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"The Gloria Films"

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Inculcated:

--- Quote from: "Ursus" ---
--- Quote from: "Samara" ---Disturbing. The horrible thing is that when I should feel compassion for Gloria, I don't. The minute she picked Perls at the end, it all escaped me. She picked the person who would ultimately abuse us all. And so many kids in programs idolized the harshest, most brutal master and practically prostrated before them to curry favor.
--- End quote ---
To be fair, I think she was really under the influence of and trying to please her own therapist, Everett Shostrom, who was also the producer/director of "Three Approaches to Psychotherapy," and who adored Perls at the time.

It didn't take Gloria all that long to realize her mistake and she began to speak out against Perls, even standing up in front of a crowd of ~100 folk at a Western Behavioral Sciences Institute weekend conference just a little over a year after the filming ... to voice her distress over the session. I think she continued to speak out against Perls for the rest of her life.

How many folks who get bamboozled like that put their dignity on the line, their mistakes up for public derision, just to continue to try to rectify that wrong?
--- End quote ---
All true. Even though I knew before seeing it that it was going to show this woman being mocked and attacked by the very guy her therapist idolized and that the twisted ending would be her “picking Perls”; I experienced a lot of anger first for her then at her—even though I knew.

What was striking to me was that Rogers seemed in that limited time able to help her make connections about her stated concerns about how she should relate to her daughter about her social life that went beyond the initial framing and into how her ex was perceived differently than she, how she felt about certain perceptions of her to maintain roles to satisfy her mother and others and how she really had not yet become comfortable with being a single woman and selecting suitors that pleased her.

Then comes Perls with whom she attempts to be candid and stand her ground under his attacks on her demeanor and his attempts to bait her into the behavior he was exhibiting. It was clear that she didn’t want to “rise to this challenge” because it would involve sinking to his level. The influence of Shostrom indeed likely played a significant factor in her making that choice to pick Perls, but I also wondered if it was possibly somewhat about that fact that Perls’ attack had so completely thrown her. Like a friend of mine who never seems to know the right thing to say in moments of conflict (like with an unduly bitchy coworker of hers) who will call me to vent and to say the things she wishes she had said. She has marveled at my ability to come up with zingers as she calls it. She has no idea from whence this ability of mine has come and was honed—nor that it comes with its own regrets.  I wondered if Gloria felt whatever post session processing influence from Shostrom, but also that post confrontation indignance of if only when prompted to make her selection for the film. She after just one encounter would not have known that to play the game is to lose. War Games wouldn’t hit theaters for another two decades.

She did do her best to undo the damage of her “selection” and even her daughter has written a book called: Living with 'The Gloria Films': A Daughter's Memory

seamus:
ok so albert ellis began all the RBT/RSA stuff Right? Next the torch was picked up by Dr.Maxie Mautlsby,Turns out that between his departure from straight,and the founding of L.I.F.E geuss who was in practice with Dr Maultsby? Thats right Dr George Ross.Also Ross' first wife ,Linda was there too...Any ol morgan yacht era Str8 vet can remember the abc's and all the rsa stuff.Ya didnt get to do any of it till about 4th phase (if memory serves) and it seemed over the heads of most of us at the time.But I do have to say it was closer to genuine therapy than ANYTHING that Miller Newton was throwing down.
    A bunch of "rational recovery " approach is decended from Albert Ellis' philosophy.Hes even quoted in Hazelden literature.
Kinda funny how that little circle ends up,huh.
  I remember reading a book on Elvis once where he said scientology was "all head and no heart" so I found it easier to quantify my feelings toward all that RBT/RSA stuff,since then Ive often wondered if there was/is some connection between
 synanon,Albert Ellis and Scientology,but that kinda seems unlikely to me somehow. By the way, I met Dr. Maultsby and he struck me as being both kind, and genuine.And just to clarify,while I have read "Dianetics" and some of L. Ron Hubbards sci-fi writings as well, Im in no way a Scientologist.( Fuck, Ive read the koran,at least twice,but that dont make me muslim)
   I read constantly,and my Intrests are varied. I have a horrid,all-consuming D.I.Y. mentality when it comes to education. I see little point to things such as "curriculum",unless of course you LIKE being taught WHAT to think as opposed to HOW to think.

Inculcated:
@Seamus:Yeah, there are some who benefit from the RET approach in a short term and voluntary setting when dealing with a therapist who is skilled and not so determined to produce connections and insights into the recipient that they become bent on imposing expectations of the appearance of progress at the expense of their client.
I am reminded again of an exchange Ursus and SEKTO once had about Hubbard and Dederich which got me pondering about ingredients of the strange brews being served up in program settings – that was about how the “harbingers of new ‘truths’ all steal from one another”

I’m getting a perverse giggle and veering off my own topic here, but side talk of RET …  brought to mind again something that had been shown to me in a rather unorthodox “therapy” (pretext) from early childhood with an actual literal embodiment of an irrational Ralph and I went in search of it to see if it ever came to anything. Thankfully, it did not. However, while I had initially compared what was being shown to me as a rip off of Goofus and Gallant…it seems more likely to have been inspired by this —You and Your Emotions
See page seven figure 2 for how to hate and fear cake.

seamus:
Did you know that"RATIONAL RALPH TOUCHED MY ?" that alan aldaesque cake lustin son of a bitch!

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