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Schizophrenics may tell you that they have phobias. But like the guy with a phobia of
making pictures of himself, they may have phobias of cinemas and televisions. This kind
of blows away any notion of the standard double dissociation approach and places a great
need of flexibility upon the practitioner.
I got this lady to make movies of how she would be when she didn't have the phobia and
how she would like to behave. Then I made her tell me endlessly over and over and over
again of how she would be when she finally had received help for her phobia. I kept this
up until she finally lost her temper with me and got up to leave. I immediately switched
back into the role of a therapist.
Her paradox was matched with the non-mirror image reverse, because I was acting in the
frame of being her therapist and yet simultaneously, I was not being her therapist.
Maintaining her anger at me, I asked her how specifically I could help her with her
phobia, thus switching role into that of therapist. Her role was now of being assertive
("I'M LEAVING!!") rather than that of the helpless screaming wreck that she had
behaved like previously.
On these spontaneity-paradox themes, Watzlawick and crew give the following great example:
A headmaster announces that to his pupils that there will be an unexpected
examination during the next week, i.e., on any day from Monday mrough to
Friday. The students - who seem to be an unusually sophisticated bunch -
point out to him that unless he violates the terms of his own announcement
and does not intend to give an unexpected examination some time next week,
there can be no such examination. For, they argue, if no examination has been
held by Thursday evening, then it cannot be held unexpectedly on Friday,
since Friday would be the only day left. But if Friday can be ruled out as the
possible examination day, Thursday can be ruled out for the same reason.
Obviously, on Wednesday evening there would be only two days left:
Thursday and Friday. Friday, as already shown, can be ruled out. This leaves
only Thursday, so that an examination held on Thursday would no longer be
unexpected. By the same reasoning of course, Wednesday, Tuesday and
eventually also Monday can be eliminated: There can be no unexpected
examination. It may be assumed that the headmaster listens to their 'proof in
silence and then, on, say, Thursday morning holds the examination. From the
very moment of his announcement he had planned to hold it on that morning.
They, on the other hand, are now faced with a totally unexpected examination
- unexpected for the very reason that they had convinced themselves that it
could not be unexpected.
The recursive paradoxical logic that follows here is something that occurs regularly in
the behaviour of the schizophrenic (but is by no means unique to this 'condition'). One
man, a 'chronic paranoid-schizophrenic' became convinced during the course my first
session with him that I could read his thoughts. What was in fact happening was that
rapport was well developed and he was exaggerated with his analogue marking that
made following his process easy.
Thus he found himself in an interesting bind. He didn't want to think his thoughts 'too
loudly' in case I would 'overhear' something he wished to keep private. However, how
could he keep these things private unless he thought of what they were first?
Rapport could have been lost. Traditionally, the practitioner would have performed some
'reality orientation' and attempted to bring the client back on track. However, I knew that
if I denied that I could read his thoughts, then I would be negating the phenomena he was
experiencing, thus denying the evidence of his senses.
How would he have made sense of that information?
Experience suggested to me that he would either construct a belief/delusion in order to
explain his experience (like the tribal notion: "If we kill some goats, the volcano God
will be nice to us") or would rapidly experience some schizophrenic overwhelm.
Neither experience would have been useful for the outcomes that I was intending.
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