(Re)traumatization during psychologist training 2.

"Lasciate ogni speranca, voi, ch'entrare!"
("Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.")
Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia

…Since I have experienced that respect for the right to human dignity is not fashionable in certain circles, I assume that those individuals who trampled on my rights will not mind if I, too, refrain from holding back and mention them by name in this writing, given that it would be difficult to anonymize them without leaving out the very essence of the matter.

In my previous blog article, I wrote about the traumatizing effect that the behavioral analyst final examination had on my life. Now I would like to share the topic that I dared to speak about, and for which I was humiliated (I assume this, because to this day I have not received any actual feedback as to what the reason was for the lower evaluation I received in my BA degree than my actual knowledge would have warranted… For me, it remains incomprehensible and outrageous! The only critical remark made concerning my psychological knowledge at the BA final examination was as follows: "Your statistical hypothesis is not good! Whatever. Pass.").

First of all, let me share the assessment written by my supervisor in connection with the social psychology workshop that served as the background for my final examination presentation:

"The choice of topic was relevant and corresponded to the specified research topic. The thesis fully met the formal requirements. It is a professionally well-founded, well-structured piece of work that provides useful information both for professional and external readers.

An ethically and professionally well-structured piece of original research, with appropriately formulated findings."

And here you can read the abridged version of the thesis (without the appendices and an in-depth presentation of the interviews), as a taste - though when I wrote this paper, I didn't yet know that to complete the BA program, I wouldn't have to write a separate thesis, but rather present one of my earlier papers. When I was informed about this improvement, I decided that since this workshop paper had been graded with excellent and is close to my heart, this would be the one. Especially since my other three workshop papers had also received 'excellent' and 'good' grades. It was a good choice… in a certain sense.:

Even now, my opinion—which is entirely unsupported by statistical data but based on empirical observation—is that it's not just difficult for the baby born as the umpteenth child to a mother who is multiply disadvantaged, poorly educated, and unschooled. It's also hard for the infant who, at the age of 1 or 2, is dropped off at daycare by otherwise educated and well-off families. (Personal memory: We spent two weeks at daycare for a "mommy adjustment" period with my youngest child. In the group of 12 children, one little girl was crying very hard. She held out her little hand, asking to be picked up and comforted. The inhumane, cruel, twenty-something b*tch of a daycare worker stood over her: "Let's break her will! Let her cry!" (As we know, age 2 is the right time for this, especially since psychotherapeutic methods capable of effectively correcting preverbal childhood traumas are only available to a limited extent in Hungary.)

…

I also stand by my view that, instead of making kindergarten attendance compulsory from the age of three in a country where both human resources and physical infrastructure are seriously deficient, it would be a blessing and a genuinely beneficial improvement if the public healthcare system assigned a psychotherapist specialising in trauma healing to every family. This is a country in which, without exaggeration, I can state that 100% of the population is severely traumatised at a transgenerational level, and that the triggers for these traumas include, for example, intimate relationships and the arrival of a child in the family.

…

I also maintain that it would be desirable to make flexible working arrangements and family-friendly workplaces genuinely accessible—not merely available on paper—so that women with young children could also work under conditions worthy of a human being. They should not have to choose between traumatising their child by dumping them in some godawful nursery so that they can afford their mortgage, clothes and toys, or otherwise having their standard of living plummet so drastically that they can barely make ends meet, simply so that they can keep their child close and provide them with emotional security, away from malicious and utterly unfit nursery caregivers like these.

By the way, most international studies examine whether a child has spent prolonged periods away from their mother before the age of six and whether they had to be placed in institutional childcare. Meanwhile, certain university professors are trying to argue, as part of their teaching, that starting kindergarten at the age of three—as implemented in Hungary—is a blessing and beneficial both for children and for their mothers.

Etc.

And let me also mention those members of the examination committee who felt that, after three years of hard work, it was perfectly acceptable to humiliate me with a grade of "Pass" in the final examination:

The Head of the Department of Social Psychology

The President of the Ethics Committee of the Hungarian Family Therapy Association (in 2018).

(There were two other male members of the examination committee, one of them a medical doctor by qualification; I will not mention their names: let us forgive them, they did not know what they were doing. Unfortunately, they have no idea what it can mean to give birth to a child and to hold one's own as a woman…)

It was good fun, a man's job – congratulations to the gentlemen once again, and wishing them many more similarly wonderful professional successes!… Or not?!....

