Bill: One of the lacks of the training, I think, is that young Rolfers don’t really get a proper respect for the difficulties that arise from Rolfing people who might be considered mentally ill. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Jim: Yeah, we’ve had that happen several times, so they’re difficult situations. I know recently in a class we brought in a lady who was diagnosed as multiple personality. Now the Rolfer actually did a good job with her, she felt like she could help her, and she did. But then the lady felt like she was out of balance, and it took me a few sessions to put her back together, in my private practice. But the Rolfer did a real good job at one level, and I really was happy that she was courageous enough to take this person on. On the other hand, neither one of us realized how certain things could be stirred up.

Bill: So you knew in advance that the person was MPD. That’s bizarre. You’re really stretching to get models for these classes.

Jim: That was stretching the model base, yes, but it wound up okay. But I had to give her three freebies to balance her out, and finally it all worked out well.

Bill: My case with the MPD was I didn’t know that the person was an MPD, I just kept wondering “Why do I have to do the third hour again?” I ended up doing the third hour about four times, but it was on four different people.

Jim: And then of course this person (from the class) called up her doctor and said that she’d been goofed up by Rolfing, and he wanted to know what was going on. I said, “Well, I’m going to straighten it out, but it’s going to take a little while.” The doctor was happy in the end.

But sometimes people are flipped out, or they’re psychotic in various ways. Sometimes a person was normal, and then they are sleep deprived for three or four months, and they become psychotic and go into a full-blown psychosis. You Rolf them and you think, there are moments when they become real, and so you think you’re pulling them back into reality, but it’s momentary. Then they go back into their unreality, their psychosis.

As Rolfers we tend to put down any psychiatric diagnosis, and we think psychiatrists are all a bunch of Freudians who don’t know what they’re doing, and we think psychiatrists are all a bunch of money mongers, and so we have this whole anti-medical, anti-psychiatric model-some of us do, not all of us. And there’s a rotten apple in every group. I’m sure the Rolf Institute has a few rotten apples, we just don’t see them as clearly. But psychiatry has its place. If someone’s on anti depressants we think, ‘Oh, just Rolf that person, they don’t need anti-depressants!’ And it’s not always the case, some people need to be on antidepressants. I know one person who got taken off her anti-depressants because she was being Rolfed, and she wound up hanging herself. It was a good friend of mine.

One time this other person became psychotic, and had to be put in a padded cell because his behavior was so, he was running around the streets stopping traffic, he’d been arrested several times. He had been put in a padded cell, and I went into the cell with him for eight hours trying to pull him out of his experience. The doctors wanted to put him to sleep, and I didn’t realize that he was psychotic, and in those days-this was in 1974-75-we were anti-drugs, and so they wanted to give him a shot, and we were anti-shots, anti everything, so he said “No, don’t give me a shot, don’t give me a shot.” And I said, “Don’t give him shots.” They said, “Okay.” But the truth is he needed it, and he would have been much better off had we just put him to sleep. Eventually he got released and was put under psychiatric care, and was getting counseling and psychiatry. But I do feel he would have been much better off had we put him to sleep right then and there and started that whole process of his nervous system, I mean his whole brain had not had enough sleep. So his brain just wasn’t making certain kinds of connections that a normal person makes. I think that was what caused his psychosis. But nonetheless, I’m not a psychiatrist and I intervened poorly in a way, trying to help him.

Bill: So there was a time in the development of Rolfing when the whole universe was a blank slate. There had been no “What Rolfing could do and what Rolfing could not do.”

Jim: Right. We had all been Rolfed and felt emotionally better off, so the assumption was you Rolf anybody and they’re emotionally better off, and you keep Rolfing them and they are emotionally better and better. In those days, of course, twenty years ago, even the world of psychotherapy wasn’t that strong. There were encounter groups, Gestalt, which have value but certainly don’t answer all the questions. They don’t deal with psychosis. But I think as Rolfers we come in and we’re naive. Because we’re fairly healthy mentally, we’ve had a few problems and we yell and scream a little bit and we feel better, we don’t really understand things like psychosis. We’ve never really been around it. I remember the year I met my first true bipolar, and she was all of a sudden seeing angels. This happened here in Boulder. This lady was seeing angels, and she all of a sudden had angels on her ceiling, and was telling all her clients about this. Unfortunately for her, people bought into it “oh, she’s seeing angels!” Of course, in Boulder, we call Boulder one square mile surrounded by reality, to be a citizen of Boulder you have to be psychic, to be a channel, and so she was seeing angels and everybody said “Oh, great!”

