It ’s the relationship...
Many, maybe most people believe that therapists “do” something which makes patients feel better because it is hard to believe that it is the relationship between the therapist and the patient which is the healing factor.If I go to the dentist because I have pain in my mouth and the dentist doesn't help, I likely will seek help elsewhere, and that seems reasonable. But I look to the dentist to *do* something to make me feel better. The dentist does not usually, at least in acute situations, require of me that I do more than be cooperative and hold my mouth open. But psychotherapy is a different thing altogether. Therapi...
Source: Jung At Heart - February 25, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Twitter, Trump and Fat Space
Over the weekend, after days of jabs and complaints on Twitter about the news that was released following President. Trump’s recent physical, Jon Cooper, Chairman of the Democratic Coalition, called his 239,000 followers to tweet using the hashtag #MarALardass. By Monday morning the hashtag was at the top of the trending list on Twitter. Cooper’ s followers enthusiastically embraced the hashtag and there followed more fat shaming, crude anti-fat humor than I could count. I and a number of others began to post responses to the worst of the fat bashing, only to be met with a chorus of justifications because of Trump’...
Source: Jung At Heart - February 19, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Baby It ’s Cold Outside
It is a snowy day here in Maine. In the northern part of the state they had record lows — one town was at -24F this morning and that is air temperature, not wind chills. Right now it is above zero at a not exactly balmy 24F and big fluffy snowflakes are floating about.Inside I look at this and suddenly it doesn ’t seem so wintery! (Source: Jung At Heart)
Source: Jung At Heart - February 18, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Therapeutic Space
Last summer I had to make some changes in my office. So that occasioned some serious thought about therapeutic space. In the process, 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 we 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 t...
Source: Jung At Heart - February 17, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Suddenly cool!
The NY Times seems to have discovered that older women are more than cute little old ladies. Last Monday they published a review of Mary Pipher ’s new book, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life ’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age and what ’s not to like, for us older women anyway, with the headline for the review — 70 and Female Is the New Cool! I purchased the book that very day. And I recommend it to any woman over 60.If after reading the review, you, like me, feel moved to read it and would like to be able to discuss it with a group of women, let me know. (Source: Jung At Heart)
Source: Jung At Heart - February 9, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Aging: Task 3
Defining Life Realistically - the third of Jung ’s tasks of aging.I hope that you are beginning to see how these tasks flow together. All involve looking at the life we have lived so far — our regrets and triumphs sorrows and delights. And doing so without judging ourselves, which can be the hardest part. The only way to get to where we are now is the route that we took. This is the time for making peace with ourselves and our biography. We cannot start over again as perhaps we mi ght wish. Instead we need to find acceptance.“Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take thi...
Source: Jung At Heart - February 2, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Jung on Aging
Carl Jung, at 85 yrs.,reflecting on the aging process:“Old age is only half as funny as one is inclined to think.It is at all events the gradual breaking down of the bodily machine, with which foolishness identifies as ourselves.It is indeed a major effort – the magnum opus in fact– to escape in time from the narrowness of its embrace and to liberate our mind to the vision of the immensity of the world, of which we form an infinitesimal part.In spite of the enormity of our scientific cognition we are yet hardly at the bottom of the ladder, but we are at least so far that we are able to recognize the smallness of our ...
Source: Jung At Heart - January 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Perfection or completion?
Every day of 2008 I took a photograph first thing every morning out my dining room window. I didn't know why and I didn't know if I had the discipline to follow through every day for a year - after all I started Bonnie Craig’s 21 day shape-up program at least 5 times and never got past day 8 (and never did the whole thing). But something in me knew it was an important undertaking fo r me and so, day by day, every day, I took my picture.I made myself be content with the pictures as they came out, altering them only to saturate the color a bit to compensate for the compression of the jpeg format. I was frustrated somet...
Source: Jung At Heart - January 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Aging: Some points to ponder
What to call this period? Today I am 72. I am not middle aged. I am not old old either. Yet I am different from when I was in my 50s or 60s. I have this keen sense about the onrushing end, that I have perhaps 15 years or so, and not likely more, of active life ahead. That changes things. I see myself well within the last quarter of my life. But who knows? That is one of the issues of this stage.Some factors I reflect on --* Men continue to be able to sire children into old age; for women, menopause marks the end of reproduction -- how does this affect the last quarter? *There are so few places to see bodies showing age...
Source: Jung At Heart - January 27, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Aging: Task 2
Task #2 of Jung ’s 7 tasks of old age isLife Review. Life Review involves looking back over the course of one ’s life, at the good things and the bad and everything in between. It is, as someone once told, coming to terms with one’s own biography, which then makes way for embracing what is to come.Sit with this for a while. Where are you with reviewing your life, at taking on this task? How are you doing it? Are there some parts of your life you avoid looking at?In this next week I will offer you some more structured ways to work on your life review. For now, you might write in your journal about it. As always, I lov...
Source: Jung At Heart - January 25, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Tools for the journey
It is one thing to suggest that the first task of aging is to accept that we are old or getting old and that death is the inevitable conclusion of this stage of life, it is another to seriously reflect on this task, and all of the tasks we will explore. We need tools to help take us down inside ourselves, down inside where the chatter and distractions of daily life fade to a mere quiet hum. So here are 2 tools to facilitate this inward-turning, more to come later:Quiet: How many of us have the television or radio or music on all the time — not because we are watching or listening, but to provide background sound so that ...
Source: Jung At Heart - January 21, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Fat: Guidelines for Therapists
A note on nomenclature: I deliberately use the term “fat” not “obese”. In groups of people who have been marginalised on the basis of race or sexual orientation, an important part of claiming agency is declaring the right to choose what members call themselves. Similarly it is the practice in the fat community to reclaim the term “fat” fr om the pool of epithets directed against us, as segments of the gay community have reclaimed “queer”. Therefore in what follows, I use “fat” rather than “obese” except when quoting or referring to research reports.I have been able to locate three sets of guidelines...
Source: Jung At Heart - January 19, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Coming My Way
This time tomorrow this is what I will see out my window — expecting somewhere between 10 and 18 inches of snow. Lots of time to write - stay tuned! (Source: Jung At Heart)
Source: Jung At Heart - January 19, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Aging: Task 1 of Jung ’s 7 Tasks of Aging
Task 1: To face the certainty of death, the reality of aging and dying.It isn ’t easy to fully accept what it means to be aging, to accept it beyond the intellectual level. Sure, we all know none of us is immortal but it isn’t until later life that the full impact of our finiteness and the unavoidability of death hits. To do so psychically and emotionally is another matte r when we are surrounded day and day out with images and messages that we should be young looking and youthful no matter our age. Wrinkles are bad. No one talks about sagging skin. Or a decline in mobility. White hair. Illness. These things happen no ...
Source: Jung At Heart - January 18, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
Psychotherapy: In the darkness
I think often of this powerful quote from Jung on therapy:"The principle aim of psychotherapy is not to transport one to an impossible state of happiness, but to help (the client) acquire steadfastness and patience in the face of suffering. " -C.G. JungHow very different this view of therapy is from what most people seek. Jung understood that suffering is a part of life, that it has meaning and that to live fully is to know that suffering will be a factor in one's life throughout life. If I look back on my own life, I know that I have learned most from those times which were difficult and often painful, not because I wante...
Source: Jung At Heart - January 15, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs
