The human infant is well endowed to struggle with the vicissitudes of his internal and environmental stresses. What is important for us is to be able to identify in the clinical process what effects this struggle has left and how it has shaped the adult character – M. Masud R. Khan What do trees, the […]
On the way to work this morning, I heard a radio ad, I think it was for some headphone, and the tag line was “Listen to the truth.” That really caught my ear and attention, given that I have lately been reading the very thought-provoking and influential psychoanalytic thinker, Wilfred Bion. Bion writes a lot […]
Sometimes people come into therapy looking for tools. Sometimes they are experiencing depression or intense levels of anxiety; sometimes they are having problems in relationships of all kinds. And while there is something to be said for deep breathing and relaxation techniques, I am not a therapist who provides instruction in those things. I don’t […]
This morning while driving to the office, I heard a radio commercial for yet another energy drink on the market. This one is guaranteed to give one energy and vitality. And I thought to myself about psychotherapy and how it too provides energy and vitality to one’s life, only with many fewer calories and no […]
I am fond of blogging about the wisdom that clients share with me. There is not a day that goes by without someone saying something that is so wise, so truthful, particularly about the psychotherapeutic process, the process of healing. Such a comment came just the other day. A client talked about the slow process […]
“…analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient’s ego freedom to decide one way or the other.” — Sigmund Freud, “The Ego and the Id” I recently came upon this quotation and I was very drawn to it. Here Freud, writing nearly a century ago, is defining what […]
The other day, a client said a very beautiful, true and I think profound sentence. We had been talking about healing, the healing that is often at the core of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, that is, healing the soul, healing fundamentally deep within oneself. And in recognition of that work, the client said, “It takes a […]
