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Freudians are sexy; Jungians are not ( at least not this last weekend)

Published on January 17, 2012 in Belette in Psychotherapy, Meaning Making and Quotidien. 22 Comments

I spent Friday night with Jung and Saturday morning with Freud. That sounds kind of bad. It sounds like I get around, at lease theoretically speaking. Doesn’t it? And the truth is, I do. I am a bit of a psycho-dynamic polyamorist, meaning I love Freud and Jung and Lacan and Winnicott andFairbairn and Bion and… But I am not writing today about my theoretical polyamory. Today I am talking about sexy. Sexy isn’t something you think a lot about when you think about psychology but it was something I have been thinking a lot about.

Friday night I attended a documentary about Sabina Speirlein and the audience was heavily weighted with Jungians. And the look of the attendees was decidedly “not sexy”. Most of the attendees were over-50 woman who rejected hair color with the same vehemence they might reject a prescription for Prozac or a cognitive intervention. The room was so gray that I felt like I was attending an AARP convention in the midst of hippy-dippy-granola-town-goat’s-milk, USA. Then there was the matter of their clothing: again with the gray. And with the gray there were the ubiquitous shawls and the ethnic inspired jewelry, a’la Chico’s, and the VERY comfortable shoes. I have never seen so many comfortable shoes in one place—there was not a single pair of platforms in the entire pavilion. The lady in gray who sat next to me during the screening was so comfortable in her Mephistos that she took them off. She sat next to me in a public place in her bare feet. I was aghast at her barefooted boldness. I sat there in my red J Crew suede pointed-toe penny loafers and silently judged her for exposing her feet in a public place( yes, I have some naked feet issues and these issues are amplified if the naked foot in question has never been pedicured) and scanned my mind for the appropriate DSM-IV diagnosis that would fit such shocking lack of public decency.

Beyond the drab clothes, gray hair and comfortable shoes there was just a general vibe of croniness(The crone is the archetype of the the old wise woman), haginess and witchypoo-ness to the event. These Jungian women seemed to actively embrace these archetypes and I don’t think they would in any way bristle at me describing them as a crone or a hag.  As I am a gal who loves her chemically assisted hair colour, Botox, fashionable attire and heels high enough to enter the realm of Icarus, I felt very out of place and, to tell you the truth, in such crone-filled environments I often feel more than a little unwelcome. I sometimes get the feeling that if you look like you make too much effort on your appearance that the Jungian crone women will decide that you are lacking in depth. That may not be the case but I can tell you that it certainly feels that way.

When I was working on my graduate thesis “The genesis of shame: The fig leaf of fashion and its place in psychotherapy” and I would tell women analysts in the Jungian community in which I trained that I was writing on the topic of clothing I received some pretty harsh judgements.  Clothing was looked at as immaterial to the field of psychology and judged as a surface interest and not one that should be given serious academic consideration. It’s interesting to note that five years after completing my thesis that the very same institute offered the course, “Clothes in the Analytic Relationship: Not For Women Only”. It was bittersweet to see that the topic was finally being considered. I attended the nearly sold out event and was somewhat pleased to see that the women who did the presentation had not approached the topic with the depth of analysis that I had. I was also amused and somewhat irritated by the participants cooing question to the presenters, “This is such a rich therapeutic topic. Why hasn’t anyone written on it before?” Grrr!!!!

Okay, sorry for the tangent, back to sexy. So Friday night was extremely un-sexy. That’s not entirely true. The documentary on Sabina Spielrein was kind of sexy in that she was an amazing women who contributed much the the field of psychoanalysis and she slept with Jung and she had the balls to call him out on his bad behavior and then spilled the beans to Freud and went onto become a psychoanalyst. Sabina was sexy. Jung not so much and the attendees of the documentary were definitely not sexy.

Saturday morning I attended a lecture on the Greek Philosophical Roots of Psychoanalysis. I was expecting for the class to be fascinating and insightful and it was. What I had not expected was that the teacher was going to be so sexy. She really was. She had long hair that she tossed back away from her face to great effect. She wore an amazing and figure flattering dress that I would have loved to have. She gesticulated passionately with her long and manicured talons. Peep toe platform pumps revealed red pedicured toes. She was undeniably sexy and super smart. As I sat in the audience discovering how Freud had likely been influenced by Aristotle, I found my mind reviewing some of the female Freudian and Post-Freudian professors I’ve had and how most of them looked extremely embodied, sensual and as if they probably had a pretty amazing sex life( that could just be my projection however there has been a kind of wildness to their hair, some serious heels and a leather skirt or two that all seem to say that their knowledge of sex is more than just clinical).

