Unpublished Manuscript for ISI 2008

Harry

This paper reflects my personal memories of Harry and how his presence impacted me from the early eighties until now, as well as how this presence is passed on to those I teach, supervise and participate within therapeutic endeavors. I met Harry in 1983 and immediately found a home, a mentor, a friend, a colleague who embraced my thoughts, allowed his thoughts to be embraced by me, privileged me with his trust and caring, made me think I was the smartest therapist, supervisor, and teacher; meeting Harry was the greatest event of my life outside of my family. Then again, Harry was family to me.  Upon meeting he immediately saw something in me that had been robbed by graduate school and the life of hard knocks. Through Harry my legacy was made. He lives with me today and his memories created process ethics.

Meeting Harry: A Stolen Voice is Heard

To this day, Harry lives very strongly in my mind and heart. He was the only person to fully respect myself, understand me, and see the budding potential I had. I first met Harry at the internship at Galveston Family Institute in 1983. Glen Gardner referred him to me when I was having a difficult time finding work after my master's program. 

I originally had a BSN from UTMB and learned to love the personal side of those suffering physical problems. I was a head nurse at the ICU there and became weary of never talking to the patients due to ventilators and the serious aspects of their infirmities. One day I decided to go to UH/CLC and met the dean at late registration. He took an interest in me and immediately I was enrolled in the program. I never went back to Galveston again except to pack up and leave.

Harry and my experiences in the master's program are two events that drive my passion to help endorse therapists' doing no harm and my development of process ethics. My voice was taken away in my master's program to the degree that I was stalked by a professor, told by one professor that I would never get a Ph.D. because I did not like role playing, among other burdens with the program.

Upon graduation I was shy. I had this tendency but it flourished with my voice being stolen. Glen knew of my dilemma--being shy in my interviews--something I had never experienced as a nurse. In interviewing after my master’s program the psychiatrists would critique my dress, way of speech, etc. I knew I was good and the professors in my internship, as well as my peers and clients echoed this.

And then I found Harry! What a delight. I entered the internship late--almost in the middle. I had been told to read Change, Tactics of Change, and a book by Keeney I cannot recall. So I arrive prepared. I happen to sit next to Harry perhaps I was running late--lol. This was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. After the rigid and burdensome master's program here he was as bright as a star, and being given a hoagie and a beer for lunch while he spoke to perhaps fifty of us. I thought this was wonderful. Every idea he spoke of echoed mine. I had studied Haley and Erickson as my modality and the fit was natural to his ideas. Harlene was still in Boston and I did not meet her for another year or so. I remember after this first meeting of an hour or so he leaned to me and asked me if I had questions and I did not for his ideas held so much parity. This was an example of the immediate spark between us. Always he was interested in my ideas, as I was in his.

He was my small group supervisor and it was spectacular. One story out of millions filling my head I will offer. A few weeks after being an intern, he asked me to help Kent Slayton and go into the therapy room with a question. I froze. I can remember going to the bathroom by the therapy room and looking into the mirror and forgetting what he had said. I talked this over with myself and decided I was too chicken and left the bathroom and drove home. I returned the next week and no one spoke to this. Harry never addressed this until I had been on faculty for a few years and this was perhaps six years later. One day we were having lunch after doing co-supervision with two CLC trainees and he said what happened that day--lol--I said you know I was too shy and he laughed heartily. He told others continually of my brilliance and took every opportunity to include me with those famous in the field. He mentored me and loved Rose as well. We were teaching the externship together before he died and he told me at an Armenian restaurant that he would make me the greatest teacher/supervisor. I just looked at him--stunned. Then he died and I took up his crusade and he did what was intended.

