The Best Therapy... (That Isn't)
Untamed 🌕 A Mosaic of Emotions 🌕 The Beauty of Dusk
Greetings, this Sunday of February’s full Snow Moon.
This edition introduces a new periodic feature, the best psychotherapy (that isn’t)… the best psychologists (who aren’t.)
The focus is creations, projects and work in the public sphere, and the people doing them, that bring soul-animating and healing psychological dimension to our discourse, lives and culture. Today’s start is illustration for what I mean and rationale for why I consider it an important extension of newShrink’s core mission of bringing depth psychological perspectives to bear on news and popular culture.
Assorted here is largely a sampler with a few comments, some to be revisited with deeper dives later. As several readers have, please send me suggestions when you come across people, projects and programs you find inspiring in this way — and do say why.
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on memoir… untamed
As with many examples, including comedic ones, here — and a recurring focus for newShrink — is this theme of grief in its many manifestations. For popular seasoned journalist Anderson Cooper, pictured at top left, the death of his famous socialite mother unearthed for him a particular kind all-too-common among successful, well-educated thinking types in American culture. It’s mourning that didn’t happen, the love-with-nowhere-to-go of grief unprocessed. Often it’s long-buried, even unremembered, sometimes over decades.
Anderson Cooper Explores Grief and Loss in Deeply Personal Podcast (NYT)
Over the eight episodes of “All There Is,” the CNN anchor digs into his own family traumas as well as those of others.
Previous newShrink editions have featured this favorite piece about the topic that became a lasting bond between Cooper and Stephen Colbert. Colbert has since been on the Cooper podcast. (And doesn’t this article’s timing of reflection, at year-end 2019, seem a pre-Covid lifetime ago!)
Perspective | 2019’s best TV moment? It was Stephen Colbert answering Anderson Cooper’s question about grief. (The Washington Post)
The “Late Show” host’s description of the “gift” of loss was a sublime message to all.
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Next pictured at bottom left, a powerful piece by gifted Théoden Janes, who brings a distinct psychological perspective to much of his feature writing for The Charlotte Observer. For time and space reasons I’ll save further discusson for later editions
As a baby I was left on a street by… someone. As an adult I tried to figure out why. (The Charlotte Observer)
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"Something in us is wild, and wants to stay that way through our entire life. It is the source of our greatest creativity and freedom.”
Next at center beneath this favorite quote by depth ecopsychologist Bill Plotkin is author, podcaster and unique dynamo of a motivational speaker Glennon Doyle.
A Third Glennon Doyle Memoir? Yes, and Here’s Why (New York Times review of 2020 book Untamed.)
With “Untamed,” the Momastery founder unpacks the many changes in her life since her previous two books, including her divorce from her husband and her marriage to the soccer star Abby Wambach.
It should be noted that wildly popular, already famous author Doyle was at a book publisher promotional event with massive audience of adoring evangelical Christian fans to pitch her latest book on having revived her and her husband’s marriage… when she took one look at Wambach across the crowd and found herself immediately, madly in love, for the first time, ever. With a woman.
Glennon Doyle’s Honesty Gospel (The New Yorker profile, February 2021)
The best-selling memoirist and the case for truth-telling. Doyle began writing because she was “dying for a place to tell the truth,” she says.
My wise daughter-in-law had described Doyle to me awhile back, but the author only recently resurfaced to pique my attention and I’m still exploring and digesting. Here are a few thoughts so far.
🌀Reading, and reading about, Doyle is a little like drinking from a firehose. Yet, especially in Untamed, hers is one of the most powerfully authentic writing-voices I have read in awhile. She’s remarkably raw and unfiltered, yet also fiercely disciplined writing with a keenly logical mind. The book is also structured in very crisp, short chapter-vignettes that can be easily and satisfyingly read as thought-provoking mini-essays.
