'The big secret, for both consumers and providers of psychotherapy, is that there really is no such thing as generic "psychotherapy" per se: only wildly disparate theories and divergent techniques adopted by vastly varied clinicians with dissimilar personality styles, life-experience, training, values, goals, neuroses, complexes and world-views practicing what, only in the broadest possible sense, we have collectively come today to call psychotherapy. When someone says they have been in psychotherapy, or practice psychotherapy, the reality is that his or her experience with therapy may differ radically from another person's. Psychotherapy is not – and never will be, despite efforts to scientifically systematize, manualize, objectify and make it more formulaic – something consistently or reliably predictable, prescribed and predetermined. Rather, it is, as Rank and Jung understood, an archetypal healing process that is, of necessity, at its best re-invented with each new patient and by each practitioner. -- Merkin's memoir reveals her own hard-won recognition of how unrealistic, infantile, romantic or magical expectations about what psychotherapy is and is not, can and cannot do, tend to undermine the process when not explicitly addressed during treatment. To begin with, I believe Ms. Merkin may underestimate what she has learned cumulatively from psychotherapy all these many years. First, that the fantasy of finding the "perfect therapeutic match" is, like looking for the perfect mate, just, that, a fantasy. Second, yes, it is entirely possible to "stay in therapy forever without much real progress." Which is why both unsuccessful and successful psychotherapy must inevitably end at some point. Thirdly, that, inescapably, in therapy, "the weight of responsibility is borne almost entirely by the patient. . . . " Fourth, is the recognition that constantly searching for growth, transcendence, "self-transformation" or "character change" may be a means of refusing to accept oneself for who and what one truly is. ... And last but not least, ninth, her profound perception, albeit disillusioning, that behind every all-powerful "Wizard of Oz" she and others so desperately seek and project onto a physician or psychotherapist, there is always "just another little man behind a velvet curtain." Or little woman. Another imperfect, only human, flawed fellow pilgrim plodding through life as productively as they can. There are no perfectly analyzed analysts. No totally enlightened teachers or mentors. Psychotherapists, no matter what their orientation, are not omniscient, omnipotent nor superhuman, much as we might wish them to be. -- "Above all," writes Merkin, " it provided a space for interior examination, an education in disillusioned realism that existed nowhere else on this cacophonous, frantic planet." An education in disillusioned realism indeed! Acceptance of reality, both past and present, as it is and on its own terms, rather than as we desire it to be. Of ourselves as we are. Of finitude, fate and destiny; the tragic existential facts of life. Of harsh (but also beautiful and mysterious) reality without excessive sugar-coating, buffering, sedation or anesthesia. This is a powerful lesson her antidepressants apparently never provided. Painful, expensive, frustrating, imperfect and time-consuming as it may be, any psychotherapeutic treatment that provides a good "education in disillusioned realism" can't be all bad.'

'Psychotherapy can often entail confronting a lifetime of accumulated shit. Psychotherapy patients sometimes experience the daunting task of delving into their past and dealing with their emotional demons in much the same way Hercules must have felt as he faced his disgusting, demeaning and ego-deflating fifth labor. For some, even taking the decision to seek psychotherapy is perceived as a failure or defeat. Such a seemingly impossible, tedious, menial task is tough on the ego and can be a severe blow to one's narcissism. But it can take just such a turn in life to teach us some healthy humility and diminish our neurotic narcissistic grandiosity. Carl Jung once commented that "the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the ego." I prefer to think of this infuriating and humiliating "defeat for the ego" as a traumatic yet potentially transformational process. We are insulted, humbled and, at first feel defeated by such untoward events, which can take the form of outer travails or hardships, involuntary psychiatric symptoms, and/or inner crises painfully demonstrating that we are not in complete command of ourselves but rather subject to the superior or relatively autonomous powers of the unconscious and of life itself. Naturally, the ego furiously resists such displacement and dethronement, seeking to maintain its illusion of control and mastery over reality. This resistance on the part of the ego to surrendering to the Self is so strong, persistent and pervasive – and we are so overidentified with it – that sometimes a seemingly insurmountable crisis or trauma is required to forcefully topple it from its narcissistic ivory tower. Life inevitably provides precisely that which is called for.'

"The way to live to is with vulnerability and to stop controlling and predicting." <-- Anarchist ;^)

“Right now we have this crazy system where to protect your property, government takes half your property. If there was no government and you proposed it, people would think you’re insane!”

On self-esteem and social levelling: "One of the problems with self-esteem is mistaking the accidental for the personally virtuous. You don't want to place your self-esteem on the accidental characteristics that you may have."

'I apologise to readers around the world for having defended the emergency stimulus policies of the US Federal Reserve, and for arguing like an imbecile naif that the Fed would not succumb to drug addiction, political abuse, and mad intoxicated debauchery, once it began taking its first shots of quantitative easing. ...all those hillsmen in Idaho, with their Colt 45s and boxes of krugerrands, who sent furious emails to the Telegraph accusing me of defending a hyperinflating establishment cabal were right all along. The Fed is indeed out of control. The sophisticates at banking conferences in London, Frankfurt, and New York who aplogized for this primitive monetary creationsim – as I did – are the ones who lost the plot. My apologies. Mercy, for I have sinned against sound money, and therefore against sound politics.'

