New Books in Drugs, Addiction and Recovery

Sharon K. Farber, “Hunger for Ecstasy: Trauma, the Brain, and the Influence of the Sixties” (Aronson, 2013)

It may seem silly to ask why we seek ecstasy. We seek it, of course, because it’s ECSTASY. We are evolved to want it. It’s our brain’s way of saying “Do this again and as often as possible.” But there’s more to it than that. For one thing, there are many ways to get to ecstasy, and some of them are very harmful: cutting, starving, and, of course, drug-taking. These things may render an ecstatic state, but they will also kill you. Moreover, many of the ecstasy-inducing activities and substances are powerfully addictive. It’s fine, for example, for most people to use alcohol to feel more relaxed or even to achieve an ecstatic state. But something on the order of 10% to 15% of people cannot safely use alcohol at all without become seriously addicted. And once they do, they usually descend into a profoundly un-ecstatic nightmare that often ends in death. According to Sharon K. Farber‘s Hungry for Ecstasy: Trauma, the Brain, and the Influence of the Sixties (Aronson, 2013), our desire for ecstasy is first and foremost a psychic defense that protects us against on-going or anticipated trauma. When reality (as we perceive it, which, of course, is not always or even often accurately) becomes “too much” for us, we seek refuge in altered states of consciousness. The most attractive of these, of course, is ecstasy. It makes everything frightening just “go away.” Sometimes, the ecstatic state appears spontaneously. More often, however, especially in our culture, it is consciously induced by self-harming and drug-taking. For most of us, this sort of self-medication “works.” For a large minority, however, it ends in addiction and death. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery

Duration:: 59m
Broadcast on:: 20 May 2014
Audio Format:: other

According to Sharon K. Farber‘s Hungry for Ecstasy: Trauma, the Brain, and the Influence of the Sixties (Aronson, 2013), our desire for ecstasy is first and foremost a psychic defense that protects us against on-going or anticipated trauma. When reality (as we perceive it, which, of course, is not always or even often accurately) becomes “too much” for us, we seek refuge in altered states of consciousness. The most attractive of these, of course, is ecstasy. It makes everything frightening just “go away.” Sometimes, the ecstatic state appears spontaneously. More often, however, especially in our culture, it is consciously induced by self-harming and drug-taking. For most of us, this sort of self-medication “works.” For a large minority, however, it ends in addiction and death. Listen in.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery

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Robert Pearl and Jeremy core Each episode will feature one of the top leaders and innovative thinkers in health care today This shows format is simple the guests will present their roadmap for fixing American health care's biggest problems And from there german I will scrutinize the plan and help listeners separate Fixes that is the potential to succeed from simply the hype Our goal is that everyone from health care consumers to political and medical leaders will find value in the discussions on our show You may not agree with the different solutions offered, but you will never again conclude that nothing can be done We hope you will join us. Please subscribe via iTunes your favorite podcast software for more information visit our website at www.fixinghealthcarepodcast.com Hello everybody and welcome back to the new books network I'm Marshall Paul the editor-in-chief of the network and each week we scour the internet looking for interesting books and we interview the authors of those books and this week I'm very happy to say that we have Sharon Klayman Farber on the show and we'll be talking about her book hunger for ecstasy Trauma the brain and the influence of the 60s Sharon welcome to the show Thank you. I'm delighted to be here on this very snowy day Could you begin the interview by telling us a little bit about yourself? Okay, yeah I'm a psychotherapist in private practice and Hastings on Hudson in New York I'm a clinical social worker board certified diplomatic clinical social work and I I specialized in child not a lotent treatment and treatment of people who've been subjected to trauma of one kind or another and I had had specialized training and eating disorders as well And I I like I like to take on challenging patients often the kind of patients that other therapists don't want because they're very difficult or anxiety Evoking and I know not to take on too many of those at once But I I like the challenge of that Mm-hmm. Could you tell us why you wrote? Hungry for ecstasy Yeah, you know, it's funny I That's hungry for ecstasy is my second my second book It really grew out of my first book when the body is the target, which was all about What people who inflict harm on themselves physical harm either through? self-mutilation Eating disorders or even those, you know, those people who get themselves compulsively tattooed and pierced and When I handed in the final manuscript for that book And that or that grew out of my doctoral dissertation But when I handed in the final manuscript for that book Jason Aronson the publisher After he told me he's gonna have to cut out four chapters because it would