Before technique, ethics. Before interpretation, the face.
The therapist who calls herself liberatory
charges four hundred dollars.
The sliding scale has a waitlist.
The waitlist is two years.
A locked door, a sign: welcome.
—
Rhetoric approaches sideways,
solicits your yes
before you have spoken.
The therapist arrives with a framework.
The client arrives with a body.
One knows in advance.
One does not.
—
We live from good soup—
what nourishes, what we return to.
The therapist who does not know
what they live from
will feed themselves
with someone else's hunger.
—
The dwelling hollows out
the space where welcome becomes possible.
You cannot invite someone
into a home you do not have.
A room furnished
with someone else's unsorted boxes
is not welcome. It is storage.
—
A client says:
I felt like I was nothing, but it wasn't scary.
The therapist says:
A mystical experience.
The client nods.
They no longer know what it was.
—
A client says:
I felt like I was nothing, but it wasn't scary.
Silence.
Like the weight of having to be someone just... set down.
Now they know.
—
The DSM: suffering
seen from outside.
The intake form: questions
the institution decided matter.
The treatment plan: a language
insurance recognizes.
None of these is the face.
—
I use these instruments.
I bill. I diagnose. I document.
I hold them the way you hold
a photograph of someone—
it is not them.
—
The client sits across from me.
Not their history.
Not their attachment style.
Not the target we identified.
The face
exceeds what I think I know.
They can say something
that overturns.
—
Asymmetry:
Everyone talks about the therapist's power.
The therapist holds responsibility.
The client holds refusal.
—
Before technique, ethics.
Before interpretation, the face.
Before knowing, willingness.
The client is your teacher.
Everything else follows,
or it is violence.
—
This document totalizes.
Claims. Positions.
The saying becomes said.
So: apologia.
A movement away—
apo, from + logos, discourse.
You can say that's not it.
I am obligated to listen.
You are not obligated to speak.
—
A locked door with a sign that says welcome
is not an open door.
This door is open.
I cannot make you enter.