This week’s question is from Gwynne.
She wrote to say she might be interested in trying psychotherapy, but has a hesitation:
What if I’m not much of a talker – at least when it comes to talking about me?
An excellent question.
Here’s my answer:
To submit a question to Ask The People’s Therapist, please email it as text or a video to: wmeyerhofer@aquietroom.com
If I answer your question on the site, you’ll win a free session of psychotherapy with The People’s Therapist!
Posted in AskThePeople'sTherapistSeries | Tagged expectation, prediction, resolving the transference, The Silent Patient, transference, treatment transference | Leave a Comment »
I’ve written a fair amount about lawyers at the office in this column.
Right now a lot of lawyers aren’t at the office.
They’re at home, out of work.
Unemployment is tough on lawyers because they tend to be pleasers – they have to be, to earn the grades to make it into law school.
It’s all about pleasing others at a firm, too. You submit to the whims of a partner and work around the clock.
Like all pleasers, lawyers get used to looking outside themselves for affirmation of their worth.
When you’re unemployed, there’s no one to please but yourself. You’re alone with you – and for a pleaser, that can lead to a plunge in self-esteem.
That’s why, during unemployment, you have to be especially good to yourself.
You can’t afford to fall into a hole right now – you need to stay strong. That means reminding yourself of your achievements – your grades, your degree, your accomplishments at a firm.
If things get truly dire – remember the bottom line: you’re doing your best. That’s all anyone can ask.
This is no time to beat yourself up. Remember to be you – your best self – the person you really are. That’s more than just a lawyer – that’s a person. Spend time with friends, and people who like you. You’re worth something and you know it – and you need all the support you can get.
You also need some time off.
The worst thing about being unemployed, as one of my unemployed lawyer clients put it, is that “when you’re unemployed, you’re always working.”
Unemployment can turn into a 24-hour/day grind. Give yourself permission to relax sometimes. Activity is important – but so is taking time off to get your head together.
Job interviews, in my experience, can be particularly difficult for lawyers.
Pleasers never learn to sell themselves – you just do what you’re told and hope good things happen.
That doesn’t work in a job interview.
You might remember those mass interviews the law school placement departments arranged back in the boom years. They typically consisted of a handshake, a dutiful glance at a resume, and a pointless chat about nothing.
Those weren’t real job interviews. Those firms were hiring your resume. They just wanted to make sure you could dress yourself. The interviewers often seemed as clueless as the candidates.
It’s different now, during a recession. You have to sell yourself actively.
That can be tough for a lawyer. Continue Reading »
Posted in AboveTheLaw series | Tagged affirmation, depression, job interviews, pleasers, unemployment | 11 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 his data.
If Albert Einstein had done that, he never would have come up with E= mc squared.
When Einstein began pondering what would become his Special Theory of Relativity, physics was grounded in basic assumptions from everyday existence. Scientists looked at the world around them and tried to translate what they saw into mathematics. For people like Galileo and Newton, that led to breakthroughs. They saw something drop – and discovered gravity. They saw something speed up and hit something else – and discovered acceleration and force.
Einstein’s breakthrough was different. To come to it, he had to stop imposing the narrative of the quotidian, human world onto the behavior of tiny particles and waves of energy.
On Earth, as a human, you can always go faster. Just press the pedal and accelerate. Or jump in an airplane. Speed is a variable.
Einstein’s breakthrough with Special Relativity was to stop imposing that narrative onto physics. The speed of light, he theorized, might be a constant. That would mean you couldn’t go any faster than the speed of light. It’s simply as fast as you can move.
That makes sense, if you think about it, because if you’re moving at the speed of light, you are going so fast that you can no longer exist as matter – you become pure energy – in other words, light. That’s why it’s called ‘the speed of light.’
And that’s what E=mc squared means. Matter at the speed of light becomes pure energy. (Apologies to my physicist older brother, Dr. David D. Meyerhofer, if this isn’t exactly, precisely absolutely correct – but I think he’ll agree it’s pretty close.)
If you make speed a constant in a physics equation, then measurements we think of as constants in everyday life – like how big something is, or how fast time goes by – suddenly become variables. Everything gets very strange, new and interesting. Here on Earth, living at a human scale, we have always expected a foot to measure a foot and a minute to last a minute, but a speeding photon doesn’t care how big it is, or how fast time is moving. Fundamental assumptions about our world cannot be imposed upon the reality experienced by a wave or a particle. It would give you the wrong answer.
Enough physics. Back to my patient.
He assumed every girl he met liked him at first, then rejected him after perceiving some fatal flaw.
This reality could be traced back to his early years.
This man was a “change of life” baby, born when his parents were older and his siblings already in their late teens. Initially, the entire family doted upon the new baby.
But as my patient grew up, he challenged his parents’ view of the world. His older siblings had been born in Africa, and shared with their parents a fundamentally African, immigrant viewpoint. They put schoolwork above all other priorities, married traditional African spouses and – like their parents – pursued medicine as a career.
My client, on the other hand, had an artistic bent, and grew up like an American teenager. He loved pop music, spent most of his time making pottery, displayed no talent for medicine – and still hadn’t decided what he wanted to be when he grew up.
Sensing that something was wrong, his parents expressed disapproval by withdrawing attention. They weren’t sure what to make of this final child, so they frowned and walked away, leaving him with a lingering sense of rejection and failure.
Now, with the girls he was dating, he imposed that same familiar narrative. Each woman was cast in the role of his parents – initially adoring him, then spotting some flaw, some change in him they couldn’t handle, and turning away without an explanation.
I suggested to my patient that he think more like Einstein. Maybe he was a constant in this equation – not a variable.
Maybe he was a perfectly nice guy – kind, considerate and perhaps a bit shy, but thoughtful and respectful with everyone he dated.
Maybe the girls he was dating were the variables. Maybe each one of them had her own issues – and her own reasons for rejecting him, which had nothing to do with him, or with the other women.
I asked a few key questions:
“That first woman – wasn’t she the one who had just broken up a long-term relationship and talked about her ex ad nauseam?”
He admitted that might be the case.
“And the other one. Wasn’t she fighting a cocaine addiction?”
