Blindfold

By Zita Weber

It’s 1969 and Madeleine ‘Maddie’ Kramer is a young singer, who after experiencing a nervous breakdown, finds herself in an experimental psychiatric facility. Her life is out of control and Dr. Knight, her charismatic psychiatrist, promises to help her heal. As their relationship develops, boundaries are crossed and professional and personal trust is betrayed. Can Maddie survive the deep sleep coma therapy and will Harry Knight get away with his abuse? Both patient and psychiatrist get caught up in a game where there are no winners and their behavior leads to dire consequences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zita Weber
• Release date: Sep 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301167272

Zita Weber

Dr. Zita Weber PhD is an experienced therapist, counselor and academic who specializes in grief and loss, women and depression, relationships and sexuality. She is the author of Back from the Blues, Out of the Blues, Good Grief, Skills for Human Service Practice, The Best Years of a Woman's Life, Unfaithfully Yours and Sex for Sale.

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Afterwards

Often, afterwards, I watch the film again, trying to make sense of it. But what shall I say about that experience? There is loneliness in having lived through an extreme experience. It doesn’t necessarily put you in touch with other people. Just as they move forward to comfort you and then back to protect themselves from your trauma, you think you want to open up and unload but really you go back into yourself and reflect. Nobody else knows the moment like you do. The moment you might have screamed out and ended the questioning about your life for all time. It’s hard to understand something like that from the outside.

For some of us there are unknown and unnamed horrors and for others of us the horrors are only too tangible and real. Our minds can become our enemy. We might wish to master the thought, the feeling, to argue them into logical submission. Analyse them out of existence.

There are questions in my mind that I haven’t yet asked. Had it not been for this experience, I might not have pursued them. I might have remained a woman with far less insight into my inner world.

When I met him, he said that our relationship would be firmly based in the reality of the everyday world, yet suspend reality enough so that I could explore myself and take emotional risks in a way I had never before dared. Within this relationship, he listens to my communications and assimilates the messages to discover something new and illuminating. He said that an effective therapeutic relationship is based on a foundation of trust. Trust is the cornerstone of therapy.

I felt we were a duo trapeze artist act. One of us was hurtling through the air and the other a catcher on the second trapeze swing. But only the catcher is trained and practised at his art. You hope that the connections are made at the right moment and that the performer flying through the air is caught before falling. But really, it shouldn’t be about hope and chance – these should play very small roles in the circus performance of therapy. The client should never feel they are flying unskilled although sometimes I felt I’d flown with the additional handicap of performing blindfolded.

Therapy is a risky field that relies heavily on training, practice and sensitivity.

He told me that we live in both internal and external worlds, and if the two are in harmony, we have no problems. If they are not, we suffer conflict and confusion.

What is therapy? I learned it was based on a relationship in which the healing comes from giving ear to the deepest hurts and maladies of the mind. Client and therapist must collaborate in the healing process, but without an agenda, without a map. Imagine a path strewn with blind alleys, steep uphill climbs and some stumbling. But when it works, the experience is so powerful that all the unpleasantness along the way seems worth it.

From the beginning of our relationship, I felt ease in the flow of our conversations. Much later, I would look back on those relaxed times and wonder at the comfort we had with each other. There is something sinister about our frivolity, in retrospect. Towards the end of our relationship there was no balance in our interactions, only traps and awkward turns. We each try to call back our last remark. We had leapt across boundaries without a backward glance. Those early leaps began to catch up with us.

Like the huge mushroom that Alice tasted in Wonderland, the more I had of his remedy the smaller I grew. No matter what the price, I was willing to pay for it.

With the wisdom of hindsight, I understand that the endeavour was difficult and dangerous. I can see that I had entered into a relationship, which, being human, must be flawed. Each of us is limited by our perceptions and biases.

1

Overhead the flat expanse of sunny blue sky mocks the mad spectacle of blindfolded captives working in perfect harmony to achieve trust. My partner’s beefy L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E tattooed fingers fumble with the red cloth.