🌀That writing voice along with her descriptions of the writing process bring to mind the depth psychology concept and practice of the ways in which writing is a living psychological process — a relationship with material coming from our unconscious/soul as well as conscious selves. In one reflection about memoir, Doyle responds to someone’s question about her lightning-fast flow of life-changing, family-reconfiguring events:
“I didn’t remember it. I was writing it [as it was happening].”
🌀A recurring mantra she puts into day to day practice and decision making, “feel it all” brings to mind the call from Jungian Marie Louise von Franz and others to “follow the affect” — again as a way of attuning to what’s going on and what is being demanded of us, unconsciously.
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I’ve included the next pair and their work, at top right, with memoir because of both their collaborative work and its expression of their long relationship.
Changing with the times: A Q&A with The Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax on her 25 years of daily advice (Editor and Publisher)
The Washington Post’s advice columnist is Carolyn Hax, whose cartoonist-illustrator collaborator is NC native Nick Galifianakis — her ex-husband. Despite divorce and remarriages the two have been a solid creative team for decades — interesting from both a creative and a psychotherapy point of view.
Here’s a sample of the work. The cartoon shown, by Nick, is one he designs to fit each day’s column. And Hax, not trained as a therapist, is simply excellent, combining wise, crisp, practical and well-boundaried advice along with swift recommendation of professionals. I read Hax almost daily, just before doing Wordle.
Advice | Carolyn Hax: Mom’s emotional dependence clips her adult child’s wings
“The only thing she ever loved doing was being a mom," and one of her grown children feels guilty for wanting to leave.
[This pair and their longtime partnership and creative work were featured in a different context in the 5.22.22 newShrink.]
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“mosaic of emotions”
The latest book on exuberant aging by 86-year-old Swedish Margareta Magnusson differs in generation and about every other way from Doyle and the Jungians. But she issues a similar call for us to lean-into emotions as psychologically sound practice. In the article here, Laura Carstensen, a psychologist at the Stanford Center on Longevity, said:
We find that older people are more likely to report a kind of mosaic of emotions than younger people do. While younger people tend to be “all positive or all negative,” older people are more able to experience joy “with a tear in the eye.”
3 Steps to Age Exuberantly (NYT Review)
An 86-year-old author has a few rules to live by even when the trials of getting older make it easy to complain
Her three tips in a nutshell: a Swedish term for finding the silver lining in even uncomfortable, unpleasant or tediious things…. hang out with and learn from young people… and (my favorite) say yes to as much as possible. (To hers I would add from Ted Lasso, stay curious.)
Now to non-memoir mosaic material that’s fiction, comedy and/or how-to fare.
At top left is Taffy Brodesser-Akner, the author and showrunner of Fleishman Is in Trouble, and journalist most recently and currently at The New York Times
Before Fleishman was a hit TV show streaming on Hulu, it was Brodesser-Akner’s first novel. This review captures a lot of the psychological insights and skill she’s brought to build a growing reputation as one of the best profile-interviewers in journalism. Reader and friend Pam Kelley, the veteran journalist and author, had also suggested her and her work for these reasons.
'Fleishman Is In Trouble' Flips Expectations Upside Down (NPR 2019 interview)
Profiling the profiler: An interview with Taffy Brodesser-Akner (The Guardian)
The journalist, known for pieces on Gwyneth Paltrow and Bradley Cooper, takes on a new challenge: making things up
Middle age 'is a force you cannot fight,' warns 'Fleishman Is in Trouble' author (NPR interview about the TV show)
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I’m Sorry, So Sorry
Pictured at bottom left, the Sorry, Sorry authors discuss apology — a life skill I consider so essential it’s getting a lot of space here. Some thoughts:
🌀In depth-psychological terms the capacity for self-reflection and regulation in making a heartfelt, uniquivocal apology is a measure of psychological maturity. It requires that we, not once but continually, own and wrestle anew with our own unconscious shadow elements to integrate and keep them conscious.
