The proliferation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders (DSM), now in its fifth iteration, normalised thinking about psychological, emotional and existential problems in terms of diagnostic categories. Borrowing the DSM from their colleagues in the medical community, psychological training institutions have focussed on teaching their trainees to think categorically about psychopathology…
Read MoreI have never found anything that summarises my experience of therapy (as both therapist and patient) quite like Garrick Duckler’s short film, On Being A Patient. His words provide two gifts: they touch the intricacies of the kinds of problems that people bring to therapy, as separate from diagnostic categories or symptoms, and they articulate the nuances of what can be frightening about the intimacy and vulnerability of a therapeutic relationship. It is nine minutes unequivocally well spent for any patient, therapist, or curious other.
Read MoreBeing a therapy patient, especially in a longer-term, more exploratory treatment like psychoanalysis, requires a certain kind of courage. Those who choose this mode of healing (arguably the most expensive, open-ended and uncertain option, in many respects, of those ‘on the market’) submit themselves to a path towards the perimeter of themselves as they have come to be known, by others and by themselves. Eventually, they must heave open the rusty gate at the edge of their familiar, conscious self, step into the overgrown grass and begin their navigation of the unmapped, incoherent, shadowy outskirts of who they are.
Read MoreI don’t know a person who has not, at one time or another, felt a longing for greater love in their life. The absence of enough like-minded friends around, less support and success in a particular endeavour than one would wish, a sense of rarely being understood, or the absence of sincere, satisfying romantic or sexual connection, can leave us in great pain and suffering, even if it might seem we are surrounded by many people who care about us. We are all, always longing to be loved, in a world where there is so much confusion about what love even is, and what it might mean to love each other well.
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