Bill: Is this a Rolfer you’re talking about?

Jim: No, it’s a friend of mine. But she was in alternative medicine-a very wonderful person, and very good at what she did. But all of a sudden she was telling her clients about angels, and they all kind of liked it, and some were very jealous of her and said “Gee, I’m so jealous, how do I do that?” Her practice got more and more bizarre, and finally she started throwing furniture out of her second floor window, throwing all of her clothes out-she had a huge garage sale that I went over to, and she was selling everything at strange prices, talking about-just unreal-all of a sudden she was going to move out of a little rented apartment and buy a mobile home, leaps a person can’t make. It turned out she was bi-polar, she was really in the manic stage and no one recognized it. So I went over the next day and there was this huge (sale), the yard was just full of stuff her mattress, really nice window coverings, all the nice drapes were hanging out the windows in the weather-everything, the yard was just full of clothes. It looked like the house had been trashed by vandals, but in fact it had been trashed by the lady who lived there because she was manic. People were going “Wow! She really pissed me off. She didn’t call me and tell me that she sold my so and so that I loaned her.” People didn’t realize that she was manic, they just thought that she was being a bad person or something.

Finally she got hospitalized, she called a friend up and said, “the police are giving me a hard time. Come down and get me, I’ll meet you.” Because she had (told the police), “I need to make a phone call.” So the policeman wasn’t watching her, and she snuck out of the hospital and a friend of mine picked her up and gave her a ride somewhere. He didn’t know she was manic, he hadn’t seen her for awhile and had no idea what state she was in-so I’m not blaming him. He was trying to help a friend out.

Now she’s playing cops and robbers for three days. Finally she gets picked up again, and is hospitalized. She came down after that. Months later I went to a meeting where she was trying to explain to everybody what happened to her, to explain bipolarity and how to deal with that. And people were standing up and saying, “Oh, I’m so envious of her, she saw those angels! I would love to see angels!” Five people stood up and talked about how they were jealous of her. I stood up and said, “If you tell her you’re jealous of her, you’re just driving her back into that. She’ll want to give up her medicine, she’ll want to get off her lithium and start seeing her angels again. Quit saying this crap! If you want to see angels, go see angels, or get someone to hit you in the head with a hammer, but don’t say it’s a good thing to her. She doesn’t need to see angels. She needs to take her lithium and not see angels. If she can see angels on
lithium fine and good ”

“As Rolfers we tend to put down any psychiatric diagnosis, and we think psychiatrists are all a bunch of Freudians who don’t know what they’re doing…”

But the whole Boulder community, there’s a big group of people, three people were all praising her for these “visions” she was having when she was manic. There were acupuncturists there, there were a number of people there actually feeding into her unreality. I don’t know that this happens in most towns. There were several Rolfers there too. I finally stood up, and people got mad at me because I told the truth, that this person needs to be on lithium and this whole discussion of seeing angel: is ridiculous. If you see angels, that’s fine and good, but seeing angels when you’re manic is not good.

It’s not just part of the Rolfing community, but some people don’t have what Ida would say “Get your physics in front of your metaphysics.” Know what you’re talking about, and then if you can figure out the metaphysical side of that, that’s fine and good. I think that really shows up not only in terms of Rolfing, but in terms of how we deal with people who have emotional problems. You see it even in people here who have a masters degree in psychology, but they have never really studied transference. So they transfer onto people all their stuff, and people transfer back, and it’s just sort of a bizarre situation.

Now, if you’re a psychologist or a psychiatrist, not a Rolfer who has taken a couple of workshops, or you’re not even a Rolfing teacher who’s been in a few workshops. A psychologist is a psychologist, they’re trained, they understand manic depressives, they understand psychosis, they know what the symptoms are.

Bill: Do you feel at this time, twenty years later, that these kinds of diagnoses would be sufficient reason not to Rolf a person? or to only Rolf them in a clinical setting? What kind of guidelines would you throw out to beginning Rolfers.

