Rich and Tim speak to Psychotherapist, Jamie Crabb on suffering, care, and staying with what we don’t yet understand.

Summary

Messy Social Work Podcast — Episode Summary

Episode: Rich and Tim speak to Psychotherapist, Jamie Crabb on suffering, care, and staying with what we don’t yet understand
Date: April 16, 2026
Hosts: Richard Devine & Tim Fisher
Guest: Jamie Crabb, Psychotherapist
Theme: Exploring the nature of suffering, the experience and concept of care, and the importance of sitting with ambiguity and “the enigmatic” in ourselves and others.

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Episode Overview

In this rich and reflective conversation, Rich and Tim welcome psychotherapist Jamie Crabb to discuss his recent paper, "Care and Being Seen in the Presence of the Enigmatic." The episode centers on how we encounter suffering, trauma, and uncertainty—both in ourselves and in our work with others—and why genuine care often means staying with what cannot yet be understood. Drawing on psychoanalytic ideas, especially from Jean Laplanche, the conversation explores the relational, mysterious, and often unspeakable aspects of experience, and how being seen in these places is both foundational and challenging in caring professions.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Public Perception of Social Work (02:41–09:01)

• Rich’s Reflection: Rich counters the common narrative that the public has a negative perception of social work, drawing on Malcolm Payne's research:

  “Most people most of the time feel pretty favourable towards social work. The research says that people don't know a lot about it, but they do approve of the idea of an organised way of stepping in to help people with unusual or unexpected troubles.” (06:12 – Rich)

• Media Influence: The media shapes perceptions through high-profile cases, but the true public view is more nuanced and often positive.
• Professional Identity: Social workers can internalize media negativity, impacting their self-perception.

2. Introducing Jamie Crabb and His Paper (09:34–11:24)

• Jamie describes the relational and creative origins of his paper, which began as an invitation to contemplate "being seen" at Somerville College’s interfaith chapel.

3. Understanding “The Enigmatic” (11:24–15:06)

• Defining the Enigmatic:

  "The enigmatic is something that's maybe not quite known or not quite understood in ourselves and that we're trying to, in some way, understand..." (12:44 – Jamie)

• Jean Laplanche’s Radical Shift: The enigmatic is a key part of the unconscious, prompting lifelong attempts at “translation” and understanding.
• Loving the Questions:
  Jamie uses a Rainer Maria Rilke quote—“Try to love the questions themselves”—as a central theme:

  "We’re translating beings... It's like allowing ourselves to be in the exploration. Loving the question or loving the unfolding." (13:43 – Jamie)

4. Fixed Identities and the Role of Therapy (15:06–17:29)

• Discussion of how personal and social narratives can become rigid, and how therapy offers opportunities to question and “detranslate” these identities.
• Jamie: Therapy should help clients notice and loosen such rigidities, not impose fixed labels.

5. The Roots of the Enigmatic: The Freud-Laplanche Debate (18:18–25:51)

• Historical Context:

  "What Laplanche did that was really important was to say that the unconscious is relational…not just inside you." (18:20 – Jamie)

• Freud’s shift away from acknowledging external trauma to internal fantasy is connected to societal denial around child abuse.
• The importance of returning to the relational and embodied reality in therapy—listening not just to internal pathology, but also to messages received from others.

6. Childhood Messages & Enigmatic Material (27:30–30:32)

• Enigmatic Signifiers:
  Laplanche’s idea that what shapes the unconscious are "enigmatic signifiers," unconsciously transmitted messages that children cannot yet process. These can be gestures, tones, silences, etc.

  “[They] reach the child before the child has language. They demand psychic work without explaining what work is.” (28:03 – Rich, paraphrasing Jamie's paper)

7. Personal Illustration: Jamie’s Cancer Diagnosis (34:26–38:18)

• Jamie shares an experience where a nurse’s casual disregard (“Oh, he’s young. He can wait.”) triggered a deep, lingering wound:

  "The message exceeded its intention. It was not dramatic, it was subtle, but I carried it enigmatically like a tender scar." (36:32 – Jamie)

• Such moments underscore how unintentional words and actions can impact an individual’s sense of being cared for, especially for those with histories of neglect or trauma.

8. Detranslation and the Process of Healing (38:18–40:03)

• Jamie reflects on how those initial wounds can be “detranslated” over time, with care and self-reflection, recognizing that messages once felt as wounds may not carry the meaning they once did—but the importance of genuine acts of care remains.
• The concept of care is often discussed in abstract; Jamie pushes for a more substantive, relational definition, one rooted in presence and empathy.

9. The Unknowable and Narrative Gaps in Care-Experienced People (40:08–42:40)

• For those with care experience, gaps in narrative and broken relationships mean much cannot be known, shaping their behavior and sense of self.
• The importance of relational life story work, with adults supporting children and young people to make sense of their histories, rather than imposing a singular "truth."

10. Multiplicity of Stories and Interdependence (42:40–44:34)

• Honoring difference and multiplicity instead of imposing normative narratives—especially in care contexts:

  "There isn’t one truth. There’s multiple experiences." (45:14 – Jamie)

• Being part of another person's story is both a responsibility and an opportunity for genuine care.

11. On “Being Seen” (46:15–48:20)

• To be truly seen is not to be known or labeled, but to be met in one's mystery and experience, without assumptions:

  "To truly be seen is to be able to put [beliefs or thoughts] aside and create space to be with the other person." (46:51 – Jamie)

• True care means being present with another, not as expert or judge, but as companion in uncertainty.