He nodded.
“And then there was the one you never really seemed to like, at least until she disappeared. Isn’t it possible she was picking up on your hesitancy, and walking away to spare herself the grief of being rejected?”
He had to admit that might be true as well.
I made my closing argument: “Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep looking for a woman who is actually right for you, instead of wasting time getting upset and blaming yourself each time it doesn’t work out with someone?”
From the way he looked at me, I knew I’d made my point.
Instead of imposing the narrative of his parents’ rejection on every single relationship in his life, he was beginning to grasp that alternative – and more convincing – narratives might exist.
Maybe the speed of light is as fast as you can go. Maybe a ruler can stretch or shrink and time can run faster and slower, depending on how fast you’re moving.
Maybe each and every rejection isn’t about your issues – it’s about other people, and what might be going on in their heads.
Try thinking like Einstein – outside the box, where everything might not be a reflection of you, or the world you grew up in.
It will give you a more interesting – and more accurate – picture of the world.
Posted in Thoughts and Musings | Tagged constant, David D. Meyerhofer, einstein, equation, imposing a narrative, physics, special relativity, variable | 2 Comments »
I received another challenging question this week, from Carl. He sent it to me via video, so without further ado, here’s Carl’s question:
And here’s my answer:
Thanks to all of you who have sent in and continue to send in questions. I will be tackling one each week. If I answer your question, I will also offer you a free session of psychotherapy, in person or via the internet.
If you’d like to send in a question for The People’s Therapist, please email it as words or a video, to wmeyerhofer@aquietroom.com
I also welcome your comments and feedback on this new series.
Posted in AskThePeople'sTherapistSeries | Tagged anxiety, childhood, heartache, loneliness, parental separation | 6 Comments »
My lawyer clients sometimes arrive at my office complaining about their awful work hours. They talk about how worn out they are, how they pulled all-nighters, came in on weekends, etc.
Other times they come in with a different complaint – there’s nothing to do.
Why would that be a problem? Couldn’t they just relax a bit and catch their breath?
No. Because at big law firms, no one is ever supposed to admit there’s nothing to do.
The big firms endlessly remind you of their ridiculous demands for “billable hours” – but they never so much as whisper that they might not always have sufficient work to keep you there that long.
If you’ve ever attended a partner’s meeting, you’ll know the rainmakers aren’t just sitting around gossiping about associates. They’re pressuring one another – and especially the young partners – to cultivate clients and drum up work.
One more secret: partners hog the work during dry times. That’s why associates feel the drought so severely.
The real issue here isn’t that workflow is variable at law firms. It’s variable at any business. That’s the way the world works. Of course there will be downtime.
The problem is that this reality isn’t acknowledged at law firms. That creates an atmosphere, at least for associates, in which rest, downtime, slow-downs – whatever you want to call it – are never permitted to happen. There’s no work – but the associates cannot enjoy that situation and catch their breath. Instead of resting, you switch from one intense pressure to another. Instead of having too much work and being exhausted – you’re exhausted with worry.
When there’s nothing to do, an associate is placed in a quandary.
No one admits it and says, “Hey, it’s slow this week – why don’t you take a couple days off?” That doesn’t happen at law firms.
Curiously, it does happen elsewhere. When I was in the business world, it was considered a matter of course to grab your coat and head home if things were slow. People respected the work you did, and there was no point in “face time.” If things were slow, you took off.
A friend of mine who worked at McKinsey consulting for years told me they had a phrase for these periods. You were said to be “on the beach” for a few days or weeks, while the partners drummed up business. It was acknowledged that this was the case, and no one expected you to do anything but rest up and be on call for the next project.
Law firms are different. Here is a culture that abhors rest above all else.
Posted in AboveTheLaw series | Tagged downtime, Ernst Kris, regression in the service of the ego, rest | 8 Comments »
Sometimes I feel like I might be the greatest therapist in the world.
Like when I help a gay person out of the closet.
The results are amazing. If I could put what happens to a gay person when he comes out of the closet into a bottle and sell it, I’d be a multimillionaire.
Depression lifts. Anxiety disappears. Authenticity is restored. Self-esteem soars. It’s like a super mental health tonic – it never fails.
How to account for this miracle?
A person in the closet is a liar. He’s being forced to lie to everyone around him, and he is being forced to lie about who he is, which implies there is something wrong with him.
That’s incorrect because there is nothing – NOTHING – wrong with being gay. In fact, it has many advantages – including admission into the gay community, a diverse collection of people with a proud history.
The lie of the closet isolates the closeted person. No one knows him, so he doesn’t know himself – or them. He’s living outside of the world, alone.
That isolation is devastating. It is a terrible waste of a human life.
Coming out fixes everything in one easy step. The results are astounding.
It isn’t easy to overcome the fear and take that leap. Certain elements in our society are committed to keeping gay people from telling their truth, and to achieve that end they do their best to scold, frighten and intimidate LGBT people into hiding the beauty of their authentic souls.
Over the years I’ve heard every reason in the book for why it isn’t quite time yet – or why this particular patient is the exception and can’t come out like everyone else.
It’s all nonsense. Everyone must come out.
Here’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on the topic:
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
I’ve helped people of all ages, all religions, all ethnicities and from all over the world to come out.
To my knowledge not one single mother has clutched her chest and dropped dead of a heart attack (although a patient recently – and seriously – predicted to me that this would occur.) Not one father has committed suicide upon hearing the news either (another patient’s grim prediction.)
At very worse, they might freak out, and it might take them a while to overcome their ignorance and become educated about the nature of sexual orientation.
But that’s their job. They have a gay person in their lives, and they need to learn more about gay people.
One of the best things about coming out is that you stop apologizing. You learn to look people in the eyes without shame. Suddenly you are truly present, authentically present. It’s the real you.
For a gay person, when you come out is when your life truly begins.
A few weeks ago, President Obama promised he would dismantle Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – the military’s current policy towards its gay soldiers, pilots, marines and sailors.
The military has been functioning for nearly two decades under this rule, under which gay people are permitted to serve, so long as they live in the closet.