After being in Harry’s care for two years I moved an hour away to set up a community mental health clinic along with three others that had studied with him. We created Camelot under Harry’s mentorship. No diagnosis for any challenging problem except for V codes.  We “cured” the “diseased”; schizophrenic symptoms evaporated, as well as any parity diagnosis. No psychiatrist; although we had one he was not used to the new clients that came to our clinic. No hospitalizations except for those that had been through the revolving doors before we came. Children were not discarded to “camps”; in fact no one was discarded.  No suicides, nor homicides. No addictions. People were treated as people and not diagnoses.  

Then legalism and hate language came to Camelot. Budget cuts with clients placed into groups. Ethically I had to bail. With my leaving I was asked to be on faculty at the Galveston Family Institute. Immediately I flew there.

When I came to the Institute I did not care if I made money, although it was a bit of a concern. Harry said I would not make money but I knew I would survive financially.  I came to GFI and on the first day I had neither office nor clients. I knew he would create his magic. I can still remember his asking each faculty member if they had room in their office for me and finally I had an office.  

Harry Stories

Harry addressed himself as an Armenian story teller.  Now I am a story teller. Harry said his students inspired him to create ways to be with clients. My students do that every day for me, as well, as my clients. I do not know if I was always this way, perhaps I was since I loved to create stories as a child. Being in Harry’s presence one could not escape becoming a story teller.

When I first came to the internship I felt inadequate. Here were deep thinkers and degrees I did not have. Soon I learned that this did not matter. One of my first cases was a CPS case. My co-therapist was a wonderful woman. She died the next year from cancer. We had a lovely time of honestly listening to the burden of this man whose son was whisked away one day and he was taken to jail from his place of work, with an abundance of helicopters and police. He had used physical discipline called over discipline. He had not meant to harm his son for he loved his son dearly. His story unfolded to these two young Caucasian women. We heard the pain and sorrow from both he and his son. Harry was sitting behind the one-way mirror. When we finished he said we were wonderful, indeed. That was the beginning of finding my voice and self confidence, as well as the posture of collaborative work. 

The next session Harry was not present. Our peers were behind the one way mirror and we were eager to hear their thoughts. Well, there was a refrigerator in that room with wine and beer. When we left the session for reflections we embraced a bit of an enbreated group. They were so happy with their reflections and input. It was OK because that is how things were.

How things Were

Often after the externship the dialogue would continue at a local restaurant. Here we would eat, drink, and have spectacular conversations. Here the theory evolved around our stories of the clients we had seen and, of course, around Harry. Harry often said that it was his students that helped him with ideas of what to do or not to do in therapy. The students formed delightful ideas that generated philosophical, as well as, clinical evolving postulates. I can remember one of these nights with a friend, Faith Ray, who was also in the externship and grew to be a fabulous colleague and friend. We spoke to Harry of another student who we “She will teach you much.” In the ensuing dialogue my catch was that we would learn from her to think and not judge. 

We always learn from the Other. This may be in what we may do differently or in parity to. Regardless witnessing the Other is what I have called a sacred endeavor. We are privileged to see the sacred conversations. Before we judged the other therapist but with Harry we enter into the sacred.

Sacred Conversations

Harry was the inspiration into my passion with process ethics/ Process Ethics. In past publications this theme has been presented as "process ethics" (Andersen, 2001, Anderson, 2001; Gergen, 2001; Ray, 2001; Swim, St. George & Wulff, 2001; Swim, 2003). Process ethics transcends valued traditional ethics of content (i.e. duty to warn, confidentiality, informed consent, competence standards, prevention of exploitation, etc.) and instead explores conjoint social actions between therapist and client, supplementing set rules, standards, and traditions. From this posture therapeutic ethics are a collaboration of values and morals, including diversity themes, such as the sacred. 

