The shape of the tree
People come to therapy expecting cure or healing from their problems. I don't think of therapy as healing in the usual sense. To heal means to make whole or healthy, to recover or restore and comes from the root kailo meaning whole or uninjured. In order to think of what I do as healing, I would need to see the people I work with, and indeed myself, as broken, ill and I don't, not in the sense of illness. Barbara Stevens Sullivan has a wonderful way of putting this:"In some sense, a person is her wounds. A sapling, planted beside a supportive stake that the gardener neglects to remove, will grow around the stake. The stake...
Source: Jung At Heart - September 7, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
On memory, perfection and knitting
In her post today Effy talks about failure and by implication imperfection. Which made me think about something Jung said:"If a woman strives for perfection she forgets the complementary role of completeness, which, though imperfect by itself, forms the necessary counterpart to perfection. For, just as completeness is always imperfect, so perfection is always incomplete, and therefore a final state which is hopelessly sterile...the imperfectum carries within it the seeds of its own improvement. Perfectionism always ends in a blind alley, while completeness by itself lacks selective values." ~C.G.Jung,and something I wrot...
Source: Jung At Heart - September 3, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
The Turning
The other day I read somewhere that this season, this time at the end of summer when already we can see and feel that fall is coming, is The Turning. The time of turning from one season to the next. Here in coastal Maine the light in late August already heralds this time. Light takes on a bit of a golden tone. The leaves no longer look fresh as they too prepare for the on-coming autumn. The flowers in gardens are at their most glorious, slinging color out before frost knocks them down and turns them brown in a few weeks. People who heat with wood are splitting and stacking the winter ’s supply. Local newspapers carry ...
Source: Jung At Heart - September 2, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Can I do this?
Effy Wild, a wonderful artist whoseBook of Days projectI belong to, is working on jumpstarting her blog with a plan to blog every day in September. As any of you who read along here know, I keep meaning to blog more frequently and then get distracted, which is a nice way of saying I am nit as disciplined about posting as I once was. Nine years ago on January 1, I decided I would take a photo first thing each morning from my window every day for the year. I could not tell you why I wanted to do this but I did. I had no idea if I would sustain my commitment to the project — my ex-husband and I had attempted a 21 day shap...
Source: Jung At Heart - September 1, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Things to think about while working on a possible new project
The other day I received two emails which turned out to maybe be pivotal. One from someone I worked on the Jung and feminism book asked me what I am working on these days. Good question. The other was an invitation to apply for a multidisciplinary retreat to develop a next step in our work - intimidating and intriguing. Both emails set me off on a lot of reflection and a mixture of excitement and anxiety. As is my habit when an new possibility is gestating, I spent time today cleaning out old files and ran across this piece on the state of Post-Jungian psychoanalysis and psychotherapy by Andrew Samuels. Which led...
Source: Jung At Heart - July 11, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Spike and then Oliver
I have had wonderful cats share their lives with me for the last 50 years. Though I grew up with dogs and have had some great dogs in my adult life, I have well and truly become enamored of cats. We got Spike 11 years ago, a year or so after we moved to Belfast. A neighbor had taken in his mother, a stray who then had 5 adorable black and white kittens. Spike was a wee one when we brought him home. Spunky, bold, and a bit silly. He was always full of mischief, pushing things off tables, knocking Neal’s glasses under the bd at night, making us laugh.He was wonderful cat. Then quite suddenly in April he started lo...
Source: Jung At Heart - June 29, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
You can watch me
Watch my interview with David Van Nuys for his podcast, Shrink Rap Radio. — https://youtu.be/4qZLmY7KGJk (Source: Jung At Heart)
Source: Jung At Heart - May 22, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
The Third Act
Almost 10 years ago I taught a course I called Conversations in the Third Act at the local branch of the University of Maine ’s life-long learning center. If life is a drama in three acts, then all of us over 50 are in the third act and dealing with a whole new set of issues, questions, and challengesIn 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 wa...
Source: Jung At Heart - April 27, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Where I work
I choose to have my office in my home. This is a philosophical choice based on my understandings about therapy. Both of the analysts I have worked with have had their offices in their homes, so it is something I am used to. And to the extent that most of us model our way of practicing on those therapists we admire, they are a part of my choice. But more than that, I see this choice reflecting the fact that I do not see therapy as a medical treatment. I see therapy as a part of life and needing to be grounded in the ordinary stuff of daily life lest it become too rarified and too removed from day to day existence. My office...
Source: Jung At Heart - April 15, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
How things have changed!
Sometime a long time ago I happened to see the film, ˆLady in the Dark ” and just loved it. Because it is essentially about a woman in psychoanalysis — and stars Ginger Rogers! Then a few days ago, I happened across this fromFreud Quotes - There was a comic book called “Psychoanalysis” published in 1955. Just 4 issues but still - a comic book! Three issues are available to view free online at the Freud Quotes link. I cannot imagine either the film or the comics appearing today. A novel here and there, yes, but something like these from a time when popular culture embraced psychoanalysis? Not really. (Source: Jung At Heart)
Source: Jung At Heart - April 11, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Procrustes
Crossposted fromTheFatLadySingsThis morning I read Ragen Chastain ’s latest post, They Want Fat People to Swallow Balloons Now about yet another invasive, potentially lethal weight loss device called Obera. As Ragen explains, Obera is a silicon balloon inserted into the stomach and left in place for 6 months and is promoted as non-surgical, non-invasive (though how having to be sedated in order to have the balloon inserted qualifies as non-invasive beats me), non-permanent, and no incisions. The “non-permanent” part is c orrect because as with any such effort the weight loss is not permanent. If you go to their...
Source: Jung At Heart - April 10, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Does it work?
I am occasionally asked if I can see a difference in my own life from having been in therapy. A fair question, I think.Someone who knew me when I was 25 and knows me now would not notice too very many things different about me except that I am heavier, my hair is grey and I am wearing glasses rather than contacts -- all external manifestations of age and the life I have lived. Someone who knew me very well then and now might notice that I am calmer, less prone to sarcasm, more contemplative, warmer, maybe more confident. They would recognize my delight in words and willingness to express opinions, that I have a dry sense o...
Source: Jung At Heart - April 7, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
A Place to Talk About Fat and a Typo
Cross-posted from The Fat Lady Sings:I started The Fat Chronicles when I began to gather material for and write my book. I have bounced back and forth between keeping it separate and itself and just merging it into my more general blog, Jung-At-Heart. Here we are in another bounce and a name change.Having published my book, The Fat Lady Sings, I hope that the Fat Lady Sings blog can serve as one where we can explore together issues I write about in the book and pretty much anything related to anti-fat bias, fat acceptance, being fat.Today when I thought to look into changing the name of the blog from The Fat Chronicles...
Source: Jung At Heart - April 7, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Therapeutic Space
In my search for how others have thought about the issue of therapeutic space, I encountered some of the writing of Yi-Fu Tuan, a geographer. Tuan wrote a very interesting little book, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience in which he muses about how people think about space and place, home and neighborhood. One of his thoughts is that space is what we encounter when are are someplace new and unfamiliar and it becomes place as we learn its features and landmarks. This leads me to contemplate the fact that every time a new patient comes to see me, not only is the patient is a space which is not yet place, but so ...
Source: Jung At Heart - April 3, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
A Red Letter Day
Today is a red letter day for me:my book is now available. And even before April had her baby! (Source: Jung At Heart)
Source: Jung At Heart - March 28, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