As a psychotherapist, I know that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell does more than endanger the careers of brave, hard-working American service members – it endangers their psyches as well. Overturning this policy is not merely a matter of social justice – it is a matter of psychological well-being.
Many of these service members are young and impressionable, and grew up in a climate that was especially repressive around issues of sexual orientation. In psychological terms, the military is in the position of a parent to these young soldiers. By telling these young people to hide who they truly are, the commanding officers are telling them there is something wrong with their authentic selves. If they believe this nonsense, they will become prime candidates to develop depression by bottling up their anger at the military – anger which they feel is forbidden – and turning that anger in on themselves, assaulting their self-esteem.
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is an insult to soldiers who put their lives on the line to protect our country. It is also a real and present danger to their psyches.
It is an obscenity. It must end now.
Posted in Current Events, Thoughts and Musings | Tagged coming out, DADT, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Dr. Martin Luther King, gay, gays in the military, lesbian, LGBT, Lt. Dan Choi, sexual orientation | 3 Comments »
Thank you to everyone who sent in questions!
I’ve received so many good, interesting – and challenging – questions that I’ve decided to go ahead and create a new weekly feature – “Ask the People’s Therapist” – and answer one question every week.
Here’s our first winning question – it’s a tough one – along with an answer from The People’s Therapist:
If you’d like to join the growing popular craze for submitting questions to “Ask the People’s Therapist” – please email your question, either in writing or as a video – to wmeyerhofer@aquietroom.com.
See you next week!
Posted in AskThePeople'sTherapistSeries | Tagged AskThePeople'sTherapistSeries, family, I-Statement, leading with your feelings, questions | Leave a Comment »
It seems like the cruelest thing they could say to you, but according to lawyers I work with as a therapist, they say it all the time:
Maybe you’re not cut out for this place.
There are variations, of course. There’s the old favorite:
Maybe you’re not cut out for this work.
Or – to put the knife in and twist it:
Maybe you’re not cut out to be a lawyer.
You’ve taken the LSAT, applied to law school, borrowed the budget of a small African nation, sat through endless lectures and countless exams, passed the atrocious trivia contest known as the bar, and now you’re in a big, powerful law firm – sinking like a stone.
And they’re letting you know it’s not a fluke, either – it’s you.
Maybe you’re not cut out for this place.
There’s always a smug half-smile on the face of the partner who says it, too.
Nice of him to tell you now, right?
At least with the “not cut out for this place” line, you can kid yourself life would be better with another employer. There are headhunters lining up to pocket a fee by packing you off to a “lifestyle” firm, where life is sweet and easy.
But you’re not that naive. Not after what you’ve been through. If “lifestyle” law firms exist, they are the holy grail of the legal profession – known only to a sacred few, not to every headhunter in the phone book.
The real question is why you run in horror from “maybe you’re not cut out for this place,” instead of asking yourself whether you really are cut out for this place.
You probably feel that – after all you did to get here – you have to be cut out for this place, and you have to be cut out for this job. You have to be a lawyer because you’ve sunk too much time and money into it to do anything else. You have no choice, no options, no future.
That’s not true.
Posted in AboveTheLaw series | Tagged being a victim, conscious choice, non-legal careers, re-framing, unconscious living | 36 Comments »
We had so much fun together last month on LATalkRadio, that Terry LeGrand, the host of “The Alternative,” invited me back to do a regular feature on the show. This month I discussed the special role gay adoptive parents play in the lives of children (see this article for more information.)
To hear this month’s show – April 4th, 2010 – click here.
For more information about “The Alternative” and Terry LeGrand, click here.
Here‘s the link, if you’d like to become a fan of Terry LeGrand and “The Alternative” on Facebook.
My feature begins after 10 minutes – but, as always, the entire show is worth catching. Terry gives his usual fiery opening monologue, and then, after I do my thing, he sits down with the hilarious drag entertainer, Ester Goldberg.
Posted in Radio | Tagged gay adoption, LA Talk Radio, Radio, Terry LeGrand, The Alternative | Leave a Comment »
Towards the end of a session a while back, one of my patients, who was African-American, laughed out loud, like he was sharing a personal joke.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. I still can’t get over the fact that my therapist is a white guy.”
I shrugged and smiled – there wasn’t much else I could do.
But I was pleased. I admit it. I liked being his therapist. And that patient has referred a bunch of people to me since, mostly African-Americans. That felt good, too.
I wish I had a simple, clear answer to the question posed by the title of this posting. But like so much else in psychotherapy and human life in general – it’s complicated.
On the one hand, a strong case could be made that a person’s background, and his experiences, should shape who he is, and his ability to connect with someone who has had a similar or different background or experiences. By that logic, an African-American should be better off with an African-American therapist.
But it doesn’t always work out that way. For one thing, the patient I was working with was gay – so did he have to find a gay African-American therapist, or was a gay white therapist okay, or a heterosexual African-American therapist? And what about the fact that I’m Jewish?
I think one of the reasons I worked so well with that patient was that I studied African-American history and literature in college, and am a connoisseur of jazz and other African-American music. It might also have helped that, as the Program Coordinator for a counseling program at a large urban hospital for a few years, I assigned myself lots of African-American patients, partly because I was interested in learning more about their culture and experiences, and partly from necessity. We had a small, mostly-white staff, and the other full-time counselor spoke Spanish and Portuguese, so he was occupied with immigrant patients. I became a sort of resident African-American expert.
Maybe that’s why I did so well with this patient. Or maybe we just clicked. He was an elegant, educated man, and a jazz fan, and, well, we liked each other.
Choosing a therapist is a bit like choosing a Supreme Court justice. You collect all the information you can – and then you take your best guess. An African-American jurist ought to have a better understanding of the issues affecting African-Americans – right? But then, sometimes you get Thurgood Marshall – and sometimes you get Clarence Thomas.
Many therapist list their “specialties” on their websites, or even their business cards. I don’t, because I find it limiting. I don’t see why, if a patient with a new issue comes into my office – whether it’s bulimia or childhood sexual abuse or crystal meth addiction – I shouldn’t be able to get some books, talk to colleagues, and do whatever it takes to get myself up to speed. That goes with human diversity as well. I’ve treated Kazakhs, Navahos, Cameroonians, Indonesians, Peruvians and Dubaians, among others. They all taught me something about who they were and where they came from. That’s part of my job – a fun and necessary part.