As Dr. Sexy Freudian lectured I found myself comparing and contrasting the differing representations of femininity that I experienced at both events and I felt MUCH more at home at the second. As I contemplated the differences I imagined that the gray/drab/Mephisto wearing women were a kind of asensual-intellectual that rejected sexuality and embodiment in favor of the world of the mind. and that the wild-haired and skirt and heel wearing Freudian’s clearly had a life in which they managed to be embodied, sexy and smart(Dr. Sexy has a PhD and a PsyD and is a psychoanalyst and an artist and she speaks Latin and she has crazy-sexy style and she is funny).

When the lecture was over I went up and thanked Dr. Sexy for her lecture. What I didn’t thank her for was her willingness to be feminine and sexy and smart(not choosing one at the expense of the other) nor did I tell her how personally meaningful it was to discover such a well-dressed role model.  I really wished I had thanked her for being who she is as witnessing her being herself was even more awesome than anything I learned about Aristotle ( and I did learn some good stuff about Mr. Golden Mean).  I am sure she over the years she has received some guff for being so glamorous but she didn’t let the guff stop her.  She could quote Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle with ease, all while looking like a Russian Jaquelyn Bissett and that is seriously impressive. And no woman, no matter how high her IQ, wouldn’t like to hear that she inspires and looks great while doing it—at least no woman I know of.

Labels that lower your worth or J Crew as Bad Faith

Published on January 11, 2012 in Belette in Psychotherapy and Meaning Making. 40 Comments

Okay, so here’s the deal, most of us…me included….like our labels. No, I am not talking about Gucci, Pucci and Fiorucci–although those are some nice labels. Actually my labels of choice are more likely to be JCrew, Kate Spade, Diane Von Furtstenburg and Tory Burch. But those are not the labels I am talking about. I am talking about identity labels—-labels such as “mother’, “daughter”, “therapist”, “wife”, etc.  We work hard to achieve those labels. We go to school for some of them. We go to counseling to maintain others. We pay $100,000 for a party that announces we are now a “Mrs.”.  These labels define us and when we lose them we can feel like we have lost our purpose in life.
This last year I lost some labels and gained some new ones. Being someone’s wife give me some social cache and comfort. And as I was no one’s mother, being someone’s wife made me feel like I had at least achieved one developmental milestone that made me seem like I was on the adult-who-plays-by-the-rules track. And in losing the label of ‘wife’ I had some undeniable existential angst, ennui and meaningless. However, ultimately in losing the label I gained more freedom to be who I really am.

Jean Paul Sartre, the father of Existential philosophy and the only philosopher to ever admit being chased by a crustacean( a bad mescalin trip), and the other fab four of the existential philosopher club ( Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Camus and Heidegger) ask their readers to dump these labels(being-in-itself) faster than you might ditch a questionable Prada knock off. But why do they want you to ditch them? They think it’s bad faith. What’s “bad faith”? “Bad faith, according to Sartre, is “the phenomenon where a human being under pressure from societal forces adopts false values and disowns their innate freedom to act authentically.”

Let me have Sartre explain bad faith in his own words: “Consider this waiter in the cafe. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tight-rope-walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the arm and hand.” Sartre is not singling out waiters,  it’s just likely the example that came to mind as he spent so much time hanging at out Parisian cafes. Sartre is using them to attack the notion of over-identifying with a role( what Jung might call Persona identification) and how that over-identification with a role limits our freedom.

Satre expands his analysis to those who work at the Piggly Wiggly: “A grocer who dreams is offensive to the buyer, because such a grocer is not wholly a grocer, ” Sartre continues. “Society demands that he limit himself to his function as a grocer, just as the soldier at attention makes himself into a soldier-thing with a direct regard which does not see at all, which is no longer meant to see, since it is the rule and not the interest of the moment which determines the point he must fix his eyes on (the sight “fixed at ten paces”). There are indeed many precautions to imprison a man in what he is, as if we lived in perpetual fear that he might escape from it, that he might break away and suddenly elude his condition.”

Did you read the fantastic book, The Elegance of the Hedgehog?  If not, you should. In it there is a character, Renée, who is the concierge of an upscale Parisian apartment. She works to  conform to the expectations people have of a concierge. She is fat, cantankerous, and is seemingly addicted to TV. She hides the parts of her that do not conform to the cliche of concierge.  Renée is  secretly a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. Renée is a perfect example of Bad Faith.

When I started my blog I wanted a place to talk about things that I couldn’t talk about as a therapist. I had interests and passions that were not considered “depthful” or appropriate interests for one who was working on accessing the unconscious. My interest in shoes, clothing,  skincare, and aesthetics were considered surface and not part of the expected interests of one who was a depth psychotherapist. La Belette Rouge gave me a place for me to break from the role of therapist and in having a place for that part of myself I began to value it more and was able to incorporate more of myself. I found that the more I wrote about these interests the more authentic I became and less and less felt the need to act out of an expectation of the role of therapist. I am a therapist who loves depth and discourse and philosophy and I also love skincare and shoes and leopard print and being girly. Sartre would like that about me, I think.

