Finding Snow White

[sound of crickets] And one night I was in my room ...and the room was filled with the moon light of a full moon.

And I can't explain it, but something started to come up in my gut that I was trying to understand.

And I realized I was on the dark side of the moon.

I was on the death side, and I had to get back to the life side to the light side, because as long as I was alive, David would be alive.

I got a call on Saturday from the Sheriff's Department.

There had been a mass killing with 13 people had been killed.

And they think that possibly David might be one of them.

And the next day, I picked up the phone.

Sorry, ma'am, to report that it is your son, David. And I put the phone down and I said, Don't move into the next second.

The next second holds everything of reality ...and life will never be the same.

Don't move into that next second! And then I moved and my world just fell apart.

[tense music] [Voice reads letter] February 18th, 1973, 1:15 a.m.

Dear Jonathan, Steve Oliker has just phoned me ...that Dave, along with Rob Spector ...was one of the four dead found in the Santa Cruz mountain cabin.

Mrs.

Oliker is under heavy sedation ...so perhaps you would not phone the house right now.

I'm sorry to sound so cold but I cannot express how I feel in writing.

Love, Momma When one of my best friends, Dave, and a couple of my other friends too, were murdered I was away on a hitchhiking trip And when I got the news, I was just shocked!

But then I became... I felt really angry because what they were doing was something so innocent.

[Jonathan] They were going to a place ...with some trees in it, and seeing a bit of the world.

And this serial killer... Mullin, somehow finds them in the woods ... and shoots them all dead!

They caught this guy, I guess ...a few days later, killing somebody else. It's not far from here that just a week ago today four more bodies were discovered in a connected series of murders [Reporter] The bodies were found ...late yesterday afternoon ...by a brother to one of the victims. [tense music] There is a horrible overlay to it all now.

Well, this is also the area in which 13 murders [Reporter] ...have been committed in the past six weeks.

[Jonathan] You know, they weren't doing ...anything dangerous.

They were just out having a camping trip.

They were taking a positive step ... just getting out of the San Fernando Valley [Jonathan] ...and I sure could understand that.

I got out of there after high school just as soon as I could ...looking for something else ...because the Valley just made me feel so alienated.

The cars, the asphalt, the concrete, the smog... ...it just had no soul to it ...and kind of sucked the life out of you.

So I went on hitchhiking trips, looking for something else [Jonathan] trying to... trying to find myself, I guess [tense music] I reconnected with Dave's mom, Ditta, really by chance.

I was thinking about my life and all the places I've been and worked, you know, in Europe and Africa... and I was thinking about where it all began... and then, of course, I came back to the San Fernando Valley, the place I escaped.

I remembered in the Valley there was one street in particular [Jonathan] ...that seemed to have more trees on it ...Vesper Street.

And that's where Dave lived.

I used to hang out there a lot... at his house... ...we played guitars, we read poems and I started wondering, you know... [Jonathan] ...whatever happened to Dave's mom after he died?

...That's the last I'd seen of her.

So I looked her up on the Internet and discovered... [Jonathan] I was amazed... ...she'd totally transformed her life and actually ...transformed the lives ...of many other people too.

[Ditta on TV] The effects of childhood... ...and how we experience ...our childhood do keep ...going on through our lifetime And what's so fascinating the latest brain research ...is reinforcing that, a great deal. Wow, here we are at Ditta Oliker's house.

[Jonathan] I haven't seen her in... ...oh, my entire adult life.

...It's been half a century.

...Hello? Hello!

[Jonathan] Ditta!

...Oh my god. [laughing] 47 years.

[Jonathan] The last time we were together 47 years ago, was a very sad time.

I was grieving about my lost boyhood friend [Jonathan] who was your son.

And you were in a deep state of mourning.

And then we parted ways, and I never saw you again.

And it was only just several months ago [Jonathan] ...when I wondered what ever happened ...to Ditta Oliker?

...You went on to get your Ph.D ...at age 50.

...You became a clinical psychologist... ...an author... I got your book.

I loved reading it... The Light Side of the Moon I find it very inspiring... ...your creativity very inspiring.

[Ditta] I did not want to finish my life ...and have the family be caught in living ...in an existence of only darkness, of only loss. I could not waste my life as David's life had been wasted and all the other people that were murdered, the waste of their lives.

And what I discovered is that once you have gone through something like this, you don't just live a life, you have to be truly alive.

