able to actually love my patients.
You speak about enjoyment, but I discovered that as I've got older and I wouldn't have been able, and when I was younger, I wouldn't have gone down that route. But as I get older, I realized that there's something about being able to really feel love for somebody. Some patients, it's difficult to love actually. And I think it's similar to the question that you're saying about enjoyment. What is it about this person that it makes it difficult for me to love?
I was wondering if that's an idea that you think about at all, you know, for instance. You know that I Lacan said that the analysts, don't think he ever said it, hopefully he never thought about somebody who's been in inverted commas completely analyzed. I mean, that's a monstrous thing. What does it mean completely, you know, completion of some particular project? I mean, it's just nonsensical to me.
But what I think he said that somebody who was, if you like, sufficiently well-analyzed, who in a sense had found their way to whatever it is that was at the heart of the, I mean, he said psychoanalysis is a delirium. Of course, I love that notion. And that those are the people who are more able, they've found their way to a freedom.
So if you like to use your vocabulary, fall in love with people who come to see them. I have to say that I'm very wary of this word love. It seems to me to be asked to do a lot of heavy lifting and I'm very wary of it. That's why I much prefer the notion of enjoyment. I'm aware that I derive pleasure and so, but nevertheless, if you really push me, I would say there are certain people that have come to see me, but yes.
during various periods, I would say, I've fallen in love with them. And again, it's Lacan who says, it's like the smile of the Mona Lisa. The smile of the Mona Lisa is, for him, it means that somebody has really found their way to something of a site of full enjoyment. And it doesn't happen to all, but it is a potentiality of a psychoanalytical situation. And if I've understood what he's on about there,
I think that's true. It doesn't happen to all, but there are certain people that you just get, and you see, I never think that really somebody's fallen in love with me, but I think they must love coming in a sense, or they must enjoy coming, because otherwise, why would they pay good money and spend their time, time for me is always desire, and spend all this time and come for so many years.
if there wasn't right at the heart of it, genuine pleasure and enjoyment.
I don't know that goes some way to answering that question. I feel like the next question in a sense is a bit redundant, given what you're saying. I love it. I kind of want to see, but I'm kind of, a sense, part of me is more interested in the most mundane element of this question. what I'm interested in is why do you keep going? Why do analysts keep going? Why do they keep practising? What keeps you getting up and letting someone in? I mean, you're not, you know,
Let's just say you're an older gentleman, you know, you've been doing this for a while. could have stopped me. Let's be pragmatic, right? Can't dismiss it. No, this is what the wedge. OK, money. And that I need I need to earn a living. I've got a piss poor pension. If I don't earn the living, I can't live the life that I want. But you wouldn't be working in a pie factory But but but. I've often had this thought. I mean, obviously, it's a completely
sort of fanciful, fictitious notion. What if somebody came along and said, Chris, I will give you the money that you're earning at the moment and you don't have to work another day in your life. Actually, that would be a loss. Because I organize my life in such a way that by and large, I do what I want to do. if I don't want to work. Last weekend, last week, I was in Yerevan in Armenia. This friend said,
We're going to Armenia to watch football. You want to come with us? Yeah, I'm free to do it. If I wasn't working, what the fuck would I be doing all the time? Playing fucking golf. I had much more fun listening to the stories from the people who come to see me. Do you think that was a core part of the motivation that kept you going through the years as well. The fact that you actually it's over determined to use that psychoanalytical vocabulary. It's as I say.
I've always needed to earn a living. And I just think I'm eternally blessed that I earn a living through doing something that I would claim I genuinely enjoy. I mean I love this story of this man who came, was coming up my stairs and it was during the summer, so it wasn't a cold day. And he said, do you know, when I was coming up the stairs, I'm pretty sure I could hear you rubbing your hands.
right? And so I asked him, and yes, and if I was, and he said, well, you know, I may end up with sort of egg on my face or got this completely wrong. But of course, you know, I'd really like to think you're rubbing up your hands with glee. And I just laughed. I didn't confirm it or not. I just thought, by all means. But I think
He was probably right. Chris, you won an award for your book on psychoanalysis and football. Now, I know you like cricket. But could you ever imagine writing a book on cricket and psychoanalysis or put another way, could there be a book on boxing and psychoanalysis or rugby and psychoanalysis? Or did it have to be football and psychoanalysis? I'm sure it didn't have to be football.
I it never really occurred to me to do, I mean, it's this thing, if I'm asked to write, I'll do it. But if I'm not, writing's hard work and there's, you know, there's so much out there in the world. Do we really need another fucking book? I'm not sure about that. And, I'll have a bit of that.
No, it was just I was asked by the psychoanalytical publisher if I'd write a book about football and why football's of such significance, seemingly culturally in the world. as football has always been, you know, indelible. I mean, you know, I like football far too much. It's gotten by the short and curleys you know, I it's it's
It won't let go. And which is absolutely fine by me. I mean, I love playing it. I now can't play anyway. So I love watching it. I love the community of people involved in it. just. Well, I'm also enormously fond of cricket. You know, for me, it was always football in winter cricket, playing cricket in the summer. But cricket has got a far greater sort of body of literature, far more is written in a way one would.
quite genuinely say there's cricket literature. There are people who are really, really good writers about cricket. They've never necessarily, even though of course, Mike Brearley, who I think at some point, whether he is today, I'm not quite clear, who was of course the England cricket captain, was the chair of the British Psychoanalytical Society. And although in his writing about cricket, which he does,
He brings in quite gently, not in any sort of insistent, sort of obsessive, rather overbearing manner. Just gently brings in some sort psychoanalytical understandings at certain moments. But they're usually to do with particular phenomena in cricket, like captaincy or what it might be, the experience of being dropped, these sort of things, or a specific player.
he might introduce various elements of psychoanalytical thinking to it. But there don't seem to be many, many, many instances in which somebody's tried to sort of, if you like, analyze why there's such enthusiasm for a particular sport. But it does look, which I don't think it precludes other sports, as you're suggesting, you know, not at all.
But football in a way lends itself because it does look as if this is the most popular sport globally. There almost isn't any country in the world that you can't strike up about the conversation about football. Has football taught you anything about psychoanalysis?
No, don't think, nothing comes to mind, no, not.
When did interesting football begin? How long, how deep does it go? Well, I always tell this story that my grandfather, I mean it was, you know, this is a little bit of a back story, but I never had a close relationship with my father, which to me is illustrated by the fact that my father, when he was a young man, played at junior Wimbledon.
You've got to be a pretty decent tennis player to play at junior Wimbledon. I think actually I thought he got to the final, but that was my apologizing of my father. But I think actually got knocked out in the first round 6-1, 6-0 or something. But he got there, right? I never knew that. Not in my life, you know, until because my father also sort of had this Andy Warhol moment of 15 minutes of fame.
because he discovered, he was the person who uncovered that there was this fraud about this thing called the Piltdown skull. The Piltdown skull was supposed to be the first instance of homeo sapiens anywhere in the world, right? Of course, the British would, it must have been, it was found in Sussex, but it was completely fraudulent. Somebody at the Natural History Museum, which where my father had been working, head of a department there, had faked it up.
My father using a thing called carbon dating investigation was able to reveal that it was a fraud. I remember probably when I was about nine or ten, something like that, paparazzi poking microphones through my house letter box wanting to interview my dad and this sort of thing, so on and so forth. It was only much, much later, probably in my thirties,
when I was dutifully visiting him in his space in Oxford, and I saw that he'd got all these scrapbooks. And I've always liked to scrapbook, you know, I love cuttings out of newspapers and things. And of course, he'd cut out all the stuff that was written about him and so on and so forth. And I suddenly saw this little thing sort of clipped out of the Daily Telegraph, know, Junior Wimbledon, the little thing about my dad.
I never knew that he never mentioned it and he was, you know, completely we were completely estranged. He was an only child. I don't think I'd like to think that there was a truth to this. I think my mother, at least for the first few years of my life, was absolutely besotted with me. And I think my dad could not bear that for a moment. And so there was a complete the woman I'm involved with, Annali, she said,
The person I really want to meet is your brother. We used to jokingly refer to him as the key. If I meet your brother, he's going to be the key to your relationship with your father and your relationship with your mother. He'll tell me the inside story. So she met him and within five minutes, what he said was Chris never had a chance with our father. Never had a chance. It was just...