Sartre was so committed to this notion that one shouldn’t be identified by labels, and that to do so is to treat yourself as an object and not as a being, that he refused to accept the Nobel prize. He knew if that he accepted the prize that was accepting a label and to accept a label is to limit your freedom. That is putting your money where your mouth is. I think if I was JPS, I might have tried to write a book of philosophy that argued it isn’t bad faith to accept a Nobel prize.

So what labels are you over-identified with? Do you find that these labels impinge your freedom? Oh, and just to bring about of whimsy to this post and negate the entire premise of this thesis, what clothing label do you most identify with and why? For me, JCrew continues to be the brand that I most identify with. Why? I suppose they are about classics with a twist. That’s me. I like things that endure and yet aren’t stuffy. I’m Episcopalian ( definitely classic with a twist). I prefer classical literature to modern novels—-mostly. I like designs that promise to be in style in twenty years and that don’t take themselves too seriously. That said, I also buy clothes from unexpected places (Target, etc)—which I think means I am not so over-identifed with a label that I am committing sartorial Sartrian bad faith.

 

 

 

James Hillman, April 12, 1926- October 27,2011

Published on October 27, 2011 in Belette in Psychotherapy, Meaning Making and Psychology. 16 Comments Tags: .

This morning, my boyfriend and teacher and long-time inspiration, Dr. James Hillman lost his battle with cancer. And to say I am sad doesn’t quite do it. I loved Hillman. I did.  And I still do. Anyone who knows me knows that I love Hillman. Loving Hillman is part of my identity. I have, with sincere and unshakable affection, called James Hillman my boyfriend. He wasn’t, of course. Hillman didn’t know me from Adam. But that didn’t stop me from loving him. I didn’t love him in “that” way. I loved Hillman’s mind. I loved the depth of his intellect and I loved his bold, brave and brash spirit. And, for an 80-something-year old man he was a bit of a hotty( as you can see in the picture, well I can see it—maybe you can’t).

I have read and reread everything that he’s written and if you spend more than a day with me you will likely hear me quote him or use one of his stories as my own. I made annual pilgrimages to Pacifica Graduate Institute to hear him talk. I would get there early to get a good seat and be close enough to make out what color socks he was wearing( Hillman was fond of colourful socks and because I was so fond of Hillman I found his idiosyncratic footwear to be adorable, in a lesser man I would find red socks to be nothing but an eyesore). I loved hearing Hillman speak for so many reasons. I loved his mind. He was unbelievably brilliant. I don’t think that in my life I have met a person who could match his intellect. He was fantastically funny. And he, my dear Hilly, did not suffer fools gladly.  No, he had an incredible bullshit detector and he wasn’t afraid to use it. Because of Hillman’s genius he tended to have an audience filled with intellectuals and many of these intellectuals wanted to flex their cerabellum in front of this great teacher. Many of these cerebellum flexors were men. As soon as they would get up to answer a question Hillman could see through them and their posturing and their 15 minute questions that would often include quotes in Latin, Ancient Greek or Aramaic and some other obscure and unreadable text. Hillman would yawn with impatience and say. “What’s the question?” or “I’m not interested” or “That bores me.” I know it may sound like he was cranky and cantankerous, and he was. But he was cranky and cantankerous in the cutest of ways—and that ain’t easy.

All the years I went to see Hillman speak I would never ask him a question. I would when close to Hillman be sure not to make eye contact. As much as I loved him he also scared the shit out of me. I didn’t want any of that cantankerous coming my way. However, two years ago when I went to see him I finally got the nerve to speak to him.  A friend who is a Jungian analyst, knew of my crush and encouraged me to finally speak to him. I was apprehensive. I didn’t want to ruin my affection for Hilly by having him hurl some hostility my way. I spent the better part of a day coming up with a question for him that was relevant to the topic. I made sure that it was a clear and concise, and not stupid and one that he might actually like to engage with. When I finally got the nerve to ask him I got up and stood in line, behind the long line of cerebellum flexers. I stood way back from them as if I didn’t want to actually own my place in line. Hilly’s wife saw me standing in line and she encouraged me to move up, so I wouldn’t lose my place. I whispered to her, “he scares me. I need some time to breath before I get up there.” His wife nodded compassionately, “I get it.”

I have no idea the questions that the people before me asked. I have no memory of what they said or even what Hillman said back to them. I was in a maelstrom of panic, anxiety and rehearsing what exactly I was going to say.  I rehearsed so much that I didn’t even know what the words meant anymore, the words lost their life with each anxiety filled repetition. When finally it was my turn to stand in front of the microphone I took a deep breath and was about to begin when Hillman interrupted me, which only exacerbated my anxiety.  Hillman said, “I need to make this point. It is very important to consider who it is our patients have a crush on. This is important stuff.”