And it was in that moment that I decided that I was going to [Ditta] ...become a therapist ...and make a difference in the lives of people who were caught ...in not being able to have their life be free and clear. [hopeful music] [Ditta] And I made an amazing insight into what became my life's work.

[Ditta] When I was an intern ...at a child guidance clinic... I was assigned to be the assistant to a therapist who had a very, very difficult group.

In fact, it was a group that was known throughout the clinic... ...as the Group from Hell.

Five mothers, something like 12 or 13 little kids... And they were unbelievably unruly, getting into trouble.

And one day I got a call from the clinic informing me that the therapist had suddenly died, that she had not released the information to the clinic, that she had been struggling with severe cancer and asked me to come in and tell the group that the therapist had died.

[Ditta] I told the group about the therapist ...and made it okay for them to accept that.

And within a few days, the group really calmed down... and I was getting credit and I hadn't a clue as to what I was doing.

The therapist needed the children to need her... because in her mind, she couldn't die because they needed her to be alive.

I desperately needed them - not to need me.

I was not only an intern there, I was still taking classes.

I was jammed with work.

I needed nobody to need me, actually.

And of course, they calmed down because they were now meeting my need... not to be needed.

And that, for the first time really truly ...validated what I had been moving towards ...increasingly, as an understanding of a different aspect of therapy that generally was not known.

Wow, what an insight to look at what needs are being presented to the child that are so important to the child that the need of a parent takes precedent over the child having their need met.

And it was an incredible validation of what became ultimately a very, very strong part of the new psychotherapy.

Ditta made me recognize something I'd never put into words before, that no matter what life throws at you... [Jonathan] "...you do have choices.

Even when something really bad happens, like what happened to her... ...you do have positive choices And if you choose to help yourself and maybe help others, you're engaging with life.

Jonathan] And the world can open up ...and you might discover opportunities more positive than you ever could imagine.

I sought psychotherapy from Ditta because... I was generally unhappy, even though I had no reason to actually...[laughs] it never looked like I had reason to be unhappy.

But I was unhappy about my place in the world.

[Kirby] My sexuality was still uncertain ...and it was just painful even which was odd because I had been Kirby] ...a Broadway performer ...prior to seeing Ditta and, you know, I mean, [Kirby laughing] you know, I was like, [Kirby] ...single, no girlfriend, you know, it was if it walks like a duck'...but ...but... I was, internally very, very, conflicted about it.

And I was an anxious guy, and I didn't know why I got so mad all the time over things... ...very angry.

[Ditta] One of the ways that I tried ...to express what the potential of therapy can be ...is to use my hands. I come into therapy and I'm stuck here in the past.

[Ditta] The child that got caught... ...in whatever the child got caught in.

And slowly, because the relationship I've been developing with the therapist, [Ditta] because I've been encouraged to seek freedom and a little bit of appropriate power...and slowly the limitations of the past start to break away.

Ditta] And at some point, I am... free to have a life that belongs to me... ...my life, not the life that I need to be for someone else.

Ditta's description of the process of psychotherapy as a way someone becomes free... First of all, my opinion about that is... it worked for me!

So, you know, she used to use this, this picture of you know, the flower coming out and growing when you become free and that was just a great image for me too because I wanted to be free of what was inside me that was driving me nuts!

...and making me so sad.

I was so uncomfortable about being gay [Kirby] and not being gay and all that... I don't want to make all this about that... because it's far more than just that issue.

But, that was a biggie.

And I remember her saying to me very early on, you know... Well, the discomfort about that and the worry about judgment... is from you. [Ditta] The power, the imagined power of the other' is still so strong.

So even though we may leave a place you haven't met your freedom yet, you have to fight in the new world to give yourself the freedom that is now available to you.

In the old world, you didn't have a chance.

You were caught.

But in the new world you have a chance except you've internalized that you still exist in the old world, that you yourself has not freed yourself, even though you're now in a world that would allow freedom.

I just realized there was this thing called a Survival System.'

It felt... it felt such a relief that I didn't have to blame the people I loved.

What I've been talking about is I call a Childhood Survival System.

I use the metaphor of Snow White [Ditta] ...as a good example.

...Snow White was not raised by the stepmother.

...She was raised by her mother which the German... when the story first came out that the German population objected to the mother being the bad guy.

[Ditta] ...And so that's when it became stepmother.

