A Place At the Table: Front and Center, Octopi, Poetic Justice

Front Row

I’ve just returned from the 35th Annual Boston International Trauma Conference. What is lodged in my head is the very old song by Pete Seeger and the Weavers:

Wasn’t that a Time! You are probably tired by now, of hearing me brag that I attended almost all of them. And until the Pandemic, all of them were live and in person, so my pilgrimage to Boston was a regular recurring event. I am also proud to be a veteran of the trauma field having come in virtually at ground zero. The PTSD Diagnosis arrived in 1980, and I was graduating and starting out as a therapist in 1988. So, I feel as if I grew up in this field, both as a clinician and concurrently as a healing person. I am so grateful. That conference was something of a North Star for me because every year I learned not only about the research and methodologies that were emerging in labs and consulting rooms around the world but also rubbed shoulders with people who became professional icons and mind-opening champions in my world. Every year I could not wait.

This one was very different for me, though. Historically I was a silent lurker. I felt so small and under-educated. Without fancy letters and schools after my name, I felt like a hungry sponge. I have always bristled against popular jargon like “impostor syndrome”, but admittedly it fit. I certainly felt out of my league, and that I had no right taking up space, but that was how I had always felt anyway. I floated around silently and unobtrusively like a billow of thin smoke. In the mornings I would slip in as early as the conference rooms opened, and stake out my seat, front, and center, or as close to the front as I could. Usually, the first row or two was reserved with signs or paper memos on the chairs, for speakers and other important people. So, I would reserve my seat with a notebook or jacket and silently slip out. I always wanted to be as close to the front as I could, so I would not miss a word or a breath. I knew if I did not get up at the crack, and claim my spot early, the world would crowd in and I would end up in the back.

This year I found myself for the first time, a speaker myself. There was so much to do, that I was unable to get to the meeting room early. I rushed in almost at the very minute that the first session I attended was to start, and the monitor who let me in said, “There are some reserved seats for faculty in the front.” Ambling in at the last minute, I was in the very first row, center, sitting on the reserved sign. I did not even remove it from the chair. What a strange, ethereal, and wonderful shock. I thought this must be what they meant by a “place at the table.” But I knew what I was really experiencing was the years and decades of doing my own trauma work, and how that truly transforms the organism, the self, and certainly identity. They say “self-image is the last thing to change.” But feeling that piece of paper under me that said Reserved, felt like another somatic therapeutic modality.

An Octopus’s Garden

A few weeks ago, listening to Public Radio in the wee hours, I came in late on an interview with a local neuroscientist, so I did not catch her name. She worked at UCSF and specialized in psychedelic research. She said, with all due respect for neuroimaging research and already existing findings, she questioned whether she agreed with the assumption that psychedelics interact in particular ways with specific brain regions or if as she hypothesized, they interact more with brain chemistry. So she had the idea of testing her hypothesis on an organism that did not have the brain regions we have. She selected a distant cousin, the octopus! She recruited seven octopi and administered MDMA to her slippery subjects.

Lo and behold, the octopi responded much like humans, not only did they become more playful and social, but they reached for and touched each other. I was tickled and fascinated. Admittedly had one of the proud moments ofwhere else but San Francisco would someone study octopi and psychedelics. Imagine my surprise when I found the neuroscientist who did the research, Gul Dolen, who was a speaker at the Boston Conference! I had the honor of meeting her the night before she spoke, and I eagerly asked her, “Will you be speaking about the octopi?” She said she was not sure. Hadn’t really planned to. I said, “You must!” And happily, she did.

Her talk was more importantly about work with “critical periods” which I found fascinating. Apparently, there are developmental periods where there is a window of plasticity, where change or “manipulation” can be facilitated. For example, if a baby is born with cataracts, there is a critical period where if cataract surgery, a commonly successful surgery that resolves cataracts, is performed, the cataracts will be healed as cataract surgery most routinely does. However, if that period is missed, and the window closes, the child will likely be blind for life. Researchers are finding that MDMA can reverse critical periods, and reopen closed windows!

What excellent news! As ever, I find new avenues of hope for seemingly “lost causes,” to be profoundly inspiring and exciting.

As a sex therapist, I encounter many “closed windows” of various kinds. I had to wonder if MDMA has properties of both stimulating and activating connection and touch, and re-opening windows, I wondered about sexual function long locked- even with hopelessly thrown away keys, could open again! I have the good fortune to live in the same town as Dr. Dolen. I have requested a consultation. Hope she can tear herself away from the octopi. I would like to ask her what if anything has been done in the area of MDMA assisted sex therapy.

Jim Thorpe

During the conference, while sitting in the front row, I read the news about a hero of mine: the iconic First Nation athlete Jim Thorpe. I have written about him here before. Thorpe was the super-athlete who, after miraculously winning an unheard-of streak of gold medals in the 1906 Olympic Games in Sweden, was unjustly stripped of them all. It took 50 years before, until some time after Thorpe’s death, his medals were restored. On May 3rd, while I was in Boston, the president of the US posthumously awarded Thorpe the Presidential Medal of Freedom; the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Recipients of the medal are “individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors,” a press release from the White House stated.

Yay!! Isn’t it about time?!

This past week in Boston, our ancient ancestor, the under-estimated octopus, Jim Thorpe and I all got our place at the table! Wasn’t that a time indeed?!

This week’s song:

 

True Repair: Yom Kippur, Why Apology Matters, What Heals?

Next week’s Jewish High Holiday Yom Kippur brings many thoughts. My childhood memories of that day are spotty and mostly painful. Our dad being the cantor was more nervous and irritable than ever, as that was the day when he had the fullest house of the year, meaning the “once-a-year-crowd”

Read More »

Signup to my Mailing List