🌀It’s particularly challenging, and even more than ever necessary in our culture’s recent years’ polarized environment, to recognize and practice shadow-work, apologizing and making appropriate amends as the strengths they are, rather than weakness to be denied and deflected. Problems unacknowledged don’t get solved.
🌀 Self-forgiveness and compassion, as well as a common language and shared set of rituals and assumptions, generally must precede our capacity for this, and thus our capacity for growth and individuation.
🌀In my observation (of self and others) both clinically and personally, the vast majority of our un-healed relationships, wounds, un-extended apologies and amends, are the result of inability and lack of self-forgiveness — not from stubborn self-righteousness toward the other.
How to make a good apology (NPR)
There's something very powerful about receiving or giving a heartfelt, genuine apology. Bad apologies, on the other hand, can be disastrous and lead to more hurt. The new book by Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies, draws from a broad range of research to explain the power of apologies, why we don't always get good ones, and the best way to tell someone you're sorry.
The co-authors break down steps to great apologies:
Say you're sorry. No hedge words like "regret," no making it about how you feel “devastated.”
Say specifically what it is you're apologizing for.
Take ownership, check in to be sure and show you understand why you caused hurt.
Don't make excuses, and save discussion for future dialogue IF the other wants that.
Say what steps or relevant reparations you have taken and are willing to, to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Ask if these are appropriate or others are indicated.
Be quiet and listen if the other is ready to talk and respond. Be open and non-defensive if the other is not.
🌀 One additional factor makes apologies such an important life-skill at every age, both in and outside the therapy room — and for coporations and groups as well as individuals. It is a vital process in relationships, including the one between therapist and patient, called rupture-and-repair. The “wait, something happened here, are we OK” apology points are pivotal ones. They are the way psychological and emotional intimacy and trust happens… and deepens.
It’s the paradox in healthy addressing of conflict: The relationship becomes more and more solid, alive and resilient… far more so, and better, than if rift(s) had never happened.
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“Children read fairy tales to master terror, and perhaps adults do the same with disaster books.”
Here the NYT reviews Dear Edward (new Apple TV+ series starring Connie Britton, from the best-seller novel by Ann Napolitano.)
This header-quote from the 2020 book review succinctly points to one of the piece’s psychological functions — which it shares with vast arrays of literature, theater and film.
A Plane Goes Down, Killing 191. Only a 12-Year-Old Survives (NYT)
Here is a take on the TV series that began Friday.
In ‘Dear Edward,’ Connie Britton Embraces Her Inner ‘Real Housewife’ (NYT)
The series reunites the actor with Jason Katims, the “Friday Night Lights” showrunner. But the wealthy suburbanite she plays is “so not Tami Taylor,” she said
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At bottom right…
the best shrinks… (who aren’t)
NewShrink reader Kristin S. shares a couple of her recommendations, starting with Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown podcast (pictured at bottom right):
She’s my current favorite “psychologist.. who isn’t.” I also consider [political historian] Heather Cox Richardson a favorite “shrink,” as she creates space for me to breathe and process our insane political landscape!
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Also, when at his best bringing a psychological and even a perspective of soul to cultural issues, is veteran columnist David Brooks of NYT:
In the Age of A.I., Major in Being Human
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Now, of obvious interest given the title, the new Apple TV+ series Shrinking — and a nod toward the power of comedy to deliver multifaceted, even therapeutic, messaging with disarming light touch (pictured at center above).
hum-bling, hum-ans, the soul in hum-or
Along with strong nuanced handling of profound grief this so-far excellent series takes up a core theme that’s a focus of today’s edition — and that of newShrink itself. That is how to bring psychotherapy’s healing practices, growth, depth and common language to day-to-day life experience of people and relationships outside the consulting room… and more real-life perspective, cultural savvy and animated heart to those working in it.
