Pandora's Box. (Article 3 of The history of my epilepsy.)

From one of many interpretations in the Greek mythology, I have downloaded the following: Pandora means the ‘all-giving’ or the ‘all-gifted’. She was originally a metal statue that was so beautiful that Zeus decided to give her life and endow her with qualities from different gods. From Aphrodite, she got her beauty and Apollo gave her musicality and the gift to heal. From Hermes Pandora got the Box, which she never was allowed to open, but when curiosity, which she got from Hera, took over, Pandora opened the Box, despite the ban and all accidents and diseases, flew out over the world. Pandora closed the box just before the Hope, which was all that was left, was leaving the box. The world then experienced a period of despair until Pandora opened the box again to free the Hope that came out of the box as a small bird. This has created the phrase ‘Hope is the last thing to die’. 

For almost 35 years I have had a red plastic box, 45x30x30 cm, designed to be used as an archive or a tool box. It has been my Pandora's box. In it I have collected all my letters, drafts, thoughts, poems about my accidents and my hopes. It has survived moves to many countries, several divorces, thorough house cleanings and multiple decisions that it should be burnt. Many times I have been faced with the difficult choice, whether to type the content or to throw it away. The material includes all the pain and all the liberating insights that I could express when I began to understand that there was a connection between my birth, my birth defects, my epilepsy and my subsequent neurotic superstructures. 

There has always been an invisible lock on my red box, and I have subdued my curiosity, even if hope has never left me. After that I during my first 40 years had built up neurotic tricks and manners to defend my fragile internal order, it took almost as long time to resolve the knots and straighten out tricky behaviors and to learn to live in a less neurotic way. Not until now I've been in a sufficiently good balance with myself to be able to deal with the shit without it’s hurting. 

When I am going to tell you about my epilepsy and my various adventures and insights it will not happen in a perfect systematic order because the circumstances will have an influence of what happens to be the entrance to a story. The content and the core of each story will still not fundamentally be accidental, because it depends on my brain's history, which in turn is a reflection of evolution. 

Letter to Art Janov regarding a retreat in Frutigen, Swizerland (February 1982):

"Since a couple of days I’m back in Sweden from our week-long meeting in Frutigen and I want to try to clear up some questions about my defense mechanisms, which had a hard time during the week. 

I have never been able to express my needs in a straight and honest manner. Very early in life I learned to get my needs met by acting smart.  I have begun realizing that my smartness is nothing but a great anxiety and pain of not being good enough and of not being heard. On the second day of the retreat, after having been through two frightening experiences the day before (not to get help and to experience a combination of hallucination / seizure, which in reality was nothing else than an endless need to scream out my repressed pain) I experienced a feeling of being pulled out backwards in a breech delivery. Suddenly, I got an insight that this was the feeling that had persecuted me all my life. I cannot complete anything in a normal way. I try to and try to and fail, and then I start all over, making it the opposite way. It is painful and frustrating until I suddenly realize that I can do it like everyone else, only much later ... 

To Frutigen I had traveled together with G.K. (S.O. had introduced her to me) and when I met her, I became obsessed with her blonde curly hair, and I remember I touched it a few times, and I told her about my daughter A., who had the same hair when she was 2-3 years old. G.K. and I spent some time together and among other things for that reason I dropped some planned business in Lausanne and stayed all week with people who participated in the retreat. I realized that it was only now that I began to understand the basic principles of Primal Therapy. 

There was a connection between G.K.’s hair and you. During our breaking up dinner, the last evening, I was sitting together with G.K. and you were seated behind us so that you could see us. My mind was working throughout the meal with the supposition that you observed us, and I did everything to make it look like G.K. and I had a great time together to show you how much she liked me. I acted compulsively and knew that something was amiss but could not break the pattern. Shortly after you had left, I also broke up and went to my room, packed my suitcase and went to bed. 

In the middle of the night I woke up having a feeling of a grand mal / birth primal and suddenly there was a flashback as a double image of my sister (she had dethroned me when I was 3 years old). One of the pictures showed how she looks now, with long dark hair and the other how she looked when she was 3-4 years old with blond curly hair, sitting on my father's knee. Memories of my brother, who also had blond curly hair swept past. Curly, blonde hair was in the 40's very special in Sweden since the country's crown prince had 5 curly, blond children and my mother who was a big fan of the royal family was proud to have two curly own kids, her ‘prince and princess’. My hair was thin and straggly, and my father shaved it off to ’kick-start the growth’... 

The pain of not feeling accepted and loved because of the lack of curly hair has been one of my traumas for decades. I have been obsessed with curly hair. Many girlfriends, spouses, my daughter, G.K., you and many others have triggered the pain (not to feel loved and accepted and add to that the feeling underneath of being epileptic because of an abnormal birth). In my feelings during the night, an endless number of curly haired people reviewed in a playback, and I got a burning sensation (similar to a petit mall) when your image from The Primal Scream came up. That picture of you and your beautiful curly hair was not without significance when I was first become fascinated by Primal therapy and its opportunities. 

One day during a group meeting you came suddenly almost crashing into the room and said: ‘There is a person here in this room, who really pisses me off’! I felt instinctively hit and rightly it was me, you had meant. You said that you had heard so much shit about me during the week that I did not stand up in group meetings and talk about my problems. This attack on my defense gave me a lingering awareness if I want help, then I must be straight and stop pretending that I do not have any problems, whether about myself (the most important problem) or with others that are willing to help me. I had until then not understood how important it is to work with even small blockages in pain (obviously with less “dignity and prestige”) which I carry on until I can get to the birth feelings and epilepsy. 

The continuation of a long letter is about my view on female therapists and my lack of confidence in their authority. I got key insights / feelings in this regard when B. (primal therapist) stood up during a group meeting and told you how humiliated and "pissed off” she felt when you had commented on her uncertainty because of a hysteric patient's behavior. Suddenly, I began to respect the female therapists after B. had dared to stand up for herself and straight out tell you how she felt in a way that my own mother never dared to tell the truth to my father. That set the stage for some of my later views on women." 

Hope is the last thing to die.