Werdly diversifying days

Transactional Analysis: Drama Triangle Of Rescuer, Persecutor And Victim

Transactional Analysis is a therapeutic and analytical system developed by Eric Berne. It focuses on personality, social interaction and therapeutic analysis. Part of the system looks at the games people play, and the roles they assume in these games. There are three basic roles:
The Rescuer
We take on the role of rescuer when we perceive another person to be hopeless and helpless, in other words a victim. As part of this role we take full responsibility for that person’s well being, making them feel as though they can’t help themselves. By adopting this role we keep others dependent on us and make them feel that they can’t cope without us.
The Persecutor
Persecutors start off as rescuers or victims. Because rescuers have assumed total responsibility for a victims well being, the victim will ask questions of the rescuer. The rescuer tries to solve the questions and give answers, but becomes increasingly frustrated when the victim rejects all of these answers as being unhelpful. Rescuers then begin to persecute the victim. This emphasises the fact that we shouldn’t try to rescue people who don’t need to be.
The Victim
Victims are often helped by rescuers when they haven’t asked to be. There are situations in life where people are victims, for example someone who has been burgled or assaulted, but in transactional analysis the victim contributes to the game. They pass all responsibility for their well being to the rescuer, and don’t try to overcome this oppression. Victims eventually persecute their rescuers.
Where does this game begin? According to Berne families are ‘the training ground’ for the Drama triangle with children assuming the role of the victim and parents the rescuers/persecutors. Examples would be parents deciding on what friends a child should have, or reminding them that adults “know what’s best”. We may take these beliefs into adulthood. If we don’t want to be a victim we must stand up for ourselves and demand not to be rescued. Rescuers may struggle to take no for an answer because they feel guilty when not playing the rescuing game. Victims therefore have to be determined!
Are you a victim or a rescuer in Berne’s game of life?

I start with this as I went along to a group of 4 (including me) with the idea that we would discuss the beginnings of writing a play. Instead as I really quite expected the discussion was all about personal experiences, mainly of abusive backgrounds.
It did feel a little like a busman's holiday to be truthful. My choice to sit and listen and participate verbally less and less. With one woman I felt an intolarnce towards and the first sign of this was when I detected a sharpness in my disagreement with her. I quietened myself and elected to listen more and observe myself and my emotions. To be a part of the little group, I decided to ask enquiring questions rather than try and protest my disagreemtn. What did I notice? I noticed my strong aversion to the sweeping statements that I hear from this woman. I felt a subtle control from her. I think her meaning was well intended but what I felt so strongly against was the ways in which I was told my emotions and how I should fee.. Also the generalisations were boxing. I have felt this with PS and B and notice how in my feeling boxed, I get defensive and want to push a way out. I try keeping these people away and then feel so bad.
What I also want to acknowledge is the wonderful sense of connection I feel with people though. Aware of my reactions to this lady I was able to adjust myself and find the positivity in her. And then the immediate positive connection with KJ - beautiful woman. And L last nigth too. I have a vision of these two women in my mind that I would love somehow to trust myself to transfer onto paper - right from my minds eye. I will try. KJ needs to be bright pastels on black paper. L needs to be a pencil sketch.
I will have Blade Runner on whilst trying to produce my memory of wonderful folk onto paper.

Bliss
XX

A lot of tragic loss and a natural course of death too

Lucien Freud died yesterday. I believe he died of old age and the natural cause of things.
My friend has said that she finds his depiction of women distasteful. She says he makes them look like pieces of meat. I listened to a recording of him saying that he wanted to show people as they were, lumps bumps and everything. He also said that he painted people he knew. He said even if it was the twin of someone he knew he wouldn't paint them as it was the essence of the person he wanted to capture. A woman who sat for him was saying that he spent time getting to know her. She was £20 per day sitting but he took her to lunch which would cost £80. This slightly contradicted really what I had understood from what he had said. I had understood that he literally knew everyone before they sat for him but in this case the model was someone he got to know as she sat.
Someone else said that the eyes of the woman always looked out of gauntness and as if surprised .. what  do I think?
Of the paintings I have seen directly, I thought there was an empty look in the eyes. I felt that there was relationship with women that was somehow distant for him. I wondered about his sexuality as I observed what he showed. Apparently he had many many affairs and marriages with women. This means nothing of course except that numerous partners often indicates an inability for intimacy. Always interesting and too late to get to know. And of course most people do not want to explore their behaviours, so long as its working adn they do not hit the rock bottom - if it's working don't change it.
A fascinating man I think. I am interested in his paintings but I do not see him finding beauty and love. I see something else .... Everything is personal interpretation huh



 
 



5 deaths in a hospital (in Stockport) after suspicious circumstances. A nurse Rebbecca Leighton has been arrested under suspicion of contaminating saline drips. Good grief! 