12. Emotional Inheritance and Sitting with Uncertainty (48:20–52:54)

• Rich shares personal reflections on shame and depression as emotionally inherited experiences, feeling the pull to resolve them, and how Jamie’s work offered a new possibility:

  "This paper came at a really good time for me, because [it] made me just be a bit more okay with the experience of depression and just try and sit with the uncertainty that it generates..." (50:24 – Rich)

• Jamie:

  "How do I sit with depression?... To befriend it as something that's been present with you for a long time and...needs an arm put round it as opposed to being pushed away or medicated." (52:54 – Jamie)

13. Relational Practice: “I Am Here To See You” (53:19–56:49)

• Jamie reads the closing practice from his paper, a guided relational exercise:

  “I invite one of you to say quietly to the other, ‘I’m here to see you.’ Allow those words to rest between you. Notice what moves in your body, what remains unknown... Perhaps this is where care begins. Not in understanding, not in resolution, but in the simple, difficult act of remaining present to one another in the presence of the enigmatic...” (54:42–56:49 – Jamie)

• This practice embodies the episode’s theme: care is presence with what remains mysterious.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the challenge of social work's public image:
  “Despite [media negativity], we still have, for the most part, positive views about social work and its profession.” (07:39 – Rich)

• The essence of the enigmatic:
  “The enigmatic is something that's maybe not quite known or not quite understood in ourselves and that we're trying to, in some way, understand...” (12:44 – Jamie)

• On care:
  “Care has been stripped of its substance. We talk about care a lot…But actually, what does it mean to actually care? What does it feel like? What is the substance of care?” (39:05 – Jamie)

• On being seen:
  “To truly be seen is to be able to put those [beliefs] aside and create space to be with…the other person…in the fuzziness or the overwhelm, and not have an answer.” (46:51 – Jamie)

• On emotional inheritance and sitting with suffering:
  “Much of my attempt to resolve the feelings of shame...they weren’t necessarily mine to begin with...this paper came at a really good time for me, because [it] made me just be a bit more okay with the experience of depression and just try and sit with the uncertainty…” (50:24 – Rich)

• On remaining present in relationship:
  “Perhaps this is where care begins. Not in understanding, not in resolution, but in the simple, difficult act of remaining present to one another in the presence of the enigmatic of what we cannot fully know.” (56:42 – Jamie)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:41 — Reflection on public perceptions of social work
• 09:34 — Jamie joins the episode; introduction to his paper
• 13:43 — "Loving the questions themselves" & the notion of translation
• 18:18 — The relational, not internal, nature of the unconscious
• 29:04 — Laplanche’s enigmatic signifiers
• 34:26 — Jamie’s hospital story: the impact of casual neglect
• 38:18 — The process of “detranslation” and finding new meanings
• 46:15 — The concept of being seen without assumptions
• 53:19 — Guided relational practice: “I am here to see you”

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Conclusion

This episode offers a deep, compassionate exploration of psychological and relational uncertainty. Jamie Crabb’s insights, grounded in psychoanalytic theory but always returning to lived, embodied experience, encourage social workers—and all caregivers—to resist the urge for premature closure and, instead, remain present to what we do not yet understand in ourselves and others. The conversation affirms that care, in its truest form, is about presence, curiosity, and companionship in the search for meaning, rather than neat answers.

Memorable closing line:

"Perhaps this is where care begins. Not in understanding, not in resolution, but in the simple, difficult act of remaining present to one another in the presence of the enigmatic of what we cannot fully know." (56:42 – Jamie Crabb)

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Further Reading:

• Jamie Crabb, “Care and Being Seen in the Presence of the Enigmatic”
• Jean Laplanche, psychoanalytic theory
• Francis Weller, In the Absence of the Ordinary
• Sharon Shoesmith, Learning from Baby P
• Claudia Megali (ed.), Leadership in Human Services

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Next episode tease:
Conversation with Claudia Megali, and an ongoing exploration of these themes with both Jamie Crabb and further authors/activists in care and therapy.

Transcript

[A]

This is messy social work.

[B]

And I'm Rich Devine, social worker with 15 years experience in child protection.

[A]

And I'm Tim Fisher, passionate about participation, curious about community. We're back.

[B]

We're back. It's good to have a break every now and again, isn't it?

[A]

I think so.

[B]

It's good to be consistent.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Consistency pays dividends. But also it's okay to have a break every now and again.

[A]

Why not take a week off? Have a chill pill.

[B]

Yeah. Or a migraine. Or a migraine.

[A]

Or a migraine. Well, yes, due to unforeseen circumstances, we took a break last week, but we're back this week with a surprise visit. Surprise? Yeah, it was. It was a surprise visitor.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, because Jamie Crabb, who's a psychotherapist and an excellent person who we've known for quite a few years because he came to. He's been a relational activist for a long time. He said he was coming or he wanted to rendezvous to talk about various things. And yeah, he came down to my house and we had a very, very interesting conversation about a paper he's. He'd written, which we very much enjoyed, didn't we, Rich?

[B]

Mm, we did, yeah. And I think it's. Well, I found the conversation fascinating and he presents some kind of new and interesting ideas, certainly ideas that I hadn't come across that helped us think about mental health or suffering and trauma, lived experience. And so we kind of circle around those topics, don't we?

[A]

Yeah, very much so. And yeah, felt like a nice spontaneous experience as well. Much enjoyed it. And I think you will pick up that flavour of it when you listen. But before we move into that convo, Rich, is there anything you're sitting with today?

[B]

Yeah, I have a reflection.

[A]

Rich's reflection.

[B]

I have a question for you.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

What do you think

[B]

the public thinks about social work?

[A]

They probably think two things at the same time. Probably. I think when there is a significant and public or prominent child death, sad incident, when social work is most in the. To the forefront of the psychology of the public imagination. Yeah. Andrew Cooper. So Sharon Shoesmith writes in the book Human Leadership, which is a recent book. Claudia Mengele, one of the editors, is coming on the podcast and also Sharon Shoesmith is going to in future weeks. Sian Shoesmith refers to Andrew Cooper, who's the late professor of social work at London's Tavistock Clinic.

[B]

The.

[A]

We know, we know that in a society, we know children are harmed and abused, but we cannot face it. And the pain of knowing that it happens is too great. And so then the perceived incompetence of social workers as a sort of public position or in a tabloid position in the case of Sharon Shoesmith and the influence on the tabloid press on her and her position. The perceived incompetence of social workers then functions as a defense for society against having to tolerate what is bad. Oh, sorry, Rich. I was going to say also maybe there's a bit like sometimes if you're at a party and somebody asks you, like with that you're a social worker or you're among friends or maybe in, you know them in a certain class, maybe if you're a middle class party they might go, oh lovely, okay, that's nice, you know, oh, you're a social worker and it'd be like just a gentle, oh, that's nice that you do that for those deserving people, that kind of thing.