make a very long book much too long But he said he said I think you really needs He said I think some of those chapters I cut out comprise a second book And I said, okay, do you want to tell me what that is all about and he said well I'll leave that up to you to figure out So I finally figured out how the subject of ecstatic experience Was going to be what I was going to write about in the second book. I had discovered that with In my dissertation study I asked subjects to describe what Cutting or burning themselves or starving themselves or stuffing themselves and making themselves throw up what that did for them and All of them indicated in one way or another is that it helped them to feel better. It was really a form of self-medication But it didn't last too long and they had to keep doing it again and again again, you know, they addictive aspect of it and But they were Just a few people who wrote about it in a way That made it sound like when they were doing it, whatever the it was They were having an experience that sounded to me like an ecstatic one It was more than just they felt better. They like they were in some other kind of altered state So I got that's what and as I went through the trap the chapters that had been cut out Really, I was I discovered I was writing about I had written about people who take all sorts of risks often life-threatening risks in order to have some kind of ecstatic experience So I decided that's what I'm going to write about and then I Started to think well, what is ecstasy anyway? And I found that it's become sort of a synonym for joy Or for orgasm and then I Started to To look at to see what literature there was any research literature on the state of ecstasy And they really wasn't very much at all It was very odd I found I Should tell you you know besides loving to write. I'm I guess what you'd call an independent scholar And have been for very long time so I I somehow I came across online a book Written in the I think 1961 by an English writer named Mark Anita Lasky and She had written some a novel. It was about a time travel novel But in it her protagonist a woman was We're climbing on its shades lounge having an ecstatic experience and She the novel was a big hit at least in England and The Lasky started to wonder How is it that people so readily accepted My description of an ecstatic experience because I don't know what an ecstatic experience is so And I guess she's also an independent scholar like like me and she wrote a book About ecstasy and what she did was she interviewed people she knew and asked them questions all sorts of questions about ecstatic experience and What characterized it? How did how did it happen? Do that those do they have this frequently or rarely and she came up with all sorts of very very Interesting data that's contained in her book so that was kind of my launching pad and I came to the conclusion from everything that she said That It's got an ecstatic experience was a form of dissociation That hasn't really been identified before it's Something of an out-of-body experience and so I got very interested in the neuroscience of ecstatic experiences and I'll tell you writing this book was really Was such an adventure for me, you know, I never knew where it was gonna go or what I would discover Terrific It sounds terrific I wish my books were like that you would what I wish my books were like that. I seem to always know where they're going Well, you know, I I I I think I was a writer before I knew I wanted to be a therapist And I always loved to write so and I just enjoy it so much I'm sorry. I'm sorry interrupted. You were talking about the neurological Yeah, I got very interested in the the neurological end of this and I came across a book written by a neurologist Down at the University of Kentucky Kevin Nelson and I Forgot well, I forgot the title of his book, but he's written a great deal about near-death experiences and Near-death experiences and other out-of-body experiences And he came up with a scientific explanation For for near-death experiences And a lot of people have been writing about it A neuros and I think he's a Neuropsychiatrist, I'm not sure but he's a neuroscientist He he wrote he's been on the best syllable list for weeks With his book about his near-death experience and he tries to explain it Actually Oliver Sacks said it so his book is absolutely unscientific and he explained why Why it's unscientific, but anyway, this Kevin Nelson he wrote about scientifically how we can have out-of-body experiences and I mean Elizabeth Taylor wrote about wrote about hers, you know a number of celebrities have written about theirs Carl Jung wrote about his lots of people have written about this and it's sort of a standard kind of thing, you know There they were and it either happened when they were on the operate in the operating room under anesthesia or something like that or They had were very hurt and they were waiting for the ambulance to come but all of a sudden they They saw a light at a distance and a tunnel that led you to the light and at the end of the tunnel were People dear dear ones who Who were dead beckoning them come over come over to our side, you know to come and be with them in the afterlife and It's almost a stereotype kind of experience and Anyway, this guy Nelson explained neurologically how this happened and I thought it was absolutely fascinating and what he wrote I Corresponded with