OH NO THREE DAYS IN A ROW!

Back to the therapists as some things need further clarification:

Psychotherapist Corkish: Hullo Alan; we have about 50 minutes today; it’s your time so use it as you will.

Corkish: OK; thanks. I wrote our last session up on my blog, you know, on the internet. Then when I seen it in print it didn’t look quite right. Did you by any chance read it?

Psychotherapist Corkish: Actually I did.

Corkish: Really? Ha ha ha; so there is someone ‘out there’. How did it read to you?

Psychotherapist Corkish: It sounds as though it is important to you that it is being read by someone. And when you ask ‘How did it read to you’ that suggests that there could be different ways of reading what you have written.

Corkish: Well yes; I’m a writer and I’m very aware that anything written down can be interpreted differently by different people depending on their own perspective and their experience. What has happened to them in their lives ‘shapes’ how they react to the written word. As for it being important that it is read ‘externally’ as it were, I’m not so sure about that. In many ways this is just me getting my own head clear.

Psychotherapist Corkish: In that case it may well help you if I honestly tell you how it could possibly be read. Do you think that would help?

Corkish: Oh hell yes; I’d appreciate an honest look at another angle.

Psychotherapist Corkish: This is not necessarily my own opinion but it is a way or seeing perhaps. I could be read as stating, in a nutshell, that the writer condones illicit drug taking and sexual contact with minors?

Corkish: Oh FUCK! I’m advocating paedophilia?! Ha ha ha… mmm, need to think about that.

(Long silence)

Corkish: I suppose it could be read like that. I’m wondering if such a thought disturbs me and I guess it does. A little. I’m thinking it may all be a matter of phraseology and that what I am about to say sounds like an excuse.

Psychotherapist Corkish: It may help if you speak your thoughts, just as they surface, you may then ‘hear’ things differently.

Corkish: OK. I guess what I am thinking is that both ‘dilemmas’ are actually one dilemma. What my own morality tells me is that anyone has a right to do as they like with their own body. If you for example want to snort cocaine or pop the odd E who am I to make a judgement that you shouldn’t? And the same goes for your love-life and/or your sex-life. You’re about my age right? And how can you control who you fall in love with or are sexually attracted to? If you announce to the world that you are in love with a 30 year old woman people would probably mutter; ‘God he’s nearly twice her age.’ And I’d immediately say; ‘So fucking what?’

Psychotherapist Corkish: I’m hearing you say that in your moral opinion people should be free to do as they will with their own bodies. Do I have that right? Shoot me down if I’m on the wrong track.

Corkish: Mmmm; when you say it back I begin to pick holes in the statement immediately. I was about to expand and say that if you announced you were in love with a 15 year old girl, or boy for that matter, people would not only mutter; ‘God he’s nearly four times her/his age’ they’d also be ringing the police to have you arrested. And would I then be saying, if you were in love with a human being who is so young; ‘So fucking what?’

(Long silence)

Corkish: Thanks for not interrupting there; I was away somewhere else arguing internally... I have surfaced with a feeling that it’s all to do with how mature or immature each individual is. I was a teacher for close to 20 years and during that time I was mainly teaching kids aged between 11 and 18. I can tell you that there were some 14 year olds who were certainly mature enough to make their own decisions with regard to what they did to their bodies, and they did. But there were also some kids as old as 18 who were, in my opinion, still too immature to even know when it was safe to cross the road. But then I was faced with a horrible dilemma; who was I to interfere? What right did I have to impose my own morality upon them? To decide whether I judged them to be mature or immature? I did make such ‘observations’ or framed ‘opinions’ as to their fitness to make certain decisions I know that. But I don’t think I ever turned my opinions into any kind of actions. Mmmm; I guess the key word there is ‘impose’. I have my own moral view-point and I’ll defend it strongly but I would never impose it upon anyone. How could I?

Psychotherapist Corkish: So if I make a moral decision to take illicit drugs or to have illicit sexual contact with a minor you seem to be saying; that is my decision.

Corkish: Well not just your decision obviously. As regards sex you can’t ‘decide’ to have sex with someone; it has to be a mutual decision or it becomes rape and that is clearly unacceptable. Even with illicit drugs someone else usually has to decide whether or not to supply you and again it would be wrong for someone to say; spike your drink with E or whatever. That was how it was with that old-flame of mine whom I spoke to you about at the last session actually; I mean she didn’t have any contacts but she wanted the drug. I had the contacts. I am very well aware that taking the drug she desired, it was just weed actually, marijuana, controlled and alleviated her urge to drink alcohol. That was what she said anyway and I had no reason to disbelieve her. And I had seen her when she was alcohol dependent and it was horrible; it near killed her. So I had to decide whether or not I would either get her some dope or pass to her the phone number of a dealer. I had to decide. No one else could do that for me. I honestly didn’t have any problems with that; I actually got her some stuff myself and passed it on.

