Someone introduced me to a concept of ratlifting this week, which may be of interest to you. I ve always denigrated the rats and statistics way of teaching psychology, of applying a scientific approach to the study of the human spirit. I see that as an impossible task, like squaring a circle; for each soul is unique, and science seeks to measure what is verifiable and repeatable, a search for the lowest common denominator.
I m generalising wildly here; and acknowledge that my anarchic tendency to distrust scientific method is based on some sort of dandified artistic principle. I despise the tendency that the medical establishment has of categorising and pathologising people and their experiences. I know too many people who've been treated for their homosexuality, by medication or ECT, to trust that the method that resulted in such barbaric treatment has any value. An unscientific conclusion, I know. But based on hard evidence, unfortunately.
There are some brilliant mainstream scientific thinkers in the mental health field, who are amazed by the extraordinary variety of human beings, and seek to understand the workings of the mind in the spirit of true experiment, where nothing has to be proved, just investigated; like explorers in a strange land, noting what they see, and marvelling. It s just that there seem to be so few of them around in the public health system; the main tendency seems to be to manage and contain the troublesome cases by pumping them full of drugs, and ignore their stories, the reasons why life has become unmanageable or distressing for them in the first place. For there is usually a story, and the reason, although sometimes irrational, and most probably uncategorisable, but involving trauma in one way or another, is nevertheless powerful enough to cause a lot of pain in later life.
But back to the concept of ratlifting. The story is apocryphal, but you get the picture. Imagine, if you will, even if it hurts, some rats in a maze. These rats have discovered, through bitter experience, that if they go down one tunnel in particular, they will get an electric shock. Their neural pathways have registered that this path is dangerous, and so they never go down there. Even if the electricity is turned off, and all sorts of goodies are placed at the end of the tunnel, the rats refuse to go down it.
So, with the electricity off, the rats are lifted through the tunnel by the scientists, to experience not being shocked, and to enjoy the reward at the end. The story is that each rat needs, on average, to be lifted through 23 times before the message sinks in, that it is safe to risk going for the goodies.
The woman who was telling me this story is a gestalt therapist. I don't propose to describe gestalt therapy here, you can go buy a book. I'm a fan, though. At the heart of gestalt theory there is an aesthetic appreciation of our lives, our stories, not a scientific law; the aim of the therapy is to be furiously and peacefully original, following our own unique path business as unusual . She said that in a funny way, therapists are like ratlifters; supporting their clients to go down into tunnels that used to be incredibly frightening, but now hold treasure at the end. It s just a case of doing it often enough.
There are many of us who, like those rats, stop ourselves going down rich avenues for fear of getting hurt. We can tell ourselves that we won t die, that we will survive if we say how we really feel, or we stand up for ourselves, or we walk away from abusive relationships; but logic alone doesn't do it, reading all the self-help books on the shelf doesn t do it. It s a question of practising it, in big ways or little tiny ways, before we can trust that we won t feel like dying, as we did before.
Declaring our feelings when we are young can be like this, especially if we re boys; for boys can experience real and often physical hostility if they express anything other than boisterous bluff; talking about feelings becomes one of those electric-shock tunnels down which we learn not to go. (And, if those feelings are of attraction or love for another boy, then that lesson is learned swiftly and brutally.)
Unless we grow up in an environment where it seems safe enough to do so, most men lack the practice to talk about their feelings. Often women have to act as ratlifters to the men in their lives, insisting on their talking about how they feel until the men realise that it's safe to do so; although often they will only talk to their wives or girlfriends about their feelings, and stay with pubtalk with their male friends.
Gay men are often the world s worst, for all the fact that so many of us are skinlessly sensitive; there is not much ratlifting going on in the gay bars of this world.
Finding a place, or person, to practice talking about emotions, such as rage or grief or sadness or joy is very hard, no matter who or where you are in the world. But gay men, enduring the pernicious effects of homophobia, most especially from the schoolyard, and the persistent shock of AIDS, are still not talking enough about how it feels, in my opinion, and are bottling it all up, still refusing to go down that tunnel, because the old story still has power: that revealing true feelings results in painful isolation and rejection. It s not true, but it feels like it. And without listening to each other s feelings, we miss the whole human being, and only see the surface, the body, the sex object. And so we stay isolated, and in a funny way still feel rejected, because we haven t been really seen, inside.
I ve been lucky enough (or wise enough) to have been ratlifted over the past few years by various people, and I'm beginning to trust that I can go down some rather pleasant tunnels now, without being zapped. Thanks, rats.