Jutta visits

The last day or two, I’ve been getting to know Jutta, who has just flown in from Germany. Jutta lives in Aachen, (on the border of Germany and Holland I think). She works as a midwife and also partly, in the same area that I do, that is the “music meditation for awareness” stuff. She works together with Stephan whom I also know and like a lot.

It has been great talking to her. We had met earlier this year at one of Samuel’s workshops in Switzerland and although we had not been able to spend much time with each other during the seminar itself, we somehow knew that if we did do that, we would really enjoy being together. Before the workshop came to an end, she told me she was going to come to India in October and I suggested she spend a few days with me in Bombay before making her way to the south and whichever other places she wants to visit. And now that she is here, I am amazed at the kind of knowledge that we human beings have within us, this intuition which tells us with whom we are likely to vibe, to hit it off.

We have been chatting about many things, especially about conducting groups, about the problems that group leaders and psychotherapists have with their clients (known as “authority problems” or transference problems or projections or whatever). As a psychotherapist one is accused of everything by a whole lot of people - from being selfish, to “not listening”, to being unsympathetic. Of course, it might be that the client is even right! So the only sensible thing to do, is to just not react to any of it, to be still and wait. When both client and therapist are genuinely interested in exploring something together, the truth comes out, one way or another, and it always feels good to recognise it. Sometimes however, the client, not being able to stomach his bad feelings drops out of therapy and thus the door to communication is shut.

Sometimes the client returns, after recognising his or her own part in the game. Sometimes he/she stays away for good. It is difficult to say in advance how a particular relationship will develop.

Jutta and I have been chatting about all this through breakfast and now she is on her way to visit Charmayne who will take her for a bit of shopping and a bit of sight-seeing around Bombay. And I will get down to a spot of work.

Group website:
www.basicindia.net