Mr. Lin

I'm Carl Rogers and I'd like to introduce you to Mr Lynn which is the name we've given to the young man you're going to see in this film Mr Lynn is a student who came to the counseling center on the advice of a mutual friend to whom he had talked some months previously about his problems at the time that Mr Lynn came in to see me I had been endeavoring to arrange to have motion pictures taken of some of our therapeutic interviews and in my first brief conversation with him which didn't last more than 10

minutes I asked him if he would be willing to meet with me in a room where a motion picture might be made of our interview he gave his consent and we made arrangements for this first appointment so when the interview starts I know nothing of Mr Lynn in the first moment of the interview when he says my problem is homosexuality that's my first knowledge of any of his difficulties just as it will be your first knowledge so I believe that any introduction is unnecessary let's simply step into the interview and let Mr Lynn speak for

himself well did I tell you anything about the nature of thing and when I talked to you and we arranged this appointment I didn't even ask you one thing so well um I went because I was sort of hesitated to go into it but uh uh fact remains that it's homosexuality and I want to change MH MH so um I talked with art about it about a year ago last summer and uh um when we had a rather long interview and then he decided that I better see someone but not him because the relationship is

too close and um so I of course I and this is the first I've gotten uh down to business with it and uh I've been thinking about it ever since and I um am confused mly I go around in circles I don't know where to start and U I've looked backwards just try and find if I could find the cause if that would help I mean doesn't seem to and I don't think I could find it if I wanted to and about the only thing I figured out was that the the important thing is to

find out where I stand now and start from where I know rather than psychoanalytically or something go back in the past and trying to dig up bones I don't know so the thing you're clearest about is that you do want to do something about yes but I problem but I don't know how as you tried to think it over you start to go round and round in circles and have come to feel that maybe the most important thing for you is to try to figure out what's true right now or what what's the situation right

now is that the yes sort of yes and and to to start from where I am now rather than to I see rather than to go back and try and find a cause or something and then I you can't go back in the past and eradicate the cause and and try and come up with uh a path solution shall we say of course that's what I'd always want that's what I suppose everybody wants immediate solution or something but I don't think it's going to be like that what you wouldn't mind having but no it's a

doubt if you'll paint it well I look for in music and it was the same thing I mean I think it's sort of a carryover I thought there was a key to uh to how to be a good musician there's no key of course you can't read it in a book it's not is you feel as though in that area too you had a tendency to think now there an immediate solution there's there's something that that is going to make this thing a clear up and and uh be thing I'll be a good musician but

gradually learned just as it's ridiculous and also I feel that that all sorts of things are tied up I mean the one thing I found out when I went to Art was that um shortly after that interview which was sort of a cathar uh uh I gained 10 pounds in the another two weeks which I think which gave me something to think about anyway from a standpoint that probably uh problems I have in uh thinking and music and anything else is all tied up I mean everything is tied up very closely problems of health or

something but there's some [Music] uh well uh when art said something about uh he felt that it it had crept into my music from the standpoint that uh I was making mistakes where mistakes shouldn't be made I mean he says there's no reason for you to do these things and I do that still he says it's form of self- punishment well I don't know but uh uh then too there's this I think the thing is in the form of a Neurosis I want I'm afraid to go ahead I've always been afraid of new things to

to go into something entirely new it's it carries over a little bit in music I'm sort of afraid to take up a new piece I'm sort of a um I'm afraid when College well further back than that actually from high school going into college I was rather afraid to go into the new situation make all the new adjustments that had to be made it wasn't so much coming to a school down here though but you do feel like kind of characteristic of you that anything new you it has seems to have been for a long

time I don't know meeting with people I did so you have well the idea I wanted to give is simp that I'm confused Nally right can't think straight I have no match you don't have any that's okay [Music] sorry thank you so uh I also understand that uh I am the one that has to solve the problem and not you and yet I sort of want uh you to do it for me or something I might I guess what you're saying is it maybe supposed to be that you solve the problem or something but the

thing you really feel is that you would hope very much that I would yeah yeah yeah that's very close to it it's amazing though indeed after I thinking about this thing for a year and a half I've come up with nothing that remotely resembles an insight into it I mean I just don't as as I said before it's just been going around in circles I don't have enough a very clear perceptive or something I don't other words I guess you're saying there I've wrestled and wrestled with this thing and I don't see a bit more

about it don't understand it a bit better than I did at the outset yeah that's exactly right I I I just don't know how one goes about changing that sort of thing I um well see what it's just a a mystery of you as to how a person would make a start in changing himself or understanding himself yeah well it it's uh i s I have gone I go on dates all the time not all the time but occasionally because uh I can be attracted to women and yet uh I don't know that it just

