Our initial task as client and therapist – our work during the first few sessions - resembles cartography. I begin, like a map-maker, drawing a square or a rectangle, then sketching the outlines of landmarks visible from afar – the mountains, the sea, the rivers. In limning a life, the prominent features are obvious – where [...]
Archive for the ‘Thoughts and Musings’ Category
Mapping the soul
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged cartography, compass, dislocation, fantasy, Freud, initial question, lost, maps, psychotherapy, therapists, vacation on April 4, 2012 | 3 Comments »
Huh? What’s “integrative psychotherapy”?
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged cognitive-behavioral approach, conscious ego, feedback loop, Integrative Psychotherapy, phobia, psychodynamic approach, reality testing, toolbox on March 7, 2012 | 1 Comment »
On my private practice website it says, right after my name, “Integrative Psychotherapy.” A number of people have asked me what the heck that means. Good question. There’s room for argument, but so far as I’m concerned, there are two chief meanings. The first is a bit technical. It means I integrate the two leading schools of [...]
Saved by the bell curve
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged Alcoholic's Anonymous, bell curve, calculus, cancer, foreseeable outcomes, probability, Serenity Prayer on February 8, 2012 | 7 Comments »
“If I don’t pass this test, I’m going to lose it.” My client was a nursing student, who had to pass an important math test before she could receive her degree. She failed her first attempt, and her second was coming up. She was getting the jitters. I pointed out that her approach to this [...]
Going there
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged 12-step, Alcoholic's Anonymous, alcoholism, ethanol, Ethyl alcohol, Group therapy, Maya Angelou, meat, Sullivan & Cromwell, vegan, vegetarianism on January 11, 2012 | 2 Comments »
I was chased down the sidewalk by a breathless woman. “You’re the guy who made me vegetarian!” she announced between gasps. I didn’t know what she was talking about. It turned out she’d worked as a paralegal, years before, at Sullivan & Cromwell. I didn’t feel guilty about not remembering her. We only toiled together [...]
Dr. Joy. Dr. Dream.
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged cancer, freude, Joy, Leonard Woolf, Mozart, music, Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks, Salvador Dali, Sigmund Freud, Suicide, The Moses of Michelangelo, Theodor Reik, Virginia Woolf on December 7, 2011 | 5 Comments »
There is a curious passage in a recent book by Oliver Sacks, “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain,” in which Sacks discusses whether Sigmund Freud liked music. There are contemporary accounts of Freud that mention he rarely listened to music, and only permitted himself to be “dragged” to opera on rare occasion – and [...]
Judge a Book by its Cover
Posted in About This Site, Current Events, Thoughts and Musings, tagged Amazon, book, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy on December 2, 2011 | 3 Comments »
The paperback version of my first book – “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy” is now available on Amazon.com. The terrific new cover is by Christine Sullivan, of cstudiodesign. I hope you’ll take a look.
It’s only chemical
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged amygdala, brain, cortex, depression, endorphins, neural pathways, neurons, psychiatric drugs, psychopharmacology, psychotherapy on January 5, 2011 | 5 Comments »
I get asked this all the time: “What if it’s only chemical?” Good question. Why talk to a therapist if you can take a pill and be done with it? Freud was intrigued by the possibility. According to Peter Gay, in Freud’s late work, “Outline of Psychoanalysis:” “[he] speculated that the time might come when [...]
You’re still my guy.
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged break-up, loss, relationships on December 7, 2010 | 3 Comments »
One of my patients gets together sometimes for lunch with his ex. It’s always awkward, he says, and a bit melancholy, but there’s something nice about it, too, and so it’s become a ritual. This time she brought a piece of news – she’d met someone, and was getting married. He was happy for her. [...]
Singing the blues
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged Blues, Death Letter Blues, depression, Fridgidaire Blues, impermanance, mortality, sadness, Skip James, Son House, Sonny Boy Williamson on October 25, 2010 | 3 Comments »
It doesn’t make sense. You hate depression, but feeling sad can be okay – and everyone loves the blues. That’s because depression isn’t about feeling sad. And the blues isn’t about depression. Depression is about regressing into a child’s way of relating to the world. You become helpless, so you lose touch with your own [...]