And it was true. never, again, another story I tell is that I was going to have an interview at Trinity College Dublin when I was 18, and that was the university I ended up going to. And it meant getting a flight to Dublin. And I stayed overnight because my father was now living right by the Natural History Museum in Kensington. And it meant staying the night with him. I tell you.
I was far more shitting myself about spending that night with my father thinking, what the fuck are we going to talk about than going to this interview in Dublin? I thought the interview in Dublin is going to be a walk in the park. I can talk for England. It's not a problem. It was my dad. thought, what the fuck? Now somehow or other, we must have got through that evening. I can't remember that it was such a car crash, but I know that I was, that was what I was really apprehensive about.
So, but then it was his father who started to tell me and I really liked him. He was a headmaster of the local grammar school. And one of the things I really liked to do was not that I have any interest in that particular sort of kink these days, but I used to like tying him up with bits of string. And I think he probably like must've liked it too in some way. You know, I had times chairs and things like that.
Isn't there a particular Japanese term for it? Subaru or something, something strong. Anyway, I that with my granddad. But he told me, I don't quite know how he knew of this, because I don't know that he had much link with the North of England, but he would tell me about all these miners going into St James's Park.
to watch Newcastle United. And he said, you know, there were all these miners sort of steaming out of the pit, right? And often, you know, they'd had a few ales before they got into the ground. And, you know, because they were all sort of crammed in there like sardines, they couldn't really move, so they couldn't go to the loo. So what they'd do, they'd sort of burl up a newspaper and get their cock out and have a good slash into the paper, right? And I thought, as a very impressionable young boy,
Well, that looks like, and the team I supported was Hot Spurs. And so I thought, well, they sound like Hot Spurs, these men getting their cocktail, flacking them out and having a piss in these newspapers. I think that's the sort of man I'd like to be, a very impressionable young boy. And now my grandfather actually never took me to football. Nobody ever took me to football. I took myself to football. But he did. My grandfather took me to Lord.
That was the fact that my two grandfathers, both of them, one lived actually near quite near you, Worthing and back in the day in the early 1950s, Worthing stage county cricket. They don't anymore. You know, I mean, it's now Hove where Sussex play. But in those days, Sussex also used Worthing, which was just down the road from where my grandparents lived. I remember when I was 10, 1954.
He took me to a game of worthing. I can't really remember. I think we went after tea when I think you could probably go into nothing. And I vaguely remember. I was just I just fascinated by crowds and in many ways crowds of men, you know, because I always I always in some way my sort of disaffection with regard to my father, I think led me feeling he's not really a man that I can at some level look up to. He doesn't seem to enjoy me.
So fuck him, I don't particularly enjoy him. But I think actually, because he was an intellectual who wrote books about archaeology and so on, and I think there was some form of identification despite myself that was in play there. Just give me little full-fledged analysis. Football. Really? ⁓ yeah. I mean, I'd have been amazed at it.
particularly to football fans anymore. I'd have been amazed at anyone who said that. But actually I say that sort spontaneously to be slightly sort of am I being slightly facetious? don't, this phrase comparisons are odious. I just enjoy it all, know, do I enjoy cricket more than football?
I think I was probably better at playing football than cricket. I think I'm more successful playing football than at cricket. But now I just enjoy both of them. I join, you know? I mean, some of my friends, because they're retired, all they do is go and work. You know, Nick, all he does, he probably goes to watch football and now cricket as well, say five days a week. And even if I...
wasn't working. That is not what I want to be doing. I want difference. I want more than just going to watch sporting events, you know, and that's what psychoanalysis gives me. actually, I'd like to of withdraw that and say, I'm not interested in making a hierarchy of witches. They're all locusts of great enjoyment. Sometimes I'll, in a sense,
to go and watch football rather than work. But knowing that the next day I'm back working as a psychoanalyst. So, you know, yeah, it's all part of what I enjoy. I'm of interested in what don't you enjoy? What sort of thing have actively, have you already actively dated? Rugby. Rugby, which I had to play at school. I fucking, I thought it's just big blokes banging into each other. I'm not a big bloke.
I always thought what is strange? And I don't know if other people have had this experience, but when I was growing up and even into my 20s, 30s, I always thought I was pretty puny and I always thought actually I was a bit, you know, not not somebody who would do particularly well in fights, right? But as it happened, when I got into trouble at school, three times were to do with fighting.
And always I was the one who came out on top in those fights. I'm not, I'm, know, I'm a lover, not a fighter, put it that way. But no, but I went to a rugby playing school, that and combined cadet force playing little soldiers I fucking hated with a vengeance, no enjoyment whatsoever. know, rugby, having to play, ⁓ hated it, you know.
Big blokes just banging into each other, no skip to the ball, doesn't even bounce straight. It's just awful. Combined cadets force, having a march, you know, I quite deliberately never marched instead. know, people plainly do enjoy it. ⁓ no, but a lesson that I learned, and it was quite an important lesson, I think, was in a training committee meeting. When there I am, as is my one, shooting my mouth off, and I'm saying,
Nobody likes to be told what to do. And this person, Peter Wood, who I've grown to really like and respect, he said, Chris, you're wrong. Some people do. And actually, brought it, and I thought, do you know what, you're right. Because when I played football, and I played for this team, and you get at the end of the game, you get a couple of quid in your boots. That was the highest level that I played at, right?
And what I really liked was the manager of the team. He'd say to me, not every game, but at the beginning of certain things, he'd say, Chris, if you get in four decent, I was a winger at that time, if you get in four decent crosses in the game today, you're definitely going to be playing next week. That's all I need you to do, right? Anything else is a bonus.
can just get those four in. And so I really enjoyed. Fine. I'll set my, you know, I'll set out and I'll get at least, you know, and by and large, think, you know, so I stayed in the team. So I think I probably did. Got four crosses in every game, you know. Decent crosses too, not just banging them in like, you know, you see premiership players.
I don't want to get distracted. I'm no longer in touch. As I say, partly because of the echelons that I've moved in, I know a number of football writers, and one of them who is the sports editor of the Daily Telegraph. I don't know why, because we would just meet in a
Curryhouse after the games at Wembley, but he must have heard me talking and somehow thought, well, think this bloke looks reasonably intelligent, he can probably write. So he wanted me to write in the Telegraph, which I did. And the first article that I wrote, I described my involvement with football as a hideous addiction. And I think there's some truth to that. But that's playing as well as getting up and watching. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, this is a strange question, perhaps. it's one I asked Eric and I thought, I'll probably ask you. So one of the things I asked Eric is, were you working class? Because one of the things that have come up, I mean, I have a close relationship to class and a lot of the work I have to do. Most of the people I encounter working in psychoanalysis are deeply middle class and make me feel quite uncomfortable. Do I make you Yeah. So that was like...
But usually the sign of someone is not making me feel uncomfortable. They're probably not a middle-class. There's a kind of coding that I encounter. So I was wondering about that. And Eric said, no, no, you're not. what was sort of behind that was because I often, when I encounter a certain middle-class academia that I find replicated in psych analysis, often it's as though the values of enjoyment among some of them all, let's say, base.
mass cultural elements of life are kind of dismissed and removed. The joy and the intelligence and the space of those alternative lifestyles, they kind of ignore and remove from space of values we have in front of us. And that didn't seem to be the case with you. I was like... No, but I can tell you a number of responses to that, By and large, although I was born in London,
in St. John's Wood. I was moved out at the back end of the Second World War to this dormitory town, Amersham, which has been until very, very recently an absolutely rock solid Tory constituency. But my mother was the secretary of the local Labour Party. And if you remember the story from Gunter Grass's Kindrum, I was like a little boy sitting under
mother's skirts as she convened these meetings of the local Labour Party and I was like wide-eyed, goggle-eyed, listening to the adults and what they were talking about.
partly to do with geography, where we lived, which was in, I would say, a very sort of middle class, you know, and I went to private. And it was always, it's always, and I've never, and I asked my brother the other day, because he was much closer to my parents in all sorts of ways. Why do you think they sent us to private schools, to public schools? I the school I went to, I thought was actually pretty shit.
