Witness my Life: A Psychotherapist Journey to Healing
Why is it that people participate in research?
A new method of recording and documenting perspectives from
a community perspective, called photovoice, has started generating interesting
results. Photovoice is where community members are provided with a camera,
video or voice recorder to document events at the community level. Photovoice
was developed in 1992–by Caroline Wang of the University of Michigan, and Mary
Ann Burris, at Women's Health at the Ford Foundation, Beijing, China--for rural
women in Yunnan Province, China to advocate for new policies and programs. This
method has been producing some amazing documentaries on homelessness among
teenagers, illegal drug trade, as well as images of dementia. And the
motivation for participating in this kind of documentation is that it seems we
want someone to be a witness to our life. Not to judge it, or even be part of
it, but just to witness our trials and tribulations. Perhaps an affirmation,
that because someone sees our lives nearly as close to as we experience them, that
somehow, then, we matter. Perhaps it is seen as some form of non-judgmental
validation. All of those screaming social network sites are but another
expression of this desire for others to witness our lives. In this case of witnessing, it is a form of benevolent
narcissism.
Albert Camus wrote about this in 1956, in one of his most
understated novels, The Fall. This story tells of a confession to a stranger.
It takes place in a bar called Mexico City in Amsterdam, by the protagonist of
the story Jean-Baptiste Clamence. From his success as a wealthy Parisian
defense lawyer culminating on an unidentified crisis which brings about a vague
fall from grace. After making some broad and general confession to a stranger
in a bar, Jean-Baptiste Clamence ventures out into the night one last time. We
are meant to assume that his last act is suicide. Jumping off one of the may
bridges in Amsterdam. But the point of the novel is that the only way to bring
meaning to the suffering of living, without a god, without objective truth is
if there is some recognition that we exist.
Jean-Baptiste Clamence’s confidant, an unknown character, becomes
his final witness to his life. The Fall was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in
Literature and was Camus’ final piece of fiction until he died in a car crash.
The book’s complexity allows for different interpretations and for me it has
been the fact that we are ultimately responsible for everything. By your
activity or inactivity, we choose to support an outcome. But such an
interpretation is too shallow for a deeply complex and ambivalent story. We might be responsible for our actions, but then
there is no morality to pass final judgement. Our final judgement is to have a
witness. Good or bad actions do not matter if there is no one to witness it.
Maria Arman with the Karolinska Institutet in Solna,
Stockholm, Sweden, in her book, Bearing
witness: An existential position in caring has one of the closest meaning
to this interpretation of witness. That witnessing is part of the definition of
who we are. As social beings, our awareness of self is influenced (if not
completely defined) by what and how we think others are defining us. A basic assumption in caring, or being
empathic is to be present for the other person. To bear witness for someone, to
share their awareness is to share their burden. But there is more to
witnessing, because by sharing an awareness you are affirming their journey
through life.
The philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas defines an encounter with
another person as a privileged experience. The proximity of the other person is
the acknowledgement of being real. In a world where images are held as real,
and truth is negotiated, the idea that I matter is a consoling balm on the rawness
of my ever changing world.
To be a witness you share a physical space and experience
the same perspective with another person. You share, verbally, emotionally or
spatially a mutual reality. There is a convergence where you become the other
person as much they become you. This is the healing of witnessing. Developing
such a relationship is a willful act on your part. Witnessing is an affirmation
that we have passed through life. No judgment about good or bad outcomes. There
is a validation of my presence, and my journey. A memorable tune, a remembered
story, a shared intimacy. All experiences that when witnessed can assert my
place in this world. That although there might be nothing else but my
experiences, that for one brief moment, that internal and closed trove has been
acknowledged.
Isn’t this what psychotherapy is all about? If Sigmund Freud
in 1905, the father of psychotherapy, was not so misguided as to suggest that because
learning stops at age 50, older adults are not good candidates for
psychotherapy, perhaps we would be able to see the effect of witnessing in
alleviating despair. As psychotherapists try to instill trust, the experience of
witnessing remains the bedrock for affirmation of one life.