[B]

And what do you think social workers think that the public think of them?

[A]

I think social workers do. Kind of feel that public. I think we feel the disquiet and the power of some of those big news headlines sometimes, you know, whether it's the baby example that we were talking about.

[B]

Yeah. The reason I was asking those questions is because I subscribe to Malcolm Payne's Substack. So I get a little email from Malcolm every few weeks, which is a kind of a blog. And one of them that I read last week was called it's plain wrong to say that people disapprove of social work, they favour it. So he says here that most people most of the time feel pretty favourable towards social work. The research says that people don't know a lot about it, but they do approve of the idea of an organised way of stepping in to help people with unusual or unexpected troubles. Studies in various countries over the past decades show that positive public views of the idea of having social work around and favourable views of how it works, even among people who may have caused to feel a bit persecuted, for example by being supervised in their childcare arrangements. Yet there is a persistent public image problem. Johanly's recent research looked at a range of UK government documents again over the years and found that politicians and their policy advisors often thought, contrary to the research, that they largely paid for that perception of social work was poor and sometimes sought to improve things. So he quotes Joe Hanley here who says government policy texts consistently refer to to a negative public perception of social workers and the need to address this. Most of these assertions are made with limited or no evidence. Despite this, they are frequently used to justify major reforms within the profession. So I thought it was just an interesting counter position to the kind of often held belief, and one that I've probably held myself, that social work has a particularly negative.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Perception in part predicated on serious case reviews and. And the publicity in the press that they receive. So, yeah, I think it's interesting that despite that, we. We still have, for the most part, positive views about social work and its profession.

[A]

Well, that's really what fascinate. Very fascinating reflection, Rich. Oh, well done. Yeah, that was great.

[B]

And just to kind of build upon what you mentioned earlier about some of the future episodes, we've got you referenced from a book there called Leadership in Human Services, and that's edited by Claudia Megali. And we're going to speak to her next Friday. And so I'm planning to read the book between now and then. So if anybody else wanted to. To read the book, now might be a good time before we speak to her on Friday. And I'm also reading Sharon Shoesmith's book about Baby P, because she's one of the contributors in one of the chapters of this book on leadership. And that's also a really interesting book and worthwhile read. And hopefully we'll be able to speak to Sharon in a few weeks as well. So if you like the idea of a bit of extra homework in order to aid your learning and development, there's a couple of options.

[A]

Oh, well done, Rich. Cool. You're coming out strong after your migraine with reading and people homework. It's all good. Excellent. All right, well, let's, without further ado, move to hear the interview with Jamie Crabbing. Oh, hi. Hi, Jamie.

[B]

How are you?

[C]

Yeah, good, thanks. Yeah, great. Great to be here with you guys.

[A]

Really nice, really nice to have you here as well. And, well, Rich and I have read your paper which you kindly sent to us, and it's called Care and Being Seen in the Presence of the Enigmatic. And yeah, what was the spark that led you to write that paper?

[C]

A bit of a relational spark, I guess, in that one of my friends and colleagues, Rosie Canning, did a choral contemplation at Somerville College, which is a interfaith one, I think the only interfaith college, sorry, chapels, in Oxford, which is led by chapel convener Ajia Habibi. And Rosie suggested me to Asia. And these contemplations are done in series, basically. And the particular series that was coming up was called On Being Seen. And Aja reached out to me and said, would I want to do a contemplation which is a mixture of a kind of reflection and talk, surrounded by choral music and poetry and readings. It was very beautiful. It was really stunning. And then. Anyway, so when she invited me to do it, I was doing reading on Laplanche and some writing. Jean Laplanche, the psychoanalyst at the time. And then I just kind of felt I wanted to kind of bring care. La Planche's idea of the enigmatic and being seen, this theme of being seen together, it all just seemed to kind of work quite well. So that's. Yeah, that's the trajectory of it, really. Yeah.

[A]

Wow. And what a category to say, come and talk to us about being seen. I mean, that feels very important as a topic. Yeah.

[B]

And just before we get into the article, Jamie, what. What do you mean by enigmatic?

[C]

Enigmatic. I mean enigmatic. And I guess in. In a way we. We take it back to the word enigma. It means something that's not quite. Not quite known or something that's unknown in some way. And I came across this idea of the enigmatic through essentially learning about quite a contemporary French psychoanalyst called Jean Leblanche. And Laplanche talks about this idea of the enigmatic as being part of the unconscious, essentially. So Laplanche does something quite radical and he goes back to the theories of Sigmund Freud and essentially the birth of the unconscious, essentially. And what he does is something quite radical in that he goes back to a moment in history with Freud where he says. Where Freud went astray in that he started to kind of create theories of the unconscious and he goes back to. To a particular point in time to. To kind of think about the unconscious in terms of enigmatic material that. That exists in ourself, that we're. We're always as human beings pushing to translate or to understand. So that's. That's a long shot of the enigmatic. But really, I would say the enigmatic is something that's maybe not quite known or not quite understood in ourselves and that we're trying to, in some way understanding that our bodies, our nervous system, our con, Our unconscious is trying to understand, trying to make sense of.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I really relate to that idea and feel like perhaps most of my adult life has been trying to figure out my own enigma.

[C]

Would that be the right way of framing it?

[B]

Phrasing it?

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I think that's. Absolutely.

[B]

I really love the. The. The. The kind of first line in the piece that you wrote and you say the Australia, the Austrian poet and novelist, real Key wrote, try to love the questions themselves. Why did you begin with that piece? That. That kind of. That quote from Real Key?