But originally it was this mother... and Snow White's only seven when she shows up in the mirror Mirror, mirror on the wall, the Queen says, who's the fairest of them all And the mirror returns with You are beautiful but Snow White is the fairest of them all. [Ditta] And the Queen was incensed... ...takes one of her workers and says Take this child into the woods and kill her. [Ditta] And they do except they don't kill her ...because they can't kill a child, but they figure they're in the woods ...some animal is going to get her, and they let her go.

And when you say to a child... How do you understand that?

[Ditta] What does Snow White need to do in order ...to avoid getting caught in the woods, ...almost getting killed by an animal?

What does Snow White need to do? And children think concretely, say Well, that's very simple.

She needs to be ugly. [Ditta]...because as long as Snow White is ugly [Ditta]...she's acceptable to her mother.

Whose need is getting met?

[Ditta] The narcissistic mother's.

Whose potential is not being used [Ditta] ...because she needs to be ugly?

And when you start thinking along those lines, your whole way of seeing a dynamic and understanding... because the child doesn't understand [Ditta] what's happened, they don't remember it... The need of the caretaker ...is the power ...that the child is responding to, so that the parent is meeting their own particular needs [Ditta] ...based on what their struggles are.

And that is not pathology... that is adaptation by the child that at some point [Ditta] ...really has enormous power [Ditta] .. to keep that child caught ...in not having what, in fact ...they have a potential, to have. The idea of the Survival System was interesting to me because I had a good family.

[Kirby] No one was mean to me.

No one was harmful.

I started realizing that the way I fit into my family [Kirby] ...to accommodate ...their emotional needs and them to accommodate to mine, I had to behave and think almost a certain way.

We all do.

And when she talks about the Survival System, the thing that really I appreciated the most is that this wasn't about we're going to look back, blame your parents and tell you how to get over your parents.

Now... that it was how I fit in with them and what I needed to do to... [Kirby] ...to make sure everybody was okay.

...My grandmother had been chronically ill her entire life.

...but she had everything.

And my mother wanted to work, and she did.

And that became, difficult because she had to be sort of available to my grandmother because of the chronic illness.

And my father was [Kirby] ...a very hard working guy.

And when I was, when I was young he became an attorney.

[Kirby] And it was really just night school... and passed the Bar a couple times.

[Kirby] And even though he was good to us ...he was just always stressed out.

So it was kind of making sure that he wasn't gonna freak out and that my grandmother wasn't gonna... and I was worried about everybody, but I was worried about my mom.

So I had to... because she had too much, and too much became a thing that Ditta kind of brought out.. this concept of too much [Kirby] ...and I didn't want to do anything ...that would be upsetting to anyone.

[Kirby] It was weird.... It was like ...I didn't want anybody to notice me... ...but one of the problems then was that I skipped ahead a couple of grades, when I was very young... ...and caught up to my brother And then I was academically real fast.

Socially, I was really comfortable always.

[Kirby] I had all these different things I did... ...play the piano and the singing, ...the dancing and the acting and... I felt guilty about moving up to my brother's thing.

The next thing I know, I started feeling I'm too much and, too big.

And then that would make my place in the family... You know, I, I don't want I don't want to be any trouble for anybody [Kirby] then I had a lot of emotion... ...and I just had to... ...so the Survival System' really rang true for me because I realized I had to become somebody who sort of, if I had too big an emotion, I had to hide it.

...only the problem was that I didn't hide it.

I didn't become a reserved guy.

And it was... I was always feeling guilty that I was who I was, and I had to pull back from who I was.

And it was really conflicted.

Ditta showed me in the Survival System how those very things to not be too much to... to worry about everybody else became maladaptive when I couldn't help but be out in the world and try and live a big life.

And I was conflicted always that I, I didn't... I'd always leave parties thinking... I can't believe I said all that, or I can't believe I told jokes and yet I would do it.

And I'd feel bad like... ahh!

and I think it just caused like.

so much conflict inside.

And then when I was struggling with sexuality, it was, like... [Kirby] oh, I can't do that to these people.

I don't want to have them worry about me.

And then when AIDS hit, then I thought, oh my God, I can't tell them or I can't even be that because I will be too much. God forbid I would get sick, or even that they would worry that I would get sick.

That was as big as anything to me.