doesn't seem to be the real thing I mean there's no real attraction sort of forced MH and uh so the solution isn't just to go out all the time it's some some sort of a mental attitude or something or a Neurosis maybe I'm just unwilling to to uh change my uh subconsciously something I'm willing to change TR I guess you're saying there you you've tried going through the behaviors of being interested in girls and you there's some would you have to do anyway because Society demands it which brings another point is one of the big

reasons for wanting to change is simply society's attitude toward the all things impossible situation for some people like to defy convention and that's all right for them but uh for me it's not because well there's just such a social stigma attached to the whole thing you get sort of tired of acting apart for so for you one of the big reasons for wanting to change is the social attitud that's turd homosexuality of them and another reason is uh simply that I don't think that it's a rewarding or uh it just is not a very happy

relationship at least whatever no not that it isn't and uh also I look at uh when I get older the the picture changes I mean when you're young it's one thing when you're old it's horrible the 40ish and 50ish Men you see on the streets it's just horrible I don't want to be like that M I feel it isn't in itself fully satisfying now but even it will be even less later more weighty is the fact it is you look a head you don't like that at all and from what I see of the of

course I have an entirely different perspective I'm a uh ordinary uh heterosexual relationships in my age group and uh from what I see of them they're STIs Factory although there's an awful lot of nonsense that goes on there that I think is sort of stupid but uh that has the approval of society for one thing and uh still it seems to be a workable I me more workable more uh satisfying relationship all the way through of course into this a physiological element which is simply uh who was it J tried to justify it it just

can't be justified it's silly but that's outside the realm of my experience I don't know yes I sort of get the feeling that you saying there various cultural and intellectual considerations on this several of those are outside the realm of your own experience it's a very loaded uh just to use the words it's a very loaded word because when you say that you're queer it automatically sets you apart you lose your individuality immediately and you become one of a horrible group I mean you uh they say they're abnormal people but they're really not they're they

are but they aren't they're uh perfectly ordinary in every other respect although their sexual Outlook of course colors their Outlook and on everything else and they'll be different from other normal people but you feel that when you're labeled homosexual and it's as though you're no longer a person at all you're just I don't want that's why I don't like to use the word because uh you lose your name you lose everything I mean it's just that label really destroys you as a person and just yeah puts you in a class puts you in a a

class that's that's not accepted it's not but I've had I haven't I myself haven't been put in that category ever because I've always been acting apart I've never had any homosexual Associates really but yet when you hear people talking you always make the connection mentally of course they don't know they're talking about you but uh maybe it's me that puts myself in the class alone I don't know but at least you're saying other people haven't put you in that category it's just the realization within you of of what that would mean the only reason they

don't is because they don't know but they would except for a very rare few that that is the feeling though that if they really knew then they would put me in this awful disapproved of class that is you know there a lot of certainly with the family it's true a lot of my friends is true with some of them it isn't true at all well I don't know where to go on it's uh I going cycles of of times when I'm more attracted to women sometimes almost entirely heterosexual in Outlook that happened at school I

was before I came down here but um um for a while for short while but then I all s of laps back into it I don't know why whe it doesn't uh maybe it's a retreat or something I don't know for an escape I don't that's the kind of thing you don't understand all you're quite sure of is that your feelings do change to some degree from time to time is that there have been periods when you felt quite strongly heterosexual and interest and other times when I guess it feels to you a little bit

as though it was a going back or something like that oh this is just too much why why do I bother that sort of thing hits me when walking down the street or something I just U give up what am I going to do all this effort for yeah what what is the use and then I it's mostly it's mostly entirely mental I mean it's it has nothing to do with relationships everything is just sort of a MH but of course to all my to to lots of people they say well that's absolute nonsense you're

not homosexual you don't you don't act that you don't go around with men you're not but it's the metal attitude I mean I ridiculous but you feel if it's true that this isn't doesn't have too much to do with what goes on outwardly in my relationships it's something with than me yeah it's for those people that can see it it's it's evidenced outwardly by a certain lack of sincerity maybe there something a lack of it's just as I say it's an act it gets to be uh an act which I put on I guess for

uh society and it gets to be uh drag because it takes a lot of energy I mean you have to be it's hard to keep putting on an act you think of uh you always have to be thinking about not what you would ordinarily do what you would naturally do but what you would what is the accepted thing to do and you have to do that feeling a sense that you always following a fairly involved script yeah whereas motivation is so one thing and on the other hand is the the purely insincere actions that have

