“…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 […]
Psychoanalysis and its chief tool, the couch, certainly evoke a lot of images. New Yorker cartoons come to mind. (A large fish is lying on the couch, the analyst in his chair behind the fish. The analyst asks: “So can you give me a metaphor for how you feel?” Presumably ‘Like a fish out of […]
I’d like to close out the year with a poem. It is a habit of mine to include a poem in this blog posting at the end of the year. Unfortunately, a practice I’ve gotten away from in recent years. Poetry and psychotherapy (and psychoanalysis) have much in common. Both mediums are focused on words. […]
The following article is also available on Psyched in Sf. With the help of my clients, I have been thinking lately about transcendence. Generally when people talk about transcendence, they are talking about some exalted spiritual state. In both Eastern and Western religions, there are concepts that connote an experience of a realm that is […]
The following essay can also be found on Psyched in San Francisco, a blog for psychotherapists in the San Francisco Bay Area. People come to psychotherapy looking for a good fit between themselves and the therapist. I often suggest that a client meet with me for a few sessions so that we can get a […]
The following is a revised version of a blog piece posted earlier in the year. This revision can also be found at Psyched in San Francisco, a blog of writings by psychotherapists in San Francisco. I was recently reminded of the last line of the great novel “The Great Gatsby”: “So we beat on, boats […]
Psychotherapy was invented as a treatment for trauma. That is where Freud, the inventor of psychoanalysis (the progenitor of psychotherapy) began. He formulated that the patients he was seeing with illnesses not related to an organic cause were the victims of some sort of trauma. He believed their symptoms were responses to these traumas. And […]
Psychotherapy provides a unique opportunity to have a meaningful conversation – the conversation about your life. In the frantic tempo of modern life, it can be difficult to have time or energy for any conversation. I often hear from my clients about how tired they are when they get home, about how the last thing […]
I was recently reminded of the last lines of the great novel “The Great Gatsby”: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” These words are also inscribed on the tombstone of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Sayre. Gatsby is, of course, a novel about the inevitable […]