‘Shrinking’ Review: On the Couch With Harrison Ford (NYT)
An Apple TV+ dramedy from Jason Segel and some “Ted Lasso” principals is at its best when America’s sexiest uncle is dispensing advice.
This NPR review by Linda Holmes assesses the show as a show.
'Shrinking' gets great work from a great cast.
The one below is a different NPR take, with David Bianculli on the popular “Fresh Air” program. The headline suggesting assessment of the show as therapy and the show’s many boundary-crossing elements surely give many licensed therapists heartburn or worse.
A therapist stumbles on a whole new way to treat patients in 'Shrinking'
This also speaks to the show’s great humorous heart in holding the razor-thin line of paradoxes here: The clash between therapists’ essential containment of therapeutic frame, professional boundaries of confidentiality and the alchemical human spark when therapy comes-alive, when something healing happens.
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Here are other assorted comedic comments on the week and recent news. The shadow-spotting seasonal groundhog New Yorker cartoon at center is a contribution along this week’s themes from friend, reader, former Pacifica classmate and fellow depth psychologist Dr. Rebecca Udell of CA. (Wonder who’ll break the news to this unfortunate fellow, that the shadow he sees actually is projection of his unconscious demons!)
on keeping the psyche- in psychology
Some thoughts before closing…
🌀Last week’s newShrink quoted James Hillman’s book title, We’ve Had 100 Years of Psychotherapy — and the World is Getting Worse. (It was a call for better, deeper, more widely applied psychology, not a swan-song for the profession.)
🌀There’s wonderful paradox in Jung’s soul-engaged depth psychology. It maps and vividly describes the deepening levels of our individual psyche — from most public superficial mask or persona, to conscious ego, individual unconscious, archetypal-collective unconscious, to our deepest foundational soul- (“capital S”) Self.
And yet Jung also emphasizes: It’s only from our most external public persona level — the point at which the initial soul-spark of connection is made with one another, and through the resulting relationships that develop — that our deepening individuation, increased wholeness, even becomes possible.
This suggests a pretty important piece of the soul work within the consulting room must be application outside it.
Here, findings and ideas from my dissertation research a decade ago apply today.
🌀Some trends are disturbing on the clinical side of psychotherapy, defined and increasingly limited to narrow treatment of mental illness symptoms. Influenced by Big Pharma there’s shifting focus from wholeness and healing to transactional (profitable) drug-focused reduction and management of symptoms.
🌀Some isolation and compartmentalization are inherent in professional practice so tightly defined by confidentiality and individuals working with their own separate, often very different, therapists. The HIPAA privacy act is now also used to shield providers (many of them now corporations) from transparency and accountabiity as well as the original intent of protecting and serving patients.
None of these factors bodes well for a shared common soul-animated psychological language, values, practices and rituals in daily life and culture.
🌀On the depth psychology side the late Jungian Hillman, founder of archetypal psychology, presented his usual robust, at times biting, ideas. Here he was writing of what he termed “psychology’s mortal sin” in his mass-market NYT bestseller The Soul’s Code.
The core subject of psychology, psyche or soul doesn’t get into the books supposedly dedicated to its care… [By psychology’s mortal sin] I mean the deadening, the dead feeling that comes over us when we read professional psychology, hear its language, the voice with which it drones, the bulk of its textbooks, the serious pretensions and bearded proclamations of new “findings” which could hardly be more banal, its soothing anodynes for self-help, its decor, its fashion… and its tranquilizing consulting rooms where the soul goes to be restored, a last refuge of white-bread culture, stale, crustless but ever spongy with rebounding hope.
(Come on Jim, tell us what you really think!)
Such writing can be refreshingly bracing — a knife so sharp it cuts things together, not apart, to borrow an image from poet David Whyte. In reading this blistering quote, let’s keep in mind that the practice, study, teaching and writing in service of the soul — the psyche- in psychology — was Hillman’s decades-long defining passion, labor-of-love profession and vocation up until his 2011 death at age 85.
