Written for my 1976 B.A. Portfolio for Antioch.

Linked from Psychotherapy overview

1. Describe the learning setting. Include where it took place, the role of other persons who were involved with you, and any materials and methods employed which assisted your learning.

In June of 1973 I had been working as a stagehand for almost a year. I had just started taking drum lessons for the first time in nine years. I had saved up enough money to pay my parents back for the car they had bought me when I first started working. I was interested in a girl who had come to the Zen Center, and was chasing her all over, but she was not interested in me. Finally she got so annoyed she suggested that I would be better off working through my dependency in psychotherapy rather than taking it out on her. I wanted her so much and she was telling me to go into therapy, so maybe it was time to try therapy. I asked two of my friends who were doing graduate work in psychology and had started private counseling practices whom they recommended. Both of them were seeing the same therapist, Pat Sutton, and recommended her very highly.

I went to see Pat at her home in South Pasadena. The first session with her I felt so warm and accepted that I was able to say to her, “I haven’t been able to share any of my most personal thoughts with anyone, ever, but it seems easy with you.” In that first session I shared all of what seemed like my deepest secrets that I had stored up for years. I had felt so isolated when I went in and when I left I felt that I had said everything there was to say and couldn’t imagine where we could go from there except into new areas of pure growth.

What methods were used seemed to be a very authentic acceptance of the value of everything I had to present, and a totally non-judgmental empathy. She told me that there were three ideas she had used in raising her children and that she still used in therapy: I love you, you are a good person, and you can take care of yourself.

2. Describe your participation and responsibilities in this setting.

For six months I saw Pat for one hour once a week. This makes twenty-four sessions altogether. My responsibility was primarily to deal with the both/and with which Pat responded to my either/or. That is, I kept presenting a series of choices that I had to make, and she kept suggesting that I could have both terms of the choice. And so I would test out trying to take both, and found myself growing in every direction I wanted to, rather than steering a narrow, linear course.

3. Describe new skills and/or knowledge derived from this learning activity which contribute to your Degree Plan.

The skills and knowledge that I acquired revolved around building a complex new personality and an increasing level of self esteem as I saw myself succeeding at one project after another.

One of the first decisions I had to make was whether to pay my parents the $500 they had loaned me for a car, or to keep the money in savings. I pointed out that I was in the process of becoming independent of my parents’ influence but that this caused some anxiety. Pat simply agreed with my feeling that paying back my parents would give me more psychological freedom than being in debt to them. I paid off the money before my second meeting with Pat.

I was shopping for a therapist and started with Pat at the same time as with Dick Westfall in bioenergetics. Pat always encouraged any growth that I reported from the work with Dick, but after a while I found myself trusting her very deeply, and him not very deeply at all. I was able to learn a little about bioenergetics in the context of Pat’s teaching that love, power, success, being competent, is what we fear most. Whenever I would bring in new energies that I had found within myself she would simply point out the anxiety that this caused and the avoidance reactions that I had to this new power. I was encouraged to stay with myself as my being unfolded, rather than honor the avoidance reaction.

At the beginning of the second month with Pat I finished paying off $1500 in loans to Stanford. Now one phase of my life was over and it was time to start going further. Some of the things that I found myself wanting to do in the next few months I felt too timid to try. But with Pat’s encouragement I found myself doing all of them: I got a leave of absence from the stagehand business to do the last two months of the first training period at the Zen Center. I went back to school for the first time in eight years, for the first time since all those years of LSD. I got two As, and a B at UCLA, while working to support myself, and my self-image went way up. I bought a practice drum set and metronome and found myself playing drums and going to school and supporting myself and studying Zen all at once. Previously I had  thought that I didn’t have enough energy to do any two of them at the same time. Although no one of them was a new skill or knowledge, to do all of them at once was new skill and knowledge about myself.

4. Self-Assessment: Evaluate this learning activity. Mention such things as the quality of the experience itself and its personal significance to you.

Pat’s years in analysis give her a solid grounding in the dynamics of individual growth. She brings to this background a wealth of ideas from social work, raising her own children, gestalt and transactional therapy. But the main quality of her work is that none of these theories are recognizable as theories, but rather we are presented with a woman who really cares what you do. This is the quality that distinguishes the good therapist of any orientation from the poor therapist of any orientation.

The personal significance of this experience is on three levels. First is the growth in strength, complexity, and self-esteem in my own personality, which I listed under skills and knowledge. Second, I was able to watch a really good therapist at work, and pick up a lot of experiential information on how good therapy is conducted. Third, Pat became a role model in my continuing search to find what I should be doing with my life. She was the only person I knew who could truthfully say, “I’m doing something that I do well and that I truly enjoy.” This was quite a strong influence in deciding what to do after I finished working as a stagehand.

5. Describe the methods of evaluation and feedback used during the learning experience itself.

Individual work with Pat was a constant testing of new possibilities in therapy and then bringing the ones that had worked into the “real world.” So feedback on Pat was coming from daily life, and feedback on daily life was coming from Pat. I kept on getting stronger, and more self-respect, and more positive feedback from people whom I trusted and respected.

6. Describe the material products of this learning experience, if any.

None.

7. List the forms of testimony and evaluation that you will include in your portfolio as demonstrable evidence of learning. Please attach these.

Written evaluation by Patricia S. Sutton MSW

Central Staff Advisor’s comments:

I see in this a first indication of how it began to come together for Ed leading to his coming to Antioch.

Central Staff Advisor’s signature ___________Date 3/17/76

 

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Evaluator: Patricia S. Sutton MSW

1. A brief self-description: your relationship with the student relative to this learning experience; professional and/or academic qualifications. You may attach a resume.

I am a 47 year old woman who was married for 20 years and who has raised four children. I have a BA in Psychology from the University of Michigan, and a Master’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Southern California. I spent 6 ½ years in Psycho-analysis at least three hours per week. I am a Licensed Clinical Social Workers with a private practice, and I work at Olive View Hospital, in the Psychiatric Emergency Service, doing crisis intervention, and on-going psychotherapy. I have known Ed Levin as a client in therapy with me since June, 1973.

2. Describe the student’s learning in this experience. Mention observable growth, skill development, information mastery, aesthetic sensibility, or other evidence of acquired learning. Use the back of this sheet if necessary.

When Ed began therapy with me, he appeared to feel isolated, afraid of intimacy even hostile towards it, and extremely sad much of the time. He saw life as a series of unnerving choices, all of which involved great loss for him. He seemed almost totally unaware of his great charm, his gentleness, his strength, and the power of his own thrust to be in the world. His obvious intelligence was often used to alienate himself and frustrate his attempts at communication.

During individual therapy, Ed moved more and more towards a relaxed posture in his relationships with others. He tolerated more objective, open discussion of his feelings, and became less judgmental towards himself. We both watched when he became hostile when intimacy was a possibility, and we watched this hostility slowly decrease. He began to expect acceptance from others, as he became more self-accepting. He made decisions in his life which confirmed over and over that he was strong, and that the options he had were opportunities for self-exploration, and not problems which had to be solved in a self-depriving way. He moved away from viewing himself as dependent, and somewhat undesirable, into a space where he saw himself much more as independent, and a gift to those who knew him. He gained a growing awareness of his own internal emotional processes, and an appreciation for his complexity. He seemed ready to be in a group if he wanted to.