Better to be bad than weak?
Some years ago I read Harry Guntrip's Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relations, and the Self. I often think of something he wrote in that book, that many of us would rather be bad than weak. Now that seems paradoxical at first but think about it -- it is often more satisfying to believe that we, in our "badness" ,create the behavior in others that bothers us, because that way, if we become good, then they will change too.If my mother treated me badly because I was bad; if my lover is abusive because I am not good then all I have to do is change, become good and then I will have the mother I wanted, the lover who will cherish m...
Source: Jung At Heart - November 22, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs

A Moving Target
Yes, changes are still coming. Yes, the look of this site will be changing. No, I don ’t have date for when it happens. So, let’s continue on our merry way talking about psychotherapy, about aging, about body issues. The change will come when all is ready. (Source: Jung At Heart)
Source: Jung At Heart - November 19, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs

Changes are coming soon
Regular readers know I have been contemplating moving this site to Wordpress. Though I am pretty comfortable with technology, I felt a bit flummoxed about doing the move myself. Today I am talking with someone with whom I will be working to make this move. The move means that what you see now will disappear, be replaced by an Under Construction sign  and then reappear in new dress. The address will be the same but the underpinnings will be new — kind of like a house renovation. So watch for the reappearance of the new and improved (I just had to use that) Jung at Heart. I won’t be gone long. (Source: Jung At Heart)
Source: Jung At Heart - October 8, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs

She ’s BACK!
Where have I been, you may ask? And that is a very good question. I decided I really needed to take some time to consider what comes next. And it is taking longer than I thought.  I am not disappearing. There will be changes here as I hope to begin to work to move this site to Wordpress which requires I get some help.  I am thinking even more deeply about the work I want to do, the kinds of issues I want to work with and help with — I will be writing more about that.I have a backlog of things I want to write about — about aging, about fat, about chronic illness, about life in general. There will be posts.So I am back...
Source: Jung At Heart - September 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs

Personal Myth
"I suspected that myth had a meaning which I was sure to miss if I lived outside it in the haze of my own speculations. I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness: “What is the myth you are living?” I found no answer to this question, and had to admit that I was not living with a myth, or even in a myth, but rather in an uncertain cloud of theoretical possibilities which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust. I did not know that I was living a myth, and even if I had known it, I would not have known what sort of myth was ordering my life without my knowledge. So, in the most natural way, I took it upon ...
Source: Jung At Heart - June 10, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs

The Return of Yellow
In 1968, right after I graduated from college, I was maid of honor in my best friend ’s wedding. I had a really pretty yellow dress for the rehearsal dinner (the less said the better about the dresses we attendants wore for the wedding). Then yellow disappeared. I cannot recall anything yellow I wore for 51 years after that event. The reason? None really though when I “had my co lors done” sometime in the late 80s the woman told me I was a winter and that yellow was one of the colors that was not good on me. Or maybe I was afraid it would make me stand out too much - there is nothing subtle about bright yellow. Anywa...
Source: Jung At Heart - June 3, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs

Are you ready for a journey?
“I thought I found an answer when I was older, meditation, yoga, channeling. A way of making use of a talent, a gift. And now it's back worse than ever. No, not worse than ever, but it feels like that because I've been OK so long. It's like unfinished business has come back to haunt me.”  “The gate that opens and closes can't close.”“Two years ago I began medication and it helped, not completely, but relief. Then the sleeplessness started and my doctor suggested I speak with you.”  “Are you ready for a therapy journey?”               Michael Eigen,  Under the Totem: In Search of a Path.So writ...
Source: Jung At Heart - May 26, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs

Doors
"The doors to the self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door."Clarissa Pinkola Est és  (Source: Jung At Heart)
Source: Jung At Heart - May 20, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs

Mistakes
"People do not grow in sterile containers with perfect analysts; they grow in messy human relationships with analysts who try their best to do right by their patients  but whose best must frequently consist of reparative efforts vis-á-vis the difficulties they have created."How do we recover from the mistakes that we make? We recover by recognizing that of course we make mistakes because we are human and it is how we learn. I have been in this work for 40 years and I still make mistakes -- different ones, but mistakes nonetheless.   When things go awry because of something I say or do, initially I need to be able to si...
Source: Jung At Heart - May 20, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs

Time is on my mind
My daughter texted me today to ask me when she had her measles vaccination. She will be 43 this year so it was a long  time ago. Except that in old age, distant events sometimes feel more recent than last year. A trick of time and memory that lends a vividness to long ago. I dream about a little boy and in associating to it in an effort to reveal and understand what my psyche is telling me about my life today, I have a very vivid memory of walking with my son when he was 3. I can feel his hand in mine as we walk along the street and I can almost hear his stream of commentary about things  he sees. Yet that day was forty...
Source: Jung At Heart - April 29, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs

Sunday Brain Dump
This morning for the first in what feels like weeks I woke up to sun and blue sky instead of rain or threat of rain. It ’s Sunday — no work today except the minor chores around the house. My husband has designs on finally being able to rake the winter debris from the front garden so we can maybe sow seed for summer’s flowers soon. I think about picking up one of the half dozen or so books I am slowly working my way through. And I hear that voice inside that says “It’s a nice day. You should go outside.” And maybe I will later but right now I don’t want to. I even feel a bit defiant saying that to myself.Ther...
Source: Jung At Heart - April 28, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs

Do I Look Okay?
 In his book,Ways of Seeing,  John Berger,  the English art critic, novelist, painter and poet, writes:  A woman must continually watch herself.  She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself.  Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself co ntinually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. She has to survey e...
Source: Jung At Heart - April 27, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs

I ’m okay. You’re okay.
I obsess now and then about how I am doing what I do  — a little meta obsession —like maybe the mixture I have of posts about knitting and other things unrelated in any direct way to my practice and my work might be unprofessional. I get caught up  in things like this from time to time — is the blog okay? is it all right to have my office in my home? — you know, the kind of annoying and not helpful worrying that most of us do. To complicate matters a bit, I am struggling with tendinitis in my right shoulder so some things I would ordinarily do like write or knit aggravate it. What is a person to do? Why rummage ...
Source: Jung At Heart - April 21, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs

Knitting myself together
I am a knitter. Knitters come in two basic types. The project knitter buys yarn and pattern for a specific project and knits that and only that until it is finished. Process knitters knit to knit. We love to look at, touch and acquire yarn and usually have several projects going at the same time. The finished project is nice but it is the process, the knitting itself that is engaging. Sometimes the project is never completed or it is unraveled and the yarn used again for something else. I love the feel of the yarn as it slides through my fingers as I knit. I stop frequently and pull the fabric into shape and touch it and l...
Source: Jung At Heart - April 19, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs

My life with telogen effluvium*
Every morning when I get up, after I brush my teeth, I brush my hair. For months from last summer through this winter, every morning I would find more hair in my brush. Because I was losing hair. Which filled me with grief and embarrassment and, for some reason, shame. I have a very nearly bald spot on the crown of my head, not visible to anyone who does not tower over me. But I know it is there and I cringe inwardly about it every day when I see or remember it..I have always loved my hair. Never wished it were some other color. My hair and my eyes let me feel almost pretty, to make up somehow for being fat. My beautiful a...
Source: Jung At Heart - April 13, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs