Lauren Beukes - Zoo City

burning hut. "His early stuff was all circumcision-related. It's about culture and tradition, rites of passage, the difficulties of being a man. And also being mutilated."

"Do your clients relate?"

"We call them patients. But, yes, I suppose some of them do. C'mon, I'll give you the tour." She's all brisk enthusiasm.

"I'd say about fifteen to twenty per cent of our patients are foreign," Veronique says. Like a good journalist, I dutifully take notes. "A lot of them are from the UK. It's a last resort for the families – that old attitude of 'send the troublemakers to the colonies!' But we also get people coming in from Nigeria, Angola, Zimbabwe. Naisenya, the young woman you were talking to outside, is Kenyan for example. Mostly, it's a matter of money. Three months with us costs the same as a week in a UK treatment centre like the Abbey."

She opens the door onto a spacious lounge with chairs arranged in a loose arc, facing a huge open fireplace – big enough to cook children in. Above the mantelpiece is a mounted Perspex light, featuring a naïve drawing of a cocky gentleman devil smoking a pipe, reclining in an armchair. On the opposite wall is a dreamy etching of a goat with its head bowed and a chain around its neck.

"Between the devil and the deep blue scapegoat?" I say.

"It's just art, Ms December," she says, not meaning a word of it. "The most important part of what we do here is penetrating people's denial systems, removing the alibis that will trip them up."

"Sending their sins out into the wilderness to die."

"It's one of the theories of being animalled, of course," she says.

"I never liked that one. Give me the Toxic Reincarnation theory any day."

"I don't think I'm familiar with that."

"It's very now. Global warming, pollution, toxins, BPA from plastics leaching into the environment has disrupted the spiritual realm or whatever you want to call it, so, if you're Hindu, and you go through some terrible trauma, part of your spirit breaks away and returns as the animal you were going to be reincarnated as."

"What do you think about it?" I'm aware of her standing very still, all the better to psychoanalyse me.

"Does the therapy session come free with the tour?"

"Sorry, it's habituated. I'll stop." She holds up her hands in mock defeat.

"We were talking about art, I believe? The light is Conrad Botes and Brett Murray. The scapegoat is Louisa Betteridge."

"It's an upgrade from the rehab facility I went to. The only art we had was graffiti drawn on the toilet walls."

"Was that in prison? I've always wanted to do a prison programme. We run an outreach project in Hillbrow, you know. We do good work. A lot of aposymbiots. You should visit."

"Maybe I will," I smile thinly to make it clear that this will happen when hell turns into a family-friendly summer resort. "Same deal?"

"Same tactics, different strategy. This isn't a broken leg, it's a long-term recovery. You don't want to do a story on that, do you? Make some noise? We've got some sponsors involved in our Hillbrow project, but it's difficult."

"Not really in my brief, sorry. I can pitch it for next time, maybe."

"I understand. Come, I'll show you the dorms."

We pass through the courtyard where a bunch of crazily beautiful boys and girls are lolling, smoking and chatting. There is a high ratio of killer cheekbones per capita.

"You obviously get a lot of models," I say, walking up a flight of stairs to the dorm floor. Two beds to a room. They're bright and cheery and rich in personal detail.

"Also musicians. DJs. Journalists. Advertising people. There are certain lifestyles where high-risk behaviour is endemic to the culture."

"Any names I'd recognise?"

"We take our privacy policy very seriously, Ms December. I hope you're not fishing for some celebrity scandal. I didn't take you for a tabloid journalist." Unfortunately, that's one step up from what I actually am.

I decide not to ask her about Song or S'bu directly. Instead I show her the contents of my folded-up tissue – the dried herbs I found in Song's bathroom.

"Actually, do you mind if I ask you what this is?"

She takes a pinch between her fingers and sniffs it. "I'm not the herb expert, but I'd guess African wormwood? It's very commonly used for cleansing, both by naturopaths and in traditional purification rituals. Some of our patients are into more alternative treatments."

"But you're not?"

"I like good old-fashioned medicine. Methadone is a very good thing. Although a lot of medication is based on herbal remedies. And you shouldn't discount the power of the placebo effect."

"Magic?"

"There haven't been enough studies to ease my mind about the efficacy."

I change tack, trying to circle back. "So what are the challenges?"

"With foreign patients? Language barriers, occasionally. The temptations of the exchange rate. It's very easy and very cheap to get drugs in Johannesburg. Not here, obviously. The problem comes afterwards, when they're in the third phase, out in the real world, staying at a halfway house."

"What about romance?" I fish.

"Sex addiction, you mean?"

"I was talking more about hook-ups."

"Totally inappropriate, of course. We try to discourage it. I say that because often it's a way of finding a substitute high, something else to latch onto, which ultimately doesn't help the patient."

"But it happens."

"It blooms like wildflowers. It's a very vulnerable time. Patients can form intense bonds that won't survive the fresh air of the real world. You're a recovering addict, so you would know. People can be very manipulative. They can end up enabling each other, falling back into old habits. And even if they don't, most of the relationships don't last in the world out there."

"Any chance I could speak to some of your clie- er, patients? Like Naisenya?"

"I'd be happy to set up some interviews for you. If you'd like to leave me with your card?" She holds out her hand.

I pretend to scruffle in my wallet. "Oh, hey. Fresh out."

Home››SA PSYCHWEB››Aposymbiot Counselling Resources››Shadow-self Absorption

Masks of Existence: The Demystification of Shadow-self Absorption

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a case for the demystification of counselling approaches for Aposymbiot individuals who exhibit psychic trauma associated with fear of the phenomenon known psychologically as shadow-self absorption and commonly as the "Undertow".

Whilst acknowledgement must be given to religious organisations and lay therapists and their work with Aposymbiot individuals, psychologists cannot ignore the continuing religious stigmatisation of Aposymbiots within society and within the therapeutic community itself. Therapists who themselves, either tacitly or (in rare cases) overtly, subscribe to the idea of Aposymbiots as "animalled" or "zoos" and shadow-self absorption as "Hell's Undertow" or "The Black Judgement" perpetuate this stigmatisation and very often fail to see the very real trauma that Aposymbiots experience as a result of lifelong anticipation of shadow-self absorption.

This trauma, most often experienced as an irrefutable and ever-increasing sense of oblivion, commonly manifests as an intense obsession with self-annihilation, acted out through extreme hedonism and criminal behaviour, or as a sexualised fetish with self-destruction, as in the well-documented bacchanalia of cults such as the Blood for Severance group, who engage in mass culling of their own animals to actively invoke the terror and rapture of shadow-self absorption.

Whilst the sensationalism of animal sex and death has provoked the media into ever-increasing coverage of the exoticism of "zoos", society has largely ignored the true meaning of these acts: a desperate rallying cry from Aposymbiots who wish to take charge of their own existence rather than waiting to be led like the proverbial lamb, duck or llama to the divine slaughter.