I once commented to a transsexual psychotherapist that it must be great to help others within her community. She let out a rueful sigh. Sure, she admitted. But the real issue was that she worked within a ghetto. She wanted to treat all sorts of people, not just transgendered patients. Being seen as someone who worked only with other transsexuals limited her practice, and her ability to grow as a clinician. I realized I was losing something, too, when transsexuals went to see her instead of bringing their unique diversity to my practice.
Seeking out the “logical” therapist for you can have drawbacks for the patient as well. I once did a session with a deaf woman who was dealing with a domestic violence situation. We worked with a sign-language translator, but afterward I discovered the hospital had a limited budget for translation services. An administrator recommended I refer this patient to an American Sign Language-fluent psychotherapist. I found two names, and gave them to the patient. She only rolled her eyes. She didn’t want to see a psychotherapist who worked with the deaf – those two therapists were already seeing all her friends in the deaf community, and she didn’t feel comfortable opening up to them. She said she would much rather work with me, through a translator. I was surprised – but I got her point. I wanted to work with her, too – but I couldn’t find an ASL-translator, so we didn’t have that option, which was heart-breaking.
I ran into a similar situation with a Japanese patient. His English wasn’t very good, but he could communicate. I suggested he might be more comfortable working in Japanese instead of English, and proposed two Japanese-speaking therapists. The problem, he confessed, was that he was gay, and working on coming out to his friends and family. Of the two Japanese therapists, one was straight, and the other knew all the other gay Japanese people living in New York City. He wanted a gay therapist to work on gay issues, which are sensitive in Japanese society – but he didn’t want someone who knew his friends. He decided to stay with me. Yes, he sometimes had to repeat things two or three times so I could understand him, but we did okay. He’d come to America, he said, to live like an American – and he liked having an American therapist.
It’s worth pointing out that therapists spend most of their time listening, not talking. When I do talk, I’m usually asking questions or taking a guess at interpreting something I’ve heard. My job is to listen, and try to understand. Theoretically, I should be able to listen to anyone – anyone – and understand him, whether he’s black, white or purple.
I take pride in showing off my bits of cultural competence. I enjoyed greeting a Chinese patient from Hong Kong the other day with “Please come in!” in Cantonese. Last month I shared a laugh with a Dominican patient when we realized we both have little half-Dominican nieces who call us “Tio.”
These touches might help make a patient feel more at ease. But in the big picture, they’re minor details.
What really matters isn’t whether your therapist looks like you, or acts like you – it’s whether he understands you. Just like a Supreme Court Justice – his competency depends not only on his background or experience, but how well he does his job.
Posted in Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings | Tagged African-American, American Sign Language, ASL, Cantonese, choosing a therapist, Clarence Thomas, deaf, diversity, ethnicity, Japanese-speaking psychotherapist, race, Thurgood Marshall, transgender | 2 Comments »
A major announcement from The Peoples’ Therapist:
Please submit your questions – either in an ordinary email or, if you’re feeling creative, a video – to wmeyerhofer@aquietroom.com. I’ll give them a look-over. If your question is chosen, you will see it up on ThePeoplesTherapist.com, along with my answer, and you will win ONE FREE SESSION of psychotherapy with The Peoples’ Therapist, either in-person, or via the internet.
GOOD LUCK!!! And may the best analysand win.
Posted in AskThePeople'sTherapistSeries | Tagged Contest, prizes | 1 Comment »
The People’s Therapist received an interesting and important letter a few weeks ago from a 3L (I’ve redacted it and altered some details to preserve anonymity):
Mr. Meyerhofer,
I have a question (or perhaps a topic suggestion for a post, as I’m sure many students are wondering about this) about the character and fitness part of the NY bar application.
I have seen a therapist several times over the years for issues relating to depression, eating disorders, and self-injury. On the NY bar application it asks whether you have any psychological issues that might effect your ability to perform as a lawyer. I have absolutely no idea whether I’m required to disclose my psychological treatment history, or if I do, how much of it. Is the determination based on what I personally think, or is it a reasonable person standard?
As I’ve had to go to the ER several times over the years, objectively I could see how someone could interpret that as something that could affect my performance. However, I personally don’t think that it does.
I don’t really know who I could ask about this, as I don’t really want my school administrators to know about my issues. Any information you might have would be much appreciated. Thank you so much for your help!
Sincerely,
“Stumped in Syracuse”
To begin with, here is a passage from a pamphlet, entitled “Are you fit to be a Lawyer,” published by the New York State Lawyer Assistance Trust:
Neither receiving treatment for alcoholism, drug addiction or mental health concerns, nor the status of being a recovering alcoholic or recovering addict are grounds for denial of admission to the bar.
In New York, the focus of the inquiry is on whether chemical abuse or addiction or a mental health condition impairs the applicant’s current ability to practice law.
The bar application asks whether the applicant has “any mental or emotional condition or substance abuse problem that could adversely affect” the “capability to practice law”, and whether the applicant is “currently using any illegal drugs.”
While honesty in disclosing past conduct (for example, arrests and convictions) is essential, disclosure of past treatment is not required. No questions are asked about past treatment. The Committees encourage law students who are experiencing drug, alcohol or other addiction or mental health issues to address those issues as soon as possible, regardless of when the student plans to seek admission to the bar.
The bottom line seems clear – there’s no legal duty for Stumped in Syracuse to disclose his past history of treatment on his bar application unless his mental illness currently impairs his ability to practice law. Under this standard, it would require a severe mental health condition to trigger this duty, and the majority of situations involving mental illness – certainly the ones described in Stumped in Syracuse’s letter – would not require disclosure.
The real issue here – as Stumped suggests – is stigma. Stumped, like any rational person, is afraid someone will find out about his condition and jump to the unfair assumption that he is unfit for his job. That would be a disaster for anyone interested in preserving his professional reputation. For Stumped, the ignorance surrounding mental illness may pose a greater threat than the illness itself.