[C]

I think I began with that because we're human beings. Laplanche would say that we're translating subjects. Yeah. Actually, one of our core as conscious beings, we're always trying to translate the world. And I think if we go back to early childhood, specifically with children. Children. As we're coming into the world and we're growing, we're trying to understand the world. Yeah. And we're asking questions and we're being curious and we're opening doors or whatever just to. Just to work things out. Yeah. So we're translating beings. And essentially that's what I would say about loving the question or loving the exploration or loving the unfolding. It's like allowing ourselves to be in the exploration. But I think what often happens to us as we grow, as we engage with society and culture or adult. Sometimes the questions are closed down.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Our capacity to want to wonder and be with questions is shut down in some way. And that's what I think about loving the questions is actually how do we stay with. How do we stay with the enigmatic. With questions that we don't necessarily know or understand? How can we be with them? How can we love that? How can we love the uncertainty? In some way? We always want to be certain about things, I guess. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. And. And. And I really like this because I feel like, to a degree. Sorry to make this about me again, but, like, this piece is so brilliant at, like, making one reflect on oneself. But there's a sense sometimes where it's like, your identity is fixed, or say you've been through trauma or you've got some difficulty, or there's a certain personality trait. There's a sense in which, oh, now I'm this type of person. Or sometimes you can have, like, family scripts. So I was the youngest in the family, and so there were certain ideas or notions that are attached to me as a person. And then I'm being labeled or reinforced as this particular type of person. And so you can sometimes get to a point where you're like, oh, no, I am. I don't know, I am an addict, or I am terrible in relationships, or I am ashamed. And they can become fixed identity, unchangeable aspects of who we are. And I suppose what you're pointing to is actually there's an opportunity to ask and be curious about some of those fundamental assumptions that we might make about ourselves or which have been perhaps given to us by others over periods of time.

[C]

Absolutely. With that. In fact, I think what's really fascinating with Laplanche, which I'm mentioning in the paper, is that he never developed an approach to psychoanalyst. He actually, in some way he was calling. He would want what he would call the patient as psychoanalysts themselves to. In some way, the part of the process of therapy would be to point out rigidities like what you're saying, Rich, when something. When maybe. Maybe an identity or something in us becomes so fixed that we become it. And that may not feel quite. That might actually not feel very good in ourselves. Yeah, it might be trapping in some way. So the idea is to sometimes capture that in ourselves when something becomes fixed and rigid. You know, I think that come actually when I'm listening to your recent podcast on the Trauma Industrial Complex on discussions around that I think is really. Is really fascinating where Darren McGarvey goes back again and again and again to ask the question again and again goes. Goes back over again and again.

[A]

And Jamie, you said that to the enigmatic, and you talked about enigmatic material. And so is that enigmatic material? And those things that are less clear, is that stuff generated by the shutting down questions? It's counterintuitive. It's like if we try to answer the questions and find professionals that can answer them for us in whatever way we're seeking help that would help and reduce the amount of uncertainty or enigmatic material. And that's where we should be heading. I find this question really. Do you know what I'm saying? Or not really.

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. I think, look, what Laplanche did that was really important, I think, which was to say that the unconscious is relational. It isn't something that just exists in you. It's like, like Freud, when, when Freud developed the idea of the unconscious, he began with that, but then he did a pivot. He pivoted because he was afraid of the. Of. Of the reality that. That there was. There was a lot of sexual abuse going on in families and that. That. That would destroy psychoanalysis. That would be. You know, there would be shattering. So in the end, what he ended up doing was he kind of turned it in on itself and said that there was unconsc.

[B]

Fantasy.

[C]

Yeah, there was unconscious fantasy inside of ourselves, that pathology and mental health grew inside of ourselves. Whereas what Laplanche went back and said is, no, it's relational. And actually the enigmatic is a relational process. It's the things that we don't receive from people or it's the looks it's the things that are not answered. Essentially, I think to bring it to life in terms of my own story. There were certain things that were said, you know, to me growing up about my family, my birth family. I grew up in care. So there were things that said to me but most of the message were they weren't. Well, you know, and that was. That just stayed in my body as enigmatic. What I would say now is enigmatic material which in a sense just led to anxiety, mental health challenges when I was younger. And nobody really answered the story. So there was a kind of what, what Richard Rose in Therapeutic Life Story Works talks about ghosts and monsters. It was like the ghosts of almost like what I had created in my mind of what was going on in my family. Yeah. Or the mental health. And then the monsters was how it was playing out in my nervous system, which was often in rage and acting out and you know, and what I really needed from an early age was for some of the questions to be like that I wanted to ask. To be first of all recognize I had questions and number two, that people would engage with me in the questions. There was a lot of information that I only found out as an adult when I accessed my care files that actually when I found out this information it was like what I would say is the enigmatic became something very concrete. And some of that was very recent. I went all the way to Australia just before COVID to meet my uncle, so my birth mother's brother. And he was able to just answer so many questions that were, I always say, lingering enigmatically in my body that needed answer that my nervous system was pushing for me to find answers for. You know, the other part. Of course the other part is there's. There's messages in our bodies that will never be answered. Yeah. But there's enigmatics. And it's about how do we learn to be. Be okay with that. You know, we have to do that. We have to learn to be okay to do that in relationship. I would say yeah, like we actually need to understand how to be with uncertainty and to be and to learn to breathe, to regulate our nervous system, to co regulate with somebody else. And otherwise we're just left with that on our own.

[A]

And that's fascinating, Jamie, to go to want to sit more with what you said there. But just to circle back to Freud again just to really. Because it's so central to what you're saying in your writing. And it's fascinating that. So Freud started working with the. Working with the body and working in that relational way.

[C]

Yeah. So he actually. Joseph Brewer, who was. Who started to work with traumatized women, often, you know, essentially connected with Freud and Freud. Interestingly, Freud and Brewer were working with the body at the beginning. Yeah, they were using massage. They were recognizing that there were symptoms playing out in the body. So that early, you know, the stuff that we're talking about as trauma therapy now, they were doing. Right back then. Yeah, it was happening. So that's the most important thing to note. And actually, Freud and Brewer split. Yeah. In relationship because Breuer didn't agree with where Freud was going with in terms of the unconscious fantasy and coming up with theories of the unconscious like psychosexual development and therapy, things like that. He didn't agree with that. So that's a really important kind of split that happened with psychoanalysis. And you see that throughout the history with Freud, actually, lots. There was contemporaries like Jung, for example, and Freud very famously fell out with Jung, and he also fell out with Willem Reich, who was the really famous body psychotherapist who started to develop body psychotherapy as well. So, again, there was a split there. So that's something really important to understand. But when Freud started to almost turn inwards and start looking at symptoms and things that people were sharing as kind of internal pathology, as opposed to something that was a very real relational trauma.