Blindfolded, we must learn to trust. Dr. Knight, aka Dr. God, believes this is an important exercise. Dr. Knight is in charge of this place.

Blindfold me. Lead me. I trust you.

Scents and sounds are magnified. I am aware of a faint sound, like that of the rustling of silk behind me. The bird’s song has stopped. It’s funny how the bird becomes intensely present in its silence.

Footsteps approach lazily. There are whispers, stifled laughter and moments of silence. I ask Ray to tell me what’s happening.

A long moment of silence.

‘What’s happening Ray?’

Can I trust a partner who thinks he’s Jesus? Ray told us this in small group yesterday, I am the Messiah, chosen by God to change the world in which we live. Immediately he was challenged, but Nancy backed him up, saying, you can buy a badge that says, Jesus lives.

Can I trust a man whose memory is so vague, a man who’s been living in his imagination for a long time? He has a habit of dragging both hands through his long hair as if he could pull out the answers he needs. A man who sits and stares most of the time. A man who sits so still, it’s unnerving. Ray looks at his most comfortable when he sits back, his long, dark beard splayed across his chest and his hands clasped across it. His body is dense and compact, reminding me of stone. Ray has a scar on his cheek. It’s a scar that doesn’t fit his face. It’s minute. Ray should have a long, deep, raised scar.

He tells us how frightening schizophrenia can be. Suddenly plunged into an isolated nightmarish world of terrifying experiences can mean you end up reacting with terror, or maybe panic, aggression or despair. Ray has experienced such destructive urges that he says he threatened the people who love him, and he’s been depressed enough to make several attempts on his life. Confusing thoughts and strange behaviour have built what he calls a glass wall between him and his mother. His preoccupation with his inner life has meant that he can’t sustain a loving relationship with anyone. He says that generally, it’s not nice hearing voices – they’re pretty critical.

Can I trust a man who’s tried every known chemical substance? He’s encyclopedic in his knowledge. His special brand of drug pleasure is d-lysergic acid diethylamide. He talks about bad trips that lasted for months and the ‘It can fly you to the moon, man’ good trips. LSD is a colourless, odourless, tasteless substance often applied to the back of an envelope or a postage stamp – one lick and you’ve got yourself an ‘experience’. LSD can be supplied in sugar cubes, capsules, tablets, liquid, or practically any other form. The usual dose is between one hundred and two hundred micrograms. He gives a startling fact: ‘You know, you can put enough LSD in an eye-dropper to turn on, or provide an LSD experience to 10,000 people.’ Ray confides that there is no known lethal dose for humans, or known overdose. But he’d read that a tragic fatality occurred when researchers in Oklahoma calculated the dose of LSD on the elephant’s massive body weight instead of its tiny brain weight.

Then, without missing a beat, Ray asks, ‘Is the mind independent of the brain?’ and when no-one responds he continues, ‘Have I reached a psychiatric Everest? Maybe it’s a mirage or maybe it’s a mountain, what do you think?’

Crucial questions. Impossible questions.

In silence and darkness, I have doubts about this trust exercise. I must not give way to dark thoughts. I must stay calm.

My fear amuses him.

‘Don’t you trust me?’

I feel Ray’s arm brushing against my leg. I hear the sound of his breathing. Suddenly I want to cry. Free from chemical interference, my thoughts, both wanted and unwanted, present themselves full force in my cleared mind.

I feel his breath on my hair and his urgent whisper, ‘It’s not the blindfold that’s dangerous. It’s the earphones. Beware the earphones. People don’t know what they don’t know. And those who do aren’t allowed to say.’

Another voice.

‘Time’s up. You can change roles now, the partner who was leading will be led,’ Jane’s says. Jane, our group therapist, reminds me of Joan Baez, with her calm voice, her dreamy look and long straight black hair. Jane is always telling us ‘to connect’.

Connect. Trust.

Jane delivers Dr. Knight’s message: we need connection in our lives. Connection means we are involved and not watching experiences from the sidelines. Our lives