Okay, so here’s the thing, this point about crushes was a total non-sequitur.  According to friends who were in the room and who had been able to listen to him speak, as they hadn’t been in the anxiety state that prevented them from hearing or feeling their legs, as I was,—they told me that there had been nothing before said about crushes before I made my way to the microphone.The crush thing just came to him when I stood there ( Hillman,if pressed to explain why this happened,  might have said their was a causal relationship between my crush and his inspiration to speak on the topic). Hillman finished that thought and then turned to me and said, “okay, now you..” So, with the absolute best comedic timing of my life, I said, “Um, well, I have a crush on you.” Hillman looked up at me and smiled boyishly and said, ” This could be dangerous.” The crowd went wild. I relaxed when I heard the laughter and dared to say, ” I was scared of you but you aren’t so bad.” Hillman retorted, “I can be.” Again the audience laughed at our somewhat bawdy interchange. Hillman then invited, “so what’s your question?”. I asked it, and I won’t ask it here as it would take me 500 words to explain the context of the question in any meaningful way and it would take me about 2500 words to give you Hillman’s thoughtful and engaging answer.

When I left the microphone I was beaming, Hillman liked my question. I spoke to him. I survived it. Nothing bad had happened. Strangers came up to me after and told me that our interchange was the highlight of the conference—-and even if it wasn’t for them it certainly was for me.  Truly, this was a big moment in my life. I remember the first session I had with Igor after this event and how I told him how by daring to speak to Hillman and surviving it that I wondered what else I could do that I thought I couldn’t. Something about that interchange gave me the courage to speak up. It changed me. I can’t give you concrete ways. I don’t have examples that will prove my point, I just know it’s true. Something happened to me through that interchange, a kind of boldness began to emerge. And I don’t think it is hyperbole to look back at the changes that I have made in the last year and to give some credit to this interchange with Hillman playing a part in my courageous life changes that followed.

When I heard the news that Hillman died I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I knew he had been sick. He had to cancel his last conference that he has been scheduled to present in March. He had canceled because he was ill. At the time I was in the midst of my own personal crisis and the news of Hillman’s illness amplified the pain. I couldn’t imagine a world  without Hillman. In March I wrote the following: My beloved boyfriend is not doing so well. I was supposed to be going to Pacifica this weekend to see him. However he had to cancel the event due to serious illness. Hence I will not be spending my birthday with Hillman. As soon as I heard of his canceling I had a horrible thought come to mind, “I can’t imagine a world without Hillman”. This is an awful thing to think and a worse thing to write. I can’t tell you how much it hurts me to think it. It feels like a betrayal to him to even write it. I don’t want him, with the help of Google, to ever find this post and have him find that for a minute I ever doubted his capacity for immortality. I want him to know that his existence is important to me( insert tears). Even though I have never met him, my Hilly holds father energy for me and so if he’s gone then I am once again fatherless. I know its irrational and that it is strange and absurd to project so much power on a man who doesn’t know me from Adam—-however, there you have it, this man means something to me and his presence in the world and in my psyche is grounding and important to me. And I grieve even the thought of losing him.

Today Hillman has left us. Some of you may not feel impacted by that truth. Some of you may never read his books or know his theories and that’s fine. I share this with you not to prosthelytize or to convince you of anything. I share  all of this with you to tell you that a man I love is no more and that I am better for knowing him and deeply saddened that I now live in a world where he doesn’t.

A few of my posts featuring James Hillman: I <3 Hillman

Follow your uncertainty

What I brought back with me from Santa Barbara

Red Faced

I dream of boots and beauty and making up

Some of the best of Hillman:

The Soul’s Code

We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World is Getting Worse

Re-Visioning Psychology

*****

Hillman’s obituary

How to write about what I feel like I can’t write about

Published on October 3, 2011 in Belette in Psychotherapy, Meaning Making and Psychology. 17 Comments

So I’m dating. I’m dating someone I like, someone I like a lot. And we are getting to know each other and we are in that phase in which we are idealizing each other and it is a whole lot of fun. It truly doesn’t suck to be idealized. He thinks I am sweet and smart and funny and gorgeous( I’ve got him hoodwinked;-). I think he’s adorable, funny, strong and sexy( and I am totally right about this). Even though we have only gone out ten time, he knows lots about me—he knows my feelings about religion, politics and sex and he knows that we both love salmon, chocolate, Carla Bruni and my dog( I LOVE the way he says “Lily”; It is almost as cute as the way he says “smoothy”)—but he doesn’t know about you and this blog and that is a bit weird.

Truth be told, he doesn’t even know the part of me that writes this blog. The part of me that writes this blog is the sassy, strong, and opionated part of myself and that hasn’t really come out to play yet in his presence. I am showing him more the sweet, romantic and highly-feminine part of myself which is as true and vital to who I am as is the Belette Rouge part of myself.