[B]

Yeah, because you write, at first he believed his patients when they spoke of childhood sexual abuse. He proposed that their symptoms were linked to real violations. This was explosive. It implicated respectable families, it threatened the social order. And you put forward the hypothesis that perhaps because of that, he then adjusted his position to focus it on an internal kind of fantasy of the female. And there's different explanations that you put forward. You say historians debate why this shift occurred. Was it professional survival, a wish to secure psychoanalysis as a science? An inability to bear the scale of what was being disclosed? Perhaps all of these. So it was just this. It was interesting because what you're pointing to is that Freud's experience, essentially, of discovering that these women were being sexually abused was so contrary to the public kind of perception and ideas about family life and respectability, that he almost developed an enigma around the very thing that he discovered.

[C]

Absolutely. That Richard absolutely nailed it. He couldn't remain with the enigmatic, you know, the reality. Yeah.

[A]

And Jamie, you're right about. So Brewer had a. Was working with one patient in particular, Anna O. Could you say a bit about that?

[C]

Yeah. So it was one of the first patients that her Brewer was working with and developed essentially The Talking Cure, as it were. In fact, Anna named it the Talking Cure. I think I was really. When I was writing this, it was so important for me to make it clear that it was a relational development and also that Anna had developed. Yeah. So for me, that was so important because actually, there's so many men in the story of taking over and creating psychoanalysis. But actually, she named it because it was so helpful to her to be in a room with someone and to be able to speak out all of the things that she'd experienced and had happened to him. And that she was met by Brewer, you know, and that was. That was, you know, so powerful. Yeah. And I think that's really important. It's missed in the story often that she named it. Yeah.

[A]

Talking Cure. And when you say back to La Planche and his concept of translating, and can you say a bit more about. A bit more about that? Yeah, yeah.

[B]

So

[C]

essentially, as I said earlier, I mean, La Planche, he wants us to invite us to think about how we understand what is happening in our bodies or to think about maybe rigid ideas or concepts of ourself that we might have, you know, engaged with and to think about, well, what other meanings might there be there? You know, and when we're talking about the enigmatic, that comes at us from. We could say, kind of early parental relationships or relationships with other adults. But there's also the whole social world side of it. Yeah. That comes in. So messages from the social world, essentially. So the whole idea, really, of translating is how do we translate ourselves? How do we. How do we create ourselves in some way? And, you know, one of the. You know, one of the key things with Laplanche is to say sometimes it is at the end, the. The message. The. The messages that we have about ourselves, they may not be ours. Yeah. If they don't feel. If they don't feel right in our bodies. Yeah. Then they may need detranslating. Yeah, they may need. We may need to stay with that and to think about that a little bit more, essentially. So that's the. That's kind of what translation is, really.

[A]

And it's responding to transmissions from others.

[B]

From others.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. From early stages. I mean, you know, you could think of it even in terms of, you know, our everyday interactions with people, where there might be a message that is coming at us and something in our body kind of reacts to it in some way. We might go, oh, we don't quite agree with that. Now, we might go along with it. Yeah. Or we might kind of Stay with that. We might stay with the enigma of that in our bodies and try to think about that, try to understand it.

[B]

You write in the paper that Lapanche returned psychoanalysis to its most unsettling discovery. What shapes the unconscious is not primarily what arises within the individual, but what is transmitted from others, often unknowingly, through looks, gestures, tones, questions and silences. In doing so, he restored the relational, embodied reality that had receded. He called these transmissions enigmatic signifiers. Enigmatic, not because they are mystical, but because they arrive without instructions. They reach the child before the child has language. They demand psychic work without explaining what work is. And then you give this really good example, and I wondered if you would mind speaking to it, where you were in the hospital and you would navigate in a kind of cancer diagnosis. Would you be able to explain a bit what happened there?

[C]

Just to touch on what you just shared there, Rich. Which I think is really important, and that is that I think Laplanche is really. It's really wonderful the way that the Planche talks about this enigmatic signifier or the process, because he's not blaming in any way. It's not like attachment theory, where it's like, you know, this is. This has happened because of your behavior. Yeah. Or the child is you. You've developed that you had this attachment style as a parent and then that's been passed down. Yeah. It's actually, he's saying, actually it's through all sorts of unconscious communications, gestures, you know, things that are or aren't said. And so in a sense, the unconscious for Laplanche, is enigmatic to. To adults just as much as it is to children.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

The other part of what you said there, I think, which is really important, is that the messages are received by children without the capacity to do anything with them. Yeah. So that's why it's our, you know, it's our role to be guides for children as much as possible, when they're being curious, to be able to kind of go to stay with their question and kind of go, oh, that's really interesting. You know, let's unpack that. Let's stay with you. Let's stay with your understanding. How can I help you with that? You know, and to find an age appropriate way of staying with that. I think that's what's really important rather than what often happens with children is like, I don't know, we can't answer that question or. Etc, or that's. That's going to be too much for you, you know, that kind of risk aversity. Yeah, I think it's really important.

[B]

So it's like it not only are like even the question itself becomes forbidden because it feels too complex or emotionally loaded for the adult to help the child resolve. And so the child is then left with, well, if the question is even too difficult to bear, then the, the underlying feelings or, or this drive in the question in of itself must be even more dangerous or unsettling or unknowable or unsharable. And therefore I must keep it kind of locked in or closed down or

[C]

which, as we know, when that happens, that then can turn into bodily overwhelm, emotional dysregulation, et cetera. I talk about that in the paper, actually, in that first example where I was brought to see a psychotherapist as a child. And you know, I wasn't, I wasn't, I would say I wasn't really related to, on a level that I needed to be. I needed that therapist to get on the ground and play with me or, you know, once, as a therapist who worked with care experience people said, as soon as I work with a care experience person, I say straight away, you can ask me any question you want. From the get go, this is, yeah, you can ask me any question because I'm going to ask you some. I might not be able to answer them. So they really, you know, they met them on their level, you know, And I think what I really needed in that room, rather than being prodded about stuff that I didn't understand about my family, I needed somebody to be able to not say, we're not going to talk about things because it's too much for you. What I needed was to set somebody to say, there's a lot of really difficult material or things in your history and we will, we, we can talk about it. It's on the table for us to talk about. We're going to do it. We're going to do it in a way that. That is okay for you. Yeah. And at a place that's okay for you. So I needed the questions. Yeah, I needed to be able to ask questions rather than actually me being asked the questions constantly. That felt very shut down for me.