Posted in AboveTheLaw series | Tagged alcoholism, disclosure, eating disorders, impair ability to practice law, mental illness, NY State Bar application, NYS Lawyer Assistance Trust, psychological issues, stigma | 8 Comments »
The first researchers to observe chimpanzees in the wild were left with an idyllic impression of our close ape cousins. They appeared to be a peaceful tribe of vegetarians, who cuddled and groomed and cared for one another in extended family units, sharing fruit and showering their young with affection.
Only later, when in-depth studies were attempted, did it become clear that this was merely part of the picture. These serene vegetarians were also capable of shocking violence towards members of their own species, including murder.
Chimpanzees are gentle, loving and family-oriented within their own territorial mating group. But with chimps from outside that circle, they can turn vicious.
In this respect, chimps resemble humans.
You, for example, would never display intentional cruelty towards another human being.
That is – unless you knew that other human being wasn’t like you. Then you might be surprised at what you could do.
Welcome to in-group/out-group psychology.
Consider the guards at Auschwitz. They thought of themselves as nice people.
An album of photos was made public in 2008 containing photographs taken by members of the SS who worked at Auschwitz. These pictures are not what you would expect. Dating from 1944, they show laughing, singing, smiling people reveling at Solahütte, an SS recreation home located just outside the death camp.
There’s even a shot of an SS officer lighting the Auschwitz Christmas tree only a few miles from the place where millions were being starved, beaten and gassed.
The question becomes how you convince yourself that other human beings are not like you – that they are outsiders.
One common method is to place them outside of your religious system. Religion is often credited with teaching morals and enforcing good behavior among human beings. More often, it is used to justify the abuse of out-groups by defining the parameters of an in-group. As Freud put it: “a religion, even when it calls itself the religion of love, must be hard and loveless against those who do not belong to it.”
Freud watched Hitler march into Austria during the Anschluss in 1938, as the powerful Roman Catholic church stood by offering no resistance whatsoever. As Peter Gay describes it:
“The Austrian prelates, keepers of the Roman Catholic conscience, did nothing to mobilize whatever forces of sanity and decency still remained; with Theodor Cardinal Innitzer setting the tone, priests celebrated Hitler’s accomplishments from the pulpit, promised to cooperate joyfully with the new dispensation, and ordered the swastika flag to be hoisted over church steeples on suitable occasions.”
Freud managed to escape to England with his immediate family. Four of his sisters, each of them over 70 years old, were not so lucky. These helpless elderly women were murdered in concentration camps.
In-group/out-group psychology, coupled with religion, explains a lot about wars, inquisitions, crusades, burnings at stakes, pogroms, terrorism and the ugly history of mankind in general.
Another way to ostracize a group is to link them to disease. When Glenn Beck calls Progressivism a “cancer” in America, he implies that Progressives, those people like myself who believe in Progressive causes, are the embodiment of that cancer. He is borrowing a page from Adolf Hitler’s playbook. One of the Fuehrer’s favorite tropes was to compare Jews to tuberculosis bacilli infecting the German nation.
If people are tuberculosis bacilli – or cancer cells – it becomes much easier to abuse them.
Still another way to justify dehumanizing a group of people is to isolate them because they have a different ethnic background, or physical appearance. This country began as a slave colony, based on the firm notion that people with dark skin could be beaten, abused, tortured, murdered, and bought and sold as chattel because they weren’t really “human” at all – they were more like animals. This is another example of in-group/out-group psychology at work.
The Tea Party movement lends itself to in-group/out-group psychology because it is a homogenous population – an excellent candidate for an in-group. According to a CNN poll, active supporters of the Tea Party, those who have attended a rally or donated money, are much more likely to be wealthy, male, have graduated from college and reside in rural areas that are already GOP and conservative strongholds. According to a Quinnipiac University poll, 88% of the Tea Partiers are white. They are also almost entirely Republican. It’s a fair guess that most of them are Christian, too, and probably fundamentalist.
This might explain their obsession with attempting to prove that Barack Obama, the President of the United States, was somehow not born here or is somehow not American.
He’s different from them. That makes him a member of an out-group.
Mr. Obama’s out-group status, in turn, permits the Tea Party people to justify treating him in ways they would never treat one of their own. That explains shouting “You lie” at him in the middle of a joint session of the US Congress, or flaunting firearms at events where the President is speaking. Since he is an out-group member, they can justify treating Mr. Obama with a level of disrespect that might otherwise be difficult to fathom, especially from people who claim to respect the office he fills.
More disturbing, perhaps, is the way the Republicans treat their fellow Americans who happen to lack healthcare.
If another human person were injured or ill, and needing to be taken to a hospital, it is hard to imagine anyone, whatever their political or religious beliefs, refusing to come to that person’s aid.
But the Republicans have managed to convince themselves that denying healthcare to their fellow Americans is morally defensible. Perhaps it’s a Christian doctrine that an atheist outsider, like myself or Sigmund Freud, could never comprehend.
More likely, for the Republicans, it’s simply that any American living without healthcare must be a member of an out-group. Perhaps they are all Socialists, African-Americans or Progressives, or even part of the “cancer” that Glenn Beck battles on tv.
The latest example of in-group/out-group psychology at work has appeared in the form of threats of violence by radical Right-wingers against Democratic politicians who supported the healthcare bill and voted it into law last week. Black and gay politicians have had nasty names shouted at them. One Democratic congressman was called “baby killer” by his Republican colleague on the floor of the US House of Representatives. There have been death threats and acts of vandalism.
You wouldn’t do these things to someone whom you considered an equal.
The truth seems to be that, for the Republicans, anyone who disagrees with their political agenda is an outsider. The code word for “outsider” is that you are not a “real American.” Sarah Palin warned you about those people, the “fake Americans” – the outsiders. You can place gun targets over their faces. You can threaten their lives.
As I’ve said time and time again, this column is strictly without political bias.
But perhaps it is time for the Republicans and their Tea Party minions to rise above the level of chimpanzees and Nazis, and to recognize the humanity of their fellow citizens. For decades, tens of millions of us have been denied access to decent healthcare. As a result, each year tens of thousands of us have died.