Psychotherapist Corkish: You made a moral decision; based on all the information you had, to break the law?

Corkish: Yes I did. And had no problems with it. I think it was equally easy with regard to Beth and Pete. I sure as hell wasn’t going to interfere with their own moral decisions, I wasn’t going to have the perv-police banging on Pete’s door and arresting him because he had fallen in love with a person whom the law says was not old enough to have sex. That never even entered my head and I look upon people who would pass such judgements as being lower-than-the-lowest. But then I have to consider where would I draw the line? I mean if she had been 14? Or 13? Or 6!? I mean can a six year old decide what is to be done with his or her own body?

Psychotherapist Corkish: In all this I see you wrestling with two opposites; on the one hand you don’t feel that as far as moral decisions are concerned you have a right to interfere but on the other hand, when it gets to realities, and then you mention a child of 6, then your own certainties begin to waver. You take an opposite point of view. Have I got that right?

Corkish: Yes and no. But it’s becoming clearer. When I look at any six year old my brain tells me that it would damage that child to snort coke or to have any kind of sexual encounter. But the problem surfaces in my mind as a kind of absurdity when we have ‘borderline’ cases. Ha ha ha; imagine this scenario. One of my own daughters was born at just after midnight. Imagine on the eve of her sixteenth birthday she decides to have sex with her English teacher, so they go to bed at 11.30 of an evening and lie there waiting for it to be just after midnight before they do the deed! Ha ha ha; it’s absurd isn’t it? At midnight ‘the Law’ says ‘Too immature’ and one minute later ‘the Law’ says; ‘Fine; go to it’! Ha ha ha ha She could equally well become pregnant or catch some STD when she is one minute older couldn’t she? And then I hear a voice saying to me; ‘This is sophism Corkish; the Law is there to protect minors’ and of course that is true but I also hear myself arguing back that ‘The Law is a fucking ass! It can not under any circumstances rule on moral decisions!’

Psychotherapist Corkish: A kind of monkey talk. We’ve spoken about this in the past.

Corkish: Yes, that mindless chatter that goes on eternally inside everyone’s head. And it is partially that but I think it sounds more like a real debate, not ‘chatter’. To me at least it is an absurdity which I will have no part of. I will not judge other human-beings and make a ruling, by inserting an age-limit in the case of sex or an arbitrary and often hypocritical decision in the case of drugs that such-and-such an activity is not to be undertaken because ‘the Law’ says you mustn’t. I mean in the case of drugs for Christ’s sake; alcohol is the real killer. The media whinges on about E and Coke and Heroin deaths while every week more people die of alcohol consumption than have ever died in totality from so-called illegal drugs. The hypocrisy of some Judge sentencing a heroin addict to prison as he sips at his gin-and-tonic just infuriates me!

Psychotherapist Corkish: Again I just want to be sure that I am with you. You seem to be saying, and please tell me if I haven’t got this right, you seem to be saying that each individual has a right to make their own moral decisions insofar as they themselves are concerned?

Corkish: That sounds about right. I make my moral decisions. You make yours. And never the twain shall meet. Or more correctly; never the one shall interfere with the other. I guess that sounds a bit like anarchy eh? Do what you feel is right and fuck ‘the Law’? Hmmm; maybe that’s it, maybe I’ve woven my way through the Liberals as a kid, to the Labour Party briefly, to the Communist party as a mature human-being and now, in ripe age, I’m a bloody anarchist ha ha ha.

Psychotherapist Corkish: All that you have been politically in the past has led you to where you are now? Is that it?

Corkish: Yep. That’s it. In the same way that all that happened to me as a child, the depravation, the poverty, the abuse, led me to where I am now. Everything shaped me to be me and I, and I alone, am responsible for who I am now and what I do now. I make my own decisions to take a bit of recreational substances when I feel like it and if I ever fall in love with someone whom society judges to be ‘too young’ or whom ‘the Law’ says to be ‘immature’ it is I who will decide how to progress. Me. Me is responsible for Me. Not good English but the correct conclusion. What do you think?

Psychotherapist Corkish: I think that our time is very nearly up. How are you feeling right now?

Corkish: I was going to beam at you then and say ‘Never felt better’. But there is still a niggling part of that damned monkey-chatter which says; ‘You’d better go over that again Corkish; many people will find it dodgy logic’ ha ha ha. But for now I’ll live with that. I’m getting there. Thanks as always for not judging me.