[A]

And with your. And your foster care was in the other room in that moment that you're describing. Yeah, yeah.

[C]

So I found that out in my care files. This is, this stuff. I went back into my care files and found out that in the other room some of those questions were being asked to them, but not to me, which was really important. I know you asked me about the other example, which did you want me to touch on that in terms of, in the.

[A]

Can I just ask, actually before you do, about the signifiers. And, and so in a, in a, in a world, social world of noise and ask, are the signifiers, patterns or themes that particularly catch hold? What's it that the signifier particularly. How do you, how do you, how does that concept land for you, signifier?

[C]

I mean, it's a, it, it's, it's just something coming at you that's, that's sparking a question in some way, I think. I mean, when, when I talk about the kind of tones, gestures, etc, it's like as a, as a child or as somebody, you know, or as an adult in a relationship, we're always picking up body language. So something's coming at me, you know, or coming at you and you, you, you, you kind of pick up on a gesture or a body language. Yeah. And you want, you want to answer that, but if you don't, if you don't ask about it, you don't ask someone about, well, what was that, you know, what was going on there? You're left with this enigmatic signifier, something that's not quite understood. Yeah. And that's an enigmatic signifier. It's like something that comes at us that we can't quite understand and that we're maybe pushing to, in some way to understand, but we don't necessarily ask the question or.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Or we're left with a residue, you know, we're left with a residue in our body.

[B]

I think, I think the example actually that I asked about a minute ago would be maybe a good example actually to illustrate that point. You were just making. Jamie.

[C]

Yeah. So I speak in the, in the piece that I shared about. So I was, when I was in my late 20s, I went into hospital because I, I had a cancer diagnosis essentially, and I went in for some treatment and I had had to have an operation. Everything is clear since, just to be clear. But I went in for the operation and I had a really, really awful night this, this previous night where I was in real distress and a lot of pain and I hadn't slept all night. And then in the morning, the, I think it would be called kind of the, the head nurse, she came, came on her kind of come around to see all the patients essentially. And I was in this ward with, I would say, a lot of older patients. I was the youngest in there. And essentially she kind of walked around and looked at me and said, oh, he's young. He can wait. Yeah. And then kind of, she. She then walked on to look after the other patients. And that, to me, it stands out for me at this point in my life. It stands out for me more than the pain that I had, you know, the night before, because that was really significant. It was just. It hit me in my body, you know, this. This message that was given to me. And it was like I had become a child again who, you know, where care was. My, you know, being cared for wasn't important. And it kind of took me back. It was like a. It was like a. I think they call it. There's a trauma theorist actually, who talks about this kind of pork key, porthole to trauma. Pork key. I think it is. It's a Harry Potter, something that's talked about in Harry Potter that just takes it right back to that time, essentially. And. Yeah, so. But this kind of enigmatic message was just caused in my body essentially, and, you know, really just. It hit me internally and with this idea that, you know, my care didn't matter in some way. And.

[B]

Yeah, and I think you make a really nice point about the nurse could not have known your history or how those kind of words would have landed for you subjectively, phenomenologically. And so you write here, the message exceeded its intention. It carried more than was consciously meant. It was not dramatic, it was subtle, but I carried it enigmatically like a tender scar. And so it's just sometimes the intention of the words don't necessarily matter in terms of how they might impact or affect another person. And I think I see that a lot with care experienced young people when they feel like they've been where language has been used in an insensitive way, but because of their experiences and their history is then received and perceived in a particular. Through a particular kind of lens.

[C]

I think that's so significant, Rich, because I think actually that. That at that moment, that message exceeded my capacity to. To translate it or do something with it. It just hit me in my nervous system because I was very vulnerable at that point. And also I didn't quite know how to care for myself about. At that point in my life. You know, I wasn't really able to care for myself. I was really vulnerable. Whereas, you know, now I can look back on it and translate it differently, you know, and particularly have really, you know, that, that, that, if anything, that particular moment in my life really made me think about or have to learn to lean in and. And. And I would say surrender to care for the first time in my life I had to surrender to care. So it was, you know, it was really. It was a really significant moment in my life, I think.

[A]

And is that. Are you doing detranslating there when you.

[C]

I think absolutely. And you know, in. In what you just read there, Rich, I mean, that was it, you know, that what happened to me then and what I've been able to do now since was a detranslation. You know, that wasn't what. What the nurse said to me. She didn't mean anything by it. She didn't mean harm by it. But. And yet it hit me in a particular way. It hit me in a vulnerability. It hit me in my wound, as it were. And now I can de. Translate that. I can detranslate that message. It doesn't mean that the care was right. You know, I feel like, you know, I really could have done with her coming over and just saying to me, morning, how are you doing? Yeah, I heard you had a difficult night or something. Like, I like, you know, and I think, you know, this is something actually I say quite a lot, and that is that care has been stripped of its substance. We talk about care a lot. We talk about care systems or we talk about. Yeah, we talk about care in a very abstract way. But actually, what does it. What does it mean to actually care? Yeah. What does it feel like? What is the substance of care? And I think that's what I was really trying to get through in this piece, really, is that care, you know, carries. Are acts. Yeah. Care of being with care is about empathy. You know, doing empathy is about. It's about a lot of things, but it's about it's. And sometimes it's about being able to be present with somebody when there isn't an answer. Which actually, when we talk about care, experience people, that is often a reality. There isn't an answer to some of the life story questions, for example.

[B]

So there's. There isn't an answer. But perhaps for. For a couple of reasons.

[C]

Is.