him and I asked him he actually wrote an endorsement of my my my book. It's on the back cover But he wrote an endorsement and I asked him do you think? Your explanation could hold true for the state of ecstasy and he said he thought so But anyway, he came up with this explanation that these experiences can happen when We when when we're in some sort of Unconscious state Now we can either be in REM sleep, which is the kind of you know rapid eye movement is REM sleep, which is the state of Consciousness that we're in when we dream and it's fairly close to consciousness Um, and then there's non REM sleep, which is a much deeper sleep and we usually don't dream in Non-REM the non-REM state He said these strange experiences happen when somehow there's a mixture of the REM sleep and non-REM sleep and and it causes a kind of a A a momentary paralysis where the person is lying in the bed and they can't move and And then they start to have this bizarre experience I actually I should say I've I've read about this too, and I have experienced that you did yes I have experienced that moment where You are frozen in a kind of semi-sleep, and you can't move I actually couldn't move it was like a dream But I couldn't move right I think it was pretty common actually but go ahead Yeah, well anyway, so he he wrote about that and I was just fascinated because you know these experiences that just seem so Strange but so common that you know that I thought how wonderful to be able to understand it scientifically so that's that's what I tried to do and that's what I I wrote about and But in addition to writing about how ecstasy happens And why it's not joy and why it's not orgasm I I I put chapters in there To talk about different kinds of ecstatic states that People might experience I wrote the end as a chapter the MVP about the 60s and why The 60s was really crucial for this Hunger for ecstasy because it was in the 60s or you know, Allen Ginsburg He decided he wanted he said life should be ecstasy. That's what he said and people listened to him and then when he went to India in search of ecstatic experiences The whole culture went to India I mean, that's why at that time and even now, you know, people were what had these, you know, mattress bed spreads Yeah, and you know people wore a mattress clothing, you know, everything was Indian and exotic But there were also strange practices Well strange to us at least but in India are Strange and India and India ecstasy is revered the state of ecstasy is revered and Prolonging the state of ecstasy becomes an aim that many people have They they dumbest through some Very very dangerous practices. Maybe the way they do it. There's not so dangerous I don't know about that but here it certainly is There's something called body suspension Now I'm not talking about anything that has to do with your automobile Okay I'm talking literally about people who Will volunteer to allow themselves their whole bodies to be suspended in the air On hooks now. These are hooks that very big hooks that are meant you can buy them in a marine supply store big hooks were catching very big fish and If you google body suspension That you'll get to a place where you'll be able to see photographs of people having different kinds of body Suspensions and it's become a it's become a kind of performance art People it's kind of a under-the-radar thing that's happening and word of it gets out that you know There's going to be a body suspension on this date in this place and people come and they bring you know the picnic meals and wine and speech chairs, you know, and they sit there and they watch While this person is suspended in the air. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I was gonna say this practice is In the Native American context is depicted in a movie called a man called horse I don't know if you've ever seen it, but Richard Harris gets it. Absolutely. It's both I forgot which tribe it is in this country that does that but that they but it these are tribal practices that Some people in our culture have adopted And there's a tremendous danger when you would adopt a practice from another culture Because that practice grows out of that culture and that culture's spiritual beliefs and So when you just adopt it a whole hog as your own It's very easy for it to go very long and for people to get hurt Or for people to die. In fact, there's a guy who calls himself Fatir Musafar He was asked I forgot his his real name but from an early age he He he must have had some sort of strange Neuropsychiatric sensory disorder or something like that But he would like to put pins in himself And do all sorts of things to his body to mutilate his body you know using pins or knives or whatever and I Guess when he he He went he ended up going to some Tattoo or body piercing convention And he showed off the things that he had done to his his body And I think that may be where you know people got the idea to put To pierce their penis and put a ring of ring through it. Yeah, there's a lot of that. Yes Yeah, and and all all this kind of business But so he he he adopted the name Fakira Musafar because he was a big hit at this body piercing show and And he he developed a new persona for himself Rather than just a very strange God Thanks to himself he became a shame and and and if you go online you can find his website And he had puts out a journal called body play He has also successfully reduced his