The issue of healthcare is finally being addressed with a mainstream political solution, thanks to President Obama and the Democrats.
But the Republicans still need to learn a basic lesson in citizenship.
They are not the in-group, and everyone else is not the out-group.
There is no out-group.
There is one America, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Posted in Current Events, Thoughts and Musings | Tagged Auschwitz, chimpanzees, Freud, Glenn Beck, healthcare, Hitler, in-group/out-group psychology, Obama, Republicans, Solahütte, Tea Party movement, Theodor Cardinal Innitzer | 18 Comments »
I write a lot about unconscious regression – mostly how to prevent it.
That’s because you want to learn to parent yourself – to live your life as an adult, not a child, to be awake and embrace awareness so you can take charge of the life you lead.
On the other hand, sometimes being an adult can be exhausting.
At the end of each day, you go to sleep – a regressed, unconscious state. You cannot survive without this nightly departure from reality. Sleep deprivation is harmful, even fatal in extreme cases. It is necessary for your physical and mental health to disappear into your unconscious to rest and recover.
You also need to play. Perhaps that’s what dreams are – the play of the unconscious mind.
Conscious play – what the psychoanalyst Ernst Kris termed “regression in the service of the ego” – is also critical to staying healthy in mind and body.
It’s interesting that children play at being adults. They bang away at a little workbench, or play “house” or pretend to care for a doll. They are practicing for the time when they will leave the regressed, dreamy state of childhood, and assume adult responsibilities.
Adults do just the opposite. When you play as an adult, you regress back to childhood activities. You might occupy yourself with sports, vegetate with a video game or disappear into a novel or a movie. You might sit on the beach, look at a palm tree and think about the world.
A change of physical scenery can be restful. It’s nice to escape from your familiar adult world and take yourself someplace new, where no reminders exist of adult responsibilities.
You might find it useful to go somewhere without walls – and with long horizons. There’s something about seeing a great distance that sets the mind to turning over new possibilities.
The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, wrote that a man who transcends the conventional thinking of his time “must be accustomed to living on mountain tops.”
It is healthy to gaze into the distance – from a mountain top, or out over the ocean – and consider what might be. You can best re-evaluate where you are when you can see a long way ahead.
The People’s Therapist is going on a vacation.
I’ll be back in a week’s time – rested and ready to continue in interesting new directions.
But for a few days I’ll let my child take over.
He wants to build a sand castle and splash in the waves and maybe read a good book. A little sea air and a sun tan – and possibly a margarita – might be nice. Maybe some good food and a little dancing.
I’ll see you when I get back.
Posted in Thoughts and Musings | Tagged dreams, Ernst Kris, Friedrich Nietzsche, play, regression, regression in the service of the ego, sleep, sleep deprivation, vacation | 5 Comments »
Remember when you were a kid, and you got caught doing something you shouldn’t, and a big cloud formed over your head?
You were “in trouble.”
The other kids sort of inched out of your path and exchanged looks. They didn’t want any piece of what you had coming. Mom was going to talk to you later. Or dad. You’d done something wrong.
It feels that way sometimes at a big law firm – in fact, a lot of the time.
Maybe you forget to ask a crucial question during a deposition. Or you wrote a memo that didn’t have the answer your partner wanted. Maybe – and this happened to me once – you ended up getting berated for being “too friendly” to the other side at a drafting conference. Maybe you’re still not sure exactly what you did wrong, but it must have been something. It’s always something.
The cloud hangs over you in the office and follows you home. When you were a kid, it eventually dissipated, but now it lingers indefinitely. What’s really going on?
A little dose of anxiety is being injected into you, in the form of a thought.
Anxiety is triggered by cognition – predictive thoughts. You predict something bad is going to happen, so you clutch up in preparation – tense up and prepare for attack.
At a law firm, the standard predictive cognition – the expectation – is that you are going to be criticized. They do that a lot at law firms. It is a fair guess that if something goes wrong, you are going to be blamed – and things go wrong all the time.
It got to the point for me, at Sullivan & Cromwell, that I felt my entire body clench in preparation for attack just walking through the doors of 125 Broad Street and stepping into that elevator.
When you spend long periods of time tensed up, on alert for attack, it takes a toll on your nervous system. In fact, it can produce lasting damage.
In World War I, soldiers spent weeks in trenches under fire, crouched in terror, waiting for that next bomb or bullet with their name on it. Those were some of the first documented cases of what was called “shell shock” then and PTSD now – Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
It might seem a stretch to suggest that lawyers at big law firms suffer from PTSD symptoms.
But that’s exactly what I’m doing.
Posted in AboveTheLaw series, Thoughts and Musings | Tagged anxiety, cognition, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, predictive thoughts, PTSD, shell shock | 48 Comments »
I wrote a column a few weeks back on Prince William and Kate Middleton.
I possess no expertise in the British royal family. I merely stumbled upon an article in a gossip mag comparing the Prince’s girlfriend to his mother, and it provided an excuse to discuss why you might choose a spouse who resembles your parent.
The column became a best-seller. I still get hundreds of hits each week from a stream of readers fascinated with the British royal family. I’ve been posted on royal chat sites, Prince William discussion forums, Kate Middleton fan blogs – the works.
It was so popular that now I’m writing another column on the British royal family (or, as I’ve come to know them, Elizabeth, Philip and the kids) to explain why the first one did so well.
You – or a great many of you – are fascinated by these people. It doesn’t take a genius to see why: you want to be them.
Everyone does.
That’s because the British royal family are treated like children. And you want to be treated like a child, too.
How are Elizabeth, Philip, Charles, Andrew, Edward and the others infantilized by their role as royals?
They live the life of a pampered young child.
They do not work – and they do not have to work.
They have everything they could ever want, let alone need, provided for them.
And most importantly: they have your attention focused on them like a laser beam.
Someone’s eyes are on a small child perpetually – or they should be – making sure he doesn’t get into trouble, and celebrating his every achievement. A child’s first pair of shoes are bronzed, and his first lock of hair preserved. His first steps are photographed and met with applause. Like Louis XIV at Versailles, even his bowel movements are cause for furious activity. And a young child never has to apologize for demanding so much attention – it is simply taken for granted that it is his due.