[B]

Is partly because if you've been hurt or traumatized in your early childhood, some of it just isn't memorable to you, and yet it's implanted itself within your psyche and your psychology. And so you're being influenced and dictated by these kind of unconscious underlying forces for which you can't quite, quite articulate or describe to yourself, never mind to others. And so your behavior, maybe as a child, even to your carers, might be inexplicable, but it's also partly inexplicable to you because you don't know why you're behaving the way that you're doing or behaving a lot of the time. And then it's compounded by the fact that children in care don't have continuity of relationships where there's a shared narrative about their experiences throughout the course of their life because they could be with one set of carers between the age of three to five, then they move on to another set of carers, and in theory, they've lost two years of their life narrative because the carers don't go with them in order to translate those kind of two years of their life. And unless they've got very good record keeping or access to record keep, it's going to be very hard for them to compensate for that loss.

[C]

I think, I think that's the word that you said, implantation or implanted, which is so important. It's like what gets implanted into children or into us, you know, and how does that get implanted? And like just that example of, you know, about, you know, multiple placements or, you know, moving to multiple homes. It's so important is that, how is that actually guided. I think I was talking to someone recently about if every single person thought, I am part of this other person's story, and how am I. How can I be part of their story? Yeah, and that's such a powerful way of thinking. I think about it. It's like, you know, particularly when we're thinking about care experience, been making sure we're documenting story, you know, and be in that being a relational process rather than it being seen in a kind of arbitrary life storybook that's been written for you. But you're part of the story making. And that's what, you know, I think that's what laplanche would be saying. He's like, we have a. We have, you know, we, you know, we have a role to essentially make story and help make understanding with children and young people throughout their lives. And. And as we become adults as well.

[A]

And I know we've had conversations before, Jamie, where you've talked about interdependence and emergence. And it feels like that, like storying together and trying to be part of people's stories feels like that's in that territory of like, it's not just connection in a static way. Like, we want to talk about connection as this nice fluffy words where it's important that we connect the other person. It's like it's a sense of ongoing responsibility and to Other people and interdependence. Yeah, yeah.

[C]

You made me think of something there actually, Tim, which is, you know, one of the challenges of suppose of enigmatic material, you know, is for. Particularly for someone who's care experience here, often somebody whose care experience is going into a home of somebody who isn't care experience. So there's already enigmatic that is set up, you know, in that, in that reality, in that dynamic in some way. And you know, one of the realities, of course, of the care system or families is that we're trying to set up something of a normative family around somebody who's care experience. But already the care experience person is in the enigmatic. Yeah. What we're losing potentially is to say the way you're experiencing the world, the way you're orientated in the world is, Is different from somebody else's. Yeah. Your experience of family is going to be different. Yeah. And that's okay. Yeah. Or you have more than one family, for example, and that's okay. Yeah. And how do we, you know, so there's, there's something about that to, to make that, you know, we're always trying to push for kind of some sense of normative, normativity rather than maybe saying, actually we don't have to push for that. We can, we can push for multiple. Or we can allow for multiplicity instead of multiplicity of the story.

[A]

And that part going back to the real key lyric at the beginning of the paper. As professionals, as social workers, we want to answer questions for people. And sometimes there's an impulse to want to try to help to bring clarity or answer questions or settle something, think or, you know, be even be transparent in a way that closes off options. And we feel like that will be creating clarity, but it's just generating more enigmatic material sometimes.

[C]

Yeah, you know, you've made. What came to mind was Richard Rose's therapeutic life story work. Because the way he sets up the model is he begins by first going. Starting with the child and says, what do you know already? Yeah, what do you know already? Let's start with that. So let's map out what you know. And that will be some of the ghosts and monsters. Yeah, yeah. And then he'll go off and he'll, you know, or hit the life story work will go off and find information and they'll come back and go, okay, here's some, here's this person's perspective, here's your mum's perspective, here's the social. Here's what the. Yeah, so it's Essentially presented. And then it's. Then it's down to the. The child and young person to actually from all of that. Yeah. Make some sense of it. Yeah. And choose what. What they feel is, you know, true and not true, etc. But. But everything is presented. It's not hidden. And there's something in that that's. That's. That's equally enigmatic, you know, in some way. You know, there isn't. There isn't one. There isn't one truth. There's multiple. There's multiple experiences.

[A]

Yeah. When you give. You've talked to. To the concept of care, could you develop the idea of being seen and you know, central to this paper and also the choral. What did. How did you describe it again? Jamie? Apologies.

[C]

The core coral contemplation.

[A]

Core contemplation, yeah. Wonderful. And can you just. Being seen is quite contemporary idea, isn't it? Or. Or concept. And say a bit more about that in. In.

[C]

Actually, I think, you know, what I got to at the end was that actually sometimes being seen is not to. It's not. Is kind of not to be seen. This seems quite paradoxical. Okay. So when I say that, it's actually like we. We will cut. We'll come into relationship with each other with beliefs or thoughts. Yeah. About things. About. About the other. And actually to truly be seen is to be able to put those aside and create space. To be with. Yeah. The other person. Yeah. And I think this for me is what being seen is. It's not coming. It's not necessarily knowing. Sometimes. Sometimes it's about to be able to be in the fuzziness or the overwhelm of this and kind of not have an answer. Yeah. So actually what you said is not to rush into saying, I know this. Yeah. It's like, tell me about this experience. Yeah. What's that like for you? I don't know. I don't know about being care experienced or. I don't know about this experience of family. Tell me what that was like for you. That's what being seen, I've come to understand is, and I believe it's what La Planche would be pushing on us is to say we're not here to answer all of the questions in this kind of formulaic, knowledgeable way. We're actually there to be with. Be with each other and to be helpful. Helpful in the unfolding of each other's enigmatic, as it were. That's what being seen. Yeah.