A pact with the devil
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged Sigmund Freud on August 26, 2010 | 3 Comments »
At the end of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, there’s a moment where Sigmund Freud pauses to admit he’s gone out on a limb exploring his own ideas: I do not know how far I believe in them…One may surely give oneself up to a line of thought, and follow it up as far as it [...]
Rich and famous
Posted in Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings, tagged attention, einstein, Freud, security in love on August 15, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Albert Einstein was puzzled by the mystery of his own fame. He was forever pondering with friends and associates why he – a physicist whose work was a mystery to most non-scientists – should have become the recipient of full-blown Hollywood-style celebrity. For whatever reason, Einstein chose not to discuss this issue with the father [...]
Don’t look down.
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged climbing a ladder, commitment, relationships on July 6, 2010 | 3 Comments »
My patient was in a tizzy about a relationship: “I don’t know if I can do this. I mean – he’s talking about going on a vacation together. What if we break up before then?” I tried to calm her down. “You guys have been dating for a month. No one’s bought tickets. He’s just [...]
Not a task. A role.
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged aptitude, career, job, role, talent, task, work on June 18, 2010 | 7 Comments »
My patient was clearly miserable in her job as a graduate student and laboratory scientist. But she’d worked very hard to get into this position. And she was only 3 years away from a PhD. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said. ”I’m just not good enough, I guess.” She was blaming herself [...]
Listen. Don’t mind-read.
Posted in Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings, tagged Beethoven, deafness, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, mind-reading on June 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
A lot of people thought Ludwig van Beethoven was an unpleasant person. He could be impatient, and often tempestuous. But most of the time, when people thought the composer was being gruff or imperious or rude, it was the result of his trying to hide the fact that he couldn’t hear a word they were [...]
If you don’t know, just say so.
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged child, death, gravity, Harvard, infinity, partner, relationship, religion, Stability, Stephen Jay Gould on May 24, 2010 | 3 Comments »
I am happy to admit I do not know what lies at the farthest reaches of outer space, I do not know what happens after I die, and I do not know how long my relationship with my partner will last. No one knows these things. They are unknowable. You might feel uncomfortable with these [...]
A heartbroken child.
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged emotional pain, heartbreak, inner child, parent on May 16, 2010 | 5 Comments »
My patient looked me in the eye. Tears poured down her cheeks. “It hurts so bad. Why does it have to hurt so bad?” I often sit in a room with another person in emotional agony. It’s part of my job. I sit. I listen. I don’t interrupt. I tolerate the feelings, and do my [...]
How to be Lady Gaga
Posted in Current Events, Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings, tagged Lady Gaga, Stefani Germanotta on May 10, 2010 | 3 Comments »
A young woman I worked with last week told me three thoughts that kept playing in her head like a tape: I’m not special. I’m not good at anything. It would be better if I were just dead. Listening to those voices took her down a familiar path to depression and self-destructive behavior. She admitted [...]
Naming names
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged borderline, diagnoses, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Dr. Funkenstein, DSM, Funkadelic, George Clinton, Hyman Spotnitz, Mozart, names, naming, Parliament, schizophrenic on May 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Maynard Solomon’s biography of Mozart quotes a delightful letter of 1778 from Mozart to his friend Gottfried von Jacquin: We all invented names for ourselves on the journey [to Prague]. Here they are. I am Punkitititi. My wife is Schable Pumfa. Hofer is Rozka-Pumpa. Stadler is Natchibinitschibi. My servant Joseph is Sagadarata. My dog Gauckerl [...]
You’ve got to stop your vagabond ways
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged best self, home, house, safety, Stability on April 25, 2010 | 9 Comments »
A reader wrote recently to ask about the effect of multiple moves on a child. It got me thinking about the concept of “home.” There’s no more powerful trope in human society. “Home” as a concept relates to the child you once were. It triggers a universal longing. The word resonates so strongly that real [...]
What would Albert Einstein do?
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged constant, David D. Meyerhofer, einstein, equation, imposing a narrative, physics, special relativity, variable on April 18, 2010 | 2 Comments »
My patient was upset. Another girl had dumped him when everything seemed to be going well. “What is it about me? They always disappear like that. I try to be a nice person, but something I’m doing chases them away.” This patient was making a fundamental scientific error – he was imposing a narrative onto [...]
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