waistline to something like 20 inches by Racking himself very tightly and belts and tightening these belts and just walking around like he's the things that he's done are just extraordinary So I wrote that was one of the things that was in one of the the chapters that was omitted from my You know deleted from the first book So that's how I ended up pursuing the whole subject of ecstasy But then I went on and I after the you know talking about the 60s and what was going on in the 60s That produced this hunger for ecstasy Including of course, you know the psychedelic drugs I Have chapters on ecstasies of pain and near-death experiences I have a chapter on Some of the ecstasies and psychosis That are induced By cult involvement, which is something I have a tremendous interest in I have a chapter on religious ecstasies We're a whole long thing about the development of the you know the stigmata Mm-hmm, and how that happens And other kinds of religious Ecstasies as well Not only the Christian ones although that sort of predominates, but the ecstasies and snake handling sex Down south Which is really just fascinating Ecstasies of Hasidic Jews You know that has had hasidism is really a response Against a thinking kind of Judaism. They want an experiential ecstatic religion You know, so they dance around and they go into these ecstatic states Like Sufi Muslims do sometimes as well like who Sufi Muslims do the same thing. Yeah, yeah Well, actually the front the front cover of my book shows a whirling dervish. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah whirling dervish You know, actually I can send you a you a picture of the cover or you can get one yourself I think it kind of it I selected that image myself for the cover because it it said it illustrated so much about the experience of ecstasy there's a sense of movement swirling and light But you know so that that's the part about religious ecstasies and then I have something Called killing cannibalism and other ecstasies from the hell Including the ecstasies of the SS officers through killing ecstasies I have a chapter on creative ecstasies Which I really enjoy and it's really about the nature of Creativity and very It's the relationship of creativity to mental illness, you know, just what I think that relationship is Well, let me ask you a question this is a good summary of the book and I hope people will read it The the first question I want to ask is that you've said that ecstasy is not Joy and it is not orgasm. What is it? It's it's a dissociated state of consciousness a form of out-of-body experience There's a dissociation between the mind and the body And so how do you you know like all subjective experiences or especially emotional conditions? They're very difficult to relate in words It's easy to say yes, I had that experience, you know orgasm is example You can't relate to someone what an orgasm is like, but you can say when you do the following three things You'll have an orgasm and you'll feel what it's like But you can't really describe it in words. So what So why isn't an orgasm for example ecstasy because it doesn't have that dissociative occasionally it can be occasionally it can be but I Think you know, it's it's an experience of tension Building up sexual tension building and building and building until it reaches a peak and then It's a complete release of tension You know, you feel it in your muscles you feel it in your body It's very nice. It's very pleasant, but I don't think it is ecstatic Mm-hmm. I mean I guess one thing I would say is I'll be a little bit autobiographical here I had a kind of wayward youth and I did drugs and of all different kinds and One of the things I came to associate with an ecstatic state was what people who do drugs called the rush Right the rush that you get when you do coke the rush that you get when you do a methamphetamine The rush that you get when you shoot heroin doesn't last very long the rush you get when you have an orgasm It doesn't last very long and then you always chase it you want to chase the dragon you want that back doesn't come Because the receptors get numbed or whatever happens. I don't know are those ecstatic experiences I Don't know. I think they I think that they can be first for some people But I would meet I would really need to know more about it But you know, I think people use drugs and alcohol Because they're looking for an altered state of consciousness They can't stand to be in the skin there and run out. They want out And drugs give them that out many you know, but many years ago before I had any professional training at all I worked in a drug details program when happens You know with hardcore heroin addicts and I learned from there my learned so much about the nature of Addiction that has been so helpful to me And understanding eating disorders and and so feelation, you know, I'm a lot of other things Mm-hmm. I mean one thing about drugs that I can say with some confidence is that they always work Which is to say if you want an altered state of consciousness It might not be pleasurable and for many drug addicts and especially alcoholics It is not pleasurable. Yeah, but you can get the altered state of consciousness every time unlike let's say I don't know meditation or you know, running or something or I don't know Those those those work, but they're harder to get but you know if if you if you you know if you boot some smack You're gonna feel