But actually it may have given me all sorts of confidence or whatever it is and sense of entitlement that stems from that particular education, I don't know. And he didn't really have an answer to that. But nevertheless, one of the things I was aware of that I kind of gravitated to some degree, but only to some degree, towards working-class people that I became friends with, partly
I mean, I was brought up in the era of the Teddy boy, right? And the Teddy boys used to get into this coffee shop. And I remember sort of very nervously peering in there. They were probably about four or five years older than me with a jukebox, you know? when, you know, I mean, it was a seminal moment. We all know where we were, possibly when we first heard Jailhouse Rock or something, or, you know, Blue Suede Shoes, Elvis.
I remember I was walking down Cheshire High Street when I first had a blue suede, know, and these were really, really important moments. I would look in and people have said in the book I wrote about football, they said, but you seem to declare some sort of homosexuality on your part. Well, I think, really? Just because I say there was something about people in my sort of small town.
constituency as it were. For me, where the sex was, was the hard boys, the boys that would get behind the goal at the local football ground, you know, who were by and large predominantly secondary modern, a working class, if you want to cut the world up into those clubs, which is important, I think, at some level to recognise that they do have all sorts of effects. I wouldn't want to think it'd be just utterly mystifying to suggest otherwise.
But I knew that for whatever reason, and it may have been a reaction actually to this antipathy between myself and my father, because he was manifestly, as friends of mine would describe him, he was a boffin. He was an intellectual. A boffin is a very, yeah, quatermat kind of, right?
Well, I know I had lots of people who would, I mean, it was, I would be embarrassed that Christmas, but they might pop around. And like, you know, I having a middle class upbringing, you know, say I have, you know, really quite a satchel of presents. And this working, I remember a bloke who had, I think, seven or eight brothers and sisters, and he'd got just one present for Christmas. That's all the family could afford. And I just felt an anguish that, you know, I was sort of privileged in comparison.
And I think that's, but I would expand that. But to me, it's something that I would, if you like, quite consciously aspire to, of being able to mix with Lords and Ladies and dustmen. I want to have access to all areas. That to me is just, you know, on the side of a good life.
I don't know if that goes some way towards us.
No, no, don't need to say it again. think we can we can pick up the conversation. So you're talking about this kind of the one thing I was saying to Eric is that we sort of brushed up against it. What has changed in, you know, I've been doing this now for what are we talking about? 50 years. That's my working life. I mean, I my apprenticeship was like working in a mental hospital. I was 22 when I went to the institute.
I first approached the Institute of Psychoanalysis. Are we recording now? When I was 22 thinking, you know, I don't know if I asked for my elbow. The idea that I did embark on training to be an analyst is quite frankly, it's a bit presumptuous, isn't it? But anyway, I went to see this man, Liventani, who was a senior training analyst at the Institute.
I mean, had a little sniff around because in that time, in the early 1960s, there were basically three main names in psychoanalysis. One has completely receded and those were Freud, Jung and Adler. And I went along to the Adlerian Society, which was, it was right by what I used to frequent, what was known as a beatnik pub called the Duke of York in Rathbone Place.
just off Oxford Street near Totten Court Road and the Ardlerian Society, they were in a pub quite near to the Duke of York in an upstairs room. But I went in there and I thought, A, the whole place is dusty and the men that comprise the Ardlerian Society, they're a load of duck the old fuckers too. So I thought, now this isn't for me. It's just not for me. So there was much else. somehow
Jung, interesting but mandalas, not really quite my thing and so on. So that just left Freud and sort of the Institute really until suddenly the PA and Lang and David Cooper linked to the anti-university of London. That was really what was transformative, getting into the anti-
He didn't get into it. Well, I was into it in terms of enjoyment, you know. But so I went to see the man of the issue who was sort of interviewing people who wanted to train. And he completely disillusioned me because I thought, 22, I'm far too young. He said, no, no, we had, I think that was a reference to Masood Khan. He said, no, we've had somebody of 18, but we took home to train.
I thought, ⁓ fuck, I'm way behind the guy, that's not good. And then he told me, what you need to do is get experience of seeing some genuinely manned people, you know, and because of my degree, I could take up a place as a social worker in a mental hospital. I was eligible to do that, which again was completely ridiculous because I've never actually sat with somebody who was, you know, barking mad, you know, really.
Maybe a few of my mates. Your first encounter was in one of the main institutions. Yes, I went to work in this big hospital out in Woodford Green called Playbury Hospital as a social worker. went to work in one of those big hospitals? Yeah, a big. As a mental health nurse. Right, right. Nowadays the one I went to work with has been turned into two post-cracks. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if that's what happened to the hospital there, you know.
because I mean it was a seriously strange place in that it had one of these Foucauldian panoptic towers. There was this huge tower that you could see for miles and miles around. It may still be there. I mean it's not a part of the world I go to very often these days. It may still be there. And living in that tower was this, the consultant psychiatrist, the head psychiatrist of the Holker-Boodle. I mean it was like a small village.
were like sort of 15 to 2000 people actually living incarcerated there, many of them in locked wards. Anyway, he was the head honcho there, and he'd set up the idea of the hospital as community. And there'd be community meetings every Wednesday at 12 o'clock in an enormous, enormous sort of huge sort of assembly hall. And obviously, a lot of people didn't go.
But a lot of people did and it was chaos really. But anyway, what happened, he had withdrawn. He'd become a recluse living in this tower. He never came out of the tower. I don't know how people get food into it. Everybody knew Dr. Martin is up in that tower. But he stayed there. You couldn't imagine. This was indeed the loony bin. But it was a great sort of education.
for me, you know, just sitting in a room with people that, you know, had been sectioned or whatever it was, you know. I'm going to to you a few statements. Madness can be recognised as a way in which somebody, to use an Adam Phillips insistence, was doing the best they could do with what they've got.
There is a failure to think through the idea that there is something wrong with someone and that crucial difference that something has gone wrong. What is always driven man and this occurs by allowing by not this occurs by not allowing someone to have their own experience and instead thinking for and in the place of them. The psychotic does not think but is a product of thought. Indeed.
can only have thought that have been implanted in him or her by the other. Rather than being an actor on a stage, he or she has become the stage onto which others' plays unfold. Jenny Drisco commented that to find authenticity in the signs of madness is like finding a desirable simplicity in poverty. And only
and only those not obliged to experience either can afford such intellectual slackness. At yet the same time, you also say there is a need for an addiction, a self-selected madness. We all need small doses of self-selected madness. Right, but I think I'd go on to say we shouldn't, the way I'm using that word madness now, in no way
to be associated with, if you like, the sheer, at times, horror and terror of actually having been driven mad. I talk about that football is a certain elective source of madness. You can be driven mad by the frustrations of watching a particular team or whatever it might be. But of course, that's trivializing, actually, as I say, that horror and the anguish
to be actually having been driven mad. And I have no wish to sort of in any way sort of dismiss, as I say, the suffering, the anguish that informs that. But I think I do go on to spell out that differentiation, but I would go to my grave saying, yes, I think, you know, it's essential for a say, well, I'm not interested in a sane life.
I'm interested in is a good life. A good life, hopefully we've all got a you know, locus of private madness. would be very sad. Drug wisdom. I find it fascinating using the phrase the good life. mean, you know, obviously I have my Felicity Kendall kind of thinking in the background.
The little star thing of the flowers kicking away at you. But also, this is a very philosophical, is a kind of notion of life. In a sense, is not what psychoanalysis introduces into the world. I mean, I'm thinking here about Freud's normal unhappiness. I suppose I sometimes say...
partly facetiously, but partly there's, you know, every joke has an indelible element of the serious. I'm pathologically optimistic. I don't buy that very pessimistic reading of Freud. I kind of get it to some extent, but I want to hold out Felicity Kendall notwithstanding, you know, for whatever we mean by a good life. And of course, good also has sort of, you know, something that I'm very, very wary of.
and you know sort of issues of ethics and morality. just, I'm sorry I'm wince. My experience of anybody in the psychoanalytical field who's written about ethics I say is often one of the biggest shy thoughts known to mankind. So I'm wary of it. know Aristotle's ethics aren't really an ethics in the way we know it. They're to do with this notion of virtue. have this idea of flourishing
way in which you do it is through practical reason, it's all very impure philosophy. No, but I very much like the idea, I mean there are certain moments, I don't know that I'm fine, you know, might with somebody who would come to see me today, but I can think of one or two people that I've said, you know, let's be quite clear, my desire
is to enable you to flourish. That's what I, you know, but because there's so many people who, for whatever reason, there's something that is, if you like, inhibiting or doing damage to their capacity to enjoy. You know, that's one of, I would say that a fair number of people come who almost if they've deprived of or deprived themselves,
the genuine capacity for enjoyment. And I want to enable that to flourish. One of the hallmarks of your practice, one of the things you advocate for alongside thoughtfulness is careful listening. You state that psychoanalytic listening is potentially something very special, something other, but it is never pure.
course. There is a tiredness sometimes, but there's something about this psychoanalytical listening that you continually advocate for.