no real basis on my personality or something I me there's nothing sort of as though you are going in One Direction but this act that you can put on is going off in another direction direction Sometimes They Come Together sometimes they go further and further apart when they go further apart I think I stop dating and uh um I have all sorts of devices for escaping I go to movies I read books I do all sorts of things that yeah I have like despair shortly after I came down here to to school because uh I

went back in the my old routine of I was constantly seeking some sort of entertainment or some sort of something to get away from myself I guess something I although I don't like really like to use that is this what she's saying now that when you and this uh false front get too far apart then it just seems very necessary to you to get some kind of Escape entertainment and that you realize evidently realize really suddenly you know that's what I went through when I came down here to go to school yes I joined a

fraternity down here and uh which was all right for the first while but the they insist the TR you fall in the mold and you have to go to parties every weekend you always have to have a date and I don't always feel like having a date so the upshot of that was although I told everybody that I got out of the fraternity for other reasons uh that was I guess I suppose the actual reason that I left because I simply didn't feel like playing the game all the time and that's what you have to

do because I just cannot keep up this act permanently indefinitely I can't do it all the time I don't think I could as an act I suppose uh wasting time comes into it somehow I waste I worry about wasting a lot of time when I should be practicing I'm doing something else I'm going to a movie I'm doing almost anything to waste time I wonder why that is it is that in these periods you feel almost compelled to waste time is that I feel more compelled to waste time than I do to practice and yet

I like to practice very much and then I think about well oh my gosh look at the look at the amount of time that slipped by and I get to start getting either depressed or angry or something you really schooled yourself if you waste too much time yeah I get quite mad at myself and then I don't remember what happens at that time I turn over Le new Leaf for about one day or something like that and I start wasting time again although I always managed to pull through school because school isn't anything much might

be great battle as my piano that's the thing you have to keep at all the time and that's I don't know I've gotten further and further from it I mean putting in the time I should I suppose it also I I don't see how maybe I associate playing the piano with something but uh I waste time when I'm sitting there practicing I mean I putts I improvise I do almost anything but what I should be doing why is it I somehow feel the two are tied together I know mhm sounds as though right in the

piano playing you certainly experience this impulse toward time wasting not in the playing in the practicing well I mean in the no the playing it's a different thing once I get something under my fingers so that I can play it it's become a sort of a staple thing and it's become part of the past which I don't mind going back to it's the new things again I'm always afraid of not afraid of tackl them but I want to get out of doing maybe that's how it ties in I get a new piece and I puts

around it till I more or less can play it and then I really can work on it because it's becomes so much easier to it's whether it's the newness of it or or what that brings this about at least there's a feeling that whatever you do in your practicing is tied in in some way with a lot of other things M I wonder if it's tied in with the idea of changing and being afraid or being sort of not knowing how or something how do I ever get under PE done under those circumstances it's quite

important because it takes me much longer time than it takes other people to do a do a thing once I get it done can do it quite [Applause] well there is this feeling there that changing yourself to play a new piece or getting into this new experience is something for you is slow and difficult and like changing yourself yeah and then I have great moves of depression I don't know I haven't had any since I've come down here at least not very one or something that I have tremendously depressed moves I can feel through when

I just lose I've been going around in circles for a long long time or something and uh I just don't have any Clear Vision at all maybe I get depressed about that I don't know don't feel that to understand them though maybe it's when you've been going around in circles for a long time but at least there are times when you just feel terribly down [Applause] mhm yeah it's tied in with a do when I was in high school I was able to think quite clearly and I fortunately I can still remember the experience and

now when I can't about anything School reading a book is is more less a matter of just reading the words and letting it soak in it's not read from very much of a critical approach I don't think the way I used to that bothers me too sort of a feeling where I used to be pretty clear and sharp and now confused and you know that's s exactly and consequently I feel like I bungle every day uh things because um I'm not able to think of something I thought clearly when I wouldn't come up with I

just muddle through I don't really do things clearly or well will not as well as I could do um I forget some of the things that I wanted to bring up because um I'm not in an especially Disturbed state right now I've been going on fairly well but occasionally I have things when I get a rush of ideas that I want to talk to somebody about I can't remember some of them I had a great deal of trouble with my family this year at home and uh but uh it's funny when I'm out of the

situation and not bothered by it anymore I I almost forget what it was that was causing the difficulty in the first place there some of those things that can seem very distressing at the time and you just love to have a chance to talk them out I was always in stay something well just in a state uh about something or other at home and then uh now I can't even remember what they were about you can hardly hardly remember clearly what all the strain and Str with your that's it when I get well when I