different. It may be bad, which you're gonna feel different and and I think that for many many people who are drug addicts It really is that I think you put your finger right on it is it is just precisely disassociative You don't want to be where you are. You don't want to feel what you feel Yeah, yeah, you what you are afraid of what you're feeling and there's an easy way to go someplace else So you do this thing And and that's the curious thing and I don't think many people understand about addiction is that it's it's often not pleasurable I mean, especially you know end-stage alcoholism those alcoholics are not happy. Yeah Yeah, because the drug stopped doing what they used to do. They lose there. They would use their own Yeah, right. They take you to a place that is profoundly not ecstatic, but it's different And so we have to do something even more potent and more dangerous right to try to get there. Yeah Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what it is. You know, I've I've always I've never used drugs Experimented a little bit with pot not much, but I've always been I guess I'm to it my personality. I'm just too cautious Well either that or you're not you know, that's the bad thing I think it's a good thing to be cautious Well, but I mean I think you point this out in the book I mean that and people will say this for example in AA in a number 12 step programs that the alcohol is a symptom It's not the problem, right? It's a symptom and therefore what what that kind of shows is that and again I'm not a psychologist and I should probably give all kinds of disclaimers This is not medical advice But if you're predisposed to this it probably means you're depressed in some way that there's something about reality that you can't quite handle Normal people can handle it just fine. So when they drink, it's okay But but there's something about reality that you can't handle and it's probably you know, I don't know if it's genetic or if it's somehow You know that you lose a learned behavior, but whatever it is And I've worked, you know, I know a lot of people who are in this condition that they were and I hate to use this terminology But they were broken before they got broken This was an attempt to fix themselves. They were trying to fix themselves They were self-medicating and you know as you talk to any drug addict, they'll always say it worked for a long time And so it's really done. It does work for a long time, right until it doesn't That's the way that drives you that it doesn't work right, right? But one of the things I wanted to talk about was this is sort of my second question is you describe the desire for The ecstatic experience as a manic defense. Can you talk a little bit about that? I don't know the psychoanalytic terminology very well, but I'd I'd really like to be taught So if you could put that in the context of of of psychoanalysis. Yeah, okay. Well, I You know, I in the first chapter The first chapter starts with a personal experience I had Many years ago actually 1991 November 20th 1991 if you want Precise date. I don't think you do them telling you anyway My husband have been diagnosed with cancer and he was scheduled for a surgery that we hoped would cure him of cancer and This was after five months of many many diagnostic procedures and second and third opinion And he had been I brought him down to the hospital the day before and he was admitted and then I woke up the day of the surgery and I was anticipating a very long and grueling day, and I didn't know how I was going to get through it And I drove to Mount Sinai and I As I drove I was noticing that the air smelled like morning and the Hudson River Was bluer than I'd ever seen it before shimmering in the sunshine, and I was just stunned by how beautiful it was And as I continue to drive I found myself getting joyful and excited About his surgery, but also calm at the same time. It's very Strange and I thought what an absolutely glorious day to get this damn cancer out of him For a minute just for a moment. I noticed how odd my thinking was, you know, I still had a bit of an observing ego And I didn't want to think anymore about it because I think I knew intuitively if you think about it you ruin it, you know so I didn't think about it and there was no question in my mind that cancer would be entirely removed and That he would be okay, and our son who was a high school senior at the time would be okay and everything would be alright and That state of mind then sort of by the time I got there I was in a lower case, but I was in a pretty good frame of mind That was a manic defense That was a manic defense and it happened again 11 years after his surgery He had to have another surgery a radical procedure that was meant to resolve these constant bacterial infections he got as a result of the A consequence of the first surgery and again. I'm driving to the hospital driving down the West Side Highway Along the Hudson River. I'm trying to be strong and feeling like I needed something so badly But I am a cautious type and I don't I wouldn't think of picking up a drug And what happened though was very very bizarre all of a sudden I began hearing Zydeco music Playing in my head Yeah, and I it brought me back to I was transported back to the French quarter festival This was before you know the Cape Hurricane Katrina Where my husband and I were part of a crowd listening to Zydeco on the banks of the Mississippi And