'Will a free society be able to put out fires? Yes, after it puts out the inferno of the state!' -- But who will build the roads?!?!?!

'We do not control our fate; we just influence it. We are programmed by those who raised us, not as a villainous happening; just normally in the course of events, because of who they are and what they know, or don’t know, and what happened to them, or didn’t. We all know this in part; but we retain our belief in the conscious power of intentionality as the agency that runs our personal psychic experience. When it is emotional memory that runs it, convincing us beyond any reasonable doubt that the past is still running our life, though the characters doing it have changed; yet they’re behaving just like people have always treated us, good or bad, making the past still true in the present. This spurious assumption is seldom examined; tragically one has to regard them selves as “mentally ill” in order to qualify for the learning opportunity of reexamining their assumptions – what we call “psychotherapy” – in order to explore, and improve upon their parent’s programming.'

'We humans are uniquely fortunate that ambivalence pervades everything we experience, think, feel and intuit, or we wouldn’t have gotten as far as we have. Within the scientific realm dealing with tangible objects, we have become very accustomed and skilled at managing and using contradictory possibilities and options. In fact that’s how science has progressed. It’s the art of putting things together that previously weren’t supposed to be married, and taking apart things that were supposed to remain together. But when it comes to dealing with ambiguity in the intangibles of human life—we suddenly lose it! We stumble into ambiguity-illiteracy. We try to make reality caveman-simple, of which good and evil is the best example; in making the most important decisions of life we have only two options instead of a thousand or more. Violence is one of the principle outcomes of simple-mindedness. Ambivalence is the key skill necessary for the creative management of multilayered comprehension.'

"Once you get that self-bullying doesn't work, you know that violence doesn't work, you know that to your very core." -- Stefan Molyneux

'Now I have seen it all - "inflation is the solution to all problems" Pritchard has officially capitulated in print! "Personally, I have changed my mind on Greece. My initial reaction earlier this year was that it had to be saved to avoid a sovereign Lehman. Many posters on this blog cried “shame”, saying it was just another moral hazard rescue for bankers. They were right. I flagellate myself and wear a dunce’s hat." -- My God, one of the chief money-printing apologists for the world has finally woken up and discerned that it won't work because it mathematically can't! Here's reality folks - despite the "monetarist" view that nations can spend whatever they wish by borrowing it and "deficits don't matter", in point of fact they do matter. Eventually people discern that you're unlikely to pay in full and the interest rate demanded goes up.'

'Hafiz, a Sufi poet from the 14th century: "The small man builds cages for everyone he knows. While the sage, who has to duck his head when the moon is low, keeps dropping keys all night long for the beautiful rowdy prisoners." -- Cage-building is protecting yourself and your interests, making yourself look good, and discouraging good ideas because you weren’t the one to come up with them. Taking the credit for yourself, assigning the blame to others—that kind of thing. Key-dropping, on the other hand, is making other people look good, building them up, expanding the pie. Think about the times when someone has really helped you think or live differently. It was like they placed a key on the ground in front of you; you picked it up and unlocked a cage. (You had to open the cage yourself, of course, but it was a lot easier with a key.) What keys do you hold that could set a prisoner free? Why not start dropping those everywhere you go?'

'#Wisdom is the Art of Being Not Dangerous. So what then is the point of education and experience? Your professors and teachers (and typical exam structure) would lead you to believe that you must cram as much information as possible into the *shit you know* category. I am going to be bold and suggest that this is wrong. The goal isn’t to put as much as possible into the *shit you know* category, it’s to take as much as possible out of the *shit you don’t know you don’t know* category. In other words, the goal is to be not dangerous. -- #The Reason You Feel Like a Fraud. The real reason you feel like a fraud is because you have been successful in taking a lot of information out of the *shit you don’t know you don’t know* category and put it into the *shit you know you don’t know* category; you know of a lot of stuff you don’t know. The good news is that this makes you very not dangerous. The bad news is that it also makes you feel dumb and helpless a lot of the time.'

Nobody knows.

'Monbiot: "I apologise. I was too trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I championed. I would have been a better journalist if I had investigated their claims more closely." -- Scepticism is the essential disposition of our craft, yet too many journalists have abandoned it. Remember: the opposite of sceptical is gullible.'

Sabraguy: "But now I suggest you review your file of correspondence and articles, and figure out who you need to apologize to." -- Monbiot: "I apologise. I was too trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I championed. I would have been a better journalist if I had investigated their claims more closely." -- contrarian2: "But if the science is that "settled," why refuse to disclose the data? If global warming so obvious and incontrovertible, why be in such a panic about FOI, why talk openly about re-defining "peer review", why threaten to (or actually) delete data?" -- Monbiot: "I agree. It is exactly for those reasons that Phil Jones should resign. There's a word for his lack of openness and control of the data: unscientific."

'"It took a lot for me to put that ad on Craigslist, because I had to change what I was before," he said, breaking down in tears. "I wasn't this rich little yuppie anymore, driving expensive cars, having expensive suits. I'm in this just like everybody else looking for work. It humbles you. This is real." The whole experience has given him a dose of humility. When he sees homeless people these days, he wants to help them.'

"Being poor is feeling the glued soles tear off your supermarket shoes when you run around the playground." -- I sellotaped mine. Didn't work ;^)