Is that a question? There is a question here. If you want me to describe. there's a question here. Actually, Eric's missed, but I think actually I'd quite like to hear what you think about. How does one know when listening is happening? I mean, and this is as you as an analyst, you know, how do you in a sense know when you're able to listen or you're in the position of listening? there, he would have helped some other trainee.
And they were to say, but how do I know when I'm actually listening rather than just being in the space or close up? I must say, think that's an excellent question, partly because I have to halt a while to think about it. I can't achieve my mouth. But it's got to be good.
It recalls a moment in, as I say, I only ever had one supervisor. And to say that he taught me sort of all that I know about psychoanalysis, no, that's not true, you know, but he taught me an awful lot. was in a sense sort of foundational in all sorts of ways. A man named Hugh Crawford, a very senior figure in the Philadelphia Association.
And one of the things that he pointed out, that it seemed that, and I'm sure he was on to something, that it was as if there was a need early on in my working life for the other to confirm that there was something of value in something that I'd said to them. And that I would often report to him that they had said something along the lines of, that's right.
you know, the other had said something in response to something I said, that's right. And he said, do you know, the crucial thing in terms of the exchange between oneself and the other is not that they confirm that you've said something that for them is right, but that actually it promotes them to go on talking about whatever they were talking about. But that's much more important because actually, although it's very important
that I'm listening to the best of my ability, if you like, with my, in inverted commas, psych-relatible ears. What is really important in what I'm trying to do, the notion of the user Winnicottian term, the facilitating environment, is the other is hearing what they themselves are saying. Because this is rare. When I'm talking to the two of you now, I'm not actually hearing what I myself am saying.
But if I'm sitting talking to an analyst and they're listening in a particular way, it facilitates me being able to hear and that opens up that possibility for those moments in which, aha, I'd never really have that recognition or thought before about what it is I'm saying. And you probably were against this, but could we not say that's the unconscious? Yes.
But it never existed anywhere, Eric. That's why I want to insist the unconscious does not exist. It's not some sort of terrain that we're not as yet aware of, that there is there. It's like when we come to a particular realization, until that moment, it wasn't that the realization was like a latency existing, but then can come into being. It never did exist.
It only came into the being at the moment that we recognize it. That's why I want to say the unconscious does not exist.
I don't know if that makes sense, but have all sorts of as a philosopher, kind of you the use of the word recognize is kind of picking me. No, no, of course, there's a multi-faceted, we need to be, we need to halt a while. That's the form of listening. But let's not think that we've, you know, listening, think is very much, but in this I'm sort of derridaean that no, we use so many terms, so sort of loosely without really exact.
What are we using that term to use? That's why I think I want to halt when anybody uses the word love, you know, as if, we understand what we're using that term to mean? Because I'm not sure that I do. You wouldn't want to do away with the term love or the unconscious if I'm understanding correctly. No, I can't do away with what exists in language, you of course not, there are these terms, but let's be very, very wary of quite what these terms would refer to, you know.
And of course, I would say there are all sorts of things in this very moment in speaking to the two of you that I'm not as yet aware of. What is driving me to say this rather than that and so on and so forth. But I would always want to, if you like, efface the notion of the unconscious. I don't believe there is a the unconscious.
Anyway, that's more on the little drop. think so. One of the things I was saying to some students, I was doing a lecture for people doing creative writing and I was pointing out to them that psychoanalysis develops in parallel or soon after the autobiographical self-confession.
fairy tales, the adventure novel, detective novel, that it develops alongside a certain form of storytelling. And Freud himself spoke about in the future of illusion and also his paper, The Dalton Show, he speaks about an as-if. It is as-if. It's just another just-so story. You know the word just-so story. Now you are someone who tells very good stories.
and you were speaking earlier on about that you now include storytelling in your work. I suppose what I'm wondering about
How does one know when what stories are useful, what stories are not useful? Is psychoanalysis just a story? Of course. Another word of course is theory, but it's just stories among stories. Everything is just a story among stories. Science is a story among stories. may have, know, science obviously in many instances is
in time with sort of evidence, proof and so on and so forth. Evidence, of course, is not proof, but it may lend itself ultimately to being able to prove the truth of a particular statement or phenomenon. But no, it's all, it's, but I mean, that's how I earn a living. I would claim people come into my room and they tell me stories, stories about their life. And that's why
I'm not interested in listening to those stories, trying to in some way fit them into pre-existing ways in which people have cut up the world. And of course it's very tricky because, for example, something that I would actually be very critical of at a certain level, but not entirely dismissible, a lack of clinical structures, cutting up the world into hysteria, obsessionality, perversity, or psychosis. But it's...
You know, to me, something's going terribly awry if I'm listening with that particular grid and then I'm trying to fit the stories that people say, rather than recognise that actually what he points towards is the idea for me of different languages. People can speak different, if you like, different dialects, different languages, and many of us, if not all of us, at a certain level, are multilingual.
You know, we don't just speak one particular language, but at certain moments I can be in inverted commas, whatever Lacan is using the term, again, doing a lot of heavy lifting, obsessionality and anxiety about loss, hysteria and anxiety with regard to the other and so on and so forth. It's not that there isn't some sort of, you know, part of those stories, you know, I suppose what I really love
is the idea that psychoanalysis is an invitation to the suggestion chamber. Somebody says something to me and that suggests something and I'm going to say something in response, sooner or later, that will suggest something to the other. And off we go. It's machining, a Deleuzian notion. It's producing potentially meaning all the time. But always that meaning is only just another story.
I'm not a purveyor of truth. I make suggestions. And you know what? I always like the analogy of, here we are, you mentioned the table. The table normally has loads of books on. Tonight it was empty. I put forth a suggestion. I say, you know, it's an association to what has been said. It's put on the table. If the other picks it up, that's great. Picks it up and runs with it, all to the good.
But if they don't, if it doesn't really speak to them, that's absolutely fine too. I'm not thinking that's resistance, because I'm the purveyor of truth. That to me would be just a monstrous fiction. You know, it's merely a suggestion. And that's the game that is unfolding, that I'm a party to. Would you be interested in trying to describe what that kind of story is, or would that be irrelevant? Is it more just the capacity?
I think with the cons work about this, it's more in the process of being able to play or to dream as opposed to what the content is. So would it be futile to try to say, well, what kind of story is it that's useful? What kind of story is it that you're engaging in? can I just that question? What's your role in this story? If someone was writing this and writing you into the role. Right.
You mentioned it being machine. In that sense, what's your function in the machine? Well, I think it's to keep the machine, to use a football analogy, it's to keep the ball rolling. It's not that... and actually have faith in keeping the ball rolling. It's not about goals, it's not about outcomes, see. Football, that's why football and psychoanalysis are very divergent. Football is putting the ball in the net.
I'm not interested in putting the ball in the net, scoring, know, with some of the words, you know, actually sort of capturing a particular moment. What I want is to keep the ball rolling and through that have faith that the possibility of the other being able to hit. Sometimes I will underline something that they're saying in the hope that that may bring particular attention to something. But obviously,
Were I to respond by telling a story about myself and so on? The idea is that hopefully again, it would be suggestive of a particular way of looking at the story that they've just shared with me. What other word do you use? Faith, Belief. Faith, belief, you have belief in the story.
capacity for the storage of story of psychoanalysis of the belief that something comes from this you know what lacan describes as delirium you know this potentially which i want to say is very much on the side of trance but again emphasizing no interest in because to me it's one of the forms that resistance takes those that and of course it can happen
People appear to be entranced by me. I'm doing something wrong if that is happening. I've no interest in that. What I'm trying to inculcate is that they're entranced by none other than themselves. What happens when somebody comes to you and they've lost faith, belief in their stories or their capacity to tell stories? And do you even lose faith in their stories?
