PSYCHOLOGICAL LIFE begins in the imagination. That’s one reason I have a sign in my office, dangling from the mantel, that asks clients if they have a dream to share or if something unusual happened since their last session.

The latter — odd, sometimes surreal experiences — often communicate at great depth what is going on in a person’s life, conscious and unconscious. They essentially occur in an altered state when our repressed feelings — even the refusal to acknowledge our circumstances — demand expression. Such occurrences typically transcend hopelessness and often point to needed change. But they aren’t altogether without pain.

In the last few months, I have been in a dark night of the soul that is still too painful to describe in detail. Suffice it to say that it involves the loss of love — probably the most painful blow life delivers — and severe financial trouble.

My longtime friend and colleague Rose D’Agostino has been helping me with twice-weekly sessions. Rose works with energy and the way our psychological blocks are somatized. Like me, she believes the heart is an organ of perception. If you shut down its perceptual function, life loses much of its beauty and, as if suddenly blinded, you turn obsessively inward and feel alone, aimless.

I left a recent session with Rose to meet my friend Frank to see the new film, “Kill Your Darlings.” I decided to stop at Rhodes Bakery to buy some of their famous cheese straws for us to eat during the movie.

WHEN I CAME OUT OF THE BAKERY, a pathetic guy in his early 20s — obviously a crack or meth addict — approached me and asked for money. I balked, as I usually do, then felt guilty, then gave him a dollar. I apologized that I couldn’t give him more and he laughed.  “Don’t feel bad about that,” he said. I got in the car, wondering if I would have given him more money had I not just spent $7 I couldn’t afford to waste. Probably not. My priorities seemed pretty distorted.

(Please continue to my personal blog, Sacred Disorder, to read the entire post.)

The New Yorker has an interesting essay on Elaine Pagel's new book, "“Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation” (Viking). I posted the following on Facebook about the New Yorker essay:

I grew up in the New Church, which is based on Swedenborg's symbolic reading of the Book of Revelation. I am interested to learn if Elaine Pagels takes up Swedenborg in her new book...

I'm also interested in the way she reads Revelations as a coded description of the religious politics at the time of its writing. In my own studies of mythology, I've argued that some myths -- like the one of Persephone's abduction -- are likewise coded commentaries about life in ancient times, as much as expressions of archetypal themes...

It's the latter that particularly interests me. The subject is taken up convincingly in the book of essays, "Archetypal Process." It goes a long way in explaining James Hillman's extreme reluctance to take up certain themes, like gender and sexuality -- a subject I explored in my dissertation.

I've written a pretty lengthy post on my personal blog, Sacred Disorder (linked below), about my struggle with James Hillman's work and my encounters with him during my years at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Here's the opening:

James Hillman, a charismatic therapist and best-selling author whose theories about the psyche helped revive interest in the ideas of Carl Jung, animating the so-called men’s movement in the 1990s and stirring the pop-cultural air, died on Thursday at his home in Thompson, Conn. He was 85.

Thankfully, the obituary by a Times science writer doesn't continue to depict Hillman in such a pop-cultural way. Hillman called himself a "therapist of ideas" and I can see him recoiling and probably exploding on reading this.

Hillman was cantankerous, something about him that made me nervous when I was around him. In fact, I wrote an essay, both admiring and critical, about him in 2002 that begins with an account of his eruption when he came to Atlanta on a book tour in 2002.You can read my essay here.

I first discovered Hillman and his "post-Jungian" Archetypal Psychology after taking a class in Jungian psychology during my MA program. I read his revolutionary book, Revisioning Psychology, which is a critique of the medicalized perspective that has come to dominate psychology.

The book is based on a series of lectures he gave at Yale in 1972 which, as I recall reading, outraged many because of its attempt to return to the conceptualization of psychology as soul-based. In the book, he writes about the multiplicity of the psyche, represented in the pantheon of the Greek gods. He advocates the abandonment of notions of cure. "The wound is the eye," he would later say. Revisioning is one of 20-odd books Hillman wrote, along with countless journal essays.

Patricia Laperal, a psychologist hired to study effects of images on “content reviewers,” told the Times the results of her research

Ms. Laperal… reached some unsettling conclusions in her interviews with content moderators. She said they were likely to become depressed or angry, have trouble forming relationships and suffer from decreased sexual appetites. Small percentages said they had reacted to unpleasant images by vomiting or crying.

“The images interfere with their thinking processes. It messes up the way you react to your partner,” Ms. Laperal said. “If you work with garbage, you will get dirty.”

I find it intriguing that we virtually take for granted that graphic, taboo images can negatively affect a person.  We do this to the sometimes absurd extent that the simplest erotic imagery is regarded as dangerous or immoral by many in our culture.

But, if we assert that images can have negative impact, why are so many of us disinclined to acknowledge that images can also have very positive, even therapeutic, effects? Even those most personal images, our dreams, have been dismissed by many as meaningless. (Happily, though, neuroscience is  overruling that “modern” view.)

