She recollects that for a long time she was thinking about the phrase: «You cannot enter the same river twice» until she decided to talk to her husband. Now she wants to enter this bright river, but the cliff is so high and steep!
«What does this river symbolize for you?» «It’s a symbol of the future.»
«Suppose you are already in the river, what happened?»
«If I went into the river, it would, probably, be easier for me.»
«Why?»
«I would feel saved from thirst and heat.»
«So, are feeling heat now?»
«Terrible heat. My soul burns».
«Coals or open flame?»
«Flame.»
«What your state does of it express?
«Anxiety for loved ones.»
«How many such «alarms’ do you have?»
«Five: unsuccessful marriage of my daughter; absence work and fear of work; the relations with my mother-in-law; worries for the husband, for his health, for my younger daughter.»
«How many percent of your force does it take?»
«Fifty, at least. I am thinking about it all the time. When I am talking to someone and thinking about the problems, my fear is amplified. When I have a pleasant talk (I have a neighbor who can reassure), the flame ceases. When I talk to my daughter, the flames blazes.»
Comment. Note that all the experiences of L. M. are actual and real. Her daughter, for example, is unhappy in marriage. She is in the position of a slave with a stingy husband, who is much older than she and blackmails her, threatening to take away their child.
L. M.’s reaction itself is natural. But the intensity of her worries about the unresolved problems harms her own health and the very solution of those problems.
The diagnosis of cyclothymia in this case is not excluded, taking into consideration the constitutional features of the patient.
As a doctor, I was pleased to hear that she had irrevocably left the «cave in the granite rock’. Her hesitation in entering the river of the future was a problem. Working on her «landscape’, it would be necessary to achieve «smoothing of a cliff’, so that she could feel herself close to water, or in the water.
Although the «landscape’ work can be effective, it is, in my opinion, not the best one. The most convenient way to achieve levelling, «smoothing of the cliff’ is by identifying the feasibility of such worries, by redirecting sensations of heat-heaviness inside the body. The landscape will be changed by inner calmness.
A stone in seaweed
Working with the images “who are you?” and “where are you?” are like working with concentric circles from a stone thrown into water. If you want to get the stone that on the bottom of the reservoir, it is better to dive into its center. The seaweed, growing around, can be mixed up, and the search under water can be difficult.
The advantage of turning to inner feelings is that they convey information about the main thing, which is the state of the one who sees everything directly, not implicitly. Everyone is in the “landscape’, which they are “ready to be in.
Of course, it is possible to perceive circumstances in a synchronistic way, as equal to the state. Zen Buddhists are known to equate the expressions «It is hot, that is why I sweat,» and «I sweat, that is why it is hot» (Alan Watts). This is correct if we proceed from the belief that nothing depends on the will of a person. However, if to adhere to European «active life position’ and choose what depends on a person not indirectly, but directly, the thesis" Start with yourself» still has a meaning. In this case, among others, there can be the question: «Shall I sweat or take an umbrella?»
F. Perls divided «consciousness’ into three zones: self-awareness, awareness of the world and awareness of what lies between those two22. He proclaimed the principle of «from the actual.» But what is offered to the patient in therapy is rather the «reality of things.» D. Simkin testifies that in gestalt therapy he seeks to adjust his patient to the perception of what is happening «here and now’. The patients «can see the room in which we are, hear sounds or feel their body, which is comfortable or uncomfortable in the chair, etc.23». There is no shift to «unusual’ perception with this approach.
Let us summarize this chapter.
What’s inside is primary
When closing their eyes, people begin to see with their inner vision the composition of their world. There is a correlation between the “things’, which are the charges they carry in themselves, and the world in which they live, their position in it, and their environment.
While exploring the nature of their charges, they can choose what ’to feed’ and what «to turn off’. With this inner transformation they anticipate their entry into the new world. The new world appears as soon as its contributor is ready.
Somatopsychotherapy focuses on the elaboration within the component of bodily sensations.
Characteristics of what is found in the body
In case of introspection, no one found bones, muscles, vessels, nerves, but only a variety of light and darkness, heaviness and lightness, heat and cold, density and sparsity. These are the peculiarities of human self-perception. In rare cases, which apply mainly to doctors or lovers of scientific and popular medical literature, the patients begin to talk about their feelings of, for example, vessels in the head. «Are they thick or thin?» we specify in such an unusual situation. «Are there one, three, five, or ten of them?» Pretty soon, people of such «natural- scientific’ mindset stop to transfer their once acquired knowledge, and move on to describe their real inner sensations in the categories of weight, color, consistency, material, temperature, etc.
The quasi-material
The artist Kandinsky complained that in the physical world there are no colors that convey the colors of the metaphysical world. We can only talk about the similarity of sensations from the contemplation of the first and second ones, but, in any case, not about the identity of impressions24. The characteristics of the world of the “open eyes’ are used to describe things of the world of the “closed eyes.” It is obvious that we can talk only about the similarity of what is felt inside as physical pounds, centimeters, and degrees. Things of consciousness are described by the characteristics of material things.
Jung used to say the same about the so-called «landscape’ images. «The principle of conscious life is: Nihil est in intellectu, quod non prius fuerit in sensu. (There is nothing in consciousness that was not previously in sensation (lat.). But the principle of the unconscious is the independence of the soul itself, reflecting its images in its game: not the world, but itself, even if it uses the illustrative possibilities provided by the conscious world to make its images clear (emphasis by A. E.)25" In the somatopsychotherapeutic process, a patient also uses «illustrative opportunities provided by the outside world’ to clarify what they are experiencing inside. Of course, there cannot be literal understanding of the patient’s report: «I have a kilogram of wood in my head.» Both the patient and the doctor understand that they talk about sensations.
Heat in the feet
There is a contour of sensations, adequate