No, it's interesting in that the first talk that I ever gave was about lying in psychoanalysis because it really struck me. I never think I'm being lied to. And this seems, Chris, are you completely fucking do lying? Lying is just part of, most of us, something of the human condition. But I sit there, I never think.
that somebody's telling me a lie, right? Never. And I very struck about, I've no idea, this was sort of 45 years ago that I gave that, I've no idea what I had to say about that. But I wanted to draw attention to this because it looks as if then there's something that possibly is going somewhat askew with regard to the listening that I'm giving a priority to. If I don't have an ear for the potentiality that somebody's actually
not being entirely truthful. Somebody that I recently started supervising who's seen somebody who at times possibly, I'm always a bit wary of this to some extent, because here's somebody who is a perfectly competent school teacher holding down a job and has done for many years, seemingly a pillar of the community. This is somebody living out in the West Country.
But nevertheless, as certain, one might say, sort of delusional states that seemed very, very important to her to do with certain abuse by a religious order that she had dealings with during her adolescence. But the therapist, stroke analyst, in listening to this person is very struck and really seriously doubts the veracity
of some of these, what seem to be sort of delusional, a delusional system. Partly because whenever she asks certain questions, it seems she encounters an evasiveness that leads her to believe, yes, there's an evasiveness because actually there wasn't a man engaged in abusing this particular woman all those years ago. And listening to this supervisee,
I, in listening to her, I thought, I think you're onto something. I think that this is, I don't think that this is really a traumatic effect of sexual abuse. For whatever reasons, I think there is, this particular story is fiction. But the person who's telling me this is also, and I think appropriately, saying,
that, well, whether or not it is actually fiction and not a truthful rendering of what actually happened all those years ago, it seems very important because it must be important to this woman to go on thinking that she's speaking truthfully, to not disrupt her, not confront her. So when someone is driven crazy, driven mad, to use your terminology, what happens to the story? Well, I think I said the story becomes
I mean the crucial story, but what I would only use the term psychosis for, I'm not interested in topping it up into this is ordinary psychosis or I don't know, sort of psychotic episode or, but to me genuine psychosis is where somebody is unable to be thought and thinking to me is when you're able to have an idea about an idea.
Somebody who is genuinely psychotic, it's not that they don't have ideas. They would be able to say whether they prefer fish and chips to pizza or something, of course. You know, they have their sensibilities and so on and so forth. But if you ask them to have an idea, and actually, as soon as you realize, it's like asking somebody to do a particular level of mathematics. It's literally beyond them, or to use Lacan's term, foreclosed to them. They're not able to do that.
and it's grotesquely humiliating. It's like in our culture being illiterate. It's so shameful. And you see people, I mean, I now speak to a mother from Germany who has this son and it's very worrying because he's a complete recluse, a man in his late 20s. And this happened from about the age of 15, 16. He was at a private school in Oxford.
and then they moved back to Germany. But he, one of the things his mother tells me is that he goes on the internet and he's constantly looking for things that would stimulate the workings of the brain. Because he's at some level alive to, there's an impairment of his own sort of mental functioning. And it's not that he doesn't have, but probably if you ask him, because I used to supervise the man that is actually his therapist,
And he would say, you're right. If you ask him certain questions, he just becomes sort of distressed. He can't, you know, they seem to be in a way, perfectly sort of ordinary questions, but he just displays an inability to be able to deal with those. Does this in any way link to what you used to talk about in terms of re-presenting? You played with the word representation.
as the capacity to re-present the present. I haven't heard you say that for very long time. Right. But it used to speak about when there's a loss of the capacity to re-present. Yes, yes, yes.
But just what's the thing that I was saying that loops back to a question much earlier? What are the differences in the time that I've been doing this work? What are those differences? And you know, I was saying to you when I think you won't have a pee, something about that, but you know, I've now forgotten it. don't know what it that you now share.
⁓ right, mean much more, that's one of the things. Yes. You said you were now ashamed. Yes, I think that's right. When I was starting off, know, partly because I was told, you know, I came from an era where the idea of basically, you know, presenting oneself as the blank, blank screen, one should never... This is conclusion problem. Yes, you should never, you know, really, I mean, something that I supervised only a couple of days ago was...
was saying, he's talking about, to me it's a very interesting story that possibly every analyst has had something of that order. This person comes to see him, this comparatively young woman, and firstly, she whispers. He can't hear what she's saying, right? And she asks her to speak up, and, that's really gone anyway, she continues to whisper.
and he really cannot hear what she's saying. And much of the time, he doesn't say very much. He just comes in, sits quietly. Sometimes he thinks that, she actually somewhat tearful? Not really saying anything. But anyway, he finds this somewhat difficult to be with, you know, because he sees that she's saying something, but he can't really hear it. Anyway, very graduate.
this person seems, presumably, to become a little less anxious, a little bit more able to face other things. And one of the things that she says is that actually, in the time that she's been coming to see him, she started to read bits of psychoanalysis, Adam Phillips and Freud, it seems. And what he says is,
And said, and he was almost apologetic about this, he said, as if this is a sort banal transference idea, that, well, is she interested in that? Because she thinks that would interest him. And is she interested in him and what he would be interested in? And so he says to her, listen, it's very interesting that you're interested in these things, and I allow that you assume that I'd be interested in those things that you're reading.
But what I would invite you to do is that I want you to understand you're free to ask me anything you like. I can't guarantee that I'm going to answer it, but I want to encourage you to ask me anything you like. I thought that was masterful. I think that was, I would have liked to have been able, somebody told me they were reading about something of that order and being open.
to say and inviting. And I'm sure I have said to people, you know, you're free to ask me anything you like. And I may, you know, I always say, if something is going on here that's making me anxious, I'm going to talk about that. But otherwise, go ahead, me anything you like. And I'll be very happy to do my best to answer.
So that's a difference because I think when I started out, I kind of sort of feel as if there would be something transgressive in that. I'm supposed to maintain...
you know, sort of a silence with regard to my, I always call it my own pathetic, you know, I always think my opinions, my life, what's so special about it, you know, it's special to me.
It's just an ordinary life, really.
Matt, do you have thoughts? I mean, you listen to a conversation with two analysts speaking about this strange profession. It was something that came up when you were mentioning flourishing earlier. I wasn't quite sure.
because this is a typical philosopher's cynical, right? Yeah, knock it on the head. Of course, that can't be right. What about the problems where there's very negative element of philosophy in some way. But it's because we just, in a sense, are interested in breaking the machine. Right. There's a sense in which, and this is a criticism of Aristotle as well, this is why it came up, it's like, it's great to encourage flourishing.
except without flourishing might not be quite so wonderful. So sometimes... Well, I'm thinking in a very pop culture way. Yeah. I spent a while, one of the things me and my wife enjoyed was watching the series Dexter. Right. Well, it's an incredibly rational, completely pathological character. Or even just a surprise where you have this classic relationship between...
a character that you want to flourish and the therapist. So there are characters in the world whose stories are such that I'm not sure I want those stories to flourish. And in fact, I would almost even go so far as to say for their story to flourish is for my story to somehow be diminished.
And that's not necessarily a real problem with therapy, I think, or analysis, because the people that necessarily are kind of self-selected into a situation possibly aren't about that. That's actually a very valid point, actually. Because it's something in the self-selection process. But let's go back just as an illustration to use that as a potentiality, the soprano. You know, you know...
somebody who's a made man, you know, they kill people. There was actually a man who came to see me for supervision and he had got this teardrop tattoo under his arm. It's supposed to mean you've killed somebody. Old prison tattoos used to be a lot more symbolic and structural and almost like medals on them. Absolutely. Yeah. So I asked him about it. He said no, it's not, it's, it's, he did.
to do with heartbreak, it's not, not, it's not, he's not killed anybody. But let's suppose, you know, I mean, I, again, I don't think, I'm reminded of a story that Adam Phillips told me, that his father said to him once, you know, the difference between me and you is you've never killed anybody, because his father fought in the war. Which, you know, I mean, I was rather envious that
I mean, I didn't have conversations with my old man like that. That would have been fun. That could have been good. But I see what you're saying. But to me, you see, the project of enabling the other to flourish, because in the Sopranos, although, yes, he lived in this particular, if you like, subculture,
a particular, you know, enclosed sort of climatic zone where there was a lot of violence and so on and so forth and exploiting, you know, a lot of stuff that we would, you know, be critical of as a way of being in the world. Now, in some way, let's allow that there was something about the man who was actually
something had led him there to speak to that woman because there were arenas of conflict that he had in his life. And to me, to enable him to flourish would not be to close down on those areas of conflict, not to seek to remove them, but to enable an expansion of being able to think about that with the possibility of being able to bring a certain understanding to it.
which would be beyond guilt. So guilt to me would come under the heading what I would designate as negative emotions. Guilt is actually ultimately very self-serving. It doesn't actually enhance a good life. Partly if you understand what we really feel guilty about is something that we want to go on doing.
