TRANSCRIPT
I would like to share something that I love to do, and I think it’s kind of unusual, or the degree to which I love it is kind of unusual. That is, when I am getting to know someone well, often when I really like them a lot, often when I actually even when I really do know them well, I love to look at pictures of their childhood. Photographs of their childhood, I love to look at photographs of what their face looked like as a child. I like to look at photographs of their family. I like to look at photographs of their family constellations, their extended family. I like to look at how their body language was, what they were wearing, what they were doing, the expression on their parents’ faces, their siblings’ faces. I like to put together all the dynamics of what was going on, even though it could be an old photograph from 50, 60, 70, 80 years ago, to turn it into a little movie and to try to analyze what’s going on and to do it with them. To have them point out everything that they know, and to me, it is a fascinating process.
It’s like this is one could say this is the therapist side of me. This is like being a psychologist in a world of photographs. But to me, it’s also like, I don’t know, sometimes therapy, psychology, all this can, it’s become such a perverse world and an industry that there’s so much about it I don’t like. In many ways, I prefer to think of myself as an anthropologist of the individual, an anthropologist of humanity. And photographs are just so amazing to look at people, to see what I can learn. It stimulates my mind and to bounce off what they’ve told me about themselves with what I’m seeing, to reflect on both things.
Many people want, especially friends of mine, people I knew, and this happened as a therapist to me as often as people who I was working with would participate in it. I’d say, bring in your photographs if you wish. I want to study this. I want to look at it. A lot of times people are like, well, why do you want to do that? That’s weird. And sometimes, though, they would even bring in one and they could realize there was value in this. Sometimes people would just spend whole sessions, I want to bring in a couple of photographs. I don’t want to say anything. I just want you to analyze it. I want you to tell me what you see and what you feel based on what you know about me. I won’t even tell you who these people are. And for me, it’s like, okay, there could be a game element in that, but there could be also an element where I would just say, I don’t know, but this is what I see. This is what it feels like to me. This is the body language that I see, and that could be very helpful to people.
But for me, it was just more like satisfying some level of my personal interest such that I want to do this with anyone I’m starting to get to know or know really well. And it’s especially exciting if I do know somebody really well, especially if I really love them. Or even if I don’t, like there’s something about them I maybe I’m not drawn to. But still, sometimes actually if I’m not drawn to someone, there’s something about them that they maybe they don’t like me or they’re rude to me or they’re harsh with me or there’s just we don’t get along or I’m really not drawn to certain parts of their personality. I still like looking at their background. I still like looking at their childhood pictures, their family constellation. And often what I find is after looking at those pictures, I start liking them more because I start having empathy for the child that they were.
Some of my most precious possessions in my life are my childhood pictures, especially the pictures of me interacting in my family. Seeing what I went through, seeing the rejection, seeing how I was different, how I was alive and spirited in a world that couldn’t accept me. A lot of these pictures have people in them that I can’t share publicly, otherwise I would put them on the internet. I would put them on this YouTube video. Pretty much I only put up videos, I only put up pictures of myself, my childhood pictures of just me. Sometimes even the expression of just me captures a lot, but the interactions are really where it’s at.
But I think of myself as when I was a therapist and how so many clients of mine said it. I could feel it, how incredibly useful it was to look at these pictures and how really sometimes the picture is worth a thousand words, or sometimes a thousand words are worth the beauty of a thousand words. But this picture shares it at a different language from a different angle. It’s like shining a light with different shadows on this scenario. Sometimes there’s so much to be mined, so much truth to be gathered from these photographs. And for me, it’s like also looking at pictures of myself sometimes challenged my self-conceptions about what was going on. And I’ve seen that with other people too. Sometimes when I’ve looked at the pictures, it contrasts with what they’ve told me about themselves and their lives.
And sometimes this is a real way to highlight, well, these are areas where you may be still out of touch. Like, it’s obvious in this picture that you don’t want your father to touch you. I mean, maybe you were just in a bad mood or maybe you were feeling sick, but look, here are five different pictures where your father is holding you or trying to touch you. And in every single picture, you’re doing this or this or this, and he doesn’t look like he even notices that you’re uncomfortable. And here you said you had such a close relationship with your father, so I’m wondering how does this mesh? I don’t necessarily know what it means. Maybe these five pictures just captured something that’s random or arbitrary, but maybe it is significant. Things like this often, it could really bear fruit.
And often I didn’t say things like that, certainly with friends. Even if people want me to analyze me, analyze me, look at my pictures, look at my life, I was like, I don’t want to do that. I don’t, those are weird boundaries. These are boundaries sometimes that are held better in a therapeutic relationship with real confidentiality, with a formality, with one person taking the role of therapist, not too equal. Sometimes it can be weird, but that doesn’t mean that I still don’t love looking at photographs. And I really think fundamentally, most especially looking at the photographs of my own childhood and analyzing them so that I can figure myself out better, so that I can optimally work out what happened to me and evolve.