William and Kate exist in a similar world. They can’t go swimming without a paparazzo recording each stroke through a telephoto lens.
That must be just awful (you say to yourself, tut-tutting sympathetically.) They can’t get a moment’s peace.
And they rebel sometimes, too, don’t they? Spitting fury when an annoying scandal breaks, an embarrassing revelation about a legitimately personal aspect of their lives which none of us has the least right to know anything about.
At this point they become like teenagers, rebelling against adoring parents – insisting that when they lock their bedroom door they bloody well want mum and dad to stay out and leave them alone.
Poor things.
And yet…you never had that problem…because…it’s a good problem to have, isn’t it?
You never basked in one ten-thousandth the attention – or the adoration – to which William and Kate are subjected on a daily basis.
It must feel like heroin, directly into a vein. A major rush. All that attention – directly on YOU. And you don’t even have to ask for it – let alone apologize for taking up everyone else’s time.
So you fixate on them. And identify with them. And dream about winning the lottery of life and actually BEING them.
It would be heavenly, wouldn’t it?
Let’s not kid ourselves, either. You cannot love people intensely without also being angry at them. It’s Newton’s Third Law of Motion translated to emotions: for each and every emotion there is an equal and opposite emotion.
You adore William and Kate. And you are angry at them, too – because they are receiving what you never received.
You deserve that attention, too. You always have. You are just as good as William or Kate, and you know it.
Your anger is expressed as an aggressive sense of entitlement. You are entitled to photos of them swimming. You are entitled to juicy bits of gossip about their personal lives. Fair’s fair – isn’t it?
It all works out in the end.
The royals seem to be doing just fine – and your celebration of them is a way of celebrating yourself. Lavishing attention on William and Kate (and dreaming of being them) amounts to lavishing attention on yourself because you are dreaming of being them all the while.
That’s why it feels so good. It’s nothing more than play.
It’s perfectly natural for adults to unwind and relax through healthy regression – playing at being children – just as children prepare for the challenges of life in the opposite way, by playing at being adults.
No harm in fantasizing about being the royals – the most pampered children of all – so long as it doesn’t become an obsession that occupies your every waking moment. (For most of us that isn’t an issue – it’s just a hobby.)
So go ahead and have your fun.
Imagine what it feels like to step out of that Rolls Royce and into the bursting flash bulbs.
Posted in Current Events, Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings | Tagged British Royal Family, Elizabeth II, infantilize, Kate Middleton, Louis XIV, play, Prince Andrew, Prince Edward, Prince Philip, Prince William, Versailles | Leave a Comment »
One of the hard parts of psychotherapy – and the unavoidable realities – is remorse. Inevitably, once you become more aware of who you are, and how you’re living your life…you wish you’d done so sooner.
Patients are always telling me they’re kicking themselves for not getting to my office (or at least someone’s office) years before.
One patient this week wept as he reviewed all the relationships he’d wrecked over the years by behaving exactly like his father, suspicious and controlling, exhausting the women he dated until they finally left in frustration.
“All those wasted years,” he sighed. “All those wasted opportunities for happiness.”
There isn’t much I can say to that, except that’s how awareness works – when it arrives, you always wish it made the trip a little quicker.
Then I remember what Gerald Lucas, a psychotherapist and institute director, used to say at times like that:
“What a fool I was at 80, said the 90 year old man.”
There’s no such thing as perfect wisdom. Lena Fugeri, another psychotherapist I used to work with, used to say you never finish with psychotherapy because as soon as awareness arrives, life throws you new challenges.
Lena was right. My patients in their teens are struggling with their first relationships and finding meaningful careers. My patients in their 40’s and 50’s might be dealing with raising children, navigating a marriage with a partner, learning to manage others on the job, or the death of their parents. And my patients in their 60’s and 70’s and 80’s and 90’s are handling growing older and the entirely new set of issues triggered by that process.
You are like a lotus flower – the more you peel the petals away, the more petals you find within. There is no center – only more layers to peel away, new hidden wonders.
Instead of beating yourself up for not achieving awareness sooner, it makes sense to emulate one of my favorite figures from Buddhism – the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
The Bodhisattvas, in Buddhism, are followers of the Buddha who achieve sufficient wisdom to attain enlightenment, the state of nirvana.
The Bodhisattva of Compassion, alone, chooses to remain behind in the world, to assist mankind on its journey to awareness.
In one famous story, three monks wander the parched desert until they reach a walled garden. They hear the tantalizing splash of water within.
The first monk climbs on the shoulders of the others, and leaps into the garden, disappearing.
The second monk laboriously scales the wall and is also soon hidden amid the plants and trees.
The third monk clambers up all alone and perches himself atop the wall, studying the lush garden and cool, clear spring.
Then he slides back down, and returns to wander the arid waste.
This monk’s job is to search for other lost souls. He shows them how to locate the garden.
This is the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
You might be wiser now than you used to be. I hope psychotherapy helped you acquire some of that insight.
But please don’t forget – part of wisdom is passing on what you’ve learned to others.
Don’t sit in a walled garden, thinking you’ve got it all figured out. You don’t.
Share what you’ve learned.
You’ll acquire more wisdom showing others the path to enlightenment than sitting in a garden surrounded by walls.
Posted in Thoughts and Musings | Tagged Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva of Compassion, Buddhism, enlightenment, Gerald Lucas, Lena Furgeri, regret, remorse, wisdom | 6 Comments »
A New York Times article from a few weeks ago holds enormous potential ramifications for lawyers bent over their desks at big law firms. The tentative conclusion of the piece was simple: if you are dealing with minor depression, or in fact, with anything other than massive, serious depression, popping anti-depressant pills is probably a waste of time. In fact, a placebo might do you more good.
How many lawyers are currently taking anti-depressants? According to the admittedly anecdotal evidence from the lawyers I’ve seen over the years in my private practice, quite a few.