I mean, I think I would agree with you around the idea of guilt for the individual. But social, can be enormously useful. Can it? Well, it kind of keeps certain people in line. It keeps a of a rein on the chaotic social that has to be ordered. This would be one of the ways of thinking about it. And in a sense, in that sense, it's almost inevitable for any social situation to
gender and certain use. I'm thinking of kind of Nikian relationship. No, I mean, it's a very, you're making a very, again, a very interesting point. It's difficult for me, you know, without considerable amount of thought on this. But of course, at that moment, you invite a certain recklessness on my part. mean, fuck this social order. I'm not sure that that social order has actually given us a good life.
or many people a good life. And certainly conforming to that doesn't look like a good life for me. But I don't want to stop. No, no. It is also nine o'clock. We need to think about ignoring. Just one or two more questions. When you speak about R.D. Lang, you say for all of Lang's failures, and there were many, there was something of a vision.
A concern to be as alive as it might be possible for who we are, or we are who, no, let say that again. There was something of a vision, a concern to be as alive as it might be possible for we who are still half alive. There is an unbound resistance to the stultifying status quo, which I think is what we're talking about here. Can you tell us about this commitment of yours or?
land to break free of the stultifying constraints? And is this in any way political?
Well, only political with a very small P. You know, I mean, as I go back to something I said earlier, for me, it's a project of liberation, of emancipation, of freedom, of being able, but again, this idea that psychoanalysis is a thinking, and a thinking that's not merely, I'm not really interested in the inculcation of a greater self-knowledge.
As I say, I'm not interested in thinking about myself or knowledge about myself. I know? You know, of course I've glimpsed certain aspects and made me be thoughtful about ways in which I've behaved and so on and so forth. Not wanting to dismiss at some level an importance to that, but that's at a certain level, it's not really has a primacy in the project. Lange talking about being as alive as it's possible to be.
I just, you know, I can't better that than, you know, an indelible aspect of the project. What else are we here on earth to do? To be as alive as it's possible to be, to be alive, to conflict, to guilt, to remorse. I'm much more interested in actual remorse. I think remorse is suffused by regret, regret for certain things that we've done, and almost...
Although of course it's very problematic, but were we to be put in that situation again, might we have done something differently? Whereas guilt to me is because we want to go on doing it. We're not about to let go of that. There's two really, I think, things that kicking off in my head when you're talking about this, and some that you said earlier also made me think this. mean, one, how familiar are you with the Nietzschean question around eternal return? It sounded almost like at one point earlier that you were
doing the full affirmation. But he basically asked, which is essentially the idea of would you repeat everything? If you can, then you can say yes to the universe. so if you would repeat everything as it was, just would you? I said earlier, didn't I, about given a chance, I would just love to live my life just in a way, not not be able to savor it in more intensity than I did at the time. But
basically whatever I mean by this, and it's not that I'm not like anybody else, I would say there are things that I, in a say, am subject to remorse in relation to regret, but would I have done it any differently? I don't know that I would, I think I would have just, you know, I'd have done what I did. Back to the Adam Phillips thing, in a certain way was I doing the best I could with what I've got? Maybe.
Could I have done it better? Of course I could have done it fucking better. know, who could have done it? Could I have been a better husband, lover, brother, son, father, whatever, know, analyst? Of course, you know, it'd be absurd to suggest otherwise. I remember one of the things, which I thought was a very odd question. When I wrote the football book and Adam had read it and he gave a thing to the cover and everything.
He asked me, did you think that that was the best that you could have done? And I just thought, that's a bizarre question. Because it never occurred to me that that was the best that I could have done. In that I always thought, of course, there's all sorts of room for improvement, and I might have done that, but there comes a moment when, well, fuck this for a of soldiers, it's good to go.
can't be asked a pen anymore time and it just, you know, be done with it. But is that the best? It really struck me as a very, very curious question. And I didn't, I just said, well, I'm sure it could have been better. But me, I don't know. It was fucking hard work. don't know enough of that. The other thing that comes from this is, I I often, I mean, don't, I don't,
work with people in an analytical situation. So I'm only in the situation with other people in a kind of teaching situation. there, learning often appears to me to be a painful experience. And part of the reason it's a painful experience is as people learn, they often realize in a sense that some of what they've already done when they hadn't learnt, in a sense, it almost triggers the learning. It's like, ⁓ that thing I did,
Yeah, maybe that wasn't so good, maybe that didn't work very well, maybe that was hurtful, and they learn in a process of painful regret, remorse, encounter with... Possibly there's elements of remorse. It's very interesting. I was talking today with somebody and I was asking them, do you have this experience? No, actually it was last night. Because I have this experience in my relationship that I suddenly recognize
something that I possibly have a propensity to do. Now, am I entitled to extrapolate from that? But many people do that. And I take my chances with it. think, yes, I think they probably do. And it's to do with what I place under the heading of subtle, but in this instance, very slight cultural differences. I'm involved with this woman from Sweden. In Sweden, everybody...
When they come into a house, flat, whatever it is, dwelling, they take their shoes off. It's a big thing in the suite, you know. For me, sometimes, I know you've taken, I have a, there's no reason to, because sometimes people come in here and say, would you like me to take my shoes off? I said, no, no, no, it's absolutely fine. I'm of a culture, we don't by and large do that. Anyway.
When I'm in my analyst flat, right, and sometimes I very sort of delicately sort of have a crock in my shoes, I'll be asked to take them off because we're just about to go out. I need to have a pee. I'm going to go across living into the loo or something, right? And she's like, ⁓ what are you doing? I said, I'll just take a moment. You can eat, I always say this phrase, you can eat a fried egg off the sole of my shoes. It's not dirty. And I'm dismissive of it.
But then I find myself, this is an instance, when I find myself thinking, Chris, you've done this all your life in relationships. It's time to learn your lesson. Don't be dismissive just because aesthetically that you don't share those sensibilities. The other sees something differently than you do. Just because you think it's trivial, it's not important.
Don't dismiss what is important at that moment to the other. Now, I may say that to myself, and I actually, that sort of thinking, I find pleasurable. You know, I just think that's, it's not that I'm sort of patting myself on the back necessarily. I think I like the way in which my thinking has led me down to that path and that recognition. I think that seems to me of a value at some level, potentially.
The difficulty is that having sort of come to that, if you like, insight that should affect outlook, it does to some extent, but the next time I'll still be nipping into the bog with my shoes on. Last question. When you speak about being as alive as one can oneself, the way I've developed that in my own thinking alongside Matt is for me, psychoanalysis should be a practice in which one comes to the support of life.
the life we are part of and the life which flows through us. So in that sense, it's the life that is within us that makes us as alive as it is possible to be, but also a life which flows through us. The life which is not just human life, but other kind of life as well. The life of the planet. Because I think for me, it's really important
to include some sort of political dimension. Now I know that a lot of people will kind of frown upon that way of thinking. But I think in thinking about coming to the support of life, makes psychoanalysis slightly less human-centric. It allows it to kind of have some sort of connection to something that is beyond just the individual life, but connected to just life.
Yeah, suppose I don't have very much interest in that. I mean, I would just say, you know, good luck. know, just enjoy that, that, that potentiality. To me, I don't want, I've got enough on my plate dealing with this individual, this individual, this individual, this individual, this individual, you know, something more than that.
Well, I wouldn't really know how to engage with it. just doesn't, as I say, it doesn't really speak to me. So what you're describing as a political dimension, I always want to sort of say, it's, you know, if my efforts lead to somebody just being, you know, at some moments in their lives, just more alive than they otherwise would be, then I guess I'll settle for that, you know.
