In 1947, three young artists Louis Deltour, Edmond Dubrunfaut and Roger Somville signed the manifest giving birth to "Forces murales". Engaged artists, they aimed their art to serve the people. They find their inspiration in people’s lives, work, struggles, tragedies, victories and hope. They revived the art of tapestry and Muralism in Belgium. Collective and active, their expression was also fundamentally political. Although the adventure of the group Forces murales ended in 1959, their ideal leaves its mark on their art production long after. Although I kind of knew it already I am a bit surprised at the amount of thinking that clients sometimes do about their therapist’s and their therapy. There are sometimes endless blog posts on this topic which I read with interest. There seems to be much less written by therapists about specific clients so one could say that this is another example of how the relationship is not an equal one. It seems safe to say that generally speaking therapists are more emotionally important to clients than clients are to therapists.
I am reminded of an event that happened many years ago early in my working life that I have never forgotten. I was running a therapy group that had about 10 participants. The usual few hours one morning of the week that would go for about 6 weeks in a row. On about the third week just before the group was to start we were all sitting there and then was an exchange between a number of the group members that did not involve me. I was just sitting there listening to it.
Barrel bolt
The door of the room had the usual door knob that one would turn to open the door. I had also placed a small barrel bolt higher up the door which I also latched each time we shut the door for the group to start. The group members had about a 5 minute discussion about this barrel bolt and how I latched it before each session. Some were saying that it was there to provide a sense of safety and others said it was done for the boundary of the group and to build a sense of trust and so forth.
I said nothing and just sat there listening. Eventually it was time for the group to start, their discussion concluded and we began. The door knob latch on the door was a bit faulty. Occasionally it would just pop open and the door would swing open a few inches and I would have to get up and close it again. I had put the barrel bolt on the door to stop that from happening which is the reason why it was there.
I hate saying this but I have to because it’s true. Being a therapist at least in part is a job to earn money to live. I don’t like saying it because I have never wanted a client of mine to become just a case number and I have always worked at trying to achieve that. I think I have been successful to some degree at least.
Depending if one works in a hospital or in a private practice a therapist may see 30 clients a week. For each individual client the therapist sees another 29 each week. For each client there is a client before you and a client after you. Sometimes there are long blog posts I read about what a therapist did or said. Much conjecture and thought over what he/she meant by a certain comment, their motives for doing something and so forth. I would imagine that some of the time, the therapist hasn’t even thought about it. Like my barrel bolt on the door. It didn’t mean anything and was turned into a significant psychological undertaking by me.
Graffiti
“If it's healthy for husbands to look at other naked women because it feels good” (end quote)
Although I didn’t actually discuss the health of it, this insightful blogger does raise a good question about the health or ill health of men looking at naked or partially naked women.
In the previous post I postulated that when post pubescent males look at naked women they feel good and that is why some of them do it. They do not usually do it compare to their wives or feel unsatisfied in their current marriage. Theoretically this would probably be seen as a Free Child piece of behaviour.
If this was all that was involved in the process then one could say that this is psychologically healthy. Or at least that there will not really be any psychological damage that should result from looking and then having the feeling.
However one can hypothesize situations where this may not be all that happens. For instance some men will have Parent ego state beliefs that say it is bad to feel like you want to look and worse to even look and then have the FC reaction. These beliefs could be based on some religious system or some other kind of value structure.
When he feels like looking the CP will get involved and tell him he is bad or sinful. In this sense there could be a state of ill health because he has two parts of his personality that is in conflict. The FC urge is not going to stop and thus this will create ongoing psychological disquiet. This could be an example of when looking at naked women would be unhealthy. He would need to come to some sort of truce between the FC want and the Parent belief if he is not to be scarred in the long term.
I must say I feel for such men as it kind of is impossible not to look. In Australia it is not uncommon for females to bath topless at the beach and to wear the ‘thong’ (no not thong you wear on your foot!). It woman is right there in front of you and one would have to be constantly looking away. I assume these men end up just never going to the beach. Even worse if one simply goes to the shopping centre in the summer time there are women dressed in all sorts of ways, some of them in quite sexualised ways. One would be constantly bending their neck so as to get such women out of the line of vision.