Process ethics reflects the beliefs, values, and morals that therapist and client create together. They are intimate, immediate, fluid, constantly changing, and individualized (Swim et al. 2001). They are not produced outside the therapy room (Anderson, 2001). Therapist and client become co-constructors of ethics and therapeutic change. Process ethics co-creates an environment where therapist and client explore liberating narratives which are self tailored to the client’s desire for change. This ethical partnership enables the client to have a conversational space (where new therapeutic possibilities occur) that is client driven and honored (Swim, et. al., 2001). Through this endeavor the therapist welcomes a sacred conversational space, where the unspoken is spoken, and where we come to understand the intimacy of the Other (Swim, et. al., 2001) 

Hospital and Genetics

Before Harry's death in 1991, we were discussing the field of mental health. He had embraced a hard day. He was consulting at a hospital and was saddened by the plight of a former patient or colleague. My memory is unsure. What I can recall is his words of burden and what I now call hate talk. Hate talk embraces the psychiatric model of languaging about a client’s demise. For once a client enters into the DMS system the client no longer exists. Instead “hate talk” or deficiency language replaces heartfelt concerns. One is changed from a human being to labels, treatment plans, and diagnoses, which tend to rule and remake one’s existence.

In this conversation with Harry we were discussing his latest writing of the Dis-diseasing of Mental Health. He was so fond of this writing. I can remember he shared this paper at a faculty meeting. He was so passionate about trying to change the field. Unfortunately this paper, addressed by others at an AAMFT conference, did not come alive. It was misunderstood by many. Only Harry could have promoted this piece in a manner that it was heard. For it was his passion and ideas. I have my students read the paper in classes that I teach. It is more important today than it was in 1991. The medical diagnoses continue to flourish within our field. The DSM has grown fatter and deficiency language encompasses all seeking relief and solutions. 

In this paper he addressed the DMS’s and how they changed the mental health system. He grew up in the mental health system. One of my favorite stories was of his kidnapping a husband. Not really. What he did was to sneak in a husband into UTMB, the University of Texas Medical Branch. He wished to see who this horrible fellow was that was making his in-patient wife depressed. At that time there was no family therapy and families were not involved with treatment. So Harry sneaks in this horrid man. Upon talking to this man, Harry realizes that the man is not horrid. He was a man with his own burdens and pain. Multiple impact therapy was born in this moment. It will later become a word of multi-partiality and the collaborative language systems approach to therapy... A posture of listening purely to all involved in the problem system. Problems are not alive but people are. Problems cannot be treated but people can through conversations dis-solve their problems; through re-authoring from a posture of not-knowing and where the client is the expert in hi/her selves change can be created in a conversational space of the not yet said. Here lie endless utterances that embrace possibilities for burdens to be lifted and “solutions” to be granted.

Harry: Now I See A Person

Harry has inspired me to my latest endeavors in what I call, Now I See A Person. Today, Harry lives in everything I do.  I am certainly not a mini "Harry", more akin to a daughter who dearly loves the ideas of her friend and mentor.  He died at a time when we most needed his controversial voice.   But I can be like Harry, a bit too controversial at times.  Kind of the Colombo type -- not necessarily saying what is appropriate, rather finding that my passion rises to my mouth or perhaps to my nose -- sneezing ideas.   In this spirit, I find that, even after 24 years, I am as passionate about making a difference in the field, as I first was when I was the intern.  

With respect for Harry’s legacy, I engage in supervisory work.  I feel alive with students.  I find that they continue to teach me, to improve me, to give innumerable gifts, seen and unseen.   And, in my desire to acknowledge these gifts, in my desire to see them flying in their own way, on their own journey, I realize that I wish to lose the therapeutic hate words, I wish to lose hierarchy and labels, I wish to lose the sadness which we as therapists and supervisors so frequently (though often inadvertently) create for others.  In regards to this document, Now I See A Person, I carefully transcribed these reflecting conversations which my students engaged in.  My co-author, Chris Kinaman took these words and reassembled them into a poem. The words of this poem are all the students’ words.  Now, however, they are permitted to speak with their own poetic rhythms and powers.

Conclusion

I end my thoughts here and insert my students’ courageous poem. For we have to continue the courage Harry had in pushing the field; so that people are seen for people and not disease.