It's a question of shirts

*******************************************************

I said before that Gretchen encourages us to ‘create’ from the back of our heads: the primeval brain, or the reptilian brain. She says that because we acquired language we have evolved lopsided, so to speak: the front part of our brain grows physically as we learn, and the creation of neural pathways actually pushes the brain out; that’s why we have a big brain, (and a big forehead). Of course this is at the expense of our primitive brain. In other words, we have become too cerebral. She claims that is the cause of most of the neuroses that cause people to be admitted to places like this. To put it another way – we think too much. We need to allow the feeling part of our brain to come ‘on-stream’ more. Pay more attention to ‘gut feeling’ and that much ridiculed ‘woman’s thing’ intuition. We are unbalanced. We need to redress this balance, hence Eric’s ‘Legs’. I agree with her.

Freddie - as I've said before - encourages me to talk about my childhood. I said to him – things started to go wrong with society with they began to make shirts that buttoned all the way down the front. When I was a lad, men had proper shirts. Shirts that just had four buttons at the top and you had to pull them over your head. I can remember many a freezing winter’s morning, in a bedroom with ice on the inside of the windows, all bleary eyed and yawning, struggling to pull my shirt on over my head. It made a man of you, though. (Well, it made a man of those who didn’t die of pneumonia). Then, somebody invented shirts that buttoned all the way down the front. Well, you could see where that was going to lead to, couldn’t you?

But Freddie wasn’t too impressed, so I told him about the day I played ‘Fuck’.

I was probably no more than five or six, and Alfie, my pal from across the road, invited me into his house. Maisie from a few doors down was also there. Alfie and Maisie were a year older than me. Anyway, Alfie led us upstairs into his parent’s bedroom, saying we were going to play fuck. In those days you never went upstairs in someone else’s house, but Alfie’s parents were out this day. I remember wondering at the old overcoats that covered the bed in lieu of blankets, how rough and coarse they felt. (We had proper blankets on our bed!). Anyway, Alfie instructed us to climb on the bed and when we had done so, to jump up and down, as if we were on a trampoline. Of course, he didn't say 'trampoline' because none of us had heard of such a thing. The three of us jumped up and down, whooping with laughter, bumping against each other, falling down, bouncing back up. It was great fun. And all the more so because it was ‘naughty’. We were in someone else’s bedroom! And that was all there was to playing fuck.
When I went home for my lunch (or dinner as we called it then) my mother asked me what I had been doing. I told her (the innocent that I was) that we had been in Alfie’s mum’s bedroom playing fuck. To say that I was not prepared for her reaction would be to put it mildly; my mother went berserk. She shouted at me and told me that she never wanted to hear that word again. I was shocked, literally. And I was mystified. Why was she so angry? She never bothered to explain. But I never used that word again – well not until after I was married.

Freddie tells me that up to 30% of problems that patients consult their GP about have a psychosocial component. And of course a lot of people suffering from what might be called ‘psychosocial problems’ don’t even consult a GP because they are afraid they woul be considered ‘weak’ and told to ‘pull themselves together’. In fact this is often what they are being told within the family. Freddie sees the family as a crucible, a melting pot of irrational fears, superstitions, guilt, unreasonable demands and expectations from which are reconstituted an individual's core beliefs. It is these core beliefs which lead to dysfunctional behaviour: low self esteem; poor coping strategies; unrealistic expectations of self and others; a view of the world as a dangerous place; a denial of one's true self, and an inablitiy to get ones needs met.

Or as Philip Larkin put it:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They give you all the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

(I have a feeling, Anna, that I might have quoted this poem in full at some earlier date. Tell me if I have.)

I called at the pub tonight. (Yes we are allowed to visit the local inn.) I had a pint of strong lager to see if it would settle my stomach. I was on my own. I usually go with Derek, but he is on 'suicide watch'. That sounds like an invitation: Hey fellas, come and watch me do myself in!

You haven’t responded to my previous post. Okay, so you don’t like my photographs. Well I will post another one, which I hope you will find more to your taste.
Oh, wait a minute – you’re not sulking are you? Because I corrected your mistake? I didn’t think you would mind, but if I have offended you, I am truly sorry.

Talk to me, please.

Your lover (soon to be)

George