[Ditta] One of the theories is... ...starting in early, early development of mankind... ...and the importance of having ...the individuals be part of a group ...because a group will survive in better ways than an individual... ...the individual then adapts to what the messages and needs of the group are...

which translated into the child starting at birth to meet the needs of the family and whoever was in charge of the needs of the family.

So that's why it makes it so difficult to break through... because it's so basically inherent in the human experience I realized that this Survival System... was there with Ditta, and realized that I was taking part in it... and that it was not all anybody else's fault that you participate in your Survival System because you don't know anything else.

This is the world you know.

So then it gives you some agency when you realize that you are adapting as a child [Kirby] even not knowing, you're adapting... the idea that you are picking up these cues as if you're being told to be... something, or to being told to adapt a certain way.

What they discovered in the right brain is communication between... when the child is first conceived, which is non-conscious and non-verbal, so that neither the child nor whoever they're communicating with, is aware that this dynamic is going on.

It's below consciousness, it's below awareness.

It's how the right brain talks to the right brain in ways that is non-conscious and non-verbal.

We don't even know we are getting those messages and responding accordingly.

Because you create this thing in your head that makes you survive and, so, makes you secretive in my case because maybe I thought people were going to judge me.

And when somebody was clearly not... and I had the evidence that someone wasn't... then it made me have to accommodate that maybe I was the one who had the problem... and no one else...

about, you know, say, the gay thing... I was the one who had the problem about it, and I wasn't really getting much back from people that they had a problem.

But I was projecting that.

So when I realized there was a thing such as the Survival System, I... ...it made it like, okay, I can figure this out.

And I realized, oh, I actually had a part in it.

And that helps because it does give you some sense of ownership over the issues you've got.

Then it makes you say, okay, well then, I got to figure out how to not do that.

And I felt like, oh!

I get to feel good about what actually is there, rather than something internal that was holding me back emotionally... and, and career-wise it was holding me back that way too.

[Ditta] As therapy hopefully continues... ...and we work towards the resolution... ...of really freeing what's inside of me ...that's been caught for so many years, ...then this is the symbol of freedom ...and choosing to have the life ...that feels right for you. After listening to Ditta and Kirby, I think it's possible many of us had a Snow White in our childhood.

I think I did, and maybe she's still in here [Jonathan]...thinking she's helping me survive ...as a child, even though I'm an adult.

[Jonathan] And I also realized that as a teenager I wasn't running from the San Fernando Valley.

It didn't make me feel alienated It was just an overgrown suburb.

But I feel it represented something to me that maybe I was grappling with?

So even at my age, I'm thinking about finding my Snow White and trying to answer Ditta's question Whose need is really being met?

[Ditta] As long as I was alive, ...David would be still not a body... ... but a soul, a spirit ...that would be part of our family.

And I moved to make that possible... ...knowing that I could be a good psychotherapist myself and help other people find their potential.

[Ditta] And I think every time I do, ...I kind of say, okay, Dave, we did it again.

He's been part of that process. [Jonathan] At the end of my visit, Ditta showed me a folder of Dave's old papers and poems, and looking through it I found, actually, one of my own poems written as a teenager.

[Jonathan] I must have left it there.

But one of the curious things about it is that it was about Vesper Street, [Jonathan] ...which actually first reminded me ...and brought me back to Ditta.

It goes like this... The grieving wind blows untaxed along ...this street, turning back the trees... ...one about one, their leaves topple down.

The singing wind grieves all down this light-blown street ...scattering our remembered words... ...one about one... all around our feet.

What is past is yet to come.

O all our eyes have come undone. I kind of like the last two lines of that... What is past is yet to come. What's been in the past might come around to us ...full circle.

O all our eyes have come undone [Jonathan] Well, maybe that's the time when... ...it's time to cry.

[uplifting music] And I think for the rest of my life I will always remember you talking about ...people becoming free.

That gesture that you have, which is so marvelous that... that blossoming... slowly becoming free of what constrained them before so they can do what they want to do!

That is such an optimistic, positive image!

It's so simple.

And yet it says so much, doesn't it?

[heartfelt music] [Singer] If one could understand ...the seasons... Emotions would not bring fear.

If one could understand ...the sorrow, one would not run ...from fear.

I need not know... But time carries me on Waiting patiently... ...one does not fear... [Singer] I have a poem in the back of my mind ...of things said before... ...of days long ago...

But now I have not much to show Past moments have ...uncovered the fear ...of losing you... ...of losing my heart...