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Regression Therapy

Dreamed 2016/6/19 by Wayan

THAT DAY

Watch a movie--a Despicable Me sequel. Gru's neighbors and adopted kids try to find him dates; he avoids them and goes spying at the mall instead. Spying, he's comfortable with. A pointy-nosed girl starts working with him. She's got a plain face, he's deeply ugly... interesting just how hardwired I am! I find their caricatured faces ugly, so it's impossible they could ever develop any chemistry. Apparently even highly stylized cartoon characters have to share my exact tastes! Sheesh.

Then I reread Alison Bechdel's intense graphic memoir Are You My Mother? This time I'm struck by Donald Winnicott's idea of "compromise formation", when two sides of you want conflicting things and those pressures clash, generating an outcome neither really wants--unacceptable urge + repression = anxiety or pointless compulsion or illness. I've sure experienced this. But it doesn't prove my health problems are psychosomatic! Still, the less energy locked in such chronic combats the better for my general health.

So I ask my dreams "Please show me any compromise formations that are causing me trouble... and how to deal with them."

THAT NIGHT

It's about 1920. With Gru's partner, plainfaced but Barbie-bodied, I visit the rambling house of a guy we heard has developed a cure for neglected & abused kids. He only works with boys at present--he says he doesn't understand girls. This IS 1920, and he's a big gruff working-class guy who looks like a scaled-up Popeye--sailor tattoos on gorilla arms.

His method is simple. He regresses them back to the point where they were deprived, have unfinished developmental business. Treats them like toddlers, babies if need be. Meets the simplest needs until they're satisfied. Then each kid un-regresses gradually to his current age--but healthier.

Boy curled up crying; sketch of a dream by Wayan. Click to enlarge.
It really works. And the method seems simple enough to be teachable.

Seems unfair to restrict it to boys like this. Or to even to kids. This should work on adults! Faster than psychoanalysis, that's for sure--he's getting serious behavior change in just weeks. Weeks of incompetence--indeed, in some cases, incontinence--but letting them break down lets them metamorphose into something new--and then zoom ahead.

NOTES IN THE MORNING



LISTS AND LINKS: incubated dreams - time travel in dreams - psychotherapy - healing from abuse - kids - transformation & metamorphosis - digital dream art - same dreamer, same night, a second answer! Saint Barbie

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