so I popped a CD into the CD player and Usually I don't I don't listen to music or listen to the radio at all when I drive. I like to think But as I listened to Aaron Neville singing I put the voodoo on you I I found myself sort of like catapulted out of myself and I was just flying higher and higher and it felt like the music had slowed into my blood and I swapped out the beat on the steering wheel and I'm bouncing on the seat and flexing my leg and gluteal muscles and singing And it was like I was in some kind of a groove going higher and higher and my feet wanted to tap and But I'm a cautious person. I thought that before and There was an inner signal that more me I could get myself killed if I allowed myself To give into this and I knew I had to stop it immediately and I did That's my signal. I'm sorry. Thank goodness for that Um, but that frame of mine that manic frame of mind Was a manic defense because I at the I was anticipating what my husband's funeral would be like You know, I was anticipating that we were gonna play I was gonna play it's all over now Baby blue as a funeral, you know, I was picking up the music This is what I Was afraid of I was afraid he was gonna die and I was gonna lose him and I couldn't stand it so And so at that point there came my manic defense, right? Yeah, I can take me completely away from it and It really it helped it helped to get me through The days of both surgeries, you know, I got I got through them um So I that's how I got how I came while I'm looking back at this spirit this experience while I was writing the book I Can't I came to understand that I was really looking to go into an ecstatic state to just abandon myself To that experience Yeah, I mean I think it's at that moment that someone like me would take drumps Instantly I Don't take drugs at all now. I don't drink. I don't take drugs. I don't do anything I you know, I have the boy am I squeaky clean, but the former me would have definitely if there was a former me Definitely would have taken drugs right then I would have drank that's what I would have done But I should say I mean again to wax a little bit autobiographical I have experienced the kind of thing you're talking about But I always called it a kind of adrenaline rush and it occurred at moments of crisis when I knew that I was really needed For example in the car accident or when somebody was hurt when I was playing basketball It's like my my perception narrowed. I became very focused. I became very calm but an absolutely untroubled and I did kind of I Saw what was going on as if I were watching myself do stuff But and I do recall that feeling because I really liked it. I mean, I really liked it Yeah, I really like that experience. Yeah, I was thought of it as an adrenaline rush like a super adrenaline rush But it only occurred in places where there was a crisis I can induce it into adrenaline rush in a lot of ways I used to play sports all the time, but this was a different thing It's a very different thing and it's only happened a couple of times in my life What and especially it's associated when people get hurt and I have to help them I just everything becomes very focused and and you get this I think some psychologists called it cold flow Or something like that where it's just you you have this it is is ecstatic and I remember thinking that was just it was horrible But I felt great While I was helping that person. I just felt absolutely really really really terrific So so then the thesis of the book or one of the thesis of the book is that that this is my and I wouldn't I don't Again, I don't know the terminology very well. It's it's some part of my brain Defending me against some reality that another part of my brain can't accept right Yeah, yeah, I mean one thing is curious to me that it and again, this may Begin a discussion of kinds of people But for me, it just doesn't happen often enough in other words. I find myself in a lot of situations Which are pretty I don't know they're challenging for me. I don't want to be in them But I don't kick into that kind of out-of-body experience. I don't have the manic defense. I wish I did But I just get depressed if you see what I mean. Oh, you know, so after after having this peculiar experience I never had it never happened again. Mm-hmm. It never happened again, and but I wanted it to yeah Yeah, you know, it was it was so wonderful Yeah, that's called chasing the dragon if you're a heroin addict not that I ever was I was never a heroin addict But I know some you chase that experience and it because it's so you it's really imprinted on your brain What it felt like and so you want it again? And again, I you know orgasms are a little bit like that although they're easily induced I won't go on about that for most people so it it is you know, it does It does have a kind of manic aspect because it's repeated again and again and again, and it's always sought after You never get enough of it. It's it's insatiable sort of thing and so so at the end of the book you talk in a little bit more therapeutic sense about about people that actually Harm themselves by pursuing ecstasy And how they might be treated how they might be identified and treated. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah Well often, you know, we you're treating somebody and you discover that there's there's something that they do that is potentially life threatening But they don't regard it that way. They just love to do it And I think if you you know, you have you you've established a solid attachment relationship with with that patient You can take a stance it's not a neutral stance by any means And I'm not a big advocate of the neutral stance anyhow But it's a stance that's you're being protective of your patient You're trying to help them to Anticipate what might happen if they continue to do this And you're trying to help them to find another way to live so that they don't have to do it And it's it's a I think it really means, you know, you you're sticking your neck out with a with a patient You're working in a way that It's kind of unorthodox But the patient feels that you really care about him And even if you care about him that much that you express it passionately if you feel that way I Think this this creates a kind of indelible experience for a patient because often they never felt that anybody really cared about the love before right and and and so when they can establish a Safe and secure relationship With their therapist That that can help them to relinquish or give up That relationship to pain and suffering and life-threatening risk-taking I mean, I'm I think clear no you're being very clear and I agree with what you say completely I mean that jives with my own experience. I won't be more by graphical than that. I mean, I know that That when my problem sees one of the most important things for me is I met people that did care about me and at the time I felt that nobody cared about me all I cared about was the drugs and alcohol and I had sloughed everything else off. Yeah, you know, it was but you know again by the time they get to you They're at that state. Well, hopefully you get them earlier But they're at that state where it's them and the drugs and alcohol and there is nothing else in the world And they don't really care But the expression of some sort of interest in somebody is a is a it's a very powerful thing And so I agree with you completely the only I would add One element and that is and this is drawn from my own experience And that is that someone who's addicted to ecstasy of spinotic to see the drug but ecstasy that the feeling And is being harmed by it needs to see people and talk to people who have overcome that or have learned to live with it Successfully and and then again when I first came in so to say the very powerful thing for me was seeing people Who had come through it and they were living normal lives because I didn't think that was possible I just didn't seem to be possible And I saw them and you know the proof was right there before my eyes There they were normal people who had been just like me and I was like, wow, that is amazing I truly didn't believe it. Yeah, and then and then they expressed interest in me just as you say And and at that point you just like you open a whole new world for them Or just as it was for me and I realized that I didn't you know what they said was very you don't have to live like you're living and That was bizarre to me I couldn't couldn't fathom it, but they said you don't have to live like you're living. I thought I did you know Yeah, and and and so I think that that's right And I've had therapists over the years and the ones that I have been most the ones that Again, I I'm not a doctor and not there's anything like that But the ones that I think I have benefited most from have expressed an interest me and even even probably worse I think they get trouble that told me what to do I Know you're not supposed to do that But they told me what to do and I really appreciate it because I was lost You know, I wanted somebody to tell me what to do and I did it and and so and that you're right that does kind of break down the That barrier. What is the status of that barrier now in the schools that teach psychoanalysis, and you thought are you taught to be very objective and distant? Well, you know, it's it's very it's it's very strange. I mean initially Freud advocated That the the Alice be a blank slate Because it was thought that if the analyst if the patient knew the analyst as a real person a real human being That would stand in the way of a transference Developing and a transfer and you know, it was hoped that a transference would be developed in the treatment so that then through the treatment it could be Dissolves or resolved But anyway, that's the basis for this blank slate Thinking but the reality is and I've I'm working on a third book now, and I've written about this Freud as really A part The third book is about my tentative title is celebrate the wounded healer psychotherapist Be where the wounding healer the therapist who hurts his patients And I think in many ways Freud without intending to He he the way he worked with some patients not all of them Completely contradicted his blank slate Theory he socialized with patients. They came to his house, you know Met his family. He analyzed his own daughter Yeah, and apps, you know, which is my god that you don't do that And he may have but you know prevented her from ever developing a life of her own With you know with the say a husband, maybe children You know, she never did She became his his spokesperson. Yes and his nurse when he was dying, you know But um, so this whole blank slate thing I think we need to reevaluate and this whole concept of the therapist neutrality that you're absolutely neutral I think there are times when it's very good to be