Dangling

Almost twenty-five years ago, a middle aged man came to see me and told me a tale of woe and victimization that, after five sessions, began to seem a bit extravagant, almost as if the man was drunk, not on alcohol, but on something subtler and deeper. I must have tipped my doubts because he did not come to the next session. He did not come and did not call. When I tried to reach him, the telephone was not a working number. I called the employer he had named. I was told that there was no such employee. I tried the number of the person he had named as a contact. That telephone number did not work either. The man came to see me, then disappeared, as if he had been made up in the first place. I still think of him, still wonder about him, illustrating the power of the incomplete. The problem about deceiving your psychiatrist is that it is too easy, since the psychiatrist knows only what you tell him, so may actually know only a figment of your...

Before The Beginning, After The End

Psychotherapy begins before it begins and continues after it ends. Before the first appointment’s encounter, psychotherapy starts as a hope, an intuition, a hypothesis, even a prayer. A patient says, “Even before I saw you, I think I invented someone like you to talk with, even though I didn’t know that this person that I invented had to exist.” So we realize that much as the question about a transitional object – did I discover this or create this? – should not be resolved, so, as therapists, we are co-creators, co-discoverers of ourselves. A therapist who has been helpful remains in the mind after appointments cease, changing the inner light by which we see ourselves much as a stained glass window changes the light that passes through it to something quite different than ordinary sunlight. Oddly, a therapist who remains an inner presence can develop along with the person who has taken him in, becoming almost someone else from who he once...

Seek?

“Seek and ye shall find.” “Don’t seek and ye shall find.” Basic research and art and psychotherapy all explore the territory between these two poles. Targeted effort can be a good friend and also a devastating opponent, closing off the land of mischief and inspiration, the odd thought that illuminates a new path. Mixed states probably hold the most promise. If we are to temper our seeking with not seeking, then we can not take ourselves too seriously: “I am and am...