[B]

And I think there's something about being. Being with those aspects of yourself. Allowing yourself to see those aspects of yourself that are perhaps undesirable or ugly or repulsive or difficult to bear and without necessarily needing to do anything with them, just allowing them to be seen or held or to be kind of looked after for. I guess that's kind of some of the intention behind meditation. And I think actually this, this paper came a really good time for me because you talk about these kind of transmissions of enigmatic signifiers and I was thinking about my own experiences with my dad, who was care experienced and abused drugs and alcohol for most of his adult life, and my mom, who had chronic fatigue and depression. And I think a lot of what my dad suffered with was shame fundamentally. And then obviously my mum had depression. And those, those are probably the two defining features of my adulthood is shame and depression. And, and in some ways I feel like much of my attempt to resolve the feelings of shame, they weren't necessarily mine to begin with. I've just had them transmitted to me by my dad and I've had to almost resolve them, it feels like on his behalf. And I'm not, I don't know if that's true and it might sound a bit weird, but that does feel like what it's been like. And then, and then at the moment I've been going through experiences of feeling low and fatigued and basically suffering with depression and I've just, I've just got a bit tired of feeling tired and, and I've kind of been thinking, I need an answer. Like I need, I need a resolution to this depression because it's starting to get me down. And I tried medication for several weeks and didn't find it especially helpful, even though it was helpful when I did it a few years ago. And this paper came at a really good time for me because. Made me just be a bit more okay with the experience of depression and just try and sit with the uncertainty that it generates and not feel the need to fix it immediately and to have a solution to it and just allow it to be seen and to think about the questions that it's posing in its presentation. So I just wanted to. Yeah, thank you for that.

[C]

Really. This was really powerful to hear you say that, Rich, because I think like what you're talking about is an emotional inheritance there. And I think that's, it's really significant. I think it's really important that you're naming that and just to kind of meet you there. There's a somebody who I mentioned in the paper, Francis Weller, who has, who's. Who's written fantastic books around loss and grief and. And also a more recent one, which is called in the Absence of the Ordinary, which is really about being with uncertainty. And for me, he's just been. I, you know, I came across his writings, I think, about two years ago, and I remember when I first read it, I just couldn't do it. And then in the last year, he's just taught me to be with uncertainty, to be with the possibility of being with grief, you know, as his five gates of grief. And they're just a real invitation to be with losses and to just be present or to Jesus, just be present with feelings and with emotions, you know, he talks in his most recent book about exactly what you just described there, Rich, which was how do I sit with depression? How do I, like, welcome it? That sounds really weird to say welcome it, but just to be there with it and to acknowledge it and to not fight with it in some way befriend it and. And to befriend it as some. Something that's been present with us with you for a long time and actually that needs an arm put round it as opposed to being pushed away or medicated in some way.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[C]

Thank you.

[A]

And Jamie, at the end of the paper, there's a practice at the end, and I mean, I don't know if you may or may not want to do this, but I wonder if you might read out the practice at the end.

[C]

Sure, yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I need to say that I. Yeah, I was scratching my head about how to finish the paper and I'd read it to a couple of. I read it to a colleague and I'd read it to my supervisor and my colleague said, oh, you need something at the end, then it needs to be a practice. And then I went to my supervisor, my fantastic supervisor, Shoshi, and she. She gave this to me. So I want to credit her for this because it was a brilliant one. Yeah. So I essentially. Yeah.

[B]

And just before you do, Jamie, I have to say, because it invites. It's a relational practice. But. But a lot of people are going to be listening to this and they might not have the opportunity to do it directly with somebody either.

[C]

They can.

[B]

They can listen to it and just eat. Because what I wanted to say, sorry, I'm messing up my words a bit. But even when I read it, the invitation alone unsettled me because I was imagining, if I have to do this, what that would feel like. And it brought up a sense of, like, vulnerability and fear in the act of inviting another to see me and in the process of being seen. So I just wanted to say a. When you listen to Jamie, you can just imagine how this would be experienced, but you can also try it out later. I hope I haven't compromised.

[C]

Not at all. And I think you picked up, Rich, a little bit of discomfort that came into the. Into the chapel at the end, which was like people were not expecting this, me to invite them. So. So, absolutely. So, yeah, so, yeah, I'll read the whole of the last bit, actually, because I think it's quite interesting. So I ended with. Laplanche never offered a method of psychoanalysis. He was wary of trainings that promised certainty, technique or mastery. For him, the work was humbler and more demanding. It was to accompany another as they encountered the enigmatic messages that shaped them to create conditions where those messages might be slowly retranslated, where possible, and where they could not to develop the capacity to live alongside what remains unknown. The patient themselves is the psychoanalyst. So following La Planche and holding the enigmatic between us, I end not with conclusion, but with practice. I invite you to notice your breath, how it arrives, how it leaves. Allow it to deepen as you breathe in and lengthen as you breathe out. Feel the ground between beneath your feet, the seat holding your body, the quiet presence of others around you. If you feel comfortable, I invite you to gently turn towards someone near you, keeping your awareness in your body. I invite one of you to say quietly to the other, I'm here to see you allow those words to rest between you. Notice what moves in your body, what remains unknown. And when you are ready, the other person can offer the same words in return. I am here to see you. Perhaps this is where care begins. Not in understanding, not in resolution, but in the simple, difficult act of remaining present to one another in the presence of the enigmatic of what we cannot fully know.

[B]

Wow. Thank you so much.

[A]

Thanks so much for the conversation, Jamie.

[C]

Thank you. It was great to join you.

[A]

Very much appreciate it. Oh, Rich. Well, that was really nice. And thanks so much again to Jamie for popping by. Very much enjoyed that conversation. And we're gonna speak again, aren't we? With Jamie?

[B]

Yeah, we're back now, resident. Yeah, in several weeks time to talk about that book by Francis Weller.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah. I always appreciate when I can

[A]

co

[B]

opt one of the guests into a quasi psychotherapeutic session for myself. So I appreciate Jamie for indulging me on that.

[A]

Well, well, Jamie, appreciate you and we all appreciate you for bringing the reality to the conversation as ever, Rich.

[C]

So.

[A]

Yeah, nice one. And you've got a poem to see us out today as well.

[B]

Yes. Yeah. It's quite a well known poem that many of you will be familiar with. It's the Guest House by Rumi. So we'll see you next week.

[A]

See you next week.

[B]

The Guest House. This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival, a joy, a depression, a meanness. So momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all, even if they're a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture. Still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice. Meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.