get in a depressed modood it's the same thing when I get out of it I can't remember what I was depressed over but sure shooting I'll be another one in a week or so maybe I like them I don't know maybe you get into them by choice or something or maybe I don't know might be that that's a Escape too either just give up trying to think about it and I just get in a mood or something I don't know what really I've never thought about them too carefully when I'm in them I don't know

what constitutes one of my depression I've noticed it before though but as soon as they're over I can't remember what they're about so so whatever the experience is in these kind of black times at least when your out it's as though you had no recollection or or else I can remember the thing that caused it but I can't remember it in the same frame of mind I was in then uh and when I'm out of them they ridiculously very silly matal things butth they get magnified when I go into a depression and that's all I

think about it something guess you seeing perhaps objectively they really may be trivial things when you're in that mood they're enormous things yeah and I can't entirely disc uh discount them because uh as I say they'll happen again they have I mean they usually happen later on it must be some sort of a mental uh attitude way of uh mental approach caused by something I don't know or I'll just pick on any incidents to as an excuse to descend into a depression or something I don't know you're saying it could be that if I really

in in a mood to be depressed then find something to be depressed about you maybe that's true I don't know seems like this is miles away from the subject but it's still it's as I say I think they're probably all related so I might just as well present the whole picture maybe I'm roaming around but I'm sure it's all tied together yeah I think yes I'm all one person as far as I know at least physically sometimes feel like several different people mentally but and I wonder about this this idea of clear thinking whether that

would whether that is just a metal laziness or whether it's uh also tied in with on my problem I mean whether if I get out of this will I be able to think clearly whether I'm just all muddled because of one's Central problem or whether using it as an excuse to be mentally lazy or something I don't know I guess there's a vague feeling there that somehow the two things are they are related yet maybe maybe I just try to uh let myself get away with a lot because I'm in a sort of a difficult

situation maybe I feeling sorry for myself I is this what you're saying that perhaps you use what you see as your central problem as kind of an excuse uh for the fact that you're mentally lazy yeah that I don't really feel it when I'm reading a book I want to I want to get as much out of it as I can I want to read a Ally and when I'm reading it I thinking about wanting to do it yet I still don't do it maybe I just don't know how it's a might be a lack

of method or something I thought of that and I told my panel teacher and she told me to read Plato So I'm reading Plato um but the fact that I'm not reading very critically means that I'm not going to get much out of PL as far as the method goes because you have to be pretty sharp I don't think it's all method problem I think there's an awful lot of laziness involved doubt if it's just kind of mechanical difficulty or using the wrong method or something but more that there's something deficient in you in that

respect uh um no well yeah deficient in the sense that I'm lazy yeah I can only think of that one word to describe an awful lot of things that I do and I of course rationalize them right after I do them uh the fact that I didn't get up this morning in time to make class or something and I rationalize it while I was up late last night or I had a bad week or something uh and yet then shortly after I tell what you know that that's not true it's just because you're so damn

lazy you won't get up or something that you can make excuses for yourself but still underneath that there's a very strong feeling you are lazy yeah evidenced in the amount of time I can spend sleep in I mean I can well I can sleep very easily all day more or less do and daydream all day and not have it bother me at least many of the time that I this spent till about 1 or 2:00 Saturday morning sleeping uh after going to bed at something I 12 or 1 the night before and uh when I

wake up I get very angry that I wasted all this time bed I just turn over oh well so so I guess you feel it this ability to sleep or Daydream or a combination of the two is this real proof that you are lazy [Music] yeah maybe I want to sleep again I don't know maybe that's another thing maybe what maybe I want to sleep maybe I would rather sleep than do what see what I should be doing if I were up I would be practicing something or or procrastination is a big part but I

love to put everything on maybe I really choose to sleep rather than the other Alternatives yeah it's not very conscious choice though I don't know but I do feel it U all these things may be tied in with one metal attitude maybe the uh maybe the homosexuality isn't the central issue I don't know because there's all these other side issues that's just the one that seems the biggest because that's the one that Society doesn't condone whereas lots of people sleep their classes and lots of people uh don't read a book with any great care go

to to many movies or something like that sounds as though you're wondering let I'm isn't there perhaps some some one unified problem and maybe it isn't as much may you know maybe maybe it's just the the fact that some are brought into Relief by the way other people think about them or something some problems would have sharper social aspects and some would not yeah but isn't there really in me one quite unified Problem whatever could do well there might be I don't know it certainly seems to be some sort of a pattern never thought of

it before but I never uh but I've never brought them all together and considered that that each one has a sort of a common element yeah I've always thought of them separately but there does seem to be some sort of a common element to fact waking up to face a new day is almost too much to be born something like that maybe that's another Retreat from what's new by rights that should be a political reactionary but I'm not but at least there's the kind of vague feeling that all these different things may be quite tied