Police clarified earlier reports suggesting a 41-year-old man had died. The officer said he was in fact still very poorly.

Both of them had been on wards A1 and A3 which is where detectives have focused their investigation into the deaths.

Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport confirmed his death today as police continued to question a nurse accused of killing three patients using contaminated drips.

Rebecca Leighton was arrested in a dawn raid at the small flat she shares with her fiancé and was being questioned by detectives last night.

In a statement, Greater Manchester Police said: 'Police have been given more time to question a woman arrested on suspicion of murder.

'The 27-year-old was arrested on Wednesday by detectives investigating the deaths of five patients at Stepping Hill Hospital.

'A warrant of further detention has been granted and is due to expire at 9.05pm on Friday.
'Inquiries are continuing.'

Known as Becki, the 27-year-old works at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport where her mother, Lynda, is understood to be a nurse training manager.

She is being held on suspicion of the murders there of George Keep, 84, Arnold Lancaster, 71, and Tracey Arden, 44.

The 85-year-old woman died on July 14 but her death is being linked with the other four.

A/Ch Const Hopkins said: 'As with the deaths of George Keep, Arnold Lancaster and Tracey Arden the cause of this man and woman's death is not known and it is important we do not lose sight of this fact.

In relation to the death of the woman, this was referred to us by the coroner and after a review of the circumstances surrounding this death - notably the low blood sugar level - we have decided to investigate further.

'In relation to the man's death, due to the fact he suffered a hypoglycaemic episode during a timeframe we are looking at it is only right we conduct further inquiries.

'We have family liaison officers with both families and my thoughts are with them as they are with the relatives of all affected by this incident.


Then the devastating news of a bomb and vile shootings in Norway. I am relieved to know my friend is alive and well.

Norway has been hit by twin attacks - a massive bomb blast in the capital and a shooting attack on young people at a governing Labour Party youth camp.

At least seven people were killed in the bombing, which inflicted huge damage on government buildings in Oslo.

A few hours later a gunman opened fire at the camp on an island outside Oslo, killing ...... at the time of this report the BBC reported 10 people killed. BUt I have heard from other news bulletins of maybe as many as 90 killed and still some people are missing. Young people drowned as they tried to escape by swimming off the island Utoeya.
It's just baffling. I will never get to grips with it - or so I say. I think there is some awareness with the work that I do and studying too of the way that evil can be cultivated without even knowing that its happening. I feel sorrow for the tortured soul within this person who could cause such devastation and trauma.

Amy Whinehouse has been found dead this afternoon - currently the cause of death is unknown. The tragedy of addiction.
   



I saw some photographs of Amy in the depths of her drug use and despair. I felt so sad and could not bring myself to give the disease of addiction space to live by copying them here onto this Blog. It's so tragic! I feel so sad for the waste of a life given over to this disease that ravages souls. What was so painful underneath that she couldn't face. I sit day after day in my job with people who are losing everything slowly, slowly. A woman who has alcoholic dementia and so now she will not remember that she cannot drink. It's just awful. People who have near liver failure but they cannot get that they are powerless over this disease of addiction. So far there is only one solution - abstinence. Handing over the power to other people. I cannot get it around food. I cannot get it around love and relationships - codependency. I understand it fully. It kills - it is violent in it's killing. I am grateful to have been given the gift of recovery. Thank you Universe.
People don't even think they have it! Denial is so convincing and strong. It sabotages living and life.


 And yesterday a client was found dead after disappearing from the hospital the day before.

All these feelings are within me. As always I have a complete void. Just an awareness of something big within me. Perhaps I am over sensitive I don't know but today I am feeling something big about all of these.

This morning I used laxatives. I cannot bear feeling how I do so had to purge. I am powerless over the compulsion.

Tomorrow I am visiting my Auntie and then onto to visit my cousin who is so seriously ill.
My dad called to say he is very ill.

I find it all too overwhelming. I do not want to go to any meetings as everyone will be dwelling in the disaster of an addict dieing.

Bliss with failing words
xx

between the war years - British Artists

Stanley Spencer
Alfred Munnings
William Coldstream
Paul Nash
John Piper


John Wonnacott
David Inshaw

The gift from anger .....

..... is energy

Bliss
xx

Adjusting willfullness

The Adjustment Bureau. Another film of another Philip K Dick book.
What an incredible imagination tat man had. Blade Runner of course was a stunning film. I haven't read a single one of his books. But those I have seen made into films have been engaging stories. Science fiction is the genre but of course with so many other genres contained within them.

