An arrow finds its mark
I have been working a lot on my book this past week, reorganizing, revising, editing, writing. Energized and excited about this project that I have been laboring on for over 3 years. I came to editing this portion:
"For a fat person, for me, to be whole as I am, I have to come to terms with the body I have — embrace it, inhabit it, cherish it, live fully in it — and do the work of minimizing the negative effects of those complexes. The complexes Marion Woodman writes about are not unique to fat people, though being fat brings another dimension to them because of cultural stigma attached to it.
I write these w...
Source: Jung At Heart - June 22, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Where we do what we do
I have always been interested in the hows and whys of therapists’ offices. How and why they decorate them s they do. Where they locate the office. Home vs office away from home. Even what they call it — office, consulting room or as I have seen at least one Italian analyst describe as his studio. I played with collecting data to write about this very thing some years ago and sent a survey to around 20 therapists of different theoretical persuasions. Other things came along to catch my attention but I did learn from my small sample that depth therapists thought about their offices interns of how the space feels to be ...
Source: Jung At Heart - June 15, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Fed Up
This week the film Fed Up has been everywhere in the news.
Fed Up is a 2014 American documentary film directed, written and produced by Stephanie Soechtig. American journalist and TV personality Katie Couric also produced and narrates the documentary. The film premiered in competition category of U.S. Documentary Competition program at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2014...The film explains how, since the U.S. government issued its first dietary guidelines 30 years ago, the rate of obesity has skyrocketed. Generations of kids will live shorter lives than their parents.
...
Source: Jung At Heart - May 31, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Whose agenda?
In her most recent book, The Mystery of Analytical Work, Barbara Stevens Sullivan brings together Jung and Bion. In my own practice I have tried for many years to hew to Bion's dictum to approach each patient, each hour without memory, desire or understanding. Sullivan does a lovely job of explicating what this means in practice. I find eschewing desire to be especially important. This means setting aside any agenda for the patient, any wish that I have about the patient. To quote her:
"A desire to help the patient is similar: is the patient inducing in me a subjective sense of helplessness or ...
Source: Jung At Heart - May 18, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
All the Spindles
Nearly every turn in the road turns up a new wrinkle in fat acceptance for me. While I have been able to come to terms with my body, still I wished for my daughter that she not have to contend with being fat, not because I feel fat is bad but because I know how hard it is to be out of step with the culture.
You see that beautiful little girl in that photo? She was 2 years old there. I was delighted beyond measure when she was born. I always wanted a daughter, in part I'm sure to redeem my experience with my mother. To me she was and is the most wonderful daughter ever -- smart, funny, and beautiful -- everythi...
Source: Jung At Heart - May 18, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
To do or not to do
Most therapists that I know will say they entered the field at least partly out of a desire to help people. It’s hard to sit with someone who is crying or angry or yearning and not want to do something to make them feel better. But most of the time if that desire to do something is acted upon, the outcome is not what we hope. For me, this is a lesson I have had to learn again and again.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately. What comes to me was the image of an infant in the throes of colic. You try everything to make them stop because that cry is distressing, because it makes you feel impotent and frustrated...
Source: Jung At Heart - May 6, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
At the intersection
Recently I read again two excellent posts on Obesity Timebomb -- Rad Fatty: Corinna Tomrley and Susie Orbach at ASDAH. In both, some justified angry swipes at Orbach are taken but I keep feeling that in rejecting everything Orbach says, the baby is thrown out with the bathwater.Charlotte Cooper makes a legitimate point when she says, "What makes the psychological pathologising of fat people particularly pernicious is that although it is based on nothing but speculation, it is very difficult to refute, indeed denial only strengthens its grip." This is at the heart of a lot of my arguments with Marion Woodman, even th...
Source: Jung At Heart - May 4, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
When the muse goes on vacation
For the last several weeks it seems my muse has been away on vacation, or at least not urging me here. This happens sometimes. This blog is now seven years old and the likelihood that I will have something new and/or interesting to say every day or even three or four times a week has decreased.