I do have some ideas about why I am holding back on revealing the LBR side of myself. I have a little relationship PTSD. This PTSD didn’t come from my marriage. This PTSD is a bit cumalative and can’t be blamed solely one guy—-but the original wound comes from Daddy. I got the message from Daddy and other men since then that they would prefer to be the smart, strong, sassy and opionated ones and that I ought to smile and nod and agree and generally be agreeable and a great audience. I also got the message that if I dared to be smart and strong and opionated that they would likely go away. As I didn’t want Daddy and men-like-daddy to go away I learned to be a fantastic audience and mute my passions and opinions.

So, in comes the adorable, funny, strong and sexy man that I am dating who thinks I am sweet, smart, funny and gorgeous and I find that I am shy and quiet and a bit disconnected from the me that writes this blog. I almost can’t imagine that I could connect to that part of myself in his presence and I don’t know if that is more about me or about him( my guess is that it is the former). I imagine that if and when he finds this blog and reads it and hears my “voice” that he will feel surprised and he will, perhaps, struggle to reconcile the me he knows with the me that he sees here. I worry that he won’t like this me. But there is another part of me that knows that if he doesn’t like this me then he is missing out and that I want to be with someone who likes all of me.

I talk about “my adorable, funny, strong and sexy BF” a lot in therapy. My therapist and I talk about how this relationship might make me grow. It is my therapist’s opinion that a relationship  that is predictable will be one that bores me. She believes that I require a relationship that challenges me and that this variety is the only one that I can stay in. One of the things I really like about “him” is what whenever I go to a neurotic place he is a bit impatient about it and will call me on it. Recently when he was going to pick me up at the airport my flight was delayed and I was overly apologetic about it.  I apologized over and over. He stopped me, ” I chose to pick you up. I want to be here. Stop apologizing.” I was stunned. There was something so strong, mature and psychologically sophisticated about his response. I heard him and I immediately quit apologizing.  There have been other examples when I started to spin out about something and he called me on it and instead of feeling hurt, wounded or in anyway offended, I found myself desperate to kiss him. His calling me on my shit, it turns out, is a major turn on for me.

Last night we had a moment when I felt something that wasn’t “sweet, feminine or agreeable”. I had an opinion. I had a feeling that wasn’t in alignment with his action. He could see it. “Are you mad?” he asked. “No,” I insisted. At the time I wasn’t sure that I wasn’t. But with 12 hours to consider I am convinced that I was not mad. What I was would be better described as disappointed.  So this morning I texted him and told him my opinion. I told him how I felt. I sent the text over four hours ago and I have yet to hear back from him. I am telling myself that I haven’t heard back from because he has a VERY busy Monday. I am telling myself that he can tolerate me having feelings. I am telling myself that if he can’t then it is better to know now. I am telling myself that no matter what happens I will be okay. And while self-talk is all well and good I would prefer to hear all of this from him. Um, “Adorable, funny, strong and sexy BF”, if you are reading this would you call me and tell me you understand; thanks.

Photo by Cindy Sherman, “Untitled #90“.

What smarty-pants psychoanalysts say about shoes that defends my obsession

Published on June 15, 2011 in Belette in Psychotherapy, Meaning Making, Psychology and Quotidien. 16 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

This shoes thing won’t let me go. For over 20-years I have been unable to do heels. I had foot problems. I was a Pisces who was more suited to swimming than walking. I was imbalanced. I couldn’t stand the pain. I was constitutionally incapable of walking in them. High-heels were just for special occasions. I needed a man to wear them, as I needed someone to lean on in order to walk in them. I could wear them for only brief periods of time. Valet parking was a must if heels were going to be worn. Only now I can walk blocks in them. I can wear them all day. I wear them alone. And I don’t need to valet park in order to wear them. So what’s happened? I have the same feet. If anything, I would imagine with age that I would be less likely to be able to tolerate four-inch heels than more. The only way I know how to make sense of this is to look at it symbolically as it can’t really be explained physically.

According to J.E. Cirlot in A Dictionary of Symbols, shoes are often symbolic of the vagina. Cirlot points to Cinderella as a story that uses shoes to symbolize female sexuality. Not surprisingly Freud saw the shoe or slipper a “symbol of the female genitals.” In symbolism, the shoe has is largely associated with fertility customs, marriage and romance. For example: The custom of tying shoes to the newlyweds car, which is symbolic of the sexual union.

“The Erotic Foot” makes this interesting argument that might explain my new passion for shoes that perch me higher, “The high heel and the position it creates for the foot is a strong sexual stimulus. The feet are plantar-flexed (not perpendicular to the leg as they are in a relaxed position). This is the position emphasized for the foot in any centerfold picture. It is also achieved in the sexy crossing of legs where one foot teasingly flexes forward. The extension of the foot, pointing of the toes, particularly with a circular movement, is a strong body language signal saying “I’m available.” So perhaps my choice of foot wear speaks to my availability.

