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Archive for the ‘Meaning Making’ Category

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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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Post Traumatic Mexican Restaurant Syndrome

Published on January 28, 2011 in Belette in Psychotherapy and Meaning Making. 59 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

On the way to Igor’s today my mind went to a memory that I don’t like to think about. It is a memory that I have locked off and put in solitary confinement. As that wasn’t enough to protect me from this dreaded memory I also installed locks, guards, barbed-wire and other defenses such as denial, repression and a fire-breathing dragon or two to guard against it entering my consciousness.  However today this memory got free and it surfaced into my conscious mind. At first I resisted it, but it was too strong. I relented to the memory and went on a trip in my  own personal time-traveling anxiety machine,  and went back to the day that He-weasel lost his job only two short months after moving to Austin. I remember all the details of the moment like it is a photo that I have studied and that someday soon someone will  test me on it.  ”Where were you?” What were you wearing? What music was playing in the background?” “What exactly did He-weasel say?” “What did you do after?” I can tell you all these things and much more in the most minute of detail. And I can tell you that today, almost three years later, that when I think about that day that I feel sick. Not just a little nauseous, rather full on PTSD related nausea that requires a couple of slurps of Pepto Bismo and an Ativan chaser.

As I was reliving this horrible day in my head I started to do a comparative study and tried to think of a day that might make me feel sicker—not that I wanted to feel sicker, my masochism does have its limits, I just wanted to know that there had been worse days in my life. And I could find plenty of bad days to turn to. Trust me, there have been plenty. Let me give you a sense of how many. One therapist that I saw for only one session, told me that I had too many traumas for her to process. Just her hearing my history had given her a bad case of vicarious traumatization. I tell you that not to brag (I am truly not a trauma overachiever) about my impressive trauma history but just to make it clear that I have some shit days I could call on. When I thought about the top ten traumas I couldn’t get any of them to feel worse than the day in Austin that He-weasel lost his job. This is what is really interesting. This is what made me see the significance of this memory that came to mind.  It isn’t true that there are no worse days than this one.  I think anyone would say that one’s husband losing their job is not as bad as almost getting killed. In the hierarchy of shit it is clear, obvious and indisputable that death is worse than job loss. But as much as I tried to make these other memories feel worse, I just couldn’t. For today the job loss felt like the worst thing that ever happened to me.
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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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