For the full picture, it is worth mentioning that during the day there was a candidate who enthusiastically recounted her examination experience after receiving an excellent grade in the final examination: "I went in, looked at Dániel and said: – Do I really have to explain the topic?" … She did not have to explain the topic, and she received an excellent grade. Clearly, she knew something that I did not. And if those who do not explain the topic receive excellent grades, then someone has to receive a "Pass", after all. Why not the person who prepared and took this examination seriously?!… At the same time, to my knowledge, the BA final-examination topic list and the content and quality of the self-awareness classes in the family therapy training do not overlap to such an extent that this fact could exempt anyone from the BA examination requirements: from giving an oral examination on a topic drawn from a list of nearly 1,000 pages. And yes: the family therapy training is a fee-paying training programme, from which the gentleman who sat on the examination committee and judged me derives an individual benefit, and not a small one at that!… At that time, I did not have the money to "grease anyone's palm" anywhere in exchange for a better grade. … And when I did have the money, I felt that I did not want to give it to a professional environment this filthy, when I had worked damn hard for it myself! Sooo, that is how it happened that, contrary to my previous plans, I did not begin the family therapist training….

There are no statistical data based on credible research available to me concerning the effectiveness of family therapy in Hungary, but according to malicious tongues, in the case of family therapies conducted in Hungary, in approximately 50% of cases the positive outcome is that the therapeutic process ends with the couple separating peacefully. Approximately 40% of marriages in Hungary end in divorce – alongside the political slogans of "Family-Friendly Hungary: three children, three rooms, four wheels". Families with young children still do not receive psychological care, despite the fact that, according to some estimates, 80% of Hungarian society is traumatized to a greater or lesser extent in some way; and at the transgenerational level, it is not an exaggeration to say that 100% of Hungarian society is traumatized.

… And meanwhile I keep wondering: where could the problem have been with my final examination presentation and my explanation of the examination topic? Did I take it too seriously? Did I fail to pay in the right places? ... My cumulative academic average was above 4.0 (on a scale of 1–5, where 1 means failing and 5 means excellent) – yet for some reason this did not count towards the grade of my BA degree. My supervisor gave my workshop paper an excellent grade, and I prepared my final-examination presentation on the basis of that work. I had already learned how to give presentations as an economist; in that profession, it is considered a basic skill. So, if the grade of "Pass" in my BA degree was based on my 10-minute presentation and my 10-minute oral explanation of the examination topic, then I wonder: was I unable to prepare a 10-minute presentation about my workshop paper, which had been graded excellent, or did the gentlemen think that, as the mother of three children, I did not have enough reading experience concerning infancy (that was the topic I drew and was examined on)?!

And I also find it puzzling that if the lesson of the three-year behavioural analyst training was – let us say it plainly – that according to the examination committee I was unsuitable to become a psychologist, how did I get from that state over the following 2–3 years to receiving an excellent grade for my MA final examination at the very same university, albeit in a different department - specifically, in the hard-core adult clinical and health psychology specialization, which include self-awareness exercises and clinical internships and work in psychiatric wards?!

I know that the fault lies with me: the professor-gentlemen told me at the humanities behavioral analyst final examination that I did not understand statistics, ergo I had no affinity for logical thinking, but I really do not understand.

And I no longer even want to understand. I simply want to be as far away as possible from such an unethical, utterly substandard environment!

And whether it is acceptable when the President of the Ethics Committee of the Hungarian Family Therapy Association delivers the coup de grace to an otherwise currently struggling mother of three (because returning to the labor market after maternity leave was not exactly easy) – well, I don't know. I am not in a position to judge that. So let everyone decide for themselves. But in any case, it is an interesting contradiction to learn theoretically, as a psychologist, that "if you cannot help, at least do no harm", and then see the practical implementation take the form of someone kicking you so hard that you hit the wall… Ah-ha, I understand, there is something here that I do not understand. Practising what you preach? Drinking wine and preaching water? Until this point, I thought that was merely a habit of the Catholic Church…

Years have passed since then, but as I reread the insignificant and dry statistics in this piece – together with the many emotional memories of what I experienced at the final examination – I realize that I experienced such depths of human depravity on the part of professors who supposedly train helping professionals that, even now, I have not found words fit for polite company to describe it. It is not a statistical hypothesis that the Hungary where one could see huge posters everywhere proclaiming "Family-Friendly Hungary" was by no means such a good place for those who took on the "Three Children, Three Rooms, Four Wheels" project promoted by the political powers of the time. There is still a long way to go in sensitizing society regarding the situation of women and children, and regarding the humane treatment of the period with young children (regardless of educational qualifications).