It’s such a lawyerly thing to do. You figure out you’re depressed, so you do something about it – march over to your doctor, or maybe a high-powered shrink with a top reputation, get diagnosed, and get your pills. The whole thing takes a few minutes, and you’re back on the job. No wasting billable hours, no whining and complaining on a therapist’s couch – you take care of the problem and move on. Take a pill and knock it off with the martyr routine.
However, there are a few problems with anti-depressants…
First, like I said, they might not work. Don’t believe me? Here’s an excerpt from the article:
Some widely prescribed drugs for depression provide relief in extreme cases but are no more effective than placebo pills for most patients, according to a new analysis released Tuesday.
The findings could help settle a longstanding debate about antidepressants. While the study does not imply that the drugs are worthless for anyone with moderate to serious depression — many such people do seem to benefit — it does provide one likely explanation for the sharp disagreement among experts about the drugs’ overall effectiveness.
Second, the side-effects. This includes the “sexual side-effects” – which might mean, if you’re a guy, erectile dysfunction, and whichever gender you are, inability to reach orgasm. And there are “regular” side effects, too – like weight gain.
Third, anti-depressants only work while you’re on them. I’ve heard of people staying on anti-depressants for decades, but I have no idea what the long-term effects are because no one knows. If you’d like to experiment on yourself, I’m sure the pharmaceutical industry would be fascinated to find out.
Fourth, to the extent they do work, it’s by erasing feelings. Anti-depressants tend to narrow the bandwidth of what you feel, chopping off the top and the bottom – no more highs, no more lows. That can bring relief, but at a cost.
Fifth, other than the vague explanation that they “affect neurotransmitter levels,” no one really understands how they work. Anti-depressant medications, especially the new generation of drugs, are a relatively recent development, and the exact mechanism that produces the results isn’t fully understood.
Is there another option?
Posted in AboveTheLaw series, Thoughts and Musings | Tagged anti-depressant medication, anti-depressants, erectile dysfunction, neurotransmitter levels, pharmaceutical industry, psychotherapists, psychotherapy, sexual side effects, side effects | 19 Comments »
The People’s Therapist had fun the other night on the radio, chatting with LA Talk Radio host Terry LeGrand about some common misconceptions that gay and straight people hold about one another.
Here’s the interview. I come on about 10 minutes into the show.
Terry is an interesting guy – and his show – “The Alternative, with Terry LeGrand” is not to be missed.
Here’s where you can find a schedule and an archive of past shows.
Here’s Terry’s webpage.
and Here’s Terry’s fan page on Facebook. Please become a fan!
Terry is not only an LGBT rights activist and popular radio personality – he’s also a retired physician and the Co-Chair of ACT UP Southern California. He’s invited me to come back on the show again next month. I’ll let you know when the interview is available online.
Posted in Radio | Tagged LA Talk Radio, LGBT, Terry LeGrand, The Alternative | Leave a Comment »
Watching the most recent Oscars ceremony was a healthy reminder of the most fundamental instinct in human nature – the desire to please.
You want everyone to like you.
Admitting that is a big step towards authenticity. Because it’s true.
It is also true that everyone will not like you. Not even such masters of public relations as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama can make everyone like them. Some people have their own issues – they might dislike you simply for being liked by so many other people.
Why do you want to be liked so much? It relates back to the evolutionary necessity to please your parents. A young animal must please his parents in order to survive. Often, in the wild, where food and care can be in short supply, only the young animal who pleases survives to adulthood.
You crave delighting others because it regresses you into a happy child, secure in having pleased his parents and thus surviving and flourishing.
Even as an adult, you have a place in the back of your mind where everything you do is still directed at pleasing your parents. That promotion at work, the book you published, the shiny diploma on your wall – there’s some part of you that’s hoping mom and dad will notice, just like those folks up on the stage at the Oscars, thanking their mom and dad. And you’re watching those people because you enjoy identifying with them – pretending to be them for a few moments of rapturous pleasure in receiving approval.
Some part of you also wants to experience that cliched but endlessly replayed scene from every “feel-good” movie ever made. It’s the scene where, after a lifetime of commitment and hard work, the unsung hero is finally recognized by…everyone. Think “Mr. Holland’s Opus” or any of thousands of other cheesy Hollywood films. Finally, after quietly doing your part to improve the world, you get your standing ovation. The entire auditorium (or the stadium, if it’s a sports flick) is on its feet, cheering, applauding, weeping with joy – for you.
Moi?
I’d like to begin by thanking the Academy.
The problem with this instinct to please others and seek their approval is that it displaces your source of assurance about your own value onto other people. They become the arbiters of your value as a person.
It’s lovely to receive accolades – the little kid within you dances for joy.
But the judgment of others cannot become a referendum on your value as a human being. An adult needs to look within himself for approval. And you can only achieve that approval by becoming your best self.
That means staying conscious of who you are at all times, and checking in to be certain it is your most authentic identity, the person you want to be – the person you can look back on afterward and be proud of.
Your respect for yourself must be earned.
The respect of others is nice, but it can be fickle. Back in 1985 , when Sally Field won the Oscar for Best Actress for “Places in the Heart,” after having won in 1980 for “Norma Rae,” she didn’t actually say “You like me, you really like me” – although that’s what she’s remembered as saying, and that’s what she still gets made fun of for saying.
Here’s what she actually said in 1985: “I haven’t had an orthodox career, and I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!”
Perhaps it was her putting it so bluntly – telling the audience that they liked her – that made them flinch, and change their minds, and switch to making fun of her.
Sally Field probably realized once and for all in 1985 what will always be true – that you must look within yourself for the approval that matters. No one else – not even your parents – can satisfy your craving to be accepted as the person you truly are.
Posted in Current Events, Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings | Tagged Barack Obama, best self, Bill Clinton, desire to please, Norma Rae, Oscars, Places in the Heart, Sally Field | 6 Comments »
The first book is called "Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy"
Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy
The second book is called "Way Worse Than Being A Dentist"
Way Worse Than Being a Dentist: The Lawyer's Quest for Meaning
And the SEQUEL has just come out!
STILL Way Worse Than Being a Dentist
I've written a comic novel about a therapist, called "Bad Therapist: A Romance"
...or come by my office and I'll sign one for you.
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The People's Therapist 