(Please continue reading on my blog, Sacred Disorder.)

My main work in the psychology field has been working with blocked artists of all kinds. It's difficult work, not least because the block is so painful.

By the time most get to me, they have developed an elaborate system to avoid the pain -- like drinking, having lots of sex and innumerable other compulsive activities.

A recent article in the New Yorker describes the work of a Jungian psychotherapist with blocked Hollywood people. The most interesting aspect of Barry Michels' work to me is with the Shadow. I am always stressing to my own clients that nothing is going to change much if they don't "embrace" the Shadow.

Of course, this is precisely the point at which many clients stop coming to sessions. This is so predictable that I try to bring clients to awareness of the Shadow slowly. It's very difficult to convince anyone that by accepting their discomfort and pain, it becomes much more tolerable, even useful.

Here's an excerpt from the article about nearly every writer's problem:

By far the most common problem afflicting the writers in Michels’s practice is procrastination, which he understands in terms of Jung’s Father archetype. “They procrastinate because they have no external authority figure demanding that they write,” he says. “Often I explain to the patient that there is an authority figure he’s answerable to, but it’s not human. It’s Time itself that’s passing inexorably. That’s why they call it Father Time. Every time you procrastinate or waste time, you’re defying this authority figure.” Procrastination, he says, is a “spurious form of immortality,” the ego’s way of claiming that it has all the time in the world; writing, by extension, is a kind of death. He gives procrastinators a tool he calls the Arbitrary Use of Time Moment, which asks them to sit in front of their computers for a fixed amount of time each day. “You say, ‘I’m surrendering myself to the archetypal Father, Chronos,’ ” he says. ‘I’m surrendering to him because he has hegemony over me.’ That submission activates something inside someone. In the simplest terms, it gets people to get their ass in the chair.” For the truly unproductive, he sets the initial period at ten minutes—“an amount of time it would sort of embarrass them not to be able to do.”

Definitely read the article if you have problems with creative blocks. I certainly did in my early 30s, when I was given an advance to write a book I never finished. It was precisely exposure of my shadow that inhibited me.

(From my blog, Sacred Disorder)

As I’ve explained many times, I don’t watch TV, so the Charlie Sheen brouhaha didn’t enter my awareness until a few days ago when I came across the above  video.  Then I Googled and found a zillion articles and video clips in which every mental health professional on the planet, like Dr. Drew, proffers an explanation of Sheen’s behavior.

Whatever the etiology of his behavior — drugs, bipolar disorder, hypomania — Sheen embodies in Jungian terms the “puer aeternus” (“the eternal youth”). It’s not really my intention here to join the diagnostic frenzy, but here’s an excerpt from Dr. Peter Milhado’s description of the puer complex:

The Puer’s main pursuit in life is ecstasy, many times at the expense of everything else.  This can be externalized in a highly symbolic fashion in fascination with flying or climbing mountains.  Many Puers hang out on ski slopes and racetracks.  Many are drawn to drinking, gambling, pornography and drugs to get that rush.

The classic mythic example of the puer is Icarus, flying too high and crashing to his death when the sun’s heat melted the wax that bonded his wings. And if anything is predictable, it’s that Charlie Sheen will crash, but hopefully not to his literal death.

There’s a lot that can be said about the attention Sheen’s crackup has gotten.....

 To continue reading please go to my blog, Sacred Disorder.

Is talk therapy going silent?

Not entirely, but the Saturday edition of the New York Times featured an article entitled “Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy.” This is very old news to anyone in the mental health field — as a patient or practitioner. But it’s good to see that The Times has noticed.

Here’s the heart of the story:

Recent studies suggest that talk therapy may be as good as or better than drugs in the treatment of depression, but fewer than half of depressed patients now get such therapy compared with the vast majority 20 years ago. Insurance company reimbursement rates and policies that discourage talk therapy are part of the reason. A psychiatrist can earn $150 for three 15-minute medication visits compared with $90 for a 45-minute talk therapy session.

 

Competition from psychologists and social workers — who unlike psychiatrists do not attend medical school, so they can often afford to charge less — is the reason that talk therapy is priced at a lower rate. There is no evidence that psychiatrists provide higher quality talk therapy than psychologists or social workers.

 

Of course, there are thousands of psychiatrists who still offer talk therapy to all their patients, but they care mostly for the worried wealthy who pay in cash. In New York City, for instance, a select group of psychiatrists charge $600 or more per hour to treat investment bankers, and top child psychiatrists charge $2,000 and more for initial evaluations.

The truth is that psychotherapy of any type has become unaffordable to the average American without insurance. Of course, this is true of all health care now, but the insurance companies, through “managed care,” have become particularly stingy about psychological services, whether delivered by an MD, an MSW or a PhD....