…

And a little jump forward in time: a few years later, when my children had grown older, I decided to move to another country (with the peace of mind that my expertise and my children are of no value to the Hungarian state…). Enough. I travelled, trying to feel where I could imagine my future. At first, I travelled alone, since I could not take my children out of school for more than five days without consequences, and it did not always fit the budget to take them with me either (and some "teachers" at school even told them: "If I were your mother, I wouldn't do this!" … You are NOT in my place!!!...)

Then I travelled with them as well. (And then they were told: "We know that the family reason you gave for your absence was that you were travelling, so there is no exemption: you will be examined on the material the others studied while you were away – fail!")

I was in Madrid with my three children for a long weekend. On the evening of the first day, one of them started having toothache, so my first task was to get painkillers – and to find a private dentist capable of dealing with any problem and make an appointment immediately, so that our first stop in Hungary would be there. The toothache accompanied us throughout those 4–5 days. Every morning at 5 a.m., my son would stand beside my bed saying that the painkiller had stopped working and asking me to give him the next dose – and we agreed that he could have it in two hours. In the meantime, we acted out his little tooth and the pain with stuffed animals – a little improvised, untrained child therapy, necessity knows no law, as my mother used to say, etc.

By the time I reached Madrid airport, I was more than exhausted. We looked for where we could check in. A female airport employee came up to me and started saying something in Spanish. I told him, "I don't speak Spanish!" – and at the same time I thought: Oh God, what does he want to argue about now? Our luggage is too big, they are going to fine us, I cannot bear any more burdens, for fuck's sake, go bother someone else, I've had enough!

He asked me in English whether the children belonged to me. I still thought that this was some kind of confrontation, that the aim was to punish me. This is what I am used to: being hurt, being punished, having obstacles put in my way. In Hungary, this is how everything that is advertised on the posters as "family-friendly" manifests itself in actual practice.

"Yes, they are my children," I said, while thinking that, in my opinion, they looked quite enough like me with their blue eyes, and obviously the wind had not blown them there, of course they were my children, you fucking idiot! Just leave me alone! And when I have thoughts like that, they tend to show on my face as well.

Fortunately, you cannot kill someone with your eyes, so he survived and continued explaining in limited English:

– Puerta exclusivo – and he gestured towards it.

So, because I was travelling with three children (and none of them was a baby anymore!), they escorted us to the puerta exclusivo, where a kind, smiling woman helped us with check-in, and they opened a gate through which all three of us could walk at the same time. Well, this was the one thing I had not considered: that the person standing there might actually have good intentions and want to help me as a woman and a mother when she saw that I was travelling alone with three children.

Then we returned to Hungary, where the "Family-Friendly Hungary" advertisement greeted us at the airport, without a single spark of actual support or goodwill. (And yes, I do have mischievous fantasies about how much each of these advertisements costs when commissioned through public procurement, while there is no money left for teachers' salaries, doctors' salaries, psychologists' salaries… Ahem!)

We returned to the Hungary where my child was physically and psychologically abused at a state primary school, and when I reported the school, the teachers reported me as well and initiated proceedings to have my child removed from the family, because I did not smile when my child came home beaten up. We returned to the Hungary where my child even came home crying from the private school, after the ethics teacher tried to force them, in the middle of two root canal treatments, to prepare a bilingual presentation on the subject of marriage (naturally in accordance with the current political expectations, which completely contradict my individual values; ergo, they trampled on the values of the woman and mother who was paying HUF 150,000–200,000 per month per child so that she could know her children were physically and psychologically safe after they had been repeatedly abused at the state school!). To the Hungary where, during working hours, a teacher from the private school harassed me on the phone, demanding that I force my child, immediately and over the phone, to write the ethics test on the spot, otherwise they would fail him in ethics (whatever that word is supposed to mean in Hungary among teachers and non-teachers alike). We returned – for a while longer – to the Hungary where even psychology professors are lacking in humanity.

(Refrain: if the shoe doesn't fit, don't put it on.)

…

A few months later, I travelled to Alicante with my children. The plane arrived in the morning, and we still had about two hours before we could enter our accommodation. We sat down in a café so that we would not die of thirst. We ordered something: coffee, fruit juice, drank it, and then moved on. I stopped in front of the café to reorganize our luggage and put away our sweaters. Suddenly I saw the waitress coming out of the café, holding three wrapped croissants, explaining: "For the babies."

Again, I was surprised. I had not expected that. And it felt so incredibly good! Not because of the croissant – fortunately, I can provide my children with whatever they need (at least the basics)… But because of the kindness, the good intentions. The love directed towards the children.

…

"Tre cose si sono rimaste del paradiso: le stelle, i fiori, e i bambini."

("Three things have remained for us from paradise: the stars, the flowers, and the children.")

Dante Alighieri