More and more I rate Matt Damon as an actor. I love the appearance of Terence Stamp - he is so, uhm, so British, so 60's. Somehow he is a stage lovey. I enjoy watching his contribution to films.
 Agent Thompson

I love the never quite getting there feel in this film. The idea that really we don't truly have free will. There is a plan and there is some guidance given along the way. However there are chance things too. A little convenient the idea that water hides us temporarily from them. So when it's raining like it has been here in England for the past two days, we have been slipping through the net. I wonder what the plan has been and if my foolish choices have been flummoxing them all the time. of course I am probably too much high maintenance to be able to keep a lid on me. And with so many people in the world there aren't enough agents of fate to be following each and everyone of us. Apparently. Which means that there is a rippling effect of chance as well as a rippling effect of the choices made by those that are being "watched over".

Oh and the hats are both a limit and give the agents a power. I loved their books. It seemed to show all the possible ripple effects - kiss her and this will happen. However, the Chairman it seems was able to re-write the script. The agents had to keep events changing so as to keep to the script, knocking out any effects that chance might make to the plan being followed. Short sighted in way.
It was an interesting conversation when Agent Richardson explains the effects of allowing humans to have complete freewill. The agents stood back and he spoke about all the devastation caused by humans free choices. Mainly he talked about wars. Norris retorts that the world is in pretty bad shape now. Good point I thought, to which Agent Richardson points out that it's not in as bad as state as if they hadn't been involved. That's true love. And thereafter anything can be achieved I guess.



A quote from the Guardian about this film - A love born of pheromones, or just genetic predisposition?
Pheromone - any chemical substance released by an animal that serves to influence the physiology or behavior of other members of the same species.

Is it all written in a plan somewhere?? If it mine seems a funny plan and very different from what it seems I think I want. Perhaps my strong urges have caused it to be such a wriggly line, and the agents have to keep getting me back on course because they are not watching me all the time.
I wish I had met someone who truly loved me.

A would-be panegyric to the glory of free will makes determinism seem preferable
The theological theory of determinism is the basis oh Philip K Dick's book. And I think this theory manifests through other stories of his. I am not certain about this having not read them and watched the film. But I like the way he takes these theories and weaves them into stories asking big questions.
But of course the fiction also leaves many unanswered questions around the theory. Like the fact that the agents determinedly follow the "plan" and don't question it when chance itself is so very persistent. And why on earth would humans have been created with the belief of autonomy - what benefit would that bring to anyone unless it was all some big game. For what point?
Humph!!! It starts to turn into a conspiracy theory then and breeds in me distrust. Yuchy!

"Free will is a gift that you only use when you have to fight for it"
What does that mean exactly? Agent Harry says this to Norris.





Lots of interesting ideas from Philip K Dick anyway.
I liked A Scanner Darkly and Blade Runner and The Minority Report.
I think I have seen Paycheck and didn't really like the film. It's Ben Afleck I think - I am not keen on him as an actor. It's a similar bravado role I think like Tom Cruise. It was a pity he was in Minority Report actually. I liked Total Recall too. I have yet to see Next and Screamers. I think I should like to read a book as well.

Bliss
XX

Chasing nothings

There is nothing in this world, yet everyone is madly pursuing this nothing - some more, some less.

- Sri Anandmayi Ma

I was at the Tate Modern yesterday. As I got closer to the exhibition room where Miro's 150 pieces of work were I felt an excitement rising in me. There were some that totally sucked me in. Others I looked at and liked. I was amused by him too at times.
There was in particular I really liked - Le repas des fermiers. It was fairly early if I remember correctly, maybe 1924 or some time around then. He was already very much representational and more surreal.
I was surprised there was little mention of his inspiration taken from the Dutch Interior paintings. Nothing at all. I am certain the uses of symbolism were very much a part of that inspiration.
It was interesting as the commentary around the gallery linked a lot of the work with his political viewpoints and of course a lot of the time he was painting during the civil war. But I wonder how much is really known what was going on in his thoughts. My friend and I were saying how if said with conviction and associating specific symbols with ideals and emotions. But it would be very easy to asociate them with other issues. We identified a lot of sexual references and anger. Not knowing his life story, we wrote his story from our imaginative interpretation of what we saw in his work.
My friend pointed out that his series of 50 black and white images were very similar to some of what I call my doodles. I was flattered. And laughed.