Jim: Well, to a beginning Rolfer I would say, even if they have a masters degree in psychology, I would say don’t work with these people. They should be working with a psychologist or psychiatrist, and someone who has some experience in this so they can recognize it somewhat and know that it’s also not within their realm.

This is separate from someone say, like Scott Spann*, who is trained and is able to recognize trauma intervention, where he can do some work with trauma, and somehow he know, if it’s really his realm or not. But I would say most people I know out there really don’t know. It’s easy to want to help everybody, to want to save people, to think “Oh, I’ve got the skills to do this.” And I think that’s our problem. Twenty years from now I think we’ll understand these guidelines, I think we will be able to tell students, don’t work with this, if someone tells you’ve they’ve been manic-depressive in the past and you know they’re on lithium, fine, but if you have any suspicions of them being off their lithium, know who their therapist is if they tell you they’re manic depressive who’s their psychiatrist, who’s their psychologist. Give this person a ring.

Bill: When you’re doing your intake, would it ordinarily come up? I think of my intake, and I don’t cover mental illness.

Jim: I don’t either, I don’t cover mental illness.

Bill: I get a feeling, which is anybody’s guess whether it’s accurate or not.

Jim: I ask people whether they’ve been in therapy or if they are in therapy, and ask for the therapists name.

Bill: Do you ask people if they’re taking drugs of any nature, any prescription drugs?

Jim: Yes.

Bill: So there it could come out, if someone is on lithium. That doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t want to work on them necessarily, because if they’re on lithium, that does imply a certain level of stability

Jim: Yeah, if they’re on lithium, that’s good. Every once in awhile I may say maybe halfway through I’ll say, “Are you still taking your lithium?”

Bill: The people you have to worry about are the ones who won’t tell you whether they’re on lithium. I had a client who was on lithium and startec feeling better from what I did and then stopped taking the lithium. So when she had her healing crisis, her therapist blamed the Rolfing.

Jim: This is a danger. I had a client once who told me I was his thirteenth therapist. I said “Who was your last two therapists?” They were both well known and well-regarded psychiatrists, who I held in high regard, and who are excellent therapists. It turned out his first three had put him in shock therapy, and he’d had a lot of shock, and in the seventh hour all that shock came out. Every time I looked at him I saw a sort of bumble bee, it was like a beehive buzzing around his head, and I told myself “When that seventh hour comes I’m going to pull that beehive off.” I gave him a seventh hour with this intention, and all of a sudden he called me up and told me he was going to commit suicide.

Dr. Rolf had a rule, if you see something real deep or super deep and you go after it, be prepared to live with the person. I remembered that rule, and when he said he was about to commit suicide, I said “No you’re not, you’re going to move in with me.

Pack your bags up, I’ll be right over.” So I went over and tried to get him to pack his bags. He said, “You know I think it would be okay if I just called you three times a day.” I said, “Okay, but I want you to move in tomorrow.” So anyway, we talked on the phone and I tried to get him to move in several times, and he kept staying home, and my willingness to have him move into my house, and my telling him that everyday and actually trying to move him in, gave him a sense of stability, a sense of support. I didn’t realize that at the time, but that was what I was trying to do, was actually move him into the house. I was renting a room in a Gestalt therapists house, I was renting a Rolfing room and a bedroom. So I just told her, “I’ve got a client who needs help. He has to move in for a few days, and I’ll pay you whatever it takes.” That was okay with her.

But he got better, but he could have gotten worse. I didn’t know this, but he was also seeing a psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist was watching this. I got a letter from him years later, sort of thanking me for helping him. But there was a time there were it could have gone either way. So I was up and down, on my toes for days. Anytime the phone rang I had to pick it up, didn’t matter who I was Rolfing, I could have been Rolfing the President of the United States and it didn’t matter, I had to pick that phone up, and normally I wouldn’t answer the phone if I’m working on someone, and people don’t like that. Sort of feels like their space is invaded.

So it was a good lesson for me; I’m glad I did it in a way. But I don’t know that I’d be able to do it once a week or every other week, it took a tremendous amount of dedication and energy on my part. So here’s where I didn’t really do my intake long enough, I didn’t say, by the way,
have you ever had shock therapy? Once I heard he’d been to see some good psychiatrists, I assumed everything was on cruise, or okay.