If our observant male is in a relationship and his partner has a problem with him looking then there will be another problem created. A relationship problem as I described in my previous post on this topic. So one could also define this as a unhealthy result from the FC want to look.
Other instances when looking may be a problem for the male
1. There are some men who are addicted to pornography in the same way people can be addicted to gambling or drugs. In this way the FC want to look at semi naked women could be seen as a state of ill health because in one way it would be a relapse back into the addiction. Fortunately most men are not addicts as such.
2. Looking at women in a sexual way could at times be objectifying them in the observers mind. This is probably true for some men who are in essence objectophiles and thus the looking could be seen as psychologically unhealthy.
On the other hand all men crave a secure attachment and a loving, caring relationship with a spouse. If you objectify the woman then you can’t have that. Men learn (like women too I suppose) that you can’t have a a loving and caring relationship with an object. They loose out if they objectify women.
3. Some men are misogynists and looking at women in a sexualised way could contribute to their women hating beliefs. An interesting derivative of this is what is known as the Madonna-whore complex. This man typically holds women like his wife, sister or mother with reverence. They are treated with great respect, edified and by and large seen in a non-sexual way. An example of this could Tony Soprano, the good family man who usually treated his wife and daughter with respect (the madonna).
Tony Soprano - Family man
Then as a working man he ran a strip club called Bada Bing. The other females in his life like the girlfriends, prostitutes or strippers were seen as the whores and treated with great disdain.
Tony Soprano at work - Bada Bing
Another movie example was the gangster Tony Montana in the movie Scarface (Excuse me! why are so many gangsters called Tony - Tony Soprano, Tony Montana and ‘Fat Tony’ from the Simpsons!). He treated women with little respect except for his sister who he treated like a princess.
This continued until the end of the movie when he sees her at a night club doing drugs and being lascivious with his business partner. He can’t cope with her transition from Madonna to Whore and he sets about to kill his business partner for defiling her.
Having isolated these types of instances where that natural Free Child desire to look can be unhealthy I think it is safe to say that this only accounts for a small number of men. Most men like women and want the best for their partners and wives. Their desire to look at semi naked women in magazines and so forth is not meant to be offensive to the female nor to denigrate them it just feels like a good thing to do.
Graffiti
He had a habit of buying magazines that had swim suit models in them and he would read them at home. Soft porn. Then he was at one point going interstate with a group of his friends to see the football. After the game they were going out and may end up at a strip club.
She had a big problem with this and we discussed it at length. She had never mentioned to him that she had a problem with the magazines or his planned trip to the boudoir. Eventually she decided to discuss the matter with him. She asked him not to go to see the pole dancers on his football trip, he agreed and as it turned out he did not go. However in speaking with her she summed up many of the misconceptions some women have about the male psyche in this way.
Firstly it seems women differ considerably on this matter. Some women have the reaction as described above. I know other women who give their husbands a years subscription to Hustler magazine for a christmas present each year. Clearly they are not of the same view as the woman described above
Angst
As I mentioned in a previous post (generally speaking, and I know I am generalising here) for women sex and relationship are intimately intertwined. For men that can be the case but it does not have to be. Men can have sex without there being a relationship established or establishing. The most obvious example being prostitution and the fact that places like Hooters exists and magazines like Hustler can be so profitable.
Some of her misconceptions were.
1. Because he wants to look at naked women that means he wants to have sex with them.
2. Because he wants to look at naked women that means our relationship is no good.
3. Because he wants to look at naked women that means I must not be good enough for him.
4. When he looks at naked women he is comparing them to me.
Wrong!! I would argue that for most men these are not so.
Males when they turn into teenagers discover that when they look at a female who is sexually attractive it feels good. That’s it, end of story. It feels good so they look. They are not intelligent enough to think up the 4 things described above. It feels good so they look.
The male in one of his brighter moments at the Red Neck games
She now reports no angst about his swim suit model magazines.
Graffiti
Tribal Bates Graffiti Alphabet on Wall Murals
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