I have to go and get ready. I have been procrastinating since 6:30 this morning. Such an early waking after such a late sleeping. I am not sleeping well. So much goes through my mind. Too much goes through my mind. I think I have noticed a slight lift in my mood these last few days. I may even have been a little manic on Thursday which of course I love. After experiencing the wonder of the UCL buildings and stimulated visually again yesterday, I think that lifts my mood immensely but I think there is no ceiling to it. I get higher and higher. I love it of course. I was ready to start sketching today b ut have to damn well go out. Oh well.
I realise it takes great great courage to add to a sketch my own symbolism or interpretations of feelings. It's off the beaten track. Oddly though people have preferred the less usual things I have sketched. Interesting. Maybe it shows a creativity from within that a staright forward sketch copy doesn't reveal. Is that how it is for me when I look at art like that. When I look at the wonder of Vermeer and the detail and the eactness, but the depth and the inside view - it goes deeper and is layered and gives me a sense of him not the painting itself. And similarly, Miro's earlier work did something similar. Whilst I wondered in pleasure at some of the later work, there was less of a sense of him I think apart from the prolificacy I sense. Almost as if painting was like turning page after page of a book, racing towards the end to know the outcome. An urgency?

And this I can relate to the mad pursuance. In search of something  that perhaps isn;t there and is here all along. As I was looing at his works, I wanted to have one. To own something he had created. Not a copy but an original just to feel that energy. I get this feeling for so many things and then settle for a copy of second best and it becomes just another thing I have spent money on and now own amongst other things I own. However, I have started putting art on my walls. Copied of course and some orginals from friends. And I can look at it and appreciate the work. I wanted every book I opened, I wanted every copy I saw. I bought one copy - the farm at Mont-Roig. A very early piece of work. I loved the original. I feel very honoured to have seen it. I love the Vermeers that JH bought for me. I adored the original - breathless when I stood and embraced it with my eyes.
I appreciate the pieces of work my friends have given me.
But actually I need none - I have experienced the real thing and somewhere in the electricity wtihin my brain it will reside. If I forget then it is of no consequence, I have experienced and there is always room for experience. I am glad I did not purchase all that I wanted there on the spot.

I am off tog et ready - bath, drive, walk then lunch. I don;t need any more food for a week I think!!

Bliss
XX

Birthtime spendings

My friend's birthday day out in London ..............

Joan Miró's works come to London in the first major retrospective here for nearly 50 years. Renowned as one of the greatest Surrealist painters, filling his paintings with luxuriant colour, Miró worked in a rich variety of styles. This is a rare opportunity to enjoy more than 150 paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints from moments across the six decades of his extraordinary career.
Miró is among the most iconic of modern artists, using a language of symbols that reflects his personal vision, sense of freedom, and energy. The exhibition includes many of the key works that we know and love. It also shows that, behind the engaging innocence of his imagery, lies a profound concern for humanity and a sense of personal and national identity. Extraordinary works from different moments of his career celebrate his roots in his native Catalonia.

The exhibition also traces an anxious and politically engaged side to Miró’s work that reflects his passionate response to one of the most turbulent periods in European history. Working in Barcelona and Paris, Miró tracked the mood of the Spanish Civil War and the first months of the Second World War in France. Under the political restrictions of Franco's Spain, Miró remained a symbol of international culture, and his grand abstract paintings of the late 1960s and early 1970s became a mark of resistance and integrity in the dying years of the regime. Telling the story of Miró's life and the time he witnessed reveals a darker intensity to many of his works.

(There is no mention of the influence on Miro by the Dutch Interiors - and nothing was featurred in the exhibition from the Rijks Museum - I wonder why??)

Franz Kafka
An explorer visits the penal colony, where an officer demonstrates to him the Harrow, an instrument used to inflict capital punishment. The Harrow is an extraordinarily elegant instrument: the condemned man lies face-down on a Bed, while a complex system of needles inscribes the commandment he has broken (e.g. HONOR THY SUPERIORS) on his back. The needles pierce deeper and deeper until the prisoner dies. In the process of dying, however, the condemned man finally understands the nature of justice and his punishment. His face is transfigured, a sight edifying to all those who watch. The officer begins to demonstrate the Harrow on a prisoner condemned to die because he was sleeping on duty.



The machine was conceived and developed by the former Commandant. It soon becomes clear that the explorer does not approve of the death-machine and that he feels morally bound to express this disapproval to the new Commandant, who is already known to have serious questions about using the Harrow as a method of punishment. Suddenly, the officer removes the condemned man from the Bed and takes his place. Before doing so, he adjusts the machine to inscribe "BE JUST." The Harrow begins its grisly work on the officer's back, but malfunctions

Bliss
xx