absolutely neutral. I think other times you have to Take a very unambiguous dance Mm-hmm. That's something Yeah, I mean, I agree with you completely. I mean the thing about these like 12 step programs is that's just what they do They say, you know, if you do what you did, you'll get what you got And if you do what we say to do well, you might get better That's pretty much it. They don't say anything else They don't don't tell you have to do it. They just say if you do it, you might get better And and you know in many cases it works in many cases. It does not work I know that for a fact as well, but I am don't let me answer another question We're almost out of time, but it it seems to me that in some ways that it is easier than ever before in human history To induce that manic defense. You can get drugs. You can get alcohol You can get all the porn you want. You can get prostitution like it. It's just it's an amazing amount of it available to you Is that is that is that a is that a harmful part of our culture? Should we like think that that's something we should fight against? um, I Think a manic defense is a wonderful thing to have when you need one. Mm-hmm. You know I mean when I had mine It got me through a very, you know a couple of very very painful days in my life And I'll always be grateful that I had that. Yeah. Yeah, I'm also grateful that I was able to stop it, too I'm happy to hear you say that because you know and lots of lots of recovering addicts and Alcoholics and and you know to a person all of them say pretty much the same thing and that is that you know drugs or alcohol Are good for people who can use them? They're not good for people who can't and the only unfortunately the only way to find out that you can't is to use them But for for everybody else out there normies. That's just fine You know and I think that they are many ways a good thing if you don't become addicted to them They're a good thing. You know what a stiff drink after a bad day is okay, you know, that's fine It's just for a certain section of the population Who you know whose manic defenses are a little bit weak The the they take it to an extreme that causes them harm and then they end up in your office They end up with my friends and a or an A or whatever. It is. Yeah. Yeah, and like I say the sad the tragic part of it Is that you just can't tell? Without running the experiment and the experiment always hurts those people You can't say to somebody at 14 like nope you can't drink alcohol you know, I was just that I I teach a class of a master's level course for people getting a master's degree in mental health counseling and Two of the people in the class their placement their agency placement. They have a supervised placement is that a drug drug or alcohol Rehebsen And I one of the people in the class is a woman who's almost 40 years old And I discovered that she had Start she had started drinking when she was around 11 Yeah, he said that and was she was already in a rehab while she was still in high school Oh, you know, and she stopped drinking around five years ago And has remained sober with the help of AA. She said she usually goes To four meetings a week that she's feeling especially vulnerable maybe more than that, you know, but She discovered once when she when she became alcoholic that it ran in her family She hadn't known that yeah, you often do but she said that even if she had known it She doesn't think it would have stopped her. Oh, you know, I don't yeah, it's absolutely right That's absolutely right. I know that for a fact. Yeah, yeah, and I mean I am I am amazed by by her, you know, she's She's very good at what she does and she loves working with people, you know, with the chemical depends terrific That's really yeah, that's a good story. Good story. Well, we've taken up a lot of your time And I really appreciate it Sharon. I'm we usually close these interviews with it with a question We've already touched on it and the question is what what are you working on now? Oh? I'm working on a book about the wounded healer psychotherapist Yeah, and actually I'm looking I want to include a few chapters from therapists who think they are wounded healers Wounded healers a concept that you've developed And so that's that's what I'm working on well good luck with that We've been talking with Sharon Klayman Farber, but today about hungry for ecstasy trauma the brain and the influence of the sixties And I promised Sharon who noted to me that the book is somewhat expensive But you can get 30% off until June 30th 2014 if I'm going to read this you make sure you correct me if I'm wrong Sharon Okay, this is the code you'll need if you go to the Rome Roman and little field website This is the code website is Roman R. W. M. A. And calm okay Roman calm And here is the code if you want 30% off the book 8 s 1 4 j a c a t I just want to Say you need a 8 s it's it's important. I think people could hear it as F. Oh, well, okay, right? Okay, but it's s right yes s so 8 s 1 4 j a c a t right? Thanks very much Again Sharon. Thank you so much for being on the show today Oh, well, thank you. Thank you for inviting me. I really really enjoyed it I don't like those who I love to tell I enjoy the conversation, too And let me say to everybody who is listening. I'm Marshall Poe the editor-in-chief of the new books network And I hope everybody has a great week You you (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]