Sometimes these things happen and the person is not in therapy. We had a person in a class once who, it wasn’t my class, I was assisting or sitting in, I forget, but this lady was laying on her side and the Rolfer had her elbow on the back and all of a sudden this person said she felt like throwing up and she was peeing her pants, and she went into a very deep space, I don’t know what to call it, except she started remembering, it was an abuse space, and it all came up, and when she said she was going to throw up, the teacher said, “Well go get a pan,” so the Rolfer took off to get a pan, and it had garbage in it, so then the teacher got up and went to get something else for the puke, and the person felt abandoned. Didn’t say that, but that was the feeling. Meanwhile there was an auditor standing there who really wasn’t connected to the person, the auditor just thought he was because he’d been to Eslan for a week or something and had the skills necessary, so the person actually went into a deeper space, a deeper depression, a deeper psychotic space, a deeper panic is actually the best way to put it. Finally we got the person on her side, she was crying, and we kind of carried her out, drove her home, patched her up, and now this person is needing therapy, but it’s hard for her to even talk about her problem, which is abuse as a child. Before that she was happy, life was okay, but underneath all that okayness was this abuse. So here’s a problem where on the outside you wouldn’t see it. She walked in a little superficial, but you wouldn’t see it, you wouldn’t go “There’s abuse.” There were several psychics in the room, I know they’re psychics because they’re Boulder Rolfers, there were several “therapists” in the room, but no one saw this. We had these underlying problems that aren’t necessarily that (apparent).

This is something we need to talk about as a community. As Jan Sultan said recently, “We don’t have a contract to take people into that space. Our contract is to Rolf. If we feel like we want to change that contract, we have to tell the person, ‘Hey, I want to change my contract with you, I want to do therapy with you and here’s my credentials, here’s my background.”‘ We have to be honest with them about our true credentials and our true background, we can’t just have a write-away degree, where you write off to some university and pay your money and get a degree. Even if you have a masters degree in psychology, that doesn’t really mean you’re equipped to deal with bipolarity or deep depression. But anyhow, as Jan said, it’s a change of contract. You’ve got to be clear in your contract to people.

“People are coming to us for Rolfing, and they know they may have an emotional release, but they don’t see us as their therapist, and their psychologist or psychiatrist-and we’re not!”

People are coming to us for Rolfing, and they know they may have an emotional release, but they don’t see us as their therapist, and their psychologist or psychiatrist-and we’re not! We don’t train people in that. Some people think if they get someone crying that they’re helping the person. Crying is not bad, but it’s not particularly therapy. It feels good, and I’m not saying we should suppress crying, but trying to get someone to cry every time they come into your office is not therapy either.

Bill: The kind of things that are appropriate for ordinary neurosis are probably not appropriate for the psychotic, if a person doesn’t have clear boundaries.

Jim: If you’re slightly neurotic, you’ll feel better, but if you are full-blown psychotic, it could push you into a dark space that needs a lot of help coming out of it. So pushing a person into that space is not particularly therapeutic. You’re not really helping that person, because it may take them years to come out of that space. These dark spaces are not easy to come out of. That’s something we’re real naive about.

Bill: So as a guideline, it might be suggested that if a new Rolfer has any inkling that they’re dealing with someone who’s psychotic, schizophrenic or whatever, they either work out of a clinic where there’s support, or be in contact with the psychiatrist. Or else just not take on that project until they have the proper back-up support.

Jim: Right. I think most Rolfers should know a couple of psychiatrists and a couple of psychologists, a male and a female, and have some sort of rapport going on, so if they need to call someone up and make that referral, they can make an instant referral, call that person up and say “Here’s what I’ve run into, can I send them to you now? Tonight, tomorrow morning?” Instead of trying to say, “Well, let’s look in the phone book. Or I’ll call someone and find a person for you.” It’s too late then. You need someone right then. So, we need a network ahead of time first of all. And we need another person’s credentials and capacities. This is not easy, it’s not an easy task.

EDITORS NOTE:

This interview was done before Peter Levine, Anngwyn St. Just, Darrell Sanchez as well as Bill Smythe began to offer regular courses on trauma through the Rolf Institute.