The Jungian analyst and writer, Marie-Louise Von Franz describes the symbolism of shoes in the following manner: “If we start from the hypothesis that the shoe is simply the article of clothing for covering the foot and that with it we stand on the earth, then the shoe is the standpoint, or attitude toward reality. There is much evidence for this. The Germans say when someone becomes adult that he “takes off his childish shoes,” and we say that the son “steps into his father’s shoes” or  “follows in his father’s footsteps” – he takes on the same attitude.” In that vein, it is interesting to note that the moment I knew that my marriage was over came through a pair of shoes that no longer fit. The running shoes went wrong made me aware that I needed to leave my marriage. And within a month of leaving my marriage my ability to wear high heels returned. (It is also interesting to note that He-weasel would still be taller than me in most heels, so it wasn’t out of consideration for him that I chose not to wear them). If we look at the running shoe as a shoe that should have allowed freedom of movement, speed and support and that it no longer did and how the running shoe has been replaced by a shoe that is less practical,less supportive and  more beautiful—we can see how the shoe might, as a shift in attitude and a differing standpoint then I had before. My decision might have not been practical and it left me less supported and yet my life is feeling more beautiful, and more my own.

In April( a month after the seperation), when I bought my first pair of high-heels as soon as I stepped into them I noticed feeling more powerful, sexual, visible, and much more feminine. In them I have to walk slower and more carefully but walking in heels creates a kind of deliberate awareness that I never had when walking in flats. Heels slow me down and as I am in this state of transition and am using action as a way to tolerate my anxiety, the heels work as a counter-balancing agent to my impulse to run-run-run as fast as I can.

Also important to my heel obsession is how during the same time I have given flats the boot, I have had two pretty big falls. Both falls were so signifigant that I might be left with a long term scar to remind me of them. The first fall was so scary that it almost stopped me from running. A month later when I fell again I got back up and didn’t even assess my wound before getting back into the game.  I don’t know exactly how this relates to the heels, I suppose it makes the attraction to the heels feel even stronger and more important. If I am falling and feeling a bit unstable then the fact that I am choosing 4 1/2 inch sandles and not orthapedic shoes tells me that the psychic significance of this object choice is even MORE significant. I am willing to risk the fall in order to have the heights. I suppose one might rewrite that sentence and say, “I am willing to risk falling/failing in order to have this elevated life.”

I still don’t know exactly what my ability to walk in heels is all about….but I am seriously enjoying the question, the seeking the answer, the resulting ruminations and, of course, the shoes themselves. I wanted to share with you a few things that sparkle with meaning for me as I explore this topic:

1) The blogger, Dorothea, who writes the brilliant blog, Another Door, had this to say on the subject: “You can walk in heels now because you aren’t carrying all that old weight on your shoulders, throwing off your balance. You can walk in heels now because it’s like being on tip-toe and you want to be the first to see what’s coming over the horizon. You can walk in heels now because you know that if you fall down, you can get right back up. You can walk in heels now because your legs are strong from all that running (running toward, not running away from). You can walk in heels now because you are excited about taking up as much space and attention in the world as possible.” I think she is absolutely right.  Actually, in all things I think she is absolutely right. She is a brilliant writer and you MUST read her.

2 These shoes.

3) This fantastic quote that follows by, the author and psychoanalyst, Christopher Bollas which does a FANTASTIC job explaining my current obsession with heels.  However, if you find reading psychoanalytic literature to be tedious, here is what Bollas says in a nutshell: We need an object to release the self into expression. What that means for me is that  at this point in my life, I need high-heeled shoes in order to become myself.

If you do like psychoanalytic reads or would like a highfalutin explanation for your shoe love then read on. Now, I am handing my blog over to Christopher Bollas, famed psychoanalyst(Please, when reading, replace the word “object” with “high-heeled shoes”. The management thanks you for your cooperation).
“Certain objects, like psychic ‘keys,’ open doors to unconsciously intense — and rich — experience in which we articulate the self that we are through the elaborating character of our response. This selection constitutes the jouissance of the true self, a bliss released through the finding of specific objects that free idiom to its articulation. As I see it, such releasings are the erotics of being: these object both serve the instinctual need for representation and provide the subject with the pleasures of the object’s actuality…

Those objects and experiences, keys to the releasing of our idiom, free us to experience the depth of our being and of the interplay between the movement of our idiom, driven by the force of our instincts, and the unconscious system of care provided by our mother and father. We are forever finding objects that disperse the objectifying self into elaborating subjectivities, where the many ‘parts of the self’ momentarily express discrete sexual urges, ideas, momories, and feelings in unconscious actions, before condensing into a transcendental dialectic, occasioned by a force of dissemination that moves us to places beyond thinking.…

