hey guys. that book looks interesting, i might try and find that at the library :-)

i guess that with respect to self disclosure i don't mind if he discloses his thoughts / emotions etc in order to facilitate things. i don't want to hear facts about his life, however. i don't want to know his marital status or how old he is or where he lives or how many kids he has or what he ate for breakfast. well... okay... some stuff is fine. i know he used to live in sydney and that is okay i guess. but i could have done without the marital status and his wife being pregnant kind of information. to be fair i think he was telling me mostly because his time off was going to start from delivery and time of delivery is such that he couldn't tell me precisely when his month off would start. but that changed at any rate and he did end up fixing a date when his time off would start about a month beforehand. i think because he did indeed need to know this because you can't really go cancelling on clients and so he had to sort out when people were going to be booked in. i understand that he was well intentioned with that. but then he did look enthusiastic and excited about it too and yeah i think that was more about him than me... and he mentioned it every single week... and i don't know whether that was supposed to be for my benefit somehow or if he was finding it hard to contain his excitement...

i guess it is hard. i think he has been trying to show me that he is a person who is quite different from people i've known in the past. reality can kind of limit transference. maybe he was trying to help the transference not get too intense...

yeah, i need to get better at telling him what i need. i think i have done this a little more in the emails. yeah, one possibility is that he didn't receive them because of the email address thing. another possibility is that things are a lot more hectic in his life than he had supposed things would be. another possibility is that... he has no idea how to respond. that is a possibility, yeah.

with respect to the information i found online... i think he might be a bit mortified to find that the coroners report (which quotes extensively from the court hearing) is available online. i think he might be a bit mortified to find out that since he has a distinctive name when you type it into google with the double quotes and limit the search to australia first hit takes you to how much he earns and second hit takes you to the full coroners report. that there is extensive quoting of what he said in court.

he said things... about how this was deeply affecting him. about how next time someone presented similarly he would admit them even though clinically that would be the wrong thing to do. he seemed to be genuinely distressed. he didn't lose it exactly... but he was fumbling and stuff...

i'll probably tell him one day. because... it was after reading that that i got really excited about working with him. because i had wondered why on earth he choose to become so involved with the DBT program. because i figured... it was his way of making amends. you see... when he discharged this boy... he said that he had made a 'manipulative attempt to gain admission' (the boy attempted to hang himself knowing he was on 10 minute obs and knowing someone would find him and prevent him actually dying). that came up in court and he showed considerable remorse about having made such a judgemental claim...

i really don't think he judges me.

i really think he has learned not to judge. really learned. not just lip service. he has really learned that the hard way. makes sense of the interest in DBT (non judgemental stance) and the interest in self psychology (empathetic stance).

but... not for a while... i don't want him knowing that i worry about his frailty a bit in virtue of having found that. though... in a way it shows his strength too... but more to the point... the google hit mentions that there was an inquiry into whether he was guilty of misconduct. the upshot was that he was cleared completely... but that is about 50 pages into the report. how many clients would read the whole thing????? i don't think he would be happy to know it is there... and i don't want to be the one to tell him.