But some of this I realized as I thought about it this morning is what I see as a widening gap between what I do and believe in and what mainstream mental health is about these days. I read Mad in America regularly and I cheer on those who are advocating alternative treatment for those with serious mental illness. I read art...
Source: Jung At Heart - April 27, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Another change
Those of you who are keen-eyed will notice that picture of my office on the right has changed. I have been contemplating changing my office for a coupe of years and even went so far as to paint the walls of the room I wanted to use but somehow the impetus to actually do the work just never quite happened. Until a couple of weeks ago. Why now? For the last 9 years my office has been up a flight a stairs in a lovely room that seems almost to be in the trees. it is very nice space — cozy and quiet. But in the last year I have had a couple of people who, though they managed the stairs fine, clearly had a little difficulty. a...
Source: Jung At Heart - March 18, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
It’s unconscious
A few weeks ago I was in a group presenting some of my material from my book-in-progress. I am always a bit anxious when I talk about it with new people. This time, as has proven to be the case every time so far, rather than being at all hostile or critical about my ideas about fat, the group was interested, curious and supportive. In the portion I presented I shared my experience being a fat person. I talked about the assumption that fat people are compulsive eaters and said that I personally had no such history. One of the members of the group asked me if I were going to write about how and what I do eat as she was curio...
Source: Jung At Heart - March 13, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Act Three
Mid-life could be seen as the opening of the issues of the last act of life. Certainly Jung seems to;
In the secret hour of life's midday the parabola is reversed, death is born. The second half of life does not signify ascent, unfolding, increase, exuberance, but death, since the end is its goal. The negation of life's fulfillment is synonymous with the refusal to accept its ending. Both mean not wanting to live, and not wanting to live is identical with not wanting to die. Waxing and Waning make one curve. Midlife can be a time of stress as emotion breaks through ego boundaries – reflecting that which feel in...
Source: Jung At Heart - March 9, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Why keep a journal?
Most people who know me know I am an ardent advocate of journal keeping. I started my own journal 40 years ago. A friend of mine told me about her neighbors, two sisters in their 90’s who had been keeping journal since they were young women in their 20s. My husband and I were about to begin our efforts to become parents which led me to realize that I, and indeed most people I knew, really had no sense of our parents as people, as people with separate identities from being Mom or Dad, people with dreams and thoughts and wishes of their own. It occurred to me that if I kept a journal, at least when I died, my kids, whoever...
Source: Jung At Heart - March 1, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
One hell of a winter
This continues to be one hell of a winter. We have had days of below zero temperatures, snow storm after snow storm, rain, freezing rain, sleet. Yesterday we had snow in the morning, sleet in the afternoon, a thunderstorm and a huge downpour, all in less than 12 hours. Today and tomorrow we should be in the 40’s, Monday begins a plunge down down down as the Polar Vortex returns. All of this makes for a lot of time curled up inside reading and watching movies and not a whole lot of desire to communicate with the outside world.
I have been to my second New Directions weekend, which like the first was exhausting, chall...
Source: Jung At Heart - February 22, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
When winter is really WINTER
Here on the coast of Maine we have been pretty occupied by a lot of winter weather, not the least of which was the ice storm which hit us last week, leaving some people without power for most of last week. Though we were fortunate and only lost heat and lights for one day, the effects of the storm linger on. It is fiercely cold and the ice is still on the trees today, a week later. The effect is one of great beauty, so for now I leave you with photos. I'll be back in a day or so with food forethought. (Source: Jung At Heart)
Source: Jung At Heart - January 1, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
What does it mean to be a Jungian?
I used to think I had a pretty good grasp of what it means to be or call oneself Jungian. I was drawn to analytical psychology because the notion that symptoms and behavior are meaningful made sense to me and seemed to me a more optimistic view of what it is to be human. Rather than focusing on pathology or seeing symptoms as being all about pathology, as I saw it analytical psychology looked for meaning and for the freedom that can accompany working to understand and take in the meaning of symptoms and behavior. Further the notion that in analysis, the analyst is in the soup along with the analysand and both are changed i...
Source: Jung At Heart - December 7, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