The idea that I'm going to in some way engage in something that would, what, transform the world, what, dismantle various systems that we're subject to. just, you know, which is not to say that I'm full of respect and at times, you know, I mean, talking of football, I saw this photograph in The Guardian today of all these Celtic supporters, huge bank behind the goal.
covered with Palestinian flags. I just thought fucking great, you know? Now that's my own and I always put it in parentheses, my own pathetic opinion. I will go to my grave. I am not anti-Semitic, but I fucking hate what Israel's doing with relation to Gaza and the West Bank. To me, it's an absolute abomination. I'm delighted that people are so moved to say this is a war.
a war crime, it's a crime against humanity what they're doing. There is no justification for it. Whatever Hamas did, and I'm not wanting to necessarily, I think there are very good reasons why the Hamas behaved in their way, because they've been oppressed for decades, generations, been oppressed. So you can hardly, I would be, I would hardly blame them for what they did. But it doesn't justify it. That wasn't great either.
But I always want to say these are just my pathetic opinions. Do I want to impose them on anybody else? And certainly in my working life, I see many Jewish people and they have other sensibilities which I seek at some level to endeavor to understand, be respectful of and allow. They haven't come to me to be what sort of subject
to propaganda. That's not what I'm engaged in or interested in. So that's where I'm just not quite sure how psychoanalysis can engage politically. Because to me politics is to do with seeking to persuade, you know, in some way inspire people to see something in a particular way. That's why I would want, you know, what is so sad.
is how lacking in inspiration the prevailing Labour Party today is.
You a nice person. You kind of get into all sorts of stuff. Something you said earlier, talking about thoughts about thoughts, know, me this is the reflective level and you find this in Sartre as well, the kind of mid-relationship of more conscious music. And for him,
It has kind of already been going on, the pre-reflective has already been going on, but there is that his relationship to the unconscious seems to be close to the way he would lead it to happen. Well, I think so because I very much like what Sartre is saying about the notion of repression, because I always struggle with this notion of repression, right? Because what Sartre seems to say with his notions of bad faith
is that in order to feel that something is unspeakable, in other words, unthinkable, needs to be suppressed, we have to have some awareness of it. In other words, we then engage in a lie to ourselves, and as if we repress it to such an extent, that thought had never ever occurred to us. But I'm with him. I think this, to me, dismantles the whole idea of repression.
You why would one repress something unless one had some idea that that is so offensive to my own pathetic sensibilities? Why would I have any need to repress it? Just doesn't make any sense. It doesn't stack up intellectually. just doesn't. Sorry, it doesn't work for me. I'm a sad problem. Because I mean, there's a there's a sense. You also talked about psychosis being a situation in which this
relationship, a psychotic has thoughts, in fact sometimes plenty of thoughts. they have ideas, there's this distinction between ideas and a thinking. To me, a thinking is the ability to have an idea about an idea. Right, but this is the thought about the thought, the idea about the idea. I mean, in a sense, this is the capacity for irony amongst other things. one of the things that's interesting in America and
picture we are presented with of American politics at the moment is this collapse of irony amongst the right and amongst the conspiratorial. Now, let me just go back to the politics question in that sense and think about those people who've talked about, know, a psychoanalytic definition of an age. Is it not at the point at which psychoanalysis encounters this socially in a group phenomenon?
Is it still not at that point somehow some insight that is meant to give? A political insight. It's not an insight about an individual. It's an individual. No, no, it's an insight at a group level. Cultural level. Contagion level. Which is a very strange notion because it's very important. Fair enough. No, that's a very valid point because of course the term psychoanalysis, I would say, has sort of
three particular sort of strands to it. There may be more, but there's at least these three. One is the notion of a particular community. You know, people who buy into either their in analysis or they work as analysts or whatever it is. That's one might say sort of clinic. I don't like the word clinical. I'm not a clinician, anyway, let's leave that at the short hand. There's that. There's also the notion of psychoanalysis as a community.
all the different training organizations, all the different journals and so on and so editorial boards, training them, all of that, that again, obviously clearly exists and this comes under the auspices of psychoanalysis. And then the third is, if you like, the stories that psychoanalysis set that have, I never want to say they have applications because I think that's where psychoanalysis can go wrong.
but they have implications. And you're quite right to suggest surely psychoanalysis has implications for bringing an understanding to bear on certain cultural phenomenon like Trump being, you know, and what is going on, you know, with the Proud Boys and all the rest of it. And I'm sure that psychoanalysis in that moment, again, has a story that can inform, has implications
a greater understanding, a greater thinking about these particular phenomena that we're called upon to play, called upon to address. But what psychoanalysis might have to say, I'm sure there's a multiplicity of things that it might have to say about this. I mean you said something about mis-masculinity, as if there's a, almost as if there's a new form, and I'm thinking no this is as old as the hills then.
What is new about this? You know, it's what I call the revenge of the D-stream. You know, that's always been in play. You'll have to explain the D-stream. The D-stream is those who have always been read off as, by and large, the Hillary Clinton thing. Reprehensible, ignorant, thick, they've been blodged.
in the D stream at school. right, okay. Okay, it's the revenge of the D stream. That's as old as the hills. It's always been there. You know, people who feel they've been disenfranchised, disrespected, disregarded, have no place in the community, you know.
who also at some level are then dazzled by, you know, highly educated, highly driven billionaires. They aspire precisely to that. And that's You don't think there's anything particularly masculine about it because you've got Trump, got Musk, and you've got somebody called Joe Rogan. And it's a very particular kind of masculinity.
it's, it's, it's something very crude about it. It's like, we can be crude, there's this, this, this, this culture of the vulgarity of cruelty, where we can just do what we want and have a disregard. And it seems to be becoming more more globalized. We see it, we see it in so many expressions of power. There's this, this yearning for a particular kind of masculine expression. What you think Hitler was doing? That's true.
I mean, it's as as the hills, You know, Julius Caesar or something like that, fuck about it. You know, I mean, it's as old as the hills. God knew. I you've really got to look at it. You know, you talk about archetypes. I don't know about archetypes, but he's a stereotypical hunk. You know, we've seen them all our lives. You walk...
You know, I I go on about the Ring of Resentment. You've heard me talk about the Ring of Resentment. You know, you're familiar with I'm not familiar with the Ring of Resentment. The of Resentment is around about a 35 to 40 mile radius outside of London. I can name these places. Bases like Bay, Alestreet, Peterborough.
You know, all these sort of places, right? They don't have an identity other than their proximity to London. And they feel less than London in some way, and they're resentful. You push open the bar door, the saloon bar, 11 o'clock on a Saturday morning, right? They're in there. They're in there, and the cabbies will tell you the big demand is five o'clock.
They've been in there since 11 in the morning, six hours of fucking drinking, right? You can smell them, you can see them. You know, they're overweight, they're bullying, they look exactly like Trump, right? They're just horrible looking people, sadly. They live very, very sad lives. They're never going to go anywhere near psychoanalysis, you know that. What they're gonna go near is the next fucking drink, right?
Five o'clock in the afternoon, they're on the phone, they get out, go back, collapse. They might wake up the next day, who fucking knows. But they're basically amnesiacizing themselves. And they're saturated with resentment. This is again very meat-shitting.
Is
Some people at football are part of that crowd, but the point of a football crowd is entirely the opposite of a present one. think so? Absolutely, absolutely. There's a kind of joy of becoming a crowd, there's the joy of the game, there's a... It's a completely different thing. I mean, the best example is the way in which crowds make up fantastic songs together. That is the most extraordinary phenomenon that I touched on in my book. Other than, there's this idea...
that somehow, because of states of trance that actually football engenders, you know, this idea that when you watch people going through a game, it was a woman when probably I was about 19 or 20 that I, I don't take women to football too much. You know, I mean, I tell Alan Lee, she's coming here next weekend and I'm taking her again. And I said, fucking Tottenham lose again when you're present. That's it. Never again. You're a fucking jinx.
And but no, this this woman that I was seeing all those years ago and she pointed it out to me. She said, all of you, when you're walking to the game, your eyes are different. They sort of glaze over. You're in a state of sort of as if you're hypnotized. I don't use that word, but I think that's what she was talking about. As if you're mesmerized by that prospect of the sporting event.