Krista Tippett has made a wonderful video about compassion for TED. She is host of the NPR show “On Being.” I especially like the way she compares tolerance and compassion. Many people inappropriately conflate the two.

See the video and read the rest on my blog, Sacred Disorder.

There's a fascinating front-page article in the NY Times today about lawyers and "lucky" totems and rituals they employ. At one point in the story, the habit is even described as propitiation of the gods.

Several things come to mind reading this. One is Jung's notion of compensation, with the dominant super-rational style constellating its opposite. Another, of course, is the way a totem or ritual focuses energy or serves as an object for the displacement of anxiety. The extreme example of the latter is obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Although I specialize in creative types, probably the largest percentage of my clients has been lawyers. Apologies to any happy lawyers out there, but I've had many friends who gave up the occupation after a few years. In fact, when I was editing one of the nation's largest alternative newspapers here, several of the editorial staff were former lawyers.

Part of this is counter-transference of course. My parents always told me I should be a lawyer because of my highly argumentative style. Instead of going to law school, I ended up doing a lot of critical writing -- movies early on, then popular culture and politics and, even now, dining. So, I think my public persona probably attracted lawyers. (Too bad writing doesn't pay like lawyering!)

But there are deeper connections between creativity and the lawyer's occupation in my experience. Most of my lawyer clients and friends love stories. Their cases are narratives. They are also often attracted to offbeat characters. And they love words. So, a good lawyer often seems to me at depth quite creative, often a frustrated writer. Typically, they don't recognize this about themselves or they are specializing in work that doesn't provide much satisfaction of their creative urges.

The rituals and totems are not new to me, either. I had one client years ago whose undergrad major was  philosophy. Feeling compelled to make a living, he went to law school and had just been employed by the most prestigious firm in town, making a gigantic salary. He had installed a "zen" fountain and virtual rock garden in his office both to signify his difference from his colleagues and to provide an object of contemplation.

An acquaintance went to law school to satisfy his parents. But he was obsessed with food and before graduating was already writing a very funny blog, The Amateur Gourmet. On graduating, he immediately enrolled in a graduate writing program and his blog became one of the foodie world's favorite. As far as I know, he has never practiced law.

I confess I've often said that the only lawyers I like are unhappy ones. But I also recognize that the most effective among those I've had to hire are pit bulls. It's no surprise to me at all that lawyers, often deeply conflicted, engage in rituals and carry totems.

(From my blog, Sacred Disorder.)

Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How a Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, has a superb column on the Psychology Today website this week. It’s a critique of David Brook’s New Yorker essay on neuroscience and psychology.

Lane makes this point:

What’s striking about… the article… is the idea, articulated most forcefully since the mid nineteenth century, that our social forms have evolved imperfectly to fit our biological and evolutionary needs. That principle certainly is not news. The problem is that much of Brooks’s article repeats it as if it were.

He goes on to observe:

“A core finding of this work” on brain science, Brooks writes, as if to a drumroll, “is that we are not primarily the products of our conscious thinking. The conscious mind gives us one way of making sense of our environment. But the unconscious mind gives us other, more supple ways.”

That’s new? Perhaps if one hasn’t read much Freud it may appear so. Yet Brooks, in the article, grapples with an age-old misfit between culture and biology that Freud pinpointed in the late nineteenth century, then helped greatly to assuage, including through the “talking cure,” a concept still very much with us today.

Any student of depth psychology will feel inspired to high-five Lane for this observation. Like him, I’ve repeatedly read during the last few years about neuroscience’s “surprising” revelation of unconscious processes. Occasionally, they note that, in this, contemporary science is validating Freud’s basic observations. But usually, like Brooks, they do not.

Freud has been mindlessly demonized for years. He’s only survived in the academic world in literature departments, with the few exceptions of schools that offer study in depth psychology. (Jung has been banished altogether for the most part.)

A few years ago, a friend who was a student at one of the schools of professional psychology (and a “closet Jungian”) told me her program didn’t include more than a few days’ study of the unconscious. It, and Freud’s other theories, were regarded as historical artifacts with no use in clinical practice today.

Online, I recently ended up in a debate with a psychology student who dismissed Freud with a litany of utter falsehoods. Of course, he turned out not to have read Freud and to be parroting his professors.

It does bear mention that the psychoanalytical community itself misrepresented Freud in some respects. It clung to Freud’s early explanation of homosexuality’s origin as over-identification with the mother, for example. Freud in fact recanted this, admitting that, for all he knew, the cause was over-identification with the father. In any case, he wrote to the mother of a gay man, there was nothing wrong with being gay. So, he was actually quite ahead of his time in that respect too.

It’s fascinating to watch arguably the most influential thinker of the 20th century fall into disrepute and oblivion for observations that now re-emerge without any acknowledgment of their history. It’s an example of the short-sightedness of contemporary psychology — but that’s another post. In fact, it’s a dissertation.

(From my blog, Sacred Disorder.)