A White Sheet and Eye Test

Many hear about a course that I took at Berkeley at Yale that seems to have no relevance to everyday life and what you and your friend or mate may believe about the world and your attitude in it. The course is Phenomenology, a study of perception, that was originated with the thinking of a Frenchman, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. I am looking at his seminal book on the subject on my home office bookshelf. He studied the importance of how we see things in the world and one another. Obviously, we see things with our eyes, but blind people see life in another way turning their mind into an eye that can perceive as well as the sighted. They have an advantage of heightened senses such as hearing, etc.

There are two exercises that can tell you about how you see the world. First, get out a piece of white paper and place it on a flat surface. Put a dot in the middle and look around a little and return to viewing the sheet. What do you see? People are split on the answer to this question. Some see a dot. Others see a white page. What did you see? That would be my question to you if we were performing this exercise together. There is no right or wrong answer.

Most people will say, “I saw a dot!” But there are those who say. “I see a white sheet of paper!” If you see the dot as time, you can conclude that you see your problems as the biggest part of your life when in fact they represent a small amount of gratitude that is expressed in the view of the whole white sheet. It puts to seeing just a little in life to be grateful for whereas those who see the whole sheet of paper experience as a lot of gratitude. That is not the end of the exercise but the beginning of a possible rich discussion. What are the problems that make up your life compared to everything that you may take for granted but should be grateful for.

There is an eye test that can make a difference in your life. It is usually given unfortunately to older people who may be at risk for glaucoma, a disease where your peripheral vision is gradually reduced caused by eye pressure on the optic nerve. If caught early enough, the simple cure is eye drops of various strengths. The test is the visual fields where you are in a darkened area and you must always focus on the black dot in the middle of the screen or field. At various times lights flash. Some are closer to the black dot, but others move out to the periphery of what you can see by keeping your focus on the black dot. With each sighting of the light which blinks and moves around in random ways as well as with different brightness. You push in on a control that identifies when you see the blinking light. There are also random sounds that are given so that you can’t game the system.

Each of us has a blind spot which is an area that no matter what, we can’t see. I am so competitive that I always try to find the spot during the test, but no one can ever find it as a printout is made and you can see exactly how much of your peripheral vision could take in, but the blind space is also pointed out. Why is this important? It is analogous to our psychological make up. There are just things that we can’t see about our behavior and attitudes unless they are pointed out. Even after you know your liabilities in how you see yourself or how you come across to others, you can reduce it through insight which is the best you can do.

It’s not until you see it for yourself that you can be helpful to yourself and others. It’s why one of the first things that they did for me and my classmates at Duke Medical Center to help us counsel others was everyone had to be in  individual therapy once a week and in group therapy several times a week. Sometimes the group work was loaded with anger or tears as a hard truth about how we came across was pointed out to us. It is required that our counseling had to be supervised by video and written reports recapturing each comment of a session much like an actor must remember all his or her lines.

There is a biblical story about a therapeutic exchange. David wanted Bathsheba to be his wife after viewing her naked from a balcony, but she was married to Uriah, a devoted soldier of David. David put Uriah in the front of the battle where he knew that he would be killed. His prophet, Nathan, perhaps the first therapist, went to David, a powerful king and told him a story about a rich man who took a sheep of a poor man. Nathan asked, “David, what should I do to that rich man?” David replied, “He should be killed.” Nathan said, “David, you are the man!” Psalm 51 is the psalm where Daivd asks for forgiveness.

I had a host of therapists who I used to help EA students and families deal with the stresses of life including the pressure of EA. I always chose people who people indicated to me that they had a great experience of healing from an individual. I could care less where they went to school or how many degrees they had or what courses they took. In fact, even if they were helpful to someone to whom I referred them, there was one thing that I wanted to know. It was how much supervision they had of their counseling. The supervisor should be just like Nathan.