So the thing you and Matt do is you both enjoy the crowd. Crowd? they're fascinating. I go to football as much. I mean, I'm always chatting to anybody, you know. I mean, I've got, I mean, I used to, for a long time, I used to sit next to this professional cyclist who was just a lovely man and who really got football. The man I sit, I mean, I go with this mate and his son, you know, been going with them for a long time.
But they actually the bloke I sit next to who comes with two of his sons are probably men in their middle 30s And he used to play for late Norian the bloke who sits next to me, but I think injury stopped his career fairly early on But we and it's this curious phenomenon. I've now known him for about four or five years We've been sitting together ever since Tottenham moved into their new ground. I don't know if it's four or five years ago I don't even know his name
But I mean, we greet each other every game, like long lost brothers or something, you know, he seems genuine. I really delight seeing him and his sons. And you know, he's a big bean when he sees me coming in. Psychoanalysis is phobic about the crowd, about the community. Psychoanalysis, yeah, Freud hated the crowd. Freud hated crowds.
crowds seem to descend into the lowest common denominator. Yes, I remember having a very, I remember spending time in Italy at a philosophy seminar and having a really long argument one evening that went on for like five or six in the morning and we were finishing off the whiskey bottles because everyone there was like, that was a philosophy, you must take crowds. know, is, are irrational. Crowds are beyond fucking reason. Crowds are dangerous. They're always mobs. They're always mob.
The mob, this notion of mob possible. I'm getting to the point I'm actually shangling them going, even the mob is beautiful. It's just you have to be careful where you are in my relationship to it. even the mob is beautiful. But most crowds are not mobs. They have mob potential, but they also have enormously, know, the enormous range of other potential. But yeah, the philosophers that I work with there.
detested the notion of crowds and I think... look at this photograph that I was talking about that was in today's Guardian of the Celtic supporters, you know, why would people in Glasgow be that moved, the whole bank of that crowd holding up Palestinian flags? They're moved by that. Much of the world's not Palestinian.
Yeah, I I came in at Swiss Cottage for this interview and down the road there's a Palestine, you know, the pro-Palestine demonstration. I stopped for a while, but it came. We've policed around it. And it's a very strange kind of isolated space. And it's precisely because they've not been allowed to be a crowd. Because we've controlled the crowd, because we've stopped them from being... cattle them. just allowed to be on the road there.
small crowd that people could come in and out. There's fear of the crowd. I think the crowd is the potential of new politics. My belief is, and alongside Matt, is that in psychoanalysis there's one-to-one relations, there's community relations and there's group relations. In other words, you take the mode of the astro and you think of it
You take Lacoste Mobius strip and we want to reframe the Mobius strip as the intersection of one-to-one relations, group relations and community relations. In the middle, you can speak about the body without organs, the body that's not organized. But what I'm trying to get across here is I really believe that psychoanalysis is very phobic about the community relations.
They have a difficulty with the group relations, but they sure as hell do not want to think about the community relations. It's kind of bracketed out. There's this kind of insularity, just focused on the one to run relation, as if somehow that's fine. But you've got to factor in all these different kinds of relations. You'd say got to, but there's no got to. Fair enough, fair enough. Maybe got to is the wrong word, but.
where the desire that you would like psychoanalysis to engage with that far more quite right point out that that's not. I think it's very important at a certain level to sustain a degree of modesty with regards to the project that if you become over ambitious, then in actual fact, you just sort of run into a certain sort of cul-de-sac. I don't know quite what you really have in mind with regard
to what psychoanalysis would say at a sort of political level in terms of particular community. I really struggle with that. just, you know, maybe it's a limit and limitation on my part. I just don't get it. What do you have in mind? What is it that psychoanalysis is going to bear, bring to bear that situation? I suppose I'm thinking about applied psychoanalysis.
For me, I wouldn't want to make a distinction between pure and applied psychoanalysis. think all psychoanalysis is a form of applied psychoanalysis. think there is no such... People might argue that pure psychoanalysis speaks to something of the unconscious, but the unconscious is not here, if we're to play with the notion of the unconscious. There's something about applying psychoanalysis in different contexts.
potentiality to... Well, for example, when I worked in the homeless sector and I worked with the homeless hostels, we would offer them one-to-one relations, we'd offer them group relations, and there would also be the whole community relation, and there would be the intersection of these different relations. So there was the possibility that people could, in terms of their capacity to have a formal human relation, they could have a one-to-one relation.
They could maybe be in some sort of group relation as in play, a barbecue or a table tennis tournament, or even an art group. And then they was bringing in the outside community into the hostel or even having the whole hostel as a community, trying to think as a community. And it was this capacity for these different relationships to overset. And in that sense, what it did, it enables the hostel to...
start to become a site of experience which can learn from these different relationship possibilities. It can start to be able to learn from these different relationship possibilities as opposed to just privileging one kind of relationship. It was the intersection of these different relationships that enabled... I'm not sure, and I'm very wary. I think...
The stories that psychoanalysis brings to bear on the way in which we are together and individuality and pathetic individuality and so on and so forth. It has implications. Something deeply goes astray and I'm not quite sure what it is that you're in a way sort of importing from the stories that psychoanalysis has to say that then are applied
certain community initiatives. All for these community initiatives, nothing wrong with them at all, just don't quite get where psychoanalysis played you worked in therapeutic communities, you worked in RD Lang's communities, that's what I mean. you think that's where you started, you worked in RD Lang's communities. That was for me an attempt to create an applied psychoanalysis. There was one-to-ones, there was groups and
that the houses were a community. That's another way of saying what we just proved. People living together as a community.
I do think there's a particular way of, it's very interesting last night, I supervising these people who run the introductory group for the PA. And I've been meeting up with them, now this is the third year. And it's very interesting because however gently I try and encourage them to think about what is going on at a group level.
No, they never move beyond talking about this individual and that individual and so on and so forth. And what they say about those people is very interesting, but I'm trying gently to nudge them in the direction is, but what are the themes that are playing that would in some way at a certain level, possibly, but not inevitably, talk almost everybody who's in that?
You edited it and you worked in Audrey Lang's therapeutic communities. Yes, but this is just, this is where, you know, certain psychological thinking, because, I mean, one of the things they were saying was interesting in this group, which is quite actually an unwieldy group. It's neither what is known as a large group, say that we, you know, I've been with you in a large group down in King's Place or something.
You know, where they're often maybe as many as 30 people in that group or something. This is sort of a curious sort of hybrid. It's not a large group, but nor is it an ordinary more orthodox sort of small group that possibly at the maximum would be say nine or 10 people. They've got about 14 people there. Okay, but they still seem to be handling this okay.
And they were saying that a number of people, it's as if the group has set off, and it sounds really quite exciting, some other, many of the people in that group have had experience of other group situations, so they're not unfamiliar with it. And they seem to have set off, it seems, of people telling their particular stories, right? And so they were saying that a number of them, the other night, they were talking about
how addiction had played a part in their stories. And one of the therapists, the group therapist, was saying that he's very skeptical about the ideas of addiction. And I'm thinking, well, that's all very well, but I'm not quite sure that that's got anything to do with what's going on at the level of the group. And I said to me, addiction, it's in this sort of, if you like, chain of, to use that clunky vocabulary,
a chain of signifiers that has dependency as a proximity to addiction. So what is going on in the group? They're just beginning, is at some level articulating at that group level a concern about what if we actually find our way to really enjoying this group? Because all addiction begins with actually a locus of enjoyment. The difficulty is that that enjoyment may become
a solution that ends up being a problem. But it means never forget, you know, I remember this, who was it? Shane McGowan from The Pogues. Well, he was interviewed. You know about Shane? Yeah, yeah. One of my favorites. Yeah, right. OK. I mean, he was he just sort of battered, obliterated himself for fucking decades, right?
And and and and toward the end of his life, somebody asked him, you know, sort of would you recommend the life that you believe to any anybody else, know, fans, followers of yours and so on. And he sort of. He said, you've probably got a point, you know, it's probably not, you know, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.
But then he said, difficulty is certainly in the beginning and you could return to it every now and then. It was so fucking pleasurable. And I thought, I know what you mean. Drugs, you know, not all drugs are great, but some drugs are fucking brilliant.