in together in this dreading to wake up and face a new day is not as dissimilar from some of these other problems as it might be yeah that's true well well I can't can't understand what would cause something like that of course that's looking for the cause that's not looking at the way I am uh I can't I tried turning over new leaves and that simply doesn't work or maybe at least it hasn't worked yet you can't turn a new over new Lea and everything and write letters when you're supposed to and not put off

anything that is is sort of I guess what you're doing is sort of trying to feel out the implications of this and realizing well certainly this doesn't change just by saying okay now tomorrow I will will change change no it doesn't work I don't know why it doesn't but sometimes it uh does work for a while but it's always for a short while I always want to lapse back into things the way they were I seem to want to slide back or something mhm it's also true composition when I'm writing a piece or something like

uh I sort of hastily put down the new idea and then I will do Lish all sorts of time copying it I'll rearrange it I'll do any number of things with this one idea that's that's that's come but I don't want to go on and write the the um succeeding developments of it or something like that sort of as though if you've taken one step forward I want to stay you like to yeah you like to spread all my way around and and and let's not explore the whole situation whereas most they they keep insisting

that you write the whole mess as fast as you can and then go back and and work detail but I will copy a thing half a dozen times before I'll go on and do something else make two or three versions of it huh s the same situation there again that's kind of the same mm pattern same as the P same as it's the new that it's what all sort of frightens me so it seems to be sort of an obsession what I feel though it's surprising the extent to which this does seem to be a

theme of being mhm afraid of the new day the new task yeah that's it's been as long as I can remember it too mhm uh well no that's not true when I was in high school I was uh enjoyed coming back for another year and I of enjoyed to at least I think they did of course at the time I probably didn't as you look back you know you always think that this is much better than what's what is now but it wasn't always true I remember very distinctly in my senior year in high school

that uh um I was thinking how much better the years before were than this year and then I all all of a sudden thought well in a few years I'll be thinking this was just about as fine as anything I ever had don't remember though uh mental environment that that you were in at the time or something I don't know or that you looked at these things the way you looked at them at the time you just just remember what's good about them or something I don't know sort of realized that even back there the

the past tended to look better and yet that you might have been really deceiving yourself about that but when it was that when it was the present maybe it wasn't so hot yeah I see our time's about up for today oh is it mhm um you like to come back at 11:30 next on 11:30 next Saturday M yeah that will be fine okay I'll try and make it on time try to be ready in okay okay F I think that uh this was a somewhat characteristic first interview uh I'm sure that the uh development of

it follows the kind of thing that one often sees namely first my problem is a certain label and then gradually the individual begins to get more and more into his experience and begins to see that perhaps the problem is not that labeled thing a Neurosis or homosexuality or inferiority complex or whatnot um but but the problem lies more in in his total experience and uh it seemed to me that this boy began to uh recognize something of the patterning of his experience that there were themes and threads running through his life that um um were

perhaps in some total sense more important than the thing that he saw as as the problem I think as far as the um relationship was concerned it seemed to me easy but not deep uh as is more and more true of people who come for help these days uh he seem to be prepared for the counseling experience evidently through this talk with his friend um and so it starts off easily but certainly without uh a great deal of emotional depth in the uh in the relationship uh I would say that from the point of view

of the therapeutic process what we've seen here is simply the very beginning of a relationship and also perhaps the beginning of the individual's exploration of his uh life and of his own experience and um he seems to be uh finding as is so often true that though by himself he simply goes around and round in circles in such exploration the moment he begins to express himself in a relationship then somehow it does get to be forward movement I think that uh he felt that he saw a few things about himself in this interview that he

hadn't been aware of before uh I would say that this is surely no more than the nearest start on a therapeutic experience but that perhaps it is a a start I'm coming back into this film to add a postcript to the interview that you have just observed some of you viewing his uncertainty and reluctance at the end of this interview must be wondering what happened next well it was considerably more than 2 weeks before Mr Lynn referred returned for another interview but after some weeks he did return and when he returned he began to dig

much more deeply and more seriously he began to explore what it was that he valued in homosexuality and to try to understand the various aspects effects of himself realizing that the problem was himself not simply a problem of homosexuality he began to explore his fantasy life too and realized that certain fantasy satisfactions were far more real and meaningful to him than any of the satisfactions that he gained in actual homosexual contact in short he did return and he has entered therapy and while the story is still unfinished I thought that you might want to know

that following a period of uncertainty he did make the choice to attempt seriously to reorganize his personality and his behavior