🌀Especially relevant to today’s examples involving memoir is Steve Almond, cultural critic and commentator with NPR, The New York Times SundayMagazine and other venues. Here are excerpts:
A generation ago, when “Annie Hall” won the Oscar for Best Picture, talk therapy occupied a prominent place in our collective imagination…. Today you join a writing workshop…. Literary endeavor has supplanted therapy as our dominant mode of personal investigation. We want to be heard and acknowledged. It’s the difference between someone “liking” our Facebook update versus agreeing to listen to our story, the whole bloody thing, even and especially when it runs up against bruising revelations. For those with the means, therapy used to serve this function. But it did so in a covert and stigmatized fashion.
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Here, spotted at writing time regarding memory, the very substance of memoir that’s the common thread of this first collection of examples: A post by acclaimed Charlotte author, memoirist and friend Judy Goldman:
Whatever the world chooses to do later on, it can never so much as lay a hand on the having-been-ness of this time. The past is inviolate. We are none of us safe, but everything that has happened is safe. (Novelist and Theologian Frederick Buechner in Listening to Your Life.)
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Saved for last to wind up today’s topical discussion is Frank Bruni’s lovely memoir, which is my current favorite pick for most-borrow-worthy title image.
The Beauty of Dusk
Review | One morning he awoke blind in one eye — but he ended up seeing the world more clearly (WAPO)
Franki Bruni’s memoir ‘The Beauty of Dusk’ shows the surprising upside of vulnerability.
Two soul/depth psychology themes are tapped, both by the subject of his memoir and the title image of dusk.
🌀First is Jungian psychology’s emphasis as a psychology of adulthood, of individuation through all life stages. In “Stages of Life” in Volume 8 of his Collected Works, Jung even refers to the “afternoon” — ie. dusk — of adult life. He describes how it requires a different “programme” of different soul-priorities and tasks than the ego-demands of our adulthood’s “morning.”
Jung explains that our “morning” was all about defining and securing an ego-self with which we can function in the world, make a living, pay our bills, make plans, care for and raise both prior and next generations. By contrast, from midlife-on, in life’s “afternoon” (or dusk) our individuation task of maturing is to relativize the ego — less need or emphasis on defending — in order to respond to increasingly insistent demands of the authentic soul-(“capital-S”) Self.
Often this involves discovery or awakening of unfamilar or long back-burnered areas of ourselves. (All of which can make Jung’s versions of middle-to-old age a whole lot more interesting than Sun City or AARP!)
🌀And second, the image of dusk and its beauty — as with that of dawn — evokes the liminal time and space, between daylight and night, waking consciousness and the unconscious/soul’s dreamtime.
I’ll leave you today with two related images and their messages.
🌀First, how some astonishing natural manifestations of the soul arrive only once in many millennia… if ever:
In the top photo, this week a comet last visible during the Stone Age appeared over Stonehenge. The last time the green comet, called C/2022 E3 (ZTF), was visible from Earth was around 50,000 years ago, long before the stone circle was built around 2,500 BCE. (The photo here is from Josh Dury Photo-Media).
🌀Then others, also marvelous, reliably recur monthly or even daily. Pictured at bottom here, as with the center-column photos in the lede illustration at the top of today’s post:
Snow Moon in February 2023 (The Farmer’s Almanac)
This one is most commonly so-named for the average snowiest month. As with all moons (named for the full month in which they occur after the full phase), various cultural traditions use several other names, such as Bear or Groundhog moon this month.
The moon is full at 1:29 EST this afternoon, visible tonight in clear areas. It’s now just 35 days until Daylight Saving Time, 43 days until Spring Equinox!
And, that is all I have! Talk to you next week.
🦋💙 tish
… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
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Post Credits
Lede illustration credits: Mosaic of Emotions at right by Delcan & Co. Untamed AI at left, Damon Winter of The New York Times. Stock illustrations at center are from The Farmer’s Almanac.