… Do I select objects that disseminate my idiom or not? For example, do I pick up a novel which I don’t like but think I should read — but through which I shall not come into my being — or do I select a novel which I like, into which I can fall, losing myself to multiple experiences of self and other? Do I have a sense of this difference of choice? What if I don’t? What if I do not intuitively know which object serves me? If I don’t know then my day is likely to be a fraught or empty occasion. Neuroitic conflict eradicates, at least for a time, potential objects.… Or I may choose an object because it is meant to resolve a state of anxiety or to recontact a split-off part of myself housed there. In other words, pathology of mind biases the subject toward the sleection of objects that are congruent with unconscious illness.…

The ego chooses not only what aspect of an object to use but also what subjective mode to employ in the use.…

We can learn much about about any person’s self experienceing by obseriving his selection of objects, not only because object choice is lexical and therefore features in the speech of character syntax, but also because it may suggest a variation in the intensity of psychic experience that each person chooses. If we live an active life, then we will create a subjectified material world of psychic significance that both contains evocative units of prior work and offers us new objects that bring our idiom into being by playing us into our reality.”
From, On Being a Character: Psychoanalysis and Self Experience, 1992 by Christopher Bollas

 

Naked Therapy

Published on March 7, 2011 in Meaning Making, Psychology and Psychology Today. 38 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

The other morning I woke to find an email in my inbox from a reporter at Salon.com. This reporter had found me on Psychology Today. She had read my piece on Naked Therapy: Seeing Through the Sartorial Signifiers of Our Shrinks for Psychology Today and she wondered if I would take a look at an article on Sarah White, “the birthday suit therapist”. I quickly clicked over to read the article on the the 24-year-old-”therapist” whom has no degree, license or training as a therapist, save a few undergrad courses in psychology. This woman claims to use Skype, striptease and nakedness as her method of psychological change. White is quoted as saying, “Freud had dreams and I have nakedness.” For $25 more an hour than I charge( and I have a M.A. in counseling psychology, years of training, post-grad education, a license AND a wardrobe) this woman is doing what she considers to be real therapy with men and women( The New York State licencing board may have a different opinion on her practicing without a license).

I was sure I was dreaming, I was both flattered to be contacted as an expert on the importance of metaphorical nakedness and aghast that this woman was engaging in something closer to”sex-work” and yet calling it psychotherapy. After reading the article I sat down to figure out how exactly I felt about this( at the time I was wearing pajamas, a sweatshirt and a Brooks Brothers robe). I had some thoughts and some feelings about all this nakedness. The first thing I felt, after worrying about the extremely unethical action that this woman was engaging in,  and calling it therapy, and  about the mental health of her patients, was a certain amount of anger. If I had just not bother to get dressed, if I had  given up my wardrobe that I spend a lot of time, money and energy on, as well as my ethics and integrity, I too could have gotten major press( Wall Street Journal, NY Daily News, Salon.com, Fox News, etc), a full case load and $25 more an hour than I make.  However, I prefer having a small case load, my ethics and the ability to actually do good work rather than fame and fortune for questionable practices . Once I got my envy out of the way I got to really thinking about this “Naked Therapy” and I put on my professional hat, shirt and other apparel of licensed and degreed expert, having written my thesis on The Genesis of Shame: The Fig Leaf of Fashion and Its Place in Psychotherapy I had a lot to say on the subject.

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Résumés of deserving

Published on March 4, 2011 in Meaning Making, Psychology and Quotidien. 38 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

When I was in high school there was a boy  whom I dated who was absolutely gorgeous. I wouldn’t think so now, as my types have seriously changed since I was in junior English( he would now be way too pretty boy for my taste, but at the time I was crazy for blond  boys in Polo shirts). I think it was maybe our third time out and I felt what Molly Ringwald must have when in Sixteen Candles she got THE guy at the end.  You remember the scene when they were on the dining room table and there was a birthday cake and the kiss? It was astounding to me that dorky-old- me was dating a high school deity. I was dizzy from the altitude sickness and overwhelmed by the oxygen differential that occurs when a mortal dates a resident of Mt. Olympus.

The date progressed and we were doing lots of kissing. I think the term for it was “making out”. Yes, we were making out( Do they still call it that?). And this deity started getting pushy about moving things to the next level. I stood firm in my resistance. It was too early. I didn’t know him well enough. And I didn’t want him to think I was a slut. So I continued to say no and he continued to push for yes. He grew tired of my noes and so he, between passionate kisses( as passionate as a 17 year old boy could be) began a different tact. He gave me the highlights of his sexual CV. Seriously. He did this. He began to tell me all the gorgeous and popular girls in my high school that he had slept with. The terribly and surprising and horrifying thing is that his who’s-who of high school actually worked on me. I was impressed with his impressive list of girls. I wanted to be on that list (any wonder I have needed years of therapy?) and so I slept with him.

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The Container

Published on February 28, 2011 in Belette in Psychotherapy, Meaning Making, Psychology and Quotidien. 24 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

So you know how I often write detailed accounts of what I told Igor and what he told me in my sessions with him? Well, there is a school of thought that would say that by my doing that I am damaging the work and even impinging my growth. I have kept this idea in the back of my mind as long as I have been writing about my own personal therapy here on the blog and chose to keep it there, that is until now. Cheryl Fuller, on her brilliant blog Jung at Heart, wrote a post about the importance of container for transformation to occur in psychotherapy and it got me thinking and I felt like I needed to think about/write about this issue as a means of coming to understand exactly how I feel about this and to see if perhaps my writing about my own therapy is helping or hurting my work with Igor.

In case you don’t know about the idea of the “the container in therapy” here’s the theory: In Depth psychotherapy the relationship and the room that the work is done is understood as an alchemical vessel, a sealed vessel and as a container. According to this theory the change occurs because, in part, due to the container remaining sealed. The heat, tension and energy that happens within the therapy needs to remain in the container for change to occur.  There are many ways that the therapist works to keep the container sealed: a safe room that has a sealed door and doesn’t allow for others to hear what’s going on. The therapist doesn’t take calls during session. And the therapist’s use of confidentiality is another way the container  is kept sealed and safe and a place where change can occur.
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Three Types of Men: Foreign lover/Abusive father/Good father

Published on February 25, 2011 in Belette in Psychotherapy, Meaning Making, Psychology and Quotidien. 79 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Remember the post, the one from a few days ago, the one I was whinging about not having any dreams. In terms of daytime dreams I am still without one. Writing a book, having a baby, or moving to Chicago have not been replaced with the desire to open a tea shop or take up Bikram yoga. However in terms of night time dreams I have had two.

Dream number one was a bit on the X-rated side. I won’t go into lurid detail. I will just tell you that Javier Bardem and I were doing things that birds and bees and educated fleas do. What felt important in this dream was the level of connection Javier and I had. And Javier’s instructions to me felt VERY important. Javier was very keen on me “opening up to him”. It seemed that he was trying to open me up so he could fill me up(metaphorically). Please, stay with the metaphor—this isn’t about sex, it’s about metaphor—really. In the dream it felt like Javier and I were very connected and I trusted him and I did open up to him. I told Igor all of these associations.
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I <3 James Hillman

Published on February 23, 2011 in Dreams, Meaning Making and Psychology. 34 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

If you have been reading my blog for very long you know that I have a sizable and long-term crush on the father of Archetypal Psychology, Dr. James Hillman. I do. I can’t help it.  It is hard for me to write about him with out gushing like a tween writing about Justin Bieber on her Facebook page. He is cute and smart and super cute and funny and he is crazy-smart and super-cute. Okay, enough with the gushing.  But he is really cute. He isn’t cute in the George Clooney way, well not to most of you. But to me he is. What I find to be George Clooney attractive about Hillman is his spark, his aliveness and his profound intellectual curiosity and that all of that comes together in an 80-something year old package makes him even more attractive( most men in their 80′s lose their joie de vivre and find their bore de vivre).

The funny thing about my crush is that Hillman and I don’t share a theoretical orientation. I am most certainly not a person who practices in a way that Hillman would. I am not an Archetypal theorist or practitioner. I have no interest in being one,it is all a bit too loosey-goosey  and structure-free for me. I am, if I was to define myself, a Post-Freudian psychoanalytically oriented therapist. Hillman would find that a major turn off. He would, I think, see me as attached to interpretations and stuck on the impact of  drives and early childhood. So even though Hilly and I don’t share the same theories we do share a love of  love of philosophy, literature, mythology and theory. And the truth of it is that I am not into him for his theories. It is his passion that really gets to me. I am, at truth, a complete sucker for passion. Anyone who is bliss-filled is a person who makes it to my love list. I once had a professor who read Rilke quotes, pages of Anais Nin and he took role using the Kabbalah’s numerological system. This man was so passion filled that I count my days in his classroom as some of the best days in my life. Really, I would pay a whole lot of money to hear him read Rilke. His excitement on the subject was completely infectious. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t hot for teacher. I was hot for passion. And I still am. I don’t remember the details of  his class or even the name of it.  I am sure I learned whatever was the class objective was, but what I learned most from him was an appreciation for passion. I can smell it a mile away and when someone has it I want to be around it. One might say that I have a passion for passion.
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About Me

My name is Tracey, aka La Belette Rouge. I am a psychotherapist and the author of Freudian Sip @ Psychology Today. I blog about psychology, my therapy, dreams, writing, meaning making, home, longing, loss, infertility and other things that delight or inspire me. I try to make deep and